Revolutionary!?

Me, a revolutionary!? Yes, my mom believes that I'm a revolutionary, that I want to overthrow the gov't and all that. But the truth is, I liked this country during the Clinton Years. If you want to talk about revolutionaries, talk about Jesus Camp and Borat, when the Chief Justic of the Alabama Superior Court and the director of the rodeo are blatantly theocratic. According to some people, my aunt's boyfriend's Catholic brother and an online friend, the Jesus Camp brainwashing routine has always happened, only in smaller sects and on the fringe, out of public sight. It's only thanks to the last 4 presidents (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Tsar Nikolay Bush II; Clinton because his delicious sex scandal and the CR's 'restore integrity to the Oval Office' crap [though who has integrity now! I wish it were a sex scandal!]) that these "fringe" dwellers and underground Bolsheviks burrowed out to gain control. On three channels (including CNN!), programs are running on what used to be considered fringe beliefs: Falwell is on CNN, Faux is talking about the resurrection, and History has recently begun giving credence to End-Times fanatics and ran a lengthy series of "investigations" pertaining to The DaVinci Code. Oh joy.

I want what Thomas Jefferson wanted, though hold the hypocrisy. I would like it if America was an international intellectual melting pot, where thinkers from all around the world would convene in one place, where...ahh what the hell? In reality, the lowest sewer-dwelling reptiles in the heirarchy of anti-intellectualism, like Ann Coulter and James Dobson, weild their Becky Fischer-trained child-footsoldiers against something that they truthfully know NOTHING about.

My mother believed that the kids in Jesus Camp and others like them would recover soon after exposure to the almighty Huxleyan Glass Teat, that "they will rebel when they find out," but was explained by the Catholic mentioned earlier that "few people ever recover" from early-age indoctrination. Such activities have always happened, yes: In places like Nazi Germany. Who would have ever thought in America, the Land of the Free, etc?

The problem is, as the Bolsheviks put it, "politically conscious"1. It wouldn't be so frightening if the Jesus kids never learned of the democratic system, which their instructors hate with so much Christian Passion. Lauren Sandler, who wrote books recently on Jesus Youth Movement, said in an ABC interview that Kids on Fire and its brothers are going to have "a negative impact on the country's future"2. Music to the Republican party's ears, a haunting requiem for a country that was so great and the citizens whose lifestyles will be tossed into the bonfires alongside the Constitution.

And we know what is going to happen, it's a convention and formula. Revolutionaries taste power, power corrupts and those in possession of it act hastily for the infinite expansion of the power they hold at the wanton expense of the residents.

I think that the political Christians are most similar to the Bolsheviks, perhaps not so much in their ideology (though the Proletariat was undereducated as well), but in their behavior and methodology.

They were ruffians, blatant hypocrites who merely wanted to change the class system upside-down. After Lenin and Trotsky, the proletarian "intellectuals" were about as intelligent as average 8th graders. They essentially lowered their standards of intellectualism, if not did away with them. Their intellectuals, save Lenin and Trotsky, were merely drilled with slogans and sayings, not what they meant or how to achieve them. They were very fiery and, when power was within sight and competition with other socialist factions grew fierce, the Bolsheviks resorted to terrorist tactics. Boris Pasternak wrote in Dr Zhivago, "The war [WW1] had killed off the flower of Russian manhood, now there was nothing but rotten, good-for-nothing rubbish left...And Russia, too, was a manageable girl in those days, courted by real men, men who would stand up for her, not to be compared with this rabble nowadays"3.

In the 90s, we had abortion clinic bombings that the government did not pay attention to, acts which the government has forgotten, partly because those bombers are indirectly in power! The RW Christians are less intelligent than 8th graders, not because they are "born with it," but because intellectual capacity is not stressed, and merely repeat those same types of slogans and the same arguments that their parents and teachers and leaders spoonfeed to them. And what is to happen if they gain power? We have a model for that, too: 1970s Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini.

The RW Christians seek not to overthrow the bourgeosie, but to overthrow the intellectual "elite" that has "oppressed" them. In truth, they are not oppressed, they are not hunted down with dogs and jailed, etc. They are actually quite allowed to do what they do. The problem becomes (as it is a problem now) that they seek to unravel our fragile democracy in place of their Old Testament government, and tyrannize (as expressed in Borat and Jesus Camp) over what they believe to be evil: The very freedom for individuals to live as they please so long as they affect no one else.

The irony: Many theologians, Muslim and Christian, believe that "Allah" and "God" are the same entity. The "Allah" that flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon and beheads journalists and blows up innocent people is the very same "God" that America turned to so willingly en masse. Its very funny, pleading to your oppressor as you would a benefactor. However, the RW Christian belief that God is punishing America is valid under this premise: Under Islamic law, women have no rights. In America, women have many rights. Under Islamic law, women's sexual deviance is punishable by death. Our law is, realitve to Islamic law, indifferent to sexual activity. In Islamic nations, homosexuals are immediately detroyed. In America, they are allowed to live but are still relatively oppressed. See the connection? God disdains minority freedom.

The catch is that one would have to take parts of the New Testament, as well as small sections of the Old Testament completely out. Jesus is an escape clause. Being that only 22% of RW Christians have actually read the Bible, this isn't a big issue for them4.

Works Cited:
1. Pasternak, Boris. Dr Zhivago. Wm Collins & Sons. London. C. 1958: Boris Pasternak lived in Soviet Russia from before the Revolution and his novel seeks to be as realistic as possible. The rest of the paragraph is not taken from the novel, just that quotation. Also of note is a review of
A Study of Bolshevism: Author of review: David G. Smith in The Journal of Politics © 1955 Southern Political Science Association found at http://www.jstor.org/view/00223816/di976494/97p0596n/0?frame=noframe&userID=9597ce5e@wpuni.edu/01cce4406500501bc3993&dpi=3&config=jstor

2. Harris, Dan. Film Shows Youth Training to Fight for Jesus. ABC News. September 17, 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2455343&page=2

3. Ibid. p. 310

4. Altemeyer, Bob. The Authoritarians. University of Manitoba. C. 2/26/07. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/