Jesus and John Wayne
Kristin Kobes Du Mez “Evangelical infatuation with Donald Trump stems in large part from the cult of masculinity that American evangelicalism has both cultivated and succumbed to over the past half-century.”
Trump signaled that "he would deal with evangelicalism's oppressors and cultural enemies in the manner of a political John Wayne, a strongman with a brash and swaggering demeanor, the hyper-masculine tough guy."
Evangelicals have "advocated a conception of gender and gender roles that idealizes masculinity and its links with power, aggression, domination and strength in all spheres of society and politics. Theirs is the John Wayne-style of masculinity."
"Evangelicals did not betray their values in voting for Donald Trump. Evangelical leaders, too, are guilty of a bewildering variety of misogynistic, predatory and abusive behaviors. Donald Trump was the culmination of their pursuit of a militant Christian masculinity.”
"In 2016, evangelical leaders became Trump's bitch, the beta male to Trump's alpha male, a bitch reduced to a position of submission, the evangelical males sacrificing their Christian values, their integrity and their autonomy. Trump is the antithesis of Christian values. Yet the evangelicals abased themselves before Trump, forsaking their steadfast commitment to Jesus."
"Evangelicalism has turned submissively to the desire for a strongman in order to preserve for themselves a place of privilege and power."
Earth, Wind and Fire
This is one of those forest fire seasons when the word apocalypse comes to mind. Seattle is smoky. Oregon and California are being hammered by flames… Paradise Lost. Humans have desecrated Mother Earth. We will pay a heavy price for that sin.
Kristin Gilbert “The West is choking on its own mythos. The rugged land of individualism only exists as a part of taxpayer largess, ranchers grazing free on public lands, cities fed by federalized water delivery systems, the land of flag-waving patriots who depend on undocumented labor to prop up the farming industry.”
The Earth is a closed system. One hundred years ago, the population of the Earth was 1.1 billion people. When I graduated from high school in 1965, the population of the Earth was 3.3 billion people. In 1968, Paul & Anne Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb,” warning us of the problems that come when there are too many rats in the box. And now, here we are in 2020 and the Earth’s population is 7.8 billion people. We have taken paradise and turned it into an overcrowded ship of fools.
Tantrum
Political insights are ripping through the air like shrapnel. I'm trying to keep up. On the Left, Biden is presenting his Covid strategy and building the diplomatic team who will deal with international affairs. On the Right, Trump and the Republicans are doing what was predicted: they are trying to delegitimize the 2020 election, and they are trying to slow the transition.
Bret Stephens "In Trump's depraved G.O.P., shamelessness is a virtue. In Trump's conservative universe, nearly everyone has become a lickspittle. Trump lost for two main reasons: 1) He is immoral, and 2) Conservatives never tried to check his iniquity. They rationalized, excused, enabled and ultimately celebrated it."
Usually, we reserve the word tantrum for use in describing a child throwing a fit. Now the word tantrum will be forever linked to the childish behavior of Donald Trump. We are looking down the barrel of Trump’s 10-week post-election grand finale tantrum, aided and abetted by his many lackeys in the House and Senate. Is it possible that, like Trump, over 70 million Trump voters never grew up, never learned to reason, never learned to coexist? A child’s tantrum is shameless. An adult’s tantrum is bizarre and pathetic.
Monolith
Thanks to the mystery metal monolith discovered in Canyonlands in Utah, last night I awoke suddenly and found myself thinking about surgically mutilated cattle found over the years in a wide swath of the Central and Mountain Time Zones. It occurred to me that the idea of mysterious cattle mutilations makes sense. It's the same thing we humans do to the same animals. Aliens, who enjoy culinary delicacies throughout the universe, visit Earth just as we might visit a destination restaurant. The aliens harvest the genitals, innards, eyes and blood of cattle, deer and elk, which they devour with gusto and continue on their way to their next feeding ground.
Imagine my surprise when I awoke at 12:30 AM last night, turned on the TV and there it was, a rerun of the 30-minute episode of "The Twilight Zone" titled "To Serve Man.”
In the opening narration, Rod Serling says, “Respectfully submitted for your perusal… a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we’re going to ask you to shake hands with the Christopher Columbus from another galaxy, another time…”
Crop circles, UFOs, cattle mutilations, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, Area 51... and now the prank monolith in Utah. Perhaps you too have spent nights in the wild, in a sleeping bag looking up at the stars. That unhindered view is an emotion all its own... shocking, humbling, eerie. Years ago, I offered my theory to explain Earth. Earth is an abandoned 8th grade science project for which young Glork571 of the Planet Debbie received a B-minus.
Spanky’s Curse
We await the moment when Spanky concedes. I don't think Spanky comprehends how quickly his life would improve if he would just exit the White House and move permanently to Mar-a-Lago. He'll still have Secret Service protection. He'll still have over 70 million slavish worshipers. He'll spend the rest of his life in court, but he is a pro at making the justice system look like a collection of timid namby-pamby milquetoast overly-cautious feebs.
This evening, the election was called for Biden. Here at our dining room table, my brother opened a bottle of champagne and the cork shot upward and knocked off his glasses.
A toast… “Have an interesting year.” Like the Chinese curse that is really a backdoor warning, 2021 could turn into the “3rd Rock from the Sun” series finale… “The Thing That Wouldn’t Die.”
Lord, have mercy...
I, too, have given up trying to get through to the Trumpers I know. It's pointless. I need to shift my focus away from Donnie for a while, while the trial unfolds.
Last month I stumbled onto a cache of politicized letters written to a like-minded friend I've known since college (1965-1969). Since 2024 is an election year, I chose to focus on 2020, another election year, and found the usual mash-up of subjects, all of it leading up to Biden's win and the total flip-out of Trump and his minions. I hope to shift focus and get away from Donnie for a few weeks, but that always depends on which door I open next.