Religion, Culture, Politics

“All stable civilizations result from the dynamic trinity of religion, culture, and politics.” Deborah C. Tyler

“America was fortunate to be founded when that religion was a passionate, decentralized, and freedom-loving Christianity.” Ibid

Politics Is Downstream from Culture…but What Is Culture Downstream From?

By Deborah C. Tyler, American Thinker, April 23, 2022

Before his untimely death ten years ago, Andrew Breitbart’s most famous quote was “politics is downstream from culture.”  That concept is the basis for what is called the Breitbart Doctrine, which holds that in order to change politics, it is first necessary to change culture.

Breitbart was partially correct.  In a cohesive, functional society whose members generally understand assumptions regarding faith and moral ideals, politics does indeed flow from culture.  But more importantly, culture is downstream from religion.

Andrew Breitbart was born in 1969, when the fundamental destruction of the unifying American religious narrative and morality had begun.  He could not see that the relationship between culture and politics is not a two-step progression, but two aspects of a self-energizing cycle consisting of three elements of human civilization: religion, culture, and politics.  Religion provides the foundation of belief, culture provides the enrichment of knowledge, and politics (the least of these) provides opinion and activism to recalibrate power as necessary to sustain unity.

Religion provides answers for the questions of whence and whither and why to control the self on behalf of society.  Religious belief in the significance of life and unchanging truth inspires a search for and participation in that truth, from which flows cultural creativity and engagement, which in turn unifies society and limits the dangers of political struggle.

All stable civilizations result from the dynamic trinity of religion, culture, and politics.  America was fortunate to be founded when that religion was a passionate, decentralized, and freedom-loving Christianity as the basis for historic American religious tolerance.

When America could, broadly speaking, be described as one nation under God, the tripartite cycle of religion, culture, and politics originated in generative energy from the beliefs of distinctly American, pro-God religious consciousness that inspired the exploration of truth, meaning, and joy of a national cultural idiom, which in turn influenced the parameters of political endeavors.  In classical, pro-God America, the inspiration for a civilization of freedom and equality came from the unifying assumptions of theistic belief.  The assumptive belief in God and in the universal divine nature of all humans enabled the generation of a predominantly uplifting culture, which in turn was upstream from a generally lawfully and respectfully conducted political process.

That one nation under God has been irrevocably broken into two, irreconcilable American civilizations, one based in life and the other based in death.

Why did the civilization of this one nation under God, the  greatest constitutional republic in world history, come to be degraded and broken by the Democrats and the left?  Why did the unifying American assumption that freedom and equality are God-given come to be devalued, and the religions that imparted the belief in the sanctity of life come to be ridiculed?  Why did American culture become antagonistic to faith, and therefore ugly, weird, and dehumanizing?  Why did the government megalith become an anti-constitutional corruption?  Theological and worldly explanations are both available.  Take your pick, or you can have them both, as they are not incompatible.

Through the course of the 20th century, an ever louder cacophony from the left has spawned an anti-God, anti-American process of civilizational chaos that is wrapping around and squeezing the life out of traditional American civilization like a huge snake.  Andrew Breitbart could not have seen what is becoming apparent to all sane Americans.  The cycle of religion, culture, and politics, which sustains American civilization, has reversed course.  Politics is upstream from culture, which is upstream from religion.

Politics is temporally reactive and contains no unifying truth.  It is invariably divisive.  Civilization based in politics without unifying religious consciousness amounts to permanent and deepening social chaos.  The energy of this anti-civilization of the left arises in politics, which is leftists’ religion.  Politics in turn controls and censors non-conforming culture, which is upstream from non-organized, therapeutic “spirituality” and denatured Christianism, which cares more about political issues than it does about children and protecting human life.

The profundity of the nightmare we are living through is hard to grasp.  The tone of our everyday lives as Americans is an anti-civilization controlled by the government-media-educational megalith that is anti-God, anti-American, and pointedly anti-Christian.  American social process now originates in the bitter energy of left-wing politics as replacement for religion.  That element of opinion maintains an inquisition of judgment of good and evil people based on a false, anti-historical obsession with long gone oppression by race, sex, and sexuality.  Left-wing politics operates as increasingly divisive fanaticism, which can be called scientistic materialism.  Science is prostituted to justify a hollow-eyed, humanity-hating doomsday cult of climate change.  The reverse cycle of civilization originating in godless political opinion has made a sacrament of disposing of pre-born humans, which idolatry is inexorably expanding to include post-natal infanticide.

Left-wing politics as religion substitute idolizes atypical and deviant sexuality and normalizes the abuse of children in that cause.  It is suffused with the odor of race grievance and enmity against European-Americans while writing a new scripture of falsified, degrading American history, wholly ungrateful for the magnificent sacrifices made by European-Americans to preserve the Constitution for all.  In short, American anti-civilization now originates in politics designed to cancel the God-given universality of American freedom and equality, and replace it with a political contrivance of toxic power derived from a  permanent derogation of traditional American faith and character.  And like all fanatic religionism, this politics places itself above the law and loves to shun.

The new American anti-civilization celebrated the theft of the last presidency because its outlandish hatred for the last president was a thinly disguised hatred of the American people.  Downstream from such politics is a deadening anti-culture industry.  Hollywood, Disney, Netflix, the race-obsessed “art” in virtually all public museums — these are creating not a new American culture, but a deconstructive anti-culture, which is erasing traditional culture.  Because they are largely based in politics, the left wing no longer has the inspiration, energy, or talent to create art or culture.  Leftists merely create propaganda of neo-elitist race, sex, sexuality, and victimization, which is purposed to destroy traditional culture, abusive to children, deadening, and boring.  Downstream from “mainstream” anti-culture of godless America are the self-soothing methods of therapeutic “spirituality” and the marginalized residue of once great religions.

In 1827, in his work entitled “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,” Thomas Carlyle identified “[t]he three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing and the Protestant religion.”  For the sustenance of American civilization, the greatest of these was the Protestant religion.  The left is frog-marching its way through Carlyle’s trinity, destroying the right to bear arms and the right to free speech — but for the ultimate destruction of American civilization, they must destroy classical American faith in God.  To get the great elements of civilization to pervert and turn backwards with politics as the originating point, power must be taken away from God and placed in grasping human hands.  The struggle is not between the right and left.  It is between civilization and chaos.

Why are we still using Twitter?  Why are we still using Facebook and Google and all the rest of the engines of our own destruction?  Why are we still giving  money to corporations that despise us and support the blood-drenched BLM?  Why did we let them close the churches and keep the liquor stores open?  Why did we wear those cloth masks?  From the wisdom of the American heartland comes the question: “If underpants can’t stop a fart, how can a mask stop a virus?”  Why did we let them steal the presidency?  Why do we let them imprison and abuse righteous protesters against that massive crime? 

Freedom or slavery?  Civilization or chaos?  What is it going to be?

Visit Psychology Reoriented at Substack to read Dr. Tyler’s observations on timely topics.

Selling Eskimos Refrigerators

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen authored a 2008 paper titled ‘Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?’ A simple answer: no, it is not.” Russell Cook

Selling Global Warming to Eskimos

By Russell Cook, American Thinker, June 8, 2022

When John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate, lamented that the Ukraine war situation would distract the public from the ‘climate crisis’ and then doubled down later on how ‘climate change refugees will outnumber Ukrainian refugees, he seemed to have no awareness of how ludicrous his statement was. NPR and CNBC have both trumpeted the same theme about the war distracting the public from the “true crisis.” Then there’s Biden’s Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, who reacted the following way to Rep. Ben Cline’s “distraction” that the proposed 2023 budget “doesn’t really help families put food on the table or clothes on the back.”

“…we believe climate change is an existential threat so, you know, children won’t — [shrugs, pauses]. Forget about clothes on their back. They’re not going to be able to have a life if we don’t deal with climate change.”

Add Navy secretary Carlos Del Toro saying climate change — not hostile foreign adversaries — is an existential threat to America.

It’s as though Kerry, Raimondo, and Del Toro are so assured of their own importance that they actually believe they can sell global warming to Eskimos.

That’s a paraphrase of a line from the sales industry; a guy’s sales talk skills are so good that “he can sell refrigerators to Eskimos.” Many arrogant salespeople describe themselves this way, oblivious to how big the backlash might be if purchasers realize that they’ve been conned into buying something they absolutely don’t need. Sell Eskimos refrigerators and you risk being vilified so thoroughly that you’ll never be allowed to set foot in their territory again.

That’s essentially what the “climate change” issue is, a charismatic smooth-talking sales campaign selling the world the notion of catastrophic man-caused global warming via an endless string of deceptive narratives. Even the name of the issue, “climate change,” is deceptive. Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, taught around the world from the grade school level through college, used the “global warming” phrase a minimum of 25 times while never mentioning “climate change” once. Why change the name? When ‘man-caused global warming‘ pauses instead of continually rising as more atmospheric CO2 irrefutably rises, the public starts asking questions.

No problem. Switch to “Climate Change™” and blame it for last year’s seven million acres of U.S. wildfires, while crossing your fingers that nobody recalls the nearly 22 million acres burned in 1937.

When objective, unbiased observers examine the issue, they find no end to disingenuous imagery and misleading narratives. Case in point: media don’t use clear, midday photos of coal-fired power plants, they instead show views taken at sunset or sunrise where the always-backlit harmless steam emissions resemble sinister pollution clouds. News reports imply the colorless carbon dioxide in the steam is a pollutant, despite the fact that commercial greenhouse growers pump CO2 into their buildings to help their plants and flowers grow bigger and faster. Beyond that, news outlets simplify the name of that odorless, colorless trace gas as “carbon pollution,” evoking mental images of smokey black soot.

If the public is not being presented with accurate depictions of just those few items, how many others are misrepresented?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen authored a 2008 paper titled “Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?” A simple answer: no, it is not. Despite widespread talking points about too much “equal time” in news reporting being given to skeptic scientists like Lindzen, news outlets such as the “PBS NewsHour” have never once had a skeptic scientist on the program over the last 25 years to dispute what was said during 97 appearances of scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The public is largely unaware of how climate experts question the notion of global warming: temperature data-gathering methodology/ocean ‘acidity’/polar bear populations/glacial retreat/the ‘scientific consensus’/sea levels/weather intensity, on and on. At one climate conference I attended, when banquet workers were clearing away dishes, one of the remaining audience members asked a worker if she had listened to the skeptic’s presentation. She loudly proclaimed, “I’ve never heard any of this before!!”

Accusations of corruption by oil companies have played a major part in keeping the issue alive for 30 years now. Its specific claim is that “leaked industry memos” proves the fossil-fuel industry paid skeptic scientists to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.” Those “leaked memos” were first floated as evidence by environmentalists in June 1991, and the “reposition” strategy goal was most famously spelled out on the full screen in Al Gore’s movie, in an apples and oranges comparison to a leaked tobacco industry document. This same supposedly sinister set of leaked memos is the cornerstone evidence for disinformation campaign accusations in most of the “Exxon Knew”-style global warming damages lawsuits (e.g. City of Hoboken, NJ v Exxon), and this same memo set was once again cited in a November 2021 UK Guardian article about oil industry disinformation campaigns, where the article went so far as to additionally post scratchy copies of newspaper ads that supposedly accompanied the ‘disinformation campaign’… but it turns out that those ads were never used in the genuine campaign, which was a short-lived public relations effort to tell the public what Al Gore and the IPCC wasn’t telling them.

Worse, the leaked memo set, with the “reposition global warming” strategy targeting a gullible audience of “older, less educated males” and “young, low income women,” was only a strange proposal that was rejected by the industry group it was sent to. It’s worthless as evidence, but it is still clearly the ‘most viable-sounding evidence’ the global-warming alarmists have ever had to convince the public to ignore skeptic scientists and other experts.

As complex as the science is after 30 years, the elemental fatal fault in the global warming issue is how the whole issue still boils down to just a one sentence talking point:

Exxon and the rest of the fossil fuel industry knew the science was settled, but paid shill ‘experts’ to reposition global warming from fact back to uncertain theory, and that’s why everyone can ignore those skeptics and move forward to stop the climate crisis.

Maybe an ordinary hotel banquet room worker isn’t qualified to judge the science, but that person doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to commit an elemental act of due diligence by asking the most basic questions: “What is your evidence proving those skeptics knowingly lie and are paid illicit money to do that?”

The global warming issue is bigger than just the science, it’s a window into the world of how big the mainstream media journalism malfeasance may be in this issue.

Why do we have every appearance that there is no actual climate crisis while seeing growing evidence of where the actual disinformation is found in this issue?

Because prominent enviro-activists, along with unquestioning policymakers, both enabled by a complicit mainstream media, are not providing fact-based information that fully informs the public. They are instead selling all of us one of the most false premise, deceptive, and disingenuous narratives in history. Selling refrigerators to all of us Eskimos, in other words.

Russell Cook is the publisher of the Gelbspan Files website and is a long-time contributor to American Thinker, documenting the fraudulent claims that oil and coal industries pay climate skeptics to oppose the global warming doomsayers.

Image: therapysessions

Baseball Goes WOKE!

“The Tampa Bay Rays … recently decided to engage in a little shameless virtue signaling by literally wearing their support for the LGBTQIA+ Community on their sleeves. The players’ jersey sleeves to be precise.” Eric Utter

Baseball players attacked for not wearing ‘Pride Night’ special uniforms

By Eric Utter, American Thinker, June 7, 2022

Does pride goeth before a fall?  We shall see in time, I suppose.  But one thing is certain: pride goeth before a ball.  A baseball, that is.  Courtesy of the Tampa Bay Rays, among other teams.

The franchise recently decided to engage in a little shameless virtue-signaling by literally wearing their support for the LGBTQIIA+ Community on their sleeves.  The players’ jersey sleeves, to be precise.  Following the lead of the San Francisco Giants, the team added rainbow-colored logos to their Pride Night uniforms, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Moreover, during Saturday’s Pride Night, the Rays included members of the LGBTQ community in pregame events, gave mini–Pride flags to attendees, and made a $20,000 donation to Metro Inclusive Health, which provides diverse health and wellness services to the community.

Rays president Matt Silverman stated, “Our Pride Nights continue to grow both in terms of visibility and participation.  By doing this, we extend an invitation not just for this game but for all of our games that the LGBTQ+ community is invited, welcomed, and celebrated.”  Apparently, heterosexual Christians need not apply, so to speak.

Not every Rays player was eager to be used in this manner.  The Times reported that at least five members of the squad removed the rainbow burst logos from their jersey sleeves and donned the team’s standard cap instead of the Pride cap sporting a rainbow-colored “TB” on the front.

Pitcher Jason Adams was one of the players who eschewed the special Pride! Night garb, citing religious reasons.  The non-conforming players’ decisions didn’t sit well with leftists on social media — or elsewhere.  Many blasted the players for exercising their free will in declining to wear the rainbow colors on their uniforms for the team’s game Saturday, May 4, against the visiting Chicago White Sox.

Rays officials selected Adams to speak for the group who decided not to wear the Pride! regalia.  He said:

A lot of it comes down to faith, to like a faith-based decision.  So, it’s a hard decision. Because, ultimately, we all said what we want is them to know that all are welcome and loved here. But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it’s just a lifestyle that maybe — not that they look down on anybody or think differently — it’s just that maybe we don’t want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who’s encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior, just like [Jesus] encourages me as a heterosexual male to abstain from sex outside of the confines of marriage. It’s no different. It’s not judgmental. It’s not looking down. It’s just what we believe the lifestyle he’s encouraged us to live, for our good, not to withhold. But again, we love these men and women, we care about them, and we want them to feel safe and welcome here.

What a monster, right?

Cyd Zeigler, “a commentator and author in the field of sexuality and sports” according to Wikipedia, was not assuaged.  He tweeted, “Will someone please show me the Bible passage that says ‘Thou shalt not wear a rainbow on thou’s clothing?'”  Good one, Cyd.  Will someone please show me the Bible passage that says “Thou must wear a rainbow on thou’s clothing?”  Or “Thou shalt not wear a MAGA hat?”

Zeigler, who co-founded the National Gay Flag Football League and had a featured part in the 2015 documentary F(l)ag Football, also wrote, “Players don’t get to just choose what uniform they wear.  That’s the point of the word ‘uniform.’  Welcome to sports.”  Well, actually, they do in part.  The majority of NBA and NFL players in the past two years have adorned their jerseys and helmets, respectively, with such cogent social justice messages as “I Can’t Breathe” and “End Racism.”

Other tyrannical “progressives” and Twitter twerps purported to be equally aghast that the players didn’t automatically do as instructed.

To wit (or nitwit in this case), one tweeted: “Hey @RaysBaseball, why did you allow homophobic players to express their homophobia on Pride Night?”  Um, Einstein, they didn’t opt to express “their homophobia.”  They simply declined to be forced to express unreserved approval of homophilia.

Another tweeted, “All day I thought those Tampa Bay Rays hats were dope without knowing it was for LGBTQ pride. Those dudes who refused to wear them are lame losers.  ‘Faith’ my ass.”  This dope probably smokes a lot of it if he didn’t know the rainbow-colored hats were in honor of Pride! Night/Month.  “‘Faith’ my ass?”

And another colorfully exclaimed: “If your religious beliefs don’t allow you to wear a damn pride number on your jersey, [d]on’t give your fake performative b——- of ‘we accept everyone.’ [S]o Tampa Bay Rays please get f—– with your ‘wouldn’t allow it’ f——.”  Huh?  Your religious beliefs won’t allow players to not wear Pride! paraphernalia.  So don’t try to foist your fake performative b——- of “we accept everyone” or tolerate everyone on us.

Yet another unjudgmentally noted: “Some folks need to abandon the myth that you can be against homosexuality without being against homosexuals.  It’s a cowardly cop-out and a failed effort to not seem like the bad guys.  The entire #LGBTQ community knows the truth: You’re the bad guys.”  Wow.

You can be against the sin without hating the sinner.  It’s an old concept, in fact — one that these folks would likely be unfamiliar with, as they all appear to despise Christianity.

Who are the bigots here?  Who are the authoritarians, the dominant ones?  Who is intolerant, unbending, and non-inclusive?

When will women’s sports teams be required to wear patches, hats, and sayings touting “Masculine Pride?”  When will the NBA, NFL or Major League Baseball host a “Hetero Pride! Night?”

Would the hyper-inclusive genius that wrote, “Hey @RaysBaseball, why did you allow homophobic players to express their homophobia on Pride Night?” have said something similar and consistent if players had declined to obey their organization’s instructions to sport patches and hats in support of Jews, Republicans, firearm owners, or Evangelical Christians?  What do you think?