Tuesday Open Thread | James Baldwin Week

Posted on February 14, 2017 by rikyrah

Today’s James Baldwin’s feature is The Fire Next Time.”

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firenexttime

The Fire Next Time is a 1963 book by James Baldwin. It contains two essays: “My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” and “Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind.” The first essay, written in the form of a letter to Baldwin’s 14-year-old nephew, discusses the central role of race in American history. The second essay deals with the relations between race and religion, focusing in particular on Baldwin’s experiences with the Christian church as a youth, as well as the Islamic ideas of others in Harlem.

The book was first published by The New Yorker and owing to its great success, it was subsequently published in book form by Dial Press in 1963, and in Britain by Penguin Books in 1964; both essays in the book had previously been published in The Progressive and The New Yorker, respectively. Critics greeted the book enthusiastically; it is considered, by some, one of the most influential books about race relations in the 1960s.[1] It was released in an audiobook format in 2008 and narrated by Jesse L. Martin.

The book’s title comes from the couplet “God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water but fire next time” in Mary Don’t You Weep, a Negro spiritual.

James Baldwin Speaks! The Fire This Time: A Message to Black Youth

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34 Responses to Tuesday Open Thread | James Baldwin Week

  1. eliihass says:
    February 14, 2017 at 8:51 pm

    When you have 20 minutes to spare, please listen to this…can’t find a video that’ll play in the U.S but the audio works…this is the guy the buffoon pretend potus picked to transition the EPA…he chose Pruitt as head of EPA …Over the years, Mr. Ebell has argued that global warming is a good outcome, especially for Minnesotans and other northerners who face bitter winters. Awwww, Ametia, they picked Pruitt to get you warmer winters…LOL…but on a more serious note, they’re picking up where Judge Gorsuch’s mama left off ..

    “BBC HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s transition team on environment policy and has long been an advocate of radical reform of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The Trump administration seems intent on a radical reset of America’s energy and environment policies. The implications will be profound on everything from fossil fuel production to climate change policy. In America’s new politics will the interests of big business consistently overshadow environmental concerns?”

    Myron Ebell is the ultimate creep…a very damaged psychopath…a cold-blooded, soulless psychopath with serious, serious issues…he runs a ‘think-tank’ funded entirely by the Koch brothers…his wife is a Sunday school teacher..

    Myron Ebell is Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. He is also the chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a loose coalition formed in 1997 which presents itself as “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis”.

    Through these organizations, Ebell who has no scientific training and is not a scientist, has been central in promoting climate change denial, distributing his views to the media and politicians.

    Ebell has stated his belief that global warming is a hoax, that most of the data predicting climate change is false, and that the scientific consensus was “phony”.

    In 2009 a Climatic Research Unit computer server at the University of East Anglia in the U.K was hacked and thousands of emails and computer files were uploaded to a Russian server. Ebell said the hacked emails “make it clear that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an organized conspiracy dedicated to tricking the world into believing that global warming is a crisis that requires a drastic response.”

    //embeds.audioboom.com/posts/5592413-director-of-competitive-enterprise-institute-myron-ebell/embed/v4?eid=AQAAAGy7o1hdVVUA

    Now, after a career of advancing theories that question the scientific underpinnings of global warming, he is charged with overseeing U.S. EPA’s transition For Donald Trump. It’s not lost on many observers, liberal and conservative alike, that Ebell is not a scientist and has never worked for the agency whose environmental mission he has attacked for years.

    Environmentalists have called his selection a “sick joke.” Even some Republicans wonder how someone who has spent most of his career at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, could be thrust into a prominent role that includes selecting the head of the EPA, interviewing agency staff, identifying potential employees and designing a new direction for EPA under a president who has threatened to shrink its authority.

    He has been known to treat those on the right who accept the scientific underpinnings of rising temperatures as “traitors” and “enemies,” according to sources.

    “He’s very Orwellian,” said one Republican. “If there’s a Republican who wants to be constructive [on climate policy], they’re an enemy.”

    Reply
  2. eliihass says:
    February 14, 2017 at 8:17 pm

    These con men from the greed churches of TWO Corinthians have to have been ‘praying’ to their alternative god..

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4j3POTUYAAC6Ax.jpg

    Reply
  3. SouthernGirl2 says:
    February 14, 2017 at 6:58 pm

    23 GOP reps who voted along party lines to not request Trump’s tax returns

    https://twitter.com/Impeach_D_Trump/status/831651238043193344

    Reply
  4. SouthernGirl2 says:
    February 14, 2017 at 6:28 pm

    Kelly Ann Conway going down next. Karma is red hot on her heels.

    https://twitter.com/MichaelSkolnik/status/831659793702146049

    Reply
    • eliihass says:
      February 14, 2017 at 7:45 pm

      Pretty obvious she’s not slept in weeks…when KARMA finally visits..

      It’s a dog eat dog world and survival of the fittest right now for all the White House impostors…cannibal edition ..

      The jousting and jostling fir control and to hold sway over the buffoon pretend potus …and the clashing of the big white nationalist egos is only the beginning …the purged will exact revenge…and in the end, they will take everyone down with them…

      There’s no honor among thieves…even when all their dastardly plans to decimate hard-won basic rights and civil protections seem to be going swimmingly …

      But look, Ivanka the ingenue has ‘big’, ‘important’ plans for ‘women empowerment’- starting with planting herself next to and ogling the young, liberal Canadian president for a pretend round-table … Mika Brzezinski said so, and Mika is so mad everyone’s too focused on Flynn, Bannon, Stephen Miller and the buffoon pretend potus, instead of paying attention to Ivanka and her ‘women plans’…Mika wants us to stop being distracted by the pretend potus and his and the shenanigans of his white supremacist crew, and be distracted instead by Ivanka the diversion..

      And hey, did you hear, Melania the merciful has decided not to bulldoze after all, the perfectly wonderful White House vegetable garden installed by our historic First Lady that also supplies D.C food kitchens with over 500 pounds of fresh produce each year …

      Awwwww…such sweet, sweet, harmless teddy bears…Someone please give them each a lollipop…

      Reply
  7. SouthernGirl2 says:
    February 14, 2017 at 3:32 pm

    I tweeted to President Obama and Michelle to COME BACK…. I was Joey!

    https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/831551902555000836

    Reply
  8. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 3:03 pm

    Stephen Miller’s History of Bigotry
    by Martin Longman
    February 13, 2017 3:07 PM

    On the one hand, who cares what Joe Scarborough has to say? On the other hand, he was so alarmed and appalled by Trump aide Stephen Miller’s performance on the Sunday morning talk shows that he’s talking about impeachment.

    Scarborough said the White House is “embarrassing themselves by putting this guy up,” describing Miller’s “performance” as “horrendous” and “an embarrassment.” “That is the talk of a dictator, not somebody who is president of the United States,” Scarborough said. If Trump’s administration were to actually act based on Miller’s suggestions, “we could have impeachment proceedings within the next six months,” Scarborough warned.

    Meanwhile, Univision has tracked down some of Miller’s childhood friends, and the stories are a little unsettling. For example:

    Stephen Miller and Jason Islas grew up in sunny southern California in the late 1990s, united by their passion for Star Trek. But Miller stopped talking to his friend as they prepared to jump from Lincoln Middle School to Santa Monica High School.

    Miller only returned Islas’ phone calls at the end of the summer, to coldly explain the reason for his estrangement. “I can’t be your friend any more because you are Latino,” Islas remembers him saying.

    That’s cold. And it only got worse.

    Reply
    • eliihass says:
      February 14, 2017 at 7:53 pm

      As horrid, despicable and unpalatable as the impostors in the White House are, Joe Scarborough is that slimy, 5-prong tongued, dishonest, deceitful, cowardly sociopath you absolutely don’t want on your side…

      Reply
  9. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 2:36 pm

    Obama’s ISIS Strategy Could Thwart Bannon’s ‘War on Islam’
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    February 14, 2017 2:48 PM

    Many of us have been concerned about how a Trump administration would respond to a terrorist attack in this country. Along with others in the administration, Steve Bannon seems particularly anxious to ignite a global war on Islam. An attack would provide just the fodder he is looking for.

    While something like that might still happen, this report indicates that it is much less likely that such an attack would be organized by ISIS.

    [ISIS], now confronting its own eventual fall, is devising a modified survival strategy that may involve surrendering control of its “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria but seeks to preserve a virtual version of it online…

    The plan reveals a level of desperation for a terrorist organization that has seen its territory shrink rapidly over the past year. But it also serves as the latest example of the group’s innovative approach to using the Internet and social media — first to draw recruits to the fight in Iraq and Syria and now to preserve the loyalties of its dispersed followers…

    Beyond losing territory under military pressure from the United States, Turkey, Russia, Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State has seen the flow of foreign fighters into its ranks plummet — from as many as 2,000 a month two years ago to as few as 50, according to recent assessments.

    The group began altering its propaganda themes last year to prepare followers for the collapse of the caliphate, depicting its mounting battlefield losses as ­noble and inevitable struggles, in contrast to the triumphant messages that had previously dominated its output.

    Reply
  10. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 2:31 pm

    After Three Weeks, Trump Baffled, Staff Exhausted
    by Martin Longman
    February 10, 2017 4:38 PM

    Politico has a new piece up on low morale in the White House. It’s based on interviews with “nearly two dozen people who’ve spent time with Trump in the three weeks since his inauguration.” It’s kind of amazing to realize that it’s only been three weeks because, to me, it seems more like a millennium. And I guess the administration’s staff feels about the same way.

    Really hard to overstate level of misery radiating from several members of White House staff over last few days.

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 10, 2017

    It’s only been three weeks, but that’s been long enough for Trump to create “a climate where people are ‘very careful who they talk to.’” It’s been long enough to create a “powder-keg of a workplace where job duties are unclear, morale among some is low, factionalism is rampant and exhaustion is running high.”

    Hell, considering that “two visitors to the White House last week said they were struck by how tired the staff looks,” things were already so bad after only two weeks that people were wearing down.

    Stamina. How does it work?

    Reply
  11. Ametia says:
    February 14, 2017 at 1:33 pm

    Why they keep having this ditzy, lying bimbo on to LIE?

    Reply
  14. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    Quick Takes: The Mad King
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    February 13, 2017 5:28 PM
    POLITICAL ANIMAL BLOG

    * Andrew Sullivan is not someone who is known for understatement. But in this case, I think he’s correct.

    Then there is the obvious question of the president’s mental and psychological health. I know we’re not supposed to bring this up — but it is staring us brutally in the face. I keep asking myself this simple question: If you came across someone in your everyday life who repeatedly said fantastically and demonstrably untrue things, what would you think of him?…Here’s what I’d think: This man is off his rocker. He’s deranged; he’s bizarrely living in an alternative universe; he’s delusional…

    I think this is a fundamental reason why so many of us have been so unsettled, anxious, and near panic these past few months. It is not so much this president’s agenda. That always changes from administration to administration. It is that when the linchpin of an entire country is literally delusional, clinically deceptive, and responds to any attempt to correct the record with rage and vengeance, everyone is always on edge.

    * I’m going to suggest that you watch this entire clip from Morning Joe today for two reasons: (1) If you didn’t watch the atrocious interviews with Stephen Miller on the Sunday morning shows yesterday, it will give you a good run-down of just how awful he is, and (2) imagine Donald Trump (who LOVED Miller’s performance) watching the commentary after the clips. It has been pretty well established that he’s addicted to watching this show.

    Reply
  16. Liza says:
    February 14, 2017 at 12:29 pm

    Donald Trump has a white supremacist brain trust. My new @salon piecehttps://t.co/oEh2hyoE48— chauncey devega (@chaunceydevega) February 14, 2017

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Reply
  17. Liza says:
    February 14, 2017 at 12:17 pm

    Thank you so much for James Baldwin week.

    Reply
  19. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 10:57 am

    Found this at BJ. Liked this suggestion:

    AMinNC says:
    February 14, 2017 at 8:36 am
    I called both my GOP senators yesterday and asked for an independent commission to investigate ties between Trump Campaign/Administration and Russia. In their local offices I spoke with actual people, and they indicated they had been getting calls on this. I also paused for a moment and said to the staffers, “I know you are a Republican, but doesn’t this bother you? Don’t you think getting to the bottom of these multiple connections to a hostile foreign government is more important than backing up your Party? Shouldn’t Senator X be acting in our national interest? This is not normal.” In both cases there was a long pause, a heavy sigh, and a slow, flat response, yes Ma’am, I’ll make sure that the Senator hears your concerns.

    If even staffers and true loyalists are being beaten down by the Russia connections, I think this should be vocally front and center every day for every Dem elected official, and Dem. Party spokesperson, and every regular citizen on their Facebook pages and in conversations with Republican friends and Relatives from now until upcoming special congressional elections, and through the midterms. We must tie the silence and misjudgment of the entire GOP Congress to this corrupt administration.

    Reply
  21. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 9:22 am

    Repealing the Medicaid expansion will lose them 7-10 senators. Obamacare repeal is essentially dead. https://t.co/BQni9PjHuA

    — Jordan Acker (@JordanAckerMI) February 14, 2017

    Reply
  22. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 9:06 am

    Mark the calendar: Tues. Feb. 14 is a national call-in day to flood phone lines on ACA repeal. 866-426-2631 (English) 877-736-7831 (Spanish)

    — Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) February 10, 2017

    Reply
  23. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 9:05 am

    The Fire Next Time changed my entire worldview.

    Reply
  24. rikyrah says:
    February 14, 2017 at 9:05 am

    Good Morning, Everyone :)

    Reply
  25. Ametia says:
    February 14, 2017 at 7:36 am

    Good Morning, Everyone.

    Reply

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