{"id":9253,"date":"2016-11-25T10:52:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T14:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=9253"},"modified":"2016-11-25T10:58:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T14:58:11","slug":"damned-by-their-own-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=9253","title":{"rendered":"Damned by their own salvation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"v-vote-here\"class=\"alignnone<\/a><\/p>\n

I wanted to post a link to this brilliant piece from Alternet, “An Insider’s View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America.”<\/a> This piece is going viral among “educated elites” who understand the self-defeating stupidity of rural America (mostly because that’s where we happened to be born).<\/p>\n

“In deep-red white America, the white Christian God is king, figuratively and literally. Religious fundamentalism is what has shaped most of their belief systems. Systems built on a fundamentalist framework are not conducive to introspection, questioning, learning, change. When you have a belief system that is built on fundamentalism, it isn\u2019t open to outside criticism, especially by anyone not a member of your tribe and in a position of power. The problem isn\u2019t ‘coastal elites don\u2019t understand rural Americans.’ The problem is rural America doesn\u2019t understand itself and will NEVER listen to anyone outside their bubble<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

The author totally nails it.<\/p>\n

I’m still avoiding the news, but it’s horrifying: <\/p>\n

Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Trump Turning to Ultra-Wealthy to Steer Economic Policy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans plan to move forward on a years-old effort to shift Medicare to a system known as premium support<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Has Steered Money from Public Schools<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Krugman on how Trump’s infrastructure scam would work<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

As the Alternet piece points out, religion is to blame more than any other factor. The author of the Alternet piece offers no real solutions, other than talking back to them. I don’t have any solutions either, other than talking back to them. I do know that I long ago passed the point of abiding by the unwritten rule that you don’t criticize people’s religion.<\/p>\n

I have long noticed, in dysfunctional people, that they tend to cling as though for dear life to the very dysfunctions that are pulling them under. They can’t seem to see their dysfunction, or to change, and so they ruin their own lives and often the lives of others who are entangled with them. White trash Americans see fundamentalist religion as their salvation. Their preachers teach them that their religion is the only thing that can save the country. So their religion blocks the vital insight — that it’s actually religion itself that is ruining their lives and communities. Some avoid the trap, to be sure. They stop going to church and observe that their life gets better, though they’re poorly equipped for figuring out why. And of course there are some — those who aren’t fundamentalists — who are smart enough to take their religion with a grain of salt and perhaps find some benefit in the social glue that any community organization can provide. <\/p>\n

I would argue that we need to start openly talking about the fundamentalist religion of white-trash America as the hell and danger to the country that it is. Then we have to figure out how to save us all from it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted to post a link to this brilliant piece from Alternet, “An Insider’s View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America.” This piece is going viral among “educated elites” who understand the self-defeating stupidity of rural America (mostly because that’s where we happened to be born). “In deep-red white America, the white Christian God … Continue reading “Damned by their own salvation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-political-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9253"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9268,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9253\/revisions\/9268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}