Donald Trump
My distinction between authoritarian populists (the “Tea Party,” now “Make America Great Again”), paleoconservatives (white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the like), and social conservatives (mostly evangelical Protestants) seems decreasingly tenable[1] following the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority conference, where the views expressed by social conservatives seemed indistinguishable from those of authoritarian populists.[2] But in fact, Donald Trump has aroused considerable controversy among social conservatives.[3]
David Smith, “The martyr who may rise again: Christian right’s faith in Trump not shaken,” Guardian, June 20, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/19/trump-christian-right-conference-faith-and-freedom
Gig economy
There is a new blog post entitled, “This is not a business plan.”
Rida Qadri and Alexandra Mateescu, “Uber and Lyft: woo drivers with stable pay, not short-term honeypots,” Guardian, June 20, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/gig-economy-companies-uber-lyft-drivers-pandemic
Pandemic
This is where COVID-19 denial, vaccine hesitancy, vaccine resistance, and vaccine refusal matter.[4] Because the delta variant is both more contagious, even for the fully vaccinated, and more dangerous. Vaccines still offer significant protection.[5] But there has to be a real question as to how long it will be before a variant arises that does break through the vaccines more often.
Talal Ansari and Jason Douglas, “Delta Covid-19 Variant Likely to Become Dominant in U.S., CDC Director Says,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/delta-covid-19-variant-likely-to-become-dominant-in-u-s-cdc-director-says-11624047575
- [1]David Benfell, “The seven tendencies of conservatism,” Irregular Bullshit, n.d., https://disunitedstates.com/the-seven-tendencies-of-conservatism/↩
- [2]David Smith, “The martyr who may rise again: Christian right’s faith in Trump not shaken,” Guardian, June 20, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/19/trump-christian-right-conference-faith-and-freedom↩
- [3]Elizabeth Bruenig, “In God’s country,” Washington Post, August 14, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/14/evangelicals-view-trump-their-protector-will-they-stand-by-him/; Rod Dreher, “Eric Metaxas’s American Apocalypse,” American Conservative, December 10, 2020, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/eric-metaxas-trump-bloodshed-american-apocalypse-live-not-by-lies/; Sarah Jones, “White Evangelicals Made a Deal With the Devil. Now What?” New York, December 6, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/white-evangelicals-made-a-deal-with-trump-now-what.html; Peter Wehner, “Evangelicals Made a Bad Bargain With Trump,” Atlantic, October 18, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/the-evangelical-movements-bad-bargain/616760/; Julie Zauzmer and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “After Trump and Moore, some evangelicals are finding their own label too toxic to use,” Washington Post, December 14, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/after-trump-and-moore-some-evangelicals-are-finding-their-own-label-too-toxic-to-use/2017/12/14/b034034c-e020-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html↩
- [4]Philip Bump, “Vaccine skepticism and disregard for containment efforts go hand in hand,” Washington Post, April 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/02/vaccine-skepticism-disregard-containment-efforts-go-hand-in-hand/; April Dembosky, “It’s not Tuskegee. Current medical racism fuels Black Americans’ vaccine hesitancy,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-03-25/current-medical-racism-not-tuskegee-expls-vaccine-hesitancy-among-black-americans; Apoorva Mandavilli, “Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe,” New York Times, May 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-herd-immunity-vaccine.html; Chris Megerian, “Biden’s coronavirus success threatened by political divisions he pledged to heal,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-04-27/bidens-coronavirus-success-threatened-by-political-divisions-he-pledged-to-heal; Benjamin Wallace-Wells, “The Vaccine Resisters,” New Yorker, March 5, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-populism/the-vaccine-resisters; Laurel Wamsley, “Florida Gov. DeSantis Rejects Vaccine Passports As ‘Completely Unacceptable,’” National Public Radio, March 30, 2021, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/30/982837517/florida-gov-desantis-rejects-vaccine-passports-as-completely-unacceptable↩
- [5]Talal Ansari and Jason Douglas, “Delta Covid-19 Variant Likely to Become Dominant in U.S., CDC Director Says,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/delta-covid-19-variant-likely-to-become-dominant-in-u-s-cdc-director-says-11624047575↩