Archive for category Society
The Nostalgia Trap
Posted by Glenden Brown in American History, American People, GLBT issues, Human Rights, Racism, Society, This Blog on May 19, 2013
I’ve written about the ways in which many conservatives seem to yearn for yesteryear. This morning, historian Stephanie Coontz offered a fascinating and compelling article in the NY Times on the dangers of nostalgia:
In society at large, however, nostalgia can distort our understanding of the world in dangerous ways, making us needlessly negative about our current situation.[snip]
Happy memories also need to be put in context. I have interviewed many white people who have fond memories of their lives in the 1950s and early 1960s. The ones who never cross-examined those memories to get at the complexities were the ones most hostile to the civil rights and the women’s movements, which they saw as destroying the harmonious world they remembered.
Read the whole thing, it’s worth it.
College Life, Rape and Public Discourse
Posted by Glenden Brown in Contraception, Human Rights, Mental health, Sex, Society, This Blog on May 2, 2013
There’s a major discussion happening right now about sexual assault on college campuses (i.e. it’s made the NY Times; some other posts and articles here, here, here and here). The basic shape of the conversation can be described fairly simply:
Rape and sexual assault are already underreported crimes. Students on college campuses are victims of rape and sexual assault on a regular basis; college campuses nationwide engage in efforts to minimize reporting of sexual assault on campus and take minimal actions against perpetrators. New regulations are shining a light on the situation.
The consensus seems to be that colleges aren’t doing enough to protect students from sexual assault and aren’t doing enough with regard to punishing perpetrators; it seems to me the worst a college can do is expel a perpetrator and even then they run risks they may prefer to avoid. As I think about this issue, it seems that colleges are trying to thread the needle with regard to legal liability – in the absence of specific knowledge about specific threats to a student from/by another student, they can’t take any action; they can’t expel a student because he might rape someone. Without evidence, they can’t punish a student. In many cases, victims can’t identify the perpetrators. Read the rest of this entry »
Running Towards the Smoke and Fire
Posted by Shane Smith in American People, Climate Change, Conservatives, Disaster, Gun Control, Health Care, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Philosophy, Society on April 18, 2013
I am about out of energy for this week. But I do have the smoking remains of an irony meter sitting in the corner crying to be heard. And a tiny little mangled… something. Something Confucius might have called Ren. Something I almost forgot about. Read the rest of this entry »
The Best Humor Comes From Near Tragedy
Posted by Larry Bergan in Election Fraud, Human Rights, Laugh, Society, Voting Rights on March 9, 2013
But in this case, past tragedy. Tragedy not usually experienced as widely as as it could be, or was in the past.
That’s not saying it couldn’t happen again to anybody, but you know what they say:
Humor is the best medicine:
A Whole Lotta Ugly from a Whole Lotta Crazy . . .
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, American People, Conservative, Conservatives, Political Corruption, Republicans, Society, This Blog on January 2, 2013
The fiscal cliff negotiations have simply been too depressing to be believed.
From David Atkins at Digby’s place:
On the long-term consequences, it’s true that the President’s inability to stick to a negotiating position may embolden Republicans to take future hostages. But it’s also entirely unclear that Republicans wouldn’t be emboldened, anyway.
There is no reason to believe that the Republicans wouldn’t do everything in their power to hold the debt ceiling hostage no matter how strongly Obama and Reid had negotiated on the fiscal cliff. If the President takes the Constitutional option to avoid hostage-taking over the debt ceiling, there’s no reason to believe that the Republicans wouldn’t portray him as a dictatorial King George spending hard-working Americans out of their sustenance, justifying their efforts to take even more hostages in the near future out of formerly mundane government functions.[snip]
It doesn’t matter that Americans in general blame Republicans for the fiscal cliff mess far more than Democrats. What matters is that in the vast majority of Republican districts they’re considered heroes for standing up to the evil President, while the few sane or vulnerable ones in the House GOP caucus have no power. So why would they compromise? Why would they buckle? Their voters don’t want them to, and any retreat would only mean a potential challenge from the right. Most of them aren’t the least bit afraid of a Democratic opponent in 2014.
And so the depressing cycle continues. Republicans get crazier and crazier and behave in ever less socially acceptable ways and are rewarded by Republican voters, who as Atkins points out, are even more nuts than elected Republicans: Read the rest of this entry »
National Rifle Association Has Turned the Second Amendment Into a Cruel and Deadly Hoax
Posted by Cliff Lyon in 2nd Second Amendment, Activist groups, Alan Korwin, assault weapons, Bush Failures, Gabrielle Giffords, Gun Control, John Lott, Mass Shooting, NRA, Republicans, Society, Some people should not own guns, Supreme Court, The Constitution on December 21, 2012
The NRA is the enabler of death-paranoid, delusional and as venomous as a scorpion. With the weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel and deadly hoax. – Bill Moyers
NRA Enabler of death
Bill Moyers Essay: Living Under the Gun from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
The procession of funerals of innocent children under the casual gaze of the gun lobby and 2nd Amendment zealots, reminds us that our public spaces are no longer safe. This is the antithesis of freedom and civic life. Americans must rise up now against this terror and demand basic security for unarmed people.
Can the Christian Church Become Anti-Racist, Anti-Sexist, and Anti-Homophobic?
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Religion, Society, This Blog on December 4, 2012
Please note, I’m using the term homophobic to indicate bias against sexual minorities; the terms heterosexism (bias against non-heterosexual persons) and genderism (attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender – including bias against gender nonconforming, transgender, genderfluid, and third/fourth gender persons) seem more accurate but in my experience a general audience isn’t always familiar these terms.
I was already thinking about the church as an agent of social change when I read Denise Oliver Velez’s post at DailyKos.
None of us—meaning people of color—can fix you. The only person who can begin to right these wrongs is you. Most of us don’t live in your neighborhoods, nor do we work with you, or even go to school with you. Most of us aren’t married to you. Most of you have white children, parents, in-laws, cousins and co-workers.
Few of you get up each morning and say as you look in the mirror while you brush your teeth, “Today, I’m going out to do battle against racism.” You aren’t driven by that, your whole life is not shaped by being the wrong color, and though you may get outraged from time to time, when reminded by the more heinous offenses against us, it isn’t your rallying cry. You expect us to lead the various poc civil rights movements from our own segregated spaces and you’ll join in from time to time, or perhaps make a donation to “our” worthy causes. You don’t wake up in the morning each day and say to yourselves—I have white privilege, and that’s not alright.
You still go to family celebrations with racists. When at gatherings with none of us present rarely do you confront others there with you about their racism. What makes it harder is that you rarely look at your own unconscious acceptance of a world that allows racism and privilege to fester, boil and erupt.
Last week, I was the Art Of Hosting for faith communities. The question of hosting in culturally competent ways came up. What does it mean to host conversations in a racially diverse community? How do we work across cultural lines? Can the church which has for so long been a perpetrator of racism, sexism, homophobia and other biases and bigotries become an agent of positive transformation?
Our Multidimensional Crisis: Institutional Breakdown
Posted by Glenden Brown in 2012 Elections, Activist groups, Afghanistan, American History, American People, Bailout, Bush Administration, Climate Change, Conservative, Conservatives, Conspiracy theories, Deficit, Economy, Elections, GLBT issues, Iran, Iraq, Liberal, Poverty, Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, Republicans, Science, Society, This Blog, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority, Unemployment on November 19, 2012
The signs are all around us – our crisis continues to deepen and to engulf us in its complexity.
Manuel Castells, in the introduction to The Power of Identity:
The Iraq invasion was the return of the state in it most traditional form of exercising its monopoly of violence, and it followed a major crisis of international governance institutions, starting with the United Nations, marginalized by the United States, and the apparent triumph of unilateralism in spite of an objectively multilateral world. [snip]
Not only was the United States drawn into protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as al-Qaeda wanted, but its inability to build a global governance system led to a multidimensional, global crisis of which the financial collapse of 2008 was only its most damaging expression.[snip]
. . .. in the long term the trends that characterized the social structure ultimately imposed their logic, but in the short term the autonomy of the political agency could oppose such logic because of the interests and values of the actors occupying the commanding heights of agency. When such is the case, as during the Bush-Cheney administration period, the discrepancy between structure and agency induces systemic chaos, and ultimately destructive processes that add to the difficulties of managing the adaptation of the nation-state to the global conditions of the network society.
Fundamentalism Feeding Polarization
Posted by Glenden Brown in 4th Estate (Media), Activist groups, American History, American People, Conservative, Liberal, Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, Republicans, Society, This Blog, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority on November 1, 2012
In an article at Alternet,Katherine Stewart observes:
There is an obvious answer, and it is, in a sense, staring you in the face every time you watch a political debate or read about the latest antics of Focus on the Family and the AFA. The kind of religion that succeeds in politics tends to focus on the divisive element of religion. If you want to use religion to advance a partisan political agenda, the main objective you use it for is to divide people between us and them, between the in-group and the out-group, the believers and the infidels.
The result is a reduction of religion to a small handful of wedge issues. According to the religious leaders and policy organizations urging Americans to vote with their “Biblical values,” to be Christian now means to support one or, at most, a small handful of policy positions. And it means voting for the Republican party [snip]
When religion is thus reduced to a single policy decision and support for a political party, it becomes shrill and bigoted. This abuse of religion for political purposes has been tremendously damaging for American politics. But it is worth pointing out that it has been destructive of religion, too. According to another poll this month, this one by the Pew Research Center, record numbers of Americans are now reporting that they have no particular religious affiliation. Perhaps that is because, right now, the God of hate seems to be shouting louder than the God of love.
Stewart’s article is a good one, but I don’t believe she pushes her thesis far enough. I’ve written before about political fundamentalism on the American Right: Read the rest of this entry »
Recent Comments