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Category: Political Rhetoric

Book Banning, “Age Appropriateness,” and LGBTQ+ Content

Book Banning, “Age Appropriateness,” and LGBTQ+ Content

In recent weeks, I’ve posted several memes at Assertive Spirituality’s Facebook page that have, for whatever reason, gone what I like to call “troll viral.” One thread of rhetoric that has popped up a lot in this recently has had to do, interestingly to me as a scholar, with gaslighting the idea that there’s a “book banning” trend at all. No, these folks say, books are just being removed pending “finding a way to make them more age appropriate.” While…

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That Duggar Documentary and Unhealthy “Biblical” Conflict Management

That Duggar Documentary and Unhealthy “Biblical” Conflict Management

Like many people I know, I just finished watching Shiny Happy People—that documentary about the Duggar family of the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, their recent sexual abuse scandals,and the religious extremism behind that helps provide context for so much around this show and other American religio-political issues of the last few years. If you haven’t yet watched and want to, it’s on Amazon Prime video in the US. Today, I’m going to provide as few spoilers as…

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Right-Leaning Folks and the Viking or Victim Mindset

Right-Leaning Folks and the Viking or Victim Mindset

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…

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The Nashville Shooting and The Danger of a Single Story

The Nashville Shooting and The Danger of a Single Story

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…

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When Drag Gets Demonized: A Call to Action

When Drag Gets Demonized: A Call to Action

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…

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When Pronouns Become the…Enemy? Analyzing Anti-Transgender Rhetoric

When Pronouns Become the…Enemy? Analyzing Anti-Transgender Rhetoric

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,…

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On Sin-Leveling and Classified Documents

On Sin-Leveling and Classified Documents

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…

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When Shame–Er, Purity Culture—Becomes a God Term

When Shame–Er, Purity Culture—Becomes a God Term

So this week I had the strange experience of re-reading the book Pure by Linda Kay Klein when an article came out suggesting that Evangelical missionary, martyr, and purity culture icon Jim Elliot seems to have longed for death at the end of his life because of struggle against something unspecified that he deemed a (sexual) sin. Considering Pure is an ethnographic study of the damage and trauma caused by the Evangelical purity culture movement that was in part pioneered…

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How to Respond When the Bullies (Seem to) Win

How to Respond When the Bullies (Seem to) Win

I don’t know about you, but there are times in weeks like this past one when it just feels so much like however much progress we make, like the systems in place are just too flawed, and allow the bad guys—you know, the bullies and abusers—to win much much too often. In today’s piece I want to unwrap some of the dynamics of these issues and how to understand and healthily respond when things seem like this. (This is going…

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When the GOP Fails to Denounce Nazis—A Call to Action

When the GOP Fails to Denounce Nazis—A Call to Action

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…

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When Women Use Abortion as a Devil Term

When Women Use Abortion as a Devil Term

This week an AS follower came to me with a request. She had been engaged in a lot of recent discussions with right-wing women, specifically, about the questions around abortion rights. She was very frustrated with these discussions and wanted my take on them as well as my encouragement and advice. In today’s blog post I plan to talk about some breakthroughs in understanding I had in the process of analyzing these situations with her, specifically understanding better why and…

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When Right-Wing Media Poisons the Well Against the DOJ

When Right-Wing Media Poisons the Well Against the DOJ

This week a member of the AS community sent me an article they had seen a pastor in the US post on social media from the right-wing source the Daily Wire. They asked for an analysis. This Daily Wire post (which I won’t link to here but you are welcome to Google) was about a supposed “new development” in the case which has already led to many convictions in the case of Keith Raniere’s multi-level marketing scheme meets sex cult/sex…

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QAnon, the Satanic Panic, and Poisoning the Well Against Survivors

QAnon, the Satanic Panic, and Poisoning the Well Against Survivors

Okay, so awhile back I blogged, as part of my series about William Cooper, the conspiracy theorist who popularized the word “sheeple,” about QAnon, who claims Cooper as an inspiration. In that post, I specifically talked about how QAnon, with its horrible SaveTheChildren hashtag, was poisoning the well and distracting from genuine cases of sex trafficking. Well, this week I plan to build on that work and connect it to a similar movement I’ve been seeing with people who are…

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When “Open Borders” Becomes a Right-Wing Devil Term Yet Again

When “Open Borders” Becomes a Right-Wing Devil Term Yet Again

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…

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When (Loan) Forgiveness Becomes a Conservative (Christian) Devil Term

When (Loan) Forgiveness Becomes a Conservative (Christian) Devil Term

There’s been some gold out there in the reasonable world the last few days since the student loan forgiveness policy was announced, especially in responding to the conservative Christian rhetoric critiquing the policy. In the remainder of this piece, I hope to build on these excellent critiques that are already out there as well as some previous pieces here. In so doing I plan to discuss the details of why at least some conservative Christians are decrying student loan forgiveness…

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