National Cathedral likens Trump to Joseph McCarthy

Washington National Cathedral.

Far too often those  I refer to as "good Christians" remain silent and allow the hate and misogyny of evangelicals and far right Catholics define Christianity.  The result is the exodus of many from religion, especially those under age 30 where 40% want no more of organized religion.  Thus, it was a pleasant surprise to see the leadership of the National Cathedral sharply rebuke Donald Trump and condemn his racism and the hatred he sows on a daily basis.  Indeed, they likened him to Joseph McCarty and the manufacturer "red scare" of the 1950's.  If Christianity is to retain any legitimacy in the minds of many, we need more "good Christians" speaking out and condemning evil and countering the poison peddled daily by evangelicals and their toxic leadership.  NBC News looks at this much needed condemnation of Trump.  Here are highlights:

In unusually forceful language, the leadership of the Washington National Cathedral condemned what it called the "racialized rhetoric" of President Donald Trump and directly compared him to 1950s anti-communist demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

The statement, released Tuesday, isn't so much an appeal for Trump to retract or soften his statements as it is a call for the nation as a whole to reject them.

It asks: "After two years of President Trump's words and actions, when will Americans have enough?"

The criticism comes after a particularly inflammatory month for Trump. He has publicly told four outspoken congresswomen of color — three of whom were born in the U.S. — to "go back" where they came from. He also feuded with Rev. Al Sharpton, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and called the city of Baltimore a "rodent-infested mess."

The statement, issued in the name of three of the cathedral's top leaders — Revs. Mariann Budde, Randolph Hollerith and Kelly Douglas — makes multiple direct references to the communist witch-hunts of the 1950s led by McCarthy.

It accuses Trump of deliberately fanning racial divisions for political gain in the same way that McCarthy used fears of communist infiltration.

"When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call and give cover to white supremacists," it states. "We have come to accept a level of insult and abuse in political discourse that violates each person's sacred identity as a child of God."

It [belongs to the Episcopal Church] has a history of liberal political stances and has condemned Trump's ban on transgender members of the U.S. military and the policy of separating immigrant families at America's southern border.

Breaking the Republican Lock on God

For years now the Republican Party has claimed to be the party of god and god-fearing Christians - even though its policies over the last 20 years are diametrically opposed to Christ's social gospel message: feed the hungry, cloth the naked, give shelter to the homeless, care for the sick. The GOP instead wants to throw the poor in the gutter and to hope that the sick will conveniently die despite constant disingenuous statements of "thoughts and prayers" when it is social programs that are what is really needed.  Swarming to the GOP banner have been the evangelical Christian and far right Catholic crowd seemingly motivated solely by anti-abortion fervor and anti-gay hatred and a willingness to close their eyes to the anti-gospel agenda of the Republican Party.  Best representing this false Christianity are Mike Pence and "mother" his bigoted wife and, of course, the loud professional Christian set that rarely focuses on the issues Christ talked about and instead amasses personal wealth and strives for political power. This hypocrisy and anti-Christian behavior is now being repeatedly called out by unlikely sources: a gay Christian and a black woman in the persons of Pete Buttigieg and Stacy Abrams.  I left the GOP years ago when I concluded that one could not be a decent, moral person and remain a supporter of the GOP.  That belief has only intensified with Trump in the White House.  Whether one calls them-self a Christian or not - I typically do not since evangelicals have so sullied the label -  if you believe in the social gospel message, you cannot support the today's GOP.  A column in the New York Times looks at this much needed call for decent people to challenge the GOP and strip it of its claim to be the party of god.  Here are highlights:

We know that slaveholders in the American South used Scripture to justify keeping their fellow humans in bondage. They could find no words from Christ on this, for there are no words from him. Just a line in the New Testament from mere mortals presuming to speak for him.

But perhaps it made those who tore apart families, who whipped insubordinates until they passed out, who sold children and cotton bales as similar commodities feel better to know that the monstrous crime of their daily enterprise could be a blessed act.

These days, no less an authority than Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said recently that God “wanted Donald Trump to become president.”  She offered no sourcing for this assertion, as is the case for vaporous claims that rise from the rot of the Trump presidency on a daily basis.

Mocking Sanders and the many Ned Flanders of the G.O.P. team is unlikely to make much of a dent. Nearly half of all Republicans believe God wanted Trump to win the election. To them, secular snark is a merit badge on the MAGA hat.

But there is a better way to sway the electorate of faith, as the rising Democratic stars Pete Buttigieg and Stacey Abrams have shown us. They apply something like a “What Would Jesus Do?” test to rouse religious conscience on the political battlefield.

Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., is a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes scholar, married to a junior high school teacher. He’s gay and, more surprising for a modern Democrat, he is an out Christian, as quick to quote St. Augustine as Abraham Lincoln.

Like Abrams and Senator Cory Booker, Mayor Pete says his faith made him a progressive. Scripture directs him to defend the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the societal castoffs.

But Buttigieg goes much further than mere Bible-citing. He’s taking it directly to Trump and to Vice President Mike Pence, who flashes his piety like a seven-carat diamond on his pinkie finger. It’s hard to look at the actions of President Trump, Buttigieg said, “and believe they are the actions of somebody who believes in God.”

The mayor calls Pence the “cheerleader of the porn star presidency,” and he wonders whether the vice president “stopped believing in Scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump.”

Buttigieg’s marriage to Chasten Glezman “moved me closer to God,” he said in a speech last Sunday. To the “Mike Pences of the world,” he said, “your quarrel is not with me — your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

Abrams, who narrowly lost her race for governor of Georgia last year, also uses faith, part of a long African-American tradition, to marshal Christian principles against the repulsive acts of man. The daughter of two Methodist preachers, she said in one of her television ads, “My reading of the Bible says that Jesus Christ was a progressive.”

[W]hen a president is held up by his own spokeswoman as an extension of divine will, and that president is embraced by the evangelical community as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, it’s fine to use the source material to fight back.

The best Christian argument against Trump comes from Christ. The essence of Christianity is his exhortation that people treat the sick, the hungry, the poor, the imprisoned as they would treat him. “Whatever you did to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.”

No one can know what’s in Trump’s heart. But his policies are inhumane in the extreme. Cursed are the meek, for under Trump’s command, children have been put in cages, and the poor in red states are denied the health care that should be available to them under Obamacare.

Trump is all about self. His bigotry, his boasting, his lies, his pride, his scams of the vulnerable, his worship of materialism, his insults of the dead, his turning a blind eye to refugees, his bragging of adulterous behavior, his treatment of “the least” among us — all of this is antithetical to Christian philosophy.

Buttigieg is right to call him on this. He’s right to attack Pence’s hypocrisy. But the moral high ground is a fragile perch, best visited on rare occasions. He’s thrown down a needed challenge. Now let Trump and Pence try to prove him wrong.

In what many of the "godly folk" would find ironic, most of the LGBT people I know are far more Christian - meaning they support Christ's social gospel message - than the evangelical crowd.  The vast majority of us oppose Trump and the GOP and we support the very social safety net that the GOP seeks to destroy.   Calling oneself Christian and parking your ass in a pew each Sunday doesn't prove one is Christian.  Rather it is how one approaches supporting feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless, caring for the sick and caring for refugees. The Pences of the world utterly fail this test.

Charles Pierce - Quote of the Day

In keeping with the previous post, I want to address those who continue to tell me to show "respect" for others' beliefs and to have "patience" and try to politely and quietly educate them as to the errors of their political allegiances.  Patience has never been one of my virtues, especially with those who support politicians working to deprive me of civil rights and equality under the law. In a piece in Esquire, Charles Pierce sums things up well in the wake of Roy Moore's victory in the Alabama GOP primary.  Pierce's remarks apply equally to Trump supporters. Here are excerpts:

[W]hen it comes to the people who voted for Moore, I don’t have to “respect their beliefs.” I don’t have to “understand where they’re coming from.” I don’t have to “see it from their side.” These people are preparing to make a lawless theocratic lunatic one of 100 United States Senators, and that means these people are about to inflict him and his medievalism on me, too. If you think that Roy Moore belongs in the Senate, then you are a half-bright goober whose understanding of American government and basic civics probably stops at the left side of your AM radio dial. You have no concept of the national interest and very little concept of your own, unless, as I suspect, you’ve made your own fears, and hating people and hawking loogies in all directions, the sum total of your involvement in self-government. You are killing democracy and you don’t know it or care. If you had any real Christian charity in your hearts, you’d keep Roy Moore in the locked ward of your local politics and not loose him on a nation that deserves so much better than him.

I’m out of empathy for this stuff. I’m out of pity. I’m out of patience. And, not for nothing, but Moore’s opponent is a guy named Douglas Jones. In 2001, Jones convicted two men for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963, one of the iconic white supremacist terrorist acts of that period. One of those bastards already died in prison and the other keeps getting denied parole. If you’d rather be represented in the Senate by a lawless theocratic lunatic, rather than a guy that finally got justice for four murdered little girls, well, you deserve anything that goddamn happens to you.

Yes, I may "play the game" when required in social settings, but I will not respect beliefs that involve bigotry, hate, homophobia and/or racism.

Uncensored Trump Rally Videos: "Hang the B*tch!" "F*g!' 'N*gger!"

As the GOP feigns outrage over Hillary Clinton's remarks about the true nature of Trump's supporters, it is useful to revisit the uncensored videos that the New York Times released last month from Trump rallies:  The New Civil Rights Movement reminds us of what Trump's base of support is really like (if you have not done so, be sure to watch these videos, and then ask whether or not Hillary was right in here remarks over the weekend):

"Sieg heil!"

"Fuck you, Hillary!"

"Hang the bitch!"

"Kill her!"

"Trump the bitch!"

"Get out of here, you fag!"

"Fuck that nigger!"

"Hillary Clinton needs to get her ass spanked!"

"Ignorance and immigrants. They mix together!"

"Fuck those dirty beaners!"

"Hillary is a whore!"

The video, clearly, is disturbing, but what's more disturbing is the culture Trump has created, fostered, nurtured, and allowed at his rallies. 

The man who literally threw a mother and her crying baby out of a rally on Tuesday but not a 10-year old child who repeatedly yelled, "take the bitch down!" about Hillary Clinton, has made his priorities and what he finds acceptable crystal clear.

Perhaps even more revealing are the comments of one Trump supporter included in the video, an older man who says he feels Trump is his last chance to "preserve the culture I grew up in."

Trump's supporters have defined themselves by their own words and actions.  If they do not like how Hillary, I and others describe them, then they need to take a good look at themselves and change their behavior.  Sadly, we all know that that will never happen.  Indeed, I'm sure to much of Trump's base, I just a "filthy faggot" - or worse.   

Hillary Correctly Calls Half of Trump’s Supporters "A “Basket Of Deplorables"

The Republican Party loves to slander and stigmatize members of minority groups, "liberals," gays and many others, but the proved how thin skinned they are when Hillary Clinton rightly called out the misogyny that motivates a significant portion of Donald Trump's base of support.  Specifically, at a New York City LGBT gala fundraiser where Barbra Streisand performed, Clinton said many of the GOP candidate’s voters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.”  All in all, a 100% accurate description of many rank and file Trump supporters, especially those who call themselves evangelical Christians.  It got even better when Clinton said, as Joe Jervis reports, the following:

Clinton urged the crowd to volunteer for her campaign, saying: “If you know anybody who’s even thinking of voting for Trump, stage an intervention.” . . . She joked: “That may be one conversion therapy I endorse. Just remember: friends don’t let friends vote for Trump.”

The wailing, whining and crocodile tears now coming from Trump and the GOP underscores the hypocrisy that has become a leading hallmark of today's Republican Party.  They believe they can say all kinds of foul things about Hispanics, blacks, Muslim, gays and anyone else who isn't a part of their white "average American" crowd of Neanderthals and that is all perfectly fine.  Just don't call Trump supporters out for what they truly are.  The New York Times looks at the hypocrisy and feigned outrage.  Here are excerpts:

Mrs. Clinton’s comments Friday night, which were a variation of a sentiment she has expressed in other settings recently, came at a fund-raiser in Manhattan.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” she said to applause and laughter. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

By Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had acknowledged her stumble. “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea,” she said in a statement. “I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong.”

She then used the opportunity to double down on her criticism of her opponent. “It’s deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia,” she said, “and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people.”

A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Jason Miller, said what made Mrs. Clinton’s comments particularly off-putting was that she made them “in front of wealthy donors” and that the setting and statement, “revealed just how little she thinks of the hard-working men and women of America.”

Mrs. Clinton made a similar remark on Israeli television on Thursday, saying “We’ve always had a kind of paranoiac, prejudicial element within our politic.” But she did not specify how many of Mr. Trump’s supporters fit into that category.

It was the characterization of “half of Trump’s supporters” on Friday that struck some Republicans as similar to the damning “47 percent” remark made by their own nominee, Mitt Romney, in his 2012 campaign against President Obama.

Her remarks on Friday were a more pointed version of her earlier criticisms of the movement her opponent has spurred.

Last month in a speech in Reno, Nev., Mrs. Clinton devoted an address to criticizing Mr. Trump for “taking hate groups mainstream” and “helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party.”

In talking points given to surrogates on Saturday, and obtained by The New York Times, the campaign advised anyone speaking about the “deplorable” issue in the news media to reiterate that while Mrs. Clinton intended to say “some” instead of “half,” Mr. Trump, as she had pointed out in the past, “has clearly brought the alt-right’s hate into his campaign and into the mainstream.”

The talking points advised that anyone who is pressed on the “deplorable” remarks should assert that the news media was holding Mrs. Clinton to a different standard than Mr. Trump, with this suggested rejoinder: “Are they going to make more out of this story than they made out of the racist, misogynistic Trump comments that got us here in the first place?”

True to form, some in the media are carrying water for the GOP on the issue and ignoring the groups Trump insults at nearly every one of his rallies, engaging in their routine false equivalence of Trump's daily outrageous remarks and one by Clinton that is all too accurate.  Part of the motivation for this, of course is due to the undeserved deference given to Christofascists who wrap their hatred of others in the cloak of religion.  Hate is hate, no matter what the excuse given to justify it.  Much of Trumps base is made up of people who simply put are NOT nice or decent people. Hillary got it right.  

I'm Sorry, But Supporting a Bigot Makes You a Bigot

Some time ago I did a post about how we could expect the mainstream news media to continue to depict the 2016 presidential election as a "horse race" in order to (i) maintain a level of excitement, d (ii) maximize revenues through subscriptions or page views, and (iii) avoid a time consuming and perhaps tedious job of evaluating the contrasting proposals of candidates.   In short, much of the mainstream media is lazy.   

While many things could happen, the polls overwhelmingly show Donald Trump in the toilet, yet we continue to hear breathless reports about Trump's possible come back or media harping on the latest Clinton "e-mail scandal" as if they want to sabotage Clinton to keep the race closer.  And god forbid that the networks call things as they are: if you are supporting a bigot, it's pretty likely that you are a bigot as well regardless of whether you try to hide behind the smoke screens of religious belief or "fiscal responsibility."  The latter of course is farcical since the deficit always balloons when the GOP controls the White House. A piece in Salon gets down to the reality  of things.  Here are excerpts:

 Donald Trump’s ascendance to power over the Republican Party was made possible by how he outmaneuvered the American corporate news media. As I explained in anearlier Salon piece, Donald Trump, with his background in reality TV and professional wrestling, created a spectacle that rewarded him with at least $3 billion in free media coverage. Trump’s sophisticated meta game also allowed him to exploit a risk-averse news-media establishment that operates according to a clear and predictable set of rules and conventions governing “the boundaries of the approved public discourse.”

These rules and conventions consist of maintaining the appearance of “objectivity” and “fairness,” perpetuating a “both sides do it” framework when discussing Republicans and Democrats, and an obsessive need to present “all sides of an issue.” Clear statements of fact and truth are treated as mere opinions though as Paul Krugman once said, “if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.’”

The American corporate news media also prefers to feature generalists who understand these rules as opposed to real experts who will not obey said script. Ultimately, in covering political campaigns and elections, the American corporate news media is more interested in reporting about the “horse race” — because it is an easy story to communicate — than in critically evaluating the specific policy proposals and qualifications of a given candidate.

When confronted by the Donald Trump phenomenon, the American corporate news media was flummoxed by his disregard for facts, inconsistency and willingness to rapidly change his positions on a given issue, overt racism and bigotry of his followers and movement, fascism-fueled hostility and contempt for journalists, and utter disregard for the rules of normal politics. 

On Monday’s edition of “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” New York Times columnist and author Charles Blow refused to comply with Donald Trump’s political con job and an American corporate news media that has acted irresponsibly in aiding and abetting his presidential campaign. In an exchange with Donald Trump’s minion Bruce Levell, Charles Blow did not allow Trump’s clear pattern, habit and strategy of racism and bigotry to be obfuscated or repackaged.

As detailed by a transcript from CNN:
 BLOW: And I know a bigot when I see a bigot. And you are supporting a bigot and that makes you part of the bigotry that’s Donald Trump.

LEVELL: I know someone who doesn’t tell the truth on national TV when I see it, sir.

BLOW: Right. And I know this. A bigot is a bigot. You’re supporting a bigot. That makes you part of the bigotry. And you are part of the problem that black America faces. That what black people don’t need is not somebody to solve our problems like we are some sort of algebraic equation. What black people need is dismantling . . .

LEVELL: . . . you can’t sit on national TV and call someone a racist, sir.

BLOW: I called him a bigot and I called you a supporter of that bigotry, and therefore part of that bigotry. And you are part of what the problem with African-Americans.

LEMON: Let him get in. Let him get in. Go ahead, Bruce.

BLOW: Yes, I said that to you.

Charles Blow conducted a master class in how best to derail Donald Trump’s news-media con job. Blow was direct, unapologetic, did not concede any territory of agreement or compromise and clearly communicated how Trump’s behavior and policies are racist and that by implication his supporters are as well.

Charles Blow also used the racial optics of his segment on CNN to great effect. Donald Trump, like other Republicans, deploys black conservatives as human mascots to deliver some of his most toxic, offensive and racist policies. . . . Because Don Lemon, Bruce Levell and Charles Blow are all black men, Levell was not allowed an easy out or pivot.

On Monday’s edition of “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” Charles Blow established a new rule for how journalists and other commentators should interact with Donald Trump’s agents and rabble. Blow is one of the few prominent voices who have consistently refused to legitimize or excuse-make for Donald Trump’s political campaign of bigotry, racism, nativism and lies. The question now becomes, Will other members of the Fourth Estate follow Charles Blow’s lead and the new rule that he has tried to establish or will they continue to be supplicants for Donald Trump?