#they had 'conservative evangelical' in their DESCRIPTION

[brobotsbro]

...........if this was not somehow readily apparent by the constant talking about queer robots. this blog is run by a real life queer person. and I will not tolerate transphobia or homophobia and if I find out you are those things I will block you. Just letting anyone who may have somehow not gotten the message know. Trans rights isn't just referring to the transformers.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sarah Posner for TPM:

I am a journalist who has covered the Christian right for two decades. Over the past three years, I began to more frequently use the term “Christian nationalism” to describe the movement I cover. But I did not start using a new term to suggest its proponents’ ideology had changed. Instead, the term had come into more common usage in the Trump era, now regularly used by academics, journalists, and pro-democracy activists to describe a movement that insists America is a “Christian nation” — that is, an illiberal, nominally democratic theocracy, rather than a pluralistic secular democracy. To me, the phrase was highly descriptive of the movement I’ve dedicated my career to covering, and neatly encapsulates the core threat the Christian right poses to freedom and equality. From its top leaders and influencers down to the grassroots — politically mobilized white evangelicals, the foot soldiers of the Christian right — its proponents believe that God divinely ordained America to be a Christian nation; that this Christian nation has come under attack by liberals and secularists; and that patriotic Christians must engage in spiritual warfare to rid America of demonic forces, and in political action to restore its Christian heritage. That includes taking political steps — as a voter, as an elected official, as a lawyer, as a judge — to ensure that America is governed according to a “biblical worldview.”

If you want to see that definition in action, look no further than the career of House Speaker Mike Johnson. Seventeen years ago, when I interviewed Johnson, then a lawyer with the Christian right legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, I would have labeled him a loyal soldier in the Christian right’s legal army trying to bring down the separation of church and state. He is a product of and a participant in a sprawling religious and political infrastructure that has made the movement’s successes possible, from politically active megachurches, to culture-shaping organizations like Focus on the Family, to political players like the Family Research Council, to the legal force in his former employer ADF. 

In today’s parlance, Johnson is a Christian nationalist — although he, like most of his compatriots, has certainly not embraced the label. But Mike Johnson the House Speaker is still Mike Johnson the lawyer I interviewed all those years ago: an evangelical called to politics to be a “servant leader” to a Christian nation, dedicated to its governance according to a biblical worldview: against church-state separation, for expanded rights for conservative Christians, adamantly against abortion and LGBTQ rights, and especially, currently, trans rights. That mindset is still the beating heart of the Christian right, even as the movement, and other movements in the far-right space, have radicalized in the Trump era, taking on new forms and embracing a range of solutions to the apocalyptic trajectory they see America to be on. Different movements imagining a version of Christian supremacy exist side by side — different strains that often borrow ideas from one another, and that fit comfortably under the banner of Christian nationalism.  

The term “Christian nationalism” became popularized during Trump’s presidency for a few reasons. First, Trump, who first ran in 2016 on a nativist platform with the nationalist slogan “Make America Great Again,” was and still is dependent on white evangelicals to win elections and maintain a hold on power. He is consequently willing to carry out their goals, bringing their ambitions closer to fruition than they’ve ever been in their 45-year marriage to the Republican Party. They have been clear, for example, in crediting him for the downfall of Roe v. Wade, among other assaults on other peoples’ rights.

Second, the prominence of Christian iconography at the January 6 insurrection, and the support for Trump’s stolen election lie before, during, and after January 6 by both Christian right influencers and the grassroots, brought into stark relief that Christian nationalist motivations helped fuel his attempted coup.   Finally, sociologists studying the belief systems of Christian nationalists pushed the term into public usage, as did anti-nationalist Christians, especially after January 6, in order to elevate awareness of the threats Christian nationalism poses to democracy. (The paperback edition of my book, Unholy, which was published in mid-2021 and included a post-January 6 afterword, reflected the increasing usage of the term Christian nationalists by including the term in a fresh subtitle.)

The Trump era, along with the rise of openly Christian nationalist social media sites like Gab, and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, have given space for otherwise unknown figures, like the rabidly antisemitic Gab founder Andrew Torba, co-author of the book Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations, and Stephen Wolfe, author of the racist book The Case for Christian Nationalism, to enter the Christian nationalism discourse. Although Torba and Wolfe have made waves online, and extremism watchers are rightly alarmed that their tracts could prove influential and radicalizing, they remain distinct from the Christian right. 

[...]

The conventional Christian right does not want a parallel society or a divorce. They believe they are restoring, and will run, the Christian nation God intended America to be — from the inside. They will do that, in their view, through faith (evangelizing others and bringing them to salvation through Jesus Christ); through spiritual warfare (using prayer to battle satanic enemies of Christian America); and through politics and the law (governing and lawmaking from a “biblical worldview” after eviscerating church-state separation). Changes in the evangelical world, particularly the emphasis in the growing charismatic movement on prophecy, signs and wonders, spiritual warfare, the prosperity gospel, and Trumpism, has intensified the prominence of the supernatural in their politics, giving their Christian nationalism its own unmistakable brand.

For decades, Christian right has been completely open about their beliefs and goals. Their quest to take dominion over American institutions by openly evangelizing and instituting Christian supremacist policies sets the Christian right apart from other types of Christian nationalists who might operate in secret, or imagine utopian communities as the ideal way to save themselves from a secular, debauched nation.  The fact that far-right extremists like Torba or Wolfe embrace the Christian nationalist label gives the more conventional Christian right leaders and organizations space to disassociate themselves from it. Some also berate journalists who use it to describe them, accusing them of hurling a left-wing slur at Christians. 

The bottom line is that Christian nationalism takes on different forms, and despite organizational or even ideological differences, ideas can penetrate the often porous borders between different camps. Someone who receives the daily email blast from the Family Research Council might also be drawn to Wolfe’s book, for example. On a more unnerving, macro level, major right-wing and GOP figures, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and the CEO of the Daily Wire, the podcast consortium run by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro, have embraced the rabidly antisemitic, Hitler-admiring antagonist Nick Fuentes, who is Catholic but also is accurately described as a Christian nationalist. The increasingly influential Catholic integralist movement, which seeks a Catholic-inflected replacement for the “liberal order,” is yet another unique form of Christian nationalism.

Sarah Posner wrote for TPM about the variants of Christian Nationalism within the larger Christian Right movement.

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

Their is a vital connection between Dr. McDonald's description of Homer as a gnostic cult in Plato's Cave and Molly Worthen's Resurrection epiphany , I didn't know this about Homer in these specific terms, but I'm not surprised. I have studied Number as a figure of speech since my freshman year at Indian University just before the draft call ups for Vietnam began in July, To say I studied it is far more systematic than what I actually have done, which is more like doing cross word puzzles,

I'm dyslectic, I am a charter member of DAM: Mothers Against Dyslexia, I didn't know what it was but a graduate student taking a freshman finite math course noticed it in conversation and suggested I learn how to do numerology as a method to mitigate the effect of dyslexia. And it helps. It makes me mindful of my thinking and behavior. For reasons that have to do with DC before the Reagan people fucked things up, I could have earned a comfortable living as a psychic counselor reading cards and doing numerology, Among other things, I was a disciple of a serious psychic for Richmond, Virginian, who was connected in various ways to Edgar Cayce

this stuff Jesus is doing in the Gospel of Mark is Wicca and, when I got back from Vietnam in 1971, DC is the place where the Woodstock Nation had determined to put down roots. It was the most racially mellow city in the world. The only thing more racially mellow in my experience was on a relay landing zone with a combat Battalion coming out of the woods and toking up with Jimi Hendrix going cross town, waiting for the slicks to come take us to a 5 day stan down.

So, all this New Age DEI Human Potential vibe was in the air and the only people who didn't share in the whole Jimmy Buffet/Chuck Brown/Bob Marley groove of it was the Plumbers and other white supremacists of the John Birch Society, I could have had a job in the Nixon White House but I was on a different career path, number one, and, number two, I didn't want to have to work with white supremacist thugs like Pat Buchanan and G. Gordon Liddy and Chuck Colson, Before the Reagan people came to town, they were largely avoidable, Since January 20, 1981, not so much,

In spite of Family Ties, it was never Kool to be Conservative. My point is that I know a lot about the numerology of the Bible that has a direct connection to what Dr MacDonald is talking about and what happened to Molly worthen, The problem with the Critical Historic Analysis of the Post Modern Historic Deconstruction is that both the Jesus Seminar and the Pro-Live Solo Scriptura Evangelicals ignores all these mechanisms of literature because you cannot find the DNA of Jesus in the dried up shit they dig out at Kur Qumran latrines.

Here's the insight I have to pass on : In terms of the numerology of the New Testament, Luke is wholly Homeric in origin: among other things: it has 24 chapters, the number of the letters in the Greek Alpha bet, just like the Iliad and the Odyssey, And it is my conviction that Matthew and Acts anticipates Mohammad, with 28 chapters, the number of letters in the Arabic alphabet.

And if you need an example of the Holy Spirit guiding the pen of any author in the 66 books of the Palestine Bible, the Gospel of Luke is had to beat.

[xianjaneway]

The Loss of Rev. Bubba Copeland, Part 2

(Content note: we're going to address topics like suicide, child sex abuse, graphic descriptions of sex & abuse in fiction, fundamentalist & conservative hatred towards LGBTQIA people, & the Southern Baptist Convention's cover-up of child sexual assault within its leadership. This is a cry for justice, & it's not going to be pretty. If any of this is unhealthy for you to read about, please use the back button to save your sanity.)

Conservative Christianity showed its face today, & it is dirty.

The response of the church to the passing of Rev. Copeland has been outrageous, confusing, and filled with both misinformation & bigotry.

I need the queer, trans, fanfic, dead dove, & any other affected community to see what's happening here:

They're saying his works of fiction are indications that he's a danger to the community.

They're saying that, because he wrote about a murder, using the name of a real woman, he must have secretly wanted to murder her.

I don't know how to explain to non-writers, "Fiction isn't reality. Copeland wasn't going to murder that woman, just like I'm NEVER going to be an military intelligence analyst in witness protection."

I wonder if they think reality TV is real.

Even worse, they're attacking those of us who brought stories of systemic child sexual abuse into the light, saying, "BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS GUY?? HOW CAN YOU DEFEND HIM?"

My friend @CoffeeYall said it best: "We will never ever deal with church abuse, when we view a queer adult man as having the same amount of evil, as a pastor who grooms and rapes underage girls."

The church fundamentally does not understand the difference between "sin," or violating their commandments, & "abuse," the act of harming another person, taking a person's agency away, controlling them, violating them, & destroying them. They view sin as a type of abuse against God, the church, & society, & seek to banish it.

They don't understand consent, which is why the fact that Rev. Copeland's wife had full knowledge & consent of their online life doesn't matter to them. When we became Evangelical, we were supposed to give ALL of our will & ambition & sense of self over to God.

They don't understand that people have a right to exist without their approval. They literally see themselves as a type of authority that should be on equal footing with the government.

Here's the laziest example of this type of thinking. It's an excerpt from James Dobson's book, "Marriage Under Fire," page one:

Does Dobson justify this claim in any way? Of course not. That would take work! Evangelicals like him just accept that their views should be taken as default. They don't understand that protecting the rights of people who disagree with them eventually protects their own rights as well.

You might ask, "Why then would Rev. Copeland stay in such an environment? He was only harming himself?"

Sadly, Rev. Copeland was 49 years old when he died. I turn 44 in a couple of weeks. I can tell you, as someone just five years younger than him, who also grew up in a rural community, that we didn't grow up with the internet, or strong technology literacy, or any diversity of media.

The only difference is, I was taken away when I was 16, & was exposed to a new world of ideas. If I'd stayed?

The most radical or diverse ideas I'd have seen would be at the solitary Catholic church in a 30 mile radius. Maybe I'd have been a crazy Apostolic or Methodist Lady Pastor!

People who discover truths about themselves late in life often face a very difficult choice:

Hide who you are for just a FEW more years, until you can comfortably retire.

Don't hide who you are, & lose everything you've spent the last 20-30 years building. Your community, your financial security, your dignity, & your life.

I know a pastor who successfully navigated 3 short years before retirement. I could tell when the topics & language of his sermons changed, that he was struggling. He's now living happily, about 2500 miles away.

I wish Rev. Copeland had been given that same chance.

[thegreatbigscaryarchive]

Deliverance: New Wave Exorcism Part 1

The United States' growing political dichotomy and the continued evolution of Evangelical churches has created the perfect environment for a new, mass scale, form of exorcism. These new exorcisms are referred to as deliverance. Similar to traditional exorcisms, these involve breaking "a link" between an entity and an individual before removing the entity. Rather than following the Vatican's protocols on this break and removal, deliverances utilize breath to physically force demons and spirits from the body. This practice's growing popularity can be marked by its presence is megachurch teachings. Deliverance teachings also makes up a significant slice of the 1.2 billion dollar religious publishing industry. Isaiah Saldivar, is a streamer, podcast host, and preacher of a nondenominational church who has generated a map of 1,402 deliverance practitioners across the united states. WHERE THESE IDEAS CAME FROM?

Deliverances are part of a concept called spiritual warfare. This ideology was created by missionary, prominent theologian, and ordained Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, C Peter Wagner. After working as a missionary in Latin America from 1956 to 1971, his ideas surrounding religion began to reflect Latin American values- specifically the belief that biblical good and evil operate in the every day world. Wagner preached that demons and the devil were literally and physically in the world and that it was the duty of Christians to battle these evils. WHY IN THE USA RIGHT NOW?

Wagner's early descriptions of spiritual warfare not only claimed that the occult was real and among us. He also stated that the goal of these evils is to "rule over governments". This ideology lends itself to those who feel ostracized and abandoned by the government. Additionally, "Deliverance warriors believe that problems such as illness and poverty are the result of spiritual sickness, not earthly afflictions". Meaning that deliverance warriors in a Post-Trump era can biblically align with values of the far right. The average political perspective among deliverance warriors appears to be hovering around "everyday Maga-ism and closer to QAnon". Recently Marjorie Taylor Greene signaled her commitment as a deliverance warrior when speaking about her own presence in government.

“I think it just shows we’re in a true spiritual war in America,” she said, “and you can see the attacks on me are proof of it.”

As the United States becomes an increasingly secular country and rates of christianity drop nationwide, the most successful churches are those that are able to grab the attention of disenfranchised christians. You won't find spiritual warfare believers in traditional Christian spaces. Like many other self help ideologies, they have instead made a footing in online spaces. Religious organizations that believe in spiritual warfare often have a strong digital literacy and online celebrity prophets. Additionally spiritual warfare dug deep digital roots in facebook communities. The claim that all ailments are due to demonic possessions and not worldly afflictions, brings a wide range of people to these groups.

"Cyndi wrote she suffered from 'Slumber; Apathy; Passivity; Laziness'; Karen said that the devil had been waging war against her. Mary-Ann wanted her 'diabetes GONE', and Ryan had fallen off the wagon after nine months of sobriety and hit a meth pipe the day before; he hadn’t been to sleep since."

Resources:

Demons Be Gone - Meeting Americas New Exorcists

Exorcism And Deliverance

isaiahsaldivar.com

hardcorechristianity.com

Exorcism: Increasingly frequent, including after US protests

C Peter Wagner Wiki

[lenbryant]

Holy Long Posts & Bat Balls! Now, "Don't Say Gay" Comes To GA?

(Via L.A. Times) An author tells the real origin story of Batman and is silenced for saying ‘gay’

A Georgia elementary school principal panicked, pulled the plug on a lecture and apologized to parents.

ROBIN ABCARIAN

Holy evangelical conservatives, Batman! 

Even the Dark Knight’s origin story has become fodder for our endless culture wars.

Last month, Marc Tyler Nobleman, an author who spent years researching the disputed origins of the Batman story, told an assembly of fifth-graders in Georgia how his work led to an obscure writer named Bill Finger finally getting credit for co-creating Batman. For the last decade, Nobleman has given presentations to rapt children all over the country based on his 2012 book, “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-creator of Batman.”

One of the pivotal characters in the true story, Finger’s son, Fred, was gay, a fact that was relevant to Nobleman’s pursuit, as you will see in a moment.

Apparently, though, the very word “gay” has become so offensive to some social conservatives that it cannot be uttered in a room of fifth-graders without inducing moral panic. The principal of Sharon Elementary School in Forsyth County, Ga., was so unnerved by Nobleman’s description of Fred Finger that he sent a preemptive letter of apology to parents, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting: “As Mr. Nobleman chronicled the tale, he included that Mr. Finger was ‘gay,’ ” wrote Principal Brian Nelson. “This was not subject matter that we were aware that he was including nor content that we have approved for our students.”

In three subsequent talks to students at the school, Nobleman excised the word. But after he saw Nelson’s email to parents, he had a change of heart.

“He apologized as if I had hurt people,” Nobleman told Georgia Public Broadcasting. “And when I saw that, my conscience came roaring back and I said, ‘I’m done with this. I’m done acquiescing.’ ” As a result, the school canceled his final two presentations.

Who was served by this knee-jerk reaction? Certainly not the children, who were deprived of an informative and inspiring hour about one of everybody’s favorite superheroes.

You may think Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” crusade against classroom discussions of sexuality is a stupid, disingenuous and cynical ploy to appeal to former President Trump’s MAGA Republican base. And it certainly is all that. But it has also inspired other states — Georgia legislators are currently grappling with a version of such a bill — and has added fuel to the backlash against LGBTQ+ civil rights, which has now reached a moment of maximum absurdity.

The idea that children on the cusp of adolescence should be shielded from any reference to sexual identities is an assault on the humanity of queer people.

“Imagine opening an email and reading the message that your sexual orientation, your family, your child, your very existence as a gay person warrants apology and an assurance that no discussion of your existence will be allowed,” wrote members of the Forsyth Coalition for Education, which the New York Times described as a nonpartisan group of parents and teachers fighting “conservative efforts to restrict what can be taught in the district.”

The kerfuffle over Batman is the result of an increasingly aggressive and well-organized campaign on the part of the religious right and MAGA Republicans to turn back the clock on the hard-won civil rights of women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

Years ago, Nobleman had become convinced, correctly, that Bob Kane, the man who had been credited as Batman’s sole creator, had wrongfully denied credit to Finger, starting with the character’s inception in 1939. Kane had a vague idea for a bat-like superhero. But Finger refined it; he created Batman’s iconic bat-eared cowl, his bat logo and scalloped cape. He came up with the sidekick Robin, the monikers “the Dark Knight,” “Bruce Wayne” and “Gotham City.” He created or co-created various Batman nemeses — Catwoman, the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler. His name appeared only once in Batman history, as co-writer of “The Clock King’s Crazy Crimes,” an episode of the campy 1966 “Batman” TV series.

As a result, Finger died penniless in 1974, while Kane, who died in 1988, became a rich mega-celebrity in the intensely devoted world of superhero comic fandom.

Nobleman set out to right the historical record. But he was stymied.

As far as he knew, Finger had no living heir to make the case to Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, which owned the rights to the character. Finger’s only son, Fred, was gay. He had died of complications of AIDS in 1992, and Nobleman simply assumed that, as a gay man, he had not fathered any children. As he scoured telephone books and newspaper obituary pages, Nobleman tracked down some of Finger’s relatives, including a niece who informed him that Fred had in fact married a woman. And that he had fathered a daughter named Athena.

After years of sleuthing, Nobleman found Athena, Bill’s granddaughter. He knew he’d hit gold in 2007, when he tracked down her MySpace page and saw that she had posted a photo of her dog, Bruce Wayne.

Finally, after a years-long campaign involving fan pressure, gentle legal threats and plenty of moral outrage, in 2015 Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment acknowledged Bill Finger’s considerable contributions to the lucrative franchise. Finger, they admitted, was “instrumental in developing many of the key creative elements that enrich the Batman universe,” and they promised to give him credit on every future Batman release.

In 2017, Hulu released the documentary “Batman and Bill,” based on Nobleman’s book.

Threaded throughout the film is the family’s frustration, anger and sadness about Finger’s obscurity, which hung over them, as Athena Finger puts it, “like a dark cloud.”

In one illustrated scene, Fred Finger draws the famous Batman silhouette in sand on an Oregon beach. He spreads his father’s ashes inside the silhouette, then lets the waves wash them away.

It’s a beautiful moment in a story that ends with the dark cloud lifted, with justice served.

Will school officials stop their inane objections to the word “gay”?

We can only hope. As Batman was fond of saying, “The night is darkest before the dawn.”

@robinkabcarian

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil Turns, Lula Returns

[Image description: a supporter of Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with a placard reading “Bolsonaro out, Lula President”, in São Paulo, Brazil, December 22, 2021; their mask reads "Defend SUS” (Brazil’s universal healthcaare system).]

In early December, Luiz Inácio da Silva—the former president of Brazil universally known as Lula—took the stage at the ABC Metalworkers’ Union, in greater São Paulo, before a screening of the film Marighella. All of the symbolic elements lined up. This was the place, in Brazil’s industrial heartland, where Lula began his career as a labor leader back in the 1970s; and it was the building from which he had been hauled off to prison by federal police in 2018.

The movie, about Carlos Marighella, a Communist dissident who was murdered in 1969 by the US-backed military dictatorship, had had its release delayed for two years because of censorship by the extreme-right government of President Jair Bolsonaro, according to its director, Wagner Moura (the star of the Netflix drama Narcos). Today, Bolsonaro is weakened, while Lula, his corruption conviction thrown out, is once more free to contest the presidency, an office he last held more than a decade ago. At the screening, he greeted throngs of his blue-collar supporters, taking selfies and giving hugs, as the cast and crew assembled to celebrate lives of determined resistance, the kinds of stories that constitute the ideological foundation of Lula’s own Workers’ Party.

In an address, a pastor named Henrique Vieira made an even more forceful comparison. He started by saying that even though Brazil’s evangelical Christians were often dismissed as conservative, they are working-class people, and they are suffering. Many may have voted for Bolsonaro, but their true place, he said, is within a renewed left. Then he began to speak about Jesus Christ. He is a skilled preacher, and I could see that his words electrified the audience. “Remember, the Gospel did not end with the crucifixion,” he boomed. “The Gospel ends with the resurrection!” Bella Camero, an actress who plays a young guerrilla in the film, began to weep behind her coronavirus mask and dabbed the tears from her eyes.

Lula is back at the center of Brazilian politics. These days, he often dominates headlines, even more than Bolsonaro. Ever since the Supreme Court annulled the conviction, last year, that had put Lula behind bars—and ruled that the judge who convicted him, Sergio Moro, had conducted the case in a biased manner—the veteran campaigner, now seventy-six, has been indefatigable. Railing against the embattled far-right president, Lula is offering many Brazilians the hope of a return to normalcy, if not also to the good years that many remember from his two terms in office, from 2003 to 2010. Every poll on voting intentions currently suggests that he would beat Bolsonaro in a landslide (and trounce every other likely contender, too). Another, less conventional measure of Lula’s popularity is that, according to Spotify, his interview with Mano Brown of the legendary São Paulo rap group Racionais MC’s was Brazil’s most-streamed podcast episode of 2021.

If all that counted were popularity, Lula would likely have won back the presidency in 2018. He had left office eight years earlier with an approval rating of over 80 percent, and he was well ahead of Bolsonaro in the polls when he was taken to prison at the height of the hard-charging and unscrupulous “Lava Jato” (Operation “Car Wash”) anticorruption crusade. But back then, in 2018, the courts upheld his imprisonment. At the same time, the head of the army—in two notorious tweets—implied that the Brazilian military would not accept any other decision.

Powerful institutional forces worked to keep the Workers’ Party out of the presidency in recent years: a politicized judiciary, a military that has once again under Bolsonaro become entrenched in government, and a parliamentary body willing and able to end a democratic presidency on a technicality. In 2016, Congress chose to remove Lula’s chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, from office, in a move that many Brazilians considered a parliamentary coup. While Rousseff was unpopular at the time, no one ever voted for her vice president, Michel Temer, to take power and install a completely different, much more conservative government.

In weighing whether Lula might return to govern in 2022, it is crucial to understand how and why Brazil’s varied institutional forces—where power actually resides in moments of crisis—might be willing to let him.

Continue reading.

[patriotsnet]

Did Trump Ever Say Republicans Are Stupid

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-trump-ever-say-republicans-are-stupid/

Did Trump Ever Say Republicans Are Stupid

Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters

Donald Trump Tells Oprah in 1988 What He Would Do as President

Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.

One day in 2015, Donald Trump beckoned Michael Cohen, his longtime confidant and personal attorney, into his office. Trump was brandishing a printout of an article about an Atlanta-based megachurch pastor trying to raise $60 million from his flock to buy a private jet. Trump knew the preacher personallyCreflo Dollar had been among a group of evangelical figures who visited him in 2011 while he was first exploring a presidential bid. During the meeting, Trump had reverently bowed his head in prayer while the pastors laid hands on him. Now he was gleefully reciting the impious details of Dollars quest for a Gulfstream G650.

Trump seemed delighted by the scam, Cohen recalled to me, and eager to highlight that the pastor was full of shit. Theyre all hustlers, Trump said.

The presidents alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith, he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year. Its a message his campaign will seek to amplify in the coming weeks as Republicans work to confirm Amy Coney Barretta devout, conservative Catholicto the Supreme Court.

The People Whom President Trump Has Called Stupid

Since he declared his candidacy for the presidency, no group has been deemed stupid by Donald Trump more frequently than Americas leaders. There are stupid people running the country, he said over and over and over again on the campaign trail; making stupid deals with Iran and stupid deals on trade. Everyone in charge was dumb and he wasnt except that he was stupid for self-funding his campaign. That, in broad strokes, was Trumps rhetoric in 2015 and 2016.

But that wasnt the full extent of it. When Trump tweeted disparagement of LeBron James and CNNs Don Lemon Friday night, it was a reminder that Trump often divides the world into two groups: those who are stupid and those who arent. It was also a reminder that, of late, Trump has often chosen to describe as stupid people who are not white.

That wasnt always the case. Before the presidential election, Trump mostly disparaged white people as stupid.

Of course, back then, his political opponents were mostly white people: those running against him in the Republican primary and the conservative establishment broadly opposed to his candidacy. He called Karl Rove, former George W. Bush adviser, stupid five times, including in interviews. Bloombergs Tim OBrien, whom Trump once sued unsuccessfully for alleged libel, earned the description three times, as did television host Glenn Beck.

Since President Trumps inauguration, though, that has changed.

It wasnt Obama.

The Dumbest Stuff Donald Trump Has Ever Said

Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty

Americas favorite faux-political shock jock came back with a vengeance two weeks ago when, during a press conference to announce his candidacy for the presidency, he characterized all Mexican immigrants as drug-peddling rapists.

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody elses problems, he said. When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre not sending you. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

The comments ended up getting both him and his television programs booted from NBC. After a public pressure campaign that racked up more than 200,000 petition signatures, the network decried his words as derogatory. Trump, as to be expected, railed against NBC. Instead of apologizing for his words, he later asserted that his stance on immigration is correct.

Its not the first time Trump has insulted Americas southern neighbor. This past February, when Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu took home an Oscar for his film Birdman, Trump offered dubious congratulations. Well it was a great night for Mexico, as usual in this country It was a great night for Mexico. This guy kept getting up and up and up. I said, you know, whats he doing? Hes walking away with all the gold.

On African-Americans:

Laziness is a trait in blacks.

On women:

On religion:

Read Also: Do Republicans Support The Death Penalty

Trump ‘knows Republicans Are Stupid’ Jared Kushner Allegedly Said To Former Editor

Greg Price U.S.Jared KushnerDonald TrumpRepublicans

One of the strategies Donald Trump employed as he began putting his name on the U.S. political map years ago was championing “birtherism,” the long-held conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born outside of the U.S. and hence should never have been elected. He often chastised Obama and demanded the president produce his birth certificate, revving up an anti-Obama base that eventually helped put Trump in the White House.

Evidently, Trump may have been using the so-called birthers only as a means to an end.

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is also a senior adviser to the president, allegedly told a former editor of the newspaper he once owned that the billionaire real-estate mogul didn’t believe his own “birtherism” claims, and only made them to charge up Republicans because they are “stupid,” GQ reported.

During a discussion on how to cover Trump, the former New York Observer editor, Elizabeth Spiers, claimed she told Kushner that she had serious problems with Trump’s repeated claims that Obama was not born in the U.S., to which Kushner allegedly told her: “He doesn’t really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it.”

Spiers told her Kushner anecdote in response to a question from a conservative blogger on Facebook, and then screenshotted the response and put it up on Twitter.

In 1988 Oprah Asked Donald Trump If He’d Ever Run For President Here’s How He Replied

Donald Trump;wasn’t always so sure he wanted to run for president.

Long before The Donald officially kicked off his;polarizing2016run and became;the Republican frontrunner, Oprah asked the business tycoon about his political aspirations on a 1988 episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” ;Trump had originally appeared on the show to promote a new book and discuss his life as a businessman, but the conversation soon turned toward foreign policy and how Trump would take a tougher stance with America’s allies.

“I’d make our allies pay their fair share. We’re a debtor nation; something’s going to happen over the next number of years in this country, because you can’t keep going on losing $200 billion,” he said on “The Oprah Show” back then. “We let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets… They come over here, they sell their cars, their VCRs. They knock the hell out of our companies. And, hey, I have tremendous respect for the Japanese people. I mean, you can respect somebody that’s beating the hell out of you, but they are beating the hell out of this country. Kuwait, they live like kings and yet, they’re not paying. We make it possible for them to sell their oil. Why aren’t they paying us 25 percent of what they’re making? It’s a joke.”

The rant prompted Oprah to ask the question that people would ask for the next few decades.

Of course, he couldn’t help but hedge.

“I think I’d win,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you what: I wouldn’t go in to lose.”

Also On HuffPost:

Don’t Miss: What Republicans Voted Against Tax Bill

Trumps 10 Most Hilariously Stupid Things He Said In 2019

President Donald Trump has a long history of saying some of the most bizarre things in politics. This year was one for the books as the president flailed, searching for excuses for his July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Here are some of the most hilariously stupid things the president has said this year:

1. Windmills cause ear cancer

If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value, Trump told Republicans in April. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one. He then made a whirring noise mimicking a turbine.

2. He wants to buy Greenland

In meetings, at dinners and in passing conversations, Mr. Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its abundant resources and geopolitical importance and, according to two of the people, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea, the Wall Street Journal reported in August.

Denmark essentially owns it, Trump told reporters in the days that followed. Were very good allies with Denmark. We protect Denmark like we protect large portions of the world. Strategically its interesting.

Trump then got into a fight with Danish leaders and had to cancel a trip hed planned to the country.

3. Trump is the chosen one.

4. Why dont they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.

Im Getting The Word Out: Inside The Feverish Mind Of Donald Trump Two Months After Leaving The White House

I Alone Can Fix It

To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

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To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

Seventy days had passed since Donald Trump left Washington against his will. On March 31, 2021, we ventured to Mar-a-Lago, where he still reigned as king of Republican politics. We arrived late that afternoon for our audience with the man who used to be president and were ushered into an ornate sixty-foot-long room that functioned as a kind of lobby leading to the clubs patio. A model of Air Force One painted in Trumps proposed redesigna flat red stripe across the middle, a navy belly, a white top, and a giant American flag on the tailwas proudly displayed on the coffee table facing the entrance. It was a prop disconnected from reality.; Trumps vision never came to be; the fleet now in use by President Biden still bears the iconic baby blue-and-white livery designed by Jacqueline Kennedy.

Trump had invited us to Mar-a-Lago to interview him for this book. He had declined an interview for our first book about his presidency, and when A Very Stable Genius was published in January 2020, attacked us personally and branded our reporting a work of fiction. But Trump was quick to agree to our request this time. He sought to curate history.

But future elections were not front and center in his mind. A past election was. Trump was fixated on his loss in 2020, returning to this wound repeatedly throughout the interview.;

Also Check: How Many Republicans Voted For Obamacare In The Senate

Trump Told A Reporter His Biggest Secret: That He Is A Danger To The American People

Trump is a particularly stupid man who thinks he is very smart. Perhaps this lies at the root of his monumentally dumb decision to grant Bob Woodward 18 interviews

The Inuit are supposed to have dozens of words to describe snow. The Brits have endless ways to talk about rain. Now its time for Americans to delineate all the many ways that Donald Trump is dumb.

If Bob Woodwards new blockbuster teaches us anything new about the character of the 45th president, its that we dont yet have the words to describe the multiple variants of the vacuum inside his head.

Theres the stupidity of arrogance, the stupidity of ignorance and his old friend: the stupidity of blatant duplicity. Theres his homicidal stupidity, his traitorous stupidity, his criminally corrupt stupidity and his plain old infantile stupidity.

Lets start with the top of this taxonomy: the domain of Donalds dumbness. At his core, the former reality TV star is a particularly stupid man who thinks he is very smart. Or as he prefers to call his own character, a very stable genius.

Perhaps, just maybe, this lies at the root of his monumentally dumb decision to grant Woodward 18 interviews, on the record and on tape.

Instead, our very stupid genius vomited up all manner of secrets that collectively prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he represents the greatest single danger to the fate of both the American people and to himself.

Fact Check: Did Trump Say In ’98 Republicans Are Dumb

Donald Trump: I didnt say that. (He did.)

Did Donald Trump tell People magazine in 1998 that if he ever ran for president, hed do it as a Republican because theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country and that he could lie and theyd still eat it up?A:;No, thats a bogus meme.

FULL ANSWER

The meme purports to be a quote from Trump in;People;magazine in 1998 saying, If I were to run, Id run as a Republican. Theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe;anything on Fox News. I could lie and theyd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.

We were alerted to the meme by a reader, A. Douglas Thomas of Freeport, N.Y., among others, who saw it in his Facebook feed, along with a message from someone who said, I just fact-checked this. Google Donald Trump, People magazine and 1998. This is an actual quote by Trump.

Well save you the effort. It is;not;an actual quote by Trump.

We scoured the;Peoplemagazine archives and found nothing like this quote in 1998 or any other year.

And a public relations representative with;People;told us that the magazine couldnt find anything like that quote in its archives, either.;Peoples Julie Farin said in an email: Peoplelooked into this exhaustively when it first surfaced back in Oct.;We combed through every Trump story in our archive.;We couldnt find anything remotely like this quote and no interview at all in 1998.

There were several stories in the late 1990s about Trumps flirtation with a presidential run.

You May Like: What Are The Main Platform Ideas Of Republicans

Trump Is Right: Republicans Are Stupid

Donald Trump, master of the deal, is right. The Republicans are stupid, not only as politicians but also as political psychologists. He criticized Paul Ryan for bringing up the subject of Medicare reform that the Democrats could use to turn the elderly against the Republicans. Their video of grandma being shoved over the cliff by Republicans is a stark indication of how the Dems will fight to win four more years for Obama.

As the discussions over increasing the debt limit go on, the Democrats are portraying themselves as the more flexible party in the negotiations. They are willing to cut cherished programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, provided Republicans agree to some increases in revenue. They want the Republicans to agree to raise taxes and cut spending on programs that the elderly hold sacred. A perfect recipe for Republican defeat in November 2012. Thursdays meeting was supposed to focus on spending cuts in the two health care programs and on new revenue. And only stupid Republicans would attend such a meeting.

From the very beginning, by focusing on cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, the Republicans have trapped themselves into a no-win situation. Why havent they offered a list of real cuts in federal spending? Who told them that cutting programs that the elderly are dependent on is the way to win votes in 2012?

Here Are The Top 10 Stupidest Things Trump Did As President

We’re tentatively starting to emerge from the four year-long national nightmare of Donald Trump’s presidency, but the reckoning of what the nation endured will take years to really understand. Trump was terrible in so many ways that it’s hard to catalog them all: His sociopathic lack of regard for others. His towering narcissism. His utter ease with lying. His cruelty and sadism. The glee he took in cheating and stomping on anything good and decent. His misogyny and racism. His love of encouraging violence, only equaled by his personal cowardice.

But of all the repulsive character traits in a man so wholly lacking in any redeemable qualities, perhaps the most perplexing to his opponents was Trump’s incredible stupidity. On one hand, it was maddening that a man so painfully dumb, a man who clearly could barely read even on those rare occasions when he deigned to wear glasses still had the low cunning necessary to take over the Republican Party and then the White House.

On the other hand, it was the one aspect of Trump’s personality that kept hope alive. Surely a man so stupid, his opponents believed, will one day blunder so badly he can’t be saved, even by his most powerful sycophants. That has proved to be the case as Trump fumbles his way through a failed coup, unable and unwilling to see that stealing the election from Joe Biden is a lost cause.

He then pointed at his head, and said, “I’m, like, a person who has a good you-know-what.”

Read Also: Where Are Republicans On The Political Spectrum

Top 10 Actual Things Donald Trump Said At His 2016 Presidential Campaign Kickoff

Top 10 Actual Things Donald Trump Said At His 2016 Presidential Campaign Announcement

— On Tuesday, real estate mogul-turned reality show star, Donald Trump, became the latest Republican to jump into the 2016 presidential race.

If hes elected in 2016, the GOP hopeful predicated that he would be the most successful president for U.S. jobs that God ever created, used the recent sale of a multi-million dollar apartment he owned to someone from China as an example of his friendly ties with the country, voiced concern that people from the Middle East are probably sneaking into the country through the border, and revealed that rich Islamic terrorists are his competition within the hotel market in Syria.

This is all real, and its trademark Trump. Here are the quotes from Trumps presidential announcement that you will never hear another presidential candidate say — ever.

[automatismoateo]

In response to a question in a recent thread where someone asked me to go in-depth, here's a description of my experience in Education and teaching Science in Arkansas and why I finally quit. via /r/atheism

Submitted July 11, 2021 at 11:22PM by paxinfernum (Via reddit https://ift.tt/3ALPxPr) In response to a question in a recent thread where someone asked me to go in-depth, here's a description of my experience in Education and teaching Science in Arkansas and why I finally quit.

The only thing that matters

Here's something you need to understand first. In most rural districts, pretty much any idiot can get hired to a position and stay there as long as they don't piss off parents too much. The people hiring you don't really understand what you teach, and the parents don't understand or care what quality teaching is, but they care if you say something that offends their backward sensibilities. What that effectively means is that your ability to teach and stay on has more to do with being in sync with the community, who are usually racist and batshit paranoid. If you aren't in sync with that, you either have to keep your head down, or you will eventually get harassed into leaving due to vague complaints.

Abusive parenting is normal here

Okay. So starting with my student teaching. The woman I worked under was a total fucking psychopath. She bragged in the teachers' lounge about how she disciplined her daughter and people don't discipline their kids like that now. By discipline, I mean she told a story about how she chased her daughter down a hallway, dragged her by the hair of her head, and spanked her until she was raw. This was part of a story where she was bragging about how well behaved her daughter was due to her parenting.

If you're wondering if anyone pushed back against this, the answer is that they didn't. They were nodding their heads in affirmation. That's the problem with rural schools in a nutshell. The community hires from the community, and the community is backward as shit and filled with people who were raised in abusive conservative fundie homes. The parents, by the way, loved that teacher because she wasn't one of those soft "liberal" teachers. Parents, more than anyone else, wanted us to hit their kids and were always disappointed when they didn't get spanked. Child abuse is a way of life down here.

Teachers who are fearful of knowledge

Okay, so this woman was a science teacher. That's what I trained to teach. Science. I did so because I wasn't just one of those "science is awesome" Sagan-heads. I genuinely cared about teaching science as more than just fun facts, but as a methodology for uncovering the truth. I naively went into the field thinking that's what most science teachers would be like. I kind of hoped that I'd at least find a community of like-minded individuals in this ignorant state.

Over my entire teaching career, I literally never met another science teacher like me who was pro-science and pro-skepticism. They were overwhelmingly either just dumb and teaching rotely, or they were conspiratorial and fearful of science. This is exactly what an Arkansas school board wants out of a science teacher. They know they have to teach science, but they are afraid of science and see it as the most dangerous subject to teach in their little fundagelical minds. So they hire people who are afraid of science.

That crazy woman I trained under? She ranted about drones being used to spy on us. She told the kids GMOs were dangerous, and she told them homeopathic medicines were something she'd researched to help her friend with cancer. She wasn't unique in that regard. Every other science teacher I met in Arkansas was terrified of GMOs and had some conspiracy they wanted to rant about. One teacher's bugaboo was allergies and how he thought more people were getting allergies because of chemicals being put in the water. He brushed it off when I said it was probably due to more sensitive testing. Another teacher told their students the most horrendous and completely inaccurate facts about nuclear energy.

They're not sending us their best people

The point is these people weren't the best and brightest. Often, they weren't even adequate. One guy I worked with became a science teacher because he needed something to teach alongside coaching. He was dumb as a box of rocks and just barely passed his praxis exams after three tries. I know most people weren't going to ace these tests like I did, but the cutoff for a passing score in Arkansas is hilariously low. Yet, when he finally passed, it was only by a single point, and he recounted it to me like it was only by the grace of god.

Another teacher, a math teacher who was probably the worst speller I'd ever met, got certified in Texas, which has a lower standard for math, and he transferred his certification to Arkansas. So he only was able to teach math in Arkansas on a technicality. The way it works is that you only have to be recertified if you let your certification lapse. All that's required to recertify is doing 30 hours of PD per year, and then, every couple of years, you have to do the recertification process. But this idiot was too stupid to do that, and he let his certification expire. So then, he was teaching math without a license because he couldn't pass the Arkansas tests. (You're allowed to teach for so long as long as you're pursuing certification.)

Propaganda and Indoctrination

Half of the teachers I met might as well have been missionaries. It's illegal to push your religion or politics on students, but fuck if anyone will actually enforce that. Actually, let me step back there. Fuck if anyone will actually enforce that unless you're liberal or non-Christian. The state is an unofficial conservative theocracy so if the teacher wants to rant about gays or Jesus, there's very little chance any parent will even bother to complain. (Even liberals around here know they're outnumbered and won't win.) Even if the parent complains to the Principal, they'll only "have a word" with the teacher in question, most likely to have a chummy conversation where they eye roll about the parent and discuss ways they can continue to evangelize more subtly.

Even if the Principal is the type who takes this seriously, the teacher will only get a vague note in their file because no school board around here is going to fire a teacher for proselytizing children. They don't want the school to get burned down by an angry mob of Fox News zombies. Even if it makes it to the state ethics board, I've seen the state ethics board literally do nothing about a counselor who ignored a suicidal student, a teacher who was caught drunk driving, a superintendent who was manipulating the system to siphon more money into the school, and so many other things. The only thing the ethics board actually takes a license away for is cheating on standardized testing (got to keep our corporate donors happy) and actually fucking a student. Even if you bring a teacher up on proselytizing, they'll get a warning and be back in the classroom the next day.

So if you're a kid in a rural school, get ready for your teacher to unsubtly tell you about how Jesus is such an important part of their life or straight-up rant about the Democrats. When I was a student in Arkansas schools, I had teachers tell me: 1) All gay people should be thrown in prison 2) HIV-positive patients should be shipped to an island or burned (it was the 90s) 3) the Jews brought the holocaust on to themselves by rejecting Jesus 4) the teacher was boycotting Levis jeans because they supported gay people. That's just a sampling of shit I heard as a kid in Arkansas from freaking teachers.

While working as a teacher, I knew of teachers who latched onto kids with poor home lives and invited them over to their homes so they could do "prayer studies" with them. The kids went because they were kind to them and offered food. In case you're wondering, they got away with this because it was a husband and wife, so parents allowed it. (I'm just going to say that I'm actually quite certain this was entirely above board sex-wise. I knew the individuals, and while I despised what they were doing, I knew they were entirely sincere.)

Another teacher, a Trump supporter, went into a rant about how they needed to give all the teachers guns to fight off school shooters (because restricting guns in any way was tOtAlItArIaNiSm.) I nodded along because I was smart enough to know disagreeing publicly will get you shunned or harassed. All I could think in my head was "Dude, if they ever give you nutters guns, that's the day I quit. There will be 10 dead kids within a week." On that topic, one teacher I know of grabbed a student by the throat because they were pissed at them, and they didn't lose their job.

The history teacher, the one who wanted us to all have guns was teaching that the Civil War was about tariffs. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. Hundreds of thousands of people went to war over tariffs that were at their lowest point in decades. It had nothing to do with the people they owned and shackled up like a Saw movie. The Civics teacher pushed Trump election conspiracies.

Another teacher, who had a family member who had a terminal illness and was literally only getting their medical treatment paid through Obamacare would go off on rants about Obama and transgender students.

Harassment

At one point, I was harassed by the campus cop. He found out I was in support of BLM, and literally screamed at me. Later, he transitioned to simply refusing to acknowledge my existence. Like, if I said anything to him, he would pretend he couldn't hear me. The dude was fucking insane and filled with hate. I'm pretty sure his domestic situation with his wife was abusive due to things he said. He was so angry and radicalized that it was never the students I worried would be a mass shooter. It was him. I was literally afraid he would come in one day and shoot the place up. He wasn't an oddity though. Every one of our resource officers was racist and unethical. One was running a vaping ring with students. Another took special joy in cracking down on Latino students.

Eventually, I started getting harassment from students though, and that's what led to me leaving. There are two things that led to increasing harassment. First, I had one conservative student who hated me and surmised that I must be a Clinton supporter. I never said that, but because I was one of the few teachers who didn't violate the rules about discussing religion or politics, they guess that I was a liberal atheist. So they started working to get me fired.

The second thing is that the Arkansas standards changed so that teaching evolution became part of my classroom standards. Just so you know, most schools in Arkansas don't actually teach evolution, even though they're supposed to. The way it works is teachers put it last on their things to teach, and oopsie, I just ran out of time at the end of the year. Some teachers know evolution is real, but they don't teach it because the backlash is too much to take. Others don't teach it because they're fundagelicals themselves, so they go along with the informal conspiracy to not teach evolution. I say informal conspiracy because it's not like they all get together in a back room and decide this. It's just the culture and incentives are all there to not teach it.

I actually taught evolution, and while I had always dealt with some degree of negativity, looking back, I have to say that was the point where I started getting a lot more. I can't emphasize enough how brainwashed these kids were. I'm not saying all of them because there were absolutely kids who believed in evolution, but they were in a minority and knew to keep their mouths shut. But it's sort of staggering to try to teach the history of the Earth and have a kid repeatedly try to prove to you that there was a global flood.

How harassment actually works in the real world

This is the thing I want people to understand. Harassment in the real world isn't usually as obvious as in a movie. No one drives by your house and throws a brick through your window. No one calls you up and leaves threatening messages. No one will ever fire you for being liberal or an atheist. Because these people are dumb as fuck, but they're also very clever at being shitty people. They know they can't walk up and say to the school board, "Fire so and so because they're teaching evolution." They know that's illegal technically.

So they just start making up vague complaints. Principals, even ones who were supportive like my last Principal, are reactive. If a parent comes to them to complain about a teacher, they're going to assume the teacher did something wrong and needs to be talked to. So the girl who found out I was a Hillary Clinton supporter suddenly decided I "made her uncomfortable" and "looked her weird." The great thing about these types of innuendos and character assaults is that you don't have to provide any real facts. It's all about how you just don't like that person. Remember that teachers are one of the few professions where you can actually be fired simply because the community doesn't like you.

So that fell flat because, like I said, my Principal was actually decent and understood how flimsy that was. So then, that girls boyfriend made a complaint about how I'd yelled at him in front of all the students. Unfortunately for him, this supposed incident happened while we were in a part of the school with cameras so it was obviously bullshit. However, parents calling in upset is still a big deal so I was told that I should try to be nicer to him in the future and win the parents over.

The point is that it's basically death by a thousand cuts from little gripes and exaggerated concerns. Another student flat-out lied and said I cussed them out in class. I know that some of this was actually instigated by a staff member who didn't like me. So they encourage students to complain about me. At one point, I know they actually set up a kid's parents to lodge a complaint against me. I know this because the language of the complaint was obviously written by them, and when I was having the parent conference, they actually stayed behind work (something they never did) and didn't leave our adjoining rooms until it was over. They apparently wanted to listen in and see how it went. This conservative teacher at various times: told me the wrong place for a meeting, got kids to say they would show up for an after school event and then not show up, convinced an entire group of students to quit a club I was sponsoring, spread rumors about me to parents.

I'm done

The final straw was covid. I tried to stick it out, but the day a kid told me he wasn't going to wear a mask because "Biden isn't the real President" was the point where I decided I was done. This came from teachers too. The biology teacher wore a mask below their nose. The staff refused to stop having potlucks throughout the entire pandemic. Some people can't be saved.

edit: I forgot to mention the English teacher I met while I was doing my student-teacher training. She was forcing her class to write essays on how Obama wasn't a real US Citizen. All throughout my teacher program, I'd been told over and over that you could get fired for talking politics in the classroom, and this bitch was literally forcing kids to write essays about how Obama was a secret Muslim. And nothing was done about it. She could get away with it because Arkansas is so white and racist. To put it into context, the county she was teaching in was 94% white and voted for Trump by 78% in 2020.

[keywestlou]

GUARANTEED $500 CHECK PER MONTH FOR POOR BLACKS BUT NOT WHITES.....WHAT?????

I am in a state of shock! Those who read this blog and those who know me are aware I am a liberal. I believe it is the responsibility of government to help those in need regardless of color or ethnicity. Whether Purple, Green, White, Black, Asian, etc.

Blacks would be in an uproar if a guaranteed law were passed whereby only poor whites could receive certain financial assistance.

Oakland, California is working on a program to provide families of “color” with financial assistance of $500 per month, no strings attached.

A “guaranteed income project” to assist Black and Indigenous families.

White families excluded.

The $500 would be provided on a per month basis for 18 months. Payments unconditional. Recipients can spend the $500 on whatever they choose.

Certain eligibility conditions do apply, however. The family must include one child under 18. Additionally, the income of such families must be below the median income for the area.

The program is limited to 600 families. Selection will be by random drawing.

The 600 families are divided into 2 groups. One half being those whose incomes fall below the $60,000 median income for the Oakland area. The other half to families earning $30,000 or less.

Funding will not involve public monies. Funding will be by “private donations.”

Consider for a moment the clamor if a similar program was involved with one difference. The $500 per month payments were to go solely to poor white families. Black and Indingenous families not included.

Another example of an insanity that has begun to permeate our society involves conservative Reverend Rick Joyner. I mentioned him a few days ago. He is the subject of a New York Times column today.

Joyner is a prominent evangelical preacher. He calls on Christians to pray for a civil war against liberals. His thinking as erratic as that of John Brown in support of the abolitionist movement.

The thrust of the New York Times column had to do with Joyner’s children. He is the father of five. They do not support his position nor do they identify as evangelicals. They claim to love their father. However believe his rhetoric dangerous and could trigger violence.

Joyner claims Democrats are in league with Satan. Many agree and support him.

All five of his children vote Democratic.

The entire situation typifies political polarization on a different level.

Religion and politics are like water and oil. They do not mix and must be kept separate.

George W. Bush made a comment worthy of repetition: You cannot lead a divided state. That was my problem with Richard Nixon. He divided the country. The leader’s job is to unite.”

There is another insanity which has become a fabric in our country. Republicans talking about how to resolve the gun issue. With each mass killing, they sing the same tune and do nothing. They will rue the day when one of their own family is killed.

It was midnight yesterday for Syracuse basketball this season. They lost decidedly to Houston 62-46.

Simply stated, Syracuse was not with it, did not have it.. Buddy Boeheim was guarded by one Houston player the whole game who hung to him like glue. Boeheim was out of step the whole game. Even missed some foul shots which his uncommon for him. Three’s, forget it. He made only 2 or 3.

Houston began the game fast. Ran up a 15 point lead almost immediately. Syracuse came back twice thereafter, but it was Houston’s game the last 10 minutes.

Sophmore Jesse Edwards is the Syracuse substitute at center. He played a hell of a game! At 6’11” he can block shots. Did so repeatedly.

The pros will be after Boeheim. If he remains, the team should be much better next season. Most of the players will be returning.

Syracuse has nothing to be ashamed of. Their record prior to the tournament poor. However their 2 victories in the tournament before going down to Houston redeemed them.

One of Key West’s most popular haunts is Captain Tony’s. Located on Greene Street, just off Duval. The original Sloppy Joe’s in the 1930s.

The building was constructed in 1852. Since that time besides being a bar, it was an ice house, city morgue, telegraph station, cigar factory, bordello, and gay bar. In addition several speakeasies specializing in gambling, women, and bootleg rum.

I mention Captain Tony’s this morning because of a piece of indoctrination I came across. I have always wanted to know what local places Harry Truman frequented. Still have not been able to ascertain. This morning, I read that Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy both visited Captain Tony’s.

An exciting day for me yesterday. Received my second vaccine shot.

Within a half hour, I became nauseous. Not overwhelmingly so. Uncomfortable a better description. I am still nauseous this morning. My arm where I received the shot is sore also.

Not complaining. Merely sharing.

The local gymnasium where I received the shot was much more crowded than when I got my first. I discussed it with one of those working. When I got my first shot, only first shots were given Yesterday was a combination of first and second shots.

I am excited. I’ve been told I should wait two weeks before going out. In two weeks I will be over 400 days of self-quarantine. I can’t wait!

Enjoy your Sunday!

GUARANTEED $500 CHECK PER MONTH FOR POOR BLACKS BUT NOT WHITES…..WHAT????? was originally published on Key West Lou

[gravitascivics]

MEME ADDICTS

Andrew Marantz[1] reminds his readers of a JFK quote.  Kennedy pointed out that people are always disposed to accept simple messages that address their concerns, but that Americans’ good sense seems to sober them up when it comes to how they proceed.  What Kennedy did not foresee is an accelerant.  It happens that today that accelerant exists and, sure enough, it is overrunning what good sense many people have.

         That disrupter is social media.  As the result of the wizardry back in 2004-2005, a technical magic developed that allows ordinary people to communicate with everyone else in the world without going through gatekeepers.  Now, in full disclosure, this writer has both a blog – dah – but also has a book published through the retailer, Amazon.  In both cases he bypassed any gatekeepers.  But even he has to admit that there are inherent problems with this free access to a world audience.

         This writer sees this free access as an opportunity to extend of his career – one that pays a lot less, but one that allows him to continue with that aspect of his former employment that he enjoyed most.  That is “teaching” someone something he, first, feels is important and, second, that he can do with people who want to learn what it is he is sharing.  Surely, there is a vast array of reasons why anyone would expose him/herself by communicating to a world audience.  This writer, for one, finds it as an enjoyable activity and important in a limited way.

         Unfortunately, too many who have engaged in this media has apparently done so to be, as Marantz found out in his research, disruptive.  And the motivation seems not to provide a public service, but as a means to make a buck. Nothing wrong with that as long as what they do does not offend or go contrary to the common good.  But when disrupters go about their business with no ascertainable aim or goal other than to be disruptive, then the common good is being, at best, ignored.

         The first victims of these disrupters were/are the gatekeepers in an array of industries.  They include advertising, journalism, publishing, and political consulting.  And they were successful in this endeavor beyond what anyone could have predicted. The effects have not only ignored the common good, but they have also attacked it in ways that few could have predicted back in the early years of this new endeavor.  And their success, of course, is not the sole result of their skills but of the social/political environment in which they initiated their efforts.

         The directly, affected segment of the population that was targeted was what was known as the silent majority. That is the mostly conservative, frustrated people of middle class, religious oriented groups (usually evangelical groups) and the numbers of dispossessed workers – victims of the global economy – that have stewed over the vast social, economic, and political shifts the nation has experienced since the 1980s.

         What came about has been media that on a continuous basis – often through entertaining messaging such as with the use of humor – issued information that people did not need to see and hear, but what they wanted to see and hear.  As such, they became victimized in ways Marantz captures as in the following:

Then, swiftly, came the unthinkable:  smart, well-meaning people unable to distinguish simple truth from viral misinformation; a pop-culture punch line ascending to the presidency; neo-Nazis marching, unmasked, through several American cities.  This wasn’t the kind of disruption anyone had envisioned.  There had been a serious miscalculation.[2]

And to heighten the effect, due to something new called algorithms, their “published” material targeted their messages toward those who wanted to see it, but not to those who did not.  The computer imaging had a way to draw the attention of those who would be open to such content and away from those who weren’t.

         Marantz goes on a bizarre adventure in which he got to know the producers of this messaging, attended their functions, and extensively interviewed them.  He tells an interesting story that gives his readers insights as to what skills these producers have, their personal motivations, and their politics.  This is not only in terms of how they react to the national political stage, but how they behave politically within the community of fellow social media activists and how they can exploit those environments.

         But to set the stage for the current state of affairs within that community, one can note that by 2014, their community was established.  One early practitioner was Ron Paul who initiated a blog named The Right Stuff.  An early descriptive term for the resulting, early sites was “post-libertarians.”  These more strident sites were attempting to push messaging with a far-right flavor.  Marantz characterizes their political content as creating a “libertarian-to-far-right” pipeline.  The direction of such efforts was toward a “full radicalization.”

         The techniques used can be described as being propaganda efforts, and they include to this day photoshopping images, the use of parodied songs, and what is called “countersignal memes.”  This last technique is characterized with depressingly mocking or unsavory, self-serving images or messages.  When these efforts are well executed and many of these practitioners have proven to be skillful in this realm, they become “must see” material among those disposed to appreciate and believe its messaging.

         Future postings will share some of Marantz experiences as he observed firsthand what these social media communicators have done and what seems to assist them in their efforts.  Anecdotally, this writer has heard that for many, these social media outlets have become what right-wing voters depend on to get their “news” despite their proven misinformation and inaccurate predictions that they have made over the last decade or so.  

Of course, the most recent example is the message that Trump’s victory in the last election was stolen from him.  Gee, what can go wrong with this kind of unfettered, free speech?  Which by the way, this blogger would find it totally acceptable if his blog would be reviewed for its content being responsible.  That would be the case as long as the criteria used in such reviews were subject to public acceptance and limited to concerns over influencing violent or otherwise illegal behavior.

[1] Andrew Marantz, Anti-social:  Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation (New York, NY:  Penguin Random House, 2019).

[2] Ibid., 4.

[braindamageforbeginners]

The apocalypse is here

Pictured above: Either the I5 North or the current political races. I’m no longer sure. So, this will take a bit of time to get to, but I promise it’ll be good. I guarantee that, I’ll be quoting directly from candidate statements/descriptions (we’ll get back to the abyss soon enough, and the time a DIY project almost killed/crippled Dad)(the man attempted an electrical project, I’d like to point I quietly though this was a bad idea). Anyway, I’m certain that decent, kind, honest, noble, and educated and mostly-human Congresscritters must exist - people do vote for them, after all. However, having met one Congressman and, being lied to the staff of another (pro-tip; no matter how pro-military or manly and awesome you like to think you are, it’s not a reassuring thing to your constituents if there’s an explosion on a large photo in your office. So I have rather low regard for them, as a group (I know, that’s baseless stereotyping).

So you can imagine my surprise at coming to rest in Daryl Issa’s old district, a man so loathed even by his own party that they quietly told him to go away. I’ve seen a lot of strange political events, but, believe me when I say I’ve never seen anything like this; a completely vacant Congressional seat that could be inhabited by a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or even some type of salamander (the salamander would’ve been an improvement over Jerry Lewis). Anyway, since there are also assorted state assembly judicial races at stake, they’re all included in this pamphlet (and potentially included in this oversized piece). As usual, I will be selecting choice quotes, and, remember, candidates may include an age and/or occupation.

Kistin Gaspar: “[...] A mother, small business owner, and the mayor of encinitas, she has the get-it-done approach we need in Congress.” Fantastic, just as I start to enjoy the peace and quiet of life without Larry the Cable Guy in the public light, there’s this call-back. Or so I thought, until I found out that the “Get It Done” app is used in our area to report “non-emergency problems to the city.” Now, I hate potholes as much as any American (possibly more, since I used to live in a country where drivers used them to help corner while going 80 mph on unpaved roads). Still, “Fixing potholes” seems a little below the pay-grade of a pre-conviction congresswoman.

Diane Harkey: Healthcare: Diane will worke for policies that increase choice, costs, and allow patietns and doctors to decide what care is best. No, no, she isn’t. Diane’s endorsed/puppeted by the American Independent Party, so she has about as much chance of winning as a large rock. But, more importantly, I’m pretty sure the AIP is only concerned with healthcare as a business that sends them money. The big take-away here is less what I say, and more the fact that third party-associated candidates with little-to-no chance of winning feel compelled to tell everyone their healthcare system will be fine, even if it won’t.

David Medway: “I want to protect working families from increasing taxes, healthcare bills, and gun violence (while protecting our right to bear arms). I want to prevent national catastrophes like pandemics (which I wrote a book about) and environmental disasters (such as protecting our coastline from nuclear waste and oil spills that would devastate our shores). I support women’s rights and the melting pot of cultures tha tmake up California. I support lower taxes, less government and the best healthcare and education in the world for all Americans at reasonable prices. Please define “reasonable,” sir, I suspect our answers will differ. Also, you’ll notice he’s making the classic math mistake - better, improved services at a mere fraction of the tax cost! Which is a bullshit political statement/proposal. You might be able to get a great vaccuum cleaner for a fraction of the name-brand because slavery is still totally legal in some parts of the world (meaning the company saves a lot on payroll), and wholesalers/transportation will give bulk purchase discounts. Unless your local police and firefighters are staffed by robots (always a possibility), imagine City Hall telling them that they now have to do the same job, only much better, and with a pay cut. Oh, and we’re firing one-in-three of their employees. Society tried hat in Silicon Valley (with choppy results), I don’t think you want to try it with ambulances.

Crag Nordal: “I am an Evangelical Christian who will defend and protect Israel, protect innocent human life from conception to birth, and to natural death, defend and protect marriage between a man and a woman, restore Christian and Jewish morals and ethics to our public schools, and protect religious freedoms. I vow to enforce and enhance border security, build that wall, protect and defend our 2nd Amendment as an NRA life member, and wok to shrink government daily and drain that swamp. I believe I have a conviction from God, to enter this race. I ask that you consider my moral character and conviction above any other experience or attributes. Nothing is more important in selecting our leaders in in the Congress of the United States of America. Our country is engaged in a spiritual battle between the guiding force of moral law and those that are working to remove God from every aspect of our society. We need Christian moral leaders to stand up and fight for the God given rights that our Founding Fathers based our Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. In the creation of this great country God and His laws were relied on to form the greatest founding documents of any country ever formed by men, and thereby the greatest country ever conceived. The United States was formed to be God’s hammer in this world to contain and destroy evil.” Holy shit (almost literally), is there a lot to discuss - I included all of it because every time I thought I’d gotten to the funny/pertinent point, it went on, like a Harry Potter book . First of all, even though you get looney-tune candidates like this and parts of the GOP that always like to nod to the idea of instituting a theocracy, let’s get that out of the way; this is basic civics, First Amendment expressly forbids the idea of instituting a state religion. Speaking of which, even if that were legally possible, whose religion? When he simultaneously restores Jewish and Christian ethics to the schools, will bacon be allowed in those schools? You get a different answer depending on if you go to church on Saturday or Sunday (which is also something different Christian sects have different ideas on). For the purposes of brevity, I’ll have to just say, everyone’s welcome to their own religion, but the institution of a theocracy - while appealing in theory - would be horrific, brutal, and possibly genocidal (I’ll admit I like the idea of communism, in theory, but I’ve seen enough of the results in the real world to know it’s not a good idea). Also, I appreciate his desire to look after Israel, which is always a positive attribute when you’re voting for someone to look after your own country’s interests (I know there’s a tenuous Biblical connection, but, come on, guys, Isarel’s gotta start fending for itself)(the flip side of hat sentiment would be, “We can talk about Israel when every American has a job, home, and healthcare”). And there’s “I believe I have a conviction from God.” We all have convictions, maybe some of them come from God, but most are personal. Unless he means “I believe I have a mission from God.” Which is more grammatically correct, and, compared to the rest, no crazier or dumber. BTW, I feel like I have to put out a disclaimer about religion and say that I don’t really care if you’re religious, or, as long as it’s not hurting anyone to what extent your religion informs policy proposals (and I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to determine exactly where one ends and the other begins; our minds just aren’t built that way) - there’s a massive difference between that and standing up in the middle of church (let alone Congress) and shouting, “GOD COMMANDS ME TO CAST OUT THE UNWORTHY.” I do like his demand that we judge him exclusively on his faith and not on what he says, does, or anything else that might involve objective reality. Oh, and that bit about “God’s hammer in this world” really upset me when I first read it, and I couldn’t figure why, until I remembered this quote, “ "I am the Flail of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you. “ which is attributed to Genghis Khan (even if you think the temporary stability and increased trade in Asia as a result of the Mongol Empire is awesome, remember that 40-60 million people died due to his campaigns and policies)(the Mongols tended to obliterate cropland, so whoever they didn’t kill usually starved).

Robert Pendleton MD, PhD - Surgeon/Biochemist/Small Businessman/Visual Artist: “ My name is Robert Pendelton Md PhD and I feel a calling to awaken the apathetic and unite disenfranchised moderates. I am an eye-surgeon, biochemist, small businessman, and visual artist, and the K9USA Party is my vision for a better world. K9 is a political party and philosophy of decision-making based upon the attributes of dogs that make “man’s best-friend” so special: Unconditional Love, Simple Needs, and Readiness to Defend. Adapted to national politics, international politics, and our personal lives, these attributes become the nine K9 principles: Socially Progressive, Fiscally Conservative, and militarily prepared (national, Altruistic, Sovereign, and United (international), and Loving, Lean and Strong (personal).2020 Application of K9 Principles yields the “six results” of Tolerance, Security, Health, Happiness, Peace and Freedom. My “2020 Vision” is for the K9USA Party to elect a majority of representatives (50% women) to the United States Congress and Presidency by the year 2020... Donkeys and elephants have failed. It’s time for dogs to lead.” I have only just heard of this man and I love him.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

An Eclipse of True Christianity – Sun Myung Moon and the FFWPU / Unification Church

By Gabrielle Devenish     Christian Post Reporter     Nov 26, 2011

The “Christian” organization you are supporting may very well be a cult.

The Unification Church, otherwise known as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity or the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owns or is affiliated with several organizations, many with Christian-sounding names.

The organization itself “uses Christian terminology and categories, but the definitions and meanings are totally different,” said Fred Miller of True Light Educational Ministry in Shirley, N.Y.

Kurt Goedelman, founder of Personal Freedom Outreach, an apologetics ministry that deals with cults, told The Christian Post, “They claim to be Christian but they deny all tenets of Christianity.”

The movement rose to its peak in the 1970s, when the hippie generation embraced the Unification message of peace and love.

“When the hippie culture became popular in the 60s, young people turned to alternative religions and one of the new religions was the Unification Church. Moon got enormous attention through his support of Richard Nixon and his followers worked zealously to bring people in to the movement,” James Beverley, professor of Christian Thought and Ethics at Tyndale University, said in an interview with CP. Followers are sometimes termed “Moonies” due to the founder’s last name, though Miller noted that they consider this term offensive.

“Back then he (Moon) was drawing the kids in. You could see them standing on corners selling roses and trinkets,” said Miller, who has been studying cults for 20 years.

"The Unification movement was popular in the 70s and 80s but membership has gone downhill in the United States and Canada and most parts of the world,” Beverley noted, in part because of Moon’s conviction of tax fraud [and document forgery]. However, “Moon has many followers in South Korea and Japan.”

Despite the Unification promotion of peace and love, the movement is not a Christian organization, based on the faith’s primary tenet of having a relationship with Jesus.

“Moon claims that he’s the Messiah. In order to get to heaven, you must be married. Now I don’t know how different you can get from Christianity,” said Miller.

“He (Moon) was also actually ‘crowned’ King of Christianity,” he added.

Craig Branch, director of the Apologetics Resource Center, called the Unification Church “a pseudo-Christian cult,” in an email to CP.

Beverley agreed. “If cult refers to a group that claims to be Christian but is far, far away from clear, main biblical teaching then the Unification Church fits the description,” he said.

“Part of (the Rev. Sun Myung) Moon's strategy was/is to form conservative political group alliances and therefore credibility with traditional conservative Christians, which unfortunately ... had some apparent endorsements from notable Christian leaders. For example the conservative newspaper, The Washington Times, is owned by Moon,” said Branch. The Rev. Jerry Falwell has also been tied with Moon, and interestingly, said Miller, “Ninety-five percent of the sushi in American restaurants is coming out of his factory.” LINK

Many of these have Christian-sounding titles, such as the Christian Heritage Foundation, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the National Prayer and Fast Committee or the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy – the Unification Church is affiliated with all.

“The Unification movement retains the outline, though not always the substance, of classical Christian doctrine,” Beverley states in his book, The Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions. “Divine Principle, the famous Unification ‘Bible,’ has been the centerpiece in Unification evangelism and in-house teaching.”

Divine Principle was penned by the Rev. Moon, with a disciple [Hyo-won Eu], and published in 1966. But “Moon has always made it clear that his ongoing teachings and sermons themselves constitute the most important source of modern revelation,” the book clarifies.

“The Unification Movement would see the Bible as an errant book,” Kurt Goedelman, of PFO, pointed out in an interview with CP.

Theologians seem to agree on other key areas where Unificationist teaching clearly departs from Scriptural Christianity: the Fall, the Trinity (including denying Jesus’ sinless nature) and the resurrection of Christ.

“Moon denies the Trinity, minimizes the sovereignty of God, and teaches salvation based partly on human works, including payment for liberating ancestors," Beverley explained.

Also, “The Unification Church (Sun Myung Moon) teaches that mankind’s Fall was twofold: (1) spiritual and (2) physical,” said Ric Walston, president of Columbia Evangelical Seminary of Washington, in an email to CP.

“(1) The Spiritual Fall: The Unification Church teaches that God wanted Adam and Eve to mature to the point of spiritual perfection before they engaged in sex and had children. If they had done this, they would have been ‘True Parents’ and they would have had perfect children, and, thus, they would have established the kingdom of God on earth,” he wrote. “But, Lucifer seduced Eve and had spiritual sexual relations with her. Their spirit bodies committed fornication. This is what caused the ‘Spiritual Fall.’”

Walston continued:

“(2) The Physical Fall: The Unification Church teaches that in her effort to right this wrong, Eve seduced Adam and they had physical sex. But, Eve was motivated by ‘satanic love’ and Adam and Eve’s children (and all children thereafter) were children of the devil. This physical, sexual union between Adam and Eve is the ‘Physical Fall’ of mankind.”

[“Do you see it? Adam and Eve were husband and wife before the Fall, not brother and sister.”]

Walston said that the belief system teaches “Jesus was [the] only person since the Fall who was without sin and so he was to redeem mankind both spiritually and physically. But, Jesus failed his divine mission.”

Instead of getting married and having children, thereby redeeming humanity “both spiritually and physically,” Jesus died, Walston said.

[Sun Myung Moon’s 1952 Divine Principle states Jesus was married. Moon later changed the script.]

“So, Jesus only redeemed humanity spiritually by dying on the cross; and, now, Sun Myung Moon is the second coming of ‘Christ’ to redeem mankind physically.”

Branch also explained, “Sun Myung Moon claims to have received the revelation that he was to fulfill what Jesus did not do.” LINK

PFO director Goedelman summed, “Only devotion to Moon and his wife can bring salvation.”

"The Unification Church centers on Sun Myung Moon as the key Savior and Lord. Jesus is viewed ultimately as someone who failed in his original mission. Unificationists focus on Moon and his Divine Principle and his ongoing teaching. Christians focus on Jesus and the Bible and the Gospel as given by Jesus and his original disciples," Beverley stated.

Because followers are so heavily indoctrinated and highly devoted to Moon, it is hard to reach them with any other message.

“Defectors are extremely exiled,” Miller noted. “One leader in the Unification church told me that he believed in true Scripture, but if he left the church, ‘I lose my wife, I lose my job, I lose my family, I lose everything.’”

Beverley stressed, “The way to win the Unificationists is through love not coercion.”

"Followers of Sun Myung Moon are usually highly committed to Unification teachings. Consequently, there is not much openness to evangelical Christian faith,” he said. “However, the Unification Church is going through a crisis now because of the split between Moon's oldest and youngest sons. Further, there are increasing signs of doubt about Moon himself, given the clear evidence of his own failures and those of his family. Given these realities, Christians can witness with love and patience about the supremacy of Jesus as the only Savior and Lord."

Miller agreed.

“Generally, when I approach any cult member, I don’t tell them their religion is wrong. I take a more confused approach: ‘Wait a minute, I don’t understand, you believe this, but your Scripture says this.’”

He said that when regarding the Unification Church, Christians need to keep in mind Matthew 24 and Luke 13.

“For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many” (Matt 24:5).

“Many will knock on the door, saying Lord, Lord, open unto us, but He will reply, ‘I don't know you or where you come from'” (Luke 13:25).

Moon: “Christianity is an organization of idiots”

It is indeed official UC teaching that Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene

Sun Myung Moon’s plans to impregnate Mrs. Jesus back in 1978

How “God’s Day” was established by Sun Myung Moon in 1968

In 1948 Moon was arrested for bigamy, sent to Heungnam prison and excommunicated

Jesus ‘Bows to Moon’ Spirit Revelation and the Unification Church by James A. Beverley

Young-oon Kim joined, but it ended in tears and flames

Sun Myung Moon and his anti-Semitism

Shamanism is at the heart of Sun Myung Moon’s church

The six ‘wives’ of Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon makes me feel ashamed to be Korean

[moments777]

What are the pros and cons of attending a mega-church (megachurch)?"

A “megachurch” is defined as a Protestant church that has an average of 2,000 or more regular attendees to weekend services.

Megachurch demographics: The composition of the megachurch has changed in the last decade. Ten years ago, megachurches were comprised mostly of baby boomers (the post-World War II generation born between 1946 and 1964) with children. As baby busters (born in the generation following the baby boom when the birth rate fell dramatically) had their own families and megachurch singles’ ministries developed, the demographic has grown much younger. Income and education levels of megachurch congregants tend to be higher than for those in smaller churches. Megachurches tend to have twice as many visitors as other churches. Over two-thirds of congregants have attended for less than five years, while nearly half of traditional church congregants have attended for more than ten. Members of megachurches are more likely to hold evangelical beliefs, study the Scriptures on their own, and believe in the importance of sharing their faith. Megachurches also tend to be the most multi-ethnic of all congregations.

Megachurch denominations and beliefs: Roughly one third of all megachurches are non-denominational, and one fourth of all megachurches are Baptist. Over half are evangelical. Interestingly enough, the larger the church, the more likely their doctrine is to be conservative and Bible-based (at least in a very broad sense of what it means to be conservative). According to George Barna, this may be because traditional-minded conservatives, those who value boundaries and rules, are more able to work together for a common goal.

Megachurch health: Attendance in and financial support of megachurches is actually climbing, while traditional-sized churches are struggling. Again, George Barna points out that conservatives tend to define success by numbers, and people with higher education and income would naturally take more ownership in what is perceived as a successful organization. But although megachurches are, in general, doing well financially, their individual congregants tend to give less. A megachurch’s larger numbers means their finances can be used more efficiently to provide more services for a greater number of people.

Megachurch environment: Megachurch worship styles are usually contemporary and professional-quality, although they may have great variety between their different services. They tend to use technology in the worship service and are more likely to support a variety of artistic expressions of worship such as drama and dance. Many megachurches manage their growth by expanding to other geographical locations and broadcasting the pastor’s message from the central site. Smaller churches will embrace technology as their budgets and culture deem appropriate. Most megachurches emphasize small groups as a way of building and maintaining interpersonal relationships, something difficult to do in the main services.

Megachurch ministries and programs: Megachurches offer many more opportunities to serve. Attendees can pick and choose their ministries and the groups they’d like to participate in. On the other hand, it is easier to regularly attend services and still not know anyone; new parishioners need to be proactive about finding a place in the church. Coffee shops are becoming ubiquitous, but many megachurches also provide preschools, recovery and addiction groups, and licensed counselors. They may also host musical concerts and conferences. Smaller churches are usually limited by their resources and facilities, although they can join together with other churches to provide some of these services. Because of the services offered, parents of young families and young singles are more likely to go to a larger church.

Megachurch leadership: Many megachurches are driven by an energetic senior pastor with a strong personality. A megachurch led by a spiritually mature, Bible-dedicated pastor can remain healthy for years. If the pastor leaves, whether due to scandal, retirement, or just moving on, the church may not survive intact very well. Megachurches are often defined by their senior pastor, and transition can be difficult.

Smaller churches, often comprised of several long-attending families, are less dependent on the pastor for their internal atmosphere. Smaller churches tend to rely on their parishioners more, and the parishioners have more of an impact on the tenor and life of the church. This can be fulfilling as parishioners see how they have a personal impact on the identity of the congregation. It can also be overwhelming if the church is struggling financially.

Megachurch culture: Interestingly, although megachurches were first developed by baby boomers, megachurch trends in attendance, participation, and leadership all reflect the growing influence of the baby buster generation. Busters are more likely to take responsibility for their own beliefs instead of allowing an organization to define them. Because of this, they are generally more committed to the church when their needs are being met (hence the high ministry participation rate), but are more apt to leave and find another church when they are not (hence the low long-term membership rate). In addition, busters are more likely to be loyal to an individual or individuals than to an organization—reflected in the megachurch’s reliance on a single personality.

Obviously, the biggest difference between a megachurch and a traditional church is the size. From the off-duty policemen directing traffic in the multi-acre parking lot and the huge sanctuary with stadium seating, to the warren of hallways leading to children’s Sunday school rooms, megachurches, by their nature, must be big. This provides more opportunities to serve and a wider variety of ministries, but also a greater chance an individual will get lost in the crowd.

The choice between attending a megachurch or a more traditional, smaller church is a personal one. While the above descriptions are based on statistical analysis, there are churches of all sizes that provide sound biblical teaching and opportunities for spiritual growth. All Christian churches should preach the gospel and the headship of Christ. The ministries available should be those that edify and provide service opportunities for the attendees. There is nothing in Scripture that states the ideal size of a local congregation. It is the presence of God that makes a church, not the number of people.

🙏✝️🧎🏻‍♀️🐑

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Greetings, people. Today we’re going to have a super nice and respectful chat about a recent column from David Brooks of The New York Times.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): …

Nate drank his Gatorade.

micah: The column: “The End of the Two-Party System.” Can someone give us a fair summary of Brooks’ argument?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): The summary is that we need the Reasonable Center Party, which happens to have exactly the same policy positions that Brooks has and would be enormously successful if only anyone bothered to create it.

micah: I said “fair.”

clare.malone: Brooks brings up the rise of basically what he’s categorizing as tribal politics, and compares it to European trends from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

He says that, at some point, conservatives and liberals will split themselves between true philosophical conservatives and liberals, and then the people who are the tribal conservatives and tribal liberals.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): A more generous summary might be that Brooks feels the Republican Party is too Trumpish and the Democratic Party is too stuck on race- and gender based-politics, and we need another party for people who don’t like those two ideologies.

micah: OK, I don’t want this chat to just be bashing Brooks’s argument; I want to talk about third parties. So let’s get the argument-demolishing out of the way …

There’s a ton wrong in this article, right?

natesilver: I mean, the main problem is that he doesn’t understand how parties work.

Which is a pretty big problem if you’re writing a column about parties.

I like Brooks, by the way (I really do) — this just wasn’t one of his best efforts.

perry: So, first, he points to the good old days of the 1990s. But as Julia Azari has written, we’ve always had very intense political conflict, it’s just more partisan now. Moreover, the 1990s were not great — as we knew back then but are learning more now — if you were, say, a woman trying to advance in many fields or an African-American who dealt with the criminal justice system.

Second, the pre-Trump Republican Party he describes skips over the racialized politics of, for example, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

micah: Yeah, this description of the GOP seems waaaaay off:

In the years after Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party was defined by its abundance mind-set. The key Republican narratives were capitalist narratives about dynamic entrepreneurs and America’s heroic missions. The Wall Street Journal editorial page was the most important organ of conservative opinion. The party’s views on other issues, like immigration, were downstream from confidence in the abundant marketplace and the power of the American idea.

What about all the racialized law-and-order stuff?

clare.malone: My real problem with the article is that he doesn’t really prove his case.

He says at the very end of it, in a single paragraph:

Eventually, conservatives will realize: If we want to preserve conservatism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors. Liberals will realize: If we want to preserve liberalism, we can’t be in the same party as the clan warriors.

But wait … will they realize this? What about hyper-partisanship? And check this out from Pew:

natesilver: The article also skips over the importance of “values voters” and the evangelical movement to the George W. Bush coalition. (And to the Reagan coalition too.)

micah: But, Nate, explain how you think the article misunderstands how parties work.

natesilver: Du. Ver. Ger’s. Law.

Bam!

OK, that’s a pretty obscure reference. But its point is that party systems are heavily influenced by electoral structures.

You usually get two major parties, or maybe three, in first-past-the-post systems like the U.S. uses. Those European systems he’s talking about — where you have lots of viable parties — mostly have proportional representation.

It should really be “Duverger’s reasonably reliable empirical regularity” and not “Duverger’s law,” but it’s a pretty useful heuristic.

clare.malone: What a sentence.

My question is, when does Brooks think all of this is going to happen?

That is, is this something he thinks will come down the pike in 2020 (aka, David Brooks is a stan for Kasich 2020)?

Or is this something 25 years in the future?

natesilver: It will happen once more people read his columns and join the Reasonable Center.

micah: OK, so he sorta bungles parties and bungles recent U.S. political history, but let’s talk about the force he thinks will spur a viable third party …

Isn’t his argument like: People are getting really partisan and so therefore people will break out of partisanship?

That seems … wrong?

Or am I misunderstanding the argument?

natesilver: It’s not necessarily wrong to think that partisanship could abate. It does tend to ebb and flow. And it’s at a high end of the historical range now.

clare.malone: It’s really hard to build a party structure — state-level offices/organizers/money — which is one of the reasons that people tend to stay within the two major parties.

Like, if you wanted to launch a legitimate third-party bid, it would not be something that could happen overnight. The Libertarian Party has been trying for decades, and they’ve only recently been racking up margins that made a dent.

natesilver: And/but/also, the two-party system is pretty adaptable. Does the Republican Party under Trump look a lot different than the Republican Party under Reagan? Sure. But that’s why parties work!

clare.malone: Right. Parties shift priorities. The modern Republican Party emerged under Herbert Hoover. So maybe it won’t break apart now, it’ll just shift to a new iteration.

perry: I was thinking out loud about this before the chat, but the last new, big major party in America was in the 1850s, right? Lincoln’s Republican Party. It replaced the Whigs in many ways.

Trump’s rise is a major crisis to Republicans like Brooks and lots of other scholars who view Trump as kind of the worst possible type of president. So the idea is a Gov. John Kasich-like figure rises to create a new kind of party that is an alternative to Trumpism. I didn’t think that was impossible in October 2016. But it seems much more implausible now, since Republican voters broadly like Trump and it’s not clear that stopping Trump is some clarion call for people outside of the Democratic Party and the Acela corridor.

micah: Yeah, so that’s key: Is there demand/desire among Americans for a third party?

natesilver: Again, a lot of this is just that David Brooks had a party (the GWB-era GOP) that he once mostly agreed with and now he doesn’t have one. Which is annoying for David Brooks but doesn’t really provide much evidence either way in terms of broader public sentiment. There’s been a gradual uptick in the number of people who identify as independent, but it’s really quite gradual and quite mild:

micah: But that’s party identification … people do say they want a third party!

perry: I think there’s demand for changes in politics: a more populist economic strain and a more nativist strain. But it feels like the former is happening in both parties (Trump, Bernie Sanders) and the latter in the GOP with Trump.

In other words, we are seeing huge changes in politics, but they are within in the parties. (And in the opposite direction of where Brooks is, since he is not populist or nativist.)

natesilver: Yeah, exactly. Basically, Brooks is a Democrat now and doesn’t want to admit it.

micah: Explain that Gallup chart though.

clare.malone: I do think it’s fascinating that Americans say they want a third party.

And yet … where is it?

Maybe if the U.S. had less money involved in politics, you’d see more parties.

natesilver: I wrote something once about how Trump himself was essentially a third-party candidate. His platform during the campaign was quite different than John McCain’s or Mitt Romney’s — although he has arguably governed as a much more traditional Republican.

But part of the issue that Americans don’t want a third party — they want their third party.

perry: So, here’s a smarter take on third parties from Lee Drutman at Vox:

Yes, third parties in American politics are kamikaze missions. Because of our single-winner plurality system of elections, third parties almost never gain representation.

And yes, a serious third-party conservative challenge to Republicans would help Democrats in the short term, by siphoning off votes from Republicans.

But each month that the Republican Party has a leader who can’t conceal his overt racism, who calls the media the enemy of the people, is a month in which voters who identify as Republican have to update their worldview to fit with their partisan identity. Only losing, and losing bigly, will break this Republican partisan trajectory.

One more excerpt from Drutman:

Perhaps you like the idea of starting a Conscientious Conservative Party, but don’t like the idea of losing and tipping the balance of power decisively to Democrats. In that case, maybe you could get on board with changing electoral laws to make it easier for third parties.

Perhaps you could get behind the Fair Representation Act, introduced last year in the House, which would move us toward a proportional voting system by creating multi-member districts with ranked-choice voting. That means that even if the Conscientious Conservative Party could only get about 15 percent nationally, it would get some seats in the House — possibly enough to be a pivotal voting bloc for control of the chamber.

Or if that feels too bold, how about just straight-up ranked-choice voting, which would give people the chance to vote for the Conscientious Conservative Party and then list either the Democrat or the Republican as their second choice, ensuring that they could express their true preference without wasting their vote, and putting some pressure on both Democrats and Republicans to court Conscientious Conservatives to earn their second-choice votes.

The point is, third-party votes don’t have to be wasted votes. They’re only wasted votes because our electoral system makes them so.

natesilver: Yeah, look, I don’t want to go overboard in totally dismissing the idea of a third party. Also, independent presidential candidates can sometimes succeed irrespective of a more sustainable third party.

But as Perry says, a lot of the changes happen within parties. And independents fall into maybe three different categories — including lots of people on the “far left” and the “far right,” not just Reasonable Centrists.

micah: No one has yet explained to me what gives with that Gallup chart, though. If 61 percent of people think a third party is needed, what’s getting in the way?

Brooks is speaking for the masses!

natesilver: Because among that 61 percent, there’s 21 percent who want the Reasonable Center Party, 20 percent who want the Green Party, and 20 percent who want the America First Party

clare.malone: I mean, there’s no high-profile candidate from a third party. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are too fringe. And their parties don’t have enough money. So no one except people who read sites like FiveThirtyEight ever vote for them.

micah: Don’t stereotype our readers!

clare.malone: Sorry, readers.

micah: Let’s do a poll.

If you're a @FiveThirtyEight reader, please answer this question:

Have you ever voted for a third party?

— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) February 15, 2018

Anyway, how could we get more parties? Structural change, as Drutman wrote?

perry: I think so — it’s the structure of our electoral system that gets in the way.

natesilver: Yeah, see, Brooks should really be writing about the need for ranked-choice voting.

You’d probably wind up with slightly more fluid, centrist parties, although maybe not with more parties.

perry: Well, the parties would have to vote for structural change, and I don’t see that happening.

I think I could see an Emmanuel Macron-style situation happening in the U.S.

clare.malone: Macron is basically a Michael Bloomberg type but with less experience. Way less.

natesilver: Yeah. I’d put the odds of “independent candidate wins one of the next four presidential elections” quite a bit higher than “there’s a new major party within 16 years.”

perry: If, say, Sanders and Trump are the nominees in 2020, could the Reasonable Centrist Party do better? Macron is a centrist in policy but has a personality cult around him. Or had one.

clare.malone: I mean, if Sanders wanted, he could lean into the Democratic Socialist Party thing and try to build that out. It probably wouldn’t yield him the presidency in his lifetime, but it would perhaps bear fruit decades down the line. A delayed-gratification legacy.

micah: Sanders doesn’t seem the type for delaying gratification.

perry: Take Arnold Schwarzenegger in California in that very odd California 2003 environment. I felt like he could have won as an independent.

natesilver: But in the case where Sanders has won the Democratic nomination, he’d look like a more “traditional” Democrat by the time the general election rolled around. And the Democratic Party is moving in his direction anyway.

clare.malone: Right. Sanders realized that you need the big party in order to succeed. Even if you hate their guts.

natesilver: Could someone more radical than Sanders win the Democratic nomination? Maybe. Or a Sanders who also had lots of personal liabilities?

micah: OK, so if we all think that it’s much more likely that one of the two major parties will shift in a big way than that a third party will emerge, what could that shift(s) look like?

perry: Those shifts already happened to some extent. And the people who lost out on the them are the Jim Webb types in the Democratic Party and the Bill Kristol/Brooks types in the GOP.

micah: One hundred percent agree on GOP, but are we really ready to declare the Democratic Party fully shifted too?

In other words, is asymmetric polarization more symmetrical now?

clare.malone: Oh, Democrats got stuff a-brewing — though because they lost, it’s a less dramatic fight. But the party, in addition to some demographic changes, is much more liberal than it used to be:

natesilver: Neither party has fully shifted, but the Democratic Party is earlier in its process of shifting, I think.

perry: I’m just having a really hard time seeing the Kristol/Brooks wing retaking the GOP. I think, like Nate said, those people are basically Democrats now. And they should try to push the Democrats to be less-identity-ish.

natesilver: In terms of the Democratic Party shifting, the key question isn’t, “What does David Brooks want?” but, “What do young black and Hispanic voters want?”

micah: So, yeah, you two just identified the tension there, right?

clare.malone: Big ol’ tent, huh?

Big enough for Brooks and Kristol.

micah: It would have to be a huge tent!

Brooks describes the Republican Party of the 1980s without one mention of race — getting Brooks-esque voters in the same tent with liberal Democrats is gonna be tricky.

clare.malone: I mean, those guys are basically European conservatives, to go back to the Brooks point about European politics. And their being in the party for a while could, in 10 years, push the more left-leaning people to start their own thing.

Eventually the tent will get too crowded and some people will have to go to the overflow section.

natesilver: Right now, opposition to Trump unites white urban neo-liberals with white democratic socialists with black and Hispanic voters. You’d have a lot of tensions within that coalition down the road, though.

perry: Brooks and the other conservative anti-Trump voices have resonance, in part, because some Democrats at the elite level are wary of the identity stuff too but can’t say so publicly. (Let’s say Sanders and Biden, if you look at their immediate post-election comments.) But I think a party that is only about 25 percent white men doesn’t really care what Brooks thinks. The Democratic Party is going to get more Sanders-like, I think, in the short term. And this is going to frustrate people like Brooks, who should become Democrats. But could Biden win the 2020 nomination on a kind of unity platform? Maybe.

It feels like Brooks’s best hope is that the Democratic Party, in some kind of “Save America from Trump” move, embraces a style of politics that Jeff Flake, John McCain, etc., agree with but does not piss off young voters, minorities, women, socialists, Sanders types.

In other words, the parties really sort along immigration lines — the people with Trumpish views on race/immigration in one party, the others in a second party.

natesilver: Obama, in some ways, united all these different groups together in 2008 because George W. Bush was so unpopular. So if Trump is really, really unpopular by 2020, a Biden type could do great.

In the long run, I don’t think you can avoid these tensions, though.

perry: That’s a great point. The 2008 Obama campaign was a kind of unity ticket. He couldn’t recreate that in 2012.

micah: OK, and to wrap up: Is there any chance that the Republican Party becomes the party Brooks wants it to be?

clare.malone: That’s a negatory. At least in any sort of near-term future. I don’t think you can just forget about the forces in the party that manifested Trump.

perry: If Trump and Putin had a July 2016 phone call during which Trump told him to hack Podesta’s email, that call becomes public and Trump is impeached and removed from office … then maybe.

micah: See, I disagree with that, Perry.

perry: You think Putin made the hacking suggestion first?

micah: LOL.

The Trumpism in Republicanism predates Trump and — to a first approximation — would postdate him too, wouldn’t it?

natesilver: I’m on Perry’s side. If Trump is perceived to be a failure, there could be a reasonably sharp counterreaction to Trump. (Although, I’m thinking “failure” more in the sense of “he loses re-election,” not “he gets impeached,” which raises a different set of issues.)

micah: So, if Trump loses re-election, Republican primary voters suddenly move to the middle on immigration?

natesilver: STRAW MAN MICAH IS BACK

micah: Whose team are you on, Clare?

clare.malone: I’m not sure about my team. I guess I could see, in the case of a Trump flameout, Trumpians getting completely steamrollered by national establishment figures.

But then you’ve got a part of your base that is wildly unhappy with you. I guess they either leave or just become pains in your asses for the rest of time.

I’m not sure I’m on a team. I’m agnostic.

natesilver: Voters (maybe not voters in the GOP, but voters overall) are already moving left on immigration. The reaction to Trump has been fairly thermostatic, as the political scientists like to say.

micah: What does thermostatic mean?

natesilver: Public opinion tends to move in the opposite direction of the president’s policy preferences.

perry: But while I don’t think the Republican Party will change in the short term, I don’t rule out a strong third-party candidate doing well in 2020. There is some broad dissatisfaction with American politics that someone could capitalize on. Someone more like Oprah than Kasich, but I think it won’t be either one of them. I don’t know who that person is.

micah: OK, I’ll say this: Partisanship is sooooooo strong now that maybe it allows for more ideological/policy movement and flexibility. We’ve seen Democrats and Republicans flip on the FBI. We’ve seen Republicans flip on free trade, Russia and Putin.

So, in that sense, maybe it’s easier to imagine the GOP becoming more to Brooks’ liking pretty quickly.

If, in three years, a set of circumstances comes together so that the “right” set of partisan positions for Republicans is Brooks-ian, I don’t really have much doubt that partisan voters would support those positions — in the same way Republicans became anti-free-trade almost overnight.

clare.malone: I’ll buy that somewhat.

The FBI thing is really interesting. A good point.

perry: That’s a good ending point, I basically agree with Micah’s take there.

natesilver: Yeah, I hate to say it, but I basically agree with Micah too. The very intense partisanship we see in the country today is a sign that the parties are quite healthy, whether or not it’s good for democracy.

micah: OMG!

Let me just marinate in this moment for a little while.

[glittergummicandypeach]

Republican Josh Hawley soils the Barrett hearing with his special talent for twisting religion

Judge Amy Coney Barrett has done a fine job of acting at her confirmation hearings to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. She has played the role of a reasoned jurist who is not the extremist anti-choice zealot that we all can plainly see she is.

But the Oscar for Best Supporting Bad Actor will likely go to Senator Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, the youngest and arguably most dangerous member of the U.S. Senate. Hawley is on the short list of 2024 candidates to carry the mantle for the Republican Party’s fanatical right wing.

In a moment for the ages in the annals of straw-man demagoguery. Hawley falsely accused Democrats of anti-Catholic bigotry in advance of their questioning of Barrett. Hawley, an Evangelical, conveniently ignored the fact that five of the Supreme Court’s justice are practicing Catholics (and a sixth, Neil Gorsuch, was raised as one).

“This pattern and practice religious bigotry by Democrats on the committee must stop!” bellowed Hawley, ignoring the detail it hadn’t started. In fact, no Democrat went anywhere near the subject of Barrett’s religious views, nor did they intend to fall into the clumsily placed trap Republicans were trying to set.

That didn’t prevent Hawley from earning a state-TV victory tour, where no less than Tucker Carlson, the Grand Guru of Grievance, wept along with Hawley’s passionate pleas for the Devil Democrats to call off their unholy crusade to bring down God. The irony of doing the dirty work of heathen Donald Trump in the name of the Divine, went unnoticed.

Hawley validated Esquire Magazine’s January description of him as “the thirstiest man in Washington D.C.” As that article had noted, “the most dangerous place to stand in Washington D.C. is any place between Senator Josh Hawley and a live microphone.”

The fiasco was rooted in Barrett’s 2017 Senate hearings to become a federal appeals-court judge. Among her unapologetic instances of publicly associating faith and law, Barrett had co-authored a 1998 law review article “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases.”

Since Barrett was passionately and publicly an anti-choice extremist, it wasn’t exactly a stretch for senators to wonder how her faith might inform her judicial temperament. That felt mostly to pro-choice Democrats, but there also was a skeptic from the other side–Republican Senator Ted Cruz–who worried allowed that her faith not impede the death penalty. That one escaped Hawley’s notice.

This time, Hawley had the chair pulled out from him in the Senate. He attacked Democrats in advance for something they had no intention of doing.

In a normal world, Hawley would have been roundly chastised for that rubbish. We don’t reside in one of those, however, so Howley raked in precious political capital for 2024, his only sincere concern.

It’s a little-known but notable fact that this is not Hawley’s first rodeo when it comes to distorting reality shamelessly when it comes to a judicial nominee. Last year, Hawley derailed the nomination of Michael Bogren to a federal judgeship using some of the most twisted illogic on record. Ironically, he twisted Catholicism on this one, as well.

Bogren had represented the city of East Lansing, Michigan when it was sued for banning a couple from participating in its farmers’ market after they refused to allow their orchard to be rented for same-sex weddings. That seems reasonable enough, unless you’re a homophobe like Hawley.

Bogren had argued that “the First Amendment does not create an exception to anti-discrimination laws based on religious beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be,” the Detroit News had reported.  Bogren used an analogy that a KKK member couldn’t hide behind the First Amendment to deny service to an interracial couple.

Shamelessly, Hawley pounced on the analogy with some unbelievably twisted illogic. Hawley claimed Bogren didn’t merely defend his client, but “denigrated” the orchard owners’ Catholic faith:

“To say that this family following the teachings of their church and the Scripture, that there’s ‘no distinction’ between them and the KKK, that, I think, is really beyond the pale.”

Ed Whelan, a conservative legal scholar writing for the National Review, argued that Bogren — respected on both sides of the aisle — was doing his job as a lawyer, adding that it’s wrong to hold him personally responsible for his legal advocacy.

“Do conservatives really want to embrace the general proposition that arguments that a lawyer makes on behalf of a client should, without more, be held against the lawyer?” Whelan asked. “That’s a proposition that, apart from being unsound, could redound to the detriment of conservative nominees who have defended religious liberty or pro-life legislation in unpopular contexts.”

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board criticized Hawley three times in three months, arguing he set a “precedent conservatives will regret.”

But guess what? Hawley was successful in killing Bogren’s nomination. He learned his lesson about the benefit of exploiting emotions irrationally when it comes to religious faith.

The larger question is whether Americans will learn any lessons from watching Josh Hawley ply his craft.

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