Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered The Party by Max Blumenthal, Part I

VOTE AGAINST ELECTION DENIERS!

Where's Dad

If DeLay had not met Republican Representative Frank Wolf during his first year in Congress, he might have remained just another pro-business Republican—perhaps a slightly crankier, more obscure version of Dick Armey. But Wolf, a born-again Christian, hounded DeLay in the hallways of the Capitol, urging him time and again to see the video he said had changed his life—“Where’s Dad?” starring James Dobson. This short film, Wolf told DeLay, had transformed him from a workaholic into a responsible Christian father who opposed abortion and homosexuality almost as fervently as he loved his children. 

Wolf buttonholed fellow Republican members and urged them to see it. He himself watched it repeatedly. Finally, DeLay gave in to Wolf’s beseeching and followed him into a darkened room in the Capitol basement, where Wolf showed him the film. DeLay claimed to be forever altered by “Where’s Dad?” 

When Dobson stared into the camera and sang Harry Chapin’s schmaltzy folk ballad “Cat’s in the Cradle,” DeLay broke down in tears. “I started crying because I had missed my daughter’s whole childhood,” he said. “It was awful. My daughter in third grade asked her mother ‘if somebody adopted Daddy, because he was never around.’” 

The guilt that consumed DeLay became the impetus for his redemption. “Hot Tub Tommy” became submerged in a baptismal pool of born-again righteousness. “It wasn’t just being raised in a dysfunctional family, though,” DeLay reflected in an interview published in Focus on the Family’s political newsletter. “It also led me to Christ, which I am eternally grateful for—and Dr. Dobson had a big part to play in that. 

For the last 20 years I’ve been walking with Christ, and I think as I look back over my life, the Lord has had a major part in developing who Tom DeLay is . . . I’m a different person now.” 

But DeLay’s born-again experience had only transformed his alcoholism into another addiction. “The convert maintains the same addictive thinking as before,” University of Kansas professor of religious studies Robert Minor wrote of alcoholics who trade liquor for evangelical religion. “There’s a similar level of intensity in their dependence upon religion as [in] their dependence upon the previous addiction. And the substitution will remain successful as long as the religion continues to produce a more fulfilling high than the substance or process they abandoned.” 

With his conversion, DeLay gained the loyalty of the evangelical grassroots. Writing in 2001, when DeLay’s influence was at its zenith, Peter Perl observed that “DeLay’s faith has solidified his political base and fundraising with the Christian Coalition and other religious and socially conservative groups. They love him, because DeLay’s America would stop gun control, outlaw abortion, limit the rights of homosexuals, curb contraception, end the constitutional separation of church and state, and adopt the Ten Commandments as guiding principles for public schools.” But the bond between DeLay and the Christian right went beyond politics. DeLay’s evangelical supporters derived profound emotional satisfaction from his reign over the House. He embodied their sensibility, proudly representing the culture of personal crisis that kept the movement knit together. The visceral connection between DeLay and his base lent his leadership style a dynamic quality that few House figures could replicate. 

As DeLay headed into a sea of scandal, the Christian-right leaders who revered him became his enablers. “If we do not see the unconscious suffering of the average automatized person,” Erich Fromm wrote in

Escape from Freedom, “then we fail to see the danger that threatens our culture from its human basis: the readiness to accept any ideology and any leader, if only he promises excitement and offers a political structure and symbols which allegedly give meaning and order to an individual’s life.” With moralists like Dobson by his side, DeLay seemed to believe he was insulated from accountability...

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This book was published in 2009. Had I read it then, I probably would have approached the book routinely. But, because it is now 2022 and much of what is discussed in this book has indeed occurred, I find it impossible NOT to present it to all who are interested. Indeed, if you feel like I do that many should be aware, then this will be the first time, I suggest to anybody that you send the location of this blog article(s) to as many people as you feel could benefit with the answer that so many of us have asked over and over during, especially, the years during the last republican administration...

To prepare as I normally do for nonfiction books, I went out looking for the credentials of the author. And also, a generic definition of the term Gomorrah. I found both in Wikipedia... Since I also found a number of author discussion videos, I believe they will present a sufficient introduction of the young man who was asked to research and write this book, taking time along with his routine journalism duties to do so. In his dedication, he thanked the many who did the considerable research, which is provided as an appendix, to document what was presented in the book. Indeed, checking to ensure he had that available was one of the first things I double-checked as I began to read...

Many of you may recognize that Gomorrah was a town in Biblical history which was destroyed... Here is what has been defined as reasons: pride, fulness of bread, and careless ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination, adultery, lies, and shameless sinning... before Me...

From the standpoint of my profession over the last more than 15 years, it is one of the best, well-written, and well-researched of many of the books I have read, including those I've been reading and sharing with you recently. Indeed it was a bestseller on both the LA Times and NY Times bestsellers lists. I had downloaded the book that inspired the author by psychologist Erich Fromm, with whom I've been acquainted for his works in the past. Indeed, without the correlation and comparative analysis of what was being written by Blumenthal by referring to Fromm" book, I don't think it would have been quite as outstanding...

Because the premise of that book is/was: Fromm analyzed the personality of those "eager to surrender their freedom" via an identification with authoritarian causes and powerful leaders." Please keep that in mind as we proceed with the discussion...

In fact, I want to be very explicit...please consider what has occurred during the pre, during, and post-administration of the former president of the United States... And whether or not, this book gives for you, as it did for me, the how and why all that has occurred has come about!

In the fourth video above, the author talks about how the book opens, dating it back to 1915. Although relevant for the source of money that was soon to be made available, it is when a meeting occurred with Robert Welch who founded the John Birch Society, that a semblance of connection of religion and politics is first noted as the threat of communism took hold in America. Of course, any politician or event that occurred that was not initiated correctly was to be judged as related to communism...

Rushdoony, however, never became a card-carrying Bircher. “Welch always saw things in terms of conspiracy,” he mused, “and I always see things in terms of sin.”

It was the time (in the 1950s and 60s) when Reverend Billy Graham started preaching and traveling across the nation, to packed audiences where he urged that a culture with Christ as the center be our goal. I remember the one visit into our area when I was able to participate in the large community choir that was created from nearby churches... and George Beverly Shea led the singing--what a wonderful music leader!

But Billy Graham did not normally travel except to where huge crowds would be expected and planned for. Still, when I saw that Graham was considered the pastor for high political activities, it made sense. We watched all of the televised programs, of course. For me, Dr. Graham was the last minister in which I was truly able to see the love of God flowing through his words...

In 1973, Rushdoony publised The Institutes of Biblical Law, an eight-hundred-page book in which "Reconstructionism” was defined and painstakingly outlined plans for the church to take over the federal government and “reconstruct” it along biblical lines. According to Frederick Clarkson, a pioneering researcher of the Christian right, “Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’" Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home... The book was not for public consumption, but for the leaders (an elite cadre) of those days to study and regurgitate directions out to the masses...

Let's just say that if you are old enough to know what is meant by "hell-fire and damnation preachers," you'll understand exactly what would be taught and mandated... There were other TV preachers that began to proliferate--Pat Robertson, Falwell, Baker, James Dobson, Oral Roberts, et.al., all of which I was acquainted with, except Dobson.

There was a note that some went to the Oral Roberts university to take a course in speaking in tongues... in a course called, "Evangelicals in Communists countries..." A Personal Note if I may... It has been my experience that if you are given the gift of tongues, it is never taught...it exists through the indwelling Holy Spirit of those who have received it and is not normally initiated by the individual speaking...

The volume of information provided in this book is quite comprehensive, so much so that most readers, like myself, will not recognize many of the names of those involved either in the religious or political arenas. For me, I was certainly surprised that there were so many different agencies, I would call them, which seemed to be administrative in nature. I could be wrong... But certainly there were many involved in each of the groups mentioned, especially as James Dobson came into prominence... and, somehow, with no credentials as a theologian, became a leader, who just might be the authoritarian who reigns behind all that has, is, and will continue to be happening...

For Blumenthal, he believes, as routinely stated, that "a culture of personal crisis" has defined the American "radical right." In a 2009 interview with CNN, he commented: "The GOP has become subsumed by dysfunctional personalities with no capacity for restraining themselves, either from acting out hysterically or from their most devious urges. For these internally conflicted figures, who will continue to produce new and increasingly bizarre scandals, right-wing political crusading is simply a form of self-medication."

Indeed, as readers move forward, they will learn of this individual or that individual--including two serial killers--who have "found God" through their inability to deal with their own personal crisis... 

Consider the fact that Ted Bundy meets with Dobson, confessing his sins and gaining immediately open arms for embracing Jesus as His Savior... Or consider those who are homosexual, who have been told by everybody that what they feel is wrong, so that when they can no longer hide it, and cry out for help, they are immediately forgiven and can do no wrong under God's grace... Or, an alternative is that a man who knows he's homosexual but has turned to God instead of acting out...who is then placed in positions of, sometimes, considerable power, as part of a plan...

Let's stop to think at this point. We just heard the last hearing on the January 6th Insurrection yesterday, where many have already been arrested, have confessed, or shared that they acted on the command of the former president. We've learned that many of those individuals may be police officers, from the military, or our next-door neighbor... And we've been thinking that it was Trump that held so much power...

Or was it? Just as we have all supposed that there were individuals with big money behind all of this, have we ever considered, even as we knew and questioned about the evangelical christians making a deal with Trump that it might be somebody who was much more committed to what was planned than Trump, who is basically so selfish, that he went rogue, just as Hershel Walker did yesterday, flashing a badge during a debate that he was a police officer--and in being called out for not being an officer, continued to lie, as he has done related to the abortions that he paid for, as confirmed even by his son???

Think about it, if you are having a crisis of some sort and you may not even have any way to have family support, and you have somebody listen to your pain, perhaps cry with you, and then hug and welcome you into His family--his family of MILLIONS! Wouldn't that give you the security and feeling of being cared for, even when you are separated from those you've loved and married...

And all you have to do is share your sins, talk about them, not with a pastor, a priest--but with a psychologist who has exactly the words you needed to hear...You're OK NOW... We've got you--God's planning right now to share His Love...

If only you will do this...Announce your christianity over and over...even if you fail in whatever crisis, such as drinking...even then, you are forgiven, But...

We've all heard it on television. I give Trump one credit...he's had so much experience of lying and conning you, that some could easily believe that he really does care... Only thing is, that he never followed through on things like Infrastructure, or education... Instead making deals with authoritarian leaders he wanted to join all over the world...

And, imagine, that no matter what he did, he would still be controlled by the true, highly placed family authority/leader that gives the marching orders...

James Dobson's background is, I think, important. His father was a "fire and brimstone" minister who traveled, bringing people into a frenzy of being born again, while teaching a very limited life of repression of music, or any form of popular culture. While, his mother was physically abusive to her son, often grabbing whatever was near to attack and beat him, with a belt, or shoe... He was most affected, however, by the religion’s concept of crisis and redemption through enforced austerity which formed the basis of his hard-right ideology.

... (studying psychology and pediatrics) his work began to gain some professional notice, Dobson was preoccupied with the tumult outside his window. Sandwiched between Los Angeles’s riot-charred inner city and a college campus roiled by anti-war protests, Dobson seethed and blamed the upheaval on the counterculture and radical politics. Dobson flatly rejected the notion that the residual ravages of Jim Crow, the ever-escalating violence of the Vietnam War, or the resentful style of President Richard Nixon had provoked any of these problems. Instead, he homed in on a scapegoat: Dr. Benjamin Spock, a pediatrician whose perennially best-selling book,   Baby and Child Care, advised parents to treat their children respectfully as individuals...

Before Spock, parents were often encouraged to control their children with threats of violent retribution and physical discipline. This mode of child-rearing was particularly prevalent among white Protestants. 

Prescott Sheldon Bush Jr., the brother of President George H. W. Bush and a patriarch of one of America’s most prominent Republican families, neatly encapsulated the parenting style of his social milieu: “My father was a gentleman and he expected us to be gentlemen,” Bush recalled. “If we acted disrespectfully, if we did not observe the niceties of etiquette, he took us over his knee and whopped us with his belt. He had a strong arm and boy did we feel it.” 

For many new parents of the burgeoning postwar middle class, Spock’s methods seemed a more humane alternative to the stern methods of their own mothers and fathers. What’s more, they worked. Spock’s recommendation that parents pick their children up and comfort them when they cried might seem like conventional wisdom today, but when Baby and Child Care was first published in 1946, it was nothing short of revolutionary. Indeed, Spock’s prescription for kindness incited critics from the start. And when Spock lent his voice to the anti-Vietnam War movement he became a hate figure for the conservative movement. Among the doctor’s most vociferous attackers was Vice President Spiro Agnew, an early and forgotten icon of the New Right who sneered at Spock as “the father of permissiveness.”

Dobson envisioned himself as Spock’s foil. He pecked away at his typewriter, hoping to produce the definitive child-rearing manual for conservative Americans revolted by the “permissive” passion play of the 1960s. Dobson was convinced that if his teachings reached a wide enough audience, they would forge a new generation of loyal counter-revolutionaries that would return America to the golden days of the 1950s—

Shall we acknowledge that he succeeded?

Or shall we consider that this was surely the period that began a movement that has shattered the republican party? And may be getting even worse?

When you consider the year, 2016, in which we saw a man take on the presidency, with the backing of the entire evangelical christian movement, can we not realize that, at that point, a mistake might have been made? For Dobson's guidance to a man who also wanted to be "the authoritarian" of the country, who in making a deal, was not only willing to do the bidding of the Far Right, but also to do more to move toward his own takeover--to take America backward to where the rich had control, where white men were king not only of the family, but also the only ones that were allowed to vote! If voting really was... necessary...

To be Continued...