Wait, what's this book about?
Looong story short, and I've only thumbed through the book myself but I've watched a few interviews with the author: There's this "organization" called "The Family" (and while the group has been around since at least the 1960s, they're quite proud of the name's modern association with the Mafia), a collection of mostly conservative Republican politicians and political flunkies and adjuncts (there are Democratic members as well, and there were a lot more in the days of the Democratic Solid South), who put
very simply believe that people who are wealthy or powerful got that way by divine providence, and are therefor entitled to remain wealthy and powerful, do whatever they have to stay as such, and are largely exempted from the rules of morality or law made for "the little people", whether laws of man or God.
That was a long fucking sentence, but it's "The Family" in a nutshell. I won't even try to describe everything that they are supposedly accused of, around town and in the book, but there are a few legal proofs that give a pretty good idea of the situation. Most of the wholly verifiable ones can be found on "The Family"'s
wikipedia page. Read it before they sue or mass delete shit.
The most famous physical edifice of "The Family" is a boarding house in Washington D.C., called the C Street House. Legally, it's registered as a church, and therefor given all kinds of exemptions on legal observation, gatherings and habitation, and especially property tax. The whole building, in the capitol's downtown, costs $600 a month in rent. However, this "church" does not actually have any priests, services, or congregations. It's basically just a fancy treehouse for a rambling collection of Congressmen (and they're all men) to stay at while in town, and when necessary hide from reporters during a sex scandal. It's also where they hold most of their group meetings and welcoming parties, and other secret club stuff.
As for what they do, a lot of the attention they get focuses on their wacky brand of self-actualizing Christian-interpretation. Everyone from King Soloman to Hitler is given a spotlight on what they did right in bending the world to their will, and how the righteous man is entitled to his riches, and a bunch of other crap I'm neither qualified nor eager to elaborate on.
Where it might turn into a "conspiracy" is how so many of the group's big-name members are neck-deep in controversial religious activism organizations, especially in Africa. Plenty of photos of them shaking hands with Nigerian dictators, tacitly endorsing gay-hunting laws, anti-contraceptive bills, and so forth. Now, it's perfectly possible that it's just a hospitality club for a bunch of rich Christ-happy politicians, who all happen to independently stick their feet in their mouths and back the wrong horse in inter-national democracy booster unions. In fact, I happen to believe that's most of what "The Family" is about, a very hammy group of egotists who pat themselves on the back over being awesome, and occasionally fuck up another country's politics by way of wholly coincidental personal activity.
That said, the "church" thing alone is enough to raise legal inquiry, and the documentation on them is definitely a national-league sized track record of shady campaign funding, hush money, back-room deals, and moral dissonance. I should read the book, and I'm curious to see what all shakes out.
Author
Topic: Jeff Scarlet's "The Family" (Read 1254 times)