NeoCons/TheoCons and Armageddon

This morning I went to my less-used bookshelf and took from it to reread yet again Charles Brady’s “Stage of Fools” (Dutton Press). The setting of this book is a crisis time, as is ours, in which the accountability of church was a burning issue. Corruption in the church (Roman Catholic) was then a big factor in the shredding of the social fabric. Colonialism was a joined mission of imperial exploitation and religious evangelism. There were, then as now, those who protested church corruption and imperial overreach.

I see important parallels in our times. Church and state were then of the same mind in their mutual interests of funding and expansion, as they are in critical areas today — thus, the TheoCon/NeoCon amalgam. What is different now is that the consequences of this unholy alliance are globally far more consequential than they were in the days of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. At issue are Armageddon and Apocalypse, the ultimate exploitation of authentic religious sentiment and Earth resources.

ARMAGEDDON IS NOW if the NeoCons and TheoCons have their way with history. The American people, however, seem not to want to go their way, and for good reason. In 2004, the US military budget was bigger than the military budgets of the next ten biggest spending countries. The US economy is hell-bent in an immoral direction. In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower had this to say: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.’ [NCR Cover Story: Defense Spending, 03/09/07, Jeff Severns Guntzel, “Labyrinthine, indestructible economic force”, pg 9ff]

Humans can precipitate self-destruction or live responsibly, conscionably, and choose to avoid the way of ultimate global degradation. The future is ours to choose, Apocalypse or Enlightenment. Which option will church incline toward? The Voice of the People needs to speak out, loud and clear, and hold church accountable.