When–and how– does ignorance morph into mental illness?
Let’s be candid: we are all ignorant. Ignorance isn’t stupidity; even the brightest people know little or nothing about numerous subjects. When I was on the university faculty, I had brilliant students who found our new digital environment understandable and even intuitive, but were unacquainted with the most basic premises of constitutional government–and others who were civically-literate but had trouble using their smartphones.
As a person getting along in years, I find myself ignorant of much, if not most, of today’s popular musicians and entertainers. (Among many other aspects of modern life.)
That said, it certainly seems as if a growing number of political figures –largely, but not exclusively on the Right–aren’t simply unaware of evidence contrary to their favored positions, but flat-out divorced from facts and reality. Perhaps these figures have always been around and we’re just more aware of them, but they certainly weren’t as prominent or politically successful.
Take, for example, the Republican candidate for governor of Colorado. Per the Contrarian, we learn that
The Republican nominee for Governor of Colorado claims he’s mastered the “rules of engagement” for casting off “demonic oppression.” Oddly, that supernatural claim might be one of the least interesting — and most believable — parts of his biography.
Victor Marx runs a multi-million-dollar Christian ministry that’s built on incredible tales of salvation, most of which are no easier to prove than his claim to be a master of “spiritual warfare.”
Marx has made numerous unverified and unverifiable claims. In 2022, he said he’d helped liberate “over 43,000” women and children who were being sex trafficked, and claimed to be best known“for recovering women and children from ISIS.”
Marx also boasts of having freed hundreds of people from “demonic attachments” (including the late Charlie Kirk) and has bragged of his undefeatable prayer powers against evil, insisting: “We just don’t lose.”
It isn’t just his disconcerting use of the royal “we.” According to the linked article, he describes his candidacy as a mission from Jesus and asserts that “It’s clear we’re right in the center of God’s will.” The linked article goes into considerable detail, much of it focused on a purported biography that comes across as wildly loony-tunes. (New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently wrote that “Marx is the sort of character Carl Hiaasen might have conjured if he took mushrooms and wandered into a Pentecostal church.”)
In more recent years, Marx has added “spiritual warfare” to his story arc. Marx’s roots in Colorado include working for the conservative culture warrior Dobson of Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs. But, different from Dobson, Marx situates himself in the charismatic tradition of Christianity, whose believers hold that the spirit world — and the struggle between angelic and demonic forces — is not at all metaphorical.
I am not focusing on this candidate because I expect him to become the governor of an increasingly Blue Colorado. But he won a Republican primary. For governor, not for dog-catcher. As the Contrarian notes, Marx represents the evangelical base of today’s GOP, voters who believe with him that “Christians are called to ‘occupy’ earthly government until Jesus returns.” He also embodies what the article calls “a deepening of post-truth politics on the MAGA right, for whose voters the myth and charisma of a candidate — be it Victor Marx or Donald Trump — is far more important than the reality of the resume.”
Or evidence. Or facts. Or the Constitution.
The electoral successes of Marx and those like him are manifestations of the successful takeover of a once-reasonable GOP by far Right Christian nationalists and their Evangelical fellow travelers. As the linked essay notes, that takeover extends from grassroots voters to the office of the Speaker of the U.S. House, who recently opined that America’s “wickedness” invites God’s wrath. A significant number of America’s political candidates and government officials are either unaware of the First Amendment, or–like Indiana’s Jim Banks— purposely reject it.
All of this has made me develop something like nostalgia for those long-gone smoke-filled rooms where party poobahs chose (arguably sane) candidates to run for public office. Some of those party elders were probably corrupt, but fewer were bat-shit crazy.
I understand the urge to dismiss candidates like Marx as anomalies, but I think that would be a mistake. I don’t know what has caused the rise of these “Christian warriors”–I leave that analysis to psychiatrists and psychologists. But they are everywhere–school boards, library boards, city councils and Congress.
They elected Donald Trump.
And they are destroying the America I believed in.
Having lived, worked and taught public school science in Colorado Springs, I can attest to the fact that the city’s religious culture swarmed with head-bangers like Marx. One pundit labeled COS as the Vatican for the Evangelical Right. COS is a bright red dot in a mostly sane state. Add the New Life Church to the idiocy of Focus on the Family (Translation: Focus on the Family’s purse.) if you want to see the dumbing down of humanity. Ignorance? I taught their children and was called the spawn of Satan for actually introducing critical thinking and the scientific method to the classes. You can’t make this stuff up.
I now live in Denver which is the polar opposite of Colorado Springs, just 70 miles down I-25. Sigh. The thing is, there are plenty of very fine, honest, clear-thinking people in Colorado Springs. They don’t contribute to the shrieking nonsense of evangelicalism. Their relative quietness skews the perception of the community.
This gentleman’s ascension to the GOP candidate for governor of the state of Colorado is another of many signs that this country continues on on a path of normalization of egregiously extreme positions. Or, as Sheila appropriately puts it, “Looney-Tune Territory.” I am continuously confounded by the acceptance of, or at least the turning a blind eye to, the unlawful and unconstitutional shenanigans of the administration of djt. I’m actually tired of saying that’s the worst I’ve seen, it’ll be the end of that, only to find it to be only the worst momentarily, for another is right on it’s heels. He has indeed, flooded the zone, the sports metaphor adopted by the wonderful Steve Bannon (BTW, why isn’t he in prison, oh he must have been pardoned), so much so that exhaustion has set in. But the courts keep working (with the exception of SCOTUS, unfortunately), and the good guys are not going anywhere. We’re still hanging in there, ready for anything, especially the prodigious Big Blue Wave ready to sweep across this country in November. I can’t wait. Will we finally find out why the GOP as a whole could not bring themselves to resist even one horrible thing foisted on us by this worst-of-the-worst administrations in history? Just one? I doubt it.
One of the reasons Trump asked Mike Pence to be his Veep in 2016 was because of Pence’s evangelical base. Yep, your Marx fellow is one of Mikey’s crew.
I can certainly understand why these people are attracted to US politics. I honestly think they believe they want to save us from our sins. However, they are a little over the top. Our Speaker of the House is just a professional liar, among other things. I still remember Mikey’s famous answer at a press conference, when he responded to an access reporter by saying, “Epstein was talking about a different Donald Trump,” and then again, “Trump was an undercover FBI agent.”
All these characters make me wonder why they chose Trump, of all people. He is a serial adulterer, pedophile, thief, liar, and blew Bubba (but it wasn’t Bill Clinton). Trump is not redeemable. He’s a lost cause.
Despite all of the theatrics, I do believe in the end of times. I’m just not interested in conning a bunch of innocent believers out of their retirement checks.
Commenter VT described Colorado Springs. The city is home to the Air Force Academy. Mikey Weinstein of MRFF was interviewed in 2006, at the beginning of his campaign to stop the erosion of church-state separation in the military,
‘’ …father tackles proselytizing in Air Force after son’s harassment,” (STL Jewish Light).
Discussions about the dominance of White, right ring religion in MAGA and in what remains of the GOP should include reference to Peter Thiel, the Republican mega donor/influencer and the sponsor of JD Vance.
Recently, Theil presented his religious world view to a gathering at the capital of the largest religious sect.
Posts about fascist attacks against inclusion in schools/universities are frequent. Little is written about the White religious right’s similar plot against the military’s pluralism.
Some of those evangelical crazies live in my Indiana county. They’ve have managed to get elected to county and city offices and one of them is also a current state legislator.
The Air Force Academy has been proselytizing at least since Reagan’s Presidency. The President promised that the bad treatment, especially of the Jews, would be addressed. Seems as if it was made clear that they shouldn’t single out the Jews. They had to include insufficiently Christian cadets, atheists, agnostics and the few cadets from a smattering of other religions as well.
Nixon was the first to turn to the Evangelicals as part of his “silent majority”. I would call it a bargain with the Devil, but I’m unclear about which side is the Devil. The GOP wanted the votes and the money. The Evangelicals wanted power. They both got what they wanted. Now we have to clean house .
THINK,
VOTE!!!!
I sometimes wonder if we were better off in the old ward healer days. Corrupt? Sure. But they delivered services to thr voters.
We have a very different and destructive sort of political machine now.
Yes, those “figures” were always out there, but have been emboldened, even sought after, by the orange clown-car.
Peggy, thanks, I’d forgotten about Nixon’s crap, was going to mention Reagan and his invitation to the WH.
I tis sad , how religious belief can morph into open delusion.
In the 1972 election, Nixon was the first modern day Republican President to win a clear majority of the votes of the largest religious sect (America magazine).
Prior to 1972, 69% of the sect were Democrats. By 2024, demographic analysis shows a huge shift of the sect to Republican voting.
The voting pattern of White men and women has been discussed in media. Commonweal reported that In 2024, support for Trump grew more (7% increase from 2020) among the sect’s women than among the men of the sect.
The quoted researcher attributed the unexpected statistic to a decrease in the pool of voters which caused a proportionality shift. Female progressives left the Church which caused an alteration of the make-up of the voting segment.
In reference to a posted comment, what criteria are used to set the bar for qualifying delusions associated with religious belief?
Ah, yes….RELIGION….best tool to control idiots humanity’s ever known.