Maidan

Take the worst of the worst mindless Bush supporters in the US, clone them in Ukraine, and you end up with an emerging religious cult that preaches high-minded ideals but believes in – and fully expects and hopes for – Armageddon, death, massive destruction, and the end of the world.

Given religious and political freedom under Ukraine’s Constitution, there’s nothing to stop them or deter them aside from rational thought. Otherwise, US neo-conservatives are a group largely driven by world domination, and who are largely supported politically – as in voting – by far right-wing ideologues who rarely if ever bother with independent thought and reason.

That ideology holds that these are the end times, the end of human civilization as we know it, that the Rapture is just around the corner, soon to be followed by Armageddon and an inferno holocaust that will teach everyone on Earth a lesson they’ll never forget.  And then Christ will return.

There is the key: the hope and expectation of the return of Christ.  But, certain things have to happen first.  US right-wingers are taking it upon themselves to fulfill prophecy to speed things up.  Two thousand years is a long time to wait for Christ’s return, after all, and they’re getting impatient.

So impatient, in fact, that most of the entire US right-wing are now referred to as “Rapturists” and “Armageddonists.”  They’re tired of waiting for Biblical prophecy, as they understand it and assume to be the Absolute Truth for every person on this planet, to be fulfilled.  Perhaps only America could breed such a do-it-yourself approach to the end of the world – and with the weaponry to back it up.  In the meantime, they’ve supported America’s takeover by undemocratic-types of the Bush cabal, because the end of the world is just around the corner anyway.

To be clear, US right-wing Christians and US neo-conservatives are not exactly the same.  Neo-cons intend to plant US values and way of life around the world, mainly for profit motives.  

Right-wing Christians are natural prey to the neo-con scheme.  They believe that their world view is the only possible natural order of things because it says so in the Bible according to them.  Circular logic jumps out immediately, of course.  The world must become according to their beliefs because they are correct, and their beliefs are correct because the world must become according to their beliefs: the Bible as they understand it.

Never mind reason and mere facts.  Possibly the premier champion of the Christian right (right as in political right wing, not right as in correct) is Hal Lindsey.  He wrote a book in 1970, “The Late, Great Planet Earth”, wherein he assigned himself as a key prophet in interpreting and making sense of the various prophecies throughout the Bible – not least the utterly incomprehensible Book of Revelations.  Therein, Lindsey set upon describing contemporary and very recent world events in 1970 as indications of end-time prophecy being fulfilled.  He extrapolated further to make predictions about how things would unfold over the next quarter century or so.  Many simple-minded folks  – but voters, nevertheless – in the US were taken in completely.  Some took a wait-and-see approach, to see if his predictions were correct.  Lindsey was wrong on almost every prediction he made, not least that Christ would return before the end of the millennium.  Moreover, the Rapture and Armageddon didn’t happen.

Undeterred, the US Christian right took it upon themselves to help hurry things along by allying with US neo-cons in the neo-con world domination schemata that co-opted the entire US Christian right into neo-con dreams and ambitions of US hegemony around the world.  The US Christian right see it as the natural order of things, because all of it is preparing the world properly for Christ’s return and fulfillment of their increasingly impatient and rabid beliefs.

Those beliefs mesh almost perfectly with the US neo-conservative agenda to plant Americanism all over the world, and make life Hell for anyone who gets in their way.  Neo-cons are political; the religious right are the US religious faction in natural position to follow blindly – while making up roughly one-fifth of the US electorate.  Both are fervently hoping for an excuse to pull the nuclear trigger, because for US Christian right-wingers that means Armageddon, and then Christ can be only a short time from His long overdue reappearance to save the world and bring peace.  But first, vicious, nihilistic  war and conflict must precede.  For US neo-cons, pulling the nuclear trigger is a mixture of motives, primarily to remove opponents to their New World Order, and secondarily to fulfilling Biblical Armageddon “prophecy” to satisfy their right-wing Christian constituency.  If neo-cons don’t deliver Armageddon, Christian right-wingers will be very disappointed.  It must happen, because it says so in the Bible, at least according to them.  Pulling that trigger is to them equivalent of fulfilling God’s word.

Strangely, or not, the religious right – a voting bloc without which Bush and his cronies would have no chance of power in the US – blithely ignore messy little facts inherent in such instances as the current war on Iraq.  In that regard alone, Bush and his neo-cons have demonstrably broken at least four of the Ten Commandments:

-do not kill
-do not steal
-do not covet
-do not bear false witness against your neighbor

US right-wingers, and their clones, give full blessing and support to the Iraq travesty and rationalize those fundamental moral breaches as inevitable, because these are the “end times”, and certain things must happen to make it all come to pass.  Circular logic.  Thus, breaking the basic moral code of Christianity becomes the Christian thing to do, according to their tortured beliefs and lunacy.  Further, annihilating a few million people with nuclear holocaust is in accordance with the word of God and fulfillment of prophecy, because nuclear holocaust has become ubiquitous with Armageddon: fire and brimstone raining down from the sky to punish the unrepentant, and that sounds like a job for nuclear weapons.  (Ignore the “Thou shalt not kill” part.  It just gets in the way.)

Like it or not, disturbing or not, this is what the US Christian right passionately expect and desire.  There is no need to blindly accept the words in this article.  Talk to them yourself.  And, they are backing, supporting, and encouraging people – US neo-cons and their world-control, New World Order agenda – whom they are convinced can make it all happen.  On that point, they are correct, and the rest of the world can only watch and marvel: potential shock and awe on the grandest scale, if they get what they’re looking and hoping for.

Anyone who doubts them or disagrees in any way is, of course, the Anti-Christ as well as un-American.  And all who are un-American are terrorists, and therefore deserve to be punished.  Again never mind that the US Christian right themselves have bought into fundamental betrayal and violation of the most basic Judeo-Christian teachings and moral precepts.

Their ideology is corrupt and rotten to the core – and they’re now infecting and infesting Ukraine.  

There is nothing to stop the US Christian right wing from infesting Ukraine, due to religious freedom guaranteed by Ukraine's Constitution, nor should there be anything to stop them aside from individual critical thought on the part of their recruits and followers who are mostly simple, trusting, desperate, unthinking and uneducated people.  The social shambles left in the wake of Ukraine's previous governments have left a rich vein of hardened, but thoughtless, cynics who are prepared to believe anything whatsoever that gives them a sense of hope and entitlement for a better tomorrow.  I have yet to meet one person among new converts in Ukraine with the ability to think critically about what they’re being led to believe, though I can surely see the appeal and sexiness of their believing that they’re suddenly among the chosen few heading to magically depart in the Rapture before all Hell breaks loose, or enduring to see the greatest show of all time, the Second Coming of Christ and His presidency of the entire world with True Believers in the most favored positions.  If it takes murder and mayhem to make that happen, that’s just the price of admission.  Old Ukraine and the imagined Second Coming sound strangely similar.

Perhaps in fair and inevitable balance, having talked with many Ukrainians being duped and having talked with those from the US who are here to dupe them, there is already competition among them about who is preaching the “only real, True word of God.”  An evangelical preacher says he is.  A Baptist missionary, also a preacher, says he is.  Both say they have a lock on the Truth, and the other is wrong.  “Rattlesnakes committing suicide” comes to mind.

They might all do well to pray for salvation, and to pray that this isn’t the end of the world.  If the Lord were to return in the near future, He’d likely be very, very irritated with so many who have arrogantly and willfully wrought death and destruction in His name in the expectation of forcing His hand, fulfilling tortured interpretations of prophecy, just so they can be in on the Grand Show of the Second Coming.

It probably won’t be so Grand for them if He really does return in the near term.