Oy vey.

I read a few things last week that got me thinking about politics in our country and how screwed up things have gotten since Bush took office. Mark Morford’s article, and Bill Moyer’s essay on political religion and its effects on the environment brought upon me this impending sense of doom, and I don't quite know what to do about it.

In a nutshell, the evangelicals believe in this idea of “The Rapture,” in which Israel will again occupy the rest of its biblical lands, unconverted Jews will burn, and the Messiah will return to earth. Supposedly the evangelicals – and those of their ilk – will be saved, and will be seated at the right hand of God. Now mind you, the plot of “The Rapture” per se doesn’t appear in the bible, but some believe that it is a hidden code in the Book of Revelation.

These are the same people that take a wholly literal approach to the bible. God forbid he/she made us in his/her own image, yet endowed us with brains incapable of interpreting allegory and metaphor. These are the same people that think that man truly has “dominion over ... every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

What keeps me up at night is the notion – nay, the reality – that these people have the current administration by the nut sack. It makes me nostalgic for the days when the GOP was all about Big Business.

Everything we’ve seen in the news lately has been motivated by these interests: The battle against gay marriage; the war in Iraq; impending drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge; the Schiavo drama; the FCC fight against Janet Jackson’s nipple.

Maybe it’s because of things going on in my personal life, but I’ve been thinking a lot about religion lately. For me, my religion is a very private thing, and I wouldn’t dream of pushing my beliefs on anyone else. However, that’s exactly what these people are doing. Everything they touch becomes perverted. Dirty. Twisted. And they use religion to further this hate-filled agenda of theirs into the very fiber of our government. I’m Catholic, and through all my years of catechism, I learned that God = Love. What god do these people believe in? I refuse to believe we’re talking about the same one.

And I don’t know what to do anymore. Things just look so bleak to me. And we have three more years with this guy. Will we, as a nation, survive The Bush Years, or will we go out in a blaze of unfettered, self-righteous, hate-filled glory?