Disclaimer: I want to state for the record that this blog post is about as politically incorrect as you can get, so if you’re easily offended, don’t read it. Remember, you have been warned.
Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne recently published an op-ed piece in the New York Times titled, “The Evangelicalism of Old White Men Is Dead.” They write that evangelicalism (or at least its reputation) is a “casualty” of the recent presidential election. They believe it is time to bury evangelicalism and replace it with a more authentic expression of Christian faith.
-Shayne Looper
“Red Letter Christianity” And The Bible
The Huffington Post
If the recent presidential election proves anything, it’s that we — as individuals, organizations and a country — need to evolve the tech industry’s approach to diversity and inclusion.
-Nichole Burton and Aubrey Blanche
Why white men are diversity’s missing stakeholders
TechCrunch.com
In the days that followed Donald Trump’s election victory, liberal assessments about what went wrong and prescriptions for how the Left can move forward were in short supply. There were, however, exceptions. Notable among those was Mark Lilla’s piece in the New York Times ten days after Hillary Clinton’s loss describing the need to bring about an end to the “age of identity liberalism.”
-Noah Rothman
The Left’s Toxic Identity Obsession
Commentary Magazine
As Donald Trump’s inauguration day rapidly approaches, the news media continues to scramble for some understanding of what went wrong, as in “How could Hillary Clinton have possibly lost to Donald Trump?” kind of wrong.
Their answer, and I’m grossly simplifying it here to make a point, is “White Men Bad!”
More specifically, the Huff Post article states in part:
Campolo and Claiborne regard the fact that 80 percent of white evangelical Christians voted for Mr. Trump as evidence that evangelicalism has been poisoned by self-interest. Its reputation “has been clouded over.”
Actually, I find the statement hilarious. Does Shayne Looper imagine for one split second that everyone who voted for Clinton wasn’t voting out of self-interest? Everyone voted for the candidate they thought would best represent their interests, or at least they voted for the candidate they found less objectionable (and some people were so revolted by the both of them, they voted for neither).
But to that point, Looper goes on:
How, they wonder, could people who take Jesus seriously ever vote for a man whose campaign was marked by “racism, sexism, xenophobia,” and “hypocrisy”?
From Shayne’s point of view, the problem isn’t just white men, but white, male Evangelical Christians. I’m not a huge fan of Evangelical Christianity, in part because it really can be rigid about doctrine and the whole “God, guns, and guts” routine, but they’re Americans too, and they have the right to vote for the candidate of their choice.
I do agree with Shayne that we have to take the Bible as a holistic, unified document rather than emphasize some areas (such as putting everything Jesus said in red letters) and de-emphasizing or completely disregarding others (and it should be said that Jesus was almost universally teaching Jews, not Gentile Christians…if Christians want to understand their own theology better, they need to read Paul).
The “solution,” from Looper’s point of view, is to replace Evangelical Christianity with a more universal form that presents as more compassionate, charitable, and inclusive (my words, not his).
This is somewhat different from the solution proposed by Nichole Burton and Aubrey Blanche at TechCrunch, who believe that instead of ejecting white men in favor of something different, they should be recruited as “allies”.
The Silicon Valley tech community is about as liberal and progressive as you can get, but they’re still struggling with their own “diversity crisis,” probably because like a number of other professions, it’s been historically dominated by white males.
According to Burton and Blanche:
In the election, the majority of white people voted for Trump, whose campaign was characterized by division rather than inclusion. And white men voted for the president-elect by at least a 10 percent margin over other groups.
I also found this statement hilariously funny, not because it isn’t true, but because it describes the Obama Presidency to a “T”. Racial and ethnic relations have reached (or so it seems to me) an all-time low in the eight years since Barack and Michelle first walked into the White House.
But they go on:
White men (and other allies) must learn how to be inclusive and use their own privilege constructively. All of us are capable of prejudice and biased behavior, but changing it is more difficult the further a person is from being the subject of discrimination.
I have to be thankful that Burton and Blanche at least acknowledge that it’s possible for people besides white males to be “capable of prejudice and biased behavior,” but of course, it’s worse when whites do it.
They do want to extend a carrot instead of a stick by creating “safe spaces” for “unconverted” whites to hear minority points of view, and to use whites who are already allies to invite non-ally whites into the fold.
So the Huff Post writer wants to trash can Evangelical Christianity for a version that would be more likely to vote for Clinton, while the TechCrunch writers want to solve the same problem by recruiting conservative white males into progressivism as allies, people who also would be more likely to vote for Clinton.
However, according to Noah Rothman at Commentary, the left has a problem:
Notable among those was Mark Lilla’s piece in the New York Times ten days after Hillary Clinton’s loss describing the need to bring about an end to the “age of identity liberalism.” Lilla’s case in favor of a “pre-identity liberalism” is a convincing one, but he doesn’t propose a method to bring about a return to this providential status quo ante. There’s a reason for that: there isn’t one—at least, not an easy one. Political movements are not party committees. They don’t radically redefine their mission at the drop of a white paper. The modern activist left was reared on toxic identity politics, and it seems disinclined to abandon this addictive poison without a struggle.
The idea here is that modern liberalism is hardly united. It’s been fractured into multiple units, some running in parallel to others while some are actually standing in opposition to particular liberal factions.
They have no central rallying point, and thus, no specific focus other than #NotMyPresident.
Rothman goes on:
Take, for example, the so-called “Women’s March” that will descend on Washington D.C. to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 21. The masses gathered in opposition to Trump will create the appearance of unity, but a closer examination of the coalition united by their antipathy for the incoming administration paints a portrait of a movement at war with itself.
The Women’s March will be short at least one formerly eager participant who told the New York Times she canceled her trip to Washington D.C. after reading a volunteer organizer’s Facebook post who “advised ‘white allies’ to listen more and talk less.” The Times noted that racial tensions within the organization extend to the organizational level. A Louisiana coordinator resigned her volunteer role due to a lack of diversity in leadership positions. The decision to change the name of a satellite march based in Nashville yielded to a caustic debate over whether the event had become hostile to white participants.
I read about this in another online venue, and basically what was being said was “white women aren’t victim enough”. I consider this yet another of President Obama’s legacies. Leftist progressives are inhibited from uniting by identity politics. How are they going to accomplish anything if they can’t unify, even over how much they hate Donald Trump?
Google “Democratic party crisis” and the search results will produce quite a number of articles, usually published sometime last November, including this one from Fox News.
They’ve probably recovered from the shock of Clinton losing the election by now, but they’ve got an uphill battle in dealing with a Trump Presidency and a Republican majority in the House and the Senate.
So what does that mean for the rest of us?
If Hillary Clinton had won, then white males who were not self-avowed “allies” would have continued to be relentlessly attacked by the majority liberal left, basically with us being called racist simply because we were born white and male (and we received further demerits if we happened to be Christians or religious Jews). The majority social and political power in the United States would have kept on flattening us with their juggernaut steamroller just as they have for the past eight years.
As the character Howard Beale (Peter Finch) ranted in the film Network (1976) “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
And that’s the real reason Donald Trump won the Presidency. The marginalized rose up against the monolithic system and gave it a taste of its own medicine.
They sure don’t like that taste, not at all.
The result is that in a week, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States.
I wish that actually meant good things, but every time I hear the man speak, I’m astonished that he managed to build an empire worth billions. At least Clinton could (most of the time) fake being a sane and reasonable human being.
What it really means for us is that instead of a steamroller continuing to mash us flat, the left will either play the victim card hoping we’ll feel guilty enough to succumb to being their allies, or that they’ll put on sheep’s clothing and pretend they don’t think that all white males are “deplorables,” as Clinton declared us, hoping we can be convinced to turn over our free will and self-determination to the collective.
I know all this sounds cynical, and it probably is. Trump isn’t going to help, and in fact, every time he opens his mouth or puts out a tweet, he just pours more gasoline over the inferno.
Because Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton lost, and because Donald Trump is such as big, white, rich, narcissistic, loudmouth, all white males, and especially conservative and religious white males (along with conservative, religious white woman) will be painted with the same broad brush, and one strategy or another will be employed to either turn us to the “light side of the Force” (in their eyes, not mine) or they will attempt to maintain a “Rebel alliance” which will limp along for the next four years due to factionalized identity politics.
Bottom line is no one is going to have a good time. We’ll all suffer, not only because Trump is a total loose cannon, but the only solution the left has to fix its problem and the problem of white men, is to reframe capitulation as cooperation. They will continue to try to remake us into their drones, and failing that, “demonize” us as the enemy to resist.
May the Messiah come soon and in our day or, continuing my Star Wars references, “Help us Yeshua HaMoshiach, you’re our only hope.”
Morning Meditations 
What do you think of the statements that Trump doesn’t talk like us, that we should give him time, that he didn’t grown up like us? That he doesn’t know the language, like Paul didn’t know the language?
Shavua Tov, James — You mentioned in passing one of the accusations leveled against Trump as one of narcissism. I found that interesting, because the essence of the victimhood mentality is also exactly the same sort of self-centeredness, focused on an identity by which each victim isolates himself or herself from others, and then wails in woe over not feeling sufficiently valued or honored or accepted in comparison with the perceived advantages of some other identity group. [Thus we see yet another example of the proverbial pot calling the kettle “black”.] This is, of course, in contrast to the self-help or “bootstrap” mentality that determines to overcome all obstacles to win for itself some desired goal.
Philosophically, identity isolation is a natural logical consequence of dialectical materialism, in that materialism limits the psychological and emotional tools with which one may hope to pursue improvements in one’s personal condition, and the dialectical qualifier is that which divides the world into competing groups or identities. You may recall that dialectical materialism is the philosophy embraced by the Left via Marxism, and promulgated as the method of their struggle for dominance.
Hence we can observe its effect in the current conditions within the USA (though certainly they are not limited to that locale). The solution which must be pursued, then, by the political Right, must be one that encourages the view that the larger body of citizens are all in the same proverbial boat and that all its individuals likewise have common goals in the pursuit of life, liberty, and well-being. Thus, no one is truly isolated, and they must seek solutions to various problems in a manner that addresses all who are willing to participate in the common endeavor (recognizing that some will refuse to do so, and that they must be ignored or marginalized [possibly imprisoned, in more severe cases] so long as they remain unwilling to seek their individual well-being within the common well-being).
One of the first issues to be addressed, then, is to identify the principles that best support the common well-being. In the USA those questions were addressed by its founding fathers; and their solutions were well-documented in forms such as the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the book “Common Sense”, and some others. They were also well-advised in their era to draw lessons from the Tenakh and the apostolic writings. These solutions are still applicable today, though they may demand a greater degree of humility and tolerance from some identity groups, because these solutions did not originate with Islamists, nor Buddhists, nor Shintaoists, nor Wiccans, nor even solely or specifically with Christians or quasi-Christians. However, in the USA, the benefits to be derived from its founding principles are dependent on adopting a view of “e pluribus unam” despite the existence of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (IDIC).
[For a fictional literary example: In the StarTrek universe, the Federation was required in order to unify the IDIC diversity identified by the Vulcans. But even the Federation had problems trying to identify any universal set of moral principles, because, in my view, the scriptwriters (being constrained by Hollywood’s liberalism) were unable to commit themselves to unabashedly promulgating the guidance of HaShem’s Torah.]
Those are statements by “Dr. Dobson” from before the election. Another statement was that Trump had said the word “hell” a few times in an interview. Awww… shucks. He said a bad word.
Just to point out… it was James himself who said Trump is a narcissist (and loose cannon, and so on). It’s simply an obvious observation; it doesn’t have to be turned back on the observer.
And, as for victimhood, there is such thing as a victim — and categories of victims. For instance, it wouldn’t make sense to say slaves should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
On the other hand, rebelling and having and following the Underground Railroad and putting their hands to the Civil War were aspects of such pulling up (aspects often denigrated as wrong).
They didn’t do most of that alone, though. They had to help each other, and there were white helpers as well, and the CIvil War had to be primarily carried by white yankees who cared.
White victimhood, though. This is fairly inexplicable to me. Sure, again, there is such thing. But white people aren’t generally oppressed. It can happen — and it can be based on race, or not.
As for race relations in our country during Obama years, one main person who kept fanning resentment just got elected. I find it strange to blame the guy who was constantly called black…
… or not even black. He’s from Africa but “worse” — and he has a brother who’s black too, just look at him. Oh, and don’t forget to notice there’s a black aunt. And on it goes. He’s such a racist.
Hi, Marleen — Once again I find myself behind in the sequence, because my last previous reply was formulated before your latest reply was visible to me. This could mean that I’ve already written something that you’ve addressed separately beforehand, and that I may therefore repeat myself inadvertently in addressing your latest reply, but I’ll give it a go anyway.
I think James was quoting or paraphrasing someone else’s statement when he mentioned narcissism. When I mentioned identity victimhood, I was not addressing real victimhood or dismissing the existence of real victims. I was addressing a phenomenon of feelings that has occurred only in a much more recent context than the slavery that ended a century and a half ago, and much more recently than the Holocaust half that long ago, consequently the bootstrap metaphor cannot be applied to the sorts of solutions that were required for such severe circumstances (nor criticized for its inapplicability).
Now, you mentioned being puzzled over the notion of “white victimhood”. Despite the fact that white folks are not generally oppressed, I think you might recognize from James’ essay how they have been scapegoated, particularly white males. It is a feature of the dialectic method to create a group that may be safely targeted and attacked, as a justification for whipping up a sense of rage or outrage that then may be directed as political power. However, as recent events have demonstrated, such a ploy can backfire if pursued too long. The man who was just elected POTUS made use of that backlash only very recently. You cannot justify accusing him of any longer-term incitement of such political resentment. His prior public activities were solely commercial and not political, whereas the scapegoating of white males, particularly older ones in positions of power, has been ongoing for at least half a century. This issues that need to be addressed and resolved are much larger and of longer duration than the smoke and screeching demonstrated during the recent political conflict. Their solutions cannot be superficial, either.
@Marleen — Was it Dr,Dobson who said that Trump doesn’t know the language, like Paul didn’t know the language? I’m confused, about who supposedly doesn’t, or didn’t, know which language. If this was a reference to Rav Shaul the Shalia’h, who was fluent with Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and probably Latin as well, then I can’t understand why he would be cited as a linguistically-challenged individual for comparison with any modern example of such a difficulty. On the other hand, I could understand someone claiming that Mr.Trump doesn’t understand, because he fails to employ, the “lingua-franca” of the American Left that has become such common currency in recent years.
Of course, this claim would, in itself, reflect someone’s failure to understand a deliberate refusal to submit to the presuppositions inherent in that language, in order to demand a change from existing terminology and the views it supports. We could infer a comparison with the insistence among Messianic Jews upon using Rav Yeshua’s Hebrew name, and corresponding Jewish honorific titles such as “Rav” and “Admor”, along with other Jewish names and terminology for the Jews and Jewish concepts addressed in the apostolic writings, rather than the Greco-Roman terms and transliterations that support the ancient Christian de-legitimization of Judaism.
Jewish messianists may well claim much better justification for their insistence on different terminology to challenge prior faulty assumptions; but that does not mean that Mr.Trump should not be allowed to express himself, even outrageously, for a similar purpose of challenging public assumptions. Does he do it deliberately, or is it simply an unconscious indicator that he is an uncouth boor? Or could it be a little of both? I don’t claim to know; and I’m not convinced that anyone else can be sure about him, either. Regardless of Mr.Trump’s personal statements, I would certainly applaud anyone who is willing to adjust their use of language to challenge many aspects of current American discussion that are falsely taken as accepted wisdom.
There’s something rotten in this country and it’s the political system.
Donald Trump appalls me. The Republicans appall me. The Democrats appall me. Washington, D.C., is in the throes of a gigantic hissy fit, thrown by grown men and women on all sides. I see a sad few in power actually trying to do anything that is beneficial for the country at this point. They’re all far more concerned with tearing each other to pieces. I’m contemplating getting off of social media and avoiding the news for awhile because the whole thing makes me so angry, but I hate to be uninformed.
Side note: What’s interesting to me in all of this is that the Millennials (I may or may not be one, depending on the model) are supposed to be the most selfish, entitled, weak generation in a thousand years. But you know what those of us in our 20s and 30s see? Baby Boomers burning the whole thing to the ground with no plans for rebuilding. They (in the broad sense, of course; not at all pointing fingers at you) don’t seem to remember or care that there are people coming up after them that have to deal with whatever they leave behind. If they ever leave it behind. Oh, how we need term limits!
A comment somewhat tangential to your piece. Carry on.
Ooooh…funny! As a Baby Boomer, I cannot help but hope you do not want the term limits specifically applied to individuals as opposed to the politicians supposedly supported by Baby Boomers. I would that they all, had ever done as they promised to.
From where I am, and the other Boomers I talk to, the seeming lack of preparation for ‘saving the planet’ or providing for the next generation is being done on a personal, family level…pretty much as it’s always been done.
We plan to hand on the family property to the next generation, hoping that we will not be forced by a different mindset amid society to use all that we have to simply stay alive, or be forced to hand it over to someone who has no right to what we have worked for, and do not wish politicians to play with our ‘stuff’ any more than we like them playing with our ‘rights’.
Unlike the WWII Greatest Generation, we have been hit with a combination of bad food, bad investment of forced investing (Social Security), and too much medicine applied incorrectly…at least in my experience, and will not trouble those who are coming up behind us as long as perhaps our parents troubled us, or like James, still is being bothered…blessedly! And then of course, the end of days may end a lot of our days prematurely, even if being human does not.
This isn’t really about Millenniels or Boomers…it’s about the narrative, and who controls it, and a lot of what you see is partially untrue…just untrue enough to get a lot of us off in a legitimate court from being convicted of selfishness.
I want term limits applied to every government position. Local, state, federal. No exceptions.
Maybe it’s not a generational war, but it certainly presents itself as one more often than not. Whether that’s spin or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that a lot of the older people in my life like to complain about how my generation has screwed everything up – we’re lazy and selfish and ignorant. Of course some young people are, but so are some older people. It’s hard to listen to things like “well, I put myself through college” line when the cost of education is so much higher now than it was 30 years ago.
Now we’re really in a tangent.
Does he do it deliberately, or is it simply an unconscious indicator that he is an uncouth boor? Or could it be a little of both?
I, like you, am not sure anyone can fully answer that.
But Dr. Dobson wasn’t saying Trump was too challenging to “the left” — he was making excuses for Trump not fitting in with “the right.” As is common with “the right,” excuses abound for the pick of “the right” or whatever “Evangelicals” have hitched their wagon to. [I am talking about something that bothered Dobson, not so much me.]
I agree that Dr. Dobson shows an ignorance of or bias against the very capable command of language that Paul had (both literal and figurative, as in knowing a number of relevant languages and knowing Jewish culture and propriety and knowing how the larger political culture worked). Dobson, nevertheless, is a mover and shaker of “conservative” votes here in the United States. I think Dobson shows that he doesn’t “get it” by making such a statement, thereby putting Trump and Paul in some kind of similar category (without warrant). The “pro-Israel” vote comes with a large amount of condescension, or worse, and ignorance — besides “another religion.”
I was yet surprised Dobson fell for Paula White. The religious right is forever judging whether someone is “born again” or not. The most likely, to them, indicator of being born again is whether one has signed up for the Republican Party. And then you can draw in votes or money or accolades or whatever it is that’s desired. A blind eye is also what one can obtain from “the right.” (But my pointing out that Dobson told us Trump said hell — a bad word in conservative households at least — was meant to show that Dobson is missing larger problems with Trump that we can see constantly, not just his using hell and p***y… and most especially just using the words.)
There is something very shallow going on with “Evangelicals” or “the right.” It’s been the case for too long. And it is time to take a hard look at it. It’s not about rejecting white people.
And while it was said that “Evangelicals” can vote for whomever they want to (which is obvious), I wonder if anyone other than “Evangelicals” are allowed to have an evangelical outlook?
It seems odd to me that the left are attempting to appear as if they are upset about Trump being a boor, a racist, and worse, an uneducated plebe, when in reality they are upset by what his extremely ordinary adopted persona covers up…a sharp business mind with no tolerance for any kind of progressive socialism, no matter how abtruse and deftly hidden. As for his flamboyance and vulgarity, which does very well for the majority of those who watch a lot of television, it ably covers up a dangerously sneaky mind, and what is essentially the ability to appear charming.
People do not study the early videos of Trump…which show a thoughtfully deft mind. Add experience to that, and a lot of political contacts from living in New York, and you have someone who just appears to be as the President Elect prefers to be seen…which is why they did not see him coming, and lost so disastrously.
All Trump had to do was not trip over his tongue too much, and be his ordinary entertaining self. He isn’t a law breaker as a rule…it’s bad for business, so he merely uses the law, however unethical. He isn’t even much of a vulgarian, except with other men. Women who are not feminists get used to him quite easily. He is forgiven by the ordinary people because he never set out to be virtuous…just successful. And after the last 16 years of progressive inadequacy, everyone who could stand to do so, voted for him.
That he is appearing to be sane in his cabinet decisions, and his way of letting people know just what he wants and what he is willing to accept from the bully pulpit argues for something getting done for our economy and infrastructure, never mind his supreme court choices and enforcement of existing law, if he can merely make it to the inauguration without getting assassinated.
“There is something very shallow going on with “Evangelicals” or “the right.” It’s been the case for too long. And it is time to take a hard look at it. It’s not about rejecting white people.
And while it was said that “Evangelicals” can vote for whomever they want to (which is obvious), I wonder if anyone other than “Evangelicals” are allowed to have an evangelical outlook?”
Maureen, Dobson is not the best evidence that there is an evangelical mind at all! I fear that the Moral Majority of yesteryear sticks in peoples minds more than it does in reality. It is pity that those people who think they are evangelical are having so little effect. I am seeing some of the best evangelists in Israel…in the Messianic congregations run by Sabra’s!
It is one of the reasons I truly fear we are in for a lot of trouble soon. Having such people being effective in Israel is a harbinger of bad things to come…however much we want the end result of Yeshua returning.
“I also found this statement hilariously funny, not because it isn’t true, but because it describes the Obama Presidency to a “T”. Racial and ethnic relations have reached (or so it seems to me) an all-time low in the eight years since Barack and Michelle first walked into the White House.”
There are none so blind as those who do not see!
If we look back at the absolute horror all of the Evangelicals and Conservatives experienced in November of ’08, we see that for the most part, they politely accepted reality when Obama won the White House (no matter how much they complained at home) that a Communist Muslim sympathizer that disliked America was able to use a brilliant persona and great reading skills, along with the financial mess of ’07 to get into the White House.
Most of the people I know tried very hard not to condemn him for being a communist…we mostly didn’t care that he was only half black. He could have been all African American, born into this country by the skin of his teeth, and not a known progressive, and been not just tolerated, but generally accepted…much as Colin Powell and Condaleesa Rice were, and are.
What is sad is that the left never seems to look into the mirror at how they are perceived, nor do they examine themselves to see how frequently they refuse to hold themselves accountable for what they accuse others of.
Top priority is not “the left” or “the right.” What matters is truth and consistency and avoidance of hypocrisy. But now it seems hypocrisy is fine with those who consider themselves the right — because it works. Works for what? Politics today…
…when salt has lost its savor.
Will there be faith when the Lord returns?
Marie, I think it’s a meaningful tangent. My parents both went to college when you could pay outright for the tuition with a part-time, ordinary, kid-type job (like selling tickets at a movie theater). On top of that, the city they lived in subsidised their educations in order to get more of that in which they majored. Yet they have the “bootstraps” mentality (counter-indicated by the facts of their lives). When one of my youngest sons heard about this, he said (tongue-in-cheek) that he figured something out; if you’ve already gotten what you want, there’s no reason to care about anyone after you. [Additionally, they are not black… so I suppose there is no reason to resent them getting help.]
Hi, Marleen — One small clarification about the definition of the “bootstrap” mentality — it does not mean that one never accepts help when opportunities are available. It does mean that the individual takes initiative to improve their own condition, rather than to wait for others to push them forward or to hand them a ready-made solution outright. Given that clarification, would you still insist that your parents’ circumstances contra-indicated their bootstrapping views?
I don’t know when your parents attended university, but I did so in the 1970s; and while I could cover my costs slightly with a small scholarship that I earned, I was both prudent and privileged to attend an engineering school that structured its curriculum to incorporate periods of real-world working engineering experience that earned a commensurate salary. Thus and only thus was I enabled to pay for my education. I don’t think a salary selling cinema tickets or working at some other minimum-wage job would have been sufficient (I also worked part-time as a groundskeeper, though this did begin to interfere with my studies); and I imagine that many current-era would-be students might be similarly hard-pressed to work for a sufficient time to accumulate funds to pay for university or specialized education. Nonetheless, scholarship programs and cooperative education or internship programs are still available, along with other incentives for needed skills (such as you report your parents having received). So some folks who previously received such benefits are still caring about those who come later, by managing or funding such programs to continue making them available to those who make the effort to participate in them in order to bootstrap their own careers.
On another tangent (in response to Marie) — “term limits” is a notion that may be beneficial in circumstances where the duties of an elected position can be managed by an ordinary person with no special skills or training beyond an average general education. But if the duties require professionalism and special training, then there must exist some incentive to justify a candidate’s efforts to prepare for these duties. How long a term of service might then be required to compensate the candidate for the time and resources expended in preparation, if they are to be limited to only a finite period of service? What are they to do with their special skills if they are not permitted to seek continued public employment? Perhaps some positions require only managerial skills that can be applied to other work before and after a limited term of elected public service. Similarly, public service positions requiring legal training could be filled for limited periods by lawyers who could return to private practice. But one should be careful not to assume that *every* public office can be filled as a “temp job” with only limited terms of service being permitted. Some jobs, like in law enforcement (a sheriff, for example), simply require a degree of technical forensic knowledge that cannot be obtained or applied for only limited terms. A community may wish that the office holder submit to periodic elections in order to ensure the quality of their performance or to facilitate their removal; but if that quality is deemed sufficient, it would be a waste of talented manpower to limit the number of terms that may be served.
Marleen said:
One of the points I was trying to make in this blog post is that we don’t see that level of cooperation in liberalism anymore. Everyone is compartmentalized in their own identity groups, and few, if any want to cross boundary lines.
Yes, there are people and groups that have been victimized, but as you pointed out yourself, the best strategy isn’t just to isolate oneself and bemoan their fate, but to cooperate with different, unlike groups to find positive solutions.
From my point of view, President Obama failed to create racial harmony when, as the first African-American President, he was uniquely placed to do so.
I didn’t write this blog to defend Donald Trump. I wrote it to illustrate the dysfunctional liberal response to Donald Trump.
As far as Dr. James Dobson goes, I concluded long ago that he believes Jesus was born a Republican in East Texas.
@Marie: Politics is supposed to make strange bedfellows, but in the past eight to ten years, I’ve seen a terrific amount of polarization in political parties. They no longer seek to cooperate for the greater good, but to defeat the other party’s policies at all cost. It’s the American people who suffer.
@Questor: As reasonable as Trump may appear, both historically and recently, he seems to say the most outrageous things, just to say them. That fans the flames of liberal angst inciting equally dramatic responses. If Trump would stop giving his opponents ammunition, they’d have nothing to shoot at him with.
@PL: I tend to agree with Marie that if we have term limits for the President to prevent him/her from establishing a powerful platform whereby they can’t be voted out, we should also apply limits to Congress. There are Senators who have been in office for decades, becoming fixtures (as well as their policies becoming fixtures).
Sometimes, we need to sweep away the old order and let some fresh blood come in.
Hi, James — I tend to agree about term limits for Senators, though you have to wonder how it is that some of them stand for re-election again and again and their constituents continue to return them to office. Is it because these folks agree with him or her and the representation and advocacy being offered continuously over an extended number of terms? Or are they actually too lazy or afraid to try someone new? Under such latter circumstances, term limits would have to be viewed as a means to force these constituents to take more seriously their consideration of what policies they want each new candidate to advocate. If then, they really wish for continuity, they would have to establish a “tag team” of at least two senators who trade places after each limited term, with one serving as a paid adjutant to the other in the off-term period.
Thus, even in a term-limited environment, it would still be possible to pursue the same entrenched views and policies as when the number of terms is not limited. It would, however, require a more concerted and deliberate effort. I suppose, in some degree, that is what political parties try to accomplish, though not necessarily keeping a designated next candidate on salary or in a senatorial adjutant position while awaiting their next available term. It would be intriguing, though, if a state were deliberately to create an elected office for their senatorial adjutant in addition to their senator, such that the adjutant would have opportunity to learn or to keep abreast of the inner workings of the seated senator’s activities. Of course, in the next election cycle, such an adjutant would have a tremendous advantage over some competing candidate, because of being able to claim complete readiness for a seamless transition into the job. And this would be possible even if the elected adjutant were a member of the opposition party. Nonetheless, it would still be possible to overturn the adjutant as well as the senator, if the voters were sufficiently dissatisfied.
Thanks, James. Yes, I know you “didn’t write this blog to defend Donald Trump.” Besides what I referenced earlier that, you, James [the James of this site, not James Dobson in this case] said (which you did say*), you also said this: The result is that in a week, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States.
I wish that actually meant good things, but every time I hear the man speak, I’m astonished that he managed to build an empire worth billions. At least Clinton could (most of the time) fake being a sane and reasonable human being.
….
I know all this sounds cynical, and it probably is. Trump isn’t going to help, and in fact, every time he opens his mouth or puts out a tweet, he just pours more gasoline over the inferno.
* I point this out because someone else told me I was wrong about that. Also, I’ll go ahead and say now that I’m not reading all the articles you linked to from your opening blog post; I get in hot water for that too. (The conversation is very strange and unreasonable.)
I think you (by contrast) will understand what I’m saying even if you, at least at this time, don’t agree with me. I agree that people need to work together. I just don’t see what you referenced as being in disagreement with that. I think other people want to work together too.
Sure, you will find people who want to stay in their bunkers — on both supposed sides. But it’s not constructive to fixate on that. On the other hand, people who think they are born against and super great have a greater responsibility not to be silly hypocrites. (At least, we have a responsibility not to fall for them over and over.)
Now, by that, I don’t mean we (the general American public) should replace one set of hyper-venerated “faith” leaders with alternate super-venerated faith or tech leaders [my saying this can refer back to what I tried to get across in your previous topic, where I did respond more fully to a particular article to which you linked*]. And maybe the person who pulled the two other writers who didn’t write for the Huffington post sort of “together” (I think it was two to which the Huffington Post writer refered) made something less palatable out of it all. I do think the conversations on what is going on and could change are okay. What’s been happening isn’t good.
* I’ve tried to find another article (which I read maybe a month ago) that relates to a second topic to which you linked there (previous opening blog post), but I haven’t been able to find it again.
Hello guys, Peace be to all and a good health.
An additional information knowledge regarding to what we have told before that the Character Improvement was only applied to the literal gentiles, which is only a partial truth. Because there is a whole truth to this topic, that God have already applied these Character Development ever since Edenic Period, which was applied to the first created family and their seeds. And it was only partly change at Moses time and the 10 Commandments was their guidelines to their Character Development of the Israeli people and an optional to the gentiles in the whole period of OT. And it also resulted to unsatisfactory of God. So, God made another proposal plan to another Covenant Plan, which God also implemented it on the later time after the OT Period. And the Judaism religion was affected of this Transition and the NT gospel was the authorize legal faith religion of God. But the biggest problem unknown to many of this New Covenant Plan of God is its being conceal knowledge and was only be given or rewarded knowledge wisdom of God to those that will only comply seriously to the Will Plan of God, thus making the most important context knowledge of the Plan is incompletely unknown to the world and was only known as the NT gospel book. And not as a making of a New Creation Man or as a revise modern or advance methodology of God for a Human Character Development into a highly Spiritual Man. If they will only whole heartedly trust the Word of God (Yeshua Messiah) can do it! But this knowledge is only given to the Covenantal People (Israelites) and no to gentiles! Thats why, thou could hardly see or rarely known or can be only observed of these kind of quality character to those Original Messianic people and non to any people of this world! And the remaing example were those 7000 Messianic that was still remaining alive up to date but were only scattered in different countries, and were all candidate among to be caught in the cloud in 1Tes. 4:16-17.. But the Holy Spirit is still waiting to those “Crossbreed leftseeds Israelites” to their submission to this Last Call of God, to their redemption unto salvation and be among to be caught in the cloud as plan to them.
And now to point out the general guidelines on these Character Development, which were mandatorily imposed in the NT gospel. But when Yeshua Messiah proclaim it, he put them into conceal message of just a simple terminology as a “Sermon in the mount” in Mt. 5:1-48, Mt. 6:1-34 & Mt. 7:1-29.. And the other elaboration were also in the other 3 gospel and to other letters of some Apostles! And the most crucial and the hardest imposed order in this major requirment to every believers is that they must really religiously observe and comply it whole heartedly the message in Mt. 5:44-45.. Which many could not accept it but to those who have it completely comply to this kind of Character Development were those person that can be called a True Messianic or True Christian Person! Which we could not fully observe to some of the viewers in this blog.
And the other most blasphemous deception created by the gentile religion which was even for warn message of Yeshua Messiah in Mt. 24:4-5, from this message alone all religion can be already accuse of being a false preacher and false religion! Is it not this were all the literal working character of all the religion? Bringing the name of Christ or the gospel to every houses or approach every people and preach them the gospels. For the truth of the message is there is really No Mediator to God except Yeshua Messiah, which only means that a person must only personally seek God in the gospel book without any assistance guidance of anybody, especially in this our present Period of the Parousia, Jn. 9:4.. May our living lord God Bless us all.
LOVE: New Jerusalem- Holy City
Sorry; I didn’t mean “born against” — rather, “born again.”
Hello guys,
This character development, we mentioned as the context essence of the NT gospel is only partial to the whole truth context, for it has an automatic combination of a synchronize judgment, which also simultenously applied as the Covenant goes on. And the judgment is to those that will indirectly ignore or directly rejecting to believe to this Plan of God.
May our living lord God Bless us all.
LOVE: New Jerusalem-Holy City
Kind of a curiosity, since “The Women’s March on Washington” was touched on in the opening post:
http://fortune.com/2017/01/20/hillary-clinton-womens-march/
On Thursday, the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington released a list of 27 women who “paved the way for us to march.” …
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The hashtag #AddHerName soon appeared on Twitter and is still going strong:
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Shavua Tov, Marleen — I agree that this is a puzzlement of sorts — that the same women who are energized to defend feminist values in the face of a perceived threat should fail to claim some inspiration from the first female presidential candidate, who also served as a first lady, a senator, secretary-of-state, lawyer, social activist, etc.. I suppose they might have found her defeat too demoralizing to continue considering her a role model to list among those 27 who “paved the way for [the] march”. I did find one of the tweets, from one Charles Clymer, strangely disconnected from reality. He tweeted: “Leaving Hillary Clinton off this list is further proof of how we tell women: ‘Do it perfectly, or don’t try at all.’ “. I’ve never seen that kind of exaggerated implication at all, in decades of observing the human condition. I have seen the perception that women must try harder and do better than male competitors in order to be taken seriously, though I have not seen that in action in the engineering world I’ve inhabited (perhaps engineers are more pragmatic than other professions). Nonetheless, the notion of perfection as a disincentive I have not seen. Hence the notion of these women dis-including someone who did not succeed in one endeavor, for that reason, doesn’t make sense to me.
I can’t help but wonder if there might be other aspects of the Clinton legacy for which she might have been omitted, such as accusations of illegality, national security violations, callousness with the lives of American diplomatic and military personnel, and even turning a blind eye to sexual irregularities.
Of course, there have been other questions raised about who is allowed to participate in this march. For example, apparently a pro-life women’s group also was excluded. One might suspect that the organizers have a very narrow and selective view of women’s issues.
Or perhaps this march is in reality merely a front for yet another leftist perspective that is still trying to muster public opinion against a duly-elected president who has indicated that he intends to champion views diametrically opposed to leftist views that have become entrenched in American society during the course of the past fifty years and more. Why, he might even try to overturn certain aspects of FDR’s legacy! Worse yet, he might even try to overturn certain aspects of the legacy left by the Roman Empire against the notion of Jewish political and territorial sovereignty in their own land as the nation-state “Israel” — and wouldn’t *that* be intolerable to those who have adopted the false notion of Palestinian Arabs as the underdog who must be protected at all costs, regardless of their own egregious behaviors against women, against Jews, against non-Muslims, against democratic values and against reason itself.
Trump is the same mess as Clinton (no need to pick which one of the two Clintons, just add it all together), different particular details. Hillary might be a bit better as a person who isn’t lascivious and insane… but like I said, I still didn’t vote for her (nor her husband way back when). Anyway, you might be able to see I didn’t post the link and quote to argue for Hillary. [On another note, though, not about the protesting, I do think it’s pretty apparent a lot of people hate women who stay with their cheating husbands. They like the cheaters better, no matter what else they do.] But it was interesting to me that the writer of the Huffington Post article (although I didn’t read the full article) seemed to be making everything about getting people to be more likely to vote for Hillary, while that doesn’t seem to be a main point of what drives the protesters (at least the majority of them).
Meanwhile, I had no interest in the protests. For one reason, there was too much talk about abortion. But since I’m a woman, a righty told me he thought I should be there. Well, no. And no thanks on that thinking for me crap. (Of course, he’s a “righty” who has had an abortion for his own convenience, so he wouldn’t understand it could be something that matters in real life. He doesn’t have to think about it. The definitions of “right” and conservative have become so ridiculous it’s not bearable, much less anywhere near funny.)
Anyway, probably a few things got mixed up between the Huffington Post article and the two articles that writer referred to; I don’t think that writer fully reflects the other two writers. But I won’t read the articles to discuss them with you, PL (as we would get nowhere with you throwing out charges of gossip for being informed — but we sure do know you’re not a gossip).
I’m sure you know, Marleen, that an essential fundamental requirement for “being informed” is the validation of one’s sources. If those sources have forsworn their sense of responsibility to verify and report facts rather than opinion or rumor, in order to pander to their financial bottom line, then one is likely to find in them nothing better than gossip. It’s difficult, recently, even to compare multiple sources to sift out real information from “fake news”, even among mainstream news purveyors. When one adds to that the many internet players who are little better than mere rumor-mongers, the prospect of finding real validated information is daunting.
PL, I somehow missed an earlier post of yours. I never said there is no help for anyone. There are people who don’t want help for anyone (or only think a very small segment earn any hope). Obviously, the ones who don’t want others to be helped aren’t the ones doing the helping [except in hypocritical instances when moneys are sought for their own interest and fought otherwise]. I know plenty of people who don’t recognise what they’ve gotten and done in life as being philosophically at odds with what they argue and vote for continually. As for when my parents attended college, they graduated in the early sixties. They aren’t “boomers.” Did you attend right out of high school? I assume so. Congratulations on all that you did and got.
I’ve gone ahead, now, and read the Huffington Post article and the Commentary Magazine article (until that one cut me off and said I’d have to give them my email address). The Huffington article wasn’t what I thought it was, and it was pretty good. It had a funny line, too, something about not favoring parts of the Bible even if they’re printed in red. [However, those words can function to be very focusing and clarifying.] Turns out that all was very much in tune with bringing up James Dobson (which I did, which the author didn’t).
As it happens, the author at Commentary was mistaken that “the march” would “be short.” It, and they, were far from short.
Maybe it was the tech article that was about wishing for Hillary. But I didn’t get to finish the Commentary article.
@Marleen, as I think I mentioned above, President Obama was uniquely placed to unite our nation but instead he spent eight years tearing it apart. Now Trump is President, and he pretty much doesn’t care what he does or how it will affect people, so division is only going to get worse.
Sure, a lot of women all over the nation agreed to march on January 21st, but I read an article where at least one white woman and her daughters pulled out because one of the African-American organizers said white participants should be quiet and let only women of color speak. Perhaps an isolated incident, but also perhaps an effect of the polarization resulting from the Black Lives Matter movement.
PL said:
Name recognition and voter habit. A Senator would have to do something pretty dramatic to change the minds of constituents.
At least with term limits, you have a better opportunity to change the direction of the horse, so to speak, as we’ve recently seen in the Presidential election.
Regarding Hillary Clinton being left off the list, it is truly surprising, considering she came within a heartbeat of actually being elected POTUS.
As far as Hillary Clinton’s personality is concerned, I think she realizes she has to project a certain image so as to at least give the appearance she cares about her supporters (and she does a pretty good job much of the time). Trump, on the other hand, just doesn’t care what people think.
@James — You said: According to Burton and Blanche:
In the election, the majority of white people voted for Trump, whose campaign was characterized by division rather than inclusion. And white men voted for the president-elect by at least a 10 percent margin over other groups.
I also found this statement hilariously funny, not because it isn’t true, but because it describes the Obama Presidency to a “T”. Racial and ethnic relations have reached (or so it seems to me) an all-time low in the eight years since Barack and Michelle first walked into the White House.
[I (Marleen) am responding as an interjection, here, that the lack of self-awareness or awareness of the group one insists on clinging to for primary meaning, has become a President Trump.]
But they go on:
White men (and other allies) must learn how to be inclusive and use their own privilege constructively. All of us are capable of prejudice and biased behavior, but changing it is more difficult the further a person is from being the subject of discrimination.
I have to be thankful that Burton and Blanche at least acknowledge that it’s possible for people besides white males to be “capable of prejudice and biased behavior,” but of course, it’s worse when whites do it.
[I’m not a big follower of techies as the purveyors of wisdom (techies are just some people like everybody else, but with some skills having to do with computers and other technology) — yet, just looking at what you’ve quoted, I would be careful not to misconstrue. Is it “worse” qualitatively (in terms of morality or something) when whites do it, or is that what the tech authors really mean? Or is it practically more influential (so maybe worse, if that’s the word you like) when whites do it, because we are (still) the majority (which matters in a democracy/republic) and have historically had more joint wealth as a few do now while the rest of us have kept defending {not changed} this as the right and proper way to proceed; which, wealth, has meant more in recent years (for a few along with some less-well-off but sufficiently ruthless and those sufficiently kept in useful slumber or fury)? And/or did they mean “harder” — more difficult as they said?]
They do want to extend a carrot instead of a stick by creating “safe spaces” for “unconverted” whites to hear minority points of view, and to use whites who are already allies to invite non-ally whites into the fold.
So the Huff Post writer wants to trash can Evangelical Christianity for a version that would be more likely to vote for Clinton
[It looked to me like the Huffington/Huff Post writer wanted to get across that “red letters” {as a form of “re-branding” — as I’ve seen another article refer to it} aren’t the solution to division, sexism, racism, etc. — at least not said letters taken alone. The writer was talking about a couple of other (Christian) writers who were in a “trash can” state of mind, if that’s the way you want to put it.]
…while the TechCrunch writers want to solve the same problem by recruiting conservative white males into progressivism as allies, people who also would be more likely to vote for Clinton.
[Like I said, I didn’t read their article; maybe they wanted people to vote for Hillary Clinton. I’m not familiar with them, nor am I familiar with the Huff Post writer (although I did read his article after all). But all three seem fine with diversity. I could go into some wondering, here, as to how much diversity those in the tech world really deal with (as you noted already) and how much deferring to the majority the women in actuality do, but that’s not the current topic.]
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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-literary-dividing-line-between-trump-and-obama
This is an article, with an associated transcript of an interview (which transcript I didn’t read), not video.
http://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2017/01/two_editions_of_1984_top_sales_charts_penguin_orders_more.html
…
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The book was No. 1 on Amazon’s bestsellers list. And on Wednesday, another edition of the novel has cracked the top 10 …
Penguin USA publishes the edition that’s been thrust to the top of the charts while Brawtley Press prints those that have appeared as high as No. 4 Wednesday.
…….
Orwell isn’t the only author who’s enjoying a resurgence in popularity.
Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here,” a satire that explores how a fascist could have replaced Franklin Roosevelt as president, has also cracked the top 10.