A Lack of 2020 Vision

New Year’s Eve essays traditionally look back at the past year or ahead to the new one, but we don’t feel up to either task. Once again we’re afraid to look back for fear of being turned into a pillar of salt, and we can’t imagine what’s coming next.

Much of what’s happened over the past three years or so would have been unimaginable just four years ago, so we won’t make any predictions and will try not to be surprised. It seems a safe bet that the the Senate won’t vote to remove President Donald Trump from office, but there’s likely to be more information coming out about his impeachable offenses, and a slight chance it might be too much even for the Republican party. The Democrats are bound to nominate someone left of the American center, but lately they’ve been backing off some of their crazy talk about Medicare for all and it remains to be seen just how far left they go.

As for how all that shakes out in the Electoral College next November, don’t trust anyone who tells you they know.

The sun will continue to rise in the east and the national debt will continue to accumulate and Trump will continue to “tweet” outrageous things, but don’t count on anything else. We suggest you indulge in some revelry tonight, some rest and heart eating tomorrow, and be ready for a wild ride through 2020.

— Bud Norman

A Violent Year Ends

On Sunday morning we were worshipping God at the West Douglas Church of Christ over in rough Delano, and that evening we were having dinner with the folks and a brother and sister-in-law at a swank retirement village where some adorable young children from a nearby synagogue were charmingly singing Hanukkah songs. All the local sports teams won in the afternoon, the food was good, and there was a lingering holiday cheer.

We came home to the news the someone had walked into the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, with a shotgun hidden in his overcoat, and killed two people before being gunned down by a couple of gun-toting members of the congregation. Late Saturday night in Monsey, New York, a man walked into a synagogue with a machete and severely wounded five people during a Hanukkah celebration, and although no one was sufficiently armed to prevent his escape an arrest was made a short time later. Such is life in America in the waning days of 2019, where such senseless acts of mass murder and mayhem are commonplace.

It happens all too often at shopping malls and music festivals and gay bars and sporting events and in random workplaces and crowded streets, but it’s all the more unsettling on the all too frequent occasions when it happens at schools and houses of worship and other places that ought to be considered especially sacred. Which is not to say that the lives lost in one place are any less precious than those lost in another, but only to express a natural human yearning for some safe refuge in such a cruel world as this.

As we try to envision 2020 through squinted eyes we see no reason to hope the problem will be solved by year’s end. So far there’s no known motive for the incident at the West Freeway Church of Christ, and might well prove some personal beef between the shooter and on the of the congregants, as the denomination tends to be blessedly apolitical and focused on more eternal matters, but it appears that the incident in Monsey was yet another manifestation of the Jew hatred that has long infected humanity and has lately been on the rise here and abroad, and every single incident of the past several years is probably best explained by the ancient belief shared by all religions that evil exists and persists in the heart of man. It’s been there all along, so far as we can tell, and neither of our political parties of the moment can offer any better solutions than the parties of the past came up with.

Despite our denomination’s placid and apolitical bent we’re not at all surprised that a couple of Church of Christ-goers in a Texas town called White Settlement happened to be armed during Sunday worship services, and we think they’re on firm scriptural ground with the admonition in Luke 22:36 that “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one,” and in this case it seems to have limited the carnage, so you can score one for the Republican argument about good guys with guns. Still, it’s as inadequate a solution as trying to get rid of guns.

So far as we know no one at the West Douglas Church is packing heat on a Sunday morning, and even if we were to bring the fancy handgun our father gave us we’d probably be of little help to our fellow congregants if something evil came our way, so we can’t blame those Jews in Monsey for sharing our faith in the goodness or at least basic decency that also persists in the heart of man, and usually prevails. Between God almighty and the local constabulary of our up-to-date western civilization we should be able to count on that.

The best that the politicians can do about it is to encourage the better angels of our nature, as President Abraham Lincoln once put it during a very divided and violent time in our history, but it’s hard to envision that happening in 2020.

— Bud Norman

End-of-the-Year Procrastination

All three branches of the government of are still on holiday vacation, the private sector is also taking a break, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un didn’t deliver any unpleasant Christmas surprises. For the moment there’s no reason in the news to interrupt the holiday cheer, which might well last until next year, but sooner or later you’ll find the news of the world unavoidable.

When we all get back to it President Donald Trump will still be impeached, with all the headache-inducing arguments that will entail, the stock markets will go up and down, and the situation on the Korean peninsula will remain very scary. The national debt will continue to accumulate, the climate will continue to change, and trade wars will be ongoing and the resulting agreements underwhelming. There will be celebrity scandals and much-ballyhooed product launches by big corporations, and stories about the many good and bad things happening in the world that deserve more serious attention.

For the past several holiday days we’ve been carefully avoiding any discussion of any of it at our family gatherings. This has mostly worked out well, as we have lots of happy memories and fond wishes to share, and that seems most apt for this cold and dark time of year. We’ll put off the news for another week if not another year, and send our best wishes for a Happy New Year to anyone who happens to read this.

— Bud Norman

Happy Boxing Day

Today is Boxing Day in Canada and the United Kingdom, and we think the United States should consider adopting the holiday. The name has nothing to do with pugilism, a sport more suited to Black Friday at Walmart, but rather the tradition of handing out boxes of gifts to postmen and household servants and the clerks of oft-visited stores and the other helpful people one encounters on a regular basis.

Boxing Day seems a nice way to keep the gift-giving Christmas spirit going through another day, and help lubricate the gears of social interaction. Better yet, it’s another reason to take a day from all the news of the world.

Happy Boxing Day to all of our Canadian and British friends, and to the rest of you wish a happy day after Christmas.

— Bud Norman

Merry Christmas, 2019

Today is Christmas Day, and the only news story worth mentioning is now more than two millennia old. One of the first reports was in the Gospel According to Luke, a few decades after the fact, but it hasn’t been improved on since an angel of God first told it to some shepherds shivering in the cold outside outside a small town called Bethlehem.

“And the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all peoples. For today in the city of David there has been born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Except to wish you and all those you love a most Merry Christmas, we’ll leave it at that.

— Bud Norman

Merry Christmas Eve

When we were growing up, the full-scale celebration of Christmas always commenced on Christmas eve.

The family tradition was to gather around the tree and near the fireplace and listen to Gene Autry’s Christmas album and then sing carols along with Mitch Miller and his band, pose interminably for the family portraits that Dad always took several tries to take with his camera timer, and eat pizza or some other fun food and play games. After that the folks let us open all the presents from them and the Okie kinfolk, and we’d play with them for a while until we were sent to bed hopefully wondering what greater gifts from Santa Claus would await us on Christmas morning.

At our advanced age we’re more inclined to hopefully ponder the greatest gift that God might offer, and how His plan for it began on a cold night in Bethlehem, and how it might end for us. That’s a bit somber for such a festive occasion as Christmas Eve, however, when it’s far better to hopefully look forward to a new birth of creation tomorrow.

There’s plenty of bad news and ominous developments on the political scene we usually write about, but leave that to another day, even until next year. Instead, have a very Merry Christmas Eve.

— Bud Norman

Have a Happy Whatever Holiday You Celebrate

Today is the first day of Hanukkah, and to all those who celebrate this ancient and beautiful holiday we a most happy one. Which is not meant to give any offense to those who celebrate Christmas.

These days many people get touchy about such things. Some still consider “Merry Christmas” a slight toward the 13 other religions that have holidays at this time, and now some others think that anyone who says “Happy Holidays” or “season’s greetings” is waging a war on Christmas. We tend to say “Merry Christmas,” and did so even before President Donald Trump gave his permission, but we know all sorts of people and try to accommodate their preferences.

That seems in keeping with the spirit of all the holidays, especially Christmas, but you can offer us your best wishes any way you want. We’ll not let it disturb our Christmas cheer.

— Bud Norman

On Trump and Christianity Today

Since its founding by Rev. Billy Graham in 1956 the magazine Christianity Today has been an influential voice in evangelical circles, but little noticed by the rest of the world. That changed on Friday when it ran an editorial urging that President Donald Trump be removed from office, which got so much attention the magazine’s internet site briefly crashed in the unprecedented traffic.

The editorial was newsworthy because poll after poll has shown that Trump enjoys overwhelming support from white self-identified evangelical Christians, with such self-proclaimed evangelical leaders as Graham’s son Franklin Graham among his most obsequious defenders, and Trump’s critics have long been perplexed by the phenomenon.

Trump boasted in “The Art of the Deal” about the many married women he’s seduced, his third wife is a former nude model, he broke federal laws to cover up an affair with a pornographic video performer, he ran casinos and strip clubs, often curses in front of the kids, once tried to kick an elderly widow of her longtime home to build a parking lot for his limousine, and has earned a reputation for stiffing his employees and contractors and investors. He tells at least two or three outright lies a day, his family was recently barred by the New York courts from running a charity because his foundation had stolen money from a children’s cancer program, he pridefully “punches back ten times harder” rather than turn the other cheek, and while running for the Republican nomination he told a Christian forum that he’s never felt the need to ask God’s forgiveness for any of it.

So far as we can tell, Trump’s white evangelical supporters believe he’s punching back ten times harder on their behalf, and therefore deserves a pass. Although he was a staunch advocate for abortion rights through most of his life, he’s kept a promise to appoint Supreme Court justices and lower court judges who might overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that made first-term abortions a constitutional right. He moved the America’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and given his blessings to his expanded Israeli settlements in disputed territories, and has otherwise been a staunch friend to a country that is now more important to America’s evangelical Christians than to its most secularized Jews. Trump has also sought to revoke the Johnson Amendment that forbids tax-exempt churches from advocating for political candidates such as himself, and his controversial Secretary of Education has sought to prevent restrictions on the free speech rights of students.

More importantly, we suspect, is that Trump is despised by the same snooty Hollywood and academic and media types that many evangelicals feel have been sneering down at them during the past many decades of cultural revolution. He longs for a 1950s economy of coal miners and steelworkers and stay-at-home moms, and a return to that same halcyon era when football players stood at attention during the national anthem and protestors were treated roughly and Christianity was a more dominant force in American culture. Trump might not be an exemplary Christian, some of our white evangelical friends will admit, but they note that David was beloved by God and a great leader despite his rather extraordinary sins, and that the Persian King Cyrus negotiated a treaty that protected his kingdom and also gave freedom to the Israelites, so they have faith that Trump is one of those mysterious God ways with which works His will.

We’re white and regularly attend services at a strictly-by-the-Bible low church over on the west side and not embarrassed to evangelize for Christ, and in fact are ashamed by how little we do it, but better Christians than ourselves have never persuaded us to support Trump with any of these arguments.

David had demonstrated his love for God in mortal combat against Goliath and pleaded God’s mercy for his sins, and Trump’s bone spurs and prideful nature have prevented him for doing either. That deal Cyrus struck with the Israelites only forestalled the diaspora and the destruction of the temple and the pogroms and the Holocaust and all the difficulties that still beset a reconstituted Israel. For all its virtues the ’50s was a time of disgraceful institutional racial and sexual inequality, and for all the destructive influences that have been unleashed since we’re glad that the era’s dissenters weren’t beaten into submission. That steelmaking and coal mining economy isn’t coming back, nor are the trade union dominance and high top-bracket tax rates of the era, and we figure it’s better the public should focus on the inevitable high-tech and air-conditioned and less brown-lung-inducing and more female-inclusive industries of the future, and how to get along with one another in a population that will become increasingly diverse no matter what walls Trump builds. Even if Roe v Wade is overturned, the matter will simply be turned back over to the states, where the liberals will likely win lots of elections on the issue.

We’re as appalled at the current state of the American culture as any of our white evangelical brothers and sisters, but the scriptures tell us to put not our faith in princes, and as princes go we’re especially suspicious of this unrepentantly vulgar and profane Trump fellow. He seems to epitomize the Hugh Hefner and Rat Pack hedonism of the ’50s, as well as the decade’s pushy racism and sexism, and his complaints about what have come since seem disingenuous except when they’re overtly racist and sexist or obviously self-serving. God allowed Trump’s election to the presidency, just as he twice allowed President Barack Obama’s, but we believe that in both cases He was granting American mankind its postlapsarian free will and the opportunity to once again screw things up beyond recognition.

At this point, and as always, even the most cocksure Americans of humankind can’t bring about paradise on Earth, so we figure the Church should remain focused on sending as many individual souls as possible to a better place. Having the faith identify itself with its allegiance to Trump won’t help the effort. As the editorial in Christianity Today notes, there’s no disputing the evidence that Trump’s unabashed amorality has led him to abuse the powers of office and obstruct officials to find the truth about it, among other odious things, and there’s no explaining that to the skeptical sinners in need of salvation.

“To use an old cliche, it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence,” the editor-in-chief wrote. “And just when we think it’s time to push all our chips to the center of the table, that’s when the whole game will come crashing down. It will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and the world’s understanding of the gospel. And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.”

We’re not saying any damn Democrat would be any better, but we share the hope of Christianity Today and Christians everywhere that there’s something better on the far horizon.

— Bud Norman

And So It Begins

As the House of Representatives was voting to impeach him on Wednesday, President Donald Trump was holding yet another campaign rally, this time in Battle Creek, Michigan. The location was appropriately named, as Trump was even more combative than usual.

Although the rally was a relatively short two hours long, Trump managed to ramble through the usual boasts, toss out the usual nicknames for his potential election challengers, whip up the usual hatred for the media covering the event, gripe that the security forces were too gently escorting a female protestor out of the event, and cast the usual aspersions on the patriotism of anyone who opposes him. He seemed particularly peeved with Democratic Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, who filled her husband’s longtime seat after his recent death, and threw a rather morbid joke to the rant.

“Debbie Dingell, that’s a real beauty,” Trump said, telling the crowd how he had signed off on the half-mast flags and other funeral honors routinely given to mark the passing of such a longtime congressman as her husband. “She calls me up. ‘It’s the nicest thing that’s ever happened. Thank you so much. He’s looking down,'” Trump told the crowd, imitating the tears she was supposedly crying, then adding with a comic shrug, “Maybe he’s looking up, I don’t know.”

Most of the crowd found it hilarious, but the mocking of a grieving widow and a jocular suggestion that her recently deceased husband might be roasting in hell did get a few audible moans, and not just from the media in attendance. We found it a bit much even by Trump standards, and were also offended by the suggestion that Dingell was obligated to vote against Trump’s impeachment because he didn’t spitefully deny him him the honors due a long-serving member of Congress. Later in the speech he also seemed especially peeved with New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, suggesting that she owed him a “nay” vote because he had once donated to one of her campaigns and “now I want my damn money back.”

Such arguments didn’t stave off Trump’s impeachment by the House, where only two members of the Democratic majority, both running for reelection in districts that Trump won in the past election, were all voting “yea.” Every Republican voted “nay,” though, and and for now the entire slim Republican majority in the Senate finds Trump’s exaggerated boasts and unfounded slanders and casual cruelties compellingly persuasive. It wows the rally crowds and plays well with the talk radio-listening base, too, and will probably be the defense that Trump sticks with through an impeachment trial.

Which should make for an interesting holiday season.

— Bud Norman

What Not to Talk About in Christmastime

The House of Representatives is expected to impeach President Donald Trump today on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress today, giving Americans plenty to shout at one other about during their family Christmas celebrations. All the polls and other evidence the country is split pretty much down the middle on the matter, and neither side seems willing to listen to the other, so for now we suggest everyone talk about such anodyne topics as sports and whatever good news they have about the cute kids scurrying around the festivities.

Even so, we’ll be keeping an eye on the developments. This is only third time in American history that a president has been impeached — not counting the impending and inevitable impeachment that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation — and no matter one’s perspective it’s a subject of great importance. It’s very serious stuff, even if many of the arguments being made are utterly unserious.

On impeachment eve Trump issued a six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on official White House stationery, and it has to be seen to be read. The president reportedly spent a whole week on it, with input from top White House advisors and Trump’s personal lawyers, and it’s clearly been spell-checked and made use of a thesaurus, but otherwise it’s just a longer-than-usual presidential “tweet.” The are the usual Random Capitalizations and excessive use of exclamation markets, easily disproved claims, personal attacks, and the standard Trumpian tactic of accusing his opponents of whatever he’s been accused of, as well as a complaint that the Democrats “have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!”

Nothing in the missive offers any credible refutation of the evidence that has been brought against him, nor any explanation about why he’s blocking key witnesses from offering any exculpatory testimony, but Pelosi’s response that the letter was “ridiculous” and “really sick” also wasn’t very substantive. We’re holding out faint hope that the arguments will be more high-minded during a Senate trial, which is expected to take place next month, but have no expectation that any of it will change anybody’s mind.

Anything’s possible, though, especially these days, and there’s no predicting what bizarre plot twists might unfold in this surreal reality show. We’ll keep an open eye on it, but during the Christmas season we’ll try to keep our mouths shut at the family get-togethers. Some Republicans are blaming the Democrats for impeaching Trump so close to Christmas, but some of them voted to impeach President Bill Clinton on Dec. 19, 1998, and even though our family was in favor of that we mostly talked abut sports and the young kinfolk during that holiday season.

— Bud Norman