It’s hard for the Christian fundamentalists who run the Republican Party now to worry about the serious economic danger they’re putting the world in, because they are swept up in worrying that President Obama is an agent of the devil and that the world is on the verge of mayhem and apocalypse if they don’t “stop” him somehow, presumably be derailing the Affordable Care Act. Christian conservatives such as Ellis Washington are running around telling each other that the ACA will lead to “the systematic genocide of the weak, minorities, enfeebled, the elderly and political enemies of the God-state.” Twenty percent of Republicans believe Obama is the Antichrist.Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner argued that Obama is using his signature health care legislation to promote “the destruction of the family, Christian culture”, and demanded that Christians “need to engage in peaceful civil disobedience against President Obama’s signature health care law”.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops joined in, demanding that the Republicans shut down the government rather than let Obamacare go into effect. The excuse was their objection to the requirement that insurance make contraception available without a copayment, saying ending this requirement matters more than “serving their own employees or the neediest Americans.”
The Christian right media has been hammering home the message that Christians should oppose the Affordable Care Act. Pat Necerato of the Christian News Network accused the supporters of the law of committing idolatry and accused people who want health care of being covetous. The Christian Post approvingly reported various Christian leaders, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, saying things like the health care law is “a profound attack on our liberties” and lamented “Today is the day I will tell my grandchildren about when they ask me what happened to freedom in America.”
Some in the Christian right straight up believe Obamacare portends the end times. Rick Phillips, writing for Christianity.com, hinted that Obamacare might be predicted in Revelations, though he held back from saying that was certain. Others are less cautious. On the right wing fundamentalist email underground, a conspiracy theory has arisen claiming that Obamacare will require all citizens to have a microchip implanted. While it’s completely untrue, many Christians believe that this means the “mark of the beast” predicted in Revelations that portends the return of Christ and the end of the world.
In other words, the Christian right has worked itself into a frenzy of believing that if this health care law is implemented fully, then we are, in fact, facing down either the end of American Christianity itself or quite possibly the end times themselves. In comparison, it’s hard to be too scared by the worldwide financial collapse that they’re promising to unleash if the Democrats don’t just give up their power and let Republicans do what they want. Sure, crashing stock markets, soaring unemployment, and worldwide economic depression sounds bad, but for the Christian right, the alternative is fire and brimstone and God unleashing all sorts of hell on the world.
Damn am I tired of all of this ridiculous shit! You simply cannot reason with people who are this insane.
And people wonder why I spend so much time talking about religion on this blog. How can I not?
Are they really saying that other civilized countries are in the clutches of Satan? That accessible healthcare is a thing of the devil? There are so many countries, from Canada to Australia, that have healthcare for all, and these barbaric countries have not realized they're being ruled by the devil himself?
ReplyDeleteOnly in America...
Really arguing logic with these kind of people? They want to believe we (they) are Exceptional and blessed by God to be free (as they think we should be, so long as they legislative their morals) and the Left is usurping their secularism. It isn't just about Obama's race, they felt this way about the Clinton's when they tried to grapple with the nation's health care system.
DeleteThey loves them some dysfunction in a costly, uncaring, insurance-run system.
Proud to be a Philistine........
Deleteregina--having grown up and also gone to college in such a system (rigid Catholicism), I can assure you, that is EXACTLY what they think.
DeleteI heard many, many sermons and lectures about the unimaginable Hell which exists not just in the future but now as well, and how almost all people on earth will go to/ already are there.---Julie
"You simply cannot reason with people who are this insane"..........It's an epidemic that's all around us.......and probably the biggest reason "History" only goes back several thousand years.......fragmentation is the name of that game.....something we're seeing accelerate even in the "information age"......or should we call it the "Misinformation Age"....?
ReplyDeleteThese people are dangerously insane. Add them to the NRA gun nuts, the Truckers for Jeebus, the anti-woman quiverfuls, the Mormons and Catholics who think nothing of hiding huge amounts of cash from taxes (give to US and not to the USA,) and all the anti-American southern rebels who want to fight another war, and we have a colossal mess. THEN add in a GOP scared of repercussions if they don't toe the Koch line, and you have a government teetering on a shaky axis. To think that all we've heard since 2008 is that Obama is evil, when all along some of us saw the truth: the danger and evil are coming from the right. The left, as always, is looking out for the people, just like it says in the Constitution (and the Bible.) I do hope we get through the next six months intact.
ReplyDeleteCyclone Phailin is on track to make landfall in the state of Odisha on the northeastern coast of India with 165 MPH winds.
ReplyDeleteFor real ... Sarah Phailin will kill thousands this week.
Told ya that five years ago... Sarah blows. Just sayin'.
DeleteIt stands to reason that these people aren't sleeping well at night with all these prophesied terrors. . .I'm glad. They don't deserve to sleep the sleep of the just. (But I still wouldn't deny them health care, cause I'm a godless yet bleeding heart liberal.)
ReplyDeleteI have Mormon relatives who have been sitting on a year's worth of dried and canned food for DECADES waiting for "the Tribulation" times. They don't care if blood runs in the streets, as long as they can say "See, I was RIGHT!" Smug and self-righteous as they see their more secular neighbors suffer.
ReplyDelete(As an Ex-Mormon I heard plenty about food storage, and nothing about sharing with others during emergencies.)
They are hoping for chaos, thinking that during a power vacuum they step in and be the de facto government.
Bastards. Of course they think they are "Tru Patriots" - but their real agenda is CONTROL through FEAR so they can drag us all back to the 19th century.
Belief in nonsense is NOT harmless.
ReplyDeleteLet's negotiate, indeed. Let''s start with: Time to tax the churches- at all levels. Would go a long way towards reducing the debt. Think about it - no more more pastor's with huge salaries and free mansions. No more ostentatious church building monstrosities. if you are really a charitable NPO, then apply and prove it like all others have to. If you want to be a church school and get state funds via voucher, then start a charter, like everyone else. So tired of religions cheating.
ReplyDeleteThose beliefs are so foreign and bizarre to me. I was informed by an end times believer of an end times conspiracy that Obama and two others were having our military blow up underground escape routes (earthquakes are not earthquakes) so only Obama and two more foreigners are out to destroy the world and only they survive getting all the money under the twin towers and the world!
ReplyDeleteDeath panels is feeding the delusion of genocide. Also the delusion of Saint Sarah.
Am I going to kick myself for not updating my passport??
ReplyDeleteI firmly believe that we will see Civil War in our lifetime, possibly in the next less than ten years...
ReplyDeleteI truly fear this insanity will culminate in an assassination of President Obama. They are whipping up the craziest among us.
ReplyDeleteCrazy brainwashed cretins! I'm not even sure how these ignorant people take themselves seriously, much less expect us to. The sooner religion is eradicated, the better, then we can all move on in a more sane, educated, and peaceful world.
ReplyDeleteI am stuck here in deep East Texas with Louie Gohmert and Ted Cruz to represent my interests nationally. Gohmert I understand, he is a deacon at a fundamentalist megachurch in Tyler, Texas and we were redistricted into his district. Cruz I wondered about, until I read this article by Chris Hedges at Truthdig: The Radical Christian Right and the War on Government.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_radical_christian_right_and_the_war_on_government_20131006
"U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed 'Christian' leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation 'biblical.' It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous."
Cruz is not just a fundamentalist, he is a Dominionist, which is a different kettle of fish. The whole article is worth reading and passing on. These folks do not intend to go away.
Armageddon sick of this armageddon propaganda as well! What's so evil about providing affordable care? If you don't want subsidized birth control, then by all means don't get it! If you don't want an abortion, then by all means don't have one! If you want to have unprotected sex, the by all means, knock yourself out... but there's worse consequences than getting pregnant. Do you feel lucky?
ReplyDeleteThe douggers are trying for number twenty. Explain how it's Obamacare's fault.