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.

Are We Capable?

precarious times

     I've been replaying the moment I stood next to a USGS scientist staring down into the caldera of the most active volcano in history when the earth shook and a jet engine sound rattled our ears as a noxious cloud of black sulfur gas enveloped us. The gas piston tremor created a strong earth quake. Mother Earth was not terra firma. In that moment I realized this planet of ours is alive, still forming, unpredictable, eruptive and that our human certainties are not so certain and there are forces more powerful at work.

    Our ordered, legally defined and constitutional way of public life is being shaken now and assaulted by forces including a noxious self inflicted ignorance.

     The people's House impeaches the US President, Britain votes again as Brexit undermines stability, Iranians die as they protest a regime, Hong Kong unravels, allies make joke and laugh at president Trump, dictators and strongmen are  on the rise, nationalism once again creeps virus like back onto the world stage and meanness trumps cooperation time and time again.

impeachment is hard

     It is the right thing to impeach Donald Trump. There are many more reasons he should be removed, but the case against him as outlined in the hearings is undeniable. He abused power, he misused the office, he has obstructed justice and the constitutional process. 

    Those who say it is only politics are wrong. Impeachment is about now and the future. 

    If Trump is not impeached, it sends a destructive memo to all future Presidents. Those who say it undoes the will of the people seem to miss that is exactly what Trump did when he attempted to withhold funds that were approved by the congress, representing the people's will.

    The founders wrote in the impeachment process because they wanted future generations to have the power to protect our system by removing a despot, would be dictator, criminal or crackpot. If this president is not impeached it is a signal that his abuses, his invitation to foreign powers to meddle in our elections by money or subversion, or manipulation, could be repeated by future presidents.

    He is not being impeached because he lies dozens of times every day. He is not being impeached because he has and continues to act like a traitor. He is not being impeached because he advances Putin's agenda on the world stage and behaves as though he is the Russian's stooge. He is not being impeached because he has tried to dismantle the State Department, or denigrated our federal law enforcement, or undermines our intelligence agencies, or demeans the federal judiciary, or because he is trying to make money for his family business while president. He is not being impeached because he meets privately with a Russian spymaster and gives away secrets. He's not being impeached because he betrayed allies and allowed their slaughter. He's not being impeached because he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. He's not being impeached because most of his campaign staff are now in prison as federal prisoners. 

    Instead he is being impeached because he is a clear and present danger to our way of government, our constitutional system, and because he seeks to overthrow the balance of power between three separate branches of government. He is being impeached because he is not above the law.

an age of ignorance

    That it is unlikely he will be convicted in a Senate trial does indeed speak to how his cultish influence has destroyed a once proud Republican party. It speaks volumes about the cowardice and self interest so evident in most Republicans on the Hill. But it speaks more loudly about how ignorant we have allowed ourselves to become.

    I've written here about my concern about our failure to teach civics, government and the lessons of US history. We are living at the junction of that failure and the rise of a defiant ignorance fed by bias, manipulation and brainwashing.

    Several recent studies have reported that a decline in newspaper readership leads to more corruption, greater polarization and a decline in voting. We are there. 

    So much talk is about "motivating the base." Isn't that a variation of a kind of mob rule? Where is there intelligent discussion or civil debate? We've devolved and we've done it to ourselves as we fail to teach, and then feed the worst instincts by tribalized and echo chamber news channels. One of them, the one founded by a sexual predator, spends most of the day engaged in Russian disinformation, brainwashing and Trump worship.

    Even at that, millions get their "news" and opinion shaping info from social media platforms infected with manipulation and persuasion programs, run by all number of nefarious players, including foreign and hostile powers.

    When you see Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, John Kennedy, Lindsey Graham and company actually speaking Russian disinformation your head wants to explode. Reagan, HW Bush, Eisenhower and Nixon must be spinning.  

    I guess there is a reason he's called Moscow Mitch. When you compare what the Republican Party used to stand for on the Soviet Union, national security and intelligence and you hear the words and see the actions of Trump and his synchophants, it should be clearly obvious why impeachment is important to our survival. Giuliani is off trying to trump up more fabricated dirt, even as this president is being impeached. If they are not stopped, where in the world will they take us and what will they try to do?

    43% of self identified Trump Republicans believe he is right to ignore the Constitution and obstruct Congress. Folks, that's the kind of blind loyalty the world saw in Germany in the late 30's. It's in the history books.

     If we did a better job of teaching history, if our graduates knew the difference between a Governor and a US Senator, or could identify the three branches of government, Nunes would be looking for a job, Jim Jordan would still be hanging out in the locker room watching his fellow coach masturbate in the shower with his wrestling team, and Trump would still be calling New York radio stations posing as John Miller to talk about how sexually active "his boss Donald Trump is."

Bill Barr would be selling tupperware and Moscow Mitch would spend all day on the liars bench drinking from a brown paper sack. 

    An educated and informed electorate has a way to deal with hustlers, idiots and liars. We are not a well informed electorate and there is more blind faith than due diligence and more opinions than facts. The ground is shaking, and a loud noxious presence is apparent. The certainties are not.

why build a statue of trump and mitch and company

       With apology to those who are deserving statesmen and women and genuine heroes. Still, even for them, nature is what it is. And me thinks nature would love a chance to speak to the trump gang.

        Back to the Irish trail, soon. Thanks for indulging another historic US moment.

         See you down the trail.