Jak's View of Vancouver v.3

Y’All Qaeda is what we call the fundamentalist right wingers who, hypocritically, pretend there is a (non-existent) attempt to impose a form of sharia law in America and yet are themselves trying to impose their own distorted theocratic views on the majority.  The Y’All Qaeda Files will document their hypocrisy and anti-intellectualism wherever we find it.

One of the leading Y’All Qaeda figures is the Governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback. Just last week he reinforced this position by removing protections from LGBTQ people being discriminated at work on the basis of their sexual orientation. These rights had been put in place by an Executive Order of the previous Governor. Brownback has rolled the State back to a discriminatory past by cancelling the Executive Order.

In the years since [former Governor] Sibelius’s action, one has to wonder how many gay state workers put a picture of their same-gender spouse on their work desks, believing they had the right and the opportunity to be more open under her executive order. Those workers are now “out” to their work colleagues and bosses. Can the boss or supervisor now fire them for being gay, with impunity? Does the gay worker now have no recourse in the courts because Brownback changed the rules? … It is an astounding and horrifying phenomenon when rights are actually taken away from citizens.

About a month ago, ISIS executed gay men by throwing them from the top of a tall building. We can only guess that Brownback and ISIS share similar beliefs about the value of LGBTQ people’s lives.

The Y’All Qaeda movement also has some very peculiar and dangerous ideas about medicine.  For example, a Nevada legislator recently suggested that cancer was just a fungus and, if only the Government would allow it, cancer could be cured by simply flushing the fungus away.  She added that if Nevada, which is already “the capital of entertainment”,  it could help “make it the medical capital of the world as well.”  Another legislator from Alabama has suggested that the current measles outbreak might be caused by “illegal aliens” crossing the border.  And it is almost too bizarre to note the anti-abortion Idaho lawmaker who suggested women could swallow a camera to check on their pregnancy.

Talking of science, one of the key beliefs of Y’All Qaeda is that the scientific fact of evolution is merely a theory, and a theory moreover that has no more validity than their own creationist myths. I believe that people have a right to believe whatever they want to believe; the problem comes when they want State schools to follow suit. Y’All Qaeda commentators say the question is only posed to “embarrass” Republicans. Surely, they can only be embarrassed if they are embarrassed by their own answers.

And if anyone wants to question the strength of the Y’All Qaeda movement in the United States, they need only look at the results of a recent poll of Republican primary voters.  Fully half say they do not believe in evolution. Even more, 57%, want to cancel the First Amendment and make Christianity the national religion of America. That would be a form of Christian fundamentalist sharia law if ever there was one.

Previous Y’All Qaeda Files

Y’All Qaeda is what we call the fundamentalist right wingers who, hypocritically, pretend there is a (non-existent) attempt to impose a form of sharia law in America and yet are themselves trying to impose their own distorted theocratic views on the majority.  The Y’All Qaeda Files will document their hypocrisy wherever we find it.

Tennessee Republicans have introduced legislation that would establish the authority of God in the state’s constitution – and the Christian Right is aiming to make this the case right across America. As reported, the Tennessee move would add the following words to the State Constitution:

“We recognize that our liberties do not come from governments, but from Almighty God, our Creator and Savior” and would “establish the Christian Church within the legal systems of the state, rendering it a theocracy rather than a secular democracy. In a parallel move, fellow Republican Rep. Jerry Sexton, has proposed legislation that would designate the Holy Bible as the official state book of Tennessee.

Hard luck if you are not a Christian, I guess. Michigan also has House Bill 5958, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA):

This bill legalizes a Christian extremist’s religious freedom to discriminate, and commit other breaches in law and social mores. The law makes it legal to refuse service, deny employment, housing, and violate other citizens’ rights, any rights, if a theocrat claims it violates their religious freedom and objects on religious grounds. As if this were not terrifying enough, our worst fears should be reserved for the Orwellian-titled  “conscience clause.”  This clause allows any Christian Fundamentalist working in the healthcare industry to cease a patient’s medical care if they claim their objection is founded on religious beliefs, and  the Healthcare provider would be obliged to send a patient away. This would give legal cover to religious pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions if they “think” a person is gay, a woman is a single mother, or the patient is the “wrong religion.” It would also mean a first responder, whether law enforcement, fire protection, or ambulance personnel can use “religious objections” to refuse to provide service to a person or group they feel violates their religious beliefs.

In Oklahoma, Think Progress reports:

Oklahoma Rep. Dan Fisher (R) has introduced “emergency” legislation “prohibiting the expenditure of funds on the Advanced Placement United States History course.” Fisher is part of a group called the “Black Robe Regiment” which argues “the church and God himself has been under assault, marginalized, and diminished by the progressives and secularists.” The group attacks the “false wall of separation of church and state.” The Black Robe Regiment claims that a “growing tide of special interest groups indoctrinating our youth at the exclusion of the Christian perspective” …

Efforts by conservative school board members in Colorado to make the Advanced Placement U.S. History course “more patriotic,” prompted a walk-out by students. Under the changes proposed in Colorado “students would only be taught lessons depicting American heritage in a positive light, and effectively ban any material that could lead to dissent.” In South Carolina conservatives asked the College Board to exclude any material with an “ideological bias,” including evolution. Similar efforts are underway in Georgia and North Carolina.

Far from sharia law being a threat the Christian Right is attempting to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, one state at a time.

And it is not just our minds that are threatened: The fundamentalist Republicans and Libertarians thunder against the threat of Islamic terrorism, and yet the typical extremist killer in the United States is a white male with a gun. As Alternet reports:

A 2001-2015 “Homegrown Extremism” analysis by the New America Foundation parsed the “ethnicity, age, gender and citizenship” of people who killed or violently attacked others, whether they were motivated by jihadist philosophies or other “right wing, left wing or idiosyncratic beliefs.” Of 448 extremists counted, white men who were U.S. citizens outnumbered every other demographic by wide margins …

As CNN’s national security reporter, Peter Bergen, reported last April on the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, is that “since 9/11, extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists, and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology” …

“Moreover, on Thursday, SPLC issued a report, “Age of the Wolf” … The report examines extreme violence in America between April 2009 and February 2015 and found “that domestic terrorism and related radical violence—as opposed to terrorist attacks emanating from overseas” is what plagues the nation.”

You are not about to hear any of those true statistics from Fox News or any of the other far right media. Why not?  Because it actively and conclusively contradicts the untrue story they want to peddle.

Previous Y’All Qaeda Files.

A Republican in Montana has just lost his bid to make the wearing of yoga pants and other “revealing” clothing illegal.  It is more than ironic that these same kind of rightwing kooks who want to control what people wear and do are the very same ones claiming to fight the (non-existent) imposition of sharia law in the United States.

My wife, an expat-American, calls these idiots Y’All Qaeda.