I have just finished reading" C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy", by Jeff Sharlet, the author of the National Bestseller "The Family."
On Page 89 of C Street, the author contrasts Evangelicalism --with an eye to "saving" individuals -- to its less-well-known plan to engage in "benevolent subversion" as a means of achieving political transformation (read that “takeover”) without conflict.
Addressing those of us who are outside the realm of "Family/Fellowship" influence (and this includes far too few of our politicians in both major parties), Sharlet says: “Inasmuch as the rest of us accede to that seductive idea, inasmuch as we cling to the myth of harmony at the cost of democracy, we become collaborators. Not in the rise of fundamentalism, but in the exchange of democracy for stability."
On Page 284 of C Street, Sharlett describes meeting a veteran turned street preacher, who describes the plight of the poor:
“Compassionate Conservatism,” he scoffed! Poor people need something for this!” He rubbed his belly as though he were a good-luck Buddha. “You sit there and listen for decades, or centuries, while some rich guy says, “Hold on awhile.” Well, after a while you get fed up, you know?”
The politics of that year are old now, but the problem remains the same, the real culture clash of American life. It’s between the essence of fundamentalism – paternalism, authority, and charity – and the messy imperatives of democracy, “the din of the vox populi, “once derided by Abram Vereide.**
It’s the difference between false unity, preached from above, and real solidarity, pledged between brothers and sisters – the kinds who are always bickering. It’s the difference between the harmony of a politics with few options and less imagination, and the cacophony of believers and unbelievers gathered together. Gathered, that is, not by the narrow borders of “common ground” -- a euphemism for the stronger faction’s conventional wisdom – but by a commitment, grudging or willing, to disagreement: “the noise of democracy” as President James Buchanan (1857-1861) called the American sacrament of arguing, his failures myriad but for the high regard in which he held dissonance.
**Founder of The Family
In spite of their many delusions, the Teabaggers have a point in terms of their impatience with being told to “hold on awhile” while all around them they see personal/financial/political disaster. Uneducated and religiously indoctrinated, they lack any capacity to understand nuance. They are hungry now, in a variety of ways.
We, the Democrats, have our own hunger. The call to “hold on awhile,” to find “common ground” among the Democrats as a way of defining one quiet road to victory is laden with similar delusions. This country’s government was born out of spirited exchanges. Censoring the individual voice, on a message board or in the public square, is decidedly undemocratic. And need it be said – unDemocratic.
Justice delayed is justice denied. We the People, of many philosophical/political persuasions, are tired of waiting – tired of waiting for the storied changes we voted for and which remain on hold. The Democrats have had the kitchen for almost two years now. It's time they got cooking!
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