by The 2006 midterm elections are our nearest hope for relief from the constrictive conservative religious agenda that is wrenching our freedoms against us and returning us to a time when things were perceived as better and morally old-fashioned.
The current culture war against narrow non-believers is mainly based on fear of foreigners and the unknown — take a look at how our national leadership treats non-Americans abroad and the disenfranchised here at home — and we begin to see a ballistic desire to ratchet back the clock when all the dirty details of family and life and a national policy on belief were held in abeyance in the privacy of the home, but this time around the goring twist is a mandatory drum-beating government and faith-based fifing of private desires against public compliance of home matters of belief and the family.
This perceived perfection in the post-war America of the 1950’s tugs at people who wish to return to a simpler time when melancholia sedated the nation in cultural conflict. Family Values becomes Intolerance via Religion as advances in medicine, science and humanity are actively pressed back into the primordial muck of believing only in the power God rather than in the rational consequences of scientific discovery. The road backward is paved with falsities and “forget about its” and rights revocations” and a removal of social advances of equality that sicken those who fought so hard to win them.
The courts and legislatures and the Congress are all taking away these human merits in the name of a dead notion of the “original intent” of Constitutional construction and under the misguided pretense of serving our Founding Fathers and it is an ultra-religious agenda that is driving these changes as only true red believers are appointed to jobs in politics for which they are not qualified in order to press a private agenda on the public.
The only way to fight this reversion and pulling back of technology and medicine is to stand up and say “Enough” and “We’re not doing that anymore” in a loud and public manner with votes that actually get counted at the ballot box and then the furious embers of the middle class will once again burn blue as the extremists right here at home begin to lose their radical push-backs against the human spirit and they will begin to live in jeopardy of losing their cultural revolution against the polite and the cautious and the non-boat-rockers — because once that strata of America stands to be heard — the conservative cultural revolutionists will die the loud and obnoxious death they deserve.
The only revulsion in religion is you and this article. Why pick on religion? Why not pick on those who are against religion?
Hello betts!
I am writing about “Cultural Revulsion” today because the center of a lot of the trouble we are experience in America today is due to an ultra-religious mandate in politics and not a political mandate embedded in religion. I find former troublesome for the good path of our nation.
So making fun of our president and law makers is the new American way? Why don’t you focus on the people who want to put us at risk like terrorists and ultra-liberals?
I’m not making fun of anyone — I think what’s going on in American with the ultra-conservative agenda isn’t funny and it isn’t warranted. The terrorists have only been emboldened by our current foreign policy and the ultra-liberals you mention haven’t been any sort of force or factor since 2000.
I had to read this piece a few times to get the full impact of it there are lots of things going on here and it tooks lots of time to think up. I agree a slim vote result does not a mandate make and we’re all paying the price for it now.
You make an interesting point, soos.
How a minority margin of victory so quickly led to such majority arrogance is beyond me. It’s as if this is the only time in history that packing the court and pressing oil interests across the world can be achieved in a single lifetime, but our grandchildren are those who will reap and have to clean up the international moral and political mess that has been made in all our names under the cover of covert democracy.
The midterm elections are key. Do enough of the middle realize what’s happening to care enough to stand up?
My feeling is not enough people will stand up because they generally agree with what’s going on — America has a 75% belief in God — and by the time they wake up to the aftereffects we’re going to be in for an even longer and bloodier nightmare.
Probably right. It’s going to take some really smart national leaders to mend all the broken fences. I hope they get to it before it’s too late.
We’ll have to all stand together to mend those international and local community fences and it will take a REAL and honest and truly active “uniter, not a divider” to do the job right.
Very nice piece David.
This has been a long-time in the making. It blends the fearmongering, intolerance aspects of McCarthyism, the unbriddled Executive reign, secrecry of Nixonism, with a religious fervor and insistence unlike any movement before. While >75% of Americans believe in God, I would hope that a belif in God would not be synonymous with intolerance and scientific/social reversion.
Believers on the right have been whipped into a frenzy by an orchestrated cultural campaign. Following the hard lessons of Contract-with-America, Karl Rove and others took time to hone their art of building political campaigns based on divisive cultural issues rather than substantive, logical platforms. Their skill in distorting reality for the sake of political advantage has been very destructive. I believe it will take more than a political realignment to mend the cultural and social wounds. However, a political realignment is a necessary first step to wipe the self-satisfied smugness off the faces of the religious right, restoring some sense of political and social reality. Recent battles over right-to-death and ID/Intelligent Design have highlighted that this country is severely failing in the education of its citizens. Ignorance leaves people open to manipulation, ubale to separate cultural distortion from their own beliefs. . Religion and individual freedom/science need not be mutually exclusive. The common good cannot be reduced to manipulated inferences from scripture. We need a restoration of the American image, one that embodies the hopes and dreams that make this country great. One that celebrates personal freedom and welcomes discussion with the world community.
Jonathan —
Your make an excellent argument in your comment.
We are back in the Red Scare days and a return to Nixonian wire-tapping but instead of violating the privacy rights of an opposing campaign, the campaign to scare out the radicals and non-believers has moved to the internet and the American living room on a presidential whim. Is it any wonder this happened when those who served Nixon now also serve our current president?
The Bushes believe they are our American Royal Family and that is why a Jeb Bush presidency must never occur in his lifetime for that would wrongly force and encourage their continued arrogance that belittles us all and befalls the good but unwilling.
The failing of us all belongs squarely on the shoulders of the American mainstream media. Through government coercion the media giants have become beggars in the hallways of justice and they then lose their perspective and loyalty to the truth as they are no longer able to provide unbiased reports no matter which master it serves.
It will take a Herculean effort to return us to the stasis of a safe harbor where everyone in society is equally respected and made whole again.
The cord the ultra-right have woven around our necks will take generations to unwind and if Alito joins a Roberts Court the curse may never be unwoven again.
I’m beginning to think that split government is always the best. Maybe gridlock and the “sausage factory” model of politics is safer than a streamlined, quick and efficient government.
When one or the other side gets complete control, there is always abuse. Speed kills in politics because often there are no brakes on the tendency to abuse power.
At my local level, one party control has led to significant abuses of trust and taxpayer funds. When our local FBI office isn’t rounding up gang-bangers, they are often taking away crates of documents from government offices where lax accounting often hides the dirty secrets. Businesses and political leaders get too cozy and sometimes “in order to get things done” money flows in ways that it shouldn’t. This also happens on the national level. Look at Delay and Frist.
Human nature always wants to abuse power — that’s why our founding fathers built checks and balances into our system. As much as we want to think humanity is good, we are also capable of much evil, if given the opportunity.
It’s human nature to want to be “king” or “queen” and lord over the subjects when it seems that your position in power is absolute. Since absolute in politics is a relative term, it could mean that your party controls the legislative and executive branches, or as a representative, your incumbent status guarantees unlimited campaign contributions. Or, you get control of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches — probably the most dangerous situation in terms of potential for abuse.
Having the same types of people in control of everything is always dangerous, whether is it Democrat or Republicans. Diversity is always a good thing. Especially in the political arena.
The key is to vote for people based on their opinions and goals.
Unfortunately, the way our political structure is set up means that politicians often end up having multiple sets of goals that they dispense to various groups. Nobody seems to want to stand up for their true beliefs, until they are safely in their seat and incumbency guarantees a 90 % chance of re-election.
It’s sometimes hard to figure out where politicians are coming from when they have various messages for different groups.
That’s why it’s hard for the average voter to keep up with everything, in addition to their normal daily routines.
It also increases the danger that we end up with an ultra-homogenized government filled with all the same types of people when nobody has the time or inclination to pay attention to the fine details.
The hegemonic thinking of the right both at home and abroad speaks to a very different vision of America than that presented by liberalism. The GOP has always represented at much more authoritarian view of government, however when the needs of that authority begin to erode personal freedom and begin to change the very fabric of American life it has clearly gone beyond a simple difference in governemental models. What is particularly disturbing is that despite claims of ‘strict constructionism’, the current administration has worked to erode consitutional checks and balances on the power of the executive. Restraint of the executive by the judiciary is immediately branded judicial activism, when in fact this is a neccessary check on power. The Administration has repeatedly played bait and switch with Congress. With majority control of all three branches of government and the media failing to provide a watchdog, only the public has the ability to curb their power.
A two-party system provides for less gridlock and more stability than a coalition governement, however as we have seen it allows a simple majority to dictate the agenda of the country with little recourse by the minority party. Diversity of thought and belief is constrained by the realities of campaigning, each day a congressman must raise money for his or her next campaign. I agree that divided government is an important feature of a two-party system. Most studies indicate that the country is healthier by many measures and accomplishes more under divided government.
Chris!
You make a heart-ripping argument and there is no hiding from the logic of the aftereffects you describe so well.
I agree a 50/50 split between parties is the best way to govern because discussion and compromise would have to be the mandate of the day to get any work done. When a narrow window opens – because of an aberration in the history of vote-counting – to press though minority desires that affect the majority of the people great pain and sorrow are sure to follow and follow they have.
I agree voting is key and I also agree most people don’t care to vote and really only care about the immediacy of their lives and I wonder when and how that change came about where the future no longer has meaning and history is merely a travail of humanity’s dustbin experience never to be reflected upon or referenced again.
Jonathan!
I agree the aggressive ultra-conservative wing of our current “GOP” has created a terrible and intentional record of severing goodwill and service to humanity at home and abroad.
Our three-tiered system of governing is in jeopardy as the judicial wing executes the will of the executive branch while those in congress who are sworn to fight back are licked and dog-eared into submission by the catcalls from radio hosts and angry bloggers.
Speaking up and standing up for a change in the other direction is a surprising form of moderation on the surface, but to really create the sort of watershed moment most of us crave makes the move even more important against insidious conservative activism that wraps itself in a timpani of stars against a blue shield and rambling blood red stripes running with the white of the American flag.