Tag: weaponized religion

afloweroutofstone:

1988 was fucked up.

  • In the Democratic primary, Dukakis’ campaign leaked news that Joe Biden had stolen a speech from a British politician in the Labour Party, forcing him to drop out of the race (Dukakis fired the people who leaked it)
  • At the DNC, Ann Richards said Bush Sr. “was born with a silver foot in his mouth” and Ted Kennedy said that he was a “dead duck”
  • Bush won the Republican primary almost exclusively on his promise of “read my lips: no new taxes,” which we know now to have been a complete lie
  • Bush repeatedly called Dukakis a “card-carrying member of the ACLU,” stealing the phrase “card-carrying member of the Communist Party” from the McCarthy era
  • Bush repeatedly attacked Dukakis for his refusal to sign a bill requiring the Pledge of Allegiance be read in Massachusetts (the bill would have, as Dukakis later put it, threatened teachers with jail to do so)
  • To make himself seem more strong militarily, Dukakis did a photo op where he rode around in a tank with a giant helmet on and looked absolutely ridiculous. The Bush campaign took that footage and turned it into one of the most famous and devastating campaign ads in the history of American presidential elections (two of the other most famous ads were also from this election, we’ll get to them later)
  • When rumors circulated about Dukakis having a history of depression, President Reagan was asked about his unwillingness to release medical records, to which Reagan replied: “Look, I’m not going to pick on an invalid.“
  • That rumor was supposedly spread by a guy on Bush’s campaign named Lee Atwater, one of the architects of modern Republican campaigning. He also supposedly spread another rumor, that Dukakis’ wife had burned a flag at an anti-Vietnam War rally, something she was forced to hold a press conferance to deny.
  • The VP debate produced the most famous smackdown in American debate history
  • Donna Brazile (the current DNC chair), who was on Dukakis’ campaign at the time, leaked a rumor that Bush was sleeping with an assistant (Dukakis fired her for it)
  • Here’s where it gets really fucked up. Lee Atwater sneakily put out two more of the famous debate ads in America, famous specifically because of how low they go.
    • The “Revolving Door” ad discussed the prison furlough program in Massachusetts, alleging that Dukakis would be responsible for similar programs as president that’d set prisoners free to commit violent crimes against Americans. But not just any prisoners, and not just any Americans- after you watch the ad the first time, watch it again. Pay attention to the section from 0:12-0:17. There is only one man in that entire line of prisoners who shifts his glance up to give the camera a menacing scare. What features do you notice about that man that no other man in scene shares? See where this is going? That was intentional.
    • Here’s the big one. The infamous Willie Horton ad. The audience is introduced to Willie Horton, a scary-looking black man who we are told stabbed a little boy 19 times, then on a weekend pass, he kidnapped a couple, stabbed the man, and raped the woman. The ad ends by emphasizing that this is what Dukakis wants. When Roger Stone (the hardcore Republican mudslinger who most recently served as a Trump surrogate) saw this, he advised Atwater against putting it out. Atwater responded, “y’all pussy.” Atwater’s goal, in his words, was to make people “wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.” They mentioned him constantly, non-stop. They wanted the first thought to enter your head when you thought “Dukakis” to be a black rapist and murderer, threatening you and your white family. You want to know the kicker? “Willie” Horton’s name was William Horton. He had never, at any point, gone by the name Willie; his name was changed in the ad to make it sound stereotypically blacker and more dangerous
  • The cherry on this brutal campaign was during a debate. The first question of the night was directed towards Dukakis: “Governor, if [your wife] Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” The question itself was shocking and wildly unfair, but Dukakis’ response to it was a very calm, rational response. That cool-headedness in the face of just being asked about your wife being raped and murdered killed him, it made him look completely inhuman.

In the end, Dukakis won 111 electoral votes, and Bush won 426. It was one of the dirtiest elections we’ve ever had, and none of them have come close since until this year.

I was around and old enough to pay attention during that campaign, and the attacks were absolutely appalling at the time. Definitely outside the norm, with the Religious Right behind much of it. (Including pushing some ludicrous allegations.) The degree to which this happened was a relatively new thing, as they were gaining more political power.

Another pretty impressive part of that smear campaign (bolding added in the description):

“MAGICAL MIKE: The REAL Story of Mike Dukakis” (1988) by Dick Hafer

1988 comic book by Dick Hafer, endorsed by Jerry Falwell and Republican Party. Asserts to tell the ‘real story’ of Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee for president. Includes jabs at blacks, gays, women (including Dukakis’ wife) – also attacks the sick, the poor, foreigners, peacemakers, others, connecting Dukakis as the common link. Praised by Jerry Falwell, who urged his entire following to distribute the item. Also earned the support of the GOP, placing a copy of the comic under every seat at the 1988 Republican National Convention. Considered extremely influential in Dukakis’ loss to George H Bush. See news item directly below images for more information.

roachpatrol:

tooblacktoomad:

lord-kitschener:

thetrekkiehasthephonebox:

the-transfeminine-mystique:

mattandsaraproductions:

lord-kitschener:

lord-kitschener:

I think people really underestimate how fucking evil a large chunk of American Christianity is, when they try to say to antichoicers “well if you’re against abortion, at least you should support things like WIC and SNAP, so that women facing an unplanned pregnancy can still feed their future kid”

I’ll be blunt, to American Christians like this, “but single mothers and their kids will starve!” is the entire fucking point. Being ostracized by your family and community and left for you and your bastard child to starve alone in abject misery and deprivation is what they believe the Godly punishment should be for being “unchaste,” and that things like food benefits and contraception are destroying moral society because they let women have unapproved sex without being as controlled by the fear of being cast out to starve with an unwanted kid (this also heavily ties into misogynist racism against woc, especially black women, who are accused of being “welfare queens,” draining good, properly chaste white Christians with kids born from their supposedly mindlessly lustful and irresponsible behavior, that can only be kept in check with threats of starvation or violence).

“Women (especially woc) cannot overcome their base urges and live virtuous lives without being heavily trained and coerced by threats of deprivation, isolation, and violence” is one of the most important unspoken ground rules of reactionary movements, both religious and secular

Evangelicals have no long-standing theological problem with abortion. My parents have been married for longer than evangelicals have been against abortion. Evangelicals in the 1970s didn’t care about abortion. Being against abortion was a Catholic thing. Evangelicals thought abortion is unfortunate, but not evil.

What changed?

Bob Jones v. US (1983).

Bob Jones University, an evangelical school, had a segregationist dating policy. It means what you think it does – they wouldn’t allow white students to date black students. They also wouldn’t admit black students who supported interracial marriage. This was in the mid-70s. Loving v Virginia was nearly a decade in the rearview mirror. The government threatened to revoke their tax-exempt status as a university unless this Jim Crow shit stopped. The school sued, and this eventually went to the Supreme Court. The Court, unsurprisingly, agreed with the government.

What was clear to evangelical leaders, then, in 1983, was that out-and-out racism was no longer going to be tolerated. What could they focus on that would have the same effect? What could rally the base without openly espousing racist views?

Reagan, with his “welfare queens” dog-whistle politicking gave them a like-minded politician glad of their support. And Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was only to happy to tell people what he thought of abortion.

So here we are, thirty-five years later, with every evangelical doing their damnedest to pretend that evangelicals have always been against abortion. They’ve lied themselves into believing it, and now they claim they’re against birth control too. That’s even more spurious – If they actually thought life begins at conception, then birth control would be a necessity, because fertilized eggs being rejected is the norm. Most of what they want to call human life never even gets implanted in the womb, or lasts very long if it does. And if they cared about life, welfare programs ought to be the most important, to ensure everyone has a good standard of living worthy of human beings.

But they don’t care about those things, so the only conclusion is that they are not pro-life. They just don’t want to see family planning and health care go to women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, etc.

It was never about being pro-life. 

(and incidentally – Bob Jones v US was an 8-1 decision. Who was the dissenting voice? None other than William Rehnquist. Who was elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan when Warren Burger retired a few years later. None of what has happened has happened by accident)

Randall Balmer has a really good article about that here.

And it’s worth noting that Bob Jones University defended their policy exclusively on religious freedom grounds, but Rehnquist’s dissent was based entirely on procedural grounds. Even the one justice who was “on their side” didn’t buy  their argument and had to justify it on other grounds. It’s been a long road from BJU v. US to the Hobby Lobby case.

I have a similar theory about why evangelicals fight so hard against believing climate change when supposedly humans are stewards of the earth. It’s all about evolution. Climate change is a proxy war. It’s all the same rhetoric about scientists being corrupt and only looking out for their own interests and trying to shove their research down other people’s throats.

For a group of people who supposedly believe that God charged them with taking care of the Earth, they really seem to have bought into the whole “I can do whatever I want to the planet because God put us in charge of it” mindset really hard. Of course, maybe this is just the 21st century version of manifest destiny.

I think another problem is that with a large chunk of US evangelicalism, the world ending is what they want. The apocalypse means that the chosen few get carried off to heaven as a reward for beating the shit out of their gay kid or whatever, while the rest of us who failed to give the true believers the obedience respect that they feel entitled to are left behind to die in slow agony before being cast into eternal hell. It’s really hard to get people to give a shit about the planet dying when they view literally would have the world end to own the libs

It’s ABSOLUTELY what they want. During the Bush years, they were pretty up front about it, too. The entirety of the Evangelicals’ support of Israel is explicitly so that the Jewish People rebuild the Solomon’s Temple; which is a prerequisite for the events of Revelations to happen. The sooner it’s built, the sooner the Rapture can sweep them up into Heaven so they can laugh as all the “sinners” suffer the End Times. They don’t ACTUALLY care about Israelis or the long lasting sociopolitical factors of the area; they’re literally just pawns for the most death cult aspect of American Evangelical Christianity. It’s legitimately terrifying that people like this run large sections of a nation already capable of destroying all life on the planet.

It’s a fatal but common liberal mistake to assume that evangelicals are motivated by (misguided) compassion. They’re not. They will watch you die and be pleased about it because youve gone to hell faster.

batzendrick:

fuck-customers:

The next person who tries to correct me when I say “Happy Holidays” is going to be told Happy Hanukkah instead. Very tired of hearing, “No, it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS.” I’m pretty sure Judaism was around a lot longer than your Buckstar’s boycotting butt, Karen.

My boss once shared a great story about that. This happened when he was in a layover in North Carolina back when the “War on Christmas” bullshit was first becoming prominent. He had gone to get a pack of cigarettes, and after he paid for it:

“Merry Christmas.”
“Happy holidays.”
“No. I said Merry Christmas.”
“Do you know what Hanukkah is about?”
“No, what?”
“Some people tried to make us worship their ways, so we rose up and killed them. Happy Hanukkah.”

salkryn:

It’s called the foot-in-the-door method. First, you propose something that is slightly outside of allowable norms: denying gay people wedding cakes on grounds of “religious freedom”. Then, you slowly ramp up how extreme your demands are, coercing the other side to giving a tiny bit of ground each time, until you’ve shifted the entire fucking playing field. Conservatives are also very fond of the door-to-face method, which is demanding something completely outlandish that you know will be refused, and then asking for something less ridiculous by way of compromise, again resulting in a gradual shift in norms until views that were once considered moderate or reasonable become unthinkably liberal by destroying people’s sense of standards. The combination of these methods is called the “foot-in-the-face” method, which sums up where this whole thing is headed quite nicely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-in-the-door_technique

the-transfeminine-mystique:

mattandsaraproductions:

lord-kitschener:

lord-kitschener:

I think people really underestimate how fucking evil a large chunk of American Christianity is, when they try to say to antichoicers “well if you’re against abortion, at least you should support things like WIC and SNAP, so that women facing an unplanned pregnancy can still feed their future kid”

I’ll be blunt, to American Christians like this, “but single mothers and their kids will starve!” is the entire fucking point. Being ostracized by your family and community and left for you and your bastard child to starve alone in abject misery and deprivation is what they believe the Godly punishment should be for being “unchaste,” and that things like food benefits and contraception are destroying moral society because they let women have unapproved sex without being as controlled by the fear of being cast out to starve with an unwanted kid (this also heavily ties into misogynist racism against woc, especially black women, who are accused of being “welfare queens,” draining good, properly chaste white Christians with kids born from their supposedly mindlessly lustful and irresponsible behavior, that can only be kept in check with threats of starvation or violence).

“Women (especially woc) cannot overcome their base urges and live virtuous lives without being heavily trained and coerced by threats of deprivation, isolation, and violence” is one of the most important unspoken ground rules of reactionary movements, both religious and secular

Evangelicals have no long-standing theological problem with abortion. My parents have been married for longer than evangelicals have been against abortion. Evangelicals in the 1970s didn’t care about abortion. Being against abortion was a Catholic thing. Evangelicals thought abortion is unfortunate, but not evil.

What changed?

Bob Jones v. US (1983).

Bob Jones University, an evangelical school, had a segregationist dating policy. It means what you think it does – they wouldn’t allow white students to date black students. They also wouldn’t admit black students who supported interracial marriage. This was in the mid-70s. Loving v Virginia was nearly a decade in the rearview mirror. The government threatened to revoke their tax-exempt status as a university unless this Jim Crow shit stopped. The school sued, and this eventually went to the Supreme Court. The Court, unsurprisingly, agreed with the government.

What was clear to evangelical leaders, then, in 1983, was that out-and-out racism was no longer going to be tolerated. What could they focus on that would have the same effect? What could rally the base without openly espousing racist views?

Reagan, with his “welfare queens” dog-whistle politicking gave them a like-minded politician glad of their support. And Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was only to happy to tell people what he thought of abortion.

So here we are, thirty-five years later, with every evangelical doing their damnedest to pretend that evangelicals have always been against abortion. They’ve lied themselves into believing it, and now they claim they’re against birth control too. That’s even more spurious – If they actually thought life begins at conception, then birth control would be a necessity, because fertilized eggs being rejected is the norm. Most of what they want to call human life never even gets implanted in the womb, or lasts very long if it does. And if they cared about life, welfare programs ought to be the most important, to ensure everyone has a good standard of living worthy of human beings.

But they don’t care about those things, so the only conclusion is that they are not pro-life. They just don’t want to see family planning and health care go to women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, etc.

It was never about being pro-life. 

(and incidentally – Bob Jones v US was an 8-1 decision. Who was the dissenting voice? None other than William Rehnquist. Who was elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan when Warren Burger retired a few years later. None of what has happened has happened by accident)

Randall Balmer has a really good article about that here.

And it’s worth noting that Bob Jones University defended their policy exclusively on religious freedom grounds, but Rehnquist’s dissent was based entirely on procedural grounds. Even the one justice who was “on their side” didn’t buy  their argument and had to justify it on other grounds. It’s been a long road from BJU v. US to the Hobby Lobby case.

Very relevant:

The ‘biblical view’ that’s younger than the Happy Meal

White evangelicals and contraception: reversal and revision redux

salkryn:

It’s called the foot-in-the-door method. First, you propose something that is slightly outside of allowable norms: denying gay people wedding cakes on grounds of “religious freedom”. Then, you slowly ramp up how extreme your demands are, coercing the other side to giving a tiny bit of ground each time, until you’ve shifted the entire fucking playing field. Conservatives are also very fond of the door-to-face method, which is demanding something completely outlandish that you know will be refused, and then asking for something less ridiculous by way of compromise, again resulting in a gradual shift in norms until views that were once considered moderate or reasonable become unthinkably liberal by destroying people’s sense of standards. The combination of these methods is called the “foot-in-the-face” method, which sums up where this whole thing is headed quite nicely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-in-the-door_technique

memecucker:

the fact that “Defender of the Faith” is one of the titles of the English monarch and was originally granted to none-other than Henry VIII by Pope Paul III due to how early on Henry was a staunch opponent of Protestantism until his split with Rome only to increase the emphasis of that specific title just with the “Faith” having the opposite referent is really funny to me 

lord-kitschener:

lord-kitschener:

I think people really underestimate how fucking evil a large chunk of American Christianity is, when they try to say to antichoicers “well if you’re against abortion, at least you should support things like WIC and SNAP, so that women facing an unplanned pregnancy can still feed their future kid”

I’ll be blunt, to American Christians like this, “but single mothers and their kids will starve!” is the entire fucking point. Being ostracized by your family and community and left for you and your bastard child to starve alone in abject misery and deprivation is what they believe the Godly punishment should be for being “unchaste,” and that things like food benefits and contraception are destroying moral society because they let women have unapproved sex without being as controlled by the fear of being cast out to starve with an unwanted kid (this also heavily ties into misogynist racism against woc, especially black women, who are accused of being “welfare queens,” draining good, properly chaste white Christians with kids born from their supposedly mindlessly lustful and irresponsible behavior, that can only be kept in check with threats of starvation or violence).

“Women (especially woc) cannot overcome their base urges and live virtuous lives without being heavily trained and coerced by threats of deprivation, isolation, and violence” is one of the most important unspoken ground rules of reactionary movements, both religious and secular