Back around the turn of the millennium, I was in a Books-A-Million (where they sell books that didn't sell in mainstream book stores, only for cheap) and I bought a copy of tim lahaye & jerry b. jenkins' *left behind* book 1 (pub. 1995) from a stack of about 20 out of morbid curiosity.
It creeped me tf out. One scene in particular (spoiler) where Carpathia (the antichrist in his politician guise) murders these two dudes in front of a group of people at the UN and, under his sway, everyone in the room except the protagonist (Buck, natch) believes that they witnessed a murder-suicide. They just believe transparent bullshit. That is, only those on the "side of light," like Buck, have this special Truth-O-Vision.
There is no reasoning with people who believe like this. And that's exactly what I see in the picture of the crazed woman with the baby adoring the transparent liar trump at one of his nuremberg rallies (or wherever.) It's who they all are. They are immune to evidence since they believe they have the Truth-O-Vision and everybody else is, at best, deluded. They can't be reasoned with—so they must be defeated.
I think part of what scares me the most about how these people are operating now is that they've realized they can run for all manner of low-level positions, that voters often don't even "care" about, so they can infiltrate city councils and school boards and so on, and then start to enact shifts in policy before anyone really notices. And then they get the huge, awful, right-wing Christian conspiracy machine rolling to prevent any regular people from "righting the ship". We all need to start paying a lot more attention to the "small" offices on the ballot -- not just state and federal level.
Had heard "Satanic Panic!" mentioned before, but had not been aware of the specific time-frame/era. Too many life-events and I had missed much awareness of the 1990s. Had thought it was the Panic! of the 1970-80s with AIDS and "It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are?!?" and such, or maybe the 1950-60s (Commie, Hippies {snark, like there's a difference} and last US on-docket as Witchcraft trial {TX, ofc}), or maybe the 1920-30s (Prohibition, groups Rights Marches again/still), or the 1880-90s or the the the...
Back around the turn of the millennium, I was in a Books-A-Million (where they sell books that didn't sell in mainstream book stores, only for cheap) and I bought a copy of tim lahaye & jerry b. jenkins' *left behind* book 1 (pub. 1995) from a stack of about 20 out of morbid curiosity.
It creeped me tf out. One scene in particular (spoiler) where Carpathia (the antichrist in his politician guise) murders these two dudes in front of a group of people at the UN and, under his sway, everyone in the room except the protagonist (Buck, natch) believes that they witnessed a murder-suicide. They just believe transparent bullshit. That is, only those on the "side of light," like Buck, have this special Truth-O-Vision.
There is no reasoning with people who believe like this. And that's exactly what I see in the picture of the crazed woman with the baby adoring the transparent liar trump at one of his nuremberg rallies (or wherever.) It's who they all are. They are immune to evidence since they believe they have the Truth-O-Vision and everybody else is, at best, deluded. They can't be reasoned with—so they must be defeated.
I think part of what scares me the most about how these people are operating now is that they've realized they can run for all manner of low-level positions, that voters often don't even "care" about, so they can infiltrate city councils and school boards and so on, and then start to enact shifts in policy before anyone really notices. And then they get the huge, awful, right-wing Christian conspiracy machine rolling to prevent any regular people from "righting the ship". We all need to start paying a lot more attention to the "small" offices on the ballot -- not just state and federal level.
Had heard "Satanic Panic!" mentioned before, but had not been aware of the specific time-frame/era. Too many life-events and I had missed much awareness of the 1990s. Had thought it was the Panic! of the 1970-80s with AIDS and "It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are?!?" and such, or maybe the 1950-60s (Commie, Hippies {snark, like there's a difference} and last US on-docket as Witchcraft trial {TX, ofc}), or maybe the 1920-30s (Prohibition, groups Rights Marches again/still), or the 1880-90s or the the the...