LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article in Alternet talks about why the current administration doesn't seem to care that they're flying the US straight into the ground: Jesus is going to come and do a 'planetary makeover'!

Near the beginning of Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta's Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, "F – - the future!" To which his boss replies: "No, Tony, you can't f – - the future. The future f – -s you! It catches up with you and it f – -s you if you ain't prepared for it!" Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but America has morphed into a nation of Tony Maneros – collectively dismissing the future. And nowhere is this mindset more prevalent than at the Bush White House, which is unwavering in its determination to ignore the future.

The evidence is overwhelming. Everywhere you look, it's IOUs passed on to future generations. Record federal debt. Record foreign debt. Record budget deficits. Record trade deficits.

And this attempt to f – - the future is not limited to economics. You see the same attitude when it comes to energy policy, health care, education, Social Security and especially the environment – with the Bushies redoubling their efforts to make the world uninhabitable as fast as possible. (See their attempts to gut the Clean Air Act, gut the Clean Water Act, gut the Endangered Species Act, gut regulations limiting pollution from power plants.)

And the even bigger problem? They don't see this as a problem. In fact, it actually all may be an essential part of the plan.

If this last sentence doesn't make a wit of sense to you, then you are clearly not one of the 50 million Americans who believe in some form of End-Time philosophy, an extreme evangelical theology that embraces the idea that we are fast approaching the end of the world, at which point Jesus will return and carry all true believers – living and dead – up to heaven ("the Rapture"), leaving all nonbelievers on earth to face hellfire and damnation ("the Tribulation"). Christ and his followers will then return to a divinely refurbished earth for a thousand-year reign of peace and love.

In other words, why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?

Keep in mind: This nutty notion is not a fringe belief being espoused by some street corner Jeremiah wearing a "The End Is Nigh!" sandwich board. End-Timers have repeatedly made the "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic books among America's best-selling titles, with over 60 million copies sold.

And they have also spawned a mini-industry of imminent doomsday web sites like ApocalypseSoon.org and RaptureReady.com. The latter features a Rapture Index that, according to the site, acts as a "Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity" and a "prophetic speedometer" (the higher the number, the faster we're moving toward the Second Coming). For those of you keeping score, the Rapture Index is currently 152 – an off-the-chart mark of prophetic indicators.

Now I'm not saying that Bush is a delusion-driven End-Timer (although he has let it be known that God speaks to – and through – him, and he believes "in a divine plan that supersedes all human plans"). But he and his crew are certainly acting as if that's the case.