Politics and Religion Don't Mix

 Once, long ago when times were different, lots people stopped off at their local bar after work or after play to have a drink or two. Or more.

As you might guess, there were lots of drunks who got into lots of fights and caused lots of damage. So, signs were put up limiting the free speech of the patrons - No Religion or Politics spoken here.

It worked.

My point is not that politics leads to fighting, or that religion has led to bitter conflicts through the centuries - and has been unfairly blamed as well - but to give me a chance to once again talk about my favorite Catholic theologian, C.S. Lewis.

Huh?

Well, Clive Staples Lewis  had remarkable insight into the human condition, and a wonderful talent for capturing fantasy and blending it with human behavior. It even explains the riot in Washington.

Let me say it another way. He wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, which is still being made into movies, and The Screwtape Letters, which gives us a remarkable insight on what makes people act the way they do. He also wrote The Problem of Pain, which came out in the middle of World War II, and with which I really disagree. That’s life.

Before you begin to think I have gone off the deep end, let me explain something. I am rapidly losing interest in Donald Trump, and gaining interest in his enablers.

I no longer view him as a source of evil, or wonder how he could be so ignorant about so many things. Instead, I think of him as the Wizard of Oz, someone who is powerless himself, but elevated to great heights by his supporters. I think that once he is widely seen as a loser - and there are lots of reasons to think that will happen within a few months - then the question will become “why did so many people support him?”

Now, to my point. And to C. S. Lewis.

Lewis thought a lot about how the Devil tempts people. Since he was a Catholic theologian, he wondered how the Devil could tempt a good, true believing Catholic. Or, in today's terms, a conservative-leaning law and order Republican.

Lewis found the answer. It explains what’s happening today in the Republican Party, in the born-again movement and in anti-abortion protests.

That’s in the United States. The same pattern of temptation and corruption can be seen all over the world. Different players, same result. You can plug it in almost anywhere, at any time. And, societies can’t deal with it unless they recognize it.

Lewis had a senior devil explain how to do it to a junior devil in just a page or so.

Curious yet?

The temptation is to make the victim, a good church-going man, think of himself as a hyphenated Christian. It didn’t matter what kind. An anti-abortion Christian. A socially responsible Christian. A born-again Christian. A modern-day Christian.

You can see how that works. My Christianity is better than yours. Mine is perfected. Mine is focused. Yours is not.

Or, in 2021, you see it in people who claim to be Christian supporters of Donald Trump. You know, the kind that bring crosses to the Capitol along with the noose to hang the vice-president. Stand together for the greater good.

I’ll let you make the argument comparing Trump to the anti-Christ. It’s too complicated for a blog to do it justice.

Anyway, adding that hyphen was, for the devil, strictly a way to make divisions. I’m better than you. I know more. I stand for better things. Which meant that all those other people in church - the ones who stuck with faith, hope and charity - didn’t really get the whole purpose of their religion.

You become part of a group of people who believe what you do, and whose faults are small compared to your shared belief in- well - anything you want. We have to ban abortions. We have to restrict illegal votes. Jesus wants it that way. So do I. 

Hard to believe? Well, there were lots of churches in the South before the Civil War that preached slavery was the will of God. After all, that’s why the Egyptians enslaved the Jews.

See how easy it is to go down that very slippery path. If you don’t see it, just look at the clips of the assault on the Capitol. Thousands of people, all feeling virtuous. All convinced they were right. After all, didn’t Donald Trump tell them to fight for their nation?

There’s a lot of speculation now on what will happen to the GOP post-Trump. Will he run again? Will he be impeached and nevertheless create a political dynasty? Will he become a kingmaker with millions of dollars to give to his favorite candidates, or will a lot of civil lawsuits lead him into bankruptcy and criminal charges that lead him to jail?

Or will the Republican Party just split into two or three or even four factions? Endless speculation, and very little insight, at least on my part. Just give it time to become clearer.

Meanwhile, I’m not doing much right now. Waiting for a vaccination, of course. Doing some light gardening and some baby-sitting. And waiting for Wednesday. 

An Interesting Question

 I was out in the cold the other day, cleaning up after my dogs. I had a little plastic bag to put the frozen dog poop in, and used a heavy-duty metal blade and scoop my wife had gotten for me to do the job.

It gave me about 20 minutes alone to think. Which, naturally enough, led me to think about how Congress and the Biden Administration will clean up after Donald Trump.

Free association is an odd thing. You can’t plan what will pop into your mind.

Let me share my thoughts with you.

Obviously his term is coming to an end. Clearly he is working on some kind of insurance policy to keep from having even more legal troubles than he already faces. And, truly, I don’t think anyone is dumb enough to make a deal with him like the one Nixon got.

Nixon had five people break into Democratic headquarters and try and steal political information. Trump had thousands of people break into the Capital and steal our very democracy - hardly the equivalent being pushed by some commentators on Fox News.

So, it looks like getting a pardon is Donald Trump’s last, best hope. But, should he give it to himself, or quit his post at the last minute and let Mike Pence bail him out. Just two choices. Both of them are risky.

Well, there is actually another way out for him. He could fly out to Moscow and seek asylum. He could also fly to some uninhabited island in the Pacific, form his own country, and refuse to extradite himself. But, I don’t see either of those things happening.

So, does he open door number one and pardon himself, or does he open door number two and get the Vice President to do it.

Well, a self-pardon is risky. It is sure to be challenged in the Supreme Court, and those judges have already refused to hand him the election by declaring all those votes for Democrats to be invalid.

I don’t think he expects gratitude from those traitors. And, there isn’t enough time for him to get on the good side of Michael Cohen again and have him do something to win them over either.

So, that leaves Mike Pence. Now I know he doesn’t like the vice president as much as he used to - you remember, when the Vice President went before the TV cameras and said what an honor it was to work for Donald Trump.

Besides, Pence was the one who was supposed to make sure the whole nation was vaccinated for Coronavirus, and look at the mess he made of that, despite Donald Trump’s bold leadership to inspire him.

It was at that point that sarcasm fled and an actual legal question popped into my head.

Now Pence is a lawyer - he got his degree from Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law in 1986, before he went on to become a conservative host on radio and tv talk shows.

Why should we care? Because it’s likely he has heard the legal phrase “accessory after the fact.”

Let me explain that in non-lawyer terms. I can do it because I’m not a lawyer, so everything I write is in non-lawyer terms. And, I have covered enough trials in my career to know some legal stuff - things like what “guilty” and “not guilty” mean.

Here’s the legal question that popped into my head. If Pence pardons former President Donald Trump, does he become an accessory after the fact.

Let me give you an example. A neighbor of yours comes over and asks to borrow your car for an hour. Then, completely without your knowledge, he robs a store and shoots a clerk who later dies.

The police show up a couple of hours later and ask you about the robber. You don’t want to get into trouble, so you don’t tell them you gave him your car. Then, he tries to rob another store, a silent alarm goes off, and he is arrested a few blocks away.

Now, here are two things that might happen - The police call you, tell them that a car registered in your name has been found near a crime scene, and ask if you want to pick it up or if they should simply return it to you. Let’s call that “A”.

Or - and we can call this “B” - the police knock on your door, tell you that you have facilitated several crimes after the fact, including robbery and murder, because you gave the robber your car, and it was used in a crime.

Well, if Donald Trump gets pardoned, does that mean his Vice President is responsible for his behavior? Do you think that Pence could actually argue that pardoning Trump will mean the country will heal, and that Trump will no longer be involved in politics or try to tear the nation apart?

Well, there are some statements by Pence on the record, talking about how honored he was to be working with President Trump. Sure sounds like they were associates to me.

So, what to do? What to do?

Gee, an impeachment might be looking better and better. I wonder if Pence has any influence in Congress.

The Follow-up Story

 

Let’s assume that everyone has already said what was obvious about the attack on the Capital - the mob, the damage, the police response, the instigation by Donald Trump.

Don’t even try to argue that one. He held a “Save America” rally that drew thousands of people.

You all saw what happened after he told the crowd “And after this, we're going to walk down there, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

And off they went, unstopped, to storm the Capitol and wreck havoc for hours.

The media did a pretty good job covering it. There were even some pictures of the rioters smashing cameras and posing for photos, followed up with brief comments from members of Congress, mostly saying that this was a terrible thing.

That was after they were rescued by police and the national guard, the FBI and other agencies. There was celebration by some of those legislators that only four people died - three of medical problems, one was shot - until someone noticed the same police forces that used tear gas and force to break up Black Lives Matter protests in the street didn’t seem to be taking any action at all for hours, not until after a curfew was declared.

Then the protesters were ushered out, still taking pictures with the assembled police. For the record, as of Thursday afternoon, the official count was 52 people arrested and 14 police officers injured.

What’s left to say? There is always a second-day story to be written, then a Sunday story a few days later when there is more space and a little more time to reflect on what actually happened.

So, let’s pretend have to come up with some new things to write about. Some are obvious, some will take a long time to develop. Let me offer a couple of suggestions.

First, there has to be a tick tock. That’s a term used for the hour-by-hour or minute-by-minute story showing what happed where and when. We know the Trump rally ended just before noon, and that his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, spoke just before him,

But, when was the rally scheduled? How did the word get out? When did a thousand or two thousand people start arriving?

And when did police start planning how to handle the rally? What was the communication between the Capital Police and other agencies? What were Republicans - and Democrats for that matter -doing during their enforced lockdown.

Then where did the decision not to make mass arrests come from? Who made it? Who else was involved in making the decision? And, of course, what will those arrested be charged with - trespass, vandalism, treason?

Tick tock is good to know.

 

Then there’s the question of whether this was an isolated incident. The Associated Press reported on Jan. 6 that protesters supporting Donald Trump demonstrated at statehouses in Georgia, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arizona, Nevada and Washington State. Some had guns, more held signs reading stop the steal or four more years.

Which leads to the best follow-up question, although it may take a long time to get the answer. Who paid for this all? Signs cost money, sweatshirts with slogans supporting President Trump cost money. So does paying  lawyers to defend 52 people. And putting up bail.

A good reporter might even try to find out where they stayed while waiting to try and overthrow Congressional approval of Joe Biden’s election. Did someone reserve a block of rooms, or were they all on their own. Normally when you get booked, police like to know where you are staying. Might be some interesting evidence left behind in a room.

So, that’s what we should be looking at during the next couple of days. I figure out it will take Congress at least that long to figure out what to do about Trump’s rantings that the election was stolen from him and that traitorous Republicans should be punished.

And, oh yes, we should be watching what the new administration will do about all this once they are sworn in.

Was it just a dream?

I got up the other day thinking about what was happening in Washington, but it wasn’t quite right.

I wasn’t sure it was really happening. I told a couple of my friends about it, and they thought I just had a bad dream. But, a few days later, I realized that people were talking about it. Probably a lot of people.

So, it must be true. Otherwise, why were people talking about the end of the world as we know it. The sun is going out.

I know that President Trump told a rally that if he leaves the White House, the sun will never rise again. I remember him shouting it out clearly. “You may like me, or you may hate me. But, you have to vote for me, otherwise the sun will never rise again.”

And he lifted his hand to the sky - and he was holding a bible - and he vowed that God would punish an ungrateful nation that did not keep him in office.

“No more elections means no more cheating by the Socialist Democrats,” he yelled, to applause. Four F-18 fighter jets flew overhead, a spontaneous demonstration of support by loyal pilots in his new Space Force.

Then he went back to the White House and fired Mike Pence.

Rudy Giuliani called a press conference to explain it.

“He’s the boss. He’s in charge,” New York City’s former Mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer explained. “Someone works for you, you can fire them.”

The very same day, 13 Republican Senators demanded that Congress vote on a special emergency bill to declare President Trump to be President for Life.

And, to avoid any political chaos because of what they admitted might be seen as a revolutionary change to the Constitution, they added a provision to extend the terms of current Senators to 20 years. Not all of them, of course. That would be unfair. Only half the Senate would get those extended terms, and the power to decide who got picked would be left to the new Senate Majority Leader, Ted Cruz.

“He’s the best one to do it. Besides, if he can’t be President, he deserves a consolation prize.”

Now my family tells me this was just a horrible nightmare. I should get on my computer and see for myself that it didn’t really happen.

Well, I logged onto Google and tried to see if there really was a special session of Congress meeting to make Donald Trump president for life, but the only key that seemed to work was the letter “Q.”

That’s when I turned on my television set. They were showing images of a special Trump rally.