Category: Fuck Christians

Posted on

A Personal Apology to Young Americans for Failing to Stop Ronald Reagan

From Thom Hartmann:

I'm so embarrassed to have to say this, but my generation let this happen. And now our chance is here to stop the Republican onslaught once and for all.

The article is a great read. If you don't have time, here is a summary:

Hartmann argues that Reagan's deregulatory, uber-free market, pro-corporate, anti-labor, anti-higher education, and/or low taxation for the rich policies ultimately contributed to:

    1. Greater generational income inequality. "Boomers in their 30s [in  1990] owned 21.3 [%] of the nation's wealth," whereas "Millennials in their 30s today own 4.6% of the nation's wealth." 
    2. Wage stagnation. This occurred because of "right to work" anti-union laws enacted in Republican controlled states. Of the 27 states that have passed these laws, 23 are below the mean U.S. household income, 8 are in the poorest national quintile (state rankings of 41-50), 6 are in the second poorest national quintile (state rankings of 31-40), and 9 are in the third poorest national quintile (state rankings of 21-30).
    3. Increased student loan debt and inability to wipe out debt via bankruptcy. Reagan led the way as governor of California in cutting aid to public higher education and in putting an end to "free tuition" at the University of California. "As president, [Reagan] began the methodical process of eliminating federal and state support for [college] tuition."  Furthermore, in a massive GOP "gift" to banking, people can no longer "discharge student loans through bankruptcy."
    4. Price gouging (which contributes to inflation). "In 1983, President Reagan ordered the federal government to stop enforcing the anti-trust laws," resulting in "merger mania," which allowed for the growth of huge monopolies that "crushed" small businesses, including startups, and allowed for price gouging with impunity.
    5. Increased individual medical debt (and bankruptcies), increased spending on healthcare, and lower life expectancy in the U.S. compared with other developed nations. This all occurred because the "Reagan Revolution" encouraged the end of state "nonprofit requirements" for "health insurance companies and hospitals," to be replaced by "free market principles."
    6. Excessive pharmaceutical prices. Because of the "Reagan Revolution," drug companies were allowed to become "monopolistic monoliths" that could charge whatever they wanted for drugs.
    7. Excessive housing costs. The GOP Congress under New Gingrich "'deregulated' the financial industry." That's why today "trillion-dollar hedge funds and investment groups are purchasing as many as half…of the available-for-sale housing, so they can turn them into rentals and then, when they've cornered the market, jack up the prices."
    8. A large "transfer of real wealth" to the "top 1%." "Reagan dropped the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 27%, and cut corporate tax rates from 50% to functionally nothing […] This 42-year-long process, with Reagan's original massive tax cuts amplified by trillions more in tax cuts for the morbidly rich from the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, has produced a $50 trillion transfer of real wealth from the middle class to the top 1%."

Hartmann also describes other ways that Republicans since Reagan have continued to destroy our nation (and in terms of climate change, potentially the planet):

    • Climate change denial. "Republicans, right across-the-board, continue to deny [climate change], in deference to the fossil fuel industry and its billionaires that funds their elections. They've put money and power above the fate and future of your and your children's planet."
    • Politicians for sale. Through the "Citizens United" decision, the Republican appointed conservative Supreme Court justices have allowed "billionaires and corporations" to virtually buy politicians–making it hard for anyone in Congress (especially Democrats) to pass any laws not approved by the oligarchs who "own" members of Congress [mostly Republican but some Democrats too].
    • Promoting autocracy, trying to overturn legal elections, and trying to rig future elections. Trump and his Republican cronies "tried to end our 240-year experiment in democratic self governance, and are now actively embracing neofascist autocracy, openly trying to emulate the rightwing strongman governments that have taken over Russia and Hungary." Republicans are also attempting "to rig our elections by purging millions of minority, Boomer, and Millennial voters from the rolls."
    • Limiting reproductive rights. [Republicans, through the appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices have] "succeeded in overturning the right to abortion." [Some Republicans, including Justice Thomas, are also threatening to go after birth control.]
    • "Openly embracing homophobia and misogyny." [Hartmann didn't elaborate on this but some "Don't Say Gay" laws and anti-trans laws have passed or are being considered in red states. Some in the GOP want to overturn Obergefell and Lawrence so they can do away with same sex marriage and can re-criminalize homosexual behavior. Not only are the challenges to reproductive rights misogynistic but many of the educational gag order bills/guidelines in red states prevent the discussion of sexism in public education.]
    • Gun culture run amok. [Thanks to the efforts of the gun lobby and the conservative Supreme Court Heller and Bruen decisions, pandora's box has been opened and we are stuck with the] "400 million guns drenching our country [in] blood, and… Republicans [being] unified across-the-board to prevent any further action to stop gun violence in America."
    • White supremacy, racism, and a "whitewashed" American history. "And now, these Republicans are trying to marinate your children in their white supremacy and racism by forcing teachers to push a false narrative about American history."

Still, Hartmann tried to end this depressing narrative  of the "Reagan Revolution" legacy on a positive note:

The good news, however, is that, increasingly, [Boomers and Millennials] are working together to throw Republicans out of office and elect progressive Democrats who understand these issues and know how to do something about it.

From the 80-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders to 19-year-old progressive candidate for the Ohio House Sam Lawrence… progressives are growing in political power at the same time America is waking up from the fog of bullshit Republicans have been crop-dusting over us since 1981.

All is not lost; change is in the air.

Get out there. Get active. Tag, we're it!

Posted on

MAGA Christians Are Dancing On God's Corpse

Evangelical Trump supporters live preposterously unexamined lives binding white Evangelicalism to the MAGA movement.

Donald Trump is the actual demonic person that white Evangelicals have convinced themselves liberals are. He's a marriage-wrecker, hedonistic sex freak, obvious atheist, litigious thief, welfare queen who never pays taxes, and he has gotten handouts from every level of government on his rise to his mobbish empire of cheap licensing deals. He is the personification of their liberal nightmares. Yet they're politically Christifying him.

So it's just sublimely apparent that MAGA Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus anymore. They've excommunicated Jesus for being a socialist Jew, and they're dancing on God's corpse proclaiming blasphemously all by themselves the arrival of the End Times and getting high on blood libel conspiracies, and snorting fat lines of racism huffing poppers of fascism to pregame for the party in Heaven where they'll watch America burn and all their political enemies suffer for eternity.

Remember that the God-fearing are the most impulsively capable of committing godless acts of unforgiving vengeance… in their devotion to their loving, forgiving god of moderation. Fascism depends on the religious fundamentalists doing the crusading dirty work in the streets.

Which is why QAnon's slow mainstreaming of the blood libel conspiracy is absolutely a cancer on society. It proliferates into so many toxic things, like anti-Semitism, Misogyny, and legalized persecution against society's downtrodden. The Republican Party's dogwhistle embrace of QAnon is inciting violence already. January 6th, the break-in of Nancy Pelosi's house, and it's going to get worse. And Christians are not breaking from the fascist coalition to be, you know, Christian.

God's immaterial corpse is being danced upon by ends-justify-the-means theocracy.

Pete Buttigieg is a much better Christian, acting through works rather than stupid faith alone, than Mike Pence.

Liberal atheist lesbians are the moral center of America.

It's amazing that Christian conservatives think they're losing the "Culture War" considering they made it up, they're the only ones fighting it, and their liberal enemies are not so much corrupting, demonic servants of Satan as just normal people unafraid of multiculturalism who wish conservatives would chill out, read a book other than the Bible, and realize that diversity has literally always been America's great historical strength. But instead they're striving to become a Christian branch of the Taliban mandating how everyone gets to live their lives.

Christians literally can't be against admitting refugees. It's everywhere in the Bible.

For too many, religion is a superfluous excuse to insist on being intolerant of people who are just being themselves. Don't be that kind of person.

To the pro-life crowd: in Deuteronomy 28:53 God promises to cause a terrible war that will make everyone eat their own children.

The Bible mandates we should stone Donald Trump several times for his various sins. I'm not saying we should do that, but I'm also not the one claiming I base my life on the Bible.

To all the people who want to force prayer back into schools: making repetitive things be absolutely mandatory typically makes people want to do them much less.

In terms of evolution, maybe we're making life much more complicated than it needs to be. Animals kind of exist because plants basically bred more complex life forms to eat their increasingly bright and tasty seeds and defecate them in other locations. Homo sapiens are extra good at it, and that's why plants, arguably, domesticated us to agriculturally be their slaves. So maybe try to relax, and enjoy existence!

Props to parents who don't force their kids into a religion so that they can decide for themselves what they believe without having nightmares about made up stories of eternal torture take root in their developing toddler minds.

The Tyrant
God does not sanction free and fair elections, He intervenes and cheats, He stuffs the ballot box for Himself, He is demagogic and says He alone can fix this, he smears his competitors and forbids their participation, and demands virginal prima nocta.

Comedy should always aim up, and never worry about aiming too high. All the way up. Because if anyone should ever be able to take a joke, it should be God, being benevolent and all.

Everything finite and mortal is more magnificent than the eternal and immortal. Enjoy the spectacular beauty of temporary life. Even God is watching us glued to His TV binging all our series' episodes, not us watching His.

The modern Jesus confesses to all the crimes of the year at the reception desk of the police station, but the prison wardens want their bonuses, and have state reservations full in the books, so they tell Jesus to go but he won't, and they arrest him for not resisting arrest.

[Source]