Is American foreign policy always a cool rational neoliberal calculation or do the delusions of the general public have meaningful impact?
I think its more important to consider that maybe the ruling class shares these delusions
I've tried to avoid thinking it, but sometimes their choices only make sense if you think they actually believe the bullshit they peddle to the masses.
Someone shared an excerpt about Bush talking to the French president, and Bush cited some esoteric biblical event about holy tribal warfare and the French president was so utterly confused he called his assistant over to see what the fuck this guy is on about
Show
That really is something. Wow, I wonder if this was just because that's how he was used to speaking to his underlings (and saw France as more of the same) or if it was actually because he honestly believes in trying to fulfill some weird "biblical prophecy" in the Middle East.
Supposedly he never said this, but this rebuttal comes from a source that seems to want Daddy Bush to notice them. But considering he’s talked about divine intervention in his politics, I have no reason to doubt he’s into this shit.
People are prone to forget how batshit religious Dubya was. It seems to me that Cheney wanted war and he wanted to grift. But Dubya was a believer and he probably thought he talked to God once in a while.
Bush, Gog and Magog | Andrew Brown | The Guardian
Just when you thought it couldn't get crazier, a well-sourced story claims Bush invaded Iraq because of Bible prophecies
10 Aug 2009
---
When I was dumb teenager - Jimmy Carter used a phrase like "pray on it" and I didn't know if he meant that seriously. I asked my mom about it and I was taken aback to learn he actually meant it literally. His religiosity surprised me and my mom too.
People have utterly formatted their mental hard drives in regards to George W. Bush. So much of Gen-X and below generation was shaped by W. In the same way Regan is the devil and reason everything sucks, W is also the devil and reason everything sucks.
He totally used the cross ✝️ to carry all his war on terror and by extension his foreign policy
Remember early on when they fucked up and called it a crusade against terror?
That's one of the top 100 uniquely evil moments under Bush. Katz need to remember how dreadful and awful the eight years of Bush were. Obama cleaned up the memory, and Trump sort of overshadowed the memory by being particularly vulgar and garish. Trumps novelty and Obama's civility really did a bang-up job covering up Bush's christofashism.
christofascism is a definite issue, though idk whether the christo or the fascist takes precedent. Former australian PM Scott Morrison is/was cosy with hillsong church, requested a +1 for Brian Houston to meet Trump, made mention on behalf of a qanon friend of 'ritual sexual abuse' in an apology to CSA survivors at the hands of the Catholic church.
We really pride ourselves on our hwhite, christian heritage. Idk how many are true believers rather than putting on the mask, but they're all out to create/uphold religio-ethnostates
pretty sure pence is a dominionist. christian nationalism skews hard republican because it aligns well with regional industrial capital interests and not so well with global finance capital interests, but there sure seems to be some true believers in the highest echelons of power.
You may want to clarify that you're talking about American Evangelicalism specifically (and on that point, I fully agree). This comes off as downplaying the very real persecution that, say, Palestinian Christians face from the Zionist state.
Basically what MiraculousMM said and also this is erasure of other forms of liberation theology like with black radicals in the US, obvious example being MLK Jr.
It’s an evil, disgusting religion responsible for our already-evil country’s most violent and destructive urged.
also this is just false and anti-materialist.
I can't speak to the Baptist situation, but I grew up in an Evangelical church and this is a common view. The "Left Behind" books were basically novelizations of the Evangelical conception of the end times, and they were enormously popular.
If you want to know more about how the Evangelical church got involved with right wing politics, I'd suggest the book "Jesus and John Wayne."
I think the person who made this thread is confusing the evangelical position with the baptist position.
There's not that much difference as far as I can tell. Baptists are just Evangelicals that wear suits and have steeples on their churches.
Had to brush up on this stuff again, to make sure not to talk out of my ass: Evangelicalism is an interdenominational movement within Protestantism, while Baptism is more of a specific Protestant denomination (with its own sectarian flavors).
So not all protestants are evangelicals, but all evangelicals are protestants, and different denominations within protestantism may or may not have a strong evangelical constituency.
Baptists (frequently ABA) and Presbyterians (frequently PCA) tend to be the biggest evangelicals.
The ABA has always been super racist and the PCA is so heavily Calvinist conservative that they're one step away from calling for blood sacrifice to maintain the economy.
The evangelical movement tends to exist more within churches themselves though. The organizations just care about trying to not split again, so it's really the individual pastor's decision if they're gonna go full evangelical or just phone it in.
There are also evangelical cult churches that are totally divorced from the sects and basically just cherry pick the worst aspects of all of them and call themselves something old testament. These are the ones that usually harass college campuses (see Antioch)
There's also the Catholic Charismatic movement, but we already mentioned Protestants.
I don't like the "the US supports Israel because evangelicals want the apocalypse!" explanation. It feels like a way for vote-blue-no-matter-who liberals to whitewash the Democrats' unstinting support for Israel's apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
I've literally never encountered this off the internet & don't actually believe that it is a real thing (beyond maybe dozens of people somewhere). But it is everywhere on the internet like it was an addition to the sermon of the mount or something.
Go anywhere in the American southeast. The place I grew up was essentially a suburb of a military base, and this was everyone.
it's totally irrelevant, most of them can't locate israel on a map
people talk about the christian baptist thing a lot but I've literally never met one of these people online or offline. could be in a bubble though
If you live in the American South they’re impossible to avoid. They’re everywhere.
It’s not just Baptists, Evangelicalism is a vague coalition across sects, but Baptists tend to be some of the worst. Especially Southern Baptists, the church that exists because the Baptist Church went “You know I think slavery is bad” and they wanted to keep owning people.
Backing this up because people don't realize:
- how prevalent this is in the south
- how many of these people hold prominent governmental positions in the south
- how generally acceptable it is to be one of these fascists
It's very, very, very bad
Genuinely if I had my way people associated with the Southern Baptist church would be so oppressed that I should have difficulty running for public office just because my grandma was one and she took me to church as a kid.
Anyone with strong ties to that church needs re-education and lifelong monitoring. Most of the leaders, including nearly every pastor, should be given the fucking wall.
It's actually worse, if memory serves. The Baptists didn't decide slavery was bad for everyone they simply decided that the preachers shouldn't own slaves, what with the whole "envoys of christ" angle they play from the pulpit. That was a bridge too far and thus the Southern Baptists were created.
for the SBC.
that's a case where you need to get more specific than "catholic," because "catholic" includes chuds and liberation theologists at the same time
For my perspective, some Catholics get a pass, but most in the US get to hang with their Evangelical colleagues.
The current Pope doesn't have to go against the wall, but he probably needs a little re-education
afaik the official line is that all the apocalypse stuff is mostly literary and there isn't a concrete idea of when/what/where, so they don't worry about it. i'm sure some sects and clerics still get millenarian from time to time though.
what that means is that is that catholics shouldn't have a dog in israel, but evil white yankee catholics support israel through racism while Rome does the routine "stop killing people" they do for any war with stronger words when israel attacks christians, particularly members of the several churches in lebanon/palestine in communion with Rome
I don’t think I’ve met any Catholics who said that anything is metaphorical. Certainly not priests.
yes and no. It's a great tool for forcing the compliance of a certain segment of the population but it doesn't work on everyone and that's what all the other consent tools are used for. For the most part foreign policy has been smoothed and streamlined enough to no longer require consent
"I'll come back because I love you, but ONLY if very specific certain circumstances happen" Lol imagine if your wife said this you would label it as an emotionally abusive relationship and rightly so. Religion is holding back humanity
The zealots’ means to an end is no different than the business minded neoliberals and the overtly genocidal neoconservatives. So really, as long as the latter two have an interest in the Middle East, it doesn’t matter.
I’m sure there are more concrete examples of religious zealotry being the main force behind a campaign, but more often than not it correlates with motives that are grounded.
Or maybe you can take the reverse stance and say the materialist motives are coincidental to the dominions running the show 👁️
In my experience, most Christian Baptists don't know know much of anything about Israel, and these days I'd expect the bulk of that community to be blindly making the same mix of misinformed facebook posts as everyone else.
I don't think any sincere Baptist community would cheer on any kind of death, Westboro style groups excluded.
