Monthly Archives: October 2020

President Donald Trump gestures while speaking during the first presidential debate Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I started this post on Tuesday night after the debate. My anger was palpable. I found out a few minutes ago that he and his wife have tested positive for COVID-19. The irony is so rich. The man who knew about how bad the virus is and how he did nothing to stop it, who took few personal precautions, exposed his followers in rallies where masks were not required and social distancing was ignored. He set himself up to get it by so casually denying the advice and attacking the experts who gave it. I hate to say it, but anyone who conducted himself in such a manner served to be infected, and due to him being high risk in that he is old, morbidly obese, and must have unreported medical conditions that he has ordered his doctors to lie about, including an  unplanned and rushed visit to Walter Reed, but I digress. I expect that he will have a very bad time of this, and may end up incubated in an ICU in the next few weeks. So please read on to my debate commentary. 

I hate bullies and liars. I always have. Donald Trump has always been a bully, and a liar and this was on full display tonight. I have never seen a President disgrace his office more and demonstrate his unfitness for office than President Trump did in the first Presidential debate tonight. He was far ruder and disrespectful than any American President than I have ever have seen. Trump broke every ground rule of the debate, and ended with him saying that the election didn’t matter and that he should remain in office, even encouraging Right Wing Militias like the Proud Boys to be stand by after the election. I felt assaulted as an American citizen, by his display of hatred for our political system, institutional, and Constitutional norms. It was as if only he mattered, and the rest of the country, even his supporters be damned.

Like Adolf Hitler, President Trump shouted down his opponent and the debate moderator through the entire debate. I was overwhelmed by his anger, invective, lies and incredible lack of empathy for the victims of COVID-19, or even Joe Biden’s dead son Beau who served in Iraq before dying of a brain tumor.

I cannot believe what I saw, the number already disproved lies that that he blasted all night long on every issue, repeating QAnon conspiracy theories as if they were the Gospel and sowing discord that could destroy our country. He refused to condemn White Supremacist ideology, lying about his responsibility in the Coronavirus Pandemic, for 210,000 deaths and over seven million infected by it, many of who will never fully recover.

However, like everything else he touches, tonight he destroyed another American institution, that of a neutrally moderated debate. Instead he abused the moderator, Chris Wallace of the Fox News Network, his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and everyone who watched, of course since his followers are fine with abuse and being abused they won’t raise an eyelash in criticism.

What the President did tonight was to destroy any respect for the office of the Presidency and the reputation of the United States around the world. I was so embarrassed.

Because of the Hatch Act I cannot urge anyone to support or vote for any candidate, nor can I say who I will vote for in the election. I have served in the military for over 39 years, obey my oath and have been able to serve under six Presidents, almost eight since I enlisted shortly after President Carter left office and won’t be on active duty if Joe Biden becomes President. In my service to the nation I never have believed that any American of any belief was not a person that I was not obligated to defend.

Donald Trump will never change, his documented lies, falsehoods, and distortions of the truth since he entered office number in the tens of thousands, respects no-one or nothing, During the debate he showed to the nation and the world that he only considers his power as the ultimate end. That is what a dictator does. After his election I gave him a chance, but in the past 3 1/2 years he has proved that he, the the Constitution, not our institutions, cannot be trusted. When he told the Neo-Nazi Proud Boys to Stand Back and Stand By it was a clarion call against our Republic. It showed that the President demonstrates that he does not uphold his oath to the Constitution, and only cares about his political power and the protection his offers him from his creditors.

My thought is that Trump has destroyed everything that used to be considered conservatism in the country and that the Republican Party once stood. I know because for 32 years I was a conservative Republican. Now I can only say, I can only repeat the words of  General Ludwig Beck: who said:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history  will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.”

Beck was correct. Final decisions about our Republic are at stake. My time in the military is almost over, but even so I will maintain my oath of office, my vows as a Priest, and my honesty as a historian who gets many threats, including death threats  on this blog because of President Trump’s calls to violence. The Proud Boys just issued a new patch for their hateful, fascist and violent movement using Trump’s words, Stand Back and Stand By. I will fight them if need be. I have been threatened by them for over a decade and I won’t take it.

I have turned my cheeks so many time that I have callousness on all four of them because of it. No longer. I will fight for our Constitution and Republic.

To quote John Paul Jones:  “It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.”

I say that I will take the risk and if fate says I lose, I will have my honor and integrity intact. To quote Major General Henning Von Tresckow who died in the attempt to kill Hitler and overthrow Nazi rule: “I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler’s regime.” I think the same of anyone who calls themself a Christian who is willing to follow Trump into the abyss.

To this end in response to last nights shit show of a debate presented by a President who broke every rule, disrespected and dishonored one of the last remaining  bulwarks of the American experiment, the right to watch the candidates tell the truth about themselves, their positions and how they defend the Constitution and Republic, I remain will continue to support legal orders, but I will be damned to Hell if in my last 90 days of active duty I will a pawn of a President who has bulldozed the Constitution and Poisoned our instructions. As Democrat Senator Stephen A. Douglas said of President James Buchanan, a man of his political party:

“God forbid,” I said “that I ever surrender my right to differ from a President of the United States for my own choice. I am not a tool of any President!” 

And I also quote Theodore Roosevelt who responded to attacks on his patriotism by members of Woodrow Wilson’s administration: 

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

As I have always said, I will tell the truth.

I would rather stand in the shoes of Stephen A. Douglas, or Theodore Roosevelt, than in the shoes of President Trump. I still have to obey his legal orders and respect his office, but disobeying unlawful and unconstitutional orders issued by any President who tramples the Constitution and Civil Liberties at every opportunity is something that I cannot do for humor any other President regardless of their political party, or ideology.

I have to remind people time and time again that for 32 years, from 1976 to 2008 I was a loyal Republican, but by bearing first hand witness to the propagandists of the Iraq War, damaged by PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury, and finding that with the exception of their I support the Troops bumper stickers that the lies that brought on the war and it’s victims, including Americans really didn’t matter, to that Party.

My beliefs hadn’t changed, but theirs did, and 12 years later most remaining Evangelical Christian Republicans support a man who only uses them as a stepping stone to absolute power, and because he appoints judges sympathetic to their ideological, political, and social beliefs, even  though they no longer represent most Americans.

As far as that goes those people are heretics and isolators, who sold out their faith for that of a Golden Calf.

Now Trump and his wife Melania are infected with the Coronavirus 19. As I said up front, Trump himself is in a high risk group: Morbidly obese, old, and probably suffering from medical conditions that he has ordered his doctors to lie about for year to maintain the lie of his great health. I figure at best he has a long and painful ICU stay ahead of him, if he doesn’t die from it.

By the way as of publication there were 7,494,671 total infections, 212,660 deaths, 2,545,390 current infections, 47,389 which were reported yesterday before the President’s announcement. Worldwide over a million people have died. 

How this effects any future debate is on me, but that now is probably the least of his concerns, and his political opponents are going to have a field day with it. Biden will be gracious but others will go for the jugular.

If it either happens I can only quote his words when asked about his feelings about 200,000 dead Americans, “It is what it is,” as he praised his response to the virus. That being said I don’t wish death on him, “just a fate worse than a fate worse than death.” (Gratuitous Black Adder Quote)

So, until whenever,

Peace,

Padre Steve+