Civil Commotion

Bryan Fischer is having an even worse day than usual.

As most everyone knows by now, Target is now allowing men into little girls’ bathrooms and fitting rooms. The risk this poses to the sexual integrity of young girls, as well as to young women and even mature women, is off the charts.

And since Target is the second largest retailer in the nation, we are talking about potentially catastrophic consequences. Even one innocent victim of such a dangerous policy is too many since a young female can experience damage to her soul as well as her body that she must endure for the rest of her life.

Undoubtedly, at this very minute, somewhere on earth, a pastor is raping a child in church. But not once — not once — has there been a report of a transgender sexually assaulting a stranger in a public restroom. As David Hume so famously said, a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence — so take your wife and children shopping Sunday morning, instead of suffering through the Weekly Berating. You’ll probably enjoy it more anyway.

An SBC pastor from Iowa announces he is finished with the Republicans.

So, to sum it all up, I’m not voting for Hillary, and I’m not voting for Donald. Ever.

I want a new party. Maybe it is time we think about forming a new party. Donald Trump is going to ruin the GOP, I’m convinced of that. My party is over – I’m abandoning a sinking ship. He is a nuclear warhead looking for a place to detonate. I do not want to abandon the country to the Democrats — they are against everything I am for. They are devoted to the destruction of the American constitution’s freedoms, our way of life, and our moral foundations. If we give America over to the Democrats, there will not be an America — it will be a European-style socialist nation within a decade and headed down the same moral, spiritual, and economic sewer as those nations. But Republicans have shown themselves to be craven, weak, and inconsequential. Voting GOP will change nothing.

Almost simultaneously, Salon reprises and celebrates Russell Moore’s sniffing that the evangelicals supporting Trump aren’t r-e-e-e-a-l evangelicals.

Believe it or not, Southern Baptists have become the loudest chorus of anti-Trump voices within conservative evangelicalism. And as has happened in other precincts of the right, the real estate mogul’s candidacy has forced evangelical leaders to confront the contradictions between their values and their political allegiances. “My concern is not so much about the presidential election,” Moore told me. “I’m more concerned about the witness of evangelical Christianity, which I see compromised in the apologies from some Christian leaders for Trump and his behavior.”

How can you not love the irony? The first demographic to race to Trump’s side were the evangelicals, and the pastors are spitting mad because they’ve been displaced by some other Pied Piper.

Now, Moore and that pastor from Iowa will say the same thing: Those evangelicals aren’t regular church attendees; they’re not the r-e-e-e-a-l thing. Sorry — but they’re the exact same people whose votes such as Moore, Mohler, and Dobson have bartered for decades for political influence. What’s really going on here is plain-vanilla professional envy. Donald Trump has offhandedly one-upped them, and shown that they aren’t kingmakers at all — and you may be certain that the party establishment has noticed.

No wonder they’re so upset.

The stupid are like the poor: They will always be with us, and they will always be manipulated and exploited by amoral cynics. Ironically, the Internet — which has facilitated that manipulation — has also worked to undermine the influence of the once-mighty Evangelical Right. The difference is that Trump relies entirely on smoke-and-mirrors and bluster, whereas the Evangelical Right’s influence relies on a specific set of widely debunked and easily challenged claims.

The prognosis, then, is for more and louder fact-free noise, more manipulation and less information in our politics. It worked for The Donald — right? It probably is vain to hope that the Republican Party will reform itself and throw-out the nutjobs after this preposterous election cycle; it is much more likely it will put its energy into figuring-out how to deliver the propaganda voters want.

A North Carolina megachurch which operates a preschool program is accused in a lawsuit of discriminating against disabled toddlers.

Calvary Church’s Child Development Center in North Carolina declares in its mission statement that its philosophy of educating children in a nurturing environment is justified, because: “By nurturing children daily in this manner, we pray that we can teach them scriptural morals and values, and that these truths will allow them to develop strong character in a happy and secure environment.”

But five local Charlotte families disagree, and have filed a lawsuit, claiming that their children were kicked out of the preschool after each had been in attendance. Ten other families have submitted affidavits documenting similar experiences. According to the parents, CDC dismissed each of the children when evidence of disabilities, or ADHD, or other health issues were discovered. Some of the parents have alleged that the staff diagnosed medical issues that didn’t exist, and then used the faulty diagnoses as reasons to dismiss.

If Detroit were actually ready to ‘own’ its eccentricities, it’d be called Squid Arena.

Target’s accommodation of transgenders will lead Our Invisible Friend to use Russia to rain nuclear warheads on us!!

“It’s either shut down Target or their type is going to shut down this nation, because there’s no end to their insanity and their immorality and their wickedness,” Wiles declared later in the program.

Reading from a Business Insider article about an increase in Russian submarine activity, Wiles connected the dots.

“Doc, God is going to use the Russians to bring down Sodom and Gomorrah if there’s no repentance in this land,” he said. “Listen, these freaks are going to get us all killed. They’re going to get us all killed.”

Ho-ho — Wiles doesn’t know his theology. If he did, he would know that punishments are always visited on blameless people at great remove. I’m thinking, at worst, another tsunami visits Indonesia.