Thought for the day. It occurs to me that — at the risk of tossing out another simplistic dichotomy — the OT is pure tribal morality, while the NT, parts of it anyway (Jesus, maybe, though not Paul), presents a more sophisticated, worldly morality. And so it’s telling that Christians want the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, but not anything that Jesus supposedly said.
- More about Democrats calling Republicans names, since apparently that’s all the latter understand;
- An appeal from a Republican governor to his party: stop the trash talk;
- How the accusations of “weird” are driving MAGA nuts;
- How Vance and Thiel suspect that America began going downhill when women got the vote;
- Short items about misogyny in the US, Trump the bigot, how awful Trump is, how Trump doesn’t “want” pronouns;
- And an essay about Christians who actually follow Jesus, and who are therefore fighting against Trump.
Two complementary items in today’s NYT, one of which echoes the item I posted yesterday.
NY Times, Jessica Bennett, Opinion, 31 Jul 2024: Trump Is ‘Weird,’ Vance Is ‘Creepy.’ Finally, the Democrats Start Name-Calling.
The opening paras here reflect my comments yesterday.
Snowflakes. Groomers. Cucks.
For years the MAGA movement has approached politics the way a bully would approach a schoolyard, sparring with labels so nasty, they seemed expressly chosen to appeal to the kind of people who stuffed nerds in lockers in sixth grade. And for years Democrats, abiding by the mantra to go high, not low, have responded by trying to be the adults in the room: defending themselves with facts, with context, with earnest explanations that nobody remembers (if they defend themselves at all).
The problem is that taking the high road only works if politics is a sport played mainly by people who act like grown-ups, which it is not. And also: Facts and context don’t make for particularly sticky messaging.
Enter: Weird.
Over the past two weeks, as “Brat” and coconut memes have taken over the internet and Kamala Harris inches closer to Donald Trump in the polls, the Democrats have finally gone low, deploying a bit of verbal jujitsu so delightfully petty it might just work.
In contrast is the next item, quite ironically adjacent to the first in today’s print paper.
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NY Times, Christopher J. Sununu, guest essay, 1 Aug 2024: My Fellow Republicans, Stop the Trash Talk
As a Republican governor who has won four elections in a purple state, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to win. As Donald Trump and my fellow Republicans navigate the next steps of their campaigns, my message to them is this: The path to victory in November is not through character attacks or personal insults.
In fact, those attacks are unlikely to bring a single new voter on board. Catchy one-liners — calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “bum,” “not a serious person” and “bottom of the barrel” — might rile up the base, but they do little to connect with independent voters needed to close the deal in November.
But as I’ve said, the Republicans can’t help themselves. That’s all they understand.
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And then:
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 2 Aug 2024: What does “weird” even mean? Why the vagueness works — and why it’s driving MAGA nuts, subtitled “The ‘weird’ discourse is turning MAGA-style doublespeak against itself — and it’s totally working”
Almost as soon as Democrats started circulating the word “weird” as a primary attack on Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, the second-guessing began. Because some progressives can’t help but turn to self-parody, we heard concerns that “weird” is a stigmatizing term that could be hurtful to those who “self-identify as weird.” Some journalists got fussy about the word weird, because it violates a powerful convention of good writing: Be precise in your word choice. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post worried that “weird” could “downplay the threat” of Trumpism by “making Trump seem merely daring or irreverent.” Historian and blogger Erik Loomis wrote, “It’s not so much that Trump is weird … as [that] he is probably the single worst human being in American political history.”
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But I also squirmed for the same reason as a lot of other people: “Weird” is a vague term, almost impossible to define. Like many media folks who have tried to assess the weirdness of MAGA over the years, I’ve been drawn to more exacting adjectives: Fascistic. Sinister. Sadistic. Unhinged. Sociopathic. But “weird” is undeniably delighting everyday Americans who just find Trump and his movement alien and disgusting. Furthermore, the word puts MAGA on the defensive, to a degree I haven’t seen before. Trump booster Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old man who spends his days tweeting like a 15-year-old edgelord, complained that it’s “dumb & juvenile.” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., self-owned in a big way, responding, “They called us weird so I’ll call them weirder. That’s what I used to do back in high school.”
And Facebook posts from a couple friends of mine have said how they’ve taken the accusation of being “weird” as a badge of honor. Too bad some other adjective couldn’t have been found.
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Yet another example of tribal moralists upset by the modern world.
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley, 2 Aug 2024: Is J.D. Vance’s Biggest Donor Right That America Started Going Downhill When Women Got the Vote?, subtitled “Let’s look at the evidence before we dismiss this out of hand.”
The contention is from Peter Thiel, who in effect said that American society started going downhill in the 1920s, when women got the vote, among other things that happened then. The writer considers the evidence seriously. Maybe because women are more liberal than men? Voted for too many social programs? Not exactly, according to Harvard professor Claudia Goldin:
This all said, Goldin notes, there is research showing that the expansion of the franchise had an immediate effect in the early 20th century on the government’s attention to public health, particularly reforms that benefited children.
“In sum—the vote did matter and probably helped to clean up the food supply and create healthier cities,” she wrote. “Is that good for economic growth? Most would say ‘yes.’ Much better for wellbeing, and isn’t that what it is all about?”
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Now we’re getting all sorts of tribalist misogyny.
The Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr, 27 Jul 2024: This is a misogyny emergency. A huge outpouring is coming in the runup to the US election
In 2016, a historically unprecedented incident took place. And yet, barely anyone even noticed. Even years later, we’ve failed to acknowledge it or to have begun the process of understanding it. Because we still can’t even see it.
And that’s because this incident involved a woman. And she was asking for it.
The woman was Hillary Clinton. What she was asking for was votes. And what she got was the single biggest outpouring of misogyny in human history.
We can now say that. Although no one ever does. But this was an unprecedented previously unimaginable event. Because 2016 was when the world’s first global instant mass communication technology – social media – crashed up against the most ancient of prejudices – misogyny.
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Summary of Trump’s naked bigotry; nothing new here.
Robert Reich, 1 Aug 2024: Trump’s meltdown, subtitled “The bigot revealed”
We all know Trump is a racist, a misogynist, and an antisemite. But in past years he’s expressed such bigotry just enough to excite his base while covering himself with “I was just being sarcastic” or “It was taken out of context.” And the media allowed him to get away with it.
No longer. Now that he’s running for president against a Black woman, the media isn’t buying it.
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Another piece about the interview Trump gave a few days ago to the National Association of Black Journalists.
Slate, Jeremy Stahl, 31 Jul 2024: Donald Trump Is on a Real Tear of Reminding Everyone How Awful He Is, subtitled “It remains astonishing what this man will say out loud, in public.”
And there are tens of millions of voters out there who think he’s a hoot.
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And if he has no idea what he’s talking about, apparently his fans (who doubtless “don’t like pronouns” either) don’t care.
Salon, Griffin Eckstein, 1 Aug 2024: “I don’t want pronouns”: Trump asked if he’s gender-fluid in Fox interview, subtitled “Amid campaign promises to roll back trans rights, Trump voiced his opposition to pronouns with Fox’s Laura Ingraham”
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So, quite coincidentally to my opening thought of this post (which I wrote down yesterday), is this piece posted today.
NY Times, Eliza Griswold, guest essay, 2 Aug 2024: The Christian Case Against Trump
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, a video with images of Jesus crowned with thorns, blood running down his face, followed by photos of the former president circulated on social media. Days later, at the Republican National Convention, the evangelist Franklin Graham endorsed Mr. Trump from the stage, saying that “God spared his life.”
But the idea of Mr. Trump as chosen by God has infuriated those evangelicals who believe that he stands in direct opposition to their faith. Their existence highlights an often-overlooked fact about the American religious landscape: Evangelicals are not a monolith.
The troubling ascendancy of white Christian nationalism has galvanized evangelicals for whom following Jesus demands speaking truth to power, as well as building the kingdom of heaven on earth in actionable ways. In 2024, this includes mobilizing voters against the former president.
Here is my point exactly:
“The so-called evangelicals who support Trump have a Jesus problem,” Bishop William Barber II told me. Jesus advocated tirelessly for the poor and warned that nations would be judged “by how we treat the hungry, the sick, the incarcerated and the immigrant,” Bishop Barber said.
The writer’s main point is that evangelicals aren’t block voters. And some *are* rebelling against Trump.
Instead of casting Mr. Trump as a holy martyr, these Christians offer an alternative vision of him as an Antichrist, who abuses his power and in many ways resembles the emperors of Rome. (The Antichrist is sometimes likened to Nero, who persecuted Christians and sometimes crucified them.)
These other evangelicals also commit to following word for word Jesus’ moral teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he commands people to “give to the needy,” as well as “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” among other practical but difficult tasks. This provides a blueprint for the Christian ethic. “There is no following Jesus without following his teachings on helping the poor and oppressed,” Lisa Sharon Harper, an evangelical theologian, told me.
And yet:
Some American evangelicals justify Mr. Trump’s decidedly unchristian acts like cheating on his wife with a porn star, in service of advancing abortion restrictions.
But how much is there in the Bible about abortion? Nothing, I believe. Rather, this obsession with abortion is another element of tribal morality that favors expansion of the tribe at the expense of all other considerations.
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Most mornings I reread, polish, and copy-edit my post from the evening before. If this comment is still here, I have not yet done so for this post.
