Last night in my post-election daze I was wracking my brains trying to
come up with any way out of this rat-trap. I think that that may be
speaking to the majority in this country in their own language – morals
and religion. Of course, some people may think that that is, again,
allowing them to set the debate just like Bush set the tone in the
presidential debates by allowing Kerry (or Kerry only allowing himself)
the defensive position. But I think that ultimately, re-directing the
religious narrative in this country instead of ignoring it and hoping
it goes away may be our only course of action.

The only thing I can think of to do personally is to start by creating
a website where religious voices–pastors, ministers, etc. who are
anti-war–can out-Jesus and out-moralize these people and get them not
to think twice, but feel twice about how their lives and their stories
have been hijacked. I or like-minded people would need voices to be
heard and people who are willing to donate a domain, webspace and
design time.

Pass this email on far and wide. These are things we should at least be
thinking about.

Jason


We Are the Moral Majority

I'm writing this the morning after Black Wednesday. Here in New York
the hurt and defeat – I'm talking physical pain – are palpable. Even
the sky went dark.

The thing we most feared happened. A lot of people are trying to get
used to the idea of being resigned to this regime for the next four
years. A lot of people, especially young people, are planning to leave
the country.

One thing is for sure: what we saw yesterday is the complete failure
of the left to get through to voters. We appealed to reason. We
uncovered the Bush administration's dealings, their lies and their
personal interests. We showed them the fruits of their labor in graphic
detail. We showed them that despite everything that Bush and the
Neo-Cons say to them, in the end they will take their money and send
their children to die for no REASON whatsoever.

And you know what? The people who re-elected Bush saw and heard and
registered that. It even gave some of them pause – but in the end, that
didn't matter. Because Bush BELIEVES. Bush is religious. Bush is moral.
And most of all, Bush holds the Word of Christ as true and
incontrovertible.

Religion is the opiate of the masses – or it can be, if wielded by
hands who mean to use it to enslave and cynically manipulate. It can
also be man's highest aspiration – to find meaning in life, to find
goodness and truth, even to surrender to higher power.

Imagine the left in this country from the perspective of the
overwhelmingly religious majority of those who voted for Bush this last
Tuesday – those who did so because Bush speaks to the unshakeable faith
that they hold so deep within them, that they have carried with them
from childhood or conversion, that they gauge their own actions and
those of everybody else on this planet by. Look at the shameful,
unwitting self-parody that is the left through their eyes, the living
Jack Chick tract that is left-leaning America. Living like rats in
cities with no space to breathe or appreciate the land or the simple
things. Snide, arrogant, belittling, totally convinced of intellectual
superiority and unwilling to believe in something higher. Our pundits
and champions are sarcastic comedians, coddled actors and misogynist
rappers, not serious political thinkers. From their eyes, we teach our
children that God does not exist (condemning them to hell), that people
descend from monkeys, to spit on the traditional family and its values
and that it's perfectly OK to kill unborn children, all while laughing
at those evolutionary throwbacks who are so unsophisticated that they
actually believe the Word of God and the moral code laid down in the
Bible.

How can you expect to argue with the Bush administration and those who
support it when everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like
mocking laughter, and from somebody so backward and unaware of the
hollow void at the center of their life that they haven't accepted
Jesus Christ as their personal savior, to boot?

This country was founded on the separation of Church and State. We
might yet realize this eminently sane ideal. Unfortunately, since the
Reagan years and especially in the last four, this separation no longer
holds true. But the time to lament a country that was more respectful
of individual differences is not now, not when the average American's
view of reality has been almost wholly constructed from the King James
Bible, FOX News and the Left Behind series.

Now I was watching CNN after the election results came out and, over
and over again, I saw people being interviewed on why they cast their
vote the way they did. And Bush's supporters overwhelmingly said that
they ticked his box because Bush is a man of faith. Despite the fact
that their decisions are rapidly returning this country and the world
to the 13th century, these are not consciously wrong-doing people
(neither, I would go so far as to say, is Bush, although I won't speak
either for his cabinet or for the Neo-Con elite in this country). All
of these people have put their faith in something huge, a transcendent
force bigger than any single one of them, a force that for many of them
is the glue and meaning of their lives and their protector and
salvation in their moments of need, fear, doubt and darkness.

And these people's faith – so pure and simple – is being callously
manipulated to serve the interests of an unsustainable and murderous
political and economic system, and moreover, a truly Satanic elite that
does not care one whit for the people or the beliefs that it pays lip
service to in order to hold on to its mandate to steal and kill.

So stop thinking in terms of hypocrisy. Stop thinking in terms of
rationality. The only way that we will minimize the irreversible damage
done to our planet and our civilization in the next four years is to
speak to the Bush administration, and even more importantly, the people
who support them, in their language. To show them how the narrative
they hold to be true has been manipulated and played upon. We have four
years. So instead of giving in to despair or separatism – which will
almost certainly allow the last semblances of democracy-as-we-knew it
vanish into the night – we need to work with what we have. We need to
ENLIGHTEN BUSH.

The most immediate thing that can be done in this respect is to begin
assembling voices. Let's do it. We need pastors and ministers writing
and on TV, explaining to Bush and the Neo-Con jackals that are raping
this planet what Christianity is REALLY about. WE NEED RELIGIOUS AND
MORAL VOICES SPEAKING TO THE "RELIGIOUS" AND "MORAL." Give them
something that's not so easy to dismiss. Give them something that goes
straight to their heart, not their brains. Give them something that
speaks in the language that they hear in the middle of the night when
they lay awake with doubts as to whether they're doing the right thing
or not. We need to out-moralize and out-Jesus them. We need to give
them scolding father and mother figures. Give 'em their own medicine
and remind them that Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Organize a deeply religious, anti-war voice in this country and give
it the mountain to give its sermon on, on TV, on radio and on the web
and we'll start to turn back the tide of inhuman violence that has been
perpetrated in the name of religion. There's no reason even to be
limited to Christianity, although it needs to be the primary mode of
argument.

This is going to take a lot of organizational effort but it could be
one of the best – the only – ways to lighten the burden of this
administration on our planet, ourselves and the generations to come.

Religion is not the problem – religious fundamentalism is, and that's
across the board. Christianity and Islam are both religions of peace,
as our President has pointed out, and are also highly sophisticated
methods of human liberation once one gets past the totally literal
interpretation and begins to explore past the surface – so what
happened to all the True Believers? The message of Christ has been
hijacked and used for political control and manipulation since before
that message was even written down. And they're hijacking it still,
right now – but I have faith in people to be good and not follow the
lies, when that good is framed in a way that people are prepared to
listen to. And not in the way of the politicians who spout the language
of faith while setting this world on fire.

Because in their assuredness that they are following the decree of
Heaven, they are swiftly turning this planet into a living hell.

Let's take back the hearts and souls of the nation. The Kingdom of
Heaven could be now.

–Jason Louv