by James Glaser
July 19, 2002

I went to a fund raiser for a women that I know very well. She has had months of hospitalization, but is fighting her way toward recovery. While at this event, like many other public affairs, it seems that I sit with those of the religious right. Either that or there are a lot more of those people now. While sitting, eating little bits of so many great Minnesota hot dishes, trying to save room for the myriad of desserts, a woman asked if we thought the President was the Antichrist?

I started to laugh. but found that those sitting there were taking this as a honest question for discussion. Not being right up there on apocalyptic prophecy, I asked for a definition of Antichrist. Those around the table looked at me like this was a pretty dumb question, but went on to say that the Antichrist was a evil person who will plague the world and that the true Christ will defeat him at the battle of Armageddon.

Hey, what can I say, but that fits our George to a tee and so I could see why these people that are truly religious would pick up on this while a "sinner" like me would miss it all together. These people, who I thought would be backing up the President, talked of that "disinformation plan" of a few months ago, where the United States Government would lie to the world about what they were doing. They were all very happy that public pressure stopped that one. Then I did laugh.

These people of the far right take our Constitution and Bill of Rights very seriously and are upset with how President Bush has attacked those two documents repeatedly. On purely religious grounds these people fear our President and I don't think they are a lone group, especially because of the fact that these people didn't attend just one church.

This week a report in the Sidney Morning Herald talked about a new program by President Bush, called The Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS). Isn't it a real shame that Americans have to read a newspaper from thousands and thousands of miles away to find out what our Government is doing? Seems that the Sidney Herald broke this one. TIPS is a plan to get about 4% of all Americans to spy on the rest of us.

This program would mean "the US would have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police" This 4% would be reporting "suspicious activity" Those that are being recruited are primarily those whose work gets them into homes and businesses, like letter carriers, utility employees and truck drivers

A 1992 report by Harvard University's Project on Justice says "the accuracy of informant reports is problematic, with some informants having embellished the truth, and others suspected of having fabricated their reports." This would not matter if the Government was only looking for an excuse to arrest someone. Maybe Americans will start to hear that "knock in the night" and they will never be heard of again.

Remember that Patriot Act that Congress passed without reading? Well with the power that the Federal Government received with that vote a person's home can be searched without that person being informed that the search was ever performed or of any surveillance devices that were implanted. Do those people at that fund raiser have something there? Is this something a Antichrist would do to his own people?

You can read about this TIPS Program on the Citizen Corps web site. Citizen Corps explains itself with this, "Public Education, Training, and Volunteer Opportunities to support community and family safety." Right away you can see how spying fits right in with those other things. TIPS is reported to be "a national system for concerned workers to report suspicious activity" Workers, is that like the Communist Workers Party? Maybe George isn't the Antichrist but a 60s radical that has pent up Communist urges he has been suppressing since college.

Could President George W. Bush be the Antichrist? Yeah, he could be. He does every thing he can for War and almost nothing for Peace. He believes that if innocent people get killed by American forces in the prosecution of our War on Terrorism, that is unfortunate, but America has the right to kill those people, because our right to have a war is greater that those people's right to life.

One would have to believe that any Antichrist would have to destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights, would hide behind a pronouncement of religious fervor, and most important, create a intense distrust among all men so that opposition can not get organized.

Hey, just maybe those people at that fund raiser had something there.