Regarding the role of Christian nationalism in the 1/6 coup attempt

At the 1/6 insurrection

Experts have been analyzing the role of the Christian nationalist political movement in the 1/6 coup attempt. Results of that research is pointing to a significant but complex role. The Washington Post writes:

University of Oklahoma sociologist Samuel Perry, another participant in Thursday’s event, has written several books about religion and politics. New research for “The Flag and The Cross,” which comes out next month, shows a powerful correlation between people who subscribe to Christian nationalist beliefs and anti-democratic beliefs.

The book, co-written by Perry and Yale sociologist Philip Gorski, lays out a scale of Christian nationalism based on agreement with seven points, including “the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation,” and “the success of the United States is part of God’s plan.”

Their research shows how, the higher people are on the Christian nationalism scale the more they tend to agree with the statement “we make it too easy to vote.” The same thing happens when people agree with the statements “the best way to stop bad guys with guns is to have good guys with guns,” and “authorities should be able to use any means necessary to keep law and order” and “if national security is at risk, I support torture.”

“Even after accounting for partisanship and political ideology, the more strongly White Americans affirm Christian nationalism, the more likely they were to respond to Trump’s election loss with a view that voting access should be restricted even more,” the book says.

“White Christian nationalism is not just in the people who stormed the Capitol but it’s powerfully associated and a leading predictor of whether people affirm authoritarian tactics to control populations they think are problems,” Perry told The Post.

Perry and other experts say new data does not indicate that an expanding percentage of the U.S. population hold these views. He says that is because of younger Americans being more secular and the Trump presidency heightening awareness of the issue.

However, it is wrong to see this group as “ineffective or in a dying grasp,” he said. Instead, they are becoming more angry and, he believes, dangerous. The book’s research showed that the same group more powerfully believed “it’s too easy to vote” after the 2020 election compared with before.

“As this group of Americans — Whites who believe the country is for people like them — the more they feel marginalized, in a corner, and can lean into that, there is more potential for them to become more radical, more militant,” he says. The topic becomes wrapped up in partisanship, with followers saying: “If the liberals hate this Christian nationalism, it must be good.”

Regarding Christian nationalism, NPR reported last January. NPR commented that CN beliefs include (i) masks and vaccinations violate religious freedom, (ii) the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were proud patriots, and (iii) the Biden administration is evil and illegitimate. NPR noted that “this movement of ultra-conservative, politicized churches is apparently on the march, though there are no firm numbers because the congregations are mostly nondenominational.”

NPR reported about the Patriot Church in Lenoir City, TN, where Rev. Ken Peters spoke to his congregation in a sermon entitled How Satan Destroys the World. Peters said: “Don't let the mainstream media or the left tell you that we were not a Christian nation. You know why there's churches everywhere and not mosques? Because we're a Christian nation! .... You know he's not the most popular president in America. How many Biden parades did you see? Yet he beat Trump with 70 million? Give me a break. We know something's up.”

After the sermon, one of the parishioners commented: “This is a spiritual battle. It's good versus evil. And, unfortunately, evil has taken charge.”

That is how Christian nationalism sees America and what it stands for.

The professional media awakens?

It may be the case that the professional new media are beginning to wake up to the existence, authoritarian fundamentalist agenda and toxic influence on the Republican Party and American society of the Christian nationalist political movement. If so, that would be some good news.

In the next few days, a post focused on the findings of a recent research report on the role of Christian nationalism in the 1/6 coup attempt will follow. 

Comedy before Reality? Zelensky version?

 I had no idea. I never heard of the sitcom Servant of the People. 

Found it this morning on my Netflix!

Well well, Comedy before Reality! Zelensky playing a school teacher who becomes President of Ukraine. Seriously?

Servant of the People review: Sitcom that propelled Zelensky to presidency has earned its place in cultural history

Now also the name of Zelensky’s political party, ‘Servant of the People’ is pacy, satirical, wry, earthy and honest.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/zelensky-sitcom-review-b2028841.html

Ukraine President Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ on Netflix Is Shockingly Prescient

MUST-SEE TV

The streamer has made the first season of his hit TV series available, featuring Volodymyr Zelensky as a high school teacher who, after a viral rant, rises to the presidency.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ukraine-president-zelenskys-servant-of-the-people-on-netflix-is-shockingly-prescient

Have you all heard of this, and it is just this SNOWFLAKE who never did?

What's bubbling in the GOP propaganda cauldron?

Ah yes, the stench of Republican dark free speech tactics is upon us. As usual. This blast of smelly bad faith, ill-will and hypocrisy is all the rage, literally, in the Republican propaganda cauldron.

MTG cooking up some toxic rage and lies 

Slate writes about the sad cosmic joke of American politics:

As gas prices have surged over the past several months—and shot up even further following Russia’s incursion into Ukraine—Republicans have predictably tried to pin blame on the White House.

“Joe Biden caused this and doesn’t seem to care,” the Republican National Committee’s deputy communications director tweeted last week, echoing the stickers that Trump-voting motorists have been slapping onto gas pumps across the country.

But President Joe Biden did not cause this. In fact, other than sanctions against Russia—which the GOP broadly supported—the primary reasons why filling up your tank has gotten more expensive over the past year have almost nothing to do with America’s chief executive. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since presidents almost never have much direct control over gas prices. But unfortunately voters act like they do, which is sort of the sad cosmic joke of American politics.

.... based on the GOP’s rhetoric, you might be tempted to think that U.S. oil production had collapsed since Biden stepped into the Oval Office.

That’s just not the case: In fact, oil production has actually increased, from about 11 million barrels per day to 11.5 million barrels through 2021.

The Biden administration also did pause sales again last month, after a Trump-appointed judge blocked the administration from considering climate costs when auctioning oil leases. So it’s a GOP-approved official who’s forced this halt on land sales while the administration rejiggers its energy accounting.

The real reason U.S. oil production hasn’t returned to peak production levels has less to do with Biden’s energy policies than with the fossil fuel industry’s desire to earn a buck.

As demand for oil has resurged from its mid-2020 lows, producers have been under pressure from shareholders to “put profits over production increases” and “return cash to shareholders rather than pump it back into drilling,” to quote the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, respectively. As a result, companies have only expanded production slowly.

Just listen to oil executives themselves. “Whether it’s $150 oil, $200 oil, or $100 oil, we’re not going to change our growth plans,” the CEO of Pioneer, which is the largest oil producer in the Permian Basin, the key oil-producing area of the Southwest, said at a Bloomberg event last month. “If the president wants us to grow, I just don’t think the industry can grow anyway.”  

Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub has likewise said her company is focused on paying back investors at the moment: “I feel now that we do need to return cash to the shareholders in the form of dividends or buybacks, especially during the better cycles.”

And of course, as we all recall with perfect clarity, Republicans howled in sanctimonious outrage while Obama was in office that oil prices were too low. The Republicans hated Obama's guts for that along with the fact that he even existed as a human being. To fix that horrible Obama-caused situation, our awful Republican ex-president, supported by his awful Republican Party, helped to finagle an agreement to cut global oil production by a massive 9.7 million barrels per day. The New York Times wrote this about that:

Oil-producing nations on Sunday agreed to the largest production cut ever negotiated, in an unprecedented coordinated effort by Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States to stabilize oil prices and, indirectly, global financial markets.

Saudi Arabia and Russia typically take the lead in setting global production goals. But President Trump, facing a re-election campaign, a plunging economy and American oil companies struggling with collapsing prices, took the unusual step of getting involved after the two countries entered a price war a month ago. Mr. Trump had made an agreement a key priority.  

“This is at least a temporary relief for the energy industry and for the global economy,” said Per Magnus Nysveen, head of analysis for Rystad Energy, a Norwegian consultancy. “The industry is too big to be let to fail.”

There it is, too big to fail. And, as we all know, gas prices take the elevator up, but the stairs down. Profits for oil elites trump the public interest and the environment.

There's your daily dose of toxic Republican bad faith, ill-will and hypocrisy. No wonder the stew smells funny. It's got rotten things in it.

DO NOT FORGET CLIMATE CHANGE!!!

Why the EPA cannot work: Mind numbing complexity and 

slow, slow bureaucracy sabotaged by Republican climate science 

deniers and government haters

Every step can be and is quietly subverted by climate science  

deniers, threatened special interests, Republicans

 and/or other kinds of government haters

The AP writes:

Earth’s poles are undergoing simultaneous freakish extreme heat with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) warmer than average and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) warmer than average.

Weather stations in Antarctica shattered records Friday as the region neared autumn. The two-mile high (3,234 meters) Concordia station was at 10 degrees (-12.2 degrees Celsius),which is about 70 degrees warmer than average, while the even higher Vostok station hit a shade above 0 degrees (-17.7 degrees Celsius), beating its all-time record by about 27 degrees (15 degrees Celsius), according to a tweet from extreme weather record tracker Maximiliano Herrera.

It caught officials at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, by surprise because they were paying attention to the Arctic where it was 50 degrees warmer than average and areas around the North Pole were nearing or at the melting point, which is really unusual for mid-March, said center ice scientist Walt Meier.

“They are opposite seasons. You don’t see the north and the south (poles) both melting at the same time,” Meier told The Associated Press Friday evening. “It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.”

“It’s pretty stunning,” Meier added.

“Wow. I have never seen anything like this in the Antarctic,” said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos, who returned recently from an expedition to the continent.

“Not a good sign when you see that sort of thing happen,” said University of Wisconsin meteorologist Matthew Lazzara.

Yup,  it is not a good sign when you see this sort of thing happen. This is the scariest bit of data that I can recall about climate change. 

Questions: In view of past and current success in blocking government action, it now reasonable to consider people and organizations that oppose government action on climate change criminals, demagogues and/or intractable liars? What about quiet opposition by Exxon-Mobile and other oil and gas companies, the ex-president, the Republican Party, libertarians and other government-hating ideologues, chemical companies, Toyota, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Disney[1], etc?

Footnote: 

1. The Guardian: “Some of America’s most prominent companies, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney, are backing business groups that are fighting landmark climate legislation, despite their own promises to combat the climate crisis, a new analysis has found. A clutch of corporate lobby groups and organizations have mobilized to oppose the proposed $3.5tn budget bill put forward by Democrats, which contains unprecedented measures to drive down planet-heating gases. The reconciliation bill has been called the “the most significant climate action in our country’s history” by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate.”

The Guardian again: “The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report. Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.”

This is all the GOP has to say about climate change, “The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.” In other words, “don’t worry, climate change is not a serious problem and we will not take it seriously.”