Stop The Steal! - How The Christian Far Right Is Stealing America's Democracy

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg
… we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain … and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Most Americans Support Legal Abortion 2 Years After Roe Was Overturned | Pew Research Center

The USA no longer has the government of the people by the people and for the people that the founding fathers intended to create because the Christian far right have decided to take it away as it was not giving them the privileged access to political power to which they feel entitled.

I can say this because, despite the fact that 63% of people support a woman' right to an abortion for any reason, this is now illegal in many states since SCOTUS reversed the decision in Roe vs Wade which gave them that right.

For America to operate as a democracy, the three branches of government - the executive; the legislature and the judiciary should reflect public opinion, not oppose it, yet Donald Trump stuffed SCOTUS with partisan Repugnican fundamentalist Christians and the Rupugnican Party is in bed with Christian far right evangelicals, resulting in a government which is imposing the will of a radical minority on the majority, despite the constitutional bar on the establishment of any religion.

The latest Pew Research poll shows how far this gap between the will of the people and the actions of the government have diverged in respect of the issue of abortion:

Trumpanzee News - How QAnon Lured Gullible People Into The Trumpanzee Cult

How people get sucked into misinformation rabbit holes – and how to get them out

From our perspective in Europe, it seems almost incomprehensible how the political situation in the USA has degenerated to such an extent that Donald Trump may be elected as POTUS again, despite the incompetence, buffoonery and criminality that characterised his earlier term.

What was once the 'shining beacon on the hill', which set the rest of the world an example (albeit more than a little idealised) of how democracy operated to produce a prosperous, egalitarian society where aspiration and enterprise were rewarded and the economy worked for all, has degenerated to warring factions, full of mutual hate and fueled by the most ludicrous and lurid conspiracy theories.

A significant number of adult Americans now believe there is a 'deep state' run by senior Democrats, that operates as a Satanic paedophile cult and that the serial adulterer, insurrectionist and crook, Donald Trump, was personally appointed by God as their saviour, because God obviously takes a keen interest in US politics and would pick someone with a narcissistic personality disorder to do his work for him. This god also promised to ensure Trump was reelected 2020, so the fact that he was kicked out of office must have been due to the same deep state/Democrat conspiracy to steal the election - and then hide the evidence where even God can't guide Trump's supporters to it.

And of course, the serious criminal charges Trump is now facing in a number of different US courts, are all part of that conspiracy, as are the judges, prosecutors and prosecution witnesses, so the more damming the evidence and the more charges he faces are evidence of the conspiracy, not evidence of Trump's guilt and unsuitability to hold elected office, let alone be in charge of a nuclear arsenal and the US public finances, and able to appoint senior members of the judiciary.

The only real conspiracy in the USA is that run by the shadowy and rabidly far-right, pro-Trump QAnon, so how did the QAnon cult lure so many people down their particular paranoid rabbit hole to the extent that they are prepared to take up arms against their fellow countrymen and stage an attempted coup d'etat in the name of patriotism?

Antivax COVIDiot News - Study Shows Vaccines Halted The Rise In Prem Births Caused By COVID-19

Covidiot Trumpanzees.
Risking the lives of unborn babies for political ends.

Study: Spike in premature births caused by COVID, halted by vaccines

About the last thing the politically-motivated, far right antivaxxers covidiots are interested in is protecting human life. With characteristic hypocrisy, many of the same frauds are also active campaigners against legal abortions and a woman's right to choose which, together with COVID-19 denialism and antivaxx conspiracism, have become major talking points in the Trumpanzee far right playlist.

The hypocrisy of these frauds was revealed yesterday in a study which shows there was a huge spike in the number of premature births during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when women infected with the virus spontaneously aborted their baby. The same study also shows that in those areas where the vaccine uptake was high, the premature birth rate quickly fell back to pre-pandemic levels, but in areas where uptake was low, it took another year to return to pre-pandemic levels.

The study was carried out by Professor Jenna Nobles of Wisconsin–Madison University and Professor Florencia Torche, of Stanford University who have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

As the Wisconsin–Madison University press release explains:

Conspiracy Loon News - Why Some People Fall For Wackadoodle Conspiracy Theories

They fall more easily for conspiracy theories - Linköping University

In the last 20 years of so, two things have featured in western culture, especially so in the United States, and recent research has shown how these are linked.

1. Democratization of opinion: Conflation of the belief that everyone is entitled to their opinion on every subject under the sun, as guaranteed to Americans by their constitution, and the belief that this means every opinion should carry equal weight in a debate, regardless of the evidence (or lack of it) on which it is based, or the level of expertise in the subject of the person voicing that opinion.
   
   The attractiveness of this belief to the intellectually lazy and to those who feel alienated by the political and economic forces that shape their lives, is that they can tell themselves that they are at least the equal of the experts, and very probably their better.
   
   For example, I was recently castigated in the social media when I disagreed with the claim that "everyone needs Jesus because without Him life is meaningless". I was informed that "This is America (it was actually Facebook!) where we are entitled to our opinions!", as though a constitutional right in one country mandates the rest of the world to respect dogma and regard it as a statement of irrefutable truth, with the implication that no-one has a right to disagree. The constitution guarantees my right to my opinion (but not your right to yours).
   
   Similarly false claims are made by creationists daily in social media, accompanied by indignation when challenged. Creationists who couldn't define the terms 'evolution' or 'kind' and who assiduously maintain their scientific ignorance, will confidently inform the world that the millions of highly qualified working biomedical scientists who have no difficulty with the science, have it all wrong, and should listen to the creationist who knows best, having completed a 15 minute Google University degree in creationism. And they're all part of a gigantic Satanic conspiracy anyway.

Trumpanzee Cult News - Trump or Desantis? The Nutjobs May Decide It.

Evangelical Christians are crucial voters in Republican primaries. Would they support DeSantis or Trump?

The American Christian far right now has two dogs in the fight for the position of Repugnican candidate in 2024 - the odious, epitome of a sore loser, former president, Donald Trump and the evangelical white supremacist, governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who emerged the stronger of the two in the mid-term disaster for Trumpanzee Repugnicans, where candidates who publicly bought into Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election, fared badly.

But is there much to choose between them? To someone like me from outside the USA, there doesn't appear to be a fag-paper's difference between Trump and DeSantis. They both appeal to the hate-filled, neo-fascist, human rights denying, white Christian evangelicals and misogynistic pro-life hypocrites who blame God and the Bible, and thank Trump and his stooges in SCOTUS, for their legalised denial of a woman's right to bodily autonomy.

What will come next? A ban on contraception? Legalised persecution of anyone who isn't heterosexual? Prohibitions on voting for anyone who isn't a white evangelical Christian? The abolition of democracy itself?

Seems a bit exaggerated? All of these have been advocated by the Christian far right at various time very recently and many of them see it as the entire reason for the 'culture war'!

Dominating the judiciary isn't enough for these privileged extremist who will only settle for a Taliban-style self-selecting theocracy which dominates both the Executive and the Legislature, which will be mere rubber stamps for the dictates of the self-appointed evangelical cult leaders. At least one popular televangelist with a huge following has already claimed to a cheering audience that God told him the government should be accountable to him, not the people.

How these extremists, who still form a significant block of American voters, despite the growing rejection of organised religions in the USA, will divide between the two candidates, then unite behind the winner, is still an open question, as is the question of how far their repugnant extremism will push people into the Democrat camp.

One frightening aspect of Christian fundamentalism the USA, is that many of them, the so-called dispensationalists, saw the relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by Trump as the first move in setting the precondition for an apocalyptic war, and believe Donald Trump will complete that process. In that war they believe they alone will be saved and 'raptured' to a place of safety until it is safe to return to Earth where they will have everything for themselves and all those who disagreed with them will be dead - the greatest thing they can imagine!

If these self-possessed, entitled nutters gain the political powers they crave, they will have control of the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet, with enough warheads to destroy all life several time over, all under the command of a narcissistic psychopath with an acute personality disorder, the self-control of a toddler and his own private nuclear bunker.

The stakes in 2024 really are that high!

Fundamentally Racist Christianity
What does Rapture Theology Say About Christians?

In the following article reprinted from The Conversation, Professor David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney, gives his assessment of the prospects, and to what extent the unpopular (even amongst Repugnicans) state bans on abortion will affect the outcome of November 2024.

The article, which can be read here, has been reformatted fos stylistic consistency.

The Trumpanzees are Losing it.

US midterms: America appears to have passed 'peak Trump'

This is beginning to look like the end times for Donald Trump and his Trumpanzee cult.

The mid-term elections which were supposed to deliver a 'red wave' of Repugnican candidates as Trumpanzees took control of both houses, failed to materialise and scarcely even resembled a dribble. It looks like the Democrats will retain control of the Senate and very many of the candidates publicly endorsed by Trump either lost or won by slim margins. To make matters worse for Trump personally, his arch rival for both the Repugnican choice for the 2024 presidential election and as leader of white right extremism, Ron DeSantis, won the gubernatorial race in Florida by a landslide, setting him up for a run at the presidency.

Anti-Vaxxer, Covidiot News - Why Vaccination Is a Good Thing

COVID-19: Vaccination greatly reduces infectious viral load - Press Release - UNIGE

Yet more evidence, if any were needed, of the efficacy and desirability of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was provided today in a paper published by a Swiss team from the Université de Genève (UNIGE) and the Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève (HUG). The results of their study were published in Nature Medicine a few days ago.

The team have shown that vaccinations reduce the viral load and thus the infectivity of vaccinated people who are unfortunate to become infected.

The press release from the Université de Genève explains:

Christian Hate News - Loony Talibangelical Extremist Greg Locke on the War-Path.

Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee.
"This means war!"

Hate-Preacher Tells Right-Wing Crowd They’re Being Persecuted: “This Means War!” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Readers of this blog will be very familiar with false prophet, rabid homophobe and preacher of hate with a persecution complex, Greg Locke, who recently announced he was building the violent Church that Jesus wanted. An announcement that promptly got him banned from Twitter and resulted in several of his more offensive YouTube videos being taken down.

According to Locke, only gay people would do nothing while the evil, Satanic Democrats closed churches to stop them spreading the coronavirus, and Jesus wasn't gay so he would have defended his First Amendments rights with his Second Amendment rights.

It goes without saying that the US Constitution applied in 1st Century Palestine and Jesus jealously guarded his right to use guns to keep his churches open by posting armed thugs at the door to stop the authorities "trying something"!

I'm not a psychiatrist, but Locke's behaviour since he was shown to be a false prophet by falsely prophesying that Trump would win last November by a landslide because God had told him personally, he would arrange it, is becoming so bizarre and extreme that if his behaviour doesn't meet the definition of insanity, then insanity needs to be redefined.

Covidiot News - Amish Prefer Magic Spells and Other People's Immunity to Vaccines

People in Amish country prepare a horse team to work on a farm in Pulaski, Pennsylvania, on June 23, 2021. The vaccination drive is lagging far behind in many Amish communities across the U.S. after a wave of virus outbreaks that swept through their churches and homes during the past year.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

Amish put faith in God's will and herd immunity over vaccine

Religion news service is reporting that Amish communities across America are eschewing the anti-Covid vaccines and relying instead on prayer and 'herd immunity' to protect them. The notion that magic spells cast towards an imaginary mind-reading sky man who can suspend the laws of nature at will can protect them against a potentially deadly virus, would be laughable if the consequences of this childish notion weren't potentially tragic, and not just for the Amish themselves but for anyone else with whom they might chance to come into contact. In fact, for anyone infected by coming into contact with an infected Amish, the consequences could be the same as if one of these peace-loving, non-violent people had taken a gun and shot them.

As for 'herd immunity', this in substantial part, depends not just on the members of their community having immunity (by surviving an infection) but also on a large proportion of thos with whom they might come into contact also having immunity so they are not shedding virus particles even when asymptomatic. This largely depends on other people having the vaccines. So, whatever their reason for declining the vaccines, they appear to think that doesn't or shouldn't apply to others. Any risks involved (and what risks have been identified are very rare) are okay for others, but not for them.

Trumpanzee News - Another One Who Can't Cope With Reality

Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries
Trump is still gonna win! Any day now! Real soon!

'Prophet' Hank Kunneman Refuses to Repent for Repeatedly Prophesying Trump's Reelection | Right Wing Watch

Hank Kunneman, an extremist evangelical fundamentalist Christian preacher and self-appointed 'prophet' of One Voice Ministries, Nebraska, repeatedly bore false witness to his followers, assuring them that Donald J. Trump would win the 2020 presidential election - because God says so, and of course, Kunneman hears voices!

Now he has to try to cope with the reality that not only did Trump lose, not only have the votes been counted, recounted and certified, not only has the result been turned into a 'landslide' EC win for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris but that they have been duly and legally sworn in as POTUS and VPOTUS respectively, and have already stared on a program of repairing much Of the damage Trump did and reversing his more harmful directives like the withdrawl from the Paris agreement on climate change and withdrawing funding from the WHO because it kept telling him things he didn't want to hear.

Gullible Idiot News - QAnon Dupes in a QAndry

For QAnon Believers Facing Reality, What Happens Now? | Psychology Today

The Trumpazee Dupes who got their 'information' from Trump's disinformation sources such as QAnon - the supposed 'deep state' whistle-blower and Trump confidante, responsible for the more outlandish beliefs of the Trumpanzee cult - have a major psychological task facing them - how to rationalise the demonstrable fact that none of the QAnon predictions and claims proved to be true with their belief in the certainty and reliability of their source?

Their problem is the familiar one of how to cope with the cognitive dissonance that results when reality doesn't conform to your requirements and beliefs, forcing you to either change your precious beliefs or ignore reality by explaining it away.

Talibangelical News - SCOTUS Strikes Down Louisiana Restriction on Abortion

Chief Justice John Roberts. Voted with the liberals.

US top court strikes down law limiting abortions - BBC News

Conservative Christian hopes of using the Trump-given conservative majority on SCOTUS to force their religious bigotry into law took another blow today when, by a majority of 5-4, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voting with the liberals, SCOTUS struck down a restriction on abortion services in Louisiana.

Only a few days ago, SCUTUS enraged fundamentalist Christians by confirming that all Americans, of whatever sexuality, are entitled to the full protection of the law, so cannot be sacked on the grounds of their sexuality.

Talibangelical Christian Subversion in Mississippi

Mississippi State flag, adopted 1894, 29 years after the South lost the covil war.

Look away, Dixie: Mississippi to lose rebel emblem from flag

The extremist Christian campaign to subvert the US Constitution and impose a fundamentalist theocracy on the people, moved a small step towards its goal in Mississippi last Sunday.

The Mississippi legislature passed a bill to set up a commission to redesign the state flag to remove the racist Confederate Battle Flag and replace it with one which must incorporate the words "In God we trust". In other words, the Mississippi state government has at last accepted that the South lost the civil war and has jumped at the chance the "Black Lives Matter" campaign has created to establish Christianity, or at least theism into the state flag and to endorse a religion that 14% (and growing) of the population don't believe in.

The End of Christian Fascism in Greece?

Greek fascist 'Golden Dawn' flag

Greece election results: Landslide for centre-right New Democracy after Syriza concedes defeat | The Independent

Hidden in the result of the recent Greek general election a few days ago was a welcome result which went almost unnoticed by the mainstream news media; the extreme right-wing, Orthodox Christian-supported and openly fascist party, 'Golden Dawn' was totally wiped out, losing all its MPs.

Golden Dawn had previously been Greece's third largest party but under the Greek proportional electoral system, having failed to reach the 3% threshold, it did not qualify to have even one MP.

According to this report, the Greek Orthodox Church, which unlike Catholicism, does not have a rigid hierarchical structure but has devolved regional autonomy, is at least ambivalent towards Gold Dawn's openly fascist, ultra-nationalist policies and violent tactics. While some bishops have been critical other have been lukewarm or even openly supportive of Golden Dawn.

Science Shows Creationists and Conservatives Are Ignorant

Source: Deena Skolnick Weisberg et al., in Bioscience, Vol. 68, No. 3; March 1, 2018
No Missing Link: Knowledge Predicts Acceptance of Evolution in the United States
Bioscience, Vol. 68, No. 3; March 1, 2018

Credit: Amanda Montañez

People Who Understand Evolution Are More Likely to Accept It - Scientific American

A study published in BioScience last March and reported on in Scientific American shows a clear link between scientific ignorance and rejection of evolution in favour of creationism in America.

It also shows the same link between scientific ignorance and political conservatism. In both cases the more ignorant of science a person is the more likely he/she is to be a creationist and politically conservative.

How Xenophobia Evolved

Overt xenophibia, used during the United Kingdom EU referendum.

Subconscious fear of infection may explain skepticism towards immigrants - ScienceDaily:

Xenophobia, one of the most irrational and destructive of human emotions, may have an evolutionary basis as a defence against infection, so argue scientists from Aarhus University, Upsala, Sweden in a published in American Political Science Review yesterday.

It is readily understandable how an aversion to excrement and putrefaction evolved, even evolving olfactory mechanisms which interpret the scents given off as repulsive. It is maybe not quite so easy to understand why some people at least overreact and are repelled by such signs of difference as physical deformity, birthmarks, skin colour and dress and yet these reactions are strong enough and commonplace enough to prevent successful integration of immigrant and refugee populations. The internal immune system, which attempts to cope with potential pathogens once they have gained access to our bodies, is supplemented by a behavioural immune system which helps prevent infection in the first place. The authors argue that this is an overreaction of a hypersensitive behavioural immune system.

What Does Terrorism Tell Us About Religion?

YouGov | What the world thinks.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter, martyr, liberator or defender. It's just a matter of perspective; of the perception of right and wrong.

This was illustrated by the results of the above YouGov poll published recently. The question asked of the 4812 respondents, weighted to make them representative of the GB population, was, "Do you think terrorist acts that are carried out by Muslims do or do not tell us anything about the nature of Islam?"


The result by political view was (terrorist acts carried out by Muslims):

Was Jesus a Fundamentalist Extremist?

Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple,
Luca Giordano (1632–1705)

Reading all three so-called 'Synoptic Gospels', Matthew, Mark and Luke, they all agree that Jesus' arrest, trial and crucifixion followed closely after the 'cleansing of the temple' when Jesus allegedly drove the moneychangers out of the temple. Was this in fact the violent terrorist act of an extremist leading a bunch of dissidents in an attack on the Jewish authorities who ran Judea under Roman suzerainty and who were de facto the local government of the day?

There is no hard evidence that Jesus ever existed at all, and certainly no contemporaneous eye-witness accounts of anything associated with his life and death exist and even the two historians living and writing at the time (Philo-Judeus and Justus of Tiberius) are entirely silent on the matter, so it's hard to make a case for the stories of Jesus being based on

How To Spot A Militant Secularist

With all the dire warnings now in the media on the dangers of militant secularists and the imminent threat they pose to the fabric of society, law and order and life on this planet as we know it, I thought I would produce a handy print-out-and-keep list to help people recognise these individuals and show why it's important to resist their perverted ways.

The first thing to remember is that most militant secularists try to look like perfectly ordinary people. They wear the same sorts of clothes and may not even look particularly scruffy. They may have a proper job, even a well-paid one. They may even live in your street and drive around in cars or use public transport just like normal people.

Are you sure your neighbours or even members of your family aren't militant secularists? What about aunts and uncles, even cousins or the mailman or school bus driver, even that friendly neighbourhood policeman? They do not have green or purple skin and very rarely have red eyes. In fact, in most respects they look just like you or me and are not easy to pick out in a crowd - unless you know the signs.

It is important to remember that, just like socialists, they may look like perfectly respectable, ordinary people!

However, there are a few tell-tale signs that, try as they may, militant secularists are not able to keep hidden for long. If you learn these they can become fairly easy to spot even across a crowded room.