In
my view, religious fundamentalists are more to be pitied than feared.
Not only are their historiographical imaginations stunted, but their
literary imaginations are as well.
Emerson liked to distinguish between
the Party of Memory and the Party of Hope. Fundamentalists belong to the
former, and it is an impoverished memory at that. I do not envy them
their narrow and fearful worldview.
The case with Christian Zionists is
different. Sure, they are religious fundamentalists, but they are also
apocalypticists. Their "historiographical imaginations" (if you can call
it that) are vivid, detailed, and in teleological overdrive.
I would
still tend to feel sorry for them as I would anyone suffering from
psychosis, but they have maneuvered themselves into positions of power
in the last great Superpower on earth.
Having shed the quietism that
once characterized their approach to politics, and having grown
impatient with what they believe is the promised fulfillment of God's
plan for the world, they have convinced themselves that God wants them
to act to bring about Armageddon and, with it, the Second Coming of
Christ. The modern ethno-religious State of Israel is, in their view,
fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.
Given the blank check that the Biden
Administration has written for the Israeli war machine, such a
worldview, held by people who appear to be quite comfortable with
genocide, is not merely a matter of "personal belief" in need of
"sprucing up." These people, and all who are complicit with them,
represent a clear and present danger to the safety and security of the entire world.
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