Reddit mentions of C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy

That said--I'm really glad that the release of the Netflix documentary has given some new and badly-needed attention to Jeff Sharlet's research. (Sharlet was a former member of the Family, as you likely know, until he walked away--and was still able to get unprecedented access to the archives and history of the group until this was eventually shut down, with even the publically available archives being yeeted off the Internet after Sharlet's first article on The Family came out in 2003.) I will say that the documentary is, very much, the Cliff's Notes version of Sharlet's research; those interested should seriously check out the original book on which the documentary was based (written almost ten years ago to the day!) and the followup C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat To American Democracy. He's been trying to warn about the threat even longer than I have, and it's good to go to the source material (or even some of his interviews re the book).

Seriously, I just wish people were paying this kind of attention some thirteen years ago...

I may not have been clear enough. I certainly wasn't trying to claim it's all hunky-dory here. The chosen example was to highlight the absurdity of something like that.

Having said that, your example of Mrs. Reagan is not quite relevant since she was certainly not an elected official and (at least from what I know and what your wiki link says), the astrologer was used by her in a personal capacity, for personal reasons. So, yeah, not the same thing at all. Of course, I will freely grant that such nonsense is not that uncommon even in the US. Just saying that the Reagan thing doesn't seem like a valid example. The thing with India is that astrology is so widely accepted there, that using an astrologer for high-level economic policy decisions doesn't raise much ire there. Fuck astrology and its prevalence there - it's holding India back in so many ways that it's heart-breaking. Its penetration in all areas of life, from the personal (marriage decisions) to the political is disgusting and tragic.

For a detailed look at actual examples in the US, I would recommend C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, or this wiki for much of the same info.

>They are calling them the family even though I have been deep in this shit for years and never heard that stupid name

Thats funny, because it has been known about for years. Jeff Sharlet even wrote a couple of books about them C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy was published in 2010, and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power was published in 2009. He wrote a famous piece in Salon about this issue in 2009 as well.

https://www.salon.com/2009/07/21/c_street/

The nexus of right wing Christianity and fascism in American politics has been a running theme for decades.