Regarding the origins of Christian nationalism and some of its moral mindset

This 18 minute interview by NPR's Michele Martin with American Christianity historian Kristin Du Mez (do may) discusses the Evangelical movement, its origins and one aspect of its moral mindset. Du Mez argues that the American Christian right is undermining democracy and fracturing the country. 

One of the points that Du Mez asserts is that the modern White Evangelical way of thinking is so innate and natural that they sincerely believe that their Church and Evangelism is not political. To them, it's just ordinary day to day life. They fully engulfed by this religious culture and society. In their prayers they thank God for anointing Brett Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court and they vilify big government, but they see no politics in any of that. Instead, they see these things as merely being Christian. They have lost sight of most or all differences between politics and religion. In their minds, religion has swallowed politics.

Regarding Evangelical values, Du Mez asserts that most people did not understand them. Support for the ex-president was not a betrayal of those values. Instead, he was the embodiment of them. One needs to puts White patriarchal authority at the center of the Evangelical morality, to see that the ex-president embodied their moral beliefs and values. The vulgarity, disrespect, mendacity, infidelity, bigotry and so on were all beside the point. The core value is a strong, even ruthless White man capable of defending Christianity, the nation, the women and the children. She argues that is what many Evangelicals, men and women, saw and liked about him.

Along with white unease over the rise in minority populations and various social changes, White patriarchal moral authority is another factor in what Christian nationalism and the Republican Party are today.

Du Mez notes that prominent Evangelicals in leadership positions who opposed the ex-president as being to radical or otherwise not acceptable or Christian turned out to be wrong. Now they have either lost their power in a populist American Evangelical Christianity by being pushed out or by leaving after realizing that their leadership position has simply vanished in the face of a a populist insurgency and the White patriarchal moral authority the ex-president represents in the insurgents' minds. 

The purity/sanctity moral frame[1]: Wife beating, rape and uncontrolled lust --

It's the woman's fault, men just can't help it 

In a fascinating segment beginning at ~10 minutes in the interview, Du Mez describes why Evangelical women do not find the ex-president's marital infidelities or sexual vulgarities strongly offensive or objectionable. Evangelism teaches that men are aggressively sexual, while women are not. Because of that, it is the woman's duty to defend purity. When men do bad things related to sex, the woman has tempted the man or has failed him sexually. That is the woman's fault. For example when a man has sex with his young daughter, it is the wife's fault for not properly satisfying her man's sex urges. According to Du Mez, this strain of belief dates back to Evangelical teachings from the 1960s and 1970s. It is a central theme in Evangelical moral belief today.

If what Du Mez argues is mostly true, that would help explain some or most of why supposedly moral Evangelical women accept and support people like T****. That is a manifestation of their moral purity belief that the woman is responsible for taming men's uncontrollable sex urges. That may seem counter intuitive, but it does make moral sense to me. I think I get it.

Christian nationalists are happy campers today: They got what they wanted, Roe overturned: The sacred ends justified the dirty means

Finally, the interview ends with a segment on how Evangelicals see the situation today. They are overjoyed at the impending reversal of Roe v. Wade. They also see that, unpleasant as the means may have been, the sacred ends morally justified what the ex-president and the Republican Party have done.

These people are scary. They will accept the fall and loss of democracy, the secular rule of law and civil liberties if those things are demagogued into truth as the will of God. These anti-democratic impulses to obey God are deeply embedded in Evangelical minds. Contrary facts and reasoning are not persuasive or even relevant. One just cannot question God's will. God is first. Democracy and all the rest is arguably not even a close second.

Footnote: 

1. Purity is one of the moral values hypothesized to be important in Moral Foundations Theory. MFT was mentioned here a couple weeks ago. That post discussed what happens when the loyalty moral value clashes with the honesty moral value. Propagandists and demagogues intentionally create artificial moral conflicts to divide, distract, foment distrust and subjugate the masses. 

The core moral values hypothesized in Moral Foundations Theory are Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression. The purity that Du Mez mentions refers to the sanctity/degradation moral.

Recent origins of the Christian nationalist anti-abortion movement

This fascinating 18 minute interview by Christiane Amanpour with a former Christian nationalist propagandist, Frank Schaeffer. Schaeffer now says he regrets his role in helping to convert Evangelical Christians from mostly positive or neutral about abortion to rigidly anti-abortion. He claims that he and his father were important players in the demagoguery and the conversion.[1] The one group that was the most anti-abortion was Catholics. They did not need to be convinced to oppose Roe v. Wade. The Evangelicals needed to be convinced.  

Schaeffer made propaganda films that demagogued abortion for maximal emotional impact, especially to foment moral outrage and hate. A key point was that this was an effective way to raise money and trap votes for Republicans. Republican politicians and activists, e.g., Paul Weyrich[2], noticed this and started pandering to the anti-abortionists in the Republican Party quest for money and power. 

In all of what is going on in American neo-fascist conservative politics, lust for money and power among the elites is a constant central theme. The minds of most rank and file supporters (~95% ?) are quite different.

Footnotes: 

1. I don't know the history of this well enough to know how important Schaeffer was in the conversion of Evangelicals to rabid anti-abortionists. If what he claims is true, he was arguably a significant player in both the anti-abortion movement and in crystallizing (maybe inadvertently) Christian nationalism into the toxic, powerful neo-fascist political and social movement it is today.

2. Apologies for posting this short video so many times. It just strikes me as important to know. This 40 second video is Weyrich stating the fringe of the Republican Party view on free and fair elections in 1980. Today in 2022, that old fringe opinion is now dominant mainstream Republican Party dogma. The Republican concern Weyrich stated in 1980 is still true today.  

Public opinion on abortion

The polling experts at FiveThirtyEight posted some data on public opinion.

The last graph shows that relentless, ruthless Republican demagoguery on abortion is swaying public opinion. 

Once again, the power of dark free speech is on display. If that can happen with opinions on abortion, it can happen on opinions with most anything, including support for democracy and respect for truth, a secular basis for the rule of law, and civil liberties. That's the threat, right out in the open. 

Next on the Christian nationalism agenda: Abortion pills and homicide charges

Getting rid of Roe v. Wade isn't the end of the Christian nationalist foaming at the mouth jihad against controlling women or sex generally. This is the beginning. The New York Times writes:

Abortion Pills Stand to Become the Next Battleground in a Post-Roe America

Medication abortion allows patients to terminate early pregnancies at home. Some states are moving to limit it, while others are working to expand access.

Medication abortion — a two-drug combination that can be taken at home or in any location and is authorized for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy — has become more and more prevalent and now accounts for more than half of recent abortions in the United States. If the federal guarantee of abortion rights disappears, medication abortion would likely become an even more sought-after method for terminating a pregnancy — and the focus of battles between states that ban abortion and those that continue to allow it.

“Given that most abortions are early and medication abortion is harder to trace and already kind of becoming the majority or preferred method, it’s going to be a big deal,” Mary Ziegler, a legal scholar who has written widely on abortion, said. “It’s going to generate a lot of forthcoming legal conflicts because it’s just going to be a way that state borders are going to become less relevant.”

About half the states are expected to quickly make all methods of abortion illegal if the justices’ decision in a Mississippi case resembles a draft opinion leaked this week that would nullify the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion. In Louisiana, a legislative committee this week advanced a bill that would allow homicide charges to be brought against people who get abortions or perform them.  

Medication abortion is less expensive and less invasive than surgical abortions. In December, the Food and Drug Administration made access to it significantly easier by lifting the requirement that patients obtain the first of the two pills, mifepristone, by visiting an authorized clinic or doctor in person. Now, patients can have a consultation with a physician via video or phone or by filling out online forms, and then receive the pills by mail.

I have been warning as hard as I can that this was part of what is coming from America’s neo-fascist Republican Party. The extremist radical Christian nationalist movement and the laissez-faire capitalist, anti-government, anti-environment powers that control the GOP are planning a vast social re-engineering of American society around core extremist goals. 

Theocratic Christian nationalist goals include, but are not limited to: 

1. getting rid of all secular public education and replacing it with fundamentalist Christian schools at taxpayer expense, 
2. giving White Christian heterosexual males the legal power to openly and brutally discriminate against non-Whites, women, racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBQT community and non-Christians, and 
3. completely obliterating what little vitality is left in the concept of separation of church from state, giving them, among some other awful things, full control of tax revenues in Service to God and the Christian nationalist theocratic agenda. 

I repeat the warning: 

Theocratic neo-fascism is coming to America  

unless Republicans are voted out of office.

 

Roe v. Wade propaganda wars

The propaganda is flying thick and heavy. Republicans say the decision to overturn Roe was leaked by a Democrat for Democratic advantage. Me and some others thought it was leaked by a Republican for Republican advantage.

Faux News and Mitch McConnell are desperately and transparently deflecting by ignoring the fact that Roe is about to be overturned. Republicans are foaming at the mouth about the leak damaging the court and being the worst thing to ever happen with the court. 

Republican "reasoning", i.e., dark free speech, includes irrational deceit like this.

Republican propaganda: The Democrats weren't concerned about abortion before the leak and now they are.

Rational response: Well yeah, isn't that what one would expect? Something happens and then people respond. Before the decision leaked, polling indicated that Democrats were not worried about abortion because they wrongly believed that Roe was settled law and abortions would remain legal. (IMO, this indicates how shockingly ignorant and/or disinformed the electorate is, including Democrats)  

Republican propaganda: In response to the decision about the reversal of Roe and McConnell's direct role in putting those judges on the Supreme Court, he responds by  attacking the leak. He ignored the question about Roe or his role in killing it. 

Rational response: McConnell's tactic is pure partisan politics. The tactic is to ignore, downplay or reject bad news, and deflect to something either helpful or at least less damaging. He uses the tried and true KYMS** propaganda tactic by completely ignoring the important questions like his role in killing Roe despite majority public opinion that wants to keep abortions legal.  

** Keep your mouth shut

Republican propaganda: This leak is the worst thing to ever happen with the court.

Rational response: The leak is not worse than court sanction and legalization of racial segregation of public schools. Worse things have come from the court. This is just another means to deflect from  the fact that abortions in 23 states will immediately go completely or almost completely away. Here's a summary:

• 9 states retain their unenforced, pre-Roe abortion bans.
• 13 states have post-Roe laws to ban all or nearly all abortions that would be triggered if Roe were overturned.
• 9 states have unconstitutional post-Roe restrictions that are currently blocked by courts but could be brought back into effect with a court order in Roe’s absence.
• 7 states have laws that express the intent to restrict the right to legal abortion to the maximum extent permitted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the absence of Roe.
• 4 states have passed a constitutional amendment explicitly declaring that their constitution does not secure or protect the right to abortion or allow use of public funds for abortion.

One can envision advantages and disadvantages for the leak for both Republicans and Democrats.[1] Time will tell whether advantage goes to one side or the other. We may not ever know if a Democrat or Republican leaked the decision, or what their specific reasoning was to leak it. 

Given recent norm-busting and mendacious behaviors by Republicans, especially since T**** was elected, but also including McConnell's refusal to consider Obama's Supreme Court nominee, the leak feels very likely to be Republican.

Footnote: 

1. Ideas that a commenter here posted yesterday.

Possible motives for a Democrat to leak

(Note: Dems probably won't agree with all of this, but 

consider that Republicans see a very different reality)

1. The General Election is in six months. For funds to be of the best use, they need to be raised now, before the summer. DNC fundraising has been weak. So this could be a Democratic attempt to come up with an issue that'll get funds into campaigns.

2. The DNC has been weaker with suburban white women than they have been in recent cycles. Democrats are very concerned about the Latino vote, especially Latino women. So this may be an attempt to get these two key demographics, and other demographics that are solidly Democratic (urban/professional women and women of color) to not sleep off this election.

3. Democratic enthusiasm and activism has been down. The momentum that was so big on the ground for Progressives all throughout the past five years or so has pretty much dried up in the last two. The ones really pushing on the ground seem to be Conservatives, and the momentum seemed to be with them going on the offensive on things like gender issues, education, CRT, and other issues of high salience. So this might be a way for the DNC to get the activism going again.

4. DNC is losing the PR struggle this year (as usual IMO). Things like the Hunter Biden laptop, the situation in Ukraine, the economy and inflation, the Durham probe, and general anxiety over what this regime will do next has been forcing the administration on the back foot, trying to place defense, justifying itself and its actions in the face of what has been going on. The Court leak, at this time, gets the focus off of all the negative issues that have been plaguing Biden and the Democrats, and onto something that, for once, isn't Congress or executive branch related.

Possible motives for a Republican to leak

(Note: Repubs probably won't agree with all of this, but 

consider that Democrats see a very different reality)

1. Since the decision was going to become public, it would be better for the GOP to have it hit sooner, rather than later. The closer this hits to the General Election, the more it will impact the election, and the less the campaigns will be able to create a propaganda strategy to counter it. This is the whole "soften the blow" argument, because it's a whole lot easier to handle a big event six months out from a General Election than three months out. (This was my initial reaction and it still seems the most likely to me)

2. The Right may think it is advantageous for them to leak this decision, because whatever Democratic or public reaction it provokes would be useful to Republicans somehow. Reaction in opposition can be used to paint opposition to overturning Roe as dangerous radicalism, or an effort to intimidate the Court. (This seems very unlikely IMO)

3. Christian conservatives tend to support results, rather than platitudes, about the right to life. They've been successful in some states, but not so much on the Federal level, and they were deeply concerned about whether the Roberts court could deliver on Roe. This may change that, and get Christian conservatives to start going in big on support for Republicans, especially in campaign donations.

4. This might be a way for the GOP to jack up the enthusiasm downticket, towards state races, where they already have a few good wedge issues working for them, mainly in education. Again, the money raised now is much more useful than the money raised three months from now. Not only that, but this now makes GOP primaries, which are currently underway, much more important.

PROOF POSITIVE THERE WAS VOTER FRAUD!

 

GOP Voter Sentenced for Casting Dead Mom's Ballot, Said Election Not 'Fair'


An Arizona judge sentenced a registered Republican to two years of felony probation after she pleaded guilty to voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Former President Donald Trump and many other Republican allies continue to falsely claim that President Joe Biden only won the last presidential election due to widespread voter fraud. Despite their continued allegations, no evidence has emerged corroborating the claims. To the contrary, dozens of election challenge lawsuits failed in state and federal courts—with even Trump-appointed judges dismissing the cases.

Tracey Kay McKee, 64, was sentenced Friday by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret LaBianca after she pleaded guilty to the voter fraud charge in January, The Arizona Republic reported. McKee signed and cast an early voting ballot on behalf of her deceased mother, Mary Arendt, who was also a registered Republican.

Arendt died on October 5, 2020, just days before early mail-in ballots were sent out to voters, according to the Phoenix-based newspaper. In McKee's trial, the prosecutor played a clip of her denying her wrongdoing to investigators.

"The only way to prevent voter fraud is to physically go in and punch a ballot," the GOP voter told the investigator in the recording, the newspaper reported. "I mean, voter fraud is going to be prevalent as long as there's mail-in voting, for sure. I mean, there's no way to ensure a fair election."

"And I don't believe that this was a fair election," she added. "I do believe there was a lot of voter fraud."

Arizona's KTVK 3TV and KPHO CBS 5 News reported that prosecutors had called for 30 days of jail. However, the judge sentenced McKee to just probation instead. Her lawyer contended that jail would be too harsh a penalty. McKee cried as she apologized in her court hearing.

"Your Honor, I would like to apologize," McKee told LaBianca, The Arizona Republic reported. "I don't want to make the excuse for my behavior. What I did was wrong and I'm prepared to accept the consequences handed down by the court." It's unclear whether McKee cast a ballot for Trump, as she was not asked who she voted for.

https://www.newsweek.com/gop-voter-sentenced-casting-dead-moms-ballot-said-election-not-fair-1702442