Dietrich Bonhoeffer Had the Perfect Description of Trump Voters

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Although he was executed by the Nazis in 1945, German theologian and Nazi opponent accurately described the type of person who would rally to Donald Trump's standard - he had experienced the German equivalent - and now comprises the base of the Republican Party.   For those "friends" who don't know, Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident who was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned and later he was transferred to a Nazi concentration camp. He was executed by hanging on 9 April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing.

One friend noted that "willfully ignorant" is less offensives that the term stupidity.  My response?  I am at the point where I'm not sweating it over offending those who want to take away my rights. Their ears and minds are closed to facts and reality.

Donald Trump’s Police State

Sadly, many Americas know very little accurate history of their own nation much less that of other nations.  This deficit of knowledge and the vulnerability it creates for demagogues to simply lie at will is becoming increasingly obvious as one watches the Republican Party swing towards fascism, especially in the person of Donald Trump who seems to believe that Americas are willing to accept a police state in exchange for "security."  It's the type of pact with the devil that many Germans accepted in the early days of the 1930's and lived to regret - assuming they and their families survived World War II intact.  If one really listens to Trump, it is frightening, especially since 75% of his "facts" are untrue.  A column in the New York Times looks at what a Trump regime could bring to America.  It's not a country in which I would want to live.  Here are excerpts:

[O]ver the last three months, in listening to plans of the Republican presidential front-runner and the views of his increasingly thuggish followers, I’m starting to have some dark fears should Donald Trump become president.

Take him at his word — albeit, a worthless thing given his propensity for telling outright lies and not backing down when called on them — Donald Trump’s reign would be a police state. He has now outlined a series of measures that would make the United States an authoritarian nightmare. Trump is no longer entertaining, or diversionary. He’s a billionaire brute, his bluster getting more ominous by the day.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before,” he said in the demagogic spiral following the Paris attacks. “And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.”

What’s he talking about? In his words, he wants to implement “the unthinkable.”

Let’s start with his most far-reaching crush of cruelty, the Trump promise to create a huge “deportation force” to storm into homes, churches, schools and businesses and round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants. In doing so, he would need an army of agents to go door-to-door, breaking up families, and snagging many citizens caught up the in the mass sweeps.

As his jackbooted minions grab legal Americans (the children born in this country, citizens per the 14th amendment) and separate them from their illegal parents, he will place them — where? In foster homes? In detention centers? In concentration camps?

He says it will take only two years for him to disrupt nearly every community in the United States, destroying thousands of businesses in the process. “I’m going to remove them so fast your head would spin.”

To go with his Deportation Force, Trump would send another wave of federal authorities out to identify, track and monitor Muslims in America. All of them? He hasn’t said. He’s building his police state on the fly. But in just a few days he went from saying he would “strongly consider” closing houses of worship (mosques), to saying he would have “absolutely no choice” but to shut them down. As for tracking Muslims through some kind a database, he’s been squishy, but also unequivocal, saying, “I would certainly implement that.”

To further clamp down in this land of the formerly free, Trump could borrow a few police state ideas from his fellow Republican presidential candidates. Mike Huckabee has suggested using federal agents to invade doctors’ offices and homes, physically preventing women from ending a pregnancy.

[A]ttend a Trump public event.   These rallies are scary spectacles of rabid brown shirts in Dockers. His followers cheer while others pummel protesters, or spit on them. A few days ago in Alabama, a black protester was punched and kicked by his supporters. Trump suggested the man had it coming.

Like any good authoritarian — Soviet or banana republic — Trump concocts plots and dark doings to scare the quivering masses. And no one on the public stage is better at the Big Lie this year than Trump. PolitiFact found that 75 percent of his so-called factual statements are “mostly or entirely false.” The other 25 percent were “half true” or “mostly true.” His score in the flat-out “true” column was zero.

The more lies he tells, the more popular he is with a large part of the Republican base that lives in a world of made-up horror and blunt force solutions.

So, hordes of Mexicans continue to rush into the United States, he says, when in fact more people are now returning to Mexico than are coming in. Syrian refugees are “pouring into the country” when barely 2,000 have been admitted. And Trump continues to say “I saw” thousands and thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11, when no such thing has ever been documented. The goal is to get you to hate them — Mexicans, Muslims, the object of all your fears.

As we enter the holidays, there is one more Trump vow to consider. “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you.” With Trump, the seasonal salutation may be mandatory, and creepy.

So why is Trump so popular with the many in the Republican Party base? Very simple.  The party base is now mostly made up of straight, white, far right Christian, white supremacists who embrace ignorance and feel threatened by anyone who is different and/or threatens their white privilege and/or their fantasy based world view (if one can even call their restricted version of reality a world view).  Trump is playing to everyone of their prejudices and making them promises just as Hitler did as he began his rise to power. The rest of us should be very, very afraid.  

"Godly Folk" Freaking Out and Lying About End of Boy Scout Gay Ban

It would almost be amusing to watch the rants of the Christofascists over the Boy Scouts of America's vote to end its ban on gay scout leaders.  The amount of hyperventilation and flying spittle is truly off the charts.  Unfortunately, these same "godly folk" who follow the Ten Nine Commandments - they don't observe the Commandment against bearing false witness and lying - are likewise off the charts in the anti-gay lies that they are disseminating.  The common thread being disseminated is that all gays are would be pedophiles and that all molestation of boys is done by gays.  The REAL truth is that HETEROSEXUAL MEN have been documented to commit the vast majority of sexual molestation.  Thus, both claims are total lies, but sadly we are indeed to a point were if these folks' lips are moving, it's about a 99.99999% likelihood that they are lying.  The big danger is that the ignorant and gullible fall for these lies and that gays will suffer violence as result.  Among those spouting this anti-gay animus are some of the usual suspects (all of whom are welcomed with open arms by the GOP):

Don Blake, president of the Virginia Christian Alliance, a coalition that encourages Christians to stand up against the rise of secular culture, told a central Virginia NBC affiliate that Christians who are involved with the Boy Scouts of America need to protect their children by either starting their own scouting programs or joining already existing programs that do not permit openly gay scout leaders.  "All the church people who believe in the Bible need to drop out of the Boy Scouts and start their own program," Blake asserted. "There are existing programs out there."

Robert Jeffress,who leads the 11,000-member Dallas First Baptist Church, urged parents to "run away" from the organization."My advice to parents who are asking me about this is: If you are concerned about the safety of your boys, you should run, not walk, away from the Boy Scouts as quickly as possible," Jeffress stated. Jeffress then contended that "100 percent" of child sex abuses cases in the Boy Scouts have been committed by "homosexuals."

Not to be outdone, anti-gay hater extraordinaire Bryan Fischer pulled out all the stops and, utterly lied about gays and sex abuse:

"The percentage of child sexual abuse cases in which men molest boys is many times higher than the percentage of adult males who are homosexual, and most men who molest boys self-identify as homosexual or bisexual." . . . . homosexuals are responsible for a staggering "one-third of the total number of child sex offenses." 

 

Ponder that: one percent of the population is responsible for 33 percent of all sex crimes against children. This is just another clear indication that there are unmistakable pathologies associated with the homosexual lifestyle. This is not a lifestyle any rational society should celebrate, endorse or promote, let alone sanction with the term "marriage."

[I]t is the height of irresponsibility to deliberately place homosexuals in positions where they have frequent access to young boys. It is inexcusable and virtually criminal.

It is the same kind of campaign of lies that the Nazis used against the Jews and that Vladimir Putin is currently employing against gays in Russia.  If you want to know why the number of "Nones" is exploding in this country, look no farther than these "godly Christians."  They are foul liars and modern day Pharisees - and most make a plush living as parasites preying on the ignorant, uneducated and gullible.  Yet people wonder why I no longer want to call myself a Christian.  Anne Rice got it right.  If this is what Christians are, count me out.