Originally published at: Texas doctor blames Texas republicans for 'killing their fellow Texans' | Boing Boing
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Texan here … have a lot of depressing thoughts on the whole situation, but my main takeaway of the Trump era is that Christianity is 100% doornail dead. Whatever vestiges it had as a political tool to rein in our worst impulses - as a religion of peace, helping the suffering, helping your neighbors, worrying about your eternal soul, asking what would Jesus do … completely gone.
I’m sure plenty of people here will think that’s a good thing, or picture the “always has been” meme … but in my mind even the pretense of humility and “God loves all the little children” was one of the last barricades against the onslaught of the conservative proposition of “there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
That voice that has always been there in Southern politics for my entire 40 years of living … just isn’t there anymore.
And frankly it makes me very afraid because 1) that’s exactly the vacuum Trump and his ilk are latching onto, and 2) I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg, the cracks are just now starting to show and give way …
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Yup. For all the negative impact of the Christian Right in American politics there used to be a lot of progressive causes that organized through church groups too, from the earliest abolitionist movements to the Civil Rights movement to organizations that worked to make the U.S. a more welcoming place to immigrants. Jimmy Carter was a deacon and was inspired by his faith to spend his sunset years building houses for the homeless and working to find peaceful resolutions to global conflicts.
Now the concept of “Christian” politics in the United States has been so thoroughly poisoned that it’s impossible to even imagine a voice of compassion moving from the pulpit to the podium.
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Hey, they’re just supporting “rugged individualism” and “personal responsibility.” Those texans killed themselves. (/s)
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Sadly you are correct. The thing that Christian authoritarians use to justify their hatred of all things that may benefit humanity in general is that they are saving the precious babies via cruel legislation that accomplishes nothing other than punishing the poor. Policy that may actually prevent abortion like Colorado’s birth control program are rejected as a combination of “free stuff” and enabling sin. WWJD is obsolete.
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I hope Abbott’s supporters hear this. It is awful how much preventable illness and death the Texas government is bringing to its state.
brief rant on lousy data display
I can’t let that awful graph go unmentioned, though (wish I could, but I can’t). The 7-day trailing average and daily count are in the same units with the same range; there is no reason for a second y-axis, and why on earth would anyone make 2 y-axes with just slightly different scales so that it took 3x as long to figure out what was plotted and why the average didn’t match the raw data for low periods. We need to get this pandemic under control and do better at teaching basic math/science here in Tx
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Also infuriating that the Christofascists keep trying to appropriate legitimately heroic figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while going out of their way to ignore or misrepresent everything those figures stood for.
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I agree. Any Christian organizations that are legitimately standing up for good causes deserve to be recognized for such.
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[insert something…something…for the children! battlecry here]
Texas has enough parts of our big cities, and a few rural areas too, that give those of us living here a bubble to believe that Texans are nice, good people, and we can all live together in peace and harmony. The Covid debacle has completely broken that illusion. Democrats have tied themselves in knots trying to break the republican hegemony in Texas, but too many voting Texans just see an R and pull the lever.
If not for Mississippi and Alabama, Texas would be dead last in every category used to define civilization. But apparently that’s what voting Texans want.
And until someone not a republican can win statewide, I don’t want to hear about gerrymandering etc. The governor ain’t gerrymandering.
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Except for all the voter suppression that is an ongoing problem in this state like other southern states…
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The gerrymandering of districts doesn’t directly influence the govenor’s election, but it is part of the broader Texas voter suppression that does.
In Texas there is no online voter registration (1 of 8 states), student IDs can’t be used, no same-day registration, voters have to reapply for registration if you move to another Tx county, helping others register requires a special licensing from the county that expires every 2 years (so 254 counties for a statewide registration drive), which is why it is the most difficult state to vote in and has over 3 million unregistered voters which is more than the total number of eligible voters in most states
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Never let a republican tell you they are in any way respectful or in favor of democracy.
Every red state proves that republicans hate voting.
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Be wonderful if they pipe up and make their presence known.
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Another Texan here. The worst thing (in my mind) about all this shit is that the politicians in the Lege don’t give one single fuck one way or the other about COVID. They’re going to do what they think will get them the most votes.
Everybody knows that lots of people have been moving to Texas over the last several decades. Somehow amid all this inflow, Texas gained an undeserved reputation as some sort of conservative nirvana, and so Texas has been attracting the looniest of the right wing. Trust me, 40 years ago, Texas was way less conservative than it is now.
It’s painful for me to watch long-time native Texans in the Lege kowtowing to dumbshit right wingnut newcomers, and not believing one single word of the bullshit that they shovel to them. Makes me want to pull my hair out.
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I call them out for what they are: False Christians.
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So you’re saying they’re “No True Christian™”
Unfortunately, these days they are the vast majority.
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No. No it’s not… White Evangelicals are only 14% of the population of white Christians… And not all White Evangelicals are right wingers (although many are).
https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/
It’s a very vocal minority here who are attempting to dominate the religious and political landscape of the US and have aligned with fascist groups to do so. They have managed to wrest control of one of our major political parties, and that needs to be challenged.
But these assholes are NOT a majority of the country, of Christians in America, or even of white people.
You’re all just giving them exactly what they want and they are going to continue to roll over the rest of us, with the vulnerable groups being first.
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