Archives for 2024

Jasmine Crockett gets it:

CNN has reported that Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter has left some Democrats fuming, as he repeatedly and unequivocally claimed that he would never take that step.

“I can’t say why my colleagues are acting the way that they are. I can say that the American people are tired of us bringing a butter knife to a real fight, a real war. And the reality is that, you know, a lot of my colleagues, even if they are lawyers, they’ve never practiced law, they’ve never actually been in a courtroom,” Crockett said of some Democrats who are critical of Biden.

“I need people to really recognize that we are living in some different times. And I applaud the president, because the American people have been so upset with Democrats not fighting back and not fighting with the same tools that the Republicans have been fighting with.”

(CNN is so messed up it’s hard to link to this directly, but here’s the page it’s from.)

Steve M has a good name for people like Jared Polis, who added to his track record of saying nice things about RFK Jr. by tweeting about his concern about the pardon:

Pick-Me’s Bringing Butter Knives to a Real WarPost + Comments (364)

I always have to chuckle when people say “well, she’s going to divorce him” after they find out that an apparently reasonable woman is married to a whack job / misogynist / red pill incel.  No she isn’t.  She’s an enabler who derives some benefit from the relationship, and she’s used to tolerating the behavior of her spouse.  Today’s case in point is RFK the lesser’s wife Cheryl Hines.  Remember how she was so upset when the news that her husband and Olivia Nuzzi were sexting?  That, like probably the dozen other women that he’s cheated on her with, is in the past.  Now Cheryl is sitting between Bobby Very Junior and Tucker Carlson at Trump’s table at Mar-a-Lago, and hawking a line of MAHA candles while standing in front of her nude husband.   See, also, Usha Vance.

Institutions have long provided shelter for abusers, and our silly belief that most Christian churches follow the teachings of their namesake and therefore deserve the benefit of the doubt allows those places to shelter child rapists, extreme misogynists, and (alleged) adult rapists, too:

In the years since [being accused of rape], Hegseth — now on his third marriage — has claimed that he rediscovered Christ, saying “faith became real” to him in 2018. He became deeply involved with the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), moving to Tennessee to enroll his children in a branch of this fundamentalist organization. He also joined the associated denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Both are led by Doug Wilson, an untrained and self-proclaimed pastor who advocates for Christian nationalism and has become famous for his trollish promotion of his far-right political views. At the center of Wilson’s philosophy is a misogyny so overt that it’s sometimes hard to believe he’s serious. [ed. – I have no problem believing he’s serious]

“Wilson holds the most extreme views of women’s submission found in any form of Christianity,” Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, told Salon. “Women are taught that submission to their husbands (and other male authorities) is submission to God. Independence of any kind is cast as sin.”

In one famous passage from his book on marriage, Wilson suggests that sexual violence is women’s fault for not being submissive enough. “[T]he sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party,” he writes. “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” The alleged failure of women to submit, he continues, leads men to “dream of being rapists,” deprived of the “erotic necessity” found in women’s submission. Nancy Wilson, Doug Wilson’s wife, backs this view, comparing a wife to a “garden” cultivated for the husband’s pleasure: “But of course a husband is never trespassing in his own garden.” […]

Journalists Peter Bell and Sarah Bader have been producing a podcast about Wilson and the culture of abuse at CREC churches and ACCS schools, titled “Sons of Patriarchy.” They’ve recorded a seemingly endless number of interviews with people who witnessed or survived sexual abuse or domestic violence — and documenting the unwillingness of CREC leaders to take it seriously. Bader told Salon women are told they are “accountable for all of their husband’s sins” and that Wilson just “rewrapped rape as ‘submission.'” Students at ACCS schools who said they were sexually abused by teachers reported being blamed for causing the older men to “stumble.” Women say they’ve been blamed for being raped, for husbands who abuse alcohol and for men’s infidelity.

Wilson says that God designed women “to make the sandwiches”.  Weird that whenever God’s teachings come up, they sound like the masturbatory fantasies of a teenage boy.  By the way, this is Wilson, and if he doesn’t give you the ick, maybe you need to recalibrate your ickometer:

Here’s One About the Enablers and ShelterersPost + Comments (110)