Bush and the Axis of Evil

I braved the cold yesterday evening and attended a talk in Cahors on "Bush et l'axe du mal" by Bernadette Rigal-Cellard, a professor of American studies at Bordeaux University. If I understood her machine-gun-fire French correctly, she gave an accurate history of the hijacking of the Republican party by the evangelicals and the repackaging of the cold war rhetoric on Evil as a battle cry for God's Chosen People in the 21st century. She downplayed the stranglehold of Mammon on American politics, but focused on the way that Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and their ilk had enabled the religious fanatics to become credible in Washington.

There were a few chuckles. She likened religion in America to food in France (ah! that got the audience's attention). Religion is regional and you can have it a la carte. Fashions change. The consumer can choose the ingredients and the chef. I'm not sure that a French chef would take kindly to being asked to change the ingredients of a dish, but perhaps that's the point: there is full disclosure and you can always change your allegiance.

Rigal-Cellard didn't mention the Rapture specifically, but she noted that once the Puritans had given up on fixing the rottenness of American society themselves and had decided to leave the clean-up to God (knowing that they themselves would be saved), it didn't really matter how many human beings died in the process.

The mood changed radically during question time. (A subject of particular interest was the perceived rapprochement between the evangelicals and the jews). There was not a trace of anti-Americanism, merely a theme of "what on earth can be done about the situation?" Actually, the French way apparently is not so much to ask a question, but to have a rant, which then enables the presenter to have a rant of his or her own.

Rigal-Cellard eventually calmed down and said that America was a democracy and that things would sort themselves out within a decade or so, although she noted the problem of lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. It's nice to be reassured by a European that democracy is still alive in the U.S.A.