A journal for the purpose of discussion and expression aimed at speaking with grace, gentleness and respect
Thursday, October 3, 2024
The Best Use of Jack Smith's January 6th Trial Filing is in the Court of Public Opinion
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Gloom and Doom is Almost as Big a Lie as the Stolen Election, But This One is Told by an Evangelical
Baptist News Global: At 88, James Dobson Still Warning of Doom if a Democrat is Elected
Democratic party Presidencies have been characterized by economic prosperity, including job growth and low unemployment, wage growth, expansion of the GDP and the stock market. The last three, as a matter of fact, account for 95% of all jobs that the economy has created since the cold war, and that is an established, well-reported, fact.
Crime rates also seem to fall when there's a Democrat in the White House. During President Biden's term in office, it is also a documented fact that violent crime has reached a record 50-year low. That's right. In spite of all of the bluster from his predecessor, the crime rate fell under Joe Biden, and let's also look at why. It's called, providing resources for law enforcement. That's at all levels, by the way, not just funding police departments, but just about everything else benefits from what the federal government kicks in, because Democratic party Presidents tend to be more about using America's resources instead of trying to cut services that it is constitutionally obligated to provide.
Violent crime actually increased during all four years of the Trump administration, after a relatively steep decline under Obama's Presidency. The crime rate dropped significantly every year President Obama was in office, and reached an eight year low during the last year of his Presidency. It started up again when, well, you know what the rest of the story is. It went up again under Trump.
And in all of the categories of multiple social issues that more conservative Americans, including those who are Evangelical in their religious practice seem to think are the constitutional responsibility of the President of the United States, but which that office actually has almost nothing to do with, it's really a matter of opinion as to how Americans have fared. After a lot of talk, and more talk, about how we should have exited Afghanistan when we discovered that Osama Bin Laden was actually in Pakistan, it was a Democratic President who actually took the steps to get us out, and then engineered and negotiated an air lift that removed over 100,000 people from the country, and stopped the wasteful spending on a failed "nation building" project initiated by President Clinton's Republican successor.
Democratic party Presidents have been very good for America, very good indeed. That's because they tend to see government as being more "of, by and for the people" than Republicans do. And hey, nobody is perfect, regardless of their party affiliation. Democrats tend to run on the issues and look to resolve problems. Republicans tend to avoid issues, which is why they must create these doom and gloom, us versus them, divisive, negative campaigns to try and convince enough voters that Democrats are taking the country to hell in a handbasket because they themselves have nothing beneficial to offer them.
And one of those doom and gloom, negative, hateful naysayers is Dr. James Dobson.
Dobson Still Warning of Doom if a Democrat is Elected
Dobson is an Evangelical author, psychologist, and far right wing social reformer. He founded a ministry called "Focus on the Family," off which he prospered very well, and through which he marketed his books and media materials and became one of the most influential spokesmen for conservative social positions among the conservative Evangelical community in America. Focus on the Family included a daily radio program with a large, worldwide audience, with some television coverage as well.
Dobson was a strong advocate for what he termed "family values," which included an Evangelical Christian perspective on social issues like homosexuality, traditional gender roles, and marriage that is singular and heterosexual, based on his interpretation of the Bible. He was the most influential culture warrior among conservative Evangelicals for many years, managing resources to create large networks of lobbying organizations and groups that influenced politicians and in many cases, identified, supported and ran candidates for public office.
But he was no prophet.
He wound up coming into the period of his greatest prosperity during the Reagan and Bush years, and started hollering about what would happen when Democrats were elected President just before Bill Clinton entered the White House. None of Dobson's gloom and doom prognostications has ever come to pass.
There's an Old Testament verse that addresses this, which I will include here for those who use the Bible as support for any idea that fits their particular worldview.
You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?" If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be alarmed. Deuteronomy 18:21-22, NIV
I would say that Dr. Dobson's political prognostications, appearing in his October newsletter, deliberately political in their intent, are more conspiracy theories than they are accurate predictions. They represent no known reality and bear no factual support. Dobson has given himself over to hearsay and rumors, in the true spirit of conservative Evangelicalism.
Here's the Load of Bull
According to Dobson, if a Democrat is elected President, be warned:
- Tens of thousands of churches will have nowhere to meet after public schools ban them.
- Christian schools and adoption agencies will shut down.
- Secular bookstores will ban books from evangelical publishers.
- Christian stations won't be able to preach the Bible, and conservative talk stations will go belly up, or switch to country or gospel music.
- Homeschooling would be outlawed, public school students will receive mandatory gender identity training in first grade, the Boy Scouts will no longer exist, citizens will lose their guns, Christian non-profits will be threatened, gas will cost $7 a gallon, public school teachers will no longer lead students in the pledge of allegiance, and Russia will hit Israel with a nuclear bomb.
First Trump, Now Vance, Flips on Abortion Rights, Selling Out Their Evangelical Constituency
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
It's Fall and We Need to Feel the Chill in the Air...
I'm well aware that daytime temperatures are still climbing above 100 degrees out west, in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and poor Laughlin and Bullhead City. But it is October, and whether the weather is showing a little bit of a fall chill or not, I think some Democrats are in need of a little bit of one.
This election season is intense. We know what is at stake. We saw this man serve in the Presidency for four years and it was a disaster. Then we saw January 6th, and we know he has no respect for the law, the Constitution, anything, in fact, except his own interests, all of which involve money. We know that American democracy as we know it will be destroyed systematically by letting him back in the White House.
We are aware of his attempts to suppress the vote, and of all of the potential damage that will be done to our country if he is elected. He has threatened, bullied, and his antics have attracted media attention like no other subversive personality in American history. The fact that he is now the three time nominee of the Republican party, twice impeached, with felony convictions, awaiting sentencing and two trials is an indication that something is seriously wrong with our politics, and the only fix we have is to vote him down once again, this time in such a way that a clear message is sent to the GOP. Don't do this again!
And that has created a level of political stress like I've never seen before. We're stressing out at everything, we're envisioning doom and gloom scenarios as if there is no hope, we're grasping at straws, fearing the worst, trembling at every blip in the polls, scanning them for information that, frankly, isn't there and that they're not going to provide.
It's time to sit back, take a deep breath, let it out, and relax. Chill for a moment. Breathe in again, and relax. There, I hope that feels better.
She's going to win this. It should make all of us feel better realizing that Biden was going to win this, too. How do I know? Well, not by worrying and hand wringing over the polls.
Do some observing. What's out there? A Republican candidate who is so desperate, that he's not even paying attention to what he, or his running mate says. It's a scattershot attempt at trying to pull his base together. He's lost a lot of support along the margins, a lot of those voters who, because of party affiliation and some sort of vague sense of identity that goes with it, were going to hold their nose and vote Republican, but are giving that a long, hard look themselves. In spite of some billionaire PAC money, they aren't finding it easy to gain contributions, leaving Trump to grift for money by selling stuff.
Harris, on the other hand, took in half a billion in September, and the Democrats have enough to make it rain in all 50 states. Her poll numbers, for those who take that seriously, have increased ever since she's been in the race, and if the media is loathe to make known the fact that she is consistently leading in the battleground states as well as nationally, they've had to report her approval rating, double digits ahead of his, and her rising numbers on the only two issues where he has an advantage at all, though not enough to win it, the economy and the border.
She's offering realistic solutions to problems. He's whining about them.
We're stressing about everything. There's shooting in the Middle East and we're stressed over how that will affect the election. There's a hurricane that turned into a tropical storm that devastated the hollers of the Appalachian South and we're stressed about how that effects the election. A deep red Republican pollster defies the majority and becomes an outlier in Trump's favor and there's panic.
Relax. It's going to be OK.
The fact that so many Democrats, independents and Republicans who have publicly declared they're abandoning Trump are worrying about this election is a good sign, and an indicator that we are going to have a huge turnout. That's a good sign. Heck, having celebrity endorsements helps, too, it all goes together.
Heck, even a couple of the composite pollsters, usually dark and gloomy in their forecasts, are thinking that Democrats have a better chance at keeping control of the senate than we may have thought.
So relax, lay down, take a nap, get up and play a game on your computer. It'll help big time. Things are looking good, don't worry about it.
Leaving American Evangelicalism Behind, With All its Flawed Politics and False Theology
Salon: An Exvangelical on the Implosion of His Faith
"Theology is not necessarily the defining characteristic of evangelicalism. Whiteness, capitalism and power helped to develop an evangelical industry. The theology takes a back seat. That may not be the case for every single person that uses the term "evangelical." But conservative, white Evangelicals act in a particular way and that deserves our attention. It deserves to be criticized within those terms, as much as whether they live up to their espoused theological beliefs.--Blake Chastain, podcast host, author, Exvangelical and Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement That's Fighting Back.
My own experience involved being raised in an Evangelical church. Growing up, church was something that happened every week for as long as I remember, and that included the nursery and toddler class in the small, Southern Baptist churches where my parents were members. And because it was a routine, and was a large part of our family life, it included Sunday school and worship on Sunday morning, a class in church polity and doctrine called "Training Union" on Sunday evening, followed by another worship service, and then missions groups and prayer meeting on Wednesday night.
When I went to college, choosing a university that was affiliated with the state branch of the Southern Baptist denomination, I discovered quite a contrast between the doctrine and theology taught there, based on the historical and cultural contexts of virtually every part of the Bible, and the simple, folk religion I had grown up with in the church, which included the required intellectual assent to specific doctrines that were "must haves" in order to be truly Christian, according to them. That included accepting the belief that the text of the sixty-six books accepted as the "Protestant" Bible were without error in transmission and infallible in being the "sole authority for faith and practice," interpreted from a literal rendering of the Biblical text.
So all of the history behind the writing of those books of the Bible, the myriads of differing cultural contexts which occurred while it was being written, is all basically ignored by a literal reading of the text in English, even King James English, which some conservatives believe is the original language of the Bible, and which large swaths of conservative, fundamentalist churches teach is "the preserved word of God in English." So, in most conservative, Evangelical churches in the United States, the theology and doctrine upon which the practice of Christianity is based is not the Bible itself, but on the effects and circumstances of American cultural influences, especially those resulting from revivalist movements like the two "Great Awakenings" and various movements that sprang up during the westward expansion of the country.
No Surprises Here, That Superstitious Folk Religion is Connected to Populist Politics
Truth, in the form of objective facts, is the enemy of superstition. The Southern Baptists among whom I grew up had a strong, anti-intellectual bias, which eventually became focused against its own colleges and universities, most of which had been founded to provide an educated clergy for areas of the frontier where there was a huge need. Challenging commonly held beliefs and superstitions in local churches is not easy, especially when the superstitious are the ones who are in control of the church, and some of them sit on the trustee boards that run the colleges, universities and seminaries.
The bottom line is that it has become more about the power to control than it has been over theology and doctrine, which doesn't interest the average pew sitter in the church. A lot of pastors have been moved along to a different career by elder and deacon leadership in the churches who terminate their tenure for the slightest hint of educated liberalism. The colleges and universities have been able to survive, largely by changing their governance structure to self-perpetuating boards of alumni who protect the school from conservatives intent on enforcing their own doctrinal positions. A few schools haven't been so lucky, but most weren't really dependent on the financial contribution from the denomination anyway, a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue they needed to remain viable, which comes from students paying tuition and from alumni donors who are loyal to the school and who have an education that helps them get past religious superstition.
But, it's those engaged in the practice of Christian folk religion who also connect with populist politics. The distrust of institutions is something they have in common, the belief that the world around them is going to hell in a handbasket and they must stick together and try to fight it off, whether it's liberalism in the form of educational institutions, or liberalism in the form of government.
Don't Believe for One Minute That Trump Believes Any Religious Doctrine or Cares About Those Who Support Him That Do Believe
Trump's lifestyle is his clearest expression of his complete and total denial of any kind of religious belief, Christian, cult or pagan. There's no evidence here of his belief in the existence of any kind of god, because he elevates himself to the highest place of importance in his universe, and that's what he cares about. If he has to give away a few insignificant political points, like supporting the religious right's opposition to abortion, he'll do that as long as he benefits the most in return.
He's shown some willingness to throw his Evangelical supporters under the bus as he has realized his stances on abortion, and his helping by appointing the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, have cost him large numbers of votes. He's also openly denied having anything to do with Project 2025, though his fingerprints are all over it, because when it leaked out prior to the RNC, it also wound up costing him votes, ultimately a lot of them. It hasn't really dented his MAGA base much, but he can't win on the strength of their votes alone, and he has lost a significant number of votes among independents, and among members of his own party who aren't so much in the MAGA base.
He basically figured out, once he got politically conservative Evangelicals in his back pocket, that their "theology" is cultural, not doctrinal. "Whiteness," and the idea that the United States was once a Christian nation that must be "take back" are their theological and doctrinal pillars, not anything that Jesus said or taught, is where they invest their faith practice. And they've come up with several points aimed at nullifying Jesus and putting Trump in his place, including the cliche, "God sometimes uses evil men to achieve his purposes." That's theological heresy.
In the Christian gospel, Jesus is the man God sent to achieve his purposes. Claiming that Trump is doing this is idolatry, by definition, but those who make the claim know nothing of the significance or importance of this theological point. They are making Trump into their savior, which is a denial of who Jesus was, something the Apostle John calls "antichrist." [I John 4:1-3]
Joining the Ranks of the Exvangelicals
For me, personally, setting aside the theocratic heresies of populist Evangelicalism occurred way back in the 1980's, when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were pushing their own organizations, or "ministries" as they call their profit-making enterprise, to get right wing conservative Evangelicals to vote for Ronald Reagan. It was pretty easy to see that what they were claiming to offer wasn't Christian, especially since Reagan was no saint compared to his opponent, Jimmy Carter, who was perhaps the single most genuine, sincere practicing Christian ever to occupy the White House.
It's a good feeling to wake up in the morning, go to bed at night, and not be worried about the eternal destiny of my soul based on the way I've chosen to cast my vote.