DL Open Thread: Friday, March 29, 2024
Trump And Christianity: Why So Much Blood?:
The exhibition, which opened in late February, doesn’t take up the proliferating use of blood as political metaphor in the rhetoric of Donald Trump, but it explores the deep historical reservoirs of meaning that make the former president’s invocation of blood so disturbing.
Christianity was a particularly blood-obsessed religion, with the Nile transformed to a river of blood in the Old Testament plagues of Egypt, and blood flowing freely from Jesus’ body during the flagellation and crucifixion of the New Testament. By the late Middle Ages, the wounds of Jesus took on an iconic power that floated free of the crucifixion narrative and became detached from his body. And so we see his body soaked in blood in an image from a 16th-century prayer book by the Flemish artist Simon Bening, and an even more disturbing image of the side wound of Jesus, from the late 15th century, in which the wound is presented disembodied, a kite- or vulvic-shaped object presented as if on a platter, with a text that confirms it is life-size: “This is the measure of the wound of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
The resurgence of blood as political metaphor in the United States draws upon these deep wells of symbolic power, copiously though not consistently. When Trump in interviews and rallies last fall began saying that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country, his remarks were compared to the frequent use of blood as a metaphor for race, nationality and disease in Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” But Trump, like Hitler before him, was animating toxic ideas far older than 20th-century fascism.
I found this article and accompanying artworks fascinating. You’ll learn everything you need to know about Trump’s frequent forays into blood-soaked rhetoric. Highly recommended.
Just–Wow! Nothing Worse Than A Co-Conspirator Scorned: Lev Parnas documents Rudy Guiliani’s attempts to falsely implicate Biden in Ukraine kickbacks. Another must-read (and hear)! Check out how the Fox News team and a whole host of undesirables conspired to spread a story they knew to be false. Also featuring Delaware’s odious legal duo of Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing.
Former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.“
Supreme Court Enables South Carolina Elections To Take Place In Unconstitutionally-Drawn Districts. How? They just sat on this case until it was too late:
The Supreme Court’s over five months of inaction on a South Carolina redistricting case has forced a lower court to order that the state’s 2024 elections be conducted with a map that includes a district it found to be racially gerrymandered.
“Having found that Congressional District No. 1 constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, the Court fully recognizes that ‘it would be the unusual case in which a court would be justified in not taking appropriate action to insure that no further elections are conducted under an invalid plan,’” Obama appointee Judge Mary Geiger Lewis wrote, quoting a separate case. “But with the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical.”
The Supreme Court heard oral argument on October 11, and has neither decided the case nor acted on Republican legislators’ emergency request to keep the map as is.
During oral arguments, the right-wing justices sounded solidly arrayed behind the Republican lawmakers, dismissing the plaintiffs’ case as resting on “circumstantial evidence.”
This case has also served as a reminder of how bizarre redistricting litigation has become on the federal level thanks to the Roberts Court. Since the Supreme Court banned partisan redistricting cases from being heard in federal court, litigants are only left with racial gerrymandering claims — particularly farcical, as race and partisan lean are often linked. That reality has led to surreal scenes, as Republican South Carolina lawmakers openly admitted that they’d rigged the maps to maximize their vote share, to pick and choose voters by party until it became virtually impossible for them to lose the House seats.
The Jetsons In The Spotlight? Air taxis soon to be a reality?:
For a decade, Dayton in south-west Ohio has fought to shed its rust belt past. New apartment blocks, hotels and breweries have cut into a landscape dominated by derelict warehouses and general industrial decline. But today, that transformation is shifting gears and taking to the skies.
A town that 120 years ago produced the pioneers of human flight the Wright brothers is set to build hundreds of futuristic flying taxis each year.
With the Joe Biden White House committing billions of dollars to a new era of manufacturing, part of a wider move to reduce the US’s dependency on other countries for key technological products, much of that money is landing in the industrial midwest. Millions of dollars of government incentives have been committed to new semiconductor and other mobility projects in Ohio, Michigan and other states that are often more commonly associated with socio-economic decline.
For Dayton, a city that has lost close to half its population since the 1960s, the move could spark a major turnaround.
Might as well close on a musical note:
