Civil Commotion

Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler?

There is nothing idle about wondering if Donald Trump is a traitor. I am sure that NATO does and won’t share any important secrets with him; after all, they might go straight into ol’ Vladimir’s ear.

There is a reason that Trump consistently takes diplomatic and economic positions that undermine and isolate the United States, positions that jibe perfectly with Putin’s ambitions — and Occam’s Razor¹ suggests the reason is that Trump works for Putin.

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¹   The simplest explanation is usually the best.

You were not involved but now you’re stained with an original sin. What kind of a religion is that? That’s what I can’t accept, very stupid proposition.

Rodrigo Duterte

I wish it had not been said by a notorious dictator — because careless thinkers will link his skepticism to his bad character — but Duterte is correct: Original Sin is a stupid idea.

It is not merely stupid, of course, but harmful, too, and in ways both obvious and obscure.

Consider, for instance, the case of the pastor of an evangelical church. His livelihood depends upon convincing people that …

• You are no damn good, and …

• You were born no damn good, and …

• You will never be any damn good, and …

• The only way to escape the eternity of punishment you deserve is to join my club.

A happy, healthy, well-adjusted and forward-looking person is a threat to his well-being. Healthy marriages are a threat to his total control and ownership of his congregation.

Christianity can flourish only where men are unhappy and frustrated, and that’s why there are so many ‘recovering fundamentalist’ groups and such a high divorce rate amongst evangelicals.

Though many preachers are overtly predatory, I doubt that most are even conscious of the harm they do. I suspect, rather, that most are unreflective and are unable to recognize that the Christian concept of the good — slavish submission to the point of self-abnegation — is itself corrupt.

If you don’t feel shame that such a thing has happened in the United States, then there is something wrong with you.

Nobody should be surprised, I suppose, to learn that a man who routinely reneged on his promises to pay would betray immigrants who serve in our military in return for the promise of citizenship — but this is particularly foul.

So: The Buffoon-in-Chief who routinely celebrates the military, who wants a big military parade, wants no … others … in the ranks.

The Marquis de Lafayette? Baron von Steuben? The embarrassment of Donald Trump doesn’t end.

Liberalism is a theological disorder

Theology is not a grounded, intellectually serious branch of study and is unworthy of respect. No theologian has any right to expect to be taken seriously until he or she has done the hard work of proving that …

• Abraham’s god exists, and …

• Abraham’s god authored/inspired/whatever The Bible.

Till then, I refuse without caveat or exception to grant theologians any more dignity than I grant to Dungeons & Dragons, which at least has the honesty to acknowledge that it’s fiction.