Most of you have already seen Rick Perry’s by-now infamous campaign ad where he blasts Obama for his “War on Religion.” You probably haven’t seen it on TV–its intended place to be viewed, especially if you live in Iowa where Perry is pining his last ditch hopes to win the nomination–but it’s been steadily making the rounds on YouTube, Facebook, and forwarded emails. But not for the reasons Perry hopes.
The buzz on this video is almost unanimously negative. Right now on YouTube, 98 percent of the people who voted, voted that they “dislike” this video. That’s right, a 98 percent negative rating on YouTube, the site where even a cat falling off a toilet set can get a 95 percent favorable rating. Now, does that mean that the people who would support Perry’s worldview just aren’t on YouTube? Or, more likely, does it mean that the people who support Perry’s worldview are shrinking in numbers?
For those that haven’t seen it, the 30 second spot goes into a tirade about Obama’s “War on Religion,” the liberal media’s “War on Christmas,” and vehemently says that it’s wrong for gays to serve openly in the military but for children to be unable to celebrate Christmas. Uhhh…I don’t think any children are unable to celebrate Christmas, but of course that hasn’t been the story coming out of conservative circles for a while now.
In fact, you can tell Perry didn’t expect there to be anything controversial about his ad and probably had no idea it would be so widely disliked. He thought he was playing right into the Republican wheelhouse of “Christians are being persecuted!” and touched on everything from Prayer in School to the “War on Christmas” as a result. [In fact, you generally feel like Perry is running his campaign in 2000 pre-recession times where this is something people care about instead of 2011 times of “Oh shit, we need to care about finding a job.”]
Problem is, the only religious group to never be persecuted in America is Christians. And saying they are more persecuted today because there’s a Christian president (Obama) many think is a Muslim because his dad is, is Trumpian hyperbole at best and downright bigotry at worst. I’ve talked to people that really believe Obama could be the anti-Christ because he represents such a threat to their extremely limited ideal of what Christianity is. But, Obama isn’t really the point of this, and neither is “The War on Christmas” or “The War on Prayer in School” or “The War on Religion.” [Damn, for a bunch of Christians, these culture warriors sure are involved in a lot of wars.]
This is about the extremely delusional belief that Christianity is somehow under attack in America, when in fact America is perhaps the most religious first world country on Earth. What it’s really about is the belief the Christian majority has that everything it wants should be granted because everything they want is sacred. Prayer in school? “Doesn’t really make sense, but we want it!” War on Christmas? “There’s no real evidence of it, but we know it exists because there’s a Jewish/Muslim conspiracy out there that hates Christmas!” [Right, because Jewish and Muslim people are known to be so collaborative.] War on Religion? “Oh, absolutely, why else would gays be allowed to serve openly in the military?” Maybe because they are human beings and not everything is about some obscure passage of The Bible that vaguely implies homosexuality is wrong. Not every thing in America can cater to the most trivial whims of what intolerant Christians want.
This is about a majority run amok. A group that really believes the Civil Rights of others (and gay marriage is that, like it or not) are less important than preserving what they want. Whether it truly affects them or not–and it doesn’t–becomes debatable because when a worldview becomes this selfish, everything seems to be about them. So that’s what’s really behind Perry’s pandering to a base primed to believe in a “War on Christmas.” However, the negatives are rising, the positives are falling, and there seems to be a tidal change saying that this type of pandering might be appealing to fewer and fewer of “the majority.”