Democracy is in deadly imminent peril

This 8 minute video is the most spot on, accurate description I am aware of about what we are facing in the 2022 elections. 

Aside from some of the jokes, none of that is hyperbole. All of it is truth.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Susan for bringing this video to my attention.

From the too little, too late files

The Texas Observer writes:

CHRISTIANS MUST PUBLICLY DENOUNCE

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

A former pastor explains why more churchgoers must condemn the bigotry of Donald Trump and his supporters in order to save democracy.

My husband and I expected to be pastors until we retired, but the Christian nationalism embraced by some church members has caused us to give up on that idea.

From 2017 to 2020, we were co-pastors of a church in Amarillo. Members knew that we did not share the positive opinion of former President Donald Trump that many of them had, but we rarely discussed our political views. We left that church before the 2020 election, planning to continue our careers as pastors elsewhere.

We have since realized we cannot do that. Serving as pastors now seems incompatible with God’s call to preach and live according to the teachings of Jesus. We know that other congregations, especially in red states like Texas, are likely to include MAGA Republicans who don’t want to hear that their bigoted views go against everything Jesus taught and modeled. They can’t accept that politicians they support, like Donald Trump and Governor Greg Abbott, are endangering lives and ignoring Jesus’ call to help “the least of these.”

My husband experienced this firsthand when he led worship at a rural Texas congregation on June 19, 2022. The person reading the prayers provided by the national church left out one that recognized the Juneteenth holiday and condemned white supremacy. During his interview with the church council after worship, he asked why that prayer had been omitted. He was told that similar prayers at previous services had caused one man to walk out and say he wouldn’t be back and several others to complain. When he said he found that troubling and did not think white supremacy was part of God’s kingdom, the council president looked straight at him and said, “I disagree.”  

As you’ll see below, many Texas Christians recognize the danger Christian nationalism poses and are publicly expressing their opposition to it. Even so, far more Christians in Texas and elsewhere need to denounce Christian nationalism. The silence of those who know better not only contradicts the teachings of Jesus, but also legitimizes the cruel policies, threats, and violence.  

The term “Christian nationalism” means different things to different people. That makes it easier for political and religious leaders to falsely claim this dangerous ideology will make our country better. I am using Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry’s definition from Taking America Back For God. They spent five years analyzing data and conducting interviews about Christian nationalism in the United States, and they define the term as follows:

“Christian nationalism is a cultural framework—a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems—that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civil life.”

They emphasize that “Christianity” here means something other than its usual definition. It is not simply a religion whose adherents worship Jesus as Lord.  

Whitehead and Perry continue,“It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious.”

Even in supposedly progressive denominations like the one my husband and I belong to, there are people who embrace Christian nationalism and believe the United States needs to be reclaimed as a Christian nation. What used to be the private prejudices of some church members are now painfully obvious. Even worse, they believe God shares their bigoted views and wants everyone to be forced to live by them. State officials like Abbott seem to agree.

Those warnings speak for themselves. I’ve got nothing to add.

Biden’s accomplishments despite rigid Republican opposition

The NYT posted these charts today about what Biden wanted and what he got:

Proposed - $4.4 trillion

Got passed into law - $1.5 trillion

Bipartisan vs. Democrats alone

Notice how Republicans and conservative Democrats opposed and blocked most or all money for most family friendly things like child care, pre-K education, family health, and job training. It is a miracle anything was passed for climate change.

Obviously, the GOP is anti-family, anti-environment, anti-government and anti-worker. So is conservatism in general, Democratic and Republican.

HELP!

I keep hearing over and over how the Democrats don’t know how to message effectively. I personally can hear their messages loud and clear, but evidently, I’m in the minority.

The Democratic messages I see are: the continuing problem of wealth inequality; serious environmental concerns; heretofore freedoms being eroded (e.g., of pro-choice, voting access, religious impositions); the fair/commensurate taxing of those behemoths who pay zero in taxes; government funded higher education to lift all boats, like in other societal-learning European countries; affordable quality healthcare for all, not just the already wealthy and/or well-connected... I could go on.  But all in all, I’d call them positive constructive-type messages. Call me crazy.  This is what the Democratic Party currently stands for, to my knowledge. 

Now, to me, a biased Dem, those things seem like no-brainers.  They are conditions that, I would say, most regular, everyday people would be in favor of.

OTOH, the messages I see from the Republican side of the aisle are: let’s start with the Big Lie, a denial of/refusal to accept the 2020 election results in spite of 60+ court rulings, recounts, and audits verifying it; unregulated (running amok) capitalism; the favoring of getting rid of, or phasing out, the social safety nets such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (and/or privatizing them for profit); climate change being a science hoax/scare and nothing to worry about; unaddressed (by their leaders) political violence and intimidation; “the other” is the enemy… I could go on.  But all in all, I’d call them negative destructive-type messages.  Call me crazy.  This is what the Republican Party currently stands for, to my knowledge. 

So, where are the Democrats going wrong with their supposed positive messaging to the masses?  What do the Republicans have that makes their negative messaging so much better/more effective?

Is it that negativity sells, and the Dems don’t get that?  Is it the Republican “me” over “we” mindset that’s the most important (a Republican “vote clincher”)?  Here’s a thought. Maybe the problem with the Democratic messaging is that their messages are not delivered with “attitude.”  Nowadays, attitude is everything. If you don’t have attitude, you’re considered boring, dull, no zip in your steps, no pizzazz. That can translate into loss of votes in a country where attitude, with all its glitz and glamour, are seemingly revered.

So, what’s the magic ingredient that the Democrats are politically missing?  Is it a lack of negativity?  Is it a lack of attitude?  Is it not enough “me” and way too much “we” nonsense?  Not enough urgency and panic in their voices?  Other?

Help me out here.  I know we’ve had this conversation before but tell me again what’s missing from the Democratic messaging, because it’s just not sinking in.  Am I the problem because I can see the bigger forest but not the dastardly trees that make it up?  What gives?? 🤷‍♀️ 

It's raining lawsuits! ☂️

Trump sues NY attorney general

The BBC writes:

Trump sues NY Attorney General Letitia James for 'intimidation'

Donald Trump has sued New York Attorney General Letitia James, accusing her of conducting a "war of intimidation and harassment" against him.

It follows a lawsuit that Ms James launched against Mr Trump and three of his children last September, accusing them of fraud committed over a decade.

"We sued Donald Trump because he committed extensive financial fraud," the statement said. "That fact hasn't changed, and neither will our resolve to ensure that no matter how powerful or political one might be, no one is above the law."

Mr Trump's lawsuit is the latest twist in a long-running feud between Mr Trump and Ms James, who - on the night she was elected in 2018 - vowed to shine "a bright light" on his real estate dealings.

Mr Trump, for his part, has accused her of conducting a "witch hunt" and branded Ms James - the first black woman to be New York's attorney general - a "racist".

Ms James made a gigantic mistake by saying that Trump committed extensive financial fraud. She should have said there is solid evidence that Trump committed extensive financial fraud. Oh well. Now Trump can file a motion to get her off the case for saying that.

Doctor sues Indiana attorney general

CBS News writes:

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio, is suing Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, alleging he has relied on "baseless" consumer complaints to launch "overbroad" investigations into physicians who provide abortion care, and issued subpoenas seeking the confidential medical records of their patients.  

The lawsuit, filed by lawyer Kathleen DeLaney on behalf of Bernard and her medical partner Dr. Amy Caldwell in Indiana Commercial Court in Marion County, claims Rokita opened investigations into seven consumer complaints filed against Bernard after she came under scrutiny for performing the medication-induced abortion on June 30, days after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade.

Parents sue police

ABC News writes:

The parents of Gabby Petito have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the police department in Moab, Utah, where the slain travel blogger and her boyfriend Brian Laundrie were questioned about a possible domestic dispute weeks before she was reported missing.

The lawsuit, which was initially announced in August in a notice of claim before being filed Thursday, is seeking at least $50 million in damages.

"We feel the need to bring justice because she could have been protected that day," Petito's mother, Nichole Schmidt, said during a press conference Thursday. "There are laws put in place to protect victims, and those laws were not followed. And we don't want this to happen to anybody else."

The suit alleges that if the Moab police had followed a Utah law on domestic violence, "Gabby would still be alive today," James McConkie, one of the attorneys representing the family, said during the briefing.

Twitter employees sue Musk

Axios writes:

Twitter was sued on Thursday over Elon Musk's plan to cut as many as 3,700 jobs at the company.

Driving the news: The class-action lawsuit, filed by five current or former employees, alleges that Twitter violated federal and state laws that require at least 60-day notice of a mass layoff.

Federal judge would like to sue the Supreme Court?

This one is a total hoot! In a burst of both frustration and refreshing sanity, a federal judge rhetorically spit in the Supreme Court’s face. MSN writes:

In his Bruen decision last June, Justice Clarence Thomas ordered courts to assess the constitutionality of modern-day gun restrictions by searching for “historical analogues” from 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified. Ever since, judges have struggled mightily with this task—in part because most have no training in real historical analysis, but also because the record is often spotty and contradictory. In light of Bruen’s maximalist language, they have erred on the side of gun owners, finding a constitutional right to buy a gun while under indictment for a violent crime, to carry a gun into airports, and to scratch out the serial number on a firearm, rendering it untraceable.

Last Thursday, Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Mississippi charted a different course: He proposed appointing a historian to help him “identify and sift through authoritative sources on founding-era firearms restrictions” to decide the constitutionality of a federal law barring felons from possessing firearms. His proposal is the first positive development in Second Amendment law since the Bruen revolution. At worst, it will demonstrate the absurdity and impossibility of Thomas’ command. At best, it will restore sanity to an area of jurisprudence that is going completely off the rails.

Reeves’ order is bracingly honest about the sorry state of Second Amendment jurisprudence today. “The justices of the Supreme Court, distinguished as they may be, are not trained historians,” he wrote. Federal judges “lack both the methodological and substantive knowledge that historians possess. The sifting of evidence that judges perform is different than the sifting of sources and methodologies that historians perform. And we are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791.” Putting oneself in the mindset of a rich, white men in the 18th century requiring training and practice. “Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.”

To illustrate his point, Reeves wrote that while historians still fiercely contest the theory of an individual right to bear arms, that right remains the law. He quoted the academic Patrick J. Charles, who wrote that advocates of this theory “broke, and continue to break, virtually every norm of historical objectivity and methodology accepted within academia.” Charles’ complaint could be applied to a huge amount of pseudo-originalist legal theory. As he explained: “Minority viewpoints are cast as majority viewpoints. Historical speakers’ and writers’ words are cast in terms outside the bounds of their intended context or audience. The intellectual and political thoughts of different historical eras are explained from modern vantage point. Historical presumptions or inferences are sold as historical facts.”

By appointing a trained historian, Reeves could avoid these pitfalls. He would, indeed, stand a better chance of lighting upon the truth. Even as it may be mandated by Thomas’ Bruen opinion, any such undertaking remains fundamentally misguided: Renowned historian Eric Foner recently dismissed the “foolish” belief that the Constitution has “one original meaning,” since it always meant “different things to a lot of different people” who were involved in its ratification. But a historian will at least get closer to a plausible interpretation than Thomas. And if the whole undertaking fails to produce a good answer, it will have demonstrated the absurdity of defining rights on the basis of history alone.

It warms my little heart to see so much work going to the lawyers. And now maybe some will go to historians too! Lawyers and historians need work so they can make money to pay for groceries.

A corollary is that lots of people will be packing heat (carrying a gun(s)). It will be just like 1791 all over again! MAGA!!

News digest: Free speech, etc.

Free speech under attack

The Verge writes:

Virtually every American politician professes to love the First Amendment. Many of them profess to hate another law: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But the more they say about 230, the clearer it becomes that they actually hate the First Amendment and think Section 230 is just fine.

The heart of Section 230 is famously just 26 words: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.  

Threatening to repeal 230 is a shakedown racket, a way for lawmakers to quietly put their thumb on the scale — a back door to imposing government speech regulations.  

The thing is, these complaints get a big thing right: in an era of unprecedented mass communication, it’s easier than ever to hurt people with illegal and legal speech. But the issue is far bigger and more complicated than encouraging more people to sue Facebook — because, in fact, the legal system has become part of the problem. 

The legal system wasn’t built for bad faith at scale. The First Amendment doesn’t work if the legal system doesn’t work. Republican-proposed speech reforms are ludicrously, bizarrely bad. The rules are transparently rigged to punish political targets at the expense of basic consistency.

In other words: 

• Our legal system cannot handle all the bad faith that has completely taken over the rhetoric of America’s fascist radical right and is now starting to poison the left
• There is not yet equivalence between America’s fascist radical right and the left, but the gap is probably narrowing

Section 230 shields web hosts from liability for illegal speech that a third party posts or reposts. The problem is that the scope of illegal speech is so narrow that online hate speech, blatant lies, crackpot conspiracy theories, harassment and etc., are not illegal. 

What some anti-free speech politicians want to do is repeal the Sec. 230 shield for certain kinds of online disinformation, e.g., lies about COVID vaccines killing many people or being ineffective. Republicans want that to apply to giant social media sites, while leaving small radical right crackpot sites untouched and free to spew lies, slanders,[1] disinformation, etc.

Republican plans for domestic spending once 

they are back in power 

The NYT writes:

Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs.

.... several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden. Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage. The ideas are being floated as a way to narrow government spending on programs that are set to consume a growing share of the federal budget in the decades ahead.

Of course radical right Republicans are not saying exactly what they would do before the elections next week. Only after they are in power will we find out what fun plans they have to screw us. Once back in power, the radical right will continue its relentless assault on government’s ability to protect citizens from enraged Christian fundamentalists, ruthless brass knuckles capitalists and power mad, fascist Republican Party elites.

From the too little, too late files: 

Biden feebly tries to defend democracy

The NYT writes: 

President Biden issued an impassioned condemnation of his predecessor and other Republicans on Wednesday night for encouraging political violence, voter intimidation and “the Big Lie,” framing next week’s elections as a pivotal test of American democracy.

“As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America — for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state — who won’t commit, they will not commit to accepting the results of the elections that they’re running in,” Mr. Biden said at Union Station, just blocks from where a mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the transfer of power. “This is the path to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it’s un-American.”

No Joe, it is not a path to chaos and so far it has not been illegal, except for the Republican’s 1/6 coup attempt. It is a path to things like Christian Sharia law under a brutal, enraged Christian Taliban, ruthless, unregulated brass knuckles capitalist kleptocracy and American-style fascism served up by Republican Party grifter elites. That is the path we are on right now.

In my humble opinion, Joe still doesn’t get it. Regardless, it’s probably too late for Joe’s speech to make much difference in the elections next week. 

Hear that hammering sound? It is nails starting to be pounded into the coffin of democracy, civil liberties, secularism, respect for fact and truth, and the rule of law.

Footnote: 

1. When I use slanders in this context, which I do a lot now, I do not mean slander in the sense of what is needed to win a defamation case in court. That is usually impossible or almost impossible to do. What I mean is defamatory insults that are rarely prosecuted. An current example is the lies America’s fascist radical right put out that Paul Pelosi (Nancy's husband) had hired a male prostitute, wound up in a drunken fight with him, and got hit in the head with a hammer. Those lies are obviously insulting to Paul. But they’re the kind of insults that rarely go to court, and rarely lead to a finding of defamation for the few lawsuits that are filed.

Climate change non-education

An effective way to keep people from opposing or supporting something that elites want or don’t want is to keep the public as ignorant, deceived, disinformed, confused and/or distracted as much as possible. A great way to foster ignorance and disinformation is to simply not teach subjects that elites want the public to remain ignorant and disinformed about. The NYT writes:

Many States Omit Climate Education. These Teachers Are Trying to Slip It In.

Around the United States, middle school science standards have minimal references to climate change and teachers on average spend just a few hours a year teaching it.

In mid-October, just two weeks after Hurricane Ian struck her state, Bertha Vazquez asked her class of seventh graders to go online and search for information about climate change. Specifically, she tasked them to find sites that cast doubt on its human causes and who paid for them.

It was a sophisticated exercise for the 12-year-olds, Ms. Vazquez said, teaching them to discern climate facts from a mass of online disinformation. But she also thought it an important capstone to the end of two weeks she dedicates to teaching her Miami students about climate change, possible solutions and the barriers to progress.

.... in Florida, where Ms. Vazquez has taught for more than 30 years, and where her students are already seeing the dramatic impacts of a warming planet, the words “climate change” do not appear in the state’s middle or elementary school education standards.

“Middle school is where these kids are starting to get their moral compass and to back that compass up with logic,” said Michael Padilla, a professor emeritus at Clemson University and a former president of the National Science Teachers Association. “So middle school is a classic opportunity to have more focus on climate change.”

For those who do receive formal instruction on climate change, it will most likely happen in middle school science classrooms. But many middle school standards don’t explicitly mention climate change, so it falls largely on teachers and individual school districts to find ways to integrate it into lessons, often working against the dual hurdles of limited time and inadequate support.

Ms. Vazquez really went out on a limb to admit she teaches climate change in Florida, which politically is anti-climate change science. She has moral courage, but maybe not a job for much longer. A way to fire her will probably be found soon. And, radical right Republican climate science deniers like Rick DeSantis will look into ways to get laws passed in Florida to stop the teaching about climate change and science. DeSantis will attack it as socialist lies, groomer indoctrination and whatever other crackpottery seems good enough to keep the base angry, fearful, distracted, deceived and ignorant.

An ignorant public is a much more gullible and deceivable public than a well-informed public. The Republican Party understands this. That underpins ruthless Republican efforts to maintain ignorance and deceit about climate change.