Culture Warriors category archive

You can’t make this stuff up. What’s truly sad is that you don’t even have to try to make it up.

The gyrations of Southerners who wish to deny the reality of Southern history constantly bemuse and amuse.

Houdini would be confounded by the contortions of those who seek to justify a society based on kidnapping, captivity, torture, rape, and theft of labor.

I did not realize this. Did you? (Emphasis added.)

On any given day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps at least 34,000 immigrants locked up while they wait for their cases to be heard in immigration court. Many of these detainees are incarcerated not because they are dangerous or likely to skip their court dates, but because ICE must meet an arbitrary quota set by Congress. This quota, which is often referred to as the “detention-bed mandate,” is a disgrace and should be eliminated.

(snip)

The quota is unprecedented. No other federal or state agency is required by law to detain a specific number of people without any regard to whether the quota makes sense from a law-enforcement perspective. Indeed, the quota is so excessive that it has been criticized by the very immigration authorities charged with enforcing it.

This is what cruelty looks like when it’s made routine by force of law.

Read the rest.

Rekha Basu, because she writes for the Des Moines Register, pretty much had to attend the recent right-wing religious fest in Iowa.

She takes exception to its premises. A nugget:

But America is not a theocracy, so it’s alarming to see politicians, by attending and playing to the sponsors, play into the notion that worshiping Jesus should be a prerequisite for federal or state office. America also cannot base its Mideast policy on some biblical interpretation about Israel. Whatever our religious affiliation or lack of it, I’d guess most voters have better explanations for Sept. 11 or the Sandy Hook shootings than God’s revenge – and would like to practical, reason-based solutions from those seeking office.

Via Job’s Anger.

In July, two customers received a discount for praying before their meal at Mary’s Gourmet Diner in Winston-Salem, N.C., and they posted a picture of their receipt on Facebook, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

It would appear that Matthew 6:5 was not one of their memory verses in Sunday School.

After the bout of Facebook Frolics, the discount has been discontinued.

One wonders whether their next marketing stunt will be a discount for beating plowshares into swords.

Writing in the Bangor Daily News, Robert W. Glover, assistant professor of honors and political science at the University of Maine, tries to understand the hostility to the child refugees fleeing to this country. A nugget (emphasis added):

This pitched public debate reveals much about how humans collectively respond to those who are different. Research on immigration attitudes suggests that opposition to increased migration often stems from perceptions of economic threat or notions that newly arriving immigrants, particularly those from different racial groups, threaten community security or our “way of life.”

For instance, in recent immigration attitudes research we conducted at the University of Maine, we found individuals consistently employed notions of threat consistent with racial stereotypes, even when these failed to correspond to the facts of a narrative they had just read. This shows how powerful notions of threat hinder our abilities to grasp nuance — or even make us misinterpret reality itself.

Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up.

Via Job’s Anger.

Dick Polman:

Nearly 18 months ago, the Republican National Committee released a detailed autopsy report on the ’12 debacle. It warned: “If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs, or the economy; of Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In essence, Hispanic voters tell us our party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.”

So what does the GOP do, in the one chamber of government it controls? It OKs a crackdown measure drafted in part by the likes of Michele Bachmann (she’s ecstatic about the House action, which tells you all you need know). In short, the GOP has opted to become known as the deportation party.

The Marquis de Sade, were he alive today, would be a Republican.

The University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors has decided that dissent is a bad thing.

I strongly doubt that Thomas Jefferson, who had as many faults as he had virtues, would approve.

Full Disclosure:

I did a year of graduate work in history at UVa. It almost destroyed my love of history (but it didn’t–if you don’t know where you came from, you cannot know where you are going), but it did me the inestimable service of convincing me that I did not want to become a professional academician.

Those folks will stab you in the back over a semicolon.

What Noz said.

The Stupid. It burns.

Facebook apparently is too liberal, so some wingnuts are starting their own site, where they can wallow unmolested in hate.

The Rude One’s comments on this are a delight.

Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

What happens when crackpot state legistors arrogate the role of doctor?

Debra L. Ness and Charles Cutler answer that question in the Inky. A nugget:

Pennsylvania and many other states have considered or enacted laws that mandate bad medicine, undermining the relationships between patients and health-care providers. These laws concern a range of issues, including women’s health, gun safety, environmental hazards, and more.

One of these laws forbids doctors from telling patients which by-products of natural-gas extraction may be making them or their children sick. Others prohibit physicians from discussing whether a gun in a patient’s home might be within reach of a small child. Still others require doctors to subject women seeking abortions to unnecessary medical tests or inaccurate information.

This Republican quackery needs to end.

Via Job’s Anger.

Dennis G. at Balloon Juice points out that mass migrations are normal parts of human history over millenia and highlights the racist motives of the right-wing anti-immigrant clamor. A nugget (emphasis added):

Given the scale of human history, borders, fences and other barriers to migration are a very recent development and the idea that you can stop human migration with non-porous borders is a very recent fantasy. There are some who want America to embrace this fantasy. Unsurprisingly, the wingnut plan to create these non-porous barriers is firmly rooted in our mythologies of race. These mythologies make it easy for white or white approved migrants to come and stay with or without documentation, while other migrants face extra hurdles and fear mongering design to turn them into “the enemy.” This is the standard wingnut reaction to migration and immigration from the Know Nothings to the Tea Party, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to border fences. Policies rooted in race-based fears never work and always lead to trouble. And yet, that is the only type of policy today’s conservatives can imagine.

Please do read the rest.

Wherever the scalpel cuts into American “Conservatism,” racism will be found at (and in) the base. All the rest is window-dressing.

The New Haven Register shares the stories of some of the immigrants refugees who have lately fled to the United States from Central America and found themselves in Connecticut. If you want to know why these children are heading north, read them.

They are chilling. Here’s a bit from one:

“They made an announcement at school that if the gangs didn’t get some money, they would kidnap a little girl who was five years old. They never heard from her again,” Hazel said, through a translator. When the mother of the child went to look for her, they found her dead with her organs removed.

Hazel said the principal of her school told the students that they would be safe there, but no one believed her as students disappeared, either fleeing the city or victims of extortion.

Nothing illustrates the venality, the cynicism, the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party and its dupes, symps, and fellow travelers more fully than its crusade to victimize these who are already victims.

Dan Simpson searches for America’s heart. Read it.