Skeptophilia: Empowering Madness

The whole “they’re weird” thing seems to irritate Republicans.

JD Vance took the opportunity to object to the characterization in an interview with Dana Bash a few days ago. He said that this is all happening only because Kamala Harris and Tim Walz “are uncomfortable with their policy positions.”

“They’re calling Americans names instead of telling them how to make their lives better,” said Vance, whose running mate declined to comment because he was too busy shaking his fist and shouting at Crazy Kambala, Sleepy Joe, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, Gavin Newscum, Shifty Adam Schiff, Deranged Jack Smith, Crooked Hillary and Pocahontas.

The point is that a large portion of the most ardent Trump supporters Are strange. Dangerous. Take two from the past week, which are good examples, but certainly not the only ones. The first is from the program Flashpoint on the wildly popular evangelical Christian Kenneth Copeland Victory Channel. Copeland is a consistent and vocal supporter of Donald Trump, which still seems bizarre to me, considering Trump’s main claim to fame is that he embodies all seven deadly sins in one person. But if that sounds odd to you, consider the statement of “Prophet Joseph Z” about Flashpoint a few days ago is even more remarkable.

In fact, Joseph Z appears so far removed from reality that he couldn’t see it, even with a powerful telescope.

This is what Joseph Z said about vice presidential candidate Tim Walz:

I believe very clearly that the Spirit of the Lord is making a way for the body of Christ to go through this time. And you know, even when we bring guys like Tim Walz out and look at what’s happening, people say he’s, you know, a Midwesterner, I have another word for him, I’m from Minnesota myself, and it’s weird. That guy is just weird. You see the way he hugs his wife. You see the way he does everything. I believe the Spirit of the Lord is taking them beyond their reach. I believe he’s giving them a sense of confidence that’s actually going to be a surprising silver lining in this whole story. I believe the Spirit of the Lord is going to bring victory and breakthrough. And you know, it’s interesting how the spirit of the Antichrist loves to pick people who are perfect for the evil, all-powerful lizard mafia that’s really run by their goblin masters. And when you look at this, I think that’s exactly what we’re dealing with right now: a spirit of Antichrist that wants to get his way.

Sure! Of course! Goblin masters and the lizard mafia! But Tim Walz is the weird one, we promise!

You would think that after something like that the moderator would have realized that it sounded like madness (‘because it is’), and that it was at least a small being shy, or being inclined to backtrack on what has just been said to reassure the listeners.

That is not true.

Instead, the moderator, Gene Bailey, defended Joseph Z.’s credibility, saying, “we take what we broadcast very seriously.” There was no hint of “…but this “That guy is crazier than squirrel poop.”

The second revolves around Kevin Roberts, architect of Project 2025 and author of The Early Light of Dawn: Taking Back Washington to Save AmericaBoth of which should strike fear into the hearts of anyone not to the right of Attila the Hun. The Trump campaign has finally acknowledged that Roberts and Project 2025 are dangerously extreme (“because they are”), and has attempted to distance itself from them — with Trump publicly saying he had no idea who put together the plan, despite the fact that 140 of the project’s contributors worked for his administration and six were Cabinet members.

Of course, he also swore he had never met Roberts in his life:

So maybe it’s not such a good idea to trust everything Trump says after all.

To say the content of The early light of dawn is a long paean to paranoid fascism is, if anything, an understatement. America is in danger, Roberts says, from “pantsuit-girlboss advertising executives, Skittle-haired they/them activists, soy-faced pajama-wearing work-from-home HR apparatchiks, Adderall-addicted dog-mom diversity consultants, nasal Ivy League regulatory lawyers, obese George Soros-funded police-abolitionist district attorneys,[and]hipster trust-fund socialists.” He decries what he sees as the loss of Christian hegemony in the United States (despite the fact that some 70 percent of Americans still identify as Christian, and in some parts of the country it’s nearly impossible to get elected unless you do). Humanity, he says, “was made to worship, and our republic depends on the moral fiber and habits of heart that come from piety.” Before you get your hopes up that he includes other religions in this assessment, it is explicitly stated that he is not just talking about each kind of piety, but a specific one. “American society is rooted in the Christian faith,” he writes. “Certainly, public institutions should not establish anything that compromises Christian morality under the guise of ‘religious freedom’ or ‘diversity, equality, and inclusion.'”

Apparently you are free to worship however you want, but you have to make the right choice.

How are he and his cronies going to pull this off? Well, he’s going to start by destroying “every Ivy League college, the FBI, the New York Timesthe National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education, 80 percent of the Catholic higher education system, BlackRock, the Loudoun County Public School System, the Boy Scouts of America, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, the Chinese Communist Party, and the National Endowment for Democracy.”

This is so extreme that I feel obligated to state for the sake of completeness that I did not make it up. each of these quotes. (If you’re curious, he apparently cited Loudoun County Public Schools as an example because of a rape case he alleged was committed by a male student who disguised himself as a woman to gain access to the girls’ restroom. This claim was not substantiated at the hearing.)

Don’t @ me about how you’re a Republican and you disagree with this. I’m sure that’s true. I have conservative friends who would probably say the same thing. But in this election you have to realize that if you vote Republican, you’re voting against the people who Doing believe all this, and who, if elected, will do their utmost to see that all of this is put in place.

The fact that there are people who have a conservative approach to government doesn’t bother me at all; we can disagree, but we can talk about it politely. But there is no discussion with people like Kenneth Copeland, Gene Bailey and Kevin Roberts. They don’t want to work with the opposition and come to a consensus.

They want the opposition to be wiped out, by force if necessary.

Normally I don’t frame things this harshly, but this November we have a choice. One side of the ticket has inextricably linked itself to the far-right lunatic fringe that is perfectly happy to talk about the lizard mafia of the Antichrist and Adderall-addicted dog-mother diversity consultants, and pretend that what they say is perfectly rational. The fact that “some members of the GOP don’t believe this” is actually irrelevant, because they are not the ones who will come out on top if Donald Trump wins.

This fall we have a choice between sense and nonsense, between authorizing reasonable policies and authorizing madness. Whatever party you belong to, whatever your political preferences, there is nothing more in it.

I know how I’m going to vote.

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