Back in the George W. Bush years, and as a person very active in the atheist community, I took note of how the GOP and the conservative Christian world continued to be wedded. And, today, the same thing is true of Trump world, and it’s just more of the same. Well, more terrifying.
There was a time, well before my time, when the GOP was a quite different party. Remember, this party was originally the party of Lincoln, and while it certainly was never ideal (as if any group of people could be), it was a laudable party which managed to defend the Union during a crisis which almost tore the nation apart.
Although, in some senses, it did. Because here we are, a country divided, and the points of division are, in many ways, historically connected to the ones that had us shooting at each other a century and a half ago. There are reasons why a lot of Trump supporters wave the rebel flag, after all.
The Bush Years
I did a lot of protesting, reading, and some writing about the growing alliance between the GOP and the evangelical Christian world which became more and more obvious after September 11th, 2001. At the time, most “liberals” (the term “progressive” had not caught on yet, if I recall correctly) thought that George W. Bush was the dumbest, most embarrassing, and most damaging president America could have had. His administration was highly problematic for many reasons, but the Christians loved him.
He was one of them, after all.
Super-patriotic and conservative Christian jingoism started to appear in popular political narratives in a way that most Americans had not ever seen before. The existing culture wars ramped up to a degree that we had not seen before. We didn’t think it could get much worse. We thought that our nation was on the brink of collapse. The Christians thought it was because of the impending apocalypse, and other people foresaw endless wars which would leave America a wasteland.
We were so naïve…
Back in 2006, there was a series of events called “Battle Cry” which were run by a Christian organization called Teen Mania Ministries (which closed in 2015). They would rent out large stadiums where thousands of Christians would listen to bad Christian rock, patriotic music and images would be everywhere, and a message warning their audience about the dangers of secular media, culture, etc. And, as I observed in an article I published in a local Communist newspaper at the time, and later published at the Rational Response Squad (and which I host a copy of here), it really came across as a way for hungry Christian media to deal with its secular competition.
In other words, it was a way to control where such largely white, evangelical, suburban/rural, conservative, middle class people got their information, and to make sure it was from the Christian media, artists, etc.
Is this starting to sound familiar?
Building the Base for an Alternative
I don’t have any data to support this idea, but I think that a lot of the teenagers I saw at this event (I attended the one in Philadelphia, upon invitation from the organizers), as well as their parents who drove them to it, are predominantly Trump supporters today.
Ron Luce, the organizer of these events, saw his purpose as influencing a generation. In other words, he wanted to create a generation of people who would get their information from wholesome, Christian, and patriotic sources. His book talks all about this. In other words, many evangelical leaders, associated with conservative causes and therefore the GOP, have been making a concerted effort to groom a generation or two of Americans to ignore a large segment of media sources in order to control the narrative that those people hear.
In the case of the Bush years, it was the “secular media” and it’s demonic influence on our children (“won’t somebody please think of the children!”). Ron Luce and his organizations, including these Battle Cry events of 2006 (which were only a few of many similar efforts in American culture at the time) were a way to advertise the various Christian alternatives to music, news, and other sources of entertainment and information.
From the episode of South park called “Christian Rock Hard”, we see Cartman being awful, but simultaneously demonstrating something true; a lot of Christian music is just stealing from the secular alternatives, and that Christians would figure this out and make a lot of money from it in America.
What’s worse is that their offerings were a pale alternative, blithely and badly copied in form but not in content in order to be “righteous” and godly. Just think about how much Christian music is a lot like secular music. In the South Park episode referred to above, the plot is lampooning the fact that changing love song lyrics to say “Jesus” rather than “baby” or whetever was how Christian music worked, in many cases. But so long as the kids were listening to that, and not the devil’s music, then they might not be tempted by Satan.
The fact that the Christian marketing companies had a bunch of things to sell them and which were present at such events was, well, just convenient I guess.
Seth Andrews has talked about this as well:
It’s a brilliant strategy, from a marketing point of view, and it largely worked. There is a whole alternative universe which Christian kids grew up in which has a lot of parallels to the one I grew up in, but it’s isolated and insulated enough to keep the home-schooled evangelicals pretty ignorant, at least until they reach the outside world. I’ve met many of these people who grew up in said environments, even dated a couple of them after they escaped.
What this creates is a template for creating quite distinct sub-cultures, fed by very different sets of media, worldviews, and even facts.
And since those years we have seen the division of where Americans get their information widen, until we get to the last few years which will likely be known, to historians, as…
The Trump Years
You know, the age of “alternative facts.”
For decades, conservative radio, the evangelical Christian sub-culture, and many conspiracy-theory laced sources have been cultivating more rural, conservative, and largely older people to distrust the admittedly problematic corporate and mainstream sources of news and entertainment which dominated places like where I grew up.
As the internet grew, there were all sorts of weird corners for such people to gather, and as they started to coalesce, meet, and work together, some realized that there was a market here. Hence such people as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones became household names. There is an impulse and maybe even an instinct that such people, and their messages, link onto in an unskeptical and uncritical mind.
So, you know how The Daily Show, back when it was hosted by Jon Stewart, spent years making fun of Fox News and other conservative outlets of information? You know how it lead to a spinoff of Stephen Colbert, for 9 years, mocking Bill “Papa Bear” O’Reilly? And you know how conservatives totally watched those shows, and subsequently became self-aware that they were being duped?
Yeah, that last part probably isn’t true. But we libtards surely got a kick out of laughing at them dupes. I wonder why they are mad at us….
And you know how it seems like people who hate trump and people who love trump seem to get their information from different universes? It’s almost like there has been a concerted, overtly-stated, effort to get conservatives who lean towards the evangelical side of the culture to learn how to ignore a large swath of sources (whether “secular” in the Bush years or “mainstream” later on) in favor of trusted, reliable, “fair and balanced” sources? Or, you know, to resent those mainstream and liberal sources for laughing at them all the time and feeling elite about it all?
It really seems as if a large segment of American culture has been groomed to be controlled and manipulated, while being told it was everyone else who was being manipulated. It’s a classic technique used by abusers of all sorts, to control the narrative and point at other people for doing what they, themselves, are doing (even if they aren’t aware they are doing so). Many of my family who are conservative consider me to be the one who is brainwashed. Perhaps you think so too.
If you do, I don’t think you know me very well.
And, as many of us in the atheist community used to try to argue (before we were distracted by rifts related to feminism and such), it’s the tools of religion; faith, sacredness, righteousness, etc which are at fault. Wielded by the right people, these tools are great at controlling large amounts of people, as the history of religion has taught us. And over the last few decades, conservative Christians have had a lot of practice honing their skills at utilizing marketing techniques and religion to influence politics and culture. And here we are, now, in a world where Donald Trump is considered, by many evangelicals, to be sent by God to lead us through these times.
The Battle Cry seems to have worked. Ron Luce’s efforts seem to have come to fruition. Congratulations, I guess, but I still feel a little like crying.
I cannot prove that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between these movements during the Bush years and now, but it seems a reasonable line of argument to entertain, and it fits in so many ways. It exemplifies what is worst about the religious instincts:
- Tribalism: in-group/out-group separation of people. (whether it be Christians/sinners or MAGAheads/”Libtard cucks”)
- The preference for sacred or trusted sources of information while simultaneously shunning other, contradictory, sources (whether it be the Bible/secularism or Fox News etc/”lamestream media”)
- the cult-like defense of and adoration of a central figure (whether Jesus or The Donald)
- The lack of ACTUAL skepticism, as opposed to lip service to rationality. If you’ve ever read “sophisticated theology,” then you know what rationalization looks like, as opposed to rationality, logic, and skeptical analysis. Similarly, if you’ve ever talked to a Trump supporter use logic, you know what I mean, as well.
Where we are in history, right now as Americans, cannot be a surprise if we look back at the culture in which we have lived. And to the people out there who didn’t, and perhaps still don’t, see the effect that faith and religious conviction is having our culture, and how it will continue to effect our politics and history, then all I say is you are probably helping it to repeat, or at least rhyme, in the future. In other words, your respect for religious traditions in the face of their harm is fucking us over.
Please, more skepticism. Those teenagers at Battle Cry 13 years ago are now adults. And insofar as the efforts of people like Ron Luce and the many other Christian organizations who saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between people and a secular, rational, and potentially better future were successful in their efforts, we now have a significant percentage of people who unfailingly support this historical disaster.
I overhear Trump supporters often. They are not cartoonishly evil or stupid people. They are just convinced they are right, like everyone else, and are largely uninterested or unimpressed by what other sources say, because they think they already understand. This is one of the reasons when I hear anyone, especially myself, sounding self-righteous or overly certain, I’m skeptical. This is one of the reasons I am critical of even people on “my” side, because I don’t want to be part of a tribe in the same way.
I want to make sure I’m not subject to the groupthink that takes over groups, so I’m critical of people I’m allied with.
It’s easy to mock creationists, flat-Earthers, or people who believe that the reptilians control the world. But what if the people in your tribe start talking about how dangerous vaccinations are or how the new lady congresspeople are all stupid feminazi drones?
And remember, even if Trump is impeached, we still have to deal with Mike Pence.
Let’s stop this historical rhyming, already.
Skepticism, Properly Applied 