Did you vote for Trump because he said he was pro-life? Are you pro-life because you think that sex shouldn't be divorced from reproduction? Do you think a man who has cheated on or has attempted to cheat on all of his wives thinks so? Are you pro-life because you think men should take responsibility... Continue Reading →
How Do We Learn Who is Bad?
Content Warning: Images of bodies injured and killed in state-sponsored violence. The images and stories out of Standing Rock in the last 48 hours are horrifying. Peaceful protesters trapped by water cannons in below-freezing temperatures, rubber bullets shot at close range. The risk to human life is great. And police and security forces are eager to... Continue Reading →
White Evangelical Trump Voters are Not Hypocrites.
They’ve always been on the side of controlling other people. For months, observers of American religion have been trying to make sense of the support Donald Trump was given by white evangelical Christians. We made excuses for them as they went for Trump over their conservative Christian brethren, Cruz and Carson, in the primary, saying... Continue Reading →
GodSmacks: Delivering God’s Hate in Love
I'm lucky to be in San Antonio for the American Academy of Religion this week. I'll be presenting "GodSmacks: Delivering God's Hate in Love" on Saturday at 4. The presentation focuses on Westboro Baptist Church's interpretation of personal and national suffering as a sign of God's anger--"GodSmacks" [warning, this link takes you to a website... Continue Reading →
Help Me Out on My Birthday
It's my birthday! And while I usually actually kind of dread it (which I suspect might be kind of typical for academics, with our delayed entry into regular and significant social security contributions), this year I'm focusing my energy on something better: supporting the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Why? Because Trump-inspired hate crimes are... Continue Reading →
Your Empathy for Trump Voters Isn’t Just Misplaced—It’s Immoral.
CW: Anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, and anti-Latin@ hate crimes Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, we got so many news articles about why Trump was winning with poor, rural, white folks, people who had been abandoned by Washington, by liberals, and by the general march of progress, that parodies of the genre even popped up. These pieces kept... Continue Reading →
Why Hate Wins (with Musical Interludes)
CW, just for my dear mother: Your grandson swears in this one. We’d stayed up late to watch the election results with some friends, though not late enough to see the final tally of electoral votes. I’d checked on the results throughout the night, awake with worry about the progress of the vote, then awake... Continue Reading →
Winners and Losers in Any Good Thing’s Electoral Mapping Contest
Well, we all know who lost on November 8. Decency, civility, minorities, the idea that bullies don't win... Also, the New York Times, Paul Krugman, and virtually all the pollsters. Who won? Facebook, which did a better job of telling us about ourselves than just about anyone else, and Allan Lichtman, who, I hope, has... Continue Reading →
Election 2016: Everything Worked Like It Was Supposed To
It was Clinton’s thumb on the scale during the primary. When faced by a real challenge—one to her political philosophy, not just her political odds—the DNC and Clinton silenced Sanders, effectively ignoring the fact that the public wanted change, not experience. It was Clinton’s lackluster efforts to understand or appeal to voters' economic concerns. It was... Continue Reading →