https://archive.ph/LQQQi
Exposing hypocrisy is such a losing strategy. I see what she's trying to do but this is such a weak way to do "Christians should support criminal justice reform"
Exposing hypocrisy is always a losing strategy, but it’s doubly so when trying to apply it to Christians and white evangelicals in particular (I know she’s Catholic but I think she’s trying to reach those white evangelicals.
It’s because white evangelicalism - which something like 25% of Americans identify with - can barely be called a “religion”. It’s more like, part of the superstructural glue that holds white settler colonialism together. Actual beliefs don’t matter to them. They just take what they want to be true - and whatever upholds white supremacy - and justify it later. If you can find something in the Bible about it… great. If not, they can still find a way to make their own beliefs into doctrine.
They're religious but not spiritual.
It's about being in the club. They don't actually believe in sin - evil is when you're not white, straight, cis, conservative. Everyone who is those things has a free pass.
It certainly makes a lot more sense when you examine it as a religion of capital and white supremacism with the superficial trappings of Christianity rather than the other way around.
I didn't read it because I think her articles are annoying to read and I think she's highly manipulative and dishonest. I think it's even possible that she and her husband's seeming open-minded Christianity is a lie so they can grift liberals and leftists. I think they are in fact highly devout deep toxic Catholics.
That's totally fair. It's good that they're for a welfare state and against capital punishment, but this is also just like, a huge fall from her more detailed reporting on the inhumanity of death row (which wasn't unique ofc but was trying to at least get Christians on that level)
I actually don't know that much about her. But what I do know repulses me.
The once-beloved “leftist” is facing backlash for her anti-abortion views. Why did it take this long?
Jul 20, 2022
This bit is highlighted...
To strip women and trans people of agency, violate their bodies, kill thousands of them, and then throw the survivors some free diapers isn’t “leftism;” it’s barbarism with a sheen of feel-good charity to make it sell.
There's a lot more I could quote but I'll just mention this...
Consider a sentence from that 2014 piece on “pro-life liberalism:” “Since we care enough about the outcome of pregnancy to insist against abortion, then we must continue to care about the outcome when abortion is no longer a legal option.” Did you catch it? I didn’t, at first. It’s so subtle, just a whiff of a suggestion of a hint of a teeeeeensy tell: “When abortion is no longer a legal option.”
Not “if.” When.
For Elizabeth Bruenig, the overturn of Roe has always been both possible and desirable. Her “leftism” is simple cleanliness: She wants to be standing just far enough away that she won’t be spattered with blood when the axe falls.
That just sounds like a hit piece. Wringing your hands over the word "when" instead of "if" is such a goober line. How do you get "desirable" from that. Plus at this point abortion literally is illegal in multiple states.
A couple times and I tried and failed to read Bruenig's own articles on abortion among other things. What she believes personally is her business. But there's no need for her to spend 1,000s of words of obfuscation that she's anti-abortion. She can just say something like "Personally I do not believe in abortion. However..." It's not hard. But she'll never do that because it hurts her brand. She also routinely deletes all her tweets. She seems full of bullshit as far as I am concerned.
I'm now tempted to read her Trump Jesus article. But The Atlantic is garbage and her double speak gives me a migraine.
A thread I started a few minutes ago - "Ideally the lord" - a great example why the Bruenigs delete their tweets.
There’s already plenty of Christian activists against Death Row, unfortunately they also often make the case for those that have “found Jesus” and not much else.
Our Father, who art in Mar-a-lago, hallowed be thy tan.
Thy tweets come, thy will be done, on Twitter as it is on Truth Social.
Give us this day our daily outrage,
And forgive us our fact-checks, as we forgive those who fact-check against us.
And lead us not into fake news, but deliver us from covfefe.
In the name of the Donald, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, amen....
