Tag Archives: donald trump supporters

December 28, 2016 · 06:30

Freedom Dies When Men Ignore Justice and then No Longer Recognize It

justice-weeps

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Just a short thought today. Yesterday was very tiring, we were dealing with a veterinary emergency with our older Papillon Minnie, and also had Judy’s follow-up appointment for the Endometrial Cancer she was operated on for in 2015. It looks like Minnie will be okay, she is spending the night in a fully staffed veterinary hospital where she will be monitored, medicated, and given IV’s after scaring the hell out of us with what our vet diagnosed as Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis, and the hospital vet things might have been Pancreatitis. She had showed no signs of being sick when we went to bed last night but when we got up she had vomited multiple times and was crapping bright red blood. As soon as I saw it I scooped her up, called the vet and drove her there. We finally got home after transferring her to the overnight emergency vet about nine-thirty last night. She’s doing better and hopefully she will be home tomorrow.  Of course in the middle of everything we learned that Carrie Fisher had died and as much as I want to reflect on her life I cannot now, other than to say that I admired her greatly, especially for her openness in speaking about her own mental health issues. When I suffered my own PTSD crisis and decided to speak out and be transparent about my struggles, she was a role model.

But, anyway, as a follow-up to what I wrote yesterday I wanted to share this thought, from the late Charles Morgan Jr. I wrote about his comments in regard to what he said after the bombing to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama some 52 years ago before and think that they are as pertinent in the age of Trump than they were when he wrote them about the Jim Crow South.

Morgan was a well off young Southern gentleman, a lawyer, and a man with a conscience. He was a defender of the civil liberties of many people during his life, most of which were incredibly unpopular when he made his strand.

Morgan made a comment that really stuck in my brain because it is so true. He said,

“It is not by great acts but by small failures that freedom dies. . . . Justice and liberty die quietly, because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.”

The truth is that it those small failures; first to turn our backs on justice and to ignore it, and then finally, to fail to even recognize it when justice is being trampled. That is how freedom dies. Sadly, those who most often trample freedoms, usually in the name of God or religion are the last to recognize their complicity in that loss of freedom. Judge Learned Hand spoke these words; “If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.”

Sadly, there are too many who will do just that, all to often in the name of their God, or their religion. If we ration justice so that only a few; the rich, and the well off are able to afford it, then we will succeed in standing idly by as injustice becomes the norm. I fear that in the coming months and years that justice itself will become a scarce commodity.

As always I admit that I hope that I am wrong, but from all I read from Trump’s supporters in the so-called Christian Right, the Neo-Nazis of the self-proclaimed Alt Right, and the most radical talking heads on radio, the internet, and heads of  right wing political action groups, I fear that we are in for very rough times unless the President-Elect himself makes a stand, because the Republican Congress has shown time after time that they will not do so.

Have a good day,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 11, 2016 · 06:30

Two Types of Faith: Fiendish Sadistic Cruelty or Mercy and Justice

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The great Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once wrote, “Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty…” 

As I watch the reaction of many people who call themselves Christians in the wake of Donald Trump’s election I find much truth in Whitehead’s words. I feel that what has posed as Christianity in the United States has been revealed as a sham; a way for religious leaders to enrich themselves and gain power even if it means forsaking the Gospel to do so.

Those who follow my writings know how much I struggle with faith and doubt on a daily basis. I believe, but as the man told Jesus when he asked Jesus to heal his child “I believe, help my unbelief.” I no longer believe in the “absolute truths” that I once believed. Of course to some this makes me a heretic or worse. That being said, I have faith in a God I cannot see. I have faith in a God who clothes himself in human weakness and allows himself to be killed based on the trumped up charges of corrupt and fearful religious leaders. Thus I have a problem with Christians or members of other religions try to use the police power of state to enforce their beliefs on others, something that is about to become reality in our country.

I believe, but my doubts are all too real. Frankly I cringe when I hear religious people speaking with absolute certitude about things that they ultimately cannot prove, and that includes the concept of justice, which cannot always be measured in absolutes. Captain Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) noted in the Star Trek the Next Generation episode Justice: 

“I don’t know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.”

I have found and learned to accept that life as we know it “is an exercise in exceptions.”  We all make them, and the Bible and the history of the church is full of them. So I have a hard time with people who claim an absolute certitude in beliefs that wish to impose on others. Whitehead wrote: “There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.” Unfortunately many true believers fail to understand that fact and whenever they gain political power use it to enforce their half-truths as if they were absolute truth. This behavior is demonstrated throughout history by people who profess every religious creed in the world.

Proving Whitehead’s words, many true believers frequently wrap themselves in the certitude of their faith assuming that they are the custodians of all truth, not recognizing that they are ignorant of their very ignorance.  The true believers espouse doctrines that are unprovable and then build complex doctrinal systems to prove them, systems that then which must be defended, sometimes to the death; and may whatever God you believe in protect you should you cross them.

Eric Hoffer wrote: “A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.”

Henri Nouwen wrote, “Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God’s incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.”

No one can be competent in God, and that those who claim to be are either hopelessly deluded, or worse, are evil men masquerading as good. Those that speak of absolutes and want to use the Bible or any other religious text as some sort of rule book that they alone can interpret need to ask themselves this question, “When has justice ever been as simple as a rulebook?” 

Sadly too many people, Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, and others apply their own misconceptions and prejudices to their scriptures and use them as a weapon of temporal and divine judgement on all who they oppose. However, as history, life and even our scriptures testify, that none of us can absolutely claim to know the absolutes of God. As Captain Picard noted “life itself is an exercise in exceptions.” 

It takes true wisdom to know when and how to make these exceptions, wisdom based on reason, grace and mercy. Justice, is to apply the law in fairness and equity, knowing that even our best attempts can be misguided. If instead of reason we appeal to emotion, hatred, prejudice or vengeance and clothe them in the language of righteousness, what we call justice can be more evil than any evil it is supposed to correct, no matter what our motivation. Whitehead noted something that people of faith should remember and practice: “Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.”

The temporal power of the Christians who have thrown away the Gospel to use the election of Donald Trump to to further their temporal agenda of gaining earthly power completely miss the essence of faith, and the concept of justice. They have shown themselves to be little different from the theocrats that they condemn in the Islamic world, but then the mirror can be a difficult thing to look at.

But we see it all too often, religious people and others misusing faith or ideology to condemn those they do not understand or with whom they disagree. When such people gain power they tend to expand that power into the realm of theocratic absolutism and despotism. As Captain Jean Luc Picard noted in the Start Trek Next Generation episode The Drumhead:

“We think we’ve come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches it’s all ancient history. Then – before you can blink an eye – suddenly it threatens to start all over again.”

That day is already here and it will become much worse before it gets better, especially since there will be little to restrain them unless the man that they sold their souls to support in order to increase their power turns on them; and that is always a possibility with Donald Trump.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 29, 2016 · 06:30

Reordering Life under the New Order

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have taken most of the past week off and did little in the way of writing, but I did do much reading and reflecting over the Thanksgiving holiday. We spend most of the holiday out of town with friends near Washington D.C. in a very relaxed environment in which I radically reduced my time on social media to do a lot of reading and reflecting about the future that we are soon about to enter, a future that portends a radical departure from the historic norms of American democracy, polity, and social convention. We are about to enter a “new order” and it is important that we as Americans realize what this will entail.

However, I will come back to that later or in future articles. Today I will talk about what I am doing to keep my balance and to prepare for the difficult times that lay ahead for us. The problem for me is that as a historian who has devoted most of his life to studying the totalitarian Third Reich, and who also has a large amount formal graduate level education in theology, philosophy, and ethics that I see the gathering storm and am doing what I can to prepare personally as well as to be a beacon of rational thinking in a world that has gone mad.

The fact is that in less than two months a highly narcissistic megalomaniac authoritarian who appears to live in a cloud-cuckoo-land of delusional fantasy and paranoia will be the President of the United States. No recounts will change that fact, and unless members of the Electoral College actually do the job that the Constitution demands that they do, that Donald Trump will be President come January 20th 2017. That is a hard fact. One can talk about him not being their President all that they want but he will have the full power of that office in his hands and like it or not he will be making the decisions unless checked by Congress and the Courts. I do hope, probably against hope that those pillars of government rise to the occasion but I fear that they will not.

So over the Thanksgiving holiday I made some alterations to how I do life. First I have pulled back from social media. I still look at my Facebook and Twitter feeds at the posts of people whose intellect and desire to be truthful, but I am much more hesitant to comment on other people’s feeds, including people I dearly value as friends.

Likewise, I have become very selective about what I share. If I share something related to our current political situation I am first reading the article, checking its veracity, and looking at the track record of the author. As such, I am reading longer, more thoughtful, reflective and analytical articles that force me to think as I read them. Even then I will not necessarily share them on Facebook or Twitter unless I think they rise above the banter and chatter that inundates those platforms. Yes I am being more circumspect, but part of this circumspection is the realization that there are people who in the wake of Trump’s election are already are making “enemies lists” of professors, government officials, writers, and others that they would like to silence. Having been trolled and threatened for years I know that I am a potential target.

I am also much more discriminating in where I get my news. I am focusing on well-established newspapers in the United States and Europe where investigative reporting and substance matters while avoiding all American Cable News channels and sites that promote sensationalism or that thrive on unsubstantiated rumor or innuendo. The fake news business that was a fixture of the 2016 election is still going strong and is going to be used more and more to promote fear, distrust, and to pave the way for tyranny. As such I am not taking the bait when I see headlines posted on Facebook or Twitter which are solely designed to inflame passions and lead people respond emotionally without critical thinking or reflection.

As far as news and social media I have stopped looking at them after 10 PM. This is something that I should have done a long time ago. My regular readers know the difficulty I have sleeping do to PTSD and TBI and the memories of wartime and other traumatic experiences returning from war and I have found that many social media posts as well as the constant bombardment of news; real, fake, important, and unimportant only raises my nighttime anxiety and makes it far harder to sleep. Instead, I read or watch my favorite television shows or movies. I probably need to write an article dealing with this in the near future. There is something to be said about disconnecting from the insanity at night. 

I am going to be very careful when listening to politicians, and not just the incoming President, use terms such as “extremist” in describing individuals or groups that they oppose and “terrorist” to describe events that may or may not be terror related. Likewise, I will be careful when politicians using the pretext of an “emergency” describe “exceptional” circumstances to curb civil rights and individual liberties. Such methods are emblematic of authoritarian states and are the death of democratic states. The fact is that the Patriot Act and numerous already existing Executive Orders provide mechanisms for the Executive Branch to suspend civil liberties in reaction to certain emergencies.

I am going to limit what I say in e-mail and social media posts and try to do more through direct personal contact, sharing meals and drinks while discussing important issues. Likewise I am going to get out more, mingle more with real people, and also take time with Judy and our dogs. I really am coning to enjoy spending time with Judy and my walks with our dogs provide me a lot of relaxation and enjoyment, so they are getting longer and more numerous.

I am becoming much more alert to threats of violence and intimidation by some of Trump’s supporters as well as members of the “Alt-Right” which is nothing more than a bunch of rebranded Nazis and Klansmen. I will speak up against such people and organizations at every opportunity as to quote General George Patton “the Nazis are the enemy” and I don’t care where they come from, I will fight them.

I have a lot more to say on this, but that is all for now. Have a great day.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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November 20, 2016 · 14:09

A Grave Responsibility to Remember and Remind: The 71st Anniversary of the Opening of the Nuremberg Trails

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today is the 71st anniversary of the opening of the Nuremberg Trials. I write about this a lot and I know some people, even so-called progressives have told me that they know the Nazis were evil and that they don’t want to hear it, while alleged conservatives vehemently object because they do not believe that such things can happen again.

However that is not the point. The reason I post things like this is because the players in the drama are representative of humanity, and humanity is the one constant in all history. Human beings and their propensity for good as well as evil is what these posts are about, and the fact is that any human being is capable of committing such crimes or turning a blind eye to them, to simply go along with the system and not to make waves. That is part of human nature, we value liberty, but that liberty lies in our hearts, and when it dies there, it dies. As the great American jurist Learned Hand said:

“I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.” 

When that spirit of liberty is lost, when that sensitivity to the rights and needs of others trampled, when a desire for revenge and getting even displaces civility and compassion; there is nothing than stop evil, for evil will find ways to justify their evil deeds under the cloak of legality. That is what Germany did in the 1930s and what I believe may happen in the United States and other Western nations as the wave of populism and xenophobic racism sweeps the globe. Robert Jackson said, “The most odious of all oppressions are those which mask as justice.”

That is why it is so important to remember the evil that we as human beings are capable of and not to run roughshod over the rights of those with whom we disagree. Since the election of Donald Trump I have seen many comments of his supporters and the well documented writings and opinions of three of first appointees, Stephen Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Jeff Sessions. All have extensive writings and comments which advocate policies designed to limit freedom and excise whole groups from the United States. His supporters are condemning all forms of protest or opinions that disagree with theirs, and the President Elect jumps to his Twitter account to blast anyone who insults or criticizes him. Nothing in American history is comparable to the thin-skinned inability to tolerate dissent that is happening now.

In our country we have seldom had to fear that the outcome of an election could erase liberty, but it is possible now. Jackson noted, “One’s right to life, liberty, and property depends on the outcome of no election.” But it seems that this election may test that premise, the premise that Jackson so eruditely enunciated:

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. One’s right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote; they depend on no elections.”

I do fear for what the future holds because of the many statements made by Donald Trump and his supporters during the campaign and even after. While I am willing to give the new President the benefit of the doubt, and hope that he will rise to the occasion, I wonder if that will happen, and for now I wait, and I send up warnings from history.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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November 13, 2016 · 22:10

A Reflective Sunday at Bull Run


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As I mentioned yesterday we have been on the outskirts of Washington DC attending a get together of Papillon dogs and their loyal human companions. Since the meeting was breaking up today and since we are remaining until the morning to see another friend in the area, I took a trip to the Manassas Battlefield National Park. 

The First Battle of Manassas, or Bull Run was the first major battle of the American Civil War. At the time it was the largest and bloodiest battle fought on the North American continent. The combined strength of both armies was close to 70,000 men, although both sides only committed about have of their men to the battle. On the day of battle about 850 Union and Confederate troops were killed and another 2600 wounded. The armies and their commanders were inexperienced and but for the stand of the brigade of General Thomas Jackson the affair may have led to a Union victory. But instead it was a Union defeat. Even so the battle showed the leaders of both sides that the war would neither be short, nor bloodless. 

It was a wake up call to both and though the number of casualties shocked the Union and the Confederacy, the number of casualties would pale in comparison with so many later battles. 


Compared to Gettysburg or Antietam the battlefield is relatively devoid of markers or memorials and most of the ones here commemorate Confederates. But then the battlefield is in Virginia and these were all built by the state of Virginia or Confederate veteran organizations. Even so the number of monuments is tiny compared to Gettysburg or Antietam, and the largest was errected in 1938 and dedicated to Stonewall Jackson, and compared to monuments on other battlefields seems almost looks like a superhero rather than a real flesh and blood person. But then such is the myth of Stonewall Jackson, to many people then and to others even today, the myth overshadows reality. 

As I walked around I spent most of my time reflecting about the Civil War and what our country is going through now. I read a statement by the leadership of the League of the South after the election of Donald Trump which read like the speeches of secessionist leaders in early 1861. I will take the the time later to post those statements so you can compare them, just not now. They make fascinating, if not frightening reading when you read them and realize that 166 years have past and the League of the South, the KKK, and other White Supremacist groups have not altered their thinking since before Bull Run. 

I wonder what will happen if Donald Trump does not reign in his most ardently deplorable White Supremacist supporters, or if he miscalculated the effect his words word actually have on people and he won’t be able to dial things back. I am beginning to believe that he is not nearly as prejudiced or hate filled as many of the White Supremacists who rallied to his banner. That remains to be seen, but all over the nation there are violent incidents by people claiming to be Trump supporters against minorities of all kinds. I just hope that the many more people who voted for Trump because he was not Hillary, or because he was a supposed outsider will not stand by silently like the vast majority of Germans who said nothing and did less when the Nazis launched their persecution of the Jews, other ethnic minorities, and political opponents during the Third Reich. I honestly don’t think that the majority of those that voted for Trump are racists, yet ther are a significant number that are and that fact cannot be ignored. 

So there was a lot to think about at I walked that seven mile long loop around the battlefield. These are things that I will continue to ponder and write about as we enter the Trump era. 

Have a great night. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

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