Faith-based Fascism

If you assume that the goal of the new "Religious Liberty Task Force" recently announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be to find new and better ways to discriminate against the LGBT community, you probably are underestimating the Attorney General and the administration he serves.  Rest assured that the Task Force also will investigate new ways to justify restricting women's reproductive rights, expand federal funding for religious schools, and aggressively erode the separation of Church and State.

Political authoritarians and religious hierarchies enjoy a natural partnership.  Both are essentially conservative, demanding that followers  accept the immutable rules and mythologies they hand down.  Neither can tolerate opposition based on anything so heterodox as rational thought, and both perceive those from outside their networks of believers as threats to be resisted, repressed, and demonized.  Working together, they keep their followers unquestioning and compliant.

Such partnerships may be as old as human civilization, but there are plenty of contemporary examples.  Conservative Islam, either Sunni or Shi'a, dominates the autocracies of the Middle East.  The Orthodox parties in Israel recently cooperated with Netanyahu's Likud to enact legal changes that make Muslims and Druse second-class citizens.  In India, Modi's Hindu nationalists stay in power by persecuting Muslims, and the generals of Myanmar have solidified Buddhist support by doing the same.

Of course, the relationship that most resembles Tr*mp's alliance of interests with Evangelicals is Putin's alliance of interests with the Russian Orthodox Church; and in Russia, too, the effort to strengthen church-state solidarity began by attacking homosexuals.  Perhaps "moral" considerations motivate religious conservatives to endorse and facilitate authoritarian political leadership, but the process is inevitably corrupt.

Strongmen

Surprising his State Department, Our President got it into his head to invite the irrepressibly murderous Rodrigo Duterte for a White House sleepover.  To Tr*mp's surprise and chagrin, I'm certain, Duterte said he might be "too busy" to come over and play.

So what is it with Tr*mp and his passion for authoritarian bad boys like Duterte, al-Sisi, Ergogan and, of course, Vladimir Putin?  Hell, he was even saying nice things about North Korean meatball Kim Jong-un the other day!  Is it time for our Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to have a peek at the Presidential brain?

It's hard to believe there isn't something psycho-sexual involved in Tr*mp's bizarre infatuations, uncomfortable as it may be to entertain the imagery afflicts the imagination while entertaining such thoughts.  Fred Trump, one imagines, was the kind of father who could generate psychiatric fortunes over the generations — except that none of his sons ever could be so weak as to need a therapist.

I hope we don't have to bomb the Philippines.

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More shit, quoted from the Times:
In a discussion last year about the cost of the Marines in Darwin, The Australians came in with a data-heavy presentation asserting that United States Marines eat more that typical Australian soldiers, and therefore strain sewage systems more, and argued that the Americans should pay more of the costs of improving wastewater lines on military bases.

Presidential Powers

"What I do," said Our President, "is authorize my army."  Presumably, this follows consultation with "my generals."  L'état, c'est moi.

Tomorrow, another president who shares that attitude expects to formalize that same relationship with the state he leads.  Turkey will go to the polls to decide whether Recep Tayyip Erdogan may legally assert presidential powers that will serve to legitimize his authoritarian rule.  It is very probable that his referendum will succeed: according to international monitors, he has stacked the deck in his favor.  He has muzzled the press, arrested opposition leaders, and led a massive purge of potential adversaries from positions of influence — down to the level of schoolteachers.

In truth, though, his suppression of opposition may not have been necessary.  Most Turks, like most Americans, vote ideologically rather than rationally.  Conservative Muslims, Erdogan's "base voters," are more impressed by the symbolic value of the enormous new mosque under construction on an Istanbul hilltop than the potential for loss of personal freedoms or estrangement from NATO and the European Union.  Are conservative Christians in the United States any less impervious to reality? 

A Question of Legitimacy

A leader is politically legitimate when citizens accept his right to lead them.  They willingly cooperate, accepting his decisions even when they disagree, because they trust his intentions will be in accord with their nation's broadly accepted laws and practices.

Congressman John Lewis will not be attending the Presidential Inauguration Ceremony on Friday because he believes the incoming President is not legitimate.  Lewis cites illegitimate means the President-elect's campaign used to secure his victory — but that is not the test of legitimacy.  What matters is whether or not the mass of the American public accepts that Tr*mp is entitled to lead.  It is not a matter of how he achieved office, but of how willing Americans are to follow his leadership.

A significant minority of the American public never granted legitimacy to Barack Obama.  They were emotionally incapable of accepting the leadership of a black intellectual, so were willing to believe he was a foreign-born socialist Muslim  A recalcitrant Republican Congress acted as if that minority's misguided beliefs were true — but Obama had sufficient public support to guide the direction of the country through eight years in office despite bitter opposition.

Whether Tr*mp will enjoy that level of legitimacy remains to be seen.  His significant deficit in the popular vote is working against him, as well as his bizarre affection for Vladimir Putin — but the emotional element is key.  To many Americans, his innate persona inspires feelings ranging from distaste to utter contempt.

It is true that most people just make do with whatever government they get, so many authoritarian governments manage to persist by coercive repression of a small number of vocal opponents.  If the opposition is sufficiently vigorous, though, even those governments fail.