You and I feel differently about this one, Shannon. You’re being very generous. People who have already made a great deal of money and fame on fundamental dishonesty are hardly likely to change stripes. I believe wholeheartedly, just as I have read about one evangelist preacher after another who got caught fucking whores or soliciting homosexual prostitutes that their tears are about as honest as anything that ever came out of Trump’s lying pie hole.

You can get your (fake) forgiveness in the confessional booth, then go right out and commit the same goddamned sins over and over and over, and just keep coming right back to the same fucking confessional booth. Nothing changes. Rinse, wash, repeat. As long as there is profit in bad work and bad behavior, and the promise of (fake) grace on earth by making (fake) confessions, there will be more behavior that never changes.

To wit, Jim Bakker, who recently was censured for selling fake Covid cures.

Evil is evil is evil as evil DOES, Shannon.These people lied, manipulated, stole and profited from it. I am unforgiving until they publicly demonstrate consistent behavioral change. When it comes to the pseudo-spiritual community, I am not now and will never be a believer. I take my cue from those people whose transformations I am intimately familiar with, who do not stand to profit from some bullshit story that sets them up as godlike figures on earth.

I transform myself- and I am not the slightest bit interested in the straw men and women who preen, posture and manipulate their images for profit. It’s a bad business all around. Call me a cynic, you’d be right. But for my part I am very glad they came crashing down. For the evangelical community, it’s just one more hard lesson in what happens when you worship the golden calf and find out the goddamned thing was made of Styrofoam.