Trump’s Shadow Government, Hillbilly Welfare, the Meaning of the "Kidnapped" Posters
KTF Weekly Newsletter
Hi everyone,
If you haven’t looked at our Instagram or Facebook lately, please do and give us a follow! We’ve spruced up what we’re doing there, and it looks great if we do say so ourselves. We spent a lot of November highlighting theology around indigenous land rights to combat harmful narratives about both Thanksgiving and Palestine. We have a lot more great stuff planned for the upcoming months, so head over to Instagram and Facebook to follow us!
And now, to this week’s highlights!
Sy’s recommendations:
Please pray for Pastor Sandra Maria Van Opstal who is suffering from a rare and highly aggressive type of infection, has already undergone four surgeries, and will be in the hospital for several weeks. Please also donate to her GoFundMe to help cover medical bills and other needs. As you may know from her work or our podcast with her, She is an author, worship leader, and activist truly committed to the hard work of justice and being a good neighbor in her community. I would love to see people from far and wide reaching out to help her in a time of need, as she spends her days doing for so many others.
You may have seen the many posters of the people Hamas kidnapped from Israel cropping up in counter-protests at rallies for a ceasefire in Palestine. This article from The Intercept traces the history of “missing” posters from the Holocaust, through fascist dictatorships in Latin America, to New York City after 9/11. It argues that, in the past, such posters appealed to the shared, universal humanity connecting the victim and anyone viewing their images in order to oppose cruel, overpowering violence. But today, the posters communicate “an insistence that the most important thing about the kidnapped is not their humanity, but their nationality.” And their purpose is to bolster the idea that “the pain and right of retribution, unlimited, belongs to Israel alone.” You will learn a lot of important history from this read, and some about the ways people are using today’s posters to harm people standing up for Palestine.
During the first half of the 20th century, several million poor White people from the rural South moved to the Midwest and West, combining with Black people from the Great Migration and migrants from overseas to transform the demographics of many American cities. Burgeoning welfare systems, which often formally excluded Black and other people of color, focused enormous resources on these White newcomers, setting the groundwork for the famous federal welfare legislation of the 1960’s. But this article, and excerpt from historian Max Fraser’s new book Hillbilly Highway, explains how wealthier White liberals blamed the migrants’ poverty and inability to become upwardly mobile on their own maladaptive behaviors and cultural deficiencies, centering the focus of welfare on fixing those behaviors instead of addressing people’s real-life needs. Democrats would come to broadly apply the same way of thinking to Black people after Jim Crow. Fraser argues it is this condescension that eventually led to the populist resentment exploited by Ronald Ragan’s conservative resurgence. It is one of a million cautionary tales throughout American history warning us against making assumptions about the “other” instead of facing the much more daunting structural problems in our society.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Throughout scripture, we see Jesus prioritizing care for the most vulnerable and calling His disciples to do the same. Yet, conservative action groups in the United States are calling on our society to do the opposite, and they are becoming bolder about it after the Supreme Court ruled affirmative action unconstitutional. The most recent target is the Abundant Birth Project which is dedicated to serving pregnant BIPOC in the most precarious of circumstances in San Francisco. We have covered the Black maternal health crisis in previous newsletters and on this episode of Shake the Dust. The article in the above link explains well how the program diminishes the strain on people who are expecting, and who are the most vulnerable during pregnancy and birth. But it’s under attack for acknowledging and attempting to address inequalities head on. We pray, long, and work for a just, kind, and beautiful world where those Jesus deemed blessed can get the support they need.
PBS reported in August that Former President Trump and a cadre of conservative political activists, academics, and operatives are forming a shadow government of vetted trump loyalists, planning for his reelection. Axios recently reported in greater detail on this story . The group’s goal is to gut the administrative state and replace more than 50,000 federal employees with the Trump faithful. Moreover, the 80 partner organizations, including institutions like the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA, are preparing for a Trump presidency, but they are ready to implement their plans for any Republican nominee.
President Biden announced earlier this week that he will skip the annual climate gathering known as COP28, which began today. The backlash focuses on Biden’s rate of approving oil and gas drilling projects, currently higher than Trump’s, and his refusal to commit the US to any significant action on climate change. The United States passed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s leading crude oil producer in 2018, doubling its production between 2011 and 2022. Much of our economy is inextricably linked to this many-billion-dollar product that is destroying ecosystems all over the world. With wars raging abroad and the fight for domestic policy priorities heating up, climate change could slide quickly down the list of important subjects. I pray that is not the case.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Jonathan and Sy