Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Men Don’t Give Birth

"Doctors prepared to do an emergency cesarean delivery, but in the operating room no fetal heartbeat was heard. Moments later, the man delivered a stillborn baby."

apnews.com/b5e7bb73c6134d58a0df9e1cee2fb8ad

If men have babies, what’s even the point of talking about gender and sex categories? The categories are literally meaningless.

First:
“Sex” and “Gender” were synonyms. They both meant male and female as traditionally understood. Girls. Boys. Pink. Blue.

Then:
“Sex” and “Gender” were separated. Sex referred to biology. Gender referred to cultural norms around biology. Male vs. Masculine. Gender—being cultural—was malleable, and things like gender fluidity and transgender became common terms.

Now:
Sex and gender are synonyms again. But now they mean “malleable designations that mean whatever an individual wants them to mean.” The malleability of culturally-based gender notions has been back-migrated into biological sex.

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Politics

My America

I live and work in Saudi Arabia. I work for a Saudi company, and my colleagues are largely Saudis supported by a mix of Egyptians, Pakistanis, Indians, and other people from this side of the world.

My boss, however, is an American, a convert to Islam who moved here a decade ago and has lived here ever since. He is black, the son of a minister, and a product of private catholic schools.

We have many differences, but as much or more in common, and we have developed a real and enjoyable friendship. A few days ago at the end of work we headed over to a burger joint—of which there are many in Riyadh—to share a meal and conversation.

On the way, I asked him: What is your ideal country? If you could build your Utopia, what would it look like?

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Politics

Equal Justice and the Border Wall

The other day in a thread about illegal immigration and deportation, I posted some words of Trey Gowdy’s from a commencement address at Liberty University:

Let me tell you something about the law. It is the most unifying and equalizing force that we have in this country. It is the only thing that makes the richest person in this county drive the same speed limit as the poorest. It is what makes the richest person in Virginia pay his or her taxes on precisely the same day as the poorest.

As Trump’s inauguration draws closer, and as he continues to fill his cabinet with right-wing picks, and as he continues to make a fool of himself on Twitter, I continue to believe that the DNC and the GOP establishment made space for all of this to happen by failing for so many years to take a stand for the rule of law on the matter of immigration. The wall issue gave Trump so much traction in his campaign, early and late.

The thing is, illegal immigration doesn’t negatively effect people with money and power. Illegal immigrants aren’t moving into their neighborhoods, changing the culture around them, and competing for their jobs, or—really—affecting them much in any way at all. As Ted Cruz said, last November, “The politics of [illegal immigration] would be very, very, different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande—or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press.”

I think this is a very important point in the aftermath of Trump’s election, and Gowdy’s quote made it click for me.

The refusal to enforce the law on immigration and on border controls is really an unequal use of the law. Whether they realize it or not, those with power and money have decided that a certain segment of law that primarily protects the interests of poor, non-elite citizens doesn’t matter. And they’ve failed to enforce it. This failure is analogous to me to busting poor people for speeding, but not the rich.

And while non-elites may often be poorer and have less education than those in power, they aren’t stupid. They know a raw deal when they see one just as much as my six-year-old daughter (sniff, now seven) knows when her older brother is giving her a raw deal.

How America handles the immigration question is a matter of social justice. But it is also a matter of justice—a matter of law.

As long as the political establishment continues their failure of enforcing the law in this area, so long will Trump and people like him have a potent weapon in their Populist arsenal. Our political establishment, for the sake of their own agendas, and for the sake of this country, needs to start consistently and thoroughly enforcing the rule of law at our borders and in regards to illegal immigration.

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Politics

Trump Ascended

On June 15, 2015, one day before Trump officially announced his candidacy for president, I told a former student of mine who had been hyping Trump on his FB wall, “Nick, you lower yourself every single time you post about this sleazeball. Every. Single. Time.”

From that time I have watched with a mix of impressed fascination and (increasing) horror as Trump first systematically crushed the GOP and then humbled Hillary and the vaunted Clinton machine to finally ascend to the White House.

All that time I have been anything but subtle about my personal disgust towards Donald Trump and my opposition to his candidacy. I have regarded him as a dangerous fascist and said so clearly and often. I have been as vocal in this matter as I have ever been on any political issue. #NeverTrump #NeverEverTrump

And yet, here we are. Trump has won. He has won it all.

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Politics

A Theologian Argues for Trump

Note: I was hardcore #NeverTrump from the very beginning. He represents the opposite of Conservative values and Christian values, being both a fascist and a deeply immoral, selfish man. This Facebook post from the 2016 election cycle is representative of my views both then and now. (DL, June 10, 2023).

townhall.com/columnists/waynegrudem/2016/07/28/why-voting-for-donald-trump-is-a-morally-good-choice-n2199564

Respected theologian Wayne Grudem is publicly teaching that voting for Trump is the moral thing to do.

The core of Grudem’s argument is this:

"There is nothing morally wrong with voting for a flawed candidate if you think he will do more good for the nation than his opponent. In fact, it is the morally right thing to do."

The core of my response is this:

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Politics

Facebook Discussion on Cake Baker Rights

Notes: This series of Facebook comments took place on a post on the wall of a gay friend that I believe was related to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law passed by Indiana to prevent government from substantially burdening the free exercise of religion. The law, which arose in part as a reaction to the Colorado Masterpiece Cake Shop case, passed into law the day of this thread. I engaged in response to another commenter who’s content was acerbic and anti-gay. This series of comments is a good example of the kinds of discussions with strangers I had on Facebook when I was most involved with the platform. The consistent failure to actually change any minds through all this engagement (as evidenced here) is one of the reasons I ultimately left the platform. I posted on the same topic in a comment on another thread a few days later. (DL, June 14, 2023).

[Commenter 1 Name Redacted], I hesitate to engage you simply because I’m not sure it’s going to get us anywhere profitable, but silence can be its own form of complicity, so . . .

1) The formulations “degenerate minority” and “degenerate sexual deviant” are not an indicator of an open minded clear thinker. Your expression is dismissive and muddy. It basically comes across as bombastic namecalling. Perhaps you could have written something like: “You shouldn’t get extra rights at my expense simply because of your race or your sexual preference.” In this way you could have made the same point without unnecessarily raising the temperature level of the conversation and offending many of the people you’re ostensibly trying to dialog with.

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Politics

The Importance of an Open Marketplace

Note: When Mike Pence signed Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act on March 27, 2015, the news made the rounds in my Facebook circle, and I participated in a couple of threads on the topic. This short comment echoes some of the main points I had made a few days earlier in a longer discussion. (DL, June 14, 2023).

I had this discussion earlier on another thread, and I’ll repost some of what I said here:

I subscribe to the concept of the social contract. As members of a freely self-governing society, we undertake certain commitments to one another. In essence, we willingly agree to give up some of our autonomy in exchange for the benefits and protections of combined effort.

In regards to the public marketplace, I accept rules regarding fair and equitable trade for all in exchange for police protection, protection from unfair competitive practicies by more powerful competitors and banks, easy access to my customers and suppliers provided by the public transportation infrastructure, and (crucially) free access to the market myself regardless of my beliefs.

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Politics

My First Thoughts on Transgenderism

Note: Ten years ago I wrote this as a Facebook post because I wanted to speak clearly and publicly in response to the then new (at least, it felt new) but growing cultural trend of normalizing transgenderism as a means of overcoming or negating biological reality. In the intervening decade, though the irrationality of the transgender movement has become increasingly accepted in our society, my views have not changed. If I wrote the post today, I would likely seek to moderate the tone somewhat, but the ideas themselves I still embrace. I post this here now out of a commitment to speaking the truth as I see it, even though I believe I may someday suffer professional or other repercussions for holding these views. Such are the times in which we live. Following the note itself are a selection of my comments from the discussion thread that followed the original Facebook post. (DL April 20, 2023)

I dislike provoking ill feelings in others, but with Bradley Manning’s transgender announcement today and the subsequent pronoun shift in the media coverage, Wikipedia, etc. regarding him, I feel like it’s time for me to say something clear about my position on transgenderism.

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Politics

In the Wake of Sandy Hook

Note: The Columbine massacre, which happened at the end of my senior year of college, is the first mass shooting that I remember. In the twenty-five years since, it seems undeniable to me that mass shootings of this type have increased in frequency and severity. While I believe the primary cause is not the guns themselves (guns have been been woven into American society since the beginning) it seems increasingly clear that we as a society cannot be entrusted with guns without more effective limits. I wrote this Facebook post in the wake of Sandy Hook to explore foundational principles that we would have to observe and incorporate into our thinking as we explore more effective gun control as a society. (DL, June 10, 2023).

In the wake of the terrible sadness of Sandy Hook, we need to reevaluate the place of guns in our society—specifically the place of the modern weapons that have done so much to increase the average person’s lethal potential.

This is a contribution to that reevaluation. It is a statement of principles that I believe to be true.

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Politics

Thank God for Barack Obama

I predicted to a friend yesterday that Obama would win in a landslide. I have felt that way all Summer. On the morning after, Andrew Sullivan captures my feelings about Romney and right-wing media:

[This election] has revealed that Fox News, Drudge, and the rest have been engaged in a massive propaganda campaign to create an alternative reality and get the rest of us to go along. . . . What was defeated tonight was not just Romney, a hollow cynic, but a whole mountain of mendacity and delusion. That sound you hear is the cognitive dissonance ringing in the ears of ideologues and cynics. Any true conservative longs for that sound, the sound of reality arriving to pierce through fantasy and fanaticism.

I want to share a challenge with my conservative friends: Did you buy into the story that a media conspiracy was twisting the polls? Did you reflexively dismiss bad news during this campaign as media bias? Did you look to Drudge, Fox, Rush, Hannity, Beck, Dinesh D’Souza, et al. to give you the *real* story?

Don’t. They are as blinded by bias and ulterior motives as any in the “mainstream” media. I hope you can see that now.

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