<html>
<head>
<style>
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
FONT-SIZE: 10pt;
FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma
}
</style>
</head>
<body class='hmmessage'>
Visionaires, <br><br>Some of you have asked that I try to post from my blog, Prevailing Winds, onto Vision 2020. For both of you (!), here's my take on why we're a nation under judgment:<br><br>From my blog:<br><br><div class="post-body entry-content">
It's been a few days since I've posted -- I'm afraid the germ-filled
air on my flight home as well as a lingering visit by the Back Pain
Fairies had me not feeling so well. But it's given me time to formulate
an argument supporting my contention that the United States, through
the sovereignty of a just and holy God, has experienced eight years of
judgment under the George W. Bush administration.<br><br>We
elected Bush in 2000, the crest of a new millennium and a clear break,
to conservatives, from the sex and scandal-laden years of the Clinton
era. I'm not a fan of Bill Clinton; I think he was a largely immoral,
hypocritical user trading far too much on charm and wit and not nearly
enough on intelligence and principle. However, spending a few hundred
million bucks exploring the vagaries of his private sex life seems to
me to have been unwise -- the public funding of a GOP vendetta against
an economically and societally successful president, disguised as a
quest for truth, morality, and traditional values. Nonetheless, all
sides can agree that the dawning of the Bush 2 administration was a new
start, albeit one that terrified liberals as much as it comforted
conservatives. <br><br>(I also believe that Bush's cronies stole the
election, period. But they'll have to face God on that one, and face
Him they will).<br><br>Bush's first term, marked as it was by 9/11,
could have lifted up the people of the United States, elevating our
finest ideals and enacting policies that stood firm against evil
without responding in kind. Bush may have been unprepared for the
attacks of 9/11, but he and his neo-cons were certainly prepared to
wage war against Iraq. It made no sense before the attacks, made even
less afterwards, and remains a testimony to the evil in mens' hearts,
displayed on an international level and realized in the tears of every
American and Iraqi parent grieving the loss of their child. Bush came
into office either too dumb or too malleable to avoid war at any
provocation, and when 9/11 came, the door, hinges greased in eagerness,
swung open for an unprovoked attack and an immoral invasion of a
country that did us no harm. <br><br>The first few years of the Bush
administration, then, were fruit from a poisoned tree, and the stench
of war was augmented by the rotting economy his fund-war/cut-taxes
policy brought about. Indifference to the poor is the kindest possible
description of what could bring about such insanity; I prefer "utter
contempt" and "shocking dismissal." The middle class suffered and the
underclass shattered, and the war against the poor at home continues
unabated, just as the war against Iraq thunders along today.<br><br>And, astonishingly, the American people rejected a genuine war hero and decent man and elected Bush again in 2004. <br><br>The
Brits asked how so many millions of people could be so dumb. Perhaps
the question is how so many supposedly God-fearing voters could vote
not only against their own self-interest, but for the very things that
the truly religious ought to reject with fervor. It's difficult for me
to accept that Bush won his first term largely because of people
whipped into a frenzy by illicit sex in the Oval Office, but it
continues to boggle the mind that American voters cast their lot with
him again -- when evidence of Bush lies, pre-9/11 war planning, an
economy beginning to skid, and the multiplying hardships endured by the
poor on whose backs the rich enjoyed tax breaks were all startlingly in
view. The wealthy Right got what it wanted, and the Religious Right
handed it to them in a chalice.<br><br>I believe that the evil
perpetrated by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al, is unprecedented in
American history. And, after reading eminent prosecutor Vincent
Bugliosi's "The Impeachment of George W. Bush on Murder Charges," I'm
also convinced that he is at best a war criminal and more accurately a
common thug whose indifference to life, blind faith in his own gut,
stunning anti-intellectualism, and mission to please those smarter and
more evil than him informed his every presidential move. The thuggish
and the thick generally aren't too dangerous to too many people; the
thuggish and the thick given enormous power have brought us and Iraq to
where we are today.<br><br>Because I believe in a sovereign, personal
and holy God who knows all and is thwarted by nothing, I have to
conclude that He allowed the United States to suffer as it has under
two terms of a Bush presidency. I don't know why; further, I don't know
why the Iraqi people were allowed to be slaughtered and to slaughter
our own men and women forced to fight an unwinnable, immoral, unneeded
war. But God doesn't exercise His sovereignty in ways that are always
pleasant for us. We all know when we've been blessed; we tend to
explain away when we've been disciplined or placed under judgment by
our Lord. Those who call us a "Christian nation," who kindle fires of
hostility and division and trade in violence and bigotry, who trample
the poor under their well-shod feet and pretend not to notice, and who
wail about the killing of fetuses (who I believe are children, by the
way, known and loved by God) while applauding the killing of innocents
abroad and the slow death of those at home, are the ones who've brought
about the judgment of a God who takes no joy in levying punishment, but
also brooks no favor with those who mock Him. <br><br>The reality that
we chose to be governed by a man so ill-prepared to be president, just
because he claimed Jesus as Savior, and that we gave a second term to
the arrogant-bumblers-turned-vicious-mercenaries he chose to surround
himself with, is sobering. I imagine historians will puzzle over it for
decades, perhaps centuries. But right now is the time to realize that
God judges nations who seek blood and trample the poor and dispense
with justice, and our national religion of flag-waving and Jesus as
Best Republican not only doesn't shield us from judgment, but invites
it.<br><br>May God have mercy on us all.
</div>
<div class="post-footer">
<div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-1">
<span class="post-author vcard">
Posted by
<span class="fn">Keely Emerine Mix</span>
</span>
<span class="post-timestamp">
at
<a class="timestamp-link" href="http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/2008/09/judgment-and-george-w.html" rel="bookmark" title="permanent link"><abbr class="published" title="2008-09-19T08:58:00-07:00">8:58 AM</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class="reaction-buttons">
</span>
<span class="star-ratings">
</span>
<span class="post-comment-link">
<a class="comment-link" href="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=491276552577218507&postID=2750216509831945378" onclick="">0
comments</a>
</span>
<span class="post-backlinks post-comment-link">
</span>
<span class="post-icons">
<span class="item-control blog-admin pid-921954875">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=491276552577218507&postID=2750216509831945378" title="Edit Post">
<img alt="" class="icon-action" src="http://www.blogger.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gif">
</a>
</span>
</span>
</div>
<div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-2">
<span class="post-labels">
</span>
</div>
</div>
<br>Keely<br>http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/<br><br /><hr />See how Windows connects the people, information, and fun that are part of your life. <a href='http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/msnnkwxp1020093175mrt/direct/01/' target='_new'>See Now</a></body>
</html>