Where's my flying car?

[labellementeuse]

Here's what I think about the inauguration: You know all those movies, usually vaguely crappy sci-fi/natural disaster movies, set somewhere in the indeterminate future? Like Independence Day and Deep Impact and stuff. Well, sixth_light and I realised some time ago (because we watched a lot of aforementioned vaguely crappy SF movies) that the President was always black. It's like it was a rule: In The Indeterminate Future, the President will be African-American. Putting This In Our Movie Makes Us Seem Liberal, Right?

So anyway. Welcome to the future, y'all.

Comments

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Of course as an atheist I care less about whether or not a candidate believes in god or not than whether or not s/he will enact policies I support.

I agree. But it seems to me to be a luxury to think this way, because religion clearly affects at least the rhetoric of American politics, across the spectrum, in a way that confronts and confounds policy I support. If you know what I mean?

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

Well if you find that members of a particular religion oppose what you want politically 99% of the time, then yes, I suppose abstract homilies about not caring about people's religious beliefs may start to seem a bit precious.

Personally I find it very hard to bite my tongue when somebody uses a religious justification for a policy I agree with. If anything I actually feel a greater need to confront them than if they were using a religious justification for something I disagree with, since there's no assumed solidarity.

Of course usually such justifications take place in the realm of abstract brainstorming rather than political programme-building (thanks, the internet!) so I don't always hold back.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Personally I find it very hard to bite my tongue when somebody uses a religious justification for a policy I agree with. If anything I actually feel a greater need to confront them than if they were using a religious justification for something I disagree with, since there's no assumed solidarity.

This seems to me to mesh interestingly with your earlier statement that you don't care what somebody believes and are more interested in the policies they enact. Thought experiment: there is a politician who is a devout Catholic and therefore feels strongly that it is a Christian's responsibility to support people who cannot support themselves; responding to some of the Christ parables, she thinks we should be accepting of prostitutes, foreigners and people of colour, etc; she agrees with you on a wide range of issues, her policies are significantly to the left, and yet her policy is founded on her devout belief in the word of God as it is expressed in (her interpretation of) the Bible. Do you vote for this politician?

Well if you find that members of a particular religion oppose what you want politically 99% of the time

It's less that, and more the fact that I feel like Americans would be less likely to invade other countries if they weren't quite so sure they were God's chosen people and he was approving of them from on high. (Note to Amerians reading this: I don't mean you, at all!) I know plenty of lovely religious people and often they agree with me for mostly the same reasons, and sometimes they don't; but although their faith might motivate them to hold the religion they do, they rarely resort to its rhetoric to support themselves or attempt to convince me - people who I know who voted for ACT aren't going to appeal to some Bible passage to convince me that it's a good idea for me to do so. This is all by way of saying that I think American reluctance to elect atheists has a lot more to do with the publicness of religion in that country, and conversely the way we in this country tend to treat it as a private matter.

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

Yes it is pretty hypocritical isn't it? Still, voting for somebody and discussing (or arguing) with them are somewhat different things for me. My disapproval or approval in a discussion doesn't mean much to most people; the stakes are low. In an electoral situation there are stakes, even if my particular vote doesn't count for much.

As for the christian politician, it obviously depends on the alternative. I'd certainly pick him over an atheist libertarian capitalist like Rodney Hide. My only worry would be that if they had a crisis of faith they might abandon all their socialism too, but I'm not aware of any examples.

That politician is, of course, not that hypothetical. In New Zealand those sorts of politicians dominated the Labour party right up until the 1980s.

And I agree with you on the religious thing. I'm not sure that an atheist American wouldn't be as interventionist as it is - I think there are economic factors which both religion and belligerence spring from. But it is interesting to note that most religious groups use reasonably secular logic (even if things like "the family" and "traditional values", while theoretically secular, are increasingly code words for religious conservatism). Presumably it's because they can't afford to alienate non-religious or atheist conservatives, whereas in the USA that is such a small group it effectively has nowhere to go but the mainstream conservative movement.