Americans are leaving the church in droves — and these scholars explain why

A Florida megachurch in 2013 (Creative Commons)

Alex Henderson

September 08, 2023

The Christian nationalist movement is not only hoping to coerce Americans into becoming more religious — it is also hoping they will embrace the severe and extreme form of Christianity favored by far-right evangelicals.

But according to the new Jim Davis/Michael Graham book "The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?," the opposite is happening. The United States on the whole, David and Graham report, is becoming less churchgoing.

Religion News' Bob Smietana, in an article published on September 7, points out that Davis and Graham offer plenty of data to back up their "dechurching" argument. And they used research conducted by Eastern Illinois University's Ryan Burge and Denison University's Paul Djupe.

Smietana explains, "The dechurching study eventually yielded profiles of different kinds of dechurched Americans: 'cultural Christians,' who attended church in the past but had little knowledge about the Christian faith; 'mainstream evangelicals,' a group of mostly younger dropouts; 'exvangelicals,' an older group who had often been harmed by churches and other Christian institutions; 'dechurched BIPOC Americans,' who were overwhelmingly Black and male; and 'dechurched Mainline Protestants and Catholics,' who had much in common despite their theological differences."

Smietana notes, however, that according to the book, "many dechurched Americans might return to churches if they found a stable and healthy congregation."

Find Religion News Service's full report at this link.

Satanic Planet to perform at Indiana Statehouse following religious freedom spat

Satanic Planet, a band affiliated with The Satanic Temple, will perform at the Indiana Statehouse this month. Above, a sign publicizes the event on an Indianapolis light pole. (Courtesy Riley Phoebus)
Leslie Bonilla Muñiz, Indiana Capital ChronicleSeptember 08, 2023


A band with ties to The Satanic Temple (TST) will perform at Indiana’s Statehouse this month, averting a legal challenge.

Satanic Planet first asked about performing in May, within days of a conservative Christian activist’s prayer rally at the site. After months of back-and-forth — including a legal threat — administrators signed off on the band’s use agreement on Wednesday.

Now, the band — fronted by TST co-founder Lucien Greaves — will perform for an hour at noon on September 28, at the Statehouse’s north atrium, according to the Indiana Department of Administration. The event is free.

“We are beyond thrilled to exercise our fundamental First Amendment rights with such an impactful display of religious pluralism and liberty,” TST Indiana Chapter Congregation Head Riley Phoebus said in a statement to the Capital Chronicle.

The organization, recognized as a church by the federal court and tax systems, advocates for the separation of church and state.

Event modeled after Christian activist’s rally
Satanic Temple-affiliated band cites ‘religious liberty’ in seeking Indiana Statehouse performance



The show is part of TST’s “Let us burn” tour, and it comes after Sean Feucht’s multi-year “Let us worship” tour touched down in Indiana’s capitol building.

Feucht, a preacher-influencer who prayed over former President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in 2019, began his ongoing tour as a protest of pandemic-era restrictions on in-person religious services.

His May 7 stop in Indiana was meant to be outside, but when faced with inclement weather, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch helped get the event inside, according to a Crouch spokesperson.

In video footage of the event, Feucht prayed over Crouch, telling a crowd she’d be “filled with favor” for her efforts.

TST leaders were paying attention — and wanted inside the Statehouse, too.

“Feucht is openly a theocrat who courts the attention of politicians and seeks to proselytize through his performances,” Greaves said in a June news release announcing the band’s performance request. “He has his opinions, and we have ours, but one thing the government can not do is preference his viewpoint over ours by giving him exclusive access to perform a concert on the Capitol grounds.”

“Satan has never had creative ability,” Feucht posted in response. “He only tries to pervert what has already been created.”

Group pushes for permission

By May 11, TST Indiana’s Phoebus had made an initial voicemail inquiry about a Satanic Planet performance to the Indiana Department of Administration’s (IDOA) director of Statehouse events, according to emails obtained by the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

That’s Tracy Jones — who denied the request May 16. After an extended back-and-forth, TST had its legal counsel send a demand letter to the agency on July 5.

Phoebus said that’s when IDOA’s own counsel, John Snethen, asked TST to complete a questionnaire “to process our reservation request.” After that was in, Snethen blocked out time for the event.

That month, Satanic Planet announced its new performance date on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.

By August, TST had signed and submitted its Statehouse use policy agreement. Jones signed off as IDOA’s representative on Wednesday, according to Phoebus.

A campaign to finance the tour surpassed its $15,000 goal and closed. Phoebus thanked supporters in a statement to the Capital Chronicle, adding, “We look forward to seeing you in Indianapolis this month.”

On stage at the Statehouse

Satanic Planet’s lunchtime performance includes an hour before and after for equipment setup and removal, IDOA spokeswoman Molly Timperman wrote Wednesday.

IDOA made no restrictions, accommodations or other policy changes for the event.

“The event organizer must abide by the standard terms and conditions of the Statehouse use agreement and comply with all applicable laws and policies, the same as any event organizer that requests to use public space in the Statehouse,” Timperman wrote.

The event is free to attendees — and the space is free to the band.

“With the exception of weekend leases of the Statehouse for weddings, IDOA does not charge the public to use public spaces and is not charging this event organizer to use a public space,” Timperman wrote.

TST and the band, meanwhile, are getting ready.

“This performance will be different from Satanic Planet’s typical setup to accommodate for the building’s unique sound and to equate Feucht’s performance in terms of instrumentation and noise level,” Phoebus told the Capital Chronicle.

Phoebus said TST has embarked on a social media campaign about the event and spread the word to members across the country.

“We hope to bring the Let Us Burn tour to Capitals all over the nation as a display of religious pluralism and our First Amendment rights,” Phoebus added.

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

Christian nationalists’ new anti-divorce campaign risks increasing domestic violence: report


Alex Henderson

September 08, 2023

In the past, heated debates about divorce were common among Catholics and Mainline Protestants. Catholics tended to be anti-divorce, while Mainline Protestants (Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians) were all for marriage counseling but were more likely to believe that divorce was a valid option if a marriage was beyond repair.

But in 2023, an anti-divorce movement is growing among far-right white evangelicals. Journalist Katie Herchenroeder examines the Religious Right's campaign against no-fault divorce in an article published by Mother Jones on September 7. And she warns that this campaign risks encouraging domestic violence.

"The push for no-fault divorce began in California in the 1960s ostensibly to alter a system that required public discussion of wronged parties, infidelity, and other private matters for a legal separation," Herchenroeder explains. "Couples fought bitterly in public; some fabricated fights to get divorce papers. No-fault divorce helped simplify the process."

Critics of no-fault divorce, the journalist notes, have ranged from former Trump Administration official William Wolfe to PragerU/Daily Wire pundit Michael Knowles. And the Texas GOP platform calls for ending no-fault divorce.

But ending no-fault divorce, Herchenroeder warns, would "put even more obstacles in front of" women trying to escape from abusive marriages.

The journalist explains, "The most dangerous time for women experiencing abuse is when they attempt to escape, according to research…. Abusers often isolate their victims, cutting off communication with other family members, friends, and support systems. A 2003 working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that total female suicide declined by around 20 percent in states that allowed one partner to solely push for divorce."

Brooke Axtell of The SAFE Alliance, a Texas-based organization that helps victims of domestic violence, told Mother Jones, "Imagine finally leaving a person who's emotionally and physically assaulted you, betrayed you, violated you — and then being forced to combat them in court, sometimes for years, to prove this just so you can be free of them and claim what belongs to you."

Find Mother Jones' full report at this link.

READ MORE:

Suspect in killing of storeowner over LGBTQ flag was far-right conspiracist who promoted Christian nationalism

CA gov signs executive order to prevent 'mass casualty events and environmental emergencies' by AI

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - 

 California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference 

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images).

Brandon Gage

September 06, 2023

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed an executive order on Wednesday laying out a plan to regulate the rapidly accelerating advancement of artificial intelligence, which scores of scientists and industry leaders have warned poses an imminent threat to human civilization.

"This is a potentially transformative technology – comparable to the advent of the internet – and we're only scratching the surface of understanding what GenAI is capable of," Newsom said. "We recognize both the potential benefits and risks these tools enable. We're neither frozen by the fears nor hypnotized by the upside. We're taking a clear-eyed, humble approach to this world-changing technology. Asking questions. Seeking answers from experts. Focused on shaping the future of ethical, transparent, and trustworthy AI. Doing what California always does – leading the world in technological progress."

Newsom's office said in a press release that he seeks to maintain the Golden State as the "global hub" for developments across several economic sectors, including "education, innovation, research, development, talent, entrepreneurship, and new technologies."

Within 60 days of issuance of this Order, the Government Operations Agency, the California Department of Technology, the Office of Data and Innovation, and the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, in collaboration with other State agencies and departments and their workforce, shall draft a report to the Governor examining the most significant, potentially beneficial use cases for deployment of GenAI tools by the State. The report shall also explain the potential risks to individuals, communities, and government and state government workers, with a focus on high-risk use cases, such as where GenAI is used to make a consequential decision affecting access to essential goods and services. Additionally, the report shall include but not be limited to: risks stemming from bad actors and insufficiently guarded governmental systems, unintended or emergent effects, and potential risks toward democratic and legal processes, public health and safety, and the economy. The report shall be regularly assessed for any significant developments or necessary updates and as appropriate, be done in consultation with civil society, academia, industry experts, and the state government workforce or organizations that represent state government employees.

It continues:

No later than March 2024, the California Cybersecurity Integration Center and the California State Threat Assessment Center, both established within the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, and inclusive of the California Department of Technology, the California Military Department, and the California Highway Patrol, shall perform a joint risk analysis of potential threats to and vulnerabilities of California's critical energy infrastructure by the use of GenAI, including those which could lead to mass casualty events and environmental emergencies, and develop, in consultation with external experts as appropriate from civil society, academia, and industry, a strategy to assess similar potential threats to other critical infrastructure. Once this analysis is completed, these agencies shall provide a classified briefing to the Governor and, where appropriate and without divulging classified information, make public recommendations for further administrative actions and/or collaboration with the Legislature to guard against these potential threats and vulnerabilities. These recommendations shall address how to ensure systems are regularly tested and monitored to detect and avoid unintended behavior, and how to ensure they remain under effective human control. At a cadence deemed appropriate by the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, the analysis and public recommendations should be updated to reflect changes to the technology, its applications, and risk management processes and learnings.


Newsom's directive also instructs state agencies to explore "procurement and enterprise use opportunities where GenAI can improve the efficiency, effectiveness, accessibility, and equity of government operations" while considering "relevant stakeholders, including historically vulnerable and marginalized communities, and organizations that represent state government employees, in the development of any guidelines, criteria, reports, and/or training as directed by this Order."

READ MORE: Scientists and tech leaders sign open letter to prioritize 'mitigating the risk of extinction from AI'

Start at the top: Why 'expensive' CEOs should be the first ones replaced by AI

Alex Henderson

September 11, 2023

Back in 1914, the ultimate capitalist CEO, Henry Ford, made an argument that liberals, progressives and union leaders are still echoing in 2023. Ford said, in essence, that workers needed a living wage in order to afford the products he was producing.

Ford's argument still rings true at a time when a wide variety of workers fear that artificial intelligence (AI) will make them unemployed.

In an article published by Business Insider on September 11, reporter Ed Zitron argues that if AI should put anyone out of work, it's CEOs.

"From writers and teachers to bankers and lawyers, most jobs seem ripe to be replaced by artificial intelligence — with one notable exception," Zitron explains. "The only job that seems to be safe from the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tech is, oddly enough, the most expensive and easily automated role: CEO."

The journalist continues, "Chief executives have recently spent a lot of time threatening to replace their lazy, entitled and unproductive workers with AI, but they never seem to face the same level of scrutiny other employees do. Look a little closer, though, and it becomes clear that the role of the modern CEO is not only broken, as I've pointed out before, but it could easily be done by the technology we have now."

Zitron goes on to note that CEOs typically "make over 300 times more than the average worker" despite not being an "actual contributor to a company's bottom line." CEOs, he writes, operate based on "spreadsheets" that are "fed to them by consultants" yet lack a "real understanding of the business."

"The solution is fairly simple: We must hold CEOs accountable in the same way that we do their employees or dissolve the role entirely," Zitron emphasizes. "A chief executive must meaningfully contribute in a way that is measurable and delivers clear value for the company. Failing that, I would argue that the opaque role of the CEO should be the first one to be replaced by artificial intelligence."

Scientists use AI to uncover the deep connection between self-relevance and art appreciation

A team of scientists recently utilized generative AI software to demonstrate a strong link between self-relevance and what people find visually attractive in art. The findings, published in Psychological Science, provide evidence that when a piece of art is connected to something meaningful in our own lives, we’re more likely to perceive it as aesthetically appealing, independent of the specific qualities of the artwork itself.

Aesthetic judgments of faces and natural landscapes tend to be relatively consistent across individuals, but shared taste in art accounts for only a small percentage (10% to 20%) of reliable variance in aesthetic ratings. This suggests that there is a substantial amount of variability in how people perceive and appreciate art.

The researchers hypothesized that an essential factor in determining the aesthetic appeal of art is its capacity to resonate with an individual’s self-construct. They propose that artworks that speak to a person’s self-schema, which includes their self-perception, past experiences, and personal identity, are more likely to be aesthetically appealing to that individual.

“Aesthetics affect so many aspects of our lives. Not only what we buy, who we spend time with, or where we live or go on vacation, but also in small and big ways every day,” said study author Edward A. Vessel, the Eugene Surowitz Assistant Professor of Psychology at the City College of New York.

“The aesthetics of our environment affect how we feel, how we heal, and how we relate. Aesthetics reflect more than just whether something is “pretty”, but really tell us about how well the world fits, or doesn’t fit, our _model_ of the world.”

“There’s been a flurry of work recently showing that when you use the most sophisticated machine-learning models available, you can predict a degree of aesthetic appeal from the features of images (though I would note that even in this work, those ‘features’ that are most predictable are in fact really-high level meanings that we, as a culture, agree on). But it’s clear that, especially with artwork, people can have really unique tastes that differ a lot from ‘average’ ratings of appeal.”

“We wanted to try to get inside people’s heads and understand what internal representations lead to such divergent aesthetic tastes. This led us to start doing research on self-relevance: how much a particular image or experience relates to your self-construct.”

The researchers conducted a series of three experiments to investigate the relationship between self-relevance and aesthetic appeal.

The first two experiments, which included 33 German-speaking participants recruited through a research participant database maintained by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and 208 English-speaking participants recruited online via Prolific, aimed to establish whether there was a relationship between aesthetic ratings of visual art and self-relevance judgments.

In the first experiment, the participants viewed a diverse selection of artwork, spanning various time periods, styles, and cultures. After viewing each image, the participants indicated the extent to which something in the art related “to you, your experiences, or your identity” (self-relevance) and how “moved” they were by artwork (aesthetic appeal). The second experiment followed a similar procedure, with slightly different questions.

In both experiments, the researchers found a strong and positive relationship between individual ratings of self-relevance and aesthetic appeal. Despite differences in which artworks participants personally found appealing or self-relevant, the correlation between these two measures was robust.

Next, Vessel and his colleagues aimed to further investigate the relationship between self-relevance and aesthetic appeal using novel AI-created artworks. To do this, they used a deep convolutional neural network to perform style transfer on existing artworks, creating new synthetic artworks with personalized content based on each participant’s responses to a questionnaire. These new artworks were designed to be highly controlled for both content and style, without explicitly asking participants about self-relevance.

The experiment involved 40 German-speaking participants aged 18 to 55. The participants first completed a Cultural Background and Lifestyle Questionnaire that assessed “significant locations associated with autobiographical experiences, aspects of their personal identity, and personal interests in topics such as the arts, style, and cuisine.”

The participants were then paired with others whose questionnaire responses were sufficiently divergent to create self-relevant and other-relevant images. They then viewed and rated a total of 80 artworks, divided into four conditions:
Real Artwork: 20 paintings selected from a diverse set of styles, genres, periods, and cultural origins.
AI-Generated Control Artwork: 20 novel artworks created using the style-transfer algorithm. These were the same for all participants.
AI-Generated Self-Relevant Artwork: 20 artworks uniquely generated for each participant based on their responses to the Cultural Background and Lifestyle Questionnaire.
AI-Generated Other-Relevant Artwork: 20 artworks generated for each participant’s paired partner, with matching artistic styles but different content.

The researchers found that participants rated the AI-generated self-relevant artworks as significantly more self-relevant compared to other categories of artworks. This confirmed that the manipulation of self-relevance was successful.

Importantly, artwork generated from self-relevant content were consistently rated as significantly more aesthetically appealing than matched other-relevant artwork and AI-generated control artwork. This finding further supported the idea that the subjective, personal connection individuals have with artworks plays a crucial role in shaping their aesthetic judgments.

“The primary finding is pretty straightforward,” Vessel told PsyPost. “When an image contains self-relevant content, such as things that relate to memories about yourself, to how you identify, or to your core life experiences (e.g. where you grew up), a person tends to like it more. But someone else with different life experiences, will tend to like the same image less.”

“We think this works because self-relevant content acts like a map or a key. It allows a person to unlock deeper levels of meaning, even when the art is actually about someone else’s experience. And this makes the experience more pleasurable, because we are learning about the world, about ourselves, and about our relationship to the world.”

The researchers also classified AI-generated self-relevant artworks into different subclasses based on the nature of the questionnaire items from which they were derived. They found that artworks related to specific autobiographical memories, aspects of personal identity, expressed preferences, and interests were rated as most appealing. However, artworks related to common activities did not show the same effect.

“I think these results are really interesting for several reasons,” Vessel said. “In addition to their usefulness for understanding a basic aspect of human experience, they also point the way to how we might create more impactful art therapies, which are increasingly being recognized as an effective and cost efficient tool for addressing physical and mental health challenges.”

“But they also present a cautionary tale about the increasing use of AI by tech and media companies to generate self-relevant content from models of their consumers,” the researcher added. “Personalized content is hard to turn away from, and in this way, has the potential to be addictive and maladaptive. We need to recognize this potential for harm and consider public policies for protecting consumers from a digital version of Harry Potter’s ‘Mirror of Erised,’ serving us an idealized view of ourselves and our world.”

The study, “Self-Relevance Predicts the Aesthetic Appeal of Real and Synthetic Artworks Generated via Neural Style Transfer“, was authored by Edward A. Vessel, Laura Pasqualette, Cem Uran, Sarah Koldehoff, Giacomo Bignardi, and Martin Vinck.

2023/09/08
© PsyPost

The most American pop culture phenomenon of them all

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

The Conversation

September 06, 2023

“American Idol” was “born” exactly nine months after 9/11. The timing was significant, because since its premiere on June 11, 2002, the show has become an integral part of the country’s coping strategy – a kind of guidebook for our difficult entry into the 21st century.

By carefully curating a distinctly American mix tape of music, personal narratives and cultural doctrine, “American Idol” has painted a portrait of who we think we are, especially in the aftermath of tragedy, war and economic turmoil.

As the show concludes after 15 seasons, it’s worth looking at how the past and present collided to create a cultural phenomenon – and how we’re seeing shades of the show’s influence in today’s chaotic presidential race.
All our myths bundled into one

“American Idol”‘s premise – the idea that an ordinary person might be recognized as extraordinary – is firmly rooted in a national myth of meritocracy.

This national narrative includes the dime-novel, rags-to-riches fairy tales of Horatio Alger, which were intended to uplift Americans struggling to get by after the Civil War. Then there was the American Dream catchphrase – first coined in 1931 by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America – that promoted an ideal of economic mobility during the hopeless years of the Depression.

Indeed, decades before host Ryan Seacrest handed out his first golden ticket to the first golden-throated farm girl waiting tables while waiting to be “discovered,” we’d been going to Hollywood in our dreams and on screen.

The show has shown us archetypes of immigrant narratives, like when Season Three contestant Leah Labelle spoke of her Bulgarian family’s defection to North America during Communist rule. It has demonstrated how to rely on faith in the face of hardship, exemplified by Fantasia Barrino’s victory song, “I Believe,” performed with a gospel choir. Meanwhile, it served as a stage for patriotic passion, broadcasting two performances of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” when the United States entered Iraq in 2003. Meanwhile, the many “Idol Gives Back” specials remind us of American philanthropic values.

The show has celebrated failure as both a necessary stumbling block and a launchpad to fame. Many singers needed to audition year after year before they earned their chance to compete. For others, such as William Hung, their televised rejection brought fame and opportunity anyway.

For contestant William Hung, fame blossomed out of failure.

“American Idol” has also served as a course in American music history, featuring discrete genres like Southern soul and Southern rock, together with newer, blurrier categories like pop-country and pop-punk.

Making the old new again

In one sense, “American Idol”’s format was nothing new. In fact, British entertainment executives Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell – who shepherded in a 21st-century version of the “British Invasion” – fashioned their juggernaut show as a new take on old business models.

There is something distinctly American about contestants standing in a Ford-sponsored spotlight, judges sipping from Coca-Cola glasses, and viewers sitting in front of television screens texting their votes on AT&T phones. The show’s conspicuous commercialization recalls the earliest days of television, when programs were owned and produced by advertisers. And “Idol,” like that early programming, was intended to be “appointment television,” bringing families together at the same time every week.

“Idol”’s production model is also a throwback. It’s structured like Berry Gordy’s Motown – a one-stop fame factory that offers stars a package of coaching, polishing, a band, album production and promotion.

The format also draws from amateur regional and national radio competitions of the early 20th century. (Frank Sinatra got his start winning one on “Major Bowe’s Amateur Hour” in 1935, with the Hoboken Four.) Another influence is the half-ridiculous and totally political “Eurovision Song Contest,” the hugely popular and mercilessly mocked annual televised event that pits nation against nation in (almost) friendly singing competition.
A vote that counts?

“Eurovision,” which originated in 1955 as a test of transnational network capabilities and postwar international relations, introduced telephone voting a few years before “Idol” premiered.

And like Eurovision, the impact of “American Idol” extends far beyond our annual crowning of a new pop star. The show’s rise has taken place at a time when the boundaries between entertainment, politics and business have become increasingly blurred.

Season after season, “American Idol” fans have placed votes for their favorite contestants – options which, somewhat like our presidential candidates, have been carefully cultivated by a panel of industry experts looking for a sure bet.

The initial success of “Idol” heralded not only an era of similar television programming, but also a new era in which we’re given the opportunity to “vote,” whether it’s for dum-dum pop flavors or the world’s most influential people.

Considering these trends, it’s not so farfetched to suggest that the wild popularity of shows like “American Idol” played some role in setting the blinding chrome stage and slightly “pitchy” tone for this year’s election.

It isn’t just that Donald Trump presided over “The Apprentice,” a reality competition that rode in on “American Idol”’s coattails.

His persona also seems to meet the same sadistic public need satisfied by original “Idol” judge Simon Cowell: the executive heir, the imperious arbiter of taste who owes his fortune at least as much to his superiority complex as to any financial acumen. At the same time, personas like Cowell and Trump deign to give an ordinary, hardworking American a chance.

That conceit, though, is mitigated cleverly by both moguls: they capitalize on what Cowell has identified as a universal desire to feel important.

The crux of their personal appeal is that they understand that everyone wants to matter, and we are willing – as TV viewers or as citizens – to risk an awful lot just to feel like we do. We each want to imagine our own sky-high potential, and laugh in relief when we see others who will never get off the ground. We want to be judge and jury, but also be judged and juried.

“Idol” gives Americans permission to judge each other, to feel like our opinion makes a difference. Trump’s unfiltered rhetoric has done something similar, giving his supporters implicit and sometimes explicit permission to mock, dismiss, exclude and even attack others based on racial and ethnic identity, religion or ability.

And so now, as “Idol” makes its final journey from Studio 36 to the Dolby Theatre, we deliberate over whose victory will herald the last “Seacrest – out.”

Whatever happens, and whichever way our presidential election goes, the U.S. is on the brink of something new, a major cultural shift. Wherever we’re going, “Idol” has served its purpose, and we don’t need it in the same desperate way anymore.

I think, though, that we’ll always be searching for the next big thing. And we’ll always be glad we had a moment like this.

Kelly Clarkson, the first winner of American Idol, performs ‘A Moment Like This.’

Katherine Meizel, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, Bowling Green State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

U$A
Workers are trying to unionize in greater numbers than expected in the Midwest

Public approval for labor unions is at 67%, according to a Gallup poll released at the end of August.

2023/09/07

A Starbucks barista at the Cheltenham neighborhood location at Hampton and Wise avenues joins a one-day walkout involving more than 100 stores nationwide on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022, in St. Louis

. - Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS

ST. LOUIS — In the central Midwest, unionization attempts this year are continuing at a faster pace than expected and are on track to almost match last year's high number.

In the first half of this year, 49 private sector workplaces filed for representation in the region, compared with 108 throughout the entirety of 2022, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis of National Labor Relations Board data. The 2022 number was the highest in eight years, bolstered by high costs of living, an organizing campaign at Starbucks and historically low unemployment rates.

Unionization attempts are up in the Midwest and nationally, said Jake Rosenfeld, a Washington University sociology professor. But, he added, "I'm not sure it's large enough to change the broader dynamic."

In January, annual data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that while the total number of union members rose, it didn't grow at the same pace as the overall workforce. As a result, the percentage of workers who are represented by unions still fell slightly, to 10.1%.

This year has seen tough labor negotiations, strikes and protests. Some 295,500 workers have been involved in stoppages through July this year, Reuters reported, citing preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That puts 2023 on track to become the busiest year for strikes since 2019.

Labor experts had expected to see this year's numbers hampered by broader economic conditions. Earlier this year, with many economists forecasting a recession, labor experts expected the anticipated economic downturn would make workers less likely to risk unionizing.

At the time, there was a general belief that economic storm clouds were forming, said Harley Shaiken, a University of California-Berkeley professor who specializes in labor and the global economy.

"Now, a lot of that has dissipated. It doesn't mean that we are totally out of danger, economically — we never are. But the possibility of avoiding a recession has become real," Shaiken said. "Overall, the economy appears less threatening."

Doug Swanson, field specialist for the University of Missouri Extension and coordinator of the labor studies program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, added that the expectation of an economic downturn tempering unionizing attempts has "yet to materialize."

"I'm not seeing a dampening of that early momentum," Swanson said.

Still, experts said, the overall picture is mixed for unions.

Union membership has been on the decline, nationally, since the 1950s. It peaked at 35% of the workforce in 1954, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Public approval for labor unions is at 67%, according to a Gallup poll released at the end of August. That's just below last year's 71%, which was the highest level in 57 years.

"Despite all the energy, despite the broader public support, organizing in the private sector remains extraordinarily difficult," Rosenfeld said.

The long-term question, Swanson said, is how unions and employers alike will evolve as the U.S. population ages, bringing about larger shifts in labor dynamics.

"It's going to get tougher. We have not hit the bottom of the workforce shortage," Swanson said. "Labor is, in itself, at a crossroads."

© St. Louis Post-Dispatch

'Exaggerations': DeSantis-appointed college board member’s new book full of 'factual missteps'

New College of Florida board member Christopher Rufo, 

Image via Twitter.

Maya Boddie

September 10, 2023

In a Sunday, September 10 report by Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp, he warns of the "dangerous" narratives pushed by far-right activist Christopher Rufo.

Earlier this year, Florida governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis "hand-picked" Rufo to sit on the board of the the New College of Florida. The right-wing activist "professed that the school 'will no longer be a jobs program for middling, left-wing intellectuals.'"

Now, Beauchamp writes that "in recent essays," and in his new book America's Cultural Revolution — with the subtitle "How the Radical Left Conquered Everything," Rufo "has argued for conservatives to treat authoritarian Hungary and Richard Nixon as models for a 'counterrevolution' against the left."

In the book he "argues that America has been quietly taken over by the ideological heirs of 1960s radicals. Ideas formulated by Marxist revolutionaries and Black nationalists, disguised in benign-sounding language like “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), have completed a 'long march' through America's major institutions — starting from universities and emanting outward to government and corporate life."

Beauchamp writes:

In June, before America's Cultural Revolution hit the shelves, Rufo reached out to me over email, offering a review copy of his forthcoming book and an on-the-record interview.

As a general rule, I think it's good to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially if their politics differ radically from your own. Rufo is an important person on the political right; it was worth taking the call to see for myself if he was acting in good faith.

However, Beauchamp notes "the more I examined Rufo's work, the weaker it started to look. His worldview is built on a foundation of exaggerations and misrepresentations — distortions that make it difficult to trust even his basic factual assertions, let alone his big-picture analysis of American society."

The senior correspondent writes:

Further pressing yielded the claim that his book couldn't be read 'literally' — that his 'artful and kind of narrative manner' requires the reader to question whether 'there was a kind of literary device at play' while reading.

But what he wrote didn't seem like any recognizable literary device. It just seemed like an obvious exaggeration, meant to make his readers think the problem is much graver than his documentation suggests.

Exaggerations weren't just a problem with the book's big-picture premise. The more I fact-checked what he said, the clearer the pattern of exaggeration and factual missteps became.

When I argued that university faculties weren't nearly as radical as he made them out to be, he pointed to his reporting on DEI departments in Florida and Texas — where, he warned, DEI departments were 'training students how to participate in violent protests.'

I traced this claim back to a piece Rufo had published in City Journal on Florida International University, focusing on a DEI pamphlet titled 'Grassroots Activism and Protest Safety.' The training contained advice like 'bring a bandana to cover nose and mouth” and “download a messaging app that has end to end encryption.' Technically, if you squint, providing such safety tips is 'training students how to participate in violent protests.' But his phrasing suggests the university is instructing students on how to engage in violence. What he said wasn't literally false, but it's profoundly misleading.

Zack Beauchamp's full report is available at this link.

READ MORE: DeSantis requests course data on CRT from state colleges to prevent 'far-left woke agenda' from taking over

Ramaswamy campaign hats made in repressive nation with ‘one of the worst governments in the world’

Vivek Ramaswamy in Phoenix in December 2022 (

Gage Skidmore)

Alexandria Jacobsonand
Raw Story

September 11, 2023

“Truth. Vote Vivek.”

Black baseball caps emblazoned with this message made their way around the Iowa State Fair last month, and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sported the hat before participating in Fox News’ Republican presidential debate held in Milwaukee, Wis., less than two weeks later.

But the hats have a truth of their own.

They’re made in Myanmar, a country rife with human rights atrocities and led by a military junta. The Myanmar military has propagated torture, sexual violence and mass murders, including killing children, according to pressaccounts and Human Rights Watch.

“It’s clearly one of those countries that’s sliding back on the freedom scale very much so,” said Irina Tsukerman, a foreign policy expert, human rights and national security lawyer and president of communications advisory company, Scarab Rising. “The fact that Vivek has chosen that place as opposed to another country where such issues are not really as prominent, like India or the Philippines maybe, it raises questions why. What is he willing to do for money?”

Ramaswamy’s campaign acknowledged purchasing the hats, explaining that they were from one “rush order for an event.”

“When this was brought to Vivek’s attention, he said we were changing it. He was not aware at all of the source, and it has been changed,” Stefan Mychajliw, deputy communications director for Ramaswamy’s campaign, told Raw Story.

The “Truth. Vote Vivek.” hats are made by a company called Otto, which calls itself “America’s largest source for blank caps and custom headwear.” The caps distributed by the Ramaswamy campaign show tags that say “Made in Myanmar,” and the company’s website also shows images of tags that say “Made in China."

Two Raw Story sources saw the hats in person and confirmed that the labels indicate they were made in Myanmar.

“This is bottom of the barrel,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division for Human Rights Watch. “This is amongst one of the worst governments in the world. It is right at the top of the list of the worst human rights abusers in Asia.”

The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a London-based nonprofit organization, is just “seeing the tip of the iceberg of allegations” in terms of the labor rights abuses in Myanmar since it tracks such abuses from publicly available news sources, which is limited due to a lack of press freedom in the country, said Natalie Swan, labor rights program manager for the organization.

A tag inside a "Truth. Vote Vivek." hat distributed in Iowa by the Vivek Ramaswamy presidential campaign shows that the cap comes from a company called Otto and was made in Myanmar.

“There's not some special zone where things are better in Myanmar,” Robertson said. “It's not like somehow that Otto is going to be this shining paragon of good practice in a country where the military is controlled and the workers are repressed.”

Members of Otto’s leadership team did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment. Otto has offices in Ontario, Calif.; Arlington, Texas; and Fairburn, Ga.
China-Myanmar relationship

While the choice of where a presidential campaign sources its promotional hats might seem trivial, merchandising “is a very important part of his foreign policy because it normalizes his positions with the public,” Tsukerman said.

Ramaswamy, who is running third behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in some recent national polls, wants an “America first” approach to foreign policy, according to an article he wrote for The American Conservative on August 28.

The merchandise for sale on his website also boasts “Made in USA” as a selling point.

Ramaswamy has been particularly critical of China, which has a close relationship with Myanmar. When asked about “Made in America” stickers on The Fifth Column podcast, Ramaswamy said, “I’ve actually called for total decoupling from China, total economic independence from China, not on protectionist grounds at all but on grounds of long run national security … I think it is not good for the long run security interests of the United States when we are dependent economically on our enemy for our modern way of life.”

Ramaswamy says the United States should no longer have economic dependence on China.

“I will admit that it is unacceptably dangerous that so much of our way of life is dependent upon Chinese manufacturing and Taiwanese semiconductors. I will declare economic independence from China,” Ramaswamy wrote in The American Conservative. “I will incentivize American companies to move supply chains away from China and rebase them in allied markets, especially in our own hemisphere, and I will use trade deals as the main way to do it.”

Mychajliw says Ramaswamy’s support for America’s independence from China is unwavering.

“As far as Vivek Ramaswamy is concerned, the major part of his foreign policy platform is declaring independence from China. We cannot be dependent on America's biggest adversary for the shoes on our feet or phones in our pockets. That does not change, and that's very consistent,” Mychajliw told Raw Story.

But factories in Myanmar, which shares a border with China, often are operated by Chinese factory owners, Robertson and Swan said.

China is a strong supporter of Myanmar’s military government, Tsukerman said, with the Council on Foreign Relations writing that China has “gone all in with the Myanmar regime”.

“It's really rather astonishing to me that he would stoop so low to have a piece of merchandise coming from a country that is one of the worst rights abusing situations in the world,” Robertson said. “It boggles the mind, frankly, that somehow they think it's alright to source something like a hat from Myanmar when any sort of brief Google search can come up with a full page of atrocities that have been committed by that military government.”

Ramaswamy’s foreign policy views were called out during the August Republican presidential debate by his challengers.

“You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows,” said Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, The Hill reported. Haley’s campaign did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

 

Republican presidential candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy (L) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (R) participate in the first debate of the GOP primary season hosted by FOX News at the Fiserv Forum on Aug. 23, 2023, in Milwaukee, Wis. 

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Former Vice President Mike President, another Republican presidential candidate, said Ramaswamy is “just wrong” on foreign policy on Fox News this week. Pence’s campaign also did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

“It's hypocritical on his part to claim that he wants to move away from China but nevertheless is supporting products in places where China is very dominant, where it basically is behind many of these manufacturing companies,” Tsukerman said.

Last month, Ramaswamy wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his “progressive ‘elite’ former peers in places like Harvard, Yale & Wall Street” are “dripping sanctimony and condescension toward the so-called ‘rubes’ in the rest of the country.” Minutes later he shared another post with a similar message.

“They remain cloistered in their enclaves and think they’re worldly because they’ve been to London, backpacked in Prague, and took a photo with some starving child in Myanmar — yet they’re downright ignorant, bigoted, and unwilling to hear out their own fellow citizens in their own country. Do that first. Then you can feel good about yourself for going to Haiti or Myanmar *after* that. I know how to give them the dose of reality that they need. I will not be shy about prescribing it,” Ramaswamy wrote.

‘One of the worst governments in the world”

In February 2021 a military coup took place in Myanmar, sending the country into “effective civil war,” where the military has bombed civilians and engaged in” systematic commission of war crimes,” Robertson said.

In April 2023, the military bombed a Myanmar village, killing at least 157 civilians, with at least 25 of them children, the Washington Post reported.

The U.S. State Department has issued a Level 4 travel advisory — it’s most restrictive — for Myanmar, and warns of “significant ongoing challenges and human rights issues” across the nation.

Conditions for garment workers in Myanmar are particularly concerning to human rights activists.

In its August 2023 report, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre describes “gender-based violence, wage violations, unpaid and mandatory overtime, inhumane working conditions and other forms of abuse” as common, with wages around $2 per day.

As for Ramaswamy’s campaign hats, “It is very, very problematic that this is being produced there, and any claim that somehow this was produced under fair conditions, this is produced in a way that was ethical, I think doesn't hold any water,” Robertson said.

Unions aren’t currently allowed in Myanmar, forcing union leaders to flee the country, and protests are put down by military force. Factory owners are supported by the military and take advantage of workers’ poverty and inability to strike, Robertson said.

In one case in March 2021, the military massacred at least 65 people as part of a protest by factory workers, Human Rights Watch reported. More than 4,000 pro-democracy activists and civilians have been killed by the junta and nearly 25,000 arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

“You see an immediate crackdown of the right to freedom of association and the right to join and form a trade union in the country, persecution of existing labor rights,” Swan said. “Leaders, you're no longer able to get your union registered in the country, and what that means is that you've lost that foundational framework with which workers can call for better terms and conditions.”

The U.S. Department of State has levied numerous sanctions against Myanmar since 2021.

'Didn’t even invite him': Mehdi Hasan explains how he ruffled Vivek Ramaswamy’s 'easy ride'

Image via Aaron of L.A. Photography/Shutterstock.

Maya Boddie

ALTERNET

September 10, 2023

During the Sunday, September 10 episode of MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian Reports, Vossoughian spoke withThe Mehdi Hasan Show host Mehdi Hasan about his recent interview with biotech entrepreneur and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

The Daily Beast reports, "During a marathon 25-minute sitdown with Ramaswamy that aired on NBC's streaming service Peacock, Hasan held the 38-year-old multi-millionaire's feet to the fire throughout, rarely giving the 'anti-woke' culture warrior a chance to deflect and dodge when confronted over his past comments and behavior."

Vossoughian had Hasan on Sunday's segment to discuss how the interview with Ramaswamy came about and what the MSNBC host expected to get out of it.

"First off, I should point out, I didn't even invite him on the show," Hasan said. "He suggested himself back in July. He tweeted at me saying, 'Have me on your show to debate on this stuff, MSNBC.' So we said, 'All right!' After the debate, when it looked like he was actually a serious contender, we said, 'All right. come on then.' So he actually invited himself — it's part of his strategy of throwing himself into numerous entities — it's how he's made a name for himself. Because was really a nobody six months ago. But he's done this intense media exposure campaign. And my goal was to try and hold him to account for some of the nonsense that he said in those interviews and for some of the lies he's told about his past. What he's done so well up until this point, including on the debate stage in Milwaukee, is to just basically talk over people, speak super fast, and super confidently. Thing is, Yasmin — so do I. So I was ready for that. And we did our homework, my team and I. We came to him with his quotes, with his book, with his tweets, with his tax returns. And I don't think he was quite ready for that because he had an easy ride so far."

Vossoughian went on to say, "That was a moment, Mehdi, when you went at him with his tax returns. If anybody has not seen that part of mehdi's interview, you should certainly watch it online because it is amazing to watch. When you were talking to him, I think two of the biggest things, it seems, you are trying to hold him on was, first, his qualifications, and secondly his trustworthiness. Was it there or was it not? And I think going into it, you probably understood it was likely not gonna be in there. All that being said, Mehdi, right, your audience is not the type of people that are going to be voting for someone like Vivek Ramaswamy. So even by having him on your show...it's not those folks are now gonna say, 'Well, Mehdi kind of called him out.' Right?"

Hasan replied, "Well, first of all I would say there's a value to truth in and of itself. I really don't care if I'm saying truth in an empty room. Sometimes it really doesn't matter the audience, you just have to reinforce the truth. But I will say one thing, Yasmin, the DeSantis people are sharing the hell out of this clip. He's got rivals on the right who are actually very happy to see him held to account. I've seen a bunch of conservatives, people like Meghan McCain, who's no fan of mine, saying 'Why didn't conservative media ask Vivek Ramaswamy these questions over the past six months? Why did he get a pass on the right for so long?' So actually interestingly enough, given the dynamics of the GOP presidential race, where he's snapping at DeSantis' heels, they're actually appreciating the fact that someone's asked some of these questions."

Vossoughian emphasized, "That's a really incredible point. And it's interesting because of the leak that came out of the DeSantis camp just a couple weeks ago, saying, 'We're gonna be focusing more' —ahead of the debate of course — 'We're gonna be focusing more on Vivek on that debate stage' than they would, obviously, the front runner is the former President Donald trump. What do you most, Mehdi, worry about looking ahead to this election, specifically, the primary race, and then ultimately, the general?"

READ MORE: Vivek Ramaswamy’s Hindu faith 'major stumbling block' for evangelical 'Christian nationalists': report

Hasan said, "The most worrying thing is something I've been saying for a long time. I'm sure you have too — the authoritarianism that comes out of the GOP. and Vivek Ramaswamy, despite being the son of immigrants, having a brown skin, is as authoritarian as the rest of them, if not more. On Friday, he announced that he wants to deport U.S. citizen kids of undocumented immigrants. He doesn't accept the birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. So, it's a real problem when you've got a bunch of people who are not called Donald Trump, but are as authoritarian as he is, if not more so in some cases."

Watch the video below or at this link.