Do you want to understand why the fundies have so much power?

I posted this on another thread, but I thought I'd post it on its own because it is an important topic that is talked about a lot here on DU.. I grew up in a family of fundies, and most of my family is still that way.. I understand them pretty well, and I just wanted you guys to understand it too.. The better you understand your enemy the easier they are to defeat..

In my best estimates I'd say they account for 15-20% of the population.. They have a tendency to be loud mouthed and extremely politically active, so their numbers appear to be larger than what they really are.. On top of that, they more or less hijacked the conservative movement to make themselves appear larger than what they really are.. Most conservatives have completely different values than what the fundies do, but because conservatives are often religious they don't do the further exploration into what the differences are, so the side with the zealots instead of us "godless commies." Most conservatives want to be able to pray in public schools, and plaster "In God We Trust" all over everything, but they would stop short at giving up their privacy and force others share their views, where as that is the fundies actual goal..

Until we can separate the true conservatives from the fundies for good we are outnumbered.. Most conservatives though, to their credit, are coming around.. (Just take a look at the recent poll numbers, and you can see it..) They hate how much money is being spent, and they hate big government, and they are beginning to see that they aren't getting what they bargained for.. They are beginning to see what is happening, and the ones that have woken up are just as pissed about it as we are..

The biggest reason that fundies are getting what they want is because they are aligning themselves with corporate America.. They both want basically the same things, but for different reasons.. Fundies want women to not have choice in regard to their bodies because it makes women easier to control, and it "punishes" women who have sex, where as corporations want it so they have more consumers for their products, cannon fodder for their wars, and a bigger pool to get cheap labor from.. If you look at almost all of the corporate and fundie goals, they're almost all the same, they just want them for different reasons.. If you look at the issues like taxes, discrimination laws, separation of church and state, and so on, they all line up just like the women's choice example I gave above.. When the two joined forces they became harder to defeat.. The corps. have the money, and the fundies have the people to write the letters, make the phone calls, and demonstrate.. These are the reasons they have so much power, when in reality their numbers are so few..

On edit- Just so you are aware.. These people aren't truly religious people.. This is a movement of white guys that think they lost all their power when women where given the right to choose, and civil rights took effect.. They want the power that they had in the 1950's back.. This is nothing more than a movement of powerless white guys trying to drag us back to the period when they had power.. They have their women convinced that submitting to their husbands and men and general is Godly, so they've got them convinced that it's a good idea.. This is all about control.. The fundy movement has little to do with religion, it's about getting control under the guise of religion..

When I was a child, I was afraid of the bogeyman, too.

people, and corporations that want to force people into their way of thinking and living.. Jesus has little to do with this mess.

Because their pastors tell them to and they're afraid to not do what their pastors tell them else they'll face Jesus' wrath.

came when women were given the right to choose.. They think that when women had another option besides becoming a brood mare, they lost all control.. (They hate civil rights for the same reason.) It's all about control, and being able to control those around them.. They want to be able to control women and minorities around them.. Their women think that it's okay because it's "Godly," and their duty.. This is basically just a movement of a bunch of white guys with no control that want the control that they had during the 50's.. They feel they lost control and they want it back..

You can't have a bully without his sheeple, and those sheeple are motivated by fear.

religion as a basis. Religiosity is a mental disorder. Politically vocal fundamentalists just can't stand the idea of people getting something for nothing or having 'too much' personal freedom.

It's been a great motivator for tapping into an (until a few years ago) untapped market demographic. Christian Conservative music is a good example of this.

"Don`t do THIS or God will be mad!"

"Don`t do THAT or God will be mad!"


Fear and Pain (or fear of pain) are the biggest motivaters there are.

Beside Sex and Money.

This is a bunch of powerless white guys trying to gain back the power they had before women's choice and civil rights.. That's all it is.. They scare the women into submission with fantasies of what will happen to them if they don't listen to their husbands and "God's Word," but that's about all God has to do with it.. This is a bunch of powerless white guys that want the "power" back they had in the 1950's.. That's all this is.. Men trying to gain control under the guise of religion...

" if they don't listen to their husbands and "God's Word," but that's about all God has to do with it.."

That`s a pretty BIG part. It doesn`t matter what the color is. It`s not just a color power grab. It`s another type of fear mongering.

waiting to smack you. People need to get over all that fear stuff."

- David Gehue, MiqMaq Nation at the UN, 1993

You say that the fundies and corporations are in alignment. If this is so, how do the fundies reconcile the "sinfulness" of some corporations, such as communications companies? Are they simply ignored, or do the fundy leaders use the "sinful" corporations to manipulate their flocks while taking kickbacks, like Ralph Reed did with casino gambling?

They don't care nearly as much about sin, as what they would lead you to believe.. All they care about is getting control and forcing people to live as they do.. It's about control, it isn't at all about God..

that the ends NEVER justify the means, for your actions transform and change you.

This is basically a movement of white guys that think that the women's right to choose and civil rights took all of their control away.. This has nothing to do with religion.. This is about white guys getting back the control they had in the 1950's.. This has nothing to do with religion, this is all about powerless white guys getting back the "power" that their fathers and grandfathers had in the 50's...

so much they would take the words of Jesus to heart and be liberals.

They obviously aren't worried about passing through the gate of heaven, they are worried about control in this life.


It's the Nixon Southern Stratedy dressed up in religiousity.

You are also spot on about the fusion of corporate and fundie goals.

They share goals, and since all they have to do to align themselves is support Republicans, they don't really have to deal with one another that much.

It's a convenient arrangement in which their resources can be shared without their having to tolerate the less appealing sides of their allies.

by the fundies occurred in the late 70s/early 80s. That helped drive Reagan into office the first time and then the movement grew and solidified during the decade of greed.

Having grown up in a truly conservative republican family (who converted out of the hijacked party more than a decade ago) I can relate greatly to your post, but I come at it from the other side of the merged movement and have to correct one thing:

Conservatives (particularly the conservative republican leadership at all levels) did not allow the hijacking because they had a common foe of the "godless commies." They allowed it because they wanted to win elections. They were (and still are) on a massive power trip with an insatiable thirst for greed. There was an organized plan to infiltrate all levels of governing and pack them, and the courts, with loyal republicans. The fundie republicans made attractive candidates to the republican leadership because they were less likely to "turn" or change their attitudes and voting patterns later. The republicans worked for decades to build this army of robot repukes that we're fighting now.

Everything else in your post is spot on--especially your third paragraph! It's a must read and I'm recommending!

why the average conservatives were/are still voting with the fanatics.. They have a common denominator with religion, even though the conservatives aren't as fanatical as the fundies.. They think they have more in common with the fundies than they do us"godless commies," so they side with the other team.. The average conservatives are beginning to realize though that the fundies are in fact fanatical, and they are beginning to pull away.. You are spot on about your leadership point though.. I was trying to so from the perspective of the average conservative because we still have a shot with them, and we need them to some degree.. The puke leadership is useless to us though, and there isn't really anyway for us to bring them around..

in a heavily republican county and the split goes down to the ground level. I cannot count how many rank and file old school republicans remain deeply uncomfortable with mixing gov't and religion and are starting to talk openly about ridding their party of the fundie parasites.

It's not just the leadership.

Same experience with several Republicans that I know. They are solid in their opposition to religion permeating our government.

And, for me, if JC appeared today and had anything to do with the fundies he'd be a way different dude than the one I remember being described in the NT.


Be The Bu$h Opposition - 24/7

I'm glad others are having the same experience. I've been feeling a little "through the looking glassish" lately.

control under the guise of religion.. It isn't about God, it's about control..

simular to the breakaway mormon polygomists.

Control is the most important aspect, justified by twisting and using religion.

So I don't think the religious right had taken over yet. But a good updated bumper sticker idea.

Kicking and recommending. Thanks for this.

more moderate centrist Christians than fundies.

It wasn't that the fundies hijacked the conservatives, but that the Reaganites actively courted them to help take over the country, using them as a vehicle to control the masses, to win elections.

Ita with you, otherwise - it's all about control, not religion. In the end, perhaps it doesn't matter who courted who first. Clearly, it was a powerful match, and practically has this country in a deathgrip now. I think most conservatives went along with them joining bcs it floated their boat, so to speak. Now they got their idiot son to be President, and things don't look so "conservative" anymore to most Republicans of 20-30 years ago.

Historically, most Fundamentalists avoided Government ties. Their denominations often had histories of oppression by an Established Church. All that changed when the Christian Right & the Republican Party began their obscene intercourse.

A group of Republican strategists who had worked on Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign were worried. Goldwater had been soundly defeated, and the strategists feared that the base of the Republican Party -- primarily southern segregationists and the very wealthy -- was too narrow. So they set out to expand the base calling themselves the New Right. Goldwater was not part of the New Right.

One member of the New Right, Republican Strategist Paul Weyrich, founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 -- a think tank to promote the ideas of the New Right. Weyrich also founded ALEC, The American Legislative Exchange Council in 1973 to coordinate the work of Religious Right state legislators. ALEC initially positioned itself as a counterweight to liberal foundations and think tanks, focusing on social issues like abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment, but became a magnet for corporate lobbyists......

In 1979 Weyrich coined the term "Moral Majority." Their goal was to politicize members of fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches - a constituency that had been basically apolitical.

Not all members of fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches support the Religious Right, but those were the groups targeted by the New Right. And some members of churches outside of those mentioned support the Religious Right, while many other Christian leaders strongly oppose them.

www.theocracywatch.org/taking_over.htm

There's lots more information at this site. And elsewhere, if you're interested.

nearly as many of them as many think, and 2. What their true goals are.. This isn't as much about religion as it is about powerless white guys that wanting the control back that they had before Civil Rights, and women where given the right to choose.. This is about of powerless white guys that want to drag us back to the era when they had the most power.. That's what it is about today.. I grew up in it, and my family is still in it..

So working out your personal demons is more important to you than examining the details of real history.

who grew up in the middle of it.. My father is a deacon at the World Harvest Church.. (The church that just got busted for helping Blackwell in Ohio, and is at the forefront of this new movement).. I have some idea of what I'm talking about.. Thanks.. Rod Parsley is my youngest sisters God father.. His family lived in one of my fathers rentals when The World Harvest was being built.. I have some idea of what I'm speaking about..

Guess you really can't leave all that behind.

that you don't understand about fundies.. Bottom line.. I lived it, don't tell me how things are, because you've been off the mark every time you've tried.. You don't seem to have any clue to how things operate in that life, so stop pretending you have a clue about things that you have no first hand knowledge of..


on edit- How incredibly ignorant, and for that matter arrogant, could a person be to assume they have any clue to how a person was raised?? Reading a book about something and living it are two different things..

www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/01/elec04.prez.dean.confederate.flag/ - 44k -

"I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," the former Vermont governor said in an interview published Saturday in the Des Moines Register. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats."

For the record, Convert, I agree with you.
And I agreed with Dean when he brought it up!
These white guys got hoodwinked by their
own conceit and selfishness, but we DO
need to reach them on some intelligent level
before they vote themselves right into
the fundie Armageddon.

... I guess. I really didn't understand your PM.

poor people this economy is producing.

.. and they think they have morality and values on their side.

And, even worse, they think they're the majority.

Sue

do with,"DIABOLICAL DEIBOLD & FRIENDS" (ES&S,Sequoia,etc.). Still, its a good post !!

they have to have a loud minority shilling for them that appears to be bigger than they actually are.. They don't actually have to have large numbers of people, they just have to appear to have large numbers so the general population believes that the races are close.. It actually goes hand in hand..

wages to afford a home and a stay-at-home wife. They aren't even promising that. If they want to drag us back there, then they'd better come up with the union wages and benefits that enable blue collar workers to have a middle class lifestyle.

On edit: I forgot to add, in the fifties after Korea there were no wars other than the cold war, which didn't require ammunition and the taking of lives.

The taxes on the middle class went from 12-15% total in the 50s to the whopping 43% total and climbing now?

"The biggest reason that fundies are getting what they want is because they are aligning themselves with corporate America.. They both want basically the same things, but for different reasons.. Fundies want women to not have choice in regard to their bodies because it makes women easier to control, and it "punishes" women who have sex, where as corporations want it so they have more consumers for their products, cannon fodder for their wars, and a bigger pool to get cheap labor from.. If you look at almost all of the corporate and fundie goals, they're almost all the same, they just want them for different reasons.. If you look at the issues like taxes, discrimination laws, separation of church and state, and so on, they all line up just like the women's choice example I gave above.. When the two joined forces they became harder to defeat.. The corps. have the money, and the fundies have the people to write the letters, make the phone calls, and demonstrate.. These are the reasons they have so much power, when in reality their numbers are so few."

Things are making sense.

the angry white male meme as negatively triumphalistic. And they were beginning to lose overzealous AWM's to libertarianism, Perot and real ideology while permanently losing vast swaths of women voters. Instead they pick a faithfully predictable segment that controls their loyal women folk as the front of their emotional majority. Looks like a conscious choice to revamp image and streamline the rock hard base with something more reliable.

Which means they are being used even more than previous riled suckers and there are fewer options, narrower issues to turn them away from the GOP. being smaller and more focused however has its drawbacks. They have to be kept energized and satisfied at the same time, no mean feat, or sitting out an election will have more effect than the defection of AWM conservatives. Being unable to win over a true electorate plurality by service and ideology they have painted themselves into this odd corner and protected it with money and fraud. Corporate fundamentalism. Really. Have the business renegades turned cultic or have the zealous Christians adopted Mammon as their God? Probably neither as far as they themselves say, so the marriage is incompatible or hypocritical, likely both.

complete control of the women folk, the power to discriminate (they are already setting up the cases to get civil rights and affirmative action reversed, just as they are doing with abortion..) against who they see fit, and the tax free money from the churches.. The neocons are getting more out of it than the fundies, but the fundies are getting something out of it too..

Read:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0604.sullivan.html

Seems they don't get as much as they think they would.

get it done, and they have made great strides in short periods of time.. The biggest mistake people make is underestimating them..

just an active, dedicated minority. Liberals need to remember this when they whine about how its a waste of time to try electing liberals to office so we should settle for moderates.

cracking down on broadcast TV, and radio.. Almost all complaints that come into the FCC are from a handful Christian Right Groups, but they treat the complaints as if it is a broad section of the America that is offended.. We are now seeing record fines being doled out because of a couple of groups that have an army of letter writers.

From Phyllis Schlaffly to Pat Robertson, the fundies worked from the bottom up taking over the Republican Party porecinct by precinct, county by county, state by state.

Go to your next precinct convention. How many people are there? Three? Any group could do the same thing the fundies did if they have the patience and the guts to do it.

It took the fundies a generation of slogging through the mud of precinct politics. Do other groups have the same patience and discipline?

to supposed to represent the true will of the people.. That isn't happening.. No one can "earn" the right to do whatever they want in regards to politics, that isn't the way that a democracy works..

However, I disagree that they're powerful at all.

They are being used. They are the corporate patsy. They'll disappear back to whence the holes they came if the corpogarchy needs another target group to take the blame for their excesses.

free money runs through the churches? If that wasn't bad enough now our government is giving them tax money for their faith based initiatives.. Before it's all over they will be able to discriminate against anyone they see fit, and they will have complete control over women.. Mark my words..

A corpogarch. WDMWJO? (What diamond mine would Jesus own?)

WADWJB? (Which air-conditioned doghouse would Jesus buy?)


The only thing they're getting out of it is some vague self-satisfaction. A counter balance to that nagging notion in their head that they're not up on their book learnin'.

Do you have any idea the assets and the pull of a church of 5,000 people? Do you have any idea how much a church like that can bring in a week? You really have no clue about what you're talking about.. I appreciate your need to write them off as nuts, as I wish it were that simple too, but it isn't.. We're talking about franchises of super churches here, with millions of followers.. As little as one or two churches in some states, as many as 5-6 in others.. People seem to forget the "Justice Sunday's" that just took place within the last year. The first one was broadcast on broadcast TV for God's sake, with corporate sponsors to boot.. The worst thing you can do is underestimate these people..

I'm just pointing out that the real power is in the hands of those that manipulate the marionette strings of the "Ministers." If it behooved them, they could have the same group of people clamoring for the Kyoto Protocol, et al, with a flick of a string. Real power lays in the hands of a few thousand people, not the millions that play the part on TV. The PTB doesn't fear this group of people whom are as moldable as clay. They fear the other, greater millions who act independent of their machinations. The Phundie Phenomena is a script running it's course. Millions in the street marching is the giant hand of the editor threatening to make script changes. They're the only power that has a chance at corralling the puppetmasters- defeating them, no, holding them at bay?...perhaps.

Fundies also hate &/or fear homoexuals, especially gay men. The RW use that as fuel for that fire, as well.

Meanwhile, they're backing the Bekin's van up to your wallet.

white guys trying to drag us back to the time when they reigned supreme. Have you ever heard so much whining about how there is reverse discrimination against white men?

I wish I could find it in me to have some compassion for these men but I don't.

like a viral sort of terror,
an outrageous implosion, collapsing of tower,
behind enemies corporate interior,
a greying confederate reversal of power.
The union enslaved to its most degenerate license,
adults taken over by mad children deflower
reversal of empire on course for the greater imperial sense,
of the interplanetary league guide's earth, prison-empire gone sour.

And oh, the passionate meandering shadow beneath,
my lover's giggling, we're on course to blow the seals of power,
and atlantis will sink again underneath,
the waves, another civilization debased devour.
maybe it has to come to rest.
returning karma does its best.

If corporatists can align with the religious right, then the rest of us..liberals, moderates, etc..can band together to defeat them!

just not as much as they used to, and they can't stand that. Being a white male, particularly a successful white male, used to mean that you were set for life in this country (and before that, Western Euorope). You could beat up blacks, women, Jews, "furriners", gays, hippies, just generally anyone who was in any way out of the "mainstream" and know that you weren't likely to pay for it. Even if you were arrested and tried, you'd get a jury of your "peers" -- white men and brainwashed white women -- and get off Scott-free. Now they have to face some measure of accountability, and since they've been spoiled rotten in that regard for so long, it's more than they can handle. White men still have the advantage in almost everything, just not nearly as much as before. And the lower median income drops, the more they feel like they're being "persecuted". In a way, it's true -- everyone but the filthy rich IS being persecuted. They're just now finding out how bad it is, but it was plenty bad before they found themselves in the same boat.

this movement appeals to them.. Their leaders are powerful, but the followers usually aren't.. They are unsuccessful, and this movement makes them feel like it isn't their fault, and that if they follow the group think they too can gain control again.. They tell them the reason they can't get a good job is because there are women in the work place, and affirmative action to contend with.. They don't tell them the reason they aren't successful is because they went to a substandard school, or because they didn't finish highschool..(The typical follower is the white guy you here bitching about how there are no good jobs left due to affirmative action..)