There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans and Heathens out there, more than our team can write about in depth in any given week. Therefore, The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up.
A “seismic political week”
As has adequately been reported throughout mainstream media, the Trump administration generated a number of executive orders and memoranda that are now creating significant backlash and raising concerns in many communities. These orders include, but are not limited to, the revival of the North Dakota Keystone pipeline project, immigration restrictions, and actions to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. To see read more about what the administration has done in what some are calling a seismic week of executive action, read the White House website‘s weekly report.
While Trump’s first week as president has been punctuated by seemingly non-stop protest and rallies of one kind or another, the pipeline memorandum and immigration orders have generated the most immediate public reaction. In response to the Jan. 24 pipeline project revival, the Standing Rock Sioux tweeted, “Trump’s executive order on #DAPL–violates the law and tribal treaties. We will be taking legal action.” A day after the orders were signed, Chairman David Archambault II also issued a direct letter to President Trump outlining the issues and his concerns. The full text of that letter is published on the Standing Rock Sioux website.
With regard to the Jan. 27 immigration executive order, the very next day a large number of protesters reportedly made their way to eight international airports around the country, including JFK in New York City where a group of refugees and foreign travelers had been detained. In addition, the ACLU filed a lawsuit calling the immigration order a “Muslim ban” and “violation of the establishment clause.” In response to that suit, a federal judge blocked the president’s deportation order. As word spread internationally, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had his own response. He tweeted, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”
The immigration order, which is titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” was signed Friday and is not yet available on the White House website. However, CNN has published the text in full.
This all in one week’s time.
There is other news
- The Satanic Temple is reportedly closer to placing its Baphomet statue on the Arkansas capitol grounds. According to a local Fox affiliate, “A subcommittee of the state Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission on Wednesday cleared the proposal by the Satanic Temple to build” the statue. The project has moved to a public hearing stage, but the date for that hearing has not yet been established.
- Was the Women’s March on Washington a manifestation of the spirit of Witchcraft? Right-wing pastor Lance Wallnau thinks so as do others. As quoted in Right Wing Watch, Wallnau said, “It’s a witchcraft that’s operating behind this stuff,” he said later, “and it’s intimidation and it’s violence and it’s threatening and it’s destructive and it’s clearly the work of the devil. And the media mind controls what we’re dealing with.”
- According to AP, a West Virginia mother is suing her local public school system because its educational program includes Bible classes. As reported, the mother has said that “her child will be forced either to take these weekly classes at her Mercer County elementary school or face ostracism as one of the few children who don’t.” Her suit is backed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). According to that organizations spokesperson, FFRF has “a dozen lawsuits in other states” regarding prayer in school and has one one case where classes were involved.
- Moving outside the U.S., India’s top court has banned the use or mention of caste and religion in election. As reported by The Guardian, the Supreme Court “banned political candidates from seeking election on the basis of religion, caste or language, in a landmark ruling that has unclear but potentially far-reaching consequences for the way Indian politics is practised.”
- According to World Wide Religion news, Norway is also showing signs of pushing religion out of government. The country is officially parting ways with its national church. As reported, “On Jan. 1, the Scandinavian country cut some ties with its Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Norway, rewording the national constitution to change the denomination from ‘the state’s public religion’ to ‘Norway’s national church.’ While some feel that the change in language is not enough to create a true church-state separation, this move does support claims that many countries within Europe are headed toward increased secularism.
- Back in December, as reported by RNS, former president Obama signed a “newly strengthened” international religious freedom act. The changes in the language made the new version a first for atheists and agnostics. As quoted in the RNS article, law professor Caroline Mala Corbin said, “The new law has some really interesting language in it. It takes an expansive view of religious liberty, saying freedom of religion is not just about the right to practice religion. It is also about the right to have your own views about religion including being agnostic and atheistic.”
- Lastly, in arts and entertainment, the popular television show Charmed is getting a reboot. The series began in 1998 with a show entitled, “Something Wicca this way comes,” and then followed the Halliwell sisters, three witches (Shannon Dougherty, Alyssa Milano, and Holli Marie Combs), as they learned magic and fought off evil. The series ended in 2006, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, it will be making a comeback. The CW will air the new Charmed show, but there are no reported dates on its exact launch.
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“It’s a witchcraft that’s operating behind this stuff,” OK, who blabbed?
It seems to me it’s a bunch of warlocks (as in the word meaning oathbreakers) who are behind the radical changes in this nation’s political traditions. Trump just threw out the National Intelligence Director and the Military Brass from attending National Security Council’s Principals meeting, but included former Breitbart (fake) News publisher Bannon. As was pointed out in one comment on ABC News: “This is now a coup detat. ::shakes head::
Trump may not be trustworthy and he’s certainly not good for freedom or the country, but this is not a coup d’état.
He was legally elected. The NSC exists to advise the President, the NID and the JCOS answer to the President. Tradition has nothing to do with it, it’s at the pleasure of the President.
And as much as I hate to say it, the orders blocking travel from specific countries is legal too. Carter set the precedent.
A better question might be why the President didn’t block travel from countries he has done business with, such as Saudi Arabia with an absolutely terrible human rights record. Not to mention that 15 of the 9-11 bombers were Saudi.
Much as I dislike it I have to agree with NeoWayland on the facts. A travel ban cannot be a Muslim ban if it does not affect Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, or Pakistan, which was founded to be Muslim. And he was legally elected and is using precedented, legal powers and prerogatives — wildly inappropriately, very counterproductively, and in defiance of our deepest national values, but legally. If we don’t want Trump using “alternative facts” we are obligated to abstain from them ourselves.If you look at the map of the banned countries they only form part of the region where the trouble arises; there are holes. It’s an excellent question why those holes are there.
It’s a Muslim ban if the primary intent was to exclude Muslims because they are Muslim, and it’s pretty obvious that was Trump’s intent. Rudy Giuliani, who was part of the commission which drafted the ban, said Trump asked him how to do a “Muslim ban” legally. The fact that it is not a universal or particularly rational ban on Muslims does not change the intent. Trump has also made clear that he plans to give preferential treatment to Christian refugees from these countries going forward.
The primary intent is to redeem his red-meat campaign promise of a “Muslim ban” without an immediate judicial rebuff on constitutional grounds. He has succeeded in that; we need to acknowledge it and move on to things we can affect, like process violations for green card and visa holders. We don’t need to keep repeating “Muslim ban” for our Muslim sisters and brothers to know they’re disfavored by this Administration.
I repeat it primarily because language is one of the primary weapons of authoritarian regimes. In dictatorships throughout history, controlling the terminology and narrative is as important as force of arms in maintaining power, if not more so. A big part of that tactic is to officially stand by the biggest and most obvious of lies without blinking and scrambling to discredit or crush any dissenting voices. This is why Trump and his press guy spent a week on the stupidity of the inauguration crowd estimates. It wasn’t the numbers that were important, it was important that the regime’s “alternative facts” not be questioned. If you can condition a population to praise the emperor’s new clothes as he walks bare-assed down the street, the rest is downhill.
You’re not wrong about the Big Lie technique, but he does it rather badly in an age of Twitter and a 24-hr news cycle. “Alternative facts” became an instant joke.
The link for the article from Right Wing Watch seems to be broken. I tried reading the direct link to “Pastor Paranoid’s” Facebook page and my stomach just couldn’t handle it this early in the morning!
Since there was no particular Pagan slant to the news on immigration reform, etc., I ‘ll toss one out for discussion.
What is more important, protecting minority (on this continent) religious rights or being concerned about thousands of people coming in whose holy book explicitly says, “Kill the polytheiststs”?
Excellent question.
Personally, I think people should agree to respect the beliefs of others before being allowed in.
Two liberal Christian churches in my town are deeply into community resistance to fallout from the executive order on immigration. They share a holy book that says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” But that’s not how they behave — they appreciate my contribution to the annual interfaith Longest Night service — and I will not scorn solidarity with them in confronting the current situation. How one behaves is more important than an isolated scriptural quote.
Point taken, but you sort of side-stepped my discussion topic. I was not speaking of Christian churches here, but of Muslims arriving from elsewhere.
As for the “Sword verse,” as it is known, the scholars will say, “Oh, that was a thing that happened when Muhammend was angry at some Pagans in Medina. It’s historical.”
On the other hand, the Qu’ran is sacred, every word. Its position in Islam in more like that Jesus in Christianity, rather than the Bible.
The guy making jihadi videos does not care for scholarly interpretations. Ask the Yezidis how well that scholarly interpretation worked for them
I brought up those Christian churches because I believe in holding all players to a single standard in issues like this, not one standard for Muslims and another for Christians. This will be apparent in the following.What you say about Muslims holding all of their scripture sacred could be said just as well about American Christians who hold their scripture sacred, but we don’t try to make life difficult for them based on what they believe but, if necessary, on what they do.People who bomb abortion clinics don’t care for scholarly objections to what they do, either, but that does not denigrate the scholar.
I live among what has to be one of the highest Muslim populations in the Midwest if not the country. I can walk 10 minutes from my door and feel like I’m in a suburb of Islamabad. Probably 1 in 5 or 6 of my coworkers are Muslim. I’ve encountered them daily in every walk of life for the last 15 years. Never once has any of them given me grief about religion. Not a single one ever tried to proselytize or convert me. In fact none of them ever even brought up religion unless I asked them first. I’ve dealt with a whole lot of angry Abrahamic religious loons over 46 years, but the holy verses employed against me were not from the Koran…
What’s more important is sanity and the Constitution, roughly in that order. At no point has the Trump administration produced any solid data to show that accepting refugees poses an unmanageable risk or that a knee-jerk blanket ban is an intelligent solution to public safety concerns. This has nothing at all to do with public safety. It’s about indulging an ideology of nativism which runs in tandem with Christian fundamentalism and white supremacy. Since day one, Trump has spoken out not simply against terrorism, but against Muslims as a whole. This initial 7-country ban was simply a way to create some line of defense for what is an obvious violation of the Establishment Clause, due process and any number of human rights. If we as Pagans sit back and allow this sort of religious persecution in the name of expediency and false safety, we are fools, and we will deserve every bit of discrimination meted out against us when our time comes (and it absolutely will).
In all likelihood, Trump’s actions will, if anything, worsen the threat of Islamist terrorism. Sure, ISIS organizers would love to slip in a fighter or two into a refugee stream if they could, but they certainly don’t need that option, and it’s by far not the most attractive. If you were a terror group commander, why send some battle-worn fighter to the U.S., who’s going to be under a microscope during and after his immigration processing? It’s much easier and cost effective to recruit and radicalize young men and women who already live here. With a little effort and luck, you can find a long-settled immigrant with permanent visa status or even a born citizen, maybe even a white kid who will just never pop up on national security radar at all. Thanks to our nation’s gun laws, your new recruit can be equipped for mass slaughter with one stop shopping and no questions asked. By validating the ISIS narrative of a global holy war, Trump is doing more to advance Islamic terrorism than any crackpot imam could ever hope to do.
OK, we’ll put you down for “Protecting minority religions (in the US) is more important than keeping out more Middle Eastern monotheists.” Gotcha.
Actually, you are probably right about the second generation. The first immigrant arrivals are happy to be here. Their kids, however, grow up wondering, “Am I American?” And then they start watching YouTube jihad videos. “Kill infidels! Live gloriously! Die gloriously!”
And then they are off to the combat zone — or to the Boston Marathon. Not sure what to do about that. Who knows what their kids are watching?
I’ll stand by that.
What those discontented kids will grow up watching are the actions of a U.S. president which affirm everything they are being told by the ISIS recruiters on social media. Trump, along with his inner circle including Steve Bannon and CIA pick Mike Pompeo frame terrorism as a literal holy war between Christianity and the West and Islam wherever it is found. As young Muslim men in particular receive the message that they have no standing or future as “Real Americans”, some will take up that call to holy war.They may become Trump’s only real legacy at restoring the “Made in America” brand.
Word!
I’m no fan of Trump, but please let’s not give Obama a pass for his actions. Whether he inherited it or not, Obama has expanded the wars in the Middle East and increased armed drone operations.
He did much, much more.