The metal ring kept the fire contained at a campground where birch bark hauled to burn hissed and crackled most satisfyingly.
Our son adored the sound along with twisting bright flames fueled by botulin, the chemical that Nature offers up in wooden sacrifice and cathartic light.
He was fire-tending the entire evening allowing us to sit back and warm our faces under a canopy of trees, flickering with native illumination.
Those instincts carried over many years to keep relationships alive, the conversation between fire and air, the kept secrets and revealed hopes all signaled by smoke and flames running red to orange, yellow to white, and in concentrated heat in blue.
When we’re not with family, these fires mean something different, the practical burns of cardboard and paper, always turning stacks of pages to make sure no financial documents or personal information remain.
As a child, I was instructed by my mother to take our combustibles out to the incinerator, as she called it, a brick pit ten feet deep where I watched the 1960s go up in flame as far as I was concerned.
We watched the civil rights movement on television, and rockets burning with the burden of men striving for the moon to keep Russia from getting there first.
Such is pride, whether personal or national in nature, that we keep lighting fires between ourselves and within our souls to conquer sin, or so we’re told.
It’s astounding to think that some believe there is an eternal pit of hell where Satan is the fire-tender, and we’re left to suffer both tinder and blaze in punishment for not behaving as we should in praising Jesus or the Trinity because free will is supposedly a pile of logs to be kept from the fire lest they burn in effigy of our choices.
Considering these options and the temporal nature of fire left untended, it is comforting to know that they always burn out. Yet sometimes, the time is right to light the fires of righteous anger and truth.
We live in a time when legalistic religion sits stacked like cordwood and Is being tossed into the pit of critical mass, as we’re learning much more about how the narrative was formed, how it grew and consumed through the emphasis of law over love in repressive force and institutional graft that claimed to control the fires of human sin.
Now we’re witnessing the new light of discernment, deconstruction, and honesty toward the Gospels, examining the Letters of Paul and the calculated constructs of Christianity to hold candles in vigils of determined witness.
We can see how the cords were stacked in a bulwark of religious authority despite the fires that Jesus tried to light under the pyres of hypocrisy. Those sparks were long ignored by despots charging money to burn offerings to earn favor with God, and by those selling indulgences to release souls from purgatory, and by preachers selling Prosperity Gospel as fire insurance to the gullible, the hopeful and the eternally victimized.
These are the corrupt logjams of religion that must be burned for the sake of humanity, and we must all be fire-tenders devoted and strong, or they will call us the persecutors of their faith when they have burned it up themselves for millennia.
The Anti-Semitism and Inquisitions. The Holy Wars and political Popes. The scurrilous use of Sodom to curse Acts of love, when the real sin Was gang rape and ignoring the poor, the needy, and immigrants. There is nothing holy in that history.
These are the ‘traditions of men’ that Jesus, The fire-tender, sought to burn. and if you don’t understand that, good luck finding solace in the ashes, dust and detritus of dishonest belief.
“Pretty boy” Pete Hegseth left a stinking path of adulterous cheating in his marriage path
Most of you have likely seen photos of an amped-up Pete Hegseth, covered in tattoos signifying various belief systems he adheres to. The documented laundry list of right-wing delusional markings imprinted on his body includes:
“Deus Vult”: This Latin phrase, which translates to “God wills it” and was a battle cry during the Crusades, is tattooed on his bicep. This tattoo was reportedly a reason a fellow service member flagged him as a potential “insider threat,” leading to his removal from duty at President Biden’s 2021 inauguration.
Jerusalem Cross: Located on his chest, this large cross surrounded by four smaller crosses is a historic Christian symbol representing the five wounds of Christ and the spread of the Gospel.
“Kafir”: Hegseth got a new tattoo in Arabic that reads “Kafir,” an Arabic word meaning “infidel” or “non-believer,” which has sparked outrage and criticism from some Muslim advocacy groups.
“We the People”: He has “We the people,” the opening words of the U.S. Constitution, emblazoned on his forearm.
1775, 13 stars, and an AR-15/American flag design: Above the “We the People” tattoo, he has “1775” in Roman numerals, representing the year of the Second Continental Congress, surrounded by 13 stars and an image combining an AR-15 rifle and an American flag.
Sword with Bible reference: A tattoo of a cross and sword referencing the Bible verse Matthew 10:34, which he interprets as “not peace, but a sword”.
All these religious undertones in ink became religious overtones in Hegseth’s public life. But it’s all pathetically hubristic garbage if you analyze it with the least bit of theological and historical context. The “five wounds of Christ” allusion is in reality a gory testament to excessive government authoritarian cruelty in the Roman Empire, which Trump and Hegseth seek to emulate. His cultural appropriation of the Kafir word meaning “infidel” aligns with the inane “not peace, but a sword” ideology of the Christian Crusades that wrought nothing but insane, warlike trips to the Middle East based on religious zealotry and political jealousy. That manic tradition of killing for dominance continues to this day. We saw it in two Iraqi Wars and the continual military-industrial support of Israel to our own country’s impoverishment.
Pre-Constitutional fervor
Even Hegseth’s claims to Constitutional fidelity, borne in the tattoo 1775, take an anachronistic off-ramp by celebrating a period before the United States was a fully formed nation. Combining that purposeful gap in patriotic fulfillment with an image of a deadly AR-15 rifle, created 200 years later, illustrates the irreconcilable inanity of Hegseth’s radical notions of what constitutes American ideals.
Proving that while Pete Hegseth is educated, he’s also willfully stupid. A Dumb Bro with a higher education degree is still a Dumb Bro.
The sick part of all this ill-educated symbolism is that the disgusting little prig had every opportunity to use his education and background to do somegood in this world. Instead, over time, he’s become a man addicted to many things; alcohol, sex, rule-breaking, adultery, lies, aggressive hyperbole, and death. He’s a fraud on par with his boss Donald Trump, and just as woefully bigoted, ignorant, and incurious. It
Selfishness as a worldview
But most of all, Hegseth is a selfish prick. He cares nothing about other people, other than to use them for his self-aggrandizing thirst for power and control. He stood before our nation’s generals spitting out threats amid calls for loyalty without having done a single thing to earn them.
Now, after retitling his responsibilities to the “Department of War,” he’s a man out of control and murdering people on the world’s oceans based on vague notions of “war” against the United States by people in little boats who could never reach our shores carrying drugs, if they were carrying any such cargo at all. We’re supposed to “trust the word” of the people carrying out the murders at sea that these boats are filled with dangerous drugs. But everyone allied with the Trump administration or forced to function in subservient roles is a demonstrated liar. Every. Single. One.
Turning Point terrorism
Another “pretty boy” fascist eager for death and destruction to bolster his sense of manhood
Thirst for Death
Hegseth’s addled-brained supporters love his unapologetic thirst for death. As reported by historian Heather Cox Richardson, “This evening, Andrew Kolvet of Turning Point USA posted on social media: “Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.”
To which Hegseth turned around, quoted Kolvet, and commented: “Your wish is our command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.” Richardson notes: The U.S. Southern Command confirmed the strike against a small boat in the eastern Pacific, saying that “[i]ntelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route…. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed.”
But even after they blow up the boats, they return to kill any survivors floating on the wreckage. These are war crimes by any definition of the word. But to Pete Hegseth, they are offerings to the Religion of Death he has tattooed across his body. This campaign is Pete Hegseth’s international Crusade, his Inquisition, and his Christo-fascist lust for bodies floating in blood to make himself feel like he’s serving the God of Destruction and Chaos. Hegseth is inked on the outside and hollow on the inside.
But he loves death, and he’s good at that it seems. Perhaps it was even Hegseth who did Turning Point’s “dirty work” in murdering Charlie Kirk? Who knows? There’s so much wanton killing, masked abduction and brutality, illegal ICE raids, warrantless beatings, and detention centers bordering on torture chambers that we can’t tell who’s killing who, or why?
It’s just “business as usual” in Trumplandia.
Like Father Trump, Like Son Hegseth
As long as we’re touching on Hegseth’s callow interests and Trumplike qualities, he also reportedly paid $50,000 to a woman who alleges he sexually assaulted her. Hegseth never effectively denied the encounter, only its nature. He insists it was “consensual.
As noted on the website 19thnews.org: “She reported the matter to police, but no charges were ever filed against Hegseth. He and his representatives have maintained that the encounter was consensual. At the time, Hegseth was still legally married to his second wife and had recently welcomed a child with the woman who would become his third.
“But you acknowledge that you cheated on your wife and you cheated on a woman by whom you had just fathered a child? You have admitted that,” pressed Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
“I will allow your words to speak for themselves,” Hegseth said.
Some contend that rape (or sexual assault) is as bad as homicide because of what it kills in the life of its victims. The National Library of Medicine seems to think so.
My wife and I attended the Paramount Theater production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, The Musical in Aurora, Illinois. We subscribe to the Broadway Series because the Paramount produces top-quality shows, and we’ve seen close to two dozen, I’d estimate, over the years.
My all-time favorite was an all-Black cast production of Jesus Christ Superstar. But every show we’ve seen has offered something unique and a vital presentation of themes old and new.
Which brings me to a “review” of the current production of White Christmas, and why it has modern relevance and revelations to offer more than half a century after its creation.
First: huge compliments to the performers, whose incredible talents in singing, dance, acting, and tap dancing wowed the audience into impromptu cheers and long applause after each section of the show. I tried imagining what it would be like to work in the theater profession while leafing through the Playbill reading the actor bios. Many of them thanked their agents for their work, which prompted me to look up the casting director and director, who, in notes to the audience, noted the show’s devotion to “everyday acts of kindness” and “counting our blessings.”
That’s the main theme of the production, yet there is far more going on with this musical production than the White Christmas movie seemed to convey. Perhaps it’s the result of being “present” with the cast as they portray each character’s story in real time, but the story made so much more sense as a play than it did for us onscreen.
The context of the story is post-WW II during the time when everyone who fought in the war or experienced its impacts “back at home” was figuring out what life was supposed to look like after the threat of worldwide fascism fell to the “good guys” fighting overseas. That’s where the play opens with two talented men holding a battlefield Christmas Eve musical of their own. Upon being discovered by their strong-willed General, they retreat to their duties, but he sternly thanks them for that touch of home despite the breach of wartime conduct.
It’s a raw feeling realizing that nowadays, half the United States seems to have forgotten what the threat of fascism looks like. For that reason, it’s taking place right before our eyes as Trump sends militarized ICE mercenaries out into the streets wearing masks without identification to drag people away without recourse. That’s the kind of dog-whistle racism, anti-immigration, anti-Semitic, anti-Liberal, anti-intellectual sentiments that America fought against in Germany’s Nazi era.
The other stark realization is that General Dwight Eisenhower is mentioned several times in the musical as the President who won the war and now presides over 1954 America. A glance at the 1956 Republican Party Platform illustrates how far from sanity that party has drifted in the seventy years since Eisenhower ran the nation. Eisenhower also warned against the “military-industrial complex” and the United States now spends more on its military (and now its ICE military) than the next six or seven nations combined. We’re insane, in other words.
The play also acknowledges the classic issue of ageism in America, as one song is literally titled “What Can You Do With A General. The tune focuses on the problems faced by those who choose to continue working but are no longer deemed ‘fit for duty’ or useful to society. Millions of Americans are now experiencing those feelings as they are “generally” constrained to menial, low-paying jobs in the service or retail industry.
The General in White Christmas owns and runs a hotel, but a distinctly warm winter in Vermont isn’t helping things upstate, where everyone who came to see and rub their faces in the snow is disappointed and leaves. These days, it’s climate change that screwing everything up, as noted from reports around the world: “Ski resorts are struggling with climate change, experiencing shorter seasons and lost revenue due to less predictable and decreasing snowfall. In response, many are adapting by investing in more efficient snowmaking, implementing energy-saving measures, and changing their business models to be more sustainable, though the long-term outlook remains challenging.”
Finding hope
White Christmas depicts a faction of people who turn to creativity and ingenuity to prop up the General’s enterprise. In the end, it helps him overcome an unfortunate tendency toward stubborn conservatism. His mind undergoes revelations as he watches the play preparations unfold, including the scene in which the two lead men play feminine roles in a reprise of a Sisters fan dance previously performed by the two female leads. Irving Berlin was far ahead of his time in illustrating the gender-fluid nature of the arts and how they break down emotional barriers.
Human values
There’s a quasi-religious theme behind it all, but not the conservative Christian kind where people use religion to control others. The song Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep calls us to take stock of the good things we do for others and the good things they do for us. In some respects, that’s liberal Christianity and the Golden Rule. But Berlin’s play is more humanistic than it is religious, and that’s an important distinction these days when Right wing Christians try to claim that all good traits emanate from God. That’s partly true if one doesn’t turn religion into a weapon. White Christmas The Musical drops more than a few hints that there is a strong relationship between the kinds of people who engage in personal relationship betrayal and societal corruption.
Deeper themes
All of these deeper themes resonate beneath the show’s history as a classic musical. But it’s the glamour that brings it all to life, and the staging at Paramount is incredible. That is apparently a product of being “presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals,” because the stagecraft brings you right into the old barn where the fundraising play will be staged. But there’s also wall-sized rotating set of piano keys that delivers jaw-dropping visuals.
Director Stephen Schellhardt brings it all together thanks to the ensemble of enormously talented actors, dancers, and singers. We even got a chance to sing along at one point in the play! What really fascinated me was how frequent and convincing the costume changes were. It all climaxes with a Christmas-themed final number in which the two female leads emerge in the sparkliest dresses you’ve ever seen, backed by the cast performing “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.”
That’s the sentiment of connection that Schellhardt sought to convey. But for me, it was the contrast between the good vibes of the past with the harsh realities of the present that made the show so meaningful. I don’t think the current administration would grasp those contrasts, or understand why the humanistic precepts of White Christmas are what Make America Great Again, and always have.
Instead, it’s likely Trump and his fascist band of Christian nationalists and bigoted supremacists would think “White Christmas” means cleansing the countryside of Brown or Black People, immigrants, and anyone who dares to question Trump’s sociopathic authority and doesn’t embrace White Replacement Theory.
In August of 2003, I was invited by a business friend to play in a guest-member golf outing at Medinah Country Club. The course is famous for its difficulty and hosting professional golf tournaments such as the US Open in 1949, 1975, and 1990. My business friend, a commercial printing broker, helped me accomplish a number of great things, such as organizing a highly successful literacy support program reaching 175 public libraries and 375,000 families, and also producing a poster that placed in the top four Cream of the Crop running posters from Runner’s World Magazine.
Working with him was great even though our politics and personal views were political opposites. He was conservative and I am a liberal and progressive. But we liked each other and often had lunch to discuss our personal and professional lives. Once in a while, we’d go golfing together.
Honest advice
But he was the much better golfer. I shoot in the 80s and he was an ace at golf, often scoring in the 70s even on tough courses such as Medinah. Thus when he invited me to play in a golf outing at that course, his advice was simple and sound: “If you hit into the woods, play it out to the fairway. Don’t try to hit through them.”
I was eager to try playing the course because my late grandfather-in-law was once a club champion of some sort at Medinah. But my father-in-law didn’t care for the game of golf and never used his Medinah membership for anything but taking his kids to the restaurant and other fun. When asked why he didn’t play golf, my father-in-law replied, “Nature Is My Country Club.”
That quote stuck with me, and I used it years later as the title of the book I wrote about the golf industry and its changing dynamics.
Nature Is Our Country Club by Christopher Cudworth
So when I finally played Medinah, I paid close attention to my conservative friend’s advice. We teed off under clear and beautiful August skies, but during the first few holes the clouds moved in and were threatening rain. Suddenly, sheets of driving droplets poured through the trees as if there were an air raid going on. We piled into our golf carts and headed toward the ninth hole turnaround spot, but the rain kept up and soon the fairways shone as if they were an ice-skating rink. We piled into our carts during a partial pause in the storm and hustled back to the main clubhouse.
Rainout
The outing was cancelled, so the club food service swung into action as we gathered in damp shirts to have a meal and talk about the shots we’d made and missed. The next day, I pulled out my quasi-official personal journal, and wrote about the experience, which ended weirdly, and that’s the whole point of this story. What do you do, and how do you respond, when life throws corrupt circumstances your way?
Journal Entry August 7, 2003
“Nature was not able to be denied yesterday. In spite of millions of dollars of manipulation of a golf landscape. In spite of affectations in architecture and social structure. In spite of metal clubs and synthentic balls and electric carts, the rains came furiously and washed away the Camel Trail Golf Outing at Medinah Country Club.”
“It was an impressive environment if you like your thick woods without leaf litter, your ponds without grass along the edges and your open fields manicured to a carpet length smoothness. This time around I heard and saw no birds, I realize. Not even a vagrant heron in the shallows, for there were, apparently, no shallows in the lakes. Just opaque, moody depths that the golfers call hazards. It is an interesting metaphor if you stop to consider the manifold meanings of the word hazard. And their role in the game of golf is nearly absolute save for a lucky skip if a shot is hit so low the ball skims over the surface to safety.”
“The entire course became a waterway when the skies, heated to a froth by the August sun, unleashed. We played a hole in the sprinkles, but when driven to the Halfway House (not one for the poor, but for the wealthy) accompanied by one of our fore caddies, a strange allotment of youth and ethnicity including our own, a quiet Latino named Jesus. His nervous but eager eyes and partial grasp of the language actually made me more comfortable in the situation. I too felt like a foreigner in the face of so much. At so much a cost.”
“We sat and drank as the rain fell straight down from the sky. Light beer and cigars at our table. Less calories and more smoke. The cadre of men stood close to one another and talked loudly, determined I guess to ward off what might be perceived as too much of an intimacy. We talked of things men in a group talk about; other rounds, other exploits, drugs of our youth, and women.”
“But the storm would not let up to relieve us of these sentimental strivings, so we trekked to the clubhouse in our sheltered carts which still could not keep out the wind and rain, especially for Jesus, whose back got soaked while perched on the front of the cart. Giant puddles whooshed as we followed the paths, and one could see rivulets and pools forming on every fairway. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed again. We left behind a tree on the 7th hole dated to 1664. It has seen, if the claims are correct, over 440 years of storms, snows, heat, cold, winds and the like. It too is a hazard for anyone who hooks his drive on #7 at Medinah. A little black sign proclaims the tree a a State Champ for the ages.”
“We dine on giant slabs of red beef and more drinks. The dinner talk turns briefly to business while the storm sinks to the south. Twillight comes with sunshine and slowly the fairways clear of water but the greenskeeper declares the course officially closed. We are too late to finish a round anyway, darkness a worse enemy even than lightning, to a golfer.”
“I recall that my second shot remains perched in the grass on the 7th fairway, or was it in the rough? I will never know. The course vanished behind me like the memory of a funeral. We came into the lavish clubhouse, furnished and decorated like a regal crypt, to toast ourselves or something.”
“After dinner it was Showtime. An obscene but somewhat sweet comedian cracked wise on dogs, wives, kids, and driving, especially drunk driving.
‘HOW AM I GOING TO GET HOME THEN?” he taunted the crowd. Some joke.”
“Then came the strippers, bare to the bone, which I didn’t know was legal. The two pretty girls allowed four willing men the chance to grope them repeatedly while the crowd howled vicariously. The show ended and a host of apparently decent men stood up to leave when the girls started working the audience for money. Like I said earlier, too much intimacy is simply too much for a crew this removed from nature, human and otherwise.”
And all of this is true exactly as I described it. When relating this story I was once challenged by someone defending Medinah’s honor. “They don’t allow stuff like that there,” the apologetic attempted to claim. “All I know is what I saw,” I responded. “I turned to the guys at my table and told them, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m married. And I’m leaving. And we all left before the strippers got to our table.'”
We live in an age when that scene at Medinah is the regular appetite of those at Mar-a Lago, and the White House improper, it seems.
Recently I researched how Wheaton College felt about its graduate Russell Vought, whose fealty to Project 2025 is now on full display in his job serving the Trump Administration. I found a column by Timon Cline, whose bio reads: “Editor in Chief at American Reformer. He is an attorney and a fellow at the Craig Center at Westminster Theological Seminary and the Director of Scholarly Initiatives at the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College. His writing has appeared in the American Spectator, Mere Orthodoxy, American Greatness, Areo Magazine, and the American Mind, among others.”
I’ve dissected Cline’s column in the American Reformer attacking Wheaton College graduates for criticizing Vought and his version of Christianity. Cline’s writing in his column is featured here in bold. My analysis of his claims follow.
Wheaton Alumni Issue Attack on Russ Vought
Last week, Wheaton College did a very normal thing: it issued a congratulatory statement on social media to one of its graduates, Russ Vought (‘98), who was recently confirmed as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The author of this piece, Timon Cline, opens with a vapid attempt to normalize Russell Vought’s goal of replacing the Constitutional Separation of Church and State* with Project2025’s legalistic version of Christianity as law in the United States of America.
Cline ignores the fact that Vought’s views on religion ought to have nothing to do with his duties as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. But legalistic religious authorities have a long history of blurring the lines between religion and government. The Bible shows that John the Baptist and Jesus fought the Pharisees and Sadducees over legalistic scriptural interpretations used to create stumbling blocks to God and turn the temple into a commercial enterprise. We can draw a straight line from the practices of those religious authorities to the political and religious objectives of Project 2025 today. They are practically the same people in different eras.
Here’s the sad part. Christians were supposed to learn from Jesus’ example not to fall into legalistic worship patterns created under the “traditions of men.” But once legalistic Christianity consolidated with the Roman Empire, the course was set to impose authoritarian, persecutorial religion for millennia to come. Over time, conservative Christianity became the one thing Jesus most despised, a legalistic religious institution bent on absolute power and authority. Even Reformation attempts failed to eradicate these instincts, and Evangelical Protestant legalism with its literalistic Bible interpretations and “apologetics” are just as bad, if not worse, than the original Catholic model of absolute authority and political control.
That hypocrisy is evident in all of Russell Vought’s attempts to impose a controlling version of religion in the name of Christian nationalism here in America. That’s why Wheaton College alumni protested when the school casually congratulated Vought for his “success” in government. Cline finds that ethical accountability offensive, and seeks to dismiss the corrupt nature of Voughts political theology by heightening the importance of Vought’s position. This is Cline’s attempt to overwhelm resistance to Project 2025’s objectives. Cline writes:
“Few people reach such a high level in American government, and Vought has done it twice. Certainly, this is something worth celebrating for any college, especially for a small evangelical college. Wheaton graduates have done impressive things, but very few have served in such an elevated position as Vought. Though a not insignificant amount have served in government, most of Wheaton’s well-known graduates are theologians and evangelists–think Billy Graham, John Piper, and William Lane Craig. Perhaps, Dan Coats, former Director of National Security, and Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, are the only Wheaton alumni to rival Vought in achievement in government service.”
Wheaton has long claimed Billy Graham as a celebrated graduate, and that’s fair enough. He wasn’t a perfect man, we must note. At one point he stated that Jews had a “stranglehood” on America that must be broken, and Graham tolerated segregation at his rallies to mollify whites offended by integration. Such are the habits of many so-called conservative Christians, who always seem willing to compromise their biblical principles to satisfy political allies and “save face.” But many also have disturbingly secret skeletons in their closets. Dennis Hastert is one such notable Wheaton College alum. Hastert’s political career ended in disgrace when his hush money payments to cover up a child sexual abuse case became known. Yet Cline casually dismisses that corrupt behavior out of deference to people in powerful positions. One has to ask, is that what Jesus would do?
From this theologically corrupt standpoint, Cline begins his line of questioning (he is a lawyer, after all) why Wheaton College removed its post about Russell Vought. Given the shallowness of Cline’s premise, the argument seems to be, “He’s certainly no worse than any other conflicted Christian hypocrite.”
In fact, there’s no stopping Cline’s vacuous strains once he’s gained momentum. He tries justifying Wheaton’s complicit honoring of Vought as a “simple congratulatory statement.”
Wheaton’s post was a simple congratulatory statement including a call to prayer for Vought—a standard 1 Timothy 2:2 practice, it must be said. A day later, the post was removed and replaced with a new one. The “significant concern expressed online” led Wheaton to delete the post. The College did not want to make a “political endorsement,” it said. The College explained to Fox News that the post had led to thousands of “hostile comments,” which prompted them to remove the post “rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction,” adding that said removal did not constitute an apology for expressing congratulations to Vought.
What Cline chooses to ignore is that Wheaton College recognized (or was forced into admitting by its protesting alumni) that its announcement constituted patent approval of Vought’s Christian hypocrisy in turning legalistic scripture into law. Jesus once warned:
25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Despite such clear scriptural warnings that legalistic religion used for political purposes offended Jesus, Cline whines that Wheaton’s action was “unfair” to Vought somehow, and proceeds to malign its graduates for standing up to Vought’s brand of Right-wing Christian nationalism. He writes:
In other words, what Wheaton itself characterized as a typical announcement was rescinded because enough people dislike the recipient. As Chase Davis posted on X, this is a “glimpse into how Christian colleges and seminaries have been captured by emotional sabotage. Is that really the standard under which Wheaton wants to operate? Vought appropriately commented with one word: “Sad!”
Even this backpedaling was not enough. Wheaton alumni have begun circulating an Open Letter against Vought which American Reformer has obtained and is printed in full below. As is usually the case, Wheaton’s capitulation to the mob has not satisfied it. Now it must be rebuked.
Let’s consider what Cline is trying to accomplish here. It’s nothing short of gaslighting to advance the notion that Vought is somehow theologically and constitutionally “pure,” which is what conservatives always love to claim. But let’s be clear: Project 2025 is a patently extremist view of American government, if you can even call it that. But consider this view from the Global Extremism Project website:
“Within weeks of taking office, Trump issued sweeping executive orders, attempting to grab more power for himself and the executive branch. The dismantling of federal agencies and firing of tens of thousands civil servants has accelerated the far-right and authoritarian takeover of government institutions that will hurt ordinary Americans. And this is just the beginning. Christian nationalist ideals are set to shape this administration, and this country, as Project 2025’s architects work to consolidate power, dismantle progressive policies, and entrench their agenda.”
The ”agenda” Cline supports is rife with bigotry and authoritarian construction and the Project 2025 mission is both vicious and dauntless. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, recently said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” That’s a threat, not diplomacy. Whe Roberts insinuate violence if people don’t fall into line, he’s not exaggerating.
The Kettering Foundatio analyzed Project 2025’s goals: “The plan is ambitious. The Mandatefor Leadership is both specific in detail and vengeful in tone. Its central agenda is to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Christian nationalism believes that the Christian Bible, as God’s infallible law, should be the basis of government and have primacy over public and private institutions. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership. Its thousands of recommendations include specific executive orders to be repealed or implemented. Laws, regulations, departments, and whole agencies would be abolished. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as being enemies of our republic.”
Cline likes to pretend that this agenda does not threaten the nation. But speciously, he’s never done whining either. He winces at objections to his call to install Trump as king.
Predictably, the Letter picks up media narratives about Project 2025.
What exactly is it about Vought’s contribution to Project 2025, “Executive Office of the President of the United States,” that is offensive, misguided, or unbiblical? Likely, none of the signatories have read the 900-pageMandate for Leadership, but surely, they have perused Vought’s chapter, right? The Open Letter denounces Vought and Project 2025 as authoritarian. Strange given that the first citation on the first page of Vought’s chapter is to Federalist No. 47 wherein James Madison warns against the accumulation of all governmental powers into the same hand or hands. Vought proceeds to argue for constitutional restoration over and against bureaucratic theft of power.
Cline’s argument that Project 2025 is “constitutional restoration” is a patent lie, and he gaslights by quoting James Madison when the Project’s goals have no intention of respecting those limits. There is also no “bureaucratic theft of power.” What he’s calling “bureaucracy” is regulatory agencies created by Congress to protect human and consumer rights, manage financial industries, and protect environmental health and sustainability. Those are basic governmental principles aligne with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without monopolistic industries trashing the country, stealing money through Big Pharma and privatized health insurance, and raping the environment from shore-to-shore.
But Right-wing autocrats want those protections out of the way principally to reward the super wealthy with the right to “privatize the profits and socialize the losses.” Cline goes on to play dumb in the face of his own specious arguments. Instead, he replaces bureaucracy with autocracy. Listening to his ugly rationalizations we find a series of contradictions that current forms of government are “overreaching.” Instead, he says Vought and Trump and Musk and Johnson deserve the “whole hog” right to do whatever they want to Americans. But especially Trump, for whom Cline seems to have a political hard-on.
In truth, everything in Vought’s summation of the constitutional power of the executive is mainstream and unsurprising. An executive acting like an executive may seem odd to us now—so accustomed are we to neutered figureheads in the Oval Office, to a “feeble executive” and thereby a “feeble government.” Checks and balances, separation of powers, requires not only that each branch does not encroach upon the power of the others, but also that each one fully exerts the power granted to it. Effective government is hardly unconstitutional. Neither is a well-managed budget according to the actual priorities of government. That is, use of taxpayer dollars for things more pertinent to their safety and flourishing than DEI operas and comic book campaigns in Europe or gender studies programs in the Middle East or spreading atheism in Asia–all things prioritized by the previous administration to the tune of millions.
In those last few lines, Cline paints himself into a partisan corner with his spoiled and possibly uneducated punk attitude. He’s so desperate to hate on liberalism that his word salad denigrates Black history and human equity enlightened dramas here and abroad as “DEI operas.” Apparently, the only programming, theater or movies Cline can handle are Christian-oriented biopics of blabbering demagogues like Reagan and Bush, albeit with a litany of Trump’s Greatest Hits thrown in as croutons on a Christo-fascist salad.
The entire concept of gender also seems to frighten Cline, who also adopts the idea that atheism is “the enemy” of justice and culture. For icing on the cake, Cline attempts a swipe at the “previous administration” by appealing, in the early part of the paragraph, that any initiative aimed at promoting factual history and human rights is a waste of taxpayer money.
Then comes the really ugly part of Cline’s petulant essay. He appeals to anachronism and Federalism as justification for his “winner-take-all” version of triumphal nationalism.
Moreover, an energetic executive is exactly what Alexander Hamilton presented in Federalist No. 70. Indeed, a single executive exercising control over the executive branch was the only path to true vigilance on behalf of the people, said Hamilton. A “vigorous executive” was not inconsistent with republican government but rather its guarantee. “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Surely, “all men of sense” would agree with this proposition, thought Hamilton.
To answer Hamilton’s question, we can turn quickly a personal, political, and economic analysis of Trump, who is not a man of “good sense” by any human standard. Certainly not morally, where Trump is a massive failure, having cheated on a series of wives, often with much younger women, as an NBC News story reported, “Trump was at one point friends with Epstein. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002, before there were any public allegations of wrongdoing against multimillionaire money manager. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said then. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Trump also lacks truthful financial sense, as his own Trump University paid $25M in fraud fines. His Foundation closed after Trump was found guilty of stealing its funds. His business enterprises earned a $400M+ fine for lying about property valuations. Famously, he also bankrupted Atlantic City casinos. None of these habituated losses point to Trump as a “man of sense.”
He also led attacks on American democracy and the Republic, claiming that he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud, all while conspiring to create “fake electors” to steal the election for himself. When his supporters came to Washington at his request, they responded to his urgent call to “fight like hell” and invaded the Capitol in a specific attempt to block the certification of Electoral College votes and install himself as President. Trump watched on TV as the rioters bearing Trump and Confederate flags bludgeoned Capitol police, broke into the building and vandalized the property while insane militia members led chants to “Hang Mike Pence,” which Trump never declined. Instead, he insisted Pence did not have the courage to “do the right thing.” You normally don’t get to just walk away from events like that, but Republicans declined the rightful impeachment of Trump for the insurrection, and Right-wing judges excused and delayed justice for high crimes. These were seditious actions.
All of this proves that men like Timon Cline know exactly what they’re doing by insisting that Trump has the right to absolute power. They throw his abuses right back in our faces, proving that Cline is a sycophantic Christian nationalist and an avid fascist. He denies this in “theory,” but he admits it in practice.
The so-called unitary executive theory is not a theory; it is not authoritarianism. It’s just Article II of the Constitution. Russ Vought’s crime, then, is that he wants a well-functioning, secure constitutional order, the only path to ensure, in his words, “the survival of self-governance in America.” And the big reveal over the past few months from outlets like ProPublica is that Vought is aligned with the presidential administration in which he is now serving. Shocker.
It is clear that Timon Cline would suck at the game of poker because he always overplays his hand. He goes on to re-write biblical and American history in revisionist fashion.
If Project 2025 proposed a true monarchy, the Wheaton alumni have a problem. If such a model is “unbiblical” then King David is in trouble. But, in fact, Project 2025 is, in large part, a repudiation of the trajectory set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s long tenure which was as close to a monarchical “restructuring of society” as America has ever gotten. (Indeed, FDR was quite effective in his use of the OMB itself.) If anyone is responsible for the omnipotent, unaccountable bureaucratic deep state, it is FDR and his progeny.
First off, King David was a genocidal, adulterous asshole, whom God disavowed at the end of his earthly life telling him, “No you can’t build a temple in my honor. You have too much blood on your hands.” But Cline seems not to care that his supposedly “biblical” heroes are everything America is supposed to resist. We are supposed to learn from David’s example not to act like him. But evangelical American Christians love to proclaim that “God works with flawed people” because secretly, they understand their entire theology is a hypocritical trashpit of cherry-picking creationism and longstanding bigotry based on tiny bits of scripture that amount to a house of cards.
And so predictably, Cline also chooses to ignore the fact that FDR came into power after Robber Baron capitalists crashed the economy in a spectacularly speculative fashion. Unemployment reached 25% during the Great Depression, while the Dust Bowl raged across the American plains because lying Christo-fascists dismissed the environmental realities of arid country to promise hapless farmers that “rain would follow the plow.” God hates liars, but liars hate to admit they’re ever wrong. Look at Trump.
Amidst these 1930s Right Wing failures, FDR used the government to restore a sense of balance and security in the face of rampant abuse by free market capitalists whose “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” approach was the perverse form of socialism preferred by greedy capitalists. Trump and Project 2025 seek to return to those failed policies again in America and are proceeding with fascist fervor led by the corporatist Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation’s murky band of bigots, economic terrorists, and Libertarian hustlers.
I read Project 2025 and found it grossly unpalatable in tone and objectives. It is a fascist document much like Hitler’s Mein Kampf. There are similarities to its authors, and Trump, and one other famous fascist. As the United States Holocaust Museum website note, “Mein Kampf promoted the key components of Nazism: rabid antisemitism, a racist world view, and an aggressive foreign policy geared to gaining Lebensraum (living space) in eastern Europe.” Do you note the similarities to Trump’s approach here? He’s trying to annex Canada and Greenland for “living space” and “security” for America.
There’s also similarities between Hitler’s economic aims and Trump’s constant grift of selling Trump Bibles and other crap bearing his image. The parallel is that Trump spent time as a political exile, and like Hitler, rose to power again due to populist rhetoric of hate and malignant dog-whistle racism. “Hitler began writing Mein Kampf in 1924 in Landsberg prison, following his conviction for high treason for attempting to overthrow the German republic in November 1923 in the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. Although his coup failed, Hitler used his trial as a pulpit to spread Nazi propaganda. Largely unknown before this event, he gained immediate notoriety in the German and international press. The court sentenced him to five years imprisonment, of which he served less than 9 months. With his political career at an all-time low, he hoped that publishing the book would earn him some money and serve as a propaganda platform to air his radical views and attack those whom he accused of betraying him and Germany.
I created this timeline to show how we’ve moved from MAGA to fascism.
Cline doesn’t recognize it as such, but he’s an avowed fascist. He openly attacked Wheaton College grads for not sharing his brand of Christo-fascist hatred. He also tears at the fabric of scripture itself to score points with his Right Wing audience.
Apart from this fearmongering, the Open Letter lodges a litany of leftwing complaints. The issues? Vought’s goals do not sufficiently prioritize illegal immigrants, homosexuality, and abortion, and do not pay adequate homage to the altar of “racial injustice.” All these typically left-of-center hobbyhorses, apparently, have biblical precedent, according to the Wheaton alumni.
The alumni also complain that Project 2025—the entirety of which they pin on Vought—is insufficiently “concerned with governing faithfully as Christians.” A speech from Wheaton president Phil Ryken is quoted wherein Ryken elevated the type of Christian who can “carry forward the Great Commission.” And I had thought Christian Nationalism was the problem, not the solution. Curious.
The ardent cynicism with which men like Cline engage with these subjects borders on pathological. So there’s an instructional moment here. Pathology is “the study of disease, including its causes, mechanisms, development, and effects,” and Cline’s version of religion and politics is a virus feeding on its host of religious and political conservatism.
At the end of the previous paragraph, Cline conflates the Great Commission with political authoritarianism, perhaps believing that the call to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” is a political call to action. Cline and his ilk take that “commission” to mean “convert or die,” which is why the Crusades took so many lives, and why the Wheaton College mascot was once the Crusaders. But the Wheaton College alumni questioning Vought’s nationalistic tactics invite believers back to Jesus’ original intention: Offer love, not law. Welcome all, not just the chosen few.
But Cline is the unrepentant type, so he cherry-picks some targets much like his hateful hero Trump.
Since Wheaton alums seem so concerned about the OMB all of a sudden, where was the outrage over Shalanda Young, President Biden’s demonstrably unqualified director, and her enthusiasm for federal funding of abortion? Of course, Young isn’t a Wheaton alum. But what about when Michael Gerson (‘86) went soft on gay marriage? Did a very concerned alumni letter circulate then?
Cline leaps to ardently ignorant conclusions here by trotting out terms that appeal to right-wing hypocrites. He maligns those who protect abortion rights, yet where is the right-wing call for men to stop impregnating women rather than blaming women for getting abortions after the fact? The ignorance of the so-called Pro-Life movement is going on fifty years of public whining when in fact, Jesus would tell them, “If you must depend on the law to bring about the Kingdom of God, you have already failed.” Birth control is readily available to prevent the need for abortions, but right-wingers oppose that too. See how lies add up to more lies?
But Cline isn’t with his brand of dishonest apologetics. Not yet. He blames honest Wheaton College alumni for holding “rigid ideological lines” defined as “too liberal” for Cline’s tastes. You’ll get to read that letter at the end of this piece, and will find that many of Wheaton’s graduates do understand scripture, and point that out in their letter protesting Vought’s perverted brand of dismissively bigoted religion.
But, clearly, alumni status is not the determinative criteria for alumni outrage. Wheaton students had no problem weighing in on Jerry Falwell Jr’s views on guns and Muslims, especially when the Washington Post was willing to publish their complaints. Nathan Heath, an analyst at NSI and the second signature on the Open Letter, was one of the authors on the Post piece along with Ciera Horton McElroy, the former editor of the Wheaton student paper and another signatory.
What is clear is that the Wheaton alumni opposing Vought possess their own “rigid ideological lines.” Vought and the Trump administration generally represent a rolling back of the status quo in which the largely millennial and obviously left of center Wheaton alumni are quite comfortable.
Their problem with Wheaton College’s congratulation of Russ Vought is not that he is a political figure; it is that he has the wrong political views.
So yes, Timon Cline. Let’s be clear. Russell Vought is the exact kind of religious authority that Jesus would find (and did find) disgusting for the love of power, self-righteous status, and personal aggrandizement. And you don’t get that?
And yet, Timon Cline is all about the language of victimhood and self-proclaimed persecution.
Obviously, congratulating an alum for achievement in government service does not constitute an endorsement of any policy or view. Deplorables like Vought, however, can receive no such treatment. Again, wrong politics. Wheaton couldn’t stop celebrating Michael Gerson whom they pronounced “God’s wordsmith.” Was this sacrilege? Too political? But then again, Gerson had the right politics.
To be clear, colleges should celebrate the accomplishments of their graduates. This is natural and appropriate. By any measure, Gerson was accomplished, but so is Russ Vought. Objectively so.
Cline’s claim here is not sophisticated. He avows fealty to triumphalism, not morality. Then he goes on to gaslighting the Wheaton alums once more by accusing them of Christian Nationalism.
The authors and signatories of the Open Letter should drop the pretense and simply admit that they would like their alma mater to support their vision for the country and not Vought’s. That is all that they are saying. This has nothing to do with decorum or precedent or norms. Indeed, the vision cast by the Open Letter is decidedly Christian nationalist, just of a different variety. The Open Letter is, in fact, asking Wheaton College to take a stand on policy, their policy. The College should not capitulate. Last I checked, Russ Vought, for all his alleged “authoritarianism,” had issued no such demand to his alma mater. Who is the better liberal here?
These word games from Cline are passive-aggressive instincts at play, defined as, “expressing negative emotions indirectly, often through subtle acts of resistance or defiance instead of directly addressing the issue, such as through sarcasm, procrastination, or withholding information.” Many passive-aggressive individuals are manipulative, abusive gaslighters who try to make other people think they’re the crazy ones. It’s a bit surprising that Cline didn’t see fit to insert the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” here. It certainly fit his other methods.
Or perhaps he accomplishes the same aim by claiming that the “marginalized and vulnerable” MAGA populace, including, of course, the avowed racists, anti-Semitics, Trump-flag waving militias and bitter CEOs having to recognize DEI policies that are so beset that they can’t function in this world? Cline seems to think so.
For all their moralizing about the “marginalized and the vulnerable” and government “accountability,” the Open Letter includes exactly no mention of the American people who have suffered under the unaccountable government of the past four years, or the past decade, for that matter. It is rich indeed, in the wake of the USAID revelations, to charge the incumbent administration with “authoritarianism,” unaccountability, and neglect of the public good.
The link he includes in that paragraph begins with deranged accusations that USAID promotes aggressively “anti-Christian” agendas. It reads: “While we shouldn’t celebrate the loss of anyone’s job, we should celebrate the dismantling of USAID, which for decades has been squandering our tax dollars to sow sinful corruption in other countries and indoctrinate the world with transgenderism, homosexuality, atheism, and eugenics.”
The amounts of money ascribed to these supposedly horrific aims are pittances, small amounts to support cultural diversity and realities that hard-line, dichotomous religious bigots love to deny. But there are practical solutions to which they object too.
$1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”
$70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
Despite what numbskulls like Cline and his audience like to proclaim, transgender people are real, human beings. Recognizing their humanity is not “sinful,” nor is producing a play about the potential difficulties of dealing with rampant bigotry in places where intolerance and ignorance often rule. But Cline seems to think that’s what Wheaton College is nowadays.
Wheaton used to produce serious, thoughtful, and accomplished graduates, and it may do so again, if it can overcome evident mission drift. Where, on the present political spectrum do these infantile alumni think Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry, for example, would have landed? If Vought is unpalatable, then so are they. (Then again, there’s a reason Franklin Graham recalled his late father’s library from the College years ago.)
Cline doesn’t realize that Franklin Graham is frequently the opposite of everything his father ever stood for. He’s a mean-spirited cuss whose political instincts overwhelm any good work he does.
For example, based on Graham’s own words, we see how and why Right-wing Christians are now “pro-Russian.” Graham stated: In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” He dismisses the fact that Putin is a murderous thug and war criminal to equate the supposed “sins” of gay people with the likes of a man frequently throwing political opponents out of tall hotel windows. If Cline had any honesty in his soul, he would disavow such narcissistic self-aggrandizement as Jesus did. But Cline is not about Jesus. He’s about using fear and hate to control his little world. He even issues economic threats to the college in hopes of dunning them into submission. Cline is a brute.
In any case, Wheaton College has a choice: succumb to emotional terrorism or get back to the business of cultivating faithful national leadership on behalf of American evangelicals. The crop of alumni represented in the Open Letter reflects poorly on the College. Should we expect more of the same from Wheaton or more of the older produce like Vought?
At bare minimum, surely the Ryken administration recognizes the Michael Jordan rule: conservatives pay tuition too. But they won’t much longer if liberal alumni can force a denunciation of people who work in the White House.
Here’s the letter Wheaton College alums wrote to their alma mater.
An Open Letter from Wheaton College Alumni on Project 2025 & Endorsing Russell Vought To the Wheaton College Community and our American Neighbors,
We, the undersigned alumni of Wheaton College, write with deep concern over fellow alumnus Russell Vought’s role in forming and implementing Project 2025 on behalf of the current presidential administration. As Wheaton graduates, we were shaped by an education grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which states that the Kingdom of Heaven is known by the Fruit of the Spirit and made manifest by feeding the hungry, giving the stranger a place to sleep, clothing the naked, and caring for the sick. Our Wheaton education taught us that to serve the hurting and broken in our world is to serve Christ himself (Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 25:31-46). It is precisely because of our commitment to these values that we find Vought’s vision for government, as outlined in Project 2025, to be antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the mission of Wheaton College—and moreover, we are concerned by the college’s quick and public proclamation of support in social media posts on February 7th, 2025.
Institutional Endorsements Wheaton’s own statement, after removing their original post, says: “Our institutional and theological commitments are clear that the College, as a non-profit institution, does not make political endorsements.” However, it has been repeatedly clear that the institution is making public-facing posts that are divisively partisan, including its affirmation of Russell Vought on February 7th, 2025. Wheaton College also gave Fox News a very different response on February 10th, 2025:
“The social media post led to more than 1,000 hostile comments, primarily incendiary, unchristian comments about Mr. Vought, in just a few hours. It was not our intention to embroil the College or Mr. Vought in a political discussion or dispute. Thus, we removed the post, rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction. This was in no way an apology for having expressed congratulations or for suggesting prayers for our alumnus.”
Wheaton’s student body, and thereby its alumni family, have always encompassed a broad spectrum of social and political affiliations. What unites us is Christian orthodoxy. We ask that the college be mindful of public proclamations that translate as political endorsements—especially in cases where the issues, as in Project 2025, are antithetical to Christian charity.
Christianity and the Temptation of Totalitarianism Project 2025 is a blueprint for consolidating executive power to remake American government and society along rigid ideological lines. The plan proposes dismantling independent institutions, purging thousands of career civil servants in favor of political loyalists, and centralizing authority under one person. Such a system is not only dangerously authoritarian but also profoundly unbiblical. As fallen and sinful people, we acknowledge the need for accountability, regardless of how high or prestigious one’s position or office; indeed, leaders are held to a higher standard and are accountable not only to the people they lead, but to God himself (1 Timothy 3:1-10, Ezekiel 34:10). Project 2025 is less concerned with governing faithfully as Christians than with cynically using Christianity’s majority status to establish political dominance, remake the United States in their own image, and further marginalize at-risk populations.
The pursuit of unchecked political control dismisses the humility of Christ and the servant-leadership model that Wheaton instilled in us. In Philip Ryken’s plenary address at the Fourth Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization, Wheaton’s president was forthright: “There is only one kind of Christian who is able to carry forward the Great Commission…and that is someone who embraces Christ-like servanthood as a way of life. We are all called to be servants.” The cost of service was high for Christ and his Apostles and is high for us as his followers today. As alumni of Wheaton College, we cannot lend credibility to a rejection of servanthood and an authoritarian restructuring of American society.
Marginalization of the Vulnerable Project 2025 promotes policies that target marginalized communities in ways that unequivocally contradict the biblical command to care for the least of these (Matthew 25:40). Among its stated goals are:
Gutting protections for undocumented immigrants and refugees, despite Scripture’s consistent call to welcome those same persons and condemnation of figures who do not (Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Hebrews 13:2, Matthew 25:43).
Dismantling civil rights protections, dismissing the reality of racial injustice, and refusing to seek the biblical vision of reconciliation and justice (Isaiah 1:17, Amos 5:24, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, Acts 10:28, Colossians 3:11).
Rolling back opportunities and protections for people with disabilities and LGBTQ individuals, failing to treat all people with the dignity and respect that every image-bearer of God deserves (Genesis 1:26-27 & 5:1, Psalm 8:4-6, Ephesians 4:29-32, Matthew 22:39, 1 John 4:20-21).
Going far beyond humanitarian restrictions on abortion, by limiting access to contraception, daycare, and medical interventions for life-threatening pregnancies; prioritizing surveillance and control of women in crisis situations. (1 John 4:18, Luke 8:43-48, Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalms 46:1-3, John 14:27, Isaiah 41:13).
Slashing educational resources and healthcare for families of little financial means, ignoring the Bible’s emphasis on honoring the poor the same as the rich, Christ’s statement that the poor are blessed and that the kingdom of God belongs to them, and his assertion that those who reject the poor reject Him and are in danger of judgment (James 2:3-4, Proverbs 22:2 & 31:8-9, Luke 14:13-14, Ezekiel 16:49, Luke 6:20, Matthew 25:41-43).
These policies seek to enforce a narrow and exclusionary vision of American identity that aligns with political imperialism rather than biblical Christianity. As Wheaton alumni, we worship in accord with people of all tribes, tongues, nations, and languages, in anticipation of celebrating side by side, as one Church before the throne of God (Revelation 7:9). We celebrate and exhort a return to Wheaton’s foundation as an institution committed to the defense of fundamental freedom for all peoples. Under the guise of limiting government, Project 2025 instead proposes consolidations of presidential power. We believe the design of our government, as reflected in the US Constitution, reflects healthy ideals such as the limitation of human power in order to protect the vulnerable. It would be disastrous to subvert such designs.
Moreover, Christ-like values and character, not raw notoriety and power, are critical to the witness of the Church. We celebrate the God-given differences and unique abilities that make up one Body of many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Different social, economic, racial, and cultural identities are brought together by faith in Christ so that we as Christians can effectively live out the Great Commission and spread the good news to all peoples (Galatians 3:28, Mark 16:15). The domination of one American tribe and invalidation of all others undermines the Church’s global role. If not in agreement, we are nonetheless called to live together in unity, edifying each other and standing together as one Church (John 13:35, Romans 14:19, Psalm 133). Project 2025 espouses an abusive authority that is fatally misaligned with the Word that stands forever (Isaiah 40:6-8).
A Call to Faithfulness Wheaton College has stood as a beacon of Christian higher education, committed to rigorous intellectual engagement, faithful discipleship, and responsible citizenhood. To align, even indirectly, with a political vision that prioritizes power over service, exclusion over love, and coercion over conscience would be to abandon the very heart of our faith.
As Wheaton alumni, we publicly distance ourselves from Russell Vought’s work and reaffirm our commitment to the Gospel’s radical call to justice, mercy, and humility. Silence in the face of such an anti-Christian vision is complicity.
The history of Christianity is one of argument over the meaning of Jesus, the role of sin in life, and humanity’s relationship to God. Or at least, that’s what Christianity is supposed to be about. Instead, the world has witnessed a protracted conflict over scripture, its authorship and verity, and how we’re supposed to understand critical aspects of the book Christianity calls the Holy Bible.
To understand these questions more clearly, consider that when Jesus arrived on the scene two thousand years ago, he followed in the wake of a man called John the Baptist, of whom there was a supposed prophecy. Isaiah 40:3: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ” Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight in the desert. A highway for our God.” John’s role was clear: cut through the religious legalism of the day and place the focus on repentance of sin. He challenged the rules and rituals of the temple authorities, and Jesus later dismissed them as meaningless to a relationship with God.
We all know what happened from there. The religious authorities took great offense at being questioned. They sent people out to quiz Jesus on the rules they made from scripture, and Jesus tossed revealing questions back at them. They could not answer him effectively because their hypocrisy in implementing those traditions was apparent: they loved the authority it conferred upon them. Jesus also found the use of the temple for commercial purposes offensive. He attacked those conventions by creating a whip out of cords and drove the vendors out of his “father’s house.”
None of this took place because the religious authorities were Jewish. Jesus was a Jew by birth and faith. But he despised what conservative religious authorities had done to turn Judaism into a religion of law rather than love of others. He used parables to instruct people on the ways of God that stood outside the Torah as examples of the right way to live. Most of these stories drew from daily life experiences, and many used organic symbolism: the mustard seed, the yeast in the dough, to draw connections between nature and spiritual truths. That’s a vital example of how we’re supposed to read the Bible. Yet centuries of adherence to biblical literalism and the legalism that emerges from it have buried Jesus’ wisdom and ways under layers of bad theology, defined as defending God when God does not need defending.
Rather than learn from the conflicted nature of the religious authorities in Jesus’ day, the religion known as Christianity repeated its mistakes many times in history. The Catholic Church used purgatory as a money-making scheme based on a Jewish reference to the purification of souls. One of their priests, Martin Luther, challenged this brand of legalism and sought to emphasize salvation through grace.
That led to the Reformation, a religious movement that produced Protestantism, a branch of Christianity that, to this day, many conservative Catholics consider illegitimate. But Protestants went on to invent their form of legalism, which goes by various names, including fundamentalism, biblical literalism, and today’s populist form called “apologetics.”
All of these constitute the most legalistic forms of Christianity. Many focus on “obeying the rules” and engaging in the confessional language of latter-day Christianity. These habits frequently dismiss Jesus’s core teachings in favor of adhering to a set statement of belief encompassed in creeds or, worse, through alliance with political aims of power and authority.
That brings us to the problems facing America today, where politically charged religious beliefs assemble a form of allegiance to God and Country. This approach is collectively known as Christian Nationalism, fueled by the brand of Christianity called Dominionism, a repeat of the same legalistic fascism that religious authorities engaged in two thousand years ago.
When you trace the behavior patterns to their religious sources, it’s easy to comprehend. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden sought to take Adam and Even under its authority and control by quoting God and pretending to defend God’s Word. “Did God say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” and then issues the legalistic half-truth that leads the couple into sin, “You will not surely die.”
See, the Serpent “was more clever than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.” It knew how to manipulate people to take them under its authority. It tempted them with promises of knowledge and authority, stating, “God knows that when you eat fruit from that tree, you will know things you have never known before.”
Where do we find that type of temptation repeated in scripture? Satan tempts Jesus in the Wilderness by inviting him to use power and create bread to assuage his hunger or to submit to Satan’s authority and earn all control over the world. See, the temptations of legalism have always been with us. It’s sad that Christianity so often succumbs to its own worst flaws and then tries to impose them on the world. That’s what we’re facing in the United States of America: a religious mindset that assumes it owns all authority but ignores the corruption at its core. That belief system is easily exploited by those who excel at manipulation and seek power for themselves, historically, theologically, and politically. Jesus didn’t like or abide by any of that.
You’ve seen the trucks with American flags flying on one side while a Trump 2024 flag flaps around on the other. You’ve seen the Red Hats and the Rallies, where people applaud the hate-filled language of their leader, who mocks the disabled, and whose patent distrust and disdain for immigrants is evident despite the dog-whistle language meant to cloak the hate behind it. You’ve heard the MAGA Candidate threaten his political opponents with prison time and, worse, the death penalty if necessary to dispatch those daring to question his authority. You’ve watched the former President Trump mug obsequiously for the camera with that smug smile backed by the phony victimhood speaking style. “They hate me!” Trump gaslights the world in quasi-religious fervor. “They are persecuting me, and they are persecuting you.”
Trump is the face of an American movement claiming to represent patriotism, but it is not. Instead, it is Hatriotism, a political strategy that thrives on vicious accusations against liberalism, the true foundation of democracy and the Republic, our laws, and our government. Yet according to Hatriots, these institutions are the enemy of the people. The conservative members of the Supreme Court, all of whom hate the rule of law if it contradicts their ideology and political alliance, just proved that.
Supreme Hate
The conservative Supreme Court demonstrated that it is a tool of the Hate Machine that was once the Republican Party. The SCOTUS granted Hatriotism full approval by granting immunity to Donald Trump, the man who disrespects our nation’s laws and resists their natural limits at every turn. Given that judgment by the six conservative members of the Supreme Court, there is now no limit to what hate will be allowed to do to anyone the GOP decides to punish, with Trump leading the way.
Russian collusion by imitation
Indeed, Hatriotism looks much like the power politics of regimes run by the vicious whims of authoritarians. Over in Russia, Vladimir Putin has ordered his perceived enemies extinguished at will. Some fall out of high windows while others face the silent death of poison. Do we think Trump will act any differently here in America? When it comes to international politics, Putin’s hate-filled paranoia deemed Ukraine part of Mother Russia. To prove it, he’s tried to beat his perceived child into submission.
Trump’s feverishly transactional style is no different. His admiration for dictators is apparent, as is his disdain for what he brands “shithole countries.” Hate is the political blood running through Trump’s veins.
Daddy issues
History is also rife with the childishness of world leaders running around with parental bugs up their asses. Hate-filled despots and insecure wannabe kings all seem to have Mommy and Daddy issues driving their furious need for approval. President George W. Bush invaded Iraq to show his father that he could do what Daddy could not, which was to capture Saddam Hussein. The torture committed in Iraq under the son’s watch was the hate-filled byproduct of that compensatory need for approval.
The Trump Saga is driven by Daddy Issues too. That dynamic holds a far worse menace for us in America and abroad. A Washington Post story about the Trump Family history reveals the source of the insecurity on display in everything Trump does, “We know that many presidents have had daddy issues: dreaming of their absent fathers, chafing at their judgments or struggling under their legacies. When discussing his father in his memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trump stresses the business savvy he gleaned from the late Fred C. Trump. “I learned about toughness in a very tough business, I learned about motivating people, and I learned about competence and efficiency.”
Tough to take
In Trump’s case, that pursuit of “toughness” is mostly about covering up his long line of grandiose mistakes. His many failed business ventures. His bankruptcies and fraud. His three failed marriages that succumbed to his infidelity. Now he’s a convicted felon hiding behind claims he’s never done anything wrong, all while hiding his vanity behind a prodigiously dyed blonde combover shading a face painted to disguise a complexion that without makeup resembles a pale grocery store tomato.
Faux Christians
Despite all this vacuous dishonesty, Trump refuses to confess any flaw, a trait that his Christian evangelical supporters seem to adore despite the call to repent of sins founding their tradition. Instead, they excuse Trump’s hateful attitudes by comparing him to the likes of King David, the genocidal despot whom God refused to honor at the end of his life because he had too much blood on his hands.
That murderous legacy already exists in the latter-day interpretation of the Second Amendment, a law split in half by conservatives on the Supreme Court so that hate can be armed in its battle with cultural progress and peace in America. The first half of the Second Amendment, the part about a “well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state,” has been hijacked by hate-filled anti-government soldiers of fortune that spend most of their time blasting cement-filled Home Depot buckets with ammunition hoping someday they’ll have an excuse to turn the slogan “How Doers Get More Done” into a full-blown takeover of the American government.
Hate on the march
Those were the same disturbingly small-minded militants of Hatriotism invading the Capitol on January 6, 2020. They waved American flags but also Confederate banners, proving their cause was nothing more than treason disguised as a righteous cause. They were called to arms and used sharpened flagpoles to thump and stab Capitol police, all while welcoming into their ranks the racists and anti-Semitics, the Bison Heads and suburban nutcases, many of whom wound up arrested and convicted for their crimes of obstructing governmental business and destroying government property.
That’s Hatriotism in a nutshell. It lacks the consciousness and conscience to realize it has the entire American Experiment wrong. That’s why Make American Great Again fits Hatriotism so well as a slogan. It calls the nation back to a time when prejudice was “normal,” and when bigoted forms of religion held sway everywhere from town hall meetings to public school systems. Hatriotism wants––indeed needs––to lurch backward in time because it is a form of hate that Americans embracing principles and conscience seek to leave behind.
Right now the haters seem to have the upper hand, but the Union fought slavery and bigotry in the past. We’ll do it again in the present to resist the deplorable, despicable nature of Hatriotism. That’s our only choice as Americans.
A couple weeks ago, an email arrived through my website with a request for an illustration job. The creative brief was quite complete, albeit for an interesting subject. Apparently, some “client” of the emailer wanted to produce a presentation to warn youth about the dangers of monkey pox disease.
I found the request a bit odd because I didn’t think monkey pox was much of a threat these days. I’m no expert on infectious diseases, but if someone wants to help spread the news on the value of vaccinations, I’m all for it. The creative brief came with illustration descriptions that were quite detailed. Still, I responded requesting more information about the job. The potential client proposed compensation for the sixteen illustrations inviting at one thousand dollars per 8 X 10” full-color panel. That’s higher than most jobs I’ve done in a 40-year creative and illustration career, but again, some clients just want the work done and don’t care about the budget. If luck would have it, I wasn’t going to turn it down.
There were however Red Flags about the assignment. The person contacting explained that he was hearing impaired and would communicate via email and text. “Okay…” I thought to myself. “We’ll see how this goes.”
Progress
I did one quick sketch that took fifteen minutes and sent it to the client for approval. He said yes with hardly any feedback. That made me suspicious, but the money still sounded good.
Within a week after our initial contact, the “client” requested my address to send a check for a down payment. I stated that 25-50% as part of the initial $4000 first phase of the project was sufficient. I don’t start a job these days, especially one received online, without receiving earnest money. A few days later, the client confirmed that he’d sent a message to arrive through UPS and the US Mail.
Something in the process still felt funny to me. “I’m not sure this is real,” I told my wife and son. They agreed that I should proceed with caution. “Wait until you get a check and cash it before doing anything for them,” my wife advised.
The check arrived in a big USPS envelope. Again, the check was just floating around inside a 15″ X 12″ shipping envelope. “Who does that?” I thought. At a glance, the check looked legitimate enough. I investigated the company listed on check on Linkedin and did a search online to corroborate its location and it lined up. My wife and I joked that I should “run to the bank” to test it all out. A part of me wondered if that was the right thing to do.
Text talk
Then I received a text from the client:
“Hi Christopher, usps confirmed the successful delivery of the package to you…Kindly confirm you have received it so that we can proceed. I await your response.”
I confirmed receipt of the check and immediately got another message. “Thanks for the update. Kindly go ahead and deposit the check and let me know as soon as you do…” I took the check to the ATM machine and paused to take a photo of the document before depositing it. I had no idea if that was legal, but I did it anyway in case something odd happened with the deposit. The check had a small iridescent seal on it that looked a bit like a chip you’d find on a credit or debit card. Not having seen that on a check before, I paused before depositing it. I wondered: could that chip somehow send information back to a potential scammer? One never knows these days…
The check slipped into the ATM machine and the bank showed that the deposit registered.
The next morning I received another text: “Hi Christopher, How are you doing today? I would like to know if you successfully deposited the check. I have to give feedback to my sponsor on the payment. How’s the project coming along? Warm regards.”
To this point, nothing about these interactions felt right or authentic to me. While I was relieved in some sense that the check deposited the night before and a deposit showed up as deposited in my account, that chip on the check still made me nervous. The ATM spit out a receipt showing my prior balance and the new deposit combined. I still wasn’t convinced the check was real or that the “job” wasn’t a scam.
Then another communication came. This one raised my suspicions to another level. “Okay, thanks for the update. I’d be glad if you could confirm funds availability in your account now and get back to me. I await response.”
At that point, every red flag I’d learned in online scam training had been checked. I was no longer convinced anything about that check was authentic. Then came the text that confirmed all my suspicions. “The sponsor has requested that the 2nd phase of the project be cancelled due to a family emergency,” the message read. “We will only work on the first phase and ensure to keep up with its deadline date.”
This scam is being exposed on Reddit
I decided to play along and draw the scammer out in full fashion. “Okay, so what’s that mean on refunding the money?” I asked. “I’m not using any of it until the assignment is completed,” I added. My thinking was that for legal reasons and self-protection I should construct a line of defense about ‘acceptance and intent.’ I’m no lawyer, but I’ve come to understand that exhibiting intention is sometimes as bad as actually doing something wrong. I live in the state where former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was caught shopping political promises under the mantle “This is Golden.”
Refund defund
The scammer (of course) welcomed the conversation about a refund. “Yes, that sounds good. The sponsor has provided me with her Zelle and PayPal details for the refund of the 2nd phase. Please advise which of the information I should provide you with so you can proceed with the refund now for $4000. Thank you.”
I responded. “This is quite strange to me. I’m going to check with the bank first.” That is what I proceeded to do. Then I wrote: “I’m not comfortable with any of this process. I will inform you of the next steps when I’ve checked with the bank.” Frankly, by that point, I was hoping to gather information that might somehow track back to the sender.
That communication engendered a different tone in response. “I am sorry about the inconvenience. Yes, you may check the bank, but the bank has already confirmed the check and funded your account. She decided to cancel phase 2 for a family emergency and until the vaccination exercise has concluded. Therefore, the second phase of the workshop has been moved to a later date next year. I’m giving you $200 more for your stress and canceling of the project. This is just to compensate for the dashed expectation.”
The real question is why scammers like this cannot be caught? I contacted my bank. I called the police.
That communication was received while I was on the phone with my bank, first through a local branch and then through the Fraud Alert national network. They didn’t indicate they’d do anything but did suggest I not send the money. The guy on the line also congratulated me on being cautious in that respect. Still, I asked, “Don’t we do anything right now?”
The Fraud Alert guy replied that the bank has to let the check clear or bounce, or “come back” as it was explained to me. My thinking was much different. Shouldn’t we get the FBI be involved? Wasn’t this an attempted crime in progress? It sure had all the marks of an outright scam.
Meanwhile, the scammer kept up his pressure to refund money. I responded, “I’m not sending you any money. I am on the phone with the bank now.”
“What did your bank say?”
I wrote back again. “Just got off. They said don’t send any money.”
Then came the emotion-based plea: “Chris, please. I hope this doesn’t affect the project in any way because your feedback is top-notch, and professionalism is impeccable. You have been been giving me the best service ever since my very first message to you. I don’t want this to affect my relationship with my sponsor.”
For all of you out there reading this, I hope you recognize the problem here: This brand of broken English is a sign that things are not right with the contact.
I replied, “Unless that check clears inspection by my bank nothing is happening. I talked with them already. I’m perplexed and suspicious by refund requests. I’m not doing that. If your sponsor is legit they can wait.”
At that point my only purpose was holding him at bay in hopes of getting some kind of investigation going. It wasn’t until that evening that I had a chance to Google “Peter Welsh illustration scam” and immediately found the thread on Reddit where a discussion about the same guy doing the same scam in various forms was shared by many others. The people behind these multiple personas and versions of the scam are apparently prodigious in their craft.
Here’s another version of the same scam.
The scammer tried one more time to get me involved: “I’m so sorry this happened, and don’t feel bad. The check is legitimate, and the payment has gone through, so there’s not a compelling reason to put a hold on it. Please, I would appreciate it if you can send the money out today. You can also use money order.”
I read that message and muttered to myself…”F you…”
And after that, it was radio silence from the scammer for five hours. It is highly likely that he sensed my suspicions and moved over to another “account” that looked more promising. In the interim, I went about my business as a substitute PE teacher for the day, and drove home glad that the scammer had let up and that I’d called the authorities. On the way home, I set up and appointment to make a police report. Then I opened the original Gmail message to look closer at the photo attached to the Sender. As others noted, perhaps he’s some kind of real person. More likely not. In the age of facial recognition, this photo is probably stolen from somewhere else. Just like the check I received. It’s a fake.
I looked up the name of the company from which the check was issued. I’m not sure what to think about that. Their Glassdoor and Google reviews feature a long string of one-star reviews. They ostensibly sell automotive parts, but they must also be missing stacks of checks or else someone is creating fake ones using their company’s name.
Of course, that check that I “cashed” did not clear the bank and it immediately caused other problems. Admittedly, I did not protect myself well enough in this instance. That said, I filed the police report against this scammer. The officer shared that their department gets 8-10 calls for different kinds of scams each week. “It’s sad,” the officer shared. “People lose tens of thousands of dollars sometimes. Especially older people.”
One last shot
In late afternoon I received a phone call from the scammer. He talked in some sort of Eastern European accent, possibly Russian. Over the years I’ve worked with numerous Eastern European caregivers for my late father. These accents are often difficult to tell apart. It wasn’t a surprise to me that this guy was from some odd origin. That’s often how all of this works. Even the 2016 presidential election was impacted by fake social media accounts run by Russian interests. Meta recently announced the 4000+ fake accounts pumping out political disinformation were removed from Facebook. Scamming works at a global level these days.
My caller, whose working name is “Peter Welsh” started right in talking about whether the check had cleared or not. I was ahead of him on that, having already called the bank and checked online to see that it was “Oh Hold.” Our conversation veered from one place to another over the course of a minute. My goal was to get home off the line asap. He tried to manipulate me by telling me I was “acting weird” about the refund. I outright told him to stop gaslighting me and hung up. Then I Blocked any remaining calls from his number. I admit that I could not resist sending him a semi-nasty text. Father, Forgive My Sins.
Just think: this guy and his ‘operation’ is doing this kind of thing to dozens, perhaps hundreds of people across the country. He’s probably had success too. Even if he works 10-12 marks a week, $4-10,000 isn’t bad pay for a week’s work.
It’s a scammy world
Clearly I’m not alone in this being exposed to this scam experience. I’m sharing this in hopes that other people will be wiser and keep their guard up. To be honest: I’ve always been too trusting person in this world. That has cost me in many ways, including in business where even the people you work with have “agendas” that in some cases qualify as “scams” when seeking internal favor just grabbing additional compensation.
The love of money really is the root of all evil. I think back to a time when a fellow salesperson sandbagged his cumulative ad sales during a competition. He waited until the last minute to turn them in so that he could a $250 sales prize. Working hard in my little territory, I’d led the contest all along. Meanwhile, this jerkwad sold just enough to say ahead of me in his better territory, then walked over the board on the last day and filled in his totals. He scammed me, in other words.
Big picture fraud
There’s a ton of fraud taking place in this world. Along with scammers like this scuzzy Peter Welsh, scams take place in all kinds of places. Most common these days are online scammers (Facebook Marketplace, etc.) and cryptocurrency crooks, to name just a couple. The scams and fraud in this world include those concocted by deceptive CEOs or financial crooks (remember Enron, or Bernie Madoff?) Even seemingly “upright” corporate directors collect millions in salaries wrought from real or imagined profits while the workers driving productivity struggle to make ends meet. Wealth inequality is at a disturbing level in the United States of America.
We also see political scammers collecting millions in fund raising dollars while making all sorts of false promises to bilk money from supporters. One notable scammer in George Santos just got booted from Congress yet the likes of Trump (“Mexico is gonna build that wall…and if they don’t, we will!) still walks free. Trump excels in stealing support from millions of people even though his own University has been held culpable for fraud. The same holds true for his main business which is facing banishment from the State of New York for decades of scamming banks and the government with falsified financial reports and inflated and deflated property values. Trump is a proven crook and scammer. Now he’s on trial for host of other alleged yet well-documented crimes including attempts to steal an election, conduct an insurrection, and theft of Classified documents that include exposing national secrets to domestic and foreign sources.
Trump knows that his supporters don’t care that he’s a scammer. He’s their scammer for bragging that he’d “drain the swamp” while his administration turned out to be one of the most corrupt in US and World History.
A sucker born every minute
It’s often been said that there are “suckers born every minute” (P.T. Barnum, at right) Much has been made of this fact by huckster of many kind. Somehow, the general public never figures out who to trust. Mark Twain once said, “All it takes is ignorance and confidence, and success is sure.”
All it takes to deceive people is a bit of swagger and a carefully leveraged appearance of credibility. It’s been true since the dawn of recorded history. The Serpent in Genesis used the Word of God (“You will not surely die…) to lead Adam and Eve into temptation. According to scripture, they were the first suckers in history. But the real suckers are those who take the Bible narrative literally. Because, where did the wives for Adam and Cain come from? We’re supposed to ignore those casual details somehow?
The shocking thing is how so many people to this day seem eager and willing to be deceived. They’ll open their wallets and place their wholehearted trust––even their religious faith––behind proven scammers as if their life depends on it. There is nothing more disheartening that seeing otherwise good people get caught up in propagandistic schemes that are nothing more than artistic scams. All while the sociopathic crooks in power dishonestly insist they’ve got their victims’ best interests in mind.
Reverse prosperity gospel
None other than Jesus Christ warned against this kind of “reverse prosperity” scam system. He castigated the religious authorities of his day for taking money and gaining power by manipulating the masses through guilt and tradition. Today we have “Prosperity Gospel” preachers raking in millions in contributions while bilking people into thinking their donations will return prosperity to them. They’ve stolen pages from religious scammers of the past and modernized them through media.
These forms of religious scams are blatantly obvious, but people fall for them every day. Hell, even the Catholic Church ran a purgatory scam with its ‘indulgences’ program before one of their own priests, a guy named Martin Luther, called them to account. Purgatory and the collection of indulgences served as a money funnel to “protect” people from a place that existed only in the minds and bank accounts of the religious authorities. The many scams concocted by televangelists (End Times supplies, anyone?) and politicians claiming religious affiliation (Mike Johnson is now Speaker of the House) are no different. They are all working against the original truth and goodness that the Bible depicts in the person of Jesus.
Roped in but not duty bound
The attempted scammer successfully roped me in, but his last-minute try at gaslighting me into guilt didn’t work. Still, he knows those psychological bonds and ploys are what help him succeed. The more emotional a scammer can make a potential victim feel, the more chance they’ll get their hands on their money––and their soul.
While I nearly got tricked by the scammer, I’m grateful for having received direct training on how to identify scams before they take full effect. I was misled at first, but as the Red Flags added up, I wised up. My father wasn’t so lucky many years ago. He got roped into a network marketing scheme that cost our family $5000 in early 1970s money. I’ve had keen antennae up against such schemes ever since.
So beware. Scammers are real. They are all around you in this world and they’re committed to putting all their intellect and artistic deception to work in building “real relationships.” In fact, they’re merely trying to win your approval, steal your money, steal your vote, or steal an electionthey’ve already lost to escape prosecution for the crimes they’ve already committed. All while presenting themselves as a salvation from the evils of this world. These
The sad thing is that so many people embrace these scams as absolute truth. Even worse, they gaslight the rest of us for holding fast to honesty while claiming that we’re the liars. Meanwhile the security of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness all stand at risk because so many people fall for scams and never realize they’re the mark, not the wise ones.
About a year ago, I wandered down a rabbit hole while researching conservative attitudes about the January 6th insurrection. Along the way, I stumbled upon comments by Scott Adams, the cartoonist responsible for the Dilbert comic strip. He was raving about politics and blaming everyone for the problems of America but those most likely causing them. At that point in time, I stopped reading his comic strip in the Chicago Tribune, one of the newspapers to which I subscribe.
Like millions of other Americans disgusted by the vagaries of corporate life, I found Dilbert funny in some ways, and tragic in others. Adams is certainly adept at pointing out the fact that lousy bosses often rise to the top, and that middle managers have a hard time getting them to understand, much less embrace the truth.
And yet, Adams himself appears to have a hard time understanding the truth about many things. Most recently, he branded all Black people a “hate group” in one of the biggest gaslighting faux pas of all time. His Dilbert comic strip is now getting canceled right and left. Even the company responsible for getting Adams’ content out to newspapers had heard and seen enough. They dropped him too.
Adams’ response to the poll was vehement. “If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people… that’s a hate group,” Adams said during the broadcast. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people… because there is no fixing this.”
Adams deserved to get popped for making those racist remarks. Perhaps like many people claiming some sort of free speech clause… he’s now feeling like the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Popverse notes: Adams continues to be glibly unrepentant for his comments and their effects., “I’ve lost three careers to direct racism so far. Crocker Bank, Pacific Bell, and cartooning. All three were perpetrated by White people for their own gain,” he tweeted on Monday. “No Black person has ever discriminated against me. That’s partly why I identified as Black for several years.”
Drunk with power
Mr. Adams seems like a massively conflicted character, almost a cartoon of his own making. That self-conflicted nature reminds me of the time that I was sitting in a hospital emergency room with my daughter when she scratched her eye and was in some pain. We waited a long time to see a physician. While we sat there together a man strapped to a gurney in an open area was moaning and groaning loud enough for everyone to hear. “I want my booze!” he kept bellowing. “I want my f******* booze!”
When people get too belligerent, they sometimes need restraint.
This went on for a half hour at least. A security guard stood by his side keeping watch over the obviously inebriated man. Finally, the angry drunk turned his head to the policeman nearby, while saying, “Why did you do this to me?”
The officer leaned close enough to speak quietly to the man, and said: “We did not do this to you, sir. You did this to yourself.”
That’s a lesson that Scott Adams is learning right now. His self-inflicted punishment is costing him in terms of national image. There are financial implications as well. He’s lost comic strip revenue that once included income from 2000 newspapers in 65 countries. Even his book publisher is dumping his book project titled Reframe Your Brain. Why would anyone buy a book like that after learning the way Adams thinks?
Possible markets
Actually, there are probably millions of people eager to buy Adams’ book because they think just like the guy. Racism in the United States of America has gained stature among Right-wing activists enervated by the likes of Donald Trump, who blessed them on several occasions, even inviting them to be part of the January 6, 2020 attack on the United States Capitol building.
The most disturbing part of the type of dishonesty that leads to social injustice of this order is how many supposed Christians embrace Trump and by proxy, the racism that goes with it. That favoritism emerged during his 2016 campaign when the likes of high-profile Christian evangelicals such as Franklin Graham branded him God’s favorite candidate and stood by him through all sorts of scandals that would have tanked any other politician. The only thing that helped Trump survive his own power-drunk surge toward the White House was evangelical dismissiveness toward his clearly corrupt nature.
The not-so-Reverend Franklin Graham
Graham is now starting to show regrets about his Trump support, but the harm done poisons his legacy and has damaged democracy in the United States of America. As reported on WNYC, “Like his father, Rev. Billy Graham, before him, Rev. Franklin Graham is one of the nation’s most prominent preachers, influential in the evangelical world and in the highest echelons of Washington. But where Billy Graham came to regret that he had “sometimes crossed a line” into politics, Franklin Graham has no such qualms about showing his full-throated support of the President. An early advocate of Trump’s candidacy, he has remained stalwart even as scandals pile up. Graham tells the New Yorker staff writer Eliza Griswold that Trump’s critics have forgotten that “he’s our President. If he succeeds, you’re going to benefit.” Of Trump’s many personal scandals, Graham says only, “I hope we all learn from mistakes and get better. . . . As human beings, we’re all flawed, including Franklin Graham.”
Hypocrites and legalistic zealots
But evangelical Christians that follow the likes of Graham are nothing if not devout once they make up their minds that God is on their side. Even after two well-deserved impeachments and a massive set of lies about the threat of Covid, about 30-35% of Americans refuse(d) to give up support for Trump.
There is effectively a 1:1 relationship between the percentage of people that vote for Trump and those that adhere to a biblically literal worldview on subjects such as creationism, the contention that the earth and all life were conceived in just six literal, 24-hour days, that a literal flood once covered the entire earth and that all “kinds” of living creatures were preserved aboard an ark that floated for nearly a year.
There is zero scientific evidence supporting any of those contentions, yet nearly 1/3 of Americans eagerly defend such untruths as absolute truth. To put it more bluntly, they are quite used to lying to themselves to defend their belief system and other equally shallow and self-centered priorities, often based on anachronistic ideology and traditional understanding of scripture failing to allow for scientific or cultural advancements debunking the so-called biblical version of reality.
The culture and lifestyle devoted to literalistic, fundamentalist, and legalistic religion also spends considerable effort trying to turn their belief systems into law, even demanding that religious beliefs such as creationism be taught in public schools. These attempts at imposing Christian law ignore the Constitution’s clear ban on imposing a state religion. The pursuant retort is that the Constitution itself is based on so-called “Christian values,” and that America is by design a “Christian Nation.” None of this is in the least bit honest.
Pushback is not persecution
When the American public conducts pushback against attempts to turn religion into law, the hard-Right Christian community loves to cry “persecution.” This version of victimhood is a gaslighting attempt of its own kind. That’s why Trujp was successful in garnering the right-wing Christian voting bloc. He plays the victim himself, and earns sympathy as a result. Before Trump, the Christian Right voted for George W. Bush on the dog-whistle hopes that an authoritarian embrace of Christianity would win the day.
This push toward American theocracy was predictable. The signs have been there for decades, as “Rock musician Frank Zappa once said, “The biggest threat to America today is not communism, it’s moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that’s happened during the Regan (sic) administration is steering us right down that pipe.”
Musician and iconoclast Frank Zappa had it right about the threat of right-wing theocracy.
The ironic aspect of all this theocratic favoritism is that President Barack Obama is a practicing Christian with a healthy family in comparison to Trump with his multiple wives, porn star associations, and lust for his own daughter. Yet the Right Wing eagerly branded Obama as a “Muslim” as if that religious affiliation disqualified him from office. In specious fashion, the dog-whistle goal was to associate President Obama with Islamic extremism with hints of abject racism mixed in.
Speaking of Democratic Christians, President Joe Biden is a devout Catholic man that has seen suffering and sorrow in life and approaches challenges with compassion and contrition. Former President Jimmy Carter devoted his entire life to service after occupying the highest office in the land, yet the Right-Wing still refuses to recognize his true Christian nature versus the dishonest puppet-play religiosity of a man like Trump who couldn’t quote a Bible versus when asked about it. Yet he promised to ban abortion and gay marriage, and that trumps all other qualities among conservative Christians.
An ugly history
Looking back 150 years or so in American history, this political zealotry disguised as Christian righteousness is sort of ideological monstrosity that once pushed the notion that Manifest Destiny granted White Christians absolute dominion over the North American continent. The grand excuse that God favored white people was used to wipe out Native Americans through wars, theft of land, distribution of disease and alcohol, broken treaties, and when all else failed, outright genocide.
That same brand of Christian gaslighting supported slavery for centuries, in part because the Bible didn’t specifically ban it. Never mind that Jesus preached love and spiritual equality for all souls regardless of race. That truth was too inconvenient for pro-slavery fascists and ostensibly devout Christians that ultimately seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy.
This pattern of hypocrisy and denial of culpability for hideous outcomes wrought by hate-based religion is consistent. It leads to dishonesty about social justice and produces the worst offenses against humanity, all while claiming that Christianity is one of the most persecuted religions on earth. That brand of gaslighting and dishonesty is beyond disturbing. That is why Christianity as a religion needs a reality check. If the tradition can’t handle honesty about its own corruption of scripture to justify selfish actions, then it doesn’t deserve to have the word CHRIST in its name. Jesus specifically fought that kind of religion during his ministry, yet legalistic Christianity persists in its sins of power to this day.
The not-so-anonymous hate club
All this dishonesty allows racism to persist to this day as well. That’s why a big market remains for the brand of hate espoused by Scott Adams. A stubborn segment of American culture has refused social change for centuries. That means some conservative publisher will pick up the rights to Adams’ book and it will sell well among deplorables eager to embrace the high-profile confirmation bias offered by Adams.
A rioter openly carrying a symbol of secession, racism, religious bigotry, and social injustice invading the United States Capitol.
That love for famous people spouting hate and lies is the same reason people have flocked to Fox News for decades, where Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and other well-known “commentators” preach right-wing talking points even when they know it is damaging to the nation they claim to protect. That makes them liars and hypocrites of the same order as dishonest Christians, which makes ugly sense because biblical literalists and constitutional originalists adhere to the same brand of a belief that anachronistic texts hold never-changing truths.
It has taken a while, but the like of Fox finally got caught red-handed after perpetrating the lies of Trump and the Republican Party for decades. Now Rupert Murdoch is plotting ways to avoid culpability for his corrupt regime of liars by trying to throw them under the bus. Murdoch and Fox (and by proxy, the GOP and Trump) are addicted to the money and power they gain by lying to the world. But they sure don’t want culpability. They’re the same sort of addict as the guy strapped to the gurney crying out, “I want my booze!” They are addicted to the thing they most need to leave behind.
The lesson behind all of this is that while it is hard to be honest, it is even harder being honest and ethical at the same time. In a perverse way, Scott Adams passed the honesty test with his racist comments. Yet he fails miserably at being a person of good character with an ethical foundation worth imitating. By his own confession in fact, the cartoon Dilbert was (also) always about hatred for the world and a self-righteous indignation at being wronged in his employment. One now wonders if the people firing him had an incredibly just cause. As in, “Was Scott Adams always an unemployable jerk?”
About this whole enterprise of Right-wing hate and dishonesty, and how it eventually catches up to people we can honestly say, “We did not do this to you. You did this to yourself.”
This article was originally published on the author’s LinkedIn Site Honest-To-Goodness.
It is with little consolation that I write the title above this article, or share the graphic that I created to describe how Trump moved from slogans to fascism. Way back when Trump announced his candidacy for US President I lit into the man for his brutish behavior well before he gained a single vote. From that time forward, I observed that Trump had more in common with the fake sport of professional wrestling than anything else. I also observed that he behaved like a pirate with his thieving, grifting ways.
Beyond theorizing about his awful character, the regular news about his behavior was far more damning that anything I conceived allegorically. He threatened to withhold pre-approved funding for military assistance to Ukraine by trying to force the President of Ukraine to generate dirt on Hunter Biden. For that offense, Trump was rightly impeached for abuse of power.
The more time he spent in office the worse it got for America and the world. Trump lied to Americans about the threat of Covid-19 to public health, a fact recorded for posterity by journalist Bob Woodward. Millions of Americans pursuantly defied medical directives to mask up and get vaccinated. Trump’s supporters worsened and then prolonged the pandemic as Covid spread and killed hundreds of thousands of people, many of who would not have gotten infected if appropriate mask precautions were taken, and many that would possibly have lived if they were indeed vaccinated.
But people kept giving up their lives for Trump, whose lies kept piling up and whose behavior became more extreme and corrupt by the day. His public support for racist and para-military organizations led to violence while his refusal to hold police accountable for brutality on Black citizens drove protests that led to even more violence from activists defying Trump’s fascist approach to government.
Thus it was not surprising that Trump welcomed the fascist attack on the United States Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of results from a legitimate election. Trump’s people brought 60+ lawsuits trying to demonstrate election fraud, and all of them failed for lack of evidence. And still, Trump’s lies turned into the Big Lie, a propagandist tactic directly adopted from other fascist regimes whose success in nationalistic populism appears to be Trump’s main playbook.
After his failed attempt at re-election due to his moral depravity and lack of personal or governmental accountability, Trump retreated to his pirate’s lair in south Florida with goods and records stolen from the US Government. Now he’s being investigated for all kinds of crimes against the nation, and his prized Trump organization just got convicted and slammed for tax evasion. That only confirms his prior fraudulent behavior with his “Trump University” which got fined $25M for lying to its customers.
But what did we expect from a proven misogynist and sexual abuser that cheats at golf and claims that he hates exercise because it will “wear down his battery.” He’s an ignorant fraud whose vision of reality is skewed by a narcissistic need to be “right” all the time even when he’s been proven completely wrong. Who else stares up at a solar eclipse?
The pain of being right about Trump all along offers no solace. His Republican Party has zero conscience when it comes to political or civil morality. They are a depraved band of pirates who claim that women should be happy they were raped and whose history of blocking environmental legislation and climate change action means they’ll willingly rape the world if it somehow keeps them in power.
And that’s why being right about Trump is absolutely no fun at all.
Genesisfix's Blog 