Civil Commotion

I happen to know people so stupid that they think this makes sense.

You’ve got to love this: Bill Donohue has inexplicably unearthed an actual instance of anti-Catholic sentiment rather than merely parading his hyper-sensitivity (follow the second link).

Naturally, because he is an idiot, Donohue seeks an absurd remedy.

There is no legitimate place for someone like Jacob in public office. Anyone who would post anti-Catholic hate speech on social media is not fit to represent his Catholic constituency. Hopefully, you will read his bigoted posts and let him know of your disdain for his behavior.

Furthermore, I am requesting that Republican lawmakers, beginning with House Speaker Todd Huston, not to include Jacob in the Republican caucus. Had Jacob made these invidious remarks while in office, I would have asked that he be censured. At the very least, he should now be marginalized by his colleagues.

Jacob’s views were doubtless known to the voters of his district, and they chose him to represent them; he should not be summarily declared persona non grata by a party that surrendered the high ground a long time ago with cruel stereotypes of immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ, on and on (about all of which Donohue has been curiously silent).

What makes this most interesting, of course, is that John Jacob is at least partly correct: Catholic teaching is embarrassing for its absurdity (Transubstantiation? Seriously? Grow up.). He appears to favor conservative Protestantism, however, though it is equally ridiculous.

It puts me in mind of a popular Kingston Trio song from the ’60s:

They’re rioting in Africa
They’re starving in Spain
There’s hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The french hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much!!

I live in the Southern Baptist south, of course, and everybody hereabouts knows that the Pope is the Antichrist; it’s common knowledge, like Catholic girls are easy. I’m surprised my neighbors haven’t found a seminary professor just like Jacob to represent us.

In the end — and it is the end, no matter what a deranged team of White House lawyers is still babbling about on Newsmax or Facebook or wherever — Trumpism and America’s hopefully brief experience with neo-fascism has been exposed as a death cult.

Will Bunch

I’m not sure whether or not I agree with this, but I’ve found myself thinking along these lines often enough that the quote is worth attention. Everything — everything — Trump and his supporters touch ends in degradation and failure; never, never, uplift. I’m not sure what that means, and am unwilling to speculate about the psychological workings of this crowd — but it’s not an accident; it’s who they are.

We live in a country in epistemological crisis, in which much of the Republican Party has become detached from reality.

David Brooks, The New York Times

Just so’s you know, epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with what we know, and how we know that we know it.

Nobody should be particularly surprised that we’re in this dilemma. Think back to all the times you’ve heard some preacher howling and bellowing that, No, he can’t prove that Our Invisible Friend is real, or that He wants us to do this or that — you’ve got to have faith, you’ve got to believe without evidence. That is a demand for abandonment of epistemic standards — and evangelicals, the largest and most important faction of the loony right, are the people who listen to that slop and think it’s a virtue to believe without evidence.

No kidding: The descent of the GOP into lunacy is the fulfillment of Christianity’s epistemic ideal.

Apparently, Donald Trump thinks he has to leave the White House only if Joe Biden satisfies certain of Trump’s demands.

This is crazy-talk, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense to his crazy followers. Seriously: I will not be surprised if thousands of his loonies show-up in D.C. on or about Inauguration Day, armed and prepared to ‘defend’ the White House from a usurper.