Research Notes #8
One Whole Year
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One year gone
This past week we hit the 1 year point in our time with COVID. We also reached 530,000 US deaths and 2.5 million worldwide deaths from the pandemic. These numbers are so huge that it is difficult to even fathom that many people gone. In 1 year, 2.5 million people gone. 2.5 million people who otherwise would still be with us. 2.5 million family members, friends, colleagues, acquaintances whom we will never interact with again.
Thinking about this from the perspective of 1 March 2020 it never crossed our minds that we would lose this many human beings in the course of only 1 year. Those of us who have survived have been affected on the individual level in so many ways. Some have lost family members and friends. Some have lost jobs and the ability to care for themselves and others. Some have lost their way due to isolation. Some have lost the ability to hold on to reality and veered off into high-end conspiracy theorizing. In the end, every human has been affected in one way or another. Not one of us has been spared.
Another horrible outcome of this year has been the surge in hate crimes perpetrated against Asian-Americans. The attackers have been emboldened by Former President Trump’s demonization of the AAPI community. During his tenure, Trump refused to denounce the violence against Asians in America and, in fact, stoked the violence through his rhetoric while the rest of the conservative community remained virtually silent. In recent months, there has been a greater focus on this violence, but it also appears to be underreported, as many hate crimes are. Demonizing ‘the other’ is how the white supremacist patriarchy continues to maintain power over the majority of citizens and the instances of violence against AAPI community members can be traced back long before the pandemic. In order to counteract the hatred, we need to continue to work as allies for each other’s movements and toward justice for ALL.
And yes - hope is here. Hope that comes from movements. Hope that comes from the vaccine. Hope that comes from the little glimmers of light that shine in when we realize we might be able to see our family and friends again. Hope that comes from knowing that the end of the pandemic is around the corner and ultimately hope that what we learned over the past year will inform future pandemic containment. Climate change is real and pandemics are directly related to it. If we don’t start being better stewards of the Earth at the industry level, we can be assured that isolation, poverty, plague, and violence will continue to be the norm. Sure, reducing, reusing, and recycling is great, but what really needs to change is the machine of capitalism that consistently wreaks havoc on our environment, keeping us in a state of manufactured bliss, while reinforcing wedges between groups that could be striving together for a better tomorrow.
Yes - it is a lot, but so was the past year. Let’s move forward together to make this country and the world a better place for everyone. Not just the privileged 1%.
More info: Marxism in a Minute from Hadas Thier and Haymarket Books - a great primer on capitalism and its effect on human beings.
A Persistent Research Interest
Over the past few weeks, as I mentioned in a previous issue, I have been rethinking the idea of PhD work. Since I completed my BA in Sociology back in 2011, I have longed to continue down the path of scholarly research. In fact, this is one of the main reasons I started this newsletter. Not only as a way to highlight the writing on hippiegrrl media or convey important research skills to our readers, but also as a way to locate all the topics I would like to research and start bringing them together into a cohesive set of theses.
In doing so, I have come across a number of topics that intrigue me in ways that make me want to continue thinking about them in a more scholarly manner. One such topic is white evangelicalism and the hold that Christian nationalists have on a large portion of both our politics and society, overall, in the United States. After reading Anthea Butler’s latest book, I have come to find that, indeed, this is one of the topics that I should be focusing my research toward.
Demonizing groups
Conservatives have successfully convinced large groups of citizens that we need to be wary of each other. The strategy here is to divide us so that we do not unite and overtake their power structure. White conservative males are in the statistical minority in the United States and this scares them. Due to this fear of losing power and to maintain the order, they sow division between groups. Conservatives are highly skilled at demonizing ‘the other’. This is to say that they have a way of making anyone who is not a white, affluent, cishet, dude into the enemy. But “the enemy” shifts in order to rationalize each argument for maintaining the power that they hold. The enemy shifts to accommodate white supremacist patriarchy.
In the past two weeks, we have seen several instances of this division: First, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson demonized women by signing into law a bill that would ban abortion for all women seeking the procedure except in the case of the life of the mother. This means that even if a woman is raped or a victim of incest, she will not be allowed to have the procedure. At the moment, Roe V. Wade overrides this type of legislation at the State level, but it is a law that Arkansas has passed as a trigger. They are banking on Roe v. Wade being overturned putting Arkansas in a group of 10 States that have these laws in place.
During the pandemic alone, 5 States have put laws in place to restrict or ban abortion access to the women who need the procedure. This timeline, provided by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, shows the ways in which lobbyists against women’s rights seized on the opportunity of the pandemic not to HELP women in need during this time, but further restrict their rights. In many cases, these restrictions also put women at risk of contracting COVID due to the multiple clinic visits necessary to obtain a LEGAL medical procedure.
Next, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, in an interview on the Joe Pags Show showed his overt racism betraying the façade that white conservatives use to keep their racism in the shadows, by admitting that he was not afraid of the 6 January insurgents because they were “people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law”. This despite the fact that they committed several felonies, including being complicit in the death of a Capitol police officer. But the real show of racism came when he stated that if, “President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned” sealing the deal. Senator Johnson is racist. He showed us his racism clearly. But more than that - he showed us the overall goal of white conservatives: demonize people of color and place wedges that will allow the white one-percenters to maintain power.
Further research
Recently, I have started listening to the Straight White America Jesus podcast. It sounds off-brand for me, but it is probably not what you think. This podcast, co-hosted by Bradley Onishi and Dan Miller, two “former insiders and critical scholars of religion” (SWAJ), takes a deep dive into the world of Christian Nationalism. This podcast takes me down deep rabbit holes of research.
As I move forward with this general line of research I will be connecting it to unions, colonialism, and collective action. In order to make change in the United States, those of us that are not in the 1% need to continue fighting for what is right, but we also need to be doing this collectively.
Conservatives have a treasure trove of tactics that they use to pit the rest of us against each other. In coming newsletters we will dive more deeply into topics such as the minimum wage, unemployment, ‘right-to-work’, unionization and union-busting, healthcare, marriage, bodily autonomy, and other wedge issues that conservatives have used to divide and rule while grassroots efforts have countered with a strong movement for the workers.
Together, as one united social justice movement, we can make true and lasting change. Or, we can continue to listen to those in power tell us that they are going to take care of us or that others are not worthy when we are or that we should be wary of one another. We need to break the cycle of trust with the leaders and make change on the ground. Grassroots efforts have always been the best avenue for change and 2021 is no different.
Thank you for reading the Research Notes Newsletter! If you have comments, questions, or suggestions for future research, please let me know in the comments. I look forward to a lively discourse.