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Three Good Links

@protoslacker / protoslacker.tumblr.com

I read posts online that interest, infuriate, stimulate, inspire, or otherwise move me. I'll share short snippets. Mastodon Shuffle
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Big Daddy Trump

I start work at 5:30 AM, but on Tuesday I voted before going to work. I was in line before the polls opened at 7:00 and there were already about a hundred people in line. As the line wound around inside the firehall I could see from the window that about a hundred more people had joined the line. I wondered if I was the only one voting for Democrats? There was a Black couple in line. I felt that even if they were voting for Trump, they were probably as uncomfortable in this crowd as I.

In 1988 I was student teaching fifth grade in a rural Pennsylvania school. I made a unit on elections. The bulletin board I made featured the infamous picture of a helimited Michael Dukakis riding in a tank. I felt quite a lot of pressure not to expose my political biases.

I was nervous when presenting a lesson to the students. My tongue got tied. I said "regular erections" instead of "regular elections." I had to pretend not to notice the observing teacher's expression at the back of the classroom.

I had made cards with imaginary voters in the 1912 election. The cards provided a brief biography of a person and who they voted for. As the 19th Amendment hadn't been ratified in 1912, not everyone could vote. Each student took a card, I don't remember what the writing prompt was, but they were supposed to write something.

One boy's essay was an argument against electing a women president. The argument was succinct: If a women is elected then we wouldn't have any freedom.

George Lakoff contends that Americans tend to view the nation through a metaphor of the family and the government as parents. He contrasts a strict-father model of parenting with a nurturing-parent model. Pundits often present Trump as a "strict father" presidency.

Standing in line to vote there was a guy wearing a t-shirt with Trump's Georgia mugshot image and the tag, "I'm voting for the convicted felon." Another shirt in the crowd read "Fast Cars and Freedom."

An American ten year old knows he's got to do what his mother tells him to do, so the notion of a woman as president connotes a constriction of freedom. It would seem that as violent and capricious as Trump is, seeing him as a "strict father" implies that freedom must available through fecklessness.

#politics#metaphor#misogyny#authoritarianism
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As I argued in a recent virtual talk, the key problem with the “Christian nationalism” framing as it functions within American political discourse is that it’s ultimately too narrow to encompass all of the harmful tendencies within American Christianity. Clearly there’s a problem when “respectable” evangelicals like French and Moore, who are opponents of abortion rights and LGBTQ inclusion, can obtain “get out of criticism free” cards simply because they are outspoken opponents of Christian nationalism. Clearly we need better language to address anti-democratic Christian beliefs.

Chrissy Stroop in Religion Dispatches. Good (Enough) Christians — Russell Moore in The Atlantic Illustrates the Limitations of ‘Christian Nationalism’ as Category

#democracy#christianity#authoritarianism
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Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won't.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it. 

Timothy Snyder in Thinking about. . . .. The Stronman Fantasy.

And Dictatorship in Real Life

#donald trump#authoritarianism#dictatorship#fascisim
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Trump and the nightmare of tyranny lurking within the American dream
Despite facing 91 felony charges, Trump is going to be the Republican presidential nominee. He is a dictator-in-waiting
The New European
The nightmare of tyranny, in other words, has long lurked within the American dream. Eight years ago, it was plausible to claim that we should take Trump “seriously but not literally”. We should now take him at his word.

Matthew D'Ancona in The New European. Trump and the nightmare of tyranny lurking within the American dream

#politics#donald trump#authoritarianism
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The traditional practice of libraries is to buy or acquire published materials, preserve and catalog them, and lend them widely and confidentially. When books were printed on paper, the laws governing these practices remained clear for more than a century. But now, in the digital age, every one of these functions has been denied to libraries, or recently even declared illegal in the United States.

Brewster Kahle in The Guardian. The US library system, once the best in the world, faces death by a thousand cuts

In addition to political censorship and budget cuts, libraries are being undermined by rapacious digital licensing agreements

#libraries#books#authoritarianism
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What we are building toward on Nov. 5, 2024, might have the outward trappings of an election but it is really a show of force. What we call the Republican Party is barely a political party in any sense of the word but a dangerous antisocial movement that has embraced many of the tenets of fascism, from calls for violence to its dehumanizing of “others” — from desperate refugees at the border to transgender youth.

Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America

Momentous week of GOP debate, Trump's arrest gets 'horse race' coverage when the story's not about an election but authoritarianism.

#republican party politics#fascism#authoritarianism#journalism
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If, as Moms for Liberty insists, they want to “protect children,” what does all of this do to children themselves? We know the harm it enacts upon those the group targets, but what does it do to a child in a Christian nationalist home who takes these lessons to heart? This is the question that Smith grapples with, pointing out that imbibing these lessons “tears up the heart and mind as much as to be hated.” 

Matthew Teutsch and Emma Williams at Religion Dispatches. Christian Nationalism Hurts the Children It Claims to Protect--As Author Lillian Smith Understood 80 Years Ago

Lillian Smith

#authoritarianism#christian nationalism#memory#education
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Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian leaders, sees more than tactical political maneuvering in the choice by so many Republicans to again immediately lock arms around Trump despite the powerful evidence detailed in last week’s indictment. Such deference is “completely consistent” with the behavior across the world of “autocratic parties” under the thrall of “a leader cult,” says Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020 book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

The closest recent parallel she sees to the GOP’s behavior might be how the Forza Italia party remained in lockstep for years behind former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi throughout multiple trials (and even convictions) for corruption and sexual misconduct, amplifying his claims that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy and “witch hunt.” For leaders like Trump or Berlusconi (who died at 86 on Monday) such legal challenges, she says, actually become a “juncture” to strengthen their dominance by demanding that others publicly defend their behavior – no matter how indefensible. In that way, the leader establishes personal loyalty to him as the one true litmus test for belonging to the party. (The Republican decision to replace a party platform in 2020 with a brief statement declaring it would “enthusiastically support” Trump’s agenda, she notes, marked an important milestone in that transition.)

Ronald Brownstein at CNN. How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment

#donald trump#republican party#authoritarianism
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This White Christian identity, easily animated by appeals to resentment and racism, is the moral glue holding this defensive and defiant group together. Its apocalyptic worldview—where the all-important end of preserving a White Christian America justifies a by-any-means-necessary politics—legitimates support for Trump.

Robert P. Jones at Religion Dispatches.  CNN's Disastrous 'Town Hall' With Trump Put the Country At Risk

I am no expert on Robert P. Jones, but when a White Southerner speaks as eloquently as he does in opposition to white supremacy, I wonder what their story is.

I don't find it easy in my own life to filter out region from what I think and know.  Saying I'm a Christian seems to annoy quite a few people who know me. "You are a Christian so you must believe. . . (some generally odious  dogma or doctrine they pull out of a hat)." I oppose Christian nationalism and part of my opposition is steeped in in the history of Christianity in this country's history. There is so much emphasis on personal religious beliefs  and much less attention to the religious threads woven into our shared histories.

Jones is the CEO of PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute). He is a graduate of Mississippi College is the second-oldest Baptist-affiliated  college or university in the USA. He holds a Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University. He is also the author of a a book entitled,  White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.

It's worth recognizing that there are Christian allies in opposition to Christian Nationalism. I am grateful for Robert P. Jones and his good work.

#donald trump#media#cnn#politics#white supremacy#authoritarianism#book#white christian nationalism#robert p jones
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This effort—to remove powers from elected representatives who are Democrats—has become the new method of disenfranchising voters and maintaining perpetual Republican political power. And it is being undertaken with alarming frequency and speed across the country. This may be the most dangerous and efficient structural attack on our democracy. Its threat, and pernicious ingenuity, lies in its ability to make voting itself irrelevant. Voters may turn out in high numbers and elect their candidates of choice, but if the official is not one whose views align with those of the Republican Party, they may find that their powers of office are removed by antagonistic GOP-controlled legislatures.

Sherrilyn Ifill at Slate. The Republican Plan to Make Voting Irrelevant

#authoritarianism#republican party politics#voting rights#facism
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Why would US citizens develop a set of political values that favor the restriction or elimination of limits on the use of executive power -- by governors or presidents -- that very well could lead to harm to themselves and their families? A constitution exists to ensure equal treatment to all citizens and to establish equal liberties for all citizens; so why would some citizens favor authoritarian rule over constitutional protections? One possible motivation is the misplaced confidence that the strongman who emerges will naturally protect the interests of one's own group. But logic and history both suggest that all citizens benefit from constitutional and legal protections, and surrendering those for shortterm anxieties is a horrible mistake.

Daniel LIttle in Understanding Society. Decline of support for democratic norms

#democracy#authoritarianism#facisim
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Christian nationalism is as mainstream as apple pie among evangelicals and Republicans. And Christian nationalists are by and large churchgoing believers whose authoritarian Christianity is a very real and powerful expression of the faith that drives their ascendant anti-pluralist, anti-democratic politics. These are the same religion and politics I was socialized into back in the 1980s, only now with far more power. Pretending this is not the case and insisting on the equation of “Christian” with “good” only reinforces the Christian privilege that pervades American society and gives Christian nationalists cover. The only way to fight Christian nationalism effectively is to recognize it as an authentically Christian phenomenon.

Chrissy Stroop in Religion Dispatches. Christian Nationalism Is Authentically Christian--And According to a New Poll Most White

Reading about lynching and the KKK the "authentically Christian" part  really gets to me and has got me a bit stuck about links to share about White history during this Black History Month.

#racism#white christian nationalism#authoritarianism#christo-facism
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mastodon.social

Direct link to thread.

Thomas Zimmer is a German academic and visiting professor of history at Georgetown.  Perhaps his, “So far, the response has been utterly inadequate.” isn’t comming off as his hair’s on fire. But he really does seem shocked by the lack of mainstream outrage over this assualt on democracy. On  the Is This Democracy podcast Zimmer along with Lilliana Mason and Perry Bacon, Jr. discuss this issue: 13. The Murder of Tyre Nichols, the Authoritarian Takeover of Florida Education, and the Case *for* Teaching “CRT” --the  Florida  stuff begins around the 25 minute mark

#white supremacy#education#authoritarianism#florida#ron desantis
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What it comes down to is that they assert their right to control reproduction, and they assert their right over people's bodies. All totalitarianisms, no matter what they say their aims are, no matter what's on the flag, they all have in common the rollback of women's rights.

Margaret Atwood quoted in an article by Robert McElvaine at Salon. Abortion and authoritarianism: Why women's freedom threatens male supremacy

The notion that men are superior to women is the root of all human inequality. That's why we must fight it

#authoritarianism#dictators#human rights#women's health#bodies
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