SDMB Political Analysis, Feb 4, 2022
I have been saying this for a year or more and it has never come close to coming true.
I believe the White Christian Nationalist movement which has taken over the Republican Party is entering their own modern day “Dark Ages.” I believe they have an unenlightened and repressive agenda at best, and are certainly behind the times as to understanding science and human rights.
They are however very good at consolidating their power and influence. They are also quite good at persuading low information voters and they are MASTERS of frightening the old, weak, and mentally deficient into adopting their agenda – which boils down to a simplistic culture war where they get to claim to be on the side of the most holy and all powerful God. Their other tactic to win this wrong headed culture war is to suggest to the weak minded – “remember how great your life was when you were young?”
You are right, they are destined to fail… eventually. But the middle ages while the church ruled all of Europe lasted for hundreds of years and the very term Renascence was coined to celebrate the rebirth of science and art after centuries of being suppressed by the church. Well not only are modern “Christians” not embracing new science and art… they are revisiting items that were supposed to be resolved.
For example, it was accepted until recently that racism and sexism are bad and should be avoided. In the last fifty years American Protestant Christendom has reversed its position on abortion and adopted the views of the Church of Rome (which is still holding grudges from the Great Schism of 1054). As recently as the 1970’s Francis Schaeffer could not find any evangelical or fundamentalist to stand against abortion. (See Katherine Stewart [The Power Worshipers] and his own son Franky Schaeffer [Crazy for God] for documentation of this fact.)
It gets worse however, many of these followers recognize no power but God and are therefore anarchists as far as “Earthly” governments are concerned. They deny not only new science they fear, but older science like vaccines which they had embraced for more than a century. To make matters worse, a large section of the misinformed are now flat Earthers!!
Give these “believers” (who seem to know NOTHING of the message of love and peace that Jesus of Nazareth taught) a hundred years and like The Spanish Inquisition, they will be digging up Galileo and Copernicus in order to burn them at the stake. That will be after they have already burned Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Bill Nye, Lawrence Krauss, and others at the stake. I was okay when the church only disputed NEW science that they had not grown up with, but now they have far too much power and they are going after well established science. Oh man, imagine what that mob at the Capitol on January Sixth would do if they could get their hands on a living Charles Darwin!!
These nuts want the very thing they HATE!! They want a Theistic Government like all those around the globe they rail against – but they want their Theocracy to be based upon their particular sect of Christendom. They are a very tribe that has no place for enlightenment – simple rules carry the day. Islamic Theocracies = BAD! “Christian” Theocracies = GOOD! (YAY!!)
National laws suppressing women’s rights are wrong in Islamic countries – but somehow fine here in America as long as it is a good, Godly and “Christian” cause behind it.
I believe I am the last former Republican who is ever going to get out. Those who remain will not even consider new information and some of them “Rebuke” news sources they see as ungodly (which is all of them left of OANN, even Fox for some of them). Even after January Sixth I stayed in the GOP hoping they would self correct and steer out of their gutter using all the momentum they had built up. But then they refused to confirm the second impeachment of Donald J. Trump and I was finally out. Unlike the elected officials who broke with Trump (I didn’t have that worry- I had never supported him), I kept going as far and as fast as I could.
A little postlude detail:
The GOP and specifically Trump must be suffering because even though I am no longer on their roles they have been calling again lately. They want to know if I am as fed-up with the Socialist agenda Nancy, Chuck, and Joe are pushing as they are – to give me a chance to donate to those committed to reversing their evil efforts. After listening to their spiel, I tell them how little I think of the GOP and those who remain with them and they respond: “Donations are not tax deductible.”
The American Right Wing IS going to fail. It is just a matter of seeing if they destroy the nation before they do. (I secretly hope Alvin Toffler is correct and the rate of change in society is now too quick to allow the republican Party to stop or even reverse it.
Here is an example of the what the United States will be in fifty or a hundred years if the Republicans succeed in consolidating all their power:
