CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS BUILT ON SUBURBAN DESPAIR

CHRIS HEDGES, ALTERNET - The engine that drives the radical Christian
Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American
history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the
growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans,
who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by
the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn
apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that
America was a place where they had a future.

This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in
the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where,
lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply
isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily
manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is
a worker's paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of
Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the
warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of
purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and
worthwhile. . .

In the United States we have turned our backs on the working class, with
much of the worst assaults, such as NAFTA and welfare reform, pushed
though during President Clinton's Democratic administration. We stand
passively and watch an equally pernicious assault on the middle class.
Anything that can be put on software, from architecture to engineering
to finance, will soon be handed to workers overseas who will be paid a
third what their American counterparts receive and who will, like some
45 million Americans, have no access to health insurance or benefits.

There has been, along with the creation of an American oligarchy, a
steady Weimarization of the American working class. The top one percent
of American households have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent
combined. . .

The danger of this theology of despair is that it says that nothing in
the world is worth saving. It rejoices in cataclysmic destruction. It
welcomes the frightening advance of global warming, the spiraling wars
and violence in the Middle East and the poverty and neglect that have
blighted American urban and rural landscapes as encouraging signs that
the end of the world is close at hand. . .

All radical movements need a crisis or a prolonged period of instability
to achieve power. And we are not in a period of crisis now. But another
catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, a series of huge
environmental disasters or an economic meltdown will hand to these
radicals the opening they seek.

[Hedges is the author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the
War On America]

http://www.alternet.org/stories/46908/

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