The publication pasted above, from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), appeared in last weekend's edition of our parish bulletin as a two-page spread. I admit I don't read our bulletin every single week as assiduously as I probably should, but in my 30+ years in the parish, I don't recall previously seeing anything in the bulletin that was as explicit about connecting particular issues with our duty as citizens to vote.
The image above may be too small to read as-is, although it seems if you click on it, it may pop up in a window that is large enough to read - at least that's the case in my environment (I read the blog in Google on a Wintel laptop). If you're interested in seeing the original, it's here at the USCCB website:
https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/parishes-and-schools/upload/catholics-care-catholics-vote-bulletin-insert.pdf
Below the break, I'll retype some of the content, and then offer a few comments.
On the left side, the pamphlet states, "While there are many moral issues before us, every issue is not equal." Below that statement, it lists six issues the bishops presumably wish to highlight. I've retyped those six bullets verbatim:
- Issues that directly affect human life - such as abortion and euthanasia - are fundamental and demand serious consideration.
- Our Constitution heralds religious liberty in the First Amendment, yet increasingly people of faith are having to fight to retain this basic right.
- There is a move in the nation to redefine marriage. The marriage of a man and a woman is the foundation of the family and an essential core element of a flourishing society.
- The growing disparity between rich and poor means most of the world's resources are in the hands of a small percentage of its people. The federal budget is a moral document and must prioritize the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
- The millions of undocumented persons living in the United States deserve our compassion. There is an immigration problem, and we need a humane solution to it.
- War, terror and violence have caused thousands of lost lives. We must work for just solutions to conflict in the Holy Land, throughout the Middle East, and beyond.
I wrote above that the bishops "wish" to highlight these issues, in the present tense, but in fact this publication is not hot off the press: the fine print at the bottom of the second page states that the copyright year for this content is 2012.
This list of six issues probably made sense at that time. Chronologically, 2012 wasn't so long ago, but politically and perhaps historically it seems like a different era. That year, President Obama was running for re-election. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) legislation had been passed several years earlier (despite the bishops' opposition), and the proposed details of that legislation's contraceptive mandate had been announced in 2012. Not coincidentally, 2012 also was the year the American bishops inaugurated their Fortnight for Freedom to try to build support for defending religious liberty in the face of the contraceptive mandate. 2012 also was three years before the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision legalized same-sex marriage nationally. And of course, in 2012, Roe v Wade was very much the law of the land; the Dobbs decision was still a decade away.
Here are my quick comments on the six highlighted issues, from the perspective of 2024:
- Abortion: even though Roe v Wade has been overturned, abortion obviously is still an unsettled political question and continues to be a motivating issue for American voters. At the same time, the politics of abortion have changed since 2012 as the makeup of the two parties has shifted: the GOP is no longer the pro-life stalwart it was a decade ago. It seems likely enough that the US is heading toward an abortion "settlement" with two possibilities: either the country will continue down the current state-by-state path in which blue and purple states establish a right to abortion, with a minority of red states continuing to limit abortion; or Democrats will succeed in passing federal legislation that reimposes a uniform national right to an abortion.
- Religious liberty: the bishops never quite succeeded in elevating religious liberty to the top of mind of American voters. Still, the courts have largely been friendly to the bishops' concerns, and consequently, my sense is that this issue has receded in importance, even for the bishops.
- Same-sex marriage: I think it's fair to say this ship has sailed. The Obergefell decision made same-sex marriage legal in all states. It appears that LGBTQ advocates have moved on to other issues, notably transgender rights. I don't sense that there is much appetite among religious conservatives for rear-guard action to restrict same-sex marriage. The GOP as a party, despite its heavy reliance on religious conservative voters, has no discernible desire to make same-sex marriage a political issue. The same is true of IVF and, increasingly, abortion.
- Disparity between rich and poor: the bishops may have been a bit ahead of the curve on this issue. Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century was published the following year, in 2013. And since that era, American politics has taken a significantly more economically populist turn; recall that, in 2012, the Republican ticket consisted of Mitt Romney the alleged plutocrat and Paul Ryan the alleged Ayn Rand acolyte. To be sure: it's possible that our political rhetoric has become more populist without the underlying income-disparity reality changing much.
- Undocumented immigrants: This is the issue that has moved most dramatically to the top of the national conversation since 2012, albeit probably not in the way the bishops would have wished. President Trump's most significant political accomplishment has been to boost the importance of immigration as an issue. It is scarcely an exaggeration to note that immigration has become for the Trump-era GOP today what abortion has been for Democrats: the issue that, more than any other, unites and motivates its base.
- Violence in the Holy Land and the Middle East: Another issue which has taken on greater urgency since 2012.
I recall that publication being put under windshield wipers in the church parking lot in previous election years. They haven't done that this year. In fact there hasn't been any mention of the presidential election. The big noise here are two opposing ballot initiatives, 434 and 439, Whichever one passes will be an amendment to the state constitution. 434 basically codifies the present 12 week limit with exceptions for life or health of the mother and rape or incest. Initiative 439, backed by Planned Parenthood, is ambiguously worded and basically doesn't spell out any meaningful restrictjions through the third trimester.
ReplyDeleteThere was a bulletin insert explaining the initiatives, just in case we missed the information blitz going on for the past several months. I have no problem voting for Initiative 434. Our priest spoke a little about it prior to Mass. He said it was morally acceptable to vote for the lesser of evils, which would be 434. I am just relieved not to hear anyone saying that we are obliged to vote for Trump. Not that I would consider myself bound by that!
Glad you had a choice. In Michigan, we would have reverted to the 1934 law on the books, no exceptions unless the mother was at point of death, or Prop 3, which many thought/hoped would keep abortion legal with Roe-era guardrail (informed conset, parental notification, no abortions past viability except for medical reason, etc) in place. But those guardrails were challenged and pitched by the state Supreme Court after Prop 3 passed.
DeletePrior to the vote, Michigan Right to Life was busy screaming about how it would usher in sex change operations for kids. It ignored highlighting the possibility of losing the Roe restrictions.
Dobbs has been useless as far as saving fetal lives, imo. You'll have more babies in the Old Confederacy where ir's illegal and fewer in the "anything goes" states up north. And given the way the white male evangelical legislators talk about abortion down south, fewer progressives want to embrace any abortion restrictions for fear of looking like religious nuts.
Every dollar wasted on initiatives to overturn Roe might better have been spent on improving the foster care system and providing health care for pregnant women.
I'm back trying to help the local baby pantry with the Methodist ladies. Huge need for this in a poor rural area.
Well, at least they mentioned violence in the Mideast, however ambiguously. I know America Media has recently published totally one-sided articles by zionists. There have been both-sides articles for peace but no mention of the genocidal campaign by Israel and their efforts to have us destroy Iran as they had us neuter Iraq for them. I’ll be turning in my ballot at the library tomorrow. It is basically my “dear John letter” to the Democratic Party. I know they love abortion but after the third trimester is a bit much.
ReplyDeleteLocal priest has had harsh words in the bulletin for Catholics who voted for the abortion amendment to the Michigan Constitution two years ago. He said flat out that abortion should be the overriding concern of every Catholic when they vote. Will that make a lot of people switch their vote to Trump?
ReplyDeleteDunno.
Trump and his minions seem to trying to persuade conservative Christians that they overturned Roe, abortion problem solved, let's freak out about transgender treatment for minors and prison inmates instead.
I don't think Trump cares about these moral issues at all. He's happy to let white Christian nationalists put the 10 Commandments in school, teach out of the KJV Bible, dismantle public education, get sexy books out of librariesput teachers in jail for making their little darlings feel shame--whatever makes them beholden to him so he can do whatever he wants to make sure he comes out of the deal with a lot of money and lucrative foreign real estate deals. And stays out of prison.
The recycled Faithful Citizenship document is wholly inadequate.
ReplyDeleteThere simply is no rational choice in the upcoming presidential election for those who intend to vote at all except to vote for Kamila Harris, or at least vote for someone other than Donald Trump. I cannot even begin to understand why anyone would vote for Trump in 2024, including members of my immediate family who supported him in 2016 and, as far as i know, intend to again. (We dare not discuss it.)
I always remember P. J. O'Rourke (conservative commentator and humorist) in 2016 revealing he would vote for Hillary Clinton and saying, ""I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."
It's so much more descriptive of 2024 than of 2016. I of course did not agree that Hillary Clinton was wrong about everything, nor is Kamala Harris, but even for very conservative Republicans like Liz Cheney, the choice this time is between someone within normal parameters and someone far outside of them. I find it astonishing and appalling how blatantly Trump lies day in and day out, and yet he has enough support that he may very well win the upcoming election.
It is actually one of Trump's less damaging lies, but I can't believe he keeps repeating that all legal scholars on both sides wanted (or demanded!) that Roe be overturned.
Delete•“Every Democrat, every Republican, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated and brought back to the states,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said on Fox News on Thursday morning.
•“Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives, wanted Roe v. Wade TERMINATED, and brought back to the States,” he wrote on social media on Thursday night.
•"I was proudly responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted, and in fact demanded: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended," Trump said in the video, shared on his Truth Social platform. Later in the clip, Trump said Roe’s overturning has left "abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint."
Is there anybody who doesn't know this is false? What is the point of repeating such an obvious lie?
I forget how many lies Trump tallied up during his term as president. It might have reached into six figures; I don't know. Was there any rational point to 99% of them? Being a lying liar is an intrinsic part of his personality.
DeleteI think there are two kinds of Trump voters; the cult followers who believe him or don't care if he's a liar, and the ones who cynically support him for what they think he can do for them. And they don't think the leopards will ever eat their faces. (Don't ask me what that means, it's what my sister always says about people who overlook evil because of what it does for them.)
A useful concept, that someone can be "wrong within normal parameters".
DeleteTrump has a Catholics for Trump initiative, launched in September, going on his official campaign site.
ReplyDeleteCatholicVote.org, highlighted on the Trump site, is pushing him hard. Their tack has been to amplify the "Christians under seige" theme, which is more important than than the little "flaws" they acknowledge.
I'd like to dismiss pro-Trump Catholic activist groups as fascist fringe, but given that a majority of white Catholics will vote for him (see Pew Research), these ideas are now mainstream American Catholicism.
I'd also say that American Catholics continue to endanger their Catholic identity by clubbing together with white Protestant nationalists. But that's been going on since Phyllis Schlafley threw in with fundiegelicals on overturning Roe.
You want to find the heirs of Catholics who truly give a s**t about the poor and disenfranchised, like Martin de Porres and Dorothy Day? Look at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, not CatholicVote and Right to Life.
The fundamental flaw of the Faithful Citizen document is that it does not understand the nature of our government. We are not (or at least were not) a parliamentary system where party platforms are meaningful so that one could vote for issues.
ReplyDeleteRather we elect individuals who make decisions on our behalf. They may make promises, but they are not obliged to keep them. Therefore, the character, talents and skills of our candidates should be uppermost in our minds.
I think the bishops have not only been sweep into the hyper partisanship of recent decades they have also contributed to it by their emphasis on issues.
Worthy advice from the bishops should begin with focusing not on issues by on that character, talent and skills of the candidates. In my mind Trump fundamentally fails as a politician to be worthy of our votes. A flawed candidate should never get our vote no matter how closely he or she conforms to the issues that are dear to the hearts of the bishops.
As a practical matter, given the dynamic nature of modern political environments and all the events that might occur (e.g. pandemics) an issues approach to voting is very flawed.
I think the church has had an uneasy relationship with democracy going way back. They sorta/kinda decided it was okay around the time of Pope Leo XIII. He wrote a couple of encyclicals touching on the subject.
DeleteActually, the Vatican had an uneasy relationship with democracy until the Allies liberated Rome at the end of WWII. That did not get expressed much until Vatican II. The American bishops on the other hand have gone along with democracy at time, e.g. John Caroll and have been very wary of it at other times, e.g. the KKK.
DeleteStory especially for Katherine
Deletehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/14/nebraska-2nd-district-battleground-00183400
Anne, yes, our "blue dot". I always thought it was a more fair way to apportion our (few) electoral votes. Of course the MAGA Republicans are having a cow about it. They tried to change it at the last minute, but one state senator, who is a Republican, would not go along. I believe there were a couple of others who supported him. Not everyone here is MAGA. Congressman Don Bacon is not MAGA, but apparently feels he has to be loyal to the party. I am proud of the blue dot, but I don't want it to be a deciding factor in the election. It would be much better if Trump lost by a comfortable margin. A loss by one vote would be an invitation for chaos.
DeleteRe: a parliamentary system and voting for parties: even though we are not a parliamentary system, party affiliation is not nothing in our system. Political parties still attempt to exert disciplined behavior on the part of legislators. For decades now, it has been nearly impossible for a Democratic elected official or candidate to get party support (meaning: party funding for an election) if s/he does not toe the line on the party's abortion policy. And more recently, Republican officials and candidates are hung out to dry by the party if they don't toe the line regarding Donald Trump and the question of whether Trump lost the 2020 election.
DeletePriests for Life, which has some influence among clergy and conservative Catholics, used to tell (and perhaps still tells) its followers that the party affiliation of candidates has moral consequences.
This thought experiment might help illustrate their point: suppose a pro-life Democrat is running for Congress against a pro-choice Republican. A voter who votes on the basis of abortion might reasonably desire to vote for the pro-life Democrat. But Priests for Life would say: wait, and stop and think for a moment. Both houses of Congress are nearly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Sending a Democrat to Congress, even a pro-life Democrat, could tip the balance in Congress and put Democrats in the majority. Should that happen, then, even though your representative is pro-life, the Democrats as a party surely will put pro-choice representatives in chairmanships of the committees, and will work to pass pro-choice legislation. In short, putting Democrats in the majority in Congress is to make Congress pro-choice.
Now - that is the Priests for Life position. As, for practical purposes, they are a single-issue organization, that abortion-centric line of thought makes sense for them. And I would argue that it can be extended far beyond the single issue of abortion. Which party controls Congress has a big impact on immigration, spending, judicial appointments, approval of cabinet positions, and many other government duties.
I've probably shared this before: from my point of view, there would be worse outcomes than Kamala Harris winning the presidency, while Republicans recapture control of the Senate. That's just my personal point of view - I'm not speaking for the church in noting this!
I know lots of Repubs who will vote for Harris and then for every Repub on the ballot, from Congress on down to drain commission. Their hope is to block Trump and to ensure that Harris will not be able to push any progressive measures. It makes a certain amount of sense.
DeleteBut there are a lot of MAGA Repubs on the GOP slate. So hope those voters are prepared for a divided GOP that will likely block measures with bipartisan support. Maybe get rid of the filibuster?
I am guessing the GOP is looking for an heir to Trump--a pro-biz culture warrior with Trump's charisma minus the lying, **ssy-grabbing, freelance foreign wheeler-dealing, and outlandish hair and make-up.
After Monday's rally in Pa, maybe also somebody with a better playlist and dance skills.
Jim, our former governor, a Republican, was a terrific governor, supported heavily by democrats in our deep blue state. The most popular Gov with both parties in the 52 years we’ve lived here. It’s mostly been Democrats.
DeleteHe is the only prominent Republican that I know of who refused to ever board the Trump train - even McCain did when he feared losing his Senate primary. Cheney and a couple of others developed a backbone eventually but Larry Hogan spoke out in 2016 and 2020 and refused to endorse Trump when asked repeatedly. Now he’s running for the Senate. We would LOVE to vote for him - except for the fact that he would add to the GOP headcount in the Senate and perhaps they would gain control.
Anne - yes, he's not a bad example. I believe he's pro-choice? In recent decades, moderate/pro-choice Republicans are the only ones who win statewide elections in Illinois, too. But if he was to get elected to the Senate as a pro-choice Republican - which, as I understand it, isn't likely to happen - it would virtually assure that Republicans control the Senate (even if Ted Cruz loses in Texas, which is starting to look like a real possibility). Having Republicans in charge of the Senate would pretty much guarantee that there won't be any post-Roe national abortion legislation passing.
DeleteJean said: I know lots of Repubs who will vote for Harris and then for every Repub on the ballot, from Congress on down to drain commission. Their hope is to block Trump and to ensure that Harris will not be able to push any progressive measures. It makes a certain amount of sense.
DeleteI agree that this might happen in our election. Recall my post on British, French and India elections which all seemed to be about stopping the right when it goes too far. Put in a Democrat president who can do nothing but veto Republican efforts that go too far. Also, the Ohio constitutional amendments that limited Republicans on abortion and marijuana.
Yes, Hogan is pro- choice. He is also a Catholic. I’m a bit surprised that Lori hadn’t tried to prevent him from receiving communion as that awful bishop in San Francisco did with Pelosi. But I don’t know if he and his Catholic wife belong to a parish. He has said that he prefers to keep his religious beliefs out of politics.
DeleteFWIW, I don't think the American bishops share whatever confusions or misunderstandings or royalist-shaded views on democracy used to prevail in the Vatican a century or two ago. I don't think those views even prevail in the Vatican anymore. But that is not to say that Vatican officials have a deep understanding of American politics and American policy. I am just guessing about this: I suppose, if we could somehow induce American bishops to speak frankly and openly with us, they would say that Francis doesn't really understand the USA.
ReplyDeleteThe Vatican seems to be one of the few places left not wholly under the thumb of American influence. This strikes me as generally healthy for the world at large. But I don't know to what extent American Catholic theologians and/or money might have influence the way ideas are presented. Thoughts?
DeleteI rely on Vatican experts in the media to help me understand what is happening and what makes it tick. But I think it's safe to say that American influence there is not disproportionate.
DeleteIn Benedict's day, conservative Catholic influence was disproportionate, and American money probably played at least an indirect role in that, as it helped fund the conservative groups which had Benedict's ear.
Thomas Reese - especially for the deacons - Jim and Katherine’s husband.
ReplyDeletehttps://religionnews.com/2024/10/14/2024-election-checklist-five-ways-catholic-parishes-can-keep-politics-out-of-church/
That's a good article, Anne. Due to having two abortion related initiatives on the ballot this time (opposite sides) has meant that there were bulletin inserts urging people to vote for the right one. I let a friend talk me into going to the sodality meeting a couple of weeks ago. Some super duper pro-life ladies kind of hijacked the first part of the meeting. I regretted coming to the meeting. They mean well, but everyone has decided by now which initiative they're going to vote for.
DeleteThankfully the church people have refrained from endorsing any candidates.
Anne, thanks for that Thomas Reese article. It is very good.
DeleteOnce in a while, there is something that happens - like Charlottesville - where it would seem negligent not to talk about it in light of church teaching, regardless of any political implications. I think preachers have to use good judgment, and not always, as Reese says, hide in the basement.
I think single issue focus and any kind of litmus tests tend to distort politics in a bad way. And the law of unintended consequences comes into play.
ReplyDeleteI think pro-life advocates didn't know how pro-choice the voting public has become. I think it was always clear that the pro-life position was a minority position, but I also think it's likely that the country has moved more in a pro-choice direction in the last decade or so - part of the inexorable intergenerational change in the electorate making itself felt.
DeleteI haven't checked the figures later, but when one take into account the details, e.g. life of the mother, rape, incest, etc. there really has not been that much change.
DeleteIf pro-life includes no abortion for life of mother, etc. then the country has never been pro-life. That has always been an extreme position. However, the country has always been pro-child; the number of people who want no children has also been a minority even though having children has become increasingly expensive in so many ways. What might have changed over the years because of economics is the number of children that people are willing to have.
As one sociologist put it, the country has always been pro-life in the sense that it is for family and children but has always been pro-choice in that these matters should be decided by woman and her physician not by the government.
I also think it's very difficult to take away a right, once it has been in place, especially a right like abortion which had been in place nationally for a couple of generations. Voters who may have personal qualms about nearly-unlimited abortion could nevertheless be reluctant to restrict it significantly. For 50 years, the Roe decision let voters off the hook from having to seriously contemplate it. Now they are being given the opportunity, and they are voting to retain it. That doesn't mean that the number of abortions can't decline. The numbers declined for many years while abortion was legal nationwide, until the last decade or so.
DeleteMany years ago, Margaret Steinfels asked on the C'weal blog what non-religious arguments could be posed by pro-lifers. Several participants were deeply offended by the idea.
DeleteHard as it may be for Catholics to hear, pro-lifers will always be in the minority because they rely on religious texts to justify their position and often display religious symbols and gestures (crosses, rosaries, kneeling, etc) in protests. A majority of Americans dislike people "preaching" at them, especially people from sects whose ideas they reject. (I'd also say that the very emotional confrontations like "why are you killing your baby?" always come across as hysterical and accusatory.)
Pro-lifers might have got further with a more dispassionate, scientific approach (e.g., when fetuses feel pain), but that might have forced them to concede that destroying frozen embryos and first-trimester abortions were less egregious than later-term abortions.
But the pro-life movement is so interwoven with conservative Christianity now that it's easy to dismiss their concerns as nothing that need concern non-believers.
Re: "nothing that need concern non-believers": I think that's one aspect of the intergenerational change in the electorate. Younger voters are not as religiously affiliated as older voters.
DeleteSure, but Roe was handed down in 1972, before Gen Xers were adults, and before Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha were alive. Great Generation and Boomers were in power for decadez, and not enough of them wanted to tip over Roe, either.
DeleteTo come around to a more conservative view about abortion, I certainly had to overlook bring lumped with stereotypical religious conservatives, and look for info beyond literalist "it says right here in the Bible" arguments.
The basic error of the pro-life movement has been that it let itself become an anti-abortion movement, actually for a time even more narrowly a repeal Roe movement. That enabled many people to dismiss them.
DeleteIf they had adopted the seamless garment of life strategy, they might have found many allies who were concerned about a whole range of issues. The bishops did not help when they chose opposing abortion as their top priority. Bernadine was unable to convert his fellow bishops; Law and other cardinals teamed up against him.
As far as a non-religious argument that could be posed for a pro-life position, there is the one that abortion destroys the one chance at life that a particular fetus has. Whether or not one believes in an immortal soul, or at what stage of development the soul occurs, it's over as far as life on earth goes for that developing person. All the more poignant if one doesn't believe in a life hereafter
DeleteFor me it started with my distaste for the fertility treatment racket and the money that gets wasted on those efforts while kids languish in foster care. From there I guess I began to see the commodification of babies as something that cheapens human life and erodes compassion. How could I call myself a compassionate person if I didn't think about the human suffering and callousness flows from the idea that kids, generally, should appear only when we want them to and can be ditched in homes or abortion clinics when we don't.
DeleteRe: the pro-life movement adopting the seamless garment approach: I am with you. Unfortunately political partisanship devoured that possibility.
DeleteJean, I have read many comments on Catholic sites arguing that women facing a problem pregnancy should have babies because so many couples are waiting to adopt. Babies as commodity. Those waiting couples are apparently unwilling to adopt kids in foster care. Or they adopt babies in foreign countries - not American kids in foster care.
DeleteI have also read many comments on Catholic sites saying that we need more babies to have enough workers to support their social security needs when they retire. So people need to have babies for economic utilitarian reasons.
Babies as commodities.
Maybe looking at babies as commodities is inevitable.
DeleteI'd like to think we've evolved beyond that to something like, "Hey, God sent us some kids! Great! What do we do to make sure they have a clean place to live, good food, fresh air, lots of people to teach them stuff, and parents who are not stressed out trying to do all this on their own while dealing with our avalanche of disapproving comments."
I guess I see more of that kind of attitude down at the animal shelter. Sadly.
Jean, in a capitalist world system where an abstract fiction like money seems more real and fundamental than living creatures, anything that can possibly be commodified shall be commodified. My left kidney has a price. If Musk needed it, he would get it. My price is 1.5B USD but I guess a hit man with surgical skills is cheaper.
DeleteWhenever Trump talks about s-hole countries sending us their nuts and criminals, I think of Musk. My fondest wish is that he gets deported back to South Africa.
DeleteI would prefer launching Elon of Mars to the Red Planet. If our species lasts another thousand years, we might develop the pathway to colonizing Mars. Then they could find his skeleton and erect the Tomb of the Well-known Nut-job around it.
DeleteAs I understand it, he'd be preserved as a mummy cuz bodies won't rot on Mars. But I'm all for sending him there.
DeleteOnce one buys into the idea that abortion is a pre-eminent issue because a million humans are terminated each year, then, on the balance, one is able to support a party that opposes abortion while supporting all kinds of horrors. Not all, but I think many of these folks like the horrors. Indeed, one could have justified voting for Trump even if he barbecued a baby weekly on the White House lawn and ate it. After all, that’s only 52 babies a year versus the million aborted human fetuses he’s saving. For many, the abortion issue is camouflage for getting the cruel government and economic system we all deserve. It’s “conservative” virtue signaling. Of course, the Democrats have their own seamless garment thing going since they support abortion in all three trimesters and beyond, in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon.
ReplyDeleteThere is sort of a disparities convergence recently. Republicans inching toward the Democrats on abortion, Democrats inching toward Republicans on immigration.
DeleteSorry, that was supposed to be "dispiriting convergence"
DeleteEven with Trump softening on abortion, his support doesn’t seem to have dropped off. Maybe it’s the art of the deal and people feel they owe him for killing Roe v. Wade. But I really do think they always liked the other nasty stuff.
DeleteStanley - “ But I really do think they always liked the other nasty stuff.”
DeleteAgree.. He has gotten away with saying and doing things that were never acceptable in American politics or in “polite” company. He has normalized immorality, vulgarity, hate, lying, cheating etc and he has millions of supporters who admire him for getting away with it. He manipulated the evangelicals and conservative Catholics via his phony abortion stance. And now that he has abandoned it, they don’t care because for most of them it really wasn’t the thing they liked best about him.
Sometimes I try to understand a mindset very different from my own. I think Trump releases some corralled, contained bad stuff that evangelicals and others keep contained through an act of will or conformance to ideology and their community. And it feels really good and liberating like someone admitting to something in their nature they’ve been keeping suppressed. One thought one shouldn’t have these feelings but Lord Trump has shown the way. It’s ok. Like Jack Nicolson in the movie embracing his werewolf. That’s why we have to find another way. Not just tolerating but loving in the way the Ground of Being loves or as close to it as we can get. Positing Trump as the Antichrist or an antichrist for a moment, isn’t that where that entity would seek the greatest success, among Christians?
DeleteThere's more to it than repressed evangelicals.
DeleteLots of Trumpers are like Musk, not religious in any sense, just a bunch of aging drunken frat boys who like to make noise and confusion.
Watch the guys cheering behind Trump when he talks about Arnold Palmer's being "all man." Or about punching rally hecklers. Or when Trump says "I love women." The more tasteless or threatening it is, the more they like it.
It's Lord of the Flies with a bunch of middle-aged men.
"Watch the guys cheering behind Trump when he talks about Arnold Palmer's being "all man." Or about punching rally hecklers. Or when Trump says "I love women." The more tasteless or threatening it is, the more they like it."
DeleteI definitely noticed the guys cheering behind Trump during the Arnold Palmer bit, some of them wearing their hard hats." That's a snapshot of his "bro base". Which maybe includes the women who love them, because I think some of them were laughing and cheering him on, too.
It isn't just Trump the supposed rebel that fulfills them in this way; it's the whole ecosystem they live in, much of it mediated by conservative media.
Jim “ It isn't just Trump the supposed rebel that fulfills them in this way; it's the whole ecosystem they live in, much of it mediated by conservative media.”
DeleteYes. And I was told recently that testimony in hearings in Canada confirmed that Russia used Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson to deliver pro- Putin propaganda and push a distorted definition of masculinity and femininity that appeals to too many conservatives, religious and non- religious.
Apparently they provided funding too to convey Covid and vaccine misinformation. But google warns that the news is changing rapidly and apparently this was some kind of leak of testimony by Pierre Trudeau. Stay tuned and wait for the official denials.
DeleteThe women are laughing with Trump suck-ups because adoring them is the only way to placate men like that. Keep the food hot, the beer cold, your mouth shut, and your makeup on.
DeleteTypical Trump bravado, behind a phalanx of Secret Service. What a nematode.
DeleteHee, "nematode." Because "worm" is too good for him.
DeleteSpeaking of Gaza, I am reading that Sinwar is dead. I can't say that I am sorry he is gone. I hope that means that there is more of a chance to end the war.
ReplyDelete