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| Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talks to reporters |
By Morris Dean
I didn't write the column I'd like to edify you with today. It's a fascinating piece written by Chris Hedges, a journalist specializing in American politics and society—his article, "The Radical Christian Right and the War on Government," which was published on October 6 on the news website TruthDig: Drilling beneath the Headlines.
Hedges writes that the "public face [of the radical Christian Right] is on display in the House of Representatives," and its "ideology is the driving force behind the shutdown of the government. It calls for the eradication of social 'deviants,' beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country."
Hedges judges that "Christian fascists" such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz are "manipulating the very real despair of believers within the Christian right who are struggling to survive in a hostile world."
I think we are very fortunate that the Christian right is a minority, but, unfortunately, the demagoguery of people like Ted Cruz connects subconsciously with its members' childhood teachings about evil, and that makes it very powerful.
For an edifying Thor's Day, read Hedges's article! (It isn't long.) The "cult of masculinity" that Hedges says "pervades the ideology of the Christian right" sounds all too real to me as I watch the right-wing faction of our House of Representatives in action.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
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Rome was destroyed from with in and it would appear we are going down the same path. You cannot make a pet out of a rattle snake and once you let it into your house, it is hard to get out, and it knows only how to attack.
ReplyDeleteIt'll be hard for nice, fair-minded, tolerant, reasonable people to accomplish, won't it? Are you laying odds?
ReplyDeleteWell, I went and read the column. I found it not unlike a column that a right-wing group would have written. The difference was he had most of his facts right, which could have stood on their own. Instead he inflated the threat in order to instill fear into the reader.
ReplyDeleteThe right-wing or Tea-Party is not one group supporting one idea, anymore than the Peace Movement in the sixties were bonded together. Nixon's people saw the weakness and instead of a frontal attack they pulled the movement apart piece by piece until only the true believers stood along and was no longer a threat.
The Christian Right is not as large or as powerful as they would have you think. It is instead made up of people who share one or more beliefs with the group. At the core are the true believers, but their strength comes from the numbers they call their own. However, these numbers are not theirs; they are fragments that are held together by loose strings, which can be pulled apart.
As an example of this would be the Pro Life bunch. The core of the right wing are after much more than doing away with abortion, but they give support to the group and convince them to vote their way by offering candidates who say they are pro-life.
These candidates, once elected, play the game, and rave about Roe v Wade. However, it's only a show; if this were not true, by now there would be a law on the books banning abortion. Once you can convince this group that the right wing has bigger fish to fry than their anti-abortion, they will go in search of other pastures.
No one has, to date, tried to speak to the one issue voter and just ask them if they feel they are getting their money's worth.
Ed, thanks for teasing the issue into parts. I agree that Mr. Hedges did adopt a polemical tone and emphasis, somewhat reminiscent of some of the comments that have been offered here at times, if you know what I mean.
DeleteYour analysis gives me hope that the natural intelligence of "liberals" might actually identify specific strategy and tactics for pulling apart the loose strings. I wonder whether a camerilla of such thinkers has already met to discuss what to do? They certainly OUGHT to have by this point of the grinding of government to a halt, if they hadn't already been meeting for many months. Of course, if they've already been meeting THAT LONG, why haven't we seen any results yet...?
Sounds like extreme Haters to me !
ReplyDeleteOn some issues they are out and out haters. If the right wing were a country Mississippi would be its Capital. In all the years I lived in that state I never pretended to be anything but a Democrat and on most things to the left. However, I could always find the things we agreed upon to discuss. I also found we agreed on more things than we disagreed on. The barrier was the deep believe we had for those things closest to our heart.
ReplyDeleteI would ask them, why they voted for people who were against more things they believed in than Democrat that was running. It always came back to the core issues of, Gays, Abortion, and the support of Blacks over Whites. It didn't seem to matter that the Democrat was anti-abortion, anti-gay, and a member of the KKK.
In part it's a marketing issue, with the agenda of the Koch Bros.funded "interest groups" driving the message. It often seems easier to get people who are not directly impacted by something to fear change than to consider the impact in their lives of the action of the powerful.
ReplyDeleteI'd agree that Hedges gets strongly polemical in this, and quite a few of his writings, but I'd also point out that views contrary to the conventional wisdom usually need emphasis to get heard. Hedges is one of the few Christian Left voices engaging with the issue of the power that "that old time religion", with it's emphasis on evil (as the right frames the question) in politics, has over the political discussion.
Their power seems at the moment still in the acendency. But, as Frank Rich observes in his current essay on Rand Paul in New York Magazine, the dynamics of the post-Obama era may make their agenda harder to sustain.
Although, I wonder where the resistance is to be found, most of the Christian Left is focused on specific social justice projects, rather than political organizing. Whether the up coming political season will change the dynamic is hard to guess.
Tom, thanks for throwing some light on Hedges's method and his position. I didn't realize that he, too, is a Christian, on the other end of the spectrum.
DeleteAnd thanks for mentioning (again, I think) Frank Rich's article in New York Magazine. I haven't read it yet.
Of course, "little me" has to look at all that's going on as "just happening," with no sense at all that I can do anything to affect its trajectory.
I'm resigned to that and don't allow myself to become depressed over it, yet I am pretty pessimistic, and of course that is not a good feeling.
I think one of the problems is, the right-wing is at war, and we democrats want to have a discussion about why they want to kill us. Things like that never turn out well.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back to the swimming pool Tom. Your voice has been missed.