Growing up, I had the opportunity to sit in on more than a few 'polite' dinner conversations among adults. Not having much to say, I tended to listen. And, more often than not, as one topic led to another, as the pace of speech quickened and voices became slightly higher in pitch, that inevitable conversation stopper reared its head. "No religion or politics!" Such things are off limits, you see, and when discussed in 'polite' company, all rationality seems to fly out the window and a battle of wills ensues.
It's too bad, really. Combined, politics and religion are a force to be reckoned with. When discussed openly, rationally and honestly, these two topics have the potential to free us from millennia of lies and illusion. Sadly, when it comes to these realms of 'personal beliefs' and deeply-held convictions, we're stunningly adept at pulling down the shutters of our minds and retreating to the comfort of discussion and debate on the personal lives of our celebrity-gods, the victories of our sports heroes, the latest French fashions and technological gadgetry. And while we're occupied with such titillating distractions, we're robbed blind of everything that truly matters by predators we don't even know exist.
In the last issue of The Dot Connector, we began a short series on these 'forbidden' topics. Ryan Summers compared the Tea Party movement in the US with the early years of the Nazi party in Germany. No doubt many are offended by such a comparison, perhaps thinking it a stretch, a gross exaggeration, or even a defamatory and politically-motivated attack. One reason for such reactions is that the Nazis were exposed after the fact. The Tea Party's just getting started. You see, like the Nazis, Ted Bundy was caught, convicted and executed, his psychopathy exposed for the whole world to see. But if Bundy had never been caught, accusations against him of serial rape and murder would likely have been met with moral indignation (in fact, some had that reaction even after his crimes became public - he was such an upstanding guy in his 'real' life, after all). Those who miss the signs are naturally offended by the statements of those who can see. And for the person making the accusation - the person that can see behind the mask of sanity which others are loathe to admit exists in the first place - the dynamic can be maddening. Where the willfully blind see only image, the discerning see reality. And when the reality isn't pretty, the normal human response is to go back to sleep.
"My husband, an axe murderer? But he treats his kids so well!" "My pastor, a pedophile? Impossible!" "My government killing its own citizens? Where's the proof? I refuse to believe it!"What better place to hide for those who intend harm than behind the security of blind, emotionally-locked belief? That's what the Tea Party has going for it. The reality is, there is no great Muslim conspiracy to take over the world, but there is a 'Christian' one, and they're in a far better position to make their vision come true. That's not to say Christianity is any worse or 'more evil' than Islam. All religions and political ideologies have the potential to be used for such agendas. It's just that Christianity happens to be the default worldview of the current global superpower - its military, movers and shakers. And the Tea Party is just one facet of the current pathocratic, Dominionist agenda.
Enter C Street - It's All in the Family
Shrouded in secrecy - deliberately kept by its members - 'C Street' exploded into the public view with the close succession of three 'sex' scandals involving US politicians Chip Pickering, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford. Until then, little was said about 'the Family' (or 'the Fellowship', after its head organization's title, Fellowship Foundation) in the media. By design. After all, the key to power is influence, and publicity just gets in the way.
C Street, a $1.8 million three story brick mansion in Washington D.C, is on the books as a registered 'church', but really it's more of a rent-free dorm for thrifty politicians who talk about Jesus, pray, receive 'coaching' on their extramarital affairs, and plan how to influence foreign and domestic policies and leaders to align with their Idea - that God rules via his chosen. This nominally Christian group has a goal - "God's government" - and the means to achieve it. It aims to bring world leaders - 'Kings' in biblical gloss - into a "personal relationship with God through Jesus", not down the barrel of a gun, as their mafia-inspired name might suggest, but using a method of subtle influence. They work within the system. Jeff Sharlet, the journalist who brought the story public after living undercover in one of their common houses, writes:
"Throughout its history, the Family ... has built power not through mass movements or unstoppable voter blocs, not by rallying around a singular demagogue, but by working the margins; lining up the back benchers; recruiting men with the kind of influence that doesn't depend on cameras." (C Street, p. 41)According to its leaders, we don't know the half of it, or even a thousandth of it. It is a network of properties, foundations and organizations, and, most well-known, the National Prayer Breakfasts that have popped up in various countries. Some just exist to hold property for parent organizations, while others like Christian Embassy, Ambassadors of Reconciliation Foundation, and International Peace Organization share similar beliefs, cozy relations, and overlapping membership. Properties like Ivanwald (the Family property Sharlet spent time living in undercover) function as communal living arrangements for affluent eighteen-to-thirty-somethings - future leaders who work and play - making connections for their future dealings. Very little in the way of 'religion' actually goes on there, limited to a few minutes' worth of Bible discussion each morning. As for what is known, Sharlet has collected what he could in his two books The Family and C Street. The fact that his research apparently just scratches the surface is a scary thought, indeed.
'New Chosen', Old Agenda
The Family is a case study in the politics of psychopathology, where image and reality come to suggestively disparate odds. Like the psychopath in microcosm, the face it presents to the public hides a dark reality. Seemingly benign words and phrases mask hidden content and contrary meanings, while public utterances mask private agendas. On the surface, its beliefs, aims and methods would appear to provide enough material with which to form a full picture of what it's all about. It is a Christian organization, intent on bringing God to the godless and an understanding of Jesus' message to a society steeped in immorality. It is composed of Christians who work with non-Christians the world over, arms open and accepting. For those who look no deeper, it is at worst a misguided example of religious egotism and fanaticism - Christians who identify too much with their own worldview, and upon seeing the state of the world, wish only to make it better, however misguided their intentions. But to stop there in one's analysis is the danger. It is to accept the mask presented for public consumption in ignorance of its true aims and potential.
The hidden agenda is relatively easy to trace, if one studies history and knows what to look for. It's the same always and everywhere, and it all comes down to the search for contradictions, when actions fail to match words. So, where to start?
The Family's self-professed aim is to serve the poor by influencing the rich and powerful. To bring the world back to Jesus. It might seem naively revolutionary, or even prophetic, at first, but that's part of its charm. Rather than challenge existing political structures, their flaws and systemic corruption, as the biblical prophets might, their position takes for granted the position of those who govern, and the legitimacy of their rule. After all, all authority comes from God (Romans 13: "There is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God."). They just need Jesus to seal the deal, and make them right in God's eyes. But the lack of any real difference between their envisaged rule and the current one (i.e., that of bare-faced psychopathology and its endless pursuit of power and control) belies their good intentions. So does the nature of the support they give and procure.
A glance at their past and present roster of members shows Democrats and Republicans, Catholics and Protestants, as well as a few Nazi sympathizers and Klansmen thrown in for good measure. Its founder, Abraham Vereide, helped the US State Department recruit Nazis experts for conversion to American 'democracy'. Their support and influence of 'key men' has been extended towards rogue regimes like those of Somalia, Haiti, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Let us take just one example of its shady dealings. As a result of Family maneuvering, millions of dollars in military 'aid' were transferred to the government of Sri Lanka to help end the civil war with the Tamil minority. In May of 2009, three hundred thousand or so Tamil civilians gathered at a 'safe zone' - a designated beach - in order to negotiate terms of a peace settlement, at which point the Sri Lankan government opened fire and killed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians. Following the atrocity, several Family-connected congressmen called in the Sri Lankans' debt and sent a letter to that government, not decrying the massacre, but demanding that it block pending legislation that would ban the use of "force, fraud, or allurement" in the religious conversion of Sri Lankan citizens. That's how the Family rolls.
General Suharto, Ferdinand Marcos, David Bahati - these are the 'kings' of this world with whom the Family does its business, in the schizoidal belief that by helping the powerful (i.e., the insane, the murderous, the rapacious), they will help the masses. But, notwithstanding those who profess such an absurd belief, the idea is in fact a front, covering up for something far more foreign to the sensibilities of greater humanity. Doug Coe, de facto leader of the Family during the '60s (the title has since passed to his son, David) is a case in point. Sharlet relates that Coe "used to say that Jesus was not a sissy." (C Street, p. 7) Coe's "disdain for weakness" - that is, 'human compassion' - is on display for all to see in a widely-seen videotape of a sermon in which he exalts the attitude of the Red Guard, who would take an axe even to their own mothers' heads. That's dedication to the cause, in Coe's mind. Sharlet rightly comments on the strange co-mingling of extreme, violent imagery with the ordinariness of "maxims for everyday living." To say that something is not right with this picture is an understatement. As a matter of fact, Coe has expressed his admiration for such historical luminaries as Hitler, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Bin Laden. They understood power, power that should be Jesus'. With such a framework, murder is not murder. It's nation building. "The new kingdom."
As for David Coe, his own words do him justice: "Moral orders, that's for kids. God's will is beyond morals" (C Street, p. 25). Like Genghis Khan, Family members submit to God's will, becoming "'tools' with which to advance the kingdom, an ambition so worthy that beside it all personal failings pale" (C Street, p. 6). What kind of failings, you might ask? Here's how Coe framed the discussion on the topic with several young Family members: "Beau, let's say I hear you raped three little girls. And now here you are at Ivanwald. What would I think of you, Beau?" Simple question, simple answer, right? Think again. Like King David, who "liked to do really, really bad things", we should revere Beau, because "he was chosen." Confess your sins, tell us your secrets, commit to God's work - that is enough. The mission is what matters. Child rape is a mere trifle when doing God's work. In their own words, better to let in a wolf than keep a sheep out. But such a notion of the 'chosen' only serves to turn off thinking, to stop differentiating between criminal pathology and normal human behavior, after which any sort of evil becomes excusable, even justified.
So far, what do we have? A group that espouses Christianity, yet courts genocidal criminals; that cries for the poor, yet favors the rich; that wants to create a Kingdom of God, utilizing the same corrupt systems currently in use; that idolizes Jesus ... and Mao, and Hitler, and Lenin, and Bin Laden, and Ho Chi Minh. In their version of 1984, Big Brother has a beard and sandals.
Jesus is the Bomb (or, How to Stop Worrying, and Take Over the World)
How does this happen? Well, for anyone planning on taking over the world, or understanding those to do, here are some of the steps commonly used by megalomaniacs of all stripes:
1) Hijack a popular or thoroughly-entrenched belief system. Define your actions in terms of said belief, and its followers will not question you (don't worry, those who do are easily disposed of).
The pathological elements who serve as the chief source of inspiration for the Family know what they're doing. Their method, and the tools they use to ensure support, is time-tested. After all, when you align yourself with a tradition that is based on thousands of years of religious conviction, you have at your disposal an almost guaranteed supply of human material grounded in belief. If you are one of the millions upon millions of people who have long been trained to accept the Bible as the 'word of God' without question, it is extremely difficult to extricate yourself from the bind created by those who align themselves and justify their actions and policies in terms of the Bible. Even if in your heart you disagree with them, the force of belief and the fear of recrimination are more than enough to keep you within their circle of control. The Family's use of the Bible as a tool of justification for both its members and the public typifies this circle: it is self-referential, self-reinforcing, and difficult to think one's way out of. It is so because the Family defines what it wants in terms of what God wants, and what God wants in terms of what it wants. The two are exactly the same, and to question one means questioning the other. To question the Family means to question God. And what Christian has the audacity to question God's will?
The C Streeters use religion to pay lip service to social issues. As Sharlet puts it, they use a fusion of "free-market fundamentalism justified and slightly softened by scripture". (C Street, p. 58) What would Jesus do? Apparently, transfer the wealth of the many into the hands of the few. They cherry-pick scripture, manipulating it into sound bites of American pie-tasting wisdom, slogans for the 'Kingdom of God', from which comes their ideology of the paradoxical 'servant leader'. They don't want power; God saw fit to give it to them. After all, no one likes a dogmatic authoritarian ruler, but as soon as he adopts an air of humility and self-sacrifice, no matter how fatuous, he is accepted with open arms. Cynicism is rebranded as humility. However, as every third-grader knows, the mere act of calling oneself an elephant does not make it so. But after such verbalistic feats, a husband's supremacy is an act of selfless sacrifice, control via power is love, and freedom is slavery. The meek shall inherit the earth, and then they shall rule over it, just as the previous rulers have done before them.
This technique can be used to justify the status quo, or bring in a new order. Current and future wars are justified with Jesus' remark about bringing not peace but a sword. War is thus the natural state of humanity until the 'Second Coming'. If Christians represent God, non-Christians represent Satan, and the unsaved at home and abroad are all potential agents of his influence. The external and internal 'threats' on which pathocracies depend are thus easily defined by scripture, manipulated at will against whoever gets in the way of God's (C Street's) plans. But make no mistake, the agenda is C Street's, not God's.
2) Keep your vision and plan of action obscure. Let the people project their own hopes and interpretations onto purposely vague slogans adapted to their own vocabulary.
The Family's vision is murky and ill-defined. They quote tidbits of scripture, speak in general terms, but never seem to say what they mean. All we have are the catchwords, slogans, and superficially biblical language they repeat ad nauseam. However, this isn't a sign of some foggy self-understanding or lack of actual, concrete aims, at least among the group's leadership. It's a technique, a skill specific to psychopaths that's been used throughout history. While some do learn to see through this social disease when it takes root, it has rarely been described in any clear, scientific manner. There's no adequate word for it in our lexicon, but perhaps 'psychopathic induction' comes closest. Psychopaths hypnotize us with their words, and against our better judgment, we accept the poison behind their words.
As Katherine Yurica, who has written extensively on Dominionism, paraphrased Leo Strauss, "One ought not to say to those whom one wants to kill, 'Give me your votes, because your votes will enable me to kill you and I want to kill you,' but merely, 'Give me your votes,' for once you have the power of the votes in your hand, you can satisfy your desire."
To a psychopath in power, the beauty of language is that words are the perfect weapons, Trojan Horses just waiting to be exploited. They can mean anything you want them to mean. To an ordinary Christian, such phrases as the 'new Chosen', 'spiritual weaponry', and 'God's leadership' ring true because they're familiar. Unfortunately, they're completely meaningless in any objective sense. Psychopaths in power use them to give us the impression that they're just like us, but inject a hidden meaning that most of us would reject with horror if we were to grasp it in its fullness. Incidentally, among themselves, Family members are quite open about their use of doublespeak. In a PowerPoint presentation on 'reconciliation', the point is made that they don't want to give the impression to foreign leaders that their agenda is a 'crusade' or 'conversion', so instead they use the 'personal relationship with Jesus' line. But the very presence of this slide is an admission that their goal is religious crusade and conversion! They use terms like 'benevolent subversion' and describe love as providing 'opportunities'. Selfish feelings and base motivations get branded with terms like 'the Holy Spirit moving over them'. In short, they project their own inner pathological mindset onto Jesus and the world, filling vague slogans with pathological intent. Like their members, these are 'tools' for 'infectious agents' (their own words). And the disease they're spreading? 'Jesus.'
3) Accuse others of what you yourself plan on doing. People will believe it. No one has that kind of chutzpah.
According to fundamentalist Christianity, adopted by the Family to entrench psychopathic rule, Christendom faces a worldwide Satanic conspiracy of non-believers. An anti-Christian bias that must be fought on two fronts. Muslims allegedly want to convert us, take over the world, and create a reign of terror. No one wants that. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the Family is seeking. They don't say it, but they sure give off the stench of it, from their cynical justification of war ("God raises up nations to bring them down"), to their anti-gay and anti-women views. They charge that Muslims want to bring society back into the Middle Ages. Best they look in the mirror.
It could be called a massive bait-and-switch maneuver. The offer? Utopia, happiness, peace. The condition? Only your mind. The psychopath (in government, church, or both) offers the world, and he does so by making your choices for you. He tells you what is right and wrong, acceptable and not, holy and sinful. And the poor souls swallow it. They may agonize over killing an innocent in war (or not), but if the target was deemed 'evil' by the authorities, he is not plagued with remorse or anxiety. He was doing God's will. The result? Along with the inner peace of handing over your free will, there are other consequences. Leadership increasingly defines its enemies in terms of its ideology, criminalizing any compassion for those deemed unworthy. Subservience is rewarded, evil is justified, and anyone who is rightly and naturally horrified with this turn of events is left without a voice. They're the ones you find in torture chambers, disappeared from their communities and on government hit lists.
The 'why' is largely irrelevant, but is often a stumbling block to understanding their actions because it's so inscrutable. We can't imagine why anyone would want to do such a thing, let alone actively plan for it. But, the fact is, it happens. Just look at history. We only see it, and accept it as a fact, when it's too late or when someone else, some other country, some other people, suffer under it. It's so painful to see that we always find some external object on which to project such evil. "Well, I can see Muslims doing that..." Or, "Well, I know the Nazis were a sick bunch, but they were a historical anomaly!" The fact is, we do face an internal and an external threat, only it's nothing we've been trained or educated to look for. It grows anywhere there is an ideology and a population ripe for harvest. In the US it is brewing on C Street, in the Tea Party and Dominionism as a whole. Its proper name is psychopathy, the dark and vacuous face behind the mask of ideology.
Seven Alaskan Mountains
It's interesting to note that while Sarah Palin, trumpeter for the Tea Party cause, is considered an 'outsider' to C Street elites, her stance is fully compatible with theirs (Mark Sanford's wife, Jenny, actually campaigned on her behalf). Both are Dominionist. Coe takes the Bible's "He shall have dominion from Sea to Sea" as a directive force, to be wrought by invisible influence. And one of Palin's churches (Wasilla Assembly of God) sings a similar tune, espousing the 'Seven Mountains Mandate' scheme shared by Youth with a Mission (YWAM, the organization that legally owns the C Street property, in all probability another Family front organization).
Palin's pastor Mark Rose has close ties with the so-called 'Third Wave', or the New Apostolic Reformation, one of the largest active Dominionist movements in the US. Dominionism itself has its roots in the Reconstructionism of R.J. Rushdoony and Gary North (whose work influenced Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of books popularizing the 'Rapture' meme). As Chip Berlet defines it, "Dominionism is ... a tendency among Protestant Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists that encourages them to not only be active political participants in civic society, but also seek to dominate the political process as part of a mandate from God." Dominionists believe that Christians should have dominion over all secular institutions. One of the ways they go about ensuring this is by targeting the youth.
Joel's Army is one of the more extreme groups espousing Third Wave ideology. Their goal: to create an 'army' of young Christians to dominate the world (watch the documentary Jesus Camp for a peek at their insanity). The Assemblies of God churches (the largest Pentecostal denomination) are awash in Third Wave belief. In fact, Palin has been connected with Third Wave churches her whole life, attending Wasilla Assembly of God in junior high school and acting as head of the local Fellowship of Christian Athletes branch. Her most recent church, Juneau Christian Center, led by Mark Rose, is also Third Wave.
Thomas Muthee, the Kenyan cleric who practices and teaches techniques of 'spiritual warfare' (basically, a Christian version of generational curses and the exorcism of demons possessing whole geographic areas, a topic with which I'm sure John Keel would've had a field day, especially considering point #3 above!), gave a series of sermons at Wasilla Assembly of God in 2005 in which he personally 'anointed' Sarah Palin, who was in attendance, and spoke of the Seven Mountains Mandate. The '7M Mandate' is widely promoted among the New Apostolic Reformation. So, what is it, exactly?
The 7M Mandate is the epitome of Dominionism's plan for secular America, a "template for warfare" by which God 'invades' institutions. According to legend (i.e., according to Lance Wallnau, who preaches the 7M Mandate to churches across North America), it all started when God spoke to Loren Cunningham (YWAM founder) and Bill Bright, telling them that "the harvest of nations" could be taken by dominating the seven "mountains" of Religion, Education, Family, Government, Media, Arts/Entertainment and Business/Economics. Whoever controls these seven institutions controls society, and as such, this is where Christians should be exercising their influence if they are to fulfill God's wishes. Rather than focusing exclusively on 'harvesting souls', they should also be putting their energies toward 'transforming nations'.
According to them, 'democracies' are failing because of corruption and selfishness among elites. They've got that right, but with what do they plan to fill this hole? By making abortion and homosexual marriage illegal, instituting Christian - creationist school curricula, Christian-run banks, corporations, economies, media, and government. And in the mountain of Religion, there will be a displacement of 'sinners' (Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, etc.), who will be given a 'choice' to convert and take their place in the 'kingdom of light'. Wallnau teaches that it only takes a 3 - 5% minority to shape a culture, the majority is irrelevant (these figures are surprisingly close to the number of psychopaths in the general population - 6% - which Dr. Andrew Łobaczewski says form the elite in a pathocracy). In short, Christians will become the "head and not the tail", a phrase used in many 7M Mandate sermons and which has been heard from the lips of Sarah Palin.
Palin is obviously one of the potential leaders being propped up to make the Dominionist 7M Mandate a reality, one of the "3 - 5%" whose Christian influence will "culturally shape" the "irrelevant" majority. And, as any research into her personality will show, she has all the qualities of those who typify that pathological minority; she is a rare specimen of female psychopathy.
Perhaps the best exposé on Palin to date is Michael Joseph Gross' Vanity Fair piece, "Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury." Gross traveled to Palin's home town, with a population of just over 7,000, to interview those who knew her - anyone from hairdressers and hotel clerks to old friends and former campaigners. He experienced an "astonishing phenomenon" and the picture that formed was like a case study from Robert Hare's and Paul Babiak's book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work. Practically everyone to which he spoke either refused to talk or requested anonymity because they were afraid of what Palin might do to them. The power she holds over that small population was palpable. Plainly put, they fully expected Palin to exact revenge on them for sharing what they knew. As Gross put it, "anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin's life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath."
One ex-aide related the effect she has on those around her: "The people who have worked for her - they're broken, used, stepped on, down in the dust." Many had experienced her fits of rage: screaming, swearing and throwing insults and objects at the slightest provocation (one friend experienced a fight during which Palin started throwing canned food at her husband, Todd). Besides using her fierce temper to intimidate those she views as tools or otherwise useless (psychologists call it 'instrumental aggression'), there is her signature threat: "I have the power to ruin you." But she can also swing to the other end of manipulation. One friend related how, in preparation for a city-council meeting, she said, "I'm gonna put on one of my push-up bras so I can get what I want tonight."
She is reckless with other people's money (one campaign bought her 30 pairs of shoes and $3000 worth of underwear), and lacks any real talent for government, delegating most of her duties to her many aides (another friend said she "does not understand math or accounting - she only knows buzzwords, like 'balanced budget'"). Even her own children see through her façade. After putting on a pious, public display, one reportedly said, "You're just putting on a show. You're so fake. This is not who you are. Why are you pretending to be something you're not?" A good question. Read the article, then take a look at this short list of psychopathic qualities and see how many you can spot on Palin's reported behavior: glibness/superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric), callous/lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility for own actions, need for stimulation/proneness to boredom, parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioral control, impulsivity, irresponsibility. This is the woman who is, by all appearances, being groomed for the Presidency. Of course, many will say that's impossible. But then again, that's exactly what the 'cultured' said about Hitler before his meteoric rise to power. These things have a tendency to happen. Better put, psychopaths have a tendency to make them happen. And humanity gets caught up in the tide of their influence.
Dominionism Reprise
Imagine a world dominated by an elite minority, cloaking themselves under the banner of Christianity and using religion to utterly dominate the planet and everyone on it. Old Testament law is reinstated, and homosexuals, Muslims, heretics, and peace activists are routinely identified, anathematized, denied citizenship, and executed. Non-Christians are offered the 'choice' to accept Jesus and by extension the government ruling in his name. To accept means to live a life of relative comfort - if you are not poor, old, sick, or weak - but it means giving tacit support to the regime and all it does in Jesus' name. Dissent is outlawed and any person of conscience who is horrified by the terror of the situation and who speaks out is similarly dealt with.
In such a world, 'democracy' is biblical tyranny and 'tyranny' is secular humanism. The willful control of others, the theft of their freedom of conscience, becomes a moral imperative. Because God's chosen are predestined to paradise, they are inherently free of sin. The sinful are those who stand in their way. 'Once saved, always saved' applies equally to the ordinary housewife as to the murderer, the rapist, and the pedophile. State murder becomes the instrument of God's wrath on those who do not accept his unquestionable rule and his chosen authorities.
But in reality, the leaders do not even consider themselves Christian. They wear it like a businessman dons his suit. They believe citizens need to be deceived, that there is no morality, that evil is justified, that without control there is chaos, that external threats must be manufactured to ensure political stability, and that religion is a tool to 'unify' the people under their rule. They realize that total power means total control of those who do not accept their power.
This is the direction America is headed. It is the same in any country. Whether it is under the cloak of Dominionist Christianity, atheistic communism, or corporate fascism, the essentials are always the same. It happens like clockwork and is a general law of social and political life on planet Earth. Behind the surface of appearances lies a reality of those who kill without a thought, who would shoot a mother in front of her children for the unforgiveable crime of dissent. They know they are different, they lust for unbridled power, and they have no qualms about doing whatever it takes to keep themselves in a position of brute domination. Sadly, it's the ordinary state of affairs. A massive con job. And as a species, we fall for it every time.
Sources
Berlet, Chip. "What is Dominionism? Palin, the Christian Right and Theocracy."
Engdahl, F. William. "Christian Fundamentalism Permeates the Republican Party: Sarah Palin's links to the Christian Right."
Gross, Michael Joseph. "Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury."
Hedges, Chris. American Fascism: The Christian Right and the War on America. New York: Free Press, 2006.
Sharlet, Jeff. C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2010.
Sharlet, Jeff. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. New York: HarperPerennial, 2008.
Wilson, Bruce. "Palin Pastors, Ensign C Street House Owner Promote Same Infiltration Plan."
Wilson, Bruce. "Palin's Churches and the New Apostolic Reformation." (Contains dozens of links to pertinent articles, videos, and research.)
Yurica, Katherine. "The Despoiling of America."
Abut the author: Harrison Koehli has written articles on religion, politics and psychology for the Dot Connector magazine, SOTT.net, the Safe Relationships Magazine, the Agora National, and has been interviewed on various alternative radio programs. When he is not managing the Rabbit Hole bookstore in Grande Prairie, or editing books for Red Pill Press, he can usually be found playing his guitar, writing articles, or reading a book.
Good reminder of what is happening in the upper power echelon of the US.
Excellent article Harrison!