Jesus, the Capitalist

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Over the last decade, there’s been a shift in the Democratic party towards socialism. Even though a 2022 Pew poll reveals that overall support for socialism is down from 2019, it’s not true for young adults (a Democrat leaning demographic), who increasingly prefer socialism to capitalism. Interestingly one of the ways pro-socialist types, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, try to gain more currency is to attempt to convince Christians that Christ was a radical socialist. The catch phrase “What would Jesus do?” has become a left wing dog whistle for faux empathy and a collectivist mindset. But in fact it’s actually hard to make the case that Jesus didn’t like profits and shrewd money managers. Jesus wasn’t a socialist. Jesus wants you to work, flourish, and profit. 

More recently, articles are coming out that Jesus was in fact woke. Those views are based on Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Russell Moore, who frequently criticizes Christians for lacking compassion. Moore’s sentiment echoes among other pastors as well who appear to be influenced by the woke agenda, including well-known pastors such as Rick Warren. The woke have a way of cornering the market on empathy. But it’s always the short term over the long term. They believe it’s more empathetic to give a man a fish than it is to teach him to catch them on his own. Jesus was empathic, but he wasn’t short-term minded, he was very much long-term. Jesus wasn’t woke.

Democratic Socialist Cornel West, who is running for the Green Party ticket in the 2024 presidential election, stirred the pot with ideas that a reader of the Bible couldn’t deny that Jesus was a Socialist. This begs the question: how is socialism being portrayed in the Christian community? Or said another way, how is Christ’s Gospel being contorted to support socialism? 

Socialists point to Matthew 25:31-46 - “The Sheep and the Goats” as evidence that Jesus was a socialist. In these verses, it is presumably the end of times when Jesus is in his glory separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff. Jesus refers to moments when he was thirsty, and someone gave him water, or when he was hungry, and someone gave him food. He then says, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of those brothers of mine, you did for me.” This is a wonderful verse that calls us to be generous. But how is this verse a call for the government to determine how we should be generous? How is this verse a validation that the government would be better stewards of resources ? 

In fact, studies show that the government is not the best manager of resources. I recall Mary Meeker, a well-known tech analyst, said something to the effect that if America was a business, it would be bankrupt, and she called for “re-org of USA, Inc.” About 70% of money in government welfare budgets go to administration, not the poor, whereas private charities and churches give more than 70% of proceeds to the poor. In another example that shows the government may not be the best stewards of finances, public schools received a record amount of funding, yet they failed in their job of teaching.  

Jesus isn’t a collectivist. His focus is on the actions of the individual. While Jesus does say that a man should pay his taxes, when he tells the Pharisees to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, there is no connection that those funds would satisfy man’s obligations to be charitable. Nor is there a connection that those funds would satisfy Jesus’ calling to be good financial stewards.   

In Luke 16:10 Jesus says “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” This is in the Parable of the Shrewd Manager, where Jesus told his disciples about a rich man who accused his manager of wasting his wealth. Ashamed of his ways, the manager shrewdly gets his master’s money back through negotiation and smarts. Jesus praised good stewardship and market business savvy. That’s quite different than instructing his followers to give everything away! 

Jesus doesn’t stop there. In Luke 16:12 Jesus refers to a meritocracy when it comes to private property. He says that private property is available to those who have earned trust in managing someone else’s property. It doesn’t say all property should be centrally managed and distributed equitably. It says the people who are good at managing property should manage it! 

Staying in the same book, in Luke 19:11 - “The Parable of the Ten Minas,” Jesus spoke to people in Jericho and shared a story of a noble man who was going away and gave 10 of his servants 10 minas each and told them to put the money to work. When the man returned, the first servant said he doubled his money. So the noble man gave the servant 10 cities to rule. The next servant said he earned 5 more minas. The noble man then gave that servant 5 cities. Another servant said he kept the mina in cloth so he gave the noble man back one mina. The noble man was furious berating the servant for not even earning interest on the mina and so he told the servant to give his mina to the man who doubled his money. 

Here’s the important part, the servant says, “Sir, he already has ten.” At which point, the man replies: “I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away.”  That is what Jesus would do! He would tell you to have agency over your life. 

Jesus also sees profit as an end goal as it is said in Proverbs 31:18 “She sees that her trading is profitable.”

A generous nation

But counter to Proverbs 31, the socialist Democratic Party, which backed both AOC and whose honorary chair was Cornel West, says working people should “run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits.” 

The Bible is clearly telling us that we shouldn’t conflate profit-making with greed. Profit-making may lead to greed, but so can centralized power over a welfare state. If it is for human needs to be met, then let’s look at the record.

In capitalist America in 2014, $358 billion was given to charity, of which, over 80% came from individuals, according to Philanthropy Roundtable. Those same individuals pay taxes. And those tax-payers have been giving a lot to poor nations for America’s historical sins. Henry Louis Gates Jr., in a NYTimes Op-Ed in 2001, (Gates was the Harvard professor who called the police racist for arresting him for disorderly conduct) said the West needs to repent more for slavery over African nations because the West benefited whereas African nations did not. Gates praised UN's Secretary-General Kofi Anan for pushing for $7-$10B in aid to mostly African nations to fight AIDS. By 2007, about $10B was raised. In 2022, the United States alone had given $6 billion in financial assistance to Africa. Melinda and Bill Gates have been big private donors who contributed to those funds. Let’s not forget how Gates climbed the ladder of success thanks to capitalism. 

Capitalism has made billionaires, like Gates, created jobs and in the words of the DSA, met “human needs.” In fact, those who’ve risen in the ranks in a capitalist society pay for much of the welfare services the poor enjoy. The bottom 50% of earners only pay 2% of taxes. 

Yet Socialists, like Bernie Sanders, want to cut the wealth of billionaires in half in 15 years so more money can be redistributed to the poor and the middle class. Sounds great, until we realize that with each tax hike, it’s the middle income class that gets hurt and is seemingly being hollowed out. In June 2023, a real estate report showed that middle income earners can now only afford a quarter of the home listings. This is down from five years ago when middle income earners could afford half the listings. The middle class is being pushed away from owning private property. When the government jacks up taxes and then turns around and spends trillions of dollars to pay for social services that unleashes 40-yr high inflation rates, that leads to decades-high mortgage rates, we’re left with unaffordable housing for the middle class and certainly the poor - the very people Socialists say they’re helping.  

Utopian Ideology

There’s much talk about Left wing political ideology being directed towards the creation of a utopian society. A heaven on earth of sorts. Where all people are equal, free of shame, and relieved of all burdens. Well you can’t combine that ideology with the Bible.

First the Bible is pretty clear, right at the start in fact, that we tried this in the Garden of Eden and failed miserably. But there’s an even more fundamental issue that’s impossible to reconcile. In the Christian faith man is, at his core, broken. He is a creature of endless sin. There is no way that Jesus would advocate for man investing his faith and belief in other men. Jesus knows that ends in a circular firing squad. Jesus wants men to fix their eyes on Him.

Jesus knows that collectivism would just devolve into sin and debauchery.

From grief to gratitude: A journey after losing a loved one

As much as people read about death or experience it through the passing of a parent, nothing prepares us for the sudden loss of a sibling, particularly one so close. I’ve learned through my two experiences now - my father and my brother - that people process death differently, and the path largely depends on the view of death held by both the person who died and the one who survived: are they afraid of death? Prepared for death? Do they welcome death? 

     Carl Jung said “death is an archetype” - an experience we all have that wants something from us. It seeks to generate behaviors - anger, fear, confusion, regret, doubt, reflection, gratitude and forgiveness. It demands a response that takes on different healing pathways. The journey from grief to gratitude is just like someone’s own journey with birth, adolescence, marriage and having children. It’s unique; it’s never linear; It’s never what we expect. My father lived a long life; his death was anticipated for years; He was the one who folded his last hand. It was heartbreaking but there was no jolt of despair that comes with a sudden death. My brother’s life was abruptly, and maybe cruelly, taken away from him. The reality is gut-wrenching because there is no time to contemplate a new reality. It is thrust upon you.  

     Since my brother died – I even find it hard to say those words – I’ve not been able to fully embrace the loss even though the day after he passed, I immediately knew I was to sit in gratitude. If not, then did I really believe in God? Did I really believe in His truth and the Bible? If I didn’t view my brother’s death as good news and a victory, as my younger sister Meliza wrote in a tribute song to our brother, was I a doubter of my faith? Ezra asked me that question on the evening of Friday, Oct. 21, 2022 - the fatal day, “Do you believe your brother is with Jesus?” He looked at me with all sincerity asking without saying any words, “Has Christianity just been a set of heuristics for you or do you fully embrace the Gospel?” Heuristics are rules-of-thumb that guide us in decision-making. For those who see Christianity as merely a set of guiding principles, they would be ill-prepared to handle death when emotion overrides rational thought. In fact, rationale barely exists in the initial part of the grieving process. The peace that surpasses all understanding is only afforded to those who trust in God. 

     I remember when I had to deliver the painful news to my mom. She was so delighted to see me that morning. In fact, chipper and upbeat. She seemed almost ready for some good news. Often I would visit her, sit her down, and I would reveal a pleasant surprise. She had many of these moments this year, given that she turned 80 in January and among the many ways to keep her happy was by making her feel like a child on Christmas morning for as many days as we could. I think she thought this was one of those times. This time, the surprise would be the most agonizing news ever in a lifetime. She broke down hysterically. Just as Robbi, my brother’s wife replays that nightmare evening she was last with my brother, I sometimes rehash my mom’s response, along with my three sisters whom I had to break the news to. The memory is hauntingly vivid as I could feel the shock, paralysis, and denial in their voices when they asked the same questions: “What? No! Are you sure?” I did that too when I received the news, except it wasn’t broken to me so gently. But is there really any way to receive such news? My mom immediately looked to God with confusion and anger, asking “Why? I prayed to you every day without fail to wrap my children and their spouses and their children with your Holy Mantle. You didn’t wrap my son. Where were you? Why?”

     We are taught to allow people to feel pain; to be a sounding board; to say nothing but to allow them to process the bad news. All I could do was hug her. But when a mother is in pain, like my mom was, I knew I couldn’t allow her to hurt herself physiologically by sitting in mental anguish. All I could say was the devil wants you to sit in anger and question God. Don’t let him win. This outrage will hurt you physically because it will release hormones in your body that won’t allow you to think clearly. This is a reality, Mom. The devil knows this so turn to God for that is where Raul is right now. Was this denial? Did I fail to show compassion by denying my mom that moment of fury? Or did I show more compassion by leading her mind back to that place of restoration and trust so physiologically, the hormone oxytocin could be released to give her a sense of calm during overwhelming emotions of torture?

Refrain from anger 

     That same day, after the news broke, the many text messages, Facebook messages and emails began flowing in. I have yet to go on Facebook beyond getting photos. My brother was active there; He was my political ally and the one person who always liked or loved a post. Ironically, his absence would be more real in this virtual world. Denial? I don’t think so. It is denial if you don't move forward with the realities of life, such as going through the logistics of death – questions of what to do with the body, how to memorialize, and how to handle finances. It’s not denial if you don’t put yourself in situations that bring up memories you’re not ready to entertain. The one memory I wasn’t eager nor thought relevant to consider was the particulars of my brother’s death. He was struck by an intoxicated motorcycle driver. This person was driving another in a sidecar attached to the motorcycle and crashed into my brother who was on a scooter. My brother died immediately along with the two other men. It was OK to be angry about this, some said. A drunk driver takes away your brother’s life suddenly? How can one not be angry? 

     Popular psychology says anger can make a person feel powerful in the face of feeling powerless. Anger helps a person avoid being vulnerable or sad. People shouldn’t run away from anger but feel empowered by it. People should lean into the pain of anger, not only to give them control of the situation, but to help them move through grief and understand where that anger comes from. This is conventional wisdom. Sit in anger. Feel empowered by it. No thank you. A person can identify the root of their anger without wallowing in it for a few hours, much less a day. 

     God tells us to “refrain from anger” in Psalm 37:8. In James 1:19-20, James the brother of Jesus pacifies us by saying, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” In Genesis 4:7 God asks Cain why he is “angry” and warns that if he does “not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is [for] you, but you must rule over it.” In the moment, I didn’t need scripture to tell me not to be angry. I had no anger actually. In fact, the only rational thought I had in my despair was - don’t be angry. I wanted to sit in gratitude and there was no way I would allow anger to take that away from me.

     This seems stoic to some. Unfeeling to others. I sensed my older sister found my attitude to be either delusional fantasy or selfish denial or both. I wasn’t getting to the bottom of what had just gone down! I wasn’t asking the right questions about my brother’s death. She needed to know for her own sake, in my opinion, to find a dispositional explanation of the matter.  Not even 24 hours after my brother’s death and my sister and I were fighting. We don’t heal in the same way when it comes to death. When my father died, she was hurt and angry because of the immediate logistical decisions I made regarding his finances. My father, whose death wasn’t sudden, prepared me for the aftermath by showing me where his passwords were and what bills needed to be paid. When he did go, my brother and I flew out to New Jersey, knowing we only had a few days to help organize his finances to help his widow, who didn’t speak very good English, manage his obligations. My sister was angered by our priorities as though we were nefariously trying to hide something from her. Death led to our estrangement for a few years.

 Conspiracy theories

     Death does demand action. It does call us to respond. When we don’t respond in the same way, death is the antagonist, ripping our hearts and bringing out the worst versions of ourselves toward one another.  My father died in 2017. Five years later, I sit in grief once again for a strained relationship with my sister. This time, without my brother to console me as he did when my father passed. With my brother’s death, my sister said in a group text with me and our two other sisters that the news she received of our brother was delivered through a “biased” lens. Since I was the deliverer, it was clear she thought I was yet again hiding something from her. She wanted to know the details, which she has every right to know. I shared what I knew: He died immediately; it wasn’t pretty. But when she kept pressing, “What was the road like? Did he die in the ambulance or in the scene? Was he wearing a helmet?” I found the questions irrelevant and only opened the door for more questions to fester: Should we be upset that he didn’t wear a helmet? Is he partly to blame so we can be angry at him? Were the emergency technicians incompetent? Did it matter? In the end, why would we want to ruminate over these questions and blame my brother, the technicians or anyone?  Maybe I was second-guessing why she needed to know and I was selfish for not trying to answer. But I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I also needed to process in my own way. That conversation was memorable, but a blur. I just wanted her to stop asking so the only response I had in me was: “Does it matter? He’s f’cking dead!” and hung up. 

     The very next morning, Saturday, my brother spoke to me and said, “Hey! Grab your bible, I want to show you something.” I opened up my bible to Isaiah and immediately thought, “Isaiah? Why not Corinthians or Galatians?” The books in the bible that Paul wrote are always uplifting because Paul is appealing to his followers to remain strong and stay true through the tribulations. They are inspiring words. I never thought of Isaiah as inspiring the way I thought of Paul’s books. But there in Isaiah 8:11 were the words I needed to read. 

Fear God 

The Lord spoke to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of these people. He said: Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear. And do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to fear. He is the one you are to dread. And he will be a sanctuary, but for both houses of Israel he will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.

     The Lord Almighty is the one I am to fear. He is my sanctuary and the one who will be a stone that causes men to stumble! Whether my brother had a helmet on or whether he was a target of some greedy actors didn’t matter. If we fear that someone is keeping secrets from us, we will never move to gratitude. These were conspiracy theories - great secrets that people think are being kept from them. Do not fear them or entertain them. My brother was speaking to me loud and clear through the Bible. The psychology behind conspiracy theories is that people by nature want to be in control. In order to have control, they come up with a conspiracy to explain how such situations came to be. To this end, conspiracy theories are dispositional - “someone planned this” - because the theories attribute circumstances to some intentional motive. My brain had no emotional capacity to contemplate such conjectures. As it turns out, neither did my younger sister Meliza. That same morning, I went to see my mom and she was on the phone with my younger sister who was sharing the words of a song she had written for my brother. Her words, “I can question a thousand times why no motorcycle helmet was on; I can beat myself up wondering how in just one second it all went wrong. Or I can hold on to the sweetest memories since you’re now long gone.”

     Raul was speaking to her too. For my sister, it was through poetry and song. What a relief that my sister and I were responding to death in the same way, with our eyes set on Jesus. So she and I, just as we did on Friday, chose to hold on to sweet memories and lift my mom up and pray for God to fill our hearts with joy because Raul was where he wanted to be, face to face with Jesus. We were not in denial and we were not carrying out a heuristic. Our worship and joy was unadulterated certainty in the truth that my brother had reached his destination. He spent two years designing an entire lifestyle to hasten the wedding between Jesus and the church. His book titled “WHY Simple Discipleship; To Hasten the Wedding” is meant to teach people how to be disciples and importantly how to spread the good news through one-on-one committed conversations. The faster we spread the word through one-on-one discipleship, the faster Jesus could be face-to-face with his bride, the people who make up his church. For my brother, that heaven-on-earth wedding wasn’t hastened, but he accelerated his own journey. I imagine he is in a better position to spread the word in a more powerful and profound way.

The nothingness fallacy 

    I know some people think, if this works for you, it's a good way to view his death. Believe it, if it helps you but there is no such thing as a new life. Nothing awaits us on the other side and that is reality. In fact, believing in the religious myth and fantasy of an afterlife is an obstacle to our ability to be truly compassionate, according to atheist Sam Harris, who said that religion is consoling and pays emotional dividends but the cost of religion is the loss of compassion. Religion is the “antithesis of teaching your children how to grieve” and it “dampens our compassion,” according to Harris, who adds through grieving, people can contemplate the brevity of life and from that emerges a moral clarity and energy to embrace the present. It brings a resolve to not suffer the small stuff; to make the best of our time here because we don’t know when our time is up. I have no problem with this rationale and positive way to view life. But if the highest good that comes out of death is that it helps us find moral clarity and a resolve to not sweat the small stuff, that’s a relatively small silver lining compared to the feeling of victorious joy for my brother who’s been promoted to see Jesus. To rest in this joy; to sit in this gratitude that countervails my grief and to celebrate where my brother is doesn’t dampen my compassion one bit. I still mourn, and just because this outward expression of my grief is acutely different than some does not negate the vast feeling of sorrow I have ever known.  

     In Ecclesiastes 7:4, it says “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.” In the house of mourning, compassion is just one emotion on display as I said in my eulogy for my brother during his California celebration:

“It sounds ironic to be anything but sad in a house of mourning. But I witnessed a lot of wisdom during my brother’s Memorial in Colorado - hosted by my brother’s children and wife Robbi. In the house of mourning – there is no pretense, everyone considers others and are gentle to one another, there’s a lot of mercy in the air, a lot of sincerity, authenticity; there’s no fear of what others think; And mainly there’s a lot of humility and forgiveness (even if it’s sometimes just kept in the heart). In the house of mourning, we are most wise because we are the most like Jesus.  

     How is this not compassion? Why is this fantasy to atheists? If nothingness on the other side is an acceptable mystery to them, how is nothingness not a fantasy in and of itself? Joy and compassion seem mutually exclusive to those who do not believe in God. It seems an outward display of suffering is warranted because the joy on display is a mystery. While God-aimed joy is a “peace that surpasses all understanding” for Christians, it is a conspiracy theory for non-believers because heaven is too good to be true therefore any motive to desire it must be selfish or stupid. For those who don’t outwardly show suffering for others, they look at Christians as taking the easy way out by saying it’s God’s plan.  Somehow suffering and pity have to be on full display. Inherent in this demand is an utter failure or unwillingness to grasp Christianity. To atheists, it is inconceivable to believe in an omniscient, omnipotent God who defines the highest good while also allowing for death, destruction and decay. God didn’t have his Holy mantle around my brother that evening. Therefore how could we fantasize that he exists, let alone worship him? Yet this view expects God to bend a knee to us. Are we to expect God to make every day sunny and stop every person from drinking and driving recklessly so as to not cause death? Are we to jump out of planes without a parachute because we know God will catch us? If God intervened, wouldn’t that forfeit our free will and negate the consequences of our actions? If there was a God defined by atheists, we would have to redefine the human condition because we’d all have the superpower to never die despite the many poor choices we make. We would be living in the movie “Edge of Tomorrow” where we are in a continuous loop of living, crashing and then living again. Or we can live the way atheists do, pretending that nothing greets us on the other side; embrace a reality that life is short on earth so we are to be the best versions of ourselves for our progeny before our time is up. Yet something is missing from this way of life, namely who defines the “best version of ourselves”? Who saves us from ourselves? 

     Importantly, nothingness doesn’t really prepare us for death. Popular opinion says if death conjures up fear, don’t think of it. About 42% of the country is afraid of death so it stands to reason that nearly half the country is not preparing themselves or the people around them for that fatal day. My brother wasn’t afraid; he was prepared and he prepared those around him so we could sit in gratitude as we mourn. He didn’t fear death. His son Harrison even told me that his dad trained him well for the very possibility of death and if that day should come, “we should be jealous.” If we truly believe Jesus awaits us, then jealousy is the only variation of anger we should have. Mad envy that my brother beat me to the next phase, the next life. 

The God-aimed spirit and flesh

      Yes. My brother made it easy for us. He made death easy for those he left because he knew that beyond death in this world, there is renewed life alongside Jesus. How could we grieve endlessly for such a person, unless, of course, we are not convinced that he is with Jesus? And yet we grieve. We grieve because we are flesh and as C.S. Lewis wrote in “A Grief Observed'', if a mother loses a child, she may find comfort in her “God-aimed eternal spirit within her. But not her motherhood. The specifically-maternal happiness must be written off.” While she will always be a mother, she cannot do what mothers do: enjoy and take pride in a child’s successes or provide comfort in the face of hardship. Since we are flesh and spirit, we live in constant tension. To be human is to be a paradox. The Bible tells us that the spirit thirsts for something entirely different than our earthly bodies. In Galatians 5:17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”  So while our flesh grieves, our God-aimed eternal spirit does not. 

     Some people are not so lucky to have a God-aimed eternal spirit. Someone close to me said, “Glad it helps to be a Religious person in times like this. I am not and never been able to understand that people would say that my mom should be with Jesus, not with me, when I was 6 yrs old. That stuck with me!” I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for a six-year-old to comprehend the loss of a mother. It would be hard to comprehend for a teenager or young adult, much less a 1st grader. My mom broke down in hysterics and my brother had lived for 57 years, experienced much and left a lasting legacy that will impact generations. Taking a child from a mom is heart wrenching. But taking a parent away from a small child seems even more brutal. Is there any wonder people question the value of prayers offered to God? 

Psalm 37:4-5 - “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” 

Romans 8:6 - “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

Psalm 37:5 “Depend on the Lord. Trust him, and he will take care of you.”

James 5:10 - “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

     Prayers are effective? Trust him and he will take care of us? Being controlled by the Spirit gives us life? How can we depend on and trust the Lord? How is the death of a parent or child anywhere close to being a desire of our hearts? In other words: Why spend decades praying if in the end, all we get is just death? The atheists are right! God is just a terrible myth, and worse yet - a cruel joke. If I didn’t know Jesus, having people tell me that my parents were with God would make absolutely no sense. I might even be angry at this Jesus person who took my mother away. Even if I did know Jesus, if I allowed conspiracy theories to sit in my brain, prayers of protection would ring hollow. Religion would definitely sound like a fantasy. Doubt would persist.  

Doubt and faith

       Fortunately, I know full well that doubt is an insidious mental state. Allow it to fester long enough and grief wins over gratitude. Only my Jesus time casts it aside. This time, I read the book of Job. Job was blameless and upright, yet he lost all his wealth and family and was physically afflicted. In Job 10:18, he was in such despair he doubted God’s plan, asking, “Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye saw me.” Despite his grief and suffering, Job remained faithful. In the end, he doubled his wealth and had 10 more children. 

     In what is referred to as the cry of dereliction, there is no one more faithful than Jesus, yet he doubts God’s plan in Matthew 27:46, he cries out: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Did God abandon him is a question many scholars like to ponder though it does seem like a distraction from the truth that his death accomplished salvation for all of us. That was God’s plan. There is a greater purpose for our lives that our torment knows not. As my mom’s grief led her to doubt God’s plan, Ezra assured my mom that my brother’s death was a catalyst to spread the word and exponentially do the work my brother set out to do. We don’t know for sure but faith gives us that peace that surpasses all understanding so we can put our doubt to rest even in the face of death.  

     On the third day, Sunday, my brother spoke to me again in the morning. I had been missing him and I couldn’t get myself to stop having bursts of tears. Grief wants attention and it sneaks up to us often and at unexpected times. I saw my brother sitting at the kitchen table reading his devotion and listening to worship music on his phone. I saw him with his arms crossed contemplating and thinking of just the right words to say to me or providing the right amount of humor. I heard him calling me on the phone saying “Hey Bam!” And then saying good-bye with, ”God bless your day!” I saw him laughing and flipping BBQ; I saw him with his earnest look asking, “Are you worthy?” I saw him singing at the piano, lost in song and worship. I teared up knowing I wouldn’t be able to sit with him in the mornings to learn something new. He knew I was his willing pupil, always ready to hear his words. He would always ask questions, probe about my faith and my Jesus time. I often was on the defense: “Yes. My Jesus time is great when I can fit it in. I’m busy, you know.” He would nod his head in sympathy. But then ask, “What’s it all for?” “Why are you so busy and to what end?” During this time lost in memory of my brother, I couldn’t answer the questions. I needed him there to answer them for me or guide me. I felt a heavy burden of grief this very morning. Then finally, I distinctly remember walking through my kitchen and my brother said, “Bam! Bam! Stop thinking of me that way!” I saw him in heaven cloaked in white smiling at me. Then true to form, he said, “Well. OK, just maybe a little.” Then he said, as he held a tiny violin, “If you could see what I see from here. So many people struggle. Your pain is nothing by comparison. Besides, are you thinking of your loss or celebrating my happiness? I have taught you so much. Now go on. You know what to do.” 

     It is a truism, isn’t it? That we rely on people to complement us. Aristotle said, “A good friend is one soul in two bodies.” Indeed, my brother was a soul mate. We believed in Christ; We shared the same politics. He would always bring me back from the edge of doubt. Now we are just one soul in one body.

Discipline

        It was at that moment, I started becoming aware that I had to carry on with the qualities of my brother I admired. C.S. Lewis says death is like an amputation. What seemed the only way to grow back that part of me that was cut off was to emulate all the great qualities of my brother: all the talents and skills that made me feel whole. In this way, I can feel that he is with me. 

     That same morning, my brother led me to another Bible verse. This time, it was in the Index of Topics. The verse that caught my eye was Hebrews 12:11 - “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Disciplined to what end? How am I being disciplined now? In what way should I discipline myself? Discipline myself in grief? When you think of discipline, you typically think of applying it to something. Make sure you do your hour workout, your Jesus time, etc. What was Raul telling me? Why discipline if it all leads to death ultimately? When I ask these questions, and I have asked them often these days, my heart grieves for my brother. He was always there to answer tough questions. But then he reminds me: “I am with you. Now go on. You know what to do.” Read and pray and you will hear Jesus. He is the one you need to listen to. I want to shout but I want to hear from you even if it’s in spirit! I’m afraid you will drift away like memories. Don’t tell me to speak to Jesus just yet. I want to speak to you.

     My Jesus time is my time with my brother. Is there anything wrong with wanting to hear God’s words through my brother? Is this denial of reality? My brother leads me to open my bible. He is the reason I am drawing closer to Jesus. My brother is disciplining me right now to pray and read God’s word. He led me to Romans 8:5 - “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” Again the question nags at me: Why do we pray?  

     We pray to discipline ourselves to live in the Spirit, not in the flesh. If we did, we would take to heart what it says in Philippians 1:21 - “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” This means we should emulate Christ in every way, especially in his humility. Jesus “humbled himself and became obedient to death.” Humility takes discipline. Living in the Spirit takes discipline. Trust takes discipline. We need discipline to learn and follow Jesus, “the author and perfecter of our faith.”  

     Faith is made perfect in his death. For me, his death makes all the difference in the world in shaping my trust in his story - in the Christian story. So powerful; so unique; so odd. So incomprehensible. So inconsistent with logic. So enduring. It is this faith and the hope I have within me that gives me gratitude. Gratitude for my brother’s journey, his blessings and his victory. I needed to discipline myself in embracing the God-aimed eternal spirit in me. I needed to humble myself to suffering as Jesus did to the cross. I needed to know Jesus more and more so I could be even a little like him. My brother was telling me: Discipline yourself in the spirit. “To live is Christ” as it says in Philippians. So Raul - How’s my Jesus time? I’ve never been closer thanks to you. 

[This was written a couple weeks after my brother died. I decided to share to give me closure and for anyone else who has experienced death.]

Religion heals our mental health, especially during death

[Below is a tribute I gave on Oct. 26 at my Future of Mental and Behavioral Health event for my brother who died tragically on Oct. 21, 2022. Since the topic was mental health, I wanted to share how religion is the best antidote.]

Good morning. I thought about moving this event. But too much has gone into bringing everyone together. And this discussion is about mental health and how we treat it.  We’ve gone through two years of grief in different ways. So I thought it would be relevant for me to share my story where the grief runs very deep but the joy and gratitude far outweighs it.

As the speakers know, I lost someone special a few days ago. He was my brother (and besides my husband, he was my best friend). He died in a tragic accident. He was killed by a drunk motorcycle driver while he was riding a scooter during sunset on the way to his beach house in the Philippines. For years, he had been planning his next chapter. He wrote a book, built a platform, and gathered many to support this next venture. Then he sold and gave away all his belongings (homes, furniture, boats, assets) and along with his wife moved out to the Philippines to start a ministry. Who does that? He finally made it to the island.  

It’s hard to imagine being taken right when you reach the top of a mountain you’ve always wanted to climb - while being in love with his wife, family, and purpose.

Now … I go back and forth between grief and gratitude. C.S. Lewis wrote: “In grief - nothing stays put.”  

The grief hits me, when I think of my loss. To be frank – when I pity myself because he’s not here to make me feel better: My brother was very good at giving me wise counsel. He understood our human condition. He was typically the first person I called when I needed sage advice about relationships and conflict. But then I see my brother up in heaven with a small violin saying, “Seems like you're more sad for your loss than happy for me. If you can only see what I see; other people struggle. Your pain is small by comparison. I’ve spent enough time with you. Now you know what to do. Now share with others. I’m a part of you.”

C.S. Lewis also described death as an amputation. Indeed, a part of me died. What I am learning, however, is that in death, the more we can impart the good qualities of the person we lost, the more we can grow back the part of us that was cut off. Then if we exercise those qualities like a muscle. Train ourselves. We end up honoring the ones we lost by showing a little bit of them through us. 

So I want to impart his good qualities and share what he taught me that kept me in the best mental state. Now these are from a Christian perspective. But you can simply consider them helpful heuristics. 

Practice forgiveness: My brother would say, division is primarily due to unforgiveness. [My brother was killed. I should have trouble with this. Some say I should be angry; and it’s OK to sit in that anger as part of the grieving process. But I’m not]. To apply this to what’s happening in the world, I don’t think we should teach our kids that ALL decisions made by our forefathers were to keep one race down and elevate another. Teaching kids bitterness creates division and instills anger in their hearts. 

Our self-worth is in Jesus Christ. My brother would always remind me, “You are not worthy.” Some may wonder why that’s helpful. Because I am not worthy. So I even teach this to my children. My 10 yr old son knows this well. In this world, we’re constantly thinking of our self-worth. We are told to demand others to affirm us. That affirmation may give us a temporal sense of self-worth. But we will fall back to earth, and we’ll need to find worth again. To apply this to what’s happening in the world, there’s far too much emphasis on teaching kids that kindness is affirming someone’s identity. Kindness is keeping others safe in their fantasies to give them some false sense of dignity. If people keep looking to others for their dignity, they’ll never be satisfied. We’re even letting kids cut themselves up, if that makes them feel better. How is that safe? Life isn’t safe and the sooner we know how to live through those dark moments, the faster we find our true identity.    

We don’t deserve what we have. My brother would always say, “I don't deserve anything.” What does that mean? It means, I am not worthy and I am broken; I will make mistakes and I will sin against my brothers and sisters, friend and neighbor. Sins big enough I shouldn’t even have the wealth I have. Importantly, if you have what you don’t deserve, then everything is a gift. If more people understood that they were broken, we’d have less stigma about our mental health problems, and we’d have far more mentally healthy people.

So conventional wisdom – says take your time and sit in your anger; conventional wisdom says – you are worthy; you are good and you deserve the best, and you deserve safe spaces. Well maybe conventional wisdom is wrong. The ways we treat the mentally ill are probably wrong; We’re probably also asking the wrong questions. Certainly in mental health, some say, we’re only treating symptoms.

This event will be very different from the others. It will NOT be a safe place. Our mental health is at stake. We will question conventional wisdom - from the way we diagnose mental health, to the current top-down lockdowns and forced mandated healthcare protocols that keep people living in fear.  We’ll talk about what's behind the horrific statistics around mental health. And we’ll talk about what technological innovations can really help.  But ultimately, it’s not data and gizmos that get us to a healthy mental state. It’s forgiving one another and training ourselves to move from grief to gratitude.

The abortion straw man arguments

Women's rights aren’t under attack, potential life and ordered liberty are.

“Note to everyone: In order to get an abortion, you have to get banged,” tweeted Christian Walker, son of Herschel Walker, after a draft decision to overturn Roe v Wade by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to the press. Granted, a bit crass but a reminder nonetheless that sex and pregnancy involve multiple parties. The SCOTUS has articulated that abortion involves two interests: the woman and as Roe and Casey acknowledged and termed - the “fetal and potential life.”  There’s also the man in all this.

Pro-abortion advocates narrowly focus on a woman’s right to the exclusion of the others. That doesn’t seem fair.

Yet after the leak, the shouts for women’s rights rang loud from, ironically, the party that won’t define the word “woman.” Kamala Harris said Roe v Wade “at its root, protects the fundamental right to privacy." President Biden declared that “a women’s right to choose is fundamental” based on the 14th Amendment’s concept of personal liberty. Nancy Pelosi warned the decision would “inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years.” MSNBC’s Joy Reid said Republicans are waging “war on women’s bodies” which “are no longer their own, but state properties.” Stacey Abrams, who’s running for Governor of Georgia, said women have the “right to choose, the right to dignity, welfare and our health” and the “moral certainty is you’re talking about women’s lives.”  

These righteous claims cast pro-life advocates and Republicans as evil suppressors stripping away a woman's constitutional right to privacy. It is the left’s biggest justification but also a flawed straw man argument. A straw man argument is a rhetorical misrepresentation of an opponent’s position so it’s easier to attack and stir emotion with fervent statements, like VP Harris’ words evoking Greta Thunberg: “How dare you!” 

How dare conservatives be so cruel to women?! How dare they force a woman who’s been raped to carry that child as a constant reminder of the torment? How dare they force a teenage girl to have a child and take away her youth?! Tough and painful situations no doubt, though it’s not guaranteed the births of those babies will ultimately be a curse. 

I’m anti-abortion, and I don’t view this decision as gutting woman’s rights. We need to consider the decision in the context of all the parties involved. There’s a name for this. It’s called “ordered liberty,” which Alito’s decision makes clear has been stripped from the people.  

“Ordered liberty sets limits and defines the boundary between competing interests,” Alito wrote. While Roe and Casey in their cases balanced the rights between the woman and “potential life,” Alito pointed out so accurately that “the people of the various states may evaluate those interests differently.”

Indeed they will as 26 states “expressly asked this Court to overrule Roe and Casey and allow the States to regulate or prohibit pre-viability abortions,” wrote Alito.

State power is the heart of the democratic process

The court is giving this issue back to the legislature, initially at the state level and maybe in time at the federal level. Taking abortion power away from unelected judges and returning them to the legislative bodies is nothing but democratic. It enhances civic engagement and encourages people to vote. And clearly that process is at work.

Abortion will very likely remain available in at least half the country, and in the states already conducting much of the abortion procedures. Of the top dozen states where abortions are most frequenty, at least seven are preparing or have already set in motion laws to protect it. 

About 15% of the nation’s abortions are performed in California, a state that represents 12% of the population. California is working to become a sanctuary state for those seeking abortions. The state’s abortion count is much higher than New York, according to  Guttmacher, an advocate for abortion rights. For its part, New York topped the list of states that submitted abortion data in 2019, according to the CDC. Those states include: Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. 

In 2019, New York became the first state to codify the right to abortion and end the ban on abortion after 24 weeks. Connecticut Governor Lamont on May 5, 2022 signed laws protecting those providing and receiving abortions in their state and for those fleeing other states. Illinois’ Governor JB Pritzker signed a law keeping abortion legal should Roe v Wade be overturned. In Nevada, Governor Steve Sisolak said abortion would remain legal until 24 weeks of pregnancy should Roe be overturned. In Massachusetts, the state Senate codified abortion access into law in 2020. In NJ, Governor Phil Murphy signed a law in early 2022 making abortions legal. Two things are notable in all these moves, the first is that this is the legislature at work and although I don’t agree with the policy, it is the current will of the people as expressed by the people they’ve elected - if the people want change they can vote them out! The second notable is how many people clearly expected Roe to be overturned! It clearly wasn’t going to hold forever, and at least now we can get on with the post-Roe world we all knew was coming.

Half ofstates will have restrictions, like Florida, where abortion will be banned after 15 weeks starting July 2022. It may also be the case that bans continue to narrow the allowable time frame to six or even five weeks as science advances and our perspective on “potential life” becomes increasingly refined. But restrictive abortion policy doesn’t mean zero opportunities, just parameters to keep it, as Bill Clinton once said, “rare.”

I think most Americans would prefer it if abortions were “rare.”

Most Americans support a ban after 5 weeks! 

Some 58% of Americans want to ban abortions after a heartbeat can be detected, which is around five to six weeks, according to a 2021 Gallup poll. Importantly, more people have consistently believed abortion to be morally wrong every year since 2000. 

Pro-abortionists like to mislead popular opinion by amplifying stats that 80% of Americans support abortion and that 58% don’t want Roe v Wade to be overturned. But a closer look at the 80% show more than half, or 48%, want to limit abortion to only certain circumstances while 19% want to ban abortion altogether. 

A WSJ poll shows that 50% of voters want bans on abortion after 15 weeks, or essentially limited to the first trimester. These numbers do not showcase a country overwhelmingly for all types of abortion. In fact, despite the establishment of Roe v Wade, 66% of respondents in the Gallup poll said they were somewhat or very dissatisfied with the nation’s policies regarding abortion, suggesting abortion remains contentious despite the existence of Roe as federal law.  

Regardless of where decisions fall at the state level, laws will never comport with everyone’s view of what’s right or fair.

Reasonable people argue that abortion puts women and men on the same biological playing field. Men have the choice to walk away from pregnancy and have consequenceless sex . There are countless anecdotal stories of men who neglect their duties as fathers. It’s no wonder the number of abortions of unmarried women is eight times greater than married ones. Too many men abdicate their responsibilities, isn’t it only fair that women have the same right and ability to make independent choices?

Phrased in that way, it seems the answer is yes. But it is a vindictive way of looking at a problem. In other words, if men can disown their responsibility shouldn't women have the right to shirk that duty as well?

By making this particular choice solely a burden for a woman to bear, society distances men from the very obligations women want them to honor. When men walk away from commitment (for economic and/or lifestyle reasons), they’re largely displaying the worst versions of themselves. Unfortunately, abortion does the same for women, which is why these decisions are heart wrenching and painful. Underneath it all women know they’re abandoning some trust and killing a part of themselves. 

 Sadly, many women ignore the truth that a life is destroyed during an abortion. They provide harrowing reasons why their position is justified even though these situations are rare. Less than 3% of abortions are conducted to save a woman’s life; less than 1% are due to rape; and less than 1% of babies are stillborn. The vast majority, or about 75% of the time for the mainly 20-30 yr old demographic aborting kids, the reasons are economic and lifestyle: lacking finances, readiness and a partner. 

The second straw man

Politicians meanwhile ignore the truth about life to make yet another straw man argument that reversing Roe puts all past progressive decisions on a slippery slope, a poor attempt to distract attention from the weakness of Roe itself. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: [The court] isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage and civil rights.” 

She’s wrong.  Alito differentiates interracial marriage, contraceptives, consensual sex, same-sex marriage because abortion “destroys what those decisions called ‘fetal life’” whereas the others, such as marriage involve two consenting parties and the freedom of those individuals to pursue happiness. Ironically, the very life the left wants to ignore is the very one that protects the other rights.

Abortion has been an answer for some people and it will continue to be available. Maybe making it a little harder isn’t such a bad thing if it means society will start having broader discussions and asking the right questions: How do we get men to be more responsible? How do we teach sex to be something a little more sacred? How do we prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place? How do we provide economic and societal support to women who need it? 

Restrictions are the basis for many laws and it limits the broadening of individual rights. Ordered liberty prevents one person from acting on the basis of their own beliefs to the exclusion of other parties involved. Attacking that liberty and “potential life” by shouting “My body! My choice!” won’t lift women’s burdens, it will just leave them alone and make their burden heavier.  

Will Smith and the slap to toxic femininity

Will Smith’s violent meltdown at the Oscars has been discussed ad nauseum as the shock and awe of a man snapping literally at the pinnacle of his career is obsessively processed. We can’t help but be engrossed by this event because it touches all of us at the core and raises questions about human nature: who we are individually and as a society. It is why the aftermath saw dizzying theories as to why this came to be. It was an act widely denounced as cowardly and simultaneously defended as brave and chivalrous. Bill Maher called the slap a sign of canceled culture and the “Twitter mob come alive.” Ben Shapiro said it was redolent of microaggression culture in which offensive words necessitate  a violent response. The woke, always happy to find a race angle on anything, said white supremacy had something to do with the matter. 

Or the slap revealed something more insidious happening under the covers. No pun intended. Smith is a man emasculated by his wife, and in the heat of the moment found an opening to reclaim his manliness through an act of rage. This is a story to heed in light of the progressive movement to obliterate the traditional roles of men and women, creating more toxic females and subordinated men. 

“Love will make you do crazy things,” Smith said defensively as he apologized for storming on stage and assaulting Chris Rock for his joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald head, a style she’s worn confidently for some time due to alopecia, a disease that results in hair loss. 

Set aside the fact that comedians are expected to be edgy, the joke was actually a compliment. “Jada, I love ya. G.I. Jane 2, can't wait to see it,” he said, referring to Demi Moore, who rocked a bald head in G.I. Jane, a movie about a woman breaking ground as the first female to undergo a training program similar to the US Navy Seals. If you had to be bald, resembling Moore in G.I. Jane would be a high form of flattery. The joke is even more innocuous if you consider that Pinkett Smith has at least publicly accepted her condition with grace and humility. “Now at this point, I can only laugh,” she said in December 2021. “Me and this alopecia are going to be friends … period!”  

Pinkett Smith’s humility was sadly thrown out the window with that slap. Smith, who initially laughed, wouldn’t have snapped if his wife weren’t so vain, he wasn’t so castrated, and they weren’t so influenced by a culture hell bent on destroying the truth.

Progressive view of marriage

The Smiths have been under the spotlight since Pinket Smith admitted to an affair in 2020 with a 29 year old while she was 50. Affairs are unfortunately commonplace. What’s bizarre is for the couple to have an open discussion about this dalliance on Pinkett Smith's Red Table show in which she confessed to her husband that she “just wanted to feel good. It had been so long since I felt good.” He seemed uncomfortable talking about her “transgression,” at which she corrected him by saying she didn’t feel her actions were a “transgression.” She also wanted the world to know that she didn’t need permission from her husband. “One thing I want to clean up… about you giving permission, which is, uh - the only person that can give permission in that particular circumstance is myself.” Watch the clip, if this isn’t loading of the Will Smith time bomb I don’t know what is. 

In this public therapy session, there was no contrition on her part. No remorse nor regret. The world saw that and something didn’t sit right with her lack of repentance. A year later in September 2021, Smith went public again about his marriage, this time in a GQ expose, in which he revealed what many consider to be an open marriage. “Jada never believed in a conventional marriage… And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.” He said the couple wanted to give each other “trust and freedom” so that marriage wouldn’t “be a prison.” Yet he also said he wouldn’t suggest their style of marriage to anyone. “I don’t suggest our road for anybody. I don’t suggest this road for anybody.”

This acknowledgment revealed Smith’s hesitancy to embrace his wife’s nuanced view of marriage and his clear sycophantic acceptance, a posture ripe for shaming and ridicule. Rebel Wilson, who hosted an awards ceremony last month, roasted Smith with this statement: “I thought his best performance over the past year was being OK with all his wife’s boyfriends.” After the slap incident, comedian Ricky Gervais took a stab at Jada and teased, “I would not have made a joke about his wife’s hair. I would have made a joke about her boyfriend.”

Assault on traditional men, husbands

To be the punchline of a wife’s infidelity would enervate any man. When manhood is suppressed it is bound to emerge in unhealthy ways. There’s something else at work though. The slap was visible as though Smith was figuratively slapping the world for demanding men support women and their sexual rights while concurrently mocking him for his compliance. It was as though he was saying, “Is this what you want? This is what happens when men can’t be the men we’re meant to be.” Sadly, he is a victim in the assault against traditional masculinity, which according to the American Psychological Association is a pathology. Marked by “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression,” the traditional male role and qualities are “psychologically harmful.” 

It is ironic that we demand men to be less men in the US while across the Atlantic in Ukraine, men are being demanded to be men to protect women, children and their country. The very aggression psychologists want to suppress and tame is the very quality that makes men great in a time of crisis. 

Deep down, all women, even the progressive feminists, still want this traditional male. They want men to defend them, see their pain and protect them. 

Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) celebrated the assault with a tweet: “#Alopecia nation stand up! Thank you #WillSmith. Shout out to all the husbands who defend their wives living with alopecia in the face of daily ignorance & insults.” Singer Nicki Minaj praised Smith for being a husband who saw his wife’s pain. Comedian Tiffany Haddish said: “When I saw a Black man stand up for his wife, that meant so much to me. As a woman who has been unprotected, for someone to say, ‘Keep my wife’s name out your mouth, leave my wife alone,’ that’s what your husband is supposed to do, right? Protect you.”

Yes, protect. But husbandly protection assumes a covenant between a husband and wife: one in which both honor and submit to one another. It’s hard to see what Smith was protecting and honoring at that moment. It felt more like he was defending his own honor more than hers. The marriage was clearly broken in all the traditional sense, just as the roles of women and men, wives and husbands are being destroyed. 

That’s why we’re drawn to Smith’s sucker punch; the bad joke; the toxic wife; the public stage and the rage as a result of emasculation. Strip men of their essence and what you’re left with is confusion, hurt and mental anguish. Smith’s slap was a cry for help and probably wasn’t meant for Rock as much as toxic femininity.

Debunking Covid mask and vaccine myths

This week, California Governor Newsom extended the mask mandate for children while allowing vaccinated adults to be free of the face decor despite Covid cases in California having dropped 75% since mid-January. The reason is pretty clear as California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said this week that vaccination rates for school children are still low. Less than a third of 5-11 yr olds in California are fully vaccinated. 

Yet again, children in this repressive state are forced to live in a perpetual state of panic and fear. Even my son’s school, which has thumbed its nose at the statewide mask mandate for much of his fourth grade year, put in place a temporary mask requirement during the Omicron rise when case rates jumped over 5%.

We ignored this rule largely to avoid prolonging the charade that masks work and that Covid is the biggest health crisis we all face. My decision isn’t political though Democrats identify as the masked party, a position that took root when President Trump downplayed the efficacy of masks and blossomed when President Biden asked Americans to mask up for 100 days. Now the mask identity is hurting Democrats given their inconsistent messaging around when and why to wear them, and display of “let them eat cake” elitism around who should wear them as evidenced by Newsom photographed maskless at a football game and the many unmasked celebrities at this year’s Super Bowl.

We can all take off our masks. And most people do. But you can’t get rid of a vaccine once it’s in your body. This is the most deleterious concern as a parent: the impending vaccine mandates for children. Last October, Newsom said Covid vaccinations are “just another vaccine” and would be required for K-12 starting January or July 2022, depending on when the FDA fully approves the vaccine for a specific age group. On top of this tyrannical mandate, California Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, introduced Senate Bill 871, ending personal belief exemptions for Covid vaccines in schools. 

I don’t want our school to roll over when and if these regulations pass. For my part, I’m trying to bring together like-minded parents who can stand up with boldness. To do so, we need to understand the legalities of the issue and also the inconclusive and conflicting science so we can reasonably and steadfastly support and defend the choices we’re making for our kids. 

To do so, I wanted to do a little myth busting because so many people make the same arguments as to why we should mask up or vaccinate our kids. They do so because they’re afraid of Covid or they just don’t want to bother fighting. Either stance is wrong, in my opinion. Here’s why and here are some common arguments and how to respond to them.

Firstly, this is a pandemic of the older and unhealthy. Something we knew two years ago. In April 2020, we already knew that 78% of those admitted to the hospital had a pre-existing health condition. We also knew, and the numbers have remained consistent, that 75% of Covid deaths are from those over 65 yrs old. As of this week, 822 kids have died, or .09% of the 923,000 Covid deaths in the US. Some 94% of those who died from Covid have commorbidities - (hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, pulmonary diseases, kidney). And the CDC says 80% of those conditions can be eliminated through healthy behaviors, such as diet, exercise, sleep and mindfulness (peace of mind/serenity). That’s the best prevention for adults and kids. Yet the only prevention message prioritized is to wear masks, get vaccinated and social distance. Imagine if we encouraged people to lose weight, get fit, take vitamin D, be less anxious and be grateful. We would be in a better place.  

But particularly in California, we’re encouraged to live in fear. And fear is infectious, and rubbing off on our  kids. Fear releases the hormone cortisol, which makes us more stressed, weakens our immune system, leads to obesity and heart problems – all the conditions that make us more susceptible to severe illness or death with Covid or any other disease. Fear doesn’t only have a physiological impact, it has a mental one as well. In 2020, we already saw “suspected suicide attempt ED visits” for girls and boys 12-17 were up 22% in the summer 2020 and then up 39% in the winter of 2021, according to the CDC. It’s not just teens. In 2020, kids (5-11 yrs old) were 1000 times more likely to go to the hospital for mental health issues than Covid. 

So if you want to stand up for your kids, here’s some common myths you’ll hear and here’s how you can debunk them. 

1. Kids are at high risk of dying from Covid. Wrong. They’re at low risk. In a given year, more kids die from pneumonia, suicide, drowning, heart disease, and car crashes. The No. 1 cause of death - car crashes - account for 20% of all deaths, according to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine. Yet we don’t restrict car pooling if a few parents are paranoid about their child getting into an accident. We don’t have school monitors checking seatbelts when parents pick up their kids.

2. Kids are mandated to get vaccinated for other deadly diseases, like polio, tetanus, etc. so Covid should be no different. Wrong. Covid is not as deadly as other diseases for which vaccines are mandated. For Covid, .006% of kids die after infection. This is compared to 20% of kids under 5 who die after diptheria infection and 10-20% who die (all ages) who get Tetanus. In other words, Diptheria is 3200-times deadlier; Tetanus is 2400 times deadlier; Polio is 80 times deadlier; Measles 32 times deadlier than Covid. Even the flu is deadlier at .01% fatality rate or 1 out of 10,000 kids. Kids are also not mandated to get a flu shot because as we all know if you get a shot, you can still get the flu and transmit. This is also an argument against Covid vaccine mandates.

3. If kids get vaccinated, we’ll slow the transmission. Wrong. As we all know now, the vaccinated spread Covid (arguably at the same rate as unvaccinated).

4.  We need to take every precaution to protect the elderly and immunocompromised. Wrong. We don’t mandate that everyone get a flu vaccine to protect the elderly and immunocompromised even though they’re at great risk if they get the flu. We don’t even mandate people mask up if there’s a flu outbreak. And pre-Covid since 2010, on average about 5-20% of Americans got the flu annually. (10-50M people).  

5. The risks of side effects from the vaccines are lower than the risks of dying from Covid. Wrong. An Oxford study found myocarditis occurs in 1 in 3k to 7k boys after a second dose. That’s more than kids who die from Covid. In other words, boys have a higher risk of getting a heart problem from the vaccine than dying from Covid. 

6. There are long Covid risks such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C, brain damage, chronic disease later in life). Without longitudinal data on long Covid, it’s worth getting the vaccine. Wrong. We also don’t have longitudinal data on negative effects of the vaccine. We already know there's a higher risk of complications (myocarditis in boys) and we’re seeing growing evidence of a negative impact on the female reproductive system.(WSJ). Also why doesn’t anyone talk about “long flu”? The flu can worsen long-term medical conditions, like congestive heart failure, asthma, or diabetes or lung disease. But we don’t mandate the flu vaccine. 

7.  The vaccines give greater immunity against other variants. Wrong. In January 2022, CDC said natural immunity was more effective against Delta than vaccines in reducing hospitalization. An Israeli study done in summer 2021, vaccinated people 13 times more likely of severe illness than someone with natural immunity. 

8. We mandate for other health risks so vaccines shouldn’t be a big deal. Wrong! Seat belts, helmets are all good things with only upside. Vaccines have a downside.

9. When we have a high caseload, we should mask up for the greater good. Wrong! The flu is deadlier than Covid for kids, yet we don’t mask up kids or adults despite an  average of about 5-20% of Americans getting the flu annually (around 10-50 million people) pre-Covid.

10.  Studies show masks work! Wrong. There are flaws in the many often referred to studies supporting mask mandates in school. A Wisconsin county study, published in CDC and referred to by NPR as evidence that mask mandates in school works, compared schools to a community. It’s a flawed study to compare a school setting with a community setting. An Arizona study, published in CDC and widely referred to by Rochelle Walensky as evidence that schools without mask mandates are 3x more likely to see Covid outbreaks is also flawed because some schools in the study weren’t even in session or had virtual learning. A Salt Lake City study cited by the CDC to support school mask mandates said masks in schools kept infections in schools below 1%, and failed to mention that infection rates in the town were also below 1%. A North Carolina study conducted by Duke ABC Science Collaborative (led by Dr. Kanecia Zimmerman, co-chair of ABC Science Collaborative) studied 60k students and concluded masks limit the spread in schools while at the same time admitting that the “study did not allow for a comparison to an unmasked setting.”

11. There’s “no cost” to wearing a mask. What’s the big deal? Besides there are no studies that show masks have a downside or don’t work! Wrong! A UK Department of Education study Jan 2022 found detrimental “physical” side effects to students including “verbal” and “non-verbal” communication. In March, Ireland’s Dept of Health announced it wouldn’t require masks in schools because they “may exacerbate anxiety or breathing difficulties for some students.”

12. It’s just the right-wing anti-science nutcases who say masks don’t work. Wrong! On Dec. 8, 2021, former health commissioner of Baltimore (widely listened to on CNN) said that cloth masks aren’t effective with Omicron because it’s airborne. Former head of FDA Dr. Scott Gottlieb said “Cloth masks aren’t going to provide a lot of protection, that’s the bottom line. This is an airborne illness.” Moreover, there are no N95 masks for kids that are approved by any government agency.

We don’t have to and shouldn’t live in an endless pandemic over every variant. The fact that there is robust scientific debate and disagreement is enough to argue for a reset around these authoritarian elitist one-way, one-size-fits-all zero Covid policies. Our kids know it and in a generation, they will be the masked generation who will put these universal myths to rest.

Cancelled in third grade

Recently, my third grade son’s assignment was to write about a person who was an American hero who fought for our freedoms. His teacher began to write a list asking students to come up with names. Someone said, “Abraham Lincoln,” who she added to the list. She then proceeded to write Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Cesar Chavez and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Upon seeing the names, my son asked if he could write about Donald Trump. She curtly said “No” and said she’d discuss it with him later. When that time came, she told my son that she couldn’t allow kids to add to her list because firstly she wanted to select people she knew and she didn’t want an extensive list. She also said the people on her list were people who promoted emancipation and equality.

When I raised concerns to the principal that this seemed arbitrary and subjective, I received this reply: “From what I understand about the assignment… the focus is on American heroes who helped improve communities, schools or living conditions/opportunities for workers, families, women, and students. The specific standard states: Describe the lives of American heroes who took risks to secure our freedoms (e.g., Anne Hutchinson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr.). 

I responded by saying if the criteria is those “who took risks to secure our freedoms” then I’m not sure why Michelle Obama or Ruth Bader Ginsberg were on that list. If the list is that expansive, then I think my son’s choice would also fit the description. If this is a list about people who “helped improve communities, schools or living conditions/opportunities for workers, families, women, and students” then my son’s choice is as legitimate as those on the list. One could argue Trump’s actions and impact could be objectively quantifiable. 

Say what you want about our former president but our schools shouldn’t be selecting or promoting national figures based on instructor ideology. School should foster conversation, dialogue and critical thinking! I know this teacher means well. But this is what is so insidious about a narrative that has become so mainstream it’s taken for granted and the result is that counter views are easily dismissed with no explanation or justification. Until yesterday, my son didn’t really understand the first amendment right to free speech nor cancel culture. But now he does! 

Anti-Asian crimes are not due to white culture

Over the past week, I’ve watched and read about Asians fearing for their lives, even afraid to jog in a relatively safe part of the Bay area due to possible harassment.  It’s unnerving. Anti-Asian crime is real. It’s jumped significantly compared to overall hate crime in the past year. As an Asian-American, I don’t want to live in fear. So what matters to me is to understand what is happening.  

I’m not a criminologist, but my intuition tells me that the intent behind a crime should matter as much as the identity of the victim. If we are to understand how to help prevent crime in the future, we have to understand why they are happening in the first place. 

That’s why it’s infuriating to see how these vile acts are being used as propaganda to further a narrative. I’m talking about the causal connection between crimes against Asians and white supremacy, and by extension Republicans or what’s broadly referred to as white culture and privilege. Once again, Democrats are hijacking a narrative for political gain. And even more infuriatingly, they are choosing to select the incidents that fit their narrative and that work towards their ends, and conveniently deselecting the incidents that don’t.

It isn’t helpful to frame the issue in a way that doesn’t seek to find a solution for everyone.  Following the horrific mass killing in Atlanta where six of the victims were Asian, USA Today ran an article with the headline: “Stop Asian hate; Stop black hate; Stop all hate.” According to the article, hate crimes can only be perpetrated against “non-white” groups, and the Atlanta shootings “presents a chance for communities of color to effectively address the common enemy of white supremacy.” We don’t know if this was a hate crime, and hate crimes can most certainly be committed against any group. 

Preliminary police reports showed the suspect, who had a sex addiction driven by his religious guilt, wanted to eliminate the temptation at the spas he frequented. These parlors were listed in a “red light district” and were linked to sexual services. It appears we could possibly blame oppressive religious indoctrination or an oversexualized society. But to immediately blame it on white supremacy without truly understanding the underlying facts and potentials of the case creates division in a place where we should be seeking healing.

This narrative applied indiscriminately obfuscates what’s really happening. It’s abusive, dehumanizing, degrading and dangerous because it’s confusing the issue and leading us all down a path that will increase, not decrease, hate. 

“Stop Asian Hate” is the latest rage bubble against whiteness. It’s replacing the rage bubble of 2020, which was BLM. And as I mentioned in my book Unequally Yoked, BLM replaced the rage bubble of #metoo. We are continually inflating rage bubbles against the status quo, and with each one, the number of aggrieved gets larger and larger. 

Lest someone calls me “tone deaf” and says “We should despise all hate crimes, but 2021 is the moment to stand up in solidarity for anti-Asian hate!” Sure. I stand with that. But I don’t stand with defaulting to racism as the prime mover of evil in our society. Things are a lot more complex than that. 

Factless based claims

On March 18, CNN had a scathing and hyperbolic headline: White Supremacy and Hate are Haunting Asians. Yet the first line of the article reads: “It’s immaterial whether the accused killer in the Atlanta spa shootings admits to a racist motivation.” 

Daily Show Trevor Noah also dismissed the probability that the Atlanta shootings could be driven by sex or religious guilt. “Murders speak louder than your words,” he stated while suggesting white culture was to blame. 

The cultish icon of the woke age, Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: “Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror.”

The New York Times editorial board, along with the Washington Post, have written that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment is due to Donald Trump’s calling of COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus.” Never mind that the first known case came from Wuhan, China and the World Health Organization is now in China investigating the source. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there was “no question” that Trump’s rhetoric led to anti-Asian hate crimes. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Ca) told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that the killings were “the culmination of a whole year’s worth of hate stoked by xenophobia of Donald Trump.” In another Hayes interview, a black feminist and activist suggested that white supremacists and the Trump administration “created a rhetorically-violent environment for Asian American folks, blamed them for this pandemic, ginned up the public and created this context for things to be unsafe.” During a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) said Asians are fighting hate and bigotry because “anti-Asian rhetoric like China virus and Kung flu” have left Asians “traumatized and fearful for their lives.”

Is the person behind rhetoric to blame?

Rhetoric can certainly influence. But is the person behind the rhetoric to blame? Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La) was shot by a gunman who was inspired by Bernie Sanders. Is Sanders to blame? In the shooting of five white officers in 2016 by a black gunman who told police he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers, should we blame Obama, who had riled racial tensions?  

There are a lot of crimes out there, every day. White on white, Asian on Asian, black on black, black on Asian. It isn’t just white people. Yet when it isn’t white perpetrators it’s cast in a different light. 

When a black 19-year-old killed an 84-yr-old Asian man last month, why did CNN report that there was “lack of evidence pointing solely to anti-Asian bigotry” and the suspect was a man preying on the vulnerable and elderly? What about the Asian stylist punched in the face by a black woman hurling racial slurs?  Last year, a video caught two men dragging an Asian woman and in another video a black man assaulted an elderly Asian man. Are these anti-Asian crimes? What about hate crimes in general? In upstate NY this month, two black teens were arrested for allegedly setting an elderly white man on fire. Is this a racist crime? Reports of the the Boulder shooting that left 10 white people dead refers to the non-white male suspect whose family emigrated from Syria as having mental illness. Why isn’t this investigated as a hate crime? Search “Boulder or Colorado shootings'' and most reports refer to the problem of mental illness or loose gun laws. Search for “Atlanta shootings” and most reports refer to the problem of racism. Something’s not right.

By Trevor’s logic, all crimes are racist because intent doesn’t matter. 

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistic report in 2018 titled: Criminal Victimization, white Americans were not the largest perpetrator of crimes against Asians. The percentage of whites and Asians carrying out crimes against Asians were the same: 24 percent, whereas blacks committed 27.5 percent of those crimes. These are not categorized as racially-motivated crimes. We don’t know the motives or intent. But if we are to apply the same standards the media is applying to the Atlanta shootings, then yes all of these are racially-motivated crimes.

The point is we’re not addressing the problem

There is an anti-Asian problem. I get it. As an immigrant, I recall being the only Asian in a very white school where some of the white kids weren’t sure if they could be friends with me because I was “oriental.” In another neighborhood, I was chased down by three black kids because I was different from them too. I don’t doubt this type of unfamiliarity with people drives some to do bad things. 

But there’s questions to ask: Are Asians being targeted because many are successful? Are they being targeted because Asian women are sexualized? Who’s committing the crimes and what is their motive? Is the 24/7 news media hype machine causing more hate crimes? Is it a combination of the above that’s been exacerbated by lockdowns that are driving everyone insane? (In 2020, murders rose 35 percent in the Bay Area while homicides jumped  nearly 40% in NYC and up 50% in Chicago.) 

As I’ve also said in the past, if American culture is so racist, why are Asians doing so well? They account for under 6 percent of the population yet the household median income for Asian Americans is 38 percent greater than the national median income. At Apple, 23 percent of the highest paying tech jobs are held by Asian. Even in 2010, a decade ago, Asians made up more than half of the Bay Area workforce, which included high-paying tech and engineering jobs. 

If Republicans are so racist, why did the Trump administration sue Yale for discriminating against Asians in college admissions? If the current administration is not racist, why did they drop this lawsuit that discriminates against Asians? When a school drops a program for high-performing kids solely because many who qualified were Asians and whites, why is this not racist?

Democrats, like Kendi, will say because “If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.” They’ll say their progressive discriminatory policies enabled Asians and people of color to succeed, therefore they’re not racist. I agree and disagree. Democrats and Republicans both have laid the groundwork for such policies. Republicans were just as much behind affirmative action (which are a form of preferential, or said differently “discriminatory”). Their goals aligned in wanting equal opportunity and safety nets. But I don’t subscribe to the notion that discrimation until there are equal outcomes is a good thing, that’s called communism. It doesn’t work. 

This is why the current political battle isn’t between Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s actually Republicans against socialists. Socialists are on the move and in fact have a toe, and possibly a foot, in the White House since the White House is also promulgating the same racist narrative. The socialists have found a magical hammer, racism, and they can use it to hammer any political nail. If you defend America’s traditional values, capitalism and the Judeo-Christian ethos whose goal is not equal outcomes, you are racist. Essentially the entire Republican party is racist. Equal outcomes taken to its logical end doesn’t make sense.

Socialists want more power in the hands of their government and to use that platform to shape our values, ethos and definition of equity. Inflating rage bubbles has become their go-to political strategy. Select incidents that fit the narrative; re-cast those that don’t; spin the media and social media machine; call everything that contradicts the narrative bigotted and move the social agenda forward. Rinse and repeat.

As an immigrant who’s had success in America, I like America’s traditional values and capitalism. They’ve changed my life. I was given an opportunity to create an amazing life that would not have been available to me in any other country of the world. I’m grateful for America. But rage bubbles distract me from being grateful. They drive me and many to fill ourselves with hate and resentment so we forget the blessings that inspire us. 

Not all media are complicit. NBC News legal analyst explained why the Atlanta shootings are “not being classified as a hate crime. But these reports are few. We need more of this and less emotion. Yes, America needs to work on race. We always will need to. But what leads to crime isn’t just racism. We won’t find those underlying cracks in our foundation if we are so myopic. 

Rage bubbles move us backward, not forward. 

Image source on social media: Vox

Why Democrats use the 'false equivalency' argument

President Trump was acquitted of impeachment charges for the second time. Whether he should have been convicted or subject to impeachment in the first place will be forever debated. The residual question is when are comparisons fair and when are they false equivalencies? This topic matters not just for understanding the impeachment, but for our continued national dialogue.  

However inappropriate Trump’s actions and rousing words were after Nov. 3 through Jan. 6 it’s hard to believe he foresaw the fatal uprising. And that is the issue: whether Trump incited the mob’s assault on Capitol Hill that left five people dead on Jan. 6, 2021. The House charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” The word incitement means the “action of provoking unlawful behavior or urging someone to behave unlawfully.” This is not a cut-and-dry analysis. The burden of proof for both provocation and insurrection are high, in light of the highly-charged rhetoric coming from Democrats in the last year with impunity. 

Democrats, such as NBC News anchor Chuck Todd, says bringing up what others have done is a “lazy version of whataboutism,” a tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without disproving the argument. In other words, Democrats' use of inflammatory speech in the past that resulted in violence is a false equivalence to Trump’s rhetoric which ended in violence. 

Why is it that some see these situations as morally equivalent while others do not? Who gets to decide?

It comes down to whether there is alignment on what is true. Clearly, there is very little  alignment between conservatives and progressives on what is true or false, wrong or right, good and evil. And if there is no alignment, how can then there be equivalence? Everything is a false equivalence.

In the last year, a new social-cultural system of truth - aka religion, whose moral compass is driven by a sense of collective social justice has come into full force. And while it should be separated from government, it’s very much entwined and embraced by the Democratic party. This new religion believes the US is a racist and oppressive nation rigged against anyone in the minority, and morality is defined by the good works performed in the name of equal outcome (read socialism). 

Anyone who stands up for this supreme truth is justified and righteous. Anyone against this truth is considered violent, harmful, intolerant, immoral, in denial, unaware, unenlightened, and of course racist, deplorable and stupid. In other words, not “woke” to the racist and oppressive sin that bedevils us.  

This is the lens we must look through to understand Trump’s second impeachment trial and why the Left believes their words or actions and similar words and actions carried out by conservatives are considered a false equivalence. 

What the trial videos revealed

During the trial, Democratic House managers offered up a lot of emotional provocation through a 13-minute video dramatizing the Jan. 6 uprising laced with Trump’s words as mobs attacked the Capitol. No one wants to see footage of the Capitol being ransacked. But to make the causal link requires a high bar of evidence, which was not presented. Importantly, the House might have gone against its own rules, which bars the dissemination of videos “distorted or manipulated with the intent to mislead the public.” Indeed, reports are already referring to the carefully-edited film as “a massive body of video evidence of the alleged offense.” Next time I go to trial I’d like to be able to create my own video montage of the defendant, and set it to evil Star Wars music.

If Republicans wanted to create causal links between rhetoric and violence, they would have far more b-roll to choose from to recreate the months’ long inflammatory language and encouraging calls for unruly protests in 2020 while showing buildings burning down, police killed and dozens of statues toppled. Trump’s defense team didn’t take that cheap shot. 

Smartly and accurately, they produced a nearly 10-minute clip capturing many Democrats using incendiary remarks (such as putting a bullet in Donald Trump) as well as the often-used political rallying word: “fight.” Why did Trump’s lawyers zero in on that word? Because Democrats did. Here are some of the words spoken by Trump they say incited the mob. “We fight like hell,” said Trump. “And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” 

Immediately, Democrats dismissed the video comparing their rhetoric with Trump’s as a false equivalency.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) remarked that the comments in the video did not have the same dire consequence but rather shows “a history that in no cases resulted in deaths, deaths of police officers, rioting behavior.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) called the argument a “distorted equivalence” because Trump “invited this mob to Washington.” 

Never mind that in one of the video snippets from August 2020, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) invited unruly behavior, saying there needs to be “unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.” Another clip showed CNN’s Chris Cuomo in early June 2020, saying “Show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” Or when Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) insouciantly said in July 2020 that “people will do what they do” referring to the destruction of the Christopher Columbus statue. 

Those permissive comments were just a few of the many that created the tolerance for violence.  In September 2020, two LA County sheriff’s deputies were shot in the head in Compton. Protestors outside the hospital tried to block entryway to the hospital and shouted “Death to the police” and other “derogatory” words, according to an eye-witness. In October 2020, the Guardian reported that at least 25 people died in the 2020 Floyd protests. Let’s not forget how Seattle’s Mayor Durkan allowed protesters to take over several city blocks in her city, an uprising she referred to as a “summer of love.” The takeover ended in shootings and two deaths. In Minneapolis alone, fires were set to 150 buildings, some burned to the ground. Billions of damage had been caused across the country; Rampant iconoclasm on government property ensued. 

Another senator who appears in the video saying “fight,” sought to ridicule his clip by explaining that he used the word in the context of changing healthcare reform. Never mind that Bernie Sanders’ spirited speeches about healthcare reform inspired a rabid follower to critically shoot Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA). Scalise didn’t blame Sanders.

The point is causal links aren’t often made because they’re hard to prove and often don’t explicitly exist. It’s hard to know what triggers any crazy person. Moreover, what insane radicals do should not undermine and delegitimize the protests - an argument often used by the left in 2020. Democratic protests were to fight for social injustice which is held to a different standard because the system is racist and oppressive. 

The Jan. 6 protests on the other hand, Democrats say, were driven by baseless lies and conspiracy theories about a stolen election. Never mind that Trump protesters were fighting for election integrity. A fight Democrats were 100% behind since 2016, spending tax-payer dollars to fund a $32 million investigation into alleged Russian collusion with Donald Trump. After a two-year investigation, it was determined there was no collusion. That fight for election integrity wasn’t considered a lie or unjust then. Why should it now?

When standards matter

To be sure, Trump’s conduct in isolation was not good. It was unpresidential and narcissistic. But if that were the bar, then presidents would be impeached in their first 100 days. It was also right to investigate the situation, albeit in a cursory way. It was found, rightly so, that his words and actions were not impeachable. There was no causal link made. There was no evidence of a concerted premeditated coup. There were no constitutional grounds. All this matters.  

What also matters is context. We just witnessed the year - 2020 - in which violence across the country ensued, largely with impunity. And yet in August at the Democratic National Convention, Democrats failed to condemn the violence, destruction and killings after the death of George Floyd. Protests were encouraged; unruliness was encouraged. Punishment was ignored in the name of social justice.

Punishment matters. In a Ted Talk, Jonathain Haidt, a professor of moral psychology, said that “cooperation decays without punishment.” To solve cooperative problems it’s not enough to appeal to people’s good motives, but to have punishment applied to everyone for the same actions. We’ve become a very permissive society when it comes to rude and entitled behaviors in the name of social justice in order to redeem a guilty conscience. Since 2015, we have seen a rise of micro-uprisings across college campuses, where in some cases professors were taken hostage, fires were set off, people were pepper sprayed -- all in the name of social justice. Much of these actions by progressive activist students went on with impunity by progressive college administrators who felt the weight of the guilt of their forefathers. But permissiveness should never be allowed to compensate for guilt.  

President Trump should be rebuked for his words, as should the senators, representatives and mayors I mention above!

Should we be surprised therefore that we saw similar and broader uprisings in 2020 with progressive leaders falling back on the same claim that the protests were “mostly peaceful.” Jonathan Turley in an Op-Ed piece said it well: “The search for moral clarity will be lost if Americans cannot distinguish between the behavior of the accused and that of his jury.” In other words, standards matter. If there are no standards for the accused and the accuser, there will always be a false equivalency.

But let’s just get the big fancy terms out of the way. 

If you hear someone say, “It’s a false equivalence or whataboutism,” just say, “What you’re really saying is, ‘the right is bad and the left is good.’” What Democrats are really saying is that there is no equivalence because conservatives are guilty for everything that seems wrong in the world. Some on the left care about social justice but many use it as a convenient cudgel for guilt they feel inside. Why do Democrats use the “false equivalency” argument? Because they want to release themselves of their guilt. They want to feel innocent. The only way they can is to place that guilt on someone else. That’s often done through double standards. 

Case in point: Gina Carano and Pedro Pascal, both stars of the Disney show “Mandalorian” compared a group of Americans to Nazis. Lucasfilm, the company that owns Disney, said the  “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent.” Carano, a conservative, was fired; Pascal, a progressive, was not. Why?

Because we can’t compare the two situations. You see, it’s a false equivalence. But hey, at least Gina, and by extension all conservatives, are carrying the guilt.

Behind Obama’s epistemological crisis: Ego and Animus between Obama and Trump played a big role

Obama was recently interviewed about his new memoir when he made an arousing observation: “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis.”   

Epistemology is the perfect ten dollar word for the crisis. When history is written, we could indeed have different versions of truth depending on which news channels, newspapers or books historians use as reference. Yet the New York Times has already rewritten history with its 1619 Project, claiming the one we know is false so at closer inspection Obama might have been more perspicacious if he recognized that the crisis he speaks of has already been well entered into. Despite many believing the reality distortion started when Donald Trump became president,  Obama had a hand in shaping this. Like a social stealth bomber, he is hard to see coming as he eloquently glides in to deliver his rhetorical payload. It is in the aftermath that the carnage becomes visible. Trump takes the blame for a situation of Obama’s making.   

But before we dive into their competing truth narratives, we have to talk about the odium that seeded the animus. As long-standing enemies, the visceral contempt and simultaneous jealousy between Obama and Trump have been akin to parents undergoing a high-conflict divorce. It’s no wonder the kids are not alright and have vehemently taken sides.

Seeding contempt

Obama’s scorn, initially driven by Trump’s doltish and relentless accusation that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, was famously revealed during a 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, in which he made the entire room burst into raucous laughter at the expense of Trump. Obama’s insults stung: "[Trump] can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?" 

Fast forward a decade, the fervent ill-will remains. As Esquire’s Charles P. Pence so astutely pointed out in his post: President Obama has set up light housekeeping in Donald Trump’s cerebellum, Obama is showing his “snarkmaster” personality as he takes joy trolling Trump. 

Evidence of that was on display when Obama toured the country this fall, seemingly spending more time mocking Trump than praising Biden.

In the memoir interview, Obama continued his assault, saying he’s not surprised that Americans voted in a right-wing populist, but “I would have expected somebody a little more appealing.” He also emasculated Trump by portraying him as less than manly. “There was a code… the code of masculinity that I grew up with that harkens back to the 30s and 40s and before that. There’s a notion that a man is true to his word, that he takes responsibility, that he doesn’t complain, that he isn’t a bully -- in fact he defends the vulnerable against bullies. And so even if you are someone who is annoyed by wokeness and political correctness and wants men to be men again and is tired about everyone complaining about the patriarch, I thought that the model wouldn’t be Richie Rich--the complaining, lying, doesn’t-take-responsibility-for-anything type of figure.”

In between his snarkiness, Obama’s rhetorical prowess seduces many into believing the benevolent president of hope isn’t a mean-spirited vengeful bully, notwithstanding his endless derision. He’s rendered honest, accurate, witty and justified. It is why Obama could so easily fly below the radar and insidiously charge up the national narrative’s divisive rhetoric on race without anyone knowing what hit them. It helped that news outlets and tech distribution platforms have become extensions of the liberal party.

Media silos promoting competing narratives

Trump is assailed for calling much of mainstream media fake news. The Trumpian style of astute observations distilled down to a label, while sometimes viewed as bullying, is also perceived as incisive. But make no mistake, Obama was first to call fake, accusing Fox News of purveying conspiracy theories that demonized him. Obama just used a lot of words.

“The issue was not a lack of schmoozing,” Obama said, referring to the gridlock he believed Republicans created. “The issue was that they found it politically advantageous to demonize me and the Democratic Party. This was amplified by media outlets like Fox News. Their voters believed this, and over time Republicans became so successful in their demonization that it became very difficult for them to compromise, or even be seen being friendly.” Obama sees Fox News everywhere just as the right sees CNN in every airport. “If Fox News isn’t on every television in every barbershop and VFW hall, then it might be a Sinclair-owned station, and the presuppositions that exist there, about who I am and what I believe, are so fundamentally different, have changed so much, that it’s difficult to break through. I come out of this book very worried about the degree to which we do not have a common baseline of fact and a common story.”

He then goes on to blame right-wing media for shaping the Republican party. “I’ve said this before: The problem facing the Republican Party, the conservative movement, whatever you want to call it, goes back to the attitudes of the base—attitudes that have been shaped by right-wing media. And so essentially what Republican elected officials have done is to say to themselves that in order to survive, we have to go along with conspiracy theorizing, false assertion, fantasies that Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh and others in that echo chamber have concocted, because people believe them.”

One can only surmise that Fox’s rising popularity and criticism of Obama, motivated other outlets to come to the defense of him and the progressive ticket against right-wing lies. When Trump came into office the media’s criticism and defense of the presidency became more apparent and partisan, albeit in reverse. Like children guarding their favored parent, the media accelerated their transformation into political activists fighting fiercely for their version of truth to prevail. 

Why racism is 2020’s epistemological crisis

There are many different truth claims that Obama is likely referring to. The most recent debates have been focused on the efficacy of mask wearing and lockdowns and the prevalence of voter fraud. But the current definitive argument on truth involves the nature of racism: It is systemic in our culture and institutions, victimizing blacks until equal outcomes are achieved. Or it is a manifestation of human sin irrespective of external systems. 

Trump champions the latter because anyone can be racist. Obama champions the former because he can lay the racism accusation at the feet of conservatives. As the popular election memes say: “Trump supporters may not be racist, but they certainly decided it wasn’t a deal killer.” Race has become the social and political kill switch for debate and conversation. If you step out of the approved narrative, you are no longer with us, and you have moved from binary 1 to a 0. You may not be a racist, but you’ve decided racism isn’t a “deal killer.” Which, by the way, is just a passive aggressive way of calling you a racist. 

The fact that Obama was the very first black American to become president always made  “race” hard to ignore though many, like myself believed Obama’s presidency meant a new racial order. But Obama and Hillary weren’t inclusive, they labeled (deplorables) and bullied in their own silky smooth way, and they lost the national mandate in the process. Michelle Obama also seemed to play a significant role in cultivating the systemic racism meme. If Obama’s reference to her is any clue, she appears to harbor a lot of resentment. Michelle was the target of malign emails by Republican officials who compared her to “animals,” he said. Obama also noted that Michelle “tends to be a little bit more pessimistic about human nature.”  The core themes of her public presence, including her less-than-hopeful speech at the 2020 DNC, seem to have become “white flight”, white supremacy and systemic racism. 

Those issues are important, but they aren’t the center of the national zeitgeist. Even Obama hinted as much. In the memoir interview Obama makes an important statement, though it’s lost in the discussion of today, that he’s not sure if Trump’s 2016 win was based on racism or an anti-liberalism strain. “It’s difficult to clearly say how much of this was race, as opposed to opposition to liberalism,” he said. I believe Obama sees the underlying truth, that Republicans aren’t stepping over racism, they are stepping away from liberalism. 

My sense is that in 2016, race played a much smaller role than anti-liberalism, anti-establishment and anti-Hillaryism. Yet Obama’s thin-skin when it comes to microaggressions amplifies race. While he likes to quip that Trump “ain’t all that tough” because he can’t take the media heat. Obama cries a river when he’s the target of their ire. 

“What I think is indisputable is that I signified a shift in power. Just my mere presence worried folks, in some cases explicitly, in some cases subconsciously… And then there were folks around to exploit that and tap into that. If a Fox News talking head asks, when Michelle and I dap, give each other a fist bump, ‘Is that a terrorist fist bump?,’ that’s not a particularly subtle reference. If there’s a sign in opposition to the ACA in which I’m dressed as an African witch doctor with a bone through my nose, that’s not a hard thing to interpret.”  

Obama was referring to then Fox News reporter E.D. Hill’s gaffe reference to the fist bump Obama gave his wife in 2008. As for the witch doctor image, it was made by a NJ store owner who doctored a photo and placed it on his store window. Hill’s blunder was insensitive and the doctored photo was clearly inappropriate. But it is important to not take the exception and package them as the norm, that’s how we get to now highly polarized views with no clear path back to a shared understanding that most of the people on both sides are good and decent and want largely the same things - but with slightly different views on how to allocate the resources to get them. 

To be clear, Trump didn’t help matters. When he started making the so-called “birther” allegations against Obama, he also tried to delegitimize his intelligence by questioning how he got into Harvard. These insults became the basis of the “racist” narrative that began to take shape a decade ago. “Racist code underlies Trump’s rise,” wrote Politico. NPR published: “Confronting Trump’s coded racism.” 

By the time Trump decided to run for office in 2015, the racism narrative took off, much of which I talk about in my book Unequally Yoked. By dint of association or support of Trump, a person was labeled racist, even though Trump’s policies weren’t racist, and in fact many would argue upward mobility by minorities advanced significantly under his administration. Even some of his staunchest critics took issue with the racist label. Hendrik Hertzberg, a liberal political commentator opined that Trump’s contempt for Obama is more anti-elitist than racist. "Obama's erudition, his ivy-league-ness, his urbanity, his citizen-of-the-worldness, his foreign-sounding name, his respect for the authority of reason and science, his 'aristocratic' 'aloofness' (all of which I love, of course) are equally or more part of the package," Hertzberg told NPR, adding that racism is the latest evidence that conservative’s have a problem with the truth. 

“The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties,” wrote Hertzberg. “It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on part with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old.”

We do live in an epistemological crisis if we hold on to our truth claims with such vigor. We live in a crisis if Al Sharpton, who promulgated the famous Tawana Brawley hoax, is scolding the country on MSNBC that “we’re now in a nation where facts don’t matter. You make up facts. And not only do you have an alternative reality, how do you debate someone that is dealing with a totally fictitious premise?” We live in a crisis when Joe Biden says it’s “time to heal” and “not to divide but unify” when many from his party want to cancel Trump supporters. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tweeted: “When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.” I’m not sure that’s how Nelson Mandela would have tweeted it.  

Obama’s epistemological solution

So what to do about this crisis Obama has identified? One can take Obama’s antidote to fight discouragement with gallows humor and “laughter to fight off despair.” Or we can embrace one indisputable truth: black Americans are free, and the fact that Trump doubled the votes of this racial group suggests many of them think the victim narrative is an overplayed fiction.  

Obama has succinctly captured the current national crisis. He has hinted that he knows the underlying challenges for Democrats aren’t racism, but some aspects of liberalism. He’s even questioned the efficacy of the woke movement. This is good. But not good enough if racism blinds his ability to pursue the truth. To wit: On the “The Breakfast Club” radio show, Obama showed how little he understood the many Hispanic evangelicals who don’t like the anti-capitalist leanings of the left. “There are a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans or puts detainees, you know, undocumented workers in cages — they think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion,” Obama said. 

Obama’s words were a lost opportunity that threw more fuel on the race fire and ignored reality.  

To address this epistemological crisis, there’s one more move he and his wife can make on the national chess board: articulate the other side and acknowledge their reality. If the Obamas want to go high, as Michelle lectures many to do, and become the pan-American voice they clearly aspire to be, then they have to move beyond packaging corner-case incidents as systemic racism, and use their prodigious gifts of articulation to explain both sides of the issues confronting our nation. 

In other words, Obama can use his gift of communication skills to articulate why an anti-capitalism stance is hurting his party, and embrace the indisputable truth: black Americans are free, and the fact that Trump doubled the votes of this racial group suggests many of them think the victim narrative is an overplayed fiction.  

Why asking "How can a decent moral person vote for Trump" is a terrible question

After 1000 plus comments across multiple threads regarding this post, with some thoughtful feedback, and some colorfully-worded dissent, I want to answer a couple consistent questions raised: 1) How can a seemingly decent moral person who follows Jesus vote for Trump? 2) Do I support Trump’s morals and character?

Let me ask the first question in reverse: How can decent moral people vote for Biden? Does that sound like a productive question to ask? No. That is why I've never asked. I am not questioning someone's moral compass. Nor should they question mine. There is a reason the idea of a "Supreme Judge" is in the Declaration of Independence. The framers of this country believed the country should live under the moral laws of God and the governing laws of man. As virtuous as I think some people are, I don't see anyone on the tickets or anyone here as the arbiter of right and wrong or good and evil. Stop calling people evil and deplorable, and I'm certain a very robust and fruitful conversation will follow.

The breaking point and deal killer for many is that Trump is racist and he's commandeered white supremacists to rise up. They then take this a step further (this is where the illogical syllogism comes into play) by saying someone's vote for Trump or someone's insufficient hatred for Trump (which is what my husband was told hundreds of times this week) means they are by extension racist. To show the absurdity of it all, I've even been called a "white” privileged person. Trump's paleoconservative position has appealed to the working class who love America and want to put American jobs first. Is this form of nationalism a bad thing? No. Has this awakened some extreme groups on the right? Yes. But this doesn’t make him or his policies racist or supportive of white supremacy. He has repeatedly condemned these hate groups. I cover this in much greater detail in my book, Unequally Yoked: Finding hope and balance in our differences.

We're seeing repugnant violent extremists rising up on the left. Yet, on the left there is a wink and a hat tip to rioting, iconoclasm and far-left fringe groups in the name of social justice. There's also a dogmatic left shutting many people down. This happens on the right too. But cancel culture is more pervasive on the left because they control tech, media and academia. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see a lot of people cancelled for their support of Biden. I also see explicit calls from the left to remove checks and balances (removing filibuster, packing the court, changing electoral college). I also see failed promises to minorities and flat out racist comments from the top of the Democratic party.  Why are these moral actions to support? Or said differently, are the people who want to push through these actions have the character and morals I support?

This seems to be the question asked of me. Do I support Trump’s character and morals? I would say that the character of a man should be judged by its entirety (flaws and all). I grant Trump has made statements he could have said better, and even some he should not have said at all. But the fidelity of his words is in many cases diminished by the media, which has masterfully leveraged scorn for the man into entrenched contempt. I’m not voting for the pastor of my church. And I’d have to squint hard to find the moral consistency in any accomplished politician.

This brings me to Joe Biden. Is he a man of character? He seems to be a good guy with a measured way of speaking, gaffes and all. He might even be less polarizing. But I would also measure his character to be president in its entirety, and this is where he may be deficient for this job. I don’t see any evidence that he will have the fortitude or restraint to be a bulwark against the growing radicalized left that many hope.

In closing, to have a binary view of how people should vote is to have a binary view of good and evil. To many like me, our vote and our moral foundation are calculations with lots of inputs. As moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a self-admitted liberal atheist, pointed out, conservatives have a far more complex moral foundation than liberals. While conservatives equally revere compassion, fairness, authority, loyalty and sanctity, Democrats rank compassion and fairness higher in their moral calculation.

Now back to Jesus. Anyone who says they know what Jesus would do or vote for has become a modern day Pharisee. What would Jesus have me do?  He would have me understand that we are all broken and flawed and that if we start from a posture of gratefulness and forgiveness we move ourselves closer to Him.  He would have me love my neighbor as I love myself. So I follow Jesus and even if you disagree with me, I still love you and I respect your view. All I ask is to allow others to have the freedom to have theirs too.

Why I'm voting for Trump in 2020

I’m voting for Donald Trump. It’s largely a moral choice. For my friends who are also voting for Trump, but fear to share your hand, I thought I'd share my thoughts because I know you want them to be said. The left’s sanctimonious accusations that anyone who votes for him is debauched with no conscience has been so insulting that it has only served to move more people like me to the right. This overused failed syllogism delegitimizes half the country. Constant derision is exhausting. A Christian friend of mine wrote that those who’d vote for Trump wouldn’t be forgiven. Not particularly Christian.

My vote in 2016 wasn’t so much “for” Trump, it was “against” Hillary Clinton’s duplicity. 

This time around I’m voting for Trump because character and decency still matter. Democrats are not the party of unity and honor that they tout themselves to be. They are not the paragon of morality. When Michelle Obama lectured the country during the DNC that our leaders are encouraging white supremacy while those rioting and looting on the street were justified, that wasn’t “going high” as she so frequently lectures others to do, it was a clinic on going low. Harris and Biden are carrying forward that unrepentant pharisaical division. 

Evangelical John Piper wrote this to admonish those voting for Trump: “I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting, and strife-stirring.” As a Christian, I would pose the same statement to him. Piper also wrote: “Forgiveness through Christ is always possible where there is repentance and childlike trust in Jesus. But where humble repentance is absent, the sins condemn.”

After seeing throughout the last four years the dishonorable, arrogant, reprehensible and unprecedented media-enabled coup attempts to get rid of Trump, I would say repentance is definitely called for but there’s little likelihood we’ll get that from Democrats.

So I’m excited to cast my ballot for Trump. Yes he lacks humility and is narcissistic. Perhaps those are qualities needed to withstand and survive incessant attacks, not just on him, but his supporters. For Biden and Harris to be part of that scheme hardly makes them more honorable and humble. Worse yet, if they do get into office, they’ll be aided by a media apparatus and an educational system that will always package their agenda and image as compassionate, selfless and moderate. Let’s not be fooled, Harris will bring us closer to the radical left. Non-partisan govtrak ranked her the “most liberal compared to All senators.” 

At the final presidential debate, Joe Biden blamed Trump for the COVID deaths. How does this make him honest? Did Biden’s plan also sound any different than what this administration is already doing?    

I moderated a panel at Vator’s event called Healthcare in Politics, where government officials, innovators and healthcare policy wonks cried the same meme: We should have had a coordinated national policy against COVID! After I shared the numerous ways the federal government did respond (travel ban, FDA’s easing of rules to get the private sector to produce tests, national Shelter in Place and social distancing guidelines, $2.2 trillion relief package, CMS telehealth deregulation, etc.), I asked what could have been added to those initiatives. The basic response was - “We should have had a national mask mandate.” Oh! Of course! Genius. I’m switching parties now! [Watch the video of the panel.] Nonetheless, on April 3, Trump announced the CDC recommended everyone wear masks. 

The Hunter Biden scandal is also replete with evidence, not of the younger Biden’s dalliances though there’s many, but of the media’s irresponsible protective coverage of the story. 

First Facebook and Twitter suppressed the distribution of the New York Post article that unearthed emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, emails the FBI has independently confirmed as authentic and the Biden campaign has not denied as genuine.

Much of the media has ignored the very real possibility that Joe Biden might have crafted national policy to enrich his son or that he might even have benefitted himself. I’m not accusing Biden of this. But at least, there’s enough to investigate. Yet, the media is doing nothing of the sort but everything in their might to debunk it. There’s an endless supply of analysis and opinion, like this one from MSNBC: “Trump’s desperate ‘Bidengate’ Hail Mary keeps backfiring.” But you can see the left-leaning tendencies even from supposed objective reporting, such as this piece on CNN: The anatomy of the New York Post’s dubious story. 

The most disconcerting admission of non-coverage came from NPR, whose Managing Editor for News Terence Samule said the outlet didn’t want to “waste” time on “stories that are not real stories.” Fortunately, some of my friends who are centrist see this blatant disregard for objectivity and truth-seeking. 

Where was this type of reporting when it came to Russian collusion? The Democrats and their media allies were happy to run with it for years even though the FBI in January 2017 clearly admitted that the document [Steele dossier] that was the basis for the investigation and surveillance on the Trump campaign was flawed and uncorroborated. One piece of evidence came from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s testimony in 2017. “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”

The double-standard reporting principles have been a winning strategy for Biden, if the polls are accurate. This is a sad state of affairs. The press is a critical part of the checks and balances in our governing process - often referred to as the “fourth branch” of government.  If the press continues to kowtow to the Democrats and we lose the “final check” on the system, we are surely setting a course for tyranny.

Additionally, Biden’s manipulation of Trump’s words betrays his lack of dignity. Here’s what Biden said during the debate. “He started off his campaign coming down the escalator saying he’s getting rid of those Mexican rapists. He’s banned Muslims because they’re Muslims…” This is not true and honest and well-read people know it. It’s just one of the repeated lies about Trump I wrote about and deconstructed in my book Unequally Yoked.  

For those who like to say that Trump was impeached for “Abuse of Power” then let’s at least apply the same standard to Obama, who could have been impeached for the same reason when he asked Dmitry Medvedev to tell Putin to ease up on missile defense until after the election.  

Trump’s sexual misconduct allegations are horrific and disgusting, but let’s not sweep under the rug the more than dozen sexual assault allegations against Biden. Also, I’m sure if half the men in this country were caught on a hot mic, their locker room talk might sound similarly gross. Preachers have confessed their obsession with pornography. Can you forgive them?

Many accuse Trump to be an indefatigable prevaricator. As I’ve said many times, when everyone is counting, it’s hard not to find some embellishment here and there. But to say Trump lied 360 times by saying “the economy is the best in history” isn’t a lie when you consider unemployment was the lowest in 50 years (pre-Covid) and the stock market was and continues to set record highs.  When Obama said in 2016 that “America’s economy is not just better than it was eight years ago” you could argue that it wasn’t better off since he doubled the deficit to $19 trillion up from $10 trillion when he took office. Was Obama lying? The lie narrative is simply at best a half truth. 

The question isn’t: Is Donald Trump a liar? The question is: Who isn’t?

The question isn’t: Is Trump immoral? The question is: Who is not?  

The question isn’t: Does Donald Trump share our Christian faith? The question is: Have his policies reflected what some Christians stand for? 

So here’s why I’m voting for him in 2020. His transparency has been net refreshing, if only to get Democrats in a tizzy and to expose their hypocrisy.

I’ll start with the policy wins I am excited about:

Non-political Judges -- I am for originalists judges. Judges who look at the Constitution based on its original intent and understanding when it was ratified. Trump appointed 53 appeals court judges and 3 Supreme Court judges. Republican-nominated judges tend to vote based on the law and not politics. Out of the 67 decisions made by the Supreme Court in the 2019 term, four justices appointed by Democrats voted together 51 times while Republican-nominated judges only voted together 37 times, according to Ben Shapiro. 

Deregulation -- For all the talk of Trump ushering in a Hitler-like authoritarian government, the left is bringing us far closer to a Marxist and Stalin totalitarian regime. To use Joe Biden’s favorite line, “Come on, Man!” The Democrats have embraced the self-admitted Marxist organization Black Lives Matter. The left controls the media and wants to control even more of the economy through initiatives like the Green New Deal. Trump wants to move power away from an unaccountable administrative state. He added the fewest regulations compared to Obama and G.W. Bush in the first two years and initiated 243 deregulatory items. Source: Cato

Anti-abortion initiatives -- I am for women to have rights. But I’m also for women and men to be accountable for their actions, and there have been many unintended and unfortunate consequences for allowing abortion to be too easily accessible. I’m for prudence when it comes to making a heart-wrenching decision like abortion. And I’m not alone. If Americans are pretty split on being pro-choice and pro-abortion, then we shouldn’t have abortion be a federally funded procedure. 

Trump supported a “Born Alive Act” - institute penalties and jail time for healthcare providers who do not provide medical care to a child born alive due to a botched abortion. The care would be to preserve life, just like any child born. Democrats say “infanticide” is already illegal in every state. The bill failed in the Senate. Sen. Harris was against this bill. If there is no need for federal law to save these born alive babies, then the same argument can be applied to abortions. There is no need for a federal law if there is already state laws that support  abortion. Trump also backed “No-taxable funding for abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2019.” HHS created Conscience and Religious Freedom Division fights for doctors, nurse and healthcare providers who don’t want to participate in abortions. (source) Harris is just a tool for Planned Parenthood, advocating many of their policies, including federal right for healthcare providers to provide abortions free limitations and bans (such as getting ultrasounds and follow state medical procedures, like waiting periods. This is part of the Women’s Health Protection Act. Biden/Harris would also eliminate the Hyde amendment, which would ban federal funding for abortions.  

Economy -- Admittedly, the economy under Obama was recovering tepidly and Trump’s policies one could argue just continued the slow growth. But under Trump there were several quarters of 3-plus percent growth. (source) Pre-Covid, Trump created more manufacturing jobs and lowered the unemployment rate more than Obama. In the last 30 months of Obama’s term, manufacturing employment grew by 185,000 or 1.5 percent. In Trump’s first 30 months, 499,000 jobs were added, up 4 percent. Comparing these two periods, Trump added 314,000 more jobs. (source) Unemployment was 7.8 percent for Obama Sep 2012 (re-election) down from 10 percent in October 2009; Unemployment under Trump was 7.9 percent Sep 2012 down from 14.7 percent in April. But it also trended to 3.6-3.9 percent in 2018/2019. Blue-color jobs also grew 3.3%,  

The stock market did go up from sub-7000 during the Great Recession amid the Obama years. Trump then continued the gains, largely due to tax cuts and a deregulatory environment. Trump tax cuts helped corporations spend $1 trillion in stock buybacks. More than half of Americans are invested directly into stocks. When we came to America, my family didn’t own any stocks. We didn’t own any property. We lived in a studio apartment. Stocks and property are not entirely generational wealth mechanisms. 

Trump has shown more fiscal constraint over Obama, at least prior to COVID. Obama entered with $10.6 trillion in total debt and left owing $19.9 trillion - about $1.6 trillion each year. Debt to GDP under Obama was 77.3% and up to 103.6 percent by the time he left. By 2019, that debt rose to $22 trillion under Trump, making the debt-to-GDP ratio 104%. Yet we saw a lot of gains in GDP and the stock market during this period. On Oct. 1, 2020, it hit $26.5 trillion, making the ratio surge to 136%. But this is largely due to COVID-19. 

Tax cuts - I’m generally for tax cuts and supply-side economics. Americans paid about $64 billion less in federal income taxes in the first year when the tax cut was signed into law. The sharpest drops in payments went to taxpayers earning between $25k and $100k a year.  Taxpayers making between $40k to $500k saw a roughly 15% tax reduction while those making over $1 million saw a 4% tax reduction. Also, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers pay 97% of all individual income taxes. While the bottom 50 percent pay the 2.8%. The top 1% paid 39% of all individual income taxes. (source)

The Middle East wins --  Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, unwound the Iran nuclear deal (a move highly supported by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice). Even the Brookings Institute, not exactly your conservative think tank, rebuked the Iran deal. “The presumed trigger for a possible Middle East nuclear weapons competition is Iran, which has violated nonproliferation obligations, conducted activities relevant to the development of nuclear weapons.” Their activity raised concerns among other countries. Trump’s team, led by Jared Kushner, brokered relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, as well as Bahrain and Israel -- creating a network of peace. The last time there was a reconciliation between an Arab state and Israel was in 1994 with Jordan. The four Arab countries that recognize Israel are Bahrain, UAE, Jordan and Egypt. 

Police reform and addressing underserved communities: 
Black women terminate pregnancies via abortion at far higher rates than other women. Some call it “black genocide.” While there are pro-life Democrats, Republicans are far more explicit and supportive of anti-abortion and pro-life policies. There’s a large body of research that shows the benefit of Charter Schools for lower-income and black families. More Republicans embrace Charter Schools than Democrats. The Trump administration has provided hundreds of millions  of dollars for historically black colleges and at the same time forgiven hundreds of millions of dollars of loans. There was criminal justice reform with the First Step Act (FSA), which was signed into law in 2018, and referred to by The New Yorker as “one of the most significant criminal-justice-reform bills in decades.” The FSA appears to be successfully reducing sentences, something social justice warriors are fighting for. Ben Carson proposed reducing regulatory hurdles for affordable housing, and the list goes on. This isn’t all talk. Prior to COVID-19 unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans had dropped to its lowest point in history. We can’t ignore progress just because it doesn’t fit a narrative. 

Democrat’s double standards 

Impeachment farce - Trump was impeached on two counts: Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress. Firstly, Congress didn’t vote on an impeachment inquiry, Pelosi just started it. It’s not unconstitutional to not have a vote, but unprecedented. Republicans were also not allowed to issue subpoenas and at times have been denied the ability to cross-examine. Additionally, Democrats abandoned using the courts to compel witnesses, something they had at their disposal. They just sent subpoenas, which Trump had every right to ignore. As for Abuse of Power because he asked a foreign leader to investigate corruption, presidents do that all the time. President Obama asked Dmitry Medvedev to tell Putin to ease up on missile defense until after the election. Even Romney criticized Obama for wanting political favor to help him win re-election. (source: wsj)   

Russian collusion illusion -- Robert Mueller’s final report in April 2019 concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. His two-year tax-payer-funded probe cost $30-plus trillion. Mueller didn’t find any evidence for criminal indictments. “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Former Dir. of National Intelligence James Clapper testified: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/​conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” source.

Most egregious abuse of power was the use of the Steele Dossier. Christopher Steele, a former British spy, was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC to find dirt against Trump. He came up with a report that came largely from one “primary subsource,” according to the Justice Department. When agents investigated the source said there was no basis for those allegations, they were not factual, only business intelligence. Yet FBI interviews in January 2017 showed the FBI used the dossier as the basis for warrants to surveil Trump aid Carter Page during the 2016 campaign, according to the Justice Department. There’s nearly 60 pages of notes from the interviews making it clear the FBI knew the dossier had spurious information (as early as 2017). The FBI didn’t even corroborate the allegations prior to Page being surveilled in October 2016. Even the source said the information was business intelligence but nothing factual. 

In February 2017, one of the FBI investigators wrote an internal FBI analysis saying “we are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.” Yet the NYTimes still wrote articles “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” Moreover, they used the dossier to renew surveillance warrants. (source: wsj) 

I wrote my book Unequally Yoked to largely deconstruct how the media has misrepresented Trump. In the last four years, I’ve seen a false narrative explode into mainstream consciousness as the postmodern moral polarity view is being adopted and canceling out those who do not embrace the left’s version of right. Ad hominem has not only been permitted, it’s been a concerted strategy. Complex truths are turned into simple falsehoods. I’d love Trump to win if only so more people can see this hypocrisy. But it’s coming out. Truth always out distances deceit. 

Cancel culture can’t go on ad infinitum or no one will be left to cancel. I’m proud to be voting for Trump. 

Weekend at Bernie’s(anders), starring Joe Biden

If you’re wondering where Joe Biden is all the time, he’s been prepping for his Hollywood debut. He’s going to star in the remake of Weekend at Bernie’s, a 1989 movie about a cadaver named Bernie, who is seemingly alive at a weekend party, thanks to two of his employees secretly convincing guests that he is indeed still living and breathing, albeit with a pale glow.

Well, Bernie has resurrected via Biden, despite the Democrat's insistence that a socialist-communist threat posed by the American left is simply a fantasy. To borrow from Biden, “Here’s the deal!” It is most certainly a threat if we consider Bernie Sanders & Co are the ones toting Biden around.

Much like the torpid movie character, Biden is quite asleep. His lifeless and infrequent appearances have commentators on both sides ridiculing Biden for running an enervated campaign. He’s earned the moniker “Basement Biden.” Conservative talk show host Ben Shapiro belittled Biden for “lying around technically alive in a basement.” But how sprightly? Some refer to him as a walking corpse. “Has anyone seen proof of life?” joked Sky News host Paul Murray. 

Earlier this year, Van Jones, CNN commentator who worked as an advisor in the Obama administration, criticized Biden’s campaign for being a “dead man walking campaign for a long time.” After the DNC in August, Jones explicitly expressed the fears of every Democrat. “Sometimes when he gets up there, you’re afraid he’s going to make a mistake; he’s going to have a gaffe. Expectations are just so low,” said Jones. Jones also made explicitly clear the fear of all Republicans. “We were prepared for it to be a terrible speech, as long as he didn’t embarrass himself,” said Jones. “We were going to come out here and praise it. You don’t have to make nothing up tonight.” Thanks Jones for confirming what many already know: the left-leaning media go to great lengths to cover up and mop up all of Biden’s senile blunders, alleged improprieties, and his obvious move left.   

As entertaining as watching such a movie might sound, people are smart. They don’t want to be insulted and they want answers. Biden has stayed mum on his list of proposed Supreme Court nominees and whether he’d expand the court. This is likely because Sanders & Co. will have a big say. And while Sanders is not for packing the court, he believes Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick in 2016, wasn’t progressive enough. Avoiding questions is just another form of Biden’s self-immolation moments and confirmation of his progressive shift.  

While Democrats are trying to paint Biden a moderate, the presumptive Democratic nominee has signalled his willingness to court the progressives through the creation of a joint Biden-Sanders task force to bring supporters of the self-proclaimed democratic socialist under the Biden-Harris ticket. Just appointing Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate was the first clue of his ideological leanings as Harris was considered the most liberal senator by non-partisan organization GovTrak. If that wasn’t enough, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s explicit endorsement of Bernie Sanders at the DNC was quite a threatening statement, underscoring a hostage-like grip over Biden’s agenda. We’ll hand you the young progressives, you push our policy. Biden has also displayed a tacit permissiveness of the riots in the name of tearing down our institutions and Harris has praised the “brilliance” of the self-described Marxist organization that is Black Lives Matter.

If Biden wants to convince the public that he “beat the socialist,” he needs to explain why he adopted significant swaths of the socialist’s plans. Even the New York Times conceded that Biden’s plans are “indications that progressives succeeded in pushing some proposals leftward, influencing Mr. Biden’s policy platform as he prepares to accept his party’s nomination for president next month.” 

On healthcare, the Biden-Sanders joint task force proposal falls short of Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, but expands on Biden’s public healthcare insurance option, including certain prescription medications offered with no co-pays, plus availability with no premium costs to Americans living in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. The proposal says that low-income people not eligible for Medicaid can be automatically enrolled in the public option with no cost. Essentially, this is circumventing the whole point of having a Medicaid threshold.  

While Biden had proposed lowering the Medicare age to 60 years old, expanding Medicare to cover dental care, vision and hearing loss have largely been Sanders’ proposals. Biden’s plan even before Sanders’ input already had a very progressive option, such as abortion coverage as part of the “essential health benefits” that insurers must cover. This won’t fly with conservatives, who already argue that older people shouldn’t have to pay for maternity coverage.

The joint proposal calls for increased investments in community health centers and free college tuition for those earning under $125,000 a year, initiatives Sanders has been pushing for. Biden has also embraced Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s progressive proposals to cancel student debt and make it easier for people to file for personal bankruptcy.  

In August, Biden received the endorsement of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. If we are to apply the same guilty-by-association treatment to Biden as Trump received for having radical far right supporters, we would conclude that Biden must have an “overt appreciation for communists.” A movement leftward is not a simple fallacy, it is a real threat and at least one half of the country won’t be cheerfully eating popcorn if this movie gets released.

Why media-driven hypocrisy is driving division, the mental health crisis and the new woke dogma

I wrote Unequally Yoked to embolden those on the right to share their opposing ideas in Silicon Valley, where it’s assumed everyone is part of the elite, liberal, compassionate intellectual class. Conservatives are reticent because they fear they won’t get a job, they won’t get funding, they'll lose their advertising sponsors, they won’t strengthen relationships, they won’t get speaking engagements -- in other words: they’ll get cancelled. 

In short: 1) This book calls out the BS and here are six examples of hypocrisy. 2) This book shows why the media is propagating this hypocrisy. 3) This book shows why media-driven hypocrisy (along with its ugly step sibling social media) and the decline in faith together drive division, hatred, a mental health crisis and the new “woke” dogma and safetyism culture.

Hypocrisy Highlights from the book 

Hypocrisy 1: Division hypocrisy.
Trump and conservatives are racist/divisive; Biden and the left are unifying. Many believe Trump started the current race war and divisive rhetoric. He didn’t. Obama began dividing the nation along racial lines in his first year in office. Obama’s polar bear problem didn’t help. 

From the book: “In November 2008, history would be made. Barack Obama became

the first black President of the United States. One would think, and many did, the cultural revolution which ascended the first black man to the White House meant the country had moved beyond race. Yet something unexpected happened over the course of Obama’s two terms and Lisbeth Gant Britton, an African American History professor, nailed it when she said, Obama’s presidency was to “start, not end a national conversation on race.”

From the book: Obama should have let that polar bear go. Just the discussion around whether to say Islam or not, perpetuated the idea that somehow Muslims needed protection from being alienated in America. While well-intentioned, Obama’s suppression of the word “Islam” ironically made more people think of identity in a racially-divisive way.

Hypocrisy 2: Media distortion hypocrisy.
Media distorts Trump’s words, while ignores their own. I call it: Graecum est, non legitur (It’s all Greek to me) -- words take on new meaning. Trump’s words are always manipulated by Democrats projecting their racist and negative narratives while flying over the underlying issues. The latest distortion: Trump won’t commit to a peaceful transition of power. Hilary’s explicit statement to not concede is swept aside. Mexico is the oft-cited projection of racism.  

From the book: In January 2017, Trump called for the construction of a Mexican wall to crack down on immigration. By taking Trump’s words about Mexican immigrants out of context, the media doubled-down on their “Trump is a racist” narrative for calling all Mexicans “rapists” and “drug dealers.” Never mind that Obama’s immigration reform efforts resulted in more Mexican deportations than Trump, so much so that Obama earned the sobriquet “Deporter-in-chief.”

From the book: The main negative effect of outsourcing is it increases U.S. unemployment. The 14.3 million outsourced jobs are double the 5.9 million unemployed Americans. If all those jobs returned, it would be enough to also hire the 4.3 million who are working part-time but would prefer full-time positions.” For Mexico, the NAFTA trade deal also ignited a wave of illegal Mexican migration to the U.S. because Mexico stopped its corn subsidies, forcing many Mexican farms to shut down, pushing Mexicans out of jobs at home. 

Hypocrisy 3: Moral equivalent hypocrisy.
The right must always identify and implicate its own but never make moral equivalencies. When Trump denounced evil on “many sides” in Charlottesville, liberals said he took sides with White Supremacists. When Joe Biden failed to denounce the riots by BLM radicals and antifa, liberals praised his speech. He even pointed to Charlottesville, reminding people that Republicans are “spreading hate” while the left have “the courage to stand against it.” Before 2020, Charlottesville was the most oft-cited one-sided false narratives. 

From the book: I applauded his words. He was trying to build a two-sided solution. But the one-siders didn’t see it that way… Two days later Trump issued a second statement “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups,” Trump said at a press conference. By contrast, over his entire two terms, Obama never specifically labeled the offenders who murdered nearly 100 Americans. He was even defensive: “There’s no magic to the phrase radical Islam…It’s a political talking point,” he said at a press conference. “Someone seriously thinks we don’t know who we’re fighting?”

From the book: “American exceptionalism does not merely connote cultural and political uniqueness belief that, because America has a special devotion to democracy and freedom, its sins are mostly incidental.” AOC was exposing a much larger truth, according to The Atlantic’s Beinart. I agree. The enemy is evil and we’re all capable of it. But where was Beinart’s enlightened position eighteen months prior? The same moral equivalency could have been applied to President Trump’s words “many sides” being capable of wrongdoing. It was not. In 2017, The Atlantic published Beinart’s piece titled: “What Trump gets wrong about Antifa.” Beinart wrote: “Trump is right that, in Charlottesville and beyond, the violence of some leftist activists constitutes a real problem. Where he’s wrong is in suggesting that it’s a problem in any way comparable to white supremacism.” Both AOC and Trump essentially made visible the same truth. AOC got a break. Trump not so much.

Hypocrisy 4: Guilty until proven innocent hypocrisy. Media applies this approach to anyone on the right, such as Nick Sandmann, Brent Kavanaugh and Amy Cooper. But the left is assumed to be blameless, like Jacob Blake, who resisted arrest, was tased twice and reached for a knife. The Cooper dog walking incident convicted a nation of their inner racism, yet if we deconstructed the news and understood the context, we might find a different truth.  

From the book: What reasonable, non-confrontational, non-dog person walks around with dog treats in his pocket for the sole purpose of reprimanding people who have their dogs unleashed? Secondly, I might have reacted the same way as Ms. Cooper. I walk and run an eight mile stretch of undulating hills through trees and underbrush several times a week. Sounds a bit like The Ramble. There are clear signs that say dogs must be leashed, but most dogs walk freely. If I were walking alone with my dog unleashed at 7:30 am and a strange man came out of a bush “screaming” to leash my dog, according to Ms. Cooper, I would certainly be startled if not offended. Then if he threatened me by saying: “Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it,” and proceeded to call my dog over to feed him, I’d be startled, scared, threatened and frantic. Are you poisoning my dog? I’d say I’m calling the police and I’d say what I’d tell the police: a very detailed identification of that person, which would include race, gender and other visible attributes. Ms. Cooper should have leashed her dog. Maybe she should have chosen better words. But that’s not the point. It’s about reducing her life to nothing without due process; rushing to judgment to celebrate an ideological win at the expense of the more nuanced truth. 

Hypocrisy 5: Postmodern view hypocrisy.
Violence is good, as long as it’s in the name of the left’s cause.   

From the book: Hannah-Jones, the New York Times author of the 1619 Project declared that “Violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man’s neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. To use the same language to describe those two things is not moral.” … “Property destruction is a ‘reasonable articulate expression in itself” and “attacking police stations, for example, makes rational sense.”... “Property is itself a violent thing because it was created through exploitation.”  The author also argues that white Americans have no right to define violence since the current institutions that empower white people are violent in and of themselves... I wouldn’t consider The Nation a mainstream publication, but their articles captured the prevailing sentiment on the left, tacit (and as we’ve seen even explicit) approval of violent protests in the name of social justice while in the next breath berating the anti-lockdown protests by folks struggling for their livelihood and wellbeing.

Hypocrisy 6: Racism hypocrisy.
The right is racist until they believe in systemic racism, a life of self-flagellation and embracing BLM, better known as Bitterness Ladened Marxism. But racist evidence against the left is ignored. To wit: Harris conveniently drops her racist charge against Biden.  

From the book: DiAngelo has five ways to deal with inner racism. The first is to remove from your vocabulary “I’m not a racist.” The second is to spend the rest of your life “grappling with what it means to be white.” She has created the world’s first perpetual motion machine of guilt. No breaks for possible salvation, it just spins with no end… The position that one race is being told to live a lifetime of self-flagellation as Robin DiAngelo suggests, or that we should be “done forgiving” as Roxanne Gay says, is bankrupt.

From the book: I don’t think many people know the specifics of what BLM actually stands for and how its emphasis is less on helping blacks and more about pushing a far-left political agenda. Given the reach of the BLM brand, it would be crazy for the organization to change the name, but there should also be truth in advertising, so the underlying name should be more inclusive of all the intersections it represents, and closer to the core political thrust. Something like Bitterness Ladened Marxism would make sense. Branding aside, in time their real motives will become visible and the movement will lose steam, sadly repeating the pattern of false narratives squandering opportunities for progress.

From the book: In a blog post, Sobantu Mzwakali says that “black people do not have the resources to impose such oppressive structures which enforce their superiority. White people, on the other hand, have…Black people can be prejudiced but not racist.” This is a reductive argument because the main premise is that people in power are the only ones that can be oppressive. The second premise is that black Americans are not in power. The conclusion is they can’t be racist. President Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan are blacks in America who have more than enough power to be racist. Let’s find solutions that don’t divide us along racial lines, but instead pull us together against the common enemy, evil.

Media Machine Hypocrisy Highlights from the book 

Why has the media become 24/7 Crossfire with the left dominating the national narrative? The Hutchins Commission warned of media self-destruction 70 years ago.  

From the book: The commission might not have envisioned Twitter, but it did understand the self-destructive power of technology and gave this caveat: “The modern press is a new phenomenon. It can facilitate thought or thwart progress. It can debase and vulgarize mankind. It can endanger peace. It can do it accidentally, in a fit of absence of mind. Its scope and power are increasing… These great new agencies of mass communication can spread lies faster and farther than our forefathers dreamed when they enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution. With the means of self-destruction now at their disposal, men must live, if they are to live at all, by self-restraint and mutual understanding.” In short, new technologies, like the internet, would not only offer journalists’ the means of their self-destruction, but also threaten free speech itself.

From the book: A study by the Media Research Center found that between 2008 and 2016, ninety-four percent of donors affiliated with five major news outlets—Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, NBC and CBS—contributed to Democrats… One reason often given for the media’s left lean is that it is the product of the ideologies on college campuses. In a 2018 study published in The National Association of Scholars, Democrat professors outnumbered Republican professors ten to one. Another reason is that geographically, most media outlets and therefore journalists are clustered on the predominantly blue state coasts. This clustering of “coastal, college-educated, liberal journalists” has been underway for over sixty years. 

Mental Illness and Woke Religion Highlights from the book  

The number of adults with mental illness jumped to 53 percent recently, largely due to COVID. But the rise in mental illness and woke religion are due to the God-sized hole in our hearts and centuries of a Rousseauian philosophy that says we are naturally good which is opposite from the Judeo-Christian view that we are broken.  

From the book: The woke apologists offer us another solution. To wrestle with our inner racism, and fight, violently if need be, to reverse the current power structures. The Judeo-Christian faith offers an alternative solution and it’s not to drop down on our knees and pray for Christ’s second coming, though that’s not a bad idea. It is to start with the posture of forgiveness—a power  position from which outpours gratefulness and so many other virtues that make up our humanity. At its core it’s about understanding that the human condition is broken and needs a God to heal and redeem it. Nietzsche predicted that there would be no redemption without a God, and those who have followed his path have yet to show us a better way.

From the book: This chapter explores why we need forgiveness to lighten our loads, not only with family and friends, but on a broader scale with people who disagree with our ideology. Forgiveness is bigger than releasing someone from a trespass. It is how we grant legitimacy to those who we see as different so that we can actually hear them. If Judeo-Christian doctrine could offer society one gift, it would be its embrace of the profundity of forgiveness. Grace, or unmerited favor, is the antidote to the human condition. Trading religion for self-reliance is bad for us, something we did when we took prayer out of schools sixty years ago. Put the weight of the universe on individual shoulders and it’s not hard to see why mental illness and discontent are on the rise… Ironically, what science has tried to bury—our sinful natures—is now becoming self-evident as mental illness plagues the country. I asked Dr. Nina Vasan, Chair of the Innovation Lab at the American Psychiatry Association, if more people believed that their human condition was naturally broken, would mental health improve? She believed yes.

From the book - With this shift as the backdrop it’s not hard to see how the radical left has commandeered the national conversation. Unilateral views on right and wrong; a culture of victimhood; a quick cancel over a thoughtful discussion, and most frighteningly a clamp on free speech. We took prayer out of schools, stopped teaching courage, and left kids to make the rest up on their own. This is what they came up with.

There is precedent in filling the Supreme Court vacancy 2020

The American people deserve a fully-staffed court of nine. The American people expect the president’s nominee to be given a fair hearing and a timely vote in the Senate. You cannot keep a seat on the Supreme Court, which represents all of us, you cannot keep it vacant against the Constitution. The blockade on filling a naturally occurring vacancy, in my view, is harmful to the independence of the Article Three branch. If you want to stop extremism in your party, you can start by showing the American people that you respect the President of the United States and the Constitution. The Constitution is 100% clear. The President of the United States has the right to nominate someone to be a justice of the Supreme Court. Senate’s function is to hold hearings and to vote.

If you don’t believe these words and positions then you don’t agree with Democrats, as those statements above are their words and stance they took in 2016.

If Democrats want to cry foul and “Hypocrisy!!!!” at least consider that it happens on both sides.

Importantly, we should contemplate historical precedent. There have been 29 times there’s been a vacancy during an election year, Senator Ted Cruz pointed out. 19 occurred when the Senate majority was the same as the president. When the president’s party controls the Senate, they get to fill the vacancy. When the president’s party doesn’t control the Senate, the nominee is typically not confirmed. According to National Review Dan McLaughlin, of the 10 times the party of the president and Senate were not aligned, only one nominee was ever confirmed before an election in a year.

So to borrow Joe Biden’s words: let’s “de-escalate.” If we want to de-escalate, we can follow precedent not politics. If Democrats want “everyday fairness” as former President Barack Obama suggests then they shouldn’t threaten to pack the court, end the filibuster, and grant statehood to two states that will likely give them four more Democratic senators.

Obama suggests Republicans should “apply rules with consistency.” I wish that could be the case. Obama knows this as well. He is after all the one who created the “We Can’t Wait” initiative in 2011 to institute policies by executive orders because he couldn’t “wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job.”

For this one, Dan McLaughlin’s article in the National Review article is spot on: History is on the side of Republicans Filling a Supreme Court vacancy in 2020.

Why the Democrat's messaging is lost in translation

A cut-and-paste text has become popular on Facebook. Here's a snippet: “Just a note for my right leaning family and friends from my left leaning self as we near voting day: They say we want to disband police departments (and that we hate the police): we don’t, that’s a lie. We want to weed out racism and unnecessary police brutality and for those who abuse their power to be held accountable.”

Here's my reply to at least the first claim: Weeding out racism, targeting unnecessary police brutality and holding those who abuse power accountable are priorities on which I think both sides can safely agree. However, they are not achieved by using broad-strokes strategies. They are sophisticated challenges, and we need to refine our thinking and approach if we want to actually make progress.

If I can speak for those with whom the original poster refers to as their “right leaning family and friends,” we agree with 99 percent of everything on that list. I’d imagine we can all agree as well that there’s different approaches to achieving these goals. Let me show why these goals you strive for (at least a few of them on that list), however, appear to be lost in translation based on the way the Right sees the Democratic messaging and actions.

The Right doesn’t say the left wants to “disband police departments” - the Democratic messaging does. When massive protesters hold signs saying “Defund the police” and “Black Lives Matter” and BLM explicitly says on its website and in videos they’re done with “police reform” and encourage their followers to ask lawmakers to “spend less” on police - it’s hard to believe you don’t want to disband the police. If Democrats don’t want to “defund the police” or if you have to explain a core slogan, then it’s at best a less-than-sufficient one and at worst, a divisive one.

If the Right believes that some on the left “hate the police” - it's because Democratic messaging sure suggests this. When Democratic media defends destruction and violence it’s hard to believe you want to support the police. (A few examples: NYTimes Hannah-Jones said: “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” From the Nation: “attacking police stations, for example, makes rational sense.” Or CNN’s Don Lemon: “This is how this country was started… They’re fighting for what’s right.”) There is a tacit, and at times more than tacit, anti-law and order theme prevailing amongst many of the left.

If Democrats want police reform to weed out racism, unnecessary police brutality, etc. - the Right is with you. But it’s hard to believe the sincerity when in June, Senate Democrats didn’t allow amendments or discussion of Sen. Tim Scott’s police reform bill, which had a number of Democratic proposals including 1) making lynching a federal hate crime 2) reviewing US criminal justice system 3) barring chokeholds 4) collecting data on use of force by police. As Senator Scott said at the RNC - it felt like continuing the issue was more important to the Dems than finding the solution.

If Democrats want to match “punishments” with “crimes” - the Right is with you. But it’s hard to believe the sincerity when progress is ignored. There have been thousands of reduced sentences and released prisoners as a result of the First Step Act (FSA), which was signed into law in 2018, and referred to by The New Yorker as “one of the most significant criminal-justice-reform bills in decades.” This is landmark legislation, and it came from the Right.

This week, CNN's Don Lemon started condemning the riots because it's hurting Democrats in the polls, and because "they’re rioters, not protesters. They’re criminals," he said. This is good. More of this please. But should we condemn riots because it’s the wrong thing to do, or simply because it’s hurting votes?

We can all do better. As Jacob Blake’s mother said so well: “America is great when we behave greatly.”

Please comment at @bambi100 on Twitter.