White washing Martin Luther King, Jr.

 Artist Jonathan Harris and his painting titled “Critical Race Theory:”

It is almost impossible to find anyone working for racial justice today who cites and uses MLK's life and work as sources and examples. Even on the federal holiday in his honor, the media offer only the briefest nod to his legacy.

Jonathan Harris is right: CRT is the field of white elites who practically have a seizure reading or watching Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. CRT is in fact another white supremacist movement by which white elites demand that blacks and other minorities (but especially blacks) continue to know their place and do what they are told.

At Vanderbilt Divinity School a required course for my M.Div. was Black Religious Leadership. Each of us was assigned to study the life and teachings of prominent black religious leaders. I was assigned Malcolm X. We each had to explain our work and then defend our work and the person's work. (There was no written work to turn in; it was literally an oral exam. My written assignment was on Nat Turner.)

By the time I had completed about half of my sources for Malcolm X, I was thinking, "What exactly makes this guy a radical?" Because frankly, he seemed pretty reasonable to me. And he nailed it, also:

Karl Marx on the fundamental error of the $15 minimum wage

Consider:

What Ms. Cash is saying is that she thinks that the amount of work she does must determine the wage she is paid. But not even Karl Marx thought that! In Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production, Marx gave this explanation:

Karl Marx

Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. ... 

... The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. 

[Following is the key point:] 

The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.

What Marx was saying is that as efficiencies of production increase per unit of time, the value of the labor of the "old" production correspondingly decreases. When powered looms in England doubled the rate of production, the labor value of the prior manual production decreased by half.  

What Ms. Cash and her allies need to understand is what needs to be be said over and over: the actual, real-world minimum wage is $0.00. 

When she gets a raise to $15 per hour she will not increase her production of product. When McDonalds figures out that her work can be automated - as has already happened with electronic ordering kiosks replacing human order takers - the wage value of her work will go down, not up. And she should not be surprised when her wage then drops to zero because her old job is being done by a smart machine for an amortized "wage" of less than $15 per hour.

Stop making Protestant arguments against Catholic bishops!

There is a tempest in a teapot among many of my ministerial colleagues about what the American bishops of the Roman Catholic Church have just done regarding President Biden and other Catholic elected officials. National Public Radio reports:

After a contentious debate, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has voted to move forward with a process that could call into question the eligibility of politicians like President Joe Biden to receive Communion.

The bishops voted 168-55 in favor of drafting "a formal statement on the meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the Church," officials announced on Friday afternoon, the final day of their three-day virtual meeting. Six bishops abstained.

Biden's election as only the nation's second Roman Catholic president has prompted renewed debate over denying Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, a position at odds with church teachings.

During their online meeting, bishops held a spirited discussion Thursday before voting on the proposal to direct the bishops' Committee on Doctrine to draft the statement. Such a document, once completed, could include guidelines for denying Communion to public officials.

I say that the reax by my colleagues is a tempest in a teapot not because the issue is not serious but that across the vast spectrum of Americans the bishops' decision has been met with a gigantic yawn, including by the vast majority of non-Catholic clergy. 

However, many are not happy about it at all. Here is a typical response:

In this post, I am arguing neither for nor against denial of Communion as a practice in the RCC. I am making no judgment whether denying it to President Biden, et. al., should be done or not. My two main points are: 

1. The RCC's theology of this matter has no real cognate in Protestant churches, so arguing against denial from a Protestant basis is like stepping into a boxing ring by yourself, shadow boxing against an opponent who is not there, then claiming victory in a fight you never actually fought. 
    
2. It is pretty obvious that tweets like this are not really directed at the RCC bishops, for this is not an attempt to persuade the bishops to reverse. This and other, similar tweets and posts are directed toward the posters own in-group to signal that they are defending not a superior theology of Communion, but political figures whose abortion advocacy must be protected. These are not religious or theological tweets or posts, they are political declarations hiding behind religious language. 

That said, I do not personally take issue with RevDaniel's implied theology of Communion here. The problem is that he is using a very Protestant argument against Catholic bishops, who if they ever read this will know immediately that RevDaniel knows almost nothing about the Catholic theology of the Eucharist (Communion). 

First, RCCs very emphatically believe that no one is worthy of receiving the Eucharist; their catechism says so very precisely. Communicants, those who receive the sacrament, are not worthy of the sacrament but are made eligible by obeying the commandments of Scripture regarding the sacrament. The formal Catholic teaching, or catechism, of the Eucharist includes:

1384 The Lord addresses an invitation to us, urging us to receive him in the sacrament of the Eucharist: "Truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."

1385 To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself."218 Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion.

1386 Before so great a sacrament, the faithful can only echo humbly and with ardent faith the words of the Centurion: "Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea" ("Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul will be healed.").

The key sentence for this post is, "Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion." What the bishops are insisting is that abortion on demand is a grave sin, and its political advocates and enablers would be partaking of the Eucharist in an unworthy manner unless they complete the steps of Reconciliation. Those steps are Confession, receiving Absolution from a priest, and doing the Penance assigned. 

We Protestants need to understand that the sacraments of the RCC are a system and are closely interrelated. This is not much true in my denomination, the United Methodist Church. Our two sacraments of baptism and Communion are related, but not much interrelated. 

Besides, even we UMC ministers formally (though not in practice) "fence" the Communion table in the first paragraph of the litany by saying, 

Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another.

And then we require confession! (Though the confession is a scripted prayer said by the whole congregation, not privately to a pastor.) But read that sentence carefully: We formally (again, not in practice) invite to Communion only those who love God, who repent of sin (which is what the RCC bishops are demanding in the present controversy, only they really mean it) and who want to live peacefully with one another. 

Barring persons from the Communion table has never been part of the UMC's theology, doctrine, or practice, so our verbal fence around the table is mostly symbolic and also a call for each person to examine themselves. However, before we get our Protestant backs up, we should consider that formally, we are not much different from the RCC in qualifying who may receive the sacrament. It's just that the RCC is far more likely to mean it. 

These are not religious or theological tweets or posts, they are political declarations hiding behind religious language. 

Update: An email from a practicing Catholic, Joseph S., points out that the denial of Communion (to one who has sinned and is unrepentant) is intended to protect that person from compounding his or her sin by receiving the sacrament in an unrepentant state. So, yes, denial of Communion is aimed at correction but also at protection. In this way denial of Communion is an act of pastoral care and Christian love. 

Update: Have done some more reading on this general topic, not about the Biden-Communion controversy. There have been for a long time, decades if not centuries, debates within Catholicism about the Eucharist being served to persons still in grave sin, such as divorced Catholics whose marriage was never annulled by the Church and who have since remarried. Catholic doctrine (and some Protestant denominations) consider that to be adultery, which is a state of grave sin. These have been serious debates of varying intensity over the years/decades, and were not tied to politics. A strict interpretation has held that Catholics still in grave sin (politically tinged or not!) should not receive the Eucharist. Some also say that such persons should not be allowed to serve in public ministry such as being a lector, who are lay persons reading Scripture of litanies during worship. So, even within the RCC, eligibility to receive the Eucharist has long been a very complicated issue on matters other than abortion for at least several decades. However, this present controversy could have far-reaching outcomes on Communion and matters other than abortion. As lawyers say, the bishops' lopsided vote on the abortion-Biden matter could set a precedent for other issues unrelated to abortion but still related to the sacrament. We should all pray for the Holy Spirit to be heard and heeded!

Also, the whole concept of denying Communion to a church member is widely misunderstood among non-Catholics to be a form of priestly punishment upon a sinful church member. That is not so. In fact, the emphasis of denial is that the person concerned should be encouraged and assisted to repent and reconcile by their own volition to enable them to approach the altar to receive the body and blood of Christ. Grudging repentance is not repentance at all. It is submission to power, not an acceptance of divine love and its return to God by the communicant. But the Church's goal is to help bring its members to, or back to, a state of loving God and neighbor with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to receive Eucharist in that state, not in mere submission to priestly authority.

The responsibility is on the communicant, God and the Church being his/her helper. I am far from certain that the publicity of the recent vote regarding the president and other Catholic politicians is very helpful, and I have to imagine that among Catholic clerics there is no little discussion of that. 

We become what we focus on

The severest punishment God ever lays upon us is to let us have what we want.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
Proverbs 29.18, King James Version

Jason Gould is a Vanderbilt University student who, though liberal and progressive, fell afoul of the "woke" Gestapo (yes I use that word intentionally) that operates on almost every campus today. He was savaged by the campus newspaper and other attacks while the university administration found other things to occupy its attention, like watching the grass grow. One university staffer even took part. This despite the fact that he was running for student government office, for which Vanderbilt's rules specifically forbid personal attacks upon any candidate. Oh, he was (a) white and (b) Jewish, so he was automatically guilty of everything. He relates, 

The other candidates’ supporters tore down our posters and ripped my head off pictures. Fake social media posts circulated that my fraternity had parties with Confederate flags and chanted that the South would rise again. One message said, “White men are the absolute worst!” and “He should get dragged for it!” Then came the anti-Semitism: “Hitler got something right!”

 

This was a victimhood arms race. I was cast as a white, male evil-doer who must be shamed and punished for all the white man’s sins. I was unfit to hold office. My economic inclusion work didn’t mean a thing. I was paraded out for a social media stoning, and the social justice mob would stop at nothing.

 

Everything I had worked for was destroyed, and so was my reputation. I felt unsafe to walk on campus. The other candidates were elected unopposed. They made "misogynoir" their campaign slogan. I had no choice but to drop out of the election race for my physical safety and mental health and leave Nashville for someplace safe.

 

Vanderbilt’s campaign rules prohibit negative campaigning and ban any remark or attack about a candidate’s personal character. These rules require collegiality and civility, but Vanderbilt stood by while this angry mob weaponized social justice, targeted me, threatened me, and ran me out of town.

 

I’ve begun to believe that for some of my attackers, social justice is a cover for people who get pleasure from inflicting harm on others — straight-up bullying made a hundred times worse on social media. When did woke culture become so toxic? Some are cowards who hide behind an avatar. I am through being trampled on, but I shouldn’t have to fight back. When the social justice mob came for me, my university did nothing.

[Italics added] 

"When did woke culture become so toxic?" Well, it began toxic and went downhill from there. Gould is right, though - show me a "woke" warrior and I will show you someone who will someday be quite gleeful about flogging class enemies into the gulag. Consider this tweet:

We are a very short way from the Stalinist modus operandi: 

1. Show me the man or woman, and I will tell you their crimes. 
2. You may not be guilty of anything at all, but you are a member of a class - that is, a racial or religious group - that is guilty of everything. 

So what does all that have to do with Proverbs 29.18? Here it is again: "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he" -- King James Version. 

The KJV text, though well known, poorly communicates what the verse is trying to say. The KJV was done in the very early 1600s and for today, it just is not a good translation.

"Vision" refers to spiritual sight, more properly, spiritual insight. The verse, properly understood in its context and intention, is actually one of the most important warnings and assurances in the entire Bible.

Try this: When the people lose sight of God’s will, they go astray, but they prosper when they keep God’s law.

"The people" in the verse does not refer just to a worshiping congregation, but in the context of its time, a national people, the people of ancient Israel. The verse is talking about national consequences of ignoring God and the benefits of cleaving to God's commandments.

Bible Gateway has a long list of different translations and renderings. The ERV's translation is probably the best: "If a nation is not guided by God, the people will lose self-control, but the nation that obeys God’s law will be happy."

One Hebrew word study I read said that the real thrust of the verse is that when the nation loses sight of godliness, it descends into anarchy. We become what we focus on. When we lose sight of God and God's will for our lives, we become ungodly. That never ends well, either for individuals, churches or nations.

Here is a key point: God commandments were revealed to humanity. We did not make them up. We are so far removed from their revelation that we think that morality, as we understand it, is the natural way that people live together. In fact, the societies around the ancient Jews and early Christians were brutal.

 

The Romans considered mercy, charity and forgiveness to be vices, not virtues. Roman parents beat their children for the showing weakness of mercy. Human morality absent divine commandment is base and as Proverbs says, descends finally into anarchy. We will either rule our passions or be ruled by them. As St Paul put it, "God cannot be disregarded." Note well: he did not write God "should not be" or "must not be," but cannot be disregarded. It is not possible. He continued, "You will harvest what you plant."

Morally, our capacities are weighted toward the negative side of the scale. People intend greater good than they achieve. Treaties, alliances, aid organizations, political parties, civic groups, even churches – all begun for good reasons to accomplish good things, and all fall short of what their founders intended.

Hence the necessity of God giving the moral law. My friend and former co-author Rabbi Daniel Jackson wrote, "There are obvious logical elements of the Law of Sinai that might be deduced logically (or rationally). Yet, much of the Scriptures is based on directives and rules that we would not have known if the Scriptures did not tell us so."

God's Law frees us from the baser demons of our being so that we may discover the better angels of our nature. Every choice to depart from God's Law chips away at our integrity as persons belonging to Jesus. Integrity matters!

During his time as a rancher, Theodore Roosevelt and one of his cowpunchers lassoed a maverick steer, lit a fire, and put a branding iron in it to heat. The part of the range they were on was actually owned by Gregor Lang, one of Roosevelt's neighbors. According to the cattleman's rule, the steer therefore belonged to Lang. Roosevelt saw his employee, the cowboy, raise the glowing branding iron toward the steer, but it was Roosevelt's brand. "Wait, it should be Lang's brand," he said.

"That's all right, boss," said the cowboy. "Lang will never know."

"Drop that iron," Roosevelt demanded, "go back to the ranch, get your things and get out." Roosevelt later explained, "A man who will steal for me will steal from me."

Integrity, says Webster's, is "adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty." And that takes the willingness and ability to cleave to a standard, whether you call it the law or a code or something else. Choices matter, and the choices we make are not isolated from one another.

The issue is more acute for young people than for me or those older than me. It sounds trite to say but it's nonetheless true that we grew up in a different time than you. The advice to "do your own thing" was unknown to us and we would never have even thought of agreeing that something may be right for you and wrong for me, or vice-versa, depending on our own inclinations, points of view and what we simply want to believe.

The problem is that to be a man or woman in 2021 is to believe in nothing. Or more accurately, to believe in nothing in particular. The spirit of this age gleefully embraces that nothing underlies fundamental reality, making, in the words of David Hart, "a fertile void in which all things are [claimed] possible, from which arises no impediment" to our desires and therefore we may decide for ourselves what is right or wrong and what we choose.

Which is to say that modern America as a whole no longer believes that there are objective criteria by which to judge our choices because being able to choose in the first place is the highest good there is. Therefore, all judgment, whether divine or human, infringes on choosing – and being able to choose according to one's own standards exercises "an almost mystical supremacy over all other concerns."

This is a purely modern idea. In centuries past, even before Jesus was born, true human freedom was understood as liberation "from whatever constrains us from living a life of rational virtue" and that led to our intellectual and spiritual flourishing. Freedom was the ability to overcome "our willful surrender to momentary impulses, [including] our own foolish or wicked choices."

"In this view of things [said Hart], we are free when we achieve that end toward which our inmost nature is oriented ... and whatever separates us from that end -- even if it comes from our own wills -- is a form of bondage. We are free not merely because we can choose, but only when we have chosen well."

For to choose poorly is to enslave ourselves to the impermanent, the irrational and eventually the destructive. Simply choosing, unconnected from divine guidance and godly standards, is to choose ultimately to reject freedom and to be enslaved to what Paul called the body of death and finally to choose to perish rather than attain everlasting life.

God's law enables human beings to be freed from the shackles of spiritual and mental bondage that prevent us from being saved in this life and the next. Paul's advice of Romans 12 holds true: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

Even Jesus understood that a life of choosing rightly is not easy. "Enter through the narrow gate," he said, "for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

What to do and how? Paul tells us that in Philippians 4:8: “… Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

It's not easy to live rightly to remain free. It is bondage to death and sin that is easy. But we can break those chains if we keep focused on God. Then we will be free indeed.

More divided now than ever

I used to believe that the USA is as divided now as it was in 1860, and as the 1860 electoral map shows, the country was very divided then. But I think we are far more divided now than then. 

Born and raised in the South, I was taught the mythologies of the South's secession and of the Civil War, especially those of the "Lost Cause" of the South and what I came to call "Noble Lincolnism" in the North. But after I decided to do my own research of the era, I discovered that almost all I thought I knew was simply Bravo-Sierra. 

I learned that not only was slavery the focal point of the country's disunity, it was in fact the only meaningful point of the nation's disunity. That is, in 1860 the South and North were not really in dissension over anything substantive but slavery, not even on secession. (After all, there was an active secession movement among state-level politicians, including the governor, in Wisconsin in 1860!)

On almost every other principle of America's founding and the structure and purpose of government, there was practically no disagreement between North and South. By 1860, though, all the areas of basic commonality were fully overshadowed by the slavery issue with all its moral and political implications, but both the USA and the temporary CSA were established as representative republics with governments of limited powers and authority. 

But today, the American Left and Right share almost no commonality of political world view. I am an ordained United Methodist minister, now retired, and I suggest that what is happening to the country is well illustrated by what has happened to the United Methodist Church, the third-largest religious denomination in the country.

The UMC began grappling with homosexuality in the 1976 General Conference of the church. In our polity, the GC, as it is called, is the only body that can set rules and regulations for the whole denomination. The GC meets every four years for two weeks and does not exist in between. 

Beginning in 1976, advocates for full inclusion of homosexuals in all offices of the UMC began their fight. Then and in each successive GC until 2016, they fought for the GC to approve ordination of homosexuals and to include officiating of same-sex marriages or unions as part of all pastors' ministry, to include such services in UM churches' sanctuaries. 

They never succeeded. Finally, 2016's GC set a special GC for 2019 that would have the sole task of resolving the issue once and for all. All the delegates agreed that the 2019 GC would determine the final answer and that neither the advocacy nor traditionalist side would raise it again. That GC met in February 2019 and voted to retain the status quo and in some details to strengthen it.  

Of course, it did not "resolve" the issue at all. The advocacy side doubled down and reorganized while the traditionalists stood around and patted themselves on the back for winning. As the result, the liberal-progressives dominated elections for delegates to the 2020 General Conference. In the meantime, an ad hoc commission was established to find a way forward. It announced that secessionism was the only answer for 2020 (although of course it was not called that) and with the Council of Bishops' approval, the first order of business for the 2020 GC was to be a vote on the dissolution of the United Methodist Church into at least two denominations. 

The 2020 GC did not take place because of Covid. It was rescheduled for this year, then rescheduled to begin in late August 2022 (update: now rescheduled again to 2024). Even so, there are no voices anywhere calling for reconsideration of dissolution. That die has been cast even though the vote remains 18 months away. 

It took from 1976 to 2019, but both sides finally realized that they each understood all matters of the issue and that no new arguments, no new theology, no new insights, and no more debates were going to go anywhere. No one's mind was going to be changed. No compromise was possible because the fundamental tenets of each sides' beliefs and religious world view had been pared down to their core. There was nothing left for either side to give that did not equal full surrender. And no one was going to raise the white flag. 

So secession. Sorry, I mean, "Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation." 

Welcome to America today, the UMC analogically writ large. Like the UMC, the coming dissolution of the United States began long ago. I think it actually began in the Civil War, which IMO is when the "imperial presidency" really began, though the seeds did not sprout until Wilson's disastrous presidency. But then they did take deep root and have grown ever since. 

Just as Lincoln's election brought secessionism into the fore in 1860, the one-two punch of Trump-then-Biden are the levers that are fracturing the country now. There simply is no compromise even possible between Left and Right any more because there is no common ground or understanding on how the country should move into the future. By "no," I mean zero. 

No common ground at all on these matters; there is no longer any "centrist" position:

• Limited government
• Size of government
• Scope of government
• Authority of government
• Reach of control by government
• Global warming - climate change - environmental policy
• Who controls election processes in states
• Who gets to vote
• How voting is done
• How votes are secured
• How votes are validated
• What is the meaning of citizenship
• Immigration
• Use of technology
• Meaning of privacy
• Meaning of human rights
• What does the word, "unalienable" mean
• What does federalism mean
• Control of the judiciary
• International relations
• Energy policy
• Federal spending
• Abortion
• Identity politics
• The right to keep and bear arms
• What is "truth?"

I could go on, of course, but I think that gets the idea across. I do not see how a dissolution of the country is avoidable. Avoidance will require sincere and enduring compromises of politics from both Left and Right, compromises that are not actually possible because they would require the surrender of fundamental tenets of political belief. That is not going to happen. 

So what will be the tripwire for us? I think it will be the 2022 mid-terms. No matter which party comes out ahead, the result will be soundly rejected by the other side. I pray that the aftermath will be peaceful, but I am not going to bet any money on it. But the United States as we have known it until now will begin dissolving then. 

God, I hope I am wrong. 

Related: The Priesthood of Politicism Offers Only Damnation

Update: As to be expected, Angelo M. Codevilla gets more to the heart of the matter than I, although his paper and my essay do not disagree. He is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of International Relations at Boston University. Read, "American Exodus."

Update: "America never more politically divided than under Biden." 

The latest Gallup research shows that under President Joe Biden, the partisan gap has reached its widest point, surpassing the gulf under former President Donald Trump and likely making Biden the all-time leader of partisan approval.

In Biden’s first months, the gap between approving Democrats and Republicans has been 86 percentage points. That means Biden is approved by 96% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans. He easily beat his former boss, former President Barack Obama, by seven points.

By comparison, Trump had 87% approval among Republicans and 10% among Democrats. While he bragged about his GOP approval, former President George W. Bush had a higher (89%) rating with Republicans in his early days. ... 

The survey is the latest to show the political division in America growing after the heated 2020 election. It follows another from Rasmussen that found bipartisan agreement that "cheating" helped Biden win the election.

 Update: The Univ. of Virginia: "New Initiative Explores Deep, Persistent Divides Between Biden and Trump Voters."

— Majorities of Trump and Biden voters express support for several elements of the bipartisan infrastructure and reconciliation bills being debated in Congress, but there are marked differences in their levels of support. (see Table 1 below)

— Majorities — often large majorities — of both Biden and Trump voters express some form of distrust for voters, elected officials, and media sources they associate with the other side. A strong majority of Trump voters see no real difference between Democrats and socialists, and a majority of Biden voters at least somewhat agree that there is no real difference between Republicans and fascists. (see Table 2 below)

— Significant numbers of both Trump and Biden voters show a willingness to consider violating democratic tendencies and norms if needed to serve their priorities. Roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters strongly agree it would be better if a “President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts,” and roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union. (see Table 3 below)

City Journal: The New Secession Movement | City Journal (city-journal.org) 

Washington Free Beacon: "The Sense of an Ending" Dec. 3, 2021.

Whatever happens, I find I cannot escape the sense that America has reached an impasse, that it has arrived at a moment of transition, and not just on the matter of abortion. Whether one looks at politics, economics, or the world, one sees a realignment of forces, a shuffling of players off and on the stage, to prepare for the next act in the drama. The Trump presidency seems less like the harbinger of a new beginning than a spectacular climax to a historical epoch. If so, we are living through a sort of denouement, a working through of conflicts left unresolved. "It feels like the order we have all taken for granted since the end of the Cold War is badly decaying, and has gotten so fragile that it might well shatter soon," wrote Damir Marusic of Wisdom of Crowds last month. Question is: What replaces it?

The U.S. is Heading Toward a Second Civil War. Here Is How We Avoid It --  The author offers no guarantees, but his prescriptions at minimum can do no harm. 

Self-hating elites are destroying our commonwealth, by Mackubin Owens, a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia

The Priesthood of Politicism Offers Only Damnation

A progressive friend of mine posted this on his FB page. I was tempted at first to respond that the singular exception of either party that comes to mind is Donald Trump, in whose administration the incomes of minorities and the lower half of income earners rose faster and by a larger proportion than of whites and the upper earners. And that under Trump's policies, minority unemployment reached the lowest ever recorded. 

But I didn't so reply. Instead, it struck me that Stewart was basically correct, and that naming Trump as the exception simply buttressed Stewart's point. In fact, I agree with Stewart, but not fully because Stewart does not go near far enough. He pulls up way short of the issue. 

Following are three links, all dating well before Trump was even on the political scene at all, which should give a clue that the corruption of the federal government by far predates Jan. 20, 2017. 

The first is on billmoyers.com. Bill Moyers, now 86, is a lifelong Democrat who served as LBJ's press secretary for two years. His liberal-progressive creds are solidly established. And on his site is this article: "Anatomy of the Deep State," by Mike Lofgren. 

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country. ... the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself.

And as Lofgren explains, not only is it in a class by itself, it is in a class for itself and no one else. 

Second is a paper of a research project by Cambridge University, which, being in England, can hardly be accused of having a dog in the fight. Cambridge says its empirical research of American politics shows that

... economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

Well, duh.

Third is, "America’s Ruling Class And the Perils of Revolution," by Angelo Codevilla. He is Prof. Emeritus of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He also served as a foreign service officer and professional staff member of the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

As I said, all of these articles were published before Donald Trump was part of the country's political scene. Despite all the fury about Trump's presidential tweets and often off-putting personality, the real reason Washington pushed back against him was because "he is not one of us." It is true that under Trump the rich got richer, which ordinarily would be greeted joyously by Democrats and Republicans alike (but especially Democrats, who are now the party of and for the upper class). But that was far overwhelmed by the fact that the non-rich got richer also, and by higher margins than the wealthy. So the Trump years essentially were a time of wealth transfer from the wealthy Political Class to the non-Political Class, and that was simply intolerable. 

As Ben Weingarten explained last year, Trump exposed the rot and corruption of our ruling class.

[O]ne of President Donald Trump’s myriad achievements stands above all others: he has exposed the unprecedented degree of rot and corruption that pervades the American system.

 

More specifically, Trump has exposed the ruling class: the bipartisan political establishment and its adjuncts in Big Tech, the corporate media, Big Business and Woke Capital, the academy, and across the commanding heights of American society.

 

Trump’s manners engender hatred in the ruling class. Even more significantly, his tenacity in confronting the ruling class’s members with their failures—and the fact he has threatened to rectify those failures—discredits and disempowers those responsible for them. Their response—a perpetual effort to destroy him—has shown the ruling class to be lawless and tyrannical.

But Trump's truly unforgiveable sin for which no redemption was possible was this: he accurately identified China as the chief threat to America's political security, and took steps to oppose it. The literally uncounted and uncountable tens to hundreds of million dollars the Chinese Communist Party has poured into Political Class pockets has become its addiction, and no one is ever going to be allowed to turn it off or even reduce it. 

Two months before 2016's election, it was clear to Prof. Codevilla that America's status quo "has resulted in citizens morphing into either this class’s stakeholders or its subjects." 

From the primary season’s outset, the Democratic Party’s candidates promised even more radical “transformations.” When, rarely, they have been asked what gives them the right to do such things they have acted as if the only answer were Nancy Pelosi’s reply to whether the Constitution allows the government to force us into Obamacare: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?”

 

On the Republican side, 17 hopefuls promised much, without dealing with the primordial fact that, in today’s America, those in power basically do what they please. Executive orders, phone calls, and the right judge mean a lot more than laws. They even trump state referenda. Over the past half-century, presidents have ruled not by enforcing laws but increasingly through agencies that write their own rules, interpret them, and punish unaccountably—the administrative state. 

In 2004, Glen Wishard wrote "A Thumbnail History of the Twentieth Century," boldface original:

The common theme is politics as a theology of salvation, with a heroic transformation of the human condition (nothing less) promised to those who will agitate for it. Political activity becomes the highest human vocation. The various socialisms are only the most prominent manifestation of this delusion, which our future historian calls "politicism". In all its forms, it defines human beings as exclusively political animals, based on characteristics which are largely or entirely beyond human control: ethnicity, nationality, gender, and social class. It claims universal relevance, and so divides the entire human race into heroes and enemies. To be on the correct side of this equation is considered full moral justification in and of itself, while no courtesy or concession can be afforded to those on the other. 

Therefore, politicism has no conscience whatsoever, no charity, and no mercy. 

I have said before that politics is the religion of America today, frankly much more on the Left than the Right, but not absent from the Right at all. 

Orwell was correct that politics very easily can can become nothing but gaining and keeping power. When that happened within one party - note past tense - in America, no one should be surprised that eventually the other party followed suit. 

That is where we are: politics in America is a literally religious-type quest for power - and for nothing else at all. We are way past (I say many years past) the times when effective, enduring compromise was possible. It is not. 

I do not see any way to reverse this. I am reminded of a disease I read of some time ago, that once it becomes symptomatic, it is too late to treat it. I think that politically that is where we are now. It seems clear to me that we no longer live in the "United" States of America, and I see no way to regain that. 

The question is whether the United States will survive in its present form, or will some kind of dissolution come to pass. Personally, I am not optimistic. 

 

See also:

Social Democracy is Collapsing Before our Eyes - American civic life is fracturing, and everyone knows it.

Victor Davis Hanson: The 10 radical new rules that are changing America

Social Justice, Marxism are "POISONOUS" Ideologies

Dr. Voddie Baucham is Dean of Theology of African Christian University in Zambia.

"‘Critical Theory’ Is A Disastrous, Unbiblical Worldview"

Secularists require an enemy

Mark Tapscott wonders why do, "... secular/humanist movements seem to create enemies, evil oppressors, that must be totally eradicated?"
https://hillfaith.blog/2020/06/23/heres-the-dilemma-humanism-cant-solve-but-christianity-can/

There are two specific groups of people who will always become the target of secularism's ire. First of course are Jews:

Holocaust Survivors Memorial Toppled At California Cemetery
https://thewashingtonsentinel.com/holocaust-survivors-memorial-toppled-at-california-cemetery/

A fountain dedicated to Holocaust survivors was toppled into pieces at Santa Rosa Memorial Park, where police are investigating the act of vandalism to determine if it is a hate crime.

As if there is a real question about that . . .

Exhibit two: this happened in Nashville, only a 30-40 minute drive from my home: "Nashville Holocaust Memorial desecrated with antisemitic messages."
https://www.antisemitism.co.il/2020/06/nashville-holocaust-memorial-desecrated.html

The other enemy is Christianity, which cannot be tolerated by atheistic humanism because Christian faith simply contradicts not only that atheistic humanism is correct, but that it is even possibly correct.

And so we have anarchist race warrior Shaun King:

So, did Jesus have a northern European appearance? Of course not. In fact, we do not know what Jesus looked like. Over the centuries since his day, Christians around the world have created art showing a Jesus who looked like them:

There are thousands of similar examples in countries around the world. Are these wrong, also? When Chinese Christians portray Jesus with Asian features, are they guilty of Chinese supremacism (and that definitely is a thing)? Are African Christians' portrayals of Jesus as an African guilty of cultural or racial appropriation? 

Or is it only the whites whose Jesus must be destroyed? To ask the question is to answer it. 

Not all mainly-humanists are atheists. But whenever Christians begin to consider other persons, either other Christians or not, mainly as enemies who must be defeated, well, that is when they have in their hearts denounced Christ and have embraced the powers and principalities of the world. 

Understand this: "white Jesus" is not the real target at all. It is only a beginning point. Anyone of any race who renounces the call to violence and carries out the commandments of Christ is the real target.