Reply #19: Religious Factors [View All]

[kurt_cagle]

I think there's another profound difference between the Vietnam War and the present. The evangelical Christian movement has gone from being barely a factor to being one of the biggest factors in the polarization of this country. At his height, Richard Nixon was never considered by his followers to be one step from God. Bush's followers are -- many see him as the incarnation of Christ on Earth in the 21st century, and they see him leading them into a theocratic "heaven" where all of the Godless heathens will be interned or even killed outright.

This is a factor that is often hinted at but not mentioned outright in most of the recent media analyses that I've seen of the campaign. The religious fundamentalists feel that they are within a few years of achieving total dominion, at which point they can freely persecute the gays, the witches, can move women back into the kitchen and make minorities subservient once again. They want this country to be one where you MUST sign a loyalty oath that binds you as a "Christian" in order to do anything from voting to holding public office to seeking employment. Once all of the Godless have thus been purged, then they will use the US as a platform to do the same kind of conversion on the rest of the world.

I grew up in the early seventies, helping my father repatriate both soldiers and refugees in Hawaii after the fall of Saigon. We talked a lot about what was going on in the country, but in general most of the division was more about believing whether or not the administration was doing the correct thing. This deep seated Dominion politics is very new, and in some ways the most terrifying aspect of the whole Bush ascendancy, because these people are not motivated by logic but by faith, no matter how misplaced that faith may be.