Usually Rod Dreher's inimitable brand of intellectual tomfoolery is Edroso's wheelhouse, and he's the master at it, but Young Rod dropped an egregious deuce the other day that ties in with a relevant article explaining the manifold hypocrisies of the evilangelicals (as well as a detailed follow-up to the latter article). So I'll take a poke at this chump.
Taking the second and third links first, let's cut through all the chaff and get to the heart of it -- evangelicals want power for the same reasons everyone wants power. They can pretend that their supposedly celestial concerns supersede the ephemeral worries of the evil secularists, but by their deeds shall you know them.
These money-grubbing Elmer Gantry types are poisonous to democracy precisely because they are by nature authoritarians, which in turn is why racism is their most useful tool, as it jibes perfectly with their dream of a white patriarchy overseeing all the other sheep. But it's just a tool, along with their cynical relationship to their professed belief system.
Their goal is that of a mafia boss, or a tinpot despot: power and money. That's it. There's nothing else to understand. There is no point in spelunking the ass of their lurid post-confederate history of oppressing and subjugating women and minorities, because they're impervious to outside influence.
And there's definitely no point in trying to find common political ground with them. Publicize their hypocrisies, boycott their businesses, make them pay taxes, and keep them the hell away from the White House. These jackals have no business being within a country mile of any place of responsible government -- which of course is why they're perfectly at home in this hog-shit lagoon of an administration.
Now, as to Dreher, while I don't read him regularly, I've read him enough to have encountered his doubting Thomas schtick with irritating consistency. Here's a sample:
Well, gee whiz, hoss, you think that might be because he's a dangerous retard with the soul of a banana republic caudillo, and has never bothered to hide any of that? The guy's a fucking criminal, and always has been. Dreher's just peeved that Trump's constant bad form puts a nasty patina on his flock's efforts to turn this country into the Republic of Gilead.
It would be nice if (and maybe he has) Dreher would elucidate in some broad strokes what he would like done about his pet issues. The abortion rate in this country has steadily declined since 1980 or 1982, depending on whether you go by number per thousand live births, or total number reported per year. It is never going to be zero, no matter how much you pray or what kind of monster you put in a senator's seat or judge's bench.
But every "pro-life" person needs to be asked this point-blank: what should the penalty be, for the woman and/or the doctor? Hell, set abortion aside for a second -- we have states that want to throw women in prison for decades for having a miscarriage, like some Third World shithole. We have states that want to force rape victims to bear their attackers' spawn.
That's the country Rod Dreher wants to live in, where an eleven-year-old girl being forced to bear her adult molester's child is more of a priority than whether the fucking president upholds the Constitution of the United States.
Look, I get the pro-life argument at its basest principle, but as with capital punishment, it doesn't take very long or very much of a leap for grandstanding morons to scapegoat poor people for political gain. That's really all this boils down to, whether Dreher realizes it or cares or not.
And I have no idea what the hell he means by "religious liberty." Is this still about the three or four bakeries that refused to do cakes for gay weddings? Again, is he seriously prioritizing that bullshit over whether this openly corrupt bastard is openly trashing his office? This Ukraine thing is just the one they have him most dead-to-rights on. If the impeachment inquiry allows sufficient scope to follow the money and is not interfered with by the equally corrupt Attorney General, it's practically a slam-dunk that they'll find that Trump and his dipshit son-in-law have been selling American foreign policy to the highest bidder, mostly the Saudis and Emiratis, who have been his best customers for many years. Not to mention all that bratva cash he's laundered.
But hey, as long as Joe Schmo's cakery in East Overshoe, Nebraska can tell those pesky faggots to fuck off, it's totally worth it.
And that's exactly what happened with Bill Clinton, and he got his ass impeached. So maybe what comes around goes around, even if it's too little too late. It's pretty simple -- either the law matters, or it doesn't. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his unfitness for any office, routinely engaging in behavior that would have gotten him fired from the 7-11 graveyard shift. He is obviously incompetent and incoherent, clearly sociopathic in nature, probably in the early stages of dementia, deeply corrupt, likely compromised in multiple ways by his foreign interlocutors, and openly and aggressively challenging long-held norms and precedents that are actually important to operational and transitional integrity.
This nation faces some very serious challenges in the near future, not just climate change disaster mitigation but also planning for a smoother transition from global hegemon to (hopefully) principal partner in what will (just by sheer demographics and economic power) become an Asian century. Aside from the one tax cut for billionaires and stocking the courts, Trump has fucked up or ignored every legitimate issue this country faces -- even ones he demagogues regularly, such as immigration and trade policy.
Really, this is a rich irony that Dreher and the evangelicals richly deserve -- they profess to follow the teaching of Christ, and to revere the Ten Commandments, and have spent the better part of the last four years trying to square all that with their unwavering support of someone who routinely violates half the commandments, and has eschewed even the pretense of following even the most basic of those teachings.
The only thing the rest of us ask is that these hypocrites quit trying to make excuses to us, and go try their luck explaining it to the god they supposedly worship.
Taking the second and third links first, let's cut through all the chaff and get to the heart of it -- evangelicals want power for the same reasons everyone wants power. They can pretend that their supposedly celestial concerns supersede the ephemeral worries of the evil secularists, but by their deeds shall you know them.
These money-grubbing Elmer Gantry types are poisonous to democracy precisely because they are by nature authoritarians, which in turn is why racism is their most useful tool, as it jibes perfectly with their dream of a white patriarchy overseeing all the other sheep. But it's just a tool, along with their cynical relationship to their professed belief system.
Their goal is that of a mafia boss, or a tinpot despot: power and money. That's it. There's nothing else to understand. There is no point in spelunking the ass of their lurid post-confederate history of oppressing and subjugating women and minorities, because they're impervious to outside influence.
And there's definitely no point in trying to find common political ground with them. Publicize their hypocrisies, boycott their businesses, make them pay taxes, and keep them the hell away from the White House. These jackals have no business being within a country mile of any place of responsible government -- which of course is why they're perfectly at home in this hog-shit lagoon of an administration.
Now, as to Dreher, while I don't read him regularly, I've read him enough to have encountered his doubting Thomas schtick with irritating consistency. Here's a sample:
I resent the hell out of Donald Trump for putting so many conservatives, especially Republican lawmakers, in the position of having to defend him over stupid, easily preventable missteps.
Well, gee whiz, hoss, you think that might be because he's a dangerous retard with the soul of a banana republic caudillo, and has never bothered to hide any of that? The guy's a fucking criminal, and always has been. Dreher's just peeved that Trump's constant bad form puts a nasty patina on his flock's efforts to turn this country into the Republic of Gilead.
What would Trump have to do that would cause me to support his impeachment, or at least to vote against him for re-election — this, in spite of the very real and significant damage a Democratic president would do to causes (abortion, religious liberty) that mean a lot to me?For someone who constantly tries to paint this eternal struggle between political goals and moral ethics, he sure hasn't thought this one through at all. Again, considering that Trump lies routinely, has a track record as a crook, a schnook, and a serial philanderer, one would think that someone with Dreher's rigorous personal moral code would have figured out where his line was a long time ago. It's not like Donald Fucking Trump suddenly turned into this morally objectionable character based on a memorandum of conversation (not a fucking transcript) that surfaced a couple weeks ago.
At this point, I don’t know. But I am sure I’m going to find out as the investigation goes forward.
It would be nice if (and maybe he has) Dreher would elucidate in some broad strokes what he would like done about his pet issues. The abortion rate in this country has steadily declined since 1980 or 1982, depending on whether you go by number per thousand live births, or total number reported per year. It is never going to be zero, no matter how much you pray or what kind of monster you put in a senator's seat or judge's bench.
But every "pro-life" person needs to be asked this point-blank: what should the penalty be, for the woman and/or the doctor? Hell, set abortion aside for a second -- we have states that want to throw women in prison for decades for having a miscarriage, like some Third World shithole. We have states that want to force rape victims to bear their attackers' spawn.
That's the country Rod Dreher wants to live in, where an eleven-year-old girl being forced to bear her adult molester's child is more of a priority than whether the fucking president upholds the Constitution of the United States.
Look, I get the pro-life argument at its basest principle, but as with capital punishment, it doesn't take very long or very much of a leap for grandstanding morons to scapegoat poor people for political gain. That's really all this boils down to, whether Dreher realizes it or cares or not.
And I have no idea what the hell he means by "religious liberty." Is this still about the three or four bakeries that refused to do cakes for gay weddings? Again, is he seriously prioritizing that bullshit over whether this openly corrupt bastard is openly trashing his office? This Ukraine thing is just the one they have him most dead-to-rights on. If the impeachment inquiry allows sufficient scope to follow the money and is not interfered with by the equally corrupt Attorney General, it's practically a slam-dunk that they'll find that Trump and his dipshit son-in-law have been selling American foreign policy to the highest bidder, mostly the Saudis and Emiratis, who have been his best customers for many years. Not to mention all that bratva cash he's laundered.
But hey, as long as Joe Schmo's cakery in East Overshoe, Nebraska can tell those pesky faggots to fuck off, it's totally worth it.
The howls and cries of liberals who see no reason at all why anybody should support Trump in spite of himself fall on deaf ears. They don’t feel as strongly about religious liberty and the pro-life cause as I do, and therefore they don’t have an intuitive grasp of how disastrous a Democratic president would be, given how radical the party has become on those issues. If the situation were reversed, and a corrupt Democratic president was the only thing standing between a champion of the Religious Right taking office, and putting abortion and LGBT rights in jeopardy, they would know exactly how I feel.
And that's exactly what happened with Bill Clinton, and he got his ass impeached. So maybe what comes around goes around, even if it's too little too late. It's pretty simple -- either the law matters, or it doesn't. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his unfitness for any office, routinely engaging in behavior that would have gotten him fired from the 7-11 graveyard shift. He is obviously incompetent and incoherent, clearly sociopathic in nature, probably in the early stages of dementia, deeply corrupt, likely compromised in multiple ways by his foreign interlocutors, and openly and aggressively challenging long-held norms and precedents that are actually important to operational and transitional integrity.
This nation faces some very serious challenges in the near future, not just climate change disaster mitigation but also planning for a smoother transition from global hegemon to (hopefully) principal partner in what will (just by sheer demographics and economic power) become an Asian century. Aside from the one tax cut for billionaires and stocking the courts, Trump has fucked up or ignored every legitimate issue this country faces -- even ones he demagogues regularly, such as immigration and trade policy.
Really, this is a rich irony that Dreher and the evangelicals richly deserve -- they profess to follow the teaching of Christ, and to revere the Ten Commandments, and have spent the better part of the last four years trying to square all that with their unwavering support of someone who routinely violates half the commandments, and has eschewed even the pretense of following even the most basic of those teachings.
The only thing the rest of us ask is that these hypocrites quit trying to make excuses to us, and go try their luck explaining it to the god they supposedly worship.
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