News with Nuance: July 26, 2024

Biden steps down, Kamala steps up, and Christian Nationalism at the RNC ...

Hi Readers,

This is the last edition of News with Nuance for the summer, before I take my annual August Substack sabbatical. And whew - what a summer and month of news it has been! The past two News with Nuance posts (here) and (here) weren’t finished until around midnight the night before I sent them, due to being written on the same day as the Presidential Debate between Biden and Trump, and then the post-NATO Summit Biden press conference that would be his last live press conference as President prior to stepping down from seeking his Party’s nomination for President in the upcoming November election.

Since then, we’ve experienced an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania against former President Trump, a Republican National Convention rife with Christian Nationalist imagery and rhetoric; the selection of a Republican VP who built his reputation on alliance with Christian Nationalist groups as well as big-time Silicon Valley funders, and also - in a hard left turn away from the self-centered tradition of world political leaders as of late, we’ve seen Biden voluntarily give up personal power, and hand it over to a woman almost 20 years his junior.

But that’s not all! Also to come in this edition of News with Nuance: the gender politics of it all, why the RNC meant sidelining of prominent (Christian Nationalist) GOP women, the deeper story and submissive marriage of uber-tradwife-influencer pageant queen Hannah Neeleman (known as the brand, Ballerina Farm), stories about Kenyan women runners ahead of the Olympics, the pedophile problem on the popular iPad game your kids and grandkids probably play (mine do), what went wrong in the wrongful death of Sonya Massey, the ongoing death and suffering of Gaza’s children, told by two doctors, and much more from the beat covering Christian Nationalism and the resistance against it, including upcoming August events and webinars.

I’m looking forward to a bit of a break in August: some time Up North and at the Great Minnesota Get-Together. For now, let’s get to the news (with nuance) …

The Headline: Joe Biden stands down for his bid seeking reelection as President, endorses his Vice President, Kamala Harris

In a News with Nuance first, I’m linking this headline not to a news story but directly to the statement from President Joe Biden announcing his decision to no longer seek reelection as President in November. I’ve spent a good portion of our last two News with Nuance newsletters explaining my dismay at Biden’s choice to remain in the race, and my concern as his campaign began releasing statements and comments that seemed increasingly self-centered and even Trumpian. So today, I’m focusing on Biden’s major about-face - and what it says for America’s future.

I think this could be one of those “where were you when” moments in history, and so I will say that I was in a public restroom in rural Wisconsin, picking up my youngest son from church camp, when I got a text from my mom asking if I’d seen the news. I went straight to X (Twitter), and sure enough: here was the long-awaited statement from Joe Biden, withdrawing from the upcoming Presidential election.

Even though I’d been convinced since the debate with Trump that this move was necessary and probably should have happened sooner than it did, my first reaction to reading Biden’s statement was not euphoria. Instead, the word that kept coming into my head was sobering. So often, this is what true leadership looks like. It’s not pretty or fun or self-aggrandizing. It’s the theology of the cross. As a person who believes that Jesus’ greatest act was one of suffering and death, making possible the resurrection, I saw in Biden’s heart-wrenching choice the pain in his words and his own difficult recognition of his own mortality and limitations. That’s hard for all of us. Historically, it has been particularly difficult for white American men in power to accept.

So Biden chose differently. And my emotions moved from sober and restrained to (surprising) tears, when I read his next tweet - posted just 29 minutes after resigning from the race.

In that photo of the two of them, an unlikely pair in so many ways, I saw genuine joy and affection. And as a woman who has spent my life working in male-dominated professions as a sportswriter, journalist, and Pastor - I saw something else, too. I saw a man who wasn’t threatened by a powerful woman. I saw a man who chose to use his influence not in order to lift up himself but in order to lift up a woman of color almost 20 years younger than him. I saw the men I’ve known in my life: the editors, pastors, fathers, husband: who have done the same for me. I know how much that matters. But in these past few hard years for American women, where we’ve been told so many times to sit down and shut up and submit: maybe I forgot that it was possible. A moving moment, and a powerful example: for our American daughters and even more so, for our sons.

The Quote: My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

the 46th President of the United States of America, Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

The Headline: Trump's GOP is no country for MAGA women

With gender politics taking center stage for the upcoming Presidential Election, as one major political party prepares to nominate a Black and South Asian woman in hopes of electing the first-ever female President, and the other Party centered its nominating convention on manhood, muscles, and masculinity - I thought this article from Salon’s Amanda Marcotte was a must-read, delineating the rise and fall of GOP women.

As someone who once interned for a Republican congressman here in Minnesota, I’ve been devastated to see the Republican Party descend fully into Trumpism, and embrace the worst of its slide into Christian Nationalism, misogyny, hatred, and violence. However, I do keep holding on to this essential truth about authoritarian and hate-centered movements: they always end up cannibalizing themselves. Political movements grounded not in love but in hate never end up winning the day, though they do create much wreckage and death in their ruling years. Ultimately, though, those at the center of these movements end up having to confront their hatred not for outsiders but also for each other. They lose their capacity for love and cooperating and devour themselves. I think you see that phenomenon at work in this article.

The Quote: For a few minutes during the Trump administration, there did seem to be a path to power for women like Greene or Lake or their Colorado counterpart, Rep. Lauren Boebert. Most of the early enthusiasm appears due to the novelty of seeing right-wing women who could hold their own in the competition to be the loudest bully in the room. Such women were especially good at triggering liberals, who may not be as misogynist as Republicans but still have sexist expectations that it's especially unbecoming for women to act this way. But in the past year or so, dating at least back to when Boebertgot caught groping her date at "Beetlejuice: The Musical," the shine has come off. Liberals no longer react to female MAGA's provocations with outrage, but with eye-rolling. Without the trigger-the-liberals effect, it appears lady trolls have little to offer the Republican base. They certainly aren't valued as leaders in a party where men live in a constant state of paranoia about being emasculated.

Story by Amanda Marcotte, Salon

A Few More Must-Read Stories from the past two weeks …

Iron Range scribe Aaron Brown writes about how Northern Minnesotans formerly beat back deforestation in favor of fossil fuel extraction - and could do so again (even in the face of threats to the BWCA from the GOP’s Project 2025)

As we await the Paris Olympics, read this about the tenacity and endurance of Kenyan female runners and the challenges and exploitation they’ve faced

Make sure to sit down before you read this harrowing article about the dangers of pedophiles on the popular children’s game, ROBLOX (CW: child sexual abuse)

Here’s the story of the wrongful death by police shooting of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman from Southern Illinois

Oregon is piloting a new program to support new parents (something anti-abortion activists are loath to fund)

While we’ve been preoccupied with domestic political news, the war in Gaza rages on, and children continue to bear a huge amount of the brunt of violence, trauma, suffering and death. This is a harrowing account from two American doctors. (CW: child death and severe injury, illness)

And as we look toward the November election, an important deep dive into a region in the Upper Midwest that changed from blue to red over the past few decades

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: (or really the past two weeks)

A few big trend stories to cover on this topic first, before we get into more links and news stories:

1. How Christian Nationalism is fueling an embrace of gender essentialism and subjugation of women, as seen in the online influencer growth of “tradwives”

   1. This is a must-read article on the major brand Ballerina Farm, with 9 million followers and big money behind its merging of Mormonism, conservatism, big families, and beautiful blonde moms

   2. After you read that article, I highly recommend

      Jo Piazza
      ’s extensive coverage of Tradwives, both in this newsletter article:

      The Ballerina Farm Master Plan

c. And on this podcast episode of Over the Influence, where she and

Sara Petersen

break down the meaning behind the Neelemans’ comments about pregnancy, abortion, exhaustion and more, and the role of Hannah’s “trad” husband, Daniel (heir to the JetBlue fortune).

d. One sad quote from the article that stuck with me: Daniel says that Hannah is often