jcsbimp01 | Entries tagged with politics

"Manipulation in the name of religion" is a matter of great concern to me, particularly as it relates to the Radical Right and to Trumpism, but it is also a subject I need to define precisely before I can talk rightly about it. It is an odd concept, I think, to people who do not profess or follow any particular faith or spiritual practice. When we consider that religion deals primarily with matters of faith, morality, or spirit, rather than observable, demonstrable principles and even the thought processes associated with reason and deduction, it is curious in a way to make a claim that the adherents of this or that faith or practice have been manipulated. "Well yes," a skeptic might say, "they've been manipulated into believing something not provable in the first place!" So any assertion that some religious practitioners/ believers are more manipulated than others, or that a particular denomination or type of religious person might be more susceptible to manipulation, might require distinguishing further the particular manipulation to which it refers.

In the case of Evangelical Trumpism, this distinction is fairly clear in my mind: The Protestant Christian tradition does not by definition make assertions that are provably not so. Or at least, the claims it makes and the values it teaches are not centered on objectively disputable claims. Yes, historic and scientific scholarship can find many faults in fact with the millennia-old observations of both Old and New Testament sacred texts. But I am not talking about these kinds of factual disputations. What I call manipulation, and its basis in asserting that which is not so, is willful misrepresentation by Evangelical Protestant leaders of what Biblical texts essentially mean, and what their stated principles imply for moral growth and ethical behavior, including how they do interact with bodies of objectively established knowledge.

The sense the Christian church has as a whole of how to reconcile ancient Biblical ideas and notions with modern scientific discovery and historical scholarship is a sense of the need to reconcile what we once believed with what we now know, or feel confident in accepting as fact. In contrast to this, the Evangelical schools of Christian thought that I call manipulative repeatedly doubt, question, and deny many of the discoveries of scientists and historians, even flatly rejecting the intellectual reasoning processes that support much modern thought and objective observation. Leaders of these religious groups consider the newer, more objectively established findings to be symptoms of evil, heathen, or politically biased indoctrination of society: itself a form of manipulation. At least, that is what appears on the surface to motivate what and how they teach/preach.

But we can dig deeper in searching out why certain sects do this, and I think I have discovered some plausible motivations. As with many other problems of modern societies and reasons for manipulating or deceiving their members, one can find some answers initially by Following The Money.

When we examine the religious movements in American Evangelical Christianity that most visibly dovetailed their doctrine and societal interaction with GOP political tenets, particularly those of the Radical Right and the "Moral Majority," we see a set of beliefs and practices that put great stock in "traditional American values" and a love of God and Country in harmony with this. The sacredness of the birth process, of traditional marriage and gender roles, and of keeping oneself "unstained by the world" are central to this. The "other" is seen as a threat, and the religion-politics divide does not keep many or most of them from seeing America as a Christian Nation, one that should be kept so.

But what do we not see as guidelines for ethical behavior and moral character in those churches' teachings? For one example, their aforementioned scorn of science and intellectualism rejects new scientific information about what racial differences genuinely are, how industrialization and its resultant pollution threaten our planet, what are the biological forces behind gender identity and sexuality, and how old the Earth and the Universe are, as well as historical information on how human society began, how religion developed, and what were the forces behind war, conquest, and enslavement of human beings by other human beings.

What are the reasons for Christian churches to ignore or shun these matters, wrapped up as they are in concepts of right and wrong arguably as important as an embryo's right to life, the sacredness of marriage, or the need to have a government explicitly based on Christian principles? An answer may be found in identifying who might be threatened by an evolving moral sense with a greater knowledge of science, history, and the interconnectedness and diversity that benefit all of humanity.

Who might be threatened? People and organizations built to profit from traditional knowledge and values are endangered, in their view, from challenging those traditions. Dig deeper. Certain values held in certain ways by the populace as a whole benefit certain people and organizations, and they rise to the top in terms of wealth and power. Those who benefit in tangible ways from society's movements want to keep benefiting, and those with enough wealth and power have, through that wealth and power, the means to satisfy that want. But new ideas and sensibilities, manifest in America by evolving notions of equality, diversity, and interconnectedness, along with greater knowledge of what benefits and harms life on Planet Earth, threaten many established values that profited the White Male Landowners (and slave owners) of past centuries, that justified the exile and genocide of Native tribes in the name of our "Manifest Destiny," and that protect the coffers of today's corporate heads, industrialists, and investment bankers.

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi has shown how racist ideas took root when planted by preachers and pundits funded by the shrewd and powerful beneficiaries of the spread of such ideas: the captains of industry and empire. I believe it is the ideological descendants, if not many of the financial heirs, to that industrial, imperial wealth and power, that have more than enough motive and means to manipulate millions of gullible religious minds in America today, in the Twenty-First Century, just as they did in our centuries past. And the damage done by these same shrewd and powerful becoming overconfident and advancing what became the Trumpist agenda, based quite predictably in racism, anti-intellectualism, sexism, and anti-environmentalism, can only disappear if we wake up from our gullibility and work together to fight forces that try to manipulate the faithful by indoctrinating them in what is demonstrably not so.

We had a Black President for eight years and we dared to be outraged when Congress obstructed and stonewalled him, including his well-thought-out Supreme Court nominee, and his health care plan that would have been EVEN BETTER had it not met all that obstruction. We dared to bristle when Fox News and the evangelical community baselessly smeared him and his wife and family and his Woman Secretary of State, for eight years. We called you out when you used derogatory rhetoric against him on social media, and we sure as HELL didn't like that you promoted a lying, cheating reality-TV star with outlandish birtherism theories as being a better man than he is. Yes, we'd groan when your manipulated masses infiltrated the more gullible members of our families, so that we got hundreds of chain e-mails promoting the most ridiculous anti-Obama and anti-Clinton theories and smear memes, just like clockwork.

So yeah, I get it that the Good Ol' Boys are sorta kinda losing their minds right about now.

But get this: We don't want those particular Good Ol' Boys running things any more. We tried Manifest Destiny and, now, #MAGAfestDestiny, and it craps on us just as it was advertised to crap on all those other people we wanted to exploit: the worst White Male being better than the best non-White-Male and all that. Or stir Evangelical Christian into that discriminatory mix, too. Same thing, bigotry promoting ideologies of inequality.

Bad deeds we've been doing for over two centuries, under the puppet-string control of plutocrats and oligarchs guarding their hoards, are still bad deeds - maybe even VERY, INEXCUSABLY bad deeds.

It's way past time for change. Even the Earth's environment is crying out that our efforts at true, compassionate progress have been too late. And y'all bigoted Radical Right lardbutts have been in the way.

Move. I understand a Space Force is being assembled. Maybe they can ship y'all off somewhere so you can enjoy your implicit race/gender/ideological superiority unhampered by the likes of us progressive snowflakes. Good luck with that - I understand you pissed off scientists with your manipulated gullibility, too.

[from a lengthy Twitter thread I just posted]

Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry (@Perry4Congress) has talked to @politico about government employees and the threat of a furlough. Among the statements he made are ones expressing skepticism at Federal government employees living paycheck to paycheck. Let's talk.

Some of his statements to @sarahnferris, as reported on http://msn.com : "Who's living that they're not going to make it to the next paycheck?" he asked Politico reporter Sarah Ferris. "...The government's not immune to these things," he added.

First of all, I want to thank @Perry4Congress for at least recognizing that the government and Federal employees are not immune from harm caused by government shutdowns & furloughs such as @realDonaldTrump is causing - and specifically owning despite backtracking - over borders.

The madman and frequent absolver of Russia's and Saudi Arabia's crimes, the traitor who ascended to office with Putin's help (Yes, I am an #AntiTrumpActivist), is really screwing us over, and what he's potentially doing to Federal employees betrays their trust.

Defending his policies does not suit you well, and what you say about Federal workers does not add up. From http://msn.com : "A 2017 survey found that 78 percent of full-time workers live paycheck to paycheck [...] There was no differentiation for federal employees."

Let me be clearer and more personal: I worked for @DeptofDefense from 1979 to 2012. Over a decade and a half before I retired from the Agency that employed me, I changed career fields to better motivate myself. It was very effective in every way except pay.

Although I was ten times the worker I had been, I saw no "promotion" (grade-level pay raise) for the last twenty years of my Federal employment. And yes, that makes a difference now. I retired as Grade 13.

I watched sycophants and people who wanted to run the Agency like a business shoot up the career ladder. I heard frequent stories, and saw evidence, that kissing @$$ was the best way to advance. This was under many administrations, and both majority parties.

When I retired, my income dropped down from over $100K a year to $60K. I moved to Georgia for affordability reasons, to come back home, and so that my wife, who had been a Registered Nurse, could help take care of my mother, who passed away in 2014.

I had been told that making the career change that I did - despite it being the best work-related move I've ever made - would hurt me when "promotion time" came.

My last boss was competing against me for the same promotion. I had been reorganized yet again out of more meaningful work. She did not have to review my promotion folder, but she chose to give it a thumbs down before handing it up the chain.

She got that promotion. My improving my abilities as a government employee had failed to compensate me for it, and YES, MY FAMILY AND I NOW DO LIVE PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK, thankful for a few credit cards to help with that.

(The bureaus can clearly see it's inadvisable to loan us more right now.) My wife thankfully - almost miraculously - found me a job working as a tenor section leader in a church that pays me $45 per visit. That has made Christmas gifts possible this year.

I know that if I were of a different race, or an immigrant, there is a high probability my plight would be made more difficult by that, under the current majority party and executive branch. But I also know that what you have said, @Perry4Congress, is inaccurate.

We have children with children of their own, struggling with student loans and other debt circumstances. My having been a Federal worker is not much help to them. And I don't think I am a particularly exceptional case.

Please try to see some of the viewpoints of why the current administration in Washington DC, and what the @GOP have let themselves become, are hurting us badly. Please don't misrepresent the plight of, I think, many Federal employees to show your loyalties to a corrupted party.

"How well supported your position is by objective reason" is not a scalar measure. How real is it? Such can be asked of a great many ideas by people who need to know, but the answer is tricky. And if there are positions whose supporters know they have less basis in evidence, their promoters and supporters are probably quite thankful such a scalar measure does not exist.

However, supporting an argument with evidence is certainly a process on which objective discovery and logical reason depend for their validity. It brings methods of science to applications in ordinary life. Arguments of suitability for given purposes establish ways to be practical and efficient in our choices. Correctness in analysis of these arguments should be very helpful, and thus we can note with interest where, when, and why such analysis fails to help more.

In what ways do virtue and suitability actually exist and lend themselves to objective measure?

Why is it so hard to determine "objectively better" even (or perhaps especially) when it is important that we, individually or collectively, do so? Putting it plainly, the marketplace of ideas is still a marketplace. And the marketplace of anything is competitive, even clamorous, since a good market for your product is something to be desired greatly: a source of potential profit, power, and prestige. Winning friends and influencing people is always more attractive than simply demonstrating qualities - and exposing deficiencies - accurately.

Being able to determine that one brand of automobile stands demonstrably head-and-shoulders above all others, while another brand is worse in all measurable ways, this would be a wonderful ability to have and to use and disseminate to all who wish to acquire in the marketplace, but it would be much less wonderful for the makers of the worse cars. Imagine if those worse cars had, nonetheless, still somehow become very popular. The sellers in the marketplace can be quite clever creatures, after all. There would be a large amount of business and a large number of jobs to be lost if the objective truth could be demonstrated by reasoned argument and gathered evidence: if you could simply convince everyone of those demonstrable facts.

Now think of political parties and movements, and the principles and platforms on which they are based, particularly their potential for governing well or poorly. Certainly, there are points of view that make this a trickier set of qualitative measurements than an automobile's virtues and vices. And perhaps in cars and politics and life itself, the marketplace idea means that there are many virtues of a particular brand of product, or a particular party, by which it can redeem itself even as it falls flat in other ways. Progress, after all, can be seen as destructive of the old even as it is constructive of something new. Likewise, conservation of something can preserve its desired worth but also can ignore the constructive potential for change, for knowing if something is more constructive or worthwhile.

But in politics, as well as advertising, does this lead to confusion rather than clarity? Is the practice of everybody giving the best sales pitch they know how - popularization and effective marketing - actually disguising the fact that sometimes, somehow, products - including political parties and movements - can actually rise to such a high level of quality that one could say with correctness they are better than the others, or fall so low that they are objectively, demonstrably worse?

When you're a buyer in the marketplace, you cannot reasonably hope not to have your viewpoint manipulated by someone motivated to sell you a product, above and beyond a dispassionate display of evidence of the actual merit of the product. In fact, if someone standing in that marketplace was correcting everyone's sales pitches with actual facts and evidence, acting as a sort of a "Consumer Reports" whistleblower daring, unlike that reputable publication, to intervene actively in the sales process, they would be an undesired troublemaker the likes of which even the most seedy dive bars have never seen.

This is why I have never had an aptitude - or appetite - for sales.

This is also why "status quo" so often has translated to "the mess we're in."

1) To the ambitious in industry, business, religion, and politics: We know sometimes your leaders work together to manipulate the rest of us. it has happened since before this country was a country. You use broadcast and published media, entertainment, commercial, & journalistic.

2) @GOP employs such manipulation strongly. To a lesser extent, but still fairly significantly, so does @DNC. @FoxNews uses such tactics & are above-board about their desire to counter "liberal bias." @CNN, @MSNBC, others go to that well, but ostensibly in a different direction.

3) Televised evangelism has, to a great extent, jumped onto this lucrative bandwagon. They were distorting religion's message for profiteering purposes already, but now evangelical avenues like @LibertyU, @700club, and @TBN say they want to make us a Christian nation.

4) What they really want is to continue exerting power, like all of these other organizations, to make the American public do their bidding and to keep the American public from threatening the financial and power base of these super-achievers, these masters of manipulation.

5) We have had pockets of humanity, people working in all of these areas - religion, business, politics, broadcasting - who have seen the danger and have spoken out against it. I have watched as your big corporate broadcasting machine smiled at such and gave a passing nod.

6) You then continued to manipulate BECAUSE YOU CAN, because it works for you, and because you adhere to a maxim stated humorously by W.C. Fields long ago: "It is morally wrong to let a sucker keep his money." Apparently, letting the gullible keep their government is wrong, too.

7) We don't pretend democracy can change this for certain. We don't pretend that ties with what civilized countries (like we once thought we were) call international organized crime will be broken just because we point them out. We're not even sure corruption can be voted out.

8) With law enforcement, governmental, and industry leaders benefiting financially from, if not also actually intimidated & threatened by, such a sinister but well established system, such a dynasty of manipulative expertise, such a social straitjacket on us all, what can we do?

9) We the People have been lulled to sleep by you too long. Even waking up is not enough. Even demonstrating is not enough. You catch us and soothe us again with TV, with social media, with a nice relaxing church service at the end of the week.

10) It's an uphill battle nobody really in power wants us, The People, to win. But perhaps the Founding Fathers did. Perhaps, to some extent, despite buying themselves into your insidious message in many shameful ways, they saw a better world.

11) Know this: We will fight to get that better world established, finally, for our children, and our children's children, and for the strangers' children whoever they are, even if it kills us. Because we know how you work, and how things go: It probably will.

Manipulate the gullible.

This seemed always and openly a tactic of some businessmen and their organizations. Some even became famous for it. And we laugh at it.

Now I see that it's emerging just how coordinated, how intentional, how clever, and how extensive this deliberate manipulation has been. It is not nearly so funny in the age of Putin and Trump. For when this kind of business person or organization manipulates a citizenry, both politics and religion get involved, because many lawmakers and preachers have found there is good money to be made, and a secure power base to be established, in manipulation.

For preachers, it's fleecing the flock, even if it is not also misrepresenting the religion. Some would argue it has always been organized religion's secret purpose. That argument, frankly, does not lack credible evidence.

For politicians, it's turning Government by the People into a scrupulously maintained, decades-long scam. For some, it has always been such, and the perpetrators of the scam, and their heirs and sycophants, are not about to stop, the principles of the Founding Fathers be damned.

It is not a tactic, and perhaps never truly has been. It is a strategy.