Cry Me a River

Today, the Green Knight (who, if he isn’t on your blogroll and/or daily reading rounds yet, seriously should be) quotes and responds to George Will, who’s concerned about the Dominionists’ hold over his party in a column called The Christian Complex:
[M]any Christians are joining today's scramble for the status of victims. There is much lamentation about various "assaults" on "people of faith." Christians are indeed experiencing some petty insults and indignities concerning things such as restrictions on school Christmas observances. But their persecution complex is unbecoming because it is unrealistic...

Religion is today banished from the public square? John Kennedy finished his first report to the nation on the Soviet missiles in Cuba with these words: "Thank you and good night." It would be a rash president who today did not conclude a major address by saying, as President Ronald Reagan began the custom of doing, something very like "God bless America."
While in some way it’s reassuring that the secular (or at least, non-Dominionist) Right is starting to express some alarm about the ever-tightening chokehold the Dominionists have on the GOP, my overwhelming reaction was pretty much boo-fucking-hoo—you slept with ’em, don’t complain now that they’re still in your bed. No matter how deep down I reach into my reserve of sympathy for those besieged by the Dominionists, I find very little for members of the GOP who were perfectly content to win elections on the backs of the nuts, just so long as they never expected any power within the party. Now that the nuts are tired of being used, and want to collect on three decades’ worth of IOUs in the form of wingnut legislation prohibiting rights that the old guard GOP quite enjoys right along with the Left who fought for them, I’m not about to feel sorry for those who have to pay this suddenly demanding piper.

The Green Knight adds:
As Thomas Frank has explained, the job of the religious right for the past couple of decades has been to be lower-class, rank-and-file Republicans, fighting the culture wars during election cycles, then quietly demobilizing while their elected representatives did nothing on cultural issues but worked instead to dismantle the welfare state. The role of the religious right was that of useful idiots, and the upper class of their party was content to treat them as such.

But now, they have all but completely taken over the Republican Party. … That has got to make members of the secular right like Will very nervous indeed.

The Green Knight says, the hell with 'em. They set all this up for themselves back in the late 70s, when they courted the fundamentalists to get Reagan elected. Until then, most fundamentalist American Christians never voted because it was too worldly. Then, the Republican Party convinced them to get politicized -- and man, have they ever gotten politicized. The secular Republicans thought they could ride the tiger; now, they're ending up as tiger chow. Somehow, the Green Knight just can't bring himself to sympathize with their plight.
The hell with ’em indeed. George Will and his ilk deserve neither our sympathy nor our direct support, though of course we ought to continue doing everything we can to counter the influence of the Dominionists on our government. But to offer any kind of condolences to members of a party who have fallen victim to their own opportunism and greed would be foolish, and far more than the guards who let them in the door deserve. This is a bill that’s not ours to pay.

In talking with people like Will before the election, begging them to vote for the party that actually would pursue fiscal conservatism, state's rights, and an intelligent foreign policy, the reason they cited for voting for Bush was because he gives them tax breaks.

The Democrats might raise my taxes.

I heard it over and over. Sure, they were concerned about the Dominionists' hold on the party, and sure, the Iraq War wasn't really working out as planned, and sure, the deficit was spinning out of control...but they didn't want to pay a single friggin' penny more; they weren’t interested in kicking in their fair share, not to help strengthen the safety net that keeps our country on a strong foundation, not to alleviate our massive fiscal crisis, not even to help pay for the war that they supported. So they voted for Bush. And now some of these same people are freaking out about the Dominionists? Tough. Nothing’s happening now that wasn’t happening during Bush’s first disastrous term, wasn’t patently obvious before the election. The Terri Schiavo debacle, Justice Sunday, and the rest—none of it came without warning. They chose to ignore the signs, so this is what they get, the stingy bastards.

We’re all suffering because of your choices. So suck it up, bitches. You’re on your own.

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