Not Bothered

God Botherer is not a term I ever use to describe my religious friends. Mainly because I have no religious friends, or at least none deserving of that derisory epithet. But I know what the term means, implicitly and effectively, and it is entirely accurate. These people do bother God. They bother God because, I think, He’s thinking, “Who the Hell are they talking about ?” The God they are talking about—the tele-evangalists, the people who come knocking at my door—bear no relation to the God I was taught about at Sunday School. The God I was taught about was kind, compassionate, all-embracing; not a redneck, bigoted, self-styled moral arbiter with an obscene bank account and a hankering to delve into secular politics. Mitt Romney’s problems were two-fold. The first was that he represented a party with archaic values. The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party, is these days neither grand nor, given its ideological splits, a party. But it is old and long out of touch with progressive thought and a young vote determined to reshape the world. It will find it hard to bounce back from this, and almost impossible to do so in its present form. The second reason I believe that Mitt Romney lost this election—and I believe that he did lose this election, Obama didn’t win it (not with 8% unemployment)—was his religion. Religion is all very laudable, but when it governs all that you do, and therefore, if applied to a President, governs all that you and I do, then it becomes dangerous and these days unacceptable. We saw that with George W. Bush (remember him?) and the memory of war-mongering Bush is still fresh and haunting. It haunted Mitt Romney and ultimately—I believe—played a large part in his losing the election. I once said and remain of the view that the American presidency is so important to the world that Americans should be excluded from voting—its like putting a squirrel in charge of a nut farm; but on this occasion they made the right choice. Thank God.