TWBG: The Trump Theocracy

One of the things that strikes me as astonishing about Trump's biggest fans is that they may even know that he is actually incurious, ignorant and lazy and basically spends the first five hours of his day watching news shows and Tweeting shitposts but on a spiritual level, they don't care. The real Trump, the one that pays off porn stars or cheats his employees and the government, is nonetheless "good for the evangelicals" that make up a strong part of his base. It reminds me, in a way, of how George W. Bush (in standee form)  was made a literal item of worship for the kids in the documentary "Jesus Camp".

The president may be fake, but the worship is real. Ish.

This is why Trump can assert, in the midst of a flurry of pious falsehoods, that he will never let the folks assembled at the National Prayer Breakfast this past week down. He won't, because they won't let him let them down. They will believe in him, because he is improbable and could only happen if God willed him.  (But then again, folks, some believe God willed Hitler, so...YMMV.) And he can also gaffe and state that people of faith can be celebrated for the "abolition of civil rights".   (But is that just a gaffe, or is it more of a Kinsley gaffe? Because while the modern religious right likes to pretend they always convened over something like, well, the "right to life" , which is nothing to do with the rights of mothers with respect to prenatal health care or maternal mortality or even doctors, nurses, or patients at reproductive health care clinics for whatever reason when harassment, closure, or even terroristic threats and actions may be concerned) but probably has a lot more to do with the kind of white nationalism Trump more or less advertently espouses.

And all of this makes it a fine time to take note of how the National Prayer Breakfast was used to insert Maria Butina into the right wing social circuit because as luck would have it, the RW evangelical set had gotten a bit of a crush on Putin, and well, it was for the kinds of anti-Muslim and anti-gay things you might think. (Consider the relationship of Scott Lively to anti-gay laws elsewhere in the world with Manafort picking Mike Pence to be Trump's running mate--a guy who basically tried to make segregation for LGBT people a thing. This is the religious right in the US influencing and being influenced by an authoritarian current in the world.)  But this sort of thing becomes very awkward when it is revealed that Maria Butina was in favor of arming anti-American, pro-Russian Crimean separatists to be totally acting in self-defense and Paul Manafort was still working on Ukraine politics even after his indictment.

This really makes me wonder to what extent the religious right here in the US is letting their hot buttons about things like LGBT marriage and participation in the military and telling women they are murderers for having fetuses they can't carry to term or will to live even if they desperately wanted to, has them choosing to ignore things like absolutely naked corruption and graft.  And how this lets them ignore detailed documentation of the real money-grubbing connections, soundly and roundly lied about, between Trump and Russia even during the 2016 election.

This isn't even really about how Russian adoptions or the placement of South American children in the care of an agency connected to Betsy De Vos--except it is--about how the religious right concerns (like raising the theocratic children of the future) can influence US policy in ways that immiserate  millions, undermine US democratic institutions, and work with foreign influences that don't have the best interests of our republic at heart whether because of apocalyptic (it doesn't matter because we'll all be dead in the long run" or absolutist (destroying current day America to create a better, more pure tomorrow) reasons.

The Trump Theocracy isn't strictly religious--but it has aspects of a cult, with hidden knowledge (Q Anon) and shunning of family and friends who aren't on board. Reinforcing the god-cult of infallible Trump seems to be an important part of conservatism at the moment, with many Republican figures assumed to be sane mouthing words that make no sense except as respecting Trump as a kind of sacred figure who cannot be criticized. Which is absurd and demeaning--he is a man, elected for a four year term (barely) and can obviously be challenged.

Unless his installation as president had an indispensability for some force, somewhere, that had nothing to do with his actual competency for the job, which still appears to be slight to nonexistent.  But about that, I can only assume this serves the highest bidder based on the swampiness of Trump associations.

But We Do Accept This

"A child of God is dead. Can not we acknowledge in this country that we cannot accept this?" Former CIA and FBI official Philip Mudd breaks down into tears following the shooting at a Florida high school https://t.co/y6GqatInij pic.twitter.com/FuuB5gQsOs

— CNN (@CNN) February 15, 2018

Fuck violence.

Fuck "thoughts and prayers" platitudes.

Fuck the NRA.

Fuck "toxic masculinity".

Fuck images of school children jogging from their school with their hands up becoming something we could become immune to.

Fuck every politician that takes NRA money.

Fuck the Trump Administration for calling off a press briefing because a school shooting happened to change the subject for them.

Fuck a world where kids don't worry about passing pop quizzes but hide in closets worrying they will be popped.

Fuck a world where parents' phones buzz an alert that their child's school is a fucking kill zone.  Or they hear their own child's fear-stricken voice trying to explain what is happening and wonder if this is the last time they will talk to their baby.

Fuck a world where we put kids through active shooter drills telling them this will keep them safe when, well, this.

You can ask me if it feels better to curse this out and what the hell am I doing about it and all I have to give is explain I see this great unnecessary scene of horror and want to throat punch every smirking douche who ever makes jokes about "safe spaces".  Because violence ideation can be a very real emotional reaction to stressors but it is inappropriate and I actually won't throat punch anyone at all; but there's safety (an experience of feeling okay talking about things or just even showing up somewhere without feeling threatened or harassed, which doesn't seem like too much to ask) and then there's safety (not getting yourself or a loved one murdered because somebody took their emotional violence ideation all the way through, with the assistance of a very purposefully created murder tool).  And there are people who will on one hand wear you out with talk about how they love "law'n'order" and then display exactly no fucks about whether folks are even safe.

President Obama shed tears for the dead of Sandy Hook Elementary, and was mocked for having human feelings. Fake news shitheads tried to pretend it was a hoax. A hoax. Imagine the inhuman shitbag cruelty that tries to deny real human beings their grieving because it just doesn't sit right with their ideology?

Other folks can offer up their thoughts and prayers. I am throwing in all my fucks. This should not be acceptable. But whenever and wherever we shrug off investigating the problems that make the US so murder-happy, we are accepting it. It isn't just mass shootings, and school shootings. It's drive-by's and shoot-outs and that toddlers and dogs even end up killing people with guns. It's that the CDC can't study the damage guns do. It's that we look at shooters as insane as if to write off the society they came up in. It that people will literally say "It's too soon" to talk about the reasons why it happens, and trying to address it gets called out as "politicizing the tragedy" as if "politics" isn't just another word for people trying to make government work.

Thoughts and prayers--sure. But faith without works is dead, and I want to see politicians try to work on this for a change.

UPDATE: And here's Alex Jones chewing the "false flag" rag again.  And this guy was given legitimacy by Trump. And I will never forget or forgive that shit.

Hands On POTUS

Let the Lord keep you and nourish you and pick you up and be a fence against people zooming in on whatever is on your collar, and we will refrain from discussing whether you were ever covetous of your son-in-law's wife, or whether you regard the trespasses of anyone else before considering your own--and we will certainly not discuss whether you have been combing a Prince Valiant into a DA for the last 40+ years because you're too antsy to sit in a big boy chair and get a big boy haircut. 

In other words--we thank you for your authoritarianism and beseech your future support for our considered Bible-maniac fuckery. 

Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough

The problem with discussing mass shootings any more is that they have grown so common that, being the practical creatures we humans are, we have ritualized the event so that we can better handle it. We have a certain formalized language, and pre-set arguments. The president is right--we get numb--it's what we do when have a tolerable outrage level, when it isn't our kids, when it isn't our town, when it isn't "our" tragedy. Perfunctory statements are made, offering "thoughts and prayers". Often these statements come from political figures, who don't want to be seen in the disgraceful pose of appearing to be "politicizing tragic deaths".

Fuck that. Tragic deaths are politicized. The dead of 9/11. The dead of Benghazi. What we have here, though, is not a one or two-off happening--the United States is actually pretty damn saturated with gun violence. The incidence of gun deaths to Americans is orders of magnitude higher than that of terrorism. Our level of gun violence is actually shocking stacked up to other civilized nations.

I don't think knee-jerk "thoughts" and hackneyed and insincere prayers are worth a damn anymore. I can't sit and wait until I have a name and a profile for whatever kink existed in the smouldering brainpan of some loser who decided he wasn't going to snuff it until some dozen or so of his fellow humans did as well.

I know gun-owners. We have guns in my house. I am not anti-gun. I know a few NRA members and they aren't actually weirdos mostly. But we have a curious incapacity for regulating the sales of weapons in this country because of a propagandistic misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The analogy I can think of is traffic. We regulate traffic a lot. Speed. Traffic lights. Rules of the road--because, you know. Accidents. It seems to me that if you discover that we don't just have accidents with guns, but a terrible and fatal number of "on-purposes", something ought to be done--and after all, there is nothing in the 2nd Amendment that forbids regulation--it's right there: "a well-regulated militia". A home army that can do self-defense, but isn't paranoid as fuck and armed to the teeth and killing each other!

If not now--when? If the bloody little bodies of Sandy Hook Elementary were not enough, what stack of cordwood-fallen humanity is high enough for our political regard?

If the answer is none, that what other fatal fascination earns your interest? What could? Take your bloody rights and flush away all your puling about anything else ever again. Because we permit wholesale murder. We darkly imply that only violence is the answer, and only big guns give the right kind of violence.

Our society is poisoned, and there will be some ghouls who proscribe a better access to poison to remedy it. And for my part,  I am beyond thinking about how their souls or bodies are dealt with on this moral plane, for they are on no moral plane at all, at all.

Does Church and State Separation Have a Prayer?

All things considered, I've never really taken public prayer that personally, myself. I don't believe or make a habit of prayer, but I have no problem with enjoying a moment of reflection. If something gets too preachy, I just engage in a moment of impure thoughts and I'm fine. But that doesn't mean I'm fully on board with the SCOTUS decision regarding public prayer, if only because I feel like it might be heading past mere acceptance of expressions of spirituality (which I don't mind and even endorse--let a thousand flowers bloom!) to an imposition of a custom on others. I don't feel that it's right to dragoon people into sentiments with which they are not copacetic.

It seems that "coercion" was the test used, and they determined that public prayer wasn't specifically coercive, because, as in my personal example, one could simply tolerate it, so long as it contained no abusive or derogatory components. But I can see where this can set a precedent for prayer or religious proselytizing in other spheres where, because of institutional hierarchy, the boundary between coercion and endorsement becomes blurred.  It could set  a bad precedent.  I'm thinking of things like school or workplace impositions of at least tacit endorsement of spirituality.

(Not that the justices of the future should feel themselves bound to stare decisis anymore than, say, Justice Scalia does--even for his own previous decisions. Whosoever would be a man, must be a non-conformist, and consistency is the hobgoblin of etc. And also, what is the sense of looking for original principles if you then have to apply them consistently? Vide Whitman--does he contradict himself? Well then he contradicts himself; his head is large and it contains multitudes.)

But anyway, I just want to point out the really screwed-up part--Justice Thomas' opinion regarding state sanctioning of establishments of religion such as prayer as not being subject because the 1st Amendment should only pertain to Federal, not state activity just strikes me as wrong, although I'm not really a Constitutional scholar, as such. I thought the supremacy clause would pertain here?  And what would that even mean for other Bill of Rights protections like the Fourth or Fifth Amendment--are they sunk in state prosecutions because it isn't a "federal case"?  I don't even know--it just seems like he's out on a limb of the law that should be struck off.

And then for their next trick they'll levitate the Pentagon!

With No Gulf Solution in Sight, Louisiana Turns to Prayer

And I suppose it just almost somewhat, on a psychological level, is a little better than doing absolutely nothing--right? But what sort of intervention would actually be effective and divine? I mean, it looks like we're really waiting on the relief wells which should be completed in August to stem this tar-y, nasty tide, but I'm guessing if any of the following things happen, we can just go ahead and call them miracles.

1) The Kraken is released. It patiently sits on the fractured well, effectively blocking any further flow.

2) Super-intelligent Giant Octopi bearing crude tools recovered from deep-sea ship wrecks swarm in wearing protective garments cobbled from the scuba gear of downed divers to protect themselves from the oily sploodge. They work tirelessly to build their own version of "top-hat", which, because they know far more about sea pressures than we do and having very little notion about top-hats, is surprisingly effective.

3) An underwater volcano erupts nearby, burying all of the well with tons of lava, effectively cutting off the spew and sealing all of the seabed fissures that may or may not be down there.

4) The sea parts over the area so that there is a channel of dry land through which the oil, as if drawn by some irresistible force, slowly starts creeping towards the direction of the nearest refinery, as if it were seeking its "home".

5) An oil-devouring organism spontaneously appears that has no possible genetic relationship to any life form we've heretofore witnessed. It not only eats oil--it excretes oxygen-rich pH-balanced water that immediately revivifies the local fauna and flora.

6) The oil is miraculously transformed into some kind of manna that feeds all the nearby stunned, poisoned wildlife so that they become stronger and happier than ever before. We suddenly understand the language of the porpoises, and learn things from a fellow sentient species that we really needed to know.

7) A whirlpool develops right over the oil so that it only flows up and not out. It continues up until it breaks the surface of the water, where it then appears to be "beamed" upwards into the atmosphere. Radar detects an anomaly that could quite possibly be a cloaked spaceship of some kind, but a fight breaks out among observers who posit that a life form sophisticated enough to have interstellar travel probably wouldn't still be using oil, anyway.

8) Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh, and hundreds of similar-minded folks, are seized with an insatiable, vampire-like thirst for oil. They need to drink it--they wade into the water at first, scooping tar-balls into their ravening maws, but as the thirst compels them, they begin to mutate, Innsmouth-like, to gilled and flippered things with a hive mind that only seeks out the oil. Their cold-blooded and newly scaly bodies are hard and silvery as they suck and suck their way down to the source of their one true love, and they capture about a million gallons a day with their unfathomable oil-lust.

9) Big-ass meteor lands with laser-precision in exactly the spot we really think a massive boulder should land. It plugs up the gusher in a heartbeat, and the resulting splash uniformly paints the coastline with a surprisingly easy to clean rim of thick, viscous tarry stuff that mostly just rolls up and off the sand like a Jello "wiggler". The sea is suspiciously cleaned by this one splash--miracle!

10) A big, ethereal hand comes down and pinches the well closed. Another hand with a humongous trowel slaps a fresh coat of firmament over the whole bleeding thing. A booming voice, somewhat rhetorically, inquires what we all would do if he wasn't about to clean up our messes and further conjectures that our stupidity is why we can't have nice things. Also, we seem to be heating the whole out-of-doors and can't we stop that. We are threatened with the taking away of our cable television if we can't behave properly, and then the hands retract back up to--erm, Heaven?

Or that's the sort of thing I think a miracle would look like. But I'm mostly counting on the science-type answers.

This might be the best graduation evah!

This is a video you've probably seen elsewhere, but hell, I'm a mean atheist-person and I don't mind showing off the odd religiosity-centered train-wreck. This is a girl who I think just got way too into it giving an invocation....and then spazzing:



It was a little cuckoo from the point of view of many unbelievers, scoffers, and mockers that I have already seen commenting regarding this poor child. But there are some fundamentalist, especially Pentecostal, churches, where they would say, "That girl just got touched with the spirit." Why, they'd be a little jealous that the spirit never threw them like that, either. Which is why I don't think she's nutty--

She could be having a religious experience of sorts. If she's seen people get carried away with their prayerful intensity before, why not spasm and collapse?

But the outright diss on the worship of the intellectual mind--baby, these people just paid for four years of education and you go and pee on it? That's not right. Maybe if her invocation was focused on the intellectual mind a bit more, she could have stayed upright.

Pentagon rescinds Franklin Graham's invitation, Obama Administration loves Prayer Day

Via USA Today:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Evangelist Franklin Graham's invitation to speak at a Pentagon prayer service has been rescinded because his comments about Islam were inappropriate, the Army said Thursday.
Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, in 2001 described Islam as evil. More recently, he has said he finds Islam offensive and wants Muslims to know that Jesus Christ died for their sins.

Army spokesman Col. Tom Collins said Graham's remarks were "not appropriate."

"We're an all-inclusive military," Collins said. "We honor all faiths. ... Our message to our service and civilian work force is about the need for diversity and appreciation of all faiths."

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation had raised the objection to Graham's appearance, citing his past remarks about Islam.

Of interest to me as a non-believer, the piece goes on to say,"The Obama administration said Thursday it would appeal," the court's decision that National Prayer Day was unconstitutional regarding pressure from (conservative) religious-based groups.

Hrmph. I do not approve. But they don't ask me, did you notice?

Group wants evangelist's Pentagon event cancelled

Via Yahoo:

DENVER – A watchdog group objected Tuesday to an evangelist's invitation to speak at the Pentagon next month, saying his past description of Islam as "evil" offended Muslims who work for the Department of Defense and the appearance should be canceled.

Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said inviting evangelist Franklin Graham to speak May 6, the National Day of Prayer, "would be like bringing someone in on national prayer day madly denigrating Christianity" or other religious groups.

It would also endanger American troops by stirring up Muslim extremists, Weinstein said.

Graham is the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and president and CEO of both Samaritan's Purse, a Christian international relief organization in Boone, N.C., and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in Charlotte, N.C.

Um, just a weird question--I get that Franklin Graham hates Islam and is bigoted towards a faith tradition that also prays, but didn't we just find out that the National Prayer Day idea in itself was probably un-Constitutional? And isn't it kind of divisive for the military to appear to be embracing any religion, anyway? So, regardless of whether any particular preacher should be representative (and they all probably have some bias against other religious traditions, in keeping with the faith towards their own)--is it representative of the nation as a whole when it leaves out all the non-believing vets and troops and the non-believing civilian Americans who support them? Does an acknowledgement by our military establishment of religion this way seem a little weird, no matter who participates?

The whole thing is a bit weird to me.

Just the kinds of questions I sometimes have....

US District Court Decides National Prayer Day is not Constitutional

FFRF celebrates National Day of Prayer victory

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb decided in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in a ruling that the federal law designating a National Day of Prayer and requiring a National Day of Prayer proclamation by the president violates the establishment clause of the Constitution's First Amendment.

In her ruling, Judge Crabb wrote: "The same law that prohibits the government from declaring a National Day of Prayer also prohibits it from declaring a National Day of Blasphemy."

The Foundation filed its groundbreaking suit in October 2008. Plaintiffs besides the Foundation are Anne Nicol Gaylor, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Dan Barker, Paul Gaylor, Phyllis Rose and Jill Dean, who are all Foundation officers or board members. Defendants are President Barack Obama and Robert Gibbs, his press secretary. Original defendants were President George Bush and Dana Perino, his press secretary at the time.

All presidents since 1952 have issued proclamations designating the National Day of Prayer each year. Since 1988, the National Day of Prayer has been held on the first Thursday in May. The president’s proclamations are released by the Office of the Press Secretary.

The next graf is where the injunction against the President from observing it it stayed until it goes through appeals, which, since Prayer Day is the first Thursday in May, is coming fast upon us, means Obama is going to do....something. Also, as for National Blasphemy Day--since I blasphemed last year on Blasphemy Day and observe it as a tradition of the Internets, I'll just consider it part of the First Amendment in general--not sanctioned or supported, but not banned, either.

I think this ruling is a good thing, and have pretty much considered the idea of a National Prayer Day like a political football for a long while--wedgy, not important to policy, but a sop to the Religious Right.