I'm afraid that my initial reaction to this latest Pew poll on religion and politics was a tad inelegant. Now that I've had the chance to look at the
numbers and to read this fuller
synopsis from the New York Times, it is now clear to me that I should have never so cavalierly dismissed the
forty-two fucking percent of the country who believe in a strict interpretation of Genesis.
As a Democrat, I recognize that my party needs to be more "friendly" to religion, like the Republicans are.
We need to work harder to exacerbate the already obscene gap between rich and poor, because poverty acts as a moral fillip to inspire the poor to better behavior and more prayer. We need to be much more aggressive in waging war--we certainly, for one, need to utterly destroy the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord our God hath commanded us (those Hivites, especially--haven't we all had enough of them?). We need to begin to do everything in our power to destroy the environment, because this will hasten the arrival of Christ our Lord for the whole harrowing and winnowing thing, which we Democrats definitely don't want to be on the chaff end of. Clearly, we also need to abandon a woman's right to choose under any circumstances, promote Protestant Christian prayer for at least an hour every school day, throw out Darwin and most of the rest of the science curriculum altogether (because who really needs science anyway, when we have both the bomb and the Lord on our side?), and come up with some sort of platform that really communicates our rabid adherence to Old Testament values, a Hammurabi's Code for America, or something along those lines.
Not that any of this will get us any votes, at least not in the short term--we'll have to prove our commitment to cutting off the hands of thieves over the long haul. At first, the Christocrats will smell a rat, of course, no matter how sincere our contrition, how fashionable our sackcloth, how pungent our ashes and stinging our whips. They'll see our change of heart as a cynical electoral ploy, and ignore us altogether for at least the next twenty years.
A few Democrats will still get elected to some offices, obviously, on the state and local levels, and it will be up to these pioneers to prove our mettle. If we somehow win a mayoralty somewhere, then I recommend dusk-to-dawn curfews, public floggings of lewd women and naughty children, and a law requiring all men to be armed at all times. We won't win any governorships, but we should be able to sneak a couple of men (all candidates, except Hillary Clinton and Mary Landrieu, will hereafter be men) into a state assembly or two, maybe even get someone on a school board somewhere. These people will be powerless, of course, but they will have to be loud and powerless--they will need to call for the immediate segregation of the schools, and perhaps it would be better just to call for the segregation of the entire populace of the given state into three cities each of its kind, right after they call for a law banning the eating of the camel, the hare and the coney, for they cheweth the cud but divideth not the hoof, and therefore they are unclean to you.
If the Republicans go for it, great--we'll have allies in the fight to Restore America to its Biblical Heritage; if they blanch, it will only be a matter of time before the country starts to question just who is the Party of God around here, and at that point we'll strike. If we have any money left. Or we'll depend on Jesus to just miracle our asses some money to run a nationwide campaign, massive voter registration drives, ad after ad after ad casting Republicans as heretics and Pharisees and ourselves as the voices of those crying in the wilderness, ready to come in from the cold, like a thief in the night, to join our beauteous souls with the righteous souls of the people and finally create that shining city on a hill this land was meant, from time eternal, to be.
Amen.
The MOQUOL--I Can Save You, America!