Trump
A Sad Easter and a Sadder Comment on American Christianity
Easter, a time celebrated by Christians around the world to mark our Savior’s triumph over death. And with it, Christ brought his salvation and redemption to the world, an offer of love from God made to all of us. There is no nationalist qualification. No color of skin requirement. No cultural preference to meet. There is nothing selfish or isolationist about this love. This salvation is open to all. It is empathetic and it is inclusive.
But, in America, too many Christians have forgotten the message of Christ’s love. Just look how many Christians, shamefully, voted into office a miserable human being whose despicable behavioral traits are in direct opposition of the traits Christ presented, taught and promoted. In fact, Trump is just a cesspool of Anti-Christ behavioral attributes. And yet, still, people, who go to church every Sunday and pat themselves on the back for being such good Christians for doing so, voted for this morally depraved and debased human being to be their president.
This Easter I want all these Christians to reflect on how their vote lacking in all Christian and American judgement is destroying our country, destroying our national identity as a nation based upon decency, the rule of law and a reverent respect for the unalienable rights of all people granted to them by their creator. America, we used to be a nation that could be counted on to protect the world from evil doers. And while we have not always been perfect in this execution at all times, we certainly never set out to intentionally and purposely commit evil like the evil that is being committed by this Trump Administration. I want these Christians to think long and hard about what they have become.
I want them to do this because I am certain that the salvation they have been afforded by this day that they celebrate has been compromised. They are not the Christians that they think they are. Doing unto others as you would have others do unto you does not involve supporting someone who is actively seeking to deny people basic civil rights guaranteed by our Declaration of Independence and by our Constitution. As demonstrated by the story of the Good Samaritan and countless other parables in the Bible, Christ did not recognize any national boundaries. When it comes to basic human and civil rights, neither should any person who considers themselves to be a true Christian.
Christians need to admit they are sinners. They need to admit when they have made a mistake. It is only then that redemption can be theirs. While this year may be a “Sad Easter,” I am hoping, next year, it will be different. By next year, I am hoping there is a recognition by all American Christians just how unacceptable and incompatible with Christianity Trump and all his Anti-Christ behavioral traits truly are. When that happens, “Happy Easter,” will have the meaning that it was meant to have this year.
The Moral of the Story
When four highly decorated, high ranking United States generals who risked their lives in battle to protect our country and its Constitution despite any bone spurs they may have suffered, who all served in the cabinet of that irresponsible MAGA leader’s first term tells you that that this MAGA candidate for President of the United States of America is a clear and present danger to America, to our country, to our democracy, to our system of government and to our republic, that he is unfit to serve in the office of President, you should believe them. When a substantial number of other respected citizens who worked in that same administration tell you the same thing, you should believe them.
Not heeding the warning of these respected generals and these other respected public government servants will cause you to help destroy your nation in the same way the German people destroyed their nation in the 1930’s and 1940’s, in the same way the Russians destroyed their once democratic and free republic in the 2000’s. Failing to recognize fascist wannabe dictators who so callously manipulates the masses into committing unfathomable violence and talks them into believing his nonsensical and dishonest rhetoric, will bring about a dark dystopian future the likes of which you have never seen and which will not be easily recovered from.
By the time you realize what you have done, when that MAGA President turns on you, when he finds he no longer needs to pander to your ideas since he has all the power he needs now, it will be too late. You will have helped him remove all those guardrails that would have protected us in the past and there is nothing you can do to change it…you voted away your democracy.
Don’t vote away your democracy. Don’t vote away your republic. Don’t self destruct. Don’t cause our country to self-destruct. Don’t vote for a multiply indicted individual facing 91 felony counts. Whatever faults Biden has, he won’t ever cause our system of government to collapse. Is your frustration with Biden worth sacrificing your whole democracy for? Is it worth destroying our whole American way of life? Is it really worth the risk of losing it all?
Day 1,467
There is a great possibility that this fictional story may soon be more real than you think…
- Day 1: the Maga President will be a dictator.
- Day 2: he will “suspend” the Constitution.
- Day 3: he will put all Muslims seeking asylum or already living in America in concentration camps.
- Day 4: his political adversaries will start to mysteriously die for unknown reasons (poison being the most highly suspected cause of death).
- Day 5: other political adversaries and critics will be charged with unsubstantiated crimes based upon false witness and made-up testimony.
- Day 6: news organizations that report unflattering news stories about the Maga President’s behavior and/or his policies are first fined, then shutdown, then outlawed and their chief operating officers jailed.
- Day 7: Fox News and the other radical-right conservative propaganda news machines merge to form Maga News and is now the only news organization legally allowed to operate by the state.
- Day 8: guns will be confiscated from all gun owners who have not pledged their loyalty to the Maga President.
- Day 9: guns are also taken away from all gun owners who have pledged their loyalty to the Maga President. This campaign is promoted as a test of their complete loyalty to him.
- Day 10: former Maga gun owners who made the mistake of criticizing the Maga President, upset they no longer are allowed to own guns, are arrested.
- Day 11: appeals to the Supreme Court regarding the Second Amendment are rejected. The Constitution is still suspended. There is no Second Amendment.
- Day 12: Christians who have criticized the Maga President’s un-American behavior and refuse to pledge their loyalty to him begin to be rounded up and put into concentration camps.
- Day 13: the rest of the Christian population begins to be rounded up and put into concentration camps, retribution for their failure to “vote hard enough for him in 2020,” as they are the group he now most blames for all his legal trouble he had to suffer after the 2020 election.
- Day 14: America abandons NATO.
- Day 15: Russia conquers Ukraine but not without finishing the genocide it began 3 years ago.
- Day 16: Russia invades Poland.
- Day 17: World War 3 begins as all Western Nations except for America declare war on Russia.
- Day 18: Russia, Iran, North Korea and China create an axis alliance against the western nations.
- Day 19: China invades Taiwan.
- Day 20: Taiwan quickly falls as the Maga President praises the Chinese leader for being so bold, smart, and ruthless.
- Day 21: China invades Japan.
- Day 22: The Maga President continues his fawning over the Chinese leader.
- Day 23: Japan falls quickly due to the lack of American support and the years it was required, by post WW2 defense policies, to refrain from weapons manufacturing until only recently.
- Day 24: China invades Australia as the Maga President continues his praises of the Chinese leadership. The Maga President snipes that, “he never liked Australia.”
- Day 25: Europe falls to the Russians.
- Day 26: the Maga President sends Putin a pair of his gold-plated tennis shoes to congratulate the genocidal maniac for his impressive subjugation of two continents in such a short amount of time.
- Day 27: Russia invades the United States through Alaska; assisted greatly by the Top Secret documents the Maga President had earlier provided Russia before he took his second term of office.
- Day 28: the Maga President happily cedes Alaska over to Russia as a symbol of his fidelity to the ruling strong man he admires so much
- Day 1,461: the Constitution is still, “suspended.”
- Day 1,462: the Maga President is still holding onto the shaky reigns of his power.
- Day 1,463: Putin replaces the Maga President with a governor from Saint Petersburg, citing the governor’s younger and sharper abilities.
- Day 1,464: a former Fox News host does grocery shopping for Putin in his new position in Moscow as the Minister of Communication and Culinary Services for the new Russian Union.
- Day 1,465: The Maga President, deposed and without the magnificent tower he wanted to build in Saint Petersburg after the tower in Moscow went bankrupt, is exiled to Siberia.
- Day 1,466: At the behest of the new Russian governor, the Maga Republican House passes a bill to rebrand, “The United States of America,” as, “The Soviet States of America.” Since the Democratic Party has been outlawed long before the Maga President left office, it is expected to easily pass the Maga Republican Senate.
- Day 1,467: Some Maga voters wonder if they have been dupped. America does not seem as great as they were promised it would be. But the thought is fleeting as they rush to wait in the bread lines to feed their hungry kids.
The Colorado Ballot Case: What Happened to the Conservative Notion of States Rights?
“The whole point of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power,” this is Chief Justice Robert’s assertion. While there are clarifications regarding what States can do in The Fourteenth Amendment, a good portion of The Fourteenth Amendment is to affirm the rights of all United States citizens and outline the protections that States are required to offer all United States citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment also offers additional guidance to States regarding federal office holding requirements.
Yes, States must defer to the Constitution and to the laws of the federal government. That, for sure, is explicitly stated. However, that doesn’t mean that the power that States have been granted in other parts of the Constitution have been erased or supplanted in some crazy way as Roberts appeared to imply with his questioning.
States have the authority to manage elections for federal offices. They have the authority to print ballots for federal offices. They have the authority to send delegates to the Electoral College to vote for President and Vice-President. When printing ballots, States have the authority and responsibility to follow the Constitution.
Additionally, the United States Constitution provides that you cannot be 34 years of age or younger to hold the Office of President. You cannot be a Naturalized Citizen to hold the Office of President. You cannot be an insurrectionist to hold the Office of President. You cannot give aid or comfort to insurrectionists and expect to hold the Office of President. This is clearly defined in the Constitution. The States are NOT limited in this power. The States can decide who is included on the ballot for all these cases. States can exclude anyone from the ballot if candidates do not meet the requirements to hold an elected federal office. Colorado was following the Constitution when its highest court made its ruling in favor of removing a disqualified candidate from its ballot.
If these candidates cannot hold the Office of President, then there is no legitimate reason for States to print disqualified candidate names on the ballot. Also, it is the federal government that has limited to no involvement in all these election processes managed by States not the other way around as Roberts suggested. Nowhere in the Fourteenth Amendment does it say anything about taking away the States’ right to run elections for Federal government offices.
The Fourteenth Amendment only amends the power that States have as described in Article II of the Constitution, to clarify that the power States have cannot conflict with the Federal Constitution, Federal Government rulings or the general rights guaranteed to all citizens of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment says, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” The amendment then goes on to indicate what powers States have, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” These inclusions in The Fourteenth Amendment are less of a limitation than they are a clarification.
Earlier in the Constitution, the second paragraph of Article Two clearly spells out the power States have, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” Also, Article Two, paragraph 5, specifies, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, amends who can qualify as a Presidential candidate with additional requirements for the States: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” Here, the federal government by way of Congress, does have the power to veto the State’s decision. But, overall, the Constitution gives States quite a bit of power.
Chief Justice Robert’s combative tone in his line of questioning on Thursday, February 8th, 2024, during oral arguments in the Colorado Ballot Case (Trump v. Anderson) seemed very odd and bizarre to me. There used to be a time when conservatives believed in States rights, especially in the ones that appear to be clearly assigned to States in the Constitution. What happened to that?
References:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
https://apnews.com/article/federal-government-role-elections-392a5567755549336fe91132b9fd5908
The Supreme Court and the Colorado Ballot Case: Only One Way to Rule
I’ve read and re-read Article II, section 1, paragraph 5 and The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 of the Constitution over and over, multiple times, and it seems really clear to me that there is only one way to understand these clauses. You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand this text. It is written that well, in plain English. There is only one legitimate way to rule on this matter.
The Supreme Court must make their ruling based upon what is explicitly written in the Constitution. The Supreme Court must allow States to determine ballot eligibility based upon what is explicitly stated in the Constitution. Trump must be booted off the Colorado ballot if Trump is an insurrectionist or if Trump has “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.
Presuming that the court is not willing to define Trump’s status as an insurrectionist and/or collaborator, the court cannot take any other “offramp” that is somehow molded into a legitimate Constitutional argument that makes any type of sense in favor of keeping Trump on the ballot, not for any reason; even if the court thinks they need one to avert some highly speculative and imaginary negative Constitutional incongruity between the power the State and Federal governments might have. If the court does try to take any other offramp, the court risks compromising their own oath to protect and support the Constitution. Taking a procedural route would be just as bad for different reasons (they shouldn’t do it).
There is nothing to infer, nothing to doubt in this judicial review like in other controversial cases that have recently been overturned by the Supreme Court where the Constitution might have inferred a right but does not explicitly state one (i.e., Roe v. Wade and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, etc.). Ruling on the side of what is plainly written in the Constitution, especially when it is so clearly written, arguably, takes a lot of courage. It may not be popular or politically expedient. It may even be dangerous given all the right-winged crazies and thugs that exist out there but it is the right thing to do. It is the American thing to do.
We need to protect our country from insurrectionists who sway public opinion with falsehoods, exaggerations, fear and frenzied rhetoric. We need to protect our nation from insurrectionists who bring dishonor upon themselves and their autocratic enabling political party. We need to protect our citizens from insurrectionists who constantly blame others for all their problems. We need to protect ourselves from insurrectionists who never take responsibility for their own criminal actions but who are always happy to divide then destroy our Constitutional government for the sake of their own narcissistic, power-hungry appetite.
Without that protection, the Supreme Court will take one step closer to ending our democracy. The Supreme Court takes one step closer to ending our republic. One step closer to abandoning the Constitution, altogether. And if that happens, where would that leave the Supreme Court?
References:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women’s_Health_Organization
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-ballot-eligibility-is-headed-to-the-supreme-court-heres-what-to-know/ar-BB1hUWL1
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/norma-anderson-trump-colorado-ballot/index.html
The Oregon State Republican Party and its Big Lie
The Oregon State Republican Party embraced a lie, a big lie. That Big Lie is that Trump really won the White House in 2020 but, due to voter fraud, the Democrats dishonestly captured the White House. Even after sixty of their Republican lawsuits were thrown out of the courts for lack of voter fraud evidence and even after more honest, honorable Republican Election officials testified to the integrity of the 2020 election, confirming the Democrats won the Presidency, the Oregon Republican Party promotes the Big Lie. But, then, on top of that lie, these Republicans take it a step further by promoting an even bigger unacceptable lie that equates the Democrats’ control of the government by the democratic process to Hitler’s takeover of Hindenburg’s government in the 1930’s with a reference to the “February 1933 burning of the German Reichstag” in a despicable resolution censuring the ten Republican Congressional Members that voted to impeach Trump.
We saw the Capital Riots in real time with our own eyes one month ago today, caught on live TV and by the rioters themselves with posts to their social media accounts. We know who is responsible for those riots. We know who is responsible for attacking and vandalizing our Capital Building. There is no doubt it was Trump supporters and there is no doubt they were incited by incendiary statements made by Trump and his dishonest band of corrupt lieutenants on that tragic day and for months earlier before the riot with their dishonest and unfounded claims of voter fraud.
It is a sick, twisted, dishonest, unethical, morally corrupt and demented argument that the Oregon Republican Party makes to say that the blame for the insurrection belongs to someone or something else and that the Republicans who had enough honor and dignity to respect our laws to impeach Trump are somehow traitors. Who is the traitor: someone who picks country over Party or someone who picks Party over country? To the contrary, in the view of the majority of Americans, these courageous Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are valiant heroes. They chose to defend our system of government. They chose to defend self-rule and our Constitution over the corrupt aims of a dishonest tyrant spreading a Big Lie about the election he lost and then inciting a riot after he failed to get his way with his many attempts to corrupt the election results.
And with these statements of false equivalency, these not so respectable Republicans in the Oregon Republican Party signing this resolution of censure against their more honorable colleagues are, interestingly, the ones who are committing the fraud they claim others are committing. The Oregon Republican Party fails to acknowledge reality. The Oregon Republican Party fails to recognize that the real traitors are the ones supporting a corrupt lying tyrant over the Constitution of the United States of America.
The Oregon Republican Party has pledged its loyalty to an inciting tyrant. The Oregon Republican Party has expressly rejected the ideals of our Founding Fathers that are prohibitively against destructive autocrats who divide the nation to steer a course towards “permanent despotism.” The very thing President Washington warned against in his Farewell Address about the corrosive path that can result from partisan affiliation that threatens our democracy is the very insidious thing the Oregon Republican Party is embracing with open arms. Their Party is more important than our country.
Ironically, it is the leaders of the Oregon Republican Party who are the ones most mimicking the actions of Hitler by embracing the Big Lie in the same way Hitler embraced his twisted Big Lie that the Jews were responsible for a conspiracy that made everyone think Germany lost World War I when, in the Nazi’s delusional minds, Germany actually had won it. Sound familiar? To add more confusion, the Nazis themselves referred to the proposition that the Germans lost World War I as the “Big Lie.” This act of paying homage to Hitler and his Nazi’s reprehensible propaganda tactics by the Oregon Republican Party comes complete with the dishonest conspiracy theories that are at the base of their warped belief system. Truth does not matter to the Oregon Republican Party just like it does not matter to most nefarious Political Parties positioned against democracy that you can name in the historical record.
There is only one way this story ends if it is not properly addressed. We’ve seen it before. It’s written in history and it is easily accessible for your evaluation. And to be clear, it’s not a good ending.
The Oregon Republican Party’s delusion will either serve to destroy their Party or serve to destroy our country. One scenario is less tragic than the other but both are very tragic. Either way, it does seem the Oregon Republican Party is bent on destroying our country in ways that are not too dissimilar from the ways that the Nazis destroyed their own country by using matching dishonest methods of creating doubt and division among its citizenry. These methods are not only offensive but they are truly un-American. It is why the Oregon State Republican Party, itself, needs to be censured.
Today is President Reagan’s birthday. President Reagan would be greatly saddened by how far his beloved Party has travelled away from that shining “City on a Hill” that he often spoke about. That city of truth, union and diversity that once welcomed all has now been replaced with a gloomy, dark, decrepit city full of lies and corruption where power for the sake of power is idolized and only Republicans who devote their entire being to Trump are welcomed.
When considering how much our system of government is based upon compromise and respect for the individual, this extreme polarization has no place in American politics but this is especially true when one side of that polarized fray is based upon a dangerously unacceptable lie that the losers won an election that they clearly lost. Such unfounded and outrageous notions are a clear threat to the very existence of our 244 year old experiment in self-rule. Such notions need to be rejected outright and, those perpetuating them, need to be condemned.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/oregon-republican-party-censure-donald-trump/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_liehttps://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/957141129/can-the-forces-unleashed-by-trumps-big-election-lie-be-undone
Detecting Fraud
Thirty one instances of suspected voter fraud out of one billion votes from 2000 – 2014. Something needs to be done about this according to fringe elements of the political spectrum. To them, that fraction of a percentage of probable voter fraud cases is way too high. For all you who are partial to statistical numbers: 0.0000031% of those votes are suspected of being fraudulent. The study was conducted by Loyola Law School Professor, Justin Levitt. Levitt is also the author of an earlier study on the same subject entitled, “The Truth about Voter Fraud.”
Similar studies confirm these results including one conducted by the Bush II administration. And the few cases that do exist may surprise you regarding who is committing these crimes. For example, a truly egregious, well publicized instance of voter fraud was committed in 2018 by Republicans in North Carolina. To increase the irony, it involved absentee voting. And then, just recently, the Republican Party in California somehow believes that they are exempt from State laws protecting registered voters against voter fraud when they decided to sponsor ballot boxes that are not owned or officially sanctioned by the State of California.
The California Republican Party is misleading voters into believing that the Republican operated drop boxes are official ballot boxes. The leaders of any other group of people involved in similar nefarious activity would be automatically hauled off to jail without a second thought since this action is typically regarded as a felony in California. Lastly, the President himself is encouraging his supporters to vote twice which is also a felony. It’s disturbing to think that a presumably respected long standing national Political Party would decide that turning to a life of crime is the only way it can win elections. It seems the ones making the most noise about voter fraud are the ones who are most often committing it.
Traditionally, the majority of absentee voters have been Republicans (including the President and the administration’s own Press Secretary—talk about Black Kettle complexes). So, if anything, voter fraud would have favored the Republicans not the Democrats if there were any merit to this erroneous claim. The assertion that there is rampant voter fraud being made by President Trump has no basis in fact. At 0.0000031%, voter fraud is virtually non-existent. The claim made by the President is itself fraudulent, dishonest and irresponsible.
Why would the President risk upsetting or alienating Republican voters and, really, all voters, by threatening to take their absentee voting rights away? Because Trump wants to give his Base something to rally behind and to hate. It’s what all demagogues do. It’s what all despicable people do who have no ethics, no morals to guide them and no integrity. If there’s nothing to hate, they’ll invent something to hate. It also sets the stage for Trump’s attempt to discredit the election results should he lose the election. This is something only a despot would do.
Even if voter fraud was rampant instead of the incredibly miniscule percentage of 0.0000031%, why would you throw the baby out with the bathwater? If you were truly concerned about election fraud, why not address the voter fraud in productive ways that improve the security of voting by mail? That way it would increase the confidence in the legitimacy of those votes. If you found the majority of voter fraud cases occurred at Polling Places, would that cause you to outlaw Polling Places? Such an action would be absurd and a deliberate attempt at destroying our right to self-rule.
We are in the middle of a pandemic that Trump initially labeled a hoax, a pandemic Trump failed to take seriously and then failed to do anything about for months. As a consequence, local governments were forced to take extreme measures absent any real leadership from the Federal government. It was a disease that Trump knew how deadly it was at the time he was calling it a hoax. This revelation caught on tape by Bob Woodward shows the dishonesty of a man who is willing to sacrifice the lives of the people of his own country in favor of what he deems to be his own favorable political fortunes. The destructive suggestion that voters should physically go to the polls to expose themselves to the very real chance that they could contract a deadly disease, a disease causing hundreds of thousands of deaths here in the United States, when there are more reasonable and safer ways of voting available to us is probably the single most irresponsible action a President has ever made in our lifetimes. This point especially resonates when you consider the President himself caught COVID-19 as a result of his own irresponsible recklessness.
For this reason and many other equally disturbing reasons, Trump is a dangerous threat to our democracy and to our country in general. Trump is especially dangerous when he advocates against our right to vote. No respectable American President dedicated to self-rule would ever advocate such a position.
Only a totalitarian leaning despot afraid of losing power would argue that your right to vote in the manner prescribed by the laws of your State should be taken away from you. If that’s not an offensive affront to our democracy, I do not know what is. A President who is against voting safely and securely should make you pause to reflect upon the stark possibility that we are truly a democracy in jeopardy. But it’s not in jeopardy because of voter fraud. It’s in jeopardy because of a different kind of fraud. And that fraud is the current occupant living in the White House.
References:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47323556
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL6ixYa1hUY
https://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/trumps-bogus-voter-fraud-claims/
https://www.politifact.com/article/2016/dec/17/fact-checking-claims-voter-fraud-2016/
https://www.lls.edu/faculty/facultylistl-r/justinlevitt/
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/The%20Truth%20About%20Voter%20Fraud.pdf
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Fool+me+once%2c+shame+on+you%3b+fool+me+twice%2c+shame+on+me
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/truth-about-voter-fraud
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ca-gop-ballot-drop-boxes/
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/12/california-gop-says-it-owns-unofficial-ballot-drop-boxes.html
Jumping Out of the Pages
It’s like Trump jumped out of the pages of a “Left Behind” book…he is that guy; the world leader that keeps doing unacceptable, evil, corrupt, unethical, un-American things yet people continue to follow him convinced that, somehow, all of this unacceptable, chaotic, narcissistic behavior, is making America great. And, ironically, the people who you’d least expect to follow someone like this, are following him—the very people who should have that special religious insight to know better.
Trump is the self-proclaimed 5th Avenue shooter who defends his thuggish, vigilante militia supporters whether they are White Supremacist groups in Charlottesville or presumptuous overzealous militia groups in Kenosha. Trump even defends his supporters when they are underage militia members charged with committing murder. Trump has his own Gestapo like secret police that he created from repurposed Homeland Security personnel—personnel that used to protect us from terrorist threats abroad but are now used to intimidate and threaten marching civilian mothers in Oregon protesting for justice.
At the same time, Trump claims to be the “Law and Order President who thinks all protestors marching for justice are rioters and looters. In Trump’s feeble mind, any protester marching for justice must be marching against him, right? Trump is only the “Law and Order” President for one race of people, his own. Trump is only the “Law and Order” President when they happen to be laws that apply to other people but these same laws are never to be applied to him or his supporters (i.e. Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, etc.).
People follow Trump to their own doom, like Herman Cain and other misguided conservatives, while the rest of us scratch our heads in complete horror wondering…how? How could they let somebody do this, all these self-destructive things that he does to our country, all the deaths people suffered because of Trump’s incompetent response to the pandemic, all the destruction done to our traditional American institutions like the Justice Department, all the abuses of power and all the abuses of position, all the corruption that lead to his impeachment, all the damage done to our Constitution, all the damage done to the rule of law, all the damage done to our values based upon respect for the individual, all the attacks against a person’s right to vote, all the actions to prevent votes from being delivered on time, all the remarks to persuade his supporters to break the law by voting twice, all the damage to our economy, all the actions never taken against national security threats from Russia, all the bounties on the heads of our military personnel in Afghanistan left unanswered, all the abandonment of our Kurdish allies in Syria, all the American troops pulled out of Germany and redeployed elsewhere because of all the delicate feelings that were hurt by a stately German chancellor, all the insults to our military servicemen and servicewomen who are the complete opposite of “losers” and “suckers,” all the grief he’s caused our traditional allies that have stood by us since World War II, all the bone spurs suffered in a letter from his doctor, all the incompetent conflicting messaging with the experts at the CDC, all the vindictiveness, all the petty, illegal retaliations against people who testified under oath, all the distractions, all the name calling, all the division, all the doubt, all the confusion and all the chaos?
Think about it. Who sows this type of confusion and division? What makes anyone think this is sustainable or aligned in anyway with any type of Christian thought? How do people, especially those who call themselves Christians, justify in their minds that this type of behavior is ever acceptable? Are they so bound and determined to continue to follow this world leader to their own doom as they attempt to drag the rest of us along with them into that dark un-American pit they have chosen? I, for one, am fed up and unwilling to tolerate any more of this indecency, nonsense and self-destruction. Let’s put Trump back into the pages where he belongs before it is too late for us and for our 244 year old experiment in self-rule.
Permanent Despotism
The President deliberately cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives all because he believed a national testing plan would only benefit Blue States. This, taken together with the most recent revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” that the President knew how deadly COVID-19 was in the early weeks of February, paints a disturbingly grim portrait of an extremely morally compromised human being. That testing plan, had it been executed at its earliest, in all likelihood would have avoided the “shelter-in-place” orders that individual States were forced to later make. It would have spared us the devastation it is still causing our economy.
The President has a responsibility to consider all Americans whether they voted for him or not. The words of President Washington in his Farewell Address are just as valid today as they were 200 years ago: “Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally…The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
We are Americans—we belong to the United States of America. We don’t belong to Red States or Blue States of some foreign, different America that has committed itself to endless political corruption and intrigue. Leaders who are morally incapable of recognizing that we are all Americans with basic core commonly held beliefs about liberty and justice are dangerously ill-suited for the office of President. These individuals, like Trump, will never do the right thing for their country because, in reality, they have no country. They just have themselves and think only of themselves. They will lead our country into a state of “permanent despotism.”
It’s time to remove dangerous threats to our republic and to our democracy. Starting with this virus but not ending there. We need to remove the self-serving politically corrupt demagogues that have made this virus outbreak in our country so destructive, so deadly and so unmanageable.
References:
#CNN #News – Jul 31, 2020 – Report: Kushner’s Covid-19 testing plan ‘went poof into thin air’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_Address
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington%27s_Farewell_Address
Just Say “No” to “Make America Sick Again!”
The new administrative order that excludes the CDC from directly receiving data from hospitals around the country that is reported to the Federal Government is a clear attempt by a desperate individual in an ill-conceived plan to improve his political fortunes at the expense of the nation’s health and safety. By controlling the data being reported by hospitals, Trump expects he can hide and manipulate the data for his own personal benefit to spin the narrative in any way that he sees fit just like he’s always done. The truth is Trump’s enemy and just like the Devil, Trump will do anything he can to hide the truth from you by painting you a fluffy, Sharpie picture or a safe secure wall to show you how he is most able to so keenly keep out the invading hordes of foreign body antigens even if it means injecting disinfectant to do it. His objective is to deceive you into believing his many fanciful lies that will, ultimately, only lead to your own doom in the end. The story is all too common and all too familiar. It’s the story of a despot.
Meanwhile, the CDC doctors and other medical doctors around the country are left handicapped. Without access to this vitally critical information required by health professionals to aid in their efforts to stop the spread of this virus as quickly as possible, they are prevented from effectively doing their job as they work fervently around the clock to help reduce the tragically increasing number of deaths that keep occurring each day because of this pandemic. Hiding that data increases the risk faced by health workers and it also increases your own risk in being counted as a victim of this pandemic.
Trump’s disturbing self-serving, ego-centric pursuits are destroying this nation and its people by the hundreds of thousands as ICU beds fill up and places to put the bodies of those who have succumbed to this disease dwindle. Trump’s unacceptable behavior is not only becoming a more deadly menace to the effectiveness of our health system but it’s beginning to compromise our national security too. As we continue to become sicker, we are distracted from other nefarious players in the world who are already working to take advantage of the precarious situation. For example, consider the bounties placed on the heads of our military personnel in Afghanistan. The failure to act on that bit of intelligence is further indication of Trump’s inability to recognize dangerous, adversarial threats to our nation from nefarious foreign sources when it contradicts his own fanciful notions of how “he wants it to be.”
Had Trump prepared our nation like he should have months ago, had he not tossed the Pandemic Playbook prepared by the Obama Administration in the wastepaper basket when he took office, had he not fired the Pandemic Response Team in 2018, had he listen to his intelligence agencies, had he listened to the pandemic experts, had he not thought it a hoax and used his hoax story as a less than clever tool to make fun of the “Left” for the benefit of his political reelection campaign, there is every reason to believe we could have avoided the extreme shelter-in-place measures that local governments were forced to take because of Trump’s incompetence and failure in leadership. Then, later, after it appeared things were looking better, had Trump taken the advice of his experts at the CDC by not promoting the opening of America too soon and by not ignoring his responsibility to set a good example by wearing a mask, we could have avoided this sadly predictable but entirely avoidable resurgence of the virus. The unnecessary and economically destructive epidemic mess we are in is entirely the fault of Trump and his anti-science politically corrupted cronies who place their faith in ignorance and made-up tabloid conspiracy theories rather than science and reality.
Trump’s new campaign slogan seems to be: “Make America Sick Again.” It is apparently working in disturbing ways and in ways not too dissimilar from the actions that the Kremlin and/or other comparative totalitarian states might take. I’m sure the idea to control the data has nothing to do with Trump’s inexplicable peculiar fondness for Putin?
With reports about unmarked, unidentifiable Federal Agents kidnapping protestors in Portland, Oregon, questioning them, not charging them and then letting them go, we are left to grapple with yet more incomprehensible un-Democratic actions and abuses of power by a President who just does not seem to have a grasp of how democracy or the rule of law works in America. These unacceptable Gestapo like tactics are right out of a despot’s handbook. They are meant to intimidate the less powerful and used only as a means to deny citizens a voice; tactics a tyrant in a banana republic would embrace without a second thought. But, in America, it’s a violation of our Bill of Rights and of our Constitution. Is this an indication of how CDC personnel and other doctors who promote advice regarding how to decrease the risk of COVID-19 and/or other pandemic disease will be dealt with in the not too distant future when their advice contradicts the advice Trump wants to promote?
Dangerous despots are easily recognizable. We have thousands of years of history to reference in order to learn how to spot them. And this is a sure sign of one. In banana republics or in Russia, it would be a common, everyday occurrence to keep medical data intended for public review and public safety hidden from the masses. But, whoever thought it could happen in America where we are supposed to have safeguards in place to prevent this type of thing from ever happening?
This is a dangerous and an alarming turn of events that should have all Americans, regardless of Political Party, very concerned. Every American citizen who believes in freedom and liberty and the health of their loved ones should be demanding that this unacceptable and un-American self-serving action by Trump be properly reversed and corrected immediately. There is no excuse for threatening the public welfare or our stability as a democratic republic in this irresponsible way.
Freedom of information needs to be preserved. That is the American way and it’s the only way to fight this virus effectively. The CDC and the public needs to have direct access to this hospital data restored now. It’s time to just say, “No,” to “Make America Sick Again!”
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-coronavirus.html
https://gizmodo.com/white-house-tells-hospitals-to-skip-cdc-and-send-corona-1844385250
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cdc-covid-19-data/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wMlgEWZnN8
https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/trump-administration-wants-all.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-obama-coronavirus-pandemic-response
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-18/portland-protests-federal-agents
The Polarity Resistance 