It’s the time of year for “summing up,” so in that spirit, I thought I’d share an amusing (albeit also depressing) roundup from Right Wing Watch, listing some of the crazy predictions from various rightwing cranks that—surprise!—failed to materialize during 2015.
You’d think the fact that none of these things happened would cause at least a few of these characters to reign in the crazy, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. They are too far gone.
Some of the predictions were doozies.
Several Religious Right pundits jumped on a nonsensical and convoluted tale about how blood moons and the Shemitah, a biblical day of debt relief, would lead to some sort of disaster in America on September 13.
Apparently, prophecies about ancient Israel are also applicable to the U.S. because–wait for it—the Founders made a covenant with God. (An assertion that would undoubtedly have surprised the Deists among them.) The catastrophe most frequently predicted was a 30% or greater decline in the Dow Jones. Unaccountably, the stock market actually gained around that time.
There was a rash of dark warnings about God’s vengeance in the wake of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage (and adding insult to injury, the White House’s LGBT Pride Month celebration with rainbow lights). Prominent among them was the prediction that Hurricane Joaquin would strike Washington, D.C. and New York. (It didn’t hit either city). Other “prophets” predicted violence in the streets. (Well, there was, but it was totally unconnected to same-sex marriage.) The WorldNutDaily predicted that “millions” of Americans would emigrate.
Pat Robertson warned of financial calamities as a sign of God’s judgment for the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling and Massachusetts-based pastor Scott Lively said the Antichrist could emerge around September 23.
(Gee–I thought Obama was supposed to be the anti-Christ…but he “emerged” way before then….)
My personal favorite was the Jade Helm conspiracy. Jade Helm was the name given to a routine military exercise scheduled to take place in Texas; Texas being the epicenter of insanity these days, Republican politicians fed fears of a “federal invasion” of Texas. One poll found that one in three Republicans, including half of Tea Party supporters, agreed that “the government is trying to take over Texas.”
Not to burst your bubble, fellas, but the federal government already HAS Texas. (Although I personally would favor giving the Lone Star State back to Mexico, if Mexico would take it….)
Ever since President Obama won the 2008 election, right-wing activists have claimed that he is on the verge of creating a private army akin to Hitler’s Brownshirts.
With 2015 coming to a close, it looks like Obama has just one year left to create such a force, but conservative talk show host Michael Savage has a pretty good idea of what Obama has in mind. Savage, who believes that Obama is bent on committing anti-white genocide and rounding up conservatives, has alleged that the president intends to create a personal force composing of Syrian refugees, Black Lives Matter demonstrators and members of the Crips and the Bloods, whom he thinks will be armed and deputized by Obama.
We can probably explain all the unhinged hysteria by recognizing that there are people in our country who reject modernity, who are threatened by the very existence of gay people and many other “others”, and who really, really, really resent having a black President.
They’re also obviously bat-shit crazy, and I’d feel sorry for them if most of them weren’t armed.
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