I Want to Believe!

Back in the 90’s I was a huge fan of the X-files.  Never mind that the stories were kind of dopey, and the “science” that they used to explain certain phenomena would be readily dismissed by a bright 7th grader.  The show was and is just mindless fun.  I have been revisiting the show lately because Mawm never watched it before and I bought him the first two seasons for his birthday. 

One of the great things about the show is that it is pure fantasy.  Although the tagline of the show, “I want to believe…”, became a mantra for its fans, no one in their right mind would ever actually believe that there are werewolves living in Montana, or vampires roaming L.A.  It is all just children’s ghost stories, dolled up for adult geeks and sci-fi nerds.

But maybe I’m giving people more credit than they deserve.  Take Huff poop writer Adele Stan, for example.  If she did watch the show, I have to wonder if she still looks up at the stars every night wondering if the Truth really IS out there.

See, Ms. Stan, like so many others suffering from kool-aid induced zombification (hey, now that sounds like an X-file!)  is twisting herself into a million little knots to explain away Barack Obama’s decision to invite right wing bigot Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.  Ironically, people like her are willing to grasp at anything to explain his actions except for the actual truth, which in this case isn’t out there, it’s right in front of your face:  Obama is a homophobe who does not care about gay people.  He doesn’t care about women’s reproductive rights, and he doesn’t care about you, Ms. Stan.  He is not the transcendental messiah figure that you’ve been dreaming about your whole life.  The sad part is that Ms. Stan’s own common sense is telling her what her heart refuses to believe:

For many of us who supported Obama vociferously during the campaign, this all feels a bit personal. Still, I know that simmering in this stew leaves me no path to redemption. And a sense of redemption, deserved or not, is part of what made election night so glorious for so many of us.

I’m just not quite there yet. “I don’t even want to go to this inauguration now,” I told one friend. Trust me, reader, that’s a sentiment of extreme deflation, so excited have I been, so looking forward to a transcendent moment on the Mall with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, straining for a glimpse at a Jumbotron amid children and grandmas as they jockey for position. And still a bitter taste laces my tongue when I imagine Warren at the microphone, calling for the blessing of a God he believes sanctions bigotry against queer folk, a God who would deny a woman her bodily integrity, a God who demands that Jews and other non-Christians burn in Hell. Not my God, thank God…

In fact, the predictable back-and-forth between left and right around this issue leads me in moments when my worser angels — you know, the less-than-angelic angels — of my nature have my ear to wonder whether or not we just got Souljahed out. Would Obama step on our tails to make us squeal in order to look “normal” to the pro-America parts of the country?

But like so many other people who wallow in their denial before accepting the fact that what they so wanted to believe in is just simply not true, Ms. Stan clutches at the most absurd hopes that this is all part of the glorious plan of Obama to transform hatemongers into hippies, and that yes, Adele, their really is a Santa Claus, and his name is Obama.

Let’s consider another alternative — please. Like any council of chiefs, the leadership of the religious right is often riven with jealousy and competition, as well as ideological differences between purists and pragmatists. Mainstream media have latched onto Warren’s AIDS-fighting work in Africa and his preaching on environmental responsibility as evidence of his ostensibly kinder, gentler biblical Christianity though, by his own admission, the difference between Warren and authoritarian right-wing media mogul James Dobson is merely one of “tone”. Yet Warren isn’t really *of* the clique of religious-right leaders as we’ve come to know them: the Dobson mob, the Robertson cabal, the Falwell gang…

If the campaign revealed anything about the president-elect, it is his use of existing dynamics to his own advantage, knowing when to get out of the way of — or lend a hand to — Nature as she takes her course. The leaders of the religious right are far less dangerous to the rest of us when sniping among themselves. Could it be that, in elevating Warren so high above the rest, Obama has tossed an apple of discord over the right fence, a clever bait of distraction?

Perhaps I think too wishfully as I look to find a reason to believe.

That is exactly the problem.  If you have to look for a reason to believe, then the thing you want to believe in probably isn’t the truth.  I always thought that those of us on the left were more in touch with our inner “Scully” and that we look to science to help us understand the world we live in.  Apparently Ms. Stan never learned the principle of Occam’s Razor, which basically states that:

“when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.”

In other words, your parents are putting the presents under the tree, not some magical elf with flying reindeer, The Roswell “incident” really was a weather balloon, and despite all of Adele’s wishful thinking, Obama selected Warren because he actually agrees with just about every homophobic, misogynistic tenet that Warren himself believes in.  To try to convince people otherwise puts you in the camp with the “Lone Gunmen” and other conspiracy theorists who are usually only given as much attention as their value as camp entertainment will allow.  But poor Adele only makes it worse by listening to the crazed theory of a friend who is obviously more deluded than she is:

For Sale: Bridge to Nowhere

An artist friend who wished not to be named (”Call me Wes and keep me out of that mess!”) took it one step further. “How do you know, Adele, that that moment, when that man is on that stage, lookin’ out on all those people — how

do you know that will not be his transcendent moment? Think of all the people he could move.”

Yeah, right.  Oh, and Adele, if you buy that, I’ve got a bridge on Omicron Persei 8 that you might be interested in, all you have to do is believe…