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I actually went there to check out Target Iraq: What The News Media Didn't Tell You by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich. I wound up reading a lot of Joe Bageant's stuff.
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 superliberal 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 are warm-hearted and generous to a fault. They live with feet on the ground (albeit with eyes cast heavenward) and with genuine love and concern for their neighbors. After spending 30 years in progressive western cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Eugene, Oregon, I would have to say that conservative Christians actually do what liberals usually only talk about. They visit the sick and the elderly, give generously of their time and money to help those in need, and put unimaginable amounts of love and energy into their families, even as Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh blare in the background. Their good works extend internationally – were it not for American Christians, there would be little health care on the African continent and other similar places. OK, that’s the best I can do in showing due respect for the extreme Christian Right. Now to get back to the Christian Reconstructionists...
