The Politics of Resentment (1 of 2)
Let’s start with two governors. In 1958 in Alabama, a trial court judge, a moderate Democrat who was endorsed by the NAACP and who sat on the board of trustees the Tuskegee Institute, a prominent black educational institution, ran for governor against a candidate who was supported by the Ku Klux Klan. The moderate Democrat lost the election. The victorious candidate said he won because his opponent was soft on the race question. As he was preparing his concession remarks, George Wallace turned to his campaign team and said, “no other son-of-a-bitch will ever out-nigger me again.”
Wallace again ran for governor in 1962 and won.… Read the rest
Moral Injury?
Can a nation suffer moral injury? I recently read an editorial with this title. James Childs, the author of the editorial, teaches at Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capitol University in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he’s familiar with the field of moral injury as applied to combat veterans. The Defense Department describes moral injury as an extreme and unprecedented life experience that transgresses deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.
A combat veteran of the second Iraqi war illustrates a sense of moral injury: “Moral injury describes my disillusionment, the erosion of my sense of place in the world. The spiritual and emotional foundations of the world disappeared and made it impossible for me to sleep the sleep of the just … I have a feeling of intense betrayal, and the betrayer and the betrayed are the same person, my very self… What I lost in the Iraq war was a world that makes moral sense.”
Childs cautiously believes a sense of moral injury can be applicable to a nation.… Read the rest
White Evangelicals, Power, Fear, and Trump
An earlier post mentioned that differentiating the subcategories of category 2 () was very difficult. This post, the first of several on the Christian Right or evangelicals, illustrates this difficulty. I place this post under the category of Christian Right although it mentions the 2016 election in which 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. Since the late ’70s the Christian Right has significantly and continually affected our society and polity. I believe this makes it worthy to treat as a separate subcategory. At times, however, I will treat the Christian Right within the context of Trump’s nomination and election.… Read the rest
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