The Gifts of Evangelicals

Religion got us here, all this chaos surrounding our government and the unmitigated shitshow of Donald Trump.

Religion, where believers must suspend disbelief in order to believe—perfect practice for falling for snake oil salesmen and political bullshit.

Knowing this, since at least the 1960s, the back rooms of the Republican Party have carried out a bold plan to enlist evangelical Christians in their pursuit of power. Hot button issues became hotter under their rhetoric—abortion isn’t just about women making medical choices about their bodies and lives, it’s killing babies. Even newborns!

It seems not to matter how absurd the argument when twisted to fit this agenda. True Believers fall for it every time. They surge out their doors on Election Day, ready and eager to vote. Otherwise, God won’t love them.

Well meaning, intelligent, even well-educated evangelical Christians can’t help themselves in the face of God’s wrath. And yes, there are such things, although the majority seems less than intelligent or educated. Do they love the country more than God? Do they love the Constitution more than God? No, they can’t. There’s a lake of fire and brimstone waiting just below their feet if they don’t love God the most.

Whatever God actually said, if anything, doesn’t matter. It’s what the puppet masters behind the Church and the Republican Party say that matters, their interpretation, spin, whatever you want to call it. Ever more outrageous, the lies keep coming.

Poor Donald, never did anything but exercise his free speech. He just wanted to make sure the vote count was accurate. He now suffers the slings and arrows of an ungrateful nation and misguided justice system because he stood up for ‘his’ people.

I wonder if Donald ever knew he was a token, a pawn used to stir up the perfect demographic to push him into office. Will he ever know?

It’s doubtful. The aspect of Donald that made/makes him a perfect pawn is his utter and complete hubris which allows him to believe he became president on his own merits. Yes, he submitted to being prayed over, signing Bibles left and right, giving the peasants the bread and circus they craved with his court appointments, his mouthing of the correct words. He probably saw/sees this evangelical fawning as yet more evidence of his personal greatness.

Yes, there were other factors. There was and remains a dedicated faction of racists among us, so fearfully enraged by darker skin that they would tear down the walls of government for the chance to (kill) take away all rights from anyone not lily white.

There was and is a dedicated faction of anarchists who salivate over the dream of no government, no laws, no rules, just each man for himself and the guy with the most guns wins.

Wasn’t it ever thus? A few malcontents and nihilists among the mobs of true believers eager to please whatever god(s) reigned supreme in that time and place? True believers, hands clasped in reverence, bow down to that man who stands before them claiming his special gift, to speak for the god, to lead the people to the god’s promises? The anointed one, showing the path to god’s love, god’s promised way of life, no matter the sacrifice. (Cue trumpets and drums, the rattling of swords against shields)

We have seen it and know it. This is the time when humanity must evolve beyond the tired hatred of religious fervor, the idea that god loves you but not me, that promise that god will send your soul to eternal torment if you don’t do what he says, what his pawn says he says.

It is time to strip away the false promises of religion, division of race or belief, and embrace each other. We are one world of one people.

When the wise men of this nation’s early years enacted policies that ensured education for all children, they had a specific rationale. Thomas Jefferson said “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”

Through much of the 1800s, the central role of public schools was to preserve the American democracy and inculcate democratic values. After all, an ignorant man can be persuaded by all kinds of rhetoric to vote one way or the other. Only the educated man has the ability to consider a multitude of facts and reason his way to a vote for the honorable candidate best qualified to lead the nation (town, county, state).

“Education” which teaches religion cares not for reason. In fact, reason is the enemy to religion. Among the many objectives of the nascent fascist force in the Republican arsenal is this awareness, thus their denigration of public education, their determination to replace it with religious ‘education’ so that they can recruit armies of dedicated zombies utterly devoid of logical reasoning.

Ironically, if the evangelicals and behind-the-scenes thugs of the Republican Party succeed in gutting the promise of our democracy, they will be heralding their own demise. Fundamentally, it is our very system of government, free from religious directives, which guarantees the right of each person to pursue his particular religious beliefs. But understanding this truth requires reasoning, and zombies don’t reason.

Some Painful Truths

Above, supporters of former President Donald Trump are seen protesting his indictment in Manhattan, New York, on Monday, April 3, 2023. KATHERINE FUNG / Newsweek 4.3.23

Others have said how, once a person has been duped, it is almost impossible to convince them they have been duped. They’ve bought in, hook, line and sinker. Never has this been more true than in the present day. Despite all our education and media and news report, our ‘advanced’ culture, nearly 40% of the U. S. population still holds a favorable view of Donald Trump.

Who are these people?

While they tasted the bait, times were glorious! They owned the world, vindicated in their every idea, belief, and prejudice. Racism wasn’t really racism while they tasted the bait, but rather the righteous validation of their belief in whiteness.

Thus it was for the role of women, made from Adam’s rib to be his helper. Subordinate. The weaker vessel, made to suffer the agony of childbirth to give man his offspring, a punishment for Eve’s original sin. Not to speak in the church of God Almighty—white male, of course.

It goes without saying that the homosexuals and transwhatever were scum of the earth. Hardly worth mentioning, not worthy of recognition much less any right to exist, work, marry, or enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Equally unworthy of mention were the heathen believers in Allah and other blasphemies, seeking to secretly infiltrate America with their insidious brown-skinned conspiracies to destroy the great God-given white nation we call America.

And so it continued for four glorious years as time after time Trump’s words and acts magnified and validated the prejudices. Never mind that God sent a plague, that over a million people died, under Trump’s watch. Never mind that he oversaw, indeed, implemented, a continuous scroll of misdeeds and treachery that threatened the very foundations of the U. S. Constitution. None of that mattered while the bait was ingested, while all the validations of hate surged through the hearts and minds of the true believers—the duped.

Now, with the efforts of honorable leaders eager to restore the nation to its solid foundations, its core philosophy that all of us were created equal, the duped refuse to accept the evidence. Refuse to read the indictments. Refuse to think that some, all, of the allegations might actually be true. No doubt even a trial and conviction will be denied by these folks.

Is this a matter of willful ignorance? Yes, but that’s not all.

In academic studies, subjects asked to distinguish truth from lies answer correctly, on average, only fifty-four per cent of the time. This is a result of several mitigating factors, not least of which is a sense of allegiance to the people and information sources we have already trusted. For example, in a Stanford University study,

A third type of bias comes from our existing political alignment, in the form of partisanship. When it comes to news and information generally, one’s identification as a Democrat or Republican, or one’s self-image of being liberal vs. conservative, has a big impact on what we readily believe or reject in the news, regardless of its truthfulness. As uncomfortable as this may be to accept, abundant research shows that people frequently reject news that’s inconsistent with their political ideology, and are prone to accept news that’s consonant with their political orientation. Like it or not, research demonstrated quite clearly that most politically-oriented fake news during the 2016 US election campaigns was consumed by conservatives, with Donald Trump supporters being especially likely to encounter and visit fake news sites. …Hillary Clinton supporters were more likely to visit fact-checking websites and less likely to visit fake news websites. Trump supporters were less likely to visit fact-checking websites and more likely to visit fake news websites.[1]

Similar conclusions have been confirmed in multiple studies. Lee McIntyre, research fellow at Boston University, has published several books on the conundrum of duped people.

One of the deepest roots of post-truth has been with us the longest, for it has been wired into our brains over the history of human evolution: cognitive bias. Psychologists for decades have been performing experiments that show that we are not quite as rational as we think. Some of this work bears directly on how we react in the face of unexpected or uncomfortable truths. A central concept of human psychology is that we strive to avoid psychic discomfort. It is not a pleasant thing to think badly of oneself. Some psychologists call this “ego defense” (after Freudian theory), but whether we frame it within this paradigm or not, the concept is clear. It just feels better for us to think that we are smart, well-informed, capable people than that we are not. What happens when we are confronted with information that suggests that something we believe is untrue? It creates psychological tension. How could I be an intelligent person yet believe a falsehood? Only the strongest egos can stand up very long under a withering assault of self-criticism: “What a fool I was! The answer was right there in front of me the whole time, but I never bothered to look. I must be an idiot.”[2]

Trump supporters are not the first group to suffer this terrible cognitive dysphoria. The Civil War is not over for many who cannot accept that what their ancestors fought and died for might have been wrong. In their multitude of righteous excuses for the Confederate cause, the war was not about slavery. Rather, the Lost Cause was based on six tenets:

Credit: Cook Collection, The Valentine
Original Author: Unknown
Created: ca. 1907
Medium: Photographic print
Publisher: Valentine Richmond History Center

1. Secession, not slavery, caused the Civil War.

2. African Americans were “faithful slaves,” loyal to their masters and the Confederate cause and unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom.

3. The Confederacy was defeated militarily only because of the Union’s overwhelming advantages in men and resources.

4. Confederate soldiers were heroic and saintly.

5. The most heroic and saintly of all Confederates, perhaps of all Americans, was Robert E. Lee.

6. Southern women were loyal to the Confederate cause and sanctified by the sacrifice of their loved ones.[3]

The fundamental truth is that the war was about the South’s determination to continue its use of enslaved people to generate the bulk of its wealth. Tens of thousands of people of Southern heritage have bought into the falsehood of the Lost Cause, continuing to display the Confederate flag and nurse their invisible wounds.

Likewise, millions of people today are standing firm in their belief that Trump can do no wrong, that he was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, and other similar dross. Don’t bother them with facts. Their minds are made up and their egos depend on it. One can only hope that enough of them will overcome the cognitive dissonance to accept that Trump was not sent by God Almighty to bestow an all-white conservative dispensation on the United States of America, but rather that he was and is a corrupt man clever enough to dupe 61,943,670 voters (2016 election).

Whether Twain actually said this remains an unproven irony.

[1] https://www.cits.ucsb.edu/fake-news/why-we-fall

[2] https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-cognitive-bias-can-explain-post-truth/

[3] https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lost-cause-the/

Connecting the Population-Climate Change Dots

Starving children in Budapest. But let’s have more!

Why would anyone want to force a woman to give birth to a child she doesn’t want? Don’t we have enough problems? It’s not like we’re running out of people. The U. S. population currently stands at 331.9 million and is expected to reach nearly 370 million in the next thirty years. Tired of traffic? Crowded city streets and sidewalks? Having to wait in line for what you need?

There is a direct correlation between population and pollution: more people, more trash, more car exhaust, more use of chemicals to produce food. There’s also the increase in taxes required to support social programs that keep people from starving. Homelessness isn’t a result only of mental illness or addiction, but also the need for affordable housing in a competitive culture where there aren’t enough houses for all the people. More population, more homelessness.

But wait! There’s more!

The global population growth rate is around .8% per year. That might not sound like much, but it translates in real numbers to an additional 67 million people PER YEAR, increasing by nearly 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from the current 8 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050. And while we might feel briefly smug that this mostly isn’t happening in the United States, the fact is that it IS happening on our southern border.

It is only logical to acknowledge that an increase in the world’s population will cause additional strains on resources. More people means an increased demand for food, water, housing, energy, healthcare, transportation, and more. And all that consumption contributes to ecological degradation, increased conflicts, and a higher risk of large-scale disasters like pandemics.

Throw into that mix the effects of climate change.

Climate change is one of humanity’s most critical challenges. The warming of the planet threatens food security, freshwater supply, and human health. The effects of climate change, including sea level rise, droughts, floods, and extreme weather, will be more severe if actions are not taken to dramatically reduce emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. While the link between human action and the planet’s recent warming remains an almost unanimous scientific consensus, the links between population growth and climate change deserve further exploration.

With 2 billion people to be added to our human ranks by 2050 and an additional 1 billion more by 2100, demographic trends and variables play an important role in understanding and confronting the world’s climate crisis. Population growth, along with increasing consumption, tends to increase emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases. Rapid population growth worsens the impacts of climate change by straining resources and exposing more people to climate-related risks—especially in low-resource regions.

Including population dynamics in climate change-related education and advocacy can help clarify why access to reproductive health care, family planning options, girls’ education, and gender equity should be included in climate interventions. Increased investment in health and education, along with improvements in infrastructure and land use, would strengthen climate resilience and build adaptive capacity for people around the world.[1]

These facts are ignored in the evangelical push behind rightwing politics that have terminated U.S. efforts to promote birth control in Third World nations and continue to attempt to enact similarly restrictive laws in the U.S. After steadily declining for a decade, world hunger is on the rise, affecting nearly 10% of people globally. From 2019 to 2022, the number of undernourished people grew by as many as 150 million, a crisis driven largely by conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, the scale of the current global hunger and malnutrition crisis is enormous, with more than 345 million people facing high levels of food insecurity in 2023 – more than double the number in 2020.

And, the policy change backfired.

In countries that depend heavily on U.S. support for family planning and reproductive health programs, contraceptive use decreased 14 percent, pregnancies rose 12 percent, and abortions climbed 40 percent when the policy was in effect relative to countries less reliant on U.S. support. The evidence suggests that the policy leads to a reduction in contraceptive use and increased pregnancies and abortions.[2]

Wake up time! Despite FOX News propaganda, the crisis at our border is not created by drug cartels pushing fentanyl. It is about the same issues that have driven people to leave their homelands since prehistory: the need for opportunity to obtain food and safety. If economic conditions are unfavorable and appear to be deteriorating further, an increasing number of people will migrate to countries with a better outlook.

As noted in this 2022 report from the National Academy of Sciences:

Although family planning services are crucial for global health and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, their funding remains controversial. We document the health consequences of the “Mexico City Policy” (MCP), which restricts US funding for abortion-related activities worldwide. Since its enactment in 1985, the MCP has been enforced only under Republican administrations and quickly rescinded when a Democrat wins the presidency. Our analysis shows that the MCP makes it harder for women to get information on and support for reproductive health and is associated with higher maternal and child mortality rates and HIV rates worldwide. We estimate that reinstating the MCP between 2017 and 2021 resulted in approximately 108,000 maternal and child deaths and 360,000 new HIV infections.

Genius.

We have yet to hear a definitive solution from conservatives who seem to prefer an unlimited number of births even if such population growth exacerbates climate change and its many effects on humanity. What do they propose to do about people starving? Nothing? Just let them starve? What about people driven from their homes by rising sea levels? That is already a big problem in low-lying areas which are home to over 900 million people. What do we do about all those fetuses and babies, not to mention half-grown children, women and men?

The United Nations warns:

Between 250 and 400 million people will likely need new homes in new locations in fewer than 80 years, [the UN President] also warned of devastating impacts for the world’s “breadbaskets,” especially fertile deltas along the Nile, Mekong and other rivers.

Apparently this won’t be a real problem until people can’t live in U.S. coastal cities. Oh, wait…

Flooding in Florida 2023 Photograph: Orit Ben-Ezzer/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

[1] https://populationconnection.org/resources/population-and-climate/

[2] https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/how-us-government-restrictions-foreign-aid-abortion-services-backfired

Climate Wars

https://jasoninstitute.com/the-first-climate-war-insight-into-the-war-in-darfur/

War still edges out climate change as the current greatest cause of starvation. It’s an ouroboros (snake eating itself, i.e. vicious cycle) wherein the more devastated a landscape becomes and the less food it can produce, the more people fight over it. Which leads to more conflict, etc. It is important to note that climate change alone has not been proven to increase the likelihood of discord; however, climate change compounded with challenging economic, political, or social conditions can heighten the risk of conflict.

Evidence links rise in temperature to a rise in civil war. Researchers at Princeton University and UC Berkeley found that a rise in average annual temperature by even 1° Celsius (1.8° Fahrenheit) leads to a 4.5% increase in civil war that year. There has been a global increase in the incidence of civil war following World War II, with civil wars even having a greater number of casualties than international wars. Civil wars are dangerous, and climate change is making them more common.[1]

In 2022, the five regions with the highest number of hungry people as a proportion of population included:

Middle Africa: 31.8%
East Africa: 28.1%
Western Africa: 18.7%
Caribbean: 16.1%
Southern Asia: 15.8%

The Sahel, located between Sudan and the Sahara (West Africa) and regarded as the most vulnerable area to climate change, is a semi-arid region comprising some of the world’s poorest and most fragile states (e.g. Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mauritania).[2]

Darfur, a region in the Western part of Sudan, has been in a state of emergency since 2003. “…The general notion is that the decline in rainfall and land degradation increased and intensified already existing violent struggles over pastures, water and farmland, proportionally resulting in a large scale civil war.”[3]

Population growth, along with increasing consumption, tends to increase emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases. Rapid population growth worsens the impacts of climate change by straining resources and exposing more people to climate-related risks—especially in low-resource regions. There has been a reluctance to integrate discussions of population into climate education and advocacy. Yet climate change is tightly linked to population growth.

https://populationconnection.org/resources/population-and-climate/

Top 10 Countries with the Highest Fertility Rates (by births per woman) – World Bank 2021 (2019 data). If these country names look familiar, check the list above of nations with the greatest rates of starvation.

Niger – 6.8 (West Africa)

Somalia – 6.0 (East Africa)

Congo (Dem. Rep.) – 5.8 (tie) (Middle Africa)

Mali – 5.8 (tie) (West Africa)

Chad – 5.6 (Middle Africa)

Angola – 5.4 (West Africa)

Burundi – 5.3 (tie) (East Africa)

Nigeria – 5.3 (tie) (West Africa)

Gambia – 5.2 (West Africa)

Burkina Faso – 5.1 (West Africa)

As the U.K.-based charity Population Matters summarizes: “Every additional person increases carbon emissions—the rich far more than the poor—and increases the number of climate change victims—the poor far more than the rich.” At the national level, there is a clear relationship between income and per capita CO₂ emissions, with average emissions for people living in industrialized countries and key oil producing nations topping the charts. High-consuming lifestyles and production practices in the highest income countries result in much higher emissions rates than in middle and low-income countries, where the majority of the world’s population lives.[4]

Sadly, the people suffering the most from climate change are those least responsible for the problem. For example, the United States represents just over 4% of the global population but accounts for 17% of the world’s energy use. Per person carbon emissions are among the highest in the world. People living in the United States, Australia, and Canada, have carbon footprints close to 200 times larger than people in some of the poorest and fastest-growing countries in sub-Saharan Africa—such as Chad, Niger, and the Central African Republic. In the middle of the spectrum are the middle-income economies, home to 75% of the world’s population. In these places, industrialization will increase standards of living and consumption patterns over the coming decades. Without changes to how economies tend to grow, carbon emissions will rise.[5]

As there is no panacea for combating climate change, a wide variety of options needs to be exercised. An integrated approach includes educating girls and empowering women to make their own decisions about reproduction.

While the United States is best equipped to address the issue of reproduction, Republican lawmakers have systematically gutted programs which offered reproductive health care to these places. President Ronald Reagan first enacted the global gag rule—also known as the Mexico City Policy—in 1984. Every president since Reagan has decided whether to enact or revoke the policy, making NGO funding vulnerable to political changes happening in the United States. The rule forces organizations to choose whether to provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care and education without U.S. funding, or comply with the policy in order to continue accepting U.S. funds.

Used by U.S. presidents since 1984 to signal their stance on abortion rights, the rule has been backed by Republicans – including Bush from 2001 to 2008 – and revoked by Democrats.

When the policy was in place in the Bush era, modern contraception use declined by 14% and pregnancy rates rose 12% in Sub-Saharan countries most reliant on U.S. family planning aid, a study found. When the policy was rescinded by Democratic President Barack Obama, the pattern reversed, with higher contraceptive use and fewer abortions.

Former President Donald Trump reinstated the rule in 2017. The evangelical-backed ban on funding for reproductive care extends beyond reproduction. Nearly 50 percent of global HIV and AIDS funding comes from the U.S. government. Under President Trump’s expanded global gag rule, the quality and availability of HIV services, including treatment, testing, and prevention, began suffering dramatically—more than previous iterations of the rule. The policy under Trump undid decades of work to integrate sexual and reproductive health services with HIV services. Vulnerable populations, and men who have sex with men in particular, began experiencing significant health service disruptions as a result of the global gag rule. Clearly, the evangelical-condoned ban isn’t about brotherly love.

Meanwhile, multiple studies have shown that the global gag rule has not decreased rates of abortions but instead has increased the number of unsafe abortions.

U.S. funding for family planning/reproductive health care is governed by several other legislative and policy requirements, including a legal ban on the direct use of U.S. funding overseas for abortion as a method of family planning (the Helms Amendment, which has been in place since 1973) and, when in effect, the Mexico City Policy (reinstated and expanded by President Trump as the “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance” policy but rescinded by President Biden upon taking office).[6]

In the situation where Republicans routinely disrupt the best efforts of U.S. progressives to reduce human suffering around the world, we can expect more war, more starvation (especially for mothers and children) and much greater human suffering all around.

Better to never have been born. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-starving-children-from-africa#/

[1] https://theyearsproject.com/latest/is-climate-change-causing-more-wars

[2] https://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/economy-and-ecology/how-climate-change-fuels-conflicts-in-west-africa-6227/

[3] https://jasoninstitute.com/the-first-climate-war-insight-into-the-war-in-darfur/

[4] https://populationmatters.org/climate-change/

[5] https://populationconnection.org/resources/population-and-climate/

[6] https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-u-s-government-and-international-family-planning-reproductive-health-statutory-requirements-and-policies/

The Tragic Trajectory of the “Freedom” Party

In political science, a reactionary is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society.

Increasingly since the 1960s, terrified conservatives and the power brokers behind them have pursued increasingly extreme political efforts to turn back time. What terrified the people were the changes wrought by new technologies and ideas of personal liberty. Suddenly women had legal access to effective contraceptives and by 1973, to abortion. To many, even more upsetting were the ramifications of the Civil Rights Act.

What terrified the power brokers were the Baby Boomers who rejected corporatism and the war machine. Young people from all kinds of families turned to the counter-culture in its denunciation of the war in Vietnam and the draft, its embrace of psychoactive substances that expanded consciousness, and a revolutionary denial of consumer culture.

The shock and horror was met by a series of efforts meant to reclaim the past. Called everything from the Silent Majority, Tea Party, and now the so-called “Freedom” Caucus, these political mavens proclaim their ‘freedom’ to not accept progress, to hang by their fingernails clenching the coattails of a vanishing way of life.

The effort puts the nation and humanity at risk.

Fundamentally, the resistance stems from love of money coupled with extremist religion (always a useful tool). Only God knows how viruses work. God doesn’t want people to question His will. God will take care of us. Et cetera. Fear drives these knee-jerk reactions, fear of learning enough to question certain religious beliefs, fear of having to think for oneself. Fear of personal responsibility.

Fear incited by behind-the-scenes power brokers.

Take, for example, the reactionary refusal to vaccinate. Science tell us that the availability of unprotected humans gives viruses fresh grounds in which to breed. And clever viruses reproduce with slightly altered offspring (mutations) that make them more likely to succeed—more virulent, or more resistant to medicine, or less likely to be stopped by the vaccine. Sadly, many reactionaries are unaware of this because they are not well informed on the nature of viruses, or of the nature of biological entities overall.

That’s because many reactionaries resisted the lessons of science that were offered in public schools. Either underpaid, overworked teachers failed to connect with the student or, more often, the student refused to allow the information to process in his/her mind. The resistance had been long taught at home through parental dismissal of science, passed on through generations.

Yet, remarkably, the same reactionaries usually turn to science when they fall ill. Vaccine refusers end up in hospitals partaking of the latest technologies and therapies science has to offer. And it doesn’t take a virus to incite their embrace of the latest scientific-medical interventions. Or take cancer, for example. Few if any persons facing a cancer diagnosis are interested in waiting for God to heal them. They rush to embrace chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.

But perhaps I overstate the point.

Reactionaries’ views on the financial world progress much faster than their views on advances in the social order. The proliferation of the extremely wealthy resonates in reactionary minds as a promise of what they might themselves gain if they play their cards right. Conditioned by clever propaganda put forth by the rich, the reactionaries wait for the ship to come in, much as a serf waited for the lord of their domain to grant a favor, perhaps by granting an extra field to plant or a new wagon in which to haul the harvest–which coincidentally largely lined the lord’s pockets, not their own.

This faith in the wealthy stems from several religious concepts, that God grants wealth to the virtuous and that people who are rich are God’s favored children. Therefore, in reactionary logic, by accepting and respecting the excessive wealth of a few, they are acknowledging God’s plan. If they’re extra good, God might also reward them with a windfall.

Never mind that the same teachings embraced by reactionaries state that wealthy men cannot expect to be accepted by God.

A darker side of this primitive thinking is the compulsion to protect those things so honored by God. If material goods of the wealthy are threatened by angry mobs, the appropriate reaction by God’s people is to kill the mobs. Hence Kyle Rittenhouse. Hence the thousands who believe young Kyle did the right thing. But this is apostasy: valuing material things over human life is a big NO in Scriptural teachings.

Another favorite mindset among reactionaries is the accumulation and embrace of multiple prejudices. Supported by twisted interpretations of Biblical bits and pieces, the religious reactionary becomes a racist, sexist hater ready to take up arms against any effort to bring them in closer, more accepting contact with people of different color, ethnicity, or gender. The actual cause of these prejudices is not religion but rather fear—fear of the unknown, the Other–as well as the urgent need to cling to what is known.

Ironically, eliminating fear is a fundamental objective of religion. Except, of course, fear of God. In theory, if a person is suitably fearful of God, and therefore religious in following God’s rules, then God will take care of everything else. This is called faith.

For many people, this narrow faith doesn’t quite get them past that man’s dark skin or that woman’s clever mind or that ‘person’ who pretends he’s a woman when he’s probably a man. Faith doesn’t provide any assistance in dealing with people who don’t have the same religious beliefs, or who speak a foreign language.

Faith has no suggestions on how to deal with sexual desires toward a person of same sex, so the default response is to call it sin and try to ignore it. But the desire never goes away and to compensate, the person in this quandary may direct his sexual frustration in other ways, such as child molestation.

Trapped in their unquestioning religious beliefs and narrow-minded view of the world, these folks hardly experience the ‘freedom’ their mantras espouse. And the power brokers don’t hesitate to play on their ignorance to enhance their financial opportunities. Not only are conservatives bound up in their tunnel vision of the world, their every effort is to restrict the freedom of others—banning books, restricting speech to avoid words they don’t like, forbidding medical care to women—there’s a long list of freedoms the Freedom Party would eliminate from American life.

http://currydemocrats.org/in_perspective/american_pie_simple.html

Arkansas Education: Part I—Education is the foundation of democracy

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” ~Thomas Jefferson

But what if the ‘education’ informing the whole mass is inconsistent? What if some students learn that God created the earth in seven days while others are taught Earth has been evolving for five billion years? What if some students learn the biology of cellular activity while others students never learn about cells at all?

Consider this:

Earlier this year [2017], Naftuli Moster, executive director of YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education) drew attention to the plight of young Jewish boys attending yeshivas instead of public schools.[1] According to Moster, nearly 50,000 yeshiva students in the New York City area “are not being taught science, history, and geography among other subjects,” even though the NY State Department of Education “requires non-public schools to teach a variety of subjects, including English, math, science, history, geography, art and more.” Misinformation and omission of subject matter are problems not just relegated to New York or to yeshivas.

As Dana Hunter wrote in Scientific American, millions of children are being taught in Christian private schools and through religious homeschooling that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and that Noah’s flood is “the event that formed most of the geologic record.” Many of these schools, as well as parents who homeschool their children for religious reasons, use non-accredited science books, such as Science of the Physical Creation in Christian Perspective, that inject religious ideology into ‘lessons’ about science.

And according to Valerie Strauss and Emily Wax of the Washington Post, tens of thousands of American schoolchildren attending Islamic schools face a similar underexposure to important secular subject matter. As an example, Strauss and Wax point to the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia, which doesn’t require students to take classes in US history or government. Moreover, their textbooks include religious instruction that fosters conflict. One, for example, states: “The Day of Judgment can’t come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.”[2]

These situations must change.

The United States notably does not have an established national curriculum after the idea was explicitly banned in 1965, in Section 604 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (since moved to Section 2302 and codified at 20 U.S.C. § 6692). This act provided federal funding for primary and secondary education (‘Title I funding’) as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. However, most states [including Arkansas] in the United States voluntarily abide by the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which provides certain uniform standards.[3]

There are no requirements for accreditation, registration, licensing, or approval from the state for private or religious schools in Arkansas. Teacher do not have to be certified. Curriculum does not have to follow any standards.

…In the 2020-21 homeschool report from the Arkansas Department of Education, there were just over 30,000 homeschooled students reported last year. In that same year, the Arkansas DOE reported that there were 473,000 students enrolled in Arkansas public schools, and approximately 27,000 students enrolled in private schools in the state.

Aside from the obvious negative effects on students who find themselves at odds with the accepted knowledge of American society, the greater harm affects the entire nation. Pockets of ‘believers’ of one particular faith or another become ‘hardwired’ to see nonbelievers (of their particular faith) as ‘wrong’ and therefore a type of enemy. People outraged that Latino immigrants don’t speak ‘English’ are often the same people who demand their right to isolate their families from other ‘wrong’ cultures.

Since the passage of the Massachusetts Act of 1647, Americans have established the right of the state to require communities to create and maintain elementary schools in all towns for every child and secondary schools for youth in larger towns. These schools were expected to provide the knowledge each child would need to lead a productive, responsible life as an American citizen. This law also established the tradition that these schools should be funded through local property tax as land was considered to be a valid measure of wealth.

Even before the United States had a Constitution, its founders were advocating for the creation of public education systems. The United States was an experiment in democracy unlike anything the world had ever seen, turning away from government dominated by elites and hoping that the common man could rule himself. If this experiment had any chance of standing the test of time, the nation needed far more schools to prepare everyday citizens for self-government. As James Madison, the father of our Constitution, remarked: “a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy.” Thomas Jefferson similarly argued that governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed,” but that it is education that makes that consent possible. President Washington, in his last annual message to Congress, added that expanding education was essential to the perpetuation of nation’s common values and the chance of a “permanent Union.”[4]

Clearly the failure of Arkansas’ current education system is directly responsible for our miserable political situation where only half of eligible voters bother to vote, and of those, many rely on propagandized rhetoric to decide their vote. In the 2022 election, Sanders won her governorship with 36% of the eligible voters.

Other states have figured out how to produce well-educated students. Arkansas should take a lesson. The state must require a specific curriculum for all K-12 education, homeschooled, private, whatever. Currently, the State of Arkansas exerts no supervision or testing of homeschooled students.[5]

The idea that K-12 education should include religion is absurd. Any specific religion is just one more belief system among hundreds of myth-based belief systems. Leave such indoctrination to parents and churches.

Make no mistake–this proposed shift of tax dollars toward private and religious schools in Arkansas is a key element of the evangelical effort to control education. If our children do not all learn the same truths about our history, science, and politics, we have no chance of preserving our republic. No matter what faith one might follow, we must agree on the basic tenants of logic, language, and the scientific method. Without that common ground, the United States of America will dissolve into violent, partisan chaos, just as the Founding Fathers warned.

[1] Yeshivas are Orthodox Jewish schools

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/religious-schools-are-fai_b_9431334

[3] Arkansas has adopted Common Core standards as well as the Next Generation Science Standards. Sadly, many states opted out of the Common Core standards which only applied to math and language arts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core   Subsequently, Next Generation Science Standards have established standards for science, but social studies and history remain ungoverned. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Science_Standards

[4] https://time.com/5891261/early-american-education-history/

[5] https://www.time4learning.com/homeschooling/arkansas/laws-requirements.html

The Very Scary Mike Pence

The former vice-president has been making the media tour these past several days, touting his new book So Help Me God and sticking his toe in the water for a possible run for the presidency. His appearance in those media events reflects the nature of the man—somber, speaking in controlled low tones, and wearing a dark gray suit. He didn’t once crack a smile (ABC interview) nor did he show any emotion, although when asked about his feelings regarding Trump’s inciting remarks during the January 6 insurrection that he lacked courage, he did duck his head briefly before changing the subject.

We were left to assume he became emotional over the betrayal by his commander in chief. Instead, he seemed an automaton, not truly human but rather a creation of his own religious obsession.

While we can be thankful that his determination to “do the right thing” prevented him from aiding Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, that same determination drives Pence toward goals that violate the freedoms of Americans. Just because he kissed Trump’s ass for four years then refused his last most important command doesn’t mean he has given up his religious beliefs.

Never forget. Mike Pence is an extremist evangelical, modeled on the Pilgrim mindset that God reigns in all things. His interpretation of God’s rules bears closer examination if we are to understand exactly how well he fit into Trump’s presidency. He, not Trump, attracted the votes of the many evangelical voters responsible for Trump’s election. Finally, evangelicals had a man who shared their point of view on virtually every issue.

Pence has repeatedly fought against abortion rights and has pursued all possible channels to block financial support for any entity which provides abortions. He has criticized sex education and supports promotion of abstinence. He has also voiced opposition to embryonic stem cell research. He supported the overturn of Roe v Wade but when asked in the 2020 vice presidential debate what he would do if it was overturned, he refused to endorse criminalizing abortion—yet another example of his fishtailing in the face of reality.

Pence is staunchly anti-LGBT rights. He has opposed non-discrimination legislation and allowing gays to openly serve in the military. He opposes same sex marriage and civil unions.

Pence has proposed a flat federal tax rate, opposed the auto industry bailout of 2008-09, and voted against raising the federal minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $7.35.

Voting against the Medicare Part D that helped provide prescription drug coverage, Pence continues to reveal his lack of medical knowledge with such assertions as “smoking doesn’t kill.” He came out firmly against needle exchange programs as a method of decreasing spread of AIDS.

Pence is opposed to the birthright citizenship policy wherein children born in the United States to non-citizens automatically become citizens. He also promoted an immigration plan that would have increased border security and implemented strict enforcement of laws against hiring undocumented immigrants.

Pence supported a 2005 plan to partially privatize Social Security but since has backed away from any specific plan, saying only that cuts to Social Security would need everyone at the table.

After many years of denying that human activity is the primary driver of climate change, in 2016 Pence stated that there was no doubt the human activity “affects” the climate. Despite this equivocation, “While in the House, Pence ’voted to eliminate funding for climate education programs and to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.’Pence also ‘repeatedly voted against energy efficiency and renewable energy funding and rules’ and voted ‘for several bills that supported fossil fuel development, including legislation promoting offshore drilling.’”[1]

Pence is a hardliner on drugs, protesting any steps to decrease penalties for low-level marijuana offenses. He worked to reinstate mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. He supports federal restrictions on online gambling.

Mike Pence has been one of the most public voices in asserting that ‘All Lives Matter’ rather than supporting the understanding that ‘Black Lives Matter’ addresses specific problems faced by formerly enslaved people. He supported the Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court which allowed corporations to act as individuals in donating to political campaigns. He supported the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Pence imagines himself as an upright Christian man, what an observer might consider as ‘smug’ in his satisfaction with his rigid stance on all the above-named issues. His primary role in the Trump White House was to uphold the pretense of religiosity that kept evangelical Christians firmly in support of Trump while simultaneously ignoring Trump’s many and repeated violations of the Ten Commandments and common decency. Pence was willing to scorch his coattails with his proximity to Trump because he, like so many other evangelicals, believed that their conservative agenda would be fulfilled through the presidency of a ‘flawed vessel.’ In their view, God made Trump president largely because Pence was there quietly steering policy toward a Christian nation.

Whether or not Pence seeks the Republican nomination for president, his dogmatic stance on so many important issues is not his alone. Rather, he epitomizes the increasingly familiar face of the Republican Party as one of extremist religious objectives. In embracing his faith, Pence (and others like him) plod toward the seditious goal of enforcing Christianity in U.S. laws and policies.

The entire extremist belief system Pence embraces ignores the reality of our evolution as humans, moving toward greater knowledge and understanding of processes that previously seemed magical, from the hand of God. As our scientific advancements allow us to develop vaccines against viruses, travel in motor vehicles, and interact with people anywhere in the world via the Internet, we gain greater opportunity and willingness to improve human life in every way. We are learning every day to become more humane, more tolerant. Yet despite appreciating the benefits of these technological advancements (pretty sure Pence uses a cell phone and the Internet), the collateral expansion of understanding and tolerance escapes the evangelical.

The deal Pence and his fellow religionists have made with God is a simple quid pro quo. We’ll do everything we can to force people to see it our way and in return, God will grant us a place at his right hand in Heaven. This magical thinking follows in a direct line from the most primitive religious practices wherein sacrifices were made to a god in order to improve some aspect of existence—fewer earthquakes, the withdrawal of enemy troops, release from slavery, relief of illness, et cetera ad infinitum. Sacrifice of pleasure, of our most valuable foods or assets, even of our children, has been the key element of religion.[2] Whatever has been a trial upon human life was within the power of a god to mitigate if only the people could hit on the best method of pleasing that god.

While the Constitution of the United States assures that church and state are to remain entirely separate, written as it was by those who knew the history of unending wars caused by religion, the evangelicals of our country either choose to ignore or ignorantly second guess the basis and importance of this provision. They will not stop their attempts to make the nation a manifestation of Christianity. The appearance of decency and patriotic intent in Pence’s refusal to grant Trump his wish to overturn the 2020 election is a throw-away relic of Pence’s true motivation, which was and remains his ‘duty’ to do right, thereby pleasing his god.

[1] This quote and much of the preceding information gleaned from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pence

[2] It can be argued that Christianity is itself a carryover of primitive death cults whose sacrifices ensured God’s benevolence. The crucifixion of Christ and the practice of communion in which the faithful partake of bread and wine as symbols of Christ’s body and blood is a direct link to the ancient belief that a life had to be sacrificed in order to please the god.

The War, Again

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/war.htm

Yet again, or should I say, still, we the people are engaged in a religious war. One could argue that religious wars never really stop. Sometimes they go underground to simmer while parents exhort their children in the evils of their neighbors’ ways. But other times, like now, religionists strong arm their beliefs and opinions into public policy.

And that, my friends, is when the bloodshed inevitably begins. It was bad enough that the religious beliefs of your neighbors caused them to say insulting things about you, to sneer or, predictably, pray for your lost soul. Let their prayers rise to the heavens, calling upon their god to save them from the sins of their irreverent brethren.

How many gods are there? Over 5,000? 330 million? But of course only your god is real.

All of them exist in the sky, came to earth to kick-start humanity, taught us important skills, and told us how to honor Him. Well, Her in some cases. Those pesky extraterrestrials with their genetic manipulations, coming here to help us and leaving us to fail.

One source provides this following summary:

Abrahamic:

Christians believe in one God, saints, and millions of angels. Muslims believe in one god called Allah. Judaism is also monotheistic.

Eastern:

Hinduism: I don’t know much about Hinduism but some Hindus I’ve met say there are millions of gods. Buddhists don’t really believe in a “god” in the classical sense

Jains and Shinto: animistic, believe in souls of non- living and animate things. Jains believe even insects, plants, fungi, and bacteria possess spirits. Shinto believe in 8 million “kami” inhabiting rocks, trees, rivers, etc.

Persian:

Not sure about Zoroastrianism. Baha’i’ appears to believe in one god. Native religions are often polytheistic.[1]

But of course that’s a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Even more fascinating is the idea, growing in acceptance, that the gods are nothing more or less than highly advanced being from other worlds. Archaeological evidence coupled with the mythologies of most religions provide excellent evidence for this theory. After all, they come from the sky and probably despair of our continuous reversion to animal behavior, from which they crafted us. Haven’t they gone to a lot of effort to instruct us?

But back to the more fantastical concept of magical beings.

Thanks to our mortal fear of things we don’t understand, we humans find ourselves subservient to one god or another, or fifty, in order to cope with our lives. We pray, fervently, when that wall of muddy water rises to our front porch, when our child burns up with fever, when the person we love dies, that our god will hear our prayer and save us. Never mind that the crisis at hand could have been prevented if a god was truly paying attention.

We join with others to pool our resources to build a church or temple so we can pray with others, hoping our joined voices somehow better penetrate the vast distance between our physical existence and the domain of our god(s). We pool even more resources in order to send our emissaries to other places to spread the good word about our god (who is of course superior to any gods those places might already know) in order to gain god’s favor.

My god is better than your god.

Only believers in my god will enter the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven—somewhere in the sky, the kingdom exists with its pearly gates and troops of glittering asexual angels. For Christians, Heaven is where Jesus Christ sits on the right hand of God while the Holy Spirit hovers effervescently around them. There is where you can exist in bliss for eternity if only you follow the rules set down by God. I won’t even try to go into the discrepancies and horrors enshrined within the pages of that many-times-edited document called the Bible, manipulated now for over 1700 years to fit the political whims of one ruler or another, ad infinitum.

Yes, as astute power brokers have long understood, religion is the key to controlling the masses. Through fear. Fear of your neighbor. Fear of disease. Fear of the great unknown, Nature in all her many ways of killing you or your children—flood, fire, earthquake, volcano, lightning, insects that consume your crops, wild animals that want you for dinner, accidents that leave you crippled. There is no end to the great unknowns. No end of things to fear.

Fear of GOD HIMSELF, a judgmental angry god who doles out death and destruction, an eternity in pain and suffering if you don’t follow his rules.

But your god is there, promising that if you only do x, y, and z, you will at least find surcease once you die. By then, of course, it’s too late to figure out it was all meant to keep you in thrall to the power structure with your tithes and contributions, your allegiance, your taking up arms to protect the power structure, your obeisance to the belief system.

Currently, the belief system for at least 74 million U. S. voters is an amalgamation of Christianity and pseudo-patriotic blather, worshippers of the earthly manifestation of their beliefs, Donald Trump. Incoherent as he may seem, he has managed to embody this confused belief system with his worldly embrace of excessive materialism, his adulterous affairs and marriages to women who can’t talk back, and his dishonorable thievery and abuse of countless workmen, friends, and professional associates.

The fear that drives Trump’s true believers is a new kind of fear. This fear is an addition to the traditional fear of Nature, disease, death, etc. The new fear is about incomprehensible technology and science that, on one hand, presents us with marvels like cell phones and the internet, and on the other hand, boggles our minds and bodies with demands we are mostly not yet evolved to endure.

It’s only been one hundred years since the majority of us lived our lives in the same patterns as we had for thousands of years. We tilled the land and cared for animals which in turn provided our food. We interacted with neighbors who were like us, who might have the skills to craft a plow or horseshoe, or who might teach our children to read. We scheduled our days by the season and the chores before us, washing our few clothes, grinding our grain, weaving our cloth. Those of us who lived in the cities might practice special trades, but the cities weren’t yet vast streams of headlights and towering structures of steel and glittering glass. Now suddenly we measure our time by the minute, steer our automobiles down the highways at 70 miles per hour, see on the television scenes of havoc and violence from places around the world.

We are not ready for this.

Battle Scene from 30 Years War, 1856 by Christian Sell

Mostly. The few among us who are ready, who embrace new ideas and new ways of living, are seen as the enemy. In fact, they are the future. They are evolving into the new humanity while the rest of us are doomed to die out.

The new people are different. They see the world as one community, the population as brothers. They accept the personal autonomy of women. They accept transgender and all forms of intimate interaction. They accept people of all colors. They accept that gods are not the answer. Rather, they embody the ultimate concept of any god’s primary teaching, that we must love each other and treat each other as we wish to be treated.

It is the Age of Aquarius.

In retreat from change, fearful people embrace what they know best, the violence enshrined in our past and its reactionary religions. Enemies, those who are Other, must be eradicated in order to protect self, family, and tradition. Random mass shootings are simply the enactment of this understanding.

This is a war that can only get worse as ‘leaders’ of the old beliefs increasingly harden their rhetoric in a craven attempt to bring glory and power to their misbegotten selves. Trump is only the figurehead for these rigid disciples. His inchoate mutterings satisfy the unspoken desire for an understandable past, when saddling a horse or following a plow were the only skills required. While these ‘conservatives’ take full advantage of the products of progress, everything from modern medicine to the use of secret internet groups where they can foment more hatred, they cannot grasp the tandem mindset, the mental/psychological trajectory of our evolution.

If only the ignorant could learn not to fear change. If only the dogmatic could understand the lessons of history. If only the evangelical Christians could see how their desire for a Christian nation mimics exactly the desires and objectives of the Taliban, the jihadists, and echoes the countless previous destructions of human life and civilizations in the name of their god.

~~~

“You cannot raise your children the way your parents raised you because your parents raised you for a world that no longer exists.” Mufti Menk

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-religions-and-different-gods-exist-currently

Putin’s Coup

Abortion has been, and continues to be, a vital weapon in the Republican toolbox, a means to gain control over a multitude of less savory objectives. With this hot button, they have been able to whip up energy within their ranks. Over the last fifty years, a growing mob of zealots have taken to the streets and the halls of government with placards showing the pitiful fetus so wronged by evil women and their fiendish abortion doctors.

The truth is that the flap over abortion was never as much about the ‘unborn baby’ as it was about political capital. Powerbrokers saw right away that this issue aroused emotion like nothing else. Yet what the Republican Party stood for, then as now, also enshrined racial prejudice, but it had become impossible to openly advocate for white supremacy.

The mass migration of voters from Democratic ranks to the shelter of the Republican Party began not with Roe v Wade, but with the 1952 Brown vs Board of Education decision and followed more decisively with the Kennedy-Johnson push for civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.

Police dogs, held by officers, jump at a man with torn trousers during a non-violent demonstration, Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963. Police officers used both dogs and firehoses to break up the rally.

After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, many white, conservative Southern Democrats became Republicans. The South had been mostly Democratic before 1964; it was mostly Republican after (although on the local level continued to be heavily Democratic for decades). Many “values voters” became Republicans.[1]

The 1973 Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion did not have nearly the same impact as the Civil Rights Act as far as political response. For a time, other issues sidetracked voter attention, such as the winding down of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that shoved Nixon out of office. The Arab oil embargo also diverted public interest with skyrocketing gasoline prices. In reality, the behind-the-scene Republican strategists were slow in coming around to a full understanding of how to use the abortion issue to represent the real interests of conservatives.

*https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/25/supreme-court-must-undo-harms-that-flowed-its-roe-v-wade-overreach/*

Early in Reagan’s presidency, developing tactics on the abortion issue spread through the nation in the hands of then-fledgling evangelical groups wielding signage of dismembered fetuses (remarkably mature for the gestation dates named) and demonstrations by women crying for the lost babies or, more heart-rendering, testimonials by women who had obtained abortions and later regretted it. (This vanishingly small group remains an active feature of anti-choice campaigns. One could sum up their position as yet another demonstration of ignorance.)

At first, Democrats yielded ground on the matter, not firmly convinced enough about women’s right to bodily autonomy to take a firm stand. Lamentably lacking in early opposition to the anti-abortion crowd were strategies to fight back with their own weaponry, for example, citing Biblical scriptures showing that personhood began at birth.

After God formed man in Genesis 2:7, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being”. Although the man was fully formed by God in all respects, he was not a living being until after taking his first breath.[2]

Democrats have finally taken a stronger stance on the topic, linking the party to “their support of ‘human rights’ and of groups whose rights have been long suppressed – African Americans and other minority groups, women seeking to vote and enjoy full property rights, LGBTQ people and immigrants.”[3]

To Republicans, the abortion issue is a coded message about the party’s stance on longstanding prejudices, not only uppity women but also African Americans and other minorities, LBGTQ people, and non-white immigrants. Without having to advertise racism or other prejudices, Republican strategists can push voters to champion the rights of the fetus while avoiding the party’s full agenda.

It is not the facts of an issue which drive evangelical voters. As a general rule, evangelicals don’t embrace facts. Their hands are full of Bibles, which they don’t precisely understand, but they do hear what preachers tell them. What the preachers tell them is intended not to elucidate the facts but rather to stoke FEAR of God’s wrath. And, in these narrow hallways of evangelical mentality, God will punish them if they don’t stop women from killing fetuses.

It’s not that evangelist preachers are pursuing a goal they understand in terms of social policy. Their vehement sermons about abortion and their endorsement of specific political candidates derive from their urgent personal desire to make money off of Jesus. Evangelicals are an easy mark. See, for example, the fundraising headline at Focus on the Family’s website: “SAVE 2X THE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Double Your Gift to Save Lives!”

The more insidious objective of the Republican agenda is to continue shifting power to corporations and the super wealthy while the frontmen lure evangelical voters with the promise of a Christian nation. Sadly, evangelicals lack any understanding of the threat posed in religion as government, a condition that increases exponentially as more private religious schools and homeschooling take the place of public education.

Remedies for the current crisis would include regulations that deny diplomas to any student, homeschooled or otherwise, who cannot pass examinations proving understanding of American history and government, among other subjects required of public school students. If U. S. citizens cannot begin adulthood on the same page, we have no hope of continuing as a nation.

One thing such an education would ensure is the awareness that the Republican/evangelical drive toward a Christian nation is a form of sedition, “an overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority.”

Vladimir Putin personally authorized a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents. *https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/kremlin-papers-appear-to-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house*

Equally tragic is while Republican power brokers chortle over wins for the One Percent, they have failed to recognize the puppet master profiting from their maneuvers: Putin.

Trump’s victory lap over the demise of Roe v Wade unveils one of the subtle purposes of Vladimir Putin’s support. The Russian ploy to undermine U.S. society gained a witless ally in Trump, who pulled his best con job in his election to the presidency, aided and abetted by the machinations of Russian interference.

What has now been made clear is that Russian trolls and automated bots not only promoted explicitly pro-Donald Trump messaging, but also used social media to sow social divisions in America by stoking disagreement and division around a plethora of controversial topics such as immigration and Islamophobia.

The overarching goal for Russia, during the election and now, analysts say, is to expand and exploit divisions, attacking the American social fabric where it is most vulnerable, along lines of race, gender, class and creed.

“The broader Russian strategy is pretty clearly about destabilizing the country by focusing on and amplifying existing divisions, rather than supporting any one political party,” said Jonathon Morgan, a former state department adviser on digital responses to terrorism whose company, New Knowledge, analyzes the manipulation of public discourse.[4]

Russia’s desired outcome in the months before Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was not simply to see him elected. It aimed, instead, to more broadly “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order” (in the words of a January 2017 intelligence assessment), an effort that Russia believed would be aided far more by Trump’s election than Hillary Clinton’s. This overlapped with its desire to “provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States” (in the words of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III), leading it to weigh in not only on electoral politics but cultural fights — investing in amplifying and exacerbating contentious social debates.[5]

[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_realignment_in_the_United_States

[2] Also Job 33:4: “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

Ezekiel 37:5, 6: “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

Exodus 21:22: If a man causes a woman to have a miscarriage, he shall be fined; however, if the woman dies then he will be put to death. It should be apparent from this that the aborted fetus is not considered a living human being since the resulting punishment for the abortion is nothing more than a fine; it is not classified by the bible as a capital offense.

[3] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/08/1097118409/the-leaked-abortion-decision-blew-up-overnight-in-1973-roe-had-a-longer-fuse

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-politics-social-media-facebook

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/24/bump-russia-american-unity-undermined/

Pussyfooted Justice

Slave Market in Ancient Rome, by Jean-Léon Gérôme

If Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett really stood up for their convictions on the abortion issue, they wouldn’t just shuffle the decision to the states. They’d completely overturn Roe v Wade.

Why didn’t they?

Because they AREN’T convinced they are right.

If bodily autonomy isn’t guaranteed for the entire nation, and states are the appropriate venue for giving or denying those rights, what’s next? Slavery?

After all, former Confederate states form the bulk of those states eager to strip women of bodily autonomy.

What is loss of bodily autonomy other than slavery?

But wait! Save those cogent arguments!

Fanatic evangelicals eager to sacrifice women on the altar to their angry misogynistic god will never change their minds.
Lawmakers eager to harvest the fruits of their fifty-year campaign to be elected by targeting women will never stop the manipulation.
Evangelical women eager to bow down to male authority in order to avoid taking responsibility for their own lives believe their salvation depends on submitting to authority, God and men.

These people do not have the intellectual capacity to reason through the facts. Whatever intellect they might naturally possess has been subverted by religious brainwashing.

Throughout the millennia, women have aborted unwanted pregnancies—or abandoned unwanted newborns to die. Their decisions have shaped the human race. Yes, evangelicals, even you are the result of selective breeding.

Evangelicals believe that overturning Roe will magically end abortions. They are willingly ignorant of the history.

What would it take to really stop abortion?

Monitor all women of childbearing age, every month, for pregnancy.
If they test positive, sequester them so they can’t grab a coat hanger. Keep them locked up until they give birth.
That means keeping them away from their jobs, their husbands, their children.
It means turning women into baby machines under the force of law.

In truth, it is not possible to stop abortion.

What is possible—and predictable—is that laws restricting abortion rights will cause women to suffer. Sterility and even death are often outcomes of back-alley abortions.

This is the Big Win for evangelicals. In religious teachings, God said women should suffer because Eve tempted Adam into falling for the apple. So why ease that suffering? God said.

Never mind that pathetic Adam couldn’t think for himself and Just Say No. That bitch used her sexuality to manipulate the poor guy into something he knew he shouldn’t do.

What could better ensure that God extends welcoming arms when the faithful reach those pearly gates than a record of supporting the punishment of women?

NEVER MIND the truth staring us in the face, the result of smug religious thoughtlessness: OVERPOPULATION.

The greater the world population, the greater the environmental damage. The higher our standard of living, the greater the environmental damage. Electricity, motor vehicles, chemical agriculture, waste disposal—already we see the oceans rise, thick with waste. Already we watch as climate change disrupts agriculture and water supply.

It’s not possible to maintain anywhere near our standard of living with the population projected to double in the next 80 years.

World population estimates from 1800 to 2100, based on “high”, “medium” and “low” United Nations projections in 2010 (colored red, orange and green) and US Census Bureau historical estimates (in black). Actual recorded population figures (as of 2010) are colored in blue. According to the highest estimate, the world population may rise to 16 billion by 2100; according to the lowest estimate, it may decline to 7.2 billion.

For decades, we’ve seen the increasingly negative results of overpopulation—people dying of starvation, the spread of disease, the expansion of desert into previously productive lands due to climate change as well as overuse of farming and grazing in marginal areas.

The evangelical solution: Teach them about Jesus. It’s in God’s hands.

No. It is in OUR hands.

We see the rush of people from marginal lands into areas of greater resources. From Africa into the Middle East, from the Middle East into Europe. From Central America and South America across our southern border.

The evangelical solution: Build a wall.

How long until the money runs out to care for the disabled, the elderly, the compromised? How long until schools are so crippled that they fail utterly? These are problems of OVERPOPULATION.

When the time comes, do we allow women to continue their ancient role of deciding who is born, or do we authorize the government to make those decisions? A government empowered to force birth is equally empowered to deny birth.

The evangelical fight to make the United States a “Christian” nation is nothing less than an attempt to overturn our government. The Founding Fathers were clear on this point, to keep religion OUT of government. Power to the people.