Its the commercials, stupid

I really didn’t realize this until presidential debate last Wednesday. I am continually surprised when I hear that the election is so close and getting closer. Then I got it – there are no political commercials playing in New York (at least New York City)! It doesn’t seem like an election. McCain gave up and ceded New York, as he did Michigan (and I suppose other places as well), so pay put money into paying for commercials, I guess.
It seems so odd…

What do they do next?

The quoted paragraph below is from the American Family Association, a very prominent Religious Right organization lead by Don Wildmon. This organization along with Focus-on-the-Family and several others are the primary forces behind the reactionary and polarizing Culture Wars in the United States.
I am truly sadden by their tactics and their short-sightedness. It came to the point several years ago where their leadership decided that political and cultural domination warranted winning at all costs and by whatever means. For them, the end justifies the means. By their rhetoric and tactics, their witness, I have a very difficult time recognizing their Christianity, despite their stated beliefs.
Here is Don’s e-mail trying to rally the troops to get out and vote. His hyperbolic statements are astounding and frightening, and he does mean it literally not out of ignorance but by intent. The Religious Right and the Neo-Conservatives push for conflict and polarization, frightening whomever they can and distorting the truth in order to get their way. Others do this too, of course, but these people are supposed to be Christian. History will show, I’m convinced, that this period in American cultural and religious history will come to be profoundly damaging to the Christian witness – the cause of Christ – in this country.
Here is a paragraph from his get-out-the-vote effort to his millions of members:

Dear Friend…
If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity. This “city set on a hill” which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage will be permanent. That is why it is so important for you to vote and to encourage friends and family to vote. This is one election where your vote really counts.

What credibility will they have when a Democrat does win and American does not “no longer exist.” Did this doomsday scenario happen when the last Democrate was in office? Of course not, and if Obama wins it won’t happen this time, unless the damage done by the last eight years by this failed president has set the stage for the end of empire. Frankly, I never wanted “empire” anyway, so I wouldn’t be so saddened if it ends. (Of course, that all depends on what takes its place in the world – dictatorship, authoritarianism, barbarism are all possible.)
And, what is left to do by all these people who believe Wildmon and Dobson and the other Religious Right leaders? Will they take up arms for God and attempt by force to impose their vision of a “city set on a hill,” a “Godly American?” What choice will they have if Obama wins, since by his winning America will be no more and real Christians will be so persecuted that they might as well be martyrs? The intentional striving for the polarization of American society by demagoguery in order to win, attain, and gain more power will come to no good end, not because of some evil liberal force taking control of their beloved geopolitical entity, but because of their own anti-democratic efforts and by their own means for imposing upon everyone in God’s name their sectarian and “fundamentalist” vision (and I don’t use the “f-word” willy-nilly).
Read Wildmon’s whole letter below.

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