A Historical Similarity

I have picked up on similarities between the Republican mentality with regard to this political environment and religion in the darkest of ages: pre-Renaissance. I think the similarity is striking and disturbing, in that the motivation, perpetrators, and victims are very similar. The least educated among us are being used to further the agendas of their exploiters, the plutocrats. Like John Stuart Mill said, "Religion is Politics"-- more to the point, each one's ideology ensures the survival of the other's agenda. The lies, absurdities, and appeals to the emotions of people who already feel desperate, powerless, and alienated are how both religion and politics use emotional abuse to manipulate their constituents. The sophistic casuistry of the rhetoric coming from personalities these constituencies wish to trust, want to trust -- actually need to trust to protect their prejudiced worldviews is a form of weaponized cultural conservatism and hate-mongering. But the Republicans of Rome, who prioritized the rule of the republic, as apposed to Greek Democrats who prioritized the will of the people, met their demise through the deluded devotion of Christians, which the Roman Fascists deserved. So, where is the alchemy?

Two human atrocities spanned the last half of the eighteenth and first two thirds of the nineteenth century. The first and worst was capitalism, mischaracterized as an industrial revolution to divert attention away from the horrendous conditions and exploitation of the labor force. This diversion also limited conversations exposing the complicity of plutocrats in government, manufacturing, mercantilism, colonialism, imperialism, and their military's exuberance in ensuring this exploitation and devastation. From this plutocratic profiteering oozed corporatism and criminal construct known as limited liability, so we now have the unbridled exploitation from laissez-faire capitalism and the government sanctioned, militarily enforced indemnity of the exploiters. We can't even fight back without going through the cops and the military. This is why we call it wage-slavery. The second atrocity (yeah, I'm not done yet), was born of the fear of democracy and its expansion into Europe. Conservatives, today, claim that conservatism was a reaction to the French Revolution, or the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, but the evidence,  both then and in retrospect, renders these claims absurd. Conservatism is the ideological maintenance of authoritarian power structures, the status quo of the plutocracy, and the retrogressively manipulative institutions that empower these authoritarian structures through hierarchies. Conservatism conserves the wealth and status of plutocrats.

The oldest of these institutions is religion, particularly monotheistic religions that were and are very useful in instilling loyalty, segregating ideologies, and harnessing the herd mentality into a political power source. Judean hillbillies used the "Moses" contrivances for militarized imperialistic ambitions through the hyperbole of an absolute authority sanctioning their nationalistic agenda. Christianity flipped the script so that nationalistic Judean rebels would surrender like the failed messiah concocted by Roman plutocrats in the New Testament and self-subjugate before an occupying imperialist force, and Islam flipped the script back so as to assert itself against imperialist ambitions from both the East and West.

Capitalism and extreme (extreme in the sense of retrogressive ambition, how primitive their authoritarianism is, and how militantly their propaganda, populism, and brown shirt activism pursues their agenda) conservatism have diverted republicanism from pure nationalism, which is problematic in any context, and redirected their ideological interests to corporatist capitalism and the conservation of extreme biases like racism and its associated xenophobia. Add to this their religio-political socioeconomic chauvinisms--in all its jingoistic, nationalistic, misogynistic, and toxically masculine forms. In short, its called fascism; yeah, fascism to motivate the masses to maximize the profit of their financiers. 

In the current political arena, the total lack of "common sense" (if I may assume we can all agree upon that to which I am referring, though it's not that common), cannot be so dissimilar from the conversations of Constantine's plutocrats, when he was attempting to sell the conversion myth, assuming there's any truth to it at all, or, as is more likely, when Eusebius of Caesarea realized the political advantage of rebuilding Roman unity with the myths of the occupied territories. Isn't the bread of the conspiracy theorist, conformation bias, and a total disregard for the obvious? The infinite ignorance of the racist asshats in this country will spill into the streets with hate, torches, and semi-automatic weapons in reaction to Barack Obama. Haters are going to hate, and the morons in this country are far too stupid to elect someone as excellent as Bernie Sanders.  

There are some who would argue,

"The lies, absurdities, appeals to the emotions of people who already feel alienated ..." Well, I'm sure as hell glad the Democrats would NEVER resort to such things!!

To which I will reply, I agree. Today's Democratic party has been pulled so far to the right by money in politics that the capitalists usually get their way, but the Democrats still try to pull back to the left, or merely act like it. The difference is one party's lies are so blatant that Republicans are known as the Confederate liars party. Racists, try to be cognizant of how many priests have gone to jail for child molestation.  

My aim was not to disparage one party over another, but to highlight the common DNA shared by religious and political motivations. The difference in the parties, in this case, is that Republicans with their Southern Strategy and their racist rightwing misogynistic religionists are connected at the hip and most religious groups are anti-democratic authoritarians as well as anti social justice, anti-choice, and anti-labor, etc. This is not to say Democrats do not try to pull the religious right more to the left, they do, of course. But there will always be fundamentalists authoritarian sheep and wolves using the ideologies for their agendas. Like MLK said, moderates are the worst. The historical evidence is overwhelming. The words right and left, and Republican and Democrat should be changed to conservative and progressive, respectively. All else is a heat shield, a distinction without a difference. The Republicans have become Christian nationalist fascists and should be ostracized as such.

An extreme example is the Nazi party of early 20th century Germany, as well as evidence of the current political misdirection fostered by the tea baggers, their financiers, and supported by repugnant, Republican rhetoric. The main reason, in this country, to hide Hitler's connection with Christians like the Catholic Church, Nazism as a rightwing political system, and Fascism as a rightwing social system lies in its similarity to the current Republican party with its ties to Confederate ideology, the religious right, and corporatism. A pseudo-theocracy with capitalists instead of masturbaters in funny hats. The Nazi party got its start by appealing to the emotional disparity of the poor, uneducated, illiterate, extremely religious German-born labor class by first singling out gays, then illegal immigrants (gypsies), and those all too conspicuous others. Sound familiar? In fact, many Republican Dynasties, most notably the Bushs, supported the Third Reich economically -- the actual meaning of "Daddy War Bucks" lest we forget.

Don't let anyone fool you, the symbiotic relationship between Conservatism and religion is more reciprocal than cooperative. Most people should ask themselves, "What is it, that Conservatives are trying to conserve?" The guesses are very enlightening: a tradition of family values that support patriarchal hierarchy, i.e., white male privilege and capitalism? Yes! The status quo, their power and its source, of course. 

Of course, tradition sounds good until one realizes it will be at the expense of progressive ideas such as civil, human, and equal rights for all beings. Again, who could possibly be against 'family values' -- but who gets to determine those values, or what constitutes a family? Think dog whistle that only a rat would respond to. Allow me to jump to the idea that Republicans are concerned with the economy, bullshit, they only about  the market and capitalism, because the contra position to patriarchy and race are much to obvious - but the person who feels that the Republican talking points about taxes have any validity at all, has no knowledge of US economic history at all. When the stock brokers smile the wage-slaves suffer. What's good for the top 1% is bad for everyone else. Capitalism is exploitation. 

National Debt by President is a graph that clearly shows Republican disregard for the working class by their own arguments. 

All of this is a rebuttal to what I see as the Republican Party's pandering to a religious cult that suppresses the populace with immoral, antiquated superstitions, racism, manipulated emotions, values, and prejudices into wage-slavery and self-subjugation, with the Democrats attempting to pull the moderate just a little more left.

But as far as the lies go, I will refer anyone to a reputable fact checker for the score card on that game. And, to my knowledge, there lies a grand gulf between statistical favoritism and "Death Panels" if that is the gist of your disagreement.

More on these similarities later.  Thanks.