Jesusland

The following discussion is pieced together from an email exchange between my cousin Jonathan, a friend named Layli, and myself. The topic? "Jesusland." Enjoy.

Jonathan starts:

A perhaps timely response from Jesusland can be read here:

[Sad American]

As a social liberal, I tend to be somewhat dismissive of social moderates & theocons m'self, but perhaps Kerry was on to something re: the NASCAR vote that other Democratic boosters failed to follow through on. It's difficult to simultaneously hold someone in contempt and request their support, no?

Bush/Rove was smart to reach out to Hispanic and Black voters, and show them how some conservative policies could help them specifically (while taking a lot of, perhaps justifiable, scorn and derision in the process), and humbly ask for their vote. He certainly didn't win a majority of them over, just enough to make a difference in some places.

Layli responds:

I'd like to discuss politics with you more, Jonathan, email me at my gmail account...but I read that link, and the comments, and I really, really struggled with it.
I agree with moderate Republicans when they claim to be insulted by suggestions that they are dumb, ill-informed, etc. And definitely, southerners have valid complaints against northern arrogance (and vice versa)...and I agree that public discourse is in the crapper. But...
I may be wearing the "tinfoil hat" as they say, but it looks to be a bit of a ruse:
It's hard for me to believe that this person honestly believed she would get calm,reasoned analysis of the issues from a source like Air America, rather than going to less biased outlets for information on John Kerry - like his website. If that's true, then maybe she deserves the label of a little dim or blind. This makes the post suspect.
She expressed belief in stereotypical profiles of democrats as people who "hate the rich" and disdain or dismiss the risks associated with entrepreneurship. This is a belief generally held by a partisan, not a so-called moderate.
"She" pretty much replicated the GOP Spin on Kerry: Kerry couldn't articulate his ideas; Kerry's positions on Iraq were confusing; Kerry thinks terrorism is a police matter; Kerry's "global test"; left wing opinionists represent the true voice of the Democratic party." and could not produce a comprehensive, reasoned analysis on the issues, other than "I understand W. W is decisive. W is a good man."
But the kicker was that Instapundit (rightwing nut) linked to her, thus causing an avalanche of internet buzz - when the blog was only created on Nov. 5 - no profile, no previous postings, etc. This makes it even more suspicious. A person who never posted before would find it very hard to get that much attention from such a buzzmaker as Instapundit. Unless Instapundit knew something about her beforehand.
The comments were far more elucidative, however. I think they revealed more about the web blogging political arena than the majority of voters. Few could easily be rendered as "swing voters."

Jonathan replies:

It's certainly reasonable to treat everything on the net with a healthy dollop of suspicion(with the exception of cousin Mookie's new blog http://themookblog.blogspot.com/ - you rule, Mook!) , but that said, there's no doubt in my mind that the ideas articulated by the author of SadAmerican don't have some validity (certainly as a response to "Jesusland", for Darwin's sake). I think I (respectfully) disagree with you on the suspicious blogs angle. Cui Bono? Who benefits from this? SadAmerican may be using talking Republican points because she's a Republican media construct, designed to trick the Democrats into, uh, having respect for and reaching out to moderate midwestern religious types (though I'm not sure I can picture Karl Rove twirling his Evil Villain Moustache (TM) on this one - how does this serve Republican partisan advantage?), or ... she may be familiar with those talking points because she, ah, is a Republican. I could also be wrong on this.

I thought about what troubled me so much about the borders map, and it's this: I think.
it's far more likely, to my perhaps overly Machiavellian brain, that the map of Jesusland would be a Republican construct - the suggestion of the coast's secession to Canada just re-enforces the Right wing meme that Leftists hate America. Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse on this, but responding to an electoral loss with arrogant condescension, coastal elitism, and nakedly anti-Christian contempt... yeah, that's a winning Progressive strategy, sure to unite the country . Similarly, if the Left continues to to be too smug and superior to people who we disagree with on some issues (who are, after all, all evil or ignorant) to form cooperative "big tent" tactical alliances, or at least stop insulting their intelligence/motives, it'll really kill the Democratic party in the near term. This lack of humility and lack of respect for differences of opinion is, I think, a sign of political immaturity.

I do agree with you that the SadAmerican author shouldn't have gone to Air America looking for reasoned discourse, and that that does seem suspiciously naive. I personally don't have much use for Moore or Fox News , Limbaugh or Air America, Vdare/NRO or Znet/Common Dreams - I think they're too partisan to give me anything resembling the full information required to have an informed opinion, but they seem to be popular among their various, ah, target audiences. This reminds me of the guy in a Frankencarrot outfit ranting to reporters about the dangers of GMOs. Regardless of the merits of his opinions, or the attention he gets, he's still his own worst enemy in getting his message out (unless his real message is "Hi! I'm really into cosplay!") - a guy in a Frankencarrot outfit's just not a credible messenger. To each their own. I think Instapundit (pro-civil liberties, pro-gay marriage, pro-research, pro-choice, pro-hawk, quite proud of his Nigerian sister-in-law, etc.) is a socially liberal Centrist hawk, you think he's Right Wing, so our different opinions of him may just be due to honest differences in political perspective/orientation. He's likely far to the Right of you, maybe not so far for me, though I don't universally agree with him.

Look. I voted for Kerry, but I didn't like him. I found him aloof, purposefully ambiguous on the WoT to keep from alienating his Leftist base and the pro-defence center (but inept when he was clear - at least to my at least equally naive armchair global strategist eyes), and an altogether unlikable East Coast billionaire plutocrat - a Bob Dole for the Democrats, if you will, only with much more unearned wealth. I'm not a Republican, but many of these criticisms easily map onto the Right wing criticisms of Kerry. I still voted for him though, because I support the Democratic party's domestic social policies (pro-choice, pro-research, relatively more fiscal responsibility and a slightly better civil liberties position than the R's, etc.), and figured Kerry'd lack the will or political power (particularly in a divided government) to screw up foreign policy too badly once he was sitting at the grown-ups table.

That said, a 3% loss is (in my opinion) neither the political meltdown of the Democratic party that triumphalist Republicans are crowing over, nor is it (apparently) the sinister machinations of automated voting machines or due to increased voter turnout over anti-gay initiatives that some of the Lefty crowd is spreading. Michael Totten (a socially liberal atheist hawk, FWIW http://michaeltotten.com/ )'s got links to the stats on this, if you're interested.

And now me:

Hi there!

Jonathan, thanks for looping me in, and thanks for plugging my blog! Did I mention my blog?
I've got to back up Jonathan on the idea that Sad American was, in all likelihood, not faked. There's no special reason to believe that Instapundit, Rove, or other Right wing operatives have the time or the inclination to manufacture a long blog post that would score them such limited political value. And even if they did, everything she says is pretty much exactly what I'd expect from a Bush-leaning swing voter. Whoopdeedoo. The proof is in the pudding, and I can't even find the pudding, here!

But I'm not sure I agree entirely with Jonathan on the "Jesusland" border map issue. Sure, calling Red country Jesusland is no way to win over moderate right-leaning Christians out there-- of course. But you won't hear leaders of the Democratic party talk like that-- this is the voice of frustration in the undercurrent of people on the Left and the Right who feel like the real issues of the election were high-jacked by Born-Again Christians; in fact, Kerry worked way, way harder at reaching out across the values gap to guys like this than did Bush toward people with more liberal values. Kerry constantly spoke of his respect for the viewpoints of people who opposed abortion, and he staked out a position on gay marriage that meshes with the majority of Americans. For X' sake, he went goose-hunting a week before the election. Time and time again he cited the fact that he was unwilling to legislate his values; Bush, on the other hand, called and continues to call for a Constitutional Ammendment banning gay marriage. It's an intensely divisive tact that appeals to a narrow Right-wing base with values that, A) do not mesh with the majority of Americans and, B) do not bear relevance to the critical issues facing the country today (we're at War, folks), and, C) clearly cannot be resolved easily through dialogue, reason, or gestures of good will, and, D) should not be resolved out of the White House-- according to, for example, Dick Cheney always and George Bush in the 2000 debates. So what you're seeing with this "Jesusland" map is, as I said, the voice of an undercurrent of real frustration amongst Americans with what happened on the issues with this election. Because they see issues that need to be addressed by our government, the same issues that most Americans for years have been discussing-- The War on Terror, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, relations with Iran and North Korea, the economy, our health care, our education system, social security, the sciences, the environment-- sound familiar? These issues lost due to a minority population bum-rushing the polls to vote on fringe issues that were deliberately trumped up by this President in order to divide and conquer. Here's the result as posted by the Political Wire today:

November 11, 2004

Born Again Christians Were a Big Factor in Election
The Los Angeles Times notes that a new poll "found that born-again Christians voted for Bush over Kerry by a 62% to 38% margin." But the most striking statistic is that "although the born-again population constituted 38% of Americans, it represented 53% of the votes cast in the election."The survey also notes "if the born again public had shown up proportional to its population size, Senator Kerry would have won the election by the same three-point margin of victory enjoyed by Mr. Bush."

I still believe very strongly that the Left (and the Moderate Right) should absolutely respect the views of this vocal minority, as they did so well during the election. Your feeling in that respect is right on, I think. But respect is a two way street, and you can hardly blame the rest of America for feeling a little bit (and light-heartedly) irritated at being captive to the whims of Born-Again Christians right now.