We've long passed the point where Glenn Beck in particular, and Fox News in general, can be considered serious, fact based reporting and thoughtful analysis. His most recent explicating of "the coming Caliphat," where he illustrates how the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt is plotting to take over Europe. In Beck's world, every event is reduced to the most simple terms.
Growing up in the very conservative Southern Baptist Church, I remember traveling evangelists who would come for a week of services designed in every detail to accomplish one thing. Convince everyone the world was going to end in just a few months and you'd better come running down the aisle at the hymn of invitation, accept Jesus as your personal savior, and "avoid the wrath of God that's surely coming upon you!"
Like Beck, every evangelist had their charts and blackboards where they would painstakingly illustrate how current events most surely pointed to the end of the world, the second coming, the Book of Revelation coming literally true in our time. How nice to know human history is reducable to such simple interpretations of scripture and current events. According to the old time evangelists who shamelessly used fear tactics to further their religious agenda, there are only good guys and bad guys, right and wrong. What's tragic is that so many people buy into such shallowness.
But then, what can we expect in a country where, by some estimates, more than half of adults can't read beyond an eighth grade level? Now I understand the appeal of Beck, and, of course, Palin.
Beck is like the traveling evangelist, the fundamentalist preachers utilized fear and simplicity to offer comfort in a complex and often frightening world that appears always on the edge of spinning out of control. Why worry? Glenn and company have it all figured out. It's all unfolding according to some sort of divinely ordained plan. How convenient, and reassuring, to believe the people in the streets of Cairo are mere pawns in the Caliph's game. Economics, justice, jobs, food shortages, lack of authentic free and fair elections; too much trouble to think of all that!
Sorry guys, it's just not that simple.
Mahalo
