"7.8% unemployment figures work of Satan" says GOP, "Act of Providence" retort Dems

I lowered it to 7.8% !

We admit its not a headline you're ever likely to see soon in an American newspaper.


But SVE asks, "why not expect such headlines in what is supposedly the most religious nation on Earth?"

Yesterday the latest US unemployment figures came out.

For about 50 previous months, the figures had always been suitable for tin hatters (Republicans) in the US , even praiseworthy: because the figures confirmed the tin hat belief in "what a mess Obama was making of the economy".

But now yesterday's hint of better days led the tin hatter conspiracy -prone GOP to charge it was a top secret secular conspiracy to favour Obama, involving tens of thousands of civil servants and businesses - about half of them not even Democrats.

There are several other alternatives.

The figures are actually correct.

There is a conspiracy, all right - of aliens.

There is a conspiracy of Satan and his band of devils. Or a conspiracy by God and His angels.

Even the GOP would dismiss the idea that aliens are to blame.

But equally quickly, even the most evangelical among the Tin Hats would also dismiss the idea that God or the Devil influenced the latest unemployment figures.

Even as recently as WWII, most of the governments of the Allied nations could direct that a national day of prayer or thanks be held after a disaster or a victory and expect it would be a widely attended and be an uncontroversial event.

Enough voters - even if only the elderly voters of 75 years ago, ie those raised in times of mid-Victorian piety - still believed strongly in Acts of Providence for the rest of society to think it wise to go along with the gag.

But not anymore.

Is America actually the LEAST religious nation on earth ?

Now for half of the population - they call themselves conservative, I call them blue sky optimists - Nature/Reality is too simple to really hurt Man and the God/Satan doesn't exist and so that only leaves other humans to hurt them.

Dismiss the possibility of your own error and imperfections, dismiss  the existence (or Free Will) of God/Satan, dismiss the complexity of Nature/Reality, who or what else is there to blame when things don't go the way you ordain them to be ?

Conspiracy theories are not irrational, if your underlying assumption is that neither Nature/Reality nor God/Satan can seriously harm you.

It is is your underlying assumption that is brain-dead - not the reasoning thereafter.

The unemployment figure truthers of 2012 are the fallout of the loss of faith in God and loss of fear of Nature that accompanied the rise in the belief in "reified-science" in 1812 : 200 years ago....