Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered The Party by Max Blumenthal - Further Consideration Based On Today's Headlines...

 

Over the last year, award-winning journalist and videographer Max Blumenthal has been behind some of the most sensational (and funniest) exposes of Republican machinations. Whether it was his revelation that Sarah Palin was "anointed" by a Kenyan priest famous for casting out witches, or his confronting Republican congressional leaders and John McCain's family at the GOP convention about the party's opposition to sex education (and hence, the rise in teen pregnancies like that of Palin's daughter), or his expose of the eccentric multimillionaire theocrat behind California's Prop 8 anti- gay marriage initiative, Blumenthal has become one of the most important and most constantly cited journalists on how fringe movements are becoming the Republican Party mainstream.

Republican Gomorrah is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal and sordidness from the dark heart of the forces that now have a leash on the party. It shows how those forces are the ones that establishment Republicans-like John McCain-have to bow to if they have any hope of running for President. It shows that Sarah Palin was the logical choice of a party in the control of theocrats. But more that just an expose, Republican Gomorrah shows that many of the movement's leading figures have more in common than just the power they command within conservative ranks. Their personal lives have been stained by crisis and scandal: depression, mental illness, extra-marital affairs, struggles with homosexual urges, heavy medication, addiction to pornography, serial domestic abuse, and even murder. Inspired by the work of psychologists Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right, transforming the nature of the Republican Party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics.--Amazon

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Sodom and Gomorrah, Legendary cities of ancient Palestine. According to the biblical book of Genesis, the notorious cities were destroyed by “brimstone and fire” because of their wickedness. The exact nature of the damning wickedness of the cities has been the subject of debate.-- Britannica.com

I wanted to begin sharing this time by beginning with simple facts related to the book and the title. The book obviously caught my attention as I am one who has openly been critical of the actions of this party. This book was written in 2010 and relates to the failed republican presidential race at that time. Upfront, I want to clearly state my belief that if John McCain had been permitted to choose the running mate he wanted, rather than Palin, he just might have had a a better chance in presenting what I would image would have been a much more solid program for his candidacy. And, I believe, be the first time in history that the president and vice-president were from different political parties--what an opportunity that would have been for the nation! The Republican Party would not allow this!

In the chaotic 2008 Republican presidential primary, the Republican base split its vote between Mitt Romney, the economic conservative, and Mike Huckabee, the social conservative, creating space for John McCain, distrusted by all factions, to emerge. McCain wished to have as his running mate an independent-minded politician who could garner votes outside the Republicans’ increasingly narrow sphere of influence. His intention was to name Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who had been the Democratic candidate for vice president in 2000. But the movement rejected his appeal to pragmatism, threatened a full-scale revolt, and demanded to vet his running mate as a condition for support. From the Last Frontier of Alaska, a self-proclaimed “hardcore pro-lifer” and “prayer warrior,” Governor Sarah Palin, was summoned to deliver to McCain the political elements he had once labeled “agents of intolerance.” Through Palin, archetype of the right-wing woman, the movement’s influence over the party reached its zenith. As a direct result, however, the party sank to its nadir, suffering crushing defeats in the presidential and congressional races. Palin’s candidacy mobilized the Christian right elements that McCain alienated, but she repelled independents and moderate Republicans in droves, winnowing away the party’s constituency in every region of the country except the Deep South. Palin fatally tarnished McCain’s image while laying the groundwork for her potential resurrection—and that of the movement—in the presidential contest of 2012. The Christian right reached the mountaintop with the presidency of George W. Bush, shrouding science and reason in the shadow of the cross and the flag. But even at the height of Bush’s glory, in his 2004 campaign, a few isolated moderate Republicans warned that the Republican Party was in danger of collapse. Of course their jeremiads were ignored. That year, Christie Todd Whitman published a book titled It’s My Party Too, decrying the takeover by what she called the “social fundamentalists.” A member of a distinguished and wealthy eastern Republican family, with deep ties to the party, she had been governor of New Jersey and head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Bush, only to quit when fundamentalist ideologues substituted right-wing doctrine for science in its studies. After the 2008 Republican debacle, Whitman pointed out that even though McCain was not considered a champion of the religious right, his percentage of so-called “values voters” increased by 3 percent over Bush’s in 2004. McCain, the last Republican moderate on the national stage, had lost among “moderate voters” by 21 points to Obama. As soon as Obama took office, the movement camped in the wilderness prepared to take political advantage of the worst economic troubles since the Great Depression by injecting a renewed sense of anti-government resentment. As most people agonized and even panicked over the sudden economic collapse, the Christian right’s peddlers of crisis lifted their hands to the heavens. They had a whole new world of trauma to exploit, more desperate and embittered followers to manipulate, and maybe—just maybe—another chance at power. Republican Gomorrah is an intimate portrayal of a political, social, and religious movement defined by an “escape from freedom.” As Erich Fromm explained, those who join the ranks of an authoritarian cause to resolve inner turmoil and self-doubt are always its most fervent, rigidly ideological, and loyal members. They are often its most politically influential members as well. President Eisenhower described the “mental stress and burden” that animates such movements. His admonition to beware the danger posed to democracy by those who seek “freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions” should be as memorable in history as his caution about the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address. The characters I have profiled may not represent a majority in terms of sheer numbers, but through their combined power, they reflect the dominant character of the movement—and, by extension, of the Republican Party they have subsumed. That party has ignored Eisenhower’s warning and realized his darkest fears. Brooklyn, New York

Right from the beginning, as we learn in the Introduction, the intent of the Party was to do what they wanted. While agreeing to have McCain as the President, it was Palin who opened the major event!

Suddenly, the floor of the 2008 Republican National Convention is in rapture, having just heard vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin taunt Barack Obama as an unqualified elitist, assail the liberal media, and bill herself as “an average hockey mom.” The man at the top of the ticket, John McCain, would speak the following night, but Palin, a charismatic culture warrior, was the spark that ignited the party base.

When the chant finally died down, three country music stars stepped to the stage to perform a patriotic musical mash-up. John Rich and Gretchen Wilson stared deeply into one another’s eyes, singing the national anthem, while Cowboy Troy, an African American singer known as the “king of hick-hop,” stood off to the side, reciting lines from the pledge of allegiance. Gales of spontaneous cheers rose from the crowd when Cowboy Troy proclaimed, “One nation under God.” From my position to the immediate left of the stage, standing next to the Pennsylvania delegation, Cowboy Troy was the only African American I could see among a sea of gray hair and white faces. After the pledge of allegiance, as Rich broke into “Raisin’ McCain,” a honky-tonk campaign anthem that extols McCain “goin’ down in Vietnam town,” a handsome middle-aged black man in a suit brushed by me, heading rapidly toward the arena exit. He was Lynn Swann, the Hall of Fame National Football League wide receiver and failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania in 2006. “Mr. Swann, where are the rest of the black people?” I asked him. He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and kept walking. Then, before disappearing into the crowd, he turned and blurted out, “We need to do more.” Earlier that day, I milled around the convention floor and walked the arena hallways, chatting with party leaders and delegates. “These are the real people,” Louisiana GOP chairman Roger Villere told me, echoing an emerging theme of the McCain-Palin campaign. “This is real America.” When I asked Villere the whereabouts of his state’s junior senator, David Vitter, he said he did not know. And when I asked about Vitter’s confession to hiring several high-priced prostitutes, Villere shot back, “David is a moral man, a great senator, and we support him totally.” Vitter, still a religious right favorite, was planning to run for reelection in 2010. Near the press box, I ran into Ralph Reed, a Christian right operative once hailed by Time magazine as “God’s Right Hand.” Reed had harbored presidential ambitions, but his campaign for Georgia lieutenant governor ended in humiliating defeat when his role was disclosed in lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s scheme to trick evangelical leaders into pressuring the Bush administration’s Department of Interior to shut down Indian casinos that Abramoff’s clients considered business competitors. I asked Reed whether he still had a political future. “What do you mean? I never left politics!” he chirped, beaming at me with a pearly smile. Reed and Abramoff’s former friend and ally, ex- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, hosted a private party that evening for Republican bigwigs. DeLay, who stood accused by the Texas attorney general of money laundering, had charged McCain with “betraying” the conservative movement. (One of the DeLay party’s high-profile attendees, Representative John Mica, head-butted an ABC cameraman when a reporter asked him if he was happy to see his disgraced friend.) Then I made my way to the far corner of the convention floor to mingle with the Idaho delegation. I asked delegates where the state’s outgoing senior senator, Larry Craig, was. Craig, rated the third most conservative senator in Congress, had barely eluded criminal charges after soliciting sex with an undercover cop in an airport bathroom stall. “We’d rather not go back and revisit all that,” Governor Jim Risch, running to replace Craig, told me. “I’m really here to talk about our party’s plan for keeping the tax rate low.” From the Idaho delegation, I pushed through a gaggle of reporters and cameramen surrounding the Alaska delegation to meet some of Palin’s constituents. When I approached a young man, the only delegate from the state who appeared to be under the age of fifty, he snapped, “You’re not going to ask about Bristol, are you?” referring to Palin’s pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter, who sat nearby with her fiancé, eighteen-year-old self-proclaimed “fuckin’ redneck” Levi Johnston. I asked about Palin’s support for laws banning abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger. “There’s no reason to kill a baby, whether you consider him unborn or born,” the delegate replied. Another delegate, a middle-aged woman, explained to me how her husband took their two daughters on “dates” to “talk about keeping themselves pure until marriage.” (Two days later, the same woman, dressed in a construction worker’s outfit like one of the Village People, bellowed on the convention floor in favor of offshore drilling: “Drill, baby, drill!”) This was a portrait of the Republican Party fully in the grip of its right wing: almost exclusively white, overwhelmingly evangelical, fixated on abortion, homosexuality, and abstinence education; resentful and angry; and unable to discuss how and why it had become this way. Noticeably absent from the convention were moderate Republicans. Senator Lincoln Chafee, legatee of the moderate Republican tradition in Rhode Island, was defeated in the 2006 midterms, and he was endorsing Obama. The last Republican House member from New England, Representative Chris Shays of Connecticut, would lose his seat in two months. None of the great Republican families of the past, from the Rockefellers to the Eisenhowers, were there either. Both of Ronald Reagan’s natural children, Ron and Patti, endorsed Obama. President Dwight Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Denver just moments before Barack Obama appeared to accept his party’s nomination. How did a party once known for its “big tent” philosophy become a one-ring circus? How did a Republican Party that had dominated American politics for over twenty-five years become so marginalized? During the 1952 presidential campaign, the Republican nominee and former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe Dwight D. Eisenhower silently observed the attacks on the patriotism of a man he knew was a great American, General George C. Marshall, then serving as secretary of state. His assailant was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, as opportunistic and sloppy as he was vicious. Eisenhower seethed while McCarthy smeared Marshall as “a man steeped in falsehood,” who supposedly harbored at least fifty-seven active Communists within the State Department. Eisenhower loathed everything about McCarthy, regarding him as a dangerous and petty demagogue, but he shrank from attacking him or defending Marshall, fearing that McCarthy’s influence among the Republican Party right-wing base might upset his campaign. Only later, when McCarthy initiated a witch hunt of a phantom Communist Fifth Column within the top command of the U.S. Army in 1954, did Eisenhower strike back. He did so by sleight of hand. “I will not get into the gutter with this guy,” he told aides. He instructed his staff to leak damaging information about the senator’s ethical breaches and invoked executive privilege to stifle McCarthy’s request for notes on the president’s meetings with army officers. McCarthy’s show trial quickly degenerated into a farce, leading to his rebuke by the army’s attorney Joseph Welch (“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”) and censure by the Senate for “vulgar and insulting” conduct. Eisenhower had guarded his party against the far right, defended its essentially moderate temper, and ensured the preservation of its national appeal. By the time McCarthy drank himself to death in 1957, what the historian Richard Hofstadter had called “the paranoid style of politics” had spread into new and growing grassroots conservative groups that sought influence within the Republican Party. These groups cohered into the movement that enabled Barry Goldwater to seize the presidential nomination in 1964, would gain genuine power with the administration of President Ronald Reagan, and would reach their apotheosis under President George W. Bush. Eisenhower observed the early development of the modern American right with anxiety. His experience in Europe had taught him that the rise of extreme movements could be explained only by the psychological yearnings and social needs of their supporters. He understood that these movements were not unique to any place or time. Authoritarianism could take root anywhere, even in America. Eisenhower did not believe that an American exceptionalism immunized the country against the spores of extremism. Eisenhower, famous as a golfer and reader of Zane Grey western novels, was criticized for lacking an intellectual framework or even an interest in ideas. But throughout his presidency, Eisenhower clung to a short book that informed his view of the danger of extremist movements. He referred to this book in the first televised presidential press conference ever, distributed it to his friends and top aides, and cited its wisdom to a terminally ill World War II veteran, Robert Biggs, who had written him a letter saying he “felt from your recent speeches the feeling of hedging and a little uncertainty. We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth.” Eisenhower could have tossed Biggs’s missive in the heap of unread letters his secretary discarded each day, or he could have allowed a perfunctory and canned response, but he was eager for an opportunity to expound on his vision of the open society. “I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed,” Eisenhower wrote Biggs on February 10, 1959. “Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life.” The president then opined that free societies do not necessarily perpetuate freedom; many citizens would be far more comfortable under a structure that provides rigid order and certainty about all aspects of life. “The mental stress and burden which this form of government imposes has been particularly well recognized in a little book about which I have spoken on several occasions,” Eisenhower wrote. “It is ‘The True Believer,’ by Eric Hoffer; you might find it of interest. In it, he points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems—freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” Eisenhower’s tone was one of humility and responsibility. He blamed himself for “purely an error of an expression” if his purposes were misunderstood. And he pointed out that fears of national security during the Cold War were distorted and exploited for political advantage. “It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness except as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.” Eisenhower closed his letter praising the dying man for his “fortitude in pondering these problems despite your deep personal adversity.” He made no reference to God. Hoffer seemed the most unlikely of figures to influence the president. A self-educated itinerant worker, Hoffer toiled on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, earning the nickname “the stevedore-philosopher” for the voracious reading and writing he did away from the job. On the docks, Hoffer encountered droves of tramps drifting in search of work. When the Great Depression set in, some of the most bedraggled misfits he knew morphed suddenly into loyal foot soldiers for strikes led by militant longshoreman union leader Harry Bridges and his allies in the Communist Party. At the same time, when Hoffer looked across the ocean to Germany, he saw a revolution led by failed artists and frustrated intellectuals stirring the rabble with dreams of a transcendent dictatorial order. Hoffer’s experiences at this historical fulcrum provided the basis for his seminal work The True Believer, published in 1951. “A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises,” he wrote, “but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence.” The true believer was at his core an ineffectual man with no capacity for self-fulfillment. Only the drama provided by a mass movement gave him purpose. “Faith in a holy cause,” Hoffer wrote, “is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.” Hoffer’s analysis of the political fanatic earned him national cult status, gaining the approval not only of Eisenhower but also of serious intellectuals such as the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Hoffer’s analysis, however, was limited for the same reason it resonated so widely. By positioning himself as a non-ideological voice of the American everyman, the ultimate individual standing alone against a rising tide of extremism, Hoffer conflated the underlying motives of all mass movements together. According to Hoffer, fascists, Communists, black nationalists, fanatical “Mohammedans,” and Southern racists equally shared an extreme sensibility, and therefore he insisted, “All mass movements are interchangeable.” But were they really?

I found myself almost gagging at what I was reading, at least as I saw what was described at the RNC event... Why? It was back in the 1970s, when I got to know David Temple, who was chair of the West Virginia University Department of Political Science at that time. During a discussion about candidates for an upcoming election, Temple was critical of someone--who is no longer important--but, for me, I learned something that day. He said that, if somebody chooses to run for public office, we should expect that individual to be above what the normal individual is about. In character, expertise and experience... Now, my mind reflected on what was happening in this present time when the same party is trying to erase/change the history of America... As recently as this week, one of the candidates for the presidency fumbled, trying to explain away the truth of slavery!

You know folks, I have a hard time understanding the, seemingly, bureaucratic nonsense of the legal system these days. There is only one way to see what is happening in America. First, one party planned for and executed an insurrection against the government of the United States. Anybody who wanted to know about it can see video after video of what happened and, further, the investigation held by Congress in which they verified all that had happened. But that is not enough...

As long as individuals are able to lie, attempt to reframe reality, based upon "Free Speech," then the public is forced to deal with the mountain of lies and disinformation that is spewed by the republican party and, specifically, the former president. Yet, everybody claims that it will have to take the "highest court" to settle things...at the same time that at least two of the Supreme Court Justices are being investigated and have been found to be not following procedure in reporting income (from rich benefactors)! This...is...illogical!

Blumenthal begins his historical analysis by going back to 1915 when a man named Rushdoony entered the clergy as a minister in the ultraconservative Orthodox Presbyterian Church and immediately began mapping out a system to restore purity and order to the fallen world Rushdoony invoked the apostle Paul’s defiance of civil court authority. “Don’t go to the civil courts,” Rushdoony said. “They’re ungodly. Create your own courts...”

Moving on to the 1950s when McCarthy created the "red scare" where politicians in the opposing party were accused of being communists... By 1961, the John Birch Society had taken over parts of the party... using tactics such as "Cells were deployed for acts of harassment and disruption that included sending to members of Congress postcards detailing a supposed Communist plot to erect a “Negro Soviet Republic” in the South, infiltrating ACLU meetings to shout down perceived Communist sympathizers..."

In the 1960s we learn of Francis Schaeffer who realized too late that a monster had been created... His son, Frank Schaeffer, a prolific speaker against the acts of the republicans today, found his father sobbing, a young man openly gay had together with his work converted to Christianity. That man had been murdered by "homophobic thugs." Schaeffer lamented to his son that he wished he had been there and that the man would have been saved from the monsters who hated--hated anybody who was different... hated, rather than loved... as Christ, himself requested that we do as his followers...

As you are seeing, the tone of what was found by the writer is stark, dismal, and certainly not about God's Love... I'll leave you with a quote:

The Politics of Guilt and Pity, in which the theologian mocked wealthy liberals. “The guilty rich will indulge in philanthropy, and the guilty white men will show ‘love’ and ‘concern’ for Negroes and other such persons who are in actuality repulsive and intolerable to them,” Rushdoony wrote. Ahmanson read avidly, as though Rushdoony were describing his own life. Still, Ahmanson did not yet convert to Reconstructionist theology, and he gave no indication that he shared Rushdoony’s racism. But through Rushdoony’s scathing critique of “the guilty rich,” he began to release himself from the burden of responsibility to carry on his father’s legacy. 

The book proceeds on covering many of the issues that have been covered in other books; e.g., the control placed on families by James Dobson and the Family Research Council during the 2007 election... From the point of time first investigated by Blumenthal in 1915, we are forced to watch and wonder what is next as each year the level of fear and violence that is both instigated and then commended moves higher than it has ever been. Blumenthal speaks of one of our most respected presidents, Dwight Eisenhower, who saw what was happening. Even then, sleight-of-hand tactics were used to publicly correct the problem at that time... What happened to the ability to disagree, speak truthfully, negotiate, and then come to a consensus for the good of our country?

Bottom line is the fact that the book is a well-researched documentary regarding the behind the scenes evolution of the Republican Party that has come to use religion and stories from ancient times well before the coming of Christ, as religious people worked behind the scenes to have him killed...

It is not difficult to merge the reported findings from Blumenthal, Shaeffer, or the author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. Each of these individuals see through what is being manipulated by public and religious leaders alike who have one purpose only. The claim is that they want to have religious freedom for Christians??? I already have that as do many others, right? See, the key thing is that they want to, as did those who created The Inquisition hundreds of years ago...and the Crusades even further back... and, of course, the Holocaust, even though that was more of an overt political action as opposed to the previous two. When those who claim to be acting on behalf of God lie, cheat, incite violence, and more...then, we must begin to speak out even more than is being done by writers... We need to share documentation, videos and present the facts, as appropriate. Certainly not in some attempt to force Christianity as a national religion. What we see now happening is no different that what has been tried in the past. It will not succeed... The question is, just how much damage to the faith in Jesus will be done for we who know the Truth, yet see Truth being ignored?

God Bless

Gabby

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

Vote Against Election Deniers 

Who Threaton Constitutional Freedoms!

Note that I did not purchase the book by James Dobson... Excerpt is from Republican Gomorrah...

Dobson’s manual, Dare to Discipline, read like a manifesto for domestic violence when it finally appeared in 1970. He urged parents to beat their young children, preferably with a “neutral object” such as a belt or a rod, lest they turn into drug-addled longhairs. He also advised administering a healthy spanking every now and again. “A little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child,” Dobson wrote. “However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely. After the emotional ventilation, the child will often want to crumple to the breast of his parent, and he should be welcomed with open, warm, loving arms.” For parents struggling with children who refused to cooperate in public, Dobson recommended a slightly less vigorous technique than spanking. “There is a muscle, lying snuggly against the base of the neck [and] whenfirmly squeezed, it sends little messengers to the brain saying, ‘This hurts; avoid recurrence at all costs.’” Dobson instructed his readers to firmly pinch the necks not only of their own sons and daughters, but of the inadequately disciplined children of complete strangers as well. “It can be utilized in countless situations where face-to-face confrontations occur between child and adult,” Dobson said of his technique. To reinforce his advice, Dobson offered an anecdote that read as though it were lifted from the script of Dirty Harry (in which he used his strength to overpower a young teen who was attacking an older man.) 

When Dobson updated his child-rearing advice in his 1992 manual The Strong-Willed Child, he extended his advocacy of corporal punishment to unruly household pets.

To Dobson, children were to be treated no differently than dogs. Both were preternaturally prone to rebellion, so both should be “crushed” with violent force.

By about this time, I felt sick to my stomach as I soon began to realize that this man was instigating violence within the home and without...in order to respond to authority/orders... And that he used the organization he led to send out letters that "told his family" how to vote... The story continued that this was about the time of the Kent State murders and a group of hard-hat rioters started a murderous riot which was later learned to be instigated by Nixon's special counsel, Colson...

Can we make a firm hypothesis that between 1970 and and around 2000, the indoctrination of violence rather than love to train our children had been firmly implemented in many homes across America. 

By the summer of 1973, Colson was preparing for his trial for obstruction of justice. With the prosecution preparing its case against him and the press corps homing in on his role in the Watergate break-in, Colson knelt on the floor with his friend Raytheon CEO Tom Phillips. While Colson fought back tears in an embarrassed state of silence, Phillips prayed for his soul. Driving through Washington afterward, Colson suddenly began to cry “tears of release.” 

“I repeated over and over the words, Take me . . . ” Colson wrote in his best-selling memoir, Born Again. “Something inside me was urging me to surrender.” Soon after, Colson sought out Dobson and Francis Schaeffer as prayer partners. When Colson finally came to Jesus, he became America’s best-known born-again Christian, lending exposure to a cultural phenomenon erupting below the radar of the mainstream press and secular America. In the Washington Post, columnist Nicholas Von Hoffman mocked his conversion as a cynical ploy, panning it as “a socially approved way of having a nervous breakdown.” While Colson appeared to remove himself from politics, he quietly planned a strategy to regain his former influence...

Of course, Colson may have indeed been changed... but he also then moved to regain his former influence and power... And, Colson went on to work within prisons for reform, based upon some promised instantaneous miracle... and his scifi book Gideon's Torch seens little more than a preliminary conceptual planning for the January 6th attack. Not surprisingly, Gideon’s Torch became a recruiting tool for those wishing to realize its fictional narrative. It has been excerpted at length on the website of the "Army of God," a radical anti-abortion group responsible for the killing and bombing of abortion providers. 

When Dobson first entered public life, his understanding of politics was amateur at best. Colson became his counsel, providing him with high-level Republican contacts and help devising a strategy to transform his growing flock into an influential political bloc. Colson could never have fulfilled the strategy on his own. Indeed, no figure in the burgeoning evangelical movement shared Dobson’s psychological understanding of his audience on an intimate level. Only Dobson recognized events such as the hard-hat riot as integral parts of a gathering backlash against liberalism. His advocacy of corporal punishment was carefully intended to channel the violent backlash in the streets into a coherent grassroots movement with himself as its guru. Dobson’s teachings resonated on a profound level with the backlashers. By 1976, Dare to Discipline had been reprinted eighteen times and sold over a million copies. His success propelled him into the rapidly expanding evangelical broadcast industry. Dobson’s new radio show and ministry, "Focus on the Family," became immensely popular as well. Now, the followers eager to implement his harsh methods had grown into a belt-wielding army of millions. Corporal punishment was back with a vengeance. 

Philip Greven, a professor of history at Rutgers University and a leading expert on Protestant religious thought, is one of the few researchers of American conservatism who has recognized the impact of corporal punishment on the sensibility of movement members. In his incisive book Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse, Greven analyzed Dare to Discipline in detail, concluding that Dobson’s violent child-rearing methods served an underlying purpose, producing droves of activists embarked on an authoritarian mission. “The persistent ‘conservatism’ of American politics and society is rooted in large part in the physical violence done to children,” Greven wrote. “The roots of this persistent tilt towards hierarchy, enforced order, and absolute authority—so evident in Germany earlier in this century and in the radical right in America today—are always traceable to aggression against children’s wills and bodies, to the pain and the suffering they experience long before they, as adults, confront the complex issues of the polity, the society, and the world.”

While Dobson worked with the psychological issues of aggression and more, he twisted it into a period of "purity" during which any individual must reveal their deepest darkest secrets before they could become a "member" of his family... The problem with this was, of course, that there is a difficult, if not an impossible issue with both allowing violence to be the controlling factor while at the same time demanding a level of purity and submission to a dominant... Certainly, this was never what Jesus had ever asked of us, especially when He gave us Our Free Will...

Yet, the movement grew and grew and a future plan of action was installed:  ... 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.”

And what happens when you have power--the power of a group of people--a cult--who will follow directions from their leader? Well, heading directly into influencing the political structure is a key part of fulfilling their goals, isn't it?

Are you aware that every single president through the election where Obama was elected (and which ended the book time coverage) has been forced to seek top-down authority to even choose what and who would be running with you?

Take for instance John McCain. Many of us would have already heard that he had originally wanted to choose a democratic senator to be his VP... This is true... What you may not know is that the far right only considered him because they forced him to take Palin as his VP running mate... "She" was the one they supported, not one of the greatest republican leaders that we all respected...

And when Obama attempted to meet with Dobson??? He was refused even one meeting... I guess that shows exactly what Dobson was all about...doesn't it? 

Of course, there are many other corrupt activities that were exposed, not the least of which was that there are more divorces and teenage pregnancies in this group than in any other... Frankly, I didn't even want to throw all of that crap into my discussion, but it's there...

I saw enough, like Roger Stone being involved early on in this movement, to form a conclusion that what was being written had a basis for exactly what is now happening... The Shattering of the Republic Party... Surely no longer standing on solid ground...

Full Disclosure: This author has been seen as writing about conspiracy theories and can be possibly discounted by some...

That doesn't bother me. He is writing about authoritarian type regimes and we happen to be one of those at the moment, from the inside...

Nobody can question that the republican party has constantly refused to work to respond to the nation-wide cry for gun control, and in particular the banning of military-style rifles...

Nobody can question that the use of violence, bias, prejudice, and lies has become a part of the people running for political office and that they are extreme in their positions of working to control power...

What I know is this: Jesus gave His Life to ransom all who call upon His name...He died that we might live in love for all...and in love for God...

I did not come to Christ as a matter of personal crisis, but because of what He offered to Us...His Gifts of Love and Truth...

This book gave me the answer to my question of WHY?

I pray that, as God as He promised, those who love him will not be damaged because pride has gone before the fall... 

The constitution speaks for our government.

God Speaks for Love and Truth...

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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...