Co-author of new Freedom House report on the decline of democracy talks about how the U.S. fell so far so fast
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At a rally on Saturday in Florence, South Carolina, former President Donald Trump condemned Critical Race Theory (CRT), wrongly portraying the academic discipline as a social ill that is harming the nation.
Trump attacked the theory, which is usually reserved for advanced college classes, by falsely claiming that it is indoctrinating K-12 schoolchildren across the country with socialist ideals. He also said that ensuring that Critical Race Theory remains out of classrooms is a “matter of national survival.”
“We have no choice” but to ban CRT lessons, Trump insisted during the rally. “The fate of any nation ultimately depends on the willingness of its citizens to lay down and they must do this — lay down their very lives to defend their country.”
“If we allow the Marxists and commies and socialists to teach our children to hate America, there will be no one left to defend our flag or to protect our great country or its freedom,” Trump added.
Aside from the obvious red-baiting, Trump’s incendiary words were reminiscent of his call to action on January 6, 2021, which led to hundreds of his loyalists breaching the U.S. Capitol building to interrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump calls on his supporters to “lay down their very lives” in the fight against critical race theory pic.twitter.com/ZtbOizUDTa
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2022
Far from being a devious plot to indoctrinate children, Critical Race Theory has been described by academics as a “diverse work of a small group of scholars who write about the shortcomings of conventional civil rights approaches to understanding and transforming racial power in American society.” In short, CRT discusses how legal frameworks have failed to adequately address institutional racism.
But Republican fearmongering on the topic — likely as a means of fueling a culture war to distract from people’s actual material conditions — has resulted in demands from conservative parents and far-right political groups for Critical Race Theory to be banned from K-12 classrooms.
Many Republicans have pushed anti-CRT policies in response to these demands, passing laws that purportedly ban CRT but which actually restrict broader studies of racism in U.S. history, denying teachers the right to teach indisputable historical facts. Parents and right-wing political groups in favor of banning CRT have often cited their worry that lessons about racism will make white students feel “discomfort.”
“This isn’t about education, it’s about racism… Black feelings are being disregarded while white feelings are being catered to,” Zack Linly wrote for The Root last May.
Given that 3 in 10 voters in the U.S. don’t actually know what Critical Race Theory is, experts are already predicting that Republicans will push the issue in the 2022 midterm elections, hoping to capitalize on the prejudices of their base. Trump’s comments over the weekend indicate that he will also push the matter in this year’s races, and may make the issue central to his 2024 campaign should he decide to run for president again.
Trump is using America’s democratic process to destroy democracy from within.
In January 2018, the 45th president hit a new low in a closed-door meeting: “Why…
There are two Republican centers of gravity coming together in and around Washington D.C., and on spec, they couldn’t seem to be more different. On one side are the truckers currently engirding the D.C. metro area in an attempt to create some chrome-heeled Woodstock dystopia where everyone took the brown acid despite repeated warnings. Back in town, the ultra-conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is organizing its annual World Forum confab, which will be held this weekend down at posh Sea Island, Georgia. The event will feature a constellation of Republican leaders and deep-pocket conservative megadonors, all looking to rub their collective woes together regarding the state of political play. They would have the upcoming midterms by the throat, they fret, but for that headless orange chicken down in Florida who keeps running and running because it refuses to believe it’s already dead.
AEI and its upcoming forum have positioned themselves as vividly Not Trump. The former president was pointedly not invited to the affair, and among the key speakers will be Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has finally made his distaste for Trump very public. Also speaking is Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who made Trump’s all-time shit list for doing his job by certifying President Biden’s win in that state. Several other Republicans of like mind are expected to speak, and the affair may serve to formalize the expanding rift between the old-line party and its Trump-obsessed base.
Take a drive out of town and find that base in its truck convoy, however, and pumping up Trump appeared to be the last thing on most everyone’s mind. Historian Terry Bouton explored the trucker encampment at the Hagerstown Speedway, and was struck by how little politics was discussed. “Lots of Trump gear, but no one was talking about him,” he noted. “Not one person mentioned Russia or Ukraine all day.”
So what do they want? The whole trucker protest convoy idea began in Canada (funded with U.S. donations) with a fight against vaccine mandates at the border, but as mandates are rapidly going the way of the dodo, convoy organizers threw wide the doors for any and all far-right ultra-nationalist white power super-conspiracy advocates to join in, the fringe of the fringe of the fringe as it were, and the scene got weird at warp speed. Weird, and more than a little ominous.
“This was a movement-recruiting event,” reported Bouton. “It was designed to draw people in with a family-friendly, carnival atmosphere. Free food & drinks. Booths, activities, a prayer tent. Revving engines, honking horns, bright lights. ‘Sign My Truck’ with sharpies. T-shirt and flag vendors. There was a clear attempt to appear more mainstream. The focus was a big-tent ideology of ‘Freedom.’ Although started by anti-vaxxers, it was re-framed as ‘protecting our liberties’ in ways that allowed for diverse beliefs. Christian Nationalism mixed with QAnon spiritualism.”
“Christian Nationalism mixed with QAnon spiritualism” is what passes for “diverse beliefs” on the trucker circuit these days, I guess. No such wildness over at AEI, of course. Having a CEO who once worked for Democrats is about as far outside the lines as those folks tend to go. These are serious people about serious business.
“Christian Nationalism mixed with QAnon spiritualism” is what passes for “diverse beliefs” on the trucker circuit these days, I guess.
AEI, you may recall, is the birth mother of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), another right-wing think tank that most every George W. Bush-era neo-conservative called home at one point or another roundabout the turn of the century. Their blueprint for the future, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” envisioned a far more militarily muscular U.S. bringing “Pax Americana” to the Middle East. All they needed was a catalyst, “a new Pearl Harbor” as they put it, and on September 11, 2001, they got exactly what they needed.
In short, this — all this, every bit of this, this ash pile we occupy, this careening juggernaut, this doomed and double-damned moment, right now — is the future PNAC and AEI set up for us 20 years ago. Soon, they’ll be down at Sea Island taking in the ocean air and plotting their next big play… and that right there is the THUD in the middle of the sentence: What play can they plan for with Trump bashing around, and with the GOP base seemingly in his grasp?
To be sure, certain high-profile GOP figures are slipping away from Trump. Mike Pence, who can easily be mistaken for a glass of low-fat milk if the prescription on your glasses is out of date, smacked Trump around at a GOP fundraiser the other day. That’s like getting attacked by a footrest.
Mitt Romney, who spends most of his time doing an excellent “Sam the Eagle from the Muppet Show” imitation, channeled some undistilled Don Rickles in his recent takedown of Trump’s most ardent allies within the party. Trump’s only response has been incoherent yelling about the fact that his precious new social media platform works almost as well as two tin cans tied together with string (and yes, these are a few of my favorite things). When Pence and Romney get bold, it’s hats over the windmill.
The Not Trumpers have their work cut out for them, because it isn’t just QAnon spiritualists flooding his corner. As recently as a week ago, a large majority of all Republicans want him to run again in 2024, preferring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the nominee only if Trump stays home. Many of those still believe the big lie that Trump has been weaving for more than a year now. Much of the GOP has become like one of those bouncy rooms that gets caught in the wind and goes flying over the horizon with the kids still inside; McConnell and his ilk will need some long ropes to haul them back down to Earth.
Right now, the GOP is like a loaf of bread split down the middle. One half is stale and moldy, the other hot and filled to bursting with grubs and mealworms. The two have existed together, and even thrived, for a very long and damaging time.
The party is still mightily dangerous; even in its separated state, it is an ultimate menace. If it is repaired, the rest of us will lose badly, perhaps mortally. This bears watching.
Truckers’ failure to breach D.C. and Trump’s fake Twitter exposes the sad emptiness of the modern right
Keep punching!
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” —Dick The Butcher, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2
Guys, Axios has a stunning bit up this morning (emphasis mine):
A dark money group with ties to Democratic Party heavyweights will spend millions this year to expose and try to disbar more than 100 lawyers who worked on Donald Trump’s post-election lawsuits, people involved with the effort tell Axios.
Why it matters: The 65 Project plans to begin filing complaints this week and will air ads in battleground states. It hopes to deter right-wing legal talent from signing on to any future GOP efforts to overturn elections — including the midterms or 2024.
The group has three categories of targets, according to plans reviewed by Axios.
During last Tuesday’s “Flashpoint” program, which airs on megachurch televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s “Victory Channel” network, unabashed Christian nationalist and self-proclaimed “futurist” Lance Wallnau gave the audience a crash course in Seven Mountains Dominionism, a radical theology that advocates having right-wing Christians control all aspects of society.
Followers of Seven Mountains theology believe that they are to “do whatever is necessary” to take control of the seven main “mountains” that shape our culture—education, government, media, business, arts and entertainment, family, and religion—in order to implement the will of God throughout the nation and the world.
Wallnau, a Trump-loving evangelist who had access to the White House during the Trump administration, said that the United States won’t be saved just by converting more people to Christianity because all the “mountains” in society are currently controlled by “roughly 3 to 4 percent of the population [who] are radical leftist elites.”
“They neutralize the church because they’re also in religion,” Wallnau said. “They changed the definition of marriage, so they’ve taken over family. They’ve totally taken over academia, so the education institutions are teaching leftist theology or leftist ideology and silencing conservatives. They’re controlling government right now. They’ve taken over legacy media, Hollywood, entertainment and the arts. And now they’ve got Wall Street.”
The only way to save the nation, Wallnau declared, is for those mountains to be seized by Christians—or, more specifically, Wallnau’s kind of Christians
“Thirty percent of the population is Christian,” Wallnau said. “How is it the 30 percent are dominated by 3 percent? They have a worldview for bringing their kingdom here now. We’re told to pray, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ but we put it off to the Second Coming. We put it off. They are organized and we are not. So, God says, ‘I’m going to send you a revival,’ and we’re praying for revival, and as we pray for revival, we think, ‘Well, watch what happens: That 30 will become 50 percent.’ It doesn’t matter because the guards in the prison control what goes on with the inmates. You can have 75 percent, and if they control those high places, you still are in suppression.”
“So, it’s not just in having more [Christians],” he concluded. “We certainly want souls in eternity. That’s the most important thing. … [But] this isn’t either/or; it’s both/and. We want souls, and we want nations. Jesus was promised nations for his inheritance, not just churches!”
The post ‘We Want Nations’: Lance Wallnau Preaches Seven Mountains Dominionism appeared first on Right Wing Watch.
If it wasn’t already blatantly apparent that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is not “calling for…
The Final Days and the End Times are big on the evangelical circuit. Different denominations claim dibs on actually predicting the final days.
Earlier today, Pat Robertson told his 700 Club audience that if you read Ezekiel, it tells you that Putin is being compelled by God to link up with Turkey and then attack Israel.
Robertson spent almost five minutes showing ancient maps overlapping current ones to make his case.
“Do I think Putin is out of his mind. Yes, maybe so, but at the same time he is being compelled by God. He went into Ukraine, but that was not his goal. His goal was to move against Israel, ultimately…,” Robertson said.
Robertson defended Putin again by quoting the Bible, “God said, I am going to put hooks in your jaws. I’m gonna draw you into the battle whether you like it or not. He’s being compelled.”
So in Pat’s mind Trump was called by God to strengthen Putin, praise him, then weaken NATO as much as possible to make it easier for Putin to attack Israel.
That’s like seven dimensional chess, right there.