A friend and colleague of mine who does human rights work alongside me mentioned recently that she went on vacation and left her work phone off the whole time, only to fear when she turned it back on she would learn someone she’d been in touch with had been murdered the night before. It wouldn’t […]
Tag: politics
Russian Atrocities in Ukraine Foreshadow the Future of the GOP in its Willingness to Use Lies and Violence to Get Whatever it Wants
As the images and stories of the war–brought to us by courageous journalists–fill our feeds, I can’t stop thinking about the approval rating for the war from within Russia, or the fact that Russian soldiers who took over Chernobyl had no idea what the place was, or the dangers that lurked there silently. Propaganda and […]
Thoughts on Precedent Setting, Slippery Slopes, and the Fracture of Society
Say what you will about autocrats and fascists, enemies of democracy and illiberal rulers: I don’t fear them as much as I fear complacent, hesitant ‘progressives’ and ‘liberals.’ Don’t get me wrong, Vladimir Putin is far more deadly and dangerous than, say, Chuck Schumer or Kamala Harris. No question plenty of people in this world […]
Fake Russian Christians making fake American Christian content fit for a Coup
Recent MIT research into an internal Facebook report unveiled that of Facebook’s top twenty Christian pages, 19 out of 20 were run by troll farms in Kosovo and Macedonia–likely the same Russian-backed “trolls” responsible for the 2016 election. The largest of those Christian Facebook pages, twenty times larger than the next, had a reach of […]
20 Years On and Rethinking Empathy and Reconciliation
I’ve been thinking a lot about an old English teacher, Faye Hardin, who passed away in 2019. She was a tough old bag. Some twenty years ago when I had her my senior year, there were students in my class whose parents and grandparents had her as a teacher. She pushed students harder than most–to […]
Charged with Terrorism for Speaking Truth to Power
One of my colleagues has been named a terrorist by the Egyptian government. Authoritarian regimes, it turns out, don’t like it when human rights organizations criticize their efforts to quell dissent. For now, my colleague is safe, as he lives in the United States, yet in retaliation, Egypt has jailed and tortured his cousin and […]
Reupp: “Trump Will Not Leave Office Alive”
Half the reason I write the stuff I do is because, while I’m not in the business of prediction, I am deeply interested in history–how it repeats or mirrors the past. Suffice to say, I wrote this piece titled “Trump will not leave office alive” one year ago. I didn’t get everything right, but I […]
Dissecting the Death Rattle of American Decline
I’ve been critical of “Hillbilly Elegy” and other theories that made the rise of Trump more the result of economic disparity than white supremacy. It’s the same argument that populism is a reaction to a dying Republican party, a “death rattle” as the party becomes smaller and has to resort to extremes to win. The […]
The QAnon Cult
In the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection, it probably comes as no surprise that I’ve devoted a lot of time to trying to understand QAnon, cults, and the rise of white supremacist violence. Being a trained seminarian, this isn’t a new topic to me; if you study religion, you’re bound to spend time studying […]
Complicit Theologies: the Status Quo Church
I’m saddened and appalled by all that has happened at the Capitol, even more so by what I expect in the coming days and weeks will be horrific revelations that it’s much worse than we currently realize as evidence is already mounting to suggest as much. Saddened, appalled, yes–not shocked. Now comes the harder part: […]
saunterings 