Robert Reich - The Republican Party: God, guns, forced birth, and strongmen

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Robert Reich
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Pay attention. The link is tightening between America’s move toward theocracy and its slide toward autocracy.

robertreich.substack.com
The Republican Party: God, guns, forced birth, and strongmen
Listen now | The ideology of Christian nationalism
1:59 PM · Jul 7, 2022

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-republican-party-god-guns-forced

The link is tightening between America’s move toward theocracy and its slide toward autocracy.

It is important to understand these connections. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, its expanded reading of the Second Amendment, and its eagerness to elevate religious freedom over the Constitution’s guarantee against established religion come from the same cloth as Republican state legislative attacks on democracy, the GOP’s fealty to Trump’s Big Lie, and white supremacy.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville last month, speakers explicitly embraced the theology of “Dominionism” -- the idea that “right-thinking” Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society.

Trump’s keynote at the conference made the connections explicit. He warned that the “radical Left” is “trying to destroy organized religion” and “trying to shred our Constitution,” and continued: “The greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside, as powerful as they may be. The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from within. And you know the people I’m talking about.”

Other speakers labeled Democrats “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” and charged that Democrats were engaged in “a war against the truth.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida predicted “the backlash is coming. Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.” Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina (the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and a virulent critic of so-called “critical race theory”) said he expected “a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referencing a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, Robinson added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”

*snip*

[sop]

1. "The backlash is coming. Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over

this country. It is time to take this country back.” That's a U.S. Senator, urging violence and preaching hate to a bunch of crazy Dominionists yearning for racial, ethnic and gender cleansing.