Category Archives: Random Blogging

Morning In America?

Remember Reagan’s “Morning in America”? I do–and it was the first phrase that came to mind when Kamala Harris and her just-announced choice for Vice-President, Tim Walz, appeared together at their first event, in Philadelphia.

The folks that the late Molly Ivins dubbed “the chattering class” have been almost uniformly enthusiastic about the choice of Walz, offering a wide number of reasons. I was excited and gratified by that choice for two rather different reasons: first, as a policy nerd (I know–you hadn’t noticed!), I especially love his strong support for public education. (I agree with most of his other policy positions too.). Second, he’s a mensch. Long before he entered politics, when he was still a high school coach, he sponsored his school’s first gay-straight alliance–understanding that having a straight, married, macho coach as a sponsor would send a strong anti-bullying message to those teens who might be inclined to pick on gay kids.

But what really has me pumped up is that both Harris and Walz are such happy warriors. They smile. They joke. They laugh. (Has anyone ever seen Donald Trump laugh? He snickers on occasion, but–unlike normal people– he never laughs. And his idea of “jokes” are almost always cruel put-downs of someone who has displeased him.)

The reason this new team and their joyous approach has made me so much more positive than I was a few weeks ago was perfectly described by Bill Kristol in a recent essay in the Bulwark. Kristol isn’t usually one of my favorite political pundits, but–as the saying goes–he hit this one out of the park.

As he noted, in their first appearance together, Harris and Walz were happy warriors.

I want to believe that being happy warriors is superior, not just morally and aesthetically but also practically and politically, to being sullen and resentful ones. We’ll see if that’s the case in the year 2024.

I’ll add that Harris, Walz, and Shapiro weren’t just happy warriors. They were distinctly hopeful and future-oriented ones.

Again, I want to believe that’s what most Americans want. That we want leaders who live in the present and will work to make America better in the future, not figures who scowl at the present and fear the future. And certainly not candidates who justify extraordinary mean-spiritedness in the name of an embittered nostalgia for an imaginary past.

To which I respond “Yes yes yes!!”

I am so very tired of the politics of nastiness and incivility, tired of the thundering diatribes of theocrats (aptly described as members of the Handmaid’s Tale faction of the GOP), of the insistence that America needs to return to the “verities” of a time that never existed except in the minds of unhappy White guys…I have to believe that most American voters are equally tired of living in the GOP’s gloomy, rancid, hate-filled fantasy world.

Kristol made another very important observation with which I entirely agree.

Finally, I was struck that the mood in Philadelphia was, if I can put it this way, all-American. Watching Shapiro and Walz and Harris—an Easterner and a Midwesterner and a Californian, men and women of such different backgrounds and religions and races—I thought: You know, this is America. 

It’s an unoriginal thought, to be sure. And as I thought it, an unoriginal—and for that matter an out of date and out of favor—phrase for some reason popped into my mind: the “melting pot.”

The image of the “melting pot” has never really described America. Many people have suggested better images—a mosaic, for instance—to capture American openness and pluralism and integration. Still, for some reason the phrase stuck in my mind.

In much the same way, images of that introductory gathering in Philadelphia made me think of “Morning in America.” Not the same morning that Reagan envisioned, rather obviously, but the dawning possibility that America might return to a politics  that celebrates the art of the possible– a politics of inclusion rather than exclusion, a politics that moves us, however incrementally, toward the vision of human equality outlined in the Declaration of Independence. 

A forward-looking politics.

Maybe the morning sun will even shine in Indiana……

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An Extra Message–And An Ask

Apologies for cluttering your in-boxes, but we have only three months until the election, and I wanted to share this important message from Hoosiers for Democracy– a grass-roots movement founded to combat voter lethargy and encourage turnout by Indiana’s Democrats.

Here’s the request I received last night. I hope you will consider making a donation. Even small amounts help!!

_______________________

Dear friends and colleagues,

Rachel, Barbara and I are thrilled about how Hoosiers for Democracy is growing and the impact it is having on educating voters as well as empowering them to act in service of preserving our hard won freedoms and resisting extremism. Our subscription list is growing, and we are expanding our network of allies across the state that help us amplify our message.  After we publish a post, we immediately get emails from campaign managers and other grass root movements asking us to be sure to include them in our next post in our “What You Can Do” section.  We are living proof that “all that rises must converge”.

We are contacting you today with an urgent request for support of a new initiative we have started focused on registering Indiana Gen Z voters, especially targeting districts that have been identified as flippable. We have 60 days to get this done.  We are emboldened by the new sense of hopefulness about the upcoming election, including the recent surge in excitement, donations, and volunteers in Indiana and across the country. Much of this surge is occurring among the younger voter population, but if past trends continue, Indiana likely still has a problem engaging younger voters. Despite some progress being made nationally towards increasing younger voter turnout in the 2020 general and 2022 midterm elections, data suggests that Hoosiers still have a lot of work to do in educating youth and young adults about the potential impacts of voting and civic engagement on their own futures and on the lives of future generations. We have decided to be a part of a solution to this issue. Our friend, colleague and expert on civic engagement, Dona Sapp, has joined with H4D in developing a targeted and strategic 60-day campaign to register young voters in Indiana.  This campaign is influenced by and in response to disheartening data:

  • Indiana voter participation is consistently among the lowest in the nation. In 2020, Indiana ranked 46th among all U.S. states for eligible voters of all ages who voted.
  • More specifically related to young voter participation, we ranked 44th for the percentage of eligible 18–24-year-olds who were registered to vote and 43rd for the percentage of 18–24-year-olds who voted in 2020.
  • Only 48 percent of eligible 18-24-year-olds in Indiana were registered to vote in 2020, and only 39 percent voted. In contrast, 87 percent of eligible 18–24-year-olds in New Jersey were registered, and 75 percent voted.

It is true that, historically, younger voters are less likely to vote in U.S. elections than other age groups, but this is particularly true in Indiana. There are many varied and valid reasons for this.  Experts tell us that young voters are passionate about issues that impact them, yet many are disillusioned with the democratic process. This is particularly true in black and multiracial communities and among young people who did not attend college.

Two more sobering and heartbreaking stats:

  • Among the 65 percent of registered Indiana voters who voted, Donald Trump received 1,729,519 million votes and Joe Biden received 1,242,416 million votes, a difference of approximately 487,000 votes.
  • An estimated 500,000+ eligible 18–24-year-old Hoosiers are not currently registered to vote. This means that younger voters, who often feel unheard and powerless to change anything, could have changed the result of the 2020 presidential election in Indiana through increased voter registration and participation

But the past two weeks have changed things.  Young people are engaged, and motivated and using their creativity and their culture to impact this election.  We need your help in making sure Indiana young people are registered to vote and get them to the ballot box!

Our 60-day Voting is Your Superpower Campaign is focused on registering eligible Gen Z voters.  Dona has designed iPhone stickers (this idea came from Senator Andrea Hunley when we pitched this idea to her), flyers, cards, yard signs, and t-shirts.  We are partnering with our allies including several Democratic party county/district managers and most of the Democratic candidates on the Indiana ballot to help us distribute the resources in strategic sites/venues across the state.  Our goal is to register 25,000 young people and get a pledge from each of them to register 5 of their peers. Additionally, we will invite volunteers in our next post to help us in statewide distribution. We have a great online form for easy registering and tracking recruits from our substack platform. The ‘swag’ includes a QR code for immediate voter registration.

We have volunteers and vendors at the ready, but we need your financial support.  We developed a budget for the materials and are asking for any support that you may be able to give so we can order these immediately and have them ready for distribution.  Based on how much we can raise in the immediate term, we will strategically order the resource we think will make the most impact for distribution.  Timing is of the essence.

We just got an email from Boone County Dems that they are ready to distribute at some key events and are spreading the word.

We are also in discussions with several campaign representatives in flippable districts who are excited to participate. Additionally, because of Dona’s extensive connections with Indiana schools, teachers and students from several of the high schools in the targeted districts have indicated their willingness to get to work on our campaign, including talking about voter registration in the morning announcements.  We have the organization, volunteers, tools and enthusiasm needed to make this campaign a big success. Now, we need the funding to put our plan into action and maximize the impact over the next 60 days.

If you can help, please reply to Deborah Asberry <debbie@debbieasberry.com>and let us know the amount that you are able to donate so we can monitor the progress.  If you know of another person who would be interested in helping us in this endeavor, please forward this information to them, but let us know whom you reached out to.  No amount is too small.  We trust we can immediately raise enough to get us started in printing and distributing.

Let’s do this!  Thank you in advance.

Debbie Asberry, Rachel Thelin, Babara Burke, & Dona Sapp

Yours in democracy,

Debbie, Rachel and Barbara

https://hoosiersfordemocracy.substack.com

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The Real Christians

As regular readers of my daily rants know, I’ve been hard on the fake “Christians” who dominate MAGA and are most accurately characterized as Christian Nationalists. I have also been emphatic in noting that Christian Nationalism bears little resemblance to the Christianity practiced by several of my friends and some of my family.

I recently had an experience that underscored my conviction that real Christians are very different from the theocrats who currently (mis)use the name.

My husband and I go to our time-shared condominium in Litchfield, South Carolina for a week each July, and we usually drive there. As I have gotten older–and as retirement has given me more flexibility–we’ve broken up that thirteen-hour drive into three days, and added interesting stops along the way. The first of those stops has usually been in Berea, Kentucky, where we stay at the historic Boone Tavern on the lovely campus of Berea College.

Berea College, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is a truly remarkable institution. It is academically excellent. It was founded in 1855 on a work-study model, to serve Appalachian youngsters who could not afford to pay tuition, and it continues to draw preferentially from that area. Most students still graduate without debt thanks to the school’s practice of offering “Tuition Promise” scholarships to all enrollees. (The average debt of those who do leave with academic debt is $4,712, and the most common debt of students who do have debt is $1000.) Fifty-eight percent of the first year students in 2021 were the first in their families to attend college; 29% of that class were African-American and 14% were Hispanic.

Religiously, the college identifies as Christian:

Berea College commits itself to stimulate understanding of the Christian faith and its many expressions and to emphasize the Christian ethic and the motive of service to others. Berea College welcomes people from all religious and non-religious backgrounds, because of our Christian commitment, not in spite of it. (Emphasis theirs)

Berea and Oberlin were the first two colleges in the U.S. to accept both women and Blacks as students, and this year, I was interested to discover that among Berea’s fifteen residence halls is “a gender-inclusive option for students who identify as transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming.”

I knew much of the school’s history prior to our most recent stay, but a conversation with the server in the bar prompted my observation that the institution is truly Christian–without the quotation marks.

The woman mixing my drink (yes, they have alcohol on the premises) responded to my verbal appreciation of the college with a reference to its history. In 1904, Kentucky’s legislature passed the Day Law, a measure aimed directly at Berea’s inclusion of Black students. The law made integrated institutions illegal in the state. According to the server, Berea proceeded to obey the law by sending all of its then-enrolled Black students to Oberlin, and paying their tuition there.

I was astonished, and when I went up to my room, I googled the issue to see whether she had embellished it. Sure enough–in the wake of the Day Law, Berea had sent Black students either to all-Black schools or to Oberlin, and had paid their tuition. It evidently continued that practice until the law was repealed in the early 1950s.

(As an aside, the server was also extremely dismissive of JD Vance and his purported emergence from Appalachia…I liked her a lot!)

But back to the question of “real” Christianity.

The founder of Berea College was a man named John Gregg Fee. According to Wikipedia, Fee and his colleagues believed that “God made of one blood all peoples of the earth,” and that belief became the school’s motto.

One of the school’s original bylaws stated that “This college shall be under an influence strictly Christian.” but–unusual for the time– the term ‘Christian’ was not defined in terms of baptism or other theological tenets.

It was assumed that Christians would be marked by ‘a righteous practice and Christian experience.’ For Fee and his abolitionist supporters, slavery, sectarianism, and exclusion on the basis of social and economic differences were examples of ‘wrong’ institutions and practices that promoted schism and disobedience to God. These sins, left unamended, would prevent Berea from being a place of acceptance, welcome, and love.” Therefore, character became the chief qualification for admission, placing education within reach of all who desired its benefits.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if today’s publicly pious “Christians” emphasized character and loving-kindness? America under that definition of a “Christian Nation” would be a place of “acceptance, welcome, and love.”

Unfortunately, those traits are utterly foreign to Trump and MAGA…

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A Factual Rebuttal

In the wake of Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the Presidential campaign, media attention turned from the just-concluded Republican convention to the Democratic ticket. While that’s understandable, it’s also important to revisit the fantasies promulgated at that GOP lie-fest. I particularly liked one of those reviews, penned by David French in the New York Times, because French is a conservative former Republican, whose analysis cannot fairly be attributed to progressive ideology.

French-who was a Mitt Romney delegate at the 2012 Republican convention– noted that this year’s event “was the first that revolved entirely around a fundamentally false premise: that in our troubled time, Donald Trump would be a source of order and stability.” As he noted, if past performance is any indication, a second Trump term would be as chaotic as the first.

To bolster their case, Republicans misled America. Speaker after speaker repeated the claim that America was safer and the world was more secure when Trump was president. But we can look at Trump’s record and see the truth. America was more dangerous and the world was quite chaotic during Trump’s term. Our enemies were not intimidated by Trump. In fact, Russia improved its strategic position during his time in office.

Convention speakers emphasized the same themes that Hoosiers saw in the GOP’s primary fight–especially ominous warnings about crime and crime rates. These arguments reek of what Yiddish speakers call “chutzpah,” because acceptance of GOP arguments about public safety requires swallowing a Republican “alternate reality.”

As French notes,

The most egregious example of Republican deception centered around crime. The theme of the second night of the convention was “Make America Safe Again.” Yet the public mustn’t forget that the murder rate skyrocketed under Trump. According to the Pew Research Center, “The year-over-year increase in the U.S. murder rate in 2020 was the largest since at least 1905 — and possibly ever.”…

It’s particularly rich for Trump to claim to be the candidate of order when the crime rate rose during his presidency and is plunging during Joe Biden’s. In 2023, there was a record decrease in the murder rate, and violent crime, ABC News reported, “plummeted to one of the lowest levels in 50 years.”

French also reminded readers of Trump’s utterly unAmerican approach to international relations, which consisted of dumping on the country’s longtime allies and cozying up to autocrats and dictators–especially Putin.

Trump’s argument about foreign policy is also fundamentally deceptive. Throughout the convention, we heard variations of the same theme: Russia didn’t invade any other country under Trump, and Iran was broke and powerless. But again, this is misleading. Far from being frightened and intimidated by Trump, both Russia and Iran directly attacked American troops when he was president.

In 2018, Russian mercenaries and their Syrian allies assaulted an American position in northern Syria, leading to a four-hour battle during which American forces deployed artillery and airstrikes to beat back the attack. In 2020, Iran fired a volley of ballistic missiles at American troops in retaliation for our strike against Qassim Suleimani and injured more than 100 American service members.

In both instances, our forces handled themselves with courage, professionalism and skill, but if Russia and Iran were so frightened of Trump, why did they attack Americans?

Trump enabled Iran to restart its nuclear program, and ordered a precipitous withdrawal from northern Syria that abandoned our Kurdish allies, creating an opening for Russia. (Russians filmed themselves occupying an abandoned American base.)

Trump’s obvious disrespect for our allies harmed American interests then, and if he wins they’ll harm American interests again. At the end of Trump’s term, Russia was stronger, Iran was unbowed, and America’s relationship with our key allies was more tenuous. Trump had even threatened to yank the United States out of NATO, our most important alliance, an act that would fulfill one of Putin’s fondest hopes.

As French concludes, Trump wants voters to empty their minds of the past so that he can fill it with his own “alternative facts.”

The Republican National Convention was one long exercise in creating memories of a Trump term that never existed. The real Trump term was chaotic and dangerous from start to finish, and if Americans’ memories don’t improve soon, the voters who seek peace and stability will instead bring us violence and tears.

The problem is, for the MAGA cult, reality is irrelevant. Climate change is a hoax, NATO isn’t worth supporting, Brown immigrants are all criminals…the list goes on, and at its base is the real glue holding the cult together–White Christian Nationalism and nostalgia for a (largely non-existent) past in which White men dominated the government and the culture.

A Republicans vote is a vote for the Confederacy.

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How Conspiracy Theories Work

I have a confession to make. In the aftermath of the attempt on Trump’s life, my first reaction was suspicion that he’d arranged the whole thing. After all, it would be just like him to produce a scenario where he could play the brave victim…and with the death of the shooter, there would be no evidence…

Okay–not my finest moment. But a cursory scan of my FaceBook page provided evidence that I wasn’t the only person open to similar fantasies, and that, in turn, led me to consider just how America got to the stage where conspiracy theories have more force and impact than facts.

An interesting experiment sheds some light on that inquiry: a while back, The New Republic ran an article detailing a “prank” that illustrated how such theories spread. The article began:

Bird propaganda is everywhere, once you’re trained to recognize it. Since the Cold War, children have eaten their breakfast cereals with Toucan Sam and spent their after-school hours learning at Big Bird’s oversize feet. Television has streamed into our homes and onto our smartphones under the strutting sign of NBC’s rainbow peacock. Penguins gaze out at us from our bookshelves. Eagles, the government insists, are patriotic symbols of strength and freedom. Duolingo uses an earnest but irritating green owl to engineer our digital behavior and shame us into learning rudimentary Portuguese.

As you catch your breath from this unnerving revelation, you should also know that there is a growing movement online determined to reveal the truth: that none of this is benign, none of it accidental. That Americans are being birdwashed into docility and obedience.

Calling itself Birds Aren’t Real, this group of primarily Gen Z truthers swaps ­memes and infographics on social media (the official accounts boast more than 800,000 followers on TikTok and 400,000 on Instagram), challenges the powers that be with combative media appearances, and holds rallies across the country. They explain that the U.S. government secretly ran a “mass bird genocide” starting in the late 1950s, replacing the real avian population with sophisticated surveillance-drone look-alikes. Bird-watching now goes both ways.

The group’s leaders even published a book, in which they “revealed” that the government’s bird genocide plot was hatched by “notorious CIA director Allen Dulles—when he wasn’t spearheading the MK-Ultra mind-control program.” They provided “evidence” of the complicity of presidents from Eisenhower to Biden, and a field guide for recognizing bird-drones in the “wild.”

“Birds Aren’t Real” was an elaborate prank, what the article calls “a knowing satire of American conspiratorial thinking in the century of QAnon–an experiment in misinformation. And it demonstrates the elements needed for a successful conspiracy theory. First of all, it offers a “theory of everything”—a way for people to make sense of the world’s complexity and contradictions, to tie up all the loose ends. Good conspiracy theories offer “arguments by adjacency,” meaning that arguably related credible facts are used to “prove” wilder claims, “offering just enough truth to make you wonder.”

Finally, successful conspiracy theories are able to perform a kind of psychic alchemy for their followers. On the one hand, they drain pleasure from everyday life. Nothing can be innocent; everything is wrapped up in the plot. QAnon supporters pull away from friends and family, convinced that the people they most love have become satanic cultists. Birds Aren’t Real tells you that you can’t enjoy simple joys like nature walks and bird-watching, family Christmases (eating turkey is “ritualized bird worship”), or even your pets. People with birds at home are advised “to calmly pack your things in the middle of the night and leave. Make sure your bird does not see you leave.” Your pet bird never loved you, for it was merely a government drone-robot, but at least now the imminent danger has passed.

The article notes that conspiracy theories offer people agency in a world that seems fallen to pieces, and it reports and analyzes the efforts underway to combat them. It’s a fascinating–albeit somewhat depressing–read.

When I thought about the elements needed for wide acceptance of a conspiracy theory, I realized mine lacked them. My reaction was more a suspicion than a theory–it didn’t explain everything (like why anyone sane thinks Trump is fit to be President); the only available “argument from adjacency” is that Trump, who lies constantly, is demonstrably capable of inventing and spreading misinformation. And my theory would hardly offer agency to those of us who are shocked and saddened by realizing that large numbers of our fellow Americans are drinking Trump’s Kool-Aid.

There’s probably a lot of overlap between MAGA folks and those who believe that Birds Aren’t Real….

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