Showing posts with label Vox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vox. Show all posts

Friday, March 15, 2024

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?

 Why the **** does everyone swear all the ******* time?

 

The mind which wrote this essay is a busy ditch, for which unsurprisingly the old concept of the vulgar is unimagined country. Accordingly, when it tires of being crass it is capable only of infelicity:


 

 

 
 
 
 
 
A nodding beam or pig of lead,
May hurt the very ablest head.
 
-- Alexander Pope

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

There are the sin forgivers, and then there are the sin retainers, like evangelical Pete Wehner

You've got to wonder if Pete Wehner ever seriously considered that evangelicals who give Trump a pass are instead practicing forgiveness.

What would forgiveness look like, Pete? Did Jesus ever once turn a blind eye to moral transgression?

But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. 
 
-- Matthew 6:15

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots. 
 
-- Luke 23:34

Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. 
 
-- John 8:11

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. 
 
-- John 20:23

Pete's clearly still a sin retainer, after all these years, just as many evangelicals have been in the past, for example in regard to Bill Clinton.

Kind of runs in the human family, but for a brief, shining moment.

The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity:

The enthusiastic, uncritical embrace of President Trump by white evangelicals is among the most mind-blowing developments of the Trump era. How can a group that for decades—and especially during the Bill Clinton presidency—insisted that character counts and that personal integrity is an essential component of presidential leadership not only turn a blind eye to the ethical and moral transgressions of Donald Trump, but also constantly defend him? Why are those who have been on the vanguard of “family values” so eager to give a man with a sordid personal and sexual history a mulligan? ...

[T]here is ... the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions. Don’t forget: Trump was essentially named an unindicted co-conspirator (“Individual 1”) in a scheme to make hush-money payments to a porn star who alleged she’d had an affair with him while he was married to his third wife, who had just given birth to their son.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Personal narrative and testimony, formerly the stuff of religion, now insulate secular speech from critical examination

Seen here, but the author has no clue that this is the Christian religion's peculiar "gift" to America:

Herein lies the folly of oversimplified identity politics: while identity concerns obviously warrant analysis, focusing on them too exclusively draws our attention so far inward that none of our analyses can lead to action.  Rebecca Reilly Cooper, a political philosopher at the University of Warwick, worries about the effectiveness of a politics in which "particular experiences can never legitimately speak for any one other than ourselves, and personal narrative and testimony are elevated to such a degree that there can be no objective standpoint from which to examine their veracity." Personal experience and feelings aren't just a salient touchstone of contemporary identity politics; they are the entirety of these politics. In such an environment, it's no wonder that students are so prone to elevate minor slights to protestable offenses.