What would Jesus do? Oppose background checks, naturally.
Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Sarah Palin
Although it is my inclination not to feed the troglodytic troll that is former Alaska governor Sarah Palin by giving her a dram of attention, her latest post on Facebook — a cattle call to preorder her new e-book — is such a remarkably dense concentration of conservative crankery, it could not be ignored.
In what can only be described as bullion cube of vintage ‘Murican stupid, Palin, resembling a Marine Todd meme brought to life, argues (in all-caps) that Jesus Christ would fight for Americans’ right to buy and carry guns with impunity. She writes:
JESUS WOULD FIGHT FOR OUR SECOND AMENDMENT
Taking concrete defense measures (ie. arming ourselves) away from the good guys? Yeah… that… we don’t want that. As this hilarious parody says, “…it will really suck when only the bad guys have guns.”
Shoot, even the Lord said to take up arms and defend yourself and protect the innocent! We’re expected to take responsibility to defend ourselves and to protect the innocent, certainly not relying on fallible leaders to do it for us.
Don’t believe me? Look it up! Luke 22:36. I wrote about it in #sweetfreedom.
Proof, Jesus is a proponent of carrying!
Luke 22:36 quotes Jesus as saying “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one,” however Jesus does a mere two verses later say that two swords is “enough.” That would indicate to me that Jesus advocates for caps on gun ownership, governor.
Then again this is all quite speculative since Jesus has as much to say about guns as he has to say about the U.S. Constitution, which is not a thing at all, having predated both of them by some several centuries.
4. Donald Trump
GOP frontrunner Donald Trump (those four words in a row still get me) has been characteristically vocal throughout his campaign about his willingness to curtail the civil liberties of American Muslims, suggesting in the past that he would “certainly look at” whether or not mosques should be shut down.
The attacks in Paris have given the Twinkie-toned mogul the occasion to double down on this, saying that he might have “absolutely no choice” but to close mosques, and that he would be in favor of tracking Muslims in a database, assigning them specialized identification, and subjecting them to warrantless searches and new levels of surveillance.
It’s not just American Muslims — Trump sees peril from within and without. In discussing the supposed dangers posed by the Syrian refugees, Trump has assiduously ignored mentioning the fact they are subjected to a rigorous screening process. In an Instagram video posted to his account Tuesday, The Donald exclaimed: “Refugees are pouring into our great country from Syria! We don’t even know who they are. They could be ISIS. They could be anybody. What is our president doing? Is he insane?”
A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on
And speaking to Yahoo News, The Donald made clear his eagerness to boot out any refugees that may have already settled in the U.S. by the time he enters the Oval Office:
“They’re going to be gone. They will go back. … I’ve said it before, in fact, and everyone hears what I say, including them, believe it or not,” Trump said of the refugees. “But if they’re here, they have to go back, because we cannot take a chance. You look at the migration, it’s young, strong men. We cannot take a chance that the people coming over here are going to be ISIS-affiliated.”
Trump wasn’t much more sympathetic to Muslims who are already American citizens, suggesting ominously that “security is going to rule” and that the country would “have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
“We’re going to have to do things we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it,” Trump said. “Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy.”
This week witnessed the leading Republican candidate cross the line, unambiguously, loudly, and repeatedly, into full-blown fascism. In the same Yahoo News interview, Trump said he would have to look “very closely” at the possibility of tracking and registering Muslims in a special database.
On Morning Joe Monday Trump spoke to the possibility of shutting down mosques: “I would hate to do it, but it’s something that you’re going to have to strongly consider because some of the ideas and some of the hatred, the absolute hatred, is coming from these areas.”
Speaking to Sean Hannity the following day, Trump went a step further, exclaiming: “There’s absolutely no choice. Some really bad things are happening and they’re happening fast. Certainly a lot faster than our president understands because he doesn’t understand anything.”
“Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it,” Trump said. “A lot of people understand it. We’re going to have no choice.”
And on Thursday Trump dug himself in further, telling NBC News that “absolutely” he “would certainly implement” a database tracking Muslims in America, and that Muslims would legally “have to be” in the database. Asked how that was any different from Nazis registering Jews, Trump said: “You tell me.”
3. Rick Wiles
In his latest dispatch from his rust-ridden raft anchored off the coast of reality, End Times radio host Rick Wiles warned Americans of President Obama’s imminent plans to lead an “Islamic invasion of America.”
Repeating a notion familiar to his listeners, that there are ISIS cells infiltrating American churches, Wiles warned that the current refugee crisis with Syria is a smokescreen for a far more insidious plot.
“This mass migration is not an accident,” Wiles said. “It’s not the fruit of bad policy. It’s the fruit of deliberate policy.”
“Jihad Barry,” as Wiles calls the president, “knows what he’s doing, and this is to create total confusion in the West.”
Audio courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
In recent months, Wiles has claimed that Bernie Sanders’ candidacy heralded the End of Days, he praised Russia for enacting a brutal anti-gay agenda, and even suggested — in one of those delightful historical ironies — that conservative Americans might one day find safe haven there after Obama’s mass slaughter begins.
Next: Steven Anderson and Theodore Shoebat
1. & 2. Steven Anderson and Theodore Shoebat
TWIC ends in a draw this week, because at some point vile is just vile, and I honestly don’t know which of these hateful, deplorable responses to the ISIS attacks in Paris last Friday is worse.
Two conservative Christians, apparently working independently, reasoned that the 129 people who were killed, and the hundreds more who were injured, got what they deserved — for the simple reason that they either attended a concert, were out eating at a restaurant, or maybe just because they were French.
Conservative Christian pastor Steven Anderson spent his Sunday sermon (called “The Sinful Nation of France”) admonishing his flock that if you happen to be a French person, and especially if you listen to a band called Eagles of Death Metal, you basically have invited your own just demise.
Anderson said:
When you go to a concert of death metal, somebody might get killed! You know, you’re worshiping death, and then, all of a sudden, people start dying!… Well, you love death so much, you bought the ticket, you love worshiping Satan! Well, let’s have some of Satan’s religion come in and shoot you!
I mean, that’s what these people should think about before they go into such a wicked concert…
As if it mattered, the band Eagles of Death Metal is not actually a death metal band. Their style is described as “feelgood, bluesy boogie-rock.”
Anderson also called the group’s leader a “drug-pushing hillbilly faggot,” and excoriated the culture of France for being, he said, pro-adultery, a moral failing that justified the attacks.
Anderson’s comments about the concert begin at the 5:45 mark:
Self-described “Christian militant” Theodore Shoebat said the attacks were “part of God’s Providence,” because “Suffering is needed, in order to bring people to the One Who suffered for them.”
Shoebat has poured his vile thesis into a rambling, raging screed on his website, subtly and succinctly titled “Don’t Pray For France, France Is A Godless Nation That Deserved To Be Attacked. France Supports Terrorists And Kills Christians, And Needs To Be Punished.”
Shoebat sprays his scattershot venom on “feminist garbage,” “the evil reprobates of Charlie Hebdo,” Planned Parenthood, which “slaughters more people in a day than what those terrorists ever did,” and the audience at the Bataclan Theater, which constituted the majority of those slain in the attacks.
The concertgoers were, in Shoebat’s words, “singing a song, ‘Kiss the devil’. They died, not as martyrs for Christ, but as worshippers of the devil.”
“They were worshipping Satan,” he continued, “and we are suppose to feel sorry for them? They kissed the devil, and the devil came to them and slaughtered them. I say, to hell with them. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
ViaRight Wing Watch andPatheos
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Photo: Alpine425 via Flickr
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