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| Sources: top; bottom. Is there a Christian version? |
Last week, in the links section of my post, I quoted Adam Serwer's commentary on Federal officials' description of Renee Nicole Good, who had just been shot to death by a Federal officer.
Serwer went on to summarize the situation: "The federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest, and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public."
In a more recent commentary, Serwer's colleague David Frum proposes an explanation for "Why Vance Committed So Hard to the Minneapolis Shooter. The vice president knows what ICE means to MAGA." As Serwer noted, "informing the public" is not the Trump administration's goal. Instead, Frum believes, (links in original)
For MAGA America, ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence. Visit ICE social-media accounts and you’ll see, again and again, videos of armed force against unarmed individuals, against a soundtrack of pumping music. There’s a montage of aggressive arrests in Minnesota of unarmed, nonwhite men, many of them thrown to the ground and cuffed, set to the 1977 hit “Cold as Ice”: “Someday you’ll pay the price.” A dozen heavily armed and armored agents round up a single unarmed woman in a T-shirt and two similarly defenseless men in California. In Indiana, armored agents throw handcuffs and ankle chains on a big haul of men and shove them in a cell, where they can be seen pacing, weeping, or with their heads plunged in their hands.
...
ICE is violence-prone in part because the agency has lowered its training standards and ditched much of its background vetting to meet the president’s grandiose deportation targets. But more fundamentally, ICE is violence-prone because its main purpose has become theatrical. Under present leadership, ICE is less a law-enforcement agency than it is a content creator.
...
MAGA is many things, but above all it’s a movement about redistributing respect away from those who command too much (overeducated coastal elites) to those who don’t have enough (white Americans without advanced degrees who feel left behind). You see that redistribution at work in the Trump administration’s project to devalue medical experts and empower wellness gurus and vaccine skeptics, and in its dismissal of “deep state” national-security professionals in favor of TV pundits.
Vance and his colleagues quickly called the just-killed Renee Nicole Good a "deranged leftist" and "domestic terrorist." Most of us ordinary citizens who oppose this administration may be statistically unlikely to feature in gleeful ICE arrest videos. (Don't count on it! Especially if we're not white.) Instead, we are part of the nefarious "network" that Good belonged to; we're "radical left lunatics." Day after day, the public space is flooded with these messages, which may be shrugged off by the majority of the audiences, but which reinforce the project Frum describes: the creation of content that demeans critics and "redistributes respect."
Most of the target audience may never understand how diverse MAGA's critics are, and how absurd the charges brought against us by those with an interest in making us look super-organized, ruthless, and scary. Many of them will not see the irony that many of us critics are devout Christians, as are many of the people being arrested and deported by those who claim to be defending Christian civilization. But we need to stand up for truth in whatever ways we can, for at least three reasons: first, to stand for truth and give the lie to these charges; second, to remain sane and resilient in the face of these constant smears; and, third, to preserve a memory of what our semblance of democracy was like before the MAGA occupation began.
To be honest: some critics of MAGA are also pretty handy with insults and invective. Let's not go there. A few days before the second Trump administration began, I asked, "Are we agents of Lucifer?" No, we are not, but there is something demonic about this proto-fascist occupation we face. This evening, I'd like once again to refer back to the ideals of the Lamb's War: We don't search for enemies, we search for prisoners—and do everything we can collectively to free them.
The attempted cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel's television show a few months ago seemed like a Reichstag fire moment on our path to authoritarianism, but this past year now seems to me to have been a seemingly endless parade of such emergencies.
Sometimes I feel as if we're in a more or less permanent state of crisis for our constitutional republic and its paralyzed legislature and overworked courts, and sometimes it seems like we're in an utterly absurdist dream—now NATO allies are landing troops on Greenland!? When will we wake up?
Let's keep up our fierce campaign of ethical vigilance, a mutually respectful and prayerful division of labor (mystics, accountants, artists, journalists, musicians, prophets, healers—we're all needed!), and the miraculous joy of the Lord.
Diana Butler Bass on Witnesses to the Bad News.
Here's how Russian forces are weaponizing winter in Ukraine.
Judy and I recently enjoyed the newest movie in the "Knives Out" series: Wake Up Dead Man. Kristin Du Mez has some interesting reflections on the movie. Don't miss the comments, too.
As an immigrant, I appreciated Heather Cox Richardson's first commentary of the new year.
Anthony Esolen and David Bentley Hart discuss suffering. (Thanks to Eclectic Orthodoxy for making this available.)
Mark Russ takes a look at whiteness and universalism among British Quakers.
Nancy Thomas on mercy from God coming through strangers. (Nancy mentions Pete Greig's Lectio 365 program, which I also use.)
"Masked Man Blues." (Lyrics below the video.)
Lyrics by Ani Rider:
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
He says he wants to see my papers, or send me to El Salvador
I said masked man, what gives you the right?
I said masked man, what gives you the right?
He said I've got a gun in my holster, don't you put up no fight
I said masked man, why don't you leave me be?
I said masked man, why don't you leave me be?
He said there ain't no law in this here country, could ever apply to me
I said masked man, don't you take my baby child
I said masked man, don't you take my baby child
He said I'm breaking up your family, that masked man's running wild
So many masked men, running all around my town
So many masked men, running all around my town
They might pull your mother over, and then they'll gun her down
Oh there ain't nothing, that a masked man won't do
Oh there ain't nothing, that a masked man won't do
First he'll come for all your neighbors, and then he'll come for you
Oh the masked man, says he ain't the one to blame
Oh the masked man, says he ain't the one to blame
But he wouldn't hide his face honey, if he wasn't full of shame
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
If he shoots me or detains me, you won't see me no more
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