One of our problems is that a major "Loopie" here is Gore. You could take the "Unibomber Manifesto" and publish it as "Earth in the Balance II," and people would have no trouble believing he wrote it. It was a bigger problem 20 years ago when a lot of the Environmental ideas had not been shot down, but they are still an huge organized force.
Do you think that “Earth in the Balance” really represented Gore’s opinions, or was it just an attempt to bring in the loopie vote? My impression has always been that the relationship between the Democratic Party and the loopies is similar to that between the Republicans and the Christian Right. The party needs the votes of the extremists, but at the same time they know that if the platform shifts too far in the extremist direction, the moderate voters will flee in droves. It’s a tough balancing act either way. I always had the feeling that Gore’s attempts to woo the loopies had more than a bit of hypocrisy, and I expect he’d have left them hanging to the greatest degree possible after the election. In any event, Gore is an ex-issue now; he has no real influence and will quickly fade away. Next time around I expect and hope that the Democrats will look for someone closer to the center, and hopefully someone of a bit higher human quality as well.
You are relaxing over there in the Philippine Jungle, (Whoops, I mean "Rain Forest) and don't feel the direct effects of it.
I wish. You wouldn’t believe the numbers of these people that we get over here. They descend on us in droves. The Philippines is to Asia what Botswana is to Africa, the favored laboratory for every small aid organization in the world’s “progressive”. Some of them are actually pretty interesting, many totally off the wall. We have an appalling alphabet soup of NGOs; what they do, beyond conferring at a prodigious rate, is generally a mystery. We’re also the final stop on the Eurohippie travel circuit. The town where I live, being cool (high altitude), beautiful, cheap, and inhabited by what are called “indigenous people” these days, gets more than its share of visitations. Believe me, I hear it all.
I have as little sympathy with fundamentalist environmentalism as anyone, but I have to say that the environmental movement has done enormous good for the country in the last 30 years. The quality of our air, our rivers, our water has been improved beyond meausure, and the availability of wilderness areas is a real, if immeasurable, benefit. Negative impacts on the economy have been far smaller than many predicted: I remember that when the first Clean Air Act was on the floor, representatives from Michican were predicting that its passage would mark the demise of the US auto industry. Didn’t happen.
One might say the same thing about feminism: despite the lunacy spouted by the extremists, the movement as a whole has vastly improved the lives of millions. That movement may need a new direction to maintain its relevance, but it will either find that direction or expire on its own.
I don’t feel threatened by the radicals. I’m familiar with their limited organizational capacity and their tendency toward internal conflict (for a brief span in the late ‘70s I worked in the Nader empire, and could almost have been said to be one of them) and I don’t believe that they will ever attain real power.
They are still around, aren't they? I have been following the rise of fundamental style Christianity in the Third World, and it is growing much faster than Islam, from what I read. The most interesting part of it to me is that it is being led by locals, not US imports, and that is one of the reasons it is growing so fast. We are in much better shape with the locals believing in "Rendering unto Caesar," than if they adopt a "The Mullahs should run everything" Philosophy.
There are still some. The guy I mentioned I met in the ‘80’s, a mixed-up time over here. He’d done hard time in ‘Nam, found Jesus, and devoted himself to spreading the gospel according to General Singlaub. Mixed up guy. I remember trying to explain some of the local complications to him, the Marcos legacy, the reasons for the rise of the left (this was in Davao, a high-conflict area in those days. Didn’t want to hear a word of it. No visible denomination, but lots of money. There was an organized effort here in the ‘80s to promote fundamentalist Christianity in rural areas, to counteract what was perceived as a leftward drift by the Catholics. CIA people were involved – in those days we had the second-biggest spook presence in the world, behind only Moscow – but a lot of money was also coming in through WACL, much of it apparently sourced from the Moonies (strange bedfellows), and Singlaub himself was spending a lot of time here. There were also a fair number of freelancers: a guy named Bavid Berg, who called himself Moses David and headed a sect called the Children of God, had a big setup here. Part of their routine was to have female members seduce males (rarely a difficult task) and try to draw them into the fold, so to speak. He was working on military officers, trying to persuade them to throw a right-wing coup. He was so far off the beam that I have a hard time imagining any form of official support, but he never seemed short of shekels.
All of them were trying desperately to counteract the supposed leftie tendencies of Cory Aquino, and restore the good old days of Marcos’ reliable anti-communism, under a new name. Oddly, when Marcos took office there were 250 armed commies in the country, when he left there were 40,000, and there would have been more if they had more arms. When Cory took office, there were 40,000; when she left there were less than a quarter of that. Odd sort of left sympathies, those.
Anyway, I digress. Many of these fundamentalist groups have survived, though the outside support has dried up, and even thrived, now under completely local leadership. I’ve read that the course growth for independent fundamentalist Christianity in Latin America has been very similar, and I wonder how much of the rise of Christian fundamentalism that you describe is an offshoot of a long-forgotten cold war initiative.
Fundamentalism, of whatever description, offers both certainty and the promise of eternal bliss, and naturally has enormous appeal in places where hardship and deprivation are the order of the day, and education and rational thought are not widespread. I am not convinced, though, that Christian fundamentalism is any more inherently benign than the Islamic variety. It is less a threat, of course, being less developed in the impoverished world, and less well positioned to serve as a vehicle for other political sentiments. That doesn’t mean that it’s harmless, or that its rise will be a positive influence. The difference we see between fundamentalist Christianity (based largely in the US) and fundamentalist Islam is less a function, IMO, of any inherent difference between those religions than a function of the different social milieus in which they gained prominence.
One of the problems is that Governments don't do "Nuance" to well. They are very good at doing nothing or doing everything, the twists and turns in between are difficult.
Unfortunately, the ability to manage nuance is essential in both domestic and foreign affairs, especially in times of stress. Ideologues of any type manage nuance very poorly, a good reason (one among many) for keeping ideologues out of office. Achieving excellence outside the world of politics requires a grasp of nuance. This is an excellent reason for choosing leaders that have achieved prominence outside of politics, and an excellent reason for avoiding people of the Bore/Gush type, those who have done little or nothing on their own and have spent their lives riding on Daddy’s coat-tails. |
