#living as both a racial and religious minority in america is not as easy as you think it is

[janetsnakehole02]

so someone wrote the following tags on this post of mine (a story about my great grandmother and colonialism) and the tags have nothing to do with the original goal of the post. but since i was singled out for some reason, i’ll respond.

i’m sorry to break it to you but hinduphobia IS real. last navratri bangladeshi hindus had their temples demolished and their houses burned down. it is estimated that in 30 years there will be no more hindus left in bangladesh. 

and there WAS a hindu genocide in kashmir. regardless of whether you’re left or right wing it should not be hard to discern that the exodus of kashmiri pandits in january 1990 was caused by a threat of genocide. they were told to flee, convert, or die. and so callously putting hindu genocide under quotes erases their trauma and experience. that’s why i defended the kashmir files. it did what it set out to do - give a voice to the kashmiri pandits once and for all. if you want to talk about the politics of the movie then find someone else. i don’t know much about indian politics to talk about it so i’d rather not say anything than say something damagingly ignorant, but i do know enough about kashmiri pandits and have seen enough of their survivor accounts to say that it was very clear that this was ethnic cleansing. my beauty parlor aunty herself is a refugee.

LASTLY as someone who has herself experienced bullying because of her hindu identity in america, it is incredibly ignorant, dare i say privileged, of you to say that hinduphobia is not a “genuine phenomenon.” i was made fun of for my bindi and was taunted by a classmate to eat beef. one time a white girl in preschool refused to play with me because i was both brown skinned and hindu. and there was a fucking GANG in jersey in the 1970′s called the dotbusters that SPECIFICALLY TARGETED HINDU WOMEN. please do not forget that even if hindus are a majority in india, they are ethnic, racial, and religious minorities in the rest of the world. so yes, hinduphobia is real. damn i wish it weren’t. but it is. and it is a desi issue. so i WILL tag this as hinduphobia AND desiblr. that’s all

[historic-old-guard-lover]

Hi, I started following you because you provide or reblog historical perspectives that I, as a white midwestern American, was not exposed to. I was thinking recently of the American “ melting pot” of culture, and how that Nile would probably have been taught how “wonderful” it was, but then also been aware of the erasure involved in a “melting pot”, and how that would affect her interactions with TOG (food!) Do you have any thoughts on this, or know of a blog that could discuss the implications?

I’m glad I’ve been widening your horizons, Anon. The American “melting pot” is a tricky concept, even before we add in how immigrants are actually treated in the US. I think the biggest factor that plays into it is that Americans don’t like to acknowledge that there very much is an American mainstream culture and various subcultures. The melting pot is used most often to denote a cultural homogeneity that “immigrants” contribute to...but ignores that this is not true for all immigrant groups, that those who contribute were originally (and may continue to be) rejected and forced into immigrant enclaves, and that the pieces that integrate change as part of the process to the point where they may not be recognizable to the “original” culture. Let’s take an all-American example: pizza.

99 out of 100 Americans will say that pizza is Italian food. 99 out of 100 Italians would look at pizza made in America and call it American food. For something so simple, there’s actually a lot of differences between Italian pizza and American pizza including the crust, sauce, and toppings. So yeah, pretty much the whole thing is different besides being tomatoes on bread. The first pizzeria was opened by an Italian immigrant in the Little Italy neighborhood of NYC in 1905. It was sold by the slice because the Italian immigrants Lombardi was trying to sell to couldn’t afford to buy a whole pie. That’s why so many Italian immigrants lived in Little Italy: they were mostly poor Catholic laborers in a Protestant nation who got called ethnic slurs like “guineas” and “dagoes”. In the South, there were multiple cases of Italian immigrants being lynched and targeted by the KKK. Now that Italians are considered “white,” it’s easy to forget that they weren’t always considered that way.

(Note: this is not me trying to compare the Italian-American and African-American experience or engage in oppression Olympics. While Italians were never grouped in the same category as blacks and some of them contributed to anti-black racism, they were violently attacked in a different way than Northern European whites for not respecting the racial hierarchy. They were also targeted as a religious group, the vast majority being Roman Catholic. If these things were happening in our modern era, we might consider these Italian immigrants “brown” like some white-passing Hispanic sub-populations and likened them to the Muslim-American experience complete with reputations as terrorists. There are major differences with these three experiences, of course, but I mention them to remind us that race is socially constructed and changes over time. I’d be happy to discuss what it means that race is a social construct if people are interested.)

The story of Italian-American immigrants is one of eventual integration into the “melting pot,” but that’s not the case for all immigrant waves as you probably know. The other archetype, at least in my mind, is characterized by the Chinese immigrant experience. In the 1850s, Chinese immigration was encouraged as a cheap and exploitable labor source for unpleasant jobs including the construction of the trans-continental railroad where an estimated 15,000-20,000 Chinese immigrants died (which, you’ll notice is a ridiculous range because they obviously weren’t keeping track). Of course, cheap labor source is a wave of racism waiting to happen and white Americans began HATING the Chinese-Americans. by the 1860s you see state and attempted federal legislation to restrict immigration and segregate Chinese-Americans to second-class citizen status (such as requiring them to have a special license to run a business that white Americans did not need). By 1880, an American diplomat was tasked we renegotiating a treaty with China to allow for the restriction of immigration. When that only kinda-sorta worked, Congress passed a series of laws we now call the  Chinese Exclusion Acts, which were not repealed until 1943 because of pressure from WW2. Though some parts of Chinese-American culture have become mainstream (eg. Chinese(-American) take-out food), Chinese-Americans and East Asian-Americans broadly have not been assimilated into whiteness. Kept at a distance from being “just American”, there are often immigrant enclaves (ie. Chinatowns) in major areas. This isn’t even touching the “Model Minority” mythos that Chinese-Americans need to grapple with as well. 

I think what you’re referencing in your comment is mostly that being accepted into (white mainstream) American culture means intentionally obscuring those immigrant links. Nile may or may not be aware of the history of immigrant experiences in America, but Chicago does have immigrant enclaves both past and present from pretty much everywhere. I’d like to think of Nile as self-aware enough to have picked up on this. And uh, since you probably were also just looking for something light-hearted, nothing is more American that fusion cuisine! I think it’d be funny to have the Old Guard what Nile put like barbeque sauce on paneer as they all silently scream in horror and Nile is just like “what? don’t hate it till you’ve tried it” and then somehow after millennia on this earth Andy tries food combinations she’s never considered

[leviathangourmet]

(Archive Link)

I recently attended a Washington-D.C. event focused on community-building hosted by The Aspen Institute’s Weave project, which works to reduce social isolation and build bonds between Americans. During one portion of the event, various activists described how racism had impacted their lives and their communities. Following a number of such testimonials, a white woman from southeast Ohio named Sarah Adkins spoke about her own community work, which involves raising money to provide post-trauma support to individuals affected by tragedies.

Perhaps because several speakers had discussed racism and issues related to white privilege, Adkins spoke about her own self-perceived racial privilege. “I followed the perfect mold…I did all the things, I went to college, and I keep thinking of white privilege in my head so forgive me, that’s what’s in my head right now, very much white privilege,” she said, while reflecting on her middle class life in an affluent neighborhood.

But Adkins also went on to describe the reason she originally had become involved in community work—which is that her then-husband had killed both of her sons and then later took his own life. One can only imagine how much suffering this caused her. Yet she still viewed herself as privileged due to her race.

“I was wealthy, okay, I was a pharmacist, I made a lot of money, right? So after that happened, I really wanted to understand that for me there definitely was a lot of white privilege. I had money, I had health insurance, so people came in and cleaned up my house. I was able to pay for a funeral for my children,” she said.

I wondered how someone who’d lived through such an awful tragedy could consider themselves to be in any way “privileged.” Yes, she had the funding to clean up her home and bury her relatives. But nearly everybody has at least some advantages in life. It feels perverse for someone who has suffered so much to be confessing their perceived advantages.

When activists and academics invoke the phrase “white privilege,” they typically are speaking of advantages that whites, on average, have over members of other ethnic minority groups in our society. And there is no doubt that racial inequality is both real and persistent in the United States, where I live, and elsewhere. There is a sizable racial wealth gap, a life expectancy gap, and an incarceration gap. Many of America’s most pressing social problems disproportionately harm people from minority groups.

But there is a danger that, by talking about this inequality as an all-consuming phenomenon, we will end up creating a flattened and unfair image that portrays all whites in all situations and all contexts as benefiting from unearned advantages. Indeed, it’s possible that we will cause people to confuse a structural inequality that exists on the level of group average with the circumstances of every individual within a particular racial group.

In the case of Adkins’s tragic story, it’s not even clear that being white in any way constituted a form of privilege. Recent research has found a huge surge in white working-class suicides. In 2017, whites in the United States had a suicide rate of 17.8 per 100,000; for Hispanics, that rate was 6.9; for African-Americans, it was 6.9. The only group with a higher suicide rate than whites was Native Americans, at 22.2.

The phenomenon of suicide is not perfectly understood, but it is generally believed that loneliness and alienation are driving factors. Whites in America tend (on average) to be more culturally individualistic, while those from other groups tend (again, on average) to exhibit more collectivist social values. The group of which I am part, Asian-Americans, would be “privileged” on this index, since our rate (6.6) is well below that of whites. But would it really be wise for me to tackle the social problem of suicide by zooming in on some idea of “Asian privilege?”

In fact, research recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that such an approach wouldn’t just be unhelpful. It would actually be harmful.

I recently interviewed Erin Cooley, a psychology professor and lead researcher at Colgate University, about her research for Greater Good magazine. She studies prejudice and structural inequality and her research has illuminated the ways in which persistent racism continues to negatively impact the lives of racial minorities in America. A study she recently published, for instance, shows how participants were more likely to associate poverty with blacks as opposed to whites. Her team found that this association helps predict opposition toward policies that involve economic redistribution, since it is widely believed that these policies benefit blacks over whites.

Her team was curious about the impact of teaching people about white privilege. Would it make people more sympathetic toward poor blacks? As part of their research, Cooley and her colleagues offered study participants a reading on white privilege—based partly on the seminal work of Peggy McIntosh, who originally formulated the concept in the 1980s—and then described to them the plight of a hypothetical man, identified as either white or black, who is down on his luck.

What the researchers found is that among social liberals—i.e., participants who had indicated that they hold liberal beliefs about social issues—reading a text about white privilege did nothing to significantly increase their sympathy toward the plight of poor blacks. But, as Cooley told me, “it did significantly bump down their sympathy for a [hypothetical] poor white person.” (Among conservative participants, there was observed no significant change in attitudes at all.)

What accounts for this? One possibility is that social liberals are internalizing white-privilege lessons in a way that flattens the image of whites, portraying all of them as inherently privileged. So if a white person is poor, it must be his or her own fault. After all, they’ve had all sorts of advantages in life that others haven’t.

When we talk about racial inequality, it is important to understand that we’re often talking about structural or society-wide averages, not the status of all individuals at all times. It is true, for instance, that African Americans are disproportionately impacted by poverty. That means a higher percentage of African Americans live in poverty as compared to whites. But the largest number of individuals in the United States who live in poverty are white. We can’t, and we shouldn’t, assume anything about any individual’s life solely based on his or her race, or based on larger facts about racial inequality.

Racism exists, of course, and its impact is disproportionately felt by society’s minority populations. I have personally spent a decent chunk of my reporting career documenting this. But the fact that disparate treatment is inflicted on racial minorities doesn’t prove the existence of an all-encompassing pattern of white privilege. “If you’re white, chances are seeing a police officer fills you with one of two things: relief or gratitude,” writes one advocate of a privilege-centric worldview. But around half of the people who are killed every year by U.S. police officers are white. True, police violence falls disproportionately on ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. But if you’re white and you’ve been abused by a police officer, your individual experience may be just as painful as that of a black person who’s suffered similar abuse.

If we extend the logic of privilege beyond the issue of race, it’s easy to see the flaws with this approach. We know, for instance, that 93 percent of people in U.S. federal prisons are men. In nearly every part of the criminal justice system, in fact, men on average have it worse than women do. But does that then mean we should be discussing “female privilege”? Would it be beneficial to the men behind bars for women to proclaim awareness of their “privileged” status?

A typical conservative response to privilege discourse is to downplay the very real inequalities that exist. This isn’t helpful. We can’t escape talking about inequality in a diverse society. For instance, we shouldn’t shy away from looking at high maternal mortality rates among black women and how it may be linked to inadequate cultural competence among medical staff. However, what I would suggest is that we change the way we talk about this inequality. Asking whites to publicly confess their white privilege—in a manner that often resembles a religious ritual more than anything else—may lead us to unfairly flatten the experience of whites while, ironically, actually shifting attention away from those who are underprivileged. The Cooley study shows that this isn’t just a hypothetical concern; it’s a reality that has been demonstrated through research.

One alternative to white-privilege discourse would be to focus on the causes and consequences of deprivation rather than on naming groups of people we believe to hold special advantages—and to stop referring to things that we should expect for all people as “privileges.” It is not a privilege to have a decent and safe childbirth, or avoid harassment by the police, or to have enough to eat. All of those things should be something we expect. While we can and should aggressively address inequality, we should make sure the methods we employ serve to strengthen our sense of empathy rather than sap it.

[creepingsharia]

Growing Nexus Between Terror-linked Islamic Groups and Black Lives Matter

As we noted in 2015, Terrorists visiting terrorists.

Black Lives Matter and a History of Islamist Outreach to African Americans

by Kyle Shideler

Once the dust settled, last week’s protest of a Donald Trump rally in Chicago demonstrated a growing nexus between Islamist groups in the United States and the radical leftist “Black Lives Matter” movement.

This rhetoric of unity between these movements was clearly on display at the 2015 joint conference of the 2015 Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). MAS was described by federal prosecutors as the “overt arm” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, and ICNA is recognized as the front for the Pakistani Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) founded by one of the foremost thinkers on modern Jihad, Syed Abul A'la Maududi.

At the event, MAS leader Khalilah Sabra openly discussed the importance of Muslim support for Black Lives Matter, and urged “revolution.” Comparing the situation in the United States to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Arab Spring revolutions, she asked, “We are the community that staged a revolution across the world; if we can do that, why can’t we have that revolution in America?”

Reporting on this merging “revolutionary” alliance goes back as far as the first outbreak of disorder in Ferguson. Few may recall the attendance at Michael Brown’s funeral of CAIR executive director Nihad Awad. Awad was identified in federal court as a member of the Palestine Committee, a covert group of Muslim Brothers dedicated to supporting Hamas in the United States.

CAIR joined other groups named by federal law enforcement as Muslim Brotherhood organizations and lined up behind the Ferguson protests.

In November of 2014, Fox News reported on an effort by CAIR Michigan Director Dawud Walid to link the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police and the death of Luqman Abdullah, a Detroit imam shot during an FBI raid.

Abdullah was described by the FBI as a leader of a nationwide Islamic organization known as “The Ummah,” run by convicted cop-killer Jamil Abdullah Amin. Abdullah’s group engaged in criminal activity in order to raise funds in order for an effort to establish Sharia law in opposition to the U.S. government.

Amin and CAIR have a long association together, with CAIR providing funding for Amin’s legal defense, and issuing numerous press releases in support of the Georgia radical imam and former Black Panther.

While this linkage of Islamist front groups to radical racial politics may seem a relatively new development, the reality is it has been the result of a nearly four decade long effort by Islamist groups. A major thinker on this effort was a Pakistani immigrant and ICNA leader named Shamim A. Siddiqui, who knew JeI founder Maududi personally. Siddiqui wrote his work, Methodology of Dawah Il Allah in American Perspective in 1989.

Siddiqui defined Dawah Il Allah as, “an organized, a determined and a continuous effort to call the people of the land to the fold of their Creator and Sustainer, Allah (SWT), as priority Number One [of the Da'ee], towards accepting Islam as a way of life and convincing them to the need and urgency of establishing the Deen of Allah in the body politics of the country, with the sole objective to get the pleasure of Allah.” [Emphasis added]

In other words, Siddiqui focused not solely on religious proselytizing, but on the promotion of Islam as a political system. Siddiqui spends much of Methodology of Dawah discussing the efforts being made at recruiting and indoctrinating African Americans, and complained that the “revolutionary” aspect of Islam (his words) was being ignored by those working to convert the African American community.

Ultimately, Siddiqui believed that the Dawah mission depends on merging the grassroots intensity of radicalized African American Muslim communities—like those led by Jamil Abdullah Amin—with the doctrinal and more sophisticated Muslim Brotherhood-led immigrant communities. Siddiqui writes:

“This again, will not be possible without bringing both the immigrant and Afro-American Muslim communities of America on to one platform. The resources of one and the political awakening of the other, when combined together with the Islamic Movement of America, will be able to play miracles…There will be no dearth of resources, both of men and material, at that time. Only the Islamic Movement of America can get this job accomplished.”

Methodology of Dawah remains an important training (tarbiyah) text in use by U.S. Islamist groups, including MAS-ICNA.

Siddiqui’s hoped for union began to come together in the 1990s with the founding of the Islamic Shura Council of North America, which united ISNA (a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organization described in U.S. MB documents as the “nucleus” of the Islamic Movement in America), ICNA, Jamil Abdullah Amin’s Ummah group, and the community of Warith Deen Mohammed (leader of the Nation of Islam who converted his followers to orthodox Sunni Islam in 1973). The effort would eventually dissolve, however, possibly over of a difference of opinion on relatively minor questions of Islamic jurisprudence.

Next, the attempt came with the formation of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), a group whose executive and advisory boards contained indigenous African American Muslim leaders (like the now deceased Luqman Abdullah) but also Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders (including its executive secretary Ihsan Bagby, a CAIR board member from 1995 until 2013). In addition to Abdullah, MANA has a number of other leading members whose followers have engaged in violence or threats, particularly against police, in the wake of Ferguson protests and the expanding BLM protests.

MANA, whose own website appears to be largely defunct, remains a member of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition consisting of organizations identified as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood groups.

The effort to incorporate the indigenous African American Muslims into the efforts of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood has not always been easy, and in the wake of the Black Lives Matter alignment has led to what amounted to online “struggle sessions” to get immigrant Muslim communities and organizations onboard. Seeking to bring the Muslim Brotherhood founded Muslim Students Association (MSA) into line with the BLM effort, the Muslim Anti-Racism Collective (MuslimARC, a group which lists CAIR’s Dawud Walid as an advisor) launched a series of hashtag conversations titled #BlackinMSA criticizing the group of its failure to incorporate African American Muslims and adopt the BLM narrative. Several MSA groups nation-wide subsequently began declaring their support, and the local Chicago MSAs apparently played a role in organizing for the Chicago protest against Trump.

Having successfully oriented themselves to activism, the Islamist groups in the U.S. are continuing to advance along Siddiqui’s described plan, moving incrementally, but inexorably forwards towards what he calls the “the final stage.” After discussing the historical example of Mohammed issuing al Hujjah, the final call to Islam after which rejection will result in armed struggle, Siddiqui writes:

"The Muslims of America (both immigrants and indigenous), individually as well as collectively have been ordained by Allah (SWT) to fulfill that obligation. They are to carry out the message of Prophet Muhammad (S) and establish Allah's Deen. It is incumbent upon us without any excuse. The Muslims of America have no option. They have to carry out the struggle in the way I have discussed in this book to the last breath of their lives until either the mission is accomplished or they pass on from this world as Mujahidin-fi-Sabil-Allah."

Bonus video:

[personinneedofmusic]

We need to have this conversation

I want to start off by saying that, while I was reading the petition, from the  time, I was worried. I was concerned about the procedures and the operations required to be able to complete this. That's aside from the fact: how are we going to establish this law unanimously across 50 states and the FUNDING holy shit! We trying to defund the police but when you wanna bring this in "Fuggett uh bowit"! 

Try to imagine how to explain all that in a petition. How would it look? You'd lose the message. This is not a Bill or an Act. This is the way citizens make Congress pay attention to our needs to pass those laws.

Let's forget about the single incident that brought this link in our hands. You says "you don't believe such measures are required". Why is that? When we have a current law enforcement system set in place for a set of local organizations to uphold and enforce laws that we have all agreed to pass through our constitution. But the law is not being upheld fairly (and "fairly" is an understatement).

Justice is not being equally distributed across our land. Just because our system is not functioning as intended does not permit the allowance of it to continue.  Let's bring a better solution not just talk down and reject ANY suggestion. For anyone who talks so much about trying to improve the problems we face, whether it be a fat guy going to the gym or the office job with shitty employees, what are these complainers doing to make the situation better? Absolutely nothing.

Let's go back, though to the George Floyd video. Anyone would agree that those cops had no reason to pin this man down the way they did. Anyone watching would of loved to shoot those bastards and you're right they did not carry firearms so a standoff would of worked against the officers. But like you stated in your opinion about this petition, this is unreasonable. To have all citizens in America carry a firearm is wishful thinking. It is not and has not been a easy thing to possess (I'm not talking about purchasing the firearm that's a whole other story. I'm referring to maintaining dominion). Look at the news articles reporting underage children killing themselves or killing others because these children got their hands on their guardians weapons. This was one of the biggest reasons for the school mass shootings we were experiencing everyday in 2019. The first 60 days of that year had more shootings than days. I remember seeing it on the news. Now checking, The Gun Violence Archive organization has recorded 417 mass shootings all over the U.S. in 2019.

People want want to stick to their statement that everyone should be strapped up? This includes children and students? Going to work or going to school, nobody should be forced to have to know how to operate or shoot a firearm. It's fun AF but it is not and should not be an all-time waking moment requirement, I'll tell you why.

This is a country of consumption and entertainment not a military state, we are not the middle east for christ sakes we've only had one war on this land and that was caused by the same bigotry and inequality we see today. That's the point of this being a free country, we have systems set in place to have to regulate the violence that's the direction that the people have chosen. Both the government and citizens don't agree with carrying guns everywhere they go.

Evidence of this is seen by big data companies and major organizations shoving advertisements of products, films, food, services but not guns not weapons. I'm not talking shit about guns cause I feel we all need one and I fully support the 2nd amendment. But carrying a firearm does NOT mean they decrease the chances of danger and for SURE do not eliminate it. I'll explain shortly.

Angel was right, anyone trying to forcefully stop these prejudice assholes  know their lives are in danger when all they were expected to do that day was go to the liquor store lol (No one owes you shit) You or I cannot expect anyone to step in to interrupt such a cruel act because we all know the outcome. This ain't talking about "what ifs" we know it would take dozens of unarmed people swarming those cops just to save that one life. I can't speak about the "what if" of creating a stand off against those cops because we do not live in that reality. In this dilemma, in the real world we live in I can say that my heart would break watching this in person and I may act irrationally by attempting to forcefully remove them from George's neck and almost certainly get killed in the process. But I would rather die than allow others to continue to watch and act out a murder. "treat others the way you would like to be treated."

If you received news that your loved one was murdered for a courageous and illogical act, you would only have your "what if he had a firearm" statement and it would do you no good. "Legally a cop can't shoot you if you stop being a lethal threat... Many terrorists do that so they don't get shot" -_-  A terrorist is considered a threat to the sovereignty of our home country. We are not the same threat. The fact that you bring that into the conversation is irrelevant because we're speaking about unarmed black civilians who are murdered in cold blood while they beg for their life.

The courts rule in favor of their law enforcement officers and white privileged citizens against minorities and please don't make me research this for you because this should be common knowledge. Once you can accept this common knowledge I can continue to tell you. Rioters fuck up the community, the stores even other people as we've seen in this last month. To the viewer of the organized media (narrow truth) it is narrated that this is hurting the message of the peaceful protesters. Just like every other person stuck at home you believe peaceful protesting is the way to get your voice heard because it's so amazing in getting the job done. Do you know how many peaceful protests have walked down the streets of our country for the killings and unjust verdicts slammed on our brothers and sisters since the 60's? Hundreds recorded and non recorded with absolutely no change.

Martin Luther King Jr. made the following statement: Riots are the language of the unheard. This is not a new statement, therefore not a new perspective, how can I verify this is not a new perspective? Because he stated this before his death in 1968. Who killed him? The CIA. The exact people who you just claimed have the jurisdiction to enforce the law/ protect its people against breaking the law and causing violence. What violence did MLK bring? Please tell me. I'll wait a thousand years for this answer and never get it. So why did they kill him?... Think about it.

The United States government killed Malcolm X because he was an obvious violent threat for his belief to overthrow their racial OPPRESSORS. The generational descendants of the people in power were slave owners and they are making sure they remain in power while the people under this federal system continue to build their wealth.

They ensure that these same "citizens" fight the wars against anyone who does not comply with their wishes. The murderous capital knows no bounds from extending their arms to developing defenseless countries (like Britain from 1400's to 1800's) to its own "citizens" it claims to protect. They see it easier to attack and influence small countries and if they had the chance they will overthrow another country they see as a competitor. But when you pay attention to how they attack the people who threaten their livelihood you will realize this is not for the greater good of the country. This is only serving the needs of greed from the wealthy politicians and business who profit from the dismantling and manipulation of others. ( I digress)

Let's go back to the U.S. in the 60's. They killed Malcolm & Martin to kill positive leaders who inspired self development. They symbolized the future of a race that was self-sufficient so this government that you've served saw it in their right to cut that class of minority's resources and leave people feeling lost & dependant. Apparently the department of self defense has also defended the previous verdict of the CIA killing MLK saying that there wasn't enough evidence in 2000. On paper they are not repsonsible for his murder, but logically speaking, the judicial system could not be forced to make such a monumental mistake in citing themselves as guilty. You can't just believe what others tell you, you need to dig deep and search for the truth.

Have you heard of what happened in 1920's the city called Tulsa?

Rioters have no other option to bring justice so they fuck shit up and will always continue to do so as long as we are oppressed and not treated fairly by our own so called brothers & sisters. Whether you are religious or not, look at the evidence and you will see we are all from the same family tree. So, how would you be able to claim to run a just country while it's representatives constantly put down and prosecute the disenfranchised who already have nothing and continue to take and take from them? Every bit of success or progress is highly praised within our community’s poor kids but women and men of color still experience prejudice & racism on all levels of our society.

What happened to LaVena Johnson (read up please)?

Watching someone drown is one fucked up immoral thing to do, but to purposely hold them down to watch the last bubble of air leave their lungs, it's beyond twisted. It's not just dispicable it is systematic corruption. So to say there are a "few bad apples" is not just wrong. Not just a few bad apples... watching all local law enforcements and national guard being deployed spray tear gas and shoot NON VIOLENT PROTESTORS in the face with rubber bullets (some dying from these so called "non-lethal" methods), this is a muthafuckkin INFESTATION BRUH! You don't see it?! That's called privilege. Because they haven't shined their spotlight on you don't mean you ain't subject to these methods of punishment.

These riots are not sprouting out of the blue just because they felt like it. Rodney King was not the only time between then and now that we had killings and beatings of unarmed minorities.Knowing our history is the reason for the hatred of our federal government (Govern = Control -/- Ment = Mind)

Our mind controllers have been doing a fine job at keeping us asleep for long periods of time, but when you threaten our basic civil rights we can't allow them to continue for the love of our children... for a better world.

I personally cannot loot. And I laughed when a looter was being dragged across the pavement from being stuck under the Semi truck they were trying to rob. Because looting is for the desperate. But focus on why they are desperate. Do you think you'll see rich people looting? You think these people are poor only because they spend money on alcohol? It's because the resources to become richer are made out of reach. Then we have these stock market bubble crashes that not only make people want to commit suicide from being systematically robbed but they widen the gap between poverty and wealth. The rich are not losing, they winning during every period of despair caused within this monopoly game and not sharing. They stock up and keep their resources away from everyone and get fat. Trust me dude, “when these fat muthafukkers get heavy enough, the ground of the people they walk on gonna open up and the hungry gon' EAT!”

You mention that these store owners may become depressed to commit suicide or become a shooter. That's a pretty big "what if" dude, and your whole essay was created based off the fact that you hate "what ifs". Based off my actual experience from speaking to the bankrupt, these people look for another way, they don't lose their composure and take their anger out on others. They could be turned to crime like drug dealing or other illegal services. But that's not because of the looters and rioters, that's specifically because their country's economic system has failed them. Everyone stuck in poverty is just trying to make ends meet.

The right thing like you say is the best procedure where no one gets hurt. But desperacy and greed is a bitch. It's a human element we all possess from top to bottom. Your short story of a sad business owner is heartbreaking but does not apply to every person.

So you agree an officer should be properly equipped to handle a dangerous situation as peacefully as possible. But we have CONSTANT monthly evidence of this not being executed correctly (correctly is an understatement). The petition doesn't even talk about changing police officers physical real world training. It's simply pushing for a Psychological evaluation of the people who have a deadly weapon in their fucking hands. SWAT team killed 7 year old Aiyana Jones performing a Flashbang while she was asleep bro! Where was the value of life? Where the fuck was the rationality? Where the fuck is the justice? Check on her killers and you'll see they're still walking "free" on this land. Flashbangs were made for wartime raids. I know you and I can both agree that this career will break your spirit. But these stories are beyond fucked up. Which is why we need to check on these people and maybe even get them the help they need. We don't know yet cause we're just trying to bring this shit to conversation.

You may feel personally attacked by this request because this may include your career, but we have a secret group of officers called the grim reapers (roughtly 2000 members) mainly white supremacists who KNOW the law they KNOW how to hide from the light so a social media evaluation aint SHIT on the people who could exercise their 1st amendment but against biased, racist and lethal internal terrorist is taking power AWAY from them. Tell me, where are these detectives that you speak of to prosecute these hate groups? "What sounds good to them"? These suggestions are not random dawg. Where is your solution?

If you followed your own advice to educate yourself you'll see throughout history the oppressors have brutally forced their way into a community and into another person's personal property for their own taking. These same oppressors now follow the same procedures to hold the highest power of dominance under this stolen land.

The "why the rules for law enforcement are set in place" is because they are ENFORCING their power over the masses. They created the monsters that you're scared of in the prison cells. These people (remember, these are fucking people) are compressed and compressed with hate, bigotry and systematic abuse throughout bloodlines. Stop looking at this from an individual perspective and within one generation. This has been specified abuse and re-designed slavery for generations almost 500 years now. Slavery has not ended homie. You & I are forced into it when we are forced to comply with actions against our health or will.

No, the law is NOT black & white. Because it should be the people who run the body of the system who decide what right and wrong is and perspectives change over time. Slavery used to be right. Public lynching or beheading throughout history was a public activity. So law is grey and the way we use law to seek justice is grey. That's why we symbolize Lady Justice to be blind. Because we begin our search for truth in square 1/ zero evidence. We gather our verdict, our decision of right and what is true from the evidence provided or there the lack of.  What I was telling Will yesterday about "perceived truth" is that it is not to be confused with total reality. Truth is defined as- in accordance with fact or reality. But reality is PERCEIVED through the eyes of the beholder. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". That's the grey area. That's why Jerome gets a different sentence compared to Chad: same age, same crime, same points, same judge, same courtroom even on the same goddamn day. Just because you have not experienced this horrendous atrocity of having your life threatened by an ominous hierarchy, does not mean it does not exist. It for sure does not mean you should leave it alone just because it's already in place and it seems to be working. It's not working, that's why we are trying anything we can think of to make a change and stop the menacing slaughtering of a certain people.

This is discouraging to see every bit of progress being undermined and pushed back. This is why people say their vote doesn't count and ignore politics, but that's exactly what the wealthy want you to believe. We are the masses not the minorities. The illusion of power is theirs. The real power is ours and we've just been tricked to hand our ability over to the money hungry power hungry FEW! Many different countries attach the representation of law enforcement as pigs. You ever wonder why they all have similar analysis? The characteristics of swine are they are consistently eating and eating without even thinking despite their great intelligence.

Law enforcement has been consistently eating more salary and more power gaining more rights over people and you think this kind of person should not be required to have an Associates degree. You know elementary school teachers are required to have a bachelors degree (4 years of college). I'm not even gonna ask you and give you the chance to ponder whether or not a kids school teacher should have a higher education than the officer who can carry a deadly weapon and interact with full grown adults from all walks of life and still get paid SHIT compared to them. That's not right, sir. And if you don't believe that's fucked up, I now know you prefer to be in a militant state and not a free state. Abuse of power is not within a few, it is within the very core of every powerful government.

Cali gaining more gun laws is still only directing the narrative to the scenery where people all agreed to carry firearms... Again, we do not live in that reality.

Peep this action. When someone hates & dislikes someone or something, you'll notice that these are products of misunderstanding.

There has not been sufficient compromise from the law for a comfortable life because these same issues lawmakers and congress have promised to look into and consider have been thrown in the backburner to suffocate just like the lives of the innocent our so called heroes have taken.

So, I know I mentioned defunding would be difficult to do if we continue with this but I am for defunding the police. Not abolishing but re-allocating their funds. One great way is removing the pension plan to those many fuckers who have a trackrecord of violence on the clock especially the murderers. You want more details about what qualifies or disqualifies someone to receive pension? I could continue but because I'm not a legislator and we're just speaking of a petition, I feel like it's a waste of time right now. Let's see this pass and then we'll dive in.

Defunding does not mean that we're creating an anarchist state. This does mean our heroes will be left on the streets. We can optimize the funds if necessary, but we can't allow the department of self defense to take so much away while it's own people are starving and living in motels or on the brink of losing their homes. This bullshit of lack of healthcare insurance coverage is a whole completely different ball game but also affects poverty and could also use assistance not in providing the government coverage but (for example) regulating these private physicians and hospitals on how they charge different prices for mediations or services in different countries.

Other services that drastically need that re-allocation funding (not overfunding past the law enforcement, remember that): Public housing, mental health services, public education & department of unemployment. Cutting after school programs and defunding your society's children is detrimental to our future and we've been allowing that (not just to continue) to progress for years. We are currently in a crisis of unemployment not caused by a typical economic downturn but nevertheless we've had problems within this public service for years that needs reform in it's method to assist people with finding a job like creating relations with employers for different job classes.

Sarcastically suggesting to fund the weed program because you can't think of any other programs that desperately need reform just shows your disconnect with our society. This is a direct statement to you but this is not a personal attack to you, I just want you to understand that there are many problems that need fixing and throwing money at it is not the solution. That goes for any of the public or federal departments that I've mentioned in this message.

The exponentially growing debt is NOT going to its citizens. Going back to the main topic, we as a body of people are not equipped with the right resources to equally seek liberty and pursuit of happiness. Also, we cannot fully blame anyone else for the decisions we make ourselves so don't expect people to be panhandling. We all just want an equal shot.

Taxes- Are a financial charge or levy imposed by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures. This means that the people are constantly being depended on to increase the salary of every government funded worker and it's supplies and other expenses to supposedly run properly. But throwing MORE money at something is not going to always fix a problem. As a country that has always found the need to be in debt and constantly spend on the wrong things this is my reason for validating that we need to re-allocate from dangerous or unnecessary spending.

People have argued that the standard technique to privatization will incur by: first defunding, then MAKING sure the facilities will not work which make the people even more angry until those facilities are shifted to the private capital. That's how we began seeing charter schools. You can't feed or educate the people of this country properly and the house of administration wants to defund NASA unless we all agree to work towards building a space station. get THAT shit out of here. The heirs of the Trump family were just recently cited to use taxpayer dollars to fund a trip to another country for a hunting game against the largest sheep in the world (reminds me of the novel, The Most Dangerous Game ;-) hunting their own supporters). TAX PAYER money, for fun! Defund whatever the FUCK they think they can do with our money. The department of defense claims it knows what's best for another country  and so it decides to train that other country's military in an act of diplomacy in hopes to gain a new ally and drain that other country of its resources. Put THAT country in debt so that they help this country with it's spending problem. (This happened multiple times) Get THAT FUCKIN SHIT out of here. Then the U.S wanna act surprised when the threatened country starts to shove the U.S. away when they begin digging their finger in their ass and so we (yes, we. You and I allow this) attack them while creating a narrative here at home that they are savages with no organized government and therefore a broken community with immoral culture (sounds like a male's narrow perspective here in the states that gets butt hurt when they get rejected by a fine ass hyna "fuck you! Slut! You dirty ho". You know there are connotations of this). But the most dangerous areas with these so-called immoral cultures are claimed to be the countries we are at war with. And that does not always mean our home's narrative is accurate. So stop looking to the taxpayer again to bail out the wall street corps and lawmakers who want to infiltrate a new country for its dependence on us. Fix THAT trillions of dollars of spending and we don't have to increase taxes.

People want to have so much faith in the judicial system of this country saying all will be resolved with jury and judges. Do yourself a favor and read up on George Stinney and then Breonna Taylor. Then let me know what kind of rationality you create for that.

QR Codes? I'll admit this had me chuckle. I don't carry a QR scanner on me but I think it's creative and smart to have a bargaining chip you're willing to lose in this conversation.

I feel I have already addressed all bullet points previously mentioned in your response, but one more thing about the re-hire: You can't be serious to think that the main focus of a rehire banning will significantly attack those heroic officers who willingly quit. This petition is specifically calling out for the group of officers who abused their power and had to be fired. Some departments will silently suggest to those officers to quit voluntarily after their post verdict of an abuse of power. But that's another loophole that we need to address possibly in another petition or when this one is passed.

You stated "we can't cookie cutter it, people are all different...". I agree with you. If certain states have a law where an officer can be fired simply because "their captain does not like them", that sounds like another piece of bullshit that deserves a different petition to gain attention. But you fail to acknowledge the cookie cut systematic oppression. El Che (Simón Bolívar) & Pancho Villas did not rise to power for rebellion against a fair system or just for the fuck of it. Neither are we and we're not even as radical. We're still civil. No longer asking, demanding equal rights still after centuries of racial violence.

You may be completely okay with a few bad doctors, lawyers, pilots or cops because it's minuscule to associate them with the term "bad apples". But these are not just only a few bad apples that create a little bit of a sad story here in America. You can't condone an attempt to pass legislation for a petition based on too many "what ifs". But that little girl has to grow up without a father now. Your abundance of what if's are leaving her with the most traumatizing “what if's” at an early age as well as others in all communities for the colored. What if George wasn't murdered? What if he was just tried and sent to years (I don’t doubt they would of found a way to make it years) of incarceration still unable to raise his child for passing an illegal tender that HE WAS NOT GIVEN THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL FOR? So to this day remains innocent based on the views of this judicial system. And now what if this same system will eradicate this little girl's life? I will not ask you if a human's life is worth less than the security of our fellow "heroes" because it is not. They took an oath to protect and serve, and all they've been protecting and serving is the interest of the wealthy. The wealthy made from the base of the citizens, the taxpayers so we are the hand that feeds them. And they are threatening us.

[evilelitest2]

Do you know of any good resources on how and why Reagan won? He seemed to have a lot of resistance from the Republican old guard and all four of my grandparents absolutely despised him. But he somehow won with what sounded like was a very unpopular platform, and I don't understand exactly what happened.

I mean most electoral histories will have you covered, are you looking from a cultural perspective or an electoral perspective, or just a general overview of the 1980 election?  Personally I recommend the book “Backlash” on the larger reactionary movement of the 80s which is in no way relevant today...

But in short there are many reasons why Reagan won, many of them depressing familiar today

1) Ronald Reagan was an actor and was a really charismatic speaker, specifically he was very good at seeming friendly, approachable and non condescending.  It was extremely easy to understand Reagan’s message if you weren’t paying attention and he didn’t seem like some sort of elite who understood policies or knew where Cambodia was on a map, because he didn’t either.  With the possible exceptions of JFK, and OBama, Reagan is likely the most charismatic president in the last century and that makes a big difference in the election

2) Jimmy Carter was a bit of a mess.  I love Carter and I think he is one of the most moral people to ever be president (judging on a scale) but...his administration was extremely chaotic, inept, and really bad at messaging.  

3) Reagan cheated.  At his most famous debate with Carter, it turns out Reagan’s team had actaully managed to get Carter’s debate plans before hand, so Reagan knew exactly what Carter was going to say which is why Reagan seemed so invincible in the debate

4) The Economy.  Due to a wide variety of reasons including but not limited too the fallout of the Vietnam War, the OPEC oil crisis, the natural eb and flow of the market, and the failure of Kenysian economics meant that when the 1980 election was happening, America was in a pretty bad economic place.  Unemployment was high, inflation was spiraling and for many white people it was the first time they had ever experienced an economic downturn

This wasn’t really Carter’s fault, just like the economic boom in the 80s wasn’t really Reagan’s fault (though the initial crash certainly was) but that is how it was perceived.

5) The Failure of Kenysian Economics.  Now when I say “failure” i don’t actually mean “this is a bad system” Kenysan economics got us out of the Great Depression after all and lead to the largest economic boom in US history.  However they aren’t the end all, especially when politicians running things don’t really understand what they are doing.  So while they aren’t nearly as awful as the Free market economics that would follow, people were becoming disillusioned with the prior economic model

6) Vietnam.  Oh dear god Vietnam.  Reagan would be the first president who didn’t preside over Vietnam in any way, which meant he wasn’t tainted by the total fuck up that was that war.  America was still reeling from losing our first major war to a small nation that nobody had heard off before they started to kick our ass, and the battle over Vietnam has basically torn the country apart.  A huge amount of people felt pissed and humiliated over the defeat, and rather than question why we went to war or the morality of our tactics, blamed protesters and leftists for not supporting the war enough, a stabbed in the back myth if you will.  Also Vietnam was a Democrat fuck up, Republicans weren’t in power when it started under JFK and LBG, who collectively created the horrific circumstances of the war.  The republicans who oversaw it were the comparatively (to Reagan) more ‘moderates” of Nixon and Ford.  So American both felt humiliated and weak from looking a major war to a people we saw as inferior and was blaming everything associated with the left for it.  Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” message was extremely attractive to a lot of people, and since he didn’t have anything to do with the war, you couldn’t blame him for its failure.  

7) The Soviet Union.  The presence of the USSR hung over every US election since Woodrow Wilson, but after Vietnam a lot of Americans felt like the USSR was winning.  This was ironically utterly untrue as the Soviet Union would collapse only 11 years later, but the perception in America was that the US had been defeated by COMMUNISM and needed to get our groove back for round II.  And Reagan was by far the most aggressively confrontational anti Communist president we have had since FDR, so much so that he accidentally almost triggered a nuclear war and destroyed all of civilizations...whoops.  But that is what American wanted back then

8) The rise of the religious right.  For most of the 20th century, while religion was certainly a thing which effected politics, the US political landscape was largely secular, religion being evoked more than it made its own demands.  But due to rise of the Counter Culture movement, religious folks sort of went into panic mode and suddenly conservative fundamentalist Christianity was one the rise.  And Reagan embraced them 100%, leading to the fundementalist cancer that lives with us to this day

9) The death of the Counterculture.  At the exact same time as the Religious Right came into power, the group it was opposing had largely collapsed.  I mentioned this before when talking about the civil Rights movement, but once overt legal segregation had been outlawed, what was left were the far more serious, complicated and unclear problems, which lead to a lot of hippies burning out, falling into infighting, declaring victory and going home, or turning to more radical and largely ineffectual approaches.  And since so much of the counter culture was linked to to its fashion and aethetic, as the Hippie style/music/clothing/demeanor became lame and uncool, the causes behind them were seen as uncool as well.  Also the most dedicated leftists quickly turned to auto cannibalism and spent more time fighting each other rather than focusing on their enemy a dynamic which the left can always be counted on (cough what happened to Counterpoints cough) 

10) The larger cultural backlash.  America as a whole was feeling threaten by the left, and by extention the progressive made for women, racial minorities, and sexual minorities, and was pushing back against them.  The 60s and 70s was a moment of sudden shocking change which took the old guard by surprise and they didn’t know what to do, but once the left had burned themselves out a bit, the Right was able to reorganize, refocus their efforts, and remake their arguments to reassert the oppressive systems they so valued.  And for a lot of Americans who were passively bigoted, the incredibly fast pace of change got them scared and they sought comfort in the return of the familiar.  Again Reagan wasn’t just an actor, he was a cowboy actor from shitty kitch family films.  And as we’ve seen before in terms of Whitelash or Male Fragility, fear of losing privilege can get people to vote against their own interest (cough union workers cough)

11) America was facing a big choice.  After WWII, we were basically the only major nation with a good economy, which we were able to turn into a great economy, and had an over 20 year post war high.  But other nations started to compete with us (most notably Japan) and our status as the singular nation started to be threatened by the EU, India, China, Latin America, and our own changing history.  For the first time, Americans started to realize that maybe, not right away, but eventually, we would just be one nation among many again, rather than the only superpower.   Simultaneous, the threat of Climate change first started to be noticed, and Americans started to realize that maybe we should tone down the materialism, the consumerism, and the reliance on fossile fuels.  Carter infamously wore sweaters in the white house to save on gas and put solar panels on the roof, which was seen by many Americans (idiots) as weakness.  

Basically we had a choice, we could either 

A) Prepare our nation for the transformation period we were going for, and slowly start to move off oil as our economy changed and we had to make adjustments for it 

or

B) FUCK THAT.  THIS IS AMERICA AND WE DON”T COMPROMISE FOR ANYTHING.  YOU KNOW WHAT...LETS BE EVEN MORE RECKLESS

Americans were asked to choose between accepting an uncomfortable reality or embracing a comforting delusion.  

12) The Iran Hostage crisis.  This made Carter look weak internationally and everybody knows that America looking weak is worth destroying our own internal economy.  

13) The Democrats were in the middle of a civil war.  The Civil Rights movement and the Great Society had torn the democrats apart which means Carter was never really able to get his own party to obey him like the Republicans did.  WHats worse is that the aftereffect of the Vietnam War had basically crippled LBJ’s Great Society Program, meaning the Democrats were really chaotic

14) Finally, it is important to remember, the Democrats had held power from 1932 all the way to 1980s, the US was kind of a single party state for most of the century, and a lot of people were pretty sick of them.  Corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy are around in every party and the democratic congress in particular was widely hated, so the Republicans felt like this new exciting thing, something which could maybe bring a new era in America.  “Its morning in America”

And of course, Reagan was in many ways what white America wants, a giant self congratulatory message that lets us avoid dealing with real issues....

[schoolcalidity]

Understanding Antisemitism

An Offering to our Movement A Resource from Jews For Racial & Economic Justice 

Part II - What is antisemitism? 

What is antisemitism? Originating in European Christianity, antisemitism is the form of ideological oppression that targets Jews. In Europe and the United States, it has functioned to protect the prevailing economic system and the almost exclusively Christian ruling class by diverting blame for hardship onto Jews. Like all oppressions, it has deep historical roots and uses exploitation, marginalization, discrimination and violence as its tools. 

Like all oppressions, the ideology contains elements of dehumanization and degradation via lies and stereotypes about Jews, as well as a mythology. 

The myth changes and adapts to different times and places, but fundamentally it says that Jews are to blame for society’s problems. Since the emergence of Christianity as Europe’s dominant religious, political and cultural force, Jews and Muslims have been targeted for violence—often extreme violence—isolated from the rest of society, and periodically purged from jobs, towns, countries and even continents. 

Antisemitism began as religious intolerance, but has always been at least partly xenophobic or mysophobic; Jews have been cast as outsiders, pollutants or polluted, such as with 15th–16th Century Spanish limpeza de sangre (blood purity) laws.27,28,29,30,31 

Eventually through the development of 25 Pew Research Center for Religion & Public Life, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 2013 retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/income-distribution/ 26 Steven M. Cohen, Ph.D., Jacob B. Ukeles, Ph.D., Ron Miller, Ph.D., “Jewish Community Study Of New York: 2011 Comprehensive Report,” UJA-Federation of New York, 2011, retrieved from: http://www.metcouncil.org/site/DocServer/JCSNY2011ComprehensiveReport.pdf?docID=3161 27 https://www.britannica.com/place/Spain/The-Spanish-Inquisition#ref587479 28 Schäfer, Peter, Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Harvard University Press, 2009 29 Schäfer, Peter. “Response to Christine Hayes and Robert Goldenberg.” 

Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 3, 1999, pp. 274–281. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40753240 30 http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0101. xml#firstMatch 

31 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Antisemitism In History: From The Early Church To 1400.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007170. Accessed on 10/30/2017

 “Privilege is not the same as power...” - Scot Nakagawa 12 Jews For Racial & Economic Justice Medieval antisemitism modern, “scientific” racism, many people began to consider Jews a distinct, inferior and troubling race.

32,33 Because of this process of evolution, sometimes antisemitism today is religious in form, focused on Jews as heretical non-believers, sometimes it is driven by specific myths and stereotypes about Jews, and sometimes it’s racial, rooted in the idea that there is something fixed and inherently, biologically wrong with Jews. Usually it’s a little bit of each. It is important to say that while Christian dogma was central in the development of antisemitism, and Christian hierarchs were often its agents, many Christians throughout history (both secular and religious) have been active allies to Jews, taken grave risks or even given their lives defending Jews from antisemitism. Over time, Christian dogma has become less relevant to antisemitic ideology as the oppression has taken on a life and logic of its own. 

In a review of A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of Antisemitism in America by Frederic Cople Jaher and Antisemitism in America by Leonard Dinnerstein, Professor Till van Rahden writes: “Racist, eugenicist, anti-communist or economic variations of American antisemitism at times certainly used Christian metaphors. Racist, eugenicist forms of antisemitism were genuinely new in ideological substance. Genes replace race replaced revelation as the driving forces of history. It is very likely that racist antisemitism adopted the familiar guise of Christ to secure its victorious career. . . .True, antisemitism was raised and nurtured by Christian doctrine. It will probably never shed the formative influence of its childhood. At the same time, however, antisemitism has grown up and become an ideology of its own, drawing from other traditions such as racism as well. To analyze and effectively combat antisemitism it is important to carefully distinguish between various types of antisemitism that call for different forms of ‘counter narratives.’” more: http://jfrej.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JFREJ-Understanding-Antisemitism-November-2017-v1-3.pdf

34 Engaging in a pattern of behavior that should feel familiar to anyone listening to today’s rightwing rhetoric about immigration and refugees, Christian nobility from antiquity on through the Renaissance curried favor with their populations by placing restrictions on economic opportunities for Jews, and sometimes isolating them physically by confining them to what came to be called ghettos. 

35,36 Prohibited from owning land or joining tradesmen’s guilds, Jews were 32 Rao, Mohan. “‘Scientific’ Racism: A Tangled Skein.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 38, no. 8, 2003, pp. 697–699. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4413238 33 Jackson, John P., and Nadine M. Weidman. “The Origins of Scientific Racism.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 50, 2005, pp. 66–79. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25073379 34 Van Rahden, Till. “American Jewish History.” American Jewish History, vol. 83, no. 4, 1995, pp. 507–511. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23885608 35 Cahnman, Werner J. “Socio-Economic Causes of Antisemitism.” Social Problems, vol. 5, no. 1, 1957, pp. 21–29. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/798945 

36 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-ghettos-of-europe/ Medieval Europe: Jews being burned at the stake. 

Understanding Antisemitism 13 restricted to jobs that Christians found distasteful or were prohibited by the Church, such as money-lending and tax collecting.

37 (There is recent scholarship that contradicts this sequence of events, and suggests that Jews arrived in the cities of early Europe armed with very high literacy rates for the era, seeking better jobs, which means that antisemitic restrictions on Jews were a form of backlash and protectionism.

38) Regardless of the chicken-and-egg nature of this debate, this era saw the genesis of many anti-Jewish myths.

39 Laws that funnelled Jews into certain professions such as money lending could only serve to reinforce these stereotypes. (A parallel is the forced illiteracy of enslaved Africans in many Southern states prior to emancipation, which reinscribes the stereotype that Black people are inherently stupid—a painful lie that persists to this day. In both examples, a present-day oppressive stereotype originates in a prior act of oppression.) After centuries of church indoctrination claiming that Jews rejected Jesus, had killed the son of God, and were agents of the devil, it was easy for European Christians to believe that Jews were the cause of their problems. Whether it was spreading the Black Plague or hoarding a community’s wealth, they were an ideal group to scapegoat. This meant that attention and anger was diverted away from the people who levied the taxes and toward the “strange,” “greedy” Jews tasked with collecting them. Once this mythology was established, it followed Jews throughout Europe, and was exported to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Americas through colonialism and imperial conquest. 

Before European colonialism, Jews in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Central Asia, and the Balkans, lived as one religious minority among many, sometimes socially restricted or targeted for violence as non-Muslims, but most of the time not singled out for persecution or racialized in the way European Jews were.

40 In many Islamic empires, Jews (and Christians) were guarded by dhimmi status and millet laws, which considered non-Muslim religious minorities living under Islamic dominion as second-class, yet protected subjects of the Sultan. Jews maintained relative autonomy over their religious practice, including the freedom to practice their own communal laws of halakha, and often paid a tax to the caliphate in order to do so. Over centuries of coexistence in many Islamic territories, there were indeed sporadic attacks, forced conversions and mass killings of Jews. But the same was true for Christians and other non Muslim minorities.  

37 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Antisemitism In History: The Early Modern Era, 1300–1800.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007172. Accessed on 10/30/2017 

38 Botticini, Maristella, and Zvi Eckstein, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492. Princeton University Press, 2012. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7rv92 

39 https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/119/1/229/20497/Maristella-Botticini-and-Zvi-Eckstein-The-Chosen 

40 Hassan, Riaz. “Interrupting a History of Tolerance: Antisemitism and the Arabs.” Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 37, no. 3, 2009, pp. 452–462. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23655209 The U.S.: 

Detail of a restrictive housing covenant, barring rental or sale to Jews, Negros, Armenians, Persians or Syrians. 

The U.S.: An antisemitic political cartoon from 1896 depicting Jews crucifying Uncle Sam. 

The U.S.: The lynching of Leo Frank by a white mob, thirty days before the reformation of the KKK. 

June, 1915. antisemitism in the u.s. 

14 Jews For Racial & Economic Justice Muslim minorities. 

The key distinction is that there was no specifically anti-Jewish ideology that bore any resemblance to European antisemitism, and for long stretches of time, Jews lived safely alongside their Muslim neighbors. 41 This history disproves narratives that assert universal persecution as the permanent condition of Jews in the world, rather than describing antisemitism as a historically specific product of European society that can also be interrupted. 

That’s why the histories of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews throw a beautiful wrench into attempts (by the right and sometimes the left) to manipulate Jewish fear by universalizing Ashkenazi historical trauma. 

This erasure of Mizrahi and Sephardi history fuels Islamophobia by spreading an inaccurate story about Jewish experiences outside of Europe. As happened across much of the globe, European Christian colonization changed everything. As it extended into the Middle East and North Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, both Christians and Jews from the region were deliberately granted economic and social privileges that were denied to the much larger Muslim population. 

For example, during the French occupation of modern-day Algeria, Jews were given the option of applying for French citizenship under the Cremieux Decree of 1870, while Algerian Muslims were not—one of the first and most significant attempts to divide and thereby weaken the relationship between the two religious groups.

42 British and French colonizers also employed Arab Jews as the representatives of their occupying governments. 

As elements of European antisemitism mixed with the social tensions of a colonized community, these privileges became deeply resented by the Muslim majority, and in some cases, Jews were targeted for violence in moments of societal stress. 

Unfortunately this history has been subsumed by a narrative that minimizes the impact of European colonialism and instead paints Muslims as broadly and inherently anti-Jewish. 

Antisemitism was something European Christians created and brought to the Middle East within the last 150 years. 

Before colonization, there may have been discrimination against Jews, even moments of escalated violence. 

However, there were rarely specific laws—institutional oppressions—that targeted Jews because they were Jews.

43 According to Riaz Hassan: “After reviewing the history of Jewish-Muslim relations, [historian Bernard] Lewis concludes that in general Jewish and Muslim theology are far closer to each other than either is to Christianity. 

Jews have lived under Islamic rule for 14 centuries and in many lands and, while it is difficult to generalise [sic] about their experience, they were never free from discrimination but were rarely subjected to persecution as the case was with Christians. 

Most of the characteristic and distinctive features of Christian antisemitism were absent. There were no fears of Jewish conspiracy and domination, no charges of diabolic evil. Jews were not accused of poisoning wells or spreading the plague and the blood libel.”

44 European antisemitism began to impact the Middle East and North Africa during the Damascus Affair in 1840, in which European colonial powers were deeply involved. 

It only continued to escalate leading up to, during, and after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, as the position of rooted Jewish communities within Arab and Muslim societies became increasingly and devastatingly precarious.

45,46 According to the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, “In the Muslim world, attitudes toward Jews remain starkly negative, including virtually unanimous 

41 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-treatment-of-jews-in-arab-islamic-countries 

42 Abitbol, Michel, and Alan Astro. “The Integration of North African Jews in France.” Yale French Studies, no. 85, 1994, pp. 248–261. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2930080 

43 Stillman, Norman A. The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, The Jewish Publication Society, 1991 

44 Hassan, Riaz, “Asian Journal of Social Science 37,” Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology, Flinders University., (2009) 

45 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-damascus-blood-libel 46 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries Erasure of Mizrahi and Sephardi history fuels Islamophobia by spreading an inaccurate story about Jewish experiences outside of Europe. 

 Understanding Antisemitism 15 unfavorable ratings of 98% in Jordan and 97% in Egypt.”47 However, we must not exceptionalize anti-Jewish attitudes among Muslim people and misread them as an essential, and therefore perennial feature of Islamic theology or society. 

Like the rest of the globe, the Arab and Muslim world was deeply transformed by European Christian colonization and impacted by white supremacy and the ideology of antisemitism that came with it. 

http://jfrej.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JFREJ-Understanding-Antisemitism-November-2017-v1-3.pdf

[dipulb3]

Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-how-dr-seuss-explains-bidens-big-win-on-covid-bill/

Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill

That stress on cultural complaints reflects the shifting source of motivation inside the GOP coalition, with fewer voters responding to the warnings against “big government” once central to the party’s appeal and more viscerally responding to alarms that Democrats intend to transform “our country,” as former President Donald Trump often calls it, into something culturally unrecognizable.

Rahm Emanuel lived through both of those earlier fights as a top White House side to Clinton and Obama’s chief of staff. Compared with the gyrations required to pass those economic plans, he told me, the changes that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other moderates demanded this time were “a nip and tuck. It’s not even plastic surgery.” The modest changes, he says, shows that compared with those earlier periods, the Democratic congressional caucus today is “much more ideologically cohesive.”

Some Democratic strategists warn that the cumulative price tag of the Biden agenda might still trigger a backlash, particularly if interest rates and/or inflation rise, as some economists warn. But for now it’s clear that Democratic moderates are displaying less fear of being tagged with the “big government” label from the right than their counterparts did during the early months of the Clinton and Obama presidencies. That could help Biden consolidate his party for another expensive proposal he’s likely to unveil soon: a broader, infrastructure-centered, economic recovery plan whose price tag will also likely reach the trillion-dollar level.

“I think it’s very clear that on economic issues, the voters … want them to pass stuff and take action, and there’s not a lot of opposition out there,” says Democratic pollster Nick Gourevitch. “So Biden’s got running room.”

Why it’s different this time

As in the famous Sherlock Holmes story, the most revealing dynamic in the legislative debate over the Covid plan may have been “the dog that didn’t bark”: in this case, the absence of a grassroots conservative uprising against the plan, even though its price tag vastly exceeded the Clinton and Obama proposals that ignited more resistance. Polls have consistently found significant majorities of Americans support the Covid relief plan, with Gourevitch’s firm releasing one survey last week that showed it winning support from more than two-thirds of adults, including a plurality of Republicans.

Democratic Rep. Ron Kind, who represents a rural-flavored western Wisconsin district that Trump carried by almost 5 percentage points last November, told me he felt no hesitation about backing the Covid bill. Calls coming into his office, Kind told me, have been “10 to one positive. … The reaction has been amazing: overwhelming support.”

Likewise, Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, who also holds a seat in a blue-collar district Trump won by more than 4 points, says that among his colleagues in swing districts, “Teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, pearl-clutching: All of those were absent in this.”

Changed circumstances partly explain the GOP’s inability to stir serious resistance to the plan. Obama’s economic recovery package was buffeted by the broader public anger over financial institutions’ role in triggering the 2008 housing crisis and severe recession. This time, despite Trump’s frequent efforts to blame the virus on China, Americans seem much more inclined to view the outbreak as a kind of natural disaster that demands a collective response.

“In ’09 there was so much anger in the air, the big fat cats being bailed out … and people were looking for blood and who do we hold accountable,” Kind says. “And that’s not as easy to do when you’ve got a global pandemic.”

Different, too, is the breadth of the pain the virus has inflicted. Clinton’s economic plan followed a relatively mild recession; and while Obama’s responded to a much more serious downturn, the housing crisis still spared most homeowners while crushing others. The small-government “tea party” movement that helped power the huge GOP gains in the 2010 election began with a television rant by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli, who asked, “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

By contrast, the coronavirus outbreak has touched virtually all Americans: Even those who haven’t faced illness in their families, or disruption to their incomes, have seen the routines of daily life disintegrate.

In his central Pennsylvania district, Cartwright says, “you would struggle to find somebody who wasn’t affected by this pandemic negatively in some way.”

That includes local Republican officials in cities and towns, Kind notes, who are eager for the bill’s assistance — despite congressional Republican attempts to tag its aid for local governments as a bailout to poorly run Democratic cities and states. “The [congressional] Republicans are overplaying their hand by trying to make this more partisan than it is back home,” he says. One Republican police chief in his district, Kind says, even told him that by opposing the local aid, Republicans “are the ones who are really defunding law enforcement and our first responders.”

Yet just as important as the changed circumstances may be the evolving priorities of the GOP voter base.

“Donald Trump may have shifted the GOP coalition to a more economically populist position or revealed that there’s just less appetite for spending discipline on the right than there was before,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson told me in an email.

If anything, questions about whether to increase or shrink government are now more likely to divide than unite Republican voters, notes Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. Though Republican partisans still generally recoil at higher taxes and oppose programs they view as transfer payments for the poor, a recent poll of Trump voters that Olsen supervised, for instance, found substantial support among them for spending on Social Security and Medicare (entitlements that benefit the predominantly White senior population).

“I think it’s pretty clear that in the modern Republican Party, spending control for its own sake is a minority taste, not a majority taste, and that partly explains why there hasn’t been this massive uprising at a $1.9 trillion bill,” Olsen says.

GOP anxiety about way of life widespread

As concerns about big government recede, anxiety about America’s changing identity in an era of growing racial and religious diversity has emerged as the core unifying principle of the GOP coalition. A February poll from Echelon Insights, Anderson’s firm, offers one measure of that shift. Asked their top priorities, Republican voters identified illegal immigration, lack of support for the police, liberal bias in media and general moral decline among their top five concerns; high taxes was the sole economic issue that cracked the list.

Olsen’s national survey of Trump voters, conducted in January, found them crackling with the sense that they are culturally and demographically besieged. In that poll, roughly 9 in 10 Trump voters agreed with a series of stark propositions: that America is losing faith in the ideas that make the country great, that Christianity is under attack in the US and that discrimination against Whites “will increase a lot” in years ahead. Overwhelming majorities rejected the idea that Whites have any intrinsic advantage in American society or that Hispanic and Asian immigrants face discrimination. In the recent national American Enterprise Institute survey supervised by Cox, three-fourths of Republicans asserted that discrimination against Whites was as big a problem as bias against minorities.

Olsen argues that racial resentment is overstated as a unifying principle for Trump supporters, instead portraying the common thread as a more general “sense that the American way of life is under attack.” Cox, along with many other political scientists and opinion analysts, disagrees: They argue the claim that Whites face discrimination has been the best predictor of not only support for Trump but also of the belief that the “American way of life” is under such threat that anti-democratic means, including violence, are justified to protect it.

Either way, whether these cultural anxieties are motivated primarily by racial resentment or not, what’s clear is they are burning brighter for GOP voters now than hostility to “big government.” “As conservative White Protestants moved from operating at the periphery of Republican politics to becoming the most critical part of the GOP base, their manifest cultural concerns, which have always incredibly important to these voters, have overshadowed the GOP’s traditional economic agenda,” says Cox.

House Republicans effectively acknowledged that shift by devoting so much attention to the controversy over Dr. Seuss — the National Republican Congressional Committee offered copies of his books to donors — while Democrats were passing a spending bill that towered over anything they had approved under Clinton or Obama. Other Republicans, meanwhile, tried to portray Biden’s use of the word “Neanderthal” to criticize GOP governor rollbacks of Covid restrictions as a slur on Republican voters, like Hillary Clinton’s description of some Trump backers as “deplorables.” While congressional Republicans called the Covid plan “socialist” or charged it was stuffed with Democratic pet projects, they hardly pressed that case with as much enthusiasm as these cultural attacks: “It doesn’t seem like they are even really trying” to discredit the package, says Gourevitch, in a verdict privately echoed by some Republicans.

Next up: Big spending on infrastructure

That half-hearted resistance seems likely to encourage Democrats to go big on the next stage of Biden’s economic agenda: the “Build Back Better” long-term growth proposal that will include a substantial infrastructure investment. Though the White House has not decided when to introduce the proposal, it will almost certainly include infrastructure spending in the range of about $300 billion annually, for a cumulative price tag over 10 years in the trillions.

Yet both inside the White House and Congress, Democrats are showing little hesitation about proposing that much new spending immediately after a package this big. Both Kind and Cartwright, holding districts that stretch deep into Trump country, say they would enthusiastically support a big infrastructure plan.

“I’d be very comfortable with it,” Cartwright says. “I have been serving in the US House since January 2013 and the whole time I have been saying out loud we need a big, big infrastructure package. It’s not just that the folks around here who build things for a living will benefit, it’s that the entire American economy will benefit.”

Steve Ricchetti, the White House counselor to Biden, told me the administration expects broad support for the infrastructure package when the President eventually unveils it.

“I believe there will be wide, deep bipartisan support for infrastructure because the need is so great,” he says. “I believe there’s a prospect for securing bipartisan support in Congress for this, but I am certain there will be bipartisan support throughout the country for this: governors, mayors, local officials whose economies are dependent on infrastructure investment, digital, energy, transportation, water. The business community will be enormously supportive of this; it’s an engine for the recovery.”

The open question for Biden, as he finalizes his next proposals, is whether there’s a cumulative weight of proposed spending that awakens the slumbering conservative recoil against “big government.” Both Clinton and Obama saw the grassroots backlashes against their agendas intensify when they followed their initial economic plans with other expensive proposals, particularly their efforts to overhaul the health care system. Each of those dynamics culminated in crushing losses for them in the first midterm after their election.

Compared with the Clinton or Obama experience, Democrats unquestionably feel they have more runway to advance new programs today, largely because the GOP coalition no longer seems as energized by opposition to spending. But if the political limits on new spending seem relaxed, that doesn’t ensure they have been eliminated. It’s possible Americans will accept trillions in spending beyond the Covid plan, but it’s also possible Biden and fellow Democrats might trigger a circuit breaker in public opinion if they go too far — particularly if inflation and interest rates rise from all the economic stimulus as even some Democratic economists have warned. Demands from moderates such as Manchin to find offsetting tax revenues for some or all of the infrastructure plan could also stir more conservative opposition.

The problem is that both the cost of the federal response and the underlying disruption to society from the pandemic are so unprecedented that no one can confidently predict how much more spending Biden can add to his tab without provoking the backlash he has conspicuously avoided so far. Even Emanuel, who rarely expresses doubt, acknowledges, “I’m not even sure I can give you an educated guess on that.”

The safest bet is that so long as the GOP remains fixated on cultural and racial grievance, Democrats will feel confident pushing forward the most aggressive expansion of government’s role in the economy since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society during the 1960s.

[displacedprincess]

True Facts About Elena & Avalor

A collection of headcanons about Avalor

Country Facts

Official languages: (Avaloran) Spanish, (Avaloran) Portuguese, Avaloran Sign Language

major announcements from the government are given in Spanish, Portuguese, and AvSL.

88% of Avalorans are bilingual in Spanish and Portuguese

there are pockets of Portuguese-monolingual speakers, mostly along the border with Brazil.

other common minority languages: Amerindian languages such as Quechua, Arabic (tied for fastest growing), Farsi/Dari (tied for fastest growing), Chinese (mainly Cantonese or Hokkien), French, German, English, Russian, others

Arabic and Farsi/Dari, and Pashto are becoming more widely spoken due to Avalor having taken in refugees from the Middle East conflicts

A huge number of asylum seekers from magick-hostile countries come to Avalor as well - hence large pockets of Russian, German, and French speakers.

Avalor is full of natural resources; gold, nickel, copper, and an abundance of rivers.

The country has a small coastline, where the capital city is located, and mountain regions bordering Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil.

There are also several islands as part of Avalor’s territory

 80% of Avalor’s electricity is hydo or solar powered. Of the remaining twenty percent, 15% is wind-powered, 2% is from tidal energy, and only 3% is from non renewable sources like coal.

Avalor was heavily influenced by Catholicism in its development, but it’s not the dominating religion anymore. Catholicism and Protestantism are about evenly matched in numbers. 

The biggest protestant denominations in Avalor are - Nazarene, Methodist and Presbyterian

The Avaloran nobility tend to practice Catholicism more devoutly than the lower classes; lower classes are more religiously diverse

Avalor has the 4th highest population of Jewish people in Latin America, behind Argentina, Uruguay, and Panama.

Islam and Buddhism are the fastest growing religions in Avalor.

Some Amerindian peoples practice their traditional religions.

Avalor is prone to earthquakes, and occasional volcanic eruptions - there are only ten known active volcanoes in the country. 

In 2008, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck a small city near Avalor City, causing widespread damage throughout most of the small country. Landslides, fires, thousands lost their homes, and almost one hundred people were killed. Then fourteen-year-old Princess Elena criticized foreign governments on social media, and again publicly during a press conference, for being slow to aid her country. Her parents apologized on her behalf, but the princess made it very clear in a Tweet following the apology that she was “not sorry, and that people are dying, they don’t have time for me dance around your feelings while calling the world out for failing us.”

The racial makeup of Avalor is primarily mestizo and white, with sizable Afro-Avaloran (growing fast as well) and Amerindian populations, and growing Asian (East, South, Southeast) and Middle Eastern populations. 

Avalor is often considered a third-world country, but many Avalorans would disagree and they reject the term “developing. ” 

Avalor’s literacy rate is 96.2% of total population

Average life expectancy is 88

Avalor’s birth rate has fallen in recent decades, with higher education becoming much more affordable, birth control methods being covered under the country’s national healthcare program, comprehensive sex-ed being more widespread, and women now marrying later and having babies later.

The birth rate currently sits at 2.33 babies for every one woman

As recently as the 1980s, the birth rate was 4.10 children

Avalorans do tend to have larger families than other industrialized countries - most families want at least two, family is very important in Avaloran society

Average age of first birth in 1975: 20; average age of first birth in 2015: 26

Average age men first marry: 28; Average age women first marry: 24

Women are generally marrying only 3-4 years later than they did in 1975, but they are holding off on having children for a few years.

Despite the drastic plummet in the birth rate, Avalor’s population alternates between stagnant and growing, due to the steady birth rate of 2-3 children per family and the large immigrant population.

Immigrant families to Avalor typically maintain much of their home culture, Avalorans tend to encourage it, and the local governments celebrate cultural holidays celebrated by large minorities in their regions.

A study by the University of Avalor - Avalor City, found that immigrant children marry into native born Avaloran families, other immigrant group families, and families within their own immigrant group about equally

Another study has shown that immigrant groups typically feel welcomed, and that their biggest concern before and after arrival is usually learning Spanish.

Common vectorborne diseases include - dengue fever, malaria, and yellow fever

Common food and waterborne illnesses in poorer, rural areas include - hepatitis A and typhoid fever

King Raul and Queen Lucia signed into law that children must be vaccinated to attend public school

Avalor is relatively easy to become a citizen of

citizen by birth

dual citizenship is recognized

must live in Avalor for 6 years before becoming a naturalized citizen

exceptions can be petitioned for, for parents, children, and spouses to speed the process along by 2 years

Avalor’s Military is comprised of five branches

Avaloran Army

Avaloran Navy

Avaloran Air Force

Avaloran Marine Corps

Avaloran Royal Guard*

*The Royal Guard is not always directly enlisted into, but can be. The Guard pulls many of its members from the AMC Special Forces. Training for the guard is known to be exceptionally rigorous.

Enlistment for active duty service begins at 18 years old

Until 2007, there was a compulsory enlistment written into law for men and women 18-24 for a period lasting eighteen months. King Raul and Queen Lucia ratified an amendment to the Constitution eliminating the draft.

Voting rights are given to all citizens at age 18. Felons are permitted to vote in most of the country, as of 2013. This was a social change supported by the late King and Queen and signed into law by Princess Elena.

There is no legal minimum age to smoke cigarettes, but purchasing, you have to be nineteen.

The minimum purchasing age of alcohol is eighteen, but in the presence of a parent or guardian, teenagers are often permitted a beer, a glass of wine, or a cocktail in restaurants. The alcohol culture in Avalor is similar to parts of Europe, where it’s introduced in controlled environments at an early age.

Most of the population doesn’t own a car. City dwellers take trains, buses, bikes, or walk. Townspeople bike or walk to the nearest bus or train station.

Horses aren’t commonly owned outside of the upper class.

Avalor is a popular study abroad destination for magick and mundus alike.

Pop Culture

Princess Elena is a style icon in her country and surrounding South American countries. Anything she’s spotted wearing sells out the next day, and designers were always asking if they could design a dress for her for X event.

Gabe is in the background and occasionally foreground of a lot of pictures of Elena that come up on Google Images. If you type in “Hot Avaloran Guard”, pictures of Gabe come up.

There’s a collection of thirst tweets out there about Gabe, Elena used to read them out loud to him.

American late night comedy shows are popular in Avalor, and Avalor has several of their own. The most popular is Avalor Esta Noche con Andre Esquivel. Andre Esquivel is often called the Jon Stewart of Avalor.

Avalor has a version of SNL, and Princess Elena is often parodied on the program. Her parents were too, and Esteban also is. All four had hosted the program at least once - Elena, twice. Once when she was 15, shortly before her parents were killed, and the second time when she was nineteen.

The Avaloran royal family, since SNL Avalor’s debut in the late 90s, has always supported the show for its satire - even when it was about them. They’re known for laughing at themselves and encouraging political satire because, in the words of the late King Raul Castillo, “A good leader welcomes criticism, both satirical and serious, because a good leader doesn’t attack journalists and comedians for doing their jobs.”

SNL Avalor liked to parody Elena for sneaking out of the palace to go dancing, often portraying her as a ditzy party girl.

Conversely, whenever Princess Elena told off another world leader via Twitter or Instagram, in a press conference, or told off an Avaloran politician that the Avaloran public also disliked, she was portrayed as a boss bitch on SNL Avalor. It depended on what they wanted to go for at the moment.

The actress who usually plays Elena on SNL Avalor is named Lana Basa; however, actor Pepe de Castro often dons a wig and a dress to portray the princess.

Avaloran telenovelas are known in several other countries, but they also have a following for their romantic comedy dramas, shot in a similar style to Korean and Chinese TV dramas.

Avaloran cinema is relatively well-known throughout Latin America.

A handful of Avaloran actors have broken into bigger industries. Juan Añonuevo is the Avaloran actor even Americans know, and Felisa Mondragón is the Avaloran actress most known.

[asatrueliberdade]

Considerations about being a “mindset focused” Heathen in Brazil

Sonne Heljarskinn

If one wants to understand what it means to be Heathen in South America, specifically in Brazil, it must be important to notice that there are many ways in which people call themselves as Heathens outside our country.

Nevertheless, we will deal here with the idea of reconstructionist Heathenry focused in the revivalism of the worldview, ideology, psychology, cosmology and religious practices of ancient or arch-Heathens, before their conversion to Christianity. It is in this way that the complex word “heathen” will be used in this piece.

So, if we want to analyze our situation here as this kind of heathens, we will have to agree that we have some advantages and some problems. Some of these problems can be found in several other places where Western civilization placed itself, and some of them are most concerned to our own historical development as a so called “third world” country.

As Freud argues in “Totem and Taboo”, “evolution” to (Western) civilization is individualization. Understanding the way in which tribal peoples, no matter if they are Tupi, Guarani, African or Germanic, place themselves to perceive and relate to the world “outside” of what modern Westerns call “Self” is an superhuman effort. Recognizing thought patterns and the subtle shadings which guide(d) tribal peoples is very satisfying though.

But most people became satisfied with taking points that they could easily recognize and reinterpret through modern (post-Christian, post-cartesian and post-illuminist) Western lens. It is the rule, and we even cannot blame them for doing so. After five centuries of Christianization in Brazil we are apparently somewhat far from our pre-Christian past than some other cultures around the world, and even our neighbors who were colonized by Spain. But that seems not to be the case maybe in Pará and Amazônia, as well some of other regions where people were not so culturally influenced by the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (which hold, in spite their industrialization, most people who call themselves as Norse pagans or Heathens).

We are not saying that people who do not seek for the application of the whole heathen worldview’s content that is still available to us “are doing it wrong” at all. But, if we look to the arch-Heathens, approaching them to learn and live their mindset(s) today (what is NOT the aim of all those which call themselves as Heathens), there are several many ways in which pre-Christian peoples did not act, think, live, nor worship as well as there is no single “right way” for many of these points. Cyclical time, hearth cult, ancestors’ worship, heroes’ worship, animism (or the belief in a supernatural reality interwoven to ours in the way that the arch-Heathens probably understood), active fate (wyrd and ørlög), world acceptance and the gifting cycle are roughly understood and agreed as “core points” of a Heathen worldview in Brazil, where “orthodoxy” (which here means nothing but a religious empathy to the Æsir and in some cases the Vanir) absolutely reigns over the orthopraxy common to ancient and living indigenous, pagan or pre-Christian peoples around the world. If one tries to point out that any Heathen should act aiming to reach these heathen worldview’s elements, he probably will be misinterpreted. Even if we have left alone “the single right way” to approach any of these core points.

If Christianity and Catholicism influence us for the bad, we cannot say it for the good. We have so many troubles to organize ourselves as a community, preferring to act as a bunch of individual mystical or spiritual seekers (in the negative sense), instead of as a community. Valhalla is still our heaven, and alcohol our Holy Communion. We cannot see the earth as our land, and the underworld as the place where our Ancestors live. The wind is still unseen and unheard, and the waters are still a product. The desacralization of both our daily lives and environment, if appointed by someone, is mocked as “new age” attitude. The individual is still their last undivided unity, and the groups can’t live because of their absence of tribal understanding. But I still think that we can, as a “third world” and a bit less individualized society, progress in this point roughly faster than people condensed outside Latin America. We just have to understand that reciprocity is not charity and community and tribe are not “evil communism”.

I think that most of these problems come from the fact that we have hard problems to deal with English – the language which holds the greater part of published books, research and papers concerning to Heathenry. I am quite literally learning English because I research about Heathenry. And I cannot even have done the first step without a friendly pressure of a priceless friend called Andreia. As Luther in the Dark Age, we must to convert Heathenry as a native idea, a folk centered practice, instead of a way to create a cult over our supposed wisdom of heathen subjects. English to us represents what Latin did to Germans in the Middle Ages. We have to get our books in Portuguese, not only Sagas, Eddas and academic papers (even though NEVE (Viking and Scandinavian Studies’ Center) is doing a pretty useful work), but true heathen books and content done by Heathens for Heathens.

Racism – yes, we should to talk about it again – is a large problem. If in United States we have an open hate spreading through culture, the supposed “racial democracy” stated in Brazil we have the exhausting common “I’m not racist but… (insert your bigoted discourse here)”. “I’m not racist but Norse paganism is for white people”, and they just forget that, even if Heathenry was only for those who have white Ancestors, well, they raped our Native and African foremothers and created us. Skin tone does not imply in itself religion, as Jung wrongly said (of course, for lots of white folks, familial heritage or bloodline is directly equal to skin color). Heathenry is the way in which I project myself towards my Ancestors, Nature, and Human Community. It is a way of seeing and relating to the world and judging my own acts. It is a culture. And a culture is acquired through socialization, not by blood. And socialization depends upon geography. A geographical and cultural outsider could understand and adopt a culture if one strove to do so. This is why I reject the poor theology (influenced by Jewish-Christian mindset) of a people chosen by a god, to reign over the world. Also, we are but one of the various silent or visible conscious nature’s beings which populate this world.

Within the large cities where most of Pagans live today we also have to deal with the fact that a mediaeval fair could but should not necessarily be one of the few events to revive heathen religious practices. Heathenry is not just a section in an online or offline market. I think that in this point we are not so different from the rest of the world, but we struggle every day to show newcomers that to be Heathen is far more than tattooing an ancient symbol in his body, or acquiring products made to attract pagan consumers. Heathen is something you are, not something you bought. We also have to deal with people that treat Eddas and Sagas not as tales of the arch-Heathens, but as a species of Sacred Books, teaching the wisdom of the God(s). If you are a mindset focused Heathen it is quite curious that you prefer to buy rather than make something or that you are looking for a Holy Book among peoples who were in their majority illiterate.

There are also some people who do not understand the differences between the meanings of “religion” and “belief” to the arch-Heathens and Christians, and want to see a centralized institution (probably guided by themselves) dictating practices and beliefs to other Heathens. Even if they cannot state clearly which are the differences between Christian and Heathen worldview and practices. Even if they cannot understand religion outside the box of the “pray to gods” Christian custom.

But the most painful point of being a mindset focused Heathen in Brazil is isolation. Heathens are nothing but an inexpressive and almost inexistent minority of our population. If you live in a large city in the Southeast or South, you will probably find more Heathens and Norse Pagans in general to love or to hate (being a Heathen or Norse Pagan almost never makes someone be nicer than he or she would be if he or she were not a Heathen or Norse Pagan). We worship our individual selves in a way in which most of us are not able to build a common religious practice, something that we can give to our sons as a heritage. So, it is hard to mindset focused Heathenry to grow up here since a mindset, to live, must be shared and constantly exercised. If one does not interact with people who share the same culture, values, ideas, understandings, ways of acting, he or she will be incorporated and homogenized within the mainstream (Western, with all its contemporary implications) culture. 

Mindset focused Heathenry is not an easy thing. But it fairly rewards those who honestly dare to break new ground. We have, as Brazilians and Heathens, our indigenous peoples to look for wisdom, and help as well as guide us in this ancestral path. We have our green and living land, even if it is not that “cold beauty” of the snowy northern hemisphere. We have our mango trees, so vivid and sacred in our daily lives as the European oaks. We have our own sacred wells, our powerful Ancestors, and primal wights which wander here since forgotten times. Also, Visigoths, Vandals and Suebi provides us with their Germanic cultural influence through Portuguese colonization. The young Brazilian Heathen community has to discover its own surroundings, Ancestral links and way to manifest themselves in the world as Heathens. We have to face our own giants but, as Beowulf did in his tale, I, as a Brazilian Heathen, am ready to fight to protect my kin, my relatives and this heathen culture I learned to love since I first met it.

[veronicamarquez1-blog]

Racial and Ethnic Groups 14th Edition Test Bank

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   View Sample Chapter below:

 Chapter 5 – Ethnicity and Religion

 Quick Quiz

 Multiple Choice Questions

 1.     Which of the following best describes White privilege?

2.     It refers to actions that cause better qualified White men to be passed over for women and minority men.

3.     It refers to taking school seriously and accepting the authority of teachers and administrators.

4.     It refers to the process by which a dominant White group and a subordinate non-White group combine through intermarriage to form a new group.

5.     It refers to the rights granted as a benefit or favor of being White and can be an element of Whiteness.

 Answer: d

 Question Title: TB_05_01_Studying Whiteness_Remember_LO 5.1

Learning Objective: 5.1: Understand what is meant by “Whiteness.”

Topic: Studying Whiteness

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 114

 2.     ________ was considered to be an early exception to the assimilationist approach to White ethnic groups.

3.     The principle of third generation interest

4.     Ethnic pluralism

5.     Symbolic ethnicity

6.     The theory of bicultural immersion

 Answer: a

 Question Title: TB_05_02_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Remember_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 115

 3.     What is the ethnic paradox?

4.     the portrayal of the problems of ethnic minorities as their fault rather than recognizing society’s responsibilities

5.     the maintenance of one’s ethnic ties in a way that can assist with one’s assimilation in larger society

6.     the belief that one’s own culture is not as good as the dominant culture in society

7.     the actions that cause better qualified Whites to be passed over for ethnic minority men

 Answer: b

 Question Title: TB_05_03_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Remember_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 115

 4.     Immigrant youth as well as adults who maintain their ethnicity tend to have ________.

5.     a higher incidence of truancy

6.     a higher incidence of delinquency

7.     more success as indicated by educational attainment

8.     less success as indicated by health measures

 Answer: c

 Question Title: TB_05_04_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Remember_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 115

 5.     ________ is the religious dimension in the United States that merges public life with sacred beliefs.

6.     Civil religion

7.     Religious left

8.     Religious ethnicity

9.     Symbolic denomination

 Answer: a

 Question Title: TB_05_05_Religious Pluralism_Remember_LO 5.7

Learning Objective: 5.7: State what is meant by religious pluralism.

Topic: Religious Pluralism

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 130

 6.     ________ reject both assimilation and coexistence in some form of cultural pluralism.

7.     Creationists

8.     Secessionist minorities

9.     Transnationals

10.   Secessionist revisionists

 Answer: b

 Question Title: TB_05_06_Religious Pluralism_Remember_LO 5.7

Learning Objective: 5.7: State what is meant by religious pluralism.

Topic: Religious Pluralism

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 135

 Short Answer Questions

 7.     ________ are people who support a literal interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis on the origins of the universe and argue that evolution should not be presented as established scientific thought.

 Answer: Creationists

 Question Title: TB_05_07_Religious Pluralism_Remember_LO 5.8

Learning Objective: 5.8: Interpret how the courts have ruled on religion.

Topic: Religious Pluralism

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 136

 8.     What is intelligent design?

 Answer: It is the idea that life is so complex that it could only have been created by a higher intelligence.

 Question Title: TB_05_08_Religious Pluralism_Remember_LO 5.8

Learning Objective: 5.8: Interpret how the courts have ruled on religion.

Topic: Religious Pluralism

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 136

 Multiple Choice Questions

 9.     Which of the following statements is true of contemporary White people in the context of race?

10.   They have a conscious racial identity.

11.   They think of themselves as a special race.

12.   They do not enjoy being reminded of their Whiteness.

13.   They do not downplay the importance of their racial identity.

 Answer: c

 Question Title: TB_05_09_Studying Whiteness_Understand_LO 5.1

Learning Objective: 5.1: Understand what is meant by “Whiteness.”

Topic: Studying Whiteness

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

Difficulty Level: 2 – Moderate

Page Reference: 114

 10.   When race is articulated or emphasized for Whites, it is more likely to ________.

11.   be seen as threatening to Whites

12.   restrict Whites from embracing their own race

13.   allow them to embrace their national roots with pride

14.   result in increased anti-Black bias

 Answer: a

 Question Title: TB_05_10_Studying Whiteness_Remember_LO 5.1

Learning Objective: 5.1: Understand what is meant by “Whiteness.”

Topic: Studying Whiteness

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 114

 11.   Ethnic maintenance is typically measured by ________.

12.   economic success

13.   educational attainment

14.   facility in the religious scriptures

15.   facility in the mother language

 Answer: d

 Question Title: TB_05_11_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Remember_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 115

 12.   According to which of the following, is there an increase in ethnic interest and awareness in the grandchildren of the original immigrants?

13.   the principle of third generation interest

14.   self-fulfilling prophecy

15.   symbolic ethnicity

16.   the theory of bicultural immersion

 Answer: a

 Question Title: TB_05_12_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Remember_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 115

 13.   Which of the following lays emphasis on ethnic food and ethnically associated political issues rather than deeper ties to one’s heritage?

14.   ethnic paradox

15.   civil religion

16.   secessionist minority

17.   symbolic ethnicity

 Answer: d

 Question Title: TB_05_13_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Understand_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

Difficulty Level: 2 – Moderate

Page Reference: 117

 14.   Which of the following statements is true about the ethnicity that exists in the twenty-first century?

15.   White ethnics have completely relinquished their ethnic identity.

16.   Ethnicity, as embraced by English-speaking Whites, includes active involvement in ethnic activities and participation in ethnic-related organizations.

17.   Sizable proportions of White ethnics have gained large-scale entry into almost all clubs, cliques, and fraternal groups.

18.   Ethnicity has become increasingly central to the lives of members of the ethnic group.

 Answer: c

 Question Title: TB_05_14_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Understand_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Understand the concepts

Difficulty Level: 2 – Moderate

Page Reference: 117

 15.   The persistence of ethnic consciousness of a unique group that developed a cultural tradition distinct from that of the mainstream depends on ________.

16.   foreign birth

17.   a distinctive language

18.   experiences in the United States

19.   a unique way of life

 Answer: c

 Question Title: TB_05_15_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Remember_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Remember the facts

Difficulty Level: 1 – Easy

Page Reference: 117

 16.   Which of the following is true of maintaining ethnicity and assimilating into the dominant culture?

17.   The ethnic community members are under constant psychological stress.

18.   The ethnic community members may get a financial boost from the ethnic community.

19.   The ethnic community members get a negative self-esteem.

20.   The ethnic community members are inhibited from competing effectively in a larger society.

 Answer: b

 Question Title: TB_05_16_Rediscovering Ethnicity_Understand_LO 5.2

Learning Objective: 5.2: Describe how people rediscover ethnicity.

Topic: Rediscovering Ethnicity

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

Difficulty Level: 2 – Moderate

Page Reference: 117

 17.   Luca claims his ancestors came from the country that was the largest single source of White immigrants to the United States. His ancestors were most likely from ________.

18.   England

19.   Ireland

20.   Mexico

21.   Germany

 Answer: d

 Question Title: TB_05_17_The German Americans_Apply_LO 5.3

Learning Objective: 5.3: Recall the German American experience.

Topic: The German Americans

Skill Level: Apply What You Know

Difficulty Level: 3 – Difficult

Page Reference: 117

 18.   Which of the following statements is true of German immigrants in the early history of America?

19.   German became the national language owing to the large numbers of German immigrants.

20.   The proceedings of the Continental Congress were published in English but not in German.

21.   German Americans established bilingual programs in many public schools.

22.   The English Americans welcomed German immigrants and treated them equally.

 Answer: c

 Question Title: TB_05_18_The German Americans_Understand_LO 5.3

Learning Objective: 5.3: Recall the German American experience.

Topic: The German Americans

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

Difficulty Level: 2 – Moderate

Page Reference: 117

 19.   Which of the following statements is true about German Americans in the twenty-first century?

20.   The German-American National Alliance declined membership to urban Protestant middle-class German Americans.

21.   With World War I and the rise of the Nazi era, most German Americans distanced themselves from the politics in Germany.

22.   With the end of wartime tensions, German Americans moved from having a single identity of White to multiple identities.

23.   German Americans were denied permanent residential status due to the Nazi tyranny in Germany.

 Answer: b

[newstfionline]

Risk of a new civil war? Today ‘us and them’ differs from 1850s.

By Peter Grier, CS Monitor, October 19, 2018

A nation divided into groups of angry, polarized voters.

Political parties splintering under the stress of social and ideological disagreements.

Distrust in institutions. Constant partisan accusations. Widespread conspiracy theories about the perfidy of the other side.

Powerful new communication networks that spread news of all this throughout the United States.

Is this a staccato description of the state of America today? Yes it is. But just as much, it’s a sketch portrait of the 1840s and 1850s, the era of national upheaval prior to the explosion of the Civil War.

These two periods aren’t exact analogies, of course. Chattel slavery was an evil and a means of division rarely matched in history. Nineteenth century America was steeped in personal and political violence; national democratic government then was relatively young and unformed, trying to find its way.

But “then” was an extreme version of “now,” and the results of its extremity may hold lessons for today. In the 1850s provocative action begat more provocative action, creating and then feeding a whirlwind that ended in fighting. National politics became so dysfunctional it broke down the public consensus that underlay republican governance.

Modern America is not in danger of falling into a second Civil War, says Jason Phillips, Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Civil War Studies at West Virginia University, and author of the new book “Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future.”

It’s too simplistic to overlay 2018 on 1858 and say that the patterns of today’s events predict a similar outcome, Dr. Phillips says.

That said, one of the lessons of that past conflict might be that the polarized factions of politics should take each other’s words more seriously. Many Northerners didn’t believe Southern threats of secession if Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Southerners scoffed at Northern vows to fight for Union.

“We are better off if we just try to listen to each other and take each other seriously,” Phillips says.

Before turning the clock back 170 years to examine similarities and differences between modern America and the antebellum era, it might be useful to look at the nature of the current division in the US electorate. That’ll give a baseline from which to proceed and compare citizens now and citizens then.

America today is not split neatly into Northern and Southern factions. There are Democrats in the cities of Texas, Florida, and Georgia. There are Republicans in the hardscrabble areas of rural New England and Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

But there is, increasingly, an “us” and “them.” The election of President Trump did not start this pattern of polarization. It’s been slowly developing for decades. But the Trump era has electrified the barrier of party division. His supporters love what they consider his blunt talk about gender, ethnicity, and racial conflict. His opponents hate it. The result is a spiral of angry words.

Political polarization is at an all-time high. Ironically, it is only partly about politics in the traditional sense. There are issues that still divide Republicans and Democrats--abortion, guns--but policy outcomes aren’t always the main point.

Even when the parties agree on what to do about a particular national problem, they view each other suspiciously and put winning as a group over all else, writes Lilliana Mason, an assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, in her recently published book “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.”

In large part this is due to the fact that the parties have become increasingly socially homogeneous, according to Dr. Mason. More and more, Republicans are white, often Christian, and in the Trump era, predominantly male. Democrats are the party of minorities and many whites with higher levels of education.

The parties are more ideologically homogeneous as well. Conservative Southern whites used to be Democrats. As their party became more liberal and pushed major civil rights legislation in the 1960s, those voters drifted toward the Republicans. That switch is now largely complete. Liberal Republicans aren’t extinct, but can see extinction from where they’re standing. Like a rare species of woodpecker, they are now mostly limited to habitat found in small areas in the Northeast.

The bottom line: Social identity is now at the heart of the two big parties that govern America. They’re split along racial, religious, and cultural lines. The crosscutting social ties that once promoted partisan understanding have withered. Democrats and Republicans live in different neighborhoods, send their kids to different schools, attend different churches, and increasingly inhabit their own news and information bubbles.

Social identity is powerful. It can prize winning for “us” above specific policy results. In that sense, candidate Donald Trump was a good fit for a new age in 2016. He vowed to win until his supporters were sick of winning--without many specifics of how, or in what.

“In this political environment, a candidate who picks up the banner of ‘us versus them’ and ‘winning versus losing’ is almost guaranteed to tap into a current of resentment and anger across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently divided neatly by party,” according to Professor Mason.

Resentment and anger. Racial, religious, and cultural animosity. Neat party division. Those things existed in America in abundance in 1850 as well as 2018.

It’s a comparison that’s occurred to lots of political writers. There has been lots of apocalyptic Second Civil War punditry in recent months. Among the most notable: columnist Thomas Friedman in The New York Times (“The American Civil War, Part II”), veteran defense writer and author Thomas Ricks in Foreign Policy (“Will We Have a 2nd Civil War? You Tell Me”), and longtime foreign correspondent Robin Wright in The New Yorker (“Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?”).

Such stories have been numerous enough to spark a backlash. “Stop Making Second American Civil War Clickbait” wrote Dylan Matthews in Vox in June.

Indeed, worries about America coming undone in some new kind of armed and dangerous civil conflict are unfounded, says Phillips, author of “Looming Civil War.” He bases his belief on one big difference between the eras: the way in which people imagine their future.

In the late 1850s, as conflict over slavery increased and the nation’s political atmosphere darkened, Americans began to expect armed conflict, says Phillips. Some dreaded it. Many others, on both sides, embraced it as inevitable and thought war might cleanse and shape the nation to desired ends. They rushed toward combat, physically and metaphorically. Author Louisa May Alcott expressed this view in an 1861 letter, writing that she “yearned for a battle like a warhorse when he smells powder.”

Today we know better. War is a terrible inferno that builds on itself. The anticipatory feeling of the years before Fort Sumter seems naïve.

“We don’t have the same view they had, that the war was something you could control,” says Phillips. “Nowadays you can start wars but they’re not easy to stop. Wars don’t end problems.”

Still, there are political parallels between the eras, Phillips says. The first and most obvious is that the emotional partisanship visible in Washington today was also evident in the 1850s.

The division then was largely between North and South, and the divisive element was slavery. The North feared a despotic “Slave Power”--a sectional conspiracy they felt controlled the national government and was plotting to expand slavery into new territories. The South feared the North wanted to flex its industrial might and larger population to destroy its economic system and way of life.

When one side did something to defend its position, the other saw it as a provocation, and made a defensive move viewed as a provocation in turn. The result was a spiral of outrage, not unlike the situation in Washington today, where partisanship produces legislative gridlock.

“These are the places our politics can go if we get to a point where it is no longer possible to compromise,” says Julie Novkov, professor of political science and women’s studies at the State University of New York at Albany, and contributor to the political history blog “A House Divided.”

In the 1850s, this stress ripped the national political parties apart. Whigs, defined by their opposition to Andrew Jackson’s populist Democrats, fell apart. Democrats split between Northern and Southern factions. These elements recombined, with Democrats on one side and the new Republican Party on the other. The South called the new organization “Black Republicans.” Partisan anger became so intense that physical combat broke out repeatedly in congressional chambers.

The new book “The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War,” by Yale historian Joanne Freeman, is a fascinating look at the details of this conflict and its obvious echoes today. Dr. Freeman documents more than 70 violent clashes between lawmakers in the House or Senate, or nearby, in the years between 1830 and 1860.

Southern lawmakers were at first the drivers of the violence. Dueling was still accepted and even common in the South, and in Washington Southern “bullies”--a word they used themselves--taunted and called out Northern counterparts. Such tactics helped enforce gag rules prohibiting floor discussion of antislavery petitions.

Most Northerners were “noncombatants.” That meant they rejected dueling and the logic of the so-called code of honor that lay behind it as illegal and immoral. At least, they were noncombatants at first. Years of abuse and humiliation pushed many into becoming fighters. They armed themselves against attacks in chambers or on the street. And their constituents approved. Some even sent guns for self-defense to their elected representatives.

Meanwhile, the press heightened the tension. Newspapers in both North and South pushed conspiracy theories about alleged nefarious plots to grab power on the other side. And the new technology of the telegraph gave editors added power. Accusations could quickly blanket the nation. No longer could politicians muddle through with ambiguous positions: The telegraph ended the practice of lawmakers saying one thing to one type of audience, and another thing to another group, secure in the knowledge that neither would hear what had been said to the other.

Things came to a head in February 1858. A hothead Southern congressman and a Northern colleague got into a fistfight during a nighttime debate on the incendiary issue of the slavery status of Kansas. Southerners raced in a group to defend their man--and Northerners, some armed, leaped over desks and vaulted down the aisles to return blow for blow. It was a true melee in front of the Speaker’s platform, a sectional conflict that presaged the war to come.

History does not repeat but it does teach, to steal a phrase. Dr. Freeman’s “Field of Blood” shows what can happen when extremely polarized leaders fight over what kind of nation the United States will become in an atmosphere of distrust, threatened violence, and press manipulation. Voters may now hold Congress in low esteem, but what it does, or doesn’t do, matters.

“The lessons of their time ring true today: when trust in the People’s Branch shatters, part of the national ‘we’ falls away,” Freeman concludes.

On the scale of possible futures for the United States, a second Civil War seems an extreme outlier, of course. But there are many other possible outcomes on the conflict spectrum, from scattered fights at political rallies and demonstrations to lone wolf attacks to the organization of quasi-official guard or militia groups. The problem is that discourse has broken down and furor is rushing in to take its place.

Making politics less about social identity and more about self-interested policy choice could go a long way toward lowering the national temperature. Can that be done? Yes, writes the University of Maryland’s Mason, in the sense that social science shows there are some methods that appear to be effective in lessening group conflicts.

One such method is simply increasing contacts. That can reduce prejudice between groups. Nongovernmental organizations could organize occasions for overt cross-partisan socializing. Entertainment media could help by adding more sympathetic partisans of both sides to popular shows.

Political leaders could set and enforce norms for more civil behavior. If they truly want to reduce partisanship, they could simply talk about their opponents in a consistently respectful and unprejudiced way.

Finally, there’s always the possibility of a natural unsorting. Politics is not forever. In the future, demographic groups could switch allegiances for some reason, or rise and fall in power, or mix themselves between the two parties in some way. After all, it hasn’t been long since white unionized factory workers were reliable Democrats. That kind of change could happen again.

Absent that, the current homogenization of the parties might be hard to surmount. “As long as a social divide is maintained between the parties, the electorate will behave more like a pair of warring tribes than like the people of a single nation, caring for their shared future,” concludes Mason in “Uncivil Agreement.”

[hoopslab]

White supremacist riot, Trump, fringe Domestic Terrorism or societal cancer?

Yesterday, there was a national tragedy that was utterly predictable and eminently preventable. In theory. But in practice, it was a tragedy that was very consistent with the times that we are living in, the likelihood of which has grown every year since Barrack Obama became president, and that was tacitly supported by the leadership of our country both before and after the event.

Yesterday’s riot was terrifying. But, in reality, it was just a symptom of where we are. And, in the scheme of things, a relatively small symptom, compared to what could and (extremely unfortunately) likely will happen moving forward. There is a movement of people that, at their hearts, are incredibly scared about everything that President Obama represented, everything that having a black man as president said about our country, and were actively looking for someone like Trump (read: a white man that would publicly go on record and say all of the things that they feared about non-white-males). And this group of people, which counts in the millions, won a huge victory and felt incredibly empowered by the election of Donald Trump.

 I wrote about this nine months ago, just after the election, in pretty distinct detail:

The White Nationalists just won a HUGE victory, in the election of Donald Trump.

This is the group that Trump was pandering to, even before announcing his run, by making himself the face of the Birtherism movement. I suspect that Trump never REALLY believed that Obama was born outside of America, and that Trump never REALLY cared one way or the other if he was…but by playing to that base from the start, by cutting his political teeth by making that absurdity an issue, he guaranteed that he had a key constituency upon which to build his political future.

In a purely Machiavellian way, this was a brilliant catapult into political life for Trump. Because there were millions of these people, each of whom have a vote, that passionately and with every fiber of their beings feared what President Obama represented and would absolutely latch onto a White Male leader who publicly fought their fight.

Ironically, this same White Nationalist group was once one of the pillars of the Democratic Party in the South, before the Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon pulled them into the Republican party. And as the stated cultural norms of our society made racism a dirty word, a feeling to be hidden and no longer expressed publicly, this part of society felt more and more powerless and dispossessed. To the point that, when a black man named Barrack Obama became the president of the United States…became THEIR leader…they longed for a way to fight back.

And Donald J. Trump gave them a voice. That was step 1.

And fulfilling Step 1 was enough for Trump to burst onto the scene like a bolt of lightening. He doubled-down on that constituency as he came down the elevator to announce his candidacy and said that Mexican immigrants were often rapists and criminals. He tripled down when he suggested that Muslim-Americans should have to register their religious affiliation in a database. He later quadrupled down when he referred to the entire African-American and Hispanic communities as Hell, where if you walk down the street you just get shot. Completely outside of policy, Trump was able to pull this group’s heartstrings by publicly saying all of the things that they had believed.

I wrote about it again 6 months ago, right before the Inauguration, when Trump’s public spokespeople were denying that they empowered racists at the same time as we were seeing a nation-wide rise in hate crimes by those that fit the demographic of Trump supporters. 

All around the country, numbers of racist incidents were reported on college campuses and schools. I went to the University of Michigan and still have people there. So these are the incidents I’m most familiar with. But these types of things were in NO way isolated to UM. But at UM…

White nationalist flyers and graffiti were all over campus (started before the election, continued after). “Alt Right”. “Be White”

A female UM student was forced to remove her hijab under the threat of being lit on fire

Another female student was pushed down a hill by two men after being accosted over religion

And here’s a list of a cross section of 13 racist incidents from all around my area, including three white students threatening to hang a Wayne State University student by her hijab, swastikas drawn on apartment doors, and of course, a police officer posting “go home monkeys” on Facebook in response to black protestors. Good old primate jokes, they just never get old, do they?

This is the kind of stuff that many don’t see. Because it doesn’t happen to national figures and doesn’t get much run on CNN. But it happens, just the same. All around the country.

And not just a rise in activity from so-called fringe racists (which is what many seem to be trying to characterize the driver from yesterday’s tragedy as...more on that below), no. But instead, a rise in this craziness up to the upper levels of politics and society. Like when an elected mayor participated in social media conversations with city officials calling our beautiful, dignified former first lady an “Ape in Heels”. Or when Carl Paladino, honorary co-chair of Donald Trump’s New York campaign, had this to say about the outgoing president and his wife:

“I’d like (Michelle Obama) to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla,”

Oh, and he wasn’t done…and he didn’t want to only target Mrs. Obama. Of course not. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say about President Obama, and what he’d like to see happen to him in 2017:

“[Barack] Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Her[e]ford,”…“He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to [senior Obama adviser] Valerie Jarret[t], who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady [sic] cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.”

So, again, yesterday’s tragedy in Charlottesville wasn’t in any way unpredictable or unexpected, or even unusual. These 30 injured people, and the terrible death of 32-year old Heather Heyer, are more fruit of the poisonous tree that has been watered by our president and his supporters. I’m watching CNN right now, and just saw former KKK head David Duke again gushing about Trump’s promises to “take the country back”:

Duke would later go on to remind Trump that “it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”

Is this just “fringe”, “Domestic Terrorism”? 

There’s a montage of political leaders on CNN right now, calling this event “domestic terrorism” by fringe White Supremacist groups. Trump, meanwhile, is being criticized because of his ridiculously lukewarm public statement about “both sides” being at fault.  But, as just pointed out, Trump can’t completely disavow those White Supremacist/white nationalist groups...because they are an important kernel of his base! 

It has to be said, of course, that not all Donald Trump supporters are racist. If you go back to my article about Trump being president, I clearly break down the four groups that I believe got Trump elected, and only one of those groups was clearly racist. But. The opposite needs to be said, and not minimized...

ONE OF THE FOUR GROUPS THAT HELPED GET TRUMP ELECTED PRESIDENT IS VERY CLEARLY RACIST! 

And it’s NOT a small group!

Racism is an incredibly slippery slope, because it’s all about shades of gray inside individual people’s psyche. And it’s not always necessarily expressed, or even believed. Our economy and government have built in inherent, institutionally racist structures for hundreds of years, and this allows for dangerous “reconfirmation” of dangerous stereotypes in a type of self-fulling prophecy. Many people that may not believe that they hate black, brown, female, LGBT or foreign would still acknowledge that, on some level, they see these groups as “other”...and that very other-ness plants the seed for racist and mysogynist reactions.

I had a huge public debate with one of my colleagues, and best friends, about what the correct size of the so-called white nationalist block is in America. In that discussion, I cited FiveThirtyEight’s estimate of tens of millions of Americans in the white nationalist voting block...but my friend stated that he believed the white nationalist vote was more like 30 thousand...a pure fringe of crazy, not a core part of the country.

This is, in my opinion, an incredibly important distinction. Because it speaks to how this issue of racism should be addressed in our public psyche. If racism can be confined to just a handful of fringe people, than it’s a “them” problem. It’s a relatively minor problem, where the solution can be primarily about identifying those “thems” that wear their racism on their sleeves, and ostracizing or defeating them (both terms I’ve seen used on CNN in the last hour).

But.

If (as mentioned in the link above) FiveThirtyEight.com’s off-the-cuff estimate of 15% of the voting block being identifiable as white national based on their voting pattern, is correct. If TENS OF MILLIONS of people, whether they consider themselves to be racist or not, can predictably be said to vote based upon white nationalist tendencies. Then this is NOT a THEM problem.

It’s an US problem.

And if it’s an us problem, then it’s a much, much more involved problem. Because it’s not easy to identify, not easy to legislate, but it’s incredibly pervasive to all levels of our society. And it’s a continuation of the racial struggles that go back hundreds of years.

There was a public push around the 1980s and after, that America had become a so-called “post racial” society. That the Civil Rights Era, and the problems that it was built to address, was over. Barrack Obama’s election in 2008 was seen as the ultimate proof that racism in America was no longer a thing...after all, how racist could America be if we elected a black man as president?

Well, the answer turns out to be...still very racist. It’s not my grandfather’s racism, when Billie Holiday was singing about Southern Trees bearing strange fruit.

It’s not my Father’s racism...when brave people had to Sit at a Counter, and Nina Simone was singing about those same trees bearing those same strange fruit. 

But there IS still racism in this generation. So when Jill Scott sings about those strange fruit, she may be singing more about police brutality than lynchings on trees. And maybe the issues are more subtle...when the Justice Department is looking into whether Affirmative Action discriminates against white men, as opposed to looking into ways to try to break down institutional racism that affects far more people in a far more negative way. Or maybe it’s a question of degree, when small events can be seen by some as a braying jackass being put in his place while others see the seeds of dangerous White Privilege.  On every level, from seemingly minor to devastating loss of life, we as a people need to really consider the part that racism may play, and how we (both individually and as a people) want to address this problem moving forward.

So yes, I agree with the talking heads that what James Alex Fields did in Charlottesville, Virginia, is Domestic Terrorism and should prosecuted as such.

However, Fields was not a “lone gunner”. He is another example of this generation’s version of Strange Fruit, but he’s the fruit of a much larger vine. There is a cancer of racism in this country, there always has been, and it still infects our country down to our core. If we isolate Fields, the cancerous growth on our country’s skin, as a fringe terrorist and remove him...while not in any way addressing the disease that led to him as a symptom...then the results will be predictable. And preventable. And terribly, terribly tragic. 

Other miscellaneous articles of interest

Sometimes you have to speak up…We matter too!

A black man and a police detective walk into a bar…

A Black Man Sits at a Counter in 2016

My first lady is dope

From Slave to Hashtag: 13th, Kap, Race Relations and the Election

My president is Trump

Moving Forward in a Trump presidency

Hidden Figures Change Our World

A Black Man venting at 3 AM about racism and the new president

Is a little bit of racism that bad? (East Coast Offense Pod II, 2/16/17)

Denzel & Fences always have a place in my history

Lavar, Kristine, Jason, Charlamagne & Emmett: an on-air spat becomes teachable moments on racism, mysogeny & white privilege

[tipsycad147]

The no-nonsense smudging guide: Easy tips and tricks for clearing your space

Posted by Michelle Gruben on Jun 10, 2018

Freshen up your life with the cleansing power of herbal incense! Smudging questions are some of the most common ones we get around the shop, so I’ve put them together in little bundle (heh). We cover why and when to smudge, some popular smudging herbs, and other questions people ask about smudging and space cleansing.  Skip to the bottom of this article for a sample smudging ritual that is easy to do and suitable for most situations.

What is smudging?

Smudging is the practice of spiritual cleansing with smoke, especially from sacred herbs.  You can smudge a person, a place, a building, or an object. “Smudge” is both a noun and a verb—a bundle of herbs burned as incense is also called a smudge.

The term derives from the Middle English word smogen, from which we also get the words smoke, smog, and besmirch. (Those who lived in smoky medieval cottages might be puzzled that we now use smoke to purify our homes, but hey—history marches on.)

Why smudge?

Smudging is done to remove bad energy and bring a feeling of peace and clarity. Most people can tell when a place just doesn’t “feel” right. Smudging is a remedy for that. Smudging uses the natural qualities of aromatic plants, along with the smudger’s prayers and intentions, to improve the psychic environment.

Smudging is a basic ritual, but it can be a very effective one. It is an act of will that removes negative influences and sets a positive intention for your home, tools, or workplace.

Some people also use smudging as a first step in setting sacred space. Smudging is a way to invite higher spiritual vibrations into a place of healing or meditation.

What tools do I need to smudge?

The only thing you really need for a smudging ritual is your choice of natural incense or herbs. You’ll also need a source of fire—matches, lighter, or flint (for purists). Other than that, the most important tools you can bring are a clear mind and an open heart.

There are all kinds of other accessories that can become a part of your smudging practice. (Links go to our store, and your purchases help support this site.)

Abalone shells are a traditional vessel for catching the ashes from smudging. They come in various sizes. (Abalone shells should not be exposed to direct heat, as they can scorch.)

Smudge pots are made of stone, ceramic, or metal. Unlike shells, they can be used to hold burning smudges. Smudge pots are very useful when burning loose herbs or individual leaves.

Wooden stands may be used to hold the shell or smudge pot steady. Stands elevate the smudging vessel and prevent heat from transferring to your altar or tabletop surfaces.

Incense charcoal is used for burning loose or herbal incense. While not always necessary, it can be useful to have it on hand in case your smudging herbs don’t want to stay lit.

A dish of sand helps absorb the heat from smudges and/or charcoal. You can use coloured ritual sand, plain sand, or even dirt from the earth. A layer of sand is also excellent for putting out a smudge when you are finished with the ritual. (Water is not traditionally used to extinguish smudges. However, it is a good fire safety practice to have water or a fire extinguisher nearby anytime you are working with open flame.)

Smudging feathers and smudging fans are used to direct the smoke where you want it to go. They represent the element of Air and the circulation of energy through the world. (Their use is optional.)

Smudging prayers and posters contain pre-written words for directing your smudging ritual. Voicing the words aloud causes your intentions to resonate more strongly. The level of spontaneity is up to you. If you don’t want to compose or memorise your own smudging prayer, it’s perfectly okay to use a cheat sheet.

What are some common smudging herbs?

Theoretically, you can smudge with any fragrant smoke, including conventional incense. But there are certain plants that have a reputation for raising the vibration of your space. Each of these plants has a different energy and aroma to contribute to your smudging rituals.

When most people think of smudging, they think of White Sage. White Sage is a shrub that grows in the American Southwest. It has a fresh herbal fragrance and benevolent cleansing energy. White Sage is part of an extended family of sages, including Blue Sage and Mountain Sage.

Sweetgrass is a long prairie grass with a calming, Vanilla-like aroma. It is burned in small quantities to perfume and purify the environment.

Palo Santo is a small, slow-growing tree that is distantly related to Frankincense trees. Palo Santo wood is a rare and expensive incense with a spicy, complex fragrance. It is native to South America.

Many evergreen trees have dry, resinous leaves that may be used for smudging. Cedar, Juniper, and various Pines are especially favoured by Witches of the mountains and forests.

Where do I get smudging herbs and tools?

You can get smudging herbs from most spiritual supply shops and even health food stores. Other smudging tools can be purchased or improvised from household items. (Do reserve them for sacred use, though, once that function has been assigned.)

Some people like to grow or gather their own smudging herbs. If you live in a climate where this is practical, it’s a wonderful way to connect with the plant spirits.

How often should I smudge my home?

Most people smudge on an as-needed basis. These are the most common occasions for performing a smudging ritual:

- When moving into a new space. You wouldn’t wear used clothes without first washing them, and some people won’t move into a new home or office without smudging. Smudging helps clean up the psychic debris from previous occupants, so their energy won’t influence your thoughts and emotions. (If you’re a real sweetheart, you can also smudge when moving out to make the space welcoming for the next resident.)

- When there has been a psychic disturbance. Some events will leave their mark on a space in the form of yucky energy. They can be major disturbances (such as hauntings or acts of violence), or minor disturbances, such as when people in the house have been quarrelling).

- To mark an important positive change. Smudging is a way of hitting the reset button on a home’s energy, so it makes sense to do it when you’re ready for a fresh start. For example: When you’ve finished seasonal housecleaning, when a toxic person moves out, or when you’re celebrating breaking a habit or addiction.

- When it’s that time again. Some people do smudging at regular intervals, as a kind of scheduled spiritual hygiene. Regular smudging keeps your home’s vibe fresh and stops anything negative from taking hold. Like clutter, the buildup of stale energy may not become noticeable because it’s so gradual.

Annually, monthly, weekly? It all depends on your needs. You may wish to use magickal timing or personally significant dates for your smudging regimen. You can schedule smudging rituals for the New Moon, New Year, your birthday, solstices or equinoxes, or other important anniversaries.

Do you need to be religious to smudge?

Smudging is associated with various Pagan, shamanic, and New Age ideas. However, the practice itself does not require any specific religious beliefs. Smudging, like all magick, is based on intention. All you really need to believe is that you can cleanse yourself, your space, and your possessions. Even skeptics and atheists have told me they see benefits from performing self-cleansing rituals.

Many spiritual paths use incense to help draw one’s thoughts to the Divine. Most also hold in common the benefits of prayers, blessings, and acts of hospitality. I don’t see a conflict between smudging practices and any world religions. However, if you have concerns, you can always speak with a leader within your faith.

I’ve heard that smudging shouldn’t be done by people who aren’t Native American. What’s up with that?

Some of the best-known smudging tools—White Sage, Abalone shells, Sweetgrass and bird feathers—were first used in the spiritual practices of natives of the American Plains and Southwest. Some people feel that you need to be initiated in one of these traditions to use these tools. Other people believe that because native peoples were systematically oppressed by whites, it’s not in good taste for white people to work with these objects.

Cultural appropriation is a complex topic, and one that always stirs up strong feelings. These are issues that should be (and are being) hashed out in our various spiritual communities through respectful dialogue.

My two cents? I’ve found that the smudging debate gets routinely re-ignited by well-meaning but easily offended people. These people—while they may have some justification for their concerns—are often driven by a desire to control and limit others people.

Nobody “owns” the energies of certain plants. They are gifts of the Earth, and they confer their blessings (usually) without regard for ancestry. While they’re often willing to cooperate with human magick workers, they’re not that interested in human concepts of ownership and racial division. These beings were here before us, and they’ll likely be here long after us.

However, it is important to be respectful and humble, especially when sharing ritual space with others. It is rude and ridiculous to borrow willy-nilly from every tradition you encounter.

If you don’t feel it’s right to use herbs and tools from other cultures, you need not miss out completely. Spiritual use of herbs and incense is common to most world traditions and there are plenty of plants to choose from.

Some European-tradition Witches smudge with green Sage or Rosemary—both Old World plants associated with wisdom and healing. Try reaching out to ancestors or spiritual guides (or to the plant spirits themselves), and you will be able to learn what herbs are most appropriate for your own practice.

Is it true that you shouldn’t blow out smudge sticks?

At least once a month, someone tells me that candles and/or smudge sticks should never be blown out with the breath. This is one of those witchy superstitions that never seems to die. Like most magickal “don’ts,” I think it’s mostly silliness with a grain of truth.

Blowing a smudge out with air could cause sparks to fly around, and there’s always a chance that the smudge could still be smouldering inside. It’s better to tamp it out in a dish of sand or on cleared ground, and then leave it in a heatproof container just in case.

Water is said to cancel out the cleansing power of Fire, and is never used to extinguish magickal incenses. But there’s a practical reason for that, too—soggy smudges can attract mildew.

I’m sensitive to smoke and/or allergic to Sage. How do I smudge?

Not everyone experiences Sage smoke as a gentle, healing breeze. Some people collapse into coughing and watery eyes whenever the stuff is around. Smudging can also set off smoke detectors and (Goddess forbid) fire sprinklers in small homes and offices.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. Sage, Sweetgrass, and Palo Santo are widely available as scented oils and water-based sprays, for those times when smoke is not practical or welcome.

You can also cleanse your space with light, water, crystals, sound (voice or bells), or visualisation. These smoke-free methods are not technically smudging, but they can be just as effective when combined with your focused intention. For those who host public workshops and gatherings, it’s smart to have a few smudging alternatives in your toolkit. That way, you can be prepared to accommodate allergic and scent-averse ritual participants.

Keep in mind that closely related plants may still affect you differently. For example, I’m fine when someone’s burning White Sage, but a close cousin, Blue Sage, makes me itch and sneeze like crazy. It may take some trial and error to find your go-to smudging partner.

I’m new to smudging. How to I begin?

Here’s a simple, effective smudging ritual that even a first-timer can do. It doesn’t require any special tools, and it’s easy to adapt to your needs and spiritual beliefs:

A simple smudging ritual for houses and apartments

The keys to a successful house cleansing are intention (knowing strongly what you want) and visualisation (being able to "see" your actions being effective).

First, clean your house. Sweep the floors, throw out the garbage, and just tidy your belongings as best you can. Physical clutter and dirt can trap stagnant energy, and make it harder to feel the effects of your efforts.

Choose a smudging herb that you like—one whose energy and aroma is agreeable to you. Hold it between your palms and thank it for lending its energy to your rite.

As you light the smudge stick, say a prayer that your home is a place of love, peace, and harmony. Ask that all who live there and enter as guests be blessed and protected.

Before you begin smudging the house, you may want to smudge yourself first. Wave the smoke around your body, starting at your head and working down to your feet.  Visualise any fear, anger, or worry you carry in your body blowing away into the air or travelling down into the ground, to be absorbed and cleansed by the earth. (Some people "see" or visualise negative energy as dark, cloudy energy.) Take a deep breath and replace it with clean fresh air and white light.  Allow the white light to flow down from your lungs and heart, joining the clean smoke in your hand.

Now you're ready to cleanse the home, room by room. (I usually do a full circle of my house, starting and ending at the front door.) Let the smoke float into every hallway and corner. As you walk from place to place, see the old, unwanted energy dissolving and floating away. You can speak your intention aloud, or just use a silent prayer or visualisation. If any areas feel particularly thick or heavy with bad energy, spend some extra time there.

When you've returned to where you started, extinguish the smudge by rubbing it out in a dish of sand. Affirm that your work is done, such as by clapping your hands and saying, “So it is!” Then sit for a moment and savour the difference in how the energy feels.

Smudging isn't permanent and will need to be repeated eventually. I smudge my house usually twice a year, but once a month is better.

Thank you for reading! Happy smudging, and may you (and your home) be blessed.

Read more articles in the archive.

Disclaimer: Nothing on this website should be taken as medical, financial, or legal advice. All herbs are intended for external adult use only. Some herbs may not be suitable for all persons—consult a licensed professional if you have concerns. Incense, candles, and herbs can cause fire hazards. Please observe proper safety precautions when using these products.

https://www.groveandgrotto.com/blogs/articles/the-no-nonsense-smudging-guide

[cringeynews]

New Post has been published on

New Post has been published on http://cringeynews.com/featured/progressives-should-not-cave-to-anemic-liberals-in-the-identity-politics-debate/

Progressives should not cave to anemic liberals in the "identity politics" debate

One of the fundamental challenges for liberals, in the Trump regime, will be trying to hold on to their basic commitments to equality and inclusion, while facing the pressure to jettison some of those commitments when it would seem to be politically disadvantageous to be too liberal.

This piece is part of The Big Idea, a section for outside contributors’ opinions about, and analysis of, the most important issues in politics, science, and culture.

As early as the 19th century, John Stuart Mill, whose work deeply influenced our ideas of liberalism, recognized that increased economic equality had not been accompanied by equality in terms of either gender or race. He was fully committed to widening the scope of equality in those realms, writing, along with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, “The Subjection of Women”: “[T]he legal subordination of one sex to another — is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”

In 1850, Mill also wrote powerfully for the abolition of slavery. He fully recognized that in taking both these positions he was going against the tide of convention and popular opinion, but for him, taking these unpopular positions was perfectly consistent with his commitment to equality for all.

Since that time, until this November at least, history seemed to have slowly caught up with Mill; many felt that things had evolved. And the road of progress was not a smooth or easy one — many well-meaning liberals dragged their heels during the civil rights movement, causing Martin Luther King Jr. to write in his famous “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

Now, with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, those who are working for racial equality are once again confronted with both of those nemeses: out-and-out white supremacists and their silent abettors, anemic liberals.

The notorious Mark Lilla essay

In the aftermath of the presidential election, many white male liberals have come forward with the following claim: Democrats lost largely because they had neglected the issue of class; Trump won because he catered to the alienated white working class. The conclusion they draw is that it is time to get rid of “identity politics,” which are attentive to issues of gender and race and other things, and get back to the economic base. Mark Lilla’s New York Times op-ed, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” is a much-discussed manifesto for this position. Lilla, a professor of humanities at Columbia University, writes:

We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale.

It is crucial to remember that Clinton won the election in the popular vote — by an increasingly sizable margin. That does not mean that liberals do not have to think hard about how they lost the Electoral College to Trump, but it does put into perspective the degree to which Democrats must rethink how they “appeal to Americans,” and who they feel these Americans are, and what their priorities are. Lilla believes that in neither case should issues of minority identities be accommodated in any substantial, public manner — his notion is that “identity politics” are the kiss of death for liberals.

But to follow Lilla’s and others’ advice would be to precisely turn away from not only progress but also reality. The United States is increasingly less white, and although some minorities voted for Trump, the overwhelming majority did not. Our country is also increasingly liberal. The Atlantic notes: “There is a backlash against the liberalism of the Obama era. But it is louder than it is strong. Instead of turning right, the country as a whole is still moving to the left.” So why abandon “identity politics”?

The term “identity politics” is disposable, but the disadvantages some groups face are real

In fact, I am all for retiring the term itself — it is a term that more and more people wish to get rid of, especially since now it’s patently clear that Trump and his followers are enraptured by white identity politics. When we fixate on this term, we tend up enmeshed in a battle of whose “identity” is worth preserving and whose is not. We end up either arbitrarily championing one over another or simply saying “All Lives Matter.” In both cases, we lose sight of what we should be aiming to achieve politically, and that should be equal rights for all, with a full understanding of how some groups are at a specific and real disadvantage in this regard. That would seem a noncontroversial idea for liberals, but some are balking at it.

What we find in the backlash by liberals against progressives is nothing other than a betrayal of the true and full values of liberalism. Liberals like Lilla would have us turning back the clock to compete for the leadership of what one might call an “off-white America,” with issues of race and gender and other minority positions relegated to the background — yet somehow not entirely abandoned, so that this America would not be confused with the starkly “pure America” favored by white supremacists. For many of us, this is an unappealing prospect.

We believe we should instead build on the gains we have made and the multiracial structures we have built — such as the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the National Immigration Law Center, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and groups working for housing rights, such as Urban Habitat.

We should not accept the logic that would demand that we must choose either economic justice or racial justice (or gender equality). As Cinzia Arruzza, an assistant professor of philosophy at the New School, writes:

An effective opposition to Trump should work on disentangling these heterogeneous and even incompatible motivations, by, on the one hand, fighting back against the new wave of racism, misogyny, and homophobia ahead of us, and on the other, addressing the legitimate desire for a radical change expressed in part by votes for Trump and in the abstention of millions of former Democratic voters.

Liberalism will have to struggle with its conscience once again, but the question should not be, “How equal can we afford to be?” but rather, “How can we best form lines of solidarity with the most vulnerable?”

The notion that on one hand is class and economic identities and on the other hand is race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation is a false binary. As the journalist Conor Lynch notes, “Economic struggles and civil rights are deeply interconnected. Women and people of color, for example, are much more likely to suffer disproportionately from poverty and economic inequality.”

People of many different identities stood together against the Dakota Access Pipeline

In response to such injustices, coalitions that recognize these connections have appeared and are growing every day. What is happening at Standing Rock demonstrates that while a movement might be led by a particularly affected group, diverse peoples can see their interests and values represented by the same historical event. The issues of water rights, indigenous rights, and minority rights have drawn people who have been aware of these issues from Hawaii and Palestine and from Flint, Michigan. None of them have checked their “identities” at the door.

Indeed, with the news that the Army Corps of Engineers has turned down the permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline to be built under the Missouri River, we find a landmark case of organizing and activism across many so-called “identities.” One veteran wrote that for the first time in his long service to the country, he felt that he had truly served the American people. He writes:

I was in Iraq when President Bush announced the “surge” in January 2007. I was in Afghanistan when President Obama announced the “surge” in December 2009. But it wasn’t until I visited Standing Rock in October 2016 when I actually served the American people. This time, instead of fighting for corporate interests, I was fighting for the people… The Sioux struggle against the pipeline embraces so many other struggles in this nation. It encompasses struggles against climate catastrophe, a history of breaking treaties with Native Americans, attacks on the right to assemble, assaults on journalists, the militarization of police, and placing corporate profits over human rights.

This places Lilla’s assertion of what constitutes “most Americans” and especially what political activism has to look like in an entirely new perspective.

And this is not new. The longest fight against an eviction in United States history was the multiracial protest against the International Hotel eviction in San Francisco.

For more than a decade, a coalition of Asian Americans, black people, Hispanics, religious groups, senior citizens, and college students fought to allow a group of elderly Filipinos to stay in their residence. Even the sheriff of San Francisco initially refused to carry out the eviction notice. All these groups and individuals understood that “urban redevelopment” meant the loss of their city, their residences, and their autonomy. Although the eviction eventually went through, the builders agreed to create low-income housing — thus setting an important precedent for urban development.

What’s more, in 2005 the city of San Francisco partnered with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco to rebuild the International Hotel as a cultural center and senior housing. We find similar coalitions fighting for housing rights today, as even white middle-class individuals and families see their communities torn apart by skyrocketing housing prices.

All this is to say that “identity” need not be a barrier to getting 51 percent of the votes in the Electoral College. A recent piece at Slate argues that the idea that Trump won the Rust Belt by appealing to poor whites misses the fact that many Democrats either voted for third-party candidates or didn’t show up to vote; in short, the Democrats lost those voters. Rather than attempt to continue a brand of managerial liberalism that decides in a top-down matter what matters to “most Americans,” it would be vastly more effective to, if one is really interested in social justice, recognize what drives people to action and commitment and to the polls. They may well be bearing their identities with them, but building something together.

Mills felt that whatever inequality might exist should be balanced in favor of the weak and the most vulnerable. Those who wish to win the next election by muting calls for justice emanating from the margins have, at that moment, given up the name “liberal” for political expediency.

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon professor, and professor of comparative literature, at Stanford University, as well as the founding editor of Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities. Find him on Twitter @palumboliu.

The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart, often scholarly excursions into the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically written by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at thebigidea@vox.com.

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