Opinion

The right's strategy on COVID-19 vaccines, as planned and executed by the Republican Party and Fox News, was a simple as it was sinister: sabotage President Joe Biden's rollout by sacrificing the bodies of their own supporters. If they could convince enough of their people to avoid the vaccine, they could keep COVID-19 transmission rates high and garner headlines from easily duped mainstream outlets declaring things like "Biden falls short" or "Biden fails to contain the virus." For a brief moment in early July, it seemed the plan was working, with a series of headlines that seemingly blamed Biden, flatly ignoring the growing partisan divide on vaccine uptake.

Then the delta variant, an extremely contagious and virulent strain of the virus, started tearing through red-state America, creating hot spot maps that neatly correlated to political maps showing rates of support for Donald Trump. There was no longer any denying that a Republican identity is the best predictor of anti-vaccine sentiment. Mainstream media started to pay attention to how much anti-vaccine sentiment was pouring out of Fox News and how popular Republican politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky were discouraging vaccination. There was no more ignoring the link between Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis selling gear mocking Biden health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and the soaring rates of COVID-19 in his state. The plan to sabotage the pandemic response and blame Biden was backfiring.

Today's Republicans appear to have a bottomless appetite for violence and destruction. It's important to understand that Donald Trump did not create that appetite — although he fed it, encouraged it and shares it.

In his capacity as political cult leader, Trump exemplifies what psychologists describe as "the dark triad" of human behavior: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. His followers idolize and worship him, and all too often seek to imitate his antisocial and pathological behavior.

With armed militia groups trying to take down our democracy, from January 6th to invading state capitols, things seem bad, maybe even Civil War bad. But if they hook up with the Christian right — with one small change to their ideology — we could be plunged into a hellscape right out of the tenth century.

This article was originally published at The Hartmann Report

According to a report from the Washington Post, former President Donald Trump engaged in a "personal pressure campaign" during the dying days of his term to try and compel acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Trump allegedly called Rosen nearly every day between the resignation of Attorney General William Barr and the deadly January 6^th riot at the Capitol, badgering him about what the Justice Department was doing to investigate erroneous claims of improper vote counts. The Justice Department recently notified Rosen and Richard Donoghue, one of Rosen's top aides, that notes taken during these calls could be turned over to Congress if Trump does not take legal action to block their release. Rosen and Donoghue could also be questioned about these conversations by congressional committees investigating Trump's actions after the election.

Republicans obviously don't like being in the minority. When they can stop fighting amongst themselves or with shadows in the corner, they are already heavily under way with literal campaigning and supportive efforts in Washington aimed at the next election cycle.

Unfortunately, they're walking away from dealing with actual problems the country faces today to worry instead about being sufficiently obstinate. That's different from Democrats when they were out of the majority. It is so widespread that it deserves a spotlight.

Even though the number of dying Trump followers increases daily, his coup rolls on.

Now, in the Trump shadow-universe he's created a shadow-government for his shadow-fans. It's not as wacky an idea as it seems and suggests Trump's solidifying his control over the GOP going toward 2022 and 2024.

When Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014, she was often described as a moderate Republican and stressed that she was happy to find common ground with Democrats. The Stefanik of the mid-2010s was conservative-leaning but not far-right, and she was chosen as co-chair of the moderate Tuesday Group. But Stefanik, who was critical of Donald Trump in 2016, has since flip flopped and gone total MAGA — and the more powerful she becomes in the GOP, the worse she becomes.

Politically, Stefanik's antics have paid off. When the arch-conservative Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming voted in favor of Trump's impeachment following the January 6 insurrection, Trump supporters were furious with her — and every time Cheney acknowledged that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, she enraged House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Cheney's anti-Trump statements caused her to lose her position as House GOP Conference Chair, and she was replaced by someone who has reinvented herself as an in-your-face Trump loyalist: Stefanik.

I don't know about you, but I was elated earlier this spring when it seemed as if Trump and COVID were gone, and Biden seemed surprisingly able to get the nation rapidly back on track.

Now much is sliding backwards. It's not Biden's fault; it's Trump's ongoing legacy.

The attacks on "critical race theory" over these last nine months have sought to silence any critical focus on racism today, on structures, institutions, systems, acts and people deemed racist, and to reshape historical memory regarding race to this end.

Christopher Rufo has become the poster boy for these attacks, their driving force. He wasn't the only one, or even the initially intended operative to lead the charge. The Heritage Foundation promoted the initiative, with numerous of its agents — or agents provocateurs — assuming the task. Jonathan Butcher and Mike Gonzalez were the other two designated with Rufo for the work. Gonzalez published a book, "The Plot to Change America," targeting identity politics, centering terms Rufo would later mobilize to attack CRT.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) went after Gen. Mark Milley during a QuakeMedia show. While Ingraham has never served a day in uniform, Banks should know better as a U.S. Navy officer.

"I can't think of any general officer in American history that has done more to destroy the apolitical ethos of the military than General Milley," said Banks on the show.

Lately, Black voters have confounded the political commentariat. Whether it was the narrow victory of Eric Adams in New York's mayoral primary, or concerted efforts by the Congressional Black Caucus in support of Shontel Brown over Nina Turner in an Ohio special election, Black voters have been giving political observers the vapors.

Across the spectrum, the commentariat has questioned and queried how a former cop could win in one of the most liberal cities in the country a year after the George Floyd protests, or why Black political actors would put in tremendous effort to push back on progressive policies. The answers—like many delivered about Black voters before—emerge from a political segregation as deep as any in our economy or our culture.

I have to focus on my mental health […] We have to protect our minds and our bodies and not just go out and do what the world wants us to do.

Biles joins other Black women like Naomi Osaka and Meghan Markle who have chosen to forgo medals, trophies and royalty to prioritise their mental well-being.

In a recent Guardian article about “the rise of the great refusal" author Casey Gerald argued “Biles did not simply quit. She refused".

There is immense power in refusal. These women have awoken something in those of us who struggle to say “no" or who blindly serve institutions that do not have our best interest at heart. They challenge us to erect boundaries to protect our well-being.

Pressure to take on ever more work and ever more responsibility is familiar to many. But saying “no" can present unique difficulties for people from racially minoritised backgrounds.

Setting professional boundaries can be deeply challenging in the face of pressure, discrimination and adverse mental health impacts.

Pressure to take on ever more work

In academia, this pressure persists. Research by colleagues and I (Kathomi Gatwiri) shows academics from minoritised backgrounds continue to have radically different experiences to their colleagues. We argue that academics from minoritised backgrounds:

are often expected to be grateful, likeable, and […] to provide extensive pastoral care so as to maintain student happiness.

They are also exposed to more severe hostility and punishments through flawed tools of measuring performance such as Student Evaluations of Teaching if they choose not to perform this extra labour. This causes extended emotional overload for many teachers and can be especially damaging to their mental well-being.

Researchers have written about the pressure of Black tenure-track academics “to engage in service activities that are not expected of their White counterparts" such as doing extra mentoring and joining more committees:

When Black faculty members face enormous requests for service, White colleagues often advise and encourage Black faculty to “just say no".

However, just saying “no" does not always work to their best interest and can lead to institutional punishment, which can derail career progress.

Another paper which looked at how Black American women contend with the pressure to take on ever more responsibilities, noted “some women talked about the difficulty of saying no […] yet others talked about the empowerment of saying no." One interviewee said:

I don't know how to say no […] I feel I have an issue with saying no. I will spread myself like peanut butter out.

In our own research on the pressures faced by Black African professionals in the workplace in Australia, participants reported feeling the workplace was a site of constant surveillance and scrutiny, where they were often assumed to be “out of place". This increases the burden of having to work “twice as hard" to prove themselves worthy, which can result in an inability to say “no" at work.

On Thursday night, news surfaced of an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) memo revealing just how contagious, and threatening, the delta variant is. The rapid, fearful spread of the delta variant, and its ability to infect the vaccinated at a higher rate, has quelled hope that the pandemic is truly, finally waning. As journalist Maura Judkis wrote for the Washington Post, "instead of flattening the curve, we've hit the delta swerve."

This article originally appeared at Salon.