"Trump’s true sin is not hypocrisy but theocracy. Christian nationalism is an extremist ideology at odds with the fundamental pluralism of American life. It poses a threat not just to secular people but also to the vast majority of religious people whose faith does not entail using the state to impose theology."
"The [Alabama] opinion is a staggering attack on every facet of reproductive health, including the freedom of people experiencing infertility who use assisted reproductive technologies. It represents the culmination of a movement to enshrine into law the unscientific and purely religious claim that life begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg, supplanting secular laws with supposedly 'biblical' beliefs."
"It would be a mistake to view the Alabama decision as a fluke or aberration, one perhaps unique to that state alone. The reality is that it’s simply a blueprint, a template for theocratic policies eagerly sought by the Christian right and now well along in the planning stages, if only Trump gets another term in office."
We can all be Alabama sooner than many of us realize. And when that happens, a big question I have is whether the "liberal" commentators of the corporate media who got us to that point, fatuously assuming that they and their families would never be forced to live in a nation now become one big Alabama, will finally admit their responsibility for ripping up democracy and establishing autocracy?
Many of the "liberal" both-sidesising folks at New York Times and Washington Post write from within their protected bubbles, from inside their elite enclaves, never imagining that the hell they are defending in places like Alabama may one day be imposed on them and their families.
But as Dartagnan rightly observes, those seeking the transformation of the entire nation into a theocracy do not and never did intend to stop with Alabama.
"Taking the penchant of U.S. Supreme Court Justices like Sam Alito to search in the far reaches of English history for commentators to justify importing medieval views into our modern-day laws, [Alabama chief justice] Parker seized upon 17th Century commentator Petrus Van Mastricht [in his IVF ruling]."
"Parker concludes Van Mastricht’s views are consistent with those of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas before moving on to quote Genesis (the King James version) for the proposition that 'Man's creation in God's image is the basis of the general prohibition on the intentional taking of human life.' He notes that taking a life without justification would incur 'the wrath of a holy God' ... Quite a heady brew of authority for a secular court."
"The decision includes the word 'Bible' three times. 'God,' 'godliness,' or a similar word appears 41 times. The word 'sacred,' five times. None of this is accidental. During a recent interview that you can read all about here, Chief Justice Parker said he is in favor of the 'Seven Mountain Mandate,' a theological approach that calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values on all aspects of American life."
"This week brought two chilling reminders that, despite America’s constitutional commitment to secular government, Christian nationalism is thriving in the Trump era. From the Alabama Supreme Court’s stunningly theocratic ruling on the legal status of embryos to the MAGA-aligned groups designing Donald Trump’s Christian nationalist second term," (continued in /2)
"After entering a cramped toilet with a #Hamas banner above it, each participant enters a small room after a corridor closed off by a grille. They hear the original sounds of the massacre of October 7, as well as the screams of victims, gunfire and the impact of bombing raids that shake the infrastructure."
It isn't just the Baltimore Sun that we should be worried about. Amazon just struck a deal with The Wonder Project to produce more "faith-based" programming. Make no mistake: the media companies have worked the numbers and they are planning for a second Trump term and theocratic fascism. America, as we know it, could be a very different and dangerous place in one year's time if we do not fight this.
If #history has taught us anything, states (or governments ) based on #religion are a VERY BAD IDEA. no matter who they are. All religions may have good and bad parts but in #government the bad/evil parts prevail. An American #Christian#theocracy will be more likely to put nonbelievers' heads on pikes than do the #Jesus thing and house and feed everyone. Indeed has anyone ever heard anyone from the so-called Christian right ever propose doing anything remotely Jesus like.
"IN A KEYNOTE speech to a gathering of Christian nationalist lawmakers Tuesday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson compared himself to Moses, leading the GOP conference — and America — through the parted waters of the Red Sea."
Haaretz Editorial: "The freedom from arbitrary arrest marks a line between real, freedom-seeking democracies and 'pseudo democracies.' The police under Ben Gvir’s shadow cannot be relied to give freedom of expression the importance it warrants"
"While the media hides from the Israeli public the extent of the horrors in the Strip, excludes voices opposing the war from the studios and mobilizes to raise "public morale" and support the war, the police persecute the opposition, which is trying to fulfill its exact role: to oppose the government's policy and offer it alternatives that do not involve dead bodies"
Amira Hass wrote on possible explanations for Israeli indifference in the face of destruction and cruelty in Gaza:
[Sorry for the poor translation from Hebrew]
⸺
The Gaza strip is being erased and gone. Of her families. Of her people. Of her children, their smiles and laughter. What allows most residents of the Jewish state to support this systematic and mass erasing? to see in it an appropriate answer to the massacre carried out by the Hamushi Hamas and their companions, to the military humiliation suffered by Israel and to the indescribable suffering of the kidnapped, the injured, the survivors, their families and the families of the hundreds of dead?
The IDF is erasing the Gaza cities, streets, countryside, fields and surprising mistakes, the alleys of the refugee camps there. Her beach promenade. He is erasing her cultural institutions and the universities, her archaeological sites. Hamas's military infrastructure is also being destroyed, thousands of its militants are killed. But the organization itself and its officials will recover and prosper, in every community and place where the degradation of Gaza will continue to occur.
What allows most Jews in Israel not to be shocked by the fact that in about two months we have killed about 7,000 children (temporary data) with the enhanced bombs that the United States provided us? What allows the majority of Jews not to suffocate in the horror of a compression of 1.8 or 1.9 million people in an area of 120 km, which is also constantly exploded? and not to cry out for the reports of the hunger and thirst of 2.2 million Palestinian citizens and the diseases that spread due to the density and lack of water and hospitals? What enables the erasure and mass slaughter of children, with our active and passive participation?
Here are some answers:
• Decades of education on the knees of absolute #belief in the exclusive ability of a military power to ensure the existence and prosperity of the country, while denying rights from the Palestinian people.
• Deleting all "context" — which incitement has made it a synonym for supporting Hamas and justifying its horrors.
• The #monopoly we took, the Jews, on the concept of suffering caused by the cruelty of the other.
• The choice not to know and not to watch the unbearable images that show Palestinian children trembling and gray-faced from dust, torn from the Russian walls. And you don't know who is more lucky: them or those who died.
• Every mass slaughter or tiffin-tiffin that we commit on Palestinians in years, every looting, humiliation, abuse, goes through thousands of media, psychological and academic filters. The effect is the self conviction that their situation is better than that of Somalis or Syrians, so let them not complain.
• Remembering every massacre Palestinians have committed on us. You have forgotten every massacre we have committed.
• The decades-old practice of living in peace and well five minutes away from our backyard, where israel (that is us) destroys for Palestinians and builds for Jews, flows water to Jews and exploits Palestinians. And all the rest is written in the reports "The Focus for the Protection of the Individual", "Betzelem" and "Adalea".
• Decades-old ignorance of warnings of "moderate" Palestinians, about who robbed the lands and freedom and violence of the settlers with the help of the state — and inspired by its violence — reduce the horizons of their children and generate desperation and belief only in the power of weapons and revenge.
• The essential perception of the world: Palestinians are terrorists because they are like that. Born with the genes of hating us. A direct sequel to Hamelnitsky and Titus.
• The self-conviction that we are a democracy even though for more than 56 years we have controlled millions of people without civil rights, in their land and economy.
• The deep racial disrespect of Palestinians, that we developed in order to cognitively and psychologically justify their trampling under our feet.
• Denial of Palestinian history and the roots of Palestinian existence between the river and the sea.
• Elimination of Gaza is possible because since 1994 we have deliberately missed the opportunity — offered to us by the Palestinians — to get rid of our characteristics as an occupying and settling entity and to give them a state of 22% of the territory west of Jordan. I wrote in July 2021: "In the light of the talk about apartheid is fading and eclipsing the dynamic, active and dangerous dimension that is Jewish-ass colonialism." This is an ideology in which the Palestinians are 'giving up', it is the actions that have shaped this ideology, which are inspired and nourished by it. In short: it is possible and desirable that only the Palestinians are bounded. Their existence here is conditional, by grace and not merit, depends on our will and our kindness, it's a question of time. The 'indulgence' ideology is a poison that spreads especially when the colonial process is in full swing. Settler colonialism is in a constant movement of land acquisition, eradicating historical boundaries, redesigning, and expulsion of the original inhabitants".
I then referred to the Palestinian "luxuries" in the West Bank and warned against the intentions for Gresham. I thought that the treatment of the people of Gaza as "giving up" resulted in the separation from their boredom and their families beyond the Erez checkpoint. But here, now the "indulgence" is manifested in their deportation ("willingly", in the shadow of the bombs) and in the physical erasure of the inhabitants and plans for the renewal of Jewish settlement in the Strip. Woe to them and woe to us.
⸺ https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/shabahit/2023-12-16/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018c-738a-d798-adac-f7af51de0000@israel@terrorism
Kareen Abdul-Jabbar notes that House Speaker Mike Johnson has explicitly stated that he rejects the first amendment's stipulatiion that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Instead, he stated in 2016, he wants a "biblical republic."
With him and men like him interpreting the bible for the rest of us….
"The speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, has delivered his verdict on the separation of church and state: it is a 'misnomer'.
The second-in-line to the presidency informed Americans on Tuesday that their time-honored conception of one of the founding principles of the country was a 'misunderstanding'."