#any political power grabs by evangelicals

[fearoftheminotaur]

I've always wondered, if Satan is mounting a revolution, is he trying a futile endeavor, or doing something where if he succeeded he would retroactively be ethically in the right?

It's fascinating how a lot of Evangelical Christian anxiety about Satanism seems to be rooted in the unspoken idea that if the Devil gathers enough worship he'll depose God and become the new God, because that's not the party line in any major religion, but it is how it works in Dungeons & Dragons.

[mswyrr]

"[W]e must also recognize that our political situation in 2025 will be more dire than it was in 2017. The forces that have aligned to enable Trump’s second rise to power, including policy organizations like the Heritage Foundation, have had years to sharpen their strategy. Techno-fascists like Elon Musk have woven themselves into the fabric of the executive branch. Evangelicals are more determined than ever to remake the United States in their own image. And while these sometimes-competing but cooperative forces do not have a fully aligned vision for the future, all of their aspirations involve the erosion or elimination of democratic processes, and significant harm to marginalized people. We should expect these authoritarian power grabs to be supported by a Supreme Court that has been captured by right-wing idealogues.

Trump’s first victory caught many Republicans off guard. This time, our right-wing enemies are poised to move more effectively, and their plans for contending with protesters, and for targeting undocumented people, unhoused people, and others living in the margins are as chilling as they are epic in scale. As someone who has devoted years of my life to the work of direct action–to planning, executing, and helping others prepare for various forms of protest–I would never suggest that we foreclose any avenue of resistance. We must be nimble in these times. However, it is crucial that we rethink our approach to direct action and protest in a potentially authoritarian, dictatorial context."

[lacewise]

I was explaining Evangelical Christian poisoning to one of my friends (she doesn’t have a lot of exposure to it because she’s Jewish) and I said, “You’d be surprised how many people think getting martyred is more powerful and more important than good works. It’s the Christianity.”

And I think that’s the full explanation of why one conflict has to be so much worse than every other (because they care about it), why they would throw over their own politics, ethics, and morals to coalition with Truly The Worst People Ever Devised, why there has to be a clearcut Ultimate Bad Guy (they view The Ultimate Bad Guys as a collective) and Ultimate Good Guys (they always view the Ultimate Good Guys as individuals), etc.

Even if they’re wrong, they’re lying, etc, they think they will be vindicated and deified as martyrs after their death. They don’t have to do real research. They don’t have to say true things. They don’t have to check they’re the ones being tricked or supporting violence, they can’t be held to the standard of fact-checking, ever. For any reason. Because they’ll be canonized. Because they’ll be martyrs.

It just… is the Christianity.

There are a lot of very bad things impacting a lot of people right now. There are a lot of violent and powerful people using civilians as pawns, sacrifices, or human shields in desperate power grabs. This is happening all over, to many groups of people. Please check your information sources, your media literacy, your critical thinking skills. Please be gentle with yourselves and don’t overwhelm your mind with violent scenes and imagery. Please rest.

Consider donating to aid organizations, like Standing Together.

Follow people who don’t hide the nuance of situations, and keep at least vaguely aware of concurrent events. And: cannot stress this enough, Take. Breaks.

Not resting and letting your mind process makes everyone much more vulnerable to being tricked. Propaganda works the same as marketing fraud which works the same as other types of scams. The more emotional, the more exhausted, the more desperate for change: the easier it is to spread lies. And once those lies spread, it is extremely difficult to trace them back to their origins.

That’s all I have to say. I should be back to my irregularly scheduled lace programming this weekend (provided my paints cooperate).

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again?

What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!”

What if the influential evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, after Trump was caught on tape explaining that as a TV star he felt entitled to “grab” women in the most intimate places — or after Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury of having done pretty much just that to E. Jean Carroll — declared that he would lead a campaign to ensure that anyone but Trump was elected in 2024 because Trump was a moral deviant whom Jeffress would not let babysit his two daughters, let alone the country?

Where would statements and actions like those have left Kevin McCarthy, his knuckleheads in the House G.O.P. caucus, and other Republicans who now are defending Trump against the Justice Department indictment? Would they be so eager to proclaim Trump’s innocence? Would they be raging against Tuesday’s hearing in Miami? Would they be claiming, falsely, that President Biden was indicting Trump, when they know full well that the president doesn’t have the power to indict anyone?

I doubt it. But I know that all of these questions are rhetorical. None of those people have the character to rise to these ethical challenges and take on Trump and what he has done to break our political system. Trump is like a drug dealer who thrives in a broken neighborhood, getting everyone hooked on his warped values. That is why he is doing everything he can to break our national neighborhood in two fundamental ways.

For starters, Trump has consistently tried to denigrate people who have demonstrated character and courage, by labeling them losers and weaklings. This comes easy to Trump because he is a man utterly without character — devoid of any sense of ethics or loyalty to any value system or person other than himself. And for him, politics is a blood sport in which you bludgeon the other guys and gals — whether they are in your party or not — with smears and nicknames and lies until they get out of your way.

Trump debuted this strategy early on with John McCain — a veteran, a man who never broke in five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, a man of real character. Do you remember what Trump said about McCain at a family leadership summit in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2015?

When McCain ran for president, “I supported him,” Trump told the audience. “He lost. He let us down. But he lost. So I never liked him much after that, because I don’t like losers.” When the audience laughed, the moderator, the pollster Frank Luntz, interjected, “But he’s a war hero!”

Trump — who wangled a dubious medical deferment to avoid the Vietnam War draft — then responded: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Later that day, Trump retweeted a web post headlined, “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser.’”

So part of the way Trump tries to break our system is to redefine the qualities of a leader — at least in the G.O.P. A leader is not someone like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney, people prepared to risk their careers to defend the truth, serve the country and uphold the Constitution. No, a leader is someone like him, someone who is ready to win at any cost — to the country, to the Constitution and to the example we set for our children and our allies.

And when that is your definition of leadership, of winning, people of character like McCain, Cheney and Romney are in your way. You need to strip everyone around you of character, and make everything about securing power and money. That is why so many people who entered Trump’s orbit since 2015 have walked away muddied. And that’s why I knew that all the questions I asked earlier were rhetorical.

The second way that Trump is trying to break our system was on display on Tuesday in Miami, where he followed his appearance as a federal criminal defendant with a political meet-and-greet at a Cuban restaurant. There, once again, Trump tried to discredit the rules of the game that would restrain him and his limitless appetite for power for power’s sake.

How does he do that? First, he gets everyone around him — and, eventually, the vast majority of those in his party — to stop insisting that Trump abide by ethical norms. His family members and party colleagues have grown adept at running away from reporters’ microphones after every Trump outrage.

But precisely because key political allies, church leaders and close family members will not call out Trump for his moral and legal transgressions — which would make his 2024 re-election bid unthinkable and hasten his departure from the political scene — we have to rely solely on the courts to defend the rules of the game.

And when that happens, it puts tremendous stress on our judicial system and our democracy itself, because the decision to prosecute or not is always a judgment call. And when those judgment calls have to be rendered at times by judges or prosecutors appointed by Democrats — which is how our system works — it gives Trump and his flock the perfect opening to denounce the whole process as a “witch hunt.”

And when such behavior happens over and over across a broad front — because Trump won’t stop at red lights anywhere and just keeps daring us to ignore his transgressions or indict him so he can cry bias — we end up eroding the two most important pillars of our democratic system: the belief in the independence of our judiciary that ensures no one is above the law, and the belief in our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately.

Just consider one scene in Trump’s indictment. It’s after a federal grand jury subpoenaed him in May 2022, to produce all classified material in his possession. Notes written by his own lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, quote Trump as saying: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t. … What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them? Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

Better for whom? Only one man. And that’s why I repeat: Trump has not put us here by accident. He actually wants to break our system, because he and people like him only thrive in a broken system.

So he keeps pushing and pushing our system to its breaking point — where rules are for suckers, norms are for fools, basic truths are malleable and men and women of high character are banished.

This is exactly what would-be dictators try to do: Flood the zone with lies so the people trust only them and the truth is only what they say it is.

It is impossible to exaggerate what a dangerous moment this is for our country.

Thomas Friedman

New York Times

[lenbryant]

Long post......(NYT) OPINION, THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Trump Thrives in a Broken System. He’ll Get Us There Soon.

June 13, 2023

(Photo) Damon Winter/The New York Times

What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again?

What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!”

What if the influential evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, after Trump was caught on tape explaining that as a TV star he felt entitled to “grab” women in the most intimate places — or after Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury of having done pretty much just that to E. Jean Carroll — declared that he would lead a campaign to ensure that anyone but Trump was elected in 2024 because Trump was a moral deviant whom Jeffress would not let babysit his two daughters, let alone the country?

Where would statements and actions like those have left Kevin McCarthy, his knuckleheads in the House G.O.P. caucus, and other Republicans who now are defending Trump against the Justice Department indictment? Would they be so eager to proclaim Trump’s innocence? Would they be raging against Tuesday’s hearing in Miami? Would they be claiming, falsely, that President Biden was indicting Trump, when they know full well that the president doesn’t have the power to indict anyone?

I doubt it. But I know that all of these questions are rhetorical. None of those people have the character to rise to these ethical challenges and take on Trump and what he has done to break our political system. Trump is like a drug dealer who thrives in a broken neighborhood, getting everyone hooked on his warped values. That is why he is doing everything he can to break our national neighborhood in two fundamental ways.

For starters, Trump has consistently tried to denigrate people who have demonstrated character and courage, by labeling them losers and weaklings. This comes easy to Trump because he is a man utterly without character — devoid of any sense of ethics or loyalty to any value system or person other than himself. And for him, politics is a blood sport in which you bludgeon the other guys and gals — whether they are in your party or not — with smears and nicknames and lies until they get out of your way.

(Continued) Trump debuted this strategy early on with John McCain — a veteran, a man who never broke in five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, a man of real character. Do you remember what Trump said about McCain at a family leadership summit in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2015?

When McCain ran for president, “I supported him,” Trump told the audience. “He lost. He let us down. But he lost. So I never liked him much after that, because I don’t like losers.” When the audience laughed, the moderator, the pollster Frank Luntz, interjected, “But he’s a war hero!”

Trump — who wangled a dubious medical deferment to avoid the Vietnam War draft — then responded: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Later that day, Trump retweeted a web post headlined, “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser.’”

So part of the way Trump tries to break our system is to redefine the qualities of a leader — at least in the G.O.P. A leader is not someone like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney, people prepared to risk their careers to defend the truth, serve the country and uphold the Constitution. No, a leader is someone like him, someone who is ready to win at any cost — to the country, to the Constitution and to the example we set for our children and our allies.

And when that is your definition of leadership, of winning, people of character like McCain, Cheney and Romney are in your way. You need to strip everyone around you of character, and make everything about securing power and money. That is why so many people who entered Trump’s orbit since 2015 have walked away muddied. And that’s why I knew that all the questions I asked earlier were rhetorical.

The second way that Trump is trying to break our system was on display on Tuesday in Miami, where he followed his appearance as a federal criminal defendant with a political meet-and-greet at a Cuban restaurant. There, once again, Trump tried to discredit the rules of the game that would restrain him and his limitless appetite for power for power’s sake.

How does he do that? First, he gets everyone around him — and, eventually, the vast majority of those in his party — to stop insisting that Trump abide by ethical norms. His family members and party colleagues have grown adept at running away from reporters’ microphones after every Trump outrage.

But precisely because key political allies, church leaders and close family members will not call out Trump for his moral and legal transgressions — which would make his 2024 re-election bid unthinkable and hasten his departure from the political scene — we have to rely solely on the courts to defend the rules of the game.

And when that happens, it puts tremendous stress on our judicial system and our democracy itself, because the decision to prosecute or not is always a judgment call. And when those judgment calls have to be rendered at times by judges or prosecutors appointed by Democrats — which is how our system works — it gives Trump and his flock the perfect opening to denounce the whole process as a “witch hunt.”

And when such behavior happens over and over across a broad front — because Trump won’t stop at red lights anywhere and just keeps daring us to ignore his transgressions or indict him so he can cry bias — we end up eroding the two most important pillars of our democratic system: the belief in the independence of our judiciary that ensures no one is above the law, and the belief in our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately.

Just consider one scene in Trump’s indictment. It’s after a federal grand jury subpoenaed him in May 2022, to produce all classified material in his possession. Notes written by his own lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, quote Trump as saying: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t. … What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them? Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

Better for whom? Only one man. And that’s why I repeat: Trump has not put us here by accident. He actually wants to break our system, because he and people like him only thrive in a broken system.

So he keeps pushing and pushing our system to its breaking point — where rules are for suckers, norms are for fools, basic truths are malleable and men and women of high character are banished.

This is exactly what would-be dictators try to do: Flood the zone with lies so the people trust only them and the truth is only what they say it is.

It is impossible to exaggerate what a dangerous moment this is for our country.

Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on June 14, 2023, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Thrives in a Broken System. He’ll Get Us There Soon..

[the-witty-pen-name]

The Nanny Pt. 3

Lee Bodecker x Nanny!F!Reader

18+

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: alcohol/drinking, food, corrupt cop, mentions of prostitution/smut, implied age gap (reader is in her 20s), cursing, mentions of serial killers/murder, mutual pining, 

Summary:

Based on this Request: The reader moves to Meade/Knockemstiff while answering an advertisement for a nanny in the paper. We learn that the ad was posted by Sandy, who has the reader watch her child whenever she and Carl leave to do their secret thing. After one of these trips, Sandy and her husband never return, so the reader is left caring for their baby. With the new investigation into these events, she meets Sandy’s brother Lee, the older, out of shape, alcoholic bachelor, and they are suddenly thrown into each others lives as he begins looking into his sister’s disappearance. Through it all, Lee starts to fall for her, and they slowly become a family.

A/N: I got inspired re-watching one of my favorite shows and I want to know if anyone else gets the reference I’m using! If I missed anything I should include as a warning that I missed please let me know! This is also unedited!

Taglist Form is in my bio!

Series Masterlist

Your shoulders tensed listening to the radio in the morning. Sitting on your ottoman, you were painting your nails, using the coffee table as your nail station. It was a really bright morning, and you had the curtains pulled open to draw in light. Julie frantically rushed between her room and the bathroom getting ready for her shift at the diner. The newest single from The Beach Boys was playing through the little counter top radio, but at the top of the hour, the melodies playing through the speaker changed to the news. The top story of the morning was chilling.

“Jules,” you said, calling her over hesitantly, putting the cap back on the bottle of polish. “Come listen to this.”

She scurried out of her room while working to tie her apron in the back, and then she stood next to where you sat to listen to the story on the news. The color drained from her face as you both listened to the reporter describe the horrific scene that was under investigation early this morning.

Roy Laferty was an evangelical preacher whose body washed up by the lake very early that same morning. The news report talked about the police investigation, and also disclosed his wife Helen, is also reported missing. They are looking into the disappearance of Helen, as well as opening a full investigation on Laferty’s murder. They also urge individuals with any information regarding the two to call the Sheriff’s department and to provide a statement.

“That’s horrifying,” you mumble, shocked as you try to process the news. Julie nods in agreement but strangely doesn’t seem nearly as affected by the news as you.

“It’s happening again,” she mutters, obviously concerned but her lack of surprise worries you.

“What do you mean again?” you ask.

“There was a string of unexplained murders, all men, like this newest one,” Julie explained, “This was all over the news like two years ago- can’t believe you hadn’t heard about it.” All you could do was shrug; this was all new to you. “Obviously, there was nothing linking their deaths, but there were these five killings a couple of years ago that are still unsolved. There’s no evidence, but the town rumors it was like a serial killer or something. Nothing is confirmed, of course, just a story.”

“What makes people think it was all the same person?” you ask, hesitantly.

“All the people were always the same type,” she shrugs, “Men all in their 20s and 30s. Again, there’s nothing linking them all together. It’s just talk.”

You clicked off the radio, and didn’t know what to do with yourself. Julie patted your shoulder, comfortingly but she had to go on with her day. So did you, and you almost her ability to move about the apartment almost unfazed by the news. You suppose it makes sense, her growing up here she’s probably used to it. You didn’t have the experience or the thick skin she had.

You had decided to go to the library, still preoccupied by the news segment as well as the things Julie had told you about the Sheriff. You spent the better half of the morning looking at the library’s archives of old newspapers. You wanted to read more about the unsolved cases Julie had told you about, so there you sat for several hours looking through the microfilm reader. You even stumbled upon articles that featured the Sheriff.

There he was plain as day on the front page when it was announced he had won the election the first time he ran several years back. You couldn’t help but notice the changes in his appearance and demeanor compared to the man you keep running into. He was a little slimmer, and he looked a lot happier, a little fuller of life, you decided was a good way to explain it. His smile was wider, and you could see the difference in his eyes as well. It was seeing how he was before the stress of the job began to take its heavy toll. He had on the same leather jacket as well, you were fairly certain, even though the one in the photograph hung a little looser.

You continued to skim through articles, piecing your way through the history of Knockemstiff. Little articles in black and white that persevered the history of this dark little town. You were beginning to realize this backwater town was a lot more tangled and complex than you originally believed. It was a tangled history, riddled with crime and unclosed cases, that people seem to have either forgotten or choose to ignore for their own sake. Your mind wandered back to the things Julie had told you about the Sheriff and him being corrupt. You wonder how much of what you read about linked back to him. Though you imagine if he has any sort of political connection, which a man like him must have, the things he was involved in probably didn’t even make it into the paper. The thought made you physically shiver.

You put the large leather portfolios of archives you took and put them back into their proper place on the self chronologically. You grabbed your sweater from the back of your chair, and pushed the chair back into place. Looking up at the clock on the wall, it was only just one in the afternoon. You decided to head down to the diner and grab a bite, and also visit Julie during her second shift. It was a short walk from the library to the diner. Everywhere felt like a short walk here, probably because everything in downtown was not much bigger than a few blocks. The majority of people lived far from the center of town, on their own land and farms.

The little bell on the door rang when you stepped in and Julie waved at you from behind the counter and pointed for you to grab an empty table in her section. You put your bag on the table and took a seat. It was a fairly busy time, most people who worked at the surrounding businesses coming in for their lunch break. Julie brought you over a coffee and then said she’d be back to chat when she got to take her five.

Lee hadn’t been able to go home since the phone call. The symptoms of his hangover were worsening and he was growing more irritable. His five o’clock shadow was still evident on his tired face and his head was pounding. He tried his best to just power through it but the sound of anyone trying to talk to him just made his ears ring.

After leaving the scene, he had to stop by his office and then he was on the phone for the better part of an hour fielding calls from frantic citizens not only of Knockemstiff but also Meade, where Laferty was from. Despite how horribly he felt, he tried his best to keep his temper level and just reassure people he had things under control. He was losing his patience.

He opened up his desk drawer and grabbed his bottle of asprin. Empty. He threw it into the small waste bin and got up abruptly grabbing his jacket off the hook and storming out. He didn’t tell anyone he was leaving and he didn’t care. It was a short walk to the drugstore from the station and he wouldn’t be five minutes. He just needed to do something to stop his head from hurting.

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” the pharmacist greeted when he walked in. He nodded his head upwards briefly to reply without having to talk. He just needed to get in and out. She went back to whatever she was working on when he came in, and he browsed the aisles for what he needed. After paying and walking out, he glanced in the direction of the diner when he was crossing the street. There you were, again. Sitting alone and chatting with the waitress that was refilling your coffee.

He let out a heavy sigh, and then continued walking. He didn’t want you to see him like this, hungover, unshaved, wrinkled uniform and heavy undereye bags from his lack of sleep. You looked- well, Lee thought you were the prettiest thing he’s seen in a while, maybe ever. There was something about you he couldn’t pinpoint. Maybe it was just because you weren’t from here. You were a fresh face, and not ruined by this town. There was a sweetness and an innocence in how you talked to him, because you didn’t know him like the rest of people here did. He liked that.

Even when he left the station for the day, he couldn’t even go home yet. He had a meeting at the bar with one of Brown’s lackeys. He was just supposed to collect his cut so he couldn’t imagine it would take long, but he was still annoyed. Stepping into the bar he looked around as he took off his hat. It was a little more crowded tonight then when he was here last. The red curtain was closed and his eyes lingered there for a moment before directing his attention to the man he recognized who was waving him over.

“Sheriff,” the man greets and Lee slides into the booth across from him.

“Hayward,” he replies. Without even needing to order, the bartender comes over bringing them a bottle of scotch and two glasses.

“You ever go back there?” Hayward asks, watching as a girl came out and brought a man behind the curtain who had been waiting at the bar.

“No,” Lee scoffs.

“They are amazing,” Hayward says, almost giddy. Lee feels sympathy towards the poor woman who had to take care of him. Lee doesn’t acknowledge the statement and just empties his glass and begins to pour himself a second.

“So, my cut?” Lee asks. Hayward frowns and goes into the breast pocket of his sports coat and pulls out an envelope of cash.

“You aren’t getting full,” the man says when Lee cocks a brow at the thinness of the envelope.

“Still?” Lee asks, pissed. Hayward nods. Lee’s jaw clenches.

“You didn’t keep things tidy on your end,” Hayward reminds him, “You got one job. Keep the cops out of our territory. We had two cruisers drive through last week. The only reason you’re getting anything at all is cause you managed to keep your people off us when we did the exchange with Deckard’s crew.”

The man finishes his drink, and then slaps the empty glass on the table. He pulls out his own envelope, which is much thicker than Lee’s and drops down more than enough for the drinks. He chuckles condescendingly and tells the Sheriff to get a dance. Fuck that. Lee takes the extra money and plans to just put it right in his pocket and go home. He finishes his third scotch and suddenly his headache was back. He felt worse than he did earlier today.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff?” a feminine voice asks, making him break his line of thought. He looks to his side and he recognizes her as one of the girls he sees bringing men to the back room, behind the velvet curtain. He shakes his head, and instead of leaving him alone, she slides into the booth next to him. Her hand grazes over his thigh. “You seem awful tense, Sheriff,” she says and then bites her lip.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted. He knows she doesn’t actually want him, and it’s just an attempt to get him to spend money in the backroom. If he doesn’t focus his already hazing vision, maybe she could vaguely remind him of you. He can’t do it, but he wants to. Her hand moves up his leg and he pulls away. He adjusts his pants and she shrugs.

“Maybe next time then,” she winks before walking away. He rests his head back on the vinyl seat and sighs. He grabs his hat and jacket, leaving before he changes his mind. “Ask for Cherry when you come in, yeah?” she calls when he walks out.

You are just everywhere. You’re in his head and he doesn’t even know you. He needs to sleep, desperately, and part of him in the back of his mind hopes you’ll be there. When he wakes up, he doesn’t remember.

“Have you heard about the Church fundraiser coming up?” Julie asks. You shake your head. “It’s a pretty big deal here. Everyone participates.”

“What is it?” you ask, kicking off your slippers so you can sit crisscross on the couch.

“Bid-On-A-Basket,” she says casually, like it’s the most obvious thing.

“Never heard of it,” you reply, “It sounds fun. What is it?”

“All us single gals put together a picnic basket with everything for a lunch,” she explains, “and then all the eligible bachelors bid on the basket and a date with the girl who made it. Last year, the dreamiest guy, Bill Whittier, bought mine- it’s so fun. Me and Bill didn’t work out but it was a good time.”

“I don’t know anyone here,” you say hesitantly.

“Perfect way to get a date then,” she teases. You bite your lip. You aren’t sure about this.

“And what if some creep is the highest bidder?” you counter.

“You get a bad date story for your next date?” she poses. “Please,” she begs, “It’s for a good cause, all the money this year is going to help the Sunday school.”

“What if no one bids on it?” You rebut.

“Look at yourself,” she scoffs, “you’ll get bids. Trust me.” You roll your eyes.

“I’ll think about it,” you say finally. She smirks, completely planning to wear you down.

“Remember it’s for the kids,” she reasons, “It wouldn’t hurt to go and participate.”

“I said I’ll think about it,” you laugh.

Time passes and soon enough you get another call from Sandy, and you are suddenly back to taking care of Valerie. You had missed her, a lot actually. You definitely have gotten attached to her, and you think you’ve grown on her too. Sandy was vague this time for how long they’d be gone, but since the previous time went so smoothly, you didn’t worry about it.

About a week after Sandy and Carl left this time, there was another disturbing news report. You were sitting on the floor, changing Valerie and you had the television playing softly in the background. The news told the story of another body, this time found in the woods off of the highway. You finish changing the baby and hold her close, her little chin resting on your shoulder as you watch the news story. It was just like Julie had talked about. Another man, thirty years old. He was shot and his body abandoned. You jump at the knock at the front door.

You peep through the curtains, and you see the Sheriff waiting on the front porch. You wonder if he knows you’re there. Part of you almost wishes he knows it you here and he wanted to see you. It’s incredibly stupid on your part and you know better, but nonetheless, part of you hoped he came here for you. Very stupid. With Valerie on your hip, you open the door.

“I’m sorry, darling,” he says walking into the house. He stops in front of you and presses a kiss to Valerie’s forehead and she squeals happily seeing Lee. You close the door with your foot. “May I?” he asks, and opens his arms. You agree, based on Valerie’s reactions to him whenever she sees him. He takes her in his arms, and she starts playing with his tie. He loosens it so she can play with it and not choke him.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff?” you ask. He reacts in a way in a way you can’t really read, but you don’t press.

His mind just goes back to the woman a couple weeks back in the brothel who asked him the same thing, and that his mind immediately had gone to you. He just clears his throat and snaps himself out of that thought process.

“Um, I just came by to see Sandy,” he says, “But I can fathom a guess that she’s not here?”

“Excellent deduction,” you joke, and he smirks. Valerie has his tie in her mouth and is covering it in drool. He doesn’t even seem to care.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and you nod. “You looked a little scared when you answered.”

“Just watching the news before you showed up is all,” you explain, “They were talking about how there was another man found dead.”

“Ain’t got nothing to worry about,” he says, “We’re on top of it. I’m on my way over there now.”

“Can I ask you something?” you ask hesitantly.

“Of course, darling.”

“My friend, you probably know her- Julie Grady.”

“Yeah, nice kid,” he says, listening but gently pulling his tie from Valerie’s grasp. She starts playing with the flap of the pocket of his jacket.

Kid. You almost grimace. That’s right. Of course, Lee would view someone your age that way. You weren’t. You chastise yourself for even caring, but you decide to continue. You shouldn’t care how he sees you.

“Yeah- well, she told me there have been others,” you continue, “I also read up about it, just the newspapers at the library- but she said people thought it was some kind of serial killer… I just, I want to know what you think.”

“I don’t think know,” he answers honestly, a little taken aback, not expecting you to approach him with something this serious. “I doubt it,” he explains, “Serial killers stay close to home. Now those cases you read about, and these two we are looking at- they sound close together but logistically, they aren’t really. Two of those unsolved were in completely different states- just like this new one.”

“So, no traveling serial killer?” you chuckle, trying to sound lighthearted. He chuckles and shakes his head.

“Most people like that stay in one area,” Lee explains, “They work jobs, they have a home, you know? They tend to stay near where they live.”

“That makes me feel much better,” you answer honestly.

“You got nothing to worry about, and that’s a promise,” he grins, although he supposes coming from him that probably doesn’t mean much. Regardless, it makes you smile.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” you offer again. He bites his lip, taking a moment to think.

“Sandy keeps a bag of candy in her cabinet,” he says, walking into the kitchen with you following close behind. He passes Valerie off to you and he chuckles under his breath at the state of his tie. He reaches up in the cabinet and pulls down a brown paper bag, filled with taffies and chocolates.

Something about this man who has a whole time scared of him playing with his niece and then stealing sweets from the cupboard is something you find so strangely endearing. He unwraps one of the brightly colored taffies and then puts the bag in his pocket.

“I gotta go,” he announces, “let me know if you hear from Sandy, yeah?”

“Of course,” you reply.

“Gonna head out to that scene, and do my report,” he discloses, not really sure why he’s telling you. “Then I have a meeting at the rectory about that fundraiser thing. Figure out security.”

“They need security at Bid-On-A-Basket?” you ask, with an eyebrow raised. He smiles.

“You going?” he asks, flirtatiously.

“Just seems weird to have police at a Church thing.”

“There’s been stupid fights,” he shrugs, “some guy will get outbid and cause a fuss. Nothing serious. Probably just gonna be me and a deputy in case. You going?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” you say sheepishly. “Why?”

He walks towards the front door, and you follow seeing him out.

“Cause I gotta know if I’ll be bidding on a basket,” he winks.

“You gonna start a fight if you don’t win it?” you joke.

“If it’s yours? Absolutely, darling.”

Taglist:

@adelaide-walker @thedepressolit @samanthadegaro @pyronack @greeneyedblondie44  @acciosiriusblack  @weenersoldierr @teenagemutant @witchybarb @iraot @my-love-darling @hold-me-like-a-heart-beat @swiftieandthewintersoldier @letsfly-andbe-free @rebekahdawkins @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan @hersilencedscreams @unsaltedalmonds @dangerdolns @vintagepigeon @bluebouquetcupcake29 @goslytherin @captainofallfandoms @buckistan @aynanasstuff @everything-is-all-clear @rosalynshields @tinynshykitten​ 

[antoine-roquentin]

It should be noted: disgust is one of the primary languages of modern advocacy — Environmental activists with climate change, animal rights activists with slaughterhouses, anti-smoking groups with lung biopsies, Black Lives Matter activists with police brutality, Christians with sin, white supremacists with interracial couples, another almost-infinite list — all of them (at least partly) built on taking advantage of the emotional flare-up of disgust in a person. Disgust brings people to a persuadable place, where anything offered solution to the trigger will be more readily received. You can see it in the large swaths of advertising, where messages are designed around provoking and relieving disgust. We are taught to be disgusted by our bodies, then offered products to fix it. We are encouraged to be disgusted by our enemies, and assuaged by our own correctness.

Donald Trump is man of disgust. He is perpetually disgusted: foods, nations, germs, his opponents, his supporters, all of them disgust him. More than most, Trump is proud of his disgust at the world, and he often relies on it to attract people to his side. If a shared disgust is a dark solidarity, Donald Trump is the center of so many networks. His disgusted affect has meandered down into all of us: Trump is not just disgusted, but disgusting. His politics are designed to antagonize and repulse, and in this concern, are incredibly successful at grabbing attention. So many of us are disgusted these days. Disgusted by things we read on our phones and laptops (yet oddly we never seem disgusted enough to put down the technology), offended by craven politicians, sickened by violence and lies — it’s the defining emotion of our time. We’ve all been ensnared in the web.

A survey of the common elicitors of disgust is like seeing a prism for all of Pastel QAnon, for the intersection of wellness and conspiracy theories. In wellness, disgust about body fat, cholesterol, aging, disease, and other issues of body purity animate our shopping and lifestyles, and lead us to fetishize “clean eating.” Body products like shit and piss and blood and organs are commonly found to be disgusting, so it would be understandable that folks would find the idea of elites harvesting chemical compounds in our brains to be a far more riveting than the actual harvesting of our time, peace, and wages. Food and hygiene are traditional fields of disgust, so fears around genetic modification or chemically treated food will hold their attention far more than food deserts or general hunger. Vaccines, when viewed through a prism of body horror, will be a perpetual source of disgust for some people, especially among the pregnant and early parents. Disgust for the feminine is another common thread: soy is a vehicle of feminine chemicals (the dreaded estrogen), ready to wreck our natural balances. Even the evangelical opposition to The Da Vinci Code is rooted in the disgust at the idea of Mary or Jesus as sexually active people.

Yet disgust blinds us to reality, distracts us from real problems. An example of how disgust can drive people away from reality and into useless theories is the famed and dreaded idea of mandatory microchip implantation. For all of the fear, the threat of microchip totalitarianism is miniscule, especially considering the far more grave threats posed by facial-recognition software and the modern surveillance state. It’s obvious to the non-disgusted mind: why would any elite group go to the effort to try and put something inside our bodies if we’re all already addicted to our smartphones and posting? We can’t give up our phones and smartwatches if we wanted to, why would they waste time on hooking us up with anything else? [Ed.- Again, I wrote this in the summer, but by now we have all seen Q fans raiding the U.S. Capitol while proudly broadcasting them on their phones, much to the delight of federal prosecutors.] The crux of why this conspiracy remains potent is because of the disgust that is provoked by the idea of violating a person’s body envelope (similar to disgust over gore or other intrusive instruments in a body). Even though the threat is far less real, the disgust provoked isn’t, which is why the idea remains so powerful. Incidentally, I read a rumor recently that even David Icke was starting to realize that microchips were a dumb idea, and he would start pivoting towards stirring up fear around facial recognition pretty soon. Color me skeptical of that idea taking hold with his followers. Facial recognition, while a real threat, isn’t vivid enough and is too non-disgusting to hold much sway with people hooked on conspiracies.

[jeanjauthor]

What’s the hierarchy in renaissance times? Royal, noble,knights, merchants, peasants? Is that it? Have I missed anything?

It honestly depends upon which culture you're using.

And yep, the clergy got missed--it's natural for us to forget to think of them since modern culture is far more secular than life used to be back in the Renaissance, and religious figures are less visibly powerful as a social rank. (I could rant about evangelicals effing up everything, but that's not this post.) As a cult of personality individually, yes, but not social-rank-wise. Back in Renaissance eras, it was more of a social rank...and again, it depends. (One can also argue that entertainers are a rank, etc.)

In China, merchants were considered lower than peasants "because they don't produce anything", yet in Venice & Genoa they were basically the highest rank you could get without having an actual noble rank. In the post-Reformation areas (Martin Luther / Protestantism), the clergy (Catholic church) were no longer near the top of the list, while over in Spain, the Catholic Church was still legally torturing people to death just for existing up until July 15, 1834 when the Spanish Inquisition was finally abolished by royal decree.

King Henry VIII of England broke the Church's power not just because of his demand to divorce his non-male-producing wives (which wasn't their fault; sex chromosomes are mostly determined by the father's contributions, gender just happens, and misogyny is toxic as hell), but because the Church and its monasteries controlled a LOT of land & wealth in the early parts of Tudor-era England...and for various reasons, he was strapped for cash, so, why not solve all problems at once by seizing all of that land and its wealth?

If this is for an historically set story (and I do wish you people would tell me if it is or not!), aka real-world setting, you need to do some research for the hierarchy. Some areas also still had slavery, so those folks would be at the bottom of the social tiers. Some areas still had serfs (I'm lookin' at you, Russia!) where the peasantry were basically slaves with a few more "freedoms"...but they were still tied to the land and could be beaten for trying to run away to actual freedom.

But if it's a setting for a created world, then things start to get a lot more flexible. Does your created culture value labor and physical products? Crafters and farmers will probably be valued higher than merchants and/or entertainers. Does it value entertainment highly? Then skilled performers will be ranked up near the nobles. Presuming your system does have nobility, does it have a monarch, or is it ruled by a council of nobles/high-ranking citizens whom appoint an elected leader for a period of time? (Think the Doge of Venice.)

On the other hand, technology was evolving somewhat drastically in the Renaissance, so if it's early Renaissance you might still have knights, but if it's late Renaissance, the advent of hand-held gunpowder weapons kinda made knighthoods kind of difficult to acquire without, y'know, dying from all those projectiles (musket / arquebus balls; technically they're not yet bullets) going straight through plate armor. The vicious bloodthirsty bastards known as Conquistadores still wore breastplates and helms, but not full armor nor chainmail; they wore the breastplates & helms to protect their vitals against up-close melee combat, and took their chances (same as everyone else) with projectile fire. As a result, warrior types were more interested in gaining wealth, titles, and lands, not mere knighthoods, because the shiny had gone out of the plate due to advancing weapons tech.

So does your society have knights? Or warrior types of any sort? And are there any crossovers? Shaolin monks were definitely warriors, but also clergy. This meant that in some eras and regions they were revered above many others socially, in some they were simply equal to most folks (the average monk, that is; not talking the heads of temples/monasteries), and in other times & places, they were literally being hunted to death. Venice had merchant-princes; most of them didn't have any actual noble titles, but they certainly had the wealth and the political power!

Also what size are your kingdoms, and what are their relations with their neighbors? The Holy Roman Empire included a lot of Germanic principalities, which had literal princes and dukes, etc, ruling over regions...but don't believe for a second that everyone considered themselves in actual fealty beneath the Emperor; there were all manner of uprisings, ignorings, and so forth.

France centralized its royal power as much as possible, demanding the nobility come live at the royal palaces for X amount of the year to control its nobles, whereas up in England, the nobles had codified a certain amount of autonomy via the Magna Carta; yes, they owed the king X amount of service, but it wasn't nearly as centralized a state in its power structure. And Poland wasn't even nearly that centralized. (Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube did a good video on this, just a few days ago).

Social status could also shift back and forth depending on who was marrying whom. English nobles might "shudder" at the idea of marrying wealthy "peasant stock" Americans, but Italian nobles and a Venetian merchant-prince family? Dude/ttes got power! Get into that family's pockets and you've just opened up a world (literally) of trade routes!

If it's a created world culture, are these merchants, nobility, etc, in a backwater area at the end of a supply/trade chain? Or are they in a major crossroads zone? (Be advised that crossroads areas tend to have a history of frequent armed conflict as invaders swoop in to try to grab all that wealth, pwn the local n00bs, & loot-lust everything in sight.)

So for an actual historical setting, that's one thing (please, people, let me know if this is an actual historical setting--the answers DO CHANGE whether it's a real-world setting or a created world setting!!), but if it's a created world...you need to figure out what the cultural values are, both for the overall kingdom, and for the local/regional culture. If your story is set in a city with a school for music & musicians, then musical entertainers are going to have a higher social ranking than in the next big city down the road, which might focus on the weavers' guild, where quality textile crafters are valued more highly in social circles.

[fxreverfame]

Kai Anderson

information provided by : [xxx]

Kai Anderson is a cult leader from a Michigan suburb. He is a character in Cult portrayed by Evan Peters. Before he was radicalized by personal trauma, he was a typical internet troll who hadn't realized yet the power in manipulating emotions. His following was known as FIT, which expanded as he continued reeling in new recruits with his gifted charisma. What Kai started as a small group of locals had metastasized as he became increasingly prolific in the political media. He was hellbent on spreading chaos to take over the world, only to have his ego be his ultimate undoing.

Background

In 2014, Kai returned home after getting a degree in religious studies. His father was a lawyer who was injured in a motorcycle accident and was paralyzed from the waist down. This caused him to abuse his wife and accuse her of an affair. He is also seen verbally abusing Kai. He spent of his time there alone, lurking on website such as r/RedPill on his laptop.

Kai states that before the accident his father was firm but fair with them and his mother. One night Kai hears muffled arguing and gunshots. He finds that his mother, no longer able to stand the abuse and accusations, has shot his father she then turns the gun on herself and pulls the trigger in front of Kai. Clearly in shock, Kai calls his older brother, Dr. Rudy Vincent, who convinces Kai that the best course of action is to cover up the murder-suicide. He reasons that they will have to sell the house and that their sister Winter will not be able to finish college due to the loss of their parents' income. He has also just started his practice and doesn't want to explain to clients that his parents murdered each other. After locking pinkies, they put their parents' bodies in bed, cover them with lye, padlock the door and leave them to decompose.

When Kai asked what he should say to Winter, Vin tells him to wait and tell her when she returns home for Thanksgiving. When Winter returns home she is understandably upset that they have kept their parents' deaths from her. She threatens to turn them in but Kai uses Vin's logic on her saying who will pay for Vasser. Three years later and the bodies are still in the house. Kai admits to Beverly that he still talks to his mom. Despite their status, he still talked to his mother's decomposing body, usually holding her hand. He also talked to the corpse of his father, still blaming him for what happened and that he gets pleasure from watching him decompose. At one later point in the season he promises his mothers rotting corpse that he will become something for her.

Sometime after the horrific death of his parents, him and his sister both fall of the deep end. They both practically live in their basement, where they spend most of their time venturing on the dark web trolling alt-right extremists, often posing online as one of them. They'd test the limits of how crazy these extremists could be by proclaiming beliefs they'd pretend to have as part of acting their role. One night while doing this, an ad popped up for "Pastor Charles Judgement House." It's an evangelical hell house, led by the crazed Pastor Charles.

On Election Night, Kai walks in on a bound Gary Longstreet urging him not to scream too loud in his current predicament lest he attracts the wrong kind of attention. Kai manipulates and riles the humiliated man up and convinces him to sever his own hand with a saw so he'd be able to cast his vote. Kai accompanies the injured Gary to their local voting booth. He watches with some amount of glee as Gary shouts: "Welcome to Trump's America, motherfuckers!".

After Election Night, Kai begins drawing all kinds of people to him. He requests Harrison Wilton as his personal trainer and calls him strong. Kai is quick to point out the humiliating aspect of Harrison's work situation: being constantly humiliated by his boss, Vinny, for being gay. He wins Harrison over by advising him to reject labels and promises to always be there for him no matter their differences. After Kai's first session with Harrison, Kai masturbates in the gym shower and lures Harrison in to watch him. As his sessions with Harrison are ending, Kai notices that his trainer sounds a lot like Vinny. When confronted Harrison almost tearfully admits that his life is in tatters, that he's nobody going nowhere. Kai convinces his first devotee that 'nowhere' is the ideal jumping off point. That night Kai assists Harrison in murdering Vinny and disposing of any evidence linking them to the crime. Meadow walks in on the pair of them dismembering Vinny's corpse. Kai is able to sway Meadow to his side by praising her artistic abilities (designing eerie ghoulish clown masks) to the sky.

Kai becomes interested in news reporter Beverly Hope. He discovers that after repeated live 'pussy grabbing' taunts Beverly assaulted one of her hecklers and was forced to seek psychiatric counseling. He catches the frustrated reporter slashing a rival's tires and advises her on how to do it more efficiently. Kai invites Beverly to dinner and impresses her by accurately stating her problems. The aspiring leader next explains his philosophy to Beverly and offers to make her his spokesperson and partner. Realizing that as a reporter Beverly requires proof, not just words Kai requests a few days to deliver said proof. After having seen footage of her hated rival Serena Belinda's gory demise, Beverly realizes that Kai made it happen. The rage-filled reporter seeks Kai out and proclaims she's ready to believe in him. Kai hugs Beverly close and once again promises her an equal partnership.

Personality and Appearance

Prior to his parents' gruesome deaths, Kai appeared to function normally and was, by society's standards, an average teenager. After witnessing his mother and father's murder-suicide, and then the Biblically-motivated violence of Pastor Charles, Kai snapped and became mentally unstable, obsessed with the lust for power. By the events of Cult, he is 30 years old and has shoulder-length hair dyed blue, which he sometimes ties back in a bun. He appears to be very muscular and has a lean build sporting toned abs and biceps. He is fair-skinned and frequently switches between the attire of a cult leader and, when in the face of the public, the suit of a professional councilman.

Embodying a terrifying blend of toxic masculinity and manipulative charisma, Kai is obsessed with the concept of fear and aspires to use it to manipulate people. He states in his speech that his desire is to release chaos to achieve change, suggesting he is delusional. He is noted for holding the mentality that "not everyone can be saved", and that in order for the world to flourish and regrow, "the world should be burned down to rebuild another one".

Kai tested as a genius when he was a young child and was invited to join Mensa, but declined because, according to him, he was also very troubled. This would appear to be true, as Kai has demonstrated all the signs of a sociopath: he is extremely manipulative and charming, is devoid of a moral compass or a conscience, and has absolutely no feelings of empathy or remorse towards other people. He appears to lack fear, as evidenced by when he harassed several Latin-American workers on the street in order to intentionally be beaten by them, employing Harrison and Meadow Wilton to record the inciting violence as a means of furthering his political agenda, which revolved around gaining the racially motivated fear of the public. Despite this, he is described by his sister as having severe paranoia - a fact supported by Kai's exceeding detachment from reality and inability to distinguish between what are his hallucinations or actual people, including seeing and communicating with visions of other cult figures in history, such as Charles Manson.

His harassment towards ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ community are incisive elements for him being perceived as a racist and homophobe, although it is not entirely clear whether he is actually biased against them, or just exploits pre-existing prejudices and tensions to create chaos in the surrounding environment. He is, however, openly misogynistic, viewing women as inferior to men, and holds the belief that they are incapable of holding places of power and importance in society. Despite this, he has displayed a sexual interest in both males and females, though it is unclear if he is actually attracted to them or just uses sexual orientations as a means to further entrance others into following his deranged viewpoints. He intentionally masturbated in front of Harrison Wilton in a gym shower as a means of attracting him to join his cult, and later shared a one-night-stand with Detective Samuels for the same reasons, who he was able to convince that "sex with men is better than with any woman"; additionally, he describes Samuels to his sister as being "quite attractive". Interestingly enough, he is responsible for neither of these men's deaths, unlike other members of his cult that he directly targeted.

Kai may be aroused by the concept of incest, as he attempted a threesome between himself, his sister, and Samuels as a means of giving birth to a "Messiah baby". After Samuel's inability to become aroused by the situation and his sister's refusal to partake in the act, Kai has since come to believe that his son is Oz Mayfair-Richards (per the influence of Ally Mayfair-Richards, who has fed him this lie as a means of self-preservation).

Story

Kai was watching the 2016 election alone in his basement and was delighted by the news of Trump's victory, while his sister Winter was devastated by it, having worked for Clinton's campaign. Kai went to Winter's room to gloat about the win and they proceed to lock pinkies.

Later, Kai attended a city council meeting, which Mr. Chang serves on, about security for the local Jewish community center. Kai states his objections, talking about using fear to control people, though the council disagrees with him and the motion is passed. Kai is later seen harassing a group of Hispanic men on the streets by filling a condom with his urine and throwing it at the men while yelling racist slurs. The men beat Kai up while an unknown person records it.

After his vicious beating Kai, wearing a suit and an endearing armbrace is interviewed by various reporters in front of city hall, as he intends to propose himself as a city councilor. The Trump supporter is quick to point the finger at those 'dangerous illegal immigrants' for his mishap and further stokes the fires of ignorance and hatred. Later Kai just happens to show up at Ally's newly fortified house. Sensing that she's very uneasy he does his best to augment the woman's sense of unease even more.

Kai shared a moment of kindness with Ally as she was attacked by protesters outside her restaurant, stating how he took care of her as promised. Subsequently, Kai recruited both Meadow and Harrison Wilton, performing the pinky ritual with each of them individually. The young man spurred the couple to reveal their deepest fears and desires, but not before unleashing his own anger on Meadow, accusing the woman of wasting his time. Kai Anderson is sent to jail as Ally submitted him to the SWAT team. Kai recruited a fellow inmate and used him to simulate himself and escape prison. Kai then visits Ally Mayfair-Richards at her senate campaign, only to be shot by Beverly.

[hubertspala]

037 – Diacon of Anguish

One True Faith consider itself to be evangelical. It really had little choice as their monstrous God is both real and very eager to encompass the world in its terrible graces, and so, the children of his voice and blood will try their very best to spread the faith of suffering, pain, agony and purity it brings through blessed transformation far and wide. Often when not called upon. By force, if need be. Or other lowly tactics. It is not unheard of the missionaries of the Church to kidnap the younglings of any community to introduce them to their ways, to bless them with the drop of blood, to introduce them to bone wrenching suffering. It is not uncommon for the locals of any tribe, town or gathering to fight the ministers and the preachers, to see them away, but it is a dangerous game to play, for the Church has wealth, power and true terror behind it in form of their tangible God and his many monsters he can call upon to enforce his will, emboldening the place of the faith on the face of the ruined realms. There are however some places that even the Church tries to thread on carefully. City of Brass with the blasphemous, painless machines. Wharf Town, that while allows their church to exist, curbs any attempts at spread and political power grabs. And of course the Underempire – vast, powerful, rich. The souls of the insects might burn small, but converting their rich biomass for the purpose of the Church would be a great victory and a start of the real flood of the faithful…

[frankterranella]

Why character matters

Character used to matter in our elected officials. It mattered that Nixon was dishonest about his role in the Watergate coverup. It mattered that Gary Hart and John Edwards had extramarital affairs. But then suddenly in 1995, when the person having the extramarital affair was the President, it didn’t matter, at least to Democrats. And so we continued down the slippery slope to 2020, where we are now “shocked” at the lack of character in our government officials.

We have gone from a world where allegations that a candidate cheated on a high school exam would lose him votes, to a world where a candidate can openly admit grabbing women’s genitals and still win.

I am here to say that character still matters. It matters because so much of governing takes place outside the public’s gaze. When politicians make those important decisions behind closed doors, I want to be able to count on their character. I want to be able to count on their character not only to influence their decision making, but to guide their candor to the electorate. I want them to be guided by a moral code above the urge to score a win for their party. I want to be able to trust the people I elect to “do the right thing.”

In the 2008 campaign, Senator John McCain showed character when he corrected a supporter who said in a derogatory way that his opponent was a Muslim. He showed character when he cast the deciding vote to save the Affordable Care Act from his own party’s attempt to overturn it.

How did we get to a world where self-professed Evangelical Christians will back a candidate who they openly admit does not measure up to their moral and ethical principles? I think it started back in the Clinton Administration, at the dawn of the extreme divide that has come to dominate our politics, when Democrats chose “their guy” over their principles. The nation chose sticking with a flawed President in 1996 over a man of character. And once you lower the bar on character and choose your candidate by his team jersey rather than the person wearing it, you have made a deal with the devil. Oh, sure you may win some things in the short run, but eventually you will lose your soul.

And in the second Clinton Administration, Democrats saw a President who was a Democrat in name only. He made immoral cuts to the safety net that protected our poorest citizens, and then he signed a repeal of the Depression-era legislation that restricted what banks could do. And that eventually led to a financial crisis in 2008.

So too during the Trump Administration, Republicans have gotten some things they like such as tax cuts and conservative judges. But while they were getting those things, they were losing their moral compass on deficit spending and the national debt. As Republicans used the label “socialist” to scare voters away from Democratic Party candidates, their President was getting chummy with Communist leader Vladimir Putin, a man Trump openly admires, and choosing to believe Putin over the CIA about Russia’s efforts to influence American elections.  And worse still, they have been silent while Trump has exercised more and more autocratic power like Putin without any checks from a Republican Senate.

And that brings us to 2020, where character matters so little that a core principle such as the power of a President to make Supreme Court nominations throughout his term depends on who the President is and how close we are to an election. There is no morality here; it’s purely about power and winning. If our public officials had character and a sense of justice, the Republicans would have allowed Garland’s nomination to proceed and the Democrats would allow Barrett’s to proceed as well. They would do this not because it gains them political advantage, but because it’s the right thing to do. But it takes character to choose morality over party loyalty. That is what being a patriot is all about.

In a representative democracy such as the United States, we do not get to vote on what the laws will be and how the government will operate. All we get to do is elect lawmakers who we think will act as we would — people who share our values. Character is more determinative of a candidate’s values than their platform or stump speech.  We need to be able to trust them to act according to a predictable moral code. Otherwise, we are just rolling the dice and hoping for the best.

[socialjusticeartshare]

THE TRUMP CHILD ABUSE SCANDAL

IT’S BEEN TWO years since the peak of public outcry over the Trump administration’s decision to begin separating the children of unauthorized migrant families from their parents at the Mexican border, yet the massive crisis that policy spawned remains arguably the darkest chapter in Donald Trump’s very dark presidency.

MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff has been back and forth from the border and Central America covering the family separation saga since it began, a story he chronicles in his new book “Separated”.

Jacob Soboroff: I think it’s a slow-motion, ongoing, decades-long American tragedy.

[Musical interlude.]

Mehdi Hasan: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Mehdi Hasan. 

Whatever happened to all those kids who were stolen from their parents at the border? Why did we just forget about perhaps the biggest scandal, the worst crime, of the Trump presidency?

JS: It was not thought through. There was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath.

MH: That’s my guest today Jacob Soboroff, NBC News and MSNBC correspondent, and author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.” He’s been covering this crisis, this scandal, at the border from the very beginning. 

So, on today’s show, the war on migrants and, especially, the theft of migrant children from their parents: How and why did it happen, and is it even truly over?

Do you remember this?

[Audio clip from ProPublica of children crying at the border.]

MH: That was a recording of 10 Central American children, sobbing desperately after being separated from their parents in June of 2018, here in the United States. That was a recording obtained by ProPublica and which promptly went viral and grabbed newsheadlines — it was even played in the White House briefing room. 

That recording helped make ordinary Americans aware of the abuses that were being perpetrated at their southern border, in their name, by the federal government, by the Trump administration — specifically, and shamefully, the deliberate, systematic separation of thousands of brown-skinned migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border on the orders of President Donald J. Trump. 

And, for a few months in 2018, what was called “child separation” was the biggest story in America, if not the world:

Newscaster: Families are being torn apart. Thousands of them. 

Anderson Cooper: Kids taken hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from their parents. Young children — toddlers, even — housed in so-called “tender-age facilities.”

Jeff Sessions: If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring him across the border illegally. 

Prime Minister Theresa May: The pictures of children being held in what appeared to be cages are deeply disturbing. 

Newscaster: The Pope labelling it “immoral.”

MH: Two years later, though, we have kinda moved on, as a media industry, and as a nation. To be fair, so many other Trump scandals have sucked up so much oxygen since — whether it was the government shutdown, the Mueller inquiry, Ukraine and the whole impeachment saga, the attacks on protesters in recent weeks, and, of course, the ongoing catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. There’s so much to keep track of — and to keep us outraged.

Still, for me personally, it stands as the biggest, most outrageous, most shocking, most inexcusable scandal of the Trump presidency so far. What’s blandly called “child separation” was, in fact, racism, kidnapping, and child abuse all rolled into one. 

In fact, Physicians for Human Rights in a report earlier this year said the Trump family separation policy constituted “torture.” Torture! On American soil. The torture of kids. Kids!

It is difficult to overstate the sheer inhumanity of it all: children were forcibly removed from the arms of their parents; babies were ripped from the breasts of their mothers. And the border agents who did all this somehow went home to their families, to their own kids, and slept fine at night. 

Meanwhile, the people in Washington who gave them those orders, who made the cruel and inhumane policies, they’re either still in government, having never faced any real consequences for their part in these crimes; or, in the case of former Trump Chief-of-Staff General John Kelly, or former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, they’re making money in the private sector. In fact, Kelly is on the board of a company called Caliburn International which operates shelters for migrant children! You cannot make this shit up.

These people are vile. They have no shame. Many current and former members of this administration — including the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions — claim to be evangelical Christians. And, yet, they have defended — excused — the torture and abuse of not just refugees but refugee children. They’re not following in the footsteps of Christ; they’re a moral disgrace.

Since the summer of 2017, the Trump administration is believed to have taken at least 5,500 kids from their parents at the border — although the real number could be even higher than that. No one knows for sure. In February of this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said, “it is unclear the extent to which Border Patrol has accurate records of separated [families] in its data system.” And as reporter Jacob Soboroff writes in his new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy”: “There are families who were quickly put back together, and children who were, as predicted, permanently orphaned.”

As I pointed out on this show back in 2018, that was not a side effect of having a tough immigration policy; that was their tough immigration policy. That was the goal, the prime objective — of an administration filled with white nationalists and apologists for white nationalists; an administration whose immigration policies are drawn up by a man, Stephen Miller, who late last year was revealed to have sent white nationalist literature and racist stories about immigrants in internal emails. No discussion, in fact, about the immigration policies of this administration can be complete without mentioning the racism, and white nationalism, and just pure cruelty that motivates and drives those policies. 

So yes, this administration has used kids, targeted kids, migrant kids, refugee kids, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, the most powerless of the powerless, to achieve their policy goals at the border: to crack down on immigration, to placate their far right base, and keep brown people out of the U.S. by any means necessary.

And here’s what’s so important to remember as we sit here, overwhelmed by news and scandal, in the crazy, chaotic summer of 2020 — it never really ended. Hundreds of migrant children continued to be detained in facilities across the country this year, even as the coronavirus spread inside of those facilities, and infected guards and detainees alike. 

Last month, a federal judge in LA ordered the release of those kids by the middle of this month. And guess how the Trump administration responded on Tuesday? By telling the court that if they’re forced to release the kids, they won’t release any of the parents who they might be detained with. Got that? Family separation, all over again. 

Imagine being the parents of those kids. Keep your kids with you and risk the coronavirus, or have them taken from you and sent out into the world, and who knows if you’ll ever see them again? 

What’s called “child separation” is still with us, is still a policy dream of the Trump administration, and yet a total nightmare for the thousands of refugees and asylum seeker families who arrive in this country from Central America every year, seeking protection from war, from violence, from rape. 

[Musical interlude.]

MH: My guest today is one of the tenacious, and I should add, deeply compassionate journalists who helped uncover the Trump administration’s vile policy of child torture at the border back in 2018, and who not only contextualized the story for us on our TV screens, but also humanized it. 

Jacob Soboroff, of NBC News and MSNBC, was, in fact, one of the first reporters to gain access to the notorious child detention facilities in Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. Here he is, reporting live on MSNBC from outside one of them in the summer of 2018, and not holding back:

JS: There’s a big mess going on right now, and even the Border Patrol inside this building says they’re overstaffed, they don’t have enough resources; the system is just getting stressed out because the Trump administration decided to put this into place, and the consequences really haven’t been worked out, and the biggest consequence of all is thousands of young children, in a way that has never been done before, taken from their parents. And when you hear the Trump administration saying: This has been done before, this is Democrat policy, this is not unusual — that’s B.S., frankly.

MH: Jacob’s reporting earned him the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism and, with his colleagues, the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.

Now he’s written a powerful and, at times, heartbreaking new book about the entire saga, called “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy” — and he joins me now from Yuma, Arizona, just yards from the southern border with Mexico.

Jacob, thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.

JS: Thanks, Mehdi.

MH: You’ve written this new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy,” having covered the 2018 crisis at the border with those kids in cages, with those children taken from their parents, almost exactly two years ago. Is this book, Jacob, about a chapter in recent American history? Or is this a book about what’s still happening right now — ongoing American tragedy?

JS: I think it’s a slow motion ongoing, decades-long American tragedy, Mehdi, and this is the first time I’ve ever done a podcast sitting 20 to 30 yards away from a 30-foot tall border wall installed by President Trump, which is exactly where I’m sitting right now, in Yuma, as I wait for him to arrive here. 

You know, the wall, and Donald Trump, have become a symbol of United States immigration policy. This is an immigration policy, however, that has, as I said, spanned decades, and Democratic, and Republican administrations. And since an official Border Patrol doctrine in 1994, called “Prevention Through Deterrence,” the goal of which was to deter migrants from coming to the United States to make them go on a dangerous and deadly journey, where they very well could die trying to get into the United States. Deterrence, pain, and suffering has been a part of U.S. immigration policy and family separations, which I had the misfortune of seeing with my own eyes, was Donald Trump’s extreme extension of that policy.

MH: Yes, the extreme extension, as you say. You’re right to say that this started on previous presidents’ watches — you know, Bill Clinton in the 90s, George Bush, Barack Obama, “the Deporter-in-Chief,” and then you have Trump escalating in this grotesque way. A total of around 4,300 children I believe, “separated from their parents at the border.” This all came to a head in May/June 2018. 

So a question that I think a lot of listeners will want to know the answer to — I know I do — do we know for sure, Jacob, if all of those children were eventually reunited with their families?

JS: We don’t. And if it weren’t for the ACLU and a federal judge in San Diego, the vast majority of them may never have been. It was a negligent, dangerous approach at putting this policy into place — sloppy. And the mechanism by which the separations were tracked, I think it actually would be even generous to call it a mechanism: It was not thought through, there was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath. 

And you mentioned a number in the 4,000 range. I think the most recent number according to the ACLU, and this is a constantly evolving number, is over 5,000 children, including children separated after the policy had nominally ended, when Donald Trump signed the executive order on June 20, 2018, ending a policy that days earlier, he said, didn’t even exist.

MH: Yes. First it didn’t exist, and then when they stopped it, it still carried on, as you point out, even after the judicial and executive order fallout. 

Um, let me ask you this: One thing that bothers me, and I don’t want to knock the title of your excellent book, because I know how hard it is to come up with a title, and I know that separated is the word that’s been used by everyone — even by me, on occasion, as shorthand — to describe this zero-tolerance policy at the border, and what the Trump administration did to migrant families back in 2018. 

But, for me, “separated” always feels like an understatement. It feels too clinical, an empty word. Because what happened was child theft; it was child kidnapping. It was, in many ways, child abuse by the U.S. government. And I worry sometimes that our journalistic shorthand often ends up underplaying how bad things are on the ground; they sanitize things too much. Am I being unfair?

JS: No, I think your point is well taken. And the reason I chose “separated,” as well, is that for me, it doesn’t just describe torture, frankly. And that’s the word that Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization has used subsequently to describe what these children went through: It meant the clinical definition of torture. But it also described most Americans’ mental separation from how we got to this point; inability to understand and comprehend —

MH: Yeah. Good point. 

JS: — how the government did this to children and, in some cases, babies. And that also includes me! I was covering the border even before Donald Trump became president, when Barack Obama was president and was dubbed the “Deporter-in-Chief,” as you mentioned, by immigration activists. I, you know, I was on what I thought was the front lines of immigration reporting, and frankly, I completely missed it myself until it slapped me in the face. 

And that’s what I wanted to make clear in the book, is that separated is not just the physical act of what happened to these parents and children, but it really also is a mental state of most Americans about the way that we deal with immigration in this country. So, you know, again, your point is well taken. I think that it’s much more vile what happened to these children than the simple word or simple act of being taken from their parents, but I think that the word also applies to many of us in our everyday lives.

MH: No, that’s a very fair point. And I would urge everyone to read Jacob’s book. It’s an excellent book. You tell the story of José in the book, a young boy from Northern Guatemala, that story is a central thread throughout your book. He fled with his father Juan to the United States in order to escape drug traffickers who were threatening his family. Can you tell us a little bit more about José? Why did you choose his story?

JS: Well, the truth of the matter is, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but I ultimately met his father Juan, and Juan and José are pseudonyms that they picked themselves to protect their own identity and the identity of their family that they left behind in Guatemala. But they come from the northern state of Petén. And Petén, which is actually a place I haven’t been to, and they asked me not to go to — I’ve been to Guatemala on several occasions, but I didn’t go to their home because they were worried about what might happen to their wife they left behind. 

They were threatened with violence. Juan was the owner of a small convenience store, and basically got into trouble after a vehicle that he sold was sold to someone else, and fell into the hands of what he tells me, and told the United States government in his asylum application, were narco traffickers, he suspected. And until he would turn over the rights, the documentation, which he no longer had to his car, they were going to put a threat on his life. 

And so he decided to pick up and leave with José, come to the United States, go to Arizona, where he had crossed twice successfully before to come and work earlier in his life when his son was was younger, but, for the first time, decided to pick up and leave with his boy to protect him.

MH: Yeah.

JS: And once they got to the United States, to the place where they thought represented safety and security, I’m actually sitting probably 10 miles away from that exact spot right now — and the president will visit almost that exact spot, as I speak to you today, as we record this — they were taken from each other in a way that nobody could have ever anticipated, even though it was going on by the time they left Guatemala and started their journey to the United States in May of 2018.

MH: So, it’s interesting, you mentioned in the context of Juan, that he had crossed twice before, for work, this time he came to protect his child. We have this great debate, of course, as you know better than me, about are these people refugees and asylum seekers or are they all economic migrants coming to work? In your anecdotal experience, having interviewed so many of these people, having covered their stories, what were they? Especially back in 2018, when it kind of hit the headlines in that huge way, when everyone in the country is talking about: Why have they brought children with them, etc, etc? 

How many people you were talking to, were, in your, you know, the story you just tell of Juan, that sounds like a genuine asylum application?

JS: And I have no reason to doubt them. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: You know, and I think the vast majority of people I came into contact with were coming to the United States from Central America — from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador — in order to seek asylum. 

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. And when I was writing the book, I was thinking a lot about this, that nobody’s perfect. And actually, when I heard the Reverend Al Sharpton deliver the eulogy for George Floyd and use the biblical example of a rejected stone becoming the cornerstone, you know, in our conversation about race, and about police brutality, and violence, it made me think of covering immigration at the border. 

Nobody is perfect. Nobody comes here with a sparkling clean record or the perfect story that you want to hold up and make an example to change the entire country’s imagination on immigration. 

MH: Yes.

JS: He had come here before, twice, illegally. He freely admitted it to me. And he laughed and smiled when he said: They didn’t catch me previously. And I think it’s not mutually exclusive; you can be an economic migrant and also, later in your life, become a refugee from violence. And I think, too often, we boil it down to: it’s one or the other. 

MH: Yes. 

JS: But these stories often intersect. And I think we do a disservice, or the general public does a disservice, when we try to distill it to one or another because, oftentimes, that really isn’t the case. 

MH: And it’s not just Latin American families that we’re talking about, of course. You describe a Congolese mother and her daughter who was separated trying to enter the U.S.; you say “the mother was taken to an adult immigration jail in San Diego, and her daughter was sent to a shelter in Chicago.” You also say that when she was told her daughter was in Chicago, she did not know what the word meant. 

How do people like that woman and her daughter a) end up at the southern border? And how is their story different to some of the more familiar Latin American stories that you tell in your reporting?

JS: Well, I think that the southern border has become an entry point for people from around the world looking to seek refuge in the United States and seek asylum. And if it wasn’t for that Congolese woman and her daughter, who later became known as Ms. L., none of these 5,000-plus families would have been reunited, because she became the plaintiff, the original plaintiff, in the ACLU case — 

MH: Yes. 

JS: — against the government. And so what happened to her, and her story, was slightly different. She presented legally at the San Ysidro port of entry in between San Diego and Tijuana, where you can legally walk up and declare asylum as part of an internationally recognized legal process. And the United States government told her they didn’t believe her, took her away from her daughter, and not until a DNA test confirmed it, were they placed back together. But that wasn’t soon enough to stop the thousands of separations, you know, from happening. 

And that’s another example, Mehdi, of it’s never a perfect story. You know, she thought she was doing it the right way, but the United States government challenged her on that, and it set off, you know, this whole chain of events. 

MH: I think we’ve learned over the last four years that, for this administration, there is no right way of claiming asylum or coming into the country.

JS: Sure. That’s right. That’s right.

MH: They just don’t want people coming into the country.

You describe in the book the moment in June 2018, when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen infamously tweeted, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” 

You say, in the book: “My eyes widened when I saw it. You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. Come on.” 

Where were you at that moment? And why did that tweet from her so stun you?

JS: Because earlier that week, I was inside the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center — they call it Ursula in the Border Patrol, and that’s in McAllen, South Texas, where they let us in. 

Katie Waldman, who later became Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, and now the Vice President’s communications director, was, at the time, a spokesperson for Kirstjen Nielsen. She invited me and another group of journalists into that center to see with our own eyes what family separations look like, because I think they believed that with outrage from the general public based on media attention, Congress would do what the Trump administration wanted, which was pass more restrictive order regulations. Of course, that backfired. 

And the reason that I was was so flabbergasted by what Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted is that days earlier, if not hours earlier, I had been inside the center where I saw, with my own eyes, separated children sitting on concrete floors, covered by those silver blankets, under a security contractor in a watchtower. It makes me sick every time I talk about it. It gives me the chills every time I talk about it, as — then — the father of a two-year-old boy. 

It was — and I don’t know —I really don’t know another way to describe it other than disgusting, to see social workers standing around Border Patrol agents, not allowed to touch the children, all because of official government policy when many of the families in there didn’t know what they were about to experience themselves, you know, to this day leaves me speechless. And to hear the Secretary of Homeland Security, who I didn’t know at the time, but I now know in writing the book, had signed the policy into place — it is just wrong. There’s no other way to say it.

MH: I mean, this is an administration that says openly: Don’t believe the evidence in front of your eyes, don’t believe what you see with your own eyes, and don’t believe what you hear with your own ears. It’s the gaslighters-in-chief. 

You say, early in the book, you sum things up this way, you say: “What I have now unequivocally learned is that the Trump administration’s family separation policy was an avoidable catastrophe, made worse by people who could have made it better at multiple inflection points.”

In what sense, Jacob, was it avoidable, given that we already had a president clearly bent on implementing harsh border policies? Who or what around him could have stopped it?

JS: Well, in particular, you know, Scott Lloyd, who was the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was warned on multiple occasions about the damage — the long-lasting trauma — that family separations would do to children. And, ostensibly, this was the man who was the custodian of the thousands of migrant children in the custody of the United States government. And, in particular, Jonathan White, commander in the U.S. Public Health Commissioned Corps, under Health and Human Services, has testified publicly to this — that he warned Scott Lloyd about the long-lasting damage that separations would do to these children. (Scott Lloyd, of course, is the same official who tried to ban abortions in HHS custody for young migrant girls.)

And the bottom line is when you look at the actions of Scott Lloyd, he did anything but stop family separations from happening. One official later told me that he believed that this was the greatest human rights catastrophe of his lifetime, in seeing this take place under the leadership of Scott Lloyd. And had the career officials in HHS, child welfare professionals, whose motto is not only to do no harm, like in the medical profession, but to put the best interest of the clients first — and that’s the children — this never would have happened. The best interests of the children were very obviously not put first here. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: The officials of HHS and the professionals were certainly pushing for that all along.

MH: And there were a lot of people involved in this process, none of whom resigned on principle, none of whom came out and became a whistleblower at that time, which says a lot about how certain people’s morals are corrupted working in this administration. 

Just to go back to an earlier point you made about this being a decades-long tragedy, a lot of Trump officials and Trump supporters — and some on the left — say it’s unfair to pin what you call “an American tragedy” wholly on Trump, because it was the Obama administration that built many of the cages that were used in 2018; it was the Obama administration that put unaccompanied minors from Central America in detention. There was a big overlap between a lot of their policies and practices at the southern border, between those two administrations. What do you say to them?

JS: Well, in some measure, they’re right. I mean, the Obama administration did build the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center where I saw the children in cages. Those cages were built by the Obama administration. And they believe that that was the best option at the time. Certainly activists and immigration rights lawyers and such didn’t believe that, and were extremely vocal in voicing their opposition at the time.

The Trump administration had the opportunity to go in a different direction. They never signaled that that was their intention. In fact, they always signaled a harsher immigration policy than the Obama administration. But they didn’t have to institute the family separation policy; the Obama administration considered implementing the family separation policy. Some of the same officials within the Department of Homeland Security brought it up. And in the book I talk about how on Valentine’s Day, 2017, less than a month into the Trump administration, some of the officials that overlapped from the Obama administration into the Trump administration, basically revived — resuscitated — a policy, a rejected, discarded policy, that even the Obama administration, which was was not beloved by immigration activists, put the side. 

MH: Yes. 

JS: And this was a conscious, deliberate decision by the Trump administration to move forward with something that they knew all along was a deterrence policy, that was so bad, it would try to scare people away from coming to the United States. And John Kelly, when he was the secretary of homeland security in March of 2017, admitted freely on CNN.

MH: So, just to be clear, what Trump did in 2018 at the border with these “separations” is much worse than anything Obama, or, for that matter, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton did at the border; that is fair to say based on your own reporting and research in this book?

JS: Well, the reason I say that this was unprecedented was that it was “systematic child abuse,” in the words of Physicians for Human Rights or American Academy [of] Pediatrics, at the hands of the Trump administration — deliberate, systematic child abuse or torture. 

The Obama administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration all had their own very harsh deterrence policies; I’m sitting in Arizona now where hundreds of people have died trying to cross in the desert because of border infrastructure walls, like the ones I’m looking at in front of my face as I talk to you. But never was the policy directed specifically at children for the purpose of hurting parents and children. And therein is the difference.

MH: Good point.

JS: I mean, that’s where the Trump administration took it to a level that had never been seen before. It doesn’t mean that, for a long time, there haven’t been cruel, harsh, and deadly immigration policies.

MH: But, in this case, it was a stated policy to cause harm in order to stop people from coming.

JS: That’s for sure. And they would never admit that, that the purpose was to hurt children. But when you say deterrence, you have to be deterred by something — and the something, here, was trauma.

MH: So, you paint a picture in the book of a president who — shock! horror! — is, you know, over his head. You know, he’s out of control, but he also doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s a huge culture of fear around him, you say, in the White House. You talk about the chaos surrounding this policy; obviously, we know very much about the Trump administration’s incompetence when it comes to any area of public policy. 

But in my view, there’s also not enough discussion in our industry, Jacob, in the ‘liberal media,’ about the ideology that drives a lot of Trump’s immigration policy. This is not just them trying to look tough or messing up. You have a White House that openly plays footsie with white nationalists. 

JS: Mhmm. 

MH: And a top Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, who leads on this issue, and who is at best, an apologist for white nationalism, at worst, a card carrying white nationalist himself; this is a guy who the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC, has thoroughly documented by his own leaked emails, has promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories, obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols. And yet, we just don’t talk about it as much as we should. It’s like we’re too polite to mention the open white nationalism from this White House when we talk about immigration and border controls.

JS: Another way to put it is that the target of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies are more often than not brown people —

MH: Yes. 

JS: — who come to the southern border where the majority of people who enter this country illegally, or ultimately stay in this country illegally, come via airplane from countries other than Central America or Latin America by overstaying visas. 

And the Trump administration has not — or did not, at that time — target visa overstays as their primary concern, when that was, by definition, by numbers, where most people who were in the United States ‘illegally’ were coming from. The policy has always been, the ire has always been targeting people with a different skin color coming from the southern border, and not at the majority of people who are entering the country and staying in the country illegally. 

And, you said it. I mean, that’s why this policy is, or was — I guess you could still say is, family separations are still happening — racist. I mean, this is not a policy that is being targeted at people who are flying here and staying here after going to school or getting a job or some other form of immigration to the United States. He’s targeting people who come through the southern border, period.

MH: Just to clarify for our listeners, you say family separation is still happening. Just briefly, how is it still happening?

JS: Well, the Trump administration is giving families an option: either separate, or be deported, or held indefinitely in family detention. That’s called binary choice. It’s the type of policy that’s being put forward. 

You won’t be surprised to learn, Mehdi, that nobody is selecting family separation as an option when they’re presented with it. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: But it is still an option that the Trump administration is giving migrants in custody. It’s a catch-22 situation, you know? Either get kicked out of the country and your child stays here, and be in indefinite family detention with your child, or separate from your child, let your child go free, but you won’t see your child, because you’ll, you know, you’ll continue to be detained. It’s just family separation with a different mechanism.

MH: The ‘family separation crisis of 2018,’ I think we would agree, Jacob, was one of the biggest crises, one of the most horrifying episodes of the Trump presidency. And given how many big crises and horrific episodes there have been over the past four years, that’s a pretty high bar that it met. And even by the standard of awful Trump scandals, this one stood out.

And yet he survived. The people around him survived. A lot of people just forgot about it. Washington, the media, largely moved on. If we hadn’t moved on, if there had been consequences — for the lies, the law-breaking, the racism, the child abuse — do you think we might have avoided or even been better prepared for many of the other Trump crises that have since followed it?

JS: It’s such a good question. I would like to think so, but that goes back to the separation from the American public about what’s happening and why. 

And so often, I find, that too many of us are disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in our country. It’s too easy to look around in our own neighborhood —

MH: Yep. 

JS: — to talk about our own concerns versus what’s happening at the border. 

I’ll give you one example. I went to Tornillo, where they had that tent city in the wake of the separation crisis and all the migrant boys housed there. And I write about this in the book, I asked a local farmer growing pomegranates what his main concern was, and he said the production of food. And this was a man that was a stone’s throw away from thousands of kids being locked up in a tent in 100-degree heat in the middle of the South Texas desert. 

And, you know —

MH: Wow. 

JS: — I’ll never forget that. Because, you know, if, if he’s gonna forget about it, or if it’s not going to be top of mind for him, it isn’t going to be for people in suburban America either. And which is why, I think, you know, just it was so important to me to write this book, not just to remind people of this, but to answer those questions for myself: How could this possibly have happened? How could we possibly have moved on? You know, and what is it gonna take for this to not happen again?

MH: Well, I’m so glad you wrote the book and one of the issues that really bothers me is that there’s been very little accountability for the main players in this saga. 

Former Trump Chief-of-Staff, former DHS Secretary General John Kelly went off to work in the private sector. He even joined the board of Caliburn International, a company that operates the largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children —oh, the irony. His successor as DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was invited as recently as October last year to speak at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit in Washington, D.C.. There doesn’t seem to have been much accountability.

JS: Not just no accountability, many but some of these people have been put in charge of the response or at least on the team to the coronavirus outbreak that’s killed over 100,000 people in this country. In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, I remember sitting at home on lockdown like everybody else, watching, up on the podium, Chad Wolf, now the acting secretary of homeland security — then, a top deputy to Kirstjen Nielsen — who, as my colleague Julia Ainsley first reported, was involved in the drafting of the initial family separation policy to be presented to her. 

Katie Waldman, as I mentioned, was the spokeswoman for Kirstjen Nielsen and is now the spokeswoman for the Vice President of the United States. It seems as though the people that were involved in the family separation policy have not been disciplined, or reprimanded, or faced accountability; on the contrary, they’ve been elevated to new positions. And you mentioned John Kelly, who’s started working with Caliburn, this company that is profiting off of the detention of child migrants in multiple facilities now, along the southwest border. 

I would say that it’s baffling and stupefying, but, again, it’s just like you said — it’s another one of these consequence-less actions of the Trump administration that, you know, they seem to benefit from when, you know, common sense would say they should be punished.

MH: By the way, at that Fortune summit, my good friend Amna Nawaz of PBS News asked Kirstjen Nielsen if he regretted the so-called family separation policy.

Amna Nawaz: I’m asking you if you regret making that decision. 

Kirstjen Nielsen: I don’t regret enforcing the law, because I took an oath to do that, as did everybody at the Department of Homeland Security. We don’t make the laws; we asked Congress to change the law, Congress reviewed the law in 2006 and decided to continue to make it illegal to cross in that manner.

MH: When you hear Nielsen saying that, Jacob, what’s your reaction?

JS: The same bewilderment that I felt when I saw her tweet that: “There is no family separation policy. Period.” I thought that that interview, by the way, was spectacular. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: And the line of questioning was perfect, because Kirstjen Nielsen is an expert in slipping away from questions about the family separation policy. If anyone should face accountability for the policy, it is her. 

She had to sign, and I outline it in the book, a decision memo that sat on her desk with three options to implement the end of what was known as catch-and-release: the idea that migrants who come to the southern border would be released to the interior, with their families, until their immigration case would be adjudicated in the courts, until they had to show up for court. And by the way, many migrants — most migrants — do show up for that process, because they want to attain asylum in this country. 

She chose of the three options, the most severe, the most punitive of family separations. It was a deliberate and clear decision by her; she had to sign her name — literally on the dotted line — for the policy. And the idea that she doesn’t face any responsibility for this, that it wasn’t something that she ultimately would come to regret, I just don’t believe it. I don’t — knowing what I know about her, having sat face-to-face with her at the start of this policy — I do not believe that that is truly the way that she feels. And I know, certainly, that she knows the responsibility that she bears for it.

JS: And like every ex-Trump official, especially once he leaves office, everyone’s going to be spinning how they were actually resisting inside the administration — they were the good guys pushing back against awful policies from the top. 

And we focus a lot on Trump, and we should focus also on these ex-Trump officials who are trying to rehabilitate themselves; they should really be shunned by polite society. But sadly, we know Washington, D.C.: they won’t be, they aren’t being shunned. And that’s depressing. 

One last question for you, Jacob. Given what you saw with your own eyes, what you heard in terms of testimony from some of these parents and children — the trauma of it, as you put it — how hard a book was this for you to write.

JS: Well, certainly not as hard as being separated from your child, indefinitely, in the minds of a lot of these parents. It was — it was difficult to revisit. But covering family separations is something that will have changed me, forever, for my entire life. I think there’s a lot of people out there who, having watched the story — not just from my coverage, but from the wonderful journalism that was done, you know, during and after this policy — you know, it’s changed a lot of people. 

And, for me, this was something that I wanted to do to answer questions that I didn’t know the answer to in real time. And it’s also something that I wanted to do for Juan and José, because the reason that they decided to participate in this story with me was so that it never happens again. And I really mean that. You know, I don’t know if it’s kosher to say that as a journalist, that covering this, and writing this book, you know, for me has a specific and — what I hope — is a positive outcome. But that’s really what this was about for me. 

And to revisit it was, was difficult. But it’s nothing compared to what Juan and José and 5,000 other children went through. 

MH: Jacob, congratulations on an important book. Thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed. 

JS: Thank you, Mehdi. Appreciate it.

[Musical interlude.]

MH: That was Jacob Soboroff, author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.”

And that’s our show! And we’re going to be on a little bit of a summer break, here on Deconstructed. The show will be back in August. Hope you’re all able to have a break too. Stay safe while we’re gone!

Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.

And I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice: iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review — it helps people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Thanks so much!

See you next month.

Article Source

[clatterbane]

Further to some tag commentary a little while ago.

Thanks to Tumblr's great search function (and more recently blocking Google from most content), I couldn't find an older post or two of my own touching on similar issues.

But, I did run across a short post from someone else that pretty well sums it up:

If

you have been watching politics

for the past 40 years and yet

you do not get why it matters

if people believe

fundamentalist Christianity

to be the only genuine Christianity

then

i do not even

know

what to say.

(Not trying to avoid giving credit where it's due, at all. I just did not want to directly reblog someone else's old personal post with a handful of notes.)

That also very specifically applies to Christianity and Christian cultural influences within the US, in the context of US politics.

The freaking Religious Right have been trying to grab power and influence for decades, and have made most of their inroads within my lifetime. I am not so keen on the idea of assigning them more power and making it easier on them.

I am personally not Christian. But, I grew up around the kinds of mainline Protestantism which Evangelicals insist aren't really Christianity. Again, not about to concede that point.

(Mainline Protestants were a majority of Protestants in the United States until the mid-20th century....

These churches played a leading role in the Social Gospel movement and were active in social causes such as the civil rights movement and women's movement.[14] As a group, the mainline churches have maintained religious doctrine that stresses social justice and personal salvation.)

I'm also not about to concede any monopoly over longer-term cultural influence within the US, just because the a particular strain of White Evangelical Chistianity has been so loud and grabby over the past few decades.

They didn't have nearly this much influence within my own lifetime. And I am only in my 40s.

Very little personal experience with Catholicism, but it also seems pretty weird to pretty much write off its longer-term influence.

There's plenty else to be said about religious cultural influences. But, it's distressing how well certain strains of Evangelical Protestantism have apparently succeeded at hijacking shit in a the popular imagination. And that's kinda what they want.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Political Confessional, a column about the views that Americans are scared to share with their friends and neighbors. In an increasingly polarized political climate, adherence to party or ideological orthodoxy seems de rigueur. Social media serves only to amplify that perception at times.

But Americans’ political views are often idiosyncratic and sometimes offensive, and they rarely adhere neatly to any particular party line. In this column, we want to dig into Americans’ messy opinions on politics, morality and social mores. We hope that this exercise gives readers a glimpse into the minds of those with whom they might disagree — or agree! If you have a political belief that you’re willing to share with us, fill out this form — we might get in touch.

This week we talked with Jennifer, a 38 year old white woman from North Carolina who wrote in to say, “I am an evangelical Christian but I think Trumpism is actually, truly a religious cult.” She feels “horrified to watch most of my friends and family believe Trump is God’s chosen one … I feel like I’m living inside of the story “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Am I the crazy one?! Why can no one in church see he’s naked!!!!!”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Clare Malone: When did you come to this opinion and how?

Jennifer: It was leading up to the 2016 election. And it really was hearing the sound bites of the actual words coming out of Donald Trump. Now, it wasn’t certain talking heads or certain news programs. It was literally the quotes or the video clips of him speaking that were so offensive to me. I couldn’t imagine voting for him even though I’ve always been a Republican.

I would probably consider myself a little bit of a centrist at this point. I mean, I’m pro-life — like, babies being born but also refugee children being cared for. I think it’s hypocritical to be here for one and not the other. And I care about women in crisis too, I just don’t think that these issues need to be so dehumanizing for certain people to win power.

CM: Take me back to 2016. When did you start to hear people start to make justifications for Trump?

Jennifer: My friends were conflicted when he made the remark about grabbing a woman. But once he ended up winning, then I felt like people really started to justify voting for him.

It’s just weird in this polarized environment because I can’t call myself a member of the GOP anymore. I am not super liberal, but I definitely can’t go along with the leadership of the country right now.

CM: Why do you think they have started justifying his actions? Is it the news they watch? Is there biblical justification to say, “Sure, God has picked an imperfect vessel.”

Jennifer: I think part of it is people feel the need to be consistent. If you went ahead and voted for the person, you don’t want to feel bad about yourself, you want to come up with reasons to feel good about the fact that you voted for them. If you agree with the president, you’re going to say we should pray for him. The Bible tells us to pray for our leaders. But if there is a person in power who is not of your political party, do you show them the same grace? Do you pray for them as well? I feel like it’s this double standard which I don’t think is biblical. I think that’s just our human nature.

CM: How do you feel about that personally? How do you feel about Trump and forgiveness?

Jennifer: Well, if you want to talk about the Bible, I think the Bible requires repentance for God to grant forgiveness to people. And so I think I haven’t seen any true repentance in any of his actions. I would use scripture that talks more about how a wise man deals with a fool — there’s a verse that says if a wise man tries to reason with a fool the fool only rages and laughs.

CM: Would you say that the attitude of people in your community about Trump has changed the way that you feel about your church?

Jennifer: I’m confronted with this reality of like four out of five evangelicals voting for this man. And it’s like, are we seeing the same reality? It’s made me want to be careful what church I attend, and what programs I’m involved with, because I think this is going to have really long term, deeply negative effects on the American culture’s view of Christians. The challenge for me is to think about how this one person, Donald Trump, doesn’t dictate who Jesus Christ is. The challenge is to focus on Jesus himself.

CM: You said earlier that you’re pro-life in the sense of wanting babies to be born but you also care about refugee children. How have the kids-in-cages news stories been received in your community given that the Trump administration has been defending that policy?

Jennifer: I do have some friends who are troubled by that. But I also have friends popping up in my Facebook newsfeed defending those policies. I think that we have to almost dehumanize people in our view of them in order to justify. So, if you talk to someone who’s very liberal and talk about the issue of abortion, they’re going to say that’s not a baby. That’s not a person. And if you talk to conservatives about a child of an immigrant in a cage, they’re going to say, they’re not Americans. They don’t belong here. Their parents broke the law. They deserve this. They’re distancing themselves from that humanity, leading to them to look at those children differently than they would look at an American child.

CM: Are you thinking of yourself as a Democrat right now?

Jennifer: I’ve switched my registration to independent. I have been GOP my whole life. At this point, I really want to see how the polling is and throw my support to whoever seems most likely to beat Donald Trump.

CM: Have you brought up your controversial opinion to family members or people in the community who support Trump?

Jennifer: I find it really hard to break through. I have some friends that are more extreme than others, like a couple friends who are really talking almost like he’s almost a messiah of sorts.

CM: How have you dealt with it on an interpersonal level? Do you switch the conversation topic at a certain point?

Jennifer: My husband and I don’t agree about it. We’ve only been married a couple years. If things get too heated we table the discussion. I think sometimes it helps if I can share personal stories or ways that seem to affect me personally; like, if I can talk about how upsetting it is being a woman to hear the derogatory comments. It’s frustrating. You care about someone and you’re on different pages.

The funny thing is, I felt like I wasn’t that political of a person before 2016. But then I just felt so deeply offended by the attitudes towards women, towards minorities, the horrible things happening at the border. And I mean, to be honest, I just expect more of Christians. Because I am a Christian.

For me, the challenge is, how do I keep from villainizing or dehumanizing those that I disagree with? And I feel like that has to start with me.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 14, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Today began with a breathless story from the tabloid paper the New York Post alleging that, according to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had dropped off three laptops for repair in 2019 and had never picked them up again, and that the FBI subpoenaed the hard drives, but before turning them over the repairman had made a copy of the material on them, and he gave it to Giuliani, and it had incriminating material on it….

And yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. Over the course of the day, real journalists have demolished the story, but it is still of note as news because of what its timing might mean.

First of all, the Trump campaign is in trouble. Polls show the president down by significant numbers, and the voters he has been trying to suppress are turning out in droves. Today Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, issued a statement saying he “cannot support Donald Trump for President,” and the Biden campaign announced that it raised an eye-popping $383 million in September alone, a historic record which comes on top of the historic record of $364.5 million it set in August. This means Biden has $432 million on hand for the last month of the election. Dumping a story like this Hunter Biden fiction in a tabloid, which has wide reach among low-information voters, is a cheap fix for the Trump campaign. It might shore him up among those who will never see the wide debunking of the story.

Second, though, the timing of the story suggests it was designed to distract from the third and final day of Amy Coney Barrett’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in her hearing for confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. The hearings have not been going particularly well for the Republicans. They have the votes to confirm her, and confirm her they will, but her insistence that she is an “originalist,” along with her refusal to answer any questions on topics relevant to the present, including on racial prejudice, climate change, voter suppression, and so on, have made her extremism clear.

Democrats have hammered home that putting Barrett on the court at this moment is an extraordinary power grab, and voters seem to agree. Turning attention away from the hearings would be useful for the Republicans when voters are on their way to the polls.

And yet, Republicans are determined to force her appointment through, even though it threatens to delegitimize the Supreme Court.

To what end?

The originalism of scholars like Barrett is an answer to the judges who, in the years after World War Two, interpreted the law to make American democracy live up to its principles, making all Americans equal before the law. With the New Deal in the 1930s, the Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt had set out to level the economic playing field between the wealthy and ordinary Americans. They regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure.

After the war, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, a Republican appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Court tried to level the social playing field between Americans through the justices' interpretation of the law. They tried to end segregation through decisions like the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which prohibited racial segregation in public schools. They protected the rights of accused prisoners to legal counsel, and the right of married couples to use contraception in 1965 (it had previously been illegal). They legalized interracial marriage in 1967. In 1973, they tried to give women control over their own reproduction by legalizing abortion with the Roe v. Wade decision.

The focus of the Supreme Court in these years was not simply on equality before the law. The justices also set out to make the government more responsible to its citizens. It required that electoral districts be roughly equal in population, so that a state could not have one district of a few hundred people with another with a hundred thousand, thus establishing the principle of “one man, one vote.”

These were not partisan decisions, or to the degree they were, they were endorsed primarily by Republicans. The Chief Justices of the Court during these years were Republicans Earl Warren and Warren Burger.

Today’s “originalists” are trying to erase this whole era of legislation and legal decisions. They argue that justices who expanded civil rights and democratic principles were engaging in “judicial activism,” taking away from voters the right to make their own decisions about how society should work. They say that justices in this era, and those like them in the present—people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who protected women’s equality before the law-- were “legislating from the bench.” They hold tight to the argument that the Constitution is limited by the views of the Founders, and that the government can do nothing that is not explicitly written in that 1787 document.

Their desire to roll back the changes of the modern era serves traditional concepts of society and evangelical religion, of course, but it also serves a radical capitalism. If the government is as limited as they say, it cannot protect the rights of minorities or women. But it also cannot regulate business. It cannot provide a social safety net, or promote infrastructure, things that cost tax dollars and, in the case of infrastructure, take lucrative opportunities from private businesses. In short, under the theory of originalism, the government cannot do anything to rein in corporations or the very wealthy.

As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, illustrated in careful detail at the Barrett hearings yesterday, it is no accident that Barrett’s nomination has the support of secret dark money donors. She will be the key vote to having a solid pro-corporate Supreme Court.

The Trump administration has made it clear that it favors private interests over public ones, combatting regulation and welfare programs, as well as calling for private companies to take over public enterprises like the United States Postal Service. But the New Deal government and the rights enshrined by the Warren and Burger courts are popular in America, so it is imperative for today’s radical Republicans that the courts cement their reworking of the country.

Former White House Counsel Don McGahn explained that the Trump administration wants to skew the judiciary to support its economic agenda. “There is a coherent plan here where actually the judicial selection and the deregulatory effort are really the flip side of the same coin,” he said.

The administration has backed pro-corporate judges whose nominations are bolstered by tens of millions of dollars worth of political advertising paid for by dark money. Trump's Supreme Court appointees have joined other Republican justices on the court, where they consistently prop up business interests—such as with the 2010 Citizens United decision allowing unlimited corporate money in elections—and attack voting rights, as in 2013 with the Shelby v. Holder decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In 2014, New York Times journalist Linda Greenhouse wrote that it is “impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Republican-appointed majority is committed to harnessing the Supreme Court to an ideological agenda.”

That ideological agenda has profound implications for our society as we know it, beginning with the Affordable Care Act, which the court is slated to take up on November 10, just a week after the election. But it is not just our healthcare that is at stake. At risk is the whole infrastructure of laws protecting our civil rights, as well as our democracy.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

[polyadvice]

What are some of Zinnia's opinions?

Hello! I see tons of asks about advise and now I'm actually wondering what are some of your opinions about the whole community? I'd like to know more about the lovely creator of this amazing blog❤️ :)

This reads to me like “please, sir, could I have some discourse?” but I, like most humans, adore being asked for my opinion, especially if it comes with some flattery, so here ya go, some Zinnia Opinions, RIP my inbox:

I think more, if not all, of us should be in therapy! I think working on our own issues and patterns is critical for healthy relationships, whether you’re polyamorous or monogamous. I think we as a culture should be fighting for more accessible mental healthcare, and one of the best things we can do for our people is help them find therapy that is helpful and affordable for them.

I miss the word '‘poly.” I fully understand why we are making a shift to polyam, and I would never put my linguistic comfort over someone else’s very real cultural hurts and needs, but I find “polyam” clunky and it makes me sad that we are facing this namespace collision right now.

I think “ground rules” and “boundaries” are incredibly misunderstood and mis-used in polyamory. I’ve almost never seen “ground rules” work out well - they’re often arbitrary, lead to unnecessary ‘betrayals,’ and let people hide behind them to avoid actually interrogating their true feelings and needs. And people need to realize that “setting a boundary” does not obligate everyone to do what you say or else they’re toxic abusers.

I think we need to do a better job with our language. I’ve written about this before, and I stand by it. I especially think we need to be very careful about words like “abuse” and “trauma,” because they really do mean things beyond ‘made me feel bad.’ I strongly recommend Sarah Schulman’s book Conflict is not Abuse as an in-depth discussion of this and think it belongs on any standard polyam reading list.

I don’t think polyamory is a better, more enlightened or truer way to be in relationship. I disagree with Dan Savage and the Sex At Dawn crowd that all humans are ‘naturally’ non-monogamous and therefore polyamory or monogamy are just personal choices anyone can make freely. Some people are better served by monogamous relationships, and polyam people need to stop evangelizing polyamory as a one-size-fits-all solution to existing problems.

That said, I think monogamy culture is pretty destructive. When practiced with intentionality and as meets the needs of the individuals in the relationship, monogamy can be plenty healthy! But I have seen so much abuse in the name of monogamy, of possessiveness, of jealousy; damage done out of fear of cheating; repression and rejection and violence - we need to better understand and interrogate the social, political, economic, religious, and sexual power structures that drive our assumptions around monogamy.

I wish we had better pride colors and/or full ownership of the infinity heart. I love symbols! I would love to be able to wear my polyam pride on my sleeve, but tons of mono people use the infinity heart to just mean “endless love,” which makes it a pretty diluted symbol, and the pride colors are not great.

I think more polyam families should become foster parents. I think more people should, honestly; but being polyam gives you an advantage in that you have more adults to help out, and most of us have already done a lot of self-work around healthy emotional management and communication styles, which is critical for foster parents. It’s not always easy to get certified as an “unconventional” family, but it is doable, and we should be doing it!

My polyamory is queer. Not all polyamory is queer, but I truly believe that polyamory can be queer, when it is a ‘queering’ of the dominant monogamous culture, a re-understanding of relationships, an individual reclamation and rejection of culturally imposed assumptions, and love as “praxis” that challenges economic, political, and sexual systems of dominance.

Polyam people need to make a lot more space for relationship anarchy in the conversation. Related to my opinion that not all polyamory is queer, but polyamory can be a queering of relationships. It’s sad to me that so many people think polyamory is only about sexual-romantic relationships, and often looks in practice a lot like monogamy culture just with more people, where the sexual-romantic relationships are prioritized in terms of values, commitment, finances, etc. Polyamory can be an invitation to re-understand relationships in a whole new way. Who say that the people we have great sex with have to be the people we live with have to be the people we co-parent with? Let’s make our own way, friends.

I think “best case scenario” daydreaming is an under-utilized tool in polyamorous relationships. Thinking through what you really want, having words for the feelings you want to have, understanding what you want your day to day life to look like - this is so helpful! We should all have a clear picture of where we’re headed, what our goals are, and what our deal-makers and deal-breakers are. I don’t know why so few people are able to really articulate what they want out of their relationships - grab a journal, or a questionnaire, or a boring work meeting, and dig in!

I think people should make my life easier when writing in to this blog. People should check my FAQ, not send me thousand-word letters that don’t include a clear question, and not do these other things. I also think it would be super swell if people contributed to my Patreon!

There we go; some of my most strongly held opinions about polyamory. I have many other opinions, like:

People should stop assigning moral value to food and eating habits and drop the food-negative fear-of-calories nonsense; diet culture is absolute bullshit, and the concern-trolling about fat bodies is cruel, disingenuous, and needs to die.

Caffeine is an addictive drug and we are way too relaxed about young children becoming dependent on it to the detriment of their sleep health.

Being critical or ironic about something does not make you smarter, more mature, or better than someone who earnestly enjoys it.

Genetic connections do not a ‘family’ make, and no one is obligated to stay connected to someone who isn’t healthy for them just because they are ‘related.' And if you are deeply connected to someone whose connection to you isn’t recognized by monogamy-culture - like a kid who isn’t genetically related, or a life partner you aren’t romantic-sexual with, that’s great! Ignore the haters.

Movie theatre popcorn is always better than anything you can make at home, and is always worth the $7 it costs at the theatre. Drinks and candy, you should smuggle in.

If someone isn’t drinking, people should leave that alone and not harass, pester, or tease them about it.

Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” music video is not cultural appropriation, because she brings in people who are skilled in those dances to perform them well, and the point of the video is that she can’t do what they do and is just being herself alongside performers she is sharing her stage with. Cultural appropriate is a real issue in pop music (and everywhere else) but I think that video is absolutely not an example of it and don’t understand why it’s constantly used as one.

Alcohol is a lot more dangerous and addictive than marijuana and the reasons it’s legal and socially acceptable are racist and classist and are not based in reality.

Tumblr and Instagram should do more (that is, literally anything) to fight pro-eating-disorder content on their platforms.

No one should feed me food with tomatoes in it, ever, ever, ever! (And I don’t want to hear about how I haven’t had a “real, good” tomato - those ones taste worse because they taste more like tomatoes!)