Groundhog Day

Although I don't normally listen to right-wing radio or visit their blogging associates, the recent elections have emboldened me somewhat. So heading home Friday I tuned into one of the right-wing Christianist radio stations in town to listen in.

And it sounded like a tape from 2004. The hosts were lamenting the media coverage of the war in Iraq. The hosts were tired of hearing about all the "negative" and wanted more "hero" stories.* This, after the Thanksgiving Day Massacre in which over 200 Shiites in Sadr City were slain by Sunni insurgents.

Aside from the delusion this line of complaining reveals, though, is the amoral, hyper-Americanism of the Christianist movement. Although Christianists engage in considerable hand-wringing about the supposed loss of "moral absolutes" in American life, it doesn't take much time in the company of the True Believers to recognize the only absolute morals their gang is amped about is their idea of American destiny. Not only are the only lives worth worrying about "American" ones, but to satisfy their fantasies, media coverage and intellectual discussion about our country's foreign adventures should be restricted to that of American soldiers themselves--and of the foreigners we're supposedly liberating only if the latter are sufficiently grateful to their American conquerers.

The ironic thing about the Christianist movement is how essentially amoral it is. And now that they've lost the elections, they've added denial to their portfolios.

The upshot of all of this is, the longer the Christianists and their GOP representatives continue to deny the repercussions of American military actions and the realities on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere, the longer it will take for the American Right to resume power--not that that's a bad thing.


*Christianists continue to attack the media, seemingly forgetting the dominance and pro-war coverage of Fox "news", not to mention the special "heroes" tributes made by CNN's Lou Dobbs, among others. But all of this is irrelevant to the American Christianists who don't just want hero tributes, they want only hero tributes, all the time.