Losing Reality

It's been a while since I checked in on Rod Dreher. Frankly, he just got too bizarre to be interesting.

But I dropped by this morning, and...wow.

You'll be glad to know that trans people are a poison in our cultural groundwater.

Also that Rod is still racist, even though he's stopped screeching about how "black culture" is destroying America in favor of screeching about how Trans people (World War T, he calls this) are destroying America.

More racism here. (Multiple studies have shown that black children are far more likely to be punished and punished harshly for the same behaviors that white children are indulged in. Rod's claim that black kids are punished more often because they behave worse is simply not the case.)

And of course white men are the real victims.

So yeah, I haven't missed anything. He's just sliding further and further into Old Man Yells at Clouds territory.

Of course, that's where his remaining readers -- pretty much all MAGA Americans -- live, so he gets plenty of affirmation for these views. If you want to be really horrified, read his comment section. Horrifying bigotry and horrifying ignorance. And Rod encourages all this, because of course he does.

Obviously, none of this is worth reading, and I don't advise anyone to read it, except that it's useful for knowing exactly how appalling and hateful the "Religious Right" had become. There truly is no bottom to these people.

Breaking News: Rod Dreher More Batsh*t Crazy Than Ever

Even his own Commentariat turn on him with this one.

"Obama Springs Transgender Traitor," he shrieks, and spends most of the post in an uncontrollable tantrum over the fact that Chelsea Manning is transgender.

This penis-having traitor suffers because people might not think she is a “real woman”. Think about that. Manning suffers serious psychological problems, and has tried to commit suicide. He should receive medical treatment — but not boobs grown at taxpayer expense on his traitorous breast, and not liberty for breaking his oath under arms.

Yeah, They're Not Racist

Glenn Beck mocks Obama's eleven year old.

"Those people" can't educate their children.

I'm sure this will end up being just like when Rush mocked 13-year old Chelsea Clinton's looks-- something the Right claims never happened.

More Persecution of Xtians

Ken Blackwell, educated at Liberty University (do I need to go on?), pens a charming essay posted by Faux News in which he claims that the Left, under Obama, is persecuting Christians.

Oh, but not just persecuting them.  That's old news.  The Left is engaging in pogroms!

I don't know who taught Mr. Blackwell this big word, but he is very impressed with himself for knowing it:

What we are witnessing right now is an anti-Christianprogrammatic pogrom. What is a “pogrom” it’s the word that describes anti-Jewish raids by Cossacks and others in czarist Russia, but a programmatic pogrom best describes what is happening right now. 

Mr. Blackwell objects (as far as I can follow his somewhat incoherent argument at all) because certain organizations connected with churches (such as Liberty University, I imagine, though he does not mention that one) are being refused funding requests because they refuse to comply with Federal Regulations: providing information on all health options available to women, apparently, being one of them, though he phrases this as refusing to provide condoms to monks.  (Do monks really ask for condoms that often?)  I happen to have a young relative at a Catholic University.  He is himself not actually Catholic, or in fact religious in any respect.  When he goes to the school clinic -- his primary source of health care -- he cannot get contraceptives; he cannot even get tested or treated for STDs; a whole spectrum of vital health care, in other words, is not made available to him, despite the fact that he is paying for this health care as a student of this university.  

Should we underwrite this irresponsible, hell, felonious behavior on that health care center's part?  I put it to you that that university is endangering the health of the students in their care.  (Not my relative so much, since he's a smart kid and knows to get his condoms and health care elsewhere, but what about the less careful and less wealthy students in their purview?)  Also, if the churches want to push their archaic and lunatic belief systems, obviously we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country; but we don't have to fund or support such lunacy.

Further, and this is my main point, Mr. Blackwell:  denying someone Federal Funding because they refuse on religious grounds to comply with Federal laws is not, in fact, a pogrom.

It is not, I do not care what you heard on Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or whatever crap you have been listening to, not getting funded is not the same being raped, or slaughtered, it is not the same as watching your children get raped and slaughtered, it is not at all like being raped and slaughtered and terrorized and having that happen to you and your entire community and to every community like yours for generation upon generation all over Europe for a thousand years, culminating in the biggest pogrom of them all, Mr. Hitler's, so you can STFU, please.

And take your stupid university and your stupid network with you.

No Real Shock Here

But states that are more religious are states that end up with more pregnant teens.

How come? Well, maybe because, like the religious kids at my kid's school, they don't get taught anything about birth control or even basic sex education at all? Ya think? Just say no, that's what they get taught. Don't do it until you get married, that's all you need to know, that's what they get told.

Because, yes, that works really well. On MARS.

Pro What Now?

You'll remember those polls a few weeks (The Whack Right went whack over them*) that seemed to show the country had suddenly experienced a radical shift and decided it was Pro-Life after all?

I did not comment then, because I reckoned they were flawed polls (Nate Silver's blog analyzed them as likely to be so) and what else was there to say?

But yes, obviously they were: here's another poll, less mendaciously constructed, showing no such shift at all.  Imagine that. 

Turns out the first poll was, apparently, slanted: pollsters asking only if people were pro-life.  No clarification given, no attempt was made to allow for situations in which people might be saying, well, yes, in theory I'm pro-life, but if the woman's life is in danger; or, yes, I'm pro-life myself, but really, isn't that up to the individual woman?  Or, I'm pro-life, except when it's a nine-year-old and she's pregnant with twins and her step-daddy has been raping her since she was six and she weighs 66 pounds and she'll die if she gives birth.  Or, I'm pro-life, but what if the fetus is doomed anyway and the woman's life is at risk if she proceeds with the pregnancy?

Or -- and frankly, this is my position -- I'm pro-how-is-this-the-state's-fucking-business, again?  Last time I checked, this was the woman's body, she owned it, she gets to decide what to do with it.  How about we keep the state and your church out of my uterus?  How would that be?

Not that any of this will stop the Whackawits.  Little bits like making their datastreams match up to reality never mattered to them anyway -- how else could they believe in a 6000 year old planet in a world that has pottery older than that?

*If you want to be made ill, read the comments at the second post.