Vampire Chronicles Book Review/Rant #5

Memnoch the Devil

Alright, this is gonna be long, this book is dense and Anne had me reading too many Wikipedia articles for context. 

I found a couple of news articles (here and here) discussing Anne’s Christianity, she allegedly became one in 1998 and “quit” in 2010 saying “It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.” I think it’s safe to say this book was her actively quarreling with her faith and belief system. 

(Side note, the last book left us with Louis, Lestat, and David going off to the jungles for adventures, and I was foolish enough to think we’d see that. Why does Anne hate Louis? He was your firstborn Anne! Lestat is the new favorite and David is becoming the second favorite)

So I think Lestat is Anne in this story, going through the journey from non-belief to belief. Lestat like Anne, was never religious, and he didn’t like his family’s fake/superficial faith. His atheism was further confirmed by Marius, who said he’s been around since before Jesus and saw Christianity as one of many cults over time. But now something has happened that forces Anne/Lestat to reconsider. 

At first, when Lestat talks to The Ordinary Man he doesn’t believe he’s Satan, but probably some supernatural being like himself. But then he also says doesn’t love God but hates him, like a lot of people do, because he allows atrocities to happen. (This reminded me of God’s Not Dead honestly, where the premise is that Tarzan is not an atheist at all but is actually mad at God).

Ok, let’s go. So, I like the sympathetic view of the devil, emphasizing his falling. He is a victim of God, hates evil, and doesn’t want to be evil. Memnoch is also behind so much of Christian and Hebrew lore, he’s the one who taught humans metallurgy and weaving (Book of Enoch), he’s the reason humans can get into Heaven, and he’s the reason God took the form of a human in Jesus. This story is both fun in a fanfic sort of way and satisfying in hitting these memorable beats in the Bible (like the temptation in the desert).

The book has a clever take on how God created the universe and set evolution into motion. I know some Christians do subscribe to this interpretation, including my own Catholic mother. It brings physics into Creation too, how energy becomes matter (we all know e=mc^2) because God willed it. Memnoch does a quick course on human evolution 101, from organic molecules on warm soupy ponds to fish stepping on land to warm-blooded mammals to humans as we know them now, and according to him, gaining souls, which is treated here as another step in evolution. This last part is something I haven’t heard from Christians before.

We have a crafty reconning of vampire lore and Christian lore, human souls are spirits, they explain ghosts, poltergeists, apparitions, possession, and most importantly, the spirits that witches can control and the spirit that went into Akasha and created vampires. Just when I think Anne is losing the plot, she brings it all together. I enjoyed this take that brings science, faith, and the paranormal together in a clean little explanation.

Now back to Memnoch, his whole reason for falling is that he thinks humans are special, they have souls and that makes us unique and separate from nature, which makes us holy and thus deserving of special treatment. It seems like many religions also see it that way, that humans are special and apart from the natural world, granting us both privileges and responsibilities. I can see that reasoning, and many humans over all of history have tried to prove that more scientifically, only humans use tools (wrong),  only humans prepare for the future (also wrong), or only humans love and grieve and plot revenge, that’s what sets us apart! But the more we study animals it seems like that’s also wrong. So why are we so determined to set ourselves apart? Lots to think about there. 

Now we get to Jesus, who has decided to die and be resurrected not because that’s what he thinks is cool and good, but because that will fit with the preexisting myths humans have about The Dying God (learn more at Crash Course: World Mythology). That sounds so blasphemous to me, but it’s a pretty juicy take.  

When Memnoch is tasked to find souls that are worthy of Heaven, he finds souls who are at peace with God. These souls aren’t mad at God for the pain and suffering in the world but are grateful to have had the chance to live at all. That’s pretty different from what I was taught would get you into heaven, the rules and beliefs that have to be followed. This feels blasphemous to me too, it seems too chill for Catholics to accept! 

Anyway, Memnoch gets a small percentage of souls up to Heaven, God accepts, everyone is happy, but NOT Memnoch, he wants every soul in Heaven! Even after Jesus’s sacrifice that allows more souls in, it’s not good enough. That’s when Memnoch is dammed to become Satan and rule Hell, his new job is to work on every soul, “tutor them for the Light” so that they can go to Heaven. That’s the job he’s so tired of. He’s also sick of God letting humans slaughter each other in his name and God not doing anything about it, which yeah, I’ve had that though and I’m sure many others have too.

God is painted as clumsy, and arrogant, doing things sporadically, sometimes even for reasons he doesn’t even know or understand, but Memonch argues that even with these “flaws” he’s still God and should be worshipped and glorified for the very fact of his creation. Lestat doesn’t buy it though, and that’s why he refuses to help Memnoch, that and the dying part. I wonder if that’s a struggle Anne was having.

And in the end, it’s left ambiguous as to whether that was really God and Satan or some other preternatural being that made illusions happen. Armand seemed pretty fucking convinced though. I’m not upset about this ambiguity, it’s more fun that way.

TLRD - The mixing of christian mythos with vampire mythos worked out better than expected and I had a fun time reading this! I never thought these vampire chronicles would lead to meating actual!Jesus and actual!Satan but it was a good romp.

Bonus: Chekhov's period blood. Chekhov’s popped-out eyeball. 

Favorites:

Lestat “I’ve been dumped in the swamps myself.” DEAD

Again: Mojo 💗 Kept by a random woman but Lestat visits to play 🥹

The description of heaven, a beautiful chaos of souls, natural elements, and architectural elements all sprouting from one another. It made me think of some of the visuals in Dr. Strange, the mirror dimension, with the city and buildings folding and sprouting from each other. 

Lestat drinking Jesus’s blood!!! WILD. But also not wild if you believe in transubstantiation, right? Christians all over the world drink Jesus’s blood and eat this flesh every Sunday.

Least Favorites:

OMFG all of Roger’s life story. I get that Lestat is making up games to make hunting more interesting, him seeing a victim’s ghost is novel and compelling. Between that, David’s story of the Paris cafe, and the Stalker, we got a good spooky start! But Roger collecting freaky books, wanting to start a cult, becoming a drug dealer, killing his baby momma, his televangelist daughter. . .it just went on and on. We already got his deal in the last chapter! I get the religious themes, but Anne, not everyone needs a 50-page background story.

I have to put the menstrual blood scene here. Just. . .Anne, I have questions. But also no I don’t. I wish to scrub my brain of it. 

Excuse me, Armand just decides to burn himself at dawn?!? 

Smutt:

Memnoch having sex with a stone age woman and cumming so hard that God Himself had to come down to Earth to yell at him about it. Absolutely bonkers. I loved it, no notes. 

I am NOT counting the menstrual blood scene. 

Nonsense Meter:

It’s gotta be a 10/10, but I have a feeling this scale will need to be reevaluated because things somehow get even more bonkers later. A vampire being solicited by Satan himself to help him out in Hell, that’s already a lot, you throw in angel sex, eye-ball mail, and time travel, it’s a lot. *Slaps book,* this baby can fit so much nonsense in it.

Misc:

Lestat (Ch. 9) “I don’t like myself, you know. I love myself, of course, I’m committed to myself till my dying day. But I don’t like myself.” My babygirl 😢

I’ve accepted that Louis is barely going to be around, but when he showed up at the end it was nice. ☺️

I read this book at the same time as I was watching Good Omens S2 and let me tell you these two bible fan fics were getting all scrambled in my brain and sometimes I couldn’t remember what was cannon for either. But also now I can name the choirs of angels, in case of emergency Christian trivia!

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I miei post migliori nel 2022:

#5

that post about bram stoker, oscar wilde and walt whitman + the fact that i finished the work due on tuesday for my thesis made me fall for the nth time down a rabbit hole of publications about queer literature.

i am now downloading a bunch of pdfs. thank u university credentials.

before i graduate i'm gonna download so many academic pdfs,

5 note - Postate 15 maggio 2022

#4

leclerc's race ended that way AND milan got the scudetto while inter could only watch

my father looking like he went to two funerals today

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#3

literally me and my 30k wip inspired by one (1) gif

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#2

words (memes?) of wisdom on twitter

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Il mio post numero 1 del 2022

having a bad thirty minutes rn

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The Catholic Answer to Teaching Conundrums

"How had I graduated from a credentialing and masters program without ever encountering this philosophy?" Claudia Rodriguez shares her journey to a philosophy of #teaching

I became a teacher because I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to teach in the toughest schools and be the next Jaime Escalante, relating to my students in a way that would inspire them to want to learn. I went to school and got certified. Once I had entered the world of education, I found myself teaching from a perspective of looking at the whole person. When creating my lessons, I took into…

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The Sinner -1

Hi, I just decided to write a series. Any issues please let me know! I’m no expert in this field so many things may be wrong and different from real-life even if I googled it a lot. Also the plot was written many years ago when I was in high school so it may have plot holes... Back then it has original characters, but I decided to mix it with Criminal Minds  

Criminal Minds BAU x Reader

I tried my best to write the reader gender neutral, but I’m not sure I’m succeeding it. The reader isn’t explicitly showed in part 1, and the reader’s partner is a male.

Warning: Explicit description of blood, death, mutilation etc.

Word Count: 2300-ish

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” – Oscar Wilde 

 The figure stood straight, watching people coming by. In the middle of night, where the moon watched them, the figure simulated the plan once again before starting everything.

1st Day 

“Where were you last night?” JJ asked Prentiss directly. 

 In the midst of working, Reid and Morgan perked their ears to hear the conversation between the women. They all went to a pub to relax last night, even Hotch tagged along with them. But not Prentiss. She decided to ditch them for something, and JJ was determined to find out because Prentiss promised she’d be there with them on that afternoon. 

 “I just wanted to rest?” The brunette looked JJ rather apologetically. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t go with you guys last night, but I really was tired.” Prentiss sighed deeply as the blonde gave her a pointed look. 

Before Prentiss could reply Hotch exited his office and told his team to meet at the conference room. The team leader watched the team bickering friendly and Garcia walked quickly with an iPad in her hands to the conference room. Then he knocked Rossi’s office and the men walked together to the conference room. 

Two photos of a dead woman and man showed on the screen. Garcia tried her best not to look at the horrible photos. Both of their eyes were closed, but the dried black blood told their eyes were gouged out with something. Their clothes were torn, and middle torsos were terribly mutilated. ‘Luxuria’ was written on their middle torsos. Their both hands were nearly blackened as if burned for a long time. 

 “Two bodies were found in Philadelphia, the first victim, the body of Erica Smith was found on 5th November and James Olson was found on 13th November. They were both prostitutes and their bodies were found at the secluded areas. They were never reported missing, because they were known to be gone from the radar for a month or so.” Garcia informed the team as they read through the report. “The PPD thinks this is done by a serial killer.” The team looked at each other, agreeing this unique signature may be a start of a new serial murders in the city. 

“The autopsy thinks Smith was killed around 31st October. But Olson’s body was found just after a day. So, 2 weeks of cooling off period.” Morgan tapped the screen of the iPad, sympathising how much the victims suffered before the UnSub finally ends their pain by killing them. 

“The UnSub will kill again soon,” Rossi leaned against the table. He’s been doing this job his whole lifetime, but looking at those victims always left him with grim feeling. 

“Let’s go,” Hotch nodded to the team. 

 They were heading to see the leading detective and the captain, while discussing about the murders. 

 “Luxuria has many meanings,” Reid started, “and ‘lust’ is one of the meanings. In Catholic, lust is listed on the Seven Deadly Sins and punished by fire and brimstone.” Reid explained nonchalantly, but his hand was rubbing the sobriety coin in his pocket unconsciously to ease anxiety. 

“That’s why the UnSub mutilated the victims’ genitals and hands with fire?” Prentiss scowled. “Another use of religion for their pleasure,” she muttered. 

Suddenly his time with Tobias Hankel flashed in his head and closed his eyes tightly, Reid stopped at the track. 

“You alright?” Prentiss asked with genuine concern. 

“Yeah, it’s alright.” Reid stuttered a bit, nodding to the older woman and the others who glanced back at him. Knowing he said ‘it’s alright’, not ‘I’m alright’. “It’s okay, really,” he said determinedly when he saw Morgan and JJ were about to say something. 

 As the team welcomed by a middle-aged man, several agents recognised the detective from a few years ago. The man aged, but he still had his sharp eyes of a professional detective. 

“Detective Santangelo,” Hotch greeted the detective. 

“Agent Hotchner,” he shook the agent’s firm hand. “Actually, it’s lieutenant now,” Santangelo gave the tall man a mild smile, though not sounding bragging about being promoted. 

“Congratulations, Lieutenant.” Hotch nodded in acknowledgement. “You’ve met Agents Jareau, Morgan, and Reid. These are SSA Rossi and Prentiss.” 

“No Agent Gideon?” Santangelo gave the BAU leader a surprised look. 

“He wanted to take a break.” Hotch replied shortly, not elaborating further, and the lieutenant nodded. 

“Captain was called out, so I’ll show the room.” 

The BAU entered a spacious room where everything was prepared for the team. The files related to the case were already stacked on the table neatly, the city map was pinned on the board and the white board standing tall beside the board. The team started to unpack their bags to prepare investigation. 

“Rossi and Prentiss, go to the first crime scene, Morgan and JJ, the second crime scene. Reid and I’ll go to M.E.” Hotch ordered his team. 

Before the team could exit the room, several knocks came from the outside. JJ opened the door where a tall, lean man standing at the doorway. 

“Hi, I’m Detective Leon Lee. I had to check on other case so I couldn’t welcome you guys,” the man smiled apologetically. “I’m leading the case for now.” He told the team and the team shook his hand. 

“You only have one guy assigned to this case?” Morgan asked curiously as he thought at least a couple of detectives would investigate the case. 

“Ah...” Lee’s face turned painful and the team knew what happened. They knew what the pain lingering in the detective’s eyes meant. Loss of a friend, teammate, and family. In this field the team and the partner are family. 

“Sorry for your loss,” JJ told the detective, the others giving him a knowing look with empathy. 

“No matter, he knew what he was doing was dangerous.” Lee sighed deeply, but soon smiled lightly. “If you need any help, just tell me. I heard you were great from the Lieutenant back then.” 

“Thank you, I’m sure we’ll need your help soon,” Hotch nodded. 

Rossi and Prentiss looked around the narrow alley, the alley was sure secluded. 

“I think it’s lucky it only took less than a week to find the body.” Prentiss sighed as she observed the blocked end. “I don’t think many will ever come here.” 

The small alley was in between two buildings, and no windows on the sides of both buildings. A large dumpster could barely fit in the narrow alley. 

“The UnSub knows the area very well.” Rossi observed the buildings. “A homeless found the body in a dumpster. He found the body because he saw her arm.” 

“He must have a good eye to spot the arm in the dark.” The female agent opened the dumpster with a gloved hand. The dumpster was new, the old one probably was taken to the forensic lab to examine. 

“There’s nothing,” Rossi said, “we should talk to the homeless. But, do we know where he is?” 

“We have his name, sure we can find him.” Prentiss rolled her eyes good heartedly towards her mentor and he chuckled. 

JJ and Morgan arrived at the second crime scene where the yellow police line was still intact, but no one was guarding it. 

“You think they forgot to remove it?” JJ asked her teammate. 

 “Maybe,” Morgan held the police line for JJ, “ladies first.” JJ laughed lightly as she shook her head. 

The second crime scene happened at the surprisingly clean alley. No single graffiti was drawn on the sides of the walls. 

“No light,” JJ looked around the alley, “it’s probably dark here at night.” 

“Kids found the body near the end of the alley,” Morgan walked where only clean site welcomed him. “The report says there were not much of blood.” 

“With that amount of torture, the UnSub may have a solitude life. Or has access to drugs and have knowledge of chemical to sedate the victims not to scream for help.” JJ frowned. “But why here? Unlike the first victim, the second victim was found the next day.” Morgan shrugged. 

“We don’t know that for now. Let’s go see the kids who found the body.” 

 When Hotch and Reid entered the cold M.E. lab, the examiner was talking on the phone. He didn’t notice the agents just entered his lab. 

“I don’t think Nick wants that,” the examiner sighed over the phone. Although he finally sensed the others’ presence, he held his hand to give him a minute and Hotch just nodded. “I have to go now, but just don’t do any hasty, okay? Everyone’s just worried about you.” The man shoved his phone in his pocket. “I’m sorry about that,” he said to the other two men while washing his hands before wearing plastic gloves. “I’m Tommy Bear, what can I do for you guys.” 

“I’m SSA Hotchner, and this is Doctor Reid. We’re from the FBI to investigate the two murders with a word carved on their bodies.” Hotch and Reid showed their FBI credentials. 

“Yes, that.” Dr. Bear opened the two morgues to reveal the victims. “You need to catch one hell of a guy, that’s for sure. I’ve worked here for sometimes, but never seen like this before.” He moved as Reid observed the bodies. “Their eyes were plucked out when they were still alive, just like when their genitals were burned. They were tortured horribly.” 

“What was the cause of their deaths?” Hotch asked. 

“Heart attack for the first victim, and blood loss for the second victim. Their cause of deaths is ultimately the same, however. They were tortured in a same manner, and I think their nails were pulled out first, then eyes, and burning their genitals.” 

“The burns are only on their genitals and hands?” Reid asked. 

“Yeah. Also, toxicology suggests they were drugged by chloroform before they died.” 

“The UnSub may have used the chemical to knock out the victims. But chloroform doesn’t knock out a person easily, why would the UnSub used that?” Reid asked Hotch. 

“Either the UnSub used that knowledge from media, or the UnSub wanted to be look like helping an intoxicated friend to avoid suspicion when abducting the victims. What about the word carved on their middle torso?” 

“I think the word is carved with a kitchen knife where you can see every day. It was carved post-mortem.”

“Using daily equipment, dumping bodies to not give hints, preying easy targets. The UnSub is prepared for forensic countermeasure.”

When the team finally met again at the conference room in the PD, the Sun was already set, and the Moon was shining over the city. 

“What do we know?” Hotch asked the team. 

“The UnSub knows the area very well, no local would know the first crime scene even exists.” Prentiss said as she leaned back. 

“The witness didn’t see anything when he found the body,” Rossi added. “He said he was searching through the garbage when he found the victim’s body under the piles of the bags.” 

“Rossi and I also went to other girls to ask about the Erica, but they didn’t know her very well. We could only get Erica was highly payed by her clients, and I quote, ‘she’s an expensive call-girl.’” 

“The second crime scene was also secluded, no light at night. But teenagers reported the body to the police, apparently some kids come to that alley to smoke. They thought no graffiti wouldn’t attract the authority but never thought a killer would dump a body there.” 

“So, the UnSub was trying to hide the body, but after it was found the UnSub didn’t even try to hide the second murder?” JJ said. 

“It’s possible the UnSub thinks it’s useless to hid the body after the first victim. But the UnSub may be was buying time between the first and second murders.” Hotch frowned. 

“Buying time might be right,” Reid interjected. “The UnSub wrote a message on the bodies.” The young man turned to the white board, a marker in his hand. 

“Luxuria.” Morgan said and Reid wrote the word on the white board. 

“Yes, it usually means ‘lust’ in Latin. The UnSub knew sooner or later the bodies would’ve been discovered. The UnSub’s motive can be anything right now, but the UnSub is telling us something. We need to find out what ‘lust’ means to this UnSub.” Reid circled ‘lust’ in red. “Their genitals were burned when they were still alive,” the team turned grim, “but their hands were burned after they were dead. As I said this afternoon, in Catholic lust is punished by fire eternally. Maybe the UnSub wanted to punish them for ‘lust’ and burned their hands after their deaths so they could still be burned in Hell.” 

“This may be done by a delusional person, thinking he is cleaning the world by punishing the sinners.” Morgan suggested. 

“Possibly, we know for sure the UnSub is omnivore,” Prentiss shrugged. “A black woman and a white man, only connection between the victims are they were prostitutes.” 

“Maybe Penelope has something,” JJ called the technical analyst via speaker phone. “You’re on speaker, Garcia.” 

“I thought all of you forgot about me!” Garcia whined over the phone. 

“Never, baby girl,” Morgan grinned. “Did you find anything that connects the victims?” 

“Nothing, nada, nuh-uh,” Garcia sighed. “They don’t use e-mails at all for their work, and their phone records are only to their closed families. And their closed families didn’t know the victims were working as prostitutes.” Feeling bad for the families who received the death of their loved ones. They were still shocked and never stopped crying when Garcia called them. 

“We need their clients’ details,” Hotch sighed. This reminded him the Megan Kane case, although Kane was posing as a prostitute to kill the clients. “Garcia, could you look for more tomorrow?” It was already late, Hotch looked at his watch. “Let’s wrap up for today. I’m sure everyone’s hungry too,” Hotch gathered the spread files. “Have some rest.” 

“I have a bad feeling about this case,” Rossi muttered. 

Plant, could you elaborate a bit more on Tessy’s background? I don’t follow her either, but know she’s seen as kind of a royal outcast or a joke, similar to Meghan I guess. Did she also come from a destitute, shoddy upbringing like Meghan? I know, I know, her father paid for private schools in LA; but it’s obvious that she had a very different upbringing than her classmates who came from actual wealthy, stable families. Meghan was always an outcast in that right.

Oh, boy. I didn’t follow her that closely. However, my understanding is that she came from a lower middle class family and went to a local community college (or the equivalent in Luxembourg). Then she joined the army and volunteered to be a UN peacekeeper in Kosovo. So she came from “humble” beginnings. Her family, however, didn’t seem dysfunctional like the Markles or ambitious like the Middletons. As far as I know (which isn’t very far, lol) they just wanted to be left alone. 

She had a nice love story because she met her husband in Kosovo. She was driving him around during his service there. He was 19 and she was a little older. It was like a Hallmark movie.

The big problem, however, was that she got knocked up right away. I don’t think anyone knew of the relationship until the pregnancy was announced. We all kind of went “wait, what?” when the palace announced that Louis was expecting a child. They were both teenagers, so the whole thing seemed...not good. The Dukes were Catholic (and I think Tessy’s family may have been Catholic too), so they put a good face on it and the baby was welcomed. However, it affected Tessy’s public image. She got branded a gold-digger early on.

https://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2006/03/16/princelouis/

They didn’t get married until a year after the baby was born, which also affected her image. I remember a lot of discussion about it with people saying they should have gotten married quietly before the baby was born and other people saying that of course she didn’t want a quiet wedding. Eyebrows were raised when she chose a sexy strapless dress for the wedding, but it was off-the-rack (I think Pronovias may be the equivalent to David’s Bridals) and it enhanced her “regular girl” credentials. 

http://orderofsplendor.blogspot.com/2011/09/wedding-wednesday-louis-and-tessys.html

Louis had to give up his place in the line of succession, but they both got titles. They settled down but Tessy didn’t seem to work very much. She did have kids and I think she studied for a while. I think she also did a small amount of UN work, not nearly as much as people expected. She also seemed prone to odd meltdowns during interviews and on social media. She would hint that she was unhappy.

She later revealed she had been sexually assaulted in Kosovo and she had a miscarriage and tons of family drama. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170414145803/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/princess-tessy-of-luxembourg-on-serving-in-a-warzone-and-being-a/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5912311/Tessy-Luxembourg-reveals-suffered-heartbreaking-miscarriage.html

https://www.independent.ie/style/celebrity/celebrity-news/my-brother-doesnt-speak-to-me-anymore-luxembourgs-princess-tessy-on-what-life-is-really-like-after-marrying-into-royalty-38028305.html

It also came out that Maria Teresa’s character is way stronger than anyone thought and living with her was likely harder than anyone imagined. Tessy probably had a hard time with her as well.

I dunno. I personally never warmed to Tessy. I thought she was cunning, trashy, and dramatic. Other royal watchers were more sympathetic. Maybe some of the anons have more insightful comments.

I don't know if you're the right person to tell this to but I think my mom's emotionally abusive. She gets mad whenever I get upset at her and gaslights me(probably??) whenever I call her out. I tried to tell her that she never apologized for hurting my feelings and she responded with, "I don't have to apologize to you" and it just made me feel worse. My family's Christian and all but I'm scared to tell the pastor(or anyone) because I don't want her to get mad at me. Do you have any advice?

I guess I’m a decent source for that, and I’ve got enough spoons today to answer this! 

I’ll be honest with you, a parent reacting with anger whenever you get upset with them is never a good sign. The “I don’t have to apologize to you” response is definitely emotionally abusive, especially if it’s not a reaction in a vacuum; anything as an isolated incident is understandable since we all make mistakes, but this doesn’t sound like a one-off thing. 

I had a couple of friends help me through being gaslit myself; here are a few articles on the topic, all of which are pretty brief:

Were You Born Under the Gaslight?

11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting

a resource post from r/RaisedByNarcissists

I’m not a psychologist in any capacity, but having been through it myself and having sat down and watched a film adaptation from where the term hails, here’s a sort of brief rundown of some things gaslighters will do to their victims:

making attempts to isolate you (from friends, from family members, etc; ex, excessive monitoring of your communications with friends to the point of taking your phone or computer so you can’t contact them, although this may be done subtly)

telling you that you have traits or attributes that do not feel or sound like things you do (ex, telling you that you are “forgetful” or “tend to lose things” even when you are not a forgetful person)

accusing you of lying, whether directly or indirectly (ex. asking, “what did you do with x thing?”, not believing you when you say you haven’t seen it; then when you find it, saying something to the effect of, “so you did know where it was”)

saying things with emotion and then denying there is any emotion behind their words (ex. if they say something to you in an angry way and when you say, “don’t be angry,” they say, “i’m not angry” and look at you like you’re crazy)

making you look bad in front of others (this can be making you look like a jerk, making you look inconsiderate, making you look foolish, like a buzzkill, etc.)

taking on a tone to imply that you are scaring them, even when you have not done or said anything out of the ordinary (if you’re thinking to yourself, “i didn’t even have any emotion behind this, i didn’t even sound angry” and they’re reacting like they’re afraid you’re going to hit you? that’s gaslighting)

whiplash mood swings and honeymooning - quickly going from being angry at you to putting on a convincing happy act in front of others; “honeymooning” is when, after a period of abuse, they start to act really nice and considerate towards you, making you think that they’ve changed, or maybe they do one really nice thing for you as a way to “make up” for their behavior (this never lasts, don’t buy it.)

turning themselves into the victim of every situation (guilt tripping you, especially in situations where you are telling them that they have hurt you. parents really love this one; it’s the “oh so i’m a horrible parent” comeback to any time you’ve ever said “this really hurt my feelings”)

infantalizing you (another parental favorite)

upsetting you in public, covertly, so that only you are aware of what they have said/done

threatening you with institutionalization

Another big one that I don’t think I mentioned here because it’s not one that came up in the film is outright denying that something ever happened. We tend to assume that’s something we’d be able to catch outright, but the truth of the matter is that their lies start out small and they do all of these things above & more for the sake of putting you off balance and confusing you so that by the time their lies get to the level of things you should be able to look at and say plainly, “that’s not true,” you’ve gotten to the point where you feel like you can’t trust your own memory or judgement of things. 

I’ll give a couple examples because the list of potential things they could lie about goes between fairly small stuff to extreme stuff:

my mother claimed once that she was never on her phone during dinner

my mother claiming she’d never seen movies that not only did i remember her commentary on, but i’m pretty sure one of them we actually saw in theatres

her claiming i’d never told her things that i most definitely had told her before

combined with that one: lying about the last time we’d had contact; right before i cut off all contact with her i was able to actually screenshot the dates and times of the last time we’d spoken and send them to her

lying about actual historical facts; in my mother’s case: refusing to acknowledge that ABA had, since its inception, used aversives and was abusive in practices, was the foundation of the conversion therapy movement. i sent her screenshot and link proofs of this as well and she did not appreciate it

she also claimed that she never threatened to kick me out of the house and claimed that i promised her i would start therapy before starting HRT - neither of which are accurate or even remotely believable (you really think i’d up and move w two weeks notice halfway across the country if i hadn’t been kicked out? i have to laugh.)

Another one that did not really get shown well in the film but that I believe i’ve read somewhere and have personal experience with, is that they like to keep you traumatized. It keeps you in a state of like... uncertainty, I guess you could say. It keeps you from feeling completely lucid or in control of things, and more likely to need help and depend on them for continued support. They may also be likely to mess with your head in other ways, like with the use of drugs - and I don’t just mean illegal ones; parents who have control over your medication and make sure you take it do have to potential to keep you up on medications you don’t actually need as a method of control. (Both of these can actually be seen in use in the film Midsommar w/ the suicide ritual being a method of continued trauma and the constant drug use being...obvious. I’m sure it gets used in other places too but that was the first one to come to mind, and Aster does a really good job of showing how effective that shit is.)

I don’t really know what other religions rules are like when it comes to confidentiality. I was raised Catholic, and there was a certain understanding about priests and ethics that pretty much went that unless you had a warrant (and on top of that, a damn good reason; iirc there have been plenty who don’t even testify under oath) they weren’t to tell anyone what you told them in confidence. If you know anything about their ethics regarding that or even feel that you can ask them safely about it, it could be a good place to start if you feel that church community is one where you feel safe. 

The biggest roadblock tbh is age and...idk how else to put this other than status? If you’re a minor there is, unfortunately, not a lot you can do to get away from her or get her to stop - especially if you’re in a situation where she’s really your only parent. Which is sort of what I meant by status; do you have another parent or step-parent, sibling, uncle, aunt, cousin, etc  you feel you could talk to about it? 

I really wish I could recommend school guidance counselors, but I’m not altogether sure they’re equipped with the right materials to help you out there. That being said, if you have a family member that you can trust to help you find a therapist outside of school, that would also be a really good resource; whether you’re an adult still living within that contact or a minor who can’t get away at the moment, a therapist can help you come up with some coping techniques to deal with it until you can safely get away. I’d suggest looking for one who specializes in trauma or in PTSD, esp if they have c-PTSD listed (the ‘c’ is for complex, which is a proposed addition(??) to PTSD that would separate a singular traumatic event from an ongoing traumatic situation like living in war zones, being a POW, domestic violence, etc). PsychologyToday has a search function for finding accredited therapists in your area that should list their specialties, credentials, and insurance plans they take. (And if you’re asked why you need one, honestly, extrapolate on a minor issue. Like tbh you could just say body image issues.) Therapists are bound by license-revoking ethics not to tell anyone what you discuss in therapy unless you are going to hurt yourself or someone else.

[If you feel you’re being monitored too closely at home and don’t have a way to get this information at school, I suggest asking a reference librarian to help you out. A lot of public libraries will have community resource information, and if they don’t have flyers or brochures out, reference librarians’ entire jobs are to help you access information whether that’s in the library or in the community! That’s why I work in LIS, lol.]

Other than that the two big pieces of advice I have are:

Build up a support network outside your family. If you feel you can’t trust them with this, or even if you’re worried about putting them in the middle of a difficult situation - and even if those aren’t concerns for you - it’s always good to have a support network that isn’t connected to the situation in some way. Most of my support network came from friends, a bulk of whom I knew from online, and from coworkers. The first person to tell me I was being gaslit was actually a coworker, who I talked to when I got kicked out and was shaken up about it. I had a p good relationship w my boss and all my coworkers there, so when I had to put in my two weeks’ notice I actually got an offer to stay with my boss in the event that the situation escalated, and also knew I could go and stay with my one of my best friends with their grandad, or their sister. In fact, right when that happened, my friends already had a kind of escape plan half-formed because things had just kind of been getting worse, and for almost a year now I’ve been living with my other best friend. Even if things never get to the point of you having to leave the house, just having people that you can rely on who will be on your side entirely is crucial to dealing with that kind of stress.

If you think or feel you may be getting gaslit - even if you’re thinking to yourself that you’re just blowing things out of proportion or that it’s “not that bad” (a lot of us go through that) - start keeping a journal of things your mother says to you. You don’t have to show anyone. Just keep it for yourself. It doesn’t even have to be anything important; like I said earlier, it can be as simple as off-handed comments about movies you’ve watched or appointments you’ve made or what have you. Write them down when they happen, date them, and then when she says something that you feel contradicts what you’ve already heard - you can fact-check it. You can also do this with screenshots if it’s over text or something, and if you think you can get away with secretly recording her on your phone that might help too. I don’t recommend telling her you’re doing this or pointing out when she’s been lying; in the event she doesn’t outright deny it she could flip it around to make herself the victim or spiral out of control and get worse - this is just for your peace of mind. The goal of gaslighting, to quote the movie, is to “systematically [drive] you out of your mind”. This would just be a way to reassure yourself that you’re not making it up, you didn’t forget, you’re not blowing things out of proportion. 

If you need anything more specific, feel free to let me know! I’m so sorry you’re going through this, it really just fucking sucks. But I believe you can make it! And there is an it - there’s an out, even if it’s hard to get to or takes long. 

A little over a week until my 30th

I remember my Dad’s 30th birthday party (I have young parents. They were 20 and 22 when my big sister was born, 24 and 26 when I was). My mom threw him a luau. Kinda. I remember grass skirts. But it was a big party with my aunts and uncles, a couple of his farmer friends and their families, and a bunch of his cousins too.

An old grade school friend just posted pics from her 30th bday trip to Disneyworld (where my sister and her family are for my nephew and younger niece’s joint bday trip. How weird?) with two of our mutual friends.

I’m not jealous. Not really. (Well, a little, but that’s because I want to be at Disneyworld to be with the nieces and nephew.) It makes sense that those three would stay so close. They all stayed in the area. They lived close to begin with. 2 of them went to the same high school, even. Hell, because I tend to stay away from facebook, I even managed to miss one of their’s wedding (she messaged me for my new address. I finally saw the message a year later when I decided to re-install the message app).

I am, however, feeling a little... I dunno, ennui?

It’s just, because I tended to walk my own path, I tended to walk alone with only my family as a constant. Most of my grade school friends went to the public high school while I went to the Catholic one. No one from high school went anywhere near where I did for college. The city I went to for law school had an infinitesimal alumni association, and most of the people who went to my undergrad who moved there, studied at the “pseudo-ivy”, while I took a risk and went to a brand new law school (I liked the school’s philosophy, their dedication to proving they could compete on the big stage, and the professors’ credentials. And the fact that it wasn’t trying to be an “Ivy League” school. Good for you, law school, for finding your own identity). Then even when leaving law school, I never wanted to stay in that city, so I resisted putting down roots. This included doing too many alumni things. Or Bar Association things. Or Women’s Law Group things...

So I’m back home, with a bunch of whithered friendships, no jobs, and I’ve missed the last two events for my alumni association (they have a much bigger presence in this city) because of family things. Plus, my only source of income is helping my cousin with her event space as a “laborer”, which means my weekends are taken up doing that. Most of the time I’m done by 7 or 8, but by then I’m so exhausted, I go back home and go to sleep. And I just feel... ¯\_(‘-’)_/¯

(I need to get out my therapy light.)

But do you know what I want for my 30th?

A steak dinner. With the whole family. I don’t care that my sister and brother-in-law always get slow service. A slice of cheesecake with raspberry compote. To hang out with my best friends (even though one’s in Hawaii. So I know it’s ridiculous to hope for both).

That’s it. I don’t need a party, I don’t need presents (if someone wants to get me something, that’s fine though), I don’t need a ton of acknowledgement from random people I barely remember on facebook. Just. Time with the people I love.

Who knows. Maybe I’m maturing.

Death Is Democratic

Although my mother was not catholic, she was a religious person. She loved Jesus. A lot. A She was also a mother who lost her daughter, Robin, when when my sister was about six months old.

Of course, my mother never recovered from my sister's death. My mother went through life with something dead inside her. We rarely spoke of my sister. The only time my mother ever remembered my older sister in a way that wasn't heartbreaking was on November 1st. Every year my mother would light a candle on November 1st, Día de los Angelitos. The candle was gone by the next morning, which is my brother's birthday. Mother's birthday was November 2nd. It was a tiny something, but it was something.

Dia de los Angelitos (Day of the little angels) starts the holiday at midnight on Nov 1st, where the spirits of all deceased children are believed to be reunited with their families for 24 hours. Families construct an altar, known as an ofrenda, with the departed child’s favorite snacks, candies, toys, and photographs to encourage a visit from their departed children. The names of the departed children will often be written on a sugar skull.

Halloween wasn't a holiday in which my brother and I were allowed to take part. It was evil. It was satanic. If we dressed up we'd go to hell. We couldn't eat Halloween candy at school. When trick-or-treaters came around at night our house was dark and my brother and I were hiding because we couldn't hand out candy. It sucked. But. My mom made it a tad better because the day after Halloween is my brother's birthday, and the next day was her birthday, and it was a time we could remember my sister.

Día de los Muertos is chiefly a day of remembrance and a celebration of the life of the deceased. Generally, an altar, or ofrenda, is made either in a home or graveyard. This is not an altar at which one worships, but rather one that is intended to welcome the soul of the deceased to visit. The flower most used on an ofrenda is the Mexican marigold called cempasúchil. The bright petals and strong scent are said to attract the soul of the deceased to the ofrenda. Another common sight on an ofrenda are sugar skulls and pan de muerto (bread of the dead), which is a sweet flavored bread. Photos, toys, mementos, water, alcohol, and other food items are also common ofrenda items.

My mommy died when I was 17 (I always called her mommy), which meant I had to go out on my own right away. For years I was totally unable to process her death in a way that was even a little bit healthy. But then I discovered something neat.

I was an undergrad at San Jose State, and I was working on obtaining my elementary teaching credential. While I was doing my student teaching, there was a teacher shortage so severe in California that I was hired full time, while I was an undergraduate, to teach second grade.

I learned a lot of things. But what stays with me, to this day, is how the community in which I was immersed celebrated the memories of those they'd lost. This hadn't been an option for me, not even a consideration. I hadn't done anything at all to actually process the death of my mother. I'd never been to her grave-I still haven't.

To this day, the East Side Union School District is incredibly diverse and cultured, and while I was teaching I learned so much.

Including all about Dia de los Muertos and All Souls Day, November, 2nd, which is also my mother's birthday.

That October, something started happening. For the first time since July 14th, 1990-the day my mommy died-I could feel something in my heart. It was loss and sadness and hurt. But it was also happiness and family and my mom's smile. Things I'd forgotten. The gold specks in her Irish hazel eyes. The way she'd tell me I was pretty. The way she knew whenever something was wrong with me. The way she would tell me to pray every night and ask Jesus to forgive my sins so if I died in my sleep I wouldn't go to hell. (Btw, mom--THANKS FOR THAT! I still pray every fucking night. We're going to have a conversation about that pretty soon!)

This is a picture I snapped of the tiny ofrendas I made the year Marc died. Darlene sent me the candle. This year my alter will have a candle for Darlene. Death is democratic. No matter your colour or creed, your wealth or your poverty, everyone ends up as a skull in the end.

This is going to be my last alter. And my alter is going to have two new additions. Darlene, B.J.: shenanigans shall soon ensue. And they will be heavenly.

Epilogue:

My brother is going to be a dad, and my nice is due on...wait for it...October 31st. :)

Backstory

The Ultimate Glossary of Terms About best beginner keyboard

“The greater you dig into a bit of Ives, the more enjoyment you get from it,” the pianist Jeremy Denk mentioned not long ago, sitting in a piano in a rehearsal space on the Juilliard College. “It’s like solving a puzzle.”

Then he enthusiastically deconstructed Ives’s “Concord” Sonata, untangling and conveying the themes and motifs embedded during the intricate textures of the intriguing score.

Mr. Denk is going to launch a disc, “Jeremy Denk Plays Ives” (Feel Denk Media), showcasing two piano sonatas, an esoteric decision of repertory for any debut solo album. But then, there is nothing generic relating to this adventurous musician. His vivacious intellect is manifest the two in his playing and on his site, Feel Denk, an outlet for astute musical observations and witty musings, whether or not a lament about inedible meatballs or possibly a spoof job interview with Sarah Palin.

Mr. Denk will exhibit his much more mainstream credentials when he performs Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. one with Charles Dutoit as well as Philadelphia Orchestra commencing on Thursday with the Kimmel Heart in Philadelphia and on Oct. 12 at Carnegie Corridor.

Mr. Denk argues which the Ives sonatas, composed early from the twentieth century, are mistakenly classified as avant-garde works instead of “epic Intimate sonatas with Lisztian thematic transformations.” For the relaxed listener, the audio that Mr. Denk describes in the CD booklet as “good, creative, tender, edgy, wild, first, witty, haunting” can unquestionably sound avant-garde. Ives, who created his living in the insurance enterprise, included jazz, riffs on Beethoven and American hymns, marches and folk tunes into his daringly experimental piano sonatas, rich in polytonality, thematic layering and rhythmic complexity.

“It’s so splendidly in-your-confront,” Mr. Denk reported, demonstrating a very maniacal passage inside the “Concord” Sonata. “It’s also fairly amazingly unattractive. There is one thing maddening about his sense of humor. Ives is repeatedly thumbing his nose at you in a method.”

But Mr. Denk implies that Ives’s tenderness, which he illuminates beautifully On this recording, is underappreciated. “Ives is commonly about things recalled,” he reported, “or Recollections or visions fetched out of some tricky area.”

He performed the harmonically misty passages in the next movement on the “Concord,” exactly where Ives directs that a piece of Wooden be pressed about the higher keys to make a cluster chord. “It doesn’t really feel gimmicky in the least to me,” Mr. Denk said. “It’s all blues in The underside. Ives understood tips on how to use those tiny clichéd bits of Americana in a way that all of a sudden will get your gut. You may’t believe how touching it truly is.”

Mr. Denk, 40, has long been enthusiastic about Ives because his undergraduate days at Oberlin in Ohio, the place he carried a double significant in piano overall performance and chemistry. “My full double diploma expertise was considerably of the continual freakout of 1 kind of A different,” he explained.

He had been a “genuinely nerdy highschool student” that has a constrained social existence, he reported. “Ever considering the fact that I used to be A child I desired to check out Oberlin and preferred the liberal arts. Of course I really get intensive pleasure from drawing connections involving pieces and poems and literature and concepts.”

Mr. Denk described himself as being a ��observe maniac,” but his horizons have prolonged far beyond the follow area since Oberlin. Though nibbling a massive bit of chocolate product pie at an Higher West Side diner near the condominium he has rented considering the fact that about 1999, Mr. Denk referred to his site, calling it “an surprisingly superior outlet to release tensions of 1 variety or A further.” He claimed it had drawn new listeners to his concert events. An avid reader of liberal political blogs, Mr. Denk goals of crafting a classical tunes Model of Wonkette, he claimed, but that could be tough to do with out offending persons. And he tries to steer clear of offending men and women, he added, even though he did a short while ago submit a rant about plan notes.

Mr. Denk, who phone calls himself “a real Francophile,” is delicate-spoken but extreme, his discussion peppered with references to varied “obsessions”: coffee, Ives, Bach, Proust, Baudelaire and Emerson.

He went off on “a Balzac mania” a several years in the past, he mentioned.

“That was a unsafe time, and every thing in everyday life seemed drawn out of a Balzac novel,” he additional. “I shed about a few decades of my life to Proust. I’m positive it modified every little thing, which include my enjoying.

“One day my manager was like, ‘Dude, You need to center on your vocation and finding your stuff jointly.’ ” At that time, Mr. Denk reported, “I used to be bringing Proust to meetings.” He additional: “I’m not sure I really experienced a profession route. I was just carrying out my Bizarre issue, which possibly seemed like a disastrous nonroute to most of the folks who have been watching above me. I keep in mind some exasperated meetings with my administration, but they ended up very individual and devoted, which I’m insanely grateful for.”

Mr. Denk grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., one among two brothers, a son of tunes-loving nonmusician mother and father. His father, that has a doctorate in chemistry, continues to be (at distinct situations) a Roman Catholic monk as well as a director of Computer system science at New Mexico Condition College.

Mr. Denk stays hooked on the chili peppers of Las Cruces, he stated, seemingly only half joking: “The red and the green and The complete spirituality of chili peppers. It’s nevertheless a huge Component of my life. Once i go household I drop by this actual dive and obsess in excess of their green meat burrito.”

When not on tour, Mr. Denk spends time together with his boyfriend, Patrick Posey, a saxophonist as well as the director of orchestral routines and setting up at Juilliard, wherever Mr. Denk obtained his doctorate, finding out with Herbert Stessin. Mr. Stessin recollects owning been impressed by “the maturity and intensity” of Mr. Denk’s actively playing and remembers him as “a rare scholar who absorbed items very speedily.”

Mr. Denk explained he “was in school forever” until eventually “at some point I chose to trust my own instincts.” Now he teaches double-degree undergraduates for the Bard Faculty Conservatory of Music. The pianist Allegra Chapman, who analyzed with him, mentioned he was “concerned with a great deal greater than the notes around the web site, always citing literary and historical references.”

“Now I endeavor to tactic songs within a additional holistic standpoint,” she extra. “He is quite passionate. He used to soar across the room and bounce about and wave his arms. It was actually entertaining. He tried to get me to consider the new music having a humorousness.”

This combination of enthusiasm, humor and intellect, so vivid in both equally Mr. Denk’s taking part in and his crafting, is what distinguishes him, based on the violinist Joshua Bell. The two have already been typical duo associates due to the fact 2004, whenever they carried out on the Spoleto Pageant United states of america.

“You obtain the intellectual musicians or individuals who don their coronary heart on their sleeve and not using a lots of musical thought,” Mr. Bell explained, “but Jeremy manages to carry out both of those, Which’s ideal. Now we have lots of arguments in rehearsal, which can be the fun section at the same time. The actual fact we don’t normally see eye to eye retains things fresh and would make me query every little thing I do.”

Mr. Bell, whose selections of repertory are typically more common than Those people of his a lot more adventurous colleague, stated he wasn’t always an Ives fan: “Which has a great deal of recent music I’m somewhat cautious. Despite Ives, right up until I listened to Jeremy. He just delivers it alive. He has this sort of a great creativeness, and nothing is done randomly.”

Ives’s piano sonatas, Mr. Denk explained, “are in a method like animals that don’t want to be tamed.”

“Just about every efficiency needs to be so diverse,” he included, just one purpose he was at first hesitant to file them. Like Bach, he mentioned, Ives leaves lots to the performer’s creativeness.

A great interpretation of your “Goldberg” Variations at Symphony Room in 2008 disclosed Mr. Denk’s profound affinity with Bach. Mr. Denk will carry out the operate and Books 1 and a pair of of Ligeti’s Études at Zankel Hall on Feb. sixteen.

To keep the “Goldberg” Variants refreshing, Mr. Denk is incorporating new fingerings, he claimed, “to reactivate the link concerning my brain and my fingers After i’m taking part in it.”

“I believe it’s an actual magical position when you have the muscle memory,” he included, “although the brain is ahead of your fingers.”

Transforming the fingerings is one way to stay clear of program, he said. “I get actual enjoyment from creating in a very superior fingering. It truly is like relearning the piece, and it will make you not choose any Take note without any consideration.”

The musical philosophy Mr. Denk relates to Bach, Ives and various repertory is probably finest summed up in that site put up on program notes: “I’ve by no means been an enormous enthusiast in the ‘Envision how groundbreaking this piece was when it was penned’ faculty of inspiration. For my revenue, it ought to be innovative now. (And it's.) No matter what else the composer may need intended, she or he didn’t want you to Assume, ‘Boy, that must are already great again then.’ The most elementary compositional intent, absolutely the ur-intent, is that you Participate in it now, you make it transpire now.”

Rolling Back The Clock: Perils from Personal History

Some prominent social critics, most visibly Sohrab Ahmari, believe that the path to a moral and right world is to get the reigns of state power and institute various societal reforms to impose a vision of society to set things right in some important sense. A lot of this entails rolling back the clock on a number of 20th century social changes brought about the the left (and certain elements of the right) that are, for one reason or another, considered immoral.

A lot of ink has understandably been spilled over what sparked this nascent reactionary revival and various issues that arise from it. But I’d like to focus on an example from my own life to explain an important point. 

The things that need to be jettisoned for this view of society are way more ingrained and important to the material and emotional reality of Americans than anything less than a full scale social revolution will make the goals of this movement unachievable. 

So let’s address a basic and fundamental part of the modern American experience: moving. 

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My parents were Good Catholics by a lot of important metrics. One went to Catholic high school, they met and started dating at a Catholic university. And they went to get married. 

However, their local* priest objected based on the fact that they were living together, “living in sin” is term. 

My family eventually leveraged their connections with assorted catholic priests until they found an old friend willing to marry them anyway. 

To avoid the social stigma of priest shopping and family pressure related to the whole affair (and for particular work opportunities) they uprooted their lives, including all of their close family ties, and moved to the other side of the country.

From that point on, their ties to their local Catholic community that they’d been raised in, and The Church as a whole, was permanently dampened. While they’d eventually move back (with tiny baby me in tow). They would remain permanently estranged from The Church, and, while I was raised Catholic, it never took to me as it did the rest of my family. My parents and I** would eventually drop the Catholic faith altogether.

So, I wanna know, which step in this process is this societal change supposed to intervene and stop things from happening? 

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I can think of a few potential options, and problems with them: 

1) Prevent the “living in sin” thing in the first place. 

I suspect that this represents the ideal long term solution for this movement, and a few generations of cultural programming would do a lot to minimize this as a possibility. However, in the short/intermediate term, dictating who can live with whom would require a massive state apparatus that tracks everyone and their marital status and a legal regime that somehow strongly disincentivises the practice (whether that be “you get locked up” or “you miss out on some of the benefits of the theocratic welfare state” probably depends on who you’re talking to). 

I’m going to assume that anyone on board with this undertaking is necessarily not a principled small government type, but even then, building a bureaucracy at this scale with this kind of authority is HARD, and going to run afoul of a lot of the ideological allies that a movement like this would find necessary for any number of its other social changes. 

2) Prevent one priest from being able to act independently of the decision of another. 

For all the talk of institutional level control and change, I don’t think I’ve seen much talk about fundamentally changing the internal dynamics of major religious institutions (save for occasional calls to rid the priestly class of abusers and other “yes everyone wants that” level reforms). I’ll admit, I’m no expert on the internal politics of the structure of low level Catholic decision making, but it’s my understanding that local parishes operate largely independent of one another on day to day matters. 

So, what is to stop a priest with a personal connection to a parishioner look the other way on some disqualifying element that is supposed to prevent a marriage? Near as I can tell, “finding a priest who will perform your marriage even though it’s clearly not within the bounds” has been a core element of religious practice since 1533 (hey, Anglican jokes). 

3) Prevent the family from escaping social censure by relocating. 

Here’s the one that I think is the most tempting for the social engineers, and the one most likely to run afoul of people’s day to day lives. 

Travel and relocation used to be ENORMOUSLY difficult enterprises. At the height of the Church’s power in the Middle Ages, a lot of folks lived the overwhelming majority of their lives in the same community, and only saw*** the rest of the world on religious pilgrimage and trading expeditions (both things accessible to certain classes more than others). A single household may contain generations of family, who all had to get along with one another. Communities ties that tight are often pretty damn good at enforcing some type of orthodoxy in the “nail that sticks out gets hammered down” model. 

In an environment where you are dependent on your family and the rest of your community for both your physical, material, and emotional stability, it’s often quite easy to enforce some kind of orthodoxy. The threat of social censure**** can chill a lot of “antisocial” (anti-community specific values) behavior, at least in the open. 

A modern, mechanical world in which you can...pick up and move to the other side of the country is going to be EXTREMELY resistant to any effort to move back to that mode of society. Large sectors of the economy rely on the ability of people to relocate to where the jobs are for particular kinds of high-skilled or heavily credentialed work. Travel is safer than ever before. And while licensing regimes and government records make us far less “truly” anonymous than we might have been when “pack up and leave and make a new name and no one will know who you were” was a possible life path, a relative lack of direct personal connections between communities make it possible for most non-celebrities and non-criminal record havers to be practically as anonymous as ever. 

And I have no idea how one can possibly overcome that massive technological, economic, and cultural shift at anything less than a Khmer Rouge style “Year Zero” campaign, and I doubt many in any movement are calling for THAT.

It turns out, culture really changes when someone can just leave.

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If you’re on the other side of this debate (or just feel like steelmanning it), I’d like to hear your solutions to this problem.

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*I’m actually not entirely clear on the timeline of events as to when the move happened/was planned vs. when the priest kerfuffle happened. My account may then be factually off in this respect, but I think that’s immaterial to my broader point.

**I actually have a lot more respect for the theology, history, and institutional power of The Catholic Church than I ever did as a (very young) practicing Catholic. This, at times, extends to a reflexive, irrational, resistance to other forms of Christian practice.

***Okay, yes, I’m oversimplifying the nature of Medieval Peasant/Artisan life A LOT, and trade in material goods and the spread of important ideas was quite substantial. That doesn’t change the fact that movement of individuals outside of a community was, outside of extraordinary circumstances, pretty rare. 

****I’d be remiss not to note that you can also make a good case for these kind of small scale, tight knit, unchanging communities, can also be really good at accepting former sinners back into the fold and practicing forgiveness. “These are your people, forever, so you’d best get along with them” cuts both ways. Atomized culture where you can get kicked out of community and be expected to find a new one doesn’t have nearly as strong a reason to be as forgiving and rehabilitory. 

Here’s a hot take from conservative pundit and massive transphobe music fan, Ben Shapiro. Normally I would tackle the more serious topics Ben discusses, but this really felt like it deserved a response. 

Though, if I wanted to take a more serious angle, I suppose I could make the argument that rap is a huge part of the black community’s cultural identity & heritage and by belittling it, Ben is insulting and diminishing one of a marginalized group’s main creative outlets that they use to communicate their struggles. 

But that would be racist! Ben isn’t racist! He is constantly explaining over and over just how not-racist he is. Which is what all non-racists have to do. 

This has nothing to do with racism and Ben has some solid FACTS explaining why.  

HE LIKES JAZZ, OKAY? 

AND OPINIONS ARE NEVER RACIST. 

I GUESS.

EVEN THOUGH HE SAID IT WAS A FACT.

So, to be clear, this will just be a not-serious analysis about Ben’s totally not-racist FACT that rap is not-music. 

Let’s get this not-party started...

You see, Ben is famous for his motto, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”

He’s even leveraged his factual wisdom and made it into merchandise. 

That’s a real thing people can buy. It even has 6 whole reviews on Amazon! 

Beyond the Box rated it with 3 stars saying, “It's okay but small.” 

(Aww, just like Ben!)

And Tim S. described the shirt’s fit as “Liberals are destroying the country.”

(I’m pretty sure that means it’s a tad itchy.)

Before I saw Ben’s factual tweet, I really FELT like rap was an amazing musical artform. It took poetry and made it musical. It gave people a new way to express themselves that didn’t require expensive music lessons or even instruments. A friend could just bang on a table while you let it flow. It made creating music more accessible. And as long as you had good rhythm you could participate. It FELT groundbreaking at the time. 

The very first cassette tape I bought was Good Vibrations by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. (I know that isn’t a great start, but I was like 10, okay?) The very first compact disc I bought was 2 Legit 2 Quit by MC Hammer. (Don’t laugh, he was the shit in 1991.) As I reached my formative years, I started listening to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Beastie Boys, and House of Pain. 

I jump’d around. (squeeEEEEEee)

But as some of you may have noticed, most of my musical selections were very mainstream. You’ve probably also noticed that I am very... white. 

To this day, even! I think it is a chronic condition. 

My skin is near translucent due to lack of sunlight. I often say things like “indubitably” and “bloviate” and “I’m sure this chicken will be fine with minimal seasoning.” And at one point I owned the entire Creed discography. 

I was in desperate need of a Hip Hop education. 

Now using the official Rules of Republican Conduct™, if I want to talk about something with a racial component, all I need is a single black friend. This will absolve me of any consequences. 

Interesting Froggie Fun Fact... I went to a mostly black high school! 

Check this out...

That’s TWO black friends! 

Shawn is the one teaching me a complicated handshake I instantly forgot. And Marcus is photobombing us in the back there. 

I wish I could say our school was super progressive and everyone got along dandy. But in the mid-90s that just wasn’t the case. There were no major conflicts, but a lot of the white kids would sort of... self segregate. They’d all choose lockers in the same area. They’d sit in the same area at lunch and in class. And not a lot of them would interact with black kids outside of school. 

That said, I did not get the segregation memo. I got along with everyone. I’m not saying I was some amazing colorblind trailblazer crossing racial boundaries at every turn. My locker was in the white section too. And I only had two black friends (not pictured) that I hung out with outside of school. 

But I do think humor can break down a lot of barriers. And I used comedy to cross those invisible lines from time to time. 

Do you remember “Yo Mama” jokes? 

Like uhhh... Yo mama so old, her social security number is 1.  Yo mama so lazy, she stuck her nose out the window and let the wind blow it. Yo mama so classless, she’s a Marxist utopia.

You get it. 

Before school or before class, a lot of kids would have these competitions. They would face off with their best motherly insults and typically the person who received the loudest “OH DAAAAAAMMMMN!” would be declared the winner. 

One day I just kind of decided to make fun of Shawn’s mama. After a few seconds of stunned silence I got the loudest OH DAMN of anyone and we were suddenly friends. And then his friends were my friends too. Our friendship didn’t go outside the school premises, but it was still a lot of fun joking around with them at lunch or when we were supposed to be doing homework.

Shawn and I started a sort of cultural exchange. He would tell me about all of the amazing music he was into. And I explained why Batman: The Animated Series was not a kid’s cartoon. IT WAS ANIMATION. Says it right in the name.  

He introduced me to a wide range of artists of color. Old and new (at the time). We talked about Boyz II Men, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Prince. He introduced me to Mary J Blige who I follow to this day. And Aaliyah :(

He also told me about not-music. 

Ya know... rappers. 

I’ll be honest, sometimes this was challenging for me. I did not like or understand everything he suggested. I had a lot of racist baggage leftover from an all-white Catholic elementary school and my brain resisted for longer than I care to admit. But after seeing Shawn’s passion for this not-music, I became rap-curious and willing to keep an open mind. 

Let me try to name-drop from memory... 

Puff Daddy, Lauryn Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, Naughty By Nature, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Dr. Dre, Biggie Smalls, Ice Cube, and some guy named Tupac Shakur. You’ve probably never heard of him. 

He’d even sneak a Walkman in his backpack so he and his friends could sample his latest acquisitions. 

He’d be like, “Hey Ben, you want to listen to some Master P?” And I’d be like, “Sure! You wanna listen to Nine Inch Nails?” And he’d be like, “Naw, I’m good.”

Okay, so the cultural exchange could be a bit one-sided at times. But Batman bonded us all.

Admittedly, when I was at home, I still mostly listened to Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Stone Temple Pilots on repeat. And I do not listen to a great deal of Hip Hop these days. Mostly due to lack of guidance. I don’t have a Shawn in my life anymore. (But that Cardi B Money song was crazy good. And I’m not just saying that cuz the video had boobs.) 

Shawn was able to get me to a place where even if I didn’t like what I was listening to, I understood why other people enjoyed it. I really learned to appreciate rap and many of Shawn’s suggestions made an appearance on my super rad 90s Winamp playlist. 

Sometimes when I was having a bad day, it was nice to have a good day to fall back on. 

So when I was very whitely bobbing my head to the beat of that communal Walkman, I didn’t think my friends were stupid. I didn’t think I was stupid. I didn’t FEEL stupid.

But facts are facts. And my feels about facts don’t matter.  

You see, Ben Shapiro is known for being a master debater. You can find videos of him CRUSHING LIBRULS WITH LOGIC. Or DESTROYING FEMINISTS with TRU FACTS. Perhaps even DEMOLISHING SOCIALISTS with STATISTICS. 

His big Harvard brain is pretty relentless when it comes to DESTROYMOLISHING The Left.  

He’s great at taking standard conservative talking points, couching them in academic speak, and peppering them with dubious facts that don’t always hold up to scrutiny after the fact. Some might argue he cherry picks his opponents and the subject matter, creates scenarios where his point of view will be well received, and uses bad faith tactics to give the appearance of the upper hand. 

But that would be speculation and this post is all about FACTS. 

And Ben’s facts are too powerful to dispute. I doubt anyone is up to the challenge. Not even a transgender woman with epic makeup, glorious costumes, creative lighting schemes, and a degree in philosophy could take him to task. 

It’s just... unpossible.

*cough* Contrapoints *cough*

Sorry, had a froggie in my throat. 

SO... let’s see Ben defend “rap isn’t music” using his fancy debating skillz. It took him 6 years to come up with this, so I’m betting it’s bulletproof. 

OH I SEE. 

He plays CLASSICAL music. 

CHECKMATE, RAPPERS!

Ben Shapiro DESTROYGASMS Hip Hop with UNDERWHELMING TWEET.

If you’ll allow me to expound his logic, being a classically trained musician makes you more specialer than a regular musician. It makes him an arbiter of what is and is not music. I forgot that classical musicians were automatically given that power. 

I know Ben only ever presents facts, so I’d like to take him at his word, but I think I’d like to see this music master perform something. Just to be sure he has the proper classical credentials to make these bold claims. 

Here is a music video he produced for The Daily Wire. Clearly a high budget homage to one of the most thrilling television themes in recent history.  

Did anyone else feel like they were watching 3 robots play the blandest arrangement ever conceived? Or was that just me? SUCH ENERGY. 

I will say, those special effects were... something. 

And Ben really PWNED CNN. I’m sure they felt that slice all the way in their Atlanta headquarters. 

Ben, if you’re reading this, that video was totally funny in the way you intended. People are definitely laughing with you and not at you. I didn’t cringe even a little. 

But does this prove that Ben is a proper CLASSICAL musician? With all the power and privileges that entails? 

Does he have the authority to judge musical worthiness?

Despite his robotic performance, I suppose he did hit all the correct notes and everything. 

Is music like facts? Does music care about your feelings? 

I think what we need is a comparison. Something we can judge Ben’s performance against in order to gauge his level of classical musicianship. 

This is Tina Guo.

She is a Chinese-American immigrant from Shanghai. She moved here at the age of 5. She probably was able to sneak in because there wasn’t a border wall yet. She is taking the jobs of American classical musicians. Probably why Ben isn’t in a top-tier symphony orchestra as we speak. 

Tina is a cello prodigy who was trained classically. She attended the USC Thornton School of Music for professional cello studies on a full scholarship where she studied under Nathaniel Rosen and Eleonore Schoenfeld--some of the most influential cellists of the 20th century. 

She also made a huge splash on YouTube casually playing Flight of the Bumblebee as a teenager. No biggie. I’m sure Ben can play that too. 

Oh, and do you remember that badass Wonder Woman theme written by famous composer Hans Zimmer?

That was her playing the lead.

Now for the comparison. 

Watch Librul Immigrant DESTROY the Game of Thrones theme that she arranged ALL BY HERSELF without the help of a BIG STRONG MAN.

I don’t know. 

I think that was a smidge better than Ben’s version. 

What do you folks think? 

So here is the dilemma. 

We have two CLASSICAL musicians who are at nearly identical skill levels...

HOWEVER... after some investigation... 

It’s possible Tina Guo thinks rap... might be music.

*GASP*

THE EVIDENCE

One of her favorite ways to practice improvisation is to jam along with Hip Hop tracks she finds on YouTube.   

Now, conservatives like Ben LOVE dictionary definitions. It’s their go-to debate tactic when trying to legitimize the idea of racism toward white folks. So let’s use the dictionary really quick. 

When I looked up what this “jamming” word meant, it sent me to “jam session.” I was shocked by what I found.

Musicians? MUSIC? But those backing tracks she practiced to were used for rap non-music. BEN I AM CONFUSED.

I think I need to dig deeper. 

After scouring the internet for almost 2 minutes I was able to find something even more shocking.

Here is LIBRUL CLASSICAL SNOWFLAKE IMMIGRANT FEMINIST MUSICIAN sharing the stage with a CUCK NON-MUSIC RAP ARTIST.

That kinda looks like Tina Guo... and LUPE FIASCO. 

*DOUBLE GASP*

And I’ve double checked this... it seems this Lupe fellow is definitely a rapper. 

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? 

I mean, she has her cello. And he has a microphone. But it’s a FACT that rap isn’t music. So I guess they are doing some experimental anti-music performance together. 

ANOTHER SHOCKING IMAGE HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION AFTER ANOTHER 12 SECONDS OF GOOGLING.

What the heck, Tina? 

Why are you, A CLASSICAL MUSICIAN, on a stage with Common? Another rapper! 

I’m a little worried that Tina might be stupid. 

Ben’s FACT clearly states if you think rap is music, then you are stupid. 

And not only is Tina playing music near a rapper... I’m pretty sure she is playing music WITH a rapper. 

That’s like... double stupid. 

I really don’t know what to feel about these facts I’ve uncovered. 

These FACTS kinda FEEL like bullshit. 

At least I can take comfort in the absolute fact that Ben Shapiro is a solid 5 feet 9 inches tall. It gives me comfort knowing he can ride any roller coaster he wants.

Sick burn, Ben. Though you’re kind of implying that when Milo sees you he is giving you blowjobs. I’m sure you’re fine with that implication. It’s not like you’re homophobic or anything, right? 

The important thing is that everyone knows how you’re a big boy. Two inches taller than Napoleon!   

I mean, it would be silly to lie about such a thing so easily disproved, right? And there is nothing to be ashamed of if you are a shorter individual. My mom is short I think she’s the best! 

So I’m confident you are 5′9″ as you have stated.  

I CAN’T FEEL ANY MORE FACTS, BEN. 

MY SOUL CAN’T TAKE IT. 

You know what... screw it. 

I’m going to make it serious. 

Not liking rap isn’t racist. 

Telling people they are stupid for liking rap is super racist. 

And being too stubborn to apologize for a 6-year-old tweet compounds that racism. 

Liking jazz is just the musical version of “I have a black friend.” 

Not understanding that rap is a cultural staple vital to the black community and then comparing it to frickin’ Titanic makes it profoundly racist.

And... *takes a deep breath* continually defending a shitty 6-year-old tweet as recent as last July, even though you could probably just apologize, blame it on youthful ignorance, delete it, and never have to deal with it again, just because you can’t ever admit you ever said anything wrong... 

Well, that just makes you look...

Trump nominates Kavanaugh to Supreme Court

It has been nearly 25 years since Brett Kavanaugh arrived at the Supreme Court as a law clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy. A few years later, Kavanaugh was back at the court as an advocate, arguing (unsuccessfully) that Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation, should have access to notes taken by a lawyer for former White House counsel Vince Foster in a conversation with his client shortly before Foster committed suicide. Kavanaugh could return to the Supreme Court in the fall, this time as a justice: Tonight President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy that will be created on the court when Kennedy retires on July 31. If, as is widely expected (and Republicans hope), Kavanaugh proves to be more conservative than his former boss, the Supreme Court could shift further to the right on a variety of high-profile issues, ranging from reproductive rights to affirmative action.

Photo by Mark Walsh

Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh capped a whirlwind process that began on the afternoon of June 27, when Kennedy announced his plans to retire. Kavanaugh had long been regarded as a possible Supreme Court nominee in a Republican administration, but there were rumors that his stock might have fallen in the past few days, because of concerns that his views might be too moderate, that he has too many ties to the Bush family and that he had once argued that a president should be impeached for lying to his staff and the public. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had reportedly urged the president to choose another nominee with a shorter paper trail than Kavanaugh, whose nomination could require senators to review millions of pages of documents.

But if the president shared these concerns, he apparently overcame them. In a prime-time ceremony at the White House tonight, Trump introduced Kavanaugh, who was accompanied by his wife Ashley, who served as President George W. Bush’s personal secretary, and their two school-aged daughters, Margaret and Liza. Trump described Kavanaugh as having “impeccable credentials” and a “proven commitment to equal justice under the law.” Kavanaugh, Trump continued, “is considered a judge’s judge,” “a true thought leader among his peers” who is “universally regarded as one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time.” Trump concluded by urging senators to quickly confirm Kavanaugh, whom he described as “this incredibly qualified nominee” who deserves “robust bipartisan support.”

The 53-year-old Kavanaugh is the consummate Washington insider, well-liked in the city’s legal community. Kavanaugh has lived in the D.C. area for essentially his entire life: He was born in Washington and raised in Maryland and, like Justice Neil Gorsuch (who graduated two years after him), attended the Georgetown Preparatory School, a prestigious Catholic boys’ school in Rockville. He left the D.C. area to attend Yale College and Yale Law School, graduating from the latter in 1990, followed by clerkships on federal courts of appeals in Delaware and California. He returned for a fellowship in the office of then-U.S. solicitor general Kenneth Starr, followed by the Kennedy clerkship. Kavanaugh would go to work for Starr again in the Office of the Independent Counsel, where he played a key role in drafting the Starr Report to Congress, which outlined 11 grounds for the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton.

In 2006, President George W. Bush nominated Kavanaugh (for the second time – his first nomination stalled) for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He has sat on the D.C. Circuit – the springboard to the Supreme Court for three of the current justices – for 12 years. During that time, Kavanaugh has compiled a solidly conservative track record (reviewed in more detail by my colleague Edith Roberts here), on everything from the detention of enemy combatants to his dissent from the full court’s decision not to review an opinion by a three-judge panel upholding the accommodation that the Obama administration offered to religious nonprofits who objected to providing contraceptive coverage to their female employees. Last fall Kavanaugh dissented from the full D.C. Circuit’s decision that cleared the way for an undocumented pregnant teenager to obtain an abortion, arguing that the court’s ruling was “ultimately based on a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

In his relatively brief remarks this evening, Kavanaugh began by thanking Trump, stressing Trump’s “appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary.” “No president,” Kavanaugh continued, “has ever consulted more widely” or “talked to more people with more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.”

Kavanaugh then praised retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, describing him as someone who “devoted his career to securing liberty.” Kavanaugh said that he was “deeply honored to be nominated” to fill the justice’s seat on the Supreme Court.

The rest of Kavanaugh’s remarks were personal and heartfelt, focusing on his family and describing himself, in essence, as a suburban “Everydad.” He noted that, when he was a child, his mother taught history at two predominantly African-American high schools in Washington, D.C. – an experience that taught him, he said, “about the importance of equality for all Americans.” Martha Kavanaugh went to law school when her son was 10 years old and became one of the first female prosecutors in the area. While practicing her closing arguments at the dinner table, his mother’s “trademark line” was “Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false? That’s good advice for a juror, and for a son,” Kavanaugh suggested. Kavanaugh’s father went to law school at night while also working full-time, he recounted, and passed on his work ethic and his love for sports.

Kavanaugh switched gears briefly, telling the audience gathered in the East Room of the White House that his high school motto was “Men for others.” He has tried to live out that creed, Kavanaugh emphasized, through a career in public service. As a judge, he said, his judicial philosophy has been “straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make it.” In particular, he stressed, he believes in interpreting statutes and the Constitution as they are written, “informed by history and tradition and precedent.”

Before turning back to his family, Kavanaugh highlighted his bipartisan bona fides, noting that he was hired to teach at Harvard Law School by then-Dean Elena Kagan, who would later be appointed to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama, and he expressed his pride that a majority of his law clerks – who come from “diverse backgrounds and points of view” – have been women. He also described himself as a proud member of the city’s Catholic community: “The members of that community disagree about many things,” he acknowledged, “but we are united by a commitment to serve.”

Kavanaugh introduced his daughters, both avid athletes, and his wife, whom he met while both were working in the Bush White House. Their first date, he told the crowd, was on September 10, 2001; the next day, they sprinted out of the White House together when it was evacuated after hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia.

Kavanaugh explained that he would begin meeting with senators tomorrow. “I will tell each senator,” he said, “that I revere the Constitution.” “I believe that an independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic. If confirmed,” he concluded, “I will keep an open mind in every case, and I will always strive to preserve the Constitution and the American rule of law.”

The confirmation hearings for Justice Neil Gorsuch began roughly a month and a half after he was nominated. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently suggested that the confirmation hearing for a nominee with a lengthy track record – which Kavanaugh certainly has – could take longer, so that Kavanaugh might not be confirmed before the Supreme Court reconvenes in October.

The post Trump nominates Kavanaugh to Supreme Court appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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President Donald Trump announced on Monday, July 9, that he was nominating Brett Kavanaugh, a federal judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, to fill retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Supreme Court seat. The anticipated decision was announced during a prime-time television special. You can read more here about the background and implications of Trump’s choice.

Below is a full rush transcript of the press conference.

President Donald Trump: My fellow Americans, tonight I speak to you from the east room of the White House regarding one of the most profound responsibilities of the President of the United States. And that is the selection of a Supreme Court justice. I have often heard that other than matters of war and peace, this is the most important decision a president will make. The Supreme Court is entrusted with the safeguarding of the crown jewel of our republic — the Constitution of the United States. 12 days ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy informed me of his decision to take senior status on the Supreme Court, opening a new vacancy. For more than four decades, Justice Kennedy served our nation with incredible passion and devotion. I’d like to thank Justice Kennedy for a lifetime of distinguished service. [Applause]

In a few moments, I will announce my selection for Justice Kennedy’s replacement. This is the second time I have been faced with this task. Last year I nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia. [Applause] I chose Justice Gorsuch because I knew that he, just like Justice Scalia, would be a faithful servant of our constitution. We are honored to be joined tonight by Justice Scalia’s beloved wife, Maureen. [Applause] Thank you, Maureen.

Both Justice Kennedy and Justice Scalia were appointed by a president who understood that the best defense of our liberty and a judicial branch immune from political prejudice were judges that apply the Constitution as written. That president happened to be Ronald Reagan. For this evening’s announcement, we are joined by Ronald Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese. [Applause] And, Ed, I speak for everyone. Thank you for everything you’ve done to protect our nation’s great legal heritage.

In keeping with President Reagan’s legacy, I do not ask about a nominee’s personal opinions. What matters is not a judge’s political views but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the constitution require. I am pleased to say that I have found, without doubt, such a person.

Tonight it is my honor and privilege to announce that I will nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. [Applause] I know the people in this room very well. They do not stand and give applause like that very often. So they have some respect and Brett’s wife, Ashley, and their two daughters, Margaret and Liza have joined us on the podium. Thank you and congratulations to you as a family. Thank you. [Applause]

Judge Kavanaugh has impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications, and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Judge Kavanaugh currently teaches at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown. Throughout legal circles, he is considered a judge’s judge, a true thought leader among his peers. He’s a brilliant jurist with a clear and effective writing style universally regarded as one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time. And just like Justice Gorsuch, he excelled as a clerk for Justice Kennedy. That’s great. Thank you. [Applause]

Judge Kavanaugh has devoted his life to public service. For the last 12 years, he has served as a judge on the DC Circuit court of appeals with great distinction, authoring over 300 opinions which have been widely admired for their skill, insight, and rigorous adherence to the law. Among those opinions are more than a dozen that the supreme court has adopted as the law of the land. Beyond his great renown as a judge, he is active in his community. He coaches CYO basketball, serves meals to needy families, and having learned from his mom, who was a schoolteacher in DC, tutors children at local elementary schools. There is no one in America more qualified for this position and no one more deserving.

I want to thank the senators on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, for their consultation and advice during the selection process. This incredibly qualified nominee deserves a swift confirmation and robust bipartisan support. The rule of law is our nation’s proud heritage. It is the cornerstone of our freedom. It is what guarantees equal justice, and the Senate now has the chance to protect this glorious heritage by sending Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. And now, Judge, the podium is yours. [Applause]

Brett Kavanaugh: Mr. President, thank you. Throughout this process, I have witnessed firsthand your appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary.

No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a supreme court nomination. Mr. President, I am grateful to you, and I’m humbled by your confidence in me. 30 years ago, President Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court. The framers established that the Constitution is designed to secure the blessings of liberty. Justice Kennedy devoted his career to securing liberty. I am deeply honored to be nominated to fill his seat on the Supreme Court. [Applause]

My mom and dad are here. I am their only child. When people ask what it’s like to be an only child, I say it depends on who your parents are. I was lucky. My mom was a teacher. In the 1960s and ’70s, she taught history at two largely African-American public high schools in Washington, DC, McKinley Tech and HD Woodson. Her example taught me the importance of equality for all Americans. My mom was a trailblazer. When I was ten, she went to law school and became a prosecutor. My introduction to law came at our dinner table when she practiced her closing arguments. Her trademark line was, “Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false?” That’s good advice for a juror and for a son. One of the few women prosecutors at that time, she overcame barriers and became a trial judge. The president introduced me tonight as Judge Kavanaugh. But to me, that title will always belong to my mom. My dad went to law school at night while working full time. He has an unparalleled work ethic and has passed down to me his passion for playing and watching sports. I love him dearly. The motto of my Jesuit high school was “Men for others.” I’ve tried to live that creed. I’ve spent my career in public service from the executive branch in the White House to the US Court of appeals for the DC Circuit. I’ve served with 17 other judges, each of them a colleague and a friend. My judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.

For the past 11 years, I’ve taught hundreds of students primarily at Harvard Law School. I teach that the Constitution’s separation of powers protects individual liberty, and I remain grateful to the dean who hired me, Justice Elena Kagan. As a judge, I hire four law clerks each year. I look for the best. My law clerks come from diverse backgrounds and points of view. I am proud that a majority of my law clerks have been women.

I am part of the vibrant Catholic community in the DC Area. The members of that community disagree about many things, but we are united by a commitment to serve. Father John Ensler is here. 40 years ago I was an altar boy for Father John. These days I help him serve meals to the homeless at Catholic Charities.

I have two spirited daughters, Margaret and Liza. Margaret loves sports, and she loves to read. Liza loves sports, and she loves to talk. [Laughter] I have tried to create bonds with my daughters like my dad created with me. For the past seven years, I’ve coached my daughters’ basketball teams. The girls on the team call me Coach K. [Laughter] I am proud of our bless sacrament team that just won the city championship. [Applause] My daughters and I also go to lots of games. Our favorite memory was going to the historic Notre Dame/UConn women’s basketball game at this year’s final four. Unforgettable.

My wife, Ashley, is a West Texan, a graduate of Abilene Cooper Public High School and the University of Texas. She is now the town manager of our community. We met in 2001 when we both worked in the White House. Our first date was on September 10, 2001. The next morning, I was a few steps behind her as the secret service shouted at all of us to sprint out the front gates of the White House because there was an inbound plane. In the difficult weeks that followed, Ashley was a source of strength for President Bush and for everyone in this building. Through bad days and so many better days since then, she has been a great wife and inspiring mom. I thank god every day for my family. [Applause]

Tomorrow I begin meeting with members of the Senate, which plays an essential role in this process. I will tell each senator that I revere the Constitution. I believe that an independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic. If confirmed by the Senate, I will keep an open mind in every case, and I will always strive to preserve the Constitution of the United States and the American rule of law. Thank you, Mr. President. [Applause]

Original Source -> Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh to Supreme Court: full transcript

via The Conservative Brief

Chapter 4 - BANNON

BANNON

Steve Bannon was the first Trump senior staffer in the White House after Trump was sworn in. On the inauguration march, he had grabbed the newly appointed deputy chief of staff, Katie Walsh, Reince Priebus’s deputy at the RNC, and together they had peeled off to inspect the now vacant West Wing. The carpet had been shampooed, but little else had changed. It was a warren of tiny offices in need of paint, not rigorously cleaned on a regular basis, the décor something like an admissions office at a public university. Bannon claimed the nondescript office across from the much grander chief of staff’s suite, and he immediately requisitioned the white boards on which he intended to chart the first hundred days of the Trump administration. And right away he began moving furniture out. The point was to leave no room for anyone to sit. There were to be no meetings, at least no meetings where people could get comfortable. Limit discussion. Limit debate. This was war. This was a war room.

Many who had worked with Bannon on the campaign and through the transition shortly noticed a certain change. Having achieved one goal, he was clearly on to another. An intense man, he was suddenly at an even higher level of focus and determination.

“What’s up with Steve?” Kushner began to ask. And then, “Is something wrong with Steve?” And then finally, “I don’t understand. We were so close.”

Within the first week, Bannon seemed to have put away the camaraderie of Trump Tower—including a willingness to talk at length at any hour—and become far more remote, if not unreachable. He was “focused on my shit.” He was just getting things done. But many felt that getting things done was was more about him hatching plots against them. And certainly, among his basic character notes, Steve Bannon was a plotter. Strike before being struck. Anticipate the moves of others—counter them before they can make their moves. To him this was seeing things ahead, focusing on a set of goals. The first goal was the election of Donald Trump, the second the staffing of the Trump government. Now it was capturing the soul of the Trump White House, and he understood what others did not yet: this would be a mortal competition.

* * *

In the early days of the transition, Bannon had encouraged the Trump team to read David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest. (One of the few people who seem actually to have taken him up on this reading assignment was Jared Kushner.) “A very moving experience reading this book. It makes the world clear, amazing characters and all true,” Bannon enthused.

This was a personal bit of branding—Bannon made sure to exhibit the book to many of the liberal reporters he was courting. But he was also trying to make a point, an important one considering the slapdash nature of the transition team’s staffing protocols: be careful who you hire.

Halberstam’s book, published in 1972, is a Tolstoyan effort to understand how great figures of the academic, intellectual, and military world who had served during the Kennedy and Johnson years had so grievously misapprehended the nature of the Vietnam War and mishandled its prosecution. The Best and the Brightest was a cautionary tale about the 1960s establishment—the precursor of the establishment that Trump and Bannon were now so aggressively challenging.

But the book also served as a reverential guide to the establishment. For the 1970s generation of future policy experts, would-be world leaders, and Ivy League journalists aiming for big-time careers—though it was Bannon’s generation, he was far outside this self-selected elite circle—The Best and the Brightest was a handbook about the characteristics of American power and the routes to it. Not just the right schools and right backgrounds, although that, too, but the attitudes, conceits, affect, and language that would be most conducive to finding your way into the American power structure. Many saw the book as a set of prescriptions about how to get ahead, rather than, as intended, what not to do when you are ahead. The Best and the Brightest described the people who should be in power. A college-age Barack Obama was smitten with the book, as was Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton.

Halberstam’s book defined the look and feel of White House power. His language, resonant and imposing and, often, boffo pompous, had set the tone for the next half century of official presidential journalism. Even scandalous or unsuccessful tenants of the White House were treated as unique figures who had risen to the greatest heights after mastering a Darwinian political process. Bob Woodward, who helped bring Nixon down—and who himself became a figure of unchallengeable presidential mythmaking—wrote a long shelf of books in which even the most misguided presidential actions seemed part of an epochal march of ultimate responsibility and life-and-death decision making. Only the most hardhearted reader would not entertain a daydream in which he or she was not part of this awesome pageant.

Steve Bannon was such a daydreamer.

* * *

But if Halberstam defined the presidential mien, Trump defied it—and defiled it. Not a single attribute would place him credibly in the revered circle of American presidential character and power. Which was, in a curious reversal of the book’s premise, just what created Steve Bannon’s opportunity.

The less likely a presidential candidate is, the more unlikely, and, often, inexperienced, his aides are—that is, an unlikely candidate can attract only unlikely aides, as the likely ones go to the more likely candidates. When an unlikely candidate wins—and as outsiders become ever more the quadrennial flavor of the month, the more likely an unlikely candidate is to get elected—ever more peculiar people fill the White House. Of course, a point about the Halberstam book and about the Trump campaign was that the most obvious players make grievous mistakes, too. Hence, in the Trump narrative, unlikely players far outside the establishment hold the true genius.

Still, few have been more unlikely than Steve Bannon.

At sixty-three, Bannon took his first formal job in politics when he joined the Trump campaign. Chief Strategist—his title in the new administration—was his first job not just in the federal government but in the public sector. (“Strategist!” scoffed Roger Stone, who, before Bannon, had been one of Trump’s chief strategists.) Other than Trump himself, Bannon was certainly the oldest inexperienced person ever to work in the White House.

It was a flaky career that got him here.

Catholic school in Richmond, Virginia. Then a local college, Virginia Tech. Then seven years in the Navy, a lieutenant on ship duty and then in the Pentagon. While on active duty, he got a master’s degree at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, but then he washed out of his naval career. Then an MBA from Harvard Business School. Then four years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs—his final two years focusing on the media industry in Los Angeles—but not rising above a midlevel position.

In 1990, at the age of thirty-seven, Bannon entered peripatetic entre-preneurhood under the auspices of Bannon & Co., a financial advisory firm to the entertainment industry. This was something of a hustler’s shell company, hanging out a shingle in an industry with a small center of success and concentric rings radiating out of rising, aspiring, falling, and failing strivers. Bannon & Co., skirting falling and failing, made it to aspiring by raising small amounts of money for independent film projects—none a hit.

Bannon was rather a movie figure himself. A type. Alcohol. Bad marriages. Cash-strapped in a business where the measure of success is excesses of riches. Ever scheming. Ever disappointed.

For a man with a strong sense of his own destiny, he tended to be hardly noticed. Jon Corzine, the former Goldman chief and future United States senator and governor of New Jersey, climbing the Goldman ranks when Bannon was at the firm, was unaware of Bannon. When Bannon was appointed head of the Trump campaign and became an overnight press sensation—or question mark—his credentials suddenly included a convoluted story about how Bannon & Co. had acquired a stake in the megahit show Seinfeld and hence its twenty-year run of residual profits. But none of the Seinfeld principals, creators, or producers seem ever to have heard of him.

Mike Murphy, the Republican media consultant who ran Jeb Bush’s PAC and became a leading anti-Trump movement figure, has the vaguest recollection of Bannon’s seeking PR services from Murphy’s firm for a film Bannon was producing a decade or so ago. “I’m told he was in the meeting, but I honestly can’t get a picture of him.”

The New Yorker magazine, dwelling on the Bannon enigma—one that basically translated to: How is it that the media has been almost wholly unaware of someone who is suddenly among the most powerful people in government?—tried to trace his steps in Hollywood and largely failed to find him. The Washington Post traced his many addresses to no clear conclusion, except a suggestion of possible misdemeanor voter fraud.

In the midnineties, he inserted himself in a significant role into Biosphere 2, a project copiously funded by Edward Bass, one of the Bass family oil heirs, about sustaining life in space, and dubbed by Time one of the hundred worst ideas of the century—a rich man’s folly. Bannon, having to find his opportunities in distress situations, stepped into the project amid its collapse only to provoke further breakdown and litigation, including harassment and vandalism charges.

After the Biosphere 2 disaster, he participated in raising financing for a virtual currency scheme (MMORPGs, or MMOs) called Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE). This was a successor company to Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), a dot-com burnout, whose principals included the former child star Brock Pierce (The Mighty Ducks) who went on to be the founder of IGE, but was then pushed out. Bannon was put in as CEO, and the company was subsumed by endless litigation.

Distress is an opportunistic business play. But some distress is better than others. The kinds of situations available to Bannon involved managing conflict, nastiness, and relative hopelessness—in essence managing and taking a small profit on dwindling cash. It’s a living at the margins of people who are making a much better living. Bannon kept trying to make a killing but never found the killing sweet spot.

Distress is also a contrarian’s game. And the contrarian’s impulse—equal parts personal dissatisfaction, general resentment, and gambler’s instinct—started to ever more strongly fuel Bannon. Part of the background for his contrarian impulse lay in an Irish Catholic union family, Catholic schools, and three unhappy marriages and bad divorces (journalists would make much of the recriminations in his second wife’s divorce filings).

Not so long ago, Bannon might have been a recognizably modern figure, something of a romantic antihero, an ex-military and up-from-the-working-class guy, striving, through multiple marriages and various careers, to make it, but never finding much comfort in the establishment world, wanting to be part of it and wanting to blow it up at the same time—a character for Richard Ford, or John Updike, or Harry Crews. An American man’s story. But now such stories have crossed a political line. The American man story is a right-wing story. Bannon found his models in political infighters like Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove. All were larger-than-life American characters doing battle with conformity and modernity, relishing ways to violate liberal sensibilities.

The other point is that Bannon, however smart and even charismatic, however much he extolled the virtue of being a “stand-up guy,” was not necessarily a nice guy. Several decades as a grasping entrepreneur without a satisfying success story doesn’t smooth the hustle in hustler. One competitor in the conservative media business, while acknowledging his intelligence and the ambitiousness of his ideas, also noted, “He’s mean, dishonest, and incapable of caring about other people. His eyes dart around like he’s always looking for a weapon with which to bludgeon or gouge you.”

Conservative media fit not only his angry, contrarian, and Roman Catholic side, but it had low barriers to entry—liberal media, by contrast, with its corporate hierarchies, was much harder to break into. What’s more, conservative media is a highly lucrative target market category, with books (often dominating the bestseller lists), videos, and other products available through direct sales avenues that can circumvent more expensive distribution channels.

In the early 2000s, Bannon became a purveyor of conservative books products and media. His partner in this enterprise was David Bossie, the far-right pamphleteer and congressional committee investigator into the Clintons’ Whitewater affair, who would join him as deputy campaign manager on the Trump campaign. Bannon met Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart at a screening of one of the Bannon-Bossie documentaries In the Face of Evil (billed as “Ronald Reagan’s crusade to destroy the most tyrannical and depraved political systems the world has ever known”), which in turn led to a relationship with the man who offered Bannon the ultimate opportunity: Robert Mercer.

* * *

In this regard, Bannon was not so much an entrepreneur of vision or even business discipline, he was more simply following the money—or trying to separate a fool from his money. He could not have done better than Bob and Rebekah Mercer. Bannon focused his entrepreneurial talents on becoming courtier, Svengali, and political investment adviser to father and daughter.

Theirs was a consciously quixotic mission. They would devote vast sums—albeit still just a small part of Bob Mercer’s many billions—to trying to build a radical free-market, small-government, home-schooling, antiliberal, gold-standard, pro-death-penalty, anti-Muslim, pro-Christian, monetarist, anti-civil-rights political movement in the United States.

Bob Mercer is an ultimate quant, an engineer who designs investment algorithms and became a co-CEO of one of the most successful hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies. With his daughter, Rebekah, Mercer set up what is in effect a private Tea Party movement, self-funding whatever Tea Party or alt-right project took their fancy. Bob Mercer is almost nonverbal, looking at you with a dead stare and either not talking or offering only minimal response. He had a Steinway baby grand on his yacht; after inviting friends and colleagues on the boat, he would spend the time playing the piano, wholly disengaged from his guests. And yet his political beliefs, to the extent they could be discerned, were generally Bush-like, and his political discussions, to the extent that you could get him to be responsive, were about issues involving ground game and data gathering. It was Rebekah Mercer—who had bonded with Bannon, and whose politics were grim, unyielding, and doctrinaire—who defined the family. “She’s . . . like whoa, ideologically there is no conversation with her,” said one senior Trump White House staffer.

With the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, Bannon, in essence holding the proxy of the Mercers’ investment in the site, took over the Breitbart business. He leveraged his gaming experience into using Gamergate—a precursor alt-right movement that coalesced around an antipathy toward, and harassment of, women working in the online gaming industry—to build vast amounts of traffic through the virality of political memes. (After hours one night in the White House, Bannon would argue that he knew exactly how to build a Breitbart for the left. And he would have the key advantage because “people on the left want to win Pulitzers, whereas I want to be Pulitzer!”)

Working out of—and living in—the town house Breitbart rented on Capitol Hill, Bannon became one of the growing number of notable Tea Party figures in Washington, the Mercers’ consigliere. But a seeming measure of his marginality was that his big project was the career of Jeff Sessions—“Beauregard,” Sessions’s middle name, in Bannon’s affectionate moniker and evocation of the Confederate general—among the least mainstream and most peculiar people in the Senate, whom Bannon tried to promote to run for president in 2012.

Donald Trump was a step up—and early in the 2016 race, Trump became the Breitbart totem. (Many of Trump’s positions in the campaign were taken from the Breitbart articles he had printed out for him.) Indeed, Bannon began to suggest to people that he, like Ailes had been at Fox, was the true force behind his chosen candidate.

Bannon didn’t much question Donald Trump’s bona fides, or behavior, or electability, because, in part, Trump was just his latest rich man. The rich man is a fixed fact, which you have to accept and deal with in an entrepreneurial world—at least a lower-level entrepreneurial world. And, of course, if Trump had had firmer bona fides, better behavior, and clear electability, Bannon would not have had his chance.

However much a marginal, invisible, small-time hustler Bannon had been—something of an Elmore Leonard character—he was suddenly transformed inside Trump Tower, an office he entered on August 15, and for practical purposes, did not exit, save for a few hours a night (and not every night) in his temporary midtown Manhattan accommodations, until January 17, when the transition team moved to Washington. There was no competition in Trump Tower for being the brains of the operation. Of the dominant figures in the transition, neither Kushner, Priebus, nor Conway, and certainly not the president-elect, had the ability to express any kind of coherent perception or narrative. By default, everybody had to look to the voluble, aphoristic, shambolic, witty, off-the-cuff figure who was both ever present on the premises and who had, in an unlikely attribute, read a book or two.

And indeed who, during the campaign, turned out to be able to harness the Trump operation, not to mention its philosophic disarray, to a single political view: that the path to victory was an economic and cultural message to the white working class in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

* * *

Bannon collected enemies. Few fueled his savagery and rancor toward the standard-issue Republican world as much as Rupert Murdoch—not least because Murdoch had Donald Trump’s ear. It was one of the key elements of Bannon’s understanding of Trump: the last person Trump spoke to ended up with enormous influence. Trump would brag that Murdoch was always calling him; Murdoch, for his part, would complain that he couldn’t get Trump off the phone.

“He doesn’t know anything about American politics, and has no feel for the American people,” said Bannon to Trump, always eager to point out that Murdoch wasn’t an American. But Trump couldn’t get enough of him. With his love of “winners”—and he saw Murdoch as the ultimate winner—Trump was suddenly bad-mouthing his friend Ailes as a “loser.”

And yet in one regard Murdoch’s message was useful to Bannon. Having known every president since Harry Truman—as Murdoch took frequent opportunities to point out—and, he conjectured, as many heads of state as anyone living, Murdoch believed he understood better than younger men, even seventy-year-old Trump, that political power was fleeting. (This was in fact the same message he had imparted to Barack Obama.) A president really had only, max, six months to make an impact on the public and set his agenda, and he’d be lucky to get six months. After that it was just putting out fires and battling the opposition.

This was the message whose urgency Bannon himself had been trying to impress on an often distracted Trump. Indeed, in his first weeks in the White House, an inattentive Trump was already trying to curtail his schedule of meetings, limit his hours in the office, and keep his normal golf habits.

Bannon’s strategic view of government was shock and awe. Dominate rather than negotiate. Having daydreamed his way into ultimate bureaucratic power, he did not want to see himself as a bureaucrat. He was of a higher purpose and moral order. He was an avenger. He was also, he believed, a straight shooter. There was a moral order in aligning language and action—if you said you were going to do something, you do it.

In his head, Bannon carried a set of decisive actions that would not just mark the new administration’s opening days, but make it clear that nothing ever again would be the same. At the age of sixty-three, he was in a hurry.

* * *

Bannon had delved deeply into the nature of executive orders—EOs. You can’t rule by decree in the United States, except you really can. The irony here was that it was the Obama administration, with a recalcitrant Republican Congress, that had pushed the EO envelope. Now, in something of a zero-sum game, Trump’s EOs would undo Obama’s EOs.

During the transition, Bannon and Stephen Miller, a former Sessions aide who had earlier joined the Trump campaign and then become Bannon’s effective assistant and researcher, assembled a list of more than two hundred EOs to issue in the first hundred days.

But the first step in the new Trump administration had to be immigration, in Bannon’s certain view. Foreigners were the ne plus ultra mania of Trumpism. An issue often dismissed as living on the one-track-mind fringe—Jeff Sessions was one of its cranky exponents—it was Trump’s firm belief that a lot of people had had it up to here with foreigners. Before Trump, Bannon had bonded with Sessions on the issue. The Trump campaign became a sudden opportunity to see if nativism really had legs. And then when they won, Bannon understood there could be no hesitation about declaring their ethnocentric heart and soul.

To boot, it was an issue that made liberals bat-shit mad.

Laxly enforced immigration laws reached to the center of the new liberal philosophy and, for Bannon, exposed its hypocrisy. In the liberal worldview, diversity was an absolute good, whereas Bannon believed any reasonable person who was not wholly blinded by the liberal light could see that waves of immigrants came with a load of problems—just look at Europe. And these were problems borne not by cosseted liberals but by the more exposed citizens at the other end of the economic scale.

It was out of some instinctive or idiot-savant-like political understanding that Trump had made this issue his own, frequently observing, Wasn’t anybody an American anymore? In some of his earliest political outings, even before Obama’s election in 2008, Trump talked with bewilderment and resentment about strict quotas on European immigration and the deluge from “Asia and other places.” (This deluge, as liberals would be quick to fact-check, was, even as it had grown, still quite a modest stream.) His obsessive focus on Obama’s birth certificate was in part about the scourge of non-European foreignness—a certain race-baiting. Who were these people? Why were they here?

The campaign sometimes shared a striking graphic. It showed a map of the country reflecting dominant immigration trends in each state from fifty years ago—here was a multitude of countries, many European. Today, the equivalent map showed that every state in the United States was now dominated by Mexican immigration. This was the daily reality of the American workingman, in Bannon’s view, the ever growing presence of an alternative, discount workforce.

Bannon’s entire political career, such as it was, had been in political media. It was also in Internet media—that is, media ruled by immediate response. The Breitbart formula was to so appall the liberals that the base was doubly satisfied, generating clicks in a ricochet of disgust and delight. You defined yourself by your enemy’s reaction. Conflict was the media bait—hence, now, the political chum. The new politics was not the art of the compromise but the art of conflict.

The real goal was to expose the hypocrisy of the liberal view. Somehow, despite laws, rules, and customs, liberal globalists had pushed a myth of more or less open immigration. It was a double liberal hypocrisy, because, sotto voce, the Obama administration had been quite aggressive in deporting illegal aliens—except don’t tell the liberals that.

“People want their countries back,” said Bannon. “A simple thing.”

* * *

Bannon meant his EO to strip away the liberal conceits on an already illiberal process. Rather than seeking to accomplish his goals with the least amount of upset—keeping liberal fig leaves in place—he sought the most.

Why would you? was the logical question of anyone who saw the higher function of government as avoiding conflict.

This included most people in office. The new appointees in place at the affected agencies and departments, among them Homeland Security and State—General John Kelly, then the director of Homeland Security, would carry a grudge about the disarray caused by the immigration EO—wanted nothing more than a moment to get their footing before they might even consider dramatic and contentious new policies. Old appointees—Obama appointees who still occupied most executive branch jobs—found it unfathomable that the new administration would go out of its way to take procedures that largely already existed and to restate them in incendiary, red-flag, and ad hominem terms, such that liberals would have to oppose them.

Bannon’s mission was to puncture the global-liberal-emperor-wears-no-clothes bubble, nowhere, in his view, as ludicrously demonstrated as the refusal to see the colossally difficult and costly effects of uncontrolled immigration. He wanted to force liberals to acknowledge that even liberal governments, even the Obama government, were engaged in the real politics of slowing immigration—ever hampered by the liberal refusal to acknowledge this effort.

The EO would be drafted to remorselessly express the administration’s (or Bannon’s) pitiless view. The problem was, Bannon really didn’t know how to do this—change rules and laws. This limitation, Bannon understood, might easily be used to thwart them. Process was their enemy. But just doing it—the hell with how—and doing it immediately, could be a powerful countermeasure.

Just doing things became a Bannon principle, the sweeping antidote to bureaucratic and establishment ennui and resistance. It was the chaos of just doing things that actually got things done. Except, even if you assumed that not knowing how to do things didn’t much matter if you just did them, it was still not clear who was going to do what you wanted to do. Or, a corollary, because nobody in the Trump administration really knew how to do anything, it was therefore not clear what anyone did.

Sean Spicer, whose job was literally to explain what people did and why, often simply could not—because nobody really had a job, because nobody could do a job.

Priebus, as chief of staff, had to organize meetings, schedules, and the hiring of staff; he also had to oversee the individual functions of the executive office departments. But Bannon, Kushner, Conway, and the president’s daughter actually had no specific responsibilities—they could make it up as they went along. They did what they wanted. They would seize the day if they could—even if they really didn’t know how to do what they wanted to do.

Bannon, for instance, even driven by his imperative just to get things done, did not use a computer. How did he do anything? Katie Walsh wondered. But that was the difference between big visions and small. Process was bunk. Expertise was the last refuge of liberals, ever defeated by the big picture. The will to get big things done was how big things got done. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” was a pretty good gist of Donald Trump’s—and Steve Bannon’s—worldview. “Chaos was Steve’s strategy,” said Walsh.

Bannon got Stephen Miller to write the immigration EO. Miller, a fifty-five-year-old trapped in a thirty-two-year-old’s body, was a former Jeff Sessions staffer brought on to the Trump campaign for his political experience. Except, other than being a dedicated far-right conservative, it was unclear what particular abilities accompanied Miller’s political views. He was supposed to be a speechwriter, but if so, he seemed restricted to bullet points and unable to construct sentences. He was supposed to be a policy adviser but knew little about policy. He was supposed to be the house intellectual but was purposely unread. He was supposed to be a communications specialist, but he antagonized almost everyone. Bannon, during the transition, sent him to the Internet to learn about and to try to draft the EO.

By the time he arrived in the White House, Bannon had his back-of-the-envelope executive order on immigration and his travel ban, a sweeping, Trumpian exclusion of most Muslims from the United States, only begrudgingly whittled down, in part at Priebus’s urging, to what would shortly be perceived as merely draconian.

In the mania to seize the day, with an almost total lack of knowing how, the nutty inaugural crowd numbers and the wacky CIA speech were followed, without almost anybody in the federal government having seen it or even being aware of it, by an executive order overhauling U.S. immigration policy. Bypassing lawyers, regulators, and the agencies and personnel responsible for enforcing it, President Trump—with Bannon’s low, intense voice behind him, offering a rush of complex information—signed what was put in front of him.

On Friday, January 27, the travel ban was signed and took immediate effect. The result was an emotional outpouring of horror and indignation from liberal media, terror in immigrant communities, tumultuous protests at major airports, confusion throughout the government, and, in the White House, an inundation of lectures, warnings, and opprobrium from friends and family. What have you done? Do you know what you’re doing? You have to undo this! You’re finished before you even start! Who is in charge there?

But Steve Bannon was satisfied. He could not have hoped to draw a more vivid line between the two Americas—Trump’s and liberals’—and between his White House and the White House inhabited by those not yet ready to burn the place down.

Why did we do this on a Friday when it would hit the airports hardest and bring out the most protesters? almost the entire White House staff demanded to know.

“Errr . . . that’s why,” said Bannon. “So the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot.” That was the way to crush the liberals: make them crazy and drag them to the left.

How a group of California nuns challenged the Catholic Church

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Immaculate Heart College Art Department c. 1955. Photograph by Fred Swartz. Image courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles.

California in the 1960s was the epicenter for spiritual experimentation. Indian gurus and New Age prophets, Jesus freaks and Scientologists all found followings in the Golden State.

But among those looking for personal and social transformation, the unlikeliest seekers may have been a small community of Roman Catholic religious: the Immaculate Heart Sisters.

Theirs was, as I discovered in my research on the order, a compelling spiritual saga, culminating in a showdown with the Catholic hierarchy. The story of that conflict spotlights the impact of the California dream on a Church in transition.

Who were the Immaculate Heart Sisters?

The Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was founded in Spain in 1848. Twenty-three years later, at the invitation of the bishop of California, 10 sisters came to the United States.

Initially, the nuns worked with the poor, but pivoted later to education. In 1886 they began teaching in Los Angeles. Over the next several decades, they staffed Catholic schools, started a convent, and founded a high school and a college. The college, though, closed in 1981 due to financial problems.

In 1924, the order separated from Spain. The women renamed themselves the California Institute of the Sisters of the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The “new” order flourished: By the 1960s, it had 600 members, most of whom were teachers. And by 1967 almost 200 sisters worked in Los Angeles’ Catholic schools. More served in their own order’s educational institutions.

Led by broad-minded mother superiors, their order and their college were intellectually rigorous and open to diverse perspectives. They welcomed female speakers such as social activist Dorothy Day to campus as well as Protestant, Jewish and even Hindu religious leaders.

Changes in Rome

Meanwhile, change was stirring at the Vatican, the center of world Catholicism. In 1959, Pope John XXIII had invited Roman Catholic leaders to discuss the role of the Church in the modern world. From 1962 to 1965, this Second Vatican Council debated Catholicism’s future. Centuries had passed with little change in Church teaching, ritual, community life and worldview. But now the council would, in the words of the pope, “open the windows and let in the fresh air.”

Catholic leaders reviewed everything from interreligious dialogue to the role of the Church in the modern world. They even updated the traditional liturgy. The language changed from Latin to the vernacular, priests faced the people and popular music was welcomed into Mass.

The debate over Vatican II’s achievements continues today. At the time, many Catholics were excited by the innovations, but others preferred the Church as it was. They were not eager to see the council’s intentions put into practice.

James Francis Cardinal Mcintyre, Archbishop of Los Angeles, U.S., left. AP Photo/Mario Torrisi

Among these conservatives was James Francis Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles.

Challenging the Church hierarchy

Following the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council, the Immaculate Heart Sisters decided to review and renew their religious life. In 1963, the sisters began a multi-year study of their spiritual practice, community structure and mission. They met regularly to talk and pray about the future of their order.

According to Anita Caspary, the order’s head at the time, the nuns were inspired by the Second Vatican Council; the spirit of the times (that is, the 1960s); and the growth of diverse populations that were roiling Southern California.

Sister Anita Caspary. AP Photo/David S. Smith

She later wrote that in this “historic moment of faith and freedom,” the community saw itself as “part of the women’s struggle for equal status in the mid-20th century.”

Many of the council’s directives did indeed reflect cultural shifts, such as reaching out to the modern, secular world, that had inspired the sisters. But the women also were inspired by trends closer to home. For example, Caspary and her community were intrigued by humanistic psychology, the psychological school that emphasized personal growth and fulfillment and which had a significant West Coast following.

Until the 1960s, the women had followed Church rules that governed their religious as well as personal lives. Now, rather than assume that they all needed to pray, study or meditate in the same way or at the same time, they encouraged individual experimentation. When they did worship together, they wanted the freedom to decide when, where and how to do so.

Likewise, the sisters sought relief from Church mandates that controlled their daily activities, ranging from what they wore and what time they went to bed to which books they were allowed to read.

Sisters of the Immaculate Heart College preparing for a spring festival. Image courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles.

On October 14, 1967, the sisters celebrated what they called Promulgation Day, the announcement of plans for their order’s renewal. A new vision for their lives and their work, the document, for example, said that sisters who taught in religious schools would be allowed to pursue teaching credentials and graduate degrees to professionalize their work. Those who did not feel the call to teach could find other careers.

Additionally, each sister could choose the length, time and type of her individual prayer, and group prayer would be shaped by the community. They no longer had to seek permission from the mother superior for the small decisions of daily life. They would be free to set their bedtimes, see a doctor or make a quick trip to the store.

Opposition to the sisters

Two days later, on Oct. 16, a delegation of six sisters sat in the office of Los Angeles’ Cardinal McIntyre. Furious with the sisters’ plans for renewal, he first asked about about their dress: Did they indeed intend to wear street clothes to their classrooms? Caspary said they might, and an angry McIntyre ended the meeting.

Even when the cardinal’s men persuaded him to continue the conversation, he refused to accept the order’s plan for renewal. Instead, he berated their defiance and doubted their commitment to religious life. As of June 1968, he told them, they would no longer teach in the city’s Catholic schools.

Over the next six months, the sisters and the cardinal presented formal cases to emissaries from the Vatican. Each side also sought support from Church colleagues and from the court of public opinion. Unfortunately, many newspapers played up the conflict as if the entire fight hinged on whether or not the sisters wore their traditional habits or street clothes.

By spring, the message was clear: The Vatican would support the cardinal. According to official pronouncements, the women’s experimentation went too far. They had not, in other words, worked within the guidelines of the male hierarchy.

Rather than give up their vision for religious renewal, however, 350 of the order’s 400 sisters began planning a new lay community outside the Church.

A new vision

By the start of 1970, many of the Immaculate Heart sisters had decided to renounce their vows and reorganize as a lay community. The new group, the Immaculate Heart Community, was open to laypeople as well as clergy, men as well as women.

In the intervening years, most of the innovations that the sisters sought – including professionalizing standards, experimenting with community worship and giving sisters control of their daily activities – were adopted by Catholics across the country.

The Immaculate Heart Sisters drew on their time and place to create a new vision of religious community. Their sources ranged from the reforms of the Second Vatican Council to the writings of California’s humanist psychologists. They also included women’s liberation, the anti-war movement and the countercultural wave that rolled outside their convent door.

The California dream and its promise of new possibilities was central to the spiritual journey of the Immaculate Heart Sisters. It continues to inspire a new generations of seekers in and out of the Church.

Diane Winston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Mission Ghana: deepening the relationship with a longtime friend.

It furthermore features a respectable human rights record, an apolitical military and a vibrant, free media environment. "Ghana requirements electricity in order to grow," said Millennium Challenge Corporation country Director Deidra Fair James. This whole-of-embassy endeavor reflected the inclusive, interagency naturel of Mission Ghana, which in turn works with every single other to always be able to deepen the particular U.S. The second-largest quantity of African students in the united States comes from Ghana. "One of the particular greatest elements of my experience with Ghana has been how relatively easy it is to travel inside the actual country," mentioned Paul Mignano, a new first-tour vice consul. "Personally, meeting the actual Asantehene, your Ashanti king, had been certainly one of one of the most memorable moments involving this tour pertaining to my family along with me," he continued. "I've had 2 kids here, I've raised kids here; it's definitely an ideal location for small families." "Our major concentrate throughout 2016 ended up being supporting free, fair, peaceful and credible elections within Ghana," said Ambassador Robert P. Jackson. Exports (commodities): oil, gold, cocoa, timber, tuna, bauxite, aluminum, manganese ore, diamonds, horticultural products [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When Ghana's Electoral Commission inside December announced the results in the presidential election held a pair of days earlier, the transition went smoothly: the winner, which had defeated the actual incumbent, gave a new victory speech as well as the loser subsequent emerged through his residence to offer his concession. Du Bois, whose grave is just steps from the embassy. . companies with operations inside Ghana contain Johnson & Johnson, Visa, Pizza Hut, GE and also Procter & Gamble, most seeking expanded markets as well as creating work about both factors with the Atlantic. Deputy Political Chief Navarro Moore stated his kids enjoy the individualized approach in order to understanding at the neighborhood Lincoln Community School and its variety involving extracurricular activities. "I prefer to state that we're within the existence improvement business," stated Ambassador Jackson. Many African-Americans trace their roots to become able to Ghana and possess come back to visit. relationship with this longtime friend. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] More broadly, Embassy Accra is actually working towards its widespread objectives with Ghana. We've traversed your canopy walk within the rain forest. Ghana completed its initial compact within 2012, an application to be able to raise farm incomes through improved agricultural infrastructure and expanded access to markets. Languages: Asante 16%, Ewe 14%, Fante 11.6%, Boron (Brong) 4.9%, Dagomba 4.4%, Dangme 4.2%, Dagarte (Dagaba) 3.9%, Kokomba 3.5%, Akyem 3.2%, Ga 3.1%, other 31.2% Population: 26,908,262 Area: 238,533 sq km [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "There's a lot going on here, and you can be involved in that and use a extremely full life," the lady elaborated. Along With we've arrive to better view the reputation Cape Coast and furthermore the traditions involving the Asante people. It's been a remarkable experience." Capital: Accra Government Type: presidential republic By Sara Veldhuizen Stealy, information officer, U.S. He noted that its new president wants to make Ghana attractive for investment, promote private enterprise and furthermore have the nation's diaspora think about returning residence and also contributing to Ghana's growth. With an annual budget totaling greater than $145 million, USAID/Ghana promotes development in most ten involving Ghana's regions, especially in the three northern regions whose growth lags that of your urban south. they consist of poet Maya Angelou and also activist W.E.B. They also promote cultivation associated with rice and also beans, as well as the cultivation associated with nutrient-rich crops, for example soybeans along with sweet potatoes. In a few villages, females farmers use their own newfound incomes in order to informally provide loans, constructing their capital via a person's eye payments. Whilst Ghana's tourism infrastructure provides limitations, those prepared to overlook minor inconveniences find it's a lively, rewarding destination to serve. The U.S. "We've been for the Sacred Crocodile Ponds regarding Paga, where you can touch the particular crocodiles. The Particular United States can furthermore be Ghana's largest bilateral donor, collaborating on agriculture, anti-trafficking, defense and also prevention involving electrical outages. The Actual funding also supported such activities as multimedia campaigns about calm elections, empowerment applications pertaining to youth and women, and also working out for journalists. Embassy Accra furthermore houses your USAID/West Africa Regional Mission, which addresses such trans-boundary problems as violent extremism, wildlife trafficking, drought control, and regional trade while overseeing projects inside countries without having an USAID mission. Ghana's stability makes it an ideal partner with regard to such U.S. government initiatives as power Africa, Feed your Future, Trade Africa, the Partnership pertaining to Growth and in addition the security Governance Initiative. "Our bilateral relationship features a multitude associated with safety cooperation activities," noted Commander Enid Brackett, chief with the Workplace of Security Cooperation. Ghana additionally hosts and also participates within several U.S.-sponsored workouts and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center, a forum for academic collaboration throughout security and peace studies. and along with that, Ghana reinforced its credentials as one with the leading democracies around the African continent, boasting seven consecutive free and also fair elections as well as multiple interparty transfers of power. USAID health applications boost the standard along with use of health care, while its governance programs strengthen accountability and transparency and education initiatives strive to enhance reading proficiency for nearly 3 million Ghanaian main university students. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Religions: Christian 71.2% (Pentecostal/Charismatic 28.3%, Protestant 18.4%, Catholic 13.1%, some other 11.4%), Muslim 17.6%, traditional 5.2%, various other 0.8%, none 5.2% (2010 est.) Major urban areas: Kumasi 2.599 million; Accra (capital) 2.277 million (2015) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Jackson expects Ghana will "play an even more activist along with outsized role about the continent inside the coming years, "as the newest government was elected upon promises involving economic reform, growing transparency and prosecuting corruption. agencies work out of the embassy. He mentioned the particular embassy has been confident inside the Electoral Commission and "knew the majority of Ghanaians wanted peaceful, credible elections." Ghana has been the first nation to obtain a new Peace Corps contingent, in August 1961, and its existing complement associated with approximately 150 Peace Corps volunteers functions inside agriculture, training as well as health. Since businesses want power to flourish, she said, "Compact II will invest almost 500 million bucks in the energy sector." Several of the money will bring a personal concessionaire "to function the state-owned Electricity Organization of Ghana and return it for you to efficiency and profitability." that concessionaire will itself must invest $500 million more than the particular compact's first 5 years, making mtss will be a $1 billion project. Imports: richesse equipment, refined petroleum, foodstuffs Currency: Ghanaian cedi Ethnic groups: Akan 47.5%, Mole-Dagbon 16.6%, Ewe 13.9%, Ga-Dangme 7.4%, Gurma 5.7%, Guan 3.7%, Grusi 2.5%, Mande 1.1%, other 1.4% (2010 est.) Another aspect of the bilateral relationship involves Ghana's military, a specialist as well as apolitical organization that, throughout polls, is the public's second the majority of reliable institution. thousands of Ghanaians in addition happen in order to be educated within the United States. Embassy in Accra, Ghana The U.S. These People had been right." Internet country code: .gh [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On election day, 50 teams associated with Americans as well as Ghanaians through almost all U.S. Mission sections and agencies fanned out over the country in order to observe voting as well as record their findings to some round-the-clock control room. Accra can be a livable capital along with lots for you to do. The Girl noted that the nation offers more restaurants, shops and also hotels, making Accra any great place to be able to "test your waters regarding Africa." Presently, 13 U.S. "You could see the impact of a expanding middle class here," Jennifer Mauldin said. relationship dates again 60 a lengthy time for you to Ghana's independence, although ties between the countries are usually deeper and also more personal, having arisen inside the merciless conditions in the African slave trade. Ghana can furthermore be within the West Africa Disaster Preparedness Initiative, a U.S.-Africa Command project in which strengthens disaster-response capabilities in 15 countries within the region. Economic Counselor Jimmy Mauldin and human Resources Associate Jennifer Mauldin get seen many changes in Ghana, getting served throughout NGOs there within the late 1990s along with early 2000s. in 2014, Ghana signed about for its 2nd Millennium Challenge Compact, which in turn aims for you to strengthen your electrical power sector. "And that applies to Ghanaians as well as Americans, such as the actual staff here. government supported the Ghanaian elections with increased than $7 million throughout funding to boost your transparency as well as credibility of the Electoral Commission; to end up being able to enable civil society groups for you to conduct a parallel vote tabulation; also to train national and regional peace councils, media, traditional and also religious leaders and others in peace messaging. Although one of the particular most effective and also revered people inside the country, the particular king "was extremely courteous and genuinely interested to learn much more about how we were obtaining our remain in Ghana," he recalled. He added in which Ghanaians "weren't worried--they knew Ghana would show itself worthy regarding its reputation. Your Woman mentioned activities largely concentrate on supporting Ghana's peacekeeping contributions (Ghana is the 10th largest U.N. peacekeeping contributor worldwide) as well as combating illicit trafficking in the Gulf regarding Guinea. Feed the Future applications boost nutrition along with incomes simply by coaching farmers in improved production strategies as well as helping mobilize finance for Ghanaian agribusinesses. "These are usually objectives that benefit Ghanaians and Americans, and also [ones] that individuals look forward for you to supporting," he noted. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/MissionGhana:deepeningtherelationshipwithalongtimefriend.-a0494585241 Export partners: India 25.2%, Switzerland 12.2%, China 10.6%, France 5.7% (2015) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Note: English may become the official language (2010 est.) U.S. Your jobs are satisfying, there's any great sense involving teamwork and furthermore you could see how you're generating a difference." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Note: estimates regarding this country explicitly just take into consideration the effects involving excess mortality because of in order to AIDS; this can lead to lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher death rates, lower population growth rates and also changes within the distribution of population by age as well as sex compared to would normally be http://milf-is-busty.easyxblogs.com/article/9/milf-is-busty-best-porno/ likely (July 2016 est.) Import partners: China 32.6%, Nigeria 14%, Netherlands 5.5%, U.S. 5.4% (2015) The mission's breadth regarding projects as well as applications keeps it busy, but workers possess time to in addition enjoy the nation's culture, history, beauty and its people; Ghanaians are renowned regarding their friendliness