XPost: sci.psychology.psychotherapy, alt.consciousness, talk.origins   
   From: 1c3m4n@chi-mafia.org   
      
   On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 06:25:15 +0000 (UTC), Crowfoot wrote:   
      
   > This e-mail originated via Prof. Mark Crispin Miller, head of the Media   
   > Studies Department at New York University, so I accept it as credible.   
   > It is long but incredibly worthwhile. Forward it widely...it is too   
   > important to keep to ourselves, don't you think?   
   >   
   > The Covert Kingdom   
   > Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas   
   > By JOE BAGEANT   
   >   
   > Not long ago I pulled my car up alongside a tiny wooden church in the   
   > woods, a stark white frame box my family built in 1840. And as always,   
   > an honest-to-god chill went through me, for the ancestral ghosts   
   > presumably hovering over the graves there. From the wide open front door   
   > the Pentecostal preacher's message echoed from within the plain wooden   
   > walls:  "Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like Pres ident   
   > Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in this battle   
   > with Satan's Muslim armies." If I had chosen to go back down the road a   
   > mile or so to the sprawling new Bible Baptist church---complete with   
   > school facilities, professional sound system and in-house television   
   > production---I could have heard approximately the same exhortation.   
   > Usually offered at the end of a prayer for sons and daughters of members   
   > in the congregation serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any of the   
   > thousands upon thousands of praise temples across our republic.   
   >   
   > After a lifetime of identity conflict, I have come to accept that,   
   > blood-wise, if not politically or spiritually, these are my people.  And   
   > as a leftist it is very clear to me these days why urban liberals not   
   > only fail to understand these people, but do not even know they exist,   
   > other than as some general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters called   
   > "the religious right ," or the "Christian Right," or "neocon   
   > Christians." But until progressives come to understand what these people   
   > read, hear, are told and deeply believe, we cannot understand American   
   > politics, much less be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's   
   > inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most   
   > enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what   
   > fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all   
   > care.   
   >   
   > For liberals to examine the current fundamentalist phenomenon in America   
   > is accept some hard truths. For starters, we libs are even more   
   > embattled than most of us choose to believe. Any significant liberal and   
   > progressive support is limited to a few urban pockets on each coast and   
   > along the upper edge of the Midwestern tier states. Most of the rest of   
   > the nation, the much vaunted heartland, is the dominion of the   
   > conservative and charismatic Christian. Turf-wise, it' s pretty much   
   > their country, which is to say it presently belongs to George W. Bush   
   > for some valid reasons. Remember: He did not have to steal the entire   
   > election, just a little piece of it in Florida.  Evangelical born-again   
   > Christians of one stripe or another were then, and are now, 40% of the   
   > electorate, and they support Bush 3-1. And as long as their clergy and   
   > their worst instincts tell them to, they will keep on voting for him, or   
   > someone like him, regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly and   
   > sub-intelligence. Forget about changing their minds.  These Christians   
   > do not read the same books we do, they do not get their information from   
   > anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources, and in fact,   
   > consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn and the Devil's   
   > lies. Given how fundamentalists see the modern world, they may as well   
   > be living in Iraq or Syria, with whom they share approximately the same   
   > Bronze Age religious tenets.  They believe in God, Rumsfeld's Holy War   
   > and their absolute duty as God's chosen nation to kick Muslim ass up one   
   > side and down the other. In other words, just because millions of   
   > Christians appear to be dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal.   
   >   
   > Having been born into a Southern Pentecostal/Baptist family of many   
   > generations, and living in this fundamentalist social landscape means   
   > that I gaze into the maw of neocon Christianity daily. Hell, sometimes   
   > hourly. My brother is a fundamentalist preacher, as are a couple of my   
   > nephews, as were many of my ancestors going back to god-knows-when. My   
   > entire family is born-again; their lives are completely focused inside   
   > their own religious community, and on the time when Jesus returns to   
   > earth---Armageddon and The Rapture.   
   >   
   > Only another liberal born into a fundamentalist clan can understand what   
   > a strange, sometimes downright hellish family circumstance it is---how   
   > such a family can love you deeply, yet despise everything you believe   
   > in, see you as a humanist instrument of Satan, and still be right there   
   > for you when your back goes out or a divorce shatters your life. As a   
   > socialist and a half-assed lefty activist, obviously I do not find much   
   > conversational fat to chew around the Thanksgiving table. Politically   
   > and spiritually, we may be said to be dire enemies. Love and loathing   
   > coexist side by side. There is talk, but no communication. In fact,   
   > there are times when it all has science fiction overtones, times when it   
   > seems we are speaking to one another through an unearthly veil, wherein   
   > each party knows it is speaking to an alien.  There is a sort of high   
   > eerie mental whine in the air. This is the sound of mutually   
   > incomprehensible worlds hurtling toward destiny, passing with great   
   > psychological friction, obvious to all, yet acknowledged by none .   
   >   
   > Between such times, I wait rather anxiously and strive for change, for   
   > relief from what feels like an increased stifling of personal liberty,   
   > beauty, art, and self-realization in America. They wait in spooky   
   > calmness for Jesus. They believe that, until Jesus does arrive, our   
   > "satanic humanist state and federal legal systems" should be replaced   
   > with pure "Biblical Law." This belief is called Christian   
   > Reconstructionism. Though it has always been around in some form, it   
   > began expanding rapidly about 1973, with the publication of R. J.   
   > Rushdoony's, Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House   
   > Books, 1982).   
   >   
   > Time out, please. In a nod toward fairness and tolerance---begging the   
   > question of whether liberals are required to tolerate the intolerant---I   
   > will say this: Fundamentalists are "good people." In daily life, they   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)