Dear Republicans: Now would be a good time for you who are Trump’s staffers to exit and get as far away from his unfolding legal disaster as you can. And Republicans in Congress- you have only moments left to stand up and rebuke Trump or find yourselves in history’s trash can.
Trump seeks to undermine Western democracies, break up the E.U. and NATO, and put his family’s corrupt business relationships, rather than the rule of law, at the center of international commerce. The Republican Party is going along.
Even in the depths of the Depression most Americans were never beguiled by the appeal of authoritarianism. Not so today, when Republicans – enabled by white evangelical voters – are empowering Trump’s undermining of American democracy in favor of this thug’s corrupting personality cult.
The Republican Party (now firmly in the grip of white nationalist evangelicals) is preparing to double down and support Putin’s failed Russian autocracy, which these idiot evangelicals led by fools like Franklin Graham believe, mistakenly, is “Christian.”
White evangelicals and their Trump cult are okay with Russian oligarchs bearing bribes and Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. Face it: Trump’s followers are America-haters and traitors.
There will be no quick fix now that Trump has destroyed the Christian witness in America and replaced it with an authoritarian personality cult of lies. It took more than a generation for left wing Americans to reject the temptations of communist authoritarianism. It will take more than a generation before we have defeated Trump’s style of kleptocratic authoritarianism too — if we still can.
The Democratic leadership remains a sad mystery. They hesitate at crucial moments, betray the movements that support them, and even try to suppress the leaders and ideas that generate any kind of populist electricity.
Will a new generation of Democratic candidates step up to re-connect with working Americans? Who will lead?
How do we reclaim our faith and our democracy? How do we make our way back into love, beauty and creation? Discover my new book Letter to Lucy: A Manifesto of Creative Redemption—In the Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies, a multi-touch book about art, love and parenting, from the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the prophetic music of Green Day and everything in between. Read the first chapter for free on your kindle fire or iOS device. Available now on iBooks and Amazon.
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12 Comments. Leave new
Dear Frank Schaeffer:
Really?
I don’t see that Donald Trump has anything to do with Christian or witness. It also occurs to me that authoritarianism and lying are sins shared by Democrats and Republicans equally.
Pentecost blessings!
Still trying to find there pronouncements in my bible. Where, for example, does it say taking children away from there mother when she is applying for asylum a biblical thing to do? Are they reading a different bible or are they actually turning their back on Christianity?
Frank, you would have so much more credibility if you simply toned down your rhetoric (Trump as liar, racist, fraudulent etc. etc.). This is an observation not just for this blog entry but for your ongoing, over-the-top, anti-Trump diatribe. Yes, I am appalled at Trump and his policies but I believe that cultivating civil discourse is vitally important as we combat his dysfunctional legacy to demonstrate to the public what is right and acceptable in civil political discourse. You seem not that much different in your coarse, condemning rhetoric than Trump. Please lead us by example into what a charitable, compassionate yet discerning voice for change might look like.
I suggest you aim your “datribe” discourse indictment to Trump himself. Frank’s assessment is the reasoned and factual response that is needed to save the most cherished democracratic government in the world from this relentless Trumpian assault.
Dear Steven Harte:
Mr. Schaeffer has heard this repeatedly.
With working class consciousness awakening, and lacking any progressive policy options, Democrat leadership explodes in a Dionysian riot of frustration, astonishment and terror. On Frank’s previous post, I said:
‘…the more the working class refuses the ‘Russian interference’ narrative, the more hysterical the CIA/Democrat machine becomes, and the more volatile its hostility toward the US population.’
Youths are especially problematic for the ruling class as they are increasingly unattached to either bourgeois party and are open to putting the whole system on the table for dissection.
Blessings!
@Steven Harte
I find Frank’s anti-Trump diatribe spot on. I don’t view it as “coarse” at all. I have a t-shirt that reads: “Stop bitching and start a revolution.” I have had people take offense at that message. Once I tried to explain to a woman what the message meant, but the good Christian lady didn’t wanna hear it because I had a “curse” word on my chest. LOL!
Yes, civil discourse would be nice if possible, but one can’t worry about offending folks with harsh truths anymore. How does one politely condemned Nazi sympathizers embolden to run for Congress because of Trump or the government taking and drugging the children of people seeking asylum? Even the “compassionate” and “discerning” Dr. Martin Luther King began to change his tone in speeches shortly before his assassination. Frank may seem to you not to be much difference in his rhetoric than Trump, but his passionate rants may push as many folks to take action as you think he may turn off.
Let Frank be Frank. The Revolution will be televised! Woo Hoo!
.
Dear Joelyn:
T-shirt aside, the petty bourgeoisie you, Frank and others support has zero interest in real revolution. I recommend quotation marks for the “R” word.
To answer your question, the way to censor Nazi sympathizers certainly isn’t by attacking them from the right.
Had it an ounce of progressive content, the Democrat Party would have in place a permanent education program on war and peace, social inequality and civil rights. But instead, real criticism is limited almost exclusively to criticizing Trump for being insufficiently belligerent toward Iran and Russia.
I agree, gdd. Sleaze (and being the Sleaze in Chief) indeed really has nothing to do with Christianity or witness. By the way, it is irrational to argue that authoritarianism is shared “equally” by anyone. And finally, lying, as a matter of one’s personal life culture and raison d’etre, has nothing to do with the simple reality that everyone lies in their lifetime.
Just an opinion here!
Frank’s rants are classic political hyperbole as one uses over the top examples of their political opponents faults to drive a point home.
I find many of these rants amusing and entertaining However, serious truths are communicated as Evangelical white Americans are enemies of our republic until they decide to follow the teachings of Jesus and it is appropriate given Frank’s background to deliver these rants until further notice as he woke up to be a true follower of him.
This is exactly what he would have done if he were here again but he is here in spirit that third person of the trinity.
Did he not get angry and whip the money changers out of the temple?
Dear Nine:
There are some things one does not say even in politics — even if exaggerating for emphasis’ sake. Equating support of a sitting President with treason is a case in point. You just don’t do that — just as you never say that you pimp out your wife and daughters to support your narcotic habit.
The rancid rhetoric here and elsewhere offers a rare glimpse into ruling class infighting. Inner-ruling class rivalries are now too intense to be hidden and are spilling out into public view.
The essential takeaway for the working class is that it has no horse in this race [or in any bourgeois election]. Increasing public recognition of this is breaking petty bourgeoisie [Democrat] Party discipline. At a time when cool heads and warm hearts are an imperative, this section of the ruling class is quickly radicalizing and becoming unhinged. I’m reminded of the Paris mob post 1789.
Blessings!
Gdd,
America is heavily armed.
Any discussion of taking those guns will lead to the electorate voting for even more right wing politicians.
I have guns as do every person I know and the ruling elite you refer to would benefit from there confiscation.
They rule by stupid people believing stupid things like evangelical Christian propaganda.
Look at Russian history if we should ever get a progressive bulshevist paradise that you advocate!
Millions murdered, starved and put in concentration camps however, putting dumb evangelicals in camps might not be a bad idea!
Only an opinion.
Nine
Dear Frank Schaeffer:
I see you’re blocking replies again! That is your prerogative as blog owner. But that it was deemed necessary is a telling indication that the CIAocrat Party indeed has moved to the right of Donald Trump, at least on foreign policy.
I’ve no way of knowing exactly what led you to block that post. I’ve said before that your party of choice stands to the right of Trump, so it isn’t that. Previously, I’ve pointed out that the New York Times and Washington Post have peddled many anti-Russia and #Me Too articles while blacking out news on immigrant family breakups, ICE Gestapo raids, Trump’s Muslim travel plan, and more. ‘Where’s the permanent education campaign,’ I’ve asked repeatedly. ‘Where’s the outcry?’ That was never censored.
I’m thrown back to my correlation of your own demands for regulating Zuckerberg’s Facebook with Facebook’s closure of event pages for the anti-fascist rally and other left causes, including a scheduled March against rapist cops.
Again, you can censor anything you want. But it hardly undercuts my contention that the CIAocrat Party has no genuine progressive content, or that proffered slogans and campaigns of ‘left’ candidates [Sanders, El-Sayed, etc.] can withstand not even the slightest examination. Sanders spent most of his political life outside the Democratic Party, criticizing it as a party of Wall Street/big business. But at precisely the moment that tens of millions of working class youths see through the party slogans and campaigns, Sanders – who was undercut by the DNC 2 years ago – is made chief spokesperson to urge them to turn their opposition to inequality into campaigns to elect CIAocrats to office! How remarkable is that!
The US is doomed – NOT because Trump is a fraud, but because instead of answering with integrity, the other bourgeoisie party can offer only more fraud. Fraud upon fraud upon fraud, campaign after campaign after campaign, election after election after election – and all the while justice collapses, social inequality skyrockets and the 90% finds itself more and more the political hostages to an alien political structure that sees it as threat to its regal privilege.
By censoring my posts, you evidence that you have much more in common with Trump than with the 90% who are the working class.
Blessings!