October 28, 2024 - Ramblin' with Roger

I saw this AP story, “What’s a ‘Jezebel spirit’? Some Christians use the term to paint Kamala Harris with a demonic brush.” And you wonder why many people steer clear of “some Christians.”

“Christian nationalist leaders are telling followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a ‘Jezebel spirit,’ using a term with deeply racist and misogynistic roots that is setting off alarm bells for religious and political scholars.

“The concept is inspired by the biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and was punished with a horrible death. The word ‘Jezebel’ was used during slavery and throughout U.S. history to describe Black women, casting them as overtly sexual and untrustworthy.”

Never underestimate the power of misogynoir.

“In the context of ‘Jezebel spirit,’ the term has sinister connotations, suggesting the person is under the influence of demons in a spiritual battle between good and evil. People who have studied the Jan. 6 insurrection warn that similar rhetoric on spiritual warfare drove many to the U.S. Capitol that day.”

If you want to hear more about The Dangerous Reality of White Christian Nationalism, watch Kat Abu here.

djt keeps prompting Christians to go out and vote. I’m planning to do so THIS week (not for him), in the unlikely event that by doing so, I will stop feeling anxious about the contest.

Arnold Palmer and Mickey D’s

Of course, the election is a dead heat, despite rational reasons not to vote for the guy, not just over policy. The Weekly Sift guy has the right attitude, which I wish I could replicate. “I can’t help but learn from headlines that the race is still close. How much more do I need to know? I know who I’m voting for, and I’ve already written my check to the Harris campaign. I could spend all day fretting about whether the likelihood of Harris winning is 55% or 45%, but what’s the point?”

He also notes about djt, “Father Time is undefeated, and he gets us all eventually. What we’re seeing here is exactly how dementia works: It takes our little quirks and exaggerates them until they become serious dysfunctions.” He needs to release his medical records.

From A Word A Day: “Whenever [djt] trains his blunderbuss…it’s difficult to decipher whether he’s deadly serious, merely trying to generate instant outrage, or just heading off on a senescent ramble.” – Irish Times (Dublin); Aug 9, 2024.

(The number of people who’ve told me that JD Vance and the cabinet are going to 25th amendment djt is astonishing. Even they believe that Orange is not up to the task.)

Turn the entire machinery of the government to his whims.

But Ezra Klein takes a different view in the New York Times; djt is not diminished, just more himself. “It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him a great entertainer. [Entertainer? Meh.] It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him feel, to so many, like not a politician — the fact that he was already the U.S. president notwithstanding. It is why the people who want to be like him — the mini-Trumps… — can’t pull it off. What makes Trump Trump isn’t his views on immigration, though they are part of it. It’s the manic charisma born of his disinhibition.

“It is his great strength. It is also his terrible flaw…

“Trump’s disinhibition is yoked to a malignancy at his core. I do believe he’s a narcissist… Trump does not see beyond himself, what he thinks, what he wants, and how he’s feeling. He does not listen to other people. He does not take correction or direction. Wisdom is the ability to learn from experience, to learn from others. Donald Trump doesn’t really learn. He once told a biographer, ‘When I look at myself in the first grade, and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.”

Hit the brakes

So why wasn’t djt’s time as President even worse? “It’s that as president, “Trump was surrounded by inhibitors. In 2020, the political scientist Daniel Drezner published a book titled ‘The Toddler in Chief.’ The book’s core was over 1,000 instances Drezner collected in which Trump is described, by those around him, as befitting an impetuous child.”

But there will be no internal inhibitors if djt wins again. He is, as a buddy succinctly put it, “a violent, racist, jingoistic, fascist madman.” Another djt term will be populated by officials vetted for loyalty. And that is scary.

Endorsements, or lack of the same

ITEM: Washington Post Says It Won’t Endorse Anyone for President. Will Lewis, the company’s chief executive, said the paper was “returning to our roots” of not endorsing presidential candidates. The Post has endorsed presidential candidates since 1976, when it gave its stamp of approval to Jimmy Carter, although it did endorse Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

Robert Kagan, “editor-at-large of the Washington Post and a persistent neoconservative critic of [djt]… Members of the Post’s editorial board were surprised Friday when they learned about the decision not to endorse from top opinion editor David Shipley, Semafor reported. The board drafted an endorsement of Harris earlier this month, which was sent to the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who reportedly pressured publisher and CEO Will Lewis to not give an endorsement.”

The Borowitz Report, a satire column, noted: “Urging Prime customers not to miss out, on Friday Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered to sell the Washington Post’s integrity as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime Black Friday Deal.’ Calling the Post’s integrity ‘a signature feature that made this former newspaper great,’ the product page for the item listed it at $4.99 with free shipping… Customers shopping for Bezos’s spine, soul, and human decency got an ‘Uh oh, something went wrong’ error message, indicating that the products did not exist.”

Also

ITEM : The Los Angeles Times opted not to endorse anyone for President. Per Columbia Journalism Review: “Mariel Garza, the editorials editor…, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse… Harris for president. ‘I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.'” Two of its writers subsequently quit. “On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, informed the paper’s editorial board that the Times would not be making an endorsement for president. The message was conveyed to Garza by Terry Tang, the paper’s editor.”

ITEM: The New York Times supported “The Only Patriotic Choice for President.”

ITEM: “Scientific American, the 179-year-old bedrock of American scientific publication, has endorsed Harris for President, only the second such endorsement in its long history.” Cory Doctorow notes, “Some institutions are getting over their discomfort with norm-breaking and standing up for democracy.”

FINALLY…

Expat Cole Haddon wrote on Medium: “All I can think about is the polls that continue to show Kamala Harris, a typically flawed Democratic candidate, polling neck-and-neck with a convicted felon, rapist, and accused insurrectionist currently running on throwing out the U.S. Constitution, punishing political enemies and whomever else he feels like, and mass-arresting and deporting millions of those he deems to be foreigners — and half of voters think this sounds like a great idea for their country’s future. In other words, nearly half of U.S. voters would prefer fascism over sharing what they perceive to be ‘their country.'”