Politics and Religion

[Dill]

(03-02-2021, 11:57 AM)hollodero Wrote: For one, since the topic is as such, I have to express my bewilderment about your politicians talking about faith and God and prayers so awfully much. Left and Right, everyone prays for every issue and every person and every enemy every minute of every day. This is just gross. But maybe I'm just used to more rationally arguing leaders.

This is a common European observation, Hollo.  These frequent references to God are to be expected, though, since we are God's chosen nation.
No slight to any European nations. No doubt some Austrians will go to heaven too (if you support us). But the responsibility for maintaining that shining City upon the Hill is not on you.

(03-02-2021, 11:57 AM)hollodero Wrote: There are many other examples, but this one should do to illustrate my point. To me, the US political struggle less and less looks like a battle of ideas or policies or ideology. It is a religious quarrel. People siding with Trump (not all conservatives, far from it) treat their affiliation as a religious commitment. One that does not need truth or facts or observable variables. Just faith.

I think the emphasis on religion misses something here. You know we have frequently had threads in this forum on the issue of racism, white grievance, the 1619 project, and the like, but few on religion. That's because we are not really quarreling about religion.

Here I am tempted to trot out an analogy closer to your European home. You are probably too young to remember the Historikerstreit in Germany back in the '80s.  (I confess that as I write this, I am nursing a cup of Bourbon, our "spiritual" contribution to the world, so there may be lapses and unclarities.)

In the early '80s, as Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl ascended the world stage to direct the politics of the "free world," certain German historians were fed up with what they perceived to be the unrelenting load of guilt imposed upon Germany since WWII for its fascist past, as much by Germans as by their former enemies. They complained about double standards regarding groups who had achieved the status of "permanent victimhood," and public figures who had to worry about being flagged for borderline anti-Semitic statements. Worse, a (real) left controlling German education paralyzed opposition to their anti-fascist curriculum by invoking national shame ("Never again!"). One historian, Ernest Nolte, argued that a nation without a past was capable of anything, and that role of historians was now to produce a history of the nation that young Germans could identify with and be proud of. They needed to step back into their role as center of Europe, anchor of NATO with Russian (Soviet) enemy still at the gates. The job of historians was then to take active part in producing affirmative national identity. (Real) leftist opponents like Juergen Habermas, claimed that Nolte, in his effort to create this affirmative national history, was lead to "normalize" Nazi genocide as one among many, distinguished only by its mass industrial use of gas, and to ignore a more fruitful path of healthy national identity offered by Germany's openness, since the war, to Western liberalism and constitutional government, and a pluralistic history appropriate to a free society, as opposed to an official national one tasked with producing a unitary and proud national identity.

This is a rough analogy, but for Americans, the real debate right now is in great part a similar struggle over national identity, which for some requires putting to rest a national shame (slavery, segregation, systemic racism) by not talking about it anymore, instead remembering our "greatness," while their opponents want us to acknowledge that shame to move beyond it. Just as many Germans in '80s resented any connection to National Socialism, and felt "accused" whenever they complained of immigration or made anti-semitic comments, so many Americans today, born after the official end of segregation, are tired of hearing the U.S. founders were racists, that the U.S. is still racist, and that their ordinary conversation may include "racist" language. Like their German counterparts in the '80s, they are suspicious that a class of "permanent victims" has emerged, born after the legal dissolution of racist policy but claiming a now undeserved deference, a double standard protected by government policy and social practices such as "canceling." They are opposed by a "left" that wants a more open accounting for our national shame, recognition of how white supremacy has shaped and continues to shape life in the U.S., and policies which address their concerns.

And that is why there is so much discussion of whether the U.S. is still "racist" and whether there is such a thing as "systemic racism," or whether we need history which makes us proud again. Both sides are religious. But one side, especially, views this contest through the prism of fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity which was politicized during the first decade of desegregation. Hence its reliance on faith over facts, its appeal to faith in a divinely appointed leader's will, not science, government, academia, or the press. But that is a contrast in methods, and not evidence of a properly "religious" quarrel.

NB: Someone may pop up to remind me that not all Trump supporters are religious or fundamentalists, etc. I am not saying all of them are. I have elsewhere, on several threads, broken down the diversity of Trump support. I am just affirming the role of religion in the public ceremonies and statements of Trump and in the degree of uncritical "commitment" in what looks to be a majority of his supporters.