I have a confession to make. I used to enjoy MSNBC, particularly Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. When I couldn’t watch, I listened to the podcast. If I could, I caught it online. However, these past few months have been rough for me… it’s been the MSNBC/Donald Trump show… all Donald all the time, and too much Donald makes a guy insane. So I’ve had to switch over to Nick at Night.
Yet every day this man says something so awful—something you couldn’t imagine hearing form a presidential candidate—that even though I no longer watch as much news as I used to, his words clangor, like a bell whose clapper’s been damaged. With every comment I think to myself, “it can’t get worse…” and yet it does. And the more egregious the comments, the more his audience loves him. And the more MSNBC covers it.
Then last Monday, he made a pronouncement that sent shivers down my spine causing me to tremble like a small poodle. Of course we’ve all heard it. We’ve all been talking about it. It’s pretty much all we can talk about right now. And when he made the pronouncement, he was received by raucous cheers and standing ovations by thousands of white, conservative Christians—rising to their feet and rejoicing that no more Muslims will be allowed into the United States.
It got me to thinking, though, how does he plan to implement this new edict? How will we know who’s Muslim and who’s just Middle Eastern—or another religion that is commonly mistaken by the Reich Wing as Muslim? And it occurred to me: the answer lies at the back of their very own bible: Revelation 13. They’ll place a mark on the Muslim’s forehead or right arm so that it will be obvious to every Conservative that this person is Muslim. To receive this mark of course the Muslim must first convert to Christianity. If they refuse to convert, if they refuse this mark, they cannot buy or sell, and will be persecuted and put to death.
I used to think that the author of the book of Revelation was some guy who accidentally put the wrong mushrooms in his spaghetti sauce, but it turns out that maybe there was something in that hallucination after all, and the Reich Wing has figured out how to salvage it.
So what number will they use? Will it be 666? They can’t use 777 since that will just make everybody think that Muslims work for Boeing. No, it will be 666. The reason this works is that the Christians themselves won’t be wearing this number since… well… they’re Christians. Muslims will be since… well… they’re the “beast” that Christians want to pretend they’re not.
But what about us? What about those who aren’t Muslim, but don’t espouse their brand of Christianity either? Not to worry, once they get the Muslims tagged, they’ll come for us. Then we too will have to wear this mark.
Our only escape clause may be this last line of Revelation 13:
“This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast…”
Wisdom is not exactly in their wheelhouse, and math is science—and we know how they feel about science, so they may end up just outsourcing it. But it turns out that the “Beast within” is by far more dangerous than any beast without—that those who cry “religious freedom” desire anything but.