The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair
January 20th, 2007WOW! It’s amazing how much I share in common with these people, in terms of the root causes of despair. I can empathize with their despair. I’ve personally felt it. The difference, however, between people like them and people like me, are the approaches we choose to the solutions.
It’s easy to criticize from afar, but be sure to put yourself in their shoes. I remember how I felt when I was trying to figure out how I was going to survive in the collapsing U.S. No money. No job. No hope at all. VERY WEIRD THOUGHTS WENT THROUGH MY HEAD. VERY WEIRD. Let’s just say that I felt as if I was facing a life or death situation. All options were on the table. What did I have to lose?
This will sound very out of character to most of you, because of how much I rail against the obvious fraud of organized religion, but I actually believe that it was Divine intervention that brought me together with Becky and helped us to get out of the U.S. and into a better environment. The harder I tried to figure out how to stay alive in the U.S., the worse my situation became. After I met Becky and we decided to leave, well, you wouldn’t believe how good my “luck” has been. (Of course, the occasional hiccup was to be expected.) While most of the doors remained closed, the ones that lead out of the U.S. opened up. With hard work, Becky and I walked through them together. Based on what I’d gone through versus where I am now, Divine intervention is by far the best explanation.
Have you ever heard this joke? There are many iterations of it:
A man was caught in a flood. Two men came by in a boat to rescue him, but he waved them away shouting, “No thanks, the Lord will save me.”
One hour later another boat came along, but the man said, “No thanks, the Lord will save me.”
Eventually, a helicopter arrived but the man insisted, “No thanks! The Lord will save me!”
Unfortunately, the man drowned and at the gates of heaven he asked St. Peter, “Why didn’t the Lord save me?”
And St. Peter replied, “For crying out loud, he sent two boats and a helicopter, what more do you want?!”
The fetishization of religion is resulting in the same old fascism because people are making up their own versions of God and God’s plan and all the rest of that bullsh*t in their heads. It’s psychopathy. The more you think you know, the darker the path becomes.
Admit defeat. Hit bottom. Open yourself up to different options and don’t try to anticipate what they will look like when they appear. After all, lilies in a field are a much purer expression of God than any construct of man, according to Luke 12:27. What does that tell you about the way organized religions are behaving? How can the answer come from something so filthy and corrupt?
It can’t.
Observe what happens carefully. When the liferaft appears, jump aboard. Waiting for Clarity on the Brink of Oblivion is actually a retelling of the “Lord Save Me” joke above, although I didn’t realize that when I wrote it. I realize it now.
How many lifeboats are showing up to save you as you drown?
Via: Alternet:
The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.
This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker’s paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.
During the past two years of work on the book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, I kept encountering this deadly despair. Driving down a highway lined with gas stations, fast food restaurants and dollar stores I often got vertigo, forgetting for a moment if I was in Detroit or Kansas City or Cleveland. There are parts of the United States, including whole sections of former manufacturing centers such as Ohio, that resemble the developing world, with boarded up storefronts, dilapidated houses, pot-hole streets and crumbling schools. The end of the world is no longer an abstraction to many Americans.
Hey Kevin, I have a fund-raising idea for Cryptogon and Farmlet.
How about Crypto-tourism, where people get the heck out of exurbia, come to visit you for a week, stay in some cool hay-bale yurt, learn about sustainable farming by helping out you on the farm, and pay $1000 USD for the privilege?
They come back a little more ‘enlightened’ and they were before. 😉
I and several other guys I know here in the UK used to be rabid fundamentalist nutcases, but eventually we discovered – independently of each other – just how at odds with biblical Christianity it all was. Fundamentalism is all legalism, formality, blind allegiance to government, aggression towards dissenters and worse still, devoid of meekness, humility and the greatest thing of all, cordial, loving respect for God and one’s fellow man. You can see what Gandhi meant when he said there’d be more Christians were it not for the Christians.
PS – Kevin, without doubt God has directed events in your life.
I’d go further and say most modern US “culture” is built on suburban despair and guilt.
Most of the peak oil movement is exactly the same as the rapture right when viewed this way. I don’t blame them at all for trying to make a buck.
An executive of a dotcom I worked at left right after 9-11 to start up a survival/preparedness supply company. He knew which way the wind was blowing.
It’s the biggest commercial market in the US- selling relief from guilt over the “end of the world” I.E. white dominated, oil and debt fueled, hyperconsumer culture.
ditto to cryingfreeman — we all have went astray
http://www.gods-kingdom.org/if_god_could_save_everyone.htm
some of us are Judas
http://www.goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=33784
In all fairness, fundamentalist christianity is NOT a monolithic movement.
Word is getting around to more and more fundamentalist christians that their self-appointed leaders, political and religious, are unbiblical frauds, if not downright satanic. They are becoming increasingly aware of the sinister intentions of the leaders of the so called “Christian Right” thanks to the proliferation of sites like these on the internet:
http://www.infowars.com/bg1.html
http://www.cephas-library.com/wordoffaith/wordoffaith_sign_of_the_horns.html
The reason that your suburban megachurch christians come across as such boobs, besides the fact that they are, is because they tend to identify with Pentacostal/Charismatic doctrines that are inherently unbiblical, and these are the fastest growing churches in American christianity. And they tend to identify with religious frauds like George W. Bush and the televangelist hucksters. But fortunately, other christians, with a better grasp of the bible, are calling them out:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance-arch.html
Kevin,
I think George’s idea is great. If you lived here in the states or of I had enough money to afford that type of thing I’d do it in a minute.
The Bible is so full of fantasy and contradiction that the smallest thinking child will start asking questions on the many aspects that make no relatable sense. Only the overly selfish, i.e. 99% of mankind, believe in an after-death. We are only the chosen in ways of chosing ourselves. That is only my opinion. I don’t try to hold any “beliefs”. Having anything more than a good guess about something is arrogant beyond even me.
Regards,
Stefan
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