Morons On The March

The other day in my Blog on "Creationists On The March", I pointed to the apparent contradiction between the fact that although the US is by far the world's most technologically advanced society, it continues to have tens of millions of people who beleive literally in the Bible, and who have little or no appreciation of basic scientific facts. In a forthcoming blog I shall be looking at similar contradictions that seem to abound across the world today, and explain the basis of these contradictions, and their implications.

In the meantime, I was struck by the Newsnight report last night on the growing opposition to Obama, and influence of the Tea Party movement. The report was interesting because it illustrated this contradiction once again. On the one hand, the Murdoch Empire represents the application of the most modern technology to the purpose of media production and distribution. Yet, despite that the Fox News Network not only represents the most reactionary, mangling of facts and opinion you could come across outside some former Eastern European regime, but also the perpetuation and dissemination of this kind of medieval mysticism and bigotry.

For those of us in Europe, the images of the oily preachers, spouting the most cheesy lines, and effecting fake emotion, come over for what they really are, comical snake oil salesmen, preying on gullible, often poor, ill-educated people. We are even more likely to see such creatures as objects of derision, given that so many of them soon turn out to, not only have been lining their pockets, and living the high-life, but a high-life that includes not a small amount of indulgence in each of the seven deadly sins! Though we might be still taken aback by the extent to which those they have previously gulled, are quick to line up and hand over their money once again, no sooner has their chosen one expressed their profound repentance at having been caught out.

But, such sepctacle is even more stomach churning when the snake oil salesmen is not one of these hokey preachers, but a main news man on Fox News, and who was so obviously fake that even the BBC reporter commented on his attempts to force an ingenuous tear, unsuccesfully. Yet, as the report shows this particular snake oil salesmen was able to attract, tens of thousands of people to the Lincoln Memorial on the Anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream", speech to hear his fifth rate, counterfeit product, and to rail against Obama's "Socialism"! The further irony, looking at many of those who attended, is that these are likely to be precisely the kinds of people who would gain most from an authentic Socialism.

The tendency must be to simply dismiss such people as morons, but we cannot do that for many reasons. Firstly, what this demonstrates is the extent to which, without prolonged work by socialists amongst all layers of the working class, there are large numbers of people who will look for easy answers to their problems, and those easy answers are always reactionary. Secondly, the US, but not only the US, there are other states, with their own religious zealots, has nuclear weapons, and by far the world's largest military. I tend to beleive that the ruling class, and its State, who do not share these nonsensical medieval ideas, would not stand idly by, and allow a Government of religious bigots to just blow up the plante on a whim. At the same time, the experiecne of Nazism demonstrates how, under certain conditions, a group of zealots, able to secure control of the Governmental power, and to exercise a control over the State, can gain a degree of independence from the ruling class that might not so easily be constrained. Sarah Palin is reported to attend a Church that preaches the doctrines of the "Endtimers", who hold the nutty, and odious view that any time now, millions of true beleivers will simply disappear off the face of the Earth in the Rapture, whilst God brings about Armageddon, an event they beleive which will be sparked by a War in the Middle East. There are more of these Endtimers who go on pilgrimages to Jersusalem, and who finance right-wing Israeli zealots, than there are Jews.

But, as my forthcoming series of blogs will argue these contradictions have a material basis. They are contradictions the Left should take seriously.