Scary Stuff

I may have come a step closer to understanding the Bush administration.

Do you know that there are Evangelical Hell Houses staged this time of year to ward their youth from the perils of evil? “Come celebrate like the true believers this Halloween season at the most shocking and controversial haunted house you’ll ever visit!” states one website. Supposedly these EHHs were a brainchild of Jerry Falwell back in the 1970s, and - like bell-bottom pants - they haven’t gone away. (http://lesfreres.org/hellhouse/main.html)

You (or more likely your moronically Christian parents) purchase tickets for one of these events. On the chosen night you enter the Hell House and are walked through different rooms of evil scenarios (secular humanists sipping lattes, suicide, homosexuals dying of AIDS, pregnant cheerleaders) and finally hell. Ultimately you are saved by Jesus and asked to accept him into your life, and then you are brought to a Christian party with a live band, donuts and punch. The stick and the carrot have certainly taken on new dimensions.

All of this causes me to think about the Bush administration and the Republican party going on about Iraq having WMD, about taking war to the terrorists so they won’t take it to us, about Democrats somehow not being able to protect us from evil, and – although there are terrifying people and forces in this world – I begin to see how the G.O.P. may have come upon this idea of using fear to retain their grip on power. Can’t you just see young, drunken George W. Bush being scared sober? Can’t you just imagine Karl Rove’s glee when he realized the potential of the power of fear? Can’t you just believe that Jesus would cry if he could see what’s being passed off as his teaching?