The Anti-Christ and I

By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 08 June 2005

Satan rules, at least according to many of my fellow Americans. In recent surveys, over two-thirds of those polled said they believed the devil to be real, whether with or without horns and a tail.

Call him Lucifer, Mephistopheles, or the Evil One, his existence plays a major role in the way Americans see the world. Right-wingers, in particular, have found him extremely useful in attacking their political foes.

Racial segregationists, union-busters, and John Birchers historically pursued their own agendas by attacking opponents as devilish collaborators of "Godless communism." Far-right evangelicals still blast the United Nations as a Satanic force run by his End Time agent the anti-Christ, while Christian Reconstructionists tar-brush every intellectual current from humanism to modern science as the work of a diabolical hand. The Enlightenment was, after all, the devil's assault on faith.

Satan sells in the USA. That's why Ronald Reagan battled "the Evil Empire," and how George W. Bush uses "the Axis of Evil."

All of which boggles my mind. I don't know why, but even in my high school years I never believed in anything supernatural, good or bad, and I've long agreed with historians who view America's unending urge to hunt witches and other fiendish conspirators as a self-destructive defect in our national character. I don't even see the present occupant of the White House and his incubi as some singularly evil force, which often puts me at odds with others on my side of the political divide.

Still, let me suggest a leap of faith - not one that I can personally take, but one that many of my religious readers say they have already taken.

What if rational thought misses the cosmic plot? What if our prayerful president, his oil-soaked pre-emptive wars, and his amen chorus of religious reactionaries have come together to do the devil's work? What if Satan - and not just the demonic Dick Cheney - now drives the global train wreck?