The Closed Conservative Mind

Being a "conservative" nowadays is something far different than twenty or thirty years ago when the Republican Party clearly stood for Democracy.  Now, in order to retain power, the Party will resort to all kinds of efforts to undermine democracy rather than change its agenda.  Worse yet, its current leader clearly wants to be an autocrat or monarch.   Adding in all of this is the aversion to objective facts and modern knowledge that studies indicate is a characteristic of the conservative mindset.  In contrast, the same studies show that liberals are open to new ideas and willing to change opinions based on facts and happenings. The division within America isn't only political but also in the very way facts and information is processed which leaves so-called conservatives far more likely to fall victims to true fake news, con-artists and conspiracy theories. One might say that conservatism is a mental condition, not just a political outlook.  A column in the New York Times looks at the closed nature of the conservative mind.  Here are excerpts:

In the continuing debate over whether liberals or conservatives are more open minded, whether those on the left or the right are more rigid in their thinking, a team of four Canadian psychologists studied patterns of “cognitive reflection” among Americans.

They found that a willingness to change one’s convictions in the face of new evidence was robustly associated with political liberalism, the rejection of traditional moral values, the acceptance of science, and skepticism about religious, paranormal, and conspiratorial claims.

Conversely, the authors — Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina, and James Allan Cheyne, Derek J. Koehler and Jonathan A. Fugelsang of the University of Waterloo — found that an aversion to altering one’s belief on the basis of evidence was more common among conservatives and that this correlated “with beliefs about topics ranging from extrasensory perception, to respect for tradition, to abortion, to God.”

In their forthcoming paper, “On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence,” the authors develop an eight-item “Actively Open-minded Thinking about Evidence Scale.” People taking the test are asked their level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements.

Pennycook and his co-authors concluded: People who reported believing that beliefs and opinions should change according to evidence were less likely to be religious, less likely to hold paranormal and conspiratorial beliefs, more likely to believe in a variety of scientific claims, and were more politically liberal in terms of overall ideology, partisan affiliation, moral values, and a variety of specific political opinions.

In other words, there is one more item to add to the constantly growing list of factors driving polarization in America: Those on the left and right appear to use substantially different cognitive processes to interpret events in the world around them, large and small.

[I]n “Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action,” a research report released in May 2017 by Harvard’s Kennedy School and Northeastern University: “While any group can come to believe false information, misinformation is currently predominantly a pathology of the right.” Some conservative voters “are even suspicious of fact-checking sites,” the report continued, leaving them “them particularly susceptible to misinformation.”

Liberals, they write, “perform better than conservatives on objective tests of cognitive ability and intelligence” while conservatives “score higher than liberals on measures of self-deception” and “are more likely than liberals to spread ‘fake news,’ political misinformation, and conspiracy theories throughout their online social networks.”

Separate studies of the language used by presidents — both “The Readability and Simplicity of Donald Trump’s Language,” and an analysis of the language used by the last 15 presidents on the blog Factbase — concluded that President Trump speaks at the lowest level of all those studied, . . . .

Stenner makes the case that the authoritarian revolution began in the 1960s: “Once the principle of equal treatment under the law was instituted and entrenched by means of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act,” traditional conservatism — “fidelity to the laws of the land and defense of legitimate institutions” — took a back seat to authoritarianism “as a factor driving expressions of racial, moral and political intolerance.”

Trump is determined to use authoritarian means to restore race to the core of his campaign.

Last week, Trump sent dozens of armed federal forces in camouflage to quell Black Lives Matter protests in Portland.

On July 19, Trump responded to a direct question from Chris Wallace of Fox News about whether he would “accept the election” win or lose. Trump answered: “I have to see. Look, you — I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no.”

And on July 20, Trump threatened to send more armed troops to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland to quell dissent, noting that these cities’ mayors were all “liberal Democrats.”

Put another way, Trump plans to echo George Wallace and take his stand in the schoolhouse door or, even more ominously, to use urban America as his Alamo.

Trump Cranks Religion to 11 As Impeachment Looms

No segment of American society has been more loyal to the morally bankrupt Donald Trump than evangelical Christians.  Having followed the so-called "Christian Right" - which is neither Christian nor right about anything - it's of little surprise.  Among evangelical leaders - I refer to them as "professional Christians" - it has never been about spreading the gospel message, especially how one is to care for the less fortunate, but rather all about self-enrichment and worldly power.  Their followers are similarly toxic inasmuch as their main motivations are based on animus to others rather than an embrace of Christ's message. In may ways, they and Donald Trump were made for each other: they, like Trump are frauds and their leaders little more than snake oil merchants and con-artists.  Trump seemingly saw these folks for what they are and has used promises of special rights and policies harmful to those they dislike to cement an unholy alliance.  Now, with the impeachment process intensifying, Trump has turned up his shameless courting of these morally deficit individuals.  A piece in Rewire looks at Trump's actions which are reminiscent of those of Richard Nixon when faced with the specter of impeachment.  Here are excerpts:

As Trump’s impeachment fears intensify and the House formalizes its impeachment process, the White House has cranked the religion up to eleven. On Tuesday, twenty-five evangelical megachurch leaders prayed for and with Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in a grand spectacle. So much for Jesus’s condemnation of public prayer as hypocrisy in his Sermon on the Mount. 

Then, on Thursday night, the White House announced that one of those preachers, Paula White, a televangelist, is joining the White House staff on the Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Earlier in October, Mike Pompeo and Bill Barr delivered now infamous speeches tying the administration to Christian nationalism.

This religious revival is all about impeachment. The hour-long prayer session included a standing ovation and was widely covered by Fox News and other conservative outlets, who explicitly characterized the prayers as a pushback against impeachment.

Nixon turned to religion as the Watergate wave broke over his administration. His first address to the nation about “the Watergate affair” announced the resignations of three senior staffers and the firing of White House Counsel John Dean. It was the first time a president ended a speech with the phrase “God bless America.” The phrase was not merely an offhand religious remark, but part of an overt appeal to Chrisitans all over the nation, a reminder that Nixon was one of them: “I ask for your prayers to help me in everything that I do throughout the days of my presidency. God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.” Nixon also managed to mention “Christmas”—in April—and work in the phrase “God-given rights.”

Eleven months after the first Watergate/’God Bless America’ address, Nixon’s popularity plummeted and the noose of impeachment tightened, so he set off on a public relations tour to woo southern members of the House committee in charge of that impeachment. His first stop was the Grand Ole Opry, where he closed the evening by playing “God Bless America” on the piano so that the crowd would sing along.

Nixon used religion as a political tool throughout his career. Scholars credit him with bringing evangelicals into the GOP. He and Billy Graham used each other in a toxic relationship of religion, politics, and, as tapes later showed, anti-Semitism. Like Trump, Nixon invited evangelicals into the White House and the halls of power in ways previously unseen in a country that adopted the separation of state and church as a founding principle. However, even with that baseline piety, Nixon’s public displays of religion seemed to get more ostentatious as impeachment heated up.

But why? First, there’s a realpolitik element. Trump, like Nixon, is shoring up his base of evangelical support. “Don’t worry. Your leaders still support me. I even gave one a White House salary,” he seems to be saying. This is both un-American and irreligious. When religion is used as a political weapon, it becomes weakened and tainted

The separation of state and church is regularly used to keep religion out of government. But it’s also meant to allow religion to remain free of the taint of the day-to-day political power struggle. This is why Madison wrote that “religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.” Politicians taint religion by using it as a political tool. Indeed, Madison’s writing is a prescient warning about Donald Trump. 

The second reason Trump is cranking up the religion is, as I explain in The Founding Myth, to distract the masses and cloak a criminal in the mantle of religion. Religion can be simple shorthand for tribal allegiance, but it also has the power to distract from important issues that actually affect governance and to serve as a rhetorical substitute for genuine morality.

Nixon asked people to pray for him and ended with “God bless America” to remind the nation that he was religious and therefore moral, and thus either innocent or deserving of forgiveness. Trump is doing the same with his gaggle of evangelical bootlickers. The only difference is that with Trump, evangelicals seem content to concede that he is not moral, but an “imperfect vessel” doing their god’s will. We’ll have to wait and see, as Trump continues his campaign of religious pandering, whether he’s done enough to earn the “deserving of forgiveness” label. One thing is certain, more public piety is in our future.

The Right’s Grifter Problem

Having followed the far right for over two decades, one phenomenon has been constant: groups of bogus experts and supposed lobbyists who are little more than leeches who enrich themselves by fleecing the gullible and ignorant.  Evangelical Christians (who typically have the lowest levels of education) seem to be among the easiest marks for these grifters as exemplified by both scamvangelists - think Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham and a host of others - who live the lives of multi-millionaires as they cajole those struggling financially to tithe to their organizations and "ministries." In the far right political realm, things are little better.  The ignorant and gullible are played time and time again by appeals to their bigotry and/or extremism to hand over money so the scammers and con-artists can live the good life. This situation existed long before Trump, but he has played upon the ease with which much of the so-called conservative base can be suckered.   A piece in National Review and another in New York Magazine look at this ongoing phenomenon of the right.  The National Review piece begins by providing a list of political action committees and groups that have one thing in common: they take in tons of money and very little of it ever gets to the supposed cause. Here's a sampling of what follows:

Politico didn’t specify which 33 PACs they reviewed; if their list overlaps entirely with the RightWingNews list, then the total sum listed above would be $127 million; if they don’t overlap at all, it would be $177 million. That is money that could have gone directly to candidates’ campaigns or other actions that would have advanced the conservative cause in recent cycles. But instead it went into more fundraising expenses, more overhead costs, or into the pockets of those running these PACs.

Why is the conservative movement not as effective as its supporters want it to be? Because day after day, year after year, little old ladies get called on the phone or emailed or sent letters in the mail telling them that the future of the country is at stake and that if they don’t make a donation to groups that might as well be named Make Telemarketers Wealthy Again right now, the country will go to hell in a handbasket. Those little old ladies get out their checkbooks and give what they can spare, convinced that they’re making a difference and helping make the world a better place. What they’re doing is ensuring that the guys running these PACs can enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle. Meanwhile, conservative candidates lose, kicking the dirt after primary day or the general election, convinced that if they had just had another $100,000 for get-out-the-vote operations, they might have come out on top.

What’s more, most of these PACs thrive on telling conservative grassroots things that aren’t true. Clarke didn’t want to run for Senate in Wisconsin, Laura Ingraham wasn’t interested in running for Senate in Virginia, and Allen West wasn’t running for Senate in Florida. The PACs propagate a narrative in which they’re the heroic crusaders for conservative values, secure borders and freedom, up against corrupt establishment elites . . . when they’re in fact run by those coastal political operatives and keeping most of the money for their own operations.

We can apply this beyond the realm of politics, as well. Why is America not enjoying a widespread revival of Christian values? There are a bunch of reasons, but we can start with televangelist Kenneth Copeland attempting to justify his purchase of a third private plane, a Gulfstream V.  Copeland’s excuse was that flying commercial “like getting into a long tube with a bunch of demons.” I’m pretty sure I’ve sat next to the passengers he’s describing, and we all got through it okay.

Progressives ought to be cheering the ease with which those on the right get fleeced literally daily.  The New York Magazine continues the examination of this reality and the fact that the right complained about Obama era efforts to stop the frauds:

Republicans have long complained, usually in private, that their fundraising apparatus is overrun with fraudsters. National Review’s Jim Geraghty has a column, “The Right’s Grifter Problem,” saying what many of them have been whispering. Many of President Trump’s most publicly strident loyalists are in the business of raising money for political projects that spend virtually all their funds on operating expenses. 

An unstated irony behind Geraghty’s complaint is that there is an agency tasked with overseeing the kind of misconduct he denounces: the IRS. When the first wave of tea-party scam PACs appeared, the IRS did look into them. Republicans insisted the agency was “targeting” the right for political reasons, probably at the behest of the Obama administration. While they spent years investigating the agency and making wild charges, a series of investigations by the agency’s inspector general, the Senate Finance Committee, and the Department of Justice refuted all their claims. The Obama administration had no involvement in the IRS’s enforcement priorities, and the agency was not even targeting the right at all — its criteria for regulating donors included keywords to search for activists on the left as well as the right. It was in fact clear all along the tea-party fundraising apparatus was rife with grifters. Stephanie Mencimer reported a clearheaded analysis of this in 2013, at the height of the “targeting” hysteria. But Republicans did succeed in their goal of harassing the agency into leaving political donors almost totally unscrutinized. The ironic result is that it has left their own party vulnerable to the financial parasites they rallied to protect themselves from.

The fact Republicans have rejected the conclusions of all these investigations and clung to their targeting theory tells you a lot about the intellectual environment that has proved so welcoming for grifters.

Geraghty’s column lacks any operating theory as to why Republican politics in particular has attracted so many grifters. Such types have exploited two long-standing aspects of conservative thought: a tendency toward Manichaean thinking and a rejection of neutral expertise.

Every victory for the Democratic Party or incremental extension of the welfare state is a twilight struggle to safeguard the last flickering hopes for freedom from the ravages of socialism.

These predictions are not just scare tactics. They reflect the authentic ideology of the American right, which treats liberalism as either indistinguishable from, or an unstoppably slippery slope toward, Bolshevistic central planning. But these beliefs are also very effective as scare tactics. Conservative fears that Democrats will usher in total societal collapse are good ways to scare conservatives into buying gold (an especially lucrative Obama-era conservative grift) or guns.

The right hardly has a monopoly on fearful predictions, of course. But their impact is magnified by the conservative distrust of the intellectual elite. Conservatives have spent decades training their supporters to reject the authority of bureaucrats, professors, the media, or any institution not explicitly committed to the right-wing agenda. Thus kook notions like the Laffer curve and climate-science denial have become cherished precepts of Republican Party thought.

The most supreme unstated irony of Geraghty’s complaint is that Trump himself is a grifter. This is true not only in the general sense of Trump’s lying constantly and exploiting his supporters’ loyalty, but also in the specific sense that Trump ran fraudulent business enterprises.

So it seems a little strange for Geraghty to complain that Republican grifters are letting down President Trump. Donald Trump grifted his way to the presidency and has kept on grifting. It seems positively unfair that his fellow grifters should have to stand down while he keeps wetting his beak. Geraghty complains that many tea-party groups are a “pyramid scheme,” but the essence of a pyramid scheme is that they connect a partnership of con artists with the greatest share of profits flowing to the person at the top.

The fact that the conservative media can publish a column entitled “The Right’s Grifter Problem,” and that the column will depict Donald Trump as a victim rather than a perpetrator, tells you most of what you need to know about why the phenomenon exists in the first place.

Let's hope the right never wises up! 

Donald Trump’s Amoral America

The con job of the gullible and stupid continues.

P. T. Barnum is widely credited with coining the adage "There's a sucker born every minute."  Whether he in fact coined the phrase or not, Barnum is remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Part of Barnum's success was that he recognized the reality that for a con to work, one need both (i) the entertainer/con-artist and (ii) an audience willing to be duped. All of which brings me to Donald Trump's base which falls in the latter category.  Running errands yesterday, I heard portions of Trump's address to CPAC - which in my view should stand for "crazy people acting crazy" - and was struck by both the insincerity of Trump's remarks and how stupid/intellectually dull the audience had to be to eat up the bullshit Trump was spewing. On the other hand, perhaps I should not have been surprised since evangelicals make up the core of Trumps base and studies have shown that of the various religious denominations, evangelicals as a whole have the lowest levels of educational attainment. A column in the New York Times looks at the willingness of some Americans to embrace a fraud and the amorality with which Trump has promoted himself and lied to his idiot supporters.  Here are excerpts:

Maybe the best book I read last year was “Bad Blood,” about the epic sham of the biotech start-up Theranos and its delusional creator, Elizabeth Holmes. I had trouble shaking it, and it roared back into my mind on Wednesday, when Michael Cohen testified publicly before the House Oversight Committee and retraced the mountain of lies buttressing Donald Trump’s business empire and the clouds of fiction preventing any clear view of it. This country of ours doesn’t lack for frauds . . . . We were probably bound to elevate one to the highest office in the land.

In November 2016 we did. As anyone paying close attention then knew and anyone who finally woke up over these last few ugly days must now admit, we gave the supreme prize and ultimate compliment — leadership of the most powerful nation on earth — to a man who wouldn’t know the truth if it raced toward him with sirens blaring, ran over him, then backed up and did it again; whose loyalties stand as firm as a strand of overcooked linguine; whose vanity makes Narcissus look like a mere pretender; and who will sacrifice whatever and whomever he must on the altar of his own spurious magnificence. What he lacks in moral fiber he makes up for in gilt. It sufficed to bring him his treasure and, for 72 years and counting, spare him his reckoning.

There are several kinds of success stories. We emphasize the ones starring brilliant inventors and earnest toilers. . . . . But for every ambitious person who has the goods and is prepared to pay his or her dues, there’s another who doesn’t and is content to play the con. In the Trump era and the Trump orbit, these ambassadors of a darker side of the American dream have come to the fore. What a con Holmes played with Theranos. . . . . And for a good long while it worked, which was more than could be said of the product that Theranos peddled, a magical black box that was supposed to be able, with just a few drops of blood from the prick of a finger, to screen for scores of ailments and diseases.

She was eventually found out, and faces criminal charges that could put her in prison. But there’s no guarantee of that. Meantime she lives in luxury. God bless America. Theranos was perhaps an outlier in the scope of its deceptions, but not in the deceptions themselves. . . . “As the list of start-up scandals grows, it’s time to ask whether entrepreneurs are taking ‘fake it till you make it’ too far.”

Interesting word there: fake. A president who’s a textbook study in the psychological phenomenon of projection — by which you attribute to others the flaws that you possess — uses it all the time. What did he call Cohen’s interchanges with House lawmakers on Wednesday? “A fake hearing,” of course.

Dangle the prospects of celebrity and riches, and plenty of charlatans rush forward. So it stands to reason that a country of supersize celebrity and riches would have a surfeit of charlatans, including some who see even the White House as fair game. Cohen’s testimony confirmed yet again how much pure bluster fueled Trump’s quest, and how heavily Trump’s entire career leaned on shady arithmetic, personal myth making and intimidation: all arrows abundant in the quivers of Holmes and her Silicon Valley kin.

But that testimony was also a reminder of how gullible their audiences are, how readily we all believe when we perceive some benefit in the transaction. This isn’t just the land of the fraud but the home of the knave, and Cohen implored Republican lawmakers and Trump supporters nationwide to learn from his own credulity. It takes two to bamboozle: the illusionist and the enraptured.

[W]hen Trump came down that escalator at Trump Tower, he didn’t just begin a presidential campaign. He pinched the edge of a scab on our body politic and began to tug, revealing all the racism, resentments and partisan fury beneath it. He gave us a fresh, jolting glimpse of just how much depravity and even criminality exist among the powerful (and the power-mad). Look at his own collaborators: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, David Pecker and lesser reprobates who either still serve in his administration (Alex Acosta, Jared Kushner) or did until they went too far (Tom Price, Scott Pruitt).

They’re favor traders, corner cutters, rule breakers, perk hoarders. . . . . They also have a competitive advantage: They’re without shame. There’s a whole lot you can do once you’ve slipped that tether. To the unscrupulous go the spoils.

Trump’s amorality play contradicts our paeans to the Puritan work ethic. It’s not the script that we teach our children. But with Trump in the White House, validated by tens of millions of votes, it may well be what some of them are learning.

I shudder to think the lesson my grandchildren may be learning having someone so morally bankrupt in the White House.  Honor, duty, truthfulness, and basic decency have all been thrown on the trash heap by Trump, his supporters and, of course, his Republican enablers. 

Pat Robertson: Satan Inspires Liberals To Lie About Donald Trump (And Him)

One of the downsides of living in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia is that try as the region might to attract progressive businesses and stop the brain drain of college educated locals who graduate from  college and move to more progressive cities and regions (DC and Atlanta are big rivals as is New York City), we continue to have the foul presence of Pat Robertson and his right wing creations, Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University, that make the area look like a lunatic backwater.  Now, true to form, Pat Robertson has shot off his mouth and said that Satan is behind liberals' criticisms about the GOP's would be fuhrer, Donald Trump. Having known one of Robertson's sons and his daughter-in-law in my GOP past, I keep wondering when are they going to shuffle Pat off to the attic and keep him under lock and key.  The man is more insane by the day. Right Wing Watch looks at Robertson's latest case of dementia induced verbal diarrhea.  Here are excerpts:

Today on “The 700 Club,” Pat Robertson defended GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump over his recent comment that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, nothing could be done to prevent her and her judicial nominees from doing away with gun rights unless “Second Amendment people” stop them.

Robertson blamed liberal monitoring groups for the uproar, alleging that they twisted Trump’s remarks, before he himself went ahead and altered Trump’s remarks to make them more benign.

The televangelist told co-host Wendy Griffith that he feels for his “buddy” because he has been the victim of similar hit jobs from Media Matters and People For the American Way. (Right Wing Watch is a project of People For the American Way).

“I sympathize with Donald Trump. I had a group called Media Matters, I had another group called People For the American Way, they taped every single word that I said and I did about 10,000 broadcasts, I did many adlibs, and every time they would take my words and transpose—they would take connectors out and they would put it out, and there was somebody at the AP who was one of their clones and they picked [it] up and across the country would come these idiotic statements,” he said. “The same thing is being done to Trump.”

These supposed lies about Trump and himself, Robertson explained, are inspired by the same source: Satan.

“Every time they’re going to twist the words, I know what it’s like, he has my profound sympathy but these people are profound liars and they’re set up as liars,” he said. “The devil is a liar and the father of lies, according to the Bible.”

 If the devil is the father of lies, then Robertson must be one of his top apprentices.

Anti-Gay Hate Merchant Tim LaHaye Dead at 90

Tim LaHaye and his equally foul wife, Beverly LaHaye

It is said that it is poor form to speak ill of the dead.  But when the dead individual promoted hatred, sought to denigrate the lives of others, and peddled religious extremism and discrimination, it is not a time to mutter neutral platitudes.  Therefore, I for one can say little positive about Christofascist extremist Tim LeHaye, who with his wife Beverly (a founder of the stridently anti-gay Concerned Women for America), did much to hold back LGBT rights and to maintain discrimination while enriching himself in the process.  The Washington Post looks at the passing of this truly foul individual with a sugar coated piece.  Here are highlights:

LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins wrote the 16-book series starting with “Left Behind” in 1995. With the theme of the end of the world and characters including the Antichrist, the books blended faith and fiction and sold more than 65 million copies.

Before he started writing fiction, LaHaye was highly active as a pastor. He founded San Diego Christian College and a dozen Christian grade schools and secondary schools, according to his ministry. He organized pastors to support political candidates including George W. Bush. He and his wife Beverly, the founder of the conservative organization Concerned Women for America, hosted a radio show together.

Time magazine called him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in the United States

However, if you want a true glimpse at the real LaHaye, this piece gives some at just how hate filled and homophobic the man was.  Here are a few excerpts:

Given how much influence LaHaye’s books had in certain circles, and how many American homes contained his work, one of the titles on my reading list was called The Unhappy Gays: What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality.

I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of either social prescriptions or theology, other than knowing this book was, at one time, the go-to manual for a conservative family that discovered they had a gay child. I had no idea how bad it was. Dear God, it’s no wonder so many of these young kids killed themselves. In a literal sense, no hyperbole intended, the closest parallel I’ve ever read is the anti-Jewish literature in the buildup to World War II and the “anti-negro” writings of white southerners in the aftermath of the Civil War through the Civil Rights era. LaHaye is right up there with the pre-reformed George Wallace. Part of me wants to acquire his works and fund a museum somewhere to demonstrate how brainwashed by hatred and prejudice a person can be. This is an incredible example of irrational ideological animus.

Here are just a handful of excerpts from the book. Imagine being 14 years old and your parents making you read this because they found out your secret. The suicide rates make sense now. Keep in mind this was considered a compassionate Christian book on the market about the topic at the time. Writings like this were the reason we now have a generation of old Senators and pastors being caught with hookers and in public bathrooms while insisting they are straight. The psychological damage is profound.

According to Tim LaHaye, gay people may be demon possessed…

No doubt some homosexuals are indeed demon possessed. – Page 141

According to Tim LaHaye, gay people might be vulnerable to demons even if they are cast out…

Even after a demon is cast out, if indeed that is necessary, the individual still has to overcome the homosexuality that caused him to become so rebellious toward God that he made himself vulnerable to the demons in the first place. – Page 141.

Got it so far?  Gay people are lying, self-indulgent, selfish, suspicious, angry, women-hating, possibly-demon possessed monsters who are unable to control themselves.  The compassion is overwhelming.

According to Tim LaHaye, gay people are a disease comparable to a plant infection…
Homosexuality is a blight on humanity … – Page 150

According to Tim LaHaye, many parents would rather have their child die than turn out gay…

Many such parents would prefer the death of their child to his adopting the unhappy wretchedness of homosexuality. – Page 157.

[A]ccording to Tim LaHaye, even when they were murdered by friends and family, it’s kinda cool because having your head split open by rocks being thrown at you was really compassion…

[When talking about the death penalty for gays in the Old Testament] This may seem “cruel and inhuman treatment” by today’s standards, but our leniency has caused today’s widespread problems. This is not to suggest that Christians advocate the death penalty for today’s homosexuals, but I do have a question that needs consideration. Who is really being cruel and inhuman – those whose leniency allows homosexuality to spread to millions of victims who would not otherwise have been enticed into this sad and lonely life style, or those who practiced Old Testament capital punishment? – Page 107.

According to Tim LaHaye, you know that despite practically every gay ever telling you they’ve known since they were a child, just like straight people, it’s totally a choice for them to be gay because otherwise God is completely unfair when He said they should be murdered.

God would never have commanded the death penalty for homosexuality if a person was really “born that way.” All capital punishment was for crimes a person committed voluntarily. Homosexuality is no exception (Leviticus 20). – Page 187

According to Tim LaHaye, since it’s not okay to kill the gays anymore, people should still try to stop them from getting laws passed to protect them against housing or employment discrimination…

 There is much more.  Suffice it to say, if there is a Hell, LaHaye must have a special reserved seat.  The world is a better place without LaHaye in it. 

Why Are Black Pastors Water Carriers For Republicans Who Hate Them?

The very white GOP convention

Driving home from having dinner with friends I had on live coverage of the GOP convention on satellite radio and what do I hear?  Yet another black pastor carrying water for the Republican Party - I believe it was Pastor Darrell Scott of the New Spirit Revival Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  The same party that has an national agenda of (i) enacting voter ID laws and other restrictions aimed at disenfranchising minority voter, (ii) opposing unions that might bring better pay to minority workers, (iii) cutting social safety net programs that aid countless minority voters, (iv) waveringly support police who kill black citizens, and (v) rolling back civil rights protections.  WTF is wrong with these black pastors?  We see a similar phenomenon here in Virginia where The Family Foundation, a hate group in all but formal designation with strong ties to white supremacists, manipulates black pastors as if they were trained circus dogs.  Do these pastors know nothing of the histories and agendas of those they are serving?  Does it take merely some short term flattery to get them to to betray the others members of their race?  Or is the promise of money what turns them into modern day Judas's?  I do not understand it.   They act akin to German Jews in 1930's Germany who would have support Adolph Hitler.  Are they really that stupid?  A piece in the New York Times looks at the reality of the GOP's lily white, anti-black convention.  Here are excerpts:

Mike Hill, a black Republican state representative in Florida, grew steadily more disheartened as he watched television clips of his party’s overwhelmingly white national convention lecturing African-Americans about the police and race relations.

There was Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, nearly shouting Monday night that the police only wanted to help people, regardless of race. A sea of white convention delegates, cheering wildly as two black speakers ridiculed the Black Lives Matter movement and unconditionally praised law enforcement officers. And a series of speakers pushing Donald J. Trump’s law-and-order message and arguing, as he has, that the United States had lost its way.

“When a lot of white Republicans get together and bring up race, even telling black people how they should see police and the world, it evokes the worst kind of emotion,” said Mr. Hill, who supports Mr. Trump but decided to skip the convention.

For many black Republicans, the party’s convention has veered unexpectedly and unhappily toward lecturing and moralizing on issues of race, an off-putting posture at a time when Mr. Trump is staggeringly unpopular with minority voters. He drew support from zero percent of African-Americans in recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and he is struggling badly with Hispanics, partly because of his harsh language about Mexicans and immigrants.

In Cleveland, however, Mr. Trump and Republican Party leaders are focused on appealing to white voters, particularly white men who are critical to their electoral strategy in the Midwest and the South.

Black Republicans said they understood the thinking behind this, but argued that it was based on politics more than on helping people or strengthening the country.

And those who did speak from the podium seemed focused more on castigating black protesters, scolding other blacks for their behavior and exalting Mr. Trump than on trying to help Republicans make inroads with undecided or skeptical black voters.

This convention has fewer black delegates and speakers than any in two decades, according to several African-American Republicans who are regulars at party gatherings. The Republican National Committee could not provide definitive counts of delegates by race; one party official estimated that there were 80 black delegates, but that was based on an informal crowd count that might have included people on the convention floor who were not delegates. There are 2,472 delegates in all.

Some Republicans said privately that they were uncomfortable that convention planners had tapped black speakers to chastise black protesters in front of a mostly white crowd, which seemed to lap it up.

Other than the possible motivations noted above, the only other on I can think of is appeals to religion.  By definition, the deeply religious reject facts and objective reality in favor of belief in myths and legends. Perhaps these pastors are suckered by this ploy.  A last possibility is that the black pastors and Trump share a common trait- they are all con-artists who prey on the ignorant and gullible.  Perhaps they feel that Trump is a kindred spirit. 

The Case for Taxing Churches

Joel Osteen's taxpayer subsidized mansion

The myth behind the tax-exempt status of churches is that in theory they perform charitable works. The sad reality is that many do not or certainly not to those outside their home parishes/congregations.  Instead far to many, especially those espousing the prosperity gospel, provide obscenely plush lifestyles for their con-artist leaders pastors .  Worse yet, many engage in political action directly in opposition to applicable IRS rules.  Through out it all, every single American by default is forced to indirectly subsidized such hypocrisy filled churches and their operations - even as many of these churches work directly against the interest of taxpayers forced to subsidize their activities.  I have long advocated that churches should lose their tax-exempt status across the board except in specific instances where they provide a 100% charitable service open to ALL citizens.  Blogger friend Bob Felton shares this belief even more strongly.  He has put together  an indictment of tax-exempt statues for churches that can be found here.  The following are some brief excerpts please read the entire piece):

When Dylann Roof massacred 9-worshippers at a South Carolina church in the summer of 2015, the subsequently-discovered images of him draped in a confederate flag irrevocably linked the flag to the racism that drove him; one could no longer plausibly claim that display of the flag is an expression of respect for southern chivalry; magnolia and honeysuckle; velvet, genteel dusks and mint juleps.

Even so, when at its 2016 annual meeting the Southern Baptists considered a resolution discouraging display of the flag, the flag’s supporters were incensed. In short order the discussion digressed into a discussion of loyalties, and on that subject Southern Baptists on both sides of the discussion were agreed.

Here is the text of some typical tweets:
  “I am a Christian first and an American second.”
  “Following Christ will always trump being an American.”
  “If I ever have to choose between the cross and the American flag, I will choose the cross every time.”

Well … that’s their right. But what right have they to expect their fellow Americans to subsidize their America Second loyalties?

So, too, the Followers of Christ, a small Christian denomination headquartered in Oregon. They rely on verses such as James 5:15 to justify denying medical care to their children – and they have a cemetery with lots of little coffins to demonstrate their sincerity.

Similarly, following the massacre of 49-patrons of a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, there was no shortage of preachers eager to condemn the dead — to complain, even, that some of the victims survived.

We subsidize all of them, too.

Religious institutions have for so long enjoyed freedom from taxes that the privileged status of churches and clergy is part of our civic scenery: of course that megachurch can’t be expected to pay for its police and fire protection, for the construction and wear of the roads which service it, or taxes on the desirable property it occupies.

Why not?

And who knows that this presumption upon the public purse – now conservatively estimated at more than $70-billion a year, or $220 per year for every man, woman, and child in the United States — was debated even before the adoption of the Constitution, or that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were all firmly opposed to it?

The tax privileges enjoyed by churches – and synagogues, mosques, temples, seminaries, on and on – are incontestably contrary to the Founders’ intent.

Set aside for a moment the Constitutional intent, and ask yourself a simple, straightforward question: Why should any American citizen be obliged, against his will, to subsidize beliefs which he considers untrue and an engine of human misery, and which are clearly unrelated to any public purpose?

I should add, too, that I reject without qualification the claim that churches (et cetera) provide a community benefit whose value exceeds their cost to the community. If that were so, churches would not so strenuously resist completing and making available for public inspection the IRS-990 form, as all other non-profits are obliged to do.

They resist because the public accounting expected of Goodwill or The American Red Cross, say, would reveal that the claim is a lie. They resist because it would be difficult to explain why Pastor Steven Furtick lives in the largest privately-owned home in North Carolina. They resist because it would be difficult to explain how the expenditure by Mark Driscoll’s church to purchase enough copies of his book to make him a New York Timesbest-selling author serves the public interest.
  When the First Amendment is used to argue that churches cannot be expected to pay taxes, it is dispositive evidence that the speaker has given the matter no serious thought whatever.

It is time then, once for all, to end the tax privileges enjoyed by religion and to stop imposing upon American citizens a compulsory duty to support institutions innately opposed to reason, hostile to American ideals, morally responsible for Niagaras of bloodshed, and destructive of national unity.

Why Closet Racist Republicans Won’t Renounce Trump

When I left the Republican Party many years ago at this point, I had several motivations: (i) the GOP's fusing fundamentalist religious belief with the civil laws, and (ii) the hypocrisy of Republicans who publicly pretended to condemn bigots and homophobes, yet actually silently applauded them. Nowadays, these problems have only worsened, especially as blatant outward racism has become accepted with little or no condemnation from party officials. Enter Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and there is little room to hide without being labeled as condoning Trump's ugly bigotry.  The result is that we are seeing half-efforts from Republicans such as Paul Ryan to seemingly condemn Trump's statements without renouncing their self-prostitution to the man and his foul views.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at this phenomenon of far too many Republicans actually quietly agreeing with Trump's misogyny.  Here are excerpts:

When Donald Trump attacked a federal judge whose parents were born in Mexico, Hispanic Americans were outraged. Other minority groups saw a pattern of bigotry. Democrats had a hard time concealing their glee. Republican leaders pretended they disapproved.

Well, to be fair, they did disapprove in a way — not because Trump believes the things he says, but because he says them so directly.

Far too many Republicans share this kind of racism and have for a long time. Trump has just dispensed with dog whistles and revels in his bigotry instead. But this is the party the Republicans have been deliberately and assiduously building for many decades, the party of division and intolerance. 

Today’s Republicans have stymied every effort at reforming immigration, at achieving true equality for women, at ending the scourge of racist drug laws and criminal sentencing rules. The Republican Party has generated a wave of laws designed to make it harder for black Americans and other minorities to vote. It’s not that Republicans don’t want to deport millions of Mexicans and ban Muslims from our shores. They just don’t like to talk about it in the open.

So when Donald Trump started to attack Mexicans, Muslims and anyone else who popped into his head, Republican leaders may have thought it was bad tactics. But all that talk this year about the “Republican establishment” being aghast at Trump for his outlandish ideas was nonsense.

What really bothers Republicans is that Trump is not a member of their club and did not observe party discipline by saving his disdain for Democrats.

Asked about one right-wing blogger who said Republicans were backing a racist candidate, McConnell simpered that what matters is winning the White House. “The right-of-center world needs to respect the fact that the primary voters have spoken,” he said.  Yes, in favor of blatant intolerance.

Given the cowardice of his fellow members of the party of Lincoln, Trump is, naturally, doubling down on running for racist in chief.

On Monday, Bloomberg Politics reported that Trump told campaign surrogates in a conference call to keep up the attack on Judge Curiel. And on Tuesday, he said in a statement, “It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage.” His evidence for his tolerance was, as usual, that he has lots of Mexican-Americans working for him.

[H]he [Trump] obviously plans to go on riding this tiger — because he thinks it will take him into the White House; because he is engaged in a creepy act of self destruction to avoid actually having to be president, which is hard work; or simply because he enjoys making bigoted comments.

Supporters of Bernie Sanders who talk about voting for Trump instead of Clinton if their candidate finally decides to drop out should consider this latest episode, and Trump’s larger pattern, carefully. They should know they would be voting for a racist.

Duggar Family Ally Sued for Sexual Abuse by Numerous Women

It seems that one never knows what delicious new bomb will go off and pt the hypocrisy of the Christofascists and "family values" crowd on open display.  Regular readers are likely familiar with the implosion of the Duggar family that made a nice living by peddling the godly Christian shtick and the parents' ability to bread like rabbits until it came out that son Josh had not only sexually abused his underage sisters and utilized the services of prostitutes.  Now,  Bill Gothard, a Duggar family ally and for years a major player in the Christofascist home schooling universe has been sued by a group of women who allege that Gothard sexually abused them.  Previously, Gothard had resigned from his "ministry" after 30 women alleged that he was a sexual predator.   Secularists and Democrats are not immune for sexual improprieties, but it seems that for every one of them that runs into trouble there are at least nine of the godly folk.  The Washington Post looks at this new lawsuit and Gothard's questionable past.  Here are highlights:

Ten women on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Gothard, who for decades was a major force in the conservative Christian homeschooling movement, charging him and leaders in his ministry with sexual abuse, harassment and cover-up.

Gothard, who urged Christians to shun things like short skirts and rock music, is accused of raping a woman. The same woman says she was raped by one of the ministry’s “biblical counselors.”

The lawsuit is part of a battle between dozens of women and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which was until recently an influential homeschooling ministry, and its charismatic leader Gothard, who urged Christians to focus on their “biblical character” and have large families.
Gothard, 81, resigned from the ministry in 2014 after more than 30 women had alleged that he had molested and sexually harassed women he worked with, including some who were minors.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Gothard said he has not seen the lawsuit and denied allegations that he had raped one woman.

A smaller group of the same women filed a lawsuit in October against IBLP. In Wednesday’s amended lawsuit, more women have joined the lawsuit, and the lawyers added Gothard to the complaint as a named defendant.  

Gothard’s ministry was once a popular gathering spot for thousands of conservative Christian families, including the Duggar family from TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting.” Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute conferences, where families would learn from Gothard’s teaching, were popular among homeschooling families. He has also rubbed shoulders with Republican luminaries like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

IBLP was in the headlines last year after In Touch magazine reported that Josh Duggar, the eldest son of reality TV stars, had been sent to an IBLP training center as a teenager after he admitted he had sexually abused four of his younger sisters and a family friend.

Read the entire piece.  The take away is that Gothard - like so many of the professional Christian crowd - is not only a parasite, but also seemingly a world class liar and hypocrite.  It is little wonder that the younger generations are walking away from organized religion and the poison it peddles. 

Lunatic Franklin Graham Claims to Quit the GOP

Parasite and con-artist Franklin Graham

As crazy and extreme as the Republican Party has become, it's not crazy enough for Franklin Graham - a parasite on society in my view who makes a cushy living peddling religious lunacy and who would be a nobody but for his famous father - who has announced that his is quitting the Republican Party.  The party's unpardonable offense?  Passing a year end funding bill that provided funding for Planned Parenthood, which he compared to the Nazis.  The irony is, of course, that Graham if he had his wish would impose a Spanish Inquisition like Christian theocracy on America.  As for the 97% of Planned Parenthood's services that have nothing to do with abortion and which meet the health care needs of poor Americans, Graham has no alternate solution other than to apparently allow them to sicken and die.  Can't you feel the "Christian love"?  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on Graham's batshitery:

Evangelist Franklin Graham has announced he is abandoning the Republican Party in disgust over the move by the GOP-led Congress last week to pass a budget that Graham said was “wasteful” and provided funding for Planned Parenthood, which he compared to the Nazis.

Graham has previously said he has no faith in any political party, but his apparent renunciation of his Republican affiliation is an indication of anger on the right and the strong interest many disaffected evangelicals have shown in populist outsiders like Donald Trump.

Graham himself has expressed admiration for Trump, the surprise frontrunner in the Republican presidential field, and has voiced support for some of Trump’s more controversial positions — such as his call to ban Muslims from the U.S. — which have drawn condemnation from more mainstream evangelical leaders.

The federal government provides $528 million in funding for Planned Parenthood — about 40 percent of the organization’s annual budget — primarily through payments to Medicaid for health services for low-income Americans. Federal law prohibits funding of most abortions and Planned Parenthood separates federal taxpayer dollars from those used to provide abortions.

[T]he shooting massacre at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic late last month by a lone gunman, Robert Lewis Dear, who proclaimed himself “a warrior for the babies,” seemed to change the calculus and congressional leaders last week reached a deal that averted a shutdown and funds the government through September of next year.

The deal also funds Planned Parenthood at previous levels — a development that has enraged many on the religious right, including Graham, son of the renowned evangelist Billy Graham.

[I]n denouncing the Republican Party this week, Graham made a pitch for the prayer rallies he will hold in every state next year, starting in Iowa in January shortly before the crucial first presidential primary.  The rallies, as Graham says, aim to “challenge Christians to live out their faith at home, in public and at the ballot box.”

 Blogger friend Bob Felton made the following apt comments on Graham:

So: Graham is severing ties with the Republican Party because they aren’t crazy enough, while people like Michael Hamar and I have stopped calling ourselves Republicans because they are too crazy.

With luck, millions more evangelicals will follow Graham’s lead and abandon the party, and the Republicans will go back to behaving like the educated, pragmatic, forward-looking realists they used to be.

 Amen to that!!