American Dynasty/American Theocracy Author Kevin Phillips Lecture: Bush,

BigOil, the Religious Right and more.

Last night I went to a lecture in a "conversation" format featuring author Kevin Phillips with questions from Dr. James Hatt, Chairman of the International Academy of Emerging Markets. Kevin's latest book is American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. He is a former active Repub who is now an anti-Bush independent. Here are some of the highlights of the evening. (Note: the following quotes are from my hadnwritten notes and are not word-for-word):

2006 elections: Dems now have a major opportunity for the '06 elections but the congressional districts have been so gerrymandered that perhaps not.

If Congress ends up about 50-50 Dems:Repubs, there will be no effective governance. Kevin believes the only way "for politics to progress" is for a coalition to form. Getting an effective coalition, however, "depends on how great the crisis is perceived to be."

Fundies and Armageddon : The evangelicals who now form the base of the Repub party "believe in Armageddon and the end of times." The Iraq War is a right-wrong proposition to them. The religious right believes that if Iraqi POW's are tortured, that is all in the cause of "right."

The non-evangelical and non-religious Repubs never considered the "Biblical coalition" when designing the blueprint of a Republican takeover in the '60's and '70's; however, by the '90's it became clear to the Bushes that they needed to remake themselves as southerners and "born again" to win over the growing evangelical vote, even though the Bushes are northeastern Episcopalians. Phillips spoke about the effectiveness of the church organizational structure as "mobilizers." He said 98% of women who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment went to church every Sunday.

Now, however, the religious right is angry because, "Bush promised the moon and gave them one-quarter of an asteroid." Phillips said that many RW authors are coming out with books about Bush's "betrayal."

Cheney and the REAL reasons for war in Iraq: "I doubt if Cheney gets up in the morning and grabs a Bible; more likely, he grabs the Wall St. Journal to see what's happening with oil," Phillips said. He believes going to Iraq was "40 to 50 per cent about oil, 20% geopolitics and the rest to get even with Saddam."

Phillips said that peak oil in the Mideast occurred in the late '90's to 2001; however, "no one thinks Iraq has peaked." Cheney had information about the Saudis' oil reserves since Halliburton provided Saudi Arabia with the latest technology to extract oil from played out oil fields; Phillips thinks Cheney knew Saudi ARabia is running out of oil and therefore, Iraq beckoned. Phillips thinks the secret Cheney energy task force is secret because the oil execs were going over the maps of Iraq to divide up areas of operation. "If Iraq's oil revved up, OPEC's hold on oil would have been impacted."

Phillips said that Iraq was born out of World War I and oil politics, and was never a country but a region of mixed ethnic groups. He likened Iraq to the Balkans and particularly, to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

There was a lot more about Scalia, the huge debt, British politics, Blair's oil connection. Funniest remark was an anecdote about a story Phillips received secondhand. Said there was a lunch of Carlyle Group members attended by Babs Bush and when some remark was made about W, she explained, "He was not good in school."