Only the purest of the movement had gathered at Coronado: men like Oliver North, Pat Robertson, and Larry Pratt (whom the press had recently drummed into exile for his alleged ties to white supremacists). In the past, the group’s clandestine revival meetings had spawned liberal warnings of a right-wing conspiracy.
But this morning, the council would plot against its own internal enemies: GOP apostates. And the chief conspirator was Paul Weyrich, the man who founded the Heritage Foundation, orchestrated the party’s alliance with evangelical Christians, and, more than any other figure, organized the right inside the Beltway. “I will tell you that this is a bitter turn for me,” Weyrich confessed. “I have spent thirty years of my life working in Washington, working on the premise that if we simply got our people into leadership that it would make a difference… And yet we are getting the same policies from them that we got from their [Rockefeller] Republican predecessors.” It was time, Weyrich concluded, to contemplate the once unconscionable: another revolution, this time against “our people.”
Funny how in 1987 Weyrich blamed the democratic process for someone as inexperienced as Oliver North being allowed to fumble the ball during the Iran Contra scandal, but just 10 short years later, he was ready to ask for North’s help to stage a revolution against the American people…
I think to some extent, that is the default when the amygdala is kicked into hyperdrive by fear and the prefrontal cortex goes offline.
But dividing the U.S. into such black and white extremes of left vs right is directly the result of the heritage foundation creating the whole moral majority narrative, and essentially creating an advertising campaign out of abortion and Roe v Wade.
Originally Americans weren’t even very divided on the issue, but Paul Weyrich seized the opportunity and targeted evangelical Christians several years after the Roe v Wade decision was even made.
Even leaders of the southern baptist church weren’t opposed to Roe v Wade at the time the decision was made.
I grew up in the southern Baptist church in the 90s, so well after the pro-life narrative had been established as unquestionable in the church. In no way was it some kind of rosey utopia back then, it was pretty awful, but even since then it’s gotten more extreme and politicized. Straight up denial and disgust with the literal word of Jesus and saying things like “empathy is a disease,” is something new that is being gradually inserted into everyday “Christianity,” so that eventually (just like abortion) it will just be accepted without question.
Before abortion it was civil rights.
Before that it was women’s suffrage.
Before that it was slavery.
This pattern will always find an excuse - some reason to distinguish a moral crusade for our people’s innate superiority versus the vile outgroup coming to humiliate us all. Therefore in the name of preserving the past we must commit unprecedented violence to protect what cannot possibly change!
They’re just shuffling cards. The outright bastards who contradict themselves within one sentence are only saying the quiet part loud. And the fact their audience does not immediately call horseshit is a big hint that they’re not engaging with this on an intellectual level. Their preacher says so, and he’s up the hierarchy. Any cognitive dissonance means they gotta “study it out” and find excuses. Like how Leviticus plainly says don’t eat shellfish, don’t mix fabrics, don’t get tattoos, but the only reason Christians reference it is to whinge about queer people. Calling it infallible means nothing - because the authority figure speaking confidently said nuh-uh.
Fear is not necessary. This nonsense is how outwardly-reasonable pillars of the community deal with everyday obstacles, sometimes in the condescending affectation of charity. They’re the opposite of scared. They think they’re helping! But what they’re saying is, it’s good that this child is hungry, because Father Dingleberry said so on Sunday, and mumble mumble yadda yadda jingly keys.
Really have to disagree with you here, fear is how groups of people are kept under control. It’s the basis of authoritarian regimes
How did Bush gain support for the patriot act despite the fact that it clearly violated civil liberties?
Why did Trump stand in front of a camera a few days ago and yell about how much danger we’re all in? You know he’s full of shit, but the person who is in an echo chamber, and never exposed to any questions of regarding his greatness, will believe he’s saying that because it’s true and he’s looking out for her best interest
But the pro life movement and the whole idea of a moral majority, was created by Weyrich to gain enough support for conservatives who created segregation academies in the south after the civil rights movement.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
When the supreme court threatened their tax exemption status, they knew the majority of Americans would not be sympathetic to them, and they needed a more palatable issue than segregation to gain support for the idea of a right to “religious freedom,” that would allow them to maintain tax exemption.
When I say it was like an advertisement campaign. I mean they literally created films back when that was the best way to spread messaging, and toured the country screening those films and giving speeches in order to create the pro-life movement.
The moral majority is the alt-right is the Klan. It’s all the same bullshit, over and over. They’re always rebranding to claim they’ve been around forever. ‘We’re responsible for everything sensible and good, but now the evil outgroup has gone too far, so we must take extreme action to–’ blah blah blah. The exact same pattern gave us Birth Of A Nation.
Fear is useful - but it’s not necessary. People stuck in this mode are probably calmer than the rest of us, because they’re not flipping their shit about observable reality. They don’t live in it. They think The Idiot starting a fucking war doesn’t count, on account of he said so. They’ve been exposed to decades of criticism against him - and they answer it by shuffling cards! He didn’t say that. Well he didn’t mean it. Well he’s joking. Well it’s out of context. Facts to the contrary are fake news. Study it out.
Facts don’t fix it because it’s not about ignorance. God help us, this worldview is stable. It is not fragile against contrary evidence. Evidence is not real, to people performing these excuses.