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Category: Politics

Political Yard Signs 2024

2024 political yard signs

My partner-in-crime, Polly, and I live on a main highway, Route 15, that runs between Defiance and Bryan in Williams and Defiance counties. Our front yard is a high-visibility site, so it is a great place to place political yard signs. Over the years, our signs have been both well-received and hated. Some signs have been stolen or defaced. We have also had people throw empty beer cans in our yard and Ziploc bags filled with feces. Countless people have waved at us when we are outside, giving us a “polite” middle finger “fuck off” you God-hating commie, liberal, LGBTQ-loving socialist. Sadly, this is what passes for political discourse these days. If my detractors would just stop by for a friendly discussion, I would gladly sit down with them, share a beer, and talk politics/religion. Sadly, a handful of people have knocked on our door, but all they wanted to do was set me straight or save my soul from Hell.

2024 political yard sign
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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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Hustling for Jesus: Christian Home-Based Businesses

christian business

Suzanne, who blogs at Every Breaking Wave, had this to say about her experiences with home-based Evangelical Christian businesses (post no longer available):

One of the things that the ladies kept trying to pound in my head during those early days, besides telling me that I should use “To Train Up A Child” to discipline my very ill child, was that if I was going to be a good Christian submissive wife I was going to have to not work outside of the home. Which was foreign to me, I’d always had some sort of job outside of the home, even if it was part-time, and mostly tried to work at a time when Jim could take care of the kids so that they didn’t have to go to daycare.

This was the first time I’d heard of the family economy. I did this for a year or two, did the quilting, to make some money while I was incapacitated by the fibro. But eventually, I did go back to working outside of the home, to the disappointment and derision of the ladies of the church. I just kept telling myself that they didn’t know any better, none of them had college educations and it seemed like a waste of my own education to not work.

But like any good cult, eventually, the messages being replayed over and over again went into my head and I started seeking a way to do the home-based economy thing, find something I could do. When I started making flags it seemed like the perfect answer, most of what I made was either an air-brushed design or something like a 9 foot long half round lame flag with an inset of glittery chiffon or a specially shaped, painted, stoned, flag that was one of the kind. One of the most popular ones I sold was a half-round flag with a flaming sword appliqued into place and bejeweled and stoned with a hand-worked sword hilt on the flag handle.

What I’m trying to say is that the flags were one of a kind, hand made, designs I’d come up with, more like art work than anything mass-produced. I charged accordingly, because, none of those things I’m talking about are quick and easy. Sometimes I’d have close to sixty dollars in materials alone in the flags.

At first, I sold quite a few, and I’d get contacted frequently to make something special, or perhaps an entire set of flags just for a church. Did so well and had enough orders that I quit my job as a systems admin at an insurance company. Home-based economy, honoring God, etc…

…With the flags and large banners I ran into a snag after a few months, a snag I’ve seen played out again and again and again in the Christian home economies in many different divisions.

It would go something like this. I’d be at a teaching conference, or someone would see my now-defunct website and start asking questions about one of the items. Most of the time this was about the half round 9 foot long flags with a half-round center of glitter bedecked chiffon, not an easy item to make, but one that I’d managed to come up with a nearly foolproof method to make. I had my own pattern I’d made, and my own special technique for appliqueing in the center, while cutting away the solid lame in the center. It wasn’t easy, but it was my way to do it that worked every time.

The problem with this particular highly-coveted flag is that you needed a minimum of 5 yards of very expensive materials. It was usually about sixty dollars for fabric in that particular one. The ones that contacted me proclaiming what Good Christians™  they were also were the very ones that demanded either a) a big discount or b) to know exactly how I made that flag so they could make their own. Why? Because the $90 I was charging was thought to be too much for this item that took lots of expensive fabric and the expertise to make.

Many times I’d give in with a sigh, sketch out how to make one if I was at a conference, or explain via email. Usually what happened is that the person would get so far into the project, screw it up and then demand I fix their mess. For free. Most of the time when I looked at what they’d done I’d have to point out that they’d mangled the delicate fabric so badly that they’d have to start from scratch again. Would have been way cheaper just to buy from me in the first place.

Eventually, I’d sell the pattern, but people would still balk at spending ten bucks for a pattern and demand I explain for free.

And the people who were whining and demanding were also screaming out what Good Christians™ they were so I owed it to them because I was a Christian.

I got to see that Good Christian™ dynamic at work in just about every place, public secular business, or Christian business, people saying that since they were doing the work of the God they deserved a discount or freebie, who would not let up until they got their way. Vyckie Garrison and I have had discussions about the Good Christian discount whine.

To add insult to grievous injury every single freakin’ time I’d come up with a new design, something I’d sketched out, made the pattern for, and then made the sample and posted it on my website within a week I’d see a badly executed copy made from discount fabric of my original design up on Ebay for a cheaper price. To me, that is what separates true artists from the artisans. Artists do it because it’s inside of them, artisans are just looking to make a buck.

Even as sales were decent after awhile I got most burned out by the attitudes of entitlement, the begging, whining, demanding a discount, and the general intellectual thievery. I stopped making flags for anyone but myself, or when someone who’s seen one of mine and is willing to pay without whining. Just readied a big box of flags going on a missions trip to Cuba next month.

One thing I started to notice during my years at good old Creek Church, the tendency of the Creekers and other Good Christians™ to take advantage of people, press every advantage, and try to drum up business by means fair and foul. For example, just about everyone that sucked up to the Pastor’s wife bought Pampered Chef merchandise and many ladies at the church signed up to sell beneath her every single time she started putting the pressure to people over being Good Christians™ helping out each other.

It was as if none of them thought hard work and conviction was enough, they had to press every advantage and try to game the system each and every time. Some of them still are, hence Mrs. 5 by 5 fleecing two different sets of the elderly she did the books for out of over 20K. Today I saw her with another new senior citizen that has a small business and I’m going to see if I can talk to her newest employer’s relatives before she steals from this woman…

… Here’s what I learned in the last twenty years plus years dealing with Fundigelicals and their businesses/home-based economies:

(1) If they can take some small advantage of you, then they will. If you call them on it they will claim it’s their right as Christians to be entitled to more or they outright deny they’ve done it.

(2) They believe if they can whine, beat you down, demand, threaten or haggle long enough you will give in to their sense of entitlement and give out something for free or deep discount. Why? Because Christian! Because Bible!

(3) If you happen to not totally agree with their flavor of True Believer then they might refuse to serve you and/or jack up the charges.

(4) They act like they have some sort of moral superiority over you all the while behaving badly.

Suzanne’s wonderful rant and roll got me thinking about my own experiences with Evangelical Christian home-based businesses/Christian businesses, and a church that considered establishing such businesses as a command from God. Let me share several stories with you.

First, let me say I don’t have a problem with people starting home-based businesses. It’s a great way to make money. But, when such businesses are wedded to religious ideology, that’s where I have a problem. While Polly and I were ardent homeschoolers for over twenty years and came into contact with many families who had home-based businesses, we never desired to have one. The money was a lot better in the “world.”

In 2005, while living in Newark, Ohio, we attended Faith Bible Church (now called Jersey Reformed Baptist Church) in Jersey (Pataskala), Ohio. Polly and I loved this church, and we thought maybe, just maybe, we had found a church to call home.

Faith Bible was a growing patriarchal Calvinistic, Reformed church filled with young families with lots of children. Everyone home-schooled, the women were keepers at home, and while all the men worked, home-based businesses were quite common. I suspect Faith Bible had a lot in common with the church Suzanne mentioned in her post.

One day after church, our family was fellowshipping with several families and the discussion turned towards our family. It was assumed that we were like they were; that Polly was a keeper at home; that I was in the world making money to support my family. When Polly let it be known that she cleaned offices for State Farm and that I was unable to work due to physical disability, the air was sucked out of the room and the friendly discussion abruptly ended. It was quite clear that the manner in which we were trying to keep our heads above water was disapproved of, perhaps even regarded as sinful. From that moment forward, everything changed for us. We felt a sense of distance from other church attendees, and it was not long before we decided to attend church elsewhere (we attended Faith for many months).

It was not uncommon for families at Faith Bible to have lots children. Polly and I have six children, and in most churches that would be an exceptionally large family. At Faith Bible, we were just one large family among many. With families being so large and women not being permitted to work outside of the home, home-based businesses became an easy way to supplement family income.

Churches such as Faith Bible have a distrust of the government. They are quite conservative, vote Republican, and think the government should stay out of their lives. The Terry Schiavo case was in the news while we were at Faith Bible, and I vividly remember a discussion that went on one night at a men’s meeting. Everyone, well everyone except me, was against allowing Schiavo’s husband to terminate life support. I found it ironic that the men felt the government should step in and stop Schiavo’s husband, yet, to the man, they thought the government should stay out of their lives. I did appreciate the respect the men afforded me, even though I voiced an opinion they considered immoral. I suspect I was quite the topic of discussion later.

What better way to stick it to the man, to get the government out of your life, than to operate a cash home-based business? There are few government rules or regulations that apply to home-based businesses. Often, such businesses fly under the radar. They often don’t have the proper licenses or permits, pay taxes, or file tax returns. This illegal behavior is justified as “not giving the immoral, godless government any more money than we have to.”

Suzanne mentioned what is commonly called “getting the Christian discount.” Years ago, my Fundamentalist Baptist (please see John and Dear Ann) grandfather operated an airplane engine repair shop, T&W Engine Service, at the Pontiac Airport (now Oakland County International Airport). Tom Malone, chancellor of Midwestern Baptist College — the college Polly and I attended in the 1970s — owned an airplane housed at Pontiac Airport. One day, Malone’s plane was having engine problems, and he asked my grandfather to take a look at it (he knew Grandpa was a Fundamentalist Baptist). Grandpa did, told Malone what was wrong, and how much it would cost to fix it. Malone asked for the “Christian discount.” After all, he was doing the Lord’s work. Shouldn’t a Christian businessman want to help out a pastor? Grandpa told Malone that there would be no discount. Malone was quite upset that Grandpa wouldn’t give him preferential treatment.

I pastored Evangelical churches for 25 years. I can’t tell you the times I had a business owner ask me if I wanted the “pastor’s/church discount.” In every instance, I said NO! Just because people are Christians or pastors doesn’t mean they deserve discounts. Yet, some Christians and pastors have no problem begging for Jesus. Like Tom Malone, they say they are doing the Lord’s work, and shouldn’t EVERY business owner want to give God’s special people a discount?

While businesses often grant Christian discount requests, it doesn’t mean they like it. They are pragmatists, fearful that if word gets out that they aren’t giving discounts, they will lose customers who are Christians. Pastors can ruin a business just by gossiping about it at “prayer” meeting or mentioning them in a sermon. Maybe they will, but in my view, it’s better to lose customers than to do business with those who try to extort you in the name of God. A political example of this was John McCain being stuck with Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. McCain hated Evangelicals, but fearing the loss of the Evangelical vote, he gave Republicans the “Christian discount” and made the IQ-challenged Palin his running mate. We know how that all turned out.

I, for one, do not frequent businesses that use the fish (ichthys) symbol or cross to advertise their companies. By using these symbols, they are saying that Christian business and Christian money have more value than mine. From time to time, I will run into Christians in store parking lots selling their wares. Often, they try to convince me to buy by giving me a guilt-laden speech about the money going to support their Christian family, their church, their youth group, orphans, or overseas missionaries. I NEVER buy from people who use Jesus to make a buck. In fact, I go out of my way NOT to buy from them (and mock and insult them if they try to pressure me into buying).

I pastored one church where I had to ban home-based sales marketing during church services. From Mary Kay and Avon to Pampered Chef and Tupperware to Girl Scout Cookies and Amway, church members tried to get other members to buy their wares or attend their parties. I began to think that the church was turning into the story in the Bible about the money changers in the Temple. I saw myself as Jesus cleansing the Temple. As I look back on this, I now realize that my preaching helped to promote such an environment. I was a complementarian — a traditional-family, women-not-working-outside-of-the-home preacher, so church women, for the most part, didn’t work. This created a huge problem because most of the families were quite poor and they NEEDED two incomes to make ends meet. Wanting to honor the commands of Bruce Almighty®, they turned to home-based businesses to supplement their incomes. Rarely did their home-based businesses generate as much income as they would have made in the evil, sin-filled, secular world.

Several churches I pastored had Christian business owners who also home-schooled their children. In every case, the children became a free or poorly paid workforce. One such business was totally staffed and operated by children. What upset me the most was that the children would be running the business during the times they should have been home doing their school work. Their parents told me that their children did their schoolwork in the evening. They used A.C.E. (Accelerated Christian Education) materials, so very little parental involvement was needed. This family never properly registered with the state or local school officials, so they were pretty much free to do whatever they wanted. Still, I am surprised no one ever reported them. I suspect one reason they weren’t is that the children were quite engaging, a pleasure to be around. It was hard not to see them, though, as a rural Ohio version of a sweatshop.

Let me reiterate, I am not against home-based businesses. I am all for people making money and providing for their families. What I am against is the religiosity that is connected with many of these endeavors. Putting out a booklet that lists all the home-based or traditional Christian businesses in the area is a sure way to make sure they never get one dime from me. I expect the people I do business with to compete in the marketplace. I expect them to play by the rules, have the proper licenses and permits, and pay taxes.

Just in case some Evangelical is getting ready to whine and complain about my unfair characterizations of home-based businesses, I am not saying that all home-based Christian businesses are like those mentioned in this post. However, many of them are, as are businesses owned by Evangelical zealots.

Over the years, numerous Christians have called me up to schedule an appointment to share with me a wonderful, God-honoring way to make shit-loads of money — okay, they didn’t say shit-load. A.L. Williams, Amway, Excel, and more vitamin-weight-loss-better-health MLM programs than I can count. In every case, they are no longer in business. Evidently, God failed to bless their hustling for Jesus.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Former President Donald Trump Is a Racist

Recently, I mentioned on social media that former President Trump and Senator JD Vance are racists. I posted:

Trump and Vance are determined to come off as racists. This may appeal to Confederate Flag waving Whites, but this doesn’t play well in general.

VANCE: Donald Trump said something very simple, totally inoffensive, but frankly, obviously true to me, which is that Kamala Harris is a chameleon.

She’s a fake, and the American people have to look at her record if we actually want to know how she stands on the issues, because her words simply can’t be trusted.

REPORTER: How can you fake a race? If it’s both Indian and black, how can she fake a race?

VANCE: She fakes who she is depending on the audience that she’s in front of, and that’s who she is, and that’s who she’s always been.

A commenter replied:

No Bruce.. it’s called pandering… Somehow the left has been pandered to for so long by their politicians they not only accept it you’re now defending it and promoting it as something good! Don’t let them do that to you man.

My response:

** *, I have no idea 🤷‍♂️ what you mean. Are you saying Trump and Vance aren’t racists; that I shouldn’t take their words and actions at face value?

We went back and forth a bit. The commenter finally said:

The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser but you can’t objectively know they’re a racist when it’s clearly an opinion formed by edited media bites and talking head on certain TV channels and you do not consider other sources of information. You’re objectively not being objective. So it is you who are not being logical aren’t you? You are still using that old time religion epistemology and compartmentalizing your beliefs that you can’t possibly back up and protect them. Also the race card is trite and there is too much information and fact now that refutes most of the claims. When it’s used by the left it’s because they can’t think of anything else.

And:

The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser sigh back at you.. really Bruce? I’m not claiming to 100% know what media you consume but it’s clear from your posts and the echo chamber you created on your profile here that you’re captured by a leftist political ideology and that you’re probably a prime candidate for philosopher Peter Baghosian’s “substitutionary hypothesis”. No I don’t see any credible evidence that Trump is a racist in fact the video link I posted above is one of many pieces of evidence against that assertion. Did you watch it? The only people asserting a name calling “racists” call on him are people who do not look at the evidence. So logically you’re either only consuming false media claims or in the political cult. And it isn’t even controversial to claim the fact that Google is absolutely engaged in result changes on their site and are heavily biased towards the left of the political spectrum. That’s not a conspiracy theory. I hope your hatred for people who disagree with your assertions will go away and you will consider that maybe you can be wrong about politics.

I replied with one word: “sigh.” (Why I Use the Word Sigh.)

What follows is an article by Abby Zimet. Used with permission from Common Dreams

Hopefully, horrifically, the Trump War Room’s “comically racist” new ad – juxtaposing two images of “your neighborhood under Trump” and “your neighborhood under Kamala” – can at last put to rest any ludicrous, lingering questions as to whether the flailing felon, rapist and GOP presidential candidate, whose decades-long history of bigotry is well-documented, is really racist. Screamingly, repulsively, truly-Holy-Mother-of-God-vile: YES. 

A day after Trump’s Megalomaniac Fascist Fest with Elon Musk – more on that soon – comes the latest obscene proof there is no bottom here on race, or anything else. Shocked, we are not. This is the guy who, along with his Klan father, was sued by the Justice Department 50 years ago for refusing to rent apartments to Blacks; who made an ugly public name for himself by loudly insisting the Black, now-exonerated Central Park Five be executed and starting the Obama birther frenzy; who for years reportedly belittled and discriminated against Blacks, including using the N-word, during his crappy TV career; who boasted about all the (imaginary) things he’s done for “the Blacks,” compared himself to Lincoln, cited “Black jobs” and “shithole countries,” and just trashed both Kamala Harris – who “just became a Black person” – and “horrible” black female journalists for being uppity. 

So, sure, bring on a campaign ad deemed “the most racist thing ever.” Tuesday’s post features two side-by-side images: One shows a suburban, flag-draped house captioned, “Your neighborhood under Trump”; juxtaposed with it is an image of a group of mostly Black people packed onto the street captioned, “Your neighborhood under Kamala.” The text above it reads, “Import the third world. Become the third world.” The people on the curb were reportedly African immigrants outside a shelter in New York City; they had come, like so many before them, seeking safety and equality from an America that boasts it will welcome “your tired, your poor/your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” but too often doesn’t, especially when run by racist clowns who know only how to fearmonger, hatemonger, “other” Black and Brown bodies and mindlessly rip the “shithole” countries they’ve fled in mortal danger.

People who’ve become sorrowfully inured to the outlandish evil of Trump still managed to be horrified by racism so explicit “there have been Klan rallies which employed more subtlety.” “This is one of the most racist posts I’ve ever seen. Wow,” wrote one, and, “The racism is off the charts.” “Don’t just take our word for it,” wrote the NAACP. “They are showing all of us just how racist they are. This is what’s on the ballot this November.” “This” – this abomination – is also what Nina Simone could have been summoning years ago with her song Sinnerman, an African-American spiritual inspired by the Book of Exodus about an unholy man running from God and begging for forgiveness on Judgment Day, in vain, from the rock, the sea, the devil: “Oh Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?/Hear me prayin’, Lord Lord/Hear me prayin’ Lord Lord/Sinnerman, you oughtta be prayin’/Up come power/Power, Lord.”

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Poornography: A Careful Look at JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and How It Distorts the Plight of the Poor

somerset baptist church 1983-1994 2
Our hillbilly mansion. We lived in this 720-square-foot mobile home for five years, all eight of us.

By Lennard Davis, Used with Permission from The Conversation

JD Vance has climbed to his current position as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, in part, by selling himself as a hillbilly, calling on his Appalachian background to bolster his credentials to speak for the American working class.

I grew up as a poor kid,” Vance said on Fox News in August 2024. “I think that’s a story that a lot of normal Americans can empathize with.”

Indeed, the book that brought him to public attention was his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” In that book, he claims his family carried an inheritance of “abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma.”

“Poor people,” he proclaimed in a 2016 interview with The American Conservative, are “my people.”

But there’s a bit of a shell game going on when it comes to Vance’s poverty credentials.

Vance did come from a troubled family. His mother was – like so many Americans, whether they’re poor, middle class or rich – addicted to painkillers. In the book, Vance searches for an explanation for his traumatic relationship with his mother, before hitting on the perfect explanation: His mother’s addiction was a consequence of the fact that her parents were “hillbillies.”

The reality – one that Vance only subtly acknowledges in his memoir – is that he is not poor. Nor is he a hillbilly. He grew up firmly in Ohio’s middle class.

In my forthcoming book, “Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those without It,” I detail how Vance’s work is actually part of a genre I call “poornography.” Created mainly by middle- and upper-class people for like-minded readers, this long line of novels, films and plays can end up spreading harmful stereotypes about poor people.

Though these works are sometimes crafted with good intentions, they tend to focus on violence, drugs, alcohol, crudeness and the supposed laziness of poor people.

When you think about novels and films about the poor, you come upon the great classics: Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” Emile Zola’s “Germinal,” James Agee and Walker Evans’ “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” Jack London’s “The People of the Abyss” or John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Yet all these monuments to the suffering of the poor were written by authors who were not poor. Most of them had little to no knowledge of the lived experience of poor people. At best, they were reporters whose source material was meager. At worst, they simply made things up, recycling stereotypes about poverty.

For example, John Steinbeck had some contact with poor people as a reporter. But as he wrote about migrant camps for “The Grapes of Wrath,” he relied heavily on the notes of Sanora Babb – herself poor and formerly homeless – who traveled to migrant camps throughout California for the Farm Security Administration. Babb’s boss – a friend of Steinbeck’s – had secretly shown the author her notes, without her permission.

Babb would go on to also write a novel based on her experiences, which was bought by Random House. But the publishing house killed it after “Grapes of Wrath” came out, and it wasn’t published until 2004, when the author was 97 years old. That year, she told the Chicago Tribune – correctly, I might add – that Steinbeck’s work “isn’t as accurate as mine.”

Then there’s London, whose “The People of the Abyss” is seen as a faithful portrayal of the lives of the British poor. But London, who went “undercover” to craft a sordid account of England’s urban poor, nonetheless maintained a comfortable apartment. He kept a stash of money sewed into his ragged coat and conveniently escaped for a hot bath and a good meal while pretending to pass as a pauper. The result is a book laden with put-downs of the English working class, who are cast in eugenicist terms as a degenerate race.

When you look at the books or films created by people who grew up poor, the tone and focus often shift dramatically.

Instead of a fixation on the tawdry side of life, you see works that explore the things that bind all people together: family, love, politics, complex emotions and sensual memories.

You only have to open Richard Wright’s “Black Boy,” Agnes Smedley’s “Daughter of Earth” or Justin Torres’ “We the Animals” to see their protagonists’ appreciation of beauty and ability to experience profound pleasure – yes, all while experiencing poverty.

Wright recalls how, as a child, he would play in the sewer, where he would spend hours fashioning all manner of detritus into toys. The young Smedley loves to stare through a hole in her roof to gaze at the sky. And Mike Gold, author of “Jews Without Money,” sings a paean to an empty, garbage-strewn lot in his neighborhood that doubled as his beloved playground.

Vance, on the other hand, fills his book with selections from the greatest hits of “poornography” – violence, drugs, sex, obscenity and filth.

But Vance himself was never actually impoverished. His family never had to worry about money; his grandfather, grandmother and mother all had houses in a suburban neighborhood in Middletown, Ohio. He admits that his grandfather “owned stock in Armco and had a lucrative pension.”

He falsely introduces himself to his Yale classmates as “a conservative hillbilly from Appalachia.” Over the course of the book, he confuses himself – and the reader – by variously saying that he is middle class, working class and poor.

In order to justify his memoir as something more than a tale of a drug-addicted mother and a son who went to Yale, he fashions a grand theory that being a hillbilly does not have to be related to social class – or even living in Appalachia.

To Vance, hillbilly-ness becomes kind of a cultural trait, tied to a family history and identity, not class. His grandmother, he writes, “had thought she escaped the poverty of the hills, but the poverty – emotional if not financial – had followed her.”

In developing his grand theory, Vance takes readers very close to the now-debunked notion of a culture of poverty, in which the poor are responsible for their situation and their attitude toward work is passed along from one generation to the next.

A dependence on government handouts, according to the theory, undergirds this culture. Vance pines for an imagined glorious past of his slice of America. His neighbors in Middletown had lost – thanks to the welfare state – “the tie that bound them to their neighbors, that inspired them in the way my patriotism had always inspired me.”

But Vance finds himself in a dilemma: Are these people simply lazy? Or are they the victims of a system that encourages them to watch TV and eat bad food as they collect welfare or disability checks?

Several times he refers to people who live on welfare as “never [having] worked a paying job in his life.” He seems to fully buy into the notion that people are poor because they are lazy freeloaders.

He “solves” the problem with the age-old critique of poor people: They got there because of “bad choices.” He mentions a friend who although having a job that paid a steady income nevertheless quit it because he didn’t like getting up early.

“His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made,” he writes, “and his life will improve only through better decisions.”

And so the GOP’s young standard-bearer for the working classes simply repeats the same bootstrap rhetoric that’s been peddled for decades.

But it’s not simply a question about believing a politician or not. That would be a fool’s game.

Rather, the issue here is what I call “representation inequality,” by which I mean that one identity group – in this case, poor people – don’t get to represent themselves.

What has happened – whether it’s in politics or in publishing – is something called “elite capture,” in which those with cultural capital and power assume the right to speak for and represent the powerless.

In so doing, dangerous stereotypes and tropes get developed with serious political consequences. Just because you drink Diet Mountain Dew doesn’t mean you do get to speak for those in the mountains.

Our political and educational system elbows out most poor people. First-generation students – like myself, and like many of my students at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where I teach – have a harder time staying in school, have more food insecurity and homelessness, and will often not benefit from the normal boost education offers. They tend to have a much harder time ascending the stratified ranks of culture and politics, becoming the published authors and elected officials who might provide representational equality.

As political scientist Nicholas Carnes points out in his 2018 book “The Cash Ceiling,” only 2% of congressional lawmakers worked in manual labor, the service industry or clerical jobs before getting involved in politics. So it’s no surprise that when the wealthy want to pass certain laws, they’re much more likely to get passed.

In July 2024, The New York Times reported that Vance’s Yale law professor and author Amy Chua read an early version of what became “Hillbilly Elegy,” one that was more geared to an academic audience and grounded in political theory. She prodded Vance to change his manuscript, telling him that “this grand theory [about America] is not working.”

I would argue that his “grand theory” about the poor doesn’t work, because the poor – unlike many other identity groups – don’t have a platform to articulate and promote their own needs and political vision.

Instead, we’re stuck with people like Vance, who offer bromides at best and fatalistic narratives of doom at worst.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

When Democrats Sound Like MAGA Supporters

tinfoil hat

Supposedly, Democrats are (generally) people of science and reason. Conspiracy theories and cultism are largely the domain of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. That is, until a man tried to assassinate ex-president Donald Trump. I am shocked by how many of my fellow liberals and progressives have turned into conspiracy theorists. They think that the attempted assassination of Trump was a false flag; a staged event. In their minds, the whole event was political theater orchestrated by the Hollywood actor Donald Trump.

Imagine, for a moment, how many people would have to be involved in the attempted assassination for it to be a staged event. Right up there with fake moon landings and a flat earth. Do you realize how absurd such thinking is?

Please stop. There’s enough crazy in the world without adding to it.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

It is Time to Cut Off Military Aid for Israel’s Genocidal War Against the Palestinian People

destruction in gaza

By Brett Wilkins, used with permission from Common Dreams

As the Biden administration pushes Congress to approve an additional $18 billion arms sale to Israel even as it wages what much of the international community considers a genocidal war against the people of Gaza, Palestine defenders on Friday urged U.S. senators to support an effort by Sen. Bernie Sanders to block weapons transfers to the key Middle Eastern ally.

The Biden administration is urging congressional lawmakers to sign off on the sale of a package involving as many as 50 McDonnell Douglas F-15 fighters, as well as munitions, training, and other support, to Israel. The sale cleared a key hurdle last month when two holdouts—Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democratic member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the top Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrat—agreed to support the transfer.

If given final approval, the sale would be one of the largest to Israel since it began its nine-month assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. More than 137,500 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing by Israel’s onslaught, which is the subject of both an International Court of Justice genocide case and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan’s bid to arrest Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar.

The Biden administration has approved billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and more than 100 arms sales to Israel since October. This, atop the nearly $4 billion Israel already got from Washington annually.

“While much of the media is focused on the drama of the U.S. presidential election, we must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse,” Sanders said Friday.

“Nine months into this war, more than 38,000 people have been killed and 88,000 injured—60% of whom are women, children, or elderly. The full toll is likely higher, with thousands more buried beneath the rubble,” he continued. “Nine in 10 Gazans—1.9 million people—have been driven from their homes.”

“Many people have been displaced four or five times, and most do not have homes to return to, with more than 60% of residential buildings damaged or destroyed,” he added.

“Israel continues to restrict the entry of [United Nations] humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza, prevent the entry of key humanitarian items, and obstruct aid workers’ access to many areas,” the senator noted. “These restrictions have prevented aid organizations from setting up a sustained, effective response.”

Sanders stressed:

Yet, in the midst of this horror and violations of international law, the United States continues to send billions of dollars and thousands of bombs and other weapons to support this war. We, as Americans, are complicit.

We must end our support for Netanyahu’s war. Not another nickel to make this horrific situation even worse. I intend to do everything I can to block further arms transfers to Israel, including through joint resolutions of disapproval of any arms sales. The United States must not help a right-wing extremist and war criminal continue this atrocity.

Palestine defenders backed Sanders’ effort.

“Every single senator should be supporting Sen. Sanders upcoming joint resolution of disapproval against an $18 billion weapons giveaway to Israel, which would further enmesh and implicate the U.S. in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” Institute for Middle East Understanding policy director Josh Ruebner said on social media.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

It is Past Time for Us to Have a Frank Discussion About President Joe Biden

joe biden inauguration
joe biden inauguration

By Marilou Johanek, Used with permission from Ohio Capital Journal

This presidential election year was never going to be a breeze for Ohio Democrats running in front-line races. The National Republican Congressional Committee homed in on three Democratic-held seats in the state held by vulnerable incumbents Marcy Kaptur (Toledo) Emilia Sykes (Akron) and Greg Landsman (Cincinnati). Its GOP counterpart in the U.S. Senate made unseating Ohio’s incumbent Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Sherrod Brown, a singular priority to take back the Republican Senate Majority.

Plus, Ohio may not be Alabama-red but it’s getting there. It is a bellwether state no more. Democratic candidates face an uphill battle from the get-go to win the hearts and minds of Ohioans. Add in the potential drag on electoral success from the marquee Democrat at the top of the party ticket in 2024 and the path to winning for down ballot Dems gets exponentially harder.

That prospect has hung like the sword of Damocles over key U.S. House and U.S. Senate campaigns waged by Democrats in Ohio and across the nation all year. But today the fear of impending defeat is even more acute as the party grapples with the imploding candidacy of their presumptive presidential nominee. 

Far from effectively communicating a persuasive reason for reelection or forcefully prosecuting a case against his dangerous opponent, President Biden is the gift that keeps giving — to MAGA Republicans. They’re over the moon with the good fortune of the felon they’re fielding to recapture the White House.

Who knew a criminally convicted, twice impeached ex-president who incited a violent insurrection against his own government in a failed coup attempt would have a cakewalk back to power? Not with that rap sheet, which also includes adjudicated rapist and business fraudster. Yet here we are.

Biden is easy prey for ridicule and perceived weakness. What is dispiriting for many to watch will only get worse. The incumbent president, who has spent a lifetime in honorable public service, has already been reduced to a caricature. A muddled old man joke. From now until November pro-Trump operatives will unleash a torrent of clips from Biden’s June 27th disastrous debate performance everywhere people scroll

If you thought the president’s flubs and frailties were mocked on Tik Tok before the debate — and they were wall-to-wall brutal — just wait. Ohio Democrats know what’s coming if Biden remains in the race. What his cadre of aides and advisors tried to keep under wraps about the advancing infirmity of their aging boss is now front and center with Democratic voters and the broad coalition of pro-democracy Americans Biden needs to win. 

The panic of that electorate is palpable. They don’t want to lose their country to a vengeful authoritarian promising dystopian Project 2025 rule. They want a warrior who will fight like hell to preserve the Republic. But rank and file Democrats, Never Trumpers, and independents are not persuaded Biden can meet this existential juncture in American history.

Maybe they can still be convinced if the pervasive distraction of Biden’s cringey senior moments is mitigated. But abiding anxiety about the 81-year-old’s performative strength as a candidate has long been No. 1 on voters’ list of concerns with the octogenarian. Attempts to spin away Biden’s frailty as trivial was always an exercise in futility.

Nobody in flyover America was fooled. People saw their parents or grandparents in Biden’s shuffle and inaudible whispers — someone who had simply succumbed to the march of time. But ordinary voters, who may or may not have put their faith in Biden in 2020, were uniformly gobsmacked by how completely Biden clocked out of a presidential debate he initiated to jumpstart his reelection campaign. 

In the weeks since, millions more have seen what cannot be unseen; an elderly, incoherent, astonishingly tepid candidate unable to land a rhetorical punch against a serial liar and coup plotter. It’s past time for the tough conversations on Biden the Democratic Party ducked in January. Voters deserve a reckoning about the diminished candidacy before it’s too late.

But Ohio Democrats on the campaign trail are still ducking what needs urgent, forthright debate, still settling for the path of least resistance. For the most part, Brown continues to dodge what many Ohio voters can’t get past yet asserts “there must be a resolution so that we can get back to talking about the choice in this election.” Kaptur largely prefers to be supportive and silent about Biden’s future. Sykes has also stayed mum on Biden.

Only Landsman was candid about whether Biden should remain in the presidential race. “He could be an American hero, Joe Biden, and say look, I’ve gotta step down,” the Cincinnati congressman told CNN. He hoped the president would use the time before the Democratic convention “to prove us all wrong” but conceded, “it’s becoming increasingly more likely this is maybe just too high a hill for him to climb.”

Why is Landsman an outlier on what is obvious and distressing to constituents worried sick about saving democracy? Why, as Axios reported, were Ohio’s presidential delegates instructed “NOT to respond to reporter calls at this time” (about the albatross killing the president’s odds of winning) per the “ODP [Ohio Democratic Party] and the Biden campaign”?

Not responding to a five-alarm fire belies the profound danger of letting a free and democratic America go up in smoke. To play it safe?

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

2006: Two Op-Eds I Wrote, Warning of the Dangers of Nationalism

american nationalism
Cartoon by Nath Paresh

In 2006, I was still a Christian. I self-identified as an emerging/emergent pastor. As you will see, my liberal/progressive political views were quite developed by this time. I was far from the ranch, so to speak. For my Evangelical critics at the time, it came as no surprise to them that I embraced atheism two years later.

May 2006 Op-Ed for the Bryan Times (slightly edited):

Throughout the history of the Christian church, it has been commonly believed that state and church, both ordained by God, operate on separate, yet equal planes of authority. This is commonly called the “separation of church and state.” History painfully reminds us of what happens when state and church are joined together. This union always results in the death of many people and the authority of both the state and the church being compromised. Adolph Hitler would not have been successful during World War II without the joining of church and state together. The church lost her moral authority when she became complicit in the Aryan teachings and programs of the Nazi regime. Yes, there were those who stood against Hitler and his murderous minions, but, for the most part, the German church remained silent. As a result, the world was plunged into war and millions of people suffered and died. This is but one example of many that could be pulled from the pages of history. I am using it because it is “current” history and one that can readily be researched.

The world owes a great debt to the United States for her willingness to stand against Germany and her attempt to rule the world. The United States stood on solid moral footing and she is to be commended for her courage and sacrifice. With such a great moral stand also comes a great challenge; to remain humble in the light of great victory. Coming out of World War II, the United States had the approval and appreciation of the world. Sixty years later the United States is now viewed as an imperialistic superpower that is intent on dominating and taking over the world one nation at a time. How did this happen?

Pride! One-word answer. Pride! Reinhold Niebuhr, shortly after the end of World War II said this:

We are indeed the execution of God’s judgment yesterday. But we might remember the prophetic warnings to the nations of old, that nations which become proud because they were divine instruments must, in turn, stand under the divine judgment and be destroyed……If ever a nation needed to be reminded of the perils of vainglory, we are that nation in the pride of our power and our victory.

As the post-September 11, 2001 era continues, there is an increasingly ugly, nationalistic pride that is rising up in the United States. This errant pride is seen in our nation’s actions in Iraq and in the continued saber-rattling against Iran. Strong traces of it can be viewed in the current debate going on in the United States over Mexican immigration.

A clear distinction needs to be made between patriotism and nationalism. According to Michael Dyson in his book titled Pride, “Patriotism is the critical affirmation of one’s country in light of its best values, including the attempt to correct it when it is in error. Nationalism is the uncritical support of one’s nation regardless of its moral or political bearing.” Sadly, much of what is called patriotism in the United States is actually prideful, sinful, nationalism.

As in Germany during World War II, this errant nationalism is graphically on display in churches everywhere. Christian theology has been wedded with political ideology and given a healthy baptism of flag-waving nationalism and the result is that the church in the United States has abandoned her call to follow Jesus. Far too many churches, including an unhealthy number of churches in this area, have become pawns in a political chess game. Such churches have lost their prophetic voice. Where is the voice calling out for justice and mercy? Where is the voice calling out for peace in the name of the Prince of Peace?

The flag-waving nationalism on display in many churches needs to stop. Ties with liberal or conservative political agendas need to be broken. The war in Iraq and Mexican immigration need to be viewed through the teaching of Jesus instead of a political party’s platform. It is time to repent.

Over the past 36 months, I have visited a number of churches in the northwest Ohio area, including churches in Indiana and Michigan. I have yet to hear one critical word concerning the War in Iraq. I did hear numerous words promoting the war, and sometimes I was almost certain that I was hearing a public service announcement from the defense department. Why are the pulpits of so many churches silent on this crucial issue? Even churches that come from the “peace” denominations are strangely silent or even go so far as to promote war, in direct contradiction to their church doctrine. I realize I can not make absolute judgments when I only visit a church once or a few times, but overall the silence is deafening.

It seems that many churches are requiring allegiance to the State and her war policy as a test of fidelity to Jesus. If one dare raise a voice of objection, immediate questions of salvation and love for country are raised. Coward, un-American, unsaved, liberal, and military hater are some of the kinder words hurled at those who, in Jesus’ name, oppose war. In spite of the name-calling, lovers of peace must continue to stand for peace. It is the LEAST we can do. Churches and ministers must be prodded and cajoled, and if need be, shamed into returning to being prophetic voices in the world. Instead of allowing political agendas to control the voice of the church, the clear and emphatic teachings of Jesus must set the agenda. It is time to stop the debates about “just war” (which is nothing more than political ideology wearing theological clothes) and return to doing what Jesus commands us to do; love our enemies and be a people who actively promote peace.

May 2006 Op-Ed for the Defiance Crescent-News (slightly edited):

Every time Christians gather together for communion, it is for the purpose of memorializing the death of Jesus. The death of Jesus on the cross has many theological implications: redemption and sanctification among many others. The death of Jesus also has political implications. His death, along with his resurrection from the dead, proclaimed a new Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. Who, and all that Jesus did, challenges the politics and agendas of every generation. There is a new King in the world, and Jesus is his name.

Last Sunday, many churches took time to briefly mention Memorial Day. Some churches had full-blown patriotic rallies, complete with the presenting of the colors and taps. Others sang a few patriotic songs and said a quick prayer for those who have died in our nation’s wars. Some took time to honor church members who are serving or had served in the Military.

I always prepare myself for what “may” happen in church on our nation’s various national holidays. I would prefer that churches not meld worship of God and nationalism together, but I have come to the place where I can tolerate it in short doses. Interjecting nationalism into our worship of God diminishes the focus of our worship, and can, if we are not careful, suggest that Christianity and American nationalism are one and the same.

In many sermons, we will hear that Christians need to view the sacrifice of war in and of itself, separated from its theological and political implications. An attempt is made to link the sacrifice of war with the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus laid down his life for others and in war we are called on to do the same.

It is unwise to connect the sacrifice of Jesus and the sacrifice of war. Jesus was the guiltless dying for the guilty. In war, there are no guiltless parties. It is also impossible to divorce the sacrifice of war from its theological and political implications. War ALWAYS has such implications.

My prayer is that churches will stop being agents for the political agendas of the Republican and Democratic parties. Instead of giving public service announcements for the defense department, churches would be truer to their calling if they proclaimed what Jesus said about peace and loving our enemies. I am still waiting to hear a sermon anywhere that takes seriously the claims and teachings of Jesus concerning peace and as a result, declares the war in Iraq to be contrary to Christian teaching. Instead of wrangling about “just war” I hope and pray churches will wrangle with the implications of “thou shalt not kill,” “love your enemies,” and “blessed are the peacemakers.”It is certainly proper and right to quietly remember those who have died during our nation’s wars. Some died defending freedom, others died for a political agenda, but all died as Americans and we should remember them. We should also take time to reflect on the awfulness of war and the danger of a nation with unchecked arrogance waging war against all who cross her path.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Finding Common Ground With People Who Hold Views Different From Ours

common ground

Lifewise Academy is an Evangelical parachurch organization currently operating release-time Bible education classes in 170 Ohio school districts, including most rural northwest Ohio districts. Our grandchildren all attend local schools that offer Lifewise classes, though most of them decline to attend for various reasons.

I oppose all release-time programs — religious or not. I have been vocal about my opposition, although I am cognizant of the fact that many, if not most, of my neighbors disagree with me. This is not surprising since my neighbors are overwhelmingly Christian, and a sizeable percentage of them are Evangelicals. Seventy percent of locals voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Their moral and ethical beliefs are standard fare for rural Midwestern communities. These are my people even though my political, religious, and social beliefs differ from theirs. I’m a country hick, and this is “home” for Polly and me and our children and their families. As a liberal/progressive/socialist/atheist/pacifist, I’ve diligently worked to live true to my beliefs while at the same time interacting with people whose beliefs are different from mine. I want to be known by my neighbors as a kind, thoughtful, respectful person; a conundrum for them to wrestle with as they try to understand what they see and know about me in light of what their pastors say about atheists; that we are immoral haters of God who lack purpose and meaning in their lives. The only way I know to change their opinions about atheists is to model decency, kindness, and compassion. If I have learned anything in my sixty-seven years of life it is this: we will be judged by how we live, not by what we believe.

I am a member of several private anti-Lifewise Facebook groups. Most participants are either non-believers, atheists, or liberal Christians. I find their hostility towards local people involved in the Lifewise program troubling. One woman, an atheist, asked if it would be okay to flip off the driver of the Lifewise bus while he was hauling children from the school to the program meeting place? I thought, are you fucking kidding me? What do hope to accomplish by telling the bus driver to fuck off? And what will the kids think of you as a person as they see you flip off the driver? Passive-aggressive, childish behaviors accomplish what, exactly? Oh, doing so feels good at the moment — I know, I have done it myself — but if the goal is to challenge Lifewise, what is gained by waving your middle finger outside the passenger window of your automobile? That’s a rhetorical question. Nothing is gained by such actions, and they often either fuel persecution complexes in believers or paint unbelievers in a negative light. If our goal is to make a difference, we must carefully consider how our words and behavior are viewed by those we disagree with.

Many non-Christians, especially those who read sites such as this one, think the apologists and zealots who email me and comment on my writing are normative; that their words and behavior are normal for Evangelical Christians. They are not. Such behavior is actually atypical, even when it comes to preachers. I have one Facebook friend who spends his waking hours railing against and condemning Evangelical preachers. In his uninformed mind, all preachers are evil, lazy money grubbers. He wrongly thinks televangelists and megachurch pastors are representative of all Evangelical preachers. This is patently untrue. Evangelicals can have bad beliefs, irrational beliefs, and still be good people. When my friend rails against Evangelical preachers, portraying them as evil monsters, I want to say to him: you do know I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years. Do you think I am an evil monster; a bad person; an indolent person who takes advantage of others? I hope not. I may have had ignorant beliefs, but I genuinely loved and cared for others. And so do most preachers.

Earlier today, Polly and I were working in the yard. One of our neighbors pulled up in his truck to say hi. Jake is a local school teacher and the coach of the high school basketball team. He’s involved with both Lifewise Academy and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He is a committed Christian. Should I treat him as my enemy? Should I flip Jake off as he drives by? Jake and I have a lot of things in common. Yes, we differ when it comes to religion and politics, yet we have had numerous discussions about education, sports, and family. Both of us choose to focus on our common experiences instead of the things that divide us. I have never felt Jake was trying to evangelize me. He’s a decent man I genuinely enjoy talking to, even though we disagree on numerous political, religious, and social issues.

My primary care doctor is an Evangelical Christian, as both of us were when we met twenty-eight years ago. He knows my religious and political beliefs have changed over the years, yet we have been able to maintain a healthy relationship. At my last visit, my doctor told me, “I know your beliefs have changed, but I want you to know that I still consider you a friend.” His words meant the world to me.

I am at a strange place in life. I deconverted sixteen years ago. I went through the angry atheist phase, but these days I don’t have it in me to constantly fight with people about religion and politics. Certainly, I am more than willing to excoriate people such as Revival Fires, Charles, James, Dr. David Tee, and others. I have no tolerance for such people: bullies for Jesus who only want to harm others. That said, I know that these miscreants are not representative of Christianity. As much as lies within me, I want to live in peace with my neighbors. I want to enjoy their company at ballgames and local social events. I don’t want to be known as an angry, argumentative atheist. I want to take the higher ground, even when others don’t.

How do you interact with your Evangelical neighbors and fellow workmates? Please share your experiences in the comment section.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

In Mississippi, It is Still the 1960s

monkey man mississippi

By Abby Zimet, used with permission from Common Dreams

As the dystopian movie Civil War sets records depicting the “colorful horrors of the American future” on its current trajectory, we saw the same mindless, time-honored rancor play out at “Ole Miss being Ole Miss,” where a pack of rabid, jeering, shit-for-brains frat bros with white-supremely punchable faces set upon a black female student protesting genocide in Gaza. On foul display: That “Southern Heritage we’re always Jim Crowing about,” and, without change, the next generation of GOP goons and bigots. 

Robert Reich recently posted a message of hope to his students, graduating at a “tremulous” time in a world beset by racism, genocide, climate change, culture wars, rising authoritarianism. Like many of us, Reich also entered adulthood at a bitter time, in 1968, amidst war, assassinations, cities burning. “I ask my students to hold on,” he writes. “To use their lives and careers to make America better. To try to heal the world.” It’s a tough ask in a fractious time, now grimly depicted in Alex Garland’s Civil War about a nihilistic America “at war with itself.” What one critic calls “a cautionary tale about America’s inevitable self-destruction,” it offers a harrowing look at “the horrors that lie ahead for a great country on the rocks – and what America has done to itself already,” with its “motiveless carnage,” tarnished ideals, president “who has raped the U.S. Constitution,” and beleaguered free press, including “an aging survivor of what’s left of the New York Times,” “trying to record what they witness in the line of fire (as) the rest of us die.” Its bleak message: “If things continue in the (current) political direction, no one will be safe from annihilation in the next decade.”

In real life, America’s political landscape takes it down a notch or so, but still leans dark. A GOP-controlled House big on “pointless gestures and posturing” just plumbed new McCarthyist depths by passing a bill that conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, “an insult (to) historical memory erasing decades of Jewish anti-Zionist politics”; its crypto-fascist “leader” Mike Johnson plans hearings on anti-genocide college protests to “look at the root causes funded by, I don’t know, George Soros or overseas entities.” A corrupt, far-right judicial system now includes in its plutocratic ranks not just Alito, Thomas et al but Trump fangirl Aileen ‘What Classified Documents?’ Cannon, who claims her newly exposed omission of fat-cat-funded vacations was “completely inadvertent.” Thanks to such chicanery – and despite efforts to protect election integrity and its stewards – a new survey shows over half of all election officials fear for their safety, from harassment to assault, and for their ability to do their jobs without political meddling. And the “petty little shit-stain” who so helped shred our democratic norms is still free (for now), and jabbering.

Of course, the “whining train-wreck” now seething through his sordid criminal trial – as Stormy Daniels say she was “ashamed” of their (ewww) sexual encounter – still pursues his rampage back to power. Last weekend, free from the legal strictures he gripes keep him from campaigning, he again fled to his tacky golf club to beg rich people for more money to keep him out of jail; with no low, he even scrounged for $9,000 in gag order fines. At a $40,000-a-plate bash, he groused about taking selfies with small donors who don’t deserve them, called Biden “the Gestapo” and Jack Smith “a fucking asshole,” deemed 40% of Americans moochers who “get welfare to vote and then they cheat,” and paraded his trashy VP hopefuls like a motel pageant of Miss Florida also-rans: Doug Burgum – “He’s a very rich man”; Kristi Noem, now urging Biden’s dog Commander be added to the kill list – “Somebody that I love”; Byron Donalds – “Somebody who’s created something very special, donors worth millions of dollars…I like diversity. Diversité, as you would say.” And sniveling lapdog Tim Scott, in limbo with no word from on high even as he faithfully declines six times to say he’ll accept the 2024 election results. 

Sigh. With such civic and moral mentors, thus do we get the savage, racist, redneck frat boys at Ole Miss who somehow never learned – so much for teach your children well – it is not acceptable, when witnessing a group of righteous fellow students acting in conscience to protest the slaughter of many thousands of innocents in Gaza, to single out a black woman and leer, jeer, boo, screech, give her multiple fingers, jump up and down making grotesque faces and grunting monkey noises, clutch their crotches, throw food and cups of water, chant “We Want Trump!” “Fuck Joe Biden!” and shriek, “Who’s your daddy?,” “Take a shower,” “Lizzo, Lizzo!”, “Fuck you fat-ass!” “Your nose is huge!” “Shave your legs!” “Fuck you fat bitch!” and “Lock her up!” The woman, identified as graduate student Jaylin Smith, kept filming as the idiot yahoos, safely surrounded by hundreds of barbarian peers, some in stars-and-stripes overalls, feverishly bounced around her. Reports said they outnumbered by about 10-to-1 the roughly 30, diverse students with UMiss for Palestine, who calmly carried Palestinian flags and signs: “Free Palestine,” “Stop the Genocide” and “U.S. Bombs Take Palestine Lives.”

Many of the yokels – one sage: “A thousand faces of ‘peaked in high school’…The end product of a failed state” – reportedly had no idea what the protest was about. Said one, “I don’t know what they’re doing here. I just want them gone.” See the ever-prescient William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” For many, the ugly spectacle summoned “the ghosts of UM’s past” at a school nicknamed for a plantation term, that long called its sports teams the Rebels and its mascot Colonel Reb, still has only 11% black students in a state nearly 40% black, and remains famous for the 1962 riots that followed the admission, a full eight years after Brown v. Board of Education banning segregation, of 29-year-old veteran James Meredith, the school’s first African-American student, whose arrival on the Oxford campus was accompanied by 1,400 US Marshalls and federal troops and who later said of the experience, “I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One.” In 1964, Nina Simone released her searing song, Mississippi Goddamn: “Hound dogs on my trail/school children sittin’ in jail/thinkin’ every day’s gonna be my last/I don’t belong here, I don’t belong there.”

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After video of the douchebag behavior toward a lone black woman by a horde of hooting good ole boys was met with outrage, UM Chancellor Glenn Boyce faintly acknowledged the school’s “challenging” history, noting, “Incidents like this can set us back.” Citing “offensive and inappropriate” statements and “actions that conveyed hostility and racist overtones,” Boyce said the school would “investigate” the conduct of at least one student and “determine whether more cases are warranted.” “Behaviors and comments that demean people because of their race or ethnicity…undermine the values that are fundamental to a civil and safe society,” he said in a statement. “People who say horrible things to people because of who they are will not find shelter or comfort on this campus.” Still, it remains to be seen if so-called adults who likewise say horrible things – like Mississippi’s Gov. Tate Reeves, who posted video with, “Warms my heart,” and Georgia Rep. and “racist POS” Mike Collins, who captioned the repulsive scene “Ole Miss taking care of business” – will also be held accountable. (His Congressional office number is 202-225-4101. Just sayin’.)

A ghastly piece of work who’s suggested murdering migrants by throwing them Pinochet-style from helicopters and introduced a bill to ban federal “zealots” from removing Greg Abbott’s deadly razor buoys from the Rio Grande, Collins later backtracked, slightly. He bombastically noted there “seems to be some potentially inappropriate behavior that none of us should seek to glorify” and suggested if someone “is found” to be a racist POS “they should be punished (and) will hopefully seek forgiveness” before doubling back down on “pro-Hamas, anti-American, Antifa anarchists” who “run roughshod” over nice rebels “there to learn and enjoy college.” Meanwhile, UM’s NAACP chapter swiftly condemned counter-protesters’ “reprehensible actions,” identified the monkey asshole as James “JP” Staples from Phi Delta Theta, and called for his expulsion along with that of Connor Moore and Rouse Davis Boyce from Kappa Alpha Order as the “primary perpetrators.” The next day, Phi Delta Theta removed Staples for behavior that was “offensive, outside the bounds of this discourse, and contradictory to our values.” The school has yet to take any further action.

But Toby Morton has. A writer for South Park and MadTV, Morton is also the “immature and irresponsible” creator of a series of Fascist Websites paying tribute, thanks to idiotically unregistered domain names, to the vile likes of Greg Abbott – “People die on his watch” – Elise Stefanik – “Let’s keep it white” – DeFascist 24 – “I’ve always strived to promote a safe and welcoming space for every white nationalist in Florida and beyond” – and Tennessee’s Cameron Sexton: “You racist? I got your back.” Now, he has a campaign website for J.P. Staples – “Racially driven experience in hate” – starting with a Hitler quote, “The first million was the hardest.” “I’ve been carrying this burden for far too long, and I can’t hold it in any longer,” it reads. “I hate so much it consumes me…I hate the way black people look at me, the way they talk, the way they exist…Here I am, confessing my deepest, darkest secret. I’m a scared little bitch. I fear those who are superior to me. I fear people will see who I truly am – a piece of shit. Thankfully, I represent many Americans and how we think.” And there are testimonials! Kristi Noem: “Does he have a dog?” MTG: “Welcome to the GOP.” 

Staples has scrubbed his social media accounts, forgetting the Internet is forever, but sleuths were quickly on it. From a Texas MAGA family whose father is a repeat DWI offender, “Monkey Boy” evidently “hates all races but his own.” His posts are both racist and anti-Semitic, raging at “cock-sucking Jews” who after a week removed from streaming a movie he wanted to watch and idly wondering “if Jews use the term ‘baby in the oven'” for someone pregnant. Observers mused on his future job prospects: Hero good ole boy a la Kyle Rittenhouse, or landscaping assistant, Trump advisor, guy “asking people if they want fries with their order for the rest of his life?” Many see him as “a sterling (result) of spectacularly bad parenting – mini-racists pop out.” “You’re looking at the next generation of racists,” said one, who included girlfriends “cheering (them) on – the Klan rode up to the meeting, but the wives sewed the capes and hoods.” They deem him “the true face of Mississippi,” of “the Republican Party and how they behave when nobody’s looking” – or even when we are – and of the ghosts of America’s racist past: Still and all, “They walk among us.”

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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