Blog For Arizona

Michael: The Christmas Conspiracy Revisited

I've been listening to talk radio in the car of late. It's like listening to the raw transmissions of some hostile terrorist organization. For instance, I had no idea that Don Collier, of The Desert Speaks fame, was an absolute Right-wing loon. He and some other local nutbags on KJLL were talking about the 'Christmas conspiracy' to prevent anyone from referring to anything religious during the holiday season (ooops, there I go repressing the poor Christians again). Anyway, he busts out a riff on how 'we' can best start our campaign to take back Christmas for Christ by taking a page out of the jihadi's playbook, and cut the heads off all the ACLU lawyers!

No, I'm not kidding. And I really don't think he was either.

I've figured out the psycho-dynamic here, I think. There is, of course, no war on Christmas. The Right is just astutely cobbling together the largely futile rearguard actions of secularists to accomodate a multi-ethnic population with over 50 major relgious minorities, and to prevent this nation from becoming a Christian theocracy, and spinning it as an organized assault on their religion. Nothing coheres a fractious and diverse polity like being under attack. To keep Christian sects, who historically have been anything but monocultural, unified and under the same political banner it is neccessary to keep them feeling like they are under asault by some godless conspiracy. The entirely fictional war on Christmas does the job admirably, even if it doesn't exist.

Perhaps we on the left should take a page from the Christo-fascist playbook and invent a hot-button war against the left. I have an idea. How about we spin all those children that go missing every year into a white Christian conspiracy to kidnap and sacrifice lefty children to Yaweh? We could write some fake protocol, a la The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which requires the sacrifice of "heathen" and "darky" children to the white Christian god periodically. Then we could use the internet and talk radio to whip our base into a frenzy of fear, indignation, and hatred for white Christians. If we get lucky, we might even incite some real religious war.

Nah... The facts of what the Right is really trying to do to this country are horrifying enough, really. Like Truman said, "I don't give 'em hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." I don't want to use Don Collier, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Tammy Bruce as role models for the political strategems of the left. The most ignominious defeat is when you adopt the traits of your enemies that are the very reasons you fight them.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 12/10/2005 03:17:00 PM