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Daily Archives: January 9, 2021
The Science of Spiritual Narcissism – Scientific American
Posted: January 9, 2021 at 2:43 pm
Ego is able to convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.Chgyam Trungpa
A purported benefit of mind-body spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation and energy healing is that they will help quiet the ego, providing an effective antidote to the exalted self. Indeed, such practices do have the potential for such an awakening, allowing us to get more in touch with reality as it is right here and now, including the qualities we dont like about ourselves. Spiritual practices also have the potential to help us cultivate compassion, concern and unconditional positive regard toward othersthings that can truly evolve our consciousness as a species.
However, this is all much easier said than done. As has been observed by many spiritual leaders, spiritual practitioners and psychologists over the years, the ego has an incessant need to be seen in a positive light, and will eagerly hijack whatever flow of consciousness it can use for its own enhancement. As the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo noted:
At every moment [the seeker] must proceed with a vigilant eye upon the deceits of the ego and the ambushes of the misleading Powers of Darkness who ever represent themselves as the one source of Light and Truth and take on them a simulacrum of divine forms in order to capture the soul of the seeker.
Likewise, in his classic book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader Chgyam Trungpa wrote:
Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process: it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.
Psychologists have also pointed out the potential for spirituality to serve as a tool of self-enhancement. According to William James, the father of American psychology, any skill that increases its centrality in the self-system is likely to breed a bias toward self-enhancement. As it turns out, no domain of human skill has been found to be exempt from this self-centrality principle. It seems to be an inextricable part of human nature.
This includes the domain of spirituality. Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool us into thinking we are evolving and growing, when in fact all we are growing is our ego. Some psychologists have pointed out that the self-enhancement that occurs through spiritual practices can lead to the I'm enlightened and you're not syndrome and spiritual bypass, by which people seek to use their spiritual beliefs, practices and experiences to avoid genuine contact with their psychological unfinished business. In my recent book Transcend, I call it "pseudo-transcendence" transcendence built on a very shaky foundation.
Just how much of a problem is all this, really? Perhaps on the whole, spiritual practices really do help quiet the ego, and spiritual narcissism isnt that widespread. What do the empirical data actually have to say on one of the greatest paradoxes of our time, which is: If a major point of yoga is quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, why are there so many yoga pose pictures on Instagram?
SELF-CENTRALITY AND SPIRITUALITY
In the past few years, a number of high-quality studies have started to unearth the existence of spiritual narcissism and self-enhancement among spiritual practices that purport to quiet the ego. In one set of high-powered studies, Jochen Gebauer and colleagues looked at both yoga and meditation practices.
In their first experiment,they followed 93 yoga students for up to 15 weeks. They repeatedly assessed self-enhancement levels among peopledirectly after participating in yoga and among people who had not practiced yoga within the past 24 hours. Self-centrality was measured by items such as "Focusing mindfully on the exercises across the whole yoga class is..., measuredon a scale of 1 (not at all central to me) to 5 (central to me).
They measured self-enhancement though a standard measure of self-esteem, as well as by asking people the degree to which they perceived themselves as better than the average yoga student in their yoga class. They also included a measure of communal narcissism, an often underdiscussed form of narcissism in which one thinks that they alone will save the world and that they are the most helpful person of them all (e.g., I will be well known for the good deeds I will have done). Research shows that communal narcissism is correlated with grandiose narcissism and all of the entitlement, arrogance and overconfidence that goes along with it (just applied to a helping domain).
The researchers found higher levels of self-centrality as well as self-enhancement (higher self-esteem, better than average judgments, and communal narcissism) among those who had just completed a yoga class compared to those who hadnt engaged in any yoga class in the past 24 hours.They also found suggestive evidence that the augmented self-enhancement of the yoga practice played a key role in the well-being benefits of yoga through increases in self-esteem. This finding hinted at the idea that the well-being benefits of this spiritual practice may actually come through boosting self-esteem, not through ego quieting.
In their second experiment,they followed 162 meditation practitioners for up to four weeks. They repeatedly assessed meditations self-centrality and self-enhancement directly after meditation and in the absence of prior meditation. This time, they directly measured well-being, including a comprehensive battery of measures of hedonic well-being (happiness and high life satisfaction) as well as eudaemonic well-being (higher levels of autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance). Their self-centrality questions included items such as How central is it for you to be free from envy?; and their self-enhancement scale included items such as In comparison to the average participant of this study, I am free from envy. Again, they included a measure of communal narcissism.
The researchers found that, after meditation, self-centrality in meditation-relevant domains was exacerbated, not diminished, and self-enhancement in meditation-relevant domains was augmented, not curtailed. Additionally, increased levels of self-enhancement explained the effect of meditation on higher well-being (both hedonic and eudaemonic).
It's important to point out that they sampled Western participants, and the yoga and meditation practices the participants engaged inwhich included engagement in hatha yoga and loving-kindness meditationdont necessarily generalize to all yoga and meditation programs and practices. Nevertheless, the researchers did find greater self-enhancement in the yoga and meditation conditions even among very advanced mind-body practitioners. These findings suggest that, contrary to the purported benefits of mind-body practices as quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, they may actually boost self-centrality and self-enhancement. Furthermore, and intriguingly, it seems as though it is precisely those self-related boosts that contributed to the well-being benefits of the spiritual practices.
SPIRITUAL SUPERIORITY AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
In a more recent set of studies, Roos Vonk and Anouk Visser conducted an exploration of spiritual superiority. They interviewed several psychologists, spiritual trainers and lay people, and asked them to describe people who use spirituality as a self-enhancement tool. They then translated these qualities to six items:
I am aware of things that others are not aware of.
I am more in touch with my senses than most others.
I am more aware of what is between heaven and earth than most people.
Because of my education and experience, I am observant and see things that others overlook.
Because of my background and experiences, I am more in touch with my body than other people.
The world would be a better place if others too had the insights that I have now.
In three studies, they assessed the relationship between their scale of spiritual superiority and other variables. In study 1, they focused on people who engaged in some form of spiritual training. Participants were recruited via mindfulness schools and energetic training centers, which aim to train skills that classify as paranormal, such as reading auras and regressing to previous lives. In studies 2 and 3, participants were recruited via a popular psychology magazine with a broad audience interested in psychological and spiritual development. The comparison was with people without any spiritual training.
Overall, the researchers found that the correlation of spiritual superiority with self-esteem was lower among the no-training group than those participating in any of the spiritual training groups. Their measure of spiritual superiority was related to spiritual contingency of self-worth, the degree to which people derive higher self-esteem from their spiritual practices (e.g., I feel better about myself when I notice I develop myself spiritually). According to the researchers, this illustratesthat the self-enhancement function of spirituality is similar to other contingency domains of self-esteem.
Interestingly, their scale of spiritual superiority was more strongly correlated with communal narcissism than self-esteem, providing evidence for the notion of spiritual narcissism. Indeed, its important to distinguish between healthy self-esteem and narcissism. The problem isnt with self-esteem but with the pursuit of self-esteem. Healthy self-esteemcomprising a positive evaluation of ones self-worth and masteryemerges naturally and organically through the engagement of authentic mastery and positive relationships, rather than by pursuing self-esteem as the goal. Increases in healthy self-esteem as a result of spiritual practices may be a good thing, and are not necessarily indicative of spiritual narcissism, which is why its good that the researchers were able to tie their measure of spiritual superiority to a specific form of narcissism: communal narcissism.
The researchers found differences depending on the form of spiritual practice, however. Spiritual superiority scores were consistently higher among those who came from energetic-training centers than the mindfulness trainees. In fact, those who underwent energy training were more likely to claim special knowledge of mindfulness, more so than those who were actually in the mindfulness condition! The energetic healers were also especially likely to score high in supernatural overconfidence, scoring high in items such as When I randomly open a book on a page number that is meaningful to me, this is no coincidence, I can send positive energy to others from a distance and I can influence the world around me with my thoughts.
While their study is correlational, it's likely that there is a bidirectional relationship among these factors. Its likely that spiritual practices can be used as a tool to bolster the narcissistic self, enhancing ones feeling that one is special and entitled to special privileges. But its also likely that some spiritual training programs attract people with strong personal development goals that are related to Western narcissistic culture. As the researchers note, the idea of exploring one's own personal thoughts and feelings and becoming an enlightened being may be particularly attractive to people with high levels of both overt and covert narcissism.
Taken together, the researchers concluded:
Our results illustrate that the self-enhancement motive is powerful and deeply ingrained so that it can hijack methods intended to transcend the ego and instead, adopt them to its own service....The road to spiritual enlightenment may yield the exact same mundane distortions that are all too familiar in social psychology, such as self-enhancement, illusory superiority, closed-mindedness, and hedonism (clinging to positive experiences) under the guise of alleged higher values.
HEALTHY TRANSCENDENCE
Is there any way around the allure of spiritual narcissism? Its all well and good that gurus espouse the importance of quieting the ego (often while driving in their Rolls-Royces), but in practice can we ever really override the universal self-centrality principle and transcend spiritual narcissism?
I think we can, but I believe the first step is simply awareness that its incredibly difficult to do so. One serious obstacle to healthy transcendence, as I see it, is how spiritual practices are sold to the masses. Yoga and mindfulness are big businesses in America. The purported benefits of mindfulness meditation have generated a billion-dollar industry (see here, here and here). Yoga is the most popular mind-body practice in Western societies. Many of these programs offer a long list of promises, including the reduction of stress and anxiety, along with greater confidence, creativity, focus, achievement, success, eating habits, sleep and even happiness.
But heres the thing: Healthy transcendence doesnt stem from an attempt at distracting oneself from displeasure with reality. Healthy transcendence involves confronting reality as it truly is, head on, with equanimity and loving kindness. As I put it in Transcend, healthy transcendence is not about leaving any parts of ourselves or anyone else behind or singularly rising above the rest of humanity. Healthy transcendence is not about being outside of the whole, or feeling superior to the whole, but being a harmonious part of the whole of human existence. Healthy transcendence involves harnessing all that you are in the service of realizing the best version of yourself so you can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.
This involves seeing reality as clearly as possible. As Nancy Colier, author of The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World, notes, the point of mindfulness is to be able to see what is happening inside ourselves, without ownership, judgment or action. And simultaneously, to lose our great belief in and reverence for the productions of our mind.... The dangerous habit is this: The mindful witness itself is becoming yet another form of ego, a new identity, a new somebody that we wear with pride.
Don't get me wrong: I genuinely enjoy looking at all the varied and intricate yoga poses on Instagram. But from my reading of the yoga literature, it doesn't seem as though the theoretical intent of yoga is primarily for physically attractive people to display with pride their ability to twist themselves into a pretzel. Rather, it seems that the most growth-oriented benefits of mind-body spiritual practices occur when we arent using them as a tool for satisfying any of our basic needssuch as our needs for security, belonging and self-esteem. Instead, such practices seem to lead to greater maturity, wisdom, compassion, acceptance and unconditional positive regard toward others when we repeatedly attempt to cultivate the ability to be witness to our mind and behaviors so that we can catch when our crafty ego has hijacked the system in a way that is detrimental to our own self-actualization and self-transcendence.
Which has me thinking: Perhaps it's time for all of these yoga and mindfulness centers to chill on all of the extrinsic purported benefits they are claiming (Better heath! Better sex! Amazing concentration! Great success at work!), and just focus on the benefits of such spiritual practices for allowing us to realize that such concerns of the ego are just the ego doing its thing. That awareness, in and of itself, is enough of a benefit to last an enlightened lifetime.
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8 Major Pop-Culture Moments That Will Shape 2021 – British Vogue
Posted: at 2:43 pm
There were few positives we could muster from the past 12 months in culture. A live music industry left in tatters; anticipated albums pulled or indefinitely delayed; big-screen movie experiences a thing of the past. Many creatives, however, have persevered throughout, lucky enough to be in situations that meant they could ride out the pandemic, waiting to release their art at a time when we could all enjoy it at its fullest. Enter 2021, a new beginning: a year of double-stacked albums, movies, tours, and TV shows.
Its bound to be a busy year all of those pop stars who were set to make their comebacks in 2020 have likely waited until now and so weve filtered through the noise to pinpoint exactly what the world will be shouting about. From music documentaries to heartthrobs marking their return to the silver screen, these are the biggest pop-culture moments to have on your radar.
Read more: 5 Exceptional Netflix Originals To Watch In 2021
Billie Eilish: The Worlds A Little Blurry, premiers globally on 26 February.
By the time Billie Eilishs feature-length documentary, The Worlds a Little Blurry, arrives on Apple TV+ on 26 February, almost two years will have passed since the 19-year-old superstar dropped her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. The film captures the process of making the record right up until her Grammy Awards sweep in early 2020. Its Emmy-winning director, R.J. Cutler (who made 2009s The September Issue), has been given unfiltered access into Eilishs life, both at home and backstage on tour, in what promises to be the most insightful look at the pop juggernaut to date.
When Ella Yelich-OConnor the artist known better as Lorde isnt releasing albums, she lives between New Zealand and Los Angeles, avoiding social media (she hasnt tweeted since 2017) and staying off the celebrity grid. Such long spells of silence only increase anticipation for whatever she may come back with.
After her 2017 sophomore record Melodrama wound up on a number of critics end-of-decade lists, fans have been waiting more than three years to hear from their hugely talented gen-Z leader. And in a rare newsletter sent to fans at the end of 2020, in which she discussed her trip to Antarctica, she confirmed what we had all been waiting to hear: a new record will arrive in 2021. Could it be another generation-defining masterpiece? It seems we wont have much longer to find out.
In a year that forced most pop stars to cower in fear, overthinking every element of their career and, in many cases, holding back on releasing records, there was one woman who decided to do it all: Dua Lipa. Her ascent to the top tier of pop godliness was affirmed in 2020 with a critically acclaimed album, international notoriety, hit singles, collaborations with major luxury brands and a record-breaking live-stream performance that attracted more than five million viewers in one night. There is just one thing left to do: bring that show to arenas around the world. It might be a little late, but expect Lipas Future Nostalgia tour, due to kick off in the UK in September, to be the glitter-doused cherry on a delicious disco era.
Read more: Dua Lipa Covers The February 2021 Issue Of British Vogue
There were enough blockbusters slated for release in 2020 to please everyone. Fans of musical theatre were hotly anticipating Steven Spielbergs take on West Side Story; the sci-fi lovers had their eye on Timothe Chalamet in Dune. Meanwhile, Marvel Cinematic Universe enthusiasts were finally getting their first movie about Avengers heroine Black Widow, starring Oscar nominees Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh. But as cinema was one of the industries hit the hardest, most of those crowd-pullers were postponed at the last minute. Any movie that needed packed theatres to earn back their big budgets are going to arrive throughout 2021 instead. Double the number of movies? Just when you thought youd had your solid fix of screen time, these aforementioned flicks, plus hundreds more, will remind you of the magic of the communal cinema experience.
Timothe Chalamet in Dune.
Chia Bella James. 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
When it first hit our screens in 2009, RuPauls Drag Race was a niche show for queer people, in which drag stars competed against each other to become the USs greatest queen. It was a hotbed of glamour, comedy, and pin-sharp bitchiness; the ultimate form of rivalrous reality TV. Today, not much has changed beyond the shows global, far-reaching appeal. Last year saw the birth of Canadas Drag Race; in late 2019, a UK version of the hit show launched. Now, we have two new seasons hitting screens in January: season 13 of the US version launched via Netflix on New Years Day and a second series from the UK is due on 14 January.
Ready for a hotbed of glamour, comedy, and pin-sharp bitchiness? Us too.
Two summers ago, teenagers and their parents across the world fell hard for Euphoria. The compulsive HBO series, which followed a drug-addicted high-school girl and the cast of tortured characters who lived in the same suburban town, won its lead star Zendaya an Emmy last year. Now, following a couple of standalone dives into the Euphoria universe, solely capturing the characters Rue, played by Zendaya, and Jules, played by model-actor Hunter Schafer, a new season is set to arrive later in 2021. Prepare for more controversial teen hedonism and beauty inspiration, as the shows make-up artist Doniella Davy returns to the make-up chair.
A new season of Euphoria is set to arrive later in 2021.
The K-pop industrys big-budget escapades were a tonic during lockdown. As Korea bounced back from the pandemic, the countrys biggest stars got to work making art the way they were used to: on the grandest scale possible. Case in point, the worlds biggest girl band Blackpink, who managed to squeeze in a debut studio album, multiple music videos and collaborations with Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez into their year. Next up? A live-streamed concert called The Show, so Blinks across the globe can see the group perform the bangers from their new record on stage. Streamed via YouTube Music from Seoul, expect jaw-dropping visuals and unrivalled choreography when it kicks off globally on 31 January.
Blackpinks The Show airs on 31 January.
Courtesy of YG/Netflix
Four years after making his cinematic debut in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, pop favourite Harry Styles is currently shooting his next project, touted to be gunning for Oscar glory. Dont Worry Darling, the latest film directed by filmmaker and actor Olivia Wilde, is a domestic thriller in which an all-American housewife (played by Florence Pugh) envisions her mundane life falling apart during a psychological episode. Harry Styles plays her husband, and photos from the set suggest hes going to be captured in similar outfits to the 70s ones hes been donning during his Fine Line album era. Wildes last movie Booksmart was a big critical success could this sneak in a late 2021 release to secure some nods for next years Oscars? Here's hoping that means four years of non-stop Styles red-carpet looks.
Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard and Fionn Whitehead in Dunkirk, 2017.
Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock
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8 Major Pop-Culture Moments That Will Shape 2021 - British Vogue
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In 2021, football needs to turn words into action when it comes to discrimination – The Guardian
Posted: at 2:43 pm
The turn of a year is traditionally a period of reflection and resolution. This year, lockdown has amplified that feeling as we consider a seismic 12 months and catch glimmers of hope.
Last Christmas, I wrote about the need to make 2020 a year of teamwork across football as we fight racism and discrimination. Nobody could have anticipated what transpired. The Covid pandemic and the death of George Floyd have changed us. Initially, Covid created a resurgence of community spirit most vividly symbolised by the weekly clap for carers ritual. That spirit has frayed over time with frustration and individualism rising. But football has consistently demonstrated real leadership with clubs continued work in the community exemplified by Marcus Rashfords stellar work on child food poverty.
The death of George Floyd has returned racial inequality to the front of public discourse. Again, football showed great leadership, players symbolically taking a knee to call for action. The Football Leadership Diversity Code has now been adopted by 48 clubs setting gender and ethnicity recruitment targets for coaches and senior leaders. Long term, this is potentially a game-changer.
What should we expect in 2021 and beyond? As the Nobel laureate Niels Bohr said: Prediction is very difficult, especially if its about the future.
Football does not exist in a vacuum. It is affected by broader social and economic trends. These send conflicting signals but two major themes are likely to dominate as we enter a post-Covid and a post-Brexit world. The end of the first world war and the Spanish flu pandemic presaged an age of hedonism in the roaring 20s and there are predictions that our current forced contemplation of mortality may trigger a similar era once the shackles are off. Happier people tend to hate less.
It is tempting to believe that now Brexit is done, social divisions will heal. I am sceptical. I tend to think of Brexit as more symptom than cause it reflected divisions that have been percolating for years. The usual backlash against rising demands for racial equality has commenced look at some of the responses to players taking a knee. We await more detail on the governments new equalities policy but initial noises worryingly resemble a dog whistle.
But there is reason to hope that football can rise above the noise. I sense a real mood to turn words into action and football has an opportunity to lead. We need to focus on three key areas in 2021: using data to monitor change, tackling online hate and aligning on education.
By committing to the Football Leadership Diversity Code, the game has made commitments to better reflect society. Over the next few years, we need to help football meet those commitments with talent programmes and hold the game to those promises using data to track progress. We intend to use our partnership with Sky with its global technology capabilities and broadcast platform to play our part in doing this.
Social media is the battleground of hate. It is partly a technological and partly a behavioural problem so we will need technological and behavioural solutions. That needs to involve Twitter, Facebook, the government, law enforcement, football clubs and governing bodies. The government can play its part by accelerating the Online Harms bill, regulating big tech, creating a duty of care on social media providers and creating rules around transparency. But we cannot just wait for that. There are things we must do now.
Clubs and players have enormous followings which can be a force for good (ask Rashford). But with great power comes great responsibility to take care. The vicious trolling of Karen Carney was grimly predictable in the febrile tribal culture of social media that rapidly escalates to misogyny, racism and other forms of hate. It was completely avoidable.
The recent abuse of QPRs Bright Osayi-Samuel and Bournemouths Junior Stanislas led to more calls for the removal of anonymity. But anonymity at which level? Anonymity on the face of social media can serve a vital protective purpose (for example, if you are gay in a country where homosexuality is illegal). The real issue is how quickly account verification information is revealed to law enforcement and action taken once that anonymity is abused. This is the heart of the problem.
There are gaps in the system between football, law enforcement and social media which contribute to the culture of impunity. Current processes are largely reliant on complaints and targeting high-profile prosecutions. But the culture of social media is set by the repeat offenders who spread hate little and often. We need to be proactive. We need to go trawling, not whale hunting. We monitored social media posts in the summer with the PFA and an AI company called Signify. I believe that football needs to invest in monitoring solutions to identify and pursue the serial and serious offenders.
What if we could identify the top 10 offenders every week and create an accelerated evidence pathway to law enforcement? The question is who pays for this kind of monitoring. Last summer, several clubs balked at the cost of a pilot scheme. The cost for an entire season across the leagues is likely to be in the region of 0.5% of the aggregate transfer fees spent during the pandemic. This is a question of priorities. Football needs to invest in real solutions or the players will continue to pay the price.
Finally, it is a truism and a refrain that education is key to countering discrimination. But educating whom, about what and when? Most people know that hate is bad but they may not realise the impact it has. There are many education providers across the football ecosystem. It is time we got aligned and focused on driving measurable outcomes.
The financial success of English football over the last 30 years has been built partly on slick marketing. But players and fans are now cynical of the PR machine. Above all else, in 2021 football needs to build on the statements of intent from 2020 and commit time, energy and resources to convert that intent into action.
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‘He Has Caused Enough Damage’: Republican Murkowski Says Trump Should Step Down : Insurrection At The Capitol: Live Updates – NPR
Posted: at 2:40 pm
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asks a question at a Senate committee hearing in September. She is the first Republican senator to call on President Trump to step down. Alex Edelman/Pool/Getty Images hide caption
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asks a question at a Senate committee hearing in September. She is the first Republican senator to call on President Trump to step down.
Updated at 7:05 p.m. ET
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has become the first Republican senator to call on President Trump to resign in the wake of the deadly insurrection this week at the U.S. Capitol, according to two separate, blistering interviews with publications from her home state, the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media.
Murkowski joins a chorus of Democrats who have said Trump should step down, less than two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.
"I allowed myself to refrain from speaking my truth," Murkowski told Alaska Public Media. "And I can't just be quiet right now."
Murkowski is one of a number of lawmakers who have found themselves at odds with Trump during his term in office, but her rebuke of his role in instigating a violent mob to overtake the Capitol is the strongest yet from a sitting Republican senator.
"People who were there to riot and who were encouraged that very morning by their president," she told the public media station. "Yes, I think he was responsible."
In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, she was even more blunt.
"I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage," Murkowski told the newspaper.
"I think he should leave, " she continued. "He said he's not going to show up. He's not going to appear at the inauguration. He hasn't been focused on what is going on with COVID. He's either been golfing or he's been inside the Oval Office fuming and throwing every single person who has been loyal and faithful to him under the bus, starting with the vice president. He doesn't want to stay there. He only wants to stay there for the title. He only wants to stay there for his ego. He needs to get out. He needs to do the good thing, but I don't think he's capable of doing a good thing."
Murkowski's comments come just two days after violent, pro-Trump insurrectionists overtook the U.S. Capitol with the apparent goal of halting Congress' certification of Biden's White House victory.
Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died as a result of the ensuing bedlam.
Trump had earlier in the day addressed the mob from near the White House and encouraged them to walk to the Capitol during Congress' certification process.
"You'll never take back our country with weakness," he said to the crowd, many of whom carried Trump, Nazi and Confederate flags.
As rioters scaled the Capitol building, smashed windows and infiltrated congressional offices, forcing lawmakers to evacuate to safety, Trump issued a video message to his supporters asking for them to leave the building. In the video, posted to and eventually removed from Twitter, he called the rioters "very special people" and told them he loved them.
On Thursday evening, he condemned the violence but did not acknowledge his role in it.
"I will attribute it to the president, who said, even after his vice president told him that morning, 'I do not have the constitutional authority to do what you have asked me to do. I cannot do it. I have to protect and uphold the Constitution.' Even after the vice president told President Trump that, he still told his supporters to fight," Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News.
"How are they supposed to take that? It's an order from the president. And so that's what they did. They came up and they fought and people were harmed, and injured and died," she said.
Murkowski said she has begun to question her place within the Republican Party, and her allegiance to it will depend on how the party is able to move forward after Trump leaves office.
"If the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me."
As to why she did not think the president would be removed if he did not resign willingly, Murkowski told Alaska Public Media she did not think there was enough time to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows for the vice president to step in in the event that the president is deemed unfit for his duties, nor to carry through with impeachment proceedings.
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Republican members of Congress refuse to wear masks during Capitol insurrection – CNN
Posted: at 2:40 pm
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware Democrat, was shown approaching the group of colleagues and offering blue surgical masks. The video, shot from inside a safe room where the lawmakers gathered during the chaos, was published on Twitter by Punchbowl News.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, Texas Rep. Michael Cloud and California Rep. Doug LaMalfa were captured unmasked and gathered closely together. They all refused the masks.
Mullin can be heard saying, "I'm not trying to get political here."
Rochester told CNN Friday she was "very concerned we were sitting in a super-spreader event but instead of sitting back and lamenting, I tried to go into action to try and persuade people to put them on."
"By the end of passing them out, I only had one left in my hand offering them to everyone," she said. "I was disappointed in those who didn't accept the masks but was encouraged by those who did. At least we were a little bit safer."
Greene's office responded in a statement to CNN, "Congresswoman Greene is a healthy adult who tested negative for COVID at the White House just this week. She does not believe healthy Americans should be forced to muzzle themselves with a mask. America needs to reopen and get back to normal."
The others did not respond to CNN's request for comment.
"I do think you have to anticipate that this is another surge event. You had largely unmasked individuals in a non-distanced fashion, who were all through the Capitol," Redfield told McClatchy.
CNN's Kristin Wilson contributed to this report.
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Republicans Splinter Over Whether to Make a Full Break From Trump – The New York Times
Posted: at 2:39 pm
For a number of Republicans who have long been skeptical of Mr. Trump, the events of the last two months have been clarifying. From his initial refusal to concede defeat and his relentless attacks on Republican state officials, which undermined the partys hopes for winning the Georgia Senate seats, to savaging lawmakers and his own vice president just hours before the Capitol riot, Mr. Trump has proved himself a political arsonist.
Trump is a political David Koresh, said Billy Piper, a former chief of staff to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, referring to the cult leader who died with his followers during an F.B.I. siege in Waco, Texas. He sees the end coming and wants to burn it all down and take as many with him as possible.
The violence in Washington appeared to embolden an array of Republican lawmakers, including some who took office only days ago, to condemn Mr. Trumps political recklessness and urge the party toward a different course. The partys humiliating double losses in Georgia, the day after Mr. Trump appeared at a rally there, also served to punctuate the growing peril for Republicans in the fastest-growing, more culturally diverse parts of the country, which are on track to amass more political power in the coming decade.
The party faces a threat to its financial base, too. Several of the most powerful business federations in Washington denounced the chaos this week in stinging language, including an extraordinary statement from the normally nonpolitical National Association of Manufacturers that suggested Mr. Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
Representative Tom Reed of New York, who has emerged as a leader of more moderate Republicans in the House, said Thursday that the party needed to begin not worrying about base politics as much, and standing up to that base. He argued that Republicans should pursue compromise legislation with Mr. Biden on issues like climate change, and forecast that a sizable number of Republicans would take that path.
If that means standing up to the base in order to achieve something, theyll do it, Mr. Reed predicted.
Mr. Reed warned his party that the Democrats would depict the G.O.P. as a dangerous party in 2022 if they did not rebut that charge.
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Here Are The Republicans Who Objected To The Electoral College Count – NPR
Posted: at 2:39 pm
More than a dozen Republican senators originally said they would object to at least one state's election results. After the violence that ensured Wednesday afternoon, that number was reduced by about half. Caroline Amenabar/NPR; Samuel Corum, Mandel Ngan, Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images hide caption
More than a dozen Republican senators originally said they would object to at least one state's election results. After the violence that ensured Wednesday afternoon, that number was reduced by about half.
Heading into Wednesday's joint session of Congress to tally the Electoral College vote results, lawmakers anticipated a long day peppered with objections hinged on baseless allegations of election fraud. More than a dozen Republican senators had said they would object to at least one state's election results.
They began with a debate over a challenge to Arizona's results. But after pro-Trump extremists brought violence and chaos to the Capitol, both chambers were forced into an emergency recess while the building was locked down.
When lawmakers reconvened hours later, a number of Senate Republicans abandoned their plan to cast objections.
Only six senators, all Republicans, sustained the Arizona objection.
Here's a look at those six senators who maintained their course.
Josh Hawley, Missouri
Hawley was the first senator to break ranks publicly last month and announce his plans to lodge objections during the joint session.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had reportedly urged Republicans not to do so.
After thanking the U.S. Capitol Police for their efforts during the insurrection, Hawley defended his decision to object.
"What we are doing here tonight is actually very important because for those who have concerns about the integrity of our elections, those who have concerns about what happened in November, this is the appropriate means, this is the lawful place where those objections and concerns should be raised," he said.
The purpose of Congress convening is to formally tally the votes of the Electoral College, not litigate election matters. Concerns about state elections were already raised and rejected in courts.
Ted Cruz, Texas
Once a primary rival of Trump's, who even declined to endorse him at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Cruz has since become a staunch defender of Trump's presidency.
"I want to speak to the Republicans who are considering voting against these objections," Cruz said Wednesday afternoon during the debate over Arizona's Electoral College results.
"I urge you to pause and think, what does it say to the nearly half the country that believes this election was rigged if we vote not even to consider the claims of illegality and fraud in this election?"
Public opinion doesn't dictate who should win an election or if there should be additional investigations into fraud, an allegation that state election officials and Trump's own Justice Department have vehemently refuted.
Tommy Tuberville, Alabama
Tuberville fulfilled the pledge he made Tuesday to join Cruz in objecting to the results from Arizona. A retired football coach, Tuberville defeated Jeff Sessions, the former senator and attorney general, in the GOP primary and went on to win against Democratic incumbent Doug Jones in November.
Roger Marshall, Kansas
A former U.S. representative, Marshall defeated former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in the Republican Senate primary earlier this year and went on to win the Senate seat vacated by Pat Roberts. He secured endorsements from prominent Republicans, including McConnell.
John Kennedy, Louisiana
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, Kennedy has been a frequent defender of Trump.
On Thursday, Kennedy condemned the rioters and reiterated that his plans to raise objections during the proceedings were on behalf of his constituents.
"I came to the Capitol yesterday to give them a voice," he said in a statement. "I joined several Senate colleagues in calling for a bipartisan commission to inspect election issues raised across the country. Our proposal was not successful, but our goal to ensure full confidence and transparency in our elections for all Americans is a noble one, and I'll keep pursuing it."
Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mississippi
Hyde-Smith won her runoff election in 2018, becoming the first woman elected to the Senate from Mississippi. She was widely criticized for comments she made that surfaced during the campaign, including one in which she told a supporter, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row." She has been an ardent supporter of Trump while in office.
The Senate rejected the Arizona challenge 93-6. The House rejected it 303-121.
Here are the 121 House members who supported the objection:
Here are the 121 representatives who sustained the objection to Arizona's Electoral College results. Caroline Amenabar/clerk.house.gov hide caption
House members also objected in the cases of Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, but no senator joined in the objection, thereby preventing debate.
The only other state disputed with support from both chambers was Pennsylvania; 138 House members, all Republicans, supported the objection, as did seven senators: Cruz, R-Texas; Hawley, R-Mo.; Hyde Smith, R-Miss.; Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.; Marshall, R-Kan.; Tuberville, R-Ala.; and Rick Scott, R-Fla.
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Republicans in East Lampeter Township switching parties following Capitol Hill chaos – ABC27
Posted: at 2:39 pm
EAST LAMPETER TOWNSHIP, Pa (WHTM) Following the fall out from the storming of the Capitol, three supervisors from East Lampeter Township have announced theyre leaving the Republican party.
This means that Republicans no longer hold a majority on that board, which is one of the largest townships by population in Lancaster County.
In a joint statement from Corey Meyer, John Blowers, and Ethan Demme said events since November have been difficult for everyone.
The statement addressed to Kurt Radanovic, the county GOP chairman said the denial of of 2020 election results by local Republicans is outrageous and those actions fomented the seeds of sedition, resulting in the violence in Washington.
Demme, a former Republican Chairman in the county, said the Republican Party party is no longer the best way to promote conservatism, good government, and the rule of law.
The Republican Party is now the party of Trump and its going to stay that way for a while. Demme said. Any true reform will have to come from outside of the party.
My values didnt change, the way I am going to vote in township meetings isnt going to change, the things I am going to advocate arent going to change, Demme added. I am just going to be doing it from a different platform.
Demme and the other two supervisors says theyre not switching their party affiliation to Democrat, all three will be registered Independents.
In a statement Radanoic said its convenient those who are leaving the party are doing so in a year when they dont face voters, who in the recent election gave Trump a majority of the vote in East Lampeter Township.
We stand ready to ensure that republican majorities continue in East Lampeter Township the statement said.
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Opinion | How the Republican Party Went Feral – The New York Times
Posted: at 2:39 pm
There have always been people like Donald Trump: self-centered, self-aggrandizing, believing that the rules apply only to the little people and that what happens to the little people doesnt matter.
The modern G.O.P., however, isnt like anything weve seen before, at least in American history. If theres anyone who wasnt already persuaded that one of our two major political parties has become an enemy, not just of democracy, but of truth, events since the election should have ended their doubts.
Its not just that a majority of House Republicans and many Republican senators are backing Trumps efforts to overturn his election loss, even though there is no evidence of fraud or widespread irregularities. Look at the way David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are campaigning in the Senate runoffs in Georgia.
They arent running on issues, or even on real aspects of their opponents personal history. Instead theyre claiming, with no basis in fact, that their opponents are Marxists or involved in child abuse. That is, the campaigns to retain Republican control of the Senate are based on lies.
On Sunday Mitt Romney excoriated Ted Cruz and other congressional Republicans attempts to undo the presidential election, asking, Has ambition so eclipsed principle? But what principle does Romney think the G.O.P. has stood for in recent years? Its hard to see anything underlying recent Republican behavior beyond the pursuit of power by any means available.
So how did we get here? What happened to the Republican Party?
It didnt start with Trump. On the contrary, the partys degradation has been obvious, for those willing to see it, for many years.
Way back in 2003 I wrote that Republicans had become a radical force hostile to America as it is, potentially aiming for a one-party state in which elections are only a formality. In 2012 Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein warned that the G.O.P. was unmoved by conventional understanding of facts and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
If youre surprised by the eagerness of many in the party to overturn an election based on specious claims of fraud, you werent paying attention.
But what is driving the Republican descent into darkness?
Is it a populist backlash against elites? Its true that theres resentment over a changing economy that has boosted highly educated metropolitan areas at the expense of rural and small-town America; Trump received 46 percent of the vote, but the counties he won represented only 29 percent of Americas economic output. Theres also a lot of white backlash over the nations growing racial diversity.
The past two months have, however, been an object lesson in the extent to which grass roots anger is actually being orchestrated from the top. If a large part of the Republican base believes, groundlessly, that the election was stolen, its because thats what leading figures in the party have been saying. Now politicians are citing widespread skepticism about the election results as a reason to reject the outcome but they themselves conjured that skepticism out of thin air.
And whats striking if you look into the background of the politicians stoking resentment against elites is how privileged many of them are. Josh Hawley, the first senator to declare that he would object to certification of the election results, rails against elites but is himself a graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School. Cruz, now leading the effort, has degrees from Princeton and Harvard.
The point isnt that theyre hypocrites; it is that these arent people who have been mistreated by the system. So why are they so eager to bring the system down?
I dont think its just cynical calculation, a matter of playing to the base. As I said, the base is in large part taking its cues from the party elite. And the craziness of that elite doesnt seem to be purely an act.
My best guess is that were looking at a party that has gone feral that has been cut off from the rest of society.
People have compared the modern G.O.P. to organized crime or a cult, but to me, Republicans look more like the lost boys in Lord of the Flies. They dont get news from the outside world, because they get their information from partisan sources that simply dont report inconvenient facts. They dont face adult supervision, because in a polarized political environment there are few competitive races.
So theyre increasingly inward-looking, engaged in ever more outlandish efforts to demonstrate their loyalty to the tribe. Their partisanship isnt about issues, although the party remains committed to cutting taxes on the rich and punishing the poor; its about asserting the dominance of the in-group and punishing outsiders.
The big question is how long America as we know it can survive in the face of this malevolent tribalism.
The current attempt to undo the presidential election wont succeed, but it has gone on far longer and attracted much more support than almost anyone predicted. And unless something happens to break the grip of anti-democratic, anti-truth forces on the G.O.P., one day they will succeed in killing the American experiment.
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Here are the Republicans who objected to certifying the election results. – The New York Times
Posted: at 2:39 pm
Even after a mob of Trump supporters swarmed and entered the Capitol on Wednesday, a handful of Republican senators and more than 100 Republican representatives stood by their decisions to vote against certifying the results of the presidential election.
Congress certified the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. early Thursday, ending attempts to overturn the results in two states. Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Roger Marshall of Kansas and John Kennedy of Louisiana voted to overturn the results in Arizona, while 93 senators voted against. Mr. Hawley, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Tuberville, Ms. Hyde-Smith, Mr. Marshall and Senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida voted to overturn the results in Pennsylvania, while 92 voted against it.
The House rejected the Arizona challenge by a vote of 303 to 121 and rejected the Pennsylvania challenge by a vote of 282 to 138.
At least four Republican senators who had pledged to back the effort to throw out the election results reversed course after Wednesdays siege at the Capitol, saying the lawlessness and chaos had caused them to changed their minds.
Those included Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who, after losing a special election on Tuesday, announced her reversal on the Senate floor late Wednesday. The events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider, and I cannot now, in good conscience, object, she said.
Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, changed his position late Wednesday, releasing a joint statement with Senator Steve Daines of Montana that called on the entire Congress to come together and vote to certify the election results.
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington also condemned the actions of the mob of Trump loyalists and said she would no longer vote against the vote certifications.
Thugs assaulted Capitol Police officers, breached and defaced our Capitol building, put peoples lives in danger and disregarded the values we hold dear as Americans, Ms. McMorris Rodgers said in a statement, which she released a day after declaring she would object to the vote counts. To anyone involved, shame on you.
Congressmen including Representative Lance Gooden, Republican of Texas, said the violence did not change his mind.
While Im disgusted with what I saw today, mob riots dont suddenly make this election secure. YES, of course, Im still objecting, he said in a tweet.
Ms. Hyde-Smith of Mississippi said that she voted against the certification of the election because the people she represents do not believe the presidential election was constitutional. I cannot in good conscience support certification, she said in a statement on Wednesday.
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