Recently, a friend of mine — a retired pastor — posted the following on Facebook:
One thing I’ve noticed since the murder of Kirk is the outpouring of support and adoration for him. He has certainly become a powerful symbol for many. But to be honest, I wonder how many of us actually followed him before last week or even knew much about him? In a culture of celebrity worship, many have latched onto him, or at least the vision we’ve been given. Politicians are demanding in some cases that we say nothing ill of him.
I pride myself in being in the know about a lot of what’s going on in the country abd the American church, but I’ll admit im not always aware of the powerful forces at work. I knew about Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA (TPU) But what seemed to be behind the scenes is now coming out in the open. A toxic mix of church and state is becoming a reality, but instead of a Rome or Canterbury, generic evangelical Christianity is becoming our national religion.
If you go to the TPU website, as I finally did last night, you’ll either love what its about or be horrified. They is no line between church and state. And for many of us, that is a problem. Our country did not come together as a ‘Christian’ nation. Nations are not Christian. People are Christians. And together, that is the true Church. Our citizenship is in heaven, and Jesus emphatically said his kingdom was not of this world. We are a nation of many religions and cultures, or even no religion at all. We need to respect that. But pushing for what amounts to a theocracy, we often demand laws that do not touch on the poor, greed, and injustice, which were major themes of the New Testament and the Prophets. We instead gear towards a Christian Taliban, punishing those that we deem unclean or immoral.
As a Christian and a pastor, I reject the idea that the state and the church can co-exist as equal partners. When the Church gets into bed with the state, it becomes a whore that is only used for the pleasure of its false master. The Church, Christ’s bride, needs to reject this false idol of power and be a prophetic voice to the world instead of a mouthpiece for antichrist values. We promote Christ and his Kingdom, not the whore of Babylon. Let us not confuse the two.
If you doubt this pastor, consider what took place at Charlie Kirk’s funeral — a full-blown worship of not only Kirk, but Christian Nationalism. The funeral was nothing more than masturbatory worship of Kirk, the Evangelical deity, and Christian Nationalism.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The fiery shards from the murder of Charlie Kirk still ricochet in baleful ways, even as his shooter’s views and motives remain murky. Despite rabid calls by a regime eager for revenge to extinguish leftist “scum” who rendered their bigot hero “a martyr for truth and freedom,” the killer seems to be a muddled mix of gun freak, devout gamer, and violent nihilist. In his bloody wake, many now beset by irrational vitriol are left to argue, “I don’t support what happened to Charlie, but Charlie supported what happened to Charlie.”
Political violence is, of course, as old as America: Federalists vs. anti-Federalists, indigenous genocide, slavery, lynching, war, Lincoln, the 1960s’ white and black assassinations, civil, women’s and gay rights struggles, Jan. 6 riots, police state troops, racist ICE raids and, in a country with perhaps 500 million guns, an estimated 125 Americans killed daily with guns – a rate 26 times higher than any other developed nation – and up to 800 children killed in school shootings impacting over 360,000 students. In 2023, the most recent year with full data, nearly 47,000 people died in gun violence. The first six months of this year saw an almost 40% surge in gun-related acts of terrorism and targeted violence over last year, with over 520 reported plots or acts of violence and, to date, 300 mass shootings, forty-seven at schools. In a nation awash in killing machines, an increasingly right-wing GOP, and a mood of rage-fueled paranoia and polarization, each act of political violence makes the next more likely.
Charlie Kirk, 31, was shot and killed by an assassin’s bullet in the neck while speaking under a tent that read “Prove Me Wrong” on the campus of Utah Valley University on the first of a 15-stop “America Comeback Tour” by his right-wing Turning Point USA; he was struck just as he responded to a question about mass shootings by blaming gangs. It was the day before a historically freighted Sept. 11 symbolizing myriad acts of or against violence: It was the day when Gandhi launched the first nonviolent resistance in South Africa in 1906 to stunning political effect; when Chile’s democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende was assassinated; when Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and Americans came together with such inspiring grace and strength the event came to represent “the ultimate failure of terrorism against the United States” – until a pernicious Bush Administration launched two bloody, pointless, illegal wars, which still haunt us, in its name.
Kirk was a vibrant, hateful, genial, incendiary mouthpiece for a MAGA worldview of bigotry and intolerance, a “loathsome human being (who) celebrated violence against people he didn’t like” and used his mocking, performative “debates” with students to effectively spread misinformation, inflame young, impressionable, vaguely discontent people, surreptitiously urge democracy be replaced by an emergent Christian Fascism, and make millions. “The language has been violent. The discord has been great,” wrote Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler. “There has been a consistent invitation to dine at the table of heated racist discussion posing as legitimate political speech,” in which Kirk “rhetorically violated” the safety of Blacks, Muslims, queers, immigrants, and multiple ‘others’ in the name of a defaming, divisive “free speech.” “He (did) not care about the security of others. He did not show empathy,” said Hagler. “Charlie Kirk expanded hatred (and) marketed the vile speech of old racisms in new wineskins.”
Kirk claimed America was full of “prowling Blacks” who target white people “for fun.” He said “God’s perfect law” says gay people should be stoned to death, Black people were better off during Jim Crow, Democrats “stand for everything God hates,” the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, Islam is “the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” He put liberal academics on watch lists to be targeted and harassed, called Dems “maggots, vermin and swine,” mocked the death of George Floyd, “joked” a “patriot” should bail out Paul Pelosi’s attacker, urged “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming doctor,” charged prominent Black women like Michelle Obama “don’t have the brain power” to succeed unless they “steal a white person’s slot.” A fierce critic of gun control, he argued we cannot allow mass shooting victims to “emotionally hijack the narrative,” and championed as “prudent” and “rational” the cost of gun deaths in exchange for having “the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Like much of the right, he practiced “eliminationist rhetoric,” wherein political opponents aren’t just wrong but evil, less than human. Still, when the 2nd Amendment came for Charlie Kirk, thoughtful opponents wrestled in a deeply human way with the complexities. “He was a vile human being,” said one, “but I do not want to live in a society where vile human beings are assassinated.” Again and again, people echoed that pivotal duality: “We can condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder while also condemning Kirk for the hate he fomented,” “Murder is bad, and sometimes bad people are murdered,” “Kirk said and did many despicable things, but he did not deserve to die,” “Kirk should not have been shot and killed for his beliefs, and nobody else” – Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, whose deaths Trump still refuses to acknowledge, no pol, no child – “should be either.” This was not vengeance-tinged schadenfreude, he said; it was a moral and political reckoning with America’s dissonant reality.
The right, obviously, ignored those subtleties, unable to recognize any space between “endorsing over-the-top grief for white men who espouse violence” and not endorsing that violence. Here, as usual, appeasement is in vain. “They are going to claim we (left/liberals/Democrats/non-white non-supremacists) said whatever is most convenient for them to say we said, no matter what we say,” wrote Rebecca Solnit. “They’ve already decided all of us were the shooter.” And they did. Within minutes, with zero information on the killer, Trump, elected on a platform of fomenting online rage against the “other,” seized the deadly moment to foment more. He raved against “a radical left group of lunatics” – “we just have to beat the hell out of them” – “the agitator,” “the scum,” who for years “have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis…This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country.” Elizabeth Warren, asked if Dems should “tone down” their rhetoric: “Oh, please.”
After he ordered the nation’s flags flown at half-mast – never once done for the hundreds of schoolchildren gunned down over the years – fellow brownshirts picked up the vengeful tiki torch and feverishly ran with it. Musk: “The Left is the party of murder…Our choice is to fight or die.” Libs of Tik Tok: “THIS IS WAR.” Matt Walsh: “We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell.” Seethed Paulina Luna, “EVERY DAMN ONE OF YOU WHO CALLED US FASCISTS DID THIS,” charging, “You were busy doping up kids, cutting off their genitals, inciting racial violence…YOU ARE THE HATE you claim to fight.” Logically, they also vowed to use the power of the state to exact retribution against Dem pols, “libtard” pundits, anyone who may have viewed Kirk as anything but a flawless hero and martyr. Clay Higgins urged social media posts be banned, business licenses revoked, students or teachers be kicked out, non-citizens be banished: “Cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals.”
As usual, a spewing, psychotic Stephen Miller won the talking-evil-bullshit-out-of-your-Nazi-ass award, raving about “a wicked ideology” that “hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved,” an ideology that views “the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth” as its adherents “tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul.” Say what the fuck? In a posthumous Kirk podcast in the White House hosted by J.D. Vance – who flew Kirk’s body home in Air Force Two and pledged to “go after” fictional leftist NGOs, includingThe Nation, that “foments violence” – a smitten Miller decried those “cheering the evil assassination that cruelly robbed this nation of one of its greatest men” and vowed to use his “righteous anger,” “as God is my witness,” to “use every resource” to destroy the left’s “vast domestic terror movement…in Charlie’s name.”
Experts say the first, vital violence the authoritarian right commits is against fact, truth, history, meaning, language – reality itself. And so, again, it comes to pass. There has been no “cheering” of an act everyone knows with “horror” will spiral into chaos and repression. Though Miller said his last message from Kirk “before he joined his creator in heaven” was “we have to dismantle radical left organizations…fomenting violence,” there is no such organization; nor is there a leftist “vast domestic terror movement.” But there is, well-documented, on the right. See here,here, and here: Far-right plots and attacks have “significantly outpaced terrorism by other types of perpetrators” since 1994, and 2024 was the third year in a row thatallextremist-related killings in the U.S. were carried out by right-wingers.” A study by the DOJ itself likewise found, “The number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism.” It was just scrubbed from its website.
But who needs facts? Not a desperate, unhinged right that increasingly views everyone else as an existential threat to the white, straight, Christian nationalist oligarchy they seek to create. And now, notes Chris Hedges, they have their martyr, “the lifeblood of violent movements”- albeit “a reprehensible human being and Christo-fascist who enacted his agenda by preying on weak-minded people” – often critical to “turn the moral order upside down” en route to “full-scale social disintegration.” Inevitably, he predicts, the right’s newfound, giddy, sanctimonious “intoxication with violence will feed on itself like a firestorm.” In less than a week, it already is, with dozens of people across the country facing retribution – hounded, fired, threatened, arrested – in a GOP-sanctified ”witch-hunt” against anyone who dares to not mourn Kirk, or accurately, scathingly quote him, or decline “to be sad that a guy willing to sacrifice school children for the Second Amendment wound up getting shot at a school.”
MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for musing, “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which lead to hateful actions.” The Washington Post fired Karen Attiah, their sole Black columnist, for noting Kirk’s racist history, especially toward Black women. Dem Rep. Seth Moulton was flooded with threats – “Cute kids – be a shame if they didn’t have a father” – for arguing Trump should make it clear political differences can’t and shouldn’t be solved by violence. And in what Thaddeus Howze calls “deafening hypocrisy,” a populace who long (if selectively) quoted Scripture to make their pious points has abruptly banished their “live by the sword” tenet after “the gun culture (Kirk) championed did not exempt him.” “Here was a man who minimized other people’s agony, suddenly forced to taste the violence he once dismissed,” he writes. As a result, his “2nd Amendment justice” is neither celebration nor solution; it’s simply the fact that, “The logic he defended and normalized folded back on him.”
Enter Tyler Robinson, who on Tuesday appeared by video in court to be charged with aggravated murder and six other counts; prosecutors will seek the death penalty. After Kash Patel’s error-ridden, “amateur hour” clown show of an FBI search, Robinson was ultimately convinced by his father and a family friend to turn himself in. Described as a quiet, “squeaky clean” kid, he came from a Trump-voting, gun-loving family; his father was a sheriff turned evangelical pastor, online, his mother often posted (now-deleted) photos of Tyler and his brother grinning with guns, and they’d gifted him the rifle he killed Kirk with. Early reports suggested he was part of Nick Fuentes’ “Groypers,” a white-nationalist group from the “toxic underbelly of the MAGA ecosystem” who use Internet memes, underground cultural references, and racist dog whistles to covertly spread hate, and who’d publicly harassed Kirk as not extremist or “pro-white” enough. Now, it’s only clear that Tyler was “a guy who plainly had Internet brain poisoning.”
As “experts” struggled to decipher reported markings on the killer’s ammunition – “Hey fascist, catch!” with a sequence of arrows, etc – gamers quickly identified them as symbols from Helldivers 2, in which elite forces battle against aliens on behalf of a fascist state. Meanwhile, more facts emerged: Tyler, his politics shifting left, was in a romantic relationship with a roommate transitioning from male to female, and he’d told them and his father he killed Kirk because he “had enough of his hatred.” All told, his views were so hazy he could be deemed a “nihilist violent extremist” (NVE), often alienated young men, desensitized to violence by gaming and right-wing subcultures, who lack a coherent political belief system but feel an inchoate rage – a reminder to a partisan world, wrote Ken Klippenstein, “of the actual diversity of the nation, and the cost of polarization that demonizes the other side.” The lack of “tidy narrative,” said Rep.Sean Casten, suggested this was merely the tale of “a young man who made a bad choice with a gun.”
Online, some declared MAGA’s civil war had been cancelled “due to shooter being demographically uncooperative.” But the regime, fired up, had no interest in leading us out of “this ugly toxic pit.” Ignoring facts, law, nuance, and their ostensible mission to unite, they’ve used the shooting to launch “the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country’s modern history.” Pam Bondi, appearing on Goebbels’ wife Katie Miller’s malignant podcast, vowed the Justice Department would “go after” those engaging in “hate speech,” or “violent rhetoric designed to silence others from voicing conservative ideals,” aka accurately quoting Charlie Kirk. “There’s free speech and there’s hate speech,” she said. “We will absolutely target you.” Heather Lyle on the “staggering irony” of selectively outraged, right-wing grievance politics “collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions…A movement that insists mass death is acceptable collateral in the name of liberty also demands national mourning when its own suffers.”
Trump, meanwhile, has helped stifle free speech by threatening an ABC News reporter who asked about it – “We’ll probably go after people like you. You treat me unfairly – you have hate in your heart” – an Australian reporter – “You are hurting Australia right now. Your leader is coming to see me soon, I’m going to tell him about you…Quiet” – and “the degenerate” New York Times with a bizarre, “hilarious,” $15 billion libel lawsuit packed with lies, boasts and juvenile praise for his “transcendent ability to defy wrongful conventions” and “greatest personal and political achievement in American history” despite a pernicious paper that “has engaged (in) decades-long lying about your Favorite President (ME!).” Like any eight-year-old sociopath, he has a notably short attention span: Asked how he’s doing after losing his “friend” Kirk, he said, “Very good. And by the way, right there, you see the trucks just started construction of the new Ballroom…It’s going to be a beauty…one of the best in the world, actually. Thank you very much.”
Elsewhere, everyone spoke of Kirk and the havoc his death had wrought. “Pay attention,” urged Sen. Chris Murphy of moves to crush dissent: “Something dark may be coming.” A somber Bernie warned of political violence that “threatens to hollow out our public life”; many followers, citing the “paradox of intolerance,” argued tolerance is a social contract the right has already ravaged: “Charlie Kirk is a self-inflicted gunshot statistic. Kirk’s widow Erika, 36, a glossy former Miss Arizona with a “Christian clothing company” and “devotional blessings” podcast, gave an ”address to the nation” at a lectern reading, “May Charlie be received into the merciful arms of Jesus, our loving savior”; she told “evil-doers” they have “no idea what you have unleashed,” and vowed the tour, mission and “wisdom” of Charlie, “wearing the glorious crown of a martyr,” “will endure.” At a shabby Kennedy Center vigil – bad music, red caps, USA chants, shrieking pastors – regime fans and officials proclaimed, “We are all Charlie Kirk now.”
Not quite. “Grief is not a performance,” offered a therapist to those struggling to respond. “When a public figure dies, you are not obligated to manufacture sorrow (to) honor a life (that) caused harm.” “You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told traumatized students. “Words are not violence. Violence is violence.” After the arrest, Cox said he’d been praying the shooter “wouldn’t be one of us” – a queer immigrant would be better? – “so I could say, ‘We don’t do that here.‘” But of course he was, and we do. “What the actual hell have we become?” asked Catholic writer Emily Zanotti. From another, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” White, male, home-grown, needy, beset by an inchoate animus and fury now wretchedly reflected in a regime whose leaders choose to use power only for hate. Compare and contrast with, say, Stephen Colbert, who this week spoke of love, loss, and “desperately loving” a country now unrecognizable. Even Tyler Robinson decried hate, and, to his partner, voiced love.
The same day he shot Charlie Kirk, the “uniquely American cycle” was reprised one state over when a male student opened fire at a Colorado high school, wounding two before killing himself; so much blood was already flowing it barely made the news. Two days later, also under-reported, a police SWAT team arrested a 13-year-old boy near Seattle for “unlawful firearms possession.” Evidently fixated on school shootings, the boy had amassed an arsenal of 23 guns with accompanying ammunition, including tactical style rifles mounted on the walls of his room, handguns strewn through the house and, in a backpack beneath a turtle habitat, AR assault magazines; police also found drawings of school shooters and social media posts that said, “When I turn 21 I am going to kill people” and, “It’s over! My time is almost hear!” (sic). In an interview, his mother, who home-schooled him, said the posts were an attempt by her son to “be cool,” and he had no intention of harming anyone.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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“BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!”
— President Donald Trump
What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat, and the drugs that are being sent into our country, and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs. That’s what’s illegal.
— President Donald Trump
This is not a war. U.S. forces went out and committed murder. There was no armed attack on the United States that would allow for the U.S. to use force in self-defense. There is no armed conflict between the United States and any cartel group or any Latin American country. A foreign terrorist designation of any of these groups does not change that. It does not authorize force against those groups. The killing of all 11 of these men was illegal. This was a premeditated murder of suspected criminals — by definition, civilians — based on the facts provided by the administration themselves,
— Sarah Harrison, former Pentagon legal expert
The Trump administration is now murdering suspected drug traffickers without due process. It should trouble all of us that Trump is using the military to blow up boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing everyone on board. These unilateral actions against alleged traffickers are illegal and immoral. Yes, I know that Trump has declared “war” on drug traffickers, but this is not an official declaration of war. Only Congress has the power to declare war. What we currently have is a rogue state doing what it wants to kill an alleged enemy. Evidently, the rules of war do not apply to this rogue state; Trump believes might makes right.
There’s little that can be done to combat Trump’s murderous ways. It is up to a Republican-led congress to reel Trump in, but by all accounts, they have no intention of doing so. Sadly, many Republicans love Trump’s bravado. They want to see him use even more violence to advance the MAGA agenda, not less. Lest you doubt this to be true, consider the fact that a Fox News host said that the answer to our homeless problem is to euthanize them. Yep, he wants the government to commit the mass murder of homeless people. The MAGA crowd claims Christianity as their chosen faith, but there’s little in their behavior that suggests they know anything about the life and teachings of the Prince of Peace.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Listen to the Trump Administration and MAGA talking heads, and you might conclude that Charlie Kirk was a “good man.” President Trump would have us believe that leftists are to blame for Kirk’s murder, but extant evidence suggests that Kirk’s rhetoric and bigotry likely played a big part in his death. After carefully examining what Kirk said and did, it is hard not to conclude that he was a Christian Nationalist; a man willing to say anything — even if it is a lie — to advance his agenda. A good man, he is not.
Podcaster Stephen Woodford recently released a video detailing Charlie Kirk’s character and beliefs:
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
By now, I’m sure you know right-wing shit-stirrer Charlie Kirk was murdered by Tyler Robinson. I shed not a tear for Kirk. His rhetoric and bigotry cannot be ignored as a contributing factor in his murder. While I certainly feel sorry for Kirk’s wife and children, I refuse to ignore what led to his death. (And it goes without saying, as a pacifist, I oppose all violence, including political.)
What follows is a list of hateful, bigoted things Charlie Kirk has said in the past.
[Kirk called the Civil Rights Act] “a huge mistake.”
“Black women like Joy Reid, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Michelle Obama … used affirmative action because they do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. So they had to steal a white person’s slot.”
“The perverse gift of the Chinese coronavirus is that it has given Americans an up close and personal look at the horrors of big government — and, by extension, socialism.”
“Conservatives are branded bigots and we are falsely accused of hate speech when we express traditional values and ideas that have made America the greatest country on Earth.”
“Democrats have long been the party of voter fraud.”
“We’ve been conditioned to see a video of white people in MAGA hats standing in front of a Native American and assume that the white people are racists.”
“Americans needs to understand that the election of Donald Trump has forestalled our slide into the abyss of cultural Marxism and the surrendering of our national heritage and identity to that of the global community.”
“Historically, Democrats have shown they are willing to do just about anything to win elections. Republicans must quit taking the high road and fight back with everything we have.”
“We have to teach goodness to our infants.”
“Rick Warren promoted the vaccine and BLM in 2020 while he was pastor of Saddleback. Typical modern preacher — they get mad when you get involved in conservative (biblical) issues but enthusiastically use the church for secular left-wing aims. Shouldn’t ever be called a ‘pastor.’ For the last decade he’s done serious harm to Christianity and the country.”
“I think it’s worth (the) cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.”
“Brazil has become a key battleground in the global clash between the power of the people and the tyranny of a corrupt globalist machine. TPUSA is honored to host President Jair Bolsonaro in Miami THIS FRIDAY for his first public event following the recent Brazilian elections.”
“The higher the building, the more liberal the voter. It just is. The closer to the ground you are, the more conservative you are.”
“To all college students who have their professors switching to online classes: Please share any and ALL videos of blatant indoctrination with @TPUSA. … Now is the time to document & expose the radicalism that has been infecting our schools.”
“I can’t stand the word ‘empathy,’ actually. I think ‘empathy’ is a made-up, new-age term that does a lot of damage.”
“We have been propagandized by liars and fakers in the media to believe that America is a vicious, racist country and indiscriminate attacks on black people by whites happen all the time. But the numbers tell the truth. Black attacks on white people happen 3X more often than white on black crime, despite blacks being only 13% of the population. Why won’t the media just tell the truth? Why lie when those lies result in innocent people dying?”
“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
“The American way of life is very simple. I want to be able to get married, buy a home, have kids, allow them to ride their bike till the sun goes down, send them to a good school, have a low crime neighborhood, not to have my kid be taught the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school. While also, not having them have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. That’s important.”
“Democrat women want to die alone without children.”
“We don’t have enough people in prison in America. We need a lot more prisoners.”
“Ignore the geriatric haters in the US Senate. Sec. Kennedy is advancing the people’s agenda and We the People have his back 100%.”
“Thanks to chain migration, Muslims are now a majority in Michigan’s Dearborn Heights (named after a Revolutionary War general). Now, local police have rolled out the country’s first-ever police badge with Arabic script. When you get conquered, you get a new language.”
“Marriage and motherhood make women happier, because of course they do.”
“Indoctrinating 5-year-old kindergartners that they can be something other than a boy or a girl is child abuse and should be illegal.”
“If people are voluntarily leaving 6 to 7 months into a presidential term to go back to their home country, maybe they weren’t actually fleeing oppression the way they say they were.”
“The Democrat Party is the party of crime. Write it down. They have normalized the idea that our cities are dumps and violence is just part of life. This is one of their key pillars in transforming America into a third world hell hole.”
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Letter sent to the editor of the Defiance Crescent-News.
Dear Editor:
Our republic was saved from Donald Trump’s worst tendencies during his first administration by Republicans who understood what unchecked power could do in the hands of megalomaniac. Over the course of four years, they were replaced by feckless true-blue believers willing to bow to Trump’s delusional demands.
Today, the three branches of government are dominated by devotees to Trump and Project 2025. Loyal to the man, instead of the people, these servants tirelessly work to advance the whims of their leader. No regard is given to the U.S. Constitution or the rule of law. All that matters is obeisance to their savior Donald Trump. He alone, they say, can deliver us from communism, socialism, atheism, liberalism, and anything that paints White American Christians in a bad light.
In their minds, the United States is a Christian nation governed by the teachings of the Protestant Bible. Well, some teachings anyway. Trump-loving Christians ignore the verses that talk about how they should treat strangers and enemies; they ignore verses that explicitly condemn the Trump administration’s immoral treatment of undocumented workers and LGBTQ people. They worship what I call a Jesus of convenience; a Jesus that is used to advance political and social agendas instead of saving souls and transforming society.
It remains to be seen if our country will survive Donald Trump. Democrats fiddle while Rome burns, offering muted responses to Trump, if any at all, waiting until the time is “right.” If they can’t see the flames erupting through the roof, they aren’t paying attention. Protests and letters to the editor have their place — I’ve been writing letters for almost 50 years — but they alone cannot bring political and social change. The solution remains what it has always been: voting. As long as we are a democratic republic, voting remains the only means to effect change. If most Americans don’t vote, we can’t expect lasting change.
Trump plans to roll back progress to the Gilded Age of robber barons. The rich now control the reins of government more than ever before. One of their own now sits at the head of the table, acting like he’s a mob boss. All that matters to Trump is power and money; things Jesus expressly condemned. And if you stand in Trump’s way or dare to challenge his actions, he will bring the full force of the government down upon your head.
Bruce Gerencser Ney, Ohio
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Trump has issued a record number of executive orders since becoming president. But, there’s a dirty little secret behind Trump’s orders; he doesn’t write them. It’s clear, at least to me, that he doesn’t even know what the orders say. That’s why he has a staff member read and explain the executive orders to reporters. Trump couldn’t explain these orders if he had to. Trump is being “managed” behind the scenes by people determined to put as much of Project 2025 into effect as possible.
Does anyone seriously think that Trump has the intellectual capacity to write his executive orders? This is a man who doesn’t know the difference between Alaska and Russia; a man who, in any other setting, would be considered mentally unfit to be president. If Joe Biden showed early signs of cognitive decline, what shall we say about Trump spouting all sorts of craziness and nonsense every time he has a press conference or delivers a speech?
Trump is a pawn in a war against the American people, one being waged by oligarchs, billionaires, libertarians, right-wing preachers, and ideologues who see Trump as a means to an end. Privately, they know he is a stupid man, a buffoon who can be manipulated to advance their respective agendas. These workers of darkness and evil use Trump’s pettiness, vindictiveness, and jealousy to tear down our democracy and replace it with a Christian theocracy.
It’s shocking how quickly they have gained their objective, and unless Congress and the Supreme Court stop these enemies of democracy, political and social collapse is sure to follow. November 2026 will be our first opportunity to neuter Trump. Whether we succeed depends on whether voters finally see Trump and MAGA as an existential threat to our republic, and vote accordingly. If Republicans hold on to their control of Congress, it is doubtful our country will survive. Cynical? Pessimistic? You bet. I have no time for people who can’t see Trump for who and what he is. It’s been ten years since Trump came down the escalator. We may not have known who and what he was back then, but we sure as Hell do now. No excuses. You can’t hide behind your ignorance. You have had ten years to size up Trump. And what troubles me the most is that millions of Americans would STILL vote for the man if he were running for office today.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I mean, when you have low IQ people like Crockett, I wonder if she’s any relationship to the late, great Davy Crockett, who was a great, great, a great gentleman. But you have this woman, Crockett. Very low IQ person. Somebody said the other day she’s one of the leaders of the party. I said, you’ve got to be kidding.
Representative Crockett replied:
He just knows how to throw that insult. But it’s a common insult when it comes to people of color. He just threw the same insult at Charlamagne tha God, and so I want people to see him and understand who he is. This is a person that has a problem with people of color, period. I don’t care how many Black MAGA are out there with their hats.
When we look at who it is that he’s kicking out of this country, it is people of color. When we look at who he always disrespects and says are low IQ, even though, when you look at his cabinet, this has to be the most incompetent cabinet we have ever had in the history of this country.
We’re talking about people that literally have the ability to drop bombs or order that bombs be dropped, or make recommendations that bombs be dropped, and they literally don’t know how to get the Signal chat. Right? So we’re talking about low IQ individuals, but so long as they say that this guy is their guy, and usually if they work for a certain news network, that’s the only qualification that’s necessary.
By the way, Crockett has more education than Trump. She is a lawyer.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the “HOTTEST” ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are “flying off the shelves.” Go get ’em Sydney! On the other side of the ledger, Jaguar did a stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement, THAT IS A TOTAL DISASTER! The CEO just resigned in disgrace, and the company is in absolute turmoil. Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad. Shouldn’t they have learned a lesson from Bud Lite, which went Woke and essentially destroyed, in a short campaign, the Company. The market cap destruction has been unprecedented, with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SO FOOLISHLY LOST. Or just look at Woke singer Taylor Swift. Ever since I alerted the world as to what she was by saying on TRUTH that I can’t stand her (HATE!). She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became, NO LONGER HOT. The tide has seriously turned – Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
— Donald Trump, as reported by The Mirror
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Last week’s Job’s Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That’s why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats.
Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!! I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!
— Donald Trump, as reported by The New Republic
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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