A businessman who posed as religious communications mogul, driving a $350,000 Bentley and flying in a corporate jet, was sentenced to more than 5 years in prison Monday for bilking creditors out of $13.3 million.
Rodney Dixon, 41, had told lenders that his company, Lacrad International Inc., in Oakbrook Terrace, sold religious recordings and music from offices around the world in the late 1990s and had annual revenues of more than $100 million.
But prosecutors said that was a carefully crafted illusion, built on fake bank statements, phony invoices and "elaborately false tax returns." They said his annual revenue never exceeded $100,000.
We've noticed Rodney Dixon and his Satanic behavior before.
I think the simple fact of being Christian (or believing someone in authority is Christian) makes people susceptible to this sort of nonsense. After all, if you bought a book that was written by a bunch of shepherds two thousand years ago, why wouldn't you also buy whatever crap they're peddling today?
The Christianization of American politics has gone too far. It's nice that Christians have a belief system that makes some of the harder "moral" choices for them so they don't ever have to think too hard, but it enables the Rodney Dixons and the Pat Robertsons and the Jerry Falwells and the George Bushes and the Dick Cheneys and the Leo Wells of the world to prey upon their utter lack of rational skepticism.
The GOP is now a party with two distinct tiers: one layer of predatory capitalism (party leadership) and a much larger layer of hapless suckers (Republican voters).
