It’s worth paying attention from time to time what conservatives really want, and more importantly, their rationales.
NY Times, Ruth Graham, 4 Jul 2024: Why a New Conservative Brain Trust Is Resettling Across America, subtitled “Pro-Trump professionals aren’t just talking about remaking Western civilization. Some are uprooting their lives to show that they mean it.”
I’ve addressed this subject — what the “intellectuals” at the Claremont Institute think, and if they have any motivation beyond the dominance of their own particular religion — several months ago, here. Damon Linker, author of that piece, characterized them as “Claremont Catastrophists,” who predicted the end of the world unless they manage to prevail.
This piece seems similar, as it concerns how some of “Claremont’s key figures have been leaving California to find ideologically friendlier climes.” Why?
“A lot of us share a sense that Christendom is unraveling,” said Skyler Kressin, 38, who is friendly with the Claremont leaders and shares many of their concerns. He left Southern California to move to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 2020. “We need to be engaged, we need to be building.”
OK, says I, so what? There have been thousands of religions throughout human history, and it’s debatable at best whether any one of them has been especially instrumental in driving the survival, let alone progress, of the human race. Christians would like to think so about themselves, of course, but our modern technological civilization, with improved health and lifespans over those of people 500 years ago, emerged *despite* oppression by the Catholic Church, and Christians in America.
Anything new here?
Their ambitions paint a picture of the country they want should Mr. Trump return to the White House — one driven by their version of Christian values, with larger families and fewer immigrants. They foresee an aesthetic landscape to match, with more classical architecture and a revived conservative art movement and men wearing traditional suits.
So their concern is that *their own particular culture* should be institutionalized forever more, or all is lost. They have no sense of history, or the diversity of the human race.
An example:
The idea was a “fraternal community,” as one leader put it, that prioritized in-person meetings. The result was the all-male Society for American Civic Renewal, an invitation-only social organization reserved for Christians. The group has about 10 lodges in various states of development so far, with membership ranging between seven and several dozen people.
My discussions in recent months would easily align these thoughts with the idealization of ‘tribal’ society and ‘tribal’ morality — pulling in, sealing off the outside world, prioritizing only one’s own kind and dismissing all others. Never mind global issues.
The circle’s critics say they present a cleaned-up version of some of the darkest elements of the right, including a cultural homogeneity to the point of racism and an openness to using violence to achieve political ends.
With a quote from the earlier Damon Linker article. Followed by a photo of a little girl crocheting, and examples of “young, mostly white-collar (and mostly white), and often wealthy” men who have been upset by the dearth of “architecturally significant churches” and same-sex marriage, among much else.
In Mr. Kressin’s new hometown in Idaho, the streets are clean and people leave their doors unlocked. His family lives in a house they can afford to own, with a white picket fence and room for a trampoline in the yard. In the cozy living room, an upright piano stands in the corner, and hymnals and classic novels line shelves on the wall.
What MAGA means, I suppose. A naively simplex past that excludes the majority of the world’s population. Mr. Kressin ends the article:
“Who knows what the future holds, but if you don’t even start building a family culture, you’re doomed to fail.”
Very tribalist thinking. On the contrary, the world is doing just fine, too fine, expanding its population and promulgating human nature without any particular brand of culture, in particular this patriarchal, racist, pious one, whose members feel superior to everyone else.
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In fact, anyone who pays attention to world news (as those people probably don’t) quickly realizes that *most* of the conflicts around the world are ones about which culture or religious group should prevail over all the others. The solution is not to keep fighting wars, or piously withdraw from secular society — it’s to realize that secular society is the only solution to stop wars and to solve global problems. Withdraw into your own little world, and the world may fall around you without your ever realizing why, let alone being part of the solution. Just say “God be great” and you’re good.
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By the same token,
NY Times, Pamela Paul, 4 Jul 2024: Your Religious Values Are Not American Values
Whenever a politician cites “Judeo-Christian values,” I find it’s generally followed by something unsettling.
With the current examples of the Louisiana governor mandating that the Ten Commandments must be displayed in public classrooms, and Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction mandating teaching of the Bible in public schools.
Forgive me for wondering: Is he referring to “an eye for an eye” or the stoning of disobedient children?
I’ve seen several funny memes on Facebook along similar lines. The broader point is how or why these officials seem to miss the point.
Either way, for both Trump and true believers, it hardly matters that the First Amendment was intended to protect religion from the state, not to have the state impose a religion. (So much for originalism.) Their goal is to impose one form of religion, Christianity, and the underlying message is that those who do not share it will have to submit.
Not only have such moves been declared unconstitutional (“I can’t wait to be sued,” Landry said), but they are also exclusionary and offensive to many.
Despite what the Christian nationalist movement would have you believe, America was not founded as a Christian nation. Nor is it one today. In a pluralistic country, neither the Bible nor Judeo-Christian values are universal, including in the two heavily Christian Southern states in which these laws were passed.
If you asked these officials, what would they think is some Buddhist or Hindu official mandating the posting of *their* religion’s precepts into public classrooms? If they don’t understand why this is not an equivalent situation, because they rely on their own religion’s dominance in society, they are missing the point of the First Amendment.
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The bridge between tribalist thinking and globalist thinking is education, and experience. (Which conservatives try to carefully regulate, or avoid.)
Salon, Brian Karem, 4 Jul 2024: A eulogy for the United States on its birthday, subtitled “Let’s celebrate a democracy that once was – but not what it now is”
An historical overview of the United States’ achievements, and failures, responding especially to the recent Supreme Court decision about Immunity. A sample:
The United States had a good run. Born from an oppressive tea tax imposed by Britain without the consent of the governed, slave and land-owning patriots across the original 13 colonies rebelled and tried to institute a government that derived its powers “from the consent of the governed.” A bold ideal that wasn’t reality, as women and Blacks had no voice in the government originally. But as Martin Luther King Jr. later declared, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Slavery ended, women got the vote, education improved and by the beginning of the 20th Century the democracy appeared in robust shape. Most people trusted government institutions, and while Jim Crow policies and economic disparity during the “Gilded Age” enabled many to question the country’s vitality, an overwhelming majority of us ignored the warning signs.
Continuing on with FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, and recent decades.
Our infrastructure began to fail. We didn’t embrace universal healthcare. We refused to pass responsible gun legislation. Our elected officials became more vituperative and less intelligent. We graduated from a robust economy that built a thriving middle class, to a bloated “trickle down” economy that fed the filthy rich and robbed everyone else. The age of robber barons had returned. We entered a technological dark age that further fed the national illness.
The disease claimed our cognitive functions. Unable to connect, unable to take care of ourselves, our institutions couldn’t stand. In the final stages of the disease, the country withered – electing older men to the highest office while Congress and the judiciary retreated from the high water of progress to embrace Christian Nationalism. It was as if the country knew it was dying and was appealing to a higher power to save it because it was no longer capable of saving itself. Women lost the right to healthcare. Legislators demanded we teach the Ten Commandments in public schools – in a country that prided itself on the separation of church and state in order to avoid the centuries of strife that plagued Europe. The high tide of the American ideal was long gone. What remained was a walking, emaciated corpse.
And so here we are. Is it as bad as the naysayers say?
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Short items.
AlterNet, Arnie Arnesen, 4 Jul 2024: Opinion | Give me the stuttering old man over the racist, sexist, lying fascist
Nice thought, but politics never works like this.
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NYT, Frank Bruni, 4 Jul 2024: There Is Apparently No Accountability — Ever — for Donald Trump
We tell children — or at least we used to — that actions have consequences. What goes around comes around. Watch your behavior. You’ll answer for it someday.
Donald Trump is the living, lying contradiction of that.
He answers for nothing. He’s accountable to no one.
You thought that changed with a Manhattan jury’s verdict five weeks ago? With “guilty” on all 34 counts? How adorable. That only bound most of his supporters even closer to him. Only amplified the theatrical ardor with which Republican politicians pledged their devotion. Only increased donations to his presidential campaign.
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LGBTQNation, 3 Jul 2024: Republicans gut HIV/AIDS spending by over $400 million in next year’s budget, subtitled “Last year Republicans attempted to cut HIV prevention funds, but the committee rejected the budget cuts.”
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NY Times, Adam Grant, 3 Jul 2024: There’s a Name for the Trap Biden Faces
Why does Biden persist? Adam Grant, author of a couple books I’ve reviewed (see link on his name, above), thinks it’s “escalation of commitment to a losing course of action”. Which I think is the same as the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Once we’re invested in a certain cause, even given evidence to change our minds, we’re reluctant abandon it, lest it be tantamount to admitting we’ve made a mistake.
