Random Blogging – Page 160

About That Swamp…And Your Vote

Early voting is now underway in most states; here in Indianapolis–thanks to Common Cause and the pro bono efforts of local attorney and all-around good guy Bill Groth–we have nearly as many satellite voting sites as our rural, Republican neighbors. Preliminary reports are that those sites have been flooded with early voters.

This is one of those years where most voters have made up their minds weeks, if not months, ahead. But just in case anyone reading this is tempted to send a less-than-emphatic message to the current iteration of the once Grand Old Party, let me remind you of the “quality” of the people in the Trump Administration, and the fact that electing any Republican to any position in any level of government is an endorsement of the “best people” that constitute Trump’s Swamp.

Who did they get to vet these people? Rod Blagojevich?

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is plagued by scandals — facing about a dozen different investigations of his conduct — but he may have found a solution to his oversight woes: replacing the person investigating him with a political stooge.

Subsequent reports suggest this particular appointment was reversed, but the fact that Zinke tried this stunt simply confirms his sleaziness. Of course, he has lots of company. CNN recently published a compendium of cabinet scandals and embarrassments.

The term “embattled” has now been thrown around so often in news coverage of Trump Cabinet secretaries’ assorted foibles, it’s practically been fused to the front of some of their titles. The President himself, perhaps for variety’s sake, referred to Jeff Sessions in a tweet last year as his “beleaguered” attorney general.

Some of the alleged (and confirmed) transgressions have been more damaging than others. The White House’s handling of the Rob Porter scandal might have been its darkest episode, an ethical failure leavened by bureaucratic incompetence. Mostly though, the administration’s scandals and embarrassments have been characterized less by furtive malfeasance than some kind of open disdain for (or ignorance of) basic ethical standards (or a lack of due diligence).

That lede was followed by a rundown of some of the most glaring “embarrassments,” from the nomination of White House doctor Ronny Jackson to head the Department of Veterans Affairs (he withdrew after reports emerged of his excessive drinking, creating a “toxic” work environment, handing out prescription pain medications without proper documentation, wrecking a government vehicle after a going-away party, and drunkenly banging on the door of a female colleague during an overseas trip) to the multiple transgressions that led to Scott Pruitt’s resignation from his position destroying the EPA, to Ben Carson’s $31,000 dining set, to White House Secretary Rob Porter’s penchant for domestic violence, to Tom Price’s pricey flying habits. And much, much more.

It’s a long list–an inclusive one would make a much too-long post– and the ethical problems continue to mount. Vox suggests that the administration is unable to clean house because the President himself is too “soaked in scandal.” As the story says,

But inside the Donald Trump White House, grifters, abusers, racists, and harassers still get hired; they lurk around the Oval Office after they’ve been found out; and even in the rare instance where they’re forced out, it’s only grudgingly.

We have an administration that is setting a new (low) level for corruption; a racist President who proudly proclaims his Nationalism; and a GOP controlled Congress that is at best feckless and at worst in active collaboration with the criminals and thugs in the administration.

A vote for any Republican–no matter how unconnected that person might be to the Trumpists’ constant affronts to democracy and the Constitution–will be seen as an endorsement of the GOP’s corruption and White Nationalism.

Is that unfair to local candidates who may be nice people? Yes. But it’s necessary. We can go back to being fair when we get our country back.

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Points Of Light–Indianapolis Edition

Remember the “Thousand Points of Light” that George H.W. Bush used to talk about? He was referencing the efforts of good people around the country (and for that matter, around the world) to make a difference in their communities. At the time, it reminded me of Voltaire’s famous admonition to cultivate our own gardens.

At times like these, when so many of us are disheartened daily by the displays of hatefulness, mendacity and unashamed bigotry being encouraged by a morally and intellectually deficient President, we need to remind ourselves that there are points of light being emitted in our own backyards and gardens.

Here in Indianapolis, we don’t have mountains or oceans or other geographical assets, but we have historically made up for those deficits with a population that “pitches in” (we have more not-for-profit organizations than any other city in the country). The other day, I had lunch with Bryan Fonseca, who is currently “pitching in” in a big way in four of Indianapolis’ least affluent, most diverse and most challenged neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods, adjacent to downtown and the campus where I teach, are on the West side of White River. They make up an area called (duh) River West.

Local folks know that Bryan founded the Phoenix Theater some 35+ years ago. For many years, Phoenix’ plays scandalized a lot of locals:they were cutting-edge works that highlighted the barriers faced by LGBTQ, Latino and other minority citizens. Over the years, what was initially scandalous became much less so. The Phoenix succeeded brilliantly; it recently moved from a donated converted church into a ten million dollar building, and from bare-bones existence on the margins of the “respectable” art scene to status as a highly valued part of the mainstream.

While that move was underway, Bryan was working with the River West community under a Transformational Impact Fellowship grant from the Arts Council of Indianapolis. And now, after leaving the Phoenix, he has gone back to his scrappy, social justice roots by establishing The Fonseca Theater Company in the heart of River West.

My husband and I attended FTC’s first play, and it met the high standard Bryan had established at the Phoenix. It was powerful and well-acted. But Bryan’s plans for his new venture go well beyond offering professional theater.

The Near West community has long faced major economic, educational, and public safety challenges. However, as Bryan points out, the area is also home to one of the most vibrant and diverse communities in Indianapolis, and he and his team of dedicated and resourceful artists intend to work with and within the community to improve quality of life and create a variety of opportunities for residents. As he says, the new organization is “invested in the concept of in-reach, which encourages artists to move into and become part of the fabric of life in the community we serve.”

The arts are a time-honored way of raising awareness, but the ambitions of this new venture go well beyond the traditional role of theatrical performance.

Research confirms that the arts improve critical thinking and problem-solving skills. So in addition to a six-show season of plays and a Latinx concert series, the organization plans community plays in which participants write, direct and act in their own stories; a teen acting program; and continuation of an existing children’s program consisting of 10-week classes filled with kids from the surrounding community. (The class is priced at $15 for the entire course, and parents of children who have taken the classes report improved grades and communication skills.)

In addition to plans to develop a soccer team and exercise programs, the theater is partnering with Indy Convergence, a neighborhood collaborative, to spearhead neighborhood events such as clean-ups, crime watches, neighborhood association meetings and eventually, a neighborhood festival, all designed to increase civic pride and neighborhood engagement. As he says, “We are more than just a theater. We are a community center designed to inspire civic engagement.”

This is an enormously ambitious undertaking. But Bryan and his longtime team have overcome daunting obstacles before, and as he says, he’s happiest when he has a cause.

In these dark days, we just have to remember that for every Trump wannabe, for every self-absorbed “it’s all about me” asshole, there’s a Bryan Fonseca working hard to cultivate a garden and make his community better for everyone who lives there.

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Giving Religion A Bad Name

I came across a couple of recent “news items” that may help explain the increasing exodus from organized religion.

First, Raw Story tells us that “Mother,” aka Karen Pence,

the wife of Vice President Mike Pence, is planning to rally support for a controversial Republican candidate who has said that women who work are violating “God’s design.”

Local news station WFAE reports that Pence on Friday will join a campaign rally for Mark Harris, a former pastor who has been sharply critical of women who decide to take jobs instead of staying home and supporting their husbands.

Pastor Harris has publicly bemoaned the fact that modern women no longer have “basic” skills–“womanly” skills such as “how to prepare a meal, how to sew on a button, how to keep a home, how to respond to a husband.”

Pardon me while I throw up.

Then there’s the new motion picture release, The Trump Prophecy. As a reporter for Vox has explained,

I sat in an unmarked cinema hall in New York’s Union Square, listening to a group of people praying. We’d just finished watching a screening of The Trump Prophecy, the controversial hybrid docu-drama made in part by students and faculty at the conservative evangelical Liberty University. Images of American greatness — an American flag, an eagle — flickered across the screen. A white man in his 60s sang out verses from 2 Chronicles 7:14:

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

They bowed their heads and thanked God that his anointed one, Donald Trump, was president. Just as the prophecy had foretold.

Scenes like this took place in 1,200 cinemas across the country during a limited release of the film this month. The Trump Prophecy, which played on Tuesday and Thursday nights, has been advertised as an opportunity for prayer groups to come together in an expression of patriotism.

Nauseating as this sounds, and as far from genuine patriotism as it clearly is, the film’s message is far worse.

But The Trump Prophecy is more than a feel-good, low-budget movie. It’s the purest distillation of pro-Trump Christian nationalism: the insidious doctrine that implicitly links American patriotism and American exceptionalism with (white) evangelical Christianity.

Everything about The Trump Prophecy — from its subject matter, to the way it’s shot, to the little details scattered through the movie’s (often interminable) scenes of domestic life — is designed not just to legitimize Donald Trump as a evangelical-approved president but to promulgate an even more wide-ranging — and dangerous — idea.

The Trump Prophecy doesn’t just want you to believe that God approves of Donald Trump. It wants you to believe that submission to (conservative) political authority and submission to God are one and the same. In the film’s theology, resisting the authority of a sitting president — or, at least, this sitting president — is conflated with resisting God himself.

It’s telling that The Trump Prophecy doesn’t even try to pretend Trump is a good, or even acceptable, leader. In fact, it treats that very question as irrelevant. What matters, simply, is that good Christians respect those in power over them (whether good Christians should also have respected, say, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is never explored).

The Vox article explores the theology underpinning this worldview, and it’s worth reading, since these beliefs are foreign to most readers who visit this blog–and for that matter, to most Americans.

As Karen Pence’s support for a reactionary pastor demonstrates, however, this is the theology that motivates Trump supporters, and a belief structure that is well-represented throughout Trump’s Administration. (Think Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos.)

If their worldview doesn’t terrify you, nothing will.

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As If We Needed Another Looming Threat

If I didn’t have a platform bed, I’d just crawl under my bed and hide.

I’m frantic about the elections. I’m depressed about climate change and our government’s unwillingness to confront it. The last issue of The Atlantic had several lengthy stories about technologies that will disrupt our lives and could conceivably end them. (Did you know that the government is doing research on the “weaponizing” of our brains? That Alexa is becoming our best friend and confidant?)

And now there’s “Deepfakes.”

Senator Ben Sasse (you remember him–he talks a great game, but then folds like a Swiss Army knife and votes the GOP party line) has written a truly terrifying explanation of what’s on the horizon.

Flash forward two years and consider these hypotheticals. You’re seated at your desk, having taken your second sip of coffee and just beginning to contemplate the breakfast sandwich steaming in the bag in front of you. You click on your favorite news site, one you trust. “Unearthed Video Shows President Conspiring with Putin.” You can’t resist.

The video, in ultrahigh definition, shows then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin examining an electoral map of the United States. They are nodding and laughing as they appear to discuss efforts to swing the election to Trump. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump smile wanly in the background. The report notes that Trump’s movements on the day in question are difficult to pin down.

Alternate scenario: Same day, same coffee and sandwich. This time, the headline reports the discovery of an audio recording of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch brainstorming about how to derail the FBI investigation of Clinton’s use of a private server to handle classified emails. The recording’s date is unclear, but its quality is perfect; Clinton and Lynch can be heard discussing the attorney general’s airport tarmac meeting with former president Bill Clinton in Phoenix on June 27, 2016.

The recordings in these hypothetical scenarios are fake — but who are you going to believe? Who will your neighbors believe? The government? A news outlet you distrust?

Sasse writes that these Deepfakes — defined as seemingly authentic video or audio recordings — are likely to send American politics into an even deeper tailspin, and he warns that Washington isn’t paying nearly enough attention to them. (Well, of course not. The moral midgets who run our government have power to amass, and a public to fleece–that doesn’t leave them time or energy to address the actual issues facing us.)

Consider: In December 2017, an amateur coder named “DeepFakes” was altering porn videos by digitally substituting the faces of female celebrities for the porn stars’. Not much of a hobby, but it was effective enough to prompt news coverage. Since then, the technology has improved and is readily available. The word deepfake has become a generic noun for the use of machine-learning algorithms and facial-mapping technology to digitally manipulate people’s voices, bodies and faces. And the technology is increasingly so realistic that the deepfakes are almost impossible to detect.

Creepy, right? Now imagine what will happen when America’s enemies use this technology for less sleazy but more strategically sinister purposes.

I’m imagining. And you’ll forgive me if I find Sasse’s solution–Americans have to stop distrusting each other–pretty inadequate, if not downright fanciful. On the other hand, I certainly don’t have a better solution to offer.

Maybe if I lose weight I can squeeze under that platform bed…..

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Religious “Morality”

I get alternately amused and annoyed when self-identified “religious” folks question the morality of agnostics and atheists. How, they piously declaim, can one be moral without (their version of) God?

It’s pretty easy, actually.

Most of the nonreligious folks I know have thought deeply about the nature of morality and their ethical obligations to their fellow-humans. And my genuinely religious friends–who tend not to be among the self-righteous and self-congratulatory “Pence-ites”–are equally thoughtful. But lately, I’ve begun wondering just how those “Christian warriors” define the morality they’re so sure we nonbelievers don’t have.

Pat Robertson, for example, has weighed in on the issue of how America should respond to Saudi Arabia’s recent murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

A major evangelical leader has spoken in defense of US-Saudi relations after the apparent killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate, saying that America has more important things — like arms deals — to focus on.

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, appeared on its flagship television show The 700 Club on Monday to caution Americans against allowing the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia to deteriorate over Khashoggi’s death.

“For those who are screaming blood for the Saudis — look, these people are key allies,” Robertson said. While he called the faith of the Wahabists — the hardline Islamist sect to which the Saudi Royal Family belongs — “obnoxious,” he urged viewers to remember that “we’ve got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of…it’ll be a lot of jobs, a lot of money come to our coffers. It’s not something you want to blow up willy-nilly.”

I’m going through the Christian bible right now, looking for the place where Jesus said that money from the sale of weapons with which to kill people takes priority over the sanctity of life. (Unless, I assume, it’s the life of a fetus…)

Robertson’s response is part and parcel of the fervid fundamentalist Christian support for Donald Trump–support that has generated numerous academic analyses and chattering class punditry devoted to the question: how do these “family values” and “morality police” Christians explain their support for a man who exemplifies everything they previously professed to hate?

It isn’t just his personal immorality–three wives, multiple affairs (including with a porn star), bragging about sexual assault, constant bullying and even more constant (and obvious) lying. It’s also his business practices.

A recent article in The New Yorker provided evidence that fraud is at the heart of the Trump business model.

The Times published a remarkable report, on October 2nd, that showed that much of the profit the Trump Organization made came not from successful real-estate investment but from defrauding state and federal governments through tax fraud. This week, ProPublica and WNYC co-published a stunning storyand a “Trump, Inc.” podcast that can be seen as the international companion to the Timespiece. They show that many of the Trump Organization’s international deals also bore the hallmarks of financial fraud, including money laundering, deceptive borrowing, outright lying to investors, and other potential crimes.

Of course, my question is rhetorical. We all know why so many White Christian men (and the women they dominate) support Trump–he tells it like (they think) it is: they are superior by virtue of their religion, their genitals and their skin color, and so they deserve to keep a more privileged status than women and minorities.

There are lots of words that describe that attitude and that support, but “moral” isn’t one of them.

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