General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do you think we'll see a female president? [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)they would lose the only thing that gets any of them elected -- their nutty Christian fundamentalist base. The oligarchy presses those "social issues" (read issues of personal morality) in order to attract the votes of the fanatics in our country.
What do you think the Koch brothers care about most: those "social issues" or grabbing all the money for themselves and their wealthy friends in the US?
Those "social issues" are the bait the Republicans use to attract poorly educated, fearful people in our country whose economic conditions remind them daily just how powerless they are.
They go to church not to learn what they should do to bring a loving God into their lives. They don't really believe that in a loving God because why would a loving God make their lives so powerless and intolerable. They believe in a God who is to be feared above all because at any moment their lives can crash around them without their having any say in the matter.
No. Those who vote on "social issues" use religion as a drug so that they can endure the uncertainty and slight of their lives. They go to church to find out what THEY SHOULD NOT DO, not what they should do. They go to church so that they can feel superior to all those sinners out there who seem to be having a lot more fun than God wants them to have. When you are really down, it is important to be taught a set of rules that fool you into thinking that in some areas of life, you are up and those who appear to be superior to you are really beneath you.
The fundamentalists do not go to church to find out how to live better. They go to church to be told that they should be thankful they are not living worse. They go to church to find out how they can "show" all those sinners out there. They go to church so that they can be reassured that they can get verbal stones to throw at all those peole they identify as sinners based on the church's teachings on "social issues." It's not really about "social issues." As a general rule, remember, the divorce rate is higher in states in which fundamentalism is stronger.
"Southern men and women had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than their counterparts in other parts of the country: 10.2 per 1,000 for men and 11.1 per 1,000 for women, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.
By comparison, men and women in the Northeast had the lowest rates of divorce, 7.2 and 7.5 per 1,000, which is also lower than the national divorce rate of 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women."
http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/08/25/divorce.bible.belt/