L.B.: Executive Intelligence Review

Left Behind, pp. 151-154

The opening sentence of Chapter 9 clearly establishes that this is not a flashback:

Buck's subconscious waking system failed him that evening, but by 8:45 p.m. he was back in Steve Plank's office, disheveled and apologetic.

So it's not a flashback. This scene occurs after the mass disappearances.

We are in the executive offices of a premier newsmagazine, the top editors gathered to discuss upcoming stories. This is not a flashback. Emotions are high. They're tossing around words like "historic" and "monumental."

Yet none of them so much as mentions that more than 2 billion people aren't there anymore. No one mentions the vanishing of every kindergartner, every first-, second- and third-grader, every toddler and infant on the planet. No one mentions the dozens of plane crashes, the scores of rail disasters, the crippling of their own city -- of every city.

Instead they're focused on what's really most important: The Jews.

It's all about the Jews. Those Jews are up to something, and no doubt it's something Jewish.

Every journalist in the room wants a piece of this story. Besides Buck and Steve, there's Juan Ortiz, "chief of the international politics section." Ortiz thinks this story should be his, since "Jewish Nationalists" and "one world government" are issues he's been "following for years." But religion editor Jimmy Borland wants a piece of this story, too, as does financial editor Barbara Donohue. They all realize that whether the subject is international finance or multinational politics, the Jews are behind it all. "Global Weekly" is looking more and more like "Executive Intelligence Review."

This is all rather insane and offensive. Buck is convinced that there is a hidden connection between a meeting of Orthodox Jews who want to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and a meeting of Jewish Unitarian "ecumenicalists," and a meeting at the U.N. proposing a single world currency. And he's pretty sure that connection has something to do with mysterious international financier and political puppeteer Jonathan Stonagal.

Buck is apparently connecting these dots on the basis of nothing more than a hunch. I cannot imagine what would prompt such a hunch, why Buck -- or, for that matter, LaHaye and Jenkins -- would assume that these things must all be connected. That assumption only makes sense if one accepts as true the Bizarro-world, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the John Birchers and LaRouchies and the rest of the tinfoil hat crowd that spends its days muttering about the Trilateral Commission, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and the string-pulling Jews behind it all.

In other sections of the book, L&J seem to want to distance themselves from such conspiracy theories, but they don't seem to appreciate the way those crazed theories are woven into the fabric of their own grand scheme.

The weird and paranoid obsession with "the Jews" in this passage is troubling. But what may be even more disturbing is that this is not a flashback. All that death and chaos, all those grieving parents, doesn't even register with these characters, or with their authors. The editors of "Global Weekly" are planning the same set of stories they had planned before calamity struck and their world was utterly changed.

One wishes this scene could be read as a satire on the cluelessness of journalists, but that is clearly not the intent. Buck is here, again, held up as a model of insight. We're supposed to admire the way he focuses on the big picture of the underlying (Jewish) conspiracy behind it all.

All of these meetings in New York were scheduled before the global calamity. Yet -- despite the shutting down of nearly all commercial aviation, despite the fact that every parent involved in these meetings is now grieving a lost child, despite the fact that their agendas, like all pre-disappearance agendas, would now seem irrelevant -- none of these meetings is postponed, rescheduled or canceled.

There is a sense that the actual, physical world does not matter. The people who live in that world do not matter. All that matters is the grand scheme, whether that scheme is the conspiracy of international financiers or the divine scheme of an arbitrary series of "prophetic" events.

The authors behave as they imagine God behaves. They have a plot that must move forward and they will advance that plot even if it means causing, then callously disregarding, the suffering of billions of people. Plot trumps -- and tramples on, and violates -- character. Here, once more, Bad Writing and Bad Theology intersect.

Comments

[Scott]

All of these meetings in New York were scheduled before the global calamity. Yet -- despite the shutting down of nearly all commercial aviation, despite the fact that every parent involved in these meetings is now grieving a lost child, despite the fact that their agendas, like all pre-disappearance agendas, would now seem irrelevant -- none of these meetings is postponed, rescheduled or canceled.

And it's the LaHaye and Jenkins Republican crowd always telling us that 3000 dead on 9/11 "changed everything" when it suits their purposes.

[ProfessorPlum]

Katrina didn't slow down the plans to ram through the repeal of the "Death Tax". Maybe this kind of reaction is more widespread among our leadership class than we might guess.

[jwhook]

"The authors behave as they imagine God behaves. They have a plot that must move forward and they will advance that plot even if it means causing, then callously disregarding, the suffering of billions of people."

One might even excuse this if they were trying to capture their plot idea into a single volume. But it's mind-bogglingly stupid when there are so many volumes to go, and so many pages to fill.

[Keith]

I'd say this newspaper of Buck’s sounds more like the Inquirer, only without any photos of alien babies and no mention of Bat Boy at all. how can you have a conspiracy without Bat Boy?

[aunursa]

It's your typical case of Evangelical Christians (L&J) assuming that everyone else has the same worldview as they do.

For instance, Evangelicals make up all these reasons to explain away why the Jews have rejected Jesus. When in reality the Jews ignore Jesus ... he isn't relevent to us. I have found that Evangelical have a hard time accepting this ... it's almost as if they would rather I say that "I hate Jesus" ... or "Jesus was a liar" ... rather than "Jesus is irrelevant."

[cjmr]

I can't even begin to imagine what a Jewish Unitarian "ecumenicalist" might believe in...

[B-W]

Katrina didn't slow down the plans to ram through the repeal of the "Death Tax". Maybe this kind of reaction is more widespread among our leadership class than we might guess.

Although one might hope, given the President's recent announcement of $200 billion to help rebuild New Orleans and other affected areas, that the repeal of the estate tax may just find some new opposition, even from Republicans. After all, they're the ones who keep saying that one needs to pay for such expenditures.

[Erick Oppeen]

Since the estate tax costs more to administer than it brings in, and leads ineluctably to concentration of huge wealth in the hands of corporations (which, being soulless, do not die) I would say that repealing it would not bring All That Is Good crashing down. Most of the arguments in its favor that I have ever seen boil down to "I hate rich people."

With that off my chest...I'm really enjoying this extended fisking of the _Left Behind_ books, not least because I have an acquaintance who believes wholeheartedly in Lahaye and Jenkins' crackpot theological theories.

[BruceA]

It's your typical case of Evangelical Christians (L&J) assuming that everyone else has the same worldview as they do.

...which is ironic, because if everyone else (in the story) had the same worldview as they do, everyone would have been raptured. Or maybe I'm missing some of the finer points of evangelical theology.

[Mazement]

One argument against repealing the estate tax is that it discriminates against some classes of income. If I earn $X by working 40 hours a week, I have to pay income tax, but if I earn the same $X by sitting around and waiting for someone to die, then I get the whole amount tax-free. It seems like an injustice. (You can make the same argument about the Capital Gains tax exemption.)

The common rebuttal is that the estate was taxed when the money was earned in the first place, but I've never found that convincing...normally money gets taxed every time it changes hands. The salesclerk at the grocery store has to pay taxes on his salary, even though the money originally came out of his customers' already-taxed income.

The concentration of wealth into the hands of large corporations is a different issue entirely. I don't know what the solution to that is...large corporations are more efficient then small ones, but one they get too big you start running into monopoly effects. In an ideal world, corporations would get big-but-not-too-big, but I've got no idea how to bring that about.

That said, I agree that repealing the Estate Tax wouldn't bring All That Is Good crashing down; it would just make the world a marginally worse place to live in.

[Rhys]

The "purpose" of the estate tax is to prevent large sums of money sloshing from one generation of the rich families to another until it gets to the point where those families can use it to influence the political process to their favour and essentially "buy the government". This had been a real problem in Europe pre-1776, and the Founding Fathers wanted to prevent it happening in the US. Now take a look at the Bush and Cheney families and be afraid, very afraid.

If the estate tax is to be repealled, it should be replaced with a 90% income tax on the rich, so that the slice of the pie that gets passed on to heirs is reduced from the get-go. But the chances of that happening in the current environment are pretty slim.

I agree with ProfessorPlum that conservatives seem to have an amazing capability to focus in on their own issues, despite everything else around them making their pet projects irrelevant.

[Iwannaliveinabluestate]

The estate tax costing more to administer than it brings in canard is debunked here: http://www.house.gov/frank/estate_tax.html
Apparently it actually costs 2c on the dollar. P.S. I don't hate rich people. In fact, I are one.

[Constantine]

I suspect that L&J can get away with this because their readership doesn't register the fact that a global calamity has just occurred. From the readers' perspectives, something great has just happened, and the readers imagine themselves to be "outside" all of it, as they've been raptured. They thus don't connect or empathize with those who are "Left Behind" and don't think, "I would be so upset and shaken if I were in Buck's position." From L&J's perspectives, the "left behind" characters are not supposed to mourn a mass calamity. They exist only to "figure out the puzzle" of why all of this happened. That's how the rapture is viewed by the authors, readers, and, strangely, the characters-- not as a tragedy but as a piece of the puzzle. Perhaps this is how fundamentalist evangelicals believe they would act if they were unsaved and the rapture occured-- they believe that they would think, "Hm? Let me figure out why this happened, and if I come up with the right answers, I'll be saved." Which presupposes that one knows that the rapture happened in the first place.

I suspect that if L&J attempted to write a secular "disaster story," the reactions of the characters would be much more plausible. However, because the story is about the rapture, and the authors know it's about the rapture, the characters act as though they subconsciously know that the rapture has occurred and are just trying to figure out how the rest of the puzzle fits together.

(and the estate tax is a means of taxing otherwise untaxed capital gains on assets when they are passed from one generation to the next)

[eriol]

While not about the estate tax, my comments might be relevant...

"The authors behave as they imagine God behaves. They have a plot that must move forward and they will advance that plot even if it means causing, then callously disregarding, the suffering of billions of people."

That sentence is like the theological nonsense question "Can God make a rock so large he can't lift?" L&J obviously believe the answer is "Yes". To them God has made up his mind and he can't change anything, isn't that like Deism? God has wound up the clock scurried away, and is waiting for everything to explode. I wonder how they can even pray.

[bulbul]

Mazement:

...large corporations are more efficient then small ones.

Would you care to provide any evidence? My experience and common sense suggest the opposite. Small to middle-sized companies seem to handle all the common tasks much more efficiently than large corporations which spent a disproportionate part of their resources on their upkeep.
Also, big kudoz to Scott for pointing out something no one is willing to say out loud. With all due respect to everyone who died on 9/11, everyone who parades the 3000 dead as a big tragedy in terms of human loss is a bloody idiot in desperate need of some history lesson. I would suggest looking in the direction of Srebrenica (cca. 7000 dead) or Rwanda (over 1 million dead in the Tutsi-Hutu conflict).

[R Lovett]

I suspect that L&J can get away with this because their readership doesn't register the fact that a global calamity has just occurred. From the readers' perspectives, something great has just happened, and the readers imagine themselves to be "outside" all of it, as they've been raptured.

I think Constantine makes a very good point here. The target audience "knows" that the Rapture is a cue for the Antichrist and that this must have something to do with rebuilding the Temple -- Hal Lindsey preached that ad nauseum when I was a pup. So the target audience's attitude, if Buck and co. were too weepy about the catastrophe would probably be "Let's get on with the story." Which does NOT mean that Fred doesn't also have a good point (and a great many of them--keep it up, Fred).

One other thought: When I read this book long ago, I saw L&J as attempting to depict humans going on as usual, ignoring God's obvious intervention in the world. I thought that was kind of cool. But I now doubt that L&J were sophisticated enough to have intended it.

[Grumpy]

Here, once more, Bad Writing and Bad Theology intersect.

I can excuse Bad Theology; I just chalk it up as fantasy anyway. Like Yodas, Muggles, and Eskimos. ;)

Bad Writing, on the other hand, is unpardonable. There are good ways to tell the same story, but this isn't one of them. I can imagine a fantasy world where Jews are pulling the strings and events are aligning to herald the return of Christ as only a few astute believers foretold. But to populate this world with people who don't behave like human beings -- it destroys all credibility.

Constantine is right, of course. And remember that the audience is not only those who presume to be saved, but also to those Left Behind, as a handbook. For that purpose, it helps to dispense with all mystery and lift the veil right away.

There's a project for someone: follow the same eschatological scheme, but tell the story for a different audience, from a different point of view. Maybe from the POV of one of the Jewish puppet masters who step-by-step brings about the Second Coming, even unwittingly.

[Grumpy]

Oh dear.

[Scott]

Most of the arguments in its favor that I have ever seen boil down to "I hate rich people."

Remember: envy good, greed bad.

If Bush is going to bribe people w/ federal $$ (also remember, federal spending is only a bribe if evil Republicans do it, not when morally pure Democrats do it), I'd rather end the Iraq occupation and use that money instead.

[Constantine]

Grumpy raises a good point-- LB is supposed to be a "handbook" for the unsaved. Namely, "In case of Rapture, keep your cool, don't get over-excited, look around at all of the other things going around in the world, and compare this to the Bible so you'll be saved." This, I suppose, would be helpful advice in the event of the Rapture, though I can't say it's a terribly realistic expectation of the rest of the world.

If there really is a rapture and if the job of the International Bankers™ and The Jews™ is to pave the way for the coming of the anti-Christ, then the protagonists and the antagonists are all acting in completely rational manners. Buck doesn't worry too much about the upheaval and instead tries to tie everything together, figure out what's going on, and, presumably, get saved later on in the book. The International Bankers™ and The Jews™ can't be distracted by a mere rapture; that would interfere with their goals of bringing forth the anti-Christ. While their reactions all seem completely implausible and unrealistic (contrary to Buck's editor, "space aliens" is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the recent disappearances, particularly on such a large scale), from the perspective of a rapture-believer, the protagonists are all making the best-possible, ideal decisions. After all, they're the heroes.

[Mnemosyne]

Did that work?

[BruceA]

From L&J's perspectives, the "left behind" characters are not supposed to mourn a mass calamity. They exist only to "figure out the puzzle" of why all of this happened. That's how the rapture is viewed by the authors, readers, and, strangely, the characters-- not as a tragedy but as a piece of the puzzle.

Additionally, the "Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers" doctrine plays a part here. Given the premises of pre-millenial dispensationism, the only reason people were not saved before the rapture is that they were under the sway of the evil one and were unable to see what was going on around them.

Presumably, such a large scale calamity would get the characters thinking of their own mortality, and by extension, of the things their departed loved ones tried to warn them about.

The problem is, fundamentalists have ghettoized themselves to the point that they do not know how other people think. L&J simply don't have personal contact with the kind of people who would find themselves in a post-rapture world.

[burritoboy]

I don't think that LaHaye and Jenkins have enough empathy to be able to understand Fred's points. If the Rapture did actually happen (and they were not themselves raptured), I doubt LaHaye and Jenkings would be crying over their lost kids or wives or "friends". I suspect that they would be secretly glad that all those parasites are gone so L&J can keep all that sweet sweet money from the LB series to themselves. They're clearly misogynists and hate kids too, so no big loss.

I think this is honestly what those two would do: they'd be rereading the Bible to fit events back into their complex "prophecy chart" and hunting for bizarre omens and signs, as well as "repenting" of whatever infantile sexual sins they feel guilty about (the fact that they're greedy assholes would never occur to them, they'll primarily be concerned about their penises not being in God-approved locations). The novel is an accurate prediction of their own likely behavior under these circumstances.

[BruceA]

There's a project for someone: follow the same eschatological scheme, but tell the story for a different audience, from a different point of view.

Speaking of point of view: News travels fast these days, but not instantaneously. From the perspective of the novel's characters, as the reports trickle in from around the world, this ought to seem like an ongoing event. The characters should be asking, "Who is next? Am I at risk?"

[KenH]

>Katrina didn't slow down the plans to ram through the repeal of the "Death Tax". Maybe this kind of reaction is more widespread among our leadership class than we might guess.<

Or perhaps the Federal goverment has DOZENS of bills, laws, ruleings, treatys and such to deal with EVERY DAY.

[Pho]

Before we get too high and mighty about L&J's theology leading inexorably to a pathological lack of empathy, we should note secular storytellers who do the same thing.

I'm thinking mostly of Roland Emmerich whose "Amageddon" and "Day After Tomorrow" suffer from the same defect. Both are of the "One-Third of the Population Gone in an Instant" genre and in both the characters act as if it is simply a kinda bad day. I still wonder at the scene in "Amageddon" in which L.A. is being vaporized and the audience is cued to cheer because Vivica A. Fox's dog jumps to safety.

That's an extreme example, but an awful lot of action movies depend on heros dusting themselves of amidst mind-numbing carnage. It's hard to know where inept storytelling leaves off and bad theology begins.

[ProfessorPlum]

Boy, it's amazing how many people leap to the defense of the ultra-rich. Any of these jokers pay the estate tax lately?

Also Pho, Roland Emmerich's movies suck also for the reasons you mention. Another person who has no clue how people would actually act in a time of crisis. Good points.

[Garnet]

I still wonder at the scene in "Amageddon" in which L.A. is being vaporized and the audience is cued to cheer because Vivica A. Fox's dog jumps to safety.

That's Independence Day, not Armageddon.

[Tim Lehnerer]

In a horrifically tangential way it reminds me of the kid who stole a school bus to evacuate 100 people from New Orleans--if Bruce Willis was in a movie and needed that bus, he'd punch out some pencil-neck bureaucrat (who would be left to drown to satiate the audience's bloodlust) and give a two line speech about how real people need to escape the disaster; he'd then drive away with the bus packed to the rafters with evacuees. When someone does this in real life they get attacked by Bill O'Reilly for looting.

[Sophist]

That's Independence Day, not Armageddon.

Like there's a difference, they're the exact same movie. Things from space cause lot's of gee-whiz special effects explosions, which dogs seem to be mysteriously immune to. The hotshot young hero goes into space to blow them up. The old guy sacrifices himself to save the world in the nick of time. Everyone cheers. The end.

[Linkmeister]

This caught my eye: " religion editor Jimmy Borland" wants in on the Jewish conspiracy story.

Wouldn't the religion editor know something (anything?) about the Rapture theory and take notice of all those missing people? Maybe the religion editor doesn't have enough sway with the AMEs and the ME to actually get it into the current issue, but I'd have thought he'd be pounding on the table saying something like "Don't you see what's going on here?!?"

[coriolis]

Most of the arguments in its [the taxing of unrealized capital gains] favor that I have ever seen boil down to "I hate rich people."

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/08/the_dotorg_cras.html
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2005/04/and_have_not_ch.html

Fred, I haven't tried to boil your blog, but do you hate rich people?

[Chris]

One reason why L&J don't give much time to plausibility is that they don't in fact have much time. For the prophetic timelines to come right Carpathia has to rule the world in about two-three months from a standing start, beginning at the day of the rapture. Unless everybody in the world cheers up and gets back to business as usual immediately that can't happen.
I say that confidently, based on how L&J have done it, but for once they don't explain the prophecy that fills in that particular time period; the actual seven-year count to J.D. doesn't apparently get triggered until Carpathia signs a treaty with Israel.

[Chris]

Sorry, five and a half months; http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Timeline/Big.Chart.html

[Merlin Missy]

Linkmeister ---

I think the implication is that anyone who knows about the Rapture enough to recognize it has already been saved. We heathens, secularists, etc. obviously have never even heard the word, or we'd have realized L&J's flavor of Christianity was the One True Way, because of its perfect logic and Biblical accuracy. Since Borland is still there, he is unsaved, and by implication has no idea what the Rapture even is. This despite being the Religion Editor and presumably having been exposed to many different theologies, including PMD. Hmmmm ... A subtle jibe at the dangers of learning about other religions, perhaps? Naw. I think we've already poked enough holes to deflate the "They're being subtle, really!" theory.

[bulbul]

ProfessorPlum: no, it is not amazing. I am not the first person to point this out - in fact I'm pretty sure I heard this on "The West Wing": people jump to defence of the ultra rich because they hope/dream/plan to become ultra rich one day.

[AJ]

Not to plug myself too much, but if any of you are still interested in a copy of LB, I have for one for sale--I'm an online trader/seller, see. (If you're wondering, it's $5 including shipping, and it's one of those large trade paperbacks in fairly good condition. Use the above e-mail to contact me.)

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, I loved this post Fred, because it was about one of my top three favorite scenes. Next week we'll get to see the one where Chole finally gets home.

Also, shouldn't L&J at least spend a week's timeline on the reaction to the event if they have 5 months for the Antichrist to take over? I mean, they spend a week on the entire story in general, and by the end of LB1 Carpathia is already in control (done in one inept scene in the last 10 pages of the book). It's not like it'd kill them to cover a few more weeks or something. At least a month.

[Fred]

Pho --

Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" also violates the Dog Rule. As he shows the U.S.S. Arizona sinking, he cuts to the Cute Little Dog we had seen earlier, swimming away to safety. Since Pearl Harbor was a real event, that struck me as even more appalling than the same kind of shot in Independence Day/Deep Impact.

One of the things James Cameron got right in "Titanic" was this: the Cute Little Dog died. And the cute little girl died. Where his film was manipulative, it was manipulative toward empathy.

[Robert]

This scene is utterly insane.

Where are we? Event plus 48 hours? The transportation grid is still down. How are they going to distribute? Can paper get to the presses? Are there enough survivors with their heads together to man the presses? Who did we lose in layout? What's the ad hole? Do we need new art? I don't think the client would want this full-pager featuring a happy child going out under their name so close to the disaster. We are trying to track that down but when the phones are working I can only reach people who are sobbing from fear and loss.

Every child is dead. Global casualties are in the one-quarter to one-third range and there is no information. Did the Chinese get hit? What about the Saudis? Who was spared? Did it happen everywhere at once or was it staged over time? Who has claimed responsibility (and some people will) and are they credible? Will I ever see my kids again?

On second thought, forget all that. Let's move on to bullet point two in our PMD PowerPoint presentation. The self-centeredness of every character in this book is mind boggling. The fact that this book is marketed to so-called Christians and embraced by them is chilling.

[Duane]

I think L&J decided that the world-wide misery and upheaval caused by the Rapture (esp. everyone losing their kids) would overshadow the Final Judgment. The Final Judgment would then be anticlimactic.

Or, perhaps they and their readers don't want to speculate about how awful a Rapture would really be. After all, the Rapture is supposed to be God's Special Ride For The True Believers, a JOYOUS thing. Can't be killing the joy ride with misery, suffering and destruction.

[Criada]

In defense of Cute Little Dogs, I can see how, in the face of incomprehensible loss, we need to hold onto what shreds of hope we can, rather than face absolute loss. And personally, I think it's nice to see people able to think beyond the good of just humanity, though I admit our tendency to be more shocked at the death of a dog than a human is disturbing.
I suppose the dog represents our classic American Way of Life - 2.5 kids and a dog. Heaven forbid we lose that. Can't have that without the dog, after all. It's never a yappy dog, always a wholesome Lab or retriever or something.
But Left Behind doesn't even give us that shred of hope. Because, of course, there is no loss to begin with, and that dog represents attachment to the material world. How callous does that make Fundamentalist? I assume they love the pets they have. Do they just leave them to starve after the Rapture? Are there going to be packs of feral dogs running around the Bible Belt after the Rapture?

[Harv]

Let's try this - brainstorm other stories that Buck witnessed that could be covered by other reporters while he tracks the "big picture". Throw the lesser reporters a bone. Let's play Perry White (or J. Jonah Jameson) and assign them:

a. Strange AMTRAK technology that allows rerouting of fixed train lines - despite AMTRAK running in the red?(Front Page)

b. Odd time/distance displacement phenomena in Manhattan (Science)

c. Airlines refusing to help passengers, but VIPs allowed use of charter planes (Business)

d. Doctors sitting on their butts while people lay dying outside airport terminals (Health)

e. How to hotwire an airphone (Technology)

Also, let me note that my fave scene in Day After Tomorrow is when the super tornadoes that destroy L.A. just happen to nail the Hollywood sign right on cue. It would not surprise me one bit to learn that the screenplay was writtng by Mr. Jenkins....

[Grumpy]

Fred, I think you mean Pearl Harbor proves the Cute Dog Rule, that is, the rule that in Hollywood movies, the cute dog must survive. And FWIW, Independence Day and Armageddon both had such scenes.

BruceA: From the perspective of the novel's characters, as the reports trickle in from around the world, this ought to seem like an ongoing event. The characters should be asking, "Who is next? Am I at risk?"

That's September 11th thinking for a September 10th novel.

[inge]

Chris: Carpathia has to rule the world in about 5.5 months from a standing start,

But that would be easier if people reacted strongly to the disappearances. After, say, two months of panic, conspiracy theories, everybody blaming everybody else and a booming market for anti-UFO devices, some reasonable person who seems to know what he's doing could probably just pluck the world like an overripe apple.

Criada: I assume they love the pets they have.

Considering the sad story of Dr. Dobson's Dachshound, I wonder...

[JR]

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

"And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful."

"Yet lackest thou one thing. Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven."

Preach the gospel of the rich man, if you want. I certainly don't hate rich people. If Jesus spoke the truth, I suspect I should pity them.

[emjaybee]

I think this tone-deafness does spring from an inability to understand the feelings of others, especially the unsaved, when they are suffering. It's a logical result of the isolation that fundamentalism insists on, the fanatical fear that our kids, wives, ourselves can be poisoned or tempted by the unsaved, so we must avoid them unless we are controlling the interaction (i.e., preaching at them for conversion purposes). Churches less and less empathize the serving aspect of Christianity; feeding the poor and hungry, clothing them, visiting the sick--*without* expectation of gratitude or reward in the shape of converting them. Many fundamentalists have only marginal contact with this sort of service, or if they participate, do so as a "witnessing tool" not as a simple act of love for their fellow humans.

[spencer]

I am not the first person to point this out - in fact I'm pretty sure I heard this on "The West Wing": people jump to defence of the ultra rich because they hope/dream/plan to become ultra rich one day.

My brother-in-law is one of these people.

The route he has chosen to get there is a strange one - he manages the meat department in a local grocery store.

Not that there's anything at all wrong with running a meat department - it's hard work, he's good at it, and he gives it everything he has, every day. But at age 40, it seems less and less likely that he'll ever even make it to "upper-middle class," much less super-rich, as a meat department manager.

Yet he is still one of these "don't tax the rich" types. My only explanation is that he is really living on the Holodeck . . .

[mel-anon]

Wouldn't the religion editor know something (anything?) about the Rapture theory and take notice of all those missing people? Maybe the religion editor doesn't have enough sway with the AMEs and the ME to actually get it into the current issue, but I'd have thought he'd be pounding on the table saying something like "Don't you see what's going on here?!?"

I think I've read a lot of commments in these LB threads saying that, in case of actual rapture, most of the "left behind" wouldn't be so quick to assume it's the rapture but would try to concoct other explanations first. I'm not so sure. You've got to figure that people like religion editors, religious studies professors and other not-fundie-enough theologians are going to put it together and figure out what's going on pretty quickly. Heck, most of the people reading this blog would know what was going on. (You can't tell me that if something happened *exactly* as LB described that you'd doubt it.) The problem is that L&J can't have a mass post-rapture conversion; that would take all the fun out of it. Perhaps that's the purpose of God's nuclear intervention back on the first page; to establish in the LB universe that most people have been handed over to Satan and are never going to "get it" no matter how obvious it is.

[Bob Davis]

Eliminating the estate tax is part of the Jewish conspiracy that my uncles Hy and Sol were in on in the 1950s, to no avail. They've been spinning in their graves ever since. Now with Bush they can finally stop spinning and get some needed rest.

This comment makes no sense at all. Never mind.