Cover of Mother Jones with an image of fingers pointing at John Roberts and the coverline "Blame John Roberts for Everything"
The NYT big expose on SCOTUS today pairs well with @ariberman.bsky.social and @pemalevy.bsky.social's cover story on how ~everything wrong with this country today can be laid at the feet of John Roberts: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
They mocked the field of gender studies as meaningless, but I think they really just knew it was onto them.
They're the softest bunch of insecure little manchildren play-acting what they have been told is manly and macho.
(gift link)
The complaint that colleges and universities lean left is hardly new. William F. Buckley, Jr., made much the same case about Yale in 1951.44 Yet something distinctive has happened in recent decades. In 1989 approximately 40 percent of the nation’s faculty identified as liberal, 40 percent as moderate, and 20 percent as conservative. By 2014, those numbers had shifted to 60 percent liberal, 30 percent moderate, and 10 percent conservative.45 Of course it is not just the faculty that has changed. The political system has changed too. Fifty years ago, the Democratic and Republican parties were less ideologically divided than they are today. As the parties resorted, so did the partisan preferences of many professions, including within higher education
To mention that the political parties have changed without noting the substance of those transformations is frustratingly to leave out the crux of the story, especially as it relates to the GOP's attacks on the university in recent decades.
If you've got other Yaldabaoth memes, I, for one, am here for them.
Was asked to fill in today to give a brief intro to Gnosticism & the Apocryphon of John
Apologies in advance to students
This is an important point to remember every time some yahoo politician who wants to defund the NSF reads the title of a grant in dumbstruck tones: "They're studying the venom of Gila monsters? What? Who's *that* for?"
All of us, Gomer. It's how science actually works.
I mean, Jesus can be the Prince of Peace and also the storm-warrior god flying through the air with a sword coming out of his mouth, wreaking destruction on his enemies. Read the Left Behind series! His literary history is complex.
www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13...
Notice how the Protestant Bible-only crowd suddenly become huge fans of the Catholic "just war" tradition when they can't cite Jesus or Paul in justifying killing national enemies.
Theological disputes are rider-talk in the service of elephants. IOW, it's deployed to justify in-group commitments.
i think everybody who wasn't an adult in 2006 is unprepared for how fast and how totally they're going to pretend trump never existed
Sounds like Godman might want to have a word with him?
Thing is, Christians don't get their theology from Popes or even Bibles. They get theology from communities. This includes evangelicals who claim to get everything from reading the Bible.
So when the Pope or the Bible tells us something our community disagrees with, too bad for the Pope or Bible.
This is one of the best studies I have seen on campus antisemitism, and it does not fully support either the "all campus antisemitism is a right-wing false flag to shut down protest" or "Jews have it so much worse on campus than other minorities" narratives. forward.com/news/818719/...
C’est mardi prochain pour ceux que cela intéresse.
you can think of it as a heretical form of christianity if that makes you feel better, but understand that they’ve the power to define the tradition now. to refuse to see them as christians is to cede that power over to them fully, no pushback.
or you could reclaim the tradition instead, IJS.
Tweet from Masoud Pezeshkian, president of Iran: "His Holiness Pope Leo XIV ( @Pontifex ), I condemn the insult to Your Excellency on behalf of the great nation of Iran, and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person. I wish you glory by Allah."
Really does not feel like this is the moment in history to be cutting Religious Studies education.
As we await the Hungarian election results, it’s worth remembering that Orban first rode to power using the same antisemitic Soros conspiracy theories that fuel MAGA. The US consultant who gave him the idea (Finkelstein) got his start selling Goldwater and then Reagan in the US.
This is an absolutely must read. 5-star
Paul Krugman and @thelisagraves.bsky.social
@alexaronson.bsky.social
Top to bottom, every word. You’ll know more than years of reading NYT or Wapo.
And get her book - Without Precedent on Roberts’ corrupt court.
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-wi...
An exceptionally good survey of the Protestant theological currents feeding this holy war.
This was a fun exercise. For the non-philosophers, here's a thread briefly describing the ridiculous views that we philosophers are pretty sure we could find seven experts to agree to.
If you read one of them and think "What?!? I must be misunderstanding" you probably aren't.
bilbo looking down at ring with smile, then serious grimace showing resolve to keep it, hesitance to give it up
shitty little sentence that makes no sense but i just like the sound of it
My latest story is up! The components required for DNA and RNA are all present on asteroid Ryugu, which lends strong support to the hypothesis that the raw ingredients for life were present before the Sun even formed. A very fun and fascinating tale!
The question of whether Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens are more influential on the MAGA base than Trump's evangelicals (White, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, etc.) is the one to watch here. I've argued the evangelicals have a thicker, long-lasting relationship with their audiences. 7/x
Something that's not computing for me is that this poll finds that self-identified MAGA Republicans are *more* supportive of the Iran war than are self-ID'd "non-MAGA" Republicans (whatever that means). But all the Tucker Carlsons are getting attention for being anti-war MAGAs, which should mean 1/x
I think people are allowed to draw conclusions about the American people based on their decision to put this man in office bsky.app/profile/pear...
Armageddon is terrible, but our only other option was diversity trainings at work.
But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?
We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in US history. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-next-c...
In honor of today’s discourse: consider reading God, Slavery, and Early Christianity!
Ch. 3 is esp. meaningful for showing how Paul’s language of slavery and the Holy Spirit gets read as “God the enslaver dwells within you & surveils you”
www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...
On the 58th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, it's time to reckon with the media's troubling role in the civil rights struggle. (I pitched this to @nytimes.com who found it "fascinating..[but] the news is making deeper & certainly more historical pieces very hard." But they're the news.) A 🧵
As Jamelle says, this is really good. So much of global politics these days is gender -- it's obvious to the naked eye but, as this author says, it's vaguely embarrassing to political scientists & other analysts. It seems silly & fuzzy. And it is! But it's so real.