Hence why Christianity, particularly of the white Evangelical stripe, is one of the larger threats facing our Democracy at the moment.
Look how reasonable I’m being today. I’m willing to concede as much ground as to say “one of”!
Pence is not the one I’m afraid of.
There’s a post making the rounds on facebook right now that describes my feelings much better than I can. I’ll link it here: Redirecting...
This part,
If the left doesn’t stop pretending these people don’t exist, pretending they’re an anomaly, pretending they will go away if the Democrats take back the house, or Mueller catches Donald Jr. red-handed, or your friend posts another meme about Donald Trump being orange, the left is going to get its fucking silly ass kicked again. It’s not going to get better overnight, and if Trump loses in 2020, trust me, I know these people - the hard right, the Trump right, the authoritarian right, is going to lose their goddamn minds. If Trump loses, it’s going to get worse. And what do you suppose happens then? What do you suppose happens when the apple pie fascists find someone capable to do the job? What happens when someone capable realizes there’s an opening? What happens when that person isn’t a fucking clown?
Trump is not going to lose office. Nothing will come of the Mueller investigation. Mueller will uncover unprecedented corruption, and Congress won’t do shit about it. The Republican party is under the full control of the fascists, and the “concerned” ones are too cowardly to fight back so they’re quitting.
I was commmenting based on this.
But I do understand your point.
…then you are not thinking straight and are not acting in a way which will actually lead to the outcome you want. This is the central problem with the whole “pro-life” argument and movement. They deny the reality that… shock, surprise… there were still abortions back before Roe vs Wade. Making abortions illegal doesn’t make them stop happening. If you really wanted to minimize the number of abortions, you would be in favor of free birth control, no questions asked, for anyone of any age; mandatory sex education at a young age; and free women’s health clinics on every street corner.
Of course, “pro-life” people are exactly against all those things, so, in actual fact, they are acting in a way which causes more abortions. So, I question their actual motivations.
If the Dems get the house in 2018, we’re going to see 2 years of accusations and dirt-digging, and there’s a lot of dirt. It won’t remove him from office but it will get folks angrier, and will make prosecutions easier if the Dems win in 2020- and I want to see as many Republicans jailed as possible right now.
I think the problem is that the classical conservative voter, who is concerned about deficits yet wants tax cuts for the rich, supports a hawkish foreign policy and worries about abortion is a critically endangered species. If they want to keep an audience and thus the business running, what choice but going full MAGA? Despite Trump’s low approval ratings, 80-90% of Republicans are all in with MAGA…
I think you’ve got an incorrect assumption there. Yeah, the religious right believes abortion is wrong, but despite all the noise around it, that’s actually a second-order effect. What really gets their goat is all that sex. Anything that’s a side effect of people having sex outside of marriage has to go. That includes abortion, helping single mothers, sex education, and so on. (Also birth control for some, though that one is a lot more acceptable than it used to be, outside the Catholics.)
Yes, but two points:
As has been oft-cited, the percentage of people who identify as Republicans is shrinking at a rate not seen for decades. So yes, those who still identify as Republicans strongly support Trump as much as ever… but the pie is smaller than it was a year ago, and ever-shrinking.
Secondly, a sitting president only having 80% approval from within his own party is NOT GREAT when you consider that the economy is doing fine and that there is no major crisis rocking the country that isn’t self-inflicted.
If you’re a Republican voter, I have some bad news for you. The people who lead the movement that supposedly represents your views — the politicians, the media figures, the activists — think you’re an idiot. In fact, they count on it…
…It’s about a poison of exploitation and deceit that courses through the conservative movement. Some conservatives have tried to expunge this poison, without success. If anything, the scam has gotten even more pervasive and influential…
…There is an entire industry on the right whose purpose is to separate gullible conservatives from their money. The way it works is that they send urgent appeals — in letters, in emails, on television and radio — that if you want to fight Hillary Clinton or save fetuses or stop the decline of our culture, you have to send a contribution now. Some of those appeals come from familiar faces, such as Mike Huckabee or Dick Morris. But the money just goes right into their pockets, or the pockets of clever consultants, with only a tiny fraction going to anything resembling political action. It’s why conservative media figures promote conservative groups, bringing in millions of dollars, part of which the groups then funnel right back to the media figures in an endlessly lucrative circle of scam.
To be clear, there are many perfectly legitimate organizations on the right who do the work they claim to do. But there’s also a grift machine generating huge amounts of money for conservatives who know just how gullible their marks are — and know how important it is to keep them angry and ignorant…
…O’Keefe counts on rank-and-file conservatives not understanding how journalism works or what kinds of information can be trusted. And that, of course, is the foundation of much of the conservative media world: don’t believe anything you hear from anybody other than us. It depends on people having no critical faculties of their own but just outsourcing anything resembling thought to Rush and Sean and Tucker.
The scam reached its apogee with the campaign and election of Donald Trump, not only because he declares any information he doesn’t find amenable to be “fake news” but because he found tens of millions of conservatives perfectly happy to support a candidate who lies to them constantly…
…They lap it up, because that’s what they’ve been trained to do by a party and a movement that relies on their ignorance. The entire GOP is in on the hustle; indeed, they depend on it.
Been saying this for years. If I didn’t have a conscience, I’d have started peddling RW lies for fun and profit a long time ago (though I’m not sure we can yet call Trump the apogee - every time I think it can’t go lower, it does - see Roy Moore).
I mean O’Keefe is pulling in like a quarter-mil a year trying to scam people.
And he’s a fucking idiot. Hell, most of them are morons and making more than that.
Well apparently it’s fine if they’re minor girls and the guy just thinks he’s important enough to not comply with the law. We have records of this guy hunting in… malls.
Oh, there’s plenty of hypocrisy involved, no question. I grew up in the evangelical Christian community and know that very well. Critical thinking skills that would reveal it are rare. Those who have them tend to leave the community, even if they still believe in the underlying religion. What is left is…well, what we see in Roy Moore voters.
I hate to break it to y’all, but the pro-Life thing isn’t about abortion, and it isn’t about the life of the unborn. It’s about having a tribal* totem. And since this America, racism.
Here, I’ll let someone who was inside that culture explain. Take it away, Fred. Reagan also rears his ugly head.
I’ll let him also help me explain why you can’t take the anti-abortion claims seriously.
*The tribe “White Christian Anti-Abortion”. Literally nothing else matters as long as you meet those three criteria.
I haven’t posted on Facebook in many years. But I’m tempted to post that just for the lulz.
There’s some serious painting with a broad brush here on the abortion thing. My parents were single issue, anti-abortion voters. That was literally their only issue (although I don’t know what they would have done if faced with a Roy Moore).
However they were college-educated Catholics, not fundamentalists, didn’t give a crap at all if I was having sex before marriage or dating (and in fact marrying) someone outside my race, had gay friends, and supported birth control. It was about none of those issues.
It all sprung from their own difficulties having children. And they put their money where their mouths were, fostering 18 babies from birth till permanent adoption - which prematurely aged them, cost a lot of money and a lot of heartbreak every time they’d have to give up a baby after watching them for a year or two.
Ayup
I mean this was my upbringing. It’s like the old saying goes’ like your Christ just fine, what I don’t like are the Christians’. I grew up around these people, and I want nothing to do with them.
Same for me on being raised around that crowd.
Hardliner Catholic family here (these last few Popes have been a little modern for them), growing up in rural, evangelical TN. There is a significant background source to my venom towards these people.
The crazy preacher guy jeffress that Trump always has as a prop literally tells people that the Catholic Church is the best described in Revelations.
He literally says this, in public.
Yes, I grew up having preachers teach that in public too. The pope was always a perennial favorite suspect.
I somehow guess that Pope Francis is especially targeted in this respect, considering he seems to actually believe and follow the footsteps of Jesus as best he can. What with caring for the poor, needy, downtrodden, and generally being compassionate. Who needs that type of pansy leading things, clearly he is the mouthpiece of the devil trying to fool the good Jesus following evangelicals into giving up their pollution, tax breaks for the rich, guns, racism, disdain for the poor…