Cripped from Aishe's journal . . . J,nothing personal.
W. and Karl played up western movie stereotypes. After
9/11, the rugged frontier myth, the hunter/Indian-fighter
hero in a war of civilization against savagery worked
better than ever. But this White House's frontier is not a
place of infinite progress and expansion, stretching
society's boundaries. It doesn't battle primitivism; it
courts primitivism.
Instead of the New Frontier, Karl and W. offer the New
Backtier.
Even as a child, I could feel the rush of J.F.K.'s
presidency racing forward, opening up a thrilling world of
possibilities and modernity. We were going to the moon. We
were confronting racial intolerance. We were paying any
price and bearing any burden for freedom. We were
respecting faith but keeping it out of politics. Our
president was inspiring much of the world. Our first lady
was setting the pace in style and culture.
W.'s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities,
stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing
off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts
with faith. We're entering another dark age, more
creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than
postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new
reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid,
regressive reality. Their new health care plan will
probably be a return to leeches.
America has always had strains of isolationism, nativism,
chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism. But most
of our leaders, even our devout presidents, have tried to
keep these impulses under control. Not this crew. They
don't call to our better angels; they summon our nasty
devils.
Jimmy Carter won the evangelical vote in 1976, and he won
it in Ohio. He combined his evangelical appeal with a call
for social justice, integrating his church and laboring for
world peace. But W. appealed to that vote's most crabbed
insecurities - the disparaging of the other, the fear of
those godless hedonists in the blue states out to get them
and their families. And the fear of scientific progress, as
with stem cell research.
When William Jennings Bryan took up combating the theory of
evolution, he did it because he despised the social
Darwinists who used the theory to justify the "survival of
the fittest" in capitalism. Bryan hated anything that
justified an economic system that crushed poor workers and
farmers, and he hated that the elites would claim there was
scientific basis for keeping society divided and unequal.
The new evangelicals challenge science because they've been
stirred up to object to social engineering on behalf of
society's most vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the sexually
different.
Yet the Bush conservatives do their own social engineering.
They thought they could toughen up the American character
with the invasion of Iraq. Now they want to reshape the
country on "moral" issues - though their morality seems to
allow them to run a campaign full of blatant distortions
and character assassination, and to mislead the public
about the war.
Back in 1994, Newt Gingrich said he wanted the government
to mold the moral character of Americans and wipe out
remnants of the "counterculture McGoverniks." He got
derailed, but now he and his pious friends are back in full
cry, messing with our psyches and excluding themselves from
the rules they demand others follow. They'll eventually do
themselves in, but will they do us in first?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/opinion/07dowd.html?ex=1100960943&ei=1&en=a9f3722ad474cfb1
9/11, the rugged frontier myth, the hunter/Indian-fighter
hero in a war of civilization against savagery worked
better than ever. But this White House's frontier is not a
place of infinite progress and expansion, stretching
society's boundaries. It doesn't battle primitivism; it
courts primitivism.
Instead of the New Frontier, Karl and W. offer the New
Backtier.
Even as a child, I could feel the rush of J.F.K.'s
presidency racing forward, opening up a thrilling world of
possibilities and modernity. We were going to the moon. We
were confronting racial intolerance. We were paying any
price and bearing any burden for freedom. We were
respecting faith but keeping it out of politics. Our
president was inspiring much of the world. Our first lady
was setting the pace in style and culture.
W.'s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities,
stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing
off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts
with faith. We're entering another dark age, more
creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than
postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new
reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid,
regressive reality. Their new health care plan will
probably be a return to leeches.
America has always had strains of isolationism, nativism,
chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism. But most
of our leaders, even our devout presidents, have tried to
keep these impulses under control. Not this crew. They
don't call to our better angels; they summon our nasty
devils.
Jimmy Carter won the evangelical vote in 1976, and he won
it in Ohio. He combined his evangelical appeal with a call
for social justice, integrating his church and laboring for
world peace. But W. appealed to that vote's most crabbed
insecurities - the disparaging of the other, the fear of
those godless hedonists in the blue states out to get them
and their families. And the fear of scientific progress, as
with stem cell research.
When William Jennings Bryan took up combating the theory of
evolution, he did it because he despised the social
Darwinists who used the theory to justify the "survival of
the fittest" in capitalism. Bryan hated anything that
justified an economic system that crushed poor workers and
farmers, and he hated that the elites would claim there was
scientific basis for keeping society divided and unequal.
The new evangelicals challenge science because they've been
stirred up to object to social engineering on behalf of
society's most vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the sexually
different.
Yet the Bush conservatives do their own social engineering.
They thought they could toughen up the American character
with the invasion of Iraq. Now they want to reshape the
country on "moral" issues - though their morality seems to
allow them to run a campaign full of blatant distortions
and character assassination, and to mislead the public
about the war.
Back in 1994, Newt Gingrich said he wanted the government
to mold the moral character of Americans and wipe out
remnants of the "counterculture McGoverniks." He got
derailed, but now he and his pious friends are back in full
cry, messing with our psyches and excluding themselves from
the rules they demand others follow. They'll eventually do
themselves in, but will they do us in first?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/opinion/07dowd.html?ex=1100960943&ei=1&en=a9f3722ad474cfb1