Christmas Ghosts Visit Donald Trump

    If Harvey Weinstein were still in the game he might be doing a remake of The Three Amigos- Jesus, Donald and Vladimir.

      Although the Christianity Today editorial would probably change that. The magazine that Billy Graham founded and that has been down the middle and a little to the right on most secular and theological issues has sent a broadside to the right wing of the evangelical brothers and sisters.

     It said Donald Trump has abused his power, violated the constitution, has dumbed down the idea morality with his government and is himself "a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused." They say he should be removed from office. 

     I have a bone to pick with CT and a thought about the impact of this further down the post, but first...

a personal note to the president

   Mr Trump,

    It is highly unlikely these words will find their way to your possibly soulless and certainly empty eyes, but I wish they would so you cannot escape a reality, the truth that people know about you. (By the way, your eyes would not look so beady if your face were not so bloated and you could change that if you did some real exercise. Getting in and out of a tanning bed, creating that coiffure and eating KFC does not count as exercise.) 

   Perhaps you will be visited by the Ghost of Richard Nixon, or Abe Lincoln if the Dicken's specters are busy lobbying at the McConnell house. Abe and Tricky Dick might run you around the presidential bed. Until then, my Christmas message here will try to channel the Ghost of Christmas Future.

     When you die, as you will, the taint of impeachment will be the first thing future generations will know about you. A close second will be what a foolish, pathetic, deceitful and abusive oaf you were. With time will come the myriad details of your massive tax fraud, business failures, cheating, and pages of despicable behavior and judgement. 

     Your presidency, including your court appointees, will be with an asterisk, that is denoted as a campaign assisted by a foreign power. History will record how you then became a lap dog and stooge for a ruthless Vladimir Putin complete with all manner of speculation as to your "bromance" with him. 

     Perhaps he was the "real man" whom you could only pretend to be. He was a tough guy KGB apparatchik when you were filling tabloids with your own tales of deception and cheating in your personal relationships. Who calls radio and tv stations using a fake name and posing as a spokesman for Donald Trump to brag about Trump's romantic prowess? Who? You did.

your legacy

     At some point cultural history will dissect your classless demonstration of "new rich" with your garish and tasteless faux opulence? There will be theories about  trying to be a king. It's a cliche', the trashy trying to gild with gold. It's like putting lipstick on a pig.

    You will probably be remembered as one of the biggest liars in history. It's so serious major news organizations actually do tabulations. 

    First president to be impeached in a first term-there's another historical note that will follow you when you are dead and unable to tweet a retort.

    But mostly you will be remembered as a joke. You are the lying hustler bully who played the race card, appealed to the angry and yes some legitimately overlooked citizens, along with kooks, xenophobes, residual nazi and fascist sympathizers (Steven Miller), racists, the poorly or uneducated, and just plain losers. You stirred a cult that worships the absolute worst of American culture. You have unleashed division, legitimized stupidity, nurtured meanness, crassness and hatred. You demean manhood and you degrade humanity. 

your list of kings

    I know you call yourself a Nationalist. The world may remember Hitler and Mussolini as nationalists on the list of evil humans. There have been other dictators; Amin, Stalin, Franco, Duarte, Mao, the Kims, Caesar, Ataturk, Garibaldi, Duvalier, Attila the Hun, Torquemada, Khan and others. But you are not on that list. No, you will be remembered as the not so bright and troubled little rich boy who wanted to grow up to be on that list, but were too incompetent. You passed only the disgusting level. 

     Your distinction is that you are forever great fodder as a joke, a laughable would be tyrant. You have been a tool, a stooge. You are the man who went broke running a casino, who failed, always. The name Trump will go down in the halls of history as meaning failure, clown, disgusting, a kind of biological waste product.  In our house, as our grand daughter was working on toilet training, we referred to her filling her diaper as "making trumpies." 

     Isn't that a wonderful legacy mr president?

     I wish you a Merry Christmas and hope the happiness of the New Year is that you return to Trump Tower and/or Mar a Lago where you contemplate the stunning change of fortune in the Senate and meet continuously with a team of lawyers helping to prepare for the first of a lifetime of trials. 

      Sincerely,

      A Tax Payer

the evangelical thing

   I know people who are otherwise pleasant but with whom I disagree on theology and politics. They are representative of who I hope will read the CT article, because while it may be comfortable to think you have it all figured out, a neat and tidy understanding of, as Bill Buckley said, "God and Man...."such thinking can lead you to dark places of wrongfulness, including judgmentalism and false teachings. 

     In making the case to the right wing of the Christian world CT say the Trump administration is morally unable to lead because of "gross immorality and ethical incompetence."

      To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?

    That part of the editorial cuts right to the heart of matter for some of Trump's base---- though many of his supporters are only as "church going" as is Trump himself! Just another fraud, working both ways.

      I take exception to this CT contention

Let’s grant this to the president: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion. This has led many to suspect not only motives but facts in these recent impeachment hearings. And, no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

    The first paragraph is, in a non-theological phrase, pure bull shit and it is one that Trumpists and Republicans have used from the beginning. 

   And Trump had a chance to participate, send records and witnesses, but defied congress, and thus the obstruction charge. CT-you get an F on that.  

   BUT hold that thought and suspend my judgment and consider that on the night of Obama's inauguration Republican leaders met for four hours to plot how to block the Democrats on "every single bill and every single issue."

    Then less than two years later in October on the eve of the first mid-term election McConnell admitted what was the Republican interest when he spoke to the National Journal

   "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one term President."
                            Mitch McConnell

   The rest is history, including the abusive act of denying a supreme court appointment to Obama.
    I do not think the effort to impeach began with the election. The effort to impeach began when Donald Trump proved true to what 55 top Republicans who served at the highest levels in Republican Presidential administrations warned in August 2016 that he was unfit, unqualified, lacked the character and would jeopardize national security.
     Like right wing evangelicals, Republicans have been fooled, or worse, with Trumpist perversity. My understanding of Christ's teaching and practices lead me to different understandings than right wing evangelicals, but I paraphrase an old saying. You need to be careful with whom you dance.
      While the group CT is trying to reach, and while the once Republicans the Lincoln Project are trying to "deprogram" may not be dancing with the evil one, they are dancing with Donald Trump, who CT says is a perfect "example of someone who is morally lost and confused."
       I am not so charitable. From my secular side of the street, whatever else he is, Trump is a traitor to the US.
        The Ghost of Christmas Future is still conjuring what that will mean to "us all, everyone."

         See you down the trail.

FRAUD RELIGION and LOOK AT DAVOS

    Balloons have lifted my spirit since I was a kid. They add cheer to anywhere, including an alley.

        Even the shadows are playful and teasing,

      and something to chase.

where a shadow haunts

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini Agency France-Presse

    The World Economic Summit has commenced again in Davos. 
    60 World leaders, countless corporate and business chieftains, academics and theoreticians gather each year to plumb the world's economy. This year there is more security than ever.

     Terror is a threat, in the form of armed zealots, but nature has done her part as well. A record 6 feet of snow has fallen. It is as though the planet's climate is demanding a place on the agenda.

Photo by Gian Ehrenzeller European Press Photo Agency

        There is also the growing terror of people dislocated by economics, war and disaster. There may have never been more refugees in history and more are likely. There may never have been a wider gap between the haves and the have-nots. The number of wealthy remains small-most of the rest of the world's population faces more struggle. A storm of another kind is brewing.

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini Agency France Presse

they wait for the rupture

    I attempt to avoid religion in these posts. A person's beliefs are their business, a most intimate and personal piece of being human. I think we should afford respect, but today I must speak.

     In the last couple of days two major news organizations have explored the support for donald trump by evangelical Christian groups, mostly right wing. There have been other pieces over the last year, but his recent profanity burst and the leak of his paying hush money to a porn star to be silent about their relationship prompted a new examination.

     They still back the vulgarian. That very support gives their brand of faith a black eye and a crushed credibility. 
     Trump is a liar, a swindler, a serial adulterer, an apparent racist, a sexual predator, a bully, worships money and is by most evidence stupid but conceited. All of that but the stupid makes him an ideal target for the evangelicals to capture- to change his heart, to convert him, to make him a better human being. But there is nothing in that to cause them to step away from the faith of Jesus to back  trump. They must have forgotten that Jesus was a radical rabbi who's rare display of anger was to turn over tables and toss out the swindlers. He spoke of eschewing all of the things that trump worships and does and how he lives and how he behaves.

    Can you imagine trump laying down his life for his followers, or living as a wandering vagrant, urging his followers to give what they have to less advantaged, or to decry violence, to be a peace maker, loving all, even those who are handicapped, or from Haiti, or Mexico, or Syria, etc, etc, etc.?

   So how do you justify going from a devotion to a Christ to a devotion to a trump? How? How in the hell do you do that? Ah, there is that!

      From my understanding of Jesus he would probably be the first to forgive trump and the first to try to bring him into the fold, but also the first to recognize the wrong or evil and perversion of the man's life and his devotion to himself. 
      Someone who purports to be a person with a genuine faith and who uses articles of that faith to support trump is, in my opinion, not to be trusted on matters of faith. Same for those who ignore trumps perversity of character.

      I knew Billy Graham and even worked with him and his senior staff over the course of a couple of years. I was leery of evangelists, but Graham was sincere and devoted to preaching. I came to a new understanding of Graham, his role and impact. Something that he wrote and spoke of is how he had been emotionally and spiritually swindled by Richard Nixon, with whom he had a close relationship. As someone pointed out recently he never got over how he was "snookered" by Nixon.  It would behoove his son Franklin and other evangelicals who somehow find a way to support the behavior and action of trump to learn the Billy Graham lesson. 

     To those who say they are evangelical Christians and who support trump-would you want to spend eternity with him? Not that you have anything to say about that.

     One year of him in the White House has been a kind of hell for the majority of US citizens and others around the globe. Try to save him if you wish, pray for him, but to take a pulpit or a public forum and endorse him or his actions makes you a phony and a fraud, just like trump. Your faith is more important than just another one of us mere mortals with feet of clay. To support trump or to ignore his perversity is to make a mockery of what you say you believe.
      And a reminder to me and everyone else, the founders were right with this idea of separation of church and state.

     And on that note, God bless you and God bless America, please! In fact, God bless this whole planet.

     See you down the trail.