In previous posts I have mentioned that whenever I take a road trip I view it as an opportunity to imagine myself a social anthropologist conducting
primary research on what people are listening to out in the hinterlands.
Thus, when I am not listening to a favorite CD, I am tuned in to either conservative talk radio or local Christian programming (not for the music but the news, commentary, sermons, or call-in Bible answer man shows).
My most recent trip confirmed not just the close similarities, but the near
identity of political-social views on secular and Christian broadcasting. There is no difference whatsoever. And that should send a chill down every disciples’ spiritual spine.
Of course, every talk show was a monolithic barrage of “Stop the Steal” nonstop — usually, asserted with ranting, anger, and fear-mongering, not to mention the repeated threats of looming violence if “the radical, leftist cabal” that stole the election from Trump didn’t move over and get out of the way.
I could not find a single instance of rational, evidence-based conversation or
debate, much less analysis, about the presidential election, the recounts, the court challenges, or the future of this country on a secular radio station.
Worse yet, the Christian broadcasts were no different.
Whether the programming was syndicated or regional, Christian commentators were reading from the same hyper-partisan play book: anger, fear, threats of armed uprisings, calling hell fire onto the leftists, socialists, Marxists, antifa-ists, critical race theorists, and Black Lives Matters communists who are determined to destroy America by turning it into a totalitarian, anti-Christian nation.
The ignorance and misinformation spewed like sewage from a fire hose.
The Christians had no more interest in honest conversation, or an examination of the facts available, than the did the Rush Limbaugh crowd. I doubt if a single one of them had even a rudimentary understanding of what socialism really is or that the United States is already highly “socialist” in many ways – highly unjust ways that favor the rich and corporations almost exclusively.
Everyone is convinced that Joe and Kamala are raging socialists chomping at the bit to outlaw private property and confiscate everyone’s guns. Obviously, not a one of these people (broadcasters and callers both) knew the first thing about Biden’s or Harris’ careers.
The truth of the matter is that both Biden and Harris are dyed in the wool crony-capitalists, corporatists, center-right party stalwarts so heavily indebted to Wall Street that I’m surprised either of them has an independent thought in their head.
Their souls are owned by the same brand of neoliberal economics that continues to fuel the gaping chasm of income inequality that curses sick Americans – especially people of color – to wait in bread lines longer than anything seen in this country since the Great Depression, and to die of covid19 at higher rates than any other country in the civilized world.
The American evangelical church has become nothing more than cheap, shallow reflection of the cultivated ignorance, narrow mindedness, and xenophobia that has always marked American conservatism.
That ghoulish political contortion has become the face of the Republican party AND the Religious Right (read: evangelicalism).
This post is my brief introduction to short series I will write in the next few weeks.
In this series I will have a great deal more to say about the incestuous mánage à tois that has developed between evangelicalism, the Republican party, and American anti-intellectualism.
I will begin by focusing on the role that virulent, Republican racism has to play in both (1) the Republican demonization of the Black Lives Matter movement and (2) Donald Trump’s campaign to persuade his base that this election was stolen.
Stay tuned.
