Civil Commotion

One of our nieces is a middle-school math teacher, and for years we’ve sent her a gift card as the Fall semester approaches to help ease the indecency of poorly-paid teachers being required to buy classroom supplies. What do you know? If the Loony-in-Chief has his way, it appears we’ll be adding a box of hollow-points to the annual package.

I am not kidding.

President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday during a listening session with survivors and family members of school shootings that arming teachers could be one solution to stopping tragedy.

“An attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes. It takes 5 to 8 minutes for responders, for police to come in. If you had a teacher who is adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly,” Trump said at the event, flanked by two teenage girls who survived the school shooting last week in Parkland, Florida. “The good thing about that …. you will have a lot of people that would be armed, that would be ready.”

No, Donald. You are an idiot. What will happen is that ambitious young mass-killers will take care to shoot the teacher first.

Or walk across the street and shoot-up a McDonald’s or Day Care center, instead.

Failing that, what happens when a jittery SWAT team with an adrenaline-rush swarms into a school in response to a report of a shooting and spots a teacher with blood all over her clothing and face?

Seriously: This idea is even dumber than the Reagan administration notion that ketchup should be counted as a vegetable course in school lunches.

Has anyone but me noticed the fitting symmetry of Billy Graham’s death as the evangelical movement he nurtured is dying of the very excesses he eschewed? There is a useful lesson in the fact, but it probably is too late for his grasping successors to learn from it.

Of Graham, it should first be said that he lived comfortably but not extravagantly. However grotesque the excesses of such as Joel Osteen, Steven Furtick, Richard Roberts, et. al., Graham actually did take care of the money entrusted to him. What is more, by all accounts he was an agreeably-tempered and accessible man.

Further, Graham had the sense to steer clear of the Christian Nationalists. He said many times over the course of his years in public life that America is a Christian nation in only the narrow sense that most Americans are Christians, but that the Founding was a secular project. Good for him; he was no fan of the David Barton-like revisionists, and for that he deserves respect.

But there was a dark side to America’s Pastor, too. Famously, as revealed by the Watergate tapes, he was plenty happy to stoke Richard Nixon’s anti-Semitism and paranoia; indeed, he shared them.

In President Richard M. Nixon’s Oval Office, the Rev. Billy Graham did not mince words in describing his feelings about Jewish people and the news media: “This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.”

On Friday, Mr. Graham, 83, apologized for his words captured on audiotape 30 years ago.

[ … ]

In the conversation with President Nixon, the evangelist complained about what he saw as Jewish domination of the news media.

“You believe that?” Nixon asked in response.

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Graham said.

“Oh, boy. So do I,” Nixon said. “I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.”

“No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something,” Mr. Graham said.

Those are stupid and contemptible things to say and, to his credit, he did apologize for the remarks, but in fact those sentiments remain a commonplace here in the south. I can more easily believe in the sincerity of the original slurs than in the the sincerity of the apology.

And then, of course, there is the matter of his life’s work. No matter how you try to evade it, no matter how you sugarcoat it, Christianity rests upon the claims that …

• You are no damn good,

• You will never be any damn good,

• And the only way to escape the eternity of torture that you deserve is to join our club.

Christianity can flourish only amongst the insecure, and I will die convinced that the devout never have actual thoughts for the simple reason that they will subject their children to this degrading junk every Sunday morning, and then demand the immediate termination of a school teacher who says something which faintly suggests that Li’l Precious is not the finest child to ever live.

Billy Graham lived honorably within the framework of his beliefs — but his beliefs were degrading, innately decadent, and an engine of human misery. I hope his passing was peaceful, and I am glad he’ll miss the crack-up of the movement he did so much to afflict us with.

Dinesh D’Souza, mocking student reaction to the decision of the Florida legislature to not discuss gun control:

Once upon a time, believe it or not, D’Souza was considered a serious intellectual and an exemplar for the future of a diverse, young, forward-looking Republican Party. William F. Buckley, Jr., favorably reviewed his first book, An Illiberal Education.

At just about the same time that D’Souza was mocking teenagers still recovering from the shock of seeing their classmates murdered, an aide to a Florida legislator was accusing the students of being activists-for-hire.

I doubt that the GOP brand will survive this Dark Side presidency; Trump’s election has green-lighted everything sick and squalid in the Loony Right.

Seriously: It is time for a new party. People like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham (on a good day) … they need to frankly repudiate the cesspool that the Republican Party has become and organize a new party. I have policy differences with each of them, but none of them is overtly crazy, none of them appears to be animated by malice, none of them is resolutely ignorant, none of them is incandescently corrupt, all of them (excepting the exigencies that inhere in a public life) exhibit a good faith intent to do well for the country. And the way, now, to do well for the country is bury the GOP and the sick, antisocial behavior set loose by the election of Trump.

Making racists and religious fanatics feel good about themselves doesn’t pay the bills.

Michael Hamar

The comment arises in connection with yet another state legislative seat flip — the 37^th — from Republican to Democrat, this time in deep-Red Kentucky.

I don’t believe anybody could have foreseen the exact shape of Trump and the GOP’s ongoing self-immolation, but the inevitability of it was in plain sight long before the election. The well-documented business corruption; the overt hostility toward the First Amendment protections of speech, press, and religion; the serial and grotesque Big Lies … the people who voted for Trump cannot plead ignorance. They got what they voted for — and now they’re getting what they deserve.

We have been praying, God, that you will expose those things that are being done in secret, to be brought out to light. God, we are seeing you expose the shenanigans of Satan that are trying to hold this country down, that are trying to get in the way of us moving forward as a country, as an administration, under the president. God, we pray that you will expose the FBI, the CIA, the Mueller investigation, whatever the enemy is trying to use and connive under the table.

The deep state will be exposed and whatever they try to do, it will boomerang and people will know they are not messing with a man, with an administration, they are not messing with a country, they are messing with the hand of Almighty God and He will not put up with it.

Mark Gonzales, Holy Man

Gonzales is the Executive Director of something called the Hispanic Action Network, and this prayer was spoken during a conference call of POTUS Shield members. POTUS Shield, y’all should know, is “a council of prelates that is assembling to raise up a spiritual shield. You are invited to join us as we bring this anointed assembly in intercession, prayers, declarations, and decrees of The Word of the Lord across our nation!”

<< SIGH >>