Science 'n news bits: Religion & morality, etc.

The influence of religious moral beliefs on 

adolescents’ mental stability

A 2007 article in Psychriatria Danubina concludes:

A higher index of religious moral beliefs in adolescents enables better control of impulses, providing better mental health stability. It enables neurotic conflicts typical for adolescence to be more easily overcome. It also causes healthier reactions to external stimuli. A higher index of religious moral beliefs of young people provides a healthier and more efficient mechanism of anger control and aggression control. It enables transformation of that psychical energy into neutral energy which supports the growth and development of personality, which is expressed through socially acceptable behavior. In this way, it helps growth, development and socialization of the personality, leading to the improvement in mental health. .... For sample selection the measuring instruments were used to exclude any pathological/abnormal social, religious and moral profile of subjects

The data was obtained from people normal religion and moral teaching. Pathological or abnormal religious zealotry like what Christian nationalism teaches was excluded. Even normal religious teaching and practice instills distrust of non-believers because humans naturally tend to distrust or dislike people who are different in some way that is perceived as significant. This 2012 review article comments:

In a 2007 Gallup poll, most Americans said that they would not vote for an otherwise qualified atheist to be president—they were more willing to vote for a Mormon, a Jew, or a homosexual. Another study found that people ranked atheists lower than Muslims, recent immigrants, and homosexuals in “sharing their vision of American society” and were least willing to allow their children to marry them.

That was 2007. A 2019 poll indicates that the situation changed and about 66% of adult Americans believe that religious and non-religious people are about equally trustworthy. Apparently, opinion has shifted quite a bit in the US in recent years. Interestingly, about 65% of atheists believe trust is about equal between the two groups. I bet that this opinion shift is what scares Christian nationalists into their zealotry, hysteria and hate about secularism.

Gun battles & the LGBQT community

This one is a head scratcher. NPR reports:

Oregon's LGBQT community worries that 

a new law will keep them from obtaining guns

Some of Oregon's trans and queer gun supporters are worried that a new state law will prevent them from buying firearms.

The law, Measure 114, grants county sheriffs and police chiefs discretion to determine who qualifies to purchase a firearm under a new permit-to-purchase program.

But Measure 114 lacks criteria clearly defining what disqualifies applicants, details on what makes someone a threat and what data can be used by law enforcement in making that decision. That's a problem for activists who have critiqued law enforcement, particularly in the racial justice protests that took place over the past two years.

“I just feel like if I was to go online and say like the police are terrorists or something ... [the police] would be like, ‘Well, you seem like you might not be fit for this community to be armed,’ ” says Mia Rose, a trans person of color and former licensed firearms dealer. “If they were to get that information that you got snatched up off the street [arrested during the Portland protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020], I would assume that the law would say they could deny your purchase, or deny your right to have a permit.”

 

Mia Rose with her custom-made

AR-15 assault rifle

Since most of law enforcement is more conservative than most of America, the concern that Ms. Rose articulates might be spot on. I smell a lawsuit coming.

From the money really does influence people files

ProPublica writes about how Leonard Leo tries and succeeds in influencing the Supreme Court:

Conservative Activist Poured Millions Into Groups Seeking to 

Influence Supreme Court on Elections and Discrimination

Newly obtained records show how Leonard Leo, an architect of the right-wing takeover of the courts, has been funding groups pushing to change elections and anti-discrimination laws.

 

The documents detail how Leo, who helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative majority as an adviser to President Donald Trump, has used a sprawling network of opaque nonprofits to fund groups advocating for ending affirmative action, rolling back anti-discrimination protections and allowing state legislatures unreviewable oversight of federal elections.

The money flowed mostly through so-called dark money groups, which don’t have to disclose their donors. They are required to reveal the recipients of their spending in their annual tax returns, which are released to the public, but often those are also dark money groups or other entities that have minimal disclosure rules.

The Supreme Court case involving a Colorado-based website designer who refuses to work for same-sex couples provides a window into Leo’s strategy.

At least six groups funded by Leo’s network have filed briefs supporting the suit, which seeks to overturn Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. The Ethics and Public Policy Center, which records show received $1.9 million from Leo’s network, submitted a brief supporting the web designer. So did Concerned Women for America, which has received at least $565,000 over the past two years from the Leo network, as well as an organization called the Becket Fund, which got $550,000 from a Leo group.  

Another case that Leo groups have sought to influence is Moore v. Harper, which could have sweeping implications for American democracy. The question posed in the case is whether the Constitution affords state legislatures the power to create rules for federal elections without state court oversight or intervention.

It is personally annoying when professional reporting keeps calling people like Leo conservative. By now it is clear that these radical right elites are not conservative like the old GOP used to be before Christian zealots and brass knuckles capitalists finally completed their takeover in 2008-2009. That was when the radical right fascists routed the last of the old GOP establishment. Those radicals turned the party into an enraged, authoritarian monster. It was and still is bitterly opposed to democracy, inconvenient truth, secularism, the rule of law, civil liberties and regulation, i.e., defense of the public interest.

The Supreme Court can howl at the top of its lungs that all the money sloshing around in the system does not corrupt or unduly influence it, including no influence on selection of federal judges or their decision-making. That is 100% baloney. It’s a lie, and an insulting one at that.

News bits: Abortion wars in Texas, etc.

Fundamentalist Christian zealots 

checking sewage for abortion medication

Antiabortion zealots are continuing to refine ways to track down and report evidence of abortions in any way their zealot minds and hearts can come up with. Like with the presence of COVID, sewage can be tested for the presence of abortion pills being taken. That sounds nutty, but rabid antiabortionists are zealots. Nutty is not a concern. The WaPo writes:

The largest anitabortion organization in Texas has created a team of advocates assigned to investigate citizens who might be distributing abortion pills illegally.

Students for Life of America, a leading national antiabortion group, is making plans to systematically test the water Erin Brockovich-style in several large U.S. cities, searching for contaminants they say result from medication abortion.

And Republican lawmakers in Texas are preparing to introduce legislation that would require internet providers to block abortion pill websites in the same way they can censor child pornography.

Nearly six months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering abortion bans in more than a dozen states, many antiabortion advocates fear that the growing availability of illegal abortion pills has undercut their landmark victory. Now they are grasping for new ways to crack down on those breaking the law.

“Everyone who is trafficking these pills should be in jail for trafficking,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who has started to speak with Republican governors about the prevalence of illegal abortion pill networks. “It hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.”

So far, criminal penalties are only for people who facilitate illegal abortions, but not for the pregnant women. The WaPo reports that for much of the South and Midwest, abortion ban violations is a crime punishable by at least several years in prison. Note the phrase at least. The jail time under such laws is mandatory, not optional. That is how theocratic American Christian fundamentalism deals self-righteously but lovingly with sin. This is the face of an emerging vengeful, bigoted American Christian theocracy. 

Abortion is yet another issue that is tearing America apart in the radical right’s vicious, no-compromise culture wars. This war isn’t over by a long shot. We are just in the middle part of the war of secularism and secular law vs. Christian Sharia law and Christian Taliban-imposed theocracy.

From the vicious liars and crackpots files: QAnon puts 

 a new poison ingredient in its toxic stew

After the weak showing of Trump and a decrease in his presence after the midterm elections, QAnon has been somewhat adrift. It is casting about for new poison ingredient to spice up the vicious crackpot stew it likes to serve the public. The WaPo writes:

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme.

And on Tuesday, [Musk] tweeted a message with an emoji that many people interpreted as saying “follow the white rabbit,” possibly harking back to “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Matrix.” But many QAnon believers saw the rabbit as a wink to one of their foundational icons, a secret indicator shared in one of QAnon’s earliest online prophesies, known as “drops.”

🐇

The White rabbit emoji?

Musk mocked the suggestion that the tweet could be interpreted negatively but offered no clarification. Among QAnon promoters, though, the message was clear: Musk was speaking to them.

One QAnon-amplifying account on Telegram with 118,000 followers, known for spreading a bogus claim that Russian fighters were targeting “U.S. biolabs” in Ukraine, said the tweet was only his latest flirtation with QAnon ideology. 

“Elon called out Fauci for creating [covid-19], [is] calling out the woke hive mind, is paving the path for 2020 to be nullified and Trump reinstated … and now he’s directly quoting Q,” the account said. “Elon is an Anon,” the account added, using the term QAnon disciples call themselves.

Logan Strain, a conspiracy theory researcher who uses the name Travis View on the podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” said Musk’s “conspiracist dog whistles” have galvanized a group that was fractured after 2020, when major social networks including Twitter started banning QAnon accounts and Trump lost the White House.

“He’s responding to and validating a rogues’ gallery of right-wing conspiracists … [and] going through a checklist of far-right grievances in a way that has certainly energized them,” Strain said. For QAnon believers, “what they view as a major battlefield in the information war just opened up again.”  

Musk has never explicitly supported QAnon, and some of his closest allies say they doubt he believes some of the wilder things he says online. One person in Musk’s inner circle, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Musk’s views, said he uses the claims merely to win the internet’s most prized currency: attention. “He wants to muck it up,” the person said.

But in QAnon circles, Musk’s ambiguity and plausible deniability have been seen as a strategic way for him to subtly push their dogma into the mainstream. A QAnon-boosting account with 165,000 followers on Truth Social, Trump’s social network, wrote Monday: “At this rate, Elon is on pace to start posting Q drops to millions of normies and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him.”

It looks like Musk is positioning Twitter to be the main online source for radical right crackpottery, lies, slanders and other anti-democratic, anti-inconvenient truth dark free speech. The trick for him is to do that without alienating too many big advertisers. This is another example of the core capitalist moral, profit talks and everything else walks. 

Among some other good things, everything else includes democracy, inconvenient truth and majority public opinion. For Musk and his now morally and socially rotted Twitter, the goal is to keep those ad revenues flowing. Given that big advertisers are capitalist like Musk, they will try to find a way to continue advertising if there’s insufficient public backlash to force a change. 

It looks like us normies, along with all the crackpotties, are going to get bombarded by a tsunami of Q drops from the hellscape called Twitter. Total bummer.

Now I regret having bought a Tesla. I didn’t see this coming. My mistake.

From the constantly moving goalpost files: Russia is 

running out of bombs to pulverize Ukraine?

For months, reports have been coming out from Western sources saying that Russia is running out of the tens of thousands of tons of bombs needed to pulverize the Ukraine into dust. (lots of  'of' in that sentence, by golly) The Guardian says it again:

Russia faces a “critical shortage” of artillery shells and Moscow’s ability to conduct ground operations in Ukraine is “rapidly diminishing” as a result, Britain’s armed forces chief has said.

Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of defence staff, told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank on Wednesday that the Kremlin had only planned for a short period to subjugate Ukraine, and has instead found itself embroiled in a conflict lasting nearly 10 months.

“So, let me tell Putin tonight what his own generals and ministers are probably afraid to say,” the military chief said. “Russia faces a critical shortage of artillery munitions. This means that their ability to conduct successful offensive ground operations is rapidly diminishing.  

The admiral’s statement is the latest in a line of similar assertions by western and Ukrainian leaders and officials, who have been counting the number of missiles fired against known stockpiles – although there has been evidence of Russia making fresh munitions as the war has gone on.

This reporting seems to ring false? Russia can build, barter oil and buy with cash more bombs to drop on Ukraine. Why would the bombs run out? Humans seem to have an endless capacity and enthusiasm to slaughter humans. It would be nice if the running out of bombs story was true. But is it? 

Imposing philosophical choices...

I’m gonna keep this really simple, and I’m throwing it together at the last minute here, so please forgive the lack of polish (not that I'm ever that polished 😉).  Anyway…

Yesterday, we talked about Deanda raising his daughters in the Christian mode/tradition of forbidding them from having premarital sex before marriage.  The point, the question really was (in a nutshell), how far can parents go when imposing their philosophical values on their children?

So, here is what I’d like you to debate. (I’m really interested in your thoughts here because I’ve often wondered about it myself.)

Since parents have the right (?) to shape the personalities/belief systems of their “blank slate upon birth” children:

1. Do vegetarian* parents have the parental right to restrict their children to a vegetarian diet like their own, starting from babyhood/birth (a philosophical choice likely made by the parents in adulthood)?

2. At what point should the child be allowed/free to choose a non-vegetarian diet?  Once its old enough to understand the concept of meat-eating, say about 5 years old?  Too young?  Other age?

Take time to think it over, then discuss the ramifications of this dilemma.

Thanks!

_________________________________________

* Non meat-eating

News bits: Birth control under attack; power shifts on gun safety

Lawsuit attacks federal right to birth control

Radical right judge Trump rejects it

Vox writes:

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas, spent much of his career trying to interfere with other people’s sexuality.

Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents,”

The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.

This is not a new argument, and numerous courts have rejected similar challenges to publicly funded family planning programs, in part because the Deanda plaintiff’s legal argument “would undermine the minor’s right to privacy” which the Supreme Court has long held to include a right to contraception.

But Kacsmaryk isn’t like most other judges. In his brief time on the bench — Trump appointed Kacsmaryk in 2019 — he has shown an extraordinary willingness to interpret the law creatively to benefit right-wing causes.

And so, last Thursday, the inevitable occurred. Kacsmaryk handed down a decision claiming that “the Title X program violates the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.”  

Kacsmaryk’s decision is riddled with legal errors, some of them obvious enough to be spotted by a first-year law student. And it contradicts a 42-year-long consensus among federal courts that parents do not have a constitutional right to target government programs providing contraceptive care. So there’s a reasonable chance that Kacsmaryk will be reversed on appeal, even in a federal judiciary dominated by Republican appointees.

Nevertheless, Kacsmaryk’s opinion reveals that there are powerful elements within the judiciary who are eager to limit access to contraception. And even if Kacsmaryk’s opinion is eventually rejected by a higher court, he could potentially send the Title X program into turmoil for months. 

Kacsmaryk’s opinion is incompetently drafted and makes several obvious legal errors

Kacsmaryk’s opinion makes a number of legal errors, some of them egregious.

The Constitution, for example, does not permit litigants to file federal lawsuits challenging a government program unless they’ve been injured in some way by that program — a requirement known as “standing.” But Alexander Deanda, the father in this case seeking to stop Title X-funded programs from offering contraception to minors, does not claim that he has ever sought Title X-funded care. He does not allege that his daughters have ever sought Title X-funded care. And he does not even allege that they intend to seek Title X-funded care in the future.

This will probably wind being appealed to the Republican Supreme Court. Given its hostility to the right to privacy, its elevation of religious rights above all others, its radical Christian nationalist ideology and its willingness to blithely overturn precedent, it seems reasonably possible that this decision will be upheld on appeal. But, a final decision is a year or two off. 

This is more evidence of the creeping radical, fundamentalist Christian theocracy that is poisoning too much of America, including federal courts.

Gun safety and politics

A NYT opinion piece written by gun safety advocate Dave Cullen discusses a surprising political shift regarding the politics of gun safety law. The shift is that gun safety laws are starting to be passed in states and the federal government. 

Apparently, years of activism and organization among gun safety groups has gained enough traction that federal and state Republican politicians have come to fear the gun safety lobby more than the NRA and the anti-gun safety law lobby and campaign contributions. Important catalysts in the growing gun safety movement include the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords in Arizona, the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre of 6 and 7 year old children, and the 2018 shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In congress, Mitch McConnell broke through decades of the rock solid Republican Party opposition to gun safety laws after polls indicated there was overwhelming public support for gun safety. That support was backed by enough anger that Republican politicians were starting to lose bids for re-election in significant part due to this issue. The NYT writes:

After decades of getting trounced by the N.R.A., activists saw 67 gun safety laws passed at the state level in 2019, compared with nine pro-gun laws. This year, 45 new gun safety laws have been adopted in states, while 95 percent of gun-lobby-linked bills have been blocked, according to an Everytown report.

.... Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, warned his conference it was. Before the vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act this June, Mr. McConnell told his conference the game had changed. In a closed-door session, his team presented stunning internal polling of gun-owning households. He summarized it for reporters: “Support for the provisions of the framework is off the charts, overwhelming.”  

And with that, the architect of the gun safety blockade in Congress blew a hole in it. He needed to peel off 10 of his senators, and he got 15. The law strengthens background checks, especially for people under age 21 and provides funding to carry out red flag laws and for mental health, school safety and violence interrupter programs.

This shows the effort and organizing needed to get the corrupt, government and gun safety-hating radical right Republican Party to do what a solid majority of Americans has wanted for years. 

Apparently, about the only thing that moves Republican politicians to respond to usually disorganized majority public opinion in the face of an opposing, organized and well-funded minority is large scale public organization and activism. That needs to be driven by enough anger and votes to threaten politician election or re-election. Once the politicians sufficiently fear public anger for their careers, things can get done.

If that analysis is basically correct, then it points to a way to deal with intransigent Republican politicians. At present, disorganized majority public opinion faces two powerful, opposing, organized and well-funded minority ideologies. One is aggressive theocratic Christian nationalism. The other is authoritarian brass knuckles capitalism.  

Some Republican text messages about the 1/6 coup attempt

Christofascism on TikTok

There is a lot of it out there

Homegirl found some of the text messages that Talking Points Memo published yesterday:

The Messages Included Battle Cries, Crackpot Legal Theories, And ‘Invoking Marshall Law!!’ By Hunter Walker, Josh Kovensky and Emine Yücel | December 12, 2022 5:34 p.m. 

Jason Miller to Mark Meadows: FYI…So I asked Ali Pardo from our press shop to get in touch with Rep. Mo Brooks’ office since he seems to be the ringleader on the Jan 6th deal. They say they will have as many as 50 members on board 1/6…but we won’t have a list of names until Sunday or Monday. This may not surprise you, but no one from the legal team has made contact with them at all. They request examples of fraud, numbers, names, whatever supporting evidence can be provided. We’ve now supplied that, but our legal squad isn’t exactly buttoned up. I bring this up for a simple reason – if we’re hoping to move real numbers on the 6th, I think we need to quickly start mobilizing our real-deal allies. I’m ready to go, I have bodies to help, will follow your lead. 

Mark Meadows reply: Thanks Jason. You are the best. I will bring it up with potus and I plan to meet with them on Saturday. 

Jim Jordan to Mark Meadows: On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. �No legislative act,� wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, �contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.� �The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ��That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.� �226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). � Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all. 

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to Meadows on January 17, 2021: Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic !! "Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!" 

Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) to Meadows on Nov. 6, just after the Nov. 3, 2020 elections: Mark, When we lose Trump we lose our Republic. Fight like hell and find a way. We’re with you down here in Texas and refuse to live under a corrupt Marxist dictatorship. Liberty! Babin

It is fact that the 1/6 event was a coup attempt supported by a sitting Republican president and some Republican members of congress. IMO, those people should be tried and jailed for life. Those Republicans apparently seriously believed Trump's crackpot lies and conspiracies about a stolen election. They believed it without one shred of evidence. Some of them apparently seriously believe that the Democratic Party wants to establish a Marxist dictatorship. Now, the fascist GOP publicly stated that it will shut down further investigation on Jan. 3, 2023, the day the fascist Republicans take control of the House. That undeniably shows the GOP’s support for the 1/6 coup attempt. Establishment of an authoritarian regime, probably a bigoted, ruthless Christofascist kleptocracy is the fascist goal.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to homegirl for brining these text messages to my attention.

News blasts ’n bits: Christian Sharia’s initial step to tax dollars, etc.

News blast: Christian theocracy under Christian 

Sharia law starts an effort to crack open a state treasury

A central, cherished goal of the radical right Christian nationalist wealth, power and theocracy movement has been to sink its greedy claws into taxpayer dollars at the state and federal levels. One way in has been to argue in courts that religious schools are entitled to tax dollars. State laws that separate tax revenues from religion have stood in the way. However, a Supreme Court decisions held that such separation was an unconstitutional burden on free speech by religion, thereby knocking down a major barrier that protected tax dollars from Christian pillage. That decision went a long way to neutering the Constitution’s establishment clause, which had been the basis for keeping the hooks of religion out of tax revenues.

Politico writes:

Oklahoma’s departing attorney general just took a big step toward achieving a conservative education milestone.

A state law that blocks religious institutions and private sectarian schools from public charter school programs is likely unconstitutional and should not be enforced, Attorney General John O’Connor and Solicitor General Zach West wrote in a non-binding legal opinion this month.

Their 15-page memo leans on a trio of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that favored religious schools and won rapt attention from conservative school choice advocates and faith groups.

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said the advisory opinion “rightfully defends parents, education freedom, and religious liberty in Oklahoma.” Newly-elected state Superintendent Ryan Walters called it “the right decision for Oklahomans.”

Now it’s time to see if faith-based Oklahoma institutions successfully apply for taxpayer support to create charter schools that teach religion as a doctrinal truth just like private schools do today, and if legislators will push to change state law. Legal authorities in other Republican-led states could also pen similar opinions.  

“The policy implications are huge because this is the first state that is going to allow religious charter schools,” said Nicole Stelle Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor and influential religious charter school supporter who wants other states to follow Oklahoma’s lead. “The legal implications are huge because this is the first state that says that they have to,” she said in an interview. 

.... [this] formal opinion of a conservative attorney general marks one of three ways religious charters can find legal footing.

In a widely-read 2020 report for the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, Garnett argued states could also amend or write laws that allow such schools to exist. Or perhaps a lawyer could sue on behalf of a school operator that wants to incorporate religion into its curriculum.

His opinion, though, relies on three groundbreaking high court cases involving religious institutions: Carson v. Makin earlier this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, and Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer in 2017.  

“It is a whole other ballgame for the state to instruct children on religious doctrine and teach it as truth,” said Derek Black, education and civil rights professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, in an interview. “That’s what we’re talking about here: State dollars in public schools, delivering instruction to children preaching religion as a way of life that must be adhered to. That’s staggering.”

This is more evidence of what pro-theocracy Christian nationalism empowered by Supreme Court-endorsed Christian Sharia law intends to do. Once the Christian nationalist Supreme Court finishes obliterating the concept of church-state separation as a viable legal barrier, powerful Christian nationalist elites, i.e., most Republican politicians in Congress and state legislatures, will be unleashed. Fundamentalist Christianity will be freed to have unfettered access to our tax dollars.

Because the threat is grave and imminent, I will keep raising these warnings about the threat of intolerant American theocracy under a vengeful Christian Taliban that is dead set on killing tolerant democracy and civil liberties.

Inside the 1/6 coup attempt

Talking Points Memo has obtained evidence that the House 1/6 investigation committee has about the role of Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. Meadows is a well-know Christian nationalist elite who supported the coup attempt. Meadows is on of the key Christian Taliban  leaders. TPM has 2,319 text messages that Meadows sent to various elite Republicans, including 34 congressional Republicans. This is more evidence that Christian nationalism was a major influence in support of the 1/6 coup attempt. TPM writes:

The text messages, obtained from multiple sources, offer new insights into how the assault on the election was rooted in deranged internet paranoia and undemocratic ideology. They show Meadows and other high-level Trump allies reveling in wild conspiracy theories, violent rhetoric, and crackpot legal strategies for refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory. They expose the previously unknown roles of some members of Congress, local politicians, activists and others in the plot to overturn the election. Now, for the first time, many of those figures will be named and their roles will be described — in their own words.

The texts Meadows provided to the select committee encompass the period from election night in 2020 through President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. It is not clear which, if any, texts Meadows withheld from the committee, but the text message log offers multiple hints it is only a partial record of his conversations. There are discussions that clearly lack prior context and messages where participants indicate there is further communication taking place on encrypted channels.  

TPM is kicking off this series with an exclusive story showing that the log includes more than 450 messages with 34 Republican members of Congress. Those texts show varying degrees of involvement by members of Congress, from largely benign expressions of support for Trump to the leading roles played by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jody Hice (R-GA), Mo Brooks (R-AL), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the plot to reverse Trump’s defeat.

Meadows’ text log shows what the scheme to subvert the 2020 election looked like behind the scenes. It reveals the roots of the violence and its key enablers in Washington. The messages show the plot began well before Jan. 6 and continued afterward. They are essential documentation of a dark day in American history.

It is no wonder that radical right, fascist House Republicans have already publicly stated that on Jan. 3, 2023, the day they take control of the House, they will shut the 1/6 Committee down. They need to end any further House investigation of the role of Trump and his Republican enablers in trying to overthrow the US government on 1/6. They have a hell of a lot to try to hide and spin from treason into something the Republican Party officially calls “legitimate political discourse.”

We can only hope that the Democrats release all of the evidence they have before their power to honestly inform the American people is taken away. Once the Democrats are shut up, the fascist Republicans will start their massive propaganda campaign to turn a true horror for democracy into a faux triumph for democracy.  

Book banning by radical right zealots:

The role of Christian business and its money

The NYT writes:

A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups 

Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans

Some groups are new, some are longstanding. Some are local, others national. Over the past two years, they have become vastly more organized, well funded, effective — and criticized.

The Keller Independent School District, just outside of Dallas, passed a new rule in November: It banned books from its libraries that include the concept of gender fluidity.

The change was pushed by three new school board members, elected in May with support from Patriot Mobile, a self-described Christian cellphone carrier. Through its political action committee, Patriot Mobile poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Texas school board races to promote candidates with conservative views on race, gender and sexuality — including on which books children can access at school.  

“This is not about banning books, it’s about protecting the innocence of our children,” said Keith Flaugh, one of the founders of Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group focused on education, “and letting the parents decide what the child gets rather than having government schools indoctrinate our kids.”

It is easy to see the power of this Christian Taliban tactic. Overtly Christian businesses generate profits. Then they leverage that profit with tax breaks to PACs that support putting more Christian Taliban into positions that can influence public schools, elections, law enforcement and everything else they can corrupt. 

Also, notice the sophisticated propaganda this is packaged with. Book banning is spun into a narrative not about banning books, but about empowering parents. The Christian Taliban wants parents to indoctrinate children into their bigoted theocratic world view by keeping them ignorant and fostering intolerance of aspects of the real world the Taliban hates and wants to oppress.  

1933 book burning ceremony in Berlin, Germany

2022 book burning ceremony in Tennessee

(Harry Potter and Twilight got torched)

Thoughts about anti-Semitism and 

bad faith rhetoric

In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

As I’ve argued here before, talented demagogues, tyrants, religious and political ideological zealots, kleptocrats and the like (“bad people”) have known for millennia that bad faith in the form of blatant lies, slanders, flawed crackpot reasoning, scapegoating bigotry and the like are hard to defend against. The burden on the defenders of truth to explain usually complicated truth in the face of assertions of simple false reality and/or reasoning.

Just as bad people understand the power of bad faith rhetoric, some observers have long understood the great advantage that the bad people have over the defenders. Along with Plato and Aristotle, John-Paul Sartre was one of those who understood the asymmetry in rhetoric and the imbalance in persuasion power that is inherent in the asymmetry.

However, maybe one thing has changed from the time Sartre wrote his comments. These days, at least for radical right American fascists, even when they are pressed quite closely, they do not fall silent. Instead, they double down and renew their attacks, lies, slanders and crackpottery. For modern bad people, the time for argument is never past.