Christianity directly attacks Johnson Amendment in federal court

The Baptist Standard reports:

The National Religious Broadcasters association has joined a complaint alongside two East Texas churches calling for the Johnson Amendment to be declared unconstitutional. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Tyler on Aug. 28.

Congress approved then-Senator Lyndon Johnson’s amendment to the U.S. tax code in 1954 that prohibited 501(c)(3) organizations such as charities and churches “from engaging in any political campaign activity.” In 1987, Congress added a clarification that the amendment also applies to statements opposing candidates.

According to a National Religious Broadcasters statement, the complaint details how organizations have “engage[d] in electoral activities that are open, obvious and well-known, yet the IRS allows some, but not all, such organizations to do so without penalty.”

The Internal Revenue Service, it continued, routinely “acts in an arbitrary and capricious manner” toward nonprofit organizations “that disfavors conservative organizations and conservative, religious organizations.” Such an unequal enforcement, it determines, constitutes “a denial of both religious freedom and equal protection.”

This is a very big deal, huge actually. The current USSC will probably declare the JA (Johnson Amendment) unconstitutional on grounds of undue burden on free speech, undue burden on religious freedom and/or anything else they can think of. The court might even find a way to apply the history and traditions test. If the JA is overturned, theocratic Christian nationalist (CN) church leaders will be free to fill their sermons with all the lies, slanders, fake American history, and poisonous bigotry, e.g., seething hate of the LGBQT community, that dominates dark free speech from CN elites. 

Paragraph 14 of the federal complaint reads as follows:

Plaintiffs [Christianity] contend that the Johnson Amendment, as written and as applied by the IRS, violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause, Free Exercise Clause, the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause (Void for Vagueness), the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause (Equal Protection), and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

To be clear, if the JA is overturned, priests, pastors and other church elites will be free to openly threaten their flocks with things like excommunication, ostracism, expulsion from the church and condemnation to eternal damnation in Satan's lake of fire if they vote for the wrong candidate according to God's sacred and infallible will. 

The really interesting aspect of this lawsuit is the nature of the JA itself. The JA was passed into law as an explicit condition on a church maintaining its tax-exempt status, not an outright prohibition on speech or religious freedom. As it is now, CN churches and religious leaders still have significant freedom to speak on political and moral issues - they just can't explicitly endorse or oppose candidates while maintaining tax-exempt status. One source comments:

Repealing the Johnson Amendment would either require an act of Congress or the Supreme Court ruling that the law is unconstitutional. Neither of these possibilities have occurred. While there is frequently language introduced by Republican lawmakers to repeal it, such legislation has historically been unsuccessful. Most recently, in the Republican tax reform bill in 2017, repeal language was dropped due to the Senate’s reconciliation rules.

Radical Republican theocratic politicians failed to repeal the JA, most recently in 2017, so the next line of attack on the JA is the USSC. Churches already can implicitly endorse and oppose candidates but even that is not enough for the aggressive, kleptocratic CN wealth and power movement. Theocratic Christianity wants to rip off the JA fig leaf and go full Monty in politics. Churches can already say, for example, that politicians who support abortion rights are agents of Satan or otherwise terrible people in God's eyes. Churches already know exactly how to implicitly endorse or oppose a candidate without running afoul of the JA. 

The courts have consistently held that tax exemption is a privilege, not a right, and organizations can choose to forgo tax-exempt status if they wish to engage in prohibited political activities. That is the main barrier that the USSC has to somehow knock down if the authoritarian CN theocratic agenda is to take its power to the highest level so far. This lawsuit is the clearest example of the ravenous greed that constitutes a major motive and goal of the elites who control America's authoritarian radical right Christian nationalist wealth and power movement.[1]

Given the radical, theocratic intend of this USSC, this lawsuit is terrifying. If the JA does get invalidated, that will happen most likely in June-July of 2026 or 2027. In normal times with a normal USSC, the chances of repeal of the JA would seem to be low. But with this radical theocratic court, certain things that are implausible but important to the CN movement become possible, maybe even likely. 

No one thought the Roe v. Wade would be overturned, but it was. 

Footnote:

1. An anti-CN source comments about the CN wealth and power movement:

Is Christian nationalism Christian?

No, Christian nationalism is a political ideology and a form of nationalism, not a religion or a form of Christianity. It directly contradicts the Gospel in multiple ways, and is therefore considered by many Christian leaders to be a heresy. While Jesus taught love, peace, and truth, Christian nationalism leads to hatred, political violence, and QAnon misinformation. While Jesus resisted the devil's temptations of authority in the wilderness, Christian nationalism seeks to seize power for its followers at all costs. And while Christianity is a 2,000-year-old global tradition that transcends all borders, Christian nationalism seeks to merge faith with a single, 247-year-old, pluralistic nation.

Why should Christians oppose Christian nationalism?

Pro-democracy, pro-love Christians must speak out together to show the country that Christian nationalism does not represent Jesus or our faith. When we do this, we prove that the biggest critics of the Christian-nationalist ideology are in fact Christians, and thus disprove the source of its biggest power: the false perception that the religious-right speaks for all American Christians.

I am not the only person who sees CN as bigoted (anti-love) and authoritarian (anti-democracy).

What is a uniparty?

 ANYONE?

From Ralph Nader to Steve Bannon, self-styled populists and outsiders have disparaged Washington’s “uniparty.” When this critique turns to foreign policy, the uniparty is accused of groupthink and militarism—dragging the U.S. into unnecessary and endless wars while neglecting the concerns of regular Americans.

While the epithet is often overstated and used in bad faith, it contains a kernel of truth. Foreign-policy experts from both parties agree on a lot, and that consensus can lead to poor decisions. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as America’s geopolitical competition with China, expose a bipartisan problem of this sort that critics of U.S. foreign policy frequently miss.

Today’s uniparty isn’t defined by a zeal to export democracy and launch ill-advised wars against governments that don’t threaten us. Rather, it is defined, on both the Democratic and the Republican side, by a lack of initiative and an urge to do things on the cheap and halfheartedly, to manage crises instead of resolving them. It is also fundamentally dishonest, as it suggests that peace and security can be sustained without major sacrifices.

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-uniparty-is-real-but-it-isnt-what-you-think/

You hear a lot of griping about the alleged “uniparty” — really just relatively rare areas of agreement between Democrats and Republicans — but those gripes rarely address the most consequential, and harmful, areas where the two parties agree. Neither party wants to tackle Social Security, Medicare, or any other entitlement-reform proposal; both parties have convinced themselves that tariffs are the road to prosperity; and, to take an example near and dear to my heart, neither party is all that interested in investigating or discussing the origin of Covid anymore. 

Large, irreconcilable differences remain between Republicans and Democrats on such issues as immigration, environmental policy, guns, taxes, religious liberty, the role of the courts, and the politicization of government agencies. That is not to say there are no areas in which both parties are complicit in bad policy. They have both presided over years of ballooning budgets and skyrocketing deficits and have refused to address the entitlement spending at the root of our fiscal crisis.

Sure, there is a de facto uniparty............

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-real-uniparty/

What is the Uniparty?

The uniparty is a political machine that dominates the landscape of American politics, a shadowy entity that transcends the traditional boundaries of the two-party system. Comprised of the establishment elites from both sides of the aisle, this unspoken alliance prioritizes the interests of the wealthy and powerful, maintaining the status quo and stifling any real change that might threaten their dominance. 

Through a complex web of financial interests, backroom deals, and media manipulation, the uniparty sustains itself, creating the illusion of choice while offering little in the way of genuine alternatives. Voters are presented with two sides of the same coin, each offering different flavors of the same failed policies, while those who challenge this system are dismissed as outsiders or extremists.

The uniparty's stranglehold on American politics has far-reaching consequences, undermining the democratic process and eroding trust in our institutions. It perpetuates a system that prioritizes the needs of the few over the needs of the many, leaving average Americans to suffer the consequences of a rigged game.

From taxation to foreign policy, the uniparty's influence is pervasive, and its impact is felt in every corner of society. Its interests are not those of the people, but rather those of the wealthy donors and special interests that keep it in power.

The uniparty is a threat to democracy and a barrier to progress. It represents a political system that has lost touch with the needs and aspirations of the people, and it is time for a change. Only by shining a light on the uniparty's inner workings and rejecting its tired narratives can we hope to restore true representation and democratic values to our nation

https://libertymaniacs.com/en-ca/pages/what-is-the-uniparty?srsltid=AfmBOooQhHNzbFoE_PyDCcKPzRpYiyvYsHMGmkPfNtGuKpYXs7YHxOyu

The "Uniparty" is a term that describes the globalist establishment's control over politics and policy to the extent that every or nearly every major political party or politician are controlled by them and, thus, have far more in common than different, policy-wise. It is essentially synonymous with the deep state, as it retains control almost regardless of which political party or politician is elected.

https://www.conservapedia.com/Uniparty

All makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't it? 

A physical-chemical basis for memory discovered: What about consciousness & free will?

One of the central issues in neuroscience is understanding the basis of memory. Assuming that memory comes from just (1) regular physical matter (atoms, molecules, cells, etc.), and (2) forces known to science, then this discovery could go a long way toward understanding the basis of memory. A SciAm article describes the discovery:

Brain Scientists Finally Discover the 

Glue that Makes Memories Stick for a Lifetime

A long-running research endeavor reveals key chemical players that cement memories in place—and still more have yet to be discovered 

A milestone in the effort to answer this question came in the early 1970s, with the discovery of a phenomenon called long-term potentiation, or LTP. Scientists found that electrically stimulating a synapse that connects two neurons causes a long-lasting increase in how well that connection transmits signals. Scientists say simply that the “synaptic strength” has increased. This is widely believed to be the process underlying memory. Networks of neural connections of varying strengths are thought to be what memories are made of.

A synapse between two neurons, A and B

In the search for molecules that enable LTP, two main contenders emerged. One, called PKMzeta (protein kinase Mzeta), made a big splash when a 2006 study showed that blocking it erased memories for places in rats. If obstructing a molecule erases memories, researchers reasoned, that event must be essential to the process the brain uses to maintain memories.

[There were some problems with the 2006 study that raised questions about the PKMzeta memory hypothesis]

A new study published in Science Advances by Sacktor, Fenton and their colleagues plugs these holes. The research suggests that PKMzeta works alongside another molecule, called KIBRA (kidney and brain expressed adaptor protein), which attaches to synapses activated during learning, effectively “tagging” them. KIBRA couples with PKMzeta, which then keeps the tagged synapses strengthened.

A synapse showing the PKMzeta and KIBRA "glue" or

"tag" that strengthens the electrical-chemical connection 

between synapses involved in long-term memory

This reinforces one postulated mechanism of long-term memory formation. There are a couple of others the SciAm article discusses. There could be other memory mechanisms that remain unknown. Regardless, this PKMzeta-KIBRA tag discovery appears to be a fundamental step forward. Other memory-forming mechanisms may exist, but at least this one appears to rely only on physical matter and known forces in nature.

What about consciousness and free will?

This research still cannot rule out involvement of something not known to science. Neurons in the human brain can have thousands of synapse connections with approximately 1,000 to 10,000 other neurons. Only some of those are strengthened with the PKMzeta-KIBRA tag the researchers found. But why only some are strengthened is still unknown. Is that selective biological activity a manifestation of consciousness or free will? Maybe so.

Imagine a halo of thousands of synapses connecting 

to thousands of other neurons

The matter and known forces of nature alone still cannot explain consciousness or free will, assuming free will exists. Consciousness does seem to exist and free will probably does too. There seems to be an inexplicable a leap between matter and known forces of nature and manifestations of the human mind such as consciousness and free will.

At the moment, I cannot envision an experiment to test for a way(s) to discover a basis for consciousness based on what we currently know about matter and known forces of nature. Maybe experts can think of one. But at present, there is no definitive evidence that human consciousness requires anything beyond physical matter and the forces of nature. Maybe consciousness and free will are emergent properties of matter and forces of nature. 

Current technology cannot yet fully explain or detect consciousness solely within known material-physical processes. Things like AI-assisted "brain decoding" techniques can reconstruct speech and imagery from brain activity with increasing fidelity. Thoughts processes through AI have been transmitted over the internet, but is a thought like that conscious? I doubt it. Things like that can be called correlates of consciousness, but they are not necessarily consciousness itself.  

There are things we still do not understand. Probably always will be.

If it is all pre-programmed, then maybe 

we do not have free will?

Reframing affirmative action; Recent headlines

Mother Jones published an article about how the Democrats are reframing a potent authoritarian radical right talking point:

The affirmative action of generational wealth. That’s a smart reframing of a longtime conservative hobby horse.

Republican politicians and right-wing media have regularly attacked programs designed to counter the generational impacts of government-sanctioned discrimination in housing, education, and veterans benefits. Now they’re targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—see JD Vance’s recently introduced “Dismantle DEI Act“—and trying to brand Kamala Harris a “DEI hire.” That’s a laughable assertion. (New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen argues that the moniker applies more aptly to Vance.)

But the critics of DEI and affirmative action want to have their cake and eat it too. For example, if you, like our Supreme Court, think the use of race as a factor in college admissions should be illegal, that’s your prerogative. But I hope you are similarly inclined to outlaw the practice of elite colleges giving an admissions boost to children of alumni and to students (like Jared Kushner) whose parents are major donors. Because isn’t that, too, a kind of affirmative action?

The issue of framing is critically important in persuasion. Recently, the phrase freedom from has been voiced by some prominent Democrats and opinionators. That was applied in the context of freedom from, e.g., living with personal and economic hardships caused by global warming, and living in fear of mass murders linked to easy access to assault weapons. Maybe the Dems could reframe the socialist epithet as freedom from unregulated capitalism. Claiming freedom from fear of bankruptcy from unregulated capitalism-imposed medical costs might be another reframing opportunity. Another reframe opportunity might be freedom from religious bigotry and oppression from attacks on the LGBQT community.

If reframing sone key issues is what the Dems are considering, they are probably already aware of the fact that if they do reframe, there are two requirements. One is being persistent and disciplined in using their own frames consistently over time. The other is to never get pulled into using Republican framing.* Authoritarian radical right claims of "tax relief" could be turned into "middle class tax fairness" to implicitly point out that the rich already have massive tax relief. Reframing issues around core values like freedom, opportunity, and security, seem like a major opportunity for Democrats. Who knows, maybe the Dems want to improve their messaging game from whatever it is now.

* I posted about how important framing is in political rhetoric. One of the biggest mistakes a person can make is to step into an opponent's frame. By doing that, one put's one's self at a serious disadvantage. When in the wrong frame, a person usually has a much heavier burden of proof to debunk an opponent’s frame. A lot of contrary evidence and explanation is usually needed to overcome a bare assertion, lies or even a little evidence. Responses within an opponent's frame usually need to be too complicated to carry persuasive power.

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

 

Something seems to be changing for the worse with DJT, and his campaign, donors and political party. Some headlines carry that message.

Team Trump Makes Arlington Cemetery Fight Way Worse With Army Insult
Gold Star father slams Trump’s 'disgusting' Arlington Cemetery stunt near his son's grave

J.D. Vance Booed by Entire Crowd During Dumpster Fire Speech

If Trump loses, expect a Republican civil war

Trump’s Team Overruled Him on Debate Rules Out of Sheer Desperation

Firefighters Union Boos JD Vance—So He Calls Them ‘Haters’

Donald Trump claims ‘107%’ of new jobs are being taken by ‘illegal immigrants’

Trump Threatens to Jail Mark Zuckerberg for Life

The GOP is making false claims about noncitizens voting. It’s affecting real voters

‘The chilling effect’: behind GOP-led states’ aggressive efforts to stop some from voting

Jack White rips Trump campaign for posting band’s song: ‘Don’t even think about using my music you fascists’

Trump amplifies posts calling for televised military tribunal for Liz Cheney

Elon Musk's X labels NPR story on Donald Trump, Arlington cemetery as unsafe | Censorship

Jim Jordan targets daughter of judge from Trump’s hush money case

Trump Goes Full Fascist in Truth Social Posting Spree

Trump Goes on Crazed, Violent Rant Calling for Death of His Enemies

Trump Shares Social Media Posts with QAnon Phrases and Calls for Jailing Lawmakers, Special Counsel

There is a lot more like that in just the last few days. It feels like something has changed with DJT, but what that may be is unclear. A minor stroke or mental illness flare up? Or, maybe reporting is now more election-focused than a few weeks ago. Regardless, something feels different even if this is just authoritarian radical right politics as usual. 

InfoWars on the legal front

An extremely long post by Steve Vladek includes him defending himself against gross errors (at best) or lies (more likely) leveled at him by a prominent MAGA operative, Carrie Severino, President of the authoritarian radical right Judicial Crisis Network. Vladek is a prominent legal scholar and critic of DJT and MAGA generally. These are some parts of Vladek's post that deal with how Severino attacked and misrepresented him:

I wanted to use this week’s issue to address a piece published by Carrie Severino in the National Review on Friday—titled “The Left’s Lies About the Fifth Circuit’s Reversal Rate.” I’m not usually inclined to engage with Severino (or the NR more generally). But given that I’m one of the people Severino accuses of lying, it seemed worth summarizing exactly what her claim is and then explaining, in detail, why she both (1) completely misstates what I’ve previously written; and (2) makes some pretty egregious data-driven mistakes of her own. The former may help, if nothing else, to correct the record; the latter may be useful more generally because it underscores the dangers of superficial attempts to use data when trying to describe the Supreme Court’s output.

I wrote a piece in July for The Atlantic, titled “The Fifth Circuit Won By Losing,” which attempted to document both how bad a term the Fifth Circuit had at the Court and how much it nevertheless succeeded—both in the three cases in which it was affirmed (each of which came in ideologically charged disputes) and, more generally, in moving the Overton Window with respect to the kinds of arguments that are now viable. Although the piece is behind a paywall, here’s the central claim it made:

But for as bad a term as the Fifth Circuit would appear to have had, it still succeeded in shoving American law far to the right. First, even when the Fifth Circuit lost, it usually picked up at least one vote (and as many as three) from the justices, validating the non-frivolousness, even if not the correctness, of its extremist reasoning. Second, the losses have the effect of making the most radical Supreme Court in our lifetime appear to be more moderate than it in fact is—with the Court’s defenders seizing upon some of the reversals of the Fifth Circuit as proof that, despite a rash of controversial, ideologically divided rulings in other cases on everything from January 6 to environmental law to homelessness, the Court really is “surprising” in its moderation. Third, and most important, the Supreme Court still affirmed three of the Fifth Circuit’s outlier rulings—all in cases in which the three more liberal justices dissented. The Fifth Circuit lost a lot—and somehow it still won.

Enter, Carrie Severino, President of the “Judicial Crisis Network.” .... As she wrote, “In its chastisement of the Fifth Circuit, the Left willfully ignores the broader universe of appeals to the high court, and presents a seriously distorted picture in the process.” .... [S]he argues, anyone who criticizes the Fifth Circuit but doesn’t mention its “wins” or criticize these other courts (“commentators who do not feign scholarly objectivity”) is engaged in a double standard.

5th Circuit = TX, LA, MS

To limit the length of this post, here is what Severino accused Vladek of doing, and his response regarding radical federal appeals court decisions coming out of the hyper-radical 5th Circuit in the last term:

• First, Severino claimed that Vladek said the 5th Circuit has the highest reversal rate by the USSC, which is false. What Vladek said was the 5th Circuit had most USSC reversals of any other circuit, but with three affirmations. But of the three cases that the USSC did not reverse, they where radical right and pushed the legal Overton Window far to the right, which was the main point of what Vladek is arguing. Mistake or lie by Severino? You decide.

• Second, Severino treats all USSC cases as equal, a point that Vladek strongly rejects. Those three 5th Cir. cases the USSC upheld were major in their impact and reach, not medium or small. He points out that the USSC picks the cases it wants to hear and those vary widely in their legal impact. In essence what the USSC is doing is allowing authoritarian radical right cases to be filed in the 5th Cir. and letting that appeals court spew out radical right decisions that the USSC uses to convert the rule of law into radical right authoritarianism. It does not matter that most of the 5th Cir. cases get reversed. The few that are upheld is a major driver of the toxic radicalization of American law. So, is that sloppy analysis by Severino or good analysis? You decide. (IMHO, this is a superb propaganda tactic to obfuscate what the radical right is doing to American law)

• Finally, and this one is wonky (sorry), Vladek argues that Severino cherry picked a USSC emergency ruling to make the 5th Cir. look even less influential than it really is. Again, that reasoning by Severino rests on the flawed analysis that all cases are equally important. Vladek points out that if one includes all the emergency USSC decisions from the last court term, “it makes the Fifth Circuit look even worse.” 

Moving the window to the right or left

makes the radical and unthinkable

seem more acceptable and sensible

Normalizing radical and unthinkable concepts

makes them feel like something they are not

Vladek concludes his article with this:

I don’t know if Severino just didn’t read what she was purporting to criticize, or if she did. But it seems like we all ought to be more careful before we accuse anyone of “lying” about something related to the Supreme Court—especially when our accusations are based upon descriptively and methodologically flawed accounts of our own.

Q: Is a USSC decision about, e.g., a federal trademark infringement case by Jack Daniel's* as important as the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the national right to an abortion, i.e., are all USSC cases about equally important?

* The subject matter of Jack Daniel’s v. VIP Products—a squeaky dog toy (Bad Spaniels) that resembles the iconic JD's whisky bottle and label, but with scatological puns in place of the original language on the whiskey bottle.

Fascism revisited, again

Has enough evidence accumulated to reasonably consider DJT, the GOP, Project 2025, Christian nationalism and all the rest of the American MAGA package close enough to old-fashioned fascism to call it fascism or some form of it, e.g., American fascism or soft fascism? DJT and the GOP have certainly gone authoritarian. Project 2025 looks awfully authoritarian and shockingly Dark Ages in some policy areas, e.g., climate science. Some supreme court rulings since the six Republican radicals took control and are now running free and butt naked wild are undeniably anti-democracy and authoritarian.  

Or, is it the case, that given modern circumstances that old-fashioned fascism or something close to that is simply impossible to happen. Lots of people believe that, probably most, maybe ~75%.

Q: What are similarities and differences of the MAGA and Christian nationalist movements and classical fascism?

A: The relationship between MAGA/Christian nationalist movements and classical fascism is complex, with some notable similarities but also key differences:

Similarities

1. Both MAGA/Christian nationalism and fascism emphasize a strong nationalist ideology that references an idealized mythic past. For MAGA, this involves nostalgia for a perceived "great" America of the past, while Christian nationalism connects America's founding and future success to its Christian heritage.

2. There are parallels in hostile attitudes toward intellectualism, education, and science (anti-intellectualism). Christian nationalism is associated with opposition to scientific consensus on issues like evolution and climate change. Classical fascism also promoted anti-intellectual and anti-science views.

3. There are similarities in the emphasis on "law and order" and support for strongman leadership figures. Both movements can display authoritarian leanings.

Differences

1. MAGA politicians generally argue that America's liberal democratic tradition needs to be saved, rather than abolished. Classical fascism explicitly rejected liberal democracy.

2. Classical fascism involved totalitarian one-party rule, secret police, and comprehensive control of society. The MAGA movement operates within the existing democratic system, despite concerns about democratic backsliding.

3. The MAGA and Christian nationalist movements arose in a very different historical context than classical fascism of the early 20th century. They lack the same mass movement character and paramilitary organizations.

Scholarly debate
There is ongoing debate among scholars about how to categorize these movements. Some see clear parallels to fascism, while others argue the differences are significant enough to warrant distinct classifications. Terms like "semi-fascism" or "neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism" have been proposed as alternatives. .... The debate over proper classification remains active in academic and political discourse.

Differences #1 and 2 arguably are more mirage than real. I don't believe either is more true than false. Available evidence strongly indicates that MAGA explicitly rejects liberal democracy. DJT and the GOP are both openly anti-voting rights and anti-free and fair elections.[1] After DJT's 1/6 auto-coup attempt, here is no way anyone can rationally argue that the MAGA movement operates within America's existing democratic system. That is pure blithering nonsense. MAGA has accepted, rationalized and justified the insurrection, elevating that to mandatory core belief in the GOP. 

However, difference #3 is real -- these are different times and circumstances. And, there still isn't a real fascist American paramilitary presence here yet.

Not surprisingly, DJT and the MAGA movement do not refer to themselves as fascist. They are superb propagandists. They shamelessly and cynically claim to be pro-democracy while being at least authoritarian, if not close to fascist.

Other commentary include this from 2022:

“To call a person who endorses violence against the duly elected government a ‘Republican’ is itself Orwellian. More accurate words exist for such a person. One of them is ‘fascist.’” .... Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank dropped the f-word after the Republican National Committee (RNC) on February 4 declared the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol “legitimate political discourse.”

Others—former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum and Democratic journalist Ed Kilgore among them—agree that the Trump-appeasing GOP is akin to the European fascists who rose to power between the two world wars. The concern predates the RNC’s endorsement of violence. Frum noted the insurrection itself, while Kilgore detected such parallels to interwar fascism as a “foundational” lie (Nazi claims about German sellouts after World War I, Trump supporters’ claims about election theft) and alliances with “reactionary religious interests and radical elements among the police and military veterans.”[2]

A Wikipedia article comments on Trumpism:

Trumpism is a political movement in the United States that comprises the political ideologies associated with Donald Trump and his political base. It incorporates ideologies such as right-wing populism, national conservatism, and neo-nationalism, and has been described as authoritarian and neo-fascist. Trumpist rhetoric heavily features anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nativist, and racist attacks against minority groups. Identified aspects include conspiracist, isolationist, Christian nationalist, evangelical Christian, protectionist, anti-feminist, and anti-LGBT beliefs. 

Trumpism has significant authoritarian leanings, and is strongly associated with the belief that the President is above the rule of law. It has been referred to as an American political variant of the far-right and the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide from the late 2010s to the early 2020s. 

Some commentators have rejected the populist designation for Trumpism and view it instead as part of a trend towards a new form of fascism or neo-fascism, with some referring to it as explicitly fascist and others as authoritarian and illiberal. Others have more mildly identified it as a specific light version of fascism in the United States. Some historians, including many of those using a new fascism classification, write of the hazards of direct comparisons with European fascist regimes of the 1930s, stating that while there are parallels, there are also important dissimilarities (links and citations removed to reduce distractions)

Q: Is authoritarianism a better, i.e., more persuasive, label for DJT, the GOP and MAGA than fascism, American fascism, semi-fascism, soft-fascism, defanged fascism (no paramilitary thugs on the streets) or neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism? 

PS: Consider this highly charged interaction: 

Irate neighbor: Hey, you neo-Bonapartist patrimonialist, get off my lawn!

Neighbor kid picking up ball that rolled onto the lawn: Huh?

Footnotes:

1. Also, the state of Georgia has just implemented new rules or laws that allow easy disruption of election results that Republicans refuse to accept. Georgia state government has gone full-blown authoritarian. And, DJT has publicly made clear his seething hate of political opposition, the Democratic Party and a free press. That is definitely authoritarian. 

2. That article included these comments:

Boston University Today: Could the Republican Party be described as either fascist or fascist-leaning?

Historian Jonathan Zatlin: From the historian’s perspective, fascism was a response to problems after 1918—the collapse of multiethnic empires, economic crises—that we don’t have today. If we’re experiencing crises, they’re crises that only superficially resemble what was going on in the interwar period: high inflation, the pandemic [of] the Spanish flu. What we’ve been experiencing the last couple of years are just very different situations. And we don’t have a four-year-long war that killed millions and traumatized a whole generation of young people who found it hard to be integrated back into society and work 9-to-5 jobs, then later experienced mass employment and a Depression lasting years. That, plus weak democratic traditions, led many Europeans to conclude that democracy brought crisis and poverty, and that only authoritarian regimes could ensure prosperity and stability.

One can rationally argue that DJT, his MAGA movement and Project 2025 are all doing their absolute best to weaken, discredit and subvert American democratic traditions and institutions, especially the rule of law and elections.

Beau gets it right!

(who is Beau?)

Brain Imprinting...

Q1: Do you believe everything we’ve ever experienced is imprinted on our brains?  If yes…

Q2: Once imprinted, barring injury (think “needle scratching a vinyl record”), can it ever be deleted/erased?  Or, is it there for good?

Make your case(s).

(by PrimalSoup)

Bits and Pieces of amusing news...........

 Unless, of course, you don't find any of the following amusing.

Foo Fighters will donate to Kamala Harris after Trump used their song 'My Hero'

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/08/25/foo-fighters-donald-trump-rally-my-hero/74943995007/?tbref=hp

Republicans Quietly Stop Impeaching Biden After Realizing it Would Make Harris President Sooner

https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/republicans-quietly-stop-impeaching

RFK Jr.’s Daughter Said He Once Beheaded a Whale with a Chainsaw

https://people.com/rfk-jr-beheaded-whale-chainsaw-kick-kennedy-interview-8701261

A bit dated but how did we not know about the following movie that reveals all about Hunter Biden's laptop and his corrupt father - Joe Biden?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15481952/

https://mysonhunter.com/

FINALLY...................

There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has yet to take a clear position. A press release issued Monday by her New Hampshire team touted “Harris’s positive vision,” a day after her national press office wrote about “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”

https://apnews.com/article/harris-walz-apostrophe-possessive-grammar-967c0bbefc09be6c804588daabed7ec9

Following the money; An awakening?; The shrinking middle class

The WaPo reports about the top 50 political donors so far, collectively about $1.5 billion so far.

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Another prominent commentator, Bill Maher joked about the major change in the Republican Party that I have been howling about for some time now. His angle was that the DJT party has completely broken with its own past. The Hill writes:

Bill Maher said the lack of Republican National Convention speeches from former presidents or vice presidents indicates the GOP has made a “clean cut” with its past.

“It’s a little odd, isn’t it? That the Republicans had no former president, vice president. There was no Mitt Romney there, no Bush, no Dick Cheney,” Maher said Friday on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

“It’s a little like Tom Cruise with his daughter,” Maher said, to laughter from the studio audience. “You know, ‘I don’t know you anymore.’”

“I feel like I’ve never seen a convention where the party just disowned its complete past like that,” Maher added. 

The discussion took place on a panel with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw (Texas).

Crenshaw started to push back, noting it “doesn’t really matter” if Republicans “put on the best show,” adding, “I know we have better policy.”

Maher shot back, “It’s an indication that you have made a clean cut with what Republicanism was up until Trump.”

This is another bit of evidence indicating that more people are slowly coming to recognize that the GOP is fundamentally different now from what it was before the rise of DJT. What is that difference? The GOP was conservative and mostly pro-democracy, but now it isn’t. So exactly what is it? Liberal or socialist? Centrist? Anarchist? No, it is shockingly kleptocratic, shamelessly demagogic, ruthlessly authoritarian and solidly anti-democracy (see Project 2025 for evidence). That is the new, morally rotted GOP.

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The WaPo writes about what used to be middle class jobs: 

‘Barely surviving’: Some flight attendants 

are facing homelessness and hunger

Working “on reserve” with hours of unpaid labor makes it difficult for new flight attendants to turn the job into a career.

Kay had already worked a full day when Frontier Airlines called her to pick up a shift. The recently hired flight attendant had been awake since 4 a.m. driving Lyft, one of the few side gigs she could manage with her unpredictable schedule.

Her new career was off to a rough start. There were three-and-a-half weeks of unpaid training. Her first few paychecks were lower than she’d anticipated. She gave up her apartment in Atlanta, where median rent is about $1,500, and had been renting a room from a friend.

The only way to make ends meet, she said, was to juggle all the gig work she could find: Instacart shopping, pet sitting, Lyft driving. The ride-share company was offering a $500 bonus for completing 120 rides in four days. With her projected pay of $23,000 a year before taxes and insurance, chasing the extra money felt necessary.

So after working for Frontier from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., Kay turned back to Lyft. By the time she reached the bonus, she’d gone nearly 24 hours without sleep. 

Kay is not alone. Most new flight attendants work “on reserve,” spending days waiting to be assigned flights. It’s common for them to take side jobs — bartenders, semi-truck drivers, makeup artists, church musicians. Some say they are struggling to feed their families and are living out of their cars.

Is the middle class really shrinking, e.g., as employers keep squeezing workers harder and harder to get more profit as fast as possible? It seems to be according to some evidence.

Q: Is the American middle class shrinking?

A: The American middle class is indeed shrinking, according to recent data and analyses. Here are the key points:

Declining Middle Class Population

The share of American adults living in middle-class households has steadily decreased over the past five decades:

• In 1971, 61% of Americans were in the middle class
• By 2021, this had fallen to 50% of the population
• The latest data from 2023 shows 51% in the middle class

The middle class is being squeezed from both sides:

• Some middle-class households have moved into the upper-income tier
• Others have fallen into the lower-income tier

Specifically:

• The share of adults in the upper-income tier increased from 14% in 1971 to 21% in 2021
• The share in the lower-income tier grew from 25% to 29% over the same period

Income and Wealth Distribution

As the middle class has contracted, its share of aggregate income has declined significantly:

• In 1970, middle-class households accounted for 62% of aggregate U.S. income
• By 2020, this had fallen to just 42%

Meanwhile, upper-income households have seen their share of aggregate income rise from 29% to 50% between 1970 and 2020.

Some demographic groups have fared better than others:

• Older Americans and Black adults made the greatest progress up the income ladder from 1971 to 2021
• However, Black and Latino Americans are still more likely to be in the lower-income tier compared to white Americans

While the shrinking middle class partly reflects upward mobility for some, it also signals growing income inequality and polarization in American society. The trend has significant economic and social implications, potentially affecting economic stability, consumer spending, and social cohesion.

 

Regarding persecution of American Christians

Who is persecuting whom?

Many American Christians support DJT because they believe he will save them from ongoing persecution and/or an impending massive crackdown after the next election. A fascinating opinion (not paywalled) by NYT columnist and evangelical Christian David French describes his experience with both sides of that issue:

The Christian Persecution Narrative Rings Hollow

This June, I was invited on a friend’s podcast to answer a question I’ve been asked over and over again in the Trump era. Are Christians really persecuted in the United States of America? Millions of my fellow evangelicals believe we are, or they believe we’re one election away from a crackdown. This sense of dread and despair helps tie conservative Christians, people who center their lives on the church and the institutions of the church, to Donald Trump — the man they believe will fight to keep faith alive.

As I told my friend, the short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.

But that’s not the only answer. American history tells the story of two competing factions that possess very different visions of the role of faith in American public life. Both of them torment each other, and both of them have made constitutional mistakes that have triggered deep cultural conflict.

One of the most valuable and humbling experiences in life is to experience an American community as part of the in-group and as part of the out-group. I spent most of my life living in the cultural and political center of American evangelical Christianity, but in the past nine years I’ve been relentlessly pushed to the periphery. The process has been painful. Even so, I’m grateful for my new perspective.

When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship.

Combine those stories with the personal tales of Christians who faced death threats, intimidation and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American backsliding — a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now persecutes Christians. If the left is angry at conservatives for seeking the protection of a man like Trump, then it has only itself to blame.

After living inside and outside conservative evangelicalism, I have a different view. While injustice is real, the Christian persecution narrative is fundamentally false. America isn’t persecuting Christians; it’s living with the fallout of two consequential constitutional mistakes that distort our politics and damage our culture.

First, for most of American history, courts underenforced the establishment clause of the First Amendment. It wasn’t even held clearly applicable to the states until 1947. Americans lived under what my colleague Ross Douthat calls the “soft hegemony of American Protestantism.” It was “soft” in part because America never possessed a national church on par with European establishments, but it was certainly hard enough to mandate Bible readings and prayer in schools and to pass a host of explicitly anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that were intended to blunt Catholic influence in the United States.

This soft hegemony wasn’t constitutionally or culturally sustainable. Mandating Protestant Scripture readings is ultimately incompatible with a First Amendment that doesn’t permit the state to privilege any particular sect or denomination. Culturally, the process of diversification and secularization makes any specific religious hegemony impossible. There simply aren’t a sufficient number of Americans of any single faith tradition to dominate American life.

In the 1960s the Warren court began dismantling the soft Protestant establishment by blocking school prayer and Scripture reading. A series of cases limited the power of the state to express a religious point of view. But then state and local governments overcorrected. They overenforced the establishment clause and violated the free speech and free exercise clauses by taking aim at private religious expression.

The desire to disentangle church and state led to a search-and-destroy approach to religious expression in public institutions. Public schools and public colleges denied religious organizations equal access to public facilities. States and public colleges denied religious institutions equal access to public funds.

Conservative and liberal justices have created a different, sustainable equilibrium, but the religious liberty culture war rages on anyway — in part because millions of Americans don’t want to strike a balance. They actually prefer domination to accommodation. Many conservative evangelicals miss the old Protestant establishment, and they want it back. This is part of the impulse behind the recent Ten Commandments law in Louisiana, for example, or the recent effort in Oklahoma to establish a religious charter school, a public school run by the Catholic Church.

Combine these efforts at religious establishment with red-state legislation aimed at progressive and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, and one could fairly assert that Christians are persecuting their opponents.

But there’s more to it than that. There are secular Americans who do take aim at Christian expression and at Christian institutions. They don’t want separation of church and state so much as they seek regulation of the church by the state, to push the church into conformance with a secular political ideology.

French overstates the threat to Christianity

French argues that (i) injustice against Christians is real, (ii) states and public colleges deny religious institutions equal access to public funds, (iii) religious gatherings were more strictly controlled than places like grocery stores and restaurants, and (iv) people who want to keep the church separate from the state want to have government regulate the church. One can easily disagree with all of that. For (i), based on how he describes anti-Christian injustice, it is minor. How bad is it for a university to block a Christian speaker, a rare to nearly non-existent event, or how often is a Christian group denied a city contract, something that is also rare (and illegal)?

For (ii), one can argue that reasonable enforcement of the establishment clause demands that tax dollars be kept separate from religion. As it is now, religion already is greatly favored over most everything else in the tax code. Those tax breaks are worth tens of billions per year. 

For (iii), as far as being more strict with religious gatherings than secular ones during COVID, evidence of that is weak. Lots of complaining went on, but without much substance behind it.

For (iv), French falsely claims his cited court case is about the state regulating the church. That is false. That lawsuit is about keeping the church from openly discriminating against groups of people that religious elites hate in taxpayer-funded religious educational institutions.[1] As usual, the churches want to be free to discriminate against and oppress LGBQT students. Our tax dollars are being used to support cruel religious bigotry. 

Why should tax dollars be used by religious institutions to treat some people like crap? That is not a matter of state regulating church. It is a matter of the church being an asshole to people. In the lawsuit that French cites, the state protected the church's tax money and its freedom to discriminate against out-groups on religious freedom grounds. There is no way that can be construed as the state regulating the church. The opposite is closer to the mark.

French is right to assert that (1) the Christian persecution narrative rings hollow, and (2) the establishment clause has been underenforced. But his arguments about threats to Christianity are hyperbolic and not convincing. It is false to say that government wants to regulate the church and force it to conform to secular political ideology. 

If religious educational institutions want to discriminate against and abuse target individuals and groups, there should ne no taxpayer dollars supporting that kind of bad behavior. Not one tax penny should go to support cruelty and bigotry in the name of any God's infinite love and grace.

Q: Should tax dollars be used to support discrimination by any educational institution (religious or not) against any specific group of people on religious grounds? 

Footnote:

1. A summary of the lawsuit is this, and the LGBQT group's appeal is probably still pending:

Thirty-three students filed a class action complaint against the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon on March 29, 2021. The students challenged the Department’s alleged complicity in abuses perpetrated against LGBTQ+ students at taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities. The students sought to represent a class of “more than 100,000 LGBTQ+ students who attend taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities that openly discriminate against them in both policy and practice.” At the religious institutions, plaintiffs alleged being subjected to conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse and harassment, and other stigmatic harms. [That's Gods infinite love in plain sight] The students alleged that the Department of Education was wrongly using the religious exemption under Title IX to breach its obligation to protect students from abuse based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. The students brought a constitutional claim against the DOE under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating the Establishment Clause, Equal Protection and substantive due process. .... The case was assigned to District Judge Ann L. Aiken on March 30, 2021. (emphasis added)

Part of the lawsuit

here, the state defended the church,

not the other way around 

The LGBQT plaintiffs got shafted

Is that persecution of Christianity?

Some would probably argue it is