The Ideology of Empire and
Springtime for Vishnu
There has been much talk lately of the establishment of a new American Empire. An empire needs an ideology. The Bush family, which has strong ties to various right-wing Christian organizations, may favor an ideology best described as “Christian Zionism.” For an excellent overview of this ideology, see the following Christ Church website:
Christian Zionism:
Its History, Theology, and Politics
In view of the strong influence of Christian Zionism on the United States government, the following festival should perhaps be known as “Springtime for Jesus” —
The National Cherry Blossom Festival,
Washington, DC.
A Christian Zionist haiku
celebrating this festival:
Cherry blossoms bloom.
Sure, it’s beautiful, but
Is it good for the Jews?
Personally, I side with Henry David Thoreau, Aldous Huxley, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Andre Weil in preferring the Hindu Holy Scripture The Bhagavad-Gita to any Abrahamic religious text.
The Gita deals, at one level, with a particular incarnation of the Aryan god Vishnu. Holi 2003, a springtime festival associated with Vishnu, will be celebrated tonight in Carteret, New Jersey.
“The old Aryan god, Vishnu, was portrayed as coming to Earth periodically in the form of Krishna, the embodiment of Spring….”
— The Classical Empires, a website of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, Kansas (final home of William S. Burroughs)
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Burroughs fans at the University of Kansas |
Follow-up of Sunday, March 30, 2003:
See With God on His Side, by Garry Wills,
in the Sunday New York Times.