Dear Evangelicals…

When did you decide that Trump was a “Christian President”?

Was it when he said, “I knew she was married, and I did try to f–k her…. You can grab women by the pussy”?

https://qz.com/804244/weve-all-heard-trumps-misogynistic-comments-in-public-but-this-video-shows-hes-even-worse-in-private/

Was it when he mocked a disabled man?

Was it when he asked Russia if they were listening, and invited an enemy government to interfere in our elections? (Within hours of this announcement, Russian hackers had broken into American computer systems, “as requested.”)

Was it when he insulted a female reporter by crassly referring to her menstrual cycle: “she was bleeding out of her… whatever”?
https://time.com/4839415/donald-trump-mika-brzezinski-women-blood/

Was it when he said– contrary to one of the basic tenets of your Christian faith as stated in John 3:16– that he did not believe he had ever sinned and was not a sinner? Was it when he said he had never asked God for forgiveness, because he didn’t believe he had ever done anything wrong?
https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/18/politics/trump-has-never-sought-forgiveness/index.html

Was it when he repeatedly said he never prayed at all, because he didn’t think there was anything God could know that he himself did not?

Was it when he repeatedly couldn’t remember even one Bible verse to quote, and mispronounced the names of Bible chapters?
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-refused-to-name-favorite-bible-verse-2015-8

Was it when the dozens of women came forward and accused him of sexual assault? (Did that sound like something Jesus would do?)
https://www.businessinsider.com/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12

Was it when you found out that he was a serial adulterer? (Even if you don’t believe the women outside of his multiple marriages, there is no denying the fact that his last two wives were his mistresses during his first two marriages.)
https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-times-trump-cheated-wives-780550

Was it when he insulted war heroes and grieving Gold Star parents?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/07/31/trumps-temper-tantrum-freaks-out-u-s-allies/

Was it when countless people proved he was a thief and a cheat? And when the small business owners came forward to tell about how he simply refused to pay them, because he knew they couldn’t afford a lawyer and therefore he could cheat them without consequence, thereby putting them out of business… when the charities came forward to say he had embezzled money from them… when the people who knew him best told you he would rob people blind without remorse… Did you not care? Did you think Jesus would have done the same?
https://theweek.com/articles/783976/brief-history-trumps-smalltime-swindles

(Because all of those were before he was even elected, but you voted for him anyway.)

Was it when his Presidential schedule NEVER showed even ONE Sunday spent at church, but most of them were spent on a golf course, and the rest were spent on Twitter?
http://www.trumpgolfcount.org

Was it when he spent hours upon hours on social media, childishly insulting people– including little girls– who disagreed with him? (Many days, he literally spends more time on social media than you spend at work.)

Was it when he and his friends ordered that human beings who LEGALLY came to us begging for asylum and refuge from violence & poverty, have their children torn from their arms and all of them thrown into overcrowded and unsanitary cages, into conditions worse than farm animals? The Bible says we are to help the helpless, give justice and mercy to strangers. It does NOT tell us to imprison them and treat them like animals. (And please… Do NOT waste your breath trying to defend this based on Obama. If one man beats up homeless man, that does not justify the next guy in beating the homeless man, too.) ALL of this is contrary to the many verses in the Bible that tell us to show mercy to the helpless, kindness & welcoming to strangers, and even to simply “do unto others as you would have done into you.”

Did Trump suddenly become a “good Christian” during any of the countless times he showed his inability to have any sympathy or understanding for other people in crisis? He has proven that he thinks he is the center of everything and the reason for everything to exist. All of his tweets are about HIS feelings, HIS ratings, HIS self-proclaimed “victimhood.” He has never shown any genuine pity for anyone but himself, even in the face of a deadly pandemic that has ravaged both our society and our economy. When asked if he had any words of comfort for the families of the then-155,000 people who had died from Coronavirus, Trump apathetically resigned himself to defeat and said, “It is what it is.” He has never shown mercy to anyone except his friends– when he pardoned them of crimes they committed WITH HIM. Trump proves that does not have any LOVE for his fellow human beings.

Was it when he began his Presidency by altering the official record, govt photos to merely make himself look more popular than he was?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited

Was it any of the countless times his best buddies were arrested, put in jail for their crimes (most committed WITH HIM), and pardoned by him– putting himself and his friends above the law?
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/12/890075577/roger-stone-clemency-latest-example-of-trump-rewarding-his-friends-scholars-say

Was it when he continued to lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, and LIE… more than any other President in history, with some of the most ludicrous and ridiculous statements we had ever heard before, over 16,000 documented LIES? Was it when he repeatedly called other people “fake news” because he couldn’t admit to his own lies?

Was it when he attacked the Constitution, by calling the Free Press an “enemy of the people” (just like Stalin & Hitler did)?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/07/donald-trump-war-on-the-media-oppo-research

Was it when he posed in front of a church he never attended, holding an upside-down Bible he’s never read, and didn’t even stick around to say a prayer? (In order to have this photo op, btw, he had police gas & shoot rubber bullets at peaceful citizens, including members of the clergy from that same church.) https://www.npr.org/2020/06/02/867705160/he-did-not-pray-fallout-grows-from-trump-s-photo-op-at-st-john-s-church


Also…
https://www.newsweek.com/reverend-says-she-was-tear-gassed-outside-white-house-so-trump-could-hold-bible-look-christian-1508074?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1591105315


Or maybe it was when military Generals were apologizing for their role in violence against PEACEFUL Americans, who were gassed & shot at by their own government, while merely excercising their First Amendment Rights?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/politics/trump-milley-military-protests-lafayette-square.html


Or maybe it was when he ordered his agents to arrest people without charging them, taking them away in unmarked vans, and beating & tear gassing innocent people– including Veterans!– who were merely (within their Rights) standing and talking to those agents?
https://time.com/5869220/navy-vet-federal-agents-portland-protests/

Or maybe it was when he attacked the integrity of the Electoral process, suggesting that our votes would not matter, LYING that we should have to go out and vote in a pandemic, and that we should ignore the Constitution in order to delay the elections and to allow him to stay in office longer?

(Did you feel like your “Constitutionalist” party cherished the Constitution when all of these events happened?)

Was it when he stood cringing and cowering next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and silently stood by when Putin bragged that he had indeed wanted Trump elected and had even helped to make it happen (i.e., admitted to interfering in our elections)?

Was it when Trump got up on TV and said he believed enemy dictators over his own intel people, over the expertise of everyone around him?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/donald-trump-putin-helsinki-summit/index.html

Was it when he ignored the repeated warnings of his own intel people, for MONTHS at a time, telling him that our Troops had BOUNTIES on their heads, and that Russia was paying terrorists for every American soldier they killed? Was it when he publically stated that (again) he cowered from having to challenge Putin, and claimed it was not a valid reason to confront Putin during any of the several phone calls they had after he was told?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trump-putin-germany-bases-bounties-russia-mueller.html

Was he more “Christian” when he called African countries “shitholes,” called Mexicans “rapists,” and said there were “very fine people” among the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville? Or maybe it was right after that, when the leader of the KKK thanked Trump for his racist endorsement of white supremacy? How proud you must have been to know he was such a hero to hateful people.

Was it when he called Covid a “Democratic hoax” and that he “didn’t take responsibility at all”? Or maybe it was when he suggested that people could inject themselves with bleach to cure the Coronavirus? Was it when he repeatedly got up on TV and turned a worldwide tragedy into a partisan political campaign?
https://youtu.be/9UGe4dVzExU

When he spent his “Coronavirus briefings” complaining about his political opponents and making countless false assertions about the virus, using his time there to campaign instead of inspiring people to unify in action against the disease… when he insisted on making the virus information sessions all about him and his political enemies… when he contradicted the words of his experts and insulted them if they dared to correct his LIES and STUPIDITY… Did that seem “Presidential” or “Christian” to you?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/trump-coronavirus-bully-pulpit/609565/

Was it whenever he has insisted that any news that criticizes him or finds fault in him is “fake news” and those who call out his lies & incompetence are “losers”?


Please tell me… How is it that a man:
* who never attends church,
* who brags that he never prays and has never sinned,
* who insults and bullies unceasingly and CHILDISHLY,
* who brags about sexual assault and chests on his multiple wives (even when they are home caring for his newborn children),
* who refuses to admit ANY of his mistakes and sins,
* who has never professed any moment of salvation (never claimed he was “Born Again,” for example),
* who represents ALL of “the seven abominations” in the Bible that God finds so abhorrent? (Proverbs 6:16-19)
* who spends more time complaining about the mistreatment of statues and the flags of traitors than the people suffering and afraid, in the midst of a plague,
* who has repeatedly been proven to be a chronic liar, serial adulterer, and thief…

How is it that you can possibly call such a person a “good Christian President”?

How can you make such a claim without actually vomiting from the blatant heretical BULLSHIT you are spewing?

I really want to know.

Joe Biden has always been far from my first choice for President. I’m no fan of his, and I’ve made that plain in the past.

But I will gladly say that, contrary to Trump’s claims, Joe Biden is a faithful Catholic (and therefore confesses his sins regularly). He has attended church regularly, can actually quote the Bible, has shown mercy and genuine loving compassion to people in pain & crisis, and has behaved far more like what Jesus commanded us to do, than Trump ever has.

Do you not think Catholics can be “Christian”? Is your dismissal of Biden’s manifest faith merely because he has a Priest instead of a Pastor?

Or are you simply regurgitating the words of an ACTUAL “Godless” man– Donald Trump?

https://youtu.be/vwuOrv1N0xU

Yes, the Bible tells us to forgive people of their sins. But it also repeatedly tells us we are supposed to use discernment when it comes to what kind of people– and what kind of leaders– we choose.

It’s time to start showing that discernment, and be better Witnesses for Christ. Instead of showing the world that we embrace an ungodly, immoral, and apathetic man, we need to start showing our actual faith at the voting booth– not merely oting or a party that only claims to defend our ideals, but instead embraced lies, a lack of compassion, and Narcissism..



History or Hate? Confederate Symbols in Modern America

My ancestors were actual heroes of the Confederacy.

They hosted Conf.Pres. Jefferson Davis at their home on multiple occasions, both during and after the Civil War, as well as giving aid and comfort to Troops of Southern soldiers during the War.

One of my ancestors, Capt. John Henry Freligh, was so entrusted by Davis that he was put in charge of printing much of the Confederate currency.
His wife, Susan Rebecca (Ruland) Freligh, was a spy who smuggled medicine (hidden in the puffy buttons of her dress) and information across Union lines. She was captured at one point, and NAGGED her way out of captivity. (Seriously.)

I have letters that Captain Freligh wrote and copies of the magazines he published in defense of the Southern pro-slavery positions. I have articles about the work he did printing the currency, and printing books & magazines for Southern causes.

It was my attempts to understand why he took a pro-slavery position that have inspired me most in beginning my Genealogical interests.

Genealogy as taught me that history should be learned from & remembered…

…In books. In family stories. In museums. In classrooms.

But NEVER revered & poised heroically in public parks, or waving on flagpoles as if they’re still the symbol of our government.

A majority of the Confederate monuments were erected long AFTER any of the people who fought in that terrible War had died. Almost all were not erected as memorials by those who fought, but as symbols to the populace that the Segregationist Jim Crow laws were the Law of the Land.

They were used to communicate to the public– both Black and White– that anyone who wanted to petition the government, to help them stand up against those racist laws or against ANY of the racist & violent oppressive (hooded & unhooded) mobs that lynched men in public squares, burned down homes wontonly, and raped women without fear of consequences… would be safer to not speak out or complain. They were statements that the victims of these racially based crimes that they would have no recourse for justice, so they would only be seen as “troublemakers” if they tried to stand up for themselves.

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments

Also:
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future

Yes, my ancestors were “heroes of the Confederacy.”

They were also traitors. They were enemies of the United States of America.

We don’t keep statues of Benedict Arnold or Aldrich Ames idolized in our public parks. We don’t idolize George III or Adolf Hitler in glorified statue form. The Confederates don’t belong that way, either.

As for the Confederate flag, it spent a few years flying over battlefields (plus a couple of years on the hood of a 1966 Dodge Charger, jumping over rivers and crashing into police cars in fictional Hazard County), but it spent most of its time–over 150 years– being used by racist groups like the KKK and by Jim Crow govts as a symbol of hate & oppression.

It doesn’t merely “offend” people. It sickens, infuriates, and terrifies them. “Keeping our history” is no longer a sufficient justification for throwing fear & hatred into the faces of people who have had it shoved in their faces for far too many DECADES as it is.

We can keep that history in our own ways, in the context of how it SHOULD be kept– in museums, in family histories, and in books.

We don’t fly Nazi Swastikas on flagpoles or wear huge Swastikas on our shirts or flying on Nascar poles as a way to “remember” WWII. We have no more reason to fly the Confederate flag those ways, either.

Almost all of the people who want to keep the Confederate statues & flags in public parks & on flagpoles can tell you NOTHING about the Battle of Memphis, the females who dressed up as male soldiers to be able to fight alongside the men, which of the small battles were truly decisive in the outcome of the War, or even simply how many men died in the course of battle or as a result of battle injury.

They can tell you little to nothing about how after the War, Clara Barton (the founder of the Red Cross) worked to locate & identify dead soldiers and return their remains to their families (or how this led to the invention of modern dog tags).

Most of them don’t even know that the commonly used Confederate flag is not the flag of the Confederacy, but one of the Confederate BATTLE flags.

But they are happy to complain that taking down the Confederate symbols means “attacking history.”

“History” only matters when you know what it means, and when you actually remember it accurately. Rewriting it & romanticizing it does no good for anyone. Neither does ignoring the 155 years of a symbol’s actual “history,” so you can hold onto the few years of what someone’s rewritten “history” THINKS it stood for.

It’s time that we not merely remember the brief history of the Confederacy, but that we also remember the decades of post-Civil War history that has been so hurtful and so demeaning to so many people. We need to do more than honor the dead of the Confederate armies. We need to honor the countless victims of Jim Crow “justice” and modern racist violence, by taking down the very symbols that have been used to protect the people perpetuating these injustices for so many, many years.

***********

Some of the sources for my Confederate ancestors:

https://www.spmc.org/journals/paper-money-vol-lv-no-6-whole-no-306-novemberdecember-2016

[“Hutton & Freligh” Confederate currency images courtesy of Washington University at St. Louis website.]
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/searchwithterms?searchterm=freligh

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Southern_Monthly.html?id=zxUbAAAAYAAJ

#UBI Simplified: “How Are We Going to Pay For It?”

Imagine you own a home with a nice big front yard. One day, a man walks up to your door and asks for one of the little rocks from your yard. “Sure!” you say. “I won’t even notice.”

So the man takes one tiny little rock, and leaves.
The next day, he asks for some more of them. “Sure!” you say again. “Take all you want and do whatever with them. I don’t care.”

So the man takes some more tiny little rocks.It turns out those rocks were GOLD nuggets.

Soon, he is back with big digging equipment. He sets up a mine in your front yard, digging under the foundations of your home. So you go to the police.

They say, “You gave him permission, and told him to take whatever he wanted. We can’t help you. You said ‘I Agree to the Terms and Conditions,’ and that made it a contract.”

You go to the man taking your rocks/gold. “Can’t I at least get some money to pay me for the gold you’re taking from me?” you ask.

He laughs at you. “You’re an idiot! You GAVE me this gold. You GAVE me permission to undermine your home’s foundation and screw you over. I’m making billions and BILLIONS of dollars by mining your gold. Why would I give you anything now?”

You sit down on he curb, depressed and heartbroken.

After a long time of this, along comes a nerdy Asian guy who says that he might not be able to get you the billions of dollars right away, but he CAN get you $1,000 a month for life, by taxing the man who is taking your gold (instead of taxing YOU, like the other politicians have been doing).That nerdy Asian guy’s name is #AndrewYang, and that “gold” is YOUR data, that companies are profiting off of and not paying you one red cent for.

This is how we can pay for #UniversalBasicIncome (#UBI).

Welcome to the #FourthIndustrialRevolution.

Let’s Talk About “Electability”

As I write this, “Super Tuesday” is hours away. Pete Buttegieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer have all withdrawn from the race. Their supporters and undecided voters are experiencing a mild panic, knowing that they don’t have much time left until they will need to cast their votes in the Primaries.

So one subject that keeps popping up in my social media feed — in the posts and the comments and the tweets — is the worry that one candidate or another will not be “electable.” Democratic voters are worried that, when it comes time in November, one candidate or another will not be able to bring in enough Democratic votes to defeat Trump.

But I would argue that this mentality of fear is both unjustified and even dangerous.

Contrary to the claims of the fear-mongering candidates (who use claims of the other supposedly not being electable in order to garner support for themselves), poll after poll after poll has consistently shown that ALL the three major candidates (Bernie, Biden, and Warren*) beat Trump in any head-to-head matchup. Each of them is comparable in their percentage of victory. [1]

And that’s not only in the national polls. After all, Hillary has proven that national numbers are irrelevant. What the Democrats need to do is to take the “Swing States” (for the Electoral College). but even in the polls that focus on the Swing States, all of these candidates match up about equally. ALL of them win by about the same percentage in the swing states, with the exception of Wisconsin, where ALL of them lost to Trump by about the same percentage.

Even if you disregard the polls, evidence shows the equality of the various Democratic candidates.

There is a Professor who is famous for correctly predicting the last several Presidential elections, including Trump in 2016—when most pundits were certain Trump would lose. Prof. Allan Lichtmann has created a list of 13 criteria that he uses to determine the success or failure of a Presidential campaign.[2] He asserts that the elections in November are NOT based on the candidates as people or as politicians, but merely on the political parties and on some of the major national events of the previous four years.

According to the Professor, people should not choose a candidate during their party’s Primaries based on that person’s likelihood of winning, as opposed to other candidates in the same party. Instead, they should choose a candidate based entirely on the idea of which one they believe would make the best President.

Lichtmann has only one criteria that even remotely considers the candidate as a person, and that is the last on his list: “Charisma.” If the challenging candidate has no “Charisma” (i.e. is not an interesting character), then this not-charismatic candidate would be more likely to lose. (As much as I am not a Bernie Bro, this criteria would be very well filled by Bernie or Warren, who — like them or not — are definitely “characters.” It would not be as well filled by Biden, who is not as… colorful… as Bernie. It would most certainly not be filled by the bland-as-barley-flour Bloomberg.) [3]

However, this “Charisma” criteria is only one of several that affect his decision about the viability of a challenging campaign. Of the rest of the criteria on his list, many would currently go in favor of the Democrats (especially in lieu of the Coronovirus outbreak and its likely effect on the economy, such as the drastic Dow Jones drop this past week).

Putting aside the “Charisma” criteria, though, the criteria are all about national events. None of them require a candidate to be sane, have the best most viable proposals, etc. None of them even require the candidate to have a platform.

If you vote merely on the odds for a candidate winning the nomination or winning in November, and not on how their positions align with yours at all, you will tend to choose someone who doesn’t really reflect your values and/or wouldn’t actually make a good President. Because most November elections are about the party and not the candidate, this makes your Primary vote the most important— and most consequential— vote of the election cycle. Voting out of fear (such as choosing the person most likely to defeat your least favorite candidate) can lead to making some very poor choices, rather than voting for the better quality candidate.

So based on both the polls and the prediction of a reliable expert, it’s safe to say that your choice in the Primaries should be done by which candidate you think is the best President, and that you should NOT make your choice based on fear of a competing candidate or fear of an ideology (“Progressive vs Moderate”) winning the nomination.

No matter who you vote for, though, be sure to do one thing: VOTE!
  
[* Note that I do not include Bloomberg here. Not only is there insufficient polling to establish a long track record of his polling numbers, but what little national polling we do have shows him either in a tie with or even losing to Trump. Also, Bloomberg is not on the ballot in many states, so his only path to victory is to win almost every state AND the rest of the candidates would have to not get sufficient delegates to garner the first-round nomination, AND he would have to get ALL the Super-Delegates to vote for him in a Brokered Convention. So analyzing his numbers and the few polls about him is not a productive use of time.]

Source links:
[1] https://poll.qu.edu/2020-presidential-swing-state-polls/release-detail?ReleaseID=3656

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keys_to_the_White_House

[3] https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2020/02/27/Allan-Lichtman-Why-Bernie-Sanders-is-electable/stories/202002260015 https://youtu.be/4Y5nBJe8Dlc