At the same time, athletes are lionized or—in the case of Tonya
Harding, say—demonized.
If you can personalize events of the world—whether it’s Hillary
Clinton or Tonya Harding—you’ve succeeded in directing people
away from what really matters and is important. The John F.
Kennedy cult is a good example, with the effects it’s had on the left.
Religious fundamentalism
In his book When Time Shall Be No More, historian Paul Boyer
states that, “surveys show that from one-third to one-half of [all
Americans] believe that the future can be interpreted from biblical
prophecies.” I find this absolutely stunning.
I haven’t seen that particular number, but I’ve seen plenty of
things like it. I saw a cross-cultural study a couple of years ago—I
think it was published in England—that compared a whole range of
societies in terms of beliefs of that kind. The US stood out—it was
unique in the industrial world. In fact, the measures for the US
were similar to pre-industrial societies.
Why is that?
That’s an interesting question. This is a very fundamentalist
society. It’s like Iran in its degree of fanatic religious commitment.
For example, I think about 75% of the US population has a literal
belief in the devil.
There was a poll several years ago on evolution. People were
asked their opinion on various theories of how the world of living
creatures came to be what it is. The number of people who
believed in Darwinian evolution was less than 10%. About half the
population believed in a Church doctrine of divinely-guided
evolution. Most of the rest presumably believed that the world was
created a couple of thousand years ago.
These are very unusual results. Why the US should be off the
spectrum on these issues has been discussed and debated for some