Being in on the Grift

One of the more peculiar things about our recent road-trip through the American South was the presence of Trump Stores.  

Generally speaking, I appreciate the South.  The pace of life, the easy sociability, and the use of the second person plural?  There's something to be said for Y'all Country.  But there's weirdness, too.  There's the juxtaposition of faith and decadence, of extreme wealth and poverty.  And, of course, the lingering racism.  The Trump Store is definitely a bit of Southern Weird.  We passed two of them in our travels, one in Western North Carolina and one in Tennessee, and both were just plain odd.

There they were, festooned with MAGA flags and images of the current president, looking for all the world like a far-right Spirit Halloween.  I was tempted to stop and check it out as we passed, just to go in and immerse the oddness, in the same way that I enjoy now and again dining at a local restaurant run by cultists.  But I didn't even suggest it to my wife, mostly because I knew she couldn't stomach the experience. 

If we were still in the lead up to an election, there'd have been a sense to 'em.  But we're not.  Trump merch just a fixture now, a permanent and peculiar part of our I'd-buy-that-for-a-dollar zeitgeist.  There's not ever been anything like this in my lifetime, this brazen embrace of politician as brand.  It's the teensiest bit pornographic.

Folks know there's money to be made off of the Trump name, and American neofascism has a healthy dollop of PT Barnum profiteering woven into its flag-festooned snake-oil DNA.

At the apex of the brand, a family business makes money hand over fist, selling access and power like never before.  It's not just cheaply made Bibles branded and sold for three times the going retail price.  Now that they're in power, it's $TRUMPcoin, a cryptocurrency that allows the wealthy to buy into the brand and get access and favors in return.  It's a $400,000,000 aircraft, offered up as a gift...not to the nation, but the president directly.   It's private clubs for the oligarchs, where just getting in the door will set you back $500,000.  Emoluments Shmemoluments!  There's money to be made!

And at the bottom of the food chain, folks buying shirts and hats and flags wholesale, which they then hawk online and at Trump stores.  

It's all just so danged crass and venal, pure 100% uncut American Mammonism injected straight into the veins of our Trump addiction.

I thought these things as I drove by, but I thought something else.  Don't be a hypocrite, I thought.

I, too, have been making money off of the Trump name.  I've self-pubbed a whole bunch of my manuscripts through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service over the years.   Of them, only one has sold in even modest numbers.  Since the election, a book I wrote back in 2022 has moved a couple of copies a day, every day.  TRUMP ANTICHRIST, it's called, and it's written in the voice of Satan himself.  It goes for $6.66 a copy, a low, low price selected more for symbolic value than for profit margin.  Amazon gets most of that, and I get about a buck.  Still, that's money.

Though I had to write the book to exorcise Trump-hatred from my soul, I've always felt a little weird about making even modest bank on it.  Those royalty checks ain't a livin', but they're not nothin', either.  How, I mused as we drove, am I different from that Trump Store owner?

Thankfully, Jeff Bezos has solved that problem for me.  

On demand printing costs have risen, and so I recently got a message from Amazon noting a rejiggering of their royalty payment policy.  Come June 10, every self-pubbed paperback on Kindle Direct Publishing that's selling for less than ten bucks will yield no royalties at all.  Not one thin dime.  So every penny of that Six Dollars and Sixty Six cents will go right into Amazon's pocket.  

In a little under two weeks, I'll get nothing from the Great Grift at all.

It feels liberating.

Why Greenland? Why Now?

Why Greenland? Why now?

It can seem, at first glance, a strange and incongruous new obsession, akin to Lex Luthor's desire for Australia.

It's entirely reasonable to suggest that there's no reason the United States needed to stop at fifty states, or to argue that adding another territory is somehow unacceptable as a topic of discussion.   That's only true, mind you, if that's a free and uncoerced choice of the inhabitants of that region.  If America economically bullies a people into submission, or...far worse...uses military force?  Then we are tyrants and monsters and morally bankrupt.  Those things need to be off the table, period, or we are no longer a nation where republican virtue matters.

But the principle of adding to the United States is not inherently invalid.  It's just, again, why Greenland?  Why now?

The geopolitical situation has changed since the Cold War.  It's not 1975.  It's 2025.

Most of the 20th century proxy struggles between the United States and those powers occurred in the Global South, but in 2025, all eyes are on the Arctic.  In 1975, the Arctic was just a desolate, inhospitable frozen waste, one where access to mineral and fossil fuel resources was immensely challenging.  The only reason to keep an eye on it was because that's where the Soviet ICBMs might be flying over on their way to pay us a visit. 

That old geopolitical reality isn't the reason for our new interest in Greenland.  In fact, the reason we pulled back from Greenland, and have fewer troops there than we did at the height of the Cold War?  It's because we're not toe-to-toe with the Soviets there anymore.  That changed.

But other things have changed.  

It's not missiles we're expecting, but ships, because Northern shipping routes are opening up.  Resources that were formerly out of reach are suddenly potentially available, particularly to American oil companies.

Greenland and the newly open waters around it are of much more interest now, economically, than they were fifty years ago.

But...why is this an emergent reality?  I mean, there's a reason.  A single, glaring, significant, obvious reason.  There's a term for that reason, but you're increasingly unlikely to find that term in the mouths of our leaders or on the recently censored websites of our government agencies.

It's climate change.  We want Greenland because of climate change.

I mean, duh.  Less ice means more shipping.  Less ice means deep sea drilling for crude and natural gas becomes a logistical possibility.

In the context of the melting of Arctic sea ice, there's a definite logic to Greenland as a focus.  It's not nuts at all.  Selfishly grasping, crassly profiteering and catastrophically short-sighted, perhaps, but there's a definitive internal logic to it.

But this is only true if anthropogenic, fossil-fuel-driven climate change is actually happening.

Which it is.  

Meaning there's a cynical and implicit acknowledgement on the part of this administration, running all the way to the top.  America's sudden hunger for Greenland exists now only because the increasing pace of climate change makes the control of that region suddenly far, far more lucrative to the oil interests who helped bankroll the current regime.

So.  How does Trump say "climate change is real" without using those words?  

"I want Greenland."  That's how he says it.

The Great Houses

I am, without question, not a fan of Donald J. Trump.  But he's going to be president. 

I am also a lifelong Beltway Insider.  Born here, raised here, pretty much the entirety of my life.  It's where I own a home, purchased back in the late 1990s for what felt...at the time...like an exorbitant amount of money.  Two hundred and forty nine thousand dollars, for a 1,300 square foot brick rambler in Annandale, and even with family help, it was a bit of stretch.  

We bought in because it was where my wife and I both planned on working, and because it was near family.  More broadly, it's our cultural expectation that buying in will give you equity in a home, which is better than just dumping money into rent.  When home prices go up over four...or eight...or twelve...years, selling off means you profit handily from the purchase.

Our rambler, for instance, is worth 200% more now than it was two decades ago.  The house my parents bought, and in which my mom still lives?  That's worth about 1,100% more than it was in 1975.

Again, I'm a Beltway Insider born and bred, which means I've seen what happens when administrations change.  Folks hoping to work with the new regime come bopping into DC, seeking housing to buy.  For most of the fifty five years I've lived here, that's been a good bet.  

Out there, I don't doubt there are Trumpy politicos thinking they'll get a piece of DC Real Estate.  In that knowledge, I'm reminded of my Lord and Savior's insistence that one love one's enemies, that one go the extra mile, that one offereth up one's cloak also and whatnot.

So to them, a warning about buying a house here:  Don't.

Knowing the sensitivities of Trumpy folk, let me note that even if you are the great Cornholio, I am not threatening you by saying this.  You'll be fine here.  Folks are generally neighborly in these parts, if a little prone to being overly work focused.  Some eye rolling and muttering may be encountered, but that's as far as it'll go.

No, the reason not to buy in to the housing market in the DC area is, if you voted for Trump, precisely because he may well do what he promised.  If the Department Of Government Efficiency has even a fraction of the impact Elon and Vivek insist it'll have, it'll tear an iceberg sized gash in the Titanic of the DC housing market.  

Many thousands of workers, gone.  Departments eliminated.  Agency budgets cut to the bone.  The broader economy here will be significantly impacted.  No matter what your opinion on governmental size may be, the impact of that would be gobsmackingly obvious: a sudden explosive decompression of the local economy.  I know what that looks like here.  Things got noticeably leaner here a bit during Al Gore's reinvention of government.  Then back in the subprime crisis of '06 and '07, home prices collapsed, leaving folks with mortgages they couldn't afford and houses that were worth half of what they paid for them.

In my own neighborhood, houses were just abandoned.  Meaning, the owners closed and locked the doors and disappeared.  The two little ramblers at the top of our street, both identical to our own?  They sat empty for years, the grass growing high, the only signs of life being the county violation stickers and foreclosure notices on the front doors.

Ever take a long walk through Flint, Michigan?  I have.  Following the closing of the Buick factory there in the nineties, entire neighborhoods were abandoned.  Home prices went to functionally nothing.  That's what it looks like when the primary industry of a region shutters or significantly retracts.

So, in the interests of being honest to even those who are my political enemies: don't buy a house here.  

You don't want to tie youself to this market right before your own choices destroy it.

Just a friendly warning.

I've also got something you might want to be aware of regarding continuing to live on this planet, but hey.  One thing at a time.

Putting Conservative Christians in Detention Camps

Looking at what we can anticipate from the upcoming administration, one action in particular stands prominent in my attention.  It's perhaps the most dissonant of the paradoxes facing this country as we move towards the next four-or-so years.

On the one hand, there's the fervent turnout of evangelical and conservative Christians, who voted en masse for Donald J. Trump.  

On the other hand, it's the stated intent of the forty-seventh president to...on day one...start rounding up conservative and evangelical Christians and forcibly taking them to camps.   

Generally speaking, this is not the way that most of the folks who voted for Trump would frame this commitment, but it's an entirely accurate way to describe what's planned.  

The plan is mass deportation, on an unprecedented scale, as tens of millions of undocumented migrants will be rounded up and returned to their countries of origin.  Given the logistics of such an endeavor, detention camps will be necessary.  If we're thinking only as selfish consumers, it might occur to us that this will cripple our ability to harvest crops, resulting in price increases and shortages.  But if we're thinking as Christians, there's that other consideration.

We know, with certainty, that most Latino immigrants profess to be followers of Jesus.  In the region of the world from which they hail, between 75% to 80% of the population are Christian.  They are Baptists and Pentecostals, independent evangelicals and traditional Catholics.  Those who risk their lives to reach our borders are no different, which is why so many reach out to Christian communities (or form their own churches) upon their arrival.  They are fleeing a combination of things: economic hardship, violence, and political oppression, particularly those trying to escape the oppressive leftist regime in Venezuela.

Again, American conservative and evangelical Christians voted, by a strong supermajority, for an administration that is planning...very first thing...on mobilizing the military to forcibly round other Christians up and ship them to detention camps, which is perhaps the least Christian response imaginable.  

Jackbooted soldiers herding Christians into trucks parses more like an Antichrist thing, or it was the last time I cringed my way through parts of one of those barely watchable Left Behind movies. 

Even more odd, to my eyes, at least, is that most of the immigrants America will be forcibly detaining aren't progressives, or leftists, or even liberal.  They're conservatives.

Latinos are many things, but most of those who come here are faith and family folk, the sort of people who are willing to risk their lives for the opportunity to work hard.  They are, as the protagonist of a novel of mine once noted, really just rednecks.  They like trucks and beer and dancing.  They like fireworks and cowboy hats and traditional family structures and Hey-zuus.  If America put the resources required to deport them into welcoming them in, they'd be Republicans for generations.

I know, I know, they're "illegal."  If you think that ultimately matters, you're welcome to lecture Jesus on immigration law and secure national borders when you stand before him on the day of judgement.  You might also try telling him about how they don't speak English, so they aren't really Christians, which I'm sure he'll appreciate.  Or how you believed Trump when when he belched out the slander-pander that they were all murderers and rapists.  I mean, it's not like showing hospitality to the stranger and mercy to the foreigner in one's land is ever mentioned in the Bible.  He'll understand that you put country and race before Christ, which he's totally cool with.  Ahem.

Que dios tenga piedad de tu alma.

On Living in an Oligarchy

Two days after Donald J. Trump won the 2024 election, I was reminded of the limitations of social media.

Those reminders have been present throughout this election season.  In 2016 and in 2020, posts containing my reflections on the state of the election were places of extended conversation.  They were shared, and shared often.  

This year?  Crickets.  Part of me got to thinking, you know, perhaps it's just that I'm boring.  And, honestly, it also felt a little repetitious.  A little dull.  Why just say things over and over and over?  I stuck to pictures of my garden, and limited my posting to my blog and the twelve people who read it.

But it wasn't just that.  Meta has changed.  Facebook was once all about friends, about leveraging the human pleasure of interacting with familiar faces.  That was their whole business model.  I'd scroll, and it'd be people I knew from every phase of my life, intermingled with the occasional ad.  That was the point.  

Now, it's not about faces.  It's primarily content pages and advertising.  The shift has been slow, but it's a completely different landscape today.

In the Meta media ecosystem...Instagram, FaceBook, and Threads...we also know that political posts have this season been suppressed by redesigned algorithms.  For major influencers, with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, that following's baked in, but for normies like myself with just a few hundred souls tagging along, the potential for a post to go viral has been muted.  This is by design.

Among my friends and colleagues who skew progressive, there were increasing reports of community standard violations, for infractions that seemed picayune or absurd.  Posts about the climate crisis.  Posts critical of far right-wing foolishness, entirely legitimate as political discourse.  Posts about nothing political at all.  Posts that would once have been utterly par for the course.  All of it, suddenly taken down.

At the same time, in the weeks before the election, my FaceBook feed was suddenly dominated by posts from a single person pitching Trumpy talking points.  He wasn't someone I know, or am close to, or have ever meaningfully interacted with, just a fraternity brother who'd graduated a few years before I entered undergrad.  He was all Trump, all the time, and if you'd read my feed, you'd have thought he was my best friend in the whole wide world.  He was delighting in being a troll, in being provocative.

It was odd.

Then, yesterday, I was hit with my first Facebook community standard violation.  

Six months ago, I'd created a FaceBook page for a work of satire I self pubbed back in 2022.  TRUMP ANTICHRIST, it's called, because what else are you going to say about a politician who has most of the American church in his thrall, while at the same time being precisely and in every way the opposite of Jesus?  To make it clear that it was satire, the book is written in the voice of Satan himself, and it calls out both the decadence and falsehood of Trumpism and...at the same time...challenges Christians who allow hatred for Trump and his followers to consume their souls.  Love your enemies, as a command, isn't contingent on your enemies being the ones that are easy to love, eh?

I'd posted on that page for most of last year, dropping relevant writings from theologians and commentators.  And then yesterday, two days after the election, the page was suddenly suspended.  Why?  It was in violation of newly revised community standards, for "impersonating another person."  

So...you write a book that is clearly satire, and clearly mark your media as a page promoting a book written IN THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL HIMSELF...and you're "impersonating another person?"  What, people might think I'm actually Satan?  I mean, ok, fine, some might, but...what and the what?

I asked that the decision be reviewed, a process that required checking one of four prewritten replies, each of which was written to subtly suggest I might be in the wrong.  The response came seconds later.  Denied, all content removed, all by an "admin," which clearly it wasn't.  This was a machine at work.  The corporate algorithms had spoken.

Here, were I ignorant, I suppose I'd whinge about First Amendment rights.  Mah Rights!  Mah Rights!  

But I wasn't speaking in America.  I was on Facebook, and Facebook isn't America.  

Meta pages or groups or profiles reside in a corporate media ecosystem.  They're not our property, nor are they the public sphere.  We are in a space controlled and managed by a global conglomerate, run by and for profit, one whose interests are engagement and eyeballs for the purposes of selling our data and advertising to us.  That's the whole business model.  Freedom of speech isn't relevant.  If, like X, Meta wants to suppress political or religious discourse that they feel does not benefit them, they can.

Constitutional protections do not apply in oligarchic systems.  I have no right to a Facebook page, or a Facebook profile.  None of us do.  There are no freedoms when our every interaction is owned by corporations.

It's something we need to remember.

Those Dirty Refs

I didn't watch the debate.  There's no need, as my perspective is already baked in.  There's nothing Donald Trump could say or do that would change my opinion of him at this point.  I mean, I suppose he could, but it's Mega Millions winning ticket improbable.  He's a buffoon unworthy of the office, and a danger to the moral and physical integrity of our Republic.  I chose to read some C.S. Lewis instead.

My wife, on the other hand, went to a watch party with her circle of Democratic Ladyfriends, so I figured I'd know how it all went by how she came through the door when she got home.  If she was grim, it was a Biden-esque disaster.  If she was angry, it was a close and tense exchange.

She bounced through the door exuberant, so it was clear it was not a good night for Trump, and that Harris had done as well as could be expected.

Online, the right wing folk I still follow were not nearly as happy, scrambling to spin the failure, with most of their ire aimed at the moderators of the debate.

When you complain about the referees, there's pretty much no question that your team lost.

We all know this.  It's a reality in all competitions, presidential debates included.  For supporters of the forty fifth president of the United States, there's no question that the moderators of the debate between himself and Harris are to blame for his loss.  He was repeatedly fact-checked, which is of course terribly terribly unfair and has nothing at all to do with his repeatedly saying things that are demonstrably untrue or delusional.

One could point out, I suppose, that both the venue and the rules for the debate had been negotiated by Trump, and that both the format and moderators had been approved by him.  Nonetheless, he'd been grumbling about it for weeks, pre-justifying his loss, planting the scripted rationale for his failure in the minds of his base.  Yet still, this was the best deal that he could negotiate, which...er...doesn't seem to say much about his deal-making skills.

But why should candidates be forced to negotiate and renegotiate the terms of every single debate?  That makes this sort of unbalanced shellacking far more likely.

Shouldn't there be uniform rules for debates?  What about an organization that made sure that everything is fair and agreed upon by a neutral arbiter, so that the debates are always on a consistent, fair and common ground?   It could be run by representatives of both parties, who would mutually determine where and when the debates take place.   That'd take the whole mess out of the hands of candidates and their campaigns, while insuring everything was on the up and up.

That would seem to fix the problem.  Not doing that is so unfair!

That was, of course, exactly what the Commission on Presidential Debates did for most of my fifty-plus-year lifetime.  Right up until 2022, when the Republican National Committee, under orders from former president Trump, announced that no Republicans were allowed participate in the Commission, and that the Republican Party would not cooperate with the Commission, because it had clearly been very very unfair to Trump in 2020.   

The CPD, which still exists, offered to organize and moderate three debates this year, which would have fallen on September 16, October 1, and October 19, following the logical process of only holding debates after the parties had finalized their nominees.

Trump and his campaign refused to go along, and instead negotiated a much, much earlier debate directly with the Biden team. 

We know how that worked out.  It allowed Biden's team to test their candidate early, giving the Democrats a chance to completely reset after his grimly weak performance.   Can you imagine what the race would look like today if the first 2024 Biden/Trump debate had happened last night? 

Who negotiated that?  Trump did.  Who's responsible for that?  Trump is.  He picked those refs, and that venue, and that timeline.  Yet still, he complains about how unfair it all is. 

It's almost like that's all he knows how to do.

A Vote to Save Trump's Soul

Unlike most of the earnestly progressive siblings in my denomination, I have a rather vigorous sense of Hell.  I've expounded on that elsewhere, so I won't get into that here, other than to say that I make no distinctions between God's love, God's wrath, and God's justice.  The cup we pour out is the cup we receive, after all, and against that measure, the current Republican candidate is in a world of trouble.

Donald J. Trump has already made American Christian discourse harsher, crueler, and more selfish, stripping grace, kindness, and wisdom from countless churches.   The crass brassy transaction of his relationship with evangelicalism has driven millions from the faith, as empty platitudes, flagrant lies, and the naked hunger for power have supplanted the Gospel.  

He has undercut the most fundamental blessing of our republic, subverting the Founder's intent for a nation in which leaders are freely elected, and where where power changes hands peaceably.

His anti-Christian nationalism has slandered millions of Latino migrants, 80% of whom are hermanos y hermanas en Christo.  He would turn America into a walled Jericho, into an inhospitable Sodom.  His misbegotten Abraham Accords "fixed" the Middle East by conveniently pretending the Israel/Palestine issue didn't exist, setting the stage for the unprecedented chaos and bloodshed of this last year.  Well, to be fair, it's precedented by millennia of strife in that benighted region, but you know what I mean.

But my deepest concern, honestly, are the tens or hundreds of millions who will suffer if he is elected again.  These are the souls that will starve, suffer, or be forced from their homes and lands because of his refusal to acknowledge our rapidly changing climate.  His flagrant quid pro quo with the oil and gas industries, coupled with his bizarre demonization of everything that would both allow us to adapt and become more energy self-reliant?  They've become pseudo-religious dogma on the far-right now, a bitter, unbiblical, and demonic creed-of-greed that will contribute to actually unprecedented human suffering.

Donald is aware of exactly none of this.  It doesn't even register.

He's a worldly man, after all, utterly unspiritual, as one would be as a Child of Mammon.  A little boy raised in a temple of gold will grow into a big man who couldn't care less about heavenly or eternal things.  And sure, yes, there's grace for all, but grace has to be freely received.  It is for all who repent.  He's great at doubling down, and has no use for repentance.  Repentance implies you were wrong, after all, and he is never ever wrong.

Yet despite all of this, Donald J. Trump is a child of God.  He knows not what he's doing.  I do not desire to maximize his suffering.  I do not wish him harm.  Though he is my enemy, I love him, because I do what Jesus tells me to do.

If he wins the upcoming election, he will receive the worldly power he desires.  But he will also reap the fruits of his actions once given power, and that...insofar as I can honestly see it...imperils his immortal soul.  It's the dark bargain of all who lead, of all who take on the mantle of worldly power, but for Donald, it's a particularly dangerous thing.  

Given power, Trump will pour out a cup of bitterness for himself, a cup as deep as the oceans, as deep as the night sky.

Don't vote against him because you hate him.  

Vote against him because you love him.  Because if he wins?  And God is just?

Lord have mercy on his soul.

Speculation and Morality

Immediately following the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, the religious chatter about Trump got waaaaay more intense.

His supporters felt that this near miss marked him as protected by God, that it was a sign that he was a necessary part of God's plan for America.  Like King David, like Cyrus of Persia, Trump is the anointed one, the vessel of the Divine intent.  Trumpist theology has always had a divine-right ring about it, which...given that his supporters are essentially monarchists...shouldn't be much of a surprise.

Others had very different ideas, ones that seem a little closer to the reality of who Trump is.  Among some fringe communities of evangelicals who haven't missed that Trump is the exact opposite of Jesus in every way, the failed assassination attempt and the wound to Trump's ear fulfilled the terms of Revelation 13:3.  "There it is," they said.  "There's the head wound, and the wondering world!"  Trump is, they suggest, the Little Horn, the adversary of Christ, whose amorality, worldliness, and pathological falsehood marks him as the Antichrist.  The end times are at hand!

Both are...off.

Trump's "faithful" supporters are off, because, c'mon.   Christ's purposes are never served by lies and bullying.  Christ's purposes are never served by showing cruelty to the stranger, or by refusing shelter to a fellow Christian.  Ever.  Not ever.  Period.  The Gospel must be expressed in our every action, and the dark logics of your theological consequentialism can be used to excuse any evil.  Sure, he's done what he promised.  But just because the devil fulfills his end of the bargain doesn't mean you haven't sold your soul.

As the author of the definitive book on Trump's Antichrist nature, I might seem closer to the latter camp.  At least the folks who are freaked out about him have the advantage of not being bamboozled by Trump's transactional schtick.  And I will admit, the whole head wound thing is a little creepy, as is the depth to which the American faithful now stand in Trump's thrall.

The challenge, though, is that none of that matters.  The question, for Christians, is never about the details of the end times, or about the mechanics of messianic fulfillment.  Jesus was really, really specific about that.  Don't speculate about those things, he said.  Don't trust anyone who speculates about it.

Our task, as Christians, is not to worry about when it all comes down.  Because if you're a Christian, if you've committed yourself to being a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, again: none of that matters.  None of it.  If you're claimed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the end times have already arrived for you.

The Christian has already stepped over to a different way of life, one that manifests itself in the values and ethos that Jesus lived and taught.  It doesn't matter where we are in the scheme of things.  We must live, right now, as if that time were fulfilled.  My moral commitments are the same, no matter where we are in the arc of history.  Faced with an cruel emperor, a totalitarian state, a flagrant charlatan, or a decadent mammonist culture, none of that changes.

Love neighbor.  Love enemy.  Feed the hungry.  Clothe the naked.  Show hospitality to the stranger.  Speak the truth, and show grace.  Refuse the sword, and turn your back on the sweet poison of wealth.  This is the basic value-set of discipleship, no matter when, no matter what.

When we get lost in wild end-times speculation, we too easily lose sight of that discipled moral agency.  We start living in a world of abstractions and phantasms, rather than in the reality of our day-to-day choices.  We forget both our Christian freedom and our Christian duty.

 

The Flavor of Weak Sauce

I love my denomination, but if I am entirely honest, it often frustrates the bejabbers out of me.

At our recent General Assembly, we once again backed away from investing our resources in renewables and other forms of energy that might blunt or slow the onslaught of the climate crisis.

For over a decade, we've been noodling around  the edges of making our investment portfolio more clearly reflect care for creation, but once again, our bottom line got muddled by the endless competing interests that sabotage progress amongst progressives.

Of more concern, frankly, was the tepid, enervated approach to the incipient collapse of our republic.  Presbyterians were at the forefront of the American Revolution back in the day, and watching the work of the Founding Fathers systematically undone by the far right should stir us to a hue and cry.  

"Christian nationalism," in the context of both the American Constitution and the Presbyterian Constitution, is an abomination.  It reflects a fundamental failure of representative government, and a toxic commingling of political power and faith that betrays the intent and purpose of the Gospel.  

The current name of that movement is Trumpism, and it is organized around Trump and those who are either in on the grift, in his thrall, or taking a transactional perspective to morality.  

Its rise threatens every single social position the denomination holds: on climate, on racial justice, on inclusion of Queer folk, all of it.   

But it is, ultimately, not a political challenge.  It's a spiritual and existential threat, one that demands an immediate moral response.

And for that, my fellow Presbyterians are catastrophically ill equipped.

What we collectively did on that front?  We funded a study to examine the dynamics of White Christian Nationalism.  

A STUDY.  I know what that means.

I mean, I've lived most of my life inside the Beltway.  I live here now.  I can hear the thrum of 495 in the distance from my front yard.  If you want to do nothing, or to stall, or to kill something, what do we inside-the-Beltway types do?  We commission a study.  We say more information is needed, and that we need to be more deliberate in assessing the complexities of the issue, and opine that there are subtleties that need to be examined, and more perspectives that need to be considered.  We need to hear from all of the constituencies, particularly those that are historically underrepresented.

By the time that study is completed, Christian Nationalism may well be in power, in such a way that meaningful constitutional governance of our republic no longer exists.

"Something is actually happening, Reg!" as that line from Life of Brian goes.  

Which, of course, calls for immediate discussion.

Praying for Donald Trump

The question, one that pressed into my soul yesterday, was this:

How to pray for Donald J. Trump following the attempt on his life?  As a Christian, I'm duty-bound to pray for my enemies as deeply as I pray for my friends, which is enough of a challenge.  But the specifics of the prayer were a unique conundrum.

I mean, had he been seriously or critically hurt, and hospitalized, that would have been straightforward.  I'd have prayed for his recovery, and for his doctors, and for healing for the nation.  That was the simple prayer offered back when he was afflicted with COVID, and things looked touch and go for a while.  Had he died, that would also have been straightforward, prayers for the disposition of his soul and again, for the healing of the nation.

But Donald J. Trump is fine.  

He could have died, yes, but he did not.  

He was aggressive before, he was more aggressive after.  His injury, such as it was, was the sort of thing one might get in a moderate fall.  It was of less import than a sprained ankle, and far less of an impediment to his life.  Nor did his response indicate any meaningful psychological trauma, or any reaction other than unshakable defiance and an even deeper conviction of his own special place in history.  

I shared this observation during a conversation with a Trump supporter yesterday after church, and they agreed.  "He's fine," they said.  

In point of fact, he is stronger after the attempt than he was before the attempt, and he knows it.  

He is just as physically healthy, albeit with a surface wound to his ear.  He is far socially stronger, as the "iconic" images of his deeply ingrained fight response have cemented the messianic convictions of his most fervent supporters.   Their collective victim-narrative is now sealed in his own blood, so to speak.   

He will step into the Republican convention this next week as a bloodied and unbowed hero, fist raised in defiance, and be received with roars of adulation.  

He isn't in mourning, or in shock.  He's fine, and feeling fine.  He is reveling in this moment, the purest gift to a consummate showman.

That's not a partisan assessment, but the simple reality.

So my prayers were simpler.  For healing for his ear, such as it is.  For the disposition of his soul, as always.  And, particularly, for the future of this country, and a turning away from the bitter spirit of violence that so blights us all.

Not up for Debate

I'm not sure, to be honest, why the upcoming debate is necessary.  

If at this point you can't tell the difference between Biden and Trump, or are operating under the assumption that they are basically the same person, I just don't know how to help you.

We know what a Biden presidency looks like.  We know what a Trump presidency looks like.

We lived through both.

Biden's presidency has looked more or less normal.  Not perfect, not ideal, but essentially competent.

Trump's presidency?  I mean, y'all were awake then, right?

Trump drove America deeper into debt than any president in history, and that was BEFORE the pandemic.  His handouts to the wealthy weren't matched with a reduction in government spending, so he bankrolled the whole thing using America's dwindling credit.  BEFORE the pandemic.  During the pandemic, he (and both parties, to be fair) just printed money and gave it away, which...er...is kinda why everything costs more dollars now.  It's almost like we didn't learn the lessons of Weimar Germany.

Trump's leadership was responsible for America having the highest COVID death rate of any developed nation.  If we'd done as well as, say, Germany, which has similar population density and equivalent average wealth, hundreds of thousands of Americans wouldn't have died.  He could have rallied Americans around our duty to one another, and to our nation.  He didn't.  He played to the basest of his base, sabotaged doctors and epidemiologists, and acted as a chaos agent when we most desperately needed clear vision and strategic thinking.

Think of the villainizing of Fauci, for pointed example.  Fauci was fine, right up until he obviously to any sentient being knew more about COVID than Trump.  Trump felt upstaged, his ego was pricked, and all of a sudden, Fauci was a monster in cahoots with the Chinese.  Heck, as far as Trump's base is concerned now, he might even have *made* the virus.  This is Demagogery 101, people. 

Trump was a friend to autocrats and despots, and the enemy of other democracies and republics.  He palled around with monsters.  All the while, he traveled to his own properties around the world, while insisting that the taxpayer foot the bill so his entourage and security could stay on his properties.  Three to six hundred dollars a night, per person?  That adds up.  Foreign powers and agents filled the rooms of the hotel he owned a short walk from the White House.  Politics, after all, can be a lucrative business.

He was the worst sort of boss, the kind of boss who hears nothing but what he wants to hear, who thinks he can do no wrong, who bullies and mocks and belittles all but those who suck up to him.  His "administration" burned through every competent staffer, retaining only those who were either in on the grift, a little crazy, or related to Trump by blood.   

Finally and most notably, Trump refused to accept, and still refuses to accept, the most basic principle of a constitutional republic: free and fair elections.  No election he loses can be fair.  They're all rigged, unless he wins.  Remember how he incited a riot in an attempt to intimidate Congress into abandoning its constitutional duty?  Remember that?  Remember how he had to be forced to concede by the armed forces, who weren't swayed by his lies and conspiracy theories?

Yeah.  Pepperidge Farm remembers.

I don't need to watch the debate.  

That a significant majority of American citizens still do is a marker of our integrity as a republic.  

Bump Stocks: Aiding and Abetting the Enemy

This is why we banned bump stocks: Sixty dead. Four hundred and thirteen injured. One gunman.

Again, that's why bump stocks were banned. A massacre at a country music concert. Bump stocks permit terrorists, both domestic and foreign, to modify any semi-automatic rifle to full-auto. Thus modified, they are crude and easily accessible instruments of mass slaughter.

We banned them, and the Supreme Court overturned that ban. The odd arguments offered up by members of the Court about the mechanism involved were obviously, self-evidently immaterial, and the worst form of legalism.

With no training, anyone...I mean anyone...can put an entire magazine downrange in seconds. Reload, then do so again. And then again. Before the Las Vegas massacre, I'd watch gun enthusiast videos about bump stocks, and as they dished about how badass they felt using one, I marveled that they'd not yet been used in a mass shooting. They reduce accuracy, waste ammunition, and are useless for shooting sports. A bump stock would be equally pointless for home defense. But if you're firing into a fleeing crowd, that doesn't matter.

Watching the videos produced by avid gun Youtubers, there was no question about the purpose of a bumpstock. It was a cheap way to circumvent restrictions on full auto machine guns, for funsies. Because what's more fun than blasting away at a target with a couple of hundred rounds? I mean, it would be kind of fun, honestly, in a world where terrorists and psychopaths didn't exist.

But that's not the world we live in. The video above makes that abundantly clear, without commentary or question.

Nor is the world we live in one where making meaningless, obviously specious arguments about trigger mechanisms is anything other than evil. Sure, it's "true," but in the way that willful spin is often "true." We do not limit access to full-auto receivers because we have an issue with receivers. We limit access to full-auto receivers because of what they *do*.

C4 and dynamite aren't the same chemically, but they still blow things up, eh?

A workaround that allows you to do the same thing...to pour hundreds or thousands of rounds into a crowd of warm bodies...violates the obvious intent of restrictions on automatic weapon access.

The sophistry involved in overturning that ban is crude, self-serving, and willfully ignorant. It's argumentation straight out of scholasticism, in which the letter of the law is debated and the intent of the law is ignored. It shows a complete failure to understand the purpose not just of bump stocks, but of the entire system of justice. Overturning that ban poses a threat to law enforcement professionals, to citizens, to all of us.

This is Trump's court, after all, so that should come as no surprise.

Of Trump and Jesus

"Jesus of Nazareth.  Donald Trump.

Both were prosecuted and convicted of crimes by the state.

Therefore, they are the same."

This seems to be the logic permeating a substantial portion of American Christianity of late, the portion that sees Jesus and Donald Trump as essentially equivalent persons.  Trump is, by this way of thinking, a martyr, whose struggle is our struggle.  The only reason he is being pursued is that he is the only one who can speak up for the little guy, the only one who knows and speaks the truth.  And like Jesus, he is willing to pay the price for his truth-telling.

This is, of course, utterly insane.  

One could just as easily place Adolph Hitler into that Venn Diagram, only Hitler actually went to prison for the beer-fueled uprising he instigated in Munich.  Like Hitler, the trial and conviction of Adolph Hitler only cemented his popularity among his followers, for precisely the same reason that Trumpists take Trump's convictions as a marker of his legitimacy.  Only a true patriot would be willing to suffer for us!  Just like Jesus!  And Hitler!  Yay TrumpJesusHitler!

But just as Jesus and Adolph were nothing alike, so too Donald and Jesus are nothing alike.

The two bear no resemblance to one another whatsoever morally or personally.  They are, in point of fact, the opposite sort of person entirely.  Making the argument that they are the same is a marker of a disordered mind.

"Are you saying my mind is disordered?" might come the snarled aggression response from the avowed Trumpist, who has learned that threats and bullying are their most effective tools in silencing opponents. 

Yes.  Yes I am.  Insofar as you are in thrall, yes.

But I will admit that there's something inaccurate about my statement.  

That way of putting it assumes that Trumpism is a physical pathology, a peculiar and pernicious neurodivergence or imbalance in brain chemistry.  

It is not.  

Trumpism is first and foremost a moral disease, the same moral disease that has afflicted humankind since we were first driven from Eden. It is the willingness to blame others for our own mistakes.  It is the desire to resent, to attack, and to manipulate truth to our own ends.  It is the hate of one's enemies, and the love of mammon, and the delight in violence and violent thoughts. 

It is a disorder of the soul, a spiritual illness.  

To use some pointlessly overcomplicated words, Trumpism is a sociopolitical manifestation of Augustinian concupiscence.  It tastes of the fruit of the knowledge of evil, its' sickly sticky siren song sweet as Turkish Delight straight from the cold hand of Jadis.  

There, I suppose, you do have your theological connection, because the reason we human beings need Jesus so utterly is our hunger to be ruled by men like Donald.

Of Trump and My Anarcholibertarian Predilections

Last year, I sat in front of a class of undergraduates and talked about my postapocalyptic Amish novel.  At one point, in response to a question from one of them about separatist/quietist movements, I described myself as having "anarcholibertarian predilections," which got a laugh from a couple of bearded young men at the back of the class.  

It's such a silly, self-absorbed, overwrought way to think of yourself, which makes anarcholibertarianism a perfect match for silly, self-absorbed, overwrought me.

I've dabbled with the idea that I might politically self-identify as libertarian over the years, but if I am, I'd have to be of that peculiar variety.  Every time I think I'm there, when my frustration with the rigidities of bureaucratic folderol and the clucking propaganda of twitter pharisees and apparatchiks have me considering going full Ron Swanson, libertarians disabuse me of the notion that I could ever possibly fit within that "movement."  

Not that it's a movement, not really.  It's as incoherent as the language on the AI generated image I prompted for this post.

The news about Libertarianism recently, insofar as there is ever any meaningful news about libertarianism in America, is that the Libertarian Party has invited Donald J. Trump to speak at their convention.

It's yet another reason why any libertarian worthy of the name would steer away from the American party, and a reminder of how neofascist, corporatist, and "strong man" ideologies have devoured the concept of libertarianism in America.  If your libertarianism ends up justifying the power of a despot, an oligarch, or a charlatan, it ain't libertarianism.  

It's monarchism, and honeychild, there is a difference.

My libertarianism doesn't bend the knee to anyone, including myself.  Perhaps that's because it's less a political philosophy and more a question of my theology, which seems a better place for libertarianism to hang its hat.  That is, let it be clear, not me saying it is less relevant.  It's me saying it's more central to my identity as a person, my understanding of how human beings are to live together, and our relationship with our Creator.

There's probably some pre-existing definition of the word anarcholibertarian, one that was argued and fretted over by earnest folks with Germanic surnames a century ago.  I mean, surely there is.  I don't care.  I mean, being anarcholibertarian, why would I?

My libertarianism is "anarcho" because I don't trust human beings with power.  Put the prefix "an" in front of "arch," and that's really all you're saying:  "no power."  Whatever the power structure may be, there is within it moral hazard.  The concentrations of power that manifest in political systems become self-perpetuating, as power seeks to reinforce itself.   There is no form of political system that is immune to this, because political systems are human social constructs, and humans love love love power over one another.  

Which means...because no human community can function without power...that I prefer systems that check and balance the powerful.  Oligarchies and despotisms, being the self-serving things that they are, are the enemy.  Social democracies and liberal republics are invariably frustrating, but they do a far better job of preserving the average soul's liberty than any other system.  This is precisely because they put the brakes on power, because they make the concentration of authority in a single person or group more difficult.  We've forgotten this, we Americans, as we posture and bellow at one another from our position of privilege.

Preserving the liberty of the powerful is and has always been unnecessary.  The wealthy and the social elite have their armies of lawyers...or their actual armies...to ensure that they are free to do as they please.  Rules, like the covenant of marriage or the Constitutional process for the peaceful transfer of power?  These things do not apply to them.

The more someone loves power, revels in it, glories in it?  The less one should trust them with it.

Yet so many of us, once again, howl for a king.