My co-worker, Mike, sees an alarming parallel between the political climate surrounding the current presidential campaign and that of 1960. He’s old enough to remember all the anti-Catholic rhetoric directed toward a young, charismatic candidate back then, and he’s noticed the same people acting the same way now, except in this election that heady combination of fear and anger coming from the religious right is aimed at Muslims, and by superficial extension, Barack Obama.

Mike sees danger in religious people letting their politics and their religion mix to the point that they are no longer separable. For lack of a better term, he calls this politigion. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but a quick search of the intertoobz shows he is not the first to use it, so who knows, maybe it has legs. Irrespective of the label, Mike and I are in agreement that those who suffer from it bear watching. While not entirely relevant to our subject matter, Mike and I both noticed that JFK’s assassination was right there, just sort of hovering over our conversation. It is a definite cause for concern. I’ve heard more than one loudmouth goober proclaim that Obama is just a holiday waiting to happen.

As I noted, Mike, who is a practicing mythologist, though not outspoken about it, thinks the problem lies in the mixing of religion and politics. He sees either ingredient alone as useful, even essential for certain purposes, but much like mixing ammonia and bleach releases deadly chlorine gas, mixing religion and politics releases a concentrated distillation of hate. Of course, being an evangelical atheist, I blame religion.

By looking at the evangelicals and fundies of the Amurkin religious right and declaring them — albeit correctly, in my opinion — to be a little “fucked up”, Mike is doing what I’ve seen religious people of every persuasion do all my life. He reinforces his own beliefs by pointing out the differences over there while downplaying the similarities over here.

For the atheist, the outsider looking in, it doesn’t matter whether you rattle beads and chant or pray to the east, recite litanies or roll around on the floor speaking in tongues, burn incense or handle venomous snakes, all religions have one thing in common. They allow one group of people to choose to believe in a supreme being based on no evidence whatsoever, to not only believe in this invisible cloud-daddy, but create an entire belief system around it, worship it, pray to it, build monuments to it, and wage wars for it, all of this while simultaneously allowing them to believe that a different group of people who have done the exact same thing in a different language or a different culture are evil, and their belief system ridiculous. It’s mind-boggling.

I have a theory that somewhere back there in the primitive part of the human brain, the part that controls our bodies most basic functions like heartbeat and breathing, the part that keeps us alive when the earth shakes, there exists a very rudimentary logic center which, when presented with the stress of accepting two mutually exclusive ideas, reacts with a basic fight-or-flight response. I firmly believe this cognitive dissonance is the source of most of the divisiveness and anger that emanates from the most religious among us.

I’m sure it’s no surprise to those who read this blog or know me personally that I often sit down here in the bunker drinking beer you can’t see through, listening to music and philosophizing. A while back, lefty that I am, and based on the title alone, I dropped $0.99 on a song for my iPod called Oil Man’s War by Kathleen Edwards. Maybe it’s the beer, but I’m really digging it. Here’s a sample of the lyrics:

You can't say it's just a matter of pride
I've been living here since I was a child
And now I'm just a simple man
But even my dreams I deserve to have

I won't change my mind
Keep your hand on my thigh tonight
When we get up north
We'll buy us a store
Live upstairs after the kids are born

And I'm not gonna die
So keep your hand on my thigh tonight
'Cause when we get up north we'll buy us a store
I won't fight in an oil man's war
I won't fight in an oil man's war

But it’s not really the anti-war aspect of the song that has my attention right now, it’s the depiction of that distinctly human trait characterized by two people joining their lives and looking into the future together. Facing adversity together. Dreaming together. Like most men, I’m a romantic at heart, a sucker for the (largely fictional) happy ending.

Sometimes me and her go out to a local pub and play Keno. It's a bingo-like lottery game whereby the state of Misery separates people who don't understand math from their extra cash. You choose anywhere from one to ten numbers in the range of 1 thru 80, darkening in the little bubbles on the entry form (I fill in the sheet because she can’t see up close any more.) and then sit back and watch the video screen above the back bar as electronic balls are lobbed from off-screen to land with a colorful splash on a field of 8 rows of 10 numbers. (She monitors our progress because I can’t see far away any more.)

We play four numbers; hers, mine, her mother's, my father's. Put in 10 dollars and win 3 or 4 back, drink a few high-dollar beers and talk about after. After the kids. After the house. After (and if) we retire. The important thing is we’re still dreaming together, still chasing that happy ending.

Over the weekend I spent a few hours “discussing” finance with a right-wing co-worker. Steve is a typical, hate-radio-listening Republican team player, so of course he blames various Democrats (going all the way back to Jimmy Carter) for our nation’s current financial crisis. Even though he knows I’m not a Democrat, Steve feels like he’s scoring points in our debates by reciting the latest meme from Rush and the gang. See, the Democrats forced the banks to make bad loans to lower income people in order to buy their votes. The Wall Street Masters of the Universe had nothing to do with it; the poor, untrustworthy and unreliable as they are, bankrupted our economy.

Despite these evil machinations by the Democrats and the poverty-stricken, Steve is confident that the situation will soon turn around. He declared me—and my belief that the entire financial system is fundamentally flawed and doomed to failure— to be insufficiently optimistic. I have to grudgingly accept that possibility.

I have to, because I am aware of the underlying pessimism in my basic philosophy of life. I believe it stems from my atheism, or, more precisely, from the observation that my country and most of my entire world are controlled by people who profess to believe that some sort of invisible cloud-fairy watches over, and approves of, the atrocities we commit on our planet and each other. So yeah, sometimes I find it difficult to look on the bright side.

But then, this morning, I tune my teevee to the BBC channel and HOLY CRAP THE SKY IS FALLING! Every major market is down sharply; some have even suspended trading. Europe’s banks are in trouble. The entire country of Iceland is teetering on the brink of financial collapse. Governments around the world are scrambling to find ways to prop up the system, and the trillion or so dollars our government has thus far committed to maintaining the status quo is beginning to look rather trivial.

So, my atheistic pessimism is getting a little shot of adrenalin this morning. I wonder what will happen when US markets open in a little while. Will the “system” right itself like my friend Steve says it will? Or will our government have to take additional steps to save it? Do we actually need to save it? Is it worth saving? Is it genuinely worth anything at all?

I find it interesting that, for the vast majority of us, there exists in this crisis a powerlessness that I imagine is akin to that from which religious belief arises. I think I’ll go play some disc golf and ponder that a bit. It beats hanging around watching my chances for retirement recede into the distance. Sigh.