News with Nuance: Dec. 15, 2023

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

Buckle up for a special *super-sized* edition of News with Nuance!

First, an explanation. Typically, News with Nuance publishes on the second and fourth Fridays of the month. However - I write the posts the day before. So in my mind, I was thinking that this week, not last, would be the second Friday (as it was the second Thursday!), meaning today’s post is running a bit late.

On the positive side, that means we’ll be covering stories from the past 3 weeks, rather than 2, meaning you’ll get a few extra stories. And on the fully forthcoming side, even if I had calculated the weeks properly, there was no way I could have written this post last Thursday, because I was in Mexico for three days celebrating the wedding of one of my best friends from college, who I’ve known for 20+ years!

I’m trying to lean into a bit more flexibility in this season of life (with two rapidly growing and changing boys at home, and an ever-evolving news cycle, how can I not?) All that said - thanks for hanging in there. We’ll get back on schedule next week with another news post next Friday (12/22) and then a quick Christmas breather before the first news post of the new year on 1/12.

I truly love putting these posts together and put a lot of time and effort into cultivating a cohesive, nuanced news feed of sorts for you - and I’m so grateful for your readership and support. I hope you get some uninterrupted time here, maybe with a hot beverage of your choice, to sit and read these stories. Sometimes the news (and life) flies at us so fast, and it takes discipline and patience to really read thoughtfully and take in the information with our whole selves. The reward for doing that, though, is so worth it. I think it brings us so much deeper into community with our world and with one another, when we make time to listen to and understand one another’s stories. And that gift of presence is a truly priceless gift.

Let’s get to the news … with nuance …

Jack Teixeira's room at his father's home in Dighton, Mass.

Photo from the Justice Department/the Associated Press

The Headline: Jack Teixeira got security clearance despite history of violent threats

I’ve been intensely reading everything I can about the unfolding story of the Discord server leaks, which included classified government information and military secrets about the war in Ukraine. The story centers on then-21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a low-level computer technician in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, who exposed a huge trove of government data to a small group of (mostly) fellow young white men on a Discord server noted for its racist, sexist, homophobic, and sometimes white-supremacist, violent language.

As I continue work on my next book, Our Boys, which focuses on the growing radicalization of young, white Christian men - I couldn’t help but see parallels between the research I was doing and the story of Jack Teixeira and the Discord leaks. I’ve noticed that boys’ and young mens’ descent into violent masculinity or white supremacy often begins as a kind of caustic humor, an off-color joke. Like young teenagers trying out swear words for the first time, these boys and men “try on” violent, racist, and hateful rhetoric, seeing what kind of reaction they might get.

It all kind of exists in the real/not-real realm on online community and video games. I imagine that Teixeira excused his own language and behavior by somehow convincing himself that there was a difference between the online version of himself and the “real life” version of himself. There was the young, handsome, clean-cut kid in the sharp military uniform. And then there was the lonely and isolated, awkward 21-year-old high school graduate who spent his time trying to impress a bunch of younger teenagers online.

Still, I’m struck by what lengths many of us - and American society in general - will go to in order to try and see young white men as scrupulous and honorable, as “good boys” even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. In this article, the Washington Post shows some of Teixeira’s “real-life” childhood friends a video of him and another young man from their town shooting guns near his house, shouting antisemitic and racist epithets and calling for killing of Jews and Black people. According to the article, Teixeira’s friends seemed shocked and troubled by the footage. But Teixeira had a history of violent, racist, and hateful threats - documented by his school beginning as early as his sophomore year. So many people had to look away from the truth about Teixeira that was right in front of their eyes, including military supervisors who had been trained to discipline this type of behavior. In Teixeira’s case, his violence and hatred within a community of like-minded young people led to not a mass shooting but instead a massive intelligence leak that likely compromised military operations and cost the lives of many in Ukraine. In so many other stories about violent and troubled young white men, the end of the story comes not with a shooting range but with a real-life mass shooting and deaths of innocent victims. We can’t keep looking away.

The Quote:

A Post reporter showed LaBree and Brandon Bourgault, a high school friend, a video of Teixeira at a shooting range near his house, which had been shared on Thug Shaker. Dressed in a camouflage hoodie, he curls his finger around the trigger of a semiautomatic rifle, faces the camera and declares, “Jews scam, n-----s rape, and I mag dump.” Teixeira then aims at an unseen target and fires 10 times in rapid succession, emptying the magazine of bullets.

Watching the video for the first time, Teixeira’s childhood friends were briefly dumbstruck.

“I didn’t expect that.” LaBree said. “Yeah, I’m just lost.”

“Looks terrible,” Bourgault said.

Pucki said Teixeira’s case had shined a light on a dark corner of the internet that most people, and parents of teens in particular, didn’t know existed. “You probably could not even put a number on it, the amount of people that have groups like this,” he said of Thug Shaker. “We took joy in being offensive,” Pucki said. “It’s embarrassing and it’s quite frankly humiliating to speak about it now …”

“I genuinely don’t think he deserves jail,” said Crow, who hasn’t spoken to Teixeira since their breakup. “I think he was just being stupid. There was never anything malicious about this, in my opinion. I think it was being dumb, trying to be cool.”

Following Teixeira’s arrest, Charles endured a months-long absence from the internet, at his mother’s insistence. But he has since gone back on Discord and reconnected with some friends from Thug Shaker. They’ve formed a new server where they discuss Teixeira and his case. Some of the members have become convinced that the government has little evidence that he leaked classified documents. They think their friend may soon be free.

Reflecting on Thug Shaker, Charles said that, absent an adult stopping them, “a lot of young people” are going to find their own way online. “And they’re going to say things that later on they’re going to regret. I’ve said stuff that I regret on that server. Everyone has,” Charles said.

“But I don’t regret meeting Jack Teixeira at all. No, he was a great guy.”

In the ceaseless company of Discord friends, Charles said, one can lose a sense of real-life consequences. “When you feel anonymous on the internet, you feel like you can say anything and get away with it.”

Story by Shane Harris and Samuel Oakford, Washington Post

Related story: ‘Problematic pockets’: How Discord became a home for extremists

The Headline: ‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad

Following up on the story of violence and hatred perpetrated by a white American 21-year-old, here’s a counterweight: the story of 21-year-old white college student Hadley Duvall, who bravely shared her story of surviving being raped and impregnated by her stepfather, beginning at age 5, in order to urge access to abortion for rape and incest victims in Kentucky. Hadley Duvall shared her story in support of the reelection of Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, whose opponent had stood in strong support of Kentucky’s total abortion ban, which had no exception for rape or incest.

One of the themes of this newsletter is the power of individual voices and individual stories, and how we can see our humanity fully only when we see ourselves in the stories of other people who we may perceive as different than ourselves. Duvall conceded that likely one of the reasons her ad was so well-received was “white privilege,” that a message in support of access to abortion being delivered by a young, white conventionally attractive woman with a Kentucky accent was likely to be more readily heard than one from a woman who wasn’t white, or conventionally attractive.

Still, Duvall used her privilege (in the midst of harrowing, terrifying, traumatic circumstances) to make sure her voice and her story was heard, and to hopefully provide access to reproductive care for women across Kentucky, many of whom don’t look like her. Duvall, who avoided having to get an abortion when a pregnancy due to her stepfather’s abuse at age 12 ended in a painful miscarriage, could have stayed quiet about her past, merely being grateful that she had survived. No one would have blamed her for doing so. But instead she risked shame and ridicule in order to try and protect other women, to widen a narrow story about abortion that too frequently silences the voices of pregnant people themselves. I am in awe of her courage and grace.

The Quote:

“Some people have a stereotype of someone who has to make this kind of choice,” said Duvall’s mother, Jennifer Adkins Miller. “But Hadley is in everybody’s household. She’s everybody’s daughter. She’s everybody’s niece. She’s everybody’s sister.”

Duvall has thought critically about why she, in particular, has been such a persuasive voice on the issue. She expects conservatives wouldn’t have been nearly as open to listening to a Black or Hispanic woman with the same story.

“It’s a sad reality,” she said. “White privilege … I believe that’s a thing, 100 percent.”

She said she’s been called “the all-American girl.”

A senior in college, still working through years of trauma, Duvall knows she could lose her appeal in an instant. As she rushes to class or sits in the stands at a basketball game, she can feel her classmates watching her, she said.

“I have to remember my name kind of means something now,” Duvall said. “There are people who are probably just waiting for the chance to shoot me down.”

Story by Caroline Kitchener, Washington Post

More on abortion access and the right to reproductive healthcare in America:

Opinion: A Texas case shows how cruel and illusory the latest abortion-ban exceptions can be

Opinion: She has a court (and doctor’s) order for an abortion. He’s just Ken (Paxton).

The Latest Stories bringing depth and nuance to the War in the Holy Land: from Israel and Gaza, plus the repercussions back here in America. Stories shared here don’t necessarily reflect my own personal opinion: rather they add nuance and depth to my understanding of the current crisis, as well as hopefully shining some sort of light toward potential peace, resolution, and an end to the bloodshed and violence

A must-read from Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (the best of the best) on the Ivy League, antisemitism, and Congressional hearings

From the L.A. Times’ David Lauter and religion writer Jaweed Kaleem, a story on the rise of antisemitism in America in the wake of the war and Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7

Opinion: We must prevent humanitarian aid from being used as an instrument of war

Opinion: Why did Israel miss so many warnings of the Hamas attack? Here’s one answer

Israel’s Failed Bombing Campaign in Gaza

Pain and an uncertain future for Palestinian students shot in Vermont

For Palestinian Christians, a Sunday spent mourning civilians killed at a Gaza church

Israel investigates an elusive, horrific enemy: Rape as a weapon of war

Abigail Edan, 4, is symbol of hope after ‘terrible trauma’

Opinion: My children are being held hostage by Hamas. Take me to Gaza to see them.

Fake babies, real horror: False AI-generated images of the war in Gaza spark alarm

And one final story on this topic, as thousands are uprooted from their homes in Israel and Gaza, and as we long for both Palestinians and Israelis to have safe homeland in the Holy Land, I must recommend this story from Korea, which tells the stories of several elderly people who were forced to flee their homes in North Korea several decades ago, never to return home again. Home is sacred, for Israelis and Palestinians and all of us:

Seven decades away from home: The Korean War displaced hundreds of thousands of North Koreans who believed they would go back after the fighting ended. The war never ended. They never returned home.

A few more must-read stories for your December winter reading

The call of Tokitae: After half a century in a tank, a beloved orca was about to be freed. Then her life ended, and a moment of reckoning began.

Whistleblower alleges failures in medical care at U.S. border facilities

When Your Own Book Gets Caught Up in the Censorship Wars

Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers

Nine months after scandal, publishers are still sorting out a plagiarism mess

Diplomas for sale: $465, no classes required. Inside one of Louisiana’s unapproved schools

A People’s Obituary of Henry Kissinger

How Jane McAlevey Transformed the Labor Movement

Why do California, Texas differ so much? Religion, priorities of white minority play huge roles, poll shows

Minnesota man released from prison nearly 20 years after wrongful murder conviction

This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism

While this newsletter won’t focus overall on Christian Nationalism, each Friday I will include a brief update from that week, as it’s both a continuing focus of my work and also, I think, a critical threat to both American democracy and the faithful witness of Jesus’ Gospel, which exists independently of the United States!

In one sentence: Christian Nationalism is a version of the idolatrous Theology of Glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement or the women’s movement. Christian Nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on all people. Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus’ theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified savior did.

This Week: I’m hoping some of you might be able to join in on this ZOOM Webinar on Monday (12/18) from 1-3 p.m. ET. I was invited early this year to serve as a research advisor for a new study convened on Christian Nationalism in America. I really enjoyed doing this work and learning in a new environment, particularly one where I was in the minority as a mainline ordained pastor who is probably less conservative than the rest of the folks in the group. This study and partnership gives me hope for the future of Christians working together across perceived political or denominational lines.

Register for the webinar here.

Also, I’m looking forward to traveling to Rice University on April 26 for a one-day conference on Christian Nationalism and public policy. Hope to see any of you Houston locals there! More information to come soon …

Some of you may also be faithful readers of the

Word&Way

newsletter, and I just wanted to pass on a plug for their series called

Unsettling Advent

. Such a good grounding daily devotion for this season - and one that never fails to help us distinguish between the Gospel of the Cross and Christian Nationalism in this Christmas season.

More stories and news related to Christian Nationalism …