24 XII 2019: Hate mongering politicians, murderous voters

News today about a woman in Iowa named Nicole Marie Poole Franklin who, enabled by Trump’s dog-whistle war against people of color, revved up her Jeep Cherokee and ran over a twelve-year-old African-American boy and a fourteen-year-old Hispanic girl. Police Chief Michael Venema declared at a press conference: “I want to say, in the strongest terms possible, that there is no place in our community — or any other — for this type of hatred and violence.” Very true, but that means there is no place for Trump, Stephen Miller, the White Supremacists, the rebel militias, and all the rest who feel that their hates and prejudices have been made legitimate by the Age of Trump.

23 XII 2019: 1) Pharisees howl 2) Trump staying out of the light

1) Everywhere I’ve seen articles headed “200 evangelical leaders slam Christianity Today“* The 200 denounce the author of the spirited editorial in Christianity Today because they claim he “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.” Let’s look at this. offensively questioned: If they were not offended the editorial failed. Pharisees find any criticism deeply offensive and sometimes react violently. questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions: No. He was not questioning the integrity of the tens-of-millions, but of their leaders. Like speaks to like, and evangelical hustlers swarm around Trump because their avarice, debauchery, lust for power, demagoguery, and insincerity are perfectly matched by his. I read that he is going to install in the White House his thrice-married spiritual director and Chair of the Evangelical Advisory Board, Pastor Paula White, as a kind of Secretary of Religion. Pastors of mega-churches, televangelists, and evangelical movers and shakers must be hoping that evangelicalism is on its way to again being made the state religion and that Trump will force America to be “christian country.”

*Google search could not squeeze all this into their titling over a Fox report, so it reads “Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity ….”      

2) Trump’s craving for secrecy is a paradox. He has led a resolutely public life of which most would be ashamed. So why the utter refusal to cooperate with Congress? Maybe he believes in the divine right of kings to be never answerable to the people they govern. Maybe he is so absolute in his refusal to cooperate because if you give them something innocuous, then they will be demanding something that could be damaging. Or maybe he thinks that the monarch-president is more broadly protected by the Vth amendment and so all his court can decline to testify because it might tend to incriminate Trump. Or maybe it is as simple as John 3:20: “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” 

17 XII 2019: Pre-perjured puppets

I was happy to find an article that answered my question: “Don’t the Republican senators have to at least pretend to be ready to make an impartial judgement in the impeachment case?” And I’ve learned from Prof. Jeffrey K. Tulis that they do. Like members of a jury they must take an oath and declare “I solemnly swear [or affirm] that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of [the person being impeached], now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws. So help me God.” Now I don’t see how Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, just to cite two, can possibly take this oath in good conscience and in compliance with the law. Mr. Graham, an intimate of the President, has already boasted “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror,” and Mr. McConnell has pledged to work closely with the accused, that is with Trump’s, legal team. So we will have a trial with at least one potential juror announcing his verdict in advance and another collaborating with the lawyers of the person on trial. In an ordinary trial the prejudiced can be rejected from the jury at the voir dire. So we must rely on prejudiced senators to reject themselves. I propose that any senator who cannot truthfully take the oath should recuse him/herself from the impeachment trial. If they do not, I propose that there be an investigation into their words and actions during the trial, and if they have broken their oaths they should be charged with perjury.

14 XII 2019: Against the will of the people

A standard Republican complaint about the impeachment effort is that the Democrats are trying to undo the 2016 election and going against the will of the American people. But I seem to recall that one third of the American people did not vote, and that Trump received a minority of the votes of those who did. There was not much real interest in removing Trump from office when he was elected, but we have gotten to know him in the last three years, and despise him. But impeach him? A hard road to travel. People seem unsure that innate dishonesty, narcissism, buffoonery, sexism, racism, and contempt for the Constitution are legal grounds for impeachment. And of course all the Republicans and the Trump BaSe are remaining “loyal” to their impeccable leader. However, I wish I could ask all the Republicans in Congress and all the Trumpites around the country if they would leave one of their daughters alone with Trump or would give him their savings to invest.

14 XII 2019: Phone calls covered. What about the tweets?

I read that “senior aides” to President Trump have more severely restricted access to his phone calls to foreign leaders. Recent events surely provoked this. I don’t think these restrictions are intended to strengthen national security, but are an attempt to draw a veil of secrecy around Trump’s ineptitude and mental illness. 

If this is their goal, they will also have to do something to control the flow and content of his tweets, for in his tweets the President displays his real personality.

11 XII 2019: Trump tries to liven up the plot. Flunky, Clown, and Angry Cracker in the House GOP drama

Trump tried to add a new dimension to the Page-Strzok saga, retailing to a slavering crowd a make-believe rumor. Trump fantasizes about Page + Strzok as if they were a romantic couple on a TV reality show. The writers know that the show will lose interest if the course of true love runs smoothly, so they think up a big complication they can insert into the lives of the TV lovers to make the plot more suspenseful and interesting. Our President lives in a reality-TV world and his thinking is shaped by this. 

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have been making a lot of speechettes that are sound bites for the folks at home and get-well cards for Trump. They are afraid of the Playground Bully, afraid he’ll go crazy if he’s not handled right, afraid he will come after them if their devotion seems anything short of abject. The behavior of some Republicans in the House makes this obvious. We’ve seen Devin Nunes as the flunky who is more than willing to be a fool for Trump. Matt Graetz is still starring as the class clown. Doug Collins can go from folksy to self-righteous on cue, so he is playing the angry cracker role. Will they receive awards commensurate with their self-abnegation? Tune in later as the unreality show stumbles onward.

3 XII 2019: Trump, fake it ’til you make it

I just viewed the footage of the President of the United States faking an orgasm at one of his nazi-revival rallies. Even Hitler who enjoyed his ecstatic moments in his speeches never tried this. I don’t know how Trump’s evangelical fans feel about it, but I was shocked and disgusted.

On reflection, however, I realized there is nothing surprising here. Trump runs his rallies as a combination liars’ and comedy club in which his lies are usually as crude as his humor. But though Trump’s fan-base found him funny, his faked orgasm, obviously based on a lot of practice, is actually a part of his liars’ club repertoire. Since Trump lies about everything else, it comes as no surprise that he fakes orgasms.

2 XII 2019: Conjectures about American dictatorship.

Farrad Zakaria provided a very good but alarming report on CNN. He fears that American democracy is in grave danger, that we are on the verge of turning into an elective dictatorship.

Here are my thoughts on what is and what is likely to be:

Donald Trump is a Russian agent, not because he loves Russia, but because he believes the Russians will help him turn the United States into a dictatorship. Trump does not value democracy. He, and people like him, the “winners,” know what they want and will do anything to get it, and care about the rest of the country only to the extent that they do not want the “losers” to get in their way. They reject democracy and even plutocracy as unacceptably inefficient forms of government, and prize dictatorship or monarchy as the only way to really get things done. 

It is of crucial importance to them to sweep away obstacles created by a system of checks and balances, by an honest judiciary or a popularly elected legislature. Both of these branches will be neutralized by filling them with people who think they stand to gain from the dictator’s rule. We see this happening even now with the Republicans in Congress in ambitious submission to Trump in hope, I think, that the U.S. will become a one-party state to the judiciary. In turn, the Senate is wholly complicit in Trump’s packing the bench with toadies.

The undereducated and mindless are incapable of voting responsibly. The Republicans will continue imbue them with a burning resentment for “the elite” and encourage their mistrust of whatever seems unfamiliar. Their fear of change will be stimulated and given focus by being directed at immigrants, “white genocide,” globalization, gay rights, feminism, Europeans, and non-Christians, and these fears will be assuaged by nativism, white supremacy, fierce provincialism, revived hyper-machismo, obdurate anti-intellectualism, and Christian triumphalism. They will be made to think they are happy by over-abundant entertainment, lurid scandals, sporting events, and their acquisition of cheap imported goods. They will be encouraged to prize their culpable simplicity and ignorance, to boast of their lack of education, and to believe that the nation is as simple as their families and only requires the rule of one strong man to set things straight. 

The elites are also to blame. Though higher education in America has deteriorated like education at every level, the elites still over-value their college educations and don’t conceal their disdain for those not similarly educated, thus stoking popular resentment. They strive for a sophistication that ideally cannot be too widely shared, but appreciated by the cognoscenti alone. They too are determined to be winners, but in a less coarsely ambitious, more stylishly refined way. They abhor Trump and his horde, but do not exert themselves to squelch mindless populism because they are naively confident that the plutocratic government of the U.S. will keep the Trumpies from changing their lives fundamentally.

Most Americans, have, as St. Paul might say, “grown weary in well-doing.” Why should America be the world’s policeman? Do we have to be the do-gooders all the time? Let somebody else do it. Let’s put America first, and if anything should be left over, share it with client countries only. We will make tyranny tremble no more, because we will embrace it. And if totalitarian regimes force other peoples to live in poverty and oppression, it is not our problem. God gave America to us as the land promised to his saints alone. Let others see to themselves.

30 XI 2019: Upon what will we be judged?

CNN reported about the Catholic diocese of Grand Rapids MI denying communion to Judge Sara Smolenski. Why? Well, the 62-year-old Judge had married her female partner of over 30 years back in 2016. But only recently, all of a sudden, the local priest phoned to tell her not to come to communion because her marriage is against Catholic teaching. He was backed up by the local Bishop who wrote: “No community of faith can sustain the public contradiction of its beliefs by its own members.” Saints preserve us!! Do we really think that Judge Smolenski’s being given communion will bring down the whole church? But that I suppose is the view of reactionary American Catholics, clergy and lay, who are urging a spectacularly naive but quite militant “back to the fifties” movement. They are like the Trumpies who want to force America back to “the way it was.”

Pope Francis made a solemn declaration after his visit to Japan that to use or even to own nuclear weapons is immoral. This teaching is a stiff challenge to Catholics in nuclear-armed countries, but Pope Francis allowed us no wiggle room. His grave warning about nuclear weapons is “We shall be judged on this.” Yes, I believe that we will be judged on our use of nuclear weapons and not about including gay couples in the church.

28 XI 2019: Bone Spurs serves up turkey

I read about Trump’s secret flight to Afghanistan. For a nanosecond I hoped that Trump had decided to run for it. But no. Our Commander-in-Chief wasted a lot of our money flying to Afghanistan secretly for Turkey Day. His trip was so secret that even Trump refrained from tooting and tweeting for 36 hours — I suppose they took away his phone — though some pre-recorded tweets were aired to avoid suspicion. It was so secret that he took the deputy White House press secretary with him. So secret that reporters traveling with the President — how? at whose expense?? Anyway, it was so secret that reporters who somehow got to Afghanistan were allowed to report the visit only moments before Trump’s return flight. 

He hinted that he’s working on a deal for peace with the Taliban. Has he decided to give the Taliban a carte blanche just as he did for Erdogan?  But it was not peace Trump was looking for in Afghanistan, but photo-ops. I think this trip was really about Trump playing generalissimo, serving turkey, and having photos taken for distribution to the BaSe.