The Fear Merchants
The 2004 Election
A lot of black Christians, obsessed with gay marriage and abortion rights, will be voting for the president, who all but wrote off the black vote. Many black Christians are, ironically, following an agenda white Christian conservatives have set, knowing only that the president is against abortion and gay marriage, the only two issues the religious right seem to care anything about. It's an unexpected bonus for the Republicans: black votes by default.
Part
3: Black Tuesday
I got out of bed last night because it was freezing in the
house. Here in Colorado, the nights are frequently chilly, and
my feet were like blocks of ice as I trundled down the stairs
into the living room and adjusted the thermostat. And I almost
wept as I did it. As the thought occurred to me that there will
be millions of people finding it hard to sleep because it is
freezing in the house. Only they won't have the divine privilege
of turning up a thermostat. On President Bush's watch, under his
clumsy, ham-fisted leadership and brainless foreign policy, the
United States has become so loathed, so hated in the world, that
the major oil cartels no longer pay us much mind. Where we once
had major influence with these people, a great many foreign
powers see our Iraq initiative as a simple grab for the oil
there, and are thus no longer concerned with America's lobbying
efforts to keep the price of oil down. At this writing, the
price of oil is at historic levels. The price of gasoline is
also at historic levels. And, thanks in major parts to
decisions made by this president, millions of people will be
going to bed cold this winter— assuming they have a bed to go
to.
There've been endless post-election man-on-the-street interviews
on TV and radio. of the gleeful, giddy Pro-Bush fans, happy for
the president's historic landslide victory, not one of them
mentioned that millions more Americans will be going to sleep
cold than ever in this nation's history. Not one of them
mentioned the millions of manufacturing jobs lost or that the
job growth this present regularly crows about are counter jobs
at 7-Eleven and other lesser-wage jobs. people, white and black,
with advanced degrees are driving buses and trucks and
delivering packages, making twenty and fifty thousand dollars
less than they once did. But these Bush supporters are happy
because they kept the heathen John Kerry out of the White House.
because they've struck a blow against abortion and gay marriage
and stem cell research.
And that “moral” victory is apparently worth millions of people
having to choose between going ton bed cold or going to bed
hungry. It is apparently worth the ruined lives of US and
“coalition” forces maimed, blinded, amputated and killed in a
useless, meaning-less war. A war this president now is useless
and meaningless but one he was forced to defend to the death
because, to do any less would have cost him the election.
America is trumpeting their “moral” choice while millions of
people board up businesses they've worked all their lives to
build. While mothers weep. While millions of people choose
between medicine and food. between heat and food.
The raging debate on politics, religion and morality in this
country misses the point entirely that forcing Christian values
upon social justice and moral standards seems right but it
really isn't. Morality and spirituality are not one and the
same. Morality (the quality of being in accord with standards of
right or good conduct) has no external or infallible truth to
it. Theology (rational inquiry into religious questions),
ideally, should be based on eternal truths, which have nothing
to do with morality per se, other than that our adherence to
these eternal truths forms opinions we express as guidelines
governing our moral conduct. Theology and morality are hardly
one and the same. A decent and moral idea, rule, or concept can
still, in all its purity, transgress the holiness of a divine
God. As such, our sense of morality is of not much use to God
(Isa 64:6). Churches relying on their sensibilities of what is
good, right, and moral (i.e. music styles, dancing, etc.) to
dictate their interpretation of scripture is, in and of itself,
faulty exegesis. The Church should not be in the business of
dictating morality, but should be proclaiming truths both
eternal and infallible. We, as individuals, having been
presented with these truths, are a people at liberty to embrace
or reject those truths, and our sense of morality is the
expression of that decision.
The president's smirking, sneering, Grade School Slacker posture
was in full effect during his victory speech and now at his news
conference. He beams with the confidence of a man who now has no
limits. No people to account to, no elections left to win. A man
empowered to take the brakes of and launch more fully into his
agenda of rewarding his rich pals and sending more of our
brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, wives and husbands to a
meaningless death in the sand so Halliburton and United Defense
Corporation can continue to pocket billions of our dollars.
While we shiver and choose.
I've got all this anger and I don't know what to do with it.
Then I think about roughly half the country that is similarly
angered. Then I think about how, had things gone the other way,
the anger would still be there, only shifted around a little.
Then I realize I wouldn't wish this anger on anyone, not even
the Christian Right.
Then I pray for the anger to be gone and let's just get on with
things.
I spent most of the day yesterday on the verge of tears. Not
since the O.J. Simpson jury verdict has this country experienced
such an enormous divided reaction. Only this time, instead of
the divide running along purely racial lines, this divide runs
more along philosophical lines: the polarized left and right of
America. A divide President George W. Bush has done nothing to
heal and who has, in fact, polarized and widened it.
I was so stressed out, a local pastor took me and several other
ministers out for a road trip to a meat packing plant in
southern Colorado, where watched this buffalo get slaughtered
and skinned.
This buffalo, once a proud symbol of freedom and power, was now
on a meat hook, quivering from involuntary spasms as a worker
carried off his head and another blithely peeled his proud akin
from his carcass. Quivering on meat hooks, the workers chatted
and listened to country western music as they went about the
routine duty of craving up NY Strip steaks and buffalo sausage.
And I couldn't help but think about the 204 election and the
state of the Black Church in America. We were once a people to
be reckoned with. A demographic to be feared. But now, we are as
segmented and divided as the country as a whole it. Divided
between those who drive Lexuses and those who ride the bus.
The Christian right was exploited and used by the Republican
party.
Played like a fiddle. The obvious strength in numbers in
Catholics, Moderate Christians and the growing conservative
right was a pigeon ready for the plucking by a patently cynical
re-election team who saw nothing but disaster at the hands of
thinking people. Which is not to say thinking people did not
vote for the president, but I'll bet all the money in my pockets
against all the money in your pockets that if we handed out
standardized IQ tests right this very moment, Kerry supporters
would score, on average, higher than Bush supporters.
The world at large mostly held Bush responsible for the stupid
things done, the thousands of lives lost, the thumbing of our
nose at the international community, the near-collapse of the
U.S. economy and the botched “war on terrorism,” a war everyone
but the Bible Belt knows to be utterly bogus.
After this election, these people will now hold us ALL
responsible. We have validated this maniac's policies and
actions. And now, rather than wait out Bush or hold his inept
bungling out as some aberration, the world community (and
terrorists) will likely ramp up their hatred for us, our global
position becoming increasingly isolated and polarized, as major
US. cities like New York become increasingly like Tel Aviv.
Most every person I saw polled on TV news, no kidding, sounded
like a moron. One lady said she voted for him because he was, no
kidding, “The kind of fella you invite over for supper. I'm not
sure I'd like to have John Kerry over for supper.” Most other
people, and all of these people were white and Christian,
mentioned (1) gay rights (2) abortion (3) stem cell research.
Not one word about the war. Not one word about the economy. The
people I've seen were utterly clueless.
The rhetoric is grindingly anti-intellectual, just as Bush is
the anti-intellectual president, rewarded merely for making it
through a debate without mis-pronouncing something. The
smirking, leering, captain of the Inarticulate, Bush is the
ultimate slacker, bumbling ass-back-wards into something that
approximates “likeable,” that like-ability apparently being more
important than actual competence. He is the Hee-Haw President.
And maybe it's liberal media bias, but the man-on-the-street
stuff I've seen today all have white couples mouthing GOP
talking points. Just Folk. I never got the sense any of these
people have any clue about our desperately sad position in the
world community, nor do they care.
I stand by my assertion that, in general terms, thinking people
trended towards Kerry, while simpler minds trended towards the
president. And my despair is not merely that Bush won, but is
for the overall sad state of intellectual thought in this
country. The hate and venom underlying these cheery Stepford
Christians was chilling indeed. Cookie cutter “family-oriented”
folks parroting, to a person, the GOP rhetoric. Book burning and
lynchings really can't be far away.
And the saddest part of all this is the fact the Political Right
is playing the Religious Right like a fiddle; using pious
posturing and “family values” code to thinly mask intolerance
and push through an agenda of hate.
It's very scary. Very Orwellian out there. And, the saddest part
is, if you said that to the average Bushie fundamentalist or
black Church Folk, they wouldn't even know what it meant.
Oddly, the only small comfort I take in all of this is the
discovery that white Christians are at least as gullible,
overall, as black Christians. The main difference being, from
all evidence, white Christian conservatives will rally the
faithful, organize their effort, and push their agenda. While,
from all apparent evidence, the black church remains largely
fractured and impotent. Our most powerful spiritual leaders have
seemingly benched themselves during this election, perhaps
struggling to find their place in the Great Moral Right, or
perhaps unwilling to risk their personal fortunes and ministries
on a run at the truth. For, if they had, this administration
would have come at them with guns blazing, rather than reward
the House Nigger go-along with vague promises of faith-based
initiatives and other watered-down ephemeral niceties.
An even scarier thought is that these men may have been
appropriated by Bush '04 the same way the white evangelicals
were. The Christian right's hammering of “family values”
resonated across ethnic and economic and political lines, and a
great many Christian blacks found themselves conflicted: caught
between a moral choice and a political one. Which decries a
severe lack of education of Biblical matters and sound theology,
as the Christian right's scrutiny of the president's claim to a
relationship with Jesus Christ has never reached a level where
the president has ever had to explain it more fully. The
president has, at best, two sentences he can parrot about his
faith before sputtering off into inarticulate Bushisms. he is
incapable of quoting even one scripture or sharing with us, in
any truly meaningful way, what his faith means.
If I did that, in any pulpit in America, I would instantly lose
credibility. But the Christian right rallied around this man and
celebrated this man and canonized Saint George. And all of that
sturm und drang echoed across ethnic lines into the Black Church
where we, The People Who Do Not Read, absorbed it and processed
it into our system until it became a matter of record: Bush Is
Saved, John Kerry Is Not. A great many black Christians,
struggling with their ten-cent understanding of Bush, Kerry and
the real issues at stake here, pulled the lever for the
president, reluctantly out of a moral obligation.
A moral obligation wholly invented by Karl Rove, the president's
chief political advisor. No more powerful, dangerous, or
frightening a man sits behind any desk in Washington DC, but,
again, I'd bet my money against yours that four our of any five
black folk you walk up to won't have a clue who he is. He's the
guy who invented Saint Bush, the guy who packaged and sold Saint
Bush to the Christian right (i.e. white fundamentalists),
knowing full well they'd canonize Saint Bush and organize like
flock to get the G.O.P. message out; a message that would have
some trickle-down benefit to the Black Church, a demographic
extremely skeptical of and largely dissatisfied with the
president. Rove's brilliance is he created a conundrum among
believers, white and black, that to NOT vote for Bush was, fact,
a sin. So brilliant was this move, that the Bush administration
earned votes from black America— a demographic they had all but
written off and wholly ignored— on moral grounds of “family
values.”
When the moral thing for the church to have done would have been
to vote this man out of office. As I've mentioned here before,
this president will have no appreciable affect on Roe v. Wade,
and, by extension, no appreciable effect on the abortion issue.
This president will not pass a constitutional amendment banning
gay marriage (he's already tried), and stem cell research will
continue— and, moreover, the church, white and black, must find
a way to educate themselves to the fact that stem cell research
and abortion have very little to do with one another (most stem
cell research is performed on discarded embryos from fertility
clinics; from couples trying to have a baby. These embryos would
have been destroyed anyway, and the religious right has never
had an objection to fertility clinics or to couples trying to
conceive).
Had John Kerry been elected, none of the religious rights core
issues would have been affected. None of their moral concerns
would have changed one way or another. But the Bush
administration has soundly convinced the evangelicals and
religious right (i.e. white Christians) that Bush will end
abortions, gay marriage and stem cell research. Which is utter
nonsense. They'd also convinced these same people that John
Kerrey would open the flood gates to abortion and perform gay
weddings himself— which was utter nonsense. It was a patent lie,
one this president knew to be a lie, and a lie that this
president reiterated every time he got in front of a crowd.
The president's strategists, like Karl Rove, knew this president
was through unless he had the strong support of the religious
right, a well-organized machine that votes its principles— or,
more specifically, the principles of its religious leaders who
were bought off and misled by politicians who are, at the end of
the day, still politicians: lying, thieving men and women who
will do or say anything to win.
If you take Christ and the Bible out of this and replace them
with Muhammad and the Koran, most of America, white and black,
would be alarmed and concerned about this huge block of
religious zealots distorting facts, parroting the GOP party
line, and fusing religion into politics. We'd be up in arms if
some huge national Islamic movement pushed their Islamic
fundamentalist president into office and pushed their Islamic
Fundamentalist agenda through Congress. But they are not Islamic
Fundamentalists. They are Christian Fundamentalists.
Christian Fundamentalists speak in code. “family values,” oft
repeated by most any Christian conservative— pastor or layman—
is received by me as a chilling code for white family values.
Ozzie and Harriet. Lame Music Values. The agenda is to mold
America, all America, into their way of thinking. Into their way
of dressing. Into their haircuts and their clothing and their
music. Every smiling puffy white guy I see in striped Hagar
shirts from Sears talking idyllically about “family values” and
George W. Bush chills me to the marrow. I know I am only welcome
in his world as a subservient, non-opinionated, mild-mannered
soft-spoken go-along Negro. And the minute I do not agree with
him, I become an outcast, sneered at and condescended to. “Watch
yourself, Jesse,” as The Reverend Jerry Falwell cautioned The
Reverend Jesse Jackson on CNN.
I am not welcome in their world. My little nickel-and-dime
website is not welcome in their world. To them, I am a sinner.
An abortionist. A gang banger. These people want to mold all of
America, all races, into their Hagar slacks and Sandy Patti
lifestyle, and otherwise quarantine or deport all uppity types
who don't conform to their view of America. Apple Pie America.
Baseball in Summer America. An America repeating the same
mistakes of Viet Nam, believing whatever the White House says
while we go about committing atrocities overseas.
“Blow 'em all away in the name of the Lord,” Falwell said during
his dustup with Jackson. But, who's “'Em"? Surely he means
terrorists, but his smirking sneer— and I can't imagine Christ
ever being so pompous, ever smirking or sneering— offers a more
insidious interpretation. Terrorists, surely, are “'Em.” But,
maybe, liberals are also “'Em.” People who don't support the
Bush agenda are most certainly “'Em.” Which means gays are
certainly “'Em.” Scientists, what with their fancy stem cell
research that encourages abortion (this is what these morons
actually think) are most decidedly “'Em.” Mexicans and other
Latino groups, unless they are cleaning Falwell's mansion, are
certainly “'Em.” Blacks are definitely “'Em.” And I absolutely
(and proudly) assure you, I am most certainly “'Em.”
The truth is, a great many black pastors blew it. A great many
black pastors slept through this, the most important election in
a generation. And, nationally, there was no visible effort made
on the parts of these super-rich super-preachers to invest their
capital in a movement to move the bar for George W.
I'm not saying Black Church superstars like TD Jakes, Paul
Morton, Creflo Dollar and others did nothing to inspire and
rally the black Church in America. I'm saying whatever they did
wasn't enough. These men, standing shoulder to shoulder, had the
cash and the credibility to forge a movement. Not a movement for
Kerry or for Bush, but a movement for truth. The religious right
has been peddling blatant lies, a kinder, gentler Stepford
Religion which canonized George W. Bush and demonized John
Kerry, when neither deserved either sainthood or hell.
Conservative Christians in this country summed the debate up in
very simple terms, their message being Vote For Bush Or You're
Going To Hell.
Would a major effort on the part of major black ministers have
won us the election? Hard to say. But it would have forced this
president, who has all but ignored us for four years, to take
Black America seriously. Additionally, such a movement would
have sent a clear message to the Religious Right that the Black
Church in America cannot be easily dismissed. That we are not
the House Niggers of the conservative “moral” right.
Instead, the message we sent was the Black Church is largely
disorganized, interested only in what suit Jakes will be wearing
this week, concerned only with the gathering and gregarious
display of blingage (material wealth), that we are highly
fractured and highly competitive within ourselves and our
gifting, and that in pure political terms, we are a non-entity;
a matter of absolutely no concern to a guy like George W. Bush.
The white church has taken the lessons of the Civil Rights
movement, adopted and improved those methods for their political
base. The white church in America now does a far better job of
making effecting social change than the black church— and
they're using our own tools and tactics to do it.
Could Jakes and Morton and Dollar have won Kerry the white
house? Maybe not. But the net result of their go-along shuffle
is they have cemented their place as modern day minstrels in a
society that ins increasingly looking back towards those bygone
days when we were, at best, a nuisance relegated to separate
drinking fountains and lunch counters. This is the code the Bush
“family values” message evokes. And everybody can read it,
except the men who could actually have made a difference.
A major opportunity for ministry in the black church has come
and gone. I realize you guys are late for your fitting at the
tailor, but on your way, in your air conditioned limo, maybe
take a moment to reflect on what a joke you are, both to the
much more powerful Christian Right, and to a nation that, in
veiled code, calls you monkey and nigger, while you do
absolutely nothing about it.
Now, preachers, it is your job to comfort the wounded. The
lowly. The poor in spirit. The desperate. Despite many of our
best efforts, we lost. Now it's time for pastors to be pastors.
To hold our hands, to wipe away tears, to encourage. To pray. To
uplift. To inspire. And, for many pastors, to apologize.
I'm sure many of us did our job. I'm just as sure many more of
us did not.
Christopher J. Priest
4 November 2004
editor@praisenet.org
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