Check out Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven for a quick overview of Mormonism (and as a bonus, Mormon fundamentalism!).  It’s easily one of my favorite books of the 00s.  He discusses the history of the Latter-Day Saints, including the various offshoots Mormonism spawned over the years, their attitudes towards larger American culture, race, other religions, and does it all in the context of trying to understand how Mormonism could have been perverted to justify (in the minds of a couple of sick fundies) the murder of an innocent woman and her baby.

Beck is Mormon, but you honestly wouldn’t know it from the general way he carries on, which is to imitate the tropes of right wing evangelical Christianity, with the weeping and the ranting and confessions

One article I read about Beck (can’t recall the link, but I’ll try to find it for you) noted that all the weeping and other drama is an integral part of Mormons giving testimony within the religious community. They’re buttoned up to the outside as adults (some of the biggest party animals in my HS were Mormon), but in private apparently this sort of thing is standard.

But I suppose people that subscribe to different flavors of made-up bullshit are wary of each other.

The understatement of the year.

Still, all along there’s been a strong potential for an alliance, because while the made-up bullshit part of the program causes animosity, the actual real world beliefs are there.

And the real-world desire for money and power. The Mormons I’ve done business with rank up there when it comes to being ruthless and unscrupulous (one was an actual embezzler). I don’t ascribe this the Mormonism per se, but rather Mormonism as one of many fundamentalist religions with zealous adherents, who believe that since they already have a ticket to heaven they can behave poorly to outsiders.

Ah, I should have known—it’s an Exiled Online article on Beck (site may be NSFW):

But when it comes to public crying as vaudeville, Beck owes less to universal womanhood than to a very specific brotherhood. He’s not stereotypically premenstrual as much as classically Mormon. Like so much else that baffles people about Beck, his approach to public tears has been shaped in the crucible of his adopted faith. It was the lachrymose Latter-Day Saints who turned an amateur crybaby pro.

During the first weekend of October 2009, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints held its semiannual general conference in Salt Lake City. For two days, church leaders sermonized on the power of the Holy Spirit and railed against pornography, a “potent tool of Lucifer.” In turn, the speakers described powerful spiritual experiences in highly personal terms. Throughout the telling, often at similar dramatic turns, many speakers appeared on the verge of being overwhelmed by emotion. Sometimes the emotion broke through. Voices cracked, throats caught, eyes misted over. To the uninitiated, it seemed as if the speakers were all imitating Glenn Beck.

Among the practices that distinguish Mormonism from other forms of Christianity is a highly stylized social ritual known as bearing testimony. On the first Sunday of each month, Mormons gather at their local ward house to speak about “what they know to be true.” The format is something like a cross between an open-mic poetry slam and an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. One by one, congregants give semi-structured speeches—testimonies—that deal with a central theme; each one usually lasts no longer than a few minutes. These testimonies, structured like radio monologues, describe the feeling of being overwhelmed by the love of Jesus, of struggling against temptation, and of maintaining full dedication to the restoration of the gospel. As the speakers relive these feelings, it is common for them to emote within circumscribed boundaries.

He goes on to support this thesis. The article clarifies a lot.

Most of the Mormons I know, outside of their religious beliefs, are not weird.  At least not in the scary winger sense.

I think there’s something about the fantastical special afterlife that puts less pressure on the current one.  You can separate the two and live here and now in this world, leaving the fantasy for religious times.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to observe that Mormonism is basically early science fiction.  We watch Galactica, they go to church.

Also, lots of Evangelicals are African-American, so they’re unlikely to respond to racist dogwhistles or match your characterization of them as right-wing or emotionally needy.

An NPR interview with Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, is illuminating. Land is skeptical of Beck’s core beliefs but highlights the intersection between Beck’s cultural values and his own. Both he and Beck pitch this nascent movement as a kind of cultural revival, not necessarily political. The attempt to remove politics from the equation seems calculated to remove the dirty realities of political organization and the compromises involved therein. By framing this movement as a grassroots awakening (the “take our country back” trope), Land and Beck create orthodox cultural norms that transcend religious belief.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129535008

The interesting thing about Mormons and politics is that the link between the Church of Latter-Day Saints and the GOP is pretty recent, a post WWII invention. I read on Slate once that before WWII, the Mormon Church would assign half the adults to the Democratic Party and half the results to the Republican Party in order to have a connection to both parties. This practice ended after WWII and most Mormons found a home in the GOP for obvious reasons but a few Mormons remained in the Democratic Party. Harry Reid is them most well-known Mormon Democrat.

  If you go to Salt Lake City and check out Temple Square, you will see quotes from various pieces of Mormon literature that lean towards a squishy sort of liberalism and many of them certainly have the earnestness of squishy liberals. One could with a little difficulty and imaginaiton, see an alternate history where the Mormons lean Democratic and Utah is a reliable state for the Democrats.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to observe that Mormonism is basically early science fiction.  We watch Galactica, they go to church.

Very true. There were few who understood this better than L. Ron Hubbard. When he was at a party with fellow SF writers who were complaining about the low per-word rate the pulps paid, he’s reported to have said something to the effect of “if you guys want to go where the real money is, found a religion.” And damned if he didn’t.

Also, lots of Evangelicals are African-American, so they’re unlikely to respond to racist dogwhistles or match your characterization of them as right-wing or emotionally needy.

When it comes to African-American Evangelicals, the Xtianists usually appeal to homobigotry instead. There’s always someone to hate, and many African-American preachers are happy to get on board with gay-bashing.

Old, why are you eager to ignore the modifier “right wing”?

That Mormons aren’t “weird” is irrelevant. I’d in fact point out that teabaggers view themselves as the epitome of normal Americans and see the rest of us as weird.

Amanda at 8: Thats a good point, the Tea Party like the Birchers believed that they represented the main stream rather than just a minority in the body politic. It usually takes a stunning defeat to shake them of this notion and even then that sometimes doesn’t work.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to observe that Mormonism is basically early science fiction.  We watch Galactica, they go to church.

I’ve never watched Galactica, but I’m fairly sure that if I did, I wouldn’t take it as eternally revealed truth according to which I must live my life.

I’ve always thought of Mormonism as more retro than futuristic. People periodically observe that the tale of how Joseph Smith founded the religion (Golden Tablets, magic goggles, etc.) is no less preposterous than many of the founding myths of ancient religions, so Catholics or Jews shouldn’t feel superior to Mormons on that score. Someone once countered that line of thinking by pointing out that Smith promulgated his nonsense in modern times, after science (and, especially, the thought patterns that make scientific discovery possible) had been well established. IOW, Smith and his followers had less of an excuse than some Semitic tribe cowering in a desert, not knowing what would happen to them next.

Regarding Mormonism and SF/fantasy, this essay on the Twilight series (discussed on Pandagon here) is a fun read if you have the time.

FWIW, it would appear that Joseph may have plagiarized the Book of Mormon from that eras’ version of SF:

Spalding manuscript and the Book of Mormon

While living in Conneaut, Ohio, in the early nineteenth century, Solomon Spalding (1761–1816) began writing a work of fiction about the lost civilization of the mound builders of North America. Spalding shared his story, entitled Manuscript Story[2] with members of his family and some of his associates in Conneaut, as well as his friends in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Amity, Washington County, Pennsylvania, where he lived prior to his death. However, Manuscript Story was not published during his lifetime.

In 1832, Latter Day Saint missionaries Samuel H. Smith and Orson Hyde visited Conneaut, Ohio, and preached from the Book of Mormon. Nehemiah King, a resident of Conneaut who knew Spalding when he lived there, felt that the Mormon text resembled the story written by Spalding years before. In 1833, at the urging of Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, King, Spalding’s widow, his brother John, and a number of other residents of Conneaut signed affidavits stating that Spalding had written a manuscript, portions of which were identical to the Book of Mormon.

Origins of the theory

The theory that Sidney Rigdon was the true author of the Book of Mormon first appeared in print in an 1831 article by James Gordon Bennett, who had visited Palmyra/Manchester area and interviewed several residents.[3] The full theory involving the Spalding manuscript first appeared in Eber D. Howe’s 1834 book Mormonism Unvailed. Howe printed the collection of affidavits collected by Hurlbut. Hurlbut had heard of an unpublished romance novel by Solomon Spalding as he was touring Pennsylvania giving lectures against the Latter Day Saint church. Hurlbut concluded that the description of the story in the manuscript bore some resemblance to that of the Book of Mormon.[4] A contemporary of Hurlbut’s, Benjamin Winchester, states that Hurlbut “had learned that one Mr. Spaulding had written a romance, and the probability was, that it had, by some means, fallen into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, and that he had converted it into the Book of Mormon.” Upon learning this, Hurlbut determined to obtain the manuscript.[5] Hurlbut learned that Sidney Rigdon had once resided in Pittsburgh and that the manuscript had once been there, and subsequently “endeavoured to make the finding of the manuscript take place at Pittsburgh, and then infer, that S.R. [Sidney Rigdon] had copied it there.”[6]

Author Dan Vogel suggests that Hurlbut was not the originator of the Spalding-Rigdon theory, noting that Hurlbut pursued this in response to what he had heard about the manuscript and suggests that had Hurlbut been the inventor of the theory “he would not have made strenuous efforts to recover Spalding’s manuscript.”[7]

Wasn’t Mormonism founded at a time in our country when spiritualism was in vogue?  People were having seances and going to performances of all kinds of weird magical stuff.  There were some big, famous cons at the time.  Seems like Mormonism fit right in.

Evangelical churches recruit from two major populations, which are people who already have right wing beliefs they want to justify and organize around, and people who are emotionally needy and are attracted to the self-help and sob-heavy emphasis of the evangelical church.

Or because the church offers the sort of support (such as childcare, library, counseling, access to some sort of medical care, a gym, etc.) that might otherwise be provided by the state, where state services are extremely poor quality or nonexistent.

Interesting. I seem to recall a lot of wingnut Christian websites mocking Romney for special underwear, earning planets, and other assorted nonsense. Maybe Beck will change their tune?

FWIW, it would appear that Joseph may have plagiarized the Book of Mormon from that eras’ version of SF

Hubbard did something similar—the whole Xenu story is basically a variation on Golden Age SF tropes. It’s critical to the success of a new religion or cult to make some connection to popular culture, fiction or otherwise. The spaceships in the $cientology mythos, for example, explicitly resemble DC-8s—the state-of-the-art passenger aircraft at the time he was first popularising his religion.

Also, lots of Evangelicals are African-American, so they’re unlikely to respond to racist dogwhistles or match your characterization of them as right-wing or emotionally needy.

Huh, I wasn’t aware that lack of emotional fulfillment was something much rarer among black people than everyone else.  Is this a new stereotype or is it perhaps related to the one about being such a musical people?

Or because the church offers the sort of support (such as childcare, library, counseling, access to some sort of medical care, a gym, etc.) that might otherwise be provided by the state, where state services are extremely poor quality or nonexistent.

Which is why you see such churches thriving in both low-income neighbourhoods and cities on the one hand, and in affluent exurban areas trying out practical Libertarian economics (like Colorado Springs) on the other.

Man, the trolls are coming at this site fast and furious this week.

jackspratt, I’ve been trying in vain to find this fantastic article I’d read a while ago about how Mormonism fit into the Big Three cultural fads of the time (it looks like someone copied it here). Joseph Smith cobbled together a cosmology out of the ideas that were fashionable at the time and voila.

I came late to the Under the Banner of Heaven party, but it was definitely a worthy read.

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only Catholic poster on this site.  The relentless bashing of any belief in anything beyond science and what we can touch is interesting.  I’m not saying it is wrong or incomplete, just interesting.  I am a man of science but also a man of faith.  I can say I need to fix this world first before moving on to the next.  Before the frothing attacks come out, I don’t care what the churches do.  I can’t control them unless I become a member or as a catholic become atleast a bishop if not cardinal or pope.  So relentless hatred of an afterlife is relatively pointless.  Calling people sheep for believing in your own private circles?  Hypocritical because the same words are used on the opposite side except they tend to publicize their hatred of atheists/agnostics. 

That being said, the Mormons are a powerful group and probably are the next to last monolithic religious institution to involve itself in politics behind Catholicism.  The problem with Catholicism in this argument though is that Catholics vote largely down the middle.  Slightly towards the left on more economic issues, about 50/50 on everything else.  Mormons have become a solid right-wing block because they’ve had a consistent history of being persecuted in Utah and even having a mini-war with the US government so when the GOP offered them a plank to write their religious beliefs into society on they jumped on that like a starving hobo on a sandwich.

Bitter Scribe says: People periodically observe that the tale of how Joseph Smith founded the religion (Golden Tablets, magic goggles, etc.) is no less preposterous than many of the founding myths of ancient religions…Someone once countered that line of thinking by pointing out that Smith promulgated his nonsense in modern times, after science (and, especially, the thought patterns that make scientific discovery possible) had been well established. IOW, Smith and his followers had less of an excuse than some Semitic tribe cowering in a desert, not knowing what would happen to them next.

This!  The older religions just had 2000 more years of test marketing!

Mormons have become a solid right-wing bloc because they’ve had a consistent history of being persecuted in Utah and even having a mini-war with the US government so when the GOP offered them a plank to write their religious beliefs into society on they jumped on that like a starving hobo on a sandwich.

Plus, it didn’t hurt that they were traditionally unfamiliar with/suspicious of black people, which fit in nicely with the GOP’s Southern Strategy.

Beck’s charlatan routine fits right in with the Mormon tradition in many ways; in addition to the whole weeping testimony schtick mentioned by Gracchus @2/3, one of the operating tenets of Mormonism (according to Krakauer) is that it’s okay to lie for the lord. Also, the Mormons I’ve known in my own limited experience are hard workers and scary-smart - which makes it even scarier that they have faith in the patently absurd pronouncements of a convicted fraud.

One other thing: Atrios will occasionally note that to those who invest their belief in made-up bullshit, the little differences are big deals. Wars raged throughout Europe for centuries under the pretext of whether or not wafers and wine actually turn into the body and blood of a long-dead Jewish magician after a few magical pronouncements, after all. (In a non-religious context, look at the bitter feuds that exist in academia over what appear to outsiders as the most mundane and minor differences.) I never thought Mittens had a shot at the presidency b/c when it came down to the wire, the far-right fundies that form the core of the Republican voter base think that he is the representative of Satan. If Beck is able to successfully blur those lines in a meaningful way (which I still doubt, but you never know) then we are in even bigger trouble than you might think.

#21 - The relentless bashing of any belief in anything beyond science and what we can touch is interesting.

Nah, it’s just that they’re right wing.  Leftie evangelicals like Slacktivist are generally respected as far as i’ve seen.  Snipes at religion are just cheap “they’re stupid” shots at proletariat conservatives, like misogynists calling feminists ugly - needlessly mean, and irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only Catholic poster on this site.  The relentless bashing of any belief in anything beyond science and what we can touch is interesting.

How is it bashing to point out that mythos are products of their times? It’s not like Catholicism is exceptional in this regard despite those 2000 years of test marketing CParis mentions. All hail Mithras, the Sun (AKA Son of) God!

So relentless hatred of an afterlife is relatively pointless.

That’s a straw man. No-one here “hates an afterlife,” unless you’re claiming that disbelief = hatred. Rather we hate the destructive belief promoted by many religions that having a guaranteed ticket to an imaginary paradise means that one has leave to behave like an arsehole in this one.

Calling people sheep for believing in your own private circles?

We call them sheep because they’re likely to give their time and money to con-men who pitch supernatural woo. If I told you I could get you into the afterlife if you gave me 10% of your weekly earnings (trust me, I’ll only put it toward good works), you’d ask if I took you for a fool. And you’d be right.

Hypocritical because the same words are used on the opposite side except they tend to publicize their hatred of atheists/agnostics.

I don’t see atheists and agnostics constantly begging for money, or accosting me in the street to share the good word, or asking me to vote in lockstep on the basis of certain political issues. We’re not organised enough for that, and don’t want to be.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to observe that Mormonism is basically early science fiction.  We watch Galactica, they go to church.
Comment #4: oldfeminist on 09/01 at 11:21 AM

Well, they even have Battlestar Galactica. I think it’s been discussed here before but the original BSG was based on Mormon mythology.

When I was in college a lot of my friends who were devout would get pissed at me because I’d point out the only real difference between say, Catholicism, Baptists and Mormoms and Scientology was time and numbers. They would pull the “but we’re older!” card and I pointed out that that only meant the people of time time weren’t as “smart” (for lack of a better word) than people were of today. Of course they thought someone who had a seizure was “possessed”.  But, as someone pointed above, once science started replacing superstition people who invented such nonsense just made it more obvious that people 2000 years ago were just didn’t know any better.

I also pointed out to them that the very smart people of their time believed Zeus was real, just like today they believe Jesus is “real”. We got into some really tense arguments. Then again, my Baptist friend also took pleasure in pointing out to my Catholic friend that she was an idolater and not really a “true” Christian. Then again my Catholic friend could also pull out the “We were here first” card on my Baptist friend. It seemed like a never ending battle for dominance.

  Also, lots of Evangelicals are African-American, so they’re unlikely to respond to racist dogwhistles or match your characterization of them as right-wing or emotionally needy.

Huh, I wasn’t aware that lack of emotional fulfillment was something much rarer among black people than everyone else.  Is this a new stereotype or is it perhaps related to the one about being such a musical people?
Comment #17: neff on 09/01 at 12:15 PM

I’m confused by your response.

I made no claims that lack of emotional fulfillment is rarer among African-Americans than anyone else.  Just that they aren’t all emotionally needy.  African-American evangelicals are diverse in their beliefs and personal characteristics.

Some might assume from stereotypes that African-American evangelicals go to church for some crazy emotional high from all the shouting and singing and putting down White people and Jews, then go home in their Cadillacs to their trashed Section 8 rentals or public housing projects.

one of the operating tenets of Mormonism (according to Krakauer) is that it’s okay to lie for the lord. Also, the Mormons I’ve known in my own limited experience are hard workers and scary-smart

The embezzler I mentioned above was a case in point—very smart, very hard-working. But he had a clever little kickback scheme running alongside, and it was only a chance conversation with a very surprised vendor that led me to discover that this manager was betraying the shareholders’ trust by floating himself thousands of dollars in informal and unsecured loans. He had displayed no shame when caught—he was spending most of the money on an engagement and wedding, and what could be more Godly than trying to build a family? Looked at that way, betraying non-Mormon investors and employers became a minor sin.

And to be clear, this isn’t unique to Mormons.

I’m confused by your response.

He’s making a lame attempt to troll Amanda via your comment. I’d ignore him.

@23 - What is the Mormons’ connection to the Southern Strategy? I’d never heard of them being particularly involved in that.

Amanda:  “Old, why are you eager to ignore the modifier “right wing”? “

Where exactly were you applying it?  For example, here:

“Evangelical churches recruit from two major populations, which are people who already have right wing beliefs they want to justify and organize around, and people who are emotionally needy and are attracted to the self-help and sob-heavy emphasis of the evangelical church.”

Are you talking only about right-wing Evangelicals here?  You didn’t specify.

Was “I’ve always thought it was strange that right wing evangelicals and Mormons couldn’t set aside their differences” meant as

“I’ve always thought it was strange that right wing (evangelicals and Mormons) couldn’t set aside their differences…”

or

“I’ve always thought it was strange that (right wing evangelicals) and Mormons couldn’t set aside their differences…”

Again, it wasn’t clear.  I’m just trying to be careful about not treating all Evangelicals the same, because they’re not.  As an atheist I think they’re all deluded, but hell, Lutherans are Evangelicals, and they’re not all that sob-heavy or self-helpy.  Some of my best friends etcetera.

What is the Mormons’ connection to the Southern Strategy? I’d never heard of them being particularly involved in that.

It’s just speculation on my part, but I think it’s logical that if you appeal to whites in the South by playing on their hostility to black people, the appeal would carry over to others similarly hostile, no matter where they live.

The traditional (and I’d bet very much still alive) enmity between rightwing American Protestants (like Baptists, for example) and Mormons, and toward Catholics as well, is one of the few hopeful things remaining in the de-secularizing of America.

No matter how they might pretend to be best buddies, sooner or later the old hatreds will overwhelm the current convenient feelings of brotherhood and they’ll be back at each other’s throats.  Catholics have been reviled by Protestants for a very long time, and pretending that Mormons are normal/mainstream is a very recent phenomenon. 

Moromons ended up in Utah, for the most part, because they were driven out of the rest of the (back then) civilized United States.  (They were treated much like the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh were when they created their own town  in the 1980s in Oregon.)

As recently as 1960 many thought a Catholic like John F. Kennedy couldn’t be trusted as president because he had allegiance to the Pope and not to America. 

Both anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic hatred is simmering just below the surface, and I believe it will rip the religious wingnut cause apart if they achieve too much success.  No matter how many BeckStock love-ins they have, it won’t change the essential character of those incompatible religions.  Sooner or later the Beckernecks will figure out they hate each other’s guts…

Spiritualism, along with the Oneida Community and Transcendentalism, arrived in mid-19th Century America like a ton of bricks a little earlier than Mormonism.

Harold Bloom has pointed out that Mormonism was a particularly American Religion:

For Bloom, the American religion is defined as follows:

  The American finds God in herself or himself only after finding the freedom to know God by experiencing a total inward solitude. In this solitary freedom, the American is liberated both from other selves and from the created world. He comes to recognize that his spirit is itself uncreated. Knowing that he is the equal of God, the American Religionist can then achieve his true desideratum, mystical communion with his friend, the godhead.

Using this definition he finds that the Southern Baptists and the Mormons are the best expressions of American Religion. I might add that, when Bloom is talking about the Baptists in this regard he is talking about the Southern Baptist Convention before the conservative takeover in the 90’s. This also is a definition of gnostic religion. Regardless of protests to the contrary, Bloom asserts that the American religion has very little to do with historic, biblical Christianity. While most of us who came out of the protestant and evangelical traditions will give a hearty amen to that idea as it applies to the Mormons, it would seem to hardly apply to the Southern Baptist Convention.

However, Bloom asserts that the Mormons and the Baptists have more in common than they realize. Both are essentially a religion of the self. In the case of the Mormons, they can become gods, in the case of the Southern Baptists, Mullins teaching of soul competency locates God within and nothing, nor no one can, can come between them and God. Both have an aversion to creeds. Both are fundamentally experiential religions. Both exclude a sense of the communal. Again, when referring to the Baptists, he is referring to the moderate wing before the 90’s.

@oldfeminist, I see what you did there. BSG was a highly mormonized TV series.

Sorry, bad example. 

The point was that you talk about right wing evangelicals in one place, and evangelicals without the modifier in another, and it’s not clear whether you’re intending to carry the right-wing modifier throughout.

read “later” for “earlier”

I think the other thing that made mormons a reliable bloc for the right is hostility toward feminism. The doctrine (even without the founder’s revelation that god gave him and all the other older men the right to f*ck as many hotties as they could intimidate parents into giving up) is pretty horrifically patriarchal, including a fairly strict official ban on birth control.

It does make you wonder, if the protestant religious right wing is willing to accept catholics and mormons, how long it will be before they decide that the Taliban (who, after all, also accept jesus as a prophet) are really worht making common cause with as well.

Oh, Xeranar, Dana’s a practicing Catholic, too!

No one really gives a shit what you believe.  It’s when you want to push those theocratic beliefs into a theocracy that the Constitution comes up.

If the only reason for limiting someone’s freedom is because your particular version of Abraham’s war deity Yahweh says so, that’s simply not good enough for true, patriotic Americans.

And I’m saying “true, patriotic Americans” sincerely here.  Patriotic Americans understand that the government has no business establishing religion.  One’s religion might influence an individual’s choices, but that religion simply cannot be the basis of our secular laws.

It’s about as wrong as can be.

Beck’s blending different faiths together in a political group is threatening b/c they are loud and might work together for a bit, since, as Amanda says, their ends are mostly the same: patriarchal standards that marginalize minorities.  Eventually, they will go back to hating each other, but if they can all pull together for Yaweh, they might cause some real problems.

Here’s hoping the Constitution can still protect us.

As for your defensiveness…sorry, but your collection money gets funnelled up to Papa Ratzi and the others who covered up they pedophilia scandals.  Rationalize it anyway you want, but it’s not picking on Catholics to say that tolerating that behavior from your hierarchy pretty much removes all basis for a moral high horse in any discussion.

Again, glad I’m out.

There’s kind of a divide and conquer thing going on.  Maybe atheists and Muslims should partner up.

You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting to think that Rush Limbaugh is no longer the most toxic personality of the extreme right.  While I think Limbaugh is a raging asshole who acknowledges and enjoys his position of being the biggest asshole in America, he doesn’t seem like a crazy person to me.  He sounds full of shit, but not completely detached from reality.  I listen to Limbaugh’s blather and I hear a very bitter and angry old white guy, but I don’t hear someone who seems detached from reality, just someone who refuses to acknowledge the existence of straight privilege, white privilege, and male privilege.

But Glenn Beck is… something else.  He’s not just a guy who tells his people what they want to hear, he’s becoming their messiah.  While the Bachmanns of America will wildly inflate the size of the Beckenator’s rally crowd, the dude did manage to get close to 100,000 people to show up and listen to him act like a revivalist preacher.  I can’t think of any other media personality on the left or the right who could have pulled that off.  And while more than 2/3 of Americans probably think Beck is completely off his rocker, the fact that even 5% of Americans probably worship this guy and hang on his every word is frightening.

Beck’s meteoric rise in popularity within the extreme right is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, including Rush Limbaugh’s own rise in popularity among that crowd after Bill Clinton’s inauguration.  The sheeple really do see Beck as some kind of savior, and when he starts giving speeches that conjure up images of an evangelical road show, it kind of makes the rightwing accusation that progressives treat Obama as “The One” seem pretty ridiculous.

Crazy or evil is something I’m still not sure of with Beck.  I think he’s honestly an amalgamation of both.  Limbaugh, no doubt, is evil… but he’s not delusional.  But Beck… I just don’t know.  What was funniest about Beck’s Whitestock was not just that the there were nearly no black or brown people in the crowd, but the number of black people up on th stage that day.  It almost seemed like a damn minstrel show, because there were actually more black people on stage than white people.  Every single song was sung by a black choir, and wingnut Alveda King was given a prominent role in the event.

It was one of the wierdest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Harry Reid is them most well-known Mormon Democrat.

The Udall family is probably the most prominent political family of the American West, and most of them are Democrats.  Three generations of Udalls and ten Udall family members have held elective office or government appointments, including two mayors of Phoenix, two Arizona Chief Justices, one member of the AZ state legislature, a U.S. Sec. of the Interior, a U.S. Congressman representing AZ-02, and three U.S. Senators.

The Udalls are to the frontier West what the Kennedys are to new England.

In 2008, three Udall family members who were all cousins were on ballots for three different U.S. Senate seats, one of them an incumbent.  The incumbent, Gordon Smith of Oregon, was the only Republican of the three, and he was he only one who lost his race (to Jeff Merkley).  The other two cousins, Tom Udall and Mark Udall, won U.S. Senate seats in New Mexico and Colorado, respective.  As far as I know, they are the only two U.S. Senators currently serving who are either siblings or cousins.

Should Robin Carnahan defeat Roy Blunt for the U.S. Senate seat in Missouri in two months, she will likely be serving in Congress alongside her brother Russ Carnahan, who is a U.S. Congressman for Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District.  This of course assumes Russ retains his seat, which is all but guaranteed in this district.

I think you are right about rush and beck. My mom’s family in St Louis is basically made up of racist Democrats. They all thought that Rush Limbaugh was a total bastard, but Glenn Beck, for some reason, really speaks to them. They are genuinely terrified about the cultural changes of the last few decades and the economic downturn—which from what I saw last time I was in STL that it is worse there than other places. For whatever reason, Beck makes them feel safe and empowered. He seems somehow less petty than rush.

That isn’t to excuse Beck of his followers. I think his broader appeal and the way his supporters depend on him makes him much more influential and scary.

I agree about Rush vs. Beck. Beck is crazy and dangerous, Limbaugh is just a loud-mouthed asshole.

(They were treated much like the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh were when they created their own town in the 1980s in Oregon.)

You mean, they defied the land use ordinances in place by a current government, and tried to change zoning laws with monies donated to their church, then were later found to have been a carrier for a militant group which violated gun, privacy, etc laws as well as attempting to silence and murder dissidents?

Oh, and forgot about Sean Hannity. He’s just plain boring, a walking GOP talking points machine. He never, ever swerves from the GOP party line, while Rush and Beck will at least sometimes.

I think you are right about rush and beck. My mom’s family in St Louis is basically made up of racist Democrats. They all thought that Rush Limbaugh was a total bastard, but Glenn Beck, for some reason, really speaks to them. They are genuinely terrified about the cultural changes of the last few decades and the economic downturn—which from what I saw last time I was in STL that it is worse there than other places. For whatever reason, Beck makes them feel safe and empowered. He seems somehow less petty than rush.

Yeah, Beck goes over pretty well here.  Their are two prominent rightwing up and comers here, Dana Loesch and Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), not to mention Phyllis Schlafly.

I was pretty disgusted to see the best player in all of baseball agree to appear at Whitestock, and while I’m no less of a fan of Cardinals’ first baseman Albert Pujols today than I was a week ago, I don’t like him less today, though it was embarrassing seeing him get ripped by Olbermann last Friday.  Apparantly, the last time Beck was in St. Louis (he and O’Reilly had a joint talk at Chaifetz Arena on SLU’s campus), he stopped by Busch Stadium and had the chance to meet Pujols and Tony LaRussa.  The Cardinals were in DC last weekend playing the Nationals, and someone from Beck’s camp got in touch with LaRussa to see if he and Pujols would be willing to make an appearance at the rally.  LaRussa agreed to do it, claiming that he was told that the event was not political in nature.  Either he’s stupid or lying, because unless you live in a cave, there’s nothing involving Glenn Beck wthat won’t be political.

Anyway, I wish he hadn’t agreed to it, but I accept that if I’m gonna be a fan of American pro athletes, I’m probably going to have to accept that some of my favorite stars are on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me.  I still love watching El Hombre play, and I still love the fact that the dude has had one of the greatest first decades of a baseball career ever.  There’s a lot of tension here about whether or not Pujols will become next year’s LeBron James… he’s only got one more year left on his current contract, and he’s poised to possibly become the first $30 Million per year baseball player with his next deal if he wants to be.  He’ll be able to command a larger paycheck than Arod next year.

My theory around the way Beck and the teabaggers leapt over logic and old divisions is that the things they defend (white male dominance) are losing.  Demographics is against them, history is against them. They are reacting much the way a drowning swimmer does—grabbing at anything to keep afloat.

Which is pretty much what Amanda said.

But which also means, we’re wasting time trying to find logic where none exists.  We should put all our efforts in keeping them from taking us down in their death throes. What’s scary is the amount of damage their dying ideology is doing and will do before it’s done.

“You mean, they defied the land use ordinances in place by a current government, and tried to change zoning laws with monies donated to their church, then were later found to have been a carrier for a militant group which violated gun, privacy, etc laws as well as attempting to silence and murder dissidents?”

I was referring to things like the Mormon experience in Nauvoo, Ill.,  and no, they weren’t (quite) as creepy as the Rajneesh people.  I meant the comparison in the sense that they took over or created a place for themselves and those around them objected, and then forced them to leave.  I’m taking no stand on whether either situation was justified or not.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I have a good number of Mormon relatives, none of whom I know personally.  I’ve been to Salt Lake City on vacation once when I was 10 or 11.  I have no axe to grind for or against Mormons.  I’m an atheist myself (now), but was born and raised in another conservative Protestant Christian faith…

Comment #51: Stikh Rule on 09/01 at 07:10 PM

Are you back again?

Stick, why this blog? Why are you so persistent? I really don’t get it.

Murrow Fan @42 - I am still laughing at Whitestock.

If you don’t want him here, simply give him zero attention.  Even writing this is giving him some of what he is here for, so I won’t say it twice.  But it’s real simple, trust me I have seen it a thousand times over the years.

Also at @42 Murrow Fan, I really agree with your post, even with the uncertainty you express.  I too see Beck as being different than Limbaugh in that Limbaugh is clearly sane, just a very mean, racist, sexist pig.  But he’s sane.  I see Beck as being both sick in the head, seriously mentally challenged (but what part of that is mental illness and what part is past - past? - drug and alcohol abuse, I’m not qualified to even guess at) but also malevolent.  He’s also one part Elmer Gantry of course.  I mean, the guy is a fucking mess.

It does literally scare me how many people look at that mess and see a savior.

Why?  You want me to go?

By all means, stay here and demonstrate how you have no life. It’s hilarious, in a pathetic way, that you spend all this effort registering multiple accounts, finding proxy servers for your dozens of sockpuppets (even cross-dressing as “Elizabeth”, like nobody would notice) just to get abused by strangers.

And that’s not even counting all the trolling you most likely do on other sites. All day, every day.

Yglesias is effective and shutting down trolls? Lol, what?

Just go over to Sadly, No! if you get off on trolling. They’ll be happy to give you the smackdown you so desperately crave over there. They love feeding trolls, which is the big reason I never read the comments section. Have at it.

What’s scary is the amount of damage their dying ideology is doing and will do before it’s done.

Ain’t it the truth?  In the next few years in particular, we would do well to remind ourselves that we are right side of history, in spite of temporary setbacks.  The good fight will always need to be fought, no matter who wins elections.

I cant believe anyone buys into Beck’s crap! The guy is such a hokey phony! I hate how Fox nurtures these kinds of creeps and then unleashes them onto the public to cause mayhem and exemplify stupid like it’s on crack!

Fox “News” and Glenn Beck are simply the most recent incarnation of the Southern Strategy.  Of course, folks here know that. It shouldn’t be the least bit surprising, though. After all, Murdoch hired Roger Ailes to run the damned thing, and he comes out of the ratfucking wing of the GOP. 

Remember, though, more people watch Top Chef than Glenn Beck, and more people attended each of the last four LGBT Marches on Washington than attended Beck’s Whitestock.

MAJeff @ 64:

I, for one, welcome our new Gay Chef Overlords…

I, for one, welcome our new Gay Chef Overlords…

Well, I am a kitchen god

Come to think of it, Gay Chef Overlords would be a great name for a band—if I say so myself.

“Yglesias is effective and shutting down trolls? Lol, what?”

Trolling, lol.

However, the religious right will always be the backbone of these kinds of movements, because without the organizing power of the churches, you mostly have a bunch of individuals sitting in their houses stewing.

Right, most of them would be too busy being Rugged Individualists otherwise.

As a personal preference, if I had to choose I’d rather be around evangelicals than Mormons, even in a non-political setting. Mormons creep me out on a personal level whereas I find evangelicals a little flaky and backward. Maybe it’s because, growing up in the south, evangelicals are “the devil I know”.

Of all religious people, though, Roman Catholics and (religious) Jews seem the easiest to be around on a personal level. A big part of it is that Roman Catholics aren’t big on proselytizing and Jews don’t proselytize period. I’ve never had a member of either religion try to tell me, for example, that I’ll be damned for all eternity unless I convert, be “left behind” when the rapture comes, and they don’t knock on my doors and pester me about it.

Mormonism is a quantum level less plausible than mainstream Christianity.  The Bible unquestionably dates from ancient times, even though it’s fiction, while the Book of Mormon was written in the 1830’s.  Thus the Bible gets a lot of the basic incidental details of ancient times right. On the other hand, we know a lot more about the ancient Americas than was known in the 1830’s, and it’s rather clear that the ancient societies portrayed in the Book of Mormon never existed.  In other words, the Book of Mormon is falsifiable by history and archaeology to a much greater degree than the Bible.

The proper way to see the Prop 8 business is an “ante-in” and early pot grab by Corporate Salt Lake, i.e. the LDS Church.  They went wild not because they particularly care about the family structures of non-Mormons, but because they want to make sure that when it’s time to award credit for bashing Team Blue, the LDS Church gets recognizes as one of the Five Families a la the Godfather.  This is why overturning Prop 8 is such a big deal beyond the human and constitutional rights of same-sex couples; it’s more than just winning but them losing all their funds in vanity and meaninglessness.

Maybe it’s because, growing up in the south, evangelicals are “the devil I know”.

I went to a Jesuit university.  Someone asked me (Unitarian) and a friend (Jewish) if we were comfortable attending a Catholic school.  We’re both from Florida.  We pointed out that we grew up with a lot of Southern Baptists.  Catholics are incredibly sane and reasonable in comparison.

I do believe (for the Wikipedia tells me so!) that Ken Jennings, the guy who had that long winning streak on Jeopardy!, is both Mormon and Democrat.

And that ties in to the earlier comment about Mormons being hard workers *and* scary smart. When I taught at a Major American Conservatory on a one-year contract, one of my TAs was a Latter-day Saint. Good guy, all the way around. (No, really!) I never talked politics with him, because he was a darn good TA and I didn’t want to let that interfere with our duties.

WF

AnglScarlett—I think you’re right about Beck. I’m not sure if he’s histrionic, or if he’s got some sort of weird adult Anxious-Ambivalent disorder, but I suspect him and fame is moth-to-the-flame stuff. He has to be outrageous, he has to be the center of attention, but he can’t handle it when he gets it.

The good news for him is that his audience is made up entirely of people with the attention span and the recall powers of a squirrel on cocaine. So he can say bullshit things about how his Restoring Honor rally is going to PRODUCE MIRACLES and BIRTH THE NEXT GEORGE WASHINGTON and no one is going to remember, 2 weeks from now, that he ever said any of that shit because they’ll be too busy slamming hand cymbals together for his latest bullshit rant.

I still don’t think Mitt Romney will be completely palatable to the evangelical base, should he decide to run in 2012 (I’ll be a bit surprised if he doesn’t).

The guy who could probably win the fundie crowd over best is Mike Huckabee, but the Club for Growth people despise him.

And as much as I would love to see the GOP nominate Sarah Palin in 2012, I just don’t see it happening.  I don’t think she’ll run, but even if she did, I think she would get hurt by a misogynist version of the Bradley Effect.  The good ole boys and gals sing her praises all day long, but quietly many of them would just not be comfortable voting for a woman to be U.S. President, even someone like Sarah Palin who appears to be an ideologically perfect fit for that crowd.

I went to a Jesuit university.  Someone asked me (Unitarian) and a friend (Jewish) if we were comfortable attending a Catholic school.  We’re both from Florida.  We pointed out that we grew up with a lot of Southern Baptists.  Catholics are incredibly sane and reasonable in comparison.

I went to one for my PhD. This after spending a lifetime among Midwestern Lutherans and Methodists and attending state schools from kindergarden through Master’s degree. Coming from that background, Catholics were anything but sane and reasonable.  I recently contact the alumni office and told them to remove me from any fundraising lists. Never a dime for that anti-gay hellhole.

Romney is the scariest of all the possible 2012 Republicans to me, because unlike most, I think he can win.

Oh this is just priceless…

Glenn Beck said:

“I held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington.”

National Archives spokesperson Susan Cooper said:

“Those kinds of treasures are only handled by specially trained archival staff.”

Anybody who watched him say that at Whitestock should have heard alarm bells going off immediately. Nobody physically touches documents such as Washington’s inaugural address with their bare hands - not even the staff of the National Archives, who wear completely sterile gloves when touching such documents. The natural oils excreted by human skin can severely damage documents that are more than 200 years old. Even the director of the Archives doesn’t physically touch such documents.

I have no doubt that Beck was given the opportunity to gaze at the address displayed inside a hermetically-sealed bulletproof glass case, but it’s quite a huge embellishment for him to claim that he physically held the document in his own hands. Not just an embellishment, a flat-out lie.

What makes this somewhat trivial lie more embarrassing for Beck, however, is the fact in the exact same speech, he told the crowd that the only way we can “fix” America is to start telling the truth. And then Beck promptly excluded himself from that expectation by lying about holding a historic document that he never held.

The possible 2012 nominee that scares me the most, by far, is Mike Huckabee.

Mitt Romney? He’s overly phony, cautious, boring, and a flip-flopper.  A GOP version of John Kerry. His Mormonism is icing on his fail cake.

Palin? She doesn’t have any discipline or focus whatsoever. She couldn’t even finish one term as the Governor of a state that has fewer people than my city’s metro area (Alaska: pop. 698,473; Richmond-Petersburg MSA: 1,225,626. And Richmond is a small to maybe medium size city).

Pawlenty? ZZzzzZZzz….huh, wha?

Huckabee is southern Baptist which is more than acceptable to the GOP base, fairly charismatic, did some fiscally liberal stuff as Governor, and at least has the rhetoric (and corroborating biography) of being anti-wall street/anti-banker. He’s also scarily ultra-socially conservative. He could win, and do real, long-term damage to this country’s social progress. His judicial nominees alone would be fucking terrifying.

Romney is the scariest of all the possible 2012 Republicans to me, because unlike most, I think he can win.

If he can secure the GOP nomination, he could be a serious threat… but can he do that?  I just don’t know.

As for the GOP winning the White House in 2012, it’s going to be heavily dependent on where the nation’s economy is by that time.  If things haven’t dramatically improved, there’s a big chance that Obama will only be a one-term president.

For all the pre-analysis that’s already being done about whatever bloodbath the GOP brings about in November, four words sum up precisely why Nancy Pelosi may not be the Speaker of the House in January: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

I said last summer that if the nation’s U3 unemployment rate still hovered around 10%, the Democrats would be in serious trouble.  And that is precisely where we are.  Americans are freaked out about the level of economic uncertainty we’re having, and when voters get spooked by the economy, they tend to take it out on the party in power at the polls.

I’m still not worried about losing the U.S. Senate, because the GOP would need to win 28 out of the 37 seats in play, 19 of which are currently held by Democrats, to take majority control.  a 50-50 tie works in favor of the Democrats with VP Biden serving as the tiebreaker vote.

But the House is starting to make me pretty nervous… the Democrats currently have a 37 seat lead (235-198, 2 vacancies), but a net gain of just 21 seats by the Republicans makes John Boehner the next Speaker of the House, with a 218-217 House split.  I hate to say it, but I’m getting to a point where I’ll be surprised if the Republicans don’t actually win back the House.  I think Nate Silver’s analysis indicates that the Republicans are favored to take back the House at this point.

I don’t think they’ll do anywhere near as well overall as they seem to think, but I do think at the end of the night, the GOP finishes with a single digit House majority, and they’ll have whittled the Democrats Senate majority down to 54-46.

The next two years are going to cause a lot of heartburn for progressives.  Which is pretty much how the last two years have been.

I went to one for my PhD. This after spending a lifetime among Midwestern Lutherans and Methodists and attending state schools from kindergarden through Master’s degree. Coming from that background, Catholics were anything but sane and reasonable.  I recently contact the alumni office and told them to remove me from any fundraising lists. Never a dime for that anti-gay hellhole.

Really?  Kinda surprised to hear that.  Were the midwestern Lutherans that you were around in your youth Missouri Synod or the other sect which is far less conservative?

I went to a Jesuit university as well (two, actually), and the university president made quick enemies with the former Archbishop of St. Louis when he put the school’s teaching hospital up for sale.  Archbishop Justin Rigali (who is now Philadelphia’s Cardinal Rigali… he was close with JPII and got him to come to St. Louis in his final visit to the US before his death) was threatening to bring the Vatican into the dispute, because it was Rigali’s opinion that Fr. Lawrence Biondi - SLU’s president - did not have the right to sell the school’s hospital, which Rigali believed to be church property.  In the end, Biondi won, and the hospital was sold to a for-profit company in California called Tenet Healthcare for $500 Million.  Rigali got a few minor concessions: the hospital had to remain a teaching hospital affiliated with SLU, it had to retain the name “Saint Louis University Hospital”, and it had to continue to offer care to the indigent.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that Jesuits seem to be a little more wordly and (relatively) liberal leaning as Catholic religious orders go.  Fr. Biondi has run the school like a CEO in the 23 years he’s been there, and has invested over $1 Billion in physical campus acquisitions and improvements in the last decade.  Both Georgetown University, which is also Jesuit, and Notre Dame (Catholic but not Jesuit) were absolutely blasted by Bill Donohue for providing on-campus forums for President Obama to deliver speeches.  It’s the older and more established U.S. Jesuit schools that have sparked the trend of extremely conservative Catholic douchebags like Tom Monaghan (Domino’s Pizza founder and anti-choice wingnut) to put up their own money to start up unaccredited wingnut Catholic institutions like Ave Maria “University” in Florida.

I remember seeing some of the younger Jesuit priests from my school out drinking at the local college bars with students.  They were pretty laid back, relatively speaking.

Rigali got a few minor concessions: the hospital had to remain a teaching hospital affiliated with SLU, it had to retain the name “Saint Louis University Hospital”, and it had to continue to offer care to the indigent.

How about EC for rape victims?  I hope he didn’t get them to concede to that.  I really think Catholics need to get the hell out of hospitals.  They offer substandard care to women—they just excommunicated the female director who signed off on a woman getting an abortion to save her life.  The bishop who excommunicated her said it would have been better to let that mother of 4 die along with the baby than to end the pregnancy and save her life.

They’ve got no business dealing in healthcare to the general public.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that Jesuits seem to be a little more wordly and (relatively) liberal leaning as Catholic religious orders go.

Jesuits controlled the Silk Road trade.  They damn near got themselves excommunicated as a whole order, but retooled and became focused on education.

Education tends to have a liberal bias.

The reason that trolls like Stick come back is they are pathetic human beings who, having no likeable traits, have to get attention by being assholes.  They’re so eager for human contact that when you feed them, they get all hyper active.  Rewarding them with attention doesn’t help you or them.  They need to learn to develop a personality besides “asshole” if they want interaction with human beings.

he Cardinals were in DC last weekend playing the Nationals, and someone from Beck’s camp got in touch with LaRussa to see if he and Pujols would be willing to make an appearance at the rally.  LaRussa agreed to do it, claiming that he was told that the event was not political in nature.  Either he’s stupid or lying, because unless you live in a cave, there’s nothing involving Glenn Beck wthat won’t be political.
Comment #48: Murrow Fan on 09/01 at 06:25 PM

There were many announcements that this was supposed to be a non-political rally.  They really made a big deal about it.

It was doubly useful, in that they could attract some people who don’t realize that there’s no way it can be non-political, and provide cover for those who want to participate but normally couldn’t because it’s political.  No idea which LaRussa might be.

Prediction:
If Romney wins the GOP primary in 2012, Hannity, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, et al will do heir damndest to shoehorn the anti-Catholicism around JFK into a pro-Romney talking point.