Birth Pangs

by digby

My electricity has been iffy all afternoon, but I was able to check in over at FDL for a bit to see what Mr Soros had to say. I brought up the Condi Rice “birth pang” comment in passing and one of the commenters pointed out that it’s actually Rapture talk, if you can believe that.

I checked it out and over at the Rapture Forum they’ve been talking about the “birth pangs” of Armageddon ever since 9/11.

Having told His disciples which characteristics would not indicate the end of the age, Jesus turned to the questions themselves; He begins with the third one about the sign that would mark the end of the age (Matthew 24: 7-8; Mark 13:8; Luke 21:10-11).

According to all three Gospels, the sign of the end of the age is said to be when nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. This act will be coupled with famines and earthquakes in various places, which Messiah clearly stated would be the beginning of travail.

The term travail means “birth-pang,” referring to the series of birth-pangs that a woman undergoes before giving birth. The prophets pictured the last days as a series of birth-pangs before the birth of the new Messianic Age. Yeshua is saying that the beginning of travail (the first birth-pang and the sign that the end of the age has begun) is when nation rises against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

This is Condi’s quote:

“What we’re seeing here … are the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.”

Aside from the unbelievable arrogance of that statement, which is virtually designed to piss off just about everyone in the region, this “birth-pang” characterization struck me a bizarre when I heard it. It seemed like an odd image to evoke under the circumstances and I didn’t quite understand what she was referring to since the “democracy baby” she and her unofficial husband call Iraq is dying a violent death before it is even born.

Now I get it. Members of the Bush administration have been speaking in code to the Christian fundamentalists for years. In fact, they’ve been praised for their innovation by the mainstream press. From “culture of life” to “Dred Scott” to “wonder working power” the administration is often talking above the mainstream discourse directly to its Christian Right base.

The only explanations for employing such language at a time like this are that the Secretary of State of the United States is a flipped out fundamentalist herself — or Karl Rove is deeply involved in the diplomatic language Rice is employing in order to stimulate their base. I lean toward the second (Karl’s legacy depends upon his holding the congress this fall) but I wouldn’t rule out the first.

Either way, it’s unbelievably inappropriate for the top diplomat of the US to be using coded Christian fundamentalist language to discuss this, of all topics. What is wrong with these people?