Veterinarian's shadow, avid reader, Oxford comma supporter, and general slave around the farm. Big fan of The Big Bang Theory, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, and any book worth reading.
In case you missed it: 99.5% of people who are dying from the coronavirus right now are not vaccinated. Which means – because of math – that less than one percent of all Covid-19 deaths are among vaccinated people.
To understand just how much the politics of the virus have infected our country, let’s take those numbers out of the coronavirus context.
Let’s say there was a pill developed – approved by the Food and Drug Administration and all that – which guaranteed that you would live five healthy years longer than you would without taking it. You would take it 100% of the time, right? Because who wouldn’t want to spend more time with family and friends, right? Right!
And yet, in the case of the Covid-19 vaccine, which has success rates of upwards of 90% in terms of preventing serious infection and hospitalization (and death), we are still having this dumb debate in some parts of America as to whether or not people should get the shot.
Why? Because Trump turned Covid-19 into a political issue rather than a public health one.
Japanese photographer Hisakata Hiroyuki has decided to dedicate a fair portion of his time to shooting cats during their totally serious combat practices, and the result is purrrfect.
As someone who was born and raised in the Deep South, I could not disagree more with these attempts to stifle an accounting of America’s racist past and even present. To people like me who attended small public schools in rural or remote areas, classes that delve into CRT would be instrumental in countering what feels like an overwhelming culture of deliberate ignorance toward our own history.
And boy, was there a lot of ignorance. In addition to that English instructor who “lectured” about the Klan, I remember a history teacher at that same school saying during a lesson on the Civil War that most slaves were treated well because mistreated slaves simply ran away or refused to work. He talked about slavery as if it were animal abuse, even likened beating a human to beating a dog that would “run away from its owner.”
At the time, no students questioned these assertions, even those of us who knew that they were lies. At fifteen, I was afraid to speak up because I didn’t know how many of my peers and their families felt the same way. I didn’t have the courage to question this teacher who was also a respected pastor in our community.
For the first time this century, mainline Protestants outnumber white evangelical Protestants.
The Evangelicals have been reliably and overwhelmingly Republican since the Reagan era. So if their percentage of the population is in decline, that spells trouble for the GOP.
According
to PRRI, mainline Protestants now account for 27 percent of white
Christians, while Evangelicals make up 23 percent. While white
Christians as a whole have been steadily declining as a portion of the
population for decades, the most recent number shows a reversal of
trends between mainliners, who are experiencing an uptick in affiliation
(from 13 percent of Americans in 2016 to 16 percent now), and
Evangelicals, who continue to decline (they were 23 percent of the
population as recently as 2006, but now stand at 14 percent).
There was a bit of a harbinger of this development in 2013, when a Brookings/PRRI study
of millennials showed a significantly larger share identifying as
“liberal” or “moderate” Christians as opposed to “conservative”
Christians. As I observed at the time: “The idea that non-conservative Christianity is outmoded is itself outmoded.”
Many younger Christians are being increasingly turned off by the hypocrisy of Evangelical leaders. Preachers like Robert Jeffress, Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham, and (the now disgraced) Jerry Falwell, Jr. had been making idiotic excuses for the blatantly sinful behavior of Donald Trump. They even urged support for him on the basis that he is some sort of 21st century equivalent of an imperfect ancient monarch like King David or King Cyrus. In reality, he’s a lot more like King Kong. (apologies to King Kong for that comparison!)
Prominent Evangelicals have tried to distinguish themselves this century by being homophobic, patriarchal, and dismissive of the plight of poor people and ethnic minorities. They’ve ditched the love and peace Jesus and have replaced him with an Aryan replica who is prepared to shoot immigrants crossing the border from Mexico,
So the Evangelical leadership, eager to ingratiate itself with far-right politicians, has only itself to blame for the declining numbers.
All they can do any more is to encourage their buddies in state legislatures and the judiciary to keep as many non-whites and non-Evangelicals as possible from voting. But that strategy can only delay rather than eliminate the end of their heavy-handed influence.
