"After years of examining Christian nationalism as a social scientist, and continuing my journey as a Christian, I’ve found that the practical fruit of Christian nationalism is not love. Rather, the practical fruit of Christian nationalism is power, control, domination, fear, and violence."
Notices by William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social), page 21
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Monday, 15-Apr-2024 04:18:18 JST William Lindsey :toad:
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Sunday, 14-Apr-2024 01:44:21 JST William Lindsey :toad:
Isn't it … odd … that Trump just "happened" to meet an adoring devotee at Chick-Fil-A in Atlanta, a Black woman who hugged him, proving that Black people are just head over heels in love with Trump –
And she turns out to be an employee of the Georgia GOP?
All staged to create viral videos and all deeply insulting to African American voters, with the implication that they can be easily deceived and manipulated.
https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trumps-viral-hug-at-chick-fil-a-was-with-maga-operative
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:30:04 JST William Lindsey :toad:
"This instruction – you, reader, must make an effort to understand the perspective not just of people in rural areas but of the most politically radical and the most disconnected from reality among them – is one that news consumers have been given for years. We're encouraged to sympathize with even extremely dangerous people who are literally stockpiling weapons, but only if they come from the places where the ‘essential minority’ resides."
~ Ibid.
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:30:03 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“The increase in geographic polarization between the parties has become a regular topic for national news outlets, yet stories about Republicans’ inability to win in cities are far rarer than stories about Democratic struggles among rural voters."
~ Ibid., p. 118
#Trump #rural #white #WhiteRuralRage #media #Republicans #Democrats
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:30:02 JST William Lindsey :toad:
"There is an implicit judgment at work, one that says that Democrats’ failure to win over rural voters is a kind of moral failing, one that can only be bred of insensitivity or contempt. Republicans’ struggles in cities, however, are seldom examined and less often judged; it's just how things are."
~ Ibid.
#Trump #rural #white #WhiteRuralRage #media #Republicans #Democrats
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:30:00 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“This is what rural people mean when they say that Trump ‘speaks our language,’ something we were told more than once during our travels. It's not that he understands their culture in any substantive way; instead, it's more visceral. Trump stroked people’s darkest impulses and said: 'You deserve to feel this way. You have been wronged and cheated and mocked.'"
~ Ibid., pp. 130-1
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:30:00 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“Whether Trump succeeds in returning to the White House in 2024, his curious appeal to rural Americans is the most important rural political story in decades. Whatever the future holds for Trump, he has left an indelible mark on rural America and, in the process, revealed fundamental truths about the people who find him so compelling.”
~ Ibid., p. 128
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:30:00 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system – distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism – and it is always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere."
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 5
#Trump #rural #white #WhiteRuralRage
/1https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734507/white-rural-rage-by-tom-schaller-and-paul-waldman/
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:59 JST William Lindsey :toad:
"Even as they are in some ways the greatest beneficiaries of democracy’s distribution of influence, rural Whites are the least committed to our system."
“Rural voters – especially the White rural voters on whom Donald Trump heaps praise, and upon whom he built his Make America Great Again movement – pose a growing threat to the world’s oldest constitutional democracy."
~ Ibid., pp. 5-6
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:58 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“To understand Donald Trump, you have to start with Barack Obama. Trump’s successful candidacy would not have been possible in the wake of any other presidency; It was the backlash against America's first Black president that pushed Trump into the White House.”
“When one looks to the places where Trump’s support was most intense, again and again one arrives in majority-White rural areas.”
~ Ibid., pp. 134, 137
#Trump #rural #white #WhiteRuralRage #democracy
/42https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734507/white-rural-rage-by-tom-schaller-and-paul-waldman/
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:58 JST William Lindsey :toad:
"Rural discontent and grievances are hardly new. But more than at any point in modern history, the survival of the United States as a modern, stable, multi-ethnic democracy is threatened by a White rural minority that wields outsize electoral power."
“If you look at where Trump got his most overwhelming support, the places are invariably rural and White."
~ Ibid., pp. 6 and 12
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:57 JST William Lindsey :toad:
"Over the same period, political observers began openly fretting over the fate and even the survival of American democracy. Somehow, almost nobody has noticed that these two phenomena are connected."
~ Ibid., p. 13
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:57 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“So, what do rural Whites get in return for all they bestow on the GOP? Almost nothing. The benefits they receive are nearly all emotional, not material."
“Since the rise of Donald Trump, few groups of citizens have received more fawning attention from hand-wringing journalists and pundits than rural Americans, especially disgruntled rural White voters."
~ Ibid., pp. 12-13
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:56 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“Even if Trump fails in 2024 and becomes nothing more than the laughable two-bit grifter he always has been at heart, his effect on the politics of rural America will be felt for a generation, if not more. He showed every Republican what rural Whites, and the GOP base more broadly, really want and how to give it to them."
~ Ibid., p. 155
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:56 JST William Lindsey :toad:
"The fact that rural areas have plenty of infidelity and teen parenthood (which occurs at significantly higher rates among rural Americans than city dwellers) doesn't necessarily make people reject traditional family values; it can make them cling to those values all the more fervently, as they consider them under constant, visible threat.”
~ Ibid.
#Trump #rural #white #WhiteRuralRage #democracy #morality #FamilyValues #TraditionalFamily
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:56 JST William Lindsey :toad:
"And they *are* connected. As we argue, the serious problems now plaguing rural White Americans are causing too many of them to lose faith in the American project, to the point where some are abandoning or even threatening the vital norms, traditions, and institutions that undergird the world's oldest constitutional democracy."
~ Ibid.
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:55 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“Second, rural Whites are the most conspiratorial cohort in the nation, and their refusal to accept basic facts or scientific knowledge prevents the nation from having rational, informed discourse on a variety of issues. Rural whites exhibit the highest support for election denialism, anti-science COVID-19 and vaccine resistance, Obama birtherism conspiracies, and unhinged QAnon claims.”
~ Ibid.
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:55 JST William Lindsey :toad:
Schaller and Waldman identify a fourfold threat white rural America poses to US democracy at present:
“First, rural Whites are the demographic group least likely to accept notions of pluralism and inclusion in a United States currently experiencing rapid demographic change. Rural whites are uniquely hostile toward racial and religious minorities, recent immigrants, and urban residents generally."
~ Ibid., p. 18
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:54 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“Third, polls and studies confirm that rural Whites express the lowest levels of support for long-standing and essential democratic principles. They are least likely to endorse the twin constitutional principles of separated powers and checks and balances between the branches of government; are least supportive of basic voting rights and ballot access; and routinely reject established governing principles like state-level authority and national supremacy help.”
~ Ibid., p. 19
/9
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William Lindsey :toad: (wdlindsy@toad.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Apr-2024 12:29:53 JST William Lindsey :toad:
“Finally, no group of Americans boasts a higher degree of support for, or justification of, violence as an appropriate means of public expression and decision making. From their defense of the domestic terrorists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to their calls for Trump to be restored to the White House by undemocratic means, rural Whites are more likely to excuse and even applaud the use of political violence.”
~ Ibid.