Why Can't the "Falwells" of this World See It?

[Interplanner]

How can the Falwells of this world be so ignorant? How can they not see social liberalism? How can they not look at the record of actions?

I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt; I correspond on script production with people at Liberty.

But it is due to thinking that Biblical knowledge is a form of knowledge that is divorced from rationality, or would be contaminated by it, that has made Christians/evangelicals less and less rational. It takes quite a bit of study, but I don't mean that they become compromised. I mean that they come across as reasonable and rational first, and make solid Biblical references too. "This has not been done in a corner" as Paul would say in Acts 24. But when rational muscles go limp, people glom on to a Trump for contradictory reasons. Glom.

 

[PureX]

"But it is due to thinking that Biblical knowledge is a form of knowledge that is divorced from rationality, or would be contaminated by it, that has made Christians/evangelicals less and less rational."

This is exactly why Carl Rove targeted evangelicals in Texas when he was trying to get G.W. Bush elected governor. Bush was not the popular candidate, and he was certain to lose. Rove needed to find new voters for Bush.

So he did what any lying, cheating, political operative would do: he grossly slandered his opponent. But he did it in a special way. He had fliers made up and placed on the windshields of cars parked at evangelical churches and meeting places, claiming that Bush's opponent (Ann Richards) was a lesbian. Rove knew these people hated homosexuals, and would believe anything they're told so long as it validated their loathing for gays. And it worked like a charm. They ran to the polls to vote against Ann Richards, and therefor for G.W. Bush. It was a method Rove used in every Bush election thereafter. The flyers claimed John McCain cheated on his sick wife and fathered illegitimate black babies. The flyers claimed gays were "infecting" public schools in Ohio and turning the children gay. They claimed Kerry was a phony war hero. They claimed Obama was a Muslim. On and on it went. Every election the slanderous flyers went out, and every election the evangelicals believed them, and ran to the polls to vote for the republican candidates, so as to vote against the democratic "demons"; no matter who they were or how bad the republican candidates might have been.

It was this propensity of evangelicals to believe whatever they're told so long as it aligns with their current prejudices that the republican party has been playing on to win elections for decades. Sometimes I think evangelicals would vote for satan himself so long as he proclaims himself an anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-busiess, liberal-hating, democrat-hating, conservative. It's as if all sense of morality and reason just flies out the window when it comes to their hatred of all things they view as "liberal". Yet what they view as "liberal" is basically whatever the republican party and their professional liars have told them it is. So they have become the perfect political patsies.

 

[Krsto]

"But it is due to thinking that Biblical knowledge is a form of knowledge that is divorced from rationality, or would be contaminated by it, that has made Christians/evangelicals less and less rational."

This is exactly why Carl Rove targeted evangelicals in Texas when he was trying to get G.W. Bush elected governor. Bush was not the popular candidate, and he was certain to lose. Rove needed to find new voters for Bush.

So he did what any lying, cheating, political operative would do: he grossly slandered his opponent. But he did it in a special way. He had fliers made up and placed on the windshields of cars parked at evangelical churches and meeting places, claiming that Bush's opponent (Ann Richards) was a lesbian. Rove knew these people hated homosexuals, and would believe anything they're told so long as it validated their loathing for gays. And it worked like a charm. They ran to the polls to vote against Ann Richards, and therefor for G.W. Bush. It was a method Rove used in every Bush election thereafter. The flyers claimed John McCain cheated on his sick wife and fathered illegitimate black babies. The flyers claimed gays were "infecting" public schools in Ohio and turning the children gay. They claimed Kerry was a phony war hero. They claimed Obama was a Muslim. On and on it went. Every election the slanderous flyers went out, and every election the evangelicals believed them, and ran to the polls to vote for the republican candidates, so as to vote against the democratic "demons"; no matter who they were or how bad the republican candidates might have been.

It was this propensity of evangelicals to believe whatever they're told so long as it aligns with their current prejudices that the republican party has been playing on to win elections for decades. Sometimes I think evangelicals would vote for satan himself so long as he proclaims himself an anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-busiess, liberal-hating, democrat-hating, conservative. It's as if all sense of morality and reason just flies out the window when it comes to their hatred of all things they view as "liberal". Yet what they view as "liberal" is basically whatever the republican party and their professional liars have told them it is. So they have become the perfect political patsies.

That's some interesting bit of history. People just don't realize how much they get played.

 

[PureX]

That's some interesting bit of history. People just don't realize how much they get played.

Not only don't they realize it, they actively FIGHT AGAINST realizing it. They'd rather continue being played for patsies than admit to themselves and to each other that they have been played for patsies. Because if they do that, they might have to ask themselves why they were so easy to manipulate. And that would lead them to see their own irrational obsession with self-righteousness and make-believe.

I appreciate that the OP mentioned Falwell. As he and his ilk are a classic example of how Christian evangelical leaders promote that self-righteousness and make-believe. Example; promoting the idea that God is punishing America for it's acceptance of homosexuality every time something bad happens. Or it's acceptance of abortion, or it's acceptance of promiscuous sex, or it's acceptance of … fill in the blank with anything that these self-righteous 'super-Christians" imagine that everyone else is doing wrong.

 

[jgarden]

Back in 1980, Falwell and Robertson promoted Ronald Reagan as the "Christian" presidential candidate in waiting - despite the fact that he rarely attended Church and was closely aligned with astrology and astrologers.

That Reagan "myth" has remained largely intact to this very day in conservative circles, despite the evidence from his children, a White House chief-of-staff, close associates and the astrology community to the contrary.

In retrospect, Jimmy Carter, whom Christian conservatives willingly "threw-under-the-bus," appears to have lived a far more Christian life than his Republican counterpart.

The moral of the story is that if you support a political candidate based purely on religious grounds, be prepared to be disillusioned and proven wrong!