God Bless America
By John Chuckman
13 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
"I know
of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real
freedom of discussion as in America." Alexis de Tocqueville
The
international view of Bush's election was nicely summed up by the reaction
of a group of my students from China. I teach economics at university
part-time, and many of my students are from China. Lest you think their
judgment clouded by communist ideology, please note the many Chinese
students studying in Canada come from that country's bright, hardworking
business class in the so-called New Economic Zone. American visions
of rabid communists in China are as uninformed as American visions of
realities in most places. These are practical, sensible people.
The topic of the
election came up during a break, and the genuinely puzzled looks on
the students' faces were remarkable. How could America elect such an
ignorant man? was asked by several. To reassure them, I explained that
America, like a frightened puppy, was still clinging to the first human
leg it had grabbed in the darkness.
The explanation,
though accepted with some laughter, was incomplete, but only in detail
and not in substance. It is certainly closer to the mark than many sad
efforts in America which hold that the nation has become somehow a very
different place than it was. While all human institutions change under
the influence of economic growth, there is little evidence of sudden
change in America, only of continued movement in long-established directions.
One of those directions
is a divergence in social values between society at large and Christian
fundamentalism. When societies grow, when new wealth accumulates, traditional
values always come under great stress. This shows in countless ways,
from the changing nature of marriage customs to the institutions by
which a nation is governed. Were this not so, we would still be employed
building pyramids for dead pharaohs.
America's traditionalists
in religion are disturbed by the social effects of economic growth,
although they do not understand the connection with economics and hold
to superstitious notions of people giving themselves over to evil. Short
of a new Dark Ages taking hold in America (an idea novelist Margaret
Atwood toyed with in The Handmaid's Tale), these social changes are
not reversible, but that fact has little impact on the intense, driving
needs of those who base their lives on narrow interpretations of ancient
texts they can't even read.
There is considerable
evidence that fundamentalists are people who suffer from greater-than-average
levels of defects like anxiety and paranoia. You only have to consider
all the screaming, spewing revivalist sermons about damnation and the
twisted nightmares of the Book of Revelations and parts of the Old Testament
to understand the role of fear in fundamentalism. Of course, superstition
itself is just fear's way of explaining the unknown.
Not all Americans
are fundamentalists, not even a majority, but there are enough of them
(something like 40% claim to be "re-born") to form a powerful
swing group in American politics. While America was founded under the
leadership of non-Christian Deists and Skeptics (the true source for
the best part of America's written, although often-abused, freedoms),
fundamentalism has long provided a howling background chorus.
There were two so-called
Great Awakenings in early America, one in the colonial period during
the 1730s and 1740s, and a second in the early Republic at the beginning
of the 1800s. A broad view of history interprets the first of these
as reaction to the influence of eighteenth-century Europe's new freethinking
and skepticism. The second, something of an echo of the first, was fired
to life by fear of new science and technology and the impact of the
Industrial Revolution, to say nothing of intense dislike for foreigners
with different views and Catholicism in general.
The Great Awakenings
were periods of intense evangelical fervor in America, the nation being
then pretty much a backwater where many people lived fairly isolated
lives with attitudes inherited from Puritan forefathers. New thinking,
progress, and change pretty much kept going forward in the world despite
these frenetic crusades, although people in America often did not feel
free to speak their minds during the worst furies.
The social and economic
implications of the Great Awakenings were at odds with another of the
nation's hottest interests. Americans were often described as crazed
over any chance to make money, de Tocqueville, for example, observing,
"I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken
stronger hold on the affections of men
." Making money is
not a pursuit that sits well with setting the clock back, although it
wasn't until the early twentieth century that Freud explained how a
great a role ambivalence plays in human minds.
We are definitely
in a new period of backlash against social change in America. People
want the physical benefits of change and growth - television, jet travel,
electronic organs, and credit cards (the complete toolkit of modern
corporate evangelism) - but they also want to enjoy these with social
relationships frozen in time, established before these things existed.
There would be nothing
disturbing about such confused, hopeless intentions were the people
involved content to follow their chosen path without trying to drag
others along, but they are not. They do not build Mennonite-like communities
to separate themselves from unwelcome modern influences. No, they insist
on changing the country to suit themselves, and increasingly exhibit
a lust to change the entire planet to the same purpose.
Some have characterized
the Bush victory as marking the beginning of a third Great Awakening.
I think there is some truth in this observation. America's fundamentalists
want to escape the social consequences of such inevitable developments
as gay marriage, abortion, and scientific research that begins to peel
back the mysteries of Creation. And the events of 9/11 only reinforced
long-standing suspicion and even dread of foreigners with markedly different
cultures.
God Bless America
is a favorite expression of Bush's, as well as, judging from their bumper
stickers, the more belligerent class of truck drivers. One wonders in
Bush's case whether the words represent a habit akin to saying God Bless
when someone sneezes, a habit he might have acquired during his years
of snorting cocaine with its well-known consequence of nasal irritation.
Of course, the association of Bush and belligerent truck drivers is
not coincidental. Didn't the Teamsters embrace Nixon as their man?
It is difficult
for many outsiders - and that includes a substantial number of Americans
- to understand the use of this totemic expression. Is God being called
upon to give something He otherwise would withhold, or is he being commanded?
In either case, the words resemble the prayers of the selfish and arrogant.
I think what is
intended is simply the constant association of God with America, at
least certain people's idea of America, those who embrace vengeance,
intolerance, xenophobia, and the beauties of extreme selfishness. Cynics
might describe the habit of muttering the words as an unrelenting marketing
campaign to make the unholy seem holy.
Whatever the case,
it does seem God has been handing America something other than blessings
recently. Events from 9/11 to the black comedy of Bush's re-election
after his getting the nation mired in a protracted and pointless war
do require descriptions other than blessings.
But for American
fundamentalists, the words affirm that a genuine man of God is in office
at last, most of them being blissfully unaware that the job of President
is just that, a job, not a religious ministry. Most of them also are
blissfully unaware of how hard their ancestors fought for genuine religious
freedom - their chief ally in the battle being the religious skeptic
Jefferson. Two centuries later, America's fundamentalists are perfectly
ready to do unto others what was previously done unto their ancestors,
that is, to impose their beliefs, views, and attitudes on others.
The fit of fundamentalist
attitudes with America's position in the sphere of world affairs is
perfect, having moved in two centuries from a nation opposing a distant,
arrogant imperial power to being the world's distant, arrogant imperial
power. American fundamentalists' determination to judge and interfere
with the private lives of others, their insistence in believing they
hold the only truth - these attitudes perfectly support the interests
of a smaller, far more privileged group of Americans who claim B-52s
serve as tools for democracy and enlightenment.
Bush may have spent
most of his life peeing on other people, doing drugs, making money in
crooked deals, and generally displaying contempt for exactly the class
of people now devoted to his welfare, but to the fundamentalist mind
the greater the stack of evidence for a destructive and undisciplined
life, the greater is the blessing of its miraculous turnaround. It's
quite a mysterious and unshakeable way of thinking.
As I said, fundamentalists
do not make a majority in America, but when their numbers are combined
with the interests of those now benefiting from astronomical tax cuts
and military contracts, they make a winning coalition. The Republicans'
firm hold on the South - the Ripley's Believe It or Not of Christianity,
being the location of the most bizarre experiments in fundamentalism
- is little more than a long-term backlash against civil-rights laws
of the 1960s. The same folks (they like that word), when called Southern
Democrats, were just as intolerant, obsessive, and xenophobic.