Amy Coney Barrett’s Cult

Republicans keep accusing Democrats of attacking Trump Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s faith. It’s a kind of pre-emptive attack, since Democrats aren’t engaging in the argument at all. It’s a Wizard of Oz moment: Pay no attention to the man behind the screen.

The man behind the screen is patriarchy. I couldn’t care less about which religion Barrett ascribes to. Yes, Barrett is a cult member, but not because her specific faction of Catholicism is a cult, but because all religions are cults — Patriarchal cults.

There is a bizarre notion that a strong woman can be a feminist while enthralled by patriarchal anti-egalitarian beliefs. That ain’t feminism. The founding principle of feminism is that all people, regardless of sex and gender, are of equal value. An obvious corollary is that everyone can control their own bodies and consensual reproductive behavior. Someone who says they value the life of a zygote as much as an actualized human woman is not a feminist. A person who believes that a male god put women on Earth to serve their husbands is not a feminist, even if she also believes that God wants her to be a Supreme Court judge.

The purpose of every religion is to maintain social order, to keep societies functioning. The myths of religions can put order to people’s understanding of the universe, but the primary reason we have religion is to keep the rulers in charge, and the rulers are generally men. You may have been taught that religion exists to make people moral, that without a document saying “thou shall not kill,” people would go about killing each other every time someone is cut off in traffic. But the top-tier function of religion is to control the masses of people so that some people can have unchallenged power and jurisdiction of other people.

How can an ordinary, or even a super-super-intelligent ordinary person fall for this? How can a person of color support a white supremacist president, or a woman believe her role is to serve men? It’s called internalized oppression: Internalized racism, internalized sexism, internalized homophobia. That’s the power of culture — it indoctrinates from an early age; its toxic beliefs are passed on even unintentionally by adults to children. It can make a small fish think it’s being true to itself by serving a shark.

There are a lot of great spinoffs to religion: songs that make you feel good, bake sales…. But those are things that have been invented by the cult members to make the cult more palatable, to enhance the feeling of community and to comfort people is distress. As good as those things are, they don’t erase the fundamental fact that the congregants are members of a patriarchal cult designed to maintain the dominion of men over others.

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Note: This article was originally posted to my OCD-Free blog on Medium (which you should all be following). However, because it doesn’t fit well with the theme of that blog, I have decided to remove it and place it here, where no one cares. If you miss Daisybrain posts, and I know you do, follow both of my Medium blogs:

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How the GOP Nearly Became the Anti-Racist Party

There was a moment in time (not too long ago in my life) when the political party of off-the-cuff intolerance, misogyny, homophobia, White supremacy, unbridled capitalism and perpetual lowering of taxes for the wealthy seemed verged to become the party of just unbridled capitalism and perpetual lowering of taxes for the wealthy, with a smattering of homophobia and misogyny.

The year was 2002. Trent Lott, the powerful Republican senate majority leader, had praised fellow sitting Mississippi Republican senator Strom Thurmond at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. Thurmond had won Mississippi in his 1948 run for president as a segregationist. Lott’s exact words were, “We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.”

Lott had actually said pretty much the same thing in 1980, but back then he experienced no pushback. In 2002, things were different. In 2002, President Bush, a fellow Republican, condemned the remarks. Trott went on a TV apology tour, most notably to BET. Nobody was publicly supporting Lott. He was forced to step down from his position as Majority Leader. He resigned from the Senate in 2007.

And I was like, “Oh my God. What if the Republican Party is going to become a fiscally conservative party that doesn’t tolerate, let alone promote, racism?” Of course, that didn’t happen and instead we have President Stephen Miller, er, Trump. Now, if anyone criticized a politician for racism, Fox News would call it “cancel culture.” But for a brief moment, it seemed like a distinct possibility, which would have shifted the political landscape of the nation dramatically.

The fact that the Republican Party came to embrace racism to begin with was a fluke of history that didn’t have to be. The Party only solidified its identity as the protector of White men afraid of losing power in Nixon’s 1960 presidential run against Kennedy. Martin Luther King Jr.’s father appreciated that Kennedy had called Coretta Scott King to express his sympathy while her husband, MLK Jr., was jailed in Georgia. The influential pastor, King Sr., switched his party allegiance from Republican to Democratic and supported Kennedy. Nixon’s Republican Party chose the other route. It embraced the Southern Strategy, courting segregationists and positioning itself in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. After that followed decades of entrenchment, with the Republicans ceding the politics of human rights to the Democrats and, eventually, in 2016, giving up on any effort to court voters who were other than White.

The Lott affair did not occur in a vacuum. The country was poised at a possible inflection point on race. I remember several politicians having to apologize around that time for casual racist statements. This was in the wake of the intense tide of racism and state terror against Muslims and people from the Middle East after 9/11. Issues of bigotry and stereotyping were heightened in public discourse. 

The Republican Party did not choose a path which would have benefitted them as the country’s demographics continued to challenge White dominance. Instead, they clutched their pearls in their comfort zone, and doomed us all to a party who’s only chance of maintaining control is through gerrymandering and other blatant efforts to disenfranchise growing numbers of people. 

But for a minute, just a minute, the portal to an alternate universe was opened.

Why I’m Not Voting 3rd Party

I’m a big supporter of the Green Party; I’ve attended Green Party meetings and voted for Green Party candidates, even in Presidential elections. I’ve always believed that you should vote your conscience if you ever want anything to change.

Why I am Meh About Bernie Sanders

Michael P. King/Wisconsin State Journal/AP

I have been troubled by my own lack of enthusiasm for the Bernie Sanders presidential candidacy. In the past, I’ve always been an energetic supporter; Bernie for Mayor, Bernie for House, Bernie for Senate – count me in! When Benrnie was elected to the US Senate, I loved how the media couldn’t mention his name without prefacing it with “The self-avowed socialist….” I made a lapel button that said “Self-Avowed” and set it to him.

So why now, with the conspicuous lack of a progressive presidential candidate in the mix, do I find myself so “meh” about Bernie? In fact, on some deep level that I have had trouble understanding, I’ve even felt a bit disappointed that he’s running for president.

…But Do They Date?

I have decided to base my vote for US President on how datable a candidate is. I have painstakingly searched Google for the phrase, “my date with [fill in candidates name]” to see what the dating public thinks of the potential candidates, and I have received some surprising results:

“my date with Elizabeth Warren” – 0 results

“my date with Jeb Bush” – 0 results

Proud Conservatives Vs. Embarrassed Liberals

In U.S. politics, we like to believe that everything is balanced; if the Republicans are doing something bad, the Democrats must be doing it too. Outside of the extremely partisan, news commentators will generally be sure to mention that if there is corruption on one side of the aisle then the other side must be up to some dirty tricks as well. If they don’t express that assumption, they fear they may sound biased, and I think that viewers feel more comfortable with the idea that politicians are all tainted regardless of their party affiliation.

It Ain’t What You Eat it’s the Way How You Chew it: Lessons for Democrats

After their 2008 electoral sweep, many Democrats ridiculed Republicans for continuing, even intensifying, in playing to their base. Gleeful Democratic pundits commented that Republicans were out of touch with the mainstream values of the electorate. The Republicans were forcing moderates out of their party. Moving further and further to the right seemed laughably misguided for a national strategy.

And yet….