The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair (AlterNet)

[redacted]

Millions of Americans live trapped in soulless exurbs which lack any kind of community, leaving them feeling isolated and vulnerable. Without alternatives for their social despair, they flock to demagogues promising revenge and a mythical utopia.

http://www.alternet.org/story/46908/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. "Fleeing the world of reality for utopian myths"... pretty much sums it up.

[northernsoul]

2. don't forget to factor in economic insecurity

My feeling is that unless you are literally a millionaire, your economic situation is actually pretty damn precarious these days.

[Fovea]

3. This really rings true

and says a lot about why suburbia and exurbia are so full of hate and fear.

It describes the America I call NIMBYville.

[redacted]

4. Yes, and one could say the same about many small towns

[Fovea]

6. In the small towns around here

it seems like the Civil War is still being fought.
You see so many confederate flags on trucks.

It only goes to show how poorly our school systems teach history, that anyone from Missouri or Kansas would want to celebrate bleeding Kansas or bushwhacker Missouri.

Our civil war was a lot like Iraq's--even down to the hangings and beheadings. Only three really big battles, (Wilson Creek, Pea Ridge, Westport/Bryam's ford) but a huge number of terrorists on both sides.

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. I believe it. Why don't these secularists talk about traditional Christians fighting for the city?

The focus of traditional religion is the polar opposite of the
suburbo-fascists, whose "religion" is just part of a global fascist
fundamentalist facade of oppression and rootless xenophobia.

In times of turmoil, religion and ideology are always misused to
divide people and make people in the middle classes direct their
anxieties downwards instead of upwards. It doesn't have to be
that way. Look at the difference in culture-religious belief
between the French, English and Spanish colonists.

Fundamentalism is a recent ideological phenomenon, tied to (secular)
postmodern belief in the supremacy of "text" and opinion (semantics,
semiotics) over reality.