the overlapping population of evangelicals and those with "W2004" bumper stickers
I've had a hard time figuring out why the Republican political machine seems to have such an easy time recruiting from the ranks of evangelicals. After some thinking and a bit of (oblique) prodding from a piece in The Atlantic (April 2005) about political talk radio, I've come to a tentative conclusion. Briefly, I think that, at least in the religious life, evangelicals are influenced more by charisma and oratory than argument. This point seems prima facie irresistible given the sort of organized religious activities of evangelicals. Can you image, for instance, a three day tent revival in which preachers presented, calmly and rationally, what they believed were sould arguments the conclusions of which were, "Stand up and be HEALED, my brother!" It just doesn't seem right. What does seem right (and of course I'm no evangelical and I've never been to a three day tent revival) is that much of what the preacher says seems to make sense to a congregation because he says it so well and with such conviction. When I run through my little mental picture of "the underneath the tent scene", and in my mind try to engage with the preacher man, after his fiery call for a return to righteous living, in any sort of discussion which involved defensible premises, valid inferences, and challenges to reasoing the whole mental picture just seems to break down. All I can imagine are his burning eyes looking back at my quandry saying, "my boy, you've chosen the path whose inevitable end, through a long and winding interlude of dissipation, banditry and mischief is DAMNATION." Which brings me, round-about, to what I believe to be the connection between evangelicals and Bush supporters.
When I try to invite a Bush supporter to justify the invasion of Iraq (say) in a reasonable fashion with anything just slightly in excess of hackneyed platitudes, I get those same burning eyes. Except it's not even as much fun as with the make believe preacher-man because the real burning eyes don't even have the glint of a possible response that the preacher-man's do. While the preacher-man has the to his mind untrumpable "DAMNATION" card, the Bush supporter doesn't really even have that. As much as she wants there to be something she can say to write me off with the political equivalent of "DAMNED" there really isn't such a recourse. Politics is all about the real world, real world results and real world consequences and empirically measurable results. The problem is that just as those feeling the spirit at the three day tent revival are most susceptible to charisma rather than arguments, so to is the Bush supporter. "Stand up my brother and be you HEALED!" comes to sound more and more like "Freedom's on the march!" and "We've got to attack THEM on their soil before they attack US on OURS!" The latter can't really be argued against because, without that they're put inthe mouth of a charismatic who can make things sound good, they're just empty slogans which we'd have trouble even making sense of when we went to apply them to any sort of real-world situation. But when they are put in the mouth of the demagogue, then how can you argue with the demagogue. He won't even play the argument game.
I think this tendency of both evangelicals and Bush supporters is one reason why there's so much overlap between the two camps.
posted by Jesse Butler @ 8:16 AM
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