you’re in my web now

I’m a big, big fan of Mr. Maher. He’s been among my variety of staples for liberal propaganda for a long time now.

However, last week’s show provoked some thoughts that have been rattling around my brain since the last presidential election. In short, I find his name-calling unconstructive.

As you may or may not know, more often than not will Mr. Maher take the opportunity to call religious folks “stupid” (or some derivative thereof). I know he’s not the only non-religious person to think or say so. My hero Jon Stewart and his crüe implied soon after the election that middle-Americans were a bunch of retards for re-electing Bush.

Having been raised in the Bible belt and lived in NYC since 1999, I may have a relatively unique perspective of the fiasco that’s been this country since Bush has taken office. Let’s look at the people who voted for Bush (an informal study) from a cynical, secular POV that’s an alternative to Mr. Maher’s:

First of all, I think it’s lazy to conclude that faith is the belief in an “invisible” nothing nobody someone made up. Clearly a god ties people and their heritage into a way of life that aids their survival or it wouldn’t crop up in so many civilizations in one form or another. So it’s simply not going to make the effect you want to venomously reject a society’s version of faith openly (not to mention the example set by the hypocrisy of wanting people to be all open-minded while you yourself are not).

A lot of working-Americans endure long hours, moderate pay, and poor health while barely providing for their families—not quite fulfilling their American dreams—and they tend to rely on faith in God to fill a void of what they haven’t achieved. I can only venture to guess this has grown organically from being a country of generations of religious folks who came from ancestors who were religious.

I’ll patronize the citizens of the red states further by pointing out that the people in charge of re-electing Bush are sheer geniuses and we must respect them for what they accomplished. GWB was re-elected because he was accessible, relatable, and sure wasn’t calling them stupid—even in the shadow of his blatant affront on their well-being. So again I’m suggesting that the majority of middle-Americans were duped out of naïveté and lack of energy to care about anyone else.

(Which doesn’t necessarily make their fanatical behavior or ill-informed decisions okay, but should, if nothing else, remind us that their electoral responsibilities shouldn’t be taken for granted.)

Couple all this with a fierce pride that results from their hard work and their children who look up to them… and you get a whole bunch of people who staunchly reject any asshole who judges them for their way of life.

Let’s learn from this. The faction that got Bush elected clearly has a handle on social engineering. Not perfectionists, obviously, as we’ve seen with Delay, Rove, and the WMDs, but we could say they’ve gotten it down to a Nazi-esque T.

Either way, is calling the people falling for it stupid the way to make things change? Do we call masses of people susceptible to starvation and genocide stupid too? It may offend you that I compare what’s happening in America to what happened in Germany, Rwanda, etc. But what I propose is so wrong with this country is the clear disconnect from the reality of humanity that’s accomplished through keeping people occupied with themselves. I think America has perfected the art of glamorizing inherently evil things. It’s what makes us American!

Distraction. Preoccupation. Complacency. And just enough happiness or the promise of it to keep people from getting angry enough to do anything. A self-absorbed, ego driven cultural design is keeping our minds closed, not just religion. That’s a symptom of the cause and such a sensitive, well-connected issue that any attack on it is the key ingredient to self-annihilation.

I’m disappointed in the democrats for pretending to be the people’s party, all the while exuding elitist bullshit. If you really want them to vote for your candidate, it is not a good idea to approach them with judgments instead of your own version of compassion, moral conviction, and relatability. Anyone on this side with the power of influence should not waste it preaching to the choir, but reaching out to people who would probably agree with you if you wouldn’t keep them from listening by calling them stupid.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 4:20 p and is filed under politiks, anthrobiology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.