Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck may seem like court jesters to most of us, but we must never forget that this is the very real threat they pose to America.

From Truthout:

Tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, have begun to dismantle the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They are creating a theocratic state based on "biblical law," and shutting out all those they define as the enemy. This movement, veering closer and closer to traditional fascism, seeks to force a recalcitrant world to submit before an imperial America. It champions the eradication of social deviants, beginning with homosexuals, and moving on to immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims and those they dismiss as "nominal Christians"—meaning Christians who do not embrace their perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible. Those who defy the mass movement are condemned as posing a threat to the health and hygiene of the country and the family. All will be purged.

The followers of deviant faiths, from Judaism to Islam, must be converted or repressed. The deviant media, the deviant public schools, the deviant entertainment industry, the deviant secular humanist government and judiciary and the deviant churches will be reformed or closed. There will be a relentless promotion of Christian "values," already under way on Christian radio and television and in Christian schools, as information and facts are replaced with overt forms of indoctrination. The march toward this terrifying dystopia has begun. It is taking place on the streets of Arizona, on cable news channels, at tea party rallies, in the Texas public schools, among militia members and within a Republican Party that is being hijacked by this lunatic fringe.

Those who remain in a reality-based world often dismiss these malcontents as buffoons and simpletons. They do not take seriously those, like Beck, who pander to the primitive yearnings for vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. Critics of the movement continue to employ the tools of reason, research and fact to challenge the absurdities propagated by creationists who think they will float naked into the heavens when Jesus returns to Earth. The magical thinking, the flagrant distortion in interpreting the Bible, the contradictions that abound within the movement's belief system and the laughable pseudoscience, however, are impervious to reason. We cannot convince those in the movement to wake up. It is we who are asleep.


For those that question my seeming obsession with Sarah Palin, this is what keep me awake at night, and what I feel that I, and every other thinking person in this country, should be working against.

These "Christianistas" are working behind the scenes even as we speak.  Getting elected to school boards and city councils ALL across this country and accumulating power while organizing to stand against the progressive agenda until they can once again get one of their own into the White House.

It is also why I am convinced that Sarah will run in 2012.  The people behind this movement need somebody who is a lightning rod for liberal media attacks, in order to continue to claim persecution in this country, and Sarah Palin was born to fill that role.  She has taken "playing the martyr" to dizzying heights, and it is by tapping into that reflexive emotion that bubbles just under the surface in the psyche of the religious right wing voters that will bring the majority of them into the fold.

She will lose, have no doubt.  But There is much to be gained in that loss for those who are pushing forward this destructive agenda.  They will be in a perfect position to armchair quarterback EVERY crisis that comes Obama's way in the second term, many that they will no doubt help to create, and by the time that Obama's presidency gasps out its last ragged breath, the country will be ready for something COMPLETELY different. Certainly not Sarah Palin different, but pretty damn close.

And if that ever does indeed happen we are ALL going to need a little Jesus in our lives.  No NOT the power hungry, testosterone crazed, heavily armed Jesus of the radical religious right wing.  But instead the compassionate, peace loving Jesus who once inspired a religion of peace that took the world by storm around 2,000 years ago.