Flibbertigibbet

What We Can Expect

In the shower this morning -- where I do a lot of thinking -- I was thinking over my recent post on the religious right and I want to make something clear: I do think that the influence of religion and mysticism in general is on the rise in America.

Although I have a lot of confidence in the American public, it would be foolish for me to claim that we are not in the midst of a slide away from religion and freedom, a slide that is not possible without popular support.

It is due to this slide that the Republican Party has become the party of the Religious Right and Christian Fundamentalism. Again, I refer you to the book With God on Our Side as good source documenting the string of events that lead to this being the current state of things.

So, given this, what can we expect to see in our political machine going forward. Assuming that this trend remains unabated, here are some of my predictions:

- I fully expect the Democrats to win the presidency in 2008.

- After two years of passing laws supporting their various socialist programs, they'll lose a few seats to Republicans who are still claiming that they support free markets and limited government.

- Democrats will increasingly espouse their own reliance on faith and win over some votes from religious-minded social liberals.

From there, I expect continued swinging back and forth between the two major parties much like we've seen over the past decade or so. Slowly the Democrats will talk more about religion and the Republicans will talk more about social wellfare. Some socially liberal things will not be avoidable like gay unions of some sort, but abortion may be more greatly restricted. Increased government interference in our health care system seems to me to be an inevitability although I will continue to rant about how stupid it is. The economy will become less stable and although I am skeptical about there being a major recession, I would not be surprised to see lots of micro-recessions across various industries.

The bottom line is that I don't have a lot of hope for things to come. It is possible for us to turn things around, but it seems unlikely that things will get better before they get a lot worse.