hitting the unsubscribe button is totally fine, actually

[amw]

Goddamnit, i have managed to avoid venting my spleen about US politics on LiveJournal for a long time because, honestly, nothing has changed since this time 8 years ago, when almost half of country's voters got whipped up into an anti-immigrant frenzy and cast their ballot for a celebrity conman who has spent his entire, privileged, elite life

Comments

[amw]

Fantastic post, i have nothing to add.

What you said about right-wingers adopting the language of the persecuted gets at something i have wanted to write about for a while but i can't quite find the right way to present it. I floated the theory with a friend of mine on Skype and she's like, nah don't see it. She came up Catholic (as opposed to Protestant), though, so perhaps that has an impact? Basically it was a theory that the reason why western conservatives imagine they are persecuted is rooted in the Christianity-based culture that they grew up in. Because most people in the west grew up in a Christianity-dominant culture they can't see the absurdity of people with all the power complaining about being a persecuted minority, because Christianity itself has the narrative of Christians being a persecuted minority. That might have been the case in the first couple hundred years of the religion when the books of the New Testament were written, but clearly has not been the case for well over 1500 years. But because those books have embedded themselves so deeply in the culture, people can't shake the feeling that somehow they too must be persecuted. My thought was perhaps this is why countries that don't have a Christianity-dominant culture don't have the same weird group of wealthy and privileged conservatives pretending like they're some downtrodden minority. But the idea still isn't fully developed, i can't explain it quite right yet, in particular how the Christian context of the culture still seeps into the worldview of people who are atheist or even a different religion altogether.

[geminiwench]

I live in Mormon Country and LDS folk definitely feel persecuted.
The "serious" Evangelists I've known felt persecuted by Satan/Sin... just in general, and the same goes for the Catholics who were raised on guilt/shame as their neutral base feeling about being Not Jesus/Mary... or being the NEXT Jesus/Mary but like... in secret and therefore doomed to fabulous-but-horrible martyrdom. Jehovah's Witnesses feel persecuted and offended by other religions *existing* at all, and then elevated above everyone else's disgusting and abominable beliefs.

Confuse Christians with Jews for awhile, then feed a few hundred Christians to the lions 1600 years ago,.. sure, that ain't great but... eventually, let the Christians grow powerful enough to murder the families of those who once mighta fed Christians to lions... then let Christians murder indigenous people across Europe, then let them murder each other in an extended sectarian war about wonkish legal interpretations re: Kings and God on/off for a few centuries, and in the meantime let them attempt a series of genocides trying to eradicate thousands of cultures/belief systems across 3 continents for awhile, and then torture/murder other Christians as witches for awhile when the Renaissance gets scary for conservatives, and... then, even after all that bloodletting and retribution and justice and righteousness, it turns out they never get over getting confused with Jews and/or being fed to lions.
Weird.