This week in lunacy

Is it just me, or have the evangelicals as a group completely lost their damn marbles?

I was a college student in the height of Jerry Falwell Sr.'s "Moral Majority," when the elder Falwell made the case that the United States had gone off the rails morally.  Unsurprisingly, given the Religious Right's continual obsession with what people do with their naughty bits, a lot of it had to do with the acceptance of LGBTQ individuals and the increase in swearing and sex in movies and television.

But at least it was consistent, and (on some level) reality-based.  LGBTQ individuals were gaining a greater voice, and there was more edgy stuff coming out of Hollywood.  A lot of us, myself included, had no real problem with that -- I've always wondered why in film ratings, nudity and sex were equated with violence and gore, as if a naked human body was as horrifying as a dismembered one -- so I disagreed with their assumptions.  But the definition of morality Falwell and others were pushing at least didn't seem to be coming from some sort of bizarre fever-dream.

Which is more than I can say from today's evangelicals.  Here's a sampler of rants from prominent spokespeople on the Religious Right, just in the last week:

• "Christian Prophetess" Kat Kerr told everyone that they shouldn't be sad about the deaths of family and friends because in heaven there was a "portal," sorta like a balcony, where all of the deceased love ones could peer down at us.  "Literally, these are all over heaven," Kerr said.  My general feeling about this is that it's more creepy than comforting -- I know there are times I would really prefer it if Great-Aunt Marie weren't watching.  But Kerr doesn't seem to think of this, and says that the dead are especially likely to be there on special occasions.  "On your birthday, they go to this place," she says.  "They look down… and sing 'Happy Birthday' to you even though you cannot hear them."

• Right-wing commentator Rick Wiles called Hillary Clinton the "queen of sleaze" and claimed that had she been elected, she would have rounded up conservatives and put them in concentration camps.

• Dave Daubenmire, of Pass the Salt Ministries, created a new confection of nastiness by mixing evangelical Christianity with racism and adding a dash of pure lunacy, accusing Meghan Markle of "poisoning the royal bloodline of the crown" because she's "half black," something that's especially awful because "the royal family is the seat of Christianity."

• None other than Vice President Mike Pence said he was "honored to represent President Trump" at a church service wherein LGBTQ people were said to be "demonic spirits working for the devil."

• White House religious advisor Paula White made the news twice this week, first for saying that she had a vision of how Trump was going to participate in the End Times.  "God came to me last night and showed me a vision of Trump riding alongside Jesus on a horse made of gold and jewels," White said.  "This means he will play a critical role in Armageddon as the United States stands alongside Israel in the battle against Islam."  She hit the news again with a response to the bounty offered on Trump's head because of his authorization of the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, saying Trump was going to be fine because she'd invoked the "superior blood of Jesus Christ" to protect him.  White, you may recall, is the one who last year at about this time said good Christians should "donate their entire January salaries" to God (i.e., write a check to her as God's spokesperson) so that they'd receive blessings in the coming year.  

• The ever-entertaining Jim Bakker issued a dire warning that a number of cities were going to be destroyed by the wrath of God because of their wickedness, and expects people to take him seriously even though he has an exactly zero percent success rate in predicting previous divine smitings.  Named specifically as targets are New York City and Long Island in New York, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana in California, New Orleans, Louisiana, Washington, D.C., Bangkok, Thailand, Tel Aviv, Israel, and some unnamed "North New Jersey Towns."  As far as why we should believe him, he says, "I know I'm not wrong."

That's in the last week.

The craziness gets passed along to the followers.  Just a couple of days ago, a woman in Pennsylvania named Nadedja Reilly drove her car into oncoming traffic to "test her faith."  She herself wasn't hurt (hallelujah) but two people in other cars were, something that didn't bother her in the least.  "Reilly related God took care of her by not having her injured," wrote Trooper Bruce Balliet in the arrest affidavit. "Reilly expressed no concerns or remorse for the victims.  Reilly also stated she did not care if the other people were injured because God would have taken care of them."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons HoppingRabbit34 at English Wikipedia, Baptists-against-jews, CC BY 3.0]

If it's not clear from what I've written already, yes, I know it's not all Christians.  I have a great many Christian friends of various denominations, and I'm sure they'd be as appalled as I am at all this.  But my point is that in the last couple of years events have revealed a deep streak of batshit lunacy in the Religious Right, beyond the intolerance, self-righteousness, and homophobia that has been evident for as long as I can remember.  And all too few people recognize this as the same kind of insane extremism and disconnect from reality that exists in radical Islam -- despite the fact that many of the same people who love Pence and Wiles and Bakker et al. consider the outrageous, bigoted, and violent statements made by fundamentalist Muslim spokespeople to be deeply and thoroughly evil.

Maybe they should reread the injunction from Matthew 7 to remove the beam from your own eye before you attempt to pluck the splinter from your neighbor's.  Or the message to the Pharisees -- the Religious Right of Jesus's time -- in Matthew 23, where Jesus referred to them as a "brood of vipers" for their pious, hypocritical self-righteousness.

None of that seems to occur to them.  A selective reading of the bible is also one of their specialties.

It's all very well to laugh at these people; Bakker in particular is so out in left field that he's almost begging to be ridiculed.  But there's the danger that if we poke fun at them, we lose sight of two facts: (1) they're completely serious; and (2) they have a great many followers who believe every word they say.

How to fight against this, I have no idea.  Knowing about it is a start, which is why I'm writing this today.  But that gets us no closer to eliminating this frightening streak of fanaticism that seems to be getting louder and louder.  It puts me in mind of the quote, often misattributed to Sinclair Lewis (its actual provenance is unknown): "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

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I don't often recommend historical books here at Skeptophilia, not because of a lack of interest but a lack of expertise in identifying what's good research and what's wild speculation.  My background in history simply isn't enough to be a fair judge.  But last week I read a book so brilliantly and comprehensively researched that I feel confident in recommending it -- and it's not only thorough, detailed, and accurate, it's absolutely gripping.

On May 7, 1915, the passenger ship Lusitania was sunk as it neared its destination of Liverpool by a German U-boat, an action that was instrumental in leading to the United States joining the war effort a year later.  The events leading up to that incident -- some due to planning, other to unfortunate chance -- are chronicled in Erik Larson's book Dead Wake, in which we find out about the cast of characters involved, and how they ended up in the midst of a disaster that took 1,198 lives.

Larson's prose is crystal-clear, giving information in such a straightforward way that it doesn't devolve into the "history textbook" feeling that so many true-history books have.  It's fascinating and horrifying -- and absolutely un-put-downable.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Making the world safe for hypocrisy

Republicans are currently having a meltdown over the reception that Vice President-elect Mike Pence got when he showed up at a performance of the Broadway musical Hamilton a couple of nights ago.

President-elect Trump, never one to sit by silently when Twitter is waiting, jumped in with the following: "Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.  This should not happen!" and followed it up with "The Theater must always be a safe and special place.  The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence.  Apologize!"

The rumor went around that the cast had booed Pence, and that started up the outrage machine.  "Boycott Hamilton!" trended on Twitter, which is kind of funny in that the musical is sold out months in advance, so any potential boycotters would have a long wait.

But what is appalling about all of this is that as usual, these people are reacting to what they think happened, not to what actually happened.  So let's start by setting the record straight.  The cast did not boo Pence; the audience did, and then the cast told them to stop.  Here's a transcript of what the cast said:

There’s nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen.  There’s nothing to boo here.  We’re all here sharing a story of love.  Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton: An American Musical...  We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.  But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.  All of us.

That is the message that President-elect Trump called "harassment" and for which he demanded an apology.

I thought this called for a response.  My initial thought, which ended with "... and the horse you rode in on," on reconsideration struck me as lacking in subtlety and depth of thought.  So here is a more measured, nuanced take on the whole thing.

The group who is screeching that Hamilton should be boycotted is by and large composed of the same people who flipped out when Starbucks changed their cup design, saying Americans should boycott the coffee company because they're "anti-Christmas and anti-Christian."  They are the ones who had conniptions at the protests over Trump's policies that have been staged in cities throughout the United States, and who have even suggested making such demonstrations criminal offenses.  They are the ones who claim that every time anyone demands separation of church and state, it's a direct attack on freedom of religion.

And yet, with no apparent sense of hypocrisy, the loudest "freedom of religion" types are now the ones who are actively supporting a government registry for Muslims, including those who are American citizens.  The ones who are having a meltdown over what the cast of Hamilton said to Mike Pence are the same ones who don't bat an eye at people who call the Obamas every derogatory name you can think of (the most recent being the characterization of the First Lady by a West Virginia mayor as "an ape in heels").  The ones who think that Mike Pence is such a delicate snowflake that the cast of Hamilton should apologize for hurting his feelings are the ones who ridicule liberals as "whiny safe-spacers" who "can't stand it if everyone doesn't get a trophy" when there is a demand that the incoming administration treat all Americans, including LGBT individuals, atheists, and minorities, with respect and equal access to rights.

In other words: "a safe and special place" means that Americans can feel free to ridicule, degrade, and strip the rights from anyone who isn't a white Christian, but if those who are on the receiving end of such treatment respond, it's "harassment."  Freedom of speech and freedom of religion only apply if they're the right speech and the right religion.

I've been trying like hell to stay out of politics, but I think this marks the point where I've given up resisting.  I see our country heading toward a very, very scary place, led by a cadre of people who take umbrage at anything outside of their narrow little worldview, demanding apologies of people who challenge them and (when those are not forthcoming) responding with vitriol, hate speech, and threats.

So, frankly, I've had it.  My previous posts on recent political developments, where I tried to be measured and polite, to ask for reconciliation and compassion, were met with comments such as (these are direct quotes) "Stop your fucking whining, you lost" and "Get over yourself" and "I bet you'd never call out the ultra-left-wingers for all the shit they do."  (The latter, at least, should be obviously wrong to anyone who has read this blog for any length of time; I've always thought of myself as an equal-opportunity critic.)

So fuck being apolitical.  At this point, not to speak up against what is happening in this country would be tantamount to supporting it.  So this may lose me blog followers at best, and friends at worst, but don't expect me to stay silent.  I am hereby vowing to call out hypocrisy wherever I see it (and yes, that includes the liberals), to stand up for the people that the incoming administration has vowed to oppress, to be an advocate even if it puts me right in the bullseye.

In other words: I am choosing to place myself right outside the "safe space."  Deal with it.  You, and the horse you rode in on.

Willful ignorance and Irish slavery

Prompted by yesterday's post regarding the tendency of some people to amplify their feelings into facts (and in the process, ignore the actual facts), a loyal reader of Skeptophilia put me on the trail of a fine, if disturbing, example of this phenomenon: the claim that there were Irish slaves, and they had it worse than the African ones did.

I had seen a version of the claim before, posted on Facebook.  This is the one I ran into:

My impression was that it was just one more in the long line of claims intended to make white people feel like they have no reason to address the sordid history of North America with respect to their treatment of minorities and indigenous peoples.  "Hey, y'all," it seems to say, "we had it bad too, you know."

What I didn't realize until today was that there's a far uglier implication here, made plain in some of the websites where you see the above posted; that not only were the Irish oppressed (a point no one with any knowledge of history would argue), but that Irish immigrants to North America were oppressed by the African Americans.  If you look at those websites -- which I would not recommend to anyone who has a weak stomach or slim tolerance for racist garbage -- you find claims that Africans and Mulattos enslaved, raped, tortured, and killed Irish slaves, especially Irish women, all through the 18th and first half of the 19th century.

The claim is thoroughly debunked by history scholar Liam Hogan, who addresses each piece of the claim, uncovering the bogus nature of the supporting evidence.  Some of the "evidence" is outright falsification; for example, one website uses gruesome photos from Andersonville Prison and the Holocaust and claims that they were pictures of Irish slaves; another shows a drawing of 18th century psychopathic murderer Elizabeth Brownrigg flogging a servant, and claims instead that it is a drawing of a poor Irish slave in the early United States being whipped.  In fact, the claim that the Irish were enslaved at all is mixing up indentured servitude with chattel slavery, a distinction that none of the slave owners back then were confused about in the least.

All of this would be another exercise in believe-what-you-want-to-believe if the whole idea hadn't been taken up by the white supremacists and neo-Nazis.  The "Irish slave" trope figures into the whole mythology you see on websites like Stormfront, revolving around the idea that the whites are in constant danger of being attacked and destroyed by people of color.  And as strategies for convincing followers go, it's pretty powerful.  If you can persuade yourself that white privilege is nonexistent, that the whites all along have had it as bad as the minorities, it is only a short step to the attitude that any demands made by minorities that the whites address institutional racism are ill-founded and unfair.

Frighteningly, that's exactly what's happening.  Donald Trump's running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, has gone on record that institutional racism only exists if we talk about it:

Donald Trump and I both believe that there’s been far too much of this talk of institutional bias or racism in law enforcement. We ought to set aside this talk, this talk about institutional racism and institutional bias, the rhetoric of division.

The Trump campaign chair in Ohio, Kathy Miller (who has since resigned), went even further, blaming President Obama for racism, and claiming that it didn't exist before he became president:

If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last fifty years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you. You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it.  It’s not our fault, certainly... Growing up as a kid, there was no racism, believe me.  We were just all kids going to school. 

I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected.  We never had problems like this...  Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.

Well, of course you didn't experience racism, you nitwit.  You're not a minority.  As for the rest of it, this surpasses willful ignorance.  I'm not even sure what you'd call it.  Especially since the interviewer said to Miller that some people would take exception to what she'd said, and she responded, "I don't care.  It's the truth."

So here's a particularly awful example of what I was talking about yesterday; people elevating their own feelings, biases, and prejudices to the level of facts.  Taking the fact that for a white person, talking about racism can be uncomfortable, and using that discomfort as an excuse for believing that racism itself doesn't exist.

Well, I'm sorry, but the world doesn't work that way.  The truth doesn't change because thinking about it makes you feel wonky.  And neither can you substitute your mythology for actual history as a way of whitewashing the role your ancestors (and mine) had in oppressing other cultures.  All that does is perpetuate the very attitudes that created the problem in the first place -- and makes it less likely that our children and our children's children will live in a world where everyone is treated fairly and equitably.

Modern-day Caligulas

Is it just me, or do a lot of high-profile members of the evangelical wing of Christianity seem to have lost their minds lately?

I mean, it's not like they haven't been saying some odd things for a while.  Pat Robertson, for example -- who at this point must be what, 148 years old? -- has been entertaining us for as long as I can remember.  But now we've got apparently insane hyper-Christians, many of whom have been elected to public office, making statements that under normal circumstances would qualify a person for medical supervision.

First we have Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, signing into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which "prohibits state or local governments from substantially burdening a person's ability to exercise their religion — unless the government can show that it has a compelling interest and that the action is the least-restrictive means of achieving it."  All of which sounds pretty innocuous until you realize that what prompted the bill was a series of cases in which Christian-owned businesses wanted government protection for their decision not to serve gays and lesbians.

Making it clear that this was what the bill was about, Eric Miler of Advance America said about the bill's passage, "It is vitally important to protect religious freedom in Indiana.  It was therefore important to pass Senate Bill 101 in 2015 in order to help protect churches, Christian businesses and individuals from those who want to punish them because of their Biblical beliefs!"

And despite this, Governor Pence swears that the RFRA has nothing to do with discriminating against LGBT people.  "This is not about discrimination," he said, in a press conference.

The state is already beginning to experience a backlash.  Supporters of non-discrimination policies have begun pulling out of Indiana, most dramatically the software company Salesforce, which operates a S&P 500 corporation headquartered in Indianapolis.  "We have been an active member of the Indiana business community and a key job creator for more than a decade," Scott McCorkle, CEO of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud division, wrote in a letter to Indiana lawmakers. "Our success is fundamentally based on our ability to attract and retain the best and most diverse pool of highly skilled employees, regardless of gender, religious affiliation, ethnicity or sexual orientation.  Without an open business environment that welcomes all residents and visitors, Salesforce will be unable to continue building on its tradition of marketing innovation in Indianapolis."

But what Pence and the Indiana state legislature has done is sane compared with what we're hearing from other right-wing Christian elected officials.  How about Senator Sylvia Allen, a member of the State Senate of Arizona, who last week proposed a way to fix the problems in the United States: mandatory church attendance.

In a debate over laws governing carrying concealed weapons, Senator Allen suddenly made the following statement, which should be an odds-on contender for the 2015 Non Sequitur Award:

I believe what's happening to our country is that there's a moral erosion of the soul of America.  It's the soul that is corrupt.  How we get back to a moral rebirth I don't know.  Since we are slowly eroding religion at every opportunity that we have.  Probably we should be debating a bill requiring every American to attend a church of their choice on Sunday to see if we can get back to having a moral rebirth.

What does that have to do with concealed-carry laws?  I have no idea.  Neither, apparently, did the rest of the senate, who just sort of sat there staring at Senator Allen with their mouths hanging open.

Then we have State Representative Gordon Klingenschmitt of Colorado, who on his television show Pray in Jesus's Name commented upon a brutal attack on a pregnant woman that occurred earlier this month, and said that the attack had happened because of the "curse of God upon America for the legalization of abortion."  Worse, still, when people reacted with outrage to Klingenschmitt's statement, he informed us that he has the right to say any damn thing he wants to, because, you know, 'Murica.

I'm against evil and I'm in favor of good. If other people are offended by the Bible, that's okay, they don't have to agree with me or come to my church or watch my TV show.  It's a free country.  If you're offended because I quote the bible in church, I ask you to forgive me but I will not apologize for quoting the Bible in church.  If the government is now going to step into my church on Sunday and say "oh, you're not allowed to do that because you are an elected official," I would ask people to take a step back and think about how the government should be protecting your freedom of worship on Sunday and maybe cut me a little slack.

Then we had a war of words between conservative Idaho State Representative Paul Shepherd and a LGBT activist named Dylan Hailey.  Shepherd had forgotten to renew his subscription to the website domain name www.paulshepherdusa.com, so Hailey bought it and converted it to a website describing the struggles of LGBT individuals in Idaho.

Well, Shepherd wasn't going to take that lying down.  In an interview with Melissa Dalvin of Idaho Reports, Shepherd made an analogy that "WTF?" doesn't even quite cover:  "Slave owners were very good Christians and good people," Shepherd said.  "They weren't terrible, rotten, horrible people.  And that's how I see gay people."

And it wasn't just the elected officials.  It appears that because of a byzantine rule regarding the way proposals for laws work in California, an attorney named Matthew McLaughlin may be in position to force lawmakers to consider a bill called the "Sodomite Suppression Act."  Here's an excerpt:

Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God's just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.

Now, nobody thinks that this bill has a chance of passing -- it's doubtful if even people like Klingenschmitt and Shepherd would vote for something like this.  But just the very fact that it's under consideration is terrifying.

You know, the whole thing makes me think about the Roman Empire.  It worked pretty well for a while, you know?  Then all of a sudden, you had people like Caligula having his horse elected to the Senate and ordering his armies to whip the ocean because he wanted to teach the god Neptune a lesson, Nero singing songs in praise to himself while watching people being burned alive, and Elagabalus, who made up his own religion revolving around the idea that prostitution was holy, and killed anyone who refused to join it.

Actually, I hope I'm wrong, here.  Because once the Roman Empire more-or-less imploded, the whole place was overrun by barbarians, and that wasn't much better.  So let's hope we can replace our own modern-day Caligulas with people who are interested in sensible governance.