But they are not alone; there’s another group that stands yet on the decks of the Ship of State, so clueless that they continue to believe that this Neo-Con, government-led administration follows their dictates and believes the superstitions they inflict on their respective congregations, the right-wing Zionist Evangelicals that know they speak the Lord’s words and predict the coming Armageddon. Despite the evidence revealed by David Kuo in his recent book, Tempting Faith, these prophets, whose words rebound off the baldacchino of commercial satellites, respond only to their own egos as they extol their brilliance before their believers, parading in their padded outfits, gesturing in dramatic mode with Bible held aloft, resonant in voice, dripping with pious sincerity and holiness.

      Such men have guided their faithful to turn from the teachings of Christ and take up the cross of racism and revenge that is embedded in the vengeful God of the Old Testament, the one, true God that called upon His people to exterminate the tribes that occupied the lands sought by the Israelites of old, the promised lands that even now, 2500 years later, a new band of Zionists claims belongs to them using the superstition of ancient texts as legitimacy for their contention, even as they ethnically cleanse or kill outright the indigenous people of the land of Palestine.

      Who are they, these ministers of war, that flagellate their laity daily with dire diatribes about Satan’s impending presence in their midst, the prophecies of doom and destruction that John predicted in the Book of Revelation? They are cruel, heartless men who have abandoned compassion for coercion, humility for hubris, truth for treachery, and faith for fable. They have maligned the loving Christ of the New Testament by metamorphosing Him into a blood thirsty God of vengeance intent on destruction of the world while they enlist their congregants as obedient and willing soldiers in their crusade to enshrine the Zionists in Israel and eradicate the Palestinian people. To this end they have cajoled and coerced our representatives, joined their bloody hands with the Neo-Con lobbyists, and enlisted the fear of God’s wrath as a political tool of power to control and ravage the nations of the mid-east. These are ministers of hate that have corrupted the cloth by bearing false witness before the very God they proclaim to serve.

      A litany of these fabricators of truth must include the mystification of Dobson, Robertson and Hinn, the mendacity of Lindsey, Kennedy and Hagee, the guile of Falwell and Ryle, the forgery of LaHaye, the sham of Franklin Graham, the deceit of Roberts, the hollowness of Evans, and their secular counterparts that encourage such deception as heard in the quackery of Miller, Prager and Coulter, and the dissembling of Limbaugh. There are more, too numerous to mention, who find voice through the casuistry created doctrines dispensed by Dominionists, Dispensationalists, End Timers, and Christian Zionists; others who join forces in organizations like The Christian Coalition, the Eagle Forum, the Family Resource Council, Promise Keepers, and the Vineyard Movement to name a few.

      What appropriate retribution might be imagined for this horde of sinners that took God’s gift of intellect and twisted it into a tool of deceit, vengeance and death? Dante placed the politicians and the popes in his circles of hell, in torments appropriate to their crimes; let’s update Dante since he could only contend with destruction by sword, lance, catapults, and fire. We are far more advanced. Progress in arms has been our one delight and arguably our greatest achievement. Such wars and political intrigue that Dante witnessed would be but footnotes compared to our accomplishments. He found fault with Florentine politics, quibbles in a city state that resulted in his conviction for graft and corruption; his absence at the time of the trials became his permanent exile. Our conflicts are global and our means of achieving our goals more ruthless and absolute. We need punishment appropriate to our progress.

      This is my vision. Every year from now and in perpetuity, we hold a world wide Day of Lamentation on the penultimate day of the year, just in time to force reflection annually on what bestiality humans inflict on their own. On this day, the sun would not shine; we would awake to see the sun in the east rise in fullness over the distant hills or the sea and watch as it slowly lost its glow. The dome of the heavens, sparkling with stars at first, would suddenly go completely black. Then in the east a new day would dawn as the dome became an enormous IMAX screen with streams of images moving inexorably through the dark sky toward the west. These images, seen by all the living in every part of the world, display our band of Neo-Cons, Evangelicals and Zionists that have so destroyed our earth doing what they do best, sitting at a computer or pacing before a pulpit while they fulminate and froth getting ready to belch their venomous lies to their respective flocks.

      But instead of the plush, air-conditioned splendor of their respective offices at the AEI or AIPAC or PNAC, they would sit before a computer that displays no words and records nothing that they think. Rather they sit wrapped in green slime mucus that pours forth from their mouths covering them in their own mental vomit and cascades down over their pin-striped suits, over their trousers and sparkling shoes, as it flows over the Berber carpets and down the halls.

      A similar image captures the criminals of the cloth as they prance before their benumbed congregations; but out of their mouths pours forth the blood of the Christ they have mutilated as they screamed for death to his brothers and sisters. Before them stand their laity, frozen now with arms aloft and eyes closed, mute statues depicting their numbed consciences that they gave to these soulless men. No sound issues from these mouths, once the refuge of their arrogant egos; no music swaddles the congregants in rhapsodic melody to quash the thinking mind.