A powerful thirty second video about American reality 2022 can say a lot:
but then it’s more complicated than that.
Take politics, add religion, mix with patriotism and distortion, stir well, then take cover. There’s a lot of talk recently about the Christian Nationalism Movement. Finally. However as far back as the 1990’s when my wife was in the United States, with a Ph.D. in Political Communication, she predicted with precision what is happening now and she was either mocked or ignored by Americans.
As the current insurrection hearings have demonstrated, the United States is running rapidly toward authoritarianism. If the Republicans take back the House and the Senate after the midterms (which is not improbable) the word is that they will shut down the hearings and hold their own hearings nullifying the findings of the present one. If the Republicans also win in 2024, particularly with someone with Trump’s mind set, but with some brains and ideology (e.g. Ron DeSantis), the Rubicon may come within sight. Evangelicals are king-makers. Religion and politics / law make for a deadly combination, as was seen in Charlottesville, and as can be seen from recent decisions by the Supreme Court, and an Evangelical president would be fine with triggering a global nuclear holocaust knowing that the Rapture leading to eternal bliss would follow.
CHARLOTTESVILLE RALLY, 2017, AT WHICH HEATHER HEYER WAS KILLED BY A FASCIST PROTESTER
By Anthony Crider; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:37, 9 April 2018 (UTC) – Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68193094
In ‘One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America’ Kevin Kruse, a Princeton History professor, concludes that the United States didn’t really became a thoroughly Christian nation until Eisenhower became president in 1953 and in almost 400 pages he outlines the role of religion in American political life from the 1930’s to the present. A few thoughts generated by the book, and a few thoughts from the three books listed at the end of this post:
By combining religion and patriotism (with some intolerance thrown in) too many American politicians have used religion for political ends. I’m looking at you George Wallace, Pat Buchanan, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, as well as Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan (and more recently Trump), and lets not forget Democratic presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama. They have been ably assisted by some pretty nasty religious leaders such as Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. Some of the January 6 insurrectionists wore hats displaying the phrase ‘God, Guns, Trump’.
A stoning – not exactly separation of Church and State:
Politicians have partnered with Corporate America and Popular Culture equating Christianity (anti-materialism) with Capitalism (pro-materialism), hence the Prosperity Gospel. They seem to believe that Communism and Socialism are bad primarily because they are Godless. They also think Russia is a Communist state when of course Russia stopped heading toward genuine Communism shortly after the Revolution in 1917 and began a headlong rush toward totalitarianism as soon as Lenin died and Stalin took over in 1924. Exhibit A – Vladimir Putin. But then America calls itself a democracy. Communist China is not exactly a worker’s paradise either. Remember the innocent millions who died during Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward / Cultural Revolution? Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Gramsci, Fanon, Allende, Angela Davis, Norman Bethune et al had some good ideas in theory but they always seem to turn deadly on a mass scale in practice. Sigh.
Conservatives, particularly Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, argue that we need more religion in everyday life (e.g. more religion in schools) because religion has traditionally been a big part of American life. After all they put “In God We Trust” on their money, “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, their presidents have referenced Christianity in speeches, and, so they say, their founders were deeply religious. But arguing from tradition would also justify a return to slavery and to women without votes (and without many other important rights). The phrase ‘In God We Trust’ was also printed on the side of the gallows erected by the January 6 insurrectionists to use to hang Vice President Mike Pence. The substance of the American Constitution is not theocratic, and the framers knew the importance of the separation of Church and State. It also turns out that the founding fathers were not exactly Evangelical Christians either. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin were deists.
Christian nationalists believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation established by God to save the world, a nation where there is no separation of Church and State. Note, however, that in 1797 the United States signed the Treaty of Tripoli with a country in present day Libya and this is part of the text of that treaty: “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on Christian religion”.
Some Christian nationalists believe that the second amendment was handed down by God. They see Jesus as a warrior (a distortion of the images in Revelations) as opposed to a healer and teacher (as he appears in earlier Biblical passages).
In the 1950’s prayer and references to God and Jesus were omnipresent, on posters, in speeches, in advertising, in the classrooms, and in a long series of big budget religious feature films (Cecil B. DeMille, the force behind the blockbuster film ‘The Ten Commandments’, was apparently intensely religious and foam at the mouth anti-Communist).
Christian nationalists think that the only ‘real Americans’ are white Christians (a favourite screed from Sarah Palin). Some favour gerrymandering and the Electoral College which gives disproportionate power to the white Christian rural populations of America. They don’t think that other groups (e.g. African Americans, Hispanics, immigrants) are real Americans and therefore their votes shouldn’t count in elections. Hence Stop the Steal. That’s why when Democrats talk to them about fair elections in 2020 the Democrats are wasting their breath.
God Bless Amerika
In American politics Christianity is the only religion that really counts though Judaism also carries some weight. It is probably true that no Moslem or atheist could be elected president presently.
Some of the most intolerant religious politicians may actually believe what they say but others almost certainly know that they are using religion instrumentally rather than spiritually. This is the sort of thing that is impossible to ascertain definitively.
By Tyler Merbler from USA – DSC09170, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98780318
Many Americans embrace these perspectives because they are ubiquitously wrapped up in patriotism; Americans have been religiously propagandized and pressured on many levels for many years from childhood, so they accept these ideas but not because they are callous, naive or unintelligent.
There have also been some very religious Americans who have fought against the totalitarian impulses of the religious right and their political and corporate masters. Unfortunately too many Americans are politically passive in part because they live in a system of such grinding inequality, misogyny and racism that they can hardly be expected to have much success even thinking about let alone analysing, organizing and defeating the authoritarian tide.
In Kruse’s book there is not very much discussion of the real life effects of Capitalism / Corporatism or of Socialism / Communism, or a consideration of the political corollaries of Christianity, let alone those of the other major religions and of Atheism. Many American politicians and corporate leaders have developed a distorted view of Christianity designed
- to make them feel good about themselves
- to reinforce their political power
- to keep the mass of the population harmless
- to allow them to sleep without guilt in their gated communities
This book is by an American about America. Some of these authoritarian tendencies bound up in corporatism and religious politics exist, though to a lesser extent, in other countries as well, including Canada. Watch the skies. Here is a quote to conjure with:
“I don’t know how you could try to be funny about Jesus’ life, there would be no point in it. What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion, it’s what followers subsequently make of it. And I was always astonished that people didn’t get that.”
That was said by John Cleese of Monty Python. When the Pythons began researching the script for their film ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ they read the Bible, read the Dead Sea Scrolls and other religious texts, and even viewed some of those many horrible old Hollywood Biblical epic films from the 1950’s and 1960’s. Five of the Pythons are graduates of either Oxford or Cambridge. Python Terry Jones has published well-respected scholarly works of serious British history. Unlike many current so-called faux researchers the Pythons took their research responsibilities seriously. What they discovered was that the Biblical Christ is for the most part very different from the Christ worshipped by the American religious right presently. Python Eric Idle:
“. . . we realized at that point we couldn’t make a film about Jesus Christ because he’s not particularly funny, what he’s saying isn’t mockable, it’s very decent stuff, you couldn’t take the piss out of it” so they made a film about his followers instead.
Trump sending an armed force out to attack peaceful legal protesters in order to clear a path so that he can solemnly stand in front of a church holding a Bible is not exactly what The Prince of Peace had in mind. I think I’ll go downstairs and play a few verses of ‘The Internationale’ lento e dolente on the clavinova. Better yet, take a look at this short patriotic clip:
God Bless America for Trump Card
There are no religious images here but the title says it all, and the line “God shed His grace on thee” can be heard more than once. Notice how the song is in a minor key at the start but slips into a major key at the 1 minute 9 second mark. I don’t know if the flag being upside down at the 2 minute 2 second mark is a mistake but when the left wing country rock band Canned Heat put the flag upside down on the cover of their 1970 record ‘Future Blues’ it was intentional.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Many American politicians clothe themselves in Christianity, a religion which is supposed to be a force for love, tolerance and peace. Do their actions match their words? I don’t agree with everything Noam Chomsky says but here he attempts to demonstrate calmly, succinctly and in some specific detail that every post-World War Two United States president would be indictable under the principles guiding the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal:
Three other books on Christian Nationalism:
1. “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
2. “Taking America Back For God: Christian Nationalism in the United States” by Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead
3. “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy” by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry.
I suspect that the United States has already passed the point of no return. They probably passed that point when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal and there was no widespread public outrage. The retreat from democracy was confirmed when in 2001 the Supreme Court sanctioned the theft by George Bush of the presidential election and Americans actually congratulated themselves on the fact that the resulting transfer of power did not lead to riots in the streets. There should have been riots in the streets.
According to The Kidd 