Monday Morning Male Beauty

The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity

Power and money mad Trump acolytes, Franklin Graham, Ralph Reed
and Jerry Falwell, Jr.

This blog looks at the poisonous effects of religion since one of the blog objectives is to expose hypocrisy. Few realms provide more hypocrisy on open display that religion, especially present day evangelical Christianity. Add to this the the deadly influence that conservative Christianity has inflicted on LGBT individuals worldwide, starting with European missionaries who exported homophobia across the globe and stigmatized, if not literally killed, native cultures that had previously accepted, if not embraced, homosexuality.  For those interested, the historical review in The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies traces the actions of these missionaries in place as diverse as the early American west, Japan, the South Pacific, to Africa.  The common theme through out this effort was converting or, if conversion failed, destroying those who did not subscribe to "godly folks'" dogma and/or agenda.  Now, in the age of Trump evangelicals have jettisoned any pretense of upholding Christ's message and their sole goal is to destroy those they deem to oppose them - liberals, gays, non-Christians, etc. - and to embrace political power regardless of the moral bankruptcy of their chosen vehicle to power.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the crisis point evangelical Christianity has reached and its need to reject Trump and refocus on Christ's gospel message or face the loss of what little legitimacy evangelicals retain with the larger public (I myself have largely given up on institutional Christianity).   Here are article highlights:

Last week, Ralph Reed, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s founder and chairman, told the group, “There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. No one!” Reed is partially right; for many evangelical Christians, there is no political figure whom they have loved more than Donald Trump.

I recently exchanged emails with a pro-Trump figure who attended the president’s reelection rally in Orlando, Florida, on June 18. (He spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, so as to avoid personal or professional repercussions.) He had interviewed scores of people, many of them evangelical Christians. “I have never witnessed the kind of excitement and enthusiasm for a political figure in my life,” he told me. “I honestly couldn’t believe the unwavering support they have. And to a person, it was all about ‘the fight.’

The rallygoers, he said, told him that Trump’s era “is spiritually driven.” When I asked whether he meant by this that Trump’s supporters believe God’s hand is on Trump, this moment and at the election—that Donald Trump is God’s man, in effect—he told me, “Yes—a number of people said they believe there is no other way to explain his victories. Starting with the election and continuing with the conclusion of the Mueller report.

Many said God has chosen him and is protecting him.”The data seem to bear this out. Approval for President Trump among white evangelical Protestants is 25 points higher than the national average. . . . . during the period from July 2018 to January 2019, 70 percent of white evangelicals who attend church at least once a week approved of Trump, versus 65 percent of those who attend religious services less often.

The enthusiastic, uncritical embrace of President Trump by white evangelicals is among the most mind-blowing developments of the Trump era. How can a group that for decades—and especially during the Bill Clinton presidency—insisted that character counts and that personal integrity is an essential component of presidential leadership not only turn a blind eye to the ethical and moral transgressions of Donald Trump, but also constantly defend him? Why are those who have been on the vanguard of “family values” so eager to give a man with a sordid personal and sexual history a mulligan?

Part of the answer is their belief that they are engaged in an existential struggle against a wicked enemy—not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, but rather American liberals and the left.

Many white evangelical Christians, then, are deeply fearful of what a Trump loss would mean for America, American culture, and American Christianity. If a Democrat is elected president, they believe, it might all come crashing down around us. . . . . A friend of mine described that outlook to me this way: “It’s the Flight 93 election. FOREVER.”

Many evangelical Christians are also filled with grievances and resentments because they feel they have been mocked, scorned, and dishonored by the elite culture over the years. . . . For a growing number of evangelicals, Trump’s dehumanizing tactics and cruelty aren’t a bug; they are a feature. Trump “owns the libs,” and they love it. He’ll bring a Glock to a cultural knife fight, and they relish that.

There’s a very high cost to our politics for celebrating the Trump style, but what is most personally painful to me as a person of the Christian faith is the cost to the Christian witness. Nonchalantly jettisoning the ethic of Jesus in favor of a political leader who embraces the ethic of Thrasymachus and Nietzsche—might makes right, the strong should rule over the weak, justice has no intrinsic worth, moral values are socially constructed and subjective—is troubling enough.

But there is also the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions.

In speaking about the widespread, reflexive evangelical support for the president, Coppock—who is theologically orthodox and generally sympathetic to conservatism—lamented the effect this moral freak show is having, especially on the younger generation. With unusual passion, he told me, “We’re losing an entire generation. They’re just gone. It’s one of the worst things to happen to the Church.”

Proximity to power is fine for Christians, Coppock told me, but only so long as it does not corrupt their moral sense, only so long as they don’t allow their faith to become politically weaponized. Yet that is precisely what’s happening today.

Evangelical Christians need another model for cultural and political engagement, . . . a set of sensibilities and dispositions that are fundamentally different from what we see embodied in many white evangelical leaders who frequently speak out on culture and politics. The sensibilities and dispositions Fujimura is describing are characterized by a commitment to grace, beauty, and creativity, not antipathy, disdain, and pulsating anger. It’s the difference between an open hand and a mailed fist.

“The Church is in one of its deepest moments of crisis—not because of some election result or not, but because of what has been exposed to be the poverty of the American Church in its capacity to be able to see and love and serve and engage in ways in which we simply fail to do.

[A]s a starting point, evangelical Christians should acknowledge the profound damage that’s being done to their movement by its braided political relationship—its love affair, to bring us back to the words of Ralph Reed—with a president who is an ethical and moral wreck. Until that is undone—until followers of Jesus are once again willing to speak truth to power rather than act like court pastors—the crisis in American Christianity will only deepen, its public testimony only dim, its effort to be a healing agent in a broken world only weaken.

At this point, I can’t help but wonder whether that really matters to many of Donald Trump’s besotted evangelical supporters.

I have to laugh in some ways about Ralph Reed's statement and his continued self-prostitution for money by pandering to an manipulating evangelicals.  Reed and I met years ago and my "gaydar " went off the charts.  Sadly, Reed strikes me as yet another closeted, self-loathing gay who cannot (i) let go of his childhood religious brainwashing and (ii) walk away from the money trough so dear to professional Christians. . 

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Will the NRA Meltdown Aid Democrats and Gun Control?

On Tuesday the Virginia General Assembly will open a special session to address the issue of enacting common sense gun control.  It is a near guarantee that most Republicans in both houses of the General Assembly will continue their slavish self-prostitution to the NRA and gun industry.  Thus, the question of the hour will be whether the NRA's current upheaval and financial meltdown might embolden a few Republicans to reach across the aisle to join Democrats in at last updating Virginia's abysmal gun laws. At the national level, a feeble NRA could harm the re-election efforts of Donald Trump and far right Republicans. For those who care about gun control and responsible government in general, the NRA's troubles are most welcome.  A piece in Politico looks at the ongoing turmoil and possible consequences.  Here are highlights: 

The National Rifle Association aired an avalanche of TV ads and pushed its 5 million-plus members to the polls for Donald Trump in 2016, propelling him in the Rust Belt states that delivered him the presidency.

Now, the gun rights group is in total meltdown — and senior Republicans and Trump 2020 officials are alarmed.

In recent weeks, the NRA has seen everything from a failed coup attempt to the departure of its longtime political architect to embarrassing tales of self-dealing by top leaders. The turmoil is fueling fears that the organization will be profoundly diminished heading into the election, leaving the Republican Party with a gaping hole in its political machinery.

With the Chamber of Commerce and Koch political network withdrawing from their once-dominant roles in electing conservatives, Republicans worry that three organizations that have long formed the core of their electoral infrastructure will be effectively on the sidelines.

The predicament has so troubled some Republicans that they are calling on the famously secretive NRA to address its 2020 plans. Within the past week, senators have privately expressed concerns about the group to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Todd Young.

With the organization mired in palace intrigue and confronting a daily barrage of negative publicity, some NRA officials are skeptical a 2020 plan will emerge. Many Republicans are convinced the job of turning out Second Amendment supporters will fall to the cash-flush Republican National Committee, which is constructing a massive get-out-the-vote and data machine devoted to turning out conservatives. Jane Timken, chairwoman of the Ohio GOP, said her organization would work closely with the RNC to microtarget firearm owners. The national party, Timken noted, has compiled extensive voter data through sources ranging from gun licenses to gun magazine subscriptions.

Concerns over the NRA intensified last week after the resignation of Chris Cox, who had been the head of its lobbying arm since 2002. . . . . With Cox gone, it's an open question who will oversee the NRA’s 2020 strategy.  “Chris Cox is the guy everybody dealt with,” said Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The organization's troubles are hard to overstate. The most serious threat is an investigation by New York state attorney general's office into its tax-exempt status. In April, NRA President Oliver North was ousted in an ugly public spectacle in which he declared the group was in a "clear crisis." News organizations have also reported that NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre used $275,000 of the group's money to buy luxury clothes at Zegna in Beverly Hills, Calif., and that the organization logged tens of thousands of dollars in other expenses that benefited its officials.

Trump weighed in on the NRA's problems Tuesday morning, tweeting that the group is a "victim" of "political harassment by New York State and Governor Cuomo."

Issues surrounding the Republican Party's outside infrastructure go beyond the NRA. The Chamber of Commerce, a key player in Republican politics over the past decade, spent just $10 million during the 2018 cycle, about a third of what it spent during the previous election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The scale back has led many to believe the organization, a staple of the business community, is preparing to play a diminished role in 2020.

Meanwhile, the Koch network is gradually shifting away from partisanship and toward policy issues like addressing poverty and drug addiction. The network, which like the Chamber has at times found itself at odds with the president, plans to sit out the 2020 presidential race and is recasting itself in a nonpartisan fashion.

The uncertainty surrounding all three groups is likely to increase pressure on America First Action, a super PAC devoted to backing Trump.

Some Republicans Urge SCOTUS To Protect LGBT Employees

LGBT friendly Republicans are about as plentiful as unicorns (especially in the Virginia GOP), but believe it or not a group of Republicans - most former office holders since being gay friendly would guarantee a primary challenge for an incumbent - have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States ("SCOTUS") arguing for the Court to rule that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans employment discrimination against LGBT employees. Their argument is that the plain language of the statute encompasses sexual orientation not just biological sex.  Two the United States Courts of Appeal have agreed with them while the 11th Circuit based in Atlanta unsurprisingly did not, reflecting the overall social and educational backwardness of the states within the 11th Circuit. A piece in The Advocate looks at this unlikely brief.  Here are article excerpts:

Donald Trump and his Justice Department may argue that current federal law doesn’t ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination, but many members of Trump’s party disagree.

More than 30 well-known current and former Republicans have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the employment discrimination cases the U.S. Supreme Court will hear October 8, The New York Times reports. The court will consider the cases of two men who say they were fired for being gay and a woman who was fired for being transgender, and the signatories to the brief contend that those actions are illegal.

Lower courts have found that such discrimination violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, holding that the act’s Title VII, banning sex discrimination, applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The lawyers representing the employers have contested that interpretation and appealed the rulings to the Supreme Court.

The Republicans signing on to the brief, to be filed with the court this week, are led by Ken Mehlman, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign manager. Mehlman came out as gay in 2010 and became an activist for marriage equality.

Other signatories include several former members of the U.S. House of Representatives, such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Tom Campbell, Ryan Costello, and Christopher Shays; former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson; Meg Whitman, the president and CEO of eBay and 2010 California gubernatorial nominee; 2012 presidential candidate Fred Karger; and staffers from the George W. Bush administration.

Numerous other friend-of-the-court briefs regarding these cases are expected to be filed this week; the deadline is Wednesday. More than 150 Democrats in Congress, led by Rep. David Cicilline and Sen. Jeff Merkley, are also filing a brief supporting this interpretation of Title VII. But the Republican brief, which is not endorsed by any current members of Congress, is more surprising.

The Republicans’ document calls for for an expansive reading of the civil rights law but does so using a conservative legal argument — one derived in part from the writings of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, certainly no supporter of LGBTQ equality. It quotes from a book by Scalia and Bryan Garner, saying, “The text [of a law] plainly applies or does not apply by its very words,” even if the legislators who crafted the law did not foresee a “particular circumstance” in which it would apply.

The text of Title VII, the brief says, makes clear that “it is unlawful for an employee’s sex to contribute to an employer’s decision to discharge or otherwise discriminate against the employee. Yet that is exactly what happened in all three cases on review. Two men were discharged because they were gay, which necessarily means that they lost their jobs because they were men who were attracted to men. Had they been similarly situated women — that is, women who were attracted to men — their employers would not have discharged them for such attraction.

“The other plaintiff is a transgender woman whose employer discharged her for representing herself as the woman she understood herself to be. The employer so acted because the employee declined to accede to the demand that employees who had been assigned ‘male’ at birth (or whom the employer otherwise believed to be male in essence) refrain from representing themselves as women. Had the plaintiff been assigned female at birth (or had the employer otherwise believed her to be female in essence), she would not have been discharged for representing herself as a woman. Thus, in all three cases, an employee was fired for attractions or actions that his or her employer would have tolerated for members of another sex.

The brief acknowledges that in 1964, Congress and the American public may not have envisioned the term “sex” applying to sexual orientation or gender identity, but argues that this is not relevant. “As this Court has repeatedly recognized, in Title VII cases as well as cases in other areas of the law, statutes often apply more broadly than their drafters anticipated, and extrinsic evidence of statutory ‘intent’ is irrelevant when the statute’s words are clear,” it states.

The Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, has argued that Title VII does not apply to sexual orientation or gender identity.  . . . .The Equality Act, pending in Congress, would amend the Civil Rights Act and several other federal laws to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, so the matter would no longer depend on courts’ interpretation. The House approved the Equality Act in May, with support mostly from Democrats. Whether it will even come to a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate is doubtful. Trump is on record as opposing the bill.

Mehlman also had an op-ed published in today’s Times arguing that these people suffered unlawful discrimination. “Such treatment is unethical and un-American, and the Supreme Court has the opportunity to read the clear language of Title VII and affirm that it is illegal,” he wrote. “No matter whether the justices take a textualist or practical interpretation, the answer is the same. …

Mehlman obviously doesn't speak for the Christofascists and professional Christians Trump panders to for whom mistreating others is a hallmark and raison d'etre.  For these self-centered hypocrites, it is ALWAYS about discriminating against and harming others.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

The Founders Would Be Revolted By Trump, Today’s Republicans

As perhaps a majority of Republicans continue to gush about Donald Trump's Soviet-style parade and military display on July 4th and his regime's human rights abuses continue on the nation's southern border, those who know accurate history of America are revolted by what they have witnessed - many of us refused to tune in - and are struck by just disgusted the Founding Fathers would be.  Significant portions of Republicans now support government censorship of the free press while a majority believe that Christianity should be made the nation's established religion.  Anyone versed in accurate history of the nation understands that these views were anathema to the Founding Fathers. A column in the New York Times looks at the increasingly anti-American positions of today's Republicans, not mention Der Trumpenführer.  Here are column highlights:

Kids in cages and tanks for the tyrant. After that dictator-friendly Fourth of July, it’s time for all true patriots to conduct a political gut check.

Like many people, I’m worried about the Democrats. A majority of Americans are desperate for someone to dislodge the despot from the White House. And yet some Democrats are pushing policy positions — such as taking away private health insurance from more than 150 million people — that are deeply unpopular. The smarter candidates will rethink this, and soon, or otherwise ensure that an awful American aberration is more than a one-off.

But as troubled as I am by the Democrats, I’m terrified of the Republicans. In numerous surveys of a party that has adopted the worst pathologies of President Trump, Republicans have shown themselves to be explicitly anti-American. The Founders would gag. So would Abraham Lincoln.

Consider the Republicans’ view of the First Amendment, the most sacred of the freedoms embedded in this country’s governing blueprint. Just under half of Republicans now believe government should be able to shut down “biased or inaccurate media.” And close to half of Republicans have adopted Trump’s authoritarian view that the news media is “the enemy of the people.”

I don’t expect Republicans to know Thomas Jefferson’s words by heart — that if he were forced to choose between “a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” This from a man who was subject to a lifetime of biased and inaccurate press.

But what part of “Congress shall make no law” abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, do these citizens not understand?

Regarding the other foundational liberty in the First Amendment, restricting an “establishment of religion” by the state, the cult of Trump would throw that under a steamroller of bigotry as well.

A majority of Republicans think Christianity should be the established national religion. And half of all Southerners — the deepest, most anti-American part of Trump’s base, with the DNA of Civil War traitors still coursing through the region — believe the United States was founded as an “explicitly Christian” nation.

George Washington made clear it was otherwise in a letter to a Jewish congregation in 1790 celebrating religious tolerance and diversity. “The citizens of the United States have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy,” he wrote.

Jefferson expressed a similar feeling, touting a homeland for “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”

So, quick summary: Republicans of today would not approve of the First Amendment as written. They would give Big Government free rein to quash dissenting voices in the press, and would prefer a merging of church and state.

[A]s they have picked up Trump’s hatreds as their own, Republicans have turned a cold shoulder to the wretched masses yearning to breathe free. Less than 40 percent of Republicans, in three recent polls, now believe immigrants are a benefit to the country. This could be because of ignorance: Even though the vast majority, 77 percent, of immigrants in this country are legal, a plurality of Republicans believe they are not.

Trump has compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, which is like comparing a noxious weed to a redwood tree.

The modern-day Know-Nothings are the pink-faced mobs calling for a wall at Trump rallies. They are the architects of a government policy that puts children in filthy cages and forces them to drink fetid water, that sees helpless and newly orphaned babies as subhuman — all while laughing at the cruelty.

You can see why Republicans with a sense of history and fealty to the great sweep of their party’s finer principles describe themselves as politically homeless in 2019.

And when Trump rolls out weapons of war to celebrate the birth of a nation that never even had much of a standing army until the 20th century, you can see why passionate pride in this country is at its lowest point since Gallup started measuring this sentiment in the modern era.

Democracy is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Declaration of Independence, as the historian Virginia Anderson recently noted. It’s a human construct, more fragile than any of us believed until now. But when it’s gone, no one should be surprised.

A piece in The Atlantic continues this theme by looking at Trump's so-called speech at his Red Square like event.  Here are excerpts:

Were these wars right or just? Why were they fought? What were their outcomes? Except for the mentions of “freedoms” sprinkled randomly through the text, those questions went unconsidered. Instead, Trump would periodically ad-lib “What a great country!” after this or that mention of power and violence. America is great because it crushes all before it. Altering for circumstances, it was a speech that could have been given by Kaiser Wilhelm or Napoleon or Julius Caesar or the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib. A great country is one that is feared by its enemies, that can inflict more devastating destruction than any other.

Devotion. Unity. History. Fighting. But not: Democracy. Justice. Individuality. Peace.

From time to time, one of Trump’s more devout speechwriters will try to insert references to God into the president’s mouth. Those references never sound natural from the least spiritual president in the nation’s history. They were, fascinatingly, all but absent from this speech commemorating the independence of a nation, in the apt phrase of G. K. Chesterton, with the soul of a church. Instead, there was only vainglorious boasting: See our wealth, see our power, see our glorious triumphs over the mounded corpses of our enemies. We will always win, because we always fight.

No non-American could watch that spectacle at the Lincoln Memorial and feel that America stood for anything good or right or universal. Power worshipped power, for its own sake.

“We will always be the people who defeated a tyrant, crossed a continent, harnessed science, took to the skies, and soared into the heavens because we will never forget that we are Americans and the future belongs to us.” That sentence of self-congratulation toward the end of Trump’s speech was probably lodged in the clipboard memory of some 1980s vintage word processor hauled from the Executive Office Building.

It’s bumpf, a thousand times typed, a thousand times said. And yet this July 4, after all the rodomontade that preceded it, I found myself paying attention to those hackneyed words in a way I never had before. Will Americans always be that people? Are Americans that people now?

Be very, very afraid.

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Is America Too Dumb for Democracy?

A piece in Salon ask the question that is the caption of this post.  The Founding Fathers believed that citizens of America had an obligation to educate and keep themselves well informed both on politics and the larger world because doing so was part of making democracy work.  Fast forward to the present day and civics classes where students learned the structure of America's three branches of government work are no longer taught.  Likewise, geography has fallen by the wayside and the difficulty of high school books compared to those of 1900 has plummeted. Leisure reading has declined and on television one sees more and more mindless reality shows and "contests" with serious documentaries relegated to obscure cable channels. Frighteningly, significant portions of the U.S. citizenry cannot locate important foreign countries on a map - 6% cannot locate the USA on a map. Pointing out these disturbing realities of America may brand me an "effete liberal" among Trump's base - or at least a liberal since they would not know what effete means - but the ignorance of America's population together with its refusal to learn from other nations due to delusions of "American exceptionalism: are becoming a threat to democracy itself.  Here are highlights from the Salon piece:

Independence Day presents a good opportunity to consider that many Americans act as if their young country is independent from the rest of the world. The former popularity of the mindless slogan, “My country right or wrong,” offers a perfect summary of America’s suicidal self-absorption. When the fireworks no longer illuminate the sky, the barbecue is down to bones, and the hangovers begin to commence, a genuine act of patriotism would insist on the widespread realization that small-minded chauvinism is not virtuous. One need to look no further than the early stages of the presidential campaign to survey the damage of a country’s inability to look beyond its own borders.

The provincialism of American culture renders its politics both farcical and dangerous. While it is encouraging to see previously “extreme” and “radical” ideas, such as socialized medicine, paid family leave and debt-free higher education, become mainstream in the Democratic Party, it is also amusing to imagine a French or Canadian observer watching American politicians debate a national health care program as if it were a novel concept.

[T]he United States is the “only country in the developed world” that does not achieve universal health care coverage through public funding. Sanders, and his fellow candidates for the Democratic nomination, have strenuous labor to complete considering that most Americans know and care little about the world beyond its borders. . . . a U.S. strategic task force of Education Abroad concluded that America’s ignorance of the outside world was so great as to constitute a threat to national security. A recent National Geographic survey indicates that merely 37 percent of recent college graduates can identify Iraq on a map, most failed to identify North Korea, only one in four could identify Iran or Israel, and among Americans ages 18 to 24, 6 percent could not even point to the United States. If you are among the 6 percent, and you are reading this, that’s where you live. The American perspective on history is as sophisticated as one would expect in a country where Donald Trump can even run for president without eliciting of universal laughter and disgust. Three-fourths of the public is unaware why the U.S. fought a cold war with the Soviet Union, and 41 percent are unfamiliar with the term “Auschwitz.”

America’s perverted priorities of giving tax breaks to the wealthy while its public schools decline into states of disrepair, along with a shallow and superficial news media operating under the demands of corporate ownership, are largely to blame for America’s failures, but the general public is not exactly resistant.

Historian Richard Hofstadter analyzed “anti-intellectualism” in American life in his seminal 1963 Pulitzer-winning book. Decades of  compounding fatuity have created a culture where leisure reading, according to several reports, is at an all time low.
It seems unlikely that those Americans who do crack open a book are studying comparative politics or international relations. For the full picture of how pitiful American culture has become, consider that for many recent years the bestselling “historian” in the country was Bill O’Reilly.

To bemoan the spectacular incuriosity of Americans is not an exercise in snobbery, but a red alarm warning of an impending crisis. The consequences of American ignorance are not academic. A Washington Post survey, two years after American forces invaded Iraq, revealed that 70 percent of respondents believed that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

American provincialism also functions as insulation of the brain, preventing the average citizen from seeing and hearing the warning signs that history offers into the transformation of democracy into despotic rule. Fascism is not an overnight development, and when your country is earnestly debating whether its treatment of immigrant and refugee children qualifies for the term “concentration camp,” you have already taken a few large steps down that deadly road.

The qualities of Donald Trump, and the zealotry of his worshipful supporters, resemble the images of nearly every authoritarian movement in European, Asian and Latin American history. If America’s political culture possessed some semblance of literacy, its voters would collaborate to consign Trump to the political garbage disposal. When it came to providing basic services for its own people, it would not allow intellectual titans like Chuck Todd to ask Democrats, “How are you going to pay for it?” — as if countries with far less wealth have not already managed to do so.

A friend of mine whose father recently died told me that her brother, who lives in London, took one month off with full pay to travel to Texas, make some final memories with his dad, and attend the funeral service. Britain, contrary to popular belief, is not a mythical, far-off universe from a fantasy novel.

If one wants to drift off entirely into dreamland, envision an America where its federal government invites consultants from countries with better performing health care systems, affordable universities and more effective poverty relief policies to assist in the expansion of the social welfare state.

Instead of seeking outside advice, we will continue to display the symptoms of national solipsism, bumbling along as if there is no reality outside what we can see right in front of us.

The United States of America is one year older today. Only time will tell if it is also wiser.

Ignorance is not bliss nor is it to be celebrated - it is a crisis that threatens our democracy.

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