By Joe Bageant
Working class whites were happy with their town squares, Christmas season parades down Main Street, crooked councilmen, yokel sex scandals, free libraries and free water and gossip about niggers raping white girls. The Frontier spirit. "Freedom to kill rabbits." Then one day they looked up and, as Internet writer Andrea Black puts it,
They were being squeezed economically and the developed Western World and the US Govmint no longer approves of Betty Joe doin' abortions wearing her tennis shoes. The price of gas ... farms going bust. Mary Jo and so many others -- in prison. Turn on the tee-vee and see teen-age whores dumping on Christianity on Jerry Springer. Unnatural couples gettin' married, with rice and flowers. The Pres f*** in the White House. No, No, and No! G-damm libruls!
There is some truth to it though.
The hubris of the money-making townees who cared nothing about public education, or the cohesion of America, the pay packets of workers, farmer's plight. Sneering and sniping and sipping Starbucks koffee and eating sushi. Who just want to be fed and fed and fed -- salad and corn and squash and beef -- well, we all know who will have the last laugh. The Kristians. Fanciful?
If you take the time to grub around in true working class America, most people will tell you the country is going to hell, and it is because we don't have prayer in school and that the homosexuals are running around getting married and kissing in public. Folks think that God doesn't like this stuff and is punishing us. They will all tell you that you can be rich and successful if you work hard and that God will reward you with money and a new Lexus if you walk with Jesus. I have been hearing this all my life. Nothing new. Furthermore, they will tell you that US has a moral obligation to bring liberty and freedom to the whole world and that they are pretty disgusted that these lucky people to whom the freedom has been delivered are not even grateful. What we need is more control, by golly!
For the political right, a healthy society is one that is "under control." It does not keep manifesting new and diverse social forms. It does not question capitalism. It does not dance with queers and does not see of movies like Buttfuck Mountain. Here's the deal: Heterosexual, two parents households, one marriage per lifetime and a car for everyone in the mortgaged single family dwelling. That's the deal. The only deal.
The dwellers of the right bank gets their bowels in an uproar over anything less than the convention of their own past. The basic argument is, "If we allow change, society will go tits up. The world will end." Women's suffrage, the 40-hour week, integration, all of these were supposed to cause America to come unhinged. The political right suffers the fearful delusion that small-town morality is the way to handle the challenges of the contemporary world, and allows itself to be held hostage by the dark minded hateful radical Christians and young spit-shined fogies with dreams of being another Ronald Reagan or Ray Croc.
The furor among liberals regarding the Christian Right will die down. Liberals, like everyone else in America, easily become bored. But these control seeking Christians are not going away. They've always been cooking away under the surface of our political stew and always will be.
Meanwhile, as we argue these points of the distracting so-called culture wars, the real players have always known the object of the game. They slipped out the back door long ago, but if you squint and look off into the horizon you may see them making off with the national treasury.
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With special thanks to Andrea Black.
JB
