The invasion of American Democratic institutions by fundamentalist, historically militant (as in crusades, witch hunts, inquisitions, and support of slavery) Christianity has significantly increased the stench coming from the already disturbing dark side of U.S. politics. It’s like a nightmarish replay of the Christian crusades—politics with a militant, convert-the-heathens dark side. Potent, cult-like group dynamics combine with unacknowledged and unseen shadow qualities to easily overwhelm the individual’s sense of right and wrong, often unleashing pure evil en masse.
As the political world and the media divided the U.S. into red and blue states, I found myself feeling uncomfortable even thinking about driving through one of those “red” states. I would imagine that every red-state person must be a card-carrying, right wing fundamentalist. From the other side of the mountain, those “blue” states are full of liberal, soft-on-terrorism, big government socialists. Both are examples of projecting our group’s shadow onto the “enemy.” And both views prevent us from “seeing” individual human beings. We see only that group, those people. With remarkable ease, we slide into a “programmed,” either-or, group-think: we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys. The group mind set is pulling the levers, directing individual reasoning and logic. It’s like seeing everything through red or blue-tinted glasses that color all we see and think—we’ve been swallowed. The blind lead the blinded with ludicrous comments like this: “I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq,” Paul Wolfowitz declared, clearly not seeing his missionary, neoconservative dark side—the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Fundamentalists use labels as weapons, dialogue-diverting smokescreens that reveal a lot about their own shadow. For example, they have demonized Liberal Democrats using phrases like “the Liberal elite,” repeated over and over, who they claim are part of some “vast liberal media conspiracy.” In fact, there is an actual conspiracy underway and it is the fundamentalist Christian cult’s shadowy, carefully planned, two-decade-long infiltration and gradual takeover of the Republican Party from the grassroots-up. “Elitism,” in reality, is at the core of the Bush administration’s dark side, especially their pretentious, religious and political elitism.