#1501: Rafael Cruz

No, we won’t give an entry to Ted Cruz. Yes, he’s trying so very, very hard to qualify for one, but (almost) no matter how hard he is trying (including his attempts to sound like a wingnut chain email), he’s not going to convince us that he doesn’t know precisely what he is doing and that his image as an unhinged lunatic is a deliberate ploy to pander to his base (maybe we are making a mistake?). We will, however, give an entry to his father, Rafael Cruz, who has become something of a B-celebrity in wingnut circles after the ascendance of Ted. Now, Rafael Cruz is a seriously delusional moron, and unlike what we suspect is the case for Ted it’s (probably) not just for show.

Like his son, Rafael Cruz has expressed strong political opinions. According to Cruz pere, the United States is a “Christian nation,” the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were a “divine revelation from God,” and the separation of church and state is really a joke. In fact, the Declaration of Independence is nothing more than a collection of sermons and, according to Cruz, over half of the Founding Fathers held “seminary degrees,” which should tell you something (namely that Cruz is a moron with no time for facts whatsoever; yes, the claims – no relation to reality – are taken straight out of David Barton’s Orwellian pseudohistory; it’s not the only garbage Cruz has gotten from Barton). He later tried to support his argument with some Bible verses, and the results would have been hilarious if they weren’t so sad.

Thus, it is shocking to Cruz that “our president has the gall to tell us that this is not a Christian nation …” when it is so obvious to him that “The United States of America was formed to honor the word of God.” Indeed, according to Cruz, Obama is an “outright Marxist” (no, he has no idea what that means; he just doesn’t like it) who “seeks to destroy all concept of God,” and he has urged his audience to send Obama “back to Kenya.” Oh, it might not look like Obama hates God to the sheeple, but that’s because the media is the “ministry of disinformation” with an “evil agenda” who covers up Obama’s real agenda and his active campaigsn against Christians since “socialism, Marxism requires that government become your god” (no, once again he has no idea what socialism or Marxism might be). It is worth mentioning that Ted Cruz himself frequently quotes his father and describes him as an important influence on his own political views and decisions.

Indeed, secular Marxists are destroying America and persecuting Christians as we speak. Not only has the end of mandatory school prayer led to crime and teen pregnancy (a claim that doesn’t hold up to even a cursory glance at statistics); Obama also wants to “take our God and our guns” and “impose a dictatorship” (yes, you may have heard that claim so many times that you only shrug your shoulders, but please give a thought now and then to how abysmally insane and delusional it is) – there is apparently also a UN conspiracy to ban guns involved.

In the end, though, and contrary to what he says, Rafael Cruz really doesn’t like the Constitution and has instead, in fact, preached Seven Mountains Domionism (in the same speech, he also – interestingly – called upon his audience to “stop electing the village idiot”).

But Rafael Cruz has lent his intellectual brilliance not only to matters of politics. Also science has been subject to his scrutiny. According to Cruz, evolution is “unscientific” and “communist propaganda” designed to lure people to communism. How that’s supposed to work would be interesting to hear, you might think. Well, Cruz does explain: “I’ve met so many Christians that tell me ‘evolution is a scientific fact.’ Baloney! I am a scientist, there is nothing scientific about evolution. But you know something, Karl Marx said it, ‘I can use the teachings of Darwin to promote communism.’ Why? Because communism, or call it socialism if you think communism is too hard a word, necessitates for government to be your god and for government to be your god they need to destroy the concept of God. That’s why communism and evolution go hand and hand.” In short, he has no idea about evolution is, what a scientist is, or what communism is. That makes it easier to connect the dots, I suppose. Here is his attempt to explain evolution. You don’t need high school biology to recognize that his definition is … idiosyncratic. Cruz has also tried to explain Marxism: “You got to realize how Marxist, how socialism works. We need to understand the issues. When you hear all these things about homosexual marriage, this has nothing to do with homosexual rights. Did you know that? The whole objective is the destruction of the traditional family, it has nothing to do with homosexuals, they could care less about homosexuals, they want to destroy the family.” It’s easier to support his position if he doesn’t give a damn about what words mean. Add a bit of conspiracy theory, and you get a word salad like that.

Oh yeah, he doesn’t like gays either. Gay marriage undermines freedom and therefore turns us all into slaves, and he has warned us that God will hold you accountable if transgender people are allowed to use public toilets, as well as publicly endorsed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s claim that states do not have to obey federal court orders. It’s all a plot by which “liberal fascism” seeks “to persecute, to punish, to fine” any Christian who opposes gay marriage, presumably on the grounds that this is (explicitly) the kind of thing Cruz would like to do to those who disagree with him. And no, he doesn’t really understand what marriage equality is either (there’s a pattern to his political positions), and has accordingly concluded that the Supreme Court decision on the issue was based on Satan.

Nor does Cruz like Common Core (which again, predictably, he doesn’t understand). It’s Nazi stuff, attempting to mold “the minds to adopt a secular worldview which destroys American exceptionalism, which destroys the historical foundations of America, which destroys what has made America a unique place in the world.” Yes, government “brainwashing” is bringing about the “destruction of our Judeo-Christian foundation” and “our religious liberty;” and after having made that claim Cruz promptly went on to criticize “the concept of ‘diversity,’” which he called “totally opposite of what made America great.”

A simple and good illustration of how far removed from reality Rafael Cruz is (not that any further illustration is needed), is his reaction when David Barton took over one of Ted Cruz’s Super PACs: It would be a tremendous advantage, said Cruz sr., because it’ll help Cruz appeal to “a block of the population that has been basically absent from the political process in very high numbers.”

Diagnosis: Embarrassing village idiot – a caricature of your crazy conspiracy theory uncle. Fortunately people like this tend not to reach positions of any serious influence, but Cruz may be an exception – unless it’s all an elaborate poe to make people vote for someone other than his son without telling Ted outright that he’s being silly.

#1500: Mark Crutcher

Marcus Hotchkiss Crutcher III is an anti-abortion activist and the founder and president of Life Dynamics Inc. (LDI), most famous (perhaps) as the guy behind the documentary “Maafa 21”. In founding Life Dynamics, Crutcher said that he wanted to fill gaps left by other pro-life organizations, in particular through “counter-intelligence or intelligence-gathering”, i.e. data gathering on abortion-providing facilities and pro-choice organizations. This has led to several publications, e.g. in Citizen (a publication of Focus on the Family and The Christian America. You can sort of imagine how his data gathering process works, and you’d be pretty much right.

For instance, Crutcher promotes the idea that legalized abortion is a big racist scheme to kill black babies. It is, in fact, unlikely that he actually believes this, but it does give him the resources for some ridiculous rhetoric: “We’ve been the victims of a lie in this country that abortion was legalized in order to advance the cause of women’s rights. The reality is that abortion was legalized as an instrument of eugenics and black genocide, and Planned Parenthood continues that today,” and supporting Planned Parenthood is accordingly “is no different than supporting the Ku Klux Klan.” (After all, since Crutcher is a wingnut the statistical correlation between numbers of abortion and poverty is conveniently overlooked.) At least he tries (but fails) to take the moral high road on racism: blacks are still not free and “they’ll never be free as long as abortion remains legal, because it was created as an instrument to get rid of them to begin with.”

It’s the same level of intellectual sophistication with which he reacted to the election of Obama in 2008: “… soon the most powerful political office in the world will be handed over to an avowed socialist. This morning, in some fetid corner of hell, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Joe Stalin are toasting each other.” Distinctions and definitions, Cruthcer – not your strong suit. “Besides being a Marxist, Barack Obama is the most rabidly pro-abortion, morally defective and completely unqualified person to ever be given the keys to the Oval Office. This man is thoroughly evil, and I have little doubt that we are likely entering into the most dangerous period in the history of our country.” What qualifies Obama as a Marxist, you ask? Oh, the same as always: Marxist = socialist = liberal = evil = non-religious (there is “no such thing as a ‘pro-choice Christian’”) = Muslim = people Crutcher disagree with. Yes, they. It’s all they, and they are in a conspiracy against Crutcher and those who agree with him.

He doesn’t like stem cell research either, and is as tactful and accurate in his criticism of stem cell research as usual.

Diagnosis: Rabidly crazy dingbat. Dangerous.

#1499: Monica Crowley

Monica Crowley is a wingnut radio host who has carved out a niche for herself as a sort of poor man’s Ann Coulter. She has also served as a guest host on The O’Reilly Factor, where her job was apparently to make Bill O’Reilly look reasonable, and is a member of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.

Among her more notable claims are her claim that (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Monica_Crowley) the French are “arrogant”, based on a survey that says most French people look at themselves in the mirror at least once a day – yes, there is a point about assessing the value of self-awareness to be made here. Mostly, however, she yells about Obama being a “socialist” frequently based on things she imagines, has misunderstood, or is just plain lying about. It’s not only Obama, though. The entertainment industry, for instance, are attempting to “indoctrinate kids” with “anti-capitalist messages” through “The Lego Movie,” “The Muppets” and “RoboCop”, not to mention “It’s A Wonderful Life” – Crowley even cheered on “It’s a Wonderful Life” villain Mr. Potter.

Not surprisingly, Crowley is a global warming denialist, having declared man-made global warming to be a hoax and the science behind it to be ridiculous (no, she wouldn’t have the remotest idea). And that kids learn about global warming in public schools means, to Crowley (and Stuart Varney), that “we are paying for the indoctrination of these kids.”

Diagnosis: Standard wingnut denialist with little aptitude for truth, accuracy or accountability. Nothing particularly original or exciting, but Crowley is still a loon and we have some kind of self-imposed duty to mention her.

#1498: Janice Shaw Crouse

Yes, more anti-gay lunacy. Janice Shaw Crouse is a Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank serving Concerned Women for America, no less. Much tanking; little thinking, unless you count using hate and rage to fuel one’s persecution imaginations “thinking”.

At least, evidence’s got nothing to do with what Crouse is engaged in. According to Crouse, “the data overwhelmingly says” that homes headed by same-sex couples “are not as good for children.” Of course, the data say exactly the opposite, but that’s presumably an anti-Christian conspiracy. Hence, according to Crouse, gay parents are using children as “guinea pigs”; also gays have a much shorter life span, much higher suicide and STD rates, do not maintain relationships for longer than a year and a half, increased rates of abuse and have multiple sexual partners – all of it based on data pulled from the same nowhere from which she pulled her data on the effect on children (Richard Cohen is a suspect). Then there are the usual conspiracies. Gay marriage will lead to the “imprisonment” of Christians, says Crouse, suggesting instead that we look to the bright and shining example of Russia (who managed to withstand both Napoleon and Hitler, she reminds us, presumably as opposed to the US or UK) and Uganda, whose draconian anti-gay measures she defended with moral relativism – since that allowed her to also critizie Obama’s denunciation of said laws as being tyrannical cultural imperialism – rather than her usual appeal to God’s eternal, unchanging laws. Intellectual honesty is apparently of the devil.

But it’s not all about gay marriage, of course. Gender equality is another recurring target for Crouse’s paranoid delusions. For instance, the Violence Against Women Act is apparently an insidious program to brainwash judges into becoming pro-decency and equal-worth activists. To really see her go over the rails, however, you can try to watch her argue that “sexual revolution” and “no-fault-divorce” is creating a “boyz-n-hood dystopia”. That’s right. Abortion, sex-ed and anti-poverty measures are to blame for children born outside of marriage, and this is evident to “anyone who will face the realities that are evident should one take a risky drive into certain neighborhoods of our cities.” Which she would certainly never do herself. It would, though, be interesting to see her try to explain the causal mechanisms (she doesn’t, of course).

It is, though, with some resignation she concludes that “perhaps the jihadists are right” about the weakness of the Pro-LGBT decadent West.

Diagnosis: Insane, delusional and fundamentally intellectually bankrupt and dishonest liar. She does seem to carry some influence, but frankly: to be influenced by Janice Shaw Crouse’s rantings, you need to share her characteristic intellectual traits.

#1497: Billy Crone

Billy Crone is the pastor of Get A Life Ministries (though we’ll refrain from making the obvious silly comments) and a serious fundie. Crone is a young earth creationist who believes, as expected, that dinosaurs and man coexisted on Earth some 6,000 years ago. Apart from that, he believes in UFOs, that secular music is dangerous and that the rapture is coming. The usual stuff.

Crone is known for his tendency to shout throughout his sermons, apparently unaware that volume is a poor substitute for evidence (though, of course, his audience may be under precisely that misconception). But then, Crone’s got little else, except some serious quote-mining and Bible verses that are magnificently irrelevant to the scientific topics he is denying (no, he doesn’t really have much of a clue about evolution), as well as some standard creationist talking points, such as the idea that human population growth shows that the Earth is young or that the Earth’s magnetic field disproves an old Earth (one gets the distinct feeling that he has no idea what he is talking about), or flat out denying that the geological column exists or that any type of dating method reveals anything but Satanic lies.

Diagnosis: Zealous fundie nutter. Probably pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.