Republicans, Religion and the Triumph of Unreason

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Some of Michele Bachmann’s local critics say she could be accurately described as a Christian fundamentalist politician.

Poster child for unreasonable, religious nutters in this country:  Michele Bachmann.  Bachmann(MN Congress), is an Uber-religious Republican whose paranoia has lead her to suspect that our President is not “pro- American”, and that the Americorps is really a “re-education camp”.  She insists that the census is evil, she introduces incomprehensible legislation making the dollar our official currency, riles up audiences to take up arms, advocates for nuking Iran, supports teaching “intelligent design” in public schools, and the CRAZY in her is unstoppable on tons of other issues as well.  Recently, she has been pushed to the forefront of the Health Care Insurance reform battle in the House.  Who, better than Michele, to take up the battle axe for health insurance companies?

Johann Hari has a provactive article in the UK ‘s,  The Independent, Republicans, Religion and the Triumph of Unreason. LINK

He sums up things well.     ~~~Snip~~~~

Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: “The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital.”     The election of Obama – a black man with an anti-conservative message – as a successor to George W. Bush has scrambled the core American right’s view of their country. In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin.

When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn’t compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of “Drill, baby, drill” have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right’s world-view – to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm of their own creation – has swollen. Now it is all they can see.

For many of the people at the top of the party, this is merely cynical manipulation. One of Bush’s former advisers, David Kuo, has said the President and Karl Rove would mock evangelicals as “nuts” as soon as they left the Oval Office. But the ordinary Republican base believe this stuff. They are being tricked into opposing their own interests through false fears and invented demons. Last week, one of the Republicans sent to disrupt a healthcare town hall started a fight and was injured – and then complained he had no health insurance. I didn’t laugh; I wanted to weep……….

You have to admire the audacity of the right. Here’s what’s actually happening. The US is the only major industrialised country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves – and 50 million people can’t afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can’t access the care they require. That’s equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being “killers” – and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive.                        More at the LINK

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