I live in the American midwest, in a blue state, near a large city. It’s not as left as, say, San Francisco, but it’s left-leaning. There are enough Darwin fish on cars that I don’t feel completely out of place. But there are also quite a few jingoistic religious patriotism stickers on cars, and even more on trucks and minivans. The most innocuous of these say “God bless the USA.” Some are more explicit about wanting prayer in schools or Jesus elected president or what have you. I’m going to leave those latter ones for some other time, when I’m writing about people who are completely batshit, and just concentrate on the apparently widely held belief that god favors the USA.
If you think about it “god bless the USA” sums up, in four words, everything that other nations find so unnerving and déclassé about us. In one short slogan, we express not only the outrageous egotism of believing that we are divinely favored, but also the staggering ignorance necessary to believe it. If I were living in one of the European countries – say, Norway - I’d be really, really nervous that a nation willing to proudly display such drivel on its bumpers and t-shirts is still in possession of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and standing army. This does not make us a good neighbor. It would be like living next door to a crazy person who runs around his yard with a rifle and points it at imaginary Viet Cong.
Of course, we are not the only nation that believes we have a god-given charter. But most of the others are wild-eyed spittle-bearded Muslim states. These nations are genuinely dangerous, because they believe god has given them license to be, and therefore cannot lose. What company to be in, huh? We’re in with the loose cannons. I sometimes feel like America is standing next to Afghanistan wearing a big t-shirt that says I’M WITH STUPID.
I imagine our European allies breathed a sigh of relief when America sensibly (for a change) rejected the Bush doctrine, and gave the religious right a bloody nose, by electing Barack Obama. Well, don’t relax, guys. The fundies are mad as hell about this, and although they don’t have to go hide in caves like their muslim counterparts in Afghanistan, they do have the same righteous fury. How dare you expect us to accept electoral defeat, when god wants us to rule? Don’t you know that this is Jesus’ country? The American left just got their heads handed to them in a couple of gubernatorial elections, and the right is successfully spreading enough lies and confusion about healthcare (among other things) to keep their base riled up. And at the core of it is the idea that this a country specially blessed by god, who is a Republican and wants you to vote for the people who will go back to waging religious wars, preferably on people who have oil.
Like many religious claims, belief in divine favor for your nation (or other group) is impervious to falsification; any set of circumstances can be twisted into supporting the belief. In the USA, the fact that America had a good long run of calling the shots for the world was evidence that god wanted us to do it. The fact that we’re losing that authority is evidence that god wants us to be more religious so we can do it again. In the Arab countries, the fact that America has had a good long run of calling the shots is evidence that we are in cahoots with satan, which in turn is evidence that they are god’s favored. No matter what is going on, it can be turned into “proof” of who god loves more.
Some of my friends (yes, I’m looking at you, Urban) feel that atheism is getting too evangelistic. Obviously I don’t completely agree, and this is one of the reasons. Sam Harris is right; we cannot afford my-god-is-greater-than-yours tribal warfare any more, now that we’ve come to the point where our tribes are hundreds of millions strong and our spears have nuclear warheads. Cooler heads currently prevail in Europe, especially Scandinavia, where going around with some sort of lowbrow advertisement for christianity plastered on your car or your clothing would be pitifully gauche. There’s no requirement to be irreligious there, of course, but religion is not a political force capable of electing morons and lunatics to high office. Religions are part of their societies, but they don’t dominate them. Yet. Until the muslims get their way. (That’d be just the same thing we have here, with a different dress code.) But whether we’re talking about the islamization of Europe or the christian right in the USA, the problem is the same – people making apocalyptic decisions on the basis of some shared delusion. Secularism needs to speak up against it, and the first thing we have to address is the idea of god sponsoring individual countries.
No, America, god did not say you are his favorite and are in charge of the world. And no, Islam, god did not say you are his favorite and get to tell everyone else how to live. People will always find reasons to gang up on each other, and I’m not under any illusion that getting countries to make policy secular will eliminate war and conflict. But doesn’t it make sense to campaign against the mindsets that lead to our most intractable conflicts?
It’s a measure of the strength of religious know-nothingism in the USA that we have enough “god bless the USA” bumper sticker voters to have re-elected George W. Bush in 2004. Those voters are not going away just because they lost in 2008; they’re regrouping and gathering strength. They promote the religious view. That needs something to counter it, or we’re going to get President Palin in 2012, with her finger on the button, you betcha.
And that is as much incentive as I need to agitate for secularism.
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“I sometimes feel like America is standing next to Afghanistan wearing a big t-shirt that says I’M WITH STUPID.”
Oh yes. It is a puzzlement to me what the red-meat Americans have against the Pashtuns, they are, after all, ideological and social brothers. Pashtuns are practicing libertarians — families should be self-governing and armed to the teeth to repel the evil agents of Gummint. If they don’t kill you on sight, you get big-hearted hospitality. Women are kept in their place and sexual deviants are slaughtered. God is with them. What’s not for them to like? I therefore suggest that someone from South Waziristan be invited to give the next Republican keynote speech.
Sympathetic though I am to your concerns, Dwasifar, I suspect that a militant Atheism would only drive the religious moderates into the arms of the nuts. If those less politically extreme Christians who make up the vast majority of Americans felt threatened by what they perceived as a smug, condescending Atheist assault on their cherished beliefs, your plan could seriously backfire.
Yes, Hugo, as I’ve often argued, fundamentalists from any tradition have more in common with each other than they do with their more mainstream co-religionists. Let’s keep it that way.
If that were so, then evangelistic christianity should already be experiencing a net loss of members as they drive the moderates into the arms of the atheists. It’s true that the numbers of the moderates are diminishing, but the fundies are increasing, so it’s fair to assume some of that growth is coming from former moderates defecting.
America looks to be polarizing on this issue, and if that’s what’s happening, then it’s only sensible to deploy some countermeasures to the fundies’ well-mobilized campaigns to win hearts and minds. It’s not unreasonable to call your opponents delusional when they’re out there painting you as evil and immoral. And a few bus ads, billboards, and books of pointed rhetoric don’t begin to equal the media opportunities the fundies take advantage of daily.
Since you invoked us heathen wimps, I should mention that you won’t see Darwin fish here. Not because there are no atheists, but because no one feels the need. Darwin himself is about as controversial as the round earth, although evolutionary psychology is wholly unacceptable to the intellectual establishment, which is Dworkinist.
In the same way, Christian bumper stickers are quite rare. Certainly no one feels presssured to affix “Jesus tat” to their cars in order to avert social unpleasantness. Bumper stickers, for whatever cause, even football, are not a European thing at all.
It’s almost a pity, since they can be a channel for wit. If the opposite of intolerance is complete lack of interest in other people, then maybe we Norwegians could benefit from a touch more of it. The car behind mine doesn’t care what I believe in, but that’s because he hardly recognises my existence anyway. He is unlikely to interact with me in any way unless aliens land on the highway and abduct us both. But that doesn’t happen here either.
I am sorry to say, but I think that “God bless the USA” isn’t, in fact, a staement as much as it is a request. If the bumper sticker put the verb into past tense, and “God blessed the USA, that would be a whole other thing. But, as a present tense verb, I would liken it to “Hey Bubba- pass them crawdads!” NOT “Bubba passed me them crawdads.
Actually I see it as “God, (continue to) bless the USA.”