Someone recently said, "Religion was the first
politics." Sounds right.
But when politics
become the very source of worship... Sounds wrong.
Worshiping a political party, treating it with the
same abiding passion and faith as you would Christianity or Judaism, reacting
angrily to criticism, hating disbelievers, even exhibiting delight at the
deaths of human beings whom these true believers find inferior and
unGodly....Isn't that a definition of religious fanaticsm?
When was the
last time you heard someone becoming outraged because his political party was the subject of
criticism.
I was asked a couple of months ago a beautiful woman asked me
how I felt about the Tea Party. When I answered, she shocked me by calling me a
bigot. You'd think I'd just attacked Jesus and and all the Jews in the
world.
Most Democrats don't take
it seriously when someone attacks their party; most Democrats these days don't even take the Democratic
Party seriously.
But the Tea Partyers
and so many Republicans have transformed themselves into crusaders, eager to
defend the new, true faith against their enemies. And they see enemies
everywhere.
You are ostracized if you so much as hint that these new
and still novel religionists worship false idols, or that their responses are
unbecomingly joyful when told that renegades and other lesser humans have
died.
This morning I received an email from a furious
neighbor in Ocala. He was incensed that I dared strike out against his party by accusing
Tea Partyers and
their right-wing GOP allies of callousness. . He took such offense at my lack
of virtue that he cast me out and vowed never speak to me again.
Twenty-four hours
earlier, I had observed in an email to him that the audience at a debate
sponsored by the Tea Party loudly applauded the news that Texas had run up a
record number of executions on Rick Perry's watch as governor.
I was
reminded of "The Tale of Two Cities."
Each time the guillotine lopped off
another head, the mob cheered.
So at one debate the right-wing audience
applauds executions. At a second debate, the Republicans and Tea Partyers in
the pews actually cheer Ron Paul for declaring that if an American died
because he chose not to invest in health insurance, that--in our free society--
was his own problem.
These worshippers profess to be charitable.
Perhaps, but if so, it is a charity governed by whim.
They show no
charity toward those of us, not all of us murderers, who in their eyes can
never measure up to the faith. Our crime against the Church of the GOPTP is less
one of criticism than of failing to accept the truth.
On the other hand,
when the devout members of this historic church sneer at liberals, they are
being, forgive a familiar expression, fair and balanced. If we cannot accept
that gospel and keep our mouths shut, it only proves we have no place in the
new god's America.
It doesn't take much imagination to guess where
these protectors of the faith might lead us next.
Art Woodstone
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