#639: Tim Dunkin

Nothing out of the ordinary about Tim Dunkin insofar as blathering insanity counts as “ordinary”, which the numbers of entries in our Encyclopedia is starting to suggest that it does. Dunkin writes for RenewAmerica and Conservative Underground, and among his schticks is – you guessed it – the malicious gay agenda. Indeed, Dunkin has joined the Scott Lively train, and taken it upon himself to warn America that not only is same-sex marriage not a right, but that homosexuality itself “is a lifestyle choice that lends itself to violence, degradation, disease, selfishness, and exploitation.” From this not particularly well-supported premise he concludes that gay rights must be “fought, defeated, and thrown back” along with “the rest of the broader revolutionary socialist agenda.” Homosexuality will destroy America also because homosexuality is associated with violence, pedophilia and abuse. But mostly because it is homosexuality and hence icky, on suspects.

It is curious that when pressed for arguments, he appeals to the same shit fluffpot woo-meister hippies generally use: “it’s unnatural”. Though he does, of course, not even get that one right.

Dunkin’s rants on evolution and environmentalism are likewise rather exasperatingly devoid of understanding of either (in Dunkin’s world evolution requires a magic transition from non-life to life; microevolution is well-supported – macroevolution is not and so on), and appallingly fond of strawmen, misrepresentations, and misapplying words he doesn’t understand. But that wasn’t much surprise, was it? (No, you get no link to his drivel; google "Dunkin" and "evolution".)

Diagnosis: Fundie bigot. Standard fare.

#638: Rex Duncan

Rex Duncan is a (former) Oklahoma State Senator legendary for a level of paranoia that borders on the clinically mentally ill. He is most famous for being behind the Oklahoma anti-sharia law – and although being against sharia law is a good thing, his reasoning displayed less than firm grasp of reality: “This is a pre-emptive strike to make sure that liberal judges don't take the bench in an effort to use their position to undermine those founding principles that are international or Sharia law.” Because the people who would want to impose sharia law are obviously liberal judges – you know, that liberal, homosexual lobby and fundamentalist Muslim alliance and its conspiracy against Oklahoma (since “Oklahomans recognize that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles”). On the need for a preemptive strike, and against the suspicion that the threat of Oklahoma becoming governed by sharia law is exaggerated, Duncan pointed out that “[i]t's not just a danger, it's a reality. Every day, liberals and uh, just ...”

In fact, the law is not merely an empty gesture to accommodate the paranoid persecution complex of the electorate. It has actual, real life, adverse consequences. There is a pretty good discussion here. Duncan has a history of standing up for the good values, by the way.

Diagnosis: As many have pointed out, Duncan forgot Martian law in his amendment, and there is still an opening that Oklahoma may impose Martian law on Oklahoma. In any case, the features that qualify Duncan for an entry are not the law per se, which is stupid, but the appalling lack of coherent reasoning behind it. Of course, it is rather obvious that this was intended pure demagoguery, but still … there is no evidence that Duncan doesn’t believe his own shit, and the default position must be that he does.

#629: Russell Doughten

The absolutely rabidly insane 

antivaxxer activist Meryl Dorey 

used to be American, but 

she works in Australia at the moment and must be counted as primariy “their problem” (though she is, indeed, a serious problem, and deserves any negative exposure she can get).

Russell Doughten, on the other hand, could only happen in the US. Doughten rose to fame in the late seventies and early eighties through a series of films promoting a dispensationalist, premillennialist view of the endtimes and the rapture; in short he produced a series of Taliban fundamentalist sci-fi flicks most aptly described as forerunners for Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series. The titles of Doughten’s efforts are “A Thief in the Night”, “A Distant Thunder”, “The Image of the Beast” and “The Prodigal Planet”, and they are uniformly distinguished by their badly acted and extremely dated dialogue and fashion. Ideologically they are close to Hal Lindsey’s legendary The Late Great Planet Earth, and plotwise they contain exactly what you would have predicted: a liberal Christian minister misses the rapture since he doesn’t take the Bible literally (though he later comes to see the errors of his ways), and The United Nations declares a state of emergency from which they rise to become a world empire (complete with mobile guillotines to behead anyone who doesn’t accept having the mark of the beast tattooed on their forehead), thus rising to become the Kingdom of Earth predicted in Revelations. (The precursors of the films, Ron Ormond’s movie “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” featured a communist world empire instead, but conspiracy theories have to evolve with the times.) A more thorough commentary on the movies can be found here, and they can be watched here, here, here, and here. Anyone who watches them all deserves a prize. 

Diagnosis: The crowd at Rapture Ready are apparently huge fans, however, which is an indictment as damning as any we could come up with. If he is currently more of a fascinating cult relic than a real threat to civilization, that is not for lack of trying. 

#624: Mark Dice

A.k.a. John Conner

Mark Dice is an author, “media analyst”, political activist, founder of the group “The Resistance”, and radically attention seeking extreme, hardcore religious fundamentalist conspiracy theorist who tends to spew (a lot of) garbled nonsense about the New World Order and a vast and a largely incompatible array of (mostly Satanic) secret societies, including (but not limited to) the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, Skull and Bones, and Bohemian Grove. His favored technique for spreading the word is phone mobbing (“flood the airwaves of call-in radio and television shows”), which does not put him and his followers in a particularly favorable light even with his fellow conspiracy theorists, but Dice is so far removed from this world that he wouldn’t notice (a good example is his anger at Charlie Sheen for not promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories) (if you think Sheen is insane, you’re only proving to Dice that you’re part of the conspiracy and probably a Satanist).

Dice’s first and most well-known book was a 450-page and largely incoherent manifesto, “The Resistance Manifesto,” which consists mainly of unsupported claims, fallacies, rage, confirmation bias and hearsay – the latter being primarily things he has apparently heard himself say; since he trusts himself, this counts as testimony (and since he doesn’t seem to trust anyone else, such testimony is apparently better evidence than anything anyone else might say). The main point of the manifesto is that the Illuminati (“many would say that the illuminati were instrumental in insuring that the 9/11 attacks happened, [and] that they are behind the banking collapse,” which does not constitute evidence even if correct) manipulate political and financial arenas to erode the Constitution and push for a socialist New World (why a secret organization would want a socialist government is anyone’s guess, but you know; socialism is evil, the Illuminati is evil … and so forth. They also promote immorality (e.g. here), selfishness (socialism, you know), materialism, and they purposefully try to keep the population entertained with television to keep them away from politics. They also produce child porn and snuff films (Dice allegedly has evidence that Hunter S. Thompson was a big producer of such), since that’s what socialists do (keep your children away from them), and were behind Occupy Wall Street protests. His other book “The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction” consists primarily if not exclusively of the latter, though Dice does spend some time debunking competing Illuminati conspiracy theories. In particular, he dislikes Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons” (calling for his followers to “disrupt” its premiere) since it makes the Illuminati idea look like a mere conspiracy theory. Indeed.

Dice is a regular guest on The Alex Jones Show, as well as Coast to Coast AM, and has appeared on various other shows hosted by various delusional conspiracy theorists, such the Sean Hannity Show, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage. He is also featured in various 9/11 conspiracy documentaries as a reliable source, and his loudness, zeal, persistence and tirelessness in promoting his stuff – making a lot of noise, disrupting events, and pestering people – have managed to garner him some intermittent national attention also without the help of said talkshows – for instance when he attempted to ship DVDs to troops stationed in Iraq to convince them that 9/11 was an inside job (one wonders a little what he wanted them to do with the information). His calls for boycott of VeriChip, claiming that it is the “Mark of the Beast”, received some attention as well, as did his request to have the “Satanic” Georgia Guidestones removed and his call for a boycott of Starbucks because “the Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute.” The socialist Illuminati apparently works in mysterious ways to undermine our civil liberties, but I am sure Dice can connect the dots and get whatever he wants.

Diagnosis: Frothing, hyper-active nonsense factory who could conceivably have done some good if he’d devoted his energy to it (he does have a lot of energy). As it is, his zealous idealism seem to take him toward mindfuck and nowhere in particular. 

#621: Penna Dexter

When you come across something called the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, you can be pretty sure its purpose is not to promote ethics or religious liberty. Penna Dexter is a member of  the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and she used to be a cohost in the fundamentalist radio talkshow “Point of View” (host: Kerby Anderson). Dexter’s main concern – despite what she might, in fact, think herself – is not liberty.

Instead Dexter is extremely concerned about zeh Gays: “It's not politically correct to say so, but the greatest threat to America … today is the advancing homosexual agenda” (also here). The main problem with that statement is not that it is not politically correct; in any case, to remedy the gay situation, Dexter therefore calls on Americans like herself, who are concerned about “so many attempts to silence God's word,” to pave the way for political action with “fervent prayer,” and I suppose it would be a good thing if people like Dexter restricted themselves to prayer as a strategy but you suspect she won’t. She has also been caught blaming the suicide of homosexual teens on themselves.

Dexter’s other main schticks include the obliteration of the separation of church and state, in line with how she and people of her ilk understand “religious liberty” (i.e. not). After all, the First Amendment, the way Dexter has read it (hardly) just means that everyone has the right to be Christian. Then there is the usual anti-healthcare stuff, her admirably unambiguous position in the ongoing War on Christmas, climate change denialism (“Climate doom and gloom is a ruse to empower a world body and to spread the wealth,” case in point: “Climategate”), and exposing the liberal conspiracies that are the U.S education system, in particular universities (I won’t link to her articles on these issues; you’ll have to seek them out herself).

Diagnosis: Completely typical representative of the mass of batshit crazy nuts who makes up the Taliban alliance against reality. I suppose Dexter is not particularly influential, or particularly extreme; she is still a flailingly insane bigot, and as such dangerous.