magical thinking

new cat 9/18

see death cult apocalypse

see ghost dance epistemic crisis

see peale

see prosperity gospel tariff BS

TRUMP SAYS COVID WILL VANISH; GAS PRICES WILL DROP

// LIE GASLIGHT REALITY DISTORTION FIELD / DELUSION? 10 26 UKR CEASE FIRE ENERGY "TRUTHFUL HYPERBOLE"?

aha see newsletter crash promises occult knowledge, (not-s0) odd confluence of free mkt and xian? eg

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DENIAL BC AI NEEDS MAX ELECTRICAL POWER COAL NUKE PEDDLE AS AGW SOLUTION MAGICAL THINKING; HAO? NEITHER DOOMERS OR BOOMERS CAN EXPLAIN HOW IT HAPPENS? NAOMI KLEIN?

REALLY BAD POLLS

AN 5 26

Trump and Republicans are suffering from 'extraordinary denial and magical thinking' - Alternet.org

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RWW 9 26 VID

09/22/2026

byKyle Mantyla

Self-proclaimed "prophet" Amanda Grace warns that Republicans are facing "double Purims" and "double decrees of destruction," but if they will "get on the floor of the House, on their knees and humble themselves before the Lord," then "something miraculous will happen at the midterm elections."

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Trump thinks he can 'magically transform reality' — and it's getting dangerous

Sarah K. Burris

President Donald Trump's mental and emotional decline is now beginning to cause international incidents, and the world is noticing.

In the morning "Daily Blast" on Wednesday, The New Republic's Greg Sargent spoke with journalist Mark Jacob, who writes the "Stop the Presses" newsletter on Substack, about how the right wing has figured out how to exploit weaknesses in the media.

While many online turn to mock press secretary Katie Zacharia's first press briefing, Kimberly Guilfoyle's firing and the upcoming election, the two men dipped into the startling fake ceasefire that Trump announced over the weekend. It has now become clear that while Trump announced a ceasefire, there wasn't one.

"He’s just getting weirder. And he was weird to start with," said Jacob.

"I mean, he announced the other day that there was an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. And of course, unfortunately—you know, my job partly is to criticize the news media, and a lot of them came out with their 'Trump says' headlines, which they should know better than to do," Jacob explained.

Once reporters finally reached President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine, he made it clear that he hadn't heard anythinga bout it. The Russians currently weren't pausing their attacks on Ukraine.

"And then they asked Trump and said, hey, nobody seems to be following this ceasefire, why did you say you had an agreement? And he responded that he told them that they needed to come to an agreement, and that was enough," said Jacob. "So, he has these bizarre delusions of grandeur, where he thinks he can just kind of magically transform reality into what he thinks it should be."

Jacob said that all of this is being caused by Republicans who "set him up" to feel like he was the king of the world and could control anything with the power of his voice.

"His idea of making a deal was just this thought that everyone had a price. And it is gratifying to see that some people don’t have a price. And also just to see that the lies aren’t working anymore," Jacob added.

He warned that this will likely start a cycle of Trump becoming more dangerous.

"Trump’s weakening power is really good for America. But this is when authoritarians are dangerous," Jacob said. "When they see their powers ebbing and they don’t know why, and all these sycophants who were on their side suddenly disappear on them—this is when they’re really dangerous."

Just in the past five days, Trump has weaponized the Justice Department to go after former aide Cassidy Hutchinson and stage a raid on the D.C. home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) over conspiracy theories that invented crimes they can't prove and are long past the statute of limitations, even if they could charge them.

"They may take—and they’ve got ICE showing up near polling places. I mean, we have to really be vigilant about what’s going on here, and insist on a fair election, and not let them do all the crazy stuff they’ve been doing," Jacob continued to warn.

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an 10 26

Trump's bizarre overnight posting spree paints him as a lion playing with a tiger

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AN 10 26

President Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Mick Mulveney was ready on Monday with a list of excuses to explain away the fact that Trump fabricates the existence of inter-global ceasefires — even when raging wars are still clearly destroying global supply chains.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of striking a Ukrainian power plant just hours after Trump claimed Russia and Ukraine had agreed to pause attacks on each other’s power infrastructure.

The Times Radio podcast host Darryl Morris invited Mulvaney to explain the phenomenon of purported ceasefires that don’t actually exist in a show posted Monday.

“What’s going on, Mick? Help me understand this,” said Morris.

“This is Donald Trump trying to visualize his way to success,” insisted Mulvaney. “This is what Donald Trump does. It’s the power of positive thinking. If he says there’s a deal enough, he feels this will self-manifest itself.”

“So, the president is self-manifesting?” demanded Morris, looking doubtful.

“Yeah. He does this a lot,” insisted Mulvaney. “He sells optimism. He sells enthusiasm. He sells momentum, and if he thinks he has a deal, he thinks one of the ways to seal that is to say ‘he has a deal.’ He’s done this from the very beginning. How many times have we heard him say he thinks the war will be over in a day?”

Morris responded that it’s one thing “if you're 13 and you want to get a puppy, and you go around saying you've got a puppy and then manifest it.”

“That's relatively low stakes and fairly harmless,” said Morris. “But he is the president of the United States of America. He can't just make up stuff, can he?”

“Well, he’s not making stuff up,” countered Mulveney.

“Well, he appears to have made up the existence of a ceasefire, hasn’t he?” said Morris.

“But if there was the kernel of a ceasefire, this is him trying to get it over the last sort of over the Finish Line,” argued Mulveney. “I've had this conversation when I was in the White House many, many times, and he would always look at me and say, ‘Look, Mick, this always works for me.’

“Do you think that's wise?” demanded Morris.

“I don't get to make that call,” said Mulvaney. “… because I'm not the president

“But is it a wise way of running the most powerful office in the world?” Morris pressed.

“Look, we used to talk about the tax bill in 2017 when nobody thought he could get that done and he got it done. People didn't think he had a snowball's chance to get reelected, including me, by the way. I thought it would lose early in the Republican primaries but he said he was going to win. He said he was going to win, and it worked out for him so many times in his life, both in his business career and politics.”

From there, Morris veered into the dangerous waters of Trump’s comparable denial over upcoming midterm devastation as Democrats are poised to wipe Republicans off the maps. Trump’s fabricated ceasefire, Morris suggested, is the result of a “rattled” president needing “to do something so desperately that he will announce a ceasefire that doesn't exist.”

This, Mulvaney scoffed, suggests that Trump cares nothing about the midterms.

“Donald Trump actually said about 6 or 8 weeks ago that he didn't care about the midterms,” said Mulvaney. “I think he's just decided that his life doesn't change that much if the Democrats take the House or the Senate, and he's unwilling to change anything in the war because of the midterms.”

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RELATED?

AN 2 26

Do you believe in ghosts, mind reading and witches? If you do, you’re likely a kid — or maybe a right-wing authoritarian. New research published in The Journal of Social Psychology suggests that individuals who endorse certain right-wing political ideologies are more likely to believe in paranormal phenomena.

“There have long been speculations that esotericism and beliefs in the paranormal are related to right-wing beliefs,” said Alexander Jedinger, a senior researcher at the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, speaking with PsyPost. “There is much research in history and cultural studies on this topic, and of course, there are a lot of references in popular culture to Nazi esotericism, exemplified in movies such as Indiana Jones and Hellboy. However, there was little quantitative evidence on these kinds of relationships.”

Past studies have hinted at a link between right-wing political views and a susceptibility to supernatural thinking, so Jedinger and his partners explored the relationship by examining specific aspects of right-wing ideology. Researchers singled out the trait recognized as “right-wing authoritarianism,” which describes a “preference for strict obedience to authority, conformity to traditional social norms, and hostility toward people who break those norms.”

They also wanted to see if the way people process information could account for any connection. People generally employ two types of thinking: intuitive thinking, which relies on fast gut feelings, and analytical thinking, which involves slow and deliberate reasoning.

“The scientists designed their study to test if this shared thinking style was the main bridge between political ideology and the paranormal.” reports PsyPost. Researchers recruited a sample of 1,139 adult participants and used an online survey with a scale for measuring participants’ willingness to accept paranormal beliefs, including phenomena like “mind reading, witchcraft, lucky charms, ghosts, and astrology.” After separated traditional religious beliefs from paranormal beliefs, they also measured political views by asking respondents to place themselves on a left-to-right political spectrum.

“Those who scored higher in right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation were more likely to endorse paranormal concepts,” PsyPost reports.

And it turned out that the willingness to believe in real witches isn’t necessarily connected to how prone you are to think “with your gut” over analysis. Kooky beliefs were more common among right-wing authoritarians, regardless of how much they relied on analytical thinking over “gut-thinking.”

“Instead, the results showed that right-wing ideology and cognitive styles independently contributed to paranormal beliefs,” PsyPost reports. “Accounting for analytical and intuitive thinking did not substantially weaken the connection between authoritarian or dominance-oriented views and belief in the supernatural.”

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very good on ai hype

Climate Scientist Reacts to AI Overlords - YouTube

Climate Scientist Reacts to AI Overlords

ClimateAdam

66.8K subscribers

26,195 views Jan 28, 2026 #ClimateChange #ai

Artificial Intelligence is here, and it's changing the world. But when it comes to climate change, whether those AI changes are going to save us or doom us depends heavily on who you ask. I take a look at what our AI Overlord CEOs have been saying about climate change, and about AI's huge energy needs. And see just how much they contradict each other and themselves - especially when it comes to the vast amounts of energy our AI future (might) need, and the climate change consequences this would cause. Featuring Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, and Sundar Pichai. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: / climateadam

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hmmn aha there’s a tech variant? 5g tower scary but crypto-currency, hydroxychlor, AI are magic? diet supplements

an 9 25

President Donald Trump on Saturday appeared to endorse the idea of “medbeds,” devices long circulated in conspiracy circles that supposedly heal illnesses, reverse aging, or regenerate limbs.

The president’s endorsement came via a video posted to his Truth Social platform, in which an AI-generated version of Trump could be heard saying that “medbed hospitals” would be part of a new health care system in the United States. The video framed the concept as a significant innovation in medical treatment.

“Medbeds” refer to a pseudoscientific theory that a kind of medical bed exists which can diagnose, heal, or reverse disease, aging, or injury in miraculous ways. The concept has gained traction in online communities aligned with QAnon and other fringe groups.

Despite Trump’s presentation, no credible scientific evidence or peer‑reviewed research confirms that any device with the purported medbed capabilities exists. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory bodies do not recognize any device capable of such broad, instantaneous healing.

The video posted by Trump led to strong reactions on social media, including from fact-checkers.

IFrame Content

Political analyst Arieh Kovler wrote on the social platform X: "It's not funny; the MedBed stuff is terribly sad. So many people who are dying or watching a loved one fade away, excited that Trump will finally release all the hidden cures and save them in time. Hang around QAnon-type spaces and you'll see them posting. It's heartbreaking."

Dr. Christine Sarteschi, a criminology professor, wrote: "This has to be a joke. Please say it's a joke."

Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur wrote: "I did not know this one but MAGA is about five good years from being described as a mental illness."

Reporter Jack Jenkins wrote: "Wait: so the President of the United States shared a video of a fake news report, rooted in a conspiracy theory, that features an AI-generated version of himself promoting a policy that…doesn’t exist?"

Writer Scott Santens said: "This conspiracy belief picked up steam in 2020 via QAnon and spread through his base. It's easier to believe this shit when society doesn't provide universal healthcare—even in a pandemic—and you live on the edge of medical bankruptcy or death. Now he's feeding their false hope."

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an 3 25

The Holy Bible's New Testament, from the Book of Matthew to the Book of Luke, is full of references to corruption among the ultra-rich. Jesus Christ, in Matthew 19:24, is quoted as saying, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."

Yet among far-right evangelicals, a doctrine known as "the prosperity gospel" claims that the ultra-rich became rich because of their morality — and that the poor are in poverty became their decisions are immoral. President Donald Trump's White House faith adviser, Paula White, is a majority proponent of the prosperity gospel (also known as "prosperity theology"). And Trump appointed her to head the White House Faith Office.

Salon's Amanda Marcotte, in a biting article published on March 14, details the connection between the Prosperity Gospel and Trump's steep new tariffs.

The Prosperity Gospel, which equates wealth with morality and poverty with sin, is controversial among Christians. Many Catholics and Mainline Protestants consider it nonsense, and some evangelicals disagree with it as well.

"Even some far-right Christian conservatives, who otherwise back Trump wholeheartedly, are angry about his relationship to White, calling her views 'heresy,' and balking at treating their religion like a get-rich-quick scheme," Marcotte explains. "But what's striking about the prosperity gospel and its empty promises of future wealth in exchange for current privation is how much it sounds exactly like the excuses Trump and his allies are making for the economic wreckage he's inflicting on the U.S. through unnecessary and unjustifiable tariffs."

Marcotte continues, "During the campaign, Trump promised, 'When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day 1.' Instead, he's doing the opposite: imposing tariffs on most major trading partners, which function like a sales tax that will almost certainly cause inflation — which had been dwindling in the last year of President Joe Biden's term, to skyrocket again."

Trump and his allies, Marcotte notes, are trying to convince MAGA voters that economic pain caused by tariffs now will lead to prosperity in the future — which, she writes, is very much the type of argument that prosperity gospel preachers make when they're begging for donations.

"In truth," Marcotte writes, "the argument that financial suffering now will lead to wealth later is magical thinking, of the same sort that fuels prosperity gospel claims that donating to a preacher's private jet fund will inspire God to fill your coffers. There's significant overlap between prosperity gospel adherents and Trump's fan base. He's likely counting on that fact to sell his tariff lies, assuming — for good reason — that his base voters are accustomed to calls to ignore reality and to have blind faith in their leaders instead."

Marcotte adds, "For his most loyal voters, he's not wrong to believe they have endless patience for being ripped off — which is why so many of them are still writing checks to televangelists when they can barely pay their own bills."

READ MORE:['A stupid fight': Conservative blasts Trump for action 'too absurd to believe'

*Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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NOTE KARO SPOX SORTA ACKNOWLEDGES SYSTEMIC MISOGYNY EXISTS, BUT DOES NOT MATTER BC YOU CAN JUST WILL YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS

musk bolso chainsawCPAC

no lnx an

'You have been gaslit': CPAC oozes MAGA's 'male inequality' agenda

People react as U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 22, 2025.

Matt Laslo February 23, 2025

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — This just might be the year American men finally overcome centuries of political, cultural and marital oppression that have ravaged the gender and kept guys locked out of key policies, like the Violence Against Women Act.

That’s what one conservative vendor peddled at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. And they’re not alone. The oft-repeated message being subtly driven into CPAC attendees – is that the era of male victimhood is over.

Culture wars are now king.

In years past, the conservative confab focused on fiscal responsibility and cutting federal spending. This year — even as Republicans in Congress and the White House debate trillions of dollars in budget cuts — leaders stoked gendered culture wars.

“Don't allow this broken culture to send you a message that you're a bad person because you're a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you're competitive," Vice President J.D. Vance told CPAC attendees Thursday.

Eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives may have merely been a stepping stone. Conservatives have rallied behind a new, if antiquated, gospel of manhood as they work to turn back time and eviscerate what they call "wokeness" in real time.

At CPAC, this is truly a man’s world, or will be soon if the resurgent right succeeds.

“Male Inequality”

Masculinity is everywhere here at CPAC. It’s tangible, making this year’s conference feel more like an all-male retreat than the policy-focused escape the annual event was before President Donald Trump remade American conservatism in his image.

In these conservative confines, there’s no gender pay gap (even as statistics show women earn roughly 75 cents for each dollar a man makes). Women’s suffrage, practically speaking, is a fairy tale of a bygone era. While Bibles abound, the Book of Ruth and its strong, central female cast, is an afterthought (if a thought at all).

The real problem is “Male Inequality,” according to the newly launched Men’s Equality Network, or MEN.

‘Areas of Male Inequality’ — a pamphlet MEN are handing out at this year’s CPAC.

At CPAC, MEN seeks to drum up support for the hashtag #genderequalityformen, while also giving away free caps emblazoned with “Watchdog: Stop the gender agenda.”

MEN's tagline succinctly sums up the mission that drives the group: “assuring due process, fairness and equal opportunities for men.” And while they may only be a few weeks old, MEN has already attracted 18 partners, ranging from United Families International to the Child Custody Coalition.

The group is so new, it hasn't held its first meeting. But MEN soon plans to start hosting monthly training sessions with partner organizations, then storm the marble halls of Washington, demanding equality for men.

And MEN has allies in powerful places in Trump’s Washington.

"Our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge, you should try to cast aside your family, you should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place," Vance opined from the CPAC main stage. He, like MEN, provided no evidence to support his contention.

While the group is surely easy to single out, it's far from alone in its drive to restore manhood to its properly patriarchal perch at CPAC but also throughout society.

"Go fu#% yourself Planned Parenthood”

Entering this year’s hall of vendors at CPAC, it’s seemingly impossible to miss the loud magenta “Go fu#% yourself Planned Parenthood” banner next to a cardboard cutout of President Trump.

Defund Planned Parenthood photo (Photo credit: Matt Laslo)

A few rows away, at first blush, the booth for "Date on the Right" seems dedicated to online romance for Republicans. But the material seems more focused on connecting hardline conservatives with their policy dreams.

Instead of promising long-term love, the group’s selling point feels more politically inclined than lifemate: “Dating for conservatives: only two genders – male and female allowed. No pronouns but male or female allowed.”

Other booths are dotted with free swag seeking to uproot political correctness — “I support free speech, not political correctness,” reads one sticker — through slogans like, “God, Guns and Girly Things” or “Woman: an adult human female.”

“We have an entire generation of young men who are smoking weed, watching porn, not getting married — not even pursuing women,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling told CPAC attendees. “We have this thing called incels — involuntary celibates. It's terrible. And we can't become a great nation again — we can't make America great again — until our men are great again.” //TUCKER MAINSTREAM GRT?

“You’ve been gaslit to high heaven”

For attendees, conservatives are undeniably victims. The thousands gathered at CPAC are set on righting those past perceived wrongs.

“You’ve been gaslit to high heaven every time you picked up a newspaper in the United States,” conservative anchor Megyn Kelly told the crowd. “Every time you’ve turned on CNN. You’ve been lied to. You’ve been bullied — or seen others with lesser power — bullied by the media and the leftist Democrats. You have been a victim of overbearing and controlling leftists who think they are the final arbiters of what’s best for you and your life.”

While this may be MEN's year, conservative women aren’t going quietly.

CPAC may be a man’s world these days, despite all the powerful women in today’s GOP, like White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who, at 27, is the youngest person to ever hold the prestigious role.

On the CPAC stage this week, former White House communications director Mercedes Schlapp — wife of CPAC chair Matt Schlapp who a sheriff wrote up earlier this month for allegedly groping a man — asked Leavitt about being a woman in Trump world.

"Look at the White House and look at the exceptional Cabinet President Trump has put together," Leavitt said. "While we don’t care about identity politics…the president has appointed Susie Wiles, our first female chief of staff in United States history; Brooke Rollins heading up as our secretary of agriculture — look across the entire Cabinet. There are incredible women — Linda McMahon, leading the Department of Education — the list goes on and on."

As for her advice to young women, Leavitt departed from her party’s new man-centric mantra.

"Stay strong, speak the truth and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t achieve your dream, or you can’t get to that next step. Just believe in yourself, because there will be a lot of people who don’t believe in you, who cast doubt on you, who talk bad about you," Leavitt said. "Screw ‘em. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter." DEFIANCE FIGHT FIGHTFIGHT PWR OF POS THINKING

NOW READ: Whoever tries to tell you that Trump is Christian needs to look up this passage in the Bible

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aha social media thus amp ?! , but trump rally is call and response?dream logic // magical thinking?

https://www.alternet.org/gop-voters-2659695517/

an 3 23

no lnx

author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.

Sharlet's latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religious right, compiling numerous interviews conducted throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, and he's more worried than ever about the possibility of civil war, reported The Guardian.

"I’ve been writing about the right for a long time," he told the newspaper. "I’m always interested in the margins of things that tell us about what’s happening at the center. An undertow is a metaphor for that, for the force that’s been pulling us to this place for a long time. If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought another civil war would be possible in the United States, I would have said no. But to think so [now] is to not understand that the right in America is as dangerous as it is."

He cited a "nice-looking" family he met near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who seemed like "ordinary" conservatives, as the newspaper described them, but harbored bloodthirsty fantasies rooted in extreme conservative politics.

"[The father said] he had a 'Let’s go Brandon' sticker because he didn’t want to swear around his son," Sharlet said. "They’re a middle-class dad and mom. They were always gun people, but not a lot of guns. Now they’re up to 36, now they are arming up. The father had always been anti-abortion. But now it was like a dream had moved into his and his wife’s mind. He described, in incredibly violent detail, the process of abortion. Then he described, in incredibly violent detail, the punishment he thought he and others were going to give to abortion doctors. They were ready for executions."

The current political moment was rooted in a decades-old struggle against fascism, and Sharlet said Donald Trump, intentionally or instinctively, used its "dream logic" to spellbind his followers, who fill in the unfinished thoughts in his pronouncements with their own beliefs -- and that creates the illusion that he's speaking their truth into existence.

"The free association that happens at Trump’s rallies, the ways people make connections that make no sense – it has dream logic," Sharlet said. "One minute, a scary man is crawling into the window to rape your wife, and then the next minute we’re laughing at windmills, and then the next minute we’re sad for the birds that were killed by windmills. And then, in the next minute, we’re yelling, 'Lock her up.'"

"This is dream logic, and there’s vanity in it, right?" Sharlet added. “'I will interpret what they’re saying and I will bend it.' It’s the vanity of the base, the vanity of the mob, the aggregate grotesque imagination of power. It becomes a spinning whirlpool that pulls more and more people in. These are people for whom reality is not enough.":{

The illusion that's created for Trump and his followers feels interactive and very real to them, Sharlet said, and that's where the twice-impeached former president gains his power.

"This is why the right feels they are more democratic than the left," he said. "The intellectual rightwingers are like, 'F*ck democracy, we don’t need it.' But the everyday people, they’re like, 'This is the most democratic I’ve ever felt. I am not only receiving – I receive, I interpret and then I transmit back.'"}:

:{Sharlet sees a similar dynamic at work within the anti-abortion movement, which the left sees as an effort to control women's bodies, but the right sees as a cause so righteous that violence is necessary.

"Yes, the project is misogynist to the core," he said. "But it is not experienced as such by many on the right. Once you make that move, that we’re talking about children, what kind of person are you if you don’t want to save that child?"}:

"It’s astonishing there hasn’t been more violence," Sharlet added. "I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Ron DeSantis sending 'very dangerous sign' to GOP voters — and Trump’s worried: religious scholar ›

NY Post's editorial board delivers scorching op-ed urging GOP voters to move on from 'unhinged' Trump ›

GOP voters have bought into an 'apocalyptic, grotesquely distorted' view of 'Blue America': Paul Krugman ›

'Magical thinking': Jamie Raskin wrecks GOP's Covid hearing by scorching Trump

an 3 23 raw

no lnx twt vid

Jamie Raskin (D-MD) blasted a House Select Committee on Covid-19 by noting that former President Donald Trump had refused for months to investigate the virus's origins but praised China President Xi Jinping instead.

At a hearing to determine the origins of Covid on Wednesday, Raskin wondered why Republicans were not more upset with Trump's mishandling of the pandemic.

"The COVID-19 pandemic came to America in 2020, of course, when Donald Trump was president," Raskin told the committee. "And that president's policy failures, magical thinking, and total recklessness caused, according to his own special advisor on COVID, Deborah Birx, the unnecessary death of hundreds of thousands of Americans."

Raskin said that answers "must come from objective, fact-based investigations informed by doctors, scientists, and public health experts."

"Whatever the origins of COVID-19, whether it is bats or bureaucrats, no finding will ever exonerate or rehabilitate Donald Trump for his lethal recklessness in mismanaging the crisisin America, which cost us more than a million lives," he continued. "Indeed, if COVID was actually the product of a lab leak, or the worst bioweapon of mass destruction ever invented, as some have argued, and obviously we don't have the scientific evidence to say any of this yet, it would not only not remove Donald Trump's culpability, it would only deepen his culpability in the most profound way."

The congressman offered a list of tweets in which Donald Trump praised Xi in the early days of the pandemic.

"I'm just giving the committee a tiny taste of Donald Trump's fawning, star-struck, sycophantic embrace of everything the Chinese government was telling him in 2020," he explained. "He could have directed the intelligence community to lead a COVID-19 origins investigation back in March of 2020, three years ago. He did not. He wasted precious time minimizing the risk of the virus and lavishing his praise on President Xi."

Raskin concluded: "He could have pushed back against the CCP for interfering with the WHO's investigation into its origins, and he could have asked our intelligence community to intervene. He did none of those things. And everyone should remember that. Let's take the politics out of it, and let's get to the bottom of what happened."

Watch the video below from the U.S. House.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Just dreamed that up': Jamie Raskin knocks Republicans over their latest attacks on the IRS ›

Jamie Raskin: Donald Trump must be prosecuted 'because of the magnitude of the attack on democracy' ›

Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene: Jamie Raskin is a 'communist' and unfit to serve due to son's suicide ›

The principles of magical thinking

At the core of most superstitions are certain intuitive notions about how the world works. Early anthropologists described these intuitions in terms of principles such as “similarity” and “contagion.”

According to the principle of similarity, things that look alike may share some deeper connection, just as the members of a family tend to resemble each other both in appearance and in other traits. Of course, this is not always the case. But this inference feels natural, so we often abuse it.

Case in point: The light reflected on the surface of a mirror is not related to the light resulting from the electrical discharges produced during a thunderstorm. But because they both seem to give off light, a connection between the two was plausible enough to become folk wisdom in many parts of the world. Likewise, because our reflection on the mirror closely resembles our own image, many cultures hold that breaking a mirror brings bad luck, as if damage to that reflection would also mean damage to ourselves.

The principle of contagion is based on the idea that things have internal properties that can be transmitted through contact. The heat of a fire is transferred to anything it touches, and some illnesses can spread from one organism to another. Whether consciously or unconsciously, people in all cultures often expect that other kinds of essences can also be transferred through contact.

For example, people often believe that certain essences can “rub off” on someone, which is why casino players sometimes touch someone who is on a winning streak. It is also why, in 2014, a statue of Juliet, the Shakespearean character who fell madly in love with Romeo, had to be replaced due to excessive wear caused by visitors touching it to find love.

A search for patterns

These kinds of superstitions betray something more general about the way people think. To make sense of our world, we look for patterns in nature. When two things occur at around the same time, they may be related. For instance, black clouds are associated with rain.

But the world is far too complex. Most of the time, correlation does not mean causation, although it may feel like it does.

If you wear a new shirt to the stadium and your team wins, you might wear it again. If another victory comes, you begin to see a pattern. This now becomes your lucky shirt. In reality, myriad other things have changed since the last game, but you do not have access to all those things. What you know for sure is that you wore the lucky shirt, and the result was favorable.

Superstitions are comforting

People really want their lucky charms to work. So when they don’t, we are less motivated to remember them, or we may attribute our luck to some other factor. If their team loses, they might blame the referee. But when their team wins, they are more likely to notice the lucky shirt, and more likely to declare to others that it worked, which helps spread the idea.

As a social species, so much of what we know about the world comes from common wisdom. It would therefore seem safe to assume that if other people believe in the utility of a particular action, there might be something to it. If people around you say you should not eat those mushrooms, it’s probably a good idea to avoid them.

This “better safe than sorry” strategy is one of the main reasons superstitions are so widespread. Another reason is that they simply feel good.

Research shows that rituals and superstitions spike during times of uncertainty, and performing them can help reduce anxiety and boost performance. When people feel powerless, turning to familiar actions provides a sense of control, which, even if illusory, can still be comforting.

Thanks to these psychological effects, superstitions have been around for ages, and will likely be around for ages to come.

Dimitris Xygalatas, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

an 9 22

We can thank the late economic justice warrior for her groundbreaking contribution in showing that “positive thinking” is part of a whitewashing of economic inequality.

Although the late Barbara Ehrenreich was best known for her 2001 bestselling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, which chronicled the real-life impacts of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, she made an equally great contribution to economic justice with her subsequent book exposing the cult of positive thinking.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Ehrenreich, who passed away on September 1, 2022, at age 81, had started her professional life with a PhD in cell biology. She didn’t relegate her journalism to mere facts. She delved as deep as she could—to a microscopic level—to make sense of the world. We concluded from Nickel and Dimed that people were not making it in America. But we realized through her book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America that the economy was proceeding unimpeded by this fact because we were putting a smiley face on inequality.

The Great Recession began in 2007. Two years later, in 2009, Ehrenreich published Bright-Sided. Two years after that, in 2011, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests began in New York’s Zuccotti Park and spread throughout the country. OWS participants called damning attention to the stark economic split between the haves and the have-nots, in this case the wealthiest “1 percent” of Americans and the rest of us—the “99 percent.” There was no putting a smiley face on the economy in that moment.

It was during this period that I had the honor of interviewing Ehrenreich. She explained that “there is a whole industry in the United States that got an investment in this idea that if you just think positively, if you expect everything to turn out alright, if you’re optimistic and cheerful and upbeat, everything will be alright.”

Ehrenreich, who survived cancer, said she began her investigation into the ideology of positive thinking when she had breast cancer, roughly six years before Bright-Sided was published. That’s when she realized what a uniquely American phenomenon it was to put a positive spin on everything, even cancer.

When she looked for online support groups of other women struggling with cancer, what she found was, “constant exhortations to be positive about the disease, to be cheerful and optimistic.” Such an approach obscures the central question of, “why do we have an epidemic of breast cancer?” she said.

She applied that idea to how positive thinking was obscuring questions of economic inequality.And she found that there was an entire industry built up to assure financially struggling Americans that their poverty stemmed from their own negative thinking and that they could turn things around if they simply visualized wealth, embraced a can-do attitude about their bleak futures and willed money to flow into their lives. Central to this industry are “the coaches, the motivational speakers, the inspirational posters to put up on the office walls,” and more, said Ehrenreich.

She also connected the rise of the American megachurch to the rising cult of the positive-thinkers. “The megachurches are not about Christianity. The megachurches are about how you can prosper because God wants you to be rich,” she said.

Joel Osteen, the pastor of a Houston-based megachurch, is perhaps one of the best-known leaders of the so-called prosperity gospel. In one of his sermons—conveniently to reach a maximum audience—Osteen claims that according to “the scripture,” “the wealth of the ungodly is laid up for the righteous,” and that “it will be transferred into the hands of the righteous.” His congregants may be tempted to imagine bank transfers from wealthy atheists magically pouring into their accounts.

Osteen has been the beneficiary of serious wealth transfers from his own congregants into his pockets, so much so that he can afford to live in a $10 million mansion. There’s no conundrum here, for Osteen is living proof to his followers that the power of positive thinking works.

Ehrenreich pointed out that the whole point of these churches is to create a positive experience for their congregants and to project a notion of exciting possibilities. The megachurch phenomenon is centered on “the idea that the church should not be disturbing. You don’t want to have a negative message at church. So that’s why you won’t even find a cross on the wall.”

Perhaps this is because the image of a bloodied, half-naked Jesus Christ nailed by his hands and feet to a wooden cross is just too painful to bear and might detract from dreams of future Ferraris and private jets. “What a downer that would be!” exclaimed Ehrenreich.

Where did the cult of positive thinking originate? “American corporate culture is saturated with this positive thinking ideology,” especially in the 1990s and 2000s, said Ehrenreich. “It grew because corporations needed a way to manage downsizing, which really began in the 1980s.”

Businesses that laid off masses of employees had a message that Ehrenreich encapsulated as, “you’re getting eliminated… but it’s really an opportunity for you. It’s a great thing; you’ve got to look at this positively. Don’t complain, don’t be a whiner, you’re not a victim, etc.”

Such sentiments percolated into the mainstream. Americans internalized the idea that losing one’s job has got to be a sign that something better is coming along and that “everything happens for a reason.” The alternative is to blame one’s employer, or even the design of the U.S. economy. And that would be dangerous to Wall Street and corporate America.

Another purpose of fostering positive thinking among those who are laid off is, as per Ehrenreich, “to extract more work from those who survive layoffs.” Indeed, we have an ugly culture of overwork in the U.S., with corporate employees having normalized the idea that they need to work insanely late hours, work on the weekends, and take on exhaustive amounts of responsibilities. After all, those who remain employed, unlike their laid-off former colleagues, ought to feel lucky to have a job—more positive thinking.

There may be a breaking point now, one that Ehrenreich thankfully lived to see, as a newer set of phenomena began emerging since the COVID-19 pandemic began. They include the “great resignation,” a term for masses of Americans quitting thankless jobs. And, more recently, “quiet quitting,” which is a new name for an older union-led idea of “work to rule” as workers are starting to only put in the hours they are paid to work and no more. How novel!

We owe Ehrenreich a debt of gratitude for shining a light not only on the perversity of the U.S. economic system but also on the gauzy veil of positive thinking that obscures the obscenity. Ehrenreich may not have lived to see her ideas of economic justice be fully realized. But, as she once told the New Yorker, “The idea is not that we will win in our own lifetimes and that’s the measure of us but that we will die trying.”

Author Bio: Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute.

magical thinking, a winner b/c you THINK/declare you are? earth2 facts # do not matter not real?

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/far-right-congressional-candidate-laura-loomer-predictably-refuses-to-concede/

no lnx twt

Far-Right Congressional Candidate LauraLoomer Predictably Refuses to Concede

By Kristen Doerer | August 24, 2022

Laura Loomer poses with Roger Stone, a leader of the so-called "Stop the Steal" campaign. Photo from campaign Facebook page.]

Laura Loomer—a far-right activist so extreme that she would have easily eclipsed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the most far-right congresswoman—lost her bid for the GOP nomination to Congress in Florida’s 11th Congressional District.

The Associated Press called the race in favor of longtime Republican Rep. Daniel Webster late Tuesday night. Webster, who was the preferred candidate of religious-right groups like the Family Research Council, had clinched 51 percent of the vote;Loomer had won 44 percent.

Nevertheless, Loomer refused to concede and declared the election fraudulent.

“I’m not conceding because I’m a[not THE?] winner, and the reality of this is our Republican Party is broken to its core,” she said to supporters after the results came in Tuesday night.

“What we have done tonight has really honestly shocked the nation, we have further exposed the corruption in our own feckless, cowardly Republican Party.”

“It breaks my heart that we are in a position in this country today where the Republican Party establishment is participating in the voter fraud machine. And I stand on the stage before you today with the American flag behind me to tell you that we do not live in a free country. We do not live in a country with free and fair elections,” she said.

Only about an hour before, Loomer seemed to acknowledge that she would lose to Webster, Mike DeForest of News 6 reported. “A win’s a win, and a loss is a loss,” Loomer told a supporter who was trying to cheer her up. White nationalist Lauren Witzke interjected. “No, no, no. You are our next congresswoman,” she told Loomer.

Loomer’s baseless accusation of fraud and refusal to concede was predictable—if not still damaging to public trust in the integrity of our elections. Since former President Donald Trump refused to concede his loss in the 2020 election, every Trumpian Republican candidate running for federal, state, and local level who loses can now claim electoral fraud and allege a grand conspiracy against them even if they’ve only won a few hundred votes.

A score of far-right activists attended Loomer’s planned “victory party,” including Witzke, who was the Delaware GOP nominee for Senate in 2020, Nick Fuentes and Tyler Russell of the white nationalist America First movement, Peter Brimelow of the white nationalist-promoting VDARE website, and Edward Szall, who has somehow only become more extreme since he left his job at the brazenly antisemitic TruNews.

“We’re so proud of you, Laura!” Witzke posted on Telegram with a photo of the “celebration.”

Lauren Witzke shared a photo from Laura Loomer’s 2022 planned “victory” party on Telegram. Among those who attended were far-right activists Ed Szall, Tyler Russell, Peter and Linda Brimelow, Lauren Witzke, and Nick Fuentes. Loomer is pictured center in yellow.]

Far-right activists and operatives predictably jumped on Loomer’s false election fraud narrative or else tried to spin her loss into a win.

Radical conspiracy theorist Stew Peters said that the election must be rigged, writing on Telegram, “Here’s some fake results from a fake election – because, every election is fake and rigged.” Tyler Russell, who has dubbed himself the leader of the Canadian offshoot of the America First movement, agreed. “LOOMER IS RIGHT FOR NOT CONCEDING! RINOS ARE RIGGING!” he wrote on Telegram.

Even ahead of voters casting their votes, Trumpian operative Ali Alexander—who led the so-called “Stop the Steal” campaign to keep Trump in power and who baselessly alleged voter fraud to justify such efforts—suggested the only way Webster could win would be through fraud: “don’t put cheating and grifting past the establishment,” he wrote.

On Tuesday night, Alexander briefly seemed to acknowledge Loomer’s loss, blaming Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene for not donating to Loomer as well as Trump’s advisers for keeping the former president from endorsing her.

“Real talk: Gaetz or MTG could’ve put Loomer over the top. $200,000 more dollars could’ve,” Alexander wrote on Telegram. “Trump’s advisors not blocking a Loomer endorsement could’ve put her over the top.”

But Ali went on to call the primary a “Rigged game,” and suggested something nefarious was afloat. “Just magically outside the margin of a runoff? What a coincidence!” he wrote. In another post, he wrote, “STOP THE STEAL.”

Fuentes—who has referred to Loomer “as one of our own”—spun her loss as a win for the white nationalist America First movement.

“Despite being the most cancelled woman in America,” Fuentes wrote, “She out-raised her opponent in every single quarter and came within 6,000 votes of Congress.”

“Tonight showed that there is very little left in the way of REAL AMERICA FIRST PATRIOTS like Laura Loomer from TAKING OVER!”

As Right Wing Watch reported ahead of the GOP primary, Loomer was eager to spread her extremism throughout the halls of Congress and promised to promote both white nationalism and Christian nationalism. We reported:

Loomer has long rallied behind white nationalist figures, spread right-wing conspiracy theories, and promoted disinformation. She proclaimed that she did not care about what happened to Muslims in the 2019 Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, where more than 50 people were murdered by a white supremacist.

In March, Loomer joined white nationalist Jared Taylor’s podcast and told him that she thought her white nationalist views would get her elected to Congress. She switched districts, she said, because Florida’s 11th District has more white people and she could be more honest about her extreme right-wing views. She went on to praise Taylor’s “white advocacy”—the preferred term of white nationalists to describe their efforts to secure a nation ruled by white people.

Loomer addressed her supporters in a Telegram post Wednesday afternoon. In it, she accused the Republican Party of being “an active participant in the voter fraud machine here in America,” called for Webster to resign, and again, refused to concede, illustrating the monster the Republican Party itself created by choosing to peddle election fraud conspiracy theories in its effort to keep Trump in power.

Tags: Ali Alexander Daniel Webste rLaura Loomer Lauren Witzke Nick Fuentes Peter Brimelow Stew Peters Tyler Russell conspiracy theories Election 2022 election fraud Stop the Steal

aha/hmmn:

ar15 totemic, tribal membership and a tool/power/spell to defend themselves (hype fear soc med] gubmint tyrant black antifa commie rioters --> MAGA

chris hayes had 2 experts and ref'd sev artl but not sure i found]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/guns-republican-primary-campaign-ads-midterms-1336903/

see greitens rino hunt, assault ar15

no lnx twt many pix

The Real Reason Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns

Conservative candidates have responded to the attack on the Capitol by doubling down on firearm worship and violent imagery to court their base

By RYAN BORT

A Republican official poses with a large gunA Republican official poses with a large gun

20,885 people were killed by guns in America in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That figure does not include suicides.

Youtube

Garrett Soldano released a pretty strange campaign ad last fall. The only words spoken in it came from a voice aggressively asking, “WHO?” and a chorus twice chanting “WE THE PEOPLE!” in response. The rest of the ad was 45 seconds of Soldano firing various weapons at a gun range, set to a heavy, looping guitar riff.

Soldano is not running for sheriff, or even for a seat in the state House. He’s a Republican running to become the next governor of Michigan.

Soldano’s ad may have been absurd, but it wasn’t atypical. Republican candidates are turning to guns, guns, guns in a very big way ahead of the midterms, serving their potential constituents with a torrent of campaign ads, Instagram posts, and even Christmas cards of themselves toting and firing deadly weapons. Conservatives using guns in campaign ads is nothing new, of course, but the way in which they’re being used in the wake of Trump’s term in office — and particularly in the wake the violent attack on the Capitol that ended it — portends a dark future for the party, and if it regains control of Washington, D.C., for the nation.

Ron Filipkowski, a researcher who tracks right-wing activity online and has highlighted several examples of Republicans going gun crazy in their campaign ads, says the use of guns in ads has “absolutely” ratcheted up this primary cycle compared to 2020 and 2018.

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“I started noticing it and was like, ‘What’s going on?'” he says. “I think it’s almost like the [Lauren] Boebert-, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene-ization of the whole America First movement that’s driving the Republican Party now. It’s those candidates who are the ones that are doing it. I feel like the establishment candidates kind of feel like they have to do it too, now.”

Boebert built her successful 2020 campaign largely around guns, and last year released an ad promising to carry a Glock on Capitol Hill. Greene in an ad for her 2020 campaign cocked an assault rifle as she warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her district, and last fall blew up a Prius with a 50-caliber rifle. Establishment Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who last year released a video of himself at a shooting range in khakis, are struggling to keep up, but the point is that they feel like they need to try. This is what the party is now.

Filipowski says he really started noticing the uptick in gun-centric ads, which were often the first big campaign rollout ads candidates would release, last fall. They haven’t stopped since.

Here’s Max Miller, a former Trump aide running for the Ohio U.S. House seat left vacant by retiring Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, talking about using “a rifle to protect our country.”

Here’s Georgia U.S. House candidate Michael Collins blowing up “Nancy Pelosi’s Plan for America” before hopping in a big rig, throwing a football, and firing another assault rifle for good measure. “I’m not afraid to say I was pro-Trump from Day One,” he adds.

Here’s Blake Masters, who’s running for Senate in Arizona, with an intimate — and frankly, creepy — ad about his love for his Walther PPK and silencers.

Masters, a venture capitalist and favorite of Trump-loving billionaire Peter Thiel, has featured guns prominently throughout his primary campaign. He responded to President Biden’s promise on Monday to crack down on “ghost guns,” which are homemade and untraceable, by tweeting a picture of a “ghost gun” he recently built himself. “Very legal & very cool,” he wrote.

“Our founders built their own guns,” Masters added. “They intended us to as well — it’s the ultimate political act, a liberty the 2A protects. Technology will not stop. With 3D printing, this is going to get easier year after year. I’ll be a political check on ‘gun control,’ but the technological check is inevitable.”

Masters isn’t the only Republican to cry that the Second Amendment is under assault while vowing to scale back gun reform policy — Florida U.S. House candidate Anthony Sabatini even responded to Biden’s address on Tuesday by calling for the abolition of the ATF — and if the party takes back Congress in November they are likely to attempt to pass a slew of pro-gun legislation, from clearing the way for nationwide open carry to doing away with background checks. “Far-right politicians in primaries are licking the boots of gun lobbyists,” Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts told Rolling Stone in an email on Tuesday. They’ll certainly continue to do so once in office.

But there’s something more insidious behind the sudden rash of pro-gun ads than protecting the Second Amendment. It’s a visual reminder that the party believes Jan. 6 was a good thing, that the attack on the Capitol was a valiant effort, and that Republicans deserve candidates who is willing to implicitly or explicitly condone the use of violence to reclaim a bygone version of the United Statesthey’ve seen slip through their fingers under Democratic leadership — to make America great again.

“It’s an extremist movement,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. “The GOP base, at least a wide swath of it, has been radicalized. There are very few things you can do to demonstrate you’re more extreme and intense on tribal issues than to insinuate, tacitly or overtly, violence, that you are willing to fight for the cause. That’s what it is. It’s not a Second Amendment issue. It’s saying, ‘I’m this intense. I’m this extreme. I’m willing to go to these measures to fight for our tribe.’ That’s what it’s all about.”

As Idaho gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeachin put it in an ad released Monday in which she fires an assault rifle, “the Second Amendment wasn’t ratified into the Bill of Rights so we could bird hunt.”

“The Second Amendment has always been a defensive posture,” Madrid continues. “It’s always been don’t take my guns. What we are moving into now is something foundationally different. It’s now advocating that gun ownership and bearing arms is a virtue. It’s not a right. It’s almost an obligation. … There’s a desire to see a society that is centralized on this type of weaponry. There’s a lot of paranoia involved here, but it’s also demonstrative of a society that a lot of these members feel is out of their control.They feel quote unquote America is gone. It’s behind them. It’s already been taken, and theonly way to defend themselves from whatever that boogeyman is, is to have a stockpile of gold bullion, canned goods, and a ton of weaponry.”

Madrid, like Filipkowski, acknowledges that the use of guns in political ads is “growing,” and that by 2024 Republicans are going to be blowing stuff up. “Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says. “There’s the 1776 rhetoric and there’s the patriot rhetoric, and there’s the American flag that’s always waved. It’s this absurd definition of what American is, and it’s getting more and more extreme in the Republican Party every election cycle.”

The fact that it’s getting so extreme among Republicans, and Republicans alone, may lead some to believe that the tenor of the ads could calm down a little ahead of the general election, when candidates typically pivot to a more moderate message in an effort to court a wider swath of voters.

In last year’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin hammered guns, abortion, and his love of Trump during the Republican primary, but eased up on guns and abortion and distanced himself from Trump ahead of the general election, which he went on to win convincingly over Democrat Terry McAullife.

But this new fixation on guns is not coming from savvy billionaires like Youngkin. It’s coming from the hardcore MAGA set, and not only is it likely to stick around beyond the primaries, it’s likely hardwired into the DNA of a party now driven by extremism, conspiracy, and a belief that violence is a legitimate tool to achieve desired political outcomes.

“It’s not going to change,” Madrid says. “This is not this is not a primary tactic. This is mainstream Republicanism. So once you start to move off of that, you will start to lose the intensity of the support and turnout you need from the shrinking Republican base. Radicalization is the goal. This is about saying I’m willing to go to arms to overthrow what’s here or what’s coming. I’m willing to be violent in that cause. It’s not a small fringe group. These people are winning Republican primaries.”

In This Article: guns, Lauren Boebert, marjorie taylor greene

an 1 22 corrob

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/scientists-establish-ink-between-religious-fundamentalism-and-brain-damage/

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.

Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.

Since religious beliefs play a massive role in driving and influencing human behavior throughout the world, it is important to understand the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism from a psychological and neurological perspective.

To investigate the cognitive and neural systems involved in religious fundamentalism, a team of researchers—led by Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University—conducted a study that utilized data from Vietnam War veterans that had been gathered previously. The vets were specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism. CT scans were analyzed comparing 119 vets with brain trauma to 30 healthy vets with no damage, and a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism was administered. While the majority of participants were Christians of some kind, 32.5% did not specify a particular religion.

Based on previous research, the experimenters predicted that the prefrontal cortex would play a role in religious fundamentalism, since this region is known to be associated with something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. This term refers to the brain’s ability to easily switch from thinking about one concept to another, and to think about multiple things simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows organisms to update beliefs in light of new evidence, and this trait likely emerged because of the obvious survival advantage such a skill provides. It is a crucial mental characteristic for adapting to new environments because it allows individuals to make more accurate predictions about the world under new and changing conditions.

Brain imaging research has shown that a major neural region associated with cognitive flexibility is the prefrontal cortex—specifically two areas known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Additionally, the vmPFC was of interest to the researchers because past studies have revealed its connection to fundamentalist-type beliefs. For example, one study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism. For these reasons, in the present study, researchers looked at patients with lesions in both the vmPFC and the dlPFC, and searched for correlations between damage in these areas and responses to religious fundamentalism questionnaires.

According to Dr. Grafman and his team, since religious fundamentalism involves a strict adherence to a rigid set of beliefs, cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness present a challenge for fundamentalists. As such, they predicted that participants with lesions to either the vmPFC or the dlPFC would score low on measures of cognitive flexibility and trait openness and high on measures of religious fundamentalism.

The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.

These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.

The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.

By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.

saying it makes it so? like genesis?

rww 921

september 13, 2021

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado Saturday at a conference held by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a religious-right political organization founded by right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack.

Addressing a crowd of conservative Christian activists gathered in the auditorium at Wommack’s Charis Bible College, Boebert called on the audience to put faith into action by calling on God to remove ungodly leaders in Washington, D.C., and replace them with “righteous men and women of God” who realize that the government should be taking orders from the church.

“When we see Biden address the nation and the world and show more contempt and aggravation and aggression towards unvaccinated Americans than he does terrorists, we have a problem,” Boebert. “And that’s why I have articles of impeachment to impeach Joe Biden, Kamala Harris.”

“We cannot take another 18 months, we cannot take another three years of this poor, failed leadership,” she continued. “We are sons and daughters of revolutionaries. They went to battle for a lot less. They took a stand for a lot less. And it’s time we get involved. I need you involved in every local level. I need you speaking up. I need the world to hear your voice. You know the word of God, and you know that there is power in your words, that the world was framed by words. You have the Lord God Almighty on your side. I need you to use your voice and speak.”

“What if Jesus showed up today and said, ‘From this point forward, everything you say you will have it’?” Boebert asked rhetorically. “He said it! That’s exactly what he said to us. So, what are we saying? Are we going to sit and agree with the enemy? Are we going to agree with what the enemy is doing?Are we going to sit back and complain and murmur? Or are we going tospeak life into this nation? Are we going to speak victory? Are we going to declare that God removes these unrighteous politicians, these corrupt, crooked politician, and installs righteous men and women of God?”

“You have the God kind of faith, and that faith speaks,” she added. “That faith speaks to mountains, those impossible, immovable situations, and I think there’s some mountains they need to hear your voice. … It’s time the church speaks up. The church has relinquished too much authority to government. We should not be taking orders from the government; the government needs to be looking at the church and saying, ‘How do we do this effectively?'”

aha: DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT PLUS GLOBALIZATION (RELATED) CORP MFG OUTSOURCING --> EXISTENTIAL epistemic crisis THREAT/CRISIS

also surprise $ donor for his BD?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/peter-popoff/

Conning' their 'vulnerable' followers: Here's what Trump and a discredited televangelist have in common

When the Christian right invaded the Republican Party during the 1980s, Peter Popoff was among the televangelists who made millions of dollars. Popoff, a faith healer, was exposed as a major fraud — he wasn't really curing cancer patients as he claimed. Journalist Michael Siegel, in a lengthy article published by Ordinary Times on June 8, lays out the things that Popoff has in common with another con man: former President Donald Trump, explaining why their deluded followers have such a hard time accepting the truth.

Popoff and Trump are the same age: 74. Popoff was born on July 2, 1946, and Trump was born the previous month on June 14, 1946. Siegel's article is really about Trump more than Popoff, although he offers plenty of details about Popoff's embarrassing history — and Siegel stresses that when people have been conned, they are often in denial about it. Popoff still had his unwavering followers even after he was exposed as a fraud during the 1980s.

As anti-Trump and anti-Popoff as Siegel's piece is, he does more than slam them and makes a point of explaining their appeal.

Siegel observes, "One of the things that con men rely upon is a certain vulnerability…. Many are afraid of their nest eggs disappearing, which ironically, makes them vulnerable to the very people who want to rob their nests."

//CRISIS/ GHOST DANCE : According to Siegel, "Con men — whether they prey on the rich or the poor, the powerful or the powerless — look for those who are at a crossroads.Those who want a chance to get ahead. Those who fear falling further behind. Those who have lost their status and want it back. A person comfortable in their life and their finances will realize the Nigerian Prince is too good to be true. A person nervous about their finances or desperate to move up in life may think this is the chance they've been waiting for." [vid] Popoff exposed - Part 1 <br

Trump is much more dangerous than Popoff ever was, as Popoff never became president of the United States — although the Christian right movement that Popoff helped bring to the forefront of the GOP during the 1980s (along with the Moral Majority's Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., Jimmy Swaggart, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and others) has been very damaging to the country. And Trump still has millions of devotees seven months after being voted out of office and four months into Joe Biden's presidency.

Many Trump devotees, according to polls, still believe the Big Lie: Trump's false claim that he was a victim of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. And Siegel explains why they are so "vulnerable," not unlike Popoff's followers.

"The Trump election fraud claim is something far more insidious than the standard-issue 'they stole our votes'cry of the defeated," Siegel warns. "It did, after all, culminate in an open attack on the Capitol to try to overturn the election. It is a claim that is not fading but being amplified by an increasing number of Republicans, becoming a litmus test in primaries. The Republicans just ousted their third most powerful Congress-critter because she had the temerity to say that Donald Trump was full of it."

Siegel continues, "I can certainly see why grifters like Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell are making this claim. There's money to be made by promoting these claims— the Trump campaign itself pulled in a quarter of a billion dollars with this scam. But why do rank-and-file Republicans believe this. Is it because they're stupid? They're no more stupid than anyone else. Is it because they're deluded by Fox News? Most of them don't watch it. No, I think it's something more basic, something that goes back to Peter Popoff and every other con artist that slithered down the pike. It's because they don't want to believe they were fooled."

When she said, "I've always been someone that you just tell me what to do and I do it," I knew she and I come from similar religious backgrounds in which morality is obedience.

O'Sullivan said that after Joe Biden won the election, Vanderbilt "spent days on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube becoming indoctrinated into the world of QAnon." (That's the conspiracy theory holding that the Democrats are in league with a global—read: Jewish—cabal of satanists who fornicate with children before eating them.) "By inauguration day," O'Sullivan said, Vanderbilt "was convinced that if then President-elect Joe Biden took office the United States would literally turn into a communist country. She was terrified that she would have to go into hiding with her daughter."

Vanderbilt said she was spending a lot of time by herself after losing her job. She was depressed. She was cranky. She too often snapped at her daughter. As a result, she said, she probably lost touch with reality. "I wasn't one hundred percent there like I should have been," she said. Folks, I'm here to tell you someone who believed that the "deep state" was having sex with children before eating them, that the former president would declare martial law, and that the military would round up his enemies before publicly executing them in cold blood is not someone who needs to lose her job, go into a depression or snap at her child to be not quite "one hundred percent there."

She was already there. How do I know? From experience. I've mentioned before I grew up on the margins of a closed protestant sect called the Christians Gathered Unto the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. (They are better known as the Plymouth Brethren.) Strict obedience to authority, which is to say, strict obedience to the father of the family, which is to say strict obedience to God, was morality.When Vanderbilt said, "I've always been someone that you just tell me what to do and I do it," I knew she and I come from similar backgrounds. We were taught Hell is really real, and God really will send you there if you do not do what He tells you to. We were taught a God who threatens eternal pain and suffering is a lovingGod. We were taught to believe up is down, left is right, wrong is right, but especially don't think just do as you're told.

So I know she was already there. She didn't need TikTok to fall down "the QAnon rabbit hole." If it wasn't TikTok, Facebook or whatever, it would have been something else, most likely ordinary word of mouth. QAnon does not demand of believers any more than Vanderbilt's white evangelical church does. She seems to have sensed the connection between them. O'Sullivan said, "while she was deep in the conspiracy theory, she said Trump was becoming an almost messianic figure for her who could do no wrong. She recalls once asking herself, 'Am I putting even Trump above God?'" She doesn't read, she said, and she doesn't pay attention to the legitimate press. All she needs to do is what she's told to do, which is follow the leader don't ask questions.

Which is why her explanation of how she "escaped" doesn't hold up. "Some QAnon adherents concocted a new conspiracy theory in the hours after inauguration," O'Sullivan said. "Biden's inauguration itself was a key part of the plan, the new theory held, and Trump would return as President in the coming few weeks. Then, certainly, all the deep-state arrests would happen. That was a step too far for Vanderbilt."Wut!

She was convinced Joe Biden's inauguration would transform the country into a Communist state. She believed she'd have to go into hiding with her daughter. She believed the Democrats and the Jews and "the Globalists" are cannibals. And she was disappointedwhen the military did not publicly execute Der Führer's enemies in cold blood. But wait whoa—a conspiracy theory adapting to reality? That's a step too far!?

Look, I don't understand why Vanderbilt thinks she escaped QAnon. I do know, using my intuition, that she does not understand why either. In not understanding why, she's vulnerable to the influence of a CNN journalist reporting a national story about a QAnon believer who escaped. Vanderbilt, in being someone who always did what was asked of her, continued being someone who did what was asked of her, in this case, giving O'Sullivan a story he was asking for, however tacitly. And in the process of telling that story, he obscured a terrible conclusion about Vanderbilt. That she felt fooled into believing there would be blood does not change the fact she wanted blood.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Trump plan for mass death is unfolding before our eyes

Cody Fenwick

On Friday, the COVID Tracking Project reported that the number of positive coronavirus infections in the last day had reached 170,000, the highest record ever and a number tha...

aha yikes herd idiocy is all we have left when freeDUMB rules, plus // w/ darwin libtard reductionist BS

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/pulitzer-winning-author-chris-hedges-warns-biden-and-the-democrats-will-dig-themselves-deeper-fueling-a-fascist-comeback/

note nuance compassion:

...

Watching the reaction from the mainstream media has been very instructive. They appeared to be shocked by the deep levels of support for Donald Trump. The polling errors appeared to flummox them. For me, as a working-class black person in America, nothing surprises me about this country and its reservoir of white supremacy. I also grew up with these Trump voters. I know and understand them. How do the commentariat and mainstream media types convince themselves of things about America which are simply not true?

I know them. I hate to admit it. But I was at their prep schools as a scholarship student. I went to their elite universities. I've sat in their elite newsrooms. As a class they are smug, arrogant, self-referential and so out of touch. They look down on the entire working class, and that includes the white working class. The Democrats under Bill Clinton thought, "We'll take the corporate money, because labor, and in particular people of color, do not have anywhere else to go. They are not going to the Republicans." Democrats took those voters for granted, and as exit polls show, the Democrats have made a fatal mistake in that regard. The Democrats' strategic calculation about those voters may have been true then, but it is not true anymore.

I think they were in fact really shocked. In many ways the elite class is clueless. The pundits and the commentariat and others in the establishment news media were just as off with their predictions as they were in 2016. They do not spend time in these communities. They do not speak to these people at all. They move from one exclusive bubble to another. They're not in touch with the suffering and the angst.

Donald Trump, at least, is completely transparent as to who he is. He doesn't hide it. He's as repugnant as he looks. And yet all sorts of groups, including white women, voted for him. And I think they voted for him knowing full well who he is, but also confident in the fact that the two ruling parties — and in particular the Democratic Party, which at one time pretended to watch out for their interests — have sold them out.

The two main parties have lost credibility, the Democrats in particular. The press has lost credibility. And once democratic institutions no longer have any credibility left, then people just start believing whatever they want to believe. That is how you get conspiracy theories such as QAnon. Too many Americans do not have social and political institutions they believe in and see as trustworthy. On that point, they are not wrong. Ultimately, I do not see how where we're going in the United States at present is anywhere good. The result will be a type of corporate totalitarianism.

There was this widely circulated image of three white women who were praying and laying hands on the door of one of the locations where the votes were being counted. There are also these "Christian" right-wing con men (and women) trying to summon angels to defend Donald Trump, their anointed and chosen savior. These people are widely mocked, as they should be. They are laughed at by rational people. But when I see such deranged behavior, I also take it seriously. Such people are deadly sincere in their beliefs. Trump's followers view him as a deity.

As I learned doing research for and writing my book "American Fascists," what happened in essence is that the world of "secular humanism," as such people call it, almost destroyed them. It is deeply personal. "Secular humanism" destroyed them because they became alcoholics, or they became crack addicts or opioid addicts or gambling addicts, or they lost their jobs and were evicted. A number of women in the Christian right that I interviewed had also suffered either sexual or domestic violence. So they entered a world of magic, the figure of magical Jesus, what anthropologists call acrisis cult. One cannot try to free them from the cult by using rationality and reason.

The only way to break the back of such a movement is to reintegrate such people into the economy, to give them stable jobs, a place where they can have a sense that through work and their societal position they can have hope for themselves and their children's lives.

And of course, the whole situation for such people has only gotten worse. Once they become hermetically encased in that ideology, you cannot really break them out of it unless you are going to create a society where they have a place, andrebuild the social bonds which were ruptured. That is not going to happen under Joe Biden. Such people on the Christian right, the praying-for-Trump types, will become more common especially as the country reels under the effects of a pandemic that is out of control and all the economic consequences of the crisis.

The other dynamic that the mainstream news media was not prepared for is that in places where the pandemic is worse, Donald Trump is more popular. This is an example of Trumpism and conservatism more generally being a type of political religion, a death cult. The more death and suffering that takes place in America, the more popular and powerful Trumpism and its variants will become.

It is a death cult. With the rupturing of social bonds and a sense of place within society, Trump's followers and the Christian right invest their energy in self-destructive behaviors, both as individuals and societies. The sociologist Émile Durkheim made an astute observation about right-wing groups, that those types of groups which seek the annihilation of others are really at the core driven by a desire for self-annihilation.

We see that throughout American society with the opioid crisis, the suicides, which are highest among white middle-aged men, and other types of addictions such as morbid obesity and gambling and the like. Those types of behaviors are all in response to the breakdown of social bonds and a sense of place and meaning within a society.

What springs forth from this moment?

What springs forth is that half of this country, who to this point have been treated by the ruling elites, and tacitly by the liberal class, as if they are human refuse, are going to strike back. We have already witnessed them trying to do this. They have not been particularly successful. People in this country are going to start getting killed. It is going to get worse especially as the ruling elites display the kind of paralysis that I expect Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell to display.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/white-house-aide-paula-white-calls-on-god-and-his-followers-to-fight-to-keep-trump-in-office/

> White Asks God to Override ‘Will of Man’ and Keep Trump in Office; Her Son Urges God to Bring ‘Rage’ and ‘Fury’ Against Those Who Resist Him

November 6, 2020 4:59 pm

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trumps-spiritual-advisor-had-a-frantic-election-meltdown-the-internet-responded-with-these-hilarious-remixes/

President Donald Trump's "spiritual adviser" went off in an election-related meltdown that was supposed to resemble a sermon. In it, Paula White ranted that international people should come to the United States to somehow stop the votes from being tallied. That would technically mean a declaration of war.

She was generally ridiculed for the context and her demand for help from a different continent.

"Angels have been dispatched from Africa!" shouted White. It was something fact-checked by many on Twitter since Trump referred to those countries as "sh*thole nations."

Beyond the replies and fact-checks about an international overthrow of the United States, however, there a series of videos where White was remixed with hilarious outcomes.

You can see some of them below:

serendip 11/20 just read bro chris H on fail state, AN gave me ad/poll zoltan i will read your picked card immed?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trumps-nomination-of-amy-coney-barrett-another-step-toward-christian-fascism

originally appeared at Scheerpost. Used by permission.

The Christian right is content to have the focus on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett revolve around her opposition to abortion and membership in People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices "speaking in tongues." What it does not want examined is her abject subservience to corporate power, her hostility to workers, civil liberties, unions and environmental regulations. And since the Democratic Party is beholden to the same donor class as the Republican Party, and since the media long ago substituted the culture wars for politics, the most ominous threat Barrett's appointment to the court represents is going unmentioned.

All fascist and totalitarian movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality. They mouth pieties about restoring law and order, right and wrong, the sanctity of life, civic and family virtues, patriotism and tradition to mask their dismantling of the open society and silencing and persecution of those who oppose them. This is the real game being played by Christian fascists, who since the early 1970s have been building institutions with tens of millions in corporate donations to take power.

Donald Trump, who has no ideology, has allowed the Christian right to fill his ideological void. He is the useful idiot. And the Christian right, awash in money from corporations that know their real political intent, will mobilize in this election to use any tool, no matter how devious, from right-wing armed militias to the invalidation of ballots, to block Joe Biden and Democratic candidates from assuming office. The road to despotism is always paved with righteousness. This was as true for Soviet communism as it was for German fascism. And it is true in the United States.

Capitalism, driven by the twin obsessions of maximizing profit and reducing the cost of production by slashing workers' rights and wages, is antithetical to the Christian Gospel, as well as the Enlightenment ethic defined by Immanuel Kant. But capitalism, in the hands of the Christian fascists, has become sacralized in the form of the Prosperity Gospel, the belief that Jesus came to minister to our material needs, blessing believers with wealth and power. The Prosperity Gospel delights the corporations that have carried out the slow-motion corporate coup.

This is why large corporations such as Tyson Foods, which places Christian right chaplains in its plants, Purdue, Walmart, and Sam's Warehouse, along with many other corporations, pour money into the movement and its institutions such as Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. This is why corporations have given millions to groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to campaign for Barrett's appointment to the court. Barrett has ruled consistently in favor of corporations to cheat gig workers out of overtime, greenlight fossil fuel extraction and pollution and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud. The watchdog group Accountable.US found that as a circuit court judge,Barrett "faced at least 55 cases in which citizens took on corporate entities in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the corporations."

Her version of Catholicism is at odds with most of the positions championed byPope Francisand traditional Catholic teaching on women's rights, voting rights, immigrants' rights, health care and environmental protections. The pope calls on the downtrodden to change the world economic order and denounces what he terms a "new colonialism" imposed by "the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain 'free trade' treaties, and the imposition of measures of 'austerity' which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor." He speaks of the "sacred rights" of labor, lodging and land. He says the unfettered pursuit of money is "the dung of the devil" and castigates industrial nations for exploiting the raw materials and labor of the developing world.

Pope Francis has repeatedly warned that time is running out to save the planet from perhaps irreversible harm to the ecosystem. "Let us not be afraid to say it: We want change, real change, structural change," the pope has stated, decrying a system that "has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature."

"This system is by now intolerable: Farm workers find it intolerable; laborers find it intolerable; communities find it intolerable; peoples find it intolerable. The earth itself — our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say — also finds it intolerable," he said.

Barrett's religiosity, like that of other Christian fascists, is in the service of almost everything the pope condemns.

These corporations don't give a damn about abortion, gun rights or the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. But like the German industrialists who backed the Nazi Party, they know that the Christian right will give an ideological veneer to ruthless corporate tyranny. These corporations view the Christian fascists the same way the German industrialists viewed the Nazis, as buffoons. They are aware that the Christian fascists will trash what is left of our anemic democracy and the natural ecosystem. But they also know they will make huge profits in the process and the rights of workers and citizens will be ruthlessly suppressed.

If you are poor, if you lack proper medical care, if you are paid substandard wages, if you are trapped in the lower class, if you are a victim of police violence, this is because, according to this ideology, you are not a good Christian and not blessed by God. In this belief system you deserve what you get. There is nothing wrong, these homegrown fascists preach, with the structures or systems of power. It is the mantra of self-help that made gurus like Oprah and Tony Robbins rich dressed up as the voice of God.

The Christian fascists, allied with organization such as the Federalist Society, have appointed two Supreme Court justices — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — as well as nearly 200 other judges with lifetime appointments to lower federal courts during the Trump administration.They claim to be strict "originalists." Originalists argue that the meaning of the constitutional text is fixed and immune to interpretation. Originalists denounce jurists who argue that constitutional law should respond to changing circumstances and values. The Originalists already have five Federalist Society Supreme Court justices. Barrett would be the sixth. (Two of them, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, were supported in the nomination process by Joe Biden.)

The legal calculus for the Christian right no longer revolves around the concept of universal human rights but around the tenets of "Bible-believing Christians" who supposedly authored the Constitution. Huge segments of the population are stripped of moral worth and legal protection. This process is incremental and often unseen. As the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels understood: "The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative."

Victor Klemperer, who was dismissed from his post as a professor of Romance languages at the University of Dresden in 1935 because of his Jewish ancestry, astutely noted how at first the Nazis "changed the values, the frequency of words, [and] made them into common property, words that had previously been used by individuals or tiny troupes. They confiscated words for the party, saturated words and phrases and sentence forms with their poison. They made language serve their terrible system. They conquered words and made them into their strongest advertising tools [Werebemittle], at once the most public and most secret." And, Klemperer noted, as the redefinition of old concepts took place the public was oblivious.

These Christian fascists understand the deep sickness that infects American society. They know how to exploit the moral and physical decay, as well as the despair it causes, to lure its followers towards their brand of tyranny. They are not wrong when they lambast the cruelty, corruption, emptiness and hypocrisy of the ruling elites, especially the liberal elites. They are not wrong when they mock cultural relativism, the idea that good and evil, right and wrong, truth and untruth, do not exist. It is part of the sad irony that the Christian right effectively exploits this cultural relativism to seize power. The failure of the liberal Christian church to denounce the Christian right as heretics, in the name of tolerance and cultural relativism, has given the Christian fascists religious legitimacy. At the same time, the Christian right seeks to delegitimize the liberal church as apostates. History has shown that it is unwise to tolerate the intolerant.

The Christian fascists, like all fascist movements, seek to create their own truth. It discredits verifiable fact, science, law and rationality. It promises a new, glorious world of moral renewal and prosperity.It promises a creator who will carry out miracles for believers and for America. It calls on followers to abandon the world of cause and effect and replace it with a world of magic. The reality-based world, as in all totalitarian movements, is snuffed out.

The Trump administration has implanted Christian fascists in senior positions of government, including Mike Pence to the vice presidency, Mike Pompeo to secretary of state, Betsy DeVos to secretary of education, Ben Carson to secretary of housing and urban development, William Barr to attorney general, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and televangelist Paula White to Trump's Faith and Opportunities Initiative. Trump gave the Christian right veto and appointment power over key positions in government, especially in the federal courts. Almost all the judges he has appointed were selected by the Federalist Society and the Christian right. Many of the extremists among his judicial appointees have been rated as unqualified by the American Bar Association, the country's largest nonpartisan coalition of lawyers.

Trump has embraced the Islamophobia of the Christian right to ban Muslim immigrants and roll back civil rights legislation. He has made war on reproductive rights by restricting abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood. He has degraded LGBTQ rights. He has allocated federal money to Christian charter schools. He has ripped down the firewall between church and state by revoking the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches, which are tax-exempt, from endorsing political candidates. His Christian right appointees, including Pence, DeVos and Pompeo,regularly use biblical strictures to justify an array of policy decisions including environmental deregulation, war, tax cuts and the replacement of public schools with charter schools, an action that permits the transfer of federal education funds to private "Christian" schools.

The Christian fascists are not finished. Brick by brick they are building a Christian fascist state. Barrett fills one more hole in the wall. They will do this with or without Trump.

mis-spoke? made up extreme exec priv or somesuch? invokes article II? or somesuch?that chosen one was a goof/joke?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/former-dhs-staff-trump-claimed-magical-authorities-to-break-the-law/

no lnx

no lnx twt text

Former DHS staff: Trump claimed ‘magical authorities’ to break the law

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 19, 2020

Of all the Never Trump groups that have organized to defeat the president, the one that has impressed me the most is Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT). They’ve asked lifelong Republicans to videotape themselves explaining why they refuse to support Trump.

Because I know quite a few conservatives, I’m aware that many of them are uncomfortable with this president—even though they won’t admit it openly. Hearing from Republicans about their refusal to support Trump can provide a permission structure that allows them to confront their partisan tribalism and begin to surface their distaste for having a narcissistic bully in the White House.

But the latest video from RVAT goes a step further and brings us a voice from inside the Trump administration about what’s really going on behind the scenes. It is as terrifying as we’ve all imagined.

The former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security says that the president wanted to exploit DHS “for his own political purposes and to fuel his own agenda.” For example, in the middle of the wildfires in California, Trump told FEMA to cut off funding for assistance to that state because the people who lived there didn’t support him. That lends credence to the story from Katherine Eban that Trump and Kushner were content to allow tens of thousands of Americans to die from COVID-19 as long as they were from Democratic states and counties.

But here’s the really terrifying part of that video: the president didn’t want to hear that his directives were illegal, saying he had “magical authorities.” What the hell does that mean?

On the same day that this video was released, an op-ed by Miles Taylor was published at the Washington Post in which he states:

Like many Americans, I had hoped that Donald Trump, once in office, would soberly accept the burdens of the presidency — foremost among them the duty to keep America safe. But he did not rise to the challenge. Instead, the president has governed by whim, political calculation and self-interest.

Frankly, there were other people in the room when Trump claimed “magical authorities” to break the law (I’m looking at you Kirstjen Nielsen). They now need to step up to the plate for their country to back up what Taylor is saying … That’s because the stakes are so high. At the end of the video above, Taylor says that people who are still serving in this administration have told him, “Just wait until the second term. It’ll be no holds barred, it’ll be shock and awe, we’ll do what we want.”

Taylor ends by saying that, despite having policy differences with Joe Biden, he will vote for the Democratic ticket in November. That’s because he understands the difference between what Adam Gopnik called “toxic enemies and honest opponents.”

What’s needed against Trump now is…not an ideologically narrow, politically focussed opposition but the widest possible coalition of people who genuinely value the tenets of democracy, meaning no more than the passionate desire to settle differences by debate and argument, rather than by power and cruelty and clan.

I’d say that, given their latest ad, the Lincoln Project knows the difference too. Above and beyond policy differences, it all comes down to character.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/experts-explain-the-**4-main-psychological-factors-that-drive-trumps-rabid-fan-base/**

no lnx

a looming question in today’s political climate is: Why do Donald Trump’s devotees continue to support him despite the carnage of his well-documented failures? Although we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic that is surging and not contained, Trump seems to maintain a base support of 35% to 40%. What are the psychological factors that influence or underpin his supporters’ attraction to him? And might this provide some perspective on how to change these supporters’ minds?

Multiple psychological factors seem to influence and explain his supporters. We have divided these factors into four major categories: Rebelliousness and Chaos; Shared Irrationality; Fear; and Safety and Order.

Rebelliousness and Chaos [DISRUPTOR? BROWNSHIRTS HOODLUMS?]

Some Trump supporters have a strong desire for rebelliousness and chaos, and view Trump as the perfect vehicle for achieving their personal goals. These supporters tend to become “anti-establishment and anti-government,” even when it is against their best interest. Many are unhappy with their station in life and believe chaos in the political system will bring them important gains. They seek immediate and sweeping changes and believe a rebellious attitude and rebellious behavior are what is necessary. They would rather have chaos, even dangerously or regressively so, than the status quo.

These supporters believe in Trump’s professed anger and rebelliousness, while often ignoring the content of the issues at hand. Trump’s talk of“draining the swamp” [SHORTHAND FOR DESTROY DC POWER PPL? NEWT CALLED DISEASE?] and of eschewing “political correctness” is attractive to them. They react emotionally and irrationally in embracing Trump’s decisions to create chaos, such as by sending federal troops into American cities to provoke hostile conflict with protestors. They enjoy and thrive upon Trump disavowing norms, rules, and laws. Rebelliousness and chaos can be a major psychological influence, but it can have serious negative consequences such as undermining the chance for real change.

Shared Irrationality

The Dunning-Kruger effect. Some people are under-informed and misinformed and are completely unaware of their lack of information. They tend to overestimate their level of knowledge and hold onto that position. They develop “illusory superiority” from their inability to recognize their true lack of knowledge. In other words, some people think they know more than they do and hold firmly to their opinions. These people are resistant to change their political thinking because they believe they are the knowledgeable ones. Trump and some of his supporters have this psychological phenomenon in common; they are unable to remedy their own limitations of knowledge and their inaccurate thinking.[QANON?]

Magical thinking. This is the belief that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can bring about effects in the world. Or, similarly, that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can cause something to happen. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s internal, personal experience and the external physical world. This often emerges from an inability to distinguish fully between emotions and logical thoughts. Relying totally on emotion or “gut reactions” results in magical thinking. Trump engages in magical thinking almost constantly. This is especially dangerous regarding the pandemic: “It will disappear very quickly,” “We have it under control,” “We may have some embers or some ashes…” Many supporters engage in magical thinking and are encouraged and validated by Trump, leading them to align strongly with him.

Obsession with celebrity. Some people are obsessed with celebrities and reality television. Trump entertains them and amuses them. Some supporters are always waiting to see what outrageous thing he says or does next. These supporters are happy as long as they are being entertained by him. They act as if life is a “game” or a “show” that is somehow disconnected from the difficult realities of everyday life, but it is not.

Shared omnipotence. This is a fantasy based in childhood experiences during our earliest years–due to our complete dependency upon parenting persons–that if one can find the “right” leader, then everyone can live harmoniously together forever. While this dynamic is often seen in romantic relationships, especially during the early infatuation period, this exact same dynamic can be seen in political relationships as well. In this case, some people believe that Trump is the “right” leader who can take them to a place of harmony and never-ending happiness and success. This is an infantile fantasy that is unrealistic and unachievable because it is not rooted in the real world of adult life. Even so, a childhood fantasy can be intense and not easily given up.

Fear

Brain reactivity to threats. Research shows that some people have an exaggerated fear response to threats. When presented with specific perceived threats–immigrants, democrats, protestors, socialism–conservatives’ brains light up in activity and experience a need to seek safety. Trump actively encourages his supporters to experience exaggerated fear responses, such that their brains remain energized.

Fear mongering. Terror management theory explains why fear mongering works. When people are reminded of their mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they reflexively defend those who share their world view and their natural and ethnic identity. Tribal identification is an outgrowth of fear mongering. Racism and bigotry are related to fear. Trump appeals to racist and bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims “dangerous” and Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers.” This fear mongering by Trump is aimed at supporters who are vulnerable to racist and bigoted thinking because it fits with their world view. Another major fear among Trump supporters is falling behind financially and losing the economic capacity to control their lives and protect themselves. A third major fear among Trump supporters is of socialism and believing that capitalism is being threatened and even destroyed. Trump is very adept at focusing on these specific fears among his supporters, using key words and names to trigger and stoke their emotional concerns NEWT]. Trump supporters believe that he is capable of protecting them from their fears. And when they feel protected, they overlook his offensive and outlandish behavior.

Conspiracy theories. Certain people are attracted to conspiracy theories because of their vulnerable personalities and even by mental illness. Life is complex and perplexing and at times dangerous. It is not simple or safe. Research shows that feelings of anxiety make people think more conspiratorially. A conspiracy theory can provide comfort by identifying a convenient scapegoat and thereby making the world seem much more straightforward and controllable. Fantasies that remove fear and doubt can be especially attractive, even if they are unrealistic and irrational. People who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events, to attribute intentionality where it is unlikely to exist, and to have lower levels of critical thinking. Trump has voiced many conspiracy theories: Spygate, Obamagate, Deep state, Trump Tower wiretapping, and others.

Security and Order

Social dominance orientation. People who score high on social dominance orientation prefer an established societal hierarchy. They are attracted to Trump because he promotes and normalizes the belief that high-status people and groups should be dominant over low-status people and groups. Trump’s clear distinction between groups on top of society (Whites) and those “losers” on the bottom (immigrants, Blacks, and Latinos) is a classic social dominance view. Individuals who are high on social dominance orientation are typically domineering, tough-minded, disagreeable, and relatively uncaring seekers of power. As such, these individuals have an attraction to authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism. Several traits characterize authoritarianism: deference to authority, aggression toward outgroups, a hierarchical view of the world, and the belief that the world is dangerous and threatening. Some people believe in having an authoritarian leader because they feel protected and safe by a strong, powerful presence. Trump’s authoritarian leanings are highly attractive to these supporters. Interestingly, research studies have shown the joint power of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation to predict far-right-wing voting in the United States and Europe.

How To Change Supporters’ Minds

aha: this (noam libtard sys fail) mixes with perennial run gov't like a biz MYTH put a rational old white guy with biz sense to use numbers to make decisions

failson is the notion that the prince will inherit the smarts and moxy of dad, and or (nature/nurture) will be trained from birth to exercise power aka make rational decisions for the benefit of all (or keep those peasants/poc in their place); not exactly magical thinking in trumpian peale [dale carnegie] form that thinking/wishing makes it so? older more achetypal/mythical king arthur pulls sword to prove divine right? but only a signal to world, the virtue /strength/wisdom is in him inherently

cf moyers cox So won civil war; pluto olig: only rich white men deserve are qualified to govern, thus kush gets covid and ME peace:

a 720

Here’s why Jared Kushner’s plan for widespread COVID-19 testing ‘just went poof into thin air’

related to kushner absolute faith in own ability vs constant fails?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/leading-cult-expert-explains-how-trump-trained-his-followers-to-believe-no-one-but-him-and-why-his-mind-control-cult-now-faces-an-existential-crisis/

no lnx

Leading expert explains how Trump trained his followers to believe no one but him — and why his ‘mind control cult’ now faces an ‘existential crisis’

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon April 7, 2020

During the 1970s, Steven Hassan was a senior member of the Unification Church, an offshoot Christian sect led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Hassan was so loyal to the Unification Church that he pledged to die or kill at Moon’s command.

After escaping the Unification Church, Hassan dedicated his life’s work to freeing other people from mind control organizations and destructive cults. He is now one of the world’s leading experts on mind control and cults.

Hassan is a direct personal witness to the way cult leaders are defined by their use of money, power, greed, sex, lies, charisma and violence to control their followers and empower themselves. In 2016 Hassan saw those traits personified in the form of Republican nominee Donald Trump. He then tried to alert the public to the danger that a cult leader would become president and that ruin and despair for the United States would be the inevitable result. Hassan’s new book “The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control” attempts to explain how this all came to be.

While many pundits and others have remained in denial about the existential threat posed by Donald Trump and his movement, Hassan warned early on that Trump’s followers were effectively cult members and would not be swayed from supporting their leader for any reason. With the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s power over his followers is on full display, as he and his spokespeople are now suggesting that older and other vulnerable Americans should be willing to risk their lives in order to “save the economy” — and of course to aid Trump’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

I recently spoke with Steven Hassan about Trump’s death cult and the power the president has over his followers. Hassan also explains how Trump resembles notorious cult leader Jim Jones and why Trump’s followers remain in love with him even as his decisions are literally making them sick. Hassan also explains how Fox News and other parts of the right-wing disinformation machine are key elements of Trump’s mind control powers over his political cult.

Hassan also warns that Trump’s followers are capable of committing acts of great violence against their fellow Americans, should their leader command it.

You can also listen to my conversation with Steven Hassan on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below.

As usual, this conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Donald Trump continues to make ridiculous statements, such as claiming he was the first person to call the coronavirus a “pandemic,” or that there will be a magical flash of light and all will be well. It is clear he is mentally unwell. How do you make sense of his behavior?

Trump grew up in the church of Norman Vincent Peale. Peale taught magical thinking and that if a person just believed something 100%, God will magically make it come true. Trump was trained to be a magical thinker as a child. It’s been described as a type of solipsistic reality where Trump defines his own world and what is real or not. That is a type of thinking which is very common to cults.

In this way of thinking, if Trump says the coronavirus pandemic is just going to somehow get better then it is going to happen. And when that does not happen, then Trump can deny ever saying such a thing, blame the Chinese, the Democrats or anyone else, instead of just saying he was wrong.

How does Donald Trump fit the profile of a cult leader?

Donald Trump fits the stereotypical profile of all destructive cults. These traits include malignant narcissism. Trump can easily be compared to Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, and other cult leaders. Trump always had a cult of personality around him in terms of his businesses and his social interactions with people. But once Trump attained the presidency, he took over the Republican Party and instituted a fiefdom where he rewards loyalty and punishes anyone who displeases him.

===...

geo gilder (xian discovery inst)

AN eternal ad on how to profit from coming crash, see newsletter

4/20 "technology prophet" reveals shocking secret evrey American must hear"

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/cnn-host-spars-with-trump-economist-peter-navarro-for-touting-his-social-scientist-credentials-in-hydroxychloroquine-fight-why-should-we-listen-to-you-and-not-fauci

CNN host spars with Trump economist Navarro for touting ‘social scientist’ credentials in hydroxychloroquine fight: ‘Why should we listen to you?’

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Alex Henderson April 6, 2020

Axios’ Jonathan Swan has reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci and Peter Navarro (policy coordinator for the Trump White House’s trade policy) had a heated argument in the White House’s Situation Room over the benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a way to possibly treat coronavirus. Navarro, like President Donald Trump, has been pushing chloroquine aggressively — while Fauci has strong reservations. And the merits of hydroxychloroquine (which has been used to treat malaria) in relation to coronavirus were hotly debated on Monday morning, April 6 when Navarro appeared on CNN’s “New Day” and was aggressively grilled by host John Berman.

Berman emphasized that Navarro lacks Fauci’s medical expertise, asking why someone would believe Navarro over a well-respected “infectious disease doctor” like Fauci. When Navarro described himself as a “social scientist,” Berman responded that being a “social scientist” is not the same as having medical expertise.

“I’m sorry, that doesn’t qualify you to treat patients,” Berman said. “You know it doesn’t qualify to you treat patients.”

“Why should we listen to you and not Dr. Anthony Fauci?,” Berman maintained. The CNN host demanded to know, “Why is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lead infectious disease doctor in this country, wrong about this?”...

after spending several minutes grilling Navarro and noting some of Fauci’s assertions on hydroxychloroquine, Berman offered Navarro an olive branch, saying, “We all want the same thing, which is people to get better.” And Navarro replied, “I’m not sure we do sometimes.”

Berman, testy, asserted, “What are you talking about?…. Don’t you dare for a second suggest that I don’t want people to get better from this. I got two friends in bed right now with coronavirus.”

Navarro replied, “That’s not what I said: don’t put those words in my mouth. When you say that when we come on here and we say we all want the same thing, there’s this political overtone — this battle between… You know, you’re trying to create this false dichotomy.”

Presumably, the “two friends” Berman was referring to were his CNN colleagues Chris Cuomo and Brooke Baldwin — both of whom have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

After the interview, a “New Day” panel continued the discussion — and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, often featured as a medical expert on CNN, clearly agreed with Fauci. According to Gupta, chloroquine can suppress one’s immune system — which is not what one should be doing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Watch the video below:

some? rational basis? rich ppl and celeb can get covid test?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-why-the-tormented-conservative-mind-is-so-drawn-to-the-dangerous-allure-of-miracle-drugs/

no lnx

Here’s why the tormented conservative mind is so drawn to the dangerous allure of miracle drugs

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 3, 2020

In one of the oddest developments of the coronavirus crisis, there’s been a run on a pair ofantimalarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which are used primarily in the U.S. to treat arthritis and to prevent organ damage from lupus. The drugs are being sucked out of pharmacies at an alarming rate, thanks to Americans who have convinced themselves these drugs will save them if the develop COVID-19, and thereby leaving patients who actually need these medications in danger.

This is happening in the face of only thin evidence that these drugs work against the novel coronavirus, and plenty of evidence that they don’t work. At one Paris hospital that used the drug heavily — on the recommendation ofDidier Raoult, a climate change-denying French doctor with a shady reputation— the results suggest these drugs are not effective at all. Chinese doctors also concluded they were useless. These drugs are known to have some scary side effects, including sudden cardiac death in some patients. They are also notorious for psychological side effects, such as paranoia and nightmares. At least one person in the U.S. has died from swallowing aquarium cleaner that contains a similar chemical compound.

So why are so many people so eager to get their hands on drugs that are clearly dangerous and may do no good?

The most immediate reason is simple: The people rushing the pharmacies are Republicans, and both Donald Trump and numerous Fox News personalities have told them these drugs are a “game-changer” that can save them from the coronavirus.

But there’s a reason these false or unproven claims are resonating with the ordinary citizens of Trumpistan. The hope that there’s a hard-to-get miracle cure that will save them speaks directly to the poisonous social Darwinism that guides modern conservatism. It reflects deep hostility to the very concept of a shared public good and a fierce attachment to a racialized ideology of individualism that treats public goods such as health care as things to be hoarded by those with the privilege, money and status to do so.

Conservative ideology simply doesn’t allow for the possibility that anything, including pandemic management, is best managed with a “we’re all in this together” mentality. Instead they’re drawn to this fantasy that there’s a Platinum Member COVID-19 status that can be purchased, which will allow them to opt out of the suffering of the plebeian class that has to quarantine or risk sickness and death.

There’s no question that Trump and other right-wing figures are pushing this hydroxychloroquine angle hard. Trump has talked about these drugs several times during his daily propaganda-dump “press briefings,” as well as on Twitter.

Laura Ingraham of Fox News has been hyping this stuff heavily, hosting a doctor who misleadingly argued that “this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic” Wednesday night. She’s also had tweets removed by Twitter for promoting medical disinformation.

Sean Hannity of Fox News has been urging his millions of viewers to grab this stuff up as well, saying “I love the idea of off label use” and arguing that even if it doesn’t work, people have “right to try”— completely ignoring that these drugs are dangerous.

There are many other examples, carefully collected here by Media Matters. This kind of repetition works, and goes a long way towards explaining how enthusiastically right-wing audiences have latched onto these drugs as a possible miracle cure....

a new Ghost Dance? End Days?

inspired by hedges and

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-how-modern-cult-self-help-fuels-cynical-attacks-welfare-state

Contemporary self-help teachings are attractive because they assure us that we are the makers of our own destiny. They preach that we have within us the power to change our lives for the better, even to make ourselves anew. Self-help leaders, from Tony Robbins to spiritual gurus like Robin Sharma and Deepak Chopra, ask us to for our lives.

The idea is simple: By taking responsibility for our emotions and what happens to us, we rid ourselves of dependence and thereby potential weakness. By accepting wholeheartedly the value of personal responsibility we become empowered,for no longer do we allow our lives to be dictated by sheer happenstance or the unpredictable whims of others.

Personal responsibility is not merely a core value of much self-help. Harvard political scientist, Yascha Mounk, has recently argued, we are today living in *The Age of Responsibility*. Lauded in presidential speeches as well as bestselling books (like **Jordan Peterson**’s *12 Rules For Life*) the value of personal responsibility has become central to contemporary moral and political discourse.

Obsession with individual responsibility

Yet this has not always been so. Mounk describes the historical shift from a conception of “responsibility-as-duty,” prior to the 1960s, to a conception of “responsibility-as-accountability” that emerged forcefully during the tenures of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. This has since become common sense.

In the wake of the “neoliberal turn,” collective responsibility was exchanged for a myopic obsession with encouraging individuals to become self-sufficient.

This shift in the meaning of responsibility has redirected attention from wider structural transformations to the actions of individuals and, in the process, led to the scaling back of the Welfare State. Thus welfare regimes have been under siege since the eighties.

The “responsibility framework” changed the meaning of the Welfare State: once conceived as a public institution based on multiple values, it is now regarded as a mere instrument designed to reward the responsible and punish the irresponsible.

This perspective casts the popularity of self-help teachings in a new (more sinister) light. Deregulation and large cuts to social services have produced dire socio-economic conditions that demand a high degree of personal responsibility just to get by.

Some scholars argue self-help and spiritual teachings offer individuals a message of personal empowerment and are popular only because they are a useful means of coping with the intense precariousness and social insecurity experienced by many today.

We do not lack agency

One response to the responsibility framework on the part of progressives has been to deny the possibility for personal responsibility. Some egalitarian philosophers and sociologists have countered the rhetoric of responsibility, most commonly invoked by conservatives, with the claim that we are, in fact, wholly byproducts of social circumstance: that we lack any agency at all.

This tactic, although understandable, is deeply misguided. The fact that most people on both the Right and the Left accept that personal responsibility is an important value suggests that this strategy is nothing short of political suicide.

In other words, telling ordinary individuals they lack agency is unlikely to be met with enthusiasm, no matter their ideological leanings. Additionally, personal responsibility is central to so much of modern life: democratic institutions, intimate relationships, the rule of law. All of these presuppose the possibility for responsibility.

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine what a society that took seriously the idea that we have no agency whatsoever would look like.

A (partial) defense of self-help

Progressives are right in suggesting that too little attention is paid to the role of social structures in determining how people’s lives go. One of the core problems with self-help teachings is that they tend to distract us from the myriad ways that our successes and failures depend on factors beyond our control. We are encouraged to see our lives as self-made, rather than as the byproduct of collective efforts and contingencies.

Still, the popularity of self-help cannot be reduced to the insecurity caused by neoliberalism. For one, self-help can be traced back to the Stoics of antiquity. Although certainly modernized, it nevertheless preaches a similar gospel of self-reliance.

Second, self-help empowers people by giving them a sense of agency, the feeling that what they think and do actually matters. To recognize the value of this we need only consider what happens when one is told the opposite: when people believe they lack agency, they generally act accordingly.

Finally, modern life, given the scope of freedom it affords, requires self-regulation. Ask anyone currently on a diet, raising kids or working on their anger issues whether or not taking responsibility for their emotions and actions is important.

Self-help is both useful (and sometimes necessary), but it needs to be tempered by a sociological understanding of the reality of social life. Self-help teachings can empower, but they can also convince people they are responsible for their own misfortune when in fact they aren’t. In these instances, self-help can become dangerous and destructive.

Self-help does not make for good public policy. It is one thing to take responsibility for our lives, and quite another to punish someone (or let them be punished by the State) because we think they didn’t do the same.

It is an injustice to the Welfare State to view it as a mere instrument for dolling out rewards to the responsible. It is more than that; it is a public institution meant to embody the values of trust, equality, benevolence, justice, freedom and social solidarity.

If we allow self-help philosophy to inform our approach to public policy, it will shrink our moral imaginations. It will leave us less able to see when it is inappropriate to apply the value of personal responsibility, and also less willing.

Galen Watts, PhD Candidate in the Cultural Studies Graduate Program, Queen's University, Ontario

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

320

Moloch!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/restart-the-economy-is-a-prayer-to-a-conservative-god-who-demands-human-sacrifice/

no lnx

‘Restart the Economy’ is a prayer to a conservative God who demands human sacrifice

GDANSK, POLAND - APRIL 10, 2009: Anonymous actors play Mystery of the Passion of Jesus Christ. April 10, 2009. Gdansk, Poland.]

Written by Stephen Young / Religion Dispatches March 25, 2020

According to classic interpretations of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, a Canaanite deity named Moloch demanded the sacrifice of children. There is a long history of writing about this bloodthirsty god spanning the ancient world to John Milton’s Paradise Lost to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” to modern social commentators. One recurring point is that the depravity of Moloch was reflected in his insatiable lust for innocent flesh.

How could anyone worship such a monster?

Readers have drawn further connections: human sacrifice marks not only Moloch as evil, but also the population who offers their children to him. This is the biblical justification given for why Israelites should exterminate Canaanites, the worship of their gods, and their customs from the Promised Land.

But although the prevalent understanding of Moloch as a rapacious child-consuming god falls short in the minds of many scholars,* some deep truth remains. We should absolutely judge a deity by the offerings and piety it demands! Furthermore, what people are willing to sacrifice for their god should likewise be a commentary on their deepest values.

Let us call this an ethics of religious responsibility: we are responsible for the deities we follow.Many people tacitly accept this point when they opine that folks who follow other gods, or at least not their God, deserve to burn in hell. So, if one’s deity demands things like human sacrifice, genocide, or partiality to rapists and autocrats, then this should give some pause.

In a society founded partly on the concept of religious liberty people can, in theory, choose to worship such deities. But in a society also founded on the concept of free speech, shouldn’t people who follow these gods at least have to answer uncomfortable questions about their sociopathic deities? Why should it be bad manners to question people who worship such gods instead of bad manners to promote those gods in the first place?

You can see where this is going. At the moment an influential contingent of conservative leaders and commentators are advocating that we put a stop to measures meant to suppress the spread of COVID-19. Most of these measures fall under the category of social distancing, which has deeply impacted corporations by restricting us from our usual purchasing and employment movements. Combined with broader uncertainties brought by the pandemic, the Stock Market has likewise been tanking.

The developing cry to end social distancing predictably centers on reversing these obstacles. “Restart the economy” is becoming a refrain. President Trump has already tweeted in this direction: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020

His top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, has spelled-out things further: “The economic cost to individuals is just too great … we’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs.” And one conservative talk radio host went still further, declaring that “If given the choice between dying and plunging the country I love into a Great Depression, I’d happily die.” Better for a whole lot more people to suffer and die than for the free market to be stifled any further. It’s the economy, stupid!

Given the prevalence of religious voices among support for Trump, perhaps we could think about our situation with the ethics of religious responsibly as outlined above. A simple translation of “restart the economy” suggests itself: the economy or the free market is God. It rules over and defines reality. And this God demands human sacrifice to rescue us from Coronavirus.

Those who know our history will not be surprised. The God of the Economy has long subsisted on human sacrifice in ways that reveal his character. When the Cotton Gin was invented, enslavers needed to increase cotton picking output to feed the machines in order to realize their profits. As Edward Baptist has vividly documented, they didn’t hire more workers or even invest in the large scale acquisition of additional slaves. Instead they intensified their system of slavery into an even more brutal form that exponentially multiplied suffering as a technology to increase production. The God of the Economy got his fill of human flesh.

If the blood of human sacrifice was the seed of the free market, its god remains hungry as ever today. As historians such as Kim Phillips-Fein, Kevin Kruse, and Lawrence Glickman have shown, wealthy followers of this god have been successfully proclaiming their gospel as the exclusive path to freedom for generations.

Their message now seems obvious and their god feels like the only option. These disciples are sick of losing wealth to social distancing, even if it saves lives. They want their economy of the pre-Coronavirus status quo back. It’s the economy that made them rich.

The surprise is not that this god’s followers are eager to offer human sacrifices, but that anyone is still shocked they would offer the rest of us to him or try to sell us on this approach by warning against the “the false god of ‘saving lives.’”

We should, at the least, stop tiptoeing around this god’s followers as though it’s bad manners to identify him as evil or un-civil to make them own that he is the real Moloch. And if their economy is Moloch, why don’t we demand that our leaders serve a new god, or replace them with leaders who aren’t Moloch’s disciples? Surely there are gods to whom we can turn now whose values are health and human flourishing as opposed to bloodthirsty greed. It doesn’t take a biblical scholar to figure it out.

As biblical scholars such as Francesca Stavrakopoulou and Heath Dewrell have argued, there was no Moloch deity in ancient Canaan. The biblical passages traditionally thought to name him instead refer to a kind of sacrificial offering (mlk). Biblical writers delegitimized this offering—and the idea that their God had commanded it!—by rendering it foreign and evil. Ancient interpreters transformed the mlk offering into a depraved foreign deity, Moloch or Molech. And readers have been off to the races ever since.

links

realize their profits. As Edward Baptist has vividly documented, they didn’t hire more workers or even invest in the large scale acquisition of additional slaves. Instead they intensified their system of slavery into an even more brutal form that exponentially multiplied suffering as a technology to increase production. The God of the Economy got his fill of human flesh.

If the blood of human sacrifice was the seed of the free market, its god remains hungry as ever today. As historians such as Kim Phillips-Fein, Kevin Kruse, and Lawrence Glickman have shown, wealthy followers of this god have been successfully proclaiming their gospel as the exclusive path to freedom for generation

3/19 mich

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/video-show-alarming-number-of-trump-fans-supporting-qanon-liberal-child-sex-trafficking-conspiracy/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/trump-loving-conspiracy-nuts-once-again-blow-a-prediction-about-the-mass-arrest-of-the-presidents-foes/

Another week, another missed prediction of the mass arrest of President Donald Trump’s political enemies.

The *Daily Beast* reports that followers of the “QAnon” conspiracy theory had predicted that Trump would round up prominent Democrats for their supposed participation in a global pedophile ring on March 19th.

March 19th has come and gone, however, and the mass arrests never occurred.

As the report notes, this isn’t the first time that QAnon followers have made a false prediction about these arrests, which they refer to as “The Storm” that will sweep away all opposition to the president.

The first failed prediction came in 2017, when followers believed that longtime Clinton loyalists John Podesta and Huma Abedin would be arrested for their role in running a child human trafficking syndicate. Since then, QAnon followers have also predicted that Trump would bring the hammer down on his enemies during the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush — a prediction that also failed spectacularly.

None of this has phased QAnon’s core base, however....

sf summer 18 talk? (fundraise show)

https://kpfa.org/episode/talkies-september-19-2018/

addiction, gambling, pioneer micro-target

magical thinking, crisis _; anomie: social instability based on breakdown of standards, lack of social control, isolation, soc provides little moral guidance.

can't argue, just restore stability, rx etc so that won't try for revenge on world that beats them down

megachurch also has target for recruits, sever you from family

...

PIC harbinger of pvt, phones, rx, commissary, aramark, idel labor, no strike, no vacation, no sick day, no union, no mages GA and __, disobey go to solitary; 90% no jury trial

see democracy inc bk

we are stripped of econ and pol? power and dems will not help