O mal existe?

Certamente a era Bush marcou o fim da era evangélica aos moldes americanos.

A era Obama irá prevalecer pintando uma nova cor para o mundo cristão, evangélico e acima de tudo para outras culturas e religiões do planeta.

A diferença entre as duas eras pode ser facilmente observada nas respostas à pergunta, se o mal existe, dadas pelos (então) candidatos à presidência americana nas últimas eleições, por ocasião do “debate” na igreja do pastor Rick Warren - aquele da “Guerra com Propósitos”, segundo Má Dico.

Rick Warren pergunta:

- O mal existe? Deve ser ignorado? Combatido?

Obama responde:

- Existe e o enxergamos a todo momento. Em Dafur e infelizmente nas ruas da cidade. Uma coisa muita importante é que devemos ter a devida humildade para saber lidar com a questão de como enfrentar o mal, pois bastante mal já foi feito justamente baseado na desculpa de estarmos confrontando o mal.

McCain responde:

- O mal precisa ser derrotado, meus amigos, como presidente dos Estados Unidos eu irei persegui-lo até os portões do inferno. Vou pegar Bin Laden e trazê-lo à justiça. O maior desafio deste século é o crescimento do extremismo islâmico. Vamos vencer a guerra e trazer nossos soldados para casa com honra e vitória e não com derrota. Isso é o que via acontecer.

Obviamente Mc Cain arrancou aplausos do público evangélico. Aliás, durante a entrevista Mc Cain conseguiu fazer os batistas da califórnia rirem por 11 vezes e aplaudí-lo 23 vezes. Não tão eufórico, Obama, por sua vez, só despertou o humor do público em 3 ocasiões e tirou 7 vezes aplausos.

Obama venceu as eleições e Mc Cain perdeu. Graças a Deus!

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Transcrição literal das falas dos candidatos:

WARREN: OK, we've got one last time -- I've got a bunch more, but let me ask you one about evil. Does evil exist? And if it does, do we ignore it? Do we negotiate with it? Do we contain it? Do we defeat it?
OBAMA: Evil does exist. I mean, I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil, sadly, on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children. I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely, and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, now, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task, but we can be soldiers in that process, and we can confront it when we see it.
Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for to us have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, because a lot of evil's been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.

WARREN: How about the issue of evil. I asked this of your rival, in the previous debate. Does evil exist and, if so, should ignore it, negotiate it with it, contain it or defeat it?
MCCAIN: Defeat it. A couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that. And I know how to do that. I will get that done. (APPLAUSE). No one, no one should be allowed to take thousands of American -- innocent American lives.
Of course, evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the transcended challenge of the 21st century -- radical Islamic extremism.
Not long ago in Baghdad, Al Qaida took two young women who were mentally disabled, and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace and, by remote control, detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is. And we're going to defeat this evil. And the central battleground according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden is the battle, is Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and Iraq and we are winning and succeeding and our troops will come home with honor and with victory and not in defeat. And that's what's happening.