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Virginia Pols Ignite Human Microchips Debate With Antichrist Mentions

by Amar Toor on February 11, 2010 at 01:18 PM

As we inch closer to 2012, and as fatalists prepare themselves for the Mayan-predicted end of the world, everyone will, as they have for centuries, start looking for signs of the apocalypse. Some Virginian lawmakers, however, say they may have already found one of these signs: microchips.

According to The Washington Post, the Virginian House of Delegates is set to vote on a bill that would protect employees from companies or government agencies attempting to plant microchips in their bodies, an act that many House Republicans are equating to the work of the Antichrist. Republican Mark Cole, the bill's sponsor, said that the impetus behind the proposed legislation centered on civil liberties and privacy issues, but added that he believes microchip implants could very well be the "mark of the beast," as mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Though Cole admits, shockingly, that he's "not a theologian," he warned that "there's a prophecy in the Bible that says you'll have to receive a mark" from the Antichrist when the world ends. "Some people," he said, "think these computer chips might be that mark."

We're all for this bill, in principle; a world in which we're branded and tracked like cattle isn't necessarily what we'd call "appealing." But the religious overtones with which Virginian lawmakers are couching the issue worry us, to say the least -- especially considering the larger political agenda undoubtedly at work. Implicit in these Republicans' argument is a posited parallel between corporately embedded microchips and "big government," debate over which is currently engulfing Washington. By taking a relatively cold button issue and dressing it up in religious rhetoric, Virginian Republicans are slyly casting Democrats (and the Democratic administration) as the monolithic, fearsome Antichrist figure, which seeks to turn us all into robots and pull the plug on Grandma.

Ultimately, such frivolous debates only stir up anger and fear, and waste everyone's time and money. As state governments turn their attention to more pressing, non-science-fiction issues, Virginian legislators have attached undue apocalyptic urgency to a decidedly hypothetical issue -- all in the name of a grandiose political cheap shot. [From: The Washington Post]

Tags: antichrist, apocalypse, Book of Revelation, BookOfRevelation, frivolous, microchips, politics, republicans, top, virginia

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