Today’s lesson, class, is on propaganda.

First, let’s establish a couple of premises:

1. Our Constitution, via the First Amendment, prohibits our government from “establishing” a religion.  This means that no part of the government can privilege or express a preference for any religious tradition.  None.  Not any. [P1]
2. It also means that, despite what the Rightwing Christianists believe, that the United States is, in fact, a secular nation, at least as far as the government and its agencies are concerned. [P2]
3. Rightwing Christianists, on the other hand, have it in their heads that they are the default position.  This is known as “Christian privilege,” and it is impossible for the R/Cs to see their way out of it.  (See here and here.) [P3]
4. Finally, because R/Cs cannot see any reason to acknowledge the validity of any other position of faith, they regard any attempt to act as if Christianism might not be the default as an attack on their faith and hence, America. [P4]

Now let’s look at this webpage that came across my Facebook feed.  No, I’m not linking to it—if the website tracks back to my blog, we’ll be inundated with the crazies who believe this stuff.  (And no, they wouldn’t read this and realize that they’ve been duped by their leaders.)  If you want to see it live, google the headline.

(Annotations mine.)

(Snark alert: there will be no snark.  I will not even mention the comma splice in the headline.)

Right off the bat (1), our anonymous writer begs the question.  For those who need a refresher course, “begging the question” does not mean “surely a question that occurs to everyone,” but “you forgot to ask the most important question first,” e.g., “Did you ever beat your wife?,” not “When did you stop beating your wife?”  The important question here is, “Does Obama have an agenda to keep the Bible out of the hands of our Military [sic]?”

The answer would seem to be no.  You will notice that there is no link to any source that would show us what Obama’s evil agenda is, a link maybe like this one, which is probably the cause of the R/Cs’ distress.  You will notice the date: December 18, 2008, and the ACLU actually questioned the military’s policy in August 2007.   This is, of course, more than a year before Obama was even elected, much less inaugurated.

(Naturally, this can be explained with the Time Traveling Obama Theorem; political ramifications here.  Okay, a little snark.)

Moving on to (2): here we see the innate belligerence of the R/Cs as well as their confirmed persecution bias [P4].  “Take him down”?  What is he, Emperor Palpatine?  And after you read the transcript below of this “one speech you have to see,” you’ll wonder exactly what they imagine is going to happen once the nation sees this brave—yet anonymous—rear admiral give his defiant speech.

The problem is [P3], wherein the R/Cs are convinced that they are the correct and only framework for this nation (or any nation—that’s why the rest of the planet worships us and can only aspire to our political system).  Once “everyone” sees this speech, they’re pretty sure that the revulsion will be so general and so profound that… oh, who knows?  Obama will be “taken down.”  Riots in the streets?  Impeachment proceedings?  Sternly worded letters?  But it will definitely “bring him down.”

I am always amazed at how like elementary schoolboys this crowd is.  Their discourse rarely rises above “You just wait—you’ll see,” or vague expressions of some Gordian solution that will vindicate their outrage.  I’m reminded of King Lear’s impotent splutter,

I’ll have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall — I will do such things —
What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth!

Yes, this one speech will take Obama down.

(You may noticed a huge cognitive split in the R/C brain: they are the default, the majority, the Real America BUT they are the horrifically persecuted minority.  No, I don’t know how that works.)

(3) OK, /snark on: “Governmnt”?  [sic] That’s like “Gubmint,” right? /snark off.

Here’s a rubric that I used with coworkers who tended to think like this author and who forwarded emails with similar stuff: “Is it too outrageous to believe?  Then it probably is: do your research before believing it.”  Hence, (4): is it really plausible that our armed services, which are struggling with suicide as a serious issue, have directed their leaders to send distressed troops to a chaplain and do nothing else??

No, it is not plausible.  Sixty seconds on the Google will give you:

• Naval Command Suicide Prevention Program
• Navy Suicide Prevention (PDF)
• Commanding Officer’s Suicide Prevention and Response Toolbox (PDF)

And that’s just the Navy.

Again, propaganda-speaking-wise, you will notice that our anonymous author gives you no link to back up this assertion.  You will also notice that I’ve given you several that refute it.  In general, a lack of links to reputable sources is one sign that someone is pulling this stuff out of his ass.

Another sign of “too outrageous to be true” is that if you do google the topic, the only hits you get are either the original article or links back to the original article.  In other words, the original is someone’s fantasy of a Bible-hating Obama (in this case), and then all the other like-minded anonymous writers pick up the outrage and run with it.  If you don’t find links to actual news sources, then it’s not true, and no, it’s not because there’s a conspiracy to suppress it.

I especially like (5): “Rear Admiral.”  Nice impressive title—R/Cs are nothing if not worshippers of authority—and of course if the brass are standing up to Bible-Hating Obama [hey, I just noticed I can abbreviate that to BHO—get it??], then surely this is an important thing.  The fact that he is not named in the article nor in the video should be a red flag.  I’m sure this guy is an actual officer in the Navy, but why don’t we know who he is?  That’s sloppiness on the videographers/directors’ parts.

With (6), we’re back to the tingly feelings we all get from [P4], wherein we get to be brave martyrs shaking our brave fists at the evil BHO.

Of course, BHO has been a convenient focal point for the R/Cs, but more disturbing to me is how successfully the R/C and their political allies have framed “Government” as a faceless bastion of intentional evil.  I just don’t understand the impulse, but it fits into their persecution narrative, and it gives them pleasure in the very center of their brains.

Ah, (7): the Family Research Council.  A more wretched hive of scum and villainy… This organization, home of professional liar Tony Perkins, is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who makes it their business to track groups like this.  They are the epitome of Jesus’ definition of a Pharisee.  They host these get-togethers that they imagine are both bastions of supreme faith [P3] and last stands against the BHO [P4], and this speaker is one of a very full slate at one of these events—again, unidentified by our (unidentified) author.

And then we wrap it all up at (8) with a straw man argument.  Exactly who are these people that “wish that the Bible didn’t exist”?  Do they have a Facebook page?  Obviously they all got into government work as part of their nefarious mission to take over this Great Land of Ours™ (for differing values of “Ours,” of course), but who are they?  To paraphrase Voltaire, “If militant atheists didn’t exist, it would be necessary for the Family Research Council to invent them.”

So what is this (unidentified) rear admiral saying?  Again, if you want to hear this man yourself, google the headline.  Here’s a transcript so you don’t have to:

Right now as we speak leaders like myself are feeling the constraints of rule and regulations and guidance issued down by lawyers¹… that puts us in a tighter and tighter box regarding our CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT² to express our religious faith.  As one general³ so aptly put it, “They expect us to check our religion in at the door.”⁴  Don’t bring that here. Leave that business to the chaplains. I’m here to tell you there’s not enough chaplains to go around. And who can tell that young man who is downtrodden and on his last legs, who has no hope, to go make an appointment to see the chaplain? Go get in line and wait—when the opportunity right now exists.⁵ Yet if I do something such as I did several weeks ago when I was looking in the face of a young man, twenty-something years old, who eighteen months before had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger and survived… When I looked at that young man and heard his story, the rules say ‘send him to the chaplain’— my heart said, “Give this man a Bible.”⁶

First of all, why is he wearing a uniform to a private function?  Still, I think it’s important to recognize that clearly the man still has his job—BHO has not had him court-martialed for his audacity in giving out Bibles to the needy, i.e., proselytizing to those in his command.  (That’s another great schism in R/C thinking: on the one hand, BHO is the AntiChrist himself, all-powerful and completely evil; on the other hand, he’s not very good at it.)

He’s not a very dynamic speaker, but boy is he sincere.  You can tell because he speaks in a strained, guttural basso.  It pains him as a manly man (notice the shaved head) to have to speak about these atrocities, but he’s containing his fury.  For now.

What are our propaganda issues in this speech?

¹ “by lawyers”: the disdain for civil procedure is evident.  This is part and parcel of the conservative worship of the military.  They will tell you that it’s not worship, it’s just respect.  But any respect that is demanded—as ours is for our military—is worship.  (The parallel to the R/Cs’ belief that God commands our praise is telling.)  Remember [P1] and [P2]: our founders distrusted the military and intended very seriously that it should be subservient to the civilian government.  The Commander in Chief is the civilian President; the military itself has no role and no voice in the government.  But our rear admiral sneers at our civilian “rules and regulations and guidance.”

² “CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to express our religious faith”: Helpful hint, guys.  Refer to [P1].  The First Amendment is there to protect your religion from the government; it is not, as [P3] would have it, there to promote your religion, or to privilege it over those “other” religions.  Or more pertinently, to privilege it over no religion at all.  Your “right” to pester others with your faith is not protected by the Constitution.  Quite the reverse: we are protected by the First Amendment from having to listen to you.

³ “As one general said”: Names, Travis, I need names.  Propaganda alert: any time you hear phrases like “one general,” e.g., “some say,” or even “many say,” circle the wagons.  This is a straw man, just one the speaker/writer made up to be on their team.

⁴ “They expect us to check our religion at the door.”: Yes, that is a true statement.  We do expect agents of our government to keep their religions to themselves, especially if they are in positions of authority, and it would seem to me that a rear admiral is a position of some authority.  Given what I know of the military ethos, we spend an awful lot of tax money to make sure that those who choose to be in that system obey their superiors in almost every regard.  To use your position to proselytize to those in your command is, in fact, against military code: see here, here, and here.  But rear admiral whatever-his-name-is sees that as “persecution.”  Of course he does; it’s the essence of [P4].

⁵ “Get in line and wait”: I’m not sure to what he’s alluding here—possibly the VA’s notorious wait times for many forms of health care, especially mental health care.  That is a critical issue, of course, although I expect our rear admiral votes for the assholes that send our troops off to fight very expensive wars but who won’t fund the aftermath.  “As ye sow…” as I’m sure someone once said.

⁶ “Give this man a Bible”: I have to believe that even in that audience that day, more than one person sat there in disbelief when he said this.  R/Cs are almost cripplingly blinkered in their worldview, but surely there were those who thought, “Are you insane??  Giving a suicidal sailor a Bible instead of calling in the mental health professionals?” What next, a couple of verses of “such a worm as I” hymns? That ought to do the trick.

So if the picture he paints of being persecuted as part of a general anti-Christian bias of the BHO is not the case, then what the frack actually happened?  Since there is no real data on the webpage—and I’ve thoroughly searched the interwebs for this bozo—we will have to guess.

My guess is that probably he has been told to follow procedure, i.e., refer the sailor to mental health professionals and not to take it upon himself to bring the young man to Christ.  I’m guessing he may have been reprimanded for doing so repeatedly.   This can only mean that the Governmnt [sic] is out to destroy brave people of Faith [sic] like himself, because [P4].  Of course.

This man is not an unfairly persecuted hero.  He’s a dick.  He’s a whinging, self-important dick, one who bullies desperate troops under his command and then petulantly (and publicly) complains when he is told to lay off, because of [P1] and [P2], not to mention the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  But such is the power of [P3] and [P4] in the minds of R/Cs that they cannot conceive that most of us recoil from him with disgust.

At first, I started this post with the phrase “rightwing religious propaganda,” but I changed it to just plain “propaganda” in order to be a little fair.  However, here’s a little thought experiment.  It is well-known that from 2001-2009, many of us suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome.  It got to the point, so much did I despise that man, that I couldn’t bear even to hear his voice.  It made me want to hurl things.

During all that time, though, I never encountered a liberal version of this webpage: ill-conceived, based in irrational fear and hatred, and completely undocumented.  And I read a lot of anti-Bush commentary.  You may make of that what you will.

Here endeth the lesson.

Encountering the right-wing mindset on a daily basis is extremely wearying, and I only do it by reading the blogs/websites of people who actually dive into the fever swamps of The Blaze or Twitchy or—Chthulhu help us—World Net Daily or Focus on the Family.  I can not imagine a more soul-numbing job.

For me these days, it’s the jaw-dropping ignorance combined with the absolute certainty that the worldview which they have created from whole cloth inside their minds—completely divorced from evidence right in front of them—that gives me a bad feeling in my tummy.

I will give two examples, the second of which I would like to examine in a little detail.

The first is the right-wing nutjob [RWNJ] who went on the teevee and simply lied about how before the 1970s gun safety instruction was standard curriculum in elementary schools.  Why would anyone make up something like that?

The second example is equally egregious.  In Alabama:

In an effort to educate the public on the divine origins of America’s founding documents, Jackson County Commissioner Tim Guffey (R) has proposed erecting a Ten Commandments monument, as well as displays of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, outside the county courthouse.

“If you look at the documents that was written — the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence — they are all stemmed from the word of God, from the Ten Commandments,” Guffey, who proposed the projects at a recent commission meeting, told WHNT on Thursday.

The commissioner insisted that the Ten Commandments proposal is “not for any type of religion” and would only serve to “make people go back and study” the sacred history behind the country’s founding documents.

—HuffPost, 8/15/14

Where does one even begin?

A good start would be to get a copy of the Constitution and a copy of the Ten Commandments and put them on the table in front of you.  Get yourself some colored highlighters.  (I was a little worried when I started this thought experiment, because it would not be easy finding ten different colors of highlighters.  Then I came to my senses…)

Get yourself a black marker, too.

Highlight the first Commandment.  Let’s use pink.

Now read through the Constitution—remember, it’s short, barely three pages—and highlight all the parts of our government that originate in the first Commandment.

What?  Nothing?  Okay, take your black marker and mark out the first Commandment so we can reuse the pink highlighter and not get confused.  (“Confused”—get it? Because Commissioner Guffey can’t… never mind.)

Highlight the second Commandment and repeat.

I won’t belabor the point, although if I were in a room with Tim Guffey in front of teevee cameras, you’d better believe we would pursue this to the excruciating end.

Even the most sociolegal of the Commandments are not found directly in the Constitution.  That is actually one of the glories of the document: it doesn’t engage in direct legislation, unlike most of the written national constitutions since then.  We get to change the laws willy-nilly; the framework not so much.

Mr. Guffey might dig in his heels and say that the ninth Commandment about bearing false witness is the source of our right to a jury trial, but a) I myself would guess that this document had more to do with that; and b) that whole “bearing false witness” thing might not be a good topic to bring up in his situation.

Because, as one commenter in one of the evil liberal blogs I read on the topic said, the authors of the Constitution argued over Every. Single. Word.  And if they had used the Decalogue as a source, they by Chthulhu would have said so.  (It’s worth noting, too, that Benjamin Franklin proposed that they have a chaplain open every session of the Constitutional Convention with a prayer, but the delegates shot that idea down with prejudice, possibly because they thought Franklin was punking them, as was his wont.)

I can vouch for this historical view—one summer (1987) at GHP I read every single volume of Max Farrand’s The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787.  Besides Jemmy Madison’s exhaustive diaries on every single motion and debate appertaining thereunto, Farrand collated everyone else’s diaries and letters to reveal the stunning process of cobbling together the world’s first—and best—written constitution.  It was an amazing event, and a fascinating read.

Further, we have The Federalist Papers, in which Madison, Hamilton, and Jay got completely down in the weeds and explained very publicly the reasons for the document looking the way it did.

In neither artifact do we have our Founding Fathers praising Jesus and just lifting our nation up in His Name, O Father God, amen.  It. Did. Not. Happen.  (Nor, to be brief, did it happen in any other source documents from the period.)

So are Tim Guffey and his fellow Christianists ignorant or lying?  They can’t be ignorant (oh all right, of course they probably are, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt), but given that whole “bearing false witness” thing, how could they be lying?

One explanation for this inexplicable mindset is that they are not lying—they actually believe these things to be true.  Their minds require these things to be true in order for them to make sense of the world, and remember that, to the conservative mind, the world only makes sense if it’s full of unimaginable horrors, horrors against which only their faith, their courage, their version of reality can save us.

Of course, that’s being generous, because Tim Duffey is lying.  Go back and read the other part of the words that he made with his mouth: this display of a specifically religious document on state property is “not for any type of religion,” which he immediately follows with

“The Ten Commandments is a historical document and it has nothing to do with religion,” he continued. “It shows that these founders had great beliefs in God and the Ten Commandments and His Word and it helped them get to the point where they were. Their feeling was God helped them build the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If you read all of the writings of John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, they speak about how that was their foundation that helped them interpret and write a great Constitution.”
Read more at http://wonkette.com/557310/alabama-idiot-thinks-constitution-based-on-ten-commandments-is-incorrect#bMSLpDJrm7ivvFDd.99

Highlights mine to underline the jaw-dropping contradiction.  (Not to mention the complete untruth about the writings/mindset of all the men he mentions, of whom only Madison had a direct role in writing the Constitution.)

So we’re back to the eternal dichotomy: is this man stupid or lying?

I have devolved into heavy sighing, shaking my head, and mixing another modified margarita.

update: Go look at the last seven paragraphs of this article on this year’s Faith and Freedom Coalition in DC.  The fear is palpable.  It’s pitiful, it really is because it’s not based on anything real.  Look at the sheer number of future tense verbs and infinitives: “wants to,” “plans to,” “going to.”  It’s all in their heads, and bless their hearts.

update redux [FFS edition]: Dear Mrs. McCarthy: Judy, sweetie, a raised eyebrow and pursed lip is not persecution.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that U.S. Representative Lynn Westmoreland is generally incoherent, so I suppose we should applaud his overcoming of such a handicap to become a member of the U.S. Congress.  Or is this one of those “necessary but not sufficient” situations?

This week I received an email from OpenCongress.org touting their new email system which allows you to hit both your Senators and your Representative with one click.  I hadn’t visited the website in a long time—in fact, I had forgotten I had ever joined—so I went over to check it out.

And there was H.R. 499, filed by Jared Polis (D-CO because of course), which removes cannabis from the federal drug schedule.  In other words, it would legalize pot in the United States.

Leaving aside for the moment whether the U.S. can do this in light of its signatory status of the U.N. 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (spoiler alert: Yes, it can.  See Bolivia (also) and Uruguay), I think this is an important step for Congress to take, and I told my elected officials so.  I expected boilerplate responses, and that’s what I got from Isakson.  (Chambliss must have his mailbox set on Ignore.)

Westmoreland’s response, though certainly boilerplate, was at least responsive.  I quote it here in full (except for the introductory and concluding blahblah):

On February 5, 2013 Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) introduced H.R. 499 which would remove marijuana from all schedules of the Controlled Substance Act. The bill also eliminates marijuana from the classification of a dangerous drug under the federal criminal code and does not allow marijuana to continue to be a ‘targeted drug’ with respect to anti-drug marketing campaigns. H.R. 499 directs the Treasury Department to issue and revoke permits for marijuana commerce purposes, as well as direct the Food and Drug Administration to treat and subject marijuana to the same authorities and provisions as alcohol.

The Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Raich regarding medical marijuana made it clear that the U.S. Congress has the authority to regulate the use of marijuana within the states. Any change to the drug laws to allow medical marijuana would require a change in law passed by Congress and signed by the President.

While I am a strong believer in personal freedom, I do not support the recreational or medical use of illegal drugs, regardless of whether the drug is marijuana, cocaine, or any other illegal substance. Congress has made decisions to protect our nation from certain illegal drugs, and allowing each state to make its own decision would adversely affect the protections that exist against those substances.

In any situation involving marijuana and other illegal substances, the Supreme Court has made clear that Congress has the authority to regulate the use of these substances at the state level, which supersedes state laws that may allow for their distribution. I am unable to support a piece of legislation that would attempt to overrule the Supreme Court’s decision and allow the protections around these illegal substances to be broken down.

I know, right?

tl;dr: “I can’t vote to make marijuana legal because the Supreme Court says it’s up to me to decide whether it’s legal or not, and it’s illegal so I can’t vote to make it legal.”

::sigh::

Then there’s the argle-bargle about states making a mess of things if we don’t keep a tight rein on them.  Yes, this is a states-rights politician telling me that we can’t let states make these decisions for themselves, like they do for every other commodity in interstate commerce.^[1]

(Also, too, Westmoreland may not be aware^[2] that there is already a patchwork approach to cannabis laws.  See here for all the 50 ways you might be punished for possession.)

You will have noticed, too, the sleight of hand with ALL THE DRUGS when H.R. 499 legalizes cannabis alone.

I don’t know about you, but I am forced to conclude that something this obtuse cannot be an honest response.

If I were of a cynical turn of mind—stop that snickering—I might imagine that this article might suggest a reason why our representatives hesitate to derail the War on Drugs juggernaut.^[3]

However, it would seem to me that there is a very simple solution to the budgeting woes of law enforcement agencies: convert the drug money to block grants for plain old law enforcement.  You might even consider embedding/combining social workers with law enforcement in order to treat drug issues as a public health problem instead of a criminal issue.  (I know—that’s crazy talk!)

At any rate, I find it very puzzling that a politician would buck a trend like cannabis legalization. Nationally, of course, a clear majority of U.S. citizens favor legalization, but even here in Georgia, 54% want pot legalized like Colorado.  It is only a matter of time before people like Westmoreland find themselves on the losing end of that election issue.

Oh well.  As I slide deeper into retirement, I figure I might as well pick up the Cudgel of Curmudgeondom and start belaboring my elected officials, none of whom are even close to representing my beliefs at the national level anyway.  For the time being, it keeps me off the streets.

—————

^[1] For example, buy a lemon tree in Texas.  Now try driving home to a) Georgia; and b) California.  Write a paragraph comparing your results.
^[2] When I say “may not be aware,” I mean “chooses to ignore.”

^[3] Yes, I am fully aware that the Juggernaut was not on rails.

Remember my post about conservative mindsets being based on fear and paranoia?

Exhibit A.

This was an elsewhere on the web ad link on one of the evil liberal blogs I read regularly.  For some reason, all those search paradigms that are supposed to be showing me cocktail recipes and cat videos keep pulling in the most incredibly stupid dreck.  And for some reason, I clicked on it this time.

Mercy.

No, I didn’t watch the video.  Yet.  It’s 34 minutes long, and I’m supposed to be writing an art song and/or an opera.

But I did scroll all the way to the bottom.  So much yummy craziness!  So much vague scariness!  So few links to supporting data!  As far as I can tell, in fact, there’s only this one page.  An ad.

Such a deal, though.  Seriously, aren’t you tempted to fork over $39 (plus s/h) for the opportunity to have all of this stuff to marvel at?

It’s porn, pure and simple, for the conservative nutjob mind.  They need to think that they will survive all on their own, striding manfully across the dystopian landscape while the weaklings are left behind.

Dangerous, dangerous thinking.  And yes, there are people who think like this.  Go search for interviews with the militia types who have swarmed to “support” Cliven Bundy.  It’s like listening to riled-up 10-year-old boys on a playground, or adolescent punks taking sides over some imagined slight.  Such tough, tough, super-lame chest-thumpings.

I have no solution, of course, other than to cede Nevada to them and make them all move there.