Imagine that 30 years ago, a coalition of the Aryan Brotherhood, the National Rife Association, the KKK, the American Independent Party, Operation Rescue, the Southern Baptist Conference and other Christian evangelical and dispensationalist groups overthrew the government of the United States to form a new Christian Republic of America.Pat Robertson, the Supreme Leader, would be the ultimate authority in this Protestant Theocracy, with help from Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts and that guy from the God Hates Fags church. Their theology would be based on the imminence of the End Times, Tribulation, the return of Jesus and the Rapture.
The only TV news would come from Fox, the only talk radio from Rush Limbaugh and print newspapers would have the depth of USA Today and the viewpoint of the Washington Times.
All the music would be Christian rock and/or gospel and the MTV clones would look like the 700 Club.
All newspapers, Web sites, internet service providers, cellphone companies, blogging aggregators and social media sites would be directly supervised and censored by the Ministry of Information, led by Sarah Palin, and all educational curricula would be designed by the Creation Institute peeps.
Foreign Minister Dick Cheney would blame all world's problems on the Europeans -- specifcally the French -- and look forward to the day France would be wiped off the map.
Almost all Americans of French heritage who had any money would have left the country and fled to Quebec and/or La Patrie, and French words would be banned from polite discourse. Despite the fact French people were here on the continent before the USA was founded, their history and role in the American Revolution would be obliterated from the collective consciousness.
Catholics would be tolerated, Jews allowed to stay Jewish but Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Bahais and Hindus would be allowed only to continue to worship in private, and denied permission to expand, refurbish or modernize any existing places of worship.
After 30 years of this, and a disputed election where the choice was between an extreme right winger and a more moderate right winger, some people would miraculously decide that enough was enough, and protest rigged elections peacefully in the street.
The FBI, bolstered by paramilitary reinforcements recruited from the Hells Angels, would be designated to crush the peaceful protests before they got out of hand. The Supreme Leader, of course, would blame it on the French.
Welcome to Iran.
5 comments:
well done on the analogy but why the need to bash the right here in the United States? It's no where near the oppressive state in Iran. Saw the link on a tweet. Well done, though.
Read "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. Her novel fleshes your description out.
Audacious, excellent, and thoroughly, compellingly well-written.
Kudos, Dennis - you've managed not only to put a fine point on the recent history of Iran, but skewer exactly what's wrong with this country in the way we let right-wing demagogues push us around and co-opt the freedoms that we spent much of the past 8 years being too lazy and ignorant to defend.
Well said and I agree!!
that ought to put things in the right perspective
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