This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
Anybody think if there’s a Lake Michigan, maybe there should be a Lake Ohio around here? I’m feeling that. We’ll talk about that a little bit more as this campaign progresses.
— Vivek Ramaswamy, 2026 Republican Candidate for Ohio Governor, as reported by Cleveland.com
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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 2025 Major League Baseball season started yesterday with the LA Dodgers playing the Chicago Cubs in Japan. This is sacrilegious. The first game of the year was traditionally played by the Cincinnati Reds. They are the oldest team in baseball. I’ve been to one opening day. No team and community does opening day better than Cincinnati. Hope springs eternal. While it’s doubtful the Reds will win the division, league, or World Series, they hopefully will field a competitive team and keep them competitive after football starts.
Trump allegedly won a golf tournament over the weekend. I say “allegedly” since Trump is a notorious cheat.
Over 400 Palestinians were killed, and 500 were wounded, in Israel’s latest genocidal attack on Gaza — with the support of the Trump Administration. There is no moral justification for Israel’s continued slaughter of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children.
U.S. Attorney General Barbie Doll Bondi wants to arrest people picketing Tesla dealerships, charging them with domestic terrorism. Evidently, Bondi doesn’t know anything about the Bill of Rights.
Will the rule of law survive Donald Trump and his minions? Maybe, but it increasingly looks like Trump plans to break the government, even if it means violating the law. What are people to do when a branch of government willingly breaks the law and ignores court rulings?
Trump wants new coal mines built — operations that will produce “clean coal.” There’s no such thing as clean coal, but the Trump Administration denies reality, so all things are possible when you are delusional.
Egg prices are coming down. Thanks to Trump? Nope. Those of us who live in farm country know that if you cull millions of hens due to bird flu infection, the supply chain will be disrupted and prices will go up until flocks are repopulated.
Trump plans to bend over and give Vladimir Putin what he wants as Ukraine helplessly stands by. Ukraine is a sovereign state. They, alone, should be negotiating with Russia. Trump wants the world to see him as a shrewd deal maker. I suspect Putin thinks Trump is a useful idiot.
Trump bombed Yemen yesterday, killing scores of civilians. Is it any wonder that hundreds of millions of people hate the United States? Every immoral bombing plants seeds for more terrorists. War and violence NEVER bring peace. After two world wars and countless other wars, it’s clear that many American politicians of both parties are warmongers.
Just because I oppose Israel’s immoral war against Palestine doesn’t mean I’m an antisemite. Supporters of Israel use the antisemite label to shut off criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. I’ve heard several Democratic leaders say protesters are “antisemites.” Others think protesters are “terrorists.” This tells me that some Democrats need a dictionary.
Bonus: After watching The Atheist Experience, Talk Heathen, and other atheist programs for the past fifteen years, I’ve concluded that Christians do not have persuasive arguments for the existence of God — the worst of which is Pascal’s Wager.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
Make no mistake about it: President Trump, Co-President Trump, and MAGA congresspeople are coming for your social security. Depending on where they fall on the Trump Insanity Spectrum, these anti-social security proponents either want to do away with Social Security altogether or privatize it. From laying off tens of thousands of Social Security Administration (SSA) employees, to doing away with the phone system people use to contact the SSA, to raising the retirement age, to doing away with cost of living adjustments, these haters of senior citizens want to throw millions of Americans into poverty.
We need a helluva lot more Rep. Larsons these days.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
I find it contemptible that ten House Democrats voted to censure Rep. Al Green for disrupting Congress.
Democrats had many ways in which they could have protested President Trump’s State of the Union Speech. Outside of Rep. Al Green’s protest, Democrats did little to show/voice their displeasure.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have been holding rallies from coast to coast, condemning Trump’s decimation of the Federal Government. We need similar rallies everywhere.
Joe Biden blamed Donald Trump for the economy he inherited in 2021, and now Trump is blaming Biden for the current state of the economy. That’s politics. However, a few months from now, after Trump has caused a recession, the blame will be his alone.
Vladimir Putin is obsessed with returning Russia to the glory days of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Countries such as Poland rightly fear being invaded, especially now that the United States is no longer interested in helping and protecting their allies.
I predict Donald Trump will try to remove the United States from NATO.
Whatever one may think about Ukraine, we committed to help defend them from Russia’s immoral, violent assault on their sovereignty. Sadly, President Trump has abandoned the Ukrainian people.
“The Art of Making a Deal,” my ass. President Trump is not a deal maker, he’s a narcissistic bully who seems hellbent on destroying anyone and everyone he disagrees with. We can only hope, that as he rages against his alleged enemies and nuzzles up to dictators and fascists, he doesn’t drag us into a major war.
It’s doubtful the world will do much about global climate change now that the United States has abandoned renewable energy and electric vehicles. “Drill baby Drill” is our official climate policy now.
Americans should be concerned over Trump’s attacks on institutions of higher learning, professors, media companies, and journalists. His goal is to silence anyone who speaks ill of him or challenges his policies. In doing so, he is trampling under foot the constitutional rights of every American.
Bonus: I continue to ponder my political future. If, as I fear, the national Democratic Party is broken beyond repair, is it time for me to leave the party? Or, do I remain a Democrat and focus on local issues, even though there is zero chance of a Democrat beating a Republican in my lifetime? Or, do I act on that increasingly nagging feeling I have; that it is time for me to invest my time, money, and talent in a third party?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
I’m almost sixty-eight years old, and there has never been a moment when you were not in my life.
Mom and Dad talked about you before I was born, deciding to have me baptized by an Episcopal priest. They wanted me to grow up with good morals and love you, so they decided putting water on my forehead and having a priest recite religious words over me was the way to ensure my moral Christian future.
A few weeks after my birth, Mom and Dad gathered with family members to have me baptized at the Episcopal Church in Bryan, Ohio. I was later told it was quite an affair, but I don’t remember anything about the day. Years later, I found my baptismal certificate. Signed by the priest, it declared I was a Christian.
Jesus, how could I have been a Christian at age four weeks? How did putting water on my head make me a follower of you? I don’t understand, but according to the certificate, I was now part of my tribe’s religion: Protestant Christianity.
I turned five in 1962. Mom and Dad decided to move 2,300 miles to San Diego, California, believing that success and prosperity awaited them.
After getting settled, Mom and Dad said we need to find a new church to attend. Their shopping took them to a growing Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation, Scott Memorial Baptist Church, pastored by Tim LaHaye. It was here that I learned that my tribe had a new religion: Fundamentalist Baptist Christianity.
I quickly learned that our previous religion worshiped a false God, and my baptism didn’t make me a Christian at all. If I wanted to be a True Christian®, I had to come forward to the front of the church, kneel at the altar, and pray a certain prayer. If I did these things, I would then be a Christian — forever. And so I did. This sure pleased Mom and Dad.
Later, I was baptized again, but the preacher didn’t sprinkle water on my forehead. That would not do, I was told. True Baptism® required me to be submerged in a tank of water. And so, one Sunday, I joined a line of people waiting to be baptized. I was excited, yet scared. Soon, it came time for me to be dunked. The preacher put his left hand behind my head and raised his right hand towards Heaven. He asked, “Bruce, do you confess before God and man that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior?” With a halting child’s voice, I replied, “Yes.” And with that, the preacher, with a hanky in his right hand, put his hand over my nose, dunked me in the water, and quickly lifted me up. I heard both the preacher and the congregation say, “Amen!”
Jesus, the Bible says that the angels in Heaven rejoice when a sinner gets saved. Do you remember the day I got saved? Do you remember hearing the angels in Heaven say, “Praise be to the Lamb that was slain! Bruce Gerencser is now a child of God. Glory be, another soul snatched from the hands of Satan?”
After a few years in California, Mom and Dad discovered that there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and our family was just as poor in the Golden State as they were in the dreary flat lands of rural northwest Ohio. And so we moved, a process that happened over and over to me throughout the next decade — eight different schools.
As I became more aware and observant of my environment, I noticed that Mom and Dad had changed. Mom, in particular, was quite animated and agitated over American social unrest caused by hippies, niggers (a word routinely used by my parents), and the war in Vietnam against the evil forces of communism. Mom and Dad took us to a new church, First Baptist Church in Bryan, Ohio — an IFB church pastored by Jack Bennett. We attended church twice on Sunday and Wednesday evening.
I attended Bryan schools for two years. Not long after I started fourth grade, Mom and Dad decided it was time to move yet again. This time, we moved to a brand-new tri-level home on Route 30 outside of Lima, Ohio. It was there that I started playing basketball and baseball — sports I would continue to play competitively for the next twenty or so years. It was also there that I began to see that something was very wrong with Mom. At the time, I didn’t understand what was going on with her. All I knew is that she could be “Mom” one day and a raging lunatic the next.
I was told by my pastors, Jesus, that you know and see everything. Just in case you were busy one day and missed what went on or were on vacation, let me share a few stories about what happened while we lived in Lima.
One night, Mom was upstairs, and I heard her screaming. I mean SCREAMING! She was having one of her “fits.” I decided to see if there was anything I could do to help her — that’s what the oldest child does. As I walked towards Mom’s bedroom, I saw her grabbing shoes and other things and violently throwing them down the hallway. This was the first time I remember being afraid . . .
One day, I got off the school bus and quickly ran down the gravel drive to our home. I always had to be the first one in the door. As I walked into the kitchen, I noticed that Mom was lying on the floor unconscious in a pool of blood. She had slit her wrists. I quickly ran to the next-door neighbor’s house and asked her to help. She summoned an ambulance, and Mom’s life was saved.
Mom would try again, and again to kill herself: slitting her wrists, overdosing on prescription medication, driving in front of a truck. At the age of fifty-four, she succeeded. One Sunday morning, Mom went into the bathroom, pointed a Ruger .357 at her heart, and pulled the trigger. She quickly slumped to the floor and was dead in minutes. Yet, she never stopped believing in you, Jesus. No matter what happened, Mom held on to her tribe’s God.
Halfway through my fifth-grade year, Mom and Dad moved to Farmer, Ohio. I attended Farmer Elementary School for the fifth and sixth grades. One day, I was home from school sick, and Mom’s brother-in-law stopped by. He didn’t know I was in my bedroom. After he left, Mom came to my room crying, saying, “I have been raped. I need you to call the police.” I was twelve. We didn’t have a phone, so I ran to the neighbor’s house to call the police, but my Christian neighbor wouldn’t let me use her phone.. There would be no call to the police on this day. Do you remember this day, Jesus? Where were you? I thought you were all-powerful? Why didn’t you do anything?
From Farmer, we moved to Deshler, Ohio for my seventh-grade year of school. Then Mom and Dad moved us to Findlay, Ohio. By then, my parent’s fifteen year marriage was in shambles. Dad never seemed to be home, and Mom continued to have wild, manic mood swings. Shortly before the end of ninth grade, Dad matter-of-factly informed me that they were getting a divorce. “We don’t love each other anymore,” Dad said. And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving me to wallow in my pain. That’s how Dad always treated me. I can’t remember a time when he embraced me or said, “I love you.” I would learn years later that “Dad” was not my biological father; that my real father was a truck driver Mom met at age seventeen while working at The Hub — a local truck stop. I wonder, Jesus, was this why he kept me at arm’s length emotionally?
After moving to Findlay, Mom and Dad joined Trinity Baptist Church — a fast-growing IFB congregation pastored by Gene Millioni. After Mom and Dad divorced, they stopped attending church. Both of them quickly remarried. Dad married a nineteen-year-old girl with a baby, and Mom married her first cousin — a recent Texas prison parolee. So much upheaval and turmoil, Jesus. Where were you when all of this was going on? I know, I know, you were there in spirit, but you had more important things to do than loving and caring for a vulnerable, hurting teenager.
Mom and Dad may have stopped going to church, but I didn’t. By then, I had a lot of friends and started dating, so there was no way I would miss church. Besides, attending church got me away from home, a place where Dad’s new and improved wife made it clear I wasn’t welcome.
One fall weeknight, I sat in church with my friends listening to Evangelist Al Lacy. I was fifteen. As is the custom in IFB churches, Lacy prayed at the end of his sermon, asking, “with every head bowed, and every eye closed, is there anyone here who is not saved and would like me to pray for them?” I had been feeling under “conviction” during the sermon. I thought, “maybe I’m not saved?” So, I raised my hand. Lacy prayed for those of us who had raised our hands and then had everyone stand. As the congregation sang Just as I am, Lacy said, “if you raised your hand, I want you to step out of your seat and come to the altar. Someone will meet you there and show you how you can know Jesus as your Lord and Savior.” Much to the surprise of my friends, I haltingly stepped out from my seat and walked to the front. I was met by Ray Salisbury — a church deacon. Ray had me kneel as he took me through a set of Bible verses called the Roman’s Road. After quizzing me on what I had read, Ray asked me if I wanted to be saved. I said, “yes,” and then Ray said, “pray this prayer after me: Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner, and I know you died on the cross for my sins. Right now, I ask you to forgive me of my sins and come into my heart and save me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” After I prayed the prayer, Ray said, “AMEN!” “Did you really believe what you prayed?” I replied, “yes.” “Then you are now a child of God, a born-again Christian.”
The next Sunday, I was baptized, and the Sunday after that, I went forward again, letting the church know that you, Jesus, were calling me to preach. I was all in after that. For the next thirty-five years, Jesus, I lived and breathed you. You were my life, the sum of my existence.
At the age of nineteen, I enrolled in classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. It was here I received training to become a proper IFB pastor, and it was here I met the love of my life, a beautiful dark-haired preacher’s daughter named Polly. We married during the summer between our sophomore and junior years. We were so excited about our new life, thrilled to be preparing to work in God’s vineyard. We planned to graduate, go to a small community to start a new IFB church, buy a white two-story house with a white picket fence, and have two children: Jason and Bethany, and live happily ever after. However, Jesus, you had different plans for us. Do you remember what happened to us? Surely you do, right? Friends and teachers told us that you were testing us! Polly was six months pregnant by early spring, and I was laid off from my machine shop job. We were destitute, yet, the college dean told us, “Jesus wants you to trust him and stay in college.” No offer of financial help was forthcoming, and we finally had to move out of our apartment. With my tail between my legs, I packed up our meager belongings and returned to Bryan, Ohio. I had failed your test, Jesus. I still remember what one of my friends told me, “If you leave now, God will NEVER use you!”
What did he know? After moving, I quickly secured secular employment at ARO and began working at a local IFB church. For the next twenty-five years, I pastored Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Jesus, you were my constant companion, my lover, friend, and confidante. I sure loved you, and I believed you loved me too. We were BFFs, right? Sometimes, I wondered if you really loved me as much as I loved you. Our love affair was virtual in nature. We never met face-to-face, but I believed in my heart of hearts you were the very reason for my existence. When I doubted this, I attributed my doubts to Satan or me not praying hard enough or reading the Bible enough. I never thought for one moment, Jesus, that you might be a figment of my imagination, a lie taught to me by my parents and pastors. I was a true believer. That is, until I wasn’t.
At age fifty, I finally realized, Jesus, that you were a myth, the main character of a 2,000-year-old fictional story. I concluded that all those times when I wondered where you were, were in fact, true. I couldn’t find you because you were dead. You had died almost 2,000 years before. The Bible told me about your death, but I believed that you were resurrected from the dead. I feel so silly now. Dead people don’t come back to life. Your resurrection from the dead was just a campfire story, and I had foolishly believed it. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Everyone I knew believed the same story. All of us believed that the miracles attributed to you, Jesus, really happened; that you were a virgin-born God-man; that you ascended to Heaven to prepare a mansion for us to live in after we die.
It all seems so silly now, Jesus, but I really did believe in you. Fifty years, Jesus. The prime of my life, I gave to you, only to find out that you were a lie. Yet, here I am today, and you are still “with” me. My parents, pastors, and professors did a good job of indoctrinating me. You are very much “real” to me, even though you lie buried somewhere on a Judean hillside. Try as I might, I can’t get you out of my mind. I have come to accept that you will never leave me.
You should know, Jesus — well, you can’t know, you are dead — that I spend my days helping people get away from you. What did you say, Jesus? I can’t hear you. I can hear the voices of Christians condemning me as a heretic, blasphemer, tool of Satan, and hater of God. I can hear them praying for my death or threatening me with eternal damnation in the Lake of Fire. Their voices are loud and clear, but your voice, Jesus? Silence.
Always silent, Jesus. Why is that?
If you ever want to talk to me, you know where I live. Show up at my door, Jesus, and that will be a miracle I can believe in. Better yet, if you can help the Cincinnati Bengals win the Super Bowl, that would be awesome!
If you can’t help my football team win a few games, Jesus, what good are you? It’s not like I am asking you to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or put an end to violence and war. That would require you to give a shit, Jesus, and if there’s one thing I have learned over the past sixty-eight years, it is this: you don’t give a shit about what happens on earth. We, humans, are on our own, and that’s fine with me.
A Sinner Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance embarrassed the United States on the world stage with a staged meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I appreciate Zelenskyy standing up to the Orange Bully and his butt plug.
More world leaders need to follow in Zelenskyy’s footsteps, standing up to a bully who only knows violence and power. Trump has likely gift wrapped Ukraine for Vladimir Putin, but if enough world leaders stand their ground, maybe Trump will put an end to demands that violate the national sovereignty of other states. Maybe, though it is just as likely he will drag us into World War lll.
It is astounding that most congressional Republicans refuse to stand up to Trump’s acquiescence to Putin and Russia. What happened to Russia being our mortal enemy? Something tells me Russia knows things about Trump he doesn’t want anyone else to know, so they blackmail Trump to get him to do their bidding. This was clear when Trump demanded Zelenskyy apologize for what he said about Putin — a man who has killed thousands of Ukrainians and destroyed their country’s homes, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure.
Stupid reporter of the day was the one from right wing media who asked Zelenskyy why he didn’t wear suits. The reporter went on to allege that this is a burning question on the minds of Americans. Really?
It is not at all certain that our republic will survive Trump’s presidency. Maybe, but I have my doubts. Trump is unilaterally making decisions that could destroy our economy and lead us into military conflict.
Where is the Democratic Party? I’m at a loss to figure out the party’s game plan, or even if they have one. Outside of a handful of outspoken Democrats, all I hear is deafening silence.
We now have a bathroom law in Ohio that protects us from roaming hordes of transgender people storming public bathrooms and attacking us. Of course, this is a non-issue. There is no bathroom problem outside of the cheap, single-ply toilet paper used in most public facilities.
Ohio can fix the bathroom issue by making all bathrooms co-ed with individual, private stalls. See how easy that was?
There’s a measles outbreak in Texas. Most of the infected are unvaccinated Mennonites. This is yet another example of how Fundamentalist Christianity can and does cause harm and kill people.
Connect the dots . . . between Fundamentalist Christianity, MAGA, and vaccine denial. They seem to be closely connected.
Bonus: The Southern Baptist Convention has no intention of building a database to list preachers who have committed sex crimes. Their excuses are legion, all the while preachers continue to prey on children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults. As I’ve asked about people still attending Catholic churches, why do people still attend Southern Baptist churches?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
As President Donald Trump, Co-President Elon Musk, and MAGA Republicans run roughshod over the government, causing chaos, heartache, and harm, there’s little being done in opposition by those who are in positions of power to fight back. Instead, Democratic politicians, corporate CEOs, and others once known for progressive values have abandoned past diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) and other “woke” policies, revealing that they never really were committed to these things. All that matters to these turncoat politicians and executives is remaining in power, improving corporate profits, and increasing shareholder value. Who cares if people of color, working-class people and other marginalized people are hurt in the process. When my partner lost her job last year due to downsizing, I reminded her that, to the company, she was just a line entry on a spread sheet. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that most workers are just a means to an end; that when choosing between profits and what’s best for employees, companies will almost always choose the bottom line.
In the United States, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks that seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination based on identity or disability. These three notions (diversity, equity, and inclusion) together represent “three closely linked values” which organizations seek to institutionalize through DEI frameworks. The concepts predate this terminology and other variations sometimes include terms such as belonging, justice, and accessibility.
I, for the life of me, don’t understand why a politician or corporation wouldn’t, on principle, embrace DEI. Sure, much like you, I find some DEI policies to either be ineffective or nonsensical, but that doesn’t mean the core values represented by the DEI acronym should be done away with.
The same goes for the term “woke.” The MAGA proud-loud-and-stupid-as-a-brick-crowd are against all things “woke” even though most of them couldn’t define the word if their lives depended on it.
Elaine Richardson, a professor of literacy studies at Ohio State University, defines “woke” this way: “In simple terms, it just means being politically conscious and aware, like stay woke.” [The word woke] “comes out of the experience of Black people of knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, gender, systemic racism, ways that society is stratified and not equal.”
Again, setting extremes such as “defund the police” aside, it seems, at least to me, that being woke is desirable in a progressive society; and that progress requires an alert, awake citizenry. While I certainly roll my eyes at some of the extremes found within DEI and woke groups, in the main I fully embrace the values expressed by these words. It is doubtful that one can be a humanist, socialist, and progressive without embracing DEI and woke values. I take that back. It is rationally impossible for someone to be a humanist, socialist, and progressive without, in general, embracing DEI and woke values. We can, must, and should argue, debate, and fight about specific DEI/woke positions, but abandoning a century of progress for the rabid libertarianism promoted by Trump and his fellow MAGA followers is not the path forward for the United States. Drunk on Christian nationalism, racism, jingoism, xenophobia, imperialism, militarism, and capitalism, Trump and his merry band of uber-rich libertarians will not rest until they bring on the collapse of federal/state governments and our society as a whole. The goal is to return the United States to a time before government regulations and progressive social programs. All that matters is unrestrained personal freedom for white Christians and record profits for American oligarchs. Once you buy into the lie that the United States is a white capitalistic Christian nation; a nation divinely chosen by the God of the Bible to rule and reign over all the earth (under Jesus, of course, though what Jesus wants and MAGA wants seems to be one and the same). Evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics now control key positions within the Trump administration, and with an atheist president pretending to be Christian sitting in the White House, it’s clear that this true-to-life telling of George Orwell’s “1984” will continue unabated for at least the next two years. And here’s the thing: much of what Trump is doing is perfectly legal, the spoils of winning the 2024 presidential election. Democrats can scream all they want, but Trump won the election fair and square. We must now face the consequences of a woefully uneducated populous electing a man who is a pathological liar; a man who doesn’t care one bit about their lives; a contemptuous man who only cares about power and wealth. I can’t think of one thing Trump has done since 2015 that reflects compassion for others.
Trump’s recent comments about the Palestinian people reveals the kind of man he really is. Trump only sees a business opportunity, one that will make him look good at the expense of millions of Palestinian men, women, and children. In some ways, Trump is no different from other American presidents; men who used violence and bloodshed to advance personal and political agendas. Trump wants to use bulldozers to turn Gaza into a canvas upon which he and his fellow billionaires can paint a beautiful picture of real estate development — the Riviera of the Middle East. No thought is given to the Palestinian people; the poor, marginalized, and disadvantaged; people who have lost everything because of Israel’s genocidal war against them.
Here’s what Trump had to say at a White House news conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as reported in Al Jazeera::
Today I’m delighted to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to the White House. It’s a wonderful feeling and a wonderful event. We had fantastic talks, and thank you very much, with your staff.
I want to say it’s an honour to have you with us. Over the past four years, the US and the Israeli alliance has been tested more than any time in history, but the bonds of friendship and affection between the American and Israeli people have endured for generations and they are absolutely unbreakable.
I’m confident that, under our leadership, the cherished alliance between our two countries will soon be stronger than ever. We had a great relationship. We had great victories together four years ago, not so many victories over the past four years, however. In my first term, prime minister and I forged a tremendously successful partnership that brought peace and stability to the Middle East like it hadn’t seen in decades.
Together, we defeated ISIS [ISIL], we ended the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, one of the worst deals ever made, and imposed the toughest ever sanctions on the Iranian regime. We starved Hamas and Iran’s other terrorist proxies, and we starved them like they had never seen before, resources and support disappeared for them.
I recognised Israel’s capital, opened the American embassy in Jerusalem and got it built. We got it built. It’s beautiful, all Jerusalem stone right from nearby and it was – it’s something that’s very special.
And recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, something that they talked about for 70 years and they weren’t able to get it. And I got it. And with the historic Abraham Accords, something that was really an achievement that was, I think, going to become more and more important because we achieved the most significant Middle East peace agreements in half a century.
And I really believe that many countries will soon be joining this amazing peace and economic development transaction. It really is a big economic development transaction. I think we’re going to have a lot of people signing up very quickly. Unfortunately, for four years, nobody signed up. Nobody did anything for four years except in the negative.
Unfortunately, the weakness and incompetence of those past four years, the grave damage around the globe that was done, including in the Middle East, grave damage all over the globe. The horrors of October 7th would never have happened if I were president, the Ukraine and Russia disaster would never have happened if I were president.
Over the past 16 months, Israel has endured a sustained aggressive and murderous assault on every front, but they fought back bravely. You see that and you know that. What we have witnessed is an all-out attack on the very existence of a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland. The Israelis have stood strong and united in the face of an enemy that has kidnapped, tortured, raped and slaughtered innocent men, women, children and even little babies.
I want to salute the Israeli people for meeting this trial with courage and determination and unflinching resolve. They have been strong. In our meetings today, the prime minister and I focused on the future, discussing how we can work together to ensure Hamas is eliminated and ultimately restore peace to a very troubled region.
It’s been troubled, but what has happened in the last four years has not been good.
I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there and frankly who’s been really very unlucky. It’s been very unlucky. It’s been an unlucky place for a long time.
Being in its presence just has not been good and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there. Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly bad luck.
This can be paid for by neighbouring countries of great wealth. It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 12. It could be numerous sites, or it could be one large site. But the people will be able to live in comfort and peace and we’ll make sure something really spectacular is done.
They’re going to have peace. They’re not going to be shot at and killed and destroyed like this civilisation of wonderful people has had to endure. The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It’s right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down.
They’re living under fallen concrete that’s very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again.
The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area … do a real job, do something different.
Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for 100 years. I’m hopeful that this ceasefire could be the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and for all. With the same goal in mind, my administration has been moving quickly to restore trust in the alliance and rebuild American strength throughout the region and we’ve really done that.
I ended the last administration’s de facto arms embargo on over $1bn, in military assistance for Israel. And I’m also pleased to announce that this afternoon, the United States withdrew from the anti-Semitic UN Human Rights Council and ended all of the support for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which funnelled money to Hamas, and which was very disloyal to humanity.
Trump’s bulldozer approach to Gaza is a common tactic used by the United States. Remember when the first Europeans landed on the shores of what is now the eastern United States? Who met them there? Indigenous people. This was their land; their home. Did we respect their geographical boundaries and property rights? Of course not, silly boy. We are a nation divinely chosen by God; a brightly lit city on a hill. We used proverbial bulldozers and destroyed countless indigenous cultures and communities. From sea to shining sea, our forefathers claimed land for their own that belonged to others, killing anyone who got in their way. Learning nothing over the past 400 years, the United States continues to use threats of economic strangulation, violence, and death to force countries to do what they want them to do. Trump has been in office all of three weeks, yet he has already threatened to invade Panama, turn Canada into an American state, appropriate Greenland, and attack Mexican drug cartels. From tariffs to military threats, Trump intends to get his way even if it means destroying our economy and killing scores of people.
Elections have consequences. What do we do now? We either fight back or give up. We are quickly learning that many corporations who promoted DEI values only did so because it made them look good or benefitted their bottom line. Now that Trump is in office, many companies are doing away with their DEI programs, embracing Trump’s racist bigotry. Gone are courage and conviction. Where are CEOs and political leaders willing to stand up to Trump, even if it costs them financially or politically? Is no one willing to stand up to Trump and the MAGA horde? Have we given up, convincing ourselves that there’s no hope? And maybe there’s not. Maybe Trump 2024 is the gasping breath of a dying republic. Does this mean we give up? I know I can’t, even though I have been quite depressed over the past three weeks, and I suspect Trump still has a lot more harm he intends to inflict on the American people. Do we just give in? If we can’t beat them, join them?
To my progressive readers, what do we do going forward? Is our political system broken beyond repair? Voting doesn’t seem to matter much these days. We routinely elect people who say all the right things when running for office, but once elected these very same people develop amnesia, serving not their constituents, but corporate overlords. I used to disparage people who didn’t vote, but I’m beginning to understand why they don’t. Vote, don’t vote, money buys elections. Rare is the politician who has courage and conviction. This past election, I watched both Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Marcy Kaptur morph into quasi-Republican-sounding politicians hoping to win Republicans to their side. I found their mealy-mouth cowardice disgusting. Better to lose standing courageously on your convictions, than lying just to get elected.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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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1. There is no such thing as settled law. There is law Trump and the broader right accept, and law that they don’t accept, and everything in the latter category will be relentlessly challenged.
2. There is no such thing as independence within the government. There is only loyalty to Trump and the cause.
3. Diversity is poison. It’s the job of the federal government not merely to arrest its progress where it is but to push it back, aggressively.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
Within months, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. It’s only gotten so much worse.
For the remainder of 2020, we dealt with 385,676 deaths from the disease while then-President Trump lived in denial and misled the American people every day. He lied about its danger, how long it would last, treatments and prevention. He would bring in medical experts to speak during White House press conferences and then make stuff up himself out of nowhere and undermine everything that they said.
It was horrifying. People were dying and losing loved ones and the president was spewing an endless stream of strange nonsense, drivel, and dangerous misinformation. Many millions of people believed everything he said without question.
Then Trump lost the 2020 Election. He began lying about that too. Millions believed him again. Coward politicians rolled over for him. His lies exploded in the historic Jan. 6 attack on our nation’s Capitol.
As the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out to the public at-large in 2021, the anti-vaxxer movement went into overdrive. Currently vaccine hesitancy is near record highs, so the anti-vaxxer movement really made out, a grisly and telling cultural consequence of a pandemic that’s taken 1.2 million American lives.
Regardless, objectively, the covid vaccine was a man-made miracle. Plagues throughout history have lasted up to 20 years or more. We had a vaccine in 11 months thanks to the brilliance of scientific research and modern medicine. It was incredible. It was a tremendous accomplishment of humankind by every historical standard, and people threw the most outrageous temper tantrums over it.
It’s easy to get lost in modern comfort, but I wish more people would just take a few seconds sometimes to recognize that we live in extraordinary times. The fact that we get to take hot showers every day is a monumental luxury compared to the rest of human history.
That we can communicate across the globe instantaneously is anthropologically astounding, if you compare the last 30 years of human history to the 300,000 years before it.
Look around you right now, wherever you are: desks, tables, electronics, electricity, light bulbs, appliances, glassware, furniture, knick-knacks, artwork, paint, carpeting, buildings. All of those things require science, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, logistics, expertise. Experts. Smart people. Smart people gave us all of this.
Intelligence gave us every amazing thing that we see around us and take for granted. The collective education of humankind over millennia has brought us here.
A whole galaxy of humans and human know-how has come together to give us these wild luxuries of daily existence that make the vast majority of us wealthier in health and technology and everyday human comfort than the richest kings and queens and emperors of history.
And yet. We sneer at experts. We spit epithets like “academic elites” at professors dedicating their lives to pursuing discovery that benefits humankind. And we worship flashy internet hucksters selling lifestyle scams.
We mock intelligence and glorify egomania and materialism. We crave spectacle and are voyeurs for anger, confrontation, and violence.
We live in fantasy worlds where what we want to believe is true regardless of whether it is true, because what we want comes first no matter what, certainly no matter any facts, this decadence of mind and body only afforded to us by modernity’s remarkable luxury and technology.
It is in these ways that I regard a very great many adults as simply overgrown children.
Speaking of which, five years later, Donald Trump is president again. He has pardoned the 1,500 rioters who sacked the United States Congress to try to overthrow the last election for him.
Trump’s cancellation of NIH grant review panels, as Forbes reports, includes the $7.1 billion annual budget for the National Cancer Institute: “of which more than $3 billion a year is allocated directly towards research for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer, which causes over 600,000 deaths in the U.S. every year.” The NCI supports 72 different cancer centers.
Freezing national funding for cancer research is sadistic.
It could also be devastating to America’s institutions of higher education.
In Ohio, Republican politicians are piling on. This week they reintroduced a proposal to overhaul education at our colleges and universities.
They seek to install a culture of fear and paranoia over subject matter among Ohio faculty, threatening their livelihoods and banning their ability to strike. They also seek to ban any diversity efforts on campuses as well as any diversity courses.
The clear intent of the bill is to have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and expression, both explicit and implicit, which is an atrocious insult to the entire purpose of education and all of the ideas behind open inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge.
Ohio higher education currently ranks No. 39 in America. Apparently that’s not bad enough for them.
America’s love affair with swaggering ignorance and confident stupidity continues to reach awful new heights. The bill will come due. The piper will need to be paid. The damage will be extensive.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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 was wondering, Bruce, if you had still been an evangelical these past 10 horrible years, do you think you would have supported Trump?
Evangelicalism is somewhat of a big tent, encompassing people who are rigid Fundamentalists, such as those found in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, liberal/progressives, such as those found in the emerging/emergent/red letter movements, and everything in between. I was born into, raised, and educated in IFB churches. I was as right-wing as you could be. I maintained this worldview until I was thirty years old.
Every preacher enters the ministry with a borrowed theology and worldview — that of his parents, family, tribe, church, and college. This is normal. Sadly, many Evangelical preachers never move beyond this point, believing the same things at sixty as they did at age twenty-five. In fact, these preachers pride themselves in not changing their beliefs, thinking they got everything right from the start. In my case, my beliefs slowly, gradually, at times imperceptibly, changed, usually moving to the left towards more tolerant, inclusive, nuanced beliefs. To those on the right of me, I was becoming a liberal. For those on the left, I was still too Fundamentalist for them.
I was a flag-waving Republican through and through. Vote for a Democrat? Never. (Though I did vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976, believing him to be an Evangelical Christian.) For the next twenty years, I voted Republican. As my beliefs continued to evolve, I slowly embraced progressivism, liberalism, socialism, and pacifism — though I was still Evangelical theologically. The United States’ immoral wars in the Middle East and the incessant warmongering by Republicans (and to a large degree Democrats too) challenged my continued support of the Republican Party. I voted Democrat for the first time in 2000, as I have every general election thereafter.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton faced impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I preached several sermons about Clinton’s lack of moral and ethical values, saying, that I could never, ever vote for such an immoral man. While I knew that no politician was a pillar of virtue and morality, I had, in my mind, a line that couldn’t be crossed if a candidate wanted my vote. I concluded that it would be better not to vote than to lend my support to candidates lacking basic moral character.
Fast forward to 2016 and the messianic arrival of Republican Donald Trump. By then I was an atheist and a humanist. I saw no possible way that I could vote for Trump and still sleep at night. Had I still been an Evangelical preacher, I do not doubt that my viewpoint would have been the same. Donald Trump is a jingoistic, bigoted, misogynistic narcissist and bully; a man lacking any sort of moral and ethical foundation; a man who only cares about money, power, and influence. Trump doesn’t care one wit about me, my family, and our needs.
If I were still an Evangelical, I still wouldn’t have voted for Trump. I probably would have either voted third party or not cast a vote at all. Trump is unfit for office, an ugly, vicious, small-dicked little man who cares nothing for anyone but the uber-wealthy and his bottom line. I could not and would not, in any circumstance, vote for Trump, no more than I could have voted for Bill Clinton decades ago.
The 2024 election finally taught me that the American political system is irreparably broken; and that it is time for a total overhaul of how we do elections. The system cannot be fixed, it must be burnt to the ground. We have reached a point where it is evident, at least to me, that both political parties are rotten to the core — a fact that became crystal clear to me when, in 2016, the Democratic National Committee deliberately manipulated the primary process to keep Bernie Sanders from becoming the party’s general election candidate. While I remain a Democratic Party executive committee member for Defiance County, I am not certain how much longer I plan to be so. I see no signs of life among Democrats, just a lot of finger-pointing and blame as they try to explain how Trump won another election. Sometimes, the only answer is to start over.
Twenty-five-year-old Pastor Bruce likely would have voted for Trump, mainly due to his “pro-life” stance on abortion. Those days of being a single-issue voter are long gone. Trump isn’t actually pro-life. He knows he needs Evangelicals to vote for him if he expects to win. So he tells them what they want to hear, hitting all the red meat, hot-button culture war issues. As far as I can tell, Trump has no moral or ethical values, Yet, it seems Evangelicals no longer care about morality. All that matters is political power and advancing their theocratic agenda (as we are seeing with Project 2025).
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
