Not What We Mean When We Say Foreign Service

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Annieli, at Daily Kos, writes:

Those who wonder why we should care about Khashoggi’s death should ask whether we want an autocratic thug to be directing US foreign policy? Why is America’s president covering up a brutal extra-territorial murder? All this whabboutery serves MBS. Is that what we want?

And this is an important question: All of President Trump’s equivocation and excuses serve foreign interests.Remember that Donald Trump still thinks he is doing business, and this is reflected in conservative language; among Republican excuses for the President’s behavior, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), often seen as a critic of the administration, mewled and rolled over:

A key consideration in the administration’s mind, according to Republican Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), is the belief that the crown prince can salvage Kushner’s stalled peace plan between Israelis and Palestinians. “A lot of the Middle East peace plan is based upon their support. They feel like they have a lot of equity there,” Corker said.

(Dawsey, Hudson, and Gearan)

“Equity” is a curious word. Certes, the Trump family has invested tremendous “political capital”. There are a handful of Congressional Republicans willing to speak against President Trump, and the general criticism runs that tweeting disapproval is pretty much all they do compared to their voting records. And in this moment, Mr. Corker, the retiring U.S. Senator, is lending his voice in aid and comfort to presidential pandering on behalf of foreign interests. The Washington Post goes on to explain:

Trump allies acknowledged that the White House’s equivocations would probably result in growing calls from Congress for a more credible accounting of events from Saudi Arabia, but they doubted it would damage the president politically.

Equity. This is just an investment. And if Sen. Corker, a Republican, wishes to be seen in opposition to President Trump, “equity” is the wrong word. Consider an actual Trump ally, such as evangelical preacher Pat Robertson:

“We’ve got to cool the rhetoric,” Robertson said. “Calls for sanctions and calls for punitive actions against the Saudis is ill-advised … You’ve got a hundred billion dollars worth of arms sales—which is, you know, that’s one of those things—but more than that, we’ve got to have some Arab allies. We have to have it! We cannot alienate a biggest player in the Middle East who is a bulwark against Iran.”When Robertson’s co-host Wendy Griffith argued that we cannot have governments killing critical journalists with impunity, Robertson dismissed those concerns.”We’ve had so many people killed,” he responded. “We’ve had CIA people killed in Lebanon. People have been taken hostage over the years. I know it’s bad, but we’ve had all kinds of stuff, but you don’t blow up an international alliance over one person. I mean, I’m sorry.”

(Mantyla)

Why Three Is the Loneliest Number (and Pat Robertson Is Dangerous)

To the one, Curtis M. Wong of Huffington Post brings us the least surprising lede of the day:

The increasingly predictable Pat Robertson has no time for Christians who are accepting of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

To the other, before we complain about taking the new out of news, it is worth pausing to appreciate the detail:

“Watch what happens, love affairs between men and animals are going to be absolutely permitted,” he said. “Polygamy, without question, is going to be permitted, and it will be called a right.”

See, here’s the thing about polygamy: Equal protection does not specifically apply to questions of numbers. To this end, marriage equality ends sex discrimination for individuals entering a certain legal arrangement. Polygamy is a fundamentally different assertion of that legal arrangement; the same legal arguments do not necessarily apply.

Thus we would remind Mr. Robertson that the quickest road to legalized polygamy is in the context of religious freedom.

And, you know, we can only reiterate our dismay, vis à vis bestiality, that Pat Robertson would seem to disregard the question of consent in such relations. This is a problem: We should not be surprised.

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Wong, Curtis M. “Pat Robertson Has No Time For Christians Who Accept Gays”. The Huffington Post. 10 August 2015.

Re-education

The headline should suffice: “Pat Robertson: God Can ‘Straighten Out’ Your Gay Daughter At Summer Camp”.

Allister Fiend comes to mind.

Be strong.

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Tashman, Brian. “Pat Robertson: God Can ‘Straighten Out’ Your Gay Daughter At Summer Camp”. Right Wing Watch. 27 February 2015.

The Sacrifice of the Intellect

“It doesn’t matter what custom you’ve got, it doesn’t matter what holy thing that you worship and adore, the gays are going to get it. They’re going to make you conform to them. You are going to say you like anal sex, you like oral sex, you like bestiality, you like anything you can think of, whatever it is. And sooner or later you are going to have to conform your religious beliefs the group of some aberrant thing. It won’t stop at homosexuality.”

―Pat Robertson

Dear Christian neighbors … er … um … never mind.

And our special thanks to Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch, who apparently watches 700 Club so the rest of us don’t have to. And, you know, really, it’s amazing what we miss for skipping out in defense of our sanity.

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Image note: Detail of Bug Martini, by Adam Huber, 25 February 2015.

Tashman, Brian. “Pat Robertson: Gays Will Force You To Like Anal Sex, Bestiality”. Right Wing Watch. 2 April 2015.

The Part That Isn’t the Part That Doesn’t Need to Be Said, With No Guarantee That This Part Needs to Be Said, Either

So it turns out that televangelism confidence artist Pat Robertson is one of the last people in our society who thinks … er … um … right.

“You know, those who are homosexual will die out because they don’t reproduce,” he said. “You know, you have to have heterosexual sex to reproduce. Same thing with that church, it’s doomed, it’s going to die out because it’s the most nonsensical thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

The setup only makes it worse; as Miranda Blue reported for Right Wing Watch, that was part of Robertson’s response to a woman complaining that the church she attends forbids its members from dating.

“Crystal”, the viewer in question, asserted that the only people in her church that are married knew their partners before they arrived at the congregation, complains that some congregants are frustrated because “we’re getting older and no one is getting married”, and describes circumstances in which “it is treated as a sin to show interest or to have a mutual understanding in church with the opposite sex”.

Naturally, Pat Robertson’s first thought was of homosexuals.

Look, when one’s first thought about issues between men and women is homosexuality, so be it. And as important as the question of why one would think that way might be, there are times we don’t really want the answer.

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Blue, Miranda. “Pat Robertson: Gays ‘Will Die Out Because They Don’t Reproduce'”. Right Wing Watch. 17 December 2014.