David M. Perry, “Concentration camps are not just part of our past, but our present and future”
Kim TallBear, professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate (a Dakota tribe), grew up in St. Paul and just recently returned to Minnesota. When we met earlier this month, she told me that the most important aspect of recognizing this history is not so those of us descended from settlers or who have otherwise benefited from the legacy of colonialism feel shame, but rather “to recognize that these tactics, [a division into] savage vs. civilized, continues to inhabit our society. At any moment, these sentiments are still there and this way of thinking emerges.”
Rebecca Solnit, “The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein”
The pretense that we will find out whether or not Donald Trump is a sexual predator if the Epstein files are released is itself a kind of cover-up, since we already know he is – though I’m all for finding out exactly what it is he’s so frantic to hide. He was found liable for sexually assaulting E Jean Carroll in a 2023 civil trial and has been credibly accused of groping, grabbing, and assault by numerous women. His worse-than-creepy behavior around the teenage girls in beauty pageants he managed is well-documented, as is his closeness to Epstein.
Donna Ladd, “The Epstein Saga Is Not a Game. It’s About Protecting Women and Girls From Rape and Retribution.”
Of course, I do understand why women are afraid to come forward. I didn’t call the cops on my rapist, and I’ve never named him publicly. It’s sure the hell not because I’m protecting him. I’m protecting myself. Nobody would have believed this trailer-park girl versus that Big Man On Campus, and if I’d outed him as an adult, he would just say he jilted me and call me crazy in a world primed to believe the worst about women, full stop.
There would be lots of hand-wringing about me trying to ruin his life—when I and so, so, so many women (and others) have carried around the fear, distrust and guilt much of our lives like a backpack filled with bricks. These freaks damage our ability to trust; they make relationships more difficult (at least until you find someone who gets it as best they can and supports you); and they make us fear the dark and watch over our shoulders more than any human being should.
Marissa Franks Burt, “Influencers invoked the Bible to promote spanking. What about its harmful effects?”
My co-author and I interviewed parents and adult children who were formed by Christian liturgies for spanking. I wish Madison and Grant could listen to some of those stories, including older parents who, looking back, identify deep regrets, grief and a sense of betrayal. It’s a heartbreaking reckoning, sometimes forestalled by the fragility and defensiveness of dogmatic Christians unwilling to consider alternatives. Instead, they double-down, misquoting “Spare the rod, spoil the child” as if it were a Bible verse. (It’s not.)
These parents probably intend to refer to a handful of verses in the book of the Bible called Proverbs, a collection of wise sayings from the ancient Near East. Reading these Bible verses and landing at “hit toddlers and preschoolers on the bottom with your hand or a wooden spoon and make sure to pray afterward” is a bizarre understanding, especially given the way most evangelicals read over other Proverbs. I don’t come across many Christians putting knives to their throats when they overeat, offering the suffering beer and wine, or somehow answering a fool while also not answering him.
Albert Burneko, “James Dobson Is Dead, Was a Monster”
Anyway, he is dead now. He died on Thursday in Colorado Springs, at the age of 89. The world is a much worse place as a result of his life’s work; it would be a better place had he never been born. If he did not want people to rejoice at his death, maybe he should not have spent an entire lifetime working for and justifying their pain and suffering. He preached that there is a hell, and that the wicked go there. He lived his life as though he did not believe it, or anything else.
Samantha Hancox-Li, “We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory”
But it’s time to stop looking away from the facts staring us in the face. The time for polite pretense is long over. Pedocon theory is not about a unique kind of mental illness that just happens to be concentrated in the Republican Party. It is not about “uncontrollable animal urges.” It is about how racial anxieties and obsessions, fantasies of patriarchal domination and control, lead inexorably towards the idea that women and children exist for men’s use—including sexual use.
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