Persecution complex

[GreenPartyVoter]

I am very troubled by the persecution complex that Americans (and particularly RW Christian Americans) have.

Anyone have any thoughts on how we came to have it? Because I feel that it hasn't been around for more than a generation or two. (Although, I have only been around that long, so perhaps that explains why I think that. *g*)

[Sweetpea]

1. Started around Christ's Crucifixion.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Well, I am looking more for the manifestation of the American

experience of it. Are you saying our country has felt persecuted since its formation, then, on account of the Christians already here>

(Note, I and many other liberal Christians I know do not seem to suffer from these complexes like the RW Christians do.)

[mzmolly]

5. They actually suffer from mental illness.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml
Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression

Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

Uncertainty avoidance

Need for cognitive closure

Terror management
"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

[Tosca]

3. They hate us for our

freedom!!

[Liberal Veteran]

4. Well, I'd say it started around the mid 70's.

That was about the time the we started hearing from right wingers about the liberal media which signaled the beginning of their embrace of victimhood.

It also oddly coincided with the shift in policy of the Southern Baptist Church to the extreme right and more political activism in that church.

The church was always a bit on the conservative side, but it was about that time I recall (being in a Southern Baptist family where church was compulsory) that we started hearing about how everyone else was out to destroy Christianity and everything from distortions to outright lies where taught in Sunday school and from the pulpit to "prove" it. It was about this time I started seeing petitions going around in church protesting a movie that supposedly was going to portray Jesus as the ultimate insult (a homo) and that rock groups and Dungeons and Dragons were all part an organized effort to lure the young into worshipping Satan and the schools wanted everyone to become atheists.

I suppose in retrospect, the bully type behavior of the right wingers when they got their hands on real power was predictable and probably from their point of view it just payback for those poor oppressed conservatives living in victimhood.

At least that's how see it. It's pretty pathological.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Pathological, indeed.

[Nikia]

7. Wasn't that Colonial?

Many Christians that came to the colonies that became the US were persecuted in their home countries for practicing their brand of Christianity. Then the Colonists were persecuted by the British. Then there was a revolution. The US was founded by persecuted people.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. Some of the founders were persecuted, yes, but certainly not all.

And by the time we get to the actual founding of America, we had very sane men like Jefferson and Franklin around. I never got a sense from them that they felt persecuted except by King George.

[AndyTiedye]

9. Puritans Came Here Fleeing "Religious Persecution"

and proceded to set up a really nasty theocracy of their own.
The rest of the New England states were colonized by people
fleeing the Puritans.

[salin]

10. Intentional political framing... esp started with the fundamentalist

cadre of politicized (and powerhungry) televangelists.

Apparently one of the last stages to the end times is massive political persecution of Christians (or so they claim). Thus to frame how dire things are... how much we "need to give money" and how much we need to support these folks politically as well as monetarily... is because the endtimes are near... and only a few will be "saved" (or disappeared.)

Thus the language started beng used very, very intentionally.

Roy Moore uses it well.

The thing is - it is laughable - given what they are using as examples of persecution. Not being able to impose their views politically on others... or legislatively on others = persecution (not at all what is refered to in the Bible as signs of the End Times... but the crowd they are attempting to pander to aren't exactly engaged these days in much critical thinking about the messages being sent to them from the pulpit nor from faux news.)

Real examples from history of religious persecution most often have to do with threat of life, but also have to do with confiscation of property, inability to hold jobs, and other methods of trying to expel those members of said persecuted group from the country.

Some examples:

-Pogroms in Russia and Europe
-The Inquisition
-The Holocausta
-The Crusades
-To some extent the mass exterminations under the Kmer Rouge (killing 1/3 of the entire population of the country
Maosist Campaign (some against intellectual - but also persecution on religious practice.)

Note that the situations that RW extremist Christians cite as signs of political persecution have nothing to do with attempts to prevent them from exercising their religion, have nothing to do with preventing them homes, jobs, or life based upon their religous beliefs. Indeed I can not think of a single example where I have seen the term used where there was anything except a denial of an attempt to impose THEIR beliefs upon the general population - in ways that are almost Orwellian - in that there seems to be a claim of "religious persecution" when they are prevented from attempting to legislate or create political pressure to build the infrastructure to begin exercising real religious persecution upon those who do not hold their same religious beliefs.

All that said - I think that the use of the term has been very intentional - and is pandering to their followers to create a sense of urgency (due to the End Times connotation) - and is used by those who framed it (granted now many use it in the same way) to amass more monetary and political power.

[salin]

11. I have been thinking about this phenomenon a while

the term gets used in our local paper - about the most trivial of matters or with blown up (false/urban myths) stories as examples... one day on a commute I heard a fundie minister on the air talking about the End Times and the political persecution of Christians that is to preceed it. Suddenly it made sense to me - the use of the framing of issues as "religious persecution".

I would appreciate any comments on my little theory about this (the post above) - does it make sense or am I barking up a wrong tree?

[merh]

12. Scopes Monkey trial and prayer in school struggles.

God forbid that any one should tell the youth of America that we evolved from apes. It really began there, intellectual reason versus religious dogma. (God created the world in 7 days) Once scientists, historians, anthropologists, etc, were able to determine that the world was much older than what the Bible said and it took much longer to form than the standard 7 days, then it all began to freak out the religious scholars.

Add that to an inability to comprehend the meanings of the bible and instead lazily use it as it were an instruction manual, you get all sorts of missed messages. Go out and preach my message to the RW means to scream down anyone who does not agree with you and or interrupt the bible as you do. It has nothing to do with living a life of love, loving all as your brother, teaching by example and not mere scripture verses.

Which, by the way, if Agent Mike is reading this, please pass on to weedboy and his band of repukes that he needs to find another scripture verse to quote. If I hear him say how can I remove the speck in my brothers eye if I have a log in my own, I will :puke: He put the speck in his brother's eye while twirling the log in his own and spouting his greatness, the hypocritical, evil demon.