Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The devil has a crew cut


It's no secret that Glenn Beck is a cynical buffoon whose stock-in-trade is scaring the crap out of people even more ignorant and crazy than himself.

It also is no secret that Beck's boss at the Fox News Channel, Roger Ailes -- as well as his bosses at
Premiere Radio Networks -- just might be the most cynical people in America. That's saying something.

But cynically ginning up outrage and paranoia among ignorant (and perhaps unstable) people is nothing new in American politics and public discourse. Dangerous, yes. Destructive of the commonweal, yes.

But, alas, nothing new. This is the tired and hoary work of minor demons inhabiting middling rings of the inferno.

CONVINCING GULLIBLE and paranoid Yankee Doodle whack jobs that "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land" is pure, uncut communism -- evil incarnate under the guise of "social justice" . . . collectivist subversion of freedom and democracy -- that, on the other hand, is the work of Lucifer himself.

The devil is on Fox News weekday afternoons at 5 -- 4 Central. His stage name is Glenn Beck.

And the devil -- er, "Beck" -- is a master at getting mere mortals to mistake good for evil and evil for a public-policy prescription.

"Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied"? Socialist redistribution of wealth!

"Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied"? Commie-libs are out to destroy individual initiative . . . by confiscating your income!

"Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation"? Implicit threat of violence against hard-working American achievers from totalitarian agitators in the highest ranks!

Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep? If you remember your history, this sounds awfully like what Stalin did when he collectivized agriculture in the Ukraine! Communists want you to starve while they redistribute your food!

CALL IT biblical exegesis, as seen on Glenn Beck's TV. And heard on his radio.

Glenn Beck thinks that if you go to a church that believes that Jesus Christ meant what he said in the Beatitudes, you are in deep borscht, Comrade.

And Glenn Beck says red-blooded, market-oriented American lovers of freedom had better get out of any church that believes in that "social justice" crapola.
No, really:
I recently received word through a new friend that The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good captured audio of Fox News’ Glenn Beck encouraging listeners to leave their church if it proclaims a concern for social justice on his March 2nd radio broadcast. Here’s the quote from Beck:

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"
NO, PEOPLE, this is no everyday, happens-every-couple-or-three-decades, run of the mill American political and cultural crackpottery.

What we have here is a crew-cut, whackadoodle Mormon-convert antichrist who has been given free reign by his radio and cable-TV masters to preach apostasy to millions of lost sheep. This isn't Christopher Hitchens going on TV to tell a bemused reporter that there is no God, and believers are full of beans.

Instead, this is one of the most popular hosts on the most popular cable-"news" channel, telling his viewers that Jesus preached evil, historical Christianity is a bunch of socialist agitprop and they should flee any church that believes in such things, because that church is a clear and present danger to the republic.

It's kind of like Lenin through the looking glass, actually.

A pretty neat trick, if you can pull it off. And we know just the malevolent entity for the job, don't we?

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