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, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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.
Almost 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. This is unconscionable.
If Donald Trump was not on the 2024 ballot, Joe Biden would not get my vote. His immoral inaction over Israel’s war against the Palestinian people is a bridge too far for me.
Biden plans to give Israel $18 billion more in weapons of mass destruction. Bernie Sanders is right, Israel should not receive a nickel more in U.S. aid as long as they are waging indiscriminate war against defenseless Palestinians and withholding/hindering humanitarian aid.
Studies show increased DNA tests reveal incest more prevalent than thought. Is anyone really surprised by this? I suspect the same can be said for an increase in people finding out that their biological father is not the man who says he is.
Hillary Clinton tells voters who are upset over Biden-Trump rematch to “get over yourself.” Sorry, Hillary I’m still pissed over your feckless 2016 presidential campaign. Taking pot shots at Democrats who want better candidates and principled policies is driving people away from the Party. You’ve been warned.
Major League Baseball ⚾️ has started. Hope springs eternal. Will this be the year my Cincinnati Reds make a deep playoff run? Please God . . . 🤣
Arizona Republicans said they wanted a total ban on abortion, and the Supreme Court gave them one. Now they are distancing themselves from the very thing they wanted. Why? They fear being voted out of office by angry women who are tired of men controlling their reproductive rights.
Don’t believe one word Trump says about abortion. He will literally say anything to get elected. I guarantee you, once elected he will give forced birthers exactly what they want.
Our kitten, Petey, the Ferret, is six months old. We are currently living through the cat equivalent of the terrible twos. Last night, Polly put leftover garlic bread in a bag and left it on the kitchen counter. Come morning, garlic bread was spread all over the kitchen/living room floor. The bag? Petey took it upstairs. Never a dull moment.
Wonder and awe for this atheist was seeing and experiencing the total eclipse on Monday. God is nothing compared to this.
Bonus: Polly started her new job last week at Sauder Manufacturing in Stryker, Ohio. She is working first shift in their sewing department. This was an inter-company move, so she kept all her benefits, albeit with a $160 a week play cut since she is no longer a manager. We survive, to live another day.
By Chauncey DeVega, a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com.
One of the great errors of the American mainstream news media in the Age of Trump is an assumption that democracy is a settled matter in this country and that Republicans and Democrats are both equally invested in normal politics and consensus where the differences are just “partisan” and not existential. In the Age of Trump (and the years and decades that brought us here), that is manifestly not true. Public opinion polls and other research show that today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement no longer support pluralistic multiracial democracy. Any members of the news media who conclude “everyone already knows” about Donald Trump’s violence so “why keep reminding them, it is old news,” is committing a number of gross errors in logic and inference.
Most Americans do not follow the news and current events closely. Moreover, political scientists and other experts have repeatedly shown that the mass public is ignorant and not highly sophisticated in terms of their political decision-making and knowledge. Even worse, public opinion polls now show that a larger percentage of Americans are possessed by collective amnesia and are actually yearning for a return to the horrible years when Donald Trump was in the White House.
This refusal to adapt and change for the better in service to real pro-democracy journalism and its dictate to pursue the real truth and not just what is comfortable and the “consensus”, is one of the many reasons why the mainstream news media has lost credibility with huge swaths of the American public.
Channeling Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Donald Trump and many of his MAGA followers have already targeted the American mainstream news media and its reporters and journalists as “enemies of the people.” To that end, Trump and his enforcers are threatening and planning (as publicly documented in Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere) how they are going to put “disloyal” and “non-complaint” (in their words “unpatriotic”) reporters, journalists, and other truth-tellers in the back of those pickup trucks right next to President Biden and their other enemies. Those threats are not metaphorical. They are literal.
When the autocrat, fascist, or some other enemy of democracy tells you what they are going to do you should always believe them. They are not kidding. Unfortunately, too many members of the American news media refuse to do so — and it will only be their undoing. They were repeatedly warned. Denial will not save them.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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.
Spring is sneaking up on far northwest Ohio. Starlings, grackles, robins, and cowbirds have returned to our feeders.
Ohio State fired its men’s basketball coach a few weeks ago. Since then, the team has only lost one game. A win against Rutgers and a win or two in the Big Ten tournament and the team should make the NCAA tournament.
In 1979, I worked an entry level union job that paid $8 an hour with zero cost health insurance. If this job’s pay rate had kept up with inflation, it would be $33 an hour today. A similar job today starts at $15 with exorbitant insurance costs. Real wages have been flat or in decline for decades, especially when counting benefit cost increases.
It is clear that the U.S. Supreme Court is trying to keep Trump from being tried for his crimes. By delaying the trial date, the Court is making it impossible to hold Trump accountable for fomenting the 1-6 insurrection — yet another reminder that rich people are held to a different standard of justice than poor people.
It’s embarrassing to watch the Biden administration air drop food into Gaza. It’s hard to watch Israel neuter the United States, knowing we could get their immediate attention by cutting off aid and ending arms shipment — but we won’t.
The “undecided” vote in Michigan is a blaring warning siren to Biden and his handlers; one that says, “Put an end to the war crimes in Palestine, or come November, we will not vote for you.” So far, it seems Biden is deaf.
Abortion will be a deciding factor this November, and Republicans know it. That’s why these liars for Jesus are trying to distance themselves from the Alabama IVF ruling — pretending they don’t know IVF results in “murdered babies.”
A writer for the Toledo Blade warned Ohioans that buying cannabis in Michigan and taking it over the state line is a federal crime. I’ll be sure to watch for FBI and DEA agents the next time I break the law. I’m sure busting recreational marijuana users is their top priority.
It’s been thrilling to watch Iowa guard Kaitlin Clark play basketball this year. Today, she broke Pistol Pete Maravich’s all-time NCAA scoring record.
I heard a dumbass on MSNBC say that Mitch McConnell was an “old-time” Republican, not like the MAGA Republicans today. McConnell did more to harm our nation than all the Trump worshippers combined. Incalculable harm that left deep, lasting scars, that’s McConnell’s legacy.
Bonus: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist, as his words at the border this weekend clearly show. Yes, the U.S. (and Mexico) has a border problem, but the men, women, and children trying to immigrate are, for the most part, decent people. Trump’s words are racist, no different from those uttered by other race baiters.
While there are certainly Evangelicals who publicly speak out against Donald Trump, they are black swans in a bevy of white ones. They exist, but largely have no meaningful voice within Evangelicalism. In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, over 80 percent of voting white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. And come November, I have no doubt that most of these “godly” followers of Jesus will vote for him again. What has happened to Evangelicals that they can no longer see things from a Biblical or moral perspective? How is it that Evangelical churches have become the “ministry of truth” for Trump and his fellow MAGA Republicans? What happened to Evangelical commitments to holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord?
Remember the President Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal? Remember Clinton’s lies? At the time, I was the pastor of Somerset Baptist Church — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio. The Sunday following news reports of Clinton’s immoral, adulterous behavior, I took to the pulpit and lambasted him, pointing out that he claimed to be a Christian, yet he seduced a young college intern and had sex with her. I know of other Evangelical preachers who did the same. It seemed clear to me at the time that our political leaders, including President Clinton, must be held to high moral and ethical standards. If churches and pastors were to be clarions of morality and virtue, then politicians — Democrats and Republicans alike — must be held accountable for immoral and unethical behavior. While my view has moderated a bit over the ensuing years, I still believe that people who work for and serve the public, be they politicians, preachers, lawyers, policemen, doctors, or school teachers, must be held to high standards. Using your power and authority to seduce and take sexual advantage of vulnerable women (and men) is morally wrong, and people who engage in such behavior, including presidents and congresspeople, should lose their jobs.
My how things have changed. Trump, who claims to be a Christian — James Dobson called him a “baby Christian” — is immune from criticism and accountability for his immoral, unethical, and sinful behaviors; sins so heinous that the Bible says that people who commit such sins will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
Charisma News is, by far, the biggest defender of all things Trump. There is no crime or sin so bad that Charisma can’t find a writer to defend, justify, or deflect Trump’s wickedness. Take Oscar Amaechina, the president of Afri-Mission and Evangelism Network and a frequent author for Charisma. With Trump’s orgiastic juices dripping from the corner of his lips after giving his small-dicked hero metaphorical head, Amaechina has nothing but praise for Donald J. Trump — a man well known for his sexual and financial crimes; a man who lies so often that it is impossible for him to tell the truth.
Now, it is clear to everyone that Donald Trump has many moral failures. Some have described him as a racist, others a corrupt leader, and some say he is a liar. But If he wins the primary of his party, between him and Biden, who do you think will create an environment for Christianity to thrive? Or do we pretend that our faith does not matter when politics are concern? Sincere answers to these questions will guide your decisions come November.
I know that Trump has his weaknesses, but he did something that endeared him to us in Nigeria. On September 8, 2020, our then-president Muhammadu Buhari said: “I believe I was about the only African amongst the least developed countries that Trump invited and when I was in his office, only myself and himself, only God is a witness, he looked at me in the face and said, ‘Why are you killing Christians?’”
It takes a man who believes in the sanctity of life and love for humanity to ask such delicate and sensitive questions. I must confess that I was touched by this question which indicated that someone cares about the survival of the Nigerian Christians. Now that no one is asking this question, we have seen how Nigerian Christians are slaughtered on a daily basis recklessly.
This is not the time to be politically correct, nor the time for interdenominational criticisms. The evangelicals should also know that this is not the time to discriminate or claim that they can do it all alone. This is the time to bring everyone who calls on the name of Christ together. All should pray and work hard so that all will be free to practice their faith when religious freedom is restored first in America and then all around the world, including in my own country of Nigeria.
When one of you says, “’I am a follower of Paul,’ and another says, ‘I follow Apollos,’ aren’t you acting just like people of the world?” (1 Corinthians 3:4) A house divided against itself shall not stand (Mark 3:25). I am not oblivious to the fact that Trump and Biden claim to be Christians, but it is not about their claims that should matter to American Christians, but their dispositions.
Who between the two will favor the course of the Christian faith? Let all American people of faith vote to have freedom to serve their God without intimidation or harassment.
Amaechina admits that it is clear that Trump has many moral failures, yet he ignores them because all that matters is what Trump will deliver for Christians politically. Amaechina adds “Some have described him as a racist, others a corrupt leader, and some say he is a liar.” What I want to know is this: does Amaechina think Trump is a racist, corrupt leader, and a liar? The evidence is clear, Trump is all three. He is also a pussy-grabbing rapist and pervert, a man with licentious sexual appetites. We know just by listening to the man that he cannot tell the truth, even when there is no need to lie. We know he is in bed with dictators such as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orban. We know he is a narcissist, a psychopath, a man without empathy or sympathy for other people. We know he wants to be a dictator, using the U.S. Justice Department and the military to punish his enemies, including the press. We know he wants to deport or incarcerate millions of people of color. We know he wants to lock up socialists, atheists, Muslims, and other undesirables in internment camps so they can be re-educated in proper American thinking. We know Trump is a racist and a misogynist. And Amaechina KNOWS all these things too, yet instead of speaking truth to power and condemning his vile, violent behavior, he justifies and condones Trump’s debauchery. Why? Well, Trump is nice to Evangelicals and delivers gifts from their wishlists on Christmas, Easter, and their birthdays. Amaechina and his fellow Evangelicals have sold their souls for bowls of pottage, trading moral authority for naked political power. In doing so, they have ceased to be Christian.
Amaechina says, with a straight face, that Trump is “a man who believes in the sanctity of life and love for humanity.” The only “humanity” Trump loves is the man who stares back at him when he looks at a mirror. As far as the “sanctity of life” is concerned, Trump is not pro-life. He sees Evangelicals and their commitment to forcing women to have babies as tools he can use to advance his political cause. Without the Evangelical vote, Trump cannot win the 2024 presidential election. He is willing to tell Evangelicals what they want to hear; that he alone is the pro-life president; that he alone overturned Roe v. Wade; that he alone is the defender of the one truth faith; that he alone will restore religious (white Christian) liberty and freedom. Never mind the fact that Trump rarely, if ever reads the Bible, never attends church, doesn’t pray or ask God to forgive him of his sins, and shows no signs that he knows one thing about what Christians believe and practice.
Amaechina concludes his sticky defense of Trump by saying, “I am not oblivious to the fact that Trump and Biden claim to be Christians, but it is not about their claims that should matter to American Christians, but their dispositions.”
There is no question that Joe and Jill Biden are practicing Roman Catholics. There is also no question that Trump is not, in any meaningful sense of the word, a Christian. It shouldn’t take an atheist to point out that Trump is an egotistical maniac; a man who has no regard for Christianity, Jesus, or the Bible; and that Evangelicals are nothing more than a political prop to him; a means to an end. Amaechina wants his fellow Evangelicals to ignore both Trump’s and Biden’s claims of faith. Instead, he wants people to focus on their “dispositions.” That’s a good idea, and if Evangelicals follow his advice, there’s no doubt that they will vote for Joe Biden in November. Of course, that ain’t going to happen. All that matters to Evangelicals is what Santa Trump can deliver to them. Now that Evangelical churches are overrun by white Christian Nationalist pastors and congregants, all that matters to them is turning the United States into a Christian nation. All that matters is enacting and enforcing the Evangelical version of Sharia Law. All that matters is returning America to the glory days of the 1950s. You know the days when Christianity was the de facto religion of most Americans, women were barefoot, pregnant keepers of the home, Blacks knew their place and lived in segregated communities, LGBTQ people were buried deeply in dark, dank closets, children read the Bible and prayed in public schools, and abortion, birth control, divorce, miscegenation, shacking up, adultery, and homosexuality were illegal. In other words, most Evangelicals want to roll back over a hundred years of social progress, going back to when stupid, silly women were given the constitutional right to vote.
A Trump win in November will be the end of American democracy, as we know it. We must not let this happen. I am no fan of Joe Biden, but I recognize that Trump is an existential threat to me, my family, and the American people, so I plan to vote for Biden. I will hold my nose and stifle the urge to vomit, knowing that Biden is the only man who can save our Republic from the white Christian National horde.
CPAC is back! Weirder, shriller, fringier, more paranoid than ever, with many empty seats but God allegedly still on the side of the cranks and zealots. Cue vapid, vicious, fear-mongering goons who, now saying the ugly part aloud, bray about evil trans people, stampeding “aliens,” looming communists and pet-marrying while heralding Christian nationalism, “cool” dictators, the “Bible Uncancelled” and the glad “end of democracy.” A republic if you can keep it: Welcome to today’s forsaken, brutish GOP.
Of course CPAC 2024, in all its shabby lunacy, reflects the increasingly rabid party – Free J6! – from which it sprang. Once a marquee conservative event that drew top GOP lawmakers and presidential contenders, it’s become an “emptier, jankier, lower-rent” affair by a party lunging ever further into the wingnut galaxy, its hapless denizens endlessly spouting stupid, awful things. Klan Mom MTG: Judge Arthur Engeron should be “disrobed” for undervaluing Mar-A-Hellhole. Trump lackey: His overlord’s “Never Surrender High-Tops” will get him black votes because “Black America loves sneakers, especially in the inner city.” DeSantis: Their V.P. should be a white man because “we don’t want people representing 10 or 15% of the party to be in the driver’s seat.” Tommy Tuberville: “These socialists and Marxists (want) to control our children” like Hillary’s “it takes a village” because “she doesn’t like your home (and) she wants to indoctrinate your children”; also, the government “has become the father, they hate Christianity, they are going to come after you.”
The creepy avatar for this assemblage of “craven rodeo clowns” is House Speaker Mike Johnson, a smarmy, doe-eyed, coup-plotting, Christian fundamentalist who’s spent his career working for hate groups, arguing deviant” homosexuals will destroy democracy, same-sex marriage is like people marrying their pets, and abortion is the killing of both “unborn children” and potential “able-bodied workers in the economy.” Boasting the Bible is “my worldview,” he took his then-13-year-old daughter to a Purity Ball where she pledged to him and God her “purity of mind, body and soul,” he promotes a “Covenant Eyes” app that allows him and his 17-year-old son/ “accountability partner” to monitor each other’s porn habits – clean slates all around! – and before he became Speaker God began waking him at night to prepare him to serve as Moses leading the nation through a “Red Sea moment…The Lord impressed upon my heart something was going to occur.” And it was: The House was in such chaos they chose a backbench demagogue who thought governance meant saving America from heathens.
Evidently, it doesn’t. Teetering with a bare majority and boisterous hard-right clique, having lost another special election, seen its fake Biden impeachment implode and failed to address not just a looming shutdown but in fact anything at all, the bumbling House threw a dim-witted Hail Mary and decided to impeach Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas – a move widely derided as “ridiculous” – for failing to fix the border after they sabotaged a bi-partisan bill to fix the border. Then they holed up at a Miami resort to lick their wounds at a leadership retreat where, rather than giving them leadership, Johnson gave them a sermon complete with Biblical references about America’s ungodly moral decline, which made lawmakers worried about keeping their jobs grumble they were “not at church” and what the hell? Meanwhile, with the GOP’s SCOTUS-facilitated war on women, IVF, and even “recreational sex” in full swing, Johnson fudges on his past (and future?) efforts to go after contraception – “I really don’t remember any of those measures” – and lurches ahead crafting the patriarchal theocracy of his dreams.
In that he’s in step with The Big Orange Guy, who says once in power he’ll create a task force to fight imaginary “anti-Christian bias” by “Marxists and fascists” (FYI not the same); he’s also plotting with a right-wing think tank whose mission is to re-define America as “a nation under God,” with a mandate declaring, “Freedom is defined by God, not man.” In pursuit of Gilead – and because last month his PAC raised $8,508 as he spent $3.9 million, mostly on lawyers – he just spoke to a gathering of evangelical broadcasters while hawking gold IRAs “to protect your retirement from D.C.’s policies” and Ivermectin: “Make Care Great Again.” He decried Dems murdering babies, “taking away knocker fields from children” and creating “dirty roads, crime, graffiti, swastickers.” He also boasted “everybody on both sides” agrees Roe had to go, he’s beating Haley by 91 points, “Israel is the capital of Israel,” and “you’re going to say as you want (and) believe in God” through “the love of Christ and the voices of famed…evangell…lllical….people and…eee-vangelis.” Ok, so he can’t say evangelical, but sure he’s your guy.
Big Awful Guy’s implausible fervor was dutifully, garishly replicated atCPAC, held at the fantastically named Gaylord Convention Center outside D.C., where his and God’s faithful touted “the greatest nation in all the world,” except for, you know, the swastickers. Amidst red, white and blue everything and pounding bad music, the meager crowd drifted through a half-empty exhibit hall offering a Jan. 6-themed pinball game, a vibrating board to stand on to magically lose weight, an 18th-century-style booth likening Biden to King George lll, and a mountain of tawdry MAGA merch: “Woke Tears” water – “identifies as transparent” – rhinestone hats blaring “I Love Jesus” and “Fuck Biden,” Trump shirts, hammocks, bobbleheads, sparkly gun-shaped purses. Sponsors were fewer and tackier: Moms For America, many groups with the word “liberty,” Newsmax with ads shouting “you don’t need those woke streaming services,” and now they’re letting their fascist flag fly proudly, the previously banished John Birch Society. Streaming was by the insurrectionist-favored Rumble; links often didn’t work, but went to a donation page.
Attendance was much sparser than previously, down from around 13,000 to the hundreds; when photos emerged of speakers facing a sea of empty seats, a right-wing site wailed, “What an embarrassment.” Country singer Natasha Owens sang the national anthem in a huge black dress declaring“2nd Amendment Protects the First,” and a banner trumpeted the new theme, tweaked from the unfortunately DeSantis-themed “woke” shtick: “Where Globalism (WHO and the UN) Goes To Die.” Speakers were mostly not totalitarian BA-listers: The mayor of Riverton, Utah, an Oklahoma rep, the head of CPAC Australia, Peter Navarro who’s headed to jail, a “businessman” who like everyone railed against transgender health care: “Woke doctors should be in prison.” But there were several big shots: Stephen ‘Goebbels’ Miller, Mike ‘Pillow’ Lindell, Disgrace to All Brain Surgeons Ben Carson, the new authoritarian presidents of Argentina and El Salvador, and a ragged array of VP hopefuls – Noem, Vance, Scott, Stefanik, Gabbard, Ramaswamy – all of whom, in a relative universe, Big Guy has called “good” and “solid.”
Welcome speeches were by CPAC’s devout Queen and molesting King, Mercedes and Matt Schlapp. Greeted with limp applause – “Lemme hear you! Wake up!” – Mercedes declaimed, “Be not afraid!” before telling her 17 listeners, “We’re gonna take this country back (from the) leftist propaganda machine.” “You are instruments,” she said. “God has put you here at this time to do this great work that needs to be done…Communism pushes the culture of death, we push the culture of life. You are assembled here in front of God to be the front line in this battle.” Facing multi-million-dollar sexual assault – and now document-shredding – charges by several young men, Matt announced, “This is our time, this is our moment.” Pledging his support for the “unique American who is being persecuted, who is being tortured” by communist “lawfare,” he turned to his sorcerer in the sky: “Lord God, you said that if we trust in you we will mount up with wings like eagles. Well, God, we’re ready to soar.” Like many, Tik Toker Incrediberry is dubious in a country where, in an election between Jesus and Satan with an “R” by his name, “Jesus would lose in a landslide.”
Still, they gathered for workshops titled The Bible Uncancelled, No Woke Warriors, God’s Children Are Not For Sale, Bidenomics: Bad For America’s Health, Would Moses Go to Harvard?, Putting Our Heads in the Gas Stove, Ramaswamy Unplugged, Going Full Hungarian: Stopping Georgey (sic) Soros, From Gaza to Greenwich Village: A Guide to Fighting Contemporary Jew-Hatred, and What You Talkin’ Bout Fani Willis,presented by esteemed legal scholar and Black linguist Jim Jordan. He was also among a host of out-Trumping-Trump speakers – paranoid losers, zealots, liars, a “who’s who of who won’t accept the results of the election” with wildly unintelligible notions and short attention spans – to offer 20-minute rants about an amorphous, all-powerful “left” who control damn near everything, which is why they can’t have nice things. “The left controls big media, big tech, big corporations, big sports, academia, Hollywood, the Senate and White House,” he whined, before bravely adding, “But the left doesn’t control we the people.”
But we the people, it turns out, often make little sense. Lara Trump said Dems think “you can change your gender like you change your shoes, and that at night she and the other son lead their kids in saying their prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance. Elise Stefanik said Ivy League campuses are “dens of anti-Semitism” where “radical leftist rot (is) destroying the minds of the next generation.” The Daily Wire‘s Michael Knowles, quoting Humpty Dumpty – “the question is which is to be master?” – said trans people reveal the decline of religion and marriage, which is “nothing other than a sign of God’s love.” “Liberals think they’re God, but they can’t really turn a couple of men, or a couple of women, or three men and a billy goat for that matter into a marriage.” Former Trump something Monica Crowley warned patriots to beware an upcoming “CATFIGHT: Michelle v. Kamala” – it was a workshop – because “Democrats (are) communists, and communists always have a plan…The left has a host group of power brokers working with the deep state, which is real.”
Kristi Noem said right now “there are people who love America and there are those who hate America” and “Joe Biden is destroying America.” Stephen Miller said Trump’s legal cases “are proof big broad laws will be used to crush us.” Kurt Schlichter said “Joe Biden is the capo of a criminal organization.” The U.K.’s Liz Truss said “we need a bigger bazooka against the deep state” after Joe Biden helped destroy her 7-week reign; nobody knew who she was, but one guy thought her speech was “on the same parallel” as U.S. politics. El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, “the world’s coolest dictator,” who’s detained 80,000 people in his.war on gangs, said he welcomes the fight against “dark forces” in America. And conspiracist Jack Posobiec said when liberals “say democracy, they mean authoritarianism.” “Welcome to the end of democracy! We’re here to overthrow it completely,” he crowed. “We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we’ll endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” Going full clerical fascist, he clutched a cross. “Because all glory is not to government. All glory to God.”
Meanwhile, Orange Jesus keeps jabbering. On Friday, he told a Black Conservative Gala his criming makes him just like them: “I got indicted and a lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me.” At CPAC on Saturday, after a tinny national anthem by Jan. 6 rioters on a prison phone, he launched into a garbled, bilious, endless tirade, spewing apocalyptic visions of a fever-dream country and “Judgment Day” that will be “my ultimate and absolute revenge.” He said “millions of illegal aliens (are) stampeding across our border” from insane asylums like Hannibal Lecter and “they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of – it’s a very horrible thing.” He said “ruthless gangs will explode (into) the suburbs” and while “weaponized law enforcement hunts for conservatives and people of faith, Hamas and Antifa will terrorize our streets (with) their brutal iDEEEo-ology.” He said he’s “a proud political dissident,” Biden is “surrounded by some very bad fascists,” he flew into Iraq with “the best-looking human beings I’ve ever seen” and maybe a guy named “Raisin Cane,” and “they’ll say ‘he rambled'” but “it’s total genius.” Sweet Jesus. Be afraid.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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 Forty-Niners will beat the Chiefs by three in the Super Bowl. Right-wingers will go nuts over Taylor Swift, and the halftime show will suck.
We need term limits based on age. Neither Biden nor Trump should be running for president. Both show signs of mental decline. I support an age seventy cutoff.
Biden isn’t the first president to be managed by his spouse, cabinet members, or trusted advisors. Ronald Reagan, by Nancy, and George W. Bush, by Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld, come to mind.
Biden’s unwillingness to speak out against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians may cost him the election in November. I suspect Biden is more worried about losing more Jewish votes than Arab votes. What should matter is the violence and bloodshed. That it doesn’t says a lot about the American people and their political leaders.
Evangelicalism is in an uproar over whether Christians should attend a same-sex/transgender wedding, revealing the hateful bigotry that lies underneath the surface in many churches. Jesus said, “It’s just a fucking wedding.” Alistair Begg said Christians should attend LGBTQ weddings. He was promptly deplatformed by John MacArthur and other notable Evangelical leaders.
Our NATO allies should pay their fair share of mutual defense costs — a minimum of two percent. The question is what do we do when they don’t? Let Russia attack them, as the orange Cheeto said?
If Texas wants to protect their border so bad, Biden should let them, removing all border patrol agents and federal national guard soldiers from the border.
I’m re-reading James Michener’s book, Chesapeake. I last read it forty-four years ago. I’m a Michener fan, but his books tend to voluminous. It will take me several weeks to read the book.,
Catchers and pitchers for the Cincinnati Reds begin spring training this week. I’m so ready for baseball. I predict the Reds will win the Central Division. Hope springs eternal. 🤣
Warning about using your cellphone number for two factor authentication. Change your phone number and you are screwed — as I’m learning firsthand.
Bonus: Corporations continue to make gaudy profits by gouging the American public — raising prices just because they can, regardless of whether costs have increased. Thieves, the lot of them. This is the primary reason most Americans think the economy is in bad shape. All they see is rising prices.
Fifty Years Later, Evangelicals are Still Plotting to Take America Back for God
[Jesus is] the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Master of the Universe. And the last time I checked—according to that B-I-B-L-E, that’s the book for me—the government still rests on his shoulders. So, it don’t matter who tries to do what, what government tries to do what, I’m here to tell you if the church arises in this hour, the church is about to take this country back, it’s about to take the government back, it’s about to take the schools back, we’re about to take back Hollywood, arts and entertainment, education!
We’re not here to patty cake, we’re here to take over. That’s what Right Wing Watch and all these others like to call me, ‘There’s a dominion guy, there’s a guy that’s trying to take everything over.’ I said, ‘Yes I am, for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.’
In 2024, we’re taking over in the name of Jesus. If the church organizes, we win. [Los Angeles County] is bigger than 23 states. Do you know how many people came to vote? 2.9 percent. You cannot tell me if we the church organize, we can’t overcome 2.9 percent. It’s a numbers game. It’s about turnout, man … I got to the biggest volunteer force in America called the church and we can take over anything, any community, any ballot box, and we can win any election.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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.
Every time I write a political post that is critical of disgraced ex-president Donald Trump or the present iteration of the Republican Party one or more commenters will object, saying “both sides do it,” or they will attempt to distract by trying to play “whataboutism.” The goal is to ignore/dismiss what I have said or paint me as some sort of hypocrite. Anything except interacting with what I actually wrote.
I make no apologies for the fact that I am a liberal, socialist, and pacifist. I don’t often write about my political beliefs, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have strong opinions and beliefs about all sorts of political, social, and religious beliefs. I am aware of the fact that when I write about politics, it often causes controversies. I have lost numerous readers over this or that political issue. Some people love my atheism, but hate my politics.
If rural Ohio Republicans were surveyed and asked if they believed in freedom and liberty for everyone, to the person they would say YES! However, words are cheap, and when we take a close look at Republican behavior and practices, we learn that they only believe in freedom and liberty for some people.
Most rural Ohioans voted for and currently support Donald Trump. They overwhelmingly voted for the disgraced ex-president in 2016 and 2020, and plan to do so again in 2024. Does Trump believe in freedom and liberty for everyone? Of course not. He routinely threatens people like me, calls for my arrest, and says that I should expelled from the country of my birth. Why? I have political and religious beliefs different from Trump and his MAGA followers. Evidently, freedom and liberty only apply to people who agree with Trump and the rhetoric of white Evangelical Christians. Everyone else is an enemy of God and state.
When local Republicans talk glowingly about their commitment to freedom and liberty, I don’t believe them. These same people are working diligently to undo the express will of the people as they try to neuter recently passed initiatives that legalize abortion and recreational cannabis. If Republicans truly believe in freedom and liberty, then they would accept the will of the people. Instead, both at state and local levels, Republicans are intent on forcing their moral beliefs on others.
Republicans want public school students to have freedom to attend release time programs such as Lifewise Academy — an Evangelical organization — yet when The Satanic Temple wants to sponsor a release time program, all of a sudden freedom only applies to Evangelical Christians. Everywhere we look, we see right-wing Republicans prosecuting the latest iteration of the culture war. For all their talk about freedom and liberty, Republicans deny that same right for everyone. Not for LGBTQ people, nor socialists, atheists, or humanists. Not for women seeking abortion care, nor people with moral beliefs different from the Christian majority.
I am in the minority when it comes to my political and religious beliefs. Even local Democrats distance themselves from me because I am a Democratic socialist, too liberal, or a godless heathen. That’s the price I pay for living in rural Ohio. That said, I demand and expect the same freedom and liberty as my Republican neighbors.
After reading my letter, several people commented and sent me messages that said there is “no difference between Republicans and Democrats.” Others played the “whataboutism” game, suggesting that Biden and the Democrats have done things just as bad as indicted Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans. Really? Do otherwise thoughtful, rational people really believe there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans; that President Biden is just a bad Donald Trump?
Donald Trump is a fascist and authoritarian. In 2020, he tried to overthrow the government and remain in power. He is currently facing numerous criminal charges in three jurisdictions. If re-elected in 2024, Trump has made it clear that he intends to upend the federal government and the rule of law. Invoking the Insurrection Act, Trump intends to use the military to advance his domestic cause, which includes rounding up and incarcerating people such as myself. One need only look at Project 2025 to find out Trump’s intentions. Does anyone seriously believe there is no difference between Trump and Biden; that Trump is not a direct threat to the future and health of our Republic?
The Republican Party has, for the most part, been taken over by Donald Trump and MAGA zealots. Centrist Republicans have either given up or left the party altogether. Trump IS the Republican Party. Are you okay with that? Are you okay with a Party that is racist, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ? Are you okay with a Party that doesn’t give a shit about immigrants, pregnant women, children, or the poor? Shall I go on? Explain to me how one can be a Republican and a humanist. The Republican platform is antithetical to the humanist ideal.
That is not to say that the Democratic Party is without its own problems. That’s why I am no longer a Democrat, I may vote Democratic, but I am not a Democrat. I am not a supporter of Joe Biden, but when forced to choose between the most unfit man to ever be president and Joe Biden, I am going to choose Biden every time. I am a pragmatist, not an idealist, when it comes to politics. If other Democratic presidential candidates show themselves to be viable candidates, then it is likely I will vote for one of them. Biden wasn’t my first, second, or third choice in 2020 (and neither was Clinton in 2016), and he is most certainly not my choice today. However, we have a two-party system, so that means I will likely have to vote for Biden in 2024. The United States can survive another Biden presidency (provided he doesn’t drag us into a world war). It cannot survive another Trump presidency.
The same goes for Republicans at the state level. MAGA zealots have taken over virtually every state Republican party. Here in Ohio, a supermajority of Republicans rule the roost without any regard for the will of the people. Last month, Ohio voters overwhelmingly voted to legalize abortion and recreational marijuana use. Did Republicans respect the will of the people? Of course not. They are doing everything they can to neuter the abortion amendment and recreational marijuana initiative. These Republicans are Christian nationalists and fascists who are hell-bent on shaping Ohio according to the teachings of the Bible.
So, enough of this idea that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans and between Biden and Trump. Instead of playing the “whataboutism” game, how about actually justifying the policies of Trump and the MAGA-controlled Republican Party? How about justifying why ANYONE would vote for Donald Trump (or Ron DeSantis)? I don’t see it. Hate Joe Biden? Fine, don’t vote for him. However, if you care about the future of our country, for the love of Loki, please don’t vote for Trump. He is not the lesser of two evils, he is evil, period.
