American history is about outcomes. Will we pass the covid-19 test?

It comes as a surprise because history’s verdict is determined by the outcome. Likewise, the history of the covid-19 pandemic will be more interested in how the battle ends than in how it got started. In that respect, the fight begins now. History will elide many of the missteps of last winter provided that we make a better showing from now on. Take, for example, the fiasco of the face coverings. When the novel coronavirus emerged, hospital managers immediately worried they would run short of personal protective equipment, including face masks. To protect existing supplies, authorities assured the public that we’d be fine without masks. That was a mistake. Masks have proved to be the first line of defense, along with social distancing and clean hands. Even on the cusp of a vaccine, these simple measures are not only our best options against the pandemic; they continue to be the only ones available to engage the nation to meet this challenge. The vaccine is coming, but the crisis is already here. History’s account of Americans in this pandemic will focus on what we do starting now. Our lack of leadership has been depressing. But we’ve learned enough through these past nine months to make up for absent leadership by exercising citizenship. It’s not Normandy. It’s not Gettysburg. But this is what history demands today. There is just enough time — just barely — left for us to pass the test. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/american-history-is-about-outcomes-will-we-pass-the-covid-19-test/2020/12/08/d39b6fb6-397b-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html

The moral hypocrisy of conservative leaders is stunning

The intellectual bankruptcy and moral hypocrisy of many conservative leaders is stunning. People who claimed to favor limited government now applaud Trump’s use of the executive branch to undermine an election. A similar attempt by Barack Obama would have brought comparisons to Fidel Castro. People who talked endlessly about respecting the Constitution affirm absurd slanders against the constitutional order. People who claimed to be patriots now spread false claims about their country’s fundamental corruption. People who talked of honoring the rule of law now jerk and gyrate according to the whims of a lawless leader. These conservative leaders no longer deserve the assumption of sincerity. They are spreading conspiratorial lies so unlikely and irrational, they must know them to be lies. But their motive remains a matter of debate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-moral-hypocrisy-of-conservative-leaders-is-stunning/2020/12/14/35e62f16-3e2d-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html

A gamble pays off in ‘spectacular success’: How the leading coronavirus vaccines made it to the finish line

The Vaccine Research Center, where Graham is deputy director, was the brainchild of Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It was created in 1997 to bring together scientists and physicians from different disciplines to defeat diseases, with a heavy focus on HIV. Since 1961, scientists had known about messenger RNA, the transient genetic material that makes life possible, taking the instructions inscribed in DNA and delivering those to the protein-making parts of the cell. In 2005, the pair discovered a way to modify RNA, chemically tweaking one of the letters of its code, so it didn’t trigger an inflammatory response. Deborah Fuller, a scientist who works on RNA and DNA vaccines at the University of Washington, said that work deserves a Nobel Prize. Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, said it was thrilling when he and colleagues in 2016 developed a nanoparticle to deliver messenger RNA to a special cell type that could take the code and turn it into a protein on its surface to provoke the immune system. The latest genetic techniques, like messenger RNA, don’t take as long to develop because those virus bits don’t have to be generated in a lab. Instead, the vaccine delivers a genetic code that instructs cells to build those characteristic proteins themselves. Scientists have to choose which telltale part of the virus to show the immune system. Long before the pandemic, Graham’s research had revealed that some virus proteins change shape after they break into a person’s cells. A vaccine based on the wrong shape could effectively train the immune system to be an ineffective sheriff, never stopping vandals or burglars before they wreak their havoc. Graham had used this insight to design a better vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus; it made Science magazine’s shortlist of 2013’s most important scientific breakthroughs. Coronaviruses seemed like an important next target. Severe acute respiratory syndrome had emerged in 2003. Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) broke out in 2012. It seemed clear to Graham and Jason McLellan, a structural biologist now at the University of Texas at Austin, that new coronaviruses were jumping into people on a 10-year clock and that it might be time to brace for the next one. Last winter, when Graham heard rumblings of a new coronavirus in China, he brought the team back together. Once its genome was shared online by Chinese scientists, the laboratories in Texas and Maryland designed a vaccine, utilizing the stabilizing mutations and the knowledge they had gained from years of basic research — a weekend project thanks to the dividends of all that past work. On Jan. 13, Moderna, The company could start making the vaccine almost right away because of its experience manufacturing experimental cancer vaccines, which involves taking tumor samples and developing personalized vaccines in 45 days. But the world will also owe their existence to many scientists outside those companies, in government and academia, who pursued ideas they thought were important even when the world doubted them. McLellan’s laboratory at the University of Texas is proud to have licensed an even more potent version of their spike protein, royalty-free, to be incorporated into a vaccine for low- and middle-income countries. Graham is matter-of-fact, rather than exuberant, and quickly changes the subject to the immense amount of work that remains to be done. Historic scientific news must now be transformed into a tool that is mass produced, distributed and used widely around the world to blunt the sickness and suffering of this winter — and to lift the pall this pandemic has cast over virtually every aspect of daily life. He recalled that his 5-year-old granddaughter recently heard the family talking about “getting back to normal” if a vaccine is successful. “She looked up and said, ‘What is normal life, what do you mean by that?’ ” Graham said. “Half of her memorable life has been like this.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/06/covid-vaccine-messenger-rna/

The coronavirus vaccine isn't a miracle

Article in the New Orleans Advocate - Our Views: Another thing we ought to learn is how brilliant we can be. In a little more than the length of a major-league baseball season, scientists have invented and proved the efficacy of vaccines to end a global pandemic. In any other era in all the history of the world this would have been inconceivable. Reasonable people will call it a miracle. It isn’t. It is the achievement of a society that for all its brokenness can still do great things. Our universities produce researchers that make groundbreaking discoveries, our hospitals train nurses that care for the sick at great personal risk, our elections elevate just enough competent leaders to pull us through. There are still honest working men and women who show up every day to stock grocery shelves and clean COVID-19 wards. We ought to offer them a great deal more respect. https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_62de3768-3cb9-11eb-bfc6-872a8e1420e3.html

Years of research laid groundwork for speedy COVID-19 shots

From article: “The speed is a reflection of years of work that went before,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press. “That’s what the public has to understand.” But long before COVID-19 was on the radar, the groundwork was laid in large part by two different streams of research, one at the NIH and the other at the University of Pennsylvania — and because scientists had learned a bit about other coronaviruses from prior SARS and MERS outbreaks. The mRNA approach is radically different. It starts with a snippet of genetic code that carries instructions for making proteins. Pick the right virus protein to target, and the body turns into a mini vaccine factory. The right design is critical. It turns out the surface proteins that let a variety of viruses latch onto human cells are shape-shifters — rearranging their form before and after they've fused into place. Brew a vaccine using the wrong shape and it won’t block infection. “You could put the same molecule in one way and the same molecule in another way and get an entirely different response,” Fauci explained. That was a discovery in 2013, when Graham, deputy director of NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, and colleague Jason McLellan were investigating a decades-old failed vaccine against RSV, a childhood respiratory illness. Germany’s BioNTech in 2018 had partnered with New York-based Pfizer to develop a more modern mRNA-based flu vaccine, giving both companies some early knowledge about how to handle the technology. “This was all brewing. This didn’t come out of nowhere,” said Pfizer’s Dormitzer. Last January, shortly after the new coronavirus was reported in China, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin switched gears and used the same method to create a COVID-19 vaccine. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/article247670020.html

In 1918, Americans were asked to wear masks. Some refused — and paid the price.

In December of 1918, The Washington Post caught up with Oliver P. Cranston, a doctor from Boston, at the Willard Hotel and asked his opinion about people who pushed back against flu-fighting recommendations, including masks and the closure of churches, schools and other gathering places. “I cannot help but be impatient or intolerant at some of the views expressed,” Cranston said, adding: “Cranks should not be permitted to hamper the precautionary measures of the public officials.” That reminds me of something Anthony S. Fauci might say. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-1918-americans-were-asked-to-wear-masks-some-refused--and-paid-the-price/2020/07/01/748d3fde-bbb5-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html

In year of stress, seek the peace of wild things

A big drainage canal runs behind my office — a wide channel, lined with concrete, that takes away the neighborhood’s rain. Though the canal does important work, few would consider it an appealing landmark. Chain-link fences line both banks, telling the world to stay away. On most days, it’s a message I easily oblige. For much of the year, as I walk through our office parking lot, the canal is far from mind. But one recent evening, as I headed to my car at the end of a workday, a white flash, vivid as lightning, caught the corner of my eye. Tracing the flash to its source, I discovered that four egrets had flown into the canal to look for dinner. About egrets, you already know. They’re tall, white birds, elegant as a length of calligraphy, and fairly common even in Louisiana’s cities, where they’ve adapted by hunting in canals and roadside ditches. I stood by the fence and watched the egrets for a few moments as they combed the canal for prey — maybe a tiny fish or two, or some frogs to make a meal. As somber as poets pecking at their keyboards, the egrets stooped over the shallow residue of a recent storm, stabbing the water occasionally as they found their quarry. It did me good to see them, and so I've made a habit of stopping by the fence before and after I start my work shift, hoping to spot the egrets again. We’ve been connecting about twice a week, their presence so routine that my heart sank a bit when just three of the egrets appeared one evening. Had the fourth bird met a bad end? He was back for the next visit, though, the quartet now complete. I was pleased to see this tiny part of my life once again made whole. You might wonder why, in a world so harried and frayed this autumn, a grown man would be making appointments with egrets. Wendell Berry, a writer I love, explained it much better than I ever could in one of his best poems, “The Peace of Wild Things.” “When despair for the world grows in me,” he tells readers, “and I wake in the night at the least sound / in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, / I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.” In seeing creatures unworried by humanity’s cares, Berry suggests, we can get out of ourselves for a while. It’s something many of us have needed in this broken time. “I come into the peace of wild things,” he writes, “who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” I watch egrets, I suppose, because in this wounded year, peace of any kind is a gift too precious to ignore. https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/danny_heitman/article_b2d5c9a2-1f9f-11eb-838c-6736e20f6ebf.html

In Biden victory, a cast change: Out with Richard III, in with Atticus Finch

As Joe Biden jogged onto that outdoor platform in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday night, one sensed a cast change on the national stage of seismic proportions. Exit Richard III. Enter Atticus Finch. It’s not mere hype or sentimentality to propose that the victorious Biden cut a figure akin to the kind, purposeful character Harper Lee created and Aaron Sorkin reinvigorated on Broadway in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In the conciliatory tones of his maiden speech as president-elect, Biden made a pitch to our better natures in a manner that reverberated with Finch-like magnanimity and rectitude. “Now let’s give each other a chance,” Biden said Saturday — as if to quickly set aside the divisions Donald Trump sought to exploit over the length of his desultory tenure. “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. . . . This is the time to heal in America. To marshal the forces of decency, fairness, science and hope.” You might forgive a drama-deprived theater critic for looking to his field of coverage, shut down by covid-19, for analogies that help frame these preliminary performances of our next president and vice president, Kamala D. Harris. Her elevation, too, as the first woman of color elected to the second highest of offices, conveyed intimations of “Mockingbird,” one of the most widely read novels in America. Here, one imagines the fulfilled dreams of Calpurnia, the indomitable Black housekeeper in Atticus’s Maycomb, Ala., home, a woman of keen insight for whom opportunity was frustratingly denied. In her remarks Saturday, Harris exuberantly invoked the women who came before her, women of more accomplishment than Calpurnia but none with more of a thirst for justice. Biden is not a great orator; it may be that his lifelong struggle with a stutter precludes that possibility. (For a harrowing reminder of how anguishing a hurdle that can be for a person in the public eye, re-watch Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning performance in “The King’s Speech.”) But his remarks over the blaring of the car horns and cheers of supporters in the Delaware parking lot pointed to more substantive values, and to a man of heart and spirit. More than a year ago, when I followed him around Iowa for a story about his performative campaigning style, I sensed a man adrift — a Willy Loman on the road, desperately trying to make a sale. In Delaware, on home turf, fresh from an election called in his favor, he seemed stronger, more resolute, a winner nationally in his own right, a man as secure in his convictions as Atticus Finch himself. The references to a book and play about a White lawyer who, in the Jim Crow South of 1934 defends a Black man falsely accused of rape, might strike some as dated: The story by contemporary standards displays some patronizing whiffs of White liberalism swooping in to save the day. But the parallels go beyond that trope, to other qualities that Atticus embodies, and that Biden reminds us of. Like Atticus, for instance, he is a devoted family man, widowed at an early age and compelled to raise children on his own. (Atticus, alas, doesn’t find a Dr. Jill.) The message of tolerance Biden delivers could come straight from Atticus, who is also a politician, by the way: He’s an Alabama state legislator at the time he’s defending Tom Robinson, the laborer railroaded by a racist and a system lined up against him. It happens to be the opposite of the inflammatory rhetoric of the figure America is tossing out of office. Remember the inaugural address invoking “American carnage”? In the aftermath of such polarizing language, though, there may be a naivete — however noble — in believing common ground is achievable. Biden underlined this Saturday by reaching out to Trump supporters, insisting he will be a president “who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States.” That notion is also central to “Mockingbird.” During Biden’s speech, I was compelled to reflect on a debate at the heart of Sorkin’s adaptation, as Calpurnia confronts Atticus over his insistence that his children show their racist neighbors — and even Bob Ewell, the vicious sexual predator who sets Tom Robinson’s tragedy in motion — courtesy and respect. “What is the virtue of teaching Jem and Scout that Bob Ewell should be treated with respect?” Calpurnia demands of Atticus. “Virtue,” Atticus replies. “The virtue is that it’s virtuous.” “I don’t know what that means,” Calpurnia says. “It means,” Atticus tells her, “I don’t want them hating people they disagree with.” Calpurnia’s rejoinder taunts Atticus with his own words. “ ‘You gotta give Maycomb time, Cal. This is the Deep South, you gotta give ’em time,’ ” she says. “How much time,” she adds bitterly, “would Maycomb like?” The terrible ending for Tom Robinson in “Mockingbird” suggests Maycomb isn’t nearly ready in 1934. But Atticus, like Biden, won’t let go of his faith in what’s to come. The play comes to an end soon after Atticus enumerates for Calpurnia a short list of local people they can count on, to push for a better day. “Smaller armies have changed the world,” Atticus says. “Joy cometh in the morning, Cal.” Maybe, just maybe, it does. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/biden-victory-speech-atticus-finch/2020/11/09/e5f36976-21d8-11eb-952e-0c475972cfc0_story.html

Halloween Pandemic 2020

Quotes from Mary Trump’s Book Too Much and Never Enough

“At 5: 00 the next morning, only a couple of hours after the opposite result had been announced, I was wandering around my house, as traumatized as many other people but in a more personal way: it felt as though 62,979,636 voters had chosen to turn this country into a macro version of my malignantly dysfunctional family.” “Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall has been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits.” “Though Donald’s fundamental nature hasn’t changed, since his inauguration the amount of stress he’s under has changed dramatically. It’s not the stress of the job, because he isn’t doing the job—unless watching TV and tweeting insults count. It’s the effort to keep the rest of us distracted from the fact that he knows nothing—about politics, civics, or simple human decency—that requires an enormous amount of work.” “He had all the confidence of a bully who knows he’s always going to get what he wants and never has to fight for it.” “Donald’s need for affirmation is so great that he doesn’t seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn’t condescend to be seen with outside of a rally. His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he’s soaked it in. Nothing is ever enough.” “A large minority of people still confuse his arrogance for strength, his false bravado for accomplishment, and his superficial interest in them for charisma.” “the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility of an economic depression, deepening social divides along political lines thanks to Donald’s penchant for division, and devastating uncertainty about our country’s future have created a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle to manage.” “Though nothing Donald did surprised me, the speed and volume with which he started inflicting his worst impulses on the country—from lying about the crowd size at the inauguration and whining about how poorly he was treated to rolling back environmental protections, targeting the Affordable Care Act in order to take affordable health care away from millions of people, and enacting his racist Muslim ban—overwhelmed me.” “Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world, which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself.” “Donald has always needed to perpetuate the fiction my grandfather started that he is strong, smart, and otherwise extraordinary, because facing the truth—that he is none of those things—is too terrifying for him to contemplate.” “Many, but by no means all of us, have been shielded until now from the worst effects of his pathologies by a stable economy and a lack of serious crises. But the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility of an economic depression, deepening social divides along political lines thanks to Donald’s penchant for division, and devastating uncertainty about our country’s future have created a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle to manage. Doing” “for Donald there is no value in empathy, no tangible upside to caring for other people.” “Donald did have—as a savant of self-promotion, shameless liar, marketer, and builder of brands—to achieve the one thing that had always eluded him: a level of fame that matched his ego and satisfied his ambition in a way money alone never could.” “The banks admonished him for betraying their agreement, but they never took any action against him, which just reinforced his belief that he could do whatever he wanted, as he almost always had.” “Donald has always struggled for legitimacy—as an adequate replacement for Freddy, as a Manhattan real estate developer or casino tycoon, and now as the occupant of the Oval Office who can never escape the taint of being utterly without qualification or the sense that his “win” was illegitimate.” “Despite the fluke that was his electoral advantage and a “victory” that was at best suspect and at worst illegitimate, he never had his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist; his bluster and shamelessness just happened to resonate with certain segments of the population.” “The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for. At this point, we can’t evaluate his day-to-day functioning because he is, in the West Wing, essentially institutionalized. Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.” “In Donald’s mind, he has accomplished everything on his own merits, cheating notwithstanding. How many interviews has he given in which he offers the obvious falsehood that his father loaned him a mere million dollars that he had to pay back but he was otherwise solely responsible for his success? It’s easy to understand why he would believe this. Nobody has failed upward as consistently and spectacularly as the ostensible leader of the shrinking free world.” “His cruelty is also an exercise of his power, such as it is. He has always wielded it against people who are weaker than he is or who are constrained by their duty or dependence from fighting back. Employees and political appointees can’t fight back when he attacks them in his Twitter feed because to do so would risk their jobs or their reputations. Freddy couldn’t retaliate when his little brother mocked his passion for flying because of his filial responsibility and his decency, just as governors in blue states, desperate to get adequate help for their citizens during the COVID-19 crisis, are constrained from calling out Donald’s incompetence for fear he would withhold ventilators and other supplies needed in order to save lives. Donald learned a long time ago how to pick his targets.” “The simple fact is that Donald is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Telling the stories of those we’ve lost would bore him. Acknowledging the victims of COVID-19 would be to associate himself with their weakness, a trait his father taught him to despise. Donald can no more advocate for the sick and dying than he could put himself between his father and Freddy. Perhaps most crucially, for Donald there is no value in empathy, no tangible upside to caring for other people. David Corn wrote, “Everything is transactional for this poor broken human being. Everything.” It is an epic tragedy of parental failure that my uncle does not understand that he or anybody else has intrinsic worth.” “Instead, states are forced to buy vital supplies from private contractors; the federal government commandeers those supplies, and then FEMA distributes them back to private contractors, who then resell them.” “Acknowledging the victims of COVID-19 would be to associate himself with their weakness, a trait his father taught him to despise. Donald can no more advocate for the sick and dying than he could put himself between his father and Freddy. Perhaps most crucially, for Donald there is no value in empathy, no tangible upside to caring for other people. David Corn wrote, “Everything is transactional for this poor broken human being. Everything.” It is an epic tragedy of parental failure that my uncle does not understand that he or anybody else has intrinsic worth.” “It would have been easy for Donald to be a hero. People who have hated and criticized him would have forgiven or overlooked his endless stream of appalling actions if he’d simply had somebody take the pandemic preparedness manual down from the shelf where it was put after the Obama administration gave it to him.” “In Donald’s mind, even acknowledging an inevitable threat would indicate weakness. Taking responsibility would open him up to blame. Being a hero—being good—is impossible for him.” “Donald’s talent for deflecting responsibility while projecting blame onto others came straight from his father’s playbook.” “Many, but by no means all of us, have been shielded until now from the worst effects of his pathologies by a stable economy and a lack of serious crises. But the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility of an economic depression, deepening social divides along political lines thanks to Donald’s penchant for division, and devastating uncertainty about our country’s future have created a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle to manage. Doing so would require courage, strength of character, deference to experts, and the confidence to take responsibility and to course correct after admitting mistakes.” “With millions of lives at stake, he takes accusations about the federal government’s failure to provide ventilators personally, threatening to withhold funding and lifesaving equipment from states whose governors don’t pay sufficient homage to him. That doesn’t surprise me. The deafening silence in response to such a blatant display of sociopathic disregard for human life or the consequences for one’s actions, on the other hand, fills me with despair and reminds me that Donald isn’t really the problem after all.” “He is Frankenstein without conscience.” “His cruelty serves, in part, as a means to distract both us and himself from the true extent of his failures. The more egregious his failures become, the more egregious his cruelty becomes.” “If what he was doing during the 2016 campaign hadn’t worked, he would have kept doing it anyway, because lying, playing to the lowest common denominator, cheating, and sowing division are all he knows. He is as incapable of adjusting to changing circumstances as he is of becoming “presidential.” He did tap into a certain bigotry and inchoate rage, which he’s always been good at doing. The full-page screed he paid to publish in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death wasn’t about his deep concern for the rule of law; it was an easy opportunity for him to take on a deeply serious topic that was very important to the city while sounding like an authority in the influential and prestigious pages of the Gray Lady. It was unvarnished racism meant to stir up racial animosity in a city already seething with it. All five boys, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam, were subsequently cleared, proven innocent via incontrovertible DNA evidence. To this day, however, Donald insists that they were guilty—yet another example of his inability to drop a preferred narrative even when it’s contradicted by established fact.” “Donald’s need for affirmation is so great that he doesn’t seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn’t condescend to be seen with outside of a rally. His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he’s soaked it in. Nothing is ever enough. This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak; his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved. So, he must draw you in if he can by getting you to assent to even the most seemingly insignificant thing: “Isn’t this plane great?” “Yes, Donald, this plane is great.” It would be rude to begrudge him that small concession. Then he makes his vulnerabilities and insecurities your responsibility: you must assuage them; you must take care of him. Failing to do so leaves a vacuum that is unbearable for him to withstand for long. If you’re someone who cares about his approval, you’ll say anything to retain it. He has suffered mightily, and if you aren’t doing all you can to alleviate that suffering, you should suffer, too.” “The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor. They either fail to see or refuse to believe that their fate will be the same as that of anyone who pledged loyalty to him in the past. There seems to be an endless number of people willing to join the claque that protects Donald from his own inadequacies while perpetuating his unfounded belief in himself.” “If he can keep forty-seven thousand spinning plates in the air, nobody can focus on any one of them. So, there’s that: it’s just a distraction.” “Since the election, he’s figured out how to avoid such questions completely; White House press briefings and formal news conferences have been replaced with “chopper talk” during which he can pretend he can’t hear any unwelcome questions over the noise of the helicopter blades.” “That’s how it always works with the sycophants. First, they remain silent no matter what outrages are committed; then they make themselves complicit by not acting. Ultimately, they find they are expendable when Donald needs a scapegoat.” “Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it’s people weaker than he is who are keeping him there.” “The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor. They either fail to see or refuse to believe that their fate will be the same as that of anyone who pledged loyalty to him in the past.” “the government as it is currently constituted, including the executive branch, half of Congress, and the majority of the Supreme Court, is entirely in the service of protecting Donald’s ego; that has become almost its entire purpose.” “Honest work was never demanded of him, and no matter how badly he failed, he was rewarded in ways that are almost unfathomable. He continues to be protected from his own disasters in the White House, where a claque of loyalists applauds his every pronouncement or covers up his possible criminal negligence by normalizing it to the point that we’ve become almost numb to the accumulating transgressions” “What Donald can do in order to offset the powerlessness and rage he feels is punish the rest of us.” “Fred’s fundamental beliefs about how the world worked—in life, there can be only one winner and everybody else is a loser (an idea that essentially precluded the ability to share) and kindness is weakness—were clear. Donald knew, because he had seen it with Freddy, that failure to comply with his father’s rules was punished by severe and often public humiliation, so he continued to adhere to them even outside his father’s purview. Not surprisingly, his understanding of “right” and “wrong” would clash with the lessons taught in most elementary schools.” “Donald, who understands nothing about history, constitutional principles, geopolitics, diplomacy (or anything else, really) and was never pressed to demonstrate such knowledge, has evaluated all of this country’s alliances, and all of our social programs, solely through the prism of money, just as his father taught him to do. The costs and benefits of governing are considered in purely financial terms, as if the US Treasury were his personal piggy bank. To him, every dollar going out was his loss, while every dollar saved was his gain. In the midst of obscene plenty, one person, using all of the levers of power and taking every advantage at his disposal, would benefit himself and, conditionally, his immediate family, his cronies, and his sycophants; for the rest, there would never be enough to go around, which was exactly how my grandfather ran our family.” “Fred didn’t groom Donald to succeed him; when he was in his right mind, he wouldn’t trust Trump Management to anybody. Instead, he used Donald, despite his failures and poor judgment, as the public face of his own thwarted ambition. Fred kept propping up Donald’s false sense of accomplishment until the only asset Donald had was the ease with which he could be duped by more powerful men.” “By perpetuating his version of the story, he wanted told about his wealth and his subsequent “successes,” our family and then many others started the process of normalizing Donald. His hiring (and treatment) of undocumented workers and his refusal to pay contractors for completed work were assumed to be the cost of doing business. Treating people with disrespect and nickel-and-diming them made him look tough.” “For him, it was not “the more you have, the more you can give.” It was “the more you have, the more you have.” Financial worth was the same as self-worth, monetary value was human value. The more Fred Trump had, the better he was. If he gave something to someone else, that person would be worth more and he less. He would pass that attitude on to Donald in spades.” “That’s what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends—ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance. Fred destroyed Donald, too, but not by snuffing him out as he did Freddy; instead, he short-circuited Donald’s ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion. By limiting Donald’s access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it. His capacity to be his own person, rather than an extension of his father’s ambitions, became severely limited.” “large minority of people still confuse his arrogance for strength, his false bravado for accomplishment, and his superficial interest in them for charisma.” “Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information. Donald’s need for affirmation is so great that he doesn’t seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn’t condescend to be seen with outside of a rally. His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he’s soaked it in. Nothing is ever enough. This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak; his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because” “he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved. So, he must draw you in if he can by getting you to assent to even the most seemingly insignificant thing: “Isn’t this plane great?” “Yes, Donald, this plane is great.” It would be rude to begrudge him that small concession. Then he makes his vulnerabilities and insecurities your responsibility: you must assuage them; you must take care of him. Failing to do so leaves a vacuum that is unbearable for him to withstand for long. If you’re someone who cares about his approval, you’ll say anything to retain it. He has suffered mightily, and if you aren’t doing all you can to alleviate that suffering, you should suffer, too.” “Instead, Donald withdraws to his comfort zones—Twitter, Fox News—casting blame from afar, protected by a figurative or literal bunker. He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own. But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy.” “By the time this book is published, hundreds of thousands of American lives will have been sacrificed on the altar of Donald’s hubris and willful ignorance. If he is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American democracy.” “I hope this book will end the practice of referring to Donald’s “strategies” or “agendas,” as if he operates according to any organizing principles. He doesn’t. Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world, which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself. Donald has always needed to perpetuate the fiction my grandfather started that he is strong, smart, and otherwise extraordinary, because facing the truth—that he is none of those things—is too terrifying for him to contemplate.” https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/84437295-too-much-and-never-enough-how-my-family-created-the-world-s-most-danger

The Next Lost Cause

From article: The Lost Cause offered former Confederates and their descendants a salve for the past. According to this mythology about the Civil War, the South was the victim, even in defeat. Confederate armies were not vanquished on the battlefield but overwhelmed by insurmountable Union resources; Confederate soldiers were heroic martyrs, none more so than Robert E. Lee; defense of states’ rights, not slavery, caused the war; and African Americans were “faithful slaves,” loyal to their masters and the Confederate cause. Through distortions and omissions, White Southerners constructed a version of history that absolved them of blame. Although they were a defeated minority, they organized to spread their message through monuments, literature, film and textbooks across the country — where it dominated for more than a century, shaping partisan politics, American culture and, of course, race relations. Even as Confederate monuments tumble this summer, we may be witnessing an attempt to form a new lost cause. Today, President Trump describes his opponents as “unfair,” the pandemic sapping his popularity as a “hoax,” the polls that show him losing to Joe Biden as “fake,” and the election in which he’ll face ultimate judgment in November as “rigged” or potentially “stolen.” His defenders are already laboring to cast him as a righteous, noble warrior martyred by traitors and insurmountable forces. They rely on the same tools that were used to promulgate Confederate myths: manipulating facts, claiming persecution, demonizing enemies and rewriting history. In other words, Trump is laying the groundwork to claim moral victory in political defeat — and to deny the legitimacy of the Democratic administration that would displace him. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/31/lost-cause-donald-trump/?arc404=true

How Fauci, 5 other health specialists deal with COVID-19 risks in their everyday lives

ttps://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/07/03/how-fauci-5-other-health-specialists-deal-with-covid-19-risks-in-their-everyday-lives/


ttps://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/07/03/how-fauci-5-other-health-specialists-deal-with-covid-19-risks-in-their-everyday-lives/

Foes of science faced ridicule at the Scopes trial. We’re paying the price 95 years later.

 

From Article

Today, the theory of evolution is accepted by most Americans — including most religious believers — but still resisted by a significant minority. According to a Pew poll in 2018, 18 percent of American adults deny the theory of evolution. Among white evangelical Protestants (a core part of the Trump base), 38 percent say that humans have always existed in their present form. Having 18 percent of the adult population in the anti-evolution camp might not seem like a lot, but it translates to roughly 37.6 million people — the population of Canada — who reject a core tenet of modern science.

I suspect there is a lot of overlap between anti-evolutionists, anti-maskers and climate deniers. That hostility to science, found far more on the right than the left, makes it much harder to deal with major crises such as global warming or the coronavirus. Ninety-five years after the Scopes trial, the foes of science are more potent politically than ever — and we are all paying the price.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/08/foes-science-faced-ridicule-scopes-trial-were-paying-price-95-years-later/

 

How to avoid a second wave of infections

From article: Modern influenza studies also hold lessons. Influenza and covid-19 transmit the same way, and a careful study of seasonal influenza transmission found that a combination of masks and hand-washing reduced illness dramatically after six weeks, while an analysis of multiple studies of mask use and hand-washing during the 2009 swine flu pandemic concluded the same thing: the combination of the two provided significant protection.

Even more important in interrupting transmission is social distancing. Simply talking face to face seems to be a major mode of transmission. Although quantifiable data supporting that statement has not yet been extracted and analyzed, that is the view of an emerging consensus of public-health experts.

Distancing oneself, using masks, washing hands, taking such other preventive actions as avoiding public bathrooms (bowel movements and toilet flushing expel airborne virus), and, of course, staying home when sick are not magic bullets, but they all impact spread. As in army barracks in 1918, as in SARS among health-care workers, compliance matters.

Individuals who employ all these measures can greatly enhance their chances of avoiding infection, and, even in the absence of adequate testing and tracing, can have considerable impact on society-wide spread.

Such measures are not ideological, even if the great irony in this pandemic is that they have become so.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/22/how-avoid-second-wave-infections/

Trump’s smoke-and-mirrors trade deal with China

While the benefits of the trade war are speculative, its costs are real: The Tax Foundation estimates that Trump’s tariffs have cost Americans more than $88 billion so far, making this one of the biggest tax hikes in history. To cushion the blow, the administration gave $28 billion to farmers — twice the cost of the 2009 auto industry bailout. Waging a trade war is like hitting your head against a wall; it feels good when you stop. But most trade experts agree with my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Edward Alden when he says: “It’s hard to see this China deal as the vindication of the president’s tactics. It’s a pretty small deal, coming at a pretty high cost.” Indeed, the New York Times reports that Chinese hard-liners are “jubilant and even incredulous” that they have gotten such a good deal. They have good cause to cheer because the real issues with China — from trade barriers to militarism in the South China Sea to human rights violations — remain unaddressed. Trump would rather trumpet “our GREAT new deal with China” than take serious action to address the real challenges from China.

By Max Boot 

Columnist

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/16/trumps-smoke-and-mirrors-trade-deal-with-china/

 

 

Cajun Christmas

Deeply immoral trashing of public servants by GOP

From article:

Partisan extremes in the United States have become entirely consequentialist in their ethics. The overriding goal may be the end of Roe v. Wade — or its preservation. It may be passage of gun control legislation — or protection of the Second Amendment. In each case, the objective — always measured in saved lives — means everything. But if the objective means everything, then how do we judge the character of leaders or the morality of political methods? If ending Roe, for example, is really all that matters, wouldn’t a corrupt or lying politician who opposes Roe always be better than the ideological alternative? This is a point I have sometimes pressed with pro-Trump, pro-life evangelicals: Would you support a rapist who opposes Roe over a pro-choice Democrat? How about a serial killer? The result is usually uncomfortable silence. If political outcomes are truly all that matter, there is no way to draw necessary moral lines.

 

Since Trump is on “our” side in the culture war, any excess can be forgiven. There is no penalty for corruption, deception or cruelty. And more than this, many Trump supporters have begun to enjoy the transgressive side of our brutal political culture.

Why should we care? Because democracy is hard to sustain in the absence of certain values. Self-government requires ethical hierarchy — a belief that honor is better than dishonor, fairness is better than exploitation and truth is superior to lies. American freedom is not based on relativism; it is based on the belief that the dignity of human beings is a knowable, universal truth. And the success of that principle is demonstrated in the way we treat each other.

There are categorical commitments to respect and truthfulness that can’t be subordinated to partisan outcomes. And they point to an essential, post-Trump task: restoring a decayed moral environment.

By 

Michael Gerson 

Columnist

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-spurs-a-wild-west-of-continuously-worsening-political-rhetoric/2019/11/18/59185e5a-0a3a-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html

 

 

It’s the Wise Men vs. the wise guys in Trump’s America

In midtown Manhattan, Trump learned to dominate the news — in his rise, that meant the New York Post, with its screaming, one-sourced stories, an early harbinger of the presidential Twitter strategy. He learned the power of TV. And he learned that tough guys — or “killers,” in a favorite approbation of Trump’s — like Ailes, who presided over this stew of often-abusive power, money and misinformation, were the kinds of guys he could count on.
For one thing was certain: The Wise Men of 68th Street or the United Nations or any of the traditional institutions of expertise weren’t his guys. The question America now faces in impeachment and, should Trump prevail, in the 2020 election, is whose New York will serve us best in the long run — the wise guys’ or the Wise Men’s?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-the-wise-men-vs-the-wise-guys-in-trumps-america/2019/11/14/277f1850-0708-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html

In Syria and elsewhere, Trump is making Russia great again

From article: Trump has sacrificed the high ground at home as well as abroad. He engages in blatant self-dealing — conditioning aid to Ukraine on political help for himself, operating hotels where foreign emissaries stay, paying off a mistress in violation of campaign finance laws, obstructing justice, etc. — and claims immunity from any consequences. His lawyer argues that Trump couldn’t be prosecuted even for shooting someone. This allows Putin to say: You think I’m bad? Everyone’s corrupt. Look at the United States.

Trump is further normalizing Putin by emulating the Russian leader’s strongman tactics. He calls opponents “human scum” and the media “the enemy of the people” while launching an investigation of the investigators who dared to probe his links with Russia. Trump is also helping Russia by denigrating the FBI, CIA, and even his own ambassador to Ukraine and one of his own National Security Council staff members as agents of a nonexistent “Deep State.” He is thereby undermining the individuals and institutions most dedicated to combating Russian designs. The leading Russian hard-liners — Fiona Hill and John Bolton — have already left the White House, no doubt to Putin’s delight.

“Russia likes seeing President Trump in the White House in part because it provides the Kremlin a chance to point to the ugly side of American politics — to say, just as they did with [President Richard M.] Nixon, look how sordid, how hypocritical,” former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev recently wrote in the New York Times. The only way to undo some of the damage, he argued, is to impeach and remove Trump. That would send a message to the world similar to the one sent by Nixon’s resignation: “Moral principles still matter in American politics and policy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-syria-and-elsewhere-trump-is-making-russia-great-again/2019/10/30/9d99ddde-fb48-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html

 

 

Democrats preside over stronger economies

Article: But the question naturally follows: Why are expectations for strong stock performance higher when Democrats ascend to the Oval Office? One plausible reason is that their Republican predecessors often leave behind a screwed-up economy with stock prices already depressed.
 Presidents don't have total control over an economy. There are lots of influences — new technology, energy prices, demographic changes — that can boost or drag economic performance.
 But history suggests that economic governance goes south when a Republican president has a Republican Congress backing his bad ideas. Start with 1930, when Republican Herbert Hoover made a troubled economy worse by launching a trade war. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had to pick up the pieces.
 Another example is 2008, a time of near financial collapse. George W. Bush's administration had encouraged speculation in house prices, let Wall Street run wild and supercharged deficits thanks to large tax cuts and little control on spending. (Bill Clinton had left him a booming economy with budget surpluses.) Barack Obama inherited Bush's mess.
 It would be unfair to compare investment performance early in Obama's presidency, when stocks had nowhere to go but up, to that of Trump. So let's compare the first 33 months of Trump with the last 33 months of Obama.
 Under Trump, so far, the S&P 500 has risen just over 33%. During Obama's last 33 months, it jumped almost 48%.
 Republicans argue that a Republican-controlled Congress curbed President Clinton's ability to spend. There may be some truth to that. But George W. Bush had Republican majorities in both houses of Congress — for half his presidency — when all fiscal discipline flew out the window.
 The same can be said for the first two years of Trump's presidency. We're now running annual deficits of around $1 trillion a year. And Trump's trade war adds further drag.
 The economy may not currently be "in deep trouble," but what can you say to those who still believe in Trump's magical powers to make everyone rich? You're on your own.
https://www.tribstar.com/opinion/columns/froma-harrop-democrats-preside-over-stronger-economies/article_e99c0a3e-00c2-11ea-9d75-17eb5ca27efa.html?fbclid=IwAR3hIcL00-ylbi_5b0qmSKUvmdwfQzqnUtegj3Ww8F3z9jhwLIjr7Zhw8Tk

Don't Try to Explain Away Trump's Crazy Ideas

Loopiness at the highest level encourages a certain type of staff response. According to the Axios report on the nuclear proposal, the shocked national security briefer answered, “Sir, we’ll look into that.” Which is the answer of a staffer hoping the topic will never be raised again. Under a president such as Trump, a considerable amount of White House staff time and energy is devoted not to managing urgent crises or pursuing the country’s good — but to minimizing the damage of the boss’s strangeness and poor judgment. In this type of atmosphere, the agenda is often set by a leader’s obsessions, rather than by opportunities or obligations. Staffers must hold their breath at every presidential press availability, and during every tweet storm, wondering what random, ridiculous notion might dominate their week, or month, or year.
Then-Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) once referred to Trump’s White House as an “adult day care center.” This means, among other things, that it can’t properly focus on the needs of the nation.
Outside of government, it is easy for Trump’s followers to become invested in his nonsense. The authority of the presidency can give absurd proposals and theories a veneer of credibility. And because of the demands of political tribalism, lunacy can become defined as loyalty. Craziness can spread like a flu epidemic. However low Trump goes, his supporters go low with him.
And then there is the risk — however effective the White House staff, Congress and the courts might be at blocking Trump’s pixilated ideas — that one of them might slip through. And let’s hope it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-try-to-explain-away-trumps-crazy-ideas/2019/08/26/569dc736-c82d-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html

Trump doesn’t just pollute the social environment with hate. He is the environment.

Eric Hoffer (circa 1898-1983), the longshoreman philosopher, said that “rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” This anticipated the essential fact about the 45th president — Trump’s fascination with what he utterly lacks and unconvincingly emulates: strength. Hence his admiration for foreign despots and his infantile delight in his own bad manners.

It is one thing to have a president who, drawing upon his repertoire of playground insults, calls his alleged porn-star mistress “Horseface .” Polls indicate that approximately a third of Americans, disproportionately including religiously devout worriers about the coarsening of America’s culture, are more than merely content with this. It is quite another thing to have a president who does not merely pollute the social atmosphere with invectives directed at various disfavored minorities; he uses his inflated office not just to shape this atmosphere but to be this atmosphere.

When Gerald Ford became president after Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, he told the nation: “Our long national nightmare is over.” Today’s long — and perhaps occasionally lethal — national embarrassment will continue at least until Jan. 20, 2021. If it continues longer, this will be more than an embarrassment to the nation, this will be an indictment of it.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-doesnt-just-pollute-the-social-environment-he-is-the-environment/2019/08/05/65cb525a-b7b6-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html

 

 

For Trump,Empathy is a Foreign Language

When Robert F. Kennedy spoke on the topic of national division at the Cleveland City Club shortly before his death, it was the culmination of a very different public role. “Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.”

That is exactly what many in the corporate world, and many conservative Christian leaders, are doing in their devotion to Trump: honoring swagger, bluster and force, and excusing a leader who constructs his political success on the cultivation of contempt and slanders against the weak. By their nearly blind support, such leaders are complicit in Trump’s rule by resentment.

“But we can perhaps remember,” said Kennedy, “that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek — as we do — nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.”

It is only on empathy — the virtue most foreign to the president — that unity can be built.

Read more from Michael Gerson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .

 

 

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/promoting-love-and-unity-goes-against-trumps-political-brand/2019/08/05/2223db56-b7b8-11e9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html

 

You Can't Divide a Country

Women's Voices Must Be Heard

Image of Courage Under Fire

Undocumented Immigrants Do Not Qualify for Welfare

Roe V Wade

A Reckoning After Trump’s Border Separation Policy: What Kind of Country Are We?

The story we tell the world is also the story we tell ourselves. Trump began June by blowing up the G-7 gathering of the world’s leading democracies by refusing to sign a joint statement endorsing “shared values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and our commitment to promote a rules-based international order.” He slapped tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the European Union, advised France to drop out of the E.U., and urged Germans to support right-wing anti-immigrant parties intent on deposing Chancellor Angela Merkel. The leaders of France and Canada replied by citing “values,” but Trump had moved on to Singapore, where he praised North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un, whose regime actively operates a network of gulags, as “a funny guy … very smart … his country does love him. You see the fervor.”

Karl Vick

Time Magazine

http://time.com/5318229/donald-trump-border-separation-policy/

 

Why many white evangelicals are not protesting family separations on the U.S. border

 

by Michelle Boorstein and Julie Zauzmer  Washington Post

For many conservative Christians, the brutal headlines of children torn from hysterical parents are weighed against other concerns, chief among them what social conservatives call religious liberty regarding issues of marriage and abortion.

But the remarks of many conservative Christians point to what is perhaps the biggest driving force in the diverging attitudes toward the border crisis: culture war. A desire not to be on the same side as secular, socially liberal forces that to many are by far the biggest threat to America.

White evangelicals — who have been among President Trump’s strongest supporters and who perhaps more than any other faith group have Trump’s ear — share the denunciations of families’ being separated, but they believe the issue is more nuanced than media portrayals suggest, and they still view strong support of Trump as important to their other aims.

More liberal faith groups have loudly criticized the Trump administration on this issue. A long list of denominations — several historically black churches, Quakers, Muslim groups, mainline Protestant groups such as the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA), almost every major Jewish group — have issued strong statements condemning the family separations. Many religious leaders took up the call in their sermons this week, some especially objecting to Sessions’s use of the Bible to defend the policy.

Catholic bishops called separating families “immoral” and floated the idea of holding prayer vigils in front of federal courthouses — a tactic that has worked in opposing abortion clinics.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, passed a resolution favoring a legal solution that considers a path to citizenship and calling for families to be kept together, as well as endorsing the importance of border security.

Other religious conservatives see the sudden prominence of immigration in the news — when problems have existed for decades — as a Democratic scheme to slam Trump, and are focused on shoring up support for a president they consider their ally in protecting what they see as the Christian character of America. They are far more focused on what they see as a war for the Christian soul of America, So even if conservatives in his sphere disagree with the White House policy of separating families, they’re not going to partner with more liberal or progressive voices. This is a battle for ideological supremacy.

While conservative evangelicals say they want to find compromise on immigration, that are suspicious of critics of the administration and believe that keeping the Trump movement together needs to come first. They point to one of evangelicals’ key goals in voting in Trump, the appointment of a conservative Supreme Court justice — and note that that justice, Neil M. Gorsuch, recently participated in the high court’s decision in favor of a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The culture war, in other words, rages on.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/06/18/why-many-white-evangelical-christians-are-not-protesting-family-separations-on-the-u-s-border/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e7d13405638b

 

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board on Immigration

As Trump Veers from Traditional GOP, He Bends It Toward Him

As Trump Veers from Traditional GOP, He Bends It Toward Him

Republicans made an uneasy bargain with the president, but it is his party now more than ever

By Gerald F. Seib  The Wall Street Journal    June 18, 2018

There are three related but separate explanations. One is the nature of the implicit bargain Republicans have made with the president. The second is Mr. Trump’s tightening grip on the party’s base. And the third is simple fear of crossing him.

The upshot is that the GOP has become Mr. Trump’s party in recent weeks, far more than before.

From the outset of the Trump era, traditional Republicans, and many conservative activists, essentially have accepted a kind of deal with the president. He would provide them help on three issues of great importance to most mainstream Republicans: tax cuts, deregulation and appointment of conservative judges.

 

 

Things Women Couldn't Do In The 70's

The religious right isn't doing much for religion

  Peter Wehner, a prominent #NeverTrump conservative, has disowned the evangelical label. He says that the “support being given by many Republicans and white evangelicals to President Trump and now to Mr. Moore have caused me to rethink my identification with both groups. Not because my attachment to conservatism and Christianity has weakened, but rather the opposite. I consider Mr. Trump’s Republican Party to be a threat to conservatism, and I have concluded that the term evangelical - despite its rich history of proclaiming the ‘good news’ of Christ to a broken world - has been so distorted that it is now undermining the Christian witness.”
  The close association with Trump has alienated nonwhite and women who have identified in the past as evangelical, The New York Times reports.
 Now, we are NOT saying that Christians should refrain from participating in the political life of the country, nor are we saying that Trump and this particular generation of evangelical leaders are solely responsible for the decline in religiosity. However, what we are saying is that obsession with political power and cult-like followings of secular political leaders do not preserve faith or create a religious revival. To the contrary, this breeds anger, resentment and obsession with politics, not faith. The notion of Christians as victims in America, martyrs in a culture war, is both at odds with reality and an example of blame-shifting. To cultivate a more religious society and one more in tune with their own values, faith leaders might consider spending less time licking envelopes for Roy Moore and more time tending to their spiritual flocks.
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2017/12/15/jennifer-rubin-the-religious-right-isnt-doing-much-for-religion/