A New Dog Whistle You Might Have Missed

Last night during President Obama's press conference Major Garrett in a question chocked full of loaded language asked President Obama about whether or not he would reject China's call for a new global currency standard.




Now you might recall that Michele Bachmann also brought this subject up yesterday in the hearing with Timothy Geitner and Ben Bernake (among other inane topics).




Now most people probably saw both questions and just thought they were related to economic crisis. But if you stop for a second you have to wonder why this question came up both in a hearing on Capitol Hill AND in a Presidential press conference when there might be 3 people in the world total who actually thinks the Chinese call for a world currency chance of gaining any traction. Well what you may not know is that this is a dog whistle for the religious right.

I am a Christian and I grew up in the church. But I obviously don't consider myself a part of the religious right or in a political sense an evangelical Christian. But I happened to read one of the "Left Behind" books, which is HUGE in religious right circles, years ago and I was hooked and read every single book in the series. Now for the uninitiated the Left Behind books are basically a fictional account of how the "end times" would be but in a sort of real life settings with fully developed characters and story lines that are full of action, despair, sorrow and just about every single human emotion you can come up with. Now here is where the dog whistle part comes in, you see many people believe that in the book of Revelations of the Bible that the end times are described as being a time where the Anti Christ rises to lead the world. And during his reign he initiates both a One World Religion and a One World Currency. Now thanks to Rachel Maddow's show a few weeks back a meme was exposed that not a lot of people had heard of. And that was that there were people on the religious right who were comparing then Senator Barack Obama to the character "Nicholae Carpathia" who in the Left Behind books is the Anti Christ.

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And of course if you go on any number of wingnut websites even to this day you will see people still making references to President Obama being the Anti Christ. So you see in their world, just China making this call for a world currency can be interpreted as another sign both that President Obama is the Anti Christ and that we are living in the end times. That is also why many times you will see the FauxNooz crowd making wild accusations about the UN someday running the world. Because surprise surprise that is another one of the plot lines in Left Behind.

To put it simply I would suggest that if you want to know whats simmering below the surface in religious right circles it will behoove you to either read the Left behind books or (because I know thats pretty tedious) just do some online research on the books. You will be glad you did.