The Charlie Kirk Non-Obituary

I used to faithfully listen to paleoMAGA talk show host Rush Limbaugh; while I began as somebody who bought into a lot of what he was saying, over time I eventually became to realize how unChristian and ignorant much of his commentary was.  When he eventually died, I struggled to figure out how I ought to think about him and other people who I thought were destructive to society, even as they were loved by many people.  I eventually come up with the sentiment that goes something like, 'We do not dance on the graves of evil people, but neither do we silently wash over the wickedness that they produced.'  I've tried keeping to this mantra in my thinking ever since.

Yesterday right-wing advocate Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus in Utah.  I confess that I haven't really ever read much from him, but he was a very popular speaker and debater in the current Trump/MAGA echo chamber.  I have seen several tributes on Facebook from people whom I otherwise respect and who almost never post political material (if they did, I would unfollow them).  Even some kids on my school bus this morning were talking about this, how their parents were crying that Kirk was dead.  

Were I to ever read much of his material or listen to his speeches, I might have liked some of the things he was saying, even as I probably would have found distasteful many other parts because it seems that often the only thing that appeals to many in MAGAland is hateful denunciations of wokeness or demands to get rid of aliens and strangers or angry screeds about liberals.  And so I don't feel entitled to really say anything terrible or praiseworthy about him.  He was a husband and a father and a son.  Lots of people loved this man, much as they loved Limbaugh.  We should respect their grief.  

But there's one quote that I keep seeing, which boils down to Kirk saying that the death of some due to gun violence is absolutely necessary in order for us to be a free country.  This has been posted by many of his opponents who are dancing on his grave this morning.  Karma, they will tell us.  A man who fought gun control on college campuses was killed by a gun on a college campus.  Will yesterday change any thinking on this?  I keep wondering how much longer the earnest question of 'Don't we surround ourselves with guns and threaten violence so as to keep in check the tyranny of the wicked'? will continue to be spewed out.    

Nevertheless, Charlie Kirk will become a modern-day martyr for the MAGA crowd.  But let's not turn him into a hero.  People like Charlie Kirk have helped create a world in which political violence is now the norm.  Conservatives will whine and moan about the violent rhetoric of the left, but they are just as much a part of the problem as those they decry, led by a President who seems to take seriously his role as Insulter-In-Chief.  Even as we condemn yesterday's violence, we cannot wash over the wickedness that evil people produce, regardless of ideology.  Whether or not he was wicked or righteous is in the hands of God now, but we can see the fruits of hateful ideology all around us, even if it is wrongly supported by many people who call themselves Christian.

I do find it interesting that in the wake of yesterday's violence, there were many liberal stalwarts who posted nearly identical 'thoughts and prayers' comments on social media.  I don't think they were trolling, but rather they really meant this...but when this is all we have rather than intentions to make this world a better place, it really does seem like satire.  

The Entitled Age

The school district for which I drive is a state football power, one of the largest schools with historically one of the best teams in the state.  Last year I drove the team to a road game against a school in a lower classification and watched my school win something like 45-6.  Over the course of the year I probably watched them play 3-4 other times, usually smashing other schools, and it quickly became apparent to me just how expected this was...at one game I was listening to fans, parents or maybe alumni, gripe about mistakes they were making even as they were up by 40 points.  When we would score, there was no joy; when the other team might get a first down, there was frustration, almost anger.  At another game we were up again by 30 points or so, and I was sitting behind the student section.  Most of the game they weren't paying attention, but at another point a chant started up.  "This is boring! (clap clap clap clap clap).  This is boring!  (clap clap clap clap clap)"  Ultimately they lost in the state semifinals.  People were not happy.

I mention this because last night in the home opener our school lost 22-21 to the same team they had beaten 45-6 last season on the road.  I'm guessing that people around here are gonna be ticked off today.  I'm sure over the next few weeks I will be overhearing conversations about how bad the coach is or the players or lazy or whatever...but it strikes me that the great problem is simply that people feel entitled.  When there is continued success, people think that somehow they deserve it and have every right to bitch and moan when they no longer get it.  

We are entitled in this generation in so many ways.  The lady sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot waiting for a low-paid worker to load up her car from her online order, moaning about how long it takes.  The 65 year old man I know who got evicted from his apartment but won't get a job in order to pay for a new one as he awaits another woman to come into his life and take care of him.  The parents who expect their kids to eat both breakfast and lunch at school for free even as they drive around in a $75K SUV.  

In many ways we have been blessed for so long, and in so many ways, that we won't know how handle a little bit of adversity as it comes upon us.  As our idiot president continues to tank the economy and alienate us from all of our allies, things are gonna start getting much worse in the coming months.  People are going to really be in a world of hurt if they think they can keep eating out all the time, spending hundreds of dollars on sports tickets, and drive around gas-guzzlers that are far more vehicle than they need.  I'll be curious to see how people will adapt...but my instinct is that things are not going to go well.  

The Anti-Trump algorithim

Because I believe that Donald Trump is a terrible president and an even worse human being, several times a week I will ragegoogle something like 'Trump is a moron' or 'MAGA is code for Nazi'.  I say these things not because I have great confidence in the Democrats or that I am a liberal...but in the end the various algorithms out there regularly put things into my news feed that likely they think I want to hear.  If I was a climate change denier, they would fill my box with opinions that rising seas are good for real estate along the seashore ("It's a seller's market if there's a shrinking amount of oceanview property!")  If I lived my life thinking that all people are stupid and I'd rather hang out with horses, I'd get ads for T-shirts that have majestic horses on them.  But because my online profile is likely as filled with English soccer, 70s yacht rock backstories, technology gadgets and anti-Trump sentiment, I get offered a lot of anti-Trump news.  Lately I've noticed there are three primary avenues.

1)The "Here's how Trump is destroying America and the World!" stories.  I actually agree with many of these stories, even if not everything is as bad as they say.  Not everything depends upon Trump, but it's important to know how he and his minions are destroying efforts for clean energy, equality, and Ameica's place in the world, among a thousand other evil things he is doing.  

2)The "Trump's support is collapsing in the polls!" stories.  These bug me a bit more, because almost always the 38% floor for Trump never seems to get crashed through.  But continually we are told about polls that show that Trump's supporters are finally waking up (nope), that the GOP will lose Congress (not likely), that the Democrats are rallying around ___ (laughable).  Nothing is changing for his acolytes, even as Trump's stupidity is on daily display for anybody paying attention.  

3)In recent weeks I've started to see a handful of "Trump is dying!" stories.  Like the polling numbers, I think that this is mostly wishful thinking, because I don't really think that Trump will die within the next few years.  No matter how obese, frail, or demented he seems, he will receive the best care available within the medical world.  This weekend one of the things that popped up was a wondering header that said, "Trump has no public appearances this weekend!  Could he be receiving a life-saving treatment?"  Doubtful...likely he's playing golf or plotting with advisors about taking away rights from somebody or planning some grift for his sons to take advantage of.  I don't really buy that the bruises on his hands or his swollen ankles or his slurred speech really mean that death is immanent; such things are simply the way of life for many senior Americans who live for years like this.  Modern medicine (something that costs the government a LOT of money!) means that people will live a long time with all sorts of ailments.  Most seniors will spend the last decade of their life going from doctor to doctor as they seek to manage conditions that are products of genetics or age or lifestyle; the only difference with Trump is that he is in a position to have the best practitioners come to him.  Maybe we might get lucky and he'll do more listening to quacks like RFK Jr ("Hey Mr. President, drink this raw milk and don't pay attention to doctors!"), but I doubt it.  If anybody is going to hang on, it's him.  

Maybe I need to change what I google for so that I will have a more balanced newsfeed.  But maybe I'll be like most people today, blissfully believing whatever appears in front of me.  

Labor Day weekend

This weekend is the unofficial end of summer, a weekend in which we honor American labor for their hard work by making the first Monday of September a national holiday.  Sure, many of the people who actually do hard work are still going to be working that day (think restaurant workers, first responders, nurses in hospitals) while the people who already have so much get the day off.  It would make sense to me that we could make Labor Day something like the old British Boxing Day, where the servants are waited upon by their lords and masters for one day.  Maybe have the doctors go and clean out bedpans on Monday?  Executives of Yum! trying to fry up the chicken or make burritos?  Maybe not...our world would likely explode if a lot of the stuffed shirts actually had to sweat a little bit.  

Sepaking of restaurants, this past week we saw the Stupidest Story of the Year that didn't involve our Dear Leader, at least directly.  Cracker Barrel, that old mainstay of countryfied food and a shop with stuff that people who think 'merica! is loved by voting for an old corrupt billionaire who likes to hump the flag occasionally, decided to change their logo.  It...wasn't good.  Basically they took the mustard and brown color from before and watered it down to something even less sexy than it had been.  Likely this was the result of paying some high-dollar PR people some money hoping that they would get young, hip audiences into the story so they might buy rocking chairs or cornhole games after dining on some fried chicken and catfish.  Needless to say, this rebranding made some people who have too little to do in their lives really mad.  

Where the story goes from amusing to downright stupid, however, was that the right-wing mediasphere decided that Cracker Barrel did all these things because they are 'woke'.  Getting rid of the barrel on the old sign, as well as the old dude (his name is Uncle Herschel, we all learned this week) sitting next to it, showed that they are somehow, someway, betraying all that is good about America.  Of course complaints of 'wokeism' have replaced 'politically correct' and charges of liberals of being 'snowflakes' as the great whine of the 38%.  Liberal calls to be 'woke', that is, to wake up and recognize that there are systemic problems of racism and inequality in this country', have been twisted to the point where being 'woke' is now code for 'anything that makes we True Americans upset'.  That is, of course, pure snowflakeism.  Thus a company hiring a black man when a white man applied for the job is now greetied with cries of wokeism.  Pointing out that climate change is real and that we are harming the planet, wokeism.  Any government policies that recognize the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion are now suspiciously woke.  And now a company with a wrong-headed idea about how they should rebrand their company is rooted in a desire to be woke and thereby must be boycotted until obese people wanting to kill themselves with satured fat and bankrupt their savings by buying wooden tic tac toe games get their way, of eating at a restaurant with the right kind of conservative logo.  

Maybe it was a good thing that on this Saturday of Labor Day weekend I didn't venture outside the house except to get two pieces of junk mail from the mailbox.  Catching up on some shows, watching soccer, taking a nap, and having some smoked salmon and wild rice with my wife tonight, was enough for me.  

A few rambling thoughts about my school bus and Dimwit Donnie

This week I began year number ten of driving a school bus.  What began as a side gig a few years ago to make a few bucks has become something I genuinely love to do, and something I will try to continue doing long after I retire from church work.  My middle school kids are usually hilarious, sometimes horrifying...but I am grateful for each one.  My bus may be one of the most culturally and racially diverse groups of people you'll ever find.  About half of my kids are white, while the other half is equally divided into kids of Hispanic, Black, and Asian descent.  There are times whether I wonder whether all of them are 'legal', and I think about the coming day in which some masked ICE thug decides he wants to drag one of them off my bus for the crime of being brought to America, land of the free and home of the brave.  I've come to the realization that I will offer myself up for arrest in their place, not as some moral hero but simply because I'd want somebody else to do for the same for one of my children.  

Tonight I was mowing the yard and I was thinking a lot about how well our Dear Leader might do driving a school bus.  Can you imagine that whiny and thin-skinned dope and how he'd deal with 60 unruly middle schoolers?  They would tear him apart.  10 minutes on a bus with those kids and Trump would be screaming about how he is going to sue them or deport them.  I doubt he could finish a route without them making such fun of him that he runs off the bus crying and saying how unfair everything is.  

Kids can be cruel and mean sometimes...that's what they are, just as that's what we were at that age.  We found the tiniest little thing to get under an authority figure's skin and we just picked and burrowed and poked and prodded until some of them broke.  Many of them, who were not so concerned with letting a 12-year-old determine their self worth, let us run ourselves out, loving us the whole time while slowly teaching us the important lessons of life.  Those who couldn't do these things didn't stay as teachers or youth ministers or anybody who dealt with kids for very long, usually running away screaming after a year or two.  The rest stuck around, grew a pair, and realized that God had put them in this thankless job and so they might as well try to find the humor in it all.

Occasionally I might meet somebody new and when they ask me what I do I tell them that I'm a minister for a small church and a bus driver.  They almost never want to acknowledge the first, but the second thing will usually provoke a response of 'Oh, I could never do that!'.  Yeah, they're right.  They couldn't.  But I would love to see the world's worst egotistical blowhard try.  In his mind he'd be better at it than everybody.  But his failure would be worth almost any price to watch.  

I Am Your Retribution

Recently in my daily Bible reading I read from Psalm 109 I came across these words: 

6 Appoint a wicked man against him; let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he is tried, let him come forth guilty; let his prayer be counted as sin! May his days be few; may another take his office! May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow!  May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!  May the creditor seize all that he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil!  Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any to pity his fatherless children!  May his posterity be cut off; may his name be blotted out in the second generation!  May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out!  Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth!  For he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted, to put them to death.  He loved to curse; let curses come upon him! He did not delight in blessing; may it be far from him!  He clothed himself with cursing as his coat; may it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones!

This hit home for me, because in my mind in recent weeks I have often thought about something like this for our current president and his adminitration.  The evil of Trump and his basket of deplorables has rarely been matched in the near 250 years of our nation.  It's not simply any one thing...but the cruelty to immigrants, the financial grift, the harm he has done to anything good our nation was doing, the appointment of like-minded depraved individuals...after awhile I cry out, as many do, 'How long, O Lord?  Why do you allow this to happen?'  Shouldn't we as people be taking up arms and removing these people, by force if we have to?  

Yet there's something about the Trump administration that gives me pause...could it be that God has sent him here to bring punishment upon our nation?  Throughout Scripture we find that when God decides to punish people, he often does one of two things.  The first is what we often think about: direct punishment.  Think Sodom and Gomorrah.  Think Herod being struck down and his body eaten by worms.  Think Israel being overrun by their enemies.  Each of these goes back to God directly bringing wrath upon individuals or nations.  

But a second way in which God comes after people is by allowing them to destroy themselves.  I think particularly of the words from Romans 1:18 and following:  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. 

Three times in this passage, following various forms of sin within humanity, God says in effect, 'OK, that's what you want?  I'll give you up to those things.'  In effect, God is allowing people to suffer the consequences of their choices, and such things might well destroy them.  This is not God's desire, of course, but the hope is always that people will repent, call out to God, and turn away from sin.  Only then will God relent from his wrath.  

So...could it be that with the chaos of the past six months we are bearing the fallout of our unrepentant sin?  Think about some things that have defined the United States in recent years: gross materialism, sexual immorality, and self-absorption, to name just three things.  How have we been given over to these things to our destruction?  

We are, by almost any measure, the most powerful economy in human history, all designed to meet any and every human desire.  We dispose of things so quickly because we have so many more (newer! shinier!) things to take their place.  We crave stuff rather than the God who has blessed us in so many ways; this is sometimes called idolatry.  So how might God let us be punished?  Who is the epitome in our nation of wealth?  Could it be a man who loves a gold-plated toilet seat and has gilded the Oval Office?  Could it be a man whose family is grafting milllions of dollars from foreign investors (golf courses, casinos, hotels) by making his own interests more important than the nation's?  Could it be a man whose recent attachment to crypto has caused those trying to get his ears to fill the coffers of his family?  Has not God given us over to the ideal of what we crave by showing us the depravity of its worst excesses?  

We are a nation that has become obsessed with sexuality.  Sure, there are some who gnash their teeth about LGBTQ or various forms of sexual immorality, but look a bit closer and they are no different than anybody else, only seeking to take away the rights that they themselves have.  People define themselves in our modern era by their sexuality, and believe that nobody (not even God) has any right to tell them to temper their desires to any more than what God has authorized.  So how might God let us be punished?  Perhaps by electing a man (with 82 % support of 'evangelical' Christians) who has more divorces in his life than all other presidents combined?  Perhaps by putting into power somebody who has routinely bragged through history of his sexual conquests?  Perhaps by making into the emperor one who is an adjudicated rapist and likely child molester?  Has not Donald Trump become the person that embodies our sexual depravity?  

We are a people who are fully and completely self-absorbed.  While there may be some benefits of the  therapeutic process, the adoption of the navel-gazing mindset in our nation is complete.  Life is about how much I am to be happy.  Get in my way, and I'll destroy you.  I am the center of my own universe.  Rather than think about how we are called to serve our neighbors and love those who aren't quite like us, even many Christians today live with a mindset that is as anti-other and unChristian as those who know nothing about the love of God.  So how might God let us be punished?  Maybe it's by putting in charge of this country the most self-absorbed person of the 21st century, a man-child whose every waking thought is 'how can I gratify every desire I have today?'  Perceived enemies are to be destroyed.  Aliens and strangers are cast out without due process.  The 'other' means nothing to us.  They're 'not like us'.  

Maybe you think I'm going way off the deep end here...maybe we really do need to rise up and destroy these wicked people who do wicked things.  But I think back to just over a year ago when Trump was campaigning, and one thing that he said over and over again to his supporters:  "I am your justice.  I am your retribution."  Could it be that he didn't really know what he was saying, that God was warning us through these words about might well happen if we don't turn from our evil ways?  Could Trump be the retribution upon our nation, the instrument of his divine wrath?  

However you choose to see Trump, his ascension to power for me is a call for our nation to repent...and that's not something I am seeing happening.  His supporters are glorifying him and his wickedness, while his opponents are just infuriated and want to see his downfall.  Few people seem to be seeing this time in history from a spiritual perspective.  Our de-Christianization may well be finding its nadir in the reign of Donald Trump.  

Weddings, funerals, and a changing religious landscape

I guess my wife and I were something of trailblazers.  When we decided to get married over 20 years ago, we had two ideas: I wanted a small wedding, and she wanted to get married on the beach.  So we decided to go to Myrtle Beach and invited only her parents and mine; my brother, who lives a few hours from there, decided to invite himself as well.  We had a nice simple wedding on the beach done by an old guy we found online, went out as a family for dinner, and started our honeymoon.  

When I first began in ministry over 30 years ago, most people still got married at a church.  Part of my job was occasionally meeting people that had no connection to the churches at which I ministered and finding time to do a brief bit of premarital counseling before walking them through the sanctuary and fellowship hall and letting them plan their big to-do.  Often times I would never hear from them again after the wedding, but I wished them well and hoped that in at least some tiny way the need for Christ and the church would have rubbed off on them.  

I got to thinking about this recently, as the daughter of a cousin of mine got married last weekend at a venue not far from here.  Even as these were people who were raised in church, I don't get the impression that getting married at a church building crossed their mind.  Instead, they chose one of the many venues that are found in the city and countryside these days...often a barn with a pretty view, a banquet hall with plenty of room for a dance floor, perhaps even an old church building that has been repurposed for weddings.  When was the last time I went to an actual church wedding?  It's gotta be over a decade, I think.  

In some ways I don't feel too bad about this...administration and wedding plans have always been the two things I have enjoyed the least about ministry.  Starting about 10 years ago, I made the conscious decision to try and avoid doing weddings for anybody I didn't know...but now it's been years since I've even been asked.  Many of the times I officiated at weddings I always felt I had the same value in the eyes of the couple as a color scheme or the right kind of flowers in the reception hall.  

Yet watching the change over these years has also brought me some sorrow, this idea that people in our country have bypassed churches, even God, in their weddings.  While I am glad that people are still deciding to get married (as long as I don't have to do it!) rather than simply live together, this diminishing of religion in one of the most sacred moments of a person's life speaks volumes about the real place of Christianity in America.  There's a line in the wedding vows in which a person makes a commitment to their spouse 'before God and before these witnesses' that now is no longer necessary, at least in part.  

As much as I have never cared to do weddings, I have always felt more at home in funerals.  Funerals actually allowed me to do my job of ministry, serving and blessing families in some of the most painful moments of their existence.  It's a terrible time, but I actually feel useful, and over the years I think that I've been able to bring some real healing for people.  While I never say that I 'want' to do a funeral, I always feel honored to do so.  

But the cultural landscape on this, too, is changing.  While I still get called to do funerals occasionally, more and more I have noticed that for many people, even Christians, these are being replaced by a 'celebration of life'.  My experience in these things is that, while at times they are still being held in funeral homes or even churches, God and his eternal promises are rarely in view.  Rather, we sit and random people (almost never ministers) talk about what a good person ____ happened to be.  Maybe they went to a church, probably not, but that's not what defined the deceased.  Instead of the goal of life being a desire to be with the Lord forever in eternity, it's enough that such people live on in the hearts of others.  

This year I have pondered a lot about the change in my country...it's easy to point out the apostasy with which many Christians have paraded about in their Christian nationalism or worship of their orange god.  But it may be that when the history (and decline) of Christianity in the United States in the 21 century is written, the change we have made in funerals and weddings may have been the canary in the coal mine.  If religious faith, even a shallow kind of religiosity, is removed from two of the most important elements of a culture's ritual identity, what does that say about how important it is in our daily lives?  A lot, I think.

Respect and the Trump Tattoo

Imagine your best friend: a regular guy with a wife, a few kids, and a steady job.  You've known him for years; you love him as a brother; you thank God everyday that he's in your life.  

But let's say he comes to you one day and says he's going to get a tattoo.  Not just any tattoo, but a large one on his face cheeks.  Yogi Bear dunking a basketball over Shaquille O'Neal.  He's wanted to do this for a long time, and he thinks it's a great idea.  

Of course, as a friend you try and talk him out of this crazy idea.  How can this look good?  Is this really how you want to present yourself?  Are you mentally ill?  But your friend is adamant.  He's gonna get this tattoo, and if it costs him your friendship, that's your problem.  He knows who he is, a Yogi-Bear-lovin' hoops fan.  Nobody can stop him.  

He gets the tattoo...and for awhile you still love your friend.  You have gone though enough stuff together that you won't give him up that easily.  But everytime you look at him you see this tattoo...and it really is the very worst thing you've seen, something you can't unsee.  It's not just the idea of a tattoo, but that he chose the worst tattoo artist in the county to get it.  The characters are all wrong, the placement is off-center, and there's not a soul out there who would think that this was done while somebody was sober.  He continually defends the tattoo, of course...if people don't like it, well they are just stupid.  They have been brainwashed by the anti-tattoo lobby.  Only he knows the real value of this art.  

Slowly but surely, over time, you stop hanging out with your friend.  You will always love him, but your respect for him has suffered immensely.  You longingly wait for the day where he comes to you and recognizes that the tattoo was a stupid idea, can you help him find a plastic surgeon to remove it?  But that day never comes.  And you continue to drift apart.  It's hard to respect somebody that delusional.  

----------------

Over the past decade I have had a lot of people in my life who have their own tattoo: the imprinting of Donald Trump on their hearts.  No matter how terrible an idea it is, no matter how badly executed it has been done, they defend their devotion to him with their very being.  Even as you bring up his incompetence, his venality, his corruption, and even his immoral depravity, all things that are so obvious that anybody should be able to see them, it's never Trump's fault.  It's Obama's fault.  It's Democrats.  It's the mainstream media.  It's Hunter Biden's laptop.  It's Hilary's emails.  

Rather than admit the ridiculous nature of the Trump tattoo, they flaunt it and celebrate himwith their red hats, theirs cheap (and quickly dissolved) flags, their Facebook memes, their devotion to a MAGA echo chamber that always points fingers in another direction.  And so they learn to hate windmills, hard-working immigrants, random members of Congress that their lord and savior has decided are the enemy.  There's nothing real about most (if not all) of his grudges, but this doesn't matter...the Trump Tattoo tells them what to think.  

I will continue to love these people as I slowly and depressingly wait for them to wake up from whatever zombie virus they are under.  But I can't really keep respecting them.  When they speak, even as it's not about Trump, I look at them and all I can see is that terrible tattoo on their face.  

A hundred years of New England freedom

This past week our family took a vacation through the New England states; I especially enjoyed the forests and tranquility of Vermont as well as a boat trip on Portland's harbor.  With vacations it's always nice to get away and see things you don't get to see everyday, but after a week it was also nice to get home and sleep in my own bed last night and poop in my own toilet.  

When we approached Boston, consciously or not a lot of our trip involved looking at stuff related to the Revolutionary War.  We stopped first in Concord and Lexington, just west of Boston, where it could be said that the civil war started in April 1775.  There we saw the places where 'the shot heard round the world' kicked off a series of events by which a bunch of diverse colonies united to claim independence and ultimately win it as well.  We also saw some of the historic sights in Boston, as well as a few touristy ones like the Tea Party museum.  It's a reminder that people suffered and sacrificed for the idea of a new nation, for liberty, for the ability to begin something very new.  No matter how imperfect it was (I was expecting monitors from the Trump administration to be sniffing around to see how America-glorifying it was, which it wasn't always), these are things that should give Americans of all stripes a sense of pride.  

A few days later we left Boston and drove to Newport, Rhode Island.  Rhode Island is where Roger Williams fled in the 1630s when the freedom-seeking pilgrims of Massachusetts denied that freedom to others  Rhode Island was found as a colony seeking a greater sense of religious liberty.  Two and a half centuries later, however, Newport became known as the place where religiosity was easily swept aside in the name of rich people wanting a summer showplace built a series of mansions overlooking the ocean.  It was the time of the 'gilded age' of the 1880s, a time where people (many of whom genuinely had worked hard; some had inherited wealth going back generations) had the wealth to lavishly show off their position in society.  Many of the old mansions still today, though a lot of them are museums; a few now belong to a college I had never heard of before, Salve Regina University.

It struck me as we strolled along the cliff walk that bordered these homes and the ocean how this week had explained a lot of America.  Our country was founded on a sense of freedom, however imperfect (ask the slaves, women, and indentured whites), but a century later was more about wealth and status in a way that might have embarrassed our English forbearers.  It may well be that this is the eternal struggle of the United States, that the energy and passion that inspires true greatness inevitably leads to a form of greatness that is gilded and self-absorbed.  Could it be that our human nature and our tendency to desire a legacy in the form of monuments leads us into a place where importance is only something that is bought?   

Worry and the Almost EV

Today, the 4th of July, we have begun our vacation.  I sit in a hotel on a Friday night in a town I know almost nothing about, thankful that today's airline flights went as scheduled and that we can look forward to a good time.  

Several months ago I made plans on Expedia, and when it came time to pick the rental car I chose the cheapest option, the Manager's Special.  We don't really need anything too big for the three of us, I thought, so I figured this would be a good place to save a few bucks in the time of inflation.  

I didn't think much about it until about 10 days ago, when I started getting emails from Hertz thanking for my rental, and oh by the way here's a bunch of reading you need to do about renting an EV from us.  Zoinks?!!  I went back and looked at my rental email and sure enough I had chosen not simply the Manager's Special but Manager's Special EV or similar.  Over the next few days I started spending my free time reading up on EVs, having never driven one before, and really having no idea how the entire system worked.  At first I was convinced that I was likely to get a Tesla; one reviewer online of the Hertz at the airport from which we would be renting complained about how he showed up to get his car and all they had left were a dozen Teslas.  

My thinking soon turned to wondering how long it would be until somebody keyed my rental, or maybe set in on fire, as the liberals for whom they were designed soon began to resist the car given to them by a modern day Nazi.  Maybe, I thought, I could put a sign in the window, PLEASE DON"T DESTROY IT'S A RENTAL I CAN'T AFFORD THE DEDUCTABLE.  But surely the rage at the South African First Buddy was starting to fade.

Soon, though, as I began to read about the Tesla I started to realize that the bigger problem might be that moment like in a dystopian movie where I have to abandon it on the side of the road because of a lack of power charging.  At the hotels we had rented I can't slow charge them overnight in a garage, and even as some of the areas we were going had Fast Chargers online reviews were saying that they didn't always work.  Was my vacation going to center on sitting at slow charging stations for six hours so I would be able to be able to drive another 80 miles?   

Then about three days ago I got another email from Hertz.  Plan your route by expecting your Polestar 2 to go about 200 miles.  A Polestar 2?  What was that?  A little research led me to realize it was simply a Volvo EV, with worse range.  But also I quickly discovered that there were other EVs as well Hertz rented, a Chevy Bolt, a few Kias, who knows what else.  How on earth was I going to digest all this information on EV charging and what different adapters one might need for each vehicle in certain situations?  

I literally spent a dozen hours online researching all the permutations of this over the past week. But what's worse, even as I tried convincing myself (and others) that I was making peace with these things, my old worrying habit came back with a terrible kick to the nuts.  Ever since this stuff all started, my pooping routine has been, shall we say, scattered.  Where once I gave a few solid poops a day, I was going 6, even 8 times a day, and often with a consistency that looked more like chocolate syrup instead of a Baby Ruth.  I wondered, maybe I'm suddenly lactose intolerant?  Maybe I have stomach cancer?  At least I wasn't getting the sores in my mouth that I used to get in times of stress; instead, the sores went into the lining of my stomach and intestines.  

Worry does some bad stuff.  And this doessn't even include this Guy thing I have in which I have to take charge, to help the wife and son have a good time, to make so many plans on my own.  What really were we going to do on this trip?  Maybe, just maybe, this is the last vacation, that I will be content to be like everyone else and just go to the lake all the time and sit around the same campfire and try to enjoy fishing.  Bleh.  And since Donnie Dimwit may well have declared himself emperor for his 38% of fawning supporters by this time next year even as the economy starts to look like my poop from this past week, we may well be more likely to be in hiding from feral ICE patrols than sitting on a beach or wandering along mountain streams in the near future. 

So.  Today our two flights go well, and we arrive at the Hertz rental counter with also doubles as the Thrifty and the Dollar rental counter.  A large woman is running around trying to do several jobs at once, as she bore the brunt of corporate understaffing.  Finally I get to talk to her...she gets my name and ID and I say as pathetically as possible, I made a mistake.  I didn't mean to get an EV rental, is there anything else possible that I can drive.  She says, honey, we don't even have any EVs for rent right now.  Let me get you and your family into something.  

In that moment everything changed.  The worry and terror I had lived in for the past week and a half suddenly lifted.  I'd use the regular analogy of a weight being lifted from my shoulders, but it's better to say that I could feel my bowels suddenly heal.  We talked a bit, I said I hoped she had a good 4th, she said she was happy to work, it got her away from her kids for awhile.  All was well.  

We walked out into the parking garage and I went to my car, a Chevy Trailblazer with less than 2000 miles on it.  The fanciest thing in the world?  No.  But as my first car was a Chevy, I know how to drive these things, and don't plan to spend my evening meticulously planning a trip around where charging stations might need to be on my map.  

The world can be a nerve-wracking thing.  America may not make it to its 250th year, but why worry?  After resting up tonight, our adventures start tomorrow.  All is good.  

Foolish v Evil

I actually agree that no longer making new pennies is a good idea.  Surely we can afford to round to the nearest five cents if we are still pay cash, right?  

But almost five months in, and that's just about where my agreement with the President ends.  Dimwit Donnie 2.0 has been a greater disaster than we could ever have imagined...if the first one was bad but we could recover from him, this one means the end of our country unless he is vanquished soon.  

I find it of interest the manner by which we are to think of his reign.  Is he evil, or merely foolish?  So many things I've seen so far are just plain dumb.  Hey, let's call it the Gulf of America!  I'm the new chief of the Kennedy Center!  And hey, let's bulldoze the rose garden so I can have a series of statues of people I really don't know anything about beyond hearing their names back in 8th grade but it seems kinda sorta patriotic so why not?  

Foolish behavior was the mark of Trump 1.0.  But having gotten away from being held accountable for his past crimes and felonies has emboldened him, and a lot of the things that he is doing are just plain evil.  Even something like the tariffs, which I though at first were just a sign of his stupidity as he raised and lowered them on a whim, are likely acts of evil.  Knowing enough about how the stock and bond markets work, it's pretty clear that even little acts like placing a tariff can drastically altar a stock.  Jerking them around, and giving your friends (though he likely has no friends, only supporters) a heads up that such things are happening, means that they get to profit off what he is doing.  Some of the direct conflicts of interest, such as hiking up tariffs from Vietnam while his family forces a new resort into the country, are just criminal.  

But one doesn't even have to look too closely before you see open corruption and wickedness.  The billions he has made off of $Trumpcoin.  The $40 million he gets for selling a documentary about his (estranged) wife to Amazon that nobody but their worshippers will watch.  The way he has shipped off certain 'undesirables' without any due process to foreign prisons, even as the courts are demanding that they be returned.  His gutting of federal aid programs as he seeks in his big and beautiful way to get massive tax cuts for billionaires.  How he has sold pardons to his supporters and given over 1600 other criminals a get-out-of-jail-free card for their actions on January 6.  

I could go on, but it gets depressing to keep recounting all the things this man has done.  He's a fool, but he's an evil fool.  Lord, forgive us.  We have had enough of retribution.  Deliver us from evil.

Three Dark Ones

I'm in my quiet season of being down to one job, so I've been catching up on some shows and movies that have been building up in my queue.  While I'm more of a series guy at this point, I decided to knock out the three Max movies I'd been wanting to watch.  

Last night I watched Mickey 17.  It's about a worker in space named Mickey, an expendable type who can continually die and then be 're-printed' as many times as needed.  Mickey 17 nearly dies after a terrible fall, and since it's assumed that he died, on his way back to the ship Mickey 18 takes his place.  All along the way a egomaniacal ex-congressman who is leading the space expedition/religious cult wants to destroy the mostly friendly inhabitants of the planet at which they have arrived.  In the end Mickey 18 blows him and the blowhard up and everyone lives happily ever after.

Today I endured the Brutalist, a brutal 3+ hour movie about a Hungarian architect trying to rebuild his life in the United States.  Actually I only made it through the first two hours before I started skipping ahead, but I got the gist, that our hero gets raped by his boss, becomes a heroin addict, and watches his wife suffer before he finds international success and is celebrated in old age by a Holocaust-surviving niece who was once mute but then kinda regains her voice.  

The final movie this evening was a brand-new release, Mountainhead.  Four tech bros, with real-life counterparts like Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerburg the most obvious, go for a boys' weekend at the poorest one's new Utah ski mansion.  Along the way the world is melting down because of the deepfakes made possible one of them, they have lots of bad quasi-philosophical discussions about how to creats coups to overthrow the government and push us towards a post-human life before deciding that such things are too much trouble, and the one with the slightest bit of a conscience about what they are doing is almost murdered by the other three.  The four survive the weekend, the world seems to regain a sense of balance, and they go back to their crappy and self-important lives.  

Whatever the quality of movies these were, I'm always a bit of a believer that movies reflect a lot about the world in which we live.  Maybe it's just me and what I watch (very possible), but it seems quite possible that these movies are so dark because we live in a dark time.  I'm starting to think that we have never really recovered from COVID, that maybe the final symptom of that disease was not something physical but something very social.  We are paranoid, angry, and for all the talk from the pseudo-religious right, we really don't like people much at all.  Maybe going into quarantine zapped out of us the social skills we'd taken generations to build.  Maybe coming out of quarantine was never a great idea, that perhaps we should have simply loaded our souls into the matrix and found a way to stay there.  

I think I do better with shorter shows.  Maybe the White Lotus or Veep or Stranger Things has its own form of darkness, but at least 45 minutes doesn't affect me nearly as long as 2+ hours of troublesome thoughts.  

Trump, Carter, and proper sentencing guidelines

Today was a national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter, who was president of our fair country in my very young days.  I remember him not being a good president, a man perhaps in a bit over his head, a man whose inability to fix the problems he inherited led to the Reagan Revolution.  His later years showed a man of character, a man who chose not to pursue the almighty dollar after his presidency, a man who taught Sunday school and modeled the idea of a humble faith and service to God.  

Compare our mourning with a spectacle that will soon take place: Tomorrow will also be a national day of mourning, as our soon-to-be president will be sentenced for 34 felonies in a court of law.  There should be many more than these for which he is convicted, but a friendly Supreme Court as well as a system which favors convicts over righteousness has ensured that he will never face justice for some of the greater evils which he has done.  

By all accounts, his felonies for falsifying business records in order to cover up payments to a porn star (wow) will not land him any jail time or any real consequences for his actions, but that it will be entered into the record that yes, he is a felon, gives me at least the slightest bit of satisfaction.  Short of prison time, though, I've been wondering what the good judge might well make Convict Trump endure.  Some suggestions:

-An ankle monitoring bracelet.  Let him forever be tracked.

-House arrest not in some golf club but in shared duplex with three other convicts, all sharing a bathroom.  

-40 hours of community service.  Put him in a borrowed jumpsuit picking up trash along the side of the road with armed prison guards standing by with shotguns in their hands while the cameras roll.  I'd watch every moment.  

-Twice-monthly check-ins with an overworked parole officer.  Said parole officer continually hounds him about his activities and questions him about the company he keeps.  

-Mandatory attendance at an old-fashioned 'Scared Straight' meeting in which he is yelled at and threatened by real convicts.  

How on earth we have devolved in my lifetime from the election of a decent man like Jimmy Carter to the coronation of a horrible pagan criminal like Donald Trump will haunt me for the rest of my life.