The “Holier-Than-Thou” Warriors

The Vanity Fair article by Michael Gross keenly illuminates that the fuel powering the Sarah Palin-Glen Beck racist revivalism is Christian Reconstructionism.  Their ceaseless rhetorical fires tan the appallingly pallid faces of their predominantly white audiences as they bask in the reflected glow of the firestorms they create.

Now they think they can score another “win” on the AntiMuslim 9-11 platform (at $225 a pop), but their blind rage is too strong to contain to just one ethnicity.  They couldn’t help but take a “wild ride” back through the Jim Crow era. While on their rose colored ride along Route 66, a sheriff in Arizona yelled “Remember the Alamo”, so they’ve added a good dose of Latino/Mexican slander to their sermons.

The growing percentage of Christians in America are Latino Catholics and Blacks, demonstrably one of the most outwardly religious folks in the US.   Reconstructionists are a minor subset of Christianity if America.  There’s no argument that the White Nationalist Christian Reconstructionism portion of American Christendom is small. Any honest debate would concentrate on whether it be regarded as a sect or as a cult.  Why we should care?  These irrational and overconfident religiosocial arsonists cannot win enough support for the Presidency.  There aren’t enough of them, no matter how much Fox news tries to pretend otherwise.

We should care because they are irrational and violent.  Many of their prominent organizers have violent, criminal pasts.  They prefer anarchy over democracy and they are heavily armed, which in and of itself is fairly American, but their unquestioning belief that they are God’s warriors is real cause for concern.  There is no sin too great.  No lie too tall.  No line too far to cross that their God will not forgive them in their means-justifies-the-ends rationality.

Enjoy.

Beck and Social Justice

Social justice is dog whistle code for WELFARE in the wingnutosphere.  You know who they think gets all the welfare?  The Black people.  Wingnutospherians hate Black people.  But what about Mormons?

The Mormons have a VERY recent history of being averse to Black folks. The social structures instituted by the Mormons (and cited in this blog) were set up to serve OTHER Mormons.

The Mormon Church was only recently forced, through the microscope of bad public relations, to soften their stance against Black people.

It was part of their CORE FOUNDING BELIEF that black people were inferior. It is my understanding that the recent movement toward race normalization within their church began somewhere in the 1970’s. Beck would have seen this “black infiltration” first hand, in his youth. It obviously scarred him in ways we are all witnessing today.

There’s no need to imagine how Mormons react when top church authority tries to tamper with original Mormon doctrine. Just look at polygamy as an example. It’s been officially outlawed for something like 100 years. Somehow it’s still prolific (and scandalous) enough to attract prime-time drama treatment.

With that in mind, the ‘social justice’ that Beck is upset about may just be that which is being implemented in his own faith. Like the “fundamentalist” Mormon polygamists of our era, Beck is merely positioning himself as a “fundamentalist” Mormon racist.

FWIW, if he was brought up to believe the Mormon version of religious fairy tales, should we hold him as accountable for his racism as if he had adopted the faith at a later time? I don’t know his bio enough to say, but I’ll speculate his peculiar Mormon upbringing is responsible for his being able to rationalize the Mormon heritage of social justice was never meant to be extended outside the Mormon circle.

Generally speaking, the Mormons have shown themselves to be hideous neighbors. Historically, it’s why they ended up out in the middle of the freakin’ desert to begin with. They got chased out of nearly everywhere (see Mormon Trail) because they were easily identifiable as kooks back ‘in the good old days’.

The details of the time they spent in Missouri is particularly supportive of my position on this.

I’ll admit it was probably easier to sort out the kooks back then. Harder to distinguish nowadays, what with admitted torturers and their extended family being lauded on TV nearly every Sunday morning while the truly God-fearing people are all at church.
In public the Mormons are forced to condemn Beck.  In private, like the Jim Crow, post-civil war KKK leader/town sheriff, he’s their hero.

Enjoy.