It's Especially NOT Funny Because It's True

 

pic.twitter.com/ZUeYUHMNjA

— Secular Talk (KyleKulinskiShow@bsky.social) (@KyleKulinski) March 17, 2025

MAGA doesn't care about this. MAGA says these friends of child traffickers say some things we agree with, so we will ignore that they also exploit working class Americans and threaten our retirement, our Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare and so on. Because THEY SAY SOME THINGS MAGAS LIKE.

So, it doesn't matter if they support dictators abroad, want a dictatorship here, support billionaires first, not America, and wipe their asses on the Constitution.

They say some things the MAGAS like. Are they ever true, correct, necessary things? They are just over the shit rainbow and think being along for the ride is winning--even while they are riding on a soon-to be jettisoned sidecar. 

TWGB: Trump The Bible Salesman

 

Donald Trump, who is very broke, is selling Bibles just a minute after whatever this was. This is not someone basking in the luxury of the "pump" phase of his obvious "pump and dump" stock. This is a guy realizing he needs to shore up his most bought-in peeps. The religious Right. So he is out there selling the Lord via his book.

He goes back to this well when it is convenient. Sometimes we all do. But some go back to address their faith, and he goes there to address why he thinks he was chosen, while no one in the real world would believe any such thing. 

Hillary Clinton and the Uncomfortable Truth

 

“So many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump,” @HillaryClinton tells me. “There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members” in the GOP, she adds in our EXCLUSIVE conversation. pic.twitter.com/ImpYIBuQ5j

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 6, 2023

The right-wing is a bit up in arms with Hillary Clinton's statement that Trump's people are in a cult and need to be deprogrammed. Now, for the record, to me this is as benign a statement as calling some portion of the Trump supporters "deplorable"--he literally attracts militia folks and Klan members. If you aren't down with calling out would-be Timothy McVeigh's and the goddamn Klan as "deplorable"--I'm not sure what your standards are, but they sure as hell aren't mine. (Looking at Steve Scalise and Josh Hawley in their whole damn faces.) You either understand civil terrorism is kind of fucked up or GTFO. I'll say John Brown and Weather Underground weren't exactly doing it right--your turn? 

Anyway, Hillary Clinton is by far not the only one to notice that Trump mega-MAGA fan behavior is cultish. They signify via their unique clothing. They silo their sources of information. They believe what their cult leader says to the exclusion of what they might even see with their own eyes. Their religion, their associations, their concept of acceptable speech: all file in line with TrumpThink. 

When comedians and journalists alike do "man on the street" type interviews with MAGA, they sound like people from the Manchurian Candidate talking about Raymond Shaw.: 

“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

TWGB: Huh.

 

Fox's Mark Levin: "President Trump is 76 years old. If the Department of Justice gets its way, he will die in federal prison." pic.twitter.com/wH2gUJtWiM

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 9, 2023

I can't call Mark Levin a liar, here; we did find out earlier this week that Richard Hanssen, the most damaging US spy so far in our history, died in prison.  If this was a work of fiction, I guess we would call that foreshadowing. This country doesn't like people playing games with our secrets. We jailed Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner for fooling around with classified docs. It would honestly be a sign of a two-tier justice system, the weird phrase Trump defenders keep throwing around, if Trump's charges weren't taken seriously just because he was wealthy and well-connected (a former president, no less!). Call it vetting for a job that Trump is finally getting about 7-8 years too late to avoid this reckoning. 

Robert Jeffress, who threatened Civil War over impeachment not so long ago, seems to think the Durham Report (which does exactly nothing) immunizes Trump from something because--I dunno. Propaganda? 

Jeffress: I told Trump that he is immunized against any indictment because of the Durham Report pic.twitter.com/D5MCy0zzTB

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 9, 2023

 Of course, Jeffress is just a part of the long Religious Right-wing Jericho March to crumble the wall between church and state that might be personified by Pat Robertson, whose death was announced today, and who I will briefly note, loved himself a culture war, demonizing his political enemies, and once said that revolting against Trump was revolting against God's plan for America. Which, coming from a man  who regularly failed to announce the date of the world's demise and blamed hurricanes and earthquakes on queer people existing, was always obviously to be taken with a grain. I think the religious right have always seen Trump as a battering ram, not the tip of the spear exactly, but a blunt force object they could use. 

Shiny Happy People

 

I cannot recommend this Amazon Prime documentary enough, because the reality of the IBLP and the legacy of Bill Gothard has a real impact on politics today. The "Evangelical vote" in this country is about, to some degree, this anti-science and abusive cult of kept-sweet femininity and abusive masculine authority. It's about deadening children's creativity and independence.  It's about reinforcing gender stereotypes and blaming victims for their abuse. It's about taking away the voices of the abused. 

It's about taking away scientific facts, and inserting one's own religious bias.  You know how they do. It's about wisdom books that have no wisdom in them. It's about elevating positive thinking and shutting down critical thinking. It's about denying reality and smiling when the camera is on. It's about little kids being made emissaries of their parents' religion and not being compensated. It's about Jim Bob Duggar being a stingy controlling SOB. It's about Mike Huckabee helping whitewash child abuse. 

When you look at Josh Hawley and his weird kvetching about masculinity, or the Liberty Mommies astroturf bullshit--you are seeing something that stems from this movement. They want to be the umbrella over you to prevent Satan doing his closet boogeyman stuff to your life. It's kind of really well-funded and super-sad. Because it is rooted in patriarchy and ignorance and weirdos who want to spank little kids. 

This Rhetoric is Harmful and Misogynistic

 

JD Vance thinks parents should stay in violent marriages "for the sake of their kids." That's not just wrong, it's unbelievably dangerous. pic.twitter.com/aQnTGRCuNi

— Tim Ryan (@TimRyan) July 25, 2022

I'm not going to get into the argument of "Well, women can be abusers, too", because I really feel like what Vance is getting at here is women don't like their helpings of marital chastisement, so the little round heels use lawyers to slink away from their otherwise perfectly good homes. Homes, where, presumably, they would be raising their children in a much better environment with two parents than by trying to go it alone.

It's appalling that a supposedly educated man knows no better than this. I heard something some time ago that really stuck with me--it's better to be from a broken home than to live in a broken family. If a spouse is being abused, what are the odds the kids aren't absorbing the trauma of that, and being abused themselves? 

On the other side of Roe, we're already looking at homicide being the number one cause of maternal mortality, and the likelihood of it being due to intimate partner violence being really high. Staying together "for the kids" in a world where parents might not have planned for or wanted these kids feels like so much resentment and interpersonal aggression ready to happen in a world where resources aren't there for them.  But once the kids are here, should they have a loving, not-violent environment to grow up in? 

His answer that getting a divorce is too easy is a disgrace--what if getting your ass beat and your psyche trampled on the daily is something no human should have to suffer? What if no one deserves the threat of violence or even death as a part of their interactions in their own home, which should be a refuge and place of safety and comfort? What if raising a child with healthy boundaries and physical and emotional safety was more important than some arbitrary feelings about two parents in the home? 

We have child marriage and rapists being fathers in this country. We have families ripe for abusive relationships. And this fool wants to pontificate on whether maybe spouses should just put up with beatings? Fatherlessness is better than a monster for a father. 

I don't know if this is his true belief or something he's signifying for the hard-right evangelicals who believe the rod shouldn't be spared and the husband is the head of the house in some iron-clad spiritual way, but this view is unhealthy and misguided, and saying it out loud displays an unfitness for making decisions pertaining to other people's lives. 

He needs to lose. Tim Ryan should be the next US Senator from Ohio. 

The Children

 

The word 'children' was painted in large Russian script on the ground outside the Mariupol Drama Theatre, Maxar satellite images collected on March 14 showed. Ukraine accused Russia of bombing the theater on Wednesday. Russia denies the attack https://t.co/JtB56K8eCz pic.twitter.com/iV13h0dBXm

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 16, 2022

What can you say about the rules of engagement of a force where painting the word "children" next to a building in the hopes that a bombing would be passed over makes that building a target? Because I have no doubt in the world this is what happened. 

I compare this to the Russian lies about the maternity hospital they shelled and the woman that they tried to portray as a crisis actor. In my heart of hearts. I will never forget that knowing she was losing her child, with a shattered pelvis, she begged to be put out of her misery and the cosmos in its accidental mercy responded. On what moral plane do such things happen? 

There isn't any morality here. This is total war, Vernichtungskreig. This is scorched earth thinking. When Putin started to talk about his paranoid fear about Ukraine and his border, it seemed to me he was talking about Lebensraum. He wanted a place for Russian people, and Ukraine as a state was in his way. When there is talk of even logging the Ukraine forest to pay for his war, I am hearing echoes of Operation Barbarossa.

The Totalitarian Dysfunction

 

It makes sense to me to start this post with Madison Cawthorn and his disturbing embrace of Putin and Hitler. I don't know enough about Cawthorn's family to judge anything from them but that Cawthorn was homeschooled and got his biases somewhere. The love evangelicals have for Putin feels wrong after hearing conservatives for so long decry "godless commies" in Russia. But the big problem they have is with the godless, multicultural liberals here, so they can kind of ignore the necessary multiculturalism of Russian imperialism and the dictates that actually exclude evangelism in favor of his nods to the orthodox church and the total capture of the state apparatus, from media to military. It's like Putin got all seven mountains going for him.  (And weirdly, atheism is not actually how most Russians identify--it's about 13% according to one poll. The jury is out on the number of actual US atheists. I'd like to think it was that high.) 

But anyway based on whatever, somehow the youngest GOP Rep. decided it was okay to demonize Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president who is a former tv actor and won a democratic election, as a thug and called him woke to just add extra stink on the shot. 

They've Got To Be Carefully Taught

 

When I was a kid, we got taught about the Golden Rule, and it was a pretty good rule as they go: Do unto Others as you would have them do unto You. You don't hit other kids or call them names or pick on them for being different or any of that, because if that happened to you, you would feel bad. You had to stop and think--is this how I would want to be treated? Would I want to be picked on for being different? Would I want to be teased if I was clumsy, or talked slow, or was fat or didn't have nice clothes? 

It was simple, and direct. It was about respecting others and the basis for good citizenship in the classroom and anywhere else. It wasn't new-fangled jargon, but time-tested and ancient religion-approved. 

Did I learn this concept found in scripture in a church--no. Your blogger never wandered into a formal religious setting before the age of ten or eleven. I learned it in public school, in kindergarten. Was I indoctrinated at the tender age of five to some startling multicultural program (I mean, my school was desegregated and I understood after this simple precept how racism was wrong because obviously--how would I want to be treated?) I still absorbed a lot of my culture's dumbfuck attitudes and I'm going to be sorting out the headtrip that whiteness is for a while, yet. I wouldn't say I was indoctrinated. 

Surely, not everyone who was in the same kindergarten class as me has come to my POV. We are individuals, not blank slates. We're not human Silly Putty pulling up cartoons from the Sunday funnies.

700,000: The Pandemic of Choices

 

Breaking News: Over 700,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. This pandemic is the deadliest in U.S. history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919. Every age group under 55 saw its highest death toll of the pandemic this August. https://t.co/mNP4pysUKq pic.twitter.com/X9FhcZFtey

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 1, 2021

It didn't have to be this way. For crying out loud, it didn't have to be this way even before vaccinations were even available--we could have have done a true shutdown and imposed mask mandates in a way that would make masking up seem like no real big thing if Delta flared up here and there. We could have had this thing more in check.

But not getting it in check is clearly a choice, in some ways that have been campaigned for.  Anti-vaxxers want to scoff about "Big Pharma", but there is big money for some reason behind the anti-mask revolt happening in school districts, and people are profiting off of the various snake oil substitutes being touted as alternatives to getting vaxxed. It's a choice 

Anti-vax and ivermectin are pimped by Guo Wengui, a Steve Bannon associate. Anti-vax and anti-mask stuff is promoted anywhere stupid Q memes are sold, because of course it is. Lin Wood tried to stage an anti-hospital intervention for one anti-vax person (now deceased for reasons obvious to people with any kind of sense) but then again he also thinks the 9/11 planes were CGI. Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn were early-adopters of the "segregation" meme that the unvaccinated would be persecuted. (Of course the simple fix is--get vaccinated! Shit. If we're all doing it, is it really unsafe? It isn't like people are being asked to change their religion, political party, or any other thing--just get a shot like one did for measles, mumps and rubella, and all.)

Everything is Teaching the Controversy, Now

 

I was recently reminded, now that we're in the age of "alternative facts" regarding Covid-19 and the 2020 election and climate change and who knows what else, of some of the strategies of disinfo I first encountered when intrigued by the creationism movement.  It still strikes me as interesting that creationism still exists even after we've got oodles of examples of transitional types (as are we all) from the fossil record, and that nothing will ever persuade people who have made it their mission to not be persuaded. 

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. 

    Georg C. Lichtenberg

One of  the things to understand about humans is we are political animals--we do tribalism. We have a need for belonging, we are not islands to ourselves but members of societies. We tend to consider our "goodness" according to the ideas of our immediate culture.  We identify and signify. And when we see our opposite number, we attack.  People who have found a disinfo tribe will defend their territory. They are defending their very identity. They see defending a thing that might even not be true as being existential for them,

 For many people, it might be necessary to profess untruths to continue in their identity. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the main group of folks who support Trump, creationism, are climate change denialists, and now antivaxxers, are evangelicals. They are basically who the old news media covenant of "both sides" was made for--the habit of mainstream journalism to also include minority views no matter how batshit or miniscule. So as to satisfy a vocal and activist minority.

They are "teaching the controversy" and so long as some kind of controversy exists, even if it is just some ignoramus sticking their tongue out and saying "Nyah!"--that's enough controversy for some to hang a movement or at least, a meaningful sense of tribal belonging on to. You could say that the existence of UFO-enthusiasts is proof aliens are among us, if you don't actually require proof of the aforementioned aliens and only need proof that people are asking questions and looking into it. And that also stands for any other "controversy". 

So, Andrew Wakefield was debunked, but persists. because having existed, one could also say there is a controversy. Just like any tobacco farmer could claim they don't think there's a really for real link between smoking and cancer, and any oil company can deny climate change. Transport ballots hither and yon under the auspices of being contracted by a GOP State Senate and count them and count them and fiddle with machines a bit and stow some ballots in a cabin somewhere and invalidate future use of those election machines and also be really dodgy, and you've got some kind of...election controversy, I guess (Although a goddamn stupid one, because who believes anything this stupid? --Oh yeah! Tribalism!) 

I'd love to believe that as a species we could be better than this especially since recent weather events show the climate crisis foretold by science is really upon our asses, but I also get that for many, tribalism is a form of survival. They depend upon signifiers to tell other people of the tribe they are fit to endure. They need to tell the kind of lies that make their lives worth living. Their belonging is their infrastructure, even if their roads and bridges and potable water and electric grid and other stuff that government should manage, goes to pot. As long as they represent their team, they suppose they have a means to a necessary social end. 

So I view with rank skepticism the idea that vaccine deniers just need someone to talk pretty to them, for example, or that rational arguments will debunk election denialists. I sometimes find myself thinking they just need shunning and gross disapprobation, to understand that neighboring tribes won't harbor their asses. That there is some activity beyond the social pale. This seems far more commensurate with primate psychology. 

The Corporate Communist Mark of the Beast

Marjorie Taylor Greene says that a vaccine passport is "Biden's Mark of the Beast" and that any company the requires one is engaging in "corporate communism." pic.twitter.com/XtTvqw83tU

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 30, 2021

Okay, I get where the Mark of the Beast thing is coming from, because the government-industrial-Big Tech Mammon is just about always trying to put bar codes or RFID chips or masks on people and from there it is just one stripper-pole ride to the Devil if you know what I mean, but the more I think about the words "corporate communism", the less I believe that there is anything going on in Marjorie Taylor Green's mind other than a game of "Mad Libs" where the rules are 1) Be mad at libs and 2) say words.

Lindsey Graham is on His Bullshit Again

 

Lindsey Graham tells young women that, “There’s a place for you in America — if you are pro-life — if you embrace your religion and you follow traditional family structure".

What a bad guy...pic.twitter.com/KwBppG65oV

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 1, 2020

I did not think Graham would make a more bare-faced exclusionary statement than the remarks he had regarding Black and brown people living in South Carolina, but here he goes again. Now, as for me, I have been in America since birth, and firmly believe in taking care of the health and rights of people who have been born (as well as the pre-natal care for pregnant people so that they can have healthy babies if they choose), am militantly agnostic, and understand that traditionally, people have formed many kinds of families, so I would certainly like to think there's "a place" for me in America. 

 (And I happen to also know that the phrase "young lady" rankles many actually young ladies who have just been told what they should believe as it rankles me at my big age. It always seemed a bit of a condescension.) 

 Like Trump's foolish "we're getting your husbands back to work" comment, these words show no recognition of the diversity ofwomen's lives. We are sometimes the sole breadwinners in our households, we go to work and have meaningful careers, we want to be paid what we are due, and not dependent on another person's labor, but women have suffered the brunt of job-losses in this pandemic. Trump talks about women wanting safety from hypothetical (and presumably Black and brown, because, wow, yes, dog-whistles!) strangers, when surrounding himself (and being, himself) persons who are abusive to their partners, in a party that that privileges the gun rights of abusers over our lives. 

 As with the right wing's touting of Amy Coney Barrett's seven young qualifications, we are faced with a picture-book image of women as household angel, who "keeps sweet" and raises babies, not hell. His view seems to me like a faded antique, and for many women who grew up as I did, the feeling should be that the genie has long been out of the bottle. This appeal he's making is towards certain evangelicals who go out of their way to extoll "family values" in a way that barely values people, let alone families.

And Graham wonders why he has been so dominantly outraised during this campaign. (Did he not know us frails control our own purse-strings these days?)

Needy

Franklin Graham says people are dying of the Coronavirus because man has sinned against god. He goes on to say the pandemic is happening because the world has turned its back on god. pic.twitter.com/Kejq9jzeLu

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) April 5, 2020

When pastors try this "God won't be ignored" line out, I guess they think it sounds like God is all-powerful and therefore, meager, suffering man should toe the line, but what I hear from it is that God is needy, and will wreck you if Attention is Not Paid. It says a lot more about the person (or parson) who has cast God in their own image. They want open ears and open wallets. They won't be ignored.

The deaths from COVID-19 are indiscriminate as to devotion or sinfulness. It doesn't matter to a virus how many times you pray, so much as how many times you wash your hands. But it always sets me seething a little when disasters (hurricanes, or earthquakes, or diseases) are blamed on the victims of them. Where is the comfort for the living in "Well, you all should have behaved yourselves, you damn fuckups!" It is the theodicy of a sadist. God kills people in horrible ways because he can, so love him for the lesson of pain. Love the abuse. Worship the vastness of his means of destroying the things you love. And thank the nice helpful men of god who explain so cheerfully why this is the proper way of the world. And make sure you tip them well.

Don't forget that part.

Here is scamvangelist Kenneth Copeland saying God told him his ministry's income this year "had to be $300 million." (HAD to be!)

Don't worry. His lawyer wrote up a contract and "it is on file in Heaven."

He explained all this to a couple of men in his empty church. pic.twitter.com/MQsfQtyZD3

— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) April 4, 2020

Because after all, who is going to blow all this sin and disease away? (Or at least sell you something that will?)

Faith might fill a need. Bullying fills coffers. I believe in science. I'll give to people who need it, and ask anyone, who exactly needs a message that "God is Disappoint" right now?

Disease Rules Everything Around Me

"I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go to major hospitals, sometimes they have 2 ventilators." -- Trump suggests Cuomo is exaggerating about the medical gear he needs to keep people alive pic.twitter.com/ADZb8fznOw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 27, 2020

My work schedule this time of year usually disrupts my posting somewhat, and in that sense, nothing has changed. The staff of the floor of the building where I work has been reduced to something like a tenth of the usual workforce. It's about the same throughout the downtown area. My usually forty-odd minute commute is a near-thirty minute breeze. But there's a pulse of low-level stress, dislocation and uncertainty. Some of the people I'm talking to in the course of my work have lost their jobs or have their money-making opportunities severely reduced. They might love to go back to work, and yet--

They don't want to be sick. They don't want the people around them to be. They can't afford to be out of work, but they also sure as hell don't need corona in their lives. I'm in the NY/PA/NJ tristate area, and there are people who don't want to be outside if they can help it. I sympathize. I feel weird about that "Everybody wants to get back to work" construction though--Trump doesn't talk to everybody, and not everybody even stopped working. I want people to stay home. I want vulnerable people to stay safe. I want people to avoid having to go to the hospital right now, because things are not, as Trump wants to believe, levelling off. I want health care workers not to be worked to death. Things won't be miraculously better by Easter, for a kind of special resurrection of our social life.

I hate posting about everything through the view of the pandemic. For me, so far, it has mostly been a bloody boring inconvenience, but tinged with the incredible sorrow that it has been a nightmare and a tragedy for others, and was nursed along at the teats of ignorance and neglect. The voices of people who think it is okay to send people back into regular contact with one another for the stimulation of the economy are something worse than fiends--they are fiendish fools. Billionaires want people to go back to work--and they are the class of people who think they can finagle their own personal ventilator, if it worst comes to worst. Imagine this line of thinking:

Dick Kovacevich, who ran Wells Fargo & Co. until 2007, wants to see healthy workers below about 55 or so to return to work late next month if the outbreak is under control. “We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know,” said Kovacevich, who was also the bank’s chairman until 2009. “Do you want to suffer more economically or take some risk that you’ll get flu-like symptoms and a flu-like experience? Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose.”

This "flu-like experience" of which Kovacevich speaks? Can involve death and orphaning of one's little children. Is this tough-minded capitalism pose prepared for the widows/widowers and orphans? ("Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses? If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.") Young workers, it turns out, are not invincible. It isn't that "some may even die"--some most certainly will. Without mitigating the spike in infections and hospitalizations, this supposed "stop the financial bleeding" thinking is simply wrong, though. The workers are also your customers, the consumers. The workforce itself, the lifeblood of everything, is at risk. Fuck the capital--save the people!

For those who need a religious lens to look at this, think of this as a time of jubilee. Let's put a pin in the stock market for a minute, and release the bonds of the worker and consider paid the debts of the bondman. (See also: Do not muzzle the ox that treads the grain.)

And for what it's worth, there is a spirit of judgment from a certain giddy and ignorant corner about the affliction of blue states over red states, which seems to be in the same state of mind as Trump's potential determination to withhold aid to states that don't flatter him aren't working with him acceptably. Trump has singled out Cuomo, Inslee and Whitmer as being governors that haven't directed the correct pleasant-smelling offering in the general direction of his taint. This isn't too far away from being a self-fulfilling prophecy--at first. But I wonder what exactly red states will be going through in the future as the disease continues, and whether, once things are proceeding, they have the infrastructure to save lives and hold back the human toll. And I hope they do. But they need to heed science, not Trump.

I don't think I can avoid my future posts being at least tangentially concerned with covid-19 (Hey 19-no we can't dance together--no we can't talk at all!) for the foreseeable.

But just to leave a little bad taste in your mouth, I came across one of Trump's former serious fans who might have spit him out because he was lukewarm, Pastor Wiles (anti-Semite bigot). Trump has enjoyed saying that no one knew how much covid-19 would be a wasting force in our world, but Wiles as early as January 29 viewed this as a "purge". Even though some of the people who succumb to covid-19 will be of the formerly faithful and COVID-19 denying, still some will enter out from the mouth of the crucible, and feel no heat. This is because, verily, they are numb. (But they could fucking read a book or something.)

And don't get me started on the paranoia of the president who thinks that governors could even be asking for ventilators and all just to fuck with him. Or his belief that "the media" (journalists) might cover whether things he says and does happened and/or actually helped at all, instead of what they generally tend to do, which is not helping.

Anyways, everything looks like viral content to me. How are you all doing?

From Christianity Today

From Christianity Today’s editor in chief https://t.co/NVdQjg4odC

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 19, 2019

I think the argumentation here is good, but I admit, I am not a part of this culture, so I don't know how influential Christianity Today is with evangelicals in general. I understand Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. have already slammed it (but they are so associated with Trump that stands to be expected). As I understand it, this magazine probably isn't that influential with the more fundamentalist Trump supporter. It also strikes me that, as with the arguments of Never-Trumpers, this will fall into the category of heresy referred to as "elitism", which I have after years of struggle finally got into my dense leftist head to means, for conservatives, being morally scolded by anyone whose convictions one does not entirely share.

I also wonder a bit about an idea I have come across that some evangelicals may be a bit impatient for Trump to give way to President Pence. I'm a little more comfortable with my opinion on that--if Trump felt threatened that he was being shoved aside for a more palatable candidate, he'd bring Pence down with him because Pence appears to have been in the loop regarding the Ukraine scheme. I don't think Trump planned Pence's involvement strategically as a hedge--he just gets people involved in this business to prove loyalty because that's how he works--like the pitch that defileth.

UPDATE: Rest assured, Trump is having no more to do with this publication (snerk).

A "far left magazine"!


UPDATE 2: You think he's still mad, tho?

No president has done what he's done for religion, ever! The damned nerve! He's the American Constantine!

He Thinks He's King Solomon, Over Here

This is a screencap of the real account of President Trump, who is confronting criticism over the likely disastrous consequences over his Turkey decision by touting his "great and unmatched wisdom".

Great and unmatched wisdom? Who is staying in the bunker with this self-aggrandizing goof?

While this sort of thing might just barely sound sarcastic (if Trump had self-awreness and a sense of humor, which would be a "no"), it hearkens back to his "chosen one" comments from not-so-long ago. Trump has surrounded himself with "yes-men", and he's definitely been told by evangelicals that he's part King Cyrus, part Queen Esther.

It's just worrisome, is all.

An Argument for Religious Freedom

Recently, Franklin Graham, the late Rev. Billy Graham's Islamophobic and homophobic scion, challenged Pete Buttigieg for referring to himself as a gay Christian because to Graham, it is not possible to be both Christian and gay. 

This is not news to millions of gay people who actually consider themselves Christian--of course, they've heard at one time or another that they are imperfect in their beliefs if they don't also hate themselves. It might be news to Graham that their religion, and freedom to practice it, is no less valid than his own and that it isn't actually up to Graham to decide who gets to call themselves a follower of Christ.

I don't follow religion, myself, and struggle with the textual smarty-pants tendency to point out this passage or that to refute the fine print gatekeepers who want to reserve their own slice of heaven, for the price of striking off others for whatever scape-goatish reason they are so inclined. It's truly not my god and not my book, and as far as one person's interpretation of it goes, it's probably not even my business--but to that extent, it isn't really Graham's business to monitor someone else's religious rectitude, either, as if only one version of the Bible even existed. 

What we do have in common, as Americans, is the First Amendment. It seems that Graham would prefer to have his interpretation of religion override what others hold to be true, and even would ask that the government agree with his interpretation to limit the rights of others to follow their non-harmful life choices, such as marrying a consenting, adult partner.   But religious guidelines can dictate what to eat and what to wear and how to discipline one's children and on and on--the problem is to what extent any religious person's mere opinion should hold weight over another person's pursuit of happiness. 

Or maybe it isn't a problem at all--Graham just wants to cause trouble. Pete Buttigieg is as free to be a gay Christian as Graham is to be a bigoted one because he accepts Christ as central to his faith. I'm a happy little atheist because why not? But that sort of assumption that freedom of religion can mean freedom from having one's rights impinged by another's religious view isn't as common as I suppose it ought to be. I can't help but think about the times I've seen Tony Perkins or Brian Brown or some other "true religion" type being treated as if their view--imposing a specifically scriptural interpretation on LGBT people's right to marry, adopt, or even exist, as if they were perfectly ordinary--and not actually peculiar sectarian extremists trying to impose a sort of Christianism on other folks. Especially when this kind of judgment and imposition of religious bigotry does societal harm. 

Sarah Sanders Proudly Lies for Trump

Pressed repeatedly on her comments on FBI agents, Sarah Sanders tells @GStephanopoulos, "It was the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point. I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democratic Party" was about Mueller probe. https://t.co/mOQZNKl1wy pic.twitter.com/y3xcNwVYHg

— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2019

I noted a little bit earlier that Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies for Trump and sounds more like him all of the time. The Mueller report revealed that Sarah Sanders lied and admitted she did when she said that she had received messages from people in the FBI who were happy about the firing of Director Jim Comey. Her answer to being pinned down on that was less than great: it was 100% accurate that she got some messages to that effect, but it couldn't be considered "countless".


Yeah. Because whether the messages were "countless", and not whether they were happening at all, was the issue. I direct to others who were paying attention:

This Relationship is Problematic

Not in a BDS way--it's just that the way the Trump/Israel thing is playing out is a little too close to evangelical apocalypse stuff, you know?  I get that Trump has a strong relationship with Israel, but also a strong relationship with his evangelical supporters, and, well, the thing where they speculate that he is here to fulfill prophecies to me is pretty worrying. But when actual Trump Administration officials like Sec. of State Mike Pompeo say that Trump is here to fulfill prophecies out loud, that's really too much. So, I don't know if they want to see Trump as necessarily a King Cyrus, or as a Queen Esther.  

I just think this is a weird conversation to be having at all. Trump is doing stuff his base wants; it's fan service, not prophecy-fulfillment. His Secretary of State speaks fluent evangelical, and is more than willing to signify to the churched that this is a religion-friendly administration.

Color me deeply skeptical, though. Bush was willing to drop apocalypse-signifying stuff too. I can't say how serious that was either.

But this is where those kinds of religion-signifying things often dwell, right? Said out loud, but daring you to sort out whether they are intended seriously, or not.