These are the people who make my favorite Harris/Walz tagline, “Mind your own damn business,” resonate so deeply: (NYT)
As opposition to their social agenda grows, particularly on abortion, many conservative Christians are experiencing whiplash as they grapple with an uncertain future…
By all indications, conservative Christians are poised to vote again overwhelmingly for former President Donald J. Trump in November. But now, they are facing the reality that many of their views are not widely held, and that to advance their goals nationally they need power at the highest levels — power that Mr. Trump suddenly seems less inclined to give.
In that way, the coming election feels like a referendum on the role of conservative Christianity in American public life. And some conservative Christians worry that it is a race that is harder and harder to win.
Forcing women who are miscarrying to bleed out in hospital parking lots until local theocrats are satisfied patients are close enough to death to warrant medical attention isn’t broadly popular! Nor is using the apparatus of the state to harass queer people, whitewash history and ban books.
It’s not surprising that social conservatives are whining about their dwindling cultural relevance even as they hatch anti-democratic plots to impose their views on people who don’t share them. That’s who they are. It’s always been who they are.
But their access to power is more durable than they let on in that article, unfortunately. The SCOTUS majority’s whiny, entitled and thoroughly corrupt justices (most notably Alito and Thomas) perfectly embody the larger SoCon movement. They will be a millstone around America’s neck until they die off during a Democratic administration (with a trifecta) and/or are diminished by an expanded court.
In a sense, this makes their whining and aggrievement even more insufferable. It would be lovely to see voters resoundingly reject the radical clerics who have a growing portion of the country under their thumbs, so here’s hoping their worst nightmares come true with regard to their cultural influence. May the “everything Trump touches dies” axiom apply to this group.
That is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. We’ll be battling the already embedded SoCons’ pernicious authority for the rest of our lives, in the courts and in antimajoritarian institutions like the U.S. Senate. And our children after us. Maybe this resentful group’s fears about the future are justified because more people see that now? November will provide important clues on that.
Open thread.
schrodingers_cat
OT: I want to thank jackalteriat for all their loving messages for me when I shared the news about my mother’s sudden passing away.
Suzanne
I posted this in an earlier thread, but it’s important. JD Vance is just the frontman for some Catholic hyperconservatism (aka integralism) that is absolutely terrifying. Absolutely undemocratic and illiberal.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?
I wonder if Trump waffling on abortion will convince some of these folks to stay home rather than vote for the guy. He’s caught between turning off some of his most rabid supporters or everyone else and he seems to know it on some level because he’s trying to have it both ways, but there’s no both ways there to be had.
Chief Oshkosh
Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe it’ll turn out that there is a God whose theocratical toolbox includes The Rapture Sledge Hammer. Maybe we’ll all wake up one day and these total fucking morons will simply be gone.
On the off chance that that doesn’t happen, we just finished another 28 post cards, and I’m heading to the PO later this morning.
bbleh
Certainly things took a turn for the worse when they abandoned their longtime rejection of secular politics and allied themselves with Reagan and his successors, but I would say that shift — like the present attitude — comes from the same place, ie the growing realization that they ARE out of step, that their time HAS passed, and that almost no matter what they do, they’re doomed to decreasing size and influence. I think that’s why they’re behaving increasingly desperately, lashing out at … well, pretty much anything, and allying themselves with increasingly despicable causes.
I’m reminded of a woman in a clip — might have seen it here? — where she says she’s voting for the Felon and if he doesn’t win she’d prefer to DIE, because she can’t go on living “this way.” And ok, hyperbole aside, that is one unhappy lady! And she and her friends have worked hard to make themselves that way.
There ARE reports of some fundagelicals going back to the old pox-on-both-secular-houses position, possibly in part due to a realization that their activism is provoking a real backlash. Maybe over the next few years / decades, that point of view will gain ascendancy and the frustrated radicals will be shut out or die off. But either way, our task right now is to defeat them. GOTV!
TBone
Ah yes, the age-old BURN THE WITCH gambit has reappeared. I posted about this fucking guy last night but he deserves additional ridicule.
“It’s the witchcraft!” is truly evidence of a bad case of The Cope:
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/lance-wallnau-blames-the-seduction-of-witchcraft-for-kamala-harris-success/
TBone
@schrodingers_cat: still wrapping you up in love
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: My condolences to you and your family. Losing a mom is so difficult and disorienting.
hells littlest angel
It’s their god’s will. It would be blasphemous to say otherwise.
TBone
@Suzanne: he wears that mantle like Dumbvict wears his cheap, ill-fitting suits. But if (when) they team up with the Dominionists, it’s a formidable foe. Gah!
TBone
@bbleh: Pope Francis butted in with a very disappointing statement. But Rick Steves will head him off at the pass!
A Ghost to Most
Oligarchs provide the money. Theocrats provide the votes. Fascist symbiosis.
JaySinWA
I wonder how the Pope’s message about voting for the lesser of two evils, but not knowing who was the least evil is playing. Largely about abortion vs immigration.
Here’s a panel discussion looking what they think it means.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/politics/video/pope-francis-u-s-election-a-choice-of-lesser-of-two-evil
ETA He did put down the idea of not voting as an option. Basically say you have to decide for yourself and vote.
TBone
@A Ghost to Most: where I live, the theocrats are very wealthy too. Not to diminish your true statement, just adding to it!
Redshift
I’m going to see our future president, Madam VP today! 😁 Fundraising reception in DC. It should be awesome.
Scout211
Somewhat related, this Rolling Stone (web archive version) is about an actual “bleeding out” personal story that one of Trump’s aides said don’t exist, in his effort to try to claim Kamala Harris lied about the serious, life threatening consequences to pregnant people who are denied healthcare in states with abortion bans.
She responded, “I’m right here, jerk.”
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I’m so sorry. I missed this news. I will be thinking of you and your family.
TBone
@Scout211: I love her for that courageous display, including her right and proper use of expletives (I saw a TikTok).
Redshift
@hells littlest angel: The “cultural relevance” bit had been around for a long time and it’s annoying as hell. Basically it’s “yes, we have tremendous political power, but the culture is still full of things we don’t like, so we’re oppressed!”
lollipopguild
@Redshift: Please give us a full report!
Citizen Alan
To which my response is “your proposal is acceptable.” In my darker crueler moments, there is a part of me that hopes the defeat and subsequent eventual death of Shitgibbon is followed by a wave of suicides amongst the death cult that propelled him to power. I only hope they are not murder suicides or worse.Suicide by terrorism.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Missed that thread, but you have been in my thoughts. My condolences, and glad you are heading to India for the 13th day. (Interesting tradition.)
kindness
The general Christian populace, the moderates and liberals at least, are making a mistake. When the Evangelicals and orthodox folk got all loud and tried to force their narrow version of morality as the only acceptable Christian one, the moderates and liberals stayed quiet. Even though many of those conservative views directly contradict the Christianity I was raised with. Now, because they never raised their voices to object, all Christians get tagged with the same brush. The liberals and moderates need to speak up and take ownership of their beliefs or they too will be washed away in the coming flood.
BR
@Scout211:
Here’s her original TikTok talking about her personal story:
https://www.tiktok.com/@geekynerdbitchcarmen/video/7413550942223666462
There are millions of personal experiences like this that the media is almost entirely ignoring. We’re lucky that social media allows people to be heard.
Elizabelle
WRT blogpost topic: It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.
Conservative Christians are neither.
TBone
Open thread palate cleanser by Cliff Schecter and Susie Madrak.
https://youtu.be/KyGe3X_W4XI
He’s cut over the eye: keep working the eye!
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/09/punch-drunk-trump-depressed-beaten-down
Jeffg166
Jeffg166
@Jeffg166:
I deleted a duplicate link.
Redshift
@lollipopguild: Will do!
Damien
I sincerely hope that the Harris administration rolls in with 55 votes in the senate and a similar margin in the House (a guy can dream), and immediately expands SCOTUS, outlaws SuperPACs, codifies Roe, codifies Chevron, and passes the Lewis’ Voting Rights Act. Personally I’d put all of that together in one big omnibus and call it the For the People Act.
Fuck bipartisanship, fuck negotiations, just immediate slap these fuckers down.
TBone
@BR: Thank you for your use of the word “experiences” instead of the word “stories.”
Elizabelle
Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter suggested that the Springfield Haitians’ pet killing saga (not!) is GOP ginning up outrage in Ohio to defeat Sherrod Brown. They need to defeat Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana.
JD Vance apparently picked up the lie and ran with it. Amplified the pet eating claim made by Neo-Nazis.
I despise these people. They have no shame. I hope Dobbs rises up and tears their testicles off.
TBone
@BR: as an aside, the erroneous closed caption translations drive me nuts. D&C became “DNC.” 🤬
Dilation & curettage
BR
@TBone:
I first wrote “stories” and realized that the word is used to dismiss what women are experiencing. Just like Trump’s project 2025 dude / chief of personnel did in that video that provoked the response.
zhena gogolia
@Redshift: Sounds great!
TBone
@BR: 💙😍💪
That’s so important. I pointed out that phenom here in a comment recently but I wasn’t sure anyone else noticed.
Elizabelle
@Damien: I’m down with those ideas!
I hope Joe Biden gets a big assignment, too, and succeeds madly with it. Court reform (which must include expanding the USSC’s number). Something he could put his skills to work on.
I want to hurl when I hear the journalist gaslighters asking if Harris wants to run away from Biden’s record. And Biden’s economy. They are just liars.
Redshift
@Suzanne: They put in writing in Project 2025 that when the Founders wrote about “the blessings of liberty,” they meant the freedom to do what God wants, not the freedom to do what you want.
Eunicecycle
@schrodingers_cat: I am so sorry to hear that. I heard she was taken to the hospital but that’s the last I had heard.
FelonyGovt
@schrodingers_cat: I haven’t been around much so I just learned about this. I’m so very sorry, sc. May her memory be a blessing.
BC in Illinois
Wow.
Devin Nunes’ cow (@DevinCow) gave a shout-out to the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, Springfield, Ohio. Some people might be interested in the profiles of the four officers:
Viles Dorsainvil – President
Reginald Silencieux – Vice President
Lindsay Aime – Treasurer
Rose-Thamar Joseph – Secretary
If the “White Christian Nationalists” could just take a break from exulting in themselves for being white, they might learn something from their Haitian-American brothers and sisters.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: I’m so sorry and give yourself time. hugs
catclub
@Suzanne: Except for the fact that everyone else would be even worse off. It would be fun to watch when the ‘Christians’ get total control and then the battle starts between the fundagelicals and the ultraconservative Catholics.
The catholics are probably better organized but the fundagelicals have the numbers.
Elizabelle
@catclub: Don’t ever say that. It’s not even clever. It’s fucking terrifying.
Almost Retired
@schrodingers_cat: I missed this. My condolences on your loss. Safe travels!
Frank Wilhoit
Key word: “force”. The emotional reward depends upon the violation of consent. If their proposals met with approval, they would lose interest, and go find something else to impose by force.
FastEdD
One of my favorite books is “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do” by Peter McWilliams. The absurdity of consensual crimes in our free country. When you employ the government as “clergymen with guns” it never works out well for anybody. The idea is that the legitimate function of law is to prevent people from causing physical harm (but not emotional) to each other. If you want to drink a quart of gin on your front porch and ruin your liver, go right ahead. If you want to drink a quart of gin and get behind the wheel of a car, hell no, you’re going to kill someone else, go directly to jail. The police would be in the role of protecting physical safety, not enforcing a moral code. McWilliams wrote a lot of woo woo self help stuff that I think is silly, but this one’s a good one. The sad irony is the author got cancer and used marijuana for pain relief and got busted for it. He spent his last days fighting court cases about something that didn’t hurt anyone else, which proved the whole point of the book.
schrodingers_cat
I just spoke with my dad and my brother, his wife and my aunt (dad’s sister). They want me to come on the 10th day. According to tradition you keep an earthen lamp continuously burning for 10 days where the person last lived. That signifies the soul of the departed one. And on the 10th day you ritually set it afloat in a water body. That begins a set of rituals for saying good bye. The mourning period ends on the 13th day for most people except the immediate family for them it continues for 1 year. 13th day is like the wake. You have a ceremonial lunch and remember the departed soul.
I also spoke with my maternal cousin (who lives in Florida), she, my brother and I grew up together! She lost her father last year. My MIL and SIL also called.
My parents were college sweethearts they dated for 2 years and they were married for almost 55 years, My dad said he has lost his friend of 57 years.
Currants
I so love your writing! Thank you. ❤️
@Betty Cracker
RevRick
Southern white Christians are heretics. They mouth the words, but they hold beliefs that diminish the faith.
They are, after all, the churches that vociferously defended slavery, the most barbaric institution of human creation, which was based in kidnapping, murder, rape, torture, brutality, and degradation. And when the federal government turned against them, they advocated for secession and Civil War, and after defeat, they supported Jim Crow and its violence. Just Google the picture of the Waco lynching and that mob of whites are good Southern “Christians.”
Southern white Christianity is what you get when Calvinism makes a deal with the devil. And in order to do so, it had to adopt a literalistic, frozen interpretation of Scripture. Which meant a rigid, hierarchical structure of society, on the order of race, class, and gender.
So, while they say they are concerned about the unborn, that claim must be seen in the context of the demotion of women to the status of lesser beings.
wjca
I don’t think that’s quite it. For a long time they were fine with ignoring secular politics, secure in the belief that they were bound for heaven. And if the rest of us were bound for hell, well that wasn’t their problem.
I think what sent them over the edge was the increasing realization that their kids (and grandkids) were looking at the wider culture, deciding they liked it better, and walking away. That, and nothing else, was and is the cause of their desperation. Since they couldn’t compete within their own families, their only choice became to destroy the culture that they couldn’t compete with.
TBone
@Frank Wilhoit: 👍 the patriarchy will never stop trying. But we will never, ever stop either. KBO!
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Good luck getting there for the tenth day. And being rested enough to partake in the rituals.
When would you need to depart?
schrodingers_cat
@Almost Retired: @JPL: @FelonyGovt: Thanks so much!
FastEdD
@schrodingers_cat: Comforting rituals are a good thing. You feel so lost and adrift you need something to cling to, some direction to go. I am not religious at all, but I understand the need for something to give you strength and peace.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Thursday or Friday latest.
schrodingers_cat
@FastEdD: Same here.
TBone
@FastEdD: facepalm 💔
Elizabelle
@RevRick:
Well said.
BR
I found a video of Doug Emhoff in The Villages, Florida yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvAOrwBQglM
TBone
@schrodingers_cat: awwww
My mom babysat my stepdad when they were littles (she was 7 years older). Thank you for sharing and reminding me of the power of love.
Anyway
@Almost Retired: are you close to the SoCal fires? They sound pretty bad. I can’t get over how frequent the fires are and how much stress it must be for the residents.
Thinking of @Scout211 as well.
Starfish
@Scout211: Here is her TikTok. This is not the one where she stitched with that guy being a jerk, but her other TikToks are about the same topic.
https://www.tiktok.com/@geekynerdb/video/7210055674267651374
Ivan X
@Elizabelle: That piece really harshed my buzz on this beautiful Saturday morning. Because nothing she said was wrong. But maybe I shouldn’t have started my day with it.
Steve LaBonne
To me the goal has always been to demoralize the Talibangelicals and push them back into the political quietism and irrelevance that once characterized them. We can only hope that Trump’s defeat will be a significant step along that path. When they stop bothering to vote we will gain the power to start repairing the damage they have done.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: That is so sad.
Elizabelle
@Ivan X: I think same for me. Out to walk a cute dog as therapy!
She’s not wrong. But …
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: What? What my dad said? Or the rituals?
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m so sorry to hear this – please know that my thoughts are with you in this difficult time.
Starfish
@BR: Thanks for finding it. This one was so interesting because she was having a miscarriage while parenting a small child, and the state was making her go through this mess. I think that several people have told us that folks seeking abortions typically have other children, and this made that part of it hit home.
Betty Cracker
@BR: I love that — thanks for linking it! I’m a broken record on this, but it’s so important for Dems to show up in red states.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia:
@Elizabelle:
Betty Cracker:
Thanks for your kind thoughts!
laura
@schrodingers_cat: No matter how old we are, none of us are ever prepared to be a motherless child. No matter how far we are removed from our loss, we remember it keenly and can comfort those who have recently experienced that profound loss.
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist:
@TBone:
Thanks
RevRick
@kindness: They do speak up, but, by in large, they are ignored. And this is due to their very real decline. My United Church of Christ is one third the size it was in the late 50s.
This is due, in large part, to the demand that worship become a form of entertainment, which is a backwards view of what worship is about. Back in the early 19th century, Soren Kierkegaard pointed out the insidious nature of this on European Churches. He made the analogy of a play, with an audience, the cast and the director. Increasingly, people believed that they were the audience, the preacher and the choir, the performers, and God, the director. But Kierkegaard said that was mistaken: God is the audience, the congregation are the performers, and the preacher and choir, the directors.
Churches that try to be faithful to that view are swimming against the current of a society clamoring to be amused.
Matt McIrvin
@JaySinWA: I’m starting to think that the Church’s bedrock opposition to abortion, at this point, basically exists for the purpose of allowing them to both-sides rising fascism.
Elizabelle
@BR: Doug Emhoff is so wonderful. A mensch.
I love that he will be living in the White House, please please please. And that the residential quarters just might smell like curry some days!!
He will be such a good ambassador, representing us and Madame President.
lowtechcyclist
@Chief Oshkosh:
I’ve often said that the world would be a good deal better off if everyone who claimed to believe in the Rapture all got Raptured.
Elizabelle
@lowtechcyclist: But they ain’t going to heaven.
Maybe an eternal compost heap.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: What your dad said. The rituals sound lovely.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: As a UU I always have the back of my liberal Christian friends. Of course you speak up and of course the media completely ignore you and swarm around the likes of Franklin Graham when they want to talk to a “Christian”. But the good news for churches like yours and mine is that the people who are still in church are there because we WANT to be, not because (in much of the country anyway) there is still social pressure to attend a church. Maybe it’s better that way.
RaflW
Good morning (what’s left of it here in CDT, or your neck of the woods)!
Pulling up the item from below that Harris is doing a sit-down with a local ABC affiliate. Good! She and her coms team I’m sure have recognized that local news stations will likely ask better questions and not perform the full Beltway dance of bullshit.
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: Well put. But it makes us weak, financially and culturally.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: It is bittersweet. I can’t even imagine what he must be going through.
Anoniminous
NPR – Springfield Ohio
Factory Owner talking about his Haitian employees, “I wish I had 30 more. Our Haitian associates come to work everyday. They don’t have a drug problem. They will stay at their machine. They will achieve their numbers. They’re here to work. So in general, that’s a stark difference from what we were used to in our community.
[emphasis added]
lowtechcyclist
Y’know, they’d at least have an argument that they might should win that race if they were pro-life across the board, rather than limiting their ‘pro-life’ stance to the in utero stage of human life.
But there are eight billion people in this world who’ve already left that developmental stage behind, and with respect to the eight billion, evangelicals aren’t remotely close to being as pro-life as the average agnostic liberal is. So they can kindly go fuck themselves.
Steve LaBonne
@lowtechcyclist: https://photos.app.goo.gl/NTRTGQBEeYi5vXSr9
Jackie
@BR: I hope Kamala decides to have a Villages rally. TCFG’s head would EXPLODE! 🤯
Jackie
@RaflW: Here’s a link to Harris’ Pennsylvania interview:
https://6abc.com/post/look-brian-taffs-exclusive-action-news-interview-vice-president-democratic-nominee-kamala-harris/15300044/
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: Speaking as a member of a very tiny minority religion, that’s lamentably true. On the other hand we and our clergy show up and use our outdoor voices. Maybe that’s worth more than the politically inert mainline Protestantism (and Unitarianism and Universalism) of the Eisenhower era.
H.E.Wolf
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh no. My deepest sympathies to you and your family. May your memories of your mother be happy ones, and sustain you in years to come.
BellyCat
@lowtechcyclist: ProBirth. AntiLife.
BR
@Jackie:
I have to believe that an average Gen Z YouTube show has 10x the reach of local news. I really hope Harris and Walz do a blitz of podcasts and YouTube shows. That subwaytakes thing that Walz did was amazing, and people were sharing it for days. They could each do one every 2-3 days and suck all the oxygen out of the room.
Anoniminous
Not only are Conservative Christians losing their influence on American culture life they are losing headcount and, so, political power.
Steve LaBonne
@Anoniminous: And I believe that’s about the same proportion of the population as mainline Protestants. How have the mighty fallen.
lowtechcyclist
@kindness:
I get so fucking tired of hearing this.
You know how Biden’s many accomplishments got way underreported by the MSM? Well, he was the President of the whole motherfucking United States of America, and all that he did basically got minimized to the point of being buried.
Now, tell me what chance a bunch of ministers from mainstream denominations had of breaking through and being heard.
ETA: Or look at the comment immediately following yours.
Anyway
J Divans is such a horrible vile person— he is responsible for highlighting and amplifying the pet-eating canard from the RW cesspits and giving it oxygen . This is a sitting senator that didn’t care about verifying it or thinking through the consequences and couldn’t resist inciting his base. He’s worse than Dotard. the other person who picked it up right away was Musk who has a huge reach.
Kelly
@schrodingers_cat: Much sympathy. My Mom passed away in July. It’s so much to get used to.
Steve LaBonne
@lowtechcyclist: Anyone who has ever been to any kind of protest against any kind of oppression should surely have noticed the presence of people wearing clerical collars (even UU ministers tend to wear them on such occasions to identify themselves as clergy). It’s quite common for ministers to get arrested. I’m an atheist as well as a UU and I get really tired of people who attack all forms of religion indiscriminately.
lowtechcyclist
@Damien:
Can we roll DC statehood into that? Let’s get those two extra Senators on our side while we’ve got the chance. (And statehood for Puerto Rico if they want it, whether or not that benefits us. But definitely DC statehood, to reduce the Senate’s long-term GOP tilt by two votes.)
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh I’m so sorry! I somehow missed that. It’s been six years, I still miss my mother.
lowtechcyclist
@Elizabelle:
I wonder if he’s been to confession since he started spreading this false witness. Not much point to confession if one fully intends to continue sinning.
Steve LaBonne
@schrodingers_cat: I deeply sympathize with your loss. We have just had a terrible loss in our family- my wife lost her 44 year old elder son after a 2/12 year roller coaster fight for survival following a massive aortic dissection.
Steve LaBonne
@lowtechcyclist: There are plenty of fine liberal Catholics born into the faith, like Biden. But a lot of the adult converts like Vance, oh my.
Josie
@schrodingers_cat: So sorry to hear if your loss.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I previously expressed my condolences but doing it again.
Juju
@schrodingers_cat: I missed that sad news. I’m sorry about the loss of your mother. I will keep you in my thoughts.
SatanicPanic
@schrodingers_cat: I’m so sorry. Getting over losing my dad in July. I think about him every day.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@schrodingers_cat: I hope you’re able to get a flight and go, if that’s what you decide would be most comforting. The ritual sounds lovely.
eclare
@Steve LaBonne:
I’m so sorry to hear about your family’s loss.
narya
@schrodingers_cat: Adding my condolences as well–I missed it in the earlier thread.
Steve LaBonne
@eclare: Thank you. The last couple of years have been pretty rough.
Juju
@JaySinWA: He may be a nicer Pope, but he’s still Catholic. I was raised Catholic and I can tell you what that statement was all about. In Catholicism women are subservient to men in the hierarchy. The VP has the woman in a non subservient role going against her, and talking openly about abortion, as well. The Pope had no trouble endorsing a practicing pro choice Catholic man who was reluctant to go into details about abortion.
delphinium
@schrodingers_cat: Missed this earlier. Sorry to hear about your mom-healing thoughts to you and your family.
schrodingers_cat
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It will be good to be surrounded by my near and dear ones. Plus it will be a great opportunity to meet my extended family. My mother’s cousins and dad’s cousins. My mom’s friends and colleagues. Dad’s colleagues from his work. My old neighbors. Everyone will stop by to pay their respect
Kent
My experience living in the south is that abortion politics is really more about giving cover for racism.
What do I mean by that? Living and working in Texas I encountered plenty of middle class white men who would say things like: “I just can’t vote for Obama because I’m pro-life”. When I know damn well none of them gave the slightest shit or care about abortion and would pay for one in a heartbeat if a girlfriend or daughter became inconveniently pregnant. Abortion is just the politically acceptable way to be politically racist in modern America. You will see the same thing in 2024. People who say they are not racist against a black woman president. They just can’t vote for THIS one because of abortion….Right.
The 2nd Amendment and gun rights also serve the same purpose. It is more cover for racist right-wingers to let their racist free flag fly without actually saying the words. Because no one really questions your sincerity if you claim you are voting for the racist because of abortion or gun rights. They take you at your word.
Villiageidiocy
@RevRick: this is a interesting point. I grew up in the Episcopal church and in high school attended a Baptist service with a friend. It appeared very performative to me, like a stage show and we were the viewers. Nothing like the interactive nature of the Episcopalian service. (Ye, for you non -Episcopalians, all that bobbing up and down, call and response do matter)
I no longer attend services, but the modern American mega churches still don’t feel religious to me.
Chief Oshkosh
@RevRick:
FTFY.
Having spent a lot of time in Oklahoma, California (SoCal and NorCal), Arkansas, Maine, Georgia, Rhode Island, Florida, Kansas, and Pennsylvania, and having spent a lot of time around Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White Christians, my experience is that White Christians are BY FAR the worst hypocrites and heretics in the country.
Jackie
@BR: Yes, you’re correct – and also mistaken. Harris’ goal was talking to Pennsylvanian voters specifically, in a state where virtually every vote counts.
”We” can’t bitch that Harris doesn’t do interviews, then turn around and bitch that she’s doing interviews.
Nebber mind; this is Baloon-Juice. Yes we can and yes we do 🤣
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Thanks Baud. It was on Thursday night right. I remember.
Kent
@lowtechcyclist: You know. Complaining that “not all Christians are bad” is sort of like complaining that “not all Republicans are bad”
Both statements are objectively true. But that doesn’t change the fact that objectively speaking, both the GOP and organized Christianity in this country have, on balance, become retrograde or revanchist forces, standing in the way of progress and building a better world.
I grew up in a mainstream Christian denomination and my father was a minister. The church I grew up in is currently in total melt down and blowing apart because all those “Good Christians” cannot bring themselves to accept gay and trans people. Of all the issues facing this world, the one they choose to blow up the church over is the right to hate and discriminate against LGBT people. These are not southern Baptists. These are northern Mennonites.
My own children want absolutely nothing to do with my parent’s church and denomination because of this issue. And I don’t blame them. It has nothing to do with wanting church to be more of a flashy show. It has to do with Christian hate and bigotry.
Steve LaBonne
@Kent: Are you also an Islamophobe, or is it only Christians who qualify for your indiscriminate bigotry?
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: That and its absolute hatred of women. Eve ate the apple and in response, god said that woman shall bring forth children in pain. To the fundamentalist mindset, the primary purpose of pregnancy is to hurt women and punish them for eve’s sin. The life for the resulting child is at best secondary, and at worst completely irrelevant to that primary purpose.
Kent
My view is the same in both instances.
Even though there are no doubt many good Christians and many good Muslims, On balance I don’t view either Islam or Christianity to be forces for progress in this world.
Feel free to define what you mean by “indiscriminate bigotry” and show how that is an indiscriminately bigoted statement.
Steve LaBonne
@Kent: Lumping UCCers and Southern Baptists together is textbook bigotry. They have nothing in common but the name “Christian”, and only the former actually deserve that name. I suggest you study the antislavery and civil rights movements to learn how religion can be and has been a very important force for progress. Pretty much nothing humans invent has only good or only bad uses, and religion is no exception.
Citizen Alan
@Steve LaBonne: i wonder if you have to be raised catholic, and perhaps even go through catholic school, to reach adulthood and be able to remain catholic while also having a bullshit detector and simply ignoring the stupid parts of catholicism. Whereas the adult converts are only in it because they are fascism-curious and are attracted to the idea of an autocratic archbishop telling them exactly what to do with their lives
Steve LaBonne
@Citizen Alan: I was raised Catholic but it had worn off by age 11. I think your analysis is correct.
Citizen Alan
@Villiageidiocy: i remember attending an Episcopalian service in college after being raised baptist, and my thought at the time was that the production values weren’t nearly as good as what I was accustomed to.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: Condolences again. It’s very hard to lose your mother, especially so suddenly. It sounds like you have a good plan for your trip back to India. The rituals sound lovely and meaningful. I hope they provide comfort for you, your family, and all those who loved her.
It’s terribly hard for you to lose your mother and also so hard for your father to lose his wife and best friend. Hopefully you can all lean on each other. Grief is a strange experience and manifests in so many different ways. It’s a journey no one wants to take yet most of us will. Be kind to yourself and do what you need to do to grieve, even if others don’t understand. Sending good thoughts and thinking of you.
Citizen Alan
@Steve LaBonne: i’m happy to say that from an ethical standpoint I don’t see any difference between fundamentalist christianity and the worst aspects of fundamentalist islam. Every preacher in the religious right aspires to be the evangelical ayatollah.
Yarrow
@RevRick: Thank you for this post. This really resonates with me. I’ve been struggling to figure out what about things like “praise bands” bothered me so much and I think this is it. Attending a worship service is such a passive experience in those churches.
Ksmiami
@Steve LaBonne: once an door- knocking evangelical asked me if I wanted to be saved and I told her that spending eternity with evangelicals would be worse than hell.
Rileys Enabler
@schrodingers_cat: I missed the original post; sending love and support in the time of your loss. I am so sorry.
cmorenc
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?:
IMO all but a few of them will show up – this election, because only a couple of months ago, they were seemingly *so* close to complete victory with a Trump Presidency restoration and a realistically possible trifecta *and* a durable RW SCOTUS majority for at least several more years. They saw the prospect of fundamentally remaking American government in their Christian nationalist image (which we call Christo-fascist, but they see it as restoration of the properly moral society the US hypothetically had um…sometime, maybe the 1950s?). The prospect of that happening melts away with a Harris victory, especially if the Ds keep even the narrowest 50-50 + Waltz Senate majority (with the treacherous Manchin and Simena gone) and win the House.
That said, in a close election, it will only take a small proportion of them staying home to make a crucial difference (think of the outsize impact of Nader voters in Florida in 2000 refusing to vote for Al Gore because Gore wasn’t progressive-pure enough for them).
Steve LaBonne
@Ksmiami: I have always hoped that type, or Witnesses, would show up at my door so I can ask them if they’ve heard the good news of Unitarian Universalism. ;)
Kent
I am not lumping UCCers and Southern Baptists together. UCC is a tiny fraction of American Christianity. In political terms they are essentially like the “never-Trumpers” or Lincoln Project in that they are rowing upstream against the much larger currents going in the opposite direction.
That is objectively true. The UCC and other liberal groups are as small a part of American Christianity as are the “good Republicans” like Romney and Cheney who oppose Trump. It is most certainly possible to distinguish between individuals and larger forces. And in this day and age in 2024, objectively speaking, and when taken on balance or collectively, neither Christianity nor Islam are forces for progress
One could say the exact same thing about White men in this country, of which I am one. Not all White men are bad. But objectively speaking if only White men voted we would probably see the end of democracy and no Democrat would ever get elected. In 2020 White men voted for Trump 61% to 38% or by 23 percentage points. So collectively, White men are not a force for progress in this country any more than Christianity is. Take away White men and Trump is a complete non-entity. And it is not “textbook bigotry” to say so.
Kent
I have had Jehovah’s Witnesses show up at my door. Objectively speaking they tend to be too stupid and brainwashed to even understand what you would be saying.
cmorenc
@laura:
I realize you are saying supportive things to schrodinger’s cat addressed to her circumstances. And it can be generalized to whichever the first of your parents it is to go, and also the latter, provided they were still in sufficient mental and physical shape to still be their essential selves. It’s different when dementia has essentially already taken that person you knew away from you, because that forces you to have already gone through a substantial portion of the grief and suffering of their death, even though they are still alive. You still feel it when the moment of their actual passing comes, but at that point it’s morphed into a mixture of grief and relief.
My father died suddenly and unexpectedly of an abrupt cardiac event at 73yo. That was a truly earth-shaking disruptive surprise emotionally. My mother lived on another 22 years, the majority of which she was a gradually declining version of her same self, but over the last 5 or so years she was less and less of the person we knew and more and more off in the confabulating clouds of dementia. The result is that when she finally passed, the emotions were a confusing mix of grief and relief, with overtones of guilt for the feelings of relief.
The Pale Scot
I think this is an easy enough ask, seeing them all limping out out of church etc
May those who love us, love us.
And those that don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we’ll know them by their limping
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: I’m so sorry. I missed that news too. I’m glad you’ll be able to go and grieve with your family. It’s going to be tough for your poor dad after 57 years, and especially hard when it’s unexpected or sudden. Sending love to you and your family.
Steve LaBonne
@Kent: You know nothing about any individual white man until you know more about them than just the fact that they’re a white man. Condemning entire groups of individuals with diverse opinions and behavior, no matter if a majority in a particular group deserves it, may seem innocuous in a particular case involving people whom our culture tends to center, but the kind of “thinking” involved is the same that underlies racism. It’s a bad mental habit.
Gretchen
@Citizen Alan: That tradwife Ballerina Farms said that she only got to have an epidural that one time her husband wasn’t able to be with her for a birth and it was awesome. Apparently he doesn’t approve of childbirth medication so she had to do without for the rest of their many kids.
frosty
@cmorenc: This was my experience with both parents. My father had Parkinson’s and over ten years of visiting him, more of his abilities were gone every time. My mother had vascular demention in her last five years. Yes, there was grief but my feelings were mostly relief. I had ten years of grieving for my father’s losses before the end came.
Gretchen
@Citizen Alan: I’m a cradle Catholic and have always noticed that adult converts seem to over-do the strictness aspect. Catholic school and especially Jesuits encouraged questioning and understanding why we believe a certain way, while the converts seem to get off on exclusion and superiority. Of course, with all that questioning, a lot of us just left religion as adults. The priests going on an on about the sanctity of prenatal life while offering no help when I had surprise premature twins did it for me.
Gretchen
@cmorenc: My very Trumpy Wisconsin relative was on Facebook yesterday talking about how important it is to reelect Trump, and a couple of her Trumpy WI friends said they feel they can’t vote for either, and they’re going to write something in. Yes, please do that, that will show us!
Jinchi
They’ll show up.
Despite all the cultish nonsense they spout, most of the die-hard right-wingers know exactly who Trump is. They will not suddenly change their vote because they discover he’s a hypocrite, or a liar, or a fraud, or a rapist who violates every commandment they pretend to hold sacred while pocketing bribes from foreign dictators. They already know all that.
He’s a tool. A man with no principals except his own self-interest. Which means he’s just as happy to sign a nationwide ban on abortion even if he’s arranged a few for his own mistresses.
And they’re fine with that trade.
Kent
@Steve LaBonne: Geez…give it a rest.
It isn’t racism to observe that large majorities of White men prefer Trump and that were it not for White men collectively, Trump would be a complete non-entity in this country.
Those are objectively true statements
The better question is to ask, WHY that is the case.
lowtechcyclist
@Kent:
Not sure how this is a reply to anything I said in the comment you responded to.
What I was addressing was the assertion that mainstream Christians hardly said a thing as evangelicals moved in and took over and became the de facto representatives of American Protestant Christianity.
And I’m saying, how the fuck would he know? And that’s all I was saying.
If you’re either agreeing, or taking issue by saying “here’s how he would know,” then we’re at least part of the same discussion here.
But what you’re saying here is part of another discussion about American Christianity that I haven’t taken part in, at least not in this thread.
Kent
@lowtechcyclist: I guess I was just clicking on your post to respond generally to the topic. But in the past decade, the mainstream strains of Christianity that I’m most familiar with have been way too consumed with their own internal battles over LGBT bigotry to speak out in any sort of coherent way against Trumpism and the growing influence of the evangelical right.
Steve LaBonne
@Kent: You seem to like “addressing” things people didn’t say while failing to even try to comprehend what they did say. Whatever.
lowtechcyclist
@Kent:
I’m familiar with Mennonites. I wouldn’t regard them as a mainstream Christian denomination, nowhere close.
A Mennonite farm has a regular booth at our weekly farmers’ market. The teenage girls who help out are wearing bonnets and dresses that are straight out of 1910. I seriously doubt that they are given the tools to be capable of survival if they left their denomination. They make Southern Baptists look wildly permissive by comparison.
Ksmiami
Most religion is just toxic delusion because death is scary. The end.
laura
@cmorenc: My mother developed dementia. I became her conservator. She didn’t recognize me years before she passed. I felt relief that her suffering had ended. I somehow convinced myself I had “pre-grieved.” Life went on. I was at the theatre watching Ladybird. There was a mother daughter shopping for a prom dress scene. I fell apart- the vastness, the geography of my loss was laid bare and I was engulfed. I am sorry that you, too, have had the experience of the long goodbye and the relief of suffering that comes from this kind of loss. I hope that you are doing okay.
Juju
@cmorenc: I’m in that same boat right now. My dad was killed in an accident right in front of my mother. She once told me she saw the accident in her mind daily. When she was diagnosed with dementia one of the things she forgot was how my dad died. I thought that was probably the nicest thing about dementia that I could come up with. Now she thinks my dad is living either in Chicago where he lived when they met, or in Davenport with his mother, who would be 125 years old. My father would be 94. She goes from thinking it’s funny that he’s living with his mother, to being angry that he left her. My mother is 91. She’s at the make sure she’s comfortable but do nothing extraordinary to keep her alive stage. Dementia sucks.
Kent
You aren’t THAT familiar with Mennonites then. They are similar to Judaism in that they range from ultra-conservative Amish-adjacent groups that would be similar to Hasidic Jews, to mainstream liberal groups equivalent to Reform Judaism.
The largest group of Mennonites in North America are MC-USA which is a very mainstream protestant branch not much different from UCC or other liberal mainstream groups, except that over the past decade they have been imploding over gay marriage and ordination of gay pastors: https://www.mennoniteusa.org/
Parfigliano
@bbleh: I hope she dies. Fuck her.
Glidwrith
@Ksmiami: I once had a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses show up that thought my husband was easy prey because he had had a discussion with the Witness (a man) that had shown up a week before. Unfortunately for the ladies, they asked if I wanted to have immortal life. I replied they just needed to give me some cheek scrapings, I’d clone them and get immortality that way!
Then I shut the door in their faces.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@schrodingers_cat:
I missed that your mother had passed, my deepest condolences to you and your family for your loss. Moms are the center of the family and it hits hard.
Kayla Rudbek
@Citizen Alan: give me a child until he is seven and he is mine for life, was the Jesuit quote.
Or as the punchline of another joke goes, when Catholics say they’re atheists, they mean that they’re mad at the Church.