Since Ted Cruz first announced his candidacy, much has been made of his chances of winning, his arrogance and his extreme conservative views. But most of the controversy over his candidacy centers on his lying.
It is no surprise to any of us that politicians lie. We generally assume they stretch the truth to get elected, to denigrate their political foes, and to bolster their images. But Cruz may just represent one of the biggest liars in recent history. In fact, he may be a whole new form of political liar.
[ aside, lol, with Google gouging multitudes on everything i'd say that Google result means zilch .. lol .. mine just now was 2,790,000 in 0.42sec. while Jesus literally walked on water mined "About 13,200,000 results (0.33 seconds)" .. anyway this is the crunch on Cruz ]
The trouble with this angle on Cruz’s misstatements is that it presumes that Cruz is, in fact, lying. But lying depends on the liar knowing that what he is saying is false. Cruz shows no signs of such awareness. As Ann Marie Cox .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/22/the-truth-behind-ted-cruz-s-lies.html .. points out in her survey of Cruz’s lies, there’s more going on here than just a politician’s twisting of the truth or a partisan spin on data. She wonders whether it is time to take seriously the idea that he really believes what he is saying. “There are objective falsehoods that show Cruz could just be looking at a different set of data. Other, more telling whoppers show that Cruz isn’t just looking at different data, he’s living in a different universe.”
That different universe is Cruz’s world of misinformation. He doesn’t lie because lying would require that he actually know the truth. And that is what makes Cruz an even greater threat to the health of our democracy than all of his lies put together. Cruz represents a turn in GOP politics where political beliefs operate more like religious fervor than reasoned inference.
Researchers have long worried about the connections between democracy and public knowledge. For obvious reasons, an informed electorate is a key part of a strong and effective democracy. Voters need to have relevant facts in order to make good choices at the polls. But research .. http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/PolBehavior-2010-Nyhan.pdf .. by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler explains that there is a vast difference between an uninformed public and a misinformed one.
[ Something that is misinformed is based on bad information. Something that is uninformed is based on no information or inadequate information. For example, a webpage on the difference between misinformed and uninformed would be uninformed if it were based on no research or experience, and it would be misinformed if it were based on research drawn from misleading or speculative commentary.
The words are often extended to describe people. A misinformed person is one who has bad information, and an uninformed person is one who has no or inadequate information. http://grammarist.com/usage/misinformed-uninformed/ ]
An uninformed public is ignorant, but a misinformed one is delusional—and that’s far more dangerous.
If you care about truth and think it should influence political decisions, this is highly disturbing. But it gets worse. Nyhan and Reifler further suggest .. http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/PolBehavior-2010-Nyhan.pdf .. that those who hold misinformed beliefs are even less likely to learn from correcting information than those who have no clue.
[ How Facts Backfire .. bit .. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger. .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=52247903
Comedy break. The Daily Show - Democalypse 2016 - Ted Cruz Is In
]
That means that for those who think like Cruz, there is virtually no amount of data, reality checks or facts that can persuade the deluded citizen to give up his false ideas. This is the mindset of the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, and many on the far right. Nyhan and Reifler .. http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/PolBehavior-2010-Nyhan.pdf .. refer to this as “motivated reasoning.” What they find is that people who are attached to falsehoods perceive any correcting information as partisan and flawed. So conservatives don’t perceive science as information. To them, it’s just a liberal agenda. In other words, they don’t believe the truth.
Not only do those with false beliefs practice “motivated reasoning,” we also now know that any challenge to their beliefs is likely to backfire. Nyhan and Reifler found .. http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/PolBehavior-2010-Nyhan.pdf .. that when conservatives who thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were exposed to news stories correcting that view, “the correction backfired.” That is, “conservatives who received a correction telling them that Iraq did not have WMDs were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD than those in the control condition.”
Exposure to the truth not only failed to adjust their views to reality, it actually made them believe in their false ideas even more strongly. This is why Cruz’s candidacy is really scary. This is not a case of a politician strategically using lies to advance a career; his whole career is dedicated to advancing a political platform built on a delusional view of the world. The catch is that to those who think like Cruz it isn’t delusional, it makes perfect sense.
But really if we want to peg the rise of a misinformed GOP on a politician we would have to start with the George W. Bush administration.
Back in 2008 .. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/ , we learned the Bush administration made 935 false statements in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Yet today, despite multiple bipartisan reports confirming no WMDs were found, a significant faction of the U.S. public still cling tenaciously to the idea that the war there was just. A recent poll .. http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2015/false/ .. conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that 40 percent of US citizens still think there were WMDs in Iraq.
But falsehoods are only the tip of the iceberg. The bigger problem is the emotional attachment to the falsehoods. The new GOP .. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/14/opinion/frum-mann-ornstein/ .. is increasingly connected to a sense of constant threat and a persistent worry that the nation and its values are under attack. When we combine a great distortion of reality with a party politics based on fear and extremism, we threaten the viability of a functional political system. That, of course, was exactly what Cruz did .. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/10/14/call-the-government-shutdown-the-ted-cruz-crisis/ .. when he led the government shutdown of 2013.
Democrats, too, hold dear to their beliefs. It’s part of human nature to want to resist information that contradicts with the way we see the world. Psychologists call the practice confirmation bias, and define it as the tendency to interpret information in ways that support our preconceptions. And yet, we don’t all resist correction of our false beliefs to the same degree.
The poster boy for this extremist, reality-bending faction of the party is Ted Cruz. As the Washington Post reports, “Cruz isn’t [just] running for president—he’s running to be the leader of a new GOP.” And that’s no lie.
Sophia A. McClennen is professor of international affairs and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University. Her latest book, co-authored with Remy M. Maisel, is, Is Satire Saving Our Nation? Mockery and American Politics. She can be found on Twitter at @mcclennen65. [ two links there ]
US Senator Ted Cruz speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill October 16, 2013 in Washington, DC
[ -- indicates indented bits ] -- "The pastor [Huch] referred to Proverbs 13:22, a little while ago, which says that the wealth of the wicked is stored for the righteous. And it is through the kings, anointed to take dominion, that that transfer of wealth is going to occur." - Rafael Cruz, August 26, 2012 --
In a sermon .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy074QLV2D8 .. last year at an Irving, Texas, megachurch that helped elect Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, Cruz' father Rafael Cruz indicated that his son was among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as "kings" to take control of all sectors of society, an agenda commonly referred to as the "Seven Mountains" mandate, and "bring the spoils of war to the priests", thus helping to bring about a prophesied "great transfer of wealth", from the "wicked" to righteous gentile believers. link to video .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNa5w9js48s .. of Rafael Cruz describing the "great transfer of wealth" and the role of anointed "kings" in various sectors of society, including government, who are to "bring the spoils of war to the priests".
Rafael Cruz' dominionist .. http://www.publiceye.org/christian_right/dominionism.htm .. sermon given August 26, 2012, at the New Beginnings Church of pastor Larry Huch, in Irving, Texas has already received considerable scrutiny due to an excellent Huffington Post commentary .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-guyton/the-theology-of-governmen_b_4020537.html .. by Methodist Associate Pastor Morgan Guyton, who noted the explicitly dominionist nature of pastor Cruz' sermon, which concerned the divine mandate for believers, with anointing of "kings" in their respective spheres, to take control over all sectors of society.
Cruz spoke of "Kings who are anointed to go to war, win the war, and bring the spoils of war to the priests."
But in a very real, mundane sense Ted Cruz has already helped deliver hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, to the evangelical right. Cruz' past service - as a "king" who brought "spoils to the priests" - is a matter of established record; as I revealed in a prior story, no less than a top adviser to President George W. Bush has stated that in 1999 Ted Cruz played a major role in helping the Bush for President campaign lock down the conservative evangelical vote in the 2000 election.
One can interpret the "great transfer of wealth" -- predicted by Ted Cruz' father Rafael Cruz, and by Pastor Larry Huch, who threw his Texas megachurch's considerable heft behind the 2012 Cruz for Senate campaign -- in magical terms, sure.
But Ted Cruz' apparently notable role in getting George W. Bush into the presidency led in turn to Bush's "Faith Based Initiative" - that continues to this day under two successive Obama administrations and which, during the Bush years, funneled billions of dollars to churches and institutions associated with the religious right.
In other words, the "great transfer of wealth" is about more than wishful thinking. It's about an ongoing effort, by leaders and institutions of the evangelical right, to gradually gobble up the secular sphere of government.
Thus, for example, fast growing Christian schools such as the late Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, which now vacuums up hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student aid money each year. Or the hundreds of millions of diverted tax dollars now flowing, in a least 12 U.S. states, under so-called "neo-voucher" schemes, to private schools - many of which, as explored in a new .. http://phillygaylawyer.com/2013/10/15/the-war-against-lgbt-students-in-schools-a-summary-of-alex-morriss-hidden-war-in-rolling-stone/ .. Rolling Stone story, have virulently anti-LGBT policies. Under Bush, too, several billion dollars per year in USAID funding were shifted from secular aid nonprofits to religious ones, some them holding anti-gay and reactionary, even theocratic, underlying ideology.
I could go on at length about this dreary subject, which involves major shifts in government social service funding streams. But instead, let's turn now to the "kings for dominion":
In his August 26th, 2012 guest sermon at Larry Huch's Irving, TX megachurch, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz' father Rafael Cruz, in what was not the first of his guest appearances at the church, explained,
-- "The pastor [Huch] referred to Proverbs 13:22, a little while ago, which says that the wealth of the wicked is stored for the righteous. And it is through the kings, anointed to take dominion, that that transfer of wealth is going to occur. God, even though he's sovereign, even though he's omnipotent, he doesn't let it rain out of the sky - he's going to use people to do it." --
Introducing pastor Cruz, in the context that it would soon be Rosh Hashanah, which would ring in the Jewish New Year of 2012, Larry Huch had stated, invoking dominionist numerology,
-- "The number 12 means 'divine government', that God begins to rule and reign. Not Wall Street, not Washington - God's people and his kingdom will begin to rule and reign" --
As Huch spoke, Rafael Cruz could be seen in the audience, standing next to Huch's wife Tiz, hand upraised to receive and magnify Huch's prophetic blessing. Huch continued,
-- "I know that's why God got Rafael's son elected - Ted Cruz, the next Senator. But here's the exciting thing - and that's why I know it's timely for him to teach this, and bring this anointing. The rabbinical teaching is, especially amongst gentiles, who God opens their eyes, that in a few weeks begins that year 2012, and that this will begin what we call the "End Time Transfer of Wealth.
And that when these gentiles begin to receive this blessing, they will never go back financially through the valley again. They will grown and grow and grow. It's said this way - that God is looking at the church, and everyone in it, and deciding, in the next 3 and 1/2 years, who will be his bankers. And the ones that say, "Here am I, Lord, you can trust me", we will become so blessed that we will usher in the coming of the Messiah. This message if for you. Would you welcome our good friend Rafael Cruz ? What a tremendous man of God." --
Pastor Cruz could not have made himself more clear:
-- "There are some of you, as a matter of fact I will dare to say the majority of you, that your anointing is not an anointing as priest. It's an anointing as king. And God has given you an anointing to go to the battlefield. And what's the battlefield ? The battlefield is the marketplace. To go to the marketplace and occupy the land. To go to the marketplace and take dominion. If you remember the last time I was in this pulpit, I talked to you about Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, where God says unto Adam and Eve, "Go forth, multiply, TAKE DOMINION over all creation." And if you recall, we talked about the fact that that dominion is not just in the church. That dominion is over every area - society, education, government, economics... --
Describing the anointing of kings, pastor Cruz spoke of,
-- "Kings who are anointed for a totally different reason than priests. Kings who are anointed to take dominion. Kings who are anointed to go to war, win the war, and bring the spoils of war to the priests. So the work of the kingdom of God could be accomplished. And I'll tell you - the king needed the blessing of the priest in order to be successful in battle... [in Deuteronomy] Before the king went to battle, the priest came and blessed the king and blessed the warriors. And the king needed the blessing of the priest in order to be successful in battle... Now, the priest also needed for the king to be successful in battle, because the priest needed the spoils of war in order to repair the temple, in order to carry out the ministry that God had entrusted him. So the king and the priest complimented each other, and they were both very, very interested in blessing one another. --
Concluding the service, the two men, Huch and Cruz, met onstage and pastor Huch conveyed a "word", a prophetic message from God relayed through one of his believers, from Rafael Cruz to his New Beginnings Church audience,
-- "God laid this on Rafael's heart, for right now - listen to me - In the next 3 and 1/2 years, and we're not waiting 3 and 1/2 years, it's the End Time Transfer of Wealth... You know, during the elections - and it just hit me, Rafael was up there and he was saying, "this is the anointed by God" - when I got a phone call, would I come to a meeting to meet Rafael Cruz and Ted Cruz, Tiz and I had already received about ten phone calls asking if we would get behind a candidate - 'could we come and speak at your church ? Can we come ?" I mean one after another.
And when we were asked by some friends to come to this house. They said we would not only meet Ted but we would meet Rafael. Before I ever met Ted, I met Rafael. And I knew that if the son was like the dad we could trust him to be our Senator. Amen ?
But here's what, here's when it came to me - Ted will be our next Senator, and I gave Rafael a word the other day... this is just the beginning. It's going to be much, much, much higher. But here's the deal - Ted Cruz is the real thing. But he hasn't become the real thing now that he's going to be Senator. He was the real thing when he was working as a clerk, he was the real thing when he was going through college, he didn't become faithful now that he's Senator. He's going to become Senator - and I believe some day either Supreme Court justice of Vice President - but he was faithful back when he was his [Rafael Cruz'] boy and God took that faithfulness." --
As a final note, consider what's implicitly packed into Rafael Cruz' and Larry Huch's "great transfer of wealth" - According to Huch and Cruz, this is a transfer of wealth, "from the wicked", to "righteous" gentiles.
In the generally accepted English meaning of the term, "gentile" refers simply to non-Jews. And because "righteous Jews" were not included among those predicted to benefit from the "great wealth transfer", the logical import is that those Christians anointed as "kings" would plunder - remember, Huch and Cruz spoke of this specifically in terms of war, and combat - the fortunes of non-righteous gentiles and, you guessed it, Jews.
Given the noisily Christian Zionist milieu in which the "great wealth transfer" service was given - Larry Huch opened Rafael Cruz' sermon with a blast from a shofar, there was a huge Menorah looming over the stage, the main pulpit featured a cross superimposed on a Star of David, and some of the men in the audience wore yarmulkes - it's more than a little creepy.
Adding to the creepiness, this isn't the first time in recent political history we've heard Proverbs 13:22 from a stage.
In September 2008, with the election looming and John McCain and Barack Obama readying their final battle plans, a strange video surfaced, from an August 2005 ceremony held at the most significant Alaska church of 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
In the video, which became briefly notorious and unsettled many uncommitted moderate voters, Sarah Palin, who would soon run for and win the Alaska governor's seat, was shown being blessed and anointed by a Kenyan pastor with a croaking, raspy voice who called upon God to bless candidate Palin and protect her against witchcraft.
While that part of the video .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgD7LQXVJ8o .. received considerable mockery from mainstream media, few seemed to notice a short speech by Muthee, which preceded the blessing and anointing of Palin. In the nakedly dominionist speech, Thomas Muthee - a close colleague of New Apostolic Reformation kingpin C. Peter Wagner - called upon believers to "invade" and "infiltrate" seven leading sectors of society:
-- "In a moment, I'll be asking you that we pray for Sarah, and I'll tell you the reason why. When we talk about transformation of a community, we are talking about God invading seven areas in our society. Let me repeat that one more time. When we talk about transformation of a society, a community, it's where we see God's Kingdom infiltrate, influence seven areas in our society.
Number one is the spiritual aspect of our society...
...the second area whereby God wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It is high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity, running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the Israelites, you know, that's how they won. And that's how they are, even today....
So we go to the third area, it's in the area of politics... There are people who are wired to politics because God wants to take the political, you know, dimension of our societies. And those people should be prayed for. That's why I was, you know, I was so glad to see Sarah here. We should pray for her, we should back her up. And, you know, come the day of voting, we should be there, not just praying, we should be there. And I'm saying this because that's what I'm telling our church. I'm telling them that we need this in Parliament. In here is what you call Congressmen, you know, you know, the, the Governors, we need the brethren right inside there. Is anybody hearing me?
You know, because who will change the laws of the lands? The problem is do we just pray, but we do nothing about it. If the believers had not done something in this country, your president would not be in office today. Yes or no? Am I right?
Number three, or number four, it's the area of education. We need believers who are educationists. If we had them, today we would not be talking about the Ten Commandments being kicked out of the church, I mean out of our schools. They would still be there. One of the things that you, you know, I would love you to know, I'm a child of revival of the Seventies, and that revival swept through the schools. They are open to preaching, you know, open. Open. Wide open. You go to any school, there is what we call Christian Union. Christian Union is nothing more but a bunch of kids that are born again, spirit-filled, tongue-talking, devil-casting. Is anybody hearing me? All over the country! Is anybody hearing me?
We need God taking over our education system! Otherwise, we, if we have God in our schools, we will not have kids being taught, you know, how to worship Buddha, how to worship Mohammed, we will not have in the curriculum witchcraft and sorcery. Is anybody hearing me?
The other area is in the area of media. We need believers in the media. We need God taking over the media in our lands. Otherwise we will not have all the junk coming out of, you know, coming out of the media... Why can't we have our living church in Hollywood? Guess what will happen. If we have a living church right in Hollywood, we would not have all the kind of pornography that we are having. Is anybody hearing me?
And the last area is in the area of government. Hello? We need believers there. We need men and women of integrity. You know, as the Secretaries of State. We need them right there. People that are born again, spirit filled, people who know God, and people who are serious with God.
So in a moment if you do not mind, I'll ask, you know, even before I go to do this thing, you know, I'll ask Sarah, would you mind to come please? Would you mind? Come, please. Let's all stand up, and let's hold hands all over this house. Come, Pastor, come.
[Sarah Palin joins Muthee and two Alaska pastors onstage]
Thank you, Jesus. Let's all pray. Let's pray for Sarah. Hallelujah! Come on, hold your hands up and raise them. Hold them and raise them up here! Come on, talk to God about this woman! Come on, talk to God about this woman we declare favor from today. We say favor, favor, favor! We say praise my God! We say grace to be rained upon her in the name of Jesus. My God, you make your judgement, you make room. You make ways in the desert, and I'm asking you today, we are asking you as the body of Christ in this valley, make a way for Sarah, even in the [inaudible]. Make her way my God. Bring finances her way, even in the campaign in the name of Jesus, and above all give her the personnel, give her men and women that will back her up in the name of Jesus. We want righteousness in this state. We want righteousness in this nation. Because you say [inaudible] in the name of Jesus. Our Father, use her to turn this nation the other way around. Use her to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers so that the curse that has been there long can be broken. In the name of Jesus. Father, we thank you today. We come in the hindrance of the enemy, standing in her way to there. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus! Every form of witchcraft, it will be rebuked in the name of Jesus. Father, make her way now. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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