cult of fools

The Cult of Fools – “The Real Enemy” – Sep 11, 2022

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By bdk, CC BY-SA 3.0

The date of this posting promotes me to briefly comment upon the events of 9/11

Sep 11 is for many of us a date that has been burned into our souls. Public understanding awoke to the apparent realisation that Islam was at war with us. Over time there has been a slowly rising realisation that it was a hideous act by a few fanatical extremists and that the vast majority of Muslims do not harbour ill feelings towards others. Sadly, even today, some do still nurture and cherish the flames of hatred for those whose only “crime” consists of having a specific cultural and religious inheritance and perhaps also because their skin color is brown and not white.

Like Christianity, Islam is an umbrella term that shelters under it a vast diversity of philosophical beliefs and thoughts. If we are to condemn all Muslims for simply identifying as Muslim because some fanatical extremists desire to subdue us all and bend us to their will, then should we not also be consistent and condemn all Christians because of the words and actions of the Christian Fascists highlighted below within this posting?

The real enemy turns out to be those within. The political/religious right-wing extremists who wish to impose their beliefs by force, overthrow and undermine the democratic norms, and execute acts of deep hatred towards anybody and everybody who is not exactly like them.

The point is this. Most humans, regardless of their specific beliefs, or lack of any specific belief, are decent, honourable, and wish no harm to others.

Moving on, below you will find my usual selection of some truly bizarre claims that have popped up during the last 7 days from some of the extremists. Each is laced with my snarky commentary so that we can laugh at just how utterly absurd they actually are. With my usual hat tip to my various sources, let’s dive in.

Enjoy.

Christian Nationalism

After failed efforts to overthrow the 2020 election, Michael Flynn has been focused on the future. An @AP and @frontlinepbs investigation finds that Flynn has been building a political movement mixing conspiracy theory with Christian nationalism. http://bit.ly/3AU5V12

Right-wing preacher Andrew Wommack claims that the Constitutional Convention began every day with prayer.

  • Fact Check: Er … No, it didn’t, that claim is a lie. The closest you can get to that was this rather famous motion that suggested it. Briefly … Ben Franklin proposed it (yes really). Roger Sherman seconded the motion. Alexander Hamilton said f-that. A bunch of others agreed. Hugh Williamson pointed out that they were too broke to afford a goddam chaplain (pay-to-pray evangelist I guess) End of story – they never even voted on the motion.
  • It is simply astonishing how some will look you in the eye and boldly lie to promote their specific agenda.

Fauci

Jesse Kelly demands “a reckoning” for Anthony Fauci, while Steve Deace says that Fauci is “America’s Mengele” and therefore deserving of “Nuremberg-like punishments:” “I’ve got a fetish, Jesse, and it’s for punishment!”

  • If indeed dedicating your entire career to keeping people alive, healthy, and well is a “crime” then yes, Fauci is guilty.
  • Fauci’s actual crime is that he made disbelieving faces when Trump talked about all the goofy ways he thought of dealing with COVID. This unforgivable show of disrespect for Dear Leader was his actual “crime”.
  • It is in reality a deliberate distraction from the utterly botched handing of COVID by Trump that resulted in over one million deaths. Such rhetoric means that the MAGA devotees don’t start to think about this.

Elections

Laura Loomer still refuses to accept that she lost the GOP primary last month: “I refuse to concede. My election was stolen. And that’s my final position.“

  • The only result she can accept is a win, everything else is “stolen” by voters who had the raw temerity to not vote for her.
  • Perhaps if she holds her breath long enough they’ll change their minds and tell her she won
  • Makes notes: … Since a Republican lost in almost every Republican primary, almost every Republican primary was rigged
  • GOP needs to hire counsellors and have them standing by at all times to help its MAGA members deal with rejection

Laura Loomer declares that the Republican Party “literally needs to be FORCED into an America First hostile takeover.”

  • So yea, the failed Republican Candidate is literally attacking the Republican party now.
  • Translation: She did not get what she wants so she is throwing a tantrum and tossing her toys out of her buggy.

Homophobia on Steroids

Christian hate-preacher Jonathan Shelley says all abortion providers should be executed: “Put ’em all to death!” Same for gay people. What about people who say they have gay uncles? “Get rid of all your [gay] uncles! Who needs them anyways? They were creepy anyways.”

  • This guy claiming others are “creepy” is projection of the highest order.
  • This is literally the Christian Hezbollah, his calls for “death” gives a rather “interesting” spin to his claim that he is “Pro-Life”.

Peter Schmidt, an anti-LGBTQ Republican running for a seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly, admitted having “many sexual encounters” with another man. He claims someone blackmailed him, threatening to leak video of an encounter unless Schmidt paid up.

  • To be wholly clear, the issue here is not that he is gay, the issue is the gross hypocrisy.
  • This is not unique but instead is a rather common reoccurring theme with these very vocal anti-LGBTQ folks. People often exhibit homophobia as a means to cover up their orientation due to the fear of public humiliation and the self loathing they feel because of the guilt that false beliefs impose upon them.

A Texas judge ruled that free coverage of PrEP drugs to prevent HIV infection, as required by the ACA, is unconstitutional because it violates the religious freedom of Christian-owned companies. Their religious bigotry is hurting all of us.

  • If a sentence starts with “a Texas judge” then you know that you need to get ready to deploy a state of the art facepalm.
  • This is raw unadulterated anti-gay Christian bigotry actively seeking to harm innocent people. These people want to gleefully watch gay people die of something that’s easily prevented and are striving hard to make that happen. That tells you a great deal about who and what they really are.
  • One of the Plaintiffs actually argued that he objects to the mandate because the bible is the “authoritative and inerrant word of god” and condemns sexual activity outside marriage between man and woman.
  • Nick Fish: The plaintiffs’ “religious objection” here boils down to a deeply held belief that gay people should get HIV and die. That’s about it.
  • Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner: Referring to Reed O’Connor as an “Extreme MAGA Judge,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strongly criticizes today’s ruling, calling it a “disturbing decision amounts to open homophobia.”

Truly Bizarre

Daniel Adams, speaking today at a conference hosted by hate-preacher Greg Locke, said that masturbation opens a portal to demons. Also, um, breaking news, he also claims: “If you masturbate long enough, the thing you’re imagining becomes in the flesh.“

  • The medical consensus is that masturbation is a medically healthy and psychologically normal habit … in other words, the medical consensus is that (checks notes) “opening a portal to demons” is healthy and normal.
  • His crazy mash-up of Weird Science and The Exorcist is not exactly going to discourage the guys in the audience. Replacing the old warnings that you would go blind with a promise that your fantasies will come true is a message that many can indeed embrace.

Vlad Saychuk, speaking at the same conference hosted by hate-preacher Greg Locke, said that the demons inside you are hungry for ungodly things. The demons of pornography, for example, demand to be fed “every single three weeks.” Three. Weeks.

  • That’s a deeply weirdly specific timeline. It’s also rather weird that he would reveal this about himself.
  • If he is correct, then clearly my demons need to go on a diet.

“Fuck Democracy”: MAGA Republicans In Their Own Words

  • For the “Both sides are equally bad” crowd, I challenge you to find anything like this coming from the left.
  • The deep irony here is that the freedom they have to say stuff like this is the very freedom they are seeking to obliterate.

Kellyanne: When Republicans take the House, his son will be the first investigated. I guarantee you that the country will be for that because that guy flew around on government taxpayer-funded aircraft shaking down governments

  • Brian Tyler Cohen: With Democrats in power, you get climate funding, lower drug costs, ACA funding, tax fairness, chips, manufacturing, veteran healthcare funding, record jobs, and historic unemployment. If Republicans take power, you’ll get investigations into Hunter Biden. Choose wisely.
  • Reminder: Kellyanne is the lady who gave us the term “alternative facts“, the claim that there had been a  “Bowling Green massacre“, and broke the Hatch Act of 1939 so many times that eventually the U.S. Office of Special Counsel strongly recommended that she needed to be fired.

Biden’s Speech

QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine was very alarmed by President Joe Biden’s speech on the danger that MAGA activists represent to democracy: “He has literally become Hitler, singling out the Jews and telling everyone to hate and kill them. We are the new Jews. He’s giving us our yellow stars. They’re about to send out the Gestapos on us.”

  • This week’s winner of the Godwin award is DeAnna Lorraine [Context: Godwin’s law,  is an adage asserting that as a discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1 ]

Dave Kubal was also outraged by Biden’s speech: “Citizens who stand for biblical values and for constitutional principles were the focus of the bulk of the President’s speech — an angry speech devoted to deriding and threatening half the nation.”

  • If your immediate go-to reaction regarding a speech about a threat to democracy is to feel threatened, then yea, he was talking about you.

Where did President Biden get the idea that MAGA Republicans represent a threat to Democracy?

  • Probably from MAGA Republicans themselves telling you how much them oppose democracy.

MAGA fanatic Jim Garlow, the former Senior Pastor of Skyline Church, says that President Joe Biden’s speech on the danger that MAGA Republicans pose to American democracy was “the single most dangerous moment in American history”: “This is much worse that 9-11, which was an attack from without. The Biden Rage Speech was not merely an attack from within. It was from the occupant of the White House. This had the eerie feeling of a Hitlerian tirade, staged at a nationally prized location, with bizarre hellish-red backlighting.”

  • Well yes, this guy is clearly second place for this week’s Godwin award
  • His posting included a picture of Hitler.

The False Profit$

Self-described Christian “prophet” Robin Bullock also has another daughter, Amber. She spent this morning defending their private jet. “The world seems smaller when you just fly one hour here, an hour and a half here…” Anyway, the family would like more of your cash.

  • There is no denying that the gullibility market is very profitable for religious grifters, so much so that there is plenty to pass on to the next generation.

Christian nationalist Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano appeared on right-wing preacher Jonathan Shuttlesworth’s show today to promote his campaign. In March 2020, Shuttlesworth prophesied that the U.S. would be “minimally affected” by COVID-19 and then vowed to hold a massive in-person “Easter blowout” service in defiance of social distancing restrictions.

  • Separation of Church and State is an alien concept for some self-appointed prophet grifters.

Kenneth Copeland aired a special hour-long broadcast Wednesday night asserting that school shootings can be blamed entirely on the 1963 Supreme Court decision removing mandatory prayer from public schools: “Now the devil’s going in there and killing children in schools!”

  • Shootings have also happened in churches (For example see here for one in May 2022) … so how does that work? Also, mass shootings happened in schools before 1963 … so how does he explain any of these rather inconvenient facts?
  • Copeland is as usual simply lying and pressing hot buttons to get even more donations
  • Fact Check: “Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents, predominantly from homicide – surpassing motor vehicle death rates“: Main cause: Easy access to guns by people at elevated risk for violence. Data Source: Peer reviewed paper in New England Journal of Medicine (May 2022) : Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States). Strangely, there is no mention of any lack of prayer being a cause.
  • If there really was a devil, then his name would be Kenneth Copeland.
  • Fact Check 2: Meanwhile anybody can still pray in school if they wish. It’s voluntary. What happened were the  Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) decisions that removed imposing prayer (Engel) and imposing bible readings (Abington) by force upon all. Shocker: Not all students are Christian, some have other religious traditions (Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, etc…), and some are non-religious, so yes, wholly appropriate. As established in law by Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, “… nothing in the Constitution as interpreted by this Court prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the schoolday“

Prophet Julie Green is asked about her earlier prophesy that God told her Charles would never be King. She explains that he hasn’t had his coronation yet, so it still isn’t wrong.

  • Charles III is King. The formal ceremonies are simply protocol that recognise what has happened. They might not have taken place yet, but he really is right now King Charles III. Personally I’m looking forward to the renaming of the UK’s Royal Mail to C3PO (“Charles III Post Office”).
  • Things “Prophet Julie Green is utterly clueless about includes not only how the UK succession process works, but also prophecy.
  • Since she is rather obviously a false prophet, will they be applying the bible standard for false prophets and stoning her at some point?

Interesting Articles

Quote of the week

https://twitter.com/ryanburge/status/1568431314608525312

Where are the Lawyers?

This has had over 1.1 million views. Honestly, it’s not just me watching it on an endless loop, she really is making a very very good point, and so it deserves a bit more promotion …

Meanwhile …

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