SECULARISM: “Bobby Jindal: U.S. Must Turn Back To God” / Secular Talk / Kyle Kulinski ☮
1
Category Archives: White Privilege
PLUTOCRACY: “A Reason to Watch the Sexist, Racist, Militarist, Corporate Rose Parade” / truthdig / Sonali Kolhatkar ☮
I hate parades. I have always hated the bright exuberance, the cheering and the flag waving. Every New Year’s Day, millions of people around the U.S. and the world tune in or gather in person to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade, also known as the Rose Parade. I live in Pasadena, home of the Rose Parade, and every year I watch thousands of families camped out on the streets of the city to secure a coveted spot from which to view the spectacle up close. Meanwhile, the moneyed classes pay for premium seating on bleachers set up for the occasion. But beneath the facade of festive glamour is an institution rife with sexism, racism, militarism and corporatism.
The Rose Parade has its origins in exclusivity and elitism. In 1890, when Pasadena was a magnet for wealthy East Coast Americans looking for temperate climates to vacation in during the winters, the Valley Hunt Club organized the first parade to show off the city. The hunting and fishing club, which continues to be featured in the parade for historical reasons, has had a problematic history of not admitting people of color.
Today the Rose Parade continues to remain ensconced within Pasadena’s well-to-do neighborhoods in the south of the city. Its annual route avoids by a wide berth poor and working-class communities of color, whose homes are concentrated in northwest Pasadena.
POLICE BRUTALITY PARODY: “Driving While Brown . . . and Furry” ☮
h/t: truthdig
CORPORATE MEDIA COVERAGE: “Two NYPD Officers Shot Dead, Everyone but Actual Shooter Blamed” / David Pakman Show / David Pakman ☮
CORPORATE MEDIA COVERAGE: “Two NYPD Officers Murdered” / Secular Talk / Kyle Kulinski ☮
POLICE BRUTALITY: “UC Berkeley Student March / 12.06.2014
ACTIVISM AND ADVOCACY: “I’m No Longer Accepting the Things I Cannot Change” / Angela Davis☮
ANTI-THEISM: “Godless Millennials Could End the Political Power of the Religious Right” / The Guardian / Adam Lee
America is becoming less Christian because young people are less religious. That’s not blessed news for conservatives.
[…]
While the effect on evangelicals is new, the general pattern isn’t. The Catholic church, the largest single religious denomination in America, was the first to feel the pinch. Church leaders and Catholic apologists have been fretting for years over the problem of aging and shrinking congregations, declining attendance at Mass and fewer people signing up to become priests or nuns – although their proposals for how to solve the problem all consist of tinkering around the edges, or insisting that they need to try harder to convince people to believe as they do.
[…]
But even if this secularizing trend continues, it’s likely that there’s a hard core of believers who will persist no matter what: no one is forecasting the total extinction of the religious right in politics.
Still, for progressives, the eroding power of the churches is a most welcome development: the religions right can no longer claim to be the sole source of morality and virtue, nor can they expect to assert their will in political matters and be obeyed without question. Instead, they’ll have to muster evidence and make their case in the marketplace of ideas like everyone else.
REPUBLICANS: “Dad, What’s Science?”
h/t: Atheist Uprising
MARIJUANA AND WHITE PRIVILEGE: “Chris Hayes Takes Down Bill O’Reilly’s Anti-Marijuana Nonsense” / “I Was Nearly Arrested For Weed” / Chris Hayes
“I can tell you as sure as I am sitting here before you that if I was a black kid with cornrows instead of a white kid with glasses, my ass would’ve been in a squad car faster than you can say George W. Bush.”
Always Question Authority 
