By now everyone who isn’t hiding out in the Texas desert to escape the FEMA camps and child support police because the Texas utilities disaster is the first sign of #BidenHarris taking everyone’s guns, has heard about the Texas utility disaster and Texans living for days on end with no relief in sight without electricity. Electricity supplies just about everything in our homes because electric pumps, so water and natural gas. Also, it is cold enough that water and natural gas have frozen in their pipes. Natural gas has frozen. It’s gone from its gaseous state, to liquid, to solid. That’s how cold it is.
Think about everything that electricity supplies and what having no electricity means for your daily life…
From their earliest ages, Evangelical children are taught:
Their present lives are inconsequential and temporary
That preparation for the next life is what matters
That dying for one’s faith is the ultimate reward
That martyrdom guarantees Christians preferential status in Heaven after they die
Many of the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists were Evangelical Christians — men and women who grew up on a steady diet of sermons, lessons, and books about being willing to die for Jesus. Does it come as any surprise that in a moment of insane passion that these same people were willing to die not only for Jesus, but also for the U.S. Constitution and Donald Trump? Those of us who stand outside of the Evangelical bubble shake our heads, forgetting that we ourselves were once indoctrinated with martyrdom teaching. Many of the readers of this blog might think back to their Evangelical days when dying for Jesus was the ultimate honor. What better way to show fealty to Jesus than to lose one’s head for him?
Most Evangelicals take a literalist approach to the book of Revelation. Evangelicals believe that someday soon Jesus will secretly come in the clouds and snatch them off the face of the earth. Once all the True Christians® are gone, God will pour out his wrath on those left behind. Yet, in a show of mercy, God will save a small number of the people who missed the rapture. These new converts will have to prove their faith by having their heads lopped off.
“While I know it’s difficult for you to see him like this, I want to assure you that in cases like his, it is fully expected that the remains will scream about Black single mothers leeching off the government long past the point when brain activity has ceased,” said Dr. Anaios, addressing family members gathered around the late radio host’s deathbed as she added that they could expect Limbaugh’s decaying corpse to continue blurting out derogatory statements about “feminazis” and undocumented immigrants for days, possibly even weeks.
A while back, “Cowboys for Trump” leader Couy Griffin said on camera, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat”. It was no surprise that Trump re-tweeted the video of the future terrorist insurrectionist.
There’s a lot of hate over there in the Radical Right Party of Trump.
Over here on the left we don’t get praised by presidents for that sort of vile demonization. Instead we prefer to say something like, “The only good Republican is one who votes to impeach or convict Trump.”
We’re thankful for them. Bipartisan majorities of both the House and Senate voted to impeach and convict Trump for his terrorist insurrection on January sixth.
The ten Republican representatives and seven senators with the courage and conscience to vote for impeachment and conviction have faced harsh blowback, ranging from censure by their state Republican Party officials, up to death threats. Nobody gets angry like authoritarian Republicans, when their two primary values of loyalty and conformity are betrayed.
After being censured by the North Carolina GOP, Senator Richard Burr said, “My party’s leadership has chosen loyalty to one man over the core principles of the Republican Party and the founders of our great nation.”
What Epstein did was attempt to publicly shame Biden for using the title, or indeed any title, as his opening line — “Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo: a bit of advice” — makes clear. But especially not “doctor.” “Dr. Jill Biden,” he wrote, “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”
He went on to list her area of expertise (education), her alma mater (the University of Delaware) and even the “unpromising title” of her dissertation in a way that suggested those specifics somehow made her use of the title even more outrageous. (What’s wrong with the University of Delaware, may I ask?) “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child,” Epstein continued, wiping off the board a whole host of actual medical doctors at a time when medical doctors of all kinds have never mattered more.
And that’s just in the first paragraph. The rest of the piece is a preening explanation of why Epstein himself never uses the title even though he received an honorary doctorate at some point from a school he does not name — I think we can assume it was not the University of Delaware — and a teardown of modern doctorates in general, which are, according to Epstein, not as prestigious as they once were.
A Wall street Journal op-ed by Joseph Epstein, later defended by WSJ editorial page editor Paul Gigot, argued that Joe Biden’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, should drop the term “Dr.” from her title.
I have not read the whole article, since it’s behind a paywall. And I am neither endorsing nor rejecting Epstein’s viewpoint. But in a New Jersey Star-Ledger op-ed, Wanda J. Blanchett strenuously rebuked Epstein. That’s OK, except that Blanchett used the op-ed as a springboard to introduce bigotry into the conversation. She lectures us that Epstein is an example of “white male privilege” and that Gigot and The Wall Street Journal allowed this op-ed because the WSJ staff lacks “diversity”–meaning diversity of skin color and gender. While acknowledging that she is not the only one to criticize Epstein, Blanchett admits that “what strikes me most about it is that the unapologetic white male privilege that Mr. Epstein exercised has largely been ignored.”
Well, maybe so-called “white male privilege” is being ignored because the “marginalization, misogyny and oppression” of women in general and women if color in particular she sees reflected in the WSJ op-ed is her own biased imagination. There’s no question that human history, including American history, is rife with genuine marginalization, misogyny and oppression of women and blacks. But accusing someone of being guilty of these injustices without evidence is just as wrong as what the real victims of history endured.
Being a life-long weather buff, I remember the saga of TV/radio weatherman Bob Harris. In 1969, Harris landed a job as the weather forecaster with WCBS-TV in New York by faking a Ph-D on his application. Harris took a few college courses, but he never actually graduated or got a college degree. Harris was essentially a self-taught meteorologist. Nevertheless, Harris spent the next decade introducing himself to his audiences as Dr. Bob Harris. When the truth came to light in 1979, Harris was fired by CBS, as well as The New York Times which also employed his services. Harris left in disgrace and, for a time, his personal life and professional career went into a tailspin. Are we to assume that “black female privilege” was to blame for Harris’s ordeal? Was Harris’s firing proof of marginalization, misandry, and oppression by men in general and men of color in particular? If not, why not? Ridiculous? Sure. But by Blanchett’s loose proof-free standards, anything goes.
I’m not going to get mired into the debate over what criteria qualifies the label “Doctor.” But a disagreement over the criteria shouldn’t justify Blanchett’s accusation. Neither should Epstein’s choice of words. He may be arrogant. He may be disrespectful. But those are not proof of racism or misogyny.
Johnson’s day, however, did not go smoothly. When a number of Republicans voted alongside the Democrats to allow witnesses at the trial, Johnson began yelling at Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on the Senate floor during a temporary break in the debate. Romney, who would eventually vote in favor of convicting the former president, had sided with Democrats on calling witnesses.
Fox News and other media outlets heard Johnson saying “blame you” to Romney. Afterwards, Johnson criticized the media for even asking about it.
“Those are private. Those are private conversations,” Johnson said, according to The Hill. When told he could be heard up in the gallery, Johnson was still upset.
“That’s grotesque you guys are recording us,” Johnson told the media.
Romney responded with humor when asked about the incident. “We were arguing about boxers versus briefs,” he said.
Johnson’s vote was not a surprise. He has refused to blame Trump for any of the January 6 violence and even suggested Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) bore responsibility for the attack.
Johnson was missing for parts of the presentation by the House of Representatives impeachment managers, but he had nothing but praise for Trump’s defense team on Friday.
When you’re privileged, consequence feels like oppression. I am not the first to make that observation, even among white people. But boy, is it ever true! And also, look, I do actually get it — if you’ve gotten away with shit for literally years with little to no consequence, getting called out on it and being judged for it and being penalized because of it, in what appears to you a sudden fashion, feels unfair, in no small part because, well, you did get away with it for years, and no one told you to stop (or if they did, you were able to overlook it).
That thing where certain people are looking through their lives and actions and social media posts, wondering frantically what’s there to trip them up in this new age where suddenly their actions do have consequences? This is not an unfamiliar thought to me! I’ve said before that when people say “Oh, but Scalzi is one of the good ones” my reaction is well, shit, I sure hope that’s true. I have three decades of being an adult and being in the public eye, one way or another, through my writing. That’s a lot of time and many many opportunities to show my ass, and I’ve taken advantage of those opportunities in the past, I’m sad to say.
The thing is, if did turn out I’m not “one of the good guys,” and I face the consequences for that, I am no different than many other people over the years — and still, weirdly, more privileged than most, because facing consequences for what I did is manifestly different than the people who have faced consequences for calling out terrible things other people did, and did to them. Yes! Being “cancelled” for being a shitty human being is an inherently more privileged position than being deprived of work or status for acknowledging someone did a shitty thing to you! And that has happened! I mean, shit, it is happening, right now, elsewhere.
When I hear or read “I have been cancelled” I mostly translate that to “I am facing consequences for something I got away with before and I don’t like it.” When I hear or read “I will not be cancelled,” I mostly translate that to “I refuse to change my behavior, it’s the rest of the world that’s the problem, not me.” Which, you know, okay. You do you. Enjoy Newsmax.
I do not understand the strategy of this, if the goal was to prosecute the Republican Party in the court of popular opinion (because d’uh: the Senate was never going to convict the bastard).
After the fact justification is pouring in from some of my friends on Twitter that now we can focus on Biden’s agenda, which is true, but that’s not the point of the trial. The point was to convince the public that the Republicans are toxic. I hope that was made clear.
