A Heathen’s Day View of the Message from Iowa

What is the message of Iowa to America’s alternative religions? It is the same sent to the world’s second largest religion, Islam: there is no room for you in the American political process.

Extremism is not a problem local to Iowa, obviously. Current Republican political theology developed out of the marriage between the GOP and the Religious Right and has been in the making since Goldwater’s defeat in 1964. I have described that unholy alliance and its development at PoliticusUSA and won’t go into it again in any detail here.

Suffice it to say, though this is a national problem, Iowa is an extreme example of this extremism. But that’s not saying much, because it is a matter of degrees. The same extremism we have been so over-exposed to leading up to yesterday’s Iowa Caucus is present in every state. Those states which fell under the power of the Tea Party in 2010 have perhaps felt it most, but we’ve all felt it to some extent.

Rick Santorum was a real winner in Iowa. As extremist candidates go, he is pretty out there, perhaps further out there than Michele Bachmann, the former queen of Batshit Crazy. Santorum has no qualifications other than his extremism. That he was able to come in second in that state says a great deal about the people who voted yesterday. The extent to which his success receives approbation from Republicans elsewhere will be a measure of how serious our problems are.

Rick Santorum is a strict exclusionist candidate. For Rick Santorum, an American is a) heterosexual, b) fundamentalist Christian, a c) white. This obviously eliminates a great many people, and we Pagans (Wiccan, Heathen, Hellene, or what have you) fail to make the grade. We are not Americans according to the GOP’s political theology and America is not for us. We are intruders, and to the extent that we succeed,  usurpers, like President Obama.

We have no legitimacy here. That is the message they are sending from Iowa. And Pagans should be disturbed by this. I am disturbed by this.

If the second largest religion in the world is a cult, where does that leave a few thousand, even tens of thousands, of Heathens like me?

Iowa is a victory for extremism – totalitarian, theocratic extremism, and a defeat for diversity, pluralism, liberalism, and every belief behind this country’s founding.

What we can do about it is stand up to them. It is what we owe our ancestors and it is what we owe our children and our descendants. We are place keepers in our ancestral lines and we can do no less. We must uphold our part; we cannot afford to remain quiet. If we do not speak up when we have a chance to speak up, we will have no chance later and no right to complain about it. Pagans can also Occupy, and must. Because if we are part of the 99 percent, we are in religious terms at the very bottom of that 99 percent. And we can’t and should not expect anyone to fight our battles for us.