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History is full of eruptions of bigoted, repressed, power-mongering, scapegoat-seeking humans, who spoil things for everybody else, with rules and punishments they claim are from God, and with witch-burnings, lynchings, pogroms, concentration camp ovens, and numerous crimes against the freedom of the human mind. Some number of them always seem to be with us. I'm mostly familiar with the European and American varieties, but I'm sure we're not alone in producing these singularly venomous individuals. The harm that they have done equals anything that has been done in war.
Honest, generous, tolerant people--the majority of humans, I think--often don't know what to do with these bigots and oppressors, and often react too late and with too weak a response to stop their worst excesses.
I remember the McCarthy era. That dangerous and crazy man could destroy lives and careers at the mere mention of the word "communist." It is amazing to think of it now--the power that he wielded. Fear is always, always the hallmark of repressive people and their doings. It is quite sickening to see it at work, twisting and harming people, causing dreadful betrayals and outlandish and often disgusting accusations.
My first political activism was in 1960, in the JFK campaign, and I still remember the vile pamphlets that were circulated by the rightwing nuts in my town--aimed at JFK's Catholicism.
The beauty of the ideals that were held by the Founders of our Republic, and that they institutionalized in our government, is that they zeroed right in on this very wickedness that erupts among humans, and attempted to build guarantees against it right into our Constitution: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, church/state separation.
They knew from their familiarity with English and European history--and from their own experience--how awful religious zeolatry is, and that the religiously crazy will always attempt to impose their beliefs by force and seek government powers to do so. Europe had been rife with religious wars for centuries on end. Many of the founders of the American colonies had specifically fled religious persecution. That's why they came here. Thomas Jefferson himself had a religious zealot for a tutor when he was young, and never forgot that hateful experience. When he died, he wanted carved on his tombstone that he had written Virginia's statute on religious liberty. It was one of the three things he was most proud of having accomplished.
Many Americans don't know this history. They don't know WHY we have separation of church and state--and that it was based on long, long, bitter experience of the madness and the evil of religious fanaticism.
Thus, Joe McCarthy was eventually rejected for the religious nut that he was. His persecution of those whom he accused of being "communists" was very similar to the persecution of witches--such as had occurred in Salem, Massachusetts (and never again, in America), and across England and Europe for centuries. It was one of England and Europe's greatest shames. And Americans finally recognized it for what it was, and reasserted those most beautiful of American principles: fairness, tolerance, justice, and open-mindedness.
It was, indeed, a form of madness that seized us during the McCarthy era. It spewed out of this one man, and infected others, and some were exhilarated with the power to destroy other peoples' lives by calling them "a communist." ("Red" was the other word that was used--which derived from the red vs. white colors of the Communists vs. the Czarists in Russia.) But it was also PERMITTED to happen, because it served the purposes of the rich and of the growing corporate/military establishment. The rich wanted no sharing of the wealth, of course. They wanted to kill that idea. And the corporate/military establishment wanted continued expansion of corporate welfare--government coffers serving the rich, not the poor.
They also--and perhaps primarily--wanted to destroy the strongest leaders in the labor movement, and did so by purging the unions of "communists"--which had the same meaning as "leftists," and, in the case of most of the accused, had nothing to do with loyalty to the Soviet Union. Merely expressing sympathy with the oppressed workers and peasants of Russia, or merely going to a meeting where it was discussed, or merely having any progressive views whatsoever, including sympathy with black citizens here at home and their civil rights struggle, could bring accusations of "communist" and ruin your life. The brightest, the most simpatico people, the thinkers, the political activists, were at risk in every field of endeavor--including actors and writers in Hollywood with "communist" (read "leftist") "leanings." But it was the labor unions that were hit hardest by this political pogrom.
Once these purposes were accomplished (especially purging the labor unions of "reds," "card carrying communists," "pinkos" and "fellow travelers"), the rich and the corporate had no need of McCarthy any more, and that contributed to his demise. But the revulsion at McCarthy's tactics and thought processes--it was called "red baiting"--occurred throughout the land. It was so similar to "witch-hunting" that some sort of collective memory kicked in--the memory of what many peoples' parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were fleeing from, when they left Europe: religious bigotry, religious wars, witch-burnings, tribalism, pogroms, book burnings, fear of speaking your mind, fear of being put up against a wall and shot for your political or religious views.
The fanaticism of the rightwing today is hauntingly similar to the McCarthy era, as well as to that black cloud in the distant past of religious wars and witch-burnings that inspired the establishment of FREEDOM OF RELIGION and FREEDOM OF SPEECH in the United States of America. In the fulminations of people like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Reagan, I hear the effort to revive McCarthyite thought processes: reviling your opponents as "liberals," as if to say "red" as if the say "communist" as if to say pogrom and purgation. Like McCarthy--and, I imagine, much like the priests of the Inquisition--they pick a person, say, Hillary Clinton, and focus primitive hatred upon her (she is not "one of us," she is a "witch," she is a "Red"). The rightwing preachers that Bob Fitrakis describes in Ohio are doing the same thing to "homosexuals", stirring up primitive hatreds, treating them as "the other" ("not one of us"), ignoring the humanity and the human rights of whoever they accuse, of whatever they accuse them of. It doesn't matter what the accusation is, and it doesn't matter if it's women, blacks, Jews, Arabs, Catholics, homosexuals, "liberals," "Reds" or any other scapegoat. It's the same thought process that leads to religious wars and concentration camps, and it's an extraordinarily handy device for the greedy.
I have been in a sort of denial about the rightwing "Christian" Bush supporters who have arisen in this era. I've dismissed them as merely being used by the powerful criminals of the Bush Cartel. What a ungodly alliance--Christ and the most greedy, murderous, heartless "moneychangers" in human history! I hadn't thought we should give these religious fanatics and their power-hungry leaders any credence. They are a minority. Their power has been engineered by stolen elections, and has been promoted for quite cynical reasons by corporations and the super-rich. They have gotten altogether more attention than they deserve.
Do you remember those statements of Rove or Cheney about how they won re-election--because of the successful voter registration drives of organized rightwing congregations? There is no evidence for it. It was B.S. In fact, the Democrats had a blowout success in new voter registration in 2004. It's one of the evidences that the election was stolen. They just make things up.
Anyway, I have felt that the rightwing Christian thing was mostly smoke and mirrors, and paying attention to it just serves the corporate powers who are manipulating and using these low human desires for scapegoats and for religious power over others. However, these reportings of Bob Fitrakis send chills down into my soul. I can't deny that there are SOME people who have these beliefs, people who think Bush is Christ-like, and who don't have a clue that "equal protection," civil rights, the First Amendment and the separation of church and state protect THEM, TOO. People who are putty in the hands of rightwing male preachers--and rightwing male preachers who smell power.
Anyone familiar with history knows where all this can lead. We do need to fight every encroachment they attempt on ours or others' human rights. But I also feel that the PRIMARY thing we must do is fight to get back our right to vote, because the majority of Americans very clearly do not support this rightwing agenda. This wouldn't be happening if we hadn't lost our right to vote. The Bush Cartel and its cynical or ignorant rightwing "Christian" supporters DO NOT REPRESENT majority opinion in this country. There is overwhelming evidence for this--in opinion poll after opinion poll, over a long period of time.
Let me remind you that 57% of Americans opposed the invasion of Iraq right up to the invasion--despite all the lies and propaganda that had yet to be exposed at that time--and after the main conflict was over, opposition to the Iraq war and the current occupation shot right back up to 57%, where it stands today. 63% of Americans oppose torture UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Opposition to ALL Bush policy is up in the 60% to 70% range. And Bush's approval rating stood at 49% on his Inauguration Day (45% today)--unprecedented disapproval for a supposedly "re-elected" president.
If I thought that the majority of Americans were fooled by this rightwing "Christian" crap, and by thievery by the rich being sold as freedom, and by fascist thought processes aimed at the most beautiful and enduring principles of our democracy--and had truly voted for all this--I would say we had a different problem altogether. But I am convinced that that is not the case.
We need to see through the illusion of rightwing "Christian" political dominance that is being created, and focus on the mechanisms of power--the primary one being our right to vote. Rightwing "Christian" political dominance is no more real than the election was.
Anyway, that's been my view. Bush or rather his puppet-masters obviously have hold of the reins of government, and have great and illegitimate power over us, and rightwing "Christians" are obviously exploiting that illegitimate power for all its worth--and, having seized control of our election system, can achieve some of their hearts' desires for imposing their views on others. We can't ignore these realities. And we can't ignore the genetic compulsion of such people, that dates back at least to the 3rd century A.D. and the Pagan Emperor Julius and his "Edict of Toleration"--which was opposed by the "Christian" fanatics of THAT era, who wanted nothing to do with religious tolerance.
We can't ignore the historical parallels, or the more recent parallel (McCarthyism), or the most horrifying parallel (Nazism). But we need to remain focused on how to regain the power of the majority, whose progressive views carry much more historical weight, are truly expressive of the deep human longing for freedom and justice, and are the overwhelming trend in the world today (--ironically, often inspired by the very American democratic principles that the Bush Cartel and its "Christian" followers want to destroy).
As for those Christian fundamentalists who might be sincere, or those whose voices are drowned out, or those who may simply fear modern life and their own evolving brains and long for certainty, and/or those who are genuine Christians (and I know there are some Evangelicals who oppose Bush and his war)--we should ask ourselves why these folks are so uneasy with American life. Their fears and anxieties, and hopes and dreams, may even contribute something to improving it.
One thing corporate rule has done is to destroy community, and civic life, and our common bonds as people and as Americans. They substitute an illusion that is premised upon the freedom to purchase things, rather than the freedom to be whole and loving and involved human beings. I imagine that some such feelings and thoughts are what motivate some fundamentalist Christians (--as well as some Islamic fundamentalists, by the way, who often have admirable qualities of family loyalty and civic responsibility).
The "American way of life" (consume, consume, consume) does need criticism and re-thinking. Human beings most definitely need something more to live for than their next shiny vehicle. For one thing, they soon won't have any gasoline to fill it with. But more than this, we need spiritual and civic connectedness. (That's why people still plug into the lying, propagandizing news monopolies, in my view--it is their conduit to the larger national community, or so they feel.)
So maybe we can find a common wisdom--and some common values--with those on the religious right who are sincere and not dangerous power-mongers and fanatics (and stupid hypocritical Bushites).
Typical "liberal," huh? Trying to see the other side. Let's hope we do not perish from the earth. (Naw...we're a sturdy bunch. We've been around a lo-o-o-o-ong time. And, despite this recent, localized set-back in the U.S. of A., we're winning. Believe me. Look at the lengths that the oppressors have had to go to, to suppress our votes!)
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