The full article is available here
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Trump & Sessions Ignored Warning Of Psychological Harm To Children With Zero Tolerance Policy - PBS News Hour
The full article is available here
Friday, July 27, 2018
New Study connects U.S. Citizen Racial/Cultural Intolerance & Support For Authoritarianism
A new study finds a correlation between U.S. citizen’s racial and cultural intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. The data shows that when intolerant U.S. citizens fear that democracy may benefit marginalized people groups, they abandon their commitment to democracy.
The growing concentration of racially and culturally intolerant voters in the Republican Party has created a party whose workings appear less and less committed to a democratic society.
When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many U.S. citizens are embracing the first while abandoning the second.
The full article is available here
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Cohen Tape: Further Evidence Trump Committed 'Felony Campaign Finance Violation'
In the unwieldy tape, Cohen and Trump appear to be discussing plans to set up a shell company to buy the rights to story of Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who alleges she had an affair with Trump.
The story was purchased by American Media Inc. (AMI)—the parent company of the National Enquirer—for $150,000. (The Enquirer never ran the story, a fact that many argue strongly suggests that the tabloid killed it at Trump's behest).
Cohen's tape appears to contradict repeated claims by the president's team that Trump had no knowledge of any payments to silence McDougal.
Lawmakers and ethics experts argued that the newly released audio provides evidence of a serious campaign finance violation.
Journalist David Atkins said, "On the tape, Cohen and Trump are discussing a conspiracy to repay a tabloid owner for buying and shelving a story by the candidate's mistress. Which is not only a major scandal, but a felony campaign finance violation."
The full article is available here
Monday, July 23, 2018
Did My Family Really Come “Legally”? - Today’s Immigration Laws Created a New Reality
Until the late 19th century, there was very little federal regulation of immigration—there were virtually no laws to break.
Today’s laws require that potential immigrants be closely related to qualified U.S. citizens or permanent residents, have employment offers from U.S. employers, or qualify as refugees.
Today’s laws would have effectively restricted many of our families that immigrated before the passage of those laws from coming legally to the United States.
Today’s laws would have effectively restricted many of our families that immigrated before the passage of those laws from coming legally to the United States.
Until the late 19th century, there was very little federal regulation of immigration—there were virtually no laws to break. The U.S. was a growing, increasingly industrialized nation that needed workers, and immigration was “encouraged and virtually unfettered."
When many families arrived in the United States, there were no numerical limitations on immigration, no requirements to have an existing family or employment relationship with someone in the country, and no requirement to obtain a visa prior to arriving.
When many families arrived in the United States, there were no numerical limitations on immigration, no requirements to have an existing family or employment relationship with someone in the country, and no requirement to obtain a visa prior to arriving.
Before the 20th century, there was virtually no bureaucracy responsible for enforcing immigration laws. The first numerical caps on immigration and limitations on Europeans were not established until the 1920s—after the great wave of immigration to the United States.
Acknowledging the large numbers of Europeans in the United States without proper authorization, the 1929 Registry Act allowed “honest law-abiding alien[s] who may be in the country under some merely technical irregularity” to register as permanent residents for a fee of $20 if they could prove they had lived in the country since 1921 and were of “good moral character.”
The full article is available here
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Alleged Russian Spy Was Working to Infiltrate Religious Right As Well As Gun Groups
(For more on how the National Prayer Breakfast was the perfect shady venue for Russians to connect with the NRA and Trump, head here)
In 2015, alleged Russian spy Butina and her associate, U.S. political operative Paul Erickson, appeared on the radio show of conservative evangelical superstar (and big-time Trump promoter) Eric Metaxas to discuss gun rights and religious freedom — topics that are strangely congruent in the conservative Christian circles in which all these birds flew.
But why would Russian espionage efforts target the US Christian Right? Well, the affection with which some Christian right figures hold Russia and specifically the LGBTQ-persecuting policies of Putin is hardly a secret.
Putin’s evangelical fan club includes some pretty big names, like conservative Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, National Organization for Marriage leader Brian Brown, and American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer.
In almost every case it has been his distinctive combination of homophobia and Islamophobia that has made Putin popular with those men. The cultural conservative preference for authoritarian moralism is echoed to the former KGB officer who has revived Russia’s pre-communist tradition of militantly authoritarian Christianity.
The full article is available here
Thursday, July 19, 2018
"Totalitarianism For Christ:" How National Prayer Breakfast Plays Into Indictment Of Alleged Russian Spy
Maria Butina, a Russian graduate student at American University and gun rights activist, was arrested and accused of “acting as an agent for a foreign government.”
One of the most striking elements of Butina’s case was the venue she allegedly chose to exert influence: the National Prayer Breakfast. At the 2016 and 2017 events, Butina allegedly met with unnamed American officials and “very influential” Russians, and seems to have successfully attempted to broker meetings between figures in these groups.
The National Prayer Breakfast is organized by "The Family," also known as "C Street." It is a powerful right wing organization that claims to be Christian, but who have an erroneous view of Jesus as the ideal “strongman,” an idea they've also referred to as "Totalitarianism For Christ." (The founders of this group were great admirers of the European Fascism of the 1930's).
In strongman-sympathetic President Trump, The Family has found an ideal vessel for their beliefs.
The Family frequently uses the National Prayer Breakfast, and the week surrounding it, as a backdoor recruiting and diplomacy tool, often using the events around the breakfast as a means of back-channel engagement with lobbyists and foreign governments that organizers feel share its “strongman” approach, without formal government oversight.
The Family's distorted belief that Jesus was a strongman guides their understanding that if you're in power, it's because God puts you there. Their efforts to work with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin are going on in the context of a growing U.S. Christian Right admiration for Putin over the past decade.
The full article is available here
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Authoritarianism Making A Comeback In West. Here's the time-tested way to defeat it - The Guardian
The first lesson, then, is not to obey in advance.
Modern authoritarians rely on repression, intimidation, corruption and co-optation to consolidate their power. Good citizens will then ask: "but what should we do?" History provides an answer: civil resistance.
Civil resistance works by separating the authoritarian ruler from pillars of support, including economic elites, security forces, and government workers. It attracts diverse groups in society, whose collective defiance and stubbornness eventually elicits power shifts.
Unarmed civilians using petitions, boycotts, strikes, and other nonviolent methods have been able to slow, disrupt and even halt authoritarianism. Civil resistance has been twice as effective as armed struggle.
The dictator’s handbook mastered by Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, Maduro in Venezuela, Putin in Russia, Zuma in South Africa, Duterte in the Philippines (and being flirted with by Trump in the US) provides the traditional tactics:
- attack journalists
- blame dissent on foreigners and “paid protestors”
- scapegoat minorities and vulnerable groups
- weaken checks on power
- reward loyalists
- use paramilitaries
- reduce politics to a question of friends and enemies, us and them.
The full article is available here
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Clarity About News-Unreliability of Fox - Heather Cox Richardson
If someone is repeating a story that seems crazy - it probably is, and you would be crazy to believe it.
The full article is available here
Friday, June 22, 2018
Illegal Immigration Does Not Increase Violent Crime, 4 Studies Show - NPR
4 academic studies show that illegal immigration does not increase the prevalence of violent crime or drug or alcohol use.
Michael Light, a criminologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, looked at whether the soaring increase in illegal immigration over the last three decades caused a commensurate jump in violent crimes: murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
"Increased undocumented immigration since 1990 has not increased violent crime over that same time period," Light said
The full article is available here
Friday, June 1, 2018
The Tired Trope of Blaming Trump on ‘Liberal Smugness’ - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
In an attempt to understand the coalition that gave Trump his narrow 2016 election victory, for the past year and a half the press has spun a whole new subgenre of stilted, tautological feature reporting on how Trump supporters support Trump.
They have routinely given platforms to those who claim, with little to no firm evidence, that Trump’s election and his steady (though historically low) popularity (as well as his predicted eventual reelection) are all partly if not wholly the fault of liberal smugness and left-wing political correctness run amok.
The proof presented in these arguments is routinely shot through with logical holes that go unaddressed. Rather than acknowledging that sexism and racism remain very real and pernicious phenomena in our society, these op-eds typically treat the words as mere insults that the left manipulatively and indiscriminately lobs at conservatives for almost every little thing they do.
Might “liberal condescension” just be a convenient fig leaf for hardened, motivated reasoning from an older, white demographic that is already heavily predisposed to like Trump, regardless of what liberals say? You won’t find any answers to legitimate questions like that here or elsewhere in these feckless claims.
Time and again, any underlying racism or discriminatory policies cited by liberals are treated as mere pretense to stigmatize those on the right. This manifests itself in almost absurdly reductive ways.
A University of Maryland working paper that studied reactions to the 2016 election cast doubt on the premise of liberal shaming driving conservatives further toward the right. As it noted, there was no statistically significant evidence of a backlash by conservative voters when confronted with liberal critiques of Trump being racist.
In fact, the paper found that conservative racial animus in response to liberal election messaging was rooted in pre-existing biases, which is why those same conservatives also rejected claims of Trump’s racism that came from Republicans.
The full article is available here
What To Know About Families Separated By New Trump "Zero Tolerance" Policy - World Relief's Matthew Soerens
The Trump administration is not taking into account the effect of such prosecutions on vulnerable children. So children who arrived with one or both parents are being classified as “unaccompanied” once their parents are charged and detained. They are then processed in the same way as a child who arrives at the border without any parent.
On May 7, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new “zero tolerance” policy to criminally charge anyone caught seeking to enter the United States without proper documentation—even in cases when the individual or families are seeking asylum.
In every other administration, the Department of Justice has exercised prosecutorial discretion, criminally charging those entering improperly in some cases, but also taking into account the effect of such prosecutions on vulnerable children. Chief of Staff John Kelly has said this new policy of separating children is designed to serve as a deterrent from those who would consider coming to the US.
Since children cannot be criminally charged when their parents are, this policy inherently means that children—even very small children—are being taken from their parents. According to recent testimony from an official with US Customs and Border Protection, during just the first two weeks of this new policy, 638 parents were prosecuted, affecting 658 children. While children and parents have sometimes been separated under past administrations, this new policy is dramatically increasing these instances.
These children, who arrived with one or both parents, are then classified as “unaccompanied” once their parents are charged and detained. They are then processed in the same way as a child who arrives at the border without any parent.
The new “zero tolerance” policy, which is leading to children being separated from their parents and classified as “unaccompanied,” will likely mean a significant increase in the number of children being transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services and in need of a sponsor. This increases the possibility for unintentional trauma for children who are already fleeing violence or the threat of violence in their home countries.
Under the Trump Administration, the US Refugee Resettlement Program has dramatically reduced the admission of refugees to the US from almost all countries. In 2018, the U.S. is on track to receive only about 22% as many individual as in 2016. Arrivals from almost all countries of origin, including those from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, are down significantly. And the Central American Migrant parole program has been terminated altogether.
With far less hope of a safe, legal option to seek refuge, more desperate families facing threats of violence in their home country feel there is no choice but to seek to arrive unlawfully—only to be separated from their family if they make it.
The full article is available here
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
No links between Ritalin and school shootings, as NRA's Oliver North claimed - Politifact
The National Rifle Association’s new president, Oliver North, deflected attention off guns and onto medication in the wake of the latest school shooting.
North said, "They have been drugged in many cases … many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten."
The overprescription of ADHD medication has been the subject of heavy debate. For the record, we found no evidence that the suspected Texas shooter was diagnosed with ADHD, or prescribed Ritalin.
More broadly and to North’s point, we found no evidence to back up the idea that ADHD medication was behind school shootings or that "many" shooters had been on Ritalin.
A minor percentage of school shooters studied had been medicated, not "many." The notion that many have specifically been on the drug Ritalin since kindergarten has no factual basis. More broadly, causation has never been established between the medication and violence.
The full article is available here
Saturday, May 12, 2018
The Irrational Fear of Islamic Terrorism in U.S. - Jeremy Henzell-Thomas in Tikkun Magazine
The inflated, irrational fear of Islamic Terrorism has reached a stage in our national consciousness where it has become an identifiable pathology, whose main symptoms are irrational prejudice, a constant feeling of threat, and an incapacitating sense of isolation.
Adam Johnson, a contributing analyst for FAIR.org (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), has contended that the actual threat to the US ‘homeland’ of terrorist groups like Islamic State has been ‘consistently magnified wildly out of proportion by US media.
Johnson cites many examples brought to light by FAIR over the years of how the media unfairly reserve the word ‘terrorism’ overwhelmingly for political violence leveled by Muslims.
A couple of pieces of data illustrate how people in the U.S. aren't interested in anything other than having their existing biases about Muslims confirmed.
* When you look at the majority of terrorist attacks in the United States, according to the FBI, the majority of domestic U.S. terror attacks are actually committed by white, male Christians. When those things occur, we don’t suspect other people who are from the same faith tradition and ethnicity of condoning them. We assume that these things outrage them just as much as they do anyone else. And we have to afford this same assumption of innocence to Muslims.’
* Ever since 9/11, the vast majority of Muslims have been continually repeating that they oppose violent extremism. Despite this, anti-Muslim prejudice has only increased to the point where it is now mainstream in U.S. society.
Anti-Islamic prejudice about terrorism has become a narrative fallacy - a flawed story that shapes our views of the world and expectations of the future. Reiterated in political discourse and the media, it has become embedded and cemented to the point of being impervious to modification. It has become the conditioned mindset and bigoted attitude of foreclosed minds.
The full article is available here
Monday, April 30, 2018
Trump's Fox & Friends Meltdown & House Republican's Attempt To Repeal Logan Act - Heather Cox Richardson
There was lots of mud in the water last week, but to my mind, the most notable things were Trump's meltdown when he called in to Fox & Friends on Thursday, and the next day's recommendation of the House Intelligence Committee that Congress repeal the Logan Act.
Taken together, they seem to me a pretty clear signal that Trump and some of his people are afraid they are about to get outed as conspirators with Russian interests, at least during the transition if not before.
The recommendation for repealing the Logan Act, coming from a committee that has been advocating for the president since the beginning, says more to me even than Trump's terrible habit of blurting out whatever is uppermost in his mind.
He is afraid Mueller's report will produce airtight evidence that he and his cronies conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election.
The full piece is available here
Friday, April 13, 2018
No, Armed Jews Wouldn't Have Stopped Holocaust - Rabbi Jeff Salkin in Religion News
 |
| Jewish families surrender to the SS during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April 1943. |
There is an obscene suggestion that anti-gun control activists like to make: If the Jews had had guns, they could have prevented the Holocaust.
We know why they utilize these arguments. They are eager to use any argument, no matter how fallacious, that will suit their political purposes.
But the idea that Jews with guns could have made any meaningful resistance is the cruelest, most cynical, most ignorant alternative fact there is. It is an insult to the memory of the 6 million Jews who died in the holocaust.
Yes, there were Jews who rose up in armed resistance against the Nazis. Though the stories of Jewish resistance militias are legendary, and all of these actions were heroic, they were also, alas, failures.
It's not realistic to think that, even if every German Jew was armed, that they would have been able to stand up against an army that would decimate the armies of France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Greece — and that would invade the Soviet Union and get within 70 km of Moscow.
And beside that, it was not just the Nazi armies that were arrayed against the Jews. It was the entirety of German society — its universities, its medical profession, its industrialists, its scientists. The Nazis had willing, eager and enthusiastic helpers in central and eastern Europe.
The full article is available here
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Fact-Checking The Hitler/Gun-Control Analogy - Jeff Wiersma
Outside Germany, armed Jewish resistance to the Nazis merely underlined its futility, and the fatuity of the claims of anti-gun control activists. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the Spring of 1943 ended with 13,000 Jews dead, while the Nazis who crushed it lost just 20 lives.
Anti-gun control advocates are fond of suggesting that gun control enabled the rise of the Nazis and led to the extermination of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
Let's investigate some fact-checking done on this assertion. First, let's turn to the work that Politifact did in response to this kind of assertion made by then-Presidential candidate Republican Ben Carson in October 2015.
Anti-gun control advocates are fond of suggesting that gun control enabled the rise of the Nazis and led to the extermination of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
Let's investigate some fact-checking done on this assertion. First, let's turn to the work that Politifact did in response to this kind of assertion made by then-Presidential candidate Republican Ben Carson in October 2015.
"While Hitler did attempt to take weapons away from Jews, Communists and Social Democrats, he also armed private citizens to better terrorize those same political opponents. To reduce Nazi gun policy to confiscation of weapons is to miss at least half the story.
Further, the gunowner registry from 1928 that Hitler relied upon was limited and far from comprehensive. It was so incomplete, in fact, that many Jews retained their weapons.
Dagmar Ellerbrock, an expert on German gun policies at the Dresden Technical University, states that, 'In my records, I found many Jews who well into the late 1930s possessed guns.'"
Next, let's look at some fact-checking The Telegraph did in response to the same assertion.
"Even if arms had been distributed to every member of Germany's Jewish population — which in the early 1930s numbered some 500,000 out of a total population of 65 million — they would have been severely outgunned by their vicious and far more numerous enemies.
Outside Germany, armed Jewish resistance to the Nazis merely underlined its futility, and the fatuity of Carson's call to arms. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the Spring of 1943 ended with 13,000 Jews dead, while the Nazis who crushed it lost just 20 lives."
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Somehow Trump Still Enjoys Support Of 80% of White Evangelicals - Amy Sullivan
Generations of white evangelicals have been conditioned to see evangelicalism as so synonymous with Republican politics that the idea of a non-Republican political option for religious voters simply does not exist.
Mr. Trump owes his continued high standing among white evangelicals to the fact that nearly 40 years after the Moral Majority’s founding, the partisan meld is complete. Decades of fear-mongering about Democrats and religious liberals have worked.
It feels like it has gotten to the point where 80% of white evangelicals would vote against Jesus Christ himself if he ran as a Democrat.
Generations of white evangelicals have been conditioned to see evangelicalism as so synonymous with Republican politics that the idea of a non-Republican political option for religious voters simply does not exist.
The messages that have steadily cemented white evangelicals within both the Republican Party and the churches that marry traditionalist theology with Republican politics are so ingrained that - even those conservatives intellectually attuned and honest enough to lament the current state of American evangelicalism - can’t help reinforcing them.
The full article is available here
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Why Did Democrats Lose the White South? - Kevin Drum in Mother Jones
Modern conservatives are oddly fond of pointing out that it was Democrats who were the party of racism and racists until half a century ago.
There’s always an implied “Aha!” whenever a conservative mentions this, as though they think it’s some little-known quirk of history that Democrats try to keep hidden because it’s so embarrassing.
It’s not, of course. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and Republicans were the face of (Progressive) Reconstruction and voting rights for blacks after the Civil War. Because of this, the South became solidly Democratic (Conservative) and stayed that way until World War II.
But starting around World War II, Southern whites who wanted to keep Jim Crow intact had plenty of reasons to steadily desert the Democratic Party and join the GOP.
Democrat Eleanor Roosevelt championed the civil right of African American singer Marian Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall. Democrat FDR signed the nondiscrimination order for the national defense industry. FDR's successor, Democrat Harry Truman, integrated the military.
And racist white Southerners gradually began defecting to the Republican Party. By the early 60s they began defecting en masse during the fight over the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The full article is available here
Saturday, February 17, 2018
What's Behind Our Arguments About Immigration? - Christian Century
Each year the United States admits a little over 1 million immigrants. Is that too many? Opponents of immigration say it is.
The notion of “virtually unlimited” migration is largely a specter of Trump’s making. Family members are not automatically allowed to join a relative in the United States. There’s a backlog of applications; the wait in some cases is up to 20 years.
The stated objections to immigration are often that immigrants take jobs away from native-born U.S. citizens, that they put a strain on government services and the economy, that they increase crime, and that they overturn the norms of U.S. culture.
These concerns have been given consideration and scrutinized, and in each case, there is ample evidence that they aren’t valid.
People’s views on immigration might not be connected to data-based assessment of costs and benefits. They might be rooted in a general uneasiness about cultural change and the challenge of living beside people who are different.
When we talk about the immigration rate, we're really talking about our most fundamental fears and beliefs. Those these instinctual reactions aren't unpredictable, they do not necessarily make for wise public policy.
The full article is available here
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Overcoming Trumpism: A Strategy For Progressives - Rabbi Michael Lerner
One part of the strategy is to split the Trump forces; challenging the policies of the truly dyed-in-the-wool racists, sexists, homophobes, and Islamophobes, while responding with empathy, caring, and respect for those who are not.
The "nots" are those who have been moved to the Right by the deep psychological and spiritual crisis of Late Modernism, even though their economic interests are better served by the Left.
Among the pains of Late Modernism is economic insecurity, which used to lead to the creation of powerful labor unions and social democratic movements. But in the past 40 years, there's been a significant increase in the degree to which people have come to believe in a self-justifying ideology of the capitalist marketplace - that we live in a meritocracy.
Those who aren't among the 1% who have benefited from exponential upward concentration of wealth in the last 40 years find their belief in a meritocracy giving rise to intense self-blame.
Yet ironically, at a fundamental level, most people hate being in a world dominated by materialism and selfishness. They yearn for a life in which love, caring, and contributing to the common good serve a higher purpose than "look out for #1."
The Movement Conservative/Fundamentalist Christian Right has offered that sense of community to many - but at the cost of embracing a message of right-wing extremism that blames the "other" as the reason that there is economic insecurity and that the world seems full of selfishness and materialism. The reason that people continue to cling to these beliefs is that they offer an effective - albeit distorted - way out of the often unconscious but pervasive self-blaming that results from the myth of Meritocratic Capitalism.
In a cruel twist, those who are victimized by Social Darwinist Corporatism are often taught to articulate their distress in ways that demean the "other(s)" who they've been told have victimized them (minorities, gays, immigrants, etc.) rather than the oppressive system itself.
...
The other part of the strategy is to correct the mistake that many high-profile progressives tend to make in shaming those who follow the misguided belief that fears and blames the "other"; think Hillary Clinton's awful "basket of deplorables" comment.
Those progressives engaged in this reactionary shaming only compound the distress of those who are already deeply engaged in self-blaming (even though it is often at a subconscious level). There is a marked difference between progressives correctly denouncing racism, sexism, inequality and dismissing the real socioeconomic distress of those who are taken in by the Right Wing's other-blaming rhetoric.
It is precisely by acknowledging ALL the different forms of suffering felt in Late Modernism - even those who react to that suffering in hurtful or oppressive ways or materially benefit from the suffering of others - that we have the best chance of building a lasting transformation of our society to one based on justice and love.
The full article is available here
Sunday, December 10, 2017
The GOP Is Rotting - Conservative David Brooks
The Republican Party is doing harm to causes it purports to serve. If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator, they may, for a couple years, have one more vote for a justice or a tax cut, but they will have made their party loathsome for an entire generation.
The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation. More and more people look at the Trump-Moore G.O.P. and they are repulsed, maybe forever.
The full article is available here
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Helpful Reactions When Someone Claims Sexual Harassment/Assault - Jeff Wiersma
Helpful public reactions when [insert name of PUBLIC FIGURE HERE] is exposed for sexual harassment or assault:
1. Wow. I’m really glad institutions are taking sexual harassment seriously.
2. I am thankful we are living in a time when people who speak out against harassment are receiving institutional support.
3. I know that for every person who comes forward with their experience, even more are silent and silenced. I hope one day soon that changes. I hope I can help that change.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Thoughts On Al Franken Allegations and Trump/Roy Moore - Jeff Wiersma
I’ve seen more “why should Al Franken resign when Republicans elected a man like Donald Trump and Roy Moore is still in his senate race” rationalizations lately than I thought that I would.
2 thoughts occur to me:
(1) Integrity means doing the right thing and isn’t subject to partisan preferences.
(2) Doing the right thing doesn’t depend on the timeline/willingness of habitual sexual predators like Trump and Roy Moore to admit their wrongdoings and do the right thing themselves.
Monday, November 20, 2017
The Religious Right Has Ended Up Being Very People They Warned Us Against - Jeff Wiersma
In my youth, Fundamentalist Evangelicals told me that “liberals” and the “gay agenda” would one day push for acceptance of pedophilia.
My goodness, how differently things turned out.
Even though this is the logical outcome of being corrupted partisans, it’s still incredibly disappointing and dismaying to see; though perhaps predictable after the Faustian bargain they made with Trump for a Pyrrhic Victory in the 2016 election.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
US, European Nations Slammed for 'Complicity' as Humanitarian Groups Demand Aid for Yemen
14 international aid agencies on Friday expressed that they were "appalled" by the global community's complacency regarding the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Yemen, and called for a resolution to the civil war that's gone on for two years—while in its own statement, Amnesty International called for an end to complicity in the conflict from the U.S. and its allies.
"The U.S.A., U.K., and France must immediately cease supplying arms to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen, which is impeding humanitarian assistance of items indispensable to the survival of civilians," declared Amnesty International.
The current famine and cholera epidemic in Yemen have both been exacerbated by a blockade that the Saudi-led coalition supporting government forces escalated 12 days ago.
The full article is available here
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Evangelical Russell Moore Stands Up For Women - Jeff Wiersma
Attention Jerry Falwell Jr: this is how it’s done.
Monday, November 13, 2017
Thoughts On Fundamentalist US Christians & Their Often-Exasperating Political Opinions - Jeff Wiersma
Trumpism - in all of its ugliness and malevolence, has turned society upside down. And as with most things that get turned upside down, things that have for a long time laid low at the bottom get brought to the surface.
I still call myself a “Christian” because it’s a lot easier to say than “a follower of the 1st Century reformist, anti-imperialist, pacifist, anti-legalism, subversive Jewish prophet Jesus of Nazareth who was murdered by corrupt religious leaders aligned with empire.”
But the twisted, misguided, and abusive caricature of Christianity that we have seen emboldened by Trumpism is something I literally fought for my life to break free from in 1999-2000.
With that out of the way ...
To those who aren’t part of my faith tradition ...
... it is vitally important to me that you know that those who hate, exclude, abuse, and dehumanize do not accurately interpret, understand, nor represent the teachings of Jesus. These people are profoundly lost, driven by fear, and are lashing out against all kinds of things that they’ve been wrongly shaped and molded to believe are their enemy. (And even if these imagined enemies were actual enemies, didn’t Jesus command that we should love our enemies? But I digress).
We are in a time of profound societal change and spiritual awakening. Those who have been programmed to fear change - specifically that threatens their hegemony/privileged position in how things have been - are a counter-awakening backlash.
However, I remain steadfast in my belief that it is never too late for people to change; because I did. I myself was once captive to this very mindset.
Also, there are a lot of principled, conservative Evangelical Christians who are opposed to Trumpism on moral grounds - and many spoke out against it as early as Trump’s entrance into the race in the early summer of 2015. Their mindset and hearts are not accurately portrayed in over-generalized characterizations of “conservative Christians” or “evangelicals.”
To those in my faith tradition who, like me, are dismayed at what is being done and said in the name of it ...
... based on everything I see, people who aren’t part of our faith tradition have tremendous respect for what Jesus taught and know that what is being done and said in his name is incongruous with those teachings. They see right through it.
This doesn’t mean that we should relent in assertive resistance to this most recent hijacking of Jesus. But be encouraged that this spasm of extremism and idolatrous worship of power, fear, and control are telltale signs that Christianity - like the rest of the world - is in the process of realigning with the shifting cultural tectonic plates from the Modernist era into the next era. We’re in the midst of a 2nd Reformation and, though this in-between time is difficult and fraught with seismic activity, the future is open to revitalizing and renewing our faith.
To me, that’s exciting - but I’m also deeply concerned about and aware of the real damage that has been done and could still be done by the forces of counter-awakening until this transition phase is complete.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
A Year Later, Reflections On The 2016 Election - Jeff Wiersma
Looking back, I can see I was naive in my hope that - despite the evidence of four decades of hypocrisy and cynical partisanship by Religious Right leaders - those who dedicate an inordinate amount of their life pontificating about “morals” and “values” wouldn’t then vote for Donald Trump of all people.
And many of them - unfathomably - still support him.
I should’ve known better. Much of the US Religious Right has a blind spot for authoritarians and demagoguery that is so large you could drive a Trump through it.
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Religious Right Carries Its Golden Calf Into Steve Bannon’s Battles - Conservative Michael Gerson
Who would now identify conservative Christian political engagement with the pursuit of the common good? Rather, the religious right is an interest group seeking preference and advancement from a strongman — and rewarding him with loyal acceptance of his priorities.”
The full article is available here
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Hurricanes, Perpetual War Overseas & Imperial Overreach - Jeff Wiersma
Trump Challenges Cabinet Member's IQ, Fights Senator He Needs. What Is Going On? - NPR
Is he serious? Is there any strategy to it all? Is it all a ‘ratings’ ploy? It’s hard to know. It's possible — as many members of HIS OWN PARTY now believe — that he doesn't know, either.”
The full article is available here
Saturday, October 7, 2017
NFL Teams Being On Field For Anthem Is Relatively New Occurrence - Tom E Curran, NBC Sports Boston
It was until 2009 - when the military paid the NFL millions of dollars to stage a patriotic display in order to enhance military recruitment efforts - that NFL players were on the field for the performance of the national anthem.
Before then, they had always remained in the locker room until after the national anthem was performed.
The full article is available here
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Republicans, Trapped by Their Flimflam - Paul Krugman
“In broad outlines, the recent Republican efforts at tax reform is a lot like health care. In both cases, Republicans have spent years getting away with big promises that weren’t backed by reality.
Now, with real policy to be made, the disingenuous promises won’t work anymore. And they can’t handle the truth.”
The full article is available here
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Dallas Sportcaster & Vietnam Vet's Take on NFL Players Kneeling
Dallas sportscaster and Vietnam veteran Dale Hansen recently gave an extremely well-crafted analysis of those who say NFL players are "disrespecting" the flag when engaged in peaceful protest.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Past Trump Contradicts Current Trump About POTUS Weighing on NFL Issues
Nixon's Vietnam Treachery Somewhat Mirrored By Reagan and Trump - Jeff Wiersma
I've studied U.S. History and Politics my entire life.
It was only when watching tonight's episode of Vietnam by Ken Burns that I learned that Nixon committed treason by talking the South Vietnamese out of joining peace talks days before the 1968 election. Nixon did so to undercut his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, who he eventually defeated narrowly.
I can't believe I had never learned that.
It reminds me a lot of Reagan's discussions with the Iranians holding US hostages in the run up to the 1980 election, and of course the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russians. You really do learn something new every day, and today's lesson is that even more mentally ill Republican presidential candidates than I was aware were willing commit treason to win.
New York Times Opinion piece - Nixon's Vietnam Treachery
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Media That Scolded Sanders Over Deficits Uniformly Silent on $700B Pentagon Handout - Common Dreams
"Where are the Charles Lanes, Joe Scarboroughs, Wall Street Journal editorial boards and other “deficit hawks” in the media to condemn this?
The answer is they’re nowhere. And they’re nowhere because no one in the media really cares about deficits, they only care about Deficits™, a clever marketing term used by those charged with keeping government money out of the hands of the poor—and in the coffers of weapons makers, banks and other wealthy interest groups."
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Trump Retweets Doctored Video from Anti-Semitic Twitter User - Video Shows Trump Injuring Hillary
 |
| ^ Racist tweet calling for the genocide of Hasidic Jews made by twitter user that President Trump retweeted a video from today |
On Sunday, Donald Trump retweeted a doctored video of himself taking a golf swing and hitting former Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton, who then stumbles as she boards a plane.
The Twitter account, @Fuctupmind, from which Trump retweeted regularly makes racial, anti-semitic, and anti-LGBT comments.
On November 29, 2019, @Fuctupmind tweeted "Please get rid of the Hasidic Jews. They are the worst people on the planet. They have taken over areas in NY right by me."
The full article is available here
Thursday, September 14, 2017
Post-09/11 Narrative of Fear & Nationalism Helped Lead Us To A Trump Presidency - Progressive Christian
The wound created by the understandable fear and terror of that horrible day created a gouge in our national spirit. Into that void crept - not a single political leader - but a entire sociopolitical narrative of fear and mistrust of the "other." The time after 09/11 asked us a lot of questions, and I hate to say, we came up with a lot of the wrong answers.
The time asked,“Who are you afraid of?”
We answered, "Everyone! "
The time asked, “Who do you trust?”
We answered, "Whoever is loudest and meanest!"
Those are all wrong answers.
Politicians, religious leaders, public figures, and propagandizing media outlets like Fox News started beating a drum of blind nationalism as the only way forward.
Over the next 15 years, while many of us remained committed to a spirit of diversity, compassion and community, many more waded further into the murky waters of U.S. exceptionalism and jingoism. The mistrust did not remain limited to Muslims, but bled into public discourse surrounding everything from immigration to police violence against marginalized people.
From there it wasn’t a far leap to fake news, rampant conspiracy theories, and – let us not forget – a certain brand of fundamentalist Christianity wherein the authority of scripture became hard to discern from the authority of the Republican Party.
Then Donald Trump got elected President. Because more than any of the other politicians that tried to artfully dance around and imply the same message, Trump came right out and said it – America First. Fear the "other."Muslims are coming for us. Build a wall. Law and order. Make America Great.
And so we have a President who clearly represents the very worst of us.
Monday, September 11, 2017
09/11 Triggered A Decline In U.S. Democracy - Washington Post
Over the past 16 years, war has imperiled American ideals by becoming about dominance. Our military actions have reflected increased investments in imperialism, accompanied by diminished attention to political change, economic development and institution-building — the essential prerequisites for democratic freedoms.
Fear of terrorism (and seeing it as a military problem) has justified excessive and habitual suspension of good governance, ultimately creating a more fertile seedbed for terrorists.
Abandoning freedom abroad has consequences at home. Dominance has emerged as the driver of domestic politics, as well. Demands for “border security” are used by the president and his core supporters to justify racism and domestic violence aimed at protecting white male dominance.
Our leaders have nurtured what the Justice Department calls a crisis of “domestic terrorism” within U.S. borders, perpetrated by U.S. citizens, not foreigners.
From the first days after Sept. 11, 2001, we have missed a historical opportunity to turn our gravest challenges into sources of unity, creativity and self-improvement. Rather than encouraging a collective mentality with high income taxes and war bond campaigns, our tax policies now exacerbate differences between rich and poor.
Our criminal policies have stigmatized groups in the name of safety, rather than offering opportunities for rehabilitation, hope and a new beginning.
The full article is available here
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
The Very Bad Economics of Killing DACA - Paul Krugman
No, they aren’t, even if we leave aside the question of who’s an American. DACA is very much a boon to the rest of the U.S. population, and killing it will make everyone worse off.
The full article is available here
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Why Donald Trump Pardoned Joe Arpaio - The New Yorker
Trump is likely a fan of Arpaio’s because Arapio is a fan of his—an early supporter who also went all in for birtherism, at one point sending members of a so-called Cold Case Posse to Hawaii to dig up something incriminating about Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
But more importantly, Arpaio represents in miniature what President Trump would like to be more maximally - an authoritarian not constrained by the rule of law.
Like Trump, Arpaio regards reporters, activists, and critics of his policies as personal enemies as well as enemies of the state. The Justice Department investigation found that his department had "engaged in a pattern or practice of retaliating against individuals for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech."
The DOJ investigation found that Arpaio had "arrested individuals without cause, filed meritless complaints against the political adversaries of Sheriff Arpaio, and initiated unfounded civil lawsuits and investigations against individuals critical of MCSO policies and practices."
As such, it is clear that Trump's pardon of Arpaio is an explicit endorsement of racial profiling and extralegal, vigilante policing.
The full article is available here
Friday, August 25, 2017
Historical Curator: Removing Confederate Statues Isn’t Erasing History - Sojourner's Magazine
Confederate symbols have become central to an increasingly ugly debate over what America is really about. That process — from The Dukes of Hazzard to David Duke — has made Confederate statues into idols in the biblical sense: objects of intense, cultic affection for those who worship the vision and prejudices they represent.
My own work as a curator and historical researcher has led me to realize what these statues truly represent to their communities - divisive symbols that mean as much to racists today as they did in the past.
Many people who don’t study this sort of thing for a living may feel things are moving too quickly, and as such we can fall prey to common "straw man" arguments: “First Confederate statues, then what?” and “We shouldn’t erase history.”
Trump's tweets bemoaning the removal of Confederate monuments as "erasing history" are based on conflation and false equivalency. He — and this line of reasoning — is confused. It conflates history with commemoration and brackets the Founding Fathers with the Confederate leadership.
And here, Trump is also prizing the aesthetics of public space over the duties of building a more perfect union. America’s parks and roundabouts will be just as pretty without Confederate monuments.
The full article is available here
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
I warned of right-wing violence in 2009. Republicans objected. I was right. - Daryl Johnson
Eight years ago, I warned of a singular threat — the resurgence of right-wing extremist activity and associated violence in the United States as a result of the 2008 presidential election, the financial crisis and the stock market crash. My intelligence report, meant only for law enforcement, was leaked by conservative media.
A political backlash ensued because of an objection to the label “right-wing extremism.” The report also rightly pointed out that returning military veterans may be targeted for recruitment by extremists. Republican lawmakers demanded then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rescind my report. The American Legion formally requested an apology to veterans. Some in Congress called for me to be fired. Amid the turmoil, my warning went unheeded by Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security caved to the political pressure: Work related to violent right-wing extremism was halted. Law enforcement training also stopped. My unit was disbanded.
And since 2008, the body count from numerous acts of violent right-wing terrorism continued to rise steadily with very little media interest, political discussion or concern from our national leaders.
The mere existence of so many heavily armed citizens filled with hate and anger toward various elements of American society is troubling enough in its own right. They number in the hundreds of thousands. More troubling is the violent convergence now underway within right-wing extremist movements.
Largely under the media radar, disaffected extremist groups with long histories of squabbling have been independently pooling resources, some even infiltrating our government through the outreach efforts of right-wing extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Constitutional Sheriff’s and Peace Officers Association.
More recently, the renewed debates over Confederate monuments, same-sex marriage and Black Lives Matter has reinvigorated alt-right extremists to mobilize toward a more radical fringe element capable of violent action at any moment. Of further concern, a new generation of “charismatic leaders” within the white supremacist movement has emerged after Trump’s election, creating an opportunity for disparate groups to unite under one banner.
Trump’s endorsement of the border wall, the travel ban, mass deportations of illegal immigrants — these ideas were touted on white supremacist message boards merely 10 years ago. Now they’re being put forth as official U.S. policy. Such controversial plans have placated white supremacists and anti-government extremists and will draw still more sympathetic individuals toward these extremist causes along with the sort of violent acts that too often follow, like Charlottesville.
The full article is available here
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Black Lives Matter Is Not A Hate Group - Southern Poverty Law Center
Generally speaking, hate groups are, by our definition, those that vilify entire groups of people based on immutable characteristics such as race or ethnicity. Federal law takes a similar approach.
There’s no doubt that some protesters who claim the mantle of Black Lives Matter have said offensive things, like the chant “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” that was heard at one rally.
However, we have heard nothing remotely comparable to bigotry from the founders and most prominent leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement and nothing at all to suggest that the bulk of the demonstrators hold supremacist or black separatist views.
Thousands of white people across America – indeed, people of all races – have marched in solidarity with African Americans during BLM marches, as is clear from the group’s website.
The movement’s leaders also have condemned violence.
Black Lives Matter is not a hate group. The perception that it is racist illustrates the problem of our society as a whole still not accepting that racial injustice remains pervasive. And, unfortunately, the fact that surveys reveal that a majority of white people tend to see race as a zero-sum game may actually impede progress.
The full article is available here
The movement’s leaders also have condemned violence.
Black Lives Matter is not a hate group. The perception that it is racist illustrates the problem of our society as a whole still not accepting that racial injustice remains pervasive. And, unfortunately, the fact that surveys reveal that a majority of white people tend to see race as a zero-sum game may actually impede progress.
The full article is available here
Friday, August 18, 2017
Amateur Online Vigilantism Is NOT How We Should Combat Right Wing Hate - Jeff Wiersma
I heard this story on NPR last evening ...
"In the aftermath of the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., some people took to Twitter and shared photos of people who allegedly were at the march. The idea was to identify who they were and shame them. But identifying someone from a photo can be tricky — and people managed to make at least one mistake."
The victim of this mistake was Kyle Quinn, a University of Arkansas assistant professor. When someone incorrectly identified him as a participant in last weekend's right wing hate rally in Charlottesville, his email and Twitter account and were flooded with people cursing at him, threatening him and his wife.
On Saturday night, someone tweeted out the couple's home address. The couple immediately got law enforcement involved. This is reminiscent of the incident in 2013 when the New York Post falsely identified two men in a photograph as suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.
In our mass media age it's easier than ever for such mistakes to happen, and the consequences are exponentially broader in scope than a scarlet letter or the proverbial mob with pitch forks.
But let's think beyond the fact that these were instances of mistaken identity.
Even if self-appointed online vigilantes properly identify someone involved in something criminal or hateful, what productive result does threatening and verbally abusing them achieve? This kind of activity strays well beyond the bounds of valid criticism of someone for their policies or actions that is part of constructive democratic engagement. In short, it is bullying.
Online vigilantism may temporarily satiate our need to feel like we've done something to combat forces of hate, but the object of vigilantism's threats and verbal abuse is still a human being. No human being should be subjected to threats and abuse. And aren't threats and verbal abuse precisely what right wing hate groups direct at minorities, those of different religion traditions, and those who stand against hateful rhetoric?
How does dehumanizing someone work in any way to solve the problem of that person's dehumanization of the people they hate?
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