The role of black conservatives

Chauncey DeVega takes the news about Trump’s deplorable ‘eulogy’ at the memorial service following the death of Lynnette Hardaway, who was the ‘Diamond’ to her sister’s ‘Silk’ as part of a duo who appeared prominently on conservative media as ardent Trump supporters, to examine the role that the current generation of what he calls ‘professional black conservatives’ play in American politics.

“Black conservative” is a specific type of character and performance in post-civil rights America (although the archetype long predates it). In the white right-wing imagination, these are black people who fulfill a fantasy role in a type of new-age race minstrel performance where they denigrate and insult the intelligence, dignity, and political agency of other black people for the pleasures of white “conservatives” and white America. These black conservatives claim that other black people are lazy, have “bad culture”, “can’t think for themselves”, are trapped on a “Democratic Party plantation.” If they “knew better,” black conservatives argue, more black people would actually be “conservatives.” Black conservatives also elevate themselves as exemplars of “hard work” and as “proof” that America is a meritocracy where anything is possible — “if you just stop worrying” about racism.

In what is perhaps their most important role, black conservatives are professional “best black friends.” They serve as mercenaries, human racism deflection shields who are deployed to tell white people some of the most grossly racist and vile things about other black people.
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Evangelicals souring on Trump

I have raised the question before about the hesitancy of the leaders of the evangelical community to rally behind Donald Trump’s candidacy this time around. Caleb Ecarma writes that while they still like him, they have real concerns about his electability, reinforced by his loss in 2020 and the poor showing of his chosen candidates in the mid-term elections in 2018 and 2022. They fear that he may lose agan, preventing them from advancing their reactionary goals.

“There’s a lot of people who share a lot of our similar thoughts but don’t want to go on record,” Bob Vander Plaats, one of America’s top evangelical thought leaders, who hesitantly backed Trump in 2016, tells me. “You can see that it’s almost a silent majority right now,” he says. Everett Piper, a Washington Times columnist and the former president of an evangelical university, published a post-midterm polemic last month arguing that Trump is “hurting…not helping” American evangelicals. “The take-home of this past week is simple: Donald Trump has to go,” Piper added. “If he’s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed.” Earlier this month, televangelist James Robison, who served as a spiritual adviser to Trump, likened the former president to a “little elementary schoolchild” while addressing the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. Another major evangelical leader, who requested anonymity, tells me there’s “no doubt” that if Trump wins the primary, Republicans will “get crushed in the general.”

But even as some evangelical leaders seek a divorce, Trump’s influence on the Republican Party has held strong. He’s centered many of the culture wars that evangelical voters have been harping on for decades. And, increasingly, the party’s agenda has become nearly interchangeable with the attitudes of evangelical voters.

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What happened to the ‘War on Christmas’?

Here we are, less than two weeks away from December 25th, and as far as I am aware there has been no recurrence of rage around the annual non-issue known as the ‘War on Christmas’ where right wing politicians and Fox News go on and on about how people are no longer able to say “Merry Christmas” or have any other symbol of the season without being harassed and otherwise being discriminated against. Donald Trump promised that when he became president, he would bring Christmas back and people would be able to say Merry Christmas again.

This was one of the most bogus culture war issues ever but that did not stop it from gaining traction among certain sections of the population. Of course, since people could always put up decorated trees, sing carols, have Santas, and say “Merry Christmas” if they wanted to, it is one of those ‘wars’ where they can declare victory at any time and move on to other culture war issues.
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The Copernican Myths by Mano Singham

Given the discussions generated by yesterday’s post about how the location of heaven changed with advances in science, I decided that an article that I published back in 2007 in Physics Today on December 2007, p. 48-52 might be relevant because it discusses why it was that the idea of a heliocentric universe led to the inference that the universe might be infinite and thus left no room for a heaven. (Doing so continues my program of putting on this blog my published articles for easier access.)

The Copernican Myths.

Nonbelievers are making their presence felt in politics

The atheist movement in the US, and skeptics generally, has advanced to the stage where for many it is no longer sufficient to simply be public about one’s disbelief in gods and the supernatural. The next stage is what one does in practical terms and it is encouraging that the skeptical community is now much more focused on becoming politically active on a wide range of causes. They are transitioning from making their presence known to making their presence felt.

While skeptics belong to all political persuasions, they tend to be much more on the left-liberal end of the spectrum, which is not surprising with the rise of the religious right and their reactionary political agenda.

When members of the small Pennsylvania chapter of Secular Democrats of America log on for their monthly meetings, they’re not there for a virtual happy hour.

“We don’t sit around at our meetings patting ourselves on the back for not believing in God together,” said David Brown, a founder from the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore.

The group, mostly consisting of atheists and agnostics, mobilizes to knock on doors and make phone calls on behalf of Democratic candidates “who are pro-science, pro-democracy, whether or not they are actually self-identified secular people,” he said. “We are trying to keep church and state separate. That encompasses LGBTQIA+, COVID science, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.”
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How did heaven first end up in the sky and then nowhere?

One of the things that made me into a disbeliever in the existence of gods (and anything supernatural) was the fact that science seemed to have ruled out any location where such things might exist. The answer usually given that ‘God is everywhere’ but could not be detected seemed like a cop out. And the idea of dead people’s souls wandering around that could observe you but you could not contact (except through people with special powers) also seemed weird.

But during the time that I was a believer, I did struggle with the question of where a god and heaven could possibly be. In this article, Stephen Case explores how ideas about heaven have changed over the last two millennia.
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Can the swastika be reclaimed?

In Sri Lanka, one would occasionally come across the swastika symbol in various places. This had nothing to do with Nazis. The swastika predates the rise of the Nazis by millennia and is a religious symbol for many people around the world and even in the US. It only became a hate symbol with Hitler.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.
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The symbol itself dates back to prehistoric times. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of well being.” It has been used in prayers of the Rig Veda, the oldest of Hindu scriptures. In Buddhism, the symbol is known as “manji” and signifies the Buddha’s footsteps. It is used to mark the location of Buddhist temples. In China it’s called Wàn, and denotes the universe or the manifestation and creativity of God. The swastika is carved into the Jains’ emblem representing the four types of birth an embodied soul might attain until it is eventually liberated from the cycle of birth and death. In the Zoroastrian faith, it represents the four elements – water, fire, air and earth.
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Why we can say that some things do not exist

In two recent posts I discussed the question posed as to why there is something other than nothing and whether the question was even meaningful. The difficulty of showing that something does not exist is not confined to questions about the universe as a whole, it even applies to individual entities where you think it might be easier.

I got a text from a person I know and attached to it was a video of what looked like an organism consisting of the head and tail of a fish and, in between, the torso of a human being with arms behind its back and three pairs of breasts. This looked like it had been forwarded multiple times on social media and this person asked me if I thought it was real. I replied that it is safe to assume that anything seemingly bizarre that floats around the internet, and is not cited to a reputable news source along with supporting evidence, is a hoax. I did not tell him it was impossible that it was real because such a level of certainty implies omniscient knowledge on my part. But it is possible to be effectively certain that some things do not exist if one follows the logic of science.
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