My friends, Rob Dalrymple and Vinnie Angelo, at the Determine Truthpodcast have posted the second part of our recent conversation about the crippling dangers of Christian Nationalism within the evangelical, Christian church.
An American “Christian” flag. Notice how the cross is subordinate to America. That’s the priority of Christian Nationalism, too.
They have also conveniently listed a number of websites where listeners can find the books and authors we mention in our conversation. If you want to investigate this issue further, these resources are a good place to start.
Another right-wing vigilante walks free in the USA. The fact that I was even mildly hopeful Kyle Rittenhouse would get some prison time only proves my eternal optimism. Once again, that optimism was misplaced. After all, it is the United States of America that I’m talking about; a nation whose history is replete
Rittenhouse drinking beer and sharing white supremacists hand-signs with members of the Proud Boys shortly after he killed two men and wounded a third
with stories of white men walking free after murdering individuals who made them afraid. It is the United States of America; a nation whose history is replete with stories of Black men lynched, executed, or imprisoned for crimes the state knew they didn’t commit. It is the United States of America; a land where the defense of property takes precedence over human life in the courts and in the streets. Especially when that property is owned by a white man.
Nothing could be more typically American than Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder spree and its aftermath. From the shooting itself to his courtroom defense that he “was only defending himself,” the entire scenario reeks of arrogance and sociopathy. Indeed, it’s a perfect metaphor for the US empire and its “foreign policy,” where
Right-wings groups, including white evangelicals, donated $2 million to Kyle’s defense fund
the concept of self-defense often involves traveling away from one’s home with a loaded weapon, walking down unfamiliar streets away from home, and then murdering people who tell you to go away? This series of events is the template for what US politicians (and many citizens) call US foreign policy. The mindset it inculcates is one that creates the Kyle Rittenhouses among its residents.
Make no mistake, the Rittenhouse trial was a political trial. The far-right knew it could manipulate the evidence in its favor, especially given the nature of stand your ground laws. The jury selection was also manipulated and the judge was not sympathetic to the murdered men. As for the prosecution, I was reminded of those grand juries that fail to indict murderous police officers because the state presents its case in such a way that makes indictment unlikely if not impossible. The assumptions of a jury’s members are played upon with the intention of bringing forth their fears and prejudices. A sophisticated legal team can convince a jury that what they see is not fact and that the legal team’s fiction is. Often, this manipulation involves removing the context of the acts being considered, shortening the timeline, and ultimately transferring the blame to the victims. This is a standard approach for the defense when police officers are charged with murder. It was used quite deftly by the Rittenhouse defense team.
Let’s pretend Rittenhouse was a leftist/BLM protester and had murdered two pro-police protesters in the same scenario like the one he was in when he killed those men. I doubt he would be a free man today. Instead, he would have been portrayed as the active shooter that he was, walking the streets of Kenosha fully armed and under the illusion he had the right to shoot people if they challenged him. In this imaginary circumstance, the pro-police protesters attempting to disarm a scared left-wing Rittenhouse would have been the heroes, and that Rittenhouse would have been the killer the real Rittenhouse is. This scenario assumes that a murdering left-wing Rittenhouse would not have been shot down in the streets by the police—a big assumption. I have protested too many Klan and Nazi rallies that were protected by the forces of law and order to think otherwise.
pastor who asked clergy at the kickoff to agree to a “Statement of Change,” financially support the initiative and meet monthly via Zoom starting Dec. 7. The monthly calls will offer more opportunities for participants to share in small groups the kinds of stories heard Wednesday under the crystal lights of the museum’s ballroom.
“Tonight, we are going to step on the third rail together, the place where angels fear to tread,” he said. “We’re going to talk about race and religion.”
Grier said he believes God prompted him to take action after the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol — just blocks away from their location — to try to bridge divides in the country.
He read portions of the Statement of Change, which noted the Bible’s call for humility, cited the three-fifths clause of the U.S. Constitution that normalized slavery, and defined racism as “inconsistent with the heart of the Holy Spirit” and scriptural teaching.
“Because men and women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, color, culture, class, sex, or age, has an intrinsic dignity and should be respected and served, not exploited,” the statement reads in part. “We believe both the spirit and clear moral imperatives of scripture require the Christian community to lead the way in defeating racial bigotry.”
Grier also shared, via video, some of his personal experiences with racism. When he was a child, a white female classmate informed him her father said he would beat her if she kept walking home with Grier, her Black friend. As an adult, he saw his son initially denied access to a school’s gifted program until Grier asked a teacher about his child’s scores and learned they were higher than most of the students who already were in the program.
I recently had the opportunity of doing a two-part interview/conversation with my friends Rob Dalrymple and Vinnie Angelo, who are the hosts of the Determine Truth podcast (and website).
I understand that part two will become available next week. I will notify my subscribers when that happens.
I am convinced that the errors of Christian Nationalism are now major impediments to the health and maturity of evangelical Christianity in America today.
Christian Nationalism is a seductive idol that has captured, crippled, and sidelined far too many who say that they follow Jesus. However, you can’t love Jesus and extoll American empire at the same time.
You can listen to part one of our conversation here.
I hope you will tune in and come back next week for part two!
His discussion of the Court’s rulings about “qualified immunity” for the police makes for chilling reading. Qualified immunity means that the police cannot be held liable, i.e. they cannot be prosecuted or sued for damages, by those they injure.
In other words, the police can violate your Constitutional rights with impunity whenever they like as they like. Leaving us, the citizens whose tax dollars finance our local police force, without any recourse for damages suffered during an encounter with the cops.
This is exactly what we can expect from conservative, pro-corporate judges who care more about the protection of institutional power than the rights and freedoms of anonymous individuals.
Pro-life my ass.
It is another example of the ongoing class warfare that characterizes American society — and why the working-class continues to lose.
For those who don’t think any of this is a big deal, remember the old definition of a liberal: a liberal is a conservative who just got mugged (in this case, by the police).
Below is an excerpt from Balko’s piece. He explains the contested history of qualified immunity; it is well worth some focused attention:
The Supreme Court, having created the problem of qualified immunity to shield
United States Supreme Court
police from being held liable for their misconduct, keeps refusing to fix it.
This week, the court declined to review an especially outrageous ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit involving a Denver man who was detained for recording a traffic stop, then had his computer confiscated and searched.
No one doubts the man, Levi Frasier, had the right to record the stop. To date, six federal appeals courts have ruled there is a constitutional right to record police officers in public, a sentiment shared by the overwhelming majority of constitutional scholars. No federal appeals court has ruled the other way. In fact, the law is so well established that the officers in Denver were trained that citizens have such a right, and to respect it.
Yet the 10th Circuit ruled that because that circuit had yet to rule on the matter, the right was not yet “clearly established.” In a truly remarkable sentence, the court added, “It is therefore ‘irrelevant’ whether each officer defendant actually believed — or even in some sense knew — that his conduct violated . . . the First Amendment.”
In my last column, I looked at the origins of qualified immunity, the court-created doctrine that makes it extremely difficult to sue police officers for abuse and other constitutional violations. . .
George Orwell famously wrote, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” In defiance of everything we know about violence and state power — and for that matter most of human history — somehow, the Supreme Court has decided that the boot deserves more protection than the face.
Watching segments of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is like stepping into a
Kyle Rittenhouse
circus fun-house. It is disorienting for me because no one bothers to point out the obvious elephant in the room.
No, it’s not a matter of race. All of Rittenhouse’s victims (the word outlawed from the courtroom by the judge) were white.
It’s not about Jacob Blake, the black man shot seven times in the back by police at close range, whose shooting sparked the Black Lives Matter marches in Kenosha, WI were the shooting occurred.
The disorienting factor to me is the fact that a 17 year old kid crossed state lines (with his mother), purchased a semi-automatic rifle he could not legally own, and then casually walked the streets, parading himself before city police doing fist bumps with relaxing officers, and nobody stopped him.
Then after he murders a man, numerous onlookers try to disarm him (however ineffectual their attempts) as he casually walks away from his first victim (yep, there’s that word again). At that point the “active shooter”, aka Rittenhouse, believes he has the right to shoot more people “in self defense.”
I’m sorry but America has gone crazy.
The undeniable evidence of America’s insanity is not Black Lives Matter protests, or antifa agitators, but gun advocates’ and the Right-Wing’s unwillingness to acknowledge heavily armed, juvenile reckless endangerment as it parades through our streets after dark.
Nowadays such blatantly antisocial, dangerous, frightening, and ultimately deadly, behavior is perfectly acceptable. No one bats an eye (provided the shooter is a white male. So maybe there is a racial tint here, after all.)
And Rittenhouse will almost certainly be set free.
On an even more depressing related note, Matt Taibbi (one of my favorite journalists) points out the truly monumental economic story that is being ignored as the media keeps its cameras fixated on Rittenhouse.
“As America Falls Apart, Profits Soar” is the title of Taibbi’s article. You can find it at his substack site.
It’s a common yet commonly ignored story. The rich get richer while the rest of us become poorer. And nobody acts to stop the huge economic disparities that are becoming worse and worse.
Our growing wealth gap and class divisions are a much bigger pink elephant in America’s living room. A dangerous problem that billionaires and CEOs prefer to ignore…at their own peril.
Below is an excerpt from Taibbi’s article (all emphases are mine):
As the country again prepares to go to war with itself, this time over a high-
Journalist Matt Taibbi
profile trial, a bigger story goes unnoticed.
. . . On the day the Rittenhouse trial began, the financial data firm FactSet released an eyebrow-raising report about the Covid-19 economy.
The firm noted that companies in the S&P 500 were set to post a net 12.9% profit in the third quarter of 2021. They pointed out this was the second-highest result since the firm began tracking the number in 2008. . .
. . . Remember last year’s long summer of riots, that period that saw the whole world arguing over the definition of “mostly peaceful,” and saw Rittenhouse go charging into the streets of Kenosha? During that long stretch of unrest, corporate America, which had been headed for a depression in March of 2020, was soaring above the fray on an apparently endless, and endlessly escalating, ride to record profits. Take a look at this graph from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and focus on the Jeff-Bezos-rocket-like ascent beginning in the second quarter of 2020:
Corporate profits in the second quarter of 2020 sat at $1.58 trillion. One year later, that number was $2.69 trillion, a roughly 71% increase. How many stories have you read in the last year telling you about how well the top end of the income distribution has been doing, while the rest of the country seemed to be falling apart?
Compared with how often you heard pundits rage about the “insurrection,” how regularly did you hear that billionaire wealth has risen 70% or $2.1 trillion since the pandemic began? How much did you hear about last year’s accelerated payments to defense contractors, who immediately poured the “rescue” cash into a buyback orgy, or about the record underwriting revenues for banks in 2020, or the “embarrassment of profits” for health carriers in the same year, or the huge rises in revenue for pharmaceutical companies like Pfizerand Johnson & Johnson, all during a period of massive net job losses? The economic news at the top hasn’t just been good, it’s been record-setting good, during a time of severe cultural crisis.
Twenty or thirty years ago, the Big Lie was usually a patriotic fairy tale designed to cast America in a glow of beneficence. Nurtured in think-tanks, stumped by politicians, and amplified by Hollywood producers and media talking heads, these whoppers were everywhere: America would have won in Vietnam if not for the media, poverty didn’t exist (or at least, wasn’t shown on television), only the Soviets cuddled with dictators or toppled legitimate governments, etc. The concept wasn’t hard to understand: leaders were promoting unifying myths to keep the population satiated, dumb, and focused on their primary roles as workers and shoppers.
In the Trump era, all this has been turned upside down. There’s actually more depraved, dishonest propaganda than before, but the new legends are explicitly anti-unifying and anti-patriotic. The people who run this country seem less invested than ever in maintaining anything like social cohesion, maybe because they mostly live in wealth archipelagoes that might as well be separate nations (if they even live in America at all).
All sense of noblesse oblige is gone. The logic of our kleptocratic economy has gone beyond even the “Greed is Good” mantra of the fictional Gordon Gekko, who preached that pure self-interest would make America more efficient, better-run, less corrupt. Even on Wall Street, nobody believes that anymore. America is a sinking ship, and its CEO class is trying to salvage the wreck in advance, extracting every last dime before Battlefield Earth breaks out.
It’s only in this context that these endless cycles of hyper-divisive propaganda make sense. It’s time to start wondering if maybe it’s not a coincidence that politicians and pundits alike are pushing us closer and closer to actual civil war at exactly the moment when corporate wealth extraction is reaching its highest-ever levels of efficiency. Keeping the volk at each other’s throats instead of pitchforking the aristocrats is an old game, one that’s now gone digital and works better than ever. That might be worth remembering after the coming verdict, and ahead of whatever other hyper-publicized panic comes down the pipeline next.
Consortium News has published an article by the only man to be prosecuted and jailed in connection with the US-CIA torture program under George W. Bush.
The irony of John Kiriakou’s story is that he was the CIA whistleblower who exposed the agency’s illegal, inhumane torture program to the world. For
Delta Camp, Guantanamo Bay
that conscientious act of bravery he was sent to prison, whereas the many men and women who engaged in torture and then worked to cover it up — well, not a single one has yet been held to account.
But, hey. This is America. What else can we expect?
For the first time, however, one of the victims of the US torture program has told his story under oath in a military courtroom. During two hours of testimony Majid Khan told his story.
Afterwards, six out of seven of the military jurors cosigned a letter condemning Khan’s mistreatment as “a stain on the moral fiber of America” and asked for clemency.
John Kiriakou, former CIA officer and whistleblower
The New York Times reported last week that a military jury at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo issued a sharp rebuke against the C.I.A.’s treatment of al-Qaeda prisoner Majid Khan, calling the Agency’s torture program “a stain on the moral fiber of America.”
The jury recommended that Khan receive a 26-year sentence, the shortest possible under the court’s rules. Seven of the eight jurors—all U.S. military officers—then hand-wrote a letter to the military judge urging clemency for Khan.
The sentencing hearing, and Khan’s two hours of graphic testimony, marked the first time that details of the C.I.A. torture program were laid bare in public.
Khan testified that during the course of his interrogations, after he was captured in Pakistan in 2003, he told the C.I.A. “literally everything” he knew. He was truthful with the information, but “the more I told them, the more they tortured me.” Khan said that his only alternative was to make up information about threats, anything to get his interrogators to stop torturing him. When the information then didn’t pan out, Khan was tortured yet again. . .
. . . Khan testified before the tribunal that he was subjected to repeated rounds of waterboarding with ice water. In more than one case he nearly drowned and had to be revived. He was chained to an eye bolt in the ceiling of his cell so that he could not sit, kneel, lay or get comfortable for days at a time.
He was subjected to sleep deprivation for as long as 12 days. (The American Psychological Association has warned us that people begin losing their minds at seven days with no sleep. They begin dying of organ failure at nine days with no sleep.)
When he went on a hunger strike to protest his treatment, C.I.A. officers pureed his food and forced it up his rectum with a tube. On other occasions, C.I.A. officers forced a green garden hose up his rectum and turned on the water, causing incontinence and searing pain.
Prosecutors acknowledged Khan’s “rough treatment.” His attorney, a U.S. Army major, called what the C.I.A. did “heinous and vile acts of torture.”
Ms. Johnstone tells the truth about US elections, and she is not talking
Caitlin Johnstone
about the Trump-Republican nonsense.
She is talking, rather, about the entire US system that keeps American citizens caged in a make-believe system of mythical democracy.
Both parties are owned by big-business and corporate interests, lock, stock, and barrel.
Simply recall the last two primary seasons when the Democrats effectively stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, who was hands down the most popular candidate.
The will of the people means nothing to our political establishment. As a commentator once said, “If elections really worked, they would be illegal.”
So when the establishment, including the media, condemn the elections in other nations — such as Nicaragua’s recent election — their critiques must be taken with a huge block of salt. (Watch Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal discuss the propaganda campaign intended to undermine the Nicaraguan elections here.)
Below is an excerpt:
Western media are blaring headlines today about a rigged election, not in the United States or any of the other powerful nations allied with it whose elections are consistently fraudulent from top to bottom, but in the small Central American nation of Nicaragua.
A Google search brings up only news stories disparaging the Nicaragua election and its results. As flagged on Twitter by Left I on the News, CNN’s coverage of President Daniel Ortega’s victory featured a chyron with scare quotes around both the words “election” and “wins”, and a newscaster flatly stating “Ortega got 75% of the vote, results that we know are illegitimate.”
New York Times correspondent Natalie Kitroeff reported that Ortega has been “arresting all credible challengers; shutting down opposition parties; banning large campaign events; closing voting stations en masse” and that “there were no billboards or campaign posters” for the opposition, all claims that have been squarely refuted by observers reporting on the scene like Wyatt Reed, Ben Norton, Margaret Kimberly, Ahmed Kaballo, Caleb Maupin and others.
This mass media concern trolling about Nicaragua’s elections would not be so outrageously absurd were the elections of the US and its allies anywhere remotely close to free from fraud and manipulation.
There’s a common misconception that nothing ever changes in the US political status quo because an ideological tug-of-war between two equal and opposing factions keeps things in a state of stasis where it’s impossible to advance changes which would benefit ordinary Americans. In reality those two “factions” are in complete alignment in all but the most superficial ways, the electoral contests between them are dominated by a donor class with a vested interest in protecting the status quo, the candidates who compete in them are pre-selected by a corrupt and meticulously vetted primary process to ensure the public only ever gets to cast votes for those who will preserve oligarchy and empire, and third parties are constitutionally prevented from ever becoming politically viable.
All US elections for positions of real power are fraudulent. None of them ever permit real opposition. It’s a one-party system controlled by plutocratic and military institutions fraudulently disguised as democracy, and yet people who call themselves “journalists” have the temerity to criticize the integrity of Latin American elections without ever criticizing their own.
Just once it would be great to hear widespread discussion of US election rigging in the same alarmed tone we hear mass media concern trolls talking about nations like Nicaragua, Bolivia or Venezuela. “Very alarming how third parties are forbidden from participation in the US presidential debate.” “Concerned about the way any real opposition to the US power structure is banned from mainstream media.”
Shariq Siddiqui and Rafeel Wasif have an article at Religion New Serviceexplaining the results of a recent study demonstrating that not only did Muslims give more money to charity in 2020 but that they also are more likely to volunteer their time to charitable causes than non-Muslims in this country.
Below is an excerpt:
Muslim Americans gave more to charity in 2020 than non-Muslims, we found in a new study. They are also more likely to volunteer, we learned.
As philanthropyscholars, we believe our findings are significant not only because this is the first time that we can see the size and scope of giving by this small and highly diverse community, but also because U.S. Muslims face a great deal of discrimination. . .
. . . We found that Muslim Americans gave more to charity, donating an average of $3,200, in 2020, versus $1,905 for other respondents. They also differed from non-Muslims in many ways. For example, nearly 8.5% of their contributions supported civil rights causes, compared with 5.3% of the general public.
Republicans and other conservatives were seized by conniption fits when
AP Photo. J. Scott Applewhite
President Biden formed a commission to investigate the possibility of expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court.
Quite predictably, the committee has recommended that the court should not be expanded. So what else is new in D.C.?
What that committee, Republicans, other erstwhile conservatives, and establishment Democrats all fail to recognize, at least in public, is that the Supreme Court has already been successfully “packed” by Senator Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.
Millions of dollars of “dark money” has been invested in placing new justices on the bench that will predictably rule in favor of big-money, corporate interests.
The fact that some of these justices may also lean in an anti-abortion direction is a serendipitous coincidence for “pro-life” evangelicals who are generally so monomaniacally focused on their anti-abortion agenda that they give little thought to other issues at stake.
The Daily Poster has an important article entitled “How Dark Money Captured the Supreme Court” describing a recent report issued by three senior members of the Senate.
The report explains the pivotal role played by anonymous, big-money donors in the selection of the Supreme Court justices appointed by Donald Trump and the Republican members of the Senate.
Justice may still be blind — though that is debatable — but her sensitive nose can detect the sickening-sweet smell of money a mile away. And her hand is always held out for another corrupting contribution.
Here is the article. I strongly encourage you to follow the links and read the additional material you find there:
As Congress nears a deal on Biden’s Build Back Better reconciliation bill, a separate battle is quietly playing out within the Democratic Party over how to handle the extremism and minoritarian rule of the Supreme Court.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., published a report on the way that dark money and corporations have captured the Supreme Court.
The report lays out how an extensive network of right-wing groups — including the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and organizations in the Koch network — have worked to appoint judges who undermine voting rights and favor corporate interests.
What is perhaps most remarkable about the report is that three senators, including the Senate majority leader, are raising serious questions about the legitimacy of an institution that many Democrats are unwilling to confront.
For example, just two weeks earlier, the commission that Biden set up to examine court reform published draft materials of their own report. Those materials expressed skepticism about adding justices to the court, suggesting that it would be seen as a partisan move and undermine public trust in the court.
“Some commissioners believe that there is a real risk that the willingness of Congress to expand the size of the U.S. Supreme Court could further weaken national and international norms against tampering with independent judiciaries,” said the draft document on court expansion, even going so far as to suggest that court-packing may be evidence of “democratic backsliding.”
But, as the three senators’ new report on “court capture” argues, the country’s highest court is already being manipulated.
Whitehouse separately wrote a law review article last week about the influence of dark money and dark money groups’ use of amicus briefs to influence the court.
“The effects of this litigation strategy on our democracy are frightening: the courts are becoming an arena for enacting policies by judicial decree that are too unpopular to pass through democratically elected legislatures,” he wrote. “These coordinated efforts warp the judiciary toward anonymous, ultrawealthy donor interests, all without the public ever learning about the role of dark-money interests in shaping the law.”
podcast have posted the second part of our recent conversation about the crippling dangers of Christian Nationalism within the evangelical, Christian church.
My book, 
explaining the results of a recent study demonstrating that not only did Muslims give more money to charity in 2020 but that they also are more likely to volunteer their time to charitable causes than non-Muslims in this country.
because this is the first time that we can see the size and scope of giving by this small and highly diverse community, but also because U.S. Muslims face a 