The Appalling Pastor Beckwith

If I were a Christian–a real one–I would cringe every time our Christian Nationalist Lieutenant Governor claimed that affiliation. Love? Compassion? Humility? How woke!

You won’t catch this pathetic excuse for a human echoing those admonitions.

Not that it’s surprising from the guy who tried to ban books when he briefly served on a library board, but Beckwith has greeted Pride month with his usual invective and bigotry. WISH TV, among others, has reported on his Facebook post, calling Pride celebrations an “annual siege on childhood innocence” backed by “corporate America and government institutions.”

The post, published just before 10:30 a.m. on the official “Micah Beckwith For Indiana” Facebook page and “TheMicahBeckwith” on X, begins with the warning: “PRIDE MONTH ALERT: The Rainbow Beast IS Coming For Your Kids!”.

Beckwith goes on to say that schools are prioritizing “DEI indoctrination over reading, writing, or science” and accuses libraries of becoming “drag indoctrination centers.”

“Try hosting a ‘Heterosexual Heritage Hour’ and watch the mob arrive,” Beckwith continues.

Under a heading titled THE BIG PICTURE, the lieutenant governor calls Pride Month a “state-corporate-pagan alliance to reprogram society” that has exchanged “parental rights for government-sanctioned grooming.”

Beckwith closes the post by urging parents to “wake up”.

The post ends with a link to a story on the same topic published by a self-described “Christian Independent Press” website.

I’ve gone to Indianapolis’ Pride parades for twenty-plus years. I’ve watched as those celebrations have grown, not just in the number of floats, but in the number and variety of organizations and businesses and families joining the celebration. Evidently, that acceptance annoys the faux Christians and MAGA bigots waging war against “woke-ism” (not to mention that dreaded equity and inclusion), but their efforts to rally the homophobes and misogynists and racists aren’t going very well. Just ask Target–or Costco.

I always wonder what explains people like Micah Beckwith–people with a frantic need to see the world in stark shades of black and white, and a corresponding need to believe that they are on the right side of the dividing line. I know that in a lot of cases, homophobic men are unsure of their own masculinity, or desperately trying to suppress their own homosexual urges, which they’ve been taught are sinful. Many are products of the fundamentalist churches in which they grew up, and still others evidently have an overpowering need to feel morally superior to someone or some group.

I know I should pity the Micah Beckwiths of this world. They are demonstrably unhappy people; something is hollow inside them. But that pity is hard to come by, because there is something so repellant about people who actively work to hurt and demean other human beings. I can understand it when people who–for whatever reason–dislike gays or Jews or Black folks,  consequently fail to socialize with them. I think they’re missing out, but (as the saying goes) it’s a free country. You don’t like gay people, you don’t have to invite them over for dinner.

What I don’t understand–and will never understand–are the haters like Micah Beckwith, who aren’t satisfied to simply avoid folks whose lives they don’t want to accept–who want to actively hurt and humiliate people who are different. These twisted souls have some sort of primal need to see themselves as the proper arbiters of civic acceptance, and they want to use government to impose their faux Christianity on the rest of us.

It’s bad enough that we have to share the general population with stunted and mean-spirited people like Micah Beckwith, but I find it infuriating  that they currently infest Indiana’s government. It isn’t just Beckwith–although he is definitely the poster child for these theocratic misfits. Todd Rokita and Jim Banks are “out and proud” Christian Nationalists, ready and eager to jettison the Bill of Rights and spit on 200+ years of American progress. Indiana government hasn’t been this retrograde since the Klan years. It’s no wonder the state has a persistent brain drain.

What is so depressing is that a majority of Hoosiers voted for these hateful people. I can’t even blame the gerrymandering that has given us our embarrassing legislature–these dreadful people ran statewide.

For my part, I intend to embrace the “Rainbow Beast.” It’s the least I can do.

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Bruce Springsteen Gets It

During a concert in Europe, Bruce Springsteen issued a criticism of Trump and his administration that generated a typically childish response from our thin-skinned autocrat.  Springsteen’s comments–unlike Trump’s– displayed a fundamental understanding of what it means to be an American–“the union of people around a common set of values.” That union, he said, is “now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other.”

Springsteen recognized an essential element of American identity, an element that MAGA appears incapable of comprehending: America is, and has always been, about a set of ideals. 

Back in 1997, I wrote that it is the mission of public education to identify and transmit the values Americans hold in common,  the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and reflected through our national history.

What is the “American Idea”?

Americans value liberty. We believe in our inalienable right to hold our own opinions, to think for ourselves, to assemble with our friends, to cast our votes, to pray or not, all free of government coercion.
 
We value equality before the law– not to be confused with the fuzzy notion that we are all somehow interchangeable, and not to be confused with the belief of some religions that all people are equally worthwhile. This is a more limited proposition – –  that government should apply the same rules to all similarly-situated citizens. It was a radical notion in 1776. It is fundamental to the way we understand ourselves and our society today.
 
We value the marketplace of ideas, the supreme importance of our ability to communicate with each other, unfettered by government censorship.
 
We value government legitimacy and respect for the rule of law. So long as our representatives continue to derive their authority from the consent of those they govern, we recognize our individual obligations to respect and obey the law. If we protest a law we believe to be unjust, we recognize our obligation to accept the consequences of that disobedience. (Tell that to the Jan. 6th insurrectionists pardoned by Trump…)
 
Finally, real Americans value the “woke” civic virtues which are necessary to the realization of the foregoing values: honesty, courage, kindness, mutual respect and tolerance.

In a country where people read different books and magazines, patronize different websites and news sources, attend different churches, and even speak different languages – where the information and beliefs we all share are diminishing and our variety and diversity are growing –these are the core values that make us Americans. They are nowhere to be seen in MAGA or the Trump administration.

Recently, David Brooks underlined the difference between Americans who define patriotism as allegiance to those overarching values, and the “blood and soil” Trumpers.

Trump and Vance have to rebut the idea that America is the embodiment of universal ideals. If America is an idea, then Black and brown people from all over the world can become Americans by coming here and believing that idea. If America is an idea, then Americans have a responsibility to promote democracy. We can’t betray democratic Ukraine in order to kowtow to a dictator like Vladimir Putin. If America is an idea, we have to care about human dignity and human rights. You can’t have a president go to Saudi Arabia, as Trump did this month, and effectively tell them we don’t care how you treat your people. If you want to dismember journalists you don’t like, we’re not going to worry about it….

If America is built around a universalist ideal, then there is no room for the kind of white identity politics that Trump and Stephen Miller practice every day. There is no room for the othering, zero-sum, us/them thinking, which is the only kind of thinking Trump is capable of. There’s no room for Trump’s immigration policy, which is hostile to Latin Americans but hospitable to the Afrikaners whose ancestors invented apartheid. There’s no room for Tucker Carlson’s replacement theory. There’s no room for the kind of racialized obsessions harbored, for example, by the paleoconservative writer Paul Gottfried in an essay called “America Is Not an ‘Idea,’” in Chronicles magazine: “Segregation was also an unjust arrangement, and I don’t regret seeing that go either. But what has taken its place is infinitely more frightening: the systematic degradation of white Americans.”

Brooks is right to accuse this Trumpian cabal of moral degradation, of substituting an ugly tribalism for genuine patriotism.

Springsteen is also right: people unified around American ideals can defeat Trump’s efforts to debase America. We all need to turn out for No Kings Day.

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Making Voting Hard

A fear often expressed by members of the Resistance is the possibility that Trump will declare a “national emergency” of some sort and use that declaration to cancel the midterm election. I don’t entirely discount that possibility, but I do think it is unlikely, for a number of reasons.

That said, the fear is reasonable, based on the GOP’s persistent assault on voters’ rights, and on its long history of vote suppression. The Brennan Center recently shared their study of the effects of those efforts, and the conclusions are depressing. It turns out that there are multiple ways of invalidating an election without actually cancelling it.

States have enacted dozens of laws that make it harder for citizens to vote. What impact will they have in next year’s vital midterm elections?

The Brennan Center has provided compelling evidence that these laws directly suppress the vote. And our newest research shows, even more significantly, that eligible voters turned away from casting a ballot once are much less likely to try again in later elections. They give up, it seems. Voter suppression can last years, perhaps a lifetime. That is a deeply disturbing finding, suggesting that even small effects of these new laws can cascade over time.  

Researchers looked at the results of S.B. 1, a Texas law making it more difficult to vote by mail. The state rejected thousands of mail ballot requests and mail-in votes during the 2022 primary. (Unsurprisingly the rejections were disproportionately those of nonwhite voters.)

They found that the voters whose ballots were rejected were 16 percentage points less likely to vote in the 2022 general election. “And the trend continued for the 2024 primary election — a full two years later.” As the report emphasized, “These citizens are not disinterested slackers. These are routine voters who have properly cast ballots year after year — 85 percent of those whose mail-in votes or ballot requests were rejected voted in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 general elections.”

This is one more strong piece of evidence that the recent wave of restrictive voting laws will have a great and growing impact. Last year, a Brennan Center study relying on a voter file with nearly 1 billion records showed that the gap between the participation rates of white voters and nonwhite voters has grown across the country — but grew at twice the rate in counties once monitored by a robust Voting Rights Act.

Some have suggested that the tumult over these new voting laws was sound and fury that ultimately signified little. Sure, they say, these laws may have had bad intent, but the impact was negligible.

As it turns out, voter suppression laws . . . suppress the vote. Who’d have thought it? 

If readers from central Indiana are interested in learning more about the impact of the GOP’s ongoing effort to suppress the vote, Common Cause is screening an important film at the Kan Kan theater on June 12th at 7:00 pm.

The documentary film, Vigilantes Inc, is based upon reporting done by investigative journalist Greg Palast, and it reveals how self-appointed “vote-fraud hunters” challenge the ballots of millions of voters–with a special emphasis on young voters and voters of color. There will be a discussion following the screening, featuring the filmmaker and Indiana advocates fighting voter suppression. 

You can buy tickets here.

As the Brennan Center article points out, the effects of long lines at a polling place, requirements to produce birth certificates or proof of citizenship, or “errors” disqualifying a ballot can effectively suppress an individual’s motivation to vote for years–even a lifetime.

Political analyst Michael Podhorzer has astutely observed that a “generational replacement” is being engineered: “Older and established voters keep up their voting habits, while new restrictions stymie younger voters.” Our research shows the effects of voter suppression on older voters, but it underscores how potent silent disenfranchisement can be…

The right kind of national legislation would expand access while strengthening election administration and security. The Freedom to Vote Act would set baseline national standards to ensure that ballots cannot be discarded for minor errors and discrepancies, and it would bar many state restrictions on mail and early voting. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore the strength of the Voting Rights Act.

These reforms came achingly close to enactment a few years ago. We predicted then that if the federal courts and Congress did not protect the freedom to vote, states would be left unchecked to abuse the rights of their people. Sadly, that has happened. Congress should once again be prepared to act.

If your schedule permits, go see “Vigilantes” on June 12th. And vote for Democrats to take Congress next year, assuming there’s an election…

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The Would-Be King

Phil Gulley is a Quaker pastor in Indiana and a clear-eyed observer of the human condition. Quakers value peace, integrity, community, and stewardship of the Earth–values that our mad would-be king disdains and desecrates. Phil recently shared an essay in which he described the multiple ways in which Trump and his MAGA base offend Quaker, American and human values, and he graciously allowed me to share it. It’s below. (He also has a Substack, for those of us who follow him.)

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A Criminal Syndicate

         Have you ever met someone who reminded you of someone else? When I first heard Pete Buttigieg, I was reminded of Richard Lugar, another well-spoken, intelligent Hoosier. When I met my wife, she reminded me of Katharine Hepburn, with whom she shared a classy, no-nonsense manner. I’m sure my rugged good looks reminded her of Spencer Tracy. When Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, I felt a spark of recognition. I know that man from somewhere else, I told myself. Then I remembered. Donald Trump reminds me of Tony Soprano. Both are swaggering bullies. Both are vicious, violent, and rapacious criminals, heading up criminal syndicates. Except one is fictional and one is not.

         There is no such thing as a Trump Administration. There is a Trump Syndicate, a crime family, a consortium of thugs, underlings, felons, and grifters, purporting to be public servants while carrying out a global campaign of theft, pilfering America’s treasury, peddling access to the Mobster-in-Chief, Donald Trump, while gutting the very agencies that would hold them accountable to the rule of law.

         Theirs is a master class in fraud, unparalleled in American history. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, which by the end of his term will be gutted. A democracy almost 250 years in the making has been stripped bare in one bleak and wintry season. The collective effort of twelve generations of Americans has been decimated by Hair Hitler and his Brownshirts. This is what I grieve the most, that tens of millions of Americans voted for a man who’d made no secret of his disdain for decency and duty. All his life, he has been the poster child of decadence—greedy, grasping, uncaring, and corrupt. He has never had a friend, only servile bootlickers collecting the crumbs that slip through his tiny hands, selling their souls for thirty pieces of silver. They, like he, merit a Judas death—abandoned and ashamed—their names a curse on the lips of history.

         He ventures from the White House only long enough to plunder, gathering jet planes and sweetheart deals from the sponsors of global terrorism, peddling his cryptocoins, favoring those who purchase them, tyrannizing those who don’t. Like all crime bosses, it is himself he is serving and no one else, so he will leave the presidency far richer than he entered it. His is a transactional presidency, our shared public treasure rummaged at fire-sale prices to his cronies.

         Anyone who dares protest is called out on middle-of-the-night tweets—Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, colleges, professors, foreign presidents with the audacity to stand against tyranny, Mexico, Canada, and liberals. What an honor it would be to be singled out for attack by Donald Trump, to be labeled an enemy of his brutish ignorance. If we are known by the company we keep, we are also known by the company we find so repulsive we would dedicate our lives to resisting it. If he is naming his enemies, number me among them. I detest everything about him and all he represents−fascism, meanness, ignorance, and cruelty.

         Like all mob bosses, to remain in his good favor requires an envelope of cash slipped into his silken pocket. His goons rise each morning and go forth, strong-arming America, threatening, intimidating, collecting the daily take, promising safety to those who comply and ruination to those who refuse.  Now we are separating the men from the boys, and shame on the boys, shame on those who buckle under, the law firms and tech bros, whose donations fund this Thief-of-State. With billions of dollars at their disposal, with teams of lawyers at their beck and call, they tremble in fear of this strutting bully and what he might tweet about them. Their spinelessness is not only appalling, but traitorous. A pox upon them all.

         Washington and Lincoln have their memorials, but there will be no such marker for Trump. Should one be erected, it will be torn down by those who cannot bear to see such a man saluted. There won’t be enough tomatoes in the world to register history’s disgust, nor enough guards to safekeep his marker. He should enjoy the braying accolades he is receiving now, since his future will lack the faintest note of praise.

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About That “Abundance” Agenda

My middle son lived in Manhattan for ten years before relocating to Amsterdam, and during his tenure in the Big Apple he sprinkled numerous conversations with complaints (okay, rants) about the excessive costs of the city’s infrastructure. He couldn’t understand why other countries could extend their subway systems and railways at a fraction of America’s cost, and could complete projects far more rapidly.  He loved New York, but the glaring and costly inefficiency offended him.

I had no wisdom to impart. I didn’t know–and was unable to speculate– why a subway extension in the U.S. cost so much more–and took so much longer– than similar projects in other countries.

Until very recently, I was equally unaware of the policy war centered on something called  the abundance agenda, which turned out–despite what I still consider a weird label–to be an argument over that same question: why can’t America build things anymore?

As an article from The Atlantic explained:

The abundance agenda is a collection of policy reforms designed to make it easier to build housing and infrastructure and for government bureaucracy to work. Despite its cheerful name and earnest intention to find win-win solutions, the abundance agenda contains a radical critique of the past half century of American government. On top of that—and this is what has set off clanging alarms on the left—it is a direct attack on the constellation of activist organizations, often called “the groups,” that control progressive politics and have significant influence over the Democratic Party.

The article documented national examples that dovetailed with my son’s complaints. For example, the amount of time that elapsed between Biden’s signing of his infrastructure bill and actual construction meant that voters hadn’t seen the effects of that legislation by the next election.

A massive law had been enacted, yet Americans did not notice any difference, because indeed, very little had changed. Biden had anticipated, after quickly signing his infrastructure bill and then two more big laws pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into manufacturing and energy, that he would spend the rest of his presidency cutting ribbons at gleaming new bridges and plants. But only a fraction of the funds Biden had authorized were spent before he began his reelection campaign, and of those, hardly any yielded concrete results.

Only 58 of the “nationwide” electric-vehicle-charging stations were in service; completion dates for most road projects was mid-2027. Rural broadband access to had connected zero customers.

Policy wonks began to ask the same questions my son had asked. What was going on? American government used to construct engineering miracles like the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge ahead of schedule and under budget– Medicare had become available less than a year after it passed, but the Affordable Care Act’s exchange took nearly four years. And an embarrassing question: Why was everything slower, more expensive, and more dysfunctional in states and cities controlled by Democrats?

The policy wonks concluded that, over the years, a web of laws and regulations has turned any attempt to build public infrastructure into an expensive, agonizing nightmare. But removing excess regulations is highly controversial, because the limitations on building and government were largely imposed by interest groups that believed them necessary– interest groups that have dominated the Democratic Party for the last half century, and who saw their task as preventing an alliance of government, Big Business and Big Labor from subordinating the needs of citizens. They wanted to prevent the government from doing harm– but too often, they ended up preventing it from doing anything at all.

The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, is an example. Passed in 1969, the law required the government to undertake environmental-impact studies before authorizing major projects and created elaborate legal hurdles to navigate.

Activist groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund saw NEPA as a potent tool to stop Washington (and, through state-level copycat laws, state and local governments) from building harmful projects. They pursued an energetic legal strategy to expand the law’s reach, turning it into a suffocating weapon against development. Over time, the environmental-impact statements required to start a project have ballooned from about 10 pages to hundreds; the process now takes more than four years on average to complete.

The article has many more examples, but the issue is so contentious because it isn’t “either/or”–it requires policymakers to find the mean between extremes. How much regulation is needed to safeguard the environment, or protect against government overreach–and how much is too much?

If and when we elect lawmakers who actually care about governing, it’s an issue they need to address.

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