From: noreply@mixmin.net   
      
   On Fri, 22 Aug 2025 14:34:50 -0000 (UTC), danny burstein    
   wrote:   
   >[snip]   
   >an appropriate obit:   
   >https://defector.com/james-dobson-is-dead-was-a-monster?giftLin   
   =260d3de36d51e61dffae5d127702b85e   
      
   recommend using tor browser to search unfamiliar or suspicious links first,   
   e.g. this webpage appears to match url "james-dobson-is-dead-was-a-monster"   
   (all dead humans are saints . . . it's only the living that are evil-doers)   
      
   (using Tor Browser 14.5.6)   
   https://duckduckgo.com/?q=defector.com%2Fjames-dobson-is-dead-was-a-monster   
   >...   
   >https://defector.com/james-dobson-is-dead-was-a-monster   
   >James Dobson Is Dead, Was A Monster   
   >By Albert Burneko   
   >4:14 PM EDT on August 21, 2025   
   >Harry Langdon/Getty Images   
   >265 Comments   
   >James Dobson was a nasty dude. He liked to beat children and dogs with a belt   
   >and to rain misery and punishment on the vulnerable; we know all of this about   
   >him because he said as much in public, repeatedly, over a long and rancid   
   public   
   >life. He enlisted a whole bunch of Ideology--patriarchy, social conservatism,   
   >utterly fake upside-down Christianity--in service of those basic motivations,   
   not   
   >only to justify his own appetite for and personal acts of sadism and   
   domination,   
   >but to cast punishment and predation as far out into the world as he could   
   >manage. He studied psychology and the Bible so that he could borrow their   
   >authority and instrumentalize them to do widespread cruelty more effectively.   
   He   
   >was oriented to evil, at vast scale, by continual lifelong choice. It was his   
   >calling, and he made it his job.   
   >What a guy like James Dobson does, and what James Dobson did for his whole   
   adult   
   >life, is offer people--white men primarily, but not exclusively--a rhetorical   
   >framework for doing evil and feeling good about it. Stand right here and look   
   >exactly there, he said, and psychology says it's OK for you to beat your   
   >children, that when they cry for more than two minutes of the beating, it is   
   >because they are bad and not because you are hurting them; you should beat   
   them   
   >harder for crying until they stop. Stand right here and look exactly there,   
   and   
   >tradition says your wife should have no will of her own. Stand right here and   
   >look exactly there, and love of country says society should press its boot   
   onto   
   >the poor and marginalized and crush them until they die. Didn't you always   
   hate   
   >them? Sure you did. Religion says right here that you are right to. He blew   
   >softly on a stupid and seething population's resentments, its will to power,   
   its   
   >lust to punish those who complicate their desires by having lives of their   
   own,   
   >and watched those appetites stick up like the hairs on your arm, or glow like   
   >charcoal in a fire. It feels good. He tempts you with the promise that every   
   >cruel, fearful, punitive impulse you have aligns with The Way Things Are   
   Supposed   
   >To Be, and that it is even your grim duty is to indulge them. In this respect,   
   >James Dobson was very much like Satan.   
   >In American society, there is a lot of money and power in the business of   
   being   
   >very much like Satan. Dobson became one of the most important figures in   
   American   
   >conservatism in the 1970s; through his organization Focus on the Family,   
   which he   
   >ran for nearly 30 years, Dobson exerted huge influence over the tides of   
   American   
   >right-wing evangelical Protestantism as the latter exploded into perhaps the   
   most   
   >powerful force in the country's religious life and politics. The Family Policy   
   >Alliance, which he founded in 2004, only made formal the vast lobbying power   
   >Dobson and his media machine already exerted within Republican politics. In   
   this   
   >way Dobson warred against virtually every concerted movement in his lifetime   
   >working toward making this country kinder, more just, more equitable, or more   
   >merciful. He also fought against efforts to protect the environment and   
   >responsibly steward the world's natural resources, because he was a nasty guy   
   >motivated by the thrill of doing evil with impunity and for no other reason   
   >whatsoever.   
   >Anyway, he is dead now. He died on Thursday in Colorado Springs, at the age of   
   >89. The world is a much worse place as a result of his life's work; it would   
   be a   
   >better place had he never been born. If he did not want people to rejoice at   
   his   
   >death, maybe he should not have spent an entire lifetime working for and   
   >justifying their pain and suffering. He preached that there is a hell, and   
   that   
   >the wicked go there. He lived his life as though he did not believe it, or   
   >anything else.   
   [end quoted plain text]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)