#Conservative Partnership Institute
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Steps from the Capitol, Trump allies buy up properties to build MAGA campus | The Washington Post
At first glance, the flurry of real estate sales two blocks east of the U.S. Capitol appeared unremarkable in a city where such sales are common. In the span of a year, a seemingly unrelated gaggle of recently formed companies bought nine properties, all within steps of one another.
But the sales were not coincidental. Unbeknown to most of the sellers, the limited liability companies making the purchases — a shopping spree that added up to $41 million — are connected to a conservative nonprofit led by Mark Meadows, who was Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump. The organization has promoted MAGA stars like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
The Conservative Partnership Institute, as the nonprofit is known, now controls four commercial properties along a single Pennsylvania Avenue block, three adjoining rowhouses around the corner, and a garage and carriage house in the rear alley. CPI’s aim, as expressed in its annual report, is to transform the swath of prime real estate into a campus it calls “Patriots’ Row.”
The acquisitions strike some Capitol Hill regulars as puzzling, considering that Republicans have long made a sport of denigrating Washington as a dysfunctional “swamp,” the latest evidence being a successful GOP-led effort to block local D.C. legislation to revise the city’s criminal code.
“So you don’t respect how we administer our city and then you secretly buy up chunks of it?” said Tim Krepp, a Capitol Hill resident who works as a tour guide and has written about the neighborhood’s history. “If it’s such a hellhole, go to Virginia.”
Reached on his cellphone, Edward Corrigan, CPI’s president, whose name appears on public documents related to the sales, had no immediate comment on the purchases, which were first reported by Grid News and confirmed by The Washington Post. “I’ll get back to you,” Corrigan said. He did not respond to follow-up messages.
Former senator Jim DeMint, CPI’s founder, and Meadows, a senior partner at the organization, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Cameron Seward, CPI’s general counsel and director of operations, whose name appears on incorporation documents related to the companies making the purchases, did not respond to a text or an email.
As Congress’s neighbors, denizens of the Capitol Hill neighborhood are accustomed to existing in close quarters with all varieties of official Washington. Walk the neighborhood and you might catch a glimpse of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, among those who own homes near the Capitol. The Republican and Democratic national committees both have offices in the neighborhood.
But it’s rare, if not unprecedented, for a nonprofit to purchase as many properties in such proximity and in so short a period of time as CPI has assembled through its related companies, a roster with names like Clear Plains Holdings, Brunswick Partners, Houston Group, Newpoint and Pennsylvania Avenue Holdings. The companies list Seward as an officer on corporate filings, as well as CPI’s Independence Avenue headquarters as their principal address.
Now, in what may be an only-in-Washington vista, a single Pennsylvania Avenue block is occupied by Public Citizen, the left-leaning consumer advocacy group, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, and CPI, which bought four properties through its affiliates.
In addition to the nine D.C. parcels CPI’s network has bought since January 2022, another affiliated company, Federal Investors, paid $7.2 million for a sprawling 11-bedroom retreat on the Eastern Shore. In 2020, CPI, under its own name, also spent $1.5 million for a rowhouse next to its headquarters, which it leases, a few blocks from the Capitol.
DeMint, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, started CPI in 2017, shortly after he was ousted as Heritage’s leader amid criticism that the think tank had become too political under his direction. Meadows joined in 2021, after working as Trump’s Chief of Staff. He was by Trump’s side during the administration’s final calamitous days, before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and as the President’s allies were seeking to overturn election results.
On its 2021 tax returns, CPI reported $45 million in revenue, most of it generated through contributions and grants, and paid DeMint and Meadows compensation packages of $542,000 and $559,000, respectively. Its current offices, a three-story townhouse at the corner of Third Street and Independence Avenue SE, is a hub of GOP activity. During the chaotic lead-up to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s election as House Speaker, dissident Republican lawmakers were observed congregating at CPI.
CPI also provides grants to a cluster of nonprofits headed by Trump allies. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, for example, leads America First Legal, which received $1.3 million from CPI in 2021 and bills itself as a check on “lawless executive actions and the Radical Left.”
Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who was on the call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seeking to reverse votes in the 2020 election, runs what the organization bills as its “Election Integrity Network,” which has cast doubt on the validity of President Biden’s 2020 victory.
“The election was rigged,” EIN tweeted last July. “Trump won.”
CLOSE TO THE CAPITOL
At an introductory meeting in December, recalled Gerald Sroufe, an advisory neighborhood commissioner on Capitol Hill, a CPI representative said the group planned to move its headquarters to a three-story building it had bought on Pennsylvania Avenue, next to Heritage’s office. Until the pandemic forced it to close, the Capitol Lounge had occupied the 130-year-old building. The bar had served a nightly bipartisan swarm of congressional staffers and lobbyists for more than two decades.
The CPI official, Sroufe said, indicated that the group planned to use the new Pennsylvania Avenue properties to “expand” its offices and “provide new retail.” But the official made no mention of Patriots’ Row, Sroufe said, or the three rowhouses the group’s affiliates had bought around the corner on Third Street SE. All of the properties are in the neighborhood’s historic district, which protects them from being altered without city review.
“This is much grander than what we were talking about,” Sroufe said after learning from a reporter about the other purchases. “On the Hill, people are always talking about how wonderful it is to be close to the Capitol and Congress. It’s kind of like a curse.”
As in many commercial corridors hit hard by the pandemic, businesses along Pennsylvania Avenue have struggled over the past couple of years. Tony Tomelden, executive director of the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals, said CPI could energize a strip pocked with vacant storefronts.
“I welcome any business because the only thing opening right now are marijuana shops,” said Tomelden, an H Street NE bar owner who helped open the Capitol Lounge in 1996 and, as it happens, instituted a rule that patrons could not talk politics while imbibing. “If they’re going to pay a lot of money and raise property values, I’m all for it. I don’t care about anybody’s politics as long as they pay their tab.”
In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, finding those who are less sanguine about CPI’s growing footprint is not exactly difficult.
Yet politics is only part of the issue, as far as Krepp is concerned. CPI’s purchases, he said, threaten the area’s neighborhood vibe, as would be the case if any group, no matter its ideological leaning, bought as many properties. “I don’t want to create another downtown on Capitol Hill,” he said. “There’s a glut of available office space downtown. You don’t have to buy up neighborhoods.”
Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a regular commuter to the Capitol from his home in Montgomery County, sees CPI’s acquisitions in terms more political than geographic.
“It just seems like a massive real estate coming-out party for the extreme right wing of the Republican Party,” Raskin said. “This is a very explicit and well-financed statement of intent. They set out to take over the Republican Party and they’re very close to clenching the power.”
Instead of Patriots’ Row, Raskin suggested an alternative name: Seditionist Square.
“Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene can be their advisory neighborhood commissioner,” he said.
A ‘PERMANENT BULWARK’ IN D.C.
On its 2021 tax return, CPI said its mission is to be a “platform” for the “conservative movement,” and to provide “public policy” training for “government and nonprofit staffers” and meeting space for gatherings and policy debates.
Although not required to identify donors, CPI reported seven contributions in excess of $1 million, including one of more than $25 million. Trump’s Save America political action committee gave $1 million in 2021, according to campaign finance records. Billionaire Richard Uihlein, a major Republican donor, gave $1.25 million a couple of years ago through his foundation, records show.
A CPI-related entity, the Conservative Partnership Center, rented space to two political action committees as of early January, the House Freedom Fund and Senate Conservative Fund, according to campaign finance records. CPI also received $4,000 from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has recorded his “Firebrand” podcast at the group’s studio, as has the host of the “Gosar Minute,” Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), according to the group’s annual report. Greene paid CPI $437.73 for “catering for political meetings” in 2021, the records show.
“No one stood up to the Left as courageously as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,” CPI declared in its 2021 annual report, hailing her as a “hero” who “endured sexist fury that always lurks just beneath the progressive surface.” The report described Boebert as a “gun rights advocate” who “wants to protect our environment more than anyone else.”
It was in CPI’s 2022 annual report that the group briefly referred to its expansion plans, writing that it has strengthened “its ability to serve the movement by beginning renovations to Patriots’ Row on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“In 2022, the Left tried to drag America further into a dark future of totalitarianism, chaotic elections and cultural decay,” the report asserts in an introduction from DeMint and Meadows. “The Washington establishment, per usual, did nothing to stop them. But neither the Left nor the establishment could stop the culture and community we’re building here at the Conservative Partnership Institute.”
“With our expanded presence in D.C.,” they add, “we’re launching CPI academy — a formal program of training for congressional staff and current and future members of the movement.”
“Even if we can’t change Washington, we can create a permanent bulwark against its worst tendencies.”
A SPATE OF SALES
CPI began its expansion in 2020, purchasing the rowhouse next door to its headquarters and christening it “The Rydin House” for Mike Rydin, a construction magnate and prominent conservative donor. When Federal Investors bought the Eastern Shore property, the group named it “Camp Rydin.”
On Capitol Hill, several property owners who sold their buildings to CPI-linked companies were surprised to learn that the buyers were connected to a group led by Meadows and DeMint.
“I did not know,” said Jacqueline Lewis, who sold a townhouse on Third Street SE to 116 Holdings for $5.1 million in July. The company’s officer, according to its corporate filing, is Seward, and the principal address it lists is the same as CPI’s headquarters. A trust document related to the transaction is signed by Corrigan, CPI’s president.
Brunswick Partners, which lists CPI and Seward as contacts on its corporate filing, bought the neighboring rowhouse for $1.8 million in January, according to property records. Brian Wise, the seller, said he did not know of the company’s CPI connection. An attorney who approached him and his wife, he said, “asked if we were willing to sell and we agreed on a price. It was a business sale.”
Keith and Amanda Catanzano also were unaware of CPI when they sold a garage in the alley behind Third Street SE to Newpoint for $1 million in June. Newpoint lists Seward as an officer and the same mailing address as CPI. “We had no idea,” said a woman who answered the phone at a number listed for the Catanzanos before hanging up.
Eric Kassoff, who sold the former site of the Capitol Lounge to Clear Plains, said he knew of the company’s CPI ties before the $11.3 million deal was finalized in January. He also sold the group a carriage house behind the building for $400,000.
Kassoff said he did not want to lease the space to a fast-food restaurant or a convenience store. He said CPI’s political leanings were not a factor in his decision to sell to the organization.
“Why would I have any issue selling my property to proud Americans?” asked Kassoff, who described himself as an independent. “We need to get past the labeling and demonizing and talk to each other, and that’s true in politics as well as commerce. If we were all to take that position we wouldn’t have much of a country left, would we?”
Although the Capitol Lounge closed more than two years ago, vestiges of its past remain on the building’s exterior, including a rendering of Benjamin Franklin beneath a quote concocted by the bar’s founder, Joe Englert: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
James Silk, the bar’s former owner, said he left behind memorabilia when he vacated the building that could be suitable for the new owner: Richard M. Nixon campaign posters still hanging on the walls of what the owners cheekily dubbed the Nixon Room (located across from the Kennedy Room).
“Nixon is finally with his people,” Silk said. He laughed and added: “Nixon was a Republican, right?”
#us politics#news#the washington post#republicans#conservatives#gop#mark meadows#Conservative Partnership Institute#political action committees#washington dc#Patriots’ Row#Jim DeMint#Cameron Seward#heritage foundation#capitol hill#America First Legal#Election Integrity Network#steve bannon#Cleta Mitchell#Capitol Lounge#Save America pac#Richard Uihlein#Conservative Partnership Center#House Freedom Fund#Senate Conservative Fund#Rep. Matt Gaetz#firebrand podcast#Gosar Minute#rep. paul gosar#Mike Rydin
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"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program.
The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.
The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”
Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders.
The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.
As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.”
Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024.
The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy.
“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said.
The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."
-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023
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This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.
#climate corps#american climate corps#acc#biden#biden administration#americorps#epa#environmental protection agency#sustainability#conservation#climate action#climate change#climate crisis#climate emergency#environmentalism#global warming#united states#us politics#hopeposting#hope posting#national forest#public lands#disaster prevention#environment#ecosystem restoration#waterways#recycling#clean energy#reforestation#disaster preparedness
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One of the biggest donors to CPI has been Trump himself.
The insurrectionists’ clubhouse: Former Trump aides find a home at a little-known MAGA hub July 5, 2022
Nearly two dozen alleged members of the Jan. 6 plot are connected to a single Capitol Hill address.
“Founded in 2017, CPI is little-known outside Trump circles, yet it has quickly become among the most powerful political messaging forces in the MAGA universe. The group did not respond to questions submitted by Grid for this article.CPI raised $20 million last year alone, and its network of nearly a dozen affiliate groups, several headed by ex-Trump aides, likely raised more. Donald Trump himself has endorsed the group’s work, boosted its fundraising and even donated $1 million to the group from his PAC in 2021.“
READ MORE https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/07/05/the-insurrectionists-clubhouse-former-trump-aides-find-a-home-at-a-little-known-maga-hub/
How the CPI became the most powerful messaging force in the MAGA universe July 21, 2022
Journalist Maggie Severns explains how the Conservative Partnership Institute helped push the Republican party further to the right and became what she calls a "clubhouse" for insurrectionists.
35-Minute Listen READ MORE Transcript https://www.npr.org/2022/07/21/1112699295/how-the-cpi-became-the-most-powerful-messaging-force-in-the-maga-universe
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ranboo retweeted this thread on different resources that help animals affected by the genocide in Palestine! 🐶🍉
Animals:
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Palestinian Institute for Biodiversity & Sustainability - focus in research, education, conservation, culture and heritage, plus promotion of responsible human interactions with the environment
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Hi, you tend to have well-thought-out political opinions (I don't always agree with you, but your reading liveblog were the kick in the ass to make me read Orientalism, and you have managed to change my mind more than once), maybe might have a better answer here than me.
Is there an ideological reason that American (b/c it typically is, god help me) left-of-center types love electoralism so much online (and offline too, tbh. College continues to deal new and fun kinds of psychic damage), but only in the context of the general national elections? I so often receive various extensive breakdowns of reasons that I MUST vote for Biden in 2024, but less about the benefits of, like, getting really invested in my city council elections or the school board.
We have so many freaking elections for goddamn everything because the US/Canada are fuck-off huge that it's super easy to argue for the importance of participating in electoralism and instead I (especially recently) see so many people picking the worst hill to die on, that I really struggle to. Well. Understand why.
I’ll speak mostly to Canada since that’s where most of my formal knowledge comes from and also because I live here lol. Also a lot of what I’m talking about is coming from books I’ve read - Still Renovating by Greg Suttor for example is a pretty in depth history of social policy (primarily housing) in Canada, it’s very dry but is useful for this conversation. This is off the dome and not meant as a PSA or anything, it’s my own perspective, if people want sources for what I’m discussing I can go dig those up, but I’m just putting this disclaimer at the top in case this post leaves my circle.
To answer your question, my instinct is that it’s because north american democracy is increasingly necrotic and disconnected from the general public (with the usual list of caveats about how much liberal capitalist democracies have ever been “for the people”). Reading up on social policy in Canada directly post-WWII is pretty bleak when comparing it to today - social housing used to be a robust part of the housing market, people were paid far better and had far more economic security, our healthcare was freshly socialised and invigorated, the promises of the Keynesian welfare state were generally being met (for a predominantly white middle class electorate, of course), and so on. Even conservatives were basically on board with these things in the 60s, at least in Canada, although that obviously did not last long. And over the decades we have become entrenched in neoliberal cutbacks, the gutting of public institutions, the sale of public space and utilities, the downloading of responsibility for social welfare onto provincial and then municipal governments who have smaller budgets and more limited institutional power, the massive expansion in public-private partnerships, the militarisation of the police - these things really kicked off in the 80s/90s in Canada and have showed little signs of stopping or even really slowing down since (something that also obviously happened in the US). People make the joke that if libraries were suggested as a policy goal today it would be called a communist plot, but it’s true - all of the shit the government offered us forty years ago is unthinkable to even suggest now. Life in general has gotten more difficult as private wealth and deregulation has taken a progressively stronger hold on domestic affairs. This happened slowly over the course of decades, and as political horizons shrunk in terms of what you could expect/demand of your government, there was a real air of this being inevitable, not a result of conscious political decisions but just some organic outcome that no one had control over (“the invisible hand of the market”). Democratic civic responsibility demands we vote as citizens of our country, but for all the reasons outlined above plus a bunch of others I’m sure I’m forgetting, the liberal conception of democratic participation shrunk to the ballot box alone.
And while we all joke about everyone having the historical memory of a goldfish, I think the pandemic made this a deeply dissonant position to hold onto - we saw the government seemingly awake from a long slumber to exercise its might. It placed eviction bans on landlords, enforced mass quarantines and social distancing measures, provided economic relief to people who lost their jobs, stationed itself inside every building and public space to enforce mask mandates, rolled-out universal vaccination programs that were mandatory if you wanted to keep your job - we saw the government flex its power in labour, in housing, in healthcare, in civic life, and at the border in a way previously unheard of, particularly for people who were not alive to experience the welfare state of the 50s and 60s and even 70s. The state revealed itself as the life-structuring force it always had been before receding again, telling everyone to go back to normal as if nothing had happened, as if millions of people had not died in a global plague, as if it had not just demonstrated to everyone in the country that the state can at the drop of a hat order your landlord to stop evicting you and your boss to give you paid time off. This of course didn’t really happen in the US, or at least not nearly to this degree, which resulted in the deaths of over a million people.
So now when politicians perform this same incapacity to do anything, when they trot out hyper-specific policies that might benefit a couple thousand people at most, when they make stupid non-promises and shrink away from even mild forms of social democracy (eg Sanders-style campaign promises), I don’t know how much people buy it. I’m not particularly optimistic about the pandemic radicalising large amounts of people, but I think even if it doesn’t, we saw what happened! And we’ve all seen a million fucking articles about how people don’t want to go to work anymore, about labour shortages, we’ve seen essentially every sector of labour go on some kind of strike in the past two or three years - there is popular organised political participation happening far away from the ballot box, and is only growing in power by the day. Socialism is now a word that exists in the national consciousness, something that was unthinkable even a decade ago. Currently right now we are seeing an international conversation about (and global popular support for) indigenous sovereignty, we are seeing a full-throated articulation of what a LandBack policy would look like, and this comes on the heels of the national Canadian conversation of residential schools and missing and murdered indigenous women. Decolonisation is now a household term. In the case of the US, we are seeing people make the very obvious point that America can conjure billions of dollars to bomb hospitals and civilians, but any social policy to help its own citizens is too expensive, pie in the sky fantasy nonsense.
And by the same token, there is organised right-wing and fascist violence happening in the streets, massive increases in hate crimes, insane political stunts and demonstrations like the Freedom Convoy and 1 Million March 4 Children (inspired by the Capitol Hill storming in the US), Qanon plots to kidnap and execute elected officials - things that right wing parties are actively encouraging, particularly the PPC and CPC. More and more we see that electoral politics is the domain of the far-right, whose culture war issues have the best chance of being realised through the sacred portal of the ballot box. Democrats can’t even offer people legalised abortion now!
I think this is why liberals are in a state of hysteria. A healthy liberal democracy does not require constant, unrelenting reminders to “vote your ass off.” Liberals are very much aware, even unconsciously, that voting does less and less of what they want every single day - you see this openly admitted to by American liberals, who are now doing Hitler % meter calculations about which fascist to vote for come the next federal election. Voting itself is what matters, even as they openly, frantically admit it will do nothing but slightly delay the inevitable.
So to like directly answer your question: I think it has less to do with federal elections as a specific political strategy and more just an expression of anxiety about the fact that voting does not do what you want it to do, or what it once did - perhaps encouraging larger questions if voting does anything at all. If national federal elections don’t do anything, if you voting for the most powerful position on the planet doesn’t really change very much regardless of who’s in power, what is the point of voting at all? So I don’t think they are articulating an actual political strategy or way of doing politics, because by their own admission it’s not going to do much of anything (while at the same time being an existential crisis). I’m in a similar boat to you, I vote in smaller elections where I feel they will do some measure of good (in part because municipalities are responsible for so much more of civic life than they were a few decades ago), I have engaged with the Ontario NDP for several years (although that has come to an end now because of their position on Palestine). Electoralism is a compromise, it is an avenue for potential good, but not always, or even most of the time.
Thankfully there are other avenues for politics - labour organising, protesting, mutual aid support networks, getting involved with community work, even something like local neighbourhood councils. Those are places of political potential, and a single person’s presence in them can make a legitimate noticeable difference (speaking from several years of heavy involvement in community orgs). I have never really felt like I was making a change while voting, but I have felt that way helping community members not get evicted, or offering them free daycare a few times a week, or running programs from lgbtq kids who don’t want to go home after school. Those things legit save peoples’ lives, a lot of them are low stakes relative to their benefit, and they help stave off the alienation and loneliness I know everyone feels. Obviously you run into the same structural problems you would everywhere else, it’s not a paradise by any stretch of the imagination, but they are so many avenues outside of voting that do actually help people around you.
And I think if liberals admit that these actions are more powerful, more effective than voting, they are admitting to themselves that their core beliefs are wrong, that the communists and anarchists are correct and have been correct long before their dumbass was born. They can no longer point to any institution that gives a fuck about them as a defense against left-wing critiques of liberal electoralism. I think that is part of what animates their hysteria, their temper tantrums, their screaming about the only thing to do is do nothing at all. It is a full-throated defense of self-defeat. They are wailing as everything they believe in dies. I’d be pretty upset too if that were me! Luckily I grew out of that when I was like 19
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SHANGHAI — Over the past generation, China’s most important relationships were with the more developed world, the one that used to be called the “first world.” Mao Zedong proclaimed China to be the leader of a “third” (non-aligned) world back in the 1970s, and the term later came to be a byword for deprivation. The notion of China as a developing country continues to this day, even as it has become a superpower; as the tech analyst Dan Wang has joked, China will always remain developing — once you’re developed, you’re done.
Fueled by exports to the first world, China became something different — something not of any of the three worlds. We’re still trying to figure out what that new China is and how it now relates to the world of deprivation — what is now called the Global South, where the majority of human beings alive today reside. But amid that uncertainty, Chinese exports to the Global South now exceed those to the Global North considerably — and they’re growing.
The International Monetary Fund expects Asian countries to account for 70% of growth globally this year. China must “shape a new international system that is conducive to hedging against the negative impacts of the West’s decoupling,” the scholar and former People’s Liberation Army theorist Cheng Yawen wrote recently. That plan starts with Southeast Asia and extends throughout the Global South, a terrain that many Chinese intellectuals see as being on their side in the widening divide between the West and the rest.
“The idea is that what China is today, fast-growing countries from Bangladesh to Brazil could be tomorrow.”
China isn’t exporting plastic trinkets to these places but rather the infrastructure for telecommunications, transportation and digitally driven “smart cities.” In other words, China is selling the developmental model that raised its people out of obscurity and poverty to developed global superpower status in a few short decades to countries with people who have decided that they want that too.
The world China is reorienting itself to is a world that, in many respects, looks like China did a generation ago. On offer are the basics of development — education, health care, clean drinking water, housing. But also more than that — technology, communication and transportation.
Back in April, on the eve of a trip to China, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sat down for an interview with Reuters. “I am going to invite Xi Jinping to come to Brazil,” he said, “to get to know Brazil, to show him the projects that we have of interest for Chinese investment. … What we want is for the Chinese to make investments to generate new jobs and generate new productive assets in Brazil.” After Lula and Xi had met, the Brazilian finance minister proclaimed that “President Lula wants a policy of reindustrialization. This visit starts a new challenge for Brazil: bringing direct investments from China.” Three months later, the battery and electric vehicle giant BYD announced a $624 million investment to build a factory in Brazil, its first outside Asia.
Across the Global South, fast-growing countries from Bangladesh to Brazil can send raw materials to China and get technological devices in exchange. The idea is that what China is today, they could be tomorrow.
At The Kunming Institute of Botany
In April, I went to Kunming to visit one of China’s most important environmental conservation outfits — the Kunming Institute of Botany. Like the British Museum’s antiquities collected from everywhere that the empire once extended, the seed bank here (China’s largest) aspires to acquire thousands of samples of various plant species and become a regional hub for future biotech research.
From the Kunming train station, you can travel by Chinese high-speed rail to Vientiane; if all goes according to plan, the line will soon be extended to Bangkok. At Yunnan University across town, the economics department researches “frontier economics” with an eye to Southeast Asian neighboring states, while the international relations department focuses on trade pacts within the region and a community of anthropologists tries to figure out what it all means.
Kunming is a bland, air-conditioned provincial capital in a province of startling ethnic and geographic diversity. In this respect, it is a template for Chinese development around Southeast Asia. Perhaps in the future, Dhaka, Naypyidaw and Phnom Penh will provide the reassuring boredom of a Kunming afternoon.
Imagine you work at the consulate of Bangladesh in Kunming. Why are you in Kunming? What does Kunming have that you want?
The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore lyrically described Asia’s communities as organic and spiritual in contrast with the materialism of the West. As Tagore spoke of the liberatory powers of art, his Chinese listeners scoffed. The Chinese poet Wen Yiduo, who moved to Kunming during World War II and is commemorated with a statue at Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, wrote that Tagore’s work had no form: “The greatest fault in Tagore’s art is that he has no grasp of reality. Literature is an expression of life and even metaphysical poetry cannot be an exception. Everyday life is the basic stuff of literature, and the experiences of life are universal things.”
“Xi Jinping famously said that China doesn’t export revolution. But what else do you call train lines, 5G connectivity and scientific research centers appearing in places that previously had none of these things?”
If Tagore’s Bengali modernism championed a spiritual lens for life rather than the materiality of Western colonialists, Chinese modernists decided that only by being more materialist than Westerners could they regain sovereignty. Mao had said rural deprivation was “一穷二白” — poor and empty; Wen accused Tagore’s poetry of being formless. Hegel sneered that Asia had no history, since the same phenomena simply repeated themselves again and again — the cycle of planting and harvest in agricultural societies.
For modernists, such societies were devoid of historical meaning in addition to being poor and readily exploited. The amorphous realm of the spirit was for losers, the Chinese May 4th generation decided. Railroads, shipyards and electrification offered salvation.
Today, as Chinese roads, telecoms and entrepreneurs transform Bangladesh and its peers in the developing world, you could say that the argument has been won by the Chinese. Chinese infrastructure creates a new sort of blank generic urban template, one seen first in Shenzhen, then in Kunming and lately in Vientiane, Dhaka or Indonesian mining towns.
The sleepy backwaters of Southeast Asia have seen previous waves of Chinese pollinators. Low Lan Pak, a tin miner from Guangdong, established a revolutionary state in Indonesia in the 18th century. Li Mi, a Kuomintang general, set up an independent republic in what is now northern Myanmar after World War II.
New sorts of communities might walk on the new roads and make calls on the new telecom networks and find work in the new factories that have been built with Chinese technology and funded by Chinese money across Southeast Asia. One Bangladeshi investor told me that his government prefers direct investment to aid — aid organizations are incentivized to portray Bangladesh as eternally poor, while Huawei and Chinese investors play up the country’s development prospects and bright future. In the latter, Bangladeshis tend to agree.
“Is China a place, or is it a recipe for social structure that can be implemented generically anywhere?”
The majority of human beings alive today live in a world of not enough: not enough food; not enough security; not enough housing, education, health care; not enough rights for women; not enough potable water. They are desperate to get out of there, as China has. They might or might not like Chinese government policies or the transactional attitudes of Chinese entrepreneurs, but such concerns are usually of little importance to countries struggling to bootstrap their way out of poverty.
The first world tends to see the third as a rebuke and a threat. Most Southeast Asian countries have historically borne abuse in relationship to these American fears. Most American companies don’t tend to see Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sumatra as places they’d like invest money in. But opportunity beckons for Chinese companies seeking markets outside their nation’s borders and finding countries with rapidly growing populations and GDPs. Imagine a Huawei engineer in a rural Bangladeshi village, eating a bad lunch with the mayor, surrounded by rice paddies — he might remember the Hunan of his childhood.
Xi Jinping famously said that China doesn’t export revolution. But what else do you call train lines, 5G connectivity and scientific research centers appearing in places that previously had none of these things?
Across the vastness of a world that most first-worlders would not wish to visit, Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up electric vehicle and battery companies, installing broadband and building trains. The world that is looming into view on Huawei’s 2022 business report is one in which Asia is the center of the global economy and China sits at its core, the hub from which sophisticated and carbon-neutral technologies are distributed. Down the spokes the other way come soybeans, jute and nickel. Lenin’s term for this kind of political economy was imperialism.
If the Chinese economy is the set of processes that created and create China, then its exports today are China — technologies, knowledge, communication networks, forms of organization. But is China a place, or is it a recipe for social structure that can be implemented generically anywhere?
Huawei Station
Huawei’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party remain unclear, but there is certainly a case of elective affinities. Huawei’s descriptions of selfless, nameless engineers working to bring telecoms to the countryside of Bangladesh is reminiscent of Party propaganda and “socialist realist” art. As a young man, Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s CEO, spent time in the Chongqing of Mao’s “third front,” where resources were redistributed to develop new urban centers; the logic of starting in rural areas and working your way to the center, using infrastructure to rappel your way up, is embedded within the Maoist ideas that he studied at the time. Today, it underpins Huawei’s business development throughout the Global South.
I stopped by the Huawei Analyst Summit in April to see if I could connect the company’s history to today. The Bildungsroman of Huawei’s corporate development includes battles against entrenched state-owned monopolies in the more developed parts of the country. The story goes that Huawei couldn’t make inroads in established markets against state-owned competitors, so got started in benighted rural areas where the original leaders had to brainstorm what to do if rats ate the cables or rainstorms swept power stations away; this story is mobilized today to explain their work overseas.
Perhaps at one point, Huawei could have been just another boring corporation selling plastic objects to consumers across the developed world, but that time ended definitively with Western sanctions in 2019, effectively banning the company from doing business in the U.S. The sanctions didn’t kill Huawei, obviously, and they may have made it stronger. They certainly made it weirder, more militant and more focused on the markets largely scorned by the Ericssons and Nokias of the world. Huawei retrenched to its core strength: providing rural and remote areas with access to connectivity across difficult terrain with the intention that these networks will fuel telehealth and digital education and rapidly scale the heights of development.
Huawei used to do this with dial-up modems in China, but now it is building 5G networks across the Global South. The Chinese government is supportive of these efforts; Huawei’s HQ has a subway station named for the company, and in 2022 the government offered the company massive subsidies.
“For many countries in the Global South, the model of development exemplified by Shenzhen seems plausible and attainable.”
For years, the notion of an ideological struggle between the U.S. and China was dismissed; China is capitalist, they said. Just look at the Louis Vuitton bags. This misses a central truth of the economy of the 21st century. The means of production now are internet servers, which are used for digital communication, for data farms and blockchain, for AI and telehealth. Capitalists control the means of production in the United States, but the state controls the means of production in China. In the U.S. and countries that implicitly accept its tech dominance, private businesspeople dictate the rules of the internet, often to the displeasure of elected politicians who accuse them of rigging elections, fueling inequality or colluding with communists. The difference with China, in which the state has maintained clear regulatory control over the internet since the early days, couldn’t be clearer.
The capitalist system pursues frontier technologies and profits, but companies like Huawei pursue scalability to the forgotten people of the world. For better or worse, it’s San Francisco or Shenzhen. For many countries in the Global South, the model of development exemplified by Shenzhen seems more plausible and attainable. Nobody thinks they can replicate Silicon Valley, but many seem to think they can replicate Chinese infrastructure-driven middle-class consumerism.
As Deng Xiaoping said, it doesn’t matter if it is a black cat or a white cat, just get a cat that catches mice. Today, leaders of Global South countries complain about the ideological components of American aid; they just want a cat that can catch their mice. Chinese investment is blank — no ideological strings attached. But this begs the question: If China builds the future of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Laos, then is their future Chinese?
Telecommunications and 5G is at the heart of this because connectivity can enable rapid upgrades in health and education via digital technology such as telehealth, whereby people in remote villages are able to consult with doctors and hospitals in more developed regions. For example, Huawei has retrofitted Thailand’s biggest and oldest hospital with 5G to communicate with villages in Thailand’s poor interior — the sort of places a new Chinese high-speed train line could potentially provide links with the outside world — offering Thai villagers without the ability to travel into town the opportunity to get medical treatments and consultations remotely.
The IMF has proposed that Asia’s developing belt “should prioritize reforms that boost innovation and digitalization while accelerating the green energy transition,” but there is little detail about who exactly ought to be doing all of that building and connecting. In many cases and places, it’s Chinese infrastructure and companies like Huawei that are enabling Thai villagers to live as they do in Guizhou.
Chinese Style Modernization?
The People’s Republic of China is “infinitely stronger than the Soviet Union ever was,” the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, told Politico in April. This prowess “is based on the extraordinary strength of the Chinese economy — its science and technology research base, its innovative capacity and its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific to be the dominant power in the future.” This increasingly feels more like the official position of the U.S. government than a random comment.
Ten years ago, Xi Jinping proposed the notion of a “maritime Silk Road” to the Indonesian Parliament. Today, Indonesia is building an entirely new capital — Nusantara — for which China is providing “smart city” technologies. Indonesia has a complex history with ethnic Chinese merchants, who played an intermediary role between Indigenous people and Western colonists in the 19th century and have been seen as CCP proxies for the past half century or so. But the country is nevertheless moving decisively towards China’s pole, adopting Chinese developmental rhythms and using Chinese technology and infrastructure to unlock the door to the future. “The internet, roads, ports, logistics — most of these were built by Chinese companies,” observed a local scholar.
The months since the 20th Communist Party Congress have seen the introduction of what Chinese diplomats call “Chinese-style modernization,” a clunky slogan that can evoke the worst and most boring agitprop of the Soviet era. But the concept just means exporting Chinese bones to other social bodies around the world.
If every apartment decorated with IKEA furniture looks the same, prepare for every city in booming Asia to start looking like Shenzhen. If you like clean streets, bullet trains, public safety and fast Wi-Fi, this may not be a bad thing.
Chinese trade with Southeast Asia is roughly double that between China and the U.S., and Chinese technology infrastructure is spreading out from places like the “Huawei University” at Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology, which plans to train 100,000 telecom engineers in the next five years. We’re about to see a generation of “barefoot doctors” throughout Southeast Asia traveling by moped across landscapes of underdevelopment connected to hubs of medical data built by Chinese companies with Chinese technology.
In 1955, the year of the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, the non-aligned world was almost entirely poor, cut off from the means of production in a world where nearly 50% of GDP globally was in the U.S. Today, the logic of that landmark conference is alive today in Chinese informal networks across the Global South, with the key difference that China can now offer these countries the possibility of building their own future without talking to anyone from the Global North.
Welcome to the Sinosphere, where the tides of Chinese development lap over its borders into the remote forests of tropical Asia, and beyond.
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Very Rare Half-Shekel Coin From Year Three of the Great Revolt Discovered
Recent excavations by archaeologists from the Hebrew University in the Ophel area south of the Temple Mount uncovered the remains of a monumental public building from the Second Temple period that was destroyed in 70 CE.
Numerous Jewish coins, the majority of which were bronze, from the Great Revolt (66-70 CE) were discovered in the destruction layer. This collection also contained a particularly uncommon and rare discovery: a silver coin with a half-shekel denomination that dates to around 69/70 CE.
The Great Revolt was the first of several uprisings against the Roman Empire by the Jewish population of Judea.
The revolt was in response to the Romans’ increasing religious tensions and high taxation, which resulted in the looting of the Second Temple and the arrest of senior Jewish political and religious figures. A large-scale rebellion overran the Roman garrison in Judea, forcing the pro-Roman King Herod Agrippa II to abandon Jerusalem.
A coin discovered in the ruins of a Second Temple-era building was most likely used to pay an annual tax for worship at the site; most coins of this type are bronze.
The dig was carried out by a team from the Hebrew University, led by Prof. Uzi Leibner of the Institute of Archaeology, in partnership with the Herbert W. Armstrong College in Edmond, Oklahoma, and with the support of the East Jerusalem Development Company, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The rare coin was cleaned at the conservation laboratory of the Institute of Archaeology and identified by Dr. Yoav Farhi, the team’s numismatic expert and curator of the Kadman Numismatic Pavilion at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.
“This is the third coin of this type found in excavations in Jerusalem, and one of the few ever found in archeological excavations,” said the researchers.
During the Great Revolt against Rome, the Jews in Jerusalem minted bronze and silver coins. Most of the silver coins featured a goblet on one side, with ancient Hebrew script above it noting the year of the Revolt. Depending on its denomination, the coins also included an inscription around the border noting either, “Israel Shekel,” “Half-Shekel,” or “Quarter-Shekel.” The other side of these coins showcased a branch with three pomegranates, surrounded by an inscription in ancient Hebrew script, “Holy Jerusalem.”
Throughout the Roman era the authority to produce silver coins was reserved solely for the emperor. During the Revolt, the minting of coins, especially those made of silver, was a political statement and an expression of national liberation from Roman rule by the Jewish rebels. Indeed, throughout the Roman period leading up to the Great Revolt, no silver coins were minted by Jews, not even during the rule of King Herod the Great.
According to the researchers, half-shekel coins (which had an average weight of 7 grams) were also used to pay the “half-shekel” tax to the Temple, contributed annually by every Jewish adult male to help cover the costs of worship.
Dr. Farhi explained, “Until the revolt, it was customary to pay the half-shekel tax using good-quality silver coins minted in Tyre in Lebanon, known as ‘Tyrean shekels’ or ‘Tyrean half-shekels.’ These coins held the image of Herakles-Melqart, the principal deity of Tyre, and on the reverse they featured an eagle surrounded by a Greek inscription, ‘Tyre the holy and city of refuge.’ Thus, the silver coins produced by the rebels were intended to also serve as a replacement for the Tyrean coins, by using more appropriate inscriptions and replacing images (forbidden by the Second Commandment) with symbols. The silver coins from the Great Revolt were the first and the last in ancient times to bear the title ‘shekel.’ The next time this name was used was in 1980, on Israeli Shekel coins produced by the Bank of Israel.”
The precious silver coins are thought to have been minted inside the Temple complex, according to a Monday statement from the Armstrong Institute.
#Very Rare Half-Shekel Coin From Year Three of the Great Revolt Discovered#temple mount#Great Revolt against Rome#coins#silver coins#collectable coins#ancient coins#ancient artifacts#archeology#archeolgst#history#history news#ancient history#ancient culture#ancient civilizations#roman history#roman empire#ancient israel
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August 4, 2023 Restoration work on the Battleship Texas
"I am 'declassifying' Hunter Miertschin's 'Top Secret' picture from a few weeks ago.
Atlantic Theater Map Declassified
On behalf of our crew, our colleagues at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's (TPWD) Cultural Resources branch, and OnAim Conservation, I am pleased to announce that the stabilization, conservation, and partial restoration of the Atlantic Theater Map in the Captain's Cabin is complete!
This map of the WWII Atlantic Theater was painted on a bulkhead in the Captain's Cabin after September 1944 (based on references in the map). It shows the ports of call Texas made during WWII (white dots with anchors in them), where she performed shore bombardment (noted by little explosions), national capitals (yellow triangles), and a few surprise discoveries as the map was conserved.
The 1966 newspaper photo of Chief McKeown, with the map in the background. This is the only known photograph of the map prior to it being painted over.
Sometime after 1966 (which is when the only known historic photo of the map was taken), the map along with the rest of the Captain's Cabin was painted white. That act was not great, but not terrible either. What was truly terrible is a window was cut into the bulkhead right in the middle of the map sometime in the late 1970s, after the map and compartment were painted white. We believe that because the map had been painted over and the loss of institutional knowledge of the map, those who made that decision did not know it was there.
Fast forward to around 2000 when the map beings to reveal itself as the white paint begins to flake off and the map is rediscovered during the planning for the Captain's Cabin restoration. When the Captain's Cabin was restored, the window was welded up and the map was partially uncovered exposing the Mediterranean and most of Europe. In 2009, I discovered the 1966 picture of Chief McKeown with the map in the background, which spurred a lot of excitement about what possibly survived. However, due to budgetary constraints we were not able to perform any real conservation treatments to the map.
This is the map in 2002. You can see Italy, Southern France, and the Mediterranean emerging. At left you can see the frame of the infamous window.
The map sat partially uncovered and untouched until last summer. In partnership with TPWD Cultural Resources we hired OnAim Conservation to stabilize the remaining paint on the bulkhead, just prior to the tow to Galveston. This initial step preserved what remained and protected it from any vibrations from the tow and/or shipyard work. It also set the stage for uncovering the rest of the map and recreating the missing sections.
This is the map in 2011. During the 2002-2003 Captain's Cabin restoration, it was partially uncovered. But work stopped out of fear of damaging the map further.
All through July 2023, the incredibly talented husband and wife team of Zak Miano and Ariane Roesch (who own OnAim Conservation), with the expertise and hard work of artist and conservator Bob Pringle, performed the tedious work of uncovering the map by removing the remaining white paint, revealing that much more of the map survived than anyone thought. They also discovered that whoever painted the map, had painted the State of Texas in Africa in burnt orange!
This is the map as it appears today. The gloss is from Damar varnish that was used by OnAim to protect the paint and bad lighting.
Europe afte the remaining remnants of white overpaint was removed and the the destroyed sections of Spain and North Africa were recreated. You can see the explosions where the ship did shore bombardment at N. Africa, Normandy, and Southern France.
We made the decision to use French Morocco as Morocco was a 'protectorate' of France and French Morroco showed on a lot of 1940s maps.
Once the map was uncovered, OnAim added Kati Ozanic-Lemberger to the team to recreate the destroyed section and features of the map. In consultation with TPWD Cultural Resources, it was a unanimous decision to touch up the paint of the surviving sections of the map, fill in and blend in missing areas within surviving sections, and recreate the large missing sections. We made this decision for two main reasons, 1) it would preserve the existing map longer 2) it would allow us to tell the story of what happened to this map. The artistry of OnAim is phenomenal in how they blended the recreated areas of the map with the original, infilled and blended missing patches, and emphasized the surviving features that were being last. The map blew me away, but the skill of these folks was just as impressive.
The big surprise: TEXAS!
The Eastern seaboard of N. America, with all of Texas's Dec 7, 1941 to September 1944 ports of call. Another discovery OnAim made was the remnants of 'North'. THis do not show in the 1966 photo, Referencing period maps, we opted to infill the missing sections of 'North' and create 'North Atlantic Ocean'. As that seemed the most logical as to what was there -there was no 'South'. Because this was largely on the destroyed section we would not be harming the original map.
The faded areas are what survived of 'North'. The more solid and brighter blue is what was infilled. Same with the gray for the oceans.
I also want to add that Ariane, Kati, Bob, and Zach were working directly under the work going on the Signal Bridge. They performed their magic while having to deal with the sounds of needle guns, grinders, hammers, et al, right above their heads and occasionally getting smoked out from welding and cutting smoke that would get sucked into Captain's Cabin. How they kept steady hands and focus amid the normal cacophony of a shipyard environment is astounding.
Custom matching and blending colors
The detail work....
Bob and Katie recreating the destroyed section of the map.
The on OnAm team: Kati, Ariane, Zak, and Bob
As to the future of the map, we plan to have it on exhibit in the Captain's Cabin shortly after we reopen and are planning to incorporate it into an AR experience."
Posted by Travis Davis on the Battleship Texas Foundation Group Facebook page: link
#Battleship Texas#Battleship Texas Foundation#Update#USS Texas (BB-35)#USS Texas#New York Class#Dreadnought#Battleship#Warship#Ship#Texas#Repairs#Restoration
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Peter Montgomery at RWW:
As the aggressive Christian nationalism that infuses the MAGA movement and Republican Party intensifies, journalists and filmmakers are paying closer attention to the threat this political ideology and its adherents pose to freedom in America. A must-watch new documentary, “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy,” will be available for streaming on AppleTV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play beginning Friday, April 26.
Directed by Stephen Ujlaki and Christopher Jacob Jones and narrated by Peter Coyote, “Bad Faith” makes masterful use of archival and current footage of Christian nationalist religious and political figures, infographics, and interviews with scholars, religious leaders, political analysts, and even a former Trump administration official.
The film draws a compelling through line from the scheming power-building of Paul Weyrich, the right-wing operative who recruited Jerry Falwell and other evangelical preachers to create the religious-right as a political movement in the late 1970s, to the institution-destroying antidemocratic ambitions of MAGA insiders like Steve Bannon, as well as Donald Trump’s dominionist “prophets” and “apostles�� and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists they inspired.
[...]
“Bad Faith” explains how that transformation happened, documenting the role played by the Council for National Policy, a partnership between anti-regulation, economically libertarian oil barons and the religious-right leaders who intended to remake the Republican Party, take over the Supreme Court, and use their political power to enforce “traditional” views of family, sexuality, and gender on the rest of the nation.
The Koch brothers poured tens of millions of dollars into “a state-of-the-art political data platform” that Council for National Policy groups use to collect personal information—including personal mental health, behavioral health, and treatment data—and use that information to micro-target individuals. (In “God & Country,” another documentary released earlier this year, Ralph Reed is shown bragging that his organization tracked “147 different data points” on the conservative Christians they targeted for turnout operations.)
[...]
As “Bad Faith” makes clear, religious-right leaders viewed Trump as a powerful blunt weapon in a long-term political and spiritual war against the federal government and institutions dominated by progressive forces. “The Council’s gambit had paid off,” the film notes about Trump’s time in office. “Christian nationalists were firmly embedded at the highest levels of government. The Supreme Court had an absolute majority of justices poised to overturn landmark civil and women’s rights decisions. Paul Weyrich’s vision of a Christian nation was becoming a reality.”
That explains why Christian nationalist leaders were willing to dismantle democracy to keep Trump in power. Members of the Council for National Policy and its political action arm went into “full combat mode” to promote Trump’s big lie, and, as Right Wing Watch documented, they supported his efforts to keep power after the 2020 election, portraying it as a holy war between the forces of good and evil. As Samuel Perry notes in the film, viewing politics as spiritual warfare between the forces of God and Satan makes it easy for those who see themselves on God’s side to “justify just about anything.”
The Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy documentary comes out today on streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play today. Bad Faith focuses on the history of Christian Nationalism and its very real threat to democracy.
#Christian Nationalism#Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy#Film#Movies#Evangelical Christianity#Dominionism#Paul Weyrich#Jerry Falwell#Stephen Bannon#Koch Brothers#Council For National Policy
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Kyle Rittenhouse, the rifle-wielding teenager who shot two unarmed racial justice protesters to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin, two years ago, met with members of the GOP Second Amendment House caucus on Thursday.
Rittenhouse, found not guilty of homicide charges last year for killings his lawyers argued were self-defense, met with members of the pro-gun caucus at a gathering at the Conservative Partnership Institute office near the Capitol.
Rittenhouse repeated his self-serving defense and held a question-and-answer session, The Hill reported. He has been hailed as a right-wing celebrity since the killings.
The caucus is chaired by Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Rittenhouse posed for a photo with both of them, and with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
He also posed for a wild Twitter photo in front of the Capitol, writing: “T- 5 years until I can call this place my office?” Given Twitter’s meltdown, it was unclear whether it was an actual message, though his profile did have a “verified” blue check.
“It was an honor to have Kyle join the Second Amendment Caucus,” Boebert, whose close election appears headed for a recount, told The Hill in a statement. “He is a powerful example of why we must never give an inch on our Second Amendment rights, and his perseverance and love for our country was an inspiration.”
Rittenhouse was charged after he killed two unarmed protesters following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The shooter, then 17, used an assault-style rifle purchased by a friend to fatally shoot Joseph Rosenbaum, who had run after him for an unknown reason, and Anthony Huber, who attempted to use his skateboard to strike Rittenhouse’s rifle out of his hands.
Rittenhouse also injured Gaige Grosskreutz, who was holding a pistol the night of the protests.
#us politics#news#twitter#tweet#2022#republicans#conservatives#gop#Second Amendment Caucus#Conservative Partnership Institute#us capitol#the hill#rep. lauren boebert#rep. tom massie#rep. marjorie taylor greene#kyle rittenhouse#ron filipkowski#alt right#vigilantism#us house of representatives
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Dave Granlund
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
April 10, 2024 (Wednesday)
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
APR 11, 2024
Prime minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and his wife, Yuko Kishida, are in Washington, D.C., tonight at a state dinner hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. The dinner is part of a state visit, the fifth for this administration.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have worked to strengthen ties to countries in the Indo-Pacific to weaken the dominance of China in the region, and Japan is the key nation in that partnership. “We celebrate the flourishing friendship between the United States and Japan,” Dr. Biden said Tuesday. “Our nations are partners in building a world where we choose creation over destruction, peace over bloodshed, and democracy over autocracy.”
During talks today, Biden and Kishida committed to strengthening the defense and security frameworks of the two countries so they can work together effectively, especially in a crisis. The new frameworks include intelligence sharing, defense production, satellite cooperation, pilot training, cybersecurity, humanitarian assistance, and technological cooperation. Affirming the ties of science and education between the countries, the leaders announced that two Japanese astronauts would join future American missions and, Biden said, “one will become the first non-American ever to land on the moon.”
That cooperation both takes advantage of and builds on economic ties between the two countries. In a press conference with Kishida on Wednesday, Biden noted that Japan is the top foreign investor in the U.S., and the U.S. is the top foreign investor in Japan. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have announced investments of $2.9 billion, $1 billion, and $15 billion respectively in Japan over the next several years, largely in computer and digital advances. Japanese corporations Daiichi Sankyo, Toyota, Honda Aircraft, Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Mitsui E&S, and Fujifilm announced investments in the U.S., primarily in manufacturing.
In a press conference, Kishida told reporters that “[t]he international community stands at a historical turning point. In order for Japan, the U.S., the Indo-Pacific region, and, for that matter, the whole world to enjoy peace, stability, and prosperity lasting into the future, we must resolutely defend and further solidify a free and open international order based on the rule of law.”
“This is the most significant upgrade in our alliance…since it was first established,” Biden said. While he noted that lines of communication with China remain open—he spoke with Chinese president Xi Jinping last week—the strengthening of ties to Japan comes in part from concern about the Chinese threat to Taiwan, a self-ruled island that the Chinese government considers its own. Leaders are increasingly concerned that the Republicans’ refusal to fund Ukraine has emboldened not only Russia but also China.
Tomorrow, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., of the Philippines will join Biden in a bilateral meeting before Marcos, Biden, and Kishida join in the first trilateral meeting of the three. Kishida will also address a joint session of Congress.
Kenneth Weinstein of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, suggested today that Japan “has quietly become America’s most important ally,” “playing a central role in meeting our nation’s principal strategic challenge: the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China, especially the defense of Taiwan.” Weinstein also notes that Japan’s longstanding engagement in Southeast Asia means it has “forged relations of deep trust” there among countries that often eye the U.S. with deep distrust.
Outside of news about the Japanese prime minister’s visit, U.S. news today was consumed by reactions to yesterday’s decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to permit the enforcement of an 1864 law that is currently interpreted as a ban on all abortions except to save the mother’s life.
President Biden issued a statement condemning the “extreme and dangerous abortion ban,” calling it “a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.”
“Vice President Harris and I stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose,” he continued. “We will continue to fight to protect reproductive rights and call on Congress to pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade for women in every state.”
Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Tucson, Arizona, on Friday to respond to the ruling. According to Hans Nichols of Axios, she had been planning to travel to Arizona anyway but quickly shifted her visit to make it a campaign trip, allowing her to comment more freely on Trump and the Republicans who were responsible for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the imposition of abortion bans since.
Harris has been out front on the issue of reproductive rights, meeting more than 50 times with groups in at least 16 states since the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the right to abortion. This year, on the January 22 anniversary of the Roe decision, she announced a “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour.
“Extremists across our country continue to wage a full-on attack against hard-won, hard-fought freedoms as they push their radical policies,” she said. “I will continue to fight for our fundamental freedoms while bringing together those throughout America who agree that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body—not the government.”
Yesterday illustrated what the overturning of Roe v. Wade has wrought. The Republicans who were celebrating that overturning two years ago are now facing an extraordinary backlash, and they are well aware that Arizona is a key state in the 2024 presidential election. Former president Trump has boasted repeatedly that he was responsible for nominating the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, supported a national abortion ban, and even called for women who get an abortion to be punished.
But today he swung around again, telling reporters that he would not sign a national abortion ban if it came to his desk. To be sure, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t sign such a bill, but the fact he is denying that he would and is running away from the issue shows just how much it hurts the Republicans with voters.
Harris’s trip, along with Biden’s constant travel, shows a willingness to crisscross the country to meet voters that dovetails with new statistics out about the Biden-Harris campaign. While Trump has largely stayed at Mar-a-Lago, has fewer than five staffers in each of the battlefield states, and has closed all the offices that made up the Republican National Committee’s minority outreach program, the Biden-Harris campaign has 300 paid staffers in 9 states, and 100 offices in regions crucial to the 2024 election.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Heather Cox Richardson#Letters From An American#national security#election 2024#Japan#Dave Grandlund#China#Taiwan
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized Ukrainian society in many unexpected ways, but perhaps one of the most remarkable is how it has advanced the rights of LGBTQ people.
On Tuesday, in a move that would have been nearly unthinkable a year ago, a Ukrainian lawmaker introduced legislation in the country’s parliament that would give partnership rights to same-sex couples. This legislation, along with a prohibition against anti-LGBTQ hate speech abruptly adopted in December, reflects a sharp rejection of Russia’s effort to weaponize homophobia in support of its invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that he attacked Ukraine last year partly to protect “traditional values” against the West’s “false values” that are “contrary to human nature” — code for LGBTQ people. Perhaps he hoped this would rally conservative Ukrainians to Russia’s side — it’s a tactic Kremlin allies have tried repeatedly over the past decade. But this time, it instead appears to be convincing a growing number of Ukrainians to support equality and reject the values Putin espouses.
--
Recent History
I could not have imagined the LGBTQ movement building such momentum when I first visited Ukraine as a reporter in 2013. Ukraine was then on the verge of consummating its long-negotiated “association agreement” with the European Union, a step Russian President Vladimir Putin bitterly opposed. As the deadline to sign the agreement approached, an oligarch close to Putin funded a campaign with billboards reading, “Association with EU means same-sex marriage.” Anti-EU protesters dubbed the EU “Gayropa.”
This effort failed to dissuade Ukrainians from a European path...
But the past decade has also seen Ukrainians standing firm in their commitment to democracy, and a growing understanding that this includes protections for fundamental rights.
There was an explosion of organizing by LGBTQ people in the years that followed the Revolution of Dignity, and some slow advances were made. But it’s been the stories of queer Ukrainians fighting and dying in the war with Russia that have truly helped other Ukrainians to see them as full citizens.
Pictured: Territorial Defense member Romanova shows a unicorn insignia, a mythical creature that has become a symbol of the LGBTQ community. This patch, which depicts a "valiant" unicorn breathing fire, has become the unofficial symbol of Ukraine's LGBTQ+ military.
Today
Ukraine’s current LGBTQ rights debate is unprecedented; never before has a country under siege had such visibly out soldiers who have so few formal rights under their own country’s laws. LGBTQ rights supporters have successfully framed the question on same-sex partnership as whether Ukraine will recognize LGBTQ people as equal citizens, which has become the norm throughout much of the European Union, as well as North and South America. They are successfully flipping the proposition that, as one Ukrainian politician once infamously put it, that “a gay cannot be a patriot.” ...
“I actually think that the Russians did a good job in terms of raising awareness and changing attitudes towards the LGBT community in Ukraine,” Sovsun told me in an interview. “The more Russia insists on [homophobia] being a part of their state policy, the more rejection of this policy [there] is from inside Ukraine.”
The aspiration of many Ukrainians to join the European Union has also helped move more Ukrainians to become supportive of queer peoples’ rights, as Ukraine attempts to define itself as a European democracy in contrast to Russian autocracy. A study conducted last May by the Ukrainian LGBTQ organization “Nash Svit” and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found nearly 64 percent of Ukrainians said queer people should have equal rights. Even among respondents who said they had a “negative” view of LGBTQ people, nearly half said they still supported equal rights.
The current push for same-sex partnership rights began with a school teacher from Zaporizhzha named Anastasia Andriivna Sovenko. In June, Sovenko registered a petition with Ukraine’s government demanding same-sex couples be granted partnership rights. It said simply, “At this time, every day can be the last. Let people of the same sex get the opportunity to start a family and have an official document to prove it. They need the same rights as traditional couples.”
Sovenko said she was inspired to file the petition after reading a story about different-sex couples getting married before one partner went off to war. It felt unfair to her that queer people couldn’t take the same step to protect their rights. Signatures quickly poured in, stunning even Sovenko herself...
Under Ukrainian law, the president is required to formally respond to any petition that gets 25,000 signatures, and the partnership petition quickly cleared that threshold. But in a sign that the politics of the issue remains complicated, Zelenskyy ruled out full marriage rights in his response, arguing that this required a constitutional change that could not be carried out under the rules of martial law. Instead, [Zelensky] punted to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, to examine the creation of civil unions. His language implied support, but he stopped short of using presidential powers to make it a reality.
“Every citizen is an inseparable part of civil society, he is entitled to all the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in the referral."
-via Politico, 3/7/23
Notes:
While the fight is still ongoing, I can't underlie enough how massive this shift in public opinion is. Russia and Ukraine have generally been incredibly unsafe places to be LGBTQ, including in very recent history. This is huge, and it sounds like it will only get bigger.
This could also help bring about a wider sea change throughout Eastern Europe, which in general has a very pervasive culture of homophobia, often tied in with both religious conservatism and ethno-nationalistic conflict, though thankfully things have been improving significantly over the last decade.
#ukraine#ukraine war#putin#russia#homophobia#lgbtq rights#same-sex marriage#eastern europe#civil unions#volodymyr zelenskyy#good news#hope
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United Nation, it seems like I have to remind you once again about the 17 goals you outlined to attain sustainable development from 2015-2030.
1.) End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
2.) End hunger, achieve food security, and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
3.) ENSURE HEALTHY LIVES AND PROMOTE WELL-BEING FOR ALL AT ALL AGES.
4.) Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
5.) Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6.) Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
7.) Ensure access to affordable, realiable and sustainable and modern energy for all.
8.) Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
9.) Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
10.) REDUCE INEQUALITY WITHIN AND AMONG COUNTRIES.
11.) MAKE CITIES AND HUMAN SETTLEMENTS INCLUSIVE SAFE, RESILIENT AND SUSTAINABLE.
12.) Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
13.) Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
14.) Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
15.) Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
16.) PROVIDE PEACEFUL AND INCLUSIVE SOCIETIES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, PROVIDE ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR ALL and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
17.) Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
So the highlighted goals were only applicable to other countries such as Ukraine but not Palestine? No, nevermind comparing countries with countries, who the fuck cares, ALL WE WANT IS FOR THOSE PEOPLE ESPECIALLY THE ELDERS AND CHILDREN TO BE SAFE AND AWAY FROM HARM, WHY THE HELL DO YOU JUST SIT THERE WHILE THOSE CHILDREN DIE FROM BOMBS SENT BY ISRAEL?
There are so many videos released online. Some of the UN members are just stupid, stupid enough to let Israel do what they want despite the evidence shown in front of them. We don't actually care about your internal conflicts, hamas, zionists, whatsoever, JUST LET THE PEOPLE BE SAFE.
LEAVE PALESTINE ALONE. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE TREATED LIKE THIS. NO ONE.
#free palestine#free gaza#gaza#genocide#reality#thought#humanity#israel#people#WeStandWithHumanity#LeavePalestineAlone
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Uline's billions fund voter suppression
Every billionaire is a policy failure, but every billionaire is also a factory for producing policy failures at scale. The political power conferred by massive wealth accumulation makes a sham of democracy, because “one person, one vote” is easily swamped by “one dollar, one vote.”
That’s why we need to abolish all billionaires, even the “good” ones who promise to support charities or causes we support. But today, I want to focus on some extremely bad billionaires, Dick and Liz Uihlein, owners of the packing-supply monopoly Uline.
The Uihleins are a multi-generational far-right clan of wealthy conspiracy peddlers. The family money starts with the founding of the Schlitz Brewery (and you thought Coors was the only fascist beer!).
The Schlitz fortune let Edgar J. Uihlein pour money into Charles Lindbergh’s America First movement, an antisemitic, pro-Nazi isolationist group that was part of a wider anti-Jewish movement that Lindbergh helped found, whose projects included translated and disseminating an English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax document purporting to reveal a conspiracy of Jewish bankers to take over the world.
Edgar Uihlein Jr — father of Dick — was a major funder of the John Birch Society, another conspiratorial far-right authoritarian group, who campaigned against secret communists, water fluoridation and civil rights. Edgar lavished funding on pro-segregationists.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Today on Propublica, Justin Elliott, Megan O’Matz and Doris Burke document the vast and shadowy support that Dick and Liz Uihlein provide to far-right causes, using the windfall profits from Uline, whose sales have ballooned along with the rise of ecommerce:
https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial
Back in 2002, Uline was pulling in $18m/year. By 2018, it was $712m. The pandemic goosed Uline’s sales still further. The Uihleins did their best to prolong the pandemic, putting money into local school-board races to oust trustees who advocated for covid safety measures:
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2021/10/27/uilhlein-bankrolls-mequon-thiensville-recall/
They also campaigned against workplace shutdowns, and turned their own facilities into super-spreader sites where employees sickened at shockingly high rates:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/28/uline-dick-liz-uihlein-workers-covid-safety
That’s just a small corner of the Uihleins’ contributions to culture war bullshit in public schools. They’re also big donors to the American Principles Project and its anti “transgender ideology” attack ads, which also target abortion and “critical race theory.”
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/07/19/uline-chairman-funnels-2-5-million-to-anti-abortion-pacs/
There’s no anti-abortion candidate too extreme for the Uihlines. They spent $50m to support Darren Bailey’s bid for the governorship of Illinois. Bailey says that the Holocaust “doesn’t even compare” to abortion” (and Bailey also condemns “perversion in our schools” in the form of curriculum that acknowledges the existence of queer people).
Dick and Liz named their foundation after Dick’s father. The Ed Uihlein Family Foundation sends tens of millions to the architects of anti-democractic, anti-majoritarian, pro-voter-suppression organizations, including the Federalst Society, the Conservative Partnership Institute and the Foundation for Government Accountability:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-filings-reveal-another-billionaire-dick-uihlein-behind-the-big-lie
The Uihleins play an inside/outside game, funding “think tanks” and other outside/astroturf groups, and also backing election campaigns directly. They’re the GOP’s largest federal donors. They’ve backed campaigns Jim Marchant, who is running for Nevada Secretary of State on a Big Lie platform that denies the 2020 election. They’re also backing the PA gubernatorial bid of Doug Mastriano, the Jan 6 insurrection participant who is associated with notorious antisemites:
https://whyy.org/articles/pa-2022-governor-elections-mastriano-jewish-democrats-press-conference/
The Uihleins epitomize the idea that rich people are born to be in charge of the rest of us, and that their wealth entitles — and even obliges — them to organize the lives of the people around them. They are workplpace tyrants, micromanaging bullies who force their employees to take down their kids’ drawings and ban women from wearing pants (they also ban corduroy!).
Employees who arrive for work one minute late are considered “tardy.” An employee may not display more than four personal items, and no item may be larger than 5x7 inches. “Liz would walk up and down the aisles, and if your desk looked off, you’d be written up.”
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23179330-uline-cubicle-dos-and-donts
The company hosts mandatory “lunch and learn” sessions for employees where they are required to endure speeches from Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and other far-right figures (the Uihleins once hired a Donald Trump impersonator as the warm-up act for one of these sessions).
The Uihleins are ideologues, but it’s a mistake to view their authoritarianism, antisemitism, racism, and homophobia as the main force of their ideology. First and foremost is their belief that they deserve to be rich, and that the rich should be in charge of everyone else.
That commitment to the one dollar, one vote system is the motivating factor behind everything else. The Uihleins fund voter suppression, sure, but that’s to weaken the power of the ballot box, which might otherwise check the power of oligarchs.
Oligarchs like the Uihleins say they believe the government is incapable of doing good, but it’s more true to say that they are committed to ensuring that the government can’t do good. They don’t want a small state — they want a captive one, one that will do their bidding.
In 2017, Donald Trump achieved the only significant policy victory of his presidency: a $2.3 trillion tax giveaway to the ultra-rich. Trump may have been in charge of the Executive Branch, but he lacked the executive function to get anything done. His plutocratic class solidarity overcame his poor impulse control for this issue alone.
The actual tax bill was an incredible mess. Lawmakers literally scribbled illegible hand-written amendments all over the 479-page bill, carving out tax breaks that sent millions to individual donors.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/02/handwriting-wall-and-page-senate-passes-tax-bill/915957001/
Two of the biggest beneficiaries of this corrupt bonanza were Dick and Liz Uihlein. Their pet senator, Ron Johnson, threatened to tank the entire tax bill unless he was given a clause that created deductions for “pass-through” entities. Johnson claimed this would “simplify and rationalize the tax code” for a wide range of businesses, but that was a lie.
In truth, only a very small number of businesses benefited from this, and right at the top of the beneficiaries were the Uihlnes, who donated $20m to Johnson’s campaign and got $215m back in the first year. Overall, they stand to make $500m from Johnson’s amendment:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory
The rich are a factory for producing policy failures, and the Uihlines operate one of the most efficient policy-failure factories in the world. Yes, they support causes that threaten to exterminate Black people, Jews and queers. Yes, they want to force women and children to give birth.
But most of all, they want to rule. They want to tell us all what we can wear and to dictate the maximum size of the keepsakes we post around our desks. They want to force us to attend their “learning sessions” and to watch their Trump impersonators and clownish politicians.
They derive this authority from being born rich, and from growing still richer. Having won the lucky orifice lottery and then leveraged the advantages of being born on third base, they get to impose their will on millions of others. They believe that some were born to rule, and the rest of us were born to be ruled over.
This is the core of the monopolist’s project — to deprive you of choices, so that you are cornered into doing the monopolist’s bidding. Not only do the Uihlines want to take away your vote, they also want to force you to fund it, by monopolizing the packing materials business, so that every time you ship a box, you support your own disenfranchisement.
https://marker.medium.com/we-should-not-endure-a-king-dfef34628153
[Image ID: A paper shredder that is shredding a document labelled 'official ballot'; the box is emblazoned with the Uline logo, as well as a VOTE HERE instruction and an 'I Voted' disc.]
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to be queer is to challenge systems, institutions, and limitations.
that's why it kills me when some queer people think the fight stops at same-sex marriage. polyam people still cannot fully reap benefits from the institution of marriage as it currently is. some disabled people literally cannot get married unless they want to lose benefits. and some people will simply never marry. instead of fighting for marriage rights, why can't we go a step further and aim to abolish the institution of marriage altogether? to abolish this part of the system means to get rid of the barriers to benefits that only marriage can offer. it means being able to visit an injured/sick friend at any hospital without being their spouse. it means that young adults escaping abusive households would not feel a need to get married in order to safeguard themselves against their families. it means restructuring the entire system to prioritize more people in an equitable manner.
one of our favorite people to mention in the aro community, Elizabeth Brake (who coined the term 'amatonormativity'), poses a model of 'minimal marriage' which is one of a few hypothetical alternatives to establishing a new system of 'marriage' that limits the power of the state in restricting marriage to monogamous, heterosexual couplings. in marriage abolition literature, there are suggestions for implementing a variation on civil unions or forms of partnerships based in state-recognized 'care-giving.'
this is all in opposition to conservative rhetoric that centers around a "proper" family and the sanctity of marriage. rather than trying to assimilate into an exclusionary system, we should consider asking ourselves why we should keep a system that does not need to exist for people to live fulfilling lives. there was a time where queer activists did not just clamor for the right to get married, but offered an intense scrutiny of marriage itself—a scrutiny we ought to sustain and entertain today.
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