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. 

Did He Say "Militant Secularist" Like it Was a Bad Thing?

Militant secular "ascendency" has "brought with it immense suffering," William Barr said in a startling speech at Notre Dame. https://t.co/QJGZLothM9

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) October 12, 2019

He sure did. I don't quite appreciate the value of a religious-freedom message that needs to exclude people of no religion, but I understand it in the same sense that I understand the use of the term "Judeo-Christian" to be inclusive of "People of the Book" regarding the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (to a certain degree)but to leave Muslims out of the coalition of Abrahamic faith altogether (because--brown? or maybe--exotic to Barr's reckoning?) and to also omit the equally vibrant Western traditions of people who philosophically rejected faith. Basically, this speech, even if I have not seen the whole text, rankles me in the way that Pat Buchanan's culture war speech did over 25 years ago (but more so, as he is in an actual position of power at a critical juncture for this country). I see it as rhetoric that singles out me as the problem in need of fixing, and we have seen in history where being the "problem" is a fatal diagnosis. But I do have this question from his speech that I can easily answer:

“Among the militant secularists are many so-called progressives, but where is the progress?” he asked. “We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system?”

I do not, as a "militant secularist" (I guess, as a practicing democracy-loving atheist) believe that we are living in a post-Christian era, except in the chronological sense that Christ seems to have lived some time before us. Christians certainly still exist. The text they read from still exists. The morality of Christ in the Book of Matthew is still instructive to even faithless secularists who profess progressivism.

What has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? Well, if you are one William Barr--partisanship and the notion that a unitary executive, however dodgy in his capacity, should rule over persons because ordained by electoral fate. Apparently. If you are me, the supposedly not Judeo-Christian secular militant (who nonetheless has drawn deep from that well, like a Samaritan of good will) you would hope that what follows from rote understanding of religion would be dialogue, moral testing, an appreciation that all humans should be treated as equal under the law of either God or mankind (or such laws are capricious and unworthy), and a cessation of blind faith in the divine right of earthly kings as revealed through a clearly jiggered legal system made to benefit top dogs as if they were tin pot gods.

Where Barr speaks the words "freedom to live according to one's faith", I can read the lines "to use one's faith as a cudgel against other people's ability to do so."

I do not find this point of view salutary or fit in the highest lawman for a diverse people. He reckons those of us of the inappropriate level of faith an "enemy" to the public good--but I have seen in his public duties where he has pardoned and exculpated the lawless deeds of an only nominally Christian president. How should I look at his rebuke of law-abiding faithless progressives, in his slavish toadyism to a tyrant of appalling lawlessness and nominal Christianity?

I can suppose he means none of it. I can assume he has blinders and lives in a delusion. He is either a liar or a mad idiot. But in neither situation is he a fit arbiter of law, so long as he does not appreciate it should fall on all equally without fear or favor.

He's pious, but poor in moral strength, for good would even be good without God to make it good, if God were logical and words meant things. Barr flings words about. What they mean is no good to those of us of religious minorities, or who oppose the would-be monarch he's become a dependent of.

The Old Boys' Club

Many of the NBC executives who obstructed Ronan Farrow's investigation into Harvey Weinstein have been accused of sexual misconduct themselves, Farrow reports in his new book. https://t.co/t2WPp6Yg2H

— NPR (@NPR) October 11, 2019

I recall when writing about Fox News' ongoing issues with Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes' multiple allegations of sexual misconduct as thinking of this culture as probably being unique to that institution of retrograde and cranky notions, even though I should know better. When you hear that someone like Matt Lauer* was able to survive as a top-paid media personality for years despite allegations of sexual misconduct, it has to be necessary to examine the culture that tolerated him. It's the same culture that tolerated Harvey Weinstein, even killing stories about him because for some reason, networks didn't want to pursue issues about rape and sexual harassment. Fox News and NBC aren't even in a class by themselves. CBS was a horror-show, and not just regarding news personalities.

It's depressing that men have covered for men in this way. It's disturbing to know that men you considered more or less decent and intelligent are drawn to sex pests (even pedophiles) as friends, despite knowing full well the counts against them as human beings. It's freakish to witness a credibly-accused attempted acquaintance-rapist sits on a SCOTUS bench, and has his alleged sins wiped away by a multiply-accused President* in front of a group of so-called "Values Voters"*.

Trump on sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh: "They're phony stories about him. They were made up. Just like they are made up about me and other people." pic.twitter.com/DY98aKEcjn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

And you can see these people who believe they are the good people applaud, because obviously, the kinds of women who make accusations aren't the good kind of people, because they are fallen, and the kind of men accusations are made about are the right sort of people, because they have risen in the world. (I can honestly not think of anything that puts me off religion than exactly this kind of thinking.)

If that is not "rape culture"--an entire culture where abuse against people on account of sex is pardoned and excused and ignored, I do not know what else to call it. Ecrasez l'infame!

* Yikes--Matt Lauer.  We shall never wonder "Where in the world?" but only "What in the world?" from this point on.

* Forty-three new allegations are detailed in a book regarding President Trump's relationships with women. This is Bill Cosby-level accusations.  Donald Trump worked for NBC on a show called The Celebrity Apprentice and is also alleged to have horked shit-tons of Adderall up his face. And I think it really shows.

*The Family Research Council is an actual hate group against LGBT people. Appearing before these assholes should be considered an insult to every person in the queer mishpocha. Call it "virtue-signaling" on my part for saying so.

John Kasich and Exporting "Judeo-Christian Values"

You know, I think OH Gov. John Kasich has come as close as there can be to being the "reasonable man" on stage in primary debates. He's informed, compassionate, and except for a little signifying, not overtly doling out pandering horseshit.

Which is why this business with creating an agency to dispense Judeo-Christian memes to countries he deems could use them is a hot mess. Remember just a blog post or so back when I mentioned that Ben Carson's adviser, Gen. Dees, was in favor of militarized missionaries? Well, that sort of thing is actually not allowed by military convention--US soldiers are not to proselytize.  (It's bad enough when heavy proselytization is used on the troops themselves.) We have this funny old thing here in the States about church and state separation, despite the best efforts of people like the head of Ted Cruz' SuperPAC, David Barton, to pretend it is not a real thing. An agency like the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, created under President George W. Bush, is questionable enough--but even that office recognizes the Establishment Clause and steers away from proselytizing.

This proposal does not. It specifically mentions "Judeo-Christian values"--implying that any other values of any other creed must be less-than. (I've recently mentioned on Twitter that "Judeo-Christian" is such a passive-aggressive phrase in that the third Abrahamic faith is, intentionally, silent.) It specifically would be geared towards spreading "Judeo-Christian values" to--whom? The poor benighted boogers of lesser faiths who don't have values that Kasich recognizes as "correct"? Why, that is tremendously paternalistic and really likely to make people more pissed off at our colonialist mindset!

Yeah. I had a little respect for Kasich, but, while this idea might sort of woo evangelicals, seriously, if there was a way to peel them off of Carson and Cruz, Huckabee would have tried it. I think it's a turkey, and as God is my witness, I do not believe turkeys can fly.

Josh Duggar and Ashley Madison--Thinking it Out

The gawking over the continued comeuppance of the Duggar clan by way of the revelations that the way in which these many children of the Quiverfull faithful aren't necessarily guaranteed to be exceptionally sexually continent, in the person of one Josh Duggar, is a little bit petty, I think.

Not because I think that the hypocrisy of the Christian Right isn't in and of itself shameful--it is.

But because I think, being a rationalist, I am not sure that we have any reason to expect someone raised in his worldview to behave better--we don't. He was raised to believe that sex outside of marriage--outside of straight, missionary, and vanilla, was a kind of damnable sin. Experiencing urges or temptations to act outside of the prescribed sexual roles, Josh Duggar figured he was damned enough and decided to roll with it. In a black and white view of morality, if you aren't simon-pure--what are you?

You're a perv. So that's the fitting role for old middle-aged before his time Josh Duggar. The first son--so if I understand the many pictures taken with so many of the GOP 2016 primary contestants, I would have to assume, the one the Duggar clan kind of thought might go into politics to spread the various odd ideas about family, homeschooling, and sexual continence...

And it turns out is exactly the example we've got for how traditional values go wrong. Because we learn a bit about how the fundamentalists find that incest is awfully common. And that for an aggrieved spouse, however humiliating the situation, leaving isn't socially permissible. So it kind of seems like an adulterous or incestuous individual can just do a smidgen of physical labor, get absolved by the powerful people in the same cult, and even hurt their family, ask for forgiveness, and be kind of okay, learning exactly nothing--especially how to regard their spouse as a human being and sexual partner who needs to be respected, consulted, and considered in all one's doings.

The Bamiyan Buddhas Recreated in Light

A project to project the images of the fallen Bamiyan Buddha statues, destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, in the spaces where they once stood, has provided a graceful memorial to the destroyed historical treasures.

The illumination has brought relief to many of the locals who had been pressed into service by the Taliban in 2001 to destroy the Buddhas. After tank fire failed, the local workers drilled holes, planted dynamite and conducted a series of explosions to bring the giant statues down. "I regretted it at that time, I regret it now and I will always regret it," one of the workers, bike repairman Mirza Hussain, told the BBC in March. "But I could not resist, I didn't have a choice because they would have killed me."

Many have called for the reconstruction of the statues, but UNESCO suggests rebuilding the massive stone Buddhas might be impossible. With the new light projection, the Bamiyan Valley might just have the next best thing.

I think there is something fitting in the idea that modern technology restored what a remorseless anti-modernity and intolerant  culture destroyed. It's not quite the same thing as the statues actually being back, but in a way, this project demonstrates that ideas are not destroyed and that history is meaningful and gives us inspiration and should be respected--and that new technologies are the way that subsequent generations can appreciate and build on the achievements of those that went before. History, technology, civilization--these things are cumulative (I want to say "progressive", but that word is unnecessarily politically fraught--except you know what I mean.)

No "Insensitive Bloodthirst" for the Duggars

 

It's hard to read former AR Governor Mike Huckabee's Facebook post regarding the revelation that the oldest Duggar son, Josh, molested 5 young girls over a period of a couple years, without wondering if it's entirely appropriate just yet to voice quite this kind of defense:



...Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things. The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand—that being a minor means that one's judgement is not mature. No one needs to defend Josh’s actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family’s authenticity and humility. Those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins in order to discredit the Duggar family have actually revealed their own insensitive bloodthirst, for there was no consideration of the fact that the victims wanted this to be left in the past and ultimately a judge had the information on file destroyed—not to protect Josh, but the innocent victims....

I can't say that I know any better than Mike Huckabee whether any of the victims preferred this be kept quiet, but I do know that this family has made their lives, or a version thereof, very public, and they were foolish if they did not suppose that it would not come to light. If they did not know in 2003, when Jim Bob Duggar got around to a half-assed job of reporting it, then by 2006, when Oprah jettisoned them and contacted a child abuse hotline, they should have realized that other people knew about it. There's expressions of disbelief and disappointment and a not-un-smug satisfaction in pointing out the hypocrisy of pointing a finger at, say, gay couple-helmed families, or spreading actually harmful lies about trans* people, when no, the child-predator sometimes looks like a virtual child himself, from a solidly Christian family, being sent their way--but no evil intent.

Is Mike Huckabee a Serious Candidate?

I've expressed my extreme skepticism before that someone like former AR Gov. Mike Huckabee could actually mount a serious run for the White House, and I may have even snarked at how obviously brand-reinforcing he seems to be. But within a really short window, supposed 2016 GOP-presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has been pretty brutally self-disqualifying for anything other than a possible "place" in the GOP primaries. There is no way in hell he could win in any general election. I'm kind of thinking it's weird that anyone is taking him seriously, for now.

It's not just because of articles like this that suggest that multiple runs engender a familiarity that breeds contempt. (Although that's the kind of thing I'm sure Governor Romney had on his mind.)  It's because Huckabee has exactly no interest in sounding out where the current electorate is or even trying to message for a larger audience.

For one thing, he's been reiterating his winning line about a "beheading being worse than a sunburn". Of course, a sunburn isn't even on the actual list of the perils of climate change, which include drought, famine, flooding, forest fires, infestations, water shortages, refugee situations and wars over dwindling resources, which could very well include "beheadings". He doesn't merely seem ignorant about the real issues of climate change and environmental damage from our unsustainable industrial practices--he's downright glib!

The Knucklehead Constituency

You know, reading Charles Pierce is a pleasure for me--he has a wicked way with a phrase and I agree with him on a thing or two. So, I was interested in expanding upon a concern of his that touches on one of my own persistent puzzles--how it happens that people running for office are not called out when they seem to be dabbling--nay, professing, or at least out of one or more sides of their faces--in sheer and utter batshit. There are people who are by no means political neophytes who seem to have been delinquent on their reality bill--they are totally disconnected. I think it would be meaningful if objective reality could be entered into a political debate to actually determine who is more legitimately competent to deal with actual issues and not group hallucinations experienced by FOX News viewers and the WND readership, but I find myself altogether cynical about it.

I found myself not that long ago mourning the reality that there is no penalty for basically racist or conspiracy theorist views in some districts. (Hell, it seems to work, to some degree, to maneuver the "squeaky wheels" into higher profile positioning.) It bothers me to no end that theres a genuine likelihood that this mid-term election might even bring a bumper crop of "knuckleheads" into Congress that makes the 2010 freshmen look like fucking Solons.

But I get the reticence of Democratic challengers to call the whackadoodles out, I genuinely do. You take a contest like Tom Cotton vs incumbent AR Senator Pryor. Now, Cotton has a whole raft of signifying nonsense that has come out of him (blaming Obama for the Ukraine situation, carping on food stamps like they only started being part of farm bills since 2009--not since always), And he's down the line a social conservative--anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage. But he's kind of funky in that Rand Paul, not understanding social contracts kind of way. But you know why Pryor can't call him a whackadoodle, even if the name kind of fits?

I'll Have you Know My Mother Voted

It sort of seems like, based on some incoherent burbling from semi-literate non-historian David Barton, like the mostly religious-wrong-based war on women might have the goal of...revoking the franchise of women to vote?

Because supposedly the Bible says so.

But you know, I am more influenced by science than the kind of things people pull out of their butt folks decide because they were inspired by fasting, prayer, and malicious sanctimony. And I have some empirical data to dispense--my mother voted, and my family unit was okay.

That really happened. My mom would read newspapers and look at the news on tv and when election day rolled around, she and my dad would go to the polling place, and they were back in like 20 minutes or so, and the whole family unit was in no way disturbed. I even vote to this day, and have blessedly been married for like, over a decade. It really doesn't screw anything up at all, except, you know, my dad is a labor Democrat and my mom is an economic liberal and well, me and the spouse are godless social liberals so maybe Barton's real problem is that , if spouses are what they call "unequally yoked", liberal wives might cancel out the votes of conservative husbands. Huh. So in which case wives shouldn't get concerned.

Hm.

Is it just me, or does it seem like Barton just selected some Bible nonsense to pretend like there is a reason for women to not vote to benefit a particular party? Because that is what it looks like to me. How very like he tried to make the Bible be the tool of his preconceptions. I'm not sure that Book should mean whatever people think it should, you know? I also don't know what is stopping the Bible from meaning just anything, anyway, so there's another thing.

Just a Sample of Regnerus for The Uninitiated

I know people who aren't either homophobes or students of LGBT oppression probably are not familiar with Mark Regnerus, the author of the study usually gone to when homophobes try and cough up something like a sociological reason why same sex couples should not be wed. So I think a wee primer might be in order, since Mark Regnerus is a named expert witness for the defense in the case against the Michigan same-sex marriage ban. 

In addition to thinking that gay families are somehow less good than the families made by straight people, even though he had so much finagling to do to get that result, Regnerus believes gay marriage will have an effect on straight couples.   To wit: men will either want adultery or anal sex.

Because there is no time before the acceptance of gay marriage that men ever wanted to have some strange or anal.

That opinion right there is amazing to me as a mostly-straight lady. To my very basic experience, straight- experienced men have long had a yen for strange and have occasionally requested anal from their female partners. This knowledge predates the acceptance of gay marriage. I believe these requests were non-exceptional and actually representative of normal straight-male sexual fetishes.

I do not find it plausible that Regnerus is a good or even acceptable researcher when it so happens that not only is he not clear on what gay relations are about, but he has so entirely misjudged straight relations, so much so that any newsstand issue of Cosmo could straighten him out. Seriously.

I think his testimony is useless, but like that  it will be out there for the major debunking.

Who is the Ted Cruz Coloring Book *For*?

I know I'm coming a bit late to the party regarding commenting on the Ted Cruz Coloring book, but I think it's in part because it isn't really...that weird to me? To explain, when I was six (!), I was a recruit to the Kiss Army, because they were not just a band, but an obviously swag-generating operation. I saw the Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park tv movie, and decided I was going to grow up and marry Ace Frehley. I had the Colorforms. I had some trading cards. What other bands had Colorforms and trading cards? None. So who was the number one favorite of headbanging first-graders? Exactly. You have to give it up for a band that merchandises for the milk and cookie crowd, although, I admit, by Animalize my tastes had just about matured out of them.

So it goes, right?

But that leads me to the question--who is US Senator Ted Cruz to The Future for? I figure the upper age for kids who actually color is what--ten? So the kids coloring Senator Ted today would be more concerned with entering high school than voting booths when 2016 rolls around.

I know. It could just be kind of a hipster-fun thing to have a political coloring book, and I might be overthinking this a little, but I don't doubt that Cruz probably does have his sights on the White House (probably in 2016,* too) and that although he says he had no involvement with the creation of the coloring book, it definitely has the fingerprints of some "friends of Ted" (note the "Ten Commandments" branch on that tree). Am I being goofy if I think this is aimed at planting a seed with "Generation Joshua" (some of whom are definitely in the process of being softened up for the TX GOP politicians of the future)? That way, if 2016 doesn't fly, maybe 2020? 2024?

(*I know I have claimed not to be interested in talking about 2016 yet. "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and all that.)

Jesus H. Christ and George W. Bush.

It seems like it was only yesterday that I was grousing about the vague possibility that we had an actual president in office who was some kind of end-times nutter, and wasn't that a freaking joke and a half, huh? Because really, what sort of guy would take a country to war in the middle east and prolong it indefinitely with incendiary "crusades" like east vs west language, and overpronate, if you will, on his spiritual walk by generally assuming that, as the Lizard King himself chanted, the "West is the Best"?  

Well, out of office, George W Bush is still probably some kind of end-times nutter, only in this case, a converting of the Jews because that isn't even remotely offensive to Jesus type. 

I have a really specific opinion regarding GWB: he can shut up forever. Also people who can shut up forever: people who want to find President Obama's Katrina, or his Iraq War, or his other equivalent of Bush fail.  He will not ever reach the fringes of Bush fail. Bush fail is a messianic fail. Bush fails like prophecy. Bush fails like fail was his job. And if he was buying into apocalypse: maybe his fails were deliberate?

Think about that, and try to have a nice day.

Getting to Know Ted, Getting to Know Ted's Dad

Probably the most exciting political figure I have come across this year isn't even a person running for anything at all--Ted Cruz' dad. Sure, he may have anointed his son as a king in the end-times wealth transfer that will come about as a part of the ultimate war between good and evil, where by good, we mean Smuggy McJudgersons and by evil we mean Commie McLibsymps, but anyways, you have to totally not at all notice that Rafael Cruz really did pray that no weapon shall be made, etc. over his boy to kind of notice he was being chosen in a way no person on the left ever christened one Barack Obama. We really have not called him a god. We just like his policies a bit more than conservative ones. It is really quite not-a-religious thing.

But when we get to looking at claims that Rafael Cruz knows that evolution is a brainwashing lie to kill God and LGBT relationships are all fake, you kind of start thinking this guy, right? What is with this guy?

Profiles in Theocracy: Obvious Theocrat is Obvious

Via TPM:

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
....
“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”
...

 “What I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it,” he said. “It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.”

 

It's not actually necessarily true that anyone needs to deny evolution or embryology (embryology!?) or the Big Bang theory in order to accept a savior. There are any number of practicing, believing Christians who manage to understand and appreciate science and have faith in their Saviour. While I find his rejection of evidence-based knowledge appalling as a non-believer, I'm actually more disgusted at his dismissal of the honest believer's good-faith attempt to reconcile evidence with practice of religion in order to obtain as clear a view of the world in which he or she lives as possible.   His view of the universe--and policy towards his fellow human being, is top-down and dictated by his interpretation of a bronze/iron age work of religious literature that doesn't always relate to the world as we've come to know it.

Evolution-denial doesn't shock me, naturally. But embryology-denial is a kind of wink at the pro-life idea that life as we know it starts at conception, I think. Turn away from the wee, not yet humaniform blastocyst you might envision because of science--see instead a Baby Jesus plucked fresh from the Nativity creche, and you have a more anti-abortion mindset. One might well guess.  Unless there is some other nifty reason to suppose  one is impregnated with a wholly-formed homunculus from Day Jizz.

The video is a freakshow largely because of the antlered disembodied-head back-drop. But just think of the crown some cat would have in heaven if all those bagged deer were instead souls saved for glory and rescued from the misapprehension that we human beings were formed by adaptation into tool-using symbol-slinging upright-walking omnivores with a penchant for occasionally tossing feces at things that scared us.

I'm not the scientist Dr. Broun is, but I have every reason from observation to suppose many of our unhairy ape brethren do toss feces at things that scare us, and someone like Rep. Broun is scared of more things than most.  Thus, he calls basic science a tool of Satan. Thus, he befouls it with his own intellectually-chicken shit.

I don't care much for theocrats, if you haven't noticed.

I just can't--I don't even....The Thanksgiving Family Forum

This is the link to this thing.

I couldn't do but a handful of minutes at a time. It got better once the candidates began talking, but not much. It was like everything that kind of seems fake and weird about Christian conservatism. It was the sappy Christian Micheal Bolton but worse-somehow-sounding music, the practically 30 minutes of propaganda stuff up front, and, I dunno, the whole idea that the forum was being run by uterus policers and homophobes.

It's not a bag I'm in. And if it's your bag, okay. But it's too much church in my state for me. I think Rick Santorum is especially good in this kind of forum, and I'm really surprised that with all the "retail-politicking" he's done in Iowa, and the genuineness he has in the Christian-conservative vein, that he doesn't have better poll numbers.

The bullshit about the left taking over the culture makes me feel especially weird. I don't feel like the left has taken over shit. Maybe we made some gains in not having people riducule, bully, and inflict nonsense on some of the least of these--our children--who happen to be LGBT*. But it's not enough. Their equating "liberty" with dominant Christian culture dictating how everyone ultimately ends up having to front to manage makes me afraid. When they talk about "fighting back", they are talking about discriminating against queers and atheists and pagans and other people who are...just like me. Maybe they think about it as "saving" people like me.

I'd rather be saved from people like these. (World where people believe deeply wrong things? Um--Repubitopia? OFFS. I just can't. I don't even.)

The Politics of Demons

This story from NPR is pretty unsettling. The part that I find most troubling:

"They teach quite literally that these 'mountains' have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society," says Tabachnick. "And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. ... The apostles teach what's called 'strategic level spiritual warfare' [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we're accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they're doing that's quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups."

Demons. It's kind of hard to argue with someone that they are mistaken or denying people their rights, when they think they are arguing with Satan's minions, isn't it? That kind of demon rhetoric is already being used by some of our elected officials. And it really doesn't seem to be being used as figurative speech.

Wow. Demons.

Took a microvacation: Not Raptured.

Actually, I'm kind of vexed at the stupidity of this whole weekend. Not my experience of this weekend--which involved a day off on Friday to celebrate my spouse's birthday with a lunch and some gadding about New Hope (which is my favorite place, seriously!), a serious spring-cleaning Saturday, which let me finally get some "outdoor plants" out of my rec room, and let me start the process of cleaning the big, empty aquarium that I might want to re-purpose, and then a baby shower with open bar today, which is obviously awesome.   But the "rapture" bits--that was vexingly dumb. That there are people who either want the end of the world, or seriously think some crooked old radio-preacher is going to know the date certain, tests me. But the fall-out.  The painful stupid, depressed-ass fall-out:

"So, Mike Huckabee, that's a 'yes' on the Christianist re-education camps, right?"

The "money quote":

HUCKABEE: I don’t know anyone in America who is a more effective communicator [than David Barton.] I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced — at gun point no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.

Now, I know Mike Huckabee has a certain sense of humor and that, feeling loose in front of a friendly audience, this might just be a kind of goofy hyperbole on his part. Only, I'm not laughing, because David Barton already has an awful lot of influence.  And his version of "American History" is a religious fable jam-packed with lies.

I think this is called "Shadenfruede"--or, The Bagboy Cometh.

Let Cenk at TYT explain:



So, since he's kind of obscure, who is this Dr. George Alan Rekers? Why, this is him! He's a man, obviously, who has baggage. To be carried.

One exceptionally heavy sack in particular, eh?

I dunno. When I see these "reparative therapy" endorsing creepy anti-gay religious wankers, I tend to mentally construct a gilded closet for them to hang out in, where they silently judge others and visit massive amounts of gay porn on the Internet--for research, naturally. So it's probably just my bias that assumes that it is sheer coincidence that Lucien was exactly the sort of boy Dr. Rekers might both live in judgement of, and kind of want to know, Biblically speaking. The Family Research Council will now pretend not to know him. You know, in the kind of cover-up way that Shirley Dobson usually wears long-sleeves. Or so I maliciously, salaciously, fallaciously and speculatively insert for satirical effect. Of course James Dobson doesn't beat his wife that he admits to. Only children and small dogs.

So why should anyone naturally think "hypocrisy" from an FRC Founder? Practice at being underwhelmed with the odor of sanctity of zealous men, perhaps? Or because Ted Haggard softened us up to expect that anti-gay evangelists are just like the rest of us--human. And as "flawed" as we can get away with--not that I think being gay is a flaw at all--but just another expression of human sexuality? Or because of the obvious things he "does"?

I'd like to see him get open and find peace if that's how it is. I'm with Shakespeare--"To thine own self be true...." and all.