The end of last week, rightwing Christian leader Gary Bauer wrote a classic piece of conservative victimology, "If Christians Were Treated Like Muslims", complaining about how victimized poor Christians are here in America. His first example:
If Muslims were treated like Christians in America, Muslims would have to tolerate the defamation of their holiest images in our national museums, acts which would be called "artwork" -- and, if particularly provocative, even given taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
It's an odd choice, given that Muslims actually take seriously the Biblical injunction against "graven images", and thus have no "holiest images". Their religious art--which is profoundly beautiful--is entirely abstract. The fact that Bauer launches his pity party with such a blatant display of his utter ignorance of Islam is most revealing: It shows both how ignorant Bauer is, and how far from mainstream influence and acceptance Islam is--the exact opposite of the lie that Bauer is pushing.
But there's an even deeper layer here: Christians only have "holiest images" because they have intentionally disregarded a clear literal teaching of their sacred texts--and not an obscure or marginal passage, but the Second Commandment (from Exodus 20:4-5 (King James Version):
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God,
One of the underlying assumptions of Bauer's pity party is that all the indignities visited on Christians are signs of persecution from non-Christian--even anti-Christian "elites". But the reality is that Christians have virtually always had profound differences amongst themselves, and have often done things that other Christians vigorously objected to and even considered blasphemous and offensive. The almost universal Christian use of graven images is but one example of this.
In this broader historical context, the sorts of "offenses" that Bauer cites are almost entirely the result of intra-Christian differences, and it's almost certain that America's active encouragement of religious autonomy and diversity--which works to accentuate such differences--is a major reason why Americans are markedly more religious than those who live in countries with historical state churches and traditions of imposing religious orthodoxy. In short, one reason that Bauer is angry is because America is America
I'm still trying to catch my breath getting back from Netroots Nation, so to buy a little time, I'm going to dig even further into my backlog of unfinished business. It was touched off by a Dkos diary A story of discrimination by Kaili Joy Gray aka Angry Mouse. The diary started thus:
This will be short. It will not be sweet.
Edwin A. Graning worked as a bus driver for the Capital Area Rural Transportation System in Texas. On January 29, 2010, he was assigned to give a woman a ride to a location in Austin. He refused. He was fired.
And now he's suing. You see, Mr. Graning believes he was fired because of his religious beliefs. He believes he is the victim of discrimination. He wants his job back. He wants back pay. And he wants money for his "pain, suffering, and emotional distress."
The reason? Graning is a rightwing Christian who thinks he's got the right to not drive someone to Planned Parenthood, because he thinks they're going to get an abortion. That's what he was fired for: refusing to do his job. And he thinks it's a violation of his rights that he--as a public employee--can't deny a member of the public the public transportation that their tax dollars helped pay for.
There are so many things wrong with this story you could write a book. But the chord that it struck most loudly with me was that of hyper-exaggerated rightwing victimology--a theme that also resonated in the firing of Sherry Sherrod as well. I wrote about this early in the year, and about trying to actually quantify it. Trying to quantify a fantasy is a pretty strange sort of thing, I have to admit. But it turned out there were some ways it could be approached. It actually started back in December of last year, with Rick Warren semi-defending his supposed non-involvement in the Ugandan "Kill the Gays" initiative by claiming that hundreds of thousands of Christian were martyred every year (from "Uganda 'kill the gays' story underscores--bearing false witness lies at 'Religious Right's' core"):
How big is rightwing victimology? We now have two data points, and both say the order-of-magnitude range is 10,000 to 1!
Two months ago I would never have never imagined we could actually quantify the magnitude of rightwing victimology, even roughly. But we now have two data points, both of which fall roughly into the magnitude range of 10,000 to 1. That means that rightwingers feel they're being victimized if their advantage over perceived adversaries is less than 10,000 to 1. If the advantage is a mere 1,000 to 1, they feel overwhelmed by 10-1 odds. If the advantage is 100 to 1, they feel inundated by 100-1 odds. In fact, the ratio is even higher than that. Here's the story:
Update: Republican strategist John Feehery on Ed Shultz just said that Move-On raised so much money in the last election that this ruling will level the playing field.
Plus, the little guy is employed by corporations so they can be confident that they'll be represented by them.
& pointing out, among other things, that in 2008 the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) Sector spent 12.5 times as much as MoveOn, and that if corporations could spend without limit, Chevron's 2008 profits were 626.9 times as much as MoveOn spent, while ExxonMobile's 2008 profits were 1,185.6 times as much as MoveOn spent.
I concluded that this line of argument was so preposterous that Feehery would be better off touting Saddam's WMDs.
But, apparently, it's time to party like it's March of 2003. Digby again:
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