American Taliban

The otherwise incomprehensible hysteria of rabid rightists about the imposition of Sharia law--which absolutely nobody is really trying to impose--is itself a signal of what's really at work.  Scratch a hysteric and you'll often find that what they fear is what they really want to do, at least in the cases where the opposites are the same.

This is one of them.  Rabid rightists in North Carolina introduced a bill to make Christianity the state religion. This is the equal and opposite of Sharia law, and it is the exact same thing: totalitarian rule by a fanatical sect that is as political as it is religious.

Absolute rule under the banner of a particular religious sect involves a number of factors, and we're seeing all of them in the states under GOPer rule.  First, imposing making that sect's beliefs the law.  Not just in blatant "establishment" but in turning its tenets into reality, as in the many laws restricting access to abortion to the point that it is completely inaccessible.  It's being pretty successful, including in states where it's quite a shock, like Virginia.

But the American Taliban is also political in the sense that it wants power, and will seize it in any way possible.  Thus the national template for voter suppression that has only accelerated since it was beaten back in 2012.  That it didn't work then is no guarantee at all it won't work especially in 2014.

This political power is expensive to get and maintain, so monied allies are necessary, not only the already rabid right billionaires in fossil fuels and banking, not only the direct beneficiaries of GOPer power like the incarceration industry and the gun manufacturers.  But those who are continuing to take over public functions through privatizing everything that government does or should do.  You can see a step towards this with the emergency managers in Michigan, and Florida's attempt to take away local power and vest it in the state government, where economies of scale are available to favored corporations.  Not to mention the imposition of American Taliban policies.

Finally, it seems the American Taliban is organizing its military.  The new National Rifle Association prez is even more outspoken and clear on this than the exec director, if that's possible. Apart from overt calls to arm and militarize against the government, there is the culture war being called for, and the clear attempts to de-legitimize any government not part of the American Taliban, like the administration recently elected by an historically healthy majority.  President Obama is the "fake President" to them--an especially inflammatory bit of rhetoric, given the racism of the rabid right.    

Despite their distance from what the American public in general wants, the GOPer state governments have gotten increasingly bold, not only internally (which they can do without the Washington-centric media noticing) but in revolt against the US Constitution as interpreted by the federal courts and the federal executive. Kansas passed a law preventing the federal government from enforcing its gun laws, the US Attorney-General notified its GOPer governor that the law was unconstitutional, but the governor is not backing down.  Some may see this as a second amendment test case, regarding any federal power to regulate guns and gun safety.  But in essence it is the American Taliban pushing for more power, in this case  illusory but consequential military power.

It's all an all-American mirror image of the Taliban, the Kymer Rouge, the Iranian fundamentalists, etc. back into history.  But this overt and blatant coalition--of reactionary religionists, political McCarthyites like Ted Cruz, Confederate states rightists and racists, reactionary billionaires and the merely amoral greedy--seems pretty new to the USA.