The Incredible Hypocrisy of Ted Haggard

[RetiredTrotskyite]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcScBdnEhY&feature=related

What's really frightening is that, according to this, 45% of Americans identify as fundie and supposedly fundie-ism is on the rise.

[Fearless]

1. I'd like to see new polls on it's level since the recession hit.

Would be interesting I believe.

[WyoHiker]

2. "People Like You make it very hard...

For People Like You!"


Yes, the Fundies Scare me. They have a strong political track record, most recently punctuated by putting W into office TWICE. They have the capability of seriously screwing this place up (even more!)

I proposed active engagement. My Uncle says that this is a waste of time and just wait for them to die out like the anti-black bigots of the old south. I disagree. For if we do not engage, and work together whenever common ground is possible, and thereby expose the fundies to the morality of non-fundie secularists, et. al., then the die-out plan will fail because more conservatives will simple rise up to take the place of the ones that have passed.

Haggard and company are bad, this is true. But ignoring them, or (worse) getting them riled up, or (worse yet) insulting them, is a recipe for continued disasters.

Exactly how to do this without figuratively throwing our GLBT friends and family under the bus, or similarly sacrificing other vital moral issues, is very problematic, but it must be done.

So, our first assignment is to find a way to be nice to Rick Warren while simultaneously making it abundantly clear that he is being hateful, hurtful, and wrong when it comes to Abortion, Gay Marriage, and probably a couple of other issues.

I wish us all luck.

Any ideas?

[RetiredTrotskyite]

3. The Fundies Are Worrisome

A large number of them are Dominionist and are trying to raise large families of "soldiers for God". You cannot reach an accomodation with this sort--they may act nice to your face, but if they ever manage to take power (something I have long considered at least a possibility), our lives won't be worth much. You ever read the "Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. That would be very much the way things would be in general.

Yeah, well, you can try to make peace with these people, but as I have said, no accomodation can be made with fanatics--in tneir view, we all surrender or we die. This is what few people understand. These people believe that they are to rule this country and, eventually, the world. and Obama is enabling them by kissing up to bastards like Warren.

[WyoHiker]

4. Not Towards The Dead Enders

You're right, the Dead Enders (ewwwww, I just used a Rumsfeld phrase!) are beyond human intervention. Best you can do is to "Pray for Them" or whatever -- just leave them to god.

When I said "Be Nice to Warren without sacrificing..." I gave the wrong idea. I was trying, very clumsily, to use him to collectively embody all the people in the fundamentalist camp.

The main end of engagement is to diminish power of the Fundamentalist Churches and their leaders by drawing away their followers, one by one, to a better life though good example and interaction. Without a large group of devotees, hatemongers lose much of their influence, and that would be enough for now.

Engagement is targeted, not towards the dead enders, but towards the souls at or near the fringes of the fundie meme. They can be reasoned with, but often times they are terrified to move in any other direction -- with good reason. They face forfeiture of their entire social support network if they bail. If their career-track is somehow intertwined with their local mega-church (like, the boss goes there too,) then they may face economic hardships. Perhaps they get vandalized. And on top of all that, they'll also get to spend an eternity in the agony in hell.

This is American Freedom, 2008. Ain't it grand?

So Engagement must be persistent, persuasive, inspiring. Those who would leave the fundie movement must have the vision of the greater good. They need to believe that what they've decided to do is worth the shit that they're gonna have to put up with and that they'll have your help as they do it. To borrow from President Elect Obama, they must have hope.

And this Hope diminishes markedly when the administration gives a position of great honor, if only for two minutes, to a person with Warren's credentials.

I think I'm finally ready to write a letter to our new president. It seems he's really screwed the pooch on this one.

You should probably drop him a note, too.

[HillbillyBob]

5. There is not reasoning with them, and I will never accomadate myself to them

I have had personal run ins with plenty of them. They are the KKKreestians, they are Anita Brayant(sic), D James Kennedy, Fallwell, Robertson, LaHaye, Moon, Mellon-Scaife, Bush.
They are Fascists, they are dominionists, yhry they are evil pretending to be holy. I have shouted down Anita in Selma Al when she was trying to drum up a lynch mob to go afer some very effeminate guys that were handy.
I was working for an electrical contractor at the First Presby church of hate in Fort Lauderdale, when D James kenedy start his shit and I told him he was hateful and spiteful and no way Christian, he was Kreestian Dominionist, and using the cover of holiness to spread fear and to vilify gay folks because that was how he generated his power over the weak minds of his flock and send him money to live high and mighty.
He insisted I be fired, my foreman just moved me to another job. I was the only one with balls to talk back to KKKenedy.
I have watched the cross over of the Dominionists and the fascists with the banking of the money party who are also fascists and need a common foe....us. They are on the same track as Hitler.
I wish I was just crazed or blowing smoke, but has anyone read the Rise of Nazis In America?
That is an online book that points up pretty much the whole mess. It does not get everything there is but its close.
I cannot find the Rise of Fascism in America site again.
but here is something of possilbe interest to many See what it has to say about Palin et al.
http://www.theocracywatch.org/
"Sarah Palin is a "Dominionist" with an apocalytic End Times theological viewpoint that sees the war in Iraq as part of God's plan. More on the End Times in the next post. Let's talk about Christian Right Dominionism and tendencies toward authoritarian theocratic governance.

With a number of bloggers calling Sarah Palin a "Dominionist," it is a good idea to clear up some obvious errors in the use of terminology.

Neither Sarah Palin nor her Protestant church affiliated with the Assemblies of God should be described as practicing a form of "Dominion Theology" or "Christian Reconstructionism." That is just plain wrong.

It is fair to suggest that Palin displays the tendency called "Dominionism" in some of her public statements.

As one of the authors who popularized the term "Dominionism" (along with Sara Diamond, and Fred Clarkson), I feel some obligation to clear up this confusion, which stems from some very sloppy research posted on a number of websites where the terms "Dominionism," "Dominion Theology," and "Christian Reconstructionism" are used improperly and interchangeably. "
There is much more...the author seems to be trying to draw back what we now realise about the dominionists is true. The DO want to dominate the rest of us under a theocratic rule.
Many of us would not realise it except for past dealings with these religious oppressor want to bes.

[HillbillyBob]

6. this is an interesting read

http://books.google.com/books?id=vh7sx2xtjGEC&dq=the+white+rose,+nazi&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct=result


Borrow this book
Find this book in a library
Provocative and highly controversial, The Nazi Hydra In America presents an overview of the fascist influence in America. While Eisenhower's troops defeated The Third Reich on the battlefields of Europe, the war against fascism was lost on the home front, to the same cadre of American elitists who built Hitler's war machine. At the centre of this small confederacy two firms stand out: Brown Brothers and Harriman, and Sullivan and Cromwell. At the very eye of this oligarchy one family name stands above all others. Spanning over 80 years and 4 generations, the Bush family has chosen to ally themselves with the Nazi element at home and abroad, ever willing to advance the Nazi agenda of global corporatism.

More details
The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century
By Glen Yeadon, John Hawkins
Contributor Glen Yeadon, John Hawkins
Published by Progressive Press, 2008
ISBN 0930852435, 9780930852436
640 pages

[Phredicles]

7. Recommending this thread for the reference to the Nazi Hydra book,

which I now want very much to get my hands on.

[WyoHiker]

8. The Kumbaya Gambit

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation." -- Mt. 12:43-45



The Fundies are in currently crisis; The just got their asses handed to them by the rest of the electorate thanks to W. (Note the old truism that in China, the word for 'crisis' and the word for 'opportunity' are the same.) This is someone's opportunity. The really, really, really big question is, "Whose?" I want it to be ours. I want the liberals to now exert as much positive influence over the fundies as we possibly can. I want to prevent some seriously christo-fascist leader (far worse than Warren or Haggard) from coming to power over this huge group of highly suggestible voters.

They will be back, and stronger than ever. They will easily forget about W. Hell, they might even delude themselves into believing that he was a Great President. They will certainly be appalled that Obama has done things like allowing gynecologists to discuss abortion in government funded clinics, selecting some non-rabid supreme court justices, closing Gitmo, presiding over an economy that just barely hobbles along, and (more tellingly) going very cool on public funding for Faith-Based initiatives. They will not be ignored.

What are our chances going forward and why? In a head-to-head showdown with the conservatives, recent history has shown that the liberals lose very consistently. Even this last election was much more a public execution of the Bush Administration that it was a sea-change for the Democrats. I can see two reasons for this. First of all, we just don't have the numbers. We lack heard mentality; that's why we are liberals. Secondly, we have completely failed in the battle for the "Hearts and Minds" of the conservatives. We act as though shaming them through ridicule and satire -- damned funny and basically true though they may be -- will somehow inspire members of the religious right to change sides. Has anyone ever considered that it might actually cause them to dig their heels in even deeper, that our amusement actually worsens the problem? By the way, here's another little secret: They're smart enough to know when they are being pandered to by the Democrats; and it understandably pisses 'em off -- yet another reason why the Rick Warren selection is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong.

To wrap up what I've got so far, these 3 things are clear. One, the fundies are not going to go away. Two, under normal conditions we cannot currently defeat them at the polls. And three, they are capable of far worse than what's been done so far. Just try saying "President Palin" a couple of times.

So, What are we to do? Whatever we've done with the fundies thus far, like since the Carter Administration, has not worked. To quote President Elect Obama again: Time for Change. I'm not at all clear on how to exert that positive influence mentioned earlier, so I've tossed up this "engagement" idea for discussion. It's my attempt to address both the numbers problem and the "hearts and minds" problem.

You've said it won't work, that they are too set in their ways, that you can't / won't do it, and that you've got the battle scars to back up your position. I respect your history and I understand how you see it that way. (My high school years were spent in Upper East Tennessee.) I also think you've got at least a 50/50 chance of being right.

But sitting here and griping that their leadership, and many of the rank and file, are bunch of unapproachable, hateful, hurtful, intractable, dangerous, unpleasant, deluded morons, while perhaps true, cathartic, and arrogantly edifying, accomplishes exactly zilch.

So, for now, I've gotta carry on with my grass-roots-level "Kumbaya Gambit." If you've got, or come up with, anything which is arguably more effective, please let me know. This is important.

Best of Luck!
RK