Comments? TL:DR but I’m sure I must be joining in the chorus of commenters, all exclaiming the same profound regret:
The overwhelming, central theme of modern conservatism (i.e. Bush Jr. era) is extreme, constant projection.
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The epithet “American Taliban” works on so many levels.
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Hmm, I always thought Dean Stockwell seemed like a total douche.
This is the same reason that misogynists call male feminists “white knights,” I think. They can’t imagine any reason to be nice to a woman other than to get laid, so anyone who claims to do otherwise must be lying.
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Plot twist…
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Despite some obvious cultural differences, they do have a lot in common. After 9/11 I put together a selection of quotes from Taliban and Al Qaeda members and American fundamentalists on particular subjects to see if one could tell the difference. It was impossible.
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Link please! 
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A tenement of faith is based on faulty premises.
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Rated M for Martyrbation.
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Plus, they don’t want any of the good bits, like jobs for people, and progressive taxes, and cars with fins.
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Ah the good old days, cowering under a school desk in preparation for our ultimate annihilation.
And Gas was 29 cents a gallon!
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ROFLMAO! Bullet time!
From the Gay Agenda-Mobile!!
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“And with the exception of some FBI agents, government officials are as soulless and devoid of scruples as the characters on House of Cards.”
So it’s a documentary?
"We aren’t told how it is that Luther’s father came to be a Catholic priest, but perhaps he was an Episcopalian who left for the Catholic Church when his own denomination became insufficiently conservative on sexuality issues. "
Yeesh. This sentence did little more than just expose the own reviewer’s biases.
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Ugh. This has nothing on the plot of a “christian” “thriller” I read as a kid. I wish I could remember the name. The plot went like this:
- Liberals at the EPA take over the federal government, socialism ensues.
- All the christians in the USA pick up their guns and move to Wyoming, secession ensues.
- The EPA jumps in tanks to attack Wyoming (jesusland), gets their asses handed to them by the militia.
- The “world’s smartest guy” says that global warming is bullshit.
- Profit?
- The End.
As a kid, my bullshit detector was not tuned well enough to see the absurdity of this all. Say what you will about homeschooling, but damn it, I learned to read. At some point, I read 1984 and went “oh shit, theocracy and authoritarian socialism can be bad in similar ways!”
To be fair, many of my (still) Christian friends find the idea of theocracy completely repulsive. They want folks to follow Jesus because they actually want to, rather than conforming to an imposed standard of behavior. If you need the state to enforce your faith, your god is power itself (and you can go fuck yourself).
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At 0:40 a guy is taking a picture using a cell phone with an LED flash, but the sound effect is charging up a xenon strobe flash…so my suspension of disbelief has already been shot to hell.
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Thanks for those who attempted a compassionate reply. I’m an Episcopal priest who left Evangelicalism a decade or so ago for many of the reasons that are mentioned on this reply chain. We need to realize how frightening a changing world is to people who are clinging to the memory of cultural power. They are addicted to power and need to be treated like addicts, not like enemies. Addicts require tough words and lots of truth, but also compassion and empathy. I wish those who have more intellectual foundations to be open minded-- like people who read boing boing-- would use that openness to realize the psychology of fear and addiction that underlie fundamentalists and come up with more effective ways to help these folks realize that living in a sustainable, pluralist, open society is much better than living in a theocracy.
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Futurama.
I thought it was a joke, but the cast… and it’s really there on IMDB! I don’t know what to believe.
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I agree with you for the most part. I just can’t shake the feeling though, that since fundamentalism is so focused on fear, and making adherents fearful, it’s a tactic to insulate themselves from reality.
Fear dulls the mind, and makes reasonable people act unreasonably. Factor in terror management theory and the self-reinforcing behaviors of an extremist religious position, and all I can make of it is a recepie for otherwise thoughtful, kind, tolerant and open-minded people to be permanently enslaved by fear, making them so easily manipulable by their religion. When everyone is the enemy, the chance at engagement by the less extreme population dwindles to the point where any additional direct interaction seems like a waste of time. These people have had their minds trapped in a pernicious way, and the only way out is on their own terms, in their own time, with their own thoughts, and our attempts to dislodge them from their position of comfortable terror only makes us seem more like monsters in their eyes.
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