Ignorant of the Beast, and unaware of the Elephant on the table

Jonathan Hutson of Talk To Action posted this comment to Frank Cocozelli's diary on Daily Kos, "Many of Us Don't Know the Nature of the Beast,"

One mistake progressives make is to assume that religious right leaders spend most of their time and resources organizing for change on the religious front, using the tools of religion. In reality, religious right leaders spend most of their time, energy, and other resources organizing for change on the political front, using political tools, such as voter registration, building up the Republican party from the grassroots up, voter identification, and get-out-the-vote drives.

There is much cognitive dissonance about this. This cognitive dissonance shows up in Democratic Party caucuses, when the topic of what to do about the organizing of the religious right leaders does not even come up.

Here on Daily Kos, the cognitive dissonance comes up when some people pay little attention to posts on the religious right, because they assume discussions of the religious right have little to do with their main interest, which is how to win elections.... But discussions of the religious right are directly relevant to Democrats who want to win elections.

This seemingly willful blindness on the part of progressives about the religious is the reality that Frederick Clarkson calls the "elephant on the table."

-IseFire