- "I know of no country in which there is so little
independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America."
- Alexis de Tocqueville
-
- The international view of Bush's election was nicely
summed up by the reaction of a group of my students from China. I teach
economics at university part-time, and many of my students are from China.
Lest you think their judgment clouded by communist ideology, please note
the many Chinese students studying in Canada come from that country's
bright,
hardworking business class in the so-called New Economic Zone. American
visions of rabid communists in China are as uninformed as American visions
of realities in most places. These are practical, sensible people.
-
- The topic of the election came up during a break, and
the genuinely puzzled looks on the students' faces were remarkable. How
could America elect such an ignorant man? was asked by several. To reassure
them, I explained that America, like a frightened puppy, was still clinging
to the first human leg it had grabbed in the darkness.
-
- The explanation, though accepted with some laughter,
was incomplete, but only in detail and not in substance. It is certainly
closer to the mark than many sad efforts in America which hold that the
nation has become somehow a very different place than it was. While all
human institutions change under the influence of economic growth, there
is little evidence of sudden change in America, only of continued movement
in long-established directions.
-
- One of those directions is a divergence in social values
between society at large and Christian fundamentalism. When societies grow,
when new wealth accumulates, traditional values always come under great
stress. This shows in countless ways, from the changing nature of marriage
customs to the institutions by which a nation is governed. Were this not
so, we would still be employed building pyramids for dead pharaohs.
-
- America's traditionalists in religion are disturbed by
the social effects of economic growth, although they do not understand
the connection with economics and hold to superstitious notions of people
giving themselves over to evil. Short of a new Dark Ages taking hold in
America (an idea novelist Margaret Atwood toyed with in The Handmaid's
Tale), these social changes are not reversible, but that fact has little
impact on the intense, driving needs of those who base their lives on
narrow
interpretations of ancient texts they can't even read.
-
- There is considerable evidence that fundamentalists are
people who suffer from greater-than-average levels of defects like anxiety
and paranoia. You only have to consider all the screaming, spewing
revivalist
sermons about damnation and the twisted nightmares of the Book of
Revelations
and parts of the Old Testament to understand the role of fear in
fundamentalism.
Of course, superstition itself is just fear's way of explaining the
unknown.
-
- Not all Americans are fundamentalists, not even a
majority,
but there are enough of them (something like 40% claim to be
"re-born")
to form a powerful swing group in American politics. While America was
founded under the leadership of non-Christian Deists and Skeptics (the
true source for the best part of America's written, although often-abused,
freedoms), fundamentalism has long provided a howling background
chorus.
-
- There were two so-called Great Awakenings in early
America,
one in the colonial period during the 1730s and 1740s, and a second in
the early Republic at the beginning of the 1800s. A broad view of history
interprets the first of these as reaction to the influence of
eighteenth-century
Europe's new freethinking and skepticism. The second, something of an echo
of the first, was fired to life by fear of new science and technology and
the impact of the Industrial Revolution, to say nothing of intense dislike
for foreigners with different views and Catholicism in general.
-
- The Great Awakenings were periods of intense evangelical
fervor in America, the nation being then pretty much a backwater where
many people lived fairly isolated lives with attitudes inherited from
Puritan
forefathers. New thinking, progress, and change pretty much kept going
forward in the world despite these frenetic crusades, although people in
America often did not feel free to speak their minds during the worst
furies.
-
- The social and economic implications of the Great
Awakenings
were at odds with another of the nation's hottest interests. Americans
were often described as crazed over any chance to make money, de
Tocqueville,
for example, observing, "I know of no country, indeed, where the love
of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men." Making
money is not a pursuit that sits well with setting the clock back, although
it wasn't until the early twentieth century that Freud explained how a
great a role ambivalence plays in human minds.
-
- We are definitely in a new period of backlash against
social change in America. People want the physical benefits of change and
growth - television, jet travel, electronic organs, and credit cards (the
complete toolkit of modern corporate evangelism) - but they also want to
enjoy these with social relationships frozen in time, established before
these things existed.
-
- There would be nothing disturbing about such confused,
hopeless intentions were the people involved content to follow their chosen
path without trying to drag others along, but they are not. They do not
build Mennonite-like communities to separate themselves from unwelcome
modern influences. No, they insist on changing the country to suit
themselves,
and increasingly exhibit a lust to change the entire planet to the same
purpose.
-
- Some have characterized the Bush victory as marking the
beginning of a third Great Awakening. I think there is some truth in this
observation. America's fundamentalists want to escape the social
consequences
of such inevitable developments as gay marriage, abortion, and scientific
research that begins to peel back the mysteries of Creation. And the events
of 9/11 only reinforced long-standing suspicion and even dread of
foreigners
with markedly different cultures.
-
- God Bless America is a favorite expression of Bush's,
as well as, judging from their bumper stickers, the more belligerent class
of truck drivers. One wonders in Bush's case whether the words represent
a habit akin to saying God Bless when someone sneezes, a habit he might
have acquired during his years of snorting cocaine with its well-known
consequence of nasal irritation. Of course, the association of Bush and
belligerent truck drivers is not coincidental. Didn't the Teamsters embrace
Nixon as their man?
-
- It is difficult for many outsiders - and that includes
a substantial number of Americans - to understand the use of this totemic
expression. Is God being called upon to give something He otherwise would
withhold, or is he being commanded? In either case, the words resemble
the prayers of the selfish and arrogant.
-
- I think what is intended is simply the constant
association
of God with America, at least certain people's idea of America, those who
embrace vengeance, intolerance, xenophobia, and the beauties of extreme
selfishness. Cynics might describe the habit of muttering the words as
an unrelenting marketing campaign to make the unholy seem holy.
-
- Whatever the case, it does seem God has been handing
America something other than blessings recently. Events from 9/11 to the
black comedy of Bush's re-election after his getting the nation mired in
a protracted and pointless war do require descriptions other than
blessings.
-
- But for American fundamentalists, the words affirm that
a genuine man of God is in office at last, most of them being blissfully
unaware that the job of President is just that, a job, not a religious
ministry. Most of them also are blissfully unaware of how hard their
ancestors
fought for genuine religious freedom - their chief ally in the battle being
the religious skeptic Jefferson. Two centuries later, America's
fundamentalists
are perfectly ready to do unto others what was previously done unto their
ancestors, that is, to impose their beliefs, views, and attitudes on
others.
-
- The fit of fundamentalist attitudes with America's
position
in the sphere of world affairs is perfect, having moved in two centuries
from a nation opposing a distant, arrogant imperial power to being the
world's distant, arrogant imperial power. American fundamentalists'
determination
to judge and interfere with the private lives of others, their insistence
in believing they hold the only truth - these attitudes perfectly support
the interests of a smaller, far more privileged group of Americans who
claim B-52s serve as tools for democracy and enlightenment.
-
- Bush may have spent most of his life peeing on other
people, doing drugs, making money in crooked deals, and generally
displaying
contempt for exactly the class of people now devoted to his welfare, but
to the fundamentalist mind the greater the stack of evidence for a
destructive
and undisciplined life, the greater is the blessing of its miraculous
turnaround.
It's quite a mysterious and unshakeable way of thinking.
-
- As I said, fundamentalists do not make a majority in
America, but when their numbers are combined with the interests of those
now benefiting from astronomical tax cuts and military contracts, they
make a winning coalition. The Republicans' firm hold on the South - the
Ripley's Believe It or Not of Christianity, being the location of the most
bizarre experiments in fundamentalism - is little more than a long-term
backlash against civil-rights laws of the 1960s. The same folks (they like
that word), when called Southern Democrats, were just as intolerant,
obsessive,
and xenophobic.
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