Itching Ears

With the new (but it really should be old) revelation that David Barton is a liar, it made me remember a verse from Timothy on itching ears.  It is from 2 Timothy 4:3-4 and is as follows:

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."

This is what happens when you mix religion with politics.  Which started in the early 1970's with the Schaeffer's, Richard Vigurie and many Republican politicians and donors.  Ronald Reagan really exploited this group and merged the two, while George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush followed.  With George W. Bush being extremely culpable in the degradation of Christianity into a form of religiosity.  Frank Schaeffer, btw, has recanted and is repenting for helping to create the Religious Right.  He basically calls the Religious Right a fraud, a scam and a great business making entity for those at the top which wields enormous political clout.  The leaders of this fraud work hand in hand with the fraud that is called the Republican Party to lie, scare and coopt their flocks to vote Republican.

But, it doesn't just end with politics, because to continue the lies, you have to make an attempt to change the culture.  How do you do that?  By telling people what they want to hear, instead of the truth.  The Republicans and Religious Right leaders have been doing this for a long time--at least since the 1970's when their plan was hatched.

In the past, we had crazy people.  But, they were your crazy aunt or uncle and what they said most people laughed at and patted them on the head and maybe even gave them another sedative.  Now, those crazy aunts (Palin, Bachmann, Foxx, etc.) and uncles (Ryan, McConnell, Gohmert, West, etc.) are the mainstays of the Republican Party.  Their cousins run the network called Fox and are just as crazy as the Bachmann's and Gohmert's.  So, in turn, we have a screwed up country because many people are getting what they want.  They are getting myths and not the truth, but they will SCREAM at you that it is the truth.  The last twist is to make them feel they are not only righteous (and Christian, but more importantly WHITE) and they are victims!  Yes, our crazy relatives "Know the Truth" and we don't.  But, that is what happens when you don't want to know the real truth or talk about the real truth and you want to live in your paranoid fantasy world.

Con artists and those who want to make money and obtain power will find a way to exploit you.  At the same time, you want to be exploited because you really do believe the crazy things that are coming out of the mouths of fools.  It struck me that so many people listen to the lies on Fox, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, etc. and believe them and it really amazes me after 10 years of tax cuts for the rich and very little job creation that Republicans and their supporters will look you straight in the eye and say--"to get the economy going we need more tax cuts for the wealthy--they create jobs, you know".  When the reality is they haven't created jobs and the exact opposite is true.

To me this is another example of how the Religionists have coopted Christianity as a means to win their culture war and to obtain political and economic power.  Yet, Paul knew we would have these kind of people who had "itching ears".  It was in the Bible, cause the answer was right there in Timothy.