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New Doc, ‘People You May Know,’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data | Religion Dispatches

As a journalist taking assignments in war-torn areas, London-based American expat Charles Kriel developed an interest in big data and its use in disinformation campaigns. This eventually led to his appointment as special advisor on fake news to the House of Commons’ DCMS (Digital, Culture, Media, Sport) select committee as it investigated the roles Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and Russia played in influencing the Brexit referendum.

Disappointment with Britain’s lack of political will to pursue needed regulation of tech companies, Kriel and film director Katharina Gellein Viken, determined to bring what they’d learned about big data manipulation, microtargeting, and tech companies’ undermining of civil society to the broader public.

The result is the new documentary People You May Know (go to trailer), starring Kriel and directed by Viken, which spotlights the role played by churches, many of which use big data for microtargeted outreach, in the information manipulation ecosystem that continues to erode democracy in the US, the UK, and elsewhere. Distributed in the United States by Sundance and available on Prime Video, this must-watch documentary couldn’t be more timely for an election cycle marred by turbulence, uncertainty about such fundamental matters as peaceful transfer of power, and a right-wing Christian power grab.

On October 13, Charles and Katharina sat down (over Zoom) with RD’s Chrissy Stroop for an interview about their creative process, their film’s reception, and the serious threat that big data manipulation represents to democracy.

This interview, which will be presented in two parts, has been edited for length and clarity.

Part 1

CS: So, your film covers a complicated topic with a lot of moving parts that can be tricky to follow. What would be your thirty-second elevator pitch summary of what you want viewers to walk away from People You May Know with?

CK: What’s important to understand is that the Koch brothers commissioned a religious charity, Cofi, and a religious software company, Gloo, to work with Cambridge Analytica to create a platform where churches could specifically target people who are suffering from mental illness or grief in order to recruit them into the churches, and then to weaponize them for the politics of the far Right.

CS: So tell me more about how you came to produce this specific film with this specific focus.

KGV: Well, so, Charles and I are quite recent partners, but we’ve known each other about ten years. And I knew that Charles had done work for civil society and as a journalist in war zones and that kind of thing, and he told me early on that he was interested in Cambridge Analytica, and I watched him do a couple of talks on the subject. And then he wrote a paper for NATO about the potential influence of the Brexit referendum by Cambridge Analytica.

He was then called to the DCMS select committee in the UK, who had been the first to form a committee to really look at the social media companies and what they were doing, and this was back when everyone was at the level of, well isn’t Facebook a nice thing that connects people? And then Charles came into the room and said they should be broken up under antitrust laws, and have you heard about Cambridge Analytica and five-factor personality profiling? Everybody’s jaw dropped, and they invited him to be special advisor the next day. And I said that we have to document this journey and this process.

I’d done a celebrity piece before, and I think initially I just wanted to do something serious; I wanted to look into fake news. And then Carole Cadwalladr’s story [co-written by Emma Graham-Harrison] with whistleblower Chris Wylie broke and the headlines just rolled across the world. I followed the committee for a year. They went to America, the first committee to ever do so, to interview Google, Twitter, Facebook. And as these tech companies lied, and they lied some more, it became a very interesting story. Then it turned out that there was very little will in the UK to pursue any of the regulation that the committee recommended for microtargeting and those issues.

So we kind of wondered, what’s the conclusion of this film? Where does it go? Because Charles had placed himself at the middle of this story, people kept coming to him with evidence. One of them, Brent Allpress, who you’ve seen in the film, just said, listen, I’ve got this connection between Cambridge Analytica and church. When we looked into it, we said, well, we’ve just had a baby, but we have to go on the road and look into this story. So we put our three-month-old baby in the back of a car and drove across America. That’s how it all came about.

CS: What a remarkable story! Charles, what is the origin of your interest in big data and personality profiling?

CK: So, probably about eight or nine years ago, someone asked me if I would go into a conflict zone and work with independent local journalists, and help them try to get digital. In post-Soviet oligarchic, authoritarian states, getting digital was one of the best ways that these journalists could get their message out. So, this offer came up, I was very excited about it, and that’s how I found myself in Nargorno-Karabakh.

I loved doing that work, and I did more and more of that work, in worse and worse places. I’ve worked everywhere from Mongolia and Tajikistan to Iraqi Kurdistan. In situations like that, you find yourself doing lots of work that was almost like counter-radicalization; it was definitely counter-disinformation. That’s what you’re helping the journalists with. So I became really informed on that kind of work, and every dark alley that I went down in these war zones or frozen conflict zones, I would find Twitter, Google, and Facebook.

You’ve signed yourself in [to the church’s app], you’ve signed in your children, you’ve shared your vulnerabilities…but it’s not just mental health, it’s vulnerabilities in general.

CS: Which is fascinating. Troll farms became a big topic in 2016. Were you picking up on anything like that, the organized use of trolls, before 2016?

CK: I was picking up on the methodologies already in place; they just hadn’t been scaled in the way that troll farms scaled things. The methodologies of disinformation and radicalization, and now election manipulation, are all incredibly similar. The difference is to what scale you operate. When the troll farms really kicked in, that was around the time of the annexation of Crimea [in March of 2014].

With social media, what you’re able to do, and what Cambridge Analytica has done, is they do data harvesting, and from those data harvests, they’re able to develop really detailed profiles of individuals, and then they can microtarget those individuals. They can do so to scale. So it’s not just, I need to find somebody in a community who’s vulnerable, and I’m going to target them specifically, and try to flip them and then they’ll be able to influence their friends and so on.

It’s all of that, but I’m going to do a million of them. The power of that is incredible. And then when you dig into what we focus on in the film, that Cambridge Analytica and Gloo were using church networks to identify people who were mentally ill and target them, it’s a really evil system.

CS: So let’s talk more about how churches use microtargeting and the findings you explore in People You May Know.

KGV: When I approached people about this initially in the churches, I talked about the modern outreach programs, and how churches are growing digitally in general. And it’s interesting, because churches have traditionally been slow on the uptake with social media and getting digital. Of course, outreach and evangelism is part of the church’s DNA, and that’s fine. And so you start to use social media for that, you’ve got live broadcasts on Facebook, and it gets started kind of slowly at first.

But then, what we found that really scared me is that a lot of smaller churches have adopted a complete digital interface. And this has happened so fast, because you want sign-in, you want to protect people’s kids, and you want to be able to track people and donations and all these things. And the churches themselves very often tell me, oh no, we don’t do that, we hire this software company, they’re very nice, and they do all of our stuff.

CS: So they’re buying that system from companies like Gloo, is that right?

KGV: Yeah, and there’s plenty of them. There’s Church Community Builder—there’s a lot of them that we ran into. And even if the church itself goes, well our privacy policy is of course we don’t share any data with anybody, the software company doesn’t protect the data at all, or they might be very bad at it. So if you go into the app—and they very often will have downloadable apps—you might find that your data is free to share with anybody. And of course you’ve signed yourself in, you’ve signed in your children, you’ve shared your vulnerabilities. Charles mentioned mental health, but it’s not just mental health, it’s vulnerabilities in general.

After all, as a European, it’s interesting to watch how churches in the States, they fill every need. You have preschool, you have a couple’s night, you have childcare, you have all this stuff that’s free and really hard to say ‘no’ to.

CS: Sure. I like the way you emphasized that in the film, because I think it’s a really important American reality that many Europeans probably don’t grasp. Just, the extent to which it’s difficult to get yourself plugged into a socially supportive community, which you need all the more because we hardly have a social safety net in America for those who aren’t religious.

KGV: Absolutely. Down here in Alabama, church daycare is the thing to do.

CS: And of course there’s also Vacation Bible School every summer. From where I sit now, as a kid who grew up in right-wing culture-warring churches, I do consider the evangelism aspect of these programs predatory. But I also see that there aren’t a lot of alternatives for most people.

CK: You can see that this happens in other functions of life too. Joining a church in a new town is the way to get quickly integrated into the community. It’s comparable to the role of the village pub in the UK. There’s a story that just broke in the past week. We have a track-and-trace system—it’s not working very well, but a track-and-trace system in Britain for COVID. And you go into a pub, and you have to download an app. You put your details in.

And that’s fine, but the pub didn’t build the app, a third party built the app. And we’re now hearing people say that pubs and restaurants have been selling this data to data brokers. But I’ll bet you it’s not the pubs and restaurants selling the data. What the pub and restaurant owners are doing is scrambling for a quick solution, thinking, we’re not coders. What the hell do we do? So they find an app, and they download the app, made by a company similar to Gloo, and they’re just harvesting data.

KGV: And it’s easy, and also in terms of churches of course, social media is cheap. Traditional outreach might have been much more time-consuming and expensive, whereas now using data you can easily find people who might be open to an invitation.

Look for Part 2 tomorrow, in which Kriel and Viken will discuss issues related to the coming election, including the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative Christian organization leveraging these powerful tools to change the country. — eds

PYMK Trailer:

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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3 Warning Signs Politics Is Becoming Your Religion

In his classic work The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis writes from the perspective of a senior demon giving instructions to a less-experienced demon on how to get someone to reject their Christian faith. Screwtape, the senior demon, advises Wormwood, his nephew and the younger demon, on how to get “the patient” to turn from God. John Stonestreet’s recent and insightful article reminded me of one particular tactic that Screwtape advocates.

Let [your patient] begin by treating … Patriotism or Pacifism as part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause,’ in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism.”

Stonestreet highlights the pattern:

“Note the progression: first, politics is part of religion. Then, politics is the most important part of religion. Then, religion becomes part of politics. It’s genius.”

The divergent political sides were pacifism or patriotism – to avoid the war or engage the war. And the way Wormwood could shipwreck the Christian faith of “the patient” was not to get the patient to believe one side or the other, but to get “the patient” to make one side or the other his whole religion.

Clearly as Christians we do not want our politics to become our religion. We want to engage politically because we care for our country, because we pray for our leaders, and because we know the policies that are set impact people and the places we live and love. But we don’t want politics to become our dominant belief system, the thing that captures our hearts and drives us. So, how can we recognize the drift in our own hearts? How do we know if politics has become our religion or is becoming our religion? Here are three warning signs:

1. Politics is what you are most passionate to speak about.

When religious leaders told Peter and John that they had to stop speaking about Jesus and His resurrection, they replied, “we can’t help but speak about the things we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Peter and John were in a politically divisive time. The Jewish people were under Roman rule, and there were differing parties and approaches among the Jewish people. But those arguments and perspectives was not what compelled Peter and John. What they could not contain was their excitement for Jesus. Jesus is who they could not keep quiet about. Whatever you love the most you cannot help but speaking about. If “we can’t help but speak about the things we have seen and heard” describes your politics, then politics is your religion. If you find yourself in conversations with friends and neighbors and you are most passionate about repeating what you heard on the news or read online, then politics is becoming your religion. If you are more eager to speak about politics than Jesus, politics is your religion.

2. Your enemy is the other political viewpoint / side.

The Scripture reminds us that our real enemy is Satan and the cosmic powers of darkness. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12). If your enemy is the flesh and blood of the other political party or the other political viewpoint, then politics is becoming your religion. A common enemy holds a powerful uniting factor, but as believers in Christ our common enemy is our Satan, sin, and shame. If we make flesh and blood the ultimate enemy, our hearts have drifted. If we frame other believers in Christ who view things differently than we do, the flesh and blood of our own spiritual family, as our enemy then we have made politics are religion.

3. You live as if there is an enduring city here.

If you believe or behave like you have an enduring city or kingdom here, you have made politics your religion. You do not have an enduring city here. The Scripture reminds us, “for we do not have an enduring city here; instead, we seek the one to come” (Hebrews 13:14). When we forget that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, we have made politics our religion.

Sadly, our hearts can drift from God towards something less than God. My heart has and will in the future. I am prone to wander. And politics being so dominant in our culture provides an attractive pull. Here is how you know you have drifted: If you are more passionate to speak about politics than Jesus, if you treat your real enemy as the “other side,” and if you live as if this world is your home then politics has become your religion. You have been nursed away from loving Jesus with all your heart, soul, and mind.

Good news: You can repent and come back to the only One who can quench the longings of your soul, the One who has an eternal city prepared for you.

This article originally appeared here.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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Watchdog Group Releases Detailed Report of Violations of Freedom of Religion in North Korea

A non-profit charitable organization called Korea Future Initiative released a nearly 100 page report detailing violations of religious freedom in North Korea. Korea Future Initiative equips governments and international organizations with human rights information to bring positive change in North Korea. The violations of freedom of religion in North Korea included in the report span from 1990 to 2019. Korea Future Initiative says they communicate their work to the target audience of decision-makers who are responsible for creating or applying policies in North Korea.

Report on Religion in North Korea

The report titled Persecuting Faith: Documenting religious freedom violations in North Korea Volume I was written from 117 interviews of survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators conducted over seven months. The report says, “In total, 273 victims of religious freedom violations were identified by investigators. Of the 273 documented victims, 215 had adhered to Christianity and 56 had adhered to shamanism. Their ages ranged from 3-years old to over 80-years old. Women and girls accounted for nearly 60 percent of documented victims.”

Persecuted victims faced criminal charges of religious practice, religious activities in China, possessing religious items, contact with religious persons, attending places of worship, and sharing religious beliefs.

The actions that resulted from those charges included arbitrary arrest, arbitrary detention, arbitrary imprisonment, arbitrary interrogation, refoulement, punishment of family members, torture and sustained physical assault, sexual violence, execution, and public trials and resident exposure meetings.

The report claims it it is just factual findings, not a legal analysis, to inform the international community and to lend support in the hopes it may detour future violations of freedom of religion in North Korea, possibly leading to some accountability.

Some of the key findings as listed within the report are the following:

-The report includes documented information from 117 interviews with exiled North Koreans that were conducted over a period of seven months in 2019-2020.

–The investigation documented 273 victims of religious freedom violations.

–Of the 273 identified victims, 215 had adhered to Christianity and 56 had adhered to shamanism. Two victims had adhered to other religions or beliefs.

–The investigation identified 54 individual perpetrators of religious freedom violations.

–The names of 34 of these perpetrators were retained alongside additional identifying information, such as rank, location, physical description, and associated organization.

–Documented organizations associated with religious freedom violations included Ministry of State Security; Ministry of People’s Security; Ministry of Public Security (China); and Border Security Command.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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A Mighty and Glorious Revival of Religion

It was in the darkest of days that God spoke the most glorious of words: “The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44). Here Martyn Lloyd-Jones comments on the encouragement this should bring us today:

King Nebuchadnezzar has had that dream which Daniel alone was able to recall and interpret. Now the precise time when all this happened was this: The children of Israel, because of their sins, had been conquered by Babylon and carried away into captivity. Jerusalem had been destroyed, the Temple was in ruins, and all that Israel had prided herself on, in a sense, lay there in desolate and hopeless condition. The land was derelict and the Israelites captives, indeed slaves, under the domination of Nebuchadnezzar. It was one of the lowest points in the history of Israel. They were the people of God, the people to whom God had made his promises, but here they were in this miserable and seemingly hopeless condition. But it was just there and then, in such a situation, that this tremendous thing happened and this message was given to them, full of hope and bright future, full of a certainty which nothing could remove and destroy.

Here is something thoroughly typical of God’s method, something that runs through the Bible as a recurring theme, even at the very beginning of Genesis. Watch those men on whom God has set his affections; constantly he allows them to get into some hopeless position. There they are feeling utterly disconsolate and their enemies are full of a sense of triumph and of rejoicing. But suddenly God comes in and the whole situation is changed.

Now that has always been God’s method, and it is an essential part of the message of the Christian faith, illustrated most perfectly of all in the coming of the Son of God into the world. When the Lord Jesus was born into this world, once more the situation was completely hopeless. Since the prophet Malachi there had been no word from God, as it were; for 400 long years there had been no true prophet in Israel. God seemed to be silent. The children of Israel seemed to be abandoned, and their country conquered by Rome. It was into that kind of situation, when it was least expected, that God did the greatest thing of all—he sent his only begotten Son into the world to rescue and redeem men.

That is the great thing that stands out in the whole history of the Christian Church; and that is why this message is of such comfort and strength to Christian people at the present time. How often the Christian Church has seemed to be at the very end of its tether—lifeless, helpless and hopeless. Her enemies had become loud, proud and arrogant, convinced that Christianity was finished; the doors of the churches seemed about to be shut for the last time. A bleak midwinter had settled upon the Church, and then suddenly and quite unexpectedly God sent a mighty and glorious revival. That message stands out on the very surface, and it is quite clear in this prophecy. The prophecy was fulfilled literally and it has continued to be fulfilled in principle ever since. Therefore as we look at ourselves today and see the Christian church as but a dwindling remnant in this sinful, arrogant world, and many begin to feel hopeless and anxious about the future—here is the message of God. It has been God’s custom throughout the centuries to come and visit his people when they least expect it. Who knows but that round the corner there may be waiting for us a mighty and glorious revival of religion! Let us take hold of this great principle.

(Excerpted from A Light Has Dawned, a collection of articles drawn from the archives of Christianity Today.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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Trump’s Lawsuit Amounts to ‘a Tweet With a Filing Fee,’ But That’s Not the Whole Strategy | Religion Dispatches

These contradictory demands lie at the heart of Trump’s legal strategy to steal the 2020 election.

You can see it in the opposing chant of Trump supporters in The Recount’s remarkable side-by-side video of small MAGA mobs in Arizona and Michigan; rats piped to their nearest polling place by the dog whistles of Trump himself.

Trump supporters: "Stop the vote!"

Also Trump supporters: "Count that vote!"#election2020 pic.twitter.com/ctyIop97gf

— The Recount (@therecount) November 5, 2020

The Trump campaign and the Republican party have filed new lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania joining the lawsuits filed before Election Day in nearly every swing state. Trump also wants a recount in Wisconsin. (Under Wisconsin law, parties asking for a recount when the margin of victory is greater than 0.25% have to pay for the recount. Jill Stein paid $3.5 million for the 2016 recount. Trump has 45 days to pay if the recount doesn’t change the outcome, but given Trump’s penchant for stiffing his contractors, Wisconsin would be wise to ask for payment up front.)

The legal arguments seem to be imbued with the spirit of Trumpism: they’re loud, hyperbolic, and don’t make a whole lot of sense. They’re nakedly partisan, as one would expect in an election lawsuit, but devoid of a legal or factual basis, not something one would expect to see in any court of law. In one federal court hearing on Wednesday, a lesser case involving less than 100 ballots, the judge repeatedly asked the Republican Party attorneys to explain the actual problem: “I don’t understand how the integrity of the election was affected. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Professor Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles pierced the bloated Republican legal strategy when speaking to Propublica: “A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee.”

The Republican Party’s legal problem is that there is no electoral problem. Voter fraud is not a problem, though voter suppression most certainly is. Counting millions of ballots takes time. Counting is not fraud. Across the country, children in their virtual public schools learned about voting and the election and can easily grasp this simple truth: count every vote. That’s something every American who values democracy can get behind.

The real world isn’t a reality show. While media outlets will call races, states don’t certify the results of their elections for weeks—not until every vote’s been counted. And, of course, the delays are largely because state legislatures, usually when Republican controlled, passed laws that don’t allow mail-in ballots to be counted until Election Day.

But Trump’s—and America’s—reality show mindset is partially why we’re here. We’re seeing the counts change in real time. Margins disappearing or growing with each refresh. In a tweet appropriately flagged as containing misleading information, Trump wrote, “They are working hard to make up 500,000 vote advantage in Pennsylvania disappear—ASAP. Likewise, Michigan and others!”

While we all think and speak as if one candidate or another has an advantage while the votes are being counted, that’s not true. The votes are cast. The outcome is set. We just have to count it up. If states didn’t publish any numbers until the count was complete, the outcome would be exactly the same but without the horserace narrative and a President subverting the will of the people.

Once the polls close on Election Day, nothing can change the outcome. Except litigation. It’s tempting to think that Trump only wants to freeze the numbers at a time when it might be favorable to him. That’s part of his rationale, but he’s also trying to gum up the system. The plan is to start litigating these cases now, but figure out the best arguments as the cases progress in the precincts where they might do the most damage to the math. Start fighting everywhere now, but wait and see where he needs to chip away at the numbers.

With a normal candidate in a normal election, this would be less of a concern and is one reason concessions are about much more than being a good sport and bringing the country together. In other words, just like the counting, with these lawsuits we need to wait and see. So far, the ineptitude of Trump’s legal team and the emptiness of his arguments have not impressed the courts.

Trump’s closest spiritual advisor, Paula White, had a little bit better grasp of the math than his attorneys did. You can’t fight math, at least not with the law, so White decided to ask for some supernatural assistance. Amid the speaking in tongues, White claimed that “angels have been dispatched from Africa right now” and that “angelic reinforcement” was coming, not from the divine plane, but from South Africa and South America:

Presidential spiritual adviser Paula White is currently leading an impassioned prayer service in an effort to secure Trump's reelection. pic.twitter.com/hCSRh84d6g

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) November 5, 2020

The angels of Africa could not be reached for comment.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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Commentary: Mask-wearing fanaticism sure looks a lot like a religion

A prominent Christian pastor tweeted the following this week: “Two seemingly contradictory currents mark our society 1. There is a denunciation of all claims of absolute truth 2. Yet there is also a fanaticism in which one position or group is absolutely right, nothing is ambiguous, and divergent views should be destroyed."

I feel ya, brother. But nothing contradictory is in fact going on at all. This is the logical destination of attempting to usurp the ultimate authority in all the universe. It is biblically defined double-mindedness perfected. "My truth" can't help but become "kneel before Zod."

As a consequence, the Beatitudes are indeed replaced with the Fanaticisms. They are ever-changing, non-eternal, entirely arbitrary power grabs that seek not to instill humility and healing but elevate lies to the level of ultimate justice.

One of the latest Fanaticisms is the wearing of masks. We are waaaaay past science on this one and firmly in the realm of voodoo now. However, it's a voodoo that only gets more obnoxiously mandatory the more it is proven to be a total fraud.

We've had an Ohio mask mandate in effect for at least 112 days. A Maryland mask mandate for at least 106 days. A New York mask mandate for at least 128 days. Yet all of their governors are currently threatening more shutdowns because of a new coronavirus "surge."

There is absolutely nowhere masks have been shown in real time to be effective at slowing Covid after months of trying. No state. No country. Nowhere. And the science published by the CDC itself even said that would be the case as a public health policy for respiratory infections before Covid came along. But now masks have been necromanced into relevance and false righteousness many times over. We've incredulously been told by the witch doctor atop the CDC they are better than a vaccine.

Well, they are a vaccine alright, but not really meant to kill the virus. They are meant to kill us. Our freedom. Our dignity. Our sense of reality itself. The more they don't actually work but we continue to agree to wear them, that becomes all the more clear. We are telling the universe that our fear is our greatest certainty and the flat earth is our greatest comfort.

No wonder a dementia patient may be on on the verge of becoming president. He is the mask personified. A twice-failed presidential candidate with a nearly 50-year-long track record in public “service" of never making a damn thing better, so why don't we try him again but only harder this time! What could possibly go wrong?

It is failure incarnate. It is failure sacramentalized. It is failure fundamentalized. The Fanaticisms are taking on all the markings of a religion because that is their dark destiny. The increasingly preposterous will become more and more enviable and inevitable as our governing idols.

That should sound to you like the reverse of the miracle of creation, where impossible grace steps into the void and compels all that is good. If God created everything 'ex nihilo,' then the terrible math of the Fanaticisms must use and abuse everything to anoint absolutely nothing at all. The abyss is the destination.

It is the most pathetic grift of all time. And it is working. So sayeth the mask.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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It’s Time for Democrats to Read the Bible Verses on the Wall and Stop Courting White Evangelicals | Religion Dispatches

I’ve always been fond of the “Charlie Brown with the football” series from Peanuts. The premise is simple: Lucy is holding a football and she wants Charlie to kick it. Charlie is reluctant because he knows Lucy’s track record: she will yank the football away at the last minute. Still, every time Lucy convinces Charlie that this time will be different. But every time he runs toward the ball Lucy pulls it away sending Charlie flying into the air and landing flat on his back.

It’s the perfect analogy for the Democratic Party’s attempts to try and win back the white evangelical vote over the last four presidential elections. Every election cycle, social media is filled with discussions about how this year will be the one when white evangelicals will shift back (at least in part) toward the Democratic party. And every single election they’re let down.

In 2008, in a landslide victory for Senator Barack Obama over Senator John McCain, 78% of white evangelicals cast their ballot for the Republican.

In 2016, after the nomination of a twice-divorced businessman who had affairs with adult film stars, swore on national television, and declared bankruptcy multiple times, 78% of white evangelicals cast their ballot for Donald Trump.

And, even after Donald Trump essentially ended a program that allowed refugees fleeing religious persecution to legally enter the United States, denigrated soldiers who had fought and died for our country, and bungled the response to Covid-19 in almost every possible way, 78% of white evangelicals voted for Trump again, if all the exit polls are to be believed.

To think that any confluence of events would lead to only 70% of white evangelicals to vote for the Republican in 2024 is pure folly.

But, why is this the case? Despite the dozens of advocacy groups that have sprung up over the last few years to try and “peel off” white evangelicals, why have they, by and large, failed to move the needle in any significant way away from the GOP?

The answer is simply that this group of voters are Republicans first, white people second, and evangelicals third. As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s simply not true to think of white evangelicals as an uneasy type of Republican—one that’s not sold on the GOP’s economic policy but votes with them because of gay marriage and abortion. The reality is this: the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals are Republicans, through and through.

In fact, if you take a careful look at polling data a conclusion becomes clear: white evangelical Republicans don’t care about abortion as much as everyone thinks they do. If Donald Trump’s job approval is the key metric, the most important factor for white evangelicals isn’t social issues, it’s Trump’s signature issue: immigration. There’s only one religious group in the United States where at least a third of adherents support family separation on the border, and that’s white evangelicals.

It may have been the case two decades ago that larger shares of white evangelicals could have been convinced to back a moderate Democrat in an election. But religious sorting is real and most evangelicals who didn’t align with the Republicans have left the pews. Those that are left are more religiously and politically conservative than ever before.

All of which doesn’t mean that the Democratic Party ought to stop its appeal to religious voters entirely, just that they need to switch targets. For instance, while Mainline Protestants have historically backed Republicans, they did shift toward Joe Biden by several percentage points in 2020.

But there’s an even bigger voting bloc out there that often gets overlooked. Many of those who were raised evangelical but left the church (for a variety of reasons) have become religiously unaffiliated—often called the “nones.” Their shift to the left in 2020 may be the story of this election cycle given the fact that three in ten Americans declare no religious affiliation.

However, it’s hard to escape the feeling that, no matter how much evidence can be mustered over the next four years, there will be lots of Democrats lying on their backs, having the football ripped away at the last possible moment by white evangelicals who just cannot stomach the thought of pulling the lever for anyone attached to the Democratic party. Nevertheless, my advice to the party’s strategists: ignore Lucy and her football.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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There's No Good Evidence that Psychedelics Can Change Your Politics or Religion - Scientific American

Psychedelics are psychoactive substances that historically have attracted exaggerations of benefits as well as alarmism. As with most subjects that bring out extreme views, the scientific data provide a more grounded perspective. Sometimes, the scientific data require further clarification. We are responding to a thought-provoking opinion piece by Eddie Jacobs published on October 11, 2020 entitled “What if a Pill Can Change Your Politics or Religious Beliefs? Some could mistakenly take away from the piece an unrealistic impression that is not supported by the scientific data. We worry that this may lead to alarmist reactions.

Jacobs’ piece raises ethical questions regarding emerging research suggesting psychedelics may be effective psychiatric treatments. Specifically, the concern is that psychedelic therapy could shift patients’ political beliefs “in one direction along the political spectrum” or “change [their] religious beliefs.” We agree that as with any emerging medical treatment, psychedelic therapy prompts important ethical considerations; however, we believe that the possibility implied in the headline––that psychedelics prompt substantial change in political and religious beliefs or affiliations––is not supported by the current scientific data.

To be clear, Jacobs did not mention affiliations, but we believe readers might reasonably take away this interpretation. We suggest that there is no evidence that people change political or religious affiliations from psychedelic treatments, and current evidence for other kinds of belief changes is weak. Below, we address the three major studies mentioned in the original article.

The concern about political beliefs largely rests on evidence from a small pilot study of psilocybin for treating depression. The study showed an average reduction on a measure of “authoritarianism” from baseline to one week after psilocybin in seven people. Authoritarianism, as it is operationalized here using five questions that were reduced from the original version of the scale, likely does not fit neatly into a particular political party. Many people, for example, would likely disagree with the scale item “The law should always be obeyed, even if a particular law is wrong,” regardless of political affiliation.

It is also not clear that a reduction in authoritarianism (or increase in libertarianism or social/moral liberalism, the other end of the scale spectrum) holds a relation to present political affiliations. There are abundant historical examples of both left-wing and right-wing authoritarian governments (for example, communism and fascism, respectively). Moreover, in a country such as the United States, the major left-and right-leaning parties have generally had no universal leaning toward either individual freedom or state control. The position taken along this continuum is highly dependent on the subject (for example, business regulation, abortion, gun control, social constraints on sexual behavior). In fact, the developers of the scale in question preferred not to use the term “liberal” in reference to the scale because that term had a political meaning in the United States that went beyond what the scale measures.

Beyond the theoretical issues with mapping authoritarianism onto present political parties, there are also statistical concerns with this study. The finding about reduced authoritarianism barely met the threshold of significance –– and with a one-tailed t-test. A one-tailed test provides a lower standard for achieving significance compared to the much more common two-tailed test. It is unclear if the reduction would have been significant with a two-tailed test. In any case, the effect did not last. At the 7–12 month follow-up the decrease was not significant, even according to the lower standards of the one-tailed test.

Jacobs’ piece alluded to another study about political beliefs, a 1971 study exploring the association between LSD increased liberalism. This study compared three groups: 1) people who had taken LSD as a medical treatment, 2) people who had taken LSD on their own, and 3) people who had not used LSD. Only those who had taken LSD on their own indicated more support for policies like “individual freedom” and “foreign policy liberalism” compared to those who had not taken LSD.

It is possible that those who were willing to take LSD outside of medical treatment may have already been more influenced by the liberal hippie movement that encouraged these beliefs at that time (Jacobs notes that this is correlational and not causal data). Importantly, no differences were found in this study between the political beliefs of those who received LSD under medical treatment compared to those who did not take LSD. Therefore, this study actually suggests that medical psychedelic treatments do not alter political beliefs!

In terms of religious beliefs, Jacobs’ piece points to a concern about belief change on the basis of a survey study by our group at Johns Hopkins. This survey specifically recruited individuals who had a “God encounter experience” after taking a psychedelic outside of a research context. Before having such an experience during their psychedelic session, 21 percent retrospectively identified as atheist, whereas only 8 percent did after the experience. This decrease was accompanied by a decrease in identification with major religions, alongside increases in spiritual types of self-identification.

Crucially though, this study was in no way representative of the general public, as only people who reported encountering “God” or a similar phenomenon were included in the study. This was a very specific sample of people reporting a special kind of experience or interpretation of experience. The study cannot provide an estimate of population rates. Belief changes of a religious type would, of course, be massively inflated in this sample, and it is therefore not appropriate to draw generalized conclusions about belief change from psychedelic treatments based on these data.

Lastly, the piece cites the observation that under clinical conditions psychedelics increase, on average, a personality trait called openness to experience, a finding first reported by our group at Johns Hopkins and now replicated by others. Unlike the political and religious effects, this phenomenon appears more robust. However, while psychedelics might be unique in their ability to prompt a change in a personality trait with a short-term clinical procedure, they are not the only clinical intervention that can cause changes in personality traits. A large meta-analysis of over 200 published studies examining the effect of psychiatric treatments on personality traits found that personality was indeed changed.

Regardless of whether the intervention was a psychotherapy or a medication such as a traditional antidepressant drug, these changes reached a moderate effect size for increases in the trait of emotional stability, similar to the effect size observed for the increase in personality openness to experience from psilocybin. Lastly, the correlation between openness to experience and liberal political views is small, accounting for only around 2 percent of the relationship between the two variables. In other words, the pathway from psychedelics through openness to experience to political belief change is, for all practical purposes, negligible.

While data from studies are always paramount, we note that in the first author’s experience interacting with hundreds of psilocybin study participants, he does not recall any spontaneous claims of changed political or religious affiliation in either direction.

Our primary point here is that that existing data do not suggest that meaningful changes in religious or political beliefs are likely from psychedelic therapy––and certainly not changes in political or religious affiliation. There is some evidence that psychedelic therapy can prompt changes in one’s sense of spirituality, but this term is so broadly and variously defined that it does not even necessarily relate to supernatural beliefs, and it can refer to things like one’s values or sense of connection.

As with many interventions, there are cases in which individuals change in their values, attitudes and/or beliefs after a psychedelic experience. The frequency and magnitude of these occurrences are empirical questions for future research to address, but the current data simply do not support the idea that psychedelic treatments result in meaningful changes in political or religious beliefs or affiliation.

Psychedelic medicine, like any new treatment, no doubt raises important and challenging ethical issues. Consent procedures in psychedelic trials by our research group (and by other groups to our knowledge) already warn that personality and attitude changes are a possibility. Of course, this should also be done with patients if psychedelics are approved as medicine. Psychedelic experiences are sometimes held as among the most meaningful in one’s life, and may be interpreted to have philosophical or spiritual import, likely depending on the orientation of the participant. Such effects present the opportunity for ethical pitfalls by clinicians.

These and other challenges will call for important contributions from ethicists. However, we must also be careful to keep any given concern in perspective and convey realistic risks to the public and patients. From this perspective, we believe, based on the data, that major shifts in political or religious orientation or beliefs are not among the likely risks associated with this treatment. As psychedelic researchers, we believe it is important to remain vigilant against excesses in enthusiasm as well as alarmism.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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DOE Report: Acellus Online Curriculum Violated Religion, Discrimination Policies

The controversial distance learning program used by hundreds of Hawaii public schools this year discriminated against protected classes based on race, national origin, gender, religion, ethnicity and socioeconomic status, according to a Hawaii Department of Education review of Acellus Learning Accelerator.

The 140-page report, drafted last month but just posted to the DOE website on Monday, reveals the program violates the state Board of Education’s anti-harassment, anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policy against students by employees.

“Viewed through the lens of BOE Policy 305-10 … the identified discriminatory content rises to the level of being severe, pervasive and persistent,” the report says.

Many Hawaii public schools used Acellus for remote learning during the pandemic.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Additionally, the report found Acellus program content promotes religion in the public schools in violation of a BOE policy that prohibits religion in the schools.

The DOE had released a five-page condensed report on Acellus in mid-October but the comprehensive report released this week offers a much fuller and detailed picture of the extent to which Acellus has featured harmful material to scores of public school students in Hawaii.

Last month, the Board of Education voted to discontinue Acellus by the end of the school year. While some DOE schools have independently chosen to yank the online curriculum from their menu of distance learning tools, other schools are choosing to continue with it so as to prevent further disruption to kids who are distance learning.

Acellus, a long-time credit recovery option in Hawaii schools that expanded in use as a main online learning program this year during the pandemic, has reached 74,405 students across the state, based on the number of student licenses purchased, according to the DOE.

The total cost to the state education department for these licenses was $2.8 million since April.

But once reports from teachers and parents surfaced in late August of lessons featuring racist, sexist and age-inappropriate material, the scrutiny on Acellus only mounted, resulting in its formal condemnation by the Board of Education last month.

The full report offers the first indication of violations against protected classes in Hawaii.

The earlier summary report said the 56 members of a DOE content review team scored the program with low marks, saying it featured repetitive tasks with “low cognitive demand.” That summary report also said there was “evidence of conflict with BOE policies addressing academic program, standards, curriculum, discrimination and religion” but did not elaborate.

In the report posted Monday, it’s clear the problems reach far deeper. The review says if a Hawaii teacher were found to be teaching the same material as Acellus in class, “it would be grounds for an investigation” by the DOE’s Civil Rights Compliance Branch and “would likely result in disciplinary action.”

The full report also provides additional examples of religious material featured in online Acellus lessons, including references to “Jesus of Nazareth,” “Jesus: His Parables and Teaching,” the “Exodus,” “Jesus of Nazareth” and “the Crucifixion of Jesus.”

“These units were not contained in a course about religion, nor were these individuals/events treated in an historical context, as is customary in a public school curriculum,” the review states.

The review cites a middle school test question that asks, “Jesus performed miracles (such as laying his hands on the sick),” with the only possible answers as true or false.

“It is the view of this examiner that Acellus presents a curriculum that promotes Christian values and religious material in the public school,” the report states.

It also goes on to say that a review of the social studies curriculum in Acellus “is nothing short of alarming from an equity perspective.”

DOE curriculum specialists were given a limited window of time in May to vet Acellus and only evaluated a handful of courses across the K-12 online curriculum.

This time, a larger team of specialists, including equity representatives from the civil rights compliance office, completed 84 reviews covering over 50 Acellus courses during a longer time period, from Sept. 22 to Oct. 2.

In a statement to Civil Beat Monday, BOE chairwoman Catherine Payne said it’s evident from the specialists’ review that Acellus is “neither aligned with Common Core or Hawaii content standards.”

“In addition there are many lessons without rigor or engagement but with highly questionable content,” she said. “The curriculum specialists are now reviewing alternatives that will be worthy of our students as we move forward in improving the option of on-line learning for our students and families.”

Read the full report here:

The post DOE Report: Acellus Online Curriculum Violated Religion, Discrimination Policies appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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Irish people are drawn to spiritualism - but not as a religion

Can the dead communicate with the living? There is nothing like war or pestilence, such as our current pandemic, to bring such questions to the fore. Some people are hearing strange sounds while in lockdown and believe they are quarantining with a ghost. Others are experiencing lucid dreams in which the spirits of the deceased appear to offer comfort.

Across the State there has been an increase in the number of bereaved seeking out mediums for reassurance of their loved one’s continued and peaceful existence.

Throughout history people have sought out mediums and healers like Biddy Early and the Witch of Youghal, who claimed to heal with the help of the Sidhe.

For the Celt the Neolithic marvel of Newgrange became the home of gods and a passage between worlds. And let’s not forget the Celtic Samhain, the night on which a portal is opened between worlds.

Thin is the veil between the living and the dead on the island, which makes it all the more surprising that spiritualism has been slow to take root here.

Spiritualism – the religion born in upstate New York in 1848 after a murdered cobbler communicated with three sisters – holds the central tenet that the dead continue to exist and communicate with the living either directly or through mediums.

In the late 19th century it filled scientists, artists and the literati – WB Yeats among them – with metaphysical excitement. In the US and Britain spiritualism was organised into a hierarchy of churches with established principles, among them the central tenet that the so-called dead continue to exist and advance through higher heavenly spheres.

Clandestine meetings

However, fearful of falling foul to the Witchcraft Act of 1735 or angering the Catholic Church, Irish mediums and spiritualists opted for clandestine meetings. By the 1970s medium Brendan O’Callaghan found even priests and nuns were coming in disguise for readings. Everyone loved a medium’s message as long as it was shared in secret.

With repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 2008, the loosening of the Catholic Church’s grasp and the increased secularisation of the island (the Central Statistics Office shows a sevenfold increase in those reporting “no religion” since 1991) spiritualist centres popped up to offer interdimensional reunifications and the spiritualist doctrine that continues to attract scientific study of the concept that consciousness does not die.

In the last decade gatherings at the Irish Centre for Shamanic Studies, a place rooted in ancient spiritual traditions only a stone’s throw from Newgrange in Co Meath, have increased tenfold, suggesting a renewed interest in pre-Christian spirituality.

Paradoxically, the island’s pre-Christian beliefs in spirits and its connection to the land intrinsically lends itself to spiritualist philosophy

Some 40km down the road Julie Coyle founded Oldcastle Spiritualists, optimistic that this interest in ancestral spirits may indicate a new openness towards natural communication with the more recently departed. The result has been unexpected.

Unlike the rules, regulations and organised churches of the US and Britain, the Irish interest largely lies in holistic healing, dabbling in the mystical and receiving messages from the beyond.

An appetite for natural spirituality and mediumship exists, but add in the doctrine and ethical oversight of a religious organisation and people head for the door.

Paradoxically, the island’s pre-Christian beliefs in spirits and its connection to the land intrinsically lends itself to spiritualist philosophy, but the current religious hangover, the distaste for hierarchies and rule-makers, has muted attempts to gain general acceptance even among those who are open to the survival of consciousness.

Discussion

Undeterred, spiritualist mediums Miriam and John Fitzgerald have established Nlightening Events, a forum for a more sophisticated discussion of these ideas so that people can make informed decisions about the veracity of life after death and its ontological implications.

In turn the World Congress of Spiritualists will meet here in 2026, offering the State an opportunity to discuss these issues from an Irish perspective.

Certainly the imagination and natural spirituality of the Celt offers spiritualism something distinctive and enriching. Whether spiritualism can accommodate the Irish free spirit remains to be seen.

Karen Frances McCarthy is a spiritualist medium and author of Till Death Don’t Us Part (White Crow Books 2020).

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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3 Warning Signs Politics Is Becoming Your Religion

In his classic work “The Screwtape Letters,” C.S. Lewis writes from the perspective of a senior demon giving instructions to a less-experienced demon on how to get someone to reject their Christian faith. Screwtape, the senior demon, advises Wormwood, his nephew and the younger demon, on how to get “the patient” to turn from God. John Stonestreet’s recent and insightful article reminded me of one particular tactic that Screwtape advocates.

Stonestreet highlights the pattern:

“Note the progression: first, politics is part of religion. Then, politics is the most important part of religion. Then, religion becomes part of politics. It’s genius.”

Clearly as Christians we do not want our politics to become our religion. We want to engage politically because we care for our country, because we pray for our leaders, and because we know the policies that are set impact people and the places we live and love. But we don’t want politics to become our dominant belief system, the thing that captures our hearts and drives us. So, how can we recognize the drift in our own hearts? How do we know if politics has become or religion or is becoming our religion? Here are three warning signs:

1. Politics is what you are most passionate to speak about.

2. Your enemy is the other political viewpoint / side.

The Scripture reminds us that our real enemy is Satan and the cosmic powers of darkness. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12). If your enemy is the flesh and blood of the other political party or the other political viewpoint, then politics is becoming your religion. A common enemy holds a powerful uniting factor, but as believers in Christ our common enemy is our Enemy, sin, and shame. If we make flesh and blood the ultimate enemy, our hearts have drifted. If we frame other believers in Christ who view things differently than we do, the flesh and blood of our own spiritual family, as our enemy then we have made politics are religion.

3. You live as if there is an enduring city here.

Sadly, our hearts can drift towards from God towards something less than God. My heart has and will in the future. I am prone to wander. And politics being so dominant in our culture provides an attractive pull. Here is how you know you have drifted: If you are more passionate to speak about politics than Jesus, if you treat your real enemy as the “other side,” and if you live as if this world is your home then politics has become your religion. You have been nursed away from loving Jesus with all your heart, soul, and mind.

Good news: You can repent and come back to the only One who quench the longings of your soul, the One who has an eternal city prepared for you.

This content was originally published here.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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Laura Jane Grace, Anti-Flag and Bad Religion want to build back better

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As the 2020 Presidential Election was broadcast live in front of millions across the country and around the world, the road to the White House is far off. What has turned into one of the most controversial elections in our nation’s history has also become one of the most monumental. Breaking all previous records, President-elect Joe Biden and President Donald Trump have amassed the highest voter turnout the U.S. has ever seen.

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Throughout 2020, and arguably heightened in the last four years, the U.S. has faced insurmountable division. Democratic and Republican parties have emphasized their focus on the state of the economy and a plan to combat the coronavirus pandemic, as well as LGBTQIA+ rights and human rights. 2020 was also met with a stark examination of the mistreatment, inequality and police brutality endured by Black individuals and people of color in the U.S.

Read more: See how the internet is using Donald Trump’s catchphrase against him

At the helm of punk rock with her sharp tongue, Laura Jane Grace spoke to Alternative Press about the struggles minority groups face, specifically noting what the LGBTQIA+ community endured under the Trump administration. Joining Grace, Bad Religion’s Brian Baker and Greg Graffin addressed what we should expect from Trump following his exit from the White House, while Anti-Flag’s Justin Sane and Pat Thetic emphasized the need for the American people to demand more from our government. Their hopes for the incoming Biden administration may vary, but one thing is for certain: Our fight for a new America doesn’t stop after Inauguration Day.

[Photo by: Alexa Viscius]

As the CEO of Against Me! and a vocal advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, Grace shared her confusion of her peers in the community supporting Trump over the last four years. Grace felt “at a loss for understanding where the disconnect was or how far off we were actually from each other.” She also said she finds it hard to imagine someone who considers themself “punk” being a Trump supporter. As the Trump administration comes to a close, Grace is heavily focused on advocacy and human rights issues.

“There’s no logic. There’s no way to reach some people on it,” Grace says. “My perception growing up when I was a young, young kid, and I get that this is fairly naive, and I was coming from the perspective of a young kid, was that a lot of the difference I perceived between Democrats and Republicans specifically was tax stuff, economic policies. Then growing up and realizing more and more, ‘Oh, no, it’s really a lot more about moral things and cultural things.’ Right now, specifically, my issues are one is a white supremacist, the other is not. What’s your decision?”

Read more: These 10 memes perfectly sum up the 2020 election

With the unprecedented nature of this year’s election and as vote tallies lingered into the latter half of the week, Trump cited a premature victory on the day of the election results as well as accused states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin of voter fraud in several Twitter tirades. For weeks now, Trump has confidently claimed victory. However, all across America, individuals in both major parties have feared civil unrest breaking out over the election results.

Throughout the week of the election, while Trump demanded vote counts to stop, Biden encouraged them to continue and expressed the importance of having every American’s vote count—and for their voices to be heard. Despite the fair nature of each vote being tallied, Trump supporters protested outside of polling locations in several swing states, demanding that recounts begin immediately or claiming that votes were being disposed of if they were in favor of Trump. The protesters’ accusations, as well as Trump’s, have zero evidence to support them.

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“I did not want to vote by mail because it seemed like there was already so much reporting on how there were going to be attempts to make those votes invalid,” Grace shares. “So I just wanted to write as direct a line as possible to it.

Read more: See why fans think My Chemical Romance are teasing something

“All throughout my life, as far as I can remember, with the exception of [George W.] Bush and [Al] Gore, it was understood that you would know what the election results were on that night,” she continues. “Even knowing it was still the Electoral College that would have to cast their votes, and that was actually really what decided it. It was always, ‘Yes, the votes would be counted and tallied that night, and you will know.’ Even with Bush vs. Gore, it was still conceded. It felt within 24 hours.

“Now, to have it presented as, ‘Well, there’s just no way we can know.’ It’s been so destabilized to that point. Your one fucking job is to decide an election [and] to accurately count for what is everyone’s right to cast a vote in this fucking democracy. So, why is this an issue? You couldn’t have gone an extra step to make sure that it could all be counted on this night? You couldn’t have adapted or pivoted in any way?

“Everything seems so designed to discredit that right to vote, to make sure it’s as hard as possible for people to vote, to make sure that the elections are destabilized as much as possible. That it is illegitimate as possible to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. It seems that’s what all our politicians are like, or half of them at least don’t like working toward that end because they know that that’s how they maintain power. With that being said, how in any way are they at all working in the interest of a democracy or working in [the] interest of their constituents? Unless it’s just fucking about money and about big corporate money and serving those interests.”

Read more: Dave Hause doesn’t believe in musical guilty pleasures and neither should you

While the road to the White House is winding down, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have promised to govern under the rhetoric that they will not see “red and blue states…just the United States.” As Biden and Harris prepare to begin their four-year term Jan. 20, 2021, both Democrats and Republicans are pertinent in keeping the pair accountable for their message of equality and unity.

Grace shares a similar sentiment, one that parallels much of the country, saying, “Hopefully this [will] be a step in the right direction. [We’ll] be able to pressure Biden and the administration to make more positive changes. It seems like you’re buying yourself a breath, really—and that no one should take that for granted if we’re able to push things in a positive direction of Biden getting into office. There is no time to rest.”

While Grace hopes to see positive change from the incoming Biden administration, Anti-Flag’s Thetic and Sane anticipate a more tumultuous upcoming weeks and months ahead of the inauguration.

Read more: See how these musicians are using their voice on Election Day

“I expect it to be a train wreck and a lot of things that we’ve never seen before,” Thetic shares bluntly. “One thing that we know is that people never give up power easily, and it needs to be wrenched away from them. People like Donald Trump are the quintessential power grabbers. We can’t even conceive of the things that he’s going to try to do to maintain this power. The interesting thing about Donald Trump is he’s so childlike that he telegraphs his emotions and his plays. So we will see them slightly before they come into action. But a rational human being will not be able to know they’re coming until probably a day or so before. You can’t conceive the limits that he will go to maintain his power and his superior position.”

Trump, too, has claimed victory of the election this week on several occasions. But Sane echoed that “Trump will do everything in his power to retain control of the White House and to assure himself all the power that he already has and a lot more.” Since the announcement on Nov. 7 that Biden was officially the next president of the United States, Trump has remained surprisingly silent.

“The fact that he came out like a two-cent despot and gave a speech at 2:30 in the morning on the election night before all the votes have been counted and declared himself the winner right there is all the proof you need to know that nothing is out of bounds for him,” Sane says. “He will never concede. He will say it was rigged, and he will say it was a coup. And there’s just absolutely no evidence of that. You can’t say those things unless there’s actual evidence of that. And so far, all the people who actually monitor elections and who have been watching this election for irregularities say that they just aren’t seeing any evidence of that.”

“But Donald Trump can throw enough sand in the eyes and make you think that it’s not being done correctly. Through that, [he] can change the whole narrative for his own benefit,” Thetic adds.

On Nov. 7, four days post-Election Day, Biden was officially declared victorious and named the president-elect alongside Vice President-elect Harris. Reports from CNN, ABC and FOX News were met with an eruption of celebration and anger across the U.S. While Biden supporters cheered on the next president, Trump supporters protested the election results.

Read more: Here’s how Foo Fighters’ new single is unlike anything they’ve done before

With zero evidence reported to support Trump’s claims, Thetic and Sane agree that he’s attempting to forge his own narrative. Some Trump supporters think he’s gone too far and should concede to the election. But many support his claims and demand justice.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that Trump has accused the election process of fraud. After winning the Electoral College votes in 2016 but losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, Trump wrongfully claimed that he had lost due to illegal votes.

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted Nov. 27, 2016.

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Read more: An LGBTQ+ youth home is being named after Power Trip’s Riley Gale

“A lot of people will hold on to that forever. You’re just going to have to confront people with facts,” Sane explains. “But also understand that you can’t change everyone’s mind. I think it’s like racism. [If] you hear it, you say something about it. More people are going to have to be willing to be politically engaged. And more people are going to have to be willing to step up. We’re living in a time where if you want to sit on the sidelines, sorry, that’s not an option anymore. I really believe that it’s important to confront people with facts and with the truth.”

“When Trump was first running for president, none of the news outlets would call him a liar,” Thetic adds. “They would all say he had alternative facts. He was bending the truth and had a different narrative.

That type of language was effective at allowing Trump to tell his tales and people to buy into them. Now, as we got through this, people are very willing to say that he’s lying. I think that is a good step. I do think we need to reemphasize that all the time, these facts that he is saying are not true. The reality that we all live in is a very different reality than what Trump is living in. We believe that people will make the right decisions over time if they’re given the right information.”

Although it’s custom to concede an election after defeat, many anticipate that Trump will not admit his loss. It also remains unclear if Trump will attend President-elect Biden’s inauguration ceremony, which is also customary. In fact, reports have speculated if Trump will immediately launch a reelection campaign for 2024.

Bad Religion’s Baker weighed in on this speculation. “I think that there will immediately be a 2024 campaign dovetailing nicely with trying to set up something further than OAN [One America News], right-wing media dispensary,” he says. “I guess Fox isn’t cool anymore, according to the rage tweeting I’ve been watching recently.

“We’ve learned too much about America lately,” Baker adds. “Where we are right now, if anything, it’s shown us how many people are completely comfortable with Donald Trump. That’s a really frightening place to be.”

In a recent report from USA Today, Rick Gates, an aide to Trump’s 2016 campaign, anticipates that Trump will remain a political figure in the upcoming years. Gates also added that Trump would likely “seriously consider another run in 2024.”

Baker says his life may return to a sense of normalcy under a Biden administration.

“I think you’ll find when he gets out of office, things all of a sudden may matter a little more. It’s just a horrible man with a shit family, just terrible, terrible people,” he says. “I think they should get everything they deserve. I will look on, but not with the same intensity. You know what I want to be back to? I want to be back to just reading the paper. You remember a life like that? Because I really do.’

Read more: 30 metal bands who pioneered heavy music in Latin America

“I remember I just read. I read, of course, the ‘mainstream fake lying’ New York Times and the ‘bullshit’ Washington Post and [the] ‘absolutely lunatic’ Plain Dealer. All this crazy ‘left-wing propaganda.’ But nevertheless, it was like there was something to that. Having news disseminated in that more contemplative and softer way. I’m really looking forward to getting back to just reading the paper. And hopefully, I can. It’s a different world now than ‘Old Brian’s coffee and paper,’ but I’m going to do the best I can.”

Graffin shared a similar sentiment, saying politics should not be treated like “television.” That, he says, is “not what makes America great.”

“It’s supposed to be about ideas. And hopefully ideas about inclusivity and ideas about coexistence of different people from all different walks of life,” Graffin says. “That’s an existential philosophy almost. That’s why I think democracy is interesting, and it makes me happy to live under democracy. But the cult of personality, the fanboy attitude that you get from television stars or Hollywood celebrities, that’s not supposed to be in politics.”

Read more: These 15 punk guitarists of the ’80s set the standards for the future

Graffin’s expectations for a Biden administration focus on the work the president-elect has ahead of him. Restoration will be key for Biden’s upcoming term, but not just restoring the country internally. Graffin says Biden will be tasked with patching up foreign relationships.

“The one thing he will do is not make America a laughing stock with the leaders around the world. I believe in incremental improvement,” Graffin says. “I don’t believe in revolution. It rarely works. [Biden has] got to basically improve upon the disaster that was the last four years in terms of restoring our international relationship with other countries. I believe he can do that.”

“In terms of policies, that’s not what his job will be. As it was Obama‘s job to restore the economy and the character of the presidency in his eight years, Biden’s got to do a lot of restoration work right now. That’s about what we can hope for.”

The election aside, 2020 has been a tumultuous year. All eyes are on the incoming Biden administration with the promise of change and progress in the country. But they’re also on the exiting Trump administration. Multiple lawsuits are beginning to unfold throughout the country over election fraud. But one thing is for sure: The American people have voiced the need for change. And that’s exactly what Biden and Harris need to be held accountable for.

The United States is far from abolishing division between the two-party system. But we, as a nation, need to start somewhere to enforce change and to promote unity.

“It’s a breath,” Grace says. “You’re buying yourself a breath and then the next day on the knife. Time to get to fucking work.”

Change and unity certainly won’t happen overnight. But it’s time to get to fucking work to create a better, more united nation governed for the American people. It’s time to do what Biden has said and build back better.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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The Tyranny of Politesse: Why Decency Does Not Require us to Wish Trump a Full and Speedy Recovery | Religion Dispatches

Let me state for the record. There is no moral obligation to wish Trump a full recovery from Covid-19. I certainly do not. Even the Bidens, Kamala Harris, and Rachel Maddow seem to feel that hoping for Trump’s recovery is a mandatory decency.

I strongly disagree.

But, I’ve been asked: how can this reaction be compatible with basic human compassion for all? How can a Christian like myself, coming out of a “love your enemies,” “turn the other cheek” tradition not hope and pray for Trump’s full recovery? How can I, an Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology at Marquette University say that I do not hope for his full recovery or that of newly Covid-19 positive Republican Senators, the sycophantic base for Trump’s lethality?

The definition of a tyrant by oppression (tyrannus in regimine) is a ruler “who uses his power arbitrarily and oppressively.” Trump is a tyrant and a moral criminal. His murderous negligence and mendacity has so far abetted the painful deaths of over 215,000 women, men, and children; caused millions more people to be infected, perhaps permanently impaired; and caused millions of adults along with their children to fall into lethal poverty. All this while leading the attack on a sick planet already in critical condition. That is tyranny on steroids.

I do not endorse the right to tyrannicide, defended historically even by Catholic theologians who wrote before there were democratic alternatives. Thus, I would not approve of deliberately infecting him. But when he flouts all precautions and gets himself infected (thus making his tyranny less feasible and his defeat more likely) I have no sympathy for him or for his Republican enablers who are complicit in his bloody criminal guilt.

What do the Gospels say?

The most quoted lines in the gospel, Matthew 38-48, are also the most misunderstood lines in the Christian Scriptures. These are the verses about turning the other cheek and loving your enemy. Biblical scholarship shows that this passage is actually the basis for a Christian philosophy of non-violent resistance. However, it’s been crudely and cruelly interpreted as cowardly passivism in the face of injustice. Wives have been told to turn the other cheek when abused by a spouse. Slaves were told to obey their brutal slave-masters. This abused text was widely taken as a call for a slavish submission to evil.

Don’t put that on Jesus!

If he’d been preaching a message of passive compliance and submission to unjust leaders, he could have died in his bed at a ripe old age. He was killed because he resisted unjust aggression nonviolently with searingly harsh invective and with civil disobedience. In John 18:23, when he was struck on the cheek in his trial he did not turn the other cheek, he protested.

No cowering victim was he: he blasted evildoers in a way that makes our toughest pundits today seem timid, calling them “hypocrites,” “vultures,” and “blind fools” who are like beautifully whitewashed tombs, looking respectable on the outside, but inside full of the fetid stench of “robbery,” “hypocrisy,” and “crime.”

Jesus was not one to shrink before the tyranny of specious politesse. It’s been said that it’s no surprise that Jesus was killed; it’s only surprising he wasn’t killed sooner.

In Jesus terms, our criticism of Trump has been too timid. We really are a pack of wimps. His robust and courageous resistance to evil wrought by the religious and political powers of his day got him killed. In a story told in all four Gospels, he created a ruckus in the temple where civil and religious leaders conspired like thieves. He loudly labeled this tainted sanctuary “a den of thieves.” The Temple was a definite no-go zone for resisters. Some scholars think his death followed within just a few days.

Rome and the religious leaders had a vested interest in keeping this place a stabilizing paragon of “law and order.” And Jesus took on their “law and order” and paid the price. (It’s interesting to note that Jesus’ brother James was also executed as a rebel. It tells you a lot about their mother who raised two such firebrands. She certainly doesn’t fit the stereotype of the pious unthreatening woman who “knew her place,” as the sugary “lovely lady dressed in blue” would have it.)

Responses to Trump’s diagnosis

The news that Trump had tested positive for Covid 19 led to the cliche du jour “I hope and pray for his full recovery.” Along with this came a storm surge of that hackneyed vacuity: “I will keep him in my thoughts and prayers.” (It’s a safe—and not at all cynical—assumption that many who intone that banality don’t mean it and will never deliver on those prayers. Indeed, let’s declare a national moratorium on that syrupy “thoughts and prayers” bromide.)

Step back for a moment and remember that human decency does not preclude honesty. Indeed it requires it. In an act of collective candor, let us admit: there is a joy, and not necessarily an ignoble joy, in seeing someone hoisted on his own blood-soaked petard. There is good as well as bad schadenfreude.

I know many who have honestly and openly expressed joyful satisfaction upon hearing the news of Trump’s diagnosis. I certainly did. One nonagenarian who has specialized in social justice work all her life said that if her legs would permit it she would have danced when she heard of the diagnosis.

A corrupt Republican-controlled Senate will stand by as Trump’s malfeasance in office spreads havoc from caged children torn from their parents’ arms to the most mismanaged response to coronavirus in the world. Those Republican senators now contracting covid get no sympathy from me. Nature has stepped in and given them a taste of the horror they endorsed and encouraged. Many religious persons would call it providential.

Praying or just hoping this tyrant, this unjust aggressor, will get well enough to continue his crime spree is strange, not benevolent or pious. And Trump’s crime spree does continue as he malignantly insists from the pulpit of the White House that the virus is just another little old flu, failing to account for the over 200,000 people who have died of it. I weep not for him, but for his victims.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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Kanye West focuses on religion in first election campaign video - CNA

LOS ANGELES: Rapper Kanye West on Monday (Oct 13) released his first official campaign video in his long-shot bid to be elected US president on Nov 3, focusing on religion and families.

West, 43, who launched his campaign for the White House with erratic statements on his social media accounts in July, is on the official ballot in a handful of US states, according to US media, but has no mathematical chance of winning.

In Monday's video, the musician and fashion designer asked supporters to vote for him as a write-in candidate.

"By turning to faith, we will be the kind of nation, the kind of people, that God intends us to be," West says in the video, featuring families at prayer and nature shots.

https://t.co/ZURvTEW9ee we stepping out on faith pic.twitter.com/ypQfooB35w

— ye (@kanyewest)

The video was the first major bid by West, formerly one of President Donald Trump's biggest celebrity supporters, to be taken as a serious contender for the White House. He has done little campaigning under his self-styled Birthday Party as concern grew over his mental health.

The singer, who has 21 Grammy awards, said in 2018 that he suffered from bipolar disorder.

Some political analysts believe that West's run for office could siphon some black supporters away from Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential election.

West has spent about US$5.8 million on his campaign this year, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. Most of the funding comes from a US$6.7 million loan from himself.

His kanye2020.country website carries ads for hoodies, hats and T-shirts ranging from US$40 to US$160.

It also sets out a 10-point policy platform that includes reform of policing and the justice systems, reducing student debt, and restructuring the education system to better serve vulnerable people.

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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UK schoolbook links a religion with terrorism: Hinduism

It is good that the publisher has withdrawn this book, but how did it get in the schools in the first place? There are terrorists all over the world who invoke the texts and teachings of Islam in order to justify violence and supremacism. Yet it is certain that there are no textbooks in Britain...

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glittergummicandypeach · 3 years

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Cultural Resentment Is Conservatives’ New Religion

Even if he’s handed a defeat in November, there probably won’t really be anything like a truly “post-Trump” politics for a long while: Donald Trump himself is likely to stick around one way or another and so too, obviously, will the Republican voters who’ve already come to see him as their Reagan. Those who believe him to be the silent avenger of trafficked children will be with us for some time as well. With fully half of the Republican Party subscribing to the belief that “top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings” according to YouGov, the QAnon phenomenon—in its inanity, reach, and roots in cultural animus—seems like a direct successor to the birtherism that sent Trump to the top of conservative politics in the first place. Last week, Business Insider reported that Republican strategists have come to “view QAnon believers and the movement not as a liability or as a scourge to be extinguished, but as a useful band of fired-up supporters.” The grand lesson they’ve taken from the Trump era, it seems, is that Republicans should harness the madness for as long as they can.

But the growth of QAnon is just one indication of how unruly things are getting on the right—in general, the conservative movement is getting more ideologically crowded. There are “Never—But Wait Actually, Maybe—Trump” conservatives of the GOP’s former establishment slinking back into the fold. There are tweedy conservative intellectuals hoping that there might be a life for a post-laissez faire right-wing populism beyond Trump, a tendency that some have called “national conservatism.” There are old school social conservatives hoping a 6-3 court will get the opportunity to rule their way on abortion and perhaps gay rights. There are integralists who believe the religious right will only prevail once originalism and the conservative movement’s traditional legal nostrums are abandoned.

And then there are the voters who’ve made all of this ideological ferment possible—the white working class defectors from the Democratic Party who helped Trump to victory in 2016 and who are actuallyless religiously committed as a group than the more affluent whites Trump has pushed away. The conservative coalition now runs from religiously ambivalent voters who believe or pretend to believe that Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of molested children, through Ben Shapiro, and all the way to wayward administrative law scholars set on undoing the separation between church and state in order to reestablish the United States as a Catholic dominion.

It’s all a bit of a mess; probably moreso than those angling to lead or direct the conservative movement have ever had to contend with. But, as Ross Douthat wrote in a Saturday piece for The New York Times, the Trump era has also produced some of the potentially unifying conditions set to animate the next stage of the culture wars, including a shared horror of social media censorship and, more broadly, a deepened hatred of liberal elites whose cultural power, conservatives believe, fully justifies their defense of the right’s structural political advantages.

“Just as liberals see political authoritarianism in a Republican Party clinging to power via the Senate’s rural bias, conservatives increasingly see that same GOP as the only bulwark against the cultural authoritarianism inherent in tech and media consolidation,” he wrote. “As long as the Republicans retain some power in Washington, Twitter will face subpoena threats when it blocks right-leaning sites and Facebook will remain a safe space to share Ben Shapiro posts ... but once you hand full political power to liberalism as well, the right fears that what starts with bans on QAnon and Alex Jones will end with social-media censorship of everything from pro-life content to critiques of critical race theory to coverage of the not-so-peaceful style in left-wing protest.”

Douthat offers reasons for skepticism about all this. As he notes, social media companies have real financial incentives to keep as many users of all stripes as possible, and the notion that the right is up against a progressive cultural monolith understates the extent to which “The Left” of the conservative imagination is, in his words, “beset by internal contradictions.” This is putting it mildly—the campus Marxists who’ve read Frantz Fanon and the J.P. Morgan executives who kneeled in front of a bank vault in support of Black Lives Matter simply aren’t engaged in the same political project. But Douthat adds that he ultimately believes the right’s anxieties are partially grounded. ”Power lies in many places in America,” he concludes, “but it lies deeply, maybe ineradicably for the time being, in culture-shaping and opinion-forming institutions that conservatives have little hope of bringing under their control.”

Can cultural power be cashed in for health insurance? Is there a way we might put it into the accounts of the eight million people pushed into poverty in this country since May? Will it stop the bullets of an AR-15?

But does power really lie in all that many places in America? And more to the point, is it actually the case, as conservatives are trying to convince themselves now, that efforts to restrict the franchise and the inequities of the Supreme Court, Senate, and Electoral College are meaningfully counterbalanced or outweighed by the post moderators at Facebook and Twitter? Is the functional veto the right will hold over national public policy absent Democratic action really negated by drag queens hosting events at public libraries? Can cultural power be cashed in for health insurance? Is there a way we might put it into the accounts of the eight million people pushed into poverty in this country since May? Will it stop the bullets of an AR-15? Is it a source of renewable energy?

In a sense, actually, it is. The idea of conservative helplessness in the face of liberal culture has powered the right for generations⁠: William F. Buckley Jr. began his long career as a crusader against liberals on college campuses; the Moral Majority fought against the depraved totalitarians it saw in Hollywood and the media. Until recently, culture war material sat alongside a fairly full economic policy agenda—dismantling the American welfare state, dramatically limiting the federal government’s capacity to rebuild it, weakening regulations, and destroying the labor movement. That’s an agenda that the right mostly succeeded in implementing—with the Democratic Party’s eventual assistance. But now perhaps most of the public believes the conservative economic project has been a disaster. And until the movement reaches a new settlement (or revives the last one) on where to go next, cultural resentments and anxieties will be the whole game—the thin tissue from which something passing for a policy agenda will have to be built.

They might be able to pull it off. Last week, Republicans on the Hill were up in arms over Facebook and Twitter blocking shares of The New York Post’s dubious expose about Hunter Biden. The leader of the pack was, unsurprisingly, anti-tech crusader Josh Hawley—perhaps the most prominent of the right’s so-called populists in Washington next to Trump. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday, Hawley argued that users with blocked posts should be able to sue Facebook and Twitter and painted the stakes of the issue for the right. “If Republicans don’t stand up and do something about this these companies are going to run this country,” he said. “That’s their desire, these woke capitalists, they want to run America. Big government, big tech –they want to run America. We have got to stop them, we have got to do something.”

The “something” that Hawley’s angling for specifically is the amendment or repeal of Section 230, a law that renders websites immune from lawsuits their users might bring over user-provided content, and that functionally gives social media companies broad latitude to moderate themselves. Trump signed an immediately challenged executive order to curb Section 230 protections earlier this year, surely without much of an idea what the full implications of the move might be. But Hawley knows—the fight over pro-Trump posts is the initial skirmish in a new campaign against what he called the “cosmopolitan elite” in a speech at the National Conservatism conference last year. “It’s about more than economics,” he said. “According to the cosmopolitan consensus, globalization is a moral imperative. That’s because our elites distrust patriotism and dislike the common culture left to us by our forebears.” The movement is about “more than economics,” in other words, because it’s belatedly realized that much of the corporate power it spent the last several decades building has gone to cultural liberals and those more radical than them who’ve made effective use of their new platforms—an error that now needs to be addressed.

They don’t seem particularly likely to succeed policy-wise, but the project does give them something to do and, almost as importantly, offers the conservative movement a way to maintain credibility in the eyes of the mainstream press and the Democratic Party. The handwringing about the right’s cultural alienation and progressive overreach we’ve seen throughout the Trump era suggests a nontrivial portion of liberals really will be guilted into understanding their cultural cachet as an oppressive force—an understanding that might encourage them to oppose structural reforms that would disempower the right. And wonky legal projects spearheaded by superficially intelligent men like Hawley and conservative lawyers will seem to many like a substantive step forward from Trumpism—efforts liberals can convince themselves to respect even if they disagree with them. The question, of course, is whether Hawley and figures like him can pull a shroud over the movement’s more visibly alarming elements—or, more accurately, whether those elements will let them.

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