Happy Sunday! Americans hate theocracy everywhere but at home. According to the Pew Research Center, 49% of Americans think churches should speak out about political matters, while 48% disagree, reflecting our divided politics. This has changed since 2010, when 52% wanted preachers to stay away from politics, and 43% didnât.
The new urge to hear their pastors pillory politicians is supported mostly by Republicans. About 63% of Americans still think churches should stop short of endorsing candidates for office (vs. 32% who favor endorsing), but the gap has narrowed since 2010 when it was 70-24%. Moreover, only 29% of Americans see the Democratic Party as friendly to religion, while 47% see the Republicans favoring religion.
So in the most devout parts of the country, Democratic candidates tend to distance themselves from the partyâs national stereotype. You will see this again in 2016.
Churches as institutions should be apolitical. And conversely, the political process should not explicitly favor members of certain religions for office. If it is really true that pious people are more honest or ethical, that fact will be clear when individuals are evaluated during the campaigns. On the other hand, nothing is easier to fake than religious faith, precisely because we canât see into the heart of another person.
While politicians must pander to lobbies or to wealthy individuals that pay for their election campaigns, if they pander to religion, it makes a hole in the fabric of US politics. Having religious organizations directly sponsor political candidates would be so much easier. After all, “God wants you to vote for John Doe” is a pretty irresistible campaign message. Luckily, that isnât America â yet.
Another week of summer with more Trump, Iran, and killings in Louisiana. Kerry met with the Senate:
Boehner has a strategy for Iran deal:
GOP has to scratch its itch:
Trump also deserves a medal:
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Fugelsang nails it about mass shootings, this time in Louisiana:
A local TV host frequently invited him as a guest, knowing heâd be a lightning rod who could light up the phone lines with rants against abortion and working womenâŚ
So he was part of what Donald Trump and Ted Cruz affectionately refer to as âThe Base.â
In recent years, many on the right talk as if they have inside knowledge of what the Creator wants us to think and do. As reported here last week, we have been arguing about the role of religion in our politics since the founding of the Republic. In 1789, George Washington declared a day of âpublic thanksgiving and prayer.â 12 years later, Thomas Jefferson abruptly canceled the ritual. The First Amendment, explained Jefferson, erected a âwall of separation between church and state.â
But Jeffersonâs contractor failed to make that wall strong enough.
So, Wrongo is adding a book to his summer reading list. It is âOne Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian Americaâ by Kevin Kruse. The book tries to explain the religiosity in our politics. Kruse investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and ’40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise. He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage under Eisenhower’s watch in the ’50s, when the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase “In God we trust” was inserted on the back of the dollar bill.
This week saw the USA Womenâs soccer team take Manhattan, the NYSE go dark, Greece on the verge of going dark, the Confederate flag comes down in Charleston and Trump jumps into the lead in Republican opinion polls.
Womenâs soccer is Americaâs new role model:
Stock Exchange glitch wasnât explained clearly, so speculation ensued:
Here is a photo with commentary by the indispensable Charles Gaba, who runs the site, ACA Signups, the go-to place for data about the Affordable Care Act:
 Apparently, 12 people showed up for the Confederate flag rally.
There will be limited blogging for the next seven days, as the Wrongologist and Ms. Right head to Bermuda.
It was an epic news week, from the killings in Charleston to the ACA decision by the Supreme Court, 6-3, in which Antonin Scalia wrote the 21 page dissent. Then came the Marriage Equality decision. Antonin Scalia wrote another dissent, starting with:
I write separately to call attention to this Courtâs threat to American democracy
Here is the Cliff notes version of both Scalia dissents: âI stole the 2000 election for thisâ??
They shot and missed:
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Republicans secretly happy about SCOTUS decision on ACA:
Marriage equality decision not popular with everyone:
And the Supremes said, âLet them eat cakeâ:
The big change on the Confederate flag doesn’t change much:
Yesterday we explained that, although Kurds are Sunnis, they fight ISIS, which is a Sunni movement. Today, we look at an example of how the Sunni-Shia divide elsewhere in Iraq seems deep enough that it might never be resolved.
ISIS was driven out of Mohamad Mutlaqâs hometown in central Iraq six months ago, and since then, he and his family have tried every few days to…go home. But…each time [Sunnis] approach a bridge to cross back into the town of Yathrib, Shiite tribesmen at a checkpoint beat the Sunni refugees, saying: âDonât even try to come back…â
The WSJ calls Yathrib a failure in Iraqâs efforts to repopulate ISIS-held Sunni areas, and it points to Tikrit as a success. Tikrit was recaptured from ISIS three months ago, and it is now at the center of a government campaign to rebuild and repopulate the area. But, the challenges are huge:
Tikrit and Yathrib, both in Salahudeen province, illustrate the challenges Iraq faces in trying to resettle…nearly three million displaced people in areas recaptured from ISIS.
Most towns and villages retaken from ISIS remain largely unpopulated as the government struggles to build a process that will return residents to their home towns. Security preparations, mine clearing and infrastructure rebuilding contribute to delays. Yathrib has been empty for six months since its 60,000 people fled ISIS. From the WSJ:
Instead, they couldnât get past the checkpoint run by a Shiite tribe known as Bani Saad. An Iraqi army unit and three Shiite militias are posted inside the town, but there is little sign of any reconstruction.
When WSJ visited, they saw pockmarked walls of empty homes. Acres of grape vineyards have gone unattended for months. The ceilings of most houses leading into Yathrib are completely collapsed, suggesting they were blown up with improvised explosive devices. Yathrib residents and tribal leaders say Shiite militias aided by the townâs Shiite neighbors have blown up some buildings, while members of the Shiite militia stationed in the town say ISIS fighters blew up the buildings before retreating:
Residents of Yathrib and its neighboring Shiite hamlets are descendants of the same tribe, split into Sunni and Shiite branches. Shiite tribal leaders accuse their Sunni brethren of enabling ISIS to stage attacks against them from the town last summer. They have demanded their Sunni neighbors be allowed to return only on certain conditions.
The neighboring Shiite tribes suggest punitive measures for Sunni Yathrib residents. They included blood money payments, buffer zones between the town and its Shiite neighbors, and even a separate water supply. The Sunni and Shiite areas would report to separate local administrations.
Some of Yathribâs Sunnis acknowledge they supported ISIS but refuse to apologize for it. The Shiite leader whose tribesmen guard one crossing into Yathrib, said his tribe would accept only blood money paid by the Sunni tribes themselves, not the government, saying:
If the government brings back the people of Yathrib without meeting our conditions, we are going to kill them all.
Tikrit is a different story. Last week, there was an orderly return of 1,400 families to Tikrit, a fraction of the 160,000 people originally displaced from the city.
Iraqâs government claims the return of Tikrit residents is an example of Sunni cooperation with the Shiite-majority militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Those forces led battles across Salahudeen province, and now are in charge of the repopulation effort. The plans for the orderly return of the population took months to get established, and local Sunni tribes that joined Shiite militias to fight ISIS have helped those militias and local officials set up an elaborate screening process. From the WSJ:
Other tensions remain. Sunni policemen stationed around Tikrit said some Shiite militiamen have refused to withdraw from the city despite government orders. In the city itself, they remain an intimidating presence, where residents complain their homes have been searched aggressively and some stores have been looted.
The Obama administration knows that the resettlement process is a make or break issue. If there isn’t a broader and successful reconciliation in Iraq, efforts to beat back ISIS will fail.
Yugoslavia went through the same thing after Tito’s death. There the conflicts were between Christians and Christians and Muslims.
The result was the creation of new nation-states organized largely around religion.
Wrongologist reader Rene asks: âwhy doesnât the Wrongologist say something about the Greek crisisâ?
Most people believe that Greece needs debt relief. The creditors should discount some of the amount that Greece owes, since thereâs no way they can pay it all back. But, that hasnât happened and itâs unlikely that it will, since itâs politically impossible. Why? It is very hard to explain in a short post, but Forbes has a great summary of the facts:
The money is owed to the taxpayers of other European Union and Euro Zone countries. And whatâs more, [their] taxpayers know this.
So, this is the issue: To solve the Greek debt problem, something like 50% of their debt has to be written off. That would equal 1.5% to 2% of GDP for each country in the Euro Zone. So itâs not happening.
Even though the money has already been lost by lending it to Greece in the first place, the response by the Euro Zone is troubling. From Ambrose Bierce in the Telegraph:
The European Central Bank, the EMU bail-out fund, and the IMF, among others, are lashing out in fury against an elected government that refuses to do what it is told. They entirely duck their own responsibility for five years of policy blunders that have led to this impasse.
Worse, Europe is now provoking a Greek bank run in their effort to force Greece to its knees, issuing a report that warned of an “uncontrollable crisis” if there is no creditor deal, followed by soaring inflation, “an exponential rise in unemployment”, and a “collapse of all that the Greek economy has achieved over the years of its EU, and especially its euro area, membership”.
So Europeâs guardians of financial stability are deliberately accelerating a financial crisis in an EMU member state, saying they are out of the Euro Zone if they donât comply.
The IMF is forcing a contradictory austerity policy in Greece â with no debt relief, exchange cushion, or offsetting investment. Moreover, they are applying a completely different standard in Ukraine, announcing on Friday, that it will: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
Continue to support Ukraine through its Lending-into-Arrears Policy even in the event that a negotiated agreement with creditors in line with the program cannot be reached in a timely manner.
This despite the fact that the IMF, by its rules, does not lend to nations that are likely to default.
In the case of Greece, the creditors are acting in concert. They are doubling down, assuming (possibly rightly) that terror tactics will cow the Greeks at the last hour.
The European governments must approve any bailout extension, but we are now so close to the expiration of the second bailout on June 30th that it is too late to get a deal approved by then. But IMF Chief Christine Lagarde has 30 days before she has to report a Greek non-payment of âŹ1.5 billion on June 30th to her board, the real drop dead date appears to be July 20th, when a âŹ3.5 billion payment is due to the ECB.
Unfortunately, itâs hard to see how the two sides will agree to anything other than a short-term deal before the July 20th date. Any âthird bailoutâ of restructuring Greek debt as suggested in the Forbes article above, may be impossible.
In the words of Woody Allen:
âMore than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.â
So wake up Euro Zone! To help with a gentle wake-up, here as we start summer, is the last in our series of spring bird visits to the fields of Wrong. Here is the Song Sparrow:
For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.
Cambodia is training an elite squad of African rats to sniff out landmines. A team of 15 rats were imported from Tanzania with the help of a Belgian NGO, which trains rats to sniff out mines. The rats will try to locate the huge quantities of unexploded mines that have killed nearly 20,000 people since 1979.
The âlawgiversâ in DC moved forward on two deeply held Republican ideas this week, and neither stand up to close inspection.
Yesterday, the Senate passed a bill banning torture. It is an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that will permanently bar the âenhanced interrogation techniquesâ that were used by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration. It passed 78-21. It limits the interrogation of detainees by any US government employee or agent to only using techniques that are listed in the publicly available Army Field Manual on human intelligence collection. This is a good thing.
The 21 no votes, which are really a vote for torture, were all by Republicans. Thatâs 21 US Senators, all from one political party, including the Senate Majority Leader and his Majority whip, who voted to continue torture as an official policy of the US government.
Presumably, these 21 will run on their support for torture the next time they come up for re-election. Interestingly, the vote split Texasâ two Republican Senators, with Cruz voting for the bill, and Cornyn voting against it. The Houston Chronicle quoted an aide to Cornyn:
The senator is concerned that limiting intelligence professionals and law enforcement to interrogation techniques detailed in publicly available manuals would give would-be terrorists the ability to train and prepare against them.
Really? You think it is possible for the average jihadist to âprepareâ for the techniques described in the Army Field Manual? And that preparation will compromise our intelligence gathering? As Charlie Pierce said:
This country can be America, or it can be a country that tortures. It cannot be both.
It would eliminate Title X funding unless the program meets a certain ideological (read: abstinence-focused) criteria:
None of the funds appropriated in this Act may be made available to any entity under title X of the Public Health Service Act unless the applicant for the award certifies to the Secretary that it encourages family participation in the decision of minors to seek family planning services and that it provides counseling to minors on how to resist attempts to coerce minors into engaging in sexual activities.
And hereâs the part of the proposal that would let your school or boss determine whether or not your insurance covers contraception or any other form of healthcare they may not like:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, no provision of this title (and no amendment made by any such provision) shall⌠require a sponsor (or, in the case of health insurance coverage offered to students through an institution of higher education, the institution of higher education offering such coverage) to sponsor, purchase, or provide any health benefits coverage or group health plan that includes coverage of an abortion or other item or service to which such sponsor or institution, respectively, has a moral or religious objection, or prevent an issuer from offering or issuing to such sponsor or institution, respectively, health insurance coverage that excludes such item or service.
Yes, it enables more unwanted pregnancies, less breast and cervical cancer screenings, more undiagnosed sexually transmitted diseases, and more economic burdens pushed onto the states.
According to a data from the Guttmacher Institute, each dollar invested in Title X saves $3.80 in Medicaid expenses related to pregnancy and childbirth. Another Guttmacher analysis found that the services provided by Kansasâ Title X clinics in 2010 helped save the state more than $61,000,000 in public funds. According to the report:
That accounts for savings from reduced maternity and birth-related costs, along with reduced costs related to miscarriage and abortion and savings related to [sexually transmitted infection] screening and cervical cancer prevention services.
You can certainly count on Republicans. If there is an efficacious solution to a problem, as in this case, you can disregard it for a faith-first solution that costs more, while creating unnecessary cruelty and inhumanity.
Republicans want to stand the First Amendment on its head.
This is who they are. They will piss on the Pope if he speaks about climate change. And their leadership, plus a total of 39% of Republicans in the Senate support torture, since torture seems mas macho.
You have a chance on Election Day to tell them what you think about their “conscience”!
Peter, a new reader to the Wrongologist asks: âIs there a Rightologist?â Wrongo has no idea. His first thought was maybe the Pope qualifies, because infallibility. Few people know that Pope Francis wrote a book in 1998 about Cuba called “Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro” that was a collection of observations between the two leaders on the occasion of Pope John Paul IIâs visit to Cuba. Popes have been pushing to end Cubaâs isolation for decades. Among them were Pope Benedict, who visited Cuba in 2012, and John Paul II, who visited in 1998 along with then-Archbishop Bergoglio.
And today, we know that Pope Francis had a key role in the diplomatic thaw between the US and Cuba. It was the right move. So, the Pope can be the Rightologist.
For today’s Wake-up, here is the Tocororo, the national bird of Cuba. It is found only in Cuba, is rare, and few Cubans have seen it:
For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.
We donât know jack about Joe: Joe is General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps and Obamaâs nominee to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Heâs only been the top officer of the Marines since October. Before that he was commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan for 18 months, not a lot of time in grade, but Obama likes him.
China has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia to sell it Chinese drones. Saudi is buying the Wing Loong medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, called the Pterodactyl I. Chinese media have indicated that the drone has a wide variety of military applications, including âprecision strikes and long-duration, long-distance reconnaissance.â Some say it is a knock-off of our Predator. Isnât Saudi Arabia supposed to recycle petrodollars into US military hardware, or wouldnât we sell our drones to them?
Skeletal evidence from the last 30k years suggests that our brains have become smaller. Scientific American says that that our brains have shrunk by an amount equivalent to a tennis ball, for two reasons. First we have smaller bodies, so the brain would naturally be smaller. Apparently, SA has never been in Indiana. Second, we now store and process information externally, like in the cloud. Your tennis ball is in a data storage facility somewhere in the NSA’s data center in Bluffdale, Utah. This explains why we canât paint like the cavemen anymore.
I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government…When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution…
Despite those like Mr. DeLay and Minister Hagee, who would have us believe that America is only a nation for Christians, weâve somehow managed to keep religion out of our government. Perhaps itâs the recognition of what theocracy does to places like Pakistan, Iran, and Somalia.
Unless you were around for the folk revival era in the late 1950âs â early 1960âs, you probably donât know who Guy Carawan was. He co-wrote and popularized the protest song “We Shall Overcome” in the American Civil Rights Movement by teaching it to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. He just died at the age of 87.
The story behind the story of We shall Overcome is that the song is based on the early hymn âU Sanctissima.â Charles Albert Tindley, a minister in Philadelphia, added new words in 1901 and called his new hymn âIâll Overcome Some Day.â In the ensuing decades, the song became a favorite at black churches throughout the American south, often sung as âI Will Overcome.â Eventually, the song was brought to a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, TN. The schoolâs cultural director was Zilphia Horton. Pete Seeger visited the school and changed âWe will overcomeâ to âWe shall overcome.â Guy Carawan, a great folk artist who plays the hammer dulcimer, was then a music director at the Highlander School. He introduced it to civil rights activists during a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting in 1960. Frank Hamilton was in Seegerâs band.
The songâs copyright includes Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, but omits Charles A. Tindley.
Carawan lived in California at the beginning of the folk revival movement, but ended up at Highlander, a place famous for its role in left-wing southern organizing in the 20th century. Few know that Rosa Parks had already trained at Highlander on civil rights issues before refusing to move to the back of the bus which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King had visited Highlander as well.
In 2013, NPRâs Noah Adams had a piece about Carawan and the song. Apparently, Carawan heard the song in the early 1950âs when he was finishing graduate work in sociology at UCLA and doing some singing on the side. He also learned about the Highlander Center, and eventually thatâs where he spent most of the rest of his life. He told a history of the song:
I first heard this song from a friend of mine, Frank Hamilton. He taught me this song, and he also had put some chords to it [on guitar]…When I came to Highlander in 1959, Zilphia Horton had died, and I had some singing and musical skills and they needed somebody there. So by the time I came to Highlander, I was playing it with the guitar…
Today, few people sing at civil protests. Somehow, outside of concerts and church, we have lost an understanding of the power of shared singing, of unrestrained sincerity, and the strength it provides to the group.
But its power was important to Dr. King. Here is what he said about the song on March 31, 1968, just days before his death:
There’s a little song that we sing in our movement down in the South. I don’t know if you’ve heard it…You know, I’ve joined hands so often with students and others behind jail bars singing it: ‘We shall overcome.’ Sometimes we’ve had tears in our eyes when we joined together to sing it, but we still decided to sing it: ‘We shall overcome.’ Oh, before this victory’s won, some will have to get thrown in jail some more, but we shall overcome.
One difference between the civil rights movement, which resulted in political change, and the Vietnam demonstrations which did not, was the power of churches working together with students, singing a song that reflected the struggle. Regardless of whether it was sung by Mahalia Jackson, the earnest Carawan, Pete Seeger, or simply kids carrying signs, it had a power to inspire.
A successful movement also required a charismatic leader like Martin Luther King, Jr. who could tell a story, and take America on the journey with him.
Guy Carawan isnât well known today, but he was really important to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and he will be missed. Here is Guy Carawan singing âWe Shall Overcomeâ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tftdes9dp-A
For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.
Baltimore riots, Nepal earthquakes, same sex marriage in front of the Supremes, Bernie Sanders runs against Hillary. Quite the week.
Did the Baltimore riot result in a move towards justice for Freddie Gray? It is more than an exaggeration to say the rioting caused manslaughter indictments against 6 Baltimore police officers. With the city electing Marilyn Mosby, a daughter and granddaughter of police officers as the Maryland stateâs attorney for Baltimore City over an incumbent white Democrat, maybe the indictments would have happened without the riots. Could the justice system now be working a bit better because people in Baltimore voted?
Seven months after Michael Brown, systematic failure to deliver justice in our cities is playing with fire, possibly, a little like 1965 all over again. The number of people in the streets in other cities in solidarity with Baltimore has been growing. And the hot spots are New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta and poor suburban cities with police departments that grift with fines and court penalties.
Indictments notwithstanding, this is Baltimore and many other cities:
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
If you watched mainstream media coverage, all of Baltimore was on fire:
Gay marriage discussion brought out the best in our politicians:
And ministers now have a new take on the old question:
Same Sex wasn’t the only type of marriage decided by the Supremes:
Bernie Sanders threw hat in the ring, and almost no media covered it:
Nepal was on everyone’s mind, including Christian bigots:
Ever hear of Tony Miano? Heâs a former LA cop who seems to be a Christian. He should ask âWhat would Jesus tweet?â because what he did was an epic fail for a human, much less a Christian. Miano could be organizing a drive to collect donations, but instead, heâs tweeting about âpagan templesâ and how the people of Nepal need to repent and receive Christ.
