Postcards from the class & culture wars (3.30.21)

Last updated on: March 30, 2021 at 11:42 am By Fred Clark

“Lola Bunny … has been rendered as a normal cartoon character, rather than the strange manifestation of subliminal interspecies horniness that she previously embodied.”

“The kind of young-earth creationism embraced by today’s young-earthers is a space-age novelty. It is newer than Sputnik and M&Ms.”

“All of us should at least be able to agree that white nationalism and white supremacy should have no place in our immigration policy, and as long as the Tanton network is at the table, that’s exactly what they’re bringing.”

“Now, Lindell’s fraud campaign is fizzling and his endgame is getting harder to decipher.”

“Gosar, who sat through Fuentes’ speech emphasizing the importance of preserving a white ‘demographic core,’ praising the Jan. 6 insurrection as ‘awesome,’ and mocking Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s disability, met with Fuentes the next day.”

“It’s people who say, ‘I do my own research; I don’t trust the elites.’ And their research is nonsense, it is sophisticated nonsense.”

“Not even two weeks after the historical commission voted to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capitol, [Republican] state senators are trying to vote to remove all members from the commission.”

“I was abducted by the state of Ohio when I was 17 years old.”

“The brewing scandal suggests that, months after the Capitol riots exposed current and former cops as violent extremists, plenty of officers remain associated with some of the same right-wing groups that stormed the Capitol.”

“Christian sex addiction rhetoric alongside the anti-pornography and anti-trafficking movement offers a disturbing script for this violence.”

“In addition to making it harder to vote, the new law allows the GOP-controlled legislature to appoint a majority of members of the state election board and gives the board the power to take over county election boards, making it easier for Republicans to challenge election results, take over election administration in large Democratic counties, and even decline to certify the results if Democrats win close races — which Trump tried and failed to get the state to do in 2020.”

Blatant racism from @RonJohnsonWI here. He says he wasn’t worried on 1/6 because the majority-white insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol “love this country,” but says if they were Black Lives Matter protestors he would’ve been concerned for his safety. #WISen pic.twitter.com/V3gm4cLw8v

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) March 12, 2021

“When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a hastily passed voter suppression law that many are calling the new, new Jim Crow … surrounded by a half-dozen white men, he did so in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved.”

“John Roberts has been a staunch opponent of voting rights his entire professional career, and we’re living in the ugly world he has long envisioned.”

“Weiser insisted he’s ‘never advocated for violence,’ after he just publicly advocated for violence.”

“It also means that to fully comprehend either white supremacy or misogyny, we have to attempt to understand both.”

“Eric Metaxas just keeps finding the edge of the fringe and jumping off.”

“When God closes a door, he opens a window … to suckers’ wallets.”

“Six people involved with the libertarian Free Keene group are facing charges — including wire fraud and money laundering — related to an unlicensed cryptocurrency exchange.”

“After all, who could resist getting health advice from the likes of Steve Bannon?”

Postcards from the class & culture wars (3.12.21)

Last updated on: March 12, 2021 at 6:50 pm By Fred Clark

“Conservatives are always burning things.”

“Collectively, these bills represent the most sustained effort to roll back access to the ballot in Georgia since the Jim Crow era. The same is true nationally, where Republicans have introduced 253 bills in 43 states in the first two months of this year to make it harder to vote.”

“Force voters in predominantly Democratic areas to wait in line for hours and then prevent people from even bringing them water — again just flat-out Jim Crow shit.”

“For decades, these institutions were venerated and well-funded, but as soon as women and people of color gained more access — even took over as the majority of those accessing those institutions — we began to devalue them, or defund them altogether, shifting the cost burden onto the individual.”

“If your schtick is costumed performance, the theater critics have been invited.”

“These new accounts follow earlier accusations of improper sexual behavior by Cuomo aides, and a claim by New York State Assemblyman Ron Kim that Cuomo had called him and threatened to destroy his career and reputation if he refused to walk back criticism of Cuomo’s handling of nursing home death data.”

“When private equity firms acquire nursing homes, patients start to die more often.”

“If these medicine ads are what it’s like to not have an NHS I never want to experience that.”

“Fringe extremists hold random events all the time, but in this case, Fuentes’ conference featured a sitting Republican congressman: Gosar delivered the keynote address at the gathering.”

“You admitted to going and being something you’re accusing other people of being. And then got mad and blamed others for the same thing you did. What the actual f— is wrong with you?”

“If you legalize marijuana, you’re gonna kill your kids.”

“Area creeps are having their moment, and the Republican freshman congressional class is where they are having it.”

“We would be more than happy to send Rep. Greene’s office a copy of Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam.”

“The result is a new series, Reframed Classics, which promises wide-ranging discussions about 18 culturally significant films from the 1920s through the 1960s that also have problematic aspects, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Mickey Rooney’s performance as Mr. Yunioshi to Fred Astaire’s blackface routine in Swing Time.”

“More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbor who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.”

“Somewhere, Benjamin Morgan Palmer is smiling.”

“He remains hopeful Homeless Jesus will be found and returned.”

Postcards from the class & culture wars (3.5.21)

Last updated on: March 5, 2021 at 4:36 pm By Fred Clark

“In April 2019, Facebook was preparing to ban one of the internet’s most notorious spreaders of misinformation and hate, Infowars founder Alex Jones. Then CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally intervened.”

“Dismissing a Pueblo woman’s deep connection to her ancestral homeland demonstrated immense disrespect.”

“You cannot exactly personal responsibility your way out of cerebral malformations.”

“Those deregulated Texas residential consumers paid $28 billion more for their power since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates charged to the customers of the state’s traditional utilities.”

“Unhappy attendees responded by booing and yelling ‘freedom!’”

“The GOP’s push to weaken Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] dates back more than 40 years — and Roberts was a key foot soldier in that effort.”

“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”

“A close ally of Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene took part in the January 6 mob at the Capitol and said he was among those who eventually made their way into the building.”

“A previous version of this article described the Three Percenters as anarchists. While the extremist militia group is anti-government, it embraces a militant form of authoritarianism and does not advocate for removing all societal hierarchies. We regret the error and apologize to anarchists.”

“Then, army press officers leaked stories to newspapers about black masses and satanic rituals taking place from republican Ardoyne in north Belfast to the loyalist-dominated east of the city.”

“The data show very clearly that where you had Black Lives Matter protests, killing of people by the police decreased.”

“I worked retail for years (several of them in Rochester, New York, in fact), and let me assure you that this is not a typical loss prevention strategy.”

“According to Perkins, LGBTQ people are evil, sick sinners who are pawns of the devil. And as such, we don’t even deserve to get cheese on ham sandwiches, to say nothing of equal rights.”

“Bethany Christian Services, the largest evangelical Protestant provider of adoption and foster care services in the nation, announced it will serve same-sex couples and other LGBTQ+ parents effective immediately.”

“Investigators also questioned Ravnsborg about whether he had been distracted by his cellphone, at one point saying they had data showing he had logged in to his Yahoo email account and pulled up a RealClearPolitics article just minutes before he called 911 to report the crash.”

“You are valued, you are loved, and you are employed on an ‘at-will’ basis.”

Postcards from the class & culture wars (2.23.21)

Last updated on: February 23, 2021 at 4:38 pm By Fred Clark

“I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout! … Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish.”

“We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing.”

“This is not going to be Biden’s America, this is my America. We should have burned it all.”

“On Thursday, with almost no public notice, Georgia House Republicans introduced a 48-page bill to significantly change voting procedures in the state in a way that particularly targets Black voters in the Atlanta metro area.”

“The danger was of them being given a co-opted Jesus, a Jesus who believed in Q, a Jesus who believed in deep state, a Jesus who automatically voted Republican.”

“It’s not that the economic stresses of the middle-class people who showed up on 1/6, say, aren’t real, it’s just that they’re too ubiquitous to be a useful explanation for anything.”

“Politics, for many clergy, is perilous terrain, and they expend substantial creativity avoiding it.”

“The lieutenant governor, a devout Christian who presents as a brash and unfiltered conservative culture warrior, invoked a number of antisemitic tropes in the years leading up to his election.”

“Update (2/22/21): CPAC has cancelled Young Pharaoh’s scheduled appearance following the publication of this article. Young Pharaoh’s information has also been removed from CPAC’s website. The theme of this year’s gathering is ‘American Uncanceled.'”

“You’ll need to be more specific.”

“The truth is, many conservative Christians embraced Rush Limbaugh because they had already embraced a faith that championed an us-vs.-them militancy, the denigration of liberals and feminists, the sexual objectification of women, an appreciation for coarse language and even violence when directed at the right targets, and a thinly veiled misogyny that kept women in their (God-given) place.”

“After unusual icy weather left millions of Texans without power, some are facing another crisis: Sky-high electricity bills.”

“Who would have thought an energy policy devised by George W. Bush and Ken Lay would have gone so wrong?”

“Phrenology isn’t having a comeback because it never left us.”

“Hatewatch reached out twice to [Republican Tennessee Sen. Bill] Hagerty’s office for a comment on his hiring of Hahn and asked directly if his hiring of her suggested that he was sympathetic to the way she portrayed non-white people in her writing.”

“So much of what passes for the American welfare state consists of tiny amounts of money and so much bureaucracy and ridiculous rules that it actively hurts people’s lives.”

“Flynt is being remembered in some predictable corners … as “an unlikely free speech hero,” although his real talent was for pandering to the absolute basest tastes and then proclaiming himself a hero because, yes, the First Amendment really does protect even the most disgusting free expression that’s at least not child porn, outright libel, or — worst of all in US America — copyright infringement.”

“There are consequences of electing people who don’t just have bad ideology and bad policies, but who have no clue and do not give a shit at all.”

Postcards from the class & culture wars (2.14.21)

Last updated on: February 14, 2021 at 4:59 pm By Fred Clark

“I hope American Christian readers will consider the ways that Christian politics of persecution can dovetail easily and myopically with nationalistic self-righteousness.”

“It is just the case, just inevitably the case, that if you are going to have financial markets that are optimized for those purposes — that are liquid and complete, that attract smart people, that are open to everyone — they are also going to have a certain amount of nonsense.”

“Monster describes himself as a Christian libertarian.”

“Sarah Ray, spokeswoman for the N.C. State Fair, said she learned of the items — applique patches bearing the swastika and the SS bolts — early Sunday when the N.C. State Fairgrounds and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services were tagged on Twitter in a post that asked, ‘Why are you guys allowing vendors to sell Nazi merchandise at the Dixie Gun and Knife show?‘”

“The North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles is no longer issuing specialty license plates featuring the Confederate battle flag.”

“The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some viewers.”

“The Long List of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Antisemitic, anti-Muslim Conspiracy Theories.”

“Such blatant racism has elicited no comment from Christ Presbyterian’s leadership, despite their public relationship with Blackburn.”

“The payment was made to a company registered to the lawmaker’s house.”

“The Trump International has a history of hiking prices around dates that are important to supporters of the former president.”

“Between USCP and our colleagues at the Metropolitan Police Department, we have almost 140 officers injured. I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake.”

“The state Senate’s top Republican made the bizarre and unfounded claim in a video-recorded meeting at a diner last week with leaders of the Hillsdale County Republican Party, who were discussing censuring him for not taking a bold enough stand against Democrats.”

“Voting by mail used to advantage Republicans. Now it doesn’t, and so Republicans want to make it harder. It’s as simple as that.”

“The belief is a delusion often held by White nationalists and supremacists, and it falsely claims there’s an active effort to bring in immigrants from other countries to wipe out White people.”

“The City Where Police Unleash Dogs On Black Teens.”

“A Pennsylvania man shot and killed his neighbors and then killed himself in a snow-removal dispute.” (CW: Don’t watch the video.)

“In 2018, Virginia Tech political scientist Cara Daggett gave the concept a name: petro-masculinity.”

“The report … says those baby foods have ‘significant levels’ of substances including lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury.”

“As more municipalities have moved to phase gas lines out of new buildings to cut down on methane emissions, gas utilities have gone on the defensive, launching anti-electrification campaigns across the country.”

“It is the self-styled moderates, like Manchin and Sinema, who freeze the institution in dysfunction, but there is nothing moderate about the modern Senate: It is radical in its inanity, a legislative chamber designed by dadaists.”

“The change was equal to a nearly 50% increase in value.”

“This report by the Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era assesses the repercussions of President Donald Trump’s health-related policies.”

“This is what happens when your newspaper is put together by a team of students who grew up in purity culture.”

“The main advice I have is to recognize what’s happening and stop doing things that don’t work, even if you think they should work.”

Postcards from the class & culture wars (1.30.21)

Last updated on: January 30, 2021 at 4:51 pm By Fred Clark

“Ten Republican members of Congress joined the Democratic majority in voting to impeach the Jamaica Estates native for the second time.”

“With Joe Biden just days away from his inauguration as the nation’s president, Pastor Darryl Knappen was still denying reality and even declaring himself willing to take up arms to keep Donald Trump in office.”

“Some Christian critics saw more of the occult than the orthodox in the QAnon conspiracies fueling the rioters’ aspirations to be knight liberators; to be sure, it’s hard to tell the difference between evangelicalism and occultism these days, and the lines are so blurred that the terminology hardly matters anymore.”

“Sedition brews in the suburbs just as well as anywhere else, and rage can be borne of boredom and a well-honed sense of grievance rather than any authentic privation.”

“Again, because of the corrupting and dangerous ideology that has poisoned this man’s mind, I wouldn’t trust him to do anything I told him to do. He probably considers me scum who deserves a headshot.”

“Greene is not an anomaly.”

“The Republican Party’s inability to self-police is one of the big reasons to be pessimistic about America’s ability to head off a coming violent wave.”

“Arizona Republicans passed resolutions on Saturday to censure three of the state’s most prominent party leaders who have found themselves at odds with former President Donald Trump: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, widow of late longtime Sen. John McCain.”

“Police say he was carrying two loaded magazines in his pants and had another firearm in his vehicle, which was outfitted with Trump decals.”

https://twitter.com/KendraWrites/status/1350301868321353730

“Continuing those efforts while remaining true to the people, team and country I love outweigh the benefits of any individual award.”

“We actually should be prioritizing the most vulnerable. We just are too incompetent a nation to do it.”

“This is a death cult.”

“Some 9,000 children died in Ireland’s church-run homes for unwed mothers, a government report published on Tuesday found.”

“The Department of Labor — run by Eugene Scalia … has also said that ending the teaching of concepts like systemic racism is ‘a key civil rights priority of the Trump Administration.'”

“Our food system needs a radical rethinking that actually values the human beings who grow our food as actual humans.”

“You will never believe what I found in the park.”

“Every year for the rest of your life will be one of the hottest in the record. This means that 2021 will end up being among the coolest years of this century. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“The list is publicly available, and contains over 4,000 athletes from around the world. Cawthorn isn’t on it.”

“The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has been tasked with attempting to return a $2 million stockpile of [hydroxychloroquine] a malaria drug once touted by former President Donald Trump as a way to treat the coronavirus.”

Postcards from the class & culture wars (12.29.20)

Last updated on: December 28, 2020 at 6:37 pm By Fred Clark

“The Complete Listing (So Far): Atrocities 1-1,028.”

“Aaron Hoffman was a cop for 15 years.”

“What was clear from his speech … is that Alito expects the new 6-3 Republican majority on the court to go to war on numerous fronts with Democratic elected officials — and that the rights and public safety of ordinary members of the public will be irrevocably lost in that fight.”

“Per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn’t, the study found.”

“Majorities of every other religious group say the president has damaged the dignity of the office of president. But only 36% of white evangelicals believe that.”

“The answer is simply that this group of voters are Republicans first, white people second, and evangelicals third.”

“Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. pumped millions of the nonprofit religious institution’s funds into Republican causes and efforts to promote the Trump administration, blurring the lines between education and politics.”

“Since Election Day this year, Charisma has doubled-down on its support for Trump, promoting voices pushing the Trump campaign’s bogus claims that Democrats are trying to steal the election.”

“One megachurch televangelist even bought a private jet two weeks after receiving $4 million in PPP funds.”

“Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) posed for a photo with former Ku Klux Klan leader Chester Doles, leading to outcry from Jewish activists.”

“This is someone who said visiting Hitler’s former vacation home was a ‘bucket list’ vacation spot, whose campaign denounced a journalist who left academic to ‘work for non-white males, like Cory Booker,’ and who’s been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women.”

“There is literally no moral difference between pardoning these people and pardoning Dylann Roof, which Trump might do before his term is over.”

“On the one hand, you’ve got women who want to join a hate group, and on the other, you’ve got men who don’t want women to join their hate group because of how they are sexist. Everyone involved is terrible.”

“I show him the screen that says ‘447.7 million,’ he says, ‘I don’t think that’s right,’ and I kiss my tip goodbye.”

“The decision was not made because of anticipated protests, but based on credible threats of violence.”

“Consider the fact that a former secretary of the Interior once proclaimed his goal to ‘civilize or exterminate’ us.”

“It seems like it should be fatal to a religious discrimination claim when religious institutions are singled out to be given more favorable treatment than comparable secular ones.”

“They didn’t offer to compensate her for the test, nor did they apologize for getting her sick.”

“During the initial stages of the pandemic, Tyson Foods ordered employees to report for work while supervisors privately wagered money on the number of workers who would be sickened by the deadly virus.”

“Newsmax would like to clarify its news coverage and note it has not reported as true certain claims made about these companies.”

“These fantasy worlds are constructed for, and by, white people. They are a sign of desperation; the last redoubt of white supremacy.”

“Sometimes, we don’t realize that something so small that you may not even, you might overlook it, it might be something major in someone else’s life.”

Postcards from the class & culture wars (9.10.20)

Last updated on: September 9, 2020 at 9:43 pm By Fred Clark

“We are ill in a way that costs us freedom, and unfree in a way that costs us health.”

“Sounds like something you’re going to have to figure it out.”

“We would like to think we have health care that incidentally involves some wealth transfer; what we actually have is wealth transfer that incidentally involves some health care.”

“Even though we have spent more than half a year battling a virus whose insidious hallmark is its ability to spread through those with no symptoms, the country has not yet articulated a coherent strategy to test these silent carriers.”

“The sooner I go out of business, the better.”

“Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.”

“Bannon and three co-defendants are charged with enriching themselves at the expense of hundreds of thousands of donors to an alleged not-for-profit, ‘We Build The Wall,’ by falsely promising that the founder would receive no compensation and 100% of all contributions would go to building a wall on our southern border (a wall that Trump said Mexico would pay for before diverting Pentagon funding to that purpose when Congress refused to fund it when Mexico didn’t).”

“A gospel-singing Brazilian lawmaker accused of masterminding the assassination of the husband who was once her adopted son is facing calls for her expulsion from congress so she can face murder charges.”

“The Trump administration … removed a video on Saturday that it had posted earlier in the week. The removal came hours after this story, which has been updated, reported on its use of false migrant crime statistics and a fictionalized story about a dark-skinned migrant murdering a man with a knife.”

“I guarantee you that if a black female presidential candidate was going to lose the actual vote by millions of voters, but still had an excellent chance of winning the election, this would be considered an absolute travesty — indeed definitive proof that the system was broken and had to be changed.”

“The state of Georgia has likely removed nearly 200,000 Georgia citizens from the voter rolls for wrongfully concluding that those people had moved and not changed the address on their voter registration, when in fact they never moved.”

“Attempting to vote twice in an election or soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law.”

“I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that.”

Via @fitsnews: “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser’” http://t.co/sgiETvdUqi

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2015

“Trump and his supporters have turned one of his presidency’s lowest moments into a loyalty test.”

“After approximately two hours, police removed the handcuffs with a bolt cutter at her request.”

“No one seemed to notice the disconnect or much care if they did.”

“The next morning, she woke up and felt like she could finally breathe again.”

“Because state violence is so often framed as the only rational response to social disorder, the influence of militarized policing on far-right extremism is one the U.S. government is profoundly unprepared to address.”

“The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is.”

“Dan Snyder wearing a Kente cloth just isn’t going to cut it.”

“[Now former-]Texas Assistant Attorney General Nick Moutos is a QAnon supporter who has used his Twitter account to tweet violent threats at people and encourage followers to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters.”

“I’m a Christian man. I read my Bible every day.”

“A 13-year-old autistic boy is still recovering in the hospital after getting shot several times by police on Friday night in Glendale [Utah].”

“Since its launch June 1, the STAR van has responded to more than 350 calls, replacing [Denver] police in matters that don’t threaten public safety and are often connected to unmet mental or physical needs.”