Hatred and Intolerance Prevail
Despite months of intense attempts to reason with, cajole and mock the social retards, NC Amendment One will become part of the constitution. And with it, we take a large step toward fascism. Chris Hedges was right: the Christian Right has declared war on America:
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…
The danger of this theology of despair is that it says that nothing in the world is worth saving. It rejoices in cataclysmic destruction. It welcomes the frightening advance of global warming, the spiraling wars and violence in the Middle East and the poverty and neglect that have blighted American urban and rural landscapes as encouraging signs that the end of the world is close at hand.
The only contemporary analogue to the rise of the Christian Right is the German Weimar Republic. Indeed, most of our political psychology concerning fascism comes from those like Karl Popper who witnessed the rise of Nazism first hand and spent their careers trying to understand how it happened. However, it is important to understand that what we are facing now is much more entrenched among the citizenry, and potentially more dangerous. While the Nazis sought domination and extermination, the Christofascists seek immolation for their enemies as well as themselves. They cannot be persuaded with logic and reason.
Despite today’s victory, the Christian Right does not hold a majority. They are better organized than the moderates and the left. Once enough citizens choose to stand against them, the Christofascists can be marginalized, politically. And while we nearly turned them back in the urban areas, as Hedges predicted, despair in our rural areas made the difference.
My concern is the right wing media has so effectively demonized Obama with lies among social conservatives that his reelection may be the trigger which foments armed revolution. I contend federal authorities are preparing for this possibility by setting precedents for the abridgement of domestic liberties toward the imposition of martial law.
Sadly, Christofascists elected to office have only the tools of austerity in spending and tax cuts to deal with our economic problems. Their insane preoccupation with wedge issues, a product of the right wing media and religious leaders, wastes valuable time and energy which is better used seeking intelligent solutions.
So, the agents of tolerance have lost this battle and are likely to lose many more before sufficient citizens are alerted to the real and present danger the Christofascists pose to our freedoms and very existence. It finally took every free nation on earth to destroy the last great fascist regime. It remains to be seen how and if this one can be defeated. But one thing is for sure: the longer we allow them to gather strength among the desperate, the harder it will be.
