This article, in the National Prospect recently, explains what “immanentize the eschaton” means, and it’s not good news. AG Sessions, in a private speech to an anti-LGBT hate group, explained how he was going to eliminate any accommodations for LGBT folk in the federal government. Here is a quote from the article, about William F. Buckley and his coining the phrase “immanentize the eschaton”:
Buckley, who never said in two syllables what he could say in twelve, was speaking of that combo-concept, meaning that it wasn’t government’s job to make things nice for people by granting them their civil rights and feeding the starving poor. To do that would create Heaven on Earth, which would necessarily bring about cosmic extinction. And who would want that?
The topic of the attorney general’s speech to the ADF, which is defending Christian-owned businesses for the right to discriminate against queer folk, was “religious freedom.” Sessions promised that, any day now, he would issue a guidance to government agencies on how to apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in ways that conform to his novel interpretation of the First Amendment. The ways in which an anti-LGBTQ bias could be applied to the work of government agencies boggles the mind, given that the government is charged with providing health care to millions, fair housing protections, asylum requests, and ensuring the rights of all. For many, the eschaton may indeed be immanentized.
While a intensely public fight rages over Don the Con’s public pronouncements, which are profoundly disruptive on a daily basis, his henchmen are quietly going about the business of destroying the government, perverting its purpose, and hollowing out its expertise. This is the worst tragedy to befall the American government since Nixon hired his band of plumbers.
[for some unknown reason, I drafted this post a few days ago but failed to publish it… “Immanentizing the eschaton” means, basically, throwing the fat on the fire, putting a match to a bonfire, and other references to the Apocalypse.]
Comment of the Morning: The Way Forward
(an irrelevant anti-VD poster from WW II)
“moral ugliness and intellectual incoherence “… [From another article about — guess who?]
dadof2
What the Republicans need is to temporarily, or permanently, abandon their belief that Democrats are the enemy and realize that Donald Trump is the enemy of both, the enemy of Democracy, the enemy of the Constitution, the enemy of the America 2/3 of the nation believes in. You’re not going to get the Steven Kings or the Louis Gohmerts, but you will get the Peter Kings, and the Leonard Lances.
And you need to convince Democrats that Mike Pence WILL respect the Constitution, the Courts, and the separation of powers. Because any President who does that, doesn’t threaten the Republic. You may hate his policies, but policies can be changed.
Because it’s a numbers game. You need 218 votes in the House to approve an Article of Impeachment and 67 Senators to convict.
Probably all 193 Democrats would vote for impeachment. That means you need just 25 more, including the Speaker, and he’s impeached.
In the Senate you have 48 Democrats, all of whom would be happy to convict Trump TODAY. So you need just 19 more. Rubio, Corker, Collins, Murkowski, McCain, Graham, Flake, Heller, and, yes, Mitch McConnell are pretty much all there already, and I suspect Burr, Grassley, Toomey and Portman are nearly there. Just 6 more Republican Senators, and Mike Pence is President.
And that’s what the GOP needs to do to reestablish its legitimate claim to govern. It needs to prove it can remove a President who, though he claims to be Republican, is not, only a selfish Trumpian.
(Twenty-five Representatives, all Republicans, and nineteen Senators. Start working on them.)
William O. Beeman
San José, CA 16 hours ago
Trump has unleashed a terrible storm with his first pardon–and its name is not Harvey. Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio is perhaps the most infamous, divisive and anti-American action ever enacted by any president in our history.
I have no words to express my complete disgust at this action, or of its timing. Trump has issued this heinous pardon of an overt racist on late Friday afternoon just before we are facing a national hurricane disaster. I am sure he believes that the backlash from this action will “blow over” along with Hurricane Harvey, which will dominate the news cycle this weekend. The pardon is cynical, spiteful and an insult to the American public, entirely in character for this President.
Trump’s vile action tells the bigots of this nation that they will never be punished for terrorizing Hispanics, Blacks, LGBT citizen, Muslmss and–yes–Jews will all be fair game for the alt-Right, Oath Keepers and white supremacists.
Now just let the Trump apologists say: “He’s not a racist.” That is a patent lie, and Trump has proved it.
I hope the public will not let him get away with this. He and the Republicans who enable him must be severely taken to task for this awful act. I beg the news media to not let this event be overwhelmed by the impending hurricane. The effects of Trump’s Pardon (as it will be known) will last far longer than the damage from Hurricane Harvey.
It’s Worse Than You Think
With the pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio on August 25, 2017, Don the Con has placed himself beyond the pale of civilized discourse.
At the same time, there are three former generals among Don’s top staff at the White House. It appears that Don is no longer completely in control of events. He will not be given the opportunity to start a nuclear war with the press of a button. He will, however, continue his profoundly illiberal private agenda, which will further divide the country along extreme partisan lines.
I have other things to do than chronicle this descent down the rabbit hole into utter madness. Stockpiling canned goods is nearly complete. Enlarging the fallout shelter will be next on my agenda, starting tomorrow.
Did you ever read “Farnham’s Freehold” by Robert Heinlein? Lesser known than “Stranger in a Strange Land” but equally thought-provoking.
“History is what the present chooses to remember about the past.” -Eric Foner, 2010
“The way things turn out is often interpreted as the way things had to turn out.” -Murphy, 2012
The author of this opinion piece is a graduate student in history and, until fairly recently, in agreement with the rest of his family that white nationalism was a good thing. The point he makes is that America was founded as a slave-holding country and only allowed citizenship to free, white men. The Civil War only abolished slavery; it did not give black people equal rights. This situation only changed in the fifties and sixties with, first, the integration of the Army, then repeal of segregation policies and securing the right to vote for black citizens. The final piece was to be affirmative action, but that has been weakened officially and only exists voluntarily in private institutions. So the equal rights movement is still far from its goal of winning the hearts and minds of Americans. Oh, and you can forget about reparations. Here is a quote from his opinion piece in the NYT:
The United States was founded as a white nationalist country, and that legacy remains today. Things have improved from the radical promotion of white people at the expense of all others, which has persisted for most of our history, yet most of us have not accepted the extent to which white identity guides so much of what we still do. Sometimes it seems that the white nationalists are most honest about the very real foundation of white supremacy upon which our nation was built.
The president’s words legitimized the worst of our country, and now the white nationalist movement could be poised to grow. To challenge these messages, we need to acknowledge the continuity of white nationalist thought in American history, and the appeal it still holds.
It is a fringe movement not because its ideas are completely alien to our culture, but because we work constantly to argue against it, expose its inconsistencies and persuade our citizens to counter it. We can no longer count on the country’s leader to do this, so it’s now incumbent upon all of us.
Here is a helpful hint on how to survive an encounter with a bear: (from the NYT)
‘‘Help the bear identify you as human,’’ says John Hechtel, a retired wildlife biologist for Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game. Talk to it in a calm but firm voice. Put your hands above your heads and wave them slowly. Avoid reacting to a confrontation in a way that makes you look like prey: no screaming, flailing or running.
Biologists put attacks, which are exceedingly rare, in two broad categories: defensive and nondefensive. The best strategy for fending off a bear depends greatly on correctly diagnosing the bear’s state of mind. A defensive bear tends to look agitated. It might paw at the ground, roar or salivate. This bear attacks because it is usually trying to protect its cubs or food. The nondefensive bear wants to eat you. Such a bear tends to look coolheaded and confident — what Hechtel calls ‘‘pushy’’ — with its head held high and ears erect. In a nondefensive attack, fight for your life. Use anything you can — stone, log, knife. Aim for the face and ears.
EFDRN
Richmond Va 6 hours ago
Hundreds lit torches and marauded the streets of Charlottesville Friday night like a pack of wolves.
These marauders (people Trump called “innocent protestors”) assaulted UVA students on their own campus . THIS KKK and Nazi inspired torch march had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LEE STATUE, which was miles away.
They then beat a handful of students on their own campus with the torches they carried and pepper sprayed them, attackers Trump defends as “Very Fine People”, as one student cried in despair, “where is everybody?!
They marched to the church I WAS IN with the Charlottesville clergy collective,i.e…., a Presbyterian church holding an ecumenical serving calling for peace and love.
These marauders menaced a church service “Heil Trump”, “Heil Hitler” “Jews will not replace us”, “You will not replace Us” “Blood and Soil” (Blud en Boden) [Blud und Boden] with their torches.
Im talking going out of there way to INTERRUPT A RELIGIOUS SERVICE AND ATTEMPT TO TERRORIZE CLERGY
On Saturday I saw and treated all, including a Neo Nazi leader who stumbled into our medic tent after police sprayed him, who tried to direct his “troops” via walkie talkie while receiving care and was told to stop or he would have to leave.
This was not a “many sides event”- this was an armed invading army of out of staters, (first thought they were the national guard, until I got closer and saw SWASTIKAS on their uniforms) colliding with locals repelling the invasion.
#NeverAboutTheStatuesTheyAreAnExcuse
Quote of the Day: Republicans and Racism
In 1994 John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser and a Watergate co-conspirator, confessed this to the author Dan Baum:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The era Ehrlichman referred to was the beginning of the War on Drugs. Nixon started his offensive in 1971, declaring in a speech from the White House Briefing Room: “America’s public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”
The object of disrupting communities worked all too well — more than 40 million arrests have been conducted for drug-related offenses since 1971, with African-Americans being incarcerated in state prisons for these offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that for whites, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 1970, Nixon’s political strategist Kevin Phillips told The New York Times, “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.”
–From a column by Charles Blow in today’s New York Times
The president’s top advisers described themselves as stunned, despondent and numb. Several said they were unable to see how Mr. Trump’s presidency would recover, and others expressed doubts about his capacity to do the job.
In contrast, the president told close aides that he felt liberated by his news conference. Aides said he seemed to bask afterward in his remarks, and viewed them as the latest retort to the political establishment that he sees as trying to tame his impulses.
–From an article in yesterday’s New York Times
