In the last week I’ve had the dubious privilege of dealing with hundreds of alt-right trolls on a few selected posts on the FB AS page. This has obviously not been my favorite thing—not sure where they all came from, honestly. But since they came along, it was actually pretty helpful (if disturbing) to see the quiet parts the more covertly right-wing folks I came up with said out loud. In thinking about it, one of the things these (now…
As I write this, it is Holy Saturday, and as I reflect on this time that’s traditionally one of gestation and waiting moving toward resurrection, in the midst of spring, a season that celebrates new growth after the dormancy of winter, it’s profoundly helpful to look back on what has gone before. And to grieve the mini-deaths that have been necessary within me as I’ve been traveling away from unhealthy religio-political beliefs, and hopefully toward healthier ones. I can’t believe…
As I write this, we just passed Transgender Day of Visibility AND there was yet another school shooting this week. But this time it was at a Christian school in Nashville, and by a person who used they/them pronouns (find out more in this NPR story). So yeah, let’s be clear: this is the type of LGBTQ+ visibility that is likely to make the LGBTQ+ community rightfully terrified. After all, this is the kind of edge case situation that unhealthy…
Just this past week, Tennessee became the first American state to outlaw drag shows (here’s a piece from PBS that gives some historical context on this). But if you’ve been paying attention, you already know that other red states are working on similar measures. This post will come at this issue from a rhetorical perspective, analyzing how the recent right-wing attempts to ban and demonize drag use strategic ambiguity in really unhealthy ways to target the LGBTQ+ community. Where I’m…
Okay, so it’s been quite a few years now since the far-right started demonizing trans people. It’s only been recently, however, as of this writing, since right-wing pundits in the US started ridiculing the use of pronouns—as though one could demonize an entire part of speech, one asks? Of course it’s not the use of a part of speech that everyone uses that is the target of course—it’s transgender people themselves, and more broadly anyone who affirms and supports nonbinary,…
I’ll confess I didn’t watch the Super Bowl this year, but I certainly heard an awful lot about the $20 million spent on “Jesus ads” that aired there. I’ve seen a lot of articles pointing out how people from both the left and the right are critiquing various aspects of this total $100 million “He Gets Us” ad campaign, which various sources has reported is funded at least in part by the same fund connected to the founder of Hobby…
Wow, we’ve been hearing a lot about classified documents in the US news lately. If you’re not paying attention to the rhetoric closely enough, it seems like it’s suddenly this huge problem that EVERYONE in government has. AND, significantly, like everyone ON ALL SIDES of US government is equally guilty of mishandling classified documents. In this piece I plan to unwrap why that simply isn’t so, and how this kind of largely right-wing rhetoric mirrors nature and the effects of…
This week, in honor of opening a new year, I wanted to use this space to write an open letter to my former more conservative self that was trained on some level to believe that assertiveness was immoral. (If you’re just joining us, or forgot, I’m a former pastor’s kid from a right-leaning denomination who went on to get a PhD in Communication. There are lots of places on this blog you can learn about where I came from and…
I have to confess—I’ve been choking back an awful lot of “I told you so’s” this past week or so as people marveled at the fact that the former president of the US (you know, the one who still thinks he didn’t lose a legitimate election in 2020 and has been shown to have fomented an insurrection to maintain power) hosted alt-right extremist Nick Fuentes for dinner at his home, and so so few GOP leaders decried the choice. In…
I had the privilege recently of talking with the lovely folks over at the What in God’s Name podcast about the ideas and background behind this Assertive Spirituality project, and if you’re reading this before Wednesday, September 28, 2022 there still may be an opportunity for you to join in a Zoom talk back session with all of us at 7 p.m. Eastern. Here’s what you need to know: The podcast is in a 3-part series, with an intro, the…
Okay, so I’ll confess I had to go back and read up on Heather Cox Richardson’s latest update when I started seeing memes and posts about GOP immigration nonsense in my feed again. At any rate, it doesn’t actually feel all that new at all. That’s because this rhetoric is old as the fascistic hills. So today I wanted to unwrap a bit more of what happens in general with unhealthy rhetoric that frames “open borders” as a devil term—and…
Okay, so the last couple of weeks’ blog posts about LGBTQ+ inclusivity and abortion bans as fascistic (see here and here respectively if you want to catch up). That coming in the midst of the crucially important January 6 hearings in Congress and the upcoming 4th of July holiday has been a thing. Not to mention the recent Supreme Court decision allowing to door to open to the Religious Right’s Holy Grail of “(Christian nationalist) prayer in schools.” All of…
Like so many of us, I’ve had sooooo many thoughts and feelings since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Especially coming on the tail end of a week in which I was rereading an excellent and excellently accessible book on fascistic rhetoric (How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley), refreshing my mind about how fascistic politicians tend to hearken back to a mythical idealized patriarchal past in order to gain and regain power, it’s been a whole thing to take…
So yeah, in recent months and years, it’s been increasingly clear that the litmus test for whether you were a “real” white Evangelical Christian has surrounded the question of where you stand on the Culture Wars, and has been stunningly similar to the question of what made a “true conservative” in the US. And let’s be clear—the issue this has consolidated around in recent years and decades, beyond the question of whether you support abortion being illegal, is the question…
Here in the US, there’s been yet another school shooting. Not long after yet another grocery store shooting (that one caused by a white supremacist). And I have heard sooooo much cynicism this week. This blog post is designed to empathize with those who are cynical but also to call those who are cynical (and others who may be overwhelmed and frozen) toward fighting for change moving forward, however you’re able. See, we need you and your efforts. They matter….