I like my crazy straight up, with a twist.
Wait, that was a serious question? Who is this guy?
It was a serious question, but he seems to have been quoting it from e-mails he's received.
Also, if Putin is the antichrist, where does that leave Obama? Can there be more than one?
Hagee's answer, by the way, is basically "uh, well, we're a new country, see, and, uh, you can also interpret these obscure biblical references to mean us, but it's a stretch."
I guess I need to do some googling to learn who these nutters (interviewer/interviewee)ñ actually are.
[pause]
A stupid talking head and a rich televangelist/huckster whose schtick is to be pro-Israel. OK.
Has any newscast on another channel replaced the old Headlines News? I used to watch a half-hour or an hour most days to see what were considered the big stories of the day, but now every evening there's just Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck and Showbiz Tonight.
Odd fact: Hagee has met with every Israeli prime minister since Begin.
but it's a stretch
Actaly he says "So, therefore, we, by stretch, could say that's referring to us," as if this mode of inference was generally accepted as quite sound -- like "by premise 3" or "by definition" or what have you.
So which one are they going to turn on if America's not in the Bible?
If plain English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for America.
11: Much of these guys' worldview collapses if that isn't considered a valid mode of inference.
More from the interview:
BECK: Pastor Hagee, here we go. Yes or no. You ready? Lightning round.
HAGEE: I hope I`m ready.
BECK: Is the anti-Christ alive today?
HAGEE: I believe he is.
BECK: End of the world as we know it in five years, 10 years, 20 years?
HAGEE: I don`t think we`ll get past 20 years.
BECK: Putin, is he part of the biblical prophecy?
HAGEE: I believe that he`s the man that`s going to cause Russia to unite the Islamic nations against Israel.
BECK: I think he`s done most of it already. Worst U.S. president in history?
HAGEE: Jimmy Carter.
Christ, these guys are so insane. It would be funny if they weren't so close to the levers of power.
BECK: Is there more evil today in the world than any other time in history?
HAGEE: I believe that Israel -- that evil is more apparent today, and I think that it is more practiced in our society than ever. Yes.
...
BECK: What TV show would Jesus watch?
HAGEE: He probably wouldn`t.
BECK: Wrong answer. I mean, wrong answer.
HAGEE: GLENN BECK!
BECK: There you go, and you heard it.
When I was five I was on a ocean liner. A little girl I played with said she was going to Egypt. I told her she couldn't go there; Egypt was fictional, it was in the Bible. (I'm guessing someone in my family had been weighing in with me that the Bible was fiction). I insisted, she cried, and I got in a lot of trouble.
I have to say, Hagee comes off a lot better than Beck.
Exemplary five-year-old reasoning, Penny.
Time to re-read Norman Cohn's "The Pursuit of the Millennium."
From the transcript:
HAGEE: I`m delighted to be here, Glenn Beck. It`s a pleasure.
BECK: Thank you. I want to talk to you tonight about the things that people in the sane world just don`t say. . .
The real problem is that John Hagee is on television, or that a case can be made that he should be.
Who else is going to talk about the truth of the literal chiliasm?
HAGEE: This -- there has never been another generation where you had the knowledge explosion, the birth of Israel, the birth of nuclear warfare, universal deception, famines, pestilence. And then he goes on to say earthquakes.
Earthquakes are -- have been something in the Bible that God has used from time to time to communicate with people who are spiritually deaf. Moses had a pastoral problem. About 20,000 people didn`t like him as the leader. God said, "Get those people in front of the tent of meetings, and I want to talk to them." And they got in front of the tent of meetings, and God opened the ground and buried them. The message was Moses is my man...
BECK: OK. We haven`t really seen an increase in earthquakes, though.
HAGEE: I believe that the specific record of the number of earthquakes has dramatically increased every century from the 15th century. I do have those numbers, and they have virtually doubled in the 20th century from the 19th century.
But the point that I`m making out here is that when we reach the end of days there is going to be an earthquake that is going to be, in vernacular words, the mother of all earthquakes, where the mountains are going to be reduced, where the islands of the sea will disappear, where I believe that the geography of Jerusalem and Israel are going to be reshaped, where the water flows from beneath the Throne of God down to the Dead Sea and the 12 trees are therefore the fruit for the ages to eat, by which they will have perpetual health.
BECK: Do you believe that global warming is a possible sign?
HAGEE: I don`t believe in global warming.
BECK: You don`t believe the earth is getting warmer?
HAGEE: No.
BECK: Really?
HAGEE: No.
BECK: No changes?
HAGEE: No.
BECK: OK. So what is the -- what is the next sign? I mean, you know, I believe it`s getting warmer. Science tells us it`s getting warmer. I don`t believe man is causing it. I don`t believe that -- maybe man is causing it. I`m not convinced of that. I definitely don`t think we can solve it.
But I mean, the earth is constantly cycling. We`ve seen forever that it gets colder and warmer and colder and warmer.
HAGEE: I`m certainly for clean air and clean water, but I have books in my library written by very responsible people up into the middle 80s were talking about the ice age, where Canada was supposed to be a block of ice right now.
And now we`re talking about global warming, and I think the Kyoto Treaty is really nothing more than something to manipulate the economy of the United States.
BECK: It`s global -- it`s global socialism.
Sorry, that was longer than I thought before I hit post.
I mean, GO TRIBE!
You can tell I'm not a Cleveland native.
the man that's going to cause Russia to unite the Islamic nations against Israel.
Man, I didn't even know this was in the cards.
I guess he's interesting in an anthropological sort of way. But that's not a very good argument for CNN giving him a show.
I mean, GO TRIBE!
Hagee's pernicious influence.
Fine, run up the score on the guy with cancer.
Like a lot of those guys, Beck is a very effective demagogue. He can make the most absurd and outrageous stuff sound vaguely reasonable, just using tone of voice and stuff. When I first heard him on the radio, I thought OK, this is the next Limbaugh.
I agree with Henley. So he's a little crazy. So's his audience, and they weren't going to change in the absence of his show. I haven't watched the show, but I think his attempts to reach out come off as sincere.
But that's not a very good argument for CNN giving him a show.
Especially considering his ratings are horrendous.
Like Limbaugh, he's better on radio than on TV. Better as background voice to driving than as focus of attention. Plus, like Limbaugh, he's sort of ugly.
Holy fucking shit. I'm off to light a candle to Richard Dawkins.
Dude, don't do that. I was on Google news looking for car accidents for five minutes before realizing what you meant. Of course, I'm (still) up at 4 a.m., which counterindicates rational responses, but still, dude.
As for Hagee: he's COVERING UP THE TRUTH about America's place in the bible.
Soon the world will KNOW that the great SATAN is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, a secular government founded on godless principles which soon will DOMINATE THE EARTH under a tyrannical system MORE POWERFUL, CORRUPT AND LICENTIOUS than ROME ever was! The Antichrist is ALIVE TODAY and his name is GEORGE W BUSH!
Fortunately, the Chicago meeting of our blog masters was filmed. Ogged was not invited because he's so gay.
Cyrus Scofield has a hell of a lot to answer for.
You know, I'm a big fan of crazy millennialism, but it's always driven me a little batty that so many people are all "the Bible is the inerrant word of God to be taken absolutely literally!" until they get to the apocalyptic visions. "See, God made the world in precisely six days, and the Patriarchs all lived to be a kajillion years old, but the Whore of Babylon is actually the Pope."
Wait, I thought we were the Eagle. Unless that was Rome. Or the Nazis.
52 is so, so true. We can't interpret Genesis non-literally, but the seven-headed dragon is definitely post-breakup USSR.
I recently saw Glenn Beck in the train station, and in accord with my experience that when you hear a snippet of someone's conversation, it tends to be (and it's really freaky this way) characteristic of that person, the snippet I heard from Beck was " . . . American values . . . " He's very tall.
Overheard from Robert Novak in the Chicago airport:
"Well, tell him to tell Ed Gillespie that."
"Henley defends Beck"; a useful reminder that he, and the rest of the crew, are actually crazy-rightists who happened to end up on the right side of the Main Story Of Our Times. Now, the people who boarded the Crazy Train have been moving away from them at considerable speed; it's not the UO crew who changed, it's the others. So don't be too surprised.
Think Auden on Churchill; "For once in his life providentially right/but for the wrong reasons/the old sod was permitted/to save civilisation".
Emerson, you have to get yourself on Christian radio.
Alex, Henley sticks to his guns and I disagree with him about a lot of things politically, but that's a pretty uncharitable reading of his defense of Beck. He's saying that it's plausibly a good interview question, the way, "But don't many experts agree that these aluminum tubes aren't part of a nuclear enrichment project?" might have been. Shame nobody was asking that one. Henley is wrong, but that seems to be based on his lack of experience with Glenn Beck (which in turn makes me wonder when he was last stranded at an airport; Christ, that guy gives me hives).
Ditto 58; and Henley's conclusion is, "if I had to watch one of these right wing bloviators, Beck might be the one that made it fitfully interesting" -- he's hardly going to the wall in Beck's defense, here.
My mom once -- uncomfortably recently -- said that the fact that the US is not mentioned in the Bible is the key reason that we need to support Israel (which is). As soon as we stop piggy-backing on Israel's divine favor, we're out!
Fucking moochers. Get your own divine favor.
Alex, Henley was obviously talking out of his ass, which he completely admits in the post. He's just speculating on the basis of second-hand information about Beck.
I don't think my mom's view of the matter is very widespread in those circles -- in fact, she may have just come up with it on her own. Most American evangelicals seem to be pretty confident that God has a soft spot in his heart for us.
29 is really good if John Cleese does Hagee's voice and Beck is Michael Palin.
Most American evangelicals seem to be pretty confident that God has a soft spot in his heart for us
Mormons push this line about as far as it will go, what with their efforts to reconcile the contents of the Joe Smith's revelations with archaeological facts about human history in the Americas.
Yeah, I was thinking about the Mormons as I was writing 61.
65: And, at the same time, a pronounced emphasis on the tale of their 19th-century suffering, exile, anabasis (only marginally appropriate, but I love that word) and eventual reward over the freaky Masonic stuff in the chloroform book. They don't make Utah-only movies about, or sell books in the "Latter-Day Saints" section of the Salt Lake City airport about, Lehi, Nephi and the rest of the grape soda prophets.
What on earth does "grape soda prophets" mean?
There's a Mormon bookstore very close to the house where I'm housesitting. I should go check it out.
68: Their names all remind me of Nehi Grape Soda.
68 - That their names all sound like like "Nehi" or "Shasta", I'd guess.
Huh, I'd never heard of Nehi soda. My prophet is Diet Moxie!
Moroni was an actual prophet or judge or whatever, not just a bad pun.
the man that's going to cause Russia to unite the Islamic nations against Israel.
I thought that was Enver Pasha. It didn't work.
"Israel" being the word they used for "England" at the time.
My prophet is Diet Moxie!
Moxie's come home and is on the comeback, baby.
As far as I know, there is no Lamanite Generation soda.
Gentian root: Welcome to Flavor Country.
79: I used to drink a lot of Moxie. Puts hair on putting hair on your chest.
"I had a visitation from Moroni yesterday, and this is the message he wanted to convey to the world:"
DYNAMITE topic sentence.
82: "Moroni" makes the difference. Think how much improved so much literature would be:
"Call me Moroni."
"Yesterday I went down to the Piraeus with Moroni to judge the annual fruitcake-baking contest...."
"Happiness is a warm Moroni."
"Hither came Moroni, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet..."
"Stately, plump Moroni Mulligan"
Emerson, Are you saying there was a Moroni mentioned in the Old Testament?
Kotsko, the New Testament has been superceded. Everyone knows that. Ann Coulter is going to hell with the Jews.
No, I think he just means Moroni is an actual character in the Book of Mormon.
That's one crowded, tense, unhappy handbasket.
88: That he is. Wasn't he the one who preserved the original metal plates?
He's the one who first appears to Joseph Smith. Not sure what his role is re: the plates.
My mom has a copy. I should take a look next time I'm at her house.
Kotsko's going to hell too, in spades.
Actually, the Mormons are pretty humane. No Hell. Dead infidels and Gentiles just disappear, which happens to be exactly what I think is going to happen to me.
I only read the introductory materials (fascinating, btw) and then through something like 2 Nephi, around a quarter of the way through. I started getting a little bogged down.
Moroni was supposed to start for us against the Cowboys today, but he's questionable with a groin injury.
Moroni was the son of Mormon, who abridged a lot of records to create the bulk of the text of the Book of Mormon, written on gold plates. There was a huge battle in which the bad, dark-skinned Jews (now American Indians) wiped out the good, white-skinned Jews, who by this point had turned bad as well. Mormon died and handed off the plates to Moroni, who wrote his own afterword while wandering, the only white guy left, from Central America to upstate New York, where he buried the plates under a rock on a hill. Centuries later, Moroni appeared to Smith and showed him where the plates were, eventually letting him take them and translate them before taking them back and going up to heaven with them.
Also, Glenn Beck is a Mormon convert.
Glenn Beck is a Mormon convert.
Well, then he has no excuse.
Moroni, also the capital of Comoros. Comoros back in the day was called Camora.
Doubtless any resemblance to J. Smith's BOM names is purely coincidental you haters.
Actually, the Mormons are pretty humane. No Hell.
Yeah, basically just multiple levels of heaven, with only a few reaching the highest levels. Supposedly even the lower tiers so fantastic that if we knew what we were missing we'd kill ourselves to get there. Mormons really aren't very good at inspiring obedience.
Mormons really aren't very good at inspiring obedience.
It's part of their charm.
Mormons really aren't very good at inspiring obedience.
They're better at guilt-tripping. The major difference between the lower circles and the upper circles is that everyone will be aware of where in the hierarchy they ended up. And the upper-circle people will come down and condescend to the lower-circle people regularly. Just imagine your saintly grandmother visiting to give you hell, as it were, for all eternity.
Gswift, Bave Dee, and I are all headed for Outer Darkness, though. Apostates really get it rough.
If I'm not mistaken, though, you'll just be dissolved into your elements, JM, which is the same thing that Dawkins and P.Z. Meyers tell you will happen to you. So they only lie to the believers.
I was under the impression that my disembodied soul would float viciously through outer space for all time. Decomposing peacefully has always sounded like a better deal.
Better check. Don't want to be surprised.
My ex-Mormon ex-wife may not have been a completely reliable source, especially because I make up things a lot anyway.
97: When did he have a sex change then?
93: Actually, the Mormons are pretty humane. No Hell. Dead infidels and Gentiles just disappear, which happens to be exactly what I think is going to happen to me.
You seem to be saying that the first sentence follows logically from the second and third, but it really doesn't. The only conclusion we can draw from the second and third sentence is something like "Mormons believe God is more humane than other Christians believe." The relevant test of Mormons' humane-ness is, how do they treat people?