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Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts
Sunday
Saturday
Has the great ‘American dream’ run its course?
CC™ Politico
By Muyiwa Adetiba
Decades ago, I had a colleague who later became a brother. He studied in the US and was besotted with the country. He often talked about life in the US in a way that tickled my curiosity and heightened my expectations. He talked about its system and its advanced technology.
Being young, I was interested by his narratives on the night life and his escapades with women. But mostly, he talked about America as the land of opportunities. He called America ‘ilu orun’. My reading of the words at the time, which might not be the literal translation, was ‘heavenly’. His constant renditions coincided with the era of Hollywood and its colourful portraits of America.
We watched the ‘cowboy’ films and fell in love with the swagger of the cowboy as one man battled ten ‘Red Indians’ to a standstill without feeling any empathy for the Red Indians who were being disposed of their land; we watched films of valour and freedom and films of romance. All of these made strong impressions on my young mind and I longed to see the US for myself.
It could be the timing – New York in winter; it could the company – I was with a fellow traveler; it could be that I was no longer a wide-eyed, neophyte traveler – I had by then, been to a few countries; or it could simply be an over expectation, but my first impression of the US was not that of ‘ilu orun’ (heavenly). In fact, subsequent visits gave more favourable impressions. But I remember traveling through Manhattan in the cold and thinking I had never seen so many high rise buildings in one place. I remember a city bubbling with life with attractive neon lights on my way to dinner. And oh yes, I remember my first visit to the Playboy Club and the seductive Bunnies. Those were some of the memories of my first visit to the US.
The US in the 60s, 70s and 80s was a shining country on a hill. Everybody saw it. Everybody admired it. Everybody wanted to emulate it. And almost everybody wanted to go there, if only for a visit. The US that was projected to the world was of democracy, the rule of law, and free enterprise. But more than that, the US projected human freedom and equality. A country of immigrants, it was a country where the first generation of immigrants felt the same sense of ownership as the fourth generation.
It also didn’t matter if your surname sounded Greek or Chinese or Italian; if your passport was American, then you were all supposed to have the same rights and entitlements. It was a melting pot of ideas and cultures with none seemingly more important than the other. From desert to swamp; from hot to cold; from oil to gold; it was a country that claimed to have everything.
It was God’s own country. It was on the cards that it would be the richest country in the world. It was inevitable that it would be the world’s first Superpower. It was a natural progression that it would become the world’s moral compass and eventually the Police Officer of the world, admonishing abusive governments which fell short of democratic or acceptable moral standards. For years, it used this enormous power so cleverly, so benignly, that it got away with many things even when it was protecting its own geo/political interests.
History tells us the US was originally home to the Red Indians. But it was such a vast, richly endowed country that it was soon home to people all over the world who wanted a better life and were not afraid of starting afresh. Its freedom was hard fought. History tells us of the war against its colonial master, against itself and against racism. The US acquitted itself on many fronts and emerged as a country where a child of a nobody could become a captain of industry, where a child of an immigrant could become the President or the Vice President, where an immigrant could become the wife of a President or the richest man in the world among many coveted positions.
It was called the Great American Dream and for years, held true to its promise. This promise was that America would give you a chance irrespective of what your background was. This promise was that if you were ready to keep your head down, your hands dirty and your nose clean, there would be a reward of a better life at the turn of the corner. This immigration flow has been America’s strength. It rejuvenates it. It gives it fresh oxygen, fresh ideas and fresh energy. At the time when Europe was aging and frankly decaying, America kept renewing itself. It has for years been the bastion of capitalism, rewarding enterprise and promoting trade without barriers – or tariff which is the new buzz word.
All of these are about to change drastically due to internal contradictions and demographic fears. Some of these fears are understandable. They could be primordial but natural fears of being overwhelmed and displaced. I mean, they almost had two Black Presidents in one decade which to the ‘owners’ was unthinkable. (It is now very convenient not to remember that America once belonged to a people who were not white.) So the fear that the current Lords of the Manor could easily be sidelined is real to them. But clamming down on immigrants could end up being an unenlightened self-interest. If America loses its ‘Great American Dream’, it will not only lose its allure and its cheap labour, it will lose its cutting edge. Trump with its isolationism might be what the White Americans want but is it what they need? Trade protectionism might be what they yearn for but would it really make their products competitive?
They might be romanticizing Trump as a strongman, but can they abide with a dictator? Speaking of dictators, am I the only one who sees a parallel between Trump, a descendant of a German and Hitler, the German who caused a World War? There is the same need to be loved and admired; the same feeling of grandeur, the same desire for racial purity bordering on xenophobia; the same disdain for checks and balances; the same thirst for territorial ambition. The perplexed world might find Trump’s stated desire to annex Panama, Greenland, Columbia, Canada and now Gaza as mere rhetoric. I hope it stays as rhetoric. Otherwise, it is a World War loading. Heaven help us all.
NEWSWIRE
Friday
Unchristian Trump unveils ‘anti-Christian bias’ Task Force
US President Donald Trump announced Thursday the creation of a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in government, intensifying a right-wing crackdown since returning to power.
The Republican billionaire said he was putting new Attorney General Pam Bondi at the head of the force to end “persecution” of the majority religion of the United States.
Trump said its mission would be to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination” in the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and other government agencies.
He also said it would prosecute “anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society.”
“We will protect Christians in our schools, in our military and our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares,” Trump told a national prayer breakfast at a Washington hotel.
He also announced the creation of a “White House faith office” led by his spiritual advisor, the televangelist Paula White.
The announcements came amid a wider purge of the federal government at the start of Trump’s second term.
Trump has unveiled a slew of orders backing a conservative agenda, including several targeting diversity programs and transgender people.
Despite a criminal conviction for hush money payments in a porn star scandal and sexual assault allegations, Trump has long made himself a champion of right-wing Christians.
Trump’s cabinet contains several members with links to Christian nationalists, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
And while Trump is not seen as particularly religious, he said he had become more so after surviving an assassination attempt at an election rally in June 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“It changed something in me, I feel even stronger. I believed in God, but I feel much more strongly about it,” Trump told a separate prayer breakfast at the US Capitol on Thursday.
“We have to bring religion back.”
Trump said in his inauguration speech on January 20, referring to the assassination attempt, that he had been “saved by God to Make America Great Again.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday
Wednesday
Friday
Thursday
Flashback: The GOP and the dearth of true conservatives
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| Reagan takes oath of office |
--- Boyejo A. Coker
This piece was written (ahead of the 2012 U.S. general elections) as a sequel to a preceding piece titled "Whither the GOP and true conservatism." Both pieces served to profess a prelude to the emergence of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump on opposite sides of the political spectrum. The article continues below.....
In an article I wrote a few years ago, I touched on the debilitating frailties of the GOP as presently constituted and how they may have led to the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.
As we get into the decisive months of presidential politics in the U.S. general elections, one sees the same pattern beginning to unfold once again, as the GOP-led Congress (at least on the House side) would much rather play side-bar politics, that could ultimately re-energize the left to turn out in solidarity of what most observers perceive to be an under-performing president.
There is no question that the president is vulnerable and worse-still is the fact that he seems unsure of what he needs to do, in order to get the economy moving again.
For independent voters (they hold the "swing votes" in key elections), the two choices for the White House would seem to be a replay of 2008 all over again.
Then, most independents seemed to initially lean towards John McCain, as they respected his service to country as well as his penchant for reaching across the aisle, to get the business of the nation done, when it was absolutely necessary.
The fringe right of the GOP was however cool to the McCain candidacy and they eventually forced his hand into choosing someone that many felt became a liability to both his candidacy as well as the poignant message true conservatives were trying to send to the American people.
Key political watchers would argue that true conservatives never warmed up to Sarah Palin the minute they realized there was nothing behind the looks or between the ears.
For all the so-called Tea Party would like most Americans to believe, conservatism is not defined by a resentment for a sterling educational pedigree or impeccable intellectual acumen. Rather than see those with the preceding qualities as snubs, a true conservative views the composite as an invaluable asset; one that typifies a sense of ambition, responsibility and ultimately speaks to the crux of the conservative message of a commitment to excellence.
The reality is that this president is way in over his head, but the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives has consistently giving him a way out by stalling and styming his feckless efforts aimed at "reviving" the American economy.
And when they are not styming the president's "well intended efforts" they are busy issuing subpoenas to the Attorney General of the United States for a program that was actually started under a Republican president; it was then called Operation Wide Receiver and it was the first known ATF "gunwalking" operation to the Mexican drug cartels, beginning in early 2006 (under the Bush White House) and ran till late 2007.
Not to digress onto this matter, but what makes the Darrell Issa-led over-reach even more laughable and at best mis-directed, is the fact that under the Bush administration, there were no known reviews by either the DOJ or the Congress at the time. In fact, it was not until Barack Obama took office in 2009, that the Eric Holder-led DOJ started an intensive review into Operation Wide Receiver, with arrests and indictments subsequently made, as a result of the investigations.
Rather than focus on the key issues that continue to affect the generality of the American people, the ECONOMY, ECONOMY and the ECONOMY, key GOP leadership and their surrogates, would much rather play divisive politics and once again, give a much needed opening and life-line to a struggling presidency.
True conservatives are not blinded by their parochial and ideological idiosyncrasies, but are instead committed to espousing the true values and ideals of transparency, accountability and responsible governance; doing so with dignity and firmness, as well as a sense of cordiality that belies their resolve and determination.
The message of individual responsibility, self-determination, personal discipline and accountability must not be lost in the abyss of incendiary vituperations laced with jingoistic redundancies.
The American people deserve much better this time around, than a default presidency as that may ultimately lead to a couple of plausible scenarios that could eventually obtain here. The first is that Barack Obama's "third term" is ensured (4 years from now) by the lack of purpose and direction currently being exhibited by the core GOP establishment. The other scenario is that an anti-establishment candidate may arise out of the ashes of the impending GOP establishment's implosion. That person would then become an unlikely but much welcome voice (to the far right) of parochial irredentism that may change the political landscape of the United States forever.
In an article I wrote a few years ago, I touched on the debilitating frailties of the GOP as presently constituted and how they may have led to the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.
As we get into the decisive months of presidential politics in the U.S. general elections, one sees the same pattern beginning to unfold once again, as the GOP-led Congress (at least on the House side) would much rather play side-bar politics, that could ultimately re-energize the left to turn out in solidarity of what most observers perceive to be an under-performing president.
There is no question that the president is vulnerable and worse-still is the fact that he seems unsure of what he needs to do, in order to get the economy moving again.
For independent voters (they hold the "swing votes" in key elections), the two choices for the White House would seem to be a replay of 2008 all over again.
Then, most independents seemed to initially lean towards John McCain, as they respected his service to country as well as his penchant for reaching across the aisle, to get the business of the nation done, when it was absolutely necessary.
The fringe right of the GOP was however cool to the McCain candidacy and they eventually forced his hand into choosing someone that many felt became a liability to both his candidacy as well as the poignant message true conservatives were trying to send to the American people.
Key political watchers would argue that true conservatives never warmed up to Sarah Palin the minute they realized there was nothing behind the looks or between the ears.
For all the so-called Tea Party would like most Americans to believe, conservatism is not defined by a resentment for a sterling educational pedigree or impeccable intellectual acumen. Rather than see those with the preceding qualities as snubs, a true conservative views the composite as an invaluable asset; one that typifies a sense of ambition, responsibility and ultimately speaks to the crux of the conservative message of a commitment to excellence.
The reality is that this president is way in over his head, but the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives has consistently giving him a way out by stalling and styming his feckless efforts aimed at "reviving" the American economy.
And when they are not styming the president's "well intended efforts" they are busy issuing subpoenas to the Attorney General of the United States for a program that was actually started under a Republican president; it was then called Operation Wide Receiver and it was the first known ATF "gunwalking" operation to the Mexican drug cartels, beginning in early 2006 (under the Bush White House) and ran till late 2007.
Not to digress onto this matter, but what makes the Darrell Issa-led over-reach even more laughable and at best mis-directed, is the fact that under the Bush administration, there were no known reviews by either the DOJ or the Congress at the time. In fact, it was not until Barack Obama took office in 2009, that the Eric Holder-led DOJ started an intensive review into Operation Wide Receiver, with arrests and indictments subsequently made, as a result of the investigations.
Rather than focus on the key issues that continue to affect the generality of the American people, the ECONOMY, ECONOMY and the ECONOMY, key GOP leadership and their surrogates, would much rather play divisive politics and once again, give a much needed opening and life-line to a struggling presidency.
True conservatives are not blinded by their parochial and ideological idiosyncrasies, but are instead committed to espousing the true values and ideals of transparency, accountability and responsible governance; doing so with dignity and firmness, as well as a sense of cordiality that belies their resolve and determination.
The message of individual responsibility, self-determination, personal discipline and accountability must not be lost in the abyss of incendiary vituperations laced with jingoistic redundancies.
The American people deserve much better this time around, than a default presidency as that may ultimately lead to a couple of plausible scenarios that could eventually obtain here. The first is that Barack Obama's "third term" is ensured (4 years from now) by the lack of purpose and direction currently being exhibited by the core GOP establishment. The other scenario is that an anti-establishment candidate may arise out of the ashes of the impending GOP establishment's implosion. That person would then become an unlikely but much welcome voice (to the far right) of parochial irredentism that may change the political landscape of the United States forever.
Chief Editor's commentary: The 'anti-establishment candidate' I predicted almost a decade ago, in this piece, turned out to be Donald J. Trump. Four years of his chaotic presidency has turned American democracy on its head and January 6, 2021 was indeed a defining day in the history of the United States of America. Let no one be fooled here either by the incendiary posturing of some GOP fringe stalwarts of the disgraced former president, as it relates to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The facts are that Donald Trump was first impeached for withholding military aid to a friendly nation in exchange for a purported favor from that nation (Ukraine) against a potential opponent (Joe Biden) of his, in the upcoming presidential elections, at the time. Trump’s feckless presidency and rudderless leadership strengthened Putin’s hand politically, as it relates to the former Soviet Republics, Ukraine especially, from a strategic standpoint, geopolitically.
Friday
Laura Ingraham: An epitome of hypocrisy and a walking contradiction of privileged ignorance
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| Laura Ingraham |
By Deji Fashola (Contributing Editor)
One of the most consistent things in life is time. Time never fails to tell the story. The story of the day, the story of your life and the events that have shaped that very life; but even more importantly, time never fails to remind us of our past, with historical and poignant markers that speak to how our past actions ultimately determine where and who we are, or will become.
For Laura Ingraham, a talk show host of Fox News and someone whom I had never heard of until she name dropped basketball superstar, Lebron James, a few years ago by telling him to shut up and dribble, time has essentially encapsulated the very essence of her being, as it relates to her place in the evolving but contentious conversation about Americas contract with people of African descent, in particular.
One of the most consistent things in life is time. Time never fails to tell the story. The story of the day, the story of your life and the events that have shaped that very life; but even more importantly, time never fails to remind us of our past, with historical and poignant markers that speak to how our past actions ultimately determine where and who we are, or will become.
For Laura Ingraham, a talk show host of Fox News and someone whom I had never heard of until she name dropped basketball superstar, Lebron James, a few years ago by telling him to shut up and dribble, time has essentially encapsulated the very essence of her being, as it relates to her place in the evolving but contentious conversation about Americas contract with people of African descent, in particular.
I am not a consumer of American news as a matter of principle, be it CNN, Fox, MSNBC or any other alphabet news organization, but one thing I will say having had a glimpse of Fox news in particular, is that the latter (Fox news) is the most brazen attempt at instituting State-run TV in a country that is supposed to be the very epitome of democracy.
Time and time again, we are inundated with the Republican mantra that seemingly serves to eschew the tenets and principles of so-called conservative values. But, what exactly do these values entail.
According to Laura Ingraham et al, conservative values seek to:
a) Preserve the sanctity of life pre-birth but seemingly abuse and devalue it after birth, especially if the life in question is of the wrong hue.
b) Promote avaricious greed that encourages limitless profit by a very limited few to the detriment of the overwhelming majority.
c) Encourage and promote governmental interference in the lives of others with the exception of those who profess a divine following of a God, whose commandments and ordinances they (the so-called conservatives) never abide by, but project and force on others who merely seek to live and let live.
d) Bully, vilify, slander, defame, abuse and in some cases, seek to intimidate with threats of violence those they disagree with, including defying constituted authority even though the latter's conduct and ordinances are within the framework of the laws and statutes of the land.
A perfect example of this vilification is the Republican messaging of referring to those who ask why the wealthiest nation on earth has more than half of its population without basic healthcare, as socialists.
These same conservatives (Republicans) have no problems though with the government giving away billions of dollars in corporate welfare to big corporations, deemed too big to fail. To them, the average American is too irrelevant and too small to succeed or be cared for, so long as Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom "call in the troops" Cotton, Josh "inordinate ambition" Hawley and the always opportunistic Rafael Ted Cruz line their pockets and those of their corporate benefactors.
e) Extol the virtues of democracy and civility when in the majority or win elections but then turn the same institution on its head, refusing to concede when you lose, and then seek to undermine and subvert the will of the people by judicial fiat. And when the latter fails, incite a violent insurrection against the duly elected leadership of the country, namely the Vice President and Congress, a co-equal branch of government, by a sitting President of the United States of America.
The four years of the Trump misrule of incompetence, laced with brazen nepotism, cronyism and racism, as well as unbridled corruption, was undoubtedly egged on by State TV (Fox News), with Sean Hannity (the former construction worker and high school dropout) and Laura Ingraham as the unofficial spokespersons of the Trump-led civilian junta.
It remains to be seen if the resulting socio-political scars remain embedded in the mental and institutional psyche of the nation, for decades or even generations to come.
Sunday
Barbarians at the gate - How America mortgaged its future on the altar of MAGA
The incoming administration of Donald J. Trump has predicated its policies on ‘cleaning the swamp’.
Here are the facts:
1) 8 of Trump’s cabinet picks donated almost half-a-billion dollars to his (Trump’s) re-election campaign. While the influence of large campaign donors on policy making is a recurring concern across administrations, the scale of these donations with regard to the incoming Trump administration, raises valid concerns about cronyism and how these relationships might shape policymaking.
2) Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
The establishment of the DOGE with figures like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy underscores broader concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Tesla’s historical receipt of government funds to innovate in clean energy contrasts with any policy that undermines competitors like Rivian. Canceling Biden-era funding for Rivian, as Ramaswamy has intimated, could:
•Stifle competition in the EV market, undermining innovation.
•Harm Georgia’s economy if the promised 8,000 jobs fail to materialize.
•Reinforce perceptions of favoritism, potentially benefiting Tesla.
3) Regulation Rollbacks
A loosening of regulatory oversight, particularly in critical sectors like healthcare and aviation, could indeed have far-reaching consequences. Historical examples suggest that deregulation:
•May increase corporate profits but often at the expense of public safety or service quality.
•Risks weakening consumer protections, as seen in sectors like banking and energy following similar moves in the past.
4) Broader Implications
My concern (and that of many well-meaning folks) is about how concentrated wealth and political influence can blur the lines between public service and personal gain. While Trump’s policies have long championed deregulation as a driver of economic growth, the balance between efficiency and accountability will ultimately define public perception of his governance.
Policy Implications for the EV Industry as a result of the possible actions of DOGE and the impact of deregulation, using the Healthcare and Aviation industries as test cases:
Policy Implications for the EV Industry
The competition between Tesla and newer players like Rivian is central to understanding the potential effects of DOGE’s decisions. Here are the key points:
1. Market Competition and Innovation
•Favoritism Risks: If Rivian loses the $6 billion promised by the Biden administration while Tesla continues benefiting from previous subsidies, the playing field could tilt significantly in Tesla’s favor. This reduces competition, which is vital for innovation and cost reduction in the EV market.
•Job Loss and Economic Impact: The proposed Rivian factory in Georgia would generate around 8,000 jobs, directly boosting the local economy. Its cancellation could harm not only the state’s workforce but also U.S. efforts to expand domestic EV manufacturing capacity.
2. Global Leadership in EVs
•Policies favoring one company over others may hinder the U.S.’s ability to compete globally, especially with countries like China, which dominates the EV supply chain and production. A diverse domestic EV ecosystem is critical to achieving energy independence and global competitiveness.
3. Public Perception and Policy Credibility
•Rolling back Rivian’s funding while Tesla remains dominant could spark accusations of bias or corruption, undermining public trust in government energy policies.
Impact of Deregulation
Deregulation in sectors like healthcare and aviation often has mixed results, with both short-term gains for businesses and long-term risks for consumers and workers.
1. Healthcare
•Impact on Safety Standards: Deregulation could loosen controls on drug approvals, hospital standards, and medical device quality. While this might accelerate innovation and reduce costs for companies, it risks patient safety if oversight is weakened.
•Access and Affordability: If deregulation leads to the consolidation of insurance companies or healthcare providers, patients may face fewer options and higher prices in the long run.
2. Aviation
•Safety Concerns: The aviation industry is highly regulated to ensure passenger safety. Reduced oversight could increase the risk of accidents or mechanical failures, as was seen in the aftermath of deregulation in the 1980s.
•Cost vs. Quality Trade-offs: While deregulation might lower ticket prices, it often comes at the cost of service quality (e.g., reduced legroom, increased fees, or overbooked flights).
With no guard rails in place for the incoming Trump administration, balancing efficiency and oversight will be a tall order as Trump will not be favorably disposed to the concept of independent watchdogs.
Furthermore, policies that support fair competition, especially in the EV industry, through the encouragement of a diverse marketplace that engenders innovation across multiple players, will be abandoned for archaic and authoritarian policies that promote favoritism and stifle competition.
The basic premise for the creation of the DOGE was to promote transparency around funding and policy decisions. It was supposed to help rebuild trust and reduce perceptions of corruption.
Under Trump, with Musk and Ramaswamy as the anchors, realizing that aforementioned noble premise will be at best, an illusion.
America and Americans are in for a long and painful ride.
Saturday
Flashback: White Evangelicals Made A Deal With The Devil And Are Still In Bed With Him.
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| Donald Trump holds a Bible outside St John's Church in Washington DC. Credits: Getty Images |
By Sarah Jones
In the end, white Christian America stood by its man. The exit polls present an imperfect but definitive picture. At least three-quarters of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in November, a figure largely unchanged from 2016. Evangelicals didn’t win Trump another four years in power, but not for lack of effort. While most of America tired of the president’s impieties, the born-again found in themselves a higher tolerance for sin.
And the sins are legion, lest we forget. He tear-gassed protesters so he could walk to a D.C. church and hold a Bible upside-down in front of it without interference. He lied and cheated, and smeared women who accused him of sexual assault. He separated migrant children from their parents and staffed his administration with white nationalists. Over a quarter of a million Americans died of coronavirus, while he railed against doctors and scientists trying to save lives. Not even a plague turned evangelicals from their earthly lord. For Trump, the consequences are political and legal. For evangelicals, the fallout has a more spiritual quality. What does it profit a faith to gain a whole country and then lose it, along with its own soul?
Evangelicals had more to lose than Republicans, for reasons I learned in church as a child. You can’t evangelize anyone if your testimony is poor. If you disobey your parents, or wear a skirt that falls above your knees, how can anyone believe you’re saved? Another Sunday School lesson, conveniently forgotten? Be sure that your sin will find you out. Evangelicals bought power, and the bill is coming due. The price is their Christian witness, the credibility of their redemption by God. Evangelicalism won’t disappear after Trump, but its alliance with an unpopular and brutal president could alienate all but the most zealous.
To be evangelical in the 1990s was to learn fear. The world was so dangerous, and our status in it so fragile. The fossil record was a lie, and scientists knew it. You could not watch the Teletubbies because Jerry Falwell thought the purple one was gay. No Disney, either, and not because Walt had been a fascist; Disneyworld allowed a gay pride day, and in one scene of The Lion King, you could see the stars spell out “sex.” You were lucky to even be alive, to have escaped the abortion mill. The predominantly white evangelical world in which I was raised had created its own shadow universe, a buffer between it and the hostile world. Our parents could put us in Christian schools or homeschool us; if they did risk public school, we could take shelter with groups like YoungLife and the Fellowship Christian of Athletes, which would tell we to make the most of this chance to save souls. We had alternatives for everything; our own pop music, our own kids’ shows, our own versions of biology and U.S. history, and an ecosystem of colleges and universities to train us up in the way we should go: toward the Republican Party, and away from the left, with no equivocation.
Whatever the cause, whatever the rumor, the fear was always the same. It was about power, and what would happen if we lost it. Certain facts, like the whiteness of our congregations and the maleness of our pulpits and the shortcomings of our leaders, were not worth mentioning. You were fighting for God, and God was not racist or sexist; He was only true. The unsaved hated this, it made them angry, and that was proof you were doing the right thing. If “owning the libs” has a discernible origin point, it’s here, in the white evangelical church.
While I was in college and Trump was still a reality show star, evangelicals faced a crisis in the pews. Young people were leaving the church, and they weren’t coming back. The first signs arrived in 2007, in the last hopeful months before the Great Recession. A pair of Christian researchers released a study with troubling implications for the future of the church. Young people aged 16 to 29 were skeptical of Christianity and of evangelicalism in particular, concluded Dave Kinnaman of the Barna Group and Gabe Lyons of the Fermi Group. “Half of young churchgoers said they perceive Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical, and too political,” they wrote. Among the unchurched, attitudes were even more negative. A mere 3 percent said they had positive views of evangelicalism, a precipitous decline from previous generations.
I interviewed Lyons about his research while I was a student journalist at Cedarville University, a conservative Baptist school in Ohio. By the time I graduated, I’d become one of his statistics, an atheist with a minor in Bible. Trump was not even a glimmer in Steve Bannon’s eye, but the evangelical tradition had already asked me to tolerate many sins. There was George W. Bush and his catastrophic invasion of Iraq; welfare policies that starved the poor; the dehumanization of immigrants, of LGBT people, of women who do not wish to stay pregnant, and my own, non-negotiable submission to men. At some point I realized that I had traveled some distance in my mind, and I could not go back the way I came. I was over it, I was through.
The years after my personal exodus brought with them more proof that the church was in trouble. Partisanship did not entirely explain why. Membership declined fastest in mainline congregations, even though they tend to be more liberal than the independent churches of my youth. Social media has expanded the philosophical marketplace; all Christian traditions face competition from new ideologies for the hearts and minds of the young. But conservative denominations are suffering, too. The Southern Baptist Convention said this June it had experienced its thirteenth consecutive year of membership decline. By age 22, two-thirds of adults who attend Protestant services as teenagers have dropped out of church for at least a year, LifeWay Research found last year, and a quarter cited political disagreements as the reason. An alliance with a president the young largely hated might not lure new generations to the fold.
Years of attrition have taken a toll on white evangelicals, said Robert Jones, the author of White Christian America and the founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. “If you go back a couple of election cycles ago, into Barack Obama’s first election, they were 21 percent of the population, and today they are 15 percent of the population,” he told me. The share of Black evangelicals has remained relatively stable, he added, while the numbers of Latino evangelicals have grown. And while these groups ostensibly share a religious label, politically they are far apart.
“If I take the religious landscape, and I sort religious groups by their support for one candidate or the other, what inevitably happens is that there are no two groups further away from each other in that sorting than white evangelical Protestants and African-American Protestants,” Jones said, adding that Latino evangelicals are “a little more divided.” (Indeed, Trump won significant support from this group in 2020.)
But white evangelicals are still outliers overall: They’re more conservative than other Protestants, more conservative than Catholics, more conservative, in fact, than any other demographic in the country. The implicit claim of the Moral Majority — that it embodied mainstream opinion — always lacked evidence, but it’s become even less true over time. By the time Trump applied Richard Nixon’s label of a “silent majority” to his own coalition, it barely made sense at all. A bloc that can only take the White House through the electoral college, and not the popular vote, only to lose it outright four years later, has no claim to majority status. They are a remnant within a remnant, a nation within a nation.
There are still dissenters. Last year, the outgoing editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, called for Trump’s removal from office. Galli wrote the typical approach for his magazine was to “stay above the fray,” and “allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible,” he wrote. But Trump had abused the power of his office and revealed a “grossly deficient moral character.” Galli has since converted to Catholicism, a decision he explained to Religion News Services as being more personal than political.
Others stay. But they can experience a painful friction between their spiritual convictions and political independence. My parents, both pro-life evangelicals, have now voted against Trump twice. I spoke to another by Skype, not long before the election.
I know Marlena Proper Graves from my days at that Baptist university, when I was an upstart college feminist, and she was a resident director and the spouse of a professor. Now the author of two books on faith and a doctoral candidate at Bowling Green State University, Graves worries about the influence of Trump, and Trump’s party, on her beloved church. The word “evangelical,” she noted, had always referred to a constellation of beliefs. “You have a relationship with God, God cares about you, God cares about all people, and Christ is central,” she said, ticking them off. “But now it seems to be something of a culture.” That culture is an exclusionary one. “I’ve been disinvited from events because of my views and activism for immigrants, because it’s controversial,” she said.
When Proper was young, she told me, she listened to Christian radio all the time, just like I did. Preachers and commentators like James Dobson, a famed radio personality and the founder of Focus on the Family, would opine on the issues of the day, on morality, and virtue. “All these people would talk about character,” she said. “How you can’t vote for Bill Clinton in particular because of Monica Lewinsky, because he had affairs.” Then came Trump. “People said, first, that they didn’t think he would win. Then it was all about abortion and judges. I felt like I was being punked,” she remembered. But many evangelicals are in on the joke. Faced with popular rejection and the humiliation of Trump, they declare themselves persecuted, and identify numerous enemies. The mission remains the same: Purify the nation, and pacify the barbarians.
Beyond the usual celebrity preacher scandals, the faith’s place in the broader Christian right required it to make moral compromises it never tolerated among the rank-and-file members of the flock. Our definition of morality narrowed the further up the pyramid you climbed. For the politicians we backed, it shrank to a pinprick point: Ronald Reagan was divorced. What mattered instead to the Moral Majority was his opposition to abortion, his hippie-bashing, his ability to trade in euphemisms about “states’ rights.” Two Bush presidents later, thrice-married Trump gave evangelicals the conservative Supreme Court of their dreams.
As hypocritical as white evangelical support for Trump may look from the outside, the president actually understood his base quite well. Eight years of a Black, liberal president threatened their hegemony. So had the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. Sarah Posner, an investigative journalist and the author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, told me that Trump managed to tap into two key evangelical tendencies. “Those two things were the racial grievances of the white base of the Republican Party, and how televangelism had changed evangelicalism from the 1970s onward,” she said.
Galli, the former Christianity Today editor, believes Trump also appealed to an entrenched evangelical sense of marginalization. By the time same-sex marriage was legalized, public opinion on LGBT rights had already liberalized; the gap between white evangelicals, and everyone else, on matters of sexuality is now wider than it’s ever been. “Here comes Donald Trump, saying it’s OK to be Christian, it’s OK to have your values, it’s OK to practice your values in the public square. And he does this in a very authoritative manner,” Galli explained. Trump didn’t know his Scripture, but he knew there was a war on, and that was enough. The nation’s culture warriors had found their general.
Evangelicals, Galli added, “are deeply suspicious of human authority,” but only to a point. What they may fear, really, is authority they don’t control. “Paradoxically,” he continued, “they are a group that’s attracted to authoritarian leaders, whether that person be a pastor of a megachurch or a dictator.” Those tendencies existed before Trump. With the help of the far-right press, social media, and alternative institutions, they will survive Trump, too.
“I think that the thing that we have to keep our eye on is the ways in which the infrastructure that they built gives them an advantage beyond what their numbers would tell you,” Posner said. Conservative evangelicals already know that they’re no longer the Moral Majority, and they’ve found a way to make it work for them. “They’ll recognize, for example, that they may be in the minority on LGBTQ rights, but in their view, that’s all the more reason that they should be protected by either the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or the First Amendment, in having the right to discriminate against LGBTQ people.”
That infrastructure still churns out new acolytes, who embrace the worst elements of the tradition we all used to share. The same movement that produced me also spawned Madison Cawthorn, a Republican elected to Congress last month. He was born the year the Southern Baptist Convention first apologized for slavery, and he will be the youngest member of Congress when he takes office in January. He’ll also be one of furthest-right Republicans in office, with a personal life that once again tests the bounds of evangelical toleration for sin. Women from his Christian homeschooling community in North Carolina and women who studied with him at the conservative Patrick Henry College have accused him repeatedly of sexual harassment and misconduct. A racist website linked to his campaign criticized a local journalist for leaving academia to “work for non-white males” like Senator Cory Booker, “who aims to ruin white males.” After he won, he celebrated with a tweet. “Cry more, lib,” he wrote.
There’s time for Cawthorn to self-immolate on a pyre of his own sins before he’s old enough to run for president. But there will be other Cawthorns, other white evangelical candidates who will try to master Trumpism-without-Trump. They might not need an army to win, either. The GOP already knows it doesn’t have to be popular to stay in power. They need a radical remnant, and a lot of dirty tricks. Republicans can get what they want by suppressing the vote, or by undermining our confidence in elections. They can protect themselves through the subtle tyranny of inequality, which empowers the wealthy while alienating the most under-represented among us. A party out of step with most voters must either reform, or it must cheat. This, too, is something the modern GOP has in common with the Christian right. Democracy is the enemy. People can’t be trusted with their own souls. Leave them to their own devices, and they make the wrong choices, take the easy way out, threaten everything holy. They need a savior, whether they like it or not.
Wednesday
Ten things we've learnt about identity politics in the United States
--- Boyejo A. Coker
a) Racism is an institution not an event, statement or action, as evident by the silence and acquiescence of the Republican members of Congress to the dangerous and highly-charged statements, and actions of former President Donald Trump for 4 years, that ultimately culminated in the violent insurrection by White Supremacist supporters of his, against the Congress of the United States on January 6th, 2021. His rhetoric hasn’t changed since he left office, as despite being convicted by a U.S. Court on 34 counts among other legal hurdles he faces, he remains in pole position to regain office as the 47th President of the United States.
b) Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually instigated the singling out (in 2019) of the women of color in the U.S. House by referring to them as "just four people with no following". That was all Donald Trump needed to strike at the time, against those women.
c) Donald Trump "is not a racist". The power structure that enabled him become the POTUS (still incredibly threatens to bring him back in 2024), and continues to facilitate his trampling upon the Constitution with impunity, is racist, and was set up to be that way by the founding fathers, who enslaved the Africans that were brought to America and saw them as less than human.
d) President Barack Obama would not have been elected to office if he had bragged about sexually assaulting women, and he would definitely have been impeached, and removed from office, if he had conducted himself in office as Trump did.
e) Imagine what would have happened if Barack Obama had asked those that criticized his administration to leave the country, if they did not like the way things were being done. Or worse still, if he (Obama) had threatened to unleash the U.S. military on American citizens, protesting in the streets. Lastly, I am confident Barack Obama would have been impeached and convicted within a week (at most) if he had instigated an insurrection against a co-equal branch of government. White privilege, an indulgent by-product of White Supremacy is responsible for Donald Trump’s ability to remain relevant in the American political landscape.
f) Gratitude is not a requirement of citizenship. Furthermore, all U.S. citizens (naturalized or natural born) have equal rights, or do they.......?
g) The old order of the Democratic party is completely out of touch and the treatment of the four women Representatives of color by former Speaker Pelosi four years ago, serves to buttress that point.
h) The Republican party has always had a playbook steeped in identity politics. Anyone remember the Willie Horton ads? Trump and his Harvard educated running mate are not doing anything new, with regard to the demonization of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, they simply took a time-tested and proven page out of the Republican playbook of identity politics.
a) Racism is an institution not an event, statement or action, as evident by the silence and acquiescence of the Republican members of Congress to the dangerous and highly-charged statements, and actions of former President Donald Trump for 4 years, that ultimately culminated in the violent insurrection by White Supremacist supporters of his, against the Congress of the United States on January 6th, 2021. His rhetoric hasn’t changed since he left office, as despite being convicted by a U.S. Court on 34 counts among other legal hurdles he faces, he remains in pole position to regain office as the 47th President of the United States.
b) Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually instigated the singling out (in 2019) of the women of color in the U.S. House by referring to them as "just four people with no following". That was all Donald Trump needed to strike at the time, against those women.
c) Donald Trump "is not a racist". The power structure that enabled him become the POTUS (still incredibly threatens to bring him back in 2024), and continues to facilitate his trampling upon the Constitution with impunity, is racist, and was set up to be that way by the founding fathers, who enslaved the Africans that were brought to America and saw them as less than human.
d) President Barack Obama would not have been elected to office if he had bragged about sexually assaulting women, and he would definitely have been impeached, and removed from office, if he had conducted himself in office as Trump did.
e) Imagine what would have happened if Barack Obama had asked those that criticized his administration to leave the country, if they did not like the way things were being done. Or worse still, if he (Obama) had threatened to unleash the U.S. military on American citizens, protesting in the streets. Lastly, I am confident Barack Obama would have been impeached and convicted within a week (at most) if he had instigated an insurrection against a co-equal branch of government. White privilege, an indulgent by-product of White Supremacy is responsible for Donald Trump’s ability to remain relevant in the American political landscape.
f) Gratitude is not a requirement of citizenship. Furthermore, all U.S. citizens (naturalized or natural born) have equal rights, or do they.......?
g) The old order of the Democratic party is completely out of touch and the treatment of the four women Representatives of color by former Speaker Pelosi four years ago, serves to buttress that point.
h) The Republican party has always had a playbook steeped in identity politics. Anyone remember the Willie Horton ads? Trump and his Harvard educated running mate are not doing anything new, with regard to the demonization of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, they simply took a time-tested and proven page out of the Republican playbook of identity politics.
i) The palpable silence of the so-called religious leaders (especially the white religious leaders) in the United States tells you all you need to know about them.
j) The silence of most top American CEOs and business leaders (until recently) also tells you all you need to know about them and their organizations. The ones that have 'spoken out' are not only late to the game (they are still Trump’s biggest donors and supporters by the way), but are speaking out merely to 'sanitize' their brand, as well as clear whatever is left of their conscience (assuming most of them actually have one).
j) The silence of most top American CEOs and business leaders (until recently) also tells you all you need to know about them and their organizations. The ones that have 'spoken out' are not only late to the game (they are still Trump’s biggest donors and supporters by the way), but are speaking out merely to 'sanitize' their brand, as well as clear whatever is left of their conscience (assuming most of them actually have one).
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
America Divided: Majority of Trump voters believe it's 'time to split the country' in two, poll finds
CC™ Politico News
By Madison Hall & Bryan Metzger
A majority of people who voted for former President Donald Trump are in favor of breaking up the country, a new poll from the University of Virginia Center for Politics has found.
UVA surveyed 2,012 voters - half of whom voted for Trump, the other half for President Joe Biden - in order to better understand the growing split between the Democratic and Republican Parties.
The results show a country at ideological war with itself: More than half of the surveyed Trump voters - approximately 52% - said the "situation is such that I would favor [Blue/Red] states seceding from the union to form their own separate country." Approximately 41% of Biden-voting respondents answered similarly.
Some Republicans have floated proposals to secede from the union, including former Texas GOP chair Allen West. After the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit spearheaded by the Texas attorney general aimed at overturning the 2020 presidential election results, West said that "perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution."
The survey shows Republicans and Democrats heavily distrust one another, with 80% or more of respondents from each party saying the opposing side presents "a clear and present danger to American democracy." In addition, 80% or more of survey respondents said they're worried they or someone close to them will experience "personal loss or suffering due to the effects" of the opposing party's policies.
An overwhelming number Trump voters in the survey - about 83% - said that society needs to stop the many "radical" and "immoral people trying to ruin things" in the country, further noting that the US needs a "powerful leader in order to destroy the radical and immoral currents" prevalent in society.
Biden voters were less supportive of the same sentiments. For example, 62% of Biden voters at least somewhat agreed that the country needs a "powerful leader in order to destroy the radical and immoral currents" in the country, compared to 82% of Republicans who said the same.
"The divide between Trump and Biden voters is deep, wide, and dangerous," Larry Sabato, the director of UVA's Center for Politics, wrote. "The scope is unprecedented, and it will not be easily fixed."
Even if they can't agree with each other on policy or the direction of the country, around 80% of voters from each side said they preferred democracy over any other style of government.
While it wasn't captured in the survey, both parties also seem to agree on major priorities like modernizing and improving infrastructure, as evidenced by a bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August with 19 GOP votes.
Read the original article on Business Insider
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