The religious right movement should be dead for all time

[Erika]

They have been only a rubber stamp to a person who they thought would careen them into rapture. Not only did W not take them to rapture, he ignored the poorest of our society while pandering to the wealthiest. Everything Christ was against.

[EFerrari]

1. The religious right better buy themselves a new compass

and start voting for Democrats or just stay out of politics altogether.

No Democrat has played them for fools or taken them to the cleaners like Ralph Reed did with Abramoff and his racketeers.

And they bought it, hook, line and sinker.

[Erika]

2. Yes, there were a lot of good people who lost their compass

when they voted GOP.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Those people were born stupid, they aren't going to change.

I just hate being dragged down with them because they have accepted the chimp as their savior.

[beam me up scottie]

4. Not going to happen.

Not anytime soon.

Don't forget, they've installed enough of their kind in all three branches to make our lives miserable for decades. Many of the judges they installed have lifetime appointments.

Their movement has been building for decades, it won't just die on its own.

We'll have to beat it to death and make sure it can't come back again. (notice I said "it" as in the movement, not the fundies. SS)

The reason they got another foothold in the eighties is because we thought we HAD beaten them and let our guard down.

Did anyone ever think that Roe V Wade might be overturned in the 21st century?

[NMMNG]

5. Not any time soon,

If at all. They'll no doubt see their betrayal by Bush and his minions as more of the "persecution" they have to endure as the faithful little people they are. Then they'll dig in their heels, come up with a new battle plan and begin their war anew.

[Peace Patriot]

6. I think the religious right movement is largely a myth--a tiny minority

of witch-burners, pasty white male preachers and religious nutballs, who have always been with us, but have been given a BIG TRUMPET, way out of proportion to their numbers, by the 5 fascist billionaire CEO's who control the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. It is unholy alliance of global corporate predators and medieval religious repression. And it will fade into oblivion when, a) we have restored transparent elections, and b) dismantled the corporate news monopolies. The 'christian' right are like derelicts being given a windfall. They don't know how to act. They've never had much political power because they don't DESERVE political power. They didn't earn it through political discourse and democratic means. They've grabbed undeserved attention on the coattails of a disreputable, immoral and unconscionably greedy fascist cabal, that steals elections, slaughters tens of thousands of people without a thought, tortures helpless prisoners, worships money and power as gods, and has nothing but contempt for real Christian values. It was expedient for this cabal to ally itself with this weird and small minority of stupid people living in the 10th century, and to promulgate their views all over the controlled news media, and fund these views with billions of dollars in "think tanks," publicity and paid columnists and "commentators," to create the ILLUSION--and I really do mean that, the ILLUSION--of a far rightwing "movement." I'm not saying these wingers don't exist. I'm saying they represent almost nobody, and never have.

Let me give you just one example of this elaborate fraud--an example that combines several of this cabal's methods. We have two Bushite electronic voting corporations--Diebold and ES&S--now "counting" all of our votes with "trade secret," proprietary programming, on extremely insecure and insider hackable voting machines--the fascist coup that occurred on Oct. 29, 2002, when George Bush signed the "Help America Vote Act," which poured $3.9 billion dollars into our election system, through the fingers of local election officials, right into the pockets of Diebold and ES&S. Diebold we all know about it, by now. Until recently, its CEO was Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer" right up there with Ken Lay). ES&S is a spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by far rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson. Howard Ahmanson also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian" Chalcedon Foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals. How mainstream do you think that is? I suppose if you put it to a vote, you might find maybe 1% of Americans who might think it was a good idea. Most Americans have somebody in their families or among their friends or neighbors who is homosexual. They wouldn't put them to death. That's how truly bizarre this idea is. I think it might be hard to find even 1% of Americans who would want that.

Yet they get one million dollars to promote this garbage. And the guy who gave it to them funded the folks who are now "counting" half the votes in the country under a veil of corporate secrecy. (Another twist: Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship--they are run by two brothers, Bob and Tod Urosevich).

I don't know that Howard Ahmanson has any operational connection to ES&S, but, given his funding of ES&S, and the rightwing color of the election theft industry, and the POWER of the election theft industry to devise almost any election results that it desires, I think it's fair to ask, what sort of people would Howard Ahmanson put in office by devious means, and how would YOU feel about the supposed supporters of those office-holders? Clearly, he would put George Bush in office--a rightwing puppet of such immense stupidity as to be an insult to the American people--and clones of George Bush, Bush's rubber stamp "pod people" in Congress, people like Orrin Hatch and Tom Delay and Bob Ney and Norm Coleman. And what do we, the members of the progressive majority, think of these office-holders? We think OTHER Americans have gone nuts. How could they vote for such frauds? And we feel threatened by what APPEARS TO BE a rising tide of insanity and rightwing nutballery in our beloved country.

The fascist cabal thus creates the ILLUSION of a rightwing "movement." Its purpose is to enact fascist policy--especially lucrative fascist policy for the super-rich--and also, and perhaps most importantly, to demoralize the rest of us, and make us, the members of the great progressive American majority, feel alone and isolated and powerless, in the face of this rather mind-boggling illusion of what America has supposedly become.

But it is little more than money (billions) + stolen elections + a big trumpet given to these nothings, these small-minded, lying, greedy, toadying, pasty white preachermen, and their lunatic minority followers.

I'm not saying it has no reality. We've all talked to Bush supporters, and wingers. And the rich elite of our society has also coattailed onto Bush for the tax breaks. Some people do vote for Bush and Bushites. Some of those who did in 2000 regret their votes. They feel fooled. And even then--before the warmonger and torturer and deficit spender showed himself--Bush didn't win. And by 2004, it took Diebold and ES&S to keep him and his "pod people" in office. They do not represent the majority of Americans. Their extremist policies are abhorrent to most Americans. The opinion and issue polls have been showing this since before the Iraq war. This nutball 'christian' base of Bush's is, at best, about 20% of the population. Add on 10% from the tax break crowd, and you're close to Bush's current approval rating of about 35%. And THESE are the views you see on TV, and hear on the radio, and read in the columns of the corporate news monopoly newspapers. Nutball views. Craziness. At times, at the level of Howard Ahmanson craziness.

These are NOT the views of the American people. But it has often SEEMED LIKE they are. The power of money. The power of monopoly. The power of repetition and illusion. The power to control and narrow the debate. The power to turn political discourse into an ugly circus. And the power to talk of "family values" while Our Lord Bush slaughters tens of thousands of children, parents and grandparents in Iraq without batting an eye.

I'm not saying don't be worried about these extremely dangerous fascists and religious nuts, from the White House on down. We've seen what horrendous evil they can do--thus far mostly to Arabs, although their ugliness hit America directly in Katrina, and with every death of a U.S. soldier in their heinous "crusade" (looting expedition) in Iraq. And if you know any history, you will never be complacent about witch-burners, inquisitionists, torturers, and the promoters of religious "crusades." I'm just saying I think we've been had. We've been fooled. This disgusting thing that we call "the religious right movement" is largely a myth. Its numbers, and its sway over most Americans, are nearly as small now as they were in the 1950s, when they used to meet out in tents in the Mojave Desert, and called themselves "The Christian Anti-Communist Crusade." The only difference is that our Corporate Rulers have generously funded them and given them the run of our public airwaves, and have promoted THEIR ugly snakeoil salesmen into the White House and the Congress of the United States.

[sweetpotato]

7. Well said

I needed to hear this today. Thank you for helping me hope.

[Peace Patriot]

8. You're welcome! And welcome to DU!!!

The demoralization and disempowerment of the progressive majority has been their one and only propaganda victory. They've failed on the war from the very beginning (56% opposed to the Iraq War, Feb. '03), and on virtually every Bush agenda item. The opinion polls show this overwhelmingly. But they HAVE convinced a lot of people that wingers are strong and unbeatable, and progressives are weak and outnumbered. But I am heartened by the vast disagreement with Bush, and have been since I began following the polls before the war. The one that gets me is that 63% of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04). This, despite relentless 24/7 fearmongering and propaganda. The American people have struggled mightily to see through the lies, and to maintain their sense of ethics and decency and lawfulness, despite an assault of propaganda that rivals Stalin and Hitler is intensity. Even this strange stat that 50% of Americans still believe that Saddam had WMDS, and/or had something to do with 9/11, tells me how hard Americans are trying. Despite this disinformation rattling around in many peoples' heads, opposition to the war is now up to 70%! Obviously, a good many people who believe in the WMDs or the 9/11 connection don't believe Bush that either of these things was serious enough to justify a war. Their resistance to Bush is even more amazing than that of typical Democrats, or leftists, who figured Bush was lying from the beginning. They've thought it all through, and decided that Bush EXAGGERATED the threat or the offense, and shouldn't have started a war over it--and has now bungled the occupation as well.

Because I was paying close attention to these opinions, I have never been afraid of America being Nazified. We might be bullied and oppressed, or worse--and those kinds of dangers are not past yet. But Americans buying into it? Nope. We never would. We're never going to see Americans sieg heiling to Bush or anyone else. If Americans can withstand the sophisticated barrage of propaganda they've been subjected to, for five years now, then I think there is much reason for hope. We are not by any means a weak-minded people. That's not our problem. Our problem is our feeling of powerlessness. But I think we are on the point of overcoming that clever bit of propaganda, whatever happens in the coming elections. I think the days of the rigged electronic voting system are numbered. Our next problem may be that Corporate Rule under the Democrats is not a great improvement over Fascist Rule under the Bushites. We clearly need thorough reform of our government, but it's going to take a while to get rid of the non-transparent vote counting and start electing real representatives of the people. We have a lot of things to face--our offensive war machine and its humongous budget, for one, and Corporate control of the news for another. But I am encouraged and hopeful.

[TayTay]

9. This country goes through period of religious revivalism

It is cyclical. It will happen again. Like all other movements, it arises because it speaks to something in the American soul. As the movement gains power, it also gains unscrupulous adherents who use it to further their own agenda and amass power for power's sake. Eventually there is an internal civil war that pits the purists against those who are using the movement for profit and to amass power. Eventually the movement implodes from it's own internal strife.

Wait 25-30 years, the cycle starts again.