Civil Commotion

“… it [marriage] was not meant for happiness … pain was to be expected …”

Once again: Christianity is not marriage– and family-friendly. It isn’t. Healthy marriages and healthy families undermine the power of the clergy to control people, and so the whole of Christian teaching emphasizes that the cult must have preeminence in your life, and the pesky spouse and children must make do with the leftovers. Next Sunday morning, go to a park instead of listening to red-faced Pastor Bubba howl and bellow.

That Trump loyalists still support the man underscores just how much Trump has debased our government and American society as a whole.

Michael Hamar

Yup. I am freshly shocked, every single day, by the evidence of how little a lot of Americans know about their own country, how hostile they are to American ideals, how easily they have been turned to suspicion of education and achievement. Trump has mobilized, and now exploits, what amounts to no more than incoherent malice.

Did God Try to Kill Moses?

Y’all will not be surprised to learn that it is Albert the Pious, the Very Mightiest Theologian Of Them All, who undertakes to answer this vexing question.

I’m no theologian^*, but I imagine that He who flung bazillions of planets and stars and galaxies into orbit, and numbers the hairs on our heads, and knows all about the affairs of every crummy sparrow on earth, could have squashed ol’ Moses pretty easily — no try about it; so I’m guessing … No. But perhaps those more learned than I would like to weigh in.

But while we’re on the subject of Moses and I’m opening the floor to theologians, perhaps somebody could explain to me that thing where God gave Moses a peek at his butt; it has a distinctly Cub Scout-ish whiff.

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^*   A vanishingly small intellectual concession, akin to admitting that one is not an alchemist or expert in the reading of goat entrails.

I thought that telling the First Felon that he wasn’t welcome at Barbara Bush’s funeral was one of the best put-downs of all time.

What do you know? Barbara Bush wasn’t done with Fearless Leader.

How did she think things were going in the USA in the Age of Trump?

“I’m trying not to think about it,” she said in an interview as the first anniversary of Trump’s election approached. “We’re a strong country, and I think it will all work out.” Even so, she was dismayed by the nation’s divisions and by the direction of the party she had worked for, and for so long.

Did she still consider herself a Republican?

In an interview with me in October 2017, she answered that question yes. When I asked her again four months later, in February 2018, she said, “I’d probably say no today.”

And …

“Putin endorsed him, for heaven’s sake,” Barbara Bush erupted. “Putin the killer! Putin the worst! He endorsed Trump! That’s an endorsement you don’t want.”

Do contemporary Republicans know that they are the party that created the National Park System, built the Interstate Highway System, created OSHA, created the EPA, opened our relationship with China, assured medical treatment for all in hospital emergency rooms, ended the Cold War?

Today’s Republicans are not — NOT — conservatives, not forward-looking pragmatists resolved upon conserving what is best while preparing for the future; they are nihilist vandals, and it speaks well of Barbara Bush that she couldn’t stomach the thuggish vulgarian who is their leader.

I sometimes wonder: What is it like to go through life with a mind so dysfunctional and a character so squalid that it isn’t obvious that Donald Trump is ignorant sewage? If Trump’s supporters weren’t doing so much harm to the country and its standing in the world, I guess I’d feel sorry for them.