What's so fascinating about a television drama that focuses on the police and prosecution aspect of our justice system? It's the creativity of the writers who came up with all kinds of twists and turns, a show that is never predictable, turning scenes that would be unimaginable in real life into drama that captivates viewers. It exercises the mind, trying to follow along, picking up early hints of where things will go wrong, and then turning the plot in a different direction. Over the course of multiple seasons and multiple episodes, the writers always managed to come up with something fresh, exciting, and they also manage to throw in their opinion of the politics going on at the time.
I don't think the imaginative writers of Law and Order could have ever written a scenario with as many twists, turns and as much drama as this second Trump administration has turned out to produce. There is no way the most creative drama writer could have come up with a scenario in which a large enough segment of the population of the United States would elect a President whose entire public life has been a demonstration of deviant sexual behavior, narcissism, corruption, dishonesty and psychotic emotional disability.
Into this mess drops the news that the man who is now President of the United States may have been deeply involved with a notorious pedophile in the sex trafficking of minors, and subsequently had something to do with his alleged suicide while in the direct custody of the Department of Justice during Trump's first term in office.
To quote what has become a common byline these days, "You can't make this stuff up."
The fact that someone like this has supporters at all, aside from having enough to get elected President, is a sign of serious dysfunction in American culture and society. Things are breaking down, and that includes our educational system from top to bottom, and the influence of more orthodox forms of Christian practice as conservative Evangelicals become more or a pseudo-Christian, right wing extremist political cult.
The safeguards that the founders put in the constitution to protect the democratic republic that it created were based on their assumption that the American people could be trusted when it came to judging the kind of character in people that was a necessary qualification to serve in public office. They could not imagine that a corrupt, dishonest psychopath would ever earn the trust of enough of the population to make it to public office. Those of dishonest and untrustworthy character who did actually get elected did so because they managed to do a good job of hiding their corruption, and deceiving people about their character, not flaunting it or making it their trademark.
The World has Turned Upside Down
The idea that Trump is "God's man" for somehow restoring America to its "conservative, traditional values" would be laughable, given the man's complete animosity toward God, exhibited in his lifestyle. Those who have made this claim, mainly from the Charismatic and Pentecostal branch of conservative Evangelicalism, are obviously depending on complete ignorance of the Christian gospel, and of Biblical history in general. They want to follow Trump, so they are manipulating unconnected theological concepts from completely different paradigms to make it sound "prophetic."
It's simply redefining the terms "good" and "evil."
The claim is that God sometimes uses "imperfect" men to achieve his will and purposes, and like King David, whose moral behavior included some spectacular failures, Trump is one of those imperfect people.
Well, no.
First of all, the United States is not a theocracy, and there's no comparison between the Jewish kingdom of Israel, and subsequently of Israel and Judah, in the Old Testament, and the United States, which is not a theocracy and is not in a covenant relationship with God. In Christian theology, attested to by both major apostles Peter and Paul, all government exists because of God's authority, and none have been given any kind of evangelistic, theocratic mission and purpose. That exists in the spiritual realm, which is evangelistic, and is where the purpose is fulfilled for which God made ancient Israel a theocracy.
In order for Trump to be "God's man," in a legitimate comparison to King David, he would need to experience the full force of conviction for his sinful life, recognize the power of Jesus Christ as the savior of humanity from its sin, turn in full submission and repentance to receive grace that brings forgiveness, and then, live a life fully submitted to the will of God, which purifies.
It's the thought of Trump submitting to anything that's laughable. He has openly denied his need for forgiveness because, in his words, "I have done nothing that requires God's forgiveness.
So he is not God's man at all, he is, by definition, a blasphemer of the Holy Spirit and anti-Christ.
His political clout being used by Christian nationalists undermines their credibility. Choosing a leader who has no respect for the values, principles and practices of the Christian faith, and who, in fact, denies them and proclaims his own religions beliefs are superior, says that the theology, doctrine and practice of Christianity are not what they are trying to establish. They're trying to ride the coattails of a billionaire to their own millions and billions.
American Patriotism Has Turned Upside Down
Do we have such contempt for our Constitution, and for the democratic republic that it establishes, that we would elect someone as dishonest, and as ideologically incompatible with American idealism as Trump is? Something in this country has gone horribly wrong if there are enough Americans who are simply not able to see how corrupt and evil this guy is, and from his first four years in office, how unqualified and inept he is as a leader.
The value that we are missing, collectively, as a nation, is integrity.
The checks and balances aren't working because those safeguards that were in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening have failed, since they require a level of integrity to work properly. That was something the founding fathers seemed to think would never be lacking in this society and culture.
One of the powers of the President is the appointment of judges to the federal court system. The appointments are for the rest of the individual's lifetime, until they determine to retire, or die. The safeguard in place to make sure these appointments are fair and non-partisan, and will uphold the law rather than play politics, is that they must be approved by the Senate. But that safeguard has been corrupted by a Republican majority that has determined to follow the President's agenda in appointing judges who will serve their partisan insterests rather than uphold the law.
Trump, and his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, corrupted the Supreme Court by making their appointments based on political, rather than legal, qualifications. From Bush we got John Roberts, the weakest, least effective, most partisan chief justice ever to serve on the court. And we got Samuel Alito, corrupt in his willingness to be affected by various forms of unethical behavior--we call it bribery--and also a right wing idealogue. And we got Clarence Thomas, more affected by bribery than any previous justice ever has been. From Trump, we got the college drunk and playboy rapist Bret Kavanaugh, another right wing activist, Neil Gorsuch, and the darling of the Project 2025 Christian nationalist influencers, Amy Coney Barrett.
So the check and balance provided by the Supreme Court is no longer in place. We have a court that has disgraced itself by its partisan bias.
Judges who are committed to serving Trump's interest and who are chosen for their loyalty to him rather than their legal expertise and respect for the rule of law have now "Cannonized" the federal court system. That's a name used this way in reference to Aileen Cannon, a federal appeals court justice appointed by Trump who is the poster child of federal judicial corruption.
Lifetime appointments, which are the result of a high level of integrity and trust assumed as essential parts of a workable justice system, have become the biggest obstacle to draining this swamp of corruption. It takes what is seen as an impossible two thirds vote of the senate to remove corrupt justices, something unattainable now, simply because the integrity and trust required no longer exists among Republicans.
Ramping Up the Opposition
It may be anecdotal, but I have time, commuting to and from work, to catch a rundown on progressive talk radio that may be revealing the level of frustration with Trump, not only from the rank and file Democrats who are opposed to him, but from others who were on the fringe, and who didn't have the ability to discern just how inept, incompetent, incapable of holding office and corrupt he is, and may have voted for him because of media misinformation, or their own stupidity [and yes, that's what I mean]. I'm hearing, on both local programs, such as Joan Esposito and Patty Vasquez here at WCPT in Chicago, and on programs like Thom Hartmann and Stephanie Miller, a call for Trump opposition to get out of the "gather for a rally and let's count the numbers and make some speeches for local news channels that cover it" approach, to ramp up the pressure in specific places where it will be noticed, felt, and where it may get more of a reaction in response.
There's a bit more of a shrill tone in the disgust and frustration with the fact that Trump has not faced a direct confrontation, nor had to deal with the opposition directly, beyond early morning rants on his own social media site, and his responses to perceived criticism that go off on conspiracy theorizing and unrelated tangents.
We've never had to deal with the kind of corruption and attempts to dismantle the Constitution like we are seeing now with Trump. We have far too many Americans who are not educated enough or informed enough to know their own history, and to know what democracy looks like, or to recognize an open attack on it. We've reached a level of prosperous self-interest that has induced national apathy, turning away from unjustified wrong committed against others, simply because it isn't being committed against us. We have no moral standards or ethical convictions. And so we are willing to let some people be tormented in order to protect ourselves from the same torment. At least, for a while, anyway.
So the frustration level is rising. It's the extremist right that has shown a willingness to violate the rule of law, disrespect the principles of the Constitution, and use illegal violence, including a full blown attack on the Capitol, to try and get their way. The fact that the left, with the organized groups like Indivisible, gathering a growing group of marchers and protesters, has shown restraint when Trump and the Republicans have pulled their shenanigans is a remarkable demonstration of respect for the rule of law.
I hope that holds, that it continues, and that we can restore constitutional democracy and clean the house without violence, and within the boundaries of the rule of law. The effects of this kind of political oppression, however, are only beginning. As the real effects of the crazy, back and forth, tariff today, no tariff tomorrow, up and down, indecisiveness on economic policy, like inflation and unemployment, begin to rise, so will the frustration.
For Republicans, the result was a violent, deadly attack on the Capitol. For Democrats and Trump opposition, so far, it's been a call for leadership change in Washington, and for the protests to become more directed at those who are prodding the frustration, including the Supreme Court. We lost our chance to change this court constitutionally when we had a majority in both houses and the White House, between 2020 and 2022. That's one of the reasons why those who are calling for leadership change, like David Hogg, are raising lots of money while the status quo at the DNC is not. It why people like Pete Buttigieg, Zoran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are drawing crowds, interest and support.
Once They Get Back in Control...
How often was it said, in the waning days of the first Trump administration, that if they were ever allowed to get back in control, they would change the rules to make it far more difficult to pry them out, or to stop their agenda, and we would have a real mess on our hands.
Those were, for the most part, just words. Except, now we are here, and those words were accurate.
When we had the chance to change the rules to make it more difficult for them to do it, if and when they got back into power, we didn't do a damn thing. We played the game in Washington by the same old rules it has always been played by, giving the other side advantages they didn't earn at the voting booth.
Now, they are changing the rules, and they are working in every devious possible way to make sure than an election no longer has the ability to bring the kind of change we are looking for. When Steve Bannon proclaims that the "big beautiful bill" is going to cost Republicans 40 seats in the House, that is a signal to those working behind the scenes to use whatever power they have at their disposal, including control over the balloting in a majority of counties in the United States, to make sure that they are able to cheat in every possible way. Trump has told us how they are doing it, by whining about how he believes the Democrats did it to him.
And they know we're not going to do much about it. Why? Well, we never have. There's enough evidence from 2024 to indicate that they probably succeeded in throwing out, or not counting, several million votes that might have made the difference. But there was no challenge offered to this at all, and they've taken this as a sign that we're not going to complain when they do it again. And they will.
So if we happen to be fortunate enough to get back some of what we have lost, instead of playing the old game, we need to turn the tables and use whatever power we have to our full and complete advantage. Those who want to maintain the status quo are going to learn the hard way. Not succeeding in being able to make progress, as soon as 2026, will lead to an awful alternative that I don't even want to think about.
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