Why Not?: "Hostages"

This is the fifth in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

Just watch.

And the former president's response:

The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime. And I will sign their pardons on Day One.

Donald Trump (rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin - transcript) 

A reminder from NBC News:

Jan. 6 defendants were caught on tape brandishing or using firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive “Trump” billboard, “Trump” flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device during the brutal attack.

 And the pardon power the former president would yield is formidable (from NPR):

Trump would have wide latitude to issue pardons. Scholars have called that presidential power a "near-blank check," unrestrained by other branches of government.

"Legally, there's not much that Congress or the courts can do to stop the president from granting clemency," said Jeffrey Crouch, an assistant professor at American University and author of The Presidential Pardon Power.

Once again, the former president:

Yes, after playing a version of the national anthem sung by the J6 Prison Choir, Mr. Trump did use the words:

"You see the spirit from the hostages—and that’s what they are, is hostages... They’ve been treated terribly, and very unfairly... unbelievable patriots.” 

If you'd like to know more about those "heroes", The Bulwark published an excellent piece detailing some of their convictions entitled "Just Who Are Trump's January 6th Heroes?" And for a really deep dive, you can look at the searchable database of Capitol Breach Cases. (There are currently over 1,200 cases in the database.)

Returning the former president to the Oval Office invites a colossal injustice to the law enforcement officers involved (from CNN):

The Justice Department believes more police officers were injured in the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack than have been officially reported, a top prosecutor said Thursday.

In a news conference commemorating the third anniversary of the insurrection, Matthew Graves, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said it was “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.”

“One hundred and forty officers guarding the Capitol that day reported physical injury, but we know from talking to the hundreds of officers guarding the Capitol that day that this 140 number undercounts the number of officers who were physically injured, let alone those who have suffered trauma as a result of the day’s events,” Graves said.

It is not "law & order" to pardon those who violently breached the U.S. Capitol in service of a narcissistic man who couldn't publicly admit he lost an election.

You are doomed! You call evil good and call good evil. You turn darkness into light and light into darkness. You make what is bitter sweet, and what is sweet you make bitter. (Isaiah 5:20 GNT)

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The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.

The third post in this series focuses on Mr. Trump's narcissism and potential cognitive decline.

The fourth post in this series focuses on the unbelievable record of lying by Mr. Trump.

Classic: Card Games & Paint Splatters

By now, pretty much everyone who reads this blog is aware that I'm somewhat obsessed with my hobby, collecting & playing board games. (Those of you who've seen the game room are sniggering at my use of the word "somewhat" in the previous sentence - stop it.) One part of my enjoyment of the hobby is online conversations about board games with other folks who share my enthusiasm.

One of those conversations seventeen years ago took a very interesting turn. We had been talking about a new "take that" card game (one of the best known "take that" games is Mille Bornes) which has weak gameplay & even weaker card art. That got some folks wondering about the ugliest card art they'd ever seen... which then led someone to bring the cliché that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". And then I felt compelled to tell my story:

I'm reminded of our visit to the Art Institute in Chicago... after hours of perusing art by Seurat, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Van Gogh and others, we found ourselves in the lower reaches of the Institute, in the "Contemporary" section. 

After looking rather askew at a Jackson Pollock (I understand intellectually that I'm looking at something "fraught w/meaning", but it still looks like paint spatter to me), we turned to see a small African-American woman in a guard's uniform standing beside. 

"I painted that," she said... and smiled. 

My wife & I laughed and turned to look at an abstract nude of an obviously overweight woman to our left. 

"That's my mother-in-law," she said. 

I don't think I ever appreciated art quite as much as I did that afternoon.

Matthew Frederick responded:

One afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after having spent a week straight touring the city with my daughter, I plopped down exhausted on a bench to wait for her to finish with something and come find me.
I'd felt exactly as you do about Pollock, that it was just paint splatters, and that though in theory I should see something or be moved, there just wasn't anything there for me. Turns out I was sitting across from a huge Pollock, but I pretty much ignored it. Suddenly, though, WHAM, I could see it. Motion, and flow, and depth. The painting was simply stunning. My brain had finally worked it out. 

To this day I can immediately find depth in Pollock paintings, but my brain's never quite worked out improvised jazz. Similar to the Pollock, I know it's a matter of my brain "getting it," and perhaps someday it will. I'll never forget my sudden awakening to the painting style, though, and the realization that there are some things that I just don't get yet, but that doesn't mean there's nothing there.
(Not saying that you're saying there's not... just a memory and an observation.)

To which I responded:

Actually, Matthew, you've just given me one of the best sermon/message illustrations ever. That's the way I feel when I try to explain the grace of Jesus Christ to someone - like I'm talking & talking and they're looking at me like I'm trying to describe a Jackson Pollock painting. 

And then there's that moment when they "get it"... sweet.

With some more time to think about it, I've come to a trio of interesting conclusions about art & faith:

1. I think we feel like it's our "Christian duty" to be able to explain everything there is to know about an infinite God... it's this impulse that leads televangelists to claim to know why God allowed 9/11 or a Christian friend to jump quickly to "they're better off in heaven" to a grieving friend. Since we can see, as Matthew put it, the "motion & flow & depth" of a life that orbits around Jesus, we want desperately for other people to see it, too.
2. According to the Bible, our primary obligation is to live a life of "motion, flow & depth" - to do what Jesus did. (Romans 8:29) We should be "prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" (1 Peter 3:15), but that verse doesn't imply that we should explain the ways of God. Our responsibility is to tell our own story... (BTW, explaining the ways of God is gonna be pretty darn difficult when the Bible claims that "his ways are higher than our ways" (Isaiah 55:9).)
3. Finally, notice how Matthew ended up in front of the Jackson Pollock painting. He wasn't planning to be there - but someone (the curator) had placed a bench where he could take his time to soak it in. Another part of our job as followers of Christ is to metaphorically put up paintings & place benches so that people can have the opportunity to examine Jesus... the chance to have one of those moments where the "motion, flow & depth" becomes clear... a moment where they can clearly experience the grace of God. Our churches need to be that kind of place - where people weary from life can come in, sit down & see what it looks like when people in love with Jesus give themselves to Him 100%

This article was adapted from an article originally published in the 7/26/07 edition of the Grapevine, the newsletter of NewLife Community Church.

Why Not?: Lies

This is the fourth in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

The Wikipedia article entitled "False or misleading statements by Donald Trump" starts with this editing note:

This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. 

That is an understatement.

What follows is a series of scattered thoughts on truth, lies, and what that has to do with the Republican candidate for president.

Lies

Both my sons knew growing up that lying was an especially egregious misstep in our house. We emphasized over and over that doing something wrong but admitting it was vastly preferable to lying about it. Our discipline was different if you were caught in a lie.

When I was dealing with a senior pastor's affair (as a staff member), one of the most thoughtful pieces of advice came from another church staff member halfway across the country who'd dealt with a similar situation. He noted that while the adultery was obviously a sin and disqualifying, the process of hiding the affair from so many people had given the pastor a master class in learning how to lie.... and that level of comfort with falsehood called more than just his sexual fidelity to his marriage into question.

At this point, I'll note that Mr. Trump's well-publicized marriages, affairs, divorces, and accusations of sexual assault might be an initial indication of "a level of comfort with falsehood."

Politicians Lie

In anticipation of some folks instant response to broaching this subject, I'm happy to admit that politicians do lie. Sometimes it's intentional - a way to escape a difficult question and/or something stupid they said or did previously; other times, it's an accident born of exhaustion or mixing up two sets of information. But they do it.

That said, they don't do with the casual ease and/or prodigious volume of the former president. Who, it should be noted, returns to his previous lies as a dog returns to his own vomit. (Gross analogy, I know - but I borrowed straight from Scripture.)

As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.

Proverbs 26:11 NIV

Helene

In the last week or so, Mr. Trump has - along with many right-wing conspiracy-minded people - amplified blatantly false information about the rescue and recovery efforts taking place in the aftermath of the hurricane that decimated western North Carolina and portions of eastern Tennessee. The fetid stew of outright lies about government inaction, "the great replacement theory", voting by illegal immigrants, and accusations of denying assistance to Republican areas is not only politically unwise - it's a sin.

2020

Three things for you to consider amidst the relentless barrage of falsehoods:

• Fox News paid a $787.5 million dollar settlement to avoid trial with a Dominion Voting Systems - the actual testimony taken during discovery in that trial is a clear indication of the lack of evidence of voter fraud.
• Two pieces of reading material for you:
• Select January 6th Committee Final Report and Supporting Materials Collection
• Government's Motion for Immunity Determination in U.S. v Donald J. Trump

Yes, I've read the final report and immunity determination motion in full. I'm not just pointing you there. When it comes to assessing the truth of documents like these, you need to consider a couple of ideas that I've written about before: Occam's Razor and the difficulty of actually stealing a national election.

Truth

You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.

Leviticus 19:11 NASB

God can’t stomach liars; he loves the company of those who keep their word.

Proverbs 12:22 MSG

For there is nothing hidden now which will not become perfectly plain and there are no secrets now which will not become as clear as daylight.

Luke 8:17 PHILLIPS

Therefore, rejecting all falsehood [whether lying, defrauding, telling half-truths, spreading rumors, any such as these], speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are all parts of one another [and we are all parts of the body of Christ].

Ephesians 4:25 AMP

And, to close, an appropriate musical interlude...

The trouble with lies

When you tell them you still got to sell them

With the look in your eyes

Oh, that's the trouble with lies

As far as I'm concerned

With the lessons I've learned

I'm determined to try and survive

Without lies

The trouble with lies

Is that you start to forget where the real man hides

Adam Again ("Trouble With Lies" from their album Ten Songs)

Important reminder: I am not attempting to defend the Biden administration or the Harris candidacy. I am simply pointing out that the obvious issues of falsehood and deceit by Donald Trump do not deserve and will not receive my support.

The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.

The third post in this series focuses on Mr. Trump's narcissism and potential cognitive decline.

Why Not?: Bragging & Weaving

This is the third in a series of posts on the reasons I will not be voting to return the former president to the White House. My focus here is not to support his opponent but instead to explain why I believe that Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified for the role.

One of the ways you can tell when you've stumbled onto someone's trigger issues is their repeated attempts to explain and/or excuse that behavior. In my case, it's self-deprecating jokes about my board game collection. (While I love playing board games, I still feel a little bit like a teenager who still wants to play with blocks & Lincoln Logs sometimes - worrying about what other folks think about my "juvenile" hobby.)

Bragging

For the former president, the most obvious trigger is crowd size. From the patently ridiculous "my inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's crowd size" in January of 2017 to his debate behavior in September 2024, questioning the size of his audience has been a sure-fire way to produce a response. It's even continued with recent lies about being forced to turn 50k people away in Wisconsin:

In Waunakee and again in Milwaukee, Trump claimed 50,000 to 60,000 people were turned away from his Saturday rally in Prairie du Chien. About a thousand people were standing in line to get into the rally, but the auditorium sat somewhere near 300 people. Crawford County, where Prairie du Chien is located, has a population of about 16,000.

The rally was initially planned to be held outdoors but switched to indoors over Secret Service staffing concerns. The agency was responsible for securing the United Nations General Assembly summit in New York on the same day.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/1/24

Weaving

Another trigger point for Mr. Trump is descriptions of his campaign rally speeches as rambling, disjointed, and/or a "word salad buffet" (credit to his former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci). In late August, the former president responded with a creative explanation:

"...you know I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I'll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And it's like -- and friends of mine that are like English professors, they say, "It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen." But the fake news, you know what they say? "He rambled." That's not rambling when you have -- what you do is you get off a subject to mention another little tidbit, then you get back onto the subject, and you go through this, and you do it for two hours, and you don't even mispronounce one word."
Donald Trump (rally in Johnstown, PA 8/30/24)

Setting aside the obvious nonsensical lie about his friends who are English professors (the Trump campaign refused to name any of these professors when asked by the New York Times), I'll note that as I am an actual English major (B.A. in English, Baylor University 1986 - with a particular focus on the works of John Steinbeck), to me "the weave" sounds dangerously like an excuse for meandering circumlocutory wanderings through the corners of the speaker's mind.

I'm reminded of this classic bit from season 7 (admittedly, the low point in the series) of Gilmore Girls:

The former president sounds somewhat like Lorelai Gilmore when attempting to answer a question about inflation:

It is probably the question I get most. They say you’re going to vote with your stomach. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but it’s a little bit true. And groceries, food has gone up at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. We’ve never seen anything like it, 50, 60, 70%. You take a look at bacon and some of these products and some people don’t eat bacon anymore, and we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down… This was caused by their horrible energy wind. They want wind all over the place, but when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem. This was caused by energy. This was really caused by energy and also their unbelievable spending. They’re spending us out of wealth. Actually, they’re taking our wealth away, but it was caused by energy. And what they’ve done is they started cutting way back. We were in third place. When I left, we were by far in first place beating Russia, beating Saudi, Arabia, and we were going to dominate to a level that we’ve never seen before. And then we had a bad election. I’ll be very nice. I’m supposed to be nice when I talk about the election because everybody’s afraid to talk about, “Oh, please sir don’t talk about the election, please.” If you can’t talk about a bad election, you really don’t have a democracy if you think about it, right? But what they did, Tulsi, is they took back the oil production, the oil started going crazy. That started the inflation. 

Donald Trump (town hall in La Crosse, WI 9/3/24)

To recap, Mr. Trump's answer was:

• groceries have gone up 50-70%
• people aren't eating bacon any more
• we are going to get energy prices lower (not sure how he made that jump in a single sentence)
• the energy issue is caused by using wind to generate energy
• side comment about how wind isn't a legit energy source
• current administration is causing this by spending too much money
• no, wait a minute, it's energy - because current administration cut back
• digression to talk about how he's not supposed to talk about the 2020 election (which was, in his words, "a bad election")
• returned to complain about reduced oil production
• blamed the start of inflation on reduced oil production

He goes on to talk  about ANWR and oil production and finally slides to a finish with promising the questioner that if he's elected, "We’re going to become the energy capital of the world. We’re going to pay down our debt, and we’re going to reduce your taxes still further, and your groceries are going to come tumbling down, and your interest rates are going to be tumbling down. And then you’re going to go out. You’re going to buy a beautiful house, okay? You’re going to buy a beautiful house that’s called the American Dream. The American Dream."

So, inflation leads to bacon to energy production to wind farms to oil to the 2020 election to oil to inflation to ANWR to economic nirvana to buying the American dream. 

Monkey monkey underpants.

A question about the cost of child care provoked a similar response:

But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that because - look, child care is child care - couldn't, you know, it's something - you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to, but they'll get used to it very quickly. And it's not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care.

Donald Trump (talk with Economic Club of New York 9/5/24)

More monkeys, more underpants. And more "tariffs are the magic bullet that solves everything." Sheesh.

The New York Times did an extensive article on how his speeches are becoming increasingly more angry and more rambling, using one campaign rally stop as an example:

He does not stick to a single train of thought for long. During one 10-minute stretch in Mosinee, Wis., last month, for instance, he ping-ponged from topic to topic: Ms. Harris’s record; the virtues of the merit system; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement; supposed corruption at the F.D.A., the C.D.C. and the W.H.O.; the Covid-19 pandemic; immigration; back to the W.H.O.; China; Mr. Biden’s age; Ms. Harris again; Mr. Biden again; chronic health problems and childhood diseases; back to Mr. Kennedy; the “Biden crime family”; the president’s State of the Union address; Franklin D. Roosevelt; the 25th Amendment; the “parasitic political class”; Election Day; back to immigration; Senator Tammy Baldwin; back to immigration; energy production; back to immigration; and Ms. Baldwin again.

description by New York Times (transcript of full rally)

Linguist John McWhorter noted in an interview with NPR that the former president may have a method to this verbal madness - but not an emotionally healthy one.

The idea that Trump has that what he's doing is this kind of jaunty character trait called the weave is interesting. And he's not completely out of his mind on that, in that most of us are not as organized in how we manage topics in the heat of a casual conversation. I mean, casual speech is much less tidy than we often think. But when I listen to Trump, what I hear is a kind of verbal narcissism. And what I mean by that is that very often, the connection between point A and point B is something that's very difficult to understand. You have to almost parse it as if it was something in the Talmud, whereas it makes sense to him.

In other words, he can't be bothered to make the connection for us. He's not speaking to us, trying to communicate with us in any real way beyond, you know, the very primal aspect of it. He could be this way at 25. There are people who talk that way at 20. I don't think it's dementia. I think that it's a more elemental problem with his nature, which perhaps has gotten worse as he's gotten older, but I think it's less a matter of his aging than the fact that he knows he can get away with it.

John McWhorter (interview with NPR 9/13/24)

Other commentators have noted that his performance at these rallies is showing signs of cognitive decline:

“The reason he’s now offering these convoluted explanations of his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he’s hyper-aware that people have noted that he’s making even less sense than he used to,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is a reflection of someone who’s very troubled and very desperate.”...

"It’s certainly doing more harm than good right now because he no longer has the foil of Joe Biden to bounce off of. Biden had become so visibly diminished and the media was more ready to take Biden to task on it on a regular basis. That allowed Trump to skate by. Now that he has a different, younger, more acute and vibrant political opponent, I think it does for him because he now often looks ridiculous or unhinged, unfocused or very, very old,” he said.
Timothy O'Brien (quoted in The Guardian)

...just a few days after attacking Harris as “a very dumb person,” Trump held an event in Wisconsin in which he struggled to pronounce United Arab Emirates, flubbed the basics of hurricane season, mixed up Iran with North Korea, falsely claimed government agencies can’t determine the U.S. population, and referred to an African country before concluding, “I don’t know what that is.”

A Washington Post report told readers soon after, “Trump, 78, often speaks in a digressive, extemporaneous style that thrills his fans at large-scale rallies. But Tuesday’s event, in front of almost entirely reporters, was especially scattered and hard to follow.”

commentary from MSNBC (video of full rally speech)

Final Thoughts

Both of these trigger points are indicators of greater issues - an inability to focus, a narcissistic outlook on the world, and the possibility of mental & emotional decline.

I was personally willing to oppose hiring an individual with narcissistic tendencies to serve as a part-time worship pastor , even as it led to twenty-four hours of professional mediation and my eventual resignation from that church. I cannot possibly support someone with those same tendencies to occupy the the position of the President of the country I love.

Finally, if you doubt what I'm saying (or what the "lamestream media" is saying), I'd strongly suggest you spend some time watching and/or reading the transcripts from Mr. Trump's rallies over the past couple of months. It's easy to do thanks to the website, Rev.

Important reminder: I am not attempting to defend the Biden administration or the Harris candidacy. I am simply pointing out that the obvious issues of narcissism and scattered thinking/speaking by Donald Trump do not deserve and will not receive my support.

The first post in this series focuses on tariff policy - at this point, Mr. Trump's belief that tariffs are a "magic wand" that can cure all sorts of problems - child care, grocery prices, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., etc. They're not.

The second post in this series focuses on immigration policy - the dehumanizing language, the abject lies, and the unbelievably foolish promises of mass deportation.