​Marianne Williamson is currently being ridiculed. I believe we ridicule her at our own peril. I am not a Marianne Williamson fan but her words that this election is more than about who has the right plans but more about the dark side of America that has taken over the country is important.
We are no longer dealing with dark forces where the Mantra Love your neighbor as yourself is scoffed at publicly at our borders. The new mantra of fear your neighbor and everyone else is our new theology.
We are a nation in search of a new god. The god of Jesus is dead. Jesus’ teachings no longer effect the actions of our people. Those who talk about winning at any cost have nailed the coffin shut on the poor man who died on a wooden cross. What a loser. So sad.
The bring you the tired and poor mantra is being replaced by ‘we want only the well-heeled, educated, and wealthy’. The sage advice that a billionaire could never understand and be for the poor is replaced by if they have a gold-plated toilet and charities that are not used for charity celebrate their rise to great fortune. And when we are through praising their wealth and celebrity they give them your trust with your welfare.
In the bible the story for those who read it still it says Lamech’s boast ‘I have killed a man for wounding me; And a boy for striking me; If Cain is avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold. Two chapters later the story told in the Bible is of god flooding the earth because it has become so wicked. We now have a president who prides himself not in defending himself but decimating his opponent on his twitter account and uses the government to exact revenge on those who oppose him or who would accuse them. Maybe this explains the reign of gun massacres our nation is facing.
We are in the battle not to see if America will live up to its stated values but we are in a battle to not have those values changed. Suddenly the new evangelical right has me defending the cherished old values of Christianity. I am the conservative and they are the radicals challenging the old ways by their forsaking of values they deem stale and not practical.  
Jesus through his story of the good Samaritan and his clear words “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’ Are lost in the fear, power preserving, white majority in our country. These words of the dead Jesus who is nailed in a coffin by the Christians are replaced by the words we need people who think like us in our country or we will lose our identity as a country.
But this is nothing new. Christians in the South argued vehemently God ordained slavery and Jim Crow. Christians argue it was our given right to spread from sea to shining sea and all over the world because we are God’s country. The same variety of Christianity argues today that women are essentially not equal, that gays are an abomination, that white and might are right.
In a country who are currently rejecting their core values for a xenophobic and racist new philosophy it is refreshing to hear a call back to our spiritual selves. Because that will be the only way we return to assisting ‘the least of these’ and ‘bring the children to me’ values we held once upon a time.

The irony of it all. The bully- in-chief accuses someone of being a bully as he takes the bully pulpit via twitter against him. But he cannot leave it alone. Baltimore’s Rep. Elijah Cummings is the victim of his latest rantings but he includes the whole city of Baltimore that happens to be predominately black in the rant too. He said that Baltimore was a rodent infested horrible city that no human being would choose to live in.  This is reminiscent of when he called countries of color ‘shithole’ places.

It is sad we have elevated someone of no character to be our president. He believes in an eye for an eye and then some more if you attack hm. He is comfortable lying. As shown by the multiple incidents of contractors who work on his buildings and reneges on paying them, he enters in compacts with no intentions of honoring them. All in the cause of him winning and making a buck.

He writes these things of Baltimore when his son is known as one of the slumlords of Baltimore and he and his father had a notoriously bad housing project on the edge of Baltimore. He writes this even though he once wrote that the then President Obama was responsible for the problems in Baltimore by his own inaction. Of course, he holds no responsibility when he is president. He even had to pay a huge fine to the federal government for his own discriminatory practices when he was starting in the real estate business. Trump’s own prize ritzy Mar a Largo has had over 17 health code violations in a year.

Trump is a bit of a lost cause when it comes to developing a deep soul. But what he has exposed is that many in America have the same issue. Why would you ever vote for a person who without apology or excuse acts and holds white supremacist views unless you hold them too. At first you may have not known the full extent of his ‘issue’, but he has left no doubt on who he is now. His followers are now complicit in his tweets and actions if they continue to support him.
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American evangelicals, white women, and white men and bible belt residents are now in moral decline. They lost their soul in their search to gain the world. Of course, this has always been true for a certain groups who supported slavery, Jim Crow, sexist, homophobic politicians in the past and present. They are no different no matter how many times they yell I am not a racist, they are the racists. And thank God they are not even close to a majority no matter how many times they say it. Their leader once said', "But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it". It is not about having the most it is about how you live your life.

​It is hard to believe that in President Trump’s efforts to secure our southern border he has increased the migration of immigration to our country. What does he do? He doubles down on his get cruel to immigrant policies to frighten away immigrants. This is the proverbial trying the same thing over and over again hoping for different results. There are many problems with this approach. First it will take at least a decade to make people fear us and forget the image and words of the Statue of Liberty. This will of course also change the way Americans was of thinking or our country. I am not sure it is an image that will help us in our interactions with the rest of the world. Secondly, it appears to make some immigrants rush to the border before it closes. Thus, we have created a mass of people that we have never seen before trying to cross into our country. Thirdly, it does nothing to address prevention of people coming to our borders in the first place. They come because things have gotten so bad in their own countries as far as the economics, crime and government goes it is deemed much better to try to get into our country where things at least on the surface seems so much better.
As if these things are not bad enough there is probably a greater problem being created by the immigrant camps. We have had no problem with terrorism from our southern neighbors. But unless we change this; we are creating an environment that creates terrorism. Think about it for a moment. We are taking children away from their parents. We appear unable to reunite some of these children with their parents. We are creating children who will grow-up with no parents. The resentment that will be held against our countries by these ‘orphans’ we have created will be deep in their psyche.  Not only are we making them orphans we are treating them harshly. They are kept in overcrowded cages, underfed, not allowed to bathe, not receiving medical treatment as needed, and some of the children have been sexually abused.  Who is to blame for this? You may say the parents, as Trump ‘the privileged’ has does not take the blame for anything. But he does ‘twitter blame’ on everyone else. The children know their parents came to receive help and our government refused to help and instead offered cruel punishment. The alienation and hate we are creating will come back to haunt us many years from now.
But isn’t this the way of violence which deciding to be unnecessary tough on others always bring with it: violent responses. The saying goes 'violence begats violence'. Maybe not today but sometime later. And this has always been America’s problem. We treated African’s as animals and enforced slavery with violence and our country still reels from this over 150 years later. I do not know what the tipping point with immigrants will be when we go from a place to seek and become a place where you are treated in a hostile manner. become viewed as a place to hate and exact revenge. But there is a tipping point.
We may still have time to prevent this from happening but we have to stop these policies of cruelty and make amends somehow. Tick Tock.

Everyone is talking about identity politics. Identity politics can give some a sense of belonging, a place to call home. It also can make someone look beyond themselves to see the needs of others. Identity politics enables you to join with others to get things done. We all start with a semblance of identity politics when we proclaim, we belong to a certain family or align ourselves with a religious institution. Others will identify with ethnic groups or race.

For many years I identify myself as a Freeman. We were Baptists not Methodists as the Hayes my mother’s side of the family. We were called to serve our country and God. We were encouraged to learn and receive an education. Later we were to identify as a Southerner but must never use denigrative terms about other races. We were also Baptist. So we took seriously one’s faith was between them and God. Politics and religion were not to rule over the other. And we were polite and good hosts to anyone we encountered. We were also FDR Democrats because we were always on the side of the poor and the average man. We saw ourselves as role models for our country, city, and neighborhood. This was my identity for many years.

Growing up this was a good identity. But along the way I had to broaden my identity or get stuck. I moved from being a Baptist who thought Catholics were not Christian and Episcopalians were suspect. I became ecumenical in my thinking. Later I included other faiths in my identity, my group. And even later atheists and agnostics became included in my identity. My views on sexuality and gender had to be expanded. I even grew away from viewing myself not only as an American but as a world citizen too. My world citizenship also had to grow to include other animals, plants, and ecosystems. This was my new definition of what it meant to be a world citizen. And now as the world has become smaller and we look to the universe I may have to expand to a cosmic citizenship.

And this is the rub of identity politics it makes you feel responsibility for others in your group. It makes you feel empathy and solidarity for those in your group. The problem becomes if your identity never grows. Your heart does not continue to grow. Your vision is stifled. And instead of identity politics growing you to accept the other, you become harden to those outside your group. I know that oppressed groups stick together to cope and defend themselves against the oppressor. For them identity politics is a matter of survival. And sometimes even if they wish they are not allowed to include the oppressor’s in their identity (ie, forced segregation, red districting, country clubs, private schools etc).
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But the goal of life is to expand, to grow, and where we can broaden our group identity the closer we become to who we were meant to be. At least this is what the mystics have always claimed. We are to expand ourselves to the end of the universe and thus become diffused or at one with God, the cosmos, or the One. Our identity spreads so far that we no longer speak of I but always as we. I will always have little bit of the South, Baptists, and Freeman in me. But more than likely as I grow I will only keep the parts that speak of the individual who is able to be inclusive of all.
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​The far right likes to toss the word snowflake around a lot when referring to the left. I find this humorous. Their great leader is the greatest snowflake in the history of the united states. Is there a negative comment from anyone that does not upset him and he ignored? The answer to that is no. recently one of my Trumpite friends was unfriended because someone did not like an article they posted on line. They in turn acted as though they were deeply hurt or offended. His Trumpite friends all chimed in how much of a snowflake this ex-friend was. The level of hurt amazed me. No offense to my Facebook friends but if you unfriend me you would probably get an eye roll from me and I would continue with my day. And I like to obsess on things.
 
Now this may sound like I do not like people, but the truth is I respect them enough to think they have the right to do that without my approbation and I respect myself enough to move on and not feel like my whole being was attacked.
 
Ultimately the truth is the Trumpites have already shown they do not care for people other than themselves. Why else would you vote for a New York billionaire with three marriages and a gold toilet seat to solve your problems. They wanted to do damage to people not like themselves. Now that their ‘great defender’ is in a lot of trouble and may be indicted or impeached for various crimes, they are looking to do as much harm to as many people as possible who are not like them.
Thus, they attack women’s rights with abortion restrictions. of course, they use pseudo-science to argue their case.  (Adam Rogers science 05.14.19 06:00 am 'heartbeat' bills get the science of fetal heartbeats all wrong) After all these are some of the same people who reject evolution and climate change with great sanctimony.  They claim they are about family values while separating children from their families at the border and failing to keep records so they could reunite the families. They are challenging gay rights because of their self-deluded religious beliefs. They are at arms and must hurt people they do not like and strangely its everyone not like them.  I fall in that group of people whose views they would not like. I am not saying we would not agree on some things. But there would be differences and that is okay with me.
But such vitriol must be constantly responded to. You cannot let those who are pushing views that harm your friends and yourself to not be countered. and there really is no compromising with them when they are currently blinded with fear and hate. They would deny they are hateful or fearful but the way they are currently acting decries this. If you feel you must push the right to carry a gun into a church you are fearful. If you insist for your security you must erect a huge wall at your border you are fearful. If you feel you only need a southern border wall and not a northern border wall you are hateful. If you want to make a ban on Muslims from your country, you are fearful and hateful. If you view the world as always a zero sum place it will make you fearful and hateful. The list could go on indefinitely.
When we lose our comfortability to explore other ideas or cultures it is a sign we are snowflakes. When our arguments are defending self and not our idea (i.e, I am not a racist) you are a snowflake. When you attack liberal academia but have things such as the Limbaugh institute, that playfully or not mimic academia you are probably a snowflake. When you have to disguise your bills with false science such as the heartbeat bill you are probably a snowflake. Finally (although i could give many more examples), when you are a bishop of the catholic church and tell families to not take their children to the pride march because harm might come to them, you are not necessarily a snowflake but you are a dangerous and hateful hypocrite. One can only hope your hate will melt away. When that happens hopefully the profound love of Christ will replace the hate. As Christ once said perfect love will cast out all fear.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Jesus said,” You must win at any cost. Because you are right.” Trump the religious prophet declared in his campaign rallies,”. That we are going to win so much you are going to be sick of it.” So the faithful doing their duty overlooking everything but winning voted for Trump.

And, so long as, he helps them to win in their appointment of judges the faithful will stand with him. Because as Jesus said from the cross winning is everything. It is stupid to sacrifice or do the right thing unless you know in the end you are going to win. There should be no Good Fridays unless you are assured there is an Easter.

The gospel of prosperity where God will deliver good things to you if you are faithful is living. The gospel of sacrifice has died on the cross in America. That is why we are so divided as a nation. If you are about winning everyone is viewed as an opponent. The idea of community is only with those who are on your side or can help you win. The class divide is in part a return on the concept that you only befriend those who can help you.

Winning, actually, is not the most important thing. Standing up for right, community, compromising so that progress can be made, learning, are some of the things that are more important. The biblical verse what does it matter if you ‘win’ the whole world but lose your soul’ and Miguel de Unamuno the Spanish philosopher said,’ winning is such a small thing’ are getting at this.
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We have the wrong way of looking at winning. Maybe it is not who has the most money or things, who is the most popular, or who Is the most powerful but who is the truest to self, who builds up others, who builds community etc. defines winning and winners.
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The Trump White House feels vindicated because they knew that they did not collude. But did they really. I would suggest the novice Trump probably did not know what was the legal proof that would be required to be charged with collusion. He knew that Russia helped him win the election. He knew his staff had numerous meetings with the Russians asking for their help and even sometimes providing polls to the Russians so they would know how to influence American voters, He knew they had met with Russians asking for dirt on Hilary but he did not know if that qualified for collusion.

So the denials of meetings with Russia, the firings of personnel who were investigating him, and the obstructions began. But to win a case against the President for collusion would have required a contract or some kind of written agreement with a quid pro quo or someone who heard a verbal ‘contract’ able to document it and willing to testify about it. Mueller could find none of this.
Without any proof of collusion some believed there could be no obstruction. Now this theory of law is not necessarily true but may have made Mueller wonder if this would make it hard for convicting Trump of obstruction. This fact may have kept Mueller from making the final decision about a trial and leaving it for Congress to decide.

So to be clear Trump celebrated he did not ‘contract’ to collude but sought a foreign enemy’s help to win the election. This is like a teenage son spending his college money on partying at college instead of tuition, books, room and board. He did not technically misuse his college money it was his to spent on college. Now everyone knows his actions were wrong but he could not be accused in a court of law of misusing the money.

Trump took his Mission Accomplished victory lap. Because for Trump it is not about ethics but about winning.  But the fact is he colluded with Russia in every way except in a way that he could be convicted. This is the state of the American presidency today.

​The Trump White House feels vindicated because they knew that they did not collude. But did they really. I would suggest the novice Trump probably did not know what was the legal proof that would be required to be charged with collusion. He knew that Russia helped him win the election. He knew his staff had numerous meetings with the Russians asking for their help and even sometimes providing polls to the Russians so they would know how to influence American voters, He knew they had met with Russians asking for dirt on Hilary but he did not know if that qualified for collusion.

So the denials of meetings with Russia, the firings of personnel who were investigating him, and the obstructions began. But to win a case against the President for collusion would have required a contract or some kind of written agreement with a quid pro quo or someone who heard a verbal ‘contract’ able to document it and willing to testify about it. Mueller could find none of this.
Without any proof of collusion some believed there could be no obstruction. Now this theory of law is not necessarily true but may have made Mueller wonder if this would make it hard for convicting Trump of obstruction. This fact may have kept Mueller from making the final decision about a trial and leaving it for Congress to decide.

So to be clear Trump celebrated he did not ‘contract’ to collude but sought a foreign enemy’s help to win the election. This is like a teenage son spending his college money on partying at college instead of tuition, books, room and board. He did not technically misuse his college money it was his to spent on college. Now everyone knows his actions were wrong but he could not be accused in a court of law of misusing the money.
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Trump took his Mission Accomplished victory lap. Because for Trump it is not about ethics but about winning.  But the fact is he colluded with Russia in every way except in a way that he could be convicted. This is the state of the American presidency today.

America has always touted itself as a classless society. Yet we have never been without a class system. Although we rebelled against England, its mark was imprinted in the mind of the American people. They have a House for the Lords and another for the Commons. And to this day they support kings and queens. Yes, the king and queen no longer have direct political power but they are representative of the government. They are given a salary based on to who they were born.

The US constitution allowed only men with land to vote. We allowed only men to own property. So we have never been a society without class. At times we have tried to limit the advantages of class but we have never succeeded in destroying our class system. And some say (which I tend to believe) you can never rid society of a class system completely. That is why in a democracy we should always even the playing field.

In America today, the class system has never been so strong. The median net worth of a senator was $3.2 million, versus $900,000 for members of Congress. Supreme Court Justices come from two ivy league colleges Harvard and Yale. The only exception started at Harvard and later transfer to Columbia Ruth Bader Ginsberg. These are not facts of a society that Is leveling the field.

Furthermore, we have created laws not to tax the rich. During one of our economies biggest boom years under the presidency of Eisenhower we tax the wealthy, from 1953 to 1961, in the top income bracket a marginal tax rate of 91 percent. Taxes on corporate profits were two times as great as they are in 2017.

Despite all evidence to the contrary we have been convinced that to tax the wealthy will lead to an economic downturn. We have forsook an inheritance tax because you could only pass eleven million dollars to a couple before their inheritance would be taxed. Although this effected only 0.2 percent of the population a great many in our society opposed an inheritance tax.

I find it hard to believe that billionaires are acceptable in a country with so much poverty. Yes maybe if everyone’s basic needs were met maybe I could wrap my mind around a single person having so much more than others. But we have one of the weakest social support networks in the first world.

A recent study showed “The probability of ending where you start has gone up, and the probability of moving up from where you start has gone down,” For instance, the chance that someone starting in the bottom 10 percent would move above the 40th percentile decreased by 16 percent. The chance that someone starting in the middle of the earnings distribution would reach one of the top two earnings deciles decreased by 20 percent. Yet people who started in the seventh decile are 12 percent more likely to end up in the fifth or sixth decile—a drop in earnings—than they used to be.

I do not believe that everyone should be paid the same or close to the same. Some people are willing to go to more schooling, others are willing to take greater risk, others fill needed niches, some work harder, and some have more talent and all of these deserve more pay than others. But to have an unlimited amount of difference in financial return between the average working man and the CEO is hard to accept. That we allow this inequality is saying we believe in a class system.

Neither do I believe in a class system reinforced by inherited money. There is no way that a Paris Hilton deserves so much more than any other child. Every child should be born with if not an inheritance a promise of an education, healthcare, food, housing, and access to technology to keep up with others. This is the least we could do. Thorstein Veblen in his famous book ‘The Theory of Leisure Class’ Proposes that we need the wealthy’s ‘conspicuous leisure’ to keep the economy running. Many never understood that he was writing satire. We know today it is the poor and middle classes who will spend the money attained by tax relief or government funding. They have so many financial needs they will not be able to save as happens when the very wealthy are given extra cash.

‘The Republicans in the new tax cut for the wealthy used the flaw rationale that the wealthy given more money will re-invest in the economy. What we have found so far is this is not so. Tracking by Americans for Tax Fairness shows that only about 400 out of America’s 5.9 million employers have announced any wage increases or one-time bonuses related to the tax cuts. ​That’s about 0.007 percent. In fact, real wages have actually declined since last year after accounting for higher gas prices, prescription drug prices, and other rising costs.’ (Research & Commentary August 22, 2018 by Kayla Kitson at Inequality.org)
​The satire of Veblen of the need of conspicuous spending and leisure of the wealthy has become with a twist the economic theory of the day. Hopefully, one day we will have an economy more biblically based where the poor are taken care of, Jubilee Years are practiced, and loans with interest are forbidden.

I hate suffering. In C S Lewis’s book The Problem of Pain he lays out the traditional view of suffering. We feel pain to teach us lessons from god. And this can be a partial reason for some suffering. If we did not feel emotional pain when we treated someone badly we would be more likely to repeat the action. The same with physical pain. If we feel pain when we touch a hot stove we will be less likely to repeat the action. So, pain does afford us the most rudimentary learnings in life.

 Of course, Lewis’s other book on suffering which was written not from and academic mindset but from his personal lost of his great love to cancer was a bit different. It is called A Grief Observed and can be heart wrenching as he tries to reconcile some sense in his grief and her suffering from cancer with a God who boasts how much She loves us.

In the end there is pain or things that happen to us that are not brought on by Karma. To challenge another religion’s premise. When working with people who were impacted with AIDS in the early days of the epidemic the karmic scales of a former lives had to be tilted. Nothing they did deserved the misery of dying young, with unfathomable suffering, ostracized, and alone.

Others will argue that suffering is an illusion. All I have to say to them ‘Suffer Much” and ‘be careful of your Karma’. Some will say most suffering is brought upon humans against humans. But that is only redirecting the blame from God to humans (of course that gives us humans more power over it). Most people suffering of starvation are not asking was this brought on by god’s indifference or human unwillingness to distribute the world food supply equitable. They only want food for themselves and their children.

The final explanation of evil is it is a part of this life. We cannot avoid it. So instead of acting as Job’s accusers standing opposite of Job to please our philosophies of evil let us hold a hand. Let us relieve as much pain as we can and then let us be present for the sufferer. 
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So, to get back to what matters. My suffering. My suffering is so great it will be written in the annals of history. I will become known as the Great Sufferer replacing Jesus on the pantheon of sufferers (the former is a brilliant attempt to psychologically manipulate God to make me suffer less). I can hear my fellow cancer survivors say, “Now wait a minute has he only finished week one of treatment. Why he is a child in suffering. I am afraid he is in for an unpleasant surprise before it is all over.” And I say to that enough about your suffering let us get back to mine. Which in case you have not heard is great.
 
 
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