Incompetence and Fanaticism

Several recent news articles and programs have forced me to ask the question: is the current administration merely incompetent (on a massive scale) or is this, in fact, a willfully apocalyptic scenario?

While one can argue that staggering incompetence could have the result of combining a throuoghly trashed economy with the destruction of 50 years of foreign policy building; it seems almost too stupid, even for the myopic Bushies.

What could explain our current predicament is the combination of the Grover Norquist, right wing fringe strategy known as 'starve the beast', wherein tax legislation is used to destroy domestic social programs such as: social security, medicare, medicaid and the education department combined with the fundamentalist christian 'armageddon' strategy. That's where the U.S., acting as a 'christian' nation foments a global war against 'heathen' religions most particularly Islam. This apparently is a precursor to the notion of the second coming of the christian messiah (and also fulfills the jewish messiah fable as well). The whole thing involves universal war, the appearance of the anti-christ, the subjugation of the populace, a magical event where true believers are raised up to heaven and the rest of the world is destroyed...generally bad science-fiction but absolute 'fiery finger writing on the wall' stuff to the faithful.

The point is that you can look at the events of the last three years as a series of fumbling stupidities by a bunch of incompetent idiots or you can see these things a series of steps on a path with clear goals in mind.