As Maya Boddie reports, right-wing white Christians and their pastors — notably white evangelicals — are loving Trump's talk of "retribution" against his and their "enemies." Rather than alienating them, the rhetoric of bloodlust and enemies vanquished thrills them.
A powerful iteration of white Christianiity in the US thrives on generating an endless succession of enemies, to prove the righteousness of the chosen.
"On Wednesday, bomb threats forced evacuations, closures or stepped-up security measures at more than a dozen state capitols, in Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Maine, Oklahoma, Illinois, Idaho, South Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Maryland and Arizona."
"Hard to keep track of all the racist, unhinged, authoritarian comments by the former president? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. … See our list of the 10 worst things Trump said in 2023."
#Republicans have basically pitched #impeachment as fair-game #retribution for #Trump’s impeachments.
“…we have a situation where the standard of impeachment has been lowered to such a degree that…it’s merely…a political exercise,” Rep #Reschenthaler (R) said this wk….
& long before…, #TedCruz basically warned of a thinly constructed, tit-for-tat political #Biden impeachment. In Jan 2022, he predicted if the #GOP won the #House majority, it would #impeach Biden “whether it’s justified or not.”
Supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader #AlexeiNavalny said Mon that they had lost contact w/ him & that they have been unable to ascertain his whereabouts for almost a week. #Navalny, who was convicted on an array of charges widely viewed as political #retribution & carrying combined sentences of 30 yrs, wasn’t in the prison colony IK-6 where he had been held in recent months.
Did anyone think he’d answer this question truthfully? He literally lies under oath.
#Trump said Tues that he would not be a #dictator upon returning to office “except for Day One,” as he largely deflected questions at a televised #townhall event about whether he would #abuse his powers to seek #retribution against his political adversaries.
“Trump has told us that he thinks the Constitution can and should be suspended when necessary, that what happened on Jan. 6 was justified, that in a second Trump presidency he would seek retribution,. The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way.”
"Trump’s continued support from white evangelicals shows how much they share his zeal to destroy democracy. To them, Trump is not a menace but a messiah — which tells us a lot about what they think the God-ordained Christian nation should look like."
"Donald Trump’s talk of punishing his critics and seeking to 'weaponize' the US justice department against his political opponents has experts and former DoJ officials warning he poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US."
Amira Hass wrote on possible explanations for Israeli indifference in the face of destruction and cruelty in Gaza:
[Sorry for the poor translation from Hebrew]
⸺
The Gaza strip is being erased and gone. Of her families. Of her people. Of her children, their smiles and laughter. What allows most residents of the Jewish state to support this systematic and mass erasing? to see in it an appropriate answer to the massacre carried out by the Hamushi Hamas and their companions, to the military humiliation suffered by Israel and to the indescribable suffering of the kidnapped, the injured, the survivors, their families and the families of the hundreds of dead?
The IDF is erasing the Gaza cities, streets, countryside, fields and surprising mistakes, the alleys of the refugee camps there. Her beach promenade. He is erasing her cultural institutions and the universities, her archaeological sites. Hamas's military infrastructure is also being destroyed, thousands of its militants are killed. But the organization itself and its officials will recover and prosper, in every community and place where the degradation of Gaza will continue to occur.
What allows most Jews in Israel not to be shocked by the fact that in about two months we have killed about 7,000 children (temporary data) with the enhanced bombs that the United States provided us? What allows the majority of Jews not to suffocate in the horror of a compression of 1.8 or 1.9 million people in an area of 120 km, which is also constantly exploded? and not to cry out for the reports of the hunger and thirst of 2.2 million Palestinian citizens and the diseases that spread due to the density and lack of water and hospitals? What enables the erasure and mass slaughter of children, with our active and passive participation?
Here are some answers:
• Decades of education on the knees of absolute #belief in the exclusive ability of a military power to ensure the existence and prosperity of the country, while denying rights from the Palestinian people.
• Deleting all "context" — which incitement has made it a synonym for supporting Hamas and justifying its horrors.
• The #monopoly we took, the Jews, on the concept of suffering caused by the cruelty of the other.
• The choice not to know and not to watch the unbearable images that show Palestinian children trembling and gray-faced from dust, torn from the Russian walls. And you don't know who is more lucky: them or those who died.
• Every mass slaughter or tiffin-tiffin that we commit on Palestinians in years, every looting, humiliation, abuse, goes through thousands of media, psychological and academic filters. The effect is the self conviction that their situation is better than that of Somalis or Syrians, so let them not complain.
• Remembering every massacre Palestinians have committed on us. You have forgotten every massacre we have committed.
• The decades-old practice of living in peace and well five minutes away from our backyard, where israel (that is us) destroys for Palestinians and builds for Jews, flows water to Jews and exploits Palestinians. And all the rest is written in the reports "The Focus for the Protection of the Individual", "Betzelem" and "Adalea".
• Decades-old ignorance of warnings of "moderate" Palestinians, about who robbed the lands and freedom and violence of the settlers with the help of the state — and inspired by its violence — reduce the horizons of their children and generate desperation and belief only in the power of weapons and revenge.
• The essential perception of the world: Palestinians are terrorists because they are like that. Born with the genes of hating us. A direct sequel to Hamelnitsky and Titus.
• The self-conviction that we are a democracy even though for more than 56 years we have controlled millions of people without civil rights, in their land and economy.
• The deep racial disrespect of Palestinians, that we developed in order to cognitively and psychologically justify their trampling under our feet.
• Denial of Palestinian history and the roots of Palestinian existence between the river and the sea.
• Elimination of Gaza is possible because since 1994 we have deliberately missed the opportunity — offered to us by the Palestinians — to get rid of our characteristics as an occupying and settling entity and to give them a state of 22% of the territory west of Jordan. I wrote in July 2021: "In the light of the talk about apartheid is fading and eclipsing the dynamic, active and dangerous dimension that is Jewish-ass colonialism." This is an ideology in which the Palestinians are 'giving up', it is the actions that have shaped this ideology, which are inspired and nourished by it. In short: it is possible and desirable that only the Palestinians are bounded. Their existence here is conditional, by grace and not merit, depends on our will and our kindness, it's a question of time. The 'indulgence' ideology is a poison that spreads especially when the colonial process is in full swing. Settler colonialism is in a constant movement of land acquisition, eradicating historical boundaries, redesigning, and expulsion of the original inhabitants".
I then referred to the Palestinian "luxuries" in the West Bank and warned against the intentions for Gresham. I thought that the treatment of the people of Gaza as "giving up" resulted in the separation from their boredom and their families beyond the Erez checkpoint. But here, now the "indulgence" is manifested in their deportation ("willingly", in the shadow of the bombs) and in the physical erasure of the inhabitants and plans for the renewal of Jewish settlement in the Strip. Woe to them and woe to us.
⸺ https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/shabahit/2023-12-16/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018c-738a-d798-adac-f7af51de0000@israel@terrorism
All in a day's time, Kevin McCarthy (R) elbowed Tim Burchett (R) in the back; Markwayne Mullin (R) challenged Teamster Sean O'Brien to a fight; and James Comer (R) called Jared Moskowitz (D) a smurf. All this in Congress….
Jay Kuo wonders if it's time to shut the GOP down, since it's clearly melting down in real time, and this endangers the whole nation.
In Marci Wheeler's view, the media are doing all of us a big disservice — notably New York Times and Washington Post — by failing to connect Trump's current, blatant promises to seek retribution if he's re-elected to his entire career of seeking retribution. As she notes, this is not a new theme with Trump, and the media are doing far too little to remind us of how constant this theme is in his twisted history.
If #Trump is allowed to return to the #WhiteHouse, our #republic is done. He's planning on an #agenda of #vengeance and #retribution; openly leveraging the power of #government to literally persecute his perceived enemies, and anyone else who says mean things about him. He will declare the end of the #Constitution, and try to impose an #authoritarian regime based on his personal glorification. I don't want to live in that nightmare, so please #voteBlue!
"]Antony] Blinken is correct. Moral clarity requires that the world condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas militants as unmitigated evil.
But this does not render morally justifiable retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza that have so far killed 1,417 Palestinians, including 447 children, and wounded 6,368, according to Gaza’s health ministry."
#WestBank, occupied #Palestine:
'The neighbourhood has now become completely isolated from the town, without services, medical centres, or even access to schools'