The Mental Derangement of Religious Fanaticism

I just read an article describing the self professed views of Ralph Drollinger, head of Capitol Ministries. It was the semi delusional drivel that often comes out of the mouths of religious fanatics. Mr. Drollinger is neither unique or even out of the ordinary for that brand of evangelicals that see the wrath of God in any number of natural events. His basic ignorance of science and biology is not out of the norm for an evangelical preacher but what makes him dangerous is the people he is influencing and partnered with in his ministries.

Drollinger released an article last Saturday in which he spewed the following misinformation: "Whenever an individual or corporate group of individuals violate the inviolate precepts of God's word, he, she, they or the institution will suffer the respective consequences. Most assuredly America is facing this form of God's judgement."

Drollinger then went on to denigrate the LGBT community and bemoan the fact that he believes people are somehow worshipping the "religion of environmentalism." I can see why a charlatan who preys on the fear of mentally weak and ignorant to get them to send him money might be upset that other groups attempt to raise money by using the same methodology but he obviously doesn't understand the basic difference between a belief that we need to take better care of the environment and the fantasy conversations he has with the god of his own particular lunacy. Just because his own livelihood is based on basic deception and fear doesn't mean other people trying to accomplish something they see as valuable for everyone are similarly taking advantage of people.

While Drollinger's self serving brand of fear and loathing of things he doesn't understand is not unique in religious circles, his influence on people with real power is. Capitol Ministries was specifically created to increase the amount of "Christians" in places of political power. Some of his flock that support him are Mike Pence (current Vice President), Mike Pompeo (current Secretary of State), and Betsy Devos (current Secretary of Education). All of these people regularly attend his services whenever they have time. Drollinger brags that Trump himself reads his articles and gives them rave reviews. Unfortunately for Drollinger, Trump worships only himself and it is common knowledge that the man doesn't read anything over a page long. He doesn't have that much interest in anything that isn't abject praise of himself.

We've heard all this kind of rhetoric before. The AIDS virus was widely seen as God's wrath on a world of people who had turned their back on this angry, infantile being no longer being worshipped properly. The god of the Old Testament regularly punished, destroyed, mangled, tortured, burned and banished to slavery his own worshippers when they didn't properly perform animal sacrifices to his exact specifications. Generations of his children were banished to slavery and all manner of inhuman torture and killing whenever he felt he wasn't being properly worshipped. We really shouldn't be surprised that people of Drollinger's ilk can read the Bible and come to such conclusions because the god of the Bible is undoubtedly a narcissistic sadistic monster with the blood of millions on his hands if we believe what is written in that group of books.

The fact that thousands of years later in a representative republic we are electing people with such beliefs is disconcerting to say the least. Drollinger, or anyone else for that matter, is perfectly welcome to believe in an angry, jealous god of destruction and mayhem if they want. However, I would much prefer that we don't elect people with such beliefs to positions of public power, just as I would much prefer we don't elect schizophrenics, child molesters, and murderous sociopaths. I am especially tired of hearing the truly ignorant who believe in such things use it to denigrate people who are of different sexual persuasions. In my opinion, it is a dangerous form of mental derangement to believe there is a mysterious, mystical, invisible all knowing individual of infinite hate and sadistic tendencies angrily striking people down with a virus because we love people for who and what they are. We should be vigilant in protecting our government from the influence of such groups as Capitol Ministries who are actively trying to gain more power by insisting that having this mental derangement should be a qualifier for electing our representatives in government.

Sixty to Zero

Two years ago I started a small business doing electrical work with my daughter. Word of mouth and low rates led to us soon being covered up with work. We both work full time outside of this business so it was supposed to be a part time thing. One thing led to another and we wound up with so much work that we can't do it all, no matter how many days a week I work. Around December I decided we needed to scale back and started turning down work for everyone except friends and people we had done work for previously. I determined that I needed to work 7 days a week for at least a month to catch up. That month turned into six weeks soon enough but I was within a weekend of catching up when the Coronavirus hit.

Like most everyone else, I was not prepared for this. I work for NASA as a contractor in my full time job. We were already working four ten hour days as a way of saving utility costs so I had started working Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on my electrical work some time ago. Then, someone at the center tested positive for the virus and we went on a telework system for most all of our projects. This is of course temporary as we do hands on testing but there are procedures that needed changing and a lot of similar type issues that will keep us busy for a little while.

Unfortunately, last Wednesday I started having a dry cough and feeling like my lungs were feeling irritated. Neither symptom is bad and neither is something I would really be concerned with normally as I had been crawling around under a hundred year old house for two weekends when that occurred. However, since we had the scare at work and since whatever this is no one else wants to get it I have self quarantined since last Friday. I talked to my doctor but his best advice was to stay home and call him if I start running a fever. There have been no available tests where I live to check who might actually be carrying the Coronavirus so that's pretty much out of the question.

So.... before the centre shut down I had already self quarantined but now everyone is working from home unless it is a drastic emergency. My side work has also shut down as the last thing I want to do is be a carrier for the virus. Odds are that is NOT what is going on with me but I have no way of knowing so I am going to just wait it out in the interest of protecting everyone else.

Working seven days a week for so long had kind of worn me down anyway. I have spent more time at home in the last five days than the previous 3 months. It strange going from such frantic activity to spending every day at home. I am doing telework some 8-9 hours a day but it still seems like I have slammed to a halt on most everything. It's not the worst thing in the world and I am certainly not complaining but it is an odd feeling to go from sixty to zero with no in between.

My off hours have been spent reading, watching Netflix, accelerating my workout routines, and doing things around the house that have been put off for a while. Not that there is any shortage of them but it's quite a change from my schedule I had been living on for a while. A lot of people are seeing pretty drastic changes from the effects of this virus. I suspect we are really just getting started with them. All in all, going from sixty to zero has been kind of pleasant.

Facts Matter

Testing is important. It is the first and most important building block of planning when presented with an unknown variable. Without testing as soon as you have an unknown variable you must choose an action based upon assumptions instead of facts. This is the blueprint for disaster in any field. Faulty assumptions invariably lead to more faulty assumptions so that progress is impeded and whatever one is trying to accomplish soon fails when enough bad decisions are piled one on top of the other.

At the moment the critical lack of testing availability for the Coronavirus is crippling the country. This lack of testing is doing two things that are extremely harmful for people in the United States. IT is causing responsible people who probably have a common cold or respiratory infection to stay at home for up to two weeks because they don't want to spread what could be a deadly contagion for older people. It is also causing irresponsible people who don't understand the problem to continue in their daily routines so that if they have the virus they are spreading it to a lot of other people. This is effectively the formula for turning a contagion into a pandemic such as what we have right now in most of the rest of the world. We don't really know if we have one here because we don't have the availability of tests to answer the basic question of whether people should stay home or not.

It is the one most critical tool to reacting to a contagion of any kind and we are missing that tool no matter how many times our President lies to us by saying we have it available. The fact of the matter is that the test kits the federal government had as late as the end of February were inconclusive when administered. Think about the massive incompetence that implies. The one tool we had to determine who had the virus was inconclusive. Add in the fact that the number of tests we had were laughably low. My state was issued a little over one thousand tests. Up until last week, the only place that thad these tests was in Montgomery. In a state of almost 5 million people we have 1000 tests. This means we could test 2 people out of every thousand that live here.

It's hard to accurately state how unprepared this country was for this event. I'm sure in the weeks and months ahead we will find out a lot more about how unprepared we are in many other ways but the lack of effective testing has made it impossible for us to make good decisions and that alone has caused this to spin so far out of control. Add the initial responses from the right wing conspiracy mongers who currently have power in this country and the assumptions that were allowed to rule because we didn't have facts and you have the real reason we are now in the state of disaster we find ourselves mired in.

Unfortunately, we have a President who doesn't deal in facts at all. As Kelly Anne Conway pointed out to a stunned media at the start of his presidency they have "alternate facts". This is a euphemism for hopeful lies. Lies that suit the narrative Trump lives by. People who constantly lie make bad leaders. Leaders who make critical decisions based upon their own lies and ignore facts are indescribably dangerous. The lack of availability of testing has led to the disaster were are in at the moment. As bad as it is, it pales in comparison to the basic lack of understanding of the necessity for FACTS in making decisions that exists in the mind of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

Coronavirus

There were 3 reasons to vote for Donald Trump for President of the United States.

1) You hated Hillary Clinton and couldn't stand the thought of four years of her as President. I actually struggled with this one myself but as the saying goes I held my breath and voted for the lesser of two evils.

2) You were ignorant of what Trump is now and always has been about. Trump is for Trump. Any means of boosting his ego and his bank account are eagerly sought after, whether they have anything to do with truth, honesty, or integrity or not. Trump is a habitual liar and always has been. Not only that, but he is devoid of integrity, basic honesty, or any other values that might interfere with his first and only love, promoting Trump. I can actually understand those who voted for Trump because they hated Clinton. I don't understand anyone who didn't take the time to do even a modicum of research to realize how debased and stupid Trump is and always has been. The number of people he has cheated, stolen from, and abused in every way in his long climb to notoriety is mind boggling. If you didn't or haven't taken the time to figure this out it is only because you are incredibly lazy or don't want to. I have as little respect for one as the other.

3) You are among the owner class that cares for nothing as much as how much money you can make. This applies to those who ignore Trump's basic dishonesty and trampling of ethics because they are personally enriched by his schemes AND those who think they might be in the future. In either case, it doesn't say much for who you are as a person if you fall into this category.

Regardless of who we are to blame for Trump being in the position he is in, we are now stuck with it for at least another year. Even though everyone knows he has continually broken laws, defied the Constitution and personally enriched his family and business partners while in office. Despite all this Republicans united to maintain their power base instead of protecting the Constitution and voted not to throw him out of office despite the fact that most or all of them realized he was guilty as charged; both in the case of trying to bribe an ally into investigating a political adversary and in the 2016 election investigation when he repeatedly and blatantly interfered in a justice department investigation into him and his cronies. Despite the fact that many of his closest confidantes are now in prison, Republican's still insist that Trump himself is innocent of doing anything but aggravating Democrats.

We have made our bed and now we must lie in it. We have slept with dogs and woken up with fleas. Now it's time to pay the piper, and pay the piper we will. The long term effects of what he has done to the economy will no doubt come home to roost soon but that is not what I am talking about at the moment. The Corona Virus that will no doubt soon infect large portions of the population will be Trump's hopefully final parting gift before leaving the stage. I am not going to claim that Trump somehow is responsible for the virus OR even try to claim that he could have stopped it. What I will say is that his incompetent approach to handling any and every crisis is critically at odds with what is needed now and we will pay for that with thousands of deaths in this country that didn't have to occur if we had a real leader in the White House who understood what is going on. All Trump can see is that it is hurting his chances for re-election and worse yet, hitting him where he can't stand to be hit; squarely in his massive and overblown ego.

Deny, deny, deny and deny louder are his first and automatic responses to any suggestion that his judgment might be faulty. We are in stage three of that at the moment. I am sure we would see several more stages if he had his way and was able to cover up what is actually going on but this one is beyond his control. In other words, he can't bully, intimidate, lie, and bullshit his way out of this one even though he is trying. Eventually, the numbers themselves will tend to show how ineffective blustering is when faced with a real problem. I sincerely hope all the experts are wrong. I do not want to see a pandemic that kills and sickens thousands and thousands of people decimate the population and wipe out large numbers of older Americans but it may be too late already. In any case, his continuing denials and refusal to put even basic pandemic safeguards in place are making it worse than it should be.

Republicans and Conservative Republican's specifically have been saying for years that the government should be responsible for protecting it's citizens to the exclusion of every other responsibility. This mentality has seen the cutting of public health initiatives for many, many years. Trump himself has steadily dismantled this system from his first day in office simultaneously while he added trillions of dollars to building American military might. If some of them would read the Constitution they profess to uphold they would recognize that a military defense is only ONE of the basic goals of the document. I'll save you the trouble of reading it by quoting from the Preamble below (highlights are my own).

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

As you can see, a common defense is only one of the basic reasons for creating the Constitution, no matter how many Republicans deny it. Without getting too far into the other goals of the people who wrote that document I think you can easily see that "promoting the general Welfare" is also an important part of why it was written. De-funding federal programs long put in place to protect us against the reality of pandemics is no less important when it comes to protecting Americans. As we may soon find out the hard way, it's a duty that the government itself is uniquely qualified and able to do.

Here is the gist of what Conservatives fail to recognize about Government. Promoting the general welfare involves a lot of things that aren't profitable. That is why we have government agencies that are created with that purpose in mind instead of private entities that are only interested in profits. They are not the same thing for the simple reason that they have completely different goals. Trump's recent defense of his policies by pointing out that it's not "good business" to keep a lot of doctors on staff to prevent outbreaks like this points out the basic fallacy of electing business people to run governments to begin with. It's not good business because it cuts into profits but it IS good government because it has saved a LOT of people's lives in the past and will no doubt save a lot of people's lives this time around because Trump and his ilk had not managed to completely destroy the CDC yet. Business and government are not the same thing. They never have been because they have vastly different duties and goals.

Trump has proven a lying, narcissistic, egomaniac with little regard for anything but his own ego can indeed be a successful businessman. We can argue all day over whether such unethical behavior SHOULD be something anyone recognizes as good business but he is living proof that a man can enrich himself without principles of any kind. Unfortunately. eventually he will also prove that these qualities are notoriously unsuited for running a government. Please think about that the next time you go vote. Either that or grit your teeth silently and hope you don't get the Coronavirus. The fact of the matter is that if you voted for Trump you have exponentially increased your chances of doing so.