Last night my husband and I were watching 60 Minutes, and they ran a segment on the movement within evangelical Christianity that believes in End Times Prophecy. I was quite familiar with this whole "Rapture" business, because there is a woman in my office who is a commited believer.
My British husband, on the other hand, is completely apolitical - hasn't the slightest clue about American politics - and religiously agnostic. He's never shown the slightest alarm at the political direction in this country or shown any interest in discussing politics with his lefty-liberal wife. But, in the last month or so, he's grown increasingly disgusted with the state of things in this country...first with the whole WMD issue (Kay's statements seem to have gotten through to him), then the Janet boob flap, then with the uproar over gay marriage. Then, after watching the 60 Minutes segment and Googling on the evangelical movement in this country, he proclaimed that we were moving to the U.K. if Bush won another term.
The evangelical woman in my office says that Bush is spending like there's no tomorrow because he understands that we're in the End Times and that there literally isn't a tomorrow to worry about. I'd always assumed that she was on the nutty fringes of society, but there are apparently 70 million other people in this country who believe as she does: that the world is coming to an end and all those non-believers will be left behind on earth to deal with the consequences.
I don't actually believe that there's going to be a fundamentalist Christian takeover of the country should Bush stay for 4 more years. But I do believe that there will be more wars, more tax cuts, more conservative judge appointments, more furor over gay marriage, more efforts to ban abortion outright, more degradation of environmental protection, more erosion of workers' rights, more blurring between Church and State.
I intend to do everything I can to support the Dem nominee in this November's election with both money and time. But should Bush win, I'm beginning to think that my husband might be right - we should get out while we can.