"A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again..."

"... because they could determine what was essential. So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown. Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It’s gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They’re not essential. We’re cutting them back. So it’d be horrible. The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do.... It can last forever. There is no off ramp. One of the Republican senators told us: We go to a shutdown, it’s going to be there for six months, nine months, a year. And by then, their goal of destroying the federal government would be gone. And finally, one final point here, and that is that right now under the C.R., you can go to court and contest an executive order to shut something down. Under a shutdown, the executive branch has sole power.... I felt so strongly as a leader that I couldn’t let this happen.... I had to do what I had to do...."

Said Chuck Schumer, quoted in "The Interview/Chuck Schumer on Democrats, Antisemitism and His Shutdown Retreat" (NYT).

By "their goal of destroying the federal government would be gone," he meant, I think, their goal of destroying the federal government would be achieved. I guess it's technically correct to say a goal is "gone" when a goal has been transformed into a reality. I think Schumer got distracted by the hyperbole of "destroying the federal government" and the opportunity to say "the federal government would be gone." The federal government would be "gone" if it were "destroyed." Colorful language is tricky!

But anyway... I think Schumer analyzed the situation correctly and made the right choice. He's getting viciously attacked by fellow Democrats, but I can't believe they don't understand why his analysis was correct. Those whose votes were not needed to prevent what he correctly envisioned — they can carry on in public and kick him around, but privately they must be grateful to him... unless they are fools.

"This shifting landscape is forcing companies and consultants to adapt on the fly, with many acting preemptively to guard against the legal threats..."

"... that have led some firms to recast or discard race-based initiatives. They’re renaming diversity programs, overhauling internal DEI teams and working closely with lawyers. Some are moving away from using racial and gender considerations in hiring and promotion.... Meanwhile, the DEI industry — which was worth an estimated $9 billion in 2023... — is also rethinking its public face, consultants say.... [I]nstead of referring to DEI, [Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management] switched to calling these efforts 'IED,' putting the focus on 'inclusion' as DEI accrued cultural and political baggage.... Eric Ellis, CEO of Integrity Development, a DEI consultancy, said he’s seen the 'branding merry-go-round' playing out for decades, tracing back to the wake of the civil rights movement. He expects the language to keep changing in response to public attacks, especially those by high-profile figures like Elon Musk, who in January wrote on his social media platform X that 'DEI is just another word for racism.'... Joelle Emerson, chief executive of DEI consultancy Paradigm [said] 'DEI has only been the acronym du jour since 2020... Regardless of what we call it, we’ve done a really poor job storytelling what this work is actually about.'"

From "DEI is getting a new name. Can it dump the political baggage? Under mounting legal and political pressure, companies’ DEI tactics are evolving" (WaPo)(free access link).

Switching DEI to IED... brilliant. Either you're proud of what you're doing or you're trying to hide it. And if you think of your real-world justification as a matter of "storytelling," you're tipping your hand. Do you even believe yourself?

"One of us didn't understand..."

Link.

Have you ever understood implications of the meaning of a book that perhaps the author did not intend? Is the author the supreme interpreter of her works? Do you adhere to originalism in the interpretation of novels? Do you think that anyone who doesn't is a laughable fool?

ADDED: There are 2 dimensions of understanding here.

"What we’re seeing is a kind of standard practice of conservatives and conservative reactions to Black political movements — to weaponize the words and concepts..."

"... they’ve used to undermine efforts of social movements. History shows that you can rally voters around issues of difference, issues that suggest that people are losing power, issues where their values are being challenged."

Said Duke polysci prof Candis Watts Smith, co-author of "Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter," quoted in "Republicans use ‘wokeism’ to attack left — but struggle to define it/Conservatives attach the term to a host of policies they oppose, from transgender rights to climate change measures to socially responsible investing" (by Ashley Parker and Liz Goodwin in WaPo).

I thought that was an interesting quote because it so obviously applies in the opposite direction. Conservatives would, I think, have been willing to put "issues of difference" off limits and to proceed color-blind. They are a "reaction," as she says, and it's a reaction to the weaponization of "words and concepts" and the rallying of "voters around issues of difference."

This really deserves my "civility bullshit" tag, because it is essentially a call for one side to stand down and stop talking in those extreme and emotive ways.

Most of this article, though, is just the typical perseveration about the word that irks them: "woke." But it's their word. And that's how words work. Your opponent uses your word and turns it around. That's rhetoric. 

"If I run, there are forces within the Democratic Party who would be trying to invisibilize me."

"I think they will have an easier time invisibilizing me if I run third party. If I do run, and I run as a Democrat, I will be more inconvenient to the people who need to be inconvenienced."

Said the charmingly glib Marianne Williamson, quoted in "Potential Biden challenger Marianne Williamson heads to New Hampshire/The visit comes as state Democrats warn the ongoing showdown over primary dates 'will create an opening for an insurgent candidate' that could embarrass the president" (WaPo).

I love the quote. Great repetition of 2 cool words beginning with "i" — "invisibilize" and "inconvenien- t/ced." Invisibilizing as the defense to inconveniencing. And the way to fight invisibility is to be more inconvenient. Another way to fight invisibility is to say intriguing, interesting things.

"The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box."

"But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act."

Said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, quoted in "Meta to Reinstate Trump’s Facebook and Instagram Accounts/Donald Trump had been barred from the social media platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. Twitter reinstated him last year" (NYT).

I agree that "The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box." But why did it suddenly become true for Clegg? I've got to presume Meta recalculated its interests. 

Clegg hedges, reserving the power to kick Trump and others out again, when the calculation changes, but at least he said "clear" — "clear risk of real world harm" — and acknowledges a "high bar." 

ADDED: Here's where the exception swallows the rule: "harm." It could encompass hurt feelings and lost economic opportunities — and lost elections. The modifier "real world" doesn't keep "harm" from including the ordinary consequences of effective speech. Then, "clear risk" isn't much of a limitation. You could have a clear 5% risk. I appreciate the Clegg at least mouthed a commitment to free speech and purported to set a high bar, but there really is no assurance at all. There are words to be thrown in his face the next time Meta kicks out somebody we care about, but he'll have words to use to say they followed their commitment to the letter.

"Buckminster Fuller... was an American type—self-invented, overflowing with ideas and theories, eager to see the universe whole, and born to evangelize...."

"On his lecture tours he could speak for hours without stopping, and he mesmerized his audiences even as he baffled them. 'Students find themselves tuned in to the unique Fuller wave length, with its oddly necessary word coinings and its synergetic constructions,' Calvin Tomkins wrote in an adulatory 1966 profile in The New Yorker. In print—and Fuller’s books are mainly edited versions of his lectures—his prose is a word salad, the same phrases and catchwords combined and recombined until the mind reels. 'Physical points are energy-event aggregations,' he would say. 'When they converge beyond the critical fall-in proximity threshold, they orbit coordinatedly, as a Universe-precessed aggregate, as loose pebbles on our Earth orbit the Sun in unison, and as chips ride around on men’s shoulders.'..."

From "Space-Age Magus/From beginning to end, experts saw through Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and theories. Why did so many people come under his spell?" by James Gleick (NYRB).

"He believed in a coming utopia. He thought no one should have to work merely to earn a living. He had a gift for slogans: 'God is a verb.' 'Nature never fails.' 'Either war is obsolete, or men are.' 'Universe is eternally regenerative.' One young listener said, 'When I listen to Bucky talk, I feel I’ve got to go out and save the world. Then when I go outside, I realize I don’t know how.'...  Even Stewart Brand has come to regret touting Fuller in the Whole Earth Catalog. 'Domes couldn’t grow or adapt,' he says. 'When my generation outgrew the domes, we simply left them empty, like hatchlings leaving their eggshells.'”

"Experts say the steady patter of bellicose talk has helped normalize the expectation of political violence."

"In late August, a poll of 1,500 adults by YouGov and The Economist found that 54 percent of respondents who identified as 'strong Republicans' believed a civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next decade. Only about a third of all respondents felt such an event was unlikely.... [The Chicago Project on Security and Threats] researchers tracked tweets mentioning civil war before and after Mr. Trump announced the search on Mar-a-Lago."

I'm reading "Talk of ‘Civil War,’ Ignited by Mar-a-Lago Search, Is Flaring Online" (NYT).

"I thought these migrants were DREAMers that were going to go to college to become doctors. Now, Nancy just wants them to work in the fields...."

"The illegals are viewed as servants by the Democrats. They’re opening the border for the help. These aren’t asylum seekers. These are just waiters and field hands for a party that fought a civil war to keep their slaves."

Said Jesse Watters, quoted in "Jesse Watters Says Democrats Leaving Border Open for Post-Civil War ‘Servants’, Migrants are ‘Waiters and Field Hands’Jesse Watters Says Democrats Leaving Border Open for Post-Civil War ‘Servants’, Migrants are ‘Waiters and Field Hands’" (Mediaite).

Watters was riffing on something Nancy Pelosi said the other day — which we talked about here — "We have a shortage of workers in our country, and you see even in Florida, some of the farmers and the growers saying, ‘Why are you shipping these immigrants up north? We need them to pick the crops down here.'"

Watters's rhetoric would have more power if he weren't stuck with calling the border-crossers "the illegals" —  "The illegals are viewed as servants by the Democrats."

I'm waiting for a Democrat to make the equivalently awkward remark "The servants are viewed as illegals by the Democrats."

Either humanize them or don't. But don't expect me to believe you really care about people who are human only when it suits your needs. Ironically, that's exactly Watters's point about Nancy and the Democrats.

"Personal essays that don’t make an argument are generally not op-eds."

"Even if the op-ed includes a personal story, it should have a point to make — something readers can engage with and think about. Journalistic investigations without an argument are not op-eds. Poems and works of fiction usually aren’t op-eds either. Neither are reviews of books, movies, television shows or other media.... When considering op-eds, we look for pieces that will accomplish one or more of the following goals for our readers:

• Help people more deeply understand a topic in the news
• Help them understand what it means for them.
• Equip them with arguments they can employ when talking about the subject.
• Elevate ideas that help them think about the world differently.
• Expose them to topics they might not have heard about.
• Help them better articulate their own perspective.
• Help them understand perspectives different from their own....

"We strive to publish a diversity of opinions on our op-ed page. Often, that means we are specifically seeking viewpoints that are different from those of our columnists or the Editorial Board."

From "The Washington Post guide to writing an op-ed" — featured at the top of the website front page today.

You know, people are not that good at making arguments. Way too much of what we see these days is a demand for agreement and a threat or insinuation that you're going to be in trouble if you don't agree. Or there's a pettish insistence on avoiding anyone not already on your side and not inclined to go along with whatever's the next thing that people like you go along with. 

What if you had to convince people who don't agree with you and don't crave your approval? What on earth would you say? Well, maybe WaPo has some op-eds that will give you some talking points.

"[S]ince around 1980, English speakers have been more given to writing about feelings than writing from a more scientific perspective."

"From around 1850 on, [researchers] found, the frequency of words such as 'technology,' 'result,' 'assuming,' 'pressure,' 'math,' 'medicine,' 'percent,' 'unit' and 'fact' has gone down while the frequency of words such as 'spirit,' 'imagine,' 'hunch,' 'smell,' 'soul,' 'believe,' 'feel,' 'fear' and 'sense' has gone up. The authors associate their observations with what Daniel Kahneman has labeled the intuition-reliant 'thinking fast' as opposed to the more deliberative 'thinking slow.' In a parallel development, the authors show that the use of plural pronouns such as 'we' and 'they' has dropped somewhat since 1980 while the use of singular pronouns has gone up. They see this as evidence that more of us are about ourselves and how we feel as individuals — the subjective — than having the more collective orientation that earlier English seemed to reflect."

Writes John McWhorter, in "Don’t, Like, Overanalyze Language" (NYT), discussing a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that purported to detect a "surge of post-truth political argumentation" and a "historical rearrangement of the balance between collectivism and individualism and — inextricably linked — between the rational and the emotional.” 

"On any given afternoon, Bongino might read advertisements for survivalist food rations ('Act now, and your order will be shipped quickly and discreetly to your door in unmarked boxes') and shotguns and massage chairs and filet mignon and holsters..."

"... 'custom-molded to fit your exact firearm for a quick, smooth draw.' In between, he supplies listeners with a tight rotation of political hits—a jab at the 'pino' ('President in name only'), followed by a savaging of the press ('Don’t ever call me a journalist, that’s an insult')—interspersed with dispatches from the culture wars (a ruckus over the use of 'jedi' as an acronym for 'justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion,' which prompted Bongino to cry, 'They can’t cancel "Star Wars"!').... Bongino, like other prominent [Trump] supporters, seems to put increasing stock in what researchers refer to as 'blue lies,' the kinds of claims that pull believers together and drive skeptics away....  Bongino is also adept at the 'accusation in a mirror' approach—co-opting the language and strategies of his opponents.... Nothing, though, has proved more potent than the constant regeneration of fear.... 'These people want you dead,' he said, and offered a call to action. 'The activism has to be dialled up times ten. These people are crazy....'...  In his punditry, Bongino talks about fear all the time. 'Fear has always been the Democrats’ coin of the realm,' he told podcast listeners in June. 'How else are they going to coax you into delivering them your civil liberties and freedom? They do it through things like coronavirus.' In a mock orator’s voice, he said, 'Give up your right to assemble!'"

From "Dan Bongino and the Big Business of Returning Trump to Power/The Secret Service agent turned radio host is furious at liberals—so he’s trying to build a right-wing media infrastructure in time for 2024" by Evan Osnos (The New Yorker).

I don't think I'd ever noticed the term "blue lies" before. Here's an article from 2017 in Scientific American — "How the Science of 'Blue Lies' May Explain Trump’s Support/They are a very particular form of deception that can build solidarity within groups." We're told it's "a psychologist’s term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen bonds among the members of that group":

Kamala, actually.

From the transcript of Kamala Harris on "Face the Nation" yesterday:

But let's not forget our individual power to actually do something about it…. And that is again, where every individual has it within their ability and- and many may argue within their responsibility to actually take on these- these- accept the tools that are available to do something about this issue…. When we talk about the economy, the average person in America is going to measure the economy based on can they actually just afford to get through the day and through the month…. And- and Goldman Sachs just today said that actually, we know that Build Back Better will strengthen the economy. And so, I think there is without any question, room for discussion about what actually will be the impact to the economy…. But it actually makes economic sense to do that and it brings down the cost of living…. we have the ability to actually alleviate the burdens that people are carrying that make it difficult for them to get through the day or in the month…. Every- I read it every day. I read it every day, and then most days the president and I actually do it together with our IC- with the intelligence community…. I think that, you know, I actually wrote a book many years ago, and I do believe that it is important for us to have a cyber doctrine…. I mean, and I actually mean that sincerely for a number of reasons…. People are- people have a right to know and believe that their government actually sees and hears them. … And it has actually been part of my lifelong career to deal with tough issues and this is no different.

It's quite obvious that the word as she's using it has the opposite effect of its literal meaning. She must want to stress the reality and practicality of what she's saying, but it undercuts her credibility. It's the equivalent of asserting "I'm telling the truth," over and over. Who does that? Someone who's insecure about her believability. A good liar would know better. A secure truth-teller wouldn't run into the problem in the first place.

Did Governor Hochul go too far using religion in her health-policy rhetoric?

Yesterday we were talking about Justice Gorsuch's dissenting opinion in Dr. A v. Kathy Hochul. In finding a right to a religious exemption from a vaccine mandate in New York, he focused on Governor Hochul's statements using religion to justify the mandate and to criticize opponents of the mandate.

I was particularly struck by what Governor Hochul said when she attended a service at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn on September 26, 2021: "All of you, yes, I know you’re vaccinated, you’re the smart ones, but you know there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants. You know who they are." I wanted to read more of that speech and see how much Hochul used religion to deliver a health/politics message. 

Here's the transcript of that speech. It might be worth keeping in mind that the Christian Cultural Center is evangelical, the litigants who want a religious exemption are Catholic (with their own interpretation of what opposition to abortion requires), and Hochul comes from a Catholic family (but is pro-choice on abortion).

Here's the excerpt, showing the most religious parts of the speech:

I am humbled and just as Reverend Bernard and First Lady Karen were called to the ministry to leave their lives and serve way back in 1979 I feel that God has tapped me on the shoulder as well because everything I have done in life has been because of the Grace of God leading me to that place and now God has asked me to serve humbly as your servant, as your Governor, and yes it is the first female governor.... Thank God for President Joe Biden. He sent money to us to help people... Get this money out to the people... God let you survive this pandemic because he wants you to do great things someday. He let you live through this when so many other people did not and that is also your responsibility. But how do we keep more people alive? We are not through this pandemic. I wished we were but I prayed a lot to God during this time and you know what - God did answer our prayers. He made the smartest men and women, the scientists, the doctors, the researchers - he made them come up with a vaccine. That is from God to us and we must say, thank you, God. Thank you. And I wear my 'vaccinated' necklace all the time to say I'm vaccinated. All of you, yes, I know you're vaccinated, you're the smart ones, but you know there's people out there who aren't listening to God and what God wants. You know who they are. I need you to be my apostles. I need you to go out and talk about it and say, we owe this to each other. We love each other. Jesus taught us to love one another and how do you show that love but to care about each other enough to say, please get the vaccine because I love you and I want you to live... I will use the inspiration of God in my life and fight for you every single day as your governor and beyond....

Some people think political office holders ought to get religion out of their rhetoric entirely, but that is an extreme position, and it's not followed. 

Others, notably Justice Scalia, celebrate the use of religion in speeches by political figures: The politicians are expressing themselves and should feel free to use religion. They're not requiring others to follow their religion, and it's fine for them to have a religious reason for adopting a policies and to speak openly about that rather than to sanitize it out of the public discourse.

The Gorsuch opinion held Hochul's statements against her because she declared what is orthodox in religion and impugned the religious position of those who wanted an exemption. She said they hadn't listened to and understood God. 

One problem with politicians using religion in their rhetoric is that it can cheapen religion. Who believes what Hochul said to the Christian Cultural Center congregation was sincere?! Does she believe God tapped her on the shoulder and made her Governor? Does she believe God made the scientists come up with the vaccine? It was — as it looks to me from halfway across the country — insipid pablum for a megachurch full of African-American Brooklynites. It's patronizing. 

You know there's people out there who aren't listening to God and what God wants. You know who they are. Give me a break!

"An 'insurrection,' as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority."

"Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Hill Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that 'got out of hand.'" 

Writes Roger Kimball in "The January 6 Insurrection Hoax" (Real Clear Politics). 

When I see "uprising," I think of this:

Sometimes people want to be thought of as insurrectionists. Sometimes the political protesters that got out of hand want the bigger concept to apply to them. They use it to brag about the scope and significance of what they accomplished. 

It goes both ways, this spin. But it's funny to me to see leftists using "insurrection" against the protesters they hate when they — some of them — used the same notion to vaunt their 2011 takeover of the Wisconsin Capitol.

And don't forget Occupy Wall Street. 

Am I failing to distinguish "insurrection" and "uprising"? I've dabbled in researching the difference if any. I think the 2 words mean the same thing, though "insurrection" might have somewhat more of a connotation of armed rebellion. I don't think any of the things discussed above were armed rebellion. So I'd just use the word "uprising" and use it consistently to refer to the takeover of the Wisconsin Capitol and the takeover of the U.S. Capitol. If you don't want to use that word for both things, just don't use it for either. Or be exposed as a propagandist.

"The median sermon examined in the first survey was thirty-seven minutes long; Catholic homilies were the shortest, with a median of fourteen minutes."

"Not even that brevity satisfies Pope Francis, who recently advised clergy members to keep their sermons short: 'A homily, generally, should not go beyond ten minutes, because after eight minutes you lose people’s attention.'... By contrast, Pew found that the sermons at historically Black churches were the longest, at more than three times that length, with a median of fifty-four minutes. These sermons had only a few hundred more words than those from within the evangelical tradition, a detail that suggests oratorical style or musical interludes might be contributing to their length. The religion scholar Albert J. Raboteau wrote about this patient style of preaching, sometimes known as the 'black folk sermon' or 'old-time country preaching,' tracing its origins back to the eighteenth century in rural, Southern prayer meetings and revivals.... Vocabulary analysis by Pew revealed how common some language is across these four major Christian traditions—words like 'know' and 'God' appeared most often, not surprisingly—but also how distinctive certain words are within each of those traditions. Evangelicals referred most often to 'eternal Hell,' 'salvation,' 'sin,' 'Heaven,' and 'the Bible'; mainline Protestants relied more on the words 'poor,' 'house,' 'Gospel,' and 'disciple'; historically Black Protestants were most likely to hear 'hallelujah,' 'neighbor,' and 'praise.'... The appearance of certain words is hardly a sophisticated metric of anything, including sermons.... And even if Pew were able to parse the language of sermons in ways that shed more light on the views of preachers, it would not be able to illuminate the most fundamental question of preaching—when, whether, and why a sermon moves a congregant to new or deeper beliefs." 

From "What American Christians Hear at Church/Drawing on newly ubiquitous online services, Pew has tried to catalogue the subject matter of contemporary sermons," by Casey Cep (The New Yorker).

"My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks."

That's funny — intentionally funny, I presume — because "this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks" is just what a partisan hack would say, and "My goal today is to convince you that" is just the intro that an elite partisan hack would use to butter up an elite audience.

The quote is from "Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues Supreme Court isn't 'a bunch of partisan hacks'" (USA Today).

I'm not calling Barrett a partisan hack. I just want to say that these speeches are so unnewsworthy. Supreme Court Justices always say the same thing — they're not partisans, not political. Justice Breyer is out and about these days — he's got another book — and he's saying the same thing. They need to say it, and I understand why. It's central to their legitimacy. But it's an assertion that they are not abusing their power. What's the good of saying it over and over? You're getting into "protests too much" territory. 

By the way,  I remember when educated people made a point of using "comprise" correctly. Is that over? Is it the new "nauseous" — a word you can only use wrongly or people won't get what you mean?

"I genuinely do love you and your community. You’re so human and beautiful. You make New York City special."

"I have no idea how we ever lose to the Republicans given that you all are frankly in, like, leadership roles all over the Democratic Party. We have, like, this incredible secret weapon. It’s not even secret. It’s like, we should win everything because we have you all." 

Said Andrew Yang, referring to the gay community and gunning for the endorsement of that Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City. And they hated it! 

I'm reading "Andrew Yang, Looking for Endorsement, Offends Gay Democratic Club/Participants described Mr. Yang’s remarks as offensive, saying that even as members of the club wanted to discuss policy issues, he mentioned gay bars" (NYT). 

Now, why did they hate it? I'm guessing they prefer some other candidate, and they ran to the New York Times to send out their negativity against Yang. He's the frontrunner, and he needs to be taken down. He expressed nothing but love and inclusiveness, but apparently, they don't want their special status talked about, they just want a policy-based discussion of the kind he would do with any group, including the least diversityish people. Who knew? 

But, I wonder, if he'd come on like that — talking policy in the same way he would with, say, straight white people — would they have run to the New York Times and claimed to have been offended that he showed no interest in their particular status and fed them generic material he could have served anybody?

I don't know. But I will disapprove of the line "You’re so human." All humans are human. To say "You’re so human" is to imply that the humanness was in question or that other humans are less human. It's a bit like "Black lives matter" in that it states a fact, but the only reason to state it is that there's a background notion — alive in the hearts of other people — that black lives don't matter. You might tell gay people "You're so human" because you mean to say: There are other people out there who think you're subhuman or barely human. 

Here's how members of the group expressed their offense: 

What should sound weird?

I'm reading "Amanda Gorman showed us how civic ceremonies can have prayer without invoking God" by Kate Cohen (WaPo): 

Hearing a grown-up ask God for something should sound as strange to me as hearing him plead with Santa or Superman. “We seek your faith, your smile, your warm embrace,” should sound weird. But it doesn’t. I was raised in America, where pledging allegiance “under God,” spending money stamped with “In God We Trust” and ending speeches with “God Bless America” are so automatic that “gracious and merciful God” sounds like “blah blah blah.” 

But is “blah blah blah” what we want from our ceremonial language? Leaving aside constitutionality — as, unfortunately, the courts continue to do — unless every American actually believes that we need to ask a supernatural being for help, then appealing to God robs these prayers of their rhetorical power. Either because they sound meaningless or because what they mean, fundamentally, is that He is the agent of change, not we.

Cohen argues that there are ways to elevate and solemnize civic occasions that don't use God. As you can tell from the title of her column, Cohen indulges in the adoration of the young woman who read a poem at the inauguration. I did not read or listen to this poem so I have nothing to say about the poet other than that the people who are overly enthused about her feel patronizing — if not idolatrous — to me. Which is why I didn't watch. I didn't want to be soppy or judge-y.

But Cohen's point is that the poet was able to use words like "The new dawn blooms as we free it" and "there is always light" to create a religion-y vibe. So there is a way, if that's what we want and need. Leaving God out is what Cohen says she needs "to make eternal truths shimmer." 

But verbiage like "new dawn blooms" and "there is always light" would in time sound just as "blah blah blah" as "gracious and merciful God." It's a government ceremony. It doesn't really matter. Find your deep inspiration away from government. That's the real separation of church and state. 

"Barack Obama continues his rather strange mission to confront and correct young liberal activists...."

" Wednesday morning on Peter Hamby’s Snapchat show, 'Good Luck America,' Obama said this: 'If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it’s not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan like "Defund the police," but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done.' It was not the first time Obama had taken aim at these young activists. Last year he also took a swipe at wokeness and 'call-out culture,' saying, among other things: 'If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.'... [T]he politician navigates the system, while the activist defies it. The politician builds a coalition by using middling philosophy and policies that appeal to the most and offend the fewest. The activist is driven more by purpose, morality and righteousness.... Obama is a good man and a great politician. History will always record him as such. But he is not an activist.... His presence as president was his greatest symbol of change: a smart, competent Black man, devoid of personal scandal, who brought class and professionalism to the White House.... That simple act, him doing his job well, was monumental in the quest for racial progress. But none of that negates the legitimate cries of the activist that much more must be done, that Obama altered a racial image, for the better, but wasn’t able to alter the system of oppression.."

Writes Charles M. Blow in the NYT.

My tag for this is "Obama attacked from the left."