The Vile Nature of Politics as Religion

In the video below, Pat Condell makes an interesting and generally true point about the nature of adult religious beliefs – that they’re indoctrinated early in life and quite thoroughly to boot.

But Pat sparked a keynote – that of the thoroughness of the indoctrination of religion into the very young. That is, when all is said and done, why Sunnis and Shia kill each other just as Catholics and Protestants have been known to do. Individuals learn a religious “style” in their youth and hang on tight.

Our current political system has taken on such religious fervor. Oh, it’s always been partisan, but fueled by the advances in technology, politics has gone stark raving mad. Doubt it? Just turn on the one-eyed brain bandit in your living room and switch the channels from MSNBC to CNN to Fox News. Nobody on the Left can do anything to make those on the Right happy, and vice versa. Neither side has so much as one good idea according to the other. And the upshot of this mania is that people on both sides are saying and doing flat-out goofy stuff. McCain doesn’t want to drill in ANWR, and Obama (“Jesus was a community organizer“) still won’t fully ‘fess up to the fact that the surge worked. McCain jokes with Sturgis bikers about entering his wife in one of their “contests”, and Obama speaks to the “average American family” from a set consisting of a plywood Greek temple.

Speaking strictly for myself, this has all become quite vile. Our agendas (that we’ve so carefully wrapped in our egos) have taken over our common sense and sense of decency. And if we’re not very careful, those agendas are going to put this country in a place it really doesn’t want to be.

Alan Speakman