Category Archives: Political Correctness

Theres a politics loose in our democracy that is all about nothing.

The evangelical church serves as the incubator and enabler of the politics of nothing. This is not a sermon, but it suggests a biblical text: The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

Isaiah speaks here of humanity, but his dreary truthful tropes can apply to what I call the politics of nothing. While the politics of nothing has its chimera of glory, it will wither and fade like flowers and grass.

The politics of nothing sells the public a bill of goods, empty bags, inflated promises, and so much rage. The politics of nothing is riding humanity hard now, and they think it will last forever, but the grass withers, the flower fades.

The politics of nothing is not the future of our democracy, but unless we see it for its uselessness, it may be the end. The politics of nothing is like a frontier medicine man peddling bottles of liquor dressed up as miraculous healing medicine but in reality worthless except for a temporary moment of feeling high.

What is the politics of nothing? It is emotionally laden speech that has no policies attached. It is a rage against how bodies act and interact in culture, with no goods offered to bodies in return.

The politics of nothing has allergic reactions to policies substantive policies designed to empower, enable, protect and assist humans. Our current outbreak of the politics of nothing has no place for policy.

The politics of nothing has allergic reactions to policies.

The politics of nothing uses pathos to induce feelings of freedom and goodness in the audience. Ironically, the feel good, feel free theme of the politics of nothing relies on the rhetoric of demonization, evidence-flouting and repudiation of institutions.

Somehow the politics of nothing manages to be entertaining and terrifying at the same time. The pathos is that of a stand-up comedian getting people to laugh nervously at the destruction of others who can safely be made fun of and put down in nefarious and hurtful ways. The politics of nothing churns out shame on the bodies of those who are different. It channels anxiety, narcissism and alienation to attract supporters who are now given the signal that it is OK to rage against the dreaded others.

The church has not always promoted a politics of nothing. The Reformation was a religious/political struggle as Catholics and Protestants battled over sacraments, polity, theology. At least the age produced an amazing number of theologians: Luther, Calvin and Wesley, for example.

Now, evangelicals are spewing out populist, affluent preachers who are all hand-tamed by Republican politics successful blessers of a successful culture, as Carlyle Marney said. In the 19th century, churches fought to abolish slavery. In the late 19th century, evangelicals promoted the rights of workers, womens rights and care for the poor. In the 20th century, churches fought to end segregation, promote civil rights and protest war. These all were serious issues with both theological and political ramifications.

Now, politicians perform rituals of feeling good, feeling free a nothing dance to win votes rather than help persons. It promises people a land of promise flowing with milk and honey, but it produces a land of fear and violence. It promises a well of fresh water but produces only brackish, bad-tasting water from the sewer. It promises a feast of fine wine and platters of meat but gives only sour wine like vinegar and a valley of dry bones.

It promises people a land of promise flowing with milk and honey, but it produces a land of fear and violence.

The politics of nothing attempts to impose a strict moralism on the nation. Actual issues that impact the political life of the democracy are ignored as evangelicals pour forth emotional appeals dealing with issues that dont have anything to do with food, water, clothing, housing, health care.

The politics of nothing has now degraded to a class of politicians eager to smear, denigrate and defame. Now, the evangelicals line up to promote spurious revisions of history, the undoing of scientific knowledge and a hyper-patriotism that smacks of idolatry.

The politics of nothing obsesses about sex. For example, Newt Gingrichs take on Judge Ketanji Brown Jacksons judicial hearing for a Supreme Court slot was that she disqualified herself because she could not define a woman. Nothing about the Constitution, the law, being a qualified judge, but a slap from Gingrich about sexuality transgender persons. This is the politics of nothing.

In the mighty house of democracy, a house built on the rock of freedom, the politics of nothing concentrates all its attention on the closet and the bathroom.

For decades, evangelicals struggled to keep gays in the closet. I always have been puzzled by the evangelical attachment to the closet as a negative trope where gays were to be housed. After all, evangelicals know that Jesus elevated the closet to a room of prominence in his teaching: Whenever you pray, go into your closet and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:6).

The politics of nothing concentrates all its attention on the closet and the bathroom.

The closet was to be a room of prayer, not a prison where you locked away those you deemed unworthy. Now that the closet doors have been thrown wide open, evangelicals switched to obsessing about the bathroom. From homophobia they transitioned to fear of transgender persons. Legislation about bathrooms and transgender persons in sports pile up in state legislators like a late April snow in upstate New York.

The Parental Rights in Education bill, more commonly known as the Dont Say Gay bill, has been signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The bill prohibits teachers and school staff from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms and limits such discussion among older students to an undefined age-appropriate standard.

The Idaho House of Representatives passed a bill that makes it a crime punishable by life in prison for parents to seek out gender-affirming care for their child. If made law, it also would make it a crime for parents to leave the state with their transgender teen to get gender-affirming care. A guilty verdict would mean life in prison.

InAlabama, lawmakers are pushing a bill that makes it a felony for a doctor to provide gender-affirming care, namely puberty blockers, hormones or surgeries to children 18 years old or younger. The offense is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

At least 29 states have introduced bills that would exclude transgender children and teens from sports. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has called gender-affirming procedures child abuse. There must be something in the water in Texas because it is also the home of the Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress who has claimed that the Democratic Party is now the party of atheism.

The politics of nothing is a gathering of politicians who come out, call on the name of God, freedom and patriotism, wave their hands in the air and declare that people are free from everything truth, responsibility, empathy, mutualism.

An image of Naaman the leper, in his snit fit over the preacher not coming to greet him in person, fits the politics of nothing attitude: I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of theLordhis God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! (2 Kings 5:11).

The politics of nothing is performative rhetoric, not policy-making legislation.

The politics of nothing is performative rhetoric, not policy-making legislation. Lights, action, cameras roll the performance begins. In the 1990s, the situation comedy The Seinfeld Show was dubbed the show about nothing. Closer examination determined that the show actually was about quite a lot.

There is, however, a show that really is about nothing: The Republican Congress starring Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Louie Gohmert of Texas, et al.

Sen. Cotton attempts to deny federal funding for the New York Times 1619 Project. He rails about the loss of civilizational confidence among white people.

Gov. DeSantis of Florida presents a bill designed to make sure no history teacher teaches Critical Race Theory or anything that might make white people uncomfortable. Somehow, he managed to have the word freedom in his bill. How odd that the people of Florida would need a law that gave them the freedom to be comfortable. One would think that the land of sunshine, gated condos, lounge chairs, flip-flops, ill-colored shirts, margaritas, eye-popping bikinis, orange juice and beaches would be basking in comfort.

The politics of nothing turns out to be a labeling company that spends all its time and energy on ginning up protests an entire list of emotional issues that amount to nothing. These efforts are more than quips, slogans or tweets. They are determined propaganda efforts to sway the nations voters. The labeling factory at the Politics of Nothing has churned out political correctness, CRT, wokeness, Dont Say Gay, anti-LGBTQA legislation, and All Democrats are communists. The purpose is to engender rage at, well, nothing.

The new Do Nothing Party in D.C. does have some activity, but like the business end of a bee its got a lot of stings and no value. Greene and Boebert between them have filed five bills to impeach President Joe Biden. Here the revenge motive glares back at us as if we were watching reruns of The Godfather.

Greene has introduced 17 bills in Congress four to impeach Biden, one to present the Congressional Medal of Honor to Kyle Rittenhouse, one to eliminate the ATF, one to remove Maxine Waters from the Committee on Financial Services, one to fire Anthony Fauci, two to give Americans more freedom with guns, and one to congratulate the University of Georgia on winning the national championship in football. Theres nothing in any of those bills of benefit to American citizens.

Theres nothing in any of those bills of benefit to American citizens.

Boebert has introduced bills such as Stop AOC Act, Protect our Kids from Harmful Research, (but dont provide free hot breakfast at school), Were not paying you to break our laws act, impeach President Biden for high crimes and misdemeanors, impeach Vice President Kamala Harris for the same reasons, Stop the Biden Caravan Now Act, and the No Mask Mandate Act.

Sen. Cotton has introduced a bill to defund Critical Race Theory called the Stop CRT Act. He also has introduced the Saving American History Act, which would prohibit federal funds from being used to teach the 1619 Project curriculum.

Media coverage of the politics of nothing has inspired people to run for Congress on a Do Nothing platform. South Carolina Republican candidate for the House Katie Arrington has said her top priorities include dismantling the Department of Education, impeaching President Joe Biden and completing Trumps border wall.

The politics of nothing wantonly imposes poverty, lack of education, fear of public education, ill-health and a truncated social safety net. Dragging its collective feet on the COVID pandemic, the ranting anti-maskers, Fire Dr. Fauci wingnuts, the anti-vaxxers, and the we cant shut down the nation railers, we have managed to kill almost one million of our fellow Americans in the name of something called freedom.

Lt. Gov.Dan Patrick of Texas, a politics of nothing poster boy, famously suggested that senior citizens should volunteer to die from COVID in order to keep the economy running, because, God knows, money is more important than senior citizens. And that rolled off the backs of Americans like water off a duck even though it is crazy.

The politicians of nothing are a gaggle of geese loud, obnoxious creatures who leave a mess for others to clean and add nothing to the well-being of our democracy.

The politics of nothing offends all human compassion. When the politicians of nothing entice us, we should resist. If they say, Come with us, let us lay an ambush for transgenders, the poor, the immigrants, the women, the children, let us waylay the oppressed, let us swallow them as sheol swallows life. Let us undermine the teaching of biology and the life-saving research of science, let us revise American history to make light of our nations flaws, ignore them. When they say, We shall enrich ourselves and fill our houses with spoil. Throw in your lot with us, resist.

The wise woman of Proverbs eviscerates the politics of nothing as twisted speech.

The wise woman of Proverbs eviscerates the politics of nothing as twisted speech, as politicians who forsake straight paths, who take pleasure in evildoing, who journey on ways of darkness. Their tracks are labyrinthine and tortuous. Smooth speech, empty rhetoric, promises without policies this is the way of the politics of nothing. The wise woman uses straightforward speech, plain utterances and her mouth speaks truth, her sayings are honest: I, Wisdom, am neighbor to shrewdness, I find out right procedures. I possess policy and competence, insight and power. By me kings reign, and rulers enact what is right. I walk in the path of righteousness, in the tracks of justice (Proverbs 8:12 16, 20).

Bottom line fact: The politics of nothing does nothing to improve peoples lives. The politics of nothing doesnt advocate for the poor or pass legislation that would feed the poor. Being anti-science, anti-history, anti-mask, anti-vaccine, or anti-CRT doesnt put food on anyones table. The politics of nothing has nothing to say about the comfort of persons of color, persons of precarious economic standing, and persons who are living in fear and want. Hungry people cant eat the ideas floating around in the cesspool of the politics of nothing.

Universal health care would improve all lives, but the politics of nothing rails against it. The parable of the Good Samaritan needs to expand from one wealthy man helping one poor beaten man to a government that provides health care for everyone. The politics of nothing doesnt provide doctors in poor rural areas. The politics of nothing doesnt make prescription drugs available for the poor because the profits of big pharma matter more than persons in need of medical care.

Our most sustained effort at providing health care for everyone is the Affordable Care Act passed during the administration of President Barack Obama. The politics of nothing called universal health care a government takeover and said the program provided for death panels. Misinformation and lies. The politics of nothing thought it was good political strategy to refuse to use the name of the act: Affordable Health Care. Instead, they labeled it Obamacare. The name of the bill was about so much that most Americans support and believe in: Affordable. Health. Care.

Church leaders working to influence politics would be better served to promote issues that improve and empower humans rather than emotions laced with fear, rage and a bunch of nothing. Instead of restrictive rules about bodies, why cant church leaders promote an incarnational, embodied concern for all bodies? Christian faith is fleshly, material, physical.

Politics turns out to be too fleshly, too material, too bodily to succumb to the politics of nothing. A church known as the body of Christ should at least be prepared to make politics more about the least of these rather than about nothing.

Rodney W. Kennedycurrently serves as interim pastor of Emmanuel Freiden Federated Church in Schenectady, N.Y., and as preaching instructor at Palmer Theological Seminary. He is the author of nine books, including the newly releasedThe Immaculate Mistake,about how evangelical Christians gave birth to Donald Trump.

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The politics of nothing and the enabling church - Baptist News Global

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Culture secretary Nadine Dorries has announced a real terms cut forBBC funding, with plans to freeze the license fee for two years. There are several theories on the Tories motives. Are they strong-arming the BBC into shape? Reducing funding in retaliation for unfavourable coverage? Or is this a PR manoeuvre intended to appease hard right voters who think the broadcaster is too woke?

On the face of it, accusingthe BBC of having a left-wing slantwould suggest a woeful misreading of the political temperature. Its a talking point that wouldnt appear out of place on GB News. But while the idea that the institution is biased against Conservatives might be absurd, it would be foolish to dismiss the idea that the BBC has any political leaning in itself given it has a clear bias against the left.

The persecution complex is a right-wingers bread and butter. Delusions of maltreatment contribute to a grand victim narrative: mundanities become sinister anti-Conservative plots, evidence of a society that is actively hostile to their beliefs, as opposed to one literally governed by the Conservative Party. The objective of this is to garner sympathy, to convince the wider electorate that if their views are controversial enough to be censored by influential, wokeprogressives, then surely they must be worth listening to.

In 2022, these dishonest tactics manifest in discourse about a culture war. The term of the day is cancel culture, a mostly online phenomenon involving the supposed censorship of Conservatives by the aforementioned powerful progressives. This perceived political suppression ranges from online deplatforming, i.e. losing access to a social media account, to being barred from a venue or space such as a university campus.

JK Rowling is perhaps the most high profile, alleged case of cancel culture. The authors many, many controversial tweets about transgender women may not have hurt her bank account, but did lead to significant online backlash. Perhaps nursing a bruised ego,Rowling characterised this as cancel culture in an open letter, signed by various writers:

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.

If the power imbalance inherent in a cisgender celebrity millionaire smearing a historically oppressed community wasnt damning enough, the fact that said millionaire suffered no professional consequencesfor her comments should have fatally invalidated Rowlings notion of cancel culture. It didnt.

Read on...

Establishment media is a crucial component in this narrative of persecution, with the BBC used as both soapbox and scapegoat. Right-wing commentators and MPs alike use the platform of the broadcaster to condemn what they perceive as the left for the cancelling of their politics. Ironically, the BBC itself often becomes a scapegoat for these grievances a patsy for their image of a left which is somehowinstitutionally all-powerful and morally craven at the same time.

Even while being interviewed on Newsnight or Politics Live, Conservative figures argue that the broadcaster has a discriminative agenda; that its an arm of Big Journalism infringing on their freedom of speech, and that diversity quotas are corrupting its audience and programming. This is what informs right-wing support of the licence fee cut-off: as long as the BBC is cancelling Conservatives, it is a moral imperative to defund it.

Of course, this is all total rubbish.

If the media landscape of the past six years has shown anything, its that the BBCs coverage of historically oppressed peoples is far from impartial. Take recent BBC News articles on the transgender community, such as the notorious Were being pressured into sex by some trans women. When initially published, the piece featured comments by pornographic actress Lily Cade, herself accused of sexual misconduct, who later encouraged the lynching of trans women in a now deleted blog post. Clearly, transgender women arent even permitted to date freely withoutthe nations most popular, impartial news platform associating themwith sexual assault. But its apparently acceptable for the very samebroadcaster to use a cisgender woman accused of sexual assault as a contributor.

BBC News also has a dismal track record when it comes to their coverage, or lack thereof, during protests. Trans right activists were still protestingWere beingpressured into sex by some trans womenmonths after its publication, but theBBCneglected to report on any of such demonstrations, even while protestors rallied outside their Londonbroadcasting house. To acknowledge dissent is to legitimise it.

And who could forget the multiple occasions on which the BBC publicised images of Kill the Bill protestors, after they were circulated by Avon and Somerset Police? A state broadcaster rolling CCTV close-ups of wanted anti-authoritarian protestors like something out of a dystopian police state. Articles like these have laid bare a reactionary bias that legitimises transphobic tropes, and a contempt for those who reject the Conservative status quo.

Arguably even more pervasive is the BBCs ideological bias. For some, the broadcasters red scare-style vilification of Jeremy Corbyn defined the past two elections. BBC News coverage of Labours recent election campaigns continues to be scrutinised, including at an academic level. The former Labour leader and his manifesto were often presented with, at best, an air of exaggerated incredulity, and, at worst, downright cynicism.

The BBCs complaints division responds to criticism on occasion, but never in good faith. For example, former director-general Tony Hall dismissed allegations of bias as conspiracy theories in the aftermath of the 2019 General Election. Also,Newsnight was accused of manipulating a headshot of Corbyn wearing a capto associate him with communist Russia, by photoshopping a Kremlin backdrop and a shade of Soviet red onto the image. Instead of addressing these complaints, BBC editors only responded to the lesser allegation that they had visually exaggerated the shape of the Labour leaders hat. Theirexplanation was a simple technical distortion, a result of the image [being] projected on to a large curved screen as reported by the Guardian, though this didnt explain the colour alteration and background image.

The subtle yet brazen bias of the BBCs reporting is perhaps not all that surprising given the senior figures at the broadcaster withlinks to the Conservative Party. But that isnt changing the minds of anyone on the right. The online behemoth that is cancel culture is a profitable one, generating more political and social capital with every contrived scandal.

The reality is that the BBC isnt cancelling right-wingers. Theyre providing them with a pulpit; giving commentators access to the most popular news platform in the country, from which they broadcast an incredibly powerful faux victim narrative. Cancel culture isnt something wielded against the right, certainly not by the BBC rather, its used to undermine and incite violence against the left. Threatening the status quo makes you fair game: transgender people, young protestors, and anyone further left than the most moderate of social democrats are all subject to incendiary smear campaigns.

Conservative diehards who pride themselves on being frank and outspoken have established themselves as puritans of the online realm. They tell themselves that the entire British establishment is out to get them for their traditional right-wing values, but then condemn media for being inclusive or progressive. They are fundamentally the ones addicted to cancel culture. They clutch their pearls at anything which doesnt fit with their worldview and beliefs, which often includes queerness, Black and Brown people, and sincerity. All the while, they characterise themselves as the only people brave enough to tell it how it is amidst a sea of sensitive snowflakes. The outrage surrounding the BBCs wokeness and political correctness before it (a lineage that stretches back to Mary Whitehouse) is simply the cultural indignation of bigots, dressed up as sensible, no-nonsense populism. Prejudice disguised as pragmatism.

Many British political moderates seem to be reluctant to criticise a broadcaster which has essentially become a right-wing propaganda platform. Some feel unwilling to turn on this world-beatingservice, because the alternative is joining a critical voice that is, currently, predominantly right-wing. But its important to keep in mind that the Conservatives campaign against the BBC, ridiculous as it may be, doesnt mean that the BBC is in the right. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Hand-wringing about optics is useless: if the BBC is allowed to continue its arbitrary, McCarthyist crusade against the left, then speaking out against biased reporting will always be an uphill battle.

Establishment media will never view even the most moderate of left-wing principles as legitimate, so why worry about the consequences of opposing the establishment? Dont be tentative to resist an institution that will never approach you with the journalistic impartiality it affords your opponents. Instead, criticise the BBC!

As a progressive, consider that a de facto state broadcaster that has consistently conflated your politics with Stalinism might, in fact, deserve to lose its funding.

Read the rest here:

If the BBC is cancelling anyone, it's cancelling the Left - The Canary

The new liberalism

Since the terms socialism, Marxism and communism carry the stigma of philosophies that have failed, groups who believe in those ideologies started calling themselves progressives in the 1920s. Their goal was to usurp control of the Democratic Party by creating problems and then offering solutions to the problems they created.

In order to create problems, progressives introduced political correctness and diversity. Type Saul Alinsky into any search engine. Read Rules for Radicals. You will then know what progressives have in store for America.

Liberalism does not mean what it used to mean. If Democrats knew what they were really voting for, they would vote for another party.

Todays Democratic Party is not the party of President John F. Kennedy. Since the 1960s, many laws have been for social reform, such as civil rights and environmentalism. Rules then written by Washington bureaucrats in charge of enforcing those laws are regulations that businesses and you and I must obey or risk fines and imprisonment.

Progressives favor policies that promote social progress by using the government to force reforms while promoting submission to the government, because, according to them, the government always knows whats best for everyone.

Progressives believe in collectivism, not individualism. When you think of Social Security, Medicare or the income tax, do you think of individuals?

New laws normally benefit groups or corporations that have lobbied for them, not individuals, while additional regulations add additional costs that are passed on to us. Along with those costs there can be hidden taxes we never see on our sales receipts.

In medieval times, serfs had to give their lord one-third of all they produced. Today, because of embedded (invisible) taxes, every dollar you spend you are unknowingly paying almost 40% for local, state and federal taxes!

What does that make us?

Sonny Heninger, Leesburg

One picture says it all.

I'm talking about Nancy Polosi tearing up the State of the Union address a few years ago. I guess some people think this is an example of class.

Ever notice how Democrats just don't seem to be able to get past Trump? No matter what else is going on, it's always Trump, Trump, Trump.

I guess it's not surprising, after all. You can't expect them to mention the disastrous exit from Afghanistan (Biden ignoring advice from military advisers); the unspeakable situation on our southern border (caused and then ignored by Biden); the surge in crime in so many Democrat-run cities (ignored again); our completely embarrassing and incompetent vice president (ignored again); the skyrocketing inflation (Bidens solution is to spend more); or the systematic destruction of our coal, gas and oil industries (a policy too unbelievable to believe).

Of course, don't remind them of Biden's campaign promise to unite the country, shut down the coronavirus, or never to invoke mask or inoculation mandates. But, the most troubling of all is their plan to remake our country into what they think it should be. Take the country that has achieved the highest level of industrial success, greatest military strength ever achieved and the highest standard of living ever, and turn it into some kind of socialistic state, a system that has been tried in many different forms and has never worked! Could it be that their real and only objective is to gain as much power as they can?

The Democratic plan: Keep the people thinking about Trump, and they will not notice what we are doing behind their back.

Roger Ball, Leesburg

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Today's letters: Readers comment on the term 'progressives' and the Democratic plan - Daily Commercial

PARENTS taking their kids to a playground are being asked to sign a disclaimer in case they get injured.

The health and safety-gone-mad rules were brought in by bosses at a Birmingham park after a change of insurance provider.

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New rules at Meriden Adventure Playground dictate mums and dads must sign a waiver agreeing that their kids enter the park at their own risk.

Bosses at the charity-run play area in Chelmsley Wood said in a statement: The playground is a wonderfully free place for children and young people to spend time exploring, gaining independence and taking (calculated) risks.

With all environments like ours, including open playgrounds, there will be bumps and bruises along the way and these are part of the adventure of free play and exploration.

The statement explained that the playground is fully insured, and anyone injured would be covered for any reason, adding their approach to risk is robust.

But due to a swap in insurance provider, documents must now be signed by anyone entering.

The statement said: You will probably all be aware that the environment is changing with regard to managing risk and we are having to make some changes to our operating practices, as required by our new insurers.

From now on, we are asking every person who steps inside the playground to sign a disclaimer that they do so at their own risk.

Some parents were pleased that the park - which had briefly closed while the insurance issue was sorted - was back open, and others suggested the waiver was overkill.

One dad, who did not want to be named, fumed: Im never taking my kids there again.

Children are supposed to rough and tumble, its normal.

This just feels like political correctness gone mad.

The park, which is free to enter, is usually open all year round.

It features a giant rope swing, a giant climbing frame and two slides - as well as regularly hosting activities.

There is also a youth night, and closed SEN sessions for children with special educational needs.

Last Christmas, sick yobs stole 2,000 worth of Xmas toys collected for struggling families in the area that were stored at the playground.

Fundraising efforts saw more than 4,000 raised to buy back the gifts.

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See original here:

I refuse to take my kids to the playground after parents were made to sign DISCLAIMERS in case they get... - The Sun

The responses are oh so predictable. When Tory grandee and minister Jacob Rees-Mogg had the temerity to suggest what many of us have been thinking, that the war waged against Ukraine put the sins of Downing Street and Partygate in some perspective, there was outrage both faux and real.

No one in the Jewish community could ever take for granted Covid, lockdowns and the fallout. We all lost friends and acquaintances to the pandemic. One of the most disturbing sights for me during Covid was attending a slimmed-down funeral at the New Bushey Cemetery for a friend taken from us by coronavirus, and seeing the serried ranks of newly-dug graves.

Yet to be furious about alleged breaches of lockdown when Europe is under military threat shows how distorted our privileged Western value systems have become. The savage Russian flattening of Mariupol, including a maternity hospital and an arts school providing shelter, is distressing in the extreme. Heart-rending images of three-and-a-half million mainly women and children fleeing war, leaving behind elderly parents and spouses, makes the lockdown deprivations seem minor.

A cousin, an Auschwitz survivor, says she has barely slept since Russia began reducing parts of Ukraine to rubble. It brings back horrendous memories of her own flight from her home in Hungary (now in Ukraine) and separation from her parents (my grandparents) on the train platform leading to the gas chambers.

The brutal war being waged by Vladimir Putin has been explained in many ways. It is sometimes described as Russias desire for a return of lost empire and prosperity. Others say Putin is determined to teach Nato a lesson for daring to remove buffer states and bring its borders so close to the motherland.

His campaign is also seen as a consequence of Western strategic weakness exposed by acceptance of Russias intervention in Syria, the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan and concessions made to mad mullahs in Iran developing nuclear weapons capacity.

There is an alternate view that the West has brought the war of the worlds upon itself. An obsession with secular consumption, political correctness, the woke agenda and condemnation of anyone who dares challenge peoples right to assign their own gender are all looked upon as evidence of a 21st century decadence.

Writing in The New Statesman, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, suggests Putin is driven by religious and cultural motives and sees himself as theprotagonist for integral Christian culture.

He cites Putins close ally, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, as a source for the self-righteousness with which the Russian leader is pursuing his war in Ukraine.

In a sermon delivered on 6 March, the start of Lent, the Patriarch argued that the campaign was justified because the Orthodox Church has to defend itself against Western corruption. Gay pride marches are singled out as a leading symptom.

Williams writes that, in spite of high recorded levels of prejudice against LBGT+ people in Ukraine, recent policy has liberalised and Kyiv has a high-profile activist community and annual parade. He says the Patriarch particularly is exercised because Kyiv is where Russian Christianity was born.

Launching a barbarous war against the people of Ukraine and their enjoyment of freedoms cannot be justified or accepted. Religion as a weapon of war, as Jewish communities around the world know to their cost, is a fearful and terrible weapon. It is pure evil in the hand of an unbridled autocrat seeking to claim moral cause for indiscriminate death and mayhem.

Alex Brummer is the Daily Mail's City Editor

Read the original:

Ukraine devastation puts 'Partygate' in perspective | Alex Brummer | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

Andrea Vance is a senior journalist with Stuff.

OPINION: In the last week I received an email from a man who seemed to be deeply angry with me.

It was borderline incomprehensible, but his rage appeared to stem from my failure to respond to previous correspondence.

I have no idea who he is. And by the tone of his note, and the insults he battered into the keyboard, I have no wish to.

READ MORE:* How Twitter spies are changing the war in Ukraine* Kanye West vs the world: when abusive behaviour is called out* How a loss of trust has fed the divisions in society

Maybe Michael did write to me before. If his emails didnt end up in my aggressively filtered Spam folder, I probably did take no notice. I have a strict policy of ignoring dickheads.

Stuff

One in 10 female journalists have sought medical or psychological help after being abused.

In truth, years and years of online abuse means I rarely read correspondence that stems from my weekly columns. The messages that do have value are lost in the maelstrom of vitriol, misogyny, and xenophobia.

Female reporters get a disproportionate amount of abuse. A Unesco report published last year laid bare a problem that targets every woman journalist. One in 10 sought medical or psychological help, one in three self-censors.

You may have recently become aware of this epidemic of online violence, mainly because Covid-19 has seen it spread to our male colleagues. Now it is a real problem.

Upsettingly for my correspondents, I do not self-censor. I am emotionally numb to the abuse. I care not that you are a man (they are always men) with a strong opinion and a keyboard. Your long, potty-mouthed tirade was in vain, it was most likely never read.

In my small way, I am breaking the cycle. Being rude to someone generally provokes a bad-mannered reply, setting in motion a sequence of increasingly discourteous interactions.

Social media is an accelerant, spewing this anger out into the world. Platforms make it easy for users to instantaneously hurl insults, and difficult to hold them to account. People are sucked into a vortex, arguing politics that spirals from mean-spirited to ugly and then plain nasty. Its at once addictive and exhausting.

The spite is so casual, Im not even sure these wannabe politicos and supporters even recognise it as such. They malign, denigrate and defame without a second thought. There is something dehumanising about their behaviour.

The disrespectful dialogue is reflective of real-life politics. Insults have replaced arguments in debate.

Last week alone, ACT leader David Seymour made a nasty personal attack on microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles. Te Pti Mori called ACT bigots. Christopher Luxon characterised the poor as bottom feeders.

Hamilton City Council is redrawing its code of conduct after one councillors inappropriate online comments and personal insults drew a slew of complaints.

Politicians abuse each other and in turn are abused by their rivals supporters. Weve seen recent debate about the slow-burning hatred directed at Jacinda Ardern. The conversation was largely sparked by venomous language used by the protesters who occupied Parliaments grounds last month.

But its not just women Nationals Chris Bishop receives eye-watering levels of abuse from those on the Left. Simon Bridges wrote movingly about how criticism of his accent affected him.

Politics has always been a nasty sport. But today it seems brutish. And what does all this toxicity achieve - apart from more ad dollars in the bank accounts of tech moguls?

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Former National Party leader Simon Bridges was reduced to tears by digs about his accent.

It doesnt take a huge leap of imagination to see the tangible effects of this hostility. The hatred spilled from online accounts onto the placards displayed on Parliaments lawns during the anti-mandate protest.

The sheer strength of their malice seemed to justify and embolden their extreme behaviour. The ugly mood has awful consequences: 40 police officers were injured restoring order.

We have already seen violence against public figures: James Shaw was punched in the face in 2019. MPs have had to increase their security. The murder of British MP Jo Cox is a terrible reminder of the darkness of politics.

Jericho Rock-Archer/Stuff

The area around Parliament was the scene of violence as police removed protesters.

So what can be done? Likely nothing. Social media normalises hatred and yet plays a larger and larger role in political processes. Given Mark Zuckerberg created a website to rank hot women, I dont think we can look to him or his company to dam this torrent of horrid.

Mainstream political reporting thrives on conflict. Protesting in dramatic and disruptive ways captures attention. There is no incentive to break out of incivility, to recalibrate politics. To be nice.

And there is a paradox. Any culture shift whether it be political correctness or Arderns bid to restore kindness to politics has backfired. Attempts to police behaviour or avoid offensive or inflammatory language has further fuelled the nastiness: the snowflakes hating on the boomers. The Deplorables attacking The Woke.

On it goes the venting and ranting, no matter how irrational or hurtful in order to ensure a healthy debate and the maintenance of free speech.

Just leave me out of it.

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The culture of nastiness: insults have replaced arguments in political debate - Stuff

Sexual Harassment Went Unchecked at Christianity Today according to an aggressive, blunt report published yesterday by Christianity Today.

Heres the beginning of that report, written by Daniel Silliman and edited by Kate Shellnut, published without prior review from executives at the magazine:

For more than a dozen years, Christianity Today failed to hold two ministry leaders accountable for sexual harassment at its Carol Stream, Illinois, office.

A number of women reported demeaning, inappropriate, and offensive behavior by former editor in chief Mark Galli and former advertising director Olatokunbo Olawoye. But their behavior was not checked and the men were not disciplined, according to an external assessment of the ministrys culture released Tuesday.

The behavior of these two men was gross, and just as disturbing was the apparent culture of retaliation that silenced, shamed, or stymied anyone who tried to report it. For years.

Olawoyes harassment of women at Christianity Today only ended in 2017 because he was arrested in a federal sting and wound up serving three years in prison for trying to pay for sex with a teenage girl. Gallis crude and creepy behavior continued unchecked for years until August 2019, when Galli was accused of inappropriately touching three women in three days. That led to his first workplace reprimand, after more than a decade of impunity despite numerous complaints. Galli announced his retirement two months later.

This long article is an unpleasant, icky, and appalling read, but Silliman deserves credit for his candor and thoroughness. And CTs new leader, Tim Dalrymple,* deserves credit for introducing accountability, bringing in an external investigator, and going public with this report rather than a total spin job.

Religion News Service interviewed Galli after the piece. Hes piously unrepentant, offering only a stock non-apology:

Galli said he was deeply troubled by the allegations in the story, which he denied. Several of the incidents in the story were taken out of context, he said, or were simply false.

My initial reaction is that I am shocked at how many of the statements made in the article were simply not true, he said.

Galli also said he was deeply troubled if he did anything that offended or intimidated other people and would be open to meeting with people he had offended and apologizing.

Thats about how youd expect Galli to react based on the creepily indignant and entitled portrait painted of him by lots of women he used to work with. Sillimans report includes some particularly vivid and skeevy snapshots of the mans character:

When [one] woman was hired on as an editor in the mid-2000s, someone joked that she was only brought on because a senior editor wanted to have sex with her. She didnt report that to HR, but a colleague did. After that, the woman heard regular comments from men at CT about how she was too quick to see sexual harassment in everything.

Galli in particular began asking her if she was offended when he held a door open for her, she recalled. He would make a banal statement about gender, she said, and then add, Are you going to report that?

None of the women saw Galli suffer any repercussions, and several said he seemed to brush the complaints off as a minor annoyance, a generational difference, or a problem of politically correct culture.

I dont know Mark Galli personally,** but I know that guy. You probably do too. The guy who extravagantly makes a point of holding open doors and pulling out chairs and other chivalrous behavior toward the ladies while always aggressively joking that hes sure theyre offended by his doing so because its politically incorrect. The guy who is constantly pushing for a reaction in the hopes of being able to tell women theyre over-reacting. That guy.

The politically incorrect bit there is a tell. Im not saying that every man who repeatedly recites variations of that 40-year-old joke will turn out to be a smarmy, handsy sex-pest seething with resentment toward women for their failure to grant him the deference he believes hes entitled to. But Politically Incorrect was the name of a show by Bill Maher. So.

These not-really-jokes about political correctness (or, more recently, wokeness or cancel culture) are a form of mockery directed at moralistic scolds. Or, to be more precise, theyre an attempt to evade legitimate moral condemnation by portraying the sources of that condemnation as legalistic, hyper-sensitive, tyrannical moral scolds.

They are, in other words, part of the bitter and bewildered backlash against the moral revolution of the Civil Rights Movement and the wave of feminism that accompanied it. That revolution didnt topple the old regime its power structures and systems mostly remain in place. But it completely demolished, forever, the prior claim that those structures and systems were morally legitimate.

So The Powers That Be retained their power, but no longer enjoyed any pretense of moral authority. The fact that uppity women and people of color no longer defer to their alleged moral superiority is something they cannot abide. So they hide the past, or try to rewrite it while they whine about their context by inventing an imaginary tyranny of political correctness and wokeness and cancel culture, portraying themselves as victims.

This imaginary victimhood shows that they still dont fully understand what changed. It shows they never fully heard, or understood, or examined the moral arguments that overwhelmed their objections. All they took from the Civil Rights Movement and from feminism is some vague, dim sense that those people who had been perceived as the victims of injustice somehow thereby gained some kind of moral authority. And since they refuse to examine either justice or injustice itself, they guess this must be due to some magical property of victimhood. And so they try to claim the power of that magic for themselves by portraying themselves as the real victims. (Are you going to report that?)

This attempt to evade well-earned disgrace by a claim of victimhood is unconvincing even to themselves unless theres at least some tiny shred of evidence that those uppity inferiors really are the over-reacting, vindictive moral scolds that all those jokes about political correctness and cancel culture make them out to be. So that guy needs to get a reaction from them.

And if those people with all their talk of equality and decency and justice dont initially provide the reaction he seeks, then he will goad and needle and grope and harass and offend until finally somebody cracks and gives him the reaction and the pretext he so desperately needs to paint them all as uptight, hyper-sensitive jackbooted stormtroopers attempting to impose moral tyranny from the bottom up.

Thats why Mark Gallis long response to Christianity Todays article doubles down on his defensive defiance. Its not an apology, its a victory lap in which he savors the opportunity to portray himself as the victim.

Is it full of pious humble-bragging and sanctimonious faux lamentation? Of course. Does he play the weaselly Matthew 18 card that every evangelical abuser plays? Of course. But the main sense one gets from his ill-advised screed is that Galli perceives that article as a kind of vindication. It all just proves that he was right and that the politically correct gazpacho were out to get him. That makes him the real victim here and according to his garbled misunderstanding of the magical power of victimhood that must re-establish his moral legitimacy and moral superiority, right?

That post from Galli reminds us of another unfortunate side-effect of choosing to become that guy the guy seething with downward-focused resentment and indignant entitlement vented off in a steady stream of jokes about political correctness and wokeness and cancel culture. Choosing to become that guy makes you incapable of listening to anyone who might care enough about you to tell you to choose better. It turns you into someone who lacks the trust of friends or family members who might tell you that the best thing to do right now would be to shut up for at least a day or two rather than firing off a narcissistic, obtuse tribute to your own imagined martyrdom.

* Yes, thats the same Tim D. who purged us liberals from Patheos evangelical channel, thereby inadvertently popularizing the term progressive Christian. And who once blamed me, by name, for the popularity and influence of Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Billy James Hargis. And who once seriously suggested that Wendell Berry needed a deeper understanding of the meaning of marriage and should turn to Focus on the Family for their wisdom on the subject (which is exactly like suggesting that Berry should turn to Monsanto for greater wisdom on farming).

In this case, though, hes acting responsibly.

** I have, over the years, interacted quite a bit with Gallis writing. See, for example:

Galli was also the source of a long-time running gag here, and the butt of that joke. He wrote the CT editorial that sought to define that magazine, in perpetuity, as: a publication that believes gay and lesbian couples are destructive to society.

Read through the links in this footnote and then re-read Sillimans report and, well, its all rather consistent, isnt it?

Continued here:

'Politically incorrect' | Fred Clark - Patheos

As the Russian army was mercilessly bombarding Mariupol and Kyiv earlier this month, the European Union adopted new sanctions against Russia. European heads of state and governments met to elaborate a common response to the worst menace they have faced since 1945. In the meantime, millions of refugees (mostly women and children) fled to neighboring countriesprimarily to Poland, which has opened its doors to almost two million refugees, the equivalent of 5 percent of its population, while Hungary has welcomed an additional 282,000.

Yet the day after it announced a new round of sanctions on Russia, by a large majority, the European Parliament called for immediate financial sanctions against Poland and Hungary for alleged violations of the rule of law.

While the world holds its breath in the face of a possible world war, the members of the European Parliament found the time to demand financial sanctions against the two European countries most exposedand those welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees. It was disheartening.

This vote reveals much about the EU's schizophrenia in light of Putin's aggression. The war marks the end of "the end of history" for Europea brutal awakening to dire geopolitics after decades of free riding on cheap energy (mostly from Russia) and free-of-charge defense under NATO's umbrella.

To be sure, the EU reacted quickly to Russia's invasion and, against all expectations, it rose to the occasion. By swiftly adopting unprecedented sanctions that suffocate Russia (but for which Europe will also pay a price), the European Union has shown that it is ready to stand on its own two feet and play hard power games. Russian aggression woke the old continent from its lethargy and led it to make more progress in two weeks than it had in 40 years, including on defense matters. Promising? Certainly, but we should remain cautious.

Although Putin underestimated European unity, we should not take it for granted. The European Parliament's vote to sanction Hungary and Poland shows how willing some Europeans are to stoke division even in the midst of a war. As in the United States, European elites are blinded by the cult of political correctness and willingly subordinate political priorities to dogmas and mantras that are as simplistic as they are harmful.

Who is spearheading wokeism in the EU? The European Parliamentan elected assembly with real legislative powers but largely unknown to European citizens, totally disconnected from their real concerns and hardly reflective of the political diversity of the continent. Over time, this supposedly representative assembly has come to think of itself as a zealous moral authority, even if that means interfering in areas in which the European Union does not have an ounce of a competence.

Europe's dogmatism largely explains the recurring conflicts between the EU and the two most openly conservative countries on the continent, Poland and Hungary. These two enfants terribles have the insolence to defend an alternative model and to oppose head-on, without apology, the dogmas that the Brussels intelligentsia seeks to impose upon them.

And they pay the price. Neither Hungary nor Poland received their share of the Recovery Fundthe EU initiative to relaunch the European economy after the pandemic. Moreover, Poland has been fined one million euros per day since October. Now they are also under the threat of "conditionality"a new mechanism conditioning EU funds on compliance with its conception of the rule of law. Were this notion not overly politicized, it could be reasonable, but as it stands it leaves too much room for bureaucratic reinterpretation.

The European Court recently affirmed the legality of this "rule of law" mechanism, although its ruling also comes with a strict framework for triggering it. The European Commission, finally showing signs of discernment, appears ready to wait for a better time to trigger the mechanism. Such welcome prudence would doubtless face fierce resistance from the European MPs, who keep ignoring that Europe is at war and that Poland and Hungary are on the front line. The resolution calling for sanctions might not be the final episode of the Parliament's crusade.

How far will this frivolous exercise of virtue signaling go? Will war definitely close the chapter of European innocence, or will Europe jeopardize its internal cohesion on the altar of political correctness? The European Parliament's dogmatic attacks on Poland and Hungary are symptoms of the same mindset that led Europeans to condescend to the rest of the world on climate change and universal values, to close nuclear power plants and cut military expenses, all while the drums of war were rumbling. The emperor is nakedand the problem is that some prefer him to remain so.

History did not come to an end. On the contrary. And over time it will put the European Parliament in its place and reveal whether this resolution will merely be a source of shameor also of infamy.

Rodrigo Ballester, former EU official, leads the Centre for European Studies at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

More here:

The EU's Shameful Treatment of Poland and Hungary | Opinion - Newsweek

As well as being a MotoGP rider and being known for his Moto3 title, those in the paddock know that Maverick Viales is a straightforward person who prefers to be sincere but assertive in his interventions. However, riders nowadays have to filter what they say and how they say it, which in Viales' case is a process that does not come 100% naturally to him.

In an interview made by journalist Niki Kovacs for her YouTube channel, Viales stated that it is part of the rules of the game for riders to have this much more careful and thoughtful stance on the words said and how they are uttered. Although the Spaniard is not entirely a fan of this way of being in the paddock, the #12 understands why a more cordial posture is adopted.

'You always have to think about what you say. Sometimes it's hard to say what you think because you have to respect quite a few people, you have to respect a brand, you have to respect a lot of things. And sometimes you can't say things the way you want to. Basically you have to think, be much more cordial than you would like to be, but that's the game. In the end you're an employee, you have an image, and you work for a brand,' replied the rider, when asked if he can become an actor when in contact with the media on MotoGP weekends.

See the article here:

'This is the game: you're an employee' - Maverick Viales and political correctness - Motorcycle Sports

Woke Sports Illustrated writer Pat Forde has been poked and prodded since Thursday over his daughter, all-American swimmer Brooke Forde of Stanford, finishing fourth in the 500 freestyle national championship race against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Pat wont say a thing. He hasnt congratulated Lia on beating his daughter. He hasnt said that Emma Weyant is the real national champion. Nothing.

In fact, Pat hasnt said anything on Lia Thomas since a January Yahoo college football podcast where he blamed the Thomas hysteria on people who dont give a damn about womens sports while not ruling out that he might have a problem with the transgender swimmer competing against his daughter and other biological females.

I think the expectation is that this would be very late to change the rules of the game and to put her out of thatThere is major questions of inclusivity, fairness. Is this damaging to womens sports? Do we ever get to a point where we have a third category at the college level, mens swimming, womens swimming and transgender swimming? Forde said during a conversation with sportswriter Dan Wetzel.

It is funny. Some of the folks who are really wound up about this and screaming about the fairness about womens sports really dont give a damn about womens sports. They are using this as a political wedge issue, and they are using it as a sign the country has absolutely run amok and has lost its mind to political correctness and blah blah blah. There are a lot of political opinions about this, but some of them are cloaked, I think, in bogus terms.

And then Pat went silent. Hes remained silent and it doesnt appear that the normally vocal blue checkmark will make a stand for biological women as the NCAA Championships come to a close Saturday night in Atlanta.

Instead, Pat has spent his time playing swimming rules cop against his haters.

Remember when Pat Forde had strong takes about COVID and seemed to enjoy coaches losing because they refused to be double-masked like Pat? Those were the days.

With takes like these, youd think Pat would have a current take on a biological male beating his daughter and her Olympic teammates (Weyant, Sullivan and Forde won silver medals at the Tokyo Games) in the 500 freestyle. Youd think a womens swimming defender like Pat would have a tweet for the swimmer who was in tears after she missed the NCAA Championships because a spot went to a biological male.

Crickets from Pat.

Does Pat care about the future of womens sports? It sure doesnt seem so after so much silence this weekend. If he did, this was the weekend to use his platform. Instead, he just sat there and let a biological male beat his biological daughter and her Olympic friends.

Its not a good look, Pat.

More:

Woke Pat Forde Remains Silent On Lia Thomas Winning A National Title Over His Daughter & Her Olympic Friends - OutKick