Evangelicals Incorrectly Believe They Are Discriminated Against - Jeff Wiersma

When one is used to privilege and hegemony, advances towards equality and plurality feel like persecution.

I do have some empathy for everyday people who have been conditioned to believe in the lie of Christian Persecution by Religious Right leaders with vested partisan and financial interests in perpetuating that falsehood - because that was me before awakening.

However, we should all keep in mind that the people suffering actual persecution are all those that Chauvinist Christendom deem to be “other” and dehumanize

Stream Chamberlain’s 1st New Song In 9 years, “Some Other Sky,” at Brooklyn Vegan

"Some Other Sky" is the first single from their upcoming album Red Weather, which is being produced by My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel. Release date still TBA, but the new song comes out as a 7″ single on Friday (4/26) via Arctic Rodeo Recordings, backed by a new acoustic recording of “Street Singer” from 1995’s Fate’s Got a Driver.

“Some Other Sky” continues in the Americana-inspired direction of Chamberlain’s later period, and it’s got a nice mix of atmosphere, pedal steel-fueled twang, and Springsteenian heartland rock, with just a bit of their punk roots shining through.

Stream the new song here

Stream The New Over The Rhine Album at Rolling Stone

Karen Bergquist and Linford Detweiler - who perform as Over The Rhine - are an enduring creative unit who helped revitalize the Cincinnati neighborhood from where they take their name, made fans and friends of songwriting icons Lucinda Williams and Mary Gauthier, have released their 15th studio album, Love & Revelation.

You can stream the album here

Rethinking The Normalization Of Fascism In The Right Wing Faux-Populist Era - Henry Giroux in Tikkun

While there is not yet any proportional comparison between Trump/other Right Wing Faux Populists and the fascist societies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet, the basic tenets of extreme nationalism, racism, misogyny, and a hatred of democracy and the rule of law are too similar to ignore.

As historian Timothy Snyder points out, "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because the basis upon which to do so has been undercut.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle."

For US President Donald Trump, lying is rhetorical gimmick in which everything that matters politically is denied, reason loses its power for informed judgments, and language serves to infantilize.  Trump uses lying as a tool of power to discredit any attempt to hold him accountable for his actions, all while destroying those public spheres and institutional foundations necessary for the possibility of a democratic politics.

Fascism begins first with language and then gains momentum as an organizing force for shaping a culture that legitimates indiscriminate violence against entire groups.

Coupled with a society that worships celebrity culture, the power of spectacle makes it easier for Trump and his associates to rehabilitate fascist ideas, principles, and a fascist political culture.

Faux-Populism (also Trump) is the natural outcome of a neoliberal culture of hyper-punitiveness amplified through an ascendant fascist politics that enshrines militarization, privatization, deregulation, manic consumerism, the criminalization/dehumanizing of entire people groups, and the financialization of everything.

This new era of barbarism cannot be understood or addressed without a reminder that fascism has once again crystalized into new forms.  Trump's rhetoric and policies are best understood as a contemporary remnant of the proto-fascist imagination.

While there is obviously no proportional or apples to apples comparison between Trump/other Right Wing Faux Populist and the fascist societies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet, the basic tenets of extreme nationalism, racism, misogyny, and a hatred of democracy and the rule of law are too similar to ignore.

Trump's ultra-nationalism, racism, policies aimed at social cleansing, his adoration of some of the world's most heinous dictators, and his hatred of democracy (and the rule of law) echoes a period in the 1930's and 40's when the unimaginable became possible; when genocide was the endpoint of dehumanizing others, and the mix of nativist and nationalist rhetoric ended in the horrors of the concentration camps.

Neo-nazi and fascist groups have found, in Trump, someone who echoes there rhetoric of "blood and soil" and the "fear of inferior blood" and has brought it to very center of power in the United States.

The full article is available here

The Mueller Report Proves Trump Believes He Is Compromised By Russia - Seth Abramson

No US president can stay in power (avoid impeachment) if they are compromised by a foreign power.

“The Mueller Report reveals that, in the weeks before the 2016 election, Trump believed Kremlin agents held videos of him from a 2013 Moscow trip that could end his candidacy.

That Trump and his fixer Michael Cohen discussed these tapes suggests that they believe - as did the Kremlin agent they were dealing with - that they existed, and that the Kremlin was (through an intermediary) reassuring Trump that the Kremlin agent-held tapes would be suppressed.

The primary ground under which a POTUS could be impeached for an inability to uphold his Oath of Office and secure the national defense - that isn't criminal - is if he has been compromised by a foreign power via blackmail that provably puts him in thrall to a foreign power.

Mueller only put ‘high confidence’ intel in his report, so we know that US law enforcement holds that the Kremlin agent was telling the truth about the videos. And no US president can stay in power (avoid impeachment) if they are compromised by a foreign power. So impeachment is mandated for Trump.”

The full article is available here

The Mueller Report Is Damning Of Trump's Criminality, He Must Be Removed From Office - Jared Yates Sexton

"I don't say this lightly. It makes me unbelievably sad and depressed that this has happened. But we have a criminal president and he must be removed. It has to happen. We are in a crisis. We have to recognize that. Right now, we have a criminally compromised president."

I just finished the Mueller Report. Here are some of the most shocking and important revelations.  Long and short: Donald Trump needs to be removed from office.

Immediately.

I don't say this lightly. It makes me unbelievably sad and depressed that this has happened. But we have a criminal president and he must be removed. It has to happen.

We are in a crisis. We have to recognize that. Right now, we have a criminally compromised president.


The biggest takeaways:

• Mueller wrote this report in such a way as to send a message that the investigation was the be all and end all of this matter.
• Regarding collusion, Mueller repeatedly mentions that he was hindered by the Trump administration either lying or else not providing information. Mueller said that they destroyed evidence and stone walled him. That's why he couldn't establish the collusion charge in totality.
• Regarding obstruction, Mueller was clearly putting the matter in the hands of Congress. The report is a full and explicit layout of impeachable, high crimes.
• When Bill Barr put forth his summary last month, he not only lied; it appears that he actively obstructed justice by misrepresenting the report. This was his attempt to try and save Donald Trump and the administration.

Also significant:

• The Trump Campaign was sometimes receptive when approached by Russia.  Other times they just proceeded with the knowledge that Russia was interfering on their behalf.  They were not ignorant of the fact that Russia was interfering, not at all.
• The Trump Campaign knew that the Democratic National Committee emails were going to be released before they were.  Mueller found that Trump himself was in contact with campaign members and people outside of the campaign in the effort to plan how to capitalize on their release.
• Trump repeatedly told his subordinates to obstruct justice.  He had them contact the principals, including Comey and Flynn, in order to take their temperature and to communicate what Trump thought. 
• Trump wanted to obstruct even more than he did.  The only thing that kept him from doing so was that multiple people declined to perform actions that would make them accessories to a crime. 

The full article is available here

There’s No Such Thing As “Judeo Christian Values” - Rabbi Danya Ruttenburg

“Judeo-Christian” isn’t a thing.  It’s important for interfaith dialogue, coexistence, basic respect, and historical accuracy to not conflate Judaism and Christianity.

The right wing trope of “Judeo-Christian Values” positions Jews and Christians against Muslims and is Islamophobic.

It omits Christian oppression and murder of Jews over more than 1000 years.  It also ignores Jewish civilization worldwide and facts of key Jewish developments in the Middle East and North Africa.

The full article is available here

Prager U Wrong On Republican Southern Strategy: Debunked by Historian Kevin Kruse

Historian Kevin Kruse thoroughly debunks the revisionist history of Dennis Prager regarding the racist Southern Strategy of the Republican Party from the 1960's onward.

This is the basic argument being put forth by Prager U: Long after the Democrats lost the South, a conspiracy of liberal academics and journalists cooked up a theory that didn't reflect what was happening at the time.

For starters, the idea that the "southern strategy" was invented after the fact is deeply ahistorical. There was considerable discussion of it throughout the 1960s, especially within the ranks of the Republican Party.

The video claims there was a conspiracy concocted later by academics, and names three central myths in this conspiracy.

None of the myths that delve into are actually central to the actual scholarship on party realignment, but are imputed to unnamed "left-leaning academic elites."

Also, in an ironic twist, Carol Swain -- the star of the Prager U video -- described the southern strategy in her own book, The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (2002).

The full article is available here

Candace Owens' false statement that the Southern strategy is a myth - Politifact

During a congressional hearing on hate crimes, Prager U/Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens said that the Republican Party never had a strategy of capitalizing on racism to lure voters.Candace Owens said the Republican’s Southern Strategy is a "myth" that "never happened."

Efforts by the Republican Party - starting in the 1960's - to win over white Southern voters have been documented by scholars for decades.

The strongest evidence that it happened comes from the Republicans who were part of that strategy. There are numerous instances of them talking about the approach in documents or interviews.
The full article is available here

Film Review: Unplanned (Grade = F) - AV Club

Insofar as there is a formal level to this slab of Christian Broadcast Network-like, after-school propaganda - the film Unplanned has greater technical finesse than the truly dreadful 'God's Not Dead' or Left Behind movie franchises.

But there’s not a single scene that speaks to characters with lives outside their streamlined narrative function; they’re performers in a parable traced over a Chick tract.

It's pantomime-villainy characterization.
The full article is available here