Oh, was he given the boot?
Seems we don’t even get to play with the low quality chew toys for long now … 
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And…because they have nothing better to legislate in the House of Representatives:
Under ordinary circumstances, that would never happen. First Trump has to appeal it to the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, and then to the New York Court of Appeals. Only then, I believe, would he be able to appeal his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, and for anyone else the Supreme Court would almost certainly deny cert (they only tend to take cases that have novel legal issues, and his case, other than him being an ex-pres, certainly doesn’t).
BTW, all of the justices on the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in NY) were appointed by Democrat governors.
I think it is illegal for women to drive in some Islamic countries.
I have a few ideas about this.
It seems that–lately–there has been a trickling exodus from Christianity here in the United States.
Church attendence has been declining steadily, which I partially attribute to the rise of the Internet.
This sudden rise of Christian Nationalism seems–at least to me–to be a response to the existential fear that Christians have of losing relevance in this digital age.
People who would have otherwise been moderate have been stirred up by fear, and we are hearing their voices when they vote and when they pass misogynistic laws.
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New info…
I don’t think it’s fear of irrelevance. I think it is just fear.
And what are they afraid of? Anything they don’t understand. They don’t understand being gay. They don’t understand trans. They don’t understand people who are different than they are. People who look different, who speak a different language, people from a different culture.
They’re also afraid that if they give someone more rights, that their rights are going to be taken away.
And they don’t like paying taxes, for things they don’t need. Disasters? Pandemics? Those happen to someone else.
But I agree the rise of the rightwing is the result of their gradually losing relevance.
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Yes, information availabiity, i.e. information that you can find yourself, in private, by only giving a few keywords to a search enging, is quite probably one of the reasons.
I would formulate it somewhat stronger. The christians are traditionally used to having a near monopoly on worldviews and opinions, and they hate the idea of people not thinking the same as them. This also goes historically, ref. how christian missionaries historically have forced people to convert to their particular brand of superstition, and even outlawing dissent. A diversification of opinions and philosophies challenges their innermost held beliefs, i.e. that christianity is 110% true, and that no amount of facts can change that.
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That’s an accurate analysis IMO. Fundamentalist Christianity is a conformity fetish basically. All who diverge from their norms are existential threats ultimately because if you don’t try to control even outsider’s behavior, you may be punished by god for “condoning sin”. Also since their god is a controlling asshole, they tend to imitate him anyway.
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A hatred of the “other” that washed European history in blood for 1,500 years or so. Arising directly from the fact that the real central message of the Bronze Age mythology in question is “kill all who do not conform”. A message reinforced by several passages, namely:
Exodus 22:20;
Exodus 23:24;
Deuteronomy 7:5;
Deuteronomy 13: 6-10;
Deuteronomy 13: 12-15;
Deuteronomy 17:2-5;
2 Chronicles 15:13;
Jeremiah 12: 1-3;
And Luke 19:27.
This venomous repression even resulted in internecine warfare between different groups of mythology fanboys. The irony of which is not lost upon me, and almost certainly acknowledged by the veterans here as well.
As an example of the sort of weirdness that results from this mindset, we have the Conventicle Acts of 1664 and 1670 here in England, which were laws passed to enforce conformity to the doctrines of the Church of England, a by-product of the earlier Clarendon Code. One of the punishments meted out to those who fell foul of this was “transportation for seven years” - namely, you were put on a ship and sent to some far off land with pretty much no chance of returning home. Quakers were hit particularly hard by this at the time, though the principal targets of these laws were, of course, Catholics. We had to wait until 1829, and the Roman Catholic Relief Act, for repression of Catholics to cease enjoying official backing.
One of the weirder side effects of the Conventicle Acts, was to establish that Jews were subjects of the Crown, and were to be treated no differently than other subjects, courtesy of Charles II. Probably not what the more ruthless enforcers of conformity to doctrine intended, but they had no choice but to accept this, courtesy of the declaration that current reigning monarch was also the head of the Established Church (of England). I’ll bet that boiled the piss of a lot of hardliners. 
though if memory serves, the Act of Settlement 1701 is still in force, requiring a new monarch to swear a coronation oath to maintain the Protestant religion. Though the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, forbidding a monarch to marry a Catholic, was repealed, but not until 2013 (!!!), by the Succession to the Crown Act.
English constitutional law is, where it exists, fucking hilarious.
Indeed, the maxim I exposed as being the modus operandi of creationism, has wider application. Namely,“If reality and my favourite Bronze Age mythology differ, reality is wrong and my favourite Bronze Age mythology is right”. Fundamentalists take this to Spinal Tap 11, but the tendency permeates some of the so-called “moderate” sects as well, though to a markedly less pernicious extent.
Or, as one commentator opined, not totally in jest, the BDSM version of Christianity.
This is possibly the most venomous aspect of hardline fundamentalist religion of any sort, but of course in the case of the fulminating pestilence that is current American Christian Nationalism, it’s basically a marriage of the cross and the Swastika. With all the horrors that this entails.
They also imitate the other psychotic aspects of the mythologically asserted behaviour thereof. Indeed, a disturbing number of fundamentalists absolutely revel in the prospect of becoming modern day and anachronistic versions of Tomas de Torquemada, with a heavy side salad of Cameron Hooker and dark fantasies about re-enacting Numbers 31:18. What makes the American manifestation of religious fundamentalism truly creepy, is the manner in which dark, sado-misogynistic sexual fantasies have become integrated therein. The ever growing list I have of child rapists and sex murderers arising from this background, should be enough to elicit shudders in any decent person, and on its own serve as a warning of the toxic and downright radioactive ideological terrain in question.
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