11.03.04 - 5:32 p.m.

Please paint my red state blue

The Democratic party has irretrievably lost the south, at least for the next election cycles, at least for this portion of our political age. The Republicans have - finally - succeeded in persuading substantial portions of the country to vote against their economic self-interest and in favor of a cultural war against gays, the coasts, New York, Hollywood, and whatever other cultural demons they can find. The Republicans have also successfully exploited well-educated, blue state contempt for the rest of the nation.

It's time for this party to - finally - stop trying to shave ground on the culture war. The "pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage" Democrats in Kentucky lost pretty convincingly, and I'm tired of hedging my language and my bets on those issues to try to pull in people who are never - and I mean never - going to agree with me. Maybe this means we'll be an opposition for four or six or eight or twelve years - I don't care. We'll win again if we want to win, if we work to win, if we change the nature of our discourse. History is on our side.

[God - or is it? It strikes me, now, on some fundamental level that selfishness, hatred, pride, exclusion, etc. are ...just part of life. I can't begin to allow myself to be consumed with cynicism. We have only begun to fight.]

In order to change the discourse, we need to do two things: excise our own painful, overweening self-righteousness and attack the religious right on its own ground: religion. Have you seen the temples that they build, and the moneylenders that they own? Have you seen the glitz and the smarm and the excessive displays? Have you seen how many people have grown wealthy by exploiting religion? Do you think Jesus would live in a seven million dollar house?

It is time to expose fundamentalist hypocrisy, over and over and over again. And over again. And over and over and over again. They will destroy themselves, but only if we make the SCLM pay attention. There is a second economy of Christian bookstores, Christian clothiers, Christian recording artists, Christian vendors of "real actual water from the real actual holy land," Christian self-help books and enormous (but ugly!) chandeliers for large Christian churches. These people do not reflect my faith anymore than the moneylenders in the temple reflected the genuine faith of believing Jews back when Jesus threw them out of the temple.

The religious right does not represent Christian values.
The religious right does not represent American values.
...and we are going to defeat these zealots if it takes four years or four generations.