Jesus Goes to Washington
Ten years ago I would not have considered that Roe v Wade could be overturned, or that the famous Scopes Trial could be played out in reverse, but it occurs to me more and more that our country is humming to a 1930s political tune as well as an economic one.
Two thirds of Americans polled cite that religion is important in their life, and 75% of Americans refer to themselves as Christians. The conservative political movement is hijacking Christian consciousness for political ends and turning the Republican Party into its sheep dog.
Every day, conservatives trumpet the diabolical schemes of our country’s enemies: Islam, Socialists, Communists, the wealthy elite, and those heathen Liberals. But, ask yourself one probing question, are these the enemies of America, or are they the enemies of hard line Christianity?
If you believe they are one and the same, it might be too late for you; you have already been turned into a fish zombie. Your most precious freedom has enslaved you and is being manipulated to control you. The very “liberal press” you despise may be the last vestige of sanity left in your world, and yet, you aspire to extinguish it so there is no one left to question your fish fortitude.
If you don’t believe the fish mongered diabolical schemes, congratulations, you are not a fish zombie (yet). However, you are obviously in some sort of a dumb ass stupor, because the fish zombies are taking control of your fucking country!
I did not dream that Rick Sanchez said that “Jews control the media” on a radio show promoting his book; I did not dream that it was necessary for President Obama, once a proud liberal, to declare himself a member of The Cult of the Fish in order to stand a chance of winning the 2012 election; and I am not dreaming when I tell you gays cannot serve openly in the military or be joined in matrimony because The Cult of the Fish dominates Congress.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
David, this article seems remarkably out of step with things. The GOP is moving out of the dark cloud of the religious right, not becoming increasingly dominated by it. You should perhaps focus on topics where you're more informed and less biased.
Dave
2 - David Waggoner
Candidates speak louder than words.
3 - Alan Kurtz
Mr. Waggoner, I realize that you are a new writer at Blogcritics, this being only your second article published here.
If you care to peruse other BC articles, you'll find that almost all include something that "Jesus Goes To Washington" entirely lacks: embedded hyperlinks.
Such hyperlinks do not adorn our articles merely as decoration. Their functionality is essential in allowing readers to engage the author in discourse via commentary on the thread accompanying each article. The hyperlinks serve as citations to sources, just as footnotes do in print media. The absence of citations can be construed, rightly or wrongly, as indicating that the author is just making stuff up as he goes along, and has no idea whether or not anything he says is factual.
I point this out in light of your declaration that "Two thirds of Americans polled cite that religion is important in their life, and 75% of Americans refer to themselves as Christians."
Such information is meaningful only in historical context, and since you provide neither context nor sources, the reader is left to fend for himself.
According to the American Religious Identification Survey, published in March 2009 by Trinity College Hartford, Connecticut: "Americans are slowly becoming less Christian." (Emphasis added.) The report points out that the three-quarters of us who self-identify as Christians actually represent a significant decline over recent decades; in 1990, 86% of Americans called themselves Christians.
The report concludes, "The U. S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008."
This suggests that your alarmism regarding the political effects of "hard-line Christianity" is overblown. "We are on the verge," you write, "of living a perverse irony where the separation of church and state goes the way of the old 'blue laws,' by remaining on the books but being ignored and ineffectual."
"On the verge" is rank hyperbole, Mr. Waggoner. The only "perverse irony" irony here is that you seemingly hope to persuade people with your unsubstantiated fear tactics. It won't work.
4 - David Waggoner
The irony of ironies is a conservative accusing a liberal of "fear tatics". Here are sources.
Percent of Christians in US Importance of faith
5 - Baronius
G.K. Chesterton wrote about the deceptive power of a list. If the first couple of things on a list make sense, the mind wanders and accepts the rest of the list unthinkingly. This article accomplishes the same trick by listing things without telling the reader why. We read that "Islam, Socialists, Communists, the wealthy elite, and those heathen Liberals" are portrayed as the enemies of America, and only afterwards the question is posed, whose enemies are they really?
So let's look at the items on the list.
Islam - a rival to Christianity; in its extremist political form, a genuine threat to the world
Socialists - not a threat to Christianity; depending on your political views, a threat to America
Communists - a threat to both Christianity and America
the wealthy elite - not a threat to Christianity; depending on your political views, a threat to America
those heathen Liberals - if heathen, then opponents of Christianity; again, if your politics are to the right, then you'd consider them a threat to America
So what does that get us? With broadest definitions, three of the things on the list are threats to Christianity, while 5 are threats to America. More practically, only Communism (I'm thinking of China) and Islam threaten America; and the same two threaten Christianity. That doesn't support your position that Christian conservatives are really out to protect Christianity rather than America.
6 - handyguy
Several of this year's high-profile Tea Party-endorsed GOP candidates are very conservative Christians, and have what many Americans would call extreme positions on, for example, abortion:
Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Marco Rubio, Christine O'Donnell, Ron Paul.
The Jim DeMint Wing of the Republican party is still very much under the "dark cloud" that Dave Nalle sunnily claims the GOP is leaving behind, and DeMint seems to be ascending in influence.
7 - Doug Hunter
When people write stuff like this I wonder if they're truly so dense that they can't see the irony, or if it's some kind of ploy I'm not yet understanding.
We're gonna fearmonger about christianity (and capitalism and fascism) because they fearmonger about Islam, socialism, communism, etc. The engine of fear powered by ignorance cycles again.
**And really? "The cult of the fish" That's grade school stuff.
8 - Alan Kurtz
handyguy (#6), would the election of Angle, Buck, Rubio, O'Donnell and [I think you mean Rand, not Ron] Paul, and the reelection of Jim DeMint, truly threaten America? Would they, as David Waggoner insinuates, demolish the separation of church and state?
Each of these candidates is running within the duly constituted electoral system, vying for office through legal means and campaigning in an open society. As far as I know, none of them has advocated repealing the establishment clause of the First Amendment and making Christianity a requirement for citizenship.
Why then do you fear them? Or, if you don't, why do you suppose David Waggoner is so exercised about "fish zombies" (read: Christians) "taking control of our fucking country!"
The Left today is engaged in a new form of McCarthyism. Instead of denouncing their opponents as commies, however, they call us "Christians" and "fish zombies" in an attempt to prevail in electoral politics through vilification, not vision.
It worked for Senator McCarthy, but only up to the point where people caught on. Then it ruined him.
I trust the same fate is in store for the likes of David Waggoner.
9 - El Bicho
"I did not dream that Rick Sanchez said that “Jews control the media” on a radio show promoting his book"
Yes you did. I just read the transcript and the words you quoted were not spoken. Either you are being dishonest, you bought into the spin without doing any research, or you didn't understand the context of what he was saying. Which is it?
10 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
More practically, only Communism (I'm thinking of China) and Islam threaten America; and the same two threaten Christianity.
Here's a few factors that threaten America far more than either of the above:
- The Citizens United decision by the conservative five dominating the Supreme Court is enabling multinational and foreign corporations to influence our elections without us having any way of knowing it. The Chamber of Commerce receives funding from overseas corporations (including from the Middle East), and the second-largest holder of stock in News Corp (parent of Fox News) is a Saudi prince.
- The acceptance by most of the Right and even a few on the Left of non-verifiable electronic voting, despite real evidence of how easily the machines are hacked and the results changed without being able to discern the true results. If we cannot trust our voting results, then we do not have a democracy.
- The war on public education by the anti-tax Right...and their battle cry of 'elitism!' every time someone seems the least bit intellectual. If Americans as a whole receive less education, we will surely lose all hope of being a world leader.
- Climate change and the ever-changing arguments by the Right that human-caused global warming is false because (1) it exists, but can't be caused by humans, (2) it doesn't exist because 3% of climatologists disagree with the other 97% of the world's climatologists, (3) it doesn't exist because the world is obviously cooling (we hear this claim every winter), or (4) it's all a vast conspiracy by the world's climatologists under orders by the vast majority of the world's governments...and I guess that means that paleontologists are also part of it since they're pointing out that we're in the midst of another 'great dying' and that human-caused climate- and environment change is the culprit. Human-caused climate change is continuing, and is doing so at an ever-increasing pace. This is the greatest actual physical threat (other than Russia's nukes) that America faces.
- The insistence by the Right on "supply-side economics" and "tax cuts for the rich"...despite the hard, cold FACT that America did just fine for forty years without Reagonomics (all four of the greatest recessions and economic crises since the Depression came after Reagan took office) and America did just fine for forty years with tax rates for the rich that ranged from 70% up to 91%. We are presently witnessing the destruction of the middle class that built up in the forty years between the Depression and the advent of Reaganomics...and we're still in the grip of Reaganomics.
- And perhaps most frustrating of all is the acceptance by the Right of the idea that it's a Bad Thing to require multinationals corporations to pay taxes like they do in every other country, that it's a Bad Thing to stop giving corporations tax breaks for outsourcing jobs overseas, that it's a Bad Thing to insist on financial regulation that will (hopefully) prevent the culmination of factors that would lead to another Great Recession.
Baronius, the above are the real threats to America. China and the terrorists (many of whom are NOT Islamic or simply use it as an excuse) can only defeat us if we allow them to win...the game is not theirs to win, but ours to lose.
11 - Baronius
Oh, come on, Doug. He's obviously very proud of that "cult of the fish" line. It's just adorable that he thinks it's going to provoke a reaction.
12 - David Waggoner
Baronius - I like it. Here is my interpretation of the list:
Islam -Boogieman
Communism - Boogieman
Socialism -Boogieman
Wealthy Elite - scapegoat
Liberalism - Boogieman
David
13 - David Waggoner
El Bicho - Paraphrased, but accurate.
14 - David Waggoner
Alan - I love how radical conservatives are reclaiming the use of terms once used to describe their own abhorrent behavior in history.
15 - David Waggoner
Doug,
I revel in the irony.
16 - El Bicho
Paraphrased yet you put it in quotes so we'll mark that as dishonest.
Nor is it accurate. He said because there are a number of Jewish liberal east coast elites that run a number of the networks they shouldn't be currently be considered an oppressed minority in the U.S. you didn't understand the context of what he was saying.
17 - David Waggoner
El Bicho - uh.. wrong part. The part specifically about Jon Stewart is where you want to focus. I quoted what CNN and 99% of the western world interpreted. You can think differently though, I am OK with that.
18 - handyguy
It's not so much that I fear them, Alan. It bugs me that they run primarily on [bogus and vastly oversimplified] economic platforms, and try to avoid discussing their extreme social conservatism. And that Tea Party fans like Nalle choose to minimize the significance of this extremism.
Social conservatism is a losing proposition, long-term. But I'd rather see fewer loons in the Senate, not more.
And yes, I meant Rand Paul. His own and his father's platforms are nearly identical.
19 - Baronius
Sure, 'cept for the couple of billion people enslaved by lunatics, communism and Islam are no more dangerous than a puppy.
20 - handyguy
The swift overreaction to Sanchez's rant was shocking. I was certainly not a fan of his ever, but they should have just made him apologize on the air and then moved on.
21 - handyguy
Baronius, you don't mean "Islam." You mean "radical Islamists." A tiny fraction of the world's Muslims. Or you mean "authoritarian governments of countries with Muslim populations." You do know this but you keep writing offensive stuff like #19.
22 - El Bicho
Not sure how what I wrote isn't related to Jon Stewart. Do you think Sanchez meant actual Stewart clones are working at different networks?
"I quoted what CNN and 99% of the western world interpreted."
Yet another unsubstantiated statistic. I'm not sure it bolsters your case that you just took what someone fed you and didn't bother to read and interpret it yourself.
23 - David Waggoner
The full audio is available here. Doesn't need me or anyone to embellish it.
"CNN's Rick Sanchez: 'Jon Stewart Is A Bigot' -- And The Jews Run CNN (AUDIO) | TPM LiveWire"
24 - Clavos
The war on public education by the anti-tax Right
Obviously you haven't seen the movie, Waiting For Superman, which was directed by a left-leaning individual. The "war" you cite isn't on education, it's on, among other things, the stranglehold the teacher unions have on US schools and school authorities.
The "war" is on administrators and teachers who run and teach in schools where fully 80% of students are graduated functionally illiterate and innumerate.
The "War" is on the unions whose tenure rules have made it so impossible to fire incompetent teachers in New York that more than three hundred teachers in that state who have been removed from their classrooms because of their incompetence, sit around all day in a room, reading and sleeping at full pay for periods of up to several years because the unions have made it nigh impossible to fire even individuals proven to be incompetent.
That is what your "war on education" is about, and it's being fought increasingly by people on both sides of the aisle.
And should be.
25 - Dave Nalle
Well put, Clavos. The hypocrisy of the left on education is an outrage. Defending the educational bureaucracy and unions which are destroying the system against the interests of kids is inexcusable.
And let's talk briefly about David's wikipedia link to his "evidence" of the growth of Christianity. If you actually read the link you find that in the last decade the portion of the population self-identifying as Christians is actually down 10.2% rather than increasing as he suggested. Plus despite calling themselves Christians, actual church attendance overall is only at 42% nationwide.
So his claims of a growing christian influence in the country is clearly a product of his imagination.
Dave