It’s been a couple days since President Biden’s State of the Union address — in which he spoke forcefully about many things, but avoided topics that would strain attention spans, e.g. climate change — and I’ve been fascinated since then by the Republican response and comments about it. I remember watching that response, from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, and thinking, no the folks who want to take America back in time are *you* guys, the Republicans. I even said it out loud.
Other observers noticed this too.
MSNBC, Steve Benen, 2 Mar 2022: It’s not the White House that wants to send us ‘back in time’
Subtitled: Despite Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ rhetoric, there is a partisan agenda that would send the United States “back in time,” but it doesn’t belong to Democrats.
Last night’s Republican response from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn’t nearly that dramatic, though part of the GOP governor’s message stood out as notable.
“Like you, I just watched the president’s address. I listened as the governor of our state, as a mom and grandmother of 11, who’s worried our country is on the wrong track. We’re now one year into his presidency, and instead of moving America forward, it feels like President Biden and his party have sent us back in time — to the late 70s and early 80s.”
As this short article describes, she’s alluding to inflation in the 70s and aggression from the USSR in the 80. But — my comment — these are things not under the president’s, or his party’s, control. Whereas…
But even more important is the underlying irony of the Republican response to Biden’s address — because there is an agenda that would send the United States “back in time,” but it’s not the White House’s.
On reproductive rights, one of the Republican Party’s principal goals is to turn back the clock to before 1973.
On voting rights, GOP officials have invested unnerving energy to impose the kind of voting restrictions unseen in the United States since the Jim Crow era.
Looking over Sen. Rick Scott’s agenda, a picture emerges of a party that celebrates a bygone era in which officials didn’t much care about the climate crisis, saw no need for affirmative action, and largely failed to acknowledge the existence of transgender people.
Even the idea of an “America First” agenda, embraced by too much of the contemporary GOP, has antecedents in 1941, not 2021.
Whereas these certainly are under the control of the Republican party, the one which would move us back in time, to a regressive past, in which white male straight Christians were privileged above all others.
Progressive politics is about the expansion of options, allowing everyone to live their lives as they choose, without government control or bullying. Regressive politics is about closing down options that don’t conform to traditional views; conservatives claim to know what is right and true, and would impose those views on all others.
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Another POV. This one is about the GOP’s shifting stance about Russia and Putin (whom Trump adores, still, apparently).
Washington Post, Greg Sargent, 2 March 2022: Opinion: Kim Reynolds shows the true face of the GOP — but not the one she intended.
Just after Donald Trump was impeached for withholding military aid from Ukraine to strongarm its president into doing his corrupt political bidding, Kim Reynolds took note of how badly the whole saga reflected on our nation.
“I think it was a sad day for history in America,” the Republican governor of Iowa told the Des Moines Register in 2019.
You’ll be startled to hear that the occasion for Reynolds’s sadness was not Trump’s extortion of a vulnerable ally pleading for help against Russian aggression. It was his impeachment, which she termed “ridiculous.”
When Reynolds delivered the GOP response to President Biden’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, she bent over backward to declare her party’s “solidarity” with Ukraine, as well as its outrage against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “tyranny.”
Politicians, but conservatives especially it seems to me, count on voters’ short attention spans and memories. (George Orwell: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.)
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And this.
MSNBC, Anthea Butler, 1 March 2022: Why white evangelical Christians are Putin’s biggest American fan base, subtitled, “Evangelicals are a long way from how they historically thought about Russia and communism.”
But whether or not American evangelicals try to distance themselves from Putin in this current news cycle, they have long gravitated toward the Russian president for his hard-line stance against Muslims and, most importantly, his anti-LGBTQ agenda. Putin’s rhetoric about the nation, the family and the church (in this instance, the Russian Orthodox Church), has captivated many and spurred them to embrace similar kinds of political action here in America. Consider all of the anti-gay and anti-transgender laws that are cropping up in states like Texas and Florida. These laws are part of a constellation of family-focused conservative religious ideals also embraced by Putin and other Eastern European leaders who have clung to a hard line against any so-called “anti-family” ideology.
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And then this, a philosophical essay about the religious (Christian) view of the world, that sets the recent quotidian events in context.
OnlySky, Captain Cassidy, 1 March 2022: Why evangelical youth ministers can’t ‘innovate’, subtitled, “Innovation is the sworn enemy of evangelicalism.”
Her point is relatively narrow, but the deeper issue is summarized part way down.
Why Christian authoritarians, in particular, hate change
Authoritarians in general don’t like change. And evangelicals are authoritarians to their fingertips. They fit every checklist I’ve ever seen for authoritarianism. Bob Altemeyer, who wrote the actual book on authoritarianism, might well have been describing evangelicals themselves. So as you might expect, Christian authoritarians have a lot of additional baggage around the idea of change.
Christians worship an unchanging god. After all, change means moving from one level of perfection to another. If their god is already completely perfect, then that means any change would be to lessen perfection. So change is simply not something their god can do.
…
When one’s god is changeless, then change itself becomes something to dread. It’s like an admission of weakness–of having been wrong. Even worse, it could indicate having perfection, but then losing some of it through error.
This makes a kind of sense, and explains why conservatives hate change, not just because they’re psychologically disposed against discomfort, fear of the other, and so on, all the things that come along with change. But because they truly believe that their god, in antiquity, created a perfect world, which some humans, in their perversity (why did their god allow that?), keep trying to change. Sacrilege! And authoritarianism is the most suitable way to ensure that troubling change doesn’t happen. Thus some conservatives, who support Putin because he’s anti-gay, and supposedly supports Christians (which I doubt he does, any more than Trump actually does).
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Meanwhile, the real threat hanging over all of us is this.
NYT, 28 Feb 2022: Time Is Running Out to Avert a Harrowing Future, Climate Panel Warns, subtitled, “The impacts of global warming are appearing faster than expected, according to a major new scientific report. It could soon become much harder to cope.”
Next up for a book summary posting is David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Published two years ago; read in January 2022.
LQCs: Back in Time, to a Perfect Past
It’s been a couple days since President Biden’s State of the Union address — in which he spoke forcefully about many things, but avoided topics that would strain attention spans, e.g. climate change — and I’ve been fascinated since then by the Republican response and comments about it. I remember watching that response, from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, and thinking, no the folks who want to take America back in time are *you* guys, the Republicans. I even said it out loud.
Other observers noticed this too.
MSNBC, Steve Benen, 2 Mar 2022: It’s not the White House that wants to send us ‘back in time’
Subtitled: Despite Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ rhetoric, there is a partisan agenda that would send the United States “back in time,” but it doesn’t belong to Democrats.
As this short article describes, she’s alluding to inflation in the 70s and aggression from the USSR in the 80. But — my comment — these are things not under the president’s, or his party’s, control. Whereas…
Whereas these certainly are under the control of the Republican party, the one which would move us back in time, to a regressive past, in which white male straight Christians were privileged above all others.
Progressive politics is about the expansion of options, allowing everyone to live their lives as they choose, without government control or bullying. Regressive politics is about closing down options that don’t conform to traditional views; conservatives claim to know what is right and true, and would impose those views on all others.
\\
Another POV. This one is about the GOP’s shifting stance about Russia and Putin (whom Trump adores, still, apparently).
Washington Post, Greg Sargent, 2 March 2022: Opinion: Kim Reynolds shows the true face of the GOP — but not the one she intended.
Politicians, but conservatives especially it seems to me, count on voters’ short attention spans and memories. (George Orwell: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.)
\\
And this.
MSNBC, Anthea Butler, 1 March 2022: Why white evangelical Christians are Putin’s biggest American fan base, subtitled, “Evangelicals are a long way from how they historically thought about Russia and communism.”
\\
And then this, a philosophical essay about the religious (Christian) view of the world, that sets the recent quotidian events in context.
OnlySky, Captain Cassidy, 1 March 2022: Why evangelical youth ministers can’t ‘innovate’, subtitled, “Innovation is the sworn enemy of evangelicalism.”
Her point is relatively narrow, but the deeper issue is summarized part way down.
This makes a kind of sense, and explains why conservatives hate change, not just because they’re psychologically disposed against discomfort, fear of the other, and so on, all the things that come along with change. But because they truly believe that their god, in antiquity, created a perfect world, which some humans, in their perversity (why did their god allow that?), keep trying to change. Sacrilege! And authoritarianism is the most suitable way to ensure that troubling change doesn’t happen. Thus some conservatives, who support Putin because he’s anti-gay, and supposedly supports Christians (which I doubt he does, any more than Trump actually does).
\\
Meanwhile, the real threat hanging over all of us is this.
NYT, 28 Feb 2022: Time Is Running Out to Avert a Harrowing Future, Climate Panel Warns, subtitled, “The impacts of global warming are appearing faster than expected, according to a major new scientific report. It could soon become much harder to cope.”
Next up for a book summary posting is David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Published two years ago; read in January 2022.