Thursday, November 26, 2015

BEHIND EVERY CONSERVATIVE POLICY, A BIG LIE

This is where I'm supposed to tell you all the things I'm grateful for, but it just doesn't feel like that kind of year. For instance, here's the guy who's supposedly the sane, rational, moderate alternative to the crazies dominating the Republican presidential race:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says religious believers are called to “ignore” laws that violate their faith.

“In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin -- violate God’s law and sin -- if we’re ordered to stop preaching the Gospel, if we’re ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that,” Rubio said in an interview with CBN on Tuesday.

“So when those two come into conflict, God’s rules always win,” he added.
Do you see what Rubio did there? He's asked about tolerating legal same-sex marriage and he responds by imagining an America in which Christians are "ordered to stop preaching the Gospel" and "ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it." Who's ordering Christians to stop preaching Christianity? Who is even trying to force religious denominations to perform same-sex marriages, any more than we force Catholics to offer church weddings to divorced people?

But if conservatives like Rubio tell themselves these are the real threats, they feel justified in lashing out. They're the victims, based on what they say is being done to them.

There's a huge difference between this and the way blacks in America are treated by police departments and their law-and-order enablers -- black people are actually killed and brutalized by cops on a shockingly routine basis -- but the principle is similar: Again, the response is justified by the false claim that the attackers are the victims. We see this in the case of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald in Chicago:
It was just about a year ago that a city whistleblower came to journalist Jamie Kalven and attorney Craig Futterman out of concern that Laquan McDonald’s shooting a few weeks earlier “wasn’t being vigorously investigated,” as Kalven recalls. The source told them “that there was a video and that it was horrific,” he said....

In February, Kalven obtained a copy of McDonald’s autopsy, which contradicted the official story that McDonald had died of a single gunshot to the chest. In fact, he’d been shot 16 times -- as Van Dyke unloaded his service weapon, execution style -- while McDonald lay on the ground.

The next month, the City Council approved a $5 million settlement with McDonald’s family, whose attorneys had obtained the video. They said it showed McDonald walking away from police at the time of the shooting, contradicting the police story that he was threatening or had “lunged at” cops.
The story that McDonald "lunged at" cops was not just ass-covering -- it reinforces a narrative that enables the police to act with impunity when dealing with young black males. They're feral! They're psychotic! They want to kill cops! We have to do these things!

One policy after another is justified by conservatives with a Big Lie. Syrian refugees are unvettable terrorists. Undocumented Mexican immigrants routinely murder and rape. Black Lives Matter protesters are thugs who want all cops to die and seek a violent race war. And on and on.

Conservatives are always the victims. The peril is always a threat to life and limb, or at least to their mortal souls. So we have to let them do whatever they want in response, right?

10 comments:

Victor said...

"So we have to let them do whatever they want in response, right?"

SATSQ:
HELL YES!!!

Otherwise, we're oppressing them, and their 1st Amendment - among other - rights.
And that leaves them no recourse, but to use their 2nd Amendment Rights - like no liberals have any guns, and can't or won't respond.

When they see themselves as the victims, they don't see themselves as corned rats with overblown imaginations that we see them as.
No.
Instead, they see themselves as Christians in Ancient Rome, where they are the true-believing victims, alone, in (liberal/secular) lion's dens, or facing down armed Heathen gladiators, with the power of Caesar behind them.

They can't have any sympathy for the real victims of a society, because no one is anywhere near as victimized as they currently are.

Oh, for the days when women and the "others" knew their place!
There were no victims then.
People knew where they fit in, and woe be unto those who tried to color outside their lines - especially, "the coloreds" (or, as Trump calls them, "the blacks)!

Jesus, if you really exist, and are our Savior, can't you save us from our American uber-"Christians?"

Ten Bears said...

Thank you Steve, for sparing us the seasonal platitude. Today simply reminds me of white people's callous indifference to the consequence of their actions. And it's not going to take to many more of these back-shooting incidents before they get the race war they want. A war they can't win.

Pragmatic Idealist said...

You slid by the most important implication of Rubio's remarks, that the Constitution is optional and can be ignored by anyone.

K. Chris said...

The first axiom of pols and crats is that they believe nothing. They have no beliefs outside that which serves them.

The second axiom of pols and crats is that all of their actions are on the behalf of power, money, and division. (Division: "Divide and conquer," and "Distract and rule.")

The third axiom of pols and crats is that every utterance of theirs, because of the above two axioms, are lies. They are ALWAYS lying.

Know these axioms, and be wiser in the world.

An American citizen, not US subject.

Unknown said...

This was a great post.

“So when those two come into conflict, God’s rules always win,” [Rubio] added."

W.T.F.?! This pustule is a U.S. Senator, who took an oath to support the Constitution. And here he is telling religious nuts they have a right to ignore it.

With his slimy lies about his parents fleeing Castro (years before Castro came to power) and his equally slimy personal finances and credit card abuse, I suppose I'm not surprised. How typical of today's GOP that he's running for President.

Unknown said...

I made it through the first paragraph with you saying Rubio urged others to ignore laws based on faith and you think this is based on some lie. What about the laws Obama ignores? That's ok to you. I regularly try to read liberal blogs but see just petty hatred and emotion.

Dark Avenger said...

Name the specific laws Obama has broken, Mark E. If you can't you'll be demonstrating the same king of illogic that Rubio has already shown here.

And if Obama has indeed broken any laws, how does it makes sense that therefore others like Rubio can do the same in favor of their religion.

As for petty hatred and emotion, try to leave a compliment to Obama on, say, FreeRepublic(dot)com, or a comment thread at NRO(dot)com. You'll get a lot worse than you see here, and, unlike here, the former will delete your comment as not keeping in the American Spirit they promote over there.

Any questions?

Philo Vaihinger said...

If not preaching were a sin people who don't preach would all be sinners.

And an eventual evolution of America to a point at which refusal to perform same sex marriages would result in loss of tax exemption or other forms of punishment is not unimaginable.

As for God's law trumping human will, that notion has been a feature of orthodox Christianity pretty much forever.

It is intimately related historically to the idea that resistance, rebellion, revolution, and war can all be morally right, natural justice trumping human will.

Ten Bears said...

In Mathew 5:5,6 Jesus admonishes to put it in the closet, to not be like those who love to stand in the churches and on the street corners to be seen proudly proclaiming their piety, they have their reward; go instead into your quiet room, your dark space, and talk to your master who will in the quiet hear you.

Ten Bears said...
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