We explore the controversial subject of police conduct, particularly in situations where an individual seeks to commit ‘suicide by cop.’ We then shift to the media’s fixation on President Biden’s age, questioning why it garners such attention and criticizing how coverage distracts from more substantive political discourse. Finally, we share our thoughts on the disappointing return of John Stewart to the Daily Show and how he plays into unneeded political equivocation.
Tag: Donald Trump
Rep. Jim Jordan attempts to obstruct a state criminal case, VP Kamala Harris is a master politician, a rule giving religious student groups that discriminate school funding should go away, and we find out that vaccine hesitancy is NOT a new thing.
In this episode Doug gets schooled on the Secular Voices Survey by Dr. Juhem Navarro-Rivera from Socioanalitica Research. Secular voters are more than atheist and agnostic and they are more political and more progressive than white Christian nationalists. Secular voters also are more concerned about the response to COVID-19. Dr. Navarro-Rivera also touches on the Latinx vote. Voters for Trump tended to come from countries where they were richer and a higher social class than Latinx voters in Arizona which went for Biden.
If there are indeed multiple parallel universes all stacked on top of each other, there isn’t a single one in which support for President Trump is compatible with a modern understanding of civility.
Yet here we are, living in a country where more than 80 percent of white, self-identifying evangelicals chose Trump as the exemplar of their values and the savior of Christianity’s flagging dominance in American politics.
Among the several amazing feats of mental gymnastics Christians engage in to allow the inclusion of Trump into their ideological canon, the idea that vociferous support for him comes only from the fringes of their leadership is one of the most ridiculous. Donald Trump is as mainstream a Christian president as it’s possible to be. However, “no one upholds Trump as a moral exemplar,” wrote a breathlessly apologetic Marc Thiessen even before the Stormy Daniels interview aired.
Religious texts are powerful rhetorical devices because they are subject to interpretation. America has no state religion, but the right wing has strongly endorsed what it preaches are a set of Christian values, making the movement more approachable to the seventy percent of Americans who identify as Christians.
You might think that for people who hold this set of values, Alabama’s Republican candidate for Senate, Roy Moore, would be stoned after five women came forward and made claims that Moore came on to them or worse when they were teenagers. The Christian right, however, seems to have taken a position of denial.
Moore’s not the only one setting a bad example for Christians in politics, either. There’s also our president.
Where Organized Religion and Politics Meet