Is Trump's Satanic Nature Sparking An American Religious Revival On The Left?

Saturday, in the Washington Post Dan Balz reiterated an important point: Señor Trumpanzee Has No Understanding Of Governing... and nothing but disdain for anything to do with learning. Balz wrote that "After a week in which the threat of recession rocked global financial markets, his trade war with China showed no signs of progress and the government of Israel got into a nasty dispute with two members of Congress, President Trump went to bed Thursday night with other weighty issues on his mind. He tweeted: 'Great news. Tonight we broke the all-time attendance record previously held by Elton John at #SNHUArena in Manchester!' This is the frivolous mindset of the president of the United States. His flurry of statements over the past few days have brought into focus once again something fundamental about the president: He has little understanding of what it means to govern. He would rather tweet from the bleachers."

Balz wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's "trade war with China has contributed to the problems now facing the global economy. Yet the president accepts no responsibility-- for his policies, his statements or his tweets, all of which have added to the uncertainty. He has a mixed message: Everything is great, and what isn’t great is somebody else’s fault. Trump was reduced again last week to doing what he always does when there is trouble brewing. He attacked others. He hurled more insults at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, a Trump appointee who has become the president’s favored whipping boy... Meanwhile, a new Fox News poll of the 2020 campaign showed Trump losing to every Democrat tested. More telling was that the incumbent president did not break 40 percent against any of them. Polls are polls, and the election is more than a year away, but those numbers should concern the president’s advisers."

You say "good, who wants this asshole interfering in governance?" Well, ok, except look who he's empowered to do it instead. Family members as clueless as he is himself. A Cabinetful of self-serving, wealthy imbeciles. And as funny as it is to hear The Mooch rubbing his snout in the mud and shit now, we're currently stuck with Neo-Nazis like Cuccinelli and Stephen Miller.

Yesterday, Bloomberg New reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Justin Sink wrote some of the Trump appointees, led by Miller, have been trying for almost 2 years to give states the power to block undocumented immigrant children from enrolling in public schools. They wrote that "Miller had been a driving force behind the effort as early as 2017, pressing cabinet officials and members of the White House Domestic Policy Council repeatedly to devise a way to limit enrollment, according to several people familiar with the matter. The push was part of a menu of ideas on immigration that could be carried out without congressional approval." Somewhere along the way someone must have told the neo-Nazis that their plan was illegal and violated a 1982 Supreme Court ruling (Plyler v Doe) that found that punishing children for their parents' actions "does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice." I wonder why that doesn't apply to putting children in cages and selling them to commercial foster homes and adoption centers. Strange that evangelicals don't seem to mind. Although... The Conversation has a post about the revival of a "Christian left" for just that reason.

Holding pictures of migrant children who have died in U.S. custody and forming a cross with their bodies on the floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, 70 Catholics were arrested in July for obstructing a public place, which is considered a misdemeanor.

The protesters hoped that images of 90-year-old nuns and priests in clerical collars being led away in handcuffs would draw attention to their moral horror at the United States’ treatment of undocumented immigrant families.

American Catholics, like any religious group, do not fit neatly into left-right political categories.

But ever more they are visibly joining the growing ranks of progressive Christians who oppose President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and federal agencies’ negligent, occasionally deadly treatment of immigrants on his orders.

American Christianity is more often associated with right-wing politics.

Conservative Christian groups advocating for public policies that reflect their religious beliefs have conducted extremely visible campaigns to outlaw abortion, keep gay marriage illegal and encourage study of the Bible in schools. Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, an Apostolic Christian, was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.

But there’s always been progressive Christian activism in the United States.

I have studied religious thought and action around migrants and refugees for some time-- including analyzing the New Sanctuary Movement, a network of churches that offers refuge to undocumented immigrants and advocates for immigration reform.

Black churches were central in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and black Christians have continued to engage in advocacy and civil disobedience around poverty, inequality and police violence. Latinos and Native Americans, too, have for centuries fought for “progressive” causes like labor rights, environmental protection and human rights.

So it’s not quite right to herald the “rise” of a religious left, as several think pieces have done since Christians began openly resisting Trump’s immigration enforcement and other policies. That erases the historic resistance of religious communities of color.

Still, Trump’s hardline immigration policies seem to have spurred a broader population of Christians into action. And their civil disobedience crosses racial, ethnic and even party lines in new ways.

One reason for this is simple: Migration has become increasingly visible in recent years, especially under Trump.

The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. peaked at 12.2 million in 2007. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama approached this issue by using relatively pro-immigrant language while deporting hundreds of thousands each year.

Though immigration at the United States’ southern border has actually been decreasing since 2000, the number of Central American asylum-seekers has grown. In 2014, an unprecedented surge in Central American children seeking asylum protections got significant media attention.

Donald Trump began his presidential campaign the next year with a speech maligning migrants. During his administration, his rhetoric has slowly become policy.

But the primary reason Christian groups are now focusing on immigration, I’d argue, is simply that the notion of welcoming strangers and caring for the vulnerable are embedded in the Christian tradition.

In the Biblical text Matthew 25, the “Son of Man”-- a figure understood to be Jesus-- blesses people who gave food to the hungry, cared for the sick and welcomed strangers. And in Leviticus 19:34, God commands: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you.”

These texts help explain why support for immigrants crosses traditional left-right religious boundaries.

Denominations that are generally considered left-leaning, like the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly oppose Trump’s harsh treatment of immigrants. So do the Catholic bishops and Southern Baptists, which are typically more socially and politically conservative.

Beyond directly assisting migrants at the U.S. border by offering food, shelter, translation and legal services, many of these Christian groups also believe that in democratic societies they should pursue laws founded on Christian moral teachings.

After all, they point out, God’s command in Leviticus was to the nation of Israel-- not just individual Israelites. And Jesus often told religious and political officials how to act and criticized the oppression of foreigners, widows and orphans by those in authority.

Faith-based support for immigrants is not limited to Christian groups.

Jewish and Muslim organizations have both provided humanitarian aid to Central American asylum seekers and protested a federal ban on travel from Muslim countries.

And 40 Jewish leaders were arrested in New York City on Aug. 12 for protesting the Trump administration’s detention policies.

The 2020 election season has brought Christian faith-based activism into the political fore. Several Democratic presidential candidates have spoken openly about the faith-based roots of their progressivism.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has referenced the biblical text of Matthew 25 as a touchstone for her critique of wealth inequality and insistence on universal health care.

In pushing for criminal justice reform, Sen. Cory Booker speaks about the Christian tradition of “grace.” He’s also been known to quote the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha and the Hindu god Shiva.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a devout churchgoer who is also gay. He says that his sexual orientation is God-given and that his marriage, in the Episcopal church, to another man, has brought him closer to God.

Talk of an emerging “religious left” is ahistoric. American Christianity has always had its liberal strains, with pastors and parishioners protesting state-sponsored injustices like slavery, segregation, the Vietnam War and mass deportation.

But the high profile, religiously based moral outrage at Trump’s immigration policies does seem to be spurring some long-overdue rethinking of what it means to be Christian in America.

Dance Around The Golden Calf (1910)- Emil Nolde

Now a little history. This is from an oldie but goodie that Gregory Paul wrote in 2003 for the U.K. website Free Inquiry: The Great Scandal: Christianity’s Role in the Rise of the Nazis. Keep in mind that early on, Hitler was quite popular on the right-- among Republicans in the U.S. and Conservatives in the U.K. and among the ultra conservative high clergy. Paul points out that a growing body of scholarly research reveals that a convoluted pattern of religious and moral failure in how Christianity dealt with Naziism, considering that it "had the capacity to stop Nazism before it came to power and to reduce or moderate its practices afterwards, but repeatedly failed to do so because the principal churches were complicit with-- indeed, in the pay of-- the Nazis. Most German Christians supported the Reich; many continued to do so in the face of mounting evidence that the dictatorship was depraved and murderously cruel. Elsewhere in Europe the story was often the same. Only with Christianity’s forbearance and frequent cooperation could fascistic movements gain majority support in Christian nations. European fascism was the fruit of a Christian culture. Millions of Christians actively supported these notorious regimes. Thousands participated in their atrocities. What, in God’s name, were they thinking?"

Keep in mind that Christianity was historically anti-Semitic and "largely hostile toward modernism and democracy... Jews were seen as materialists who promoted and benefited from Enlightenment modernism." American Evangelicals under Trump, have been twisting Christianity so that it's almost unrecognizable as having anything to do with Jesus. In the 1930s and '40s, "Aryan Christianity differed from traditional Christianity in denying both that Christ was a Jew and that Christianity had grown out of Judaism. Adherents viewed Christ as a divine Aryan warrior who brought the sword to cleanse the earth of Jews. Aryans were held to be the only true humans, specially created by God through Adam and Eve; all other peoples were soulless subhumans, descended from apes or created by Satan with no hope of salvation. Most non-Aryans were considered suitable for subservient roles including slavery, but not the Jews. Spiritless yet clever and devious, Jews were seen as a satanic disease to be quarantined or eliminated... German Aryanism, whether Christian or pagan, became known as 'Volkism.' Volkism prophesied the emergence of a great God-chosen Aryan who would lead the people (Volk) to their grand destiny through the conquest of Lebensraum (living space). A common motto was 'God and Volk.' Disregarding obvious theological contradictions, growing numbers of German nationalists managed to work Aryanism into their Protestant or Catholic confessions, much as contemporary adherents of Voudoun or Santería blend the occult with their Christian beliefs. Darwinian theory sometimes entered Volkism as a belief in the divinely intended survival of the fittest peoples."

According to standard biographies, the principal Nazi leaders were all born, baptized, and raised Christian. Most grew up in strict, pious households where tolerance and democratic values were disparaged. Nazi leaders of Catholic background included Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Joseph Goebbels.

Hitler did well in monastery school. He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests. Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood.

Rudolf Hoess, who as commandant at Auschwitz-Birkinau pioneered the use of the Zyklon-B gas that killed half of all Holocaust victims, had strict Catholic parents. Hermann Goering had mixed Catholic-Protestant parentage, while Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, Albert Speer, and Adolf Eichmann had Protestant backgrounds. Not one of the top Nazi leaders was raised in a liberal or atheistic family-- no doubt, the parents of any of them would have found such views scandalous. Traditionalists would never think to deprive their offspring of the faith-based moral foundations that they would need to grow into ethical adults.

...The Nazis championed traditional family values: their ideology was conservative, bourgeois, patriarchal, and strongly antifeminist. Discipline and conformity were emphasized, marriage promoted, abortion and homosexuality despised.

Traditionalism also dominated Nazi philosophy, such as it was. Though science and technology were lauded, the overall thrust opposed the Enlightenment, modernism, intellectualism, and rationality. It is hard to imagine how a movement with that agenda could have been friendly toward atheism, and the Nazis were not. Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an “anti-godless” movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: “We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis’ complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith.

As detailed by historian Ian Kershaw, Hitler made no secret of his intent to destroy democracy. Yet he came to power largely legally; in no sense was he a tyrant imposed upon the German people.

The Nazi takeover climaxed a lengthy, ironic rejection of democracy at the hands of a majority of German voters. By the early 1930s, ordinary Germans had lost patience with democracy; growing numbers hoped an authoritarian strongman would restore order and prosperity and return Germany to great-power status. Roughly two-thirds of German Christians repeatedly voted for candidates who promised to overthrow democracy. Authoritarianism was all but inevitable; at issue was merely who the new strongman would be.

What made democracy so fragile? Historian Klaus Scholder explains that Germany lacked a deep democratic tradition, and would have had difficulty in forming one because German society was so thoroughly divided into opposing Protestant and Catholic blocs. This division created a climate of competition, fear and prejudice between the confessions, which burdened all German domestic and foreign policies with an ideological element of incalculable weight and extent. This climate erected an almost insurmountable barrier to the formation of broad democratic center. And it favored the rise of Hitler, since ultimately both churches courted his favor-- each fearing that the other would complete the Reformation or the Counter-Reformation through Hitler.

...[F]or obvious reasons-- Chancellor Hitler had greater initial success reaching accommodation with Roman Catholic leaders than with the Protestants. The irony lay in the fact that the Catholic Zentrum (Center) Party had been principally responsible for denying majorities to the Nazis in early elections. Although Teutonic in outlook, German Catholics had close emotional ties to Rome. As a group they were somewhat less nationalistic than most Protestants. Catholics were correspondingly more likely than Protestants to view Hitler (incorrectly) as godless, or as a neo-heathen anti-Christian. Catholic clergy consistently denounced Nazism, though they often undercut themselves by preaching traditional anti-Semitism at the same time.

Even so, and despite Catholicism’s minority status, it would be German Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church whose actions would at last put total power within the Nazis’ reach.

Though it was not without antimodernists, the Catholic Zentrum party had antagonized the Vatican during the 1920s by forming governing coalitions with the secularized, moderate Left-oriented Social Democrats. This changed in 1928, when the priest Ludwig Kaas became the first cleric to head the party. To the dismay of some Catholics, Kaas and other Catholic politicians participated both actively and passively in destroying democratic rule, and in particular the Zentrum.

The devoutly Catholic chancellor Franz von Papen, not a fascist but stoutly right-wing, engineered the key electoral victory that brought Hitler to power. Disastrously Papen dissolved the Reichstag in 1932, then formed a Zentrum-Nazi coalition in violation of all previous principles. It was Papen who in 1933 made Hitler chancellor, Papen stepping down to the vice chancellorship.

The common claim that Papen acted in the hope that the Nazis could be controlled and ultimately discredited may be true, partly true, or false; but without Papen’s reckless aid, Hitler would not have become Germany’s leader.

The church congratulated Hitler on his assumption of power. German bishops released a statement that wiped out past criticism of Nazism by proclaiming the new regime acceptable, then followed doctrine by ordering the laity to be loyal to this regime just as they had commanded loyalty to previous regimes. Since Catholics had been instrumental in bringing Hitler to power and served in his cabinet, the bishops had little choice but to collaborate.

German Catholics were stunned by the magnitude and suddenness of this realignment. The rigidly conformist church had flipped from ordering its flock to oppose the Nazis to commanding cooperation. A minority among German Catholics was appalled and disheartened. But most “received the statement with relief-- indeed with rejoicing-- because it finally also cleared the way into the Third Reich for Catholic Christians” alongside millions of Protestants, who joined in exulting that the dream of a Nazi-Catholic-Protestant nationalist alliance had been achieved.[27] The Catholic vote for the Nazis increased in the last multi-party elections after Hitler assumed control, doubling in some areas, inspiring a mass Catholic exodus from the Zentrum to the fascists. After the Reichstag fire, the Zentrum voted en masse to support the infamous Enabling Act, which would give the Hitler-Papen cabinet executive and legislative authority independent of the German Parliament. Zentrum’s bloc vote cemented the two-thirds majority needed to pass the Act.

Why did the church direct its party to provide the critical swing vote? It had its agenda...

Even after the Enabling Act, Hitler’s position remained tenuous. The Nazis needed to deepen majority popular support and cement relations with a skeptical German military. Hitler needed to ally all Aryans under the swastika while he undermined and demoralized regime opponents. What would solidify Hitler’s position? A foreign policy coup: the Concordat of 1933 between Nazi Germany and the Vatican.

The national and international legitimacy Hitler would gain through this treaty was incalculable. Failure to secure it after intense and openly promoted effort could have been a crushing humiliation. Hitler put exceptional effort into the project. He courted the Holy See, emphasizing his own Christianity, simultaneously striving to intimidate the Vatican with demonstrations of his swelling power.

Catholic apologists describe the Concordat of 1933 as a necessary move by a church desperate to protect itself against a violent regime which forced the accord upon it-- passing over the contradiction at the heart of this argument. Actually, having failed in repeated attempts to negotiate the ardently desired concordat with a skeptical Weimar democracy, Kaas, Papen, the future Pius XII (who reigned 1939–1958), the sitting Pius XI, and other leading Catholics saw their chance to get what they had been seeking from an agreeable member of the church-- that is, Hitler-- at an historical moment when he and fascism in general were regarded as a natural ally by many Catholic leaders. Negotiations were initiated by both sides, modeled on the mutually advantageous 1929 concordat between Mussolini and the Vatican.

Now Zentrum’s pivotal role in assuring passage of the Enabling Act can be seen in context. It was part of the tacit Nazi-Vatican deal for a future concordat. The Enabling Act vote hollowed Zentrum, leaving little more than a shell. Thus, a clergy far more interested in church power than democratic politics could take control on both sides of the negotiating table. In a flagrant conflict of interest, the devout Papen helped to represent the German state. Concordat negotiations were largely held in Rome, so that Kaas could leave his vanishing party yet more rudderless. Papen, Kaas, and the future Pius XII worked overtime to finalize a treaty that would, among other things, put an end to the Zentrum. In negotiating away the party he led, Kaas eliminated the last political entity that might have opposed the new Führer. Nor did the Vatican protect Germany’s Catholic party. Contrary to the contention of some, evidence indicates that the Vatican was pleased to negotiate away all traces of the Zentrum, for which it had no more use save as a bargaining chip. In this the Holy See treated Zentrum no differently than it had the Italian Catholic party, which it negotiated away in the Concordat with Mussolini.

...The Concordat was a classic political kickback scheme. The church supported the new dictatorship by endorsing the end of democracy and free speech. In addition it bound its bishops to Hitler’s Reich by means of a loyalty oath. In exchange the church received enormous tax income and protection for church privileges. Religious instruction and prayer in school were reinstated. Criticism of the church was forbidden. Of course, nothing in the Concordat protected the rights of non-Catholics.

...The practical results of the collaboration were clear enough. Most Catholics “soon adjusted to the dictatorship;” indeed they flocked to the Party. Post-Concordat voting patterns suggest that Catholics, on average, even outdid Protestants in supporting the regime, further undermining any efforts by the clergy to challenge Nazi policies. In any case much of the Catholic clergy was Nazifying. Even the idiosyncratic S.S. welcomed Catholics, who would ultimately compose a quarter of its membership.

The Concordat’s disastrous consequences cannot be exaggerated. It bound all devout German Catholics to the state—the clergy through an oath and income, the laity through the authority of the church. If at any time the regime chose not to honor the agreement, Catholics had no open legal right to oppose it or its policies. Opponents of Nazism, Catholic and non-Catholic, were further discouraged and marginalized because the church had shown such want of moral fiber and consistency... [T]he 1933 Concordat stands as one of the most unethical, corrupt, duplicitous, and dangerous agreements ever forged between two authoritarian powers. Perhaps the Catholic strategy was to outlast the Nazi’s frankly popular tyranny rather than try to bring it down. But the Catholic Church made no attempt to revoke the Concordat and its loyalty clause during the Nazi regime. Indeed, the 1933 Concordat is the only diplomatic accord negotiated with the Nazi regime that remains in force anywhere in the world.

Germany’s Protestant sects were too decentralized to be coopted by a single document. To this extent Protestants who disputed Nazi policies could be said to enjoy a more favorable position than Catholics. But opposition was rare among Protestants too. Hitler cynically courted the major denominations even as they cynically courted him. Most smaller traditional Christian sects did little better. For example, Germany’s Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists bent over backwards to accommodate National Socialism.

Catholics and Protestants at first embraced the new German order. Germany was regaining international prestige, the economy improving thanks to growing overseas support.[36] Industrialists like Henry Ford invested heavily in the new Reich. German Christians also looked to the Nazis for a revival of “Christian” values to help counter the rise of nontheism. Most welcomed the Nazis’ elimination of chronic public strife by terrorizing, imprisoning, and killing the fast-shrinking German Left. The leftists had long been despised by traditionalists, who composed four fifths of the population. The state purged a far higher proportion of atheists than traditional Christians. In newspapers and newsreels the Nazis proudly publicized their new concentration camps. Reports sanitized the camps’ true nature, but no one could mistake that they were part of a new police state—to which most German followers of Jesus raised no objection. The very high rate of “legal” executions reported in the press also met with mass indifference or positive approval.

Far from being hapless victims, the great bulk of German Christians joined, eagerly supported, collaborated with, or accommodated to a greater or lesser degree, the new tyranny.

I don't want to leave this on such a downer note tonight. So... my friend Doug Pagitt, the head of Vote Common Good, has a new book out today, Outdoing Jesus. It's so uplifting. Watch him talking about it. I'm hoping that it will help cleanse your mind of all that right-wing satanic crap above:

Is Trump Inciting An American Civil War? What A Joy For The Kremlin-- And What A Great Return On Their Investment!

Trump is clearly an accessory to the massacres at the garlic festival, in El Paso and in Dayton. But there's more to it than just that. At the press gaggle in front of his helicopter yesterday, Trump claimed he "doesn't like any group of hate-- whether it's white supremacy, whether it's any other kind of supremacy, whether it's Antifa... whether it's any group of hate, I an very concerned about it-- and I'll do something about it... i think my rhetoric brings people together." Earlier, he had tweeted, that Beto O'Rourke should "be quiet." Beto responded that "22 people in my hometown are dead after an act of terror inspired by your racism. El Paso will not be quiet and neither will I."

Conservative Republican Ross Douthat pointed out in his NY Times column yesterday that Trump's "immigration rhetoric drove the El Paso shooter to mass murder in some direct and simple way"-- the obvious, but he also pointed out that "because Trump participates in the general cultural miasma that generates mass shooters, and having a participant as president makes the problem worse."

Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way. found and captured an anti-semitic, anti-gay screed from prominent neo-Nazi/white nationalist, nose-picking Trump backer Nicholas Fuentes, which has since been edited out of his YouTube channel. [Note: Why does YouTube still give Nazis channels to spread their hatred? Is Google that hard up for more cash?] There are still members of the LGBTQ community and Jews who support Trump. If you know any, try to get them to watch this:

Monday night, Fuentes-- who took part in the violent 2017 Unite the Right gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia-- uploaded an episode of his podcast to YouTube that was dedicated to discussing last weekend’s mass shootings. The shooting in El Paso, Texas, was allegedly carried out by a young man who authored a manifesto expressing his white supremacist ideology and hostility to Hispanic immigrants and posted it online prior to the shooting.

Fuentes, who is hostile to immigrants himself, took issue with conservative voices who denounced white supremacists and white nationalists in the wake of the El Paso shooting, balking at President Donald Trump’s condemnation of the very extremists agitated and energized by the president’s rhetoric. Among those singled out for Fuentes’ fury was Matt Walsh, columnist at the Daily Wire, who called the accused white supremacist mass killer a “white racist scumbag” and said white supremacy was “evil, stupid, and dangerous.”

Fuentes attacked Walsh with anti-gay slurs and called him a “shabbos goy race traitor” who works for Jews. (The Daily Wire is led by Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish.) That part of last night’s show appears to have been removed from the YouTube Live rebroadcast but was preserved in the YouTube channel of a Fuentes fan.

“Matt Walsh, shabbos goy race traitor. That’s what it is, folks. I know some people don’t like to use that expression, but it’s totally true-- throwing his own people under the bus. He hates white people. Nobody else talks like that about their own people except for white people and it’s gross,” Fuentes said, going on to mock Walsh: “Yeah, OK, keep typing on Twitter dot com, faggot. Faggot. Pussy. Race traitor-- you work for Jews, you know.”

Fuentes also threw a tantrum over Dinesh D’Souza’s remarks about white nationalism, attacking one of the right’s favorite authors based on his ethnicity and over his criticisms of racist writer Samuel Todd Francis in the 1990s. In a mocking tone, Fuentes said, “Dinesh D’Souza is gonna roll up to our shore from India, from smelly, open-defecation India, and he’s going to tell us that Robert E. Lee was a racist.”

Earlier in the podcast, Fuentes had said that he had similar political complaints to those believed to have been expressed by the El Paso shooter, but also said that he did not support violent action.

“Why is it then that we are forced to accept probably the most transformative policies in the history of our country, perhaps the most transformative policies that are possible, which is the systematic replacement of the people that constitute that country. We can’t talk about it, we can’t use mass media, we can’t run for office, we can’t change policy, so at a certain point what is the expectation?” Fuentes said.

Fuentes then claimed that he wasn’t trying to rationalize violence, but then said, “The thought process in my mind is that eventually you just run out of options. You read this manifesto, you read what is said in here, and it’s an act of desperation. It says, ‘What else are we supposed to do?’”

“Of course the solution, this kind of ‘terrorism’-- if that’s the kind of language you prefer-- or act of violence is not to further isolate, atomize, ostracize these kinds of people who have legitimate problems or people who have legitimate grievances from society,” Fuentes said. “It is instead to work them into the system.”

Fuentes laid the blame for the El Paso shooting on media outlets that accurately identify white nationalists, and alleged that the shooting has been a “benefit” to a supposed anti-Trump media agenda. Fuentes also claimed that the El Paso shooter wrote a “convenient manifesto for the powers that be” whom he said may be implicated in the scandal and alleged criminal activities surrounding hedge-fund billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, currently in prison awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges following news reports on his solicitation of sex from underage teenagers. The powers that Fuentes claims could be responsible for such a conspiracy, he said, are united in having “a problem with white people” and “bringing the systematic destruction of Western civilization and the people that created and perpetuate Western civilization, which is white people.”

Fuentes went on to speculate that the Dayton shooter could be Jewish, before also speculating that the shooter was connected to U.S. intelligence agencies. Fuentes asserted that “red flag” gun laws, like those proposed by the White House yesterday, were part of a slippery slope in which the government would seize weapons from white people.

Even a lame conservative like Status Quo Joe is linking Trump, even if just weakly and toothlessly, to the outbreak of white nationalist terrorism-- if just for his own partisan gain: "Trump offers no moral leadership; no interest in unifying the nation, no evidence the presidency has awakened his conscience in the least. Instead we have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced a political strategy of hate, racism, and division. So it’s up to us. We’re living through a rare moment in this nation’s history. Where our president isn’t up to the moment. Where our president lacks the moral authority to lead. Where our president has more in common with George Wallace than George Washington. We are almost 330 million Americans who have to do what our president can’t. Stand together. Stand against hate. Stand up for what-- at our best-- this nation believes."

Republicans generally favor autocracy, as Aaron Blake pointed out in his Washington Post column yesterday. He wrote that "Five years ago, congressional Republicans blasted former president Barack Obama as 'Emperor Obama' and compared him to a king for his executive actions, most notably those protecting some undocumented immigrants. Ten years ago, conservative activists launched the tea party movement in large part as a call for a more limited federal government. Today, conservative Republicans have moved sharply toward embracing a more powerful chief executive with fewer checks and balances. A new Pew Research Center poll, in fact, finds that a majority of conservative Republicans (52%) agree that many problems would be solved ‘if U.S. presidents didn’t have to worry so much about Congress or the courts.’ Just 41% choose the other option, that it ‘would be too risky to give U.S. presidents more power’ to confront problems. This represents a sea change in the party. The number favoring fewer checks and balances has doubled just since last year, when only 26% favored a more powerful executive."

And, as Politico explained yesterday, Trump used this permissiveness from Republicans to quietly expand gun access, at a point when most Americans want to see less access. He claims he's done "much more than most," but that just another of the over 10,000 lies he's told since occupying the White House. "While Trump boasts of action on firearms," wrote Anita Kumar, "his administration has actually eased gun restrictions over the past two and a half years. Federal agencies have implemented more than half a dozen policy changes-- primarily through little-noticed regulatory moves-- that expand access to guns by lifting firearms bans in certain locations and limiting the names on the national database designed to keep firearms away from dangerous people. The administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn New York City restrictions on transporting handguns outside homes. And it pushed to allow U.S. gunmakers to more easily sell firearms overseas, including the types used in mass shootings."

David Cicilline (D-RI), a vice chair of the House Gun Prevention Task Force, said that Trump "has in a very intentional, sweeping way made it easier for people to access firearms, not more difficult. He’s systematically gone and undone all the protections that were put in place to try to limit the ability of dangerous people to access firearms."

Trump’s critics say they aren’t surprised by his actions after he received an early and strong endorsement from the National Rifle Association, one of his top donors that contributed $30 million [likely in completely illegal laundered money from the Kremlin] to his 2016 campaign and blasted his Democratic opponent in TV ads. After he was sworn into office, Trump vowed repeatedly to repay gun owners for their support.

...“We have done much more than most administrations,” Trump said in his first public remarks on the shootings Sunday. “It’s … really not talked about very much, but we’ve done, actually, a lot. But perhaps more has to be done.”

But those changes were narrow, lengthy and, in the case of the bump stock ban, could be reversed by the next president because it is not written into law.

William Vizzard, who spent nearly three decades at the ATF, described the restrictions as modest. “On a scale of 1 to 100, they’re about a 2,” he said.

The White House and the NRA didn’t return requests for comment. In an earlier statement, the NRA said it “welcomes the president's call to address the root causes of the horrific acts of violence that have occurred in our country.“

Before he ran for president, Trump had supported several Democratic-backed proposals, including a ban on assault weapons and waiting period for firearms purchases. But after his inauguration, he made policy changes backed by the NRA. Most of them bypassed Congress, where firearms changes are difficult to pass.

“The response has largely parroted the talking points of the NRA,” said Chelsea Parsons, vice president of gun violence prevention at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Perhaps the most significant change was revoking a regulation making it harder for people with mental illnesses to buy guns that his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, enacted after the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

The Obama regulation had required the government to add those eligible for Social Security Administration mental disability payments to the national database and block them from buying guns. The Obama administration estimated it would have added 75,000 names to the database.

In addition, the Trump Justice Department narrowed the definition of “fugitive,” excluding people from being added to the national database and barred from buying a gun.

Hannah Selinger noted in HuffPo yesterday that perhaps the time had come for her to start keeping her racist, Trump's-supporting in-laws away from her children.

“I don’t understand why anyone lives in Los Angeles,” my mother-in-law said to my husband over the phone a few months ago. “It’s full of immigrants.”

This offensive “observation” was not a stand-alone comment. It was only the latest in a series of bigoted sound bites from my in-laws. Both in their 70s, they live on Florida’s Gulf Coast in a predominantly white, older community saturated by conservative talking points. They see themselves as tolerant, life-loving Catholics. But their tolerance extends only to people they know and understand-- and those people are white, straight, “American” people.

Actually, it isn’t just racism that muddies the water in my relationship with my in-laws. It’s sexism and homophobia, too. Sometimes, it’s even veiled anti-Semitism. (Note to non-Jews everywhere: Telling a Jewish person how much you love Jewish people is, on its face, a message of marginalization.) My father-in-law once had to leave the room when two men kissed on TV. “Disgusting,” he whispered under his breath, within earshot of my son.

My in-laws have always been conservative. They have always been Republican. But, before 2016, they were Catholics devoted, specifically, to the “problem” of abortion. That was the issue they cared about, and it was the issue that ignited their ballot box passion. What my husband and I have witnessed, however, has been an ideological shift, from a relationship with religion to blind idolatry.

In the past two years, fueled by a president who “tells it like it is,” my in-laws have said a spate of problematic, objectionable and, often, straight-up hateful things. My sweet mother-in-law, who cries at the very notion of a dog’s death, wanted to know why Senate hopeful Roy Moore’s teenaged accusers didn’t come forth with their claims sooner, thereby dismissing their claims. When my 1-year-old threw a tantrum and I accused him of being a “drama queen,” she gently corrected me: “It’s drama king.”

My father-in-law clucked when, in a scene in the movie Moonlight, an impoverished Black drug dealer pulled up in a decked-out low-rider. It was an expensive car, and my father-in-law wanted us to know that people of that sort were always spending above their means. “That’s just what they do,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s just what they do.” He meant Black people-- all of them.

For a while, my husband and I tried to rationalize-- if not excuse-- my in-laws’ beliefs. They’re older, we told ourselves. They don’t know that the world has changed. But eventually it became impossible to keep exonerating them. For the most part, my political contact with them was passive-aggressive ― heavy on the aggressive. I directed Facebook posts at “any and all Trump supporters, including family members,” but I didn’t single them out specifically.

That was before.

Then, shortly after Heather Heyer was run down and murdered by driver spurred on by fellow white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, and after the president said that there were “good people on both sides,” I sent my mother-in-law a text. As a Jewish woman with half-Jewish children, I wanted her to know that her support of a president who says incendiary, race-baiting things affects people like me. It affects my kids.

In a winding, wending message, I told her how Jews have been targeted since the dawn of time, and how the particular brand of hate espoused by white supremacists, and, tangentially, the president, was pretty familiar to me; I had experienced it my entire life. It was likely her grandkids would, too. I was hopeful that a human connection-- that the world through the eyes of a real, live liberal (and her daughter-in-law, no less) and not just a Fox News caricature-- could convince her that words and actions matter. I was hopeful that she might show courage in the face of an obvious wrong.

“Thank you for your note,” she wrote back. We never spoke of it again.

This was probably when I started to believe that my in-laws would never change. Once it occurred to me that this problem was going to haunt me forever, I started brainstorming solutions in hopes of not having to cut them out of our lives. Except, in the case of this deep kind of intolerance, there is no solution. I believe it has to be vanquished, entirely. I can’t just pretend they aren’t who they are. They have become completely indoctrinated, and, what’s worse, they don’t really seem to care. They know, fully, that there are consequences to all of this. But still they pursue a course of belief that seems at odds with morality.

And that means that I can’t just go on pretending that we’re a normal family. It’s not like I can just leave them with the kids for the night and hope they don’t say something awful about a marginalized group of people while I’m out enjoying a martini with my husband. That safety has been stolen from both of us.

When I asked them to stop watching right-wing cable news in the living room of our home (“You’re afraid of the truth,” my father-in-law snapped back), they rerouted to their computers. They now take solace at the kitchen table, laptops kissing, where they sift through whatever degradation the right happens to be pushing at that moment. Tucker Carlson drones on, and then Sean Hannity. They cannot get enough, and they will not stop. Days fade from bright to bruise as they sit at their computers, happily held hostage by alternative facts.

Their hatred is expanding, and it’s expanding quickly. These days, it manifests itself through conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein and the Clintons, antifa and Black Lives Matter. My in-laws oppose abortion in any and all circumstances, but they appear unbothered by the idea of migrant kids in cages at the country’s border. The media sources they ingest, of course, are intentionally dishonest, and our conversations with them reveal a view of the world that’s disturbingly removed from reality.

Recently, my mother-in-law sent a doctored video in an email to my husband, along with a message in which she told him that she didn’t want her grandkids surrounded by Muslims. We’ve asked that they broaden their perspective and that they stop watching cable news altogether (although that won’t remedy the persistent fake news internet problem). I’ve told them that my policy is to tolerate none of this around my children.

...I can tell my children, definitively, that the man we call president is a bad person. Can I say that about their grandparents, who support the same ideas? But what if it’s true? Perhaps this is a pat rendering of a real-life conundrum. We talk about good and bad guys in the movies, but actual people are dynamic and complex. In real life, I like my mother-in-law. She’s unintentionally funny, and says “darn” and “fudge” and “shoot” instead of swear words, and she can’t remember her email password, not ever-- even though I know hers by heart. My father-in-law and I share a lifelong love for the Yankees. He’s a former runner, and while I still like to say “current,” if I’m being honest, I’m a former runner, too. But I also find their politics-- and how they manifest in what they say and share-- repugnant. This is a matter, now, of fundamental human decency.

...[A]s my in-laws’ bigotry grows more entrenched, fomented by American radicalism, the idea of them in our lives seems less and less possible. And what I need to be sure of, 20 years from now, when I look at my grown children down the telescope of their lives, is that I did everything to protect them from evil, everything to make their lives bright and happy and productive. I need to be sure that I didn’t contribute to a worse world, that I left things a little better off for them. How we all arrive there, in a better place, is up to no one but ourselves.

Have you heard the new mix of the Republican Fight Song, "Kill U?" by Revboy. Totally rocks.