Tag Archives: christian

Donald Trump Doesn’t Want a Muslim Judge Either

by GeorginaDownie2 Posted on June 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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We already know that Donald Trump thinks Judge Gonzalo Curiel is biased against him because he’s “Mexican.” But what about other judges with non-white backgrounds? John Dickerson asked him about this on Face the Nation today:

Later, when asked if he believed a Muslim judge would treat him unfairly because of another controversial proposal to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S., Trump replied: “It’s possible, yes. Yeah. That would be possible, absolutely.”

“Isn’t there sort of a tradition though in America that we don’t judge people by who their parents were and where they came from?” Dickerson asked. “I’m not talking about tradition,” Trump replied. “I’m talking about common sense, okay? He’s somebody, he’s proud of his heritage.”

OK then. No Hispanics and no Muslims. I wonder which non-white ethnicities are allowed to pass judgment on Trump? He’s been pretty rough on China and Japan, after all. And Trump was king of the birthers a few years ago, so blacks probably don’t think much of him. This brings up an obvious question:

When questioned on whether he would instruct his lawyers to ask that Judge Curiel get thrown out of the Trump University case, Trump said: “Well, I may do that now—We’re finding things out now that we didn’t know before.”

“Because of his Mexican heritage though?” Dickerson pressed. “No, but because of other things,” Trump responded. “I mean because of other things.”

Hmmm. He wants Curiel tossed off the case, but not because of his Mexican heritage. Why is that? A reader points me toward a piece by Garrett Epps in the Atlantic this morning about a 1998 case overseen by federal judge Denny Chin:

Eventually, Chin dismissed Klayman’s client’s case….Not long after, the judge got a letter from Klayman and his co-counsel, Paul Orfanedes, asking a few “questions” about the judge’s Asian American background….In a written response, Chin…lowered the boom. Klayman and Orfanedes were required to withdraw as counsel from the case and would not be permitted to appear in Chin’s court on any matter ever again. They would be required to show his opinion to any other judge in the district in any future case. The court clerk would also report the sanctions to every court where they held bar membership.

….The Second Circuit briskly affirmed Chin’s order. “Courts have repeatedly held that matters such as race or ethnicity are improper bases for challenging a judge’s impartiality,” wrote the chief judge, Ralph Winter, a Reagan appointee.

In public, Trump can rant about anything he wants. But in court, if his lawyers so much as mention Curiel’s Mexican heritage in a recusal motion they risk nuclear sanctions. Even for Trump, they aren’t willing to do that.

Still, there are always those “other things.” My own guess is that this is a blustery Trumpian fiction, just like all the evidence of Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth that Trump insisted his private investigators had been digging up back in 2011. We’ll see.

Bottom line: Donald Trump apparently believes that the only judge qualified to try his case is a white Christian. I guess this is the new, more presidential Trump that his backers keep insisting will show up any day now for the general election.

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Donald Trump Doesn’t Want a Muslim Judge Either

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The Real Story of the Syrian Family Who Donald Trump Said Might Be Terrorists

by GeorginaTindal Posted on May 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Matt Chase

The couple who had panicked the nation’s right-wing politicians and pundits sits on a couch in a spartan ground-level apartment on the outskirts of San Bernardino, California. Thirty-two-year-old Samer is in a blue sweatshirt and jeans, lounging next to his wife, Sara. He has a round face and relaxed eyes; she is more angular, her eyes more direct. They’re both wearing ankle monitors. Ever since they were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention two months earlier, they’ve kept a low profile. It took me weeks to contact them, and now they’ve agreed to tell their story. But they have some caveats: no real names, not too many details. They don’t want to stir up any more trouble than they’ve already been through.

Eight months before I met them, they were in Syria, on the phone with a smuggler. ISIS fighters were on the fringes of their small Christian village, firing mortars into it. Samer and Sara knew if the village fell there was a good chance they’d be abused or executed. There was no power, no work, and the price of food was punishing. Part of their home was blown up. Their little boys, two and five years old, were “afraid all the time,” Sara recalls. They almost never ventured outdoors. Of Syria, Samer says, “It is not a life.” So they decided to seek a new one—in America, where they hoped to join Samer’s parents and sister, who live in California.

The smuggler told them he could help, in exchange for everything they had—a valuable tract of land, the remains of their home, and all its contents. The smuggler’s network stretched across the globe, and he arranged to get them to Lebanon, then Turkey, where they waited three months before being supplied with expertly forged European passports—they won’t say which nationality—and plane tickets to Brazil. From there, they traveled north. The smuggler told them where to go, whom to meet, when to take a car, and when to fly. The passports worked at every checkpoint, border, and airport.

On November 17, Samer, Sara, and their two little boys walked across the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas, and turned themselves in to American immigration officials. Samer remembers, “I was so happy. I finally arrived here to have a safe life, a good life for my children.”

They didn’t realize they were stepping into a firestorm of anti-refugee hysteria. Four days before their arrival, ISIS-backed terrorists had attacked in Paris. After Samer and Sara entered the United States, the conservative website Breitbart proclaimed—falsely—that they and another Syrian family who had crossed with them were “illegal aliens” who had been “caught” sneaking into the country. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a link to the story. Ben Carson said their arrival could be a sign that “our worst nightmare may be unfolding before our eyes.” Trump tweeted that they might be terrorists: “ISIS maybe? I told you so. we need a big & beautiful wall!” In the days that followed, more than 30 governors said they did not want Syrian refugees settling in their states.

Almost immediately after requesting asylum, Sara and the boys were put in one ICE detention center, Samer in another. They went through the extensive asylum interview process and were determined to have “credible fears of persecution or torture” in Syria. Within two weeks they were approved for release. ICE officials told Samer’s family in California to buy airline tickets for them. But the day before they were set to depart, Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook slaughtered 14 people in San Bernardino. ICE told Samer’s family to cancel the flights to California, and Samer and Sara were denied parole. The only explanation was a vague declaration of “law enforcement interests.”

During their weeks of detention, Samer was allowed to speak to Sara only once on the phone. The boys cried every night, asking Sara where their father was. As Christmas approached, the children had been held for nearly 40 days, despite a mandate that most migrant kids should be released after three to five days. “The look on their face is a look of terror,” their lawyer, Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, told me after visiting Sara at the time. “The look and the panic of a person pinned down on a hospital gurney.”

“I definitely thought America would accept me,” Samer told the Guardian. “If I had known that it was so terrible here I wouldn’t have brought my family.” On Christmas Eve, the family was finally released, reunited, and put on a flight to California.

That’s where I meet them two months later, in the warm and tidy apartment where Samer’s parents live. A cross hangs above the kitchen doorway. We drink tea in the living room as Samer and Sara lay out the terms for sharing their story. They’re wary: They don’t want to be back in the headlines, and they worry more press could endanger Sara’s mother and sister, still trapped in Syria. “They didn’t have a chance to leave,” she says. ISIS is still on the outskirts of their village.

They talk about life before the war, of their town—a small community speckled with trees and fields of crops. Sara doesn’t want to dwell on how the war has changed it. “The way the village looks is not important,” she says. “It is like all of Syria,” a landscape of broken concrete and twisted rebar.

Their troubles aren’t over. The asylum process, as Ryan puts it, is “designed so that people fall into the cracks, lose their cases on a technicality that would drive any sports fan nuts.”

But for now, Samer and Sara are piecing together a normal life. “My son started school,” she says, beaming. “Preschool. Just five years old, but he is a big boy. He is starting to learn English.” The boys, who have been playing in the living room, disappear into the kitchen and return proudly carrying potted flowers. “They bought this flower for their grandma,” Sara explains. Next they walk out holding a bag of peanut M&Ms with pleading eyes, grinning and squirming. They can play outside now. But not today. “It’s too windy!” Sara says with a laugh.

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The Real Story of the Syrian Family Who Donald Trump Said Might Be Terrorists

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Trump now sounds like every other right-wing Republican on energy — well, almost

by MarguerU84 Posted on May 27, 2016

Trump now sounds like every other right-wing Republican on energy — well, almost

By on May 27, 2016 12:01 amShare

Donald Trump has sold himself as a different kind of Republican, but in his first energy policy speech on Thursday, he adopted the same tired, old energy ideas that have been trotted out by the GOP establishment for years. The only difference: Trump doesn’t actually understand the issues at play, so he avoided specifics and made absurd, impossible-to-keep promises.

Trump was not the fossil fuel industry’s preferred candidate. Primary opponents who had  proven their deference to big business, such as Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, were considered a safer bet by the oil, gas, and coal barons. Trump, with no real ideology and a tendency to flip-flop, was seen as more of a wildcard. Still, I predicted in March that if Trump locked up the nomination, he would adopt the traditional Republican energy agenda, just as once-moderate Mitt Romney had in 2012. And that’s exactly what Trump has now done.

We got a hint that Trump was headed in this direction when he brought on oil-loving Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) as his energy policy advisor earlier this month. Cramer has an extremely anti-environment record, including a lifetime voting score of 1 percent from the League of Conservation Voters.

Then, last week, Trump met with and sucked up to Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, a coal mining company. Murray is such a staunch Republican that he is alleged to have pressured employees to donate to Romney’s 2012 campaign. Massey emerged from that meeting to say he was backing Trump, but that even he thinks Trump’s grandiose promises to bring back coal are impossible. (Trump also revealed that he doesn’t know what liquefied natural gas is.)

Saying all the right-wing stuff, sorta

In his speech at an oil industry conference in heavily-fracked North Dakota on Thursday, Trump called for much less regulation and much more drilling, fracking, and mining. But, in typical Trump fashion, he took things a step further than most Republicans do. In 2012, Romney called, nonsensically, for “North American energy independence.” Trump, though, doesn’t want Canada intruding on his effort to make America great again, so he said, “Under my presidency, we will accomplish complete American energy independence.” Never mind that “energy independence,” North American or otherwise, is impossible as long as we depend on fossil fuels that can be sold on the global market. Trump said he would ensure that we are “no longer at the mercy of global markets,” but more domestic drilling won’t free us from the tyranny of international markets unless we nationalize all of the oil companies and force them to sell only to Americans. Otherwise, rising demand in Asia or supply disruptions in the Middle East will continue to affect the price of gasoline.

Trump put his own spin on the Keystone XL issue too. He got the party line right when he said that he would “absolutely” approve the pipeline, but then he added that he would negotiate “a better deal.” The U.S. should get a “piece of the profits” from Keystone, he said. “That’s how we’re gonna make our country rich again.” That sort of kickback scheme may have worked when Trump was allegedly cutting deals with mafia-run construction outfits as a New York City developer, but there is no current mechanism for it under U.S. law.

He also promised “energy reform that creates trillions of dollars in wealth.” However he came up with that ridiculous number, he might as well have pulled it out of thin air. The only source he cited for the huge economic benefits of environmental deregulation was the Institute for Energy Research, a conservative advocacy organization founded by Charles Koch and run by a former Enron executive.

Trump’s pledge that in his first 100 days in office he would, “rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan” also offered political talking points rather than thoughtful policymaking. The Climate Action Plan is not an executive action, but a collection of actions, some of which are EPA rules, like the Clean Power Plan. It’s not clear which agency would repeal those rules if he first abolished the EPA, as he proposes. And removing those rules would be vulnerable in court without Congress first getting rid of the Clean Air Act and other legislation that requires the government to regulate pollutants.

Trump’s new energy agenda is all Republican politics without even the patina of policy seriousness offered by some more experienced politicians.

Playing to two wings of the party

Trump’s energy speech was all about holding the Republican coalition together: reaching out to the fossil fuel lobby while continuing to appeal to his rural, white, Christian base. In the primaries, Trump was the candidate of the party’s unwashed masses. Now he has to win over the elite business wing, especially now that he is raising money from them for his general election campaign. In a press conference before his speech, he gave repeated shoutouts to Harold Hamm, a North Dakota businessman who has made billions in oil and gas drilling and donated heavily to Republican campaigns.

Then he made his overture to the white working class by praising coal miners and their way of life. “The miners, they’re incredible people. I asked a couple of them, ‘Why don’t you go into some other profession?’ And they said, ‘We love going after coal.’” Trump’s pro-coal stance is so transparently political rather than based on any serious policy engagement that he just says coal is great because miners are great. And miners are great because they “love going after coal.” It’s circular logic. And like Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” it defines America’s past as its peak.

Likewise, Trump’s vow to undermine international climate negotiations — “We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs” — is as much a statement of nationalist, anti-U.N. resentment as anything to do with energy or environmental policy. It doesn’t matter that he wouldn’t be able to unilaterally pull the U.S. out of the deal.

Trump’s energy speech on Thursday demonstrated two things: he’s trying to reassure the GOP establishment that he will be a team player their economic agenda but he still has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to energy policy. But if he becomes president, he’ll find out the hard way that we can’t drill our way to “energy independence.”

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Trump now sounds like every other right-wing Republican on energy — well, almost

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Stop trying to get Instagram likes by destroying natural wonders

by LarhondColorado Posted on April 29, 2016

Graffiti is seen scratched into a sandstone wall in Utah’s Arches National Park. REUTERS/National Park Service/Handout

Stop trying to get Instagram likes by destroying natural wonders

By on Apr 29, 2016Share

This is why we can’t have nice things, people.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that some assholes have carved their names into the rocks at Arches National Park. Graffiti is — surprise! — illegal in the park, punishable with up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. This, however, seems not to have deterred a recent “tidal wave” of vandalism, according to park superintendent Kate Cannon. Cannon suspects the recent surge in graffiti has something to do with social media. Yup: They do it for the likes.

As to who “Andersen 16” is, we’re hunting down some early leads: Ron Andersen, American bridge player, Carl-Albert Andersen, Norwegian pole vaulter, and the ghost of Hans Christian Andersen — because leaving your mark on literature isn’t enough; sometimes you need to leave it on some big rocks, too.

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Stop trying to get Instagram likes by destroying natural wonders

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Ted Cruz’s New Anti-Choice Group Is Headed by a Guy Who Thinks Abortion Caused the Drought

by MelindaWest07 Posted on January 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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During a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said he’s created an anti-abortion group that will “champion every child, born and unborn.” The Pro-Lifers for Cruz coalition already has more than 17,000 members, according to a press release, and will be chaired by Tony Perkins, the anti-LGBT president of the Family Research Council who recently said same-sex marriage is responsible for “havoc in our homes and blood in our streets.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has also created a committee, but Cruz has cornered some of the more extreme members of the anti-abortion movement.

Also heading up the coalition are 11 anti-abortion co-chairs “representing virtually every perspective on the pro-life spectrum.” One of those perspectives is that of Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue and a board member of the Center for Medical Progress, the group behind the debunked Planned Parenthood videos, whose founder David Daleiden was recently indicted for alleged crimes in connection to the videos. In his announcement on Wednesday, Cruz called Newman’s group “one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation.”

Newman has been involved in anti-abortion organizing for decades, and in 1999 he became the president of Operation Rescue, a group with a long history devoted to shuttering abortion clinics. In 2000 he published the book Their Blood Cries Out, in which he calls abortion doctors “blood-guilty.” In a passage of the book, which is now out of print, Newman wrote that “the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt sic from the land and people.”

In 2002, Newman moved Operation Rescue headquarters from Southern California to Wichita, Kansas, the home of Dr. George Tiller, one of the only later-term abortion providers in the country at the time. Tiller was shot to death while volunteering as an usher for his church. Scott Roeder, 51, who participated in Operation Rescue events and protests in Wichita, was eventually sentenced to 50 years in prison for the murder. Newman immediately distanced himself from Roeder following Tiller’s death. Operation Rescue’s senior vice president is Cheryl Sullenger, who in the late 1980s served two years in federal prison for conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic.

A year after moving to Wichita, Newman commented on the state execution of Paul Hill, a man convicted of murdering a Florida-based abortion provider and his volunteer escort. In a joint press release, Newman’s Operation Rescue and another pro-life organization wrote that Hill’s execution was unjust because “there are many examples where taking the life in defense of innocent human beings is legally justified and permissible under the law…Execution under these circumstances is nothing less than murder of a political prisoner.”

Last October, Newman, who had been scheduled to speak at an anti-abortion event, was deported from Australia because government officials thought he would be “a threat to good order” and that his views on abortion could compromise the safety and well-being of women seeking abortions. Newman has recently claimed that the ongoing drought in California is caused by abortion: “Is it no wonder that California is experiencing the worst drought in history when it is the largest child-killer in all of the United States?”

Ken Cuccinelli, the former state senator and attorney general of Virginia who has said he opposes abortion even when the pregnancy is a health risk to the woman, is another co-chair of the committee. So is Gianna Jessen, who calls herself an “abortion survivor” because she was born after her mother failed an attempted saline abortion. A disability activist, she testified against Planned Parenthood during the House’s investigation last year.

“I always say that men are born to defend women and children, not sit idly by, or be passive when they are being harmed,” Jessen is quoted as saying on Cruz’s website. “Senator Cruz has been absolutely courageous in his defense of the unborn, and willing to stand alone.”

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Ted Cruz’s New Anti-Choice Group Is Headed by a Guy Who Thinks Abortion Caused the Drought

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Wheaton College: Still Standing Despite a Bit of Mild Criticism

by ElisabettaBerger56 Posted on January 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Perhaps you remember the case of Larycia Hawkins. She’s the professor at Wheaton College who declared on her Facebook page that Muslims and Christians worship the same god. Wheaton College follows the “evangelical Protestant tradition,” which apparently has different thoughts on this matter, and as a result Hawkins is in the process of being fired.

Over at National Review, David French says that this ought to be entirely uncontroversial:

But this is Christian higher education, and the Left is taking direct aim at Christian academic freedom and institutional liberty. In 2014, it launched an ill-fated attack on Gordon College’s accreditation, and last month the LGBT Left issued a report loudly condemning Christian colleges for having the audacity to exercise their statutory and constitutional right to opt out of Title IX. So it should come as no surprise that the Left is rallying around professor Hawkins, trying to pressure Wheaton into yielding on its statement of faith.

I read this over lunch, and with nothing more pressing on my mind than eating a slice of pizza, I decided to click those four links to find out just what kind of pressure the Left was bringing to bear. I urge you to click yourself to check my work. The first three go to a trio of little-read diaries at the Huffington Post. Here are the most impassioned statements I could find in each of the three:

Letter endorsed by Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and 26 others: In our view, the measures taken by Wheaton administrators…dampen the spirit of free inquiry so crucial to the academic environment; ultimately depriving the student body of the benefit of a deeply dedicated educator….We call upon her employers to renew their own commitment to the principles of tolerance and academic freedom.

Ken Wilson: There’s a way out of this morass. But it requires a commitment to the apostolic counsel of Romans 14-15. In a nutshell it boils down to this: we’re going to disagree over highly contentious issues….In the meantime, we can feast ourselves on the rich fare of mere Christianity. In a community shaped by Romans 14-15, there would be plenty of room for Julie Rodgers and Dr. Larycia Hawkins at the table.

Pamela A. Lewis: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? To the extent that Christians and Muslims come from the same Abrahamic tradition, yes they do….However, when it is a question about what these faiths call God and how they worship God, there are significant differences with respect to rituals and patterns of devotion….Whether or not Professor Hawkins has violated Wheaton College’s Statement of Faith will be decided by Wheaton College. But I am with those who believe that she was moved by her understanding of Christ’s commandment to love and stand with the vulnerable and the stranger, whoever they may be at the moment.

That’s…not…really very fiery stuff. I imagine the administrators at Wheaton College can still sleep nights. The fourth link goes to a pretty straightforward CNN story in which Hawkins herself is critical of Wheaton’s actions, which is hardly surprising since she’s the one being fired.

So where do these milquetoast statements leave us? French acknowledges that so far, “the Left has merely used its powers of persuasion to try to move Wheaton from its statement of faith.” But what about tomorrow? “Schools that don’t conform to leftist orthodoxy may soon consequences far worse than a barrage of negative news coverage.”

Maybe so. But it’s always worth clicking the links. If this is the best that the big, bad Left can do—and I assume French would have linked to worse if it existed—I think Christian colleges are probably not in any imminent danger. It’s pretty stunning sometimes just how little criticism it takes to bring out the victim in us all.

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Wheaton College: Still Standing Despite a Bit of Mild Criticism

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We Are Being Tested By God. We’re Failing.

by MirandaI21 Posted on December 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Oh come on, now he’s just trolling us for sure:

Brzezinski: Do you like Vladimir Putin’s comments about you?

Trump: Sure. When people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.

Scarborough: Well, I mean, also, it’s a person that kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously, that would be a concern, would it not?

Trump: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.

Scarborough: Yeah. But, again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him.

Trump: Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, you know.

Scarborough: What do you mean by that?

Trump: There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is. But you didn’t ask me the question. You asked me a different question. So that’s fine.

“Joseph Kony? Bad guy, no doubt about it. But at least he’s a Christian, unlike what we have now. And a tough guy too, a leader. He knows what he wants and he’s willing to fight for it.”

This is turning into a bad Mel Brooks film.

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We Are Being Tested By God. We’re Failing.

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Here’s the Awful Way the New York Post Changed Its San Bernardino Shooting Cover

by AlmedaQkv2385888 Posted on December 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Early Thursday morning, police officials announced the identities of two suspects believed to be behind the deadly rampage in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 people and injured 17 others. Authorities had been searching for Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, after the two alleged gunmen opened fire inside a center that helps individuals with developmental disabilities and then drove away in a black SUV. Farook and Malik were later killed in a gunfire exchange with the police.

With the official release of their names, the New York Post made the editorial decision to change its front-page headline with the following:

Blatant bigotry aside, it’s also important to call out the Post’s inconsistent focus on religion in the aftermath of mass shootings in America. After last Friday’s Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, the paper did not feature a story about the attack on its front page, nor did its editors label that shooter a “Christian Killer” in any accompanying stories. Instead, on Saturday, the New York tabloid demeaned the city’s homeless population with a cover story headlined “How The Bums Stole Christmas.”

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Here’s the Awful Way the New York Post Changed Its San Bernardino Shooting Cover

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Who’s the Most Humble? We Are!

by RoseanneGourgaud Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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People For the American Way emails to highlight something from last Friday’s pre-Thanksgiving celebration of Christian virtue in Iowa. Here is Carly Fiorina:

“I do think it’s worth saying,” Fiorina declared, “that people of faith make better leaders because faith gives us humility, faith teaches us that no one of us is greater than any other one of us, that each of us are gifted by God. Faith gives us empathy; we know that all of us can fall and every one of us can be redeemed. And faith gives us optimism, it gives us the belief that there is something better, that there is someone bigger than all of us.”

PFAW is doing the Lord’s work here—so to speak—but I can’t get too worked up about this. It’s annoying, but what do you expect at a big gathering of evangelical Christians in Iowa? But then there’s this from omnipresent messaging guru Frank Luntz:

Luntz then followed up on Fiorina’s statement by declaring that “I can back that up statistically,” asserting that “every single positive factor that you can describe is directly correlated to someone’s relationship with faith, with God, and all the pathologies that you would criticize are directly related to a rejection of God.”

You know, I’ve got nothing against organized religion. It provides an important part of life for a lot of people and does a lot of good charitable work. It also does some harm, but what human organization doesn’t?

<rant volume=7>

But it sure does get tiresome to hear Christians like Fiorina constantly preening about how great they are and then in their next breath boasting about their humility. Fiorina also explicitly suggests that nonbelievers are second-rate leaders and then immediately congratulates believers like herself for their empathy. As for optimism, I have rarely come across a community more convinced that the entire country has become a grim and ghastly abomination than evangelical Christians. Generally speaking, I’d say that evangelical Christians—the ones who blather in public anyway—are among the least humble, least empathetic, and least optimistic people in the country.

Still, you can just chalk all this up to political hyperbole and let it go. But then Luntz steps in to bring the Science™. It’s not just Fiorina’s opinion that believers are better than nonbelievers. By God, Luntz can prove that every single bad thing in the world is due to unbelievers. Who needs faith when you have dial tests? So there you have it: Revel in your overwhelming superiority, Christians. What better way to win sympathy for your views?

</rant>

Have a nice Thanksgiving, everyone. Eat with a few sinners and publicans this year, OK?

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Who’s the Most Humble? We Are!

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Ben Carson and the Tale of Redemption

by AdalberOreilly Posted on November 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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For those of you who may have missed it, the Wall Street Journal decided to check out another Ben Carson story yesterday. Here’s the story as recounted in Gifted Hands, about Carson’s time as a student at Yale:

Ben is broke. Finds ten-dollar bill on sidewalk. Thank you, Lord!
A year later, Ben is broke again. Looks for ten-dollar bill, doesn’t find one.
Ben gets notice that all the final exams in Perceptions 301 were accidentally lit on fire. He goes in for the retest.
The new test is really, really hard. A girl near Ben tells her classmate they should leave. “We can say we didn’t read the notice.”
Everyone starts leaving. Ben is conflicted. “I was tempted to walk out, but I had read the notice, and I couldn’t lie and say I hadn’t.”
Eventually Ben is the only one left. The professor comes back in with a Yale Daily News photographer. The whole thing was a hoax, she said. “We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class. And that’s you.”
Ben concludes the story: “The professor then did something even better. She handed me a ten-dollar bill.”
End scene.

And now for a couple of comments that I’ve seen this morning. First, Atrios remarks that the story is simply not believable. And that’s true. I assume that’s why the Journal decided to check it out. It sounded completely phony, and they concluded that it was, in fact, phony.

Second, Adam Serwer tweets that most of Carson’s deceptions and embellishments are unnecessary. His personal story is great without them. And generally speaking, that’s true. But in this case it’s not.

Here’s the thing: the beating heart of Carson’s personal story is about his redemption by God. So he says he had a violent temper as a kid, and then became a new man after praying in a bathroom one day. In fact, God turned him around so thoroughly that West Point offered him a full scholarship. He went to Yale instead, where the Lord took care of his finances when he was in desperate straits. And as a bonus, it was because of his Christian inability to tell a lie.

Are these embellishments unnecessary? Sure. But Carson knows his audience. Serious evangelicals really, really want to hear a story about sin and redemption. That requires two things. First, Carson needs to have been a bad kid. Second, redemption needs to have truly turned his life around. He was already a student smart enough to get into Yale, so he needs more.

That’s where these stories come in. He needs to exaggerate how violent he was when he was young. And after he finds God, he needs to exaggerate how great everything turned out. This culminates in the absurd story about his psychology class. No one who’s not an evangelical Christian would believe it for a second. But evangelicals hear testimonies like this all the time. They expect testimonies like this, and the more improbable the better. So Carson gives them one. It’s clumsy because he’s not very good at inventing this kind of thing, but that doesn’t matter much.

Not all of Carson’s deceptions follow this pattern. But several of them do. And they were far from unnecessary. Carson needed to sell his story to evangelicals, and that required a narrative arc as formulaic as any supermarket romance novel. So he gave them one.

Continued here: 

Ben Carson and the Tale of Redemption

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