Christian Fear and Lust for Power

“Back in 2011, white evangelicals were the most likely group to say that personal morality was important in a president, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Since Mr Trump became the Republican standard-bearer, they have become the least likely group to say that, changing what seems like a fundamental issue of morality to accommodate their support for the president.”-- The Economist, June 2017

“How long will I be allowed to remain a Christian?” That was the deeply dismaying question posed to me by a friend with four young children as we discussed the plight of the Christian faith in America and around the world. With each passing month, that shocking question becomes more relevant and even more disturbing. .... Here in the United States, Christians and Christianity are mocked, belittled, smeared and attacked by some on a daily basis. This is a bigoted practice that is not only increasing exponentially, but is being encouraged and sanctioned by a number on the left. .... As more and more of the mainstream media, entertainment, academia and the hi-tech world continue to purge or discriminate against Christians, what future job fields will be open to young Christians? -- Fox News opinion piece, April 2018

“Trump’s an outsider, like the rest of us. We might not respect Trump, but we still love the guy for who he is. Is he a man of integrity? Absolutely not. Does he stand up for some of our moral Christian values? Yes.” .... “I’m not going to say he’s a Christian, but he just doesn’t attack us.” .... “Obama wanted to take my assault rifle, he wanted to take out all the high-capacity magazines. It just — felt like your freedoms kept getting taken from you.”  -- New York Times, Evangelical Trump supporters explaining their feelings and reasons for support

Polls indicate that about 80% of white Evangelicals will vote for the president in November. That is about the same level of support he got from that group in November of 2016. This group is absolutely necessary for his re-election. He is so important to them that they changed their moral beliefs. What white Evangelicals want is political power to make their fear go away.

An article in the New York Times, Christianity Will Have Power, discusses the reasons that white Evangelicals support the president. The main reason was fear in 2016, and it still is today. The article starts with a January 2016 speech at a small religious college in Iowa where the president promised the audience they would have power if they elected him. In his speech, the president promised power:

“I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it. And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have. Christianity will have power. If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”

The NYT writes:

“Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is. They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly. White straight married couples with children who go to church regularly are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be headed for extinction. And Mr. Trump offered to restore them to power, as though they have not been in power all along.”

In essence, rural people see the social changes and they do not like it. They do not like social changes including a long decline in church attendance, a high divorce rate, legalization of same-sex marriage and a false belief that for eight long, terrifying years, president Obama led a brutal attack on Christianity, religious freedom and white people generally. The Christians complain that people in urban areas do not understand them, their situation or their moral values, especially family values. They fear that children are not taught to attend church every week and that spells the end of Christian power. They complain that urban people look down on them and think of them as deplorable.

One Christian explained it like this: “I feel like on the coasts, in some of the cities and stuff, they look down on us in rural America. You know, we are a bunch of hicks, and don’t know anything. They don’t understand us the same way we don’t understand them. So we don’t want them telling us how to live our lives. You joke that we don’t get it, well, you don’t get it either. We are not speaking the same language.”

One woman commented: “The religious part is huge for us, as we see religious freedoms being taken away. If you don’t believe in homosexuality or something, you lose your business because of it. And that’s a core part of your faith. Whereas I see Trump as defending that. He’s actually made that executive order to put the Bibles back in the public schools. That is something very worrisome and dear to us, our religious freedom.”

It is hard to see how operating a business in commerce is a core part of belief or religious practice. Selling products or goods in commerce is not any form of endorsement of anyone or their sex status. But maybe that is just an atheist bias. Obviously, Christians see this as a devastating attack on their liberty. Also, in practice, very few businesses are lost because most states do not have laws that ban discrimination  in commerce on the basis of sex. In those states, there is no chance that a business owner can lose the business by refusing to serve LGBQ or same-sex couples. They want power to discriminate their pure little Christian hearts out while oppressing those they dislike.

What few or no Christians appear to see is that the power they want is the power to stop social, economic and demographic change through political force. They do not see that a majority of Americans do not want or accept their goals, including the power to discriminate against same-sex couples and the power to force women to bear children that they do not want. What nearly all Christians appear to not know is the history of religious discrimination and brutality that characterized their false view of an illusory Christian American Garden of Eden since colonial times. What most seem to want is a vision of rural America that was like it was in the 1950s through about the mid-1960s. They want minorities to go away. They want power and they are willing to be authoritarian to get it and to use it to control the unwilling. 

One Christian commented that they want Christian education for their children: “so we don’t have to have them indoctrinated with all these different things. We are free to teach them our values.” What most Christians apparently do not understand or care about is that others want to be free to teach their different values and lead their lives as they want. 

If Christian values means forcing other people to live differently from what they would choose, those Christian values are immoral. One person seemed to sense this: “It’s almost like it is a reverse intolerance. If you have somebody that’s maybe on the liberal side, they say that we are intolerant of them. But it is inverse intolerant if we can’t live out our faith.” The flaw in that reasoning is that Christians always could live out their faith as they wished. Christians have always overwhelmingly been in power in America. Abortion law never forced any woman to have a baby she did not want. Legalized same-sex marriage does not force anyone to worship in a church that accepts it or anything they find unacceptable. There is no significant attack on religious freedom.

All of this seems to be lost on almost all Christians. The propaganda and lies they have been fed has worked to create a great but false fear. That fear now opens the door to the death of democracy and civil liberties and the birth of an intolerant authoritarianism borne by a vulgar, immoral, mendacious demagogue and a corrupt choir called the GOP. This is what fear, rational or not, can lead some people to do.

An Amazing Social Science Experiment in Racism

The 51-minute video, "brown eye blue eye, Jane Elliott", describes a social science experiment on college student volunteers. The students didn't know what the experiment was going to be. If you can't stomach the whole thing or don't have the time, I highly recommend watching just the first 10:05. You can guess how this monster will play itself out once you understand the protocol and what it is intended to do.

This is shocking. I would never have guessed that this could be done on the basis of ethics or lack of informed consent today. I suspect this experiment would be illegal today. If it is a legal, recent experiment, that's amazing.

My thanks to tttbnr for bringing the brown eye blue eye, Jane Elliott video to my attention.

The experiment also appears in a Frontline broadcast. The broadcast shows this lesson in racism being taught to adults such as prison guards. It appears to me to be probably the single best way to get the point of what white privilege really means across to people (like me) who do not fully understand the reality of the concept.

Why are ‘Karens’ so angry?

 By Quentin Fottrell

Some people say memes of white women confronting Black people provide a handle on behaviors born of entitlement and privilege, while others point to misogyny and economic disenfranchisement. What’s behind their rage?

Sometimes they approach with a smile. Other times, it’s with the rage of angels.

About four months ago, Terence Fitzgerald, and his two sons, who are 5 and 3 years old, were on a weekend bike ride in his neighborhood, a quiet suburb in Southern California with picturesque houses situated amid generous lawns.

“My oldest loves nature and stopped all of a sudden,” Fitzgerald said. “It forced us all to hit the brakes because he was leading us on our little adventure. He saw a cardinal and wanted to show me. The bird sat on a branch on the edge of someone’s property.”

It was one of those occasions a parent remembers: an ordinary moment when he and his family got to escape the rat race, pause and take a breath to enjoy the simple gifts of nature and fleeting childhood. Blink and that 5-year-old will be 15. Blink again, he’ll be 25.

Alas, Fitzgerald remembers that day for another reason. “All of a sudden, a truck stopped. A white woman rolled down her window and said, ‘What’s going on here? What are you looking at?’ I felt this surge of anger rise within me,” he recalled.

Fitzgerald, a clinical associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California and the author of “Black Males and Racism: Improving the Schooling and Life Chances of African Americans,” said he was ready to use a tone of voice his children had never heard before. “But I looked at my boys and realized that I am their role model and knew I had to control myself,” he says.

“I simply said in the smartest-ass way possible, ‘A bird,’” he said. “I gave them the death stare and the husband said, ‘Well, all right then,’ as if he was giving me permission to continue on my day. He rolled up their window and drove on. This neighborhood is my neighborhood.”

For a moment, he wondered if he had made the wrong decision in moving there. “There are maybe two other families of color here,” Fitzgerald said. “I told my wife we should have never moved into a development with ‘Plantation’ in the name.”

This is an all-too-familiar story of a white person “policing” Black neighbors. “Karens” and “Kens” have been filmed on smartphones challenging people of color with increasing regularity: “Why are you in this building? Do you live here?” Or even, “You’re not allowed to sell lemonade on this street!”

Many say these videos, whether featuring Karens or Kens, shed light on racism and ongoing harassment of people of color by white people, sometimes even their neighbors. Meanwhile, some white feminists argue that the Karen video meme has gone too far, smacks of misogyny and aggressively shames women who are merely having a bad day.

Research suggests Black people are mistreated based on their race more than white people. Some 65% of Black adults say they’ve been in situations where people acted suspicious of them, compared to just 25% of white adults, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Karen phenomenon can be roughly split into two groups: white people who confront and question people of color, and white people who show antipathy or rage toward authority — retail and restaurant workers who ask them to abide by social-distancing rules and wear face masks, for example — or ask to see the manager.

A recent prominent example of the first category is Amy Cooper, who called the cops on May 25 — the same day George Floyd died in police custody, sparking Black Lives Matter protests — after Christian Cooper (no relation) asked her to put her dog on a leash in New York’s Central Park.

They are the neighborhood busybody who has a problem with their Black neighbors: Earlier this summer, Fareed Nassor Hayat and Norrinda Brown Hayat’s neighbor in Montclair, N.J., called the police demanding to see a permit because Hayat and her husband were building a patio in their backyard.

“This isn’t just an argument between neighbors when she’s using the power of the state. She’s calling on the power of the state to say, ‘Hey, I can have a knee on your neck if you don’t submit to me,’” Fareed Hayat said after the incident. Several white neighbors came to the couple’s defense, and the next day there was a protest in the neighborhood in support of the Hayats.

Some harassment runs the gamut from legal residency and ethnicity to sexuality. Earlier this month, this woman harassed a Latino gardener in California and, when he asked her to step back because she is not wearing a mask, she repeatedly said, “Can you show me your papers?” She called him “Mariposa,” Spanish slang for homosexual. He told her, “I’m Mexican! I’m Filipino! I’m Chinese! You’re funny. You made my day.”

The other group of Karens and Kens featured in these viral memes and videos gets upset in public places when the rules don’t bend to their will. However, such cases may also raise larger issues about mental health, substance abuse and/or stress as a result of the pandemic.

Some people in these videos charge store staff at the entrance, cough on patrons, or throw their baskets on the floor or groceries out of their cart. In one particularly bizarre case that could be attributed to stubbornness or something more serious, “Costco Karen” COST, -0.69% sat on the floor of a Costco in Hillsboro, Ore., after declining to wear a mask. “I’m an American. I have constitutional rights,” she said. After requesting to speak to the manager, she sat on the floor. A staff member politely asked her if she would like a chair.

White women also call other white women “Karen.” Take this recent trip to a hairdressers on Madison Avenue, as recounted by Gail, who asked to have her last name withheld. As she was paying her bill, Gail stood at the cash register next to a woman and her dog, who had been running around the salon without a leash. (The salon had a “No Dogs” sign outside.)

When asked to use her credit card, the woman refused to put it into the machine herself. “I couldn’t possibly do that! I have four assistants,” she said, according to Gail’s account. “My assistants do that for me.” The woman also complained about having to social distance and wear a mask. But Gail seemed excited tell the story. “Is she a Karen? I think I met a Karen!”

Racial animosity and economic disenfranchisement

While white women have been filmed for vehemently refusing to wear masks during the pandemic, Black men have even been targeted in stores for wearing them. In May, Kam Buckner, a member of the Illinois state legislature, was stopped by police after leaving a store while wearing a mask.

Buckner told a local news station: When it was clear he had bought the items in his possession, the uniformed officer in question told him, “People are using the coronavirus to do bad things. I couldn’t see your face, man. You looked like you were up to something.”

It was ironic, given the resistance among some white people to wearing face coverings. “I have been programmed to show as much of my face as possible and use certain cues to disarm anyone who might have a learned inclination to be suspicious of my very presence,” Buckner said.

“It is an indictment on the whole of society for creating a climate where this is normal and this is OK,” he added. “I can’t help but think of the dangers that are inherent for a number of Black men who are just adhering to the mask rule and, by doing so, look like they are ‘up to something.’”

In a paper published in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law last year, Chan Tov McNamarah documented a “legion” of white people calling the police on Black people “engaged in mundane activities” during the summer of 2018.

The article, “White Caller Crime: Racialized Police Communication and Existing While Black,” chronicles a litany of such instances ranging from sitting in Starbucks SBUX, +0.17% and playing golf to eating in university classrooms.

But explaining why a Karen or Ken questions Black people who are simply trying to go about their day is an attempt to rationalize the irrational, said Linda Clemons, the CEO of Sisterpreneur, an organization aimed at empowering female entrepreneurs.

“Children are not born that way,” she said. “It doesn’t come from their core being. It comes from someone who is racist or biased.” These divisions go back generations, she adds: “They are coming out of the woodwork. They were already there.”

Clemons says she tells white-women friends to use their voices to speak up against Karens, Kens and white supremacy: “Use your white privilege to form a human barrier.”

That has worked in the past, albeit fleetingly, and with mixed results. Black and white farmworkers fought side-by-side for better working conditions and pay in the 1930s, with the help of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, a federation of tenant farmers, to push for reform of the rights, and the working conditions and pay of sharecroppers and tenant farmers.

“Women played a critical role in its organization and administration,” according to the Central Arkansas Library System Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

But politics and government policies got in the way. Laws and practices in the former Confederate states — such as poll taxes, literacy tests and “grandfather clauses” — were introduced to prevent Black people from voting, creating a two-tiered system among the Black and white workers.

Clemons sees the current social climate in the broader historical context of Black workers being scapegoated for white Americans’ economic ills and personal misfortunes, after being exploited as free labor for generations. “The White House was built off [the labor of] slavery and [on] Native Americans’ stolen land,” she said.

White allies have always been there too — perhaps not in the numbers seen so publicly since the civil-rights protests of 1968, Clemons said. But the most recent Black Lives Matter protests spurred by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other unarmed Black people at the hands of police have galvanized a new generation of white allies, she added.

‘White people feel safer acting antisocially in public’

In the 21st-century U.S., a different set of economic and social fissures have emerged. President Donald Trump has long identified his white, blue-collar base as “the forgotten people,” those who feel they’ve been left behind. Globalization and technological advancement have hit manufacturing jobs in many of the pivotal states won by Trump in 2016.

“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” Trump said in his election-night victory speech. The president-elect may have been paying uncredited homage to a 1932 speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that vowed help for “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”

Given the resentments aired in Karen and Ken videos, they appear to be divided along political lines. FDR’s New Deal in 1933 provided federal support to African-Americans and, by the mid-1930s, most had cut historical ties with Republican Party.

Facing discriminatory labor laws and practices, they threw their support behind Roosevelt and joined with labor unions, farmers and progressives. FDR’s 1936 reelection in a landslide shifted the balance of power in the Democratic Party from its Southern bloc of white conservatives to a more diverse field.

The most recent spate of videos featuring white people confronting Black people for the most innocuous reasons — and seeing red when they’re asked to socially distance by a store employee — comes at another polarizing time in American life, as Black Lives Matter protests sweep the country.

Lillian Glass, a Los Angeles-based communications and body-language expert and author of “Toxic People: 10 Ways of Dealing With People Who Make Your Life Miserable,” says the rage displayed in these videos is displaced, and likely originates with a combination of multiple other personal and financial problems.

Furloughs, layoffs, the stress of lockdowns and the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement has left many Karens and Kens feeling insecure and threatened, Glass observes. “It’s like the perfect storm,” she said.

Fitzgerald, the USC social-work professor, contends fear fuels their fire: “People who have historically lived in a place of privilege and safety are being told a couple of jarring things that have shaken them to their core,” he said. “They are not safe. There is a new social-justice power pushing them to look in the mirror.”

“They are being told that the supposed fake media and the misguided liberals are to blame for the current state of social and economic turmoil,” he adds. “These in fact are the same people, along with people of color, who are challenging their long-held beliefs of white superiority.”

To Aram Sinnreich, an associate professor of communication at American University in Washington, D.C., “the more interesting dimension of this is the question of who is getting angry about masks.” Or put another way: Why are these people refusing to abide by store rules nearly always white?

“Let’s assume that almost everyone is feeling an unusual level of anxiety with a pandemic, record unemployment, political and social instability, and climate change,” Sinnreich said. “Why do some people feel empowered and entitled to act on this anxiety by publicly defying mask-wearing regulations?”

“White people in this country are less accustomed than people of color to having their public behavior subject to regulation, scrutiny and critique,” Sinnreich added. “That’s the purpose of whiteness, after all. So the enforcement of rules like this may come as more of a shock.”

It’s easier for some Americans than others to let loose, and break mandatory mask rules, he said. “White people feel safer acting antisocially in public because there is less of a pervasive threat of injury or death as a result, he said, whereas “a Black person can get killed for jogging or for opening their front door.”

A LONG READ - but for those interested in the rest of the article:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-are-karens-so-angry-2020-07-29

Trump Propaganda Marches Sideways on Health Care

The president's propaganda is increasingly transparent lies, bullshit and questionable legality. Multiple sources are reporting that he is signalling he wants to sign an executive order (EO) requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing health conditions. That requirement already exists under the Obamacare law, which the president and the GOP bitterly hate. Axios writes:

"The big picture: Even if this wasn’t already law, it’s unclear what authority the president has to unilaterally require insurers to cover pre-existing conditions. 

What he's saying: "Over the next two weeks I'll be pursuing a major executive order requiring health insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions for all customers," the president said."

Such an order might be illegal because it is not clear that a president has legal authority to order this. That the law already requires this may or may not make any difference to the legality of the EO.

It is beyond bizarre that the president had tried to get rid of the requirement to cover pre-existing health conditions. Now he lies to the public yet again by saying no such law law exists. The Hill writes:

"Trump claimed such a move "has never been done before," though insurance companies are already required to cover patients with preexisting conditions under the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted in 2010.

Despite Trump's insistence he will protect those with preexisting conditions, the Justice Department argued in a Supreme Court briefing in late June that the entire Affordable Care Act should be invalidated."  

That the president believes we are stupid enough to believe this ploy to do something that people like is a blatant insult. Why millions of people continue to support this corrupt, incompetent, chronic liar is beyond reason. It reflects raw tribalism and the shocking degree of blindness to reality that it can lead millions of people into falsely seeing.

Push back Against Trump Intensifies

This is from an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer yesterday. Cramer interviewed Nancy Pelosi.

Jim Cramer: I like your spirit of being more upbeat, more optimistic, so I will offer this: Why can’t you go across the aisle and say, ‘Representative Lewis, civil rights legend, would have loved it if we could do something for the totally disenfranchised in this country. No matter what, can we give a huge chunk of money to the people who are disenfranchised, to minorities who want so badly to stay in business and can’t and to people who are trying to go to college or have student loans who are minorities who are the most affected because they had the least chance in our country?’ That’s got to be something both sides can agree to. 

Speaker Pelosi: Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn for what you just described. 

Jim Cramer: Ooh, jeez. 

Speaker Pelosi: Yeah. That’s the problem. See, the thing is, they don’t believe in governance. They don’t believe in governance, and that requires some acts of government to do that. . . . And basically, economists tell us, spend the money, invest the money for those who need it the most, because they will spend it. It will be a stimulus or at least a stabilization of — and that’s a good thing. Consumer confidence is a good thing for the economy. You know that better than anyone.

Yeah, ooh, jeez. At least some democrats are finally sharpening their rhetoric and getting to the point. The GOP no longer believes in governance. They believe in exercising power in a non-compromising, authoritarian way. They just won't compromise. The GOP is the party of HELL NO!! To hard core GOP ideologues, compromise is generally seen as treason, unlike the president's treason. That is generally seen by the GOP as patriotic.

Some context

As an update on my travels through radical right bastions such as Breitbart and Town Hall[1], the common hard core pro-Trump view is that democrats never compromise. That is cited to explain why Pelosi and democrats in congress have not compromised with the limited GOP offers so far about new coronavirus relief legislation. Compromise is in the beholder's or tribe's eye. Or the website owner's eye. What the GOP sees as compromise, the dems see as nothing of significance, and vice versa. The two sides are far apart and so far the gap cannot be bridged. The rhetoric from the radical right is super ugly. The Washington Post commented:

Meanwhile in Ohio, President Trump used an official White House visit as a forum to attack presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The former vice president, Trump proclaimed, would “take away your guns, take away your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything.” Revealing his own lack of faith and decency, Trump added that Biden would “hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy.”

Maybe political pressure from the public will nudge a meaningful GOP compromise on coronavirus into existence. Maybe not. Regardless, if what we are hearing now is a reasonable indication, the president is probably not going to touch base with reality in his lunatic attacks on Biden.


Footnote:
1. I'm hanging on by a thread at Town Hall. The people who run that extremist right site are on to me. They are now blocking most of my comments as spam. I can still get some short comments past them, but I cannot edit my comments without the edited version being blocked. I'm still not banned or shadow banned, but I expect that is coming pretty soon. Also, I get lots of down votes and maybe that will do me in. Apparently, at least some folks there hate my guts for trying to be honest and fact-based. They really dislike inconvenient truths and reasoning.

TRUMPISM and YOUR LIFE

 GLOOM and DOOM

That is lately what I have been reading, when the subject of Trump comes up.

HE will not accept a loss if he loses the election in Nov. and if forced out may urge his followers to revolt.

IF he does win, he will create a Nazi-like regime in the U.S.

REALLY?

Without naming names I even know a few people on these forums who have said they are getting depressed over what might happen.

ME?

Well, I am more even-keeled, some would say not concerned "enough", or that I am too optimistic or see the world through rose-colored glasses.

BUT I UNDERSTAND we all internalize the world around us and react differently to stimuli, and no doubt about it:

TRUMP CAN STIMULATE!

I feel things could get a lot worse if Trump wins again, but am less likely to believe there will be another Civil War if he loses.

As for HOW BAD - no, we will not end up with another Fascist regime. We will have more protests, more riots, more mudslinging, more angst, more partisanship, our climate will decline, we will lose more respect in the world, we will bicker more with our neighbors who view the world differently than we do.

BUT brownshirts? NAH, won't happen. My life will be more or less the same as it is now, I will have my family and friends, my comfortable life, and despite Trump, weed will become more universally legal, more people will invest in solar panels and electric cars, and we will still have freedom of expression.

WE MIGHT have to adjust our travel plans though, I would be loathe to vacation in any Red state that encourages gun ownership, and I would probably be VERY upset were I female with Red states attacks on abortion rights, and we may lose Obamacare, which would be the death knell for Republicans if our health care costs go through the roof, which they will.

BUT what about YOU?

Do you really believe the world will end if Trump loses or is re-elected? IS IT really enough of a concern to keep you up at night? DOES all things Trump distract you from the joys of life?

NO VALUE JUDGMENT HERE: we are all wired differently, not everyone can be a SNOWFLAKE, but the question is a serious one:

HOW MUCH DOES TRUMPISM EFFECT YOUR LIFE? YOUR PEACE OF MIND? YOUR OUTLOOK?