JMA-PSOS

Back in 2015, when Trump had begun his presidential campaign, Webster hadn’t taken him seriously, because he “said some crazy-ass stuff.” Webster thought of himself as a traditional, small-government, libertarian-leaning Reagan Republican; he’d supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primary. Now, though, he began to find Trump’s bombast refreshing. In the president’s words, Webster heard echoes of his own thoughts about the strangulating overreach of an authoritarian government. Some of what Trump said about foreign policy also began to resonate with Webster, particularly his statements about wanting America to quit its “forever wars,” because he worried about his daughter in the Marines.

[…]

Over the course of 2020, Webster found himself pulled more and more deeply into the MAGA camp. The concept of “Make America Great Again” seemed pretty brilliant to him. Who could argue with it? Webster had been disappointed to see the Obama administration go on what he thought was an endless apology tour around the world. Trump, in contrast, embraced the country and was unabashed in putting America first. “I really appreciated that,” Webster told me recently. “I didn’t view MAGA as ‘extremism.’ I viewed it as a sense of patriotism, a love of God and family and country.”

[…]

We won this election, and we won it by a landslide,” he said. After telling them to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard, in order to give Republicans the courage to reject the certification, he shifted to inflaming them: “We fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He told them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, where Congress was beginning the certification proceedings, and said that he would go with them. (He did not go with them.)

[…]

But within hours of the attack on the Capitol, an alternative narrative was already forming. On her show the evening of January 6, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham wondered aloud whether antifa sympathizers had infiltrated the crowd. Before long, a chorus of conservative-media personalities, far-right lawmakers, and family members of rioters was suggesting that the reports of savagery had been overblown; that the events of that day had been more peaceful protest than violent insurrection; that the real insurrection had been on November 3, when the election was stolen.
By March, Trump was telling Ingraham live on Fox News that the crowd had posed “zero threat right from the start” and that protesters had been “hugging and kissing” the police. By the fall, Trump and other prominent MAGA figures were regularly referring to the rioters turned defendants as “patriots” and “political hostages.” January 6, Trump would later say, was “a day of love.” News clips featured residents of the “Patriot Pod,” a unit at the D.C. jail that housed January 6 defendants, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” every night—and before long, Trump was playing a recording of their rendition at the start of his political rallies. On his Fox News show a year after the insurrection, Tucker Carlson said, “January 6 barely rates as a footnote. Really not a lot happened that day, if you think about it.” Representative Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, has said, “The whole thing was a nefarious agenda to entrap MAGA Americans.” Shortly after the first anniversary of January 6, Trump mentioned the possibility of pardoning the defendants if he were reelected.

[…]

In November 2024, when Americans reelected Trump, Hodges felt a deep sense of grief. During 11 years of policing, he’d seen people do terrible things to one another—shootings, stabbings, maimings. But the election results strained his faith in humanity more than any of that. After all Trump has done? Hodges thought. After all we know about him? His friend Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who’d been called “nigger” for the first time while in uniform on January 6, later said that seeing the 2024 election unfold was like watching the end of Titanic : You knew what was coming, but it still hurt to watch. Both Dunn and Hodges long ago grew tired of talk about the “shifting narrative” of January 6. “Ain’t no narrative,” Dunn likes to say. “Play the tape.”

[…]

Still, Hodges hoped that there would be some nuance in who received pardons. There was not. Trump did not weigh each case like Solomon: He issued full pardons to almost all of the 1,600 people charged in connection with the insurrection. Of those, about 600 had been charged with resisting arrest or assaulting officers, 175 of them with dangerous or deadly weapons. No matter how big their sin, no matter what all of those judges and juries had decided, almost everyone was just—poof—forgiven. The only (partial) exceptions were the 14 members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys whose sentences Trump commuted, meaning they were released from prison but their convictions were not erased.

[…]

Recently, I told Hodges that I’d been interviewing Tom Webster about January 6. Hodges vaguely remembered the story about the former NYPD cop who’d assaulted one of his colleagues. When I told him that Webster still believed that the 2020 election may have been stolen, Hodges was not surprised. He doesn’t think people like Webster will stop lying to themselves anytime soon. “They can’t,” Hodges said; the cognitive dissonance and moral pain would be too great.
Accepting reality would mean reevaluating everything they thought they knew—that their actions were ethical and justified, that they are great patriots. Accepting the truth of January 6 would require coming to grips with the fact that they supported a con man and participated in a violent plot to subvert democracy. The immediate reward for undertaking this kind of hard self-examination would mainly be shame and regret.
“To grapple with these truths would, in a very real way, unmake them,” Hodges said.

[…]

I pointed out to Webster that he had apologized to Officer Rathbun in court. Wasn’t that a concession that he’d acted wrongly on January 6? In response, Webster said that, although he feels “bad about how the whole day went down,” his apology should not be taken as an admission of guilt: “I was pressured by my lawyer to apologize. He said it would help me reduce my sentence.”

[…]

Webster is disappointed by where things stand now: With Trump in office and MAGA conservatives in power, they finally have the ability to prove what happened that day—so why aren’t they? When Dan Bongino was a podcaster, he repeatedly asserted that undercover agents embedded in the crowd had helped orchestrate January 6; now that Trump has made him deputy director of the FBI, why isn’t Bongino releasing the evidence? Webster feels similarly disappointed in FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Why are you guys always bragging about arresting illegal Mexicans doing roof work?” he asked. He wonders why they’re not instead exposing the plots of the deep state, as Trump has demanded. Webster believes that Bongino and Patel have become polluted by the same swamp that Trump has again and again vowed to clean up.

[…]

As Webster looked out at the members of the crowd, he thought they’d probably Google him when they got home. Which video clip would they find? he wondered—would it tell the right story or the wrong one? Would they see him as a felon or a patriot? Which truth would they believe?
On his way home, Webster told his wife that he wouldn’t speak at any more events. Reliving what they’d been through was too painful. And he didn’t see much point until the whole story was revealed. So he waits for the truth to solidify into something firm enough to stand on, a day he fears may never come.

The number of price increases for 2026 is up from the same point last year, when drugmakers unveiled plans for raises on more than 250 drugs. The median of this year's price hikes is around 4% - in line with 2025.

U.S. patients currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations.

The increases on 350 medicines come even as Trump has struck deals with 14 drugmakers on prices of some of their medicines for the government's Medicaid program for low-income Americans and for cash payers.

Nuremberg

Bunicul meu a fost avocat - si dupa razboi nu a mai fost. In primul comentariu las un link catre o parte din povestea lui.
Cand eram mic ma ducea la cinema, o data pe saptamana. Pentru ca asa rulau filmele, cate o saptamana, iar el era mare consumator de filme cu intriga legala, filme frantuzesti cu Belmondo, filme "de razboi" si Westernuri. Le vedeam pe toate la cinemascop Independenta, Targoviste - renascut de curand din propria cenusa.

Ieri am fost sa vad Nuremberg, noul film despre procesul din 1946 care a pus bazele sistemului legal international de dupa al doilea Razboi Mondial. Nu comentez aici calitatile si neajunsurile filmului ca act artistic, ci urgenta si relevanta sa. Cea pentru americani si pentru lume in general este evidenta (si un pic "on the nose", dar se pare ca oamenii nu inteleg altfel): oricine poate comite atrocitati, nu conteaza "natia" careia apartii ci politica la care subscrii, viziunea asupra lumii si a celorlalti pe care o ai. Si astazi, chiar aceasta ordine este desfacuta bucata cu bucata pe scena mondiala care se transforma sub ochii nostri intr-o preproductie a apocalipsei razboiului.

Important este de retinut ca Holocaustul a fost facut de oameni, si nimic nu ne pazeste de repetarea sa in afara oamenilor insisi si a instaurarii unor reguli la care toti, absolut toti oamenii sa se supuna. Ei bine, aceasta chestiune a actului fondator pentru justitie e pusa in lumina foarte bine in film, ilustrata prin insistenta avocatului american Robert Jackson de a avea un proces, chiar fara precedent, si de a nu-i impusca direct pe Göring si ceilalti membri ai statului major nazist judecati la Nuremberg. Si aici ne intoarcem la justitia romana si actul ei fondator din 1989.

Bunicul meu, ca multi bunici nascuti in a doua decada a secolului trecut (1911), era monarhist constitutional, liberal clasic si il ura pe Ceausescu. In decembrie 1989 a plans de bucurie la caderea regimului, el crezand ca nu ar mai fi apucat sa o vada (avea 78 de ani. A mai trait pana la 92). Am urmarit la televizor impreuna procesul intentat sotilor Ceausescu, la inceput fara sonor, asa cum a fost difuzat. Apoi imaginile dupa executie. Bunicul meu, dupa primul moment de usurare, mi-a spus: nu stiu ce se intampla pentru ca procesul e prea scurt. "Ar fi trebuit sa aiba un rechizitoriu mai amplu, sa vedem si noi cum este facuta argumentatia." La cateva ore, sau a doua zi, nu mai stiu, memoria imi joaca feste, procesul s-a reluat cu sonor dar fara a vedea completul de judecata. Cand a auzit vocea procurorului, Gheorghe Popa, bunicul meu a tresarit: "Asta e Gica Popa. I-am fost mentor cand era foarte tanar." A ascultat apoi intreg procesul si s-a aratat foarte nedumerit. Oricat l-ar fi urat pe Ceausescu, tindea sa ii dea dreptate in ce priveste actul de judecata; mi-l amintesc spunand: "asta nu e proces. nu exista rechizitoriu, nu s-au adunat probe, nu ai cum sa construiesti capete de acuzare atat de repede si nefondate pe nimic. In plus acuzatii nu recunosc tribunalul. Cum a putut Gica sa participe la asta, sa faca procesul asa? Nu asa l-am invatat sa faca." Cateva zile bunicul meu a fost agitat: "cand se linistesc lucrurile trebuie sa merg la Bucuresti sa il vad. Nu inteleg ce s-a intamplat". Nu a mai apucat. Gica Popa s-a sinucis in biroul sau. Bunicul meu a aflat din zvonuri (deci nu stiu daca e adevarat, nu am verificat, eu spun povestea sa si a mea) ca Gheorghe Popa nu si-a mai parasit biroul dupa proces si ca s-a impuscat intr-un moment in care un prieten care a stat cu el l-a lasat singur pentru un moment. Cand a aflat, bunicul a spus: "Il inteleg. Trebuie sa fi avut remuscari foarte mari, pentru ca procesul nu a fost corect si pentru ca literal a participat la omorarea unor oameni fara justificare legala". Ceva de genul asta.

Nu am spus povestea asta public niciodata, insa mi se pare foarte importanta, pentru ca explica partial starea curenta a justitiei in Romania. Actul fondator al ei a fost subred, bazat mai degraba pe o exceptie decat pe instituirea unor reguli durabile. Exceptie de fapt confirmata si de faptul ca pedeapsa cu moartea a fost abolita imediat, in ianuarie 1990; un proces corect ar fi durat mult mai mult decat atat. "Justitia" in decembrie s-a facut sumar, fara procesul datorat si ca act exceptional mai degraba decat ca act construit al unei legalitati bazate pe reguli. Atunci ar fi fost momentul constituirii unui aparat judiciar si set de proceduri care sa stea la bazele a ceea ce a urmat. Cum a fost cu Nuremberg. Noi am preferat sa il impuscam sumar pe Ceausescu, nu sa folosim momentul ca pe un act constructiv pentru justitia ce va sa vina... De unde si fata ei schimonosita de astazi...

Mergeti sa vedeti filmul Nuremberg si luati-va si copiii la el. Am vazut in sala un public intergenerational si mi-a crescut speranta. Ordinea juridica post-Nuremberg e pe cale sa se destrame pentru ca am uitat. E momentul sa ne reamintim. Ordinea post-decembrista din Romania e abia pe cale sa se faca, daca reusim macar acum un act fondator al unei justitii bazate pe lege, nu pe exceptie... Starea de exceptie este totalitarismul... Acum noi avem nevoie de un proces al magistratilor, lung, documentat, facut pas cu pas, nu sub presiunea strazii. Aceasta este buna insa nu trebuie sa se substituie actului de justitie in sine. Sa nu mai facem greseala de acum 35 de ani...

N-am văzut filmul, dar am citit despre procesele de la Nurenberg.
Două lucruri sînt de zis despre aceste procese :
1) enorm de multe achitări și pedepse neglijabile, de un an doi, pentru crime imense.
2) cei mai mulți dintre condamnați au fost eliberați și grațiați după vreo cinci ani.

Procesul de la Nurenberg a fost un spectacol. După ce lumea nu s-a mai interesat de subiect, au fost eliberați marii criminali de război.

Cei mai mulți n-au fost niciodată deranjați, au trăit confortabil,
cei din SS s-au instalat în trupele de grăniceri ale RFG.

Neurath a fost eliberat după 8 ani, Raeder după nouă, Funk după 11 ani. Doenitz a făcut zece ani de închisoare, deși era un nazist fanatic și un hitlerist fanatic. Herta Ehlert, gardiană la Auschwitz, a făcut 8 ani de închisoare cu totul. din Einsatzgruppen, Jost, SS Brigadefuhrer, condamnat în 1948, eliberat după trei ani. Erwin Schultz, a făcut și el șase ani de închisoare. Franz Six a făcut patru ani de închisoare. Walter Blume, condamnat la moarte, comutat la 25 de ani, a făcut șapte ani de închisoare și a fost eliberat. Willi Seibert, condamnat la moarte, comutat la 15, a făcut șase ani de închisoare. Eugen Steimle, condamnat la moarte, comutat la 20 de ani de închisoare, eliberat după șase ani de închisoare. Flick șapte ani. Toți cei din IG Farben au primit între 8 și 2 ani. Toți cei din RuSha au același pattern, = condamnati la 20 de ani, eliberati în 1951, după șase ani de închisoare. Cei din Einsatzgruppen au fost cazurile cele mai scandaloase - condamnați la moarte, pedepse comutate la 15 ani, eliberați în 1951-1955

Paralela cu Nurembergul este tentantă, dar oarecum greșită. Procesul lui Ceaușescu nu a fost un act fondator. A fost o fraudă, și noi știam asta chiar de atunci. Nu a fost procesul societății românești, pentru că Revoluția a fost deturnată. Am fost în primele rânduri și, în noaptea de 22 spre 23 decembrie, am știut clar că asta s-a întâmplat. Am fost martor, ca să zic așa. Ceaușescu nu a fost judecat de „noi”, de o justiție reformată într-o democrație, ci executat de un grup restrâns de activiști comuniști și de aparatul vechiului regim — Iliescu, Brucan, conducerea armatei și a Securității — pentru a-și legitima confiscarea puterii politice. Procesul a fost un act de violență politică, nu un act fondator al dreptului.

În aceste condiții, justiția emergentă atunci nu putea fi altceva decât expresia statului ieșit doar formal din totalitarism, dar continuat structural de aceleași elite, cu aceleași reflexe de comandă, excepție și impunitate. În noaptea de 22–23 decembrie 1989 și până pe 25, structurile PCR s-au rebranduit rapid în CFSN (Consiliul Frontului Salvării Naționale), sub promisiunea explicită că nu se vor transforma într-un partid politic și că nu vor participa la alegeri. Această promisiune a fost încălcată flagrant. CFSN s-a transformat în partid politic și a intrat în competiția electorală.

Era evident că vor câștiga: întreaga infrastructură a PCR era intactă – aparatul administrativ, presa, rețelele locale, securitatea, armata, miliția. Competiția electorală a fost profund viciată din start. Nu a fost o tranziție, ci o continuitate mascată.

Am fost în campanie cu Radu Câmpeanu și liberalii în toată țara. În fiecare oraș am fost întâmpinați de vechii activiști, securiști, milițieni și de armată. În unele locuri am fost intimidați, în altele atacați direct (la Brăila). Aceasta este realitatea „actului fondator” postdecembrist: nu justiție, nu competiție democratică, ci capturarea statului de către vechile elite sub un nou nume.

Diferența fundamentală față de Nuremberg este că acolo vechile elite au fost înfrânte și eliminate; aici, ele au preluat puterea sub un alt nume. Execuția sumară a fost un ritual politic de sacrificiu, menit să canalizeze furia populară și să mascheze continuitatea structurilor de putere.

Frauda fondatoare nu este lipsa unui proces „echitabil”, ci lipsa unei lustrații reale. Fără o ruptură instituțională cu vechiul regim, justiția nu putea fi stabilită, indiferent cât de lung sau „legal” ar fi fost procesul.

Poate ca ar fi bine sa recunoaștem ca orice sistem de justiție este in mare doar o codificare a regulilor stabilite de cei la putere pentru ei insisi. Nu a fost niciodată despre dreptate in sensul ei generic, drepturile omului, democrație sau orice alta utopie codificată in legi internationale. Nuremberg a fost o campanie mediatica in principiu aplicata selectiv nazistilor (desi aceleași “legi” ar fi fost aplicabile si americanilor si rusilor din punct de vedere al genocidului), doar ca a fost in premiera cu juristi. Procesul Ceausestilor a fost o farsa proasta ce probabil nici Eugen Ionesco n-ar fi putut inventa.

Tot sistemul legal international este o farsa enorma ce se aplica selectiv celor mai râioși călăi ce nu au îndeajuns prieteni la nivel inalt. Cred că aproape oricine cu ceva cunoștințe de bază de istorie poate numi cel putin 10 călăi genocidali (din ultimii 80 de ani) ce au murit liniștiti in patul lor la adânci bătrânețe fără măcar o zi la închisoare sau la tribunal. Asta e sistemul legal internațional: un câine care latră tare dar mușcă doar la comandă si foarte rar.

The killing of Safa's family was part of what became known as the Haditha massacre, when US marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including four women and six children. They entered three homes killing nearly everyone inside, as well as a driver and four students in a car, who were on their way to college.

The incident triggered the longest US war crimes investigation of the Iraq war, but no-one was convicted of the killings.

"I saw that children were in the room kneeling down. I don't remember the exact number but only that it was a lot. I am trained to shoot two shots to the chest and two shots to the head and I followed my training," Tatum told the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in April 2006.

Americans are paying the price for Democrats’ sick political games as air travel grinds to a halt amid the Democrat-driven chaos. With essential workers like air traffic controllers and TSA agents being forced to labor without paychecks, this past weekend saw the “worst weekend” for staff since the Democrat Shutdown began — and it’s only going to get worse.
Democrats have ushered in a full-scale disaster disrupting millions of air travelers’ lives:
TSA checkpoint wait times have ballooned past three hours at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport — with some passengers enduring up to five hours in line. At nearby William P. Hobby Airport, security wait times are routinely exceeding one hour.
Half of the nation’s busiest airports faced severe staffing shortages over the weekend, triggering a cascade of delays and cancellations that are rippling through the entire country. In fact, since the Democrat Shutdown began, four times as many staffing shortages have been reported at air traffic control facilities compared to last year.
It’s not going to get better until Democrats end their senseless shutdown. Passengers in the New York City area are being warned of “schedule changes, gate holds, and missed connections,” while major disruptions have hammered airports in Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Austin, Cleveland, Seattle, Boston, Indianapolis, Nashville, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and countless others.
There’s a reason every major travel stakeholder — from air traffic controllers to pilots to the nation’s largest airlines — is begging Democrats to stop the insanity by passing Republicans’ clean, nonpartisan continuing resolution. Each week the Democrat Shutdown is prolonged, $1+ billion in travel-related spending is lost, all while Democrats try to “leverage” the suffering in their demented political game.
Democrats hold the off-switch; they choose chaos every day they refuse to act.

“My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life,” [Erika] Kirk said [at his memorial]. “That young man. That young man. On the cross, our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.’ That man—that young man—I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did. And it’s what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

The audience rose to its feet to applaud in support of the grieving widow. But there was another speaker yet to come.

Donald Trump, following Erika Kirk, said Charlie was “a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.” But then the president, diverting from his script, couldn’t resist voicing his dissent. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump said. “I hate my opponents. And I don’t want the best for them.” He added, “I’m sorry, Erika.” The audience began to laugh and to cheer. Trump gave them a knowing smile. A man who lies about nearly everything couldn’t bring himself to lie about his hate for his opponents.


Donald Trump, decades before he ran for the presidency, acknowledged that he’s a man filled with hate and driven by vengeance. It’s not simply that those qualities are part of who he is; it is that he draws strength from the dark passions.

Trump has spent nearly every day of the past decade confirming that he lacks empathy. He sees himself as both entitled and as a victim. He’s incapable of remorse. He’s driven by an insatiable need for revenge. And he enjoys inflicting pain on others.
It’s no longer an interesting question as to why Trump is an almost perfect inversion of the moral teachings of Jesus; the answer can be traced to a damaged, disordered personality that has tragically warped his soul. What is an interesting question is why those who claim that the greatest desire of their life is to follow Jesus revere such a man and seem willing to follow him, instead, to the ends of the earth.


Within this world exists a subculture that includes the so-called TheoBros, men who often identify as Christian nationalists who see themselves as theological warriors. In this subculture, compassion is viewed as a weakness; bullying and abusive language, snide putdowns, misogyny, and “owning the libs” are fashionable. They’re the Christian version of shock jocks.


Many of the leaders within the Christian-MAGA movement are autocratic, arrogant, and controlling; they lack accountability, demand unquestioned loyalty, and try to intimidate their critics, especially those within their church or denomination. The grievances and resentment they feel are impossible to overstate; they are suffering from a persecution complex. Fully MAGA-fied Christians view Trump as the “ultimate fighting machine,” in the words of the historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and they love him for it. The most militant and fanatical Trump supporters refer to our era as a “Bonhoeffer moment.” (The phrase is meant to draw parallels between the “woke left” in America and Nazism.) Hard-core MAGA Christians hardly make up the whole of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism, but they do constitute a large part of it, and they are on the ascendancy.


[There are also non-MAGA-fied] pastors who preach thoughtfully on topics such as loving your enemy and turning the other cheek, which Jesus talked about during his Sermon on the Mount; and on verses like this one, found in the Book of Ephesians, written by the Apostle Paul: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

The great majority of people attending these churches wouldn’t consider those verses to be woke talking points; they would view them as the inerrant word of God.


Yet many of them will spend part of the rest of the week, and maybe much of the rest of the week, in the right-wing echo chamber, in the company of conflict entrepreneurs, having their emotions inflamed, feeling the same way toward their enemies as Donald Trump does toward his enemies. And it will all make perfect sense to them.

“It grieves me to see people I’ve known for years (some as far back as the Jesus Movement of the 1970s) seduced by a mean-spirited culture-war Christianity that is but a perverse caricature of the authentic faith formed around Jesus of Nazareth,” Brian Zahnd, a pastor and author, posted on social media recently. “Yes, it grieves me terribly.”

For far too many Christians, faith, although an important part of their life, is not primary, and it’s even less often transformative. Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today, has said that Jesus is a “hood ornament” for many American Christians.


But they are exceptional, and if we’re honest—if Christians are honest—the gap between how those who claim to be followers of Jesus conduct themselves versus how others in the world conduct themselves is often narrow, if it exists at all. We see that in high-profile scandals and in people’s daily lives, where abusive behavior, harsh judgmentalism, and unkindness are spread pretty equally among believers and unbelievers.

What’s happened, then, is that faith isn’t nearly as central to the life of many Christians as they say it is, or that they wish it were. Christianity has its own semantic world, phrases and buzzwords that are meant to convey the importance of faith in our life. In many cases, though, these are expressions of an aspiration, not the reflection of a current reality.


I say all this to provide context for my next observation, which may help explain this moment: Politics fills the void left by faith, and it’s doing so in ways that I’ve never quite seen before. For many fundamentalists and evangelicals, politics meets the longing and the needs that aren’t being met by churches and traditional faith communities. If there is something useful that has come of the Trump era, and there’s not much, it is that it has offered a diagnostic CT scan of much of American Christianity. Trump and the MAGA movement capitalized on, and then amplified, the problems facing Christian communities, but they did not create them.

Politics, especially culture-war politics, provides many fundamentalists and evangelicals with a sense of community and a common enemy. It gives purpose and meaning to their life, turning them into protagonists in a great drama pitting good against evil. They are vivified by it. And they reassure one another, time and again, that the dark passions are actually expressions of righteousness. They consecrate their resentments. As a result, they deform what many of us consider to be the most compelling voice and life there ever was, an itinerant preacher who 2,000 years ago traveled throughout Galilee and Judea, teaching new commandments on some days and healing the sick and the social outcasts on others, all the while proclaiming the Kingdom of God.


The hand of the Lord is upon this president. And they will stand with him every step of the way. That is why people at the Charlie Kirk memorial service could be moved by the words of forgiveness by Erika Kirk and also inspired by the words of hate by the president of the United States. They can move easily between two worlds. But they are encamping in the world of moral ugliness, a world of antipathy, and, for now, they seem quite at home there.

We don’t know how it will end. But here’s what I do know, or at least what my understanding of the Christian faith has taught me to believe: We are called to be faithful, not necessarily successful, for success lies beyond our powers. This world is broken but beautiful, a gift from God, and the good in this world is worth fighting for. One life on this Earth is all we get, and, in the words of the pastor and theologian Frederick Buechner, “at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.” God is far more resplendent than the theologies and doctrines about God that we humans construct. And, as the writer Rachel Held Evans put it, “faith is always a risk. No matter what we believe, there’s always the chance we might be wrong. But the story of Jesus is just the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.”

(neologism, Internet, vulgar) The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits.

1776: 3,000 Black Loyalists, among them freemen and slaves, fled the oppression of the American Revolution and came to Canada.

1781: Butler’s Rangers, a military unit loyal to the Crown and based at Fort Niagara, settled some of the first Loyalist refugees from the United States in the Niagara peninsula, along the northern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

1783: Sir Guy Carleton, Governor of the British Province of Quebec, and later to become Lord Dorchester, safely transported 35,000 Loyalist refugees from New York to Nova Scotia. Some settled in Quebec, and others in Kingston and Adolphustown in Ontario.

1789: Lord Dorchester, Governor-in-Chief of British North America, gave official recognition to the “First Loyalists” – those loyal to the Crown who fled the oppression of the American Revolution to settle in Nova Scotia and Quebec.

1793: Upper Canada became the first province in the British Empire to abolish slavery. In turn, over the course of the 19th century, thousands of black slaves escaped from the United States and came to Canada with the aid of the Underground Railroad, a Christian anti-slavery network.

On race

If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.

– Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

Prove me wrong.

– Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.

On gender, feminism and reproductive rights

Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.

– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023

On immigration

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024

On Islam

America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025

Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.

– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025

On religion

There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022

In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things

Even so, the centrifuge machines, which spin at high speeds to enrich uranium, are highly sensitive which means the explosion will likely have crashed many of them by sending them spinning off their axis.

The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanoff, Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality, plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable.

Donald Trump, and the sycophantic buffoons in his administration, are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman emperor Nero, who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life; and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending séances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets.

In “Hitler and the Germans,” the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism, but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures,” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist, its collective departure from a rational world of verifiable fact.

These idiots, who promise to recapture lost glory and power, do not create. They only destroy. They accelerate the collapse. Limited in intellectual ability, lacking any moral compass, grossly incompetent and filled with rage at established elites who they see as having slighted and rejected them, they remake the world into a playground for grifters, con artists and megalomaniacs. They make war on universities, banish scientific research, peddle quack theories about vaccines as a pretext to expand mass surveillance and data sharing, strip legal residents of their rights and empower armies of goons, which is what the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become, to spread fear and ensure passivity. Reality, whether the climate crisis or the immiseration of the working class, does not impinge on their fantasies. The worse it gets, the more idiotic they become.

Hannah Arendt blames a society that willingly embraces radical evil on this collective “thoughtlessness.” Desperate to escape from the stagnation, where they and their children are trapped, hopeless and in despair, a betrayed population is conditioned to exploit everyone around them in a desperate scramble to advance. People are objects to be used, mirroring the cruelty inflicted by the ruling class.

A society convulsed by disorder and chaos, as Voegelin points out, celebrates the morally degenerate, those who are cunning, manipulative, deceitful and violent. In an open, democratic society, these attributes are despised and criminalized. Those who exhibit them are condemned as stupid; “a man [or woman] who behaves in this way,” Voegelin notes, “will be socially boycotted.” But the social, cultural and moral norms in a diseased society are inverted. The attributes that sustain an open society — a concern for the common good, honesty, trust and self-sacrifice — are ridiculed. They are detrimental to existence in a diseased society.

When a society, as Plato notes, abandons the common good, it always unleashes amoral lusts — violence, greed and sexual exploitation — and fosters magical thinking, the focus of my book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”

The only thing these dying regimes do well is spectacle. These bread and circus acts — like Trump’s $40 million Army parade to be held on his birthday on June 14 — keep a distressed population entertained.

The Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes, the land where everything is possible, is peddled to mask the cruelty of economic stagnation and social inequality. The population is conditioned by mass culture, dominated by sexual commodification, banal and mindless entertainment and graphic depictions of violence, to blame itself for failure.

Søren Kierkegaard in “The Present Age” warns that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and shape and manipulate individuals into a pliable and indoctrinated “public.” This public is not real. It is, as Kierkegaard writes, a “monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage.” In short, we became part of a herd, “unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization — and yet are held together as a whole.” Those who question the public, those who denounce the corruption of the ruling class, are dismissed as dreamers, freaks or traitors. But only they, according to the Greek definition of the polis, can be considered citizens.

Thomas Paine writes that a despotic government is a fungus that grows out of a corrupt civil society. This is what happened to past societies. It is what happened to us.

It is tempting to personalize the decay, as if ridding ourselves of Trump will return us to sanity and sobriety. But the rot and corruption has ruined all of our democratic institutions, which function in form, not in content. The consent of the governed is a cruel joke. Congress is a club on the take from billionaires and corporations. The courts are appendages of corporations and the rich. The press is an echo chamber of the elites, some of whom do not like Trump, but none of whom advocate the social and political reforms that could save us from despotism. It is about how we dress up despotism, not despotism itself.

The historian Ramsay MacMullen, in “Corruption and the Decline of Rome,” writes that what destroyed the Roman Empire was “the diverting of governmental force, its misdirection.” Power became about enriching private interests. This misdirection renders government powerless, at least as an institution that can address the needs and protect the rights of the citizenry. Our government, in this sense, is powerless. It is a tool of corporations, banks, the war industry and oligarchs. It cannibalizes itself to funnel wealth upwards.

“[T]he decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness,” Edward Gibbon writes. “Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long.”

The Roman emperor Commodus, like Trump, was entranced with his own vanity. He commissioned statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He fancied himself a star of the arena, staging gladiatorial contests where he was crowned the victor and killing lions with a bow and arrow. The empire — he renamed Rome the Colonia Commodiana (Colony of Commodus) — was a vehicle to satiate his bottomless narcissism and lust for wealth. He sold public offices the way Trump sells pardons and favors to those who invest in his cryptocurrencies or donate to his inauguration committee or presidential library.

Finally, the emperor’s advisors arranged to have him strangled to death in his bath by a professional wrestler after he announced that he would assume the consulship dressed as a gladiator. But his assassination did nothing to halt the decline. Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax who was assassinated three months later. The Praetorian Guards auctioned off the office of emperor. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in A.D. 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.

Like the late Roman Empire, our republic is dead.

Our constitutional rights — due process, habeas corpus, privacy, freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent — have been taken from us by judicial and legislative fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect between the purported values of our faux democracy and reality means our political discourse, the words we use to describe ourselves and our political system, are absurd.

Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940 amid the rise of European fascism and looming world war:

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Our decay, our illiteracy and collective retreat from reality, was long in the making. The steady erosion of our rights, especially our rights as voters, the transformation of the organs of state into tools of exploitation, the immiseration of the working poor and middle class, the lies that saturate our airwaves, the degrading of public education, the endless and futile wars, the staggering public debt, the collapse of our physical infrastructure, mirror the last days of all empires.

Trump the pyromaniac entertains us as we go down.