I've been thinking a lot about the Cricket story and I think we dare not underestimate her intent to rile her enemies and garner more loyalty among her followers from the public disdain. Intimately bound up with her story is the notion of sacrifice in Christian nationalism. Her anecdote demonstrates she is a Christian warrior willing to make the hard sacrifices. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Jesus sacrificed his own life, and Kristi Noem sacrificed a dog possessed by the devil. I'd say she knew exactly how it would play and got her the media attention that the book itself would fail to do.
I think I agree with the Christian Nationalist analysis but would add that, in the short term at least, the anecdote (and therefore the memoir as a whole, which will be defined by the anecdote because nobody but me is misguided enough to read the whole thing) has not been embraced on the right (or by Trump) the way that she hopes.
I think no one has rushed to her defense because embracing it means persecution by the media and liberals and they don't need to address it for Christian nationalists to see their beliefs confirmed. It's not about the dog. It's a metaphor about whiteness. Breeding. Eugenics. She knows best as to who should be put down in a merciful way. Dogs are destroyed if breeding and master-control doesn't work. Her message about foreign policy is that she is capable of being a master.
To me the Cricket story is an oblique illustration/justification of the GOP philosophy that only the fittest and useful deserve to survive. She and her party apply that philosophy every winter during the SD legislative session. She took federal COVID money to replace state general fund spending, thus enabling a small tax cut, rather than fund public education past our 50th place, but refused to take the federal money that would help feed school kids in the summer, or expand Medicaid until forced to do so by initiative vote, or to provide any sort of pre-K education.
Can I take a second to praise the Medicaid Expansion Initiative, though. It’s a small step back towards the progressive populism that once flourished in South Dakota, and while it’s going to take a lot to rebuild it, particularly in a post-Noem world, it’s still a foundation! I was so proud of SD the night that result came through!
My husband is also the product of a South Dakota rural farming community and his family could not be more different. Like yours, his parents instilled ideas of kindness and care for others. I think it is no accident that he and his siblings all ended up with jobs/degrees aligned with helping. (Social work, immigrant assistance, restorative justice.)
As for her 'duh' manifesto....it hurts my heart. I have a transgender daughter. I want her to feel safe in this state. Kristi makes that hard.
Sending so much love to your whole family, especially your daughter. It's really scary when you're getting the kind of rhetoric from the folks whose job should be to keep every resident of a state safe.
I am deeply disturbed by the text from her book. And deeply disturbed that we've become a society where unhinged, untruthful, egotistical, narcissists are considered good candidates for anything.
On top of everything else, I definitely recommend never being the kind of person who wants to be President or Vice President! I think it's a bummer way to live your life!
I almost didn’t read this as I thought it might be a one dimensional poke at the other side, something I have little interest in. Thank you for writing something so much bigger and more beautiful than that.
Our first dog was a rescue from northeast PA. He was terrified of balloons popping and would crawl into bed with my mom during thunderstorms. We came home from July fireworks one year to find him in the bathtub behind the shower curtain, trembling. He also instinctively flushed the birds out of every bush in our suburban subdivision. People who knew about these things told us he’d probably been started as a gundog too young, gotten scared, and ended up dumped. Thank you for summarizing this part of the 24 hour news cycle so I don’t have to spend any of my one wild and precious life on it.
I don't know a lot about the gift shops of the Black Hills, but I'm guessing the rhetorical aesthetic is along the lines of what I think of as "tee shirts you can buy at the state fair."
Something I think about more than I should is that I never thought of those tee shirts as especially political—they were smirky, deliberately obnoxious, pro-gun and a imbued with an especially resentment-driven patriotism, but they didn't feel "aligned" with any larger political movement (at least to me, but I was a teenager, so I may have just missed the subtext). Now they feel like the intellectual roots of contemporary conservatism, which sounds like it's meant to be a dunk, but, as you say, they are both the rhetorical and ideological template for what I guess one should probably call Noem's manifesto.
I kind of want the "Know Your Enemy" podcast to make an episode where they take a break from Hayek and Friedman and do a deep dive on '80s state fair tee shirts ("Noem your Enemy"?)
It's one of my criticisms of that podcast (which I do think is helpful) is that they in some ways buy into self-promoters' (Brinkley, et. al) self-conception of how influential they were in leading conservative revolutions when a lot of cultural shifts (particularly from social change to reactionary nihilism) is just vibes, man. So yes, more time with 80s state fair t-shirts.
Also: absolutely giving you a standing ovation for "Noem Your Enemy."
Thank you for the educated synopsis, there won’t be anything as well written in Noep’s second volume of pick me bullshite.
Noep has no answers to offer for anything critical. Her actions are either reactionary or avoidant - see she non-action “leadership” during Covid.
She had to be prodded into participating in a single debate in her late gubernatorial campaign, in fear of being picked apart.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she still gets a tap as Trump’s vp though, she’s a bobble head who sticks to regurgitating the talking points, and won’t try to think very much.
It makes me really sad that South Dakotans don't have a Governor actively working to make their life better. My politics probably don't align perfectly with Jamie Smith's, but I was so excited by his campaign and the clear offer he made of a different potential path for the state. I still believe that path is possible!
Smith wasn’t perfect, but a very solid candidate and campaign, I grantee he wouldn’t have been banned by Five Tribes in South Dakota (peripherally I’m itching to know if Any other governors have been banned from Tribal lands before).
As to the potential future in SD including a democratic governor?
I don’t any optimism for that. Maga Noep won by 26 points in 2022. 26 Points.
There's so much to discuss here but "gender as both a powerful biological force and a seeming non-factor in a conservative woman’s life" = this is so well said and something that really baffles me about conservative female politics!
It's clear from reading both of her books that Noem thinks a lot about her gender, but often stops her analysis right before there might be a true grappling with the cognitive dissonance there.
I bought and read your book and recommend it. But my feeling is that you are failing to see that much of the Hamas propaganda is just going to be used to continue to spread anti Semitism. The numbers and statements regarding the palistine so called victims are from the lying and dispicable terrorists. So far there no evidence of these statements
Hi Alice. Thank you so much for the kind words about the book. It sounds like we have a different perspective on Gaza (and that both of us have extremely strong emotions there). If you'd like to discuss more, I'm at garrett@barnraisersproject.org.
Hey Alice and Jasmine. I'm glad that you're both here, but I've learned from experience that public comment sections aren't the most helpful places to have strong disagreements. Just like I encouraged Alice to toss me an email (and I appreciate you doing so, Alice; I'm about to reply) if you two want to keep talking I'd encourage you to exchange contact info as well. I don't think we're likely to get to a place in public that feels productive for either of you.
I've been thinking a lot about the Cricket story and I think we dare not underestimate her intent to rile her enemies and garner more loyalty among her followers from the public disdain. Intimately bound up with her story is the notion of sacrifice in Christian nationalism. Her anecdote demonstrates she is a Christian warrior willing to make the hard sacrifices. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Jesus sacrificed his own life, and Kristi Noem sacrificed a dog possessed by the devil. I'd say she knew exactly how it would play and got her the media attention that the book itself would fail to do.
I think I agree with the Christian Nationalist analysis but would add that, in the short term at least, the anecdote (and therefore the memoir as a whole, which will be defined by the anecdote because nobody but me is misguided enough to read the whole thing) has not been embraced on the right (or by Trump) the way that she hopes.
I think no one has rushed to her defense because embracing it means persecution by the media and liberals and they don't need to address it for Christian nationalists to see their beliefs confirmed. It's not about the dog. It's a metaphor about whiteness. Breeding. Eugenics. She knows best as to who should be put down in a merciful way. Dogs are destroyed if breeding and master-control doesn't work. Her message about foreign policy is that she is capable of being a master.
To me the Cricket story is an oblique illustration/justification of the GOP philosophy that only the fittest and useful deserve to survive. She and her party apply that philosophy every winter during the SD legislative session. She took federal COVID money to replace state general fund spending, thus enabling a small tax cut, rather than fund public education past our 50th place, but refused to take the federal money that would help feed school kids in the summer, or expand Medicaid until forced to do so by initiative vote, or to provide any sort of pre-K education.
Can I take a second to praise the Medicaid Expansion Initiative, though. It’s a small step back towards the progressive populism that once flourished in South Dakota, and while it’s going to take a lot to rebuild it, particularly in a post-Noem world, it’s still a foundation! I was so proud of SD the night that result came through!
It’s never too late to realize that love and kindness is a better path for humanity. Yes, thank you Garrett.
Appreciate you, Ted.
My husband is also the product of a South Dakota rural farming community and his family could not be more different. Like yours, his parents instilled ideas of kindness and care for others. I think it is no accident that he and his siblings all ended up with jobs/degrees aligned with helping. (Social work, immigrant assistance, restorative justice.)
As for her 'duh' manifesto....it hurts my heart. I have a transgender daughter. I want her to feel safe in this state. Kristi makes that hard.
Sending so much love to your whole family, especially your daughter. It's really scary when you're getting the kind of rhetoric from the folks whose job should be to keep every resident of a state safe.
I am deeply disturbed by the text from her book. And deeply disturbed that we've become a society where unhinged, untruthful, egotistical, narcissists are considered good candidates for anything.
On top of everything else, I definitely recommend never being the kind of person who wants to be President or Vice President! I think it's a bummer way to live your life!
I almost didn’t read this as I thought it might be a one dimensional poke at the other side, something I have little interest in. Thank you for writing something so much bigger and more beautiful than that.
Hey Rea, Garrett is good, eh?! I’m definitely a fan. And Garrett, we sure need your voice in all this turmoil—thank you 🐥
I'm so glad that came through, Mary.
Our first dog was a rescue from northeast PA. He was terrified of balloons popping and would crawl into bed with my mom during thunderstorms. We came home from July fireworks one year to find him in the bathtub behind the shower curtain, trembling. He also instinctively flushed the birds out of every bush in our suburban subdivision. People who knew about these things told us he’d probably been started as a gundog too young, gotten scared, and ended up dumped. Thank you for summarizing this part of the 24 hour news cycle so I don’t have to spend any of my one wild and precious life on it.
Love your hiding-in-bed, bird-flushing, shower-curtain-camouflauging rescue pup, Maureen!
I don't know a lot about the gift shops of the Black Hills, but I'm guessing the rhetorical aesthetic is along the lines of what I think of as "tee shirts you can buy at the state fair."
Something I think about more than I should is that I never thought of those tee shirts as especially political—they were smirky, deliberately obnoxious, pro-gun and a imbued with an especially resentment-driven patriotism, but they didn't feel "aligned" with any larger political movement (at least to me, but I was a teenager, so I may have just missed the subtext). Now they feel like the intellectual roots of contemporary conservatism, which sounds like it's meant to be a dunk, but, as you say, they are both the rhetorical and ideological template for what I guess one should probably call Noem's manifesto.
I kind of want the "Know Your Enemy" podcast to make an episode where they take a break from Hayek and Friedman and do a deep dive on '80s state fair tee shirts ("Noem your Enemy"?)
It's one of my criticisms of that podcast (which I do think is helpful) is that they in some ways buy into self-promoters' (Brinkley, et. al) self-conception of how influential they were in leading conservative revolutions when a lot of cultural shifts (particularly from social change to reactionary nihilism) is just vibes, man. So yes, more time with 80s state fair t-shirts.
Also: absolutely giving you a standing ovation for "Noem Your Enemy."
Thank you for the educated synopsis, there won’t be anything as well written in Noep’s second volume of pick me bullshite.
Noep has no answers to offer for anything critical. Her actions are either reactionary or avoidant - see she non-action “leadership” during Covid.
She had to be prodded into participating in a single debate in her late gubernatorial campaign, in fear of being picked apart.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she still gets a tap as Trump’s vp though, she’s a bobble head who sticks to regurgitating the talking points, and won’t try to think very much.
It makes me really sad that South Dakotans don't have a Governor actively working to make their life better. My politics probably don't align perfectly with Jamie Smith's, but I was so excited by his campaign and the clear offer he made of a different potential path for the state. I still believe that path is possible!
Smith wasn’t perfect, but a very solid candidate and campaign, I grantee he wouldn’t have been banned by Five Tribes in South Dakota (peripherally I’m itching to know if Any other governors have been banned from Tribal lands before).
As to the potential future in SD including a democratic governor?
I don’t any optimism for that. Maga Noep won by 26 points in 2022. 26 Points.
Cheers!
There's a lot of reasons to be pessimistic, for sure, but all the more reasons to keep the work up.
There's so much to discuss here but "gender as both a powerful biological force and a seeming non-factor in a conservative woman’s life" = this is so well said and something that really baffles me about conservative female politics!
It's clear from reading both of her books that Noem thinks a lot about her gender, but often stops her analysis right before there might be a true grappling with the cognitive dissonance there.
This has been an insightful glimpse at Gov. Noem and her motivation. Thank you.
Thanks so much!
That woman gives off serial killer vibes😬
I bought and read your book and recommend it. But my feeling is that you are failing to see that much of the Hamas propaganda is just going to be used to continue to spread anti Semitism. The numbers and statements regarding the palistine so called victims are from the lying and dispicable terrorists. So far there no evidence of these statements
Hi Alice. Thank you so much for the kind words about the book. It sounds like we have a different perspective on Gaza (and that both of us have extremely strong emotions there). If you'd like to discuss more, I'm at garrett@barnraisersproject.org.
And here you are being antisemitic. There are JEWISH PALESTINIANS. The Zionists are killing JEWS. They're the antisemites.
NO very few Palestinians are Jewish.. Most moved into Israel wen they were being harmed by the Muslim Terrorists in That territory
Hey Alice and Jasmine. I'm glad that you're both here, but I've learned from experience that public comment sections aren't the most helpful places to have strong disagreements. Just like I encouraged Alice to toss me an email (and I appreciate you doing so, Alice; I'm about to reply) if you two want to keep talking I'd encourage you to exchange contact info as well. I don't think we're likely to get to a place in public that feels productive for either of you.
ok
🤡
revenge of the puppy dogs