Category: Fascism in America

More Evidence that the Republican Party Hates Democracy

The extraordinary phenomena of last year’s protests over George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, combined with two Democratic victories in Georgia for the state’s seats in the US Senate has infuriated the Republican party.

Republicans have responded as Republicans do: undermine the power of the people.

First, they have introduced dozens of new voter suppression laws in local legislatures across the country. Naturally, Republicans object to this characterization, but Stacey Abram’s recent testimony before a Senate committee regarding Georgia’s new voter laws puts the lie to that Republican defense (watch here and here).

Second, Republicans have submitted numerous bills that would outlaw public protests and demonstrations.  They would also immunize drivers who run into protesters with their cars. (All the videos I have seen show drivers who deliberately target peaceful demonstrators.)

Today’s edition of the New York Times has an article about this second problem. It’s entitled, “G.O.P. Bills Target Protesters (and Absolve Drivers Who Hit Them).”

Below is a lengthy excerpt of that article. (It is behind a pay wall). Or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets.

A Republican proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance.

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed sweeping legislation this week that

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has used the term anti-riot bills for legislation that limits the right to protest. Credit…Phil SearsAssociated Press

toughened existing laws governing public disorder and created a harsh new level of infractions — a bill he’s called “the strongest anti-looting, anti-rioting, pro-law-enforcement piece of legislation in the country.”

The measures are part of a wave of new anti-protest legislation, sponsored and supported by Republicans, in the 11 months since Black Lives Matter protests swept the country following the death of George Floyd. The Minneapolis police officer who killed Mr. Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was convicted on Tuesday on murder and manslaughter charges, a cathartic end to weeks of tension.

But while Democrats seized on Mr. Floyd’s death last May to highlight racism in policing and other forms of social injustice, Republicans responded to a summer of protests by proposing a raft of punitive new measures governing the right to lawfully assemble. G.O.P. lawmakers in 34 states have introduced 81 anti-protest bills during the 2021 legislative session — more than twice as many proposals as in any other year, according to Elly Page, a senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks legislation limiting the right to protest.

Some, like Mr. DeSantis, are labeling them “anti-riot” bills, conflating the right to peaceful protest with the rioting and looting that sometimes resulted from such protests.

The laws carry forward the hyperbolic message Republicans have been pushing in the 11 months since Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice swept the country: that Democrats are tolerant of violent and criminal actions from those who protest against racial injustice. And the legislation underscores the extent to which support for law enforcement personnel and opposition to protests have become part of the bedrock of G.O.P. orthodoxy and a likely pillar of the platform the party will take into next year’s midterms.

“This is consistent with the general trend of legislators’ responding to powerful and persuasive protests by seeking to silence them rather than engaging with the message of the protests,” said Vera Eidelman, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If anything, the lesson from the last year, and decades, is not that we need to give more tools to police and prosecutors, it’s that they abuse the tools they already have.”

Laws already exist to punish rioting, and civil rights advocates worry that the new bills violate rights of lawful assembly and free speech protected under the First Amendment. The overwhelming majority of last summer’s nationwide Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful — more than 96 percent involved no property damage or police injuries, according to The Washington Post, which also found that police officers or counterprotesters often instigated violence.

Police officers making an arrest during protests in Miami last year over the death of George Floyd Credit…Cristobal HerreraEPA, via Shutterstock

Most of the protests held across Florida last summer were also peaceful, though a few in Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville produced some episodes of violence, including the burning of a police car and a sporting goods store. Still, as they embraced the bill that Mr. DeSantis signed into law, Republican leaders expressed scorn for cities that trim police budgets and tolerate protesters who disrupt business and traffic.

“We weren’t going to allow Florida to become Seattle,” said Chris Sprowls, a Republican who is the speaker of the Florida House, mentioning cities where protests lasted for months last year and demonstrators frequently clashed with the police. “We were not going to allow Florida to become Portland.”. . . 

. . . State Senator Shevrin D. Jones, a Democrat from Broward County and a vocal critic of the law, noted that Mr. DeSantis had been quick to emphasize how necessary the bill was the day after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol but had made no mention of that event during Monday’s bill signing, focusing solely on the summer protests.

That was evidence, he said, that bills aimed at punishing protesters were disproportionately targeting people of color. “This bill is racist at its core,” Mr. Jones said.

So far, three bills aimed at limiting protests have been signed into law — Florida’s and new laws in Arkansas and Kansas that target protesters who seek to disrupt oil pipelines. Others are likely to come soon.

In Oklahoma, Republican lawmakers last week sent legislation to Gov. Kevin Stitt that would criminalize the unlawful blocking of a public street and grant immunity to drivers who strike and injure protesters during a riot. Last June, a pickup truck carrying a horse trailer drove through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters on a Tulsa freeway, injuring several people and leaving one paralyzed. The driver, who said he had sped up because he feared for the safety of his family, was not charged.

The bill’s author, State Senator Rob Standridge, said the Tulsa incident had prompted him to seek immunity for drivers who strike protesters. He said Tuesday he wasn’t aware of any drivers who had been charged after striking protesters in Oklahoma. “My hope is that this law never is utilized,” he said in an interview. Carly Atchison, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stitt, declined to say whether he would sign the bill, which passed with veto-proof majorities.

Tiffany Crutcher, whose twin brother, Terence Crutcher, was shot and killed in 2016 by a Tulsa police officer who was later acquitted on a manslaughter charge, said the Oklahoma proposal represents Republican efforts to extend the Trump administration’s hostility toward people of color.

Why is Facebook Censoring My Wife’s Comments About Israel?

Recently, one of Terry’s (my wife) Facebook posts was flagged and deleted for violating Facebook’s content policies.

Her censored comment advocated for Palestinian human rights in the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She noted that it was the Israeli government, not the occupied Palestinians, who were regularly  committing acts of terrorism.

That particular political observation is no longer permitted by the Facebook censorship policies — which we all know are expanding rapidly.

It’s more evidence of the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country which would love to censor ALL criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people living under its control.

Fortunately, the Jewish-led, Palestinian rights organization called Jewish Voice for Peace has begun a campaign on Facebook aimed at combating the Israel Lobby’s dangerous, anti-first amendment influence online.

They call it, “Facebook We Have to Talk: On Distinguishing Anti-Semitism from Anti-Zionism in Public Spaces.” Below is an excerpt:

In January 2021, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) announced a global campaign “Facebook, we need to talk” about the social media giant’s inquiry into whether criticism of the movement Zionism “falls within the rubric of hate speech as per Facebook’s Community Standards.”

In its current form, the controversy centers around forcing universities, social media platforms, and other public spaces to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) standard which defines current anti-Semitism to include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to Israel, overall a definition that would essentially shut down any criticism of the Zionist state.

According to Lara Friedman, the goal of Zionist groups who are pushing for this action “isn’t to get Facebook to deplatform antisemitism, but to get Facebook to deplatform criticism of Israel.”

In response, hundreds of activists, intellectuals and artists from around the world have launched a petition to ensure that Facebook does not include “Zionist” as a protected category in its hate speech policy—“that is, to treat ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for “Jew or “Jewish.” In its first 24 hours, the open letter gathered over 14,500 signatures, including such figures as Hanan Ashrawi, Norita Cortiñas, Wallace Shawn and Peter Gabriel.

“Cooperating with the Israeli government’s request,” the petition notes, “would undermine efforts to dismantle antisemitism, deprive Palestinians of a crucial venue for expressing their political viewpoints to the world, and help the Israeli government avoid accountability for its violations of Palestinian rights.”

How Would Jesus Have Stormed the Capitol Building?

Jack Jenkins has written a good article for the Religious News Service again discussing the dangers of Christian nationalism among Trump-devotees and Christian conspiracy theorists.

The article is entitled, “For insurrectionists, a violent faith brewed from nationalism, conspiracies and Jesus.” I have posted an excerpt below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above. But first, I will share a few of my thoughts…

Sadly, I don’t think this problem is going away anytime soon.

One issue that jumped out to me as I read the article is the utter inadequacy of the way most evangelical churches approach adult education and “discipleship development” within their congregations.

Throwing a handful of Christians into a room together so that they can “share” their thoughts on the Bible is about as productive as giving a typewriter to a room full of monkeys and expecting them to produce the Declaration of Independence.

It ain’t gonna’ happen.

The Holy Spirit does not guarantee the gift of wisdom to those who will not study widely, do not read frequently, and will not begin humbly to confess their own misguided inclinations.

What DOES happen, quite predictably, is what we see today: the country-wide display of nationalistic, political idolatry erupting from huge swaths of the conservative, evangelical religious community.

Here is the excerpt:

As insurrectionists began the attack on the Capitol, a banner waved above the throng. It read: ‘Proud American Christian.’

Trump supporters climb inauguration scaffolding outside the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Moments before the assault on the U.S. Capitol began Wednesday (Jan. 6), a mass of Trump supporters gathered at a northwest entrance. They were angry: Footage highlighted the presence of Proud Boys, an organization classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who were

Women blow shofars during the Jericho March, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Washington. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

shouting one of their favorite chants: “F— Antifa!”

As throngs surged toward a barricade manned by a vastly outnumbered handful of police, a white flag appeared above the masses, flapping in the wind: It featured an ichthys — also known as a “Jesus fish” — painted with the colors of the American flag.

Above the symbol, the words: “Proud American Christian.”

It was one of several prominent examples of religious expression that occurred in and around the storming of the Capitol last week, which left five people dead — including a police officer. Before and even during the attack, insurrectionists appealed to faith as both a source of strength as well as justification for their assault on the seat of American democracy.

While not all participants were Christian, their rhetoric often reflected an aggressive, charismatic and hypermasculine form of Christian nationalism — a fusion of God and country that has lashed together disparate pieces of Donald Trump’s religious base.

“A mistake a lot of people have made over the past few years … is to suggest there is some fundamental conflict between evangelicalism and the kind of violence or threat of violence we’re seeing,” said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a history professor at Calvin University and author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”

“For decades now, evangelical devotional life, evangelical preaching and evangelical teaching has found a space to promote this kind of militancy.”

A form of this faith was on display in front of the Capitol the day before the attack, when hundreds of Trump supporters massed near the building for a “Jericho March.” The event’s name was a reference to the biblical account of Israelites besieging the city of Jericho in the Book of Joshua, a religious tale liberal religious activists have also invoked for their own events. . . 

Politico Discusses the Dangers of Violent ‘Christian’ Extremism

The scare quotes around ‘Christian’ in the title are mine not Politico’s. I am loath to admit that anyone conspiring to commit acts of violence or terrorism can be called a Christian.

Yet, I realize that immaturity, including gross childishness, exists within every community, including the Christian household.

Zack Stanton has written an article at Politico interviewing Elizabeth

Elizabeth Neumann

Neuman from the department of Homeland Security. Ms. Neuman is a Christian herself, making her interview particularly interesting.

The article is entitled, “It’s Time to Talk about Violent Christian Extremism.” I have posted an excerpt below, or you can read the entire

Zack Stanton writes for Politico

piece by clicking on the title above.

For two decades, the U.S. government has been engaging with faith leaders in Muslim communities at home and around the world in an attempt to stamp out extremism and prevent believers vulnerable to radicalization from going down a path that leads to violence.

Now, after the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory helped to motivate the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with many participants touting their Christian faith — and as evangelical pastors throughout the country ache over the spread of the conspiracy theory among their flocks, and its very real human toll — it’s worth asking whether the time has come for a new wave of outreach to religious communities, this time aimed at evangelical Christians.

“I personally feel a great burden, since I came from these communities, to try to figure out how to help the leaders,” says Elizabeth Neumann, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security who resigned from Trump administration in April 2020. The challenge in part is that, in this “particular case, I don’t know if the government is a credible voice at all,” she says. “You don’t want ‘Big Brother’ calling the local pastor and saying, ‘Hey, here’s your tips for the week.’”

Neumann, who was raised in the evangelical tradition, is a devout Christian. Her knowledge of that world, and her expertise on issues of violent extremism, gives her a unique insight into the ways QAnon is driving some Christians to extremism and violence.

She sees QAnon’s popularity among certain segments of Christendom not as an aberration, but as the troubling-but-natural outgrowth of a strain of American

David Reinert holds up a large “Q” sign while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally on August 2, 2018 at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

Christianity. In this tradition, one’s belief is based less on scripture than on conservative culture, some political disagreements are seen as having nigh-apocalyptic stakes and “a strong authoritarian streak” runs through the faith. For this type of believer, love of God and love of country are sometimes seen as one and the same.

Christian nationalism is “a huge theme throughout evangelical Christendom,” Neumann says, referring to teachings that posit America as God’s chosen nation. . . . 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger Is Part of a Faithful Remnant in an Apostate Evangelicalism

Adam Kinzinger is a genuinely Christian man from the state of Illinois. He was  one of the 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives who

Congressman (R. IL) Adam Kinzinger

voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump.

(Yes, remember that Trump was impeached while in office. His Senate trial this week is a continuation of an ongoing process, not something newly begun after Trump left office as so many want us to believe. And YES there is precedent for finishing the Congressional impeachment / Senate trial process after an elected official has left office. In fact, it’s happened three times in US history. It’s not common but neither is it an aberration.)

I call Rep. Kinzinger a “genuine Christian” not because he voted to impeach Trump — although this is the way many people will interpret that sentence nowadays when avid partisanship has become more important than rational thinking and honesty — but because of the reasons he offers to explain himself.

He both thinks and acts as a Christian should. No one can ask for better proof than that.

As I read this story two sayings of Jesus kept echoing in my mind:

Matthew 7:13-14, Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Luke 6:26, Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their [the leaders and Pharisees criticizing Jesus] ancestors treated the false prophets.

As you read the article from Christianity Today below, an attuned reader will see that Rep. Kinzinger is in excellent company.

Family members have now disowned him. Many who voted for him are now calling for his head.

But this is the very predictable fate of faithful people who speak truth to power and stand for what is right while others conspire to spout lies.

One last observation before the article excerpt:

The entire drama of the Trump presidency, its aftermath, and the enthusiastic support (often bleeding into open idolatry) has demonstrated a massive  failure of leadership in the American conservative/fundamentalist/ evangelical church.

There are no two ways about it.

If our churches and our leaders had really been fulfilling the Lord Jesus’ “Great Commission” where believers are commanded to “make disciples of every nation [by] teaching them how to obey everything that Jesus has taught us [i.e. concerning how to think, understand, and behave as citizens of the kingdom of God] Donald Trump’s wholesale cooption of US evangelicalism would never have happened.

Yep, that’s right. The truth is that stark.

I know many will insist that equally sincere people can easily come to different positions on such things. My answer is Balderdash!

The issue here concerns spiritual maturity and faithful discipleship. BOTH of which have been in short supply among evangelical leaders these past 4 years.

CT’s article about Rep. Adam Kinzinger make this very, very clear. Read the

Kate Shellnut, Senior News Editor for Christianity Today

entire piece below. It is entitled, “Meet the Republican Congressman Who Says His Faith Led Him to Vote for Impeachment.” The author is Kate Shellnut, Senior News Editor.

From his office in the Capitol, US Rep. Adam Kinzinger could see a little bit of the crowd on the lawn on January 6. He heard the flash-bangs go off on the steps as rioters made their way inside. And he could feel the spiritual weight of what was unfolding.

“I’m not one of these people that senses evil all the time or anything. It’s probably only happened maybe twice in my life,” the Illinois congressman said. “But I just felt a real darkness over this place, like a real evil.”

Kinzinger, a nondenominational Protestant, doesn’t talk much about his faith in public and is wary of conflating the mission of the church with the work of politics. But he saw serious implications for both in the wake of the Capitol breach and felt convicted to speak out.

“Although I’m not great at citing verse and chapter, I know the Bible speaks quite a bit about conspiracies and about allowing that darkness into your heart, about the importance of truth, the importance of being a light in dark places, of being truth,” he said on a call with CT and other news outlets this week.

“I’m not a Christian leader. I’m not a pastor. But I am a person who shares the faith and who looks at what that’s done to the political system in this country, and I decided to speak out.”

In the days after the attack, Kinzinger called on Christian leaders “to lead the flock back into the truth.” He opposed President Donald Trump for continuing to tout claims that the election had been stolen and was one of ten House Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment.

The backlash was swift, coming from Kinzinger’s district in northern Illinois, where a majority of Republicans disagreed, and from his fellow believers, with many white evangelicals continuing to support Trump even as his false claims encouraged rioters at the Capitol.

Franklin Graham condemned Kinzinger and the other Republicans who voted for impeachment for turning their back on the president despite the good he had done on issues like abortion, foreign affairs, and religious freedom. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal,” the evangelist remarked.

A relative sent the congressman a certified letter accusing him of “doing the Devil’s work.”

Kinzinger said that despite the opposition, the stance was the easiest of his career. Political analysts say it will likely cost him politically, though, and will at minimum isolate him from his party ahead of the impeachment trial set to begin the week of February 8.

At 42, Kinzinger has served in Congress for a decade and has been part of the church all his life; he was raised Baptist and now attends Village Christian Church in Minooka, Illinois. He has a conservative voting record and is outspoken in his stance against abortion, recently urging congressional leaders to preserve the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

But unlike most Republicans in Congress, Kinzinger has been openly critical about conspiracies spreading baseless claims that the election was stolen from Trump.

Last year, before Marjorie Taylor Greene controversially became the first open QAnon adherent elected to the US House, he said the conspiracy was a “fabrication” and had “no place in Congress.” Prior to the election being called for Joe Biden, Kinzinger urged people to stop using “debunked misinformation” to claim fraud and refused to challenge state results without solid evidence in court.

Kinzinger said Christians in Congress may, in good faith, take opposite stances, but he also sees them holding a unique responsibility to consider the spiritual implications of their decisions. He’s calling for fellow Republicans to join him to #RestoreOurGOP and had discussed concerns with friends in the party, such as Jaime Herrera Beutler. The Washington Republican, another churchgoing evangelical, joined him in voting for impeachment. “I’m not choosing sides,” she said. “I’m choosing truth.”

Other evangelicals in the party, like Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, voted no on impeachment, saying Trump’s words did not constitute an incitement of violence, but still reckoned with the deeper undercurrents of what happened on January 6. She acknowledged a “complete lack of leadership” and a “crisis of contempt in America” and asked Trump supporters like herself to take responsibility for enabling bullying behavior for the sake of favorable policies.

But Kinzinger said it’s not enough for members of Congress to have these kinds of tough conversations. He wants to see the church take the lead.

A Lifeway Research survey conducted in the fall found half of pastors in the US said they frequently hear members of their congregation sharing conspiracy theories. “I think there are scales on their eyes,” said Kinzinger.

He believes the spread of lies among Christians is part of a much more serious battle than political races, citing Ephesians 6:12’s reminder that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (KJV). He said too many Christians have been co-opted into prizing political victories over spiritual ones.

“If you think about the Devil’s ultimate trick for Christianity, really, he doesn’t care what the tax rates are. It doesn’t matter. What he cares about is embarrassing the church, and it feels like it’s been successful,” the congressman said. “But I also think this is an opportunity for the church to have a massive rediscovery of what our mission and our role in this world is.”

During his inauguration, Biden referenced Augustine’s line from City of God about a people being defined by their common loves. What he left out was Augustine’s teaching that love must be rightly ordered, with love of God above all, scholar Han-luen Kantzer Komline noted.

Kinzinger lamented what he saw as Americans’ disordered priorities—how they’ve allowed allegiances to the country, the economy, the president, or their political identities to distract from their primary identity as citizens of heaven.

“We get wrapped up on thinking that every little political victory we do, which has an impact on an election, is actually fighting for God and the truth. I think to an extent some of that is true. The Supreme Court now is very conservative. I like that. I think that is good for Christianity,” he said. “But I think we need to go a level above that … and say, What is our role as Christians? Truthfully, it’s to make disciples, to love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor.”

For Kinzinger, his faith offers an eternal perspective on his day-to-day work as a congressman. While he aims to fight for life, truth, and freedom, he believes following Christ trumps any political outcome. Right now, it means he can “accept his fate” among the minority of GOP lawmakers backing impeachment.

In the long-run, the debates over policies or political alliances are “not really going to matter,” he said this week. “But what does matter is what we did with this time on earth, how we talked about the Lord, how we stood up for truth.”

 

How Long Will the Trump Delusion Virus Remain Contagious in the Church?

John Fea is a professor of American history at Messiah College. He also maintains one of the best blogs I know of. He writes prolifically at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. 

I am convinced that he either keeps a closet full of hyper-active minions near his office to work on his blog, or he is a much more industrious man than I am.

He recently posted an article entitled, “Evangelical Trumpers are coming to a church near you” describing a pro-Trump “revival meeting” in Hamilton, Montana.

Yes, revival meeting is the most accurate descriptor here. I grew up in churches where we had them regularly. I know what they look and sound like.

I also happen to pass through the town of Hamilton often when I am looking for a new falcon to trap. I listen to what passes for Christian radio in that community.

Upsetting is too weak a word to describe what I hear. Thus, as sad as it is, this story is not the least bit surprising to me.

But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t disturbing and lamentable.

[I am very interested in hearing from you my readers. Are you familiar with similar tent revival type pro-Trump, stop-the-steal evangelistic events like this in the churches of your area? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Drop me a note, please! Thanks.]

Here is Fea’s post in full:

Last week we called your attention to an event at Calvary Chapel-Chino Hills featuring pastor Jack Hibbs and Trump wonder boy Charlie Kirk. Today, I want you to see a video from The River, a Southern Baptist church in Hamilton, Montana.

The video captures a special Saturday night service devoted to “education,” “learning,” and “unity.” The topic is the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The speaker is Dr. Kevin Horton, the director of the Institute for Biblical Authority, “a Biblically based nonprofit organization dedicated to upholding and strengthening the principle that the Bible is the life-changing authority for human lives.” The Institute promotes creationism and recently hosted a conference featuring David Barton. The website includes an “American History Quiz” that repeats the widely debunked, and frankly absurd, claim that 29 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were “pastors.”

Watch the video of Horton’s appearance at The River Church on the Facebook page of Montana state senator Theresa Manzella or on the church Facebook page.

The video begins with the congregation milling around the sanctuary while a song called “Potter’s Hand” by Hillsong plays over the speakers. Here are the lyrics to that song:

Beautiful Lord, wonderful Savior
I know for sure all of my days are held in Your hand
And crafted into Your perfect plan

You gently called me into Your presence
Guiding me by Your Holy Spirit
Teach me dear Lord, to live all of my life
Through Your eyes

And I’m captured by Your Holy calling
Set me apart, I know You’re drawing me to Yourself
Lead me Lord, I pray

Take me and mold me, use me, fill me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand
Call me, You guide me, lead me, walk beside me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand

You gently call me into Your presence
Guiding me by Your Holy Spirit
Teach me dear Lord, to live all of my life
Through Your eyes

I’m captured by Your Holy calling
Set me apart, I know You’re drawing me to Yourself
Lead me Lord, I pray

Take me and mold me, use me, fill me
I give my life to my Potter’s hand
Call me, guide me, lead me, walk beside me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand

Take me and mold me, use me, fill me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand
Call me, guide me, lead me, walk beside me
I give my life to the Potter’s hand

The display screen at the front of the sanctuary says “Inciting the Riot?”

Horton takes the stage at about the 5:45 mark after pastor Allen James offers a “prayer for the United States of America” in which he asks the Lord to make us “truly be one nation under God again.” (Italics mine). Horton begins by telling the audience how the Lord prompted him to go to Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 to protest the election results. He laments the fact that social media companies removed Trump from its platforms, closed Parler, and even suspended his own accounts for merely “witnessing to the truth” about what happened in Washington D.C. After taking a few required shots at Congress for impeaching Trump, Horton describes what he saw at the U.S. Capitol.

The central argument of Horton’s presentation is that Trump did not incite the riot on the U.S. Capitol. Horton bases his argument on pictures and videos he took at the insurrection. He tells this evangelical congregation that the rioters were not “true Trumpers” and then attempts to distinguish between the “peaceful” evangelical Trumpers and the evil insurrectionists. (Along the way he takes a shot mask-wearing).

At about the 47:00 mark Horton tells the audience that he is boycotting Amazon, Walmart, and Google until they “repent” for their support of Senators who refuse to investigate who was really behind the insurrection. Then he complains about how CNN is trying to “close down” Newsmax and One America News. Horton speaks in a friendly, easy-going style as he defends these conspiracy theories before an evangelical congregation led by a pastor who provided him with the platform to do this.

At the 52:00 mark he describes the election fraud protests as a “fun time” until the “cloud of evil” emerged in the form of the rioters. (If his pictures are any indication, Horton appears to have spent most of the riot only feet away from the doors of the U.S. Capitol).

Horton ends by telling his pro-Trump evangelical audience that we are now “all targets” and are no longer “safe” as Americans. (The assumption is that the insurrections were a demonic force working against the God-honoring supporters of Donald Trump. He stops just short of saying that the Democrats were somehow behind the insurrection. Or at least that is how I understood him). The only way to find peace and safety, he says, is by accepting Jesus Christ as savior. He then moves into a brief Gospel presentation.

As a fellow evangelical, I am disgusted by the way this man stoked fear, lied about voter fraud, and used his presence at the Capitol insurrection as a platform for preaching the Gospel. Apparently the audience at The River Church disagrees. They gave him a standing ovation. Pastor Allen James endorsed everything Horton said, going so far to tell his congregation that the election was rigged. James then calls his congregation to separate the Gospel from politics. This is admirable. But everything about this event sent the exact opposite message.

The January 6th Insurrectionists Came to Washington DC Well Armed

Officer Daniel Hodges is the young man who was trapped and crushed between  the violent mob and a door post inside the Capitol building on January 6.

You have probably seen the video of his cries for help that has now been widely circulated.

His mouth is bloody. In multiple interviews he has described being beaten with his own baton. He was also tazed in the neck multiple times.

Fewer news sources have published Officer Hodges remarks on one of the most significant details about the pro-Trump mob who came to overturn the results of November’s election:

The insurrectionists were heavily armed.

You can read the entire article here. Below is an excerpt of an interview published by “The Police Tribune” where Hodges describes how the police had been confiscating weapons for hours prior to the capitol assault:

“The zealotry of these people is absolutely unreal,” Officer Hodges told reporters. “There were points where I thought it was possible I could either die or become seriously disfigured.”

He said he didn’t want to draw his service weapon because he said he knew that some of the rioters had guns, too, The Washington Post reported.

“I didn’t want to be the guy who starts shooting, because I knew they had guns— we had been seizing guns all day,” Officer Hodges said. “And the only reason I could think of that they weren’t shooting us was they were waiting for us to shoot first. And if it became a firefight between a couple hundred officers and a couple thousand demonstrators, we would have lost.”

Now-former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned in disgrace the day after the Capitol riot, said that he had requested additional help at the Capitol multiple times ahead of the planned Jan. 6 protest in DC.

So much for Blue Lives Matter.

Loretta J. Ross on “The Nazification of the Republican Party”

History professor Loretta Ross published a provocative article at Counter Punch magazine yesterday addressing the increasingly anti-democratic

Professor Loretta Ross of Smith College

tendencies of the Republican party.

Four years ago I would have labelled her thesis a serious exaggeration.

But over the past four years, since the Republican party’s enthusiastic embrace of Donald Trump, I have found myself saying more and more often that Republican politicians do not really believe in democracy.

The entire “stop the steal” movement was nothing but an hysterical eruption of antidemocratic values among white devotees of Donald Trump, the Republican president.

Truth be told, I am not convinced that today’s Democratic party really believes in democracy, either.

We need look no further than the party’s coordinated efforts to rob Bernie Sanders (twice!) of the Democratic presidential nomination to find prima facie evidence of this fact.

Bernie Sanders would certainly have become the Democratic presidential nominee had he not been the target of manifold dirty tricks from the Democratic National Committee.

So much for the absurd accusations of conservative pundits who describe the Democratic party as a bastion of Marxist, socialist, radical Leftist revolutionaries. I don’t know what planet those people live on, but it’s not earth.

The fact is that there is no such thing as a “far left” party/movement in this country.

However, nowadays I must confess that given the Republican party’s behavior over the past 4 years, including its scandalous actions (or inactions) during and after the January 6th attack on Congress, I have come to believe that professor Ross’s words are very, very pertinent to our current situation.

Below is an excerpt of her article entitled “The Nazification of the Republican Party.” Or you can read the entire article here:

. . . Global contempt for the word “Nazi” is a lesson for us today in the United

Neo-Nazi insignia at the capitol on January 6

States after the attempted criminal coup at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Anyone identified as sympathetic, supportive, or financing these seditious acts that attempted to deny the peaceful transfer of power in our country should be treated with the same public condemnation that the Nazis received after World War II. This includes Nazified people in Congress, in the media, in universities, in regular jobs, and throughout society because fascism is not the fevered dream of one delusional man. Trump is a white supremacist; that he is also a deranged narcissist is really incidental.

The Republicans are a morally bankrupt political party that supported a

Neo-Nazi flag at the capitol riot

deranged president who brought this fragile, evolving democracy to the brink of extinction simply because they can’t stand the glacially slow and righteous empowerment of people of color and any limits on their power to amass an immoral amount of wealth (my emphasis). To paraphrase noted Black educator Vincent Harding, we are citizens of a country that has yet to be realized.

The Republican brand as a legitimate political party will be forever associated

Confederate flag inside Congress

with far-right ideologies, including neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates. These so-called “respectable” leaders coddled and stoked a white supremacist insurrection by Trump for the past four years. Their transactional opportunism enabled Confederate flags to be defiantly paraded in the U.S. Capitol, a shame not even achieved during the Civil War. They proved they don’t want to share a pluralistic democracy with other political parties and interests.

If Republicans can’t permanently dominate this country with a demographically shrinking number of angry white people, they proved they are ready to blow it up, figuratively and literally. Now they want us to rush to forgiveness and reconciliation, and ignore that truth and accountability come first in the achievement of healing.

Hitler led an insurrection against the German government in 1923 and was sentenced to five years in jail, served one, and used that leniency to commit the

Trump supporter wearing a Camp Auschwitz shirt on capitol steps

Holocaust. Never forget that premature forgiveness before accountability is dangerous. Fascists are violent because of who THEY are, not what WE DO–like the ordinary Germans who underestimated the Nazis and thought they were just another political party on the right. Germans who weren’t Nazis passively went about their normal affairs by denying the realities of their Jewish neighbors, all for the sake of “unity.”

Republicans are no longer entitled to exist as a legitimate political party because this authoritarian backlash has been building since new Civil Rights laws were passed in 1964 and 1965 in response to white racist violence captured on TV that required the National Guard to quell. Then-President Lyndon Johnson predicted that most white people would flee the Democratic Party to join the pro-segregationist, anti-feminist, and anti-gay revanchist political movement

White nationalist insignia worn among pro-Trump rioters

of George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. Every undemocratically selected Republican president since the 1960s (by an electoral college designed to be disenfranchising) has failed to repudiate this neo-fascist wing of their party.

I’m through giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt after 50 years.

The term “Nazi” is not even strong enough to convey the opprobrium and disgust human rights activists feel for those who brazenly claim they are simply patriots with different opinions. From the White House, to the Congress, to the streets, they declared war on democracy. They are seditionists, co-conspirators, and neo-Nazis hiding in plain sight who chose to use whatever power, platforms, and microphones they had to overturn this system of government. Their apparent goal is an apartheid-like system in which an embattled minority of people rule over millions of people who oppose them. We must send an unmistakable signal that this will not be tolerated when a more competent neo-fascist seeks to gain permanent power in the Congress or White House in the future.

I’m calling them American Nazis, who adapted the playbook of the Third Reich. Trump may be gone but Trumpism is not. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, they prioritized their “whiteness over democracy.” This is highlighted by their

More neo-Nazi flags among rioters

implacable attack on voting rights. Republicans who encouraged this dangerous resurrection of fascism are already trying to erase what happened or describe it as simply a “First Amendment Protest.” These apologists trying to launder their shredded reputations should be denied jobs, media opportunities, publishing contracts, and all other opportunities to spread their contempt for democracy. As philosopher Karl Popper observed in 1945, “In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.”

We must defend an open, democratic society against these forces of fascism disguised as a respectable Republican Party that encouraged a white supremacist insurrection that seeks to rule like kings above the law. They see calls for unity and civility as weakness, as all fascists do. They take advantage of an open society to undermine the incremental progress of the 20th century in race, gender, citizenship, national, and international relations. For over a century they’ve proven they can’t be trusted with military power, disrupting other democracies by fomenting wars and low-intensity conflicts around the world that have killed millions of people. They are unable to accept the complexity of a multi-cultural and multi-racial globalized world, so they stew in their resentments, and fight every effort to democratize the privileges and benefits of our world. They are at the natural demise of a political party that sought to hold onto power through a web of lies to their followers to enrich a small cabal of people.

America’s tattered global reputation is at stake in this unending Civil War. Instead of denouncing the traitors in 1865, we allowed them to be rehabilitated and enshrined in monuments across the country. Will our descendants look back and see that we flinched yet again when it was time to hold insurrectionists accountable? If not, we’ll have the shortest Reconstruction in history.

Our commitment to human rights, just laws, social welfare, global peace, and democratic governance is what authoritarians seek to undermine through abuse of the concept of freedom. We should call them all American Nazis and prevent them from hiding behind mealy-mouthed words because they’ve shown us who they are. Now we must believe them.

What Would America’s Karma Look Like? Caitlin Johnstone on the Bogus Nature of US Complaints

Many have taken to warning about the internal threats to American democracy.

I do believe those threats are real.

But Australian blogger, Caitlin Johnstone, has some insight into the American proclivity to misidentify the real threats to our society while also

Caitlin Johnstone

polishing our national myth of American exceptionalism.

I like Caitlin because she always goes for the juggler, which would be obnoxious were she not so good at offering such precise diagnoses of our national problems.

You can check out Ms. Johnstone’s blog here.

Below is her latest post:

To stop the exacerbation of Trumpism the talking heads are recommending internet censorship, regulations on media, new domestic terror laws, literally anything they can possibly think of except changing the conditions which gave rise to Trumpism.

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The most imminent threat to US democracy is not Russia, nor fascist insurrectionists, but the fact that US democracy is entirely fictional. Saying US democracy is being threatened is like saying Grinches are a critically endangered species.

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The previous president intervened in the primary to appoint his right-hand man as his chosen successor. That successor will be installed in a five-day, star-studded celebration surrounded by a sea of barbed wire and heavily armed soldiers. What “democracy” is under attack, exactly?

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No, the Capitol riot was not “karma” for America’s international coups and regime change interventions.

Karma would be the US actually reaping what it sows.

Karma would be the US government toppled and replaced with a foreign puppet regime, and millions of Americans killed.

Karma would be tens of millions of Americans displaced by widespread violence.

Karma would be the US becoming a failed state where people are again sold as slaves.

Karma would be nuclear bombs dropped on US cities.

Karma would be America’s forests soaked with Agent Orange.

Karma would be mass executions of Americans in sports stadiums.

Karma would be massacres of entire towns.

Karma would be foreign soldiers raping and killing civilians with impunity.

Karma would be foreign-backed extremists mutilating Americans to death and publicly displaying their corpses.

Karma for US interventionism would be for America to collapse and burn in chaos and torture.

That would be “karma”.

That would be the chickens coming home to roost.

I am not saying it would be a good thing if this happened. It most definitely would not.

I am saying the US must cease brutalizing the world.

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We now know for a fact that monopolistic Silicon Valley megacorporations can be pressured by the plutocrat-controlled political/media class to silence political factions online. Good thing there’s no way this can possibly go wrong.

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When you realize that corporations are America’s real government, the whole “it isn’t censorship if it’s a private company doing it” argument is seen for the joke that it is. It’s also completely specious, because the government is directly involved in the censorship.

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Soon social media will just be an app that sends everything you say to the FBI and gives you regular notifications that the government is your friend, and then everyone will finally be happy.

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Back before he was silenced Assange tweeted “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”

I think of this quote often.

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The mass media have earned every bit of the contempt the public has for them. Every little bit of it.

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Rightists suck at conspiracy analysis because their worldview requires an elite cabal planning and orchestrating all evil dynamics, whereas leftists understand that many (though not all) of those dynamics will unfold on their own in a system where human behavior is driven by profit-seeking. In situations where you are ideologically prohibited from blaming the obvious culprit capitalism, you’ll come up with all kinds of other wacky explanations.

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The best most reliable way to accurately predict what will happen in a given situation is to ignore whatever laws, trends and dynamics everyone else is pointing at and just assume the most powerful people will find a way to get whatever it is they want somehow. Doesn’t mean elites always win, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should stop fighting. It’s just the most reliable way to accurately guess what will happen in a given situation, if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Sectarian feuds in the online left always boil down to “the whole system is rigged against the people” lefties versus “we can work with the oligarchic empire to advance our interests” lefties.

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The US empire has two faces: the plastic smiling one based in Hollywood, and the blood-spattered one based in DC, Arlington and Langley. If you live in wealthy western nations you’re presented with the former. If you live in the Middle East or the Global South you get the latter.

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One of the weirdest things in my life these days is watching people enthusiastically arguing that they should receive less assistance from their government. Never until I began commenting on US politics was this ever a part of my life. The brainwashing there is out of this world.

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If a political party always succeeds at advancing sick agendas and always fails at advancing healthy agendas, it’s because it only exists to advance sick agendas.

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Victory for your revolutionary political goals won’t be a victory for the ego. If you are sincere about this, you want your marginalized viewpoint to become mainstream and mundane. You want your insight and understanding to become as common as grass. You can’t be in this for you.

A lot of revolutionary-minded types get a sense of coolness and specialness from their marginalized ideology. It makes them feel good to be uniquely right about things. But that attitude will actually get in the way if your goals are attained and your views become mainstream.

If you are sincere about this stuff and not just in it for egoic masturbation (many are), you can’t keep a lot of identity wrapped up in being the underdog, in being fringe and marginalized. Because the ultimate goal is to be the exact opposite.

Christianity Today: “Humoring the President Was Not Harmless”

The editors at Christianity Today have hopped aboard the mea culpa train with many other conservative, Republican, evangelical news outlets.

However, I don’t know whether to say, “Better late than never,” or “Too little too late.”

On second thought, I think I’ll go with option two. Because it’s all way too little and much too late.

It’s too late because the inevitability of violence, fueled by Right-Wing lies about the election of Joe Biden, was as clear as the nose on your face for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Trump eagerly and persistently fomented it over and over again, every time he opened his foul mouth.

Right-Wing radio and television, a category which includes ostensibly “Christian” broadcasting networks as well, only intensified the already high levels of anger and resentment among Trump’s base over the president’s mythical conspiracy stories.

Yet, I never saw nor heard a single, Christian conservative fact-checker offer even minimal push-back against the bogus election fraud charges cooked up by the Trump-Guliani-Sekulow-Powell-Mitchell cabal of greedy, power-hungry, “legal” opportunists.

Not one.

Yet, now the editorial staff and talking heads at such bastions of Trump- mania as Fox, Newsmax, the Trinity Broadcasting and the Christian Broadcasting Networks (check here, here, and here) have all joined hands to sing kumbaya and condemn the violent assault on our nation’s capitol.

An assault that their reporting had helped to stir up and create.

Christianity Today has now joined this circle of lame repentance at the evangelical campfire.

Yet, it is far too little. In fact, it is grossly inadequate.

Remember, as far back as October 2016, candidate Trump insisted that Hillary Clinton was going to rig the election. He insisted that she could only win if she “stole the election” from him.

Where was this newly discovered evangelical moral fiber then? Trump’s long-term plans were obvious then and there. Why wasn’t he called on it?

Early on in this more recent presidential campaign, Trump was replaying the same old tune warning that “the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged.”

The remarks below were made in August.

Trump was clearly previewing his strategy for contesting the outcome of the election should he lose.

Figuring this out was not rocket science.

So, where was the Christian wisdom and warning about these obvious presidential shenanigans last fall, when it might have made a difference?

Where were the serious Christian warnings about the dangers of conspiracy theories, and the irrational behavior they can cause, when Trump first initiated his ultimate conspiracy theory that is now tearing the country apart?

I don’t have time to run through the litany of impeachable offenses committed by this president over the past four years, but they began in the first week he sat down in the Oval Office when he refused to divest himself of his business interests.

Where were the evangelical voices then, ready to condemn his refusal to abide by the Constitution?

Trump’s habitual violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses were only the beginning of his presidential criminality. And, believe it or not, we see that it his theft has never stopped as his staff now steals — yes, steals — historical artifacts from the White House (see below)!

Where was this evangelical moral concern in January of 2017?

Or. how about the Muller Report’s thoroughly documents claims that Trump had committed obstruction of justice at least 10-12 times in the aftermath of his phone call with the Ukrainian president?

Where was the evangelical worry about telling the truth then? Who was calling out William Barr’s lies for Trump then?

No, “humoring” this president is THE LAST thing his conservative, Republican, evangelical base has been doing.

Rather, they have been enablers, sycophants, co-conspirators, and mindless cheerleaders for the most incompetent, criminal, and psychologically dangerous president in American history.

So, finally I get to it. Below is Christianity Today’s wholly inadequate editorial. It’s facile references to the Bible offer only a veneer of seriousness to an otherwise shallow attempt at self-criticism:

The administration officials and members of Congress who enabled President Trump’s attempts to delegitimize the presidential election did not truly believe he won. They chose to coddle the president’s deception (and, I suspect, self-deception) because they thought it would endear them to his most loyal voters, and they assumed no one would get hurt.

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” an unnamed senior Republican official told The Washington Post in November. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”

I think Trump will indeed leave, as he finally said he would in a brief video Thursday. But that doesn’t mean there was no downside. It doesn’t mean no one got hurt. In Washington on Wednesday, we witnessed a “failed insurrection,” to use the phrase of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in which pro-Trump demonstrators, some armed with guns, stormed the Capitol and rioted inside. The chaos claimed multiple lives as it made credible all but the direst warnings about what Trump’s elevation to the highest office in our country could bring.

Humoring him was not harmless.

For Christians, this should be no surprise. Scripture warns us that small patterns and habits grow to shape our lives in large ways. This is true of both faithfulness and sin, virtue and vice. “Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?” Paul asked the Corinthian church, incredulous at their acceptance of open, incestuous adultery in their congregation (1 Cor. 5:6). . . 

. . . What we saw in Washington last Wednesday is what happens when the president insists he won an election he lost and, instead of telling him and the American people the truth, his allies go along with it. It is what happens when they file lawsuit after lawsuit without a whit of merit, pushing legal claims so bad they are dismissed in court after court, by judge after judge—including judges nominated by Trump himself.

It is what happens when they prioritize power over honesty and cosset mass delusion, even in Jesus’ name. It is what happens after two months of the president and his associates telling millions of disappointed, frightened, angry people that they were cheated, that the foundation of our representative government was undermined, that they really ought to do something about it, that maybe that something should be violent, and that they should “never concede.”

Well, some of them did do something. This is what the dough looks like leavened. This is where dishonesty in the little things leads.

In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s events, I’ve seen defensiveness over assignment of responsibility to white evangelicals because of our unusually high support for Trump at the ballot box. Is it fair, some have asked, to blame all evangelicals for actions (storming the Capitol) many would never condone, or for the election of a president many backed for policy reasons if at all?