Republican desperados

The Republican Party, which has long prided itself on its law and order stance, is now a criminal enterprise. That leaves Democrats, by default, as both the party of the rule of law, and the party of common decency.

The Robert Mueller investigation has now demonstrated that Donald Trump and his associates worked with Russia to throw the 2016 election. The indictments, convictions, and guilty pleas are overflowing, but the Republicans are doing everything they can to help Trump escape prosecution, and to hold on to their own political power.

The latest developments in the case led CNN to ask Senator Orrin Hatch whether he was worried that Trump was implicated. He went first with a political argument.

"The Democrats will do anything to hurt this president."

Hatch was reminded that the charges were made by federal prosecutors. He then took a Rand Paulian libertarian tack.

"I don't think he was involved in crimes but even then, you know, you can make anything a crime under the current laws if you want to, you can blow it way out of proportion, you can do a lot of things." (Said the man who has spent his career fashioning "the current laws.")

The Republicans have invented a new term, process crimes, which we used to call coverups: lies that people tell authorities to hide their crimes. The Republicans would have us believe that being prosecuted for lying is no big deal in the overall scheme of things, and the prosecutors are therefore taking cheap shots instead of prosecuting the crime that gave birth to the lie.

Well, it's a new era, isn't it? Once upon a time, Bill Clinton had sex in the Oval Office with a White House employee. If a Democrat complained that it was a bit of a stretch to impeach a president for getting a blow job, Republicans could be counted on to retort, "Not because he got a blow job, but because he lied about it." That is now what is called a process crime by the same people who leveled that charge against President Clinton.

Here is what Orrin Hatch said back then.

"This great nation can tolerate a president who makes mistakes, but it cannot tolerate one who makes a mistake and then breaks a law to cover it up."

The Trump administration is an overflowing cesspool, but the Republican legislators don't care. It's one law for Republicans, and another one for Democrats.

Nowadays "law and order" applies only to people who are not rich, powerful, white, Republican males.

Pushing back against the Dark Ages

The results of yesterday's midterm elections show a division in America between urban/suburban residents and those who live in rural areas. Rural voters are solid in their support for Donald Trump.

It is often mentioned that it is confusing to the outsider that deeply religious voters who have long considered themselves to be for decency and "family values" can support a man who is so blatantly and unapologetically sinful. A man who is obviously not well-versed in any religion. A bullying blowhard from NEW YORK CITY, of all places. One would think he might as well be from Sodom.

The answer given by Trump's devotees is that, just as He chose bad boy King David to rule over Israel, God chose Donald Trump to deliver the United States from evil. (One unanswered question is why only presidents the religious right approves of are chosen by God. God apparently has His own version of "executive time," during which he lets things slide.)

We in the West have often marveled that the various kinds of Muslim seem to be fighting over events that happened (if they did happen) many centuries ago. Well, it seems that most of our rural Americans are living in pre-scientific darkness. They are still under the impression that natural events are signs from the Almighty praising or condemning things that humans are, or are not, doing. (I applaud the work that the evangelical Christian climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is doing to try to shift that view, and I wish her success.)

But really, I again blame the habits of thought that religion reinforces in our already too irrational minds. I have said that theology is the attempt to find excuses for one's belief in things that are glaringly not true. And I have also said that if you want someone to commit some unspeakable act, the best way is often to convince that person, or those people, that God wants them to do it.

The truth is that our most religious citizens have talked themselves into believing that one of the most vile men in American public life is favored by God. Without God's guidance, they would never be able to justify supporting this man.

God does not work in mysterious ways, but the human mind certainly does.

Rough horseplay

From Jen Hayden at Daily Kos, a recounting of an interview on CNN:

Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for The Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative organization funded by dark money that is spending millions to promote conservative extremist judges like Brett Kavanaugh, says that what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has described, that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge locked her in a room, turned up a stereo to drown out her protests, groped her, and tried to take off her bathing suit and that she feared for her life when Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth to cover her protests, even if all that were true, it was merely “rough horseplay.”

The things that conservatives say. What is it that these people expect to get from the sale of their souls?

There are witch hunts, and there are days when the witches beg to be caught.

One of the great ironies of this age is that the Republican Party, masters of the witch hunt, are accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller of conducting one.

Well, I called them "masters of the witch hunt," but, really, let's look at their success rate. Their efforts to dig up dirt on the Clintons did find that Bill Clinton lied to investigators about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Congrats, Republicans, but that's about it.

The House of Representatives launched a slew of investigations into Hillary's handling of Benghazi, but actually found nothing to reproach her for. Their search devolved into multiple investigations of her private email server, which also led to nothing, except for the House's embarrassing (for them) eleven hour interrogation of Hillary, during which they seemed totally unprepared and had no idea what questions to ask her. She owned them that day.

From these repeated Republican failures, we can come to a couple of conclusions. First, the Republicans are bound and determined to go on witch hunts, seemingly as an alternative to governing.

Second, let's examine three possibilities of what the multiple investigations of Hillary Clinton mean.

Possibility 1: The House investigators are just totally incompetent when it comes to investigating. There's actually something to be said for this possibility, but it doesn't prove that Hillary was guilty of anything.

Possibility 2: The House investigators tried their best for years, but that wily Hillary is just the smartest master criminal in the history of criminality, and they couldn't catch her. But they'll keep trying as long as they draw breath.

Possibility 3: Hillary Clinton is innocent.

OK, that's one kind of witch hunt. (The real kind.)

Now, consider the Mueller "witch hunt." Yes, I put that in quotes. If I shift metaphors here, and call the Mueller investigation a fishing expedition, it's one of the most successful fishing trips in the history of humankind. The fish are leaping into the boat!

Just today, the biggest, most elusive of all legendary fish in the Mueller expedition was finally reeled in. Paul Manafort has not only pleaded guilty to charges he did not want to fight in court, but has agreed to provide further information on Donald Trump. Now, that's fishin'.

Meanwhile, Trump's pick for the Supreme Court has been accused of sexual misconduct. His defenders may point to the fact that this misconduct happened when he was in high school. Normally, this would be enough to dismiss the charge as trivial, but the charge is attempted rape. If the allegation is true, even in high school Kavanaugh sought to control women's bodies.

Well, we'll see how that one plays out, but, really, there have been so many indictments and so many guilty pleas, the phrase "witch hunt" is wildly inapt. Trump is surrounded by criminals; they seem to be the only kind of people he knows.

Mike Pence is more of a danger to religious freedom than an atheist like me.

Mike Pence said,

"No people of faith today face greater hostility or hatred than followers of Christ."

It's neither here nor there, but I wonder if he's ever run that assertion by a Muslim or a Jew?

Speaking of Muslims, the Christian fear of Sharia law is some of the fuel that feeds the desire in many to establish a Christian government. Beat the Muslims to it, is the theory. Now, I have asserted before that any kind of religious government would be a threat to religious freedom. In my last post, I noted how very lucky we are that evangelicals at the time of the founding of our constitutional republic joined Deists in insisting on the separation of church and state, for fear of persecution by whatever the state religion turned out to be.

Another fun fact from Frank Lambert's book The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America is that, at one point, the Anglican church in Virginia sent missionaries to Massachusetts, not to convert Indians, but to attempt to convert Puritans to Christianity. Any Christian government would be a threat to the religious freedom of any Christian sect that was not considered by the government to be in possession of religious truth. I will repeat for emphasis that evangelicals fought for the separation of church and state for this very reason.

Now, as to Pence's claim: do Christians face hostility and hatred today?

I will take a backseat to nobody in my assertion that all religion is nonsense. I do not single Christians out. I don't hate Christians. I don't feel hostility towards them. Knowing that religion is deep in the bones of many, if not most, people, I have no illusions that it will ever disappear. I have no desire to proselytize for atheism. (If you happen to be losing your faith, however, I am happy to help.) I am 100% in favor of your right to practice your faith without fear from the government or your neighbors. I do not, however, believe that criticism of religious faith is persecution. Religious faith should be fair game for scrutiny, just like any other belief. But my only weapon in these "religious wars" is persuasion.

What I am hostile to is religion driving public policy. And that is exactly what Mike Pence is fighting for.

The Religious Liberty Task Force is dangerous to religious liberty.

I have made quite a few of the following points before, but in light of Jeff Sessions's new Religious Liberty Task Force, they need repeating.

Simply as a matter of cause and effect, the separation of church and state is the only guarantee of religious freedom. It has worked very will in this country for over 200 years. Elsewhere in the world, religious factions attack each other physically because the one faction that gets political power persecutes the others. It does not happen in this country, because we do not have an established state religion.

The leaders of right-wing evangelical churches in the United States claim that they are being discriminated against and face hostility. But what constitutes this hostility? It is the fact that these religious leaders seek to have their religion decide public policy. They want their religion to be declared the official religion of the United States. That is their goal.

Now, what is the nature of this alleged discrimination? Is Christian worship forbidden or policed by the state? No. Is the outward display of religious beliefs (bumper stickers, signs, Christmas displays, etc.) forbidden on anybody's private property or in any church? No.

What, then, is forbidden? Religious displays are forbidden in front of government buildings. This is not an attack on religious freedom. It is a curb on government power. Also forbidden is discrimination against any group (race, color, creed, national origin, gender, sexual orientation) by any business, even when the owner of that business believes his religious beliefs are being violated. Well, should we worry about that that business owner's right to discriminate against certain customers because of his religious beliefs? I think our concern should be on behalf of the people the owner wants to discriminate against. Over the centuries, God has told his people to do many things. Today, his people are encouraged to refuse to sell cakes for gay weddings. Once upon a time, his people were given permission to own slaves. Later, his people were given permission to not serve negroes at their lunch counters.

What the Religious Liberty Task Force seeks to bring about is not religious liberty for all, but for their own religious principles to be given the force of law. This is patently unconstitutional, and un-American.

Now, here's a little bit of American history I haven't brought up before. When the Founding Fathers put together the Constitution, it was not merely the work of some elite society of Deists who insisted on the separation of church and state. The Deists were joined in a coalition by evangelicals (Baptists and others) who were afraid that they would be discriminated against by Puritans or Anglicans if church and state were not kept separate. (The source of that last tidbit is Frank Lambert's The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America.)

Surreal days as the Trump regime continues on and on

I was watching a little bit of Trump's reception in England by Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband today. It was at Blenheim Palace. There was a red carpet, and a crowd of dignitaries waiting to attend a state dinner. A band of Scots, Irish, and Welsh guards marched and played to welcome the Trumps.

I was wondering what everyone was thinking. Here we have a president that much of the world has written off as worse than useless, and yet we are all still going through the motions, the ceremonies, as though things were normal. I'll bet that the Mays, most of the guests, and the members of the band were thinking, "My God, what am I doing in the middle of this charade?"

Here in our democracy, it is hard to take back our big mistake, because both houses of our legislature are full of big mistakes. Everyone but them seems to know what a disaster Trump is, so the surreal dream goes on.

It's way past time to snap out of it and say that our current situation is crazy and needs to stop.

Fun facts: Ben Franklin and the evil lightning rod

Back in Ben Franklin's day, lightning often struck houses. The houses often burned down, and sometimes the people inside them were killed.

After Franklin performed his kite experiment, thereby satisfying himself that lightning and electricity were one and the same, he invented the lightning rod, a metal device that protruded from the highest point on a house, and which diverted the lightning into the ground, saving life and property.

People who believed (as some still do today), that natural events were God's punishment for the sins of men, criticized Franklin for thwarting God's will.

Hypocrite of the Day: Trey Gowdy

So, the House of Representatives is grilling Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in hopes that they can cite him for contempt of Congress. They seek information about the Special Counsel investigation which, knowing them, they would pass on to the White House.

So, Trey Gowdy says to Rod Rosenstein, "Whatever you got, finish it the hell up, because this country is being torn apart."

That is correct. Trey Gowdy, leader of endless (and fruitless) investigations of Hillary Clinton, wants the Department of Justice to hurry up.

Some other rather puzzling demands: "If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury." Well, um, Trey, judging from the multiple indictments so far, I think the Department of Justice is way ahead of you on that.

And: "If you have evidence that this president acted inappropriately, present it to the American people."

"This president" acts so inappropriately so often and so publicly, the American people hardly need that pointed out to them.

The President* needs to be put into a padded cell.

Today, Donald Trump made a speech to the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Over at Daily Kos, writer Mark Sumner rightly called the speech the "undisguised rant of a dictator."

The speech, added to the Trump Regime's policy of separating families of immigrants at the border, also reveal the president* to be criminally insane.

Some excerpts:

These countries that we give tremendous foreign aid to in many cases, they send these people up & they're not sending their finest. Does that sound familiar? Remember I made that speech and I was badly criticized? Turns out I was 100% right and that's why I got elected.

Every new group of immigrants constitutes a Mariel boatlift in his diseased mind.

Crooked Hilary Clinton is questioning that statistic [Germany's crime rate]. She says 'it's not true, it's not true.’ Didn't she already have her chance? 

So, she lost the election, and she's not allowed to speak? Is that how he thinks things work?

You say ‘Welcome to America, welcome to our country ...’ You never get them out! Because they take their name. They bring their name down, they file it. Then they let the person go. They say, ‘Show back up to court in one year from now.’ One year! But here’s the thing. That in itself is ridiculous. Like three percent come back.

That, along with all the other statistics he cites, comes exclusively from his imagination. It is not true anyplace else in the real world.

We need Democrats' support. They don’t want to give it, because Democrats love open borders — let the whole world come in. The whole world! MS-13! Gang members from all over the place. Come on in, we have open borders.

Trump thinks, quite literally, that he needs to act based on the fantasies in his mind, and also that, because he won the election, his "facts" are correct, and those of his critics (Crooked Hillary's, being the primary example) have to be wrong because their side lost.

We truly need to send an ambulance to the White House, so that men in straitjackets can take him away.

 

Newt Gingrich says "secular, atheist philosophy" threatens Christianity

An article I read in the Naples (Florida) Daily News, published February 18, has quotes from a speech Newt Gingrich gave at the Ave Maria School of Law.

Wow, there's actually a place called the Ave Maria School of Law? It sounds like the perfect Newt Gingrich venue.

Newt claimed that the rise of a secular, atheist philosophy is equally or more dangerous to Christianity than terrorist organizations that will kill Christians if "they don't submit."

Well, I certainly hope that's true. I obviously don't want to see any Christians killed, but I would love to see the occasional one come to his or her senses.

Now, here's the problem with Newt's warning about secular thought. When he talks about how it "dominates universities," he evokes visions of an evil cabal devoted to overthrowing the world. There is no such cabal. There is certainly no secret that secular, liberal thought dominates universities. Universities are places of higher learning, where students go to find out what learned people know.

"Learned," pronounced the old-fashioned poetic way, "learn-ed."

Science writer Timothy Ferris, in his book The Science of Liberty, explains how liberalism and knowledge feed off of each other. Science (and any other kind of useful knowledge, for that matter) does not flourish in a conservative environment. Society flourishes wherever people are not afraid to think and speak freely. There is nothing sinister in any of this. Liberalism is not a synonym of fascism, as pseudo-intellectuals like New Gingrich would have it; a liberal society is an open society, unafraid to defend its ideas and beliefs, because they are sound and supported by evidence. A society in which, as Newt hopes, Christianity has won out over this "secular philosophy" will be very similar to what we now call the Dark Ages: dangerous, and full of fear.

Religious conservatives like Newt Gingrich are afraid that new ideas will swamp their cherished values. They are right. Newt hopes that institutions like the Ave Maria School of Law will be "centers of resistance" to two forces (secular, atheistic philosophy, and radical Islamic terrorism) which he equates with each other, because he feels their threat to Christianity. But, as I have maintained many times, a secular, liberal philosophy wants nothing to do with fundamentalist Islam or with fundamentalist Christianity. Both of those fundamentalisms are threats to freedom, knowledge, and civilization.

People go to universities because they want to learn things to expand their minds and their lives. They go to places like Liberty University and, probably, the Ave Maria School of Law, because they need a college degree to get ahead in society, but they want an education that won't challenge the beliefs that they had going in. They want to get in and out of college, changing and growing as little as possible.

Banning gay conversion therapy equals what?

Some people on the right are claiming that laws banning gay conversion therapy mean also banning the Bible.

The simple answer to that is that clearly stating that the Bible is not the law of these United States is not the same as banning the Bible or other religious books. Bibles will continue to be completely legal, as will books that argue that homosexuality can be cured. Such books will be roundly criticized for being untrue, but they will not be banned.

The banning of gay conversion therapy is based on two things: that homosexuality is not a choice, and that gay conversion therapy is cruel and humiliating.

Now, this is where conservative Christians will make the claim that their morality compels them to try to change the behaviors of their own family members, and that the government has no business interfering with their families. But if gay conversion therapy involves coercion and cruelty, child protection should overrule the parents' rights.

Once again, I ask you to consider what your motivation for disciplining your children is. Do you set rules in order to protect your children from hurting themselves, and to try thereby to maximize their chances for future happiness? Or do you set rules in order to maintain control over your children?

As I have realized recently, our knowledge of human beings has increased greatly over the centuries; as our understanding has grown, our knowledge has allowed us to improve our morality. Today's morality is an improvement over the morality of the Bible. We know that homosexuality is not a choice. We therefore know that conversion therapy cannot work, and that it can only bring misery. Better that we should love our children for who they are.

The most perilous age

I have not written any blog entries in more than two weeks, not because I have nothing to say, but because I am so overwhelmed with things to say that I don't know how to organize my thoughts.

I believe that the United States is entering its most perilous period since the Civil War. We may be well into that period, and I worry that there's no way to stop it. Sometimes political crises like the one we find ourselves in feel like powerful storms, natural disasters that must be ridden out. All people can do during the storm is to help pile sandbags to minimize the damage. Afterwards, the job is to clean up the mess and rebuild.

We may or may not be in that situation now. There are hopeful signs that our judiciary is still strong enough to stop the criminals in their tracks. And there is hope in the teachers' strikes that are breaking out around the nation. Education is the key here.

But the right-wing politicians are counting on their base believing that education and critical thinking are detrimental to the country. Education and critical thinking are, indeed, detrimental to bigotry, hatred, and willful ignorance, and the way of life bigots pursue. Education and critical thinking are detrimental to authoritarian government and to white supremacy.

Sarah Palin and her ilk have tried, successfully, to convince their followers that only real Americans are white people who don't live in cities. Ironically, the white evangelicals and others among these "real" Americans are so desperate to win their culture war, that they have chosen a crooked real estate mogul from New York City as their champion. These upholders of "family values" excuse their hero's three marriages, his many extramarital affairs, his erotic fixation on his daughter, his admitted sexual assaults, and his nonstop lying because they believe that he is anointed by God to make this a Christian nation.

Think of that for a minute. What kind of mindset is it that can be convinced that the most corrupt and sinful (if you will) person on the national stage will lead us to righteousness? It might be the same kind of mind that can believe, generation after generation for thousands of years, that Jesus will be returning soon, even though Jesus told his disciples that he would be back within their lifetimes.

Well, the purpose of this blog entry is not primarily to trash religion, but what is called faith is a factor here. The human mind seems to be able to convince itself that the things that are observable are false, and that the things for which there is no evidence are true. And what does religious training do? It reinforces that kind of thinking, beginning at a very young age for those of us who were raised in the church. As a result, even in liberal families, there is a tension between what is learned in school during the week, and what is learned in Sunday school on the weekend.

As a result, we have politicians who want to have unscientific material taught as science. "Teach the controversy," they say, when there is no controversy among scientists. And science is what is supposed to be being taught. They complain that not teaching the controversy is an attack on academic freedom. But, in truth, having government compel teachers to teach things that are not true is the very opposite of academic freedom.

I've wandered off topic here, and I repeat that America is in peril from an anti-democratic government. The Trump administration is attacking on multiple fronts. Environmental, financial, and civil rights laws and regulations are being attacked and destroyed. For those reading this who believe that regulation is evil, no. Regulation is what keeps people with power and money from running roughshod over that forgotten "little guy" the right wing is always claiming to care about.

Education is being attacked by a Secretary of Education whose avowed goal is to "advance the kingdom of God."

The lovers of authoritarianism seek to bring women back under the control of their husbands and to take the control of women's bodies away from women.

Since Donald Trump was elected by minus three hundred thousand votes, I have hoped for other powerful figures to do something to correct the mistake. I certainly never believed in the "Trump pivot towards the presidential," but I did hope that other officials' love of country and Constitution would overcome their defense of political party. So far, they have disappointed me. It seems that they don't love the Constitution as much as they claimed to. In fact, there is a move, led by the Koch brothers, to call a Constitutional convention. I think that the main thrust of the change they want would be to tear down the wall between church and state. Congressional Republicans make weak criticisms of the president, but continue to support him. My hope that Republican officials with consciences would move to head off the erosion of our constitutional protections has given way to the fear that too many of the Republicans are actually in favor of that erosion. I fear that, even with the special prosecutor's unearthing of Trump's rampant criminality, the Republicans in the House and Senate will never vote for impeachment.

The people who voted for Trump believed that they were fighting tyranny (a tyranny only they could see); they elected a true tyrant, and most of them still don't even know it.

I will resist this tyrant in any way I can, and hope that Mueller and state attorneys general can bring him down. I was born in a free country, and I hope to die in one. Even if we are able to avoid total disaster, the cleanup effort will be massive.

Notes on a Washington Post article on evangelical sex scandals

A friend of mine posted a Washington Post article on Facebook, concerning the possibility of a new round of sex scandals involving evangelical leaders. My friend, who is liberal and religious, put the scandal down to the religious right's desire to control the lives of women. I do agree that they do that, but sexual misbehavior among clergy is, of course, not limited to conservatives. (The fact that conservatives claim to be the guardians of morality and of the family makes their transgressions more galling, though.)

The article ran in the Post's Acts of Faith religious section on March 30, and was written by Sarah Pulliam Bailey. I would link directly to it, but the reader might run into a pay wall. There are a few things in it that I have problems with.

First, and most important, is a quote from Peter Wehner, described as "a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center."

[Trump's supporters] seem enthralled to his approach to life. They seem completely untroubled by the ... women who accused Trump of harassment or assault. For some large number of white evangelical men, there seems to be an attitude toward women that's disturbing and not biblical.

What I have a problem with in that last sentence is not biblical. Women are treated miserably throughout the Bible. After all, we are talking about a morality that is thousands of years old, and often seems barely removed from sheer animal behavior. In the Old Testament, God instructs his people, when they battle their enemies, to kill all the men, and to capture any marriageable women and girls as part of the spoils of war. And in the New Testament, the social status of women has improved little. Saint Paul makes that abundantly clear.

And women are not the only vulnerable population. Anyone who lacks power is fair game. Bailey notes:

In another case late last year, Paul Pressler, who helped lead a conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was accused of sexually abusing a young man for several decades, starting when the alleged victim was 14.

Mention of the abuse of children inevitably brings to mind the Roman Catholic priesthood. Bailey's article highlights a distinction between the Catholic church and evangelical denominations, in that the Catholic church has a hierarchy that one would think would punish their clergy for abusing children. Heath Carter, a professor of history at Valparaiso University notes that:

In the evangelical world, the independence of evangelical leaders and ... lack of authority structure mean [abuses] can go on for a while and then explode when they come to light.

But, really, Bailey has already pointed out earlier in her article that the Catholic hierarchy was no protector of children.

In any case, even though I'm an atheist, I can't say that this is a strictly religious problem. It is, as my friend said, a power abuse problem. And that abuse happens to women in the working world, as well as to children in schools. It even happens among scientists and religious skeptics.

But we really need to stop looking to religion as a source of morality, and we really shouldn't throw around such descriptions of attitudes as "not biblical," when these attitudes are sometimes totally in line with the Bible. Morality is something that needs to be constantly reevaluated as our knowledge increases, and constantly going back to the Bible keeps us from addressing moral problems in any meaningful way.

Second Amendment absolutists and tyrants

The people who are afraid of having their guns taken away want them for the purpose of spilling the blood of tyrants. Now that the tyrants are here, it strikes me that maybe these gun people don't so much hate tyrants as they want their own kind of tyrant to rule over them.

The fools don't know that Donald Trump would take their guns away in a heartbeat if he felt threatened.

Literature from the Bible

This post is not about the old college textbook of the same name, but my reading of the first couple of chapters of the Gospel of Matthew brought the title to mind. As a college freshman with a religious upbringing, I thought the concept of reading the Bible as mere literature was a little bit scandalous, but things change.

The author of the Matthew gospel wants, first of all, to establish that Jesus is the messiah that the Jews have been waiting for, and to do that, he needs to show that the circumstances of his birth fulfill various prophecies.

He starts with the "begats," demonstrating a direct ancestral line beginning with Abraham, continuing on through King David, and leading to Joseph after 42 generations. The David part is very important, the messiah prophesied to be a "Son of David." (One problem with the whole ancestry argument, of course, is that Joseph is not supposed to be Jesus's biological father, but that's not the point of my little essay.)

Readers of novels are familiar with how they are plotted. The author has to move his or her characters around from point to point to make the story work. In some novels, it's possible to see the machinery at work, which, to me at least, detracts from the enjoyment of the story. The machinery is highly visible in the first chapter of Matthew.

First, Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant, but not by him. An angel tells him not to divorce Mary, but to take her to his home. The prophecy of the virgin birth is fulfilled.

Then, the first plot device, if I may call it that, occurs. King Herod gets wind of the fact that an "infant king of the Jews" has been born, and that, as the prophets have predicted, the baby was born in Bethlehem. (Matthew dispenses with the mechanism, recounted in another gospel, of getting Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.)

Herod feels threatened by this infant king, and decides to kill him. An angel warns Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt and hide there until Herod has finished killing all the male children under the age of two. This part of the story takes care of two Old Testament prophecies: first that Jesus has to be "called" from Egypt, and second to fulfill Jeremiah's declaration that there would be weeping and lamentations over murdered children.

King Herod dies, allowing Jesus's family to return from Egypt. But Joseph is afraid to return to Judaea when he finds out that Herod has been succeeded by his son, Archelaus. The angel tells Joseph that they will be safe in Nazareth, neatly fulfilling the prophecy that "He will be called a Nazarene."

The whole story of Herod's jealousy of the baby Jesus is, I think, designed to move Jesus from Bethlehem, to Egypt, and finally to Nazareth, in order to show the Jews that Jesus has fulfilled the words of the prophets. To me, the whole thing reads like a clumsy fiction.

Faith in Donald Trump

"We are fools for Christ's sake." - St. Paul, I Corinthians 4:10

Faith is that thing that, as you stand amid the rubble of your neighborhood after a tornado, allows you to say, "God is merciful!"

The Bible is full of characters whose behavior is abominable, but who are favored by God. King David is a prime example. When such people commit sins, God usually punishes someone innocent.

Donald Trump is the King David of today, in the eyes of the religious right. They have faith in him. It should be no surprise to us that they retain their faith despite his failings and his failures. He gives them none of what he promised, and still they believe. Belief in an unreliable God is their lifelong training.

Humans are prone to wishful thinking, and not just religious people. But religion is an institution that systematically reinforces that kind of thinking. If you have gone to church every Sunday since childhood, you have been instructed in the very sort of thinking that gets men like Donald Trump elected. Paul warns Christians not to put any stock in human wisdom or science, and to avoid asking "foolish questions."

There you have the education of the Trump voter.

The Bible needs to be kept far away from our politics

Christian liberals, and atheists who know some scripture, like to cite certain verses it in their arguments with the religious right. But, really, dueling Bible quotes have no place in modern day politics and law.

Everyone cherry-picks Bible verses according to his or her taste. When I was young and was still going to my very liberal church, certain passages from the Bible were read often, and there were some places we never went. I think that that's the same in all churches, but that other churches choose other passages to emphasize. Certainly, if you read widely in the Bible, you'll find that there is plenty of material that supports the beliefs of right-wing Christians. We liberals ignore those parts, but they are there: the Bible contains plenty of support, even in the New Testament, for slavery and the subjugation of women, to give two examples.

The Bible is a document that is thousands of years old. Whatever you believe or don't believe about Moses and Jesus, they were men of their time. The morality of the Bible, as a whole, is in fact monstrous by today's standards. Modern morality is an improvement on it.

I will repeat that: our morality is superior to that described in the Bible. Religion is not the basis for morality. Religion is simply the enforcer of whatever morality some powerful people want us to follow.

It is a shame that, instead of deciding right and wrong in and for our own time, some people still want us to look for answers in a book that was written by people who did not know most of the things we know now. We need to have confidence in our own ability to determine what is moral and what isn't.

Arguments from the Bible, no matter which side they are in support of, should be irrelevant.

Religion is an obstacle to understanding

"Science is the record of dead religions." - Oscar Wilde

I think that religion was humankind's first attempt at science. Faced with life in a hazardous world that seemed unpredictable and unfair, early humans tried to work out just what was going on. They posited spirits behind everything they couldn't explain. Some religions moved from many gods to one, but what all the religions had in common was the belief in some supernatural intelligence whose will it was that caused things to happen.

You can see these beliefs playing out in the Old Testament. God was behind any sort of disaster, whether it was famine or disease or man's inhumanity to man. The unpredictability of good and bad fortune created the idea of a capricious god who was constantly angry. Were there ways to placate this malevolent being? The Old Testament is full of prescriptions for keeping God happy, keeping the blessings coming, and minimizing misfortune. If we behave just so, we'll stay on God's good side.

The problem with this whole system is that, no matter how a person behaves, good and bad things happen to him or her anyway. There seems to be no connection between our behavior and our lot in life. This has necessitated the creation of a very complicated deity. We insist that "God is love." We insist that God is all good, all powerful, and all knowing. (Why that should be the case is mysterious, given the evidence that all three of those things can't be true if there is evil in the world. Is our insistence that God is good simply our attempt not to trigger his wrath?)

In any case, this approach to life is full of problems. Our loved ones get sick. We pray. Our loved ones stay sick, or perhaps get well. If the disease gets worse, and our loved ones suffer and die, it leaves us wondering why our prayers didn't work. Perhaps we have offended God in some way. We change our behavior, but no matter how devout we are, the results of our prayers are about the same as before. Perhaps our belief isn't strong enough. When we have done everything we can think of to change our ways, and the success of our prayers doesn't improve, then we fall back God's ultimate loophole: our prayers have been presumptuous. We have not been humble enough. God's will be done. God is off the hook, and when our prayers are not answered, we still believe because we have given God this out.

Perhaps the religious approach to understanding life is a mistake. When we step back and look at the world, it does seem unpredictable. Bad things happen to good people. I think that the whole problem with the religious world view is the very act of assigning an intelligence and a will behind things that happen. Positing a being who wills things to happen, who has some "plan" that is beyond our grasp, only makes the world harder to understand than it should be. It adds an unnecessary layer of complication where it is not needed. And, for those who truly believe that their sins, or the sins of others, are the cause of disasters, the religious view of life heaps an extra layer of guilt and suffering on top of the suffering from the disaster itself.

Science, meanwhile, has led to improvements in our lives: the curing of once deadly diseases, for example. Modern medicine's success rate is measurable. If you get cancer, depending on what kind it is and how soon you detect it, a doctor can give you a good idea of how likely you are to get better, and then you can take the steps necessary to improve your chances of living longer.

Science makes no claim of omnipotence. A good doctor or a good scientist will tell you, "Here's what we know about the world right now." You always know where you are, for better or worse.

Through the scientific method, we have discovered that the solving of our problems is facilitated when we drop the idea that there is any will or intelligence behind the way the world works. Progress is not dependent on figuring out what God wants. The interference of evangelists and their associated politicians in making decisions about our lives is, in fact, a hindrance rather than a help. The world is much simpler and easier to understand without a supreme being. The "problem of evil" that religious believers have struggled with for thousands of years is no longer a problem if there is no all-good, all-powerful God. We understand chance. Religious believers missed the memo that has been available to all for many years now.

Fusion GPS testimony--wow

Little bits of information stick in the mind and make one wonder, and it's hard to put those bits together and figure out what they mean, to get the big picture.

A few days after Trump's inauguration, I mentioned my realization that, at least since the Reagan era, elements of the Republican party seemed to actually yearn for an authoritarian regime, even as they pretended love of the Constitution and democracy. Before the 2016 election, one would hear the occasional Republican politician praising Vladimir Putin's "strength," seeming to wish for a similar leader in the USA.

Some thought that the Republican legislators were protecting Donald Trump so that they could get their tax heist passed, but they continue to protect him and to try to discredit anyone who tries to investigate his danger to the country and the rule of law. And, indeed, Trump chafes at the Constitution's restrictions on his power, complaining that our founding document is "archaic."

Then, suddenly, something is revealed that ties these things together. Dianne Feinstein has unilaterally released GPS Fusion founder Glenn Simpson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, despite the refusal of the committee's Republican members to do so. The contents of that testimony are overwhelming.

You will have heard that the Republicans have been trying to look into Fusion GPS's bank records in order to discredit them, and somehow to make it appear that they are in Russia's employ. It's another piece in the Republican pattern of punishing the whistleblower.

Indeed, the whole thrust of Republican questioning of Simpson was an attempt to investigate Fusion GPS, instead of paying any attention to their explosive information on Trump's connections to the Kremlin, and Russian and Italian organized crime figures.

Luckily, our democracy is still functioning at a level where Democrats are also allowed to question witnesses. A picture emerges of a Republican Party up to its neck in Russia ties and corruption. If we are able to root out the corruption before it consolidates its power, Senator Feinstein will have saved our democracy.

Meanwhile, you may have heard another bit of information: that there is a move under way to convene a new Constitutional Convention. What combination of authoritarian and theocratic rule that might result is terrifying. Don't let it happen. These are serious times that demand serious leaders and strong resistance. Eternal vigilance, if you will.