Chapter review: God's Strongman

Meadows believed that as a congressman, he was locked in a “spiritual battle” with dark forces, and that prayer took place more frequently in his Capitol Hill office than those of other lawmakers because he understands the nature of the enemy and “the attacks are real.” -- Sarah Posner, Chapter 3, Unholy, commenting on Mark Meadows’ (former chief of staff for the former president) view of America’s unholy situation as revealed in a core evangelical lie that Christians in America are under a severe, sustained secular attack intended to make Christianity illegal or to convert Christians to atheists by force, a/k/a/, the Christian persecution myth

God’s Strongman is chapter 2 of Sarah Posner’s 2020 book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. Chapter 2 shows how secular democracy and governance weakened and failed over a period of decades. Now secularism is a fading shadow of what it used to be. White Evangelical Christians (WECs) love it. Most Americans appear to be mostly or completely unaware of what is happening in slow motion.

Chapter 2 describes an incident where the federal government rightfully tried to correct abuses by elite WECs. That effort not only failed, it caved in and deal a major blow to secular government and church-state separation. This incident included the rapacious televangelist Paula White, who later came to be the ex-president’s top spiritual advisor, as oxymoronic as that may sound. Posner writes:

“Like Trump’s businesses, White’s had come under scrutiny, and like Trump, she evaded transparency and accountability. In 2007, Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who was the then ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, launched an inquiry into whether White and five other televangelists .... had abused their tax-exempt status by using donations to their ministries for their personal gain. .... At first Grassley seemed determined to find answers, but some of the six, including White, resisted providing full documentation that would aid the investigation. 

Unlike secular non-profits, churches are not required by law to make their tax returns public, so the finances of these televangelists remain hidden from public view. The public effectively subsidizes them because donations to them are not taxed, and the donor receives a tax deduction. Three years after launching the investigation, Grassley, under pressure from religious rights groups protesting that it was infringing on their religious liberty, shut it down without making any recommendations for greater transparency or accountability.”

The investigation was also hampered by the Senate being unable to talk to staffers, who are routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements. The staffers feared their churches would sue them. 

Senate investigators just gave up in and gently suggested “self-reform” to fix whatever problems there might have been. So the spineless Senate put the Fox in charge of the hen house.

Despite the televangelist’s opacity and refusal to cooperate, Grassley not only caved in, he turned around and actually attacked one of the few means of restraint on tax-subsidized religious operations. He recommended either eliminating or weakening the 1954 Johnson Amendment. That law conditioned non-profit tax exempt status on not using tax-exempt dollars for electioneering. That was the quid pro quo for the privilege of having tax exempt status based on taxpayer generosity to religious organizations. Posner comments on how the ex-president took the initiative a couple of years later in 2015 and 2016:

“Trump would go to make repeal of the Johnson Amendment--which would open churches up to limitless electioneering and the possible flow of unaccountable cash through their coffers-- a centerpiece of his outreach to the Christian right. .... Falwell [Jerry Jr., the president of Liberty University] said Trump spoke to him about ‘how it needed to be repealed, and how it pretty much silenced people of faith because it scares pastors and leaders of non-profit organizations like Liberty University and others from taking a political position because they’re afraid of losing their tax exempt status.’ This characterization was not true; The Johnson Amendment does not prohibit pastors or non-profits from taking positions on political issues, only from  using tax-exempt resources to endorse a candidate in an election. 

Once in office, Trump signed an executive order directing the IRS to stop enforcing the Johnson Amendment. .... Trump’s hard line message was precisely what many white evangelicals had been waiting to hear.”

Posner goes on to detail the deceit and blatant lies the WEC political movement routinely engages in. Both the public and the rank and file are to be deceived and manipulated into giving the Christian elites what they want, including fixing what is broken. 

What do they want? Wealth and power, especially their precious tax-exempt status. 

What is broken and bad in America? Evil things like secularism, feminism, abortion, gender ideology and the “dark movement forcing anti-LGBTQ Christians to accept a radical, fringe set of norms about gender and sexuality, in violation of their religious freedom.” 

That most Americans support the LGBTQ community and rights makes no difference. Also of no concern is that allowing the LGBTQ community to have civil rights does not amount to the severe persecution of and direct threats to the loving, innocent Christians that the WEC movement constantly complains bitterly of. WEC lies and deceits are shameless, endless, blatant and undeniable.  

Questions: 

1. Is it fair or even democratic to allow religious (and/or political) groups to enjoy the privilege of tax-exempt status and use of tax-free money to support candidates and campaigns, while most everyone else has to pay their taxes?  

2. Annual tax exemption benefits for religion in America is worth tens of billions annually, but is it worth it, especially in view of the kind of bigoted, anti-democratic, anti-civil liberties politics the WEC movement fights hard and dirty for?

3. Should it be legal for a president to tell a federal agency to stop enforcing a valid law, e.g., the Johnson Amendment?

Bearing the cost of treason: The rule of law still falls

Patriots peacefully assembling?

Or, traitors trying to overthrow the government?

In another discouraging bit of evidence that the rule of law is too toothless to defend democracy or itself any more, the Washington Post discouragingly reports in an article entitled, Judge asks why Capitol rioters are paying just $1.5 million for attack, while U.S. taxpayers will pay more than $500 million:

A federal judge on Monday questioned why U.S. prosecutors are asking Capitol riot defendants to pay only $1.5 million in restitution while American taxpayers are paying more than $500 million to cover the costs of the Jan. 6 attack by a pro-Trump mob.

Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of Washington challenged the toughness of the Justice Department’s stance in a plea hearing for a Colorado Springs man who admitted to one of four nonviolent misdemeanor counts of picketing in the U.S. Capitol.

Howell has already asked in another defendant’s plea hearing whether no-prison misdemeanor plea deals offered by the government are too lenient for individuals involved in “terrorizing members of Congress,” asking pointedly if the government had “any concern about deterrence?”

On Monday, she pressed the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington why it was seeking to require only $2,000 in each felony case and $500 in each misdemeanor case.

Well fans of taxpayers not getting their money's worth, there you have it. Taxpayers are not going to get their money's worth. The US Department of Justice under the incompetent, probably corrupt, Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn't care what the costs to taxpayers are for T**** supporters' treason in 1/6 coup attempt or what their penalties are. After all, the traitors are delicate flowers who need  understanding and nurturing. Here's some plant food for them: 

💩

I want (1) pro-democracy and pro-honesty regime change, and (2) the 1/6 traitors to spend the rest of their rotten, treasonous lives in the slammer. Obviously, I'm gonna get neither.

Questions: 

1. We don't want to hurt the sensitive feelings of deceived and betrayed traitors falsely believing they are patriots, do we? (remember, they're delicate flowers) 

2. A couple of months ago, I called for Garland to be fired for failure to defend the rule of law, but was that premature? Is it still premature? What would it take to not be premature any more, e.g., Christofascists take full control, declare martial law and slaughter Democrats and people like me?

3. Is it time to start asking for impeachment of Biden? 

4. Who are the radicals here, people like Garland or people like me? 

5. Is it still unreasonable to demand regime change that does not include Democrats or Republicans playing significant roles?

Traitors howling in righteous indignation

How about this: I will never forget the treasonous 1/6 coup attempt,

and Christian nationalists will never forget the horror of the anti-Gay Cake baker?

Seems fair to me.

Afghanistan update: It's really bad

Taliban flag flying over the main square in Kunduz yesterday

The New York Times writes:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban seized three Afghan cities on Sunday, including the commercial hub of Kunduz, officials said, escalating a sweeping offensive that has claimed five provincial capitals in three days and shown how little control the government has over the country without American military power to protect it.

Never before in 20 years of war had the Taliban directly assaulted more than one provincial capital at a time. Now, three fell on Sunday alone — Kunduz, Sar-i-Pul and Taliqan, all in the north — and even more populous cities are under siege, in a devastating setback for the Afghan government.

The fall of these cities is taking place just weeks before U.S. forces are set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan, laying bare a difficult predicament for President Biden.

Since the U.S. withdrawal began, the Taliban have captured more than half of Afghanistan’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. And their recent attacks on provincial capitals have violated the 2020 peace deal between the Taliban and the United States. Under that deal, which laid the path for the American withdrawal, the Taliban committed to not attacking provincial centers like Kunduz.

Now the map looks like this:

The government doesn't control much. It is rapidly collapsing, as one would expect of a grossly incompetent, deeply corrupt kleptocratic organization.[1] Also notice how useless the February 2020 agreement that the self-described world's best negotiator and world's smartest person negotiated. That agreement wasn't worth spit the day it was signed by the world's allegedly best negotiator and smartest person. 

A bit of historical and personal context 

If I recall correctly, in ~2003-2004 or thereabouts, the Afghan government kicked US auditors out of the country, accusing them of trampling on the sacred sovereignty of Afghanistan. In fact, the auditors were limiting theft of US tax dollars too much. The kleptocrats were pissed that they could not steal freely. They wanted more. The news article I first read those fun facts in was also the first time I recall seeing the word kleptocracy used to describe a country's government. That stuff really stuck with me. When the US auditors got kicked out was when I first concluded that Afghanistan would probably end up being a tragic disaster like Vietnam. And, there's other significant parallels with Vietnam.[2]

Questions: Was the February 2020 agreement between the US and the Taliban good or bad in terms of what it contained (discussed in this post)? Will the Afghan kleptocracy survive for at least six months as US experts have confidently predicted, or will it fall sooner to the Taliban? Should the US welcome the kleptocrats and their stolen billions of US tax dollars into the US so we can get some return on our investment, or is that a bad idea and the kleptocrats should live in France and spend our money there? Because they keep electing crooks and/or liars to office, do the American people deserve to lose their civil liberties, the Republic, the rule of law and democracy?

Footnotes: 

1. I know, deeply corrupt and kleptocratic are duplicative. Bad grammar. I just did it for emphasis.

2. For example, this from the Washington Post in 2019:

U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found. 

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.  

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.  

The interviews also highlight the U.S. government’s botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.

The U.S. government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.

That sure does sound familiar. The press fighting in court to release information that shows the US government to be a bunch of lying liars about a hopeless war. 

Of course we don't know how much we spent. The auditors were kicked out years ago.

What the hell?!?

Obama’s 60th Birthday 

So the party went forward with a “trimmed down” guest list. Who got UN-invited? Mostly Obama’s prior W.H. staffers and “non-essential” types (i.e., read “not Hollywood” types).  Hollywood types and their hair and makeup staff were given a “party pass.”  😳

Now, it’s not the invited/not invited part that sticks in my craw.  No. That’s not the bigger point here. It’s that the birthday party went forward in the first place, in spite of the more virulent delta strain raging on.  I don’t care if this milestone birthday was many months in the planning/making, and that everyone who attended was a low risk.  “Not good enough” (reason) to my way of thinking.

Granted, I don’t know the whole story, but on its surface, I see it as sending the wrong message to the populace-at-large.  Same thing with that “Sturgis Motorcycle Rally” in South Dakota.  Neither gets a pass with me. Both are ridiculous and beyond stupid. ☹️

I’m really disappointed that Obama would let the party go forward.  Yes, you can’t make everyone happy.  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  But Obama’s stock just went down a few notches with me, a Democrat. 

So, what’s your opinion on this?

Thanks for posting and recommending.