Last night, Republicans and Democrats offered very different visions of the roles and rights of women in American society. In the State of the Union address, President Joe Biden thanked Vice President Kamala Harris “for being an incredible leader defending reproductive freedom and so much more.” Biden condemned “state laws banning the freedom to choose, criminalizing doctors, forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states to get the treatment they need,” and he called out Republicans “promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom.”
Thank you. Thank you! It should be difficult but I believe is not unsurprising that the Republicans reacted like that I am 80 years old. I lived through Brown versus Board of Education, the ERA amendment that did not pass and Roe versus wade and I'm still here and I absolutely believe we are all equal. I respect the rights of people to believe in a God who hates women and transgender and gay people but I hope there are fewer of them than there are the rest of us. I also believe you can be really smart and with it at 80. My cousin got her masters degree at 90 and went to work on her doctorate, and there's so many other incredibly intelligent all the adults being 80 doesn't mean you get stupid.
People have a right to their own thoughts and beliefs but also a responsibility to respect the boundaries and human rights of one another. That's the wisdom of not conflating church with state.
If one has strong religious beliefs, why is it necessary to force them on others? If you believe abortion is wrong, don't have one, no one is forcing you to have one. Why force your religious nonsense on others? You believe women should have babies and stay in the kitchen, fine, get pregnant, and stay in the kitchen, why would you force others to conform? To have your rules forced onto others requires a dictatorship - and that is exactly what we are dealing with in this country!!
It's ironic isn't it that women like Senator Katie Britt and far back to Phyllis Schlafly, are basically preaching subjugation and less rights for women but the only reason they are able to speak up is because of all the work done for women's rights.
Yes, the Repubs are definitely pushing for fewer rights for women; that's been obvious to us for along time. But I was dumbfounded that the Repubs would put her on the air!! What a turn off! What R extremists came up with this approach? The fundie voice and body language and kitchen and cross necklace and facial expressions!!! Yes, it's the submissive woman (or her vote mostly) that we want. If you need a biblical example or reference for a woman, let's use Judith who cut off the head of Holofernes.
It's one thing that she was on the air, but why in the world would she succumb to such coaching? However, I don't begrudge her for wearing a cross. I don't push my faith on anyone, but I do wear a cross....
When my mother was dying of multiple myeloma, a hospital volunteer was extremely sweet and engaged with her. The volunteer never said a thing about religion, but wore a simple, diminutive gold cross around her neck. That was the most lucid Christian sermon I ever encountered. A contrast to mongers of hate and self-righteousness.
That Katie Britt, housewife, from Alabama was disgusting....all bullshit. and plays on emotions...Of course: The border!!!....A woman raped by an illegal!!......Plenty of women get raped and the vast majority (99%?)of rapists are american citizens, many are relatives.
As far as sex slavery. She said something like "we wouldn't tolerate it in a third world country but it happened here." Is she that stupid? It goes on as an "industry" by the multi millions all over.
and, Yes, she's sporting a be-jeweled cross.
And, that "response" to Biden's speech was pre-taped.
Thank you. She REALLY was total bullsh*t. I can't imagine representing oneself for anything if one has not checked the accuracy of everything.
Towards the end of my working life, I ended up in Real Estate in NYC because I had bought buildings with partners when the prices were about 1000% less than today. Any listing I worked to get, I made sure my facts were correct. I specialized in townhouses and small buildings. I had to assume the client was smart, informed and cynical. The audience that that Katie person was appealing to are none of those things. Just uninformed and scared.
Republican and Israeli policy: LIE. LIE.LIE. A lie repeated enough becomes a "fact".
It's a trick out of Goebbles' playbook. Nazis would publicize and make a big deal out crimes allegedly committed by Jews. It's the old Willy Horton appeal to prejudice.
People are ignorant at the vastness of the "industry." As an in-house counselor at a Salvation Army's residence for ex-trafficked women, it is unimaginable what goes on here in this country....
Someone is going to get fired over this. She has "handlers" or whatever they call themselves. Listen Katie, Honey-child, shouldn't you be making decisions about something SO important as representing the fools in the GOP?......or was it some man?
I kept asking myself, what is that yellow board thing behind her? the back of a bench? but she's sitting at a round table...then she wiggled a bit and I see she's sitting on a chair. FAKE FAKE FAKE. and not vetted. at all. even I, who is nobody, could do better. someone should get very fired over this.....her male handler? someone said they thought it was Mike Johnson...but, isn't he kind of dumb? He sure looks dumb.
another GOP disaster....but, who cares, not those Maggots
Wholeheartedly agree but I think in the end it’s not about religion at all, it’s about maintaining a power structure. Evangelical religious leaders and their financial backers frame feminism and equality movements as counter to god’s will which ignites their followers, when in the end it’s really that white men with influence are threatened.
Agree completely. The whole issue needs to be viewed through the lens of power and control. My church, the Catholic Church, has always paid lip service to the idea that it's about human life, when in reality control, and the Church's age-old obsession with controlling sex as a means of controlling women, is the motivation. Otherwise impoverished clerics thus have something to aspire to: telling others how to live. That, and the fact that the Right cares not a whit for the mother and child following coerced birth, means their movement should more accurately be characterized as "pro-birth" rather than "pro-life."
And that is the gist of the 1st ammendment. Freedon to practice as each chooses; freedom from strictures arising from the beliefs of others. We are free to practice religion in any way we believe, but the limit of that freedom is another person's actions and beliefs. The Supreme Court has lost sight of the establishment clause in its over-emphasis of the free exercise clause.
It seems, in too many cultures, that people want a God-leader: IE: a tyrant that tells them what to do. Isn't this the attraction to the Tyrant-Trump? ...... He may be a bit flawed but that's OK, he supports their religious causes.
"Procrustes had a stronghold on Mount Korydallos at Erineus, on the sacred way between Athens and Eleusis.[3] There he had a bed, in which he invited every passer-by to spend the night, and where he set to work on them with his smith's hammer, to stretch them to fit. In later tellings, if the guest proved too tall, Procrustes would amputate the excess length; if the guest was too short Procrustes would stretch them until they died; nobody ever fit the bed exactly.[4] Procrustes continued his reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, travelling to Athens along the sacred way, who "fitted" Procrustes to his own bed: " -Wikipedia
I agree. Many years ago I read a great book called Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm that explained that many people find comfort in others telling them what to do so they aren't burdened by making difficult choices.
The problem is there are definitely social lines we have to decide, where to draw those. Should we allow removal of the clitoris by religious folks who believe it is the source of all evil, giving women sexual pleasure?
And for the folks that firmly believe life begins with conception, they think it is murder to have a period.
At some point, bodily autonomy has to be granted to everyone--man, woman, child. Right now, that isn't clearly drawn. Needs to be.
Yes, the ridiculousness of it cannot be overstated. Of course embryos are children, and just like embryos children can be frozen. Sometimes I find myself fantasizing of an all-women sex strike in protest....
I can't resist replying to this. The business about embryos having rights is fine except for one thing. Doesn't the mother have rights Right now it seems that the woman carrying the fetus has no rights.
She should at least have equal rights to the fetus. This is a basic and obvious fact that I have not heard brought up even once. And where you have to choose between the mother's life and the fetus's life, isn't it obvious that the mothers life should come first? Or should we deprive fetuses of their mothers just for the hell of it? Which is more moral, to leave a fetus (eventually a child) without a mother or to leave a woman grieving the loss of a fetus?
Or, the worst case, lose both the mother and the embryo, because the embryo could never become a child without the mother's womb, or condemn an embryo to a life of unending agony.
I spent many weeks in a NICU in a touch and go situation that thankfully came out well thanks to brilliant scientists and doctors, so I know all too well what it is like for these parents.
This is the most personal, private, and painful of decisions. Only the woman, with the people she trusts most, should make that decision. Her body, her right. In my observations during this period, religious factions aren't concerned about either the mother or the child; they have their own agendas, which is why they end up so snarled up around questions of when life begins.
There is a difference between 'folks' and 'people'. All folks are people, but not all people are folks. A lot of people (on radio, TV, etc.) say 'folks' when they (should) mean 'people'. Not an earth-shaking issue, but it degrades the language by removing nuance.
OK, I'll bite. I looked up the difference. It may be annoyingly casual, but in this venue, still feeling free to use the terms somewhat interchangeably. But I don't mind well intentioned corrections and appreciate the point. Got a Grammar Nazi for a husband, so had to get used to it...
Systematic C: as you can see, my late wife also had a grammar Nazi for a husband. Truth be told, though, she was quite a grammarian herself, so we had to fight about other things. Actually, this is not so much grammar (syntax) as semantics. (This website
https://prowritingaid.com/grammar-vs-syntax gives a slightly different version of syntax vs grammar. The author is a professor of English at Nassau Comm. College, so I have to be a little careful here.)
Makes sense to me. Drink till you puke in your armchair but not at the wheel of a car. Private behavior becomes the public's business when harm or unnecessary risk is forced onto others. Stay in the kitchen all you like but don't force it on others. Is a zygote sentient? Science says no. Oddly Republican (as they a wont to do) now want it both ways. It's not in a test tube but it is in a woman's body.
I am in full agreement, J.L. It is clear that we are dealing with a great many people in this country who do not believe in a secular state at all, or really any secularism in public life. "Live and let live" is an inherently expansionist/liberal idea, when you really think about it. Even among those who believe in it, there are all sorts of things we refuse to tolerate: we accept that a bank robbery is not a lifestyle choice. We find it immoral because it clearly hurts people, so we prohibit it.
An astonishing number of Americans explicitly believe that one must have religion to possess morality, and a significant subset believes one must have *their* religion to possess morality. This is mind-boggling to me, but if you put yourself in the shoes of someone with this foundational belief so much more makes sense. By inversion, anyone and anything without their God involved is *im*moral, as plainly immoral as a secular-minded person would view that bank robbery. The federal government is quite large and powerful. An entity that powerful devoid of morality can not be allowed to continue its workings unabated.
It appears are seeing what happens when a continent-wide nation explores the John Rawls Intolerance Paradox in real time.
The Fundie Baby Voice just blew me away.Saw the video back awhile …it oddly chilled me to Goose Bumps. Dragged from the past life/Handmaiden’s Legacy it took on an odious forewarning. Heathers added note is equally informative for those who haven’t ‘heard’.
For women this is the second coming and we’d all best be well informed , it carries far more implication of regression but …sisters …it comes after our compliance and silencing…FIRST!
I would rather not dismiss the voices of sincere believers like Katie Britt, but I would like to see her discuss issues with Cassidy Hutchinson, Mark Meadows' assistant that tried to keep him within the rails, as Trump White House Chief of Staff.
It took a while before she recognized what she had to do, and to start reevaluating much of what she believed in.
With my mild face blindness and poor hearing, they look and sound similar, though I hope both do well in becoming more woke to what the vast majority of us believe in as dangers to democracy and rule of just laws.
Indeed. He is without a shred of human decency, but for the fundies the end justifies the means. To me, people are either basically good or basically bad no matter what they believe or not.
I have come to think that whatever love we get in childhood, particularly from parents, determines much of how we react later. Liberal eduction teaches us to think liberally, examining our prejudices and expand our circle of affirmation. Biden’s loving family explains much of who he has become and Trump’s father’s racism and obsession with wealth and racism likely explains his criminality.
She was wrong about that. If she was here today, as a Jew, she would have joined the Jews who know how wrong Israel has been, and are continuing to be, to the Palestinians. The stronger voices against the slaughter are Israeli Jews. Masha Gessen. Norman Finkelstein, IIIan Pappe, Gideon Levy...etc..."Not in my Name" Jews.
"for the fundies the end justifies the means." Absolutely. And can we start a trend of calling "white evangelical christians" Fundies? I like how it sounds like "fundus" as in the fundus of the uterus.
I know I have been unpleasant toward you. I apologize for that; I get wound up. I remember the days when I hated Trump, my liberal neighbors in Birmingham, Alabama -- mainly in Sunday school and church -- cautioned me that hatred toward Trump does nothing to Trump but MY hating Trump diminishes me. That reminder freed me to confront the more challenging question: ¿how do we hear the complaints of people who feel overlooked without legitimating the M.A.G.A. movement?
Will, I have a friend from public school who is a Christian; her Dad (my boss for a time at the YMCA) was a minister. We carpooled to school together my first year at college, and played in band together. She went off to the college founded by her particular brand of Christianity, and we had lunch together that summer, when she came back home. She told me at that time that, for a non-theist, I was the most Christian person she knew, and explained how that, even in her bastion of like-minded believers, there were people who were (and I forget the exact words she used) but essentially "talked one game and played another. We drifted apart, and reconnected via Facebook about 7 or 8 years ago.
Long story short, she had to leave the Rogue Valley due to medical reasons (interstitial lung disease, and the heat and constant fire season was too much for her to handle), and at darn near the last minute, after having 3 sets of people bail on her and her husband, asked if I could help them move by driving one of the two 26' rental trucks they needed. I agreed in a heart beat, and while her husband drove one, I drove the other, a 26' Penske truck from Medford to a small town east of Seattle about half-way to Leavenworth WA. We had dinner that first night at their place, and she asked me if I remembered that conversation. I told her I did, and she said "well, it is still true." I still take that as a great compliment.
Thanks for sharing this, Ally. So touching. For real though, "will help you move on short notice" is the highest echelon of friend.
One of the most meaningful things anyone has said to me is very similar to your friend's comment. One of the "fundie" Baptist moms who ran the local 4-H group my brother and I were in once told me "you have a strong moral compass." I must have been in my early teens, and it meant so much to me. I'm pretty sure she knew I didn't have the same Biblical moral system as she did, but she thought I was kind and considerate and chose to let me know in a direct way that she saw that for what it was. She had earlier asked my younger brother if he (and by extension my family) believed in the Bible. He said he couldn't say, because he hadn't read the whole thing himself, or any of the other religion's books to compare. (This answer was deemed "mature" and "thoughtful.") In other words, a purely kind person, sadly captive in all that came with that "fundie" life but with flickers of her own mind still there, choosing to extend grace when you would expect proselytization. People can be complex.
My in-laws were fundamentalist Christians who believed that if you weren't baptised in their church or were anything other than married, straight, church going (their church) you would not be in heaven with them.
The issue of church came up throughout my 21 years of marriage to their son and at first I thought I misunderstood as Jesus preached inclusiveness. But, no, their exclusive rhetoric was what they believed. I raised our children in the Episcopal church (my husband had abandoned his childhood religious ties as an adult) and it was never good enough for my in-laws. I simply do not understand how religious people can come to the place where they were. They were not stupid people.
My very Catholic Nana married my very Jewish Grandpa in the waning days of WWII, with no qualms but the condition that her children would attend church until they could decide for themselves. My Dad said he remembers a Sunday School teacher making very plain that only Catholics would go to Heaven. My very worried Dad relayed this to his Mom upon getting home, asking "but what about Daddy?" He remembers her getting the most stern look he had ever seen, and simply stating "ALL good people go to heaven." She didn't say anything more, and little Jimmy never attended Sunday school again.
The white Southern Baptist church has always preached the gospel of white male supremacy They justified slavery and then segregation. They somehow declared that Jesus’ main teachings were anti-abortion and anti-gay. Women should always be subservient to men. As Dr. R points out, it is still the culture of much of the South and Fox News. They attack all capable women. Those women are the biggest threat to the power structure. One woman on the Supreme Court seems to believe that, and the other three caved to the pressure.
My sister, indoctrinated as we both we in our tiny Kansas town where she still lives, is slowly coming to terms with me telling her she's a good person because she is one. And that god has nothing to do with it.
After her return from the ark exhibit she was shocked to hear the original had been ruined in a thunderstorm and the insurance company refused the claim, because it after all was supposed to float. She was so mad she called to get her money back.
In the early 1990's, 90% of the US population polled as "Christian." By 2000, it had dropped to 80%. It is now at (or below) 63%.
A more detailed (earlier) survey, when the total Christian sector was about 70%, broke the Christian percentages down into 25% (of the total population) Evangelical, 20% Catholic, 15% Mainline Protestant, 6% Black Protestant, and the rest were "Other Christian." A full 15% (of the total population) were "Nothing in particular."
I'm guessing that a more recent survey would show drops in all of the Christian categories.
The big problems come from the Evangelicals, because they are into swinging elections. Formally. Institutionally. Financially. That was 25% of the total population around 2016. In a nation where a 5% spread is a "landslide victory," that is a LOT of votes.
"by the people, for the people, of the people".... but religious tradition, endangered demographically as it is, has a long long reach in the GOP. "live and let live" only works as long as people societally agree to respect their mutual differences. The NT in particular is an our way or the highway form of thinking, it seeks to envelop everything.
This logic does not hold up at all when confronted with the fact that some Republicans are Yale or Harvard educated and still spout nonsense for political power - the "political" positions they hold demonstrate their immorality, including supporting and even fomenting outright violence in some cases [probably many cases] - and all of them college educated full adults. Saying one is "religious" does not make one a moral person at all, and unfortunately the Repugs under T-Rump demonstrate this fact vividly. That speech by Britt was fake news pure and simple. Poison covered by a poisonous smile, even when whining uncontrollably.
Republicans with spine - quit whining and roll up your sleeves and actually work for all Americans and not only the ones willing to kiss T-Rump's ugly derriere - which is what all of them [those supporting him] are blatantly doing. Religion has nothing to do with morality when it comes to those supporting that spineless blowhard. I challenge them to lock T-Rump in a room with them - his supporters lock him in - and just see how long he lasts before he begs to be released from their presence. I predict he could not last even half the length of the insurrection of the Capital on January 6th 2021. He would start sweating and Demand to be let out and then we would HOWL and eventually BEG to be let out like the coward that he is. He can't stand them - but he knows how to use them alright. And they certainly know how to be used.
Will, excellent job putting yourself in the mythic, rule/role world space...and explaining why people who are living in that space are motivated to do what they do. And developmental psychologists estimate that astonishing number to be around 40% in the US and 70% world-wide.
I have disagree on one point! I don't respect people's rights for believing in a hateful God! They need to change their beliefs and adapt to modern society's norms for respecting all people!
I personally am an agnostic, which I think is the only sensible religious position that none of us have a fracking clue why the universe is the way it is! Obviously it makes no sense that a single God can be in charge of it all, with 10s of billions of galaxies and on top of that billions of stars per galaxy! Multiply that number by 9 planets per solar system. Translation: lots of life likely in the known universe. And no way a single intelligence could be in charge if it all.
This is why physicists like Einstein and Feynman believed in a God driving the physical laws only. That said, no one knows how consciousness arises, so we have to keep an open mind! It seems that consciousness is very much a part of the universe, which you know if you are interacting with your fellow human beings, observing the animals in nature, or simply interacting with your pets. Yet no one has an explanation for this phenomenon.
Furthermore, there are well-respected interpretations of quantum mechanics (such as the Copenhagen interpretation) that require some form of consciousness to observe an experiment in order to collapse the quantum wavefunction into an observed result that only arose from probabilities.
Well, I'm only speaking 25 years later from my training in physics. But I think in any case the universe remains a mystery and we don't have a fracking clue about it!
(Final note: Frack is the F-word in excellent Sci Fi channel remake of the Battlestar Gallactica series. Frack is also a swear word regarding fracking for oil and natural gas.)
I understand your feeling Matt, but I would say I respect anyone's right to believe whatever they want so long as they do not try to enforce their belief on anyone else. I am an atheist - I have no god and while as a scientist, I think when I die the "energy" we call a life force just wanders off to energize something else (maybe a light bulb LOL). I do not try to make other people believe what I believe, I had 4 children, each had a different belief and different religion, that was ok, religion should be personal. People who try to force their belief on others (in my opinion) do so only to validate their own belief.
I somewhat agree with what you are saying. Believe what you want! But then be humble enough not to feel the need to enforce your belief on others. This is not what the Southern Christian right wing is doing!
I don't actually believe any of the above I wrote regarding "believe what you want". I think beliefs need to be held to scrutiny.
Thanks for the response, Matt, all of us write with our emotions, then have further thoughts - at least those of us who think using critical analysis. You are definitely 'one of us'
Belief should be owned, a personal explanation of what is unknown (to me, to you). As a scientist I was privileged to have tools to understand and help change some things, some conditions. But, while I know I didn't possess all knowledge or all the truths, like most of us, I think, I had to look for a whole, an explanation that holds my understanding of everything together, for me, and until I learn some more things.
Belief, as a group phenomena reeks of ideology, blindness to new knowledge and to discovery, to growing with the collective wisdom that the group could provide, for it suffers the flaw that makes scientific inquiry so important. Ideological beliefs oppose the alternate hypothesis in all forms, thusly lacking the capacity to change, to embrace discovery, to self-correct. Their collective test of a challenge is against an ideological known, a tenant, not against or embracing the larger body of knowledge brought by time or experiment or better science or societal evolution.
Believe as you do, but never close your minds-eye to the richness of what is revealed, learned. I do wonder what I will believe, the sentiment and whole of my understanding of what I don't know of the whole, 7 or 17 years from now, when I awake at 90 or 100.
Fay Reid: Somewhere in the many volumes of writings by Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), he writes (paraphrased) that when he was asked if he believed in "God", he replied that it's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of knowing.
Restraining religion in this way is modern, it took a long time for there to be enough people societally to make this a prevailing view. The founding fathers felt the inherent fanaticism and taking no prisoners in the NT which since spawned centuries of the religiously intolerant was something which had to be taken on. As we can plainly see, a lot of Christians still maintain their religion is inherently right, and the only right belief which all should espouse, one way or the other.
I have a friend who is a respected quantum physicist. He told me that the universe is more bizarre than we can ever imagine. He hesitates to try to explain it to people because they’ll think he’s nuts.
Quantum physics: where you spend extra years in school in order to sound as indistinguishably incomprehensible as the yelling scraggly-beard at the back of the bus.
It astounds me that there is such a generalised lack of education in the USA with respect to scientific method, critical thinking and basic logic.
This leads to public discussions where the basic laws of science, climate change etc. are trested as BELIEFS. Even you yourself just said "If physics is true..."
Ah. I see it now in another comment. My comment wasn't "If physics were true", but rather "if only classical physics were true". That is a very big, if subtle difference.
It astounds me that there is such a generalised lack of education in the USA with respect to scientific method, critical thinking and basic logic.
This leads to public discussions where the basic laws of science, climate change etc. are trested as BELIEFS. Even you yourself just said "If physics is true..."
Many of us have deep respect, and even some interest, in the study of physics. For most, however, our deeper interest and talents simply lie in a different direction. Joking a bit (self-deprecation) about our lack of comprehension is our way of bowing to and acknowledging the brain power of those who do understand it on a much deeper level than we do.
Tell me more, please, I've been reading a bit on Minovitch, who with access to a friend's surplus IBM 7090 computer (cluster of 4, I believe), started solving N-body orbits in his spare time as an intern at JPL. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist
He impressed the heck out of a frequent acquaintance, John Durant, who as an Army Air Force SSgt scrounger got to play an interesting role in getting the Berlin Airlift started. The Soviets didn't expect us and allies to mount much more of an airlift then the Germans did trying to resupply Stalingrad (300 flights). I was a toddler dependent in Munich during the Berlin Airlift that sent 277,000 flights into Berlin (makes me wonder what we are capable of in Ukraine, who's people, even former Nazis for lack of better allies, seem as great post war allies as the Berliners were in 1948).
He doesn't mention Minovitch by name but I'm sure that's who he means from old conversations describing a kid who ground crews and pilots at what is now LAX let him climb in the planes, sit in the cockpits and taught some of the functions of the controls to.
He wasn't the only kid that got to do that way back when, but John helps pick kids (of all backgrounds) for the $50,000 a year the Aero Club of Southern California provides many scholarships for.
My point is that the smartest people are so far ahead of our knowledge that speaking to them is as perplexing as speaking to the dumbest people. In both cases, the strata they are communicating from is simply foreign to most of us, just from the opposite ends of the spectrum of insight. That's why some people make a mistake in thinking the dumbest people are actually the smartest, and vice versa.
Will, my experience is just the opposite of that shown in the television show Young Sheldon. The smartest people I’ve encountered are very humble—if you compliment them, they thank you and then talk about someone else who bests them in an academic endeavor. “Thanks. Have you seen Joe Blow’s latest paper on ****? The man’s a genius!”
It's technically difficult and intuitively impossible, perhaps, at best drawing on analogies we can grasp. That "more bizzarre than we can ever imagine" is a famous quote from at least one early 20th biologist, JBS Haldane i think, perhaps also Eddington, who helped provide early evidentiary support for Relativity. We don't expect our kitties to "understand" our symbolic ways, why not consider there are kinds of "consciousness" which remain conceptually beyond us?
Yes, but it is also great! If only classical physics were true, and not also quantum physics, there could be no free will and uncertainty. Not that any physicist has any clue about free will changing reality!
It is nuts! As a child I would lay in bed thinking about time and space....time ends when, then what? Space is in what?...then where is the space that's it's in?
Well i am an evangelical Christian, so i believe in that loving God and in His Word. Through that word i know him to be righteous as well as merciful, gracious, and loving.
Many people seem to have an abridged version of the Bible that leaves out a lot of things including most of what Jesus (a real radical, BTW) did or said. It makes me very sad to hear many of the claims of self- righteousness and retribution tossed around today in His name.
I've often said in discussions that Jesus was a radical--one that would horrify today's evangelicals. He would be too "woke" and far too progressive for them to follow him.
I do not often agree with the Reverend Al Sharpton, but he made a great point twenty-five years ago when Mayor Giuliani -- for whom I never voted; whom I always disliked for being vindictive and divisive -- started arresting homeless people for pan-handling on Subways and later clearing them from the streets. Mr Sharpton stated, in effect: "With Giuliani's laws, even Jesus Christ would be in Riker's Island right now."
I am with Matt, an outright atheist though. Life started on earth 3.5 billion years ago and everything that lives today (animals, plants, insects) are descended from LUCA. Proof is that we all share the same DNA, you, me, the banana on your table and the mosquito that bites you. That brains developed so that there is intelligent life could be unique. If there is other life out there, it may not have developed a brain. We may be the paragon of all creatures in the universe. Heaven help us.
Yeah Richard, we just don't really know what else "out there" is up to, do we! Instead of "proof", I prefer the concept of "supporting evidence"... strictly speaking, proof is a property of logical arguments.
I'm probably an atheist, too, although I'm open to the existence of higher conscious entities in the universe (which is why I call myself agnostic, and mostly because I don't have a clue), just not a single one who somehow created the whole damn thing!
Agreed. I attend a Sunday School class at an Alabaman Baptist church. My class-mates are as open-minded and charitable as the best of us in this forum. They make me a better man.
It took me a while to remember that i attended a Sunday School class before i called myself a Christian and had a similar experience. Inquisitive smart people with a rock solid knowledge of the Bible. That was in 1988. It was Lent then too.
I know of a Canadian female climatologist who is also an evangelical, but roots her professional knowledge in modern science, years ago even addressed Texan oilmen on the subject. She married a southern fundamentalist who opposed modern evolutionary biologist, but love was unstoppable. How views have changed in the intervening 20 years or so i don't know, but i think she was hopeful some of his fundamentalist views might moderate. Sorry i can't recall her name at the moment. She's published.
I am a mathematician; retired now, I still read science eagerly snd marvel @ the unfolding understanding of what i see as the exquisite order in God’s created universe. (Not to mention the photos from theJames Webb Space Telescope!)
I find it interesting that the first five words of the Bible (“In the beginning, God created”) are among the most important and most difficult for many people.
The Bible is “the best book”. It reveals how God deals with man and gives us knowledge “sufficient to our salvation.”
But it is not a math book or a science book, or a complete record of history. None of the math or science i’ve learned contradicts what i read in the Bible, just reveals descriptively and quantitatively the order of God’s creation.
Lots of religiously faithful can do great and good science. I agree, the universe has more than enough mystery and unknown, if not unknowable for our precocious but limited brains, to allow a variety of metaphysical beliefs to roost "at the top" while everyone has a heyday in the details. Lots of thoughtful mathematicians wonder even how mathematics has provided such a cornucopia of tools with which to advance our most basic to most esoteric science and, well, much of everything else.
You are not supposed to be self-righteous!!It’s totally wrong to act that way.I believe that groups like the Southern Baptists believe that is the way you are supposed to behave!!They are so busy judging others-They are definitely messed up!!
I am not a trained theologian but my thought is that it is part of God’s character to be “worthy of worship”. I know some people might say that there are “uncreated” beings ( angels?) who worship God, or even that there are other created realities in which God is worshipped. I generally keep my own thinking and debates on our own space- time continuum!!
To me God’s most important aspect is not that he is all-powerful* but that he is self- existent, not part of what we call creation (what we might call “our” space-time.) i like to connect this to God’s self identification to Moses as “I am”.
*Another old paradox asks if God can be all-powerful since he can’t act in ways that violate his own character.
Matt Fulkerson, I'm with you when it comes to the very widespread nasty, two-dimensional caricature of "religion".
I'm with you all the way about the universe -- and Kristin Newton says it for me.
But Einstein, Feynman, every woman, every man -- even the Donald, even the village idiot -- has under the skull the only thing that may match the inconceivable complexity of the universe. A human brain.
*
As for the KKK -- Kinder, Kuche, Kirche -- image of submissive womanhood imposed by those who are scared out of their tiny minds by real feminine power... my very conservative (in the old sense of the term, valuing good things we have and -- above all -- serving humanity, serving the people, serving one's country) my very conservative sister came to suburban America in the 1950s as a British wife, lived there a few years, bearing three kids, then got the hell out, kids and all, and returned to London.
Sorry, I forgot at first to mention that the America my late sister fled in horror, fled to survive as a human being, was that great MAGALALALAND, the never-neverland of the 50s...
Like Putin, Agent Orange speaks of restoring a myth from the remote past of his babyhood.
Because they have no present, no future to offer, only death and destruction.
Having grown up in the '50s, I can understand the need to restore the myth - but the only things I'd like to bring back from that time are the tax rates for the rich and the ratio of CEO pay to that of workers on the line.
Having been raised as a Catholic in California but living in Asia for a few decades, I much prefer Buddhism to Christianity. The concept of God is completely different. Christian missionaries have tramped on so many cultures throughout history in their determination to hammer people into thinking as they do. Everything has to be either right or wrong, black or white.
I will suggest that a healthy religious/spiritual orientation includes both Christianity's emphasis on love to others and the "spiritual technology" of Hinduism and Buddhism, including yoga and meditation.
Hi-five, fellow agnostic! Congrats to us for bravely refusing to take a stand on the existence of Sky Daddy, or between versions! You are part of a club that realized the biggest truth: that the only way to find out how it ends up is to kick the can, and then you don't get to tell anyone!
From my experience communicating with ancestors, I have been given to understand that as part of the process of dying, the soul splits into two parts, as discussed here:
Another commenter here defines herself as a non-theist and I share her belief that there is no supreme being. We are all only here on planet earth for a fraction of a second compared to how long it has been since the Big Bang. For one Supreme Being to care about the billions of humans that have only been here for perhaps 300,000 years out of 14 billion is not very logical.
Why is it that so many people that attend seminaries end up being atheists after they learn more about the history of theology?
The more we learn about science the harder it becomes for most educated people to accept the idea of one supreme being.
Matt -- science. Amazing, baffling, mind-blowing, exciting, expanding science. So many people have not had the education or do not have mental capacity to understand any of it, so in their fear they deny it: flat earthers, anti-vaxers, trumpites who have been fooled by a snake-oil salesman. They get the majority of the news coverage because they are laughable, and they are a minority. We just have to vote out all those who want to tell us how to live our lives -- the fundamentalist, the arrogant trumpites. I for one have had enough of this fracking stupidity. I kept my mouth -- not exactly shut, but respectful of others opinions. Not any more.
Who was it that said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts? I like that alot and am more troubled by the construction of a false reality constructed and sold by Trumo than i am by anyone’s opinion that is @ least based in reality
Matt then you are as bad as they are. We should all respect the rights of others to believe or not believe in whatever religious or non-religious guiding principle they choose.
Your beliefs are not the same as mine but I would fight for your right to have them. That is what freedom means isn’t it?
I enjoyed your morning essay on the limits but exciting possibilities in modern scientific empiricism. If we're no longer a privileged centre, we certainly have a privileged location from which to begin to take in an amazing, likely not fully comprehensible vista, in all directions. Got a laugh right off about "fracking".
I was fortunate to have been a high school student back in the early sixties when inquiry based science (biology, physics, and chemistry) was becoming the norm in schools prepared to teach them. I had some marvelous teachers, and so I came away with a sense of both wonder and inquisitiveness about the world and the universe I'd been born into. In college I added anthropology, paleontology, geology, and astronomy to my search for understanding. I claim expertise in non of these areas, but even as one who, by an real expert might be considered not much more than a dabbler, I have found an extraordinary delight in being able to read about new discoveries and new insights into this universe of wonder, how it was created and is endlessly evolving, and with what marvels it is populated.
Keats wrote in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" I don't presume to know exactly what he meant, but for myself, I have always believed that being willing to discover and to accept all that we can about whatever is and can be nothing else is a journey of utter beauty.
And I believe that truth, and thus that beauty is what we are always seeking, regardless of the fact that in our utter humanness, we are often capable of distorting what we find and what we believe about it into shapes sand actions so awful that we are left in incomprehension at what we've done.
Yet we persist, and a willingness to do so with open minds and the best hopes of which we are capable, we may yet become a full and positive part of this amazing world, despite the best efforts of those whose fear and ignorance would trap us in an endless cycle of anger and dispair.
Today, clergy of all faiths seem to rest on a belief in a Supreme Being which we identify as the 'Creator' or sometimes more specifically endow with anthropomorphic characteristics, since the Bible points out that that Supreme Being created man in his image and therefore, knowing what we look like, that supposedly tells us what a Supreme Being must look like. Three hundred and fifty years ago, Baruch Spinoza carefully levelled that Supreme Being into a far broader 'Supemacy' of which everything, including each individual, observing, contemplating, or even criticizing it was a part. Today's clergy have vested interests in promoting however their faith identifies a Supreme Being. That's why Spinoza, who was Jewish, was in effect excommunicated by Judaism way back then.
They “believe in a hateful God” because it allows them to justify their hate. It isn’t really about the god, it’s about their hate, their sexism, racism etc. changing people’s mind has to be done on the ground in the foxholes, people need exposure to those they “hate” so they can experience/gestalt with them and stop projecting badness on ‘other’.
In the 70s dream work was used by clergy to unplug racism, when you start sharing dreams people see and hear the universality of being and it changes hearts.
Hearts change minds in the case of small minded people.
There is something uniquely vile about today's culture in Alabama. Once upon a time, organized Christianity inculcated the inclination to be habitually good to others. That got twisted in the South.
I look forward to an imagined time when Birmingham is recognized as "Redemption City."
William I appreciate your open mind. My similar reaction blew my mind. I hope not but, I fear it falls in the category of even a blind squirrel sometimes gets an acorn.
Racism is the disease. It's what led four KKK white men to bomb the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham in 1963, killing four little Black girls while injuring many others. They snuffed out innocent lives. Murdered them. MAGA/KKK Trump supporters are racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and homophobic to the core. In other words, as humans, as creatures who share this planet with other creatures, they are misfits without consciences.
Agreed that Maga is hugely dangerous. I suspect despite this people in the South (and not just) have moved on quite a bit, if not as far as more progressive non coloured would like to hope. Well, at least when movies like Mississippi Burning, Selma, 12 Years a Slave they can find southerns to play the traditional white parts, and get funding from eg Georgia. I've also seen quite a few decently done documentaries about the Civil War and after out of southern government agencies. Statues coming down. And so on.
I don't at all understand how people of color, women, religious beliefs other than so-called or fake Christian evangelicals could even consider electing Trump and his followers!
Alas, I grew up in Mississippi several decades ago, and I remember the same vileness, cloaked in religious hypocrisy just slightly more heavy than the humidity. Social media has enjoyed a heyday in that toxic milieu, so it is more obvious now. God hasn’t slept this well since the Holocaust.
Speaking of that state - couple of years back the press was out interviewing some voters following the BLM demonstrations/protests and when they asked a white lady and her friend about the protests their view point demonstrated the real lack of understanding. It was so incredible to hear this. When asked about her feelings about the black people she said something like if a black person came up to her door and was hungry she would give them food as if that would prove she was not a bigot. The attitude was more like as long as they know their place we are just fine with them in our town. No mention of whether it was a front or back door. It was just such a profound moment of how this lady viewed the status of blacks. Very sad.
“I know a black person” and “I have a black friend” are some of my favorite qualifiers. Some of those folk also admit they have a gay friend or at least know one. Also, Ellen is funny!
But I really do think such interviews should be aired, just not standalone like C-SPAN did after the SOTU (C-SPAN is hardly alone in this practice). The ignorance needs to be outed publicly, then used as a tool to educate the masses who are nodding along. Just giving the bigots a mic and a platform lends them an air of legitimacy in the eyes of their peers, and has emboldened them all to say the quiet part aloud.
The US is a very race-conscious country. It’s unfortunate in that it serves to further divide folks. The census asks that you provide your race, and many questionnaires do exactly the same thing. And think of how much “inter” marriage there has been. The pieces of pie become smaller and smaller.
Speaking of the uniquely vile culture of today, i live in Georgia, and it's not one bit better here as i live only about18 miles from the Alabama border. Actually, there is quite a bit of things that do get twisted including organized Christianity here in the South.
Example: My daughter's mother in law once told her, please don't ever let a ''Thousand Legs'' ( A Centipede), count your teeth or you will die. Another one she told her, '' Don't get your milk out of the refrigerator when it thunders, or the milk will sour''. All of this was just the Southern Appalachian folklore that was the truth to them.
folklore is old as the "hills" ... black cats and bad luck, pinch of salt over your shoulder, my aunt, and not just her, absolutely believed in ghosts, was also very intelligent, kind, and a hawk for discipline in the school system she served for all of her adult life. My mother co accepted Darwinism as presented a century ago, reincarnation and thought she found one of her previous lives buried in a cemetery in rural England. I love that one about centipede. This stuff is hardly just from Southern Appalachia, right?
I agree, folklore is as old as the hills. I am not sure that this stuff is just from Southern Appalachia. The area i live in is at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountain chain and most of the folklore sayings have about disappeared here as it was handed down from the generation of adults from the 1920's to the 1940's here. And speaking of previous lives, my daughter did our family tree with the ancestors.com thing and there is a picture of one of my relatives from the late 1700s that looks exactly like i do. That kinda made me think of your mother's beliefs about reincarnation.
That belief of a centipede counting one's teeth made me laugh so hard i had tears streaming down my cheeks. When i wrote that comment last night i burst out laughing after i wrote it. I don't think a centipede has the ability to count. My daughter's mother in law also believed the earth is flat.
Thanks for the prompt to imagine. What shapes are the doorways in our minds that open to a future so different from now? You've helped me appreciate activism as a practice of that.
I think it's far too easy to focus on condemning the negative, and we don't think about how to change things for the better. I like to imagine a Black male family-values Republican in the Governor's mansion in Tennessee. I go around fixing the world's problems in my mind, and sometimes around here I get to share my thoughts with others.
You have mentioned your employer before and that you are a driver. Do you drive through AL very often? I've worked for companies across the country and I rarely run across someone I dislike or is difficult to work with. BUT, I rarely talk politics with anyone outside of family and a few close friends.
I drive through Birmingham and Huntsville quite a lot, going on to Memphis and Nashville. I like driving through Huntsville, becausee there's an old Saturn rocket (heavy lifter for the Moon landings) standing right next to the interstate. For a while they were sending me to Memphis a lot, because other drivers didn't want to go there.
I get the vague impression that "everybody" assumes that everyone likes Trump, but very rarely any real discussion. People just do their work and go home.
Speaking of Huntsville, A friend of mine co-authored a book - They Could Not Fail- that details what the federal government did with the space program when it located the Saturn program there. The hiring of blacks and what they did to bring some semblance of equal rights to that area is a very good read. You might enjoy it, especially if you like the space program.
A book of historical fiction, The German Wife, is about German rocket scientists and their families relocated to Huntsville, AL, right after WWII. Their backgrounds were scrubbed so they could work for the government, and the antagonism on both sides—Americans now expected to welcome our former enemies and Germans brainwashed by Hitler and Naziism—makes a super interesting story. (The US government called this Operation Paperclip.)
"People just do their work and go home." Exactly. When I used to go onsite a bunch of us would go out to dinner, trivia, drinks, etc. most evenings. We never talked politics. Of course that was before 2016 when TFFG entered the scene, but still it's just not good conversation when you're socializing with a group.
That brings up the general question of how people decide who to vote for. I remember my sister being dutifully diligent, researching the positions of the primary candidates on various issues. My four younger brothers did little or none of that, and I was sort of in between.
It seems to me that much of today's political campaigning consists of cleverly-crafted talking points, based on market research, designed to influence people who don't think very much.
The Framers established a constitutional wall between Church and State not only to prevent state imposition of church creed and church prejudice, but to keep faith based irrational habits of mind out of government, which was to be founded on coming to consensus through reasoned debate of empirical evidence - in the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. and in elections to transfer power.
"Not sure today's politicians are capable of 'reasoned debate of empirical evidence."
Please do not be fooled into believing that sweeping condemnation of American politicians - and by extension office holders. It is the fallacious rhetoric of malign individuals who want to suppress and/or split the potential Democratic vote. Whether from the Left or Right, ultimately to elect Republicans.
Please spend some time listening to CSpan. Democratic Senators and Representatives show up every day to diligently fulfill their oaths. It is both heart breaking and heartening to witness them defending legislation and democracy. They are too many to name, but among my favorites - Jamie Raskin and Sheldon Whitehouse. Veterans of the Civil Rights struggle, Benny Thompson, Hank Johnson, and Jim Clyburn. Stalwarts Patty Murray, Rosa DeLauro, Barbara Jackson Lee, Tammy Baldwin, Maisie Hirano. The new generation including AOC, Corri Bush, and Jon Ossoff. To name just a few.
I believe we have a variety of politicians who are capable of 'reasoned thought and reasoned debate of empirical evidence. But it takes two who have that ability on opposite sides to have a reasoned debate of empirical evidence. Only occasionally have I witnessed that match up. I do agree that the politicians you named have these skills. And I could add many more. But, again, who are they debating? Who is the opposition that has those skills
The words I used...not sure ....are simply that. Not sure but would like to see.
I hope she learns from Cassidy Hutchinson what real patriots do (no matter what their previous beliefs were). I wish her no malice, just wish she changes for her own sake, if not for all of ours.
If we get enough Democrats and Independants who agree (because that is all we can depend on at this time in history) in the House and the Senate, the Equal Rights Amendment will be amended to the Constitution formally. Many legal scholars look at it as a part at this point in time, because it has done what needs to be done to be an amendment - passed Congress, signed by a President, and adopted by 2/3rds of the states. There is no mention in the Constitution of time limits, as the history of the 27th Amendment shows isn’t an issue. Also, those states who say they changed their minds (like Tennessee) need to look at the history of prohibition to see that you can’t “do over” a vote on an amendment, you have to pass another amendment.
The sticking point when adding it to the Constitution is the time limit that was put on it by Congress. It was changed once, all that Congress needs to do is change it again, removing the time limit (which some legal scholars think was unconstitutional to begin with). There was a House Resolution to do this in 2021 that passed, but it couldn’t get past the Senate and the filibuster at that time. Let’s be sure and get enough Senators to constrain or overturn the filibuster, and the ERA is in the Constitution, and then goodbye abortion bans! https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-joint-resolution/17#:~:text=Passed%20House%20(03%2F17%2F,Senate%20on%20March%2022%2C%201972.
I regret that I tried to reassure my sister-in-law that it shouldn't matter because all of us should be undoubtedly considered equal. Seeing what my old party has done to make it so much harder to be ratified by 3/4s of the states shows me how wrong I was.
We do need things like the ERA and Citizens United so firmly entrenched in our Constitution that no combination of radical justices can take the protections from us ever again.
Me, too--I am currently in a campground in La Junta, Colorado. Traveling solo all over this country with my two, also aged, dogs in a 17 foot travel trailer. Ask anyone half our age who has done this, and they will tell you it can be very challenging--even for them! There are many of us who see you, Mr. President; and we do not doubt that you are more than up for the job.
I had forgotten that the ERA did pass in both houses but they included a deadline for the ratification by March 22, 1979 (later extended but also having 5 states legislatures rescind their earlier ratification). Only 35 of the required 38 states (3/4s of the states) ratified before the deadline (with 4 rescinding before the original deadline).
The stuff they made around age is ridiculous. You only get old and feel old if you give in to media version where the worldview of aging. As you're all as long as you're always enjoying yourself and learning something you're not going to decline. If you have not seen Carl Reiner's documentary if you're not in the obituaries eat breakfast, you would probably enjoy it.
There are fewer indeed, political distribution though amplifies their influence. Women voting against GOP's atavistic policies on reproductive rights however has stirred a significant demographic, a "made for Democrats " battle-issue. Make 2024 count!
Yes, I agree that people have the right to believe in a God who hates women and transgender and gays people, although I hope that number is small and getting smaller. For me, and I hope for the current members of SCOTUS, freedom OF religion entitles each of us to practice the religion of our choice (including no religion). Freedom OF religion also implies freedom FROM religion. No one, not the federal government, nor the state and local governments, can impose a specific religion on anyone. My fear is that several recent Presidents, with the help of Mitch McConnell, have created a super majority willing to impose their personal religious beliefs on the rest of us
I had a hard time watching A Handmaid’s Tale because it was so dark, and preposterous. But as we creep into the Katie Britt scenes, and others with Casey Desantis and Melania Trump… and Roe is no longer the law of the land, and embryos have more constitutional rights than women in certain circumstances … it’s not much of a stretch of the imagination anymore.
I hope many more women see this regressive trope for the patriarchal scam that it is, and vote.
I cherish and exalt women like Michelle, Jill, Hillary, Ketanji, and Elizabeth, among others.
I had to stop watching A Handmaid's Tale in the second season -- it was just too close to where things have been headed in Republican-land for the past several years :(
I read Margaret Atwood 's novel in my 20s in the early 80's before debit cards. The plot was entirely plausible and truly terrifying to me, how easy it would be to strip women of all power in an instant. I never could bring myself to watch the show.
We've actually watched all seasons of it. Most series seem to devolve into soap operas, but what the heck.
Anyway, I've often gone back and read the story in Genesis 30. The first three verses tell the story of the Handmaid, but the rest describe polygamy and unfaithfulness. The myyths in the Old Testament seem to be the basis for the Southern Baptist religion.
The weird thing was that on SNL, the actress, who looked very much like Katie had the exact same background. It was AI.... SO......Katie could have been anywhere with that AI background. One, of many things that were strange, was that she had what looked the back of a bench behind her, but a round table in front of her. Who puts a bench at a round table??
Agreed. I couldn’t watch the whole thing. It was so jarring for someone like me who watches Newshour. I think the Fox and right wing channels use this fearful tone so much that their viewers must be desensitized. I found it truly unwatchable, unsettling, and manipulative to the extreme.
So I was one of those women who burned her bra. I also remember Schlafly a little too well. Bad taste in my mouth but Britt, boy can she deliver or what? Not! Right out of a Duggar family horror movie comes the bejeweled woman of “faith”, offering possibly the worst Academy Awards speech I have ever heard. Laughable, pathetic, and to be missed. Oh wait…I understand that she will soon be auditioning for Mrs. America! What do you suppose her swim suit will look like?
For me, an advantage of growing up homeschooled with secular parents was being able to see the religious right in this country up close and personal, without actually getting burned by it.
There are loads of very Christian women in this country who feel deeply under seige by the modern world. They don't want any part of the version of "freedom" we espouse on this board. Freedom - doing what you want with your life - means decadence and depravity and the devil. What we would call repression they call being "pure," "disciplined," and "saved." God makes differences between people for a reason, and all this tearing down of differences we have been doing for most of the last century? Disastrous. No wonder this country has problems. All they want is their freedom to raise their family away from all of this as best they can, but that is getting more and more difficult, and as it does, these otherwise lovely and polite people are getting more and more scared and angry.
I will never forget a young female friend confiding in me that she "just really wanted to be a stay-at-home Mom." She had to whisper it with the unmistakable tone of something she had been told would get her ridiculed. I said I thought that was lovely, that we needed those people, and she would be a great Mom. I meant from the bottom of my big ole librul heart. Her response was between relief and bewilderment. It was like a bizzarroworld "coming out" scene. She genuinely felt torn between the imagined mileau she had been taught to grow up to desire, versus seeing every other girl finding meaning through a career. The idea that she could be that traditional thing and coexist with other people *not* being that thing was akin to a foreign concept to her. In this war between lifestyles, she was on the right side but the currently losing side, and one had to be careful who to reveal oneself to while living behind enemy lines.
Seeing the Alabama lady in her kitchen made me let out a guffaw, not of mockery, but of a sort of twisted nostalgia. I know of at least a dozen women from growing up - young and old - who are almost certainly watching this and relating to her performance very deeply. Make no mistake: the kitchen, the cross necklace, the submissive aggreivement; none of it is a joke. She knows exactly who she is speaking to.
Good comment, Will. But when death breaks the family unit, it's hard to rally around the idea that women need to stick to their role as submissive beings toward their male counterparts. At age four, my father died. My mother, my sister, and me spent the next eight years waiting for the next man to complete our family. What I learned in those formative years is I needed to make sure that I had the skills necessary to survive alone, if need be, because it was not a given that a man would be there to fill the void. So forgive me if I believe in equality for women.
To be clear, I personally do not share the beliefs that I was illustrating. I think they are misguided at best and toxic at worst. I was simply saying that unfortunately there is a ready audience in America for that rebuttal, and I have known some of them myself.
I am sorry to hear you had such a tragic formative experience. I can't help but feel that if my mother had passed at any point, my dad and brother and I would have been quite lost. Women are so often the glue that holds a unit together, and all too often go without the proper thanks.
progwoman -- do you have a link to how we can do this? (I'm greatly interested.) I searched on YouTube, found lots about when her brother died of Covid-19, but nothing yet about her father.
This is just a distinct memory from her campaign when I heard her recount it often. And then I heard her refer to it in support of Katie Porter's campaign for the Senate. She said that the family almost lost their home, and then her mother found a job. Maybe you could email Senator Warren.
Me thinks you are a good guy, Will. I never thought you shared in the beliefs; rather, I think that it is important you shared your lived experiences.
But I should have said up front that Britt's comments told my younger self that without a father, I could never be a part of the family unit that she declares is necessary for Americans. So that leaves me out, along with several million others, I expect.
Thank you, Lynell. I think I understand what you are saying, and appreciate your experiences. I cringe at these people who think the "traditional nuclear family" is necessary for social stability. They seem to think that the structure of the unit is all that matters; the level of affection and support the relationship gives you is irrelevant. My aunt adopted my two cousins and raised them herself from the moment they were born. One could make the argument that they would have benefitted from a healthy father in addition, but they certainly did better with a loving single mother than they would have with an unhealthy father relationship, and are perfectly well-adjusted adults. The idea that decades later some people *still* see my aunt's choice (or your Mom's fortitude) as unnatural or a threat to society is bizarre and maddening.
As Fani Willis recently said, "A man is not a plan. A man is a companion." I'm a man, and I am nowhere insecure enough to see a threat in that statement.
Economic independence… didn’t exist when my biological father walked out, left the state, even changed his name. My mother, now single with two children was ostracized for not keeping “her man happy!” The late 1950’s… oh those were days though. She moved away, we lived in a second story of a house with a two room converted apartment. I simply can’t imagine what living hell and stress my mother went through with little support from her family and society… … it enrages and saddens me to just read about this pathetic, twisted group of politicians that have such power over our lives so I will abstain from watching a woman play into their ‘man hands,’ one who has no idea how things have been for women, what it took to get as far as we did and one who may very well be influential in returning to those “good ole days”
I know quite a few women whose husbands abandoned them and the 2-4 children. One left and took the car. One supported her husband through his doctorate then he left her for an academic. In those years, and before, men could dump their families with little or no support. Look at the Edie and her Mother Edith Beale...of Grey Gardens. Edith was dumped by her high income/old money family husband and they lived in squalor. One of my favorite films.
Yes, and having been there, I look at how many family units death is breaking in the world each day! My individualistic determination helped me cope but I've learned that to thrive is much more communal.
Interesting comment Joan L. To me it highlights the favorable & beneficial view of embodying both aspects of our humanity: individual determination AND openness to positive communal engagement/contribution. That undergirds a strong, mentally healthy human, I believe. The patriarchy demanding certain tasks be assigned to you because you have a vagina or penis, is soooooooo missing the point. But keeping people blindly in that frame of argument is easier to control.
All the bull about a 2 State solution or integrating the 2 peoples. The Israelis hate those filthy rat Palestinians and does anyone think those people in Gaza or the West Bank aren't even MORE mad as hell?? Let's give them Texas.
I think the most capable American citizens are black women. They have to do so much to make up for the crappy jobs their husbands often end up with. Or, none. I went to my 50th year HS reunion in Montclair NJ. The white girls went to college, hoping to marry well. Many I spoke to were divorced and then had to find some job or other. The black girls went right into business and succeeded. Look at the black female prosecutors who are taking TFFG to task. I think it's wonderful...and very very funny; it must be killing TFFG.
Economic independence for women has likely been the cornerstone for allowing women to escape the bonds of patriarchy and all that can go with it, apart from more mundane reasons. In any case 70% or so of divorces I hear are initiated by women.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if men and women could be appreciated and supported for living out their best selves-loving who they love, working in or out of the home, having families or not…just being the people they know themselves to be. Naive, Pollyanna, I know-but wow-what a wonderful world that would be.
Jesus told his followers to love one another. He condemned judging and hypocrisy. Just to love. The Christian extremists feel they have the right to exert their will and way on all others-in matters of faith, life choices, societal roles-everything. There is nothing of Jesus in any of that.
I was a stay at home mom. Knocked up at 18 by an 18 year old in 1958.
I had a very small budget so my skills made my home look pretty middle class. I made clothes, curtains, food, all from scratch and refinished old furniture. I bought stripper by the gallon. I attended college nights which is a great use of all the time one has stuck in the house. I started a business which drastically changed the income level of my family. Now, at 84, my housekeeping skills are extremely handy. I still cook, sew and can repair almost anything. All those projects, my smart Mexican cat and "research" I am quite busy and content. I feel sorry for single men, or women, who didn't learn the basic skills of housekeeping.
I learned sewing basics from Mom, who can sew anything. She didn't make me, I asked her. Most boys like tools and putting things together, and I was no exception. To my mind, these were just small tools and soft materials, rather than big tools for hard materials. Which they are! The idea that boys are supposed to be tough and resourceful and independent and not let anything get in their way... but then you are leaving them to be absolutely stymied the second a button falls off a shirt because learning how to fix it would be girly? Hilarious.
My mother ,who was an amazing seamstress, wouldn't help me with sewing when I was married on a tiny budget at 18. She said she couldn't even thread a needle anymore. She was 45. She sewed for quite few years after that. She had never supported me in anything. I figured it out from the 7th grade sewing class and reading Vogue patterns. I signed up for a carpentry course because I figured it's the same principles, (like: measure twice, cut once) just different materials. The teacher got sick or something; the class was canceled. I just wanted the skill to at least make a bookshelf. I am 84 and still sewing and can even thread a tiny needle.
I think girls in some schools can now take "shop". Boys should be taught by someone to at least sewing on buttons. And, cook!
IMHO, almost no mothers can raise children well without a lot of support from family, like back "in the day". I am sure my Mother's mother with the 9 children and an active social life was not the primary caregiver. There were older women, aunties, grandmothers, older sisters, who did that job. Taking care of children when one is in their most productive years 18-40 is the worst use of time. There were and are so many ways to increase the value of the home than taking care of little kids. Farming, weaving, women used to have to haul water from wells to do the laborious job of wash day....Or, being in a business, like now. Or, getting an higher degree. Thankgod, I used the "stay at home mother" time to educate myself. I had children and I was a good mother but it was a responsibility, not a joy. As soon as they were able to be responsible without me, I went to work and started my own business.
I see so many articles questioning how to deal with raising children...it's only been a couple of generations that we have so many nuclear families with no extended family support.
It's new. I have 2 daughters who adopted children and both admit they didn't realize what they what signed up for. Both say, if they knew then what they found out later......they love their children but they might have made different choices.
This the first empathetic comment regarding the threatened traditional female role. I think it is the result of demonizing those of different cultural views.
You are welcome. I have no problem with traditionally-minded people, or traditional gender roles in the family, if that's what floats yer boat. It takes all kinds of kinds. No one should ever be found lacking or retrograde for being "just a Mom." What I have a major problem with is the idea held by so many conservatives that these roles are the only "natural" ones for people to occupy, and we are in some kind of moral battle between "ways of life." People's choices should be respected, but the choice needs to be there. My Mom raised us at home, but she also had a degree and her own passions and interests. It was a tough choice that she made, but the choice was hers to make. My Dad and we boys would have loved her either way.
I was impressed with the school superintend who said he had no problem with a parent controlling the books his/her children read. He does have a problem with parents who want to control what other children read. To me this no worse than a liberal “looking down their nose” at the woman you mention who wanted to be the traditional homemaker.
P S My mother who was a math/physics major who graduated in 1939 and after the war stayed home to become a homemaker.
My Mother was an economics major, graduated U of Wisconsin, first in her class. 1935. Smart as a whip. I was the first born 1939, she should have been working instead of running a house but it was not proper to take a job away from a man, esp. after the depression and then WW2. Who knew then that the economy was going to boom and there was room for anyone who could excel. She was sarcastic to my father and mean to me; she should have used that energy in a corporation where if she had started at the bottom she would have risen up. Not just smart, a platinum blond, with a killer figure and a sense of humor; she was competitive. We could have been rich! It would have been so much better to be raised by a nanny ...anyone but her.
Make no mistake: it's a type of coded speech. Male fundies do it too - among other things whoever does it is signalling their presence in the room to any other coreligionists. It's often meant to alert their fellows as to how to interpret the symbolic message buried in what they're saying.
I had a chance to watch a YouTube video today, comparing Britt’s regular speaking voice with the performative high-school-quality heartbroken suburbanite sobfest that she made an ass out of herself with the other night. I looked up the word phony and lo and behold there she was.
I saw that too, and I was shocked not shocked. Apparently she was using what's known as the "Baby Fundie Voice," or something along those lines. It's a thing in that world to display submissiveness.
Marlene my friend, I would like to learn more about your bra burning phase. But discretion being the better part of valor, I'll settle for the memoirs.
Duggar family horror movie indeed. I literally could not get through Senator Britt's "response" to the SOU, as it was so faux, and so viscerally uncomfortable.
Full disclosure, Marlene. In 1980, there were four of us brave women united together on a beach in the Caribbean who went topless for a few hours. And just as you experienced, it was liberating!
We (somewhat inadvertently) ended up on a nude beach with our young girls when vacationing in Hawaii (children girls, not 'those' girls!). I went to the back of the beach and took my top off. AMAZING feeling, tho those other girls were mortified!
I really wanted to turn it off and but had to "do" the whole miserable thing right to the blessed end, where she wished us all God bless , or something. PUKE!
Watching just a few snippets of the response to the SOTU was appalling. Interesting choice, the hypocrisy of wearing a diamond studded cross, which is at odds with a phrase in the Bible that a camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person ascend to heaven. Whether the diamonds were real or faux is immaterial; they represent wealth and position.
If Katie Britt is an up and comer within the GOP, good grief! Let’s send as many packing as possible.
Also an encouraging signal to Christian nationalists - and a message to the rest of us that we'll be toast if Trump and MAGA candidates are elected this year.
Britt complained about all of the aspects that make a mother’s life so difficult: expensive or even non-existent childcare costs and/or choices, and costs associated with raising children WHEN Republicans in the Senate UNANIMOUSLY VOTED DOWN THOSE SUBSIDIES IN THE BUILD BACK BETTER PLAN!
Did she think moms who vote don’t actually know that?
Day care is evil, don't you know? I went through this when I had a child in the late seventies, but I assumed that when she was an adult, there would be universal day care. But then Reagan was elected, and everybody wanted a nanny. Why subject yourself to other people's children when you can have your own personal servant. That's the way things were for white people in the South when I was growing up. But, of course, Black women have other choices now. I'd be curious about Senator Britt's own family. Being a senator is demanding, no? (True confession, I'd never heard of her til Friday morning.)
And I will say, many don’t know their Republican reps voted that out. In Ohio’s budget which cut $$ from some of those programs, many of my friends had no idea… they aren’t paying attention…
I agree, but there's more. Britt listed all sorts of things that were wrong, but didn't mention any way of improving things. Quite apart from all the style issues, there was no "there" there.
The contrast with Biden's list of new policies to actually improve things for middle class people and families was instructive, I thought.
Senator Britt represented the Handmaid in her speech. How "dare" she run for office if the family is the most important unit. Which legislation has she passed that protects and supports the family? I think we have to be attacking the Republican claim that they support the traditional family. If they did, every person would earn enough to support a large family with one income. Child care would be free for single parent families. College would be free too. Everyone would have health care coverage. In Germany where I am currently living, at 18 every gets a 200 € pass to be spent on entertainment. This is to get them out and about. They can go skating, swimming, to movies, museums, amusement parks. There is a different pass for people younger than that. Plus parents get 292 € a month per child to help raise them. You can get this until they are 25 as long as they are in school, or doing an internship until then. How about child money. Canada has an even bigger benefit. As a tax free monthly payment, for each child under 6 you get $619.75 per month, and for children 7-18 you get $522.19 per month. Denmark, Sweden and Luxembourg have the highest child credits in the EU. In Luxembourg you get 299.85 € a month for each child. So, this is what the Republican party would be supporting if it were truly for the family. Also, there would be no forcing children raped and impregnated by family or strangers to bare these children. And IVF would be supported because family choice would be supported. Instead, we have Ms. No IVF State Representing the Republicans.
That’s amazing! And here, we have the R’s reducing or wanting to get rid of the child care credit! We will win and that credit will be expanded, teachers will make more money, and the poor will hopefully lose that status and join the middle class.
How dare she, indeed, abandon her family to be in the Senate! And where's the legislation from her about those family values she espouses! And all the rest you say here, Linda!
The irony of her giving a speech from a kitchen. If we had a decent press, they would figure out what that was coming from. Whose idea was it? Was it speaker Mike Johnson's? I mean the logic of governing from the kitchen, is that you are governing family, not the nation. Apparently, from the Republican responses I heard reported on, they could see that the image and the content was crap!
Maybe they thought it would give a Julia Child vibe to the situation. On second thought, probably not. Julia Child wouldn't have allowed them in her kitchen. She'd have whacked Johnson with that big spoon of hers.
It did seem very amateurish but even so it was intentional and the imagery was on purpose. Seems like the menace from Mar-a-Lago might have had something to do with it. He does have a savviness for media and promotion and yet incredibly tacky, unsophisticated, and puerile.
"Among satirical responses, Tom Nichols, an anti-Trump conservative columnist, spoke for many when he said: “There is no way that this Katie Britt address does not end up as part of the Saturday Night Live cold open.”
I can not wait until tonight! She's a real joke.
Her material was written for her and ya gotta wonder, who thought the kitchen table was a good idea? Does she not have an office in that house?
To those who said they couldn't watch more than a few minutes of it: I get it. It was hard. I had to. How many times does one get to watch a real life horror show? So obviously pre-taped. How many takes did she have to do to get it "just (far) right"?
Her handler will get fired over this. He was probably some Man telling what to say and where to say it. SNL had an actress doing her with the exact set ...Katie was probably in front of an AI. I see a bench in front of a round table. How does THAT work??
My daughter and I were discussing how ugly that kitchen looked and how the colors did not work with her dress. That was a horrid choice. The messages and the delivery were so awful together no wonder that when her people saw it they were shocked at how bad it appeared. Of course, so many Republicans threw her under the bus. She is not a charistmatic speaker, and I am glad she destroyed her VP chances with this mess. Firing her handler might make her feel better, but with the obvious lie in there, we shall see if she makes a come back. I personally think every word she spoke was a lie. The Republican party is the ANTIFAMILY party. I would like to see reporters ask her what legislation she has presented or passed to help the family, the border etc... She was chosen as a contrast to Biden, but she made the wrong kind of contrast, reminding every American with half a brain in their head that age is not what counts like what your ideas are. She represented a return to the past. Not the world I want for my daughter nor did the women who fought to get out out from under male control, an ongoing struggle. She is Anita Bryant all over again. Yeech!
It was pre-taped...and the kitchen is fake. That yellow board behind her, between the kitchen cabinets and her...I thought it's maybe the back of a bench , then I saw the round table..which would not work with a bench....THEN I saw, when she wiggled a bit, she is sitting in a chair! What the heck!! Then SNL with Scarlett Johansson in front of the same background.. AI! Both were AI. !!! No one did their homework. I was in NYC Real estate for about 10 years and there is no way I would present to a potential client a lousy speech and a lousy set up. And, I'm no body! She's a rising star in the GOP. WTF!
Well, the news anchors were reporting it as sitting in her kitchen, but then I saw Scarlett Johansson in front of it and realized it must be fake. It is so hideous though, who would choose that, especially as a background for that green dress which was flattering to her coloring, but looked awful in that background. I wonder how much her star is going to rise now.
The Republicans can get over ANYthing. Just look at TFFG.
The background was AI.......the yellow wood slate thing behind her...was it the back of a bench??......but she was sitting in a chair at a round table. What a sloppy marketing video. Fire everyone! Her, too. If it had been me, and I'm nothing, I would have had a better "response" in my 'efen office!
"Chattin' in the kitchen with Katie, chattin' in the kitchen with Ka-a-tie, chattin' in the kitchen with Katieeeee, and strummin' on the ole banjo!...Singin'...
GOP rebuttal was exactly what I had dreamed of...The "demure, simpering, southern holy little wife in the kitchen! Oh how stupid are y'all in the GOP...Enterprise , Alabama yet...C'mon down y'all.
Exactly the issue I think will win it for us. Although, my partner in life thinks that the Christo-Nationalist hardcase women will still vote tRump. The Mango Muffin is, after all a godly man.
Thank you Heather. Another thought-provoking LFAA with important historical context. While I think that the GOP will look for any issue to divide voters and concentrate power, gender equality is an emotional connection to their world view. That is, the frame of the hard-working man at the head of the table and Katie Britt or Laura Ingalls in the kitchen making sandwiches with a smile and catering to her husbands every need. George Lakoff talks about political language and its use to establish a visual frame and emotional connection -and the "Ozzie and Harriet" frame is a classic conservative fantasy.
The thought of a well-educated, informed, and powerful woman is earth shattering to many men that would prefer a subservient woman, dependent upon "her man" to provide for her, fix things around the house, and to discipline the children. From the male perspective a more independent woman maintains an array of alternative life choices, many of which do not involve bringing him his pipe and slippers when he's home from the office or the quarry.
I learned a great deal about feminism early in my career as a confidante to several powerful women who outperformed their male peers and were paid less. It was eye-opening to me.
Later, as a father to my daughters, I did not want to constrain them to gender roles. My oldest still tells the story of when I brought her a present -a textbook on U.S. Government when she was just old enough to read (later I gained more insight into what was considered more academically grade appropriate.) We used to play baseball in the backyard and my daughters learned to hit overhand fastballs and how to drop a shoulder to create space before taking a jump shot on the basketball court. Now, as a granddad to four amazing granddots, I want to see an America (and world) making progress toward equity. A recognition that regardless of gender (or other boundaries others use to divide), the challenges of our time demands education that fully unlocks the potential of all people.
Conservatives have plenty of examples of intelligent and courageous women -and they should be celebrated, not cast out of government for a lack of fealty to the Trump/Putin/MAGA criminal organization.
And leaders have a substantial stake in providing role models for younger generations. We need leaders that may debate policies and respectfully disagree within the framework of our system of justice and democracy. We need more Liz Cheney's (I can't believe I said that), Kamala Harris's, Cassidy Hutchinson's, Hillary Clinton's, Fiona Hill's, and Letitia James as role models as to the array of powerful leadership roles that are possible. And yes, we could use many more Heather Cox Richardson's too!
I wholeheartedly agree, George. My daughter got the same Craftsman tools as her brothers. She can handle them as well as they do - as evidenced by her recent repair of the kitchen faucet in her condo in D.C. She's told me tales of male friends who didn't know how to use a crescent wrench - we shared a laugh when one was the subject of a question on Jeopardy, and none of the male contestants could identify it. And my son's daughters are an amazing trio - their mother is a doctor, and a great role model. I'll wager none of them will grow up to be just 'dependents'.
So excellent to hear James. On the mechanical side, my daughters and son are on their own! My dad passed when I was young and aside from knowing the difference between a hammer and a wrench, when it comes to their application I remind people that while I was at Oracle I worked with database tables, but not real tables.
40-plus years in IT, and I know a bit about Oracle, SQL, DB2, et alii. And I wish the database designers (the ones who know how to handle a last name that has a blank in it) would spread their knowledge far and wide. Why is it that the old COBOL technique of scanning a field to the first blank and using the result as the last name is still around? I've been dealing with it since 1964.
I came of age when abortion was illegal and unmarried women could not get access to birth control. The books by de Beauvoir, Friedan, Steinem, as well as “Our Bodies Ourselves” and Women’s Liberation opened my mind to a different way of life. In 1973, just post Roe, while in high school I volunteered at the People’s Free Clinic. I did pregnancy tests and counseling. That experience propelled me to get an education and to go on to medical school.
The staging, the content, and the delivery of Britt’s response was tone deaf and beyond offensive.
A couple of problems, Equality does not mean Dominance. The equal rights amendment (ERA) is not asking for females to be superior to males, just to be equal. Men like trump are so weak the only way for them to feel strong is to dominate others, Tough patooties. Weakness of mind or body has nothing to do with gender. A self satisfied man, is a strong man, he knows his value and has no need to feel superior to anyone. Biden is such a man. He knows his value, he has no need to feel jealousy or to domineer Jill or Kamala. My late husband was that kind of man. He respected me and my strengths because he was sure of his own.
The second thing is abortion. While this subject has more effect on females than males it is only an anatomical difference. Abortion, like an appendectomy, is a medical procedure. As a medical procedure, lawyers and religious zealots have NO endowed rights in deciding when, where, or if the medical procedure is performed. That should involve the physician and patient ONLY.
I was living in Salt Lake City when the Utah legislature voted down the ERA, because, as one legislator, so rationally and logically, put it, “NOBODY’s gonna tell ME I can’t take off my hat to a lady in an elevator!”
It's still a struggle in Utah. the LDS is slowly losing its grip as more people outside that faith move there, but public education is under tremendous pressure to protect kids from science and good books. And home "schooling" is very popular.
Every American needs to hear President Biden's State Of The Union address, regardless of the language they speak. The State Of The Union sounds just as good in Spanish!
OMG! I saw a clip of what I now realize is Britt's SOTU rebuttal on social media today and I thought it was a parody video! Jess Piper's article completely nails it. It's Stepford Wives meets Spinal Tap except it's a true horror movie.
Marlene, I felt compelled to look up Jess Piper upon your suggestion. Here’s a link to her Substack on the Republican response and the fundie baby voice. Enlightening! I encourage y’all (sic) to listen to Jess read her Substack aloud.
YES! I’ve seen her in person—she’s the sane voice in the Missouri wilderness of insanity. There are many more like her here, but our gerrymandered legislature has lost its way. Please know there are lots of us here who are actively fighting against the “fundies!”🗽☮️💟
Perhaps Prof Richardson will write this evening about the bond trompy just posted to cover the damages in the E. Jean Carroll case. It was written by Chubb, an insurance company with Russian connections. Seth Abramson, who is on Threads (@seth.abramson) has been sounding the alarm about this being a dire national security issue. He also publishes on Substack (Proof), but his content is only available to paid subscribers (which I'm not.) He's been updating his Stack post all night long and is promising a humdinger of a report sometime this a.m.
He says the Court must refuse to accept the bond on national security grounds, and it must order the taking of his property instead. This will become even more sharply critical when his $450+ million comes due later this month.
A reminder: trompy is to start receiving classified intelligence briefings shortly after the Repub convention this summer. This CANNOT happen, as there is no legal requirement for the US government to provide them to nominees; it's only a recent tradition.
I suspected we’d hear about a bond posted by trump… he met at Mar-a-Lago with Victor Orban last weekend. How can anyone think he’s not getting some financial help from his buddies!!!!!
Thank you. Thank you! It should be difficult but I believe is not unsurprising that the Republicans reacted like that I am 80 years old. I lived through Brown versus Board of Education, the ERA amendment that did not pass and Roe versus wade and I'm still here and I absolutely believe we are all equal. I respect the rights of people to believe in a God who hates women and transgender and gay people but I hope there are fewer of them than there are the rest of us. I also believe you can be really smart and with it at 80. My cousin got her masters degree at 90 and went to work on her doctorate, and there's so many other incredibly intelligent all the adults being 80 doesn't mean you get stupid.
Clearly.
People have a right to their own thoughts and beliefs but also a responsibility to respect the boundaries and human rights of one another. That's the wisdom of not conflating church with state.
If one has strong religious beliefs, why is it necessary to force them on others? If you believe abortion is wrong, don't have one, no one is forcing you to have one. Why force your religious nonsense on others? You believe women should have babies and stay in the kitchen, fine, get pregnant, and stay in the kitchen, why would you force others to conform? To have your rules forced onto others requires a dictatorship - and that is exactly what we are dealing with in this country!!
It's ironic isn't it that women like Senator Katie Britt and far back to Phyllis Schlafly, are basically preaching subjugation and less rights for women but the only reason they are able to speak up is because of all the work done for women's rights.
Yes, the Repubs are definitely pushing for fewer rights for women; that's been obvious to us for along time. But I was dumbfounded that the Repubs would put her on the air!! What a turn off! What R extremists came up with this approach? The fundie voice and body language and kitchen and cross necklace and facial expressions!!! Yes, it's the submissive woman (or her vote mostly) that we want. If you need a biblical example or reference for a woman, let's use Judith who cut off the head of Holofernes.
It's one thing that she was on the air, but why in the world would she succumb to such coaching? However, I don't begrudge her for wearing a cross. I don't push my faith on anyone, but I do wear a cross....
When my mother was dying of multiple myeloma, a hospital volunteer was extremely sweet and engaged with her. The volunteer never said a thing about religion, but wore a simple, diminutive gold cross around her neck. That was the most lucid Christian sermon I ever encountered. A contrast to mongers of hate and self-righteousness.
Who ever was in charge of prepping her needs to be fired yesterday!!!
They realized what a mistake they made. Listen to Tuberville,s response.
That Katie Britt, housewife, from Alabama was disgusting....all bullshit. and plays on emotions...Of course: The border!!!....A woman raped by an illegal!!......Plenty of women get raped and the vast majority (99%?)of rapists are american citizens, many are relatives.
As far as sex slavery. She said something like "we wouldn't tolerate it in a third world country but it happened here." Is she that stupid? It goes on as an "industry" by the multi millions all over.
and, Yes, she's sporting a be-jeweled cross.
And, that "response" to Biden's speech was pre-taped.
NYTimes has a piece suggesting her example was not accurate in many ways. Victim described was victimized in Mexico, long before Biden’s term. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/us/politics/katie-britt-republican-response-sotu-border.html?smid=url-share
Thank you. She REALLY was total bullsh*t. I can't imagine representing oneself for anything if one has not checked the accuracy of everything.
Towards the end of my working life, I ended up in Real Estate in NYC because I had bought buildings with partners when the prices were about 1000% less than today. Any listing I worked to get, I made sure my facts were correct. I specialized in townhouses and small buildings. I had to assume the client was smart, informed and cynical. The audience that that Katie person was appealing to are none of those things. Just uninformed and scared.
Republican and Israeli policy: LIE. LIE.LIE. A lie repeated enough becomes a "fact".
It's a trick out of Goebbles' playbook. Nazis would publicize and make a big deal out crimes allegedly committed by Jews. It's the old Willy Horton appeal to prejudice.
If it was prefilled, why did they go ahead and show i? It was so awful!
They were too in love with their efforts and that pretty girl to notice. A whole lot of stupid.
The figure the base will never notice.
People are ignorant at the vastness of the "industry." As an in-house counselor at a Salvation Army's residence for ex-trafficked women, it is unimaginable what goes on here in this country....
I always tell people to donate stuff to the Salvation Army which is a charity, NOT to the Goodwill, which is a business.
You didn't have to imagine it. You knew it. I am so sorry for them and for you.
Someone is going to get fired over this. She has "handlers" or whatever they call themselves. Listen Katie, Honey-child, shouldn't you be making decisions about something SO important as representing the fools in the GOP?......or was it some man?
I kept asking myself, what is that yellow board thing behind her? the back of a bench? but she's sitting at a round table...then she wiggled a bit and I see she's sitting on a chair. FAKE FAKE FAKE. and not vetted. at all. even I, who is nobody, could do better. someone should get very fired over this.....her male handler? someone said they thought it was Mike Johnson...but, isn't he kind of dumb? He sure looks dumb.
another GOP disaster....but, who cares, not those Maggots
Jennifer, For some it’s “I got mine, you can too if you work hard enough “ while pretty much ignoring the help others gave them along the way.
Well said!!!
Wholeheartedly agree but I think in the end it’s not about religion at all, it’s about maintaining a power structure. Evangelical religious leaders and their financial backers frame feminism and equality movements as counter to god’s will which ignites their followers, when in the end it’s really that white men with influence are threatened.
Agree completely. The whole issue needs to be viewed through the lens of power and control. My church, the Catholic Church, has always paid lip service to the idea that it's about human life, when in reality control, and the Church's age-old obsession with controlling sex as a means of controlling women, is the motivation. Otherwise impoverished clerics thus have something to aspire to: telling others how to live. That, and the fact that the Right cares not a whit for the mother and child following coerced birth, means their movement should more accurately be characterized as "pro-birth" rather than "pro-life."
“Pro birth” when we have climate change and overpopulation. Adoption would be a good change.
Always, always follow the money. And "the love of money".
Because some churches teach their congregants THEY are responsible for “saving” other people. If they don’t, they will suffer.
To which I reply…freedom, free to or free from.
Yes. Always ask, "Freedom for whom?"
For all, if it's to be meaningful in a societal sense. Fundamental agency for some and not for others is what tyranny is about.
And that is the gist of the 1st ammendment. Freedon to practice as each chooses; freedom from strictures arising from the beliefs of others. We are free to practice religion in any way we believe, but the limit of that freedom is another person's actions and beliefs. The Supreme Court has lost sight of the establishment clause in its over-emphasis of the free exercise clause.
It seems, in too many cultures, that people want a God-leader: IE: a tyrant that tells them what to do. Isn't this the attraction to the Tyrant-Trump? ...... He may be a bit flawed but that's OK, he supports their religious causes.
It has to be both.
Good point! That’s especially true in the evangelical sects!
"Procrustes had a stronghold on Mount Korydallos at Erineus, on the sacred way between Athens and Eleusis.[3] There he had a bed, in which he invited every passer-by to spend the night, and where he set to work on them with his smith's hammer, to stretch them to fit. In later tellings, if the guest proved too tall, Procrustes would amputate the excess length; if the guest was too short Procrustes would stretch them until they died; nobody ever fit the bed exactly.[4] Procrustes continued his reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, travelling to Athens along the sacred way, who "fitted" Procrustes to his own bed: " -Wikipedia
Having choices is hard. It requires frontal lobe engagement.
Yes, it's astounding how many intelligent people do not engage in critical thinking!
I agree. Many years ago I read a great book called Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm that explained that many people find comfort in others telling them what to do so they aren't burdened by making difficult choices.
The problem is there are definitely social lines we have to decide, where to draw those. Should we allow removal of the clitoris by religious folks who believe it is the source of all evil, giving women sexual pleasure?
And for the folks that firmly believe life begins with conception, they think it is murder to have a period.
At some point, bodily autonomy has to be granted to everyone--man, woman, child. Right now, that isn't clearly drawn. Needs to be.
Yes, the ridiculousness of it cannot be overstated. Of course embryos are children, and just like embryos children can be frozen. Sometimes I find myself fantasizing of an all-women sex strike in protest....
I can't resist replying to this. The business about embryos having rights is fine except for one thing. Doesn't the mother have rights Right now it seems that the woman carrying the fetus has no rights.
She should at least have equal rights to the fetus. This is a basic and obvious fact that I have not heard brought up even once. And where you have to choose between the mother's life and the fetus's life, isn't it obvious that the mothers life should come first? Or should we deprive fetuses of their mothers just for the hell of it? Which is more moral, to leave a fetus (eventually a child) without a mother or to leave a woman grieving the loss of a fetus?
Or, the worst case, lose both the mother and the embryo, because the embryo could never become a child without the mother's womb, or condemn an embryo to a life of unending agony.
I spent many weeks in a NICU in a touch and go situation that thankfully came out well thanks to brilliant scientists and doctors, so I know all too well what it is like for these parents.
This is the most personal, private, and painful of decisions. Only the woman, with the people she trusts most, should make that decision. Her body, her right. In my observations during this period, religious factions aren't concerned about either the mother or the child; they have their own agendas, which is why they end up so snarled up around questions of when life begins.
Every woman is Eve seems to be their dogma.
There is a difference between 'folks' and 'people'. All folks are people, but not all people are folks. A lot of people (on radio, TV, etc.) say 'folks' when they (should) mean 'people'. Not an earth-shaking issue, but it degrades the language by removing nuance.
OK, I'll bite. I looked up the difference. It may be annoyingly casual, but in this venue, still feeling free to use the terms somewhat interchangeably. But I don't mind well intentioned corrections and appreciate the point. Got a Grammar Nazi for a husband, so had to get used to it...
Systematic C: as you can see, my late wife also had a grammar Nazi for a husband. Truth be told, though, she was quite a grammarian herself, so we had to fight about other things. Actually, this is not so much grammar (syntax) as semantics. (This website
https://prowritingaid.com/grammar-vs-syntax gives a slightly different version of syntax vs grammar. The author is a professor of English at Nassau Comm. College, so I have to be a little careful here.)
Harvey Kravetz -- You took the words right out of my mouth!
Because as long as there those who don't conform to your religiosity they feel like a threat to your way of life, and an insult to your god.
Makes sense to me. Drink till you puke in your armchair but not at the wheel of a car. Private behavior becomes the public's business when harm or unnecessary risk is forced onto others. Stay in the kitchen all you like but don't force it on others. Is a zygote sentient? Science says no. Oddly Republican (as they a wont to do) now want it both ways. It's not in a test tube but it is in a woman's body.
I have often wondered the same!
Thank you.
Exactly!
I am in full agreement, J.L. It is clear that we are dealing with a great many people in this country who do not believe in a secular state at all, or really any secularism in public life. "Live and let live" is an inherently expansionist/liberal idea, when you really think about it. Even among those who believe in it, there are all sorts of things we refuse to tolerate: we accept that a bank robbery is not a lifestyle choice. We find it immoral because it clearly hurts people, so we prohibit it.
An astonishing number of Americans explicitly believe that one must have religion to possess morality, and a significant subset believes one must have *their* religion to possess morality. This is mind-boggling to me, but if you put yourself in the shoes of someone with this foundational belief so much more makes sense. By inversion, anyone and anything without their God involved is *im*moral, as plainly immoral as a secular-minded person would view that bank robbery. The federal government is quite large and powerful. An entity that powerful devoid of morality can not be allowed to continue its workings unabated.
It appears are seeing what happens when a continent-wide nation explores the John Rawls Intolerance Paradox in real time.
The Fundie Baby Voice just blew me away.Saw the video back awhile …it oddly chilled me to Goose Bumps. Dragged from the past life/Handmaiden’s Legacy it took on an odious forewarning. Heathers added note is equally informative for those who haven’t ‘heard’.
For women this is the second coming and we’d all best be well informed , it carries far more implication of regression but …sisters …it comes after our compliance and silencing…FIRST!
Make it clear….
💙💙VOTE💙💙
The View from Rural Missouri by Jess Piper -spot on!
Katie should start a chapter of "Real Housewives of Alabama"!
I would rather not dismiss the voices of sincere believers like Katie Britt, but I would like to see her discuss issues with Cassidy Hutchinson, Mark Meadows' assistant that tried to keep him within the rails, as Trump White House Chief of Staff.
It took a while before she recognized what she had to do, and to start reevaluating much of what she believed in.
With my mild face blindness and poor hearing, they look and sound similar, though I hope both do well in becoming more woke to what the vast majority of us believe in as dangers to democracy and rule of just laws.
We always HOPE for enlightenment, never losing love. 🫶
Very very true!!!Make sure you vote!!!💙
…every time, with 🫶
🙏 yes
🫶
💙💙💙💙💙
And yet those who claim, with faux piety, the moral high ground, worship the most amoral creature to ever breathe on this planet!
Indeed. He is without a shred of human decency, but for the fundies the end justifies the means. To me, people are either basically good or basically bad no matter what they believe or not.
I have come to think that whatever love we get in childhood, particularly from parents, determines much of how we react later. Liberal eduction teaches us to think liberally, examining our prejudices and expand our circle of affirmation. Biden’s loving family explains much of who he has become and Trump’s father’s racism and obsession with wealth and racism likely explains his criminality.
"Despite everything, I still believe people are good at heart." Anne Frank
She was wrong about that. If she was here today, as a Jew, she would have joined the Jews who know how wrong Israel has been, and are continuing to be, to the Palestinians. The stronger voices against the slaughter are Israeli Jews. Masha Gessen. Norman Finkelstein, IIIan Pappe, Gideon Levy...etc..."Not in my Name" Jews.
I don't believe that all are since I have know a couple sociopaths who were basically rotten and then there is death star and his minions.
"for the fundies the end justifies the means." Absolutely. And can we start a trend of calling "white evangelical christians" Fundies? I like how it sounds like "fundus" as in the fundus of the uterus.
A bit of exaggeration there.
I know I have been unpleasant toward you. I apologize for that; I get wound up. I remember the days when I hated Trump, my liberal neighbors in Birmingham, Alabama -- mainly in Sunday school and church -- cautioned me that hatred toward Trump does nothing to Trump but MY hating Trump diminishes me. That reminder freed me to confront the more challenging question: ¿how do we hear the complaints of people who feel overlooked without legitimating the M.A.G.A. movement?
Yes, I agree that these days, southern white males are feeling overlooked, which is all the worse because they have been accustomed to looking over.
Excellent Louis!👏
Will, I have a friend from public school who is a Christian; her Dad (my boss for a time at the YMCA) was a minister. We carpooled to school together my first year at college, and played in band together. She went off to the college founded by her particular brand of Christianity, and we had lunch together that summer, when she came back home. She told me at that time that, for a non-theist, I was the most Christian person she knew, and explained how that, even in her bastion of like-minded believers, there were people who were (and I forget the exact words she used) but essentially "talked one game and played another. We drifted apart, and reconnected via Facebook about 7 or 8 years ago.
Long story short, she had to leave the Rogue Valley due to medical reasons (interstitial lung disease, and the heat and constant fire season was too much for her to handle), and at darn near the last minute, after having 3 sets of people bail on her and her husband, asked if I could help them move by driving one of the two 26' rental trucks they needed. I agreed in a heart beat, and while her husband drove one, I drove the other, a 26' Penske truck from Medford to a small town east of Seattle about half-way to Leavenworth WA. We had dinner that first night at their place, and she asked me if I remembered that conversation. I told her I did, and she said "well, it is still true." I still take that as a great compliment.
She is right about you. In a heartbeat you did the right thing. Never bailed in the time apart. Just (in the larger sense of the word), a good friend.
This so exemplifies the truest of teaching love . Lovely story Ally🫶
Thanks for sharing this, Ally. So touching. For real though, "will help you move on short notice" is the highest echelon of friend.
One of the most meaningful things anyone has said to me is very similar to your friend's comment. One of the "fundie" Baptist moms who ran the local 4-H group my brother and I were in once told me "you have a strong moral compass." I must have been in my early teens, and it meant so much to me. I'm pretty sure she knew I didn't have the same Biblical moral system as she did, but she thought I was kind and considerate and chose to let me know in a direct way that she saw that for what it was. She had earlier asked my younger brother if he (and by extension my family) believed in the Bible. He said he couldn't say, because he hadn't read the whole thing himself, or any of the other religion's books to compare. (This answer was deemed "mature" and "thoughtful.") In other words, a purely kind person, sadly captive in all that came with that "fundie" life but with flickers of her own mind still there, choosing to extend grace when you would expect proselytization. People can be complex.
My in-laws were fundamentalist Christians who believed that if you weren't baptised in their church or were anything other than married, straight, church going (their church) you would not be in heaven with them.
The issue of church came up throughout my 21 years of marriage to their son and at first I thought I misunderstood as Jesus preached inclusiveness. But, no, their exclusive rhetoric was what they believed. I raised our children in the Episcopal church (my husband had abandoned his childhood religious ties as an adult) and it was never good enough for my in-laws. I simply do not understand how religious people can come to the place where they were. They were not stupid people.
It is so creepy.
It is, indeed creepy.
My very Catholic Nana married my very Jewish Grandpa in the waning days of WWII, with no qualms but the condition that her children would attend church until they could decide for themselves. My Dad said he remembers a Sunday School teacher making very plain that only Catholics would go to Heaven. My very worried Dad relayed this to his Mom upon getting home, asking "but what about Daddy?" He remembers her getting the most stern look he had ever seen, and simply stating "ALL good people go to heaven." She didn't say anything more, and little Jimmy never attended Sunday school again.
The white Southern Baptist church has always preached the gospel of white male supremacy They justified slavery and then segregation. They somehow declared that Jesus’ main teachings were anti-abortion and anti-gay. Women should always be subservient to men. As Dr. R points out, it is still the culture of much of the South and Fox News. They attack all capable women. Those women are the biggest threat to the power structure. One woman on the Supreme Court seems to believe that, and the other three caved to the pressure.
Women are the cause of original sin.
What utter bullshit. Penis worshipping, I call it.
Women should rule. It would be a far better place.
Saw this on a bumper sticker "Eve was framed".
Love it! (In a socially appropriate way, of course.)
😆 I like that one!
Jen, and women are responsible for keeping men from sinning because of their allure.
"Look at what you made me do!"
Let’s give that a run Jen…sisters all…vote 💙 , down with the coup!
And yet, for some years after Roe v. Wade, the Southern Baptist leadership supported at least a limited right to abortion.
My sister, indoctrinated as we both we in our tiny Kansas town where she still lives, is slowly coming to terms with me telling her she's a good person because she is one. And that god has nothing to do with it.
After her return from the ark exhibit she was shocked to hear the original had been ruined in a thunderstorm and the insurance company refused the claim, because it after all was supposed to float. She was so mad she called to get her money back.
Still waiting, but I like the story.
Funny!!
Love that insurance company. Wasn't it written into the policy: Did those Ark leaders read it??.....too much fine print?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Thank you for the chuckle, but I “feel your pain.”
Always remember that while they may turn out large crowds, the “Christian” Right is a small minority.
They have sufficient numbers to win elections, especially in places where effective vote suppression is in place.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-religious-composition-has-changed-in-recent-decades/
In the early 1990's, 90% of the US population polled as "Christian." By 2000, it had dropped to 80%. It is now at (or below) 63%.
A more detailed (earlier) survey, when the total Christian sector was about 70%, broke the Christian percentages down into 25% (of the total population) Evangelical, 20% Catholic, 15% Mainline Protestant, 6% Black Protestant, and the rest were "Other Christian." A full 15% (of the total population) were "Nothing in particular."
I'm guessing that a more recent survey would show drops in all of the Christian categories.
The big problems come from the Evangelicals, because they are into swinging elections. Formally. Institutionally. Financially. That was 25% of the total population around 2016. In a nation where a 5% spread is a "landslide victory," that is a LOT of votes.
"by the people, for the people, of the people".... but religious tradition, endangered demographically as it is, has a long long reach in the GOP. "live and let live" only works as long as people societally agree to respect their mutual differences. The NT in particular is an our way or the highway form of thinking, it seeks to envelop everything.
This logic does not hold up at all when confronted with the fact that some Republicans are Yale or Harvard educated and still spout nonsense for political power - the "political" positions they hold demonstrate their immorality, including supporting and even fomenting outright violence in some cases [probably many cases] - and all of them college educated full adults. Saying one is "religious" does not make one a moral person at all, and unfortunately the Repugs under T-Rump demonstrate this fact vividly. That speech by Britt was fake news pure and simple. Poison covered by a poisonous smile, even when whining uncontrollably.
Republicans with spine - quit whining and roll up your sleeves and actually work for all Americans and not only the ones willing to kiss T-Rump's ugly derriere - which is what all of them [those supporting him] are blatantly doing. Religion has nothing to do with morality when it comes to those supporting that spineless blowhard. I challenge them to lock T-Rump in a room with them - his supporters lock him in - and just see how long he lasts before he begs to be released from their presence. I predict he could not last even half the length of the insurrection of the Capital on January 6th 2021. He would start sweating and Demand to be let out and then we would HOWL and eventually BEG to be let out like the coward that he is. He can't stand them - but he knows how to use them alright. And they certainly know how to be used.
Will, excellent job putting yourself in the mythic, rule/role world space...and explaining why people who are living in that space are motivated to do what they do. And developmental psychologists estimate that astonishing number to be around 40% in the US and 70% world-wide.
Yes, they have the right to believe nonsense, but that doesn’t make those beliefs respectable. Doesn’t make the believers respectable either.
I’m not sure the numbers trialed, imprisoned, or killed who actually did the deeds.Hitler’s, Mussolini’s Stalin’s, ….the list is long.
But I can guarantee the victims for each one -their captains, their kind was and always will be 10,000 to 1 ….minimally.😔
I have disagree on one point! I don't respect people's rights for believing in a hateful God! They need to change their beliefs and adapt to modern society's norms for respecting all people!
I personally am an agnostic, which I think is the only sensible religious position that none of us have a fracking clue why the universe is the way it is! Obviously it makes no sense that a single God can be in charge of it all, with 10s of billions of galaxies and on top of that billions of stars per galaxy! Multiply that number by 9 planets per solar system. Translation: lots of life likely in the known universe. And no way a single intelligence could be in charge if it all.
This is why physicists like Einstein and Feynman believed in a God driving the physical laws only. That said, no one knows how consciousness arises, so we have to keep an open mind! It seems that consciousness is very much a part of the universe, which you know if you are interacting with your fellow human beings, observing the animals in nature, or simply interacting with your pets. Yet no one has an explanation for this phenomenon.
Furthermore, there are well-respected interpretations of quantum mechanics (such as the Copenhagen interpretation) that require some form of consciousness to observe an experiment in order to collapse the quantum wavefunction into an observed result that only arose from probabilities.
Well, I'm only speaking 25 years later from my training in physics. But I think in any case the universe remains a mystery and we don't have a fracking clue about it!
(Final note: Frack is the F-word in excellent Sci Fi channel remake of the Battlestar Gallactica series. Frack is also a swear word regarding fracking for oil and natural gas.)
I understand your feeling Matt, but I would say I respect anyone's right to believe whatever they want so long as they do not try to enforce their belief on anyone else. I am an atheist - I have no god and while as a scientist, I think when I die the "energy" we call a life force just wanders off to energize something else (maybe a light bulb LOL). I do not try to make other people believe what I believe, I had 4 children, each had a different belief and different religion, that was ok, religion should be personal. People who try to force their belief on others (in my opinion) do so only to validate their own belief.
I somewhat agree with what you are saying. Believe what you want! But then be humble enough not to feel the need to enforce your belief on others. This is not what the Southern Christian right wing is doing!
I don't actually believe any of the above I wrote regarding "believe what you want". I think beliefs need to be held to scrutiny.
Thanks for the response, Matt, all of us write with our emotions, then have further thoughts - at least those of us who think using critical analysis. You are definitely 'one of us'
Yes, believing what you want has to be conditional.
Belief should be owned, a personal explanation of what is unknown (to me, to you). As a scientist I was privileged to have tools to understand and help change some things, some conditions. But, while I know I didn't possess all knowledge or all the truths, like most of us, I think, I had to look for a whole, an explanation that holds my understanding of everything together, for me, and until I learn some more things.
Belief, as a group phenomena reeks of ideology, blindness to new knowledge and to discovery, to growing with the collective wisdom that the group could provide, for it suffers the flaw that makes scientific inquiry so important. Ideological beliefs oppose the alternate hypothesis in all forms, thusly lacking the capacity to change, to embrace discovery, to self-correct. Their collective test of a challenge is against an ideological known, a tenant, not against or embracing the larger body of knowledge brought by time or experiment or better science or societal evolution.
Believe as you do, but never close your minds-eye to the richness of what is revealed, learned. I do wonder what I will believe, the sentiment and whole of my understanding of what I don't know of the whole, 7 or 17 years from now, when I awake at 90 or 100.
Fay Reid: Somewhere in the many volumes of writings by Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), he writes (paraphrased) that when he was asked if he believed in "God", he replied that it's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of knowing.
Restraining religion in this way is modern, it took a long time for there to be enough people societally to make this a prevailing view. The founding fathers felt the inherent fanaticism and taking no prisoners in the NT which since spawned centuries of the religiously intolerant was something which had to be taken on. As we can plainly see, a lot of Christians still maintain their religion is inherently right, and the only right belief which all should espouse, one way or the other.
Respecting a right to hold any belief you like is one thing. Repecting a belief in nonsense or person who believes nonsense is something else.
I have a friend who is a respected quantum physicist. He told me that the universe is more bizarre than we can ever imagine. He hesitates to try to explain it to people because they’ll think he’s nuts.
Quantum physics: where you spend extra years in school in order to sound as indistinguishably incomprehensible as the yelling scraggly-beard at the back of the bus.
This is a pretty silly reply. You study quantum physics when you are interested in the subject. Physics is real, get used to it.
Hi Matt
You are fighting a losing battle.
It astounds me that there is such a generalised lack of education in the USA with respect to scientific method, critical thinking and basic logic.
This leads to public discussions where the basic laws of science, climate change etc. are trested as BELIEFS. Even you yourself just said "If physics is true..."
I attribute most of Americas problems to this.
Ah. I see it now in another comment. My comment wasn't "If physics were true", but rather "if only classical physics were true". That is a very big, if subtle difference.
Not sure where you got "If physics is true". I don't see it in my comment. Physics is true, but doesn't claim to go beyond what is known.
Of course physics is real. I like physics. Physics is cool.
I had no idea until 10 minutes ago that people were so protective of physics, though.
Hi Matt
You are fighting a losing battle.
It astounds me that there is such a generalised lack of education in the USA with respect to scientific method, critical thinking and basic logic.
This leads to public discussions where the basic laws of science, climate change etc. are trested as BELIEFS. Even you yourself just said "If physics is true..."
I attribute most of Americas problems to this.
Many of us have deep respect, and even some interest, in the study of physics. For most, however, our deeper interest and talents simply lie in a different direction. Joking a bit (self-deprecation) about our lack of comprehension is our way of bowing to and acknowledging the brain power of those who do understand it on a much deeper level than we do.
I loved physics in college, but had one great teacher.
We're in the middle of watching "3 Body Problem" where physicists are committing suicide all over the planet.
You may want to check it out if you haven't already.
Cause And Effect
the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can’t quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them.
—Charles Bukowski
Tell me more, please, I've been reading a bit on Minovitch, who with access to a friend's surplus IBM 7090 computer (cluster of 4, I believe), started solving N-body orbits in his spare time as an intern at JPL. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist
He impressed the heck out of a frequent acquaintance, John Durant, who as an Army Air Force SSgt scrounger got to play an interesting role in getting the Berlin Airlift started. The Soviets didn't expect us and allies to mount much more of an airlift then the Germans did trying to resupply Stalingrad (300 flights). I was a toddler dependent in Munich during the Berlin Airlift that sent 277,000 flights into Berlin (makes me wonder what we are capable of in Ukraine, who's people, even former Nazis for lack of better allies, seem as great post war allies as the Berliners were in 1948).
See https://www.hometownheroesradio.com/berlin-airlift-70-years-later/
and listen to
https://www.hometownheroesradio.com/mp3/DURANTPOD.mp3
He doesn't mention Minovitch by name but I'm sure that's who he means from old conversations describing a kid who ground crews and pilots at what is now LAX let him climb in the planes, sit in the cockpits and taught some of the functions of the controls to.
He wasn't the only kid that got to do that way back when, but John helps pick kids (of all backgrounds) for the $50,000 a year the Aero Club of Southern California provides many scholarships for.
I'm running late but a friend that worked for ITT mentioned hiring Michael Andrew Minovitch as one of the best moves they made.
And what field of science are you employed in?
None. I'm not smart enough.
My point is that the smartest people are so far ahead of our knowledge that speaking to them is as perplexing as speaking to the dumbest people. In both cases, the strata they are communicating from is simply foreign to most of us, just from the opposite ends of the spectrum of insight. That's why some people make a mistake in thinking the dumbest people are actually the smartest, and vice versa.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
Freakonomics - amazing review of the life and character of Richard Feynman. Fabulous three part series.
Will, my experience is just the opposite of that shown in the television show Young Sheldon. The smartest people I’ve encountered are very humble—if you compliment them, they thank you and then talk about someone else who bests them in an academic endeavor. “Thanks. Have you seen Joe Blow’s latest paper on ****? The man’s a genius!”
It's technically difficult and intuitively impossible, perhaps, at best drawing on analogies we can grasp. That "more bizzarre than we can ever imagine" is a famous quote from at least one early 20th biologist, JBS Haldane i think, perhaps also Eddington, who helped provide early evidentiary support for Relativity. We don't expect our kitties to "understand" our symbolic ways, why not consider there are kinds of "consciousness" which remain conceptually beyond us?
I have no problem with this notion and I am currently reading a lot about biochemistry and microbes. It is mind bending.
I think that’s true. I’ve been reading some quantum physics. The idea that we are dreaming ourselves into being at every moment is hard to grasp.
Victoria Jones: Hard to grasp, yes. But -- Keep trying! Watch your "mind."
Yes, but it is also great! If only classical physics were true, and not also quantum physics, there could be no free will and uncertainty. Not that any physicist has any clue about free will changing reality!
Order within chaos?
It is nuts! As a child I would lay in bed thinking about time and space....time ends when, then what? Space is in what?...then where is the space that's it's in?
I have no doubt
I think this line is from Catch 22
“The God i don’t believe in is a loving God. “
Well i am an evangelical Christian, so i believe in that loving God and in His Word. Through that word i know him to be righteous as well as merciful, gracious, and loving.
Many people seem to have an abridged version of the Bible that leaves out a lot of things including most of what Jesus (a real radical, BTW) did or said. It makes me very sad to hear many of the claims of self- righteousness and retribution tossed around today in His name.
I've often said in discussions that Jesus was a radical--one that would horrify today's evangelicals. He would be too "woke" and far too progressive for them to follow him.
And far from white!!
I do not often agree with the Reverend Al Sharpton, but he made a great point twenty-five years ago when Mayor Giuliani -- for whom I never voted; whom I always disliked for being vindictive and divisive -- started arresting homeless people for pan-handling on Subways and later clearing them from the streets. Mr Sharpton stated, in effect: "With Giuliani's laws, even Jesus Christ would be in Riker's Island right now."
You might like Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger 'Ballad of the Carpenter.'
https://youtu.be/LU7dlGRQq3U?si=Nv01dxRTXbH3PfrK
The Ballad Of The Carpenter
By Ewan MacColl
Jesus was a working man,
A hero as you shall hear.
Born in the slums of Bethlehem
At the turning of the year,
Yes, the turning of the year.
When Jesus was a little lad
Streets rang with his name
For he argued with the aldermen
And put them all to shame
He put them all to shame
He became a wandering journeyman
And he traveled far and wide
And he noticed how wealth and poverty
Live always side by side
Live always side by side
So he said "Come you working men
Farmers and weavers too
If you would only stand as one
This world belongs to you
This world belongs to you"
When the rich men heard what the carpenter had done
To the Roman troops they ran
Saying put this rebel Jesus down
He's a menace to God and man
He's a menace to God and man
The commander of the occupying troops
Just laughed and then he said
"There's a cross to spare on Calvary hill
By the weekend he'll be dead
By the weekend he'll be dead"
Now Jesus walked among the poor
For the poor were his own kind
And they'd never let them get near enough
To take him from behind
To take him from behind
So they hired one of the traders trade
And an informer was he
And he sold his brother to the butchers men
For a fistful of silver money
For a fistful of silver money
And Jesus sat in the prison cell
And they beat him and offered him bribes
To desert the cause of his fellow man
And work for the rich men's tribe,
To work for the rich men's tribe
And the sweat stood out on Jesus' brow
And the blood was in his eye
When they nailed his body to the Roman cross
And they laughed as they watched him die
They laughed as they watched him die
Two thousand years have passed and gone
Many a hero too
But the dream of this poor carpenter
Remains in the hands of you
Remains in the hands of you.
Thank you for posting this. Also love this one:
https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/67249/
Can’t seem to edit my post but the song I’m referring to is “What if God was One of Us?’ By Joan Osborne
I am with Matt, an outright atheist though. Life started on earth 3.5 billion years ago and everything that lives today (animals, plants, insects) are descended from LUCA. Proof is that we all share the same DNA, you, me, the banana on your table and the mosquito that bites you. That brains developed so that there is intelligent life could be unique. If there is other life out there, it may not have developed a brain. We may be the paragon of all creatures in the universe. Heaven help us.
Yeah Richard, we just don't really know what else "out there" is up to, do we! Instead of "proof", I prefer the concept of "supporting evidence"... strictly speaking, proof is a property of logical arguments.
…and then God created brains.
I'm probably an atheist, too, although I'm open to the existence of higher conscious entities in the universe (which is why I call myself agnostic, and mostly because I don't have a clue), just not a single one who somehow created the whole damn thing!
Agreed. I attend a Sunday School class at an Alabaman Baptist church. My class-mates are as open-minded and charitable as the best of us in this forum. They make me a better man.
Glad you found a congregation that supports you, but I'm sure you are aware that it's not easy to find one.
Absolutely. In my case, as a slack agnostic, I really lucked out.
It took me a while to remember that i attended a Sunday School class before i called myself a Christian and had a similar experience. Inquisitive smart people with a rock solid knowledge of the Bible. That was in 1988. It was Lent then too.
Lovely!
Jesus was a liberal.
I know of a Canadian female climatologist who is also an evangelical, but roots her professional knowledge in modern science, years ago even addressed Texan oilmen on the subject. She married a southern fundamentalist who opposed modern evolutionary biologist, but love was unstoppable. How views have changed in the intervening 20 years or so i don't know, but i think she was hopeful some of his fundamentalist views might moderate. Sorry i can't recall her name at the moment. She's published.
I am a mathematician; retired now, I still read science eagerly snd marvel @ the unfolding understanding of what i see as the exquisite order in God’s created universe. (Not to mention the photos from theJames Webb Space Telescope!)
I find it interesting that the first five words of the Bible (“In the beginning, God created”) are among the most important and most difficult for many people.
The Bible is “the best book”. It reveals how God deals with man and gives us knowledge “sufficient to our salvation.”
But it is not a math book or a science book, or a complete record of history. None of the math or science i’ve learned contradicts what i read in the Bible, just reveals descriptively and quantitatively the order of God’s creation.
Lots of religiously faithful can do great and good science. I agree, the universe has more than enough mystery and unknown, if not unknowable for our precocious but limited brains, to allow a variety of metaphysical beliefs to roost "at the top" while everyone has a heyday in the details. Lots of thoughtful mathematicians wonder even how mathematics has provided such a cornucopia of tools with which to advance our most basic to most esoteric science and, well, much of everything else.
You are not supposed to be self-righteous!!It’s totally wrong to act that way.I believe that groups like the Southern Baptists believe that is the way you are supposed to behave!!They are so busy judging others-They are definitely messed up!!
There was such a group in Jesus’s day—the Pharisees, who thought they had God all figured out. Jesus called them “a brood of vipers” to their faced.
You definitely know what you are talking about!!I agree!!They shouldn’t be treating people this way!!It’s not right
Barbara B,
Are you aware that it is possible to communicate directly with Jesus Christ?
I recorded what he had to say, and posted part of it here:
https://theplanetsspeak.substack.com/p/jesus-christ-speaks?utm_medium=reader2
Yes.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
What is Word but commuication ?
Actually, "word" is a bad translation of the Greek "logos":
https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos
If "God" wasn't all powerful and hadn't created the universe would he still be worshipped?
I am not a trained theologian but my thought is that it is part of God’s character to be “worthy of worship”. I know some people might say that there are “uncreated” beings ( angels?) who worship God, or even that there are other created realities in which God is worshipped. I generally keep my own thinking and debates on our own space- time continuum!!
To me God’s most important aspect is not that he is all-powerful* but that he is self- existent, not part of what we call creation (what we might call “our” space-time.) i like to connect this to God’s self identification to Moses as “I am”.
*Another old paradox asks if God can be all-powerful since he can’t act in ways that violate his own character.
Matt Fulkerson, I'm with you when it comes to the very widespread nasty, two-dimensional caricature of "religion".
I'm with you all the way about the universe -- and Kristin Newton says it for me.
But Einstein, Feynman, every woman, every man -- even the Donald, even the village idiot -- has under the skull the only thing that may match the inconceivable complexity of the universe. A human brain.
*
As for the KKK -- Kinder, Kuche, Kirche -- image of submissive womanhood imposed by those who are scared out of their tiny minds by real feminine power... my very conservative (in the old sense of the term, valuing good things we have and -- above all -- serving humanity, serving the people, serving one's country) my very conservative sister came to suburban America in the 1950s as a British wife, lived there a few years, bearing three kids, then got the hell out, kids and all, and returned to London.
Either that or go mad with boredom.
Sorry, I forgot at first to mention that the America my late sister fled in horror, fled to survive as a human being, was that great MAGALALALAND, the never-neverland of the 50s...
Like Putin, Agent Orange speaks of restoring a myth from the remote past of his babyhood.
Because they have no present, no future to offer, only death and destruction.
Having grown up in the '50s, I can understand the need to restore the myth - but the only things I'd like to bring back from that time are the tax rates for the rich and the ratio of CEO pay to that of workers on the line.
Having been raised as a Catholic in California but living in Asia for a few decades, I much prefer Buddhism to Christianity. The concept of God is completely different. Christian missionaries have tramped on so many cultures throughout history in their determination to hammer people into thinking as they do. Everything has to be either right or wrong, black or white.
I will suggest that a healthy religious/spiritual orientation includes both Christianity's emphasis on love to others and the "spiritual technology" of Hinduism and Buddhism, including yoga and meditation.
The harm done to indigenous children/people in the name of religion is still being uncovered.
Hi-five, fellow agnostic! Congrats to us for bravely refusing to take a stand on the existence of Sky Daddy, or between versions! You are part of a club that realized the biggest truth: that the only way to find out how it ends up is to kick the can, and then you don't get to tell anyone!
From my experience communicating with ancestors, I have been given to understand that as part of the process of dying, the soul splits into two parts, as discussed here:
https://theplanetsspeak.substack.com/p/communicating-with-ancestors-part-9b0?utm_medium=reader2
Another commenter here defines herself as a non-theist and I share her belief that there is no supreme being. We are all only here on planet earth for a fraction of a second compared to how long it has been since the Big Bang. For one Supreme Being to care about the billions of humans that have only been here for perhaps 300,000 years out of 14 billion is not very logical.
Why is it that so many people that attend seminaries end up being atheists after they learn more about the history of theology?
The more we learn about science the harder it becomes for most educated people to accept the idea of one supreme being.
Matt -- science. Amazing, baffling, mind-blowing, exciting, expanding science. So many people have not had the education or do not have mental capacity to understand any of it, so in their fear they deny it: flat earthers, anti-vaxers, trumpites who have been fooled by a snake-oil salesman. They get the majority of the news coverage because they are laughable, and they are a minority. We just have to vote out all those who want to tell us how to live our lives -- the fundamentalist, the arrogant trumpites. I for one have had enough of this fracking stupidity. I kept my mouth -- not exactly shut, but respectful of others opinions. Not any more.
Who was it that said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts? I like that alot and am more troubled by the construction of a false reality constructed and sold by Trumo than i am by anyone’s opinion that is @ least based in reality
Matt then you are as bad as they are. We should all respect the rights of others to believe or not believe in whatever religious or non-religious guiding principle they choose.
Your beliefs are not the same as mine but I would fight for your right to have them. That is what freedom means isn’t it?
I enjoyed your morning essay on the limits but exciting possibilities in modern scientific empiricism. If we're no longer a privileged centre, we certainly have a privileged location from which to begin to take in an amazing, likely not fully comprehensible vista, in all directions. Got a laugh right off about "fracking".
I was fortunate to have been a high school student back in the early sixties when inquiry based science (biology, physics, and chemistry) was becoming the norm in schools prepared to teach them. I had some marvelous teachers, and so I came away with a sense of both wonder and inquisitiveness about the world and the universe I'd been born into. In college I added anthropology, paleontology, geology, and astronomy to my search for understanding. I claim expertise in non of these areas, but even as one who, by an real expert might be considered not much more than a dabbler, I have found an extraordinary delight in being able to read about new discoveries and new insights into this universe of wonder, how it was created and is endlessly evolving, and with what marvels it is populated.
Keats wrote in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" I don't presume to know exactly what he meant, but for myself, I have always believed that being willing to discover and to accept all that we can about whatever is and can be nothing else is a journey of utter beauty.
And I believe that truth, and thus that beauty is what we are always seeking, regardless of the fact that in our utter humanness, we are often capable of distorting what we find and what we believe about it into shapes sand actions so awful that we are left in incomprehension at what we've done.
Yet we persist, and a willingness to do so with open minds and the best hopes of which we are capable, we may yet become a full and positive part of this amazing world, despite the best efforts of those whose fear and ignorance would trap us in an endless cycle of anger and dispair.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed . At least some suggestion the consciousness remains after corporeal demise.
No need for a god unless you want to dominate others.
I love the song by Iris Dement..’ Let the Mystery be’… good philosophy…it’s the Walk that really counts….
Today, clergy of all faiths seem to rest on a belief in a Supreme Being which we identify as the 'Creator' or sometimes more specifically endow with anthropomorphic characteristics, since the Bible points out that that Supreme Being created man in his image and therefore, knowing what we look like, that supposedly tells us what a Supreme Being must look like. Three hundred and fifty years ago, Baruch Spinoza carefully levelled that Supreme Being into a far broader 'Supemacy' of which everything, including each individual, observing, contemplating, or even criticizing it was a part. Today's clergy have vested interests in promoting however their faith identifies a Supreme Being. That's why Spinoza, who was Jewish, was in effect excommunicated by Judaism way back then.
If a tree falls.......
They “believe in a hateful God” because it allows them to justify their hate. It isn’t really about the god, it’s about their hate, their sexism, racism etc. changing people’s mind has to be done on the ground in the foxholes, people need exposure to those they “hate” so they can experience/gestalt with them and stop projecting badness on ‘other’.
In the 70s dream work was used by clergy to unplug racism, when you start sharing dreams people see and hear the universality of being and it changes hearts.
Hearts change minds in the case of small minded people.
There is something uniquely vile about today's culture in Alabama. Once upon a time, organized Christianity inculcated the inclination to be habitually good to others. That got twisted in the South.
I look forward to an imagined time when Birmingham is recognized as "Redemption City."
"Does your conscience bother you?
Now tell me true."
https://youtu.be/RrmWFjnAP2E?si=aMxKDeOdmn_-owzx
May the record reflect that I actually liked a John Schmeeckle comment. 👍
William I appreciate your open mind. My similar reaction blew my mind. I hope not but, I fear it falls in the category of even a blind squirrel sometimes gets an acorn.
I thought there was something in my coffee when I read that....l still think he needs a hobby...
Lordy?
Haha! Like the hands on a broken clock - it gets it right a couple times a day.
How rude.
That was uncalled for; cheap shot.
Laughing.
Racism is the disease. It's what led four KKK white men to bomb the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham in 1963, killing four little Black girls while injuring many others. They snuffed out innocent lives. Murdered them. MAGA/KKK Trump supporters are racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and homophobic to the core. In other words, as humans, as creatures who share this planet with other creatures, they are misfits without consciences.
Agreed that Maga is hugely dangerous. I suspect despite this people in the South (and not just) have moved on quite a bit, if not as far as more progressive non coloured would like to hope. Well, at least when movies like Mississippi Burning, Selma, 12 Years a Slave they can find southerns to play the traditional white parts, and get funding from eg Georgia. I've also seen quite a few decently done documentaries about the Civil War and after out of southern government agencies. Statues coming down. And so on.
I don't at all understand how people of color, women, religious beliefs other than so-called or fake Christian evangelicals could even consider electing Trump and his followers!
Alas, I grew up in Mississippi several decades ago, and I remember the same vileness, cloaked in religious hypocrisy just slightly more heavy than the humidity. Social media has enjoyed a heyday in that toxic milieu, so it is more obvious now. God hasn’t slept this well since the Holocaust.
“Just slightly more heavy than the humidity…”
Love that!
Now that is a telling phrase... "God hasn't slept this well since the Holocaust."
Speaking of that state - couple of years back the press was out interviewing some voters following the BLM demonstrations/protests and when they asked a white lady and her friend about the protests their view point demonstrated the real lack of understanding. It was so incredible to hear this. When asked about her feelings about the black people she said something like if a black person came up to her door and was hungry she would give them food as if that would prove she was not a bigot. The attitude was more like as long as they know their place we are just fine with them in our town. No mention of whether it was a front or back door. It was just such a profound moment of how this lady viewed the status of blacks. Very sad.
“I know a black person” and “I have a black friend” are some of my favorite qualifiers. Some of those folk also admit they have a gay friend or at least know one. Also, Ellen is funny!
But I really do think such interviews should be aired, just not standalone like C-SPAN did after the SOTU (C-SPAN is hardly alone in this practice). The ignorance needs to be outed publicly, then used as a tool to educate the masses who are nodding along. Just giving the bigots a mic and a platform lends them an air of legitimacy in the eyes of their peers, and has emboldened them all to say the quiet part aloud.
The US is a very race-conscious country. It’s unfortunate in that it serves to further divide folks. The census asks that you provide your race, and many questionnaires do exactly the same thing. And think of how much “inter” marriage there has been. The pieces of pie become smaller and smaller.
Jesus!!
Speaking of the uniquely vile culture of today, i live in Georgia, and it's not one bit better here as i live only about18 miles from the Alabama border. Actually, there is quite a bit of things that do get twisted including organized Christianity here in the South.
Example: My daughter's mother in law once told her, please don't ever let a ''Thousand Legs'' ( A Centipede), count your teeth or you will die. Another one she told her, '' Don't get your milk out of the refrigerator when it thunders, or the milk will sour''. All of this was just the Southern Appalachian folklore that was the truth to them.
folklore is old as the "hills" ... black cats and bad luck, pinch of salt over your shoulder, my aunt, and not just her, absolutely believed in ghosts, was also very intelligent, kind, and a hawk for discipline in the school system she served for all of her adult life. My mother co accepted Darwinism as presented a century ago, reincarnation and thought she found one of her previous lives buried in a cemetery in rural England. I love that one about centipede. This stuff is hardly just from Southern Appalachia, right?
I agree, folklore is as old as the hills. I am not sure that this stuff is just from Southern Appalachia. The area i live in is at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountain chain and most of the folklore sayings have about disappeared here as it was handed down from the generation of adults from the 1920's to the 1940's here. And speaking of previous lives, my daughter did our family tree with the ancestors.com thing and there is a picture of one of my relatives from the late 1700s that looks exactly like i do. That kinda made me think of your mother's beliefs about reincarnation.
That belief of a centipede counting one's teeth made me laugh so hard i had tears streaming down my cheeks. When i wrote that comment last night i burst out laughing after i wrote it. I don't think a centipede has the ability to count. My daughter's mother in law also believed the earth is flat.
In these times it is so ignorant to believe in such "folklore."
Thanks for the prompt to imagine. What shapes are the doorways in our minds that open to a future so different from now? You've helped me appreciate activism as a practice of that.
I think it's far too easy to focus on condemning the negative, and we don't think about how to change things for the better. I like to imagine a Black male family-values Republican in the Governor's mansion in Tennessee. I go around fixing the world's problems in my mind, and sometimes around here I get to share my thoughts with others.
John-
You have mentioned your employer before and that you are a driver. Do you drive through AL very often? I've worked for companies across the country and I rarely run across someone I dislike or is difficult to work with. BUT, I rarely talk politics with anyone outside of family and a few close friends.
Are your experiences similar?
I drive through Birmingham and Huntsville quite a lot, going on to Memphis and Nashville. I like driving through Huntsville, becausee there's an old Saturn rocket (heavy lifter for the Moon landings) standing right next to the interstate. For a while they were sending me to Memphis a lot, because other drivers didn't want to go there.
I get the vague impression that "everybody" assumes that everyone likes Trump, but very rarely any real discussion. People just do their work and go home.
Speaking of Huntsville, A friend of mine co-authored a book - They Could Not Fail- that details what the federal government did with the space program when it located the Saturn program there. The hiring of blacks and what they did to bring some semblance of equal rights to that area is a very good read. You might enjoy it, especially if you like the space program.
A book of historical fiction, The German Wife, is about German rocket scientists and their families relocated to Huntsville, AL, right after WWII. Their backgrounds were scrubbed so they could work for the government, and the antagonism on both sides—Americans now expected to welcome our former enemies and Germans brainwashed by Hitler and Naziism—makes a super interesting story. (The US government called this Operation Paperclip.)
Thanks - sounds like a fun read.....
"People just do their work and go home." Exactly. When I used to go onsite a bunch of us would go out to dinner, trivia, drinks, etc. most evenings. We never talked politics. Of course that was before 2016 when TFFG entered the scene, but still it's just not good conversation when you're socializing with a group.
Exactly what I've heard from a male gay friend chemist who moved from the northeast to Kingsport TN for work.
That brings up the general question of how people decide who to vote for. I remember my sister being dutifully diligent, researching the positions of the primary candidates on various issues. My four younger brothers did little or none of that, and I was sort of in between.
It seems to me that much of today's political campaigning consists of cleverly-crafted talking points, based on market research, designed to influence people who don't think very much.
Wow! This is quite different for you. I would venture to add . . . not only in the South.
Yes indeed. But, for whatever it's worth, the frayed Bible Belt is a southern phenomenon.
p.s. My primary interests are religious and cultural, and I haven't gone there much around here.
(That is for my posts on my own substack.)
The Framers established a constitutional wall between Church and State not only to prevent state imposition of church creed and church prejudice, but to keep faith based irrational habits of mind out of government, which was to be founded on coming to consensus through reasoned debate of empirical evidence - in the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. and in elections to transfer power.
Unfortunately, Roberts’ SCOTUS is trying to pull down this wall!
Trying? Ha!
Succeeding.
Charles Koch via Leonard Leo's SCOTUS.
Not sure today's politicians are capable of 'reasoned debate of empirical evidence'
"Not sure today's politicians are capable of 'reasoned debate of empirical evidence."
Please do not be fooled into believing that sweeping condemnation of American politicians - and by extension office holders. It is the fallacious rhetoric of malign individuals who want to suppress and/or split the potential Democratic vote. Whether from the Left or Right, ultimately to elect Republicans.
Please spend some time listening to CSpan. Democratic Senators and Representatives show up every day to diligently fulfill their oaths. It is both heart breaking and heartening to witness them defending legislation and democracy. They are too many to name, but among my favorites - Jamie Raskin and Sheldon Whitehouse. Veterans of the Civil Rights struggle, Benny Thompson, Hank Johnson, and Jim Clyburn. Stalwarts Patty Murray, Rosa DeLauro, Barbara Jackson Lee, Tammy Baldwin, Maisie Hirano. The new generation including AOC, Corri Bush, and Jon Ossoff. To name just a few.
I believe we have a variety of politicians who are capable of 'reasoned thought and reasoned debate of empirical evidence. But it takes two who have that ability on opposite sides to have a reasoned debate of empirical evidence. Only occasionally have I witnessed that match up. I do agree that the politicians you named have these skills. And I could add many more. But, again, who are they debating? Who is the opposition that has those skills
The words I used...not sure ....are simply that. Not sure but would like to see.
You wrote:
"Not sure today's politicians are capable of 'reasoned debate of empirical evidence'"
In government, eventually coming to consensus involves many people to make a majority.
I don't doubt the majority have the ability to debate empirical evidence reasonably. But Republicans prefer not to. At best, they give a simulacrum.
C-SPAN is the best way to be informed! I love their weekend History programs!
Yes, thank you for pointing this out. Too bad this isn't repeated often.
Britt was an insult.
I couldn't watch more than a few minutes.
I could see her ruse immediately. What a denigration of women and their role in society.
It will be women at the ballot box who save us from trump.
Thank you all in advance.
She will be forgotten. Biden wont.
I hope she learns from Cassidy Hutchinson what real patriots do (no matter what their previous beliefs were). I wish her no malice, just wish she changes for her own sake, if not for all of ours.
If we get enough Democrats and Independants who agree (because that is all we can depend on at this time in history) in the House and the Senate, the Equal Rights Amendment will be amended to the Constitution formally. Many legal scholars look at it as a part at this point in time, because it has done what needs to be done to be an amendment - passed Congress, signed by a President, and adopted by 2/3rds of the states. There is no mention in the Constitution of time limits, as the history of the 27th Amendment shows isn’t an issue. Also, those states who say they changed their minds (like Tennessee) need to look at the history of prohibition to see that you can’t “do over” a vote on an amendment, you have to pass another amendment.
The sticking point when adding it to the Constitution is the time limit that was put on it by Congress. It was changed once, all that Congress needs to do is change it again, removing the time limit (which some legal scholars think was unconstitutional to begin with). There was a House Resolution to do this in 2021 that passed, but it couldn’t get past the Senate and the filibuster at that time. Let’s be sure and get enough Senators to constrain or overturn the filibuster, and the ERA is in the Constitution, and then goodbye abortion bans! https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-joint-resolution/17#:~:text=Passed%20House%20(03%2F17%2F,Senate%20on%20March%2022%2C%201972.
Jill Wine-Banks is working on getting the ERA passed finally.
I regret that I tried to reassure my sister-in-law that it shouldn't matter because all of us should be undoubtedly considered equal. Seeing what my old party has done to make it so much harder to be ratified by 3/4s of the states shows me how wrong I was.
We do need things like the ERA and Citizens United so firmly entrenched in our Constitution that no combination of radical justices can take the protections from us ever again.
Me, too--I am currently in a campground in La Junta, Colorado. Traveling solo all over this country with my two, also aged, dogs in a 17 foot travel trailer. Ask anyone half our age who has done this, and they will tell you it can be very challenging--even for them! There are many of us who see you, Mr. President; and we do not doubt that you are more than up for the job.
I admire your bravery. And your energy. Hope your journey continues to go well.
Thank you Susan for speaking for us who are in our eighth decade. I am still functioning and able to read and think.
Thank you. Exactly! My dad lived to 98 and was sharp as a tack until the day he died!
I had forgotten that the ERA did pass in both houses but they included a deadline for the ratification by March 22, 1979 (later extended but also having 5 states legislatures rescind their earlier ratification). Only 35 of the required 38 states (3/4s of the states) ratified before the deadline (with 4 rescinding before the original deadline).
I'll ad the reference to https://www.lwv.org/blog/100-years-equal-rights-amendment
I do believe it would pass now if left to a popular vote with enough to meet the 75% requirement
Thank you for the uplifting post!
Amen. I’m 75 and still going strong. If a day goes by where I haven’t learned something new, I consider it less than acceptable.
The stuff they made around age is ridiculous. You only get old and feel old if you give in to media version where the worldview of aging. As you're all as long as you're always enjoying yourself and learning something you're not going to decline. If you have not seen Carl Reiner's documentary if you're not in the obituaries eat breakfast, you would probably enjoy it.
There are fewer indeed, political distribution though amplifies their influence. Women voting against GOP's atavistic policies on reproductive rights however has stirred a significant demographic, a "made for Democrats " battle-issue. Make 2024 count!
Yes, I agree that people have the right to believe in a God who hates women and transgender and gays people, although I hope that number is small and getting smaller. For me, and I hope for the current members of SCOTUS, freedom OF religion entitles each of us to practice the religion of our choice (including no religion). Freedom OF religion also implies freedom FROM religion. No one, not the federal government, nor the state and local governments, can impose a specific religion on anyone. My fear is that several recent Presidents, with the help of Mitch McConnell, have created a super majority willing to impose their personal religious beliefs on the rest of us
Susan, I’m with you. 90 in just under 3 months, doing Pilates, playing piano, writing. Good for your cousin!
Susan B: a little nitpicking here -- "not unsurprising" means (approximately) "surprising". I think you mean "unsurprising".
Please correct me if I misinterpreted.
Excellent thesis and through line.
I had a hard time watching A Handmaid’s Tale because it was so dark, and preposterous. But as we creep into the Katie Britt scenes, and others with Casey Desantis and Melania Trump… and Roe is no longer the law of the land, and embryos have more constitutional rights than women in certain circumstances … it’s not much of a stretch of the imagination anymore.
I hope many more women see this regressive trope for the patriarchal scam that it is, and vote.
I cherish and exalt women like Michelle, Jill, Hillary, Ketanji, and Elizabeth, among others.
I had to stop watching A Handmaid's Tale in the second season -- it was just too close to where things have been headed in Republican-land for the past several years :(
I had to stop after the first season’s 3rd episode.
I read Margaret Atwood 's novel in my 20s in the early 80's before debit cards. The plot was entirely plausible and truly terrifying to me, how easy it would be to strip women of all power in an instant. I never could bring myself to watch the show.
"hard time watching A Handmaid’s Tale" - Read the book instead!
I could do neither. I think I got a page and a half into it and said NOPE!!
Same 🫣📖
Ally House -- Same here. Maybe a minute and a half with the movie. Just couldn't do it!
F
We've actually watched all seasons of it. Most series seem to devolve into soap operas, but what the heck.
Anyway, I've often gone back and read the story in Genesis 30. The first three verses tell the story of the Handmaid, but the rest describe polygamy and unfaithfulness. The myyths in the Old Testament seem to be the basis for the Southern Baptist religion.
Kamela
And Hilary.
I’ll edit her in my comment!
Dr. McCormick, I was riveted to A Handmaid’s Tale because it was so dark and foretelling!
I need to go back and watch it now. I think my head was in the sand a little. Dark and creepy Britt speech was horrifying.
Btw - loved listening to a couple of your podcasts on the way to work - great expositions and food for thought! Thank you.
EXACTLY! It was SO horrifying. The background was strange....was that really kitchen or a set. And, Pre-taped.
She looked like she was in front of a green screen with the image of a kitchen projected onto the screen behind her. The whole thing looked fake.
It WAS fake.....another fake Republican.
The weird thing was that on SNL, the actress, who looked very much like Katie had the exact same background. It was AI.... SO......Katie could have been anywhere with that AI background. One, of many things that were strange, was that she had what looked the back of a bench behind her, but a round table in front of her. Who puts a bench at a round table??
Agreed. I couldn’t watch the whole thing. It was so jarring for someone like me who watches Newshour. I think the Fox and right wing channels use this fearful tone so much that their viewers must be desensitized. I found it truly unwatchable, unsettling, and manipulative to the extreme.
So I was one of those women who burned her bra. I also remember Schlafly a little too well. Bad taste in my mouth but Britt, boy can she deliver or what? Not! Right out of a Duggar family horror movie comes the bejeweled woman of “faith”, offering possibly the worst Academy Awards speech I have ever heard. Laughable, pathetic, and to be missed. Oh wait…I understand that she will soon be auditioning for Mrs. America! What do you suppose her swim suit will look like?
For me, an advantage of growing up homeschooled with secular parents was being able to see the religious right in this country up close and personal, without actually getting burned by it.
There are loads of very Christian women in this country who feel deeply under seige by the modern world. They don't want any part of the version of "freedom" we espouse on this board. Freedom - doing what you want with your life - means decadence and depravity and the devil. What we would call repression they call being "pure," "disciplined," and "saved." God makes differences between people for a reason, and all this tearing down of differences we have been doing for most of the last century? Disastrous. No wonder this country has problems. All they want is their freedom to raise their family away from all of this as best they can, but that is getting more and more difficult, and as it does, these otherwise lovely and polite people are getting more and more scared and angry.
I will never forget a young female friend confiding in me that she "just really wanted to be a stay-at-home Mom." She had to whisper it with the unmistakable tone of something she had been told would get her ridiculed. I said I thought that was lovely, that we needed those people, and she would be a great Mom. I meant from the bottom of my big ole librul heart. Her response was between relief and bewilderment. It was like a bizzarroworld "coming out" scene. She genuinely felt torn between the imagined mileau she had been taught to grow up to desire, versus seeing every other girl finding meaning through a career. The idea that she could be that traditional thing and coexist with other people *not* being that thing was akin to a foreign concept to her. In this war between lifestyles, she was on the right side but the currently losing side, and one had to be careful who to reveal oneself to while living behind enemy lines.
Seeing the Alabama lady in her kitchen made me let out a guffaw, not of mockery, but of a sort of twisted nostalgia. I know of at least a dozen women from growing up - young and old - who are almost certainly watching this and relating to her performance very deeply. Make no mistake: the kitchen, the cross necklace, the submissive aggreivement; none of it is a joke. She knows exactly who she is speaking to.
Good comment, Will. But when death breaks the family unit, it's hard to rally around the idea that women need to stick to their role as submissive beings toward their male counterparts. At age four, my father died. My mother, my sister, and me spent the next eight years waiting for the next man to complete our family. What I learned in those formative years is I needed to make sure that I had the skills necessary to survive alone, if need be, because it was not a given that a man would be there to fill the void. So forgive me if I believe in equality for women.
To be clear, I personally do not share the beliefs that I was illustrating. I think they are misguided at best and toxic at worst. I was simply saying that unfortunately there is a ready audience in America for that rebuttal, and I have known some of them myself.
I am sorry to hear you had such a tragic formative experience. I can't help but feel that if my mother had passed at any point, my dad and brother and I would have been quite lost. Women are so often the glue that holds a unit together, and all too often go without the proper thanks.
Take a listen to Senator Elizabeth Warren about what happened to her family of origin when her father died.
progwoman -- do you have a link to how we can do this? (I'm greatly interested.) I searched on YouTube, found lots about when her brother died of Covid-19, but nothing yet about her father.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren
This is just a distinct memory from her campaign when I heard her recount it often. And then I heard her refer to it in support of Katie Porter's campaign for the Senate. She said that the family almost lost their home, and then her mother found a job. Maybe you could email Senator Warren.
Me thinks you are a good guy, Will. I never thought you shared in the beliefs; rather, I think that it is important you shared your lived experiences.
But I should have said up front that Britt's comments told my younger self that without a father, I could never be a part of the family unit that she declares is necessary for Americans. So that leaves me out, along with several million others, I expect.
Thank you, Lynell. I think I understand what you are saying, and appreciate your experiences. I cringe at these people who think the "traditional nuclear family" is necessary for social stability. They seem to think that the structure of the unit is all that matters; the level of affection and support the relationship gives you is irrelevant. My aunt adopted my two cousins and raised them herself from the moment they were born. One could make the argument that they would have benefitted from a healthy father in addition, but they certainly did better with a loving single mother than they would have with an unhealthy father relationship, and are perfectly well-adjusted adults. The idea that decades later some people *still* see my aunt's choice (or your Mom's fortitude) as unnatural or a threat to society is bizarre and maddening.
As Fani Willis recently said, "A man is not a plan. A man is a companion." I'm a man, and I am nowhere insecure enough to see a threat in that statement.
Economic independence… didn’t exist when my biological father walked out, left the state, even changed his name. My mother, now single with two children was ostracized for not keeping “her man happy!” The late 1950’s… oh those were days though. She moved away, we lived in a second story of a house with a two room converted apartment. I simply can’t imagine what living hell and stress my mother went through with little support from her family and society… … it enrages and saddens me to just read about this pathetic, twisted group of politicians that have such power over our lives so I will abstain from watching a woman play into their ‘man hands,’ one who has no idea how things have been for women, what it took to get as far as we did and one who may very well be influential in returning to those “good ole days”
I know quite a few women whose husbands abandoned them and the 2-4 children. One left and took the car. One supported her husband through his doctorate then he left her for an academic. In those years, and before, men could dump their families with little or no support. Look at the Edie and her Mother Edith Beale...of Grey Gardens. Edith was dumped by her high income/old money family husband and they lived in squalor. One of my favorite films.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Gardens
I think yours, and your mother's, was/is a bigger row to hoe. Blessings, Rhonda.
Yes, and having been there, I look at how many family units death is breaking in the world each day! My individualistic determination helped me cope but I've learned that to thrive is much more communal.
What a great way to phrase it, Joan: "...to thrive is much more communal". It does take a village.
Interesting comment Joan L. To me it highlights the favorable & beneficial view of embodying both aspects of our humanity: individual determination AND openness to positive communal engagement/contribution. That undergirds a strong, mentally healthy human, I believe. The patriarchy demanding certain tasks be assigned to you because you have a vagina or penis, is soooooooo missing the point. But keeping people blindly in that frame of argument is easier to control.
Thank you, well said -- you understood what I meant.
Double yes from me, Joan.
Do you think there is even one family unit in Gaza that isn't missing the dad, the mom, the children.... the extended family. Unbelievable.
All the bull about a 2 State solution or integrating the 2 peoples. The Israelis hate those filthy rat Palestinians and does anyone think those people in Gaza or the West Bank aren't even MORE mad as hell?? Let's give them Texas.
Love your strength.
And yes, life is best when viewed between the ears of a horse. Thanks for reminding me.
Thank you, Jen!
I think the most capable American citizens are black women. They have to do so much to make up for the crappy jobs their husbands often end up with. Or, none. I went to my 50th year HS reunion in Montclair NJ. The white girls went to college, hoping to marry well. Many I spoke to were divorced and then had to find some job or other. The black girls went right into business and succeeded. Look at the black female prosecutors who are taking TFFG to task. I think it's wonderful...and very very funny; it must be killing TFFG.
Great comment, Judith. IMO, black women truly are the backbone of this country. They rock!
Economic independence for women has likely been the cornerstone for allowing women to escape the bonds of patriarchy and all that can go with it, apart from more mundane reasons. In any case 70% or so of divorces I hear are initiated by women.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if men and women could be appreciated and supported for living out their best selves-loving who they love, working in or out of the home, having families or not…just being the people they know themselves to be. Naive, Pollyanna, I know-but wow-what a wonderful world that would be.
Jesus told his followers to love one another. He condemned judging and hypocrisy. Just to love. The Christian extremists feel they have the right to exert their will and way on all others-in matters of faith, life choices, societal roles-everything. There is nothing of Jesus in any of that.
I was a stay at home mom. Knocked up at 18 by an 18 year old in 1958.
I had a very small budget so my skills made my home look pretty middle class. I made clothes, curtains, food, all from scratch and refinished old furniture. I bought stripper by the gallon. I attended college nights which is a great use of all the time one has stuck in the house. I started a business which drastically changed the income level of my family. Now, at 84, my housekeeping skills are extremely handy. I still cook, sew and can repair almost anything. All those projects, my smart Mexican cat and "research" I am quite busy and content. I feel sorry for single men, or women, who didn't learn the basic skills of housekeeping.
I learned sewing basics from Mom, who can sew anything. She didn't make me, I asked her. Most boys like tools and putting things together, and I was no exception. To my mind, these were just small tools and soft materials, rather than big tools for hard materials. Which they are! The idea that boys are supposed to be tough and resourceful and independent and not let anything get in their way... but then you are leaving them to be absolutely stymied the second a button falls off a shirt because learning how to fix it would be girly? Hilarious.
My mother ,who was an amazing seamstress, wouldn't help me with sewing when I was married on a tiny budget at 18. She said she couldn't even thread a needle anymore. She was 45. She sewed for quite few years after that. She had never supported me in anything. I figured it out from the 7th grade sewing class and reading Vogue patterns. I signed up for a carpentry course because I figured it's the same principles, (like: measure twice, cut once) just different materials. The teacher got sick or something; the class was canceled. I just wanted the skill to at least make a bookshelf. I am 84 and still sewing and can even thread a tiny needle.
I think girls in some schools can now take "shop". Boys should be taught by someone to at least sewing on buttons. And, cook!
I thought the whole point of Women’s Lineration was to be free to make
Our own choices. Our
Choice should be right for us. We are not all
cut out to be stay at home Moms. But if that’s your calling and pleasure that’s wonderful. You can be a great Mom if
You work full time too. It can be harder because you have less time to mother.
OTOH being a good mother is very difficult and doing that full time is hard work!
I am not sure I would have been a better mother had I done it full time. I worked hard to get my degrees and my job fills me
With purpose.
Let’s not judge but allow everyone to make the choice that works for them.
IMHO, almost no mothers can raise children well without a lot of support from family, like back "in the day". I am sure my Mother's mother with the 9 children and an active social life was not the primary caregiver. There were older women, aunties, grandmothers, older sisters, who did that job. Taking care of children when one is in their most productive years 18-40 is the worst use of time. There were and are so many ways to increase the value of the home than taking care of little kids. Farming, weaving, women used to have to haul water from wells to do the laborious job of wash day....Or, being in a business, like now. Or, getting an higher degree. Thankgod, I used the "stay at home mother" time to educate myself. I had children and I was a good mother but it was a responsibility, not a joy. As soon as they were able to be responsible without me, I went to work and started my own business.
I see so many articles questioning how to deal with raising children...it's only been a couple of generations that we have so many nuclear families with no extended family support.
It's new. I have 2 daughters who adopted children and both admit they didn't realize what they what signed up for. Both say, if they knew then what they found out later......they love their children but they might have made different choices.
Yet, Britt has not been a stay-at-home mom. She is a hypocrite!
Isn't that a requirement in the GOP?
This the first empathetic comment regarding the threatened traditional female role. I think it is the result of demonizing those of different cultural views.
Thank you for expressing your opinion.
You are welcome. I have no problem with traditionally-minded people, or traditional gender roles in the family, if that's what floats yer boat. It takes all kinds of kinds. No one should ever be found lacking or retrograde for being "just a Mom." What I have a major problem with is the idea held by so many conservatives that these roles are the only "natural" ones for people to occupy, and we are in some kind of moral battle between "ways of life." People's choices should be respected, but the choice needs to be there. My Mom raised us at home, but she also had a degree and her own passions and interests. It was a tough choice that she made, but the choice was hers to make. My Dad and we boys would have loved her either way.
I was impressed with the school superintend who said he had no problem with a parent controlling the books his/her children read. He does have a problem with parents who want to control what other children read. To me this no worse than a liberal “looking down their nose” at the woman you mention who wanted to be the traditional homemaker.
P S My mother who was a math/physics major who graduated in 1939 and after the war stayed home to become a homemaker.
My Mother was an economics major, graduated U of Wisconsin, first in her class. 1935. Smart as a whip. I was the first born 1939, she should have been working instead of running a house but it was not proper to take a job away from a man, esp. after the depression and then WW2. Who knew then that the economy was going to boom and there was room for anyone who could excel. She was sarcastic to my father and mean to me; she should have used that energy in a corporation where if she had started at the bottom she would have risen up. Not just smart, a platinum blond, with a killer figure and a sense of humor; she was competitive. We could have been rich! It would have been so much better to be raised by a nanny ...anyone but her.
Make no mistake: it's a type of coded speech. Male fundies do it too - among other things whoever does it is signalling their presence in the room to any other coreligionists. It's often meant to alert their fellows as to how to interpret the symbolic message buried in what they're saying.
I had a chance to watch a YouTube video today, comparing Britt’s regular speaking voice with the performative high-school-quality heartbroken suburbanite sobfest that she made an ass out of herself with the other night. I looked up the word phony and lo and behold there she was.
I saw that too, and I was shocked not shocked. Apparently she was using what's known as the "Baby Fundie Voice," or something along those lines. It's a thing in that world to display submissiveness.
Can’t link🙄, but a friend posted a Substack writer, Jess Piper, who wrote a piece, “The Baby Fundie Voice”. Arrrrggggghhhhh!
Yes, that's the piece I saw. Apparently little Mikey's wife uses that voice, too.
https://jesspiper.substack.com
I joined, a lot of Heather's people joined. it's great!
I'd like to see the video. Is there a link?
This is not the referenced YT vid, but I found this:
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1766098563879018761?
Ha!
Marlene my friend, I would like to learn more about your bra burning phase. But discretion being the better part of valor, I'll settle for the memoirs.
Duggar family horror movie indeed. I literally could not get through Senator Britt's "response" to the SOU, as it was so faux, and so viscerally uncomfortable.
I was a young thing but it was quite liberating, really, and it was the beginning of the hippie movement. Best times of my life.
Full disclosure, Marlene. In 1980, there were four of us brave women united together on a beach in the Caribbean who went topless for a few hours. And just as you experienced, it was liberating!
Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove, everyone is naked. Spent 3 summers in the mid-'80's.
Yowsa, Judith!
It was wonderful. Beach, Bay, board walk, dancing, no cars and No children. Then.
We (somewhat inadvertently) ended up on a nude beach with our young girls when vacationing in Hawaii (children girls, not 'those' girls!). I went to the back of the beach and took my top off. AMAZING feeling, tho those other girls were mortified!
If I was there, I would have understood completely, becky!
Lynell, I know it was the greatest feeling, wasn’t it?
I really wanted to turn it off and but had to "do" the whole miserable thing right to the blessed end, where she wished us all God bless , or something. PUKE!
I lasted all of 30 seconds ...
Me too. Just long enough to take in the voice, the cross, the kitchen!
When I heard it was a woman in her kitchen, that was all it took not to watch.
Lol too much
Ditto! The off with the TV!!
Go watch the whole thing. It's hard. But, beats other horror shows.
Check this: https://jesspiper.substack.com
Ew
Watching just a few snippets of the response to the SOTU was appalling. Interesting choice, the hypocrisy of wearing a diamond studded cross, which is at odds with a phrase in the Bible that a camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person ascend to heaven. Whether the diamonds were real or faux is immaterial; they represent wealth and position.
If Katie Britt is an up and comer within the GOP, good grief! Let’s send as many packing as possible.
☮️
Also an encouraging signal to Christian nationalists - and a message to the rest of us that we'll be toast if Trump and MAGA candidates are elected this year.
As the "Christian" conservatives (CPAC) said at their convention , you can kiss democracy good-bye. They have something they'd like to sell you.
must be the "prosperity gospel" lol.
Shades of Joel Osteen indeed!
Just read up on him, wowser career lots $$$
I think it was on MSNBC that they said she was the face of the future Republican party.
She and her husband are probably swinger's. Isn't that the typical hypocrisy rife in the GOP?
Britt complained about all of the aspects that make a mother’s life so difficult: expensive or even non-existent childcare costs and/or choices, and costs associated with raising children WHEN Republicans in the Senate UNANIMOUSLY VOTED DOWN THOSE SUBSIDIES IN THE BUILD BACK BETTER PLAN!
Did she think moms who vote don’t actually know that?
Day care is evil, don't you know? I went through this when I had a child in the late seventies, but I assumed that when she was an adult, there would be universal day care. But then Reagan was elected, and everybody wanted a nanny. Why subject yourself to other people's children when you can have your own personal servant. That's the way things were for white people in the South when I was growing up. But, of course, Black women have other choices now. I'd be curious about Senator Britt's own family. Being a senator is demanding, no? (True confession, I'd never heard of her til Friday morning.)
I would guess a religious-based charter school for her school aged kids.
And I will say, many don’t know their Republican reps voted that out. In Ohio’s budget which cut $$ from some of those programs, many of my friends had no idea… they aren’t paying attention…
That’s what the 2024 campaign message for. I hope this is the overreaching theme for ALL Democratic campaigns.
I agree, but there's more. Britt listed all sorts of things that were wrong, but didn't mention any way of improving things. Quite apart from all the style issues, there was no "there" there.
The contrast with Biden's list of new policies to actually improve things for middle class people and families was instructive, I thought.
Senator Britt represented the Handmaid in her speech. How "dare" she run for office if the family is the most important unit. Which legislation has she passed that protects and supports the family? I think we have to be attacking the Republican claim that they support the traditional family. If they did, every person would earn enough to support a large family with one income. Child care would be free for single parent families. College would be free too. Everyone would have health care coverage. In Germany where I am currently living, at 18 every gets a 200 € pass to be spent on entertainment. This is to get them out and about. They can go skating, swimming, to movies, museums, amusement parks. There is a different pass for people younger than that. Plus parents get 292 € a month per child to help raise them. You can get this until they are 25 as long as they are in school, or doing an internship until then. How about child money. Canada has an even bigger benefit. As a tax free monthly payment, for each child under 6 you get $619.75 per month, and for children 7-18 you get $522.19 per month. Denmark, Sweden and Luxembourg have the highest child credits in the EU. In Luxembourg you get 299.85 € a month for each child. So, this is what the Republican party would be supporting if it were truly for the family. Also, there would be no forcing children raped and impregnated by family or strangers to bare these children. And IVF would be supported because family choice would be supported. Instead, we have Ms. No IVF State Representing the Republicans.
That’s amazing! And here, we have the R’s reducing or wanting to get rid of the child care credit! We will win and that credit will be expanded, teachers will make more money, and the poor will hopefully lose that status and join the middle class.
How dare she, indeed, abandon her family to be in the Senate! And where's the legislation from her about those family values she espouses! And all the rest you say here, Linda!
The irony of her giving a speech from a kitchen. If we had a decent press, they would figure out what that was coming from. Whose idea was it? Was it speaker Mike Johnson's? I mean the logic of governing from the kitchen, is that you are governing family, not the nation. Apparently, from the Republican responses I heard reported on, they could see that the image and the content was crap!
Maybe they thought it would give a Julia Child vibe to the situation. On second thought, probably not. Julia Child wouldn't have allowed them in her kitchen. She'd have whacked Johnson with that big spoon of hers.
😂
It did seem very amateurish but even so it was intentional and the imagery was on purpose. Seems like the menace from Mar-a-Lago might have had something to do with it. He does have a savviness for media and promotion and yet incredibly tacky, unsophisticated, and puerile.
According to The Guardian, it was not well received by Republicans. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/08/katie-britt-sotu-reaction
Not well received by Democrats either.
Just hope this helps Biden and translates to more votes for him.
One response in that article:
"Among satirical responses, Tom Nichols, an anti-Trump conservative columnist, spoke for many when he said: “There is no way that this Katie Britt address does not end up as part of the Saturday Night Live cold open.”
I can not wait until tonight! She's a real joke.
Her material was written for her and ya gotta wonder, who thought the kitchen table was a good idea? Does she not have an office in that house?
To those who said they couldn't watch more than a few minutes of it: I get it. It was hard. I had to. How many times does one get to watch a real life horror show? So obviously pre-taped. How many takes did she have to do to get it "just (far) right"?
The patriarchy is alive and well in the GOP.
Her handler will get fired over this. He was probably some Man telling what to say and where to say it. SNL had an actress doing her with the exact set ...Katie was probably in front of an AI. I see a bench in front of a round table. How does THAT work??
My daughter and I were discussing how ugly that kitchen looked and how the colors did not work with her dress. That was a horrid choice. The messages and the delivery were so awful together no wonder that when her people saw it they were shocked at how bad it appeared. Of course, so many Republicans threw her under the bus. She is not a charistmatic speaker, and I am glad she destroyed her VP chances with this mess. Firing her handler might make her feel better, but with the obvious lie in there, we shall see if she makes a come back. I personally think every word she spoke was a lie. The Republican party is the ANTIFAMILY party. I would like to see reporters ask her what legislation she has presented or passed to help the family, the border etc... She was chosen as a contrast to Biden, but she made the wrong kind of contrast, reminding every American with half a brain in their head that age is not what counts like what your ideas are. She represented a return to the past. Not the world I want for my daughter nor did the women who fought to get out out from under male control, an ongoing struggle. She is Anita Bryant all over again. Yeech!
It was pre-taped...and the kitchen is fake. That yellow board behind her, between the kitchen cabinets and her...I thought it's maybe the back of a bench , then I saw the round table..which would not work with a bench....THEN I saw, when she wiggled a bit, she is sitting in a chair! What the heck!! Then SNL with Scarlett Johansson in front of the same background.. AI! Both were AI. !!! No one did their homework. I was in NYC Real estate for about 10 years and there is no way I would present to a potential client a lousy speech and a lousy set up. And, I'm no body! She's a rising star in the GOP. WTF!
Well, the news anchors were reporting it as sitting in her kitchen, but then I saw Scarlett Johansson in front of it and realized it must be fake. It is so hideous though, who would choose that, especially as a background for that green dress which was flattering to her coloring, but looked awful in that background. I wonder how much her star is going to rise now.
The Republicans can get over ANYthing. Just look at TFFG.
The background was AI.......the yellow wood slate thing behind her...was it the back of a bench??......but she was sitting in a chair at a round table. What a sloppy marketing video. Fire everyone! Her, too. If it had been me, and I'm nothing, I would have had a better "response" in my 'efen office!
Years ago I wondered what Phyllis Schafly was doing out in public all the time when her message was that women should stay home.
Was Sen. Britt a character in “The Handmaid’s Tail” that I overlooked?
Let’s hope she stars in Biden campaign ads showing how Republicans want to subjugate women.
Good idea!!
"Chattin' in the kitchen with Katie, chattin' in the kitchen with Ka-a-tie, chattin' in the kitchen with Katieeeee, and strummin' on the ole banjo!...Singin'...
GOP rebuttal was exactly what I had dreamed of...The "demure, simpering, southern holy little wife in the kitchen! Oh how stupid are y'all in the GOP...Enterprise , Alabama yet...C'mon down y'all.
Exactly the issue I think will win it for us. Although, my partner in life thinks that the Christo-Nationalist hardcase women will still vote tRump. The Mango Muffin is, after all a godly man.
....Made me want to burn my Bro.
😂😂 “The Bro”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS8nXc3X-6k
Thank you. This is a piece of modern culture that I missed completely....
Thank you for linking the “Bro/Man-zeer” clip from Seinfeld. I can laugh all day🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
exactly!
Thanks for anything Seinfeld!
You wear a Bro?
I prefer my Bros to provide support and comfort while wicking away moisture.
If only MSNBC had Bro ads….Lawrence, are you listening?
😂😂
Does it help?
Used to, but it pinches. 😂
Burned it, gone! Too skimpy anyways, the new fashion is all see through, just too embarrassing for me.
I thought you wanted to burn your brother. Since when is a bra a bro? I am out of touch.
Judith; from Seinfeld...Bro-the Manzeer. Hillarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njAJtuwJMdc&ab_channel=FlickrBinge
🤣
Thank you Heather. Another thought-provoking LFAA with important historical context. While I think that the GOP will look for any issue to divide voters and concentrate power, gender equality is an emotional connection to their world view. That is, the frame of the hard-working man at the head of the table and Katie Britt or Laura Ingalls in the kitchen making sandwiches with a smile and catering to her husbands every need. George Lakoff talks about political language and its use to establish a visual frame and emotional connection -and the "Ozzie and Harriet" frame is a classic conservative fantasy.
The thought of a well-educated, informed, and powerful woman is earth shattering to many men that would prefer a subservient woman, dependent upon "her man" to provide for her, fix things around the house, and to discipline the children. From the male perspective a more independent woman maintains an array of alternative life choices, many of which do not involve bringing him his pipe and slippers when he's home from the office or the quarry.
I learned a great deal about feminism early in my career as a confidante to several powerful women who outperformed their male peers and were paid less. It was eye-opening to me.
Later, as a father to my daughters, I did not want to constrain them to gender roles. My oldest still tells the story of when I brought her a present -a textbook on U.S. Government when she was just old enough to read (later I gained more insight into what was considered more academically grade appropriate.) We used to play baseball in the backyard and my daughters learned to hit overhand fastballs and how to drop a shoulder to create space before taking a jump shot on the basketball court. Now, as a granddad to four amazing granddots, I want to see an America (and world) making progress toward equity. A recognition that regardless of gender (or other boundaries others use to divide), the challenges of our time demands education that fully unlocks the potential of all people.
Conservatives have plenty of examples of intelligent and courageous women -and they should be celebrated, not cast out of government for a lack of fealty to the Trump/Putin/MAGA criminal organization.
And leaders have a substantial stake in providing role models for younger generations. We need leaders that may debate policies and respectfully disagree within the framework of our system of justice and democracy. We need more Liz Cheney's (I can't believe I said that), Kamala Harris's, Cassidy Hutchinson's, Hillary Clinton's, Fiona Hill's, and Letitia James as role models as to the array of powerful leadership roles that are possible. And yes, we could use many more Heather Cox Richardson's too!
I wholeheartedly agree, George. My daughter got the same Craftsman tools as her brothers. She can handle them as well as they do - as evidenced by her recent repair of the kitchen faucet in her condo in D.C. She's told me tales of male friends who didn't know how to use a crescent wrench - we shared a laugh when one was the subject of a question on Jeopardy, and none of the male contestants could identify it. And my son's daughters are an amazing trio - their mother is a doctor, and a great role model. I'll wager none of them will grow up to be just 'dependents'.
So excellent to hear James. On the mechanical side, my daughters and son are on their own! My dad passed when I was young and aside from knowing the difference between a hammer and a wrench, when it comes to their application I remind people that while I was at Oracle I worked with database tables, but not real tables.
40-plus years in IT, and I know a bit about Oracle, SQL, DB2, et alii. And I wish the database designers (the ones who know how to handle a last name that has a blank in it) would spread their knowledge far and wide. Why is it that the old COBOL technique of scanning a field to the first blank and using the result as the last name is still around? I've been dealing with it since 1964.
James, it could have been far worse if your last name had been Vander*Poel. :)
I found Katie Britt’s speech deeply offensive.
I came of age when abortion was illegal and unmarried women could not get access to birth control. The books by de Beauvoir, Friedan, Steinem, as well as “Our Bodies Ourselves” and Women’s Liberation opened my mind to a different way of life. In 1973, just post Roe, while in high school I volunteered at the People’s Free Clinic. I did pregnancy tests and counseling. That experience propelled me to get an education and to go on to medical school.
The staging, the content, and the delivery of Britt’s response was tone deaf and beyond offensive.
I'll bet Katie is shedding real tears now....her (pre-taped) response fell flat. Calling it a "response" was the first lie followed by more lies.
Me, too. Married at 18 in 1958. Not from love, either.
The Republican response from the kitchen was just so bizarre”. Who thought this was a good idea? Joe nailed it!
A couple of problems, Equality does not mean Dominance. The equal rights amendment (ERA) is not asking for females to be superior to males, just to be equal. Men like trump are so weak the only way for them to feel strong is to dominate others, Tough patooties. Weakness of mind or body has nothing to do with gender. A self satisfied man, is a strong man, he knows his value and has no need to feel superior to anyone. Biden is such a man. He knows his value, he has no need to feel jealousy or to domineer Jill or Kamala. My late husband was that kind of man. He respected me and my strengths because he was sure of his own.
The second thing is abortion. While this subject has more effect on females than males it is only an anatomical difference. Abortion, like an appendectomy, is a medical procedure. As a medical procedure, lawyers and religious zealots have NO endowed rights in deciding when, where, or if the medical procedure is performed. That should involve the physician and patient ONLY.
I was living in Salt Lake City when the Utah legislature voted down the ERA, because, as one legislator, so rationally and logically, put it, “NOBODY’s gonna tell ME I can’t take off my hat to a lady in an elevator!”
It's still a struggle in Utah. the LDS is slowly losing its grip as more people outside that faith move there, but public education is under tremendous pressure to protect kids from science and good books. And home "schooling" is very popular.
A little light from Mormon women for ethic government
A good group.
Yes. They're brave to take it on.
Every American needs to hear President Biden's State Of The Union address, regardless of the language they speak. The State Of The Union sounds just as good in Spanish!
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/03/08/president-bidens-state-of-the-union-in-spanish/
You mean the language that tfg just recently said "No one understands"?
Yup. That one :)
OMG! I saw a clip of what I now realize is Britt's SOTU rebuttal on social media today and I thought it was a parody video! Jess Piper's article completely nails it. It's Stepford Wives meets Spinal Tap except it's a true horror movie.
I love Jess Piper!
Marlene, I felt compelled to look up Jess Piper upon your suggestion. Here’s a link to her Substack on the Republican response and the fundie baby voice. Enlightening! I encourage y’all (sic) to listen to Jess read her Substack aloud.
https://jesspiper.substack.com/p/the-fundie-baby-voice
YES! I’ve seen her in person—she’s the sane voice in the Missouri wilderness of insanity. There are many more like her here, but our gerrymandered legislature has lost its way. Please know there are lots of us here who are actively fighting against the “fundies!”🗽☮️💟
Perhaps Prof Richardson will write this evening about the bond trompy just posted to cover the damages in the E. Jean Carroll case. It was written by Chubb, an insurance company with Russian connections. Seth Abramson, who is on Threads (@seth.abramson) has been sounding the alarm about this being a dire national security issue. He also publishes on Substack (Proof), but his content is only available to paid subscribers (which I'm not.) He's been updating his Stack post all night long and is promising a humdinger of a report sometime this a.m.
He says the Court must refuse to accept the bond on national security grounds, and it must order the taking of his property instead. This will become even more sharply critical when his $450+ million comes due later this month.
A reminder: trompy is to start receiving classified intelligence briefings shortly after the Repub convention this summer. This CANNOT happen, as there is no legal requirement for the US government to provide them to nominees; it's only a recent tradition.
might as well post classified intelligence to the internet
I think it would be quite interesting to supply him with mis-intelligence, and see where it turns up.
Scary stuff.
I suspected we’d hear about a bond posted by trump… he met at Mar-a-Lago with Victor Orban last weekend. How can anyone think he’s not getting some financial help from his buddies!!!!!
Where is the banging-my-head on-the-wall emoji🤯?