An article by Joe Bageant over at Dissident Voice isn’t really about SEB directly, but it does sum up a lot of what I and others here have been saying for awhile now in a way that can only be described as bombastic.
Given the near-fascist nature of U.S. governmental behavior lately, I do not think it is overstating the case to observe that we liberals seem to have become, at least to some degree, the new Jews of the rising Republican Reich. You remember the old German theme about a certain kind of people being responsible for everything wrong with an otherwise perfect white Christian society. It took a Republican mind to figure out that “elite” liberals constituted exactly such a threat to our national way of life. Remember that the German public saw the Jews as being against its “values” too, and that they had declared cultural and legal war on the Jews long before Hitler came along to galvanize the most nationalistic elements among the German people. Just as the Jews were used in Nazi Germany to rally Christian Germans, American liberals were used in the last election by the ultra-right to rouse Fundamentalist Christians—people who were previously uninterested in the GOP political agenda but got quite excited when it was pointed out to them that their anti-Christ was, lo and beshit! right among them. A godless homo-loving stem cell sucking liberal elite right here in Riverdale! The fact that we are at least one half of the population prevents us from being an “elite” somehow escaped everyone in the excitement.
In Germany it came down to jealousy of the Jews’ success in capitalist society by a group of Christian white people who believed they had been excluded. In America it came down to supposedly being culturally excluded by the liberal elite, plus the voting rights of fetuses and allowing gay people to wear wedding rings. We can safely assume the fetuses don’t really care one way or another. The gays are still pissed. In both cases, however, the German and the American, Christianity is a form of political ideology masquerading as religious faith, deploying the ultimate force of government to root out the “evil” and dominate with its own particular delusion.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to tell who is controlling whom. Do the Christian Fundamentalists in this country now have significant control of the Republican Party? Or were they simply duped into backing the latest U.S. capitalist imperialist grab for empire and exploitation of ordinary working Americans. My guess is that the big Republican capitalists do not give a fuck, so long as they can grab the money and run when the lights are shot out, and that the Christians don’t care as long as they get a shot at swapping the Constitution with the Bible.
It’s quite the read and I think a lot of my regulars will find a lot in it that will make them nod their heads while it’ll piss off the Christian Right and Republicans in general to no end I’m sure. I may have to devote some time to reading some of Joe’s other articles.
“I am treated as evil by those who feel persecuted because they are not allowed to force me to believe as they do.”
-Unknown
It seems to me everyone tries to apply that quote to themselves and they are always able to because when one minority becomes a majority they do the exact same thing to those who did it again. It’s a never ending circular power struggle.