Like all of you, I have expended so many brain cells the last few months trying to
figure out why in the hell 53 million of my fellow Americans voted for Bush and why
so very many of them continue to support the Right-Wing Agenda.
It's like banging your head against the wall, isnt it? It just doesnt make sense.
But now, I think I may have found the answer.
For many, many Americans, pain holds the meaning of life.
From "The Religious Right and the Right to Die", by Garret Keizer, Harper's Magazine,
February, 2005:
This explains the conundrum so perplexing to the liberal mind: why hard-pressed people can vote against their own interests in support of someone like George W.
Bush. How can they not see? In fact, they do see; they see from the same point of
view that has led them to believe that the misery of their lives is the foundation
of their integrity.
This seems to be, arguably, the center point of Judeo-Christian belief.
Pain is fundamental to justice...justice is conceived as nothing more than a system of punishments and rewards. The essence of punishment is pain. Whoever owns pain
owns power.
And certainly, the Right-Wing owns pain.
I was brought up Catholic in a Republican household. My experience says the above quote is right on. For God's sake, each Sunday was a reinactment of the crucifiction itself. Worship centered on suffering, not life. My father will still (at the age of 67) say that anyone who does not work 12-15 hour days, as he did most of his life, doesnt deserve to advance in life.
Here in New Mexico I've never been able to understand why some of the biggest
flag-wavers, the most devout Republicans and the most violent haters of Progressive values are the people who have had (by hand of the Governmental and Capitalist forces the Right-Wing enthusiastically support) their land stolen from them, their families genocided, their economies and communities busted, their working
opportunities sold off, their hard work pounded under by giant corporations....and on and on.
Here are people living in incredible poverty, their economies wrecked, their land and life-ways STILL under assault and no opportunities on the horizon... and yet they love GWB and the hard core Republicans!!!
The one thing they have in common (across racial and ethnic lines) are their Judeo-Christian values (yes, even many of the Native Americans).
I open it up for debate. Could it be that - despite all of the talk of `re-framing,' being more aggressive, being more cohesive as a party -the fundamental problem we Progressives face is that a very large number of Americans want and desire misery and struggle in their lives because it is "the foundation of their integrity"...and that Progressives don't offer misery?!?!?
I'd love to hear what the rest of you think.