{"id":33394,"date":"2016-11-17T19:19:33","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T00:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=33394"},"modified":"2016-11-17T19:19:33","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T00:19:33","slug":"smart-people-saying-smart-things-11-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2016\/11\/17\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-11-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart people saying smart things (11.17)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Celia Riley, \u201cWe Do Not Have to Reconcile with Our Abuser\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a woman who has experienced the trauma of violence, sexual abuse, and a lifetime of harassment, this is personal. I must confess, I feel re-traumatized by those voters who supported a predator because you so loathed \u201cthe elite.\u201d His supporters chose a man who has openly objectified women, little girls, and even his own daughter. A man who has repeatedly cheated on multiple wives, and admittedly has pursued other people\u2019s wives. A man who has been accused of assaulting several women, and intentionally walked in on naked teenagers and bragged about it. A man who only sees value and worth of a woman if she is attractive and not flat-chested (his own words), and who thinks it\u2019s appropriate to deem women ugly and fat, and rank them according to number. A man who did not take his opportunity to apologize for encouraging the sexual assault of women. Instead, he and his supporters dismissed the importance on educating men and women on the issue of sexual assault. There are no excuses for this. NONE.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seth Stevenson, \u201cHow Trump Conned America\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As Trump took the stage to bask in his victory, I felt something else, too. Pity for the small-town Trumpists who thought they voted for one of their own but elected a man who mingles solely with rich assholes. Pity for the plutocrat-haters who\u2019ve now ensured sweeping deregulation of financial institutions. Pity for the salt-of-the-earthers who are sick of Washington corruption yet elected a man who will surely preside over the most corrupt administration imaginable. Pity for all those excited rallygoers duped by a con man\u2014an elite in sheep\u2019s clothing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Bamboozled\"<\/p>\n

Maria Konnikova, \u201cCan You Spot a Liar?\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of it is that people really value their reputations, so they don\u2019t want others to know that they fell victim. The other thing is that they value their reputation so much is that they don\u2019t want themselves <\/em>to know. They would much rather believe that they were the victims of bad luck than that they were victims of a con artist. Our self-deception is incredibly powerful, because we have this very strong protective mechanism where we want to think of ourselves in the best possible light. No one wants to think of themselves as a sucker or as someone who falls for some con artist, who to someone else might seem obvious.<\/p>\n

You want to think of yourself as someone who\u2019s smart, as someone who\u2019s savvy, as someone who would know better, and so that\u2019s exactly what you do, you say, \u201cOh, bad luck, luck of the draw, it was just a bad investment decision or this person just wasn\u2019t ready for a serious relationship,\u201d whatever it is. So the funny thing is, most people don\u2019t learn from their mistakes because they don\u2019t acknowledge that they made them. One thing that I learned while I was researching the book, which I had no idea existed, was that there are sucker lists out there that con artists buy and sell of people who\u2019ve already fallen for a scam. Those are the best victims, the ones who have already been victimized once, because they\u2019ve done such a good job rationalizing that they\u2019ll do it again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jonathan Martin, \u201cyou want it darker: on race, Trump, apocalypse, and the need for more prophets than priests\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is apocalyptic time. \u201cApocalypse\u201d in Scripture means \u201crevealing\u201d or \u201cunveiling.\u201d And these are the days when the hearts of men and women in America are being revealed\u200a\u2014\u200adeep divisions that have long been present are being exposed. Apocalyptic time is inside-out, upside down kind of time. In apocalyptic time, some things are dying and some things are being born. But mostly, it feels like things are dying, at least at first.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, \u201cWhy Steve Bannon\u2019s white nationalism should scare America\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bannon\u2019s appointment signals that racism will be a lever of the actions taken by the Trump administration. As a historian of fascism, I can tell you that Breitbart has been serving up a textbook-worthy campaign of racist indoctrination. Don\u2019t buy into it further. Otherwise, you\u2019re going to develop nearsightedness and a crick in your neck from looking away from things you\u2019d rather not see.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u00a0And here\u2019s where Bannon\u2019s \u201cequal partner,\u201d Reince Priebus, comes in. Trump\u2019s new chief of staff should wear a lapel pin that reads \u201cI\u2019m here to lighten your guilty conscience\u201d by playing the part of the decent mainstream man who keeps the rogues under control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celia Riley, Seth Stevenson, and Jonathan Martin respond to the election. Ruth Ben-Ghiat on looking squarely at the things we’d rather not see. Maria Konnikova on why it’s so hard to tell victims they’ve been conned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,158,37,240],"class_list":["post-33394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-racism","tag-smart","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nSmart people saying smart things (11.17)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Celia Riley, Seth Stevenson, and Jonathan Martin respond to the election. Ruth Ben-Ghiat on looking squarely at the things we'd rather not see. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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