Democrats SNAP To It

 

I have mixed feelings about the seven Senate Democrats and one Independent who gave in to pressure to reopen the government. It’s always Democrats who do it, and Republicans count on it. Because when people are hurting, Democrats care. In the case of SNAP, aka “food stamps,” Republican Congress-squatters not only didn’t care but delighted in knowing “moochers” weren’t getting them. How they see suffering of ordinary people is the most reliable way to predict a legislator’s party affiliation: If they care, D. If they don’t, R. Maybe some readers can think of exceptions.

The votes happened just as courts had ordered Trump to fully fund SNAP, and while he was trying hard not to, including threatening states that were providing their own funding. This, after the cerulean outcomes of last week’s elections ought to have made those senators realize they had leverage: voters turning against Trump. Including football fans. Had he continued to deny funding despite court orders, millions more would regret and reverse their prior votes.

So, considering future outcomes, Democrats’ capitulation was a self-inflicted foot-shot, a case of premature retraculation. And it allowed Republicans to pretend Democrats were the problem all along. Because lying is what he does, Holy Mike Johnson, in constant contact with God, was quick to say so.

The more blatant the lie, the more Trump and his abettors know it’ll be believed by MAGAs and promoted by their media cartel. The truth about Democrats’ till-now refusal to flinch is the opposite of what Trump and his cadre would have you believe. The loss of SNAP benefits seems to have been what broke backbones, despite rightwing lies.

Here’s a typical one, from Newsmax: “Fifty-nine percent of all illegal aliens are collecting food stamps, meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer are not even Americans.” That grotesquely false statement flooded MAGA media.

The truth, as reported in an excellent, receipts-bringing NYT article, which I have munificently gifted to readers, is that “nearly 90 percent of SNAP recipients are native-born American citizens and 96 percent were citizens.” Of those that were neither, nearly all were included under rules extant both under Biden and Trump. Adding homeless people, certain veterans, and young people aging out of foster care happened under Biden, following the above-mentioned “D if they care” rule. Even so, the numbers are small.

And here’s Trump, speaking in tongues to Republican senators, as reported in the linked NYT article: “I will say about SNAP benefits, so when I was president, we had $7 billion worth and now they have many times that because these benefits were given to anybody that asked. And they’re up to, I hear, just many times, $47 billion ... Biden went totally crazy, gave it to anybody that would ask, gave it to people that were able-bodied, had no problem.” Those statements, the numbers he spouted, are 99% false. The 1% truth consists of the words “to” and “so.”

Wise people, non-FoxoMAGAified ones, know that anything Trump says is a lie unless proved true. Which might have happened, once or twice.

I sympathize with those eight senators who joined the Republicans. There was suffering out there and they could end it. But, assuming their concerns were for the effects on food and travel, among others, the deal they agreed to is vaporous. A dubious promise from Republicans to allow a vote on continuing the expiring ACA tax credits, which, if it happens, is unlikely to get R votes, because there’s nothing they hate more than Obamacare. And it’d die in the House.

The agreement reopens the government for two-and-a-half months, restores full funding for SNAP, and reverses Trump’s layoffs of government employees. So it’s not nothing. It is, in fact, good. But, for the issue over which Democrats stood firm for weeks, maintaining ACA subsidies, they got only an empty promise. However -- and maybe it’s the point – ballooning premiums will be a powerful campaign issue. That seems like a Republican foot-shot. As will voters remembering how cruelly Trump fought against funding SNAP. We’ll see. Dishonest spin, like vote suppression and not caring, is an enterprise in which MAGA excels.

Another important revelation, though obvious since Day One of Day One Two, is the message Trump sent to his supporters this week: “Lie for me and join in my criminal activities, political or otherwise, and I’ll take care of you. More elections are coming. So go forth and subvert.” The latest example is pardoning everyone who abetted his fake-elector scheme and other transgressions in trying to overturn a fraud-free, decisive election defeat. Like he did for January 6 criminals, too, many of whom, because they’re criminals, have continued to crime.  To his corrupt DOJ, Trump added, as “senior advisor,” one who called on rioters to “kill cops.”

This is Trump, and those are his people. Consider it when next you vote.

Corrupted Absolutely

 

It was inevitable. Once Trump realized he had our Republican-led Congress underthumbed, that six servile Supremes would give him a double-oh license to abuse power any way he chose, and that our helplessly MAGAfied co-citizens would weep with joy as he stuck it to the libs, he abandoned yet another campaign lie: namely, that he’d be a “Peace President.”

Why stop at impoverishing the poor and indicting truth-tellers? Or, based on lies, sending troops to American cities to create violence that hadn’t existed till then? For Trump, unchecked abuse at home evolved to threatening Venezuela, and to extra-judicial maritime murder, about which he said, in his uniquely presidential phrasing, “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be, like, dead. OK.”

Trump has provided no evidence that the people he’s killing were smuggling drugs or headed to America, and, since he knew where they were, he could have captured them. Yet, when two unexpectedly survived, they were sent home immediately. Why? Representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) said she was told in a Pentagon briefing “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes” and that was part of the reason why the administration has not sought to detain or prosecute survivors, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.” Meanwhile, corpses are washing up on Trinidad’s beaches. 

It’s unlikely that the Venezuelan boats were carrying fentanyl. What decent American can countenance their country becoming an outlaw nation, flouting our own and international laws? Or, in the case of MAGA, thrill to it?

Reviled in NYC in his younger years, for his corruption, amorality, and ostentatious preening, mocked by social elites into whose circles he so desperately wanted to be received, ridiculed in the tabloids, and, reportedly, having complicated relationships with his parents, the roots of his psychopathy are evident; assuming his kind is made, not born. Unrestrained by laws created to protect against it, cheered on by Republicans who know better and MAGAs who don’t, Trump’s autocratic “presidency” will only get more damaging.

Occupying the Oval Office, which, as of this writing, is defiled but not yet demolished, is a dangerous man behaving dangerously. And whereas it’s unsurprising that, among several billion humans, there are some such men, it’s incomprehensible that there are millions of Americans who are blind to the harm that's sure to affect them, too.

My Christian friends find it inexplicable that anyone who calls themself Christian can continue to support Trump. Likewise, anyone who considers themself a patriotic American, which, at minimum, ought to mean people who value our Constitution and the rule of law. Who think free and fair elections and democracy are worth protecting; who know lies when they see them.

And so it is that Trump, who knows nothing of history nor cares to learn, has ordered the resumption of nuclear testing, undoing decades of disaster-averting, diplomatic achievement. It will restart an expensive and dangerous arms race, a fact understood by everyone but Trump, who longs to be seen as the potential destroyer of worlds, before whom the world shudders in fear. 

Also the destroyer of truth. And decency. No president in our history has said anything about a predecessor comparable to what Trump has about President Joe Biden: “He is a CRIMINAL AND SHOULD BE IN JAIL. A MAJOR LOWLIFE AND FAILURE. An ugly person, both inside and out! I beat him badly, and love watching him squirm now.” The first three sentences were spoken while looking into a mirror. The last is the lie he tells himself – a defining MAGA belief -- followed by the only truth he’s ever revealed.

The “president” of what was once the greatest and closest to honorable country on Earth, is a hateful, dishonest, rapacious man; a nascent dictator, embarrassing us in the eyes of the world; incapable of empathy for any but himself; a man who, while ignoring people out of work and a court order to fund SNAP benefits, flaunts an ostentatiously remodeled bathroom and hosts a gilded-age party for his wealthy pals at his “you’ll never belong” club. That’s who he is.

Consider this a plea to honorable people who voted for Trump thinking they’d be getting some sort of greatness and not just his promised retribution, to recall that, in a democracy, leadership requires far more than what they’re getting. Honesty, for one, and respectability, generosity, inclusion. A plea to demand more of their party – and of themselves – than defending the indefensible. Surely there are enough of them to vote America back to pre-Trump greatness.

In Tuesday’s elections, in which Democrats won up and down ballots everywhere, hope glimmers. Republican ventriloquist dummies with Trump’s hand up ... there, are claiming election fraud. Maybe, though, the less-dummied will sense that challenging him now requires less courage than before.

Because He Can

Maybe you’ve heard this joke, which, out of respect for readers, I’ll tidy up: Why do dogs lick their dangly parts? Answer: Because they can.

It perfectly describes Trump’s every action: He does what he does not only because he can, but, metaphorically, also that other thing. Paradoxically, there’s not a lick of forethought or coherence evident in any of it.

At last, in his attention-needy, approval-deficient life, he can do whatever he wants, to whomever and whatever he chooses. It’s nearly absolute power, granted not by voters, a majority of whom disagree with almost everything he’s done, and certainly not the Constitution, but by craven Republican Congress-dwellers and a cynically selected, ideologically predictable, Constitution-rewriting Supreme Court.

We’ve just returned from New York City, where our niece is a tenured professor of immunology at NYU. She runs an internationally recognized lab in which she’s made far-reaching, health-related discoveries. Back when our government recognized the value of science and the importance of the US leading the world, she had several post-doctoral fellows working with her. Now, due to Trump’s funding cuts and punitive immigration flexes, including charging outrageous prices for H-1 visas, because he can, she has only one. To another, whom she described as a “dream candidate,” she offered a job, only to have him choose a better future in China.

Another applicant she’d have loved to hire decided to stay in China. Trump’s no-sightedness harms America’s status in the world, which, if sanity ever returns to governance, will take years to restore. He doesn’t care. Because he can’t.

Because he could, this narcissistic man-child tore down a third of the White House, to be replaced with a grandiose monstrosity of a ballroom which will dwarf the People’s House, making permanent his embarrassing presence there. Because he lies, we should assume his promise not to name it after himself is false. The destruction, which he’d said wouldn’t happen, was completed before permits or final plans, much less authorization by the National Capital Planning Commission, members of which, along with members of the Commission on Fine Arts, he replaced with sycophantic allies. Why? To ensure approval of his ballroom and self-referential Triumphal Arch. And because he can.

Last week, Trump’s Department of Definitely-not-Peace awarded a huge contract to the drone manufacturer “Unusual Machines.” Heard of it? Don Junior has, because he’s an “adviser” to the company (cf: Burisma/Hunter/outrage/Congressional investigations/impeachment threats) and owns millions of dollars of stock in it, the value of which spiked after the deal was announced. It’s astounding, definitional conflict of interest and self-dealing, which Trump knows he needn’t hide. Likewise, his pardon of Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, the crypto giant helping Trump, et spawn, enrich themselves while robbing vulnerable MAGAs with their bitcoin scams. He’ll get away with it. Because, between his prostrate hirelings and cowardly Congress, he can.

We’ve also learned that, so desperate was he to demonstrate unchallenged omnipotence, by sending people, illegally, to an inhumane El Salvadorian gulag, he sacrificed several MS-13 informants in return for its President Bukele agreeing to incarcerate his victims. Murdering claimed but unproven drug-runners on international waters is in the same category of illegality and inhumanity.

Commanding an unprincipled Attorney General, Trump got former Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted. Unlike the previously listed transgressions, this one could become amusing. Congressmen Gym Jordan and James Comey have demanded that Smith appear before their Overlooking-Trump Committees. Asking only that the hearings be public, Smith has agreed. Will they let voters see what he had on Trump?

Taking another lick at authoritarianism: Sending “election monitors” to blue states, homes of proven fraud-free elections. The clear purpose is to justify his perseverating, pathological election lies.

Because our Trump-owned Congress will do whatever he demands, they handed ICE more taxpayer money than the FBI and CIA combined, so Trump can have a personal, Constitution-ignoring army. So wanton is their resulting hiring spree, they’ve selected people with criminal histories, including drug use, robbery, and battery. Which, seeing ICE brutality, are probably attractive qualities. Additionally, they’ve been given tools banned from government by President Joe Biden, re-allowed by Trump, to spy on any and all citizens. He can do that, too, unimpeded.

There’s more, of course. It’s reported he’s demanding the DOJ pay him $230 million in taxpayer (your) money as restitution for the indignity of being properly tried and rightfully convicted of multiple felonies, including sexual assault. Ever the defender of Biblical virtue, Holy Mike Johnson, wholly pliant, doesn’t object. Trump’s personal lawyers and other embodiments of amorality in the DOJ are in charge of the decision to pay. If they won’t, he’s in position to order it. Because he can.

Trump’s lust for power and vengeance has been obvious for years. And now, revealing its claim on “law and order” and “family values” always to have been Trump-level lies, today’s Republican Party is handing it all to him. Because, thanks to SCOTUS-approved gerrymandering and vote suppression, they can.

Rallying 'Round The Flags

Around four thousand people showed up to our Everett “No Kings” rally, including, unexpectedly, Governor Ferguson. He’s a good speaker. My favorite sign: “No Faux King way, Donald.” And thank you to the people who recognized me somehow and urged me to continue writing. I guess I will.

Seven million people, it’s estimated, participated in rallies around the country. Like Everett’s, there was peace, fellowship, American flags, and humor, along with properly serious concern demanded by the threats we all face – even MAGA, yet to recognize it – from Trump and the presidents over him, Stephen Miller and Russell Vought.

What, if anything, did this massive, much bigger than last time, nationwide turnout accomplish? Maybe it won’t immediately bend the arc of history toward justice. But it’s not nothing that those patriotic rallies showed what a profligate liar is Holy Mike Johnson, who speaks directly with God in Heaven but will, if the Ten Commandments mean anything, spend eternity elsewhere, alongside Trump. “Hate America,” he called the rallies, which were, demonstrably, the opposite. There's nothing more pro-America than "No Kings." It was, after all, the story of America's birth.

It must have infuriated every high-level Republican, including Trump and his aforementioned manipulators, that there was virtually no violence. Smarmy, condescending Mike, trusting trusters to trust trustingly, attempted to dismiss it all, but ended up embarrassing himself. One sad lady wrote online that she showed up somewhere in her MAGA hat, hoping to provoke post-worthy video of nasty reactions but was, instead, ignored. In Portland, filming the results for propaganda in Noemansland, ICE agitated the crowd until there were a few arrests. 

Trump, whose ig-Nobel Mideast ceasefire lasted less than a week, and whose lies include not damaging the White House with his self-aggrandizing, bloated blight of a ballroom, lowered to the occasion by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a fighter jet, wearing a crown (take that, libs!), dumping excrement on protesting Americans. MAGA, no doubt, found it hilarious and affirming: the “president” of their prayers, heir to sacrifices patriotic Americans have made since our founding to preserve America’s most treasured values. A “president” they believe to be sent by God, evacuating his bowels on Constitutional rights. But that’s why they love him.

To marchers in the millions, and millions of other unFoxified Americans, though, it confirms what an infantile, mortifying, unfit leader MAGA has saddled us with. And reinforces the importance of saying so. Meanwhile, seeing their lies falsified in real time, rightwing media filled the air with actual b.s. 

An entire book could be written about the last couple of weeks. If it weren't already taken, it should be titled “The Book of Revelation.” For it was revealed that there are still good people in our country, committed to defying Trump’s burgeoning autocracy. And we were shown what a puerile, unwell man he is. Not that most of us didn’t already know.

Also revealed was how far our morally-deficient Vice President will go to defend “Young Republicans” who exchanged hundreds of vile, racist, antisemitic messages.  Rejecting the opportunity to say there’s no place for that in his party, Vance passed them off as young kids joking around, characterizing objections to their Trumpified hate as “pearl clutching.” Those “kids” were in their thirties. Some had had leadership roles in what remains of the Republican Party. Without doubt, they reflect what Trump’s party currently encompasses and excuses. Do they represent its future, too? Against accumulating evidence, all of America must hope not.

After those Vancy-pants deplorables were dragged into the light, there was revelation and irony in Trump’s crucifixated spokesblond claiming Democrats cater to Hamas terrorists, illegals, and criminals. Same with Trump commuting the sentence of fellow felon, election denier and mulitplicitous scammer, George Santos. They’re brothers in harms.

Lie and commit violence for Trump, get commutations and pardons. Tell the truth about him, get indicted, as it is foretold: “... behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison...” (Revelation 2:10)

For those who hadn’t yet borne witness, last week also saw Trump’s obeisance to Putin reconfirmed. After a phone call between the two, having previously announced his intention to send more Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, Taco Trump low-tailed it back to no missiles and Russia keeping the territory it stole. Then he treated Ukraine’s President Zelensky even worse than last time. Because of an un-arted deal, his announced meeting with Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban might not happen; but Trump’s envy of dictators’ unrestrained power and his, uh, flexibility in their presence remain undisguisable.

Having no positive agenda except for rewarding their affluent sponsors and harming everyone else by cutting needed “Democratic” projects, Trump, Vance, Johnson, and all other congressional Republicans know they have no compelling response to the spirit of the “No Kings” marchers and the millions of others who agree with them. So they lie and threaten. 

In time, lies are revealed and threats are withstood. Last Saturday, seven million Americans showed they aren’t among the deceived. It’s a hopeful start.

No Kings, Here Or There

 

Question: If you facilitate a peace plan in the Middle East, but foment brutal reprisals against your political opponents at home and murder people in boats in international waters, do you deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? Because pacifying the Middle East has eluded prior presidents, it’s worth asking, despite those mitigating factors.

If the Trump-involved peace plan proves durable, and if displaced Palestinians find permanent, acceptable homes where they can thrive, hand him the prize.

Trump being Trump, he flew to Egypt and Israel to bask in praise, much of which he lavished on himself. Also being Trump, he glorified the area’s dictators, admired their unrestricted power, and disgorged his usual grievances about people he dislikes back home. Nevertheless, the exchange of 20 Israeli prisoners held by Hamas and about 2000 Palestinians held by Israel is an achievement for which Trump deserves credit, whatever his role within the team that pulled it off.

But, knowing Trump to be the grifter he’s been since his simulacrum of adulthood, there are justifiable concerns. In particular, the board of overseers created to supervise the redevelopment and management of Gaza, to be headed by Trump. It’s unknown whether or what he offered to the surrounding states that have signed onto the deal, but we know Trump et fils have been proposing Trump hotels and golf courses there for years, turning the area into a remunerative paradise. Grift я him. As proof, amidst it all, the “president” of the United States is hustling overpriced, low-quality watches like a carnival barker. It’s embarrassing.

It’s reasonable to assume Qatar, for one, will get a piece of the action for its $400 million high-flying gift, and after the Trump-approved military “facility” is completed in Idaho. We refer to the project about which Pentagon Pete exulted, “I’m also proud that today we’re announcing we’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emeri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Airbase in Idaho. The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots...”

After the appropriately shocked response, even from MAGA, America’s highly qualified SecWar clarified: “... [T]o be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States—nor anything like a base...” So, okay. Nothing like a base. A facility. Within an American military base. With planes and pilots. And buildings. Definitely not base-like, though. Welcome in, Hamas-funders but not Hispanic.

If, a year from now, peace prevails, Hamas is defanged, the rebuilding is something other than a cash cow for Trump, sheiks, princes, and emirs, and Palestinians and Israelis are happy and secure, I’ll nominate him if no one else will.

Now that he solved the world’s most enduring geopolitical problem, as opposed to its most existentially grave one, climate change, which he’s intentionally making worse, it’d be great if he’d devote the rest of his term(s?) to brokering peace within the United States, by ending his verbal and military attacks on Democrats and lies about liberals. A nice start would be to acknowledge that this weekend’s nationwide “No Kings” marches are Constitutionally protected, essentially American forms of protest. Even better, he could take its message to heart.

But that would require cerebral processing power; something it increasingly appears he’s lacking. Like when he posted that “the Biden FBI” placed 274 agents within the January 6 crowd at a time when it was he, not Biden, in office. A lie, or dementia? Does it matter?

Instead, we have Holy Mike Johnson, who takes directions directly from God, which means one of them is a liar and I’m guessing it’s Mike, characterizing the marches as “a hate America rally” run by “the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people.” Right. To advocate for free speech, fair elections, equal rights, unsuppressed education, and Constitutionally contained leadership is to hate America. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a comical downgrade from Pete Buttigieg, said they’re paid protestors. I’ll be there. Where do I get my paycheck? Or cash? Will George Soros be there, handing it out?

Declaring Antifa a terrorist organization, Trump, who is demonstrably working to overthrow the United States government, law enforcement, and our system of law, issued a proclamation stating, “Antifa ... explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” Explicitly? Where? Is there a manifesto? Read us, Dear Leader, those explicit words. Where are the terrorists’ headquarters? Why haven’t they been raided?

Yes, there have been people dressed in black, mixed in with and far outnumbered by peaceful protestors, calling themselves Antifa. Some have done bad things. Some, according to the FBI when it was credible, were rightwing provocateurs. So some people call themselves Antifa. That doesn’t make it an organization by any definition, terrorist or otherwise.

America’s “president” is desperate to create violence to justify a permanent, military-backed, authoritarian takeover. Resistance, then, like “No Kings” marches, becomes a zero-sum game. It will end, one way or another.

Forked

 

About the shutdown of the government in which Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency (if that’s still the right word), the most accurate take came from this guy. Now, the same guy and every Republican in Congress, including Holy Mike Johnson, who talks directly with God, are lying, blatantly, un-ninth-commandmently about what Democrats demand to end the shutdown. They’re NOT arguing for including undocumented immigrants in Medicaid. They DO want to restore Republican-cut funds to it. For citizens. Unable to govern, Congressional Republicans turn to lying.

What Democrats SHOULD be demanding is release of every page of the Epstein files, unredacted; the end of lying about emergencies in blue-state cities; no more sending troops there; a clear statement that Trump turning the DOJ into a vehicle for personal vengeance is illegal and so is murdering people in Venezuelan boats whether or not they’re drug-runners of which no proof has been presented; and an admission from Republicans that they don’t care.

Yep, that'll do it. Shutdown over.

More realistically, Democrats should announce they won’t allow funding of the most corrupt government in the history of our republic until it’s fixed. And they should enumerate examples of that corruption every day till this November and the next.

But the moment demands more. Not MAGAs, because it’ll never happen, but, looking at that raid in Chicago, every clear-eyed American must realize we’re living in an incipient police state whose head of government (“president” no longer applies) claims the right to send US troops into any city he chooses, to round up anyone that displeases him. He just announced, after all, that he’ll imprison, for a year, anyone who burns the American flag, which is constitutionally protected speech. Only dictators declare their own laws. Only dictators unilaterally imprison people. And they ban books, words, history, and speech. Especially when, like MAGAs, enough subjects approve.

After training for Chicago like practicing the raid on Usama bin Laden, Trump sent a helicopter from which troops rappelled onto the roof of a five-story building; military vehicles; and agents with flashbangs who kicked down doors, trashed apartments, and rounded up all residents, including US citizens, offering no proof they’re terrorists as claimed. Children were zip-tied together and hustled out, screaming and crying, some of them naked. When a bystander called on those brutal agents to think of the children, one said “F..k them kids.” That’s what ICE has become. That’s who joins it. And that's not all.

Why those tactics? Why not secure exits and knock on doors? Because it’s about brutality for its own sake and unchecked power. It’s about testing outrage, of which there’s been only some, and only from Democrats. Trump’s fascistic suppression is met with silence from the right. Which means they’re so deep into curated hatred and fear that cruelty is satisfying. They welcome dictatorship because of who they think will be hurt by it and who they think, wrongly, won’t. Stephen Miller, evil incarnate, was caught considering sending the 82nd Airborne into Portland. Paratroopers. Into an American city. Against Americans. Aimed at one group, it’s terroristic. At the other, masturbatory. It’s sickening.

If the Chicago obscenity didn’t cause Republicans in Congress or members of rightwing media to speak out in revulsion, it’s likely too late. It didn’t. So it probably is. Acceptance of Trump’s lawlessness and inhumanity isn’t just cowardice, of which there’s plenty. It’s adoration. It’s what he has unmade of the United States. It’s how Kristallnacht happened. We’re almost there. 

Trump spoke to U.S. Navy sailors in San Diego last weekend: “We have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats. They want to give all of our money to illegal aliens...” On his Truthless Sociopathic, he referred to Democrats as “the party of hate, evil, and Satan.” And he posted this dark vision of himself. Dictators thrive on hate for the “other.” But, say MAGAs, Trump LOVES America. Our half, anyway, and that’s all that matters. (He doesn’t. It isn’t.)

Since Trump announced his third run, his plans have been clear. After nine months, they’re undeniable: established law means nothing, nor do the courts. He wants absolute power and is taking more every day. That’s not hyperbole, it’s not hate. It’s observable fact. So voters have a defining choice: vote Republican, admit you welcome dictatorship and trust it’ll always be others in Stephen Miller’s and Russell Vought’s crosshairs; or vote for Democrats, even if you’re uncomfortable with same-sex marriage and vaccinations and love canceling 94 million pounds of food for food banks, because you think democracy is worth saving and anyway you’re not gay or sick or hungry.

We’ve come to the inevitable fork in the road. If you rationalize what’s happening in Chicago, if you keep voting Republican, you’re trading constitutional democracy for autocracy. It’s that simple. You can no longer pretend otherwise.

Am I angry? Damn right I am.

The Proverbial Firehose

Addressing the entire daily gusher of Trumpism's willful ignorance and authoritarian madness is impossible. Where to start?

As a doc, here: The only scientifically sound way to study the effects and efficacy of any pharmaceutical is a placebo-controlled, prospective, double-blind study, wherein control and treatment groups are matched for factors other than the medium under study, and in which neither the subjects nor the investigators know who’s taking what until it’s over. Drawing retrospective conclusions from pre-existing, uncontrolled data isn’t.

RFK, Jr, who’s ignorant of science and appoints only people who reject it, promised he’d discover the cause of autism by September. Having no ability to conduct a proper investigation, nor time enough and judgment, he unearthed a publication that aggregated prior Tylenol studies. That it challenged Trump’s ability to pronounce its generic name was likely unintentional. 

The association between acetaminophen and neuro-developmental disorders, of which autism is one, was thin at best, and the authors so stated. Some of the included reports showed none at all. Nevertheless, desperate to have something, anything, by his promised deadline, Bobby regurgitated it, undigested. Lacking comprehension but not self-regard, Trump bought it like bitcoin. Since then, his Truthless Antisocial posts, reminiscent of his bleach, light, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine cures for Covid, esteemed physician that he is, have multiplied the recklessness. If it weren’t so dangerous, it’d be laughable. 

With time running out, after years claiming vaccines are culpable, RFKJ, or the worm in his brain, grabbed whatever was handy. Curiously, before this clock-stopping breakthrough, he’d cut millions in funding for autism research. The last thing he wants is proof he was wrong. 

More could be said, but there are other pressing matters.

Remember when America’s assiduous guardians of democracy, U.S. Reps James Comer and Jim Jordan, were rooting out “government weaponization” by President Joe Biden? When, after years of made-for-Fox shoutings (once known as hearings) they came up with nothing? Now, when Trump’s weaponization is as obvious as the bronzer border on his face, the silence from those justice warriors resounds throughout our democracy, the demise of which they’re pursuing with Trumpophilic zeal. 

Blind to historical echoes and current implications, the Make America Gruesome crowd will cheer whatever Trump does. To everyone else, forcing the indictment of James Comey through the compliant hands of Pam Bondi should be recognized as step 999 on the journey of a thousand toward dictatorship. Also his pledge to go after others on his enemies list, including former Democratic presidents. His plan to redefine protest and disagreement, constitutionally protected in times past, as domestic terrorism takes it far past the line. The goal is to eliminate all forms of opposition, on the thinnest of pretenses. It ought to illicit revulsion in every thoughtful American. Among the FoxoMAGAfied, it’s received worshipfully.

The dire ramifications can’t be overstated. Absent pushback from conservatives-in-hiding, it could be the end. “The land of the free and the home of the brave,” indeed.

When Trump-appointed prosecutor Erik Seibert found no grounds to indict Comey and resigned instead, Trump chose a yes-woman with no prosecutorial experience who did as ordered, despite being advised against it by other DOJ prosecutors. Corruption? Weaponization? With Republican-controlled Congress and six-ninths of the Supreme Court scrambled-egging him on, he needn’t hide it. He just threatened federal funds to NYC if its citizens elect a particular mayoral candidate. Holy Mike Johnson refuses to seat a newly-elected Democratic representative who’d be the determinative vote to release the Epstein files. Respect for democracy and elections? Not in MAGAmerica.

Been to Portland lately? Our son and his family live there, happy and unafraid. To justify another military invasion, Trump called it “war-ravaged,” which, even when those few downtown blocks saw not-peaceful protests, it never was. Today, that’s as far from the truth as Trump always is. Local responses have been pure Portlandia, but it’s no joke. More than Trump’s election lies, this unwarranted show of military force augurs the end of freedom, and not just in blue states. His hunger for power is borderless. His aim is intimidation, leading to subjugation everywhere. Does anyone still wonder how it happened in 1930s Germany?

The master plan has been employed by dictators since history began. If Trump is ill-equipped to have studied it, the people truly in control, Project 2025’s Stephen Miller and Russell Vought, know it by cold-blooded heart. They’ve been grooming him as their figurehead since before he rode that escalator down. And downer. 

Before the election, Trump made his anti-democracy intentions unmistakable. MAGA elected him because of it. The only surprise is how quickly American institutions, including media and universities, law firms, and congressional and red state Republicans flecked their genues. Do those hoary final words of the National Anthem still apply?

Will military leaders cave, too? After the embarrassment they were subjected to at Quantico by an obviously unfit Commander in Chief and a preening, peacocking “War” Secretary, maybe not. We can only hope.

Turning Point?

 

When it was revealed that Tom Homan, Trump’s Border and Brutality Czar, accepted a bagful of $50,000 in cash for promising to facilitate deals with Trump, and that Trump quashed the investigation, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline “It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to” Leavitt, speaking through lips conveniently placed above her crucifix, said, “He did nothing wrong.” (It was recorded, Ms. Leavitt. Release it.) Not lying, Megan Kelley wrote, “WE DO NOT CARE.” Hey, MAGA, there’s a new slogan in town.

At the half-hate, half-memorial for Charlie Kirk, Trump, doing God’s work, followed Erika Kirk’s remarkable words of Christian forgiveness and grace, with, “He did not hate his opponents; he wanted the best for them. (Ed note: For over half of America, Kirk didn’t want the best.) That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” There followed louder cheers from the collected Christians than there’d been for Mrs. Kirk.

Were any worshippers repulsed when demonic Stephen “You-can’t-call-me-a-fascist” Miller defiled the memorial with his signature demagogic putrefaction? 

Ghoulish: it’s the G in MAGA.

Previously asked if killing those seagoing, alleged drug-runners was illegal, V.P. Vance said, “I don’t give a sh#t.” Because he’s full of it enough to give freely, that was puzzling. Examples: Former FBI director Wray “should have been investigating the networks that motivated, inspired, and maybe even funded Charlie Kirk’s murder.” Facts? He don’t need no stinkin’ facts. After “Haitians are eating pets”: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention ... then that’s what I’m going to do.” And he has, ever since. On the assassination of Charlie Kirk, he lied that “statistics prove” most violence comes from “the left.” As he can’t not know, they show the opposite.

“He did nothing wrong.” “We do not care.” “I don’t give a sh#t.” MAGAs need bigger hats. “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them” will require T-shirts. And Autocorrect. This Trumpic gem demands an entire billboard: "When 97% of the stories are bad about a person, that's no longer free speech." It’s in the Constitution! Like “I have the right to do anything I wanna do. I’m the President of the United States.” Article II. 

Jimmy Kimmel’s return to the air (except here, where Trump-loving, news-censoring, newscaster script-writing Sinclair owns KOMO, refuses to run it and doesn’t want you to know things) suggests Trump’s censorious dictatorship might be reversible. What went on behind the scenes is unknown. In front, people canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions, hundreds of thousands of protestations were sent to ABC (and to Australian Broadcasting Corporation, proving decent people get confused, too). Even Travelin’ Ted Cruz was critical. That’s the lesson: If enough people freed their souls from FoxoMAGAfication, Trump’s totalitarianism could give way to democracy.

It’s a big “if.” The people who cheered Trump’s blasphemy at the deification of Charlie Kirk will never choose enlightenment. But maybe some attendees, and, one could hope, residually thoughtful Trump supporters observed the last couple of weeks of contrived, weaponized vengeance and persecution of free speech rediscovered what having second thoughts feels like. Remembered when they knew democracy, freedom, and free speech are inseparably intertwined. Who’ll think, sure, seeing those brown people being rounded up roughly is nice, but there’s something more important at stake here.

People aware that, years ago, opposing parties worked together and accomplished great things. Ones unwilling to keep ignoring the protrusive corruption of this administration, enriching billionaire Trump pals, selling them control of all media; the lying, the undisguised peddling of hate to ensure an ever-stronger grip on power; the ridding from government people of integrity, finally recognizing how treacherous it is. Able to entertain the thought that, for love of country, it has to stop.

Maybe those people recall Trump promising, “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.” Maybe, after Trump lied that he had nothing to do with the firing of Jimmy Kimmel, they’ll be reminded that, immediately after the cancellation of Stephen Colbert, he said Kimmel would be next. Maybe they’ll discover they’ve been duped from the beginning.

Perhaps those who don’t deny the Holocaust heard echoes of it when Vance, hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast, implored Americans to turn in anyone they hear saying anything negative about Mr. Kirk. Maybe, even though it’s not (yet) affecting them, they’ll decide, “This isn’t the America I thought I loved, not the one I want to live in. I need a president who upholds rather than ignores the Constitution, who’s truthful, whose White House isn’t a gilded cesspool of greed and corruption, and who didn’t just embarrass America before the UN General Assembly. I can no longer be a part of it.”

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Revenge Is Mine, Sayeth The Loud

 

When gun violence occurs, Democrats point to easy access to lethal weaponry, Republicans point to, well, anything else, and nothing changes. This time, though, following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Trump and his accentuators trod new ground, demanding wholesale retribution against “them.” They’ve always scapegoated everything wrong with everything, but this is different.

“It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization,” wrote Laura Loomer, Trump’s new-favorite autocracy specialist, before knowing anything about the assassin. Implicitly calling for eradication of liberalism, his other favorite, Stephen Miller, called it “... an ideology ... which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.” J.D. Vance has been conflagrating ever since it happened. Asked on Fox “news” about toning it down, Trump, who once mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi and who pardons violent felons, said, truthful for once, “I couldn’t care less.” The public, yes. But America’s government has never been so intentionally malignant.

“You own this,” raged Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) to Democrats, on the floor of Congress. (Who owns Minnesota’s Democratic state Representative Melissa Hortman’s and her husband’s assassination, Nancy?) Later, atop a pre-beaten horse, she fingered university brainwashing. The killer spent one online semester before enrolling in tech school.

One after another, rightwing media declared “war” on “the left.” Disregarding the deaths of JFK, MLK, RFK, innocent Black children and freedom workers during the Civil Rights struggles, Jews in synagogues, the Hortmans, Officer David Rose defending the CDC against a brainwashed anti-vaxxer, and innumerable more, Elon Musk explained, “Democrats are the party of death.” Trumpists say comparing people like Miller, Loomer, and Musk – and Trump! -- to fascists crosses a line. Where on which line does their rhetoric fall? Based on what information are they blaming “the left”?

In detestable contrast to presidents who rose to tragic occasions with words of comfort and calls for restraint, Trump lowered to this one, attacking “radical left lunatics,” adding “we have to beat the hell out of them,” explicitly sanctioning violence. From which his in-pocket DOJ, already promising retribution, would surely look away. 

After the murder, a Facebook “friend” messaged me: “... You unfortunately by your constant negativity encourages a breeding ground for this type of behavior... you are part of the problem with your constant negativity. hatred breeds hatred. Your posts are consumed by hate you view it as journalism but its not.” (sic, severally.)

I’m unworried that thoughtful readers of my column will be driven to violence. Given Trump’s provocations and threats from less thoughtful readers, I’m unsure about the other way around.

Perhaps we can agree:

One: Killing Charlie Kirk was horrible, despicable, and antithetical to democracy, even our dying one. It made me physically ill, as it should everyone, but didn’t. Anger, I understand and share. Gloating, I abhor.

Two: The perpetrator must be deeply disturbed, whatever his “ideology.” Friends had noticed his gradual social withdrawal, spending time in dark recesses of the internet. If, in his disordered mind, he thought he was helping the cause of anti-fascism, he accomplished the opposite. In any case, his actions seem to have been his alone. Don’t tell that to Trumpists, though. They want “they.”

Three: In no way justifying his murder, Kirk’s oeuvre was discord. If my rhetoric is “hateful” (it isn’t: it’s outrage), his belittled everyone not white, male, native-born, heterosexual, and Christian. He even advocated death for President Biden. I won’t list more here. You can look them up. Nevertheless, he ought still to be taking his combat evangelicalism to campuses, alive and well.

The response to 9/11 excepted, events like this have separated Ds and Rs for decades. Despicable comments pollute social media from the fringes of each; but, contrasted with Democratic leaders when Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated, Trump and many high-ranking Republicans are calling for extermination. It feels familiar.

Political violence should horrify everyone who believes in democracy. So should leaders suborning unbounded revenge, for the same reason. Trump glommed Charlie Kirk’s murder as an exploitable windfall, supercharging his anti-democracy aims, extant long before. He’s using it, enthusiastically, to justify more suppression of dissent, while MAGAs cheer him on. Opportunistic geopolitical foes are exploiting it, too, as always.

Well-meaning words to the contrary, violence is who we are. It birthed America and has shaped our history thenceforth, infecting, at one time or another, people of all political persuasions. But if the arc of violence is long, in the time of Trump it bends toward the right, by actual count. (Those data have suddenly disappeared from the DOJ website.) 

In response to an unspeakable atrocity, MAGA Republicans promise Trumped-up, scorched-earth retaliation upon half the country, with brutal totalitarianism the intended result. Coming from our government, it’s without precedent in the US. But it’s exactly how Trump is perverting Charlie Kirk’s death, with malice aforethought, seeking absolute authority.

As Charlie always said, “Prove me wrong.”

Weaponized Fluffery

 

The murder of Charlie Kirk makes me feel ill. So does Elon Musk’s response to it. Beyond that, nothing useful can be said, so we move on. 

Trump’s recent made-for-MAGA “Cabinet Meeting” was nothing about policy and everything about serial assculation, a showcase of Trump’s bottomless need for fawning sycophancy. If MAGAs don’t see it for what it is, namely a gaping vulnerability in an American “president,” other world leaders do.

Like many clear-eyed observers of Trump’s obsequious deference to Vladimir Putin, I once assumed there must be blackmail behind it. The rumored “pee tape,” for example, or recordings of likely “ungentlemanly” behavior while he was in Russia, tending to his Miss America ladies. There were hidden recording devices in my room in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow while on tour in college, so I’m certain there are recordings of Trump when he was there, too, whatever the content. I was talking with a young artist, wrongly unworried about speaking in my room, who spoke longingly of America, where artists are free to create. Immediately after accompanying us to the train station, he was arrested.

The recent showcase in Beijing, featuring Putin, Modi, Kim, and representatives of many other countries, including some of our pre-Trump allies, all aligning with China’s Xi, made me realize Putin didn’t need blackmail to get what he wanted from Trump. For Putin, a former KGB operative trained to take the measure of people, sizing up Trump was easy as pierogi. He saw a man so in need of flattery, so prone to bragging undeservedly and lying unreservedly, that manipulating him must have been lesson one of KGB Spying 101. So, seizing the opportunity fate handed him, using fake media and other methods, he helped to get him elected.

Unlike Trump, whose thought timeline measures in seconds and who suffers from premature emanation, our adversaries think long-term. Grooming Trump, for example, for years. It’s taken decades for China to achieve world economic and scientific dominance. By happy coincidence, Trump’s self-pleasuring tariffs sealed it, convincing the world to abandon America for more reliable trading partners.

There’s no strategy to Trump’s spur-of-the-mouth declarations. His destructive tariffs were meant to bully other countries into respecting him, consequences to our country be damned. The result, predicted by politicians and economists of both parties, is that our economy is shrinking like his approval ratings while prices rise like global temperatures. The latest jobs report showed net job loss in every sector except healthcare. Because he has the same understanding of economics that he has of Constitutional law, he promised supercharged job growth at home, spurred b y his ill-conceived, ego-driven tariffs. Instead, manufacturing jobs have declined for six straight months. We should be grateful for growth in healthcare jobs, though. RFK Jr’s attacks on science-based medical institutions mean we’ll need every one of them.

If Putin didn’t foresee that Trump would weaken America by imposing tariffs (or maybe he did), he knew it’d happen some way. He probably saw that, in Trump’s need for adulation, he’d seek democracy-ending authoritarian power at home, no matter how destructive. We “Never Trumpers” saw it and predicted it. So must have Putin. It wasn’t subtle.

The content of Trump’s private meetings with him remains unknown. But it’s a solid bet that bolshoi stroking of Donald’s ego was included, flattering him into wanting more. And he knew how to get it: by doing whatever was asked of him. The firing, by unqualified DNI Tulsi Gabbard, of 37 CIA Russia experts immediately after the Trump/Putin/Alaska fiasco didn’t go unnoticed by Putin’s state media, who gloated that Trump and Gabbard did exactly what Putin wanted. More recently, Trump announced his intent to end financial support for Europe’s security initiatives, including border fortifications intended to discourage Russian invasion from the East.

The pattern is clear. In the Kremlin, they must be doing high pyahts. Unlike so many other players, Putin didn’t need to buy Trump’s bitcoins or stay in his hotels. Just well-placed but insincere, approbation turned the trick.

But, some might say, Trump seems finally to be getting tougher on Putin. Doesn’t matter. Thanks to Trump, Vlad has what he wants from the countries he needs.

Putin’s kind of weaponized flattery trickles down. Trump uses it on his besotted followers. Certain of their credulity, he’s posting signs at infrastructure projects under construction because of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, against which Trump bleated vociferously. “President Donald J. Trump,” the signs lie, shamelessly, “Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure.” It’s disgusting.

MAGAs, whose news sources are Trump and his fawning media, will accept it as God’s truth. As they will his “hearing it now for the first time” lie regarding that botched Seal Team Six operation in North Korea. Right. Incursions into enemy countries are always undertaken without sign-off by the president. MAGAs will believe that, too, just like they’ll believe that raiding a Hyundai plant in Tennessee is consistent with encouraging foreign investment.

It’s embarrassing. And frightening. The putative “Leader of the Free World” is an easily manipulatable liar. Our global foes exploit it. Millions of Americans continue to believe him, unwittingly validating the long game of those foes.

Brain Worms Everywhere

What’s a sociopathic narcissist to do? Poor Trump: In the before times, he rightfully bragged about getting the Covid vaccine up and running at “warp speed.” He hadn’t spent much time with beakers and Petrie dishes, and he benefited from the prior twenty years during which the groundwork for mRNA vaccine development reached its zenith right on time. Nevertheless, initial fatuity aside (disbanding President Obama’s pandemic preparedness team, it’ll be over in weeks, bleach, light, etc.), he deserves credit for that.

So, what to do when the craziest of his crazy patronage hires claims those vaccines were ineffective, deadly, and should be banned, replaces vaccine experts with quacks, and defunds further research? Does he defend RFK, Jr.? Does he fire the guy he touted before, saying he’d let him “go wild” at HHS? It’s a horned dilemma. He’d rather be grifting.

Junior Bobby Kennedy is nuts. Has been for a long time, well before Trump put him in position to kill Americans; well before every Republican senator except one, including four medical doctors, voted to confirm him. The exception? Mitch McConnell, the hypocrite’s hypocrite most responsible for keeping Trump in office.

Bobby Junior Kennedy claims he can tell which children are “overburdened with mitochondrial challenges” (not a thing) just by looking at them. He quotes medical research reports that don’t exist, and misquotes and misunderstands those that do. He couldn’t tell properly-run science research from the roadkill in the trunk of his car. There’s a worm in his brain that died after eating part of it, possibly killed by the heroin that once poisoned his bloodstream.

Bobby spreads misinformation like a farmer spreads manure, but, unlike farmers’, his manure ends, rather than stimulates life. Bobby-J is nuts. Truly, deeply, dangerously nuts. Nevertheless, Trump, who hugs the flag, hugged him, too, putting him in charge of America’s health. Republican senators who knew better confirmed him. For a country purporting to be great again, it’s shameful.

Pathological liars know they’re lying. “I’m president,” Trump recently said. “I can do whatever I want.” It’s not supposed to be that way. The Framers believed they’d prevented it by creating “checks and balances.” But they couldn’t imagine sociopathic narcissists being unchecked by the unbalanced.

Contrarily, because he’s nuts and can’t tell the difference, Junior believes what he says, thinks he’s saving lives rather than endangering them. If Trump cared about anyone but himself, he’d have fired him by now. If there were even a dozen Republicans in Congress who weren’t self-serving cowards, they’d have joined Democrats to impeach Junior K the minute he started firing all the competent people at NIH and CDC, replacing them with conspiratorial know-nothings.

Unless every red state and every district within those states has managed to elect only stupid people, which seems unlikely even given the political insanity running amok in those states, there must be at least a handful who do recognize the danger RFK presents. Not to mention people like Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth in the White House’s orbit. And Steven Miller, who calls RFKJ the administration’s “crown jewel.” Removing those other threats to bodies politic would require a level of integrity lacking even in the theoretical few.

Elected Republicans won’t act. There can be no clearer proof of the descent of a once-respectable political party than the spectacle of K-J doing incalculable damage to the health of Americans while that party’s Congresspeople, elected to further the interests of their constituents, sit silent and afraid.

The same applies to standing up to Trump as he systematically overruns the constitutionally-mandated guardrails meant to keep an incurious authoritarian from unbridled power. And if the existence of Bobby K in government is proof of the fall of the Republican Party, the reelection of Felonious Trump is confirmation beyond doubt.

The downward economic impacts of his immigration policies are just beginning to be felt. Pocketbooks aren’t yet as thin as they’ll be due to his tariffs. Worse still is the end of America’s ability to influence world affairs, to remain a respected leader in science and technology. And benevolence. Instead, Trump is sidelining our country, making it dependent on others, disrespected and dismissed. The implications are grave.

Witness the gathering in China of leaders of our economic and political adversaries: Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi, and India’s Modi, forming an anti-US trading alliance. NoKoKim showed up, too, bearing his own toilet. India’s and China’s technological and scientific advancements are surpassing ours. Trump’s policies couldn’t be more favorable to them. It’s almost as if handing them the world was his intention all along.

As he inflicts his bizarre, reality-rejecting vendetta on renewable energy, those countries are racing ahead with better harnessers of sun and wind, developing battery technology that will end concerns about dark nights and windless days, while making electric cars cheaper, faster charging, and with more range than a full tank of gas.

Maybe, if our next president ends Trump’s “see-me-flex,” economy-killing tariffs, they’ll even let us buy some.

Devolution

Serving in Vietnam, I shrank my world to about eight feet in diameter. Other than doctoring, I was concerned mostly about what might happen within or near that circle. Rockets landing, for example. One did. Getting shot at. That, too.

My wife sent me a book that brought my thoughts beyond myself again, Carl Sagan’s “Intelligent Life in the Universe.” Given the overtaking of our country by people wrapped in the Flag (don’t burn it) and carrying a Cross (wear it prominently), it’s relevant today.

Boiled down, Sagan’s message was that no matter how improbable the existence of life is, how unlikely for it to have arisen spontaneously, it was a statistical certainty. One in a million? A billion? How about one in a trillion? Or a trillion-trillion? That’s approximately how many stars and planets there are in the Universe, all made of the same atoms and molecules, bumping into each other. Forming compounds. Random, Brownian. It’s chemistry. In this universe, anyway.

How many bumps to form self-replicating molecules? Who knows? But there’s worlds enough and time. Of the trillions of places where it didn’t, the one (or more) where it did would seem, to sentient life-forms that appeared, miraculous. Special. The chosen ones. Impossible to have happened without intent, the odds too long. Like one in a trillion-trillion. Viewing from beyond the Milky Way, happening on a tiny grain of sand in an unbounded desert containing uncountable grains whose chemistry, though similar, happened not to generate life, as opposed to the view from the grain itself, it’s no miracle at all. Just one of the monkeys with a typewriter.

Though we can’t grok it, something very complicated exists without creation. Either it’s the universe or a creator. The late Pope Francis, a scientist, was able to accept the obviousness of evolution without finding it antithetical to his religious beliefs. It is, after all, undeniable. We see it and have confirmed it on a macro level; microscopic, too; in DNA, and more. To deny evolution would be as mind-blind as, oh, denying anthropogenic climate change or the results of fair elections.

We humans can barely analogize that much time, such large numbers, much less internalize them. It’s hard to imagine Earth 500,000 years ago, let alone several billion. But we see evolution happening in real time, before our eyes, the evolution of which has been explained quite nicely too. Still, it’s all but impossible to conceive of what could happen over hundreds of millions of years.

In the process of replication, DNA is prone to copying errors: mutations. Some amount to nothing. Some are dilatory, some fatal. Some, though, cause useful, incremental changes in its product. That’s what “natural selection” is all about. Organisms that have mutated a change, however tiny, that enhances survival, even only a bit, have an advantage, however small, over those that didn’t. And so it goes, time over time: existence favors the better versions. Sahelanthropus tchadensis over Ardipithecus ramibus. Australopithecus giving way to Homo sapiens, to leap over a million intervening years.

For a while, in medical school, I came to question all of this. How could something as complicated as the nephron, for example, the microscopic essence of the kidney, simply have evolved? What cascade of steps would it have taken? It’s so elegant, so intricately complex, so perfectly structured to do its many jobs. And then I thought, well, yes, but it’s also hard to imagine the cumulative effects of little mutations occurring over billions of years. Earth, it’s calculated, formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and life, as defined by organisms having the ability to replicate themselves, began about a billion years later, 3.5 billion years past. Fathom that! For reference, I’ve gone from a single, fertilized cell to 6’ 4” and, now, back to 6’2” in only eighty years.

I don’t know if there’s a capital-C Creator or not, but I have doubts. And because, in addition to those perfect little nephrons, we also have renal cell carcinoma and glomerulonephritis, childhood bone cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, if there is, he/she/it must either be more careless or less pleasant than is commonly believed.

I can, however, imagine our universe being a terrarium in some cosmic space-kid’s science experiment. The terrarium I made got overgrown with mold within days.

So, what’s my point? Only that there’s logic and science behind religious skepticism. And that, among the thousand or so Earthly religions, there’s no reason to consider one more veracious than another; nor, among those that have them, their Good Books, each claiming singular, divine origin. Which means no religion, especially the unchristian perversion flaunted so publicly by Holy Mike Johnson and White House denizens, belongs anywhere near our government. And that, among believers, humility is warranted.

Many of my friends and family are religious: Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist (I think). None approves the Trump-loving, power-craving, cruel strain infecting today’s Republican Party.

Of course not: They’re my friends and family.