Christofascist idiot watch update!

I unintentionally took a week off from the blog to catch up on other things that have fallen behind. Time for a C.I.W.U. This time, there is hope that evangelicals are finally having to deal with reality. Not the biblical made-up one they spend most of their time in, I mean the one that the rest of us live in. First up, an article in Friday's NYT called "Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers".

"Their alarm has been stoked by a highly suspect claim that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that, 65 percent of the World War II generation.

Genuine alarm can be heard from Christian teenagers and youth pastors, who say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual “hooking up” approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music. Divorced parents and dysfunctional families also lead some teenagers to avoid church entirely or to drift away.

Over and over in interviews, evangelical teenagers said they felt like a tiny, beleaguered minority in their schools and neighborhoods. They said they often felt alone in their struggles to live by their “Biblical values” by avoiding casual sex, risqué music and videos, Internet pornography, alcohol and drugs."

That's the sound of reality, folks. Yes, teenagers are an impressionable lot, as evidenced in the pathetic picture in the Times piece. But for many, the teen years are when intellectual development also starts to come into fruition, and when that happens, most of the evangelical bullshit can be seen by some for the bullshit that it is. Teens can see the hypocrisy of the leaders. I think a lot of teens are turned off by intolerance. And maybe some of them are actually paying attention in science class. And maybe they're figuring out that some of the more prurient 'urges' they feel are more than just 'temptation'. Or maybe it's just that what their religion tells them just doesn't jive with reality.

Mel Seesholtz has a similar take on this over at Smirking Chimp, with his "The New Exodus From Oppression":

"Life – especially for a teenager – should be celebratory, not filled with the doom and gloom, fire and brimstone evangelicals love to rain down on everyone, including their own kids. As the muse Serendipity said in the 1999 film Dogma, some Christians – especially bible-thumping, everything-is-a-sin, we're-right-all-others-are-wrong evangelical Christians – don't celebrate spirituality, "they mourn it." And rightfully so, since they've killed it with their concocted anti-human dour dogma."

The hypocrisy as of late, is amazing. Just look at pious cultmaster James Dobson, one of the biggest and most influential blowtards on the religious right, on the Foley affair. It's just a joke concocted by the pages. This is a man who knows his 'flock' are being used, and he goes right along with it. Thomas Frank talked about, in his 'What's the Matter With Kansas' book, how the corporatist/big money Repubs use social issues to get the evangelical sheeple to support them. They may throw them a bone every now and then, but don't really do more than lip service. Just look at what bowtie hack pundit Tucker Carlson had to say about this:

"Carlson made the basic, direct statement that for years has needed making. “Everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals,” he continued under questioning. When asked, “How do you know?” in response to his initial claim about the GOP, he gave the unequivocal answer: “Because I see them.” As Carlson said, he works with them, meaning members of the power elite or the opinion makers. He has moved among them for years. “They live on my street.”

Following up the statements that “The Republican elite has contempt for the evangelicals,” and “Everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals,” he continued, “and “everybody knows that. The evangelicals are beginning to figure it out.”

'Figuring it out' is going to be a slow painful process, not just because of the lack of critical thinking skills in that gene pool; they've got nowhere else to go. Fine with me, I can't think of a more worthy and dangerous political subculture I'd like to see neutered. Dobson is well aware of this but goes along with it because it keeps him in a position of power as well. It will be interesting to see what happens.