Culture Warriors category archive
The Age of Delightenment 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Clifford Lazarus laments the growth of willful scientific ignorance. A snippet:
Do please read the rest.
The Court Is in Sessions 0
Will Bunch has more. A snippet:
American Taliban, Money Changers in the Temple Dept. 0
Dana Milbank discusses right-wing “Christians” attempt to raid the public purse.
These theocrats have redefined “we are oppressed” to mean “we are not getting our way.”
Alt-Universe 0
Dick Polman points out that “alternative facts” are not uniquely American.
He travels to France to find them also roaming in the wild there.
Republican Family Values . . . 0
. . . have never been anything other than a con for the rubes.
Tales of the Tarheel Potty Police 0
North Carolina legislators just can’t stop peeking under the stall.
Afterthought:
Doesn’t anyone else recognize how pervy is their preoccupation with pee?
Golden showers must fill their dreams,
as smiles await them with their streams . . . .
The “Friend Zone” 0
In The Guardian, Jessica Valenti tries to make sense of men who are afraid to be alone with women just because they are women.
(snip)
And that’s the rub. To some conservatives, still, relationships are not about joy or friendship, mutual admiration or common interests – they’re about creating new citizens. “Get pregnant a bunch of times and give birth to a bunch of beautiful little future taxpayers,” (Federalist writer and Lutheran pastor Hans Fiene–ed.) Fiene instructs women.
That’s why I can’t feel too badly for men like this, who are missing out on rich friendships and connections with women. Because the reason they refuse to see us as friends is that they don’t really see us as people – just potential wives or objects or desire, virgins or whores.
This does not negate that there are some men who should not be alone in a room with women.
And God Said, “Suffer, Baby” 0
If you are going to be a Biblical literalist, you can’t pick and choose. Literalism is an all or nothing proposition. Farron Cousins explains.
Tales of the Tarheel Potty Police 0
Alfred Doblin skewers the ballyhooed “compromise” over North Carolina’s infamous peer-into-the-potty law. A snippet:
Think about it. A law approved by a Republican legislature and signed by a Democratic governor that prevents municipalities from ensuring that no resident of their respective communities is the subject of discrimination. And this was the fix to a bad law.
The Republican Party, embracing mean for the sake of mean ever since Richard Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy.
Tales of the Tarheel Potty Police 0
Remember, the “compromise’ has a footnote. It puts “a moratorium on local ordinances regulating public accommodations or private employment practices until Dec. 1, 2020.” In other words, it strips localities from enacting their own anti-discrimination laws, because–oh, hell, I’ll be blunt–discrimination is a Republican Family Value.
Rights for Me but Not for You 0
In The Roanoke Times, Virginia Tech history professor Peter Wallenstein explains how Southern states favor of “states’ rights” except when they are not.
Trumpling Freedom of Religion 0
(Link fixed.)
In The Seattle Times, Rabbi Daniel Weiner reflects on the recent anti-Semitic vandalism of his synagogue, in which the words, “Holocau$t is face hi$tory,” were spray-painted on its wall. He responds to persons who believed that he unfairly blamed Donald Trump for the deed. Here’s an excerpt (emphasis added):
There has been much documented about the intersections between Trump associates and the “alt-right” — a cleansing euphemism for white supremacy. Trump’s actual regard for vulnerable populations, Jews among them, is inconsequential to his intoning of the classic “dog-whistles” of anti-minority tropes. If he is truly aware of the implications of his words, it is troubling. If he plumbs the abyss out of mere political expediency, it is equally dangerous, displaying a reckless disregard for truth and propriety unworthy of the office he currently holds.
When you blow a dog-whistle, don’t be surprised when the dogs respond.