Welcome neighbors! You have likely come to this site because you saw the website address for my blog on a Trump 2025 sign I recently put in my front yard. Thank you for taking the time to check me out.
I am a registered Democrat, one of nineteen in the Village of Ney. I am also a party official, representing Ney. If you have any questions about Federal or State Democratic policies, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me and I will try to answer your concerns. You may also text me at 567-210-1145.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has made all sorts of unfounded claims about race, immigration, the border, legal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, abortion, and transgender healthcare. I would love the opportunity to talk with you about these issues or any other issue you feel Democrats are wrong about. Contact me via email and I will gladly respond to your questions. Maybe, if you are up to it, we could go to one of Ney’s two restaurants and share a meal, coffee, or beer — on me.
As neighbors, we both want a better tomorrow for our children and grandchildren. Surely, we can find common ground by which to achieve this goal. I am not your enemy. I am the man sitting next to you at Fairview High School sporting events, eating at the same restaurants you do, and frequenting the same local stores as your family.
Thank you for visiting my website.
Be well.
Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
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 thirteen 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.
The Republican Party is pretty much a monoculture, with little, if any diversity, among its members. Thanks to the influence of fascist, criminally-indicted former president Donald Trump, MAGA (Make America Great Again) policies dominate and control the Republican Party. I suspect there are more than a few Republican politicians who personally despise Trump and the MAGA wing of the Party, but they know that without Trump’s and MAGA’s support, they can’t win. These spineless Republicans know that just one social media post from Trump can sink their election/reelection chances. So they say nothing when Trump espouses policies that are not only hateful, racist, and anti-democratic, they pretend the man is not a narcissist and pathological liar. (All politicians lie, but Trump lies multiple times every day, eight days a week.)
There was a time when the Democratic Party was considered a big-tent political group, but some within the Party are now demanding loyalty to President Joe Biden and any and every policy deemed “Democratic.” Granted, the Democrats don’t have people such as Marjorie “Moscow” Taylor-Green, Matt “Child Molester” Gaetz, Tom Cotton, Ted “Cancun” Cruz, Paul “Nazi” Gosar, Lauren “Hand Job” Boebert, and Josh “The Cowardly Lion” Hawley demanding fealty under pains of political execution, there are those within the Democratic Party who marginalize and denigrate those who dare hold positions contrary to those of the Biden Administration. Democrats such as John Fetterman, Jon Tester, Joe Manchin, Bernie Sanders, and The Squad (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Greg Casar, Summer Lee, and Delia Ramirez) face increasing pressure from mainstream and centrist Democrats to toe the party line. For example, I oppose John Fetterman’s pro-Israel view, but I reject the notion that Fetterman is not a “real” Democrat.
Joe Biden needs the various factions within the Democratic Party to vote for him if he hopes to win the 2024 presidential election. Disparaging and marginalizing pro-Palestinian, anti-war, socialist, or pro-environment Democrats is a sure way to drive these voters to the open arms of the campaigns of Robert Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein (or could lead to protest votes for Marianne Williamson). Young voters, in particular, are more likely to be anti-war, pro-environment, and have socialist tendencies. Pretending these people don’t exist will only ensure that Biden goes down to defeat in November. Young voters may not have much real-world experience, but they know hypocrisy when they see it. They “hear” the pathetic challenges from Biden and his feckless cabinet to Israel’s genocidal slaughter of over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, while, at the same time, seeing the President and Democrats in Congress give Israel $18 billion to continue its immoral war. These young folks make, as they should, a direct connection between U.S.-funded and supplied bombs, bullets, drones, and missiles and daily reports of bloodshed, violence, and death in Gaza. They see the mutilated bodies of Palestinian children and know that the United States is directly responsible for their deaths.
I am a member of the local Democratic Party’s executive committee. I was elected to this position in March. I made it clear to Party leaders that while I am a proud Democrat, I have policy positions that run contrary to that of the Defiance County and State Democratic Party. I made sure they understood that I was an atheist; a humanist; a pacifist; and a socialist. They knew or should have known, anyway, that I am an outspoken writer who uses this blog and letters to the editor of the local newspaper to advance my cause. I will gladly support the Democratic Party at every level, but I will not silence my voice just to give the Party the appearance of MAGA-like unity. I grew up in a home with a mother who spoke her mind on political issues; and who was unafraid to voice her opinion in public forums. I continue to follow in her footsteps — thirty plus years after her suicide — albeit from the other side of the political aisle.
The Democratic Party has my support, but it does not have my loyalty. I refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance because it is a loyalty pledge. I am grateful to be an American. I can’t imagine living in any other place than in the good ole USA. That said, I reject demands of political conformity and fealty. Nations and governments come and go. My objective is to work towards making the United States a better place to live. Most of all, I want my six children and sixteen grandchildren to have promising, prosperous, happy futures. When Democratic (or Republican) policies meet my desires and expectations, they can count on my support. When they don’t, the Democratic Party can expect to hear from me. Demands for Party loyalty will be rejected. If the Party’s tent is not big enough for someone like me, that’s their loss, not mine. I will do all I can to promote and advance Democratic policies and candidates, but what I will not do is abandon my political beliefs just so the Party can present to the public a facade of unity. Political debate and diversity are important for the health of the Democratic Party. The moment I’m told to be quiet or tone down my opinions or rhetoric is when I (and scores of other like-minded people) exit the tent.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
There’s been a lot of talk on mainstream news and social media about “white rural rage.” Supposedly, rural communities are hotbeds of racism, misogyny, violence, and rage. Supposedly, rural communities are awful places to live, populated with ill-bred, uneducated, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. Rural people are hopeless and helpless, with wrong ideas about the world.
As I read these caricatures of me and my neighbors, I wonder if the people making them have actually talked to rural people? When I hear Chris Hayes and other talking heads on MSNBC say that my people don’t understand economics; that the economy is booming; that the macroeconomic numbers say that life is grand for rural folks, I want to scream. Again, I ask Hayes and his fellow liberals, “Have you actually talked to people you think are too dumb or too influenced by Trump to really understand what is going on?” I doubt it.
I will soon turn sixty-seven years old. I was born in the rural northwest Ohio community of Bryan. I have spent most of my life living in rural communities throughout northwest and southeast Ohio. I am 100 percent country — proudly so. There was a time when rural Ohio was decidedly blue. Democrats routinely won state and local elections. Those days are long gone, and have been years before the fascist Donald Trump arrived on the scene. So what’s changed?
There was a time when well-paying union jobs were common. Those days are gone. Scores of factories have closed their doors. Factories that once had thousands of employees, now have hundreds. Who is to blame for this? Not the workers. The blame rests solely at the feet of federal and state officials. International trade agreements signed first by Bill Clinton and continued by every president since then, have destroyed rural economies.
There was a time when rural downtowns were booming. Those days are gone, and have been since the late 1980s. Who is to blame? State and local politicians, who sold their souls to big box corporations and restaurant franchisees. Politicians handed out billions of dollars of tax abatements and free infrastructure improvements to these predatory corporations, all the while letting their downtowns and small businesses die.
There was a time when small family farms dotted the rural landscape. Those days are gone. Corporate farming and concentrated animal feeding operations (factory farms) dominate the scene, often polluting the air and fouling waterways. Who is to blame? Capitalistic-driven politicians who think “bigger is better.” Now farmers are forced to get bigger to survive, turning a blind eye to animal welfare and the destruction of soil.
There was a time when rural high school graduates went to college and returned to work in their home communities after graduation. Those days are gone. Now our children leave and don’t return. Why? A lack of well-paying jobs. My oldest son is an upper-level manager at a large local manufacturing concern. He has numerous employees with four-year degrees running machines for him. They left, got an education, and triumphantly returned home, thinking well-paying jobs awaited them. Instead, they make $15-20 an hour while trying to pay off $50,000-$100,000 or more in student loan debt. Their school guidance counselors sold them a bill of goods. Education is the door to prosperity, they were told, only to learn that their counselors, teachers, and parents lied to them.
How people often view country folk
Every aspect of rural life has changed. Wages are stagnant or in decline, but prices, across the board continue to increase — especially healthcare. Our only saving grace is that housing, food, and transportation costs are generally lower than in cities or urban areas. But even here, housing prices are increasing, making it harder for people to find affordable apartments and homes. Corporate healthcare companies have scooped up local hospitals and medical practices, driving up prices and making it harder for residents to get care. Poor people, in particular, face long wait times to get appointments with doctors who take Medicaid — if they can even find one. Need a dentist? Good luck with that. Not one dentist locally accepts Medicaid, forcing poor people to go to Toledo or Fort Wayne for care, often waiting months to see a dentist.
Rural people share some of the blame for what has happened to them. Slash and burn Republicans have repeatedly cut taxes, destroying local tax bases, yet rural residents continue to vote them into office. It infuriates me that so many of my neighbors vote against their own self-interest. Why don’t they vote for Democrats? Would you vote for people who routinely disparage you, talk down to you, and call you names? Democrats have lost all touch with rural America, and in doing so, ceded the rural communities, counties, and states to right-wing extremists.
Rural people are largely religious — Christian. Most of them don’t attend church on any given Sunday, but when asked they will affirm their love for God and the Bible. The current culture wars loom large in rural communities, and this helps fuel discontent (though not to the degree that MSNBC would have you believe). Instead of engaging rural folks on these issues, what do Democrats do? They largely ignore them or call them names.
Most of the blame for what has befallen rural Americans rests on the shoulders of local, state, and federal politicians. Laws and policies routinely cause harm, as money for school and infrastructure improvements dries up. If rural people feel forgotten, it is because they have been.
If Democrats ever hope to effect change in rural America, then they must come to where we live and talk to us. Senator Sherrod Brown is running for reelection. Great guy. I will vote for him in November. Yet, at a community meeting in support of Brown’s election on Friday, Sherrod will not be in attendance. Instead, his brother will speak on his behalf. That doesn’t cut it. I want to see the guy who wants my vote. Of course, Brown knows that he will likely only get 30-40 percent of the local vote. Why bother, right? If Democratic politicians don’t “bother,” they are, in effect, giving up, consigning us to more Republican rule. This is the kind of thinking, by the way, that lost Hillary Clinton the 2016 presidential election.
The reasons for the decline of rural America are complex and many. However, telling us that we are racist, misogynistic violent, rage-filled county hicks is not helpful, and it only fuels the disdain rural folks have for liberals, progressives, and city folks. It is doubtful that rural northwest Ohio will turn blue any time soon, but inroads can be made through honest interaction, debate, and discussion. At the very least, opposing sides will understand where the other is coming from.
Let me conclude this post with a letter to the editor written in 2017 by essayist and agrarian Wendell Berry (my favorite author):
To the Editors:
Since the 2016 election, urban liberals and Democrats have newly discovered “rural America,” which is to say our country itself beyond the cities and the suburbs and a few scenic vacation spots. To its new discoverers, this is an unknown land inhabited by “white blue-collar workers” whom the discoverers fear but know nothing about. And so they are turning to experts, who actually have visited rural America or who previously have heard of it, to lift the mystery from it.
One such expert is Nathaniel Rich, whose essay “Joan Didion in the Deep South” offers an explanation surpassingly simple: over “the last four decades,” while the enlightened citizens of “American cities with international airports” have thought things were getting better, the “southern frame of mind” has been “expanding across the Mason-Dixon line into the rest of rural America.” As Mr. Rich trusts his readers to agree, the “southern frame of mind” is racist, sexist, and nostalgic for the time when “the men concentrated on hunting and fishing and the women on ‘their cooking, their canning, their ‘prettifying.’…”
This is provincial, uninformed, and irresponsible. Mr. Rich, who disdains all prejudices except those that are proper and just, supplies no experience or observation of his own and no factual and statistical proofs. He rests his judgment solely upon the testimony of Joan Didion in her notes from a tour of “the Gulf South for a month in the summer of 1970.” Those notes contain portraits of southerners whom “readers today will recognize, with some dismay and even horror” because (as Mr. Rich seems vaguely to mean) southerners have not changed at all since 1970. The Didion testimony alone is entirely sufficient because she “saw her era more clearly than anyone else” and therefore “she was able to see the future.”
What is remarkable about Mr. Rich’s essay is that he attributes the southernization of rural America, and the consequent election of Mr. Trump, entirely to nostalgia “for a more orderly past,” without so much as a glance at the economic history of our actual country. The liberals and Democrats of our enlightened cities, as Mr. Rich rightly says, have paid little or no attention to rural America “for more than half a century.” But it has received plenty of attention from the conservatives and Republicans and their client corporations. Rural America is a colony, and its economy is a colonial economy.
The business of America has been largely and without apology the plundering of rural America, from which everything of value — minerals, timber, farm animals, farm crops, and “labor” — has been taken at the lowest possible price. As apparently none of the enlightened ones has seen in flying over or bypassing on the interstate highways, its too-large fields are toxic and eroding, its streams and rivers poisoned, its forests mangled, its towns dying or dead along with their locally owned small businesses, its children leaving after high school and not coming back. Too many of the children are not working at anything, too many are transfixed by the various screens, too many are on drugs, too many are dying.
In a New York Times Op-Ed, A. Hope Jahren writes: “Farm policy hasn’t come up even once during a presidential debate for the past 16 years.” But the problem goes back much farther than that. It goes back at least to Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, who instructed American farmers to “get big or get out.” In effect that set the “farm policy” until now, and thus sealed the fate of the decent, small, independent livelihoods of rural America. To that brutally stated economic determinism I know that President Clinton gave his assent, calling it “inevitable,” and so apparently did Mrs. Clinton. The rural small owners sentenced to dispensability in the 1950s are the grandparents of the “blue-collar workers” of rural America who now feel themselves to be under the same sentence, and with reason.
It is true that racism, sexism, and nostalgia have counted significantly in the history of rural America until this moment. But to attribute the approximate victory of Mr. Trump only to those “southern” faults, and to locate them only in rural America, is a driblet of self-righteous ignorance.
Wendell Berry Port Royal, Kentucky
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Recently, Democratic President Joe Biden gave a political speech before a historically black congregation at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. You may remember, that in 2015 White supremacist and neo-Nazi Dylann Roof murdered nine Mother Emanuel members while they were gathered for prayer. Democrats have often used Black churches to give political speeches — contravening the separation of church and state and the Johnson Amendment.
Democrats have long objected to Republican political candidates giving speeches at Evangelical churches. Republicans show no regard for the rule of law. How dare the government tell them who can or can’t give speeches in churches? However, religious sects, parachurch organizations (who increasingly claim they are churches), and churches are tax-supported institutions — exempt from most taxes. U.S. law requires tax-exempt religious institutions to refrain from endorsing political candidates (though they can endorse/support issues). Choosing to do so anyway can lead to religious institutions losing their tax-exempt status. Though to be honest with you, I can’t remember a time when the IRS revoked a church’s tax exemption. A cursory Google search showed that IRS tax revocations since the inception of the Johnson Amendment can be counted on one hand. The IRS has stopped enforcing the law, allowing Democrats and Republicans alike to use churches for political campaigning. Pastors freely endorse candidates, knowing that nothing will happen if they do. (Personally, I support revoking tax exemption for all religious institutions; that churches who claim to be tax-exempt charitable institutions must prove it.)
Liberals love to scream about Republicans giving political speeches at Evangelical churches, yet are silent when Democrats do the same at liberal, mainline Black churches. Democrats are hypocrites if they refuse to call out liberal Black churches for doing the very same things as Evangelical churches do. One liberal writer said “Yes, Biden shouldn’t have given a political speech at Mother Emanuel, but, hey, the Republicans are doing it, so, so should we.”
As long as churches are tax-supported to the tune of billions of dollars a year, the IRS MUST enforce the Johnson Amendment and laws governing the separation of church and state. If the government is no longer willing to enforce the law, then it is time for Congress to put an end to the tax-exemption scam, taxing churches as the businesses they most certainly are. If congregations want to be tax-exempt, they must justify and prove their exempt charitable status. If churches cannot show that the majority of their income is spent on genuine charitable activities — and not just on programs and ministries that primarily exist to make fat sheep fatter — then they must pay taxes just like other businesses do. This means they must file annual income tax returns. (Churches are not required to file tax returns, including informational forms.)
If President Biden wants to speak to the members of Mother Emanuel, he should stand on the public sidewalk in front of the church and do so. On the sidewalk, Biden is free to say whatever he wants. However, once the President walks in the church’s doors, he and the church must abide by the law. That they don’t is disheartening and discredits attempts to hold Republicans accountable for their own violations of the separation of church and state and the Johnson Amendment.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Newly elected House speaker Mike Johnson is a Christian nationalist (Southern Baptist), a right-wing Evangelical. He thinks Gilead is a wonderful place to live.
Mike Johnson’s election clearly shows that the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and its fascist leader Donald Trump are in control of the GOP.
Our democracy will not survive the re-election of disgraced felon Donald Trump. We are on the threshold of the collapse of the United States and its democratic institutions.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and his wife deliberately lie in their “Vote No on Issue 1” TV ad. Not a difference of opinion — lies, lies, lies.
Mike Johnson wants to criminalize abortion and arrest, prosecute, and imprison women who have one.
Israel continues to slaughter innocent Palestinians in Gaza. Joe Biden says nothing of substance as hundreds of Palestinian children are bombed and killed every day. It seems Biden is intent on letting Israel get their pound of flesh from largely innocent people.
Apple raised its monthly streaming fee by 43 percent to $10. Other streaming services are doing the same, forcing users to jump from one service to the other to manage costs. So much for streaming being “better” and cheaper.
I am no longer a Democrat. I may, on occasion, hold my nose and vote Democrat, but I no longer support the party.
American bombs, bullets, and armament are killing innocent people in Palestine. The West is outraged over Hamas’ use of Iranian weaponry, but silent over Israel’s use of American designed and manufactured weapons of mass destruction. All of us have blood on our hands.
Despair. That’s what I feel right now. I see little to cheer about these days.
Bonus: Gastroparesis is an incurable stomach disease. I plan to have a pyloroplasty procedure done in November. Last ditch effort to lessen the nausea and vomiting. It would be nice to have just one day when I didn’t have to worry about what I ate or running to the bathroom to vomit. Where’s God when I need him? 🤣 It is what it is, but I’m tired and worn out from daily battles with nausea, vomiting, bowel pain, and loss of appetite. Some days, in moments of despair, I find myself thinking, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
We’ve been watching For All Mankind — an alternate history of NASA. It saddens me that we no longer have a space program to speak of.
Retirement is not for the faint of heart. Navigating Medicare is a nightmare. Only politicians could cook up an unnecessarily complex insurance program such as Medicare.
Over the next few weeks, the hummingbirds and red headed woodpeckers that frequent our yard will begin migrating away to warmer climes. We will miss them, hoping they return next year.
Will increases to monthly rates for streaming services ever end? Of course not. There’s money to be made and share holders to pay. I vaguely remember being told “cutting the cord” would save us money. Maybe then, but not now.
Cannabis isn’t a miracle drug, but for people with chronic pain, it can be a lifesaver.
A God who can but won’t in the face of suffering is a deity unworthy of our love and worship.
We took a drive though the Michigan Amish community not from our home. Roadside vegetable stands had pumpkins for sale — yet another reminder that summer is fading.
Democrats keep telling us that we are not in an economic recession. That dog don’t hunt, manufacturing employees say. Increasing prices, stagnant wages, increased insurance costs suggest otherwise. When’s the last time we’ve had a president tell us the truth about the economy?
Toledo Edison (First Energy) doubled their electric rates. Our bill for July was the highest in our 45 years of marriage. We switched providers, but Toledo Edison has two months to make the switch.
I haven’t given up on the Cincinnati Reds. August play will determine my interest level. Once college and pro football arrive, it takes the Reds playing winning baseball for me to keep watching. I remain hopeful.
Bonus: I preached my first sermon fifty years ago. “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Electric vehicles, LED lighting, and recycling will do very little, if anything, to meaningfully combat global climate change.
Bonus: Americans will not do anything unless you make them.
Leave your hot thoughts 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 thirteen 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.
Several days ago, a local Evangelical woman named Gracie Mae posted on a Defiance, Ohio Facebook group page a post calling on libraries to ban the book Drama by Raina Telgemeir. This post led to a flurry of comments. Surprisingly, most commenters were against banning books.
Kyle Phoenix, an Evangelical man and a Trump supporter, frequents the group, ever ready and willing to dispense to all who will listen hateful, bigoted, homophobic nonsense. But, hey, he loves Jesus. You know, that Prince of Peace guy; the man who said:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Jesus commanded his followers to love their neighbors as themselves. Either Phoenix loathes himself, or he doesn’t care about Jesus’ commands.
Phoenix, as does most of his ilk, uses a fake name to protect himself from personal accountability for what he says. He demands all sorts of responsibility from others, but none for himself. Even Jesus can’t make him act as a good Christian should.
What follows is a brief interaction I had with Phoenix. All spelling and grammar in the original.
Phoenix: It’s amazing. Seems the 30% of perverts and paedophiles in Defiance County all inhabit this Fascistbook group based on the overwhelming support for pushing pornography and perversion onto kids. Oh but that’s right, it’s only “porn” if Adam and Eve are shown screwing one another, not Adam and Steve.
Well with a cult like St John United Church of Christ pushing heresy and blasphemy, and now the largest school system in the county, what else do you expect? So how soon until the Defiance Public Library System begins hosting drag queen story hour for kids so that grown men dressed in lingerie can twerk and teabag infants, toddlers and teens?
Bruce: Kyle Phoenix, 30 percent of the pedophiles and perverts in Defiance County? What evidence do you have for this claim?
It seems churches are one of the most dangerous places for children.
As far as St John’s is concerned, Pastor Jim Brehler is a kind, compassionate man; a man who genuinely loves and cares for others. I’m proud to call him my friend. I’m an atheist, but I’d take Jim’s Christianity over yours 102 times out of 100.
What, exactly, have you done to help others, Kyle? Constantly haranguing people you disagree with puts a bad face on Christianity. Is it any wonder that Evangelicals are the most hated sect in America? Not for their beliefs, as much as their behavior.
Phoenix: Voting records, Bruce. 30% of the county votes for progressives and/or Demonrats. You are what you vote for. Don’t like the truth; change it. But I don’t expect someone to change who supports the party of murder and mutilation from conception to adulthood.
Phoenix: Oh by the way Bruce, I don’t read from biased sources on anything for the same reason I don’t read from the Satanic Bible. But you keep “blogging.”
Bruce: Kyle Phoenix , such a small, little, vacuous world you live in. BTW, I’m not a Democrat.
And that was that. I have had several dustups with Phoenix before, so I knew how this one would go. He has delusionally convinced himself that three out of ten people he passes on Defiance County streets are demon-possessed pedophiles and perverts. He is not interested in any evidence that challenges his false narrative. In his mind, Polly and I, along with several of our children, are murderers, perverts, and pedophiles.
There are local Republicans who are anti-forced birthers, and there are Democrats who say they are pro-life. Phoenix has a linear, black-and-white view of the local political scene; one that does not exist in the real world. For example, I told Phoenix that I was not a Democrat. I may vote Democratic, but I am not a Democrat. I am a liberal, a progressive, a socialist, and a pacifist. More than a few local Democrats hate my politics. Centrist, right-leaning Clintonian Democrats are common around here. We band together on election day because we know that Trumpism and right-wing Republicans are an existential threat to our Republic.
I am willing to work with people who are not like me; who hold different political values. Progress requires pragmaticism. However, for the Phoenixes and Gracie Maes of the world, politics is a religion-infused zero-sum game. If they can’t get their way, they are willing to burn our democracy to the ground.
Did you know Kyle Phoenix and his fellow arsonists appeared in the 1996 classic hit, Mars Attacks?
Phoenix: Gee Bruce, how long did it take you to look up “vacuous” at Thesaurus.com … 20 minutes? 45? Or did someone else direct you to it? But nice try on the ad hominem though. Shows real effort to try to big words over the usual leftist idiocy of emotes and initialisms.
So let’s say I believe you’re not a Demonrat. I really don’t know too many other political affiliations that side with baby killers and paedophiles other than them and Marxists. But I suppose you could just be unaffiliated, but vote for evil time and again.
Bruce: Kyle Phoenix, no, I’m an educated man. I know words. You know, I read books and know how to use a dictionary. Unlike you, I know the difference between pedophile and Democrat.
I vote Democrat—two party system— but I am not one. Joe Biden was my fourth choice during the 2020 primary. Ditto for Clinton in 2016. Unlike you, I understand politics require pragmatism. My mother taught me well, and she was a raging right-wing, racist, George Wallace, Barry Goldwater supporting Republican.
You are featured on my blog today. Enjoy. 🤣 I’m sure all the perverts and pedophiles who read my blog will love my post.
Phoenix: Bruce is your asinine petulant “blog” some sort of a threat? Oooohhh … I featured you on my blog … oooohhhhh. Gee what’s next, threaten to shoot me with your Super Soaker if you see me in public? Write a sternly worded letter to the editor of the local rag about “raging right-wing racist Republicans” and lump me in with that rabble because you assume anyone not in support of your demonic filth of slaughtering babies and mutilating children MUST be part of the Low-T GOP?
Educated? Doubtful. Indoctrinated? Absolutely. Your “two party” mantra says it all. But that fits right along side over 97% of Ohioans – the same rabble who didn’t blink when tyrants like DeWine locked us up, muffled us, called blue collar workers “non-essential” … and the Demonrats applauded it all and cheered for more.
But hey I am glad you feel so empowered by taking truth and distorting it into lies. The great prophet Isaiah must have seen your blog when he wrote: Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Hopefully the WaPo sees your stunning brilliance and offers you a job soon. As a correspondent to “fly over country – midwest division,” I am sure your brilliant piece of prose, ripe with immature emotes and fictional pablum, is just the sort of birdcage liner they’d love to have work with Taylor Lorenz, the Queen of Fiction and Doxxing.
God bless your efforts. I really hope this little petulant tirade piece helps with your therapy.
Bruce: Your response speaks for itself. I typically notify people when I mention them in my blog. Nothing nefarious going on here.
I will make you the same offer I’ve made to other locals who have similar political, religious, and social beliefs as yours. I will gladly, in person, publicly debate you on these issues; a good faith discussion about our disagreements. All I ask is that you use your real name.
Let me know. ❤️ So far, no one has had the courage to take me up on my sincere offer.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Today, we drove to the Ohio License Bureau in Defiance to renew the plates for our SUV. When we arrived, the place was crowded. We watched others come to the counter to do their business with the state as we waited our turn. During our time at the bureau, four young adults heard their number called and came to the counter to get their driver’s license or plates. Each of them was asked, “are you registered to vote?” and all said no. When asked if they would like to register to vote, these young adults said no. I saw in these young people the future of America. The oldest was twenty-nine, the youngest eighteen. Yet, they had already checked out of the political process. Why is that?
We know that young Americans are generally more liberal, more tolerant, and less religious than their parents and grandparents. They are the key to defeating Trumpism and fascism in this country. Yet, many of them have no interest in participating in the political process. Polly and I have six children. Mom and Dad have voted in every election since they were eighteen (1976 and 1975). We modeled to our children the importance of voting. Yet, two of our children have never voted. This distresses me to no end, especially when they bitch, moan, and complain when politicians do things they don’t like. Both of them tell me that they think the system is broken; that there’s no difference between the two parties; that nothing changes.
While it would be easy to rebuke these young adults for not doing their civic duty, perhaps we should spend our time listening to their reasons for not voting. Perhaps the system IS broken. Perhaps both parties ARE the same. It’s easy and convenient to look at the Republican Party — the party of fascism and Trump — and self-righteously list all the ways the Democratic Party is different from the Republicans. Different how? Both parties are in bed with corporate America. Both parties are warmongers. Both parties are out of touch with working-class people and people of color. I am not suggesting that the two parties are equivalent, but I refuse to buy the notion that the Democrats are the party of the people.
Joe Biden was elected for one reason: he wasn’t Donald Trump. He wasn’t my first choice, my second choice, nor was he my third choice. When I hear that Biden plans to run in 2024, I say, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Biden and the Democrats have bungled their way through the first two years of his term. Most galling are the unforced errors such as Biden’s indifference towards the effect of inflation, rising gasoline prices, and higher rent on working-class and poor people. Brittney Griner, a women’s professional basketball player, is being held in Russia. She was supposed to have a phone call recently with her spouse, a call that never happened. The state department fucked up this call, so it had to be rescheduled. Last week, the Biden administration threatened public schools with withholding money for school lunch programs if they didn’t comply with its interpretation of Title IX guidelines for LGBTQ students. Nice look. Submit or we will take away funding for providing free and reduced lunches. From the border problems in the south, to its mishandling of refugees, to the withdrawal from Afghanistan, to the war in Ukraine, all I see is incompetence. We liberals and progressives like to hang on to the morsels the Democratic Party throws our way, ignoring the decay, dysfunction, and rot.
Granted, there are structural issues that are strangling the life out of our Republic: the filibuster, the conservative Supreme Court, the military-industrial complex, global warming, and laissez-faire capitalism. Maybe these young adults see what we lifelong voters can’t or won’t see. We keep thinking the next vote will change things; that the next president and next congress will usher in a better tomorrow. And when that doesn’t happen, we repeat the same worn-out process over and over again. Maybe it is time for us to get off the merry-go-round.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
