Columns

I had planned that this writing of the Activist’s Diary for August 22 would be published while I was away (you’ll see those comments in the next edition), but something happened with the email. I thought I had sent my Activist’s Diary as I rushed out the door in the middle of the night to catch a 6:30 am flight, but it didn’t arrive in the Planet email box as intended. It is floating or shall I say disappeared somewhere in the internet ether. Here it goes:  

I have been watching the bungled exit from Afghanistan and wondering who is going to take the fall. The finger pointing has started and the scene is rapidly changing. Anything I can write will have changed by the time you read this. 

The question is, How could the exit strategy have been so wrong when there were pleas and warnings everywhere? It is much the same as how could the warnings of January 6^th been missed when the plans were there for anyone who looked. 

Once again, climate has taken a back seat even with one catastrophe after another and smoke filling the upper sky with one noted very welcome exception. U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason threw out key permits for the ConocoPhillips’s Willow project on the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. 

The Dixie Fire continues to grow and one has to wonder if the burning of California will only stop after everything is gone. The absence of water is the other looming threat. The Colorado supplies water for 40 million people and the water level is so low its condition is called a code red. What if rain doesn’t come this winter? Have we thought about that? It is a possibility. 

None of this has stopped the re-emergence of students. They are everywhere, moving in and filling the streets. I’m sure the businesses that managed to survive during the heat of the pandemic are thrilled with the glut of returning customers. I do miss the quiet streets that emerged along with the songbirds and nature when we were all sent home to shelter in place. 

There are few meetings this week and they will take place too late for me to capture them in this Diary. The Wildfire Evacuation Workshop is definitely worth your time. The last offering is Thursday, August 26^th. Before diving in to what is most on my mind I wish to mention, it would be appropriate for the police person driving the vehicle with the license 1610317 around noon on August 18, not to block the handicapped space on Stuart next to Johnston Medical. There were plenty of open spaces on the street and it shouldn’t be that difficult for the police person to take a few extra steps before diving into Sconehenge Bakery & Cafe. I have a picture of the vehicle in case the chief happens to read this and needs documentation. 

What is most on my mind is the book I just finished Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, published May 2020. I got the audiobook from the San Francisco Library and sent a text to my best friend, another avid reader, after listening to the first couple of chapters. Jesus and John Wayne has a 5/5 rating, which may explain how my friend started it Sunday and finished Monday. It took me until Tuesday morning. The book is described as an intersection of gender, religion and politics. 

Much of the focus was on militaristic masculinity, but the chapter on CWA (Concerned Women of America), the evangelical women’s organization with a mission to carry forward the pro-family, anti-feminist cause, was far more organized than I realized. While Planned Parenthood has used each erosion of women’s reproductive rights as a fund raiser with never a call to action in the street, members of CWA were reported as 98% having voted, 93% had signed a petition, 77% had boycotted a product or company, 74% had contacted a public official and nearly half had written a letter to the editor. 

No wonder women have been losing our reproductive rights. Sure, there have been some wins in the court, but we have been outflanked by activism in the evangelical ranks. We need to turn this around. 

I highly recommend reading Jesus and John Wayne. Here are a few of the texts my friend and I exchanged on the book: 

J: “Fascinating. Learning Lots. Did not know how militaristic these evangelicals are. Frightening how they infiltrated the Air Force Academy. Learned how Tom Delay was ousted through the influence of Dobson who installed John Thune. They are very influential in our government... 

Me: Finished yes me too was marginally aware but no idea of the depth and promotion of the militaristic masculinity. I never really tied the two together. Will no longer be able to separate the evangelicals from toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity invades fundamental religions no matter which denomination and denomination seems better described as domination. 

J: As I listened to this book it made me think about the book [Under the Banner of Heaven] we read years ago about that fringe Mormon group. The attitude of the evangelicals is not that far removed from the attitude of the Taliban…” 

And that brings us back to Afghanistan. What will happen? Will women actually have a place other than under a burqa?