Here’s one last collection of news chum this morning: all articles centering our our current political debates:
- The NRA and Antisemitism. Here’s a real interesting article on the underlying Antisemitism of the NRA. It shows how many of the fears and tropes promoted by the organization align with antisemitic fears and tropes. WIthout mentioning Jews by name as a class, the examples that are always cited are Jewish or connected with Judaism. As the piece notes: “This McCarthyite vision of a cancer destroying America, what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” is classic populism. It posits a good, mostly rural, less educated, implicitly white Volk being undermined by a corrupt, mostly urban, over-educated, and foreign set of elites. Sometimes those elites are actual Jews controlling Hollywood, “the media,” banks, or political structures. Other times, they are “structural Jews” – foreigners, Communists, elites, or other outsider-insiders who don’t share the values of “the people.” ” It is yet another example, of implicit racism, often arising from privilege issues (or changes in perceived privilege) that often underlie these shootings. I’ll note I’ve seen this implicit attitude commonly from Conservative folks when they talk about “Globalism”, which is a thinly veiled reference to the notion of a Jewish elite class and the Protocols.
- Mass Shooting Statistics. Here are a collection of statistics involving mass shootings. I invite you to tease out what is common in these shooting, and hence, what might be controlled. While doing that, note what isn’t there: understanding of the motives of the shooters, why they did it, and any common emotional or medical issues. If we don’t know the underlying cause, masking the symptoms solves nothing.
- Donald Trump’s Faith. Here’s an interesting explanation of how Faith is behind Trump. Why are the evangelicals supporting him? What is the doctrine of prosperity and why is it, so to speak, Trumping Christian behavior. How do power dynamics play into the equation.
- Chain Migration Here’s an interesting explanation of why Trump hates chain migration. Again, the real answer boils down to political power, and immigrants often supporting more liberal and progressive causes. The use of “chain migration”, by the way, is pure propaganda. Family reunification is a better term, and it takes much longer to do, results in better citizens, and has much different impacts than are portrayed. By the way, when thinking about “white” vs. “black”, remember that the terms were invented by those supporting slavery and racial superiority beliefs and are relatively modern terms. For most of human civilization, there was no such distinction.
- Net Neutrality. Net neutrality has been in the news, yet most folks don’t know what it means. Burger King provides a great explaination. Think about it this way: How would you like to have to pay extra to get your burger faster, while your neighbor who didn’t pay as much had to wait. This about what this means in separating privileged classes who can pay from the classes who cannot.
