Max Blumenthal worked his way into the heart of the modern Republican machine and researched the origins of the Christian evangelical movement. His pedestrian result, Republican Gomorrah, still reads as a brilliant summary of what backed the Republican rise to power after the disastrous 70's and later took them down in the late 2000's: the sadomasochistic authoritarian wish-thinking of the religious right.
Blumenthal introduces his book with a story about Eisenhower, who despised McCarthy and the "persecution" thinking behind him. Using Eric Fromm's clinical dissection of the authoritarian mindset, he links RJ Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer (who, strangely, was pro-gay), and James Dobson to the rise of an autocratic, fascistic anti-Enlightenment movement that hates the freedom it so cynically promotes.
Whilst narrating the lurid story of the rise and fall of the evangelical-driven Republican party, Blumenthal uses Fromm's Escape From Freedom to explain how its leaders and followers formed a culture of sadomasochism: prostate yourself to the master (here, the mass delusion of fundamentalist Christianity and its leaders), admitting you are a sinful creature in need of Jesus (and "Christian" father figures like Dobson). That masochism gives its followers the strength to sadistically prey on those considered lesser, weaker, and outside of "The Family." Twisted racism, misogyny, and homophobia were contemptuously played as "death" cards to rile a group of disillusioned, privileged middle-class white dopes into promoting a sectarian anti-egalitarian social agenda, a hoary righteous platform both espoused and ignored by the most cynical amoral reprobates imaginable, and a fiscally conservative agenda that was anything but.
One of the more interesting narratives in the book is how Dobson hated Gingrich and Armey because they were too "secular," ie they didn't pay homage to Dobson. If you wonder why the two moderate Republicans in the last election were Obama and Clinton, it's because Dobson systematically replaced any fiscal, reasonable conservative with superstitious twats subservient to the odious, born-again (and admitted Dobson follower) Tom DeLay.
McCain won the Republican nomination because the religious base was split between the fiscally moderate Mormon Romney (who believes that Jesus and Satan are brothers!) and the fiscally irresponsible Huckabee (who believes in every crazy anti-Semitic, racist superstition the religious right loves). After McCain won, the only way to appease those "Family" voters was: Sarah Palin, a hot meat puppet of the neocons who had the intellectual prowess of her Down Syndrome son Trig, and who was admittedly tied to Alaskan Christian Dominionists (many of whom wanted to secede from the US). As someone who lives in a part of our country that actively engaged in treason roughly 150 years ago, I have nothing but contempt for a woman who schtupps a former member of a secession party whilst campaigning that middle-class white people in fly-over country are "real Americans" --as though the multicultural, multi-religious, diverse people of industry living more closely together in urban areas aren't. Palin, and the religious right, failed to see that their charges against the elitism of the "others" were nothing more than a condemnation of their elitist simpleton culture. They still haven't grasped that moderate Americans have figured it out.
The book is sickening; it's no wonder the Republicans have lost every single intellectual supporter they had, from Goldwater to the Buckleys to libertarians like me.
And like Joe Scarborough, who nailed the recent "controversy" over Obama telling kids to work hard and study. Watch his visible revulsion and celebrate the last of the pragmatic (small r) Eisenhower republicans.
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