Civil Commotion

So all the “fake news” was true. A hostile foreign power intervened in the presidential election, hoping to install Donald Trump in the White House. The Trump campaign was aware of this intervention and welcomed it. And once in power, Trump tried to block any inquiry into what happened.

Never mind attempts to spin this story as somehow not meeting some definitions of collusion or obstruction of justice. The fact is that the occupant of the White House betrayed his country. And the question everyone is asking is, what will Democrats do about it?

But notice that the question is only about Democrats. Everyone (correctly) takes it as a given that Republicans will do nothing.

Paul Krugman

Krugman is correct. Trump’s offenses are real, grave, and demand a muscular response — and never mind that the Republican Party has degenerated into a shameless pack of whores. If the Democrats are the only people left to defend the country, then they will have to shoulder the job. Trump is an existential threat to the country itself, and must go.

Jerry Coyne points toward yet another case of You-know-who annexing the credit that rightly belongs to the disciplined minds of surgeons, scientists, engineers.

“That’s truly God’s work. The prayers for my family …”

No. It’s the fruit of the work of thousands of hours of study by disciplined minds.

There’s at least one area of agreement among conservative, centrist and liberal leaders in the United Methodist Church: America’s largest mainline Protestant denomination is on a path toward likely breakup over differences on same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBT pastors.

Associated Press

Moral progress is slow, relentlessly contested, and sometimes slips before it gains a sure footing — but it is real.

An Easter column by the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof consists of questions put to the President of Union Theological Seminary. Most self-identified Christians will be startled by some of her remarks.

KRISTOF   Happy Easter, Reverend Jones! To start, do you think of Easter as a literal flesh-and-blood resurrection? I have problems with that.

JONES   When you look in the Gospels, the stories are all over the place. There’s no resurrection story in Mark, just an empty tomb. Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves. But that empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed.

[ … ]

KRISTOF   But without a physical resurrection, isn’t there a risk that we are left with just the crucifixion?

JONES   Crucifixion is not something that God is orchestrating from upstairs. The pervasive idea of an abusive God-father who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people is nuts.

[ … ]

KRISTOF  What about other miracles of the New Testament? Say, the virgin birth?

JONES   I find the virgin birth a bizarre claim. It has nothing to do with Jesus’ message. The virgin birth only becomes important if you have a theology in which sexuality is considered sinful. It also promotes this notion that the pure, untouched female body is the best body, and that idea has led to centuries of oppressing women.

Good for Reverend Jones; the orthodox Christian story is so incandescently crazy that I marvel that anybody, anywhere, takes it seriously. Certainly, the average pew-sitter is there for something other than insight into the workings of reality.

Albert the Pious, y’all will not be surprised to learn, is some kind of annoyed.

[W]hat we need to notice here is the incredible candor with which she speaks, the incredible candor with which she simply overthrows the entire edifice of orthodox biblical Christianity.

She is inventing an entirely new religion in the course of this conversation.

No. Not really. It is true that her remarks represent a breach with orthodox, contemporary Christianity, but the humdrum truth is that the main lines of Christian thought were not settled until Augustine squelched the Pelagian heresy in about 420-A.D. with the invention of Original Sin; before that time, there were all sorts of people who believed all sorts of different things going around calling themselves Christians. You can read all about it in Lost Christianities, by Bart Ehrman.

For my part, I think that Reverend Jones’ frank disdain for the orthodox Christian narrative is refreshing. After all, when you reject the narrative the only thing Christianity has on offer is its cult-like ethics and club membership — both in decline.

Reading the Mueller report, one of the things that strikes me is how inadequately prevailing laws anticipate what the Trump campaign did.

It should be trivial to agree that what the campaign did was wrong; after all, it knew of an attack against this country, failed to alert the government of the attack, and sought to benefit from the attack.

But the agency laws don’t fit the offense, the campaign finance laws don’t fit the offense, and the conspiracy laws don’t fit the offense.

So: Does all of that mean, as Trump seems to think, that there wasn’t any offense? Not in my book. What it means is conduct that was so low and unprecedented that Congress failed to anticipate it.

I do think, as I have said previously, that Trump et. al. gave aid and comfort to an enemy; the campaign committed treason.