Posts Tagged → cult
My body, my….self…?
My sense is that abortion was the issue of this week’s mid-term election. After all, all of the digital online advertising I received about Fetterman, Shapiro, and Mastriano was about that one issue. And Democrat Party poll workers confirmed their own belief that abortion would galvanize their voters. It seems to have worked, and fended off what was touted as a “red wave” of conservative response to failed governance in Washington DC.
My mind wanders back to 1972 or 1973, when I was a young kid, but old enough to become self aware. My hippie parents had the Our Bodies, Our Selves book laying out in the living room. When no adults were around I would look at this book and marvel at the array of hairy women parading their naked bodies in it. At an early age, then, I determined that naked woman was good, hairy was not good. One idea that sticks in my mind (having long ago eradicated the book’s “natural” images from my memory banks) is the novel concept that a person’s body is their own.
I think freedom-loving Americans can emphatically agree on this, that a person’s body is their own and nobody else’s. Where Americans diverge from one another is what is our body? Is it just the living, walking adult body, or does that also include young humans growing inside of it?
Reasonable people can and should debate this subject, and if pro-Life advocates want to make headway politically and culturally, then they have got to do a much better job explaining their perspective on when human life begins, why it is sacred, and how abortion-on-demand is not a my body, my self policy issue, but rather an “our bodies intertwined together” humanity issue. They must do a much better job, as this week’s election results demonstrate (assuming no election fraud occurred, which in some states is once again already obvious and in-your-face to the point of training voters to regularly accept it from one political party).
To be fair to the pro-Life anti-abortion voters, advocates, and candidates like Doug Mastriano, a lot of Americans felt like the two-year Covid1984 plandemic was one gigantic official assault on the idea of Our Bodies, Our Selves. A lot of voters this week showed up to vote against the unconstitutional government overreach, official lies, official illegalities, and government personnel self-enrichment that characterized the past two years of Covid1984. They thought other Americans felt the same.
Draconian lockdowns to the point of absurdity (lone sea kayakers being surrounded by heavily armed police boats and arrested for violating a “public health code,” sunbathers sitting totally alone on a beach, and married couples sitting alone in their car at scenic overlooks being similarly mistreated by aggressive police officers etc.), pointless and highly damaging school closures, useless mask requirements, and dangerous fake vaccine requirements that are now yielding an enormous number of vaccine-caused injuries and deaths, all and every aspect of the Covid1984 experience was one huge pile of Our Bodies, Our Selves books being symbolically burned by government staffers and leftist political activists in a joyous ceremony to mark the end of the idea that your body is yours and yours alone, and to emphasize that the government, their government, can do to you whatever it wants whenever it wants.
Conservative voters and candidates mistakenly thought that leftists would be consistent in their body sovereignty thinking, that everyone else felt the same (logically consistent) as conservatives about this disaster, and that they would vote accordingly.
And this is the confusing part of this my body, my self as a public policy issue and debate subject. On the one hand we have a lot of Americans who were and still are being severely damaged by the government’s purposefully bad handling of Covid1984, and they are pushing back. (Despite the Biden DOJ’s designation of them as “domestic terrorists” for merely speaking out in official taxpayer-funded venues.)
And on the other hand we have a lot of Americans who think that not only is the government’s brutal and useless Covid1984 overreach into your body and your body choices great public policy, but that the use of crushing government coercive force to implement it and force you to comply or be destroyed was just great, too. And yet a lot of these same people are the pro abortion Our Bodies, Our Selves believers who were animated enough to show up to vote this week.
This is confusing because it is inconsistent. Choice should be choice…right?
If you spend time reading this blog, then you already know I am not enamored of liberal/ leftist thinking, because I cannot make it make sense. And to be fair, most leftists and liberals I speak with about this are quite honest about it: They don’t care about logic, reason, or being consistent. They want their political issues the way they want them, and to hell with your criticisms.
In a democratic nation and in a Western Civilization based on logic, reason, debate, and persuasion, we have a conundrum here. Americans are talking right past each other, and not just about our bodies being sovereign from outside forces. Americans are failing to communicate with each other on a whole array of political and cultural topics. I am firmly on the side of reason, logic, and reasoned debate being at the center of our governance process, and so I stand firmly with the dreaded “conservatives.”
But I will say this to the conservatives, like governor candidate Doug Mastriano: If you are going to make the elimination or regulation of abortion your main public policy goal, then you had damned well better explain it to the public very carefully, frame it in context of the 2020-2022 Covid1984 government assault on Americans’ bodies, and you had better not do any interviews where snippets of your public statements can be used to paint you into a corner. At least half of America is not able or willing to discuss this subject, and to them only the axe-murdering abortion of a helpless and sacred child is their singular and joyous right; what the government does to their bodies the other 99% of the time is the business of the government and none of their own. They are not thinking clearly about this, and candidates must work hard to connect the abortion dot to the Covid1984 dot for future voters. Or don’t work on it, and shut the hell up about it.
And I will also say this to the liberals/ leftists: Your apparent worshiping of abortion as an act, to the point of killing the living, viable child at birth, makes you look like a primitive bloodthirsty death cult. This is not civilized behavior by people who advocate for myriad other intrusive government policies “if it saves just one child.” So long as you inhabit this childish shadowland of disconnected and strongly contrasting public policies, your fellow Americans will understandably deride you as foolish children who actually hate children.
Does this book also apply to the victims of bad government policies on Covid? If not, then there is no body sovereignty for anyone
Are you in a (political) cult?
Politically active Americans pride themselves on having knowledge and basic principles that drive their political views and commitments. This goes for both left and right and especially the non-devoted “independents.”
But given how extremely out of kilter America’s economic and political landscape is right now (five dollar gasoline and 8.6% inflation by design of the Biden Administration, and lawless FBI thugs illegally performing the old Nazi Gestapo’s political function by arresting innocent political opponents of the Democrat Party), we have to ask if Americans on both the left and the right are politically devoting themselves to a form of cult worship. As in blindly supporting a political party or a political figure, regardless of how far away this devotion takes them from the essential beliefs they once held.
Because I was long ago a Democrat, and I have since fleeing that political party nonetheless long co-mingled with Democrat Party members, I have a base line for comparison, and so I will start here.
I am incredulous at how tenaciously so many Democrat Party members cling to that brand, despite so many widely deviating policy positions pouring out of it. John F. Kennedy, vaunted Democrat Party icon even today, would have zero in common with the Democrat Party of today were he resurrected and inducted back into American politics. Rather, JFK would by today’s standards be a far-right Republican. This is because the Democrat Party has now abandoned every essential principle on which it stood, and has instead embraced and championed every anti-America, anti-child, anti-woman, anti-freedom, racist, Marxist, anti-America policy possible.
Given that the Democrat Party now stands for everything that is the opposite of what it used to stand for, it naturally follows that we ask if those Americans who are nonetheless still devoted to this organization are mentally in a cult. Like, they don’t realize it, and their blind devotion to something so profoundly destructive is an emotional response and not a reasoned response.
Look, if you so closely personally identify with a political organization that has repeatedly and radically changed its policies not just over your lifetime but over the past ten years, so strongly that you take it deeply personally when someone criticizes that organization, then yeah, you have a cult follower mindset. Because you have lost sight of the fact that all organizations are created to implement certain goals, and they are very rarely a personal reflection of you. This particular Democrat Party organization has shown zero fidelity to what it once represented…so how can you continue to so closely identify with it?
So I think the answer is Yes, especially a great many older Democrat Party members today are in fact in a cult mindset. They are emotionally loyal to an organization that is killing their grandkids’ future, and that personal attachment, that emotional way of thinking is why so many older Democrats then become absolutely enraged and incapable of maintaining a calm, logical discussion about policy and politics when their political party is criticized.
No debate is allowed, walls go up, friendships and even family relationships are ended. We all see it. It is tragic. It is unnecessarily destructive, and yet, this cult mindset persists.
Now, let’s look at the political right.
The American right is splintering along several philosophical paths, and it is amazing that the Republican Party has been able to provide a big enough “tent” to house all of these different views.
One path is religious, and not just Christian, but Sikh, Hindu, orthodox Jewish, and probably a few others. These are traditionalists who value family and community structures above all, and who ascribe religion with the capability of holding it all together. The crazier and more stridently anti-religion the Left gets (First Amendment be damned), the more these disparate people find themselves sharing the same fox hole. And based on my own personal experience, there are religious Christians who strongly oppose other religions, or liberal factions of other religions, but who nonetheless find themselves in league with them by necessity or by happenstance. Nothing wrong with that, as America is based on different people with the same shared values.
Another philosophical path on the right is the Small Government/ Big Citizen American. These are people not very religious, but devoted to running their small businesses, caring for their families, enjoying life, planning for their future. They see and reject the Left’s policies targeting everything they have worked for. They are especially at odds with Big Government + Big Tech taking control of their every thought, decision, communication, and bank account, and thereby reducing the citizen to a very small role in what is supposed to be a representative government tailor-made of, by, and FOR the citizen.
Finally, there are the nationalists, for whom a constitutional republic America represents the penultimate in human achievement. Some nationalists may be religious, of course, but there are a lot of proud Americans who rightly worship the American flag’s unique symbolism of freedom, liberty, opportunity.
Into the ointment of these neat little conservative philosophical categories flies the presence of President Trump. Without question there is a well-earned cult of personality surrounding President Trump, to whom myriad supporters often ascribe superhuman powers of discernment and strategery. It is a fact that President Trump saved America from the uniparty in 2016, and probably created a great national revival and awakening by having his re-election stolen in 2020. And so he deserves our adoration and appreciation, even if he isn’t really magic.
However, if there is any cult-like mentality on the right, it is among Trump Faithful who follow his every political endorsement, no matter how poorly reasoned or considered. Trump has made a bunch of frankly bizarre political endorsements around America that has left many of his supporters scratching their heads, like Dr. Oz here in PA and RINO Minority Leader Congressman Kevin McCarthy in California. Quite lovely primary battles are unfolding in Arizona and Nevada, where a couple of Trump’s endorsed GOPe candidates are being strongly rejected by Trump Faithful voters. They say that Trump showed them the way to the promised land, and that he has now has gotten bogged down in politics, which was never his strong hand.
And that right there shows that even among the Trump personality cult following on the right, there is both careful reasoning for why he earns support, and how there is disagreement with him over politics. Americans are understandably drawn to the only truly pro-America and non-political political candidate in many decades, President Donald J. Trump. Even those who openly adore the man also openly disagree with him.
I don’t think there is a political cult on the right. There definitely is one on the left.
Are you one of Biden’s infidel ‘white n!ggers’?
Last week Joe Biden declared conservative, Constitution-believing, religious, patriotic, law-abiding Caucasians to be “domestic terrorists,” and he strongly encouraged Americans to “report” their “radicalized” family, friends, and neighbors to law enforcement.
Just like the illegal ideological purge now happening in the US military, and just like the Communists did in 1940s Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary etc, the Biden Administration now seeks to criminalize otherwise law-abiding, freedom-loving Americans who simply believe differently than the totalitarian communists who stole and are now running the federal government.
Yesterday’s flag-waving American patriot is Joe Biden’s criminal today, an infidel ‘white n1gger’ whose destiny is to be rounded up by lawless law enforcement officers, perhaps re-educated, perhaps executed as an enemy of the state, perhaps lynched in the streets by Biden’s BLM and Antifa paramilitary agents, or perhaps simply jailed forever without any Habeas Corpus rights, as is already happening with way too many non-violent January 6th rally attendees rotting away in Washington DC solitary confinement cells.
Go ahead and doubt this. Go ahead and mock this. I say take a good look at who the Biden Administration is putting into leadership positions, how federal law enforcement agencies have developed a violent, lawless, big government control, anti-America culture, and what those federal employees mean for your everyday, average American citizen who right now thinks things are not really so bad.
Let’s set aside the overtly racist Austen Lloyd, Biden’s Secretary of Defense. Consider instead a person presently being voted on for confirmation to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in the US Senate, David Chipman.
Here is a photo of David Chipman, in 1993, proudly posing all pumped up with machine gun in hand at the smoldering ruins of the Branch Davidians’ compound in Waco, Texas. It’s like a hunting trophy picture. To Chipman’s right is the charred body of one of his victims, mouth agape in screaming agony from being burned alive in the FBI & ATF’s best effort to ‘protect’ the people there by murdering them in cold blood.
Recall that the Branch Davidians were an odd group of cultists living in a quasi compound in Waco Texas. Their leader, David Koresh, was like so many other self-proclaimed cult leaders: A pedophile, a womanizer, a violent abuser, a totalitarian. But for some reason or other, people are attracted to all kinds of cults – The Branch Davidians, the Democrat Party, Black Lives Matter – and so Koresh caught the attention of law enforcement officials. He could have been easily detained by law enforcement agents on any one of his early morning jogs alone on local public roads, but the FBI and the ATF decided it would be much, much more exciting to surround the compound with tanks, helicopters, and heavily armed federal agents like Chipman, and then provoke a violent showdown. And so the violent showdown ensued, and the federal employees blasted, shot at, bombarded, and set fire to the buildings, thereby burning alive dozens of men, women, and 25 children.
Question one: Why wouldn’t an American shoot back at rogue government thugs violently and illegally attacking not just your wacko leader dude, David Koresh, but also everyone else around him, including his children? No, the FBI and the ATF had no good cause for what happened at Waco in 1993. They could have handled it other ways. I mean, do the local police blow up, set fire to, and bulldoze a bank just because bank robbers are holed up in it? (The correct answer is No, they don’t; they find peaceful or non-fatal means to de-escalate the situation, take the robbers into custody, and try them in court). Similar to 1993’s Ruby Ridge and Waco murders, the FBI is now violently rounding up American political dissidents and jailing them, charging them with the most ludicrous phony crimes imaginable, although their biggest crime is engaging in ‘thought crime’. That is, not being a sheep and not supporting the destruction of American freedoms by big government control.
Question Two: What kind of federal employee poses all pumped up with guns next to the charred human remains of one of his victims? How do other federal employees like FBI and ATF agents view American citizens? Are we trophy animals they enjoy hunting? The workforce culture at the FBI, ATF, DHS, and DOJ are all now completely at odds with the basic lifestyle of most law-abiding Americans. These alphabet agencies are now staffed by and run by people who are literally at war with Americans who value their freedoms.
Remember how our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were court martialed for posing with captives and dead bodies on the battlefield? Well, apparently it’s ok for American civilian “law enforcement” personnel like Chipman to pose with the bodies of dead American citizens who have just been murdered by said federal employees for the crime of wanting to be left alone.
Former federal agent David Chipman is now a paid professional gun control activist, who believes American citizens should not own guns, regardless of what the Second Amendment or the US Supreme Court says. If Chipman becomes the head of the ATF, he could easily have a whole bunch more Waco-style events across America, as he hunts down his undesirables. Maybe he will even go home by home. After all, Biden made it clear last week that conservative Caucasians are now “domestic terrorists,” and no one thinks terrorists have rights, right?
People like Chipman will be bringing the illegal, unconstitutional violent fight to your home, your hunting club, your VFW. You could be the next iteration of that smoldering hunk of ruined human flesh Chipman is proudly posing with.
And why not? You have been designated by the President of the United States to be a disposable infidel, a ‘white n1gger’ unworthy of Constitutional rights or protections, and subject to a totalitarian government over-reach that has only just begun. And you thought America was too big to fail!
Is Chipman really, really intense? Or crazy? Should crazy people be put in charge of armed forces?
Agent David Chipman proudly posing with a ‘war trophy’, the charred corpse of one of his victims.
One of Agent Chipman’s victims, mouth agape in agony from being burned alive. Murdered by rogue federal employees.
The Mount Carmel kook compound on fire from ATF and FBI bombs
You call this global warming?
Not only is the northern hemisphere in a deep freeze, a bunch of “climate change scientists” looking for evidence to support their religion … Oops … I mean their theory, got frozen in the Antarctic ice. Their ship is immobilized because so much ice is not only not melting, but actually increasing. Rescue ships also got frozen.
Members of the crew said it was the most ice they’d seen in years.
Guess what? Planet Earth is a dynamic place, with dynamic weather patterns and a multitude of factors simultaneously influencing climate.
Trying to ascribe cause-and-effect to these factors, or even worse, claiming to know what’s really happening with all these factors, is not science.
It’s politics, for sure. We know how clean that is.
Its adherents behave as though they’re in a cult, or at least in some charismatic religion.
Too many environmental groups use crisis to whip up support for their causes and to fund raise. Climate change appears to be one more scare tactic. The evidence just isn’t there to support the claims. Today’s zero temperature is classic.
But if you want to talk about overfishing the oceans, loss of farmland, loss of critical wildlife habitat, good wildlife management, why then reasonable people are interested.
In the mean time, I’m shoveling loads of carbon…oops, sorry, I mean firewood, into our wood stove as we trade yesterday’s carbon for today’s heat. Seems like a good and sustainable trade to me.