Forum Post: The New American Political Religion

Strictly My Opinion by John Liming

I remember when I was a kid no one seemed to worry about whether someone was Republican or Democrat or whatever.

One thing was certain! My interests centered around the woodland areas near my home town and the old swimming hole down at the creek during the long, summer days. Things were simpler back then. Things were less hurried, less frantic and less cluttered.

The issues of government corruption, corporate greed, decadence, crime and immorality were as far from my mind as the east is from the west. I sometimes wish I had never grown up to experience some of the things going on in America today. There is very little left of the America I once knew. I am getting old now—too old to be of any use to anyone, but I still have a voice and I intend to raise it for as long as I can in defense of that honor, dignity and beauty that America was a long time ago and can be again if people will only wake up and smell the roses.

I still cry tears of joy when I see the American Flag or when the Presidential Helicopter flies overhead. I don’t care who is in the helicopter. I know only one thing: The person in that chopper is the duly elected President of The United States and that is all that is important to me. I know that whoever is in that helicopter is the man the People elected and that is good enough for me.

Somehow, by some strange and ill-defined method, it seems that many of the people on the far Right Extreme have succeeded in changing the entire political landscape in America. In case no one remembers, there actually was a more peaceful time when the atmosphere in the United States was not being smoked up by that eye-burning fog of Conservative hate rhetoric spewing out on some of the airwaves.

There was a time when everyone who went to church went there to actually worship God—not to sign the latest petition for some election or to get a snoot full of why Liberalism is so evil from the pulpit. I am sure sometimes that if Jesus had a grave, He would certainly be turning over in it by now after what some of the insensitive, unknowing and unconcerned nit wits on The Far Right have tried to do to both religion and the nation.

Sometime between 1960 and 2001, something went haywire and more and more normally reasonable people began to latch onto every word of some of the more visionary (Nut Case) preachers in the Religions of The Right Wing.

The message coming off the pulpit changed essentially from “Repent Of Your Sins” to something more like, “Vote Republican Or Go To Hell.” Sometime between then and now, it seems that among some people, being a Liberal became the actual, Scriptural “Unforgiveable” sin.

Continue: http://www.thejeffersontree.com/the-new-american-political-religion/