Why Americans continuously vote against their interests

In her book “The Age of American Unreason”, published in 2008 and “revised and updated” in 2009, author Susan Jacoby seeks to explain the cultural influences on a large portion of the working and middle class population that causes them to continuously act and vote against their own  interests.

The back cover describes the book as follows:  “A cultural history of the last forty years, “The Age of American Unreason” focuses on the convergence of social forces –usually treated as separate entities – that has created a perfect storm of anti-rationalism.  These include the upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with more political power today than ever before; the failure of public education to create an informed citizenry; and the triumph of video over print culture.  Sparing neither the right nor the left, Jacoby asserts that Americans today have embraced a universe of “junk thought” that makes almost no effort to separate fact from opinion.”

While not agreeing with all that Jacoby’s sets forth, the Watchdog has greatly benefited from her insights.  Clearly there is a great residence to facts from a significant portion of our country’s population, perhaps our most valid claim to “exceptionalism” in comparison to the rest of the Western developed world.

She notes in the “Introduction”:   “Men of extraordinary learning and intellect were disproportionately represented among the politicians who wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and led the republic its formative decades.

This is preceded earlier in the chapter by “During the past four decades, America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by ignorant popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.   This new form of anti-rationalism, at odds not only with the nation’s heritage of eighteenth-century Enlightenment reason but with modern scientific knowledge, has propelled a surge of anti-intellectualism capable of inflicting vastly greater damage than its historical predecessors inflicted on American culture and politics.  Indeed, popular anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism are now synonymous.”

Jacoby is a circular rather than a linear thinker and her book in places requires patching together often scattered thoughts.   Also many of her observations are questionable.  Nevertheless, the general thrusts contributes immense revelations for the understanding our times.

One important area of her observations is the impact of religious fundamentalism on our body politic.

Born and raised as a Catholic, Jacoby observes in Chapter Eight, The New Old-Time Religion:  ”The growth of fundamentalist denominations at the expense of mainstream and liberal Protestantism, which began in the fifties, accelerated throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties and gave birth to the Christian right.  Only 46 percent of American Protestants in2003, compared with 59 percent in 1960, identified themselves as members of ‘mainline’ denominations. .. by the beginning of the twenty-first century, Southern Baptists would outnumber Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and members of the United Church of Christ combined.”  …

“One third of Americans…say that they consider the Bible the literal word of God – not merely ‘inspired by God’ but, from the serpent in the Garden of Eden to Jesus’ resurrection from the grave, an explicit blueprint handed down by the deity, with Part I going directly to Moses and Part II through Jesus to the twelve apostles. Even more Americans – four in ten – believe that God made man in his present form, in one distinct act of creation, during the past 10,000 years.”…  “…fewer than one in four Catholics regard the Bible as literally true.”

“Approximately 45 percent of those who have no education beyond high school believe in the literal truth of the Bible, while only 29 percent with some college – and just 19 percent of college graduates – share that old-time faith.”…

“A general attraction to the supernatural, extending beyond narrowly defined fundamentalism, lies in the heart of the profound divide not only between religious America and secular Europe but also between devote religious believers and secularists with the United States.”

“….nearly two thirds of Americans, compare with only one in five Europeans, say that religion plays a very important role in their lives.”

“In politics, the nexus between fundamentalism and lack of education has enabled right-wing Christian candidates to tap into suspicion of educated ‘elites.’”

“When [George W.] Bush famously told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post that he had consulted a ‘Higher Father’ instead of his earthly father, President George H. W. Bush, about going to war in Iraq, he was offering a key to his thinking that should have been taken at face value by his opponents as well as his supporters.”

“The rise of feminism in the seventies, with its challenge to fundamental assumptions about the roles of women, men, and families, has often been seen as the major spur to the religious right.  It is certainly true that the battle over abortion, which cannot be separated from late twentieth-century feminism, created a unifying cause for right-wing Protestants and right-wing Catholics.”

“Whatever their religion, those who attended church at least once a week voted overwhelming for Bush in 2000…and gave Bush more than three quarters of their votes…. What unites Protestant fundamentalists and right-wing Catholics today, in both the religious and political arenas, is a shared hatred of secularism and the influence of secular values on culture and public life.”

“Forty-three percent of Americans take the centrist religious positions that the Bible is divinely inspired but not to be taken literally. Add the centrists to the secularists, and 63 percent of Americans believe that the will of the people, not the Bible, should exert the greatest influence on American law and government.”

“The tendency of religious centrist centrists to accept compromise solutions, with no regard for consistency, is one explanation for the seeming absurdity of public support, by a two-to-one majority, for the teaching of both creationism and evolution in public schools.”

“A middle-class fundamentalist cannot be swayed, as someone of more fluid religious convictions might be, by the argument that he ought to vote for secular liberal candidates because they are more likely than Republicans to institute tax policies the help families making less than $100,000 a year.”

“The unquestioning support of Israel that [Walter] Mead describes as the most prominent example of ‘evangelical’ influence on U. S. Foreign policy is really an example of fundamentalist influence on foreign policy.  Fundamentalists support Israel’s occupation of all biblical lands, and strongly oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, because they regard the Jewish presence in the Holy Land as part of God’s plan for the second coming of Jesus.”

“The development of modern industries in much of the Middle East and Africa, for example, has profited a tiny and greedy elite, leaving the bulk of the population in poverty, often subject to the whims of brutal dictatorships.  In such circumstances, faith flourishes – as it always has – among those who have little or no hope of a better life in this world.”

A third of the population locked in rigid religous ideology is a formidable challenge to enacting sensible polices.  Furthermore, business interests find ways to exploit the religious convictions of this fundamentalist third of the population, witness objections to aspects of  health care reform, environmental issues, forms of scientific research, education and foreign policy.

“The Age of American Unreason” and “Cornered” by Barry Lynn may be flawed in places and not be masterpieces of writing, but they introduce invaluable observations and thus are among the most important books of our times.