Sometimes it’s instructive to note the bizarre and bitter paranoia that infects the far right in America. Texas offers plenty of examples, including the folks at Texas Eagle Forum. In fact, TEF’s new president, Pat Carlson, seems to harbor the same fear of everything foreign that the group’s past president, Cathie Adams, does.
In a new e-mail report to TEF activists (dated Dec. 14) from the Copenhagen conference on global climate change, for example, Carlson rails against efforts by the Obama administration to cooperate with foreign countries on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. “Obama is still campaigning but now it is for world leader,” she sneers.
But toward the end of e-mail, she most clearly reveals her xenophobia, arguing that foreigners simply want to destroy the American way of life:
“The world hates America because of jealousy and because Americans are a good and generous people.”
Oh, good grief. The Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that global attitudes toward the United States vary over time and by region, but generally our country is viewed favorably in many developed and developing countries around the world. And the U.S. image globally has actually been improving. But Texas right-wingers like Pat Carlson see only enemies surrounding us — a paranoia that simply reinforces extremist politics in this country.
Americans are indeed good and generous people, Pat but I don’t think the world is jealous of your health care system or the Texas State Board of Education.
Hey Pat, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
The hysterical paranoia of the religious right is definitely a handy tool that can be used against them.
The xenophobic stupidity of the climate deniers can’t stand for long.
However, free-thinkers, freedom lovers, and Progressives and moderates who want to start solving some of the problems facing each other should read the remarks of Rick Santorum in the other article.
It will be a war.
The “other side”, which is a coalition of the hysterical anti-abortion evangelicals and Catholics, Wall Street, Insurance lobbies, Big Oil, and the Neocons who are hateful toward Muslims, the Gun fetishists and the Racists.
The primary battleground will be the economy and jobs for middle and working class Americans. If we can start creating a new economy with blue and white collar jobs from renewable energy, domestic natural gas resources, etc., it will stimulate the demand for science-educated youth. Business leaders will demand it.
That will shut the creationists up.
Notice that the Pope has come out against the climate deniers. There’s a seam in the coalition that should be exploited. It won’t change anti-abortion views but it will marginalize the hysterical apesh*t crowd like Pat Carlson.
Pat & Cath, what a pair. I would never belong to an organization who had people like them as their leadrsihp. Where are the thinking people? God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.
This is a perfect example of their ingrained need to play martyr.
This is the Mantra of the right. I have been to about 80 countries. Most of them love the U.S. in some where the state poses as anti-American the people are decidedly pro American. All the people I have met in my travels liked me and therefore America. The only place I know of that hates the United States is the former Confederate States of America. One hundred years later later, they have not forgotten the Civil War and their hatred for the freeing the slaves is palpable.
A few random thoughts:
1) The foreigners that do hate America do so because of people like Pat Carlson and Cathie Adams—not because these two are right in what they believe—but because they are wrong in what they believe.
2) On the right wing, I believe the feeling persists that anyone who believes in electric cars or green energy is a 1960s hippie drug dealer who hugs trees, wears granny dresses, and subsists entirely on sprouts and granola. It’s also a cultural thing to the extent that they fear the turn to more responsible energy will bring an end to many American cultural icons. For example, can you picture a NASCAR race with electric cars that can only go 40 miles on a charge and have a top speed of 55—or something like that. Green energy is a southern redneck’s worst cultural nightmare. I say that as a natural born native of the American South.
3) The single worst thing that the Christian right has ever done is to PURGE love from the church. They just told it to take a hike, go fly a kite, get lost. By doing so, they sealed their doom.
“The world hates America because of jealousy and because Americans are a good and generous people.”
Could she provide some evidence to back up this statement? No, of course not. That’s why she didn’t!
And note there is no inherent correlation between the first part of her stupid sentence with the last part of her stupid sentence.
In fact, America’s image has improved significantly since Barak Obama entered the presidency so I don’t know where she’s getting her facts from. Oh but I can guess: Faux Noise.
Susan Culp (above) was prophetic in her statement about the Christian right’s desire for martyrdom. I just heard about preacher Lou Engle’s advocacy for Christians to martyr themselves. This was inevitable, and what do you want to bet that Christian martyrs are going to take some innocent bystanders out with them in their “act of faith”?
As for greenery, conservatives don’t want America to be on the cutting edge of green technology; nope, they want that technology to go to Europe and China – as is already happening. This is part of their grand plan for the defeat of America: Make America poor and dumbed-down (thanks to their war on science). An uneducated impoverished society is fertile ground for proselytization and persecution.
Charles, whenever I see a person complaining that “liberals want to take away our freedoms, and tell the rest of us how to live our lives”, I always wish the person had said it to me, because I’d be really interested in learning where the cutoff point is. I mean, if Bobby Joe Bumbershoot wants to drive his 8-cylinder Mopar as much as he wants to, and set his thermostat as high or low as he can afford, what happens if everyone does as they want to? It strikes me as extremely callous, greedy, and mindless.
Carlson and her ilk are indeed the reason why many Europeans and Asians and Africans and… find the Americans to be some very greedy and wasteful people. The fact that they don’t hate us is testament to their strength, rather than our being “exceptional”.
To the extent that Europeans “hate” Americans (or that Californians hate Texans), it’s because of provincial and parochial bigotry that manifests itself in caricaturizing our worst tendencies. Never mind that, that’s their problem.
What Pat Carlson et al. are all about is an internal insecurity and lack of true faith within, that is threatened by scientific knowledge and by the fact that there are so many people in the world who don’t share their beliefs. So they externalize that threat to their faith, construct a house of cards of defensive postures, drawing the line in the sand here and there. They lose sight of Jesus’ message of tolerance and love, and worship the Bible (which didn’t exist in Jesus’ time), as the “complete and infallible word of God.” That means that global warming is a threat to their idea that God is in control of the climate. So they become gullible pawns of Big Oil.
So this xenophobic exaltation of ignorance to block out threats to their faith become a vicious cycle. They spin emotionally inward in a tighter and tighter knot of fear, and they lash out at more and more targets that just happen to be facts or truth or reality that they deem threatening. Embracing the huckstered misinterpretation of “Revalations”, they oppose a solution to the turmoil in the middle east, and everyone who seeks peace there is a threat to their faith. Etc.
Education is the key to preventing these folks from setting up a totalitarian state of ignorance. Sensible adults will have to put a monkeywrench into the insane clockwork that is the evangelical collective mindset.
David. I don’t think anyone could have said it better.