A Word about the Religious Wackos
Who the hell are these people, and where do they come from?
These self-righteous fundamentalists are really starting to piss me off. It used to be enough to ignore them but now that they not only form the core of the GOP base but also flex real political muscle and organizational prowess, they've become a real threat to secular government. The worst thing is that when they turn violent--like these zealots in Texas--they don't receive nearly the attention that, say, a Muslim zealot would receive. Because the Christian Right has made moral blackmail their calling card, media outlets are terrified of ever pissing them off, lest they lose viewers and advertising dollars, despite the fact that the fundies already have their own media universe running parallel to the usual media conglomerates.
It isn't hard to single out the extremists from ordinary Christians, but it does take the moxie to admit that religious extremists are religious extremists, no matter what sect they represent. And unfortunately the most militant Christians are the ones who have the networks and megaphones and who are always, always, the loudest to tell the rest of us that we're going to hell. These people DO NOT represent the majority of religious sentiment in this country, but part of their political strategy is to inflate their influence to dominate the conversation.
It isn't debate they want. If that were the case, they would be exposed for the hypocrites and charlatans they really are. They want obedience to authority--theocratic authority--and to establish a Christian nation in place of the constitutional republic we have now. I consider that extreme and radical and a danger to the republic. But because they're white protestants, they do not receive the negative attention they deserve. And like so much else that is broken in our political discourse, the fix lies in restoring the news media to its proper role as adversarial, critical and unafraid to speak the truth. There is no other way.