April 15, 2024
Dear Independent and Moderate Republican Voters...
by Martin Raffel

President Biden's flaws do not include the desire to establish an imperial presidency.

I believe President Biden has been an excellent president, who has accomplished a lot for the American people in his first term. However, you may disagree with his policies or be reluctant to vote for him because of his flaws. But his flaws are not, qualitatively, like the flaws of his opponent, who will not hesitate to throw our democracy under the bus.

If you sit out the election, or if you vote for a third-party candidate, in effect, you would be helping to establish an imperial presidency. Would our democracy survive a second Trump term? Possibly. But do we really want to take that chance? A vote for Joe Biden this year is an act of true patriotism.

I recently watched the Apple TV mini-series “Masters of the Air,” which tells the story of the 8th Air Force and the courageous American pilots that flew B-17 Flying Fortresses from their bases in England in World War II. They experienced horrific losses, yet mission after mission, these men climbed back into their cockpits because they believed, correctly, that they were striking a decisive blow against Hitler’s fascism.

I thought of my late father, himself a World War II B-17 pilot, not with the 8th but with the 15th Air Force that flew out of Foggia, Italy, and his 50 harrowing missions over targets in Nazi-occupied Europe. He suffered from nightmares for years after the war. The other image that crept into my mind was of Donald Trump standing in front of a huge American flag with his rapt MAGA followers chanting “USA, USA.” And I could feel my blood pressure rising.

Frankly, that image revolted me, and I knew it would have revolted my late father. From the Greatest Generation we have descended to a former president and GOP candidate who strenuously sought to block the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history, who incited a mob to attack the Capitol, and then watched for hours as the mob battered law enforcement officers and hunted Trump’s vice president and members of Congress. The former president refused repeated appeals by advisors and family members to call the mob down and end the violence.

In recent days Mike Pence finally acknowledged he could no longer in good conscience vote for the person with whom he served. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and extremist rhetoric continue to poison our discourse. Yet, it’s not only about 2020 election denialism, his cozying up to authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, and his disrespect for Gold Star families and genuine American heroes like John McCain. Put all that aside. What about our American future?

The former president has said that he should be able to do whatever he wishes. Already he and his supportive cast have been hard at work mapping out a strategy to gain a free hand by replacing senior professionals in all federal departments, including the Justice Department, with people who will do whatever he insists that they do, Constitution be damned.

Would federal employees be protected? No. Toward the end of his term, Trump signed an executive order that would have given him the power to dismiss as many as 50,000 federal employees who have faithfully served both Republican and Democratic administrations and replace them with loyalists to his extreme agenda. After the 2020 election, Biden quickly rescinded the order. If elected to a second term, Trump reportedly would reimpose it. This is just one of many tools Trump is expected to use to consolidate power in his hands.

Our Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick declared January 6 to be an “attempted coup.” I wonder what he is thinking now. Will he join Mike Pence and others from his party, including many who worked in Trump’s White House, in rejecting Trump’s fitness to serve as commander-in-chief for a second term? Or just keep quiet so as not to alienate the MAGA base?

I know this. His continued silence means history will not think kindly of him.

April 4, 2024
A Fitting Coincidence
by Debbie DiMicco

The outcry of Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans over the coinciding of Easter with the Transgender Day of Visibility is yet another example of far-right intolerance and disparagement of anyone who is different. The concept “Let us love one another.” [John 4:7] is absent in all of this shrill and divisive rhetoric.

While Trump hawked bibles (only $59.99!), Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign press secretary, called for “an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America,” as though all Christians believe transgender persons have no right to exist in our country. House Speaker Mike Johnson jumped in, asserting that the Biden White House “betrayed the central tenet of Easter.” What tenet? “Give justice to the weak, maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute?” [Psalms 82:3]. “Be kind to one another?” [Ephesians 4:32]. “God shows no partiality?” [Romans 2:11] ] “Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner?” [Proverbs 14:21] “Judge not that you not be judged?” [Matthew 7:1]

MAGA outrage flies in the face of Jesus’ message, yet that seems to be the trend in Trump’s Republican party, embracing Christ’s name, while disdaining Christ’s message. Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today, reported that pastors who quoted from the Sermon on the Mount were met with criticism, with congregants rejecting Jesus’ words as “liberal talking points” and “weak.” It seems that “Love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12:31] is passé - unless that neighbor is just like you.

The coincidental calendar conjunction was low hanging fruit for Trump, Leavitt, Johnson, and their ilk to further their political agenda of hostility and exclusion, all while dripping in specious righteousness. Just like Mike Johnson’s insistence that the Bible is his “worldview” and “owners manual.” It seems the version of the Bible that Johnson and his cronies are reading is missing a few important pages, but that’s what you get when you switch from King James to the abridged “MAGAs Notes” version.

Whatever. Trump, Leavitt, Johnson, and company are wrong. The coinciding of Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility is not a betrayal. It is serendipity. It is fitting. And the unstrung fury it has engendered simply shows that while these right-wing extremists proclaim themselves Christian, their actions and words show that they are anything but.