Politics of Hate category archive
Twilight Zone of the Vanities 0
Rekha Basu shares her nightmare of a Gordon Gekko world:.
Follow the link for the rest, if you dare.
Carolina Coup d’Etat, Reprise 0
This is really quite appalling. One can make a convincing argument that today’s Republican Party no longer believes in truth, justice, or the American way.
Chaos in the Cabinet 0
I reckon that it is fitting that a reality show star would assemble a reality show cabinet full of cranks, nutcases, has-beens, and never-weres, calculated to cause maximum chaos while creating continuing crises for each succeeding episode.
Image via Job’s Anger.
Carolina Coup d’Etat 0
Republicans in North Carolina demonstrate that they no longer believe in elections as they attempt to neuter the governorship because their guy didn’t win.
One more time, any experiment can fail, even a noble one.
Mixed Nuts 0
Michael Smerconish ponders whether firing “Pistachio Girl” missed the Aramark.
Reconcilable Differences 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Douglas G. Kenrick remembers how, when he attended Catholic Schools, the nuns would respond when he wondered how a merciful, loving God could allow misery and pestilence. Now he wonders how persons who loudly claim to worship a merciful, loving God could have supported Donald Trump and, in a larger context, what social function religious beliefs may play in the polity.
Here’s just a bit. Follow the link for the rest.
According to the Pew Institute, 58% of Protestants, 60% of White Catholics, 61% of Mormons, and fully 81% of born again Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. I just checked online, and found a very recent list Donald Trump’s cabinet picks so far. If I were back in St. Joseph’s today, I would ask the nuns how an all loving, all powerful, all merciful, and all powerful God could have allowed Christians to elect a man who has chosen:
- a CIA director who calls those who use torture: “heroes, not pawns in some liberal game played by the ACLU,”
- a treasury secretary nicknamed “the foreclosure king,”
- an attorney general who said he thought the members of the Ku Klux Klan were: “OK, until I found out they smoked pot,”
- a secretary of defense known for his warlike hawkishness (nicknamed “Mad Dog” Mattis),
- a secretary of labor who is a “staunch opponent” of the minimum wage
- a director of the Environmental Protection Agency who actively opposes environmental protections,
- a Secretary of Commerce who has been “dubbed a “vulture” and “king of bankruptcy” because of his knack for extracting a profit from failing businesses,”
- a chief strategist of whom the Guardian says: “His web site was a clearinghouse for hate speech of all kinds including white nationalism, anti-semitism, immigrant-hatred and misogyny.”
I guess the nuns might reassure me that “God works in mysterious ways, and we simply need to have faith in His infinite wisdom.”
“No Comment” 0
There’s a reason that I do not read the comments at news sites.
Reindeer Games 0
Rekha Basu takes a fresh look at the tale of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
In fairness, they probably never met another a reindeer that looked different. Maybe their parents raised them to fear differences, and so they tried to compensate by heckling the different one and never got corrected.
Stolen Identity 2
John Cole skewers the hypocrites who are bleating about Democrats’ having to “end identity politics.” Here’s a teaser; follow the link for a magnificent, blistering rant (language).
It’s Not Just the “Appeal,” It’s Also the “Appealee” 0
As I was waking up, the germ of a blog post started to grow in the back of my mind, one about the fundamental flaw in the reasoning that blames Democrats for not adequately appealing to persons who voted for Donald Trump. I was musing about how to frame an argument that such “analyses” overlook the tactics that Republicans used to attract those votes: venal appeals to selfishness, hatred, and bigotry. I question that persons welcoming such appeals would be receptive to anything the Democrats might offer.
When I got to my RSS feed reader, I found that Badtux had written the post for me. Here’s how he starts:
Not to mention that it would have been futile in the first place. Even if the Democrats had reached out to bigots, the Republican Party appears to have a lock on the bigot vote at present . . . .
Thanks to Badtux for making my day a little easier.