Ultimately, "We the People" Are Going to Have to Clean up the Trump Mess Ourselves

For the first time in American history, a former President has been indicted in federal court.  Evidence, mountains of it in fact, has been produced which indicates that former President Donald J. Trump committed multiple felonies upon his departure from office.  That comes on top of mountains of evidence of his crimes that were uncovered by the Mueller investigation, which his own attorney general refused to prosecute, effectively elevating an American citizen above the law.  Yet to come, the mountains of evidence related to his refusal to participate in a peaceful transfer of power, but instead, tried to corrupt the process with fake electors and a riot to disrupt the ballot counting process.  

How did such a person ever get elected President of the United States in the first place?  How is it that one of our two major political parties failed to properly vet their candidate and instead, let him bribe and buy his way to the White House?  The Republican Party sacrificed all of its values and principles to let this man, devoid of morality or conscience, be their candidate, and helped him get into the White House.  It is a corruption that goes way beyond anything we have ever seen before.  

We've had hints and flashes of it in the past, and we ought to know by now that America is not immune to the corruption of its democratic government.  But within one of our major political parties, having the power to set the agenda, control the judiciary and take a shot at permanently disabling the will of the people expressed through the ballot box overcame the idealism upon which this country was founded, and that allowed a heartless, immoral demagogue to become President of the United States with the goal of using the power of the office to set up an autocracy of the rich and dismantle the people's government. 

A System That Runs on Trust 

In a constitutional democracy which depends on the rule of law, the level of trust required to make government work is so high that there are no constitutional restrictions preventing a criminal from running for the nation's highest and most powerful office.  There are certain crimes which make individuals ineligible for the presidency, but those were only added to the constitution after a devastating civil war opened up cracks in a system that hadn't been tested up to that point.  

So it is possible for someone who has been indicted and convicted of crimes, even felonies, to continue to run for public office and be elected.  In Trump's case, the indications are that some of the indictments could fall under the fourteenth amendment restrictions on his ability to run for public office.  It is even more likely that the January 6th investigations, which include the attempts to subvert the electoral vote process and the violent Trump Insurrection against Congress, would contain the kind of charges that, if convicted, would render him ineligible for election as President.  

But we can't count on that.  

Like most wealthy, influential individuals in this country who live above the law and get away with it, Trump has a cluster of lawyers who will find every loophole and possible weakness in the law to delay and obfuscate everything he can.  And we know, because he has openly declared it, that if this goes on past the nominating conventions and into the election itself, that if he gets elected to the Presidency, he will take the constitition out of its secure case in the National Archives, and burn it.  

So it is up to We, The People 

It is up to us. 

While we still have the power, we need to use it.  Every person in this country who sees this for what it is, is old enough to vote and is eligible to register, must do their patriotic duty.  It is very clear that Trump does not have the kind of public support necessary to pull this off, and must depend on trickery, deception and lies to win.  He has advisors who explored every possible avenue of the use of his presidential power, from attempts to subvert the electoral vote with fake certificates for unelected, ineligible electors, to exploring the possibility of declaring a national emergency and martial law to stay in power.  

With all the noise he and his gang made about the election being "stolen," I am not convinced that they didn't try to stuff the ballot boxes themselves.  There's plenty of evidence that they made multiple attempts to supress voter turnout, and they put out calls for "observers" who were ready to do what was necessary to alter the vote counts.  They paid people to pose as "eyewitnesses" and give false testimony to "hearings" which they goaded Republican lawmakers into conducting, to look "official."  We had better be ready for an even greater volume of this kind of thing happening in 2024.  

We need to generate a voter turnout for President Biden like this country has never seen.  Trump must not only be defeated, but for justice to be done, he must be completely repudiated.  And not only does that mean getting every potential Democrat and Independent on board, it means working on Republicans who have been brainwashed and duped by this selfish, immoral, valueless demagogue. We are going to have to figure out how to politically convert those who are capable of reason.  There are plenty of them out there, my best guess is that half of the Republican Party is waiting for someone to step up and take the banner of their party out of Trump's hands.  And among that segment of the party, there are enough who are capable of seeing reality, and the genuine threat to this country's existence that is posed by Trump, to take him out at the ballot box.  

This is Our Call to Arms

Disloyalty and unpatriotic "UnAmericanism" has become the theme of the Republican Party.  You don't hear Trump's apologists talking about trusting the court system, in which he is "innocent until proven guilty," with the outcome of these indictments, you hear them talking about their NRA membership and their guns.  That tells you that there are people within their ranks who are enemies of the United States of America.  They are developing strategy that is not aimed at defending Trump against the charges, but at subverting the process itself, which is unpatriotic and unAmerican.  

The founding fathers built a constitutional democracy that allowed for political change to occur every time an election was held, because the power to govern is derived from the people themselves, not from some privileged monarchy or oligarchy whose entitlement is based on the protection of something other than basic human rights.  It is time for us to use that power.  There's every possibility that a foreign power, an enemy, is behind the ideology that is pushing the Republican Party's agenda, and we must defend ourselves against it with the best weapons our founding fathers gave us to fight with:  Our free speech and the right to vote.  

We can no longer sit silent, or keep our conversations to ourselves.  We need to show up at town hall meetings, city council meetings, school board meetings, and call this evil out whenever it shows up.  We need to pick up the phone and burn up the lines to talk shows and public forums, dominated by extremists, prepared with facts, and prepared to be censored and cut off, but ready to defend our country.  And we need to be active in getting other people to make the effort to go to the polls, or to fill out their mail-in ballot.  

Americans in the late 1700's were called on to defend their freedom from the tyranny of monarchy.  In the mid-1800's it was to defend people from the tyranny of slavery.  Now, we are being called on to defend our country from the tyranny of oligarchy.  Our job is clear, to make sure that we have a free and fair election and to make sure that we repudiate the attempts to subvert this country.  

A False Prophet Dies. Do His False Prophecies Die With Him?

 CNN Story on the Death of Pat Robertson

Columbia Journalism Review: We Report (what Pat Robertson said) You Decide

You may say to yourself, "How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?"  If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken.  The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.  Deuteronomy 18:21-22, NRSV 

Quoting an Old Testament passage for the purpose of discussion, without consideration of its historical context, doesn't produce accurate or reliable Biblical principle.  However, since many Evangelical Christians are quite prolific at developing strange doctrinal or theological perspectives by quoting the Old Testament out of its context, as a "verse by verse" holy rule book, even though verses are not part of the original text and are reference points and not complete thoughts, and they do interpret the Bible, Old and New Testament equally as a holy rule book, I've cited this passage here as we look back on the life of Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition and, along with the late Jerry Falwell, one of the most influential Evangelical Christians in the movement to merge extremist right wing politics with conservative Christian doctrine. 

I'm not an admirer of Robertson.  I think that he was an insincere phony whose background and experience taught him how to use Christian faith to make himself filthy rich with the dollar and dime contributions of hard working, uneducated people and older widow ladies.  He, along with others of his ilk, like Jerry Falwell, know how to capitalize on people's biases and prejudices and make money off of it.  Frankly, I had difficulty sitting through a session of the "700 Club," with Robertson's ingratiating smile, smarmy attitude and insults of the intelligence of his viewers by his assertion of provable falsehoods and assumptions as facts.   

A Cross Between Biblical Style Prophecy and Political Predictions Based on Observation

Robertson never put himself in the position of being accused of being a false prophet.  His manner of prediction of future events always included a way out, sounding a lot like a prophet, falling back on the standard disclaimer that "God told me this was so," but then, when whatever he said turned out to be inaccurate or flat out false, denying he said exactly what he did, or finding some explanation to clarify why he might not have understood exactly what God meant.  

One of my mother's good friends planned her day around the schedule for the 700 Club broadcast.  Her conversation, increasingly filled with "Pat Robertson said...." as a means of justifying her belief, got to the point where I couldn't tolerate it and if she was around, I would leave the room.  I never knew what my Mom thought about all of that, though she was a soap opera, talk show junkie and never watched right wing religious television.  One day, she pointed out one of Robertson's false predictions to her friend, and to my surprise, her friend responded by saying that she'd quit watching, not admitting that the predictions were provably false, but that the mailings requesting money for various "sponsored" projects lacked credibility.  

Making predictions like George W. Bush having the opportunity to nominate large numbers of conservative justices are not prophetic, nor are they even surprising observations.  Of course he would be able to do so.  However, sometimes he got the obviously predictable things wrong, such as Bush being able to bring about major social security reform, or experience a string of legislative victories.  Robertson missed the obvious blue wave that occurred in 2006, effectively ending the Bush administration's meager legislative influence, going silent on the outcome of the election when it became obvious that Democrats were headed to a landslide, and turned to predictions of gloom and doom, like major terrorist attacks on the US, or a horrific tsunami hitting the "liberal northeast," as a punishment from God.  Of course, he was wrong.  

The Columbia Journalism Review does an excellent job of pointing out just how ridiculous Robertson was in his predictions, and I highly recommend reading it.  

So What is his Legacy

The problem with televangelists and phony preachers like Robertson is that their viewership and the money flow depends on their personality.  When they pass off the scene, their followers scatter, mostly to other phonies and religious charlatans.  Those left behind desperately try to hang on to the cash flow and keep the business enterprise going, but the attraction, built around the personality of the founder, slips away pretty quickly.  Falwell left his empire in the hands of his sons, one of whom was never on board with the Christian aspect of it, but was more interested in the business and money making enterprise, and blew it in a scandal.  

There are people at the 700 Club who have the management skills and expertise in deceiving a large television audience into giving up their hard earned cash, but Robertson played on emotional vulnerabilities to gain the trust of viewers to the point where facts no longer mattered and Pat's utterances were the measure of all truth.  He convinced people that God doesn't speak to anyone else like he spoke to himself, and there's no one left to trust.  He enjoyed a high, lavish lifestyle on their dime all his life and now he's dead and doesn't care anymore.  

Whatever your religious beliefs or faith, Pat Robertson was an evil man.  From a Christian perspective, that means he was inspired by the spirit of this world, characterized by belief in the Devil, or Satan, a fallen angel, an anti-Christ whose deviousness is the opposite of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  If that's not your religious perspective, then he's just a devious, twisted, psychologically cunning and conniving representation of inhuman evil who inspired hate-filled bigotry in millions of people claiming to be Christians.  Whether he suffered from grandiose delusions, or was just a deceitful parasite, he contributed to the fallen image of Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity in this country.  

A Non-Pundit's Observations of How the 2024 Presidential Election is Shaping Up

My background with politics and political predictions comes from being a high school civics teacher for some 20 years.  It was always fun to challenge my classes to predict the outcome of elections.  Students go with their heart, tend to believe that everyone else thinks like they do, and that gives them lower odds of getting it right.  I had quite a string of accurate predictions because I knew a lot of the more accurate and reliable sources, which I would show them after making a correct prediction.  

With round-the-clock news channels competing for viewers, a plethora of trivia floods the pundit forecasts and predictions and the experts become mired in minutia (sorry, I could not resist showing off my vocabulary skills) making it difficult to tell what they are really predicting.  And of course, this is sprinkled with sensational headlines aimed at ratings rather than providing voters with an accurate election forecast.  

I'm not going out on any limbs here, and welcome readers to compare my notes to their own, and to those of the pundits.  Hang on to it and come back with a comment when the election doesn't turn out like I said it would, I don't really care.  But I hope you have more fun reading my comments than those of the professionals who are paid to be deliberately elusive and vague.  

The Democratic Candidate and How the Party Shapes up in 2024

I'll write one brief paragraph for the two Democrats who are considered candidates for the party nomination in 2024 who aren't Joe Biden.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, has a recognizable name and is an anti-vaccine nut.  And that's about it.  Self-help guru Marianne Williamson is probably less popular this time around than she was the last time.  And that's about it on her.  I doubt that either of them even breaks the fundraising threshold to qualify for debates.  They're gone after the Iowa Caucuses and South Carolina Primary. 

President Biden has achieved a leadership threshold that even his age can't minimize as a disadvantage.  He was clearly the man for the hour, and aside from the concerns about his age, which shouldn't be concerns with Kamala Harris as Vice-President, he will coast to the Democratic nomination without spending campaign money.  He can sit back and watch the Republican field dwindle down, hopefully helped along by indictments and a conviction or two of the orange headed buffoon, which will throw the GOP nomination into confusion.  OK, maybe that's wishful thinking, since Trump has eluded justice for all his life.  But Biden will be nominated by acclamation.  

Biden wins the popular vote big, adds North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and Florida to his electoral vote totals. He'll get Florida thanks to the work of its Governor, the Democrats get control of the House back by somewhere around 22 seats, and pick up at least two more Senate seats, including Missouri, and from what early polls are looking like, Florida.  Iowa and Ohio are both matters of investment for Democrats.  Sherrod Brown running for re-election makes Biden carrying the state feasible in 2024, and Iowa is a matter of campaign finance investment and turnout. We can talk later about whether Trump and George Santos wind up in the same federal prison. 

And on the Republican Side 

The assumption is that the orange headed buffoon will once again elude justice, and will wind up getting the GOP nomination for President.  The fact of the matter is that the field shaping up against him is pretty lame, but he's not completely a shoo-in.  Republicans have lost their collective minds over this incompetent, inept boob, but he's never actually picked up the majority of votes and I think, and all of the evidence supports my thoughts, that he's on a steep, downhill slide now.  An increasing number of Republicans are done with him, he'll have a tough time convincing independent voters to support him and unless he figures out a way to cheat, which can be counted on, he stands no chance at re-election, and I'll honestly say that his odds to win the GOP nomination are not up to the 50-50 threshold. 

If there is justice, which would involve grand jury indictments and a DOJ prosecution in trials that they push to pre-election dates, which is my devout hope, then Trump will be ineligible to run and the GOP will be in hopeless confusion about which of its current array of weak candidates will get the nomination.  

Well, here goes.  

Nikki Haley is one of two current GOP candidates who has, in my opinion, the best chance of unseating Trump.  Her biggest obstacle is the misogynistic perspective of many in her party when it comes to women in leadership positions and she is, in their eyes, also a "foreigner." In terms of image, she is articulate and can show flashes of educated intelligence, which gives her the chance to bury the buffoon in a debate, if she will take that chance and be honest.  She's been on again, off again as far as Trump goes.  One of the more "left wing" things she's done is get rid of the Confederate battle flag flying over the South Carolina capitol.  She's kind of a mess on policy, depending on the audience, can be a flaming right winger or a moderate, depending on who she's talking to. She has no chance against Biden. 

Mike Pence must be dreaming.  I can't think of a niche constituency in the GOP that would find him an attractive candidate, and his poll numbers, less than 3% at the present time, are already an indication of doom for this vanilla zero of a candidate.  Indiana didn't want him back as governor when Trump snatched him up to run on the ticket in 2016, and his lack of integrity in crawling onto that ticket and accepting the nomination of a corrupt, worldly politician nullifies his claims to Evangelical purity.  Pence's political career was over the day the January 6th mob screamed to hang him.  

Then there's Vivek Ramaswamy.   Who?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

Asa Hutchinson, former two term governor of Arkansas, is the most traditionally "Reagan Republican" guy in the field, which is why he doesn't stand a chance at winning the nomination.  He has been an outspoken anti-Trumper, denounced Trump's claims that the 2020 election was "stolen", and has served in several capacities in the executive branch.  I don't see much hope for Mr. Hutchinson in the nomination process, since Republicans for the most part are no longer the party of Reagan.  

Larry Elder, a radio talk show host, which is the first of many things that disqualify him as a candidate (think Kari Lake), is a typical Trumpie politician.  He runs against mostly straw man issues, making things up as he goes along to knock down and sound serious.  He's a rewind of the same old themes, alleging the 2020 election was stolen, management of the pandemic is the cause of all our problems, crime is terrible, we need more school choice so private, religious zealots can get their hands on your tax dollars and oh, he wants to eliminate the minimum wage.  He's an African American carbon copy of Trump, and offers no alternative to motivate voters. 

Tim Scott, the first black Senator from the South in more than a century, but rarely represents the interests of most black voters in his state, walking a conservative political tightrope and backing himself into corners on issues like police reforms while arguing against the Democratic position on structural racism in America.  He is not the kind of politician who would attract black voters to the GOP, not by any stretch of the imagination.  I wonder how extremist Evangelical Christian Nationalists will look at black Republican candidates, since they don't believe blacks have any stake in this country.  

Ron Desantis has been campaigning by turning Florida into a civil rights nightmare.  That is slowly but surely making him increasingly unpopular in his own state and has doomed any chance he had at convincing people on the national level that he is a serious candidate for President.  Aside from a semi-entertaining spitting contest he has engaged in with Trump, he has offered Republicans the kind of politics that guarantee lost elections.  Yeah, he did win re-election in Florida, and is term limited, which is why he waited until his second term to get started on his ridiculous, "anti-woke" agenda.  And while it may be labelled as "anti-woke," it is definitely waking up Florida voters who are increasingly against his measures.  He has no chance at the nomination, and with his shrinking numbers, may be one of the first Republicans out after the Iowa Caucus. 

Chris Christie was a loyal Trump lackey through the 2016 election, panting at the table for scraps that were thrown his way.  He helped lead the 2016 transition team, helped Trump prepare for debates in 2020 and then, when Trump was done with him and threw him under the bus, became an outspoken critic.  So does Christie have the cojones to stand up to his former boss and inamorata, and if so, is that out of political expedience, or does he have genuine convictions and remorse over supporting the worst, most corrupt President in American history?  Christie is pretty darn corrupt himself (remember the George Washington Bridge scandal?) and was more than willing to give up what little integrity he had in order to beg for whatever the orange headed buffoon tossed his way.  

I'm not convinced that Donald J. Trump will ultimately be the GOP nominee.  He's a loser, evidenced by the fact that he has lost the popular vote every time he ran for the Presidency.  The gap has widened in the GOP, enough that I don't believe he will get enough votes to pick up the electoral votes he needs to win in 2024.  And I hope, if there is real justice, that the raining down of indictments on his head for all of the crimes he has committed, will lead those in the GOP who still have hands on the power strings to pull him up short and get him out of the race, out of fear of a potential Democratic landslide, at least of twenty-first century proportions, coming down on the party with him at the top of the ticket. 

The Coming Democratic Landslide

Google "The coming Democratic landslide" and you'll get an assortment of liberal, conservative and moderate comments about the 2020 election, the 2022 mid-terms, and the coming 2024 election, with lots of hints and points to polling data that President Biden and the Democratic party are seeing political attitudes lean in their direction as 2024 approaches.  There are several reasons for this.  

One, the Supreme Court is showing that the conservative direction Trump appointees were put on the court to provide is taking hold, and is angering many more moderate, independent voting Americans, as well as activating constituencies that have been dormant, especially in some conservative states, like Florida for example, or Texas, for decades.  The Dobbs decision was given credit by a substantial number of pundits for the turnout on the left that stopped a potential "red wave" in 2022.  Using that as the new norm, the numbers for 2024 point to significant change in the attitude of the electorate when it comes to the Republican party, of which a glimpse was visible in November 2022.  The wave of "anti-wokeness" articulated by people like Ron Desantis is a vote killer.  And high profile mass shootings, and the total and complete inaction of politicians to deal with them, is yet another vote killer.  This trifecta of issues on which Republicans are on the wrong side will bring them down. 

Then there is the orange headed buffoon himself.  People really are getting turned off of him by the sheer volume of information about his corruption and when the pressure gets tough, he opens his mouth, or his outlet on Truth Social, and spews, convincing more people not to vote for him.  His hard core base is large, but it is shrinking and what's left is not enough to elect him.  He's lost most independents and some moderate Republicans.  At most, his MAGA base can deliver maybe 35% of the popular vote, but not enough to give him electoral votes in enough states to win.  A few detailed indictments and Trump's support will evaporate.  I think, if indictments are handed down in the documents case, that will be the end of any meaningful shot he might have at the GOP nomination.  That's when the party's inner circle will pay him a visit and do whatever they need to do to get him out of the race.  

On the other hand, it has been very frustrating to see President Biden's success be minimized and shoved to the back seat by a wishy-washy media.  In any other political era, this President's accomplishments would have generated nightly news coverage and accolades from multiple sources broadcast on television.  "His job approval ratings are still low," says the media.  Well, duh.  That has to do with your reporting and coverage, not our opinion of the President.  We're more than a year down the road from the first predictions of a recession coming, and there's no recession, inflation is getting smaller, unemployment is at record lows and the economy is roaring.  

Now, wasn't that more fun than what's on today's news cycle?

 

A Glimpse at Where Christian Nationalism Would Take Us: An Evangelical Pastor Criticizes Ted Cruz

Leviticus-Quoting Fundamentalist Calls Ted Cruz a Liberal 

The African nation of Uganda, a political disaster that once "elected" a President who admired Adolf Hitler, has been heavily influenced by American Evangelicalism, largely because of intense missionary efforts and large amounts of financial support.  The result of that influence was its national government, under President Yoweri Museveni, passed a law that makes being homosexual a criminal offense with the penalty of life in prison, and "aggravated homosexuality" being a death-penalty offense.  Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who is not politically liberal by any stretch of the imagination, publicly criticized the law, using terms like "horrific, wrong, a grotesque abomination."  

With Cruz, it's hard to tell whether his words are political rhetoric spoken to gain favor with a more moderate constituency he knows he and his party must have to win elections, or whether it comes from genuine conviction.  I lean much more toward the former explanation, since I don't think Cruz has any genuine conviction that is a matter of real conscience and not something aimed at getting votes somewhere down the line.  But he made his feelings known publicly, and apparently spontaneously, and drew the ire of one Tom Ascol, a caustic, hard-line Calvinist Southern Baptist from Florida, who pounced on Cruz's comment and threw Leviticus 20:13 back in his face.  

Ascol, a hard line Calvinist Fundamentalist agitator in the Southern Baptist Convention, to the right of even the denomination's conservative leadership, denied that he favored executing homosexuals, but stuck by his claim that the Levitical text represents God's perspective on the subject, regardless of the fact that it was only applicable law to ancient Israel under a covenant relationship that came to an end when Jesus Christ made a new covenant with all humanity through his sacrifice, in his gospel.  Ascol, who heads an independent ministry group called "Founders Ministries," in addition to being the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, is involved with an ultraconservative group in the Southern Baptist Convention called the Conservative Baptist Network, and has close ties to Florida Governor and GOP Presidential Candidate Ron DeSantis.  

And it's that connection which makes this make sense.  It seems the Ugandan government has a lot in common with DeSantis' vision for Florida.  

If Ted Cruz is a liberal, then that is quite a definitive statement about what hard right Christian nationalism looks like, and what government would look like under its influence.  It would bear  absolutely no resemblance to the Christian gospel preached by Jesus.  It would be a cruel, judgmental, evil system of government, to put it mildly.  It would be worse than German National Socialism or Soviet Marxism.  

A Brand of Christian Nationalism Has Been Imported into Africa Through the Presence of American Evangelicals

Mark Wingfield, an editor with Baptist News Global, notes that American Evangelicals have spent massive amounts of money in African coutries to influence national governments with an anti-LGBTQ agenda.  Uganda is where most of the money has gone, half of some $58 million spent between 2007 and 2020.  Wingfield notes that their influence has achieved what it has not been able to succeed at doing in the United States, and that is getting anti-LGBTQ legislation in some form passed in over 30 African countries.  

And of course what has followed the passage of this legislation is violence, caused by what is perceived to be an "open season" against homosexuals.  It is difficult for them to escape these attacks, since many of them had come out and were known to their communities prior to these kinds of laws being passed.  This isn't an evangelistic outreach, it is, according to the National Catholic Reporter, "meddling " by Evangelicals in Africa, and in Uganda in particular.  Traditional missionary work, in which Christian conversion was the end result, is being replaced by this heresy.  Even on the foreign mission field, Evangelicals are abandoning their belief that conversion, following conviction of the Holy Spirit and repentance, leading to grace by faith in Christ, is the answer to the problem of human sin which separates us from God, replacing that core, foundational belief with reliance on political power to legislate its moral principles and practices.  

And it's what we'd see in the United States if these people ever get near the positions of power and influence.  

Illinois is the Model for Democracy Under Governor J. B. Pritzker and the State Legislature

We don't get the kind of media attention that California or New York may get, but there is a model of democracy and freedom, a diving bell of freedom in the middle of America, where people may still take for granted the freedom that we enjoy.  Our state government is led by a governor who understands the broad diversity of the population in the state, and what it takes to lead with that being the case.  With a state legislature that has a Democratic super-majority, Illinois, as a state government, works.  And I really hope that the Democrats in this state never take this for granted!  

The fact of the matter is that because the Democratic party is in control of the state legislature, everyone benefits.  Conservatives gripe and complain, especially when it comes to taxes, but the fact of the matter is that conservatives benefit like everyone else does from the infrastructure and state services that the tax dollars in Illinois provide.  And while they also complain about Chicago dominating the state's politics, there's not a lot of complaining about the dollars that flow out of Chicago and Chicagoland that pay for excellent schools, a solid, well maintained state highway system that benefits its downstate agriculture and transportation industries, provision for law enforcement including a top notch state police department, all over the state.  In fact, more dollars leave the Chicago area counties in tax revenue than are returned to them.  

And I'd like a conservative to tell me where they're suffering under some kind of tyranny.  What rights has any Illinoisan lost because of our majority Democratic state legislature and our governor?  Is there a single individual liberty that is restricted or blocked under this state government?  Illinois residents can still own guns, though they are required to be responsible for them.  They can still attend church, proselytize their neighbors and send their kids to religious based private schools on tax credit scholarships.  They can go to a library and check out any book they like, from a collection that represents a wide variety of literature.  Illinois schools are doubling down on making sure that all perspectives of history and sociology are incorporated into the curriculum, which gives all students freedom of consicence to make their own choices and decisions based on facts.  If a parent doesn't want their child to have that kind of education, they are free to educate them at home, or put them in a private school of their choice.  

Illinois has become aggressive against the kind of censorship that is infringing on individual liberty in places like Florida and Texas.  The state is refusing to fund libraries that censor books, and is making sure that state curriculum mandates for schools include things like African American and Native American history that is accurately taught.  The state already has a well-funded, well developed system of community colleges, among the least expensive and most accesible to students anywhere in the country, and an outstanding state university system that is also pro-active in providing affordable, high quality education to its students.  This most recent state legislative session, and the Governor, are sending a strong message that those who value intellectual freedom should seek their higher education in Illinois.  

Governor Pritzker ranks as one of the single most effective governors in state history.  His work with municipal leadership all over the state had Illinois prepared for the pandemic, with literally thousands of additional hospital beds and staff ready to serve during the pandemic.  But the scope of the COVID 19 pandemic, which had the potential to be as far-reaching and as deadly in a densely populated city like Chicago, never materialized because of the way the governor managed the states resources in fighting off its worst effects.  Hospitals were never over-topped.  Respirators were available.  Not all of the measures taken were popular, especially related to the schools, but the fact stands in contrast to the criticism.  Illinois weathered the COVID-19 pandemic as well as any other state, because of the efforts of Governor J.B. Pritzker.  

Democrats, the governor of Illinois is a model of outstanding political leadership.  He's managed the current legislative session as well as he did the pandemic.  An agenda, one approved overwhelmingly by the voters, is being implemented without drama, or a lot of controversy.  It's being done with determination and strength.  

We are so fortunate to be living in this state at this time.  

False Prophets: Nothing About Trump Came True Last Time, and Nothing Will This Time Either

My prophecy about Donald Trump is simple.  By the time the election rolls around in 2024, he will be serving time in prison for the first of several convictions resulting from indictments stemming from both the January 6th Trump Insurrection and the scandal surrounding his deliberate attempt to take classified documents from the White House, his refusal to return them, his lies to the FBI and whatever circumstances have occurred as a result of that.  

Perhaps the state of Georgia will also indict and convict him for attempting to subvert their election process, though I have more doubts about that coming to pass.  And of course, this is my profound hope and it is possible I will be disappointed because, after all, there are two Americas, and law and order and justice are elusive in the other one.  Also, I do not claim that this comes from some divine revelation.  It comes from looking at what's happening as the media coverage of his crimes appears to be intensifying in recent days.  God isn't telling me this, and my best bet is that he isn't telling anyone else anything, either, including the array of false prophets among the Charismatic and Evangelical branches of the Christian faith who keep spouting predictions that are wrong. 

Take Pat Robertson for example.  Robertson claimed that God told him Trump would win in 2020, without a doubt.  He explained his error away by following the "election was stolen" line, saying that Trump really did win but Satan got in there and messed it up.  That's a great way to avoid accountability, since Deuteronomy 18:22 says, "If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken.  The prophet has spoken it presumptuosly; do not be frightened by it." [NRSV]

Christians who claim to take the Bible seriously, and who claim that it is inerrant and infallible, which would include most of the Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic branches of Protestantism, don't really take this Old Testament verse seriously.  If they did, the assortment of evangelists and televangelists that have attempted to use their position and power within the church to bring assurances that God is on Trump's side, holding his coat-tails and cheering him on, who made predictions about his re-election would have lost all credibility and would be ignored.  But of course, in the tight little fantasyworld in which they and their followers live, even an all-powerful God can be thwarted by a stolen election.  Or so they claim.  The predictions were not wrong, according to them, but somehow God was unable to forsee this, and didn't have foreknowledge of this "trick".  And that means the false, phony prophets have some convoluted, inexplicable means of getting out of accountability to the Bible. 

This isn't the first time Robertson has made calculated errors in what he claims are divine revelations.  Even when his so-called prophecies are made with the most predictable information available, his prophetic utterances are not exact, and more often than not, they are just flat wrong.  The only thing that keeps him in business is the ignorance of his 700 Club audience.  A piece in Christianity Today, Failed Trump Policies Offer a Lesson in Humility written by Craig Keener shortly after the January 6th Trump Insurrection, claims that even a majority of Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians do not accept these outlandish prophecies.  OK, if that's the case, then why are these people still collecting cash from their constituents to keep peddling lies in the name of Jesus?  

An Embarassment Which Completely Undermines Credibility 

The patchwork of various denominations, fellowships, organizations, conventions, or whatever other label is applied to the fragmented, fractured entities that claim to be the true church of Christ, are engaged in a commercial competition with each other which is worse than some of the more cut-throat competitions for sales reveue between entities of corporate America.  They devote resources from offering plate collections to efforts that they label "evangelistic outreach" and "missions" or "ministry" which are really nothing more than ways to proselytize the members of other churches, claiming "they are wrong and we are right" and coming up with ways to convince people to join their bandwagon and then put dollars in their own offering plates.  

Among most Evangelicals, this takes the form of "theological purity," which is the claim that their particular group or denomination has hit on some interpretation of the Bible that is "distinctive" to their brand.  Growing up Southern Baptist, I heard this all the time, that this denomination, which came into existence in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia because the Triennial Baptist Convention of Philadelphia, representing most American Baptist churches, wouldn't appoint slave owners as missionaries, had somehow come up with a truer, purer, more accurate, "closer to God," approach to interpreting the Bible than any other group in the 2000 year history of the Christian church.  

And while they are willing to develop a system of convoluted hermeneutics to support their claim to immaculate perception, most Baptists frown on modern predictions of the future that are unsupported by the written text of the 66 books they claim make up "The Scriptures."  Pentecostals and Charismatics, who work themselves up into an emotional frenzy in their church services, are quite willing to claim they've been given a "word from the Lord," about some future event or international trend or impending disaster about to occur, without considering the failure of the same "prophet" to accurately predict anything, and regardless of its total inconsistency with "the scriptures." 

Raping the Minds of Millions of People

Oral Roberts, the Tulsa-based evangelist after whom the university he founded is named, probably holds the record for the single most ridiculous prophetic utterance ever made by an American pseudo-Christian evangelist.  Back in the 1980's facing a mountain of debt because of the unwise decision to build a hospital in a city that wasn't filling up its existing hospital beds, Roberts told his followers that God had told him if they didn't send him $242 each to finish the hospital, God would take his life.  

This was followed by another threat, this time over raising $4 million for his medical students, and if he didn't receive that amount by a March deadline, God would kill him.  

What is really frightening about that is that people sent him money!  

This letter writer to the Los Angeles Times in 1987 is pretty descriptive.  

"For more than a century now, these fundamentalist evangelists have raped the minds of millions of people with their fear and guilt-producing authoritarian mind set," said Ron Nelson, of Culver City, California.  What an apt description of what is still going on.  And how appropriate, that Trump is now the subject of their false prophetic utterances.  

The Odds Make for Good Guessing, but not Accurate Prophecy 

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. 

There is no example anywhere in Judaeo-Christian tradition of God using an evil, unbelieving, worldly person to accomplish his will.  There are instances in Jewish history, from the Old Testament, where the failure of the spiritual leadership of the Jewish people led their nation into disaster at the hands of the enemies that surrounded them, but there is no instance where God took an evil pagan ruler, and made that person the spiritual and political leader of his people.  He didn't do it under the old covenant with Israel, and he would not do it with the Christian church.  

What is actually happening here is that these Charismatic, Pentecostal and Evangelical "pseudo-prophets" know they are phonies and frauds, and this is about money.  They don't believe in the power of God to do anything they claim, they always depend on the money they rake in to give them the appearance of power and of God's blessing on them, and they see supporting Trump as a way to buy into the power of politics to do what they claim God wants to do.  I doubt that any of these people believe in God.  Political power is a sure thing, once in their hands, a means by which to keep the dollars flowing in and to protect them from any real accountability.  And like Trump, their organizations are a miasma of immorality and corruption.  

Yeah, and They Have Religious Liberty

Well, after all, this is America.  And this is one of those intersections in our culture, where faith meets free enterprise.  It's not a new thing.  The Protestant Reformation flamed up over the sale of indulgences by the Pope to raise money for the church.  Creating a market for the excess good works of the saints, so that people could buy their spot in heaven, was a great marketing ploy, and a demonstration of the utter contempt the Pope had for his own church membership.  

Just keep in mind, the prophets who claimed Trump would be re-elected, and those who went even further to claim that this would be the beginning of some kind of Christian nationalist vision, were wrong.  And that, according to the Bible they claim is inerrant and infallible, means that they are false prophets, they have spoken presumptuously, and are not to be feared.  

If There is Justice in America...

...then this charade of a presidential campaign being run by Trump must come to an abrupt end in a federal courtroom, where he is under indictment for the crimes he committed.  If we are a nation of laws, and a nation of people of integrity, then we, the people, must make our voices heard, and our will known.  Long before any party has a nominating convention, Trump must be facing indictment and trial and not only be rendered ineligible to run for public office, but must serve time as a consequence for his crimes against the nation.  

It doesn't take prophetic insight to know that this is what should happen.  I wish I could be certain that it is what will happen.  

The Tulsa Race Massacre: Why We Didn't Learn About It

I'm a college history major, taught American history and government to high school students for the better part of 20 years, and at one point, I had a collection of over 1,000 volumes written on the Civil War, World War 2 and on each of the presidencies.  I can't remember ever getting a grade lower than an A- in a social studies class from elementary school to graduate school.  That's not bragging, that's just making the point that I love this subject and have thoroughly immersed myself in studying it.  

There are always new things to learn, nuances of history that are different than the standard textbook fare that is produced for students, which, in my personal opinion, is a nauseating, boring, politically strong-armed mass of spoiled pablum that is rapidly becoming the enemy of democracy, or at least, is no longer providing the kind of informed electorate necessary to maintain it.  With state legislatures further censoring and dumbing down the curriculum in many states, it's no wonder students are so ignorant of their history, and that bigotry is so rampant.  

No Mention Made of the Tulsa Race Massacre, or of any Major Pogrom Against African Americans

Geographically, the elementary and high school I attended sat virtually in the center of what was once the Apache nation.  Though when I was in school, most Apache students attended high schools on their reservations in East Central Arizona, some of my classmates were native Americans, belonging to several of the Apache tribes.  

They sat through history classes mostly in silence.  They did their work, read the assigned texts, took notes, but rarely participated in the discussions.  The perspective in our textbook was "whites are good, Indians are bad."  Other than exchanging looks in class, the Apache students never said much.  Fortunately, our history teacher had been around long enough to know better, and he took us on a couple of field trips I will never forget.  One was to the museum of the Amerind Foundation, 15 miles from our school campus, which included looking at exhibits and presentations by staff who were truthful, honest and factual.  The other was to pay a visit to Nino Cochise, the grandson of the legendary tribal chief K'uu-ch'ish, known as Cochise, who gave talks on Apache history and legend.  He was, at that time, spending his days talking to tourists in a nearby community's visitor center, but when he spoke to us, he was serious, noting some of his fellow tribespeople in the room, and he didn't hold anything back.  

That's the kind of history teacher we need.  He inspired me.  

But, our history curriculum, governed by state objective standards, only briefly touched on post-Civil War Reconstruction, and the whole, long, ugly history of the struggle for equality by African American descendants of former slaves.  It might be described as a "brief mention."  The last chapter in the textbook was the Nixon Administration and the Vietnam War.  Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers were mentioned.  The gist of the story was that there was a struggle, protests, marches, speeches, the Washington march and presto!  Civil Rights were achieved for African Americans in 1964. 

One Book in a College Library

So it was not until I was in college that I ever even heard about the Tulsa Race Massacre, or any of the other pogroms, and yes, I'll use that word, in American history aimed at African Americans.  Even then, information was not easy to find, and in the college library, there was only one book on African American history that I could find to gain some kind of understanding of what happened.  One book, in a college library, on what was the worst tyranny in American history characterizes the whole attitude toward this subject, especially in light of what is going on today in places as diverse as Florida and Montana.  

This, this is exactly why we have Critical Race Theory.  

More Than Just an "Embarassment," the Tulsa Race Massacre was an Example of the Worst That Humans are Capable of Doing 

Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mid-sized oil boom city in north east Oklahoma, geographically the hub of Indian Territory, where Andrew Jackson moved the remaining Native Americans from the southern states to grab up their land, wants to present itself as a God-fearing, law abiding, idyllic mid-American paradise.  Most of the white citizens who lived there in 1921 were descendants of those who had rushed in to Indian Territory in 1889, to claim land that had once been assigned to Native American tribes, or who followed them.  In a miasma of bigotry, racism and ignorance, violence erupted when African American citizens attempted to protect each other from becoming victims of violence.  

And because it was Oklahoma, the 1920's, and African Americans were more or less still very powerless, information about it was suppressed.  Tulsa lost most of what was a prosperous community of citizens contributing to the economy of the city.  Justice was never served.  Who wants to talk about a pogrom taking place anywhere in the United States, especially a place like Tulsa, Oklahoma?  

No doubt most of the perpetrators of the violence were seated in their church pew the following Sunday.  

As I said before, this is exactly why we have Critical Race Theory.  Efforts to eliminate historical accounts like this from the curriculum of elementary and high schools in this country is unconscionable, ignorant and flat out wrong and the "anti-woke" attitude exhibited by politicians is anti-American, wrong, and is suppression of the truth with the clear intention of affecting the direction of American politics.  

Every school child in the city of Tulsa should be required to participate in an annual field trip to the Greenwood Cultural Center-Tulsa  The textbooks I've used in history classes have chapters in the chronological layout of American history that cover the Tulsa Race Massacre, along with similar pogroms which took place all over the country, in their appropriate time slot, but these textbooks are being censored in many states.  

It's Not Minimizing the Holocaust to Teach About American Racial Repression and Violence

What has happened to African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and virtually all Americans who are not of white, European ancestry (and even some of those have experienced violence depending on their nationality) is no different than what the Jews in Germany and occupied Europe experienced during the Holocaust.  The concentration and scale of the violence and murder is different, but terror is terror, tyranny is tyranny.  History must be honest.  

Americans don't want to compare themselves to the Germans under Nazi rule.  In fact, revisionists exist in all corners of academia, re-inventing historical accounts and creating an anti-Hitler perspective that didn't really exist in the United States prior to Pearl Harbor.  For those students who wonder why more Jews didn't see the handwriting on the wall, and emigrate to America when things were getting bad in Europe, it is a shock to be disabused in discovering that American embassy and consulate officials in European countries actually put up all kinds of blockades in the face of Jews trying to come here, forcing the few European havens to close their doors when, as they claimed, "the lifeboat is full."  

That attitude is clearly present in our history.  It is exactly why there has been little mention of the Tulsa Race Massacre, or other events intended to terrorize, and murder, Americans because of their race.  In every way, that attitude is anti-American and anti-Christian.  It needs to be decisively cut out of this country, by the political defeat of those who continue to promote their "anti-woke" agenda, because that's just a code word for what is nothing more than evil bigotry.