A helicopter carrying President #EbrahimRaisi of #Iran & his foreign minister crashed on Sunday in the country’s mountainous northwest, acc/to state media, deepening the turmoil that has gripped the nation on both the international & domestic fronts in recent months.
#Raisi, 63, was traveling from Iran’s border w/ Azerbaijan to inaugurate a joint dam project.
#Raisi is a hard-line religious cleric who came of age during the #Islamic revolution. Under #Iran’s #theocracy, Raisi, as president, is the 2nd most powerful individual in Iran’s #political structure after… #Khamenei.
After becoming president in 2021, Raisi consolidated power & marginalized reformists who wanted to defuse tensions w/the #West. He repeatedly said he pursued a policy of “strong diplomacy,” forging closer #economic & #security ties w/ #Russia & #China.
"Alito and his robed gang are modern American fascism's real bulwark—the final reason that this cult of creepy religious bigots really could get their way in the end. There's no law these justices can't abrogate, no protection of citizens they can't demolish with a wave of a manicured hand, for whatever reason they want to make up," (continued in /2)
(continued from /1)… "This makes American fascists bold. They are very clearly intending to make IVF and birth control illegal, and they're talking openly about punishing women for having abortions, and tracking the movement of pregnant people, and criminalizing gay and trans people, and outlawing even talk of diversity and inclusion,"
They are using the premise of a #spiritualWar to pave the road for the #UnitedStates to become the #Christofascist#theocracy they so jubilantly pray for—and intimidating students protesting the violence in #Gaza and trying to claim campuses for their own brand of #Christianity is their latest battleground.
“Nobody’s suggesting that the woman is not an individual, and she doesn’t … she doesn’t deserve stabilization. Nobody’s suggesting that,” [Alito] snapped.
A bill in Louisiana, HB 777, would make it a crime for librarians to use public funds to join the American Librarian Association or attend an ALA conference, punishable with prison time and hard labor for up to two years.
You may not think about #Tim#Dunn.
Indeed, unless you’re a close observer of Texas politics, it’s likely you haven’t heard of him.
But Dunn thinks a lot about you.
For two decades he has been quietly, methodically, and patiently building a political machine that has pushed Texas forcefully to the right, sending more and more members of the centrist wing of the Republican Party into exile.
A 68-year-old #oil#billionaire, Dunn seeks to transform Texas into something resembling a #theocracy.
👉If you ever wonder why state laws and policies are more radical than most Texans would prefer, the answer has a lot to do with Dunn and his #checkbook.
If you question why Texas’s elected officials no longer represent the majority of Texans’ views, the reason can be traced to the tactics employed by Dunn and the many organizations and politicians he funds and influences.
He has built his own caucus within the Legislature that is financially beholden to him.
And despite his Sunday school pleas for comity, Dunn has deepened Texas’s political divisions:
there are the Democrats and what remains of the mainstream conservative Republican Party.
And then there are Dunn and his allies.
For Dunn, politics, work, and religion all run together.
“I have very deliberately unsegmented my life,” he said in 2022 on a podcast hosted by Ken Harrison, the chair of #Promise#Keepers, a national evangelical group for men.
“I don’t have one approach in business and another approach in ministry and another approach in church . . . I work for God, and God has given me a bunch of jobs to do.”
Dunn directs that work from the center of a hive of his own creation, surrounded by politicians and pastors, fellow oil billionaires, and political consultants, all of whom are carrying out his vision.
I had a GYN checkup along with my annual physical. The nurse filling in forms asked me about history of births, stillbirths, miscarriages, abortions. I told her in this state of #Alabama I'd never tell a doctor if I'd ever had an abortion bc one day the state will come for all women's medical records & start attacking even old ladies like me. So I said the answer for your computer data is NO. I had several miscarriages and didn't even tell her that. #fascism#theocracy#abortion#VoteBlue
Thomas Zimmer on what's at stake in the 2024 election"
"This isn't actually about Biden versus Trump. It's basically a referendum on whether or not an effort at achieving a democratic pluralistic multiracial society should be continued or abolished altogether. It's basically thumbs up or down on, on democratic self government and the civil rights order."
How do we know that this is what the 2024 election is about? Because the Republican party has put its agenda right out there on the internet in Project 2025 for all of us to see it:
"The overriding concern is to impose this sort of reactionary white Christian patriarchal order on society. And again, they do that by dismantling some parts of government, but also mobilizing and weaponizing others."
And this is not a MAGA agenda: it's an establishment Republican agenda:
"Project 2025 is not coming from Trump. It's not coming from the Trump campaign. This is as conservative establishment as it's as it gets, right? So this is not the MAGA fringe. This is not the Trump weirdos. And so we're looking as a kind of a fusion between those forces in a very dangerous, very threatening way."
"We face here in America an important election, probably the most important one in our lifetimes, no matter what age you are. We face clear choices this cycle about who we are as a nation, as people, and as what we want the nations’s future to be."
"The best approach to understanding the Right has always been to take seriously and actually grapple with their vision for American society. In that sense, 'Project 2025' is tremendously helpful. Rightwing leaders could not possibly be clearer about the reactionary vision they want to impose on the country."
"They are telling us that they do not accept this egalitarian, pluralistic idea of a society in which the individual’s status is no longer determined by race, gender, religion, and wealth. They feel justified in taking truly radical, extreme measures to prevent that society from ever becoming a reality because they believe they are defending 'real America' in service of a higher purpose:"
"In today’s America, the right wing seems to be echoing its antebellum predecessors. It is attacking women’s rights; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; immigration; LGBTQ+ rights and so on. At the same time, it continues to push an economic system that has moved as much as $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 10% since 1981 while exploding the annual budget deficit and the national debt."
"Just as it was in the 1850s, the right-wing emphasis on religion and opposition to a modern multicultural America today is deeply entwined with preserving an economic power structure that has benefited a small minority. That emphasis is growing stronger in the face of the administration’s effort to restore a level economic playing field."
"One of the key architects of Donald Trump’s plans for a second administration has been quite public about the driving force animating that radical agenda: a 'cold civil war' to be won by those willing to use 'biblical principles' to 'instruct government' to do what the MAGA right wants."
“There’s not one Democrat that can tell you they stand up for God,” said #TommyTuberville
Ummm... That's because we live in a #secularRepublic, not a #Christofascist#theocracy, you nitwit. It's not the job of our elected leaders to "stand up for God". They're supposed to be standing up for their constituents.
Get TF out of the #Senate, and go be a priest if you want to prioritize religious mumbo jumbo over the best interests of the nation.
"If you ever wonder why state laws and policies are more radical than most Texans would prefer, the answer has a lot to do with Dunn and his checkbook. If you question why Texas’s elected officials no longer represent the majority of Texans’ views, the reason can be traced to the tactics employed by Dunn and the many organizations and politicians he funds and influences."
If you have never heard of the "Society for American Civic Renewal" (the acronym is pronounced “#sacker” by its members), it’s because they’ve been trying to stay under the radar.
Now that they are getting uncovered, they are attempting to manage the news coming out about them.
They are working to fundamentally reshape America to their vision. It sounds like a classic conspiracy theory — a bunch of rich white men on a mission from God? Really?
The thing is, there’s something about people who have managed to accumulate wealth, whether in business or by other means (like inheritance) that practically breeds hubris.
The prosperity gospel preaches that wealth is a sign that God has especially favored you, and you are privileged to rule over others by virtue of that wealth.
Kovensky has been able to unearth some details on what #SACR is about.
What is it? Among other things…
...The men TPM has identified as behind this group — and they are all men — have a few things in common. They’re all a certain kind of devout #Christian#traditionalist. They are #white. They have means, #financial and social, and are engaged in #politics.
...The members identified by TPM don’t necessarily fit the profile of the disaffected, disgruntled loner or the amped-up, testosterone-fueled militia types often found on the paranoid right-wing fringe. TPM’s reporting has identified as SACR members the president of the influential, Trump-aligned #Claremont#Institute, #Harvard#Law grads, and leading businessmen in communities scattered across America.
...Group members hold a distinct vision of America as a latter-day ancient Rome: a crumbling, decadent empire that could soon be replaced by a Christian #theocracy.
To join, the group demands faithfulness, virtue, and “#alignment,” which it describes as “#deference to and acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebears in the political realm, a traditional understanding of #patriarchal#leadership in the household, and acceptance of traditional #Natural#Law in ethics more broadly.”
More practically, members must be able to contribute either influence, capability, or wealth in helping SACR further its goals.
Matthew Sheffield, who was raised in a fundamentalist Mormon family and was once a right-wing Republican activist, explains why it's futile to try to reason with Trump's white Christian nationalist base, whose aim is to dominate and force us to dance to its theocratic tune, not to reason or to accept pluralistic democracy:
"Once the internet became completely pervasive within society, low-information religious fundamentalists finally became aware that their side had totally and completely lost all scientific and historical arguments."
"Having failed to convince people of their beliefs, they have decided to mandate them. In so doing, they are embracing their core epistemology, that knowledge comes from authority rather than from the scientific method. The Bible says it’s true, so therefore it is. I feel a warm fuzzy feeling when I watch my favorite pastor, so therefore what he says is true."