In response to the diary Unchristian Coalition is Kaput, I posted a comment that included the statement, "I don't think the Christian Right is in its last throes, even if I calculate it like Cheney does the Iraqi insurgency."
As I sat reading some more comments, I remembered a passage I'd come across recently while re-reading a favorite book of mine that gave me hope - and made me think all is not as bleak as it looks.
This realization has changed my thinking - and made me more optimistic about the future than I have been in a long time.
This diary is to offer all Kossacks a foundation to build their own hope upon. It means some MAJOR changes in thinking that may be hard for you to do. But, it will be worth it:
- Cheney was more right about how long final throes can last than we were
- Time is not like a river flowing but like a tropical ocean grinding during a hurricane season
No, I am not crazy. But I will be mixing metaphors and piling on the analogies. Stay with me, and be enlightened and encouraged as you read more below the fold
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Italo Calvino is one of my favorite authors. His fantastical novel, The Baron Among the Trees is set in the mid 18th century in Italy amidst the political and economic changes happening Europe and the Americas - building of nation-states, the Enlightenment, beginning of the Industrial Age, the decline of the aristocracy and rise of the middle class, etc. You know, all that that stuff and more you had to study and school and promptly forgot.
But, is it really water under the bridge? Not at all. I think we should view our times from the perspective of Calvino and see it as "history that is to come". In this new paradigm, it's the Christian Right/Conservative Movement that is in its final throes and Cheney's time frame is too optimistic by a decade or two!
Calvino has his narrator comment about the times he is describing (the story is told like a flashback/memory):
"... life was dominated by conflicting ideas as often happens in periods of transition. The turbulence of the times makes some people feel a need to bestir themselves, but in the opposite direction, backwards, rather than forwards..."
It got me thinking, this paragraph.
I have felt marginalized and depressed as I have experienced and read about the conservative political and social changes in my lifetime and viewed them as unfortunate possibly permanent retreats from the advances in social justice we made in the last 100 years.
But, not anymore. Let's perceive and take action based on the idea that the stridency of the Right is a good sign - a sign of desperation by a movement that realizes - subconsciously or consciously - that its hold and influence on society is doomed to fail inevitably and ultimately.
Just like kingdoms and monarchies and aristocracies gave way to the rise nation-states, more democratic governments and stronger middle classes.
Just like the levees that gave way under the onslaught of the rain and ocean in New Orleans - a matter of time and circumstances.
We are certainly in turbulent times - socially, politically and economically - comparable to those of the mid-18th century. We too have issues and tension surrounding many of the same BIG issues of the 18th century, but developing in a distinctly twentieth/twenty-first century way:
* Religion: conflicts between religion and secularism, religion and government, fundamentalism and politics, religious polarization, Christianity vs. Islam, evangelical fundmentalism vs. more tranditional Christian sects
- Economics: widening economic class pressures, great changes in the basis of national production and economics (industrialism giving way to the information age), poverty, urbanization
- Politics: rise and fall of nations and supra-state federations (Soviet Union, Communism, European Union, China, competing political and economic systems, intertwined (democracy, oligarchies, autocracies, capitalism, socialism, communism) social justice, individualism, human migrations, globalism, human rights, environmentalism, privacy
- social welfare: role of government in educating the masses, purpose and goal of education, individual rights/human rights and health care
I know I have not included all the current tensions - just a few that have been noticeably active in the U.S. in the last few years).
Certainly, many Americans - Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike- have begun to perceive the U.S. as being socially and politically conflicted (visually represented by the colors red, blue and purple).
I have believed that the U.S. is growing more conservative after a brief period of liberalism / progressivism - a change that I do not think would be beneficial to the majority of people in the U.S. or to the generations that come after us. I have felt this to be in conflict we my the great liberal and progressive movements that grew during the 20th century.
Sometimes I have hoped that these liberal/progressive perspectives and approach to problems would prevail- but haven't been able to articulate HOW or WHY this could happen in the face of the last 25 years of right wing growth in political power. Calvino has helped me do so.
This movement toward conservative fundamentalism and extreme (social) conservatism - viewed through Calvino's eyes - is but as a (tmeporary) backlash to the great social and political changes of the 20th century.
To list just a few of these great changes: New Deal, Civil Rights movement, 60s, (peace) movement, feminism, diversification of U.S. population and work force, more humae labor law, government as a force for social justice, change from industrialism to information age that loosening of control of ideas from the religious/political leaders and activiism to the masses with the rise of the Internet, urbanization of the country, and the great migrations within the U.S. and into the U.S.
History can be described as the story of the struggles between conservatism (maintaining the status quo) and progress (change).
According to Calvino's analogy, conservative fundamentalists are like the nobility and aristocracy fighting to maintain their doomed way of life in the 18th century.
We can use this construct to energize and mobilize ourselves. Liberalism and progressivism represents progress - the move forward. I believe change is more natural than things staying the same because our universe is full of natural and human generated forces.
I believe movement forward, fueled by momentum, is more natural than stopping and reversing course (moving backwards) or standing still (conservatism) because we live in a universe full of natural and human generated forces.
Now to the hurricane reference. (this isn't very well thought out, but I thought it timely).
These historical movements are not straight and constant like the water flowing in a river. It is more like the ocean water moving across the ocean during a hurricane season.
We are experiencing a social, political and economic hurricane. I don't know if we are at the outer edges, in the calm, quiet eye (doubtful) or smack in the eyewall with the most destructive winds and rains. Nor can I venture a guess how wide the storm is - but I know that the weather has changed and will change again, that there will be periods of calm between hurricanes and in the middle of hurricanes, and that there are many storms to experience.
Now, hurricanes do make progress as they move slowly across an oceanmove toward land, even as we get whipped by strong rotating winds that blow counterclockwise! (opposite direction) Our period of turbulence - our time's hurricane - may indeed be a Category 5.
Athletes know that performance and success is dependent not just on skill and talent but attitude. Let's approach the work that we do positively and embrace the idea that we have time and nature on our side, but that we cannot sit still and expect everything will work out.
We must be proactive and move forward with our agendas and action plans. Let's be prepared and proactive to take on what those counterclockwise conservative winds throw at us so that we will be in a better place once the hurricane plays itself out.
(And for those of us who believe in supreme being - since God created nature, and we have nature on our side - we have God on our side!)
So don't be discouraged! We can decisively and proactively move forward through this difficult transitional period with the belief we have history, conviction and (natural law) on our side.
Poll below (first time doing a poll - I hope it looks okay!)