I recently posted a blog, that I will admit was pretty divisive and I actually had people making insinuations about my intelligence in the comments. I did post some things that were my own opinion, and I admit upon rereading with a fresh night's sleep and trying my best to look at it from other that some things were worded stronger than they warranted.
But, to the ones that tried to devalue my opinions I return with this. I can tell you don't deal with fundamentalists or the highly religious on a daily basis, so you are no better than the historical anthropologists that made wild assumptions from bones and hides without actually studying the environment they were in.
I spent most of my career in the Metro Indianapolis area working for several industries. Basically whoever needed a mechanical engineer that had no problem with fieldwork and getting his hands dirty. I did it for 27 years until degenerative disc disease, rheumatoid arthritis and a few other medical problems forced me to retire. Believe me, I didn't want to.
My wife was a firefighter at the Columbus, Ohio airport for several years until she just couldn't do it anymore either. She is now back in college, working on her bachelor's in accounting. She is bone on bone in both knees and a hip, but is too young to have replacements.
We moved to a small town in Indiana, bought a house to rehab and live in when were are finished. We have now lived here 8 months, and while it is actually a very progressive place, considering it is in Indiana, we are mostly happy here. Here's where I tell the people who's only experience with fundies and devout Christians are either isolated incidents or what they read in the news and then try to minimize my statements to bite my ass.
At first we were floored. People who we walked by as we went to some of the local stores that said hello or other pleasantries as they walked by flummoxed us. It was amazing. Then we went to the local Christmas celebration downtown, and while we had somewhat gotten used to the almost 1950's sitcom-like friendliness of everyone, we never even imagined that something like this existed. No shoving, no rudeness, no fights or people being stupid. Everyone was smiling and singing along, and although there was plenty of Christmas cheer flowing due to the cold, no drunks. I even heard a police officer tell a group of loud teenagers, "Any more trouble, and I'm calling your parents." WTF??????
Then Trumpster-fire was sworn in.
The fundies took to this like they had heard Gabriel's trumpets. Since then it has been hell here. You can tell the fundies here just by looking at them. Sure, there are a lot of older people who are quite traditional and religious, but on the whole they are nice. The fundies though, are a whole different story. They wear their cheap polo's, Aqua Velva, and dress slacks more proudly than Crips and Bloods wear their colors.The women have a continual scowl on their faces and look at everything with disapproval. It has muted the friendliness, and divided the town between the ones who actually want to do something good for the town, and the ones who swear the past was better and want everything to stay the same.
My personal experiences have been quite colorful to say the least. From being out with my grandson, who is biracial, and being told by one of the sanctimonious morons, that they were sure he was a nice child even though he had the mark of Cain, to my wife and stepdaughter coming home after being accosted by a supposed pastor for my stepdaughter supposedly being dressed like a whore. It's probably a good thing I wasn't with them, because someone would have at the very least been put in their place, if not lost a few teeth.
I build things. I'm an engineer. It's my thing. Moving Halloween decorations, several robots built out of various power wheelchair parts, etc. JASPAR (Just A Simple Programmed Algorithmic Response) and I take quite a few walks together. I wanted people to know he was there, but all the boring "BING! Robot Moving!" BS sounds lame, so he mumbles, randomly sings phonemes and just makes pseudo-random speech-like sounds when moving. I was told the last time I would go to Hell for trying to imitate God by trying to create life. I couldn't help but laugh my ass off, and this infuriated the old man. He said God would strike my impudence down. Unfortunately, Jaspar heard the words "Strike" and "impudence" so he responded with an Obi Wan quote, and something from "The Princess Bride". I was glad at that point that I decided not to include any "Bruce Almighty" quotes. You probably know which ones. Of course that's my fault. He tries to match speech without his name being used in the sentence to MP3 filenames. It can be quite hilarious at times, but I didn't want Jaspar to be responsible for death by apoplexy so I turned down his volume control and we walked away.
Say what you want, but people who act like this towards other human beings are damaged. I suffer from ignorance and apathy on the how and why, but it is observable and verifiable.
So, Yes, it's not only worse than you think, it's worse than you can imagine.