Stoopid Stuff

Down this Dark Path We Travel, and What is our Destination?

From Evangelical Christians to Kabala to Catholics to activist Jews, every year the American population goes a little bit further towards a worldview and philosophy defined by mysticism and mythology. This has no good consequences, but let's follow it to it's logical conclusion and see where we end up. First, we need to recognize the processes at work. Theocratic extremists tend to have certain tendencies in common. First, they are not, by and large, a "live and let live" type of people. They believe in the utter necessity of living a life defined and constrained by their religious dogma of choice, and cannot accept a world where other people may allow their lives to be defined by a different set of beliefs. Especially if that different belief set is more liberal, they will conflate theocratic dogma with democratic legislation in order to compel even non-believers to live as if they were believers, or suffer punishment and torment. Which leads to the second common tendency, the belief that their church hierarchy has a major role to play in their governance. The so-called "separation of church and state" is anathema to them, for without the power to enforce by staute or decree that which they volutarily believe, they have no power to compel their community to behave in specific fashions and they have no power to enforce those behaviors.

So, at least to this observer, we are becoming a theocratic society dominated by a single mystical worldview and increasingly governed by an autocratic and authoritarian leadership whose basic pricipals are based upon an ancient text they believe to be the inerrant word of god. Now if you accept that our current societal drift is in that direction, what is the endpoint? Or to put it another way, if the people are successful in creating this radical theocratic fascist state, what will it look like?

There's an old expression that says we always become that which we hate. Go back and read the above paragraph again, but this time, instead of envisioning a Christianist American State, think about an islamic state. Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iran, the kind of Shari'a law the American Warmonger Right is always shouting about.

Yep. The very people shouting the loudest for killing, imprisoning and otherwise denying rights to muslims are themselves very similar in all but choice of book, and the name of the deity. What they are trying to build here in America resembles in every way a radical Islamist society. From clerical intervention in education, defining curiculum, banning books and vetting teachers, to defining mores of dress, music and entertainment and interpersonal relationships, to intervention in individual medical decisions to squelching scientific inquiry when it conflicts with religious dogma, there is litterally no difference between the vision for society held by James Dobson and the one held by Mullah Omar.

The screeching hypocricy in all this is the tendency of the American religious right to call those of us on the cultural left traitors in the war on terrorism. I have actually been accused of wanting the terrorists to win so they could establish a Caliphate under Shari'a law here on our shores. The speechless, sputtering irony is that in that Caliphate I would be among the first put to the sword, while the individual who accused me of these traitorous acts was, at worst, a fellow traveler and more likely an active collaberator.

posted by mikey @ 2:46 PM