Blog
Why the Republicans chose Mike Johnson
He’s been made House Speaker because he’s serving their goals. Their goal is patriarchy, white Christian nationalism, and unfettered environmental destruction. They will make elections obsolete if they can.
The biggest political donation in U.S. history is funding anti-trans laws
Anti-trans strategy isn’t invented by ‘concerned parents.’ It’s paid for. Laws against gender-affirming care aren’t the result of a concerned parent movement. They’re a well-funded political strategy.
What does Twitter think ‘destroy transgenderism’ means?
When Matt Walsh said it, what did his Twitter followers hear? Children are ‘but one phase in the overall war,’ Walsh said. He means he does not accept transgender adults either. And he is waging war on everyone.
What is human dignity?
Where does it come from? How do we know it exists? Does dignity need to be pinned to God, or can it have secular grounding? Is it about humility, pride, or both? What does interdependence have to do with it?
When we disagree on politics and I lose a friend
I have to be a good person, and even then, it’s up to someone else if they want to be my friend. They don’t owe me what I gave as a gift, and certainly they don’t owe me what I never gave at all.
Does ‘woke’ mean saying — or not saying — certain words?
In any case, careful speech—including refraining from speaking — can build trust. When the right wing refers to “woke,” they may want to prevent others from saying certain words—or to reserve certain words for themselves.
It’s not ‘free speech,’ it’s bigotry
If they really believe in free speech, this is how we’ll know. There are many reasons why people have prejudices and why they devote their speech to expressing bigotry. Not high on the list: commitment to free speech.
When we don’t have Twitter, we’ll enjoy books again
Reading ‘Melancholic Parables’ as a parable of Twitter. Flash fiction by Dale Stromberg. One way to read it: who we are when we’re tweeting, who we think we are when we’re tweeting, and why we keep tweeting.
Gilbert Highet on censorship, 1954
A collage of his words. Cave man painting a running stag? Standards of good and evil? Transmuted into living flames? I’m in. Then I realize it’s an argument for censorship.