Sarah Jones/New York Magazine:
White Christian Nationalism ‘Is a Fundamental Threat to Democracy’
Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry discuss their new book, The Flag and the Cross.
An ideology is on the march. Traces of it are detectable in a racist massacre in Buffalo; in Tucker Carlson’s monologues; in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s public comments. Find it again in the right’s anti-abortion rhetoric, which poorly disguises demographic anxiety, or in the right’s response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which shows it embracing God and guns with ever greater conviction. This ideology has a name, argue sociologists Samuel L. Perry of the University of Oklahoma and Philip S. Gorski of Yale University. Perry and Gorski call it white Christian nationalism, and in their view, it represents a pressing threat to democracy.
In The Flag and the Cross, their new book from Oxford University Press, white Christian nationalists undergo careful scrutiny. Combining research with data analysis, Gorski and Perry argue that white Christian nationalists share a set of common anti-democratic beliefs and principles. “These are beliefs that, we argue, reflect a desire to restore and privilege the myths, values, identity, and authority of a particular ethnocultural tribe,” they write. “These beliefs add up to a political vision that privileges the tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their proper place.”
I recently spoke with Gorski and Perry about their findings and the threat white Christian nationalism poses to democracy.
Politico:
Many Reporters Think Kevin McCarthy Is Dumb. Why Can’t They Say So?
Washington’s last taboo: calling someone stupid.
Is Kevin McCarthy a great big dummy?
That’s not a rhetorical question. Read between the lines of some of the coverage during McCarthy’s 15 years in Congress and you start to suspect that many folks who pay close attention to our likely next House Speaker don’t think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed.
WaPo:
Young men, guns and the prefrontal cortex
The Uvalde, Tex., shooter is part of a long list of male perpetrators of similar ages. Some experts think gun laws need to change to address that.
Teen and young adult males have long stood out from other subgroups for their impulsive behavior. They are far more reckless and prone to violence than their counterparts in other age groups, and their leading causes of death include fights, accidents, driving too fast, or, as Metzl put it, “other impulsive kinds of acts.”
“There’s a lot of research about how their brains are not fully developed in terms of regulation,” he said. Perhaps most significantly, studies show, the prefrontal cortex, which is critical to understanding the consequences of one’s actions and controlling impulses, does not fully develop until about age 25. In that context, Metzl said, a shooting “certainly feels like another kind of performance of young masculinity.”
Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:
The Expansion of Democracy Is What Republican Elites Fear Most
Democratization in the United States has obviously been uneven. With every advance, there has been a setback. And at points, such as during the age of Jacksonian democracy, democratic expansion for some demanded democratic retrenchment for others. Universal suffrage for white men often meant the end of voting rights, where they existed, for Black ones.
But if we look at the 157 years after the Civil War, which is to say if we look at most of our experience as a nation under the Constitution, it’s not obvious that democratization and majority rule actually threaten minority rights. You might even say it is the reverse.
Far from the tyranny of an unrestrained majority, the period of Reconstruction saw the first real attempt at equality under the law in the South, as well as efforts to build a more egalitarian society, with respect for the social and political rights of ordinary people. The former slaves and their white allies built schools, established hospitals and pursued a host of public improvements, among them roads, bridges and charitable institutions.
NY Times:
For Beto O’Rourke, Talk of Gun Control Has Become Both a Political Risk and Reward
Mr. O’Rourke is returning to an issue that had haunted his campaign for Texas governor for months.
Mr. O’Rourke, 49, clearly took a political gamble when he disrupted the governor in an emotional outburst that Republicans and some Democrats believed crossed a line in the aftermath of a mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead. He was speaking not only as an outraged parent and Texan, but also as Mr. Abbott’s Democratic opponent in the race for governor.
But interviews with Democratic lawmakers, strategists and voters in recent days showed that his return to speaking out about gun control and gun violence has helped him make a powerful connection with many over the tragedy in Uvalde, bringing a new energy to his long-shot campaign to unseat Mr. Abbott and a new urgency to efforts to overhaul the state’s lax gun laws.
Tut tut, says the NY Times. How vulgar of O’Rourke. How common.
Mimi Swartz/NY Times:
How Greg Abbott and Under 4 Percent of Texans Are Ruining the State for the Rest of Us
Greg Abbott probably thought he was doing the right thing when he skipped out on the N.R.A. convention last week and headed to Uvalde to play the part of a concerned Texas governor. Maybe something showed up in instant polls suggesting that he — and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Senator John Cornyn — avoid the pro-gun crowd just this once. Maybe it was the banner over the George R. Brown Convention Center that promised “14 Acres of Guns & Gear.”
The Avenida de las Americas, the boulevard in front of what locals call the G.R.B., was barricaded on both sides. Protesters, many of them young, lined the sidewalk in front of Discovery Green, having spent much of the day in the blazing sun listening to Beto O’Rourke and others plead the case for gun safety.
On the convention center side stood a phalanx of Houston Police Department and other officers, some on horseback, there for the convention and its visitors. Many convention attendees did not respond to chants and signs from the protesters across the avenue about dead children and gun safety.
The scene made for a pretty good metaphor: two sides, separated by a great distance, with communication impossible. In a different world, you might have expected the leader of a state that has had this year alone over 20 mass shootings (in which four or more people were killed or injured) to go to great efforts to comfort and conciliate his constituents. If not the governor, then maybe a senator, or at least the lieutenant governor. But that was not in the cards.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Enquirer:
Mastriano’s crazy scheme to undo 2020 election could be the first item if he’s governor
Pennsylvania's GOP gubernatorial nominee is closely tied to a network of activists with an insane project: undoing President Biden's 2020 election.
Close ally Ivan Raiklin — a Virginia lawyer and former military intelligence officer who was by Mastriano’s side as the 58-year-old retired colonel celebrated his landslide primary win last month — made clear in a May podcast interview that he and the loose alliance of prominent 2020 election deniers who’ve endorsed Mastriano still see their main goal as “decertifying” Biden and proving Trump’s Big Lie about 2020 election fraud.
Narrative wins out over policy, ever and always.