Religious and Republican at the Shrine of Democracy

By Dr Gerry Lower
03 May 2003

Have you ever noticed how many brand name American commodities (beer would be a good example) have been watered down beyond uniqueness, made entirely bland in order to accommodate a mass market? Back in the days before individual creativity and opportunity died (or was stolen away), America provided a home for over five hundred unique breweries. Today we cheer for a half dozen megabreweries and their bland offerings so that we can still have our drinks and momentarily escape our bland realities.

The same is true of the American Press. The news and commentary we are provided by the large media outlets are necessarily watered down beyond uniqueness, made entirely bland in order to accomdate a mass market -"careful how you say that, make it so they can all swallow it." Consequently, one can oftentimes benefit by going into the smaller city scene to find out what is really beneath the national fluff. So let me take you for a brief sojourn into western South Dakota, the heart of Midwestern tourist land.

"West River" (i.e., west of the Missouri), as the region is known, is culturally-dominated by Old Testament religion and conservative Republican capitalism, accompanied by western hospitality and a wild and woolly western "clickiness," a.k.a. cronyism. As a direct result, of course, South Dakota provides its citizens with the second lowest per capita income in America and, at the same time, ranks sixth in the US in its density of millionaires. We are one of the exemplars of the enormous gap between the rich and poor in America.

Conservative Republican dominion works for regional growth and development, although the area does suffer from business people who are far too competitive for their own good, a situation which breeds the typical desperation beneath most corruption. This much-pursued growth threatens daily some of the most spectacular landscapes in North America, the Black Hills National Forest and several national parks and monuments, including Mount Rushmore, the Shrine of Democracy.

Well-healed folks from larger Midwestern cities are moving to West River in droves to retire in one of America's oldest and most beautiful mountain ranges. The local working class have been mostly out of the real estate market for decades and Rapid City sports a horrendous number of inner city trailer parks, originally built on the city's edge and now scattered from downtown outward for several miles. But we do have brand new hotels and motels and museums and banks and Wal-Marts. Long after the Gold Rush of 1876, Rapid City is once again "booming," pretty much for the same people it boomed for the first time around.

The "balanced" but decidedly Republican Rapid City Journal prints editorials daily which amount to nothing more than loudly self-righteous tirades against liberalism and all political approaches smelling of the Democratic party.

Why, just a couple of weeks ago Shirley wrote about antiwar demonstrators in West River (with their "foolish tantrums and myopic opposition"). You demonstrators and your "minority ilk won't misuse our rights and tear apart our nation as you did about [sic] Vietnam […] not over my dead body!" One senses that Shirley writes with a religious passion and that she can likely write her name in the snow -better than any man.

Certainly, the editors at the Journal can differentiate between thoughtful commentary and an egregiously self-righteous outburst. The fact that the editors do not much bother making such distinctions in prioritizing editorial commentary says quite a lot about the deeply self-righteous religious attitudes embedded in West River culture (as a microcosm of the national scene with less confusing fluff) and about the sorry state of the press in America, which was originally designed to measure the news relative to the values of democracy, not to the values of post World War II capitalism. West River is a vast sea of prairie out of which rises the majestic mountain islands of the Black Hills. West River culture, on the other hand, doesn't cover much ground beyond the Old Testament or outside of West River.

Here in West River, one can actually find the authentic item, people worth several millions of dollars who provide their management-level employees with very modest pay and no benefits at all, oftentimes on a seasonal basis. Yet some are known to gather around with their employees to pray collectively to almighty god. For what? For a good season and more money incoming, of course. A living income in West River simply escapes the working people unless there be godly intervention on behalf of their rich employers.

Here we are, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. The Shrine of Democracy was sculpted between 1927 and 1941 by Gutzon Borglum in honor of America's enlightened leadership. Listen to these granite individuals, now looking southeast over the Black Hills to greet every red, white and blue American sunrise:

George Washington: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

Thomas Jefferson: "I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of men." Or better yet, "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." Or, "the purest system of morals ever before preached to man [nascent Christianity] has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions [Old Testament moralities] into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power [...] and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, so as to constitute the real Antichrist."

Theodore Roosevelt: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." What more can be said? "We here in America, hold in our hands the hopes of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men."

Abraham Lincoln: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." Or better yet, "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Doesn't sound very religious or capitalistic, does it? Sounds more like these men were speaking from the values of democracy, doesn't it?

So, here is what I want to know. What gives with you people living in Rushmore's shadow? What gives with the Republican Party in America?

Have you noticed that since Bush's appointment to the Oval Office, your "ilk" has become infallible, incapable of being stupid and doing wrong? Have you noticed that you no longer need to make any sense, common or otherwise, in promoting your agenda? Have you noticed how you "teflonize" those who tell you what you want to hear so that you do not have to challenge yourself or your thinking -in a country birthed from much larger thinking?

Have you noticed how empty arguments flavored with self-righteousness can oftentimes "win" the day? That smug cultural attitude, of course, emerges from JudeoRoman religious thinking, no Christian values in sight, as Jefferson well knew. Therefore, he gave you and me the right to believe in personal religious infallibility if we wish, in the Catholic tradition. But you and I have no right to impose that belief, or any other religious belief, upon another living soul. By Jefferson's standards, don't you see, you have sold out ... completely. That happened the instant you found your way to values other than those outlined in the Declaration, certainly one of the most Christian documents ever written.

Have you noticed how you refuse to listen to reason and how you wrap your efforts in religion and patriotism so that you do not have to bother with intelligent explanation -because you know that the supernatural notions which nourish your attitudes do not logically cut it in the real world anymore? Have you noticed how far out of sync you are with every single granite mind enshrined on Mount Rushmore? We all appreciate a break from having to think now and then, but you folks have made it into a way of life. Good for you.

One does wonder, however, why you strive so hard to win, as if nothing else matters, fabrications, distortions and fantasies being just part of a well-fought game. Despite swings of the political pendulum, you folks have been winning all along, don't you see, gradually acquiring more and more control over "acceptable" American thought and behavior, more and more control over national positions and postures, more and more control over the working individual's ability to secure a living income. In a nutshell, it has been a quest for more and more authority over the people and less and less responsibility for the people, an approach which can ultimately be only self-defeating. Your savior warned about service to mammon.

You have created more and more opportunities for the rich and fewer and fewer opportunities for working people. Your world is one in which bright and talented people do not start up businesses; rich people start up businesses and they hire bright and talented people for as little as possible to keep margins up. The destruction of meritocracy and the creation of the largest gap between "haves" and "have nots" in human history is your doing. You have converted "the people" (our collective selves) into mindless, voiceless and odorless consumers who do not need to know and do not deserve rights, medical, educational or otherwise. You make America unique among the western democracies. Good for you.

The questions that come to my mind are these. What have you really won outside of a desperately-illogical and remarkably unconstitutional control over America and the people? Now that you have finally taken over and, in less than two decades, hauled America backwards two centuries to our Tory enslavement, what are you going to do with us? Inquiring people, people who have read Locke and Jefferson and Paine and Twain and Lincoln and Thoreau and Whitman, want to know.

Copyright © 2003 by the News Insider and Gerry Lower