The diversionary ongoing drumbeat is being prodded along from many different directions, including pastor Dan, whose apparent idea of a pleasant Friday pastime is to go mischaracterize PZ Myers' position on Obama, because, once again, we nonbelievers are misidentified as the problem.
Yup, congrats, my unbelieving friends, we’ve become cumbersome, now that certain Dems can just smell 2008, some now firmly believe the best way to win in 2008 is to jettison us, to make punching bags of us, and to push us aside as a means of ‘distancing themselves from those nasty nasty ‘fundamentalist secularists’ / ‘evangelical atheists’, because apparently everything that’s wrong with America could be fixed were it not for those damn nonbelievers.
Funny, but I’ve heard this before; no, not just that my unbelief is destroying the country (whichever country, the US, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the list goes on and on). No, what I’m referring to actually is a group that once had some power, has then been out of power, getting a little power, smelling ‘victory’ over the next hill, and deciding the best ’strategy’ to get there is to throw some of their most ardent, yet unpopular supporters out the window in a vain attempt to gain ‘credibility’ and ‘legitimacy’ with some mythical unconvinced ‘middle’.
Yup, been there, done that, have a closet full o’ t-shirts.
You know, like when NOW decided the Lesbians and Bi women were what was holding them back. Or when respectable Gays and Lesbians begin getting just a little social acceptability and then begin tossing the Trans communities, or Bi communities, or Leather communities or all of the above and more overboard (never mind who got them what little shards of ‘acceptability’ in the first place!) or when women working in the anti-domestic violence and anti-rape fields decided some of their founding members were (Oooo! Eeeeeek!) Dykes, and so it was time to get rid of them, because after all, they were writing federal and state grant proposals, and it ‘just wouldn’t look good’ to have Dykes answering the hotline.
As I said, got the closet full of t-shirts, I know this routine.
And this is what we, Queers, nonbelievers, Leatherfolk, (whatever ‘minority’ hat I feel like wearing this week) ‘get’ for trying to work with the larger community. We get our pictures taken down off the wall when ‘the parents’ are coming over to visit.
To some extent, non-believers on dKos are well aware of how tenuous our stance around here can be at times. I’ll quote just a little of what I wrote in response to the ‘atheists get the f@ck outta my face’ diary, responding specifically to the notion that if a christian posted a diary telling all non-believers they were going to hell they'd be run off dKos 'on a rail':
To the contrary, it'd be on the rec list. (I'm only half joking).
Yes a properly worded piece of shit could absolutely make the rec list around here.
Oh sure, there'd be a lot of hand wringing, and fudging around over language, lots of 'but you're not doing it right'-ing, but simple fact of the matter is, that kind of diary here isn't even necessary to convey how this is a blog that is religion supportive and at times quite openly hostile to atheists.
The very notion of the ongoing pastor Dan 'services' week in and week out, the fawning over Obama as he makes secular Americans out to be bogeymen, and the very creation of Street Prophets tells us atheists in ways subtle and overt that this is just another space in which we are sometimes tolerated, sometimes kicked at, and sometime shat upon, like when a diary titled 'atheists get the f@ck out of my face' makes the rec list.
We're put up with, but told to 'pipe down'. The mere presence of a diary or two is enough to get some, and apparently YOUR knickers in a knot- so much so, that you have some deep seated need to define us out of existence, into yet another class of believer-dom, because DawnG abhors a vacuum. The notion of a lack of belief, coupled with a willingness to give that voice becomes some kind of pseudo-'threat’.
Unfortunately, it's not merely the occasional comment or diarist, but the way religion and its adherents sometimes receive a treatment around here that is very different from the kind of treatment a nonbeliever often faces. (Mind you, we're realatively used to it, dKos is not unlike much of American attitudes, even when labeled 'lefty or progressive'.) Unlike any mere mortal's diary where any member of the community commenting is an expected norm, an atheist speaking out in disagreement on a pastor Dan diary can result in troll ratings, as if we are somehow supposed to treat such diaries differently than any other diary here. Certain diaries are apparently beyond a discussion of the actual writing, the content, and the implications of such- instead, the presence of a nonbeliever gets treated more akin to an intruder- somehow 'in' someone else's space.
Naturally, the same does not hold true when an atheist posts a diary; there, every word is up for discussion, debate, and twisting into insane notions like 'atheism is a religion'.
Face it, pastor Dan has become a dKos ‘sacred cow.’ His diaries, unlike any other diary here on this political blog, are treated as some kind of sacrosanct space, a place where no, not all the community is welcomed to come and discuss the issues raised and the language used therein. To call pastor Dan on his shit is tantamount to farting in church. And ‘legitimacy’ is compounded by the creation of "Street Prophets, a Daily Kos Community."
Apparently all of us animals here on the farm are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Some may disagree, but that is my personal impression, speaking as a nonbeliever, and my experience on this blog.
All of this is the real effect of playing the "see, no really, we’re religious too!" game, and scapegoating the very people who consistently work for ‘reality based’ candidates who are pragmatists and who we hope anyway, we’re sending to Washington (or any other office) to work on real people’s real problems in the real world.
You know, as opposed to the current administration that puts people onto committees who believe things like prayer is what best to use to deal with PMS. Basing either domestic or foreign policy on one’s favourite pet prophecy, or end times scenario, or the voices in one’s head, or other such nonsense ain’t exactly working out all that great. Yup, call me a proud nonbeliever, but when Bush goes into Iraq because he thinks god told him to, and he holds out a faith-based notion that there were WMDs out there, somewhere, and that the shooting ‘will continue until morale improves’, I just happen to think we can do better.
Did you hear that?
We can do better.
So the oh so hip hot happenin’ ‘2008 answer’? Get the unpopular nonbelievers outta here (but hey, stick ‘em on a phone bank somewhere, they’re really good at doing the ‘behind the scenes work’!) and go tug on some shirtsleeves saying ‘hey Mr and Mrs America, look, we Dems have faith! We got ourselves a candidate with Jesus! It’s ok, you can vote for us now - Democrat really isn’t synonymous with atheist - we ALL know atheists are the REAL enemy here.
Yup, we make a useful someone to point fingers at come election time, so that said Democratic candidate, be it Obama, or Clinton, or any of the rest of ‘em can say, look voter we have more in common with you than we do with THEM, those atheists over there! We’re Christians too! You and me, we got plenty we can work on together, because we have a ‘commonality’. And we all know that faith is synonymous with morality, right? So, we Dems must have some morality, cause hey, look, at least we’re not like THEM, those atheists, over there- the common enemy.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, this little ‘we’re religious too!’ game has had five real world effects:
- It’s got more people babbling about their personal religious testimony and lifetime’s worth of ever evolving faith(s) , because after all, so many people can waste hours (and HOURS) ‘singing the song of me’ all over the net. It keeps people plenty preoccupied.
- It results in an avalanche of dinner table conversations, watercooler chatter, and op-ed pages chock full of ‘heartfelt discussions’ about the role (or not) of faith in government, a marketing buzz that Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and D. James Kennedy couldn’t have accomplished in their combined lifetimes - but which wouldn’t have been possible without their lifetimes worth of work for exactly ‘such as a time as this’.
- Endless pleas for non-believers, and ever just plain ole people to read Obama’s book about his religious evolution/personal testimony (again, see point 2) - a witnessing tool the likes of which evangelists everywhere have to repent of their envy of, ‘cause they wish they had thought of it first!
- The distancing of the Dem party and individual people from nonbelievers, and yes, in some cases our lifetimes worth of political experience. This drives a nice little wedge that cuts people who may have less experience off from those who have ‘so been there done that’, thus ensuring some of us nonbelievers throw our hands up in disgust and walk out, we take our toys and go home, we’re done now, we tried, you behaved like asses when the chips were down, we got fucked over again, and some of us might not be so willing to make ourselves vulnerable like that ever again. Meanwhile, all you pleading for the social acceptability you’re not going to get Dems are going to once again, get to re-invent the wheel. Have fun with that, let us know how it works out for ya.
- An unbelievable amount of energy being wasted in diaries titled things like "atheists get the f@ck outta my face" which actually made the rec list Friday night, I might add, and an unbeleiveable amount of energy being wasted on trying to insist that all atheists are actually believers, that atheism is a religion, and that we are somehow responsible for the deaths of millions. Gee thanks. How productive. Not very rational, but hey...
- ...and most importantly energy, time, attention etc all being diverted from what really matters here, dealing with the mess we’re now really in:
- the fact that we are now a nation that tortures people,
- the fact that because we refuse to make their be any real world consequences for Bushco (war crimes tribunal comes to mind) means they all ride off into the sunset, scott-free and we’re left to try to deal with the mess they’ve made, you know, little things, like the amount of money our great great grandchildren are going to be owing the Chinese thanks to those ‘deficit savvy’ republifucks.
- Awkward ‘little’ details, like peak oil and environmental tipping points that are looking more and more like they’re in our rear view mirror.
- Silly ‘little’ things like what is happening to the people of the gulf coast, or formerly of the gulf coast, access to healthcare, child hunger, etc.
- Pick something of meaning, pretty much anything that really needs to happen in the real world, I can pretty much guarantee, it’s more important than running around pitching hissy fits over the atheist ‘under the bed.’
If you insist on learning the hard way, please at least bother to LEARN this time.
Put simply, many of you are simply too busy dying your hair, clipping your nails, and out buying ‘the right dress’ before ‘his parents come over’ to deal with what’s really happening to our country right now. And that’s cute and all, but there’s real work to be done. So you want to waste time and energy on whether or not atheism is some kinda religion - it’s not - knock yourself out, you wanna chuck me overboard, because ‘you’re in the business of making Democrat synonymous with "religious too"? Give me a break.
That trick never works.
I’d just throw up my hands in disgust and let some of you learn the hard way, but it seems some of you don’t learn, no matter how many times you go through it.
And in the meantime, you’re wasting our time making me the enemy.
This blog represents a subset of some Democrats’ sentiments from across the country (and yes, international perspective as well). Yes, most people are believers of one stripe or another. But Friday we atheists around here went from the barely tolerated, to the mischaracterized/demonized and cussed at AS A CLASS OF PEOPLE, both diaries on the rec list. (Cussed at and told to essentially get out of ‘someone’s space’ after the diarist had first clicked on two atheist’s diaries, then wrote her attack on all of us.)
No, this isn’t a ‘goodbye cruel world diary, it’s a ‘you’re being an idiot, stop fucking around, and get back to work’ diary.
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