The politics of religion

We'll be treading into a minefield, today, taking on the role of religion in politics, asking first...

God can't pick a winner? All of the Republican candidates who claimed to have been chosen by God have now dropped out. Those 'following Heaven's plan' included Scott Walker, John Kasich, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee - as well as Ted Cruz, who said he would represent the 'body of Christ' to save the nation from nonbelievers. Cruz's father asserted that Ted had been ‘called and anointed’ by the Holy Spirit to be the next president. Former Fox News host Glenn Beck predicted that America would suffer 'violent revolution' if Hillary or Rubio were elected; after Cruz dropped out, Beck opined that "you will never have another Republican President ever again."

A majority of American voters consistently poll it is important to them to have a president with firm religious beliefs... yet the pack of seventeen thoroughly pious Republican candidates steadily winnowed, leaving still-standing the least religious among them - and the most-proudly indulgent of vices - Donald Trump. So now, perhaps it is time for the Republican Party to reconsider their identity with Southern conservatives, as now Trump exposes the GOP's religion problem.

To be clear, this illustrates yet again how our divisions are not left-vs-right in any classical meaning of that silly, lobotomizing "axis." Culture (and now civil) war in the U.S. is more about personality than anything else. 

Sure, there are now record-high numbers of atheists and agnostics and secularists in Blue America (following trends in Europe.) But there are also many millions of old-fashioned Christians, Jews, Muslims and "spiritually curious." Moreover, the victory of a philandering-adulterer-divorcé gambling lord over the anointed-one Ted Cruz shows that sanctity is no more a determiner in Red America than it is in Blue.

Decrypting the Trump phenomenon in his own uniquely contemptuous way, Dilbert creator Scott Adams calls all of us deeply irrational and natural prey for a master emotion-manipulator like Trump, who shrugs off "facts" as irrelevant to his next, expert, savanarola twist. Elsewhere, I will debunk this mythology of Adams, who assumes that the Blue side of this 200 year civil war is just as emotionally-erratic, romantic, reflexive and easily fooled as confederates have always been. In other words, Trump has been successful exactly as Adams describes... on republicans.  Fortunately, that won't be enough.

But let's veer back to religion. Especially the way it has in many sectors catered to a rising volcano of spite.

== Jesus... hijacked by John of Patmos ==

Has “fundamentalism” conquered what used to be called “evangelical” Christianity with memes of hate? Much of this polarizing rant - "Evangelicals are hurting the GOP: The movement is now synonymous with bigotry and stupidity" - is apt...

... but such denouncers miss the pertinence of scripture. And they are unfair to another branch of deeply sincere Christianity.

Take the humble and yes evangelical goodness of Jimmy Carter. "Red Letter Christians” (Many modern New Testament editions convey Jesus’s words in red type) can be Carter-like in their sincere modesty, tolerance and compassionate generosity. Many take part in overseas missions that do more aid-work than preaching. As I have described elsewhere, some even look forward to building starships and spreading "the word" to aliens out there! Oh sure, you have a right to smirk. But at least it allows for an open-ended and upward-aiming human future. That's respect-worthy and if it comes true, then you'd both have fun arguing across the light years.

Such old fashioned, Carter-style evangelicals stare in confusion across a scriptural and emotional chasm at fundamentalist neighbors who focus instead on poisonous purities… e.g. Genesis literalism and vindictiveness toward science. Toward all knowledge professions. Or the hypocrisy of citing three vaguely ambiguous passages in Leviticus to justify homophobia … while stuffing down pork, which is banned explicitly in scores of places.

We discussed all of this back in 2012, the year that Robert Heinlein had forecast for the squeaker election of one Nehemiah Scudder, who would quickly clamp down, toss out tolerance and constitutional rights, then establish a theocracy as Prophet of the Lord. That political year did not feature a likely parallel with Scudder. This year though...

Look into the background of near-miss, runner-up Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who has smiled and nodded as his pastor father declared him to be the anointed deliverer of America and the world into a new and foretold age. Look up "dominionism," the doctrine that the faithful have a right to all the goods and property and wealth of unbelievers, who will all die horribly soon anyway, in apocalypse, followed by eternal torment. 

Of course, Ted Cruz has lost to Donald Trump. Only here's the irony. Despite the GOP establishment's fervor to stop Trump, Cruz -- so despised that former Speaker of the House John Boehner called Ted "Lucifer int he flesh" -- was the only rival able to garner enough zealous backing to even challenge the Donald. 

Moreover, when you look at Trump supporters and Cruz-backers, there appears to be very little difference!  Members of the slightly larger group are likely to claim very similar religious convictions, only a bit looser. Just loose enough to look past Donald's roles as gambling czar and twice divorced womanizer, and so on. And a bit less focus on yearning for apocalypse. For them, culture war, confederacy and (yes) racism trump religion by a margin. Maybe 60:40.

For Cruz-supporters, the ratio was reversed. That's about it. Similarities outweigh differences (which is why I expect more post convention unity than others do). Moreover, I would lay down wagers that both crowds will nod happily if a sermon by Raphael Cruz is played for them, promising them an IOU on all the wealth now held by those dastardly, den-of-iniquity Blue Americans... as a down payment to even greater rewards, further downstream.

Oh, sure, now some evangelicals have taken a  'call to resist' against Donald Trump. Where will they go? 

Indeed, there are still millions of Jimmy Carter style, red-letter evangelicals, and tens of millions of other U.S. Christians who are sincerely compassionate, reasonable, even liberal in many ways! It's a horrendously bigoted error to lump blame on all, for the frenzy of some. 

But those "some" now are in a froth. They are eager to scudderize America. And you need to understand the central sun around which their alien solar system revolves.

That central sun is a poem that's about 1900 years old, a rant of stunning hate.

== The Cuckoo's Egg in the New Testament ==

The core illness separating the now-dominant fundamentalist movement from Red Letter Christians swirls around the screed where latter-day thumpers go, to stoke their rancor -- the Book of Revelation (BoR). 

Barely added to the early Christian canon, over strenuous objection by the era's top sages, and despised by later scholars, such as Martin Luther, this froth of cackling sadism is diametrically opposite -- at every level of morality, compassion and intent -- to the homilies of Jesus. 

Those who express hand-rubbing yearnings for the world to tumble into armageddon, as soon as possible -- in the BoR's forecast bloodbath for all-but-a-very-few -- thus disqualify themselves from any say over the use of our nuclear stockpile, which was designed by scientific geniuses to end major war, not to end the world. 

Note that every generation of BoR thumpers have recognized End Times signage in the personages and events of their own era, as in 1799, when the most popular book in Europe assigned every role to Napoleonic era figures, or when both sides of the 1860s Civil War called that fight the BoR precursor, or when Hal Lindsay declared it "obvious" that Babylon just had to be the commie USSR, or today's demonization of all Islam. (When in fact, scholarly analysis shows that the BoR was entirely about Nero and the times in which Patmos lived.)

In fact, pattern Recognition does not matter. What matters is desire! It's what they want so very much to happen.

They are praying for billions - including you and your children - to suffer incredible horrors. followed by eternal torment. (See the BoR brilliantly and satirically conveyed in comic book by Patrick Farley.) To be clear, they pray specifically for an end to all democracy and science, to all human ambition of any kind... and for an end of the United States of America, amid a blood bath that slaughters nearly all of its population. At minimum, that gleeful anticipation disqualifies them from claiming the word "neighbor."  Or, morally, "citizen."

How disappointing that not a single sage or minister has - to my knowledge - refuted the BoR with a single word that tears that bloody howl of schadenfreude into confetti. 

That single word is "Jonah," referring to an earlier and more authoritative passage - one of the finest and most moving in the entire Judaeo-Christian canon - that renders all BoR "predictions" utterly moot. Because the theme and message of Jonah (reiterated in Isaiah and several other places) is the God can, and will change His mind!  He can get ticked off and make a threat... but then withdraw it!  And never, anywhere in the Bible's long litany of tales, does He wait 1900 years before carrying out a dire promise.

Hence, even if John of Patmos's raving, asylum-worthy rant did channel a genuine threat-revelation, once upon a time, the clock ran out on it, long, long ago. Duh.

Oh, sure, we are busy singeing our fingers, concocting new ways that the world might end -- ways a whole lot more interesting and realistic and potentially devastating than a bunch of sword wielding angels riding lion-horses. This new crisis ... whether we can choose to become wise apprentices while picking up the very tools of creation... is simply far, far more interesting and dramatic than the silly, pre-medieval frippery of schadenfreude in the BoR.

The Book of Revelation is a Rorschach test, exposing those who yearn for an insane deity, not the Creator of Maxwell’s Equations and a gorgeous, galaxy-rich 14 billion year ongoing-bang, and the refractive laws that give us rainbows... as well as the gifts of Beethoven and Schweitzer and liberty and tolerance and the joyful ambitions that fill a child's heart.

But no. What’s mind-boggling is the fact that millions of our neighbors seek "solace" in such a hateful screech. 

Ask them this question! 

“Do you actually want THAT to happen to me and to those I love? 

“You actively pray for that to happen to us? 

"You would love and serve the source of such horrible hate and madness?”

That's not Jimmy Carter, whose envisioned Lord simply would not do such things. No, that is barbarism and lunacy. But it is more than that. Stand up and recognize one pure and irrefutable fact.

It is war.

Political fantasies, nightmares and white knights... so will they pick a General?

Why Ted Cruz should worry Republicans: This article ponders the negatives for the GOP, should Ted Cruz become their nominee.  e.g. how extreme-right he is, and disliked and unlikeable. Including the fact that republicans running for lower offices would find it harder to distance themselves from that pyrrhic candidate than the other one - Donald Trump. Interesting read…

…though I still offer a wager (at odds) that Cruz never was - in his heart - after the presidential nomination, all along! 

He must know he would lose big and then have no chance, ever again. Rather, I have long wondered if his role model was Richard Nixon, who bided his time in a cunning stepwise manner.  Knowing how spectacularly dislikeable he is, Cruz (I believe) always cannily aimed to be the Vice Presidential nominee, and his recent near-top status came as a worrisome surprise.  

He can’t be Trump’s VP at this point (the logical negotiated settlement) because of bad blood. So his clever game move would be to “sacrifice my own ambitions for the party and the nation” and throw his weight behind a convention outsider... a "white knight" who did not run in the primaries. That’d cement him as the unifying hero. It would also leave him tanned, rested and the heir, in 2020.

(Ah but which White Knight should he back? See a surprising scenario, below.)

It would also mean that either Hillary or Bernie should pick Al Franken as VP, in order to have a quick wit ready to cut Cruz at the knees, in the VP debates. I still expect Hillary will offer the slot to Bernie… and he might accept, on condition the office come with looser than usual reins... or he may turn it down. In any event, she needs to guard her flank with an unalloyed progressive who: 1) can help in the rust belt, 2) appeals to Sandersites, 3) is sharp-witted enough to deal on-the-fly with any sudden veer or attack that Trump or Cruz dish out.  

Alas, while we’ll likely see a long-needed torching of the GOP in November, there is a benefit to a Trump nomination that no one mentions -- the fact that Trump doesn’t give a damn about treating standard Republican catechism as holy writ. He would break the Right’s narrative during the autumn debates. Charging for the center on at least a few issues, he would shock us all by agreeing with Sanders or Clinton!  

“Yes, the rich should pay more taxes!” for example… a veer that would stun America and finish off the shambling, undead thing called Supply Side “economics” at long last.

Well that’s my fantasy and it is why I am weighing ALL my options, here in late-voting California, where (for a change) we will make the crucial difference.

== Here come the generals? ==

Way back last year I predicted the GOP establishment would push Speaker Paul Ryan as savior, after the clown car crashes. They are already running ads! Pushing his calm/handsomeness and downplaying his Ted-Cruz-clone policy book. His artful denials notwithstanding.

We all know that won’t play. The Red/Confederate white males who Fox/Limbaugh riled against the U.S. for decades are now fully-frothed and they won’t abide that cynical ploy. But this essay by David Ignatius suggests an alternative that might actually work. Pick a military man. A recently retired general or admiral.

Chief advantage: it could draw back in many outraged Tea Partiers and fundies and Trumpeteers… along with mature conservatives who are disgusted by Tea Partiers and fundies and Trumpeteers. It might even (as part of a yuuuuge deal) placate Donald Trump.

Chief disadvantage? From the establishment’s point of view?: Our U.S. military Officer Corps is by far the most intellectual in history, the third best-educated clade in American life (after college professors and medical doctors.) Sure, there are still some Jack T. Ripper types. But not many. Although most such officers are “conservative” by personality, odds are you’ll be running a smart patriot who knows how deeply the country has been betrayed by Fox & pals. Moreover, they do not cotton to the War on Science and All Smart People.

Whether in the autumn debates or in the White House, he (she?) is likely to drop insanities like Climate Denialism and Supply Side Voodoo like a live grenade.

These people can recognize live grenades. 

Yes, this gambit could save the GOP, and especially rescue countless down-ticket races, by drawing millions of discouraged moderate-conservatives back to the polls. On the other hand, even at-best you’ll likely get what you got last time, in 1952... an Eisenhower, who will (in the debates or in the White House) demolish at least half of the narratives that Rupert Murdoch and Glen Beck have been cramming down the throats of Red America. 

Not one of generals or admirals will condone the Civil War that Fox etc have deliberately re-ignited. 

Know who would be delighted by such a nominated white knight? Ted Cruz! Again, he knows he cannot win the nomination, nor the general election, if nominated. I imagine (without a scintilla of proof) that his role model is Richard Nixon, who took the long, patient path.

Almost any general-or-admiral nominee would likely pick Cruz as running mate (ruining mate?) for much the same reasons that Eisenhower held his nose and picked Nixon -- which was Ike’s one, unforgivable crime against the nation he loved. 

And then? Off we go. History does not repeat.  But it does rhyme. 

Will Trump veer-to-center?

"Interesting" doesn't even begin to describe this incredible U.S. political year.  For example, one of the statistical mavens at Five-Thirty-Eight points out that Marco Rubio's best path to thwarting Donald Trump's coronation march is to concentrate a lot of attention on blue states (those that award GOP delegates winner take all) or on blue-urban-college-educated districts. One of the richest potential troves, for example, would be districts along the California and Washington coasts!

How can this be? In zones where democrats outnumber republicans, it turns out the fewer and better educated GOP voters have outsized ability to choose Republican convention delegates. Wow. 

Of course this weirdness was deliberate... it gave Romney & McCain advantages in past years and it now seems the establishment's last hope. But the party masters who designed the current rules dug a pit for themselves, as Trump keeps winning districts by mere 35% pluralities yet getting all of each district's delegates. That is why he swept the boards in S.Carolina, despite getting only a third of the votes. Well, well, cheaters eventually are hoist by their own petard.

Okay so here's the stop-Trump path, a narrow one. If Cruz, Rubio and Kasich all three take their own winner-takes-all home states - perhaps by urging Texas, Florida and Ohio voters to pick "favorite sons" - then there's a chance for some momentum shift.  But then, in that case, none of the three will drop out!  Next, divide up the rich upper midwest, Michigan etc.  And somehow get those educated republicans in blue districts, who are staring in horror at this train wreck, to actually come out en masse. Then, a brokered convention.

No I haven't forgotten the potential end game if Trump falls short of a convention majority. The "white knight" of that scenario - House Speaker Paul Ryan - would act very very coy and reluctant.  Still, he's laying down polemical points either way, hedging his bets in case Trump wins, by saying that Republicans can "fix the country's problems" with "whoever the Republican president is."

Let's see. The GOP had the presidency 20 of the last 30-some years. They have had Congress vastly more often than the Dems. Indeed, they held all three branches of government simultaneously from 2001-2007, able to pass anything... anything at all... that they wanted.  So, why didn't they "solve the country's problems" then?

Let's be clear, aside from huge tax cuts for the rich and loosening banking/Wall Street regulation - and wars - they did zilch across those 6 years of absolute power. They canceled no programs or agencies, reformed no entitlements and in fact created Medicare Part D without any way to pay for it. They did nothing about abortion or immigration or any other part of the Fox-rant agenda. 

That period of absolute power-lock was the laziest six year congressional period in US history. All whining and no action.  (Oh, and actual outcomes from periods of republican rule were spectacularly negative.)

Um... "fix the country's problems"? Even if you are a radical right winger, why should you believe Ryan, this time?

== Out in right field ==

My reading of Ted Cruz led to a crackpot theory that his aim, all along, given his Nixonian unlike-ability, was to emulate Nixon and go for the VP slot as a stepping stone. That would have happened if Walker or Jeb or Perry were the nominee.  Now? The earlier bro-mance between Trump & Cruz (which fit my theory to a T) is now over amid a huge mud-slinging fest. 

No it's time to peer ahead to Tump's likely running mate. Sure, Nikki Haley was set up by the GOP masters to be the obvious choice. For example, she'd cancel some of the "Trump's a racist" stuff and give the establishment some hope Prez Donald won't last 4 years.  But I tell you it all depends. She's the right choice if he stays the Donald we've come to know, so far -- a raving Mussolini.  In other words, the act he's been putting on, to win the nomination.

Only... he's not a Mussolini. Will Donald - the day after he's nominated - drop all his confederate shiboleths and charge at full gallop for the American Center?  

I'd bet 3:1 odds that's what he'll do, suddenly channeling Bernie Sanders in his anti-oligarch schticks! Raise taxes on the rich! Regulate Wall Street and break up big banks! He'll jiu jitsu Hillary by out radicalizing her reformist agenda!  She'll be left stammering in amazement... unless she gets ready first.

If this center-veer happens, then Don'll need a Veep who can keep the Confederates and Southern Baptists from feeling betrayed.

If it ain't Cruz, then my money is on Mike Huckabee. Not Palin... nono. Not Sarah Palin. Huck scares me more in logical terms.  But Palin is... just too... er... entertaining.  An overdose.  Watch the hilariously scary flick IRON SKY.

== The other Trump we glimpsed ==

You think I am exaggerating Trump's ability to do sudden, brilliant veers?

Ted Cruz had reasons for baiting Donald Trump into defending New York.  They are battling for the… shall we say the “red vote”?  It is a more accurate term than “religious conservative” or rural or tea-party or neo-confederate or any of the other categories that pundits apply. Hatred not just of city folk, but of all smartypants types like scientists, schoolteachers, medical doctors, law professionals, and so on.  

Sure, Trump stood up for the spirit and gumption and skill that New Yorkers showed, both during 9/11 and for years of rebuilding. Indeed, standing on the rubble, New Yorkers turned east – toward the co-owners of Fox News whose cousins and sons hijacked those planes – and shouted: “Is that all you got?” 

City folk are the ones with terror targets on their backs, yet they get on with life, while the rural folk who are screaming loudest about terrorism are mostly safe.

(To be quite clear, not all or even most rural folk are “rednecks,” by far! Just as most city folk are not marching PC activists. But when it comes to GOP primaries and caucuses, it is the most vociferous in both parties who show up.)

         

Of course, Donald doesn’t dare point out the rest of the story.  That “New York values” – portrayed as depraved by the radio shock jocks – actually have vastly better outcomes, when compared to practical measures of morality in Red America.  Putting aside Utah… and some sections of Chicago etc… the comparison between Blue “values” and Red are pretty clear, with Red America surging way ahead in rates of teen sex, teen pregnancy, STDs, domestic violence, divorce, dropout rates, gambling and a myriad other areas of gross immorality like addiction, alcoholism, drug use, and even obesity... this in an area that screams shrilly and aggressively that it knows better how lives should be lived. 

If facts could convince - wherever abstinence-only is the preachified sex education course, the direct and nearly universal outcome is more, not less, teenage sex. 

Here, we get again the core Fox Fact. What matters isn't what's true, but what’s “truthy” and ought to be so.

== The Rise of the Religious Right ==

Do you actually believe the radical Christian right’s rise had anything, fundamentally, to do with abortion? Try looking at the real history: The Real Origins of the Religious Right.  Even years after Roe-v-Wade, even the Southern Baptists were yawning, calling abortion “a Catholic issue.”  It was court decisions – and Nixon enforcement – banning tax-exempt status to fiercely segregated private schools that lit the torch firing up the movement we now see.

What this article leaves out is the way far-right social conservatism benefited from a devastatingly stupid wound self-inflicted by the left – 

-- the insane over-reach called Forced School Bussing of students away from their neighborhoods, in order to impose integration de facto, by force majeur. 

That utopian-orwellian effort from the 1980s was senseless, cruel, distracting, ineffective, wasted vast resources and drove millions unnecessarily into the arms of fundie radicalism. Forced School Busing was absolute proof that the right does not hold a complete monopoly on dogma-driven stupidity, and that the far-left needs be watched, as well.

See the new book, Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right, by Seth Dowland, which discusses the importance of gender issues and private Christian schools in shaping how "religious freedom" consolidated the religious right.

Sure, there’s no comparison at this moment. Some campus PC excess? That’s loony and rude. Watch: Monty Python’s John Cleese Blasts Orwellian, PC College Campuses. 

But PC-bullying is a hangnail irritant compared with the Entire Right’s plunge into madness, anti-science, anti-all-knowledge-professions, oligarch-loving, Earth-wrecking, economy-ruining troglodytic madness. Elsewhere I elucidate the true, underlying reasons for the abortion frenzy, as well. 

Face it, this is the revived Confederacy, friends.  There is no other explanation for why millions of lower middle class whites would support their class oppressors.  This is phase 8 of the American Civil War.

                     

== the Bloomberg phenomenon? ==

Yes, yes, another East New York City billionaire is pondering his own run.  Michael Bloomberg so far has generated little enthusiasm.  But if Donald Trump gets the GOP nod, Bloomberg could draw a sudden effussion of support from several directions.  Despairing "ostrich republicans" -- who have been in denial over the party's plummet into insanity -- might hurry to MB. As might establishment republicans seeking one goal, for Trump to lose so decisively they can get their firm hands back on the reins of the rampaging elephant that they spurred to madness, in the first place.  May they get the first half of their wish. 

Oh but while we're in sci fi territory:  Bloomberg Sanders? Trump-Sanders? Never gonna happen.  But I am paid to go what-if.     

== Finally - ==

Bernites: check this Al Franken endorsement. He's still funny and very smart and emphasizes that you have no need to get over-emotional. Leave that to the dissolving hysteria on the other side. The only times that the loyal, Union side wins these phases of recurring civil war is when Blue America stays calm, practical and fiercely determined. 

I just wish Franken had mentioned science.  There is one symptom of the current psychosis that has taken over U.S. conservatism that disqualifies it from holding a burnt match, let alone power.

Their war on science.  And every other knowledge profession in American life.