THE THEATRE OF POLITICAL DESIRE
The following is a comment from a PUMA named Janis. The topic is Obama's 2004 speech. Her perspective is quite close to my own, even though I do not consider myself a member of the Democratic Party as does she. In fact, I have been a declared independent, thus, bypassing the primary slate, for all of my adult life. But I am thankful to Janis for sharing her POV.
I CAN QUOTE from the speech myself, from the parts that struck me as good speechwriting. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like people poking around in our libraries in the red states. It was good—but it wasn't that good. It wasn’t the goddamned second coming.
I recall a short comment from Howard Dean about how the Dems lost in 2004; he made a comment about how the Dems consistently underestimate how deeply religious Americans are. We do. I’m atheist; I’ll openly say that I tend to find organized religion rather laughable and sad.
But what they did was they figured if they could whip up a religious messiah-figure, they could capitalize on that. They still didn’t get what the religiosity of Americans was; they thought they’d come to a brilliant strategic realization that “most Americans are religious,” and then they filled in the blanks with the worst of their own stereotypes of what “religious” meant: chanting and falling to the ground in front of a messiah, like a cult following.
To most Americans, religion is a sort of quiet, rock-solid, hard little thing underneath their lives that they like to rest on but don’t like to think about or talk about all that much. They allude to it, make proclamations, and then go about their lives. Most American religious types are not swooning snake-handlers. *shakes head*
And what they got instead was exactly the opposite; they didn’t woo the fundies over from the other side; they created a shitload of unrevealed fundies on their own side, young kids who were DYING for their own chance to weep oceans at the sight of the Radiant One’s golden halo.
Just as was planned. After the destruction...
"I shall stand astride the wreckage a colossus."
—Karl Marx
Americans may be religious, but we also don’t like phonies. Dog whistles are one thing, but once we feel like someone’s bullshitting us, we turn red. We’re not that bright a lot of times, but once we clue in, we don’t clue OUT.
I CAN QUOTE from the speech myself, from the parts that struck me as good speechwriting. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like people poking around in our libraries in the red states. It was good—but it wasn't that good. It wasn’t the goddamned second coming.
I recall a short comment from Howard Dean about how the Dems lost in 2004; he made a comment about how the Dems consistently underestimate how deeply religious Americans are. We do. I’m atheist; I’ll openly say that I tend to find organized religion rather laughable and sad.
But what they did was they figured if they could whip up a religious messiah-figure, they could capitalize on that. They still didn’t get what the religiosity of Americans was; they thought they’d come to a brilliant strategic realization that “most Americans are religious,” and then they filled in the blanks with the worst of their own stereotypes of what “religious” meant: chanting and falling to the ground in front of a messiah, like a cult following.
To most Americans, religion is a sort of quiet, rock-solid, hard little thing underneath their lives that they like to rest on but don’t like to think about or talk about all that much. They allude to it, make proclamations, and then go about their lives. Most American religious types are not swooning snake-handlers. *shakes head*
And what they got instead was exactly the opposite; they didn’t woo the fundies over from the other side; they created a shitload of unrevealed fundies on their own side, young kids who were DYING for their own chance to weep oceans at the sight of the Radiant One’s golden halo.
Just as was planned. After the destruction...
"I shall stand astride the wreckage a colossus."
—Karl Marx
Americans may be religious, but we also don’t like phonies. Dog whistles are one thing, but once we feel like someone’s bullshitting us, we turn red. We’re not that bright a lot of times, but once we clue in, we don’t clue OUT.
Labels: America, atheist, God, Howard Dean, Karl Marx, Melanie Phillips, PUMA, religion
posted by Gabriel Thy at 12:55 PM
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