Watching the Temple Fall

Unless the November 7 election is
stolen, as blatantly as Robert Mugabe might steal it,
Democrats are going to sweep to victory.

TV analysts aren’t allowed to say this
because the votes haven’t been cast. They have to hedge their bets.
Most are so accustomed to Republicans pulling rabbits out of the hat
that they play along willingly.

But this election is, in every
meaningful sense, already over.

Republicans have no issues on which to
build a comeback. Even on terrorism and morality, voters now believe
Democrats more.
Want to change the subject? Let’s talk about Iraq. They really are
caught between Iraq and a hard place.

In terms of history this is not
unusual. Most elections held in the 6^th year of a
President’s term end up this way. It happened to Ronald Reagan in
1986. It should have happened to Clinton, but Republicans overplayed
their hand. And that’s about all they have to hang on to. The idea
that Democrats will overplay their hand.

In fact  something deeper is happening right
now. It’s not just that voters are questioning the policies of this
President. Thanks in large part to the fecklessness with which people
like James Dobson
have treated La Cage Aux Foley (if he could get away with it he’d do
just what Gene Hackman did in The Birdcage
and come out in drag) the blinders have fallen off.

Millions of good Christian people, who
honestly believed that their pastors cared about issues of sex and
culture, have now watched those same leaders hem and haw and excuse
and toss blame and generally behave like moneychangers in the temple, the only people
mentioned in the Gospels whom Jesus actually went-off on.

Liberals don’t like to admit this, but
there really has been a “great awakening” going on in America
these last few decades. Baby boomers who saw their cohorts sink into
drugs and despair, and who sought something to believe in, came to
believe fervently in the pastors of the megachurches, the very people
who are now letting them down.

These good people (and they want to be
good people) have come to their preachers this year with tough
questions. What about the Earth, they have asked? What about Iraq,
they have asked? What about the poor in New Orleans, and everywhere
else, they have asked?

In response they have been given
rhetoric. Political rhetoric about the evil gays, about the evil
Mexicans, about the evil Democrats, about the evil Muslims, about The
Other. Never, not once, have these preachers dealt seriously, in a
humane and Christian way, with their congregations. And slowly, over
the year many of these congregants (and some preachers as well) have
fallen away.

It isn’t La Cage that crystallized all
this. It was the reaction to it.
Every single excuse – it was the pages, it was the Democrats, it
was the media, it was Foley himself (and taken care of) – every
single talking point was knocked down. Sometimes almost as fast as it
was uttered.
Suddenly people realized just how they had been played.

It reminded
me of something Orson Scott Card said in his “Secular Humanist
Revival Meeting” about preachers attacking evolution, despite the
evidence, despite the fact that “God could have used evolution to
create our world.” When it becomes too much, everything becomes
open to question. “If you lied about evolution, maybe you lied
about redemption by grace.” Or “If you lied about Foley, maybe
you lied about Iraq.”

I have heard many idiots on the
television, these last few days, suggest that “Foley has driven
Iraq off the front page” and maybe people have forgotten about it,
so maybe it’s all to the Republicans’ good. This too is a talking
point, which is to say nonsense. People know what’s going on in Iraq.
People know the Emperor has no Clue. People know that our treasure
and a generation of believers in America are being sacrificed to no
purpose. The Silent Majority is silently seething.

La Cage Aux Foley, and the nonsense
associated with it, crystallized something that was already there. It
set people’s minds in stone. They won’t be changed. Their choice can
only be stolen.

If the Republicans do steal this
election, it will be so obvious that all of them – all of them –
will be destroyed. Not just pushed out of office. Their lives will be
forfeit, their fortunes will be seized , their families will either
be killed or die in exile like those of Third World despots. Because
that’s what they will have become.

Americans don’t put up with that
shit.