Democrats will have their backsides kicked hard this election because they bent over and started wincing in pain two years ago, apparently feeling that being kicked will be less painful than the hard work it takes to move society ahead. Meanwhile, Republicans have taken old themes (“StepNFetchit to Foreign Kings”, “Money is The God of Our Society”, and “Endless War and Torture”) and repackaged them, marketing them fearlessly and fearsomely as “The Way We Were.”
As someone who grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam war, I would like progressives to recognize that scripture is a record of our earliest efforts at sociology. I have found that religion has a face and two butt cheeks. The face sees a vision thousands of years ahead, things that could happen that would benefit humanity more than we can imagine. The left cheek, on the other hand, moons us, saying we should be different from those around us in ways that don’t make a difference, and be self-righteous about it. The right cheek also moons us, saying we can be as dreadful as every one else is, or even worse, and be completely self-righteous about it.
The right has become master of the two butt cheeks, and is mooning us for all they are worth.
We have to stand up for the thousand year vision of peace, justice and freedom, or we will lose our country and all that it stands for. It won’t be easy, with two cheeks of religion against us, but it has to be done!
There’s no doubt that Dick Cheney and his friends are willing to do most anything to drag us a few thousand years into the past.
The right has a powerful bait and switch going. Their appeal for a return to older behavior patterns is well thought out, and unified.
We’ve got to realize that there’s little comfort in knowing that we’re right, if we just stand by and let them do what they want. Dick wants us and all we stand for thrown in the path of the juggernaut of history repeated, not learned.
The three right wing themes I cited above can be turned back on the right wing, because they are fundamentally against American values, and go against our spiritual history.
There’s no doubt that the right will fight for their illusions with everything they have got. Our opposition must be determined to be heard, and unified around goals of peace, justice, and freedom.
Above all, we must communicate the vision that our problems are caused by the mistakes we make, and that our hope lies in rejecting the failed gods of selfishness, greed, and murder, and remembering our traditional American and Vermont values.