I realize this might be Chris Hedges overkill, but I just stumbled onto some more of his stuff (via Metafilter), and I thought that you might be interested in. This is an excerpt from an article entitled, “The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair.” If you think you can handle it, try reading it while listening to Hedges being interviewed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation”… Anyway, here’s a cilp:
…The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.
This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker’s paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile..
[Our last MM.com thread on Hedges can be found here. It contains quite a bit more background.]
