"Harry Hope" <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:73u322dogtaik07cscsjunsi0nmqv55cts@4ax.com...

http://watchingthewatchers.org/story/2006/3/22/165546/762

Wed Mar 22, 2006

Repub gov't: ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal
irresponsibility, rampant greed...

By Lee Russ

Finally, a conservative who can see what's right in front of him.

Way back in 1969, Kevin Phillips was helping the Republicans
strategize how to use the changing demographics of America to perform
a political takeover.

Today, according to a NY Times review of his latest book, Phillips:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books/review/19brink.html?ex=1300424400&en=b418049d5787048d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability
and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological
extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and
dangerous shortsightedness.


Well, welcome to the club (and reality).

Better late than never, although it certainly would have been nice to
wake up before the swirling motion in the toilet bowl began.

According to the review, Phillips' 13th book, titled American
Theocracy:


..identifies three broad and related trends -- none of them new to
the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this
administration's policies -- that together threaten the future of the
United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and,
as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy.
The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into
politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of
debt -- current and prospective -- that both the government and the
American people have been heedlessly accumulating.


It sounds like Phillips has done a particularly thorough job of
chronicling the rise of the religious right, and George Bush's efforts
to convince them that to view the president's policies as "a response
to premillennialist thought.

Phillips also apparently suggests that Bush and his friends may be
true believers themselves, who employ religious belief as the basis of
policy, not just as a tactic for selling the policy to the public.

Sounds like the book is worth taking a look at.

And hoping that several other millions of Americans do the same.

______________________________________________________

Try it you'll like it.

Harry

I agree with Phillips' thesis. In fact, if I were smart enough and had
enough time and money, I would have written the same book. My children
and I discuss politics whenever we get together and several years ago I
told them that I was seriously worried about three trends coming together:
growing dependence on oil and our unwillingness to deal with it; growing
power of the "religious right;" and, growing national indebtedness.

The problem I see is this: People won't believe it because it's too
weird. When you start pointing out the convergence of forces that Phillips
describes, most folks will dismiss you as a kook.

Think about it -- if I were to tell you that there are people in powerful
places who actually believe that Jesus is coming to Earth again and will
lead the armies of righteousness in a huge battle against the forces of
evil and that the war in Iraq is necessary to speed his second coming,
you'll suggest that I take my meds. But that's exactly what's going on --
and it's just beyond believability.

I've never read any discussion of this -- but -- when Hitler was coming to
power in Germany, how many Germans really believed that he would gas and
cremate six million people? I suspect if we had told the German people
what was coming, they would have laughed at us -- and told us to take our
meds.

It's the old "It Can't Happen Here" syndrome.

"Harry Hope" <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:73u322dogtaik07cscsjunsi0nmqv55cts@4ax.com...

I agree with Phillips' thesis. In fact, if I were smart enough and had
enough time and money, I would have written the same book. My children and
I discuss politics whenever we get together and several years ago I told
them that I was seriously worried about three trends coming together:
growing dependence on oil and our unwillingness to deal with it; growing
power of the "religious right;" and, growing national indebtedness.

The problem I see is this: People won't believe it because it's too weird.
When you start pointing out the convergence of forces that Phillips
describes, most folks will dismiss you as a kook.

Think about it -- if I were to tell you that there are people in powerful
places who actually believe that Jesus is coming to Earth again and will
lead the armies of righteousness in a huge battle against the forces of evil
and that the war in Iraq is necessary to speed his second coming, you'll
suggest that I take my meds. But that's exactly what's going on -- and it's
just beyond believability.