Footprints in the Manure

The Atlantic on Andy Stanley 

The Atlantic: How the Evangelical World Turned on Itself

I warn everyone who hears the words of prophecy in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share of the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.  Revelation 22:18-19

In the original, historical context, this passage applies to the book of Revelation itself.  It is frequently taken out of context and meant to support the doctrine of inerrancy and infallibility of scripture, but is also used as a shield against anything to which the user applies it.  In the conservative, Evangelical church in which I grew up, it was used, along with Hebrews 11:8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever," to justify the rejection of any perceived threat to the settled view of the majority of the congregation on theology and doctrine, the dress code, the style of music in worship, and anything else that didn't fit their perspective of "the way things ought to be" in church.  

That being a very common practice among Evangelical Christians, especially in smaller churches with pastors and church leaders that tend to have less theological education, it is surprising that a whole new set of principles and practices have taken hold as a result of the Trump influence among Evangelicals.  Flattered by his attention, most conservative Christians are inclined to ignore his immoral, unethical, anti-Christian behavior, and either ignore the scripture teaching, claiming it is "not directly applicable" or develop a convoluted, twisting rationale to find ways to piece things together and take them out of context to justify their support.  

And even though we are almost a year post-Trump, thank God (and I mean that literally, not flippantly or in vain), it just seems to be getting worse, not better.  

When You Walk in Manure, It Sticks to your Shoes

On the social media site "Impeach Trump," there's a meme that reads as follows: 

What would you call a guy who cheated on Wife #1 with Wife #2 (who got pregnant while he was married to Wife #1) then cheated on Wife #2 with Wife #3; and cheated on Wife #3 with a porn star. A man who told over 30,000 lies in four years; ran a scam university, had his charity shuttered for "a shocking pattern of illegality; who brags about sexually assaulting women, openly expresses. his desire to date his daughter and cusses like a sailor?  Republicans call him "The Chosen One" and "God's Man for the Hour."  And they wonder why churches and the GOP are both losing members.

The use of the line from Bob Seeger's "Against the Wind" that says, "I used her and she used me and neither one cared," to describe the relationship between Trump and his Evangelical supporters in one of the Atlantic articles I cited at the top is a perfect description of the way it is.  Though they shriek and flap their lips when they perceive the courts "legislating from the bench" on behalf of Democrats, they are perfectly fine with using the courts to thwart the will of the voters when it benefits them. 

In exchange for their support, Trump essentially gave them the judges they needed to legislate from the bench for them.  What does he care?  Most of the same judges are the kind of corporate lackeys he wants.  He didn't even have to go through some kind of phony "conversion experience" to become one of them, they were willing to make a "deal with the devil," so to speak.  They used each other, Trump came out on top, and his total lack of moral character and immoral lifestyle didn't matter to them as long as they got the political power they wanted.  

When Clinton was in office, he was unendingly criticized by Republican Evangelicals for his lack of morals.  One of the most frequently cited scripture verses used to justify the criticism was I Corinthians 5:9-11, where the Apostle Paul tells the church not to associate with anyone who claims to be a Christian who is guilty of sexual immorality, greed, idolatry, reviling, getting drunk or swindling.  

"With such a one, do not even eat," says Paul.  "Purge the evil person from among you."  

Perhaps the difference is that while Clinton claimed to be a Christian, and was fairly regular in his church attendance and participation, Trump never made that claim and rarely darkens a church doorway, though frankly, given the way many Evangelicals have embraced him, I think the words of the Apostle are not only very much applicable, but makes those Evangelicals who think Trump is "God's man for the hour" hypocrites.  Another big difference is that Clinton sought out spiritual counsel and was repentant after making such a move wasn't to his public benefit anymore.  Trump has claimed that he has done nothing for which he needs to ask forgiveness.  

Footprints in the Manure

The largest Evangelical denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist convention, is showing all kinds of signs of the influence of Trumpism, from bloggers cranking out fake news and misinformation to attempts by executive leadership to strong-arm investigations ordered by convention delegates.  Russell Moore, the former head of the denomination's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who has been under fire for four years for his open opposition to Trump and who resigned prior to the June convention meeting, is the most visible victim.  So is Alabama pastor Ed Litton, who won the SBC presidency in June over Georgia pastor Mike Stone, the former chair of the Executive Committee, who launched investigations into Moore's leadership and tried to strong-arm a third-party investigation into the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the denomination since an expose appeared in the Houston Chronicle in 2019.  Litton was falsely accused of plagiarism, and the personal attacks on his character continue among those who are making them.  Now Stone is suing Moore, determined that he's going to get even because of Moore's opposition to Trump.  

It's a mess with actions more suited to a secular political dispute than a Christian denomination.  

Then there's Liberty University and all of the scandals surrounding Jerry Falwell, Jr., one of Trump's closest Evangelical allies.  It comes complete with photographs, confessions motivated by revenge and an attitude expressed by Falwell Junior that he's above having to follow all those strict, fundamentalist rules and behavior codes that students are required to follow or be expelled.  What's more trumpian than that? 

Right-wing social media has become particularly vicious.  Many Christian colleges and schools connected to Evangelical churches and denominations have become aware of an overall failure to attract many Latino, African American and Asian students to their campuses.  There are several consulting groups within the Evangelical educational community that help schools evaluate their situations and work toward an atmosphere of Christian unity that helps students feel welcome included.  That's a legitimate concern that most whites just flat out don't understand.  But some well-known Christian universities and school organizations have come under attack for being "woke" or for using "marxist" tactics to appease minorities and make white students feel ashamed of their "whiteness."  

The Mission and Purpose of the Church Has Been Hijacked

A church is a group of people that are brought together spiritually, for a common purpose rooted in the teachings and in what is known as the "Great Commission" of Jesus.  They are spiritually empowered and there is visible unity in each local expression of the church around its functions of worship, education and discipleship in theology and Christian living or "practice," ministry within the church, its missions to the surrounding community also known as "evangelism", and the "fellowship" or the relationships between people in the church, built on the common bond they have as Christians.  

Churches don't function well when their allegiance is distracted, or when they lose their focus on their functions as Christian communities, and are used for purposes that don't have anything to do with their Christian identity and purpose, like secular politics.  The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christian church in Corinth in the early first century, "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."  The context of those words is in a narrative in which he was using his apostolic authority to address conflicts and division in the church which he points out were the result of "jealousy and strife" among the members.  

It's been my personal perspective, as one who grew up in Evangelical churches, that right wing secular politics has been the cause of almost all of the strife and jealousy in those churches which have pursued a political agenda, and which attempt to use the influence of political power to accomplish their mission and purpose.  In order to do that, the mission and purpose must be changed from Christ's great commission to a secular, political end. And that's what's happening now.  

Not all Evangelical Christians have been caught up in the political deception.  If you look at the Atlantic article on the church pastored by Andy Stanley, you can see that he has tried to avoid being distracted by politics.  And among white Evangelicals there are plenty of other examples.  That's not to say that the majority of the membership of those churches isn't right wing Republican, but the church leadership is keeping the church out of the political agenda. 

And many Evangelicals are clearly leaving the churches that have been hijacked.  The SBC has seen  membership decline by more than two million in less than a decade, and the average attendance in the churches is down by more than a million over the same period of time.  Across the spectrum of Evangelical Christianity in the United States, the numbers in membership and attendance are down more than 20% in a decade, more than 8% since 2016.  

There's Nothing Wrong With Churches or Christians Influencing Government

There's no religious "test" or requirement for participating in government and no exclusion of people from influencing the government because of their religious beliefs, or lack of them.  The founders, specifically Jefferson and Madison, listened to the concerns of individual Christians and groups of churches about the negative effects of the state churches of Europe, and so no state church was established by the United States.  

The problem here is that a group of churches professing the "Great Commission" of Jesus have engaged in an alliance with a man whose lifestyle includes behaviors which violate every principle of Christian teaching.  I don't want to paint with a broad brush, but the attitudes, verbiage, comments and social media posts coming from a wide swath of Evangelical leadership no longer resembles any Christian mission and purpose, it has trump-prints all over it.  Christians carrying crosses and Bible verse signs while violently attacking the Capitol on January 6 is an event that illustrates the complete corruption of those who were involved.  Doing something like that violates multiple Biblical principles and runs completely counter to the gospel message of Jesus Christ.  

Bad Legislation Leads to Confusion in Texas School District

Link: Texas School District Teaches "Opposing" views of the Holocaust 

Texas School District Backtracks on Holocaust "Sides"

Confusion in Texas Over "Legislated Curriculum"

Texas Legislation HB 3979 Creates Confusion

When I initally saw the news about an administrator at the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas telling teachers that they had to provide an "opposing perspective" when they taught about the Holocaust, it certainly caught my attention.  The way the media handles issues like this leaves more questions than answers and there had to be a context to that report that was missed.  This is, after all, an educational institution and the administrator who put those requirements on the teachers has to be an educated person, at least knowledgeable enough of history to know better than to make a blanket statement like that.  

As it turns out, there is a lot of context to her statement, and to what was happening in that school district, as well as districts around the state of Texas.  The context is HB 3979, a piece of legislation specifically aimed at preventing teachers from teaching "Critical Race Theory" in their classrooms.  But the bill, hastily written and poorly worded, has thrown curriculum objectives in confusion.  It is an unprecedented inteference by a legislature into the curriculum objectives of schools, has created mass confusion about its interpretation and is a gross violation of the first amendment.  

Earlier this year, a teacher in the district was reprimanded because a parent complained that she had a book in her library entitled This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How To Wake Up, Take Action and Do the Work.  The parent of  a student who took the book home without permission complained that it was inappropriate for her daughter's age and grade level and was upset because her daughter had been taken out of class and reprimanded for taking a book without permission. The book has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory, but far-right wing conservatives are using CRT as a blanket to snuff out anything that looks like it promotes diversity and equality. This particular incident served to cause a lot of uncertainty among teachers as to how the new law would be interpreted and enforced, leaving many of them to feel that they could be victims of an ideological "witch hunt."  

On the far right, the terms "diversity,  equality and inclusion" have been completely taken out of their context and mischaracterized, ignoring the fact that the activists promoting the issues are aiming at unity, not separation.  The term "marxism" gets thrown around to see if it sticks anywhere because it is a buzz word.  It takes a lot of convolutions and turns, redefinition of terms and ignoring anything that doesn't fit the opposition's narrative to get from the kind of diversity, equality and inclusion that is being advocated through the school system, to "Marxism."  But most Americans get their knowledge of political and social philosophy from social media, not from reliable sources.

Southlake, Texas is an affluent suburb of Ft. Worth.  Located in the northeastern corner of Tarrant County, part of the city is also in southern Denton County on the northern edge of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex.  It is 78% white, I6% Asian, 6% Hispanic and less than 2% black.  The median income for families in the city is almost $250,000, the highest in the Dallas area and one of the highest in Texas. It would be easy to just write this all off as what happens in a predominantly white suburb in the South.  But most Southlake residents tend to have more education than is typical, as the median income levels would indicate, and a majority of them are transplants from other parts of the country, like California and the Northeast, who migrated there for the climate and following the corporate jobs that relocated there. So the interesting development is that the community seems to be expressing sympathy for its teachers and administrators attempting to exercise academic freedom while trying to navigate and interpret a piece of bad legislation.

Restricting the Teaching of Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory, in any form, is not being taught in the public education system.  It's not a part of any teacher certification requirement, and while it probably is part of the sociology curriculum in a college or university setting, it's taught as information, not indoctrination. No doubt there are teachers who are informed about it and who bring it into a class discussion, at the high school level perhaps, but it is not part of any required curriculum. Conspiracy theorists on the extreme right have picked up on it and are using it to drive political histeria among those who believe there is a sinister plot to take their "white privilege" away from them.  It's a display of collective ignorance that is almost without comparison in the furor that it is causing in school board meetings, mostly in the South.  

There's not one in a thousand people who know enough about CRT to attempt to define it.  The nation's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, passed a resolution on it in 20I9 and during the debate, it was clear that those who wanted to go on the record as "being against CRT" had little understanding of the theory or purpose behind it. Their ignorant, uninformed, biased comments are part of the record of the minutes of the convention, held in Birmingham, Alabama in 20I9 if you care to look it up. It embarassingly became a referendum on racial attitudes within the denomination, resulting in the departure of thousands of African-American church members who saw opposition to the resolution as a repudiation of their involvement in convention life. 

But whether you are in agreement with the theory and conclusions of CRT or not, the bigger issue is that an American citizen has a right to agree with it, speak in defense of it and live by it if that's what they choose to do.  And I believe that while the first amendment guarantee of freedom of speech has boundary lines when it bumps up against the rights of others, including in a school setting where a teacher or professor has some advantages over a somewhat "captive' audience, a teacher in a public, government-funded school has the right to believe what they choose.  They do not have the right to coerce their students, and there is a fine line between coercion and influence, but that's not up to the state legislature.  The legislature, however, is coercing teachers by making this requirement  And threatening a teacher with their job because of what they believe about a racial theory is tyranny.

An Opposing View of the Holocaust

The fact that HB 3979 opens the door to an interpretation that the "other side" of the Holocaust must be taught is a demonstration of the law's ambiguity and lack of definition.  The denial that the holocaust never happened is a delusion, not an "opposing view."  There are literally hundreds of thousands of first hand, eyewitness accounts that make the history of the Holocaust one of the most documented events in world history. We know details of exact events, times and places from virtually every location where the events occurred.  

I have personally visited the ruins of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where more than a million Jews were executed in the gas chambers.  There is more than enough evidence there, walking through the main Auschwitz camp, and the nearby Birkenau camp, to prove the Holocaust took place. I have also seen the Museum of Polish Jews and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, stood on the site of the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw from where 300,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were transported to their deaths, and took the tour from Warsaw to Treblinka, which is another place where all the evidence needed to confirm the Holocaust as fact exists.  I've also visited Holocaust museums in Illinois, Texas and in Washington, DC, all of which lay out mountains of evidence in horrid detail and total consistency.  

The Holocaust happened, just as the historical narrative says it did.  Denying it isn't an opposing view.  It's ignorance.  

The opposing view of the Holocaust is the National Socialist, or Nazi view.  The Nazi view, which was directly ordered by Adolf Hitler and put into practice by the Nazi government, is found in a document known as the Wannsee Protocol, the minutes of a meeting in Berlin on January 20, I942 during which the Nazi bureaucracy drew up the plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem."  Hitler is not mentioned in the document but there's no question that the order came directly from him, since that was the way the Nazi government operated.  The opposing view to the Holocaust is Nazi racial theory rooted in anti-semitism. 

The results of the enactment of the "opposing view" of the Holocaust disqualify it from any approach to teaching students about it that would engender sympathy for it, or which would argue that there were "good people on both sides."  Apologists for National Socialism see the results of the Wannsee Protocol, which was the systematic, industrialized murder of six million Jews, as an act of national unity by people who saw any kind of diversity, equality or inclusion as a violation of the natural order.  There were no "good" people on that side, there were only the deluded and coerced, and the evil.  

Something is desperately wrong with a law, or with its enforcement, that leads to interpreting it to mean that the opposing view to the Holocaust must be treated fairly and equally when it is taught as part of history.  The language of HB 3979 has opened unintentional doors. 

"It Was the Right Thing to do"

Link to CNN Story: Democrat Claims Patrick's Bounty

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick put up campaign funds and offered a reward to anyone who reported voter fraud in Pennsylvania following the 2020 election.  If you recall, Patrick and several other Texas politicians were livid because Pennsylvania Democrats scored a victory for Joe Biden after a long, drawn-out vote count that was caused by a massive number of mail-in ballots.  In an unpredented and completely unconstitutional attempt to get votes in Pennsylvania overturned, claiming that the state had changed its voting procedures in a non-legislative manner, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, sued the state of Pennsylvania in the Supreme Court.  

The court dismissed the case immediately, stating that the constitution leaves the conduct of elections up to the individual states, therefore Texas had no legal standing to bring a case to the court of this nature. It was a little bit hypocritical for Texas to bring such a case, since it is the poster-child state for changing election rules without legislative approval but things didn't turn out the way they wanted.

But sometimes, you just can't fix stupid. Hence, the Lieutenant Governor's determination to keep Pennsylvania's votes from counting. 

The problem with Patrick's offer is that it requires evidence leading to a conviction.  You can't get the money for just pointing fingers and making an accusation, like the collection of paid witnesses that showed up to grab Trump cash from Giuliani and Powell during their highly unsuccessful attempt to convince even one court that what they had was "evidence."  To get your hands on Patrick's stash, proof is needed in order to substantiate another court challenge to the vote certification.  And that's the catch. 

Almost half of the ballots cast in Pennsylvania in 2020 were mail-in.  And it's just a logistical and physical fact that voting by mail is the most secure way to run an election.  Oh, and by the way, Pennsylvania has allowed mail-in voting for decades, and there was no change in any election procedure that occurred prior to 2020.  The difference from previous elections was that this time around, the number of requests for them was much higher because of the pandemic.  And since procedures did not change, and the mail-in ballots could not be opened and counted until after 7 p.m. on election night, it took a week to count them all.  

One Case After a Year, Reported by a Democrat and Involving a Republican

Eric Frank, a poll worker, reported Ralph Holloway Thurman, who had voted once and attempted to vote a second time as his son.  Frank, who is a Democrat, recognized the 72 year old Republican who came back to the same polling location later in the day in a baseball cap and Ray-Ban sunglasses.  He was convicted and sentenced to three years probation.  The conviction let to the meager pay-out from Patrick.  

"Of course, I never do anything for money, that's just how I was raised.  I do things because it is the right thing to do.  And I would have reported Thurman whether he was a Republican or Democrat," said Frank.  

"It was just ironic--it's my opinion, that Patrick put up, they put out this bounty to try to find Democrats committing voter fraud.  And, in fact, it was the complete opposite of what their intentions were," he stated.  

Or perhaps understated.  

Pennsylvania's vote has been audited, recounted, and a "forensic audit" performed because the myth was circulating among Republicans that some of the ballots may have come from "outside sources."  Those who make accusations of "massive voter fraud" have absolutely no idea how an election is conducted or how ballots are counted.  And the politicians who are making these claims, including Trump, clearly think that their followers and supporters must be the most ignorant, stupid people on the face of the planet to believe what they say.  

After All the Audits, Recounts, and Even Dan Patrick's Bounty, No "Massive Voter Fraud" Has Been Proven

Just this week, a complete audit of ballots in Wisconsin, where Biden won the state by just over 20,000 votes, was finished.  This was audit number 3 in Wisconsin, with two previous audits having been conducted prior to the deadline for certifying the election results.  Most audits find a few discrepancies here and there, in Wisconsin, the total number amounted to fewer than 300 votes.  But these were common discrepancies, not evidence of any kind of "fraud."  It seems like a pointless waste of taxpayer dollars to conduct an election audit a year after the election is over, since it is long past the time that anything can be done about it.  

Likewise, ballots in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Nevada have all been recounted at least twice, audited at least twice and no evidence of any kind of fraud has surfaced.  In Arizona, where Doug Logan's "Cyber Ninjas" make themselves look like incompetent idiots, spend months examining counting and voting machines, looking at ballots and claiming to be examining them looking for "bamboo fibers" which allegedly would prove they came from China, they humiliatingly had to conclude that actually, Biden got about 300 more votes than the certified total showed.  They chided the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for procedural practices which were nothing more than a shield for their own incompetence and inability to produce what their master had ordered.  They spent $6 million in an exercise in incompetence and futility.  

Proof That There Was No "Massive Voter Fraud" in the 2020 Election

An incompetent nut job like Doug Logan, and his "Cyber Ninja" boobs, paid by Trumpies to find massive voter fraud in Arizona, couldn't even find something that might support another lie about massive voter fraud.  Logan walked away with $6 million, most of it from Trumpies but some of it wasted tax dollars from the people of Arizona.  The report they left behind is proof that Trump's claim of massive voter fraud is a lie.  

Likewise, the failure of Dan Patrick's bounty to find its way into anyone's pocket who actually can prove a claim of voter fraud committed by Democrats, after almost a year of being offered, is another major piece of evidence that proves the "big lie" is exactly that, another Trump lie.  Patrick must not think very highly of his fellow Republicans, thinking that they need to be motivated by money to "do the right thing" like Mr Frank, the Democratic poll watcher in Pennsylvania did.  But then, through all of this post-election madness that includes Republicans supporting and defending a mob that attempted to overthrow the goverment on January 6th, it's obvious that you can't depend on Republicans to "do the right thing."  

What About "My Rights", "Personal Liberty" and "Freedom"?

My memories of the fall semester and return to school include days where we lined up and left our classroom, destination the gym or cafeteria or some large room in the school where the school nurse and the medical staff from the local clinic, including one of the doctors, were administering vaccinations.  Smallpox was the biggie, the gel placed on your arm and then several "pokes" with the needle to get it in. There was the cup with the sugar cube for polio and the shots in the arm for a variety of other diseases I didn't know anything about, like diphtheria, rubella, and other things I never worried about.  Well, they told us we were getting the vaccinations so we would not get the other things.  I did come down with a mild case of rubella when I was 10, and a mild case of chicken pox while I was in the hospital with mumps.  

I don't recall whether parent permission had to be given to get these vaccinations, though I'm sure there was a form they signed.  But what I do remember is that there was one member of my class of over 100 students, just one, who did not get in line and receive any of these immunizations or vaccinations.  We weren't allowed to talk about it, but the "rumor" went around that her religion didn't allow her to get vaccinated.  

That caused me to wonder what might happen if she got sick from one of these painful, deadly diseases.  Is that what her parents wanted?  At that point, my limited knowledge did not permit me to understand that she was insulated by the fact that all of the rest of her classmates, and by extension, virtually all of the other members of the community, were vaccinated and their actions led to the near-eradication and prevention of the spread of these diseases.  And here we are, 50 years down the road from those days, and cases of measles, mumps, polio and diphtheria are rare.  I can't say I've ever known of anyone having diphtheria and few of the school kids I've worked with in the last couple of decades have come down with any of the other childhood maladies.  

Those vaccinations were developed and mandated by government for the protection of its citizens.  The courts, including the Supreme Court, supported the authority of municipalities and states to pass laws requiring vaccinations to protect citizens from the spread of contagious disease, a practice that was welcomed and well received by people, many of whom had experienced and suffered through pandemics with limited medical care and without much close access to doctors or hospitals. 

That's one of the responsibilities of democratic government.  It protects its citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and it mediates matters where individual rights clash.  And in this case, where vaccinations protect those who get them from the spread of contagious, deadly disease and also prevent the bacterial or viral infection from growing, mutating and becoming resistant to vaccinations, the government decided that remaining at risk is dangerous to the common good of the community, and individual rights are subject to the will of the majority.  

Perspectives and Specific Examples

It's not hard to imagine why state laws require health care workers to have a long list of immunizations and vaccines.  The survival rate of employees who were vulnerable to a long list of contagious, deadly viruses and bacteria that come through every medical facility door every day would be very low.  Likewise, someone who is sick, seeking medical care, should not have to worry about whether they will get a deadly infection from the nurse or doctor with whom they have close enough contact to be contagious.  Health care is built on a foundation of immunizations and vaccinations.  Without them, you don't have health "care."  

I have had the unfortunate circumstance of being pulled over by a police officer.  There was certainly enough close proximity, and enough time, to catch a contagious disease had he been carrying one.  People have the right to expect that when they encounter police in an uncomfortable situation, they do not have to worry about also catching a contagious disease.  

The same rights exist for those who attend movies, concerts or theater, sporting events, or who use public transportation or fly.  Passengers flying together in close quarters on an airplane for several hours should not be expected to take the risk of catching a deadly, contagious virus in order to protect the "rights" of those who choose to work in that industry and know the requirements up front but decide not to comply with them.  My plane fare helps pay their salary, and entitles me to a safe flight and the reasonable expectation that the employees have followed the requirements for being certified to do their job. 

And here's an important fact.  These vaccine and immunization requirements have been in effect for decades.  They have never even remotely been considered "tyranny" or the denial of individual rights and freedom.  By definition, there is no COVID-19 mandate that remotely fits the definition of either of those things.  And there is no precedent for resistance to getting vaccinated being individual freedom or a basic right.  

The Greater Good

The boundary line where individual liberty is limited is that point where it bumps into the individual liberty of someone else. In a constitutional republic that declares equality, the fact of the matter is that your rights are not more important than mine.  Period. 

That's where the rule of law comes in.  Decisions are made by our elected government which define where the boundaries of individual rights are located.  Ignoring those definitions is breaking the law by definition.  So when there is compelling evidence that a vaccination prevents the spread of a deadly disease, and that a high percentage of the population being vaccinated prevents the disease from mutating and growing worse, the greater good establishes the boundary of individual rights in its own favor.  And that's the whole principle behind immunization and vaccination mandates.  That's it.  Rights achieve the greater good. 

Stupidity and Ignorance

Whether politics creates the vacuum into which common sense falls, or whether it is just a general lack of quality public education in this country. we have an anti-vaccination movement that has wrapped itself in a false, phony definition of "tyranny" and around one of the most ignorant premises ever invented.  The whole movement is cult-like in its mentality, a position which is not only personally detrimental to themselves but which brings everyone else down to suffer at the same level.  Maybe that's the attraction of it, I don't know.  But there is no other way to describe this except that it is ignorance and stupidity.  Those who endorse and push it are not credible thinkers. 

Think about how little sense this makes.  The same people who are shrieking and flapping their lips over state government restrictions that limit community activity in order to keep down the spread of COVID are shrieking and flapping their lips in opposition to the one thing that has the actual potential to cause the restrictions to go away.  

Nothing indicates that using the terms "stupid" and "ignorant" to describe these people and characterize this position as completely accurate is better than the deaths of the prominent, well-known, extremist right-wing commentators to COVID.  They set themselves up, ignore the problem, catch the disease and die.   Well, before they passed on, did they "own" the libs?  Who is laughing now? Do they think they are going to come back in another, reincarnated form?  They're dead, so what point have they made, other than that their own stupid behavior led to their demise.  They've left no legacy, no final word, nothing but a statement that they were stupid and ignorant before they departed.  

So common wisdom declares "you can't fix stupid."  But in this case, our health and recovery depends on fixing stupid.  And if that means people who won't comply with vaccine mandates can't attend school, be admitted to a university, ride a train or plane or a public bus and lose their job as a result of their refusal, then we have achieved the greater good that is the goal of our democratic government.  

Trump Loyalists Were Talking About Subverting the Peaceful Transfer of Power in 20I6

The first time I saw the idea that a sitting President might work the system to keep himself in office was on a social media post from a friend whom I knew was quite politically conservative.  He was suggesting that President Obama had a plan in place, when Hillary Clinton lost, that would include declaring some kind of national emergency in order to cancel or postpone the inauguration and that his administration was planning to go to court to manipulate the ballots in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Trump eked out narrow wins and get the results overturned before the Electoral College certification deadline.  As soon as I saw that post on twitter, I thought that must be coming from some right wing "news" outlet.  Turns out it was Breitbart, of course, who else? 

No Plans Existed For Obama to Refuse to Leave office

Apparently the same rumor made the rounds of other social media, enough to prompt ABC news to do some investigating and find out where it was coming from.  The story, which was completely false, was circulating on mostly obscure sites, but made it to twitter and facebook.  Missing from the list in the ABC news story is any mention of Breitbart.  Breitbart apparently pulled all of its references to this bit of fake news.  But it was there originally, and was apparently the source of many of the false quotes attributed to Obama, Pelosi or Trump mentioned in the social media posts.  That's how they do this.  That's the way this works. 

The idea that a sitting President would refuse to participate in the constitution's peaceful transition of power was unthinkable until the hard line, winner-take-all, refuse to compromise hatred of any idea or concept that isn't right wing conservative, pushed by Rush Limbaugh.  He's the one that should get the most credit for the evil divisiveness that is the real threat to the constitution and the rule of law. Projecting that falsehood on President Obama is the kind of dirty politics we've come to expect of Limbaugh and his ilk.  But they had to have explored the possibility and determined that it could actually be done at some point in order to try to make their point.  

The Idea Resonated With Trump

Trump was vocally opposed to the fact that he was running for an office that was term limited and started babbling about changing the constutution after he got in so that his adoring followers could continue electing him.  Fortunately for the whole country, there weren't enough of them to win re-election, but he was ready by then to make a serious try to put in place all of those possibilities that right wingers were claiming Obama was planning.  Executive Order 3603--the National Defensive Resources Preparedness Order and declaring a national emergency was the "last resort" for Trump if his challenges to election results failed but even that order would not have permitted the sitting, unelected President to remain in office after January 20th.  

The fact that those on the right were even discussing the possibility that a sitting President might resist the peaceful transfer of power is a huge clue into the fact that a Trump challenge to the constitution on this very point was planned from the moment he took the oath of office.  It may look like just another right wing "fake news" story designed to bash Obama for their gullible, mindless audience but one of the masters of the fake news industry, Steve Bannon, was in a key position in the Trump White House and I'd be really surprised if he wasn't already directly involved in planning to overturn the election shortly after Trump got the reins of power in his little hands.  His fingerprints are all over the whole insurrection. 

What better way to test the various theories than to float the idea that the sitting President at the time was planning to stick around and then see what kind of response that got in order to plan for actually doing it if the election went south in 2020?  

This Helps Make The Case Against the January 6 Conspirators

This might not be evidence that would hold up in court, though some of those obscure right wing extremist sites that posted it are still visible on the internet.  It looks like Breitbart, though, has erased any trace of the fake news it had posted on this subject.  It's probably on some server somewhere.  But it's the court of public opinion that needs to see this and understand just how evil and devious these people are.  They built the whole Trump administration on lies and "fake news."  And they are trying to walk away from something they did when there is evidence they tested the waters four years earlier.  

How is it possible, for anyone who now knows the truth, to ever want to put any of these crooks and criminals anywhere but prison where they belong?  Believing that a majority of Americans are still reasonable, sensible, educated, thinking people, and that they want the country to remain free, democratic and a constitutional republic means getting out and voting to prevent anyone who had anything to do with January 6th from getting into any position of power.  Do your homework.  Don't elect Republicans to statewide office.

The Constitution Provides Absolutely No Options Other Than a Peaceful Transfer of Power Following Elections

It remains to be seen how the constitution would be defended during martial law or the defense executive order, but there is no provision in the law for a sitting President not elected or at the end of his second term to remain in office or, as the conspiracy theory mill falsely predicted, be "reinstated."  In hindsight, following this first genuine attempt at a coup, it appears that the task of defending the constitution would fall to the military.  It also appears that they were prepared to make sure that the transition that was inevitably going to take place on January 20 would be as peaceful as possible, but it was going to take place.  

President Obama never spoke a word about remaining in the office after his time was done.  I'm sure he was sincerely grieved at the thought of a demagogue and pathologically lying con artist like Trump becoming President of the United States, but the Trumpie liars exposed themselves here.  No one among the Democratic leadership, including Obama, Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi, ever said anything about conspiring to keep Trump from getting in after he was elected, and their actions prove their intentions and their integrity.  Trump and his cronies, on the other hand, were babbling about election fraud and about how to stay in office in the event the voters said "NO!" and testing the waters before they even got to Washington.  This is proof, if more were even needed, that these people are crooks and criminals and need to be sent to prison.  

Are We Paying Attention to the Warnings?

Bill Maher's Dark Vision is All Too Real

It's pretty clear Bill Maher is controversial and there are plenty of things not to like for people on any side of the political spectrum.  He uses comedy to make political commentary and that's offensive at times.  But he's giving out a legitimate warning here, and it needs to be heeded.  Yes, sometimes he can be offensively off-putting, but when Maher lays out facts like this, he's usually got a good source and he gets it right.  He's not revealing anything that we don't already know, but this needs to be said, over and over, and some fires need to be lit.  Maher is often the guy who is holding the smoldering match.

Please set me straight if my perceptions are a little skewed here.  I'm glad to see things seem to be moving forward on the January 6th investigation, getting information and finding out the extent of the conspiracy to try and pull off a coup to overturn the 2020 election.  But it seems to me that we should be seeing a lot more that we are, or am I just missing something somewhere?  There's been some tough talk about arrests of the people ignoring Congressional subpoenas, but none of the biggies on that list are in jail yet, that I know of.  It seems to me that they should be.  

It seems to me that something has fallen through the cracks somewhere.  Things started out great, the testimony of the four Capitol police officers a couple of months back was remarkably candid, clear and damning.  But that's been the climax up to this point.  This was an event that, from a journalistic perspective, falls in the same category as Pearl Harbor or 9-11 or the secession of 11 states from the Union.  But I'm not seeing much about it on social media, other than the insurrectionists were just tourists that got a little riled up, or "it's all about politics."  And frankly, what I'm not seeing worries me.  

What's going on with the DNC in Washington?  I send my contribution every month, I've been doing that for going on two decades now.  I was reading their news releases before they had a website.  I volunteer, make phone calls, show up for rallies and I've even walked the streets and knocked on doors for multiple candidates.  My expectations at this moment is that the DNC should be a beehive of activity, throwing out tweets and social media posts one after the other, and maybe that's the way it is and I'm just not noticing it because I'm fairly insulated in a Democratic state and we don't have any concerns about election integrity.  I just don't like all the "status quo" talk, i.e. "the party in power in the White House always loses mid-terms" and what it looks like to me is that there's not a whole lot going on other than occasional emailings asking for money.  

Not Many People Are Paying Attention

Every effort Trumpies have made to try and prove "the big lie" has fallen to its death on the facts.  By now, we've counted and recounted ballots, audited elections, had "forensic examination" of ballots, reviews of election and counting machines and procedures and the end result has been that the claims of "massive voter fraud" are blatantly false.  Even the ballot "examinations" (I won't call them "audits") done by crooks hired by Trumpies were unable to produce a single piece of evidence proving even tiny, much less massive, voter fraud.  There was none and they are having to come to grips with the fact that election officials, in most cases Republican election officials, aren't going to lie for them.  

So they are moving on to the next phase, which is to find people who will lie for them and see how many of them they can get elected to state legislatures, state offices and secretaries of state in charge of elections so that they won't have to worry about actual vote counts and totals, they can just challenge everything, make a mess and have people with the authority to change the results if necessary.  And who knows subversives who can run for office better than Steve Bannon, who would be in prison now if not for a pardon?  

Regardless of what you think of him, Maher is just using his celebrity status to shed some light on this and create a much larger awareness than currently exists.  We didn't avert a constitutional crisis on January 6th, that event simply plunged us right into one and if people don't pay attention, think its business as usual and avoid going to vote, there won't be a constitution.  When someone like Bill Maher picks up on something and starts talking about it, it should at the very least merit some attention. 

I Don't Care How "Political" It May Look

Anyone connected with that insurrection, and that is exactly what it was, who was or is in Congress, the Senate, the courts or the White House, should be appropriately charged with the fourteenth amendment.  It's not likely Republicans will want to do that so they need to be voted out of office.  Impossible?  I don't think so.  I just want to know when the DNC is going to get it's rear in gear and start putting together the monster campaign of its existence to make sure that Democrats not only win huge majorities, but that everyone knows just how dangerous Donald Trump really is and understand the possibilities. 

It's supposed to be out of line to compare things happening in America to Europe in the mid-twentieth century and use all of that terminology but if you look at how that happened, and what's going on here now, well, history has a funny way of repeating itself.  The groundwork is being laid and those who are putting it in place are even bold enough to let people in on what they're doing and not keep it much of a secret, if at all.  

So if arresting, trying and jailing everyone involved in that insurrection, right up to Trump the inciter-in-chief, is the legal way to handle it, then that's where this needs to go.  And that includes everyone who is working with him, or who was working with him, to try and pull off what still looks like a failed coup.  You can't run for office from prison.  And if spending a billion dollars to defeat this fascist resurgence and restore the Constitution's shine is necessary, then Democrats need to be raising the money and making sure the next election sends a clear message about what happens when you try to overthrow the United States Government.

A Quirk of American Politics: Voting Against Your Own Interests

One of my favorite singers of all times happens to be an Appalachian Mountain bluegrass artist born in 1925 in West Virginia.  Her name is Hazel Dickens and she is not completely unknown, even though bluegrass music is a small niche that is popular in just a few places in the country.  She actually won two awards for her music.  She was the first woman to win the Merit Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association and she won a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the highest honor in folk music.  

But Dickens was best known for her feminist, activist, pro-labor union, pro-coal miner songs.  She was a coal miner's daughter, born and raised in Montcalm, West Virginia, in Mercer County, the heart of the "Billion Dollar Coalfields," and most of her brothers, uncles and cousins, along with her neighbors growing up, were coal miners as well.  Her father was also the pastor of a small Primitive Baptist church. When her singing career got going, after she had relocated to Maryland in the 1950's like many other young people from Appalachia, she devoted a considerable amount of her talent to writing and recording songs about the hazards of coal mining and the unjust pay and treatment of the miners.  

She was an activist in every sense of the word, making appearances on behalf of striking coal miners at union gatherings and writing songs about specific events, such as "Mannington Mine Disaster," and "They'll Never Keep us Down."  She also appeared in two movies depicting the fierce conflicts between miner's unions and the ownership of the mines, including one of my favorites, Matewan, and Harlan County USA.  It would be difficult to measure her influence and the benefits her activism provided for coal miners everywhere, but especially in the heart of Appalachia.  

Democrats, take notice.  In the life, music and political activism of bluegrass singer Hazel Dickens, a coal miner's daughter from West Virginia whose singing voice was trained in the acapella harmony of hymns in a Primitive Baptist church, are the roots of everything that made the Democratic party great.  

Mercer County, West Virginia, gave 71% of its votes to Donald Trump in 2020. 

If the Democrats can figure out why people who were not helped by Trump's election in 2016 in any way would still vote for him with those kinds of majorities, the party will be a shoe-in to win elections nationally, across the board, everywhere.  Trump never delivered on his promise to "revitalize" the coal industry, in fact, never even revisited the issue once the 2016 election was in the books.   But there's more to it than that.  In spite of all the labor unrest, the regular, almost ritualistic strikes that occur at the end of every contract period, the low wages, the poor benefits and the effects of unsafe working conditions that include a significantly elevated risk of cancer, early death from black lung disease, and accidents which take multiple lives, many of the state legislators and the congressmen and senators the coal mining regions send to Washington are coal company investors and owners.  They tend to elect some of their own oppressors, whose interests are diametrically opposed to their own.  

What's The Matter With Kansas? 

That's the title of a great book by Thomas Frank, who outlines how the political culture has shifted from the activism of economics, particularly the push for fair wages, benefits and economic opportunity for the working class to social issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights.  These social issues are elevated to priorities while the politicians who claim to support them simply use the support they get to undermine the middle class and push the wealth into the hands of a small group of corporate elite whose only concern about the unborn is how to keep using them to motivate voters and undermine the politicians who really care about the well-being and prosperity of the middle class.  

It should be difficult to convince people to vote against their own interests, since the evidence of doing so shows up in their paycheck, but they are deceived into believing otherwise.  Try to convince a Trumpie that the bulk of the big "tax cut" went to the already wealthy, and if they're middle class they more than likely saw their taxes increase and you'll get blank stares.  Show them how it works on paper and they're not interested.  If a politician declares that they are against abortion rights, and don't support LGBTQ rights, nothing else matters and it won't be long before everything that they do, no matter how contrary it is to the moral and social values of the voters, is right in the minds of their "base."  

I'm offended by the thought that some politician thinks of me as being part of a "base."  And that's one of the reasons why Democrats seem to have such difficulty wrapping their minds around this and figuring out how to undermine the GOP and get some of these voters back.  The party is too diverse to fit into one "base" and while this may sound like back patting and self-praise, too educated and made up of too many free-thinkers to be moved that way.  

But We Do Need to Figure Out How to Get These People Back

The movie that I mentioned earlier, Matewan, illustrates the difficulty of the problem.  It's not a feel-good kind of movie where the hero, the union organizer, comes to town, rallies the population and all the miners to his side, and wins the day when they get their union.  What actually happens is that the stranger comes to town to try and organize the miners into a union and the mining company does everything it can to undermine the effort, including conspiracy theories, using the church, bribing the neediest and poorest, playing on people's sympathies and triggering an honest to goodness shooting war.  

There's another movie that gives even more insight into the kind of self-defeating behavior that occurs when issues get complicated around jobs, local politics and money.  Dark Waters, another movie set in West Virginia, is considered an "accurate" depiction of events related to the poisoning of the local water supply by a chemical company that is also the biggest employer in the area.  Even as all the information was coming out about the fact that the company knew exactly what it was doing, and had kept the information hidden and buried for years, as the poison caused all kinds of birth defects and health problems, one of the characters makes the statement about the executive leadership at Dupont, "But they're good people, they'll do the right thing."  

Uh huh.  

The Elements Are in Place; The Narrative is What's Needed

Biden's "Build Back Better" is clearly popular, not just in West Virginia, but in other places where there are infrastructure needs and also employment needs.  It isn't the answer for everything, but if it's matched with the right narrative, it will be a big step toward meeting a lot of needs in a lot of different places.  Democrats need to figure out how to sell this, though, especially in West Virginia because doing so will increase the pressure on Senator Manchin, and he needs a push in the right direction right about now.  

It's also popular in Arizona and I would suggest the same strategy.  Democrats have some great "go-to" people who are good at this sort of thing.  One of the best ways to damp down the social agenda gab is to point out that the wealthy are finally going to start paying their fair share of taxes, or at least, we are headed in the right direction and that's how we're paying for this.  

The Republicans would have had a strategy in place to put pressure on their own party's more reluctant members long before now.  I'm getting a little concerned that while the Democrats are starting to wring their hands about 2022, there's very little out there that seems to be motivating voters.  Virginia's elections are less than a month away.  What's going on and is anyone listening? 

Profane Chatter That Spreads Like Gangrene: Anti-Vaxxers and the Bible

 Anti-Vaxxers Take the Bible Out of Context

Taking the Bible out of context to apply its content to a specific, unrelated situation is a common occurrence in every denomination or sect of Christianity.  In the Evangelical tradition in which I grew up, it is a particularly grievous offense since one of the doctrinal tennets on which the denomination rests involves Biblical integrity, accepting the traditional sixty-six books of the third century canon of the Old and New Testaments in the Protestant context of Sola Scriptura, the sole authority for Christian faith and practice.  

As a result of that belief, a significant amount of the offerings given to the church are devoted to the theological education of its pastors, church leaders and missionaries, an instruction that comes from the Apostle Paul, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:I5, NRSV).  In that particular denomination, that means earning a graduate level degree requiring more than 80 credit hours of study, three years for those who go full time, on top of a bachelor's degree, including extensive study in Greek and Hebrew to examine the Biblical text in its original languges, historical studies which include Latin studies and history, the theology and history of Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and the Reformation, archaological backgrounds and Greek and Roman politics, educational courses in research writing, sermon construction and preparation and public speaking and about 20 hours of behaviorial science.  The purpose of all of that is to prevent lifting "verses", which are only textual reference points and not part of the original text, out of their context and applying them in ways that the Bible's writers never intended and which do not represent any form of Christian faith or practice. 

In the same paragraph in which Paul outlines the correct interpretation of scripture, he says, "Avoid profane chatter for it will lead people into more and more impiety and their talk will spread like gangrene." (2 Timothy 2:I6-I7a NRSV).  The context of that term in bold, "profane chatter," is exactly the kind of thing that John Fea, in the cited article from RNS, is referencing.  It's a conversation which takes something from Christian theology or doctrine, and falsely or incorrectly attributes it or uses it to endorse something that isn't consistent with the context. 

Even some of the most conservative theological schools, which would include Messiah College, where Dr. John Fea, the author of the article I cited at the top is a professor, recognize the fact that literal interpretations and applications of Biblical doctrine can only occur within a spiritual or theological context.  Specific situations which are addressed within the context of the groups or individuals to whom parts of the text were written, no longer exist so interpretation and application of any specific teaching requires attaching it to a principle that is corroborrated elsewhere.  

There's nothing that annoys me more than constant references to "this verse" or "that verse," or "my life verse" or "citing chapter and verse."  The chapters and verses are not divisions of the original text, they evolved over time as reference points, becoming standard during the mid-fourteenth century.  A single verse, lifted out of the text, becomes an easy avenue to "profane chatter."  We have some excellent translations in English, the Revised Standard Version being the best of the best, because translators worked for years on understanding the context of the text in its original language in order to render it accurately in other languages.  

So this "cherry picking" by anti-vaxxers is nothing more than profane chatter.  It is, in fact, an embarassment to those who are pushing it because it isn't a demonstration of the kind of study necessary to meet the standard of approval.  Those who engage in it should be ashamed.  It comes from a long tradition of anti-education, anti-intellectual bias that is rooted in American Christianity, going back to revivalist movements which led to development and growth of churches beyond any denomination's ability to provide trained, educated pastors and church leaders.  

A Biblical Case For Getting Vaccinated and Wearing a Mask

There isn't a situation in any of the Bible's narratives that actually deals directly with healing arts.  While there are accounts of miraculous healings, a few in the Old Testament but mostly associated directly with Jesus or the Apostles, there is nothing there on which to build a case against the use of human medical knowledge.  In fact, if you accept the standard theological premise that God is sovereign, which is virtually universal among Protestants and Evangelicals alike, then the medical knowledge that has developed and accumulated among human beings over time is the discovery of creation itself through divine revelation.  Some use the term, "Common grace."  

Luke, the writer of one of the gospel accounts, was a physician, trained in the healing arts known to those in his day.  He travelled with Paul and apparently, from accounts in the book of Acts, relied on his knowledge as such.  Paul himself advised his protege, Timothy, to "take a little wine for your stomach's sake," words that are in the Biblical text in one of his letters.  And it would be taking the scripture out of context to build a case for vaccination on that evidence alone.  But it does refute the anti-vax case from a Biblical perspective. 

Human intellect, equipped with its own free will is, according to Genesis, that part of each one of us that is created in the image of God himself.  So in the process of discovering how the human body works, how it can be healed, stimulated, sedated, be a source of either intense pain or extreme pleasure, free will comes into play and choices can be made that reflect either good or evil.

The evidence that healing physical ailments and relieving pain is one of the greatest acts of mercy, representing absolute goodness, is the fact that physical healing was a cornerstone of Jesus' ministry.  With few exceptions, Jesus healed people wherever he went.  It was the door that opened people's lives to the gospel.  There was no prerequisite required to receive it and no payment required in exchange for it.  So if you accept God's sovereignty, his ex nihilo creation, and his gift of free will, then the development of vaccines to prevent devastating, contagious diseases is common grace, and is a direct act of his will.  It is an expression of his desire to heal, to relieve human suffering and pain, and is a demonstration of divine mercy.  

And so, knowing what we know about the mutually beneficial effects of vaccinations in eradicating disease, humans who wish to exercise that higher order good and mercy can do so by their own participation.  Specifically, the more people who are vaccinated, the less likelihood there is that this current virus will mutate.  Vaccinated people stop its spread, preventing others from getting sick and in the random way this virus attacks some, but not others, preventing death as well.  Those who will survive this because of the vaccinations are just as much a part of God's sovereign will as those who, in their fatalism, simply accept that it's their time to die.  Grace and mercy are sovereign, fatalism is profane chatter. 

I will study the way that is blameless.  When shall I attain it?  I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is base.  I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.  Perverseness of heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil.  Psalm I0I:2-4

Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.  James 4:I7

More specifically, vaccinations have been around for a long time and requiring citizens to get them in order to eradicate devastating illnesses has been codified into law on more than one occasion, and upheld by the courts in the United States.  Romans I3:I-7, I Peter 2:I3-I7 and Titus 3:I-2, in their correctly interpeted context, connect the sovereignty of God to the authority of governments, specifically in this case, the undemocratic, dictatorial, pagan Roman government.  They are the law and the obediance of Christians is a matter of respect for God's sovereign power which two of the early church's apostles acknowledged.  You and I are both more than likely alive today because of medical research and the production of vaccines mandated by government, against a whole variety of contagious, deadly viral and bacterial diseases. 

The government, permitted to act by sovereign God, says wear a mask to protect others from the spread of coronavirus.  That is an inherently "good" act and the Christian principle that supports it is found in Philippians 2:3-5.  That's where the definition of Christ-likeness is found, by the way.  So in context, it is correct to say that wearing a mask to protect others from a contagious virus is Christlike.  To not wear one is selfish.  

Paradigm Shifts and Great Awakenings

William Miller was a Baptist lay preacher and prosperous farmer in northeastern New York whose studies of the book of Daniel, not guided by anything but his own emotion and intellect, and concluded, based on his examination of what he called the "2,300 Day Prophecy," that the second coming of Jesus would occur in I843.  It's a long story, worth researching.  But built on the emotional fervor of the Second Great Awakening, which was occurring at that time, this "profane chatter" did indeed spread like gangrene.  Using the print media of his day, and conducting preaching and revival meetings, Miller succeeded in convincing thousands of his prediction, and also succeeded in gutting churches of members who left because their preachers and pastors wouldn't buy what Miller was selling. 

Influenced by others who joined in the movement, the date October 22, I844 was set for Christ's return.  The madness that accompanied preparations for this event, and the disappointment that followed when it didn't happen was incredible.  While most people simply waited around for it to happen, some sold their property and possessions, and there were accounts of people leaping out of windows and trees to time their jump with the resurrection in the moments before midnight.  There were those who came to their senses when it was over, but there were literally thousands of others who continued to pursue setting dates, insisting that the book of Daniel accurately predicted the exact time of Jesus' second coming.  Profane chatter that spreads like gangrene.

From my perspective, what I see happening among Evangelicals, not only in the anti-vax, anti-mask positions, but in the whole fascination with and acceptance of a man who is evil incarnate in his behavior as much as any public figure has ever been in America, is another Millerite movement.  That's the only explanation for the gross inconsistency they demonstrate when it comes to the claims of their faith on issues such as this.  Profane chatter that spreads like gangrene.

How Democrats Can Win Back West Virginia...

...and maybe get better cooperation from Joe Manchin.  

Bernie Sanders Goes "All In" in West Virginia 

Bernie Sanders in Trump Country

Back in the early days of the Trump administration, after the primaries and the campaigns, Bernie Sanders made an appearance at a town hall in Welch, West Virginia with Chris Hayes from MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes."  Yes, in Welch, West Virginia, in McDowell County in the heart of the state's coal country, a county that voted 74% for Trump in 2016.  

The big issue was the overall impact of poverty on residents of rural America, but health care and the opoid crisis got a lot of attention.  And there were some things that came out of that meeting to which Democrats should have paid more attention.  

One of the panelists was a self-described Democrat who said he voted for Trump because of his promise to revive the coal industry.  

"McDowell County doesn't need to be left behind, we need to be included.  We need drug rehab.  We need it so badly.  We need jobs.  We need infrastructure.  We need drinking water that's clean.  We need housing. We need so many things.  West Virginia was built on the backs of McDowell County coal miners.  Now, whether people believe that or not, it's true.  This was the billion dollar coal fields.  The coal that came out of here made the steel across America, the tanks for the war. "

Honestly, I think that says it all.  West Virginia was once a reliably blue state because of miner's unions.  Any politician who demonstrates an understanding of that, regardless of their party affiliation, is going to at least have the ear of most of the voters.  Sanders certainly did, and it showed in the votes he got in the primary.  Trump didn't deliver on the coal industry revitalization, nor did he deliver on his jobs promise.  And the Build Back Better plan is predictably popular.  

A Hand Up, Not A Hand-out

West Virginians, for the most part, aren't looking for a hand out.  They'd rather work and earn a living.  The evidence of that is all around, everywhere you look.  The economy, dependent on coal, agricultural and the chemical industry everywhere except in the state's Eastern Panhandle, has been boom or bust since World War 2.  The steel industry, which once also boomed, is all but gone.  And as a result, the population has also declined.  It was one of the states which will lose a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 census, diminishing its political power.  

My parents were both natives of West Virginia.  My Dad is a naval veteran from a working class family whose Democratic party roots go back to Roosevelt and Truman.  Most of his family were union members and laborers in Clarksburg's carbon plant.  My mother was from Doddridge County, one of the most rural counties in the state, from a farm family.  She worked as a hotel housekeeper prior to getting married.  They knew the value of a dollar because they had to work for what they had.  They are the kind of people you still find everywhere in West Virginia.  They were Democrats until the day they died because they believed Democrats supported the working people.  

Democrats still do.  But somehow Trump stole that line and convinced people he did.  

The key to understanding West Virginia politics is to understand people like my parents, or like the man from Welch whom I quoted.  It's not so much about loyalty to party as it is loyalty to people.  Talk about jobs, about affordable health care, about helping people build their own lives and they'll listen. They are good people and they will give you everything they've got to help you out.  They know things are changing and they want the people of their state to have the same opportunity everyone else does.  Our federal government exists to help people and this is an opportunity for Democrats to win back the trust of West Virginia voters.

Most West Virginians have a lot of pride in their state and in their accomplishments.  I don't think they liked Trump as much as they disliked Hillary Clinton and they were still buying into the orange menace in 2020 because they think Democrats are now trying to put the coal industry out of business.  They're looking at their livlihood and it looked like Trump was interested.  He wasn't.  So if Build Back Better provides jobs, fixes infrastructure, and provides resources to help with rural health care and the opioid crisis, it has the potential to change enough voters' minds to make a difference.

Why Democrats Need Each Other and Need to Work Together

The fact that one of the most liberal senators in Congress was able to go to one of the most conservative counties in West Virginia and resonate with voters is a huge hint for Democrats.  Look at everything in that town hall.  Chris Hayes, who is one of my favorite journalists by the way, asked honest questions and got honest answers.  They found out that Trump wasn't exactly as universally popular as the vote totals he gets in the state might indicate.  They thought he would do more for them than Clinton, who more or less wrote the state off when she made herself an enemy of the coal industry.  

But Sanders hit the nail on the head, addressing the big issues to West Virginia voters.  Biden's proposal covers everything Sanders talked about and more. Manchin would be a shoe-in for re-election if he listened to his constituency and got on board with this proposal.  Outside interests must be pretty shrill to bring about this kind of resistance from him, regardless of positions he's taken in the past on spending.  Flood his office with contacts and we'll see if he moves.  If not, then someone else, probably with a lot of money, has his ear.  Sending Bernie Sanders to West Virginia, a liberal senator from Vermont, and having him resonate with the people in coal country would put a lot of pressure on Manchin.  

If it were me, and I really wanted to put the pressure on, I'd sit down with Bernie and have a conversation about doing a whistle-stop speaking tour of West Virginia.  He could start in Williamson, in Mingo County, which just lost its hospital, forcing people to drive an hour to the closest emergency room.  Then he could go back to Welch, where unemployment surged under Trump, mines closed and people are having a tough time.  And where the opioid epidemic is raging, as it is in Williamson as well.  Most rural counties either have struggling local hospitals or they've lost them.  Infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. So are water systems. It's clear this would be a major boost for the "Billion Dollar Coalfields" and beyond. 

Does West Virginia Really Matter?

The state has been in population decline since World War 2.  It is losing a congressional seat and has to redistrict for the next mid-term, so it has jut four electoral votes.  It would be easy just to recognize that it's now a deep red state and not bother with spending the time and energy it will take to get it back, since that looks like a difficult long shot.  

But I think it not only is worth it, but that there is an opportunity for Democrats to win in one election cycle and this is it.  Pay attention, get the right people involved and show them that this is more about them than it is the politics.  Talk like Democrats used to talk and work like Democrats used to work, with the working class.  It's about jobs, it's about infrastructure in places like Parkersburg, where the water system was poisoned by chemicals from the nearby Dupont plant that manufactured teflon.  They're looking for a hand up not a hand out.  

If you win in West Virginia, that means you win in a lot of other places, where the issues are similar.  Joe Biden and Build Back Better have the potential to make the Democrats the party of the people again, and that's how this gets done.  There's the evidence, go make it work.

Failure in Afghanistan Was Trump's Doing

Afghanistan was never given much thought by most Americans, ever.  Other than having to locate it on a map in a geography class, it was one of those remote, desert, Muslim countries that was way off the beaten path.  We got a few glimpses of it when the Soviets were in there because their failure was good propaganda for anti-Communist America.  But otherwise, it might as well been a country that existed on the dark side of the moon. 

Then Osama Bin Laden succeeded in taking down the World Trade Center.  Using Afghanistan as a base for his Al Qaida operations, that got the attention of the United States.  And it became one of the places on which to vent the frustration and anger caused by 9-11.  It also became a place for the military industrial complex to test weapons and spend money.  

And while the Bush administration frittered away its chance to actually take out Bin Laden by attacking Iraq for no good reason, Bush, pushed along by Dick Cheney, decided that Afghanistan would be a great place to try out our nation-building skills.  The Soviets failed to impose communism on the Afghans, who are actually a combination of tribal and Islamic religious sects, but the United States would not fail in the much more righteous cause of imposing Democracy on the Afghans.  Turns out they didn't want that, either. 

The Obama Administration was stuck with the job, and political consequences, of extracting the United States from Iraq, where it had also embedded itself in a fruitless, failed, nation-building, Democracy imposing occupation.  Personally, I had always hoped that President Obama would get us out of Afghanistan as well, especially after bringing Bin Laden to justice and finding out he wasn't in Afghanistan any more, but hiding out in the capital of one of our alleged "allies".  But the job in. Afghanistan was to help the struggling, "Democratically elected" government get to its feet, become legitimate among its own people, and build a military that could support it.  I think it was apparent, by the time President Obama came along, that neither of those things would happen, but he was the kind of President who followed the advice of his advisors. 

Trump Wanted Us Out

We knew that Trump wanted us out of Afghanistan because he mentioned it at moments convenient for him during the campaign in 2016, especially when he was attacking Jeb Bush.  Trump never really intended to do much of what he said, he could hardly remember all the rambling topics of conversations in his rallies, but he was at least consistent when this subject came up.  

I don't believe for a minute that Trump saw Afghanistan as anything more than another political issue to be used for his own advantage.  The freedom of the people there, the security of the country, he couldn't have cared less.  He weighted the issue for its political value and then acted based on what he thought would make him look best and to get out of it what he could.  It presented somewhat of a dilemma for him because many of those in his base still saw it as bulwark against communism and an anti-Russia, anti-China pro-democratic position.  But a clear majority of Americans saw it as a political, national security and financial liability and wanted out.  

So if you're going to leave, you want it to be a success.  The goals were pretty clear.  One, the country needed a viable military force loyal to the democratically-elected government.  Two, the government needed to be recognized by the people as legitimate.  The United States spent over $6 trillion on the military in Afghanistan.  Why did that money not go to providing the infrastructure that was needed for support?  Why were the maintenance equipment and the military bases not being equipped and Afghans trained to operate it on their own?  Trump had four years to do it, but not being the kind of President who listens to advice, and not having the slightest inkling of how to accomplish that, it did not get done.  And that failure, more than anything else, is the reason why the country collapsed so quickly as the Taliban advanced. 

Is there any record of any negotiation, meeting or diplomatic conference between the Trump administration and the democratically elected government of Afghanistan, corrupt as it was by the time Trump came along?  No, nothing.  The key piece of the "nation building" enterprise, the central government, did not know whether or not it even had an ally in the Trump administration.  And as it turns out, the big fat "deal maker" let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they counted for less than zero.  

As usual, Trump's foreign policy focused on dictatorship, oligarchy and the totalitarians and when he did start to move to shut things down, he went to the Taliban and negotiated the exit.  He wanted to do it in secret, inviting them to a private conference at Camp David, of all places!  His apologists claim that was just reality.  And they're probably correct in making that evaluation of the situation.  But the way he went about it was a diplomatic disaster.  That's when Afghanistan became a botch, a fiasco, a disaster.  

The withdrawal date was carefully planned so as not to cause Trump any political problems.  I'm sure he thought that August 30, 2021 would be in his second term where he wouldn't have to worry about what the voters thought about it.  And if not, it would be the can kicked down the road to trouble his successor.  The problem is that the only Americans who really care about the humanitarian side of all of this, and who are genuinely grieved that our country could not support and nurture a democratically-elected government in Afghanistan are liberals who are genuinely interested in democracy, not Trumpies who don't care.  So the media bashed Biden for it, even though he'd only been in office eight months and the deadline had already been negotiated.  

Setting the Record Straight

I really don't like to talk about the orange menace.  He needs to fade out of the media until he is charged with sedition or treason in the January 6th Trump insurrection or until his other illegal activities and tax evasion are on the radar screen again.  There are a lot of Americans who think he is indeed above the law and will not ever be brought to justice.  If that turns out to be true, it will be a failure of the Biden administration, the courts and our justice system.  

Biden should get credit for ending the Afghanistan nightmare, and for one of the most remarkable evacuations in history.  His supporters should be pushing back against the media and covering social media with his success.  It's time to write history as it should be done.  Trump did a whole lot of damage to this country, and Biden is the guy who can bring it back.  

So Go Ahead, Hold Joe Biden to a Higher Standard

No Matter What Happens in Congress, Biden-Harris Have Got Things Done 

Was it the late summer heat wave that affected the east coast?  

I must have missed it on my calendar, but apparently, it is now "Be nice to Joe and Kamala" week in the mainstream media.  After weeks of put downs, caustic criticism and taking a "We could have done this a lot better" attitude toward the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it looks like the Washington Post has decided to pick this moment for their commemoration of the week.  

Gene Robinson is a great writer and commentator.  It's pretty clear he hasn't bought into all the negative rhetoric coming out of the media in the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation, which will go down in history as a major political and military success.  I'm glad to see his words back in the Post.  I like this perspective and I think he's exactly right.  

Was It Just The Contrast? 

I will never forget that Saturday morning last November when the major news networks determined that Biden's lead in Pennsylvania would hold and made the projection that Joe Biden would be elected President of the United States.  It was James Carville and Nicole Wallace who kept my nerves in check that week with their assurances that this was all going to turn out fine.  Carville had already done an analysis of the Pennsylvania ballots left to be counted and had determined that if the trend held, Biden would come out on top by roughly 70,000 votes, and that there were not enough votes remaining in Arizona, looking at the trend, for Trump to catch up.  And, he said, he wouldn't be surprised if Georgia fell into the blue column by "a few thousand votes," were his words.  He usually gets these things right. 

I had just walked into the living room when the announcement came that all of the major networks had declared Biden the winner.  Within minutes, it seemed, the whole country was out in the streets and parks celebrating.  My wife burst in from the kitchen wanting to know what happened.  I couldn't answer because I was sitting on the couch sobbing.  It was quite an emotional experience and things would get more tense and nerve-wracking right up to the moment that Biden took the oath and Trump got on his plane and headed back to the swamp.  

After four years of lies, deceit, scams, conspiracy theories, vain, pointless babbling and gross incompetence in the Presidency, we suddenly had someone who knew what needed to be done and how to get it done.  For a while, I thought it was just the contrast between the two after the country emerged from its worst Presidency in history.  That was certainly easy to feel.  But the bottom line is that the Biden administration is headed by an extremely competent leader who has the kind of experience and knowledge it takes to be President of the United States.  His predecessor had none of that. 

So I agree with you, Mr. Robinson.  This is an accomplished and experienced Presidential administration that has indeed got things done.  Lots of things.  It has not been perfect, but it stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, who was a deplorable, immoral, incompetent, inept, completely selfish boob.  

Holding Biden to a Different Standard

Afghanistan seems to be the turning point.  Military leadership involved more or less vindicated Biden today, even if the media doesn't seem to be paying much attention to it.  If the whole withdrawal had been left completely up to the Biden Administration, it would have been done right.  But the deadline had been set, the negotiations had been completed and the wheels were already turning in Afghanistan.  Everything had been done by Trump, who selfishly made sure he set a date that would prevent him from worrying about any political consequences from the withdrawal.  He knew that he would either be in a second term, and consequently the withdrawal would no longer be an election "threat" for the other side, or that his successor would be in office and would have to deal with the absolute mess that his poor planning and terrible "deal making" would achieve.  

The whole situation was further complicated by the fact that after he lost the election, his administration refused to participate in any kind of transition with the Biden administration.  This brute cared so little about this country, its military, its people who were still in Afghanistan as military contractors, and the Afghans who were loyal to the US all the way through that he was willing to put all of that at a major risk of destruction to avoid any dirt getting on his cuffs.  We've come to expect this total and complete breakdown of moral character from Trump.  It's who he is, it's in his DNA.  Ask his niece.

That makes the whole Afghanistan episode an even bigger achievement and accomplishment and feather in the cap of Joe Biden than it might have been if he'd been able to negotiate and organize a real withdrawal that would have been in America's best interest.  If planning and setting the deadline had been up to Biden, it would have been done right all the way through.  As it was, he still pulled it off and that in and of itself is a testimony to the man's ability to serve in this office.  Biden is a man of character and since we've come to expect this of him, he gets held to a higher standard.  We expect Trump to fail and be selfish.  We expect Biden to succeed and think of the good of the country. 

I'm all for holding him to a higher standard.  That's why I voted for him and that's why the country overwhelmingly elected him.  

It's Not All About Them, It's About the Whole Country

So we have gone past all the doomsday predictions about the national debt and government spending.  That's one thing Trump did for us, point out what a bunch of bull all that was from Republicans while running up something like an $8 trillion debt and gutting the country's means of paying for it.  Now there are proposals on the table which will bring jobs and benefit the country along the same lines that the Affordable Care Act benefitted it.  It's popular, and that's the only reason Republicans are opposed to it.  Their obstructionism has cost the country and Joe Biden wants to bring the prosperity back.  

Well, he was part of a Presidential administration that helped stimulate one of the biggest economic comebacks in history, so why not?  

While they can be annoying and rattle off pointless political cotton candy, Republicans are currently affirming and providing flat out confirmation that the Biden administration is right on target to bring about this economic recovery.  They wouldn't be screaming so loud if they didn't see how the Democrats will benefit from this politically.  And in the long run, that's the motivation that will bring the recalcitrant Democrats along, muttering, fussing but still pushing it through in the long run.  They have no hope of returning to office if this infrastructure bill does not pass. 

So hold Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to a higher standard.  Their administration is getting things done and that is exactly why we elected them in the first place.