Mother Jones writes about the stealth tactics that radical right authoritarians and Christian theocrats sometimes use to minimize public backlash against anti-democracy extremism:
On a Saturday afternoon in August 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the text of a bill he planned to introduce that would make it a felony for doctors to give transgender children under 16 gender-affirming medical care. “I have no doubt this will be an uphill battle when we get to session,” Deutsch warned the group. “As always, please do not share this with the media. The longer we can fly under the radar the better.”
The message was one in a trove of emails obtained by Mother Jones between Deutsch and representatives of a network of activists and organizations at the forefront of the anti-trans movement. They show the degree to which these activists shaped Deutsch’s repressive legislation, a version of which was signed into law in February, and the tactics, alliances, and goals of a movement that has sought to foist their agenda on a national scale.At the time, there was little precedent for such bills, and Deutsch’s legislation, called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, was killed in the Senate after doctors showed up at the South Dakota statehouse to argue they should not be sent to prison for following the medical consensus.
“Please do not say that the South Dakota effort failed!!” Margaret Clarke, general counsel for the Alabama branch of the Phyllis Schlafly–founded Eagle Forum, replied. “You successfully inspired, encouraged and counseled numerous VCAP [sic] efforts around the country. You established the ideal witness list that we are all still following in our individual states…And, most importantly you connected us all to each other. This is just the beginning.”
Indeed, Deutsch’s bill has proved influential in the recent surge of anti-LGBTQ lawmaking. This legislative session, at least 18 states have considered bills containing language closely resembling the text of the Vulnerable Child Protection Act. The leaked emails reveal how Deutsch’s proposal helped proponents of the national movement to restrict gender-affirming care establish a playbook for their now-common attacks.
Sometimes the radical right is out in the open and sometimes it operates with as much secrecy as I can manage to get away with. It depends on the circumstances and location.
Regardless, one can see this as another example of disciplined and coordinated efforts that radical right Christian nationalists are using to replace our secular Constitution with authoritarian Christian sharia law.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Lawyers sue robot: Business Insider writes:
- DoNotPay, which uses AI [artificial intelligence] to provide legal information, is facing a proposed class action lawsuit.
- The complaint claims that DoNotPay has been practicing law poorly and lacks a license.
The complaint argues: "Unfortunately for its customers, DoNotPay is not actually a robot, a lawyer, nor a law firm. DoNotPay does not have a law degree, is not barred in any jurisdiction, and is not supervised by any lawyer."
- DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder pledged to fight the lawsuit that he said had "no merit."
DoNotPay claims to use artificial intelligence to help customers handle an array of legal services without needing to hire a lawyer. It was founded in 2015 as an app to help customers fight parking tickets, but has since expanded its services. DoNotPay’s website claims that it can help customers fight corporations, beat bureaucracy, find hidden money, and "sue anyone."
"Time and time again the only people that win are the lawyers. So I wanted to do something about it, building the DoNotPay robot lawyer to empower consumers to take on corporations on their own," Browder said.
This is an interesting lawsuit. Legal self-help books and other legal texts and journals have been publicly available for decades. What’s the difference between reading a book written by a human and reading what a computer spits out? The AI can be programmed with all current law, making it probably more knowledgeable than the people writing the self-help books.
And, the AI can also be programmed with (i) law treatises, court reporters (journals that publish every case that courts decide) and text books written by experts in their fields, and fact patterns, legal rationales and holdings in every court case that has been ignored, or partly or completely upheld or overturned since the founding of American courts after the Constitution started coming into effect in 1789 after its ratification in 1788.
And, although it is probably usually a mistake, American law permits a person to be their own lawyer and practice law for themselves in court.
Josh Browder, peeving off human
lawyers since 2015
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
A concise description of the anti-woke concept - a two-headed thing, one bad, one good: Since anti-woke appears to be the centerpiece of the DeSantis presidential campaign and powerfully motivating to most of the radical right base, it seems timely to try to describe or define what it is and isn't. MSNBC discusses the concept:
Many Republican leaders have made “anti-wokeness” a cornerstone of their political agenda, but DeSantis has led the pack by upending the lives and liberties of Floridians through authoritarian book bans and speech codes.Following last year’s passage of the Parental Rights in Education Act -- also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law — banning discussion of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity in public schools, countless Floridians have lost their rights. Teachers in same-sex marriages left or lost their jobs. Children of gay parents now fear mentioning their parents’ sexual orientation at school. Librarians must undergo state training on the law, and face losing their livelihood if they lend books blacklisted by the state education board.
The governor’s war on K-12 programs has expanded since that bill: DeSantis banned a high school Advanced Placement class on African-American studies, claiming it was “indoctrination.” He is now angling to ban all AP courses in Florida, something surely anathema to parents hoping their children will attend reputable universities.
And DeSantis is also targeting higher education institutions, which most states strive to showcase as incubators of groundbreaking ideas, pedagogy, and research. He carried out a hard-right takeover of New College, a small liberal arts school within the state’s public university system, stacking its board of trustees with anti-critical race theory demagogue Christopher Rufo and other fringe figures from the Christian right and MAGA world. “The mission has been I think more into the DEI, CRT, the gender ideology rather than what a liberal arts education should be,” DeSantis declared, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as well as critical race theory.
The MSNBC article points out that a poll conducted by Ipsos, shows that 56% of Americans consider “woke” a positive term, meaning “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.” More than a third of Republicans agree with that definition. However, 39% agreed with a negative definition: “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.”
Maybe this anti-woke thing is not as good an issue as anti-abortion to rally the radical right as I had imagined. It seemed that all the cognitive and social factors that authoritarian radicals played on with the abortion issue were inherent in the woke issue. Maybe that’s is not so true if this poll data is probative. It feels like the definition the poll used does not really capture how the radical right base feels about this issue. Time will tell how the woke issue plays out.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
CLARIFICATION: I use the term Taliban here to mean something different from it's usual meaning, which is normally Sunni fundamentalist hardliners. Here I refer to Taliban as any hard core, religious zealot elites in any country who exercise power grounded mostly in any religion or theocratic dogma, not secularism. (see comments here)
From the religious zealot files: Iranian Taliban poisons school girls: The Jerusalem Post writes:
Poison gas attacks on schoolgirls in Iran have shocked the world for months, from with the first reports in November, at the height of the protests against the regime triggered by the death of a young woman in the custody of its morality police.
Sources inside and out of Iran have provided The Media Line [TML] with a true picture of the extent of the incidents, including the names of many of the schools singled out for attack, the exact dates on which many of the attacks took place and the number of people affected.
Iranian schoolgirls poisoned all over the country
More than 1,000 schoolgirls at more than 26 schools in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces have now been hit by the poison gas since the first attacks in the city of Qom in November, when 15 schools were targeted. The victims reported a smell akin to rotten oranges, followed by nausea, headaches, and finally shortness of breath left them urgently seeking medical attention.
Evil targets for the righteous Iranian Taliban
Tacit support from the Iranian regime
In fact, TML’s Iranian sources and experts on the issue have suggested that the attacks are being carried out either at the behest of the government or at least with its tacit support. This, they say, is being done in order to distract the public from the ongoing protests against the regime and place responsibility for the causes of the unrest on a handful of “arbitrary Talibani extremists” who can be dealt with by the authorities “to exonerate the entire Islamic system.”
An atmosphere of terror
Similarly, [TML’s sources] suggest, the poison attacks could be a move to create “an atmosphere of terror” among protesters and therefore prevent growing numbers from joining them as Iranian society reels from poverty, corruption and an unaffordable cost of living.
This has been going on since last November? This is the first I’ve heard of corrupt, enraged religious zealots from the Dark Ages poisoning Iranian school girls. How did I miss this?
Q: Worldwide and in the US individually, has religion become more harmful than beneficial to the human condition and long-term human well-being and civilization sustainability, e.g., Christian nationalists in the US are anti-democracy, anti-inconvenient fact and truth, pro-climate change and rigidly authoritarian theocratic?
No comments:
Post a Comment