Anti-vaccine TV preacher dies of Covid

Just going to leave this here:

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Prosperity gospel?

Time for the mandatory Megareverend John Oliver:

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By some curious coincidence, the RAND corporation wrote an analysis of leadership styles framed through the concept of hubris and nemesis; and (while focused on cold war-flavored nation-state leaders; since that’s what you do when it’s 1994 and the CIA is paying for the work) it seems to fit a televangelist who thinks he’s engaged in spiritual warfare against a virus surprisingly well:

In some cases, these leaders may have a special, dangerous mindset that is the
result of a “hubris-nemesis complex.”

This complex involves a combination of hubris (a pretension toward an arrogant
form of godliness) and nemesis (a vengeful desire to confront, defeat, humiliate,
and punish an adversary, especially one that can be accused of hubris). The
combination has strange dynamics that may lead to destructive, high-risk
behavior. Attempts to deter, compel, or negotiate with a leader who has a
hubris-nemesis complex can be ineffectual or even disastrously
counterproductive when those attempts are based on concepts better suited to
dealing with more normal leaders.

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Hoping to read in his obit: He and his son, Jonathan, were very, very close.

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Guess he should have prayed harder. I may have to go with an alternative hypothesis: There is no god.

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Brilliant.
So. Stealing.

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Whatever adjective applies to these assholes, ‘conservative’ ain’t one of 'em.
The word no longer adequately describes anyone on that side of the spectrum anymore.

Too little, too late.
No telling how many of this fraudster’s gullible viewers he took with him.

No, you goober, it was a virus that ‘took him down’… a virus that was sent by god, so you are admitting he was doing the work of the devil…

It is beyond past time to shut these mis/dis/ information souces down & haul people off on charges of homicide… or assisted suicide… or whatever sticks.

Shut this business [and all others like it] down.
They are frauds, pure & simple.

That’s pretty much self-evident.
‘Prosperity for me, the poorhouse for thee’.

P.T. Barnum was right.

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Don’t want to upset a chunk of one’s voter base.

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good riddance to bad rubbish.

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The fascists are calling themselves conservatives, the conservatives are calling themselves centrists or liberals, and the liberals are trying to work out it is safe to call themselves socialists.

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i’m waiting on the media to start referring to the fascists as fascists. Not holding my breath…

I haven’t seen any ‘conservatives’ self-aware enough to refer to themselves as anything other than ‘conservative’… except maybe a handful of anti-trumpers who might call themselves ‘centrists’.
No way in hells would they call themselves ‘liberal’, since that is pretty much a curse word in those circles.
‘Centrist’ would also apply to those Democrats who would otherwise be Republicans.
Before-Time Republicans, that is, & not the Fascist Death Cult it has morphed into…

The FDC is already calling everyone other than themselves ‘socialists’ so the liberals had better call a spade a spade in reference to the FDC… don’t dignify the FDC with the name ‘conservative’.
No need for liberals to refer to themselves as anything other than ‘Americans’.

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Except we have established that they are fascists, even if they haven’t realised it yet. Let’s go back to the first French Revolution, where the concept of left and right came from.

The reactionaries are the far right, they are opposed to change and want things to go back to what they imagine the past was. In the 1790s this was monarchism, now it includes fascism. This is where the modern Republican party are

The conservatives believed that change was inevitable, but that it should be slow and careful. These were the constitutional monarchists and Girondins, now I’d say it is the right wing of the Democrats (I don’t just mean Manchin and Simena, it’s wider than that.). Republican conservatism is all but dead, with just a few leftovers like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, but they would be here too.

The centre was to the left of these groups, trying to find balance between the left and the right. Unlike centrism in the US, this was a mild form of liberalism that was more progressive than the conservatives, but they still wanted to control progress. This would be the majority of the Democratic party today.

Things start to diverge heavily here, because one of the key features of progressivism is that it embraces change. The left wing of the Democratic party and the Democratic Socialists are not similar to the Montagnards (thankfully), Hérbertists, Enragés or the Conspiracy of the Equals, other than they are on the left of their political spectrums.

The point is that modern politicians portray themselves as being to the left of where they actually are, so they seem more presentable. The right wing will try to claim the rhetoric of those to their left, but not their ideals and goals. It doesn’t seem to happen the other way round that often, and usually when it does it is because of political suppression of the left.

The Before-Times was 50-60 years ago, and the Republican Party has been slowly changing for the worse all this time. Still, we shouldn’t use their impoverished language unless we want to end up unable to describe what we actually believe (See Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four).

And they are now freaking out because, after 50 years of calling everything they don’t like socialism, they now have a plurality of under 40s who think that socialism is a good idea. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

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