Wrong-house shootings are a bleak reminder how many of our fellow Americans are armed & waiting for an opportunity to kill. Expect more in the future: It’s what happens when people have been sold weapons as “home defense” for decades; they are desperate to get what they paid for.
Every dollar spent on guns for “home defense” is a bet placed on the likelihood of their eventual use. Owning them does not create situations in which they are actually needed, but it *constantly* creates the perception that now might be the time.
Apr 18, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Seems to me that the nation’s most watched news source knowingly lying about a presidential election for months should not merely be a matter two parties can settle and be done with.
Oh you two corporations decided on a payout that everyone can agree with? Great. It’s not like it’s the fate of the republic or truth itself at stake here.
Mar 26, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A year after January 6 I published an essay in @NYTOpinion warning that we might one day see official valorization of Capitol rioters.
I did not expect we would so soon witness the insurrection turned into a liturgy: An act of sacred ritual remembrance.
@nytopinion Etymology of "liturgy" is from the Greek: lēitos (public) and ergos (working). It's at once a work done *by* a public and a work done *to* a public. Its goal is for those who take part to be transformed.
The more they invoke January 6, the more they believe it was righteous.
Mar 25, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Why is Trump’s first rally in Waco?
He heard Pence could’ve helped him but didn’t have the Koresh.
What do you call the followers of a guy with messianic delusions and a Doritos-tinted spray tan?
Cool Ranch Davidians.
Mar 23, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
State of Florida about to ban this beet.
"I shall not attempt further to define obscene vegetables, but I know it when I see it."
Mar 19, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If Trump wasn’t the worst and odious to think about in all circumstances, the arc of his story would be so compelling:
Through an accident of history a man is given an extraordinary, future-shaping opportunity, but it all turns to shit because he can’t help being himself.
Just imagine: a man who puts his name on crappy merchandise for a living, who has been a joke for decades, is suddenly President of the United States. He could change the world! But he doesn’t know how not to be comically greedy. All he can think of is where else to put his name.
Mar 17, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Literally just laughed out loud at how bleak this is. Read it slowly and think about what it says. It’s bleak.
Every US institution and corporation some time in the coming months: “We know Trump poses a danger to life, property and the nation’s future, but we also understand that millions actively like this about him, so we’re just gonna roll the dice on this one.”
Feb 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Remember when a bunch of people tried to overthrow the government and they just got away with it?
Every so often the fact that dozens of current elected officials took part in an effort to overturn a presidential election startles me the way you wake from a dream and can’t be sure whether or not it was real.
Truly glad my work contributed to the January 6 Committee Report. But overall the scant attention paid to the religious dimensions of the attack may prove a disservice to history. #CapitolSiegeReligion gathers hundreds of images of the day; UncivilReligion.org offers context.
Dec 22, 2022 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
For possibly no one but me, here's a highlight reel of my work in 2022.
TLDR: This past year I put two books out into the world, opened a museum exhibit, and published a bunch of essays I'm proud of.
The most significant thing I did all year was probably the thing I did first: Collaborating with my friend and colleague Jon Grinspan on this essay for @NYTOpinion's coverage of the first anniversary of January 6. nytimes.com/2022/01/06/opi…
Jun 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A nation in which fundamental rights depend on where you live is no longer a nation in the same sense of the word. Borders between states are no longer just easy to miss highway signs. Conservatives who claim to love America fail to understand they may have fractured it fatally.
That the fracturing set in motion by SCOTUS could prove fatal for the country likely seems hyperbolic to many. But ruling that half the population ceases to control their bodies when they cross from one state to another is completely anathema to the meaning of the *United* States
May 29, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Here’s the story to read on religion and Daniel Defense, maker of the Uvalde shooter’s weapon. It’s from 2017, when the Christian gun company was *also* involved in mass murder. ajc.com/news/crime--la…
“We are in business, we believe, to be a supporter of the gospel,” Daniel Defense’s founder said in 2017. “And, therefore, a supporter of the Second Amendment. In other words, not only do we have those Second Amendment rights because God gives them to us, but also the Gospel.”
May 28, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The idea that guns make us safer is yet another Big Lie.
A few years back I published a book about historical gun mishaps called Melancholy Accidents. Throughout much of American history, stories about people blowing holes in themselves were so common that regular newspaper columns were devoted to sharing their excruciating details.
May 27, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
"Defending my family" is among the most common reasons given for gun ownership.
But a gun in the home is far more likely to injure family members than protect them.
A five-year study of 14000+ crime incidents found just 127 cases of self-defense gun use.
Meanwhile more than 1800 kids die each year by gunshot -- including suicides, accidents, and domestic violence, all of which are facilitated by guns in the home.
Jan 26, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
According to the transcript of the board’s discussion, this ban seems to be about the book’s use of “objectionable language”. History disappears not only through lies about what happened but through discomfort with the ways survivors and their families describe their experiences.
How long until they ban Night or the Diary of Anne Frank? Lots of things to make parents uncomfortable in both.
Dec 21, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There's an alternate reality in which Trump accepted defeat and since January has been using Twitter to take credit for the vaccine, which his followers receive gladly.
So much of the mess we're in goes back to one man. He did not singlehandedly politicize Covid, but we would be in a very different place had he not believed taking the virus seriously was going to hurt him politically.
Dec 4, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Can’t really make sense of our decades-long failure with school shootings without reckoning with the grotesque martyrdom narratives that emerged from Columbine.
The stories told about Christian kids facing school shooters with affirmations of faith sought to sanctify horrific events, fitting them into a spiritual warfare framework rather than treating them as the tragic result of the ready availability of guns.
Nov 22, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
As we get closer to the anniversary of the Capitol attack we’ll hear a lot of “history will judge” takes, but really we have no idea. History’s judgements change with time. Even as we learn more about what happened, there is a risk that history will be used to obscure the truth.
The speed with which the Big Lie could become State Supported History cannot be exaggerated. Even when we all still remember what happened, narratives repeated relentlessly from positions of power have tremendous influence. If they endure, they become fact in the minds of many.
Nov 12, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Dangerous problem right now is the internet has warped our understanding of the reality of violence. So many heinous things are said online that we've lost the ability to recognize the real thing when it's right before us. Not even those who make threats know if they are serious.
Remarkable to talk openly about killing political opponents and have the paper of record call it merely "menace." nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/…
Nov 4, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Crux of the CRT panic is that many Americans want the history of race to be taught as "Slavery was bad so we stopped; then MLK made everything equal" rather than "Our nation was built on crimes against humanity committed across centuries whose long-term effects we still can see."
Also must be said about the CRT panic: It exists within a fantasy that teaching US history was objective and correct until recent efforts at revision. For generations history textbooks openly argued there were positive aspects to slavery. Teaching history has never been neutral.
Nov 3, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Why CRT panic is working wonders for the GOP: It’s like the border but *so much closer.* In fact, it can be anywhere. “Look out! The caravan is in your school!”
They’ve found the plot to their horror movie: “The crisis at the border is calling from inside the house!”
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