Civil Commotion

It’s a cliché, but I’m serious: If you read just one thing today, it ought to be this account of an ex-Infowars staffer.

Days before, we spoke to the sheriff and the mayor of Deposit, N.Y., a nearby municipality. They both told us the people in Islamberg were kind, generous neighbors who welcomed the surrounding community into their homes, even celebrating holidays together.

The information did not meet our expectations, so we made it up, preying on the vulnerable and feeding the prejudices and fears of Jones’s audience. We ignored certain facts, fabricated others and took situations out of context to fit our narrative, posting headlines like:

Drone Investigates Islamic Training Center

Shariah Law Zones Confirmed in America

Infowars Reporters Stalked by Terrorism Task Force

Report: Obama’s Terror Cells in the U.S.

The Rumors Are True: Shariah Law Is Here!

Everybody with a properly functioning mind has known this all along, but it’s good to have it in black-and-white from one of the participants. Unfortunately, the people who fall for this nonsense won’t believe it; they’ll think somebody ‘got’ to the author.

In the very early days of the Internet I made the same error that was made in the early days of television: I thought it was such a magnificent educational tool that it would be a benefit. The sad reality is that it has become a device for triggering and manipulating idiots.

The Ohio Senate is considering a bill which requires physicians to re-implant ectopic (tubal) pregnancies in the uterus.

Ohio is currently mulling a new abortion bill proposed by Republican senators, House Bill 413, which would force doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into the uterus of a woman who suffered from the complication.

This procedure is technically impossible, but if the doctor doesn’t perform it, the new bill states, they would face a charge of “abortion murder” the Guardian reports.

In an ectopic pregnancy, a complication which sees the embryo attach outside of the uterus, a woman can die if the tissue is allowed to continue growing.

On its website, the Mayo Clinic says of the complication: “An ectopic pregnancy can’t proceed normally. The fertilized egg can’t survive, and the growing tissue may cause life-threatening bleeding, if left untreated.”

I gather that the loonies behind this say that Our Invisible Friend will sort it all out. This is nuts and, if passed, will doubtless be the target of litigation before the end of the day of the Governor’s signature. It’s a good pointer to how deranged the Evangelical Right actually is, however.

There are serious-minded, good faith arguments to be made on both sides of the abortion issue; convincing or not, I draw no inferences about the brains and character of those whose thinking is different than mine. BUT, of the many arguments the stupidest, the one that marks its maker as a preposterous idiot, is the one that goes: My Invisible Friend says so. Naturally, that’s the one that Evangelical morons take most seriously.

If you hate this man, if you hate this president, if there is something in you that you hates this man, I strongly counsel you to go on a fast-and-prayer and seek the Lord with all your heart because something is wrong in you. You have been deluded, you have been blindfolded, and the enemy is having his way with you.

If you still hate Trump, forget about the man himself — the personality — forget about that and focus on what he stands for and what he has done and what he is doing, He is doing our Father’s agenda. He is tearing down the pedophile rings, human trafficking, drug smuggling. He is also coming against abortion, he wants to get rid of abortion, all of it. He has already defunded Planned Parenthood and they are fighting him tooth and nail. He has appointed many constitutional judges and two Supreme Court justices. He is bringing this nation back to righteousness, or he is trying to. He has given Christians a voice, he is protecting the Christians, he’s protecting the churches. He is stopping all these Muslim terrorists from coming in. He is doing the will of the Father in this country.

Pastor Augusto Petez

By the way, thanks to the tax code we are all subsidizing this dishonest lunacy.

There is a bright spot: Thanks to the close identification of the Evangelical Right with Trump, the ‘nones’ just keep increasing. Of course. Who wants to be identified with these fools?

Between William Barr’s preemptive lies about the content of the Mueller Report, and Americans’ growing disinclination to read anything demanding, few Americans seem aware that it is a settled fact that Donald Trump knew that Russia was meddling in our 2016 election.

Apparently, the Washington Post thinks that re-publishing the report as a comic book will help to get the message out.

Granted, the report is dry reading, an endless recitation of facts that can be difficult to keep straight. Mueller may be a fine lawyer and dogged investigator, but he is no literary stylist. I don’t doubt that the dumbed-down version is more accessible than the original.

But … geez. If Americans aren’t willing to do the work of reading something so important to the well-being of their own country, I’m inclined to doubt that an illustrated version can help much.

Manufacturing continues to contract.

Manufacturing activity continued to lag in November amid a lag in inventories and new orders, according to the latest ISM Manufacturing reading released Monday.

The reading came in at 48.1 vs. an expectation of 49.4 and the previous month’s reading of 48.3.

Though the ISM reading is usually reported as a simple number, it actually denotes the percentage of manufacturers planning to expand operations. A reading below 50 represents contraction; November was the fourth straight month below the expansion level.

I don’t think anybody is surprised by this; the manufacturing slowdown has been well-known for months now.

Soon, layoffs. The Trump administration will blame it on economic uncertainty associated with his impeachment but … No. Manufacturing is merely settling back to where it should have been all along, less the sugar-high provoked by that insane tax cut.