Pained

This last Sunday, Glenn Beck handed me an excellent excuse to talk about his cult of personality with his 8/28 "Restore America" rally.

There's been a lot of surprise that the "Restoring America" rally wasn't political. It resembled an evangelical rally, and was seemingly focused on religion instead of politics. Many people have been dismissive of the rally because they think that Beck has somehow changed course. This isn't necessarily true.

In my last post, I said that religion, language, race, and the nation all start to blur at the edges and become one thing (at least, within a nationalist movement). For devotees, a religious rally is just as political as a voter's pamphlet.

The video below has some interesting interviews with the crowd. Listen how the interviewees talk about religion versus politics. (I will be doing a post on "The Mexicans" and "The Muslims" as the two "enemies" of the nation and a post on the "registered independent" movement.)


Via Cynical-C

(complete 3-hour rally is on CSPAN)

Even though the content of the speeches were largely about religion and soldiers, the audience felt that the speakers re-affirmed their political beliefs. Partly, they were excited to be in a group of like-minded people. Partly, the speakers were talking in politically coded speech. But why else?

We're pretty familiar with the idea of a personality cult in religions, especially, well, cults. We have an image of a white guy in funny clothes with 6 wives that miraculously worked out he's the second coming, so he convinced a group of people to leave their families, donate their possessions to the glorious leader, and join a fortified compound in the desert, because the feds have put aliens in the drinking water. It's a little different in politics. But only a little.

In politics a personality cult is where a population worship the leader (or founders) of a country. We're not talking "Abe Lincoln never told a lie" kind of worship. We're talking "Every public building has a room dedicated to the Dear Leader, every school day begins with a special prayer to the Dear Leader, and every private home has a small shrine to the Dear Leader." You know, the kind of things that Tea Partiers think "liberals" do to Obama.

Before you get any ideas, I don't believe that Glenn Beck is the Dear Leader that all the Tea Partiers are secretly worshiping. I don't even think his aim is to deliberately create a political personality cult. But there's something extra rabid and stubborn about Glenn Beck fans.

Glenn Beck has developed a minor personality cult around the Founding Fathers. Beck, in his eyes and the eyes of his followers, is the only one who is speaking the truth about American history and he is the only honest man who can see the truth about where America is headed. He is the only one who can give us unbiased information. He is our only connection to the past and the prophet of the future.

Back here in reality, Beck will only give airtime to those who will talk about the Founding Fathers in biblical terms. In Glenn Beck University, Faith 101-103 is presented by David Barton, who claims among other things, that the Founding Fathers were mostly ministers, that the first continental congress signed their documents with "In the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ" and that that same congress paid for bibles in American public schools. (There is a beautiful and thoughtful take-down of Barton's major arguments at Liars for Jesus. Scroll down for the videos as well.)

You may remember that Beck spent a lot of time comparing himself to Thomas Paine, largely because he's a sometimes forgotten founding father but he wrote a key pamphlet called "Common Sense". It was the first major piece of American Propaganda that asked the colonists to stand up and separate from Britain. Beck liked it so much that he re-released it -- with a modest 111 page introduction. Beck's attachment to Thomas Paine is more than a fondness for history. It was a wink at his viewers. Beck feeds his viewers something that feels both like privileged knowledge about history and events to come. This was our first sign Beck had slipped into the shoes of "mouth of propaganda." Because really, what's a personality cult without the propaganda?

So now we have the founding father linked to religion and Glenn Beck linked to the Founding Fathers. But how do we turn them divine? Well, all you have to do is a little line blurring, which is easy when people are already starting to associate their religion with their country. That the "Founding Fathers" won the revolution is enough to prove that "God was on our side." This slips into "God helped us win" to "God wanted us to win" to "We were destined to win". Which brings us to America's "Divine Destiny". Ultimately, the Founding Fathers morph into divine creators of our country, guided by destiny and acting out the will of god.

What else do we need here? Well, a good personality cult needs words. Words to "study". Words that inspire. Words to live by. The writings of the founding Fathers must be holy because the Founding Fathers themselves were holy. Sound outlandish? Glenn Beck doesn't think so.

From Beck's Speech at the Divine Destiny Rally: "The words are alive. Our documents, our most famous speeches are American scripture. They are alive today as any scripture is."

As I mentioned in a previous post, Glenn Beck's "Overton Window" describes an ideal Tea Party. At the higher levels the "Founders Keepers" steal a page out of "Fahrenheit 451" (Becks ghost writers steal shamelessly from many dystopian novels) and the members memorize anything and everything written by their favorite Founding Father. They then recite these speeches at meetings like scripture. The love interest in the story, of course, memorizes Thomas Paine.

Worship tends to spill over onto anyone who is preaching the gospel of the Founding Fathers as does the reverence for his words. Beck has aligned himself with the Founding Fathers and is now aligned with Holy American Destiny. At least, in the minds of his followers.

Now, all a politician (like Sarah Palin) has to do is link themselves to the Founding Fathers and they have instant American Destiny cred. By speaking at the Divine Destiny rally, Sarah Palin was attempting to further align herself with prophecy. This is why I had privately assumed she would announce her presidential run at the rally.

But I was wrong. It seems that certain elements in the tea party aren't taking very kindly to Beck's self-anointment. We may be seeing the beginning of the end.