• Gary Bauer, President, American Values
• Paul Caprio, Director, Family-Pac Federal
• Marjorie Dannenfelser, President, Susan B. Anthony List
• Dr. James Dobson, President and Founder, Family Talk Action
• Andrea Lafferty, President, Traditional Values Coalition
• Tom Minnery, Executive Director, CitizenLink
• William J. Murray, Chairman, Religious Freedom Coalition
• Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
• Sandy Rios, VP of Government Affairs, Family-Pac Federal
• Austin Ruse, President, Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
• Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
• Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, Founder, Traditional Values Coalition
• Tim Wildmon, President, American Family Association

And by that, I mean that they are threatening to take their money elsewhere if Republicans keep shifting to the dark side and doing horrible things like favoring same-sex marriage and background checks for gun purchases.

Want more proof the National Rifle Association is an extremist group? In Pennsylvania, they lobbied and successfully blocked a law that would have required gun owners to report to law enforcement if their weapons are lost or stolen.

Can’t have that now can we? And that’s not all. Once that happened on a state level, a number of municipalities passed such laws on their own. So what’s the NRA doing now? Working with the state legislature to pass laws that will make it prohibitively expensive for those municipalities to prosecute violators.

Y’know, even if you believe that the 2nd Amendment allows citizens to have whatever type of weapons they choose with no background checks, licensing or anything else, you’d think if said assault weapons are lost or stolen, the owners would want someone to help get them back.

Otherwise it starts to sound a lot like the perps on the cop shows, don’t it? Cop: “The grenade launcher that killed Mr. X was registered in your name.” Suspect: “That launcher was stolen months ago.”

How convenient.

And speaking of extremists, did you see that the Salt Lake Tribune endorsed Barack Obama over favorite son Mitt Romney? Seems the editorial board couldn’t figure out who Mitt is now that he’s pandering after the Tea Party and other religious extremists.

Now, you may or may not know that I pretty much consider all religions cults, but this Latter Day Saints thing takes the cake. I’m sure there are good people amongst the Mormons, as there are amongst all religions, but it seems a lot of ‘em know even less about where their religion comes from than your garden variety Christians do.

Seriously, this dude Joseph Smith, see, he found these golden plates buried in the dirt somewhere, written in a script he called “reformed Egyptian” that nobody’d ever heard of and then magically translated them. They had this entire history of people in North America — cities and animals and plants and metals (none of which is actually true, of course, but it’s another one of those Heavenly-Father-put-the-archaeological-evidence-in-there-wrong-just-to-test-our-faith kind of things, I imagine). Thus, the Book of Mormon.

After he finished translating the plates, he gave them back to the angel who first pointed them out to him. Eleven people claim to have seen the plates, but it’s not all that clear if they ever actually did, since even the guy who wrote down Smith’s dictated translation never saw them … and, in fact, they were not in the room when Smith did his translation.

But hey, who am I to judge? Just because Joseph Smith was convicted of fraud … oh, I didn’t mention that? See, he made his living as a treasure hunter. He’d put “seer stones” into his hat, peer into the hat and tell dupes where to find treasure, which, oddly enough, was the same method he used to translate the Book of Mormon, so he didn’t actually have to look at it while he translated. Somebody somewhere got ticked off when the treasure wasn’t there, and Smith went to court, where he was found guilty. Or not, if you believe the church, although it’s pretty clear he was into those seer stones from an early age.

Oh, and every time Smith did something stupid, like, say, getting caught cheating on his wife, he would come up with something to make it all right, like, say, plural marriage, which, incidentally, his wife wasn’t too fond of.

I dunno. I guess you can call me intolerant of other religions if you want, but then again, I’m equally opportunistically intolerant of religion. My mild-mannered alter ego considers herself Buddhist, which she says she considers more a philosophy than a religion. OK, whatever. At least she doesn’t try to foist it on other people.

Neither does Mitt, he says, but his whole family seems awful proud of the missions they do. Like Mitt, y’know, he spent all that time in Paris proselytizing instead of in Vietnam getting shot at, and Ann Romney says they’s pretty much the same thing.

Extremists. The whole damn lot of ‘em.

For another, they set up a toll-free phone number for us space junkies to call and listen to the astronauts talk. I did that, several times. Just to hear Sally Ride. I mean, wow. The first American woman in space. Space, the final frontier. A woman astronaut.

A woman astronaut who got asked ridiculous things like, “do you cry when things go wrong on the job” by my beloved colleagues after she was named to STS-7, never mind she had a Ph.D. in phucking physics. From fucking Stanford. And she helped develop the robot arm. My colleagues can be such idiots.

OK, but that was 1983 you say. How really different is it now? Quite, actually. For one thing, the United States doesn’t even have a shuttle program anymore, and depends on the Soviet Union … erm, I mean Russia, to get astronauts to the space station. And my colleagues pretty much ignore the whole thing anyway. I can probably count on my two hands how many know that Suni Williams is up there right now, and probably on only one hand the number who know she’ll be the station commander in September.

But Sally. Sally Ride. The name, the woman. Space. Sally was the ground communicator for the 2nd and 3rd shuttle flights, flew for a second time in 1984 and was set to fly for a third time when Challenger — the very shuttle she flew in both her space missions — exploded. NASA named Sally to the commission to investigate the accident, and then later to do strategic planning in Washington.

But politics and science don’t mix very well. Kinda like religion and science, actually, so Sally left and went off to do science, with a particular aim at bringing more kids, particularly girls, on board. She still worked with NASA on the side, and was named to the commission investigating the Columbia accident in 2003 — the only person to serve on both.

Oh, and she was a lesbian. We found out about this because the obituary that she and her 27-year partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy (also a scientist) wrote mentioned Tam as her first survivor. Hell, we didn’t even know Sally had cancer, and now we find out she was a lesbian too?

Good thing they wrote that obit, though, because NASA used its own. It doesn’t mention Tam.

But damn, some of us said, why the hell did she wait until after she was dead to let us in on this secret? Isn’t Sally Ride the very kind of person we want to show the nutjobs that we are not only just like everybody else, but in some cases we are way better than everybody else?

Well, yeah. But Sally didn’t see it that way. I don’t know what discussions went on behind closed doors between her and Tam (although I’m sure there were plenty), but I can guess at what kinds of things may have helped her decide not to come out publicly. Do you cry when things go wrong at work?

Sally wanted to do science, not give lessons on how it is that a lesbian can be America’s first female astronaut and be so fucking brilliant the rest of us should just fall down at her feet. Sally wanted to promote science in a country where half of it — oddly enough the same half that would condemn her to hell for her “lifestyle choice” — doesn’t get that science isn’t a matter of what you decide to believe. Sally wanted to get more little girls interested in science, not fend off ridiculous accusations that she’s a dyke child molester — accusations that my colleagues were bound to take just as seriously as anything she could say to the contrary.

In short, an out lesbian Sally Ride could never have accomplished what she accomplished because she would have been too busy dealing with both the idiots who think lesbians are women who hate men and those of us on our side who think famous lesbians should spend all their time in the spotlight talking about how great it is to be gay.

And that, my friends, is just so fucking sad it hurts to think about it.

According to the nation’s citizenry, calls for a mature, thoughtful debate about the role of guns in American society started right on time, and should persist throughout the next week or so. However, the populace noted, the debate will soon spiral out of control and ultimately lead to nothing of any substance, a fact Americans everywhere acknowledged they felt “absolutely horrible” to be aware of.

With scalpel-like precision, the American populace then went on to predict, to the minute, how long it will take for the media to swarm Aurora, CO, how long it will take for them to leave, and exactly when questions will be raised as to whether or not violence in movies and video games had something to do with the act.

The Onion did leave out the teddy bear and flower memorial at the theatre. And of course, it wasn’t violence in movies and video games my colleagues obsessed over. This time, they got down to the gun control battle almost immediately, with the usual, emotion-driven, completely unreasonable results.

Can’t we just mourn the tragedy without one side immediately blaming lax gun laws and the other, equally quickly, calling for more concealed weapons in public?

asked one of my colleagues on Facebook, and the answer was quickly clear, from another: “No, we cannot.”

Well, I know one cable television news anchor who wouldn’t take part in the usual bullshit. Will McAvoy. Will McAvoy would be sensitive to the victims in the tragedy and still not get bogged down in the either/or, emotionally charged garbage that passes for news in this country anymore.

Yeah, Will McAvoy, my beloved colleagues. The guy on Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show The Network that you keep laughing about. Nervous laughter maybe? Because you are the very ones decrying the bullshit that the fictional McAvoy is taking head on. The bullshit that you complain loudly about and never lift a finger to stop.

Hey, I know it’s hard. You’ve got Jane Fonda to think about. Oh, wait. Jane Fonda would be right with you if you really wanted to change things. It’s Fonda’s character on The Newsroom who worries about the money. And threatens to get rid of employees who won’t play the game.

See, here’s the thing. Sorkin, who is not a pleasant fellow but nevertheless does entertaining television, doesn’t give us real life. I’m sure none of you think The West Wing was remotely true to life. It was idealized, the same way The Newsroom is idealized. It’s what we wish would happen but not a damn one of us will do anything to create.

So I’m gonna go out on the proverbial limb here and talk about this like I think Will McAvoy would, and Will — he wouldn’t shy away from the gun arguments.

But he also wouldn’t get into the he said/she said of the pro and anti gun lobbies. Neither will I. Full disclosure: I do not like guns. I do not own one, and I won’t own one. I do not hunt, and I am not so afraid that I feel I must protect myself with a weapon that is much more likely to end up hurting me or someone I love than anyone else. I have fired guns, however, and am a pretty good shot. But I’m older now, and wiser. Guns don’t kill people. People with guns do.

The United States has a pretty high per capita of gun murders, suicides and accidental deaths. It’s significantly lower than, say, South Africa or Colombia, but only slightly below Mexico, and way higher than a whole bunch of countries that have sane gun laws.

Sane gun laws like people should not be able to buy assault weapons. For what earthly reason do you need an assault weapon? It is not a hunting rifle. And 6,000 rounds of ammunition? Seriously? It’s even easier to buy ammo, y’know, than a gun. Except maybe in Colorado or Texas. Obviously. That picture, by the way, is of a couple of SWAT dudes with AR-15 assault rifles and 90-round drum magazines. The Aurora shooter had 100-round drum magazines.

I don’t begrudge anybody who wants to buy a gun for protection, although I do think you shouldn’t oughta do it. I think we need fewer guns, not more guns. We have too many already, and it’s not helping. But no, I’m not for laws banning guns. We need to turn away from them voluntarily.

So naturally, after this tragedy in Colorado, I waited patiently until someone said

If more sane, law-abiding citizens were carrying guns, this guy might have thought twice.

Or at least less innocent people would have been hurt.

Actually, the correct word is “fewer.” Fewer innocent people. Less innocent people — well, maybe the writer actually did mean that — as in, maybe the shooter is “less innocent” than the other people — but I really don’t think so.

Either way, it’s absolutely wrong, unless the “sane, law-abiding citizens” carrying the guns were special ops forces, trained to work against some dude in a gas mask who tossed tear gas into a darkened theatre and then proceeded to use multiple weapons, including the aforementioned assault rifle and its drum cartridges.

No, if “more sane, law-abiding citizens were carrying guns” at that theatre, there’d be a lot more people dead.

But we won’t talk about sane gun laws. We’ll talk about either/or. We should have no gun laws or no guns. Yeah, I’m all for no guns, but not laws to make it so. Just sane laws to keep some of the crazy shit out. But it’s so much more fun and emotional to take extreme ends and pit them against each other on network news. And that’s what the news has become. Emotional appeals. Scare people. Freak them out. Make them cry. But for god’s sake don’t temper that with any rationality.

Yeah, temper it. Not overcome the emotion with impeccable reason. That’s the problem here — and it’s why people like James Holmes and that guy at Virginia Tech go all batshit and shoot up people. It’s simple: We don’t know how to balance emotion and reason. We think it’s supposed to be either/or, and it’s not.

And here, we typically think of emotion as something less — y’know, women are more emotional, and women aren’t as important or valuable as men, who are so much more rational. But what happens when you suppress your emotional side and do nothing to integrate it with your rational side?

You shoot up a movie theatre. Or overdose on drugs. Or become an alcoholic. Or beat your wife. Or kick a puppy. Or put on weird make-up and wear black all the time. Because sooner or later those icky old emotions will show up. Or Wolf Blitzer and a bunch of politicians will punch your buttons and your insides will open up and they’ll just spill out.

We need to learn that heart and mind are the same thing, not two different “parts” of us that can never be reconciled. They ARE reconciled. We’re the ones who keep forcing them apart.

Cuz when you let them be the same … you focus like a laser. You’re unstoppable.

Just ask Will McAvoy.

That said: while we all want a government free of religion, there are good reasons that we may not want our own progressive movement to be shorn of every last spiritual impulse. In fact, the history of the progressive movement has shown us, over and over, that there are things that the spiritual community brings to political movements that are essential for success, and can’t easily be replaced with anything else.

Religion has been central to the formation of human communities — and to how we approach the future — for as long as homo sapiens has been around. Apart from God-belief (which varies widely between religions), all successful religions thrive and endure because they offer their adherents a variety of effective community-building, social activism, and change management tools that, taken together, make religion quite possibly the most powerful social change technology humans have ever developed.

What does religion offer that progressives need to make our movement work?

First: there’s nothing like it if you want to bond a bunch of very diverse people into a tight community of shared meaning and value. A religious congregation brings together people of all ages, backgrounds, educational levels, professional rank, and life circumstances, and melds them into an enduring tribe that’s centered around a shared commitment to mutual trust and care, and (most importantly) has a clear and vivid shared vision of the future they’re trying to create.

There is simply no other organizational form that encourages people to share their time, energy, and resources so quickly, completely, or enduringly; or aligns so much conviction toward the same goal. (This is why the leaders of corporations, the marketers of sports teams, and the military all study religious cultures, and try to appropriate their tribe-building techniques for their own purposes.) The resulting tribes can last for many centuries — and acquire a resounding moral voice that can reverberate throughout their larger communities, and well beyond. If you want to change the world, this is the kind of group — deeply bound by faith, trust, love, history, and a commitment to each other and to the world they envision that transcends life and death — that’s most likely to get it done. Religion is the best way going to get people to consecrate themselves, body and soul, to a larger cause; and to take on the kind of all-or-nothing risks that are often required to really change the world.

Second, religious narratives center people in the long arc of history, telling them where they came from, who they are, what they are capable of, and what kind of future is possible. History does this, too; but religion does it at a deeper, mythic level that gives these stories extra emotional and cognitive resonance. For most of human history, in fact, the task of imagining a different future and giving people the inspiration and courage to reach for it has been the primary role of religious prophets. (So has the job of warning the people that they’re wandering into grave error or betraying their own values, and must change their ways or face disaster.) Religion is the native home of the prophetic voice — the voice that calls people to transformative change. Throughout America’s history, our most evocative political prophets — both Roosevelts, all the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Van Jones, Barack Obama — have invariably been people who spent a lot of time in the pews, learning to speak the kind of language that calls us to a better place.

Third, over the course of American history, liberal religious faiths have been the primary promoter of progressive values throughout the culture — and also the leading institution when it came time to inculcate our progressive sensibilities into the next generation. Many, if not most, progressives in America are progressive specifically because they believe that this is what their faith demands of them. They’re raising their kids in churches and temples because they believe, as the Bible says, that “if you train up a child in the way that he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Liberal congregations have etched our values onto the young souls of tens of millions of American progressives, over three centuries and dozens of generations. Do we really want to try to do without them now?

Fourth, progressive religion has always been America’s most credible and aggressive front-line defender of non-market-based values against the onslaught of capitalism and greed. In recent years, as the “free-market” fetishists took over (and gulled American Evangelicals into shilling for their hellish utilitarianism), our liberal faith communities — mainline Protestants and liberal Catholics, Jews and Quakers, Unitarian Universalists and the rising wave of reformist Muslims — are the strongest remaining cultural forces left with the moral authority to insist that we have a duty to the poor, that democracy cannot survive without a commitment to justice, and that compassion is always a better survival strategy than competition.

The market says: Everything and everybody has a price, and is for sale. Faith says: The most valuable things in our lives — good health, safe food, strong families, a clean environment, a just economy, meaningful work, access to opportunity — are beyond price, and should by right be available to us all. Our faith communities (especially, but not always exclusively, the progressive ones) have always held this light up within our culture, and it’s never been needed more than it’s needed right now.

Fifth, in a nation where over 90% of everybody has some kind of God-belief – and the overwhelming majority of them ground their political decisions in that belief — abandoning the entire landscape of faith to the right wing amounts to political malpractice. For most Americans, our religious worldviews are the epistemological soil in which every other decision we make is rooted — the basic model of reality that we use to navigate the world. When we stopped engaging people’s basic model of moral order, we effectively ceded the entire moral landscape of the nation to our enemies. It was, in retrospect, perhaps the most self-destructive error we’ve made over the past 40 years (and that’s saying something).

To our credit, a lot of our best organizers and activists are starting to realize the magnitude of this mistake. We’re paying a lot more attention these days to learning to clearly articulate progressive values, to express ourselves in explicitly moral language, and to put forward more strongly progressive frames, narratives, and future visions to counter the bankrupt conservative worldview that’s brought us to this sorry place in history.

But while we’re working toward some new understandings here, let’s also remember that the right wing’s success on taking this field was rooted directly in their ability to mobilize conservative churches to carry the moral banner forward into the culture for them. If we’re going to overwrite their brutal and anti-democratic story of how the world works, the most important step we can take is to tap into the vast reach and deep moral authority of our remaining progressive faith communities, and amplify their voices every way we can. Churches and temples have always been the first and most natural places Americans turn when it’s time to have serious cultural conversations about value and meaning and the future they desire. If we’re serious about changing the national story and bending the future in our preferred direction, then that’s where we need to be.

Sixth: Progressive faiths, across the board, promote the essential belief that human communities are, in themselves, inherently and intrinsically sacred. In fact, progressive atheists may be surprised to learn that among their more religious brothers and sisters, there’s very little agreement about the nature of God — but a very strong consensus that the act of radical community-making is the most intensely holy and essential work that they do.

If there is a God (and progressives of faith debate that question endlessly), then we might most reliably see the face of that divinity in that permanent circle of friends with whom we celebrate life’s passages and joys, and wrestle with its hardest challenges — the people whom we trust to stand with us no matter what comes, and who will work with us tirelessly toward our shared vision of a better world. It’s this deep faith in the dream of the beloved community that also feeds our faith in the potential of good government, and our confidence in the unleashed potential of the American people. (And furthermore: I don’t think I’ve ever met a progressive atheist who would disagree on this point.)

Across all the long centuries of the American progressive movement, we’ve never launched a successful change wave that didn’t draw most of its leadership, its base, and its moral grounding from the country’s deep liberal religious tradition.

Our churches and temples have been the fountain, the rock, the mother source of our movement from the very beginning. Progressives of faith have always played a central role in our political victories in the past. It’s time to stop imagining that somehow, we’re going to take the country back without them now.

The fact is that belief in evolution has virtually no real-life impact on anything. That’s why 46% of the country can safely choose not to believe it: their lack of belief has precisely zero effect on their lives. Sure, it’s a handy way of saying that they’re God-fearing Christians — a “cultural signifier,” as Andrew puts it — but our lives are jam-packed with cultural signifiers. This is just one of thousands, one whose importance probably barely cracks America’s top 100 list.

And the reason it doesn’t is that even creationists don’t take their own views seriously. How do I know this? Well, creationists like to fight over whether we should teach evolution in high school, but they never go much beyond that. Nobody wants to remove it from university biology departments. Nobody wants to shut down actual medical research that depends on the workings of evolution. In short, almost nobody wants to fight evolution except at the purely symbolic level of high school curricula, the one place where it barely matters in the first place. The dirty truth is that a 10th grade knowledge of evolution adds only slightly to a 10th grade understanding of biology.

Kevin takes it as a given that fights over what’s taught in high school are strictly about symbolism and have no real importance. I suspect that’s a much easier view to take if you’re the beneficiary  of a good public school in a blue area or lucky enough to have gone through or been able to put your own kids through private school. For someone who went to a rural high school in Texas, the notion that high school doesn’t matter strikes me as ridiculous in the extreme.

The reason conservatives target high schools (and junior high schools and elementary schools) isn’t because they’re playing peanuts. On the contrary, conservatives understand something liberals don’t, which is that if you get people while they’re young, you usually have them for life. This is also, incidentally, why conservatives pay more attention to pop culture than liberals. Liberals are great people—I’m one of them!—but we have a tendency towards preening individualism and therefore discount the importance of things like what’s in the classroom and what’s on TV because we personally feel we’re iconoclasts who aren’t affected by it. Which can, as in this case, cause us to neglect to remember that in fact this is the air most people breathe, and the quality of that air matters.

Read the rest of this post at Pandagon.

OK, here’s the thing. It’s not gonna work. None of it. It doesn’t matter how many facts we have on our side, how much truth we have, how honest we are … it just doesn’t matter. It’s not gonna work.

We’re not gonna sway one single person to see it our way. In fact, just the opposite — we’re going to harden their positions against us. Make it worse (as if that could happen — trust me, it can).

And here’s why: The conservatives own the emotional end of this. In our dualist, either/or world, emotion trumps reason every time. They do that because only two emotions are given any credence in this world: Fear and it’s flip side, anger. And those two — need I say it? No mere proof can move ‘em.

Fear’s an old emotion. An awful lot of action is born from fear. Ack! Storm! Lightning! Rain! Find cave! Ack! Dinosaur! Make pointy stick!

Oh, sorry. That’s the conservative version. We know dinosaurs and mankind did not coexist.

There’s nothing wrong with fear and anger, of course. It’s all in what you do with ‘em. In Conservative Bizarro World, if you’re afraid (and you are because you’re leaders have made sure of it), you must have a scapegoat to blame and be angry with. Fortunately, your leaders take care of that for you too.

This makes things much easier. No thinking involved. The poor souls who have been convinced by billionaires that it is progressives who are elitists never have to make a single decision for themselves. They don’t want to do that because their conservative overlords have told them it’s a big, bad, scary and complicated world out there, but the overlords alone have those poor souls’ best interests at heart, because Socialists! Black militants! Gays! Anti-American! Traitors!

And here we sit, palms up holding our paltry “evidence” in hand as if it makes a difference. It doesn’t. They don’t care. No, they don’t. Not one iota. Because we are the enemy. The strange beings who want to destroy them and everything they know and cherish. Why, we probably have horns and tails … oh, wait. That was Jews. Well, the rest of us probably do too!

You know why Scott Walker won in Wisconsin last week? I mean, besides the billions the Koch brothers poured in. It wasn’t because they thought Walker was a great guy. It was because they didn’t think a governor should be removed from office for anything less than criminal behavior. You and I may not like what the jackass did, but it wasn’t criminal, any more than any other regular piece of political bullshit is just that. You did notice that in the exit polls, the majority backed Obama, right?

We talk a lot about the right wing echo chamber, but we fail to understand what it’s actually doing. It’s entire purpose is to reach that primal reptilian part of our brains, to stir the pot of the emotions and send their minions out torch and pitchfork in hand. In short, to create exactly what we have: Mob mentality.

Surely you’ve noticed. There’s no civility. It complete viciousness. There’s not even a pretense of honest political debate, as if there’s ever been any such thing.

And here’s the real kicker — this behavior is not limited to conservatives. I’ve seen it alive and kicking in liberals too, when their deeply held beliefs are threatened. They too turn into vicious pack animals and try to rip apart anyone who stands in their way.

It happened right here in my little liberal city, when some of us learned that our beloved mayor was stealing us blind. We had the proof. The mayor’s supporters wouldn’t even look at it. “I don’t go on facts,” one guy told me. “I go on feelings.” Hey, great, your feelings are gonna cost the city its charter when it goes bankrupt.

Almost happened. Half a million in debt, which is huge for a city with only 800 residents. We got him out of office, but at a terrible price to the peace of the city and to many friendships.

Those of us who worked to save the city were rewarded by having various county and state agencies called to investigate the most middling of things, and some serious and untrue accusations were thrown about. Ugly, very ugly. Just as ugly as what we see now in our national debate, except the lines weren’t drawn between conservative and progressive because that’s not where the real line is.

The real line is between reality and delusion.

Our current crop of conservatives deal in delusion, and they are masters at it. That’s why they name a bill that guts environmental policy the Clean Air Act.

And that’s why our attempts to fight delusion with truth aren’t going to amount to a hill of beans. Delusional people cannot be dissuaded. It’s too emotional, too raw, too primal.

Too unevolved. Really, they might as well just grunt and point, cowering in the back of a dark, dark cave. The stuff they say makes no more sense than that anyway.

Saw a Tweet tonight for a moronic woman who fancies herself a conservative journalist. She’s been hanging out a Netroots Nation tweeting inanities that she thinks make sense. They do, to her fellow delusionals. The best one was her utter incredulousness when one of the speakers mentioned Virginia’s attempt to mandate an ultrasound with a vaginal probe before a woman could have an abortion. “WTF?” she tweeted. Guess she was still under her rock when that all went down.

So what do we do, you may ask. Hell, I don’t know. Do what you think is best. But know this: We’re not gonna create an enlightened society by fighting. A violent revolution does little more than change the names of the assholes in charge. And an election in the toxic atmosphere we have here is only marginally better.

But it is better. It’s better because we can pick a rich fucker who belongs to a cult, a black guy who belongs to a different cult but doesn’t make such a big deal out of it and who probably wishes he stayed in state politics or community organizing even, or any one of a number of other folks who have zero chance of winning and every chance of throwing the election to the rich fucker if we do the wrong thing. Hell, we might get to vote for Roseanne fucking Barr for president — not that I think she’d do any worse job than any of the others, but the rich fucker will definitely finish what George W. Bush started, and I can guarantee you won’t be happy about it.

So think about it, come November. And hey, I’m all for breaking down this tendency toward tribal allegiances humanity seems reluctant to let go of. It is gonna happen. I’d just rather we chose that path rather than forced it to happen. Forcing it puts us all back at square one, and I just don’t think we have that many do-overs left.

Garder54 calls Kevin June “a real scum.”

LadyDawg4 calls him a “sleazeball.”

Proud2bMom calls him a “liar and a thief.”

Kevin June is the reluctant leader for the 37 families of the Riverdale Mobile Home Village in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, who were evicted from their homes, most of which they owned and paid a monthly lot fee. Some of the residents lived there for more than three decades. Most of the residents are elderly, disabled, or living slightly above the poverty line. Several are employed; all are struggling to survive in a bad economy.

In late February, Aqua–PVR, a joint operation of Aqua America and Penn Virginia Resource Partners, bought the 12-acre trailer park for $550,000. It plans to build a pumping station to withdraw up to three million gallons of water a day from the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, and send that water through a newly-constructed pipeline system to natural gas companies that use fracking. The controversial practice involves forcing as much as 10 million gallons of water, sand, toxic chemicals and potential carcinogens deep into the earth to withdraw natural gas. The Marcellus Shale, primarily in Pennsylvania and parts of four surrounding states, is one of the nation’s largest sources for natural gas. Health and environmental pollution problems are widespread near the wells.

Aqua-PVR had originally ordered the residents to leave by May 1, but then extended it a month. It dangled a $2,500 relocation incentive in its eviction. However, the cost to move each trailer is between $6,000 and $11,000 plus any sheds and ramps.

Most regional trailer parks are either at capacity or won’t accept the older trailers. Getting an apartment is also difficult. Because of the natural gas boom, with thousands of out-of-state workers moving into the area, there are few vacancies, and rents have doubled and tripled. Senior citizen housing isn’t a viable option—waiting lists are as long as a year or two in most areas.

Some have been forced to sell or throw out many of their possessions and move into studio apartments or rooms with relatives. Seven families remain at the trailer park.

But the harpies who have written several hundred posts that appear on the online site of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette have been relentless in their condemnation of the residents. Hiding behind anonymous screen names, the writers, who sound like drunks in a bar fight or callers to an afternoon talk show, could be among the thousands of gas company employees who have moved into the area. They could be those who have leased part of their land to the oil companies. They could also be the business owners who have profited because of selling products to the workers. But almost all of them condemn the residents.

Linhk48, who posted several dozen times, believes “the new owner’s only obligation is to give you notice to vacate. He is under absolutely no obligation to subsidize your move, allow you to live rent free until you move, or hire professionals to help you with relocation. Anything he does is a generosity and SHOULD be appreciated!” Linhk48, like many, called them “rabble-rousers/troublemakers/trespassers.” Czkb217 thought the police or National Guard could move in, and advised the residents, “SO just pack your stuff and MOVE, you are now breaking the law.”

It’s doubtful any of the commentators know Pennsylvania state law, but there are legal processes that must be met to evict persons from their homes. One of the issues lawyers for Riverdale will be pursuing is whether those mandated processes were met.

CitizenQ, who opposes helping the residents and who posted several times, claimed, “some of the residents have been seen stealing from others.” However, the facts are that residents who left the trailer park took what they could from their own trailers, many of which could not safely be moved or which would cost too much to move, and specifically told other residents they could take whatever was left.

Linhk48 thought Aqua–PVR should take the residents to court “for leaving the property with trailer shells and trash all over and ask for clean-up costs—and punitive damages after they were so generous.”

Several repeatedly questioned where the donations to Riverdale went. Some specifically accused Kevin June of theft and fraud, apparently not having the time or intelligence to learn about the controls and regulations to release money from a bank-held account that is a registered 501(c) charity. “The residents know exactly where the money went and why,” says June.

When those writing into the Sun-Gazette later learned some of the money was used to buy phone cards, a camera, lawnmower and weed whacker, they increased their assault. Had they taken the time to think or ask questions — something those who type and pound “SEND” often don’t do — they would have learned that June used the phone cards to cover his expenses in numerous calls to and from attorneys, the media, and others who had an interest in the problems of the residents. They would have learned that the lawyers specifically required June to document the appearance of the village and the residents’ activities. They would have learned that both the previous and new owners had no intention of mowing the lawns or killing the weeds. With pride in their community, the residents took care of the grounds. Cutting grass and eliminating weeds also served to help protect their health; living near the river, with the warm seasons approaching, the residents knew there would be increased black fly and mosquito infestations.

Woolrich haughtily wants to know, “Why on earth would you not have saved money for when you eventually had to move your MOBILE home???” Perhaps, Woolrich, it’s because when you have poverty-level income, it’s hard to save anything.

Czkb217 thought the residents should have just gotten together and bought the park. Possibly, Czkb217, since most of the families live slightly above the poverty line, they didn’t have an extra $550,000 plus lawyer fees and closing costs laying around. Nevertheless, Czkb217 believes the residents should “Just man up and put your big boy panties on and MOVE.” He objects that his taxes are supporting some of the residents who are using Legal Aid, which receives state and federal funds to assist the impoverished. In addition to North Penn Legal Services, the Community Justice Project in Pittsburgh and the Williamsport law firm of Murphy, Butterfield and Holland are assisting pro bono.

Justin1 wants the residents to “Get out of the way of progress already.”

On Friday, June 1, the final day of eviction and the day Aqua–PVR said it would start construction, about 50 persons showed up to blockade the entrance to the park. “We are here to fight against the exploitation and abandonment by a society of the economically vulnerable,” says Dr. Wendy Lee, one of the organizers.

The protestors are often identified as “out-of-town activists” or, more specifically, “environmental activists.” Bobbie2 called the scene a “liberal zoo . . . a veritable microcosm of the liberal social system.” Joe123 called the protestors “unorganized morons,” and decided the residents “are on display by ‘Fame Seekers’, like trick-monkeys in a circus.” Proud2bMom, with no facts, something that never stymied any of the others who wrote into the online site, claimed “the residents left that are trying to get out are more or less being held prisoner in their own homes because of the few who feel they need to block the roads.”

Many of those who attacked the residents and defended corporations probably believe they are good Christians; they go to church regularly and, in one of the more conservative and highly Christian parts of the state, undoubtedly praise God publicly.

However, the Rev. Leah Schade doesn’t see them as good Christians. “It is a craven, cowardly way to snipe at people,” she says. Those criticizing the residents “are profiting from the way things are or they are so insulated from the pain and suffering the people are undergoing that they are unable to respond with compassion,” says Schade, pastor of the United in Christ Lutheran Church in nearby Lewisburg. Schade has been to the trailer park several times to minister to the residents.

“As a Christian,” she says, “I make a decision to do what Jesus calls us to do—to minister to those most vulnerable and resist the powers and the principalities that seek their own self perpetuation and their own profit.” Schade, who is completing a Ph.D. in theology, points out, “The church has a long history of offering a prophetic voice to persons who are oppressed and made vulnerable by powerful systems, and who need advocates to speak for and alongside of them in the public arena. The teachings of Jesus would tell us that what is happening to these families isn’t right. He would ask, ‘Who controls the resources; who does not?’ The residents and the surrounding ecosystem are the disempowered ones.”

A meeting between attorneys for residents at Riverdale and Aqua-PVR was held June 5 to discuss improving the incentives and settlement for the residents. Aqua-PVR, at that time, said it has no immediate intention to remove the residents.

To assist the residents, go to www.saveriverdale.com.

Walter Brasch is an award-winning social issues journalist/columnist and the author of 17 books, most fusing history with contemporary social issues. His current book is Before the First Snow: Stories From the Revolution.

Progressives often marvel at how focused, coordinated and aggressive our conservative opposition is. They seem to fall into lockstep and march, building large organizations and executing complex strategies with an astonishing rate of success. We may be smarter, better educated and more reality-based — but they seem to have a cohesion and a discipline that eludes us. What’s going on here?

There are a lot of answers to that question. But I’d suggest that some intriguing answers might come from a close study of conservative religious paradigms, which play an essential role in giving conservatives a unique kind of emotional and social durability.

Conservative faiths — particularly evangelical Protestantism, but orthodox Catholicism and Judaism also include similar teachings – inculcate a worldview that equips people with extra tools to work with in face of large-scale change. The same qualities that lead non-believers to deride faith as a crutch also give believers very real psychological support in turbulent times — the kind of sure footing that makes organizing for political and social change easier, more effective, and more gratifying for those who are operating off this sturdy base.

What follows are just a few examples of advantages followers of conservative religions may enjoy when facing transformative change. I offer them not as an argument for belief — that’s not an option for many of us, and not even most religious liberals would agree with the theology at work in these systems — but rather in the hope that if we study these advantages closely, we might find authentic ways to cultivate similar strengths that are firmly rooted in our own worldview. There are lessons to be learned here.

Knowing you are on the side of right

The soul-deep certainty that God is on your side, and that you are fighting on the side of Eternal Truth, may be the biggest political and cultural confidence-builder there is. Conservatives know, beyond the shadow of doubt, that they are on the side of the angels, and this profound sense of spiritual assurance reduces hesitation, spurs action, and increases their willingness to take big risks for the sake of the ultimate victory they know in their bones is coming. They shake off defeat more easily, too, because they know it’s only a temporary setback on their way to that promised victory. After all, the Bible asks: if God is for us, who can be against us?

Progressives operate from a far more open-ended place. We’re suspicious of that kind of deep spiritual certainty, because we know how often it’s led people and nations into moral catastrophe. Instead, we prefer to operate out of our heads. We’re always questioning, taking in new data, re-analyzing, and re-deciding what we’ve already decided, triangulating and re-triangulating against our own moral lines. In our minds, the final outcome is never preordained; and what’s “right” is an ever-shifting target that we constantly need reorient ourselves toward. Chris Mooney documented these tendencies in his recent book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — And Reality. He notes that this hyperflexibility can make it devilishly hard for liberals to settle on a plan of action — let alone actually act effectively together with confidence when the time comes.

Also: because we’re not buttressed by the reassuring conviction that the CEO of the Universe has our backs, we feel more acutely alone in the battle, and often doubt that our ultimate victory is anything but assured. Because of this, it’s much easier for us to feel overwhelmed, discouraged and burned out. When religious conservatives feel this way, they can resort to sanctuaries of prayer, fellowship and reconnection with their sense of larger purpose. Most secular progressives don’t have any kind of built-in weekly restoration-and-regeneration process — and the lack of safe healing space does take its toll.

I’d gently suggest that there are authentically progressive, non-theistic ways of tapping into that deep spiritual conviction, raising our own sense of trust in the righteousness of our vision, and finding regular sources of sanctuary and restoration. And that it would be good for us to start exploring ways to do this.

We might, for example, make telling pieces of our own glorious history a regular feature of all of our gatherings. We could make a bigger ritual out of invoking the achievements of our progressive forebears, the noble example of the lives they lived, and the ways in which they altered the course of American history. These stories ground us in our own progressive identity, forge us into a community, reaffirm our shared vision, and rouse our courage. We are capable of everything Mother Jones and Martin Luther King Jr. were. Our enemies are no more dangerous or implacable now than the segregationists, the robber barons, the slaveowners, or the royalists were back then. We don’t know for sure if God is for us or against us, but we do know, with certainty, that “the moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward justice.” And we are the ones in our generation who have been entrusted with the sacred task of bending it a little further. History, at least, is on our side.

Being accountable to God, and nobody else

Which brings us to another, closely related item: Religious conservatives are highly motivated by the sense that, today and every day until the end of time, they’re ultimately accountable to God for how things on earth turn out. The fear of failing the test before St. Peter — and again on Judgment Day — gives their temporal efforts a sense of urgency and commitment to the cause that we progressives sometimes have a very hard time mustering.

At the same time — perhaps paradoxically — believing that the only consequence that matters will be deferred until after death makes it easier to let go of the day-to-day ebb and flow of one’s fortunes here on earth. Conservative Christians believe that they are in this world, but not of it; and therefore, it’s a sin to worry too much about what goes on here. And they certainly don’t care much about what people outside their own tribe think about them. (Inside the tribe, they care very much.) God’s judgment is the only one that matters in the end; here on earth, persecution is just the clearest possible sign that you’re doing the right thing. This ability to disengage can be a profound source of peace and courage.

Progressives, on the other hand, worry a lot about this world. We have to: we believe that we are directly accountable to history and our grandkids for what happens on our watch. There is no mercy, no grace, no forgiveness or born-again do-overs if we screw it up. And that, frankly, makes us a little tense. We think we should control everything, and take it out on each other when we can’t. They know they can’t, and let God handle the rest. And that ability to let go of what they can’t control very often makes them easier to be around, and far less likely to take out their frustrations on each other.

Recognizing your special destiny in the eternal human story

All three major monotheisms have a linear view of human history as an ever-progressing struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. This narrative gives every succeeding generation an ever-more-important role on the front lines of the Ultimate Cosmic Battle (the final scene of which is always viewed as possibly happening Any Day Now).

Seeing your personal struggles as part of an eternal battle between Good and Evil locates you in time, and gives an epic quality to your very existence. No matter how ordinary your existence is, the notion that God Has A Plan For Your Life — and every life —  lends a vivid sense that your everyday actions have tremendous potential to affect the ultimate fate of humanity. How you manage your family and raise your kids matters. How you allocate your resources, devote your talents, and spend your time matters. What your church congregation does matters. The entire world is fraught with meaning, because your existence is exquisitely precious in the sight of God. Youmatter.

Again, this sense of being a chosen warrior in a heroic and eternal struggle is a tremendous psychological confidence-booster. It encourages people to dream big — and to take concrete steps toward fulfilling those dreams. It justifies all kinds of risks. It stirs feelings of deep love and respect toward one’s fellow warriors, which in turn creates strong movement cohesion. It gives people a vast mental space in which to regain their perspective following setbacks.

And perhaps most importantly: it confers the long view required for high-quality foresight, and the ability and inspiration to make bold plans that span decades and even generations. If your sense of time takes in all of history, from the Creation to the Apocalypse, then it doesn’t really matter whether or not you’ll live to see the changes you’re working for. The battle is forever; your job is to fight it as well as you can while you can, while also raising the next generation to take over for you when their time comes. And the most important work isn’t about getting big wins today; rather, it’s the work that builds enduring institutions that will enforce the conservative worldview long after your generation is gone.

Progressives need to bear in mind that we have a long history, too. We are today’s heirs to the Enlightenment, the latest in a series of generations that have been upholding America’s founding values and worldview since before the nation began. The progressive argument for justice and freedom is a conversation that will not end in our lifetimes. We don’t have to win all the battles, but we were born to this fight, and must also write our own chapter in its history before handing it over to the next generation.

And, most importantly: we need to cultivate that same long foresight that leads conservatives to protect their existing institutions like they were prized forts on a battlefield (which they are), and seed new ones constantly to expand their capacity to dominate the future. Our progressive legacy includes the vast array of public and private amenities — universities, parks, transit systems, social organizations, hospitals, libraries, public programs, on and on — that were created by our forebears for the same purpose, and continue to add to the dignity, opportunity and enlightenment of every American. Protecting this inheritance is the first duty of every progressive. Expanding it to serve future generations is the way we pay the gift forward.

I once was lost, but now am found

Another huge strength of the conservative side is the Christian redemption narrative. We make fun of the way the right-wing’s fallen angels do penance and are accepted readily (often far too readily, in our view) back into respectability. Make the obligatory confession, do your ablutions, and you’re back in good graces in time for Sunday dinner. And the rest of the movement will have your back the whole way. They may hate the sin, but they do walk their talk when it comes to continuing to love the sinner.

Our way of handling disgrace is demonstrably much more damaging, both to our own fallen angels and to the movement as a whole. If someone on our side is tarred — even if we all know the smear is completely unjust and undeserved — we will not defend the accused. Instead, we’ll close ranks and jettison them before anybody else has a chance to. And over and over, we lose incredibly valuable and talented people this way — people we’ve invested a lot of capital in raising up to leadership, and whose future contributions to the movement are forever lost to us when this happens.

As long as we’re so willing to off our own disgraced members, the right wing will always have an edge on us. They can take shots at our leaders and organizations (ACORN? Van Jones? Anthony Weiner?), and consistently score fatal hits, because we will reliably join them in putting their targets out of our misery. But because they have a theology that enjoins them to protect and forgive their own, they get to redeem their own disgraced people (David Vitter? Newt Gingrich?), and keep their talent in circulation. On their side, these hits are seldom fatal. They don’t lose their stars very often.

We could do with our own universally accepted rituals of repentance and redemption — a known, established path that lets our good people make their amends and put their mistakes behind them, and enables us to acknowledge both flaws and growth in each other with grace and mercy. If someone has done their penance, there will be room again for them in our circle. And our refusal to turn on each other will also do wonders for our overall level of community trust.

A mistake should not be the end of the world — or even people’s otherwise brilliant careers. And it won’t be if we find our way back to a belief in the power of redemption.

Coming together for love and community, not just work

Religion is a potent social technology — and its greatest strength is not about theology, but rather in its ability to knit people together in tight, close communities of trust, commitment, care and meaning. And regular observance of shared rituals is central to this power. Religious conservatives attend services at least once a week (in some churches, they go twice) to affirm their commitment to their shared values, celebrate and mourn the passages of life, and connect with each other not as workers and warriors, but as human beings.

Those rituals are social superglue. They build trust that extends outward into everything else these communities do. They inspire and engage people’s hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits, offer incredible healing and solace when things go wrong, and provide a ready-made outlet for celebration and re-commitment to doing even more when things go right.

The rituals that make community are simple, powerful, essentially human, and independent of any theology. Sitting down together to share a good meal. (In my long experience, there’s far more likely to be large quantities of good food at a conservative gathering than a progressive one. Eating together is vastly big mojo, and we often shortchange this.) Raising voices together in song, poetry, or a shared creed. Being present with each other to mark the passages of life — birth, marriage, parenthood, retirement, and loss. Gatherings that are about joy, play, sensual pleasure, and relaxation. Other gatherings that give us safe places to struggle among trusted friends with the things that are hardest and darkest within ourselves.

Secular progressives might even consider keeping a Sabbath. How much more effective would we be if we set aside a day of personal downtime every week? Shut off the phone, turn off the computer, and re-focus on life’s deep essentials:, home, self, health, family, community, and our own sanity. It might be a day to make a real meal, have friends over, create something beautiful, linger in a hot bath with a book, take a long bike ride, watch old movies, or make a picnic with your kids. You don’t have to be a person of faith to appreciate and savor the gift of simply being human. And such days are a potent reminder of why we’re doing this work in the first place, and what this life is for.

Conservatives may think and believe differently than we do. But their sheer political durability is due to some specific strengths in their communities and characters — strengths that aren’t out of reach for us, even if we arrive at them by different routes. We may not believe in God; but we have every bit as deep a need to believe in our cause, our future, our prospects, ourselves, and each other. And anything we can do to deepen our confidence in those things makes our movement more effective going forward.

Eltahawy’s despair should be taken seriously. Yes, she quotes only the most extreme evidence in support of her thesis. But the events she describes took place. Twelve-year-old girls are dying in childbirth in Yemen because child marriages are legal. A woman caught driving in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to ten lashes and needed a pardon to avoid them, another woman, gang-raped, was sentenced to prison for having entered a car driven by a man not related to her. And in Morocco, a sixteen-year-old did drink poison because she had been forced to marry her rapist (which the law allows for him not to be punished for the rape) who then continued beating her.

These events are real. They do not describe the lives of every woman in those countries but they are newsworthy events. So is the outcome of the Arab spring for the women of Egypt. One quarter of the parliament consists of salafis whose agenda about women truly is medieval and the number of women in the parliament is miniscule. The next crown prince of Saudi Arabia is rumored to have truly frightening views on women, and the victories of various Islamist parties cause women’s rights activists worry and sleepless nights.

Eltahawy asks why the Islamists hate women so much. Her wail resonated with me, after my recent travels on the misogynistic hate sites (though the two issues are not intended to be seen as equated here). I had to go for several long walks to re-settle my brain and heart after those, to remind myself about the real wide world out there, about people who are kind and caring and logical.

And that gave me an inkling about the hatred of women. However it is created, it is stoked in the furnace of like-minded people, increased by exposure to similar arguments and made moral by the support of religion or pseudo-science. It is not then seen as hate but as god’s commands, as necessary for stability, as The Way Evolution Intended It. As justified and obvious, even to many women. The more those messages are allowed to stand uncontested, the more the hate settles in, curls itself into a circle like cat and purrs out its justifying messages. Daylight is the best sanitizer and silence in this context is like darkness.

Whether what Eltahawy describes is truly a hatred of women or of uppity women or something more complicated can be debated. But it certainly is based on the arguments about The Other.

Read the rest of this article at Echidne of the Snakes.