We're in the lull before the September and October political storms hit us. It's all going to be just so freakin' great.
While we're waiting, allow me to don my Reverend hat for a bit.
Ever see or hear anyone speak in tongues?
Back when the Christian charismatic movement was new and shiny, at least to America, speaking in tongues was all the rage.
Speaking in a spontaneous gibberish language is, to many Christians, a sign that a believer has been truly baptized into the Spirit. Sometimes, the non-discernable gibberish is called the 'heavenly language'…..even though no one understands a word, or syllable, of it.
Except for the 'interpreter', that is. Charismatic Christians…Pentecostals, Full Gospel, even some Catholics…..also believe in the Spirit's gift of 'interpretation.'
So what you wind up with in some of the more…..lively….church groups, is a pre-game Holy Spirit warmup where a spirit-filled congregant will stand up and break out into a mono-syllabic gibberish completely unintelligible to other members. When that person gets done babbling…..another person will stand up and provide the English 'translation' of the 'heavenly language' just heard.
Religion is odd.
But then so is politics.
I've made it a point this year to listen more often to the drivers of today's conservative political movement in America…..Rush, Hannity, Beck, Levine….the Fox bunch. What I've noticed…..reminds me of that pre-game Holy Spirit warmup thingy.
Then it came to me. When Christian doctrine….or Republican Party conservatism…..fails to make any sense, is irrational, contradicts itself, or is just plain batty…..which is often the case with both….there comes a need for something more, something experiential, something for the faithful to sink their teeth into.
For charismatic Christians, that something is the gift of the Spirit, which often leads to the unintelligible, yet exciting, spontaneous breakout into unintelligible garbling.
For Republican Party conservatives…..it's the predictable spontaneity, yet still unintelligible, daily babblings of numerous Foxian Priests.
Similar to the tongues speaker/interpreter dynamic, a Foxian Priest, say, Sean Hannity, will spout off a string of entirely unreasonable and irrational babblings. Virtually everything Hannity says is a lie or a misconstruction…..but when he strings them together so rapidly and with such fervor…..congregants, I mean, conservative listeners….get excited, get caught up in the Spirit of the tongues-speaking Foxian Priest.
Although it always produces excitement, enthrallment even…..none of what the Foxian Priest, conservative tongues-speaker says makes one bit of sense to non-conservative, non-tongues-speakers.
Month by month, day by day, Republican Priests have been speaking in gibberish: Obama is a Muslim, a Kenyan, an undocumented socialist-commie-nazi, not one of us. Obama has taken America away with his death panels, govenment takeover of health care, stimulus, financial regulations, apologies, bowing. Obama is destroying America, is our nation's enemy, sides with the terrorists,….even pals around with them.
BP deserves an apology, Banksters deserve our sympathy, health insurers are our friends, tax cuts pay for themselves and create jobs, Newt Gingrich has ideas.
Gibberish….unintelligible.
Each week, a new Foxian Priest ascends into the heavens of delirium, returning to the microphone to tell the congregation about the racist Shirley Sherrod, or the evil, evil ACORN, or the radical New Black Panthers (both of them), or the more recent heavenly babbling about "hallowed ground" and "sensitivities" which, when properly translated, means American Muslims hate America and should be denied equal rights.
For the faithful, you know, the FoxHeads, the Dittoheads, the BeckerHeads……it's all about the hysterical excitement. Sure, from all empirical, demonstrable evidence, Republican policies have proven to be a total failure. But, ahah, conservatives have been baptized into the Spirit of St. Ronnie and no longer have to depend only on their failed policies of the past, no longer have to rely on known knowns and all that Rumsfeldian stuff.
No sir. Today's conservative Priests create their own reality, just as Father Rove instructed. And that reality is just as exciting for the Fox, Ditto, and Becker Heads as a gibberish-spouting, Spirit-filled charismatic Christian blabbering away in mono-syllabic nonsense, is to pew sitters.
The failure of Christianity's message in a modern world led directly to the yearning for something more. Nonsensical outbreaks of tongues-speaking and interpretations kept Christianity exciting….even if disattached from reality.
The obvious failure of American Republicanism over the past 3 decades has led the conservative faithful to yearn for more….umm…..than boring failures. The flock needed a Revival. Conservatives collectively called on the Spirit of St. Ronnie to revive them.
The result?
American conservatives have been enraptured by Foxian gibberish, by an entirely-unintelligible-to-non-faith-based Americans, Foxian gibberish of political tongues-speaking.
No non-member can understand or decipher a word of any of it.
But members are excited.
