Hold Them All Accountable

 Just to make clear what should be obvious: if Hunter Biden broke any laws, he should be held accountable.  If he acted in a profiteering manner that isn't illegal, he should be held accountable  and maybe we should change laws so that any profiteering off the presidency is illegal.

It's that simple. Why won't modern conservatives behave in a likewise responsible manner?

"A top legal analyst at CNN said it is possible President Biden's son Hunter Biden could be indicted by the U.S. government following an investigation into his foreign business dealings. 

"This is a very real, very substantial investigation of potentially serious federal crimes," Elie Honig said Wednesday morning on the network. "We are seeing federal prosecutors in Delaware do exactly what you would expect to see federal prosecutors do in this situation." 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/media/600372-cnn-realistic-chance-hunter-biden-could-be-indicted%3famp

Trump and Russia/Ukraine

I wonder if there will come a point where the GOP will recognize the degree to which they helped lead to Putin's invasion of Ukraine with their support of Trump as an actual president? The Trump years and Putin should really help shine the light on how very important it is to have rational, responsible adults in charge and how very important it is to support factual reporting and oppose misinformation... how very important a free press that operates with journalistic integrity and how dangerous those who spread misinformation can be to a free world.

I go back and forth trying to decide if Trump was simply a complete idiot with a single skill of conning people into supporting him but who otherwise had almost no idea of how to act like a rational adult leader... is he that? Or is he more of a sociopathic lover of chaos who does have a good idea of what he's doing with his attacks on experts, minorities, the free press and basic decency and just doesn't care. I lean towards the simpleton who's in over his head but who does have a certain genius at being a con man to get people to support him, even though he has no idea of what to do with leadership once he gets it.

From NPR...

Then-President Donald Trump was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Ukraine's defense as he was asking its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to investigate Trump's potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden.

That 2019 call got Trump impeached. But the Senate acquitted him, and he dismissed the controversy as a politically motivated hit job — and his base went along.

Now, with Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine and Zelenskyy being hailed around the world as a hero for his resolve, that call is put into a very different light.

"There's just a lot of evidence that Trump was wrong on this issue [Ukraine] and that in many ways, we undermined the NATO alliance and we undermined Zelenskyy's position in the eyes of Russia and Putin," said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist and former senior adviser on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085023029/russias-invasion-puts-a-new-light-on-trumps-ukraine-pressure-campaign

From the Economist (March 5th)...

IF VLADIMIR PUTIN’S invasion of Ukraine rests on a grand delusion, it is one he might have learned watching Fox News and other outlets of the American right. Ever since Donald Trump rose to the top of the Republican primaries in 2016, conservative talking-heads have praised the Russian leader’s vigour and acuity and denigrated his Ukrainian, European and NATO adversaries as corrupt, weak and gutless. As recently as last week, Tucker Carlson, America’s most popular cable host, suggested that, if forced to choose between Russia and Ukraine, he would pick Russia. Only a warmongering liberal obsessive would fuss over Mr Putin’s prosecution of the faraway conflict, he added: “Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs?”

The subsequent reality of Ukraine’s bombed towns, dead children and heroic resistance has not entirely pierced this delusion. Fox is still airing pro-Putin commentary. Mr Trump still praises the Russian leader. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 26th, he condemned the war but snuck in that Mr Putin was “smart” and “playing [Joe] Biden like a drum”. Even so, the war has caused the most dramatic rethink among Republicans since Mr Trump took over their party.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/03/05/the-end-of-the-putin-delusion

White Privilege, Explained and Quantified

As it happens, I have been in the hospital most of the week and away from my computer.  Nothing major -  gallstones and minor surgery.

But that means I don't have all the ability to post that I normally do. Nonetheless, on the topic of the easily established reality of white privilege, here's what some people have said...

You can only see part of this, but it's very helpful...

https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-white-privilege-definition-examples-statistics.html

White privilege quantified...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157125/

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/white-privilege-quantified/386102/

On everyday undeniable examples...

"1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2.If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

3.I can be pretty sure that my neighbours in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

5.I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilisation,” I am shown that people of my colour made it what it is.

7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race."

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/a32752175/white-privilege-everyday-examples/

more...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953614003359

https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/white-privilege

UPDATE:

More specifics, more quantified data about white privilege. This one has many specific, quantifiable instances and support for them.

"If education is the key to success, then there is no debate that whites have the advantage in America. In 2012, the U. S. Department of Education reported that about 33 percent of all white students attend a low-poverty school, while only 6 percent attend high-poverty schools. In comparison, only 10 percent of black students attend a low-poverty school, while more than 40 percent of black students attend high-poverty schools.

This means that black students are more than six times more likely than white students to attend a high-poverty school, while white students are more than three times more likely than black students to attend a low-poverty school..."

"It is a little-known fact that the average black person pays more for almost every item he or she purchases. While there is no discount Groupon that comes whit white skin, there might as well be. A John Hopkins study showed that supermarkets were less prevalent in poor black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods with the same average income, leading to increased food costs. News organization ProPublica recently found that car-insurance companies charge people who live in black neighborhoods higher rates than people in predominantly white areas with the same risk."

https://www.theroot.com/yes-you-can-measure-white-privilege-1794303451

Slavery and the US Church

I've been hearing some of our conservative friends painting the white church as "the primary driver to eliminate slavery..." as if the white church were the hero in that history. This, from one who can't/won't acknowledge that slavery is always a great evil or that white men in power who, by policy and social dominance, were engaged in a great evil in their institutionalization of the racism and slavery of the day, or that the white church was not involved in a great evil in their either passive or active support for slavery and the racism that produced it.

"The primary driver to eliminate slavery."

That's quite a claim. I wonder if he could support such a charge?

Of course, I acknowledge (as Frederick Douglass noted in my last post) that there were SOME in the white church who followed the lead of black leadership to come out (sooner or later, in different cases) as not only opposed to the racism and slavery of the day, but to actively fight against it. The Quakers, as a group, were an early group who decided as a group to take an active stand against slavery. And there were others, later on and to varying degrees. (Ironically and as an aside, there would be many Christians who don't consider the Quakers to be Christians - and, of course, there are some Quakers today who'd say the same thing, I think.)

I'm not saying that some Christian churches were not involved in the fight for human rights in regards to racism and slavery.

But, we'd have to turn an extremely blind eye to actual history to refuse to acknowledge the awful efforts made by white churches in our history to defend slavery and racism as "god's will" and/or to defend slavery by remaining quiet in the face of a great evil. This post is just to point to some of the historical record regarding white church history and racism/slavery.

In the 1820s, former slave owner (and Kentuckian) James Birney became increasingly disturbed by slavery and became an abolitionist. In the 1840s, he wrote a pamphlet in England talking about slavery in the US and dealt a great deal with the degree of support for slavery and violent opposition to abolitionism within American churches. Some of his article (which, in some places, is quoting the actual religious slavery-defenders)...


THE extent to which most of the Churches in America are involved in the guilt of supporting the slave system is known to but few in this country.^* So far from being even suspected by the great mass of the religious community here, it would not be believed but on the most indisputable evidence. Evidence of this character it is proposed now to present—applying to the Methodist Episcopal, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, and the Protestant Episcopal Churches. It is done with a single view to make the British Christian public acquainted with the real state of the case—in order that it may in the most intelligent and effective manner exert the influence it possesses with the American churches to persuade them to purify themselves from a sin that has greatly debased them, and that threatens in the end wholly to destroy them...

In the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, the colored people, during service, sit in a particular part of the house, now generally known as the negro pew. They are not permitted to sit in any other, nor to hire or purchase pews as other people, nor would they be permitted to sit, even if invited, in the pews of white persons. This applies to all colored persons...

"As a man, a Christian, and a citizen, we believe that slavery is right; that the condition of the slave-holding States, is the best existing organization of civil society."

"He [Amos Dresser] should have been hung up as high as Haman, to rot upon the gibbet, until the wind whistled through his bones. The cry of the whole South should be death, INSTANT DEATH, to the abolitionist, wherever he is caught..."

"That slavery through the South and West is not felt as an evil, moral or political, but it is recognised in reference to the actual, and not to any Utopian condition of our slaves, as a blessing both to master and slave..."

A public meeting was appointed to be held a few days afterward, to complete, in the same spirit in which they were commenced, preparations for excluding Anti-Slavery publications from circulation, and for ferreting out persons uspected of favoring the doctrines of the abolitionists, that hey might be subjected to Lynch law. At this assembly the Charleston Courier informs us;

  "The Clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene."

http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/christn/chesjgbat.html

I may post more of this later. But clearly, F Douglass and this Birney abolitionist recognized the prevalence and deadly vehemence of support for slavery and opposition to abolitionists. I suspect that this was the (vast) majority position in churches in the US but I'll continue to look into it.