What says "Christian" better than raising donations to defend a murderous little shit who gunned down three unarmed protesters?
Religion News Service reports an outfit called Give Send Go has raised almost a quarter million dollars so far to fund Kyle Rittenhouse's defence costs.
As RNS reports. the fundraising site Give Send Go has been hosting the plea for money for Rittenhouse, reaching $223,000 by early Sunday morning — exceeding its goal of $200,000.
The Give Send Go campaign for Rittenhouse, titled “Raise money for Kyle Rittenhouse Legal Defense,” contains a statement reading, “Kyle Rittenhouse just defended himself from a brutal attack by multiple members of the far-leftist group ANTIFA – the experience was undoubtedly a brutal one, as he was forced to take two lives to defend his own. Now, Kyle is being unfairly charged with murder 1, by a DA who seems determined only to capitalize on the political angle of the situation. The situation was clearly self-defense, and Kyle and his family will undoubtedly need money to pay for the legal fees. Let’s give back to someone who bravely tried to defend his community.”
Give Send Go bills itself as the “#1 free Christian crowdfunding site,” with a mission statement that reads, “Outside the obvious funding for mission trips, GSG also can be used to raise funds for medical expenses, business ventures, personal needs, churches, nonprofits, ministries or any ‘God Adventure’ you embark on.”
We ignore the religious right at our peril.
ReplyDeleteSince Reagan and particularly GW Bush they have infiltrated every aspect of our lives with tentacles that extend the globe.
It's sad that fiscal Conservatives dogmatically vote for social Conservatives. As long as we vote to win or be on the winning side and not vote for a better candidate we will continue on the path to self destruction.
TB
Retired US Army commander, Andrew Bacevich, chronicles how Christian fundamentalists came to displace Episcopalians as the official religion of America's officer class and military academies. In my time the officer corps in Canada was predominantly Anglican for Protestants and Roman Catholic for the Quebec crew. In Britain, of course, C of E was the institutional faith of choice.
ReplyDeleteThe contradictions are sharpening . . . I think the rise of something like the Christian right was inevitable. It's like, the ideal for the US empire, when it's riding high, is a fairly "centrist" approach, where the propaganda blends in, hard to see, and the oppression (except at the sharp end in the third world) is low-key, and it's easy to pretend there are carrots going along with the sticks.
ReplyDeleteBut when an empire is in decline, and the "soft power" isn't enough, it reaches for the hard stuff--direct brutality, fanaticism, more overt propaganda. Not ideal because it creates backlash, as we're seeing, and I also think depending on a bunch of deliberately-made-ignorant fanatics to get things done gums up the works, makes society not function as effectively. So in trying to shore things up, this kind of move ends up accelerating decline. I don't think it can last.
Schadenfreude & tribalism, locked in a fatal embrace:
ReplyDeleteSaw this headline and felt sad.
"One man killed at pro-Trump caravan in downtown Portland
One county official lamented the "self-perpetuating cycle of violence" stoked by the president"
perked up when I saw this detail
"The man who was shot and killed was wearing a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group"
oooops
PLG, read "One Nation Under God." Kevin Kruse (Princeton) begins by exploring how Christian fundamentalists joined with conservative industrialists in reaction to FDR's New Deal reforms. The bible thumpers thought Roosevelt was intruding on their social policy turf. The industrialists, discredited in the minds of working class Americans due to the Depression, needed someone who could carry their message to that segment of the voting public. A new type of Christian Radio was born and that carried the evangelical power straight into Washington.
ReplyDeleteCuriously enough, the fundies really took hold during Eisenhower's administration. Ike, not a particularly religious man, was worried about the spread of Communism and wanted a national religion, any faith would do, to keep the people from straying into the arms of Socialism. The National Prayer Breakfast sprang out of that and, today, every pol in Congress attends.
In his 2015 book, "American Theocracy," old school Republican insider, Kevin Phillips, looks at how the established, mainstream churches - RC, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian - succumbed to an evangelical insurgency that captured the political caste.
Andrew Bacevich wrote "The New American Militarism" in which he explores how the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned of metastasized into today's military-industrial-neoconservative-evangelical-commercial warfighting complex, each component supporting the others. Evango-Christianity has become the de facto religion of the US military. Scary.
And, of course, there's Chris Hedges,"Christian Fascists."
Taken together, these four books reveal the quiet emergence of the United States as a Christian fundamentalist nation with the Talibangelists, if not steering the ship, definitely navigating it. The Founding Fathers would be aghast.
From what I've read, NPoV, nothing is known about the shooter. Because the victim was of the radical right there'll be a tendency to point fingers at the protesters or Antifa. In these matters we're seeing that very little is as it seems.
ReplyDelete