{"id":33776,"date":"2017-01-18T16:24:48","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T21:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=33776"},"modified":"2017-01-18T19:18:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T00:18:44","slug":"and-certainly-misused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/01\/18\/and-certainly-misused\/","title":{"rendered":"And certainly misused"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2022 Thanks, Obama<\/a>. \u201cEarthly power doth then show likest God\u2019s \/ When mercy seasons justice\u201d and all that. I mostly agree with Robert Farley on this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also, though, if you\u2019re more upset that Chelsea Manning will be released from prison after seven years than you are about the contents of the video she leaked \u2014 video\u00a0showing U.S. forces gunning down journalists and other civilians<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0then you need to re-enroll in Humanity 101.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Oppressors generally fear the truth-telling insight of precise language, so they tend to avoid and to disparage words and ideas like \u201cintersectionality.\u201d But oppressors have alway been intersectional<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Betsey DeVos says she wants to use America\u2019s public schools to build \u201cGod\u2019s kingdom<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This brings us back to a perennial theological debate. Some, like my Patheos neighbor Scot McKnight<\/a>, argue that the \u201ckingdom of God\u201d refers, primarily, to the church. DeVos, by contrast, believes that the \u201ckingdom of God\u201d refers, primarily, to Amway.<\/p>\n

DeVos was in the news yesterday because her testimony revealed her to be unfamiliar with the basics of public education and because she oddly suggested that students might need to bring guns to school\u00a0to protect themselves from grizzly bears<\/a>. Don\u2019t get distracted, though, from the key point here, which is that DeVos wants to get rid of\u00a0public schools. Putting Betsey DeVos in charge of America\u2019s schools is like hiring Richard Dawkins to be in charge of church growth.<\/p>\n

(Public schools were a major part of the Radical Republican agenda following the Civil War. The agenda of radical Republicans in the 21st century focuses on undoing all of their efforts \u2014 getting rid of public schools, birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment, the 13th<\/em> Amendment \u2026)<\/p>\n

\"This
This family of right-wing billionaires seems weirdly obsessed with shooting bears. There\u2019s a story behind that, maybe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Somehow during all the scandals and horrors arising from the Bush-era employment of Blackwater mercenaries, I missed the disturbing fact that Blackwater founder Erik Prince is Betsey DeVos\u2019 brother<\/a>. Prince is horrifying. If you don\u2019t remember Blackwater, they were the model for the worst villains on the subversive Jericho<\/em>. These days, they\u2019ve been twice rebranded \u2014 first as \u201cXe,\u201d then as \u201cAcademi\u201d \u2014 in an attempt to distance themselves from the disgrace\u00a0and liability stemming from their My Lai-ish massacre in Baghdad in 2007<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The jackboots-for-hire mogul behind all of that paramilitary profiteering is part of the DeVos clan \u2014 the multilevel marketing empire that provides generous, but highly conditional<\/em>, funding for many\u00a0mainstream white evangelical institutions. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon is fun. Two degrees of Erik Prince is the stuff of a dystopian nightmare.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Sam Kestenbaum takes a fascinating dive into the complicated views that Trump-loving American Nazis have toward Jewish people: \u201cThe \u2018Alt-Right\u2019 Hates the Jews. But It Also Loves Them \u2014 and Israel<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Donald Trump has chosen<\/del>\u00a0A \u201cpoem\u201d has been submitted to be read at Trump\u2019s\u00a0inauguration<\/a>. It is not good. [Corrected thanks to several folks in comments.]<\/p>\n

It is very, very<\/em> not good<\/a>. It\u2019s third-rate wanna-be Burns \u2014 a wretched insult to the vibrant creativity of real Scottish poetry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wonkette<\/a> was the first place I saw making the obvious Vogon comparisons<\/a>, but it will not be the last.<\/p>\n

I suppose, at least, it\u2019s better than sending Monica Crowley out there to read her original inaugural poem, \u201cThe Gift Outright.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

It’s beyond creepy to learn that one of the biggest names in evangelical philanthropy is one tiny step removed from the biggest name in paramilitary profiteering and mercenary massacres. And why is this family of right-wing billionaires so obsessed with shooting bears? 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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. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}