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I grew up in a right-wing evangelical household. The reverence that was given to the founders is straight up on par with what Catholics give to Mary. It was always an unspoken truism that the founders were divinely inspired by god. When I left religion, I deconstructed both my religious views, and

Great thread. I reposted. Agree w all but this "The challenge advocates 4 democracy/progress face...in the modern era is how to make consrvtives feel safe so...they don't enable the reactionary authoritarians...threading that needle is what intra-Dem politics is about" IDK if that can even be done

Bc MOST media are RWng. And don't just spread lies, but do fear/hate/rage/grievance mongering, to scare/enrage/hurt ppl into believing lies. So to get conservatives to feel safe, we'd have to fight that w a lot more truthful media. Most Dems & other democracy lovers show little inclination to do so

Yes, media are very important in making conservatives feel safe. FDR's fireside chats really were a great example of this. He was there for the people constantly, explaining what he was doing, why he was doing it, and how people could help and have hope. Democrats lost this vital history.

Likewise us lifetime liberals. Ingested America's Civic Religion (and scripture) with my mother's milk. "Fourscore and seven years ago..."

This is why the second Trump administration has been so obsessively bent on censoring museums, monuments, the Smithsonian Institution, and federal grants to historians. But this viewpoint is not one that they articulate in public. Like most reactionary beliefs, it is only expressed in safe spaces.

They very much adhere to the belief that their poorly researched opinions are eternal truths and so therefore to discuss them in public or to subject them to debate is "casting pearls before swine," as Jesus put it. You are the swine, just in case you didn't realize it.

It's ironic that American right-wingers are often obsessed with Islamic taqiyya, but they are also very fond of the pearls scripture, and also other cases of prophetic deception, such as Abraham pretending to be his wife's brother while in Egypt. The overlaps between fundamentalisms are numerous:

It is basically a separate faith with designated priests whose opinions can't be logically dissected just believed. I wasn't raised conservative but being chronically online since the early 2000's meant spending a lot of time fending off conservative magical thinking...

There is something alluring about this way of living. My father is a lifelong democrat and so was my grandfather but years of being on the road made Rush Limbaugh a presence in my life. Not laudatory, listening made my father intensely mad, but being able to tap into that anger kept him coming back.

This is a result of the failure of the confederacy. They needed a construct that would appeal to all whites, beyond the south, so they designed a propaganda campaign, changed school & university curriculum incl the pledge and more all w the goal to return to nation to pre civil war government,