Let’s Talk Specifics

One thing most Americans can agree upon is that this year’s election is abnormal.

We have a presidential contest featuring a convicted felon– supported by a fact-averse cult–who routinely lies, threatens violence, and violates long-established political norms. (I would add that–although we’ve had some unfortunate political actors in our history–we’ve never previously faced a presidential campaign by someone so obviously, seriously mentally ill.)

Perhaps as a result of that novelty, the traditional press consistently fails to convey the actual stakes of the upcoming election–and those stakes are monumental. Handwringing pundits have complained about that failure, but very few have made specific recommendations for change. For that matter, grousing without suggesting what actions might be helpful characterizes most conversations about the upcoming election. 

What should the media do? What should each concerned citizen do?

Jennifer Rubin recently answered that question for the media. She began with a statement of the obvious:

The United States has never had an election in which: a felon runs for president on a major party ticket; a presidential candidate lays out a detailed plan for authoritarian rule; an entire party gaslights the public (e.g., claiming the president was behind their candidate’s state prosecution; pretending they won the last election); and, prominent leaders of one party signal they will not accept an adverse outcome in the next election. Yet, the coverage of the 2024 campaign is remarkably anodyne, if not oblivious, to the unprecedented nature of this election and its implications.

Rather than indulging an obsession with meaningless early polling, Rubin says, show a minute or two of unedited video of Trump’s rambling, incoherent and deranged rants. Rather than “fact checking” the nonsense blizzard, focus on the unprecedented nature of his rhetoric. Illustrate the deterioration in his thinking and speech. Quote experts discussing “how an obviously irrational and unhinged leader casts a spell over his devoted following.”

 

Rubin says the media should refuse to entertain “laughable MAGA spin,” such as claims that Trump’s conviction will help him win the election. (Those polls they love to cite rebut that premise.) Real journalists would debunk other MAGA lies, including the frequent ones about crowd size. 

 

Reporters should stop giving spineless Republican officials a free pass when they parrot Trump’s obvious falsehoods. Interviewers should be prepared to challenge and debunk them.

 

You can read the rest of her litany at the link, but the call for specificity also applies to each of us. After all, fulminations on this blog–including mine– are not actions. Sharing memes and “liking” posts on social media aren’t actions.

 

Other than the obvious–casting our votes and donating to underfunded candidates–what specific activities are available to those of us who understand the gravity of the threat posed by MAGA? 

 

Let me suggest three:

  • If everyone who recognizes that threat, everyone who agrees that voting Blue up and down the ballot is essential, would find just one rational person who has not previously voted– or who has not voted regularly–and would take it upon herself to ensure that person is registered and casts a ballot, we would assure a Blue tsunami. (Women who have previously skipped elections ought to be prime candidates this year, given the GOP’s unremitting attacks on abortion and birth control.)
  • When you come across examples of news media engaging in the behaviors Rubin has described, write and complain. If the offending outlet gets enough complaints, especially if those complaints come from subscribers, they’ll notice. They may defend their coverage, but they’re likely to be more careful.
  • If you are on social media, post accurate, credible information about the actual state of the economy, real numbers about criminal activity, and other facts that rebut widespread misinformation–with links to official sources, if possible. You needn’t get into online arguments (if someone has posted that the stock market is down, or unemployment is up, all you need to do is post an article from, say, the Wall Street Journal or other business publication reporting the fact that the market has hit an all-time high and employment is the highest in fifty years.) The people posting misinformation on Facebook or Tiktok or wherever aren’t people who read the New York Times or Washington Post–or, here in Indiana, the Indianapolis Business Journal. At the very least, you’ll be ensuring that they see something other than Rightwing media misinformation. 

If you have the time and can join an activist organization, that would be great, but if large numbers of people just did these three things, it would change the dynamic of America’s upcoming election.

This is our (much safer) beach at Normandy. Storm it.

Comments

It Seems There IS A “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”

Remember when Hillary Clinton was widely ridiculed for alluding to the existence of a “vast Right-wing conspiracy”? It turns out she wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t even exaggerating.

And it explains a lot of what’s happening now.

A number of articles over the past couple of years have pointed out that Trump didn’t suddenly turn a once-respectable political party into the MAGA cult with which we’re now dealing. As Maureen Dowd recently wrote in the New York Times, in a column about our corrupt Supreme Court, there has long been “a determined group of religious zealots with a long-term master plan to pack the court with religious zealots.”

“These conservative Catholic and evangelical Christian operators believed they were fighting the biggest moral battle of the modern age, and forced America to debate on their terms,” they wrote. “But despite their public appeals, they did not convince broad swaths of Americans of the righteousness of their cause. Instead, they remained a minority, and leveraged the structures of American democracy in their favor, building a framework strong enough to withstand not only the political system but also a society moving rapidly against them. They took power to remake the nation in their image. And they were far more organized than their opponents or the public ever knew.”

Emerging reporting and research confirm the allegations. Talking Points Memo recently described one such organization–a secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country, intent on recruiting a “Christian government.”

More recently, a study by the American Association of University Professors documented the manufacture of the recent backlash against institutions of higher education. It uncovered a network of  Right-wing “think tanks” that has been laying the foundation for those attacks for many years. In a chapter titled “Culture War, Think Tanks, and the Dark Money that Funds Them,” the scholars identified twenty-six national think tanks. Among them were the Center for Renewing America, the Conservative Partnership Institute, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and–of course–the Heritage Foundation.

The report also listed thirty-eight state-Level think tanks, and forty-three organizations it categorized as “Cultural Conservative Think Tanks (including the Claremont Institute, a think tank that figured prominently in efforts to overturn the 2020 election).

Given the purpose of the study, the report focused on eleven of the think tanks that have participated in the culture war by attacking educational institutions.

Many of these think tanks work closely with one another, often sharing personnel and board members, amplifying each other’s work, pushing the same messaging, and supporting shared political objectives. As demonstrated in Appendix 2, this level of coordination is unsurprising given that these think tanks also receive money from the same libertarian and conservative megadonors. Furthermore, as described in the second section, seven of the eleven think tanks are members of the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella organization that networks national and state-level libertarian think tanks.

Appendix 2 identifies the wealthy individuals funding these organizations.

The report analyzes a number of “model” bills that aim to impose a conservative Christian worldview on public education and promote election denial, and it describes several of the most extreme–and effective–organizations. One of those is the Manhattan Institute, which “houses Christopher Rufo, Ron DeSantis’ favored “educator.”

Rufo–who is largely credited with weaponizing the term “critical race theory”

started his anti-CRT campaign in a City Journal column in July 2020 where he wrote about diversity training offered by Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights. Since then, Rufo has published over one hundred columns in City Journal, many focused on critical race theory, DEI efforts in schools, woke-ness, so-called gender ideology, and “left-wing radicals” in K-12 and higher education. He claims that “critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions.

DeSantis appointed Rufo to the Board of Trustees at the New College of Florida, Rufo where he helped end the college’s gender studies program (which he deemed “ideological activism”).

After his appointment to the board, Rufo tweeted: “We are now over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within. Under the leadership of Gov. DeSantis, our all-star board will demonstrate that the public universities, which have been corrupted by woke nihilism, can be recaptured, restructured, and reformed.” 

The report–with copious citations–is 148 pages long, and for those with the patience to read it all, revelatory. 

The White Christian Nationalists who emerged from the shadows to support Donald Trump have been working for a very long time to reassert what they believe to be the proper world order: a society dominated by White Christian men, in which Blacks, women, non-Christians and LGBTQ+ citizens are kept in their deservedly “inferior” places.

They are indeed a “vast Right-wing conspiracy.”

Comments

Some Thoughts On Pride

The subject-matter of yesterday’s post was yet another reminder that bigotry against our LGBTQ+ neighbors still exists, and is used–together with racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry–to motivate the MAGA base. When stripped to its essentials, the reality is that our current political divide is almost completely based on the division between “live and let live” Americans and the Christian Nationalists who largely comprise the MAGA movement.

That said, it is also a reality that those harboring these racial and religious grievances are in the minority. The culture has moved on, and they know it. In fact, it is that recognition that has them so furious.

I was forcefully reminded of that cultural shift when I attended this year’s Pride parade.

I have gone to every Pride parade held in Indianapolis since my years as the Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU, so I’ve had a front-row seat to the event’s explosive growth. Although a variety of Pride events were held in the 1980s, it was in 1992 (I think–I may be a year or so off), that the very first “Cadillac Barbie Pride Parade” was held. I was there with a couple hundred other onlookers to see the floats–all eight of them, as I recall–most sponsored by the city’s gay bars.

Over the years, the number of floats and the crowds of cheering onlookers have grown–exponentially. The parade’s path has been expanded by several blocks to accomodate the crowds. And this year, a parade that was supposed to take two hours took almost three. There were at least a couple hundred entries, and they represented a breathtakingly broad part of our community. It seemed as if every company doing business in Indianapolis took part. At least five banks, multiple law firms, hospitals and schools had large contingents. The Indianapolis police and fire departments participated, as did the Mayor, the prosecutor, several Democratic political candidates, and multiple nonprofits. The local gay bars were back, along with a variety of gay organizations (including–I think for the first time– an African-American gay organization) and a large number of churches and religious communities.

The huge crowds–including lots of families with children– cheered and clapped. Many waved rainbow flags or wore  supportive clothing items. Where my husband and I were watching, near the end of the parade route, everyone was festive and polite.

I wonder what the two people holding large signs calling “homo sex” a sin thought about that massive show of support, and about the religious congregations marching with signs having some version of “Love all thy neighbors.” The “Christian” protestors who turned up regularly in the early days of the parade have dwindled over the years; I hadn’t seen any for the last few years, although given the enormous crowds of late, I may have missed them.

I didn’t go to the Pride festival that followed the Parade; I used to attend, but these days, I limit myself to the expanded parade. From what I hear, the festival–with its multiple booths and musical presentations–was equally well-attended.

I think we can take a lesson from events like this, and that lesson is comforting.

American culture has shifted. The majority is comfortable with inclusion–with the increased visibility and civic participation of Blacks and women and gay people. According to contemporary polls, over seventy percent of Americans approve of same-sex marriage, and majorities strongly disapprove of laws like Florida’s ‘don’t say gay” and efforts to keep books referencing LGBTQ+ folks out of public libraries.

It’s that level of acceptance that infuriates and frightens the MAGA throwbacks who currently control the GOP, and has pushed that party farther and farther to the Right. Just take a look at this year’s Texas GOP platform, which would infuse fundamentalist Christianity into the agencies of state government.

From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party’s growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

In Indiana, if everyone who marched in or cheered that Pride parade and the others around the state were to cast a ballot, we could easily hold off the people who see inclusion and acceptance as an attack on their right to dominate American life.

We need to get them to the polls.

Comments

Appalling

A few days ago, I posted my belief that Indiana’s dismal education policies were the result of Hoosier legislators simply not understanding the difference between education and job training. A couple of commenters disagreed; rather than ignorance and inadvertence, they saw the GOP’s attack on education as intentional. Keep the peons ignorant, and they’re easier to exploit.

Evidently, those commenters were onto something.

Florida–led by “Florida Man” Ron DeSantis–has been one of the Red states leading the way back to the 1950s. That path back to a “Christian” paternalism has been paved by persistent attacks on educational institutions. DeSantis began by appointing far Right ideologues as university trustees, and working with his compliant legislature to threaten librarians and forbid teachers from “saying gay.”

But those measures–unAmerican as they were–were apparently just an introduction. Now, Florida’s schoolteachers are being instructed in how to teach Christian Nationalism.

Training materials produced by the Florida Department of Education direct middle and high school teachers to indoctrinate students in the tenets of Christian nationalism, a right-wing effort to merge Christian and American identities. Thousands of Florida teachers, lured by cash stipends, have attended trainings featuring these materials.

A three-day training course on civic education, conducted throughout Florida in the summer of 2023, included a presentation on the “Influences of the Judeo-Christian Tradition” on the founding of the United States. According to speaker notes accompanying one slide, teachers were told that “Christianity challenged the notion that religion should be subservient to the goals of the state,” and the same hierarchy is reflected in America’s founding documents. That slide quotes the Bible to assert that “[c]ivil government must be respected, but the state is not God.” Teachers were told the same principle is embedded in the Declaration of Independence.

The site Popular Information obtained the slides from the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which received them from the Florida Department of Education after filing a public records request.

The next slide in the deck quotes an article by Peter Lillback, the president of Westminster Theological Seminary and the founder of The Providence Forum, an organization that promotes and defends Christian nationalism. The group’s executive director, Jerry Newcombe, writes a weekly column for World Net Daily — a far-right site known for publishing hundreds of stories falsely suggesting Obama was a Muslim born in Africa.

Popular Information asked Amanda Tyler to review the presentation. Tyler is the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, and an expert on Christian nationalism.

Tyler said that the “focus on the mythological founding of the country as a Christian nation, this use of cherry-picked history… is very much a marker of Christian nationalism.” According to Tyler, the aim of the presentation is “to solidify this ideology that equates being American to being Christian.” Tyler noted that the presentation does not address why, if religion was so essential to the structure of the government, the Constitution does not mention God at all.

Robert P. Jones, the president of the Public Religion Research Institute and the author of a newsletter on American Christianity, agreed, saying that the language in the slide deck is similar to what one would hear at “Christian nationalist rallies.” The term “Judeo-Christian,” Jones said, is frequently deployed in Christian nationalist circles as code for a white European Christian worldview.

One Florida middle school teacher who attended the civics training in 2022 and 2023 told Popular Information that, in one session, presenters used the King James Bibles to illustrate their points. Another said there was a heavy emphasis in the training on “dispelling the separation of church and state.” Teachers attending the training were told “that there was no such thing because the founders were Congregationalists,” (an assertion that is factually untrue and– had it been true– would hardly have supported a rebuttal of the constitutional separation of church and state.)

The training ignores John Locke and other Enlightenment figures. Instead, the slides claim that the basis of U.S. law is the Ten Commandments and that the phrase “all men are created equal” is derived from the biblical concept that “man is made in the image of God.”

Instructors were drawn from places like Hillsdale College, a Right-wing Christian institution seeking an overhaul of K-12 education that aligns with its conservative ideology. Hillsdale’s ideology downplays the role of slavery in American history and compares progressivism to fascism and the school is intimately connected to the Christian Nationalist movement.

Here in Indiana, clones of “Florida Man” include Republican culture warriors like Mike Braun, Jim Banks and Todd Rokita. If Hoosiers elect any or all of them, it will be an endorsement of the appalling “education” being pursued in Florida.

Comments

Occam’s Razor Again

A few days ago, I mentioned “Occam’s Razor,” the principle that the explanation of an event or condition that requires the fewest assumptions is usually the one that’s correct. (Wikipedia tells us that “Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation. Occam’s razor applies especially in the philosophy of science, but also appears in everyday life.”)

In the years since the election of 2016, I have come ever-more-firmly to the conclusion that the explanation of MAGA–as predicted by the principle of Occam’s Razor, not to mention common sense– is racism. 

There are reasons so many well-meaning Americans fail to understand this. As Rick Perlstein recently wrote, much of that failure can be attributed to coverage by the traditional media.

This failure, as I have been imploring, represents a deeply ingrained pattern, betokening a broader civic problem. In the weeks following Barack Obama’s election in 2008, America suffered an epidemic of racially motivated hate crimes: 200, all told, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. You may not have heard about that, because it was woefully undercovered by the gatekeeping organs of American political journalism. It was crowded out by their chosen narrative: that with the election of an African American president, we had overcome.

In the nation’s vaunted Newspaper of Record, a record of that portentous violence was particularly scant—even when it occurred in New York City, on the night of Obama’s victory, when a roving mob on Staten Island committed three separate assaults on minorities. The last victim they thumped onto the hood of an automobile; he spent the next month in a coma. The New York Times only ever mentioned the crime two months later, tucked away in the “New York Region” section, when the alleged perpetrators were arraigned.

I am actually somewhat sympathetic to the “we have overcome” narrative; it was certainly my initial reaction to that election. Unfortunately for its accuracy, subsequent research has painted a very different story. While many Americans (I hope and believe a majority) rejoiced at what we thought was evidence of progress, it turned out that Obama’s election operated to surface a significant and virulent racism that had been (thinly) veiled by what was then called “political correctness” and  is now vilified as “wokeness.”

I recently came across an article about yet another academic study underlining the role of “racial resentment” in our current, ugly, polarized political time. 

“Stop the Steal: Racial Resentment, Affective Partisanship, and Investigating the January 6th Insurrection,” relied on a national survey of adults in the US conducted in 2021. As the Guardian has reported, 

Political observers are quick to blame hyperpartisanship and political polarization for leading more than 2,000 supporters of Donald Trump to riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

But according to a recently published study, “racial resentment” – not just partisanship – explains the violence that broke out after the 2020 election.

Angered over the claim, promoted by Trump and his closest allies, that heavily Black cities had rigged the 2020 election in favor of Democrats, white voters – some affiliated with white-nationalist groups and militias, and others acting alone – stormed the US capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election.

“What Trump and Republicans did was they tried to make the point that something nefarious was going on in areas that were primarily African American,” said David Wilson, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who published the study with Darren Davis, a professor of political science at Notre Dame.

The entire appeal of the MAGA movement has been a play on racist resentments: affirmative action and other remedial measures are really efforts to “rob” Whites,  taxation of the wealthy is a ruse to enable “redistribution” to unworthy Black folks, immigration is an effort to “replace” White Christians, elections of the “wrong” people have obviously been rigged…Whatever “polite” justifications voters offer for supporting Trump, the real reason, when you peel the onion, is that he hates the people they hate: Jews, Gays, Muslims…and especially, always, Black and Brown people.

The research cited by the Guardian confirmed numerous other studies that have found a major, positive correlation between racialized resentment and support for Trump and MAGA. The potential effects of that resentment for democracy were suggested by a hair-raising quotation in the final paragraph:

“If you can get people to believe that democracy is about your freedom, and that the government is taking that away through taxes, through policies, through regulatory efforts, and [even] by fixing and rigging elections, you can stoke their resentment and they can even come to resent democracy.”

If democracy helps “them,” then democracy must go….

 
Comments