Category Archives: Conservative Perspectives

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Another “Rapture” Movie Is Here; But The End Is Not Really Near

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[NOTE: Luckily, I didn’t grow up evangelical, but old-style Catholic, which had its own hallways of horror. But that’s another story, or stories. The theology underlying the Rapture genre goes back to about 1830, and the work of a British preacher/teacher, John Nelson Darby. It’s commonly called Dispensationalism, and has spawned innumerable sects, rivalries, splits, and turgid novels. For more on its history and varieties, go here.]

I grew up evangelical. Terrifying rapture films scarred me for ever

The Guardian

Tales of wars, plagues and starvation left my friends and me fearing we’d be ‘left behind’. They haunt me to this day

Josiah Hesse — Wed 1 Feb 2023
After millions of people vanish from existence, the world is thrown into violent anarchy, the streets a playground of theft, murder, rape, looting and suicide.

Continue reading Another “Rapture” Movie Is Here; But The End Is Not Really Near →

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Quotes of the Day: Historians Haggle, But Lincoln Lingers, & Kelly Ann Conway Pontificates

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Quotes of the Day:

Today’s New York Times yielded a rich trove . . .

One was about historian Jon Meacham’s new book, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Random House)

A New York  Times interviewer asked, “So, having delved into the legacies of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush, why did Meacham take so long to turn his sights on Lincoln?

Continue reading Quotes of the Day: Historians Haggle, But Lincoln Lingers, & Kelly Ann Conway Pontificates →

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Surveying the Republican Ruins: Eavesdropping on Conservative Pundits

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White-Guy Pundits at Twilight: Two formerly leading conservative columnists ponder the prospects for their former political home, and the cloudy “trajectories” of their careers . . .

Quotes of the Week, from:
Conservative Columnists David Brooks & Bret Stephens

“The Party’s Over for Us. Where Do We Go Now?” (Excerpts)

New York Times — 01/12/2023

David Brooks

David Brooks:  Our trajectories with the G.O.P. are fairly similar, and so are our lives. I’m older than you, but our lives have a number of parallels. We both grew up in secular Jewish families, went to the University of Chicago, worked at The Wall Street Journal, served in Brussels for The Journal, and wound up at The Times. . . .

In the 2000 Republican primaries I enthusiastically supported John McCain. I believed in his approach to governance and I admired him enormously. But by 2008, when he got the nomination, the party had shifted and McCain had shifted along with it. I walked into the polling booth that November genuinely not knowing if I would vote for McCain or Barack Obama. Continue reading Surveying the Republican Ruins: Eavesdropping on Conservative Pundits →

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“Diamond” of “Diamond & Silk” – Black Super-Trump Stars, Passes Away

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[NOTE: At the end of this set of excerpts, Silk closes with a declaration that goes well past enthusiasm, and surpasses loyalty, to become an effusion of sheer devotion that sounds more religious than political. The clinical phrase “personality cult” hardly does justice to it. For outsiders, it should be food for thought: they are facing something more than illusion, beyond the pervasive grift (including that of the sisters), the inchoate politics, yet ready to go to the limit (if there is one anymore). And if half of D & S is now gone, the movement continues.]

AP News: ‘Diamond,’ of pro-Trump duo “Diamond and Silk”, dies at 51

 

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Lynette Hardaway, an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump and one half of the conservative political commentary duo Diamond and Silk, has died, according to the pair’s Twitter account. She was 51.

Hardaway, known by the moniker “Diamond,” carved out a unique role as a Black woman who loudly backed Trump and right-wing policies, earning fame first on the Internet and then as a cable television commentator. Her promotion of COVID-19 falsities eventually got her dropped from Fox News, but she landed on another right-wing cable platform. Continue reading “Diamond” of “Diamond & Silk” – Black Super-Trump Stars, Passes Away →

Activism, Colleges & Education, Conservative Perspectives, Culture wars, Current Affairs, Signs of the Times, Unions/Labor, Work

Academic Tenure Will Soon Be Gone — Unless . . .

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[NOTE: one scholar cited here says that the number of tenured professors ballooned after World War II, when more Amerians, especially veterans, went to college, got advanced degrees and stayed on to teach.

Today, student body numbers are falling, but grad schools keep churning out new PhDs. So  there’s a glut, too many carrying big debt loads, faced with vanishing tenure prospects and exploitive work conditions. Because most are also more or less liberal, this makes the academy an easy target in the culture wars. Continue reading Academic Tenure Will Soon Be Gone — Unless . . . →