Government of Profiteers and Wahhabists

Any more, GOP really stands for Government of Profiteers. Admittedly, politicians who are bought and paid for are a bane that curses Democrats, Republicans and political parties of all colors since time immemorial. But having elected Trump, American Exceptionalism acquires a new meaning.

Today's GOP and Trump are in power because the profiteers have allied themselves with an evangelical religion that we may as well label GOP Wahhabism because it has nothing to do with traditional Christianity. And we are accomplices.

I am not really qualified by education, study, debate and reflection to offer an elegant, scholarly analysis of the problem (which is human nature), but I am not stupid, either. And I need to rant.

The Saudis, a family of bandit Bedouin chiefs from a wretchedly backward region of the Arabian Peninsula, were promoted into power by profiteers. After WW1, the British promoted a Saudi to become King of Arabia in order to protect British oil interests. To maintain their power on the peninsula, the Saudi family partnered with a fundamentalist brand of Sunni religion (Wahhabism) that originated in their native Saudi area.

You know the Wahhabists? These are the folks that veil women and prohibit them from driving or going in public without a male relative. They despise music and Western culture, rigidly control the media, and force their practices on any foreigner visiting their country.

The Trump era and the appeasing Republican leadership brings us the all too historically familiar collusion between profiteers and authoritarian religious leaders, just like the Saudis. Throw in fear-mongering nationalism (xenophobia) and we have apt comparisons with Nazi Germany and Putin's Russia. Both are examples of dictators coddling conservative, organized religions and successfully enlisting their support. Leave aside Nazis and Putin. I prefer the comparison to the Saudis because the Trumps practice nepotism and glorify obscenely gaudy displays of wealth, and the "religion" that supports Trump is so extreme, so judgmental, so authoritarian, and so hypocritical that, like Wahhabism, it really is not a religion at all.

The profiteer part is the entrenched wealthy with an insatiable greed for more wealth and power and an immoral indifference to the suffering of others. Such people we always have and such people always use their money and power to influence government to their own ends. But when they have such extreme control over society as in the Trump era, history books devote separate chapters to the phenomenon.

We have propaganda, the indispensable tool for all political exploitation. GOP Wahhabism, wrapped in the American flag like all demagogue scoundrels, is fanned by Fox Noise. How else to explain the relentless hypocrisy and the crazy, paranoid, fear-based dogmas of a patriotism that vilifies imagined opposition, that sanctifies a gun culture, that harps on a make-believe "war" on Christmas (as if today's retail orgy has anything to do with Jesus) and a make-believe "persecution" of Christians and whites? It is relentless propaganda: fear-mongering, angry, divisive, rabble-rousing, fact-adverse, conspiracy theory driven propaganda.

You know the GOP Wahhabists? These are the folks that despise uppity women, prohibit them from practicing birth control, and blame them when they get raped. They despise Western culture (West Coast hippies and East Coast liberals, Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism"), advocate stripping the "fake news" media of its licenses, and force their religious practices (e.g., Christmas and "Biblical" values) on fellow citizens from other traditions.

Mohammed and Jesus inspired people to open their hearts and minds and respect and serve one another, particularly the needy. The organized religions founded after them are political. Even so, more than enough inspiration remained to nurture mystics, saints, beliefs, practices and communities that have enriched the lives of the devout and the not-so-devout, even non-believers, for centuries.

The fundamentalist ilk that breed within these religions and usurp their names have nothing to do with promoting the material or spiritual development of anyone. These religious demagogues use the labels "Christianity" and "Islam" to obscure their real intent: their own ego, anger and lust for power. The scary part is that most of these self-professed religious leaders have egos that match their charisma. They actually believe themselves.

In the U.S., the politically powerful adopt Ayn Rand as their patron saint. (You know Ayn Rand? She's the one who went on the dole when she couldn't pay her bills.) Permitting the unfettered pursuit of profit is the solution for all social problems. Education, prisons and health care are for-profit businesses. The premise that public utilities — water, sewage, electricity, and communications — require regulation is criticized as inefficient and unnecessary. Anger against the government is fanned by the NRA, home builders associations, real estate developers, manufacturers, and CEO's who despise regulations that protect safety in work places, homes, medicines, and even the water we drink and the air we breathe.

GOP Wahhabists actually believe it is morally wrong for society (when a society organizes, we call it "government") to help the poor and the sick. The destitute have no one to blame but themselves.

We reward executives in private and public sectors, whether publicly traded corporations, financial market brokers, hospital administrators, or university deans and coaches, with compensation ridiculously disproportionate to the average worker who actually produces something useful.

Watch. The GOP will privatize National Parks and make them profit centers, including slapping corporate trade names on them like bowl games and sports stadiums. (My favorite is the Arizona Cardinals' "University of Phoenix Stadium." The University of Phoenix, a for-profit university, of course, has no sports program whatsoever.) Or, as Trump is now doing, the GOP will simply sell off ("privatize" is the euphamism) public property.

Science and our own self-interest take a back seat to GOP Wahhabism. We teach little science in schools in favor of promoting "Intelligent Design". We deny the human contribution to climate change, or even to environmental degradation. We believe in "alternative" facts for the purpose of protecting the vested profits of tobacco, oil, and coal.

The entire GOP notion that government is bad is demented. Instead of using business tools to make government efficient, we make government so weak it becomes a business tool.

How can this happen? It is the human ego, the profiteers and corrupt Pharisees of our times, the same hypocritical bane that Mohammed and Jesus railed against. "Ego" reads a little antiseptic. Think "greed," "fear," "anger," "hatred," and "narcissism." Ego is every selfish, ignorant, self-destructing human weakness and ignorance that all we share in varying degrees.

What drives Rupert Murdoch to shamelessly pursue profit from fake news? 32% of the electorate is enough of a tail to wag the election dog. That is the percentage of the electorate that still thinks Trump is doing a good job. That minority is enough to determine and intimidate the outcome of Republican primary elections. In the long run (hopefully), it should not be enough to sustain control over the nation's government. The pundits say even now the percentage is shrinking. But what does Murdoch care? A 32% market share is more than enough to ensure top ratings and mega-profits for Fox Noise. Murdoch, described by those who know him as willing to sell his own mother for profit, has his roots in the tabloid business. If people get news and form opinions based upon Fox Noise, it is the equivalent of reading the National Enquirer or the Daily Mirror. As one columnist recently wrote, how can a 15-minute sermon once a week compete with hours and hours of glossy Fox Noise television distortions and lies.

I have not touched upon racism. This is the argument that Trump is a backlash to eight years of a black man in the White House, and the idiotic notion that African Americans have it easy.

We enable all this. We are accomplices. That is the tragedy.

We vote carelessly and ignorantly. That is what fundamentalists and the GOP promote: ignorance. Mohammed and Jesus taught people to think for themselves. Religious leaders and GOP Wahhabists teach people to not think for fear of divine punishment. Wahhabist leaders do your thinking for you. With enough propaganda, people do not think they react. It is called mob psychology.

In this country, we promote ignorance. We have underpaid school teachers who use their own money to buy supplies for their students. We have broken teachers unions because — well, educated people tend to vote Democrat. We have people who believe a two thousand plus year old book is authoritative on matters of science. Heck, not even the Catholic church teaches that. We believe that a president is patriotic even though he fawns upon the dictator who meddled in our elections. We have not learned from religion, history or even from the experiences of other countries. The political troubles that confront us are no different from what other societies have struggled with for millennia: human nature. The modern world faces the same challenges, only compounded by technology and social isolation.

News and information today are a for-profit business that is primarily entertainment and advertising. What few professional news organizations remain are labeled as "fake news" by Fox Noise, the tabloid that is the epitome of fake news propaganda. "Jail Hillary", but the Russian-Trump investigation is a witch hunt. We have an internet with algorithms that give us information from Google, Facebook and their ilk that is paid advertising: a feedback loop that reflects back our own greed and prejudices.

A vote is so valuable that the GOP is legislating obstacles to prevent or dilute voting by those who are indisposed towards them. The GOP promotes paranoia over voting fraud when there is no evidence of it — other than by Putin. In a concerted effort over decades, the GOP has successfully gerrymandered legislative districts to ensure that a minority of voters elect a majority of our Representatives. Now the GOP is changing the rules so that religions (read, the already mobilized GOP Wahhabists) may use tax-exempt money to actively participate in politics. That is how important votes are.

Much, much worse than ignorance is indifference. We do not bother to vote, or we throw them away on the Ralph Naders and the Jill Steins of the world. People complain about how bad things are and that there is no real difference between the two parties. Guess what. People who do not vote are the problem. You are enabling the very system that turns you off.

Such a small thing, to vote, yet so powerful.