hierarchy / order

---

see macho tag

merri ok

SEE PSYCHOLOGY TRUMP BASE

misogyny roots, fundamentalism essence?

see cognitive dissonance

7/20 book TV on am caste system?

---

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.”

---

AN 2 26

PsyPost reports that a new study published in the journal Advances in Psychology suggests that White people who personally perceive themselves as ranking at the bottom of the racial economic hierarchy or “tied” with Black Americans were the most likely to support President Donald Trump.

Previous research identified a phenomenon known as “last place aversion,” where people fear being at the very bottom of a social hierarchy — and Trump voters apparently feel the sting of smallness more acutely than others, whether or not they are actually at the bottom rung of the ladder.

Surprisingly, researchers found that these attitudes were not driven by actual poverty. The researchers controlled for objective indicators of socioeconomic status, such as income and education levels. They found that belonging to the “last place” profile predicted Trump support and anti-DEI attitudes regardless of how much money or education the participant actually had.

“We … [expected] a subset of non-Hispanic, white Americans who feel ‘last place.’ That said, we expected this profile to be more likely among working class individuals,” Cooley told PsyPost.“However, perceiving oneself to be ‘last place’ was not associated with the lowest objective income nor the lowest objective education among the White Americans in our samples.”

The United States currently exhibits a significant racial wealth gap with economic statistics consistently showing that the average white family holds considerably more wealth than the average Black or Hispanic family. But despite this reality, surveys indicate that many white Americans feel they are “personally falling behind” in terms of status without realistically weighing the resources at their disposal.

“This line of research was motivated by recent political trends among some white Americans, including support for DEI bans, alignment with alt-right ideology, and endorsement of political violence in pursuit of political goals (e.g., January 6th),” said study authors Erin Cooley and Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, associate professors of psychology at Colgate University and the University of Virginia, respectively. “Many of these attitudes are not only extreme but also anti-democratic, raising questions about how such views can coexist with identities centered on being ‘most American’ (e.g., white nationalist belief systems).”

The tool researchers used to assess personal status was a box measure called the “Perceived Self-Group Hierarchy.” Participants viewed a diagram representing a status ladder based on money, education, and job prestige, and they were asked to place markers representing themselves, white people, Black people, Asian people, and Hispanic people onto this ladder.

Researchers found a consistent link between this “last place” profile and specific political views.

“White Americans who fit this profile reported the highest levels of support for Donald Trump throughout the campaign season. They also expressed the strongest intention to vote for him. When surveyed the day after the election, this group was the most likely to report having cast their ballot for Trump,” PsyPost reports.

This same group of insecure white people also showed “the strongest opposition to DEI programs, favoring policies that would ban such initiatives in universities.” Additionally, they showed higher alignment with alt-right ideologies, agreeing more frequently with statements such as “White people are generally under attack in the U.S.” and “The government threatens my personal rights.”

---

---}:

RWW

10/20/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Peter Michaels claims that participants in the "No Kings" protests "are not interested in protesting kings and defending democracy. In truth, they are more interested in tearing down the United States, Christianity especially": "They rebel like the devil did against order, against hierarchy, and against the immutable fact that Christ is King not only over each of them but also over society by natural right."

Kandiss Taylor says that "liberal white women are destroying our country."

---

an 9 25

I was a political science student in college when 9-11 happened. Almost overnight, the air in our classrooms thickened with talk of the Middle East—of regimes and sects, of the supposed sickness in other people’s faith. At the same time, I sat in lectures on American government, absorbing lessons on freedom, the separation of church and state, and the principles that anchor a democracy. The story was tidy: Extremism existed “over there,” and here was civility, rationality, liberty.

But even then, I felt the story was too neat. We were trained to see extremism as foreign, an affliction of others. No one asked us to look for it in our own pulpits, in our own chambers of power, where faith is wielded not only as belief but as authority.

For decades, we were told that extremism abroad is born of poverty, oppression, and lack of democracy. That dignity and fair governance could inoculate against violence. Yet here at home, the extremists are not poor. They are not desperate. They are wealthy, white, and privileged, carrying Bibles in one hand and power in the other. These are the people shaping foreign policy, writing the rules of engagement, and insisting that God Himself is on their side.

It is easy to sneer at fundamentalism when it wears a beard and prays to a different God. We do this without noticing how our own leaders claim the same divine sanction. Take Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who recently said, “Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed,” a statement guiding policy on the basis of religious prophecy. As a result, borders are drawn and redrawn, not by maps or treaties, but by the conviction that scripture demands it. Tanks move forward because some believe the end times will be hastened by the blood spilled today. I have heard lawmakers speak of Israel not as a nation among nations, but as a ticket for their own salvation—a stage for the rapture. Lives are traded away for a promise written in ancient ink. Too often, it is prophecy, not policy, that carries the weight of law.

The divine is always invoked to conquer, to exclude, to strip away the humanity of others.

IN THE NAME OF

IFrame Content

Charlie Kirk was another voice in this chorus. His platform rested on the claim that his words bore the imprint of Jesus Himself. And that is the mark of fundamentalism: not just to speak, but to declare speech holy. Not just to pass laws, but to claim the laws come from God. When movements convince their followers that every act of war, every border drawn, every vote cast is sanctified, fundamentalism is no longer a fringe—it is the system itself.

This is America’s problem. We imagine fundamentalism as the product of religion alone, but in truth it is about power. It thrives in systems that punish dissent and demand obedience. It flourishes where inequality is already deep, where racism already wounds. Whether it calls itself Christian nationalism or Zionism, the fruit is the same: oppression disguised as divine order.

Christian nationalism, in particular, is theater. Fear of the stranger is the script. The Gospels are props—quoted when convenient, discarded when not. The gun becomes holy; violence is celebrated as sacrament; scripture appears only to bless white entitlement and empire. And somehow, the divine is always invoked to conquer, to exclude, to strip away the humanity of others.

“Love the stranger as yourself” has been rewritten into “expel the immigrant.” “Turn the other cheek” has become “press his cheek into the ground.” The inversion is so stark you can only call it blasphemy.

It is time to see the truth we’ve trained ourselves to ignore: that the politics of faith are not a distant problem but a domestic one. That prophecy and scripture are invoked to shape our laws, and our laws shape our lives. That the moral high ground, so often claimed, is little more than a thin veneer of power and entitlement.

We are not exempt from the damage. We are participants in it. And we cannot keep pretending that America’s fundamentalists are not pulling the strings.

---

UK meme BS ask labor to define a woman and watch flail?

5 24

---

BlazeTV's Steve Deace: Decriminalizing sodomy “led to the redefinition of marriage and all the other rainbow jihad stuff we see now”

05/22/24

---

nice pix sign: evil vaccine agenda]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/personality-traits/

a new study explains how a number of dark personality traits are connected to the ideology of conspiracy theories. According to PsyPost, a study recently published by Personality and Individual Differences was conducted by Sara Hughes and Laura Machan. It indicates that "Machiavellianism, primary psychopathy, and collective narcissism**" are traits that appear to coincide with the beliefs of those who buy into conspiracy theories.

Science Direct reports that the study, which focused on 406 participants from the United Kingdom, was based on an assessment of a number of personality measures. It also delved into individuals' "susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs and the mediating role of Covid related conspiracy beliefs on links between personality and intentional dissemination of Covid-19 conspiracies and willingness to obtain a Covid-19 vaccine."

The study focused on the characteristics of those who possess the dark triad traits and how they have a tendency to hold more hostility toward other groups. Participants completed a questionnaire to assess conspiracist ideation where they had the opportunity to provide their opinions with answers like: "There is no hard evidence that COVID really exists."

"To assess intention to be vaccinated against Covid-19, participants were asked what they would do if a vaccine were tested and approved and they had the opportunity to be vaccinated next week," the study indicates.

READ: 'You were gullible': Federal judge torches Trump's election lies — and a rioter who believed them]

Per PsyPost, their findings indicate the following:

"Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and collective narcissism have been previously linked to conspiracy mentality. Machiavellianism is concerned with the strategic manipulation of others. Primary psychopathy is characterized by callousness and lack of emotion, while secondary psychopathy is characterized by impulsivity and antisociality. Collective narcissism refers to an inflated sense of superiority extending to one's in-group."

Their research also highlights three potential limitations.

"First, rather than obtaining behavioral measures, participants were prompted to provide self-report ratings of their intentions to disseminate COVID-19 conspiracies. Second, given participants' knowledge relating to COVID-19 was not assessed, it could be the case that those with greater beliefs in Covid-19 conspiracies were lacking in factual knowledge. Lastly, given the cross-sectional nature of this work, the researchers do not make causal inferences about their findings."

---

11 21 no lnx

AA] Pastor tells congregation 'the best person to rape is your wife'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement November 23, 2021

A Seventh-day Adventist pastor told his Bronx, New York congregation that wives belong to their husbands, as property, and they must "submit" themselves to their husbands, even if that means being raped by them.

"Wives, you must submit to your husbands," Pastor Burnett Robinson said, as shown in the video below.

"I would say to you gentlemen, the best person to rape is your wife," he added in his November 13 sermon, as Religion News Service reports.

"In this matter of submission, I want you to know upfront ladies, that once you get married, you are no longer your own. You are your husband's. You understand what I'm saying? I emphasize that because I saw in court the other day on TV where a lady sued her husband for rape. And I would say to you gentlemen, the best person to rape is your wife. But then it has become legalized."

RNS notes that "Robinson was apparently preaching from a passage from the New Testament's Letter to the Ephesians, in which the Apostle Paul says, 'Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.'"

A Change.org petition with over 1100 signatures is calling for Robinson's resignation.

The Grand Concourse Seventh-day Adventist church has apologized and placed the pastor on leave, according to its website. Robinson has led that church as senior pastor since 2013.

This author will not post the video directly, but it can be seen here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Far-right pastor says there are more gays than ever thanks to a ... ›

Unvaccinated conservative pastor who successfully sued Colorado ... ›

'I'm already crazy!': QAnon pastor goes on delusional rant about sex ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

10 21 edit bd

...To come to the right conclusion, they must see what's going on. They must see it clearly. And there's the rub. Respectable white people are respectable on account of their being white people of middle class and higher means who are generally immune to political fallout. My fear is they are hearing more about "wokism" and "Critical Race Theory" than they are about the slow-motion civil war that's been building since the rapid-action coup attempt on January 6. Like it or not, respectable white people are going to fear non-white people more than other white people, even when those white people are far from respectable.

So we must do our best to pierce through the facade thrown up by the Republicans to hide their real objective, which is this: the protection, preservation and perpetuation of the "natural" orders of power — God over Mankind, men over women and white people over everyone else.

This has always been the objective of authoritarian-minded Americans. They used to be the center of the Democratic Party. Now they are the center of the Republican Party. In both cases, they fashioned a reasonable-sounding facade to hide it. They had to. They live in a democracy, after all. They can't have it be known far and wide that democracy is only tolerable if it doesn't undermine their objectives.

When it does, as when Barack Obama was elected, it's war by other means. That's when the facade becomes even more important. Part of what makes respectable white people respectable is the general sense that no matter bad things are, democracy is still worth having. The Republicans can't afford respectable white people turning against them. Even as they go to war, they work hard to hide going to war....

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/no-the-coronavirus-is-not-an-equalizer-black-people-are-being-infected-and-dying-at-higher-rates/

---

[[ aha: anez bolivia evang // bolsonaro re-assert rightful place above uppity indigenous?

has doing god's will earned him "magical authority? see below

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-white-evangelical-christians-are-bonded-by-sadism/

john s eb

there’s still too much confusion over the president’s bond with white evangelical Protestants (WEPs). I suppose there will always be as long as outsiders presume that Donald Trump’s strongest supporters believe in loving thy neighbor as thyself. Once you see that WEPs do not apply the Golden Rule universally and unconditionally, things become clearer. Once this Christian concept is removed from the discussion, “paradoxes” melt into the air. What’s left is a natural alignment of political interests.

How do I know WEPs don’t truly believe in the Golden Rule? From life experience. I know what I’m talking about. All you have to do is listen carefully, however, and know what to listen for. Elizabeth Dias wrote a big piece in the Times last week trying to clear up the “contradiction” of WEPs standing by Trump “when he shut out Muslim refugees. When he separated children from their parents at the border. When he issued brash insults over social media. When he uttered falsehoods as if they were true. When he was impeached.” A source explains helpfully that there’s no contradiction at all.

“The years of the Obama presidency were confusing to her,” Dias wrote of her source. “She said she heard talk of giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups. But to her it felt like her freedoms were being taken away. And that she was turning into the minority.” The source: “I do not love Trump. I think Trump is good for America as a country. I think Trump is going to restore our freedoms, where we spent eight years, if not more, with our freedoms slowly being taken away under the guise of giving freedoms to all. Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.”

This makes no sense to outsiders. Freedom for “gay people and members of minority groups” is not taking anything away from anybody. This makes no sense, because outsiders do not generally accept a worldview in which power is ordered. First God, then man, then woman, then child. White over nonwhite. Heterosexual over LGBTQ. Christian over non-Christian. When you believe with your whole being that power is ordered according to God’s will, “giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups” is not political equality, as outsiders would often see it. It’s knocking you out of the order of power. It’s taking something away. Equality is literally theft

when political equality is theft, you cannot apply the Golden Rule universally and unconditionally. If you did, you’d be complicit in a crime. The Golden Rule demands white people share power with nonwhite people. It demands husbands share power with their wives. Neither can ever be done.A wife, according to the same source in Dias’ reporting, must “submit” to her husband in accordance with God’s law. If she does not, she’s trying “to rule over him.” Same for whites and nonwhites. If white people are not at the top of the order, they are being ruled over. This is why Dias’ source says that, “Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.” The more for “them,” the less for “us.” They believe Trump prevents that from happening.

They believe Trump is “restoring their freedom.” Utter nonsense. What they are really saying is that the president will prevent people lower down the order of power from achieving more freedom and equality, “violating” their “freedom.” He must do that by any means, even if he confiscates kids from their mothers, bans a world religion, orcommits treason. None of that matters as much as maintaining the supremacy of a religious identity built on sand.And make no mistake: this is a religious identity. These are very real anti-democratic Christians hostile to critical thinking, modernity, pluralism, and all forms of equality. “It’s almost like it is a reverse intolerance,” a WEP source told Dias. “If you have somebody that’s maybe on the liberal side, they say that we are intolerant of them. But it is inverse intolerant if we can’t live out our faith.”[ // reverse discrimination]

If WEPs believed in the Golden Rule, they’d never tolerate other people’s pain. They do tolerate it, however. Indeed, they like it. It feels good to see the president “restoring their freedom.” When WEPs say they want to “live out our faith,” what they mean is sadism is and should be a natural consequence of the natural order of things in which God’s people are chosen to rule in God’s name. “Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is,” Dias wrote. “They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are.” That’s correct, but take that to its logical conclusion. His enemies are their enemies. His pleasures, their pleasures. Their bond is far from a contradiction. It’s an alignment of political interests in which sadism is the point.

----

has doing god's will earned him "magical authority? ends justify the means? see above

mis-spoke? made up extreme exec priv or somesuch? invokes article II? or somesuch?that chosen onewas a goof/joke? tho rw in bolivia ~ evo m claims she is restoring xian thus doing god's will? reasserts hier over indig prez

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...]]

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-white-evangelical-christians-are-bonded-by-sadism/

john s eb

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.

But hydroxychloroquine mania also flows from the rigidly hierarchical view conservatives hold of society, one where even basic necessities like health care should be differentiated along class and race lines. Public health measures like quarantine and vaccine are viewed suspiciously precisely because they involve everyone on an approximately equal basis. They long for a special kind of medical care, one that’s just for the people they see as better than everyone else.

This attitude has manifested in many ways before this crisis, most notably around the debate over health care policy. For progressives, the conservative resistance to a single-payer health care system is baffling, even viewed from the perspective of pure self-interest. Private insurance is expensive and unreliable, and since your plan is constantly changing, it can makes basic things like keeping a steady relationship with a doctor nearly impossible. A single plan for all Americans that covers us all in the same way would be cheaper and more efficient and take a lot of pain out of seeking medical care when you need it. That seems obvious.

But that’s just what conservatives don’t like about it: They don’t want a single plan for all Americans.The very idea of having the exact same health care plan as people they see as beneath them, especially lower-income people of color, causes an angry reaction. That’s what all the right-wing hysteria over “rationing,” in response to both Obamacare and the possibility of Medicare for All, is ultimately about.It’s not that you might have to wait in line for something like knee surgery, because that’s already happening under our patchwork private-insurance system. It’s that people you deem unworthy, due to skin color or class status, also get to wait in line and — heaven forbid — might be ahead of you.

(This attitude also explains the longstanding right-wing desire to police the food purchases of people on food stamps, to make sure they are sticking with “their” food and not buying conservatives feel are reserved for true and upstanding Americans. It also explains the often-hysterical levels of right-wing hostility to public transportation, which can be traced back to the end of the practice of sending black people to the back of the bus.)

In this worldview, certain kinds of health care are for grubby commoners, while the well-off white homeowner class should have its own elite status. This is also part of the reason that the anti-vaccination movementhas taken off in this country. Vaccinations, after all, are an unpleasant reminder that disease has no respect class or race, but sees all humans as basically equal, which very much does not fit with conservative ideology.

Unsurprisingly, then, anti-vaxxer attitudes have taken hold on the right, especially in the religious right, which has long been tightly intertwined with a hostility to the government defining and controlling public goods, and has favored widespread privatization of everything from education to welfare.

A lot of people believe that anti-vaccination attitudes are most common among New Age-style leftists, but in reality, Republicans are more likely to oppose mandatory vaccinations than Democrats. It’s largely Republican elected officials who are trying to roll back laws requiring vaccinations, and the religious right has increasingly promoted the idea that it’s better for kids to simply get diseases like the chicken pox than to vaccinate them.

It’s true that anti-vaccination ideology started off in lefty circles, but that happened largely among well-off white people who may vote Democratic but tend to live in highly segregated communities and tend to embrace reactionary ideologies like “attachment parenting” that prevent women from having employment outside of the home. Ultimately, the logic of anti-vaccination comes down to a belief that an elite lifestyle of organic foods and helicopter mothering precludes the need for sharing the same health care common people use, including universal vaccination. That this mentality would leap to Republicans, who would lean into it even harder, isn’t really a surprise.

The irony of the anti-vaccination movement is that the “elite” form of health care — organic food, a mother’s unwavering attention, chicken pox parties — is less effective than the universal policy that’s under disdain, which is vaccination. But that kind of logic, where reactionaries turn up their noses at the common good since it also benefits the proletariat, is hardly limited to health care. It’s also evident in everything from rejecting the local taco stand to thinking that hip-hop isn’t “real” music.

That tormented way of thinking is what’s driving the conservative enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine. The drug probably doesn’t work, and the side effects are scary. But getting a prescription for it helps set one apart from ordinary working people who are doing the stuff public health officials prescribe, such as washing their hands a lot and staying home (even though, for many, it’s meant the loss of jobs and steady income).

Even if a coronavirus vaccine is developed relatively quickly, don’t be surprised if many conservatives prefer the fantasy of hydroxychloroquine over having to submit themselves to the same jab that janitors and hamburger flippers will line up for. Most working-class people can’t afford to turn their backs on effective, preventative health care when they can get it.

---

an 420

no lnx

Here’s why conservatives really oppose federal aid for the ‘undeserving’

Written by Daniel Schultz / Religion Dispatches March 31, 2020

There is a singular and profound question that tugs at the sleeve of even the most sober analyst pondering the federal response to coronavirus. To wit, what the hell is it with these people? Although he’s since backed off the proposal Michael Gerson couldn’t figure out why Trump would decide to re-open the nation on Easter:

To be sacrilegious requires some recognition of what is actually sacred — a type of knowledge Trump has never displayed. To him, choosing Easter must have been like selecting Independence Day or Arbor Day or Groundhog Day — a useful date on which to hang a ploy.

Likewise, Paul Waldman is baffled by Lindsey Graham’s attacks on nurses: “You know, the ones who right now are risking their lives to treat coronavirus patients, and are in some cases forced to wear trash bags because their hospitals have run out of protective gear.”

John Stoehr is equally befuddled by Graham, who was joined by Rick Scott, Tom Scott, and Ben Sasse in attacking the third coronavirus relief bill because it had the audacity to toss in a measly $600 extra in unemployment compensation. John has a theory about conservative ideology behind the senators’ performative opposition:

That interpretation is this: The rich can be trusted with public money, but not so everyone else. It’s OK to give Boeing tens of billions of dollars in relief aid. It’s OK to give corporations access to unlimited and cheap money from the Federal Reserve. But it’s not OK to give normal people an extra $600 a week, people who are at the same time being coaxed by billionaires into going back to work even at the risk of death.

It goes almost without saying that there’s more than a little connection between conservative economic ideology and conservative racial ideology. Part of the performance in modern conservatism is opposition to the undeserving receiving federal largesse, with “undeserving” being more or less explicitly defined by skin tone, depending on who’s talking at the moment.

It’s possible to read the senators’ rear-guard action as nothing more than an attempt to signal to the Trump-hoodooed base that their white bona fides were all in place, despite their inability to limit the bill’s direct relief to white working-class domestic automobile-driving Red Man chewers. You can’t win ’em all, sometimes you gotta help those big city folks too, you know.

As deep as the scar of racism runs in American society, though, there’s something even deeper at work here. Stoehr is right to point out the economic hierarchicalism that pervades this attitude. Somewhere along the way, Republicans went from Reagan’s belief that maybe the government should step off the necks of the wealthy a little, to Trump’s brag that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, to the more up-to-date proclamation that the economy should reopen to save the stock market, even if it meant potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths. Some of them really seem to believe that rich people are better than everybody else.

I suppose the “to be fair” part of this is to say that Congressional Republicans believe it’s important to fuel industries that employ thousands directly or provide the economic underpinnings of those who do, but this is a paper-thin rationalization. The trade-off for taking care of average working people was always going to be shoveling large stacks of cash at the rich. It doesn’t take much to work that out.

But where does the instinct for class warfare come from? I think Stoehr is right to frame his argument in religious terms: heavenly import, sacrilege, faith and ideology, which is faith’s steely cousin.

A number of years ago, I was chatting with the theologian Walter Brueggemann’s then-wife Mary on a Sunday morning. She told me she’d been bemoaning some bit of racial egregiousness or another to her husband, and asked him why he thought people had to be this way. “There are two kinds of people in the world,” he replied. “Those who don’t see an order to the universe, and those who really want to see one.”

:{:{}:

That’s about the size of it. Some people just want to know the names of all those they’re better than, to paraphrase a singer. And some of them, like the current occupant of the Oval Office, see the world as a profoundly zero-sum game: either you’re on top, or you’re a loser. There are no alternatives.

This kind of domination play runs counter to the stated teachings of most of the religions Americans subscribe to, but let’s not kid ourselves. You can find elements of social and economic hierarchalism in all the major faiths, despite their loving concern for the neighbor. For as long as humans have pondered God or gods, there have been those who have been willing to invoke the sacred to justify their position at the top of the social heap.

In fact, as Brueggemann points out in his most famous book, faith in a god who doesn’t guarantee the social order is forever an anomaly. This is where religion turns the corner into ideology, just at the cusp of moving from gratitude for the blessings one has received to thinking the less fortunate deserve to be that way.

I’ll leave it to readers to decide if this is a necessary development of faith, or a form of idolatry. The truly interesting thing about it is how naked it is. Graham, the two Scotts, and Sasse have simply abandoned anything but the thinnest fig leaf of moral justification, and a mighty incoherent fig leaf at that. It’s as if the good Lord found them in the garden chomping away on an apple and without bothering to stop chewing they responded, “Buzz off, old man. We’re worried about our donor base.”

What is wrong with these people? God knows.