Christian Delusions Fueling Republican/Tea Party Insanity

[stromboli]

http://www.alternet.org/belief/how-chri ... paging=off

Why aren't Republicans more afraid? The entire premise of both the government shutdown and the threats to force the government into debt default is that Democrats care more about the consequences of these actions than the Republicans do. Republicans may go on TV and shed crocodile tears about national monuments being shut down, but the act isn't really fooling the voters: The only way to understand these fights is to understand that the GOP is threatening to destroy the government and the world economy in order to get rid of Obamacare (as well as a panoply of other right wing demands). Just as terrorists use the fact that you care more about the lives of the hostages than they do to get leverage, Republican threats rely on believing they don't care about the consequences, while Democrats do.

So why aren't they more afraid? Businessweek, hardly a liberal news organization, said the price of default would be "a financial apocalypse" that would cause a worldwide economic depression.  This is the sort of thing that affects everyone. Having a right wing ideology doesn't magically protect your investments from crashing alongside the rest of the stock market.

The willingness of Republicans to take the debt ceiling and the federal budget hostage in order to try to extract concessions from Democrats is probably the most lasting gift that the Tea Party has granted the country. More reasonable Republican politicians fear being primaried by Tea Party candidates. A handful of wide-eyed fanatics in Congress have hijacked the party. The Tea Party base and the hard right politicians driving this entire thing seem oblivious to the consequences. It's no wonder, since so many of them---particularly those in leadership---are fundamentalist Christians whose religions have distorted their worldview until they cannot actually see what they're doing and what kind of damage it would cause.

The press often talks about the Tea Party like they're secularist movement that is interested mainly in promoting "fiscal conservatism", a vague notion that never actually seems to make good on the promise to save taxpayer money. The reality is much different: The Tea Party is actually driven primarily by fundamentalist Christians whose penchant for magical thinking and belief that they're being guided by divine forces makes it tough for them to see the real world as it is.

This is a problem that extends beyond just the immediate manufactured crisis. The Christian right has become the primary vehicle in American politics for minimizing the problems of the real world while inventing imaginary problems as distractions. Witness, for instance, the way that fundamentalist Christianity has been harnessed to promote the notion that climate change isn't a real problem. Average global temperatures are creeping up, but the majority of Christian conservatives are too worried about the supposed existential threats of abortion and gay rights to care.

Under the circumstances, it's no surprise that it's easy for Christian conservatives to worry more about imaginary threats from Obamacare than it is for them to worry about the very real threat to worldwide economic stability if the go along with their harebrained scheme of forcing the government into default. To make it worse, many have convinced themselves that it's their opponents who are deluded. Take right wing Christian Senator Tom Coburn, who celebrated the possibility of default back in January by saying it would be a "wonderful experiment". Being able to blow past all the advice of experts just to make stuff up you want to believe isn't a quality that is unique to fundamentalists, but as these budget negotiations are making clear, they do have a uniquely strong ability to lie to themselves about what is and isn't a real danger to themselves and to the world.

Tom Coburn is the same meathead that was on 60 Minutes 'splainin' how all a them welfare peoples was a ruinin' 'Murica. A small number of nutbags are holding this nation ransom. We seriously need to get these people out of office.

[josephpalazzo]

The reason why the GOP wants to repeal Obamacare is a philosophical one: it is a perception that it will create more people who will depend on government. The flaw in this argument is that Obamacare is forcing people to buy insurance from private companies. Underlining all this is the real fear those people are going to like Obamacare, and will vote Democratic for a very long time. For the GOP, sabotaging Obamacare has become a question of survival.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Yoho from Florida thinks a global depression will bring stability. He ought to be brought up on charges of treason and sedition then shot, but of course he won't..
On the bright side, if you can think of it this way, if they do sink us all it'll spell the end of these fuckheads for good.
I think their plan is to default, send us into a global depession then attempt to lay all the blame at Obama's feet for being president when it all crashes. Very cynical and dirty. They can't win general elections so drag billions down with them and hope to 'rise from the ashes as some modern day pheonix. Welcome to Ted Cruz's empire.. :roll:

Fitch just placed the US credit on a negative watch rating..

[Colanth]

I'm not sure that the Republican reason for getting rid of the ACA is purely philosophical. Remember, one of the changes is that federal employees will have to buy insurance the same way everyone else does.  (Only the military will be exempted.)  They don't want to lose the excellent free lifetime health coverage they get.