I've remarked several times (on the old, defunct God and Consequences blog) on the need of religious right-wingers to manufacture persecutions in order to keep their movement intact. Fundie neotheocons (okay, that's fundamentalist neoconservative theocrats, not necessarily in that order but always of that tiger-stripe) LOVE to pretend the whole world is against them.
Case in point? Tom Delay thinking he's Jesus.
No, seriously.
Disclosure time: I came across this link while reading Digby and marveling at some Easter cuteness. I'm not surprised DeLay has to dress himself up in borrowed blood-drenched robes in order to maintain some psychic integrity with the shameless pandering to profit and privilege he spends his days on. I noticed back in Catholic school that the more outwardly martyred and aggrieved a "religious" person claims to be, the more they're trying to hide their pursuit of a) filthy lucre or b) sex.
Did you ever see that documentary Jesus Camp? It's a fine examination of the politics of pleading persecution. Some of the most chilling scenes are watching little people crying and moaning as their parents and other adults whip them into a frenzy of hatred toward "oppressors"--i.e., anyone who thinks the separation of church and state or a woman's control of her own body is an okie-dokie idea. The mechanism of believing your group to be a persecuted few, in possession of the fever of moral righteousness, is intensely powerful.
I'm sure plenty of fundamentalist Christians do feel persecuted. They see shameless secularists "having fun" and "getting away" with it, while the fundie is chained to a rigid worldview and stringent mores. The strain of unnaturally rigid moral codes has to find an outlet somewhere (and if you doubt this, just page back through any Freud you care to name.) Part of that outlet is believing oneself to be a suffering martyr and actually getting a charge off the idea, sexual or otherwise.
But enough of that. The perception of being persecuted is far too useful for the just-right and especially the religious right to give up. Despite the massive amounts of men, money, material, and organization the religious right can put into clipping civil liberties and enforcing their worldview on the rest of us, they still have to perceive themselves as a small band of the righteous, awash in a sea of hostility. There are several reasons for this.
It is extraordinarily damaging, to the right or the religious right, to think that perhaps the vast mass of Americans don't give a red bullseye about their hysterical screamings. To whip up public sentiment, then, they constantly play at being Pauline being tied to the railroad tracks. "HELP us! Those dastardly LIBERALS are PERSECUTING us! NEXT they will COME FOR YOU, because they are GODLESS!" Stirring up pity is a tried and true propaganda ploy, one that works so beautifully and tallies with redneck America's need to feel protective of something. (Don't holler, y'all. I like rednecks. I'm referring to those the late great Molly Ivins collectively christened "Bubba.")
Next, of course, is the DeLay Effect. It's okay to shamelessly lie, break ethics rules, and engage in behavior that at its very least is damaging to the social fabric and at worst is actively sociopathic. It's okay because we're the persecuted few obeying a Higher Law. No doubt the Wehrmacht felt this way during the Blitzkrieg or Operation Barbarossa--and no doubt the Red Army felt much the same way during the drive to Berlin. No doubt suicide bombers feel the same way too.
You get the idea. Any excess, any lie, any smear or outing of our own spies, any hideous tampering with the Constitution or the levers of justice is okay. It's in God's name, and we're his chosen ones. Right?
The idea of being persecuted martyrs also makes the cost of such behavior--social disapprobation or, God forbid, actual jail time--into a positive badge of honor the martyr can glory in. (I am tempted to bring up the early-centuries Christian writer who pleaded with martyrs to stop being so damn smug about their impending deaths, but it would take too much to dig it up. Anyone?)
That is, of course, if there is any jail time. Since the right is the party of the rich*, little things like perjury, obstruction of justice, treason, and flat-out lying, cheating, and stealing get teensy slaps on the wrist. Even the fall guys get a plush pillow to land on. The velvet-lined sackcloth and designer ashes must be a bitch to bear, I bet.
Christianity, especially in its more rabid forms, has traditionally needed an "other" to define itself against. The religious right, soaked in more or less rabid forms of fanatic evangelism, is more prey to this at most. The pressure-cooker emotional pitch needed to whip your volunteers into staffing endless phone banks (not to mention envelopes) and playing dirty to get your candidate into office needs fuel to run on, and what better fuel than the breathless sense of enemies at the gate? Megachurches don't run on bland. They run on the ersatz catharsis of tent-revival plus MTV.
To come directly to the point: there is no persecution of the religious right, or even the just-plain neoconservatives, despite how loudly they scream. It is the perception of persecution that is important to create the conditions by which the right can prop itself up and camouflage its true self--that wing of human politics which coalesces, sooner or later, around the interests of corporations and profit margins, or as they put it, the "status quo" and "tradition."
By which they mean, "we stay rich and untaxed, and everyone else stays poor." The real tragedy is that so many of the rank and file believe in the myth of this persecution, and foster it with all their might, making such insufferable bigots of themselves that they drive away any rational friends they might possess. If that isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy, I don't know what is.
* You mean you didn't know that? Just follow the money, honey. Who benefits when the Rabid Right is in power?