Pretty Disturbing

I saw this post yesterday for the first time. The more I read it and the more I think about it, the more utterly disturbing I find it. We just had an impeachment in the US because a President tried to overturn a democratic election. The impeachment was an attempt to hold the President accountable. (This coup was unsuccessful.) In Bolivia, there was a successful coup. The resulting junta government killed many hundreds of Bolivian people, including many indigenous citizens. Now, when the legitimate government is trying to hold these criminals to account, this is what the US Secretary of State tweets out. We have a Democrat in the White House and his Secretary of State is putting out tweets worthy of Mike Pompeo. It is deeply upsetting and--along with some other things the Biden Administration has done in the area of foreign policy--raises serious concerns about Biden's policies. We must do better than this Yankee Imperialism.

We are deeply concerned by growing signs of anti-democratic behavior and politicization of the legal system in Bolivia. The Bolivian government should release detained former officials, pending an independent and transparent inquiry into human rights and due process concerns.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) March 27, 2021

A Couple Opinions

 

• Some of the cancel culture warriors on social media are accusing the world of canceling Glenn Greenwald and Matt Tiabbi (as well as Bari Weiss et al). I think this is incorrect (aside from he fact that cancel culture is not a thing). If other perople are like me, they've simply decided that those folks have nothing to say that interests them anymore. There is this thing among some in the the media that they are entitled to your follow-ship. If not, they're being canceled. Grievance culture.

• There is a fair amount of revisionist history going around Twitter to the tune of: almost every reasonable person "knew" that Iraq had WMDs so stop criticizing the Max Boot crowd about all of that. In fact, many millions of Americans and probably most people in the rest of the world believed just the opposite. There was no evidence that there were WMDs and the inspectors responsible for determining this said exactly that. To take this one step further, there are many routes a person could draw to how we got to this place in history where 40% or more of America believes that Republican fairy tales are the real truth. But one reasonable route is that it started here, where the WMD fairy tale lie was put out there by an entire administration, and then even after it was obvious that it was bullshit, Fox News and the Repubs made up instances that proved that they were really there. (Every piece of scrap metal someone found was turned into a WMD.) I think some people still believe Saddam had them, because they know it in their bones, just like they know the election was stolen. This started with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, etc with the help of Fox News. Sound familiar?

Ron Johnson Redux

As a follow up to my post about Ron Johnson a few days ago....

In a radio interview yesterday, Senator Johnson basically said that he was not afraid on January 6 because the rioters were patriotic,  peace-loving White People who love law and order (and the police who they pummeled). He went on to say that if it had been Black Lives Matter, then he would have been afraid.

I am anxiously awaiting the public statement from the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (of which Johnson is a member) condemning his blatantly racist comments.

 

• This is getting crazy. I have done this sort of thing in the past, and I guess it's time again. Any time I read an essay or other opinion piece that contains the terms "woke" or "cancel culture" I will stop reading (whether from right or left). There is nothing that person has to say that I need to hear.

• Most of the stories in the MSM about Senator Sinema's infamous thumbs down don't address what most people on the left (at least me) are pissed about. It wasn't the vote; it was the glee and relish with which she delivered it, and the fact that it looked like she was performing for Mitch McConnell. She is a public person--something which she chose to be--so it is entirely fitting to judge her for her public actions.  And this one wss pretty awful. (The fact that her spokesperson chose to play the sexism card to deflect from her public action just makes her look even worse.) It is not good reporting to overlook this dynamic.

• I hope I am still saying this a year from now: the Biden presidency is way better than I expected.

I Thought I Should Post Something, It's Been Awhile

 

• I didn't see the Oprah interview last night so some might think I am not entitled to have an opinion. (The consensus seems to be it was a really good interview.) My comment is that I think it's premature to conclude that this racist stuff is going to bring down the monarchy. The monarchy survived the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia stuff. I think they stand a good chance of surviving this.

• I am just naive enough to believe that the main cause of poverty is the lack of money.

• Members of the Democratic Socialists of America have won every leadership position in the Nevada Democratic Party. The entire staff of the party has resigned. Oh yes, the defeated incumbent slate ran as "The Progressive Unity Slate". So much for unity. It seems that they also gave themselves severance pay and raided the party Treasury before they left.

• After all is said and done, this bill the Dems are ready to pass is really good.

Tweet of the Day

From a Madison, WI woman’s obituary: "In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to Ron Johnson’s opponent in 2022.” https://t.co/G7K9xvMHC8

— Reid Wilson (@PoliticsReid) March 3, 2021

Ron Johnson, Poster Child

This blog's existence was originally due in large part to my attempt to warn about the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod's (WELS) evolution into--at first--a wing of the Republican Party and--eventually--into an allegiance with the Evangelical Right. 

[As an aside, that term (Religious Right or Evangelical Right) has become less descriptive of reality. More recently, some people are using more apt terminology such as Religious Nationalism or White Evangelicalism. Indeed, some have referred to the January 6 riot as a White Evangelical Insurrection. The biggest reason for changing the terminology, is that this sect of the former Religious Right is almost exclusively identified with cult-like loyalty to Donald Trump.]

This descent started out gradually and then took a real nose dive during the four years of the Trump presidency. The WELS has historically been one of the most (doctrinally) conservative church bodies in America. But this was also historically coupled with a pretty steadfast recognition of and adherence to the concept of the "Two Kingdoms". Without getting too deeply into theology, this is the teaching that God created the Church as the authority in spiritual matters (heavenly kingdom) and he created governments as the authority over civil society (earthly kingdom). The synod is run by human beings, so there may have been occasional lapses, but for the most part the WELS did a pretty good job of staying out of the earthly kingdom.

That slowly began to change after (1) Roe v Wade and (2) the election of Barack Obama. I recall fighting some battles with the WELS and some of its affiliated organizations over things like the Affordable Care Act (and its "death panels"), the birth control mandate (where WELS falsely claimed that churches would be required to provide certain coverages) , and (3) same-sex marriage (the gays are going to takeover our churches!). Now, all of a sudden, the WELS was making "public statements" about political issues like it never did before.

The curious thing is that once you start making public statements about certain things that you disagree with, that leaves others to speculate about all the things about which you are not making statements? Does it imply that you approve or at least you dont disapprove. Where's your statement about family separation? children in cages? In effect, the WELS has chosen sides in the culture war and has broken down the wall between the heavenly and earthy kingdoms.

This is kind of a long introduction into my peeve for the day.  You see, Senator Ron Johnson is a WELS member and one of the leading promoters of lies about the past election and the January 6th White Evangelical Insurrection (one of many stories here). Where is the WELS public statement? But beyond that, I would say that the  majority of WELS members I know also believe Johnson's lies, and I am pretty sure they aren't hearing anything from pulpits that pushes back on these lies. My fear is that the WELS has simply become another outpost of the Trumpian Religious Nationalist, White Evangelical political movement, and Ron Johnson is just the poster child.