A Modest Proposal: Us vs. Them

As long as I went so far out on a limb this past Sunday night, I guess it won’t hurt to go a little further. The scene of the crime was the comments section of my favorite anti-theocracy website, Talk to Action. It was my first-ever comment on that website, posted in an unusually long comments section. Many of the meticulously researched and well-written articles generate no comments or very few of them, and some of the regular contributors were wondering about that in the brainstorming session that followed this article by Bruce Wilson.


Mostly, though, they were wondering for what seemed like the 100th time how to publicize the acute danger to religious freedom and civil rights posed by a relatively new fundamentalist phenomenon known as the New Apostolic Reformation. The best-known example of the New Apostolic Reformation is Sarah Palin’s Wasilla Assembly of God church. Unfortunately, it isn’t the only one by a long way, because the movement is worldwide and officially nondenominational. 


Since the regulars seemed to be inviting feedback, I finally screwed up my courage to say what I’ve been wanting to say for months, and at Talk to Action more than anywhere else. With all the proofreading and rewriting involved, it took me about three hours to write that comment. I realize it isn’t perfect, but I’m not about to waste all that work and (for once!) the hell with my perfectionism. It’s why so many of my blog posts never get written or posted at all. And one other thing: This way I’ll have a record of my comment if Talk To Action decides it isn’t up to their standards and deletes it.


I’m reposting it here pretty much as originally written, except for adding a few font changes and live links, fixing a few typos and also correcting the spelling of Rachel Tabachnick’s name, which I misspelled earlier. It begins with a quote from an earlier comment following the Bruce Wilson article.



A Modest (?) Proposal


Re “The underlying question is the same for both - why is writing thoughtful, well researched and important content not enough? And again, why do even the most important articles on this site receive so few comments?”


And then, of course, there is the Big Question: How to bring the very real threat posed by the NAR and similar theocratic movements to the attention of the mass media and the public?


I have been following the thoughtful, well-researched work of Bruce Wilson and Rachel Tabachnick and the other dedicated regulars of this site for two years now. I have read with growing alarm their exposes of the New Apostolic Reformation and John Hagee's Christians United For Israel (CUFI) and its unholy alliance with the Israeli extreme right both religious and secular. But for me and others like me to read this material and become more convinced and more outraged than we were already is basically just preaching to the choir. I was already convinced of the dangers of theocracy when I joined this site.


And yet this is the first time I have ever ventured to post a comment here. Part of the reason for that is because I have expressed my outrage at great length on other websites and discussion boards I frequent. But for the last several months (literally!) I have been trying to work up the nerve to suggest what I'm about to propose here, because I know it will sound perfectly insane at first reading.


The religious left has one weapon at its disposal it has never even picked up, let alone thought about using--namely moral certainty or moral absolutism. The same kind--and I mean exactly the same kind!--that the religious right uses.


Think about it. We have Truth on our side. We have Liberty, Growth and Evolution on our side. And what all of that taken together adds up to is that we have GOD on our side!


We are right and they are wrong.


Read that again, and again--until it sinks in. And yes, I know the right says the same thing! It's probably an occupational disease of progressives that we are way too reflective, too nuanced, too self-critical to be effective fighters.


The right is aware of this tendency both in the areas of religion and politics, and they use it against us. The worst thing about progressives--and one of the ways we hamstring ourselves--is that we allow them to get away with it, over and over again. I'm not saying we shouldn't be reflective and self-critical, but we can do that on our own time. It's none of our enemies' business and we don't allow them to make it their business.


I used the word enemies deliberately and for a reason. They have declared us the enemy. They have announced their intention of exterminating liberals of all kinds like rats. As a Jewish feminist with strong Pagan leanings, I can take a hint. I am already their enemy on at least three fronts, and most likely everyone reading these words can say the same thing.


So isn't it long past time for the religious left to launch a counter-offensive, to declare a state of spiritual and temporal warfare against THEM? That would get the attention of the media and the blogosphere like nothing else in the world. After all, the American public and the media love nothing so much as a great action-packed, elemental battle of Good vs. Evil. So that's what we should give them, and we'll get their attention. We are the good guys and they are the bad guys, and we need to get rid of any lingering doubts on that score, because they inhibit our ability to act.


For the record: I am very much opposed to dualism as a philosophical concept. As a universalist (if that’s even the word I want), I have to believe to that good and evil both have their origin in God, because God includes the totality of everything that exists. But as a purely tactical approach as opposed to a world-view, dualism has a lot to recommend it.


What I'm recommending specifically: For someone a lot more Web-savvy than I am to launch an elegant, beautifully produced and very comprehensive website to be called something like "Reclaiming the Seven Mountains." It's extremely important to use not just the same tactics, but the same symbolism that the Right uses. That way they are sure to get the message.


I've looked at the corresponding theocrat (NAR?) website, and I believe that some of the "seven mountains of culture" are Religion, the Family, Government, Education, the Arts...okay, that's five of them right there. It's been awhile since I looked at it, but I believe one other is Economics.


The point is that all seven are under attack by the forces of theocracy, and have been for the last 30 years or more. And the whole time progressives have been watching and documenting the steady encroachments on our civil liberties and religious freedom in growing horror but have been ineffective for the most part in stopping them, or even slowing them in any significant way. The important thing is to put the NAR and other dominionists on notice that we are no longer simply defending ourselves but counter-attacking--actively pushing back against their encroachments. And YES, I do understand that this is a dangerous project, but the danger is all the more reason to do what we should have done decades ago.


The good thing is that our enemies have given us several excellent step-by-step manuals of what they've done and how they've done it. The strategies that worked for them will work even better for us. After all, we are right and they are wrong. Therefore we can afford to be completely upfront about both our methods and our goals. There is no need for their deceptive Machiavellian tactics because we aren't Machiavellians. But aside from lying and other forms of deception, I think we can adopt most of their strategies.


So I suggest we adopt most of the tactics that have worked for them--including spiritual warfare and so-called "spiritual mapping." I'm serious. Places like Sarah Palin's Wasilla Assembly of God church and Rick Warren's Saddleback Church could be labeled "theocrat strongholds," and cities like Newark and even threatened states like Hawaii could be labeled "enemy occupied territory."


They have probably done most of the spiritual mapping work for us already--all that would be necessary would be to exchange their labels for our own.


Three reasons I hesitated for before I ventured to make this "modest proposal" in public. (1) I was afraid everyone would think I'm crazy; (2) I didn't want Bruce Wilson and Rachel Tabachnick and others to receive any more death threats than they already get; and (3) I don't want to start receiving any death threats myself. So far I haven't gotten any simply because nobody has ever heard of me, and I'd like to keep it that way as long as possible. I'm not even a very prolific blogger, just a nebbish with a long history of spouting off on interfaith discussion boards.

Just To See If I Can Do It...

I just spent the last six hours trying to reconfigure my blog, and almost nothing I tried worked.  That's basically why I decided to post tonight--I was determined to have something to show for all that frustration and wasted time if it killed me!  Besides, it was getting embarrassing that I haven't put up a new blog post in over four months.

I still can't believe I'm doing this, though--actually typing a post into the draft window of my blog with no clear idea of where I'm going with it.  The process itself isn't new to me.  I've typed literally thousands of notes into the draft windows of my favorite discussion boards over the years.  Often these posts are quite long, and some are pretty good if I do say so myself.  But for some reason I've had cold feet about doing the same thing on my blog.  Everything had to be written beforehand in MS Word, and then rewritten and edited endlessly.  The entire process could take up to two days, and I could never set out to do that.  That doesn't mean that I can't do it, or that I don't do it.  I get carried away with my writing constantly.  But it has to sneak up on me from behind because I can't plan to do it.  Everyone who knows me is familiar with my famous last words: "This is just going to be a short e-mail..."

This time, though, the words don't have to carry the entire meaning of the post, so it isn't necessary to put quite so much effort into them.  The main reason I decided to post tonight without anything definite to say was to see if I could get a couple of my recent pictures posted  For months I've been looking at wonderful pictures on other people's blogs and desperately wanting to post some of my own.  But I didn't know how to go about it and was too embarrassed to ask anyone.  Now I'm really embarrassed, because as it turns out it's quite easy...a lot easier than trying to reconfigure my blog!  I just didn't know that because I've never tried it before.

These pictures were taken a couple of days ago on Marshall Avenue in north San Bernardino, a few blocks from where I live.  The top picture is one of the two ancient California pepper trees in the parkway, one on each side of a driveway.  I'm fascinated by the gnarled, Baroque, high-relief trunks of those trees and always notice them every time I walk past them.  For months I've wanted to do a study of them, photographing them from every angle, but most of the time I'm on my way to the store when I pass them, thinking about a dozen other things and don't have my camera with me.  This time I had my camera, and the top picture was everything I hoped for.  And I'm not finished yet--I have great plans for those pepper trees!

Also on Marshall Avenue there is a flowering tree growing in someone's yard not far from the pepper trees.  I don't know what kind it is, but from the shape of the flowers it seems to be a relative of the jacaranda,  The flowers are hot pink instead of purple, and it blooms about six weeks earlier than the jacaranda.  I missed the flowering season completely last year and never got a picture of that tree at all.  The one picture I took of it was disappointing and didn't capture its full glory, but I think that's because I had my mind on the pepper trees.  But I loved the picture of the fallen flowers on the sidewalk, so that's what I'm posting here.

I've missed so many of the early spring flowers, but I'll still have another chance at the unknown tree with the hot pink flowers.  And one way or another I'll learn its name.  And the orchid trees are in full bloom now and the jacarandas have yet to bloom.  I'll still have another chance at all of them.