Christian nationalism is a grave threat to the United States and the American republic. There should be no ambiguity or dullness when it comes to understanding what it is — no matter how benign it may present itself. It is what lurks beyond the veneer that is terrifying. There, the evil is revealed and manifested.
Reading Steve’s post this morning I am drinking my morning coffee from my hotel room and watching the sunrise begin to sprinkle across the Washington monument, I am ashamed by our citizenry’s utter lack of respect, compassion, and tolerance for others. We appear to have failed you George... I cannot believe it has come to this, but here we are.
“Watching a woman stand up and ask Donald Trump how his religious faith has deepened since 2015 has settled the debate around whether there are in fact stupid questions.”--Steve Schmidt
I have to disagree Steve. I was taught there are no stupid questions, just stupid people asking questions...:)
That said, I do wholeheartedly agree. These religious whack jobs, are ruthless as much much as they are relentless, and can never be reasoned with, because a believe system is built on fear and faith. Two ingredients that make it impossible to have a constructive conversation with these people.
They can lose every battle, and never lose the war because they never quit. They will find whatever leverage they can assert within the boundaries of the law, and as J6th has shown; outside the law as well.
So far they’ve been successful corrupting the judicial system, and have perverted the use of first amendment (religious rights) by the court, allowing religious entities to discriminate at will and act as a political entity; illegal for non-profit institutions.
These people and organizations need to be brought to heel, yet, as long as dark and unlimited money infests our political system, it will be an impossible task to rein them in.
Make no mistake, these groups are a clear and present danger to the national security of this nation, and to the health of our democracy and economy. If we fail to act soon, we do so at our own peril!
The MSM is doing a disservice to us all when it ignores the extremist religious views that are gaining traction in the US. Doug Mastriano, the gubernatorial candidate in PA is a heavily involved in the Seven Mountains Dominionists. Speaker Mike Johnson flies a New Apostolic Reformation flag outside his office. These cults are working together to impose their views on the rest of us and there are others. Looking forward to watching the whole documentary. We have to do as much as possible to alert the American people to the dangers these zealots pose.
“… (I)f Trump manages, one last time, to squeeze 271 electoral votes out of a distracted and sullen American electorate, much of the blame will also rest with voters who couldn’t be bothered to put aside their petty beefs and particularistic interests long enough to link arms at the ballot box and defend the American system of government.”
--Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, November 6, 2023
Steve Schmidt … plans to … form an independent super PAC, which can raise and spend money in unlimited amounts…. It will focus on supporting (Dean) Phillips…”
Woundedness, Anger, Fear, Unresolved trauma from childhood, a Thirst for Revenge.
These are the "qualities" I find in MAGA folks.
Critical thinking is replaced by a blind violent faith, and this virus infects people from every strata of society. (One of my friends - a highly intelligent and accomplished man - regards Trump as a biblical figure sent by God to save America. And my friend is Jewish!)
We're dealing with a phenomenon here that's way beyond reason.
I will do my part to fight this. And I pray I will not on some future date meet you all in person in the Gulag.
We have always had fanatics in this country in one form or another. However, when extreme elements of the Christian faith wrap their cause in the American flag, they are even more dangerous. Our nation has survived and flourished because of our laws separating Church and State. We have contributions from every faith on earth and even from those who have no religion. To change that law would bring an end to our democracy and give rise to second class citizenship.
Donald Trump is a demagogue. To think this person could believe in a power greater than himself is absurd. Trump does not have faith in the Christian doctrines or in any other religious doctrine that would limit his powers. If he is re-elected as president, he will do what he said he would do. He would end the Constitution and make everyone who doesn't pay homage to him personally, second class citizens. A 2nd Trump term would look more like occupied Europe during WWII. We would have no rights except those granted by the whims of the Orange bloated one. We would be subjected to seeing his image on every street corner and on every building. This is the country we would have if Trump is elected again.
Your assertion that if Trump wins another term he will create the first American concentration camps. One could argue that the first such camps were created to restrict the movement of Native Americans. Those camps aside, the next would have been the internment camps that imprisoned Japanese Americans. The first of Donsld J. Trump's concentration camps imprisoned Latinx people, separating children from their parents, as was the habit of the Nazis.
People are so convinced that their life was better under DTs chaotic presidency because he repeatedly says it. Every clip I see of him jabbering, he slips in at least once if not twice the message that he will make America great again as he did in 2016. There was nothing great about the detention camps at the border or the separation of children from their parents. The gestopo idea to hire vigilantes in his “next term” to scoop up immigrant suspects and detain them sounds horrific. What Christian or non-Christian could justify this cruel and terroristic behavior sanctioned by the govt? We cannot allow this to happen.
Living amongst Southern evangelicals for 30 years in a suburb of Houston, I understood a long time ago that Trump is just a means to an end. The Christian Coalition’s radical belief system is that God is A-ok with any crimes committed in his name to achieve superiority. Remember the Crusades? As Library Director for a large school district, a group of Christian Coalitionists complained about me to the School Board for bringing in a speaker with whom they disagreed. I had a long conversation with one of the complainants about Christianity being taught in schools. As I brought up all the students in the District whose religions were not Christian, she informed me that Jews wouldn’t mind having the Christian Bible taught because the Old Testament is basically the Torah. Muslims would be okay with it too because they live in misery in the Middle East. Not only did I think they were nuts, I realized this was a big, powerful authoritarian movement that was only growing more powerful as time went on. This was in 1990.
Putin is dividing western democracy by helping Trump and Bibi to take power. Trump is the richest antidemocratic leader in the west and Bibi destroys Israel with his extremism. Still you should not be blind to the Hamas the richest terrorist organization helped by the UN. https://youtu.be/YTwQh72XUZo?si=7qQbYk3xq7TXUtwv
I find it fascinating that all these Jesus freaks adopt the symbols of losers-- the swastika, the confederate flag, the trump flag. Fascism will be "wrapped in the flag..." doesn't specify which flag but here they are proudly flaunting their giant loser symbols from their pick up trucks crowded with a bunch of Jesus freaks. The American Taliban indeed. God, I loathe and despise Abrahamic religions. Militant Tao or Born Again Pagan seems like a rational option.
The 6000 years since everything began squares with the idea that God created everything in 6 days and took the 7th off and that Adam, Eve and Karl Rove, oh sorry, the snake in the Garden of Eden, were not only the beginning, but evil, and their sons were predictors of the future, one good one bad. When man invented God, after worshipping a number of them, each associated with an inexplicable phenomenon, like rain, thunder, sunshine etc. they had quite a different perspective. The earth was a flat thing with a scary bright but helpful thing in the sky by day, a less bright thing at night and a bunch of bright little dots that we came to call stars, merely decoration. Turns out these little dots are mostly bigger than we are and millions of lightyears away. Took a while to build all that. Then there other confusing things, water, wind, heat, cold and expressions of rage, like storms and earthquakes and avalanches, (Gee, I forgot to mention snow). These things could only be explained by a sometimes benign, sometime angry God, whom we would be smart to worship. I could go on but I am gobsmacked by a contrarian view seen in the TV series, The Planet, Executive Produced by Stephen Spielberg and told to us by Morgan Freeman, oft called the voice of God. In this view, Earth commenced billions of years ago and life took hundreds of millions of years to form into a single living cel, let alone an attractive couple like Adam and Eve. The real killer is learning that 99% of the world’s species are no longer here, having been eliminated in earth-shattering traumas, (meteors, ice ages), surely delivered by God, since who else would have the clout? So many species have dominated the earth and then disappeared, (we all remember the dinosaurs), that it has now come down to us. Wow! Guess what? We are the first of these species smart enough to destroy ourselves, via Global Warming, AI, Viruses or War. After all, if you look at the big picture, the next great species may be computers. In the meantime we have these potholes. We’ve never been good with potholes, one is called Trump, another Franklin Graham and don’t forget the shiny new Speaker of the House and on it goes. Maybe what will really wipe us out is religious extremists. Oh, the irony. It seems that Franklin has ordained Trump as an act of God. If that’s the case, I’ll go with Spielberg.
Another great idea by asshole Trump....round up all the immigrants and put them in concentration camps....then who’s going to do all the shitty work white Christians won’t touch? It’ll cause havoc with just about every business in America. I have many friends who own businesses who rely on Latin immigrants to help them stay afloat. My friends tell me they can’t rely on lazy white people to even show up for work...but their Latin employees are forever faithful and work like dogs. Fkn Trump’s a moron.
I believe that religions have caused the greatest destruction and wars due to rejection of differences among them. Rather than teaching acceptance and understanding, people learn that power over others is the desired result of their particular religious beliefs. When mixed with politics the combination is lethal. We've seen it over and over, yet we haven't learned the lesson.
We MUST REJECT the wolf in sheep's skin before we recreate the conditions that led to WWII and the horrific treatment of human beings.
Where is the great mobilization and recruitment of trained local poll watchers and poll workers in America? Who is doing the organizing, oversight, and training of election observers on the ground in each state and polling district across the country? Are sufficient observers from both parties ready to oversee the counting of the ballots or will that process be restricted and done in secret? Is the federal government and the Department of Justice amassing the vast resources they need to ensure our federal elections will be fair? Are local lawyers being recruited en masse by the American Bar Association to intercede on Election Day by using the power of state and federal courts if voting fraud is taking place in their communities? Voter intimidation and harassment is illegal in every state of the union and so is election fraud and interference, but where are the safeguards and what are the processes, rules, and procedures for reacting quickly to alleged and blatant instances of voter fraud and intimidation at the polling sites during the election process? Are we going to see widespread instances of the lack of printed ballots or broken equipment in “select” voting districts on Election Day? It should be clear by now that Republicans are not going to play fair on Election Day because they know they can’t win a fair election. So what the hell are the opposition parties going to do about that other than sitting around fretting, whining, and wringing their hands and calling out for help when there is no help standing by?
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Willam Stevens Smith, son-in-law of John Adams:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” *
Many of the J6 insurrectionists, “militias” and other traitorous and seditious groups mistakenly apply Jefferson’s quote as a motivation for their actions, pretending they are patriots. Should T💩p regain the presidency, Jefferson’s prescient words should motivate the true patriots against a true tyrant.
This devout atheist will do what I can to heed Jefferson’s call for action in a legal and aboveboard manner. Should chaos and revolution stem from a second T💩p presidency, I will take up arms to protect my nation as a true and honest patriot.
Reading Steve’s post this morning I am drinking my morning coffee from my hotel room and watching the sunrise begin to sprinkle across the Washington monument, I am ashamed by our citizenry’s utter lack of respect, compassion, and tolerance for others. We appear to have failed you George... I cannot believe it has come to this, but here we are.
“Watching a woman stand up and ask Donald Trump how his religious faith has deepened since 2015 has settled the debate around whether there are in fact stupid questions.”--Steve Schmidt
I have to disagree Steve. I was taught there are no stupid questions, just stupid people asking questions...:)
That said, I do wholeheartedly agree. These religious whack jobs, are ruthless as much much as they are relentless, and can never be reasoned with, because a believe system is built on fear and faith. Two ingredients that make it impossible to have a constructive conversation with these people.
They can lose every battle, and never lose the war because they never quit. They will find whatever leverage they can assert within the boundaries of the law, and as J6th has shown; outside the law as well.
So far they’ve been successful corrupting the judicial system, and have perverted the use of first amendment (religious rights) by the court, allowing religious entities to discriminate at will and act as a political entity; illegal for non-profit institutions.
These people and organizations need to be brought to heel, yet, as long as dark and unlimited money infests our political system, it will be an impossible task to rein them in.
Make no mistake, these groups are a clear and present danger to the national security of this nation, and to the health of our democracy and economy. If we fail to act soon, we do so at our own peril!
Just some thoughts...:)
The MSM is doing a disservice to us all when it ignores the extremist religious views that are gaining traction in the US. Doug Mastriano, the gubernatorial candidate in PA is a heavily involved in the Seven Mountains Dominionists. Speaker Mike Johnson flies a New Apostolic Reformation flag outside his office. These cults are working together to impose their views on the rest of us and there are others. Looking forward to watching the whole documentary. We have to do as much as possible to alert the American people to the dangers these zealots pose.
“… (I)f Trump manages, one last time, to squeeze 271 electoral votes out of a distracted and sullen American electorate, much of the blame will also rest with voters who couldn’t be bothered to put aside their petty beefs and particularistic interests long enough to link arms at the ballot box and defend the American system of government.”
--Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, November 6, 2023
Steve Schmidt … plans to … form an independent super PAC, which can raise and spend money in unlimited amounts…. It will focus on supporting (Dean) Phillips…”
--The Washington Post, November 9, 2023
Woundedness, Anger, Fear, Unresolved trauma from childhood, a Thirst for Revenge.
These are the "qualities" I find in MAGA folks.
Critical thinking is replaced by a blind violent faith, and this virus infects people from every strata of society. (One of my friends - a highly intelligent and accomplished man - regards Trump as a biblical figure sent by God to save America. And my friend is Jewish!)
We're dealing with a phenomenon here that's way beyond reason.
I will do my part to fight this. And I pray I will not on some future date meet you all in person in the Gulag.
We have always had fanatics in this country in one form or another. However, when extreme elements of the Christian faith wrap their cause in the American flag, they are even more dangerous. Our nation has survived and flourished because of our laws separating Church and State. We have contributions from every faith on earth and even from those who have no religion. To change that law would bring an end to our democracy and give rise to second class citizenship.
Donald Trump is a demagogue. To think this person could believe in a power greater than himself is absurd. Trump does not have faith in the Christian doctrines or in any other religious doctrine that would limit his powers. If he is re-elected as president, he will do what he said he would do. He would end the Constitution and make everyone who doesn't pay homage to him personally, second class citizens. A 2nd Trump term would look more like occupied Europe during WWII. We would have no rights except those granted by the whims of the Orange bloated one. We would be subjected to seeing his image on every street corner and on every building. This is the country we would have if Trump is elected again.
Your assertion that if Trump wins another term he will create the first American concentration camps. One could argue that the first such camps were created to restrict the movement of Native Americans. Those camps aside, the next would have been the internment camps that imprisoned Japanese Americans. The first of Donsld J. Trump's concentration camps imprisoned Latinx people, separating children from their parents, as was the habit of the Nazis.
People are so convinced that their life was better under DTs chaotic presidency because he repeatedly says it. Every clip I see of him jabbering, he slips in at least once if not twice the message that he will make America great again as he did in 2016. There was nothing great about the detention camps at the border or the separation of children from their parents. The gestopo idea to hire vigilantes in his “next term” to scoop up immigrant suspects and detain them sounds horrific. What Christian or non-Christian could justify this cruel and terroristic behavior sanctioned by the govt? We cannot allow this to happen.
Living amongst Southern evangelicals for 30 years in a suburb of Houston, I understood a long time ago that Trump is just a means to an end. The Christian Coalition’s radical belief system is that God is A-ok with any crimes committed in his name to achieve superiority. Remember the Crusades? As Library Director for a large school district, a group of Christian Coalitionists complained about me to the School Board for bringing in a speaker with whom they disagreed. I had a long conversation with one of the complainants about Christianity being taught in schools. As I brought up all the students in the District whose religions were not Christian, she informed me that Jews wouldn’t mind having the Christian Bible taught because the Old Testament is basically the Torah. Muslims would be okay with it too because they live in misery in the Middle East. Not only did I think they were nuts, I realized this was a big, powerful authoritarian movement that was only growing more powerful as time went on. This was in 1990.
Putin is dividing western democracy by helping Trump and Bibi to take power. Trump is the richest antidemocratic leader in the west and Bibi destroys Israel with his extremism. Still you should not be blind to the Hamas the richest terrorist organization helped by the UN. https://youtu.be/YTwQh72XUZo?si=7qQbYk3xq7TXUtwv
I find it fascinating that all these Jesus freaks adopt the symbols of losers-- the swastika, the confederate flag, the trump flag. Fascism will be "wrapped in the flag..." doesn't specify which flag but here they are proudly flaunting their giant loser symbols from their pick up trucks crowded with a bunch of Jesus freaks. The American Taliban indeed. God, I loathe and despise Abrahamic religions. Militant Tao or Born Again Pagan seems like a rational option.
The 6000 years since everything began squares with the idea that God created everything in 6 days and took the 7th off and that Adam, Eve and Karl Rove, oh sorry, the snake in the Garden of Eden, were not only the beginning, but evil, and their sons were predictors of the future, one good one bad. When man invented God, after worshipping a number of them, each associated with an inexplicable phenomenon, like rain, thunder, sunshine etc. they had quite a different perspective. The earth was a flat thing with a scary bright but helpful thing in the sky by day, a less bright thing at night and a bunch of bright little dots that we came to call stars, merely decoration. Turns out these little dots are mostly bigger than we are and millions of lightyears away. Took a while to build all that. Then there other confusing things, water, wind, heat, cold and expressions of rage, like storms and earthquakes and avalanches, (Gee, I forgot to mention snow). These things could only be explained by a sometimes benign, sometime angry God, whom we would be smart to worship. I could go on but I am gobsmacked by a contrarian view seen in the TV series, The Planet, Executive Produced by Stephen Spielberg and told to us by Morgan Freeman, oft called the voice of God. In this view, Earth commenced billions of years ago and life took hundreds of millions of years to form into a single living cel, let alone an attractive couple like Adam and Eve. The real killer is learning that 99% of the world’s species are no longer here, having been eliminated in earth-shattering traumas, (meteors, ice ages), surely delivered by God, since who else would have the clout? So many species have dominated the earth and then disappeared, (we all remember the dinosaurs), that it has now come down to us. Wow! Guess what? We are the first of these species smart enough to destroy ourselves, via Global Warming, AI, Viruses or War. After all, if you look at the big picture, the next great species may be computers. In the meantime we have these potholes. We’ve never been good with potholes, one is called Trump, another Franklin Graham and don’t forget the shiny new Speaker of the House and on it goes. Maybe what will really wipe us out is religious extremists. Oh, the irony. It seems that Franklin has ordained Trump as an act of God. If that’s the case, I’ll go with Spielberg.
Another great idea by asshole Trump....round up all the immigrants and put them in concentration camps....then who’s going to do all the shitty work white Christians won’t touch? It’ll cause havoc with just about every business in America. I have many friends who own businesses who rely on Latin immigrants to help them stay afloat. My friends tell me they can’t rely on lazy white people to even show up for work...but their Latin employees are forever faithful and work like dogs. Fkn Trump’s a moron.
I believe that religions have caused the greatest destruction and wars due to rejection of differences among them. Rather than teaching acceptance and understanding, people learn that power over others is the desired result of their particular religious beliefs. When mixed with politics the combination is lethal. We've seen it over and over, yet we haven't learned the lesson.
We MUST REJECT the wolf in sheep's skin before we recreate the conditions that led to WWII and the horrific treatment of human beings.
Where is the great mobilization and recruitment of trained local poll watchers and poll workers in America? Who is doing the organizing, oversight, and training of election observers on the ground in each state and polling district across the country? Are sufficient observers from both parties ready to oversee the counting of the ballots or will that process be restricted and done in secret? Is the federal government and the Department of Justice amassing the vast resources they need to ensure our federal elections will be fair? Are local lawyers being recruited en masse by the American Bar Association to intercede on Election Day by using the power of state and federal courts if voting fraud is taking place in their communities? Voter intimidation and harassment is illegal in every state of the union and so is election fraud and interference, but where are the safeguards and what are the processes, rules, and procedures for reacting quickly to alleged and blatant instances of voter fraud and intimidation at the polling sites during the election process? Are we going to see widespread instances of the lack of printed ballots or broken equipment in “select” voting districts on Election Day? It should be clear by now that Republicans are not going to play fair on Election Day because they know they can’t win a fair election. So what the hell are the opposition parties going to do about that other than sitting around fretting, whining, and wringing their hands and calling out for help when there is no help standing by?
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Willam Stevens Smith, son-in-law of John Adams:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” *
Many of the J6 insurrectionists, “militias” and other traitorous and seditious groups mistakenly apply Jefferson’s quote as a motivation for their actions, pretending they are patriots. Should T💩p regain the presidency, Jefferson’s prescient words should motivate the true patriots against a true tyrant.
This devout atheist will do what I can to heed Jefferson’s call for action in a legal and aboveboard manner. Should chaos and revolution stem from a second T💩p presidency, I will take up arms to protect my nation as a true and honest patriot.
*https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/tree-liberty-quotation/