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George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Caron Nazario Remind Us of Why African-Americans Are Afraid to Get Out of Their Cars

In the midst of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s trial for the death of George Floyd, a new wave of demonstrations has erupted protesting the death of another unarmed black man, 20 year old Daunte Wright.

Here is a video of Mr. Wright’s shooting:

Almost simultaneously, a Virginia state police video was released showing the unnecessary use of force, bullying, and intimidation against another unarmed man of color, Army second lieutenant Caron Nazario. Fortunately, though both officers had guns drawn at this traffic stop neither pulled the trigger.

Here is a video of lieutenant Nazario’s police encounter:

Naturally, each of these situations is unique in its own way. I won’t discuss those differences here. I will simply encourage you to follow these stories on your own if you aren’t already.

But all of these incidents have at least two traits in common.

First, notice how quickly the police begin to apply force (verbally, emotionally, and physically) against the black suspects. Yelling, threats, intimidation, grabbing, pulling, pushing, handcuffs, tasers, and guns are all on display almost immediately.

It looks as if the police have just received a dramatic, red-alert dispatch warning them that the man they are pulling over is a violent mass murderer transporting a nuclear bomb in the trunk of his car.

From my perspective — and I have been on the receiving end of such treatment — the police are needlessly escalating a situation that could have been handled much more calmly.

Why are they acting like marines on a search-and-destroy mission?

Second, a tipping point seems to occur when the black man refuses to get out of his car (or climbs back inside). The police are clearly angered by this display of personal autonomy, which they interpret as another act of lawlessness that requires physical restraint and arrest.

As best as I can determine (I am not a lawyer), citizens are legally obligated to comply with an officer’s “lawful orders” (emphasis on lawful). If a police officer orders a driver to get out of his/her car, for example, then the driver is supposed to obey (see here and here; for a detailed discussion in the Santa Clara Law Review, look here).

Unsurprisingly, conservative reactions to such arrests and shootings are typically straightforward. Just comply! Do what the officer says, and you will be fine. Or so says the white guy…

[I am reminded of an old joke. Question: What is a liberal? Answer: A liberal is a conservative who just got arrested.]

It is now well known that the increasing militarization of US police training encourages officers to view citizens (whether explicitly or implicitly) as “the enemy” and every engagement as a combat situation. Trainees are now taught to to think of themselves as “warriors” not as “guardians” or public servants.

Frankly, I can easily understand why black men and women are afraid to get out of their cars when pulled over by police. This country has a long history of unarmed black citizens winding up dead after meeting with the police.

Recent events show that little has changed.

I would be afraid to get out of my car, too, if I shared the same history and personal experiences of black Americans who are often mistreated, even terrorized, by our so-called peace officers.

Really now, how many more George Floyd type videos does white America need to see?

Of course, the naysayers have their come backs. Most commonly, we are told that police shoot more unarmed white people than black people every year.

That is true.

But what these conservative, racial apologists neglect to mention is that, according to the US Census Bureau, African-Americans make up only 13% of the US population.

It’s not surprising, then, to learn that a larger percentage shootings occur within the majority of the population. More white people means more police encounters which means more shootings. It only makes sense.,

But what is truly shocking, and often erased from the equation, is the dramatic increase in the percentage of police shootings against unarmed African-Americans given their minority status in our population.

Over 76% of the US population is white. 18.5% is Hispanic/Latino. 13% is black. Yet, when fatal police shootings are calculated as a percentage per million of the total population, incidents involving African-Americans jumps to the top of the list by a wide margin.

This more equitable calculation shows that of all (fatal) police shootings in this country, 14% of the victims are white, while 35% are black (Hispanics are 26%). In other words, black Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be shot by police than white Americans.

Predictably, many conservatives and others will suggest (if only behind closed doors) that perhaps African-Americans are 2.5 times more likely to behave like criminals.

If you were holding on to that opinion, let me say two things: first, it is demonstrably false, but that argument must wait for a future post; second, get down on your knees, confess your sins, and repent. Your white privilege and racism are showing.

Every American, but especially anyone with even a passing acquaintance with our God, should be outraged at that statistic. If anyone can produce as many videos of white men and women being strong-armed from their cars, pushed to the ground, punched, stepped on, handcuffed, arrested, and finally shot as we have of African-Americans suffering such treatment, please send them to me.

Produce the evidence and I will recant.

But I’m not holding my breath. The fact that the police ever treat anyone so shamefully, with such unwarranted brutality and violence, is more than enough reason to campaign with Defund the Police organizers.

The fact that America’s black citizens continue to live in fear; the fact that they have good reason to be afraid of an approaching police officer; to suspect that getting out of their car may be their first step into the morgue; to know that they are consistently handled with more violence and aggression than their white neighbors; all of this and more means that this country has a long, long ways to go in the fight for racial justice and equality before the law.

This is why the Black Lives Matter movement remains essential for our society.

This is why all God’s people must share in these same goals.

Israel’s Largest Human Rights Organization Declares It to be an Apartheid State

B’Tselem is an internationally recognized human rights organization located in Israel. Its original mission was monitoring the mistreatment of Palestinians by the Israeli army in both Gaza and the West Bank.

The organization has won several international awards, including the 2014 Stockholm Human Rights Award and the 2018 Human Rights Award of the French Republic.

In January 2021, B’Tselem announced that its mission was expanding. The announcement came in the form of a public declaration describing both the Israeli nation-state and the Palestinian Occupied Territories as a single territory uniformly governed by a system of Jewish Supremacy.

The declaration is titled, “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid.”

Apartheid is defined as systemic discrimination based on race and/or ethnicity that is endorsed by state authorities and embedded in the nation’s legal system.

In Israel and the rest of Palestine, this means that all Palestinians are always second class “citizens” (though many can never attain citizenship), while Jews enjoy first class citizenship within a society created exclusively by and for Jews alone.

I have posted an excerpt from B’Tselem’s announcement below. Encourage your pro-Israel friends to read it and to investigate B’Tselem’s website. They will find a wealth of information documenting their claims.

To learn about the details explaining how and why Israel imposes Jewish supremacy upon the Palestinians, I encourage you to read the entire proclamation by clicking on the title above:

The Israeli regime, which controls all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, seeks to advance and cement Jewish supremacy throughout the entire area. To that end, it has divided the area into several units, each with a different set of rights for Palestinians – always inferior to the rights of Jews. As part of this policy, Palestinians are denied many rights, including the right to self-determination.

This policy is advanced in several ways. Israel demographically engineers the space through laws and orders that allow any Jew in the world or their relatives to obtain Israeli citizenship, but almost completely deny Palestinians this possibility. It has physically engineered the entire area by taking over of millions of dunams of land and establishing Jewish-only communities, while driving Palestinians into small enclaves. Movement is engineered through restrictions on Palestinian subjects, and political engineering excludes millions of Palestinians from participating in the processes that determine their lives and futures while holding them under military occupation.

A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive – all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met.

If this regime has developed over many years, why release this paper in 2021? What has changed? Recent years have seen a rise in the motivation and willingness of Israeli officials and institutions to enshrine Jewish supremacy in law and openly state their intentions. The enactment of Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People and the declared plan to formally annex parts of the West Bank have shattered the façade Israel worked for years to maintain. . .

The Israeli regime’s rationale, and the measures used to implement it, are reminiscent of the South African regime that sought to preserve the supremacy of white citizens, in part through partitioning the population into classes and sub-classes and ascribing different rights to each. . .

As painful as it may be to look reality in the eye, it is more painful to live under a boot. The harsh reality described here may deteriorate further if new practices are introduced – with or without accompanying legislation. Nevertheless, people created this regime and people can make it worse – or work to replace it. That hope is the driving force behind this position paper. How can people fight injustice if it is unnamed? Apartheid is the organizing principle, yet recognizing this does not mean giving up. On the contrary: it is a call for change.

Fighting for a future based on human rights, liberty and justice is especially crucial now. There are various political paths to a just future here, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but all of us must first choose to say no to apartheid.

What Is ‘White Privilege’?

(This is installment 5 in my series discussing Critical Race Theory. From here on out, I will only provide the immediately preceding post. For all previous posts on this subject, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

Critical Race Theory has advanced three key concepts that help to identify and critique the ways in which racism works in society. They are the notions of White Privilege, Systemic Racism, and Intersectionality.

In this post, I will only talk about White Privilege. The other will have their turn.

Many Christians, like the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, have condemned all three of these ideas, for reasons will we explore as this series unfolds. Though I am not a sociologist, and am happy to be corrected by my readers, I suspect that only the idea of Intersectionality may be new – although that is probably debatable.

But what is most important is not whether these are new concepts, but how they are applied to illuminate (or to confuse, perhaps) how different people relate to each other in American society.

To put things simply, White Privilege identifies the fact that America is the product of (primarily) white, European culture and society.

Colonialism was a deeply embedded component of that European culture. As a result, having white skin as opposed to having dark skin became an encoded principle of Western, racial superiority.

After all, the white colonizers were always superior to the colonized, dark skinned natives.

Even though we now live (theoretically) in a post-colonial world – albeit with numerous exceptions, beginning with Jewish Israeli colonization of 5 million native Palestinians – in which the majority of Caucasian (white-skinned) people would (probably) deny the idea of racial superiority linked to traits like skin color, ethnicity, or physical morphology, the social/cultural norms and  structures (erected in order to enforce or “protect” those norms) generated by that white culture continue to exist.

Many researchers have demonstrated the reality of White Privilege today in such areas as business hiring practices, and mortgage approval or interest rates. Even now, white people continue to benefit in many ways that black people do not.

Numerous white folks have experienced this for themselves while temporarily “passing” for black.

More tellingly, there are profound historical reasons explaining why light-skinned, African Americans have sometimes chosen “to pass” as white.

While many white folks, especially conservatives, remain loath to admit this, White Privilege is a fact of life. And the sooner white America as a whole comes to grips with this fact, the better for everyone.

Frankly, for any segment of the Christian church, whether Southern Baptists or anybody else, to deny the reality of White Privilege is unconscionable. It reveals an area of life where Jesus’ call to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” has been in short supply.

In fact, the Christian church ought to be taking the lead in working creatively to identify, address and undo the practical effects of White Privilege in our world.

Our God is not a God of favoritism.

The Creator is a God of equality. He loves everyone equally. He values everyone equally. Everyone is equally sinful. Everyone is equally in need of Christ’s redemption. Salvation is equally available to everyone, and equally beneficial to all who will believe.

The kingdom of God is a realm of equality, which will be recognizable oh this earth where God’s multi-racial community of faith can be observed by all.

Ironically, the fact that no African-Americans were included on the Southern Baptist Convention committee, which wrote the document condemning Critical Race Theory is itself a rude example of White Privilege at work among Christian people.

In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul tells us that the preexistent Son of God willingly set aside his divine privileges; in fact, “he made himself nothing, taking the very form of a servant” in order to elevate and to redeem people like you and me (Phil 2:7).

Every Caucasian who claims to follow Jesus Christ is obligated to live a Christ-like life, the life of a servant.

We need to acknowledge our privilege, identify it, and do whatever we can to share that privilege by rejecting it; to reconstruct a society where everyone of all colors stand on a level playing field – with some even being given an advantage where necessary – until our Creator’s vision of human equality is the norm.

One proviso: I suspect that the main reason the Southern Baptists rejected the principle of White Privilege was due to the way it has been misused by certain advocates of Critical Race Theory. (Another reason to remember that the abuse of an idea offers no necessary critique of the idea itself.)

Some intemperate anti-racist activists use the principle of White Privilege to define all white people as inherently racist. To be white is to be racist, no questions asked.

As a Christian, I must draw a line here and say that THIS application of the principle is wrong. It’s wrong morally and it’s wrong theologically.

Such a misuse of the White Privilege principle is, I believe, one of the reasons that certain older members of the Civil Rights movement (!) have also publicly denounced Critical Race Theory.

Regardless of their personal theologies, they too identify the moral problem at the root of any such blanket condemnation of an entire class of people.

Sadly, it is one more expression of human tribalism (and its many defects) which excels at taking good ideas and twisting them until they only shed light on my neighborhood.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream anticipating a day when black children and white children will all be judged “not on the color of their skin but by the content of their character” continues to ring true for these pioneering Civil Rights activists, as it also does for me.

Perhaps it is true that a very high percentage of US Caucasians remain blind to their privilege while happily enjoying its benefits without giving any thought to the related (even consequential) difficulties and discrimination faced by our dark-skinned brothers and sisters.

No. What every Christian can and must say is that all people everywhere are guilty of being sinful. Consequently, all people everywhere are intensely tribal. Thus, all people everywhere think and act selfishly.

Meaning that all people everywhere need the redemption and personal transformation available through Jesus Christ – which can ONLY work properly in integrated communities of faith where men, women, and children of every color share themselves, their histories, their stories, their personal experiences, and their hopes with each other.

I have more say on this topic, but I think I have gone on too long already!

Until next time…

Biden Will Continue America’s Neo-Liberal Imperialism With Worsening Authoritarianism at Home

It’s like deja vu all over again.

The transition from George W. Bush’s presidency to the Barak Obama administration strikingly revealed the partisan hypocrisy of Democratic leaders and the supposedly “liberal” establishment in America.

While Obama not only continued but intensified many of the worst features of the Bush administration (like expanding the drone bombing and assassination programs, extensive bombing in Syria, and destroying Libya, to mention only a few examples) Democratic and liberal leaders, journalists, and commentators fell silent.

Folks who screamed bloody murder when Bush had done similar things, suddenly became mute, offering no criticism at all — not even a muffled guffaw — when Obama did the very same things.

The Democratic/liberal establishment is applying the same double standard today now that Joe Biden has replaced Donald Trump. I fully expect that the Biden administration will continue the same imperialistic foreign policies, the same neoliberal economic policies, and increasingly oppressive domestic policies as would any other member of the entrenched DC establishment.

Here are a few examples and a few prescient predictions from a few thoughtful analysts:

  • Biden’s first statement on foreign policy endorses upstart, opposition figure, Juan Guaido, as the president of Venezuela. (I have written many times about US attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Nicolas Maduro; see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
  • Biden is already in the process of creating new domestic terrorism surveillance laws; see here, here, and here. Listen to this good discussion of Biden’s authoritarian impulses with Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald here.

Kenneth Copeland Goes Heavy Metal . . . Frankly, It’s About Time

No, the video below is DEFINITELY NOT mocking a man of god.

Just the opposite. Copeland is a false teacher, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a

Kenneth Copeland

fraud who exploits gullible people to line his own pockets. Jesus and several New Testament writers warn God’s people to avoid and condemn the destructive antics of men and women like Copeland.

In case you don’t the name, Copeland is a multi-millionaire “televangelist” whos preaches a prosperity anti-gospel. He owns three private jets and a $200,000 Lamborghini SUV. Of course, the opulent mansion goes without saying.

Mockery and condemnation is the only type of attention he deserves.

So enjoy:

Learn to Sniff Out the Fake News Propaganda

Nathan J. Robinson has a good article at Current Affairs entitled, “A Guide for High School Students on How to Avoid Propaganda.”

The article addresses students because of the increasing number of school

Nathan J. Robinson

districts using videos produced by Prager University (a conservative propaganda mill) for classroom instruction.

If you or your friends have wondered how to distinguish fake news from legitimate reporting, I highly recommend taking the time to read this article carefully. It is very good.

In a world where more and more people are wondering if ANY media outlets can be ever be trusted to tell the truth, Robinson offers a clear examination of media bias. He also walks the reader through 4 recent news stories and explains how to separate the “wheat from the chaff” to discover the truth of the matter.

It’s a longer article but well worth your time.

Below is an excerpt, or  you can find the entire article here.

It would be nice to think that we ourselves are smarter [than the ancients], that we could never end up being so delusional. But anyone can be fooled, for a very obvious reason: most of our knowledge isn’t arrived at rationally. We develop our understandings of the world through trusting what other people are telling us. That does not just go for religious believers. All of us have to have “faith” that we are being told the truth, because it is impossible for us to prove all the things we need to believe. George Orwell noted that most people believe the Earth is round not because they have personally deduced it to be the case, but because they have been taught it. Orwell said that if we encountered a Flat Earther who asked us to prove it, many people would struggle. Orwell himself was somewhat confident he could deal with a Flat Earther, but less sure he could take on someone who argued, say, that the moon is a flat disc.

Michigan Republicans Show More Integrity Than National Leaders

President Trump’s attempt to pressure Michigan Republicans into complying with his desire to replace Democratic state electors with Republicans appears to have failed.

CNN reports on the meeting and its aftermath:

Earlier today I posted about the White House invitation to two Republican state officials, both heavily funded by the DeVos family, to meet with the president in Washington. Trump obviously wanted to discuss the results of the Michigan presidential election recount.

Why meet with Republican state legislators? Because Trump hoped that they might overturn the election results by picking their own Republican electors — a strategy that he discussed openly long before the election.

Despite the fact that the Michigan recount has confirmed Biden’s victory, the certification of that result had been delayed.

The Detroit Daily News has a good article explaining the ins and outs of that certification process, what is at stake, and why the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers have been flip-flopping on their votes to certify or decertify the vote count (they first voted no; then yes; then no again after each received a phone call from the president — and no, the president’s personal involvement is not normal).

As best as I can determine, all but one of Trump’s lawsuits have been dismissed by the courts, generally due to lack of evidence.

Although Rudy Guliani and others continue to insist that they have an

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 19: Rudy Giuliani holds up a mail-in ballot as he speaks to the press about various lawsuits related to the 2020 election, inside the Republican National Committee headquarters on November 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/ Getty Images)

abundance of evidence demonstrating massive, nation-wide fraud, they have not been able to produce it convincingly for the courts.

The judges presiding over these suits in federal court have been both Republican and Democratic appointees. So, these have been bipartisan dismissals, making it hard to suggest a partisan conspiracy against Trump in the judicial system.

The Georgia recount has also confirmed the original results in favor of Joe Biden. Even though Guliani, together with Trump’s other lawyers, have accused the Dominion Voting System of secretly flipping thousands of Trump votes to Biden, no evidence has yet been provided to back up this claim.

In fact, the Georgia recount constitutes a decisive debunking of the Trump- team accusations. Certainly, if thousands of Trump votes had been secretly flipped to Biden by malicious software, then the state-wide, hand recount would have exposed the computer-enabled deception.

It didn’t happen.

Guliani has repeatedly stated that Biden’s victories in Democratically controlled cities is blatant evidence of Democratic election fixing.

Really?

Let’s think about this claim. Isn’t it likely that a majority-Democrat area will vote for the Democratic candidate? So, doesn’t it make sense that Biden (a Democrat) is most likely to win in Democratically controlled areas of the country? How is this evidence of nation-wide, voter fraud?

I watch and read a good deal of conservative, Republican news. I have yet to find any of the information briefly provided in this post being covered by those news outlets. What I do find is the endless repetition of Trump’s accusations of fraud, but always without evidence or discussion of unfolding developments in real time.

Repetition is not an argument; neither is it evidence of anything other than a person’s dogged commitment to their own ideas.

I intend to write more about this dangerous problem within the church in the near future.

Identifying the Dangers of “Both Sides-ism”

Most people belief that the earth is round, but we can’t be certain because the Flat Earth Society insists it is flat.

 Most scientists think that global warming is accelerated by CO2 emissions, but we can’t know for sure because others say it is not.

The preceding two sentences are examples of a logical fallacy known as a false equivalency, sometimes called the “both sides” argument. (See the definition and explanation below as well as here and here).

The logical fallacy known as a false equivalency presents two different positions, or different sides of an argument, as if they were equally valid when, in fact, they are not. This highly illogical way of looking at the world has become increasingly common in both news and social media.

Sometimes it appears innocently when a person, such as a reporter, is unclear about the facts of a case and wants their presentation to appear unbiased. In this instance, an honest reporter will admit his ignorance as he gives both sides of a possible explanation.

More often, however, false equivalencies are intentionally used to mislead and to misinform. It is a common rhetorical trick deployed in political propaganda.

I recently heard an outrageous example of false equivalency on the radio while I was listening to a conservative call-in program (driving cross-country looking to trap a little falcon called a merlin).

A Trump-voter had called the program and was deriding Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (NOTE: I am NOT a fan of either!!!) while insisting that the recent presidential election was fraudulent.

(Heads up on another false equivalency: many say Biden won the election, but many Trump supporters say the election way rigged. Therefore, we can’t know the actually winner).

The pro-Trump caller noted that while Democrats applauded Kamala Harris because she and Biden intended TO UNIFY the country, he knew that both were avid communists intent on destroying America.

How did he know this?

Well, he cited a specific page from Karl Marx’s work, The Communist Manifesto.  Marx urges his fellow revolutionaries “TO UNIFY” the proletariat (that is, the workers) in their pursuit of radical, political transformation.

In other words — according to this caller’s logic — whereas some people thought the Democratic presidential ticket was hoping to heal the nation (Ahem: if you really believe that, I’ve got a good deal on a piece of swamp land in Florida to sell you), he knew that the Democrats were really closet Communists planning a socialist revolution to destroy America.

How did he know this?

Well, both Harris and Marx talked about uniting the common people.

Of course, the host of the call-in program did not point out this whopping, outrageous instance false equivalency. In fact, he thanked the caller for his historical insight and let the comparison stand, thereby giving it his official, radio stamp of approval!

That is how propaganda works. And I hope my readers can see for themselves how very malicious such false equivalencies can be.

But false equivalencies are also used by people like politicians and church pastors who are afraid of losing part of their audience.

Rather than taking a position on a controversial issue; rather than calling out falsehoods and misinformation; rather than explaining why one position is clearly illegitimate while another is the ethical position required by good citizenship or Christian faith, these “leaders” will describe a variety of positions as all equally legitimate possibilities.

For instance, the Black Lives Matters movement sparked a deluge of bogus false equivalency arguments from conservative church leaders, though I don’t have space to describe them all here.

We see that the question boils down to a matter of discernment. How do we know the truth of a matter? Of all people in this world, Christians ought to have an especially deep allegiance to knowing the truth.

So, here are a few key ingredients to help us in pursuing the truth in public debate:

  1. Do your research. What are the facts? What is the relative expertise of the supposed “experts” whose conclusions disagree? Are there reasons for either side to be biased in its conclusions? (For instance, when the work of “scientists” who minimize the dangers of global warming is funded by the fossil fuel industry, their arguments are HIGHLY suspect). Who is paying for these people to say the things they say? Are there other vested interests at stake in the argument? What is the background, education, professional history of the various people making these claims?
  2. Yes, this type of research takes time, so admit ignorance when necessary. What?  You say you don’t have that much time to spare? If that is the case, then – to put it bluntly – stop talking. If I don’t have the time to educated myself about a subject, then I shouldn’t be making pronouncements about it. That doesn’t mean I can’t discuss it, but it does mean that I must speak with hesitation and humility. Drop the pretense of self-confidence. Learn to say, “I’m not sure. I don’t know. This is only my opinion.”
  3. Grow a spine. This point is especially pertinent to people who call themselves Christians. NOT ALL POSITIONS ARE EQUALLY VALID OR ACCEPTABLE. Thus, falsehoods, misrepresentations, and immorality must be identified and condemned wherever you see them.

All politics involves moral judgment. Pastors who say they won’t allow politics into their church are deluding themselves. The real question is, What sort of politics are you encouraging your people to embrace (whether explicitly or implicitly, by promotion or silence)?

Every Christian must be committed to exemplifying Christ-like morality. And that includes politics.

It only follows, then, that many political positions/decisions must be rejected by God’s people, since not all conflicting positions can be equally ethical, true, or Christ-like.

The basis for a Christian’s political decisions must always be the life, character, and teaching of Jesus Christ. (No, Jesus may not have an opinion on every policy, but he does have an opinion on the over-arching moral effects of our politics).

Any supposed church leader who either (a) fails to apply this “Jesus test” to their politics, or (b) says that any and all political views are equally permissible within the church – in other words, there are no truly “false” equivalencies, only diverse equivalencies – is either lazy, dull-witted, or cowardly.

The gospel witness of Christ’s church can only suffer when leaders either employ or tolerate these sorts of false equivalencies. Yet, they are rampant within today’s political discourse.

Where is the church’s influence in combating this sort of propaganda?

Where is the church taking a stand for TRUTH in public discourse?

From what I can see, the church is not very different from the polarized, partisan public that draws life from the popularization of of malicious and illogical false equivalencies.

As I see it, baptizing this brand of sloppy thinking is merely the lazy person’s way of appearing tolerant.

Trump Appears to Believe in “Mass Human Sacrifice”

President Trump torpedoed son-in-law, Jared Kushner’s, plan for a federally organized, covid testing program because he believed that it would primarily benefit “blue states” (the states that he did not carry in the 2016 election).

A recent investigative article at Vanity Fair explains what happened. I have posted an excerpt below:

Despite the Rockefeller Foundation’s round-the-clock work to guide the U.S. to a nationwide testing system essential to reopening, the foundation has not yet been able to bend the most important curve of all: the Trump administration’s determined disinterest in big federal action.

On July 15, in a video call with journalists, Dr. Shah looked visibly frustrated. The next day, the Rockefeller Foundation would be releasing a follow-up report: It called on the federal government to commit $75 billion more to testing and contact tracing, work to break through the testing bottlenecks that had led to days-long delays in the delivery of test results, and vastly increase more rapid point-of-care tests.

Though speaking in a typically mild-mannered tone, Shah delivered a stark warning: “We fear the fall will be worse than the spring.” He added, putting it bluntly: “America is not near the top of countries who have handled COVID-19 effectively.”

Just three days later, news reports revealed that the Trump administration was trying to block any new funding for testing and contact tracing in the new coronavirus relief package being hammered out in Congress. As one member of the Rockefeller coalition said of the administration’s response, “We’re dealing with a schizophrenic organization. Who the hell knows what’s going on? It’s just insanity.”

You can read the entire story here.

President Trump’s mismanagement of the US pandemic have been largely motivated (above and beyond his gross incompetence) by his partisan efforts at reelection.

Members of Kushner’s task force reveal that Trump was disinterested in their plan because he believed that “blue states” would be hardest hit by covid.

In other words, if he didn’t carry a state in the 2016 election, he didn’t feel the need to help the people who didn’t vote for him.

Let that fact sink in…

Numerous outlets are reporting this story in one form or another (here, here, here, here, and here for only a few examples).

Ironically, the current resurgence of the virus is now hitting red states the hardest, and seems to be a major cause for the current nose-dive in Trump’s approval ratings.

Now that the “mass human sacrifices” are including Republican voters, what will Trump do?

Personally, I am not holding my breath. Trump remains Trump, a gross narcissist who is too ignorant and stupid to care about anyone but himself, even when the nation is dying.

 

A Christian Man Who Understands the Civil War

Scott Hancock is a history professor at Gettysburg College. He is also a serious disciple of Jesus Christ.

Hancock regularly goes to the Gettysburg battlefield to talk with visitors, hoping to educate them about the roots of the Civil War and the southern states’ investment in defending slavery.

It is amazing to me how often his critics repeat the Confederate propaganda created by the United Daughters of the Confederacy catechism for southern children. (Check out my post on the UDC here).

(I am indebted to John Fea’s blog for directing me to this video).