- Republicans, predictably, cut taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor. Because the poor deserve their station, apparently (and the rich fund Republicans);
- Now among Christians empathy is a sin! (Do they actually read their Bibles?);
- Trump is obsessed with “genocide” of whites in South Africa, and displays phony evidence to prove it.
This is what Republicans do. You can count on it every time.
(And it’s not only due to their discredited ‘trickle-down economics’ claims. It’s to their peculiarly un-Christian belief that poor people are that way because they’re bad people, or somehow deserve to be poor, and therefore don’t merit government “welfare.”)
The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait, 22 May 2025: The Largest Upward Transfer of Wealth in American History, subtitled “House Republicans voted to advance a bill that would offer lavish tax cuts for the rich while slashing benefits for the poor.”
House Republicans worked through the night to advance a massive piece of legislation that might, if enacted, carry out the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.
That is not a side effect of the legislation, but its central purpose. The “big, beautiful bill” would pair huge cuts to food assistance and health insurance for low-income Americans with even larger tax cuts for affluent ones.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, warned that the bill’s passage, by a 215–214 margin, would mark the moment the Republicans ensured the loss of their majority in the midterm elections. That may be so. But the Republicans have not pursued this bill for political reasons. They are employing a majority that they suspect is temporary to enact deep changes to the social compact.
(This “social compact” would be what Robert Reich calls the “common good” and Heather Cox Richardson calls the “liberal consensus” of both parties following World War II. It’s what made America great for most of the 20th century.)
The heedlessness of the process is an indication of its underlying fanaticism. The members of the Republican majority are behaving not like traditional conservatives but like revolutionaries who, having seized power, believe they must smash up the old order as quickly as possible before the country recognizes what is happening.
Yet cutting taxes for the wealthy is unpopular, as is cutting Medicaid. They risk losing the midterms. So what’s going on? Chait concludes:
Congressional Republicans are willing to endanger their hold on power to enact policy changes they believe in. And what they believe—what has been the party’s core moral foundation for decades—is that the government takes too much from the rich, and gives too much to the poor.
Here’s an idea: compare other successful, prosperous nations.
\\\
This is related. Do these people read their own Bibles?
Vox, Aja Romano, 22 May 2025: Christian nationalists decided empathy is a sin. Now it’s gone mainstream., subtitled “What wouldn’t Jesus do?”
It’s a provocative idea: that empathy — that is, putting yourself in another person’s proverbial shoes, and feeling what they feel — is a sin.
The Bible contains repeated invocations from Jesus to show deep empathy and compassion for others, including complete strangers. He’s very clear on this point. Moreover, Christianity is built around a fundamental act of empathy so radical — Jesus dying for our sins — that it’s difficult to spin as harmful.
Yet as stunning as it may sound, “empathy is a sin” is a claim that’s been growing in recent years across the Christian right. It was first articulated six years ago by controversial pastor and theologian Joe Rigney, now author of the recently published book, The Sin of Empathy, which has drawn plenty of debate among religious commentators.
In this construction, empathy is a cudgel that progressives and liberals use to berate and/or guilt-trip Christians into showing empathy to the “wrong” people.
The piece goes on, with invocations by those opposed to empathy of Satan and justification of slavery as “a genuine affection between the races…” I am not inclined to read this any more closely.
My take is that conservatives follow the OT, and play lip service to Jesus and the NT. They fall back on tribal rules over compassion for others. Thus posting the Ten Commandments in schools, but not anything Jesus said. And they don’t realize what they’re revealing by doing this.
\\\
Gosh, it seems that those stories about the genocide of whites in South Africa aren’t true!
PolitiFact, Amy Sherman, 20 May 2025: Trump’s Afrikaner refugee policy based on unfounded claims about land, white farmer ‘genocide’
\
But in a meeting with the South African president in the Oval Office yesterday, Trump doubled down, displaying phony evidence.
The Week, Morning Report, 22 May 2025: Trump lectures South Africa president on ‘white genocide’
“Death of people, death, death, death,” Trump said as he flipped through his papers, one of which was a “months-old blog post featuring a photo from the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Barron’s said. Video of what he said were “burial sites” of “over 1,000” white South African farmers turned out to be crosses set up in 2020 by activists as symbols of farmers killed over the years.
Did it not occur to Trump to wonder why victims of genocides would have buried alongside a road?? No; he’s a dimwit.
\
Very similar picture above this article.
Washington Post, Monica Hesse, 22 May 2025: Unpacking Trump’s obsession with ‘dead White farmers’, subtitled “In which the president invents a genocide.”
“Dead White farmers.”
If you watched the White House meeting between President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, you already know what these words refer to, and if you didn’t, well, I’m frankly not sure that any amount of column inches can fully explain them.
With some description about the meeting. Then:
I mean, is there a mass execution involving White farmers in South Africa? Ramaphosa [the president], who is Black, suggested that Trump hear from other members of his delegation, including Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, who is White. Steenhuisen explained that … You know what? We don’t even need to get into what he explained. Every South African who spoke in that meeting said a variation of the same thing: There is no genocide. There is only a country struggling with an incredibly tragic past informing a sometimes-volatile present in which, yes, attacks on farms happen, but the victims of that violence are both White and Black. Or, as PolitiFact put it succinctly in a fact-check: “White farmers have been murdered in South Africa. But those murders account for less than 1% of more than 27,000 annual murders nationwide.” Though killing for any reason is tragic, PolitiFact noted that most farm-related murders were due to robberies and not racially motivated.
It goes on. By insisting mainstream journalism wasn’t covering this “genocide” he sowed more distrust in journalism… among the credulous MAGA cultists who believe everything he says. And perhaps that was part of the point. The article concludes:
So if you came to this column because you Googled “dead White farmers,” here is your mainstream media coverage of the issue. I’m so sorry.
