Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. California judge bans Kars4Kids ads for hiding Orthodox Jewish agenda (May 16) Wow, I never knew that Kars 4 Kids uses the money to promote Orthodox Judaism.

Also from Hemant Mehta: Former "ex-gay" leader Alan Chambers charged with soliciting a minor (May 20)

And: The evangelical Christian hit “Testify to Love” just got a powerful pro-LGBTQ reboot (May 22) Avalon was a Christian band popular in the 90s. We're just finding out now that when one of the singers, Michael Passons, left the band in 2003, actually he was kicked out for being gay. Now here he is, 20-some years later, proud of who he is, singing Avalon's hit song "Testify to Love" as a gay man. I am so here for this.

"For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love / I'll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough."

See also, Christian drag queen Flamy Grant performing this song at Q Christian Fellowship Conference in 2024:

I was not prepared for @FlamyGrant to lead a “Testify To Love” singalong. And it was perfect. pic.twitter.com/5DybJGD5wP

— Matt Nightingale (@mattnightingale) January 13, 2024

2. Before WeChat, There Were Qiaopi Writers (May 20) "Unable to type or use a smartphone herself, the woman sat beside Jiang and dictated the letter sentence by sentence while he wrote each line down by hand."

3. The Rise and Fall of Misery Memoirs (April 11, via) 2-hour-5-minute video. It's about "misery memoirs" that turned out to be completely fabricated (about the Holocaust, drug addiction, satanic rituals, etc). It's about the McMartin preschool trial, where investigators pressured children into making up stories about satanic abuse and secret tunnels and all kinds of wild things. It's about what kinds of "trauma stories" sell, what audiences want to hear and feel. It's about how scammers make up stories that fit The Template, and how real survivors are pressured to present their stories in a certain way. 

One thing this makes me think of is the feminist slogan "believe the victim." The thinking goes, if you come across a story of someone being raped or abused, you should believe it, because only a tiny percent of rape accusations are false, because victims who come forward are often put through a traumatizing process of interrogation and victim-blaming, because there's nothing to gain from making up a story, and a victim would only put themself through that because they really want the truth to come out. 

But it has to be more nuanced than just "believe the victim." It depends on *where* you're encountering this traumatic story. If it's a friend telling you about something that happened to them, you should give them emotional support and try to help them connect with whatever resources they need (therapy, etc). Within that context, you should just believe them and help them. But if you're a journalist writing a story, you should *not* just "believe the victim." You should only publish a story if there's evidence. And if the victim has a large platform and is making this traumatic story into their whole identity, uhhhh, that is even more suspect.

4. On Grindslop (May 20) "What this reveals is that the wealthiest generation of human beings in the history of our species has become so frightened of being seen as a class so terrified of their position being legible that it has begun performing the lives of people who assemble iPhones in near-slavery conditions in Foxconn plants."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Justice Department announces nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump allies in a deal to drop IRS suit (May 19) Wait, what? What on earth? The government is just going to give the antichrist $1.776 billion (that's $1,776,000,000) to give to whatever criminals feel they have been mistreated by being prosecuted for their crimes? 

"'This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,' Donald Sherman, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement."

2. Colorado Supreme Court Rules Hospitals Must Not Comply With Trump, Must Continue Offering Trans Youth Care (May 19) "In Monday’s decision, the court rejected the hospital’s central defense: that it had not discriminated against transgender youth but had simply declined to offer one category of treatment. The justices found that distinction meaningless, noting that the hospital continued to provide the very same medications, puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to cisgender youth while denying them to transgender patients."

3. Trump administration to force foreigners in the U.S. to apply for a green card abroad (May 23) This is absurd. Plenty of immigrants come to the US for education, to work, etc, legally, and then end up building a whole life, maybe even marry a US citizen, and it makes sense for there to be a process for them to get a green card and eventually citizenship. This new policy says they have to uproot their whole life and go to their own country, for who knows how many years, in order to apply for a US green card.

4. US senator says he was pepper-sprayed by federal agents during protest at ICE facility (May 26) "'Some of [the people detained] have been detained more than eight to 12 months,' Ana Paola Pazmiño from Resistencia en Accion New Jersey, a migrant rights organization, claimed, adding: 'The horrible conditions that they’re living in inside are terrible.'"

5. Tennessee judge dismisses federal human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego García (May 23) "Abrego Garcia's lawyers argued that the government's criminal case was retaliation because of the embarrassment it caused the Trump administration. After he won his deportation case, he became a sort galvanizing force for critics of the president's hard-line immigration policy. His lawyers asked the court to dismiss the charges under a vindictive prosecution claim." But I think this still isn't over.

6. More people are going hungry now than at the height of the pandemic (May 27) "The New York Fed survey from February found that nationwide, 10% of families reported missing meals for lack of food and nearly 16% relied on food donations."

7. Trump DOJ mass-deletes info on Jan. 6 riot cases, including violent assaults on cops (May 26) "A review by NPR found that the deleted material included information about some of the most serious assaults on law enforcement that occurred that day. NPR maintains the most complete database and visual archive of the Jan. 6 prosecutions."

8. SPLC seeks dismissal of charges, citing Trump admin's "vindictive motive to punish the SPLC" (May 27)