Religion: Still Being Used as a Wedge.
Ahhh, nothing wakes me up like the smell of wingnut in the morning.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is one of those crusty old historical revisionist fundiecons who thinks the way forward is to regress. Like many on the right, he’s a gay-hating, anti-intellectual xenophobe who has the gall to suggest/holds the delusion that Christians are being oppressed and their values diminished.
Today I read that he has attacked Barack Obama for “deliberately distorting” the bible and having a “fruitcake interpretation” of the constitution. Actually, the full quote is that Obama is “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.”
What the crispy crap? Hey, that sounds familiar! Kind of like supporting wars in the middle east as a way to hasten Armageddon, or suspending your literal interpretations of God’s direct words to allow yourselves to support the death penalty, or telling each other to be Christ-like, yet vote for the political party who is traditionally hostile to the poor and consistently favors the rich. Somebody’s theology is confused indeed.
At least he appears to understand that the bible is indeed something to be interpreted by using the word “understanding,” though “traditional” is highly subjective. He goes on to say “[Obama] is dragging biblical understanding through the mud,” confirming yet again what we already knew about fundamentalist mindset: only my interpretation is the correct interpretation.
In light of that, it’s not so difficult to understand their fascist tendencies, considering their refusal to tolerate disagreement, let alone dissent. I won’t even bother with his statement about constitutional interpretation. The common fundamentalist delusion of authority with regards to anything constitutional would be comical if it weren’t so damn scary.
Dobson apparently didn’t have much of a defense for his opinion, since he changed the subject by reminding everybody that Obama is pro-choice and abortion is the only issue that matters, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, OBEY, all your base are belong to us, etc. Cheap.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am
You have the uncanny ability to hit the nail right on the head! When I read about Dobson’s remarks this morning, I thought all of these things as well, and then ended with reassuring myself that at least they accepted Obama as a Christian and didn’t state incorrectly that he is a Muslim! Yeah, so now they are attacking his Christianity? Sore losers!
June 24th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Unfortunately, when some Christian wingnuts say they are “oppressed”, they mean that
1. Others dare to publicly disagree with them and
2. They are not given a preferred position in society.
Gee: our country guarantees freedom of religion and grants their churches tax exempt status, all the while letting them benefit from things like roads, police and fire fighting protection. THIS is oppression???
We should all be so “oppressed”! :)
June 24th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Well, GA, they can’t attack him because he’s black, even though they want to. They also can’t effectively attack him on the basis of policy considering the mess we’re in. So it’s back to Conservative standard operating procedure: character assassination.
Can’t win on the merits? Then let’s try to convince people not to believe anything the other guy is saying.
Ollie — I remembered that old chestnut from my pre-enlightenment days (as I like to call them). If we acted like we were the victim, it gave us something to rally around. “How dare they impede our right to make the taxpayer-funded public sector force our religion on everybody? This is America.”
Sad to see things haven’t changed much.