Worst of Breed

When Todd Akin, the Republican congressman from Missouri, recently managed the neat trick of placing his foot in his mouth while at the same time inserting his head up his ass thanks to his theories about "legitimate rape", it caused a richly deserved firestorm of legitimate anger. What wasn't mentioned much, if at all, was that this level of idiocy has now become the new normal on the right wing of American politics. In the last decade or so, but especially since the election of President Obama, Republican politicians have rarely gone a month without saying something so outrageously stupid you have to wonder if they aren't doing it just to keep staffers at The Onion busy; kind of a make-work program for humorists. Don't believe me? Just Google stupidest quotes from Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin,  and Jan Brewer; you'll be spoiled for choice.

So why is it that the right wing is producing more and better knuckleheads? The answer, my friends, is something I'm going to call Selective Ideological Inbreeding. And here's the theory in a nutshell: any organization, political or otherwise, that experiences success with a particular strategy will try and replicate or reinforce that success by enhancing or amplifying their winning strategy. What starts out as a strategic course can then become an entrenched culture, a codified and glorified mode of thinking, an orthodoxy that's held to be the one true path to success. The leaders of such an organization tend to recruit to their cause those who are not only in accord with their ideological vision, but who take it to the next level. In this way organizations can become bastions of inbreeding, with the organization's leaders selecting only those new recruits who resemble themselves in every ideological detail and bring an even more ferocious level of commitment to the organization's strategic philosophy. And what does this selective ideological inbreeding produce? In the case of the Republican Party it's created politicians who try and outdo each other in enthusiastic idiocy, moral viciousness and religious fervour.

The beginning of this process began for the GOP with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. To their delight and surprise the Republicans found that it was possible to elect a genial, flag-waving simpleton to the highest office in the land on a platform based largely on the concept that government is bad for you. By 1984 Reagan's simpleness was slipping into senility, but he still won handily. Reagan's success owed a huge debt to the religious right, which was leading a backlash, a cultural revolution, against liberal social policies and attitudes that had been on the rise since the 1960s. The twinning of simple-mindedness and religiosity became the template Republicans chose for their strategic philosophy. And why not? From a purely practical point of view it seemed to be a surefire winning formula, delivering strong mandates in both '80 and '84.

The dumb and devout template was a new concept in the '80s. Nixon and Eisenhower, the two previous Republican presidents (I'm omitting Gerald Ford because he wasn't elected), were no dummies, and their religion (what little they had) was not put on show. And by present-day Republican standards both were dangerously liberal: Eisenhower pushed through a massive public works bill to create the Interstate Highway System (tax and spend politician!), and Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (job-killing treehugger!). After Reagan, the ideal, and often typical, Republican politician became someone who combined equal levels of anti-intellectualism and old-time, tent revival Christianity. And the poster boy for this job description? George W. Bush. This degradation in the quality of Republican politicos is due to the selective ideological inbreeding syndrome: the backers and promoters of right-wing politicians are in a race to the bottom to find the next candidate who's denser and more pious than the last. We've now reached a point where the standardized Republican politician has become a bug-eyed amalgam of braying piety and Forrest Gump philosophizing.

Given the constant dumbing down of Republican politicians and policies it was almost inevitable that the Tea Party would spring to life. If you view the so-called Reagan Revolution as equivalent to China's Cultural Revolution in its basic aim of creating a purer, more orthodox society, then the Tea Party can be seen as the Red Guards: a spontaneous, populist movement that runs on adrenaline, inchoate outrage and holier-than-thou moral superiority that aims to add vim and vigour to the on-going cultural revolution. And like the Red Guards, the Tea Party became the tail wagging the dog. It's the Tea Party, the children of the Reagan Revolution, who helped produce a climate in which people who one or two generations ago would have been dismissed as nutjobs, cranks or fools, were now competing to become the leader of the free world. If Mitt Romney seems like a reasonable choice for president, it's only because in comparison to the political sideshow freaks he beat out for the nomination he comes across as a pillar of common sense and reasonableness.

What's dangerous about the Republican Party's program of selective ideological inbreeding is that in some future presidential election one of their Frankenstein monsters might win the day. It's far from unthinkable. Earlier this year it looked like Michele Bachmann, the woman who said that hurricanes and earthquakes were God's message that government spending was out of control, appeared to have a good chance of winning the primaries. And if the GOP's ideological inbreeding continues at its current pace the next Michele Bachmann will make the original look like Eleanor Roosevelt. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Finally, Proof That Jesus Would Vote Republican

As the rough beast of American presidential politics begins its long slouch towards decision day in November, the civilized world is left wondering, as it does every four years, WTF is up with America's obsession with religion. In just last the few days President Obama has had to come up with a compromise on the birth control portion of his health care package in order to placate the Catholic Church, and this is against the backdrop of the Republican primaries, which consist entirely of white multimillionaires trying to proclaim that not only are they more god-fearing than the next guy, but they'll actually make America more god-fearing if given the chance in November. Once the actual presidential campaign begins the two candidates will invoke or quote Jesus and his dad in virtually every speech, and on Sundays we'll see them drop in on the nearest suburban megachurch where their piety will be on full display. But that won't stop both candidates from inferring, or even declaring, that their opponent is in some way heretical or godless.

The auto-da-fé of the American presidential election is a wonderment to Canadians and Europeans because it's a reminder that Yanks are more religious, by far, than anyone else on the block. But why is this? A few months ago I was researching this issue for an article and I kept looking for cultural and political causes of America's religiosity. Nothing seemed to explain the situation until I thought of the other major difference between Europe and the US: social  welfare spending. Europe believes in it, America (its ruling class, at least) loathes it. So I Googled social welfare spending and religion and came up with this academic paper written by Anthony Gill (his website's here)and Erik Lundsgaarde, professors at the University of Washington. Eureka! Solid evidence to explain the religiosity divide between America and most everyone else. Before I go further here are some quotes from the paper:

"...state welfare spending has a detrimental, albeit unintended, effect on long-term religious participation and overall religiosity."

"People living in countries with high social welfare spending per capita even have less of a tendency to take comfort in religion, perhaps knowing that the state is there to help them in times of crisis."

The professors back up these conclusions with all the necessary facts and figures (graph alert!), and their paper makes for very interesting reading, but be warned that it is an academic paper so it's a tad on the dry side. The profs argue that as church-sponsored social welfare programs (education, relief for the poor, etc.) are replaced by state programs, people see less value in religion itself. Religiosity (it's defined as weekly church attendance in the paper) does not, however, decline immediately upon an increase in social welfare spending. Decreases in religiosity are generational.

The paper emphasizes the role of churches in providing social welfare support as one of the key causes of religiosity. That's where I disagree with them. I don't think American churches have any significant tradition of providing material support for their followers. I think a more likely explanation, which is hinted at in several places in the paper, is that fear is what drives some people to church, and since WW II the US has been one of the most fear-filled countries on the planet. First there was the Cold War and its fear of nuclear war, then the Vietnam War, fear of street crime in the 1970s, and then a reboot of the Cold War under Ronald Reagan. Add in the wars in the Middle East and 9/11 and you have society that's filled with dread. It's small wonder that Americans look for supernatural protection and comfort when so much that surrounds them seems so dangerous and unpredictable. And this is all on top of a society that provides the most meagre of social safety nets.

It doesn't come as much of a surprise that the Scandinavian countries, with their broad and comprehensive social welfare programs and non-involvement in military conflicts, sit at the bottom of the league in terms of religiosity. It's a clear message that people who have some confidence in their future well-being, who don't live in fear of death and disaster lurking around the next corner, have no need of imaginary beings to protect them. Needless to say there are probably a dozen other factors that can help account for US religiosity, but it would seem that free, universal health care goes a long way towards creating and maintaining a secular society. Gill and Lundsgaarde's paper provides some more proof of this with the example of the ex-Soviet Union. Once religion was made legal in Russia after the fall of the USSR, spirituality made a big comeback. It was no coincidence that the end of the USSR also marked the end of cradle-to-grave welfare programs for Russians, not to mention the end of a guaranteed job for all.

The role of religion in American politics became a big deal in the 1970s as President Jimmy Carter let it be known that he was a "born again" Christian. That seemed to be the starting bell for the evangelical movement, and it's become a key factor in every presidential election since. The rise of the Christian right has gone in lockstep with the erosion of social welfare programs that began with the election of Reagan in 1980. The US is now at a point where the Tea Party and the various Republican presidential hopefuls spend enormous effort in thinking of ways the US government can do less for its people, except, of course, when it comes to waging wars. All this looks like more evidence of religiosity being largely dependent on social welfare spending.

So, from the point of view of a ruthless, evangelical Republican politician there could be no shrewder political strategy than to cut any and all social welfare programs; its appears to be a guaranteed way to fill the pews and stuff the ballot boxes with votes for the GOP. And, really, it's probably what Jesus would do. He wouldn't want a nation of happy, healthy unbelievers. Of course, there was that time he fed the multitudes with free bread and fish...that does sound a bit welfare-ish, a bit food stamp-y, but it was probably a deliberate mistranslation by some liberal, elitist professor of ancient languages.