Pivoting off of the fundamentalist speculation about Syria’s potential role in the apocalypse, Amanda Marcotte details the influence of crazy Christian beliefs and how they spread:
The rule of thumb with bizarre Christian right beliefs, such as the belief that Syria’s conflict is a sign of the end times, is that by the time it percolates up to a Google search or a website like the Blaze, it’s been flying around in lower-profile venues such as Internet forums, Facebook posts, books sold in Christian bookstores, in-person meetings in churches, sermons and presentations, and email forwards for a long time now. The fact that these points of view are concealed from prying liberal eyes doesn’t mean that they don’t have a huge impact on right-wing communities—and that includes Republican politicians.
The Bush administration in particular provided some strong examples of how Christian right folk beliefs and conspiracy theories can percolate up to the highest levels of government without ever putting those ideas out in the general public. The Bush administration appointed Eric Keroack to the deputy assistant secretary of population affairs within the Department of Health and Human Services despite, and probably because of, Keroack’s strong anti-choice beliefs. Keroack became famous for his presentation, prior to appointment, of his belief that women’s brains get flooded with oxytocin when they have premarital sex, which makes them less capable of falling in love. Prior to Keroack’s appointment, this bizarre theory, which has no scientific basis and is pure Christian right babble, wasn’t something you could find through Google, much less the mainstream media. But it not only was a guiding belief of Keroack’s, it has been a mainstay of the kind of abstinence-only programs that Bush administration policy mandated in so many schools across the country. It was a classic example of how a right-wing myth can become widely influential through PowerPoint presentations and pamphlets without ever touching the Internet, where prying eyes might see it.
The Dish 