Bitterness and religion: some advice for Obama

I've been doing some thinking, from my churchless perspective, about the controversy over Barack Obama's remark that people in struggling Pennsylvania towns are bitter and cling to religion (among other things).

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Clinton has seized on the words "bitter" and "cling" in blasting Obama for his supposed elitism. On cable news today I kept seeing her new ad being played.

In the ad a Pennsylvania woman says that she doesn't cling to her faith out of frustration and bitterness; she finds it very uplifting.

Well, maybe that's true. If so, she's rare.

How many people are drawn to religion purely out of positive motivations, not because they're looking for solace, salvation, or some sweetness that life hasn't been giving them?

Very few, I'd say.

Buddhism teaches that life is suffering. So does country music. Where do you turn when your woman has left you, your dog has run away, and your pickup's been repossessed?

Beer – that's one option. Or, religion. "Jesus has a plan for me." That thought takes some of the sting out of a sucky situation.

Here's my advice for Obama: use this controversy as an opportunity to start a dialogue about religion, just as he did with the topic of race after Rev. Jeremiah Wright's comments set off a firestorm.

In his race speech, Obama painted the subject with a pleasing shade of gray. He talked about religion also, but didn't address why people are so attracted to religious belief. This is a sensitive subject. But it needs to be brought out into the open.

There's nothing wrong with someone clinging to religion because it makes him or her feel better. I've done that myself – for a long time.

I've never been conventionally religious, but when times were tough, I found myself praying in my own non-Christian fashion. When my mother had a major stroke, before I could get on a plane to see her I pleaded with Whoever is in charge of such things to give her whatever good karma I had.

Ditto when I feared that my wife had a serious health problem. My faithlessness temporarily turned into faith as I asked for some sort of divine intervention. I knew I was almost certainly talking to myself, but I was drawn to do the asking anyway.

If Obama would speak honestly about this, it would resonate with most believers. Something like…

"I realize that when I said people cling to religion to explain their frustrations, that rubbed some the wrong way. They feel that their faith springs from love, from devotion, from a desire to serve God – positive motivations.

Sometimes this is true. However, religious belief also helps us cope with pain, suffering, disease, death, unemployment, poverty – the negative side of life. When we're looking for answers, for reasons, and none are forthcoming, it's natural to find solace in our faith.

Life is tough. Some people get through it without religion. They're sustained by something else. But we all need support from somewhere when what we thought we could count on, no longer does.

I'm not ashamed to say that I've clung to my faith in those times. And neither should anyone else, including the Pennsylvanians I've been talking to these past weeks."

Understand, I'm not going soft on churchlessness. To me, it's preferable to see problems as they are in their naked reality, without viewing them through a prism of religious belief.

Losing one's job can be just that – a stint on unemployment and little cash in the wallet. It doesn't have to be suffused with divine meaning ("God is teaching me a lesson.")

However, if someone feels better by framing their problems within a religious belief structure, that's fine. Feeling good doesn't need any justification. Like I said before, it's when we say "I'm right" rather than "I like" that problems arise.

Along that line, I like that a recent poll is showing that Obama is actually gaining ground over Clinton in Pennsylvania and Indiana. This seems to show that voters aren't upset with Obama's "clinging to religion out of bitterness" remarks.

Probably, because they realize what he said is true.

Comments

[poohbear]

Brian,
Sorry, no comment on your blog. Who understands American politics and religion? Especially not us foreigners. But....... "Buddhism teaches that life is suffering. So does country music."
Now that's one of the more interesting statements you've made of late. I can see a new look and sound in Nashville. Ochre robes, shaved head, Texas boots, stetson hat. - the eightfold path couldn't sound better with slide guitar and them thar southern harmonies......
Take it to Nashville, Brian - America could use a new direction.

[tAo]

life is suffering, country music, and slide guitar?

well I'd rather "take it" Texas style, from my guy in Austin...

http://www.binghammusic.com

[tAo]

A Living Lie: Senator Barack Hussein Obama
by Thomas Sowell
April 14, 2008

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5160

An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years.

Senator Obama's election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.

There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation -- nor any other significant legislation, for that matter.

Senator Obama is all talk -- glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk.

Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama's public image and his reality.

Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.

Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.

In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said.

Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Senator Obama's own statements in San Francisco.

People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.

However inconsistent Obama's words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.

Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings.

Karl Marx said, "The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing." In other words, they mattered only in so far as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.

Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the "detestable" people who "have no right to live." He added: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves."

Similar statements on the left go back as far as Rousseau in the 18th century and come forward into our own times.

It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience -- and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.

Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5160

[tucson]

Thanks tAo for putting up that article on Obama. Right on. This is just the beginning of revealing who Obama really is. It will be perfectly clear to everyone by election time.

The Obama Man Can, a little humor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgt6YQiZTkc

[Juan Cruz]

Obama is spot on. But he sure as hell raises the hackles on the rednecks, some of whom think they are spirituallly inclined but their comments show their colors.....
Be a miracle to get a black fellah as President of the USA. I can feel those trigger fingers, itching, twitching, dreaming of white hoods and burning crosses.

[Holly]

Religion and politics, why can't candidates and office holders grasp the concept of separation of church and state. I don't care about their religion or who they are/have or plan on sleeping with. Just pay your speech writers and dazzle me with the typical B.S. I will vote straight line anyway.
Country music, momma gets run over by a damned ole train, or I won't dance.
Geez Juan, the KKK is only a real problem in Vidor,Tx and even they keep to themselves now. Talk of a racial uprising is incendiary. I'm offended... I get an itchy trigger finger, but only toward noisy neighbors, race irrelevant.

[inga]

Tuscon wrote: "Thanks tAo for putting up that article on Obama. Right on. This is just the beginning of revealing who Obama really is."

Oh, pleeeeeeeeeeease!

I suppose "who Obama really is" is some power-hungry, sinister guy out to deceive all Americans.

What childish, cartoon-world, rubbish!

[tucson]

Inga,

On Obama:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5160

[inga]

Tuscon,

yes, I saw that before I posted last time....nothing new there.
And besides, I don't put stock in "Capitalist Magazine". Pardon the pun.

(may W.F.Buck R.I.P.)

[tucson]

Inga,

I put that link up by mistake. Now I can't find the one I intended to put up. No matter. You'll hear it sooner or later and it won't make any difference to you. There are progressive and conservative mindsets and not much can sway them. This isn't a political forum anyway.

[tAo]

Here's an artice that tells you all you need to know about why Obama is a bad choice:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_el_pr/presidential_race_ap_poll_2

So let's cut all the goofy Obama bullshit and really ask yourselves, which would you rather have as the next President of the United States... a very savvy, intelligent, and highly experienced woman, or an aging warmonger? Because it sure ain't gonna be a racist elitist like Obama.

[tucson]

And to support tAo's remark about Obama's elitism:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/obamas_condescension.html

[inga]

Tuscon wrote:
"You'll hear it sooner or later and it won't make any difference to you. There are progressive and conservative mindsets and not much can sway them."

- seems like YOUR mindset about ME can't be swayed either....WOW!!!!! ....and you don't even know me!

Rather "condescending", don't ya think?

[tucson]

Inga,

OK, what did you think about the article?