A parting shot (until I resume chattering away on the bus or the train): as someone with a scientific education (in part) I am of course infuriated by right-wing #Christian pretensions to be the true guardians of science and the intellectual traditions of "the West". They've been attempting to build that impression of themselves ever since #CSLewis taught Christians how to pretend as if their Christian faith was the product of reasoned decision, and it's quite false and insidious and I hate it. But they have embraced this position out of scientism, the fallacious employment of science or concepts from science as if they were moral precepts or articles of religious faith. The Christofascısts wish to pretend that all of their beliefs, especially the most hideously bıgoted of those beliefs, are backed up by empirical science.

But still more infuriating and bewildering is the game that these right-wing Christians play with freedom and the concept of human rights. Even more flagrantly than with science, extremist Christians assert themselves to be the sole protectors of human freedom and even of democracy, and somehow they can do this with a straight face even though both their religion and their politics (which merge with one another) are nakedly authoritarian. They really do not seem able to grasp the self-contradiction. To this day, Christofascısts refuse to treat with the notion that they're authoritarians. Challenge them on the subject and they'll either run away or start screaming nonsense about Muslims or leftists by way of deflection. They stick hard to the pretence that they're the sole custodians of all the noble values of "the West", not just liberty but all ethics, all morality. They say none of these would exist but for the Christian faith.