Monday, March 09, 2009

Sunday Sermon: "Crazy for God"


(big h/t to Heather at Crooks & Liars)

In this remarkable video, "Crazy for God" author Frank Schaeffer breaks down the entire Republican Party in eight minutes.

The son of one of the the founding families of the Religious Conservative movement, I heard him talking several weeks ago on NPR and wanted to roll my windows down and drag people over to my car to hear his unique, insider's revelations about the "hard assed, neo-fascist" Right.

Urge them to take a listen to the words of someone who was at all the secret meetings -- who had the brain caste of the Theocon Right sleeping on his dad's couch -- tell those truths that we on the Left have usually been able to describe only by reverse-engineering: by tracking who was given power on the Right, what they did with that power and what kinds of dog-whistle rhetoric they used when shopping their radically anti-freedom, anti-American agenda to the public.

And that is what is so interesting about Schaeffer's words; that they will not be particularly shocking to the Left or to the hard Right. We both know this shit backwards and forwards -- one side working hard to bring it to the attention of the public, and one side spending billions to hide their real agenda until it is too late.

Who this really fucks up are the the Right's allies in the media: the "both sides are equally wrong" douchebags. The rotely contrary "independent" voter and "objective" journalist whose whole schtick is the lazy, cowardly, lucrative pretense that no matter deeply destructive and insane the Right is shown to be over and over and over and over again, that somehow, some way, the Left Must Always Be equally and oppositely wrong.

To them this is terrifying because it leaves them no out. No "Yeah, but, see, uh, something something Bill Clinton's penis" escape hatch.

It stands then naked before two clearly marked doors, and says "Pick One!".

And for those who grovel at the altar of Reflexive Centrism, there can be no greater nightmare than that.

8 comments:

K said...

I love Frank Schaeffer, I really wanted to buy his book for my dad who is fairly anti Republican and a big fan of your blog.

My favorite thing he points out is that it was only recently that homosexuality was on the radar of religious people at all. Before that, it was just another thing on a list of sins ... not an elevated status as a special sin.

Unknown said...

A most excellent post!

I agree about the both sides thing. Utter nonsense. Even the most far-left recycle nazi is sane when put next to the crazy for Jeebus crowd.

Distributorcap said...

i so wish this could get mass play

Rehctaw said...

None so blind as he who would not see.

Except maybe he who so desperate to believe he holds a superior position willingly swallows obvious bullshit. Recanting when it goes too far nothwithstanding.

As converts go, Shaeffer is near heroic. He comes off as more sincere than the usual 12-steppers. If there wasn't the nagging sensationalism and mercenary leanings of his book tour...

In short, why does HIM saying it make it better than what DFHs have been saying since the RW jihadists crawled out from under their rock?

Would have been so much less complicated if our warnings had been heeded and just maybe we'd be in a better place today.

Amen.

Myrtle June said...

So is this why they cancelled DL?

Frank pretty much nails it for the pubs. Regardless, they begin today witht he Ruh Roh Chorus, from newtie and such..... trying to disavow rush after finally figuring out how really bad that is for them. LOLOLOLOL And rush, stating he wants Obama to "learn new policies"..... I guess like the ones he and the other haters perpetrated on us to get us here. Oh. Yanno, Newtie..... YOU might want to look up "NEW" in the dictionary. Seems to me trotting out the same tired old bullshit doesn't qualify as the "NEW" policies he wants Obama to "learn".

Frank is ON it for the pubs. Small but very vocal and very very hatefully WRONG.

Anonymous said...

Good for him. It takes a lot of guts to make that kind of change. If he makes a lot of money off of his book because of it, so be it.

Blader said...

If he's correct, then it predicts the Republican Party should evaporate almost completely in the 2010 elections.

The existing polling data suggest as much, that the real base is half of the 28% we might have thought a year ago.

Should be interesting to see how these criminals reinvent themselves.

Anonymous said...

So...maybe there's hope for Jonathon Krohn yet.