I take that title of this post (above) from that run-away success of the, erm, Freakonomics genre, Freakonomics. My buddy Brian Kim recommended the by-now dated book to me. I had been avoiding it for some time up to now; the book’s got great content, but a horrible, horrible title.

Anyway, the book veers off, for a considerably long passage, come to think of it, into the story of this cat named Kennedy who went undercover in the Ku Klux Klan back in the 1940’s and fed all of their secret codes, handshakes, ghost stories, etc. to the producers of the Superman radio show… *Cough*

Let me pause for a moment and note that I am actually listening to the book on my iPod and thus almost burst a blood vessel laughing every time the somewhat snarky narrator uttered term “Klavilers.”

Anyway, everybody knows that the Ku Klux Klan hates blacks, Jews, Gypsies, carnie-folk, and, oh yeah, Catholics.

That’s always been kind of exciting to me, to be hated by a hate group. For a white guy from the Northeast burbs, it feels good to put my persecuted-boots on once in a while. I mean, sure, these days all Muslim extremists hate Americans, but, as Jon Stewart aptly put it, “We’re kind of all on that hit list,” so it’s not really the same.

Listening to the Klan story in the book yesterday, I began thinking about my usual guttural reaction to the reminder that there’s a whole group of sheet-wearin’ rednecks down in the dirty South hatin’ on my religion. When the fact that the Klan, for reasons I’ve never actually bothered to look into, has a gripe against Catholics (Freakonomics informed me that the Klan was started by a couple of Irish guys, which could provide a clue, depending on which part of the island they were from) is brought up, my initial reaction has always been the same: “Oh yeah, assholes? Well, I’m a Catholic. What are you gonna do about it?” My chest-bumping fantasy usually then descends into images of an epic bar fight, at which point I snap out of it and remind myself to keep my eyes on the road.

Funny thing is, I’m not a practicing Catholic. Far from it. Though I was baptized a Catholic, and have some hazy memories of going to church when I was young, that’s about as far as my connection to the Church goes. At some point I started chompin’ down communion wafers when I did find myself being offered one. But I was never Confirmed. I don’t attend Mass. And, truth be told, I’m quite dubious of the whole Pope-as-voice-of-God notion.

Let’s think this situation through. The wholly rational reaction for someone with only a vague connection to a church or institution upon hearing that a dangerous/terrorist group wants people of that church or institution dead or banished would, of course, be, “Well. I’m not really much of a Catholic anyway…” i.e., denouncement. In life, if saving one’s skin be the most pressing day-to-day action, cutting ties with a group you don’t much care for anyway to decrease your likeliness of persecution, even if the possibility of that persecution is relatively remote, seems like a no-brainer. And yet I have the exact opposite reaction. Upon learning that a hate group like the Klan may be wanting to hurt the practitioners of the religion of my birth, though it’s a religion that I’m in reality only quasi-connected to, my reaction is to get angry, rebellious, confrontational, and, perhaps, a bit violent-minded. And I don’t think it’s just me.

This seems to be the natural human reaction to the feeling of being unjustly hated-on. Need proof? Just take a look at American Muslims these days. Since 9/11, scrutiny on Arabs, Persians, Pakistanis, and all other Muslim’s has soared. Though most haden’t done anything different/wrong since the attacks, Muslims were pressed to assimilate more into American culture, to prove their bona-fides, as it were. Funny thing is, American Muslims already were quite assimilated. Certainly more assimilated than the vast numbers of Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants. And certainly more assimilated than their Islamic-brethren in various Western European countries. And they set upon this path of assimilation of their own volition. They came to America, they saw that people who learned the language, tried to fit in, and cast their public alliance with the greater community prospered fastest, that’s exactly what most Muslim immigrants did. And, for their troubles, Muslim-Americans as a whole were much more successful, and much more accepted, than their European counterparts. It’s true they sacrificed some of their Islamic-identity to gain this acceptance, but it was their own choice to do so; a calculated trade-off for a more successful life in the US. Besides, it must have been heartening that everyone else in the US had to go through a similar cultural shedding in order to fit in and move ahead. After all, it’s not like they were coming into a millennium-old culture/race like, say, France, and being asked to act like the natives. In America, there are no natives. Everybody’s some kind of immigrant and, while there is certainly an American Culture, it’s one every single new immigrant, and thus every American, had to adapt to when they came over. This we’re-all-in-it together mentality must have given some comfort to Muslim women as they discarded their hijab head-scarves.

But, following 9/11, after Muslim’s have been demonized and Muslim-American persecution is at its highest, they hijab’s are being put back on in record numbers. At precisely the instance where, rationally, one would expect Muslim-Americans to keep their head’s down and redouble their efforts to fit in, they’re differentiating themselves from American Culture at large more than ever. It can be befuddling and maddening to see this kind of thing. A Muslim family walks into an airport with the women covered head-to-toe and the men sporting beards straight out of a horror movie, and they then proceed to bitch when they’re searched more thoroughly than the other passengers at the screening area. It can be annoying, yes, but I suppose the reason for this post is to point out that it’s perfectly understandable. The feeling of persecution is a powerful, anger-inducing, rebellion-breeding feeling. Especially in a country such as the United States, a country that strides to curb all forms of persecution, its existence is capable of causing button-down, rational people to furrow their brows and push back against their tormentors with equal or excessive force. And so the formerly music-obsessed Muslim teenage girl is reading her Quran and donning the head-scarf (that one’s pretty predictable; who likes to rebel more than teenagers?), and the money-obsessed Arab Wall Street Trader is growing his beard and daring the airport screeners to treat him differently than other passengers. It’s all a big “Fuck You” to a scared and hostile society at large. And it’s human nature.

There’s a line in the excellent new Scorsese flick, The Departed, that has been playing through my head.  Near the beginning of the film, Irish Mob boss Frank Costello says, “Twenty years after an Irishman couldn’t get a job, we had the presidency, God rest him.”  The line plays on the same unique American aura  that The Godfather tapped into three-decades ago.  The American Dream.  The chance that a man, or a people, can go from nothing to the top in practically no time at all.  From the oppressed to cock-of-the-walk in a single generation.  I’ve come to accept that this is how evangelical, born-again Christians must have felt when George W. Bush was elected President. 

Highly religious American Christians had increasingly been the butt of the joke (pretty much any joke) for years.  They were hicks.  Under-educated.  Illogical. Intolerant.    Judgmental.  Self-righteous.  Ripe for mocking.  And mocked they were.  To see an Evangelical Christian on the news was to see someone, usually with a laughably sparse vocabulary complaining about some inconsequential matter most people would never think twice about, let alone take the time to protest.  The conservative Christian character on a TV show or movie was almost always playing the part of villain, standing in the way of the free-thinking, open-minded hero.  Burned and barbed by the media again and again, the Born Agains became wise to the fact that the best they could hope for when dealing with the media was to be laughed at.  And so they remained quiet.  They went to their mega-churches every Sunday, quietly.  They asked themselves which candidate Jesus would vote for, quietly.    Interpreting the bible literally, they believed the Earth was formed but 6,000-years-ago…  Quietly.  And their numbers grew.

In November of the year 2000, the first Born Again Christian was elected President of the United States of America, again, quietly.    It was a much tamer affair than when the Catholic JFK was elected.  People were not overly alarmed.  For, over the course of 30-years leading up to the 2000 election of George W. Bush, Americans felt that most issues of Religion and State had been more or less debated and solved already.  The State would take no position on issues of faith.  Religion would stay in the church.

That’s what most Americans figured.  There was one group, of course, that did not consider the Church/State fight settled at all.  And, after decades of being increasingly marginalized, finally, one of them had come to power.  And then, all of a sudden, the quirky, formerly quiet and respectful Jesus-folk went on the rampage.  As their Savior George W. Bush led these peaceful people into War, War(!), of all un-Christian things, they focused on “correcting” every gripe they had been surpressing for the past three-decades.  Gay marriage.  Evolution.  Prayer in school.  (Notice I left out abortion, which I wouldn’t classify as a “gripe,” as it is a quite serious issue, no matter the side you fall on)  And, so long as the Christian masses gave him free reign to do pretty much whatever the hell he wanted, Bush was happy to sustain their Theocratic fantasies, and (why not), even turn back the clock a bit on a secular progression or two.

Yes, the hardcore Christian did become emboldened, and their demands did rise.  And this is a problem because, as most people already recognize, most hardcore Christians are a mess of misplaced anger and hypocrisies.

Example: Born Again Christians imagine themselves to be a fiercely Patriotic folk.  You know them, the ones with the American flag bumper stickers on their cars, the ones overtly proclaiming their love of America to no particular ends.  And yet, I have more than a hankering that if there were a vote tomorrow to abandon the Constitution of the United States (you know, that document that makes America the country they so love) in favor of a new document stating that the country shall be run by laws in accordance with the rules written in the Bible, the Born Agains would vote to ditch that dodgy ol’ Constitution en masse. Ah, yes, how patriotic.
 
I don’t think it enhances ones argument to call the opposing side idiotic (though, truth be told, if you got a couple of beers in this space man you could probably coax it out of me).  But the conservative, born-again Christians certainly ACT idotically.  Judging their various conflicting stances, I can only conclude they do not have any idea what it means to be a patriotic American, or what this country really stands for.  As with their leader, it’s tough to figure out if they are actually ignorant or willfully blind.  Whatever the case, it is important to realize that Bush emboldened an Idiot Culture in America, and that is a very serious thing.

It’s the culture that demands criticizes evolution, without ever taking the time to learn the intricacies of the theory they decry.  The culture that, again hypocritically, creates false idol after false idol (Bush. Falwell. Etc.) and unquestionably accept the opinions of their demi-God as their own.  It’s a culture that has a curious disdain for science.  I suppose their anti-scientific attitude stems from the evolution “debate,” but, much like Scientologists’ not entirely clear hatred of psychiatrists, it’s strange conservative Christians, say, take a stance against believing in Global Warming, for no obvious reason other than the fact it was those dastardly “scientists” who “came up with it.”

 In some ways, I welcome their resistance to scientific proclamations.  After all, am I not just as blindly believing the things the Scientists say as they are the things their Super Reverends say?  Do I ever delve into the actual studies and verify the facts I’m told by scientists?  No, not often.   But I have, in my day (college days, mostly) gone in depth into several experiments, examined how their facts are arrived at, how the publish/peer review system works, and, like Socrates, who remembers that a triangles’ angles equal 180-degrees, even if he doesn’t remember exactly how the mathematical proof showed it, I am confident that the system is delivering me accurate facts and proclamations.  The conservative Christians question what scientists say, but I don’t think any meaningful percentage of them ever go back to the original experiments.  I don’t think they have any interest in PROVING the scientists wrong.  They’re lazy; it’s a lot easier to just point to The Book and say, “Nuh-uh.”

The emboldening of the willfully ignorant.  That’s to be the lasting legacy of the Bush Presidency.  Ouch.