The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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I Don't Care About The Oscars

By Danny Cardwell on Fri, 01/22/2016 - 10:57pm | Arts & Entertainment

In the last few days I've had friends and colleagues ask me about Oscar snubs, and the boycott some actors and activists are calling for. It's not that I don't care about black actors being slighted for their hard work, it just seems like our time could be better served worrying about the plight of African Americans outside of Hollywood. I could be wrong, but this fight seems like a small battle in the war for equality. I'm more concerned that too many graduates in the class of 2016 will be forced to work jobs instead of find careers.

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Arts & Entertainment
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Dr. King, Donald Trump, And The South

By Danny Cardwell on Tue, 01/19/2016 - 8:09am | Personal
The last few days have been very interesting in the Commonwealth of Virginia. On Saturday January 16th people attending Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. events in Lexington, VA were greeted by Confederate flag wavers. Since the removal of the flag from South Carolina's state house the Stars and Bars has been ubiquitous in this part of the world.
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Personal
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Safe Spaces, Trigger Warnings, And Mental Blocks

By Danny Cardwell on Thu, 01/14/2016 - 11:48pm | Politics

Disclaimer: If you're easily offended, or try to avoid controversial subject matter please stop reading. This isn't a provocation or click bait; I'm not concerned with hits, likes, comments, or shares. I genuinely care about people, but I won't consider anyone's feelings as I make my way through what I see as the potential weakening of the progressive movement.

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Politics
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Raising The Minimum Wage Treats The Symptom Not Our Illness

By Danny Cardwell on Sun, 01/10/2016 - 10:29pm | Social Justice

In theory, raising the minimum wage would pull millions out of the hell called poverty. There are, however, unintended consequences that come with doing this: a portion of the very people such legislation is designed to help would be hurt; some jobs would be eliminated through automation, and the productivity requirements for those fortunate enough to have a job could exceed their physical capabilities. We could, inadvertently, speed up the economic Darwinism many workers are currently facing. There's enough Prima facie evidence for us to admit that low wages are now a structural part of global capitalism. In order to properly address the growing wealth gap we have to be wiling to admit that there are industries that depend on a supply of unskilled low wage laborers.

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Social Justice
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I support The Oregon Militia. . .

By Danny Cardwell on Mon, 01/04/2016 - 11:27pm | Politics, Social Justice

I support the Oregon Militia and the dozens of interlopers who've joined their ranks. I think mandatory minimums are unjust. I've helped inmates in the Commonwealth of Virginia fight Draconian sentences handed down by judges with reputations for, "laying brothers down". I support the idea of civil disobedience.

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Politics
Social Justice
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What Does It Mean To Be A Progressive?

By Danny Cardwell on Sun, 01/03/2016 - 9:44pm | Politics

"My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They've voted in record numbers. They have invested faith, hope and trust that they have in us. The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care."  To Be Revealed Later

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Politics
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What The Left Refuses To Accept About Trump

By Danny Cardwell on Thu, 12/31/2015 - 11:40am |

"Let me go over that again: Reagan’s popularity was popular. When you went through the various traits of Reagan and what Reagan stood for and his policies and so on vast numbers of people disliked nearly all of them. What was popular was his popularity and I don’t think that Reagan’s alone in this."           

--Rick Roderick 

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Crying Out To An Apathetic Nation

By Danny Cardwell on Sun, 12/13/2015 - 10:07pm |

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
--Steven Weinberg

This kind of radical imagery is necessary if we (religious and secular people of good faith and intentions) are ever going to shatter a cultural symbolic order that seeks to lessen the suffering of others. We ingest this symbolic order through benign daily conversations, and the ideas and images disseminated through television and other forms of media. We are being consciously and sometimes subconsciously conditioned to see some people as less than us. 

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Immoral Morality, Hyper Hypocrisy, and America's Denial of Domestic Terrorism

By Danny Cardwell on Mon, 11/30/2015 - 7:33pm |

Australian philosopher and Princeton professor Peter Singer developed a thought experiment in which he asked people if they would jump into a swimming pool to save a drowning child if it meant ruining a thousand dollar suit. Every person asked, without hesitation, answered yes they would jump in to save a drowning child. Then he asked the participants to send the thousand dollars they saved by not jumping in a pool to a charity that helps children dying overseas. This was a much tougher proposition. It’s hard to make sacrifices for people half a world away, harder when they pray to a “different God”, and even harder when they don’t look like you.

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Hate Radio As A Second Language: University Of Missouri

By Danny Cardwell on Mon, 11/09/2015 - 10:44pm |

Growing up in a small southern town has blessed me with the gift of translating Conservative hate radio. I live in a town where a lot of people never learned that it's not acceptable to call a black man boy, and the Confederate flag is not a racist relic. For decades people of color comprised less than 10% of the total population in my town; very few of them, no matter how educated or qualified, worked (or work) in any field other than hospitality or service. When combined, these factors create the perfect atmosphere for people to talk unfiltered.

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Https://thoughtwrestler.blogspot.com.
Biography
Danny Cardwell believes he was born to love, read, think, write, and die. He's a Deacon at Piney Grove Baptist Church in Hot Springs, Virginia. He has tutored, lectured, and mentored at risk youth in churches, group homes, and inside the Virginia Department of Corrections. He's a contributor at Faithfully Magazine, the station coordinator at WCHG Allegheny Mountain Radio, and serves on the board of directors for Preservation Bath.

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