Holding back the anger - rant
Nov. 3rd, 2004 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wildravenIn college, I was once told by a muslim friend from Egypt that the United States is not a democracy with complete separation of church and state. Instead he felt that the United States was an extremely tolerant Protestant country. When one looks at it that way, things fall into a different shape.
Our Puritan/Calvinist roots lend to the idea that government has the duty to legislate moral behavior like the Consistory of Geneva so many centuries ago. Jon Calvin, Jon Knox, and Oliver Cromwell all felt government must stamp out swearing, public drinking, theatre, provocative dancing, card playing/gambling, etc.
Only once in the history of the United States has there been a non-Protestant elected as President.
If we are religion-neutral, this is upsetting. If we are a tolerant Protestant country, then we are open to allowing people who are Catholic, Jewish, etc. to run for president.
Did *anyone* think the former Confederacy would ever go for a Catholic, even if he chose a running mate from the South?
We will always close down the country for Christmas but never for Yom Kippur. If one even tried to honor Ramadan, they'd be stoned in parts of the country.
People will always insert things like "under God" into the Pledge of Allegience and singing songs praising God will just seem to automatically go with loyalty to the country on July 4 and the 7th inning stretch.
I sometimes want to scream.
I sometimes want to bash people's heads in while telling them what beliefs come from votes, what was simply made up and when, what was misinterpreted, and what original documents actually said.
I wish there was a place somewhere truly free for intellectual questions, where science and not myth ruled, where intelligence was looked up to and praised, not feared and hated, where people did not care if their neighbor was gay, straight, black, white, religious, non-religious, kinky, vanilla, tall, short, young or old... where the only thing that mattered was whether or not they were a good person.
I don't like it when any one group or political party dominates.
Why do people make up shit about some God they invented NOT wanting gay people to marry, blacks and whites to marry, kids to celebrate Halloween, us to spare the environment for our kids (James Watt felt God wanted us to use up all the Earth before Rapture comes soon.), anything...
...anything you want that you can not justify... just claim God wants it.
I want to scream at the world.
Our Puritan/Calvinist roots lend to the idea that government has the duty to legislate moral behavior like the Consistory of Geneva so many centuries ago. Jon Calvin, Jon Knox, and Oliver Cromwell all felt government must stamp out swearing, public drinking, theatre, provocative dancing, card playing/gambling, etc.
Only once in the history of the United States has there been a non-Protestant elected as President.
If we are religion-neutral, this is upsetting. If we are a tolerant Protestant country, then we are open to allowing people who are Catholic, Jewish, etc. to run for president.
Did *anyone* think the former Confederacy would ever go for a Catholic, even if he chose a running mate from the South?
We will always close down the country for Christmas but never for Yom Kippur. If one even tried to honor Ramadan, they'd be stoned in parts of the country.
People will always insert things like "under God" into the Pledge of Allegience and singing songs praising God will just seem to automatically go with loyalty to the country on July 4 and the 7th inning stretch.
I sometimes want to scream.
I sometimes want to bash people's heads in while telling them what beliefs come from votes, what was simply made up and when, what was misinterpreted, and what original documents actually said.
I wish there was a place somewhere truly free for intellectual questions, where science and not myth ruled, where intelligence was looked up to and praised, not feared and hated, where people did not care if their neighbor was gay, straight, black, white, religious, non-religious, kinky, vanilla, tall, short, young or old... where the only thing that mattered was whether or not they were a good person.
I don't like it when any one group or political party dominates.
Why do people make up shit about some God they invented NOT wanting gay people to marry, blacks and whites to marry, kids to celebrate Halloween, us to spare the environment for our kids (James Watt felt God wanted us to use up all the Earth before Rapture comes soon.), anything...
...anything you want that you can not justify... just claim God wants it.
I want to scream at the world.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-04 01:12 pm (UTC)You do yourself a disservice by lumping a widely diverse population of people into one limited stereotype. And I really thought you were above that sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-04 05:48 pm (UTC)And I am certain T did not mean all Christians, just like he did not mean all southerners (which are another group unfairly linked together), however I don't understand why GOOD Christians, southerners, etc don't smother their brethren who vote for Bush with large pillows!!!! :-)
I am a Christian
Date: 2004-11-04 06:17 pm (UTC)Re: I am a Christian
Date: 2004-11-04 10:21 pm (UTC)It is my belief that anyone who mixes with others regularly turns out fine, but those who live only with others like themselves learn stereotypes.
Duh, I have relatives who are Southern Christians who are good people. But sadly, they do not always appear to be in the majority.
There are protestants out there who would chose a "born-again" Saddam over Mother Theresa just as there are Catholics who would chose a "converted-to-Catholicism" Saddam over Martin Luther King Jr..
I have no anger towards people who voted based on their salary being over $100,000. Selfishness, although I do not like, I can at least understand.
It is those who voted for someone who has cut so much funding to Veterans Hospitals and benifits to Disabled American Veterans and claim they do it for "moral" reasons.
Jerry Falwell does not represent the whole country not all protestants, nor even all Baptists. He does, however, weild more power than someone with his bigoted and paranoid views should.
And obviously, I'm not going to ever smother my brethren with large pillows. Small ones, sure, but not large ones. ;-)
Re: I am a Christian
Date: 2004-11-05 04:31 am (UTC)Maybe we can try out my new George Bush punching bag??? Its full of hot air too.
Just some data
Date: 2004-11-06 06:01 am (UTC)3/4 of Born-again-Christians voted for Bush. (Obviously not all, but a very large percent)
Their stated reason was "issues of moral values"
When asked what their top moral issues were:
#1 - gay marriage
#2 - abortion
#3 - stem cell research
They said that gay marriage dominated the other two.
1 in 5 voters in this elections identified themselves as born-again-christians.
Yes, obviously not all born-agains feel this way. Heck, we were even discussing today about the huge split in the Baptist Church between the Northern Baptists who favor rights for gay people and Southern Baptists who staunchly oppose it. It is continueing a rift which began with slavery.
To further examing the voting, when all states were broken down by counties, the hugely apparent lines drawn on rural vs urban voting, regardless of State, coast, or North/South lines caused extreme pause.
If feels as though, right now, our country is more divided than it has been in quite some time.
For the first time in a while, I find myself looking at large masses of Americans and asking, "Who are you?" I feel more and more like I have little-to-nothing in common with large areas of our country. This bothers me. I don't like this feeling. I try to rationalize and say it is just different views, the differences are only on a few issues. We're all good people inside...
...yet people who follow Jerry Falwell scare me.
I don't like being scared.
Please, do NOT take this to be a condemnation of all or even most Christians. Just the ones who organize and vote in blocks based on hatred.
Our country needs to find some internal common ground.
I'm not sure where that is.