Religion and Politics and that Whole Can o' Worms

My pal, Sonia, can always be counted on to bring a sharp political analysis to any rant, be it about topics lofty or trivial. She's particularly good at catching contradictions in logic and mining a thing for subtleties that have been glossed over. This entry is an overgrown response to her comments on my last entry--so if you have the inclination, do read those before pressing onward. For those with shorter attention spans, I'll contextualize briefly here. Apologies in advance, Sonia, for making you an example like this, but you've sparked thought, once again, and for that, I thank you.

In the last few entries, I've been spouting pretty free-form about the election and what it's been evoking in my mind. One of the ideas that I've been giving a lot of attention to in my internal monologue and in my diary is this whole idea of "morality" and how people perceive George Bush to have the moral character they desire in a President. Sonia has mentioned in her own blog that she's really upset by the attitude being thrown around that this election illustrates a divide in this country between so-called "intellectuals" and so-called "simple folk." I completely agree with her that the distinction is artificial and is one of the many reasons that lefties in this country have alienated ourselves from Jane Q. Public. I never said in my entry that I agreed with the concept that this political battle is between the intellectuals and the religious, as Sonia alluded to in her second comment.

I do believe there are major differences in ideology between what I called "secular progressives" and Christian fundamentalists. The differences are plain, and I'm sure everyone can agree with that. I'm not pitting seculars against church folk at all; I'm trying to understand why we might vote differently than one another, and why a fundie might be loathe to support, say, gay marriage, when I see the issue as a plain matter of human rights. What I'm trying to get across, though I don't think I did it sensitively enough, is that I understand how the liberal agenda can seem shocking and even horrifying to someone for whom gayness is, at best, an abstraction, and, at worst, an abomination against God. I'm coming to terms with the fact that, as long as approximately 50% of voters in the U.S. have radical-conservative to moderate-conservative values and approximately 50% of the voters have radical-left to liberal values, we're always going to be electing a President that half of us don't like. That's the way it works when you're a country divided, and a country as wildly diverse as we are. But I'm quite invested in the concept that the people, all of us, should be doing less of the dividing, 'cause the politicians are all about division.

Bush and Rove and their team built their strategy around mobilizing "The Base," as it's referred to, and the numbers bear out that the most decisive voice in this election was the right-wing Christian vote, evidenced by the fact that Bush won the same states he did in 2000, but received a much higher popular vote than last time. The anti-gay marriage initiatives that won in all eleven states where they appeared on the ballot worked to pull out those voters who stayed home in 2000. So, I do believe there is something to the analysis that Christian morals were one of the key issues at play in the election. I agree with you, Sonia, that the war and security issues were most likely number one in this election, but certainly these issues of "morality" as they have been exceedingly narrowly wrought have influenced the outcome as well.

You most definitely know the Bible--both the Old and New Testaments--better than I do. I've yet to get through Genesis, which I started and stopped reading last year, and my knowledge of the Old Testament, in general, is spotty at best, due to my very lax, mostly secular Jewish upbringing. So I defer to you about the lessons from the Scriptures. I contradicted myself in the entry when I said that "killing and hatred are not the values the Bible stories teach us" (and, you're right, there are plenty of Bible stories that teach retribution and violence) and then later I said that Bible Belters learn that "God smites his enemies." In the first case, I was trying to echo what I've heard most Christians say are the values they have learned from religion and spirituality--the peace and love, the turning the other cheek, the Golden Rule, etc. And I do think that most Christians hold these values high and take them as their primary religious lessons. I am not of the persuasion that charges all Christians with being right-wing fire-and-brimstoners. I know tons of Christians and Christian churches and organizations on all sides of the political spectrum that truly adhere to values of kindness and nonviolence.

This reminds me of an incident that I learned a lot from. I've had this t-shirt for a zillion years that my sister, J., got me. It's now worn through with tons of holes, so I can't really wear it anymore, but I used to wear it all the time in college and for years after that. It says "Nuke a godless communist gay baby seal for Christ."

I made the mistake of wearing it once--and once only--while I was canvassing for the peace group. I knocked on someone's door with my clipboard in hand and the obnoxious words on my chest and got through my intro--

"Hi, I'm Bree, and I'm with (insert organization's name here) and I'm looking for people who wanna see the U.S. stop spending 300 billion dollars a year on war and start spending more money on education and health care, blah blah, etc, etc..."

--when the woman behind the door very calmly said to me, "I'm going to stop you right there and say that I agree with what you're doing, and I support disarmament, but I'm a Christian, and I'm very offended by your t shirt, so I won't be supporting you today." I was all befuddled, and I apologized to her, and I tried to explain that the shirt was mocking a very specific group of radicals, like Jesse Helms, for example, but she didn't want to hear any of it. She reiterated to me that it offended her and to remember that not all Christians are extremists, and I said that I understood, and that I was sorry, and then she closed her door.

The offending article.

I've always remembered this incident, because it reminds me to try to be respectful in my communication. Sure, my blog has an audience that is pretty comfortable with left-wing political propaganda and seeing the humor in poking fun at extremists, so I don't usually censor myself here. But I didn't intend in any way for my last entry to capitalize on the notion that Democrats are somehow smarter and more intellectual than Republicans, or that all Christians are fundamentalists or that all Bush voters are naïve and uneducated or anything of the sort. In fact, the whole gist of my rant was meant to air precisely my thoughts about bridging the divide between communities and acknowledging that different people come from different perspectives and that we all must respect those differences. I don't think it's even feasible that the people of this country will meet on any of the most contentious issues, and that's not really what my vision is, anyway. I want to see less demonization of the perceived enemy, on both sides of the aisle, as it were. I think liberals are as culpable in perpetuating this division as conservatives. We tend to cast religious conservatives as haters and conservatives are prone to labeling liberals as pie-in-the-sky dreamers. There's so much more complexity than that. And I know quite well that, on the whole, Bush voters are far more like the San Diego crowd you describe, Sonia--fiscal conservatives who connect more with Republican policies and their articulation of the issues--than they are like the couple million God-fearing zealots who turned out and sealed Bush's victory in the swing states. But these are both elements at work in explaining the winning strategy of the Republicans.

I don't even know where to begin with the losing strategy of the Democrats, but they did something right this time, 'cause even I voted for Kerry, and I'm a card-carryin' Green. No, I guess it wasn't what the Dems were doing right that made me vote for him, it was, of course, what Bush is doing wrong that made me vote against him.

But that's a whole other can of worms, now, isn't it?

Thanks, Sonia,
Fondly, Bree

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