Let's Talk About Fight Club
Try to guess where I saw this happen ...
Two guys challenge each other to a fight. The first guy says, "we can finish it here," and the second guy responded "OK, that's fine, perfect." The first guy, seeking clarification, asked, "You want to do it now?" The second guy reassured, "I'd love to do it right now." At this point, both guys sought to be triply reassured that they were both ready to fight each other. So the first guy responded, "then stand your butt up then," and the second guy said, "you stand your butt up." At this point, an elderly skinny guy with a reputation for adoring mittens stepped in to end the bluster.
Where would you guess I witnessed this?
A. biker bar
B. WWE match
C. Warriors vs. Timberwolves game
If you guessed C, you would be close because there was a fight at that game last night, but no, it's "none of the above" because it happened in Congress at a US Senate hearing. The first guy was Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., the second guy was Teamsters President Sean O'Brien, and the brouhaha was ended by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who was chairing the committee. Lest you think this a weird aberration, note that this happened on the same day Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., accused former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., of elbowing him in the kidneys.
As I watched this lack of decorum, to put it mildly, in the halls of Congress, the question that came to mind was, "Is this what voters wanted?" Then my thoughts went September of 2009. Then-President Barack Obama was addressing a joint session of Congress and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled "you lie" in the middle of his speech. Initially, Wilson was appropriately contrite. He extended his "sincere apologies" for this "lack of civility" and "inappropriate and regrettable" behavior. But then Wilson learned that some of his constituents preferred his indecency and he began to fundraise off the incident. And other Republicans learned as well that behaving like a juvenile bully can actually help win elections. So I'm certain that a segment of Republican voters will watch Mullin's behavior and think, "hell yeah! gimme more of that!"
But let's be hopefully optimistic for a moment — there must be a segment of Republican voters tired of this behavior, and some who are growing weary after previously supporting it. And if we, the voters, can send a message, I'm confident that congressional behavior will follow.
Mending Division Academy
To consider other ways you can encourage civility while advocating for truth in your own community, AVC's "Mending Division Academy" has a course that can help. "When Conspiracies Divide Us: Confronting Misinformation" is taught by Daniel Bennett, associate professor of political science at John Brown University, assistant director at the Center for Faith and Flourishing, and author of the forthcoming Uneasy Citizenship: Embracing the Tension in Faith and Politics.
Check out this short clip from the course where Bennett defines negative partisanship and talks about why it makes our government less effective.
Use the code "NOV40" to get 40% off of Bennett's course, or any other course, for the month of November.
What We're Reading
NPR: "Why the fight to counter false election claims may be harder in 2024"
"In Republican circles, 'misinformation' is a dog whistle," Wilcox said. "All of a sudden, man, you got skewered if you even mention the word."
An election partnership that Wilcox helps lead has even stopped advertising a service that allows local officials to report false voting information online, for fear of conservative backlash — a sign of broader concerns of those who work to safeguard elections as America nears another round of presidential voting.
Experts say a campaign of legal and political pressure from the right has cast efforts to combat rumors and conspiracy theories as censorship. And as a result, they say, the tools and partnerships that tried to flag and tamp down on falsehoods in recent election cycles have been scaled back or dismantled. That's even as threats loom from foreign governments and artificial intelligence, and as former President Donald Trump, who still falsely claims to have won the 2020 contest, is likely to use the same tactics again as he pursues the White House in 2024.
How a bucolic Tennessee suburb became a hotbed of ‘Christian Nashville-ism’
The kind of Christian nationalism found in these affluent Nashville suburbs is driven not by the so-called deplorables — white, disenfranchised, working-class Americans who are often seen as the core of the “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, base but by the kind of well-to-do suburban Christians found in Williamson County who have money and influence and something to lose in a changing America.
“This is not the downtrodden,” said author and attorney David French, who lives in Franklin. “This is not like the voice of the forgotten coal miner in West Virginia. This is some of the most privileged people in the whole United States of America, acting like they’re on the brink of unimaginable persecution.”
Forbes: "Fake Profiles And Anonymous Posts: How Social Media Is Upending College Life During The Israel-Gaza War"
“Why university campuses? Because they are hotspots in the debate about the Palestinians, Hamas and Israel,” said misinformation researcher Paul Barrett, who is deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “College and grad students are already passionately divided over who is to blame for the strife in the Middle East,” and fake or anonymous social media accounts “[appear] to be egging them on, trying to get both sides more riled up.”
Adversaries have long “specialized in trying to exacerbate division within U.S. society,” Barrett added, citing Russia as a key example. “Russian accounts don't necessarily try to change anyone's mind; they try to heighten polarization by encouraging Americans to go for each other's jugular.”
The Independent: "Conservative lawyers to launch Society for Rule of Law to counter Maga movement"
Judge Luttig, who has become a prominent critic of Mr Trump’s actions in the wake of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden and was a key adviser to then-vice president Mike Pence as he resisted the then-president’s efforts to bully him into unlawfully refusing to certify electoral votes from swing states won by Mr Biden, told The Independent in an interview that the new group’s efforts have been made necessary by the failure of existing right-leaning legal groups to speak out against the ex-president’s disrespect for the constitution.
This includes the Federalist Society, which for decades has formed the backbone of a conservative legal movement that has reshaped the court system and influenced generations of conservatives in how to approach the study and practice of law.
“Over the past several years ... the members of the group and I have felt that other legal groups and societies and have declined to stand up for the rule of law and against the the legal excesses of the former President and his administration. And we believe that that at this moment in American history, lawyers must stand up for the rule of law and defend the Constitution and American democracy, and the rule of law. And they must do so without regard to political party affiliation, or, or ideological,” he said.
Politico: Prosecutors grapple with alternate reality defense in Paul Pelosi trial
Now, facing trial a year later, the 43-year-old Canadian’s lawyers are trying to beat serious felony charges on a technicality — arguing that he wasn’t interfering with Pelosi’s role in Congress when he broke into the couple’s home demanding to know “Where’s Nancy?” and striking her elderly husband in the head with a hammer.
Instead, David DePape’s attorneys say, he sought to hold her captive over her “wholly unrelated” role in a bizarre conspiracy theory. They are effectively claiming that he was living in an alternate reality where her role as speaker of the House did not factor into his thinking.
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