A Murderer's Row of Nonsense

Not too long ago, I read a book entitled Money, Lies and God, about the Christian nationalist movement to destroy democracy. Very well cited, Katherine Stewart names names on the road to destroying what America used to be about: Living with opposition, living and let living.

She started out by naming self-appointed groups bent on straightening out all that sinning going on out there and fencing it all in. The number of them were amazing, so I decided to write them all down. Note that this is not, in all likelihood, an exhaustive list: These are just the ones she found. You may have heard of some of them, but I'm betting far and away not all of them:

Alliance Defending Freedom

Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

American Center for Law and Justice

Bible Literacy Project

Biblical Voter

Bradley Foundation

Child Evangelism Fellowship

Council for National Policy

Concerned Citizens for Education

Conservative Action Project

DonorsTrust

Essentials in Education

Eternal Word Television Network

Exodus Mandate

Extinction Rebellion

Faith Wins

Family Research Council

Family Watch International

Fellowship Foundation

Federalist Society

40 Days for Life

Good News Club

Heritage Action for America

Heritage Foundation

Home School Legal Defense Association

Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty

Liberty Council

Life Challenge Church

Manhattan Institute

Moms for Liberty

National Christian Foundation

New Apostolic Reformation/Fivefold Ministry Pentacostals

Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic

Parents Defending Education

Patriot Mobile Leadership Institute

Political Network for Values

Priests for Life

Protect Our Kids

Public School Exit

QAnon

Rachel's Vineyard

Reawaken America

Reform Prayer Network

Religious Freedom Institute

Salt and Light Council

School Board Leaders

Servant Foundation

Seven Mountains Dominions

The Signatory

State Policy Network

Truth and Liberty Coalition

U.S. Coalition of Apostolic Leaders

Wall Builders

Watchman Decree

Word of Faith Fellowship

World Congress of Families

Ziklag Group

I'm not even sure I got all of those listed in the book, but you can see likenesses within several names; many of them concern themselves with 'godless' public education and striving for a remedy to it. Others are catch-all names for a number of people within a number of groups: the Ziklag Group, for instance, another of an exhaustive supply of Biblical references, is named for "A secretive organization for 'high new-worth families' that vacuums in funding for the [Alliance Defending Freedom, which gains quite a bit of attention from Stewart as a central organizing entity] and its allies."

You've heard of some of these: the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, and most recently, Moms for Liberty and QAnon. The rest seem upon first glance as sliver organizations, but Stewart assures us that their dollar contributions are funneled toward the most beleaguered and best-known groups, which all have focused their attacks on some aspect of liberalism.

Undoubtedly, they are better organized than liberal groups, which tend to stay in silos, says an editor of Inside Philanthropy, a digital media site, and miss the concept of building a broad political movement. "Liberal donors can be a bit technocratic and think you make social change by coming up with solutions that are evidence-based. And that's not really how politics works," he said. "People are less rational than a lot of liberal funders would like to believe."

They still can't believe it. I must admit thinking this way for most of my political life--that victory belongs to those who can sell the most logical approach, and represent people's best interests. But the past three presidential elections, along with the coattails that have accompanied it, have clearly demonstrated otherwise. It is said that people don't vote with their minds, they vote with their guts. I think it could more easily be said that voting with one's guts create the reactionary base from which this chaos can function successfully.

Along with that, there is the implication that Democrats can't appeal to the people whose votes are vital to keeping them in power--so they keep losing the close ones. It seems counterintuitive that Democrats have to find something more emotional to pull in those on the fence, and campaign with harsh, one-way-or-the-highway rhetoric--but they may be in a position where they now have to. The results of ignoring those approaches are above: Religiously-directed campaigning breeds autocracy and authoritarianism, just the feeding ground that Christian nationalism craves. 

Do Democrats have to sell religiosity, then? I'm not sure. I don't think they want to. But something decisive with which to strike back at the lies, exaggerations and innuendoes has to be out there. It's clearly missing. Without it, Democrats will fade into the distance, and what used to represent democracy will fade with them. But this murderer's row of nonsense has plenty of momentum now. It makes no sense to say what must take place "or else," because "or else" is here. It is growing out of control or rationality.

And the facts aren't working. There's too much of all the other stuff. It drowns information and logic out. It fills our heads whether we want it to or not. And if a genuine attempt is made to clarify things, others come out and say so, lying through their teeth, sowing confusion and discontent. It encourages us to shut down access to those facts--the worst possible scenario.

Constitutional protection isn't working, either. Ask Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. There is no protection if corporate powers won't defend what late-night shows are supposed to represent--decent, creative satire. Instead of considering these shows to be examples of decent commentary, corporate executives at ABC and CBS don't want anyone, especially 47, to mess with their playthings. So the show has been taken away from Kimmel. Although he has been allowed to return, it's an abject warning that it may happen again--and not necessarily to only late night shows. Stephen Colbert has also been removed permanently, and although cost issues were listed as the number one reason, his relentless parodies of 47 cannot be discounted.

The First Amendment only matters if you have the resources necessary to take ogres into court--and then, you have to win. 47 understands that if you get into people's money bags, they aren't as high-minded as they thought they were.

Note, also, that education seems to be the leading basis upon attacks on liberals. Reactionaries are trying to depict children as helpless waifs who are victimized by naughtiness. They're getting away with acting on behalf of God in removing sinfulness from curricula. This is nonsense, of course, but the grinding away at the position of the freedom of minds to think as they please has that residual effect.

Does that mean that Christian nationalism is winning? You could say that. You could also say that it's a wall upon which to nail the pelts of those who would dare to challenge the anti-truths that 47 and minions mouth. Either way, it serves a purpose for those with grievances and complaints with newly-found governmental power to interrupt them.

And with the above noted groups supporting these awful actions, they carve out places in the body politic to spread their poppycock, overlapping where they will. I highly doubt that the liberals have this many groups to represent their interests; if so, I'd like to read a book that lists them. If not, they'd better hurry up. They're getting run over with this pretentious bulwark. The meaning of America will disappear.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Normality of Brutality

I belong to a book group, and this month's reading is the work The Other Slavery, by Andres Renendez. It describes a world that I, as a once American history teacher, never really knew.

The Spanish, who took over the Southwest part of what is now the United States, and Mexico, back in the 16th Century were brutal to the Native peoples they conquered. That much I knew and imparted to my students. But what followed that, all the way into the 20th Century, is something that I and I'm betting a whole bunch of my fellow history teachers missed: the pervasive slavery of Native Americans.

The Spanish found caches of silver and gold in America, and enslaved indigenous peoples to mine them. the descriptions of the kinds of workdays these peoples had are terrifying and disgusting. They make the horrible cotton picking of the South by black peoples relatively easier by comparison.

But there were also guilty consciences. The Spanish crown came to try to ban slavery by the New Laws of 1542, which, of course, appalled the Spanish viceroys who were making enormous profits by the mining. The crown ran into a problem that the British crown did 200 years later: How do you enforce something that unpopular that's some 4000 miles away? They couldn't, and they didn't. The New Laws, gradually, were ignored. Slavery continued.

But it was practiced, too, by some Native peoples. When they conquered other tribes and/or defeated them in battle, they took prisoners and either put them to work themselves or utilized them as trading pieces for other things they believed they needed. This was practiced throughout the Americas. Thousands, even millions, of people lived deprived, short lives of subsistence.

Some of that was interrupted by a Native rebellion in 1680, which to a great extent succeeded in chasing the Spaniards out of New Mexico. But within a generation, they returned. By then, Native peoples had re-established conquered areas of their own, forcing the Spaniards to find newly profitable places--which they did, this time utilizing presidios and missions to launch their conquests from.

Renendez has done massive, tremendous research, so much so that this is the kind of book that almost writes itself. It must have taken him years to do it, and it won the Bancroft Prize in 2017. But his thoroughness in reporting is, upon reflection, staggering. It points the finger at many of what we might call "civilized" peoples, Native or European, and exposes them being quite the opposite.

Even Natives attacked and enslaved other Natives. Comanches were particularly active and adept at doing this. They raided settlements over an enormous acreage, considering it was done only with horses. 

All this was done in Mexico, in New Mexico, in Arizona, and in California. It went as far north as present-day Nebraska and Utah. People who needed extra labor to accomplish their tasks went on the road and rounded up those who were not themselves. There were hundreds of thousands of them, all told. And those who write the history textbooks missed nearly all of it.

What the captors must have thought--like the Europeans in Africa and the Americas, like the Muslims in the Near East--is that if they happened upon or heard about other peoples in lands they were visiting or exploring, they must by nature be inferior beings. No matter where or when, if you make that assumption, it makes it easier for you to attack, carry off, and subjugate them to doing your will.

That fundamental assumption has saturated humankind, probably from its beginnings. We mourn the unnecessary activities of those, like 47 and his ICE, who are still going out of their ways not to understand and assimilate newcomers who aren't European in ancestry. We reel in shock at this backwards, even barbarous treatment. 

But the sad fact is that it is merely continuing what part of humankind has always done to those it has brought under their control, based on some kind of supremacy. The one that is practiced inside the U.S. is ginned-up white supremacy; the one practiced in the hope of acquiring gold was based on the Christian religion. Over time, the two never drifted far apart.

It isn't necessarily hate that drove this, though plenty of it existed. It was condescension, too. For some reason, Homo sapiens has a need to consider themselves above someone else--and not just recognize and dote on it, but make captives out of those they judge inferior so they can stay that way. Our slavery, which debuted in 1619,  came along right in the middle of a great deal of it worldwide. 

Ironically, The Other Slavery notes that mandates that were called the New Laws, created by the Spanish crown and its king, who grew a conscience about it all after more than twenty years of it in North and South America, were supposed to end all new slavery there. But of course, enforceability proved difficult, with an entire ocean between the orders and the disagreeing ordered, not to mention settlements in this massive new land that were hundreds of miles apart at times. After a while, the New Laws were ignored.

As silver and gold mines grew, thousands were needed to pry the ores out of them. Superior Spanish war technology left the Natives helpless to resist.

Resist they did, though. Today, we think of the Navajos as a peaceful, gentle people. When they were captives of the Spanish in the 17th Century, though, they turned pretty nasty. 

In 1680, the Navajos somehow concocted a civil war which killed hundreds of Spaniards in New Mexico, and allowed them to gain a semblance of independence. The Spanish had tried to intimidate them by telling them that the Spanish god would be displeased with them if they resisted their new lifestyles, and that, if they obeyed like good little boys and girls, they would someday find a heavenly reward. But that meant that they had to be worked to death, and realizing that turned them sour toward Catholicism. The Spaniards made sure to remove all vestiges of the Navajos' former religious attentions. This they resented deeply, and made revolution easier to consider and attempt.

The more you read about Native slavery, the more it looks just like the brand we're used to considering more deeply in the American South. The sharecropping and tenant farming that created economic conditions that created a trap for many of the so-called free blacks during Reconstruction found an imitator in the encomiendas and the repartimiendos of the Spanish, as well as debt peonage, which held Natives in debt forever.

Slavery is still practiced worldwide. It has other names: Sex trafficking, for instance, or the smuggling of children for adoption. It all has the same basis: taking the lives of other peoples right out of their hands and forcing them to work in terrible conditions for a ripe and endless profit motive. Attempts to stem the human slaughters emerged with time: Mexico's independence movement, for instance, and U.S. Congressmen tried, but with only mixed results.

It's a shame: a shame that it happened at all, and a shame that a book exposing it took until 2017 to be written. But it's yet another indication that history needs cultivation. The deeper people dig, the more they find. The normality of brutality is again upon us--indeed, it never really went away--and we must continue to find its base. 

We must conclude, too, that it takes effort beyond the norm to continue to be good to ourselves and others. There continues to be too much dragging us in the other direction.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark