Barr squawks about the death of The Traditional Moral Order
The deeply in Trump’s pocket US Attorney General gave a talk at deeply Catholic Notre Dame University yesterday, blaming secularists for everything bad and defending…morality. This lying sleazing hack who does his level best to shield Trump from any kind of oversight and law enforcement sets himself up as a source of wisdom on morality. You couldn’t make it up.
Because of the decreasing influence of Judeo-Christian traditions, Barr insisted, “along with the wreckage of the family, we are seeing record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence and a deadly drug epidemic.”
(Violent crime has decreased significantly over the past quarter century, according to statistics collected by the federal government.)
He added: “I won’t dwell on the bitter results of the new secular age. Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has … brought with it immense suffering and misery.”
Ah yes the traditional moral order. Wouldn’t that be the one in which men don’t strut around bragging about grabbing women by the pussy? The one where men who do strut around bragging about grabbing women by the pussy don’t get elected president of the US? Wouldn’t that be the one in which people aren’t supposed to lie, or cheat, or steal, or take bribes, or pay bribes, or extort, or blackmail? Wouldn’t that be the one in which people don’t deliberately incite hatred and violence? One in which people are decent to each other? One in which people have some compassion and sense of public duty? One in which people respect and obey the laws? One in which people don’t try to get away with crimes by bullying and threatening witnesses? One in which the president of the US doesn’t spend most of his time mocking and insulting individual citizens in a highly visible public forum? Wouldn’t it???
In other words who the fuck does Barr think he is? Does he think he stands for and speaks for any kind of traditional moral order? Does he not understand that he threw all that away and set fire to it the minute he consented to be Trump’s AG? Does he not realize that Trump is an evil, filthy, wicked, hideous human being who displays almost every kind of immoral behavior one can think of? Does he not grasp that Trump is above all cruel and selfish and belligerent, and thus incapable of being even minimally ok, let alone good? How dare he think he can lecture anyone on morality when he does the bidding of and protects that lying hatemongering sack of shit?
Barr called Judeo-Christian moral standards the “ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct … They are like God’s instruction manual for the best running of man and the best operation for human society,” he added.
One, no they’re not, and two, see above.
Barr stands by the ancient Christian principle that the Ten Commandments are a menu from which the powerful may order condemnations of the powerless.
@Papito
Correct. It’s not as though god specified who “thou” were and who “thou” didn’t include.
Except in the meta-data, of course, which Christians seem to ignore.
So basically what he’s saying is Gott mit uns.
The traditional moral order means:
-The poor work hard for nothing
-Slavery is legal
-Women must remain silent and obey their husbands
-The feudal lords get to collect a tithe of sheep and goats
-The rulers are divinely appointed
-Men get to own all the goodies
-Men can get the bride they want just by raping her
-Nobody eats bacon (oh, wait, that isn’t Catholic, is it? That’s Jewish. Scratch that)
-If you decide you want to sacrifice your child for no good reason, you can just blame it on God (especially if it’s a girl)
-Celibate old men get to tell everyone else when, where, and how they can have sex
consented to be Trump’s AG?
What about the stuff Barr did as Bush 41’s AG?
Of course Barr realizes all of that. He just doesn’t care. When he says the word “morality,” he is not thinking about a universal set of values. He is treating power as its own justification. His team has the power, yours does not, this shows who has the favor of God.
Well, I don’t know that, and I genuinely wonder what he is thinking. I wonder what they’re all thinking. I don’t understand it.
It’s a twofer.
You take all of the problems society faces (even if you do exaggerate some of them, by claiming they’re on the rise when they aren’t) whose real solutions would involve things you absolutely refuse to do, like increasing government spending or decreasing inequality, and instead blame them on culture war bullshit (uppity women, tolerance of LGBTQ, people who dare to not go to church).
From what I’ve seen, people who insist that we need Christianity in order to be moral aren’t really arguing for any particular set of morals (though they’ll waste time making it look like they are.) Instead, they seem to be working from the idea that the very foundation of right and wrong itself needs to be transcendent — above the views and opinions of not only individuals, but of humanity and even nature.
Otherwise, the feeling is that they might be anything at all. When we try to explain right or wrong using secular ethical philosophy, we’re going to end up with competing theories (i.e. guesses.) What we need instead is the certainty and security of a true and perfect source: the Christian God. We can be sure of God — or we can’t be sure of anything.
They’re working backwards, mentally starting out with God and plugging everything into that. Trying to get them to build up a case so they can see the holes is, at the least, very, very difficult. Same for debating particulars. No matter how much sense you make, they think they see a bigger picture than you do. You’re like someone trying to come up with a new technology who doesn’t have the vaguest understanding of science. If it’s not hopeless to begin with, it’ll quickly come to grief.
That all makes sense – as an explanation, that is, not the content itself!
But I still keep wondering how he squares it with full-on, rule-breaking, adamant support of Trump. “Trump is god’s way of…” – ??? I have no idea how he would complete that sentence.
…keeping the dusky hordes from taking control of America out of the hands of rich white men .
Sure, that’s what Barr likes about it, but what I don’t get is how he connects it to god + traditional morality.
Trump panders to his base, and so far he’s giving the religious right everything they want. Not just the rhetoric (“Christians are persecuted; we need God and prayer; it’s okay to say ‘Merry Christmas ‘ again “) but concrete actions ( primarily, conservative judges to dismantle abortion rights, feminism, and the separation of church and state.) He invites them into the White House and praises them as his ‘advisers.’
“Trump is God’s way of giving us our respect and power back again.” He could break every moral rule — including ones he hasn’t thought of yet — and still come out ahead.
I think Sastra’s hit on it.
Trump’s enemies are their enemies, so Trump is their friend.
I would add that I think for many on the Christian right, it’s actually a plus that Trump is transparently a phony paying lip service to their religion. The fact that he finds it necessary to do so is a nod to their power as a political force and the social power of their religion generally. It’s why so many Christians love to quote that bit about how every knee must bend before Jesus. It’s why they’re so gung-ho about school prayer, even though presumably their own children pray plenty already: making non-Christian children utter insincere prayers is not a side-effect, it’s a feature.
[…] (via Butterflies & Wheels) […]
I won’t dwell on the bitter results of people believing dogmatically that their religion is in possession of God’s ultimate rulebook for human society, and that violations of those rules lead inevitably to death and destruction. Suffice it to say that such people should not be in charge of law enforcement in a democracy.
I’ve written more about Barr’s speech here: https://norighttobelieve.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/the-attorney-general-yearns-for-theocracy/