It should be obvious that everyone in the nation—everyone in the world—benefits when Americans go to college. Americans have earned a reputation for inventiveness and technological advances. Are we ready to give that up?
From James Webb telescope
Back in the day, when the average U.S. worker did just fine with a high school education (or less), the few who went to college were easily subsidized by state taxes up to 80% of the cost. But as the world became increasingly technological, as science became multiple branches of study of everything from our genetic code to the finer points of interstellar rocketry, more and more young people wanted to know more than what high school could teach them.
Few among us want to go back to time when our food supply depended on a plow and a mule and day after day of unrelenting labor, when lights went out with sunset, when one out of every one hundred women died from childbirth. We may feel stressed with the pace of life, but we cannot turn back the tide of progress. The alternative to progress is stagnation, or at worst, destruction.
The United States is slipping behind other nations in the educational achievements of its young people. Rather than analyzing and correcting the reasons behind this decline, our elected leaders succumb to the easy way out which is to facilitate the transfer of tax dollars to private schools and relegate college funding to high-interest loans.
The reluctance, and in many cases the angry protests, of conservatives to support reduction of student loan debt is yet another example of the shortsightedness of this particular slice of our population. These same folks are eager to take advantage of the latest pharmaceuticals, the newest technology in cell phones and digital conveniences/entertainment, as if it all sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus. News flash: These and the many other advancements we enjoy every day are the result of people going to college.
Why would we want to strangle the future our young people can offer?
It could be that there’s a subconscious inclination among conservatives to dig in their heels and not go into that promising future. Maybe the reluctance to facilitate college education is a rejection of modern life and its collection of pros and cons, and instead nostalgia for a long-lost past where completing 8th grade was the biggest accomplishment anyone could expect. That wasn’t so long ago, back when most families lived on a farm and grew most of their own food, when telephones and electricity didn’t exist. But not even the most radical conservative is ready to give up the morning shower, or their cell phone, or the motor vehicle that takes them wherever they want to go.
Progress means finding solutions to problems large and small, problems like Covid 19 (SARS-CoV-2), a virus that so far has left a million Americans dead. In less than a year, our college grads developed a vaccine that provides protection from death and, in most cases, protection from infection, by this virus. Are we ready to give up that kind of science?
The U. S. has to choose whether to continue to lag behind other nations in supporting the education of its young. President Biden and Democrats in general have supported this modest reduction of student loan debt. But over half of student loans will remain to be paid, racking up compound interest that increases the amount owed faster than payments can be made.
It’s a rigged system. Student loans, unlike any other loan, cannot be written off in a bankruptcy, so even when illness or other tragedies of life crash down on a person’s shoulders, those student loans still must be paid. The cost of higher education continues to increase as colleges try to accommodate the loss of state funding while still providing the advanced education students need.
Higher education is the path to future successes for our nation, not only in medicine but in every other aspect of our civilization. Our supply of food and water will increasingly depend on how well we can mitigate the damage caused by climate change. Our health depends on our ability to stave off more exotic viruses. We need to know more about the causes of diseases like cancer, tuberculosis and Alzheimer’s. When we encourage the pursuit of higher education, we not only address future needs for food and medicine, but also provide for an endless advancement of every aspect of human existence.
We need to move our thinking away from the idea that college is ‘extra.’ While we will always need workers skilled in certain trades that are better taught through vocational schools and apprenticeship, increasingly we need people who can program software, refine microchips, and analyze the human genome. And never forget the thousands of college graduates we rely on every day: doctors and dentists, lawyers and judges, engineers and architects, chemists and researchers, managers and accountants, historians and diplomats, psychologists and psychiatrists, and teachers—to name a few.
It is past time for our educational system to provide affordable college education. One way or the other, a student’s cost for college has to return to a reasonable amount—if not free. States need to shoulder more of the burden, as they did before Reaganomics took effect. Lenders for student loans need to be limited to a one-time charge of interest. Colleges need to find ways to reduce costs.
We face a national emergency in education. Public school teachers need much better pay. Taxpayer funds must never be diverted to private schools which don’t have to accommodate special needs students or which promulgate narrow belief systems. As long as our brightest minds are handicapped by the cost of college education, our nation suffers.
The proud image of our nation, which conservatives love to flag-wave about, is not only about those hardworking linemen, farmers, plumbers and other ‘blue-collar’ jobs, but also about the college grads who figured out how to engineer a tractor that can be operated from an air-conditioned cab while pulling a ten-row cultivator, or who calculated the weight and conductivity of wires to carry our power grid, or who invented flex lines and connector glue to replace labor/cost-intensive copper pipe fittings. It takes all of us.
Abortion has been, and continues to be, a vital weapon in the Republican toolbox, a means to gain control over a multitude of less savory objectives. With this hot button, they have been able to whip up energy within their ranks. Over the last fifty years, a growing mob of zealots have taken to the streets and the halls of government with placards showing the pitiful fetus so wronged by evil women and their fiendish abortion doctors.
The truth is that the flap over abortion was never as much about the ‘unborn baby’ as it was about political capital. Powerbrokers saw right away that this issue aroused emotion like nothing else. Yet what the Republican Party stood for, then as now, also enshrined racial prejudice, but it had become impossible to openly advocate for white supremacy.
The mass migration of voters from Democratic ranks to the shelter of the Republican Party began not with Roe v Wade, but with the 1952 Brown vs Board of Education decision and followed more decisively with the Kennedy-Johnson push for civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.
Police dogs, held by officers, jump at a man with torn trousers during a non-violent demonstration, Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963. Police officers used both dogs and firehoses to break up the rally.
After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, many white, conservative Southern Democrats became Republicans. The South had been mostly Democratic before 1964; it was mostly Republican after (although on the local level continued to be heavily Democratic for decades). Many “values voters” became Republicans.[1]
The 1973 Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion did not have nearly the same impact as the Civil Rights Act as far as political response. For a time, other issues sidetracked voter attention, such as the winding down of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that shoved Nixon out of office. The Arab oil embargo also diverted public interest with skyrocketing gasoline prices. In reality, the behind-the-scene Republican strategists were slow in coming around to a full understanding of how to use the abortion issue to represent the real interests of conservatives.
Early in Reagan’s presidency, developing tactics on the abortion issue spread through the nation in the hands of then-fledgling evangelical groups wielding signage of dismembered fetuses (remarkably mature for the gestation dates named) and demonstrations by women crying for the lost babies or, more heart-rendering, testimonials by women who had obtained abortions and later regretted it. (This vanishingly small group remains an active feature of anti-choice campaigns. One could sum up their position as yet another demonstration of ignorance.)
At first, Democrats yielded ground on the matter, not firmly convinced enough about women’s right to bodily autonomy to take a firm stand. Lamentably lacking in early opposition to the anti-abortion crowd were strategies to fight back with their own weaponry, for example, citing Biblical scriptures showing that personhood began at birth.
After God formed man in Genesis 2:7, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being”. Although the man was fully formed by God in all respects, he was not a living being until after taking his first breath.[2]
Democrats have finally taken a stronger stance on the topic, linking the party to “their support of ‘human rights’ and of groups whose rights have been long suppressed – African Americans and other minority groups, women seeking to vote and enjoy full property rights, LGBTQ people and immigrants.”[3]
To Republicans, the abortion issue is a coded message about the party’s stance on longstanding prejudices, not only uppity women but also African Americans and other minorities, LBGTQ people, and non-white immigrants. Without having to advertise racism or other prejudices, Republican strategists can push voters to champion the rights of the fetus while avoiding the party’s full agenda.
It is not the facts of an issue which drive evangelical voters. As a general rule, evangelicals don’t embrace facts. Their hands are full of Bibles, which they don’t precisely understand, but they do hear what preachers tell them. What the preachers tell them is intended not to elucidate the facts but rather to stoke FEAR of God’s wrath. And, in these narrow hallways of evangelical mentality, God will punish them if they don’t stop women from killing fetuses.
It’s not that evangelist preachers are pursuing a goal they understand in terms of social policy. Their vehement sermons about abortion and their endorsement of specific political candidates derive from their urgent personal desire to make money off of Jesus. Evangelicals are an easy mark. See, for example, the fundraising headline at Focus on the Family’s website: “SAVE 2X THE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Double Your Gift to Save Lives!”
The more insidious objective of the Republican agenda is to continue shifting power to corporations and the super wealthy while the frontmen lure evangelical voters with the promise of a Christian nation. Sadly, evangelicals lack any understanding of the threat posed in religion as government, a condition that increases exponentially as more private religious schools and homeschooling take the place of public education.
Remedies for the current crisis would include regulations that deny diplomas to any student, homeschooled or otherwise, who cannot pass examinations proving understanding of American history and government, among other subjects required of public school students. If U. S. citizens cannot begin adulthood on the same page, we have no hope of continuing as a nation.
One thing such an education would ensure is the awareness that the Republican/evangelical drive toward a Christian nation is a form of sedition, “an overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority.”
Equally tragic is while Republican power brokers chortle over wins for the One Percent, they have failed to recognize the puppet master profiting from their maneuvers: Putin.
Trump’s victory lap over the demise of Roe v Wade unveils one of the subtle purposes of Vladimir Putin’s support. The Russian ploy to undermine U.S. society gained a witless ally in Trump, who pulled his best con job in his election to the presidency, aided and abetted by the machinations of Russian interference.
What has now been made clear is that Russian trolls and automated bots not only promoted explicitly pro-Donald Trump messaging, but also used social media to sow social divisions in America by stoking disagreement and division around a plethora of controversial topics such as immigration and Islamophobia.
The overarching goal for Russia, during the election and now, analysts say, is to expand and exploit divisions, attacking the American social fabric where it is most vulnerable, along lines of race, gender, class and creed.
“The broader Russian strategy is pretty clearly about destabilizing the country by focusing on and amplifying existing divisions, rather than supporting any one political party,” said Jonathon Morgan, a former state department adviser on digital responses to terrorism whose company, New Knowledge, analyzes the manipulation of public discourse.[4]
Russia’s desired outcome in the months before Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was not simply to see him elected. It aimed, instead, to more broadly “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order” (in the words of a January 2017 intelligence assessment), an effort that Russia believed would be aided far more by Trump’s election than Hillary Clinton’s. This overlapped with its desire to “provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States” (in the words of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III), leading it to weigh in not only on electoral politics but cultural fights — investing in amplifying and exacerbating contentious social debates.[5]
[2] Also Job 33:4: “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”
Ezekiel 37:5, 6: “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
Exodus 21:22: If a man causes a woman to have a miscarriage, he shall be fined; however, if the woman dies then he will be put to death. It should be apparent from this that the aborted fetus is not considered a living human being since the resulting punishment for the abortion is nothing more than a fine; it is not classified by the bible as a capital offense.
If Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett really stood up for their convictions on the abortion issue, they wouldn’t just shuffle the decision to the states. They’d completely overturn Roe v Wade.
Why didn’t they?
Because they AREN’T convinced they are right.
If bodily autonomy isn’t guaranteed for the entire nation, and states are the appropriate venue for giving or denying those rights, what’s next? Slavery?
After all, former Confederate states form the bulk of those states eager to strip women of bodily autonomy.
What is loss of bodily autonomy other than slavery?
But wait! Save those cogent arguments!
Fanatic evangelicals eager to sacrifice women on the altar to their angry misogynistic god will never change their minds.
Lawmakers eager to harvest the fruits of their fifty-year campaign to be elected by targeting women will never stop the manipulation.
Evangelical women eager to bow down to male authority in order to avoid taking responsibility for their own lives believe their salvation depends on submitting to authority, God and men.
These people do not have the intellectual capacity to reason through the facts. Whatever intellect they might naturally possess has been subverted by religious brainwashing.
Throughout the millennia, women have aborted unwanted pregnancies—or abandoned unwanted newborns to die. Their decisions have shaped the human race. Yes, evangelicals, even you are the result of selective breeding.
Evangelicals believe that overturning Roe will magically end abortions. They are willingly ignorant of the history.
What would it take to really stop abortion?
Monitor all women of childbearing age, every month, for pregnancy.
If they test positive, sequester them so they can’t grab a coat hanger. Keep them locked up until they give birth.
That means keeping them away from their jobs, their husbands, their children.
It means turning women into baby machines under the force of law.
In truth, it is not possible to stop abortion.
What is possible—and predictable—is that laws restricting abortion rights will cause women to suffer. Sterility and even death are often outcomes of back-alley abortions.
This is the Big Win for evangelicals. In religious teachings, God said women should suffer because Eve tempted Adam into falling for the apple. So why ease that suffering? God said.
Never mind that pathetic Adam couldn’t think for himself and Just Say No. That bitch used her sexuality to manipulate the poor guy into something he knew he shouldn’t do.
What could better ensure that God extends welcoming arms when the faithful reach those pearly gates than a record of supporting the punishment of women?
NEVER MIND the truth staring us in the face, the result of smug religious thoughtlessness: OVERPOPULATION.
The greater the world population, the greater the environmental damage. The higher our standard of living, the greater the environmental damage. Electricity, motor vehicles, chemical agriculture, waste disposal—already we see the oceans rise, thick with waste. Already we watch as climate change disrupts agriculture and water supply.
It’s not possible to maintain anywhere near our standard of living with the population projected to double in the next 80 years.
World population estimates from 1800 to 2100, based on “high”, “medium” and “low” United Nations projections in 2010 (colored red, orange and green) and US Census Bureau historical estimates (in black). Actual recorded population figures (as of 2010) are colored in blue. According to the highest estimate, the world population may rise to 16 billion by 2100; according to the lowest estimate, it may decline to 7.2 billion.
For decades, we’ve seen the increasingly negative results of overpopulation—people dying of starvation, the spread of disease, the expansion of desert into previously productive lands due to climate change as well as overuse of farming and grazing in marginal areas.
The evangelical solution: Teach them about Jesus. It’s in God’s hands.
No. It is in OUR hands.
We see the rush of people from marginal lands into areas of greater resources. From Africa into the Middle East, from the Middle East into Europe. From Central America and South America across our southern border.
The evangelical solution: Build a wall.
How long until the money runs out to care for the disabled, the elderly, the compromised? How long until schools are so crippled that they fail utterly? These are problems of OVERPOPULATION.
When the time comes, do we allow women to continue their ancient role of deciding who is born, or do we authorize the government to make those decisions? A government empowered to force birth is equally empowered to deny birth.
The evangelical fight to make the United States a “Christian” nation is nothing less than an attempt to overturn our government. The Founding Fathers were clear on this point, to keep religion OUT of government. Power to the people.
“The people have the power. All we have to do is awaken the power in the people.” — John Lennon
Some of my blog followers may remember my report on the State of Perversion a few years back. At the time, the tip of an iceberg had been uncovered, but there was no justice because the statute of limitations had run on Duggar’s child molestation (and incest) crimes before it came to light.
We all know a leopard can’t change his spots, and likewise–apparently–neither can a pedophile. In the interim, Duggar has fathered several more children on his hapless wife, but at least now his children as well as perhaps other children can rest easy while he serves his time.
Here’s the report:
Federal Jury Convicts Former Reality Television Personality for Downloading and Possessing Child Sexual Abuse Material
A federal jury convicted an Arkansas man today for receiving and possessing material depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Joshua James Duggar, 33, of Springdale, repeatedly downloaded and viewed images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, including images of prepubescent children and depictions of sadistic abuse. Duggar, a former reality television personality who appeared with his family on the TLC series “19 Kids and Counting,” installed a password-protected partition on the hard drive of his desktop computer at his used car lot in Springdale to avoid pornography-detecting software on the device. He then accessed the partition to download child sexual abuse material from the internet multiple times over the course of three days in May 2019. The password for the partition was the same one he used for other personal and family accounts. Duggar downloaded the material using the dark web and online file-sharing software, viewed it, and then removed it from his computer.
“Today’s verdict sends a message that we will track down and prosecute people who download and view child sexual abuse material, regardless of the lengths they go to conceal their conduct,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “I am grateful for the efforts of the prosecution team and our law enforcement partners who helped ensure the defendant would be held accountable for his crimes. I hope today’s conviction serves as a reminder of the department’s steadfast commitment to bringing to justice those who callously contribute to the online sexual exploitation of young children.”
“Over 7% of the cases sentenced in the year 2020 in the Western District of Arkansas were child pornography and sexual abuse cases,” said the U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes for Western Arkansas. “Our office is focused on expending all the resources necessary to the very important work of protecting children in Arkansas and elsewhere. This verdict sends the message that these cases are a top priority for our office. This verdict also demonstrates that no person is above the law. Regardless of wealth, social status, or fame, our office will continue to seek out all individuals who seek to abuse children and victimize them through the downloading, possession, and sharing of child pornography.”
“Because of the exceptional efforts by HSI special agents and our law enforcement partners, a child predator has been brought to justice,” said Special Agent in Charge Jack Staton of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New Orleans, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Every time child exploitation imagery is shared, it re-victimizes innocent and vulnerable children. The verdict demonstrates that regardless of an individual’s notoriety or influence, they are not above the law. HSI agents make it a priority to protect children by investigating these offenders and ensuring they pay for their incomprehensible actions.”
Law enforcement in Arkansas detected Duggar’s activity during an undercover investigation involving the online file-sharing program, subsequently searched his car lot in November 2019, and seized Duggar’s desktop computer as well as other evidence. Significant evidence was found that pointed to Duggar’s presence at the times of the offenses, including pictures that Duggar took on his phone that geolocated at or near the car lot. Duggar also sent multiple timestamped text messages to various individuals that indicated he was at the car lot at the relevant times; the messages were sent, and the iPhone pictures were created, at times within minutes of when the child sexual abuse material was downloaded or displayed on the desktop computer. Additionally, he was the only paid employee on the lot at those times.
Duggar was convicted of receipt and possession of child pornography. His sentencing date has not been scheduled yet. Receipt of child pornography is punishable by a term of imprisonment of five to 20 years. Possession of child pornography depicting prepubescent children has a maximum penalty of 20 years of imprisonment as well. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
HSI in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the Little Rock Police Department, and the High Technology Investigative Unit of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) investigated the case.
Trial Attorney William G. Clayman of CEOS and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dustin Roberts and Carly Marshall of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas are prosecuting the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
Americans should not fail to recognize the inevitable: the immigration problem will only get worse. The current crisis with Haitians flooding the Texas border isn’t an isolated event. Haitians (and Hondurans and Salvadorans and Guatemalans, Vietnamese and Jews, etc.) have been seeking asylum in the United States for decades. The irony is that Europeans invaded a populated continent in the 15th and 16th centuries in order to gain shelter from abuses and to gain better livelihood. We are those Europeans…and all who have come since.
“Of the roughly 1.8 million Haitians living outside their homeland, the United States is home to the most, about 705,000. Significant numbers of people from the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country also have settled in Latin American countries like Chile, where an estimated 69,000 Haitian immigrants reside, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
“Nearly all Haitians reach the U.S. on a well-worn route: Fly to Brazil, Chile or elsewhere in South America. If jobs dry up, slowly move through Central America and Mexico by bus and on foot to wait — perhaps years — in northern border cities like Tijuana for the right time to enter the United States and claim asylum…
“Many Haitians began attempting to enter the U.S. in the 1980s by sea. Most of them were cut off by the Coast Guard and perhaps given a cursory screening for asylum eligibility, said David FitzGerald, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego and an asylum expert. In 1994, U.S. authorities reached an agreement with Jamaica to anchor ships off its coast to hold shipboard hearings for Haitians intercepted on boats. Attempts by sea waned after a Supreme Court decision allowing forced repatriations without refugee protections.”[1]
Illegal immigration from Haiti has plagued multiple presidencies. After the devastating earthquake in 2010, Haitians first flocked to Brazil to jobs in support of the 2016 Olympics. When those jobs dried up, President Obama at first allowed some to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, but soon began flying them back to Haiti. Trump’s solution was widely panned for its inhumanity, and now Biden faces even bigger numbers of determined illegal immigrants due to the recent assassination of the Haitian president and ensuing political chaos, exacerbated by yet another massive earthquake.
Under Biden, the United States has pledged more than $32 million in aid to Haiti in addition to the disbursement of more than 160,000 pounds of food aid, construction of field hospitals and temporary shelters, and has flown more than 400 injured Haitians to medical attention in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. But U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator Stephanie Power remarked that the United Nations estimates a total need of over $187 million. All this follows a similar aid effort after the 2010 earthquake of over two billion which still reverberates through USAID and the Red Cross, among others.
A 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office found the USAID efforts were hampered by ”lack of staff with relevant expertise, unrealistic initial plans, challenges encountered with some implementing partners, and delayed or revised decisions from the Haitian government.”[2]
“The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people, but the number of permanent homes the charity has built is six. NPR and ProPublica went in search of the nearly $500 million [donated for this cause] and found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success, according to a review of hundreds of pages of the charity’s internal documents and emails, as well as interviews with a dozen current and former officials.”[3]
Haiti is not the only neighboring nation subject to earthquake and devastating hurricanes. In the coming decades as sea levels rise and incidence of violent weather increases, human populations will suffer more such hardships. All the Caribbean islands as well as coastal cities including our own will face the destruction of storm surges, hurricanes, and other flooding.
Of course our first reaction to news reports showing border patrol officers on horseback charging at desperate refugees is sympathy for the refugee and disgust with the officers’ tactics. But we need to ask ourselves, honestly, what are the options?
Already we have spent billions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to rebuild Haiti so that its people can remain and thrive in their homeland. But isn’t this a repeat of similarly futile efforts in areas of the United States where massive flooding occurs yet when the water recedes, we provide money to rebuild in the same flood-prone locations?
Current crisis at Del Rio, Texas.
We have just witnessed influx of over 70,000 refugees from Afghanistan as the extremist Taliban takes charge of that country. The need to accommodate refugees on our lands is not limited to neighboring countries like Haiti. We’ve seen the steady push of Syrian refugees into Europe, of Palestinians, of Colombians… As of 2020, 82.4 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order. Of these, nearly 26.4 million are refugees, around half of whom are under the age of 18.[4]
Lest we in the United States shed a tear for all our sacrifices, readers should be aware that the U.S. falls far short of addressing the global refugee crisis compared to other nations. The following report by the Norwegian Refugee Council reveals the big picture. In order of the most refugees per a nation’s population, here are the heavy lifters:
1. Lebanon – 19.5 per cent of the total population
Lebanon, with a population of 6.8 million, is currently hosting an estimated 1.5 million refugees from Syria. The real number is probably even higher because the national authorities demanded that the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) stop the registration of new refugees in 2015. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees live in the country.
Lebanon itself has been ravaged by a civil war that lasted from 1975 until 1990. It is a densely populated country with a fragile political balance between different ethnic and religious groups.
In 2019 and 2020, the situation has gone from bad to worse, with large-scale popular protests eventually leading to the Prime Minister’s resignation. Unemployment is sky-high and the country’s currency has dropped in value by 85 per cent, meaning much of the population is no longer able to afford the necessities of survival. Recent surveys put more than 50 per cent of the population below the poverty line. For Syrian refugees, the figure is even higher, with 83 per cent living below the extreme poverty line.
On top of an already difficult situation came the Covid-19 pandemic and the Beirut explosion, which killed more than 200 people, wounded more than 6,000 and displaced around 300,000. Lebanon now has an urgent need for the rest of the world to step up and help the country that has taken the greatest responsibility for helping displaced people.
2. Jordan – 10.5 per cent
Jordan has received over one million refugees in the last ten years. The vast majority were fleeing neighbouring Syria. While a comparatively small number have since decided to return to Syria or have been able to resettle in other countries, there are still more than 660,000 Syrian refugees registered with the UN refugee agency living in Jordan today.
Over 80 per cent of Syrian refugees in Jordan live in urban centers where they face the challenge of finding sustainable work and affordable housing. Competition for limited employment opportunities can lead to tensions with the local population. The remaining 20 per cent of Syrian refugees live in one of two refugee camps, established by the Jordanian authorities for Syrian refugees and managed by the UN refugee agency.
Jordan also houses 2.3 million Palestinian refugees. These are people who fled or were expelled from their country during the 1947-49 Palestine war and the Six Day War in 1967, and their descendants.
3. Nauru – 5.9 per cent
This small island state has received boat refugees who were trying to get to Australia when Australian authorities refused to accept them. The UN refugee agency has been highly critical of the agreement Australia has made with Nauru and other countries and is concerned about the reprehensible conditions the refugees live under. Australia has now agreed to stop sending refugees to Nauru.
4. Turkey – 5.0 per cent
Turkey has received more refugees than any other country since 2011 – as many as 4.3 million. Turkey is a large and populous country and is better equipped to handle the challenge than, for example, Lebanon. Nevertheless, it is challenging to provide protection to such a large number of people within a few short years. Turkey signed an agreement with the European Union (EU) in 2016 that prevents refugees from moving on to Europe. This has had serious consequences for both the refugees who have made it to Greece and those who remain in Turkey.
5. Liberia – 4.1 per cent
Liberia is another country that has shown great hospitality to displaced people. It has received 212,000 refugees, even while the country itself was in a difficult situation. Liberia went through a long and bloody civil war just a few years before it opened its doors to refugees from the Ivory Coast. It was also hit hard by Ebola, which meant that refugees from the neighbouring country could not return home as quickly as the UN refugee agency had planned.
6. Uganda – 3.7 per cent
Uganda has received 1.7 million refugees over the last ten years and is one of the largest recipients of refugees in the world. In recent years, Uganda has provided protection to people from DR Congo and South Sudan in particular, but the country has also received refugees from Burundi, Somalia, Rwanda and several other countries. Uganda is a pioneer in integrating refugees and giving them full rights.
7. Malta – 2.7 per cent
Malta is the Western country that has received the most refugees relative to its population. The country is located near the coast of North Africa and receives many refugees and migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya. The pressure has become even greater since Italy has made it almost impossible for rescue vessels to dock at its own ports.
8. Sudan – 2.6 per cent
With over one million refugees since 2010, Sudan is the fifth largest recipient country in absolute numbers. Most have fled the conflict in neighboring South Sudan. Sudan is also a key transit country for refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, among others, who are trying to flee to Europe.
9. Sweden – 2.6 per cent
Sweden has long had the most generous refugee policy in Europe and, unlike many other countries, has actively welcomed refugees. But the large influx of refugees to Europe in 2015, where many European countries were unwilling to share the responsibility, led the government to introduce a temporary law that limited the rights of refugees to a minimum of what the country has committed itself to through international conventions. Despite this, Sweden still received far more refugees than most European countries.
10. South Sudan – 2.5 per cent
Although South Sudan is better known for its own displaced population, it is also home to more than 300,000 refugees from neighbouring countries. Most are refugees from Sudan who fled conflict in the border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile in the years after South Sudan gained its independence in 2011.
In addition to these ten countries that have received the most refugees relative to their population, there are certain populous countries that have received a large number of refugees during this period and have contributed positively to giving many people a secure future.
The most important of these countries are:
Germany – 1,265,000 refugees (1.5% of the total population)
Clearly these various concentrations of refugees result from the recipient nations’ proximity to those in crisis. Just as Haitians find the United States near enough to gain access to our borders, so do populations in the Middle East seek safety in nearby places. Yet the numbers alone should help us in the U.S. consider the big picture of what likely lies ahead not only for us, but for the rest of the world.
Nations in political crisis have no leadership or organizational capability to handle emergencies like floods, earthquakes, or war. Just as wars in the Middle East will likely not end anytime soon, and thus refugees in that region will continue to seek safety and the means of livelihood, so will environmental and political crises continue to send waves of refugees to American borders.
Americans need to unify behind some clear-cut policy.
Do we allow refugees to enter the country illegally? If not, what is the answer to situations like the current influx of Haitians? Aside from a fence, which has already been considered, tried, and seen to fail, what possible barrier can we construct to force refugees to abide by our policies?
Border patrol agents are duty bound to stop people from swarming into the U.S. illegally. Is it unreasonable for them to chase down people trying to evade our laws? It seems clear that anyone trying to enter the country illegally already knows they are breaking the law. That does not bode well for their actions and attitude once in our communities.
We have rules, specific steps a person must take to apply for asylum before entering the U.S. Are we to ignore those rules?
How much money should we spend to improve conditions in places like Haiti?
How much should the U.S. or the UN interfere in places like Haiti where the government has more or less collapsed following the assassination of their president? Do we or the UN force a government model and de facto leaders in such situations? The U.S. has a dark history of interfering in the governments of other countries, most notably in efforts to displace so-called socialist or communist regimes, which in turn has contributed to their political instability. How would our interference now be any different?
What is the alternative?
Each of us needs to consider these questions and understand our responsibilities to communicate with our elected representatives as they grapple with this problem.
TOPSHOT – Newly sworn in US citizens celebrate and wave US flags during a naturalization ceremony at the Lowell Auditorium, where 633 immigrants became US citizens on January 22, 2019 in Lowell, Massachusetts. (Photo by Joseph PREZIOSO / AFP)JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images
In an ideal world, government provides for its citizens by addressing problems so complex or so large in scope that citizens alone or even in groups cannot address them. Our tax dollars support government agencies that regulate the costs of necessary utilities, the purity of our food and drugs, and the safety of our mass transportation systems such as airlines and trains, among many other things. Under our U. S. Constitution, matters of personal conscience such as privacy and religious belief are left to the individual.
At the local level, we here in Washington County, Arkansas now find ourselves with a county government which has forgotten—if indeed they ever knew—their proper role. For example, about a year ago, the county government closed their south Fayetteville hazardous waste collection center. There was no public notice of this decision.
Meanwhile, a resolution introduced by Quorum Court Republican Patrick Deacon and passed through committee last night quotes a Bible passage and presumes to embed certain religious beliefs into county law. A more experienced county judge would have stopped this presumption in its tracks.
A deeper look at the county judge’s tenure finds that upon taking office, he not only fired experienced county employees but replaced them with cronies from his former position at Ecclesia College. He gutted several of the county’s departments and ended up defending his actions in court.[1] Environmental affairs, tasked with protecting our natural springs, streams, and the rest of our land, was reduced to one employee. The county archives, a priceless repository of old deeds, marriage records, and other arcane and fascinating bits of our local history, was relieved of its professional archivist and its open hours reduced to a few hours one day a week. Other departments suffered similar cutbacks, all in the name of saving money and, to the Republican mantra, reducing government.
Hazardous waste isn’t something to toy with. These subtle poisons are found in virtually every household—cleaning products, solvent-based paints, pesticides, weed-killers, and other garden chemicals, batteries, motor oil, kerosene, swimming pool or hot tub chemicals, pharmaceuticals (all medicines), obsolete computer equipment and televisions, thermometers, barometers, thermostats, fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent globes (CFLs), and more. Educating the public about household hazardous waste (HHW) over the last thirty years has been a major effort for community recycling and solid waste departments.
Washington County had made some headway not only in educating residents about the nature of HHW but also in providing a convenient drop-off location where such items could be safely collected for appropriate disposal. This has meant that tons of these chemicals have NOT ended up being poured on the ground or dumped into landfills where someday, no matter how great the liners, they will leak into the ground. Chemicals in the ground don’t just sit there. They don’t decompose into harmless biomass. They migrate through fragmented limestone and clay and every other type of strata until at some point they join groundwater. And sooner or later, that groundwater becomes the water we must drink.
Now perhaps Judge Wood and his cohort were not aware of the dangers inherent in HHW. Perhaps their only thought was to make other use of that small building on the county’s south campus that would save the county a few dollars. (The building is currently used for storage.) And perhaps their thought was that any solid waste issue, including HHW, properly fell into the domain of the Boston Mountain Solid Waste District (BMSWD).
Whatever the considerations which entered into the decision to close the HHW collection center, these considerations did not include the cardinal rule about the safe disposal of HHW: disposal should be convenient for the greatest number of people.
In a society acculturated to the concept of convenience, it is the burden of public officials to ensure that the solution to important problems like proper HHW disposal is made as convenient as possible. Number 1 consideration should be to accommodate the operation of a facility which has become well known and well used by area residents.
When the county closed its HHW collection center in south Fayetteville, BMSWD scrambled to open a new collection center in Prairie Grove. However, Prairie Grove has a population of about 5,800 people whereas Fayetteville’s population is over 85,000, which raises the question of who is being served with this location change. The tenuous justification for the move hinted that it wasn’t the county’s responsibility to collect HHW for Fayetteville. Also, that Prairie Grove was more rural and therefore more suitable for HHW collection from county residents.
Questions posed in early April to Judge Wood were diverted to Brian Lester, formerly county attorney and now assistant to the judge.
Q: How much money did the county spend on the south Fayetteville HHW collection center?
Didn’t know.
Q: What was the tonnage collected annually at the Fayetteville HHW center? Has that tonnage increased or decreased in the year since the south Fayetteville facility closed?
Didn’t have any data.
Q: Why did the county not notify Fayetteville solid waste officials about the planned termination of the south Fayetteville site and ask for a cost sharing solution?
No answer.
Q: Is the county’s population center at or near Prairie Grove?
A: No, the center is just south of Fayetteville.
Mr. Lester alleged that BMSWD now offers local HHW pickup at various outlying communities such as Elkins. Not true. The district’s plan for HHW collection is that if a community decides it needs a HHW collection, it will provide a location and staff and the district will provide education and disposal of said waste. At the present time, the only HHW collection service in the county is a weekly one-day collection event in Fayetteville, which began AFTER early April when we circulated our questions to not only Mr. Lester, but also a quorum court member, BMSWD employees, and Fayetteville solid waste representatives.
BMSWD confirms that they received no advance warning that the county judge planned to terminate their contract to use the county’s building in south Fayetteville for the HHW collection center. Likewise, Fayetteville solid waste officials confirm that they received no warning or offer of cost sharing or other arrangements to secure the south Fayetteville location for the program.
No one advising Judge Wood or his staff on this decision seems to have considered that lots of residents of small towns and rural areas of Washington County used the Fay’vl HHW facility because Fayetteville is the largest city and the county seat and serves as the shopping, entertainment, and employment destination for most of the small town/rural residents of the entire county. Which, obviously, means Fayetteville is the most convenient HHW disposal location for most county citizens.
The allegation that Prairie Grove is a more convenient disposal location for rural citizens than Fayetteville is a fabrication based on the need to cover ass after the issue was raised with hard questions.
Government and only government has the power and scope to make decisions that provide protection for the region’s water supply for decades and centuries to come. Unfortunately, Judge Wood and his cohort’s interests seem to center on his religious beliefs and how to best impose those beliefs on individual county residents.
Despite Judge Wood’s administrative experience in various posts, his primary interest seems to follow his Masters of Christian Leadership degree (2016). Aside from imposing religious beliefs on county government, Joseph Wood’s righteousness apparently suffers lapses.
“In the 2016 race for County Judge, former Ecclesia board member Joseph Wood replaced Republican nominee Micah Neal when he abruptly withdrew from the race. Neal later pled guilty to federal bribery charges over state funds he directed to the school. Wood’s first actions as judge were to fire employees without cause, and violate county policy by hiring Ecclesia cronies without posting the position. It’s not gotten any better from there. Despite running on fiscally conservative credentials, Wood has presided over dwindling reserves and a budget shortfall in the county.”[2]
Not only Neal, but another state senator Jon Woods (appealing a fifteen-year sentence) and a well-known lobbyist Rusty Cranford (serving a seven year sentence) were part of this scheme to divert tax dollars to a religious school while lining their own pockets. As investigators ultimately discovered, the scam involved sixteen people in two states.
“As part of his guilty plea, Neal admitted that, between January 2013 and January 2015, while serving in the Arkansas House of Representatives, he conspired with an Arkansas state senator [Jon Woods –ed.] to use their official positions to appropriate government money known as General Improvement Funds (GIF) to a pair of non-profit entities in exchange for bribes.”
While Joseph Wood may not have been complicit in this scheme, his position as Ecclesia College board member made him responsible for the activities of its representatives. If he knew about this illegal scheme, perhaps he viewed it in the same way he views the unconstitutional overreach of the proposed resolution declaring the county ‘pro-life’ – that the end justifies the means. The end, in this case, would be a ‘Christian nation.’
Joseph Wood announced in May 2021 that he is running for lieutenant governor, a position one step away from the power of state leadership. In his lengthy press release announcing his candidacy, Wood extolls his career and adds his blessings to the Trump presidency:
“President Trump will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidents because he pushed ahead in the face of adversity and delivered results. Arkansas needs a proven leader for the future of Arkansas. I am running as a strategic thinker and leader who consistently delivers results. I am running as a conservative, committed to faith, family, and fighting for what’s possible in Arkansas.”
The tenure of Judge Wood has been a black mark on our county’s reputation. If elected to state office, this man and his supporters will only drag the state further down, and we’re already scraping the bottom.
We aren’t the only person to speak out about egregious behavior by Republicans on the Quorum Court. This letter to the editor was published in the Northwest Arkansas edition of the Democrat-Gazette on February 7, 2021. Please note that this Patrick Deakins is the same member of the court who put forth the pro-life resolution cited above.
“Public’s voice provided little time in meetings
“On Tuesday, Feb. 9, after months of the public calling for a public discussion regarding over $4 million in CARES Act relief funds being sent to Washington County, the public was finally offered an opportunity for discussion. Or so we thought.
“I was excited for this opportunity as my own Justice of the Peace, Lance Johnson, will not respond to my other attempts to reach him. At the beginning of the meeting, JP Patrick Deakins was elected chair of the committee, then rudely and sarcastically breezed his way through the entire agenda and insisted the only time for public comment would be at the very end, even though an agenda item was named for “public discussion.” At the end, under a brand new rule, only 12 minutes were allowed total for the entire agenda, 10 items in total.
“Five members of the community, in a county of over 230,000, were allowed to speak. Five. And, the last person speaking was yelled over and cut off, on an item that hundreds of us have waited months to discuss.
“I hope the public is aware that whether for or against any items, we have been completely shut out of participating in our local government. This 12-minute rule applies to all county business. The county received “reimbursement” for over $4 million dollars in funds they claim they spent on covid-related expenses, yet detailed as their justification were expenses that were budgeted prior to the pandemic. They have hijacked our tax dollars and our democracy. That is our money and our Quorum Court, and we are not allowed to have an opinion? This should rock every one of us to our core and they should be ashamed of themselves.
“Start talking to your neighbors, friends or family about running. We have a Quorum Court to take back.” Written by ReBecca Graham.
With yesterday’s arrest of Josh Duggar on federal charges of child pornography, this family of “19 Kids and Counting” fame is once again under the spotlight. Age 33, Josh along with his wife have so far produced seven children, following in his parent’s tradition of gene reproduction without regard, apparently, to the need to actually parent those children, an allegation supported by Duggar’s continuing sex crimes.
As a teen, Josh molested four younger sisters and at least one friend of theirs. Members of their church, the sprawling First Baptist Church of Springdale, Arkansas, along with an officer of the Arkansas State Police (now in prison for child porn) helped Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar cover up these insidious crimes until the statute of limitations had run on any potential prosecution.
On the heels of that scandal in 2015, Josh’s rough treatment of a woman he hired for sex hit the news along with the revelation that he had joined a dating service dedicated to married men who wanted to hook up.
“A few months after apologizing for his “wrongdoing” in the child molestation scandal, Duggar has confessed to cheating on his wife Anna, developing an Internet pornography addiction (which he later removed from his statement) and signing up for two paid subscriptions to Ashley Madison.”[1]
Duggar’s extensive political connections reflects poorly on the Republican slate of elected officials.
Is it finally time to examine the roots of such disgusting behavior? Is it time to look at the repressive nature of evangelical Christianity that lies not only at the foundations of Josh Duggar’s offenses but also of the innumerable cases of youth ministers and preachers and multiple other respected positions of these churches who find themselves embroiled in sexual misdeeds?
Other such abuses appear with crushing frequency not only in Northwest Arkansas but across the country where evangelicals embrace their collective ignorance. Previous posts regarding this issue include a report on earlier Duggar shame as well as the rape of a six-year-old girl rehomed by Republican state representative Justin Harris, owner of a childcare center in the small town of West Fork. [See Footnote[2]]
These are not isolated incidents. Hardly a week goes by without the report of another minister or youth leader or congregational member caught in one or another sex crime. The Washington Post spotlighted the problem of sexual abuse within the evangelical Christian community in a 2018 article:
“Across the United States, evangelical churches are failing to protect victims of sexual abuse among their members. As the #MeToo movement has swept into communities of faith, several high-profile leaders have fallen: Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was forced into early retirement this month after reports that he’d told a rape victim to forgive her assailant rather than call the police. Illinois megachurch pastor Bill Hybels similarly retired early after several women said he’d dispensed lewd comments, unwanted kisses and invitations to hotel rooms.
“…The sex advice columnist and LGBT rights advocate Dan Savage, tired of what he called the hypocrisy of conservatives who believe that gays molest children, compiled his own list that documents more than 100 instances of youth pastors around the country who, between 2008 and 2016, were accused of, arrested for or convicted of sexually abusing minors in a religious setting.”[3]
While on the surface church members who embrace the teachings of Christ might seem the least likely to commit such abuses, it seems that the fundamentalist religious power structure and their teachings lie at the heart of these perversions. Just as Catholic priests (and nuns) have been found disproportionately likely to sexually abuse young children compared to the rest of the population, evangelical Christians hear the same unnatural lessons from the mouths of their preachers. Sex is sin. Touching yourself (otherwise known as masturbation) is sin. But if you sin, God will forgive you (so, in essence, there’s a backdoor if Satan overcomes you…).
Attempting to live outside the demands of the biological bodies we inhabit is nothing but an elaborate game of whack-a-mole. The need pops up no matter how sternly we might try to suppress it. The stronger the urge, the louder they preach, the more likely the urge will slink off sideways into situations where the risk of being discovered is least likely to surface. Little kids can be intimidated into silence. Little kids are gullible, easily convinced that this diddling inflicted by an older person is somehow okay. Little kids are innocent, therefore they don’t taint the abuser in a sexual act the same way an older experienced sex partner might.
Then there’s evangelical power structure of an authoritarian god who delegates his authority to the male who then is enabled to rule over lesser beings like women and children. Those under this male authority can be subjected to his abuses, and those abuses can be covered up on his edict, making sexual abuse very tempting to repressed males.
But the roots go deeper still. The way this religious authority works is to demand adherence to a set of rules. This is the opposite of teaching people how to think or take responsibility for themselves. After all, if you ‘sin,’ it’s not really you, it’s Satan.
Children brought up in this belief system are often forced into homeschooling or church schools where they are taught not to question. Despite humanity’s crowning glory of cerebral function, intellect is switched off in favor of rules. Parents of Josh Duggar are a perfect example of this willful ignorance, refusing to obtain secular psychologist help when their oldest child’s incestuous fondling came to light and instead keeping it in the church family.
“The roots of the Judeo-Christian sexual prohibitions, as well as the sexual prohibitions of religions such as Islam, spring from ancient Jewish tribal law. During early times wives were considered “property” and laws were specifically codified to protect three things: livestock, wives and dwellings–an order or importance that seems clear in Jewish law. Beliefs among different groups ranged all the way from the approval of prostitution, homosexuality, sex with slaves and liberal views toward divorce, to 180-degree shifts in each of these areas.”[4]
“One of the myths of ‘evangelicalism’ is it inoculates the young against ‘sin’ and keeps them pure, compared to the alternatives. While anecdotal stories can be told this simply is NOT statistically true for most evangelical young,” reports this author in a first person exposé.
“It sure wasn’t true at the evangelical school I attended or in the church. In fact, the worst of the bunch was the pastor’s son. Yet the pastor publicly claimed his son was pure and virginal even though he absolutely knew that was a lie. In reality, the son was going through a large number of the teenage girls at the time and it wasn’t all consensual. His wife, who I knew somewhat, later said in an interview they were having sex and the pastor knew it the whole time but lied from the pulpit. ‘Dr. Hyles’ lying was blatant just like David’s. David was a blatant liar. He told lies that he couldn’t possibly get away with. The problem is that his dad has set himself up so good, that everybody doubts everything because that’s how they have been taught.’ But the preacher dad also lied about his own affairs, as did his son-in-law who seduced an underage girl when he took over as pastor.’”[5]
In another article, the relationship between sex crimes and extreme religious beliefs is set out in stark terms.
“While outwardly decrying abuse, extreme religiosity may breed it. In a sample of first-year students at a southern U.S. university, researchers found ‘significant relationships between religiosity and victims of child sexual abuse by both relatives and non-relatives. Persons sexually abused by a relative were much more likely to be affiliated with fundamental Protestant religions.’ A 2006 study of religiosity among Australian men incarcerated for serious sex offenses discovered that those who maintained religious involvement from childhood to adulthood had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims than other groups, including atheists. Among Jewish men in an Israeli prison, ‘religious Jews … were more likely to be in for sex crimes,’ according to other research.”[6]
Tragically for all concerned, the evangelical response to the realities of natural sexual desires is to frame sexual misbehavior as a crime of Satan rather than a predictable outcome of their theology. Josh Duggar is the product of his family’s extreme religious beliefs, not an anomaly. It may be a relief to his seven children that he is currently being held without bond.
The family of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, a tribe of potential abusers and victims
Never before has the heavy hand of religion gripped so hard in its effort to control a state government. The Republican majority of the 2021 legislative session has strained to enact every conceivable moral judgment on the state’s citizenry, promising that a large sum of taxpayer dollars will be tossed into the maw of federal courts defending the church’s agenda.
Since many of these laws intrude into the private homes, bedrooms, and bodies of Arkansans in violation of their Constitutional rights, they will—hopefully—be overturned.
Established by Jerry Cox in 1991, the Family Council is again the force behind another disgraceful session, wielding its medieval outrage over Republican legislators who can’t seem to see beyond the church hymnal. It’s as if science never existed, which is exactly what the Council wants. The Council’s agenda could not be more conspicuous: strangle the privacy and individual rights of the people of Arkansas through the enactment of laws that move social norms backwards a century or more.
“The Family Council is a conservative education and research organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Our mission is to promote, protect, and strengthen traditional family values found and reflected in the Bible by impacting public opinion and public policy in Arkansas.”
Purportedly a 501(c) 3 nonprofit, the Council lists its areas of concern as Abortion, End of Life Issues, Stem Cell Research, Human Cloning, Physician-Assisted Suicide, Same-Sex Marriage, Religious Liberty, Homosexuality, Gambling, Judicial Activism, Education Choice, Home Schooling, Divorce, Taxes, and Healthcare.
Seven of these fifteen ‘areas of concern’ are very personal, private matters, yet the Council has convinced legislators they have the right, yea, even verily the responsibility, to wade in and slam a fist down on the dinner table.
What follows is taken from the Council’s website.
“What a week at the Arkansas Legislature!
“The legislators stood strong and enacted H.B. 1570, a really good bill protecting children from dangerous gender-reassignment procedures. Lawmakers did this despite immense pressure from liberal groups across America.”
Following ‘a brief look back at the week,’ the Council gets down to passing judgment on the legislation passed so far:[1]
Good Bills Passed So Far
H.B. 1570 (Prohibiting Sex-Reassignment on Children): This good bill by Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R – Springdale) and Sen. Alan Clark (R – Lonsdale) prohibits sex-reassignment procedures on children. The bill also prevents funding of sex-reassignment procedures performed on children. This bill will protect children from being subjected to surgeries and procedures that can leave them sterilized and permanently scarred. The bill has passed the Arkansas House of Representatives and been sent to the senate. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 474 (Prohibiting Fraudulent Fertility Treatments): This good bill by Sen. Charles Beckham (R – McNeil) and Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R – Paragould) prohibits fraud and abuse in fertility treatments. The bill ensures people performing fertility treatments are honest, ethical, and abide by principles of informed-consent. See how your state senator voted here. See how your state representative voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 562 / H.B. 1402 (Abortion-Inducing Drugs): This good bill by Rep. Sonia Barker (R – Smackover) and Sen. Blake Johnson (R – Corning) updates Arkansas’ restrictions on abortion-inducing drugs like RU-486. It outlines requirements that abortionists must follow in administering abortion-inducing drugs, and it prohibits abortion drugs from being delivered by mail in Arkansas. It also updates current law to ensure doctors who perform chemical abortions are credentialed to handle abortion complications and can transfer the woman to a hospital if she experiences complications. The bill has passed the Arkansas House. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 561 / H.B. 1589 (Transactions With Abortionists): This good bill by Rep. Harlan Breaux (R – Holiday Island) and Sen. Bob Ballinger (R – Ozark) prohibits government entities, including public schools, in Arkansas from engaging in transactions with abortion providers and affiliates of abortion providers. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Jerry Cox visits with Capitol Police officers ahead of a press conference in support of H.B. 1570, the SAFE Act.
Act 560 / H.B. 1572 (Informed-Consent to Chemical Abortion): This good bill by Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R – Springdale) and Sen. Scott Flippo (R – Mountain Home) outlines the informed-consent process for chemical abortion. Arkansas’ current informed-consent laws for abortion are geared primarily for surgical abortion procedures. H.B. 1572 will help ensure women get all the facts about chemical abortion — including its risks, consequences, and pro-life alternatives. This will help save many unborn children from abortion. The bill has passed the Arkansas House. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 461 / S.B. 354 (Fairness in Women’s Sports): This good bill by Sen. Missy Irvin (R – Mountain View) and Rep. Sonia Barker (R -Smackover) would prevent male student athletes from competing against girls in women’s athletics. This would protect fairness for girls’ sports at school in Arkansas. See how your state senator voted here. See how your state representative voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 462 / S.B. 289 (Conscience): This good bill by Sen. Kim Hammer (R – Benton) and Rep. Brandt Smith (R – Jonesboro) protects healthcare workers’ rights of conscience. Arkansas’ current conscience protections are narrowly focused on abortion, abortifacients, and end of life decisions, and they protect only a limited number of people. S.B. 289 helps broaden these protections for healthcare workers. See how your state senator voted here. See how your state representative voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 498 / S.B. 85 (Abortion): This good bill by Sen. Cecile Bledsoe (R – Rogers) and Rep. Joe Cloud (R – Russellville) requires an abortionist to show an ultrasound image of the unborn baby to the pregnant woman before an abortion. Currently, Arkansas law says an abortionist must offer to let the woman see the ultrasound image. Research indicates that some women are less likely to have an abortion once they see an ultrasound image of their unborn child. That means pro-life bills like S.B. 85 can help further decrease the number of abortions in Arkansas. Arkansas Right to Life is the chief proponent of this bill, and we fully support their efforts. See how your state senator voted here. See how your state representative voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 309 / S.B. 6 (Prohibiting Abortion): This good law by Sen. Jason Rapert (R – Conway) and Rep. Mary Bentley (R – Perryville) prohibits abortion in Arkansas, except in cases when the mother’s life is in jeopardy. Family Council worked closely with Sen. Rapert to pass this good bill that could save the lives of thousands of children and give the courts an opportunity to overturn decades of bad, pro-abortion rulings. See how your state senator voted here. See how your state representative voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 358 / H.B. 1408 (Abortion): This good bill by Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R – Springdale) and Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R – Branch) helps prevent abortion providers and their affiliates in Arkansas from receiving Medicaid reimbursements from the state. The bill has passed the Arkansas House and Arkansas Senate. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 94 / H.B. 1211 (Religion is Essential): This good law by Representative Mary Bentley (R – Perryville) and Senator Kim Hammer (R – Benton) recognizes that religion and religious organizations are essential in Arkansas. H.B. 1211 will protect churches and religious groups without hampering the government’s ability to respond during a pandemic. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 226 / H.B. 1116 (Simon’s Law): This good bill by Rep. Jim Dotson (R – Bentonville) and Sen. Bart Hester (R – Cave Springs) is named in honor of an infant in Missouri who died after doctors put a Do Not Resuscitate order on his chart without his parent’s knowledge or permission. If passed, it would help protect children in Arkansas from being denied life support or having a DNR placed on their medical charts without parental consent. The bill has passed into law. See how your state representative voted here. See how your senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
Act 392 / H.B. 1544 (Pro-Life Cities Resolution): This good bill by Rep. Kendon Underwood (R – Cave Springs) and Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R – Branch) affirms the right of municipalities in Arkansas to declare themselves pro-life. H.B. 1544 outlines some of the findings and language that cities can put in their pro-life resolution. The bill also clarifies that Pro-Life Cities can install signs or banners announcing that they are pro-life. The bill has passed the Arkansas House and the Senate City, County, and Local Affairs Committee. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read the Bill Here.
H.R. 1021 (Home School): This good resolution by Rep. Cameron Cooper (R – Romance) recognizes and celebrates 35 years of homeschooling in Arkansas. The resolution passed the Arkansas House on a voice vote. Read The Resolution
H.B. 1882 (Privacy): This good bill by Rep. Cindy Crawford (R – Fort Smith) and Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R – Branch) protects physical privacy and safety of Arkansans in showers, locker rooms, changing facilities, and restrooms on government property. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 662 (Prayer): This good bill by Sen. Ricky Hill (R – Cabot) and Rep. Cameron Cooper (R – Romance) establishes a Day of Prayer for Arkansas Students annually on the last Wednesday of September. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 388 (Abortion Facilities): This good bill by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R – Jonesboro), Rep. Joe Cloud (R – Russellville), and Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R – Springdale) requires any facility that performs abortions to be licensed by the Arkansas Department of Health as an abortion facility, and it prohibits abortions in hospitals except in cases of medical emergency. S.B. 388 will help ensure that every clinic that performs abortions follows all of Arkansas’ laws concerning abortion facilities. This has the potential to save many women and unborn children from abortion. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 527 (Abortion Facilities): This good bill by Sen. Ben Gilmore (R – Crossett) and Rep. Mary Bentley (R – Perryville) requires abortion facilities to have transfer agreements with hospitals, and it fixes a flawed definition in a pro-life law passed in 2019. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 463 (Abortion Facilities): This good bill by Sen. Blake Johnson (R – Corning) and Rep. Tony Furman (R – Benton) requires the State of Arkansas to report abortion data to the federal Centers for Disease Control. It also tightens Arkansas law concerning abortion facility inspections, and it requires abortionists to file certain documentation when the woman is a victim of rape or incest. The bill has passed the Arkansas Senate. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1830 (Religious Freedom): H.B. 1830 by Rep. Jim Dotson (R – Bentonville) protects the right of public school students to express a religious viewpoint in class assignments the same way they could appropriately express a secular viewpoint in an assignment. See how your state representative voted here. Read The Bill Here.
S.J.R.14 (Religious Freedom): S.J.R. 14 by Sen. Jason Rapert (R – Conway) and Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R – Paragould) amends the Arkansas Constitution. It prevents the government from burdening a person’s free exercise of religion. The measure is similar to Arkansas’ state Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Family Council strongly supports this good amendment to the Arkansas Constitution. Read The Bill Here.
H.J.R.1024 (Religious Freedom): H.J.R. 1024 by Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R – Paragould) and Sen. Jason Rapert (R – Conway) amends the Arkansas Constitution. It prevents the government from burdening a person’s free exercise of religion. The measure is similar to Arkansas’ state Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Family Council strongly supports this good amendment to the Arkansas Constitution. Read The Bill Here.
H.J.R.1025 (Life): H.J.R. 1025 by Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R – Paragould) amends the Arkansas Constitution. It says that the sanctity of life is paramount to all other rights protected by the constitution. It states that Arkansas citizens, acting as jurors, have the sole authority to determine the amount of compensation or civil penalty imposed because of injuries resulting in death or resulting from acts that create a significant risk to life. H.J.R. 1025 will help prevent the State of Arkansas from placing a price tag on human life. Family Council strongly supports this good amendment. Read The Bill Here.
H.J.R.1010 (Casino Gambling): H.J.R. 1010 by Rep. Joe Cloud (R – Russellville) amends the Arkansas Constitution to remove authorization of a casino in Pope County. This is a good amendment that will help curtail casino gambling in Arkansas. Family Council supports H.J.R. 1010. Read The Bill Here.
H.J.R.1011 (Casino Gambling): H.J.R. 1011 by Rep. Joe Cloud (R – Russellville) amends the Arkansas Constitution. It changes the casino amendment that authorizes casino gambling in Pope, Jefferson, Garland, and Crittenden counties. Under H.J.R. 1011, the Arkansas Racing Commission would not issue a casino license in Pope County unless the voters of the county approve conducting casino gaming at a local election. Family Council supports H.J.R. 1011. Read The Bill Here.
S.J.R.16 (Boys and Girls Athletics): S.J.R. 16 by Sen. Alan Clark (R – Lonsdale) would amend the Arkansas Constitution to require public schools to designate their athletic teams as “male” or “female,” and require student athletes to compete according to their biological sex. This would prevent boys who claim to be girls from competing in girls’ sports at school — and vice versa. Family Council supports this measure. Read The Bill Here.
H.C.R. 1007 (Abortion): This good resolution by Rep. Jim Wooten (R – Beebe) and Sen. Jason Rapert (R – Conway) recognizes January 22 — the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade abortion decision — as “The Day of Tears” in Arkansas. The resolution acknowledges the 61 million of unborn babies killed in abortion in America over the past five decades, and encourages Arkansans to lower their flags to half-staff on January 22 to mourn the innocent children who have lost their lives. Read The Resolution Here.
H.B. 1429 (Home School): This good bill by Rep. Mark Lowery (R – Maumelle) and Sen. Ben Gilmore (R – Crossett) makes it easier for a student to withdraw from a public school to home school. The bill reduces the fourteen-day waiting period currently in Arkansas law for families wishing to transfer out of a public school. It also makes technical corrections to the home school law. Read The Bill Here.
[My note on Arkansas home schooling policies: There are no educational requirements for parents/guardians who provide a home school for their child(ren). The law does not give the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education or the school district the authority to review or monitor a home school student’s work. Home schools are not accredited by the state. There are no grades, credits, transcripts, or diplomas provided by the state, education service cooperative, or by the local school district for students enrolled in home school. Parents are not required to test their students.]
[Additional note: Home schooling allows parents to teach religious beliefs while leaving out those pesky topics like history, civics, and science.]
Bad Bills Filed So Far
S.B. 622 (Hate Crimes): This bad bill by Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R – Texarkana) and Rep. Matthew Shepherd (R – El Dorado), commonly being called a “hate crimes law,” outlines vague, protected classes in state law. This bill is so ambiguous that it’s impossible to know just how far-reaching this legislation may be. S.B. 622’s protections for religious liberty are not adequate. The bill does not contain sufficient safeguards to prevent cities and counties from enacting their own, more stringent hate crimes ordinances. It does not do enough to protect free speech or prevent thought-policing. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1685 (End-of-Life Care): This bad bill by Rep. Michelle Gray (R – Melbourne) and Sen. Breanne Davis (R – Russellville) guts the intent of the Arkansas Healthcare Decisions Act. It lets healthcare workers who are not physicians work through end-of-life decisions with patients and family members. It does not require healthcare workers making these decisions to have appropriate training in end-of-life care. It makes it easier to deny a dying person food or water. Family Council strongly opposes this bad bill. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1686 (End-of-Life Care): This bad bill by Rep. Michelle Gray (R – Melbourne) and Sen. Breanne Davis (R – Russellville) guts the intent of the Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment Act. It lets healthcare workers who are not physicians complete Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) forms. It removes an important provision in state law that says a POLST form is not intended to replace an advance directive. It inadvertently prevents consulting physicians — such as palliative care physicians — from completing POLST forms with patients. Family Council strongly opposes this bad bill. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 655 (Sex-Education): This bad bill by Sen. Greg Leding (D – Fayetteville) and Rep. Megan Godfrey (D – Springdale) implements Planned Parenthood-style comprehensive sex-education in public schools in Arkansas. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1869 (Gambling): This bad bill by Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R – Russellville) would legalize internet gambling and Keno under the Arkansas Lottery. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 3 (Enacting Hate Crimes Legislation): This bad bill by Sen. Jim Hendren (I – Gravette) and Rep. Fred Love (D – Little Rock) enacts hate crimes legislation by enhancing penalties for crimes committed against certain protected classes of people listed in the bill. The bill is virtually identical to H.B. 1020. Family Council has opposed hate crimes legislation for more than 20 years, and we oppose this bill as well. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1020 (Enacting Hate Crimes Legislation): This bad bill by Rep. Fred Love (D – Little Rock) and Sen. Jim Hendren (I – Gravette) enacts hate crimes legislation by enhancing penalties for crimes committed against certain protected classes of people listed in the bill. The bill is virtually identical to S.B. 3. Family Council has opposed hate crimes legislation for more than 20 years, and we oppose this bill as well. Read The Bill Here.
H.J.R.1008 (Initiatives and Referenda): H.J.R. 1008 by Rep. DeAnn Vaught (R – Horatio) amends the Arkansas Constitution. It requires initiatives and referenda submitted to voters via petition drives to be approved by at least 60% of the votes cast on the measure in order to pass. However, it would not require constitutional amendments submitted by the General Assembly to be approved by 60% of the vote. Family Council opposes this measure. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1228 (Public Drinking): This bad bill by Rep. Lee Johnson (R – Greenwood) and Sen. Breanne Davis (R – Russellville) would let cities in dry counties approve public drinking in “entertainment districts” if the city contains a private club that serves alcohol. Under Arkansas’ “entertainment district” law, alcohol can be carried and consumed outdoors on city streets and sidewalks around bars and restaurants, if approved by the city council. The bill has passed the Arkansas House of Representatives, but has not been approved by the Arkansas Senate. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1066 (Alcohol): This bill by Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R – Clarksville) would let microbrewery operators ship beer directly to private residences anywhere in the state of Arkansas or to residences in other states that allow direct shipment of alcohol. The bill may not contain sufficient safeguards to prevent alcohol from being delivered to someone who is under 21. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1148 (Alcohol): This bill by Rep. Frances Cavenaugh (R – Walnut Ridge) and Sen. Missy Irvin (R – Mountain View) overhauls Arkansas’ local option election law concerning alcohol. The bill reduces the threshold for taking a county wet or dry via a petition drive. Liquor stores in wet counties would be able to continue operating even if the county voted to go dry. The bill would make it easier for some cities or towns in a dry county to be wet while the rest of the county is dry. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 510 (LGBT Counseling): This bad bill by Sen. Greg Leding (D – Fayetteville) and Rep. Tippi McCullough (D – Little Rock) would prohibit healthcare professionals from helping children overcome unwanted same-sex attraction and gender confusion. However, the bill would permit pro-LGBT counseling that encourages children embrace a different sexual orientation or gender identity. This is a bad bill that hurts healthcare professionals and endangers the welfare of children. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1697 (No-Fault Divorce): This bad bill by Rep. Ashley Hudson (D – Little Rock) and Sen. Greg Leding (D – Fayetteville) permits no-fault divorce in Arkansas. Under current law, couples in Arkansas can divorces in cases such as infidelity, abuse, following a lengthy separation, and other circumstances. H.B. 1697 would permit divorce due to irreconcilable differences, discord, or conflict of personalities regardless of if the husband or wife is at fault. Read The Bill Here.
Other Legislation to Watch
H.B. 1069 (Contraceptives): This bill by Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R – Clarksville) and Sen. Breanne Davis (R – Russellville) lets pharmacists dispense oral contraceptives to women without a prescription from a doctor. Family Council previously opposed this bill. However, Rep. Pilkington has filed amendments to the bill. His amendments address objections Family Council raised against H.B. 1069. Family Council is neutral on this bill. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 32 (Alcohol): This bill by Sen. Jane English (R – North Little Rock) and Rep. Karilyn Brown (R – Sherwood) would let retail liquor permit holders — such as liquor stores — deliver alcoholic beverages to private residences in the county where the store is located. The bill may not contain sufficient safeguards to prevent alcohol from being delivered to someone who is under 21. The bill has passed the Arkansas Senate and the Arkansas House. See how your senator voted here. See how your state representative voted here. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1341 (Alcohol): This bill by Rep. Karilyn Brown (R – Sherwood) and Sen. Jane English (R – North Little Rock) permits on-premises consumption of alcohol on Christmas Day. Currently, Arkansas law generally prohibits bars and liquor stores from selling alcohol on Christmas. This bill would allow alcohol to be sold for on-premises consumption in bars and restaurants on Christmas. It would not let liquor stores sell alcohol for off-premises consumption. Read The Bill Here.
H.B. 1522 (Marijuana Transportation and Possession): This bill by Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R – Springdale) and Sen. Cecile Bledsoe (R – Rogers) prohibits a person from being under the influence of marijuana in public or at a marijuana dispensary or marijuana cultivation facility. It clarifies that it is unlawful for a person to use marijuana by inhalation in a place where marijuana is prohibited by the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2016. It also imposes penalties for possessing more marijuana than Arkansas’ medical marijuana amendment allows. And it makes it a crime to transport medical marijuana into Arkansas from another state. See how your state representative voted here. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
S.B. 389 (Parental Review of Sex-Education): This bill by Sen. Bob Ballinger (R – Ozark) and Rep. Mary Bentley (R – Perryville) requires public schools to notify parents about sex-education material and give parents the option of opting their students out of the class or activity. See how your state senator voted here. Read The Bill Here.
[1] Some bills pertaining to non-personal/privacy concerns are excluded from this article.
For a segment of the American population, the idea of being required to wear a mask triggers outrage. Some of the outrage results in physical violence. Over a mask.
On the surface, such a reaction defies reason. But behind the curtain, there are insidious reasons, all of which are egged on by rightwing and foreign interests determined to sow chaos in this nation.
There’s the ‘freedom’ element, resistance to being ‘required’ to do anything. But why? Similar outrage is not apparent in instances of ‘required’ seat belts, or shoes and shirts in stores, or – for that matter – driving in the right lane.
There are news reports of people who claim they can’t breathe if they wear a mask, but that dog won’t hunt. Doctors, nurses, scientists, and hazmat teams wear masks every day for hours. None of them have dropped dead from oxygen starvation or carbon dioxide buildup. Yes, there may be a few with mental health issues or respiratory problems that a mask can complicate. But that’s a handful of people in the overall situation.
If we pull back the curtain further, we find massive evidence of Denial. It’s not just excuses for why a mask requirement allegedly violates someone’s freedom or that one can’t properly breathe in a mask. The denial is far more fundamental than that, and largely hidden.
Remember, for the contingent of Americans who believe in Trump, the virus started out as a Democratic hoax. It was nothing more than the flu and would disappear by April. News coverage of New York’s crisis with bodies stored in refrigerated tractor-trailer trucks or ICU beds lining hospital hallways wasn’t real, simply more of that Democratic hoax meant to scare people and mess up Trump’s chance at re-election.
Now five months in and as the infection rate soars and hospitals in several states are nearing 100% capacity, the hoax lunacy has expanded to include screaming mobs of anti-vaxxers whose sole mission is to protect all of us from a mandatory vaccine that carries microchips which will … well, that detail is rather elusive. Some claim the chips will be the ‘mark of the beast’ that prevents its carrier from entering the Kingdom of Heaven. Others claim the chips will control our behavior and force us to accept the ‘New World Order’. Or most egregiously, it’s a Bill Gates plan to track everyone – because… ?
In a poll conducted May 20 and 21 by Yahoo/YouGov, 44% of Republicans said they believed the microchip conspiracy theory with Democrats checking in at 19%.[1]
A Christian Right broadcaster, Brannon Howse of “Worldview Watch,” warned that Gates and the “medical globalist deep state” were using the crisis to regulate people’s fertility depending on their worldview, through “procreation tickets” and microchips.[2]
So we have the ‘don’t tell me what to do’ mindset enhanced by the Democrats’ evil hoax and the microchip from Satan Gates himself. Some folks have even made the whole thing more concise by blaming Bill Gates for creating the virus so he could implant chips in the vaccine.
Elaborate thinking, perhaps – except it’s the result of not thinking at all.
Sadly, these conspiracy theories and rejections of facts have become fodder for political interests whose goal is to disrupt and divide the people of the United States. This has been the stated purpose of Russian disinformation campaigns for decades, but that too has become a conspiracy theory even when our best intelligence agencies confirm proof of such actions. The intelligence community is then swept into yet another conspiracy theory.
The more the far right learns (and can’t understand), the more it crafts yet another conspiracy theory. And experiences more rage.
Anger is often the result of fear, part of the adrenaline-stoked fight or flight response. Fear of the unknown, i.e. a virus or scientific process that is too hard to understand. Fear of being on the losing ‘side.’ Fear of being wrong for folks who need to feel ‘right’ in order to maintain mental stability.
With an invisible virus spreading through the population, anxiety sweeps in triggering fear. Those who are willing and able seek scientific information to help understand how the virus works, how it travels, what can prevent infection, and how he/she personally can best avoid the bug. These folks wear masks in public, stay home as much as possible, and social distance when they can’t.
But not everyone is equipped to seek out or understand scientific information and these people are more likely to be triggered into rage about wearing a mask. If these folks were capable or willing to investigate the virus instead of feeding on falsehoods promoted by Trump, they probably weren’t Trump voters to start with.
Trump voters are a strange amalgam of several sorts of people. At the core are those evangelicals who refuse to think beyond the boundaries of their religious beliefs, and those beliefs dictate saving the fetus above all else. That means a Republican vote no matter who the candidate, a constituency carefully cultivated and routinely fed hot-button rhetoric like the “Democrats want to kill babies after they’re born!”
There is no room in these minds for the rights of a woman to control her body, or the reality that abortions occurred millennia before Roe v Wade and will occur after it’s overturned, if it is. There is also no room in that lockstep for consideration of the horrific abuses perpetrated upon unwanted children, or immigrant children in cages, or children and pregnant women in places where our corporate war machines spread death and destruction on an industrial scale. Apparently ‘My Body, My Choice” slogans only apply to those who refuse to wear a mask.
Then there are those who hate government and rally behind the idea that Trump will dismantle the ‘deep state’ which describes, in their minds, a mysterious evil machinery behind all our nation’s ills. There is no room in these minds to understand how government works, no respect for people who devote entire careers to studying how chemicals in water or food affect our endocrine systems, or for people who spend every working day looking at data about our schools and whether students are learning, or the processes by which agencies can make choices about interest rates or surplus crops or weather forecasting – all of it in service to the people of our nation.
The mentalities involved in this willful ignorance and diminished reasoning capacity know somewhere deep inside they might be wrong. An internal crisis of anxiety and fear grows proportionately to the growing evidence of the possible error. When it reaches the point where their local supermarket won’t allow them through the doors without a mask, the evidence of their wrong blows up in their face.
Does that mean they suddenly realize that they were wrong? No. In defense of all the ignorance they hold dear, they rage.
Denial explains and justifies the rage. Denial that Trump is an idiot. Denial that the nation is not now nor ever was meant to be a ‘Christian’ nation, that the Republican mantra about fetuses and freedom of religion is nothing more than a political con meant to garner votes from people who are incapable of thinking for themselves. See, for example, the evangelical prediction that the world will literally end if Trump isn’t re-elected. (Footnote [3])
Other mask-ragers are people who fear losing the historical supremacy of white identity. People who still can’t admit the South justly lost the Civil War. People too lazy to pay attention to the facts, too busy or disconnected to read/watch the news from enough different sources to truly understand what is going on. These are people incapable of gathering relevant information regarding an issue, reasoning through that information, and reaching logical conclusions.
If we as a nation are going to survive the current chaos and move toward a more united, egalitarian future, each of these conditions among segments of the American population requires a focused examination of the cause and a concerted national effort to remediate the cause. These causes mean we are not equal. Without a long term determination to ‘cure’ these inequalities, they will destroy us. It’s not enough to have scientists discovering vaccines and advanced computing systems that can park cars for us. People have to understand how to apply rational processes and appreciate the logic of the scientific method.
Masks are a symbol of the truth of the virus, but they are also a symbol of the truth about Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Those who have embraced Trump deny they’ve been manipulated, misled, and used to further a political agenda that has – in reality – nothing to do with what they believe it to be. The agenda, in reality, is to further consolidate power and wealth in the hands of a few.
These folks have been played. Wearing a mask would require them to admit it.
A lot of talk is going on right now about not needing the police, but it’s just not true. We need police. There will always be robberies, rape, assault, murder, crazy people with a gun, and other crime.
It’s true we don’t need police in areas of our lives where they have been unnecessarily and destructively assigned duty by lawmakers eager to appease public sentiment or to garner support for re-election. The drug war has been one of those areas.
But it’s also true that law enforcement in the United States has always been armed. Shoot-outs in dusty frontier towns of the Old West come to mind. Those encounters were minor compared to what happened when do-gooders decided the American people shouldn’t have alcoholic drink.
Organized crime got its first foothold in American life thanks to the lucrative black market in liquor. This was also the golden age of bank robbery with figures like Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and John Dillinger becoming folk heroes. The Thompson sub-machine gun and the Browning Automatic Rifle were increasingly used by these crime “stars.”
…the Prohibition Era saw domestic police departments using automatic weapons, armored vehicles, and ammo developed with the express purpose of being able to penetrate the early bulletproof vests worn by gangsters of the era.[1]
The first transfer of military weapons to civilian law enforcement occurred in the years immediately after World War II when surplus military supplies were made available to various civilian entities. With the rise of activism for African-American rights in the 1950s and 1960s, then the increasing public protests over the Vietnam War in the late ‘60s and early 1970s, police forces felt emboldened to use force.
…police militarization was escalated in the 1950s and 1960s, an era in which race riots and anti-war protests were common in many U.S. cities. Some believe that the seeming success of officers armed with military-style weapons and deployed to curtail the 1965 Watts riots, a six-day race riot sparked by conflicts with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that killed 34 people, gave way to the trend of arming and equipping law enforcement officers with battlefield weapons. Joy Rohde, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, has published research indicating that “militarization is a mindset … is a tendency to see the world through the lens of national security, a tendency to exaggerate existing threats.” Rohde traces “the origins of modern militarized policing” to the Cold War-era anti-communist paranoia, and the idea that domestic civil rights activists were similar to foreign enemies, as manifested in activities such as the CIA’s Operation CHAOS.
…The 1981 Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act allows the U.S. military to cooperate with domestic and foreign law enforcement agencies. Operations in support of law enforcement include assistance in counter-drug operations, assistance for civil disturbances, special security operations, counter-terrorism, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), and similar activities. Constitutional and statutory restrictions and corresponding directives and regulations limit the type of support provided in this area. This allows the U.S. military to give law enforcement agencies access to its military bases and its military equipment. [Emphasis mine.] The legislation was promoted during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan in the context of the War on Drugs, and is considered a part of a general trend towards the militarization of police.[2]
The process becomes circular. Tougher drug laws under Reagan meant police were legally empowered to invade private residences, stop and search vehicles, and frisk people on the street. In response, civilians trafficking in drugs or only using drugs became more likely to arm themselves. Which in turn led police to seek more protection and greater fire power like SWAT which are essentially militarized police squads.
Begun in 1965 in Philadelphia, SWAT teams were conceived as a way to restrain urban unrest, deal with hostage situations, or handle barricaded marksmen. The number of SWAT raids in the US grew dramatically from about 3,000 in 1980, to a whopping 50,000 SWAT raids in 2014.[3]
Unfortunately, too much of a potentially good thing has meant that 62 percent of all SWAT deployments were for drug raids, 79 percent of these were done on private residences, and only 7 percent of all raids were done for situations SWAT was invented for—namely barricades or hostage situations.
The result has been an increasingly armed and embattled police at war with the population whether white right-wing fanatics or inner city drug gangs. One begets the other. It’s hard to imagine sending disarmed police officers out on calls and equally hard to contemplate any attempt to disarm the public. Communities of color have become disproportionately impact by the war on drugs not only because they are disproportionately impoverished and therefore seeking any means of income, but also and most importantly because ALL LAWS are policed selectively. Officers would rarely if ever stop a white well-dressed man driving a late model Lexus but would not hesitate to stop a black or Hispanic man with any profiling features like certain hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, shoes, or automobile.
We have get smart about this. Yes, communities and the nation as a whole must do a better job of intervening in the preconditions of ‘crime’ by improving all forms of social support: better early childhood education, far more generous funding for public schools, and intensive efforts to improve health care and nutritional support to impoverished communities. Better job opportunities will require dedicated effort. It’s a long list of what might help and a very short list of funding to enable those programs.
It also makes sense to look at what drives much of the police violence, and the drug war is first in line. Young men in impoverished neighborhoods earn money by selling drugs. With their profits and to protect themselves from theft, they buy weapons. Shoot-outs with police are inevitable.
We need to face reality as a nation and legalize all drugs. People who want drugs are getting them now, so it’s a fantasy to think that prohibition is succeeding in its stated goal. We only need to look at what occurred as a result of alcohol prohibition to see the parallel to our current situation. More violence, more crime, and no real impact on the use or abuse of alcohol.
The money we spend on enforcing drug laws and punishing drug law violators could easily supply the funds needed for the social reforms mentioned above. “Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost the United States an estimated $1 trillion. In 2015, the federal government spent an estimated $9.2 million every day to incarcerate people charged with drug-related offenses—that’s more than $3.3 billion annually.”[4]
The fact is that we can’t arrest our way out of the drug problem and treatment alone is not the answer. As shown on the adjacent chart, funding for ‘prevention’ is a slim portion of the overall budget. What we need to get at is WHY people abuse drugs, and in order to make meaningful headway on that question, we must first accept the reality that drug USE is not the same as drug ABUSE. Just as a beer or two isn’t alcoholism, neither does casual smoking of marijuana or exploring LSD on a weekend adventure constitute substance abuse.
If drugs were legal, labeled for purity and potency, and taxed like alcohol, our tax dollars could be concentrated on the true sources of substance abuse problems including:
– Genetic predisposition to addiction or abuse
– History of mental illness and lack of access to mental health care
– Neglect, abuse, or other childhood trauma
– Poor social skills or lack of social support structure
– Poor health and lack of access to health care
Data collected over recent decades shows a consistent 8-10% of the population are predisposed to addiction, the greatest percentage of which are alcoholics. In 2011, of persons meeting criteria for substance abuse, “2.9 million were classified with a substance use disorder of both alcohol and illicit drugs. 4.2 million were classified with a substance use disorder for illicit drugs but not alcohol. 15.0 million were classified with a substance use disorder for alcohol but not illicit drugs.”[5]
Obviously neither military weaponry nor SWAT teams have any real impact on addiction. By now we as a society should recognize that drug prohibition has almost singlehandedly pushed our police forces into armed combat on our city streets and given birth to gang warfare. This is one specific target upon which concerned citizens can and must take action – educate our elected representatives on the facts, advocate in support of change, and never rest until this arena of community conflict has been removed.
Police only enforce the laws. Voters are in control of who make laws. Let the healing begin.
denelecampbell 