mack, I don't know why, but I can't get the blue clicky to create a link to the Beliefnet interview right now. But go to the "this episode" link I give above, and that article has link that does work. I'll try and create a link to it later.

I really think Jacoby is on to something with respect to this particular presidential race, and I think the grand themes of this are currently being played out in the Kerry vs Swift Boat Veterans for Truth passion play.

The merging in the 1980 presidential elections of fundamentalist Christians and right wing Republicans, resulted in the creation of the sort of Christian American patriotic militarism we are seeing played out today that does have it's roots in the culture wars of the 60s. Nothing defined the separation, the "who's who" in the US more in that era than one's position on the Vietnam war.

The culture wars of the 60s happened along the American secularist/American evangelical religious fault line, and what we are seeing right now in the Kerry vs VV passion play is that fissure between cultural traditions. It's looking a lot like the "Two Traditions" passion plays of Northern Ireland in the wake of the IRA ceasefire.

As Jacoby points out, the American secularists are leaderless. The American Religious Patriots have as their True Believer leader, the charismatic George Dubya. Kerry, although he has tried to maintain his secularist positions, has refused to be proudly secularist, and to take on the right wing religious patriotism zealots head on, which is what the nation NEEDS him to do.

Hell, even Clinton commented upon the wishy washiness of the Kerry campaign on The Daily Show recently.

And today's NY Times editorial on this whole sorry Swift Boat veterans mess chides the Democrats AND Republicans, by asking "why" was the Kerry campaign blindsided by this, and why was the McCain campaign blindsided by the same sorts of attacks in 2000, and why was Dukakis blindsided by the sorts of attacks in 1998 ad nauseum.