From Pine View Farm

Culture Warriors category archive

Republican Family Values 0

Michael in Norfolk notes that they are phoning it in.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Donald Trump stands next to  Tom Homan, whom he wishes to appoint as the

Via Job’s Anger.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Man and woman walking through the country side are talking.  Woman:  I'm really worried about falling birthrates.  How will the economy grow with population declining?  Man:  We could let in more immigrants.  Woman:  Lots of businesses already can't find enough workers.  And that's going to get worse.  Man:  We could let in more immigrants.  Woman:  Plus, America is an aging nation.  We need young people to take care of us as we age.  Man:  We could let in more immigrants.  Woman (scowling):  And I don't want the country to get any less white.  Man:  We could let in more imni . . . I think I see the problem.

Via Job’s Anger.

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Establishmentarians 0

Writing at Above the Law, Kathryn Rubino suspects that those who would establish impose their faith might have an appeal.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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A Notion of Immigrants, Mean for the Sake of Mean Dept. 0

It is difficult not to find oneself just maybe having a slight twinge of a suspicion that perhaps sadism is a Republican Family Value.

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Dissonance 0

As I was preparing to hang the flag out–something I do for national holidays–I thought of others who fly the flag, maybe just not only on holidays as I do but every day, some of them even flying maybe multiple flags from their “I am an inadequate male” pick-up trucks.

I thought of how they congratulate themselves on being such patriots.

And I wondered, as they do that, do they think of the pledge, do they repeat the words

. . . and liberty and justice for all . . . .

to themselves, even as they vote for Donald Trump, the man who puts children in cages?

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

Michael in Norfolk hears a rhyme.

_________________

*Mark Twain.

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Base Desires 0

Field shares his thoughts about the recent election. A snippet (emphasis in the original):

. . . let’s stop with all the talk about white working class and economic angst and democrats not addressing their concerns. (James Carville, and Bernie Sanders, old white men themselves, will never get it.) If you gave a lot of these white working class voters a million dollars, and in order to keep it, they would have to have voted for Harris, your money would have been safe. They still wouldn’t have done it. It has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with identity. Kamala’s race and gender made it damn near impossible for her to win. Her opponent, at times, was acting like he wanted to lose, and he still beat her by a country mile. Performing fellatio on a mike at a rally, declaring that immigrants are eating cats and dogs, threatening political violence against your enemies, is not a winning message, but it worked for trump because it was never about the message. It was always about the people who are running. Plain and simple.

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Establishmentarians 0

Sociology professor Art Jipson takes a deep look at New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), one of the right-wing evangelical they-call-themselves Christian groups that have anointed Donald Trump as Jesus 2.0.

Afterthought:

Methinks the right-wing evangelical they-call-themselves Christian movmment is not at all about the spreading the gospel of love.

It’s about the propagating the power of preachers.

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Unjust Deserts? 0

Thom takes exception to Elie Mystal’s column about the recent election, in which Mystal argues that “Trump is our reckoning.”

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Joy Reid pulls no punches.

Make no mistake.

The pundits and politicians who are trying to blame Kamala Harris’s losing the election on Democratic strategy or poor messaging or you-name-it are (often willfully) missing the point.

Harris, despite being the most capable (not to mention coherent) candidate, lost to America’s original sin of chattel slavery and the construct of white racial superiority that was formulated to rationalize it.

Any claim otherwise is bullsh from the pundit hand book on how to mislabel maliciousness and normalize narcissism..

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Lincoln Today 0

Abe Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial throwing up into paper bag.

Click for the original image.

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Know Them by the Company They Keep 0

The wedding guest.

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The Rule of Flaw 0

I go to sleep worrying about the American dream.

I wake up to the American scream.

I am not sanguine.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

Robert Cauthorn, writing at the Las Vegas Sun, hears a number of rhymes between today and the era of McCarthyism and the “Red Scare.” Here’s just one of them; follow the link for the rest.

The phrase “the enemy within” is among the darkest phrases any politician can utter because it presages the arrival of purges, pogroms and persecution. The public must take it seriously. Those words are spoken in sincerity, they are a means of justifying tearing American culture apart while rewarding friends and eliminating critics.

Just like today, in the 1950s the forces of authoritarianism talked about the people who opposed them as degenerates and sexual deviants. And it should not go unnoticed that McCarthy’s right hand was lawyer Roy Cohn, who later became Donald Trump’s prized mentor.

Methinks you will find his article somewhat disquieting.

__________________

*Mark Twain.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

At the Portland Press-Herald, Victoria Hugo-Vidal hears a rhyme. Here’s a tiny bit of her column:

Simplicio (the author’s great grandfather–ed.) was also mixed-race. His father was a Chinese merchant and his mother was native Filipino and Spanish. This made my great-grandfather mixed-race as well. In the America of the 1920s and 1930s, that was a major barrier to success. So the young man born Jose Maria Ysidro Bonifacio Seraller Jugo became Victor Joseph M. Hugo-Vidal. And he passed as white . . . .

At the same time as Victor was hiding his heritage, on the other side of the family on the other side of the country, in upstate New York, my other great-great-grandfather, Garrett MacEachron, joined the domestic terrorist group known as the Ku Klux Klan.

I commend the entire piece to your attention.

_________________

*Mark Twain.

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Republican Family Values 0

Donald Trump in a tree spying on a woman who's getting undressed.  Trump says,

Via Job’s Anger.

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A Pet Theory 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Robert Bartholomew notes that there is nothing new about stories of immigrants eating pets Here’s a bit of his article (emphasis added); follow the link for context.

In the 19th century, West Coast Chinese immigrants were alleged to be eating cats and dogs, and this was used to justify discriminatory policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It was also a way to dehumanize them as “the Other.” After the Vietnam War, there were widespread rumors in America that Vietnamese immigrants were stealing dogs as a food source. There have long been stories across the U.S. that pets have mysteriously gone missing near Chinese restaurants. Urban legends about Haitian migrants eating dogs and cats became prominent in the 1990s and coincided with an influx of people migrating to America from Haiti. These stories spread organically, fueled by the fear of those who are different from us and concerns that they will change the fabric of American society.

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A Tune for the Times 0

The Parody Project looks back at the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency (and wonders why anyone would want to go through that again).

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