Golden Bulls and Selling Heaven

Back in the late 1920's H.L. Mencken had a field-day mocking booze-snitching preachers he called "red-nosed Prohibitionists". Now, as then, it seems our pious bible-thumpers are quick to damn every temptation save greed. To rid the land of the evils of gin our Christian commanders stomped righteously across the Beatitudes and set neighbor to spy upon neighbor. As the country sank into its Great Depression, America's salvation demanded that every bootlegger be locked in prison, his victims denied the comfort of drink even as they stomached the open thievery of their corrupted government.

Aroused by what might ensue from the taking of alcohol our moral fanatics were not restrained by charity nor the counsels of Timothy (5:23): "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake..." So consumed had our zealous Christians become with careless vices, that being fixed so long on their neighbors' sins has made them not only lose sight of the Mount of Olives but flirt with idolatry.

Evangelicals pray before a statue of a golden bull on Wall Street.


"We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion's Market,' or God's control over the economic systems. While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble."

They defend this "innocent laying on of hands" but Matthew objects quite unambiguously: "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Matt; 6-24

But with another Elmer Gantry popping up daily spouting a "prosperity gospel" the notion of the meek inheriting the earth seems almost quaint. Why wait to be rewarded in heaven when God promises the blessed shall die rich? It should come as no surprise that when the faithful saw their portfolios shrinking they forgot the fourth and fifth commandments since clearly poverty, like imbibing French wine, was a greater damnation.

The original Bush Doctrine

When in response to the 9-11 tragedy George W. told the worried nation to "go shopping" he revealed the very essence of his faith. For Bush and his religious disciples, Christ died so that the chosen could reap 20% dividends. God's Word was the gospel of globalization with its promise of an ever-expanding bottom line-- that so long as we believed would remain everlasting.

This New Order, for which the sainted Ronnie was sent to prepare the Way, had been years in the making. As Business Week prophesied in 1974--the public would have to be won over to the new religion: "It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow - the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more ... Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must be done to make people accept this reality."(October 12, 1974 p. 120)

And as with any lasting creed it must first be absorbed and then sold by good surrogates. To this end no paper has published more faithful converts than the devout NYTimes. Brought to the altar by Safire, Brooks and Friedman then finally Kristol, the nations all bowed down to the global free-market-- unburdened consumption was the savior of pensions and manna from heaven for all mankind.

Chris Suellentrop shows the metaphysical reach of Bush's doctrine in his LA Times review of David Brooks' "On Paradise Drive":

"Brooks sees consumption as so imbued with transcendent significance that he describes the transformation of spiritual desire into physical objects that occurs while shopping as a 'transubstantiation of goods.' With shopping, Brooks seems to be saying we commodify our assent to John Winthrop's Puritan dream."

The crash of the free market temple has sent the flat-earth believers into a breathless panic. The faithful blindly scurry on rightwards, shrieking kill the Marxists!--reject the devil's potion of intoxicating socialism! Meanwhile, like the pulpit grifters who continue to grab from their followers' wallets, the discredited Bush-men have set about looting the treasury. No doubt faced with a lengthy banishment to the political wilderness our unrepentant free-marketeers are praying to go on living as they've long grown accustomed to-- at our trusting expense.

Happy to Hate (Update 2 w/Correction and 2nd new video)

It appears there is no slur too foul, no mud too steeped in libel, for a desperate Republican to fling in order to stir "good Christian folks" to mindless anger. This ad from a sitting U.S. senator should be enough to bar her forever from office -- not to mention decent company.



And though the smear would be miles beyond the pale were Dole's opponent even an "godless atheist" Hagan is an elder in her church and a Presbyterian.

(An Anonymous reader has rightly criticized my excerpt dealing with the Soka Gakkai which is now amended. The Soka Gakkai was NOT excommunicated explicitly because of the fight over corruption but because the Buddhist clergy were opposed to a bill that the Komeito, a small political party the Gakkai supported, wanted to allow Japanese troops to take part in U.N. peacekeeping forces. I thank the reader for having me clarify the facts.)

According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center even though the world is facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression most Republicans claim that they are happy, and 37% even describe themselves as "very happy".

The study suggests that despite the fact that their party had become an object of scorn, their policies, soundly rejected, Republicans remain happier than Democrats and would "probably always will be". The researchers opine that this has something to do with the conservative Republican "worldview". But if the American "Right" is so much "happier" than the "Left" how does Pew account for the kind of ugliness we've seen at their rallies:



The Pew researchers might have been better served heeding Aldous Huxley.

"There are many people for whom hate and rage pay a larger dividend of immediate satisfaction than love. Congenitally aggressive, they soon become adrenalin addicts, deliberately indulging their ugliest passions for the sake of the 'kick' they derive from their psychically stimulated endocrines. Knowing that one self-assertion always ends by evoking other and hostile self-assertions, they sedulously cultivate their truculence.

And, sure enough, very soon they find themselves in the thick of a fight. But a fight is what they most enjoy; for it is while they are fighting that their blood chemistry makes them feel most intensely themselves. 'Feeling good,' they naturally assume that they are good. Adrenalin addiction is rationalized as Righteous Indignation and finally, like the prophet Jonah, they are convinced, unshakably, that they do well to be angry. "
-- Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"

It is that conflict-addicted temperament, so valuable for breeding warriors and FOX News commentators, that has been bred in great abundance in the nooks and hollows of our American Red-lands. For these Limbaugh devotees the world is a dangerous, treacherous place that must be mastered by a Great White Father. And contrary to Nietzsche, who believed that Christianity creates humble slaves, Republicans willing to vouch for the premise of headship, see their husbands and fathers as representative manifestations of Jesus. No doubt when the Rev. Arnold Conrad, was delivering his invocation at a rally in Iowa he felt justified chastening God.

"I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God -- whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah -- that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons. And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens."

I understand the frustrated reverend's confusion. For a red-blooded male trained from a pup to idolize John Wayne's big dog swagger, the fact that America has become the greatest military power in the history of mankind not only proves that he was chosen to rule, it works on his warrior brain as an opiate and a much-needed aphrodisiac. When we try to explain how Rove and his minions have managed to hold men like Reverend Conrad even as America's influence is waning and we are facing a painful recession, Huxley's insight seems prescient.

In his letter to Orwell congratulating him on "1984", Huxley predicted that "within the next generation ... world's leaders will discover that conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience."

He was wrong only in that the mass "hypnosis" is not being induced by chemicals but through the constant stimulants being blasted from our television sets and hate-talk radio. Over the last thirty years our public air-waves have been bombarded by the most bombastic nationalist propaganda. From as early as 1953 the government has been busy experimenting with various methods of mass control.

Speaking before a national meeting of Princeton alumni, former CIA director, Allen Dulles, distinguished two fronts in the then-current "battle for men's minds": a "first front" of mass indoctrination through censorship and propaganda, and a "second front" of individual "brainwashing" and "brain changing."

But the CIA did not invent these methods. When it comes to using fear and aggression to win and hold followers nothing is as old and effective as religion. Nor is it confined to "slavish" Christians. For instance, when the Soka Gakkai, the largest lay organization of Japanese Buddhists, accused priests of the Nichiren Shoshu of succumbing to corruption, rather than ask why priests needed to stay in luxury hotels and drive expensive Italian sports cars, the press vilified the Gakkai as venal and heretical usurpers turning Japanese sentiment harshly against them.

"there are widespread negative feelings in the community towards Soka Gakkai engendered by...relentless negative campaigns against the organization by [Japan's] magazines."--The Australian Financial Review

"The Japanese public is constantly exposed to the headlines on the hanging advertisements in trains and subways... Even if you don't read them but just kind of notice the slander and gossip day after day, a negative image begins to develop and grow, and you start to become suspicious..."--Noboru Okaniwa

The Buddhists' internecine struggles pale when compared to the kind of warfare being waged by our homegrown zealots against those "godless city-liberals". There's nothing like some "good old time religion" for whipping up hate and having a good time doing it. For the faithful in Palin's 'America' little has changed in the past sixty years. Here's H.L. Mencken on how the clergy went about rousing our good small town Christian back in the '30's.

"It is a terrific job to ram even the most elemental ideas into him. But it is always easy to scare him. That is the daily business of the evangelical pastors of our Republic. They are specialists in alarms and bugaboos... [T]he American peasant of today finds it vastly easier to claw into heaven than he used to. It is sufficient now to hate the Pope, to hate the Jews, to hate the scientists, to hate all foreigners, to hate whatever the cities yield to. These hatreds have been spread in the land by reverend pastors. They are the essence of the new Christianity, American style."

It makes one wonder if the kind of healing this country again so desperately needs is even possible.



It is hard to perceive how those who show nothing but anger and disdain for their fellow citizens feel happiness. Maybe for Palin Republicans it is enough to believe that God loves them. But watching that second video I suspect that despite all the happy smiles, Democrats won't be happy until we've made up for these last eight years. Perhaps then we can ramp down the hatred and go back to loving each other for a change.

Proud To Be An American

Barack Obama may be struggling to beat John McCain in our quadrennial presidential sweepstakes but the rest of the world is cheering for him to capture the White House. According to a BBC poll, people in all 22 of the countries surveyed prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of John McCain by a 4-1 margin.

In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.

So what does this say about the overall image of the United States? I would argue that it shows that after 7 and a half years of George W. Bush the world sees America as more insular and indifferent towards the rest of humanity than ever before.

History suggests this antipathy for the "ugly American" has been well earned.

"[I] know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems to be the truth"
--H.L. Mencken

People across the world understand that the United States is the Unrivaled Empire with the military might to exert its will and pursue its interests wherever it pleases. And yet they seem convinced that this hegemonic power can be employed benevolently -- or at the very least, less dangerously at a time when human beings as a whole are facing existential challenges. Climate Change, resource depletion, pollution, HIV-Aids, just to name the most pressing, should be of utmost priority yet here we are, roughly 50 days from electing the most powerful leader on earth and these issues are mostly absent from our political discussions.

Rather than being pressed to articulate, exactly how, he as president will go about tackling these problems Barack Obama is being constantly forced to explain:
a)--who he never was and b)--things he never said.

A report by Dan Hoyle on voters in small-town America bears the first point out:

"Obama, he's not our kind of people," said Middleton in a gruff, bitten-off speaking style, taking a break from canning green beans at the couple's double-wide mobile home. As a retired coal miner and a die-hard union man he should be a Democratic candidates natural supporter. He won't vote for Obama: "He don't believe in the hereafter, and the Lord, the way I look at it ... he's Muslim."

Such views are common in what the corporate media tenderly refer to as America's heartland. Polls taken in Canada and Australia show that citizens in those countries know Senator Obama to be a devout Christian (he spent his early twenties working on behalf of Catholic Charities), so when similar polls in rural USA indicate that over 19% agree with Mr. Middleton is it ignorance or simple excuse-making cussedness?
I'd say probably a little of both.

"[Our]ecclesiastics are responsible for all the turmoils and black hatreds that now rage in the bleak regions... they are to blame for every witches' pot that now brews in the backwoods of the Union."

Mencken penned those words for the American Mercury in 1924. His fear was that the Ku Klan Klan's infiltration of the Baptists and Methodists had inspired their ministers to oppose "every attempt to meet ignorance and prejudice with enlightenment." He charged religious zealots with preaching "not only the most bitter, savage morality of the Old Testament," but its "contempt of obvious facts."

And there you have it. In Mr. Middleton's America facts are malleable not concrete. Knowledge must first be filtered through prejudice. As for taking on the great ills of the day: Belief not Action confers Redemption. It is a way of viewing life, as well as others, that is necessarily both self-referential and self-reverent.

The ugly truth for Obama may simply be this. He might impress those foreign non-believers who offend God with their atheistic modern notions, he will never be what good Christians folks in our faithful hinterland think of as devoutly and proudly American.

I think Gary Ball, a former coal miner and editor of the firebrand Mountain Citizen newspaper in Inez, Kentucky said it best: "We know Obama's plenty book-smart ... but I liked Harry Truman, the last president to have a simple high school education."

I don't believe John McCain needs to worry about not understanding much about the "internets". He may have a millionaire wife and more homes than he can count, but he likes us Americans just the way we are. Just the way we've always been.