Sunday, March 02, 2014
NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...
...about the religious freedom bills that were supposed to protect citizens from gay brides and grooms, and how as usual the brethren took their enthusiasm so far that ordinary observers might just think they were also rooting for repeal of the Civil Rights Act. (Which some of them were, of course, but no fair reading anything bigoted into it.)
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Very good, carry on!
ReplyDeleteWhat, no Oscar predictions?
ReplyDelete. . . the brethren took their enthusiasm so far that ordinary observers might just think they were also rooting for repeal of the Civil Rights Act. (Which some of them were, of course, but no fair reading anything bigoted into it.)
ReplyDeleteI'd like to not read anything bigoted into it, but they keep writing crazed crap that basically says "We hate everyone who is not exactly like us! (and we're a bit suspicious about the guy next to us who's shouting the same thing at you)."
Also, too, using some of the same arguments and rhetoric that segregationists used back in the '50s and '60s adds more than a little tint of ol' timey bigotry.
Dreher said, "I would love to see a study comparing the press coverage
ReplyDeletefrom 9/11 leading up to the Iraq War with press coverage of the gay
marriage issue from about 2006 till today... I'm not suggesting a
conspiracy here, not at all. I'm only thinking back to how it seemed so
obvious to me in 2002 that we should go to war with Iraq, so perfectly
clear that the only people who opposed it were fools or villains. The
same consensus has emerged around same-sex marriage."
indeed, we will see just how prescient dreher is when, even though neil patrick harris lands his prius on the deck of u.s.s. eartha kitt under the banner "marriage accomplished," bloody civil war rages between leather daddy and twink factions in dupont circle, millions are forced to flee from los angeles and san francisco, and the weapons of mass destruction continue to go undiscovered.
I want to sail the seven seas with this comment.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the old "everybody agreed on Iraq at the time" defense. Shall we compare the numbers at anti-war demonstrations in 2003 vs. the number of anti-gay demonstrations in 2014? Everybody WASN'T in agreement back then; we just had a lickspittle media that tried to make it look that way.
ReplyDeleteWatching people rewrite history that occurred when I was in my mid-40s really makes me feel old.
I especially enjoyed Douthat's self-pitying "Terms of Our Surrender" -- dreading a future when gay-hating is something you have to keep to yourself, and anybody can get married just because they want to. It's behind the Times paywall, but if you want to get the flavor, you can watch the end of Goodfellas:
ReplyDelete"Today everything is different; there's no action... have to wait around
like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here,
I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and
ketchup. I'm an average nobody... get to live the rest of my life like a
schnook."
In the Navy?
ReplyDeleteOh, very well done. That is perfect. I spent the day criticizing Douthat over at Lawyer's Guns and Money and I really think this Goodfellas quote may be the best critique yet.
ReplyDelete"My right-wing colleagues are noted for manipulating press coverage and creating the semblance of popular support for their positions. Therefore, if popular support crystallises around a position, it must have been because my left-wing opponents were manipulating press coverage."
ReplyDeleteYou seldom see Projection in such a pure, concentrated form.
What's Brother Rod saying here? That in retrospect we can see that the consensus was wrong about Iraq, so let's see, now, that it's wrong about support for gay marriage? That's not what I see. I see Rod being wrong about Iraq, and now being wrong about gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteQED, or something. Bitchez.
I'm pretty much out of jokes about this entire thing but it does occur to me that one of the things that seems to piss these guys off the most is that the law, which they put up as a provocation and a form of crank mobilization, led to a (to their eyes) enormous counter mobilization--the kind they are always warning the left about. You know that old wheeze "if the left hadn't overreached with the civil war slavery would have ended..." "If the feminists hadn't overreached with Roe v. Wade we would never have been forced to fight back and kill abortion doctors, firebomb clinics, and make women's lives a living hell..." "If the gays weren't so darned sexy and out we wouldn't have to gay bash..."
ReplyDeleteSo this is their model and this is their nightmare--a critical mass of people has formed who react to gay baiting legislation being run up the flagpole by peppering the flagpole with buckshot and then we drag out the ground to air missiles and blow that sucker to bits.
Now if we could only get people to turn out and represent for other stuff, like the 15 minimum wage, like raising taxes on the 1 percent, like free nutritious meals for all school kids and free higher education for everyone who wants a real college degree from a brick and mortar school.
I think he's definitely arguing that weak minds are easily led astray but he seems not to realize thats what he's saying. Perhaps he's also arguing for a mercy fuck style judgment of history--some people (including Rod) were wrong when they were in the majority so now some other people (not including Rod) are probably wrong when they are in the majority now. Won't the judges please acknowledge that this is at least as likely that Rod is always wrong?
ReplyDeleteAh, yes - the old "You made me do it, honey" defense.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if we're going to talk about things that most people were wrong about in the previous decade, what issue (besides the "war on terror") was the GOP riding on quite successfully all through the 2004 elections, conducting disingenuous scare campaigns and fooling the most gullible members of the public? Hint: it's ANOTHER issue that Americans have rapidly changed their minds about.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I am hearing this comment in the voice of Annie Lennox.
ReplyDelete"There is in this sad world such a thing as a Ku Klux Klan wedding — should the management of Harlem’s famous Sylvia’s Restaurant
ReplyDeletebe prosecuted under civil-rights law if the establishment should
decline to cater such a wedding? It is impossible for me to imagine that
that should be the case."
A bunch of people are going to be very happy and a much larger bunch of people will be disappointed.
ReplyDeletebecause of course two brooklyn gays getting hitched is just as reprehensible as a grand dragon marrying one of his seven furies. what an asshole.
ReplyDeleteGreat Voice column this week... but I do wish it included the point someone made in comments here earlier: the GOP side keeps talking about cakes and wedding pictures to make this sound like any harm would only be frivolous, but this could affect everything, from groceries to health care.
ReplyDeleteA lot of bigots who happily say out loud, "No cake for you, queers!" would keep their mouths shut if forced to acknowledge they're also saying "No medicine for you, queers!" or "No baby food for your child, queers!"
Next year, "Son Of God" will be duking it out with "Noah" for ALL the awards...and no other films will even need to show up.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, does he have no memory of opinion polls from 2003? I know chickenhawks like Dreher want to believe that everybody was anxious to get Saddam, but I don't think it was much above 60% at it's peak.
ReplyDeleteI feel it's a good idea to leave this as a marker so that the other side understands why their grandchildren, insofar as they have them, will be an oppressed underclass in the Republic of Texas under my incredibly numerous descendants
ReplyDeleteThere's not going to be enough water in that shithole for your proposed algae bloom.
Being the Rodney Dangerfield of the NYT columnists must sting like a bee.
ReplyDeleteTo the dismay of some on the left, bashing big biz is no longer our private franchise. Dreher:
ReplyDelete"American business leaders are a far greater threat to Christian morality than all the faculties of all the universities in the country."
The American right will be having no more of those Koch-boys threatening Christian morality, no siree.
It's funny how they meet each defeat with threats echoing through the ages. We may have beaten them today but their bigger, badder kids will kick our butts in 40 years.
ReplyDeleteYet they can't look forward on climate change or other environmental issues that require, not giant attack golem-kids, but a simple understanding that we're using up or ruining what future generations will need to survive.
The 'Baggers being the Koch whores that they are, it'll be fun watching this play out. Unless it just, you know, plays out...
ReplyDeleteI'll just take this opportunity to argue from the consensus of my high school, Northern Durham, NC, circa 1978. Homos are undesirables, unless they're your friends. then they're edgy.
ReplyDeleteWhat I see is a consensus moving toward someone else the right can tell us who we need to hate.
I think the story of Paula Deen shows that black people have been being forced to serve white people, without complaint and with fairly low remuneration, for quite some fucking time.
ReplyDeleteImma gonna send gay porn magazines to all their kids houses. That'll teach 'em.
ReplyDeleteHey, I know a guy who can show us where earring-pierced men gather at night with printing presses!
ReplyDeleteIn Douthat's column he not so subtly insinuates that in the absence of an ability to coerce society in general, through law, the theocrats and the "dissenting christians in their small groups" will have no one to turn on but each other. The various christian sects can either locate and home in on a new enemy that they can all agree upon, or they are going to turn and start lashing out at each other. Why? Obviously because they are competing for moral authority over an increasingly small pool of potential members. They are either breeding new members themselves (something even the Catholic Church is having trouble with in this country) or they are converting from other nearly related christian groups (something Rod Dreher himself epitomizes since he has sect hopped at least three times in his adult life).
ReplyDeleteThis is actually a perennial problem for born again christians--that in order for the franchises to thrive new pastors must be able to get new people to join their particular church. Sometimes they pump up the numbers by poaching other churches memberships, sometimes by forcing everyone to get born again again to show their sincerity and conviction.
If they can't get the help of society/government/ law to enforce conformity and fear of a gay planet they are going to have to find a new enemy so they can continue to drive new membership into the fold (join today to avoid the muslim/trans/russian threat!) or they are going to have to turn on each other like the cannibal birds described by Paul Muad dib in Dune--most likely to eat its own siblings because they are the closest competitors for the same food.
Lets get together and put on a show!
ReplyDeletei think this may in fact be one of the issues with the emphasis on the shift to individual rights over solidarity in the wake of the 1960s, or "postmodern" liberalism - it's that idiotic arguments like douhat's get traction, while the qualitative difference in historical or even real time experience is obliterated.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it interesting that comments were disabled for this column? Even the fools who sign Douthat's paycheck must have smelt the stink coming off of this one.
ReplyDelete"American business leaders are a far greater threat to Christian
ReplyDeletemorality than all the faculties of all the universities in the country."
Has Dreher only just realised this??!
I remember reading, decades ago, that "The values of market capitalism are incompatible with, and inevitably replace, any pre-existing value system". Can't remember whose Law it is. Might just be a corollary of Gresham's Law.
If signed, the law could theoretically have opened a veritable Pandora's Box of indiscriminate discrimination, and the JeezoNazis don't seem to realize that it could have been them on the wrong end of a lot of it. This is partly a case of them being blinded by the light of their own Holiness, and partly a case of just being dumb as a bag of hammers. I leave it to the PhDs to tell the two apart...
ReplyDeleteUm, what kind of printing presses?
ReplyDeleteSome people like guns, I like Heidelberg platen offset presses. Don't judge me.
Given your wit and genius, I have often found it gratifying that I share with you a moniker ending in "-ex." Today is no exception.
ReplyDeletea critical mass of people has formed
ReplyDeleteA fact the bidness community seems to recognize much better than the Chosen Ones.
and free higher education for everyone who wants a real college degree
You mean like it used to be*? In many cases, "the good old days" really weren't. This is not one such.
* OK, not free, but cheap, and (for white folks, mostly, sorry) readily available, especially in CA.
If it's any good, Pierce will probably have a dissection tomorrow...
ReplyDeleteGod damn the repeal of the blue laws!
ReplyDeleteThe True Believer/Business Insider divide has already become apparent. Darryl Issa was actually dressed down on Fox.
ReplyDeleteIf only there were some way to send gay porn directly into their homes... it would be even better if it were the product of a big government project.
ReplyDeleteI know, heavily subsidized good state schools is what I meant. Of course even heavily subsidizing them wouldn't work without an enormous increase in the minimum wage so people could afford to eat and live while going to school.
ReplyDeleteOr the Marriott Hotel Corporation.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, even in evangelical households, the kids are becoming more and more accepting of LGBT people with each passing year.
ReplyDeleteThe fabulousness is coming from inside the house!
You can almost hear the tears in his voice and see them spattering across the page.
ReplyDeleteMickey Rooney libel.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm not so sure I'd blame liberalism for this. Also I'm not sure that Douthat's argument does get any traction, even among his supposed brethren. They went to the "religious freedom" shtick and focused on individuals because individuals are more sympathetic than large institutions, and because they were having corporations and businesses shelter behind the skirts of the individual because: hobby lobby.
ReplyDeleteor porn.
ReplyDeleteoh pshaw
ReplyDeleteit's not blame so much as that it's more about naming a liberalism that's so constrained; we live in an intensely business friendly society, and it's notable that the crucible for these controversies are occurring in the marketplace. it's supposed to be a neutral site, of course, which is why all these dickhead arguments about klanspeople and sad catholics also get a hearing, or are grist for the nro's "thought experiments."
ReplyDeleteThe gay leaning bisexual drummer from my junior high school cover band was a local hero because he took advantage of a rare freeze to convert the access road into his subdivision into a winter sports arena.
ReplyDeleteWhile his alcoholically challenged folks were passed out, he and his younger brother put the garden hoses out in the street and flooded it. The cop cars called to respond? Rear wheel drive.
I miss Billy. He died in the first wave of AIDS. His folks didn't even attend his funeral.
My heart is continually being hardened against the Christian right. They don'rt give me an opportunity to like them.
Show, porn, tomayto, tomahto
ReplyDeleteOn the eve of the invasion, something like 62% were opposed absent UN agreement, which as you'll recall, Bush & Co. decided to forego.
ReplyDeleteThe results of image-searching for "Babes in arms" + "rule 34" were remarkably inoffensive, suggesting a lack of initiative on the part of the Interweave.
ReplyDeletei'm in agreement with you on the second piece - these are our key words, and it puts us in a spot when they are appropriated by the right.
ReplyDeleteas for your first point - this is true, the marketplace tends towards flashpointiness because of that public character. but schools are also a public space, and we continue to have great difficulty winning there, or maintaining victories.
He's got his consistencies backwards. It's not "majority was wrong about Iraq which proves majority is now wrong about gay marriage;" it's "Rod Dreher was so wrong about Iraq that you have to assume he's wrong about everything else, including gay marriage."
ReplyDelete"American business leaders are a far greater threat to Christian
ReplyDeletemorality than all the faculties of all the universities in the country."
This is what Dreher's "resignation under pressure" letter looks like.
I have an old proof press that I intended to use for woodblock printing, but I'm too lazy. If I could use it to incite the masses to stitch Tom Perkins into a giant hackey sack, it would be worth the 200 dollars I sank into it.
ReplyDeleteElsewhere, Dreher compared Brewer's veto in Arizona with the ending of Chinatown and groused that Brewer had been influenced by business interests in her decision (duh), that "the corporate class is no friend of traditional religion," and "American business leaders are a far greater threat to Christian morality than all the faculties of all the universities in the country."
ReplyDeleteYou mean to tell me that the servants of Mammon are serving Mammon instead of God? Well, shut my mouth.
This reads like the scene in Casablanca where the dude is just shocked to find out that gambling is taking place.
You gotta admit that it's mighty fuckin' funny that Ben Domenech, the boy wonder of wingnut welfare--who's never had a job in anything resembling real work--is nattering on about "free markets." And, then, has the unmitigated gall to propose, after the nuclear meltdown of 2008, that "if you believe free markets work," as if, of course, everyone believes that, that it's a foregone conclusion.
ReplyDeleteAnd then tops it off with, "if you believe people work...." Let me put it this way--I know of at least one person that doesn't work....
In this scenario, religious conservatives would essentially be left to
ReplyDeletepromote their view of wedlock within their own institutions, as a kind
of dissenting subculture emphasizing gender differences and procreation,
while the wider culture declares that love and commitment are enough to
make a marriage.
If I understand correctly, Douthat is describing his best-case scenario... an honourable defeat, with no Versailles-style reparations. To put it another way: he views the absence of a theocracy, where he does not get to impose Sharia law on everyone else, as a defeat.
You bring Overton's window back here, young man, right this minute!
"The Derp State"...
ReplyDelete"Freedom of conscience is squashed under the jackboot of liberals, all in the Orwellian name of 'equality and fairness,'" snarled Tammy Bruce, a self-identified "gay conservative woman." "...Horribly, the gay civil rights movement has morphed into a Gay Gestapo." She must be fun at parties.
ReplyDeleteI thought that this was worth quoting in full because:
a) What the hell, why not throw Tammy a bone once in a while and
b) Few things are more amusing than somebody using the word "Orwellian" in the midst of committing pretty much every offense in "Politics and the English Language."
What do you mean? Schools and prisons and (some hospitals) are complicated hybrids of public space with special limitations on their membership (due to age, legal status, or infirmity/health care laws). I guess I think we might be overusing "public space" to include them in with generic streets and public accomodations like restaurants and hotels.
ReplyDeleteWe are winning in lots of schools--anti bullying, gay straight alliance, better nutrition, etc..etc..etc... We are losing in others where community standards are still extremely reactionary (so the schools reflect local standards), and we are losing where we are allowing the privatization of schools and the destruction of unions. In other words: we are losing in the places where we are permitting schools to slip from public control to private.
They are nonetheless shared spaces and so naturally will be a flashpoint for areas of conflict between different communities and identities--religious and atheist, white and black, etc..etc..
They really hate the imaginary new fact that gay people are expecting to live life out and proud. Even a gay woman hates it. Maybe she sees it as cutting into her action and devaluing her uniqueness?
ReplyDeleteIt's Whinertown, Jake.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry about your friend.
ReplyDelete"Freedom of conscience is squashed under the jackboot of liberals,
ReplyDeleteall in the Orwellian name of 'equality and fairness,'" snarled Tammy
Bruce
What's that Nixon quote about Babs Bush? "That woman knows how to hate". This one too. Can't write worth a shit, though...
Oh my god I think you may be the first past the post with this one.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to add that I think, on the matter of words, its the tribute vice pays to virtue and the loser pays to the winner--hypocrisy and theft are all that are left to them.
ReplyDeletethe sacred consensus that all Right-Thinking People share
ReplyDeleteAll decent people agree with me, the Sacred Center of Goodness, and the rest of you were made to endure the agony of my haughty rejection!
Not when she wakes up every morning with a hateover, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how Ben's done with the Bitcoin Miracle.
ReplyDeleteI never had any interactions with him that would suggest he'd do anything but mortgage his boyfriend's house to you. But you know those queers. Rolling in money,.
ReplyDeleteIs it a hateover, or a hateon?
ReplyDeleteThat's the future Republic of Texas that will be led by Zombie Sam Houston, I'm guessing.
ReplyDeleteProbably about as well as he did with the WaPoo.
ReplyDeleteNeoreactionaries
ReplyDeleteThe Endarkenment. You may also spell that with an "o"...
Neoreactionaries
ReplyDeleteThe Endarkenment! You may also spell that with an "o"...
One comes first, the other is disappointed.
ReplyDeleteTwo points on language:
ReplyDelete1) "Orwellian" seems to morph into an orwellian word itself.
2) "Gay Gestapo" is too an orwellian word. The real Gestapo was quite heavily involved in the persecution of gays.
I would love to see a study comparing the press coverage
ReplyDeletefrom 9/11 leading up to the Iraq War with press coverage of the gay
marriage issue from about 2006 till today
Nothing is stopping Dreher from carrying out that comparison. Evidently the one thing he would like better than to see it, is to speculate about what it would look like, without fear of contradiction by facts.
Did Rod just come out against the Iraq War?
ReplyDeleteApart from the fact that he lacks the education and intellect to do such a thing. Besides Dreher has always come to his conclusion, which everyone could have predicted, so the whole thing is pointless for him.
ReplyDeleteYes, and that's what the focus on the "wedding" is all about: to hide that implication. If a bakery can refuse to sell a cake to a "gay wedding, " because God says so, according to the bakery owner, then, under the same logic, the bakery owner should be able to refuse all service to GLBT folks. After all, we can't know or prove that God told the baker to limit his discrimination against gays to the wedding context only. Nor can we know or prove that God didn't say the same thing to the grocer, the doctor, the pharmacist, the landlord and so on.
ReplyDeleteOnce "God says so" becomes an out to compliance with laws that affect other people so greatly, there is no stopping it.
Morning hood?
ReplyDeleteWait. I'll come in again.
In fairness to Rod, he wrote this in his TAC blog on March, 5, 2013:
ReplyDelete"For all that [ie the "fact" that, in Rod's view, there was plenty to criticize about HOW the "radicals" registered their dissent from the war] they [the "radicals"] were right about the only question that counted — Should the US launch a war on Iraq? — and my side was wrong. I was wrong. I had allowed myself to be swayed by emotion, even as I spited the emotional hysteria of the antiwar crowd."
And I believe he has more or less repeated this admission since then on several occasions.
Rod's problem, IMHO, is not that he can never admit that he was wrong. Rather, his problems stem partly from his tendency to shoot from the hip. He writes too much, and often in the heat of the moment, but is actually fairly good at backtracking and admitting he was wrong (although, as here, he usually presents an alibi as well) when his folly and inconsistency are patiently pointed out to him by even his more favored commenters, and partly from his complete lack of self awareness/self obsession. Everything under the sun is judged by him according to whatever "lesson" he thinks his personal life has taught him, or how it affects him personally at the moment, or (my favorite!) what he happens to be reading at the moment, or what his religion du jour has to say about it, and so on. He can empathize, but only with certain folks, and gays, for some reason, are pretty much beyond the pale. He claims he had a gay friend, once, a good friend, and that person did him wrong. And, somehow, I guess, that one person (assuming the truth of the story) has become the touchstone for all that is gay.
Ah, well, the object is not to be logically or syntactically correct. The object is to propagandize and to foment hysteria, and "Gestapo" is a nicely hot-button word to use toward those ends. No matter that "Gay" and "Gestapo" in apposite, is in almost any context ludicrous. It's supposed to get the base worked up and frothing, not thinking.
ReplyDeleteThat she does that badly--and we know that she's doing it badly because she's invoking Orwell in the midst of being Orwellian herself--ought to be reassuring, I think. Nice to know that the unconvincing propagandists are still wasting the right wing's bandwidth.
You know, I am always flabbergasted by the unspoken assumptions in discussions like this. It must be an American thing. Those people who rail against anti-discriminatory laws seem to have a fundamental delusion: they think that their jobs are part of their self-expression.
ReplyDeleteWhich is not so - at least that seems very obvious to me. When you are at work, you are not even a person, you are a cog in the machine. Your opinions don't matter. Your beliefs don't matter. Your job is to do - your job. That means that you serve everyone who comes in and act polite to them too, no matter how much you personally despise them. You are not allowed to have feelings while on the job. You have sold that right for $25 an hour.
And what really ticks me off is that the people who whine and moan about how paid work might mean doing something they don't want to do are the same people who are always lecturing others about how life is hard and you don't get something for nothing and if your boss tells you to work 20-hour days you have to do it to show that you are a Hard Worker and not one of those sniveling moochers. Endless, soul-killing drudgery is apparently less of a concern to them than having to be nice to someone they don't like. I cannot understand those people.
Rod Dreher himself epitomizes since he has sect hopped at least three times in his adult life
ReplyDeleteRod's a sects fiend?
Rod can reach into his right hip pocket and pull out Forgivin' Jesus or into his left hip pocket and pull out Smitin' Jesus.
ReplyDeleteMad theological skillz.
I beg to differ. It could also be in the voice of Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.
ReplyDeleteAs to your first pararagraph: I realize that though it is a point worth to be made explicit as you do here. But I think you can't distinguish here between agitators and a base. Bruce herself is like so many others of her unhinged and frothing-at-the-mouth. It's more a kind of contagious perfomance which is supposed to synchronize mood and thought.
ReplyDeleteFinally she is probably not the originator of "Gay Gestapo" the first hit on google is Bryan Fischer, that lovable scamp.
That it originates with the Rev. Fischy somehow does not surprise me in the least. So that makes Bruce not only inflammatory, but derivative, as well.
ReplyDeleteI put that same thing on a thread on Lawyers, Guns & Money yesterday ... but I take no particular credit for being "frist". It was just an obvious no-brainer. Uh, no offense to Meanie-meanie; great minds think alike, is all.
ReplyDeleteYou seldom see Projection in such a pure, concentrated form even at this blog. And were certainly presented extraordinary cases of projection regularly by Roy.
ReplyDeleteAmended.
So what you are saying is that this is Dreher's equivalent of the Cavuto Mark? A Dreherism is to wonder aloud about the amazing synchronicity between facts pulled out of his own ass and a study that really had ought to have been done by someone.
ReplyDeleteCome on, everyone knows the gay gestapo were workign with the feminazis and the reverse vampires.
ReplyDeleteWell, this just came up when Eric Cantor spoke to the massess and admitted that although Republicans talk like everyone is a "jerb creator" and a "small business owner" the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of people in this country who are out there to vote at all are now and always will be wage slaves workign for someone else. The right wing fiction has always been that everyone is on the way to being an entrepreneur/small business owner and, indeed, many people who used to work for other people have now been downsized and outsourced into being their own employers (such as truck drivers) because it costs business less to do it that way.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that while the Republican attitude towards actual workers has always been "stfu and do what you are told" their attitude towards owners has always been solicitous in the extreme. Its no surprise that in trying to expand the sphere of religious bigotry they actually focused on what they think of as small business owners like the imaginary baker or florist. It is as owners of capital, not as laborers in a service industry, that these people are thought to be entitled to act out any and every act of spite and discrimination that pleases them. Although they have extended the right to discriminate to pharmacists that is really something they do because it was a thin end of the wedge in destroying women's access to health care and contraception. They didn't do it for pharmacists qua employees and, indeed, considered from that perspective they would never have supported it. Freedom of conscience laws pertain only to people whose behavior they already approve.
I can't see how the vetoed bill or any NY counterpart would have prevented a civil-rights law-suit against Sylvia's Restaurant, in the absence of any religious principle against racist scumbuckets. Kevin Williamson was proposing a unilateral disarmament in which liberals agree not to voice their disapproval of homophobic bigots in return for racist bigots continuing to be vile.
ReplyDeleteI had allowed myself to be swayed by emotion, even as I spited the emotional hysteria of the antiwar crowd.
ReplyDeleteAn apology / concession of the form "I am sorry I allowed my opponents to drag me down towards their level" does not really encourage reflection, nor provide an incentive to be less stupid next time.
squashed under the jackboot of liberals
ReplyDeleteWait, is crush porn making a comeback?
A transsectual.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it is "the case." NY State civil rights law, like the Federal equivalent, prevents Sylvia's from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin. But nothing prevents Sylvia's, as far as I know, from discriminating on the basis of politics. It seems to me that a Ku Klux Klan wedding is not merely a , er, "White wedding," but a wedding with a political theme. As such, I think Sylvia's, or, indeed, any establishment, could probably decline it and still not be in violation of the civil rights laws.
ReplyDeleteThe same might be true of a "Black Panther" wedding. Or, moving away from any overt racial subtext entirely, say, a "Tea Party" wedding or an "Occupy Wall Street" wedding.
That's one of the troubles with these counterfactual, hypothetical cases....they either simply beg the question with a scenario in which the same result applies as in the real case ("What about a baker who refused Christian weddings....What about a gay baker who refused hetero weddings...."---well, what about them, the same rule applies as does the rule about a Christian hetero baker refusing gay weddings) or they are different in some salient way (usually, as here, because the category is not covered by the civil rights law, but also sometimes in positing a defendant which is clearly not a public accommodation, eg "What about a demand that Spike Lee, or his company, Forty Acres and a Mule, make a "white" movie...."). Of course, another problem with these hypotheticals is that they are blind, or worse, to the actual historical and current realities of discrimination and oppression...whites, Christians, heteros, and so on are not typically or even more than very, very occasionally subject to discrimination, whereas African Americans, Muslims, GLBT folks, etc are quite often.
Gettng back to the notion of political discrimination, I have seen it argued that a "gay wedding" is inherently "political," and a "political statement," and thus service could be refused on that basis. I don't buy that, though.
See my above comment for why the hypothetical might not be applicable. Fed and NY State law don't require that public accommodation providers not discriminate on the basis of politics. The KKK is not merely a racial organization, it is a political one. So, I don't think Sylvia's would need any further legislation to refuse to do the wedding, and religion need not enter into it.
ReplyDeleteYes, Rod has just learned that there are new ways to be stupid. Last time, when it came to Iraq, he went along with the crowd, figuring those not in the crowd, the "radicals," had to be wrong, per se.
ReplyDeleteLast year, when he realized that he was wrong about the Iraq war, he also said this:
"I don’t think this makes radicals always right, or beyond mockery. But I learned that sometimes, radicals of the left and the right see things, however imperfectly, that most of us don’t. When 'everybody' knows something is true, right, and necessary, we should damn sure question it."
Very true, if somewhat trite and banal and obvious already to most folks.
But now Rod has decided that when "everybody" "knows something" it should not only be questioned, but it must be the product of group think, the influence of the Deep State, and the conformism of the kewl kids in DC. Rather than merely questioning received wisdom, Rod now, at least in the case of the consensus behind SSM, "knows" that it must be a manufactured, false consensus.
Wildly swinging from one indefensible meta position to its opposite, while managing to get it wrong on the particular issue at hand in both cases. Finally figuring out, long after most thinking folks did, that there really is such a thing as the Mighty Wurlitzer, playing us into war over and over again, but then lurching equally far to the opposite side of ignorance so that he assumes that the same, or a similar, snow job must be happening all the time on every issue. It never occurs to Rod to always question the consensus, but never assume it is just fake either. No, the consensus must either be always right or always wrong.
That's our Rod!
Sometimes there doesn't even need to be mythological study. Both the general fact and the synchronic particular fact can be pulled out of his ass.
ReplyDeleteFor example, Rod thinks the NY Times does not cover conservative religion enough (that such a concern is maybe inappropriate given that most of the Times' readership does not consist of white, Christian, Southern, hetero men living in East Podunk, Louisiana, like Rod, is another issue, which we will just skip here). And he once said something (supposedly apropos to a NY Times article about, IIRC, a gay African American atheist) to the effect that IF a new evangelical church opened in the Bronx, and thousands of Latino folks joined it, the Times would refuse to cover it. NOT that such a thing had actually happened, with the Times remaining stonily silent. No, that IF it happened, the Times would not run a story on it. A total ipse dixit and straw man....the Times "would" do such and such nefarious and biased thing, because, er, I said so. No effort to point out where the Time had even done something analogous. Nope. Rod's word, apparently, was supposed to be good enough.
The general notion being that the Times unfairly scants religious coverage, particularly of conservative Christians, which was in sync with the posited particular lack of coverage of the made-up event! At least with the notion of the fake study, somebody actually could take Rod up on his speculation, and do the study. But what could one do here? Set up an evangelical church in the Bronx and hope that thousands of Latinos joined it AND that the Times did cover it, just to prove Rod wrong!
Roy, the right-wing freakout over 12 Years a Slave winning Best Picture - and plans to teach it in school - will give you some juicy material. (Yeah, you've touched on a bit of it before, but the furor will grow.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting that he does not now pause to wonder whether the emotional hysteria of the antigay crowd has swayed his ammo-blasting hips once again. He's just the derptoy of every passing fad.
ReplyDeleteYer just gonna hafta bake all your own cakes from now on cuz no bakery's gonna sell you one.
ReplyDeleteDexceptional!
ReplyDeleteBut, is this "guy" trustworthy? I mean does he have some credentials, say like Public Advocate, that would lend weight to his testimony?
ReplyDeleteOr, "None of these things for you Christist Bigots!"
ReplyDeleteThis is inconceivable to the Black-N-White Rationalists. They do not understand compromise, cooperation, toleration, or any other motivation necessary to democracy.
These narrow-minded SOBs really believe the nation is, will always be, and has always been, theirs alone. The insular thought is evident in their astonishment every single fucking time Big Business follows the free market against their wishes. As if business gave a shit about any social issues other than lining their pockets with the highest profits. That Big Business only really cares if people are mindless greedy consumers is something that they fail to grok, and so must feel that there is some conspiracy afoot.
"So why did you come here to America?"
ReplyDelete"I came for the promise of an unbridled theocracy."
"But what about the Establishment Clause?"
"I was misinformed..." sad trombone cue
"$25 an hour" An hour?! My apologies in advance but ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...stop, you're killing me!
ReplyDeleteI guess I've been wrong all these years, but I always thought of fried chicken and watermelon as a Southern thing, not just a black thing.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, figuring that Sylvia's would stand to make a couple thou on the project, they'd probably be happy to do it. The hors d'oeuvres might have a slightly acidic tang, of course.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the pro or anti government stances rely on the (apparent) dominant culture.
ReplyDeleteIMHO liberals rely on centralized government to promote and protect various human rights, while conservatoids see centralized government as a tool to impose cultural homogeneity.
So, when conservatoids have dominance, government is "good" to them, while in today's marketplace, where the swindlers have convinced them they are a persecuted minority, they see government as a "bad" instrument of oppression.
I don't think it's any more complicated than that to these yahoos.
This. What country are you posting from?
ReplyDeleteMy post wasn't actually a commentary on the law, although I would't put it past Williamson or James O'Keefe to try organizing a Klan wedding at Sylvia's just in order to prove their unwavering dickitude. I just posted the link that Williamson used to illustrate the surmise that these might not be the kind of folks that would appreciate fine dining for its own sake.
ReplyDeleteThis. "IF I've offended you, I'm sorry."
ReplyDeleteA bunch of people are going to be very happy and a much larger bunch of people will be disappointed.
ReplyDeleteTrue, true. Now, does anyone have any Oscar predictions?
But... but... they're SINCERE, and God certainly does appreciate sincerity. After all, as George Burns, AKA God, said "If you can fake that, you've got it made."
ReplyDeletethe theocrats and the "dissenting christians in their small groups" will have no one to turn on but each other.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, I have a pantry full of popcorn.
"Play "Cat Scratch Fever! PLAY IT!!!"
ReplyDeleteNow if we could only get people to turn out and represent for other stuff, like the 15 minimum wage, like raising taxes on the 1 percent, like free nutritious meals for all school kids and free higher education for everyone who wants a real college degree
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, we'll have to keep working on making the mostly sane party less "business friendly," then. Arizona was a win only because so much of the Money Power is finally on board. All that other stuff picks rich people's pockets while breaking their legs, to hear them tell it.
(Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick caught a lot of flak from some quarters for suggesting that perhaps the liberals pushing back so effectively on gay rights might try walking and chewing gum at the same time, since we've been losing so much ground on economic issues and reproductive rights in the meantime. The former is a no-go because of the bottom line, but maybe the Chamber of Commerce can be brought to bear on the obvious monetary advantages of access to birth control.)
Don't judge me.
ReplyDeleteEh, you always seemed like the type.
Regarding the idea of putting the Bowery Boys on the case from the last post, I saw that Bowery Boy extrordinaire, John Stewart, framed the issue quite well by emphasizing that these bills are morally repugnant and asking what else really needs to be said.
ReplyDeleteIn related news, I saw at TPM that the main organizations behind this spate of anti-freedom "freedom" bills both have the word "freedom" in their name. It's long been known that Republican polling has shown that the word "freedom" resonates with their target demographic, so it's hardly a surprise to see it used so much. Still, would be nice to see the Democrats turn it on them, a strategy which would be supported by facts as well as polling.
I smiled when I saw one of the rightbloggers in your article refer to something as "Orwellian." I lately realized that it is essentially an elitist term and thought perhaps it's a sign that the right is losing touch with the common person. After all, unless someone went to an elite private school or went on to major in English at college, it's unlikely they have read Orwell or understand the implications of "Orwellian." It sounds vaguely like "Edwardian" or some other fancy pants English history thing, so may be thought a good thing if one doesn't think to much on it. I like Orwellian decor, so why shouldn't I be for religious freedom? Better to go with the "morally repugnant" angle, which you don't need to be an English major to understand.
And in still more related news, the NYT ran a story today about how Democrats are finally getting around to considering the wild and craaaazy possibility of trying to communicate with working class people outside the coastal urban areas. The article indicates that they are dumbfounded as to how to go about it, but at least someone is considering making the effort. There's nothing Orwellian about it either way, but I've always considered it morally repugnant to just ignore so many people in such dire need of help and understanding. Perhaps someone should call in the Bowery Boys?
Has Dreher only just realised this??!
ReplyDeleteThey've only just started shitting in his sacred Wheaties, so yes.
While they were openly ripping the Gospels to shreds and burning them on an altar to Mammon, it was actually the Will of God. But now that they've finally sold out on a couple of isolated sentences from Leviticus and Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it's an existential danger to Christianity. If only there were another epistle from Paul that addressed ... Oh, hello, what's this? "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Galatians 6:7 (KJV). The footnote in my annotated version says, "So go fuck yourself with a tire iron, Rod, you hypocritcal shitweasel."
Unfortunately, the stereotype is set in stone right now, if you do a Google Image search for fried chicken and watermelon, you'll see mostly racial stereotypes. In particular, the African-American/watermelon linkage dates from the 19th Century.
ReplyDeleteI doubt they will appreciate the irony, but I suspect the only parts of Texas that will be inhabitable in 100 years, will be that way because of a massive investment in renewable energy. (to power reverse osmosis desalinization plants.)
ReplyDeleteAs luck would have it Wonkette has a great example of this just today.
ReplyDeleteAnd for some reason, people in that church did not want to hear analsex analsex analsex analsex in church. We don’t get it either!
But you see, what you need to understand is that while The Gays want you to think they are people who have families and personalities and lives and homes and pets and rights, there’s something very important that (former) Rev. Rick Scarborough wants Americans to know, and that is this simple fact: Gays do sex in the butt.
The one thing that the homosexual community doesn’t want us to talk about is what they actually do. They love to disguise their activities with euphemisms. And the presentation they always give is some handsome, erudite young man that’s a gift to society, when in fact he’s committing indecent acts with consequences.
Right up the poopchute, is what he is getting at. Bet you didn’t know THAT, did you?
Sadly, the nice people at the church he visited were just not in the mood for buttsex — however novel — with their Sunday worship, because they could not handle the truth:
consequently a segment of the church didn’t come to another service of revival and just basically boycotted because they found what I said to be reprehensible. In other words, the church families don’t find what they’re doing reprehensible, but they put such pressure on the preachers not to even mention it that a lot of preachers have gone silent.
So, it’s not just the fear of the left, it’s the fear of the right, because Christians are more concerned about what their sensitive ears have to listen to than what’s taking place at the high school that may be perverting their own children.
Read more at http://wonkette.com/542972/wingnut-preacher-has-a-sad-when-good-church-people-wont-let-him-talk-endlessly-about-buttsex#JfXbi7mRv0oslqfI.99
In fact the Texas Republican Party overtly ran with this message on voter suppression tactics: "Its ok because Democrats are not a protected class, like black people or minorities. So we can gerrymander them out of existence."
ReplyDeleteMy apologies. Those LGM threads can get pretty knotty and its easy to miss something.
ReplyDeleteOh, I think "Orwellian" has been around long enough and flogged hard enough by wingnuts trying to sound sophisticated that most people know it's supposed to be bad even if they never read 1984. Same with references to Saul Alinsky. Though he's supposed to be a Lefty propagandist, I'd say that, thanks to a gaggle of wingnut radio personalities, more righties have read him, or at least "know" he's supposed to be bad.
ReplyDeleteGood one. But I want to know why he calls them "neo reactionaries." Aren't they just garden variety reactionaries. Does he think neo sort of softens it?
ReplyDeleteNot even as well. Bitcoins, for all their many faults are immune to plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteFor RWNJ who are still on the anti communist beat, as opposed to the anti gay beat, Orwell still has a certain confused cachet.
ReplyDelete"...even as I spited the emotional hysteria of the antiwar crowd..." reads somewhat differently to me. "Spited" is a really odd word there--it has no good connotations and is not even gramatically correct. I think its a little teeny bit of christian humble brag in which he's actually still criticizing himself for being spiteful (always bad) towards other people. Its kind of more on the lines of "I complained about the mote in my brother's eye while ignoring the beam in my own."
ReplyDeleteAnd that will be the last time I give a good interpretation to anything rod ever writes.
In a sense non-white New Yorkers have set up an enormous new social organization--they elected a bloody Mayor and he is doing things in an entirely new way. And the Times is covering it. From a shitty, anti liberal, perspective full of carping asides about airy fairy dreamy radicals who don't know how to run things. So in that sense we have an example of the Times running stories on a new social phenomenon, even if its not strictly religious, and we find that the Times far from being anti-religious is simply ANTI POOR PEOPLE/latinos, blacks, etc... when they are in their own bailiwick and causing the one percent some trouble. In other words: they might not cover the church opening but thats because it would be full of poor people, not because it would be full of religious people.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that the homosexual community doesn’t want us to talk about is what they actually do.
ReplyDeleteYeah, porn sales would plummet.
If they did put on a Klan wedding they would be at pains to point out to us that it wasn't "real" because the Klan is not real, or not really a threat, anymore. And when th entire stunt goes tits up, say when an actual white supremacist group offers itself to do the deed, they will rear back in horror and begin shrieking "false flag operation by the libtards to make us look bad." The script writes itself.
ReplyDeleteThats absolutely correct. That is why the South is pro "state's rights" when they are part of a federal system and pro more centralized government control when they thought they would be in charge of a central government. And that is why they are pro-state's rights when it means they can pass disciminatory anti abortion laws, or new jim crow laws, and against the whole "states as the laboratory of democracy" thing when it comes to assisted suicide or drug legalization.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention Orwell and Alinsky in the same comment- I've always maintained that Saul Alinsky basically serves as Emmanuel Goldstein. Whenever I see or hear them invoke Alinsky's name, I get a creepy feeling that they really mean "Jewy Jew Jew".
ReplyDeleteIs Rod admitting he was wrong on Iraq? If so, isn't it possible he's wrong on gay marriage?
ReplyDeleteThe Lord shall spite thee..
ReplyDeleteThey still have abortion to skree about.
ReplyDeleteCrap. Shoulda read the thread.
ReplyDeleteThe list of issues on which Rod is wrong, would make the OED look like a pamphlet.
ReplyDeleteCan reactionaries be "neo"?
ReplyDeleteIf they are upside down and facing backwards.
ReplyDeleteIt's even better than that. If you read him closely, you'll find that not only he resisted the Iraq war, but the liberals,who dominate the Catherdral supported it because they support gay marriage which is what the Cathedral supports.
ReplyDeleteThe part that gets me is that members of the congregation will probably fall into two classes: the ones who think anal sex is icky and disgusting, and the ones who think it sounds like fun and wish their partners were into it.
ReplyDeleteEither way: not a crowd that really wants to hear about all the hot anal sex other people are having. It's just gonna piss them off.
Yeah, Fred "Slacktivist" Clark has recently reiterated that the thing that fundamentalist Protestants didn't care about forty years ago has become one of the absolutely non-negotiable markers for the "in" group. He expects that more evangelicals (and there are already some) will be able to get away with lightening up on gays as long as they maintain the hard line on abortion. That's the true shibboleth of the post-Francis Schaeffer age.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember a story in some famous book about a guy throwing moneylenders out of a temple. Dunno if Rod's read that one or not.
ReplyDeleteYou jest, but movement conservatives are, apart from holocaust deniers, champion purveyors of historical revisionism. The Charlemagne deniers (don't ask) are pikers compared to them.
ReplyDeleteThere is the Lost Cause, the War of Northern Aggression etc., various shenanigans around the Great Depression including New Deal Denialism, alleged persecution of Christians during the Third Reich, Gays as perpetrators of Nazi violence instead of victims (Scott Lively with an assist by Our Jonah), Liberals were the real Facists and the Nationalsocialists were Socialists (and Socialists are of course Liberals, all again courtesy of the Fart Joke), Vietnam was lost because the US was stabbed in the back. I could go on.
And I'll leave out any history since the Carter administration.
As a somewhat of a history buff and believer in objectivity this really gets my goat. It's ridiculous, it's hysterical and also really pernicious.
The Charlemagne deniers
ReplyDeleteWait, where did the deniers supposedly come from if Charlemagne didn't start minting them?
My estimation of what a typical paygrade is might be warped by my having a cushy IT job, I admit. :P
ReplyDeleteSweden. And my crowns-to-dollars exchange was done in a haste, as well - having looked more closely, I sell my soul for more like $20 an hour.
ReplyDeleteGroan, I should have seen that one comming.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna upvote you anyway.
ReplyDeleteHere in the US, land of opportunity, people sell their soul for something like $2.15 cents an hour for tipped workers, with the tips dragging them up to 7.40 an hour if they can get them.
ReplyDeleteWhich is another reason for me to be quite happy that I live here and not there, I freely admit...
ReplyDeleteI've been harassed by the local funnymentalists so much that I'd personally take every opportunity to refuse them service under such a law, if I lived in a jurisdiction that had one. I bet I'm not the only such person around.
ReplyDelete(One time I even had to threaten to get the cops involved because some nutter was leaning over me while I sat on my backpack on the ground waiting for a bus, screaming into my face for no apparent reason other than I guess she just didn't like the looks of a female punk in a t-shirt with Hebrew on it. She wouldn't even get out of my face long enough to let me stand up, until I threatened to get a cop. Not that I think the local constabulary is worth a frozen turd on a stick, but still...)
Well, now, it's only fair to distinguish between the left-wing, liberal-socialist Democrat Jews of America, and the wonderful Jews of plucky little Israel, and of course, it's supporters in the US.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right. When the right can no longer win democratically, then, and only then, does it start thinking in terms of "rights" beyond majority reach, and the rights are usually, as you say, fake ones that are more about maintaining hegemony than anything else.
ReplyDeleteThe "left," really, the liberals, were all about expanding rights even though they were in power, at least at the national level. And the rights (other than those that were either enumerated in the BofR or were necessary to make democracy work) that were particularly targeted were, as Justice Stone put it, targeted for the benefit of "discrete and insular minorities" who (1) had no chance to succeed at the ballot box, and (2) were much more likely to actually be victimized by bad laws than folks in the dominant culture.
That's roughly what according to Lohnspiegel.de a cushy IT job in Germany before taxes would make. All you need is vocational training (no college/university also you could go that route and in the long term make more) and a bit of work experience. Mind you this a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, because of shenanigans like the different organisation of payroll taxes, which cover health insurance, pensions and other things, and VAT.
ReplyDeleteIn Sweden all the people who make Nord keyboards are well-paid and happy.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I figured that. I just thought it was worthwhile to point out the legal and factual sloppiness in the standard, right wing "why don't we turn that around," hypothetical argument. I liked the pictures, particularly the one of the bride to be in her veil and camo combination!
ReplyDelete. . . their attitude towards owners has always been solicitous in the extreme.
ReplyDeleteDepends on the size and nature of the business. My sister owns a small flower shop in Orange City, Florida. Governor Batboy is, indeed, extremely solicitous toward businesses that are a.) big employers and b.) donors (or likely donors) to GOP candidates and causes. Actual small businesses that employ the owners and a handful of others are treated like dirt. They get no tax breaks, no help or even encouragement from the state. What they do get, however, is an ever-increasing burden of state and local regulations with which they must comply--unlike the companies that meet requirements a and b, above.
My understanding is that that is actually "good" (as in operative) SCOTUS doctrine.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know movement conservatives are apart from Holocaust deniers? It seems to me that if you made a Venn diagram of the two groups, it'd have a large overlap.
ReplyDeleteThey just don't really like history as it stands, in any case, because they're really not comfortable with facts they can't manipulate for their own ends, hence Goldberg's minim opus and so on.
Thank you. It's appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThat's kinda the irony, no?
ReplyDeleteThat is a good one, and did you notice that the fiance has a hell of a shiner on his left eye, to the point where it's almost closed? Must have been a great bachelor party...
ReplyDeleteHint -- they only like the Israelis the way kids at a birthday party like cake. It's something to be set on fire, then consumed before the end of the whole mess. Personally, I think that's worse than plain in-your-face antisemitism.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, you are quite correct. I remember hearing a lot of complaints from actual business owners last time the Chamber of Commerce weighed in on the election, to the effect that the CC basically had no relation to local businesses at all but was more of a front for large donors/corporations. But I meant conceptually more than in reality--that is, the "idea" of the property owner and business owner is very important in their rhetoric and ideology. Its the dividing line between the kinds of people who serve, adn the kinds of people who give orders.
ReplyDeleteHas it made it all the way to SCOTUS this round?
ReplyDeleteBroadly speaking the pro-Israel, pro-Likud politics of the right, the fact that the US was on the right side of history in WW II and their propensity to abuse it by crying things like "Gay Gestapo", likening their enemies to it and making other specious analogies.
ReplyDeleteThe last one isn't the sole domain of movement cons, the history of the Third Reich is abused plenty these days, even to some extent by liberals and lefties. That is partly because it looms so large in the Western Imagination.
But as you point out their views are not primarily shaped by facts but by ideology, politics and what one could term a psychology of innocence where oneself is always noble and good and the other is the necessary fount of all that's bad.
I'm sorry that this is not very eloquent but it is hard to compress these issues into a blog comment sized format.
Well, I'm one of the two, at least.
ReplyDeletePossibly Orwell doesn't resonate with a lot of people. On the other hand, we read a short story by Orwell in high school out in rural South Dakota, so a handful of us out in rurality did have a passing acquaintance with him. (It was "Shooting an Elephant," not "Politics and the English Language," but you take what you can get.)
ReplyDelete(Because I can't resist, I give you Groucho: "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.")
It's long been known that Republican polling has shown that the word "freedom" resonates with their target demographic, so it's hardly a surprise to see it used so much.
ReplyDeleteFunny how "equality" doesn't appeal to them quite so much.
Not sure. But IIRC, there has never been a case in which SCOTUS actually said that a particular instance of gerrymandering for partisan political reasons violated the Constitution or any Federal law. It wasn't until 1968 that the Court even hinted that such cases could be brought at all, and I believe that, as of now, there is no agreed upon standard which such a gerrymander could fail.
ReplyDeleteBut you might be more up on this than I am.
Dammit Jim, I'm an anthropologist, not a lawyer. However I think that IIRC when the Texas redistribution happened and they made their argument they were pretty sure that the law, such as it was, was on their side. I don't think it has gone to trial yet in any jurisdiction and presumably it has to work its way up through the Texas courts after the dems sue, and they may not be able to sue because they may not constitute a class under the meaning of the act. The fact that disenfranchising dems is also identical to disenfranchising non whites may not matter if the discrimination is so broad that it appears largely aimed at political affiliation and not at a minority.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you assume there isn't a third of the congregation that is swinging any way they can, with their spouses and others, and who just keep it on the QT?
ReplyDeleteWait, is he using the consensus for the war as proof that consensus is bad AT THE SAME TIME he raises doubts that there really was consensus?
ReplyDelete"I don’t think this makes radicals always right, or beyond mockery.
ReplyDeleteWell, DUH.
When 'everybody' knows
something is true, right, and necessary, we should damn sure question
it."
How about being damn sure about something before taking action that harms real people? Like war, say, or discrimination? I mean really, he thinks because he jumped to support a war we should be more cautious about making sure people are treated justly?
"groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers
ReplyDeleteAh, I remember the days before the Intertubes when the term 'groupthink' had not yet been coopted and redefined as "a situation of a lot of people all disagreeing with me because the rest of the world are the ones out of step, not me". Back when people like Peterson and Tetlock went to a lot of effort trying to quantify it.
By putting 'groupthink' in quotes, Drefer is aiming for the impression that he is using it as a technical term of art, so I don't feel too pedantic about pointing out that he's simply making up his own wrong definition, snatching the mantle of social psychology to make him sound all erudite and learned when he writes off the fact that everyone thinks he's a numpty.
worse than plain in-your-face antisemitism.
ReplyDeleteOh hell yeah. The Jews (in Israel where they belong) are their ticket to Paradise. To which said Jews will not be invited...
Well, that's a relief. What if no outcry began and children started to assume being enslaved wasn't a good career goal?
ReplyDeleteHow do you know movement conservatives are apart from Holocaust deniers?
ReplyDeleteFundamentalist Protestantism certainly has a long and glorious history of flat-out anti-semitism, which gets elided away because they're "pro-Israel," in that they pray that Israel's existence hastens the day when the Jews are finally exterminated or converted to Christianity. However, this mindset means the fundigelical base have to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened, precisely because it's the mechanism for prophecy-fulfilling** Israeli statehood. On the other hand, most of that crowd also are John Birch Society holdovers, so you get a lot of minimizing of its unique awfulness, because look at how many people Stalin and all those other commies killed.
**Or, in a more modern translation, "ass-pulling."
Yeah, I think it is pretty clear that "Democrats," or members of any political party, are not "protected classes" under the Voting Rights Act (Under the VRA, the only protected classes are race, color and minority language group). And, yeah, even though there are white, non Latino Democrats (even in Texas!), I think the notion is that they are treated just as badly in the redistricting as the non white Democrats, so there is no discrimination against African Americans or Latinos!
ReplyDeleteBut, even beyond the VRA statute, I think it is hard to the point of impossible, under SCOTUS doctrine, to make out a constitutional case (14th Amendment Equal Protection) based on political party discrimination in the gerrymandering context.
Well, I guess I turned out to be singing to the choir with my recent remarks on Holocaust denial.
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction. Maybe that's why they got tagged with "The Dark Enlightenment"
ReplyDeleteNo fence. The only thing I'm sure I was first with is my nym, and since it occurred to me in 1961 or thereabouts (filed away for future use), it's entirely likely someone else has thought of it too. I'll settle for being "first on my block"...
ReplyDeletesounds like something Algore would think up.
ReplyDeleteHah. You should have heard my Mom when the "hippie kids" took over downtown Asheville. "They're smoking joints right out in public!!"
ReplyDelete