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Jacobin Magazine — Jeff Bezos: Your Legacy is Exploitation

Jeff Bezos has gotten considerable attention lately in the MSM lately due to

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – OCTOBER 15: Jeff Bezos speaks onstage at WIRED25 Summit. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for WIRED25 )

his decision to step down as Amazon’s CEO.

However, he has not left the company altogether. He has made a lateral move to become Amazon’s Executive Chair. A chair from which you can bet he will continue to rule the roost in both Amazon and the global marketplace.

Jacobin Magazine has published a good article explaining Bezo’s longstanding predatory, exploitative business practices — the obscene practices directly responsible for making Amazon the mammoth monopoly power that it is today.

The last thing Jeff Bezos is is a business genius who deserves admiration. Rather, he is a textbook example of how the rich make themselves richer by exploiting and devouring smaller fry further down the food chain.

The article’s author is Paris Marx. It is entitled, “Jeff Bezos: Your Legacy is Exploitation.” The entire piece is well worth your time. I have posted an

Journalist, Paris Marx

excerpt below, or you can find the entire article by clicking on the title above.

Read it and get angry at over the way US predatory, crony capitalism works.

Jeff Bezos is stepping aside as Amazon’s CEO having made a fortune of almost $200 billion. It’s an attempt at reputation rehabilitation — but he can’t escape the legacy of exploitation he leaves behind.

Jeff Bezos, who you might also know as “the richest man in the world” or “that guy who ate a lizard one time,” is stepping down as the CEO of Amazon after twenty-seven years at the helm — or maybe it’s better to say he’s stepping to the side. Bezos will instead take on the title of executive chair, which means he’ll still have an influential role in company decisions, but will no longer be the face of Amazon. Yet there’s no reason to believe that means Amazon will become the friendly monopolist its smiling logo might suggest.

With Bezos at the helm, Amazon grew from an online bookseller started from a garage in Bellevue, Washington to one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world that not only controls key e-commerce and cloud platforms, but has extended its reach into a growing number of sectors. However, it’s important not to get distracted by the triumphalist historicizing of tech companies and their chief executives that’s become far too common since internet businesses exploded in the 1990s.

It’s often said that Amazon was started in Washington so it would be close to Microsoft and try to attract some of its talent, and while that’s partly true, it was hardly the deciding factor. Before founding the company in 1994, Bezos was the senior vice president of a hedge fund, and it’s said he made sure the first house he rented in Bellevue had a garage so he could spin the kind of founding story one would expect of a tech company. He was hardly poor, and he knew how to minimize his tax burden.

The real reason Bezos was drawn to Washington was because the state had no personal income tax and no corporate income tax, and at the time, Amazon only had to charge sales tax on purchases made in whichever state the company was headquartered in. With a population of just over five million in 1994, Washington was the perfect base from which to ship the other 260 million Americans all the books they could buy — not because Bezos had a particular love of books, but because they could be bought wholesale, were easy to ship, and independent bookstores had been decimated, leaving a market to be captured.

As Amazon began to attract customers and expand its product offerings, it took a different approach to growth. Instead of seeking to turn a profit as quickly as possible, Bezos played the long game, reinvesting Amazon’s earnings in the business to such a degree that it didn’t turn its first quarterly profit until 2001 and its first annual profit until 2003. For years to follow, Amazon’s profit margins remained slim as it expanded its empire.

This was undoubtedly a great business strategy, but it came with consequences. By operating at a loss for a decade, Amazon was able to provide goods and services below cost to drive out its competitors and dominate the markets it operated in. This only became easier as it grew, as the case of Diapers.com shows.

In 2009, Bezos saw that Diapers.com was gaining popularity with parents, so Amazon set up a meeting with its founders. When they refused to sell, Amazon set its prices on diapers and other baby products 30 percent below those offered by its competitor, and when Diapers.com adjusted their prices, the ones on Amazon changed accordingly. Amazon was using the profits from its other products to sell baby products below cost so Diapers.com would have to sell itself to Amazon or go out of business. Amazon even launched a service called Amazon Mom to offer baby products at even steeper discounts until, on November 8, 2010, Diapers.com finally sold to Amazon. Not long after, Amazon Mom was terminated, and prices returned to normal. . . 

Critical Race Theory and the Church, Part 3

Trying to Think Biblically About Tribalism, Prejudice, and Discrimination

As with most theories, different people have different evaluations, positive, negative, and in between about the value of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

In my discussions of American racism, prejudice, discrimination, and the place of Critical Race Theory within the Christian church, I will not take the time to define or explain CRT itself.  Many others have already done that work, so I will simply refer my readers to a few brief introductions.

I urge you to read these additional discussions in order to understand where we are going. (For informative and reasonably positive reviews, see here and here. For critical to middling reviews, see here and here. What I happen to think will unfold as we proceed.)

God creates Adam to bear His image, by Michelangelo (Genesis 1)

I begin with two important Christian theological positions: the biblical teachings about (1) how all human beings are created as the Image of God (all good theology begins with Genesis 1 & 2, not Genesis 3), and (2) all human beings are fallen creatures, corrupted by sin (the doctrines of original sin and total depravity).

So, all people are BOTH divine image bearers as well as corrupted image bearers who carry the twisted consequences of sin within us, which causes

The Serpent tempts Eve and then Adam into eating the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3)

us to commit specific sinful acts.

As a result of our sinfulness, all human beings have a natural (or, from God’s perspective, an Un-natural, post-Fall) inclination towards Tribalism.

Human selfishness, greed, fear, and possessiveness move all people, and the society’s that we create, in the direction of tribalism. We are suspicious, even fearful, of outsiders, The Other. We are protective of our own, most protective of those who are “our own” and of the things we know best.

Our Own are those who are most like us.

The Other, the stranger, aliens, an outsiders are those unlike us; or, at least, they are unfamiliar.

Fallen human nature tells us to be skeptical, fearful, and protective against unfamiliar Outsider. Since they are different from us, we are skeptical as to what we can expect of them. We may even be fearful because in facing the Outsider we face the Unknown.

Again, our sinfulness pushes this fearful distinction between Us vs. Them into the creation of imaginary qualitative distinctions.

Our group is smarter, better, kinder, more civilized. We can place every racist, prejudiced caricature about those who are unlike us and our tribe into this category.

The outsider is regularly measured in qualitative terms as dangerous, irrational, ignorant, criminal, and uncivilized. The Other can even be seen as subhuman.

All of these features of human tribalism have been universally prevalent throughout human history.

It was not uncommon for Native American tribes to identify their own people as “the True Human beings,” or “the Real People.” Meaning, of

About 85% of Rwandans are Hutus but the Tutsi minority has long dominated the country. In 1959, the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighbouring countries, including Uganda. Genocide erupted in 1994.

course, that the members of other tribes, which were often enemies to be feared and killed, were not as human as they, the Real Human Beings, were.

When I visited my daughter in Kenya, I was fascinated by the latent hostility that the members of different tribes held for one another. I was told by a number of the Kenyans I met such things as, all Kikuyu were dishonest; all Luo were lazy; and all Masai were violent.

It did not matter that all these people shared the same skin color. It was the tribe that made the difference, allowing for automatic generalizations, prejudice, and discrimination.

Throughout the course of history, in different times and places, human tribalism has appeared in a wide variety of different guises. Tribalism can wear a multitude of different masks, but it is always the same sinful problem.

Tribalism expresses itself through religion (Protestant vs. Catholic), race

Protestant martyrs burned at the stake in Roman Catholic England

(white vs. black, though to call this “racism” is a misnomer that I will return to later), nationalism (Spaniards

vs. Catalonians), and political partisanship (Republicans vs. Democrats). The list goes on and on.

Human beings are terribly creative in finding ways to draw boundaries around themselves, separating their own people (who are typically good) from “the other” people (who are typically bad).

With the coming of the Kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, our Father in heaven has been working towards the goal of eliminating the blight of tribalism that have has ripped and shredded humanity since the Fall in Genesis 3.

As soon as Adam pointed his finger at Eve and said to God, “It wasn’t my idea. SHE made me do it!” the problem of divisiveness has been working to sabotage God’s original desire for all-inclusive, human community.

Here is where I believe we must begin a Christian analysis of the problems at hand.

We will eventually talk about the sins of racism, discrimination, and prejudice. But in order to have an adequate Biblical foundation for grappling with the complexities of those issues, we need to understand that they are merely different dimensions, or expressions, of a single problem: human tribalism.

We must also remember that we all are guilty of tribalism in one way or

Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, “The Good Samaritan”

another, to one degree or another, because we are all fallen, sinful images of God.

We ALL share the same basic tendencies, which is why remembering the ethical instruction that Jesus left to us in the four New Testament Gospels is essential for us all.

Combating our own, as well as our society’s, expressions of tribalism is a non-negotiable responsibility of everyone who claims to follow Jesus Christ.

Remember, when Jesus told his listeners to love their neighbor as themselves, the Pharisees in the crowd asked him, “Ok, but who exactly is my neighbor?”

They were searching for some tribal distinctions that would allow them to love those who were like themselves, while ignoring Outsiders.

Of course, Jesus perceived the not-so-hidden motive behind their question. By answering them with the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus makes it clear that all tribalistic distinctions violate God’s intentions.

The Jew in the ditch and the Samaritan who stops to help were from two very different tribes of people that openly despised each other. Except that this particular Samaritan was an exception.

The “despised” Samaritan acted according to God’s intentions for all people — that loving neighborliness knows no bounds.

Members of the kingdom of God understand that there are no insiders or outsiders within the human family. All people qualify equally as worthy of our care and concern.,

Jesus tells us all to repent of our tribalism, no matter what it may look like; to renounce it as sin in our lives; to ask the Spirit for illumination that we may recognize the blindness created by own our tribalistic instincts.

And then to commit ourselves to change, to ACT in whatever specific ways are necessary for us become different people, living as citizens of God’s kingdom on earth.

I will have more to say about this practical application in the days ahead.

(Also, if you disagree or have different thoughts on this issue, send me a note and let me know that you think. Thanks for reading.)

How Long Will the Trump Delusion Virus Remain Contagious in the Church?

John Fea is a professor of American history at Messiah College. He also maintains one of the best blogs I know of. He writes prolifically at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. 

I am convinced that he either keeps a closet full of hyper-active minions near his office to work on his blog, or he is a much more industrious man than I am.

He recently posted an article entitled, “Evangelical Trumpers are coming to a church near you” describing a pro-Trump “revival meeting” in Hamilton, Montana.

Yes, revival meeting is the most accurate descriptor here. I grew up in churches where we had them regularly. I know what they look and sound like.

I also happen to pass through the town of Hamilton often when I am looking for a new falcon to trap. I listen to what passes for Christian radio in that community.

Upsetting is too weak a word to describe what I hear. Thus, as sad as it is, this story is not the least bit surprising to me.

But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t disturbing and lamentable.

[I am very interested in hearing from you my readers. Are you familiar with similar tent revival type pro-Trump, stop-the-steal evangelistic events like this in the churches of your area? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Drop me a note, please! Thanks.]

Here is Fea’s post in full:

Last week we called your attention to an event at Calvary Chapel-Chino Hills featuring pastor Jack Hibbs and Trump wonder boy Charlie Kirk. Today, I want you to see a video from The River, a Southern Baptist church in Hamilton, Montana.

The video captures a special Saturday night service devoted to “education,” “learning,” and “unity.” The topic is the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The speaker is Dr. Kevin Horton, the director of the Institute for Biblical Authority, “a Biblically based nonprofit organization dedicated to upholding and strengthening the principle that the Bible is the life-changing authority for human lives.” The Institute promotes creationism and recently hosted a conference featuring David Barton. The website includes an “American History Quiz” that repeats the widely debunked, and frankly absurd, claim that 29 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were “pastors.”

Watch the video of Horton’s appearance at The River Church on the Facebook page of Montana state senator Theresa Manzella or on the church Facebook page.

The video begins with the congregation milling around the sanctuary while a song called “Potter’s Hand” by Hillsong plays over the speakers. Here are the lyrics to that song:

Beautiful Lord, wonderful Savior
I know for sure all of my days are held in Your hand
And crafted into Your perfect plan

You gently called me into Your presence
Guiding me by Your Holy Spirit
Teach me dear Lord, to live all of my life
Through Your eyes

And I’m captured by Your Holy calling
Set me apart, I know You’re drawing me to Yourself
Lead me Lord, I pray

Take me and mold me, use me, fill me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand
Call me, You guide me, lead me, walk beside me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand

You gently call me into Your presence
Guiding me by Your Holy Spirit
Teach me dear Lord, to live all of my life
Through Your eyes

I’m captured by Your Holy calling
Set me apart, I know You’re drawing me to Yourself
Lead me Lord, I pray

Take me and mold me, use me, fill me
I give my life to my Potter’s hand
Call me, guide me, lead me, walk beside me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand

Take me and mold me, use me, fill me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand
Call me, guide me, lead me, walk beside me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand

The display screen at the front of the sanctuary says “Inciting the Riot?”

Horton takes the stage at about the 5:45 mark after pastor Allen James offers a “prayer for the United States of America” in which he asks the Lord to make us “truly be one nation under God again.” (Italics mine). Horton begins by telling the audience how the Lord prompted him to go to Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 to protest the election results. He laments the fact that social media companies removed Trump from its platforms, closed Parler, and even suspended his own accounts for merely “witnessing to the truth” about what happened in Washington D.C. After taking a few required shots at Congress for impeaching Trump, Horton describes what he saw at the U.S. Capitol.

The central argument of Horton’s presentation is that Trump did not incite the riot on the U.S. Capitol. Horton bases his argument on pictures and videos he took at the insurrection. He tells this evangelical congregation that the rioters were not “true Trumpers” and then attempts to distinguish between the “peaceful” evangelical Trumpers and the evil insurrectionists. (Along the way he takes a shot mask-wearing).

At about the 47:00 mark Horton tells the audience that he is boycotting Amazon, Walmart, and Google until they “repent” for their support of Senators who refuse to investigate who was really behind the insurrection. Then he complains about how CNN is trying to “close down” Newsmax and One America News. Horton speaks in a friendly, easy-going style as he defends these conspiracy theories before an evangelical congregation led by a pastor who provided him with the platform to do this.

At the 52:00 mark he describes the election fraud protests as a “fun time” until the “cloud of evil” emerged in the form of the rioters. (If his pictures are any indication, Horton appears to have spent most of the riot only feet away from the doors of the U.S. Capitol).

Horton ends by telling his pro-Trump evangelical audience that we are now “all targets” and are no longer “safe” as Americans. (The assumption is that the insurrections were a demonic force working against the God-honoring supporters of Donald Trump. He stops just short of saying that the Democrats were somehow behind the insurrection. Or at least that is how I understood him). The only way to find peace and safety, he says, is by accepting Jesus Christ as savior. He then moves into a brief Gospel presentation.

As a fellow evangelical, I am disgusted by the way this man stoked fear, lied about voter fraud, and used his presence at the Capitol insurrection as a platform for preaching the Gospel. Apparently the audience at The River Church disagrees. They gave him a standing ovation. Pastor Allen James endorsed everything Horton said, going so far to tell his congregation that the election was rigged. James then calls his congregation to separate the Gospel from politics. This is admirable. But everything about this event sent the exact opposite message.

Critical Race Theory and the Church, Part 2

Not long ago I posted a very brief history of how the Republican party devised its famous “Southern Strategy” for its election campaigns as well as its interminable “War on Drugs” model of policing (which quickly gained bipartisan support).

That history is another clear demonstration of the way white privilege and systemic racism continue to influence American society.

Lee Atwater (architect of the Southern Strategy) and John Ehrlichman (domestic policy advisor for Richard Nixon and creator of the War on Drugs policing strategy) were two white men who knew how to manipulate language as well as social systems (political campaigns and police departments) to target the white population’s fears of African Americans.

That fear is as real today as it was then.

By using language that they knew would heighten white folk’s apprehensions about the black community, they deliberately deepened the color  divide between these communities.

The white community implicitly understood that their privileged status was being safeguarded by Atwater and Ehrlichman’s new political strategies.

The result was the establishment of new ways to systematically accomplish racist goals for the benefit of white society – which is exactly what both men had hoped to accomplish, by their own admission (reread that post!).

A person does not need to be a Marxist (a common, specious charge leveled against Critical Race theorists) or a devotee of any particular critical theory to figure these things out.

All it requires is a bit of critical thinking, which everyone should learn to do by the way, and some knowledge about American history and politics.

In fact, I will go so far as to insist that every thoughtful Christian (which should also be an obvious redundancy) needs to understand that white privilege and systemic racism are integral parts of this nation’s story, past AND present.

Coming to grips with these facts is crucial if the Body of Christ is ever to embody the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, harmonious ideal that God’s kingdom intends for us here and now.

In my next post, I will begin to flesh out what I believe a biblical perspective on these sorts of racial issues teaches us.

I don’t offer this as a “Christian alternative” to CRT, but as one man’s approach to sifting the wheat from the chaff in any conversation about what should be the church’s approach to racism in America today.

 

Systemic Racism in the Capitol Police Force

As I focus on the problems of systemic racism and white privilege this month, ProPublica has a good article describing the problem of systemic racism in the capitol police force and its effects during the Capitol attack on January 6th.

The article is by Joshua Kaplan and Joachin Sapien. It is entitled “‘No One Took Us Seriously’: Black Cops Warned About Racist Capitol Police Officers for Years.”

I have excerpted the article below, or you can read the entire article by clicking on the title above.

Allegations of racism against the Capitol Police are nothing new: Over 250 Black cops have sued the department since 2001. Some of those former officers now say it’s no surprise white nationalists were able to storm the building.

When Kim Dine took over as the new chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in 2012, he knew he had a serious problem.

Since 2001, hundreds of Black officers had sued the department for racial discrimination. They alleged that white officers called Black colleagues slurs like the N-word and that one officer found a hangman’s noose on his locker. White officers were called “huk lovers” or “FOGs” — short for “friends of gangsters” — if they were friendly with their Black colleagues. Black officers faced “unprovoked traffic stops” from fellow Capitol Police officers. One Black officer claimed he heard a colleague say, “Obama monkey, go back to Africa.”

In case after case, agency lawyers denied wrongdoing. But in an interview, Dine said it was clear he had to address the department’s charged racial climate.

. . . Whether the Capitol Police managed to root out racist officers will be one of many issues raised as Congress investigates the agency’s failure to prevent a mob of Trump supporters from attacking the Capitol while lawmakers inside voted to formalize the electoral victory of President-elect Joe Biden.

Already, officials have suspended several police officers for possible complicity with insurrectionists, one of whom was pictured waving a Confederate battle flag as he occupied the building. One cop was captured on tape seeming to take selfies with protesters, while another allegedly wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat as he directed protesters around the Capitol building. While many officers were filmed fighting off rioters, at least 12 others are under investigation for possibly assisting them.

Two current Black Capitol Police officers told BuzzFeed News that they were angered by leadership failures that they said put them at risk as racist members of the mob stormed the building. . . 

. . . Sharon Blackmon-Malloy, a former Capitol Police officer who was the lead plaintiff in the 2001 discrimination lawsuit filed against the department, said she was not surprised that pro-Trump rioters burst into the Capitol last week.

In her 25 years with the Capitol Police, Blackmon-Malloy spent decades trying to raise the alarm about what she saw as endemic racism within the force, even organizing demonstrations where Black officers would return to the Capitol off-duty, protesting outside the building they usually protect.

The 2001 case, which started with more than 250 plaintiffs, remains pending. As recently as 2016, a Black female officer filed a racial discrimination complaint against the department.

“Nothing ever really was resolved. Congress turned a blind eye to racism on the Hill,” Blackmon-Malloy, who retired as a lieutenant in 2007, told ProPublica.

Stop Trying to Save Jesus: The Problem of “Fandamentalism”

Chrissy Stroup has written an interesting article at Religion Dispatches about

Chrissy Stoop

the competing portraits of Jesus on display in public political debate.

In contrast to “fundamentalism,” she coins the term fandamentalism to describe public attempts to harness Jesus as the religious mascot for whatever political policy position one prefers.

Her challenge is both provocative and challenging. The article is entitled, “Stop Trying to Save Jesus: “Fandamentalism Reinforces the Problem of Christian Supremacy.”

I have excerpted the article below, or you can read the entire piece by click on the title above.

But wait, you say, Jesus would of course disapprove of Trump! Let me respond with a modest proposal, as it were: Jesus does not need you, or anyone, to save him, so perhaps you could hear me out? If you do find yourself becoming angry on Jesus’s behalf as you read this, I would ask you to take a breath and try to consider how your very defensiveness might be belying a subtler, but still problematic, form of Jesus fandamentalism. 

As I’ve argued on a number of occasions, Christian supremacism is baked into the American public sphere to the extent that it’s very difficult to get many people to see how American cable news and legacy media outlets whitewash the power and breadth of Christian Right extremism. They let “respectable” evangelicals dominate the conversation unchallenged by critical outside researchers, ex-evangelicals and those who are most harmed by white supremacist patriarchy. When the trauma and abuse inherent in fundamentalism and Christian nationalism come to light, too often they are represented as mere “hypocrisy,” while the Christians behind them are dismissed as “fake Christians,” conveniently shielding Christianity from any systemic criticism. . . 

. . . admitting that the Jesuses of our headcanons and our church traditions are shaped by our own values, “opens possibilities” for believers to ask “why Jesus appears the way he does in our communities, readings, and theologies,” according to Onishi. “What does it say about us? How does our shaping of Christ reflect our values? How should becoming cognizant of that image and those values transform us? Those are questions I think Christian communities would benefit from asking.”

Critical Race Theory and the Church, Part 1

(This is the first in a series of posts I will make on the controversy surrounding something called  “Critical Race Theory” within the Christian church and the continuing problem of racism in America. Stay tuned…)

The Southern Baptist Convention’s condemnation of something called Critical Race Theory has made this particular approach to understanding racist behavior (both individually and collectively) a controversial issue in the evangelical world.

All six presidents of the Southern Baptist seminaries have gone  on record

Screengrab from the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting as Danny Akin speaks while other seminary presidents and leaders watch, including Jeff Iorg, Adam Greenway, Al Mohler, and Jamie Dew.

denouncing Critical Race Theory as an expression of “the tide of theological compromise [that Christian’s face in] an increasingly hostile secular culture.”

The heart of this new addition to the SBC declaration of faith says,

In light of current conversations in the Southern Baptist Convention, we stand together on historic Southern Baptist condemnations of racism in any form and we also declare that affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and any version of Critical Theory is incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message. (emphasis mine) (For a fuller statement see here).

All six seminary presidents added individual affirmations to the end of the document.

SBC President J.D. Greear speaks on a panel discussion about racial reconciliation during the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention at the BJCC, June 11, 2019 in Birmingham, Ala. RNS photo by Butch Dill

What is, sadly, most telling about the new Southern Baptist position paper is the fact that it was formulated by an exclusive group of white men.

No African-American Southern Baptists were included in this body; neither were any consulted as the group made its deliberations.

As an article in the Religion News Service (1/8/2021) puts it,

Southern Baptist Convention officials admitted it would have been better if they’d contacted Black leaders of their denomination before issuing a statement decrying critical race theory, which led to the departure of several Black pastors…

. . . In late November, the leaders of the six SBC seminaries — all of them white men — declared critical race theory, a set of ideas about systemic racism, was not compatible with the statement of faith of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

After the presidents issued their statement, several Black church leaders announced they were leaving the mostly white denomination.

Obviously, these are horrible optics for the SBC.

But even worse is the denominational reality these optics reveal: both white privilege and systemic racism are thriving within the Southern Baptist Convention, including its educational institutions.

The SBC is now Exhibit A proving the urgent relevance of the very observations, about white privilege and systemic racism, that Critical Race Theory is most helpful in uncovering and confronting.

Honestly, I cannot help but wonder if these white, male, Southern Baptist decision-makers (I am hesitant to call them “leaders”) have actually condemned Critical Race Theory because it holds up a mirror to reveal their true selves.

Perhaps we should not forget that the SBC was originally formed by Southern slave-owners in order to protect the institution of slavery.

I am sure that many Southern Baptists are ashamed of that particular piece of their story. But this recent action shows that it continues to cast a very long shadow.

However much the SBC may have renounced its slave-owning origins, this recent episode in church politics has highlighted both the importance and the validity of Critical Race Theory’s analysis of both white privilege and systemic racism within American society.

Given the fact that the SBC finds the concepts of white privilege and systemic racism as particularly offensive ideas in Critical Race Theory, it is almost comical (were it not so atrocious) to see how the SBC doctrinal committee has made itself the newest poster child (poster children?) for the important benefits that Critical Race Theory has to offer.

Oklahoma Congressman Evicts Tenants During the Pandemic

This story is from freelance journalist Emma Rindlisbacher at The Daily Poster. The headline is “Congressman’s Companies Evicting Renters During Pandemic.”

The wealthy Republican is evicting tenants despite the eviction moratorium passed by Congress. Once again, rich property owners do as they wish while others suffer.

Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., drew ire for voting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, as well as for refusing to wear a mask to keep COVID-19 from spreading when lawmakers locked down during the U.S. Capitol insurrection. His nonchalance about the coronavirus did not end there: Eviction notices have been filed against residents of two rental properties associated with Mullin during the pandemic.

The eviction filings come as coronavirus case counts have steadily increased in Oklahoma and the United States. So far, Oklahoma has seen 3,323 deaths from the coronavirus. In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a national moratorium against evictions as a public health measure to prevent the spread of COVID. . .

. . . Mullin’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The CDC took action to curb evictions by issuing an eviction moratorium, which took effect on September 4. But the moratorium has been criticized as weakly enforced and has allowed evictions to continue despite the pandemic. The moratorium was set to expire on December 31, before Congress took action and extended the moratorium until January 31. President Joe Biden then extended the moratorium until March 31. 

“Biden is Already Breaking His Promises.” So What Else is New?

Patrick Lawrence has been a journalist, foreign correspondent, author, and lecturer for over 30 years. He recently published a piece at Consortium News entitled, “Biden is Already Breaking Promises.”

He gives special attention to the Senate confirmation hearing for Biden’s nominee as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.

Naturally, it is not the least bit surprising to see the Biden presidency kick -off another business-as-usual Democratic administration. After all, every presidential candidate lies. Remember how Trump promised that Mexico would pay for his border wall?

But Mr. Lawrence reminds us that despite the corporate media’s (excepting Fox) decision to applaud Biden as America’s post-Trump savior (though, we ought not forget how much money president Trump brought to these

Antony Blinken with President Biden

outlets with their wall-to-wall coverage of his every faux pas — and there were many) he is essentially an old-style, moderate Republican at heart, who will continue to shovel coal into the gaping furnaces of neo-liberal economics, corporate control over US politics, and American imperialism around the world.

Welcome to the new Democratic administration.

Here is an excerpt:

It was inevitable that President Joe Biden would betray numerous of his campaign promises — and those that mattered most to wide-eyed voters who put him in office. The speed at which he and his people have revealed their treachery is nonetheless stunning.

No, there will be no comprehensive stimulus plan until at least the spring, if then. No, relief checks are not “going out the door immediately,” and no, they will not be for the $2,000 to which Biden committed his administration. As to Biden’s health care reforms, one can hardly believe one’s eyes and ears.

As Andrew Perez and Julia Rock reported in Jacobin last week, Biden’s plans are literally lifted from a letter health-insurance lobbyists recently sent Capitol Hill legislators. The promised public option is out the window. Health care “secure for all?” These people do have bridges they intend to sell you.

All this within a few days of Biden’s ascendancy.  It’s not much different on the foreign policy side, so let’s draw the old lesson. You can have democracy at home or empire abroad, but you can’t have both. We will continue to suffer the latter under Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Those drawn into thinking the Biden regime would conduct America’s affairs abroad decently and humanely and in principled fashion will now discover they have been savagely sucker-punched. Those who understood from the outset that Biden’s people would go nowhere near the essential, determining questions of exceptionalism, universalism, and our consequent dedication to empire will be repelled but not surprised as the policy framework is revealed.

In this case, the moment of truth came even before Biden’s inauguration. His saccharine inauguration speech last Wednesday, with its Hallmark-card calls for unity, was quite secondary to the confirmation hearings the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held the previous day. . . 

. . . Among Blinken’s many rather sad-to-witness “Yes sirs,” two standout: his finely chiseled endorsement of Pompeo’s reckless assassination a year ago of Qassem  Soleimani, Iran’s revered military commander (“Taking him out was the right thing to do”), and his approval of the Trump administration’s decision to send lethal arms to the manically corrupt regime in Kiev (“Senator, I support providing that lethal defensive assistance to Ukraine,” when the Obama administration, from which he comes, did not.)

Late last year, Blinken appeared on “Intelligence Matters,” the podcast run by Michael Morrell, the coup-mongering former deputy director at the Central Intelligence Agency and now — of course — a regular commentator on the televisions news networks. In their exchange, the two took up the question of our “forever wars” and Biden’s well-advertised commitment to ending them. Here is a snippet from Blinken’s remarks:

“As for ending the forever wars, large-scale deployment of large, standing U.S. forces in conflict zones with no clear strategy should and will end under his [Biden’s] watch. But we also need to distinguish between, for example, these endless wars with large-scale, open-ended deployment of U.S. forces with [sic], for example, discreet, small-scale sustainable operations, maybe led by special forces to support local actors. In ending the endless wars we have to be careful not to paint with too broad a brushstroke.”

This is what we are in for these coming years, the hyper-rational irrationality of the middling technocrat. There will be adjustments at the margin, reconsiderations of method. There will be no consideration whatsoever of America’s hegemonic objectives—of the imperial project.

“Unity” is Not a Magic Word

Many politicians, including president Biden, are calling for our nation to unify. Biden says that he won’t be the president of red states or blue states — Trump frequently emphasized that he was president primarily for red states — but for the United States.

The question, however, is how will this happen?

During Mitch McConnell’s reign as senate majority leader, the Republican party has shown about as much interest in unity as a harlot has in chastity.

Historically, Republicans establish unity by ignoring Democratic complaints and proceeding full steam ahead. (The last two Supreme Court appointments were text book examples of this tactic.)

Democrats, on the other hand, are congenitally spineless, establishing unity by rolling over and giving Republicans most of what they want. (In a great many ways, the Obama administration was one long give away to Republican demands.)

Politics is adversarial by definition.

How do rivals ever find unity, especially when one side or the other is not particularly interested in burying the hatchet (except in an opponent’s back)?

Watch and behold the wonders of bipartisanship as Republican commentators glory in heart-warming calls for “unity.”

The video is titled “How Conservative Media is Covering Biden.” Watch it and weep.