“If kids got raped at Denny’s as often as they got raped at church, it would be illegal to take your kid to Denny’s. Trans urinators aren’t a danger to kids. Youth pastors are.” —Dan Savage
What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?
God’s Rightwing Terror Turn
This post on Reddit contains a lot. But, since I have such extensive (and deplorable, destructive) insider knowledge of Bill Gothard, his cult and his cultists and their oeurve, It rang true.
None of the Gothardites is more passionate and … well, cultish than the (in)famous Quiverful Duggers. And, of course, they are chock full of pedophiles and pedophilia and outrageous stupidity and lunacy.
“Amy, now 39, was not allowed to be alone with her grandfather at any point when she was growing up in Arkansas. ‘I wondered all the time. I asked. I asked my mom, I asked my grandma, and they obviously were going to protect the answer. They didn’t want me to know that information growing up,’ she says After his death, Amy’s mom sat her down to reveal the truth, that her late relative was a ‘predator,’ as Amy labeled it in her new book. “‘I honestly did not know why until my mom and I spoke after he passed away,’ she shares. ‘But I obviously assumed. I always had assumptions as to why, but it was never spoken about. It was a little difficult, but I’m one of those people that when I was little, I asked questions, sure. But if something was told to me, I just believed it.’ “‘I was very naive, and I’m a kid, so I was like, “Okay,”‘ she continues. “I knew grandpa couldn’t go to the trampoline with me. I knew grandpa couldn’t sit and watch a movie with me. I knew grandpa couldn’t be in a car with me. I knew grandpa couldn’t take me to school. There were so many things, and I just knew that that’s how it was.
And here are the two comments I most relate to:
The sole value of organized religion — and conservatism in general — is respect for and obedience to [one’s perception of] traditionally established hierarchy, and hierarchy dictates that those on top (in-groups) are rightfully idolized and receive privileges, credibility, and resources, while those on the bottom (out-groups) are demonized/dehumanized and/or bound by restrictions, scrutiny, and lack of resources. To them, the second-greatest injustice imaginable is for those [they perceive to be] on the bottom [of social hierarchy] to have access to the rights, credibility, and resources reserved for those on top. The first greatest injustice is for those on top to be bound by the restrictions, scrutiny, and lack of resources reserved for those on the bottom. It is never the act itself that upsets them, but rather, the social standing of the person doing the act, as said act is a privilege meant for those on top of [their perceived] hierarchy. (See also: pedophilia – Trump and Catholic church vs. LGBTQ+ and drag queens) To them, children are property of their social betters, and “know your place” is their mantra. Shido_Ohtori
And:
Exactly. They don’t have morality (this or that is wrong) nor ethics (what if everyone did this?). They are not built like that. And it’s deeper than just them thinking rape is right or wrong depending on who does it to who. It’s that they can’t even conceive of any harm as a crime unless it is against a social better. They won’t see it. Violence, humiliation, rape, exploitation, coercion flow down the authoritarian’s hierarchy in a way that’s so natural, so inherent to their worldview, that it would be like noticing the air and getting mad about it. Authoritarian types don’t resort to violence to put the hierarchy back in place, the way people imagine. Violence IS the hierarchy. It’s what it’s for. It’s what it’s made of. —DaBlurstofDaBlurst
But here’s the rub: These people are now in charge of the government. And this regime is completely destroying everything we knew. It’s a new world, and it’s run by the New Apostolic Revivalists, with billionaire tech boys tagging along and exploiting it for everything it’s worth.
I’ve said many times: Trump is irrelevant and almost dead. It’s increasingly obvious that he is not in control, is not in touch with reality, is fed what he wants to hear. The government head is nominally the vice president and the real players are Larry Ellison and Peter Thiel and some assorted funders/enablers with very deep pockets.
Democracy is done in this country. We are a religious oligarchy. Among other things. Cruel, venal, irreligious, hypocritical, ultra-violent. And I’ve been along for the long, slow, ever-steeper slide, courtesy of American evangelicals.
The only question is just what happens next. I can guess.
What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?
Crashing and Burning the Drumpf Shuttle
The Apostle Paul said, “Having done all, stand firm.” After a lifetime of studying German history, and having been “raised up [as a child] in the way I should go,” this is my firm stand, based upon the way I was raised, which I am not departing from, and the deep study I have made. Silence no more.
Just now in the House: Over 100 Democrats are asking for unanimous consent to protect against cuts to SNAP and Medicaid by vote of the House on record.
North Carolina’s notorious Republican Rep Virginia Foxx has the floor and refuses to relinquish it to allow a vote to eliminate from Trump’s bill cuts that will close hundreds of rural hospitals, destroy health insurance for tens of millions, close hundreds of nursing homes with our elderly left with nowhere to go, destroy care for veterans, give a massive budget to the unaccountable secret police force called ICE that is bigger than the military budgets of most other nations on earth, and cause widespread hunger and misery … for a single purpose: Tax cuts for billionaires.
This bill goes beyond cruelty. This is wickedness in high places, immorality, and is fundamentally hostile to the mission and life of Jesus Christ and the American promise. It is a continuation and expansion of our long National Sin and Shame-our tradition of concentration camps, cruelty, segregation, slavery, and genocide.
Case in point: Just a bit ago, when Jim Clyburn of South Carolina invoked his request by (paraphrasing) for this nation to follow Jesus Christ’s absolute command of us to feed the hungry and care for the sick, Foxx refused to yield and the chair ruled that invoking Christ “constituted debate and is therefore out of order and cannot be entertained.”
But yes. Let’s continue to truly believe that this administration and its empty, immoral, indecent, and anti-Christian Republican party are, indeed, true Christians.
A family member memorably told me fairly recently I could not vote for a Democrat and escape going to hell. On the contrary, I dissent: It’s my firm, unshakeable belief no one can vote for Trump or any Republican on any level, and therefore for concentration camps, masked kidnappers, and white “Christian” nationalism and codified American cruelty and escape God’s ultimate, final, eternal, fatal judgment of hell. I would add that, as smirking folks are fond of telling me, “That’s not me saying it. It’s Christ himself.”
It’s time for actual, real Christians who are committed to follow and implement Christ’s main commandment: “Love one another” … and “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me” to rise up, leave the cult of Trump and truly implement those Christ-given commands.
You want a Christ-centered nation? Fine. Then remember: Jeff Bezos and his handful of billionaire friends and their supporters can pass through the eye of needle easier tan they can get into heaven. You’re worshiping the wrong gods.
Here is what a true Christian nation would do right now: Supercharge Social Security to provide full retirement for anyone older than 60. Fully fund universal healthcare and remove the profit motive from it. Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Treat the mentally ill and addicted. Fully take care of all veterans. Honor honest labor with real, livable wages. Take in the oppressed of other lands, no matter their skin color. FOLLOW Christ’s commands. Period. He meant what he said and it was very plain.
Then, and ONLY then, may you call this nation “Christian”. Until then, you’re enjoying the cruelty and setting your own path to perdition. Hurting others is not what you should be about.
This is my firm appeal to friends and family who are blind to wake to your peril. This is my firm stand. What’s yours?
What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?
Crashing and Burning the Drumpf Shuttle
Wilhelm Furtwangler, defending composer Paul Hindemith in November 1934, wrote he was also bringing into the open the whole question of interference by political zealots in Germany’s artistic life. ‘What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?’”
See also America then and now. Answer: We are become ruined, derelict, and empty.
“It’s all almost too stereotypical,” Shore reflects. “A 1930s-style military parade as a performative assertion of the Führerprinzip,” she says, referring to the doctrine established by Adolf Hitler, locating all power in the dictator. “As for Los Angeles, my historian’s intuition is that sending in the national guard is a provocation that will be used to foment violence and justify martial law. The Russian word of the day here could be provokatsiia.”
Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.
Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
—The Guardian
It’s great if you can get out, but like in 1933, not many of us can leave. Would Canada take us? Nearing retirement, no money, not famous, not Ivy League professors, not … anything? Just like the United States in 1933, most countries would reject us. Oh, yes. But we would go if we could.
Williams Shirer on editing his college newspaper. We’re still experiencing the same stuff today.
Williams Shirer on editing his college newspaper. We’re still experiencing the same stuff today. My own mother told me in 2024 that “You can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat.”
“An American gentleman . . . likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves.”
Another in a series of random notes of things I want to remember:
Charles Dickens had this country pegged from the beginning—our addictions (tobacco and greed, hypocrisy and selfishness):
“Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. … “Schools may be erected, East, West, North, and South; pupils be taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands; colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the land with giant strides: but while the newspaper press of America is in, or near, its present abject state, high moral improvement in that country is hopeless. … “As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening. In all the public places of America, this filthy custom is recognised. In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. … “An American gentleman . . . likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves. … “Here’s the rule for bargains. ‘Do other men, for they would do you.’ That’s the true business precept.”
