Christian right mounts a doomed revival

[marmar]

Bless their hearts! The Christian right attempts to mount a revival
The Satanic panic over the Grammys is part of a larger fundamentalist bid to make themselves relevant again

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 8, 2023 6:11AM (EST)


(Salon) After a banner year for pop music, Sunday's Grammy award show was quite the barnburner for pop culture discourse. Beyoncé fans decried the failure to award her groundbreaking "Renaissance" album the top award, while Harry Styles fans defended their man's acceptance speech. Twitter gossips enjoyed Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez quarreling. Taylor Swift won something and, more importantly, had truly astounding earrings.

Oh yeah, and conservatives absolutely lost their minds in what may or may not be a sincere panic over a "Satanic ritual" performed by Sam Smith and Kim Petras, which was, in reality, a heavily stagecrafted performance of their hit song "Unholy."

Link to tweet

Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but when people like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweet stuff like, "The Grammy's featured Sam Smith's demonic performance and was sponsored by Pfizer," I'm disinclined to think the motivation is literal fear of the Prince of Darkness. After all, she made sure to include a grammatical mistake to maximize retweets and dunks from liberals. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., was definitely trolling in bad faith when he tweeted, "This…is…evil," while amplifying some right-wing pundit disingenuously claiming that "demons are teaching your kids to worship Satan." (If only it was incest porn, Cruz would be popping a "like" on it instead.) That said, it was funny watching Daily Wire host Matt Walsh screeching about how "leftism is Satanism," before going down a weird rabbit hole about "theological Satanism" and his totally imaginary taxonomy of Satanism.

....(snip)....

Yep, the fundamentalists seem to think now is their chance to revive not just their political but their cultural power. They seem to believe they can revive their halcyon days of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush years when their magical thinking about everything from creationism to Satanic messages in heavy metal music had real cultural sway.

Make no mistake: In many ways, the Christian right is as powerful as they ever were, having captured both the Republican Party and much of the federal judiciary. The overturn of Roe v. Wade last June and the onslaught of draconian abortion bans at the state level is a testament to how decades of organizing gave the Christian right a level of political power far beyond their numbers in the larger American population.

Still, the Roe overturn has also exposed a very real weakness in the religious right's future grip on power: Most Americans hate them. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/08/bless-their-hearts-the-christian-right-attempts-to-mount-a-revival/

[raging moderate]

1. Fundamentalists have become more extreme in my lifetime.

When I was about twelve, my grade school principal started taking my brother and me to his fundamentalist church. We stopped going there soon after high school, but I must give them credit for showing me that an adult does not have to smoke cigarettes or drink liquor every day. They were mostly right-wing even then, but the few times somebody mentioned the transsexual Christine Jorgenson, their attitude was pretty much just brief honest bewilderment. Some powerful interests have infiltrated this group of Americans. And this is not the only area where they have been manipulated.

[Lovie777]

2. They are a bunch of liars...............

make up shit, and everyone is a Demon if they oppose the RW's fucked up ideology. They are frighten of their shadows.

History in the USA, Salem.