Author: rampinelli (Page 3 of 3)

What Else You Get with Trump

October 27, 2020 / rampinelli

Why Evangelicals Should Think Twice

October 27, 2020

Most white evangelicals support Donald Trump for reelection. Ignoring some of the craziest arguments, like Trump is “God’s chosen one”, Trump’s evangelical supporters emphasize his opposition to abortion, support for religious liberty, and appointment of conservative judges. Fair enough. Most Democrats are pro-choice and favor LGBTQ calls for acceptance, including the right to marry, over conservative Christians’ rights to not participate in something they believe is sinful, such as gay marriage.

But abortion and religious liberty are not the only issues that Christians should care about. What you also get with Donald Trump is a man with a narcissistic personality disorder. He has an inflated sense of his own importance, an excessive need to be admired, and little or no sense of empathy. As a result, his administration is the epitome of incompetence and corruption. More specifically, the Trump administration has given the country a disastrous foreign policy, a catastrophic climate change policy, a fiasco in health care, and poor stewardship of the economy. Even worse: Trump is dividing the country, attacking the rule of law, and threatening our democracy.

The Trump administration is fundamentally incompetent. While Trump began his term with competent people, such as General Mattis as defense secretary, he has since replaced them with sycophants, such as Pompeo and Barr. From the start, he surrounded himself with family members, as if the U.S. government were his family business, or a Mafia syndicate. Because of his grandiosity, he refuses to listen to his advisors unless they tell him what he wants to hear. The botched response to the Covid-19 crisis is an especially glaring, and deadly, example of the administration’s ineptitude.

The Trump administration is corrupt. As a narcissist, Trump believes the normal rules of political behavior do not apply to him. And so instead of putting his business assets in a blind trust, as his predecessors did, he turned them over to his sons. Foreign governments curry favor by booking events at his hotels and golf courses, as do domestic and foreign businesses. According to Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander, Trump daughter Ivanka’s trademark requests in China were approved 40% faster than before his election. Just a week ago, the New York Times reported that Trump has a secret Chinese bank account. Corruption, of course, is not just about money: Trump’s strongarming of Ukraine’s president to get politically usable dirt on Joe Biden is a prime example. There are good reasons why Democracy21’s Fred Wertheimer calls the Trump administration the most corrupt in history.

Moving on to foreign policy, the record is somewhat better. Trump did have some successes: for example, he brought the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, started by President Obama, to a successful conclusion. But his abandonment of our Kurdish allies, who spilled most of the blood in the fight, may have undone everything he accomplished, and it certainly smashed our reputation. Trump has also managed to avoid new wars, although he came close to starting one with Iran by killing General Soleimani. Moreover, Trump did sell tank-busting Javelins to Ukraine, but the sales agreement prohibits Ukraine from using them against the Donbas separatists. These successes are overshadowed by the Trump administration’s strategic failures. From the start, Trump has cozied up to dictators, such as Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, and Chinese Communist Party chairman Xi Jinping. At the same time, he has attacked long-standing allies, such as Germany, and ignored others, such as Australia, which had to wait two years until an ambassador was appointed. As China continues its economic and political global expansion, backed by a growing military capability, the U.S. needs its allies more than ever. Instead, Trump has trashed our alliances. Can we count on them when we need them?

With the command to “till it and keep it”, God gave humanity dominion over the earth. Our stewardship of the planet has not been good. Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is already causing droughts, fires, and extreme weather patterns. It will continue to get worse. For that reason, world leaders came together and signed the Paris Agreement to keep global warming below 2° by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the counsel of scientists, Trump denies climate change and so withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. While China has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s greatest polluter, there is no hope for success in the fight against climate change if the U.S. is not onboard.

On health care, Trump has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – and replace it with “something better”. At the end of his first term, his promised replacement is still a secret. But the threat to Obamacare is real, with a lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court to overturn the law.

Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is a classic case of dishonesty and incompetence. Trump knew back in January that the novel coronavirus was a serious public health threat, but he chose to downplay it to protect his reelection chances. When Democratic governors took action to limit the damage, he attacked them, calling on supporters to “Liberate Michigan!” Even now, amid the predicted autumn wave of rising Covid-19 cases, he still argues that the virus is going away. The U.S. leads the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths, largely because of its slow response to the pandemic. Trump’s narcissistic focus on reelection has killed thousands of Americans.

Polls show that Trump gets his highest marks for the economy, which was doing well until the pandemic hit. But he does not deserve credit for it. Trump inherited a strong and growing economy from the Obama administration and juiced it up with massive tax cuts. But as any economist will tell you, an economic boom is not the time to increase the deficit. Trump’s tax cuts have raised the government’s debt immensely. When interest rates rise, which will happen someday, the interest burden will be hard to bear. Moreover, due to the high levels of government debt, which the tax cuts fostered, Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate refuse to pass a second stimulus package, which the economy now desperately needs. To maintain its position as the world’s strongest economy, the United States needs to invest in infrastructure – roads, rails, communication, and education – and in industries of the future, such as renewable energy. We are falling short. Another massive economic problem is the growing gap between the rich and the rest. Rising inequality threatens our social cohesion, which threatens our economy. But he does not seem to care about it, nor do his fellow Republicans.

Trump has been called the “Divider in Chief”. He has attacked Mexicans, calling them rapists and criminals. He has banned immigration from Muslim countries. His signature policy is to “build the wall” to deter illegal immigration and has taken money from the Defense Department to do it. Trump is anything but forthright in condemning white supremacists. Not surprisingly, racial incidents against Latinos, Blacks, and Asians have climbed substantially since Trump took office.

Trump denies that Blacks are more likely than whites to be victims of police violence. And when a 17-year-old white male shot a protestor in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump supported him. Instead of trying to calm the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in police custody, Trump fanned the flames. The result was a wave of protests that sometimes turned violent. Trump responded by sending DHS paramilitaries into Portland, Oregon, and encouraged the white nationalist Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by!”

Trump’s disdain for the rule of law is painful to see. It began early in his presidency when he demanded personal loyalty from the FBI director, James Comey. Trump then obstructed the Muller investigation into his 2016 campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia. His widespread corruption has already been noted. Trump has pardoned the likes of Sheriff Arpaio and Roger Stone. Under Attorney General Barr, the U.S. Justice Department has been degraded into Trump’s personal law firm, which now wants to defend him in a civil suit.

But the worst evil of Trump’s presidency is his threat to American democracy. His strongarm response to peaceful protesters so he could have a photo op in front of a damaged church in Washington D.C. was an attack on our consitutional right to protest. He has called for an “army” of poll watchers to descend on voting precincts, presumably to intimidate people who would otherwise vote against him. But worst of all, he refuses to say that he will honor the will of the voters by leaving office peacefully. Instead, he says that, if he loses, it is proof of voter fraud, even though the polls favor Joe Biden to win.

If the loser does not accept the election results, but tries to cling to power, American democracy faces an existential threat. And if he would succeed in staying in power despite losing the election, America is no longer a democracy. We would have descended to the level of Belarus and become a dictatorship. The people would not take this lightly – massive civil unrest, with many casualties, would result. We could even have a second civil war.

If you believe that abortion kills a human being, it makes sense to oppose it energetically, and protection of religious liberty is an important part of our American democracy. But the reelection of Donald Trump would put our country and its democracy at grave risk. The price is too high. Instead, politically conservative evangelicals should strive to reform the Republican Party and renew its commitment to democracy and the rule of law. Then, in good conscience, they can try to win the next election. The country might support them.

Choose Your Jesus

December 23, 2017 / rampinelli

One of the great advantages of living in a modern capitalist economy is choice: If you have enough money, you can buy just about anything you want. Take cars, for example. If you like luxury, and have the cash, you can buy a Mercedes S-class. If you prefer a sportier ride, Porsche will be happy to give you what you want. If you want a more macho image, a pickup truck might be just right for you. And if you want the status of rejecting status symbols, Dacia will be happy to sell you a cheap but good car.

When I teach my students about marketing, the message is simple: Segment the market, select the segment or segments you want to serve, and offer them the products they want at a price they’re willing to pay. The theme song of a 1960s countercultural movie told listeners, “You can get anything you want, in Alice’s Restaurant!” That described the economy back then, and describes it even better now.

The consumer mentality isn’t just restricted to goods and services: In our post-modern, post-truth society, we can also believe whatever we want. Are you a political progressive? Then you know giant corporations, the Koch Brothers, and Republicans are all that’s standing between the people and a bright future filled with prosperity and social justice. If you’re a conservative, you believe that Donald Trump is a modern-day miracle-worker, who will restore manufacturing and mining jobs, protect America from unfair competition, and keep us safe from Muslims and Mexicans.

For years, now, the idea that we can believe whatever we want has applied to religion as well. Since the founding of the republic, we Americans could choose the church we want to belong to. This freedom of religion is a wonderful thing, and I’m very glad we have it. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Since at least the beginning of the 20^th Century, you could choose your church AND your beliefs.

Once upon a time, if you believed that Jesus was a great moral teacher, but not the Messiah, savior, or Son of God, you pretty much had to become a Unitarian. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that: Unitarians are fine people and have had a long and distinguished history. But if you want to write about a non-divine Jesus, you’ll gain a lot more attention if you’re a member in good standing of a non-Trinitarian church (or are Muslim and get interviewed by Fox News). After all, we expect that from Unitarians. But if a Lutheran, Episcopalian, or Catholic scholar claims that Jesus was just a man, well that’s news! Or at least it used to be, before it became so common.

The quest for the “historical” Jesus goes back to the Enlightenment, with the writings of Hermann Reimarus, who died in 1768. Reimarus argued that Jesus was a Jewish reformer who became increasingly fanatical and political and failed in his quest. His followers reinterpreted him as another type of Messiah, and Christianity resulted. In the 19^th century, David Friedrich Strauss argued that the early church embellished Jesus’s story to turn him into a divine Messiah. Then, in 1906, Albert Schweitzer published his magnum opus, “The Quest for the Historical Jesus”, in which he critiqued the previous searchers and argued that Jesus was an eschatological prophet who believed in the imminent end of the world. The famous theologian Rudolf Bultmann, in turn, argued that the gospel record was invented by the early church, but no matter: Whereas the Jesus of History is unknowable, we believe in the Christ of Faith, as proclaimed by the church. So, we could be agnostic about the historical Jesus but remain Christians through belief in the Christ of Faith.

In other words, Christians could be like Michelle Bachmann, who said that America’s Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery, even though many of them, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, kept slaves until they died. We can believe whatever we want, regardless of the historical facts.

The so-called Jesus Seminar shows us how to do this. The four gospels, along with the epistles of Paul and, possibly, some non-canonical writings, such as the Gospel of Thomas, are the main sources that tell us what Jesus said and did. And Paul’s epistles don’t provide much detail here. One of the “Seven Pillars of Scholarly Wisdom” promulgated by the Jesus Seminar is reversal of the burden of proof: The gospel writings are so embellished, that we need evidence to conclude that anything in them is historical. So, if something in the gospels doesn’t fit our view of Jesus, we can simply reject it, based on reversal of the burden of proof!

The Jesus Seminar does, of course, have somewhat objective criteria for evidence, such as multiple attestation and embarrassment. But multiple attestation alone isn’t enoug: Even though Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem is attested by both Matthew and Luke (with some significant differences of detail), the Jesus Seminar argues he was born in Nazareth. On the other hand, community issues, where a statement or action of Jesus would reflect the concerns of the early church, is evidence of inauthenticity, as is self-reference, such as “I am the way, the truth and the life.” In other words, anything that the early church COULD have made up, it did make up, and Jesus never talked about himself at all. The result is, eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not uttered by him, according to the Jesus Seminar.

While this may be shocking for orthodox Christians, it’s good news for religious consumers. You can cherry-pick the sayings and actions of Jesus to fit your desired image of Jesus, and reject everything else as “inauthentic”, added by the early church.

The Muslim Reza Aslan, for example, argues that Jesus was a proto-Zealot, whose goal was to free Judea from Roman rule, by force. Jesus, of course, failed (in contrast to Mohammed and his successors, who conquered much of the Eastern Roman Empire). An opposing view is provided by John Dominic Crossan, who argues that Jesus opposed Rome, but was non-violent.

In other words, you can believe that Jesus was a violent (Aslan), or a non-violent (Crossan), opponent of Roman rule – take your pick. If you prefer, you can make Jesus a liberal social justice warrior – look at his concern for the poor! Then again, maybe you want a more law-and-order Jesus, such as the one who said “not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away”. And if you don’t want your taxes to go to help the poor, Jesus said “the poor you will always have with you”. All the other sayings about helping the poor must have come from the early church. Moreover, if you care a lot about the “right to bear arms”, Jesus said “if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” As for his rebuke of Peter for using a sword, you can call that an inauthentic addition by a pacifist early church. See how easy it is to have exactly the Jesus you want?

It’s certainly possible that the early church embellished what Jesus said and did before the gospels were written, and in the case of Mark’s longer resurrection account, even thereafter. But the gospels are the best sources we have for what Jesus said and did, so reversing the burden of proof of authenticity means we can know very little about him. And so we can cherry-pick our evidence and make Jesus whoever we want him to be.

An old joke has a businessman looking to hire an accountant. He asks the first two applicants, “How much is two plus two?” When they answered “four”, he dismisses them politely. The third applicant, when asked the same question, replies, “How much do you want it to be?” And if we’re free to reject what we don’t like, we can do the same!

We can choose our favorite Jesus by accepting the biblical evidence that fits our presuppositions and rejecting the rest. Or we can accept Jesus as presented in the gospels, a very complex man who is also God, and grapple with his actions and sayings that we might prefer to reject. For followers of Jesus, the choice should be clear.

Illiberal Liberals

June 29, 2017 / rampinelli

Liberals are supposed to be liberal. Some are not.

June 29, 2017

I think I’m a liberal, at least in the American context:

I support health care for all;
I favor low-tuition – or even tuition-free – education at public universities;
I want the federal government to take strong measures to fight unemployment, promote higher wages, and reduce inequality;
I support the right of gays and lesbians to marry;
I’ve consistently voted for Democrats since 1992.

I was – and am – appalled by the intolerance, ignorance, and closed-mindedness of many Trump supporters and others on the right. But I used to think intolerance was mainly on the right. I was wrong. A few things have happened recently to change my mind.

The shooting of Republican congressman Steve Scalise by a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter is certainly one of the worst atrocities by an American “progressive”. It would be easy to write this off as the random act of a crazy person with a gun. But some Twitter posts by “progressives” have applauded it, or at least argued that Scalise had it coming. Kathy Griffin’s photo shoot holding Trump’s decapitated head might have been a lame attempt at humor – she’s a comedian – but it was worse than just poor taste.

On a less gruesome note, but also of concern, was Sen. Bernie Sanders’s questioning of Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. A year before, Vought weighed in on a controversy involving Wheaton College, his alma mater. The evangelical college had fired Larycia Hawkins for stating that Muslims worshipped the same God that Christians do. Vought supported the college, arguing that Muslims reject Jesus Christ, and so are condemned. Sanders questioned him hard on this, and then argued that Vought was an Islamophobic bigot who should not be confirmed. As a somewhat more liberal Christian, I disagree with Vought – and Wheaton College – but their arguments are based on reasonable interpretations of the Bible and should be treated with respect. Bernie Sanders applied a religious test to the appointment, essentially rejecting Christians with evangelical beliefs as unfit for public office. The Constitution, fortunately, prohibits this.

The problem wasn’t just with Bernie Sanders. On its Facebook page, the normally responsible “Being Liberal” site condemned Vought for his “incredibly Islamophobic” statements. Many of the commenters agreed.

Jaelene Hinkle, the conservative Christian goalkeeper for the US women’s soccer team, withdrew from the roster for “personal reasons”. Her likely reason was that the team’s jerseys included numbers in the LGBT rainbow and replaced the player’s name with “Pride”. Ms. Hinkle, like many other conservative Christians, opposes same-sex marriage and probably felt her witness would be compromised by wearing the jersey. She was skewered as a bigot in social media for her very discreet decision.

There’s more, of course. Liberal universities have canceled speeches by right-wing speakers, such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter. In academia, “political correctness” threatens free speech.

Liberal intolerance can also be found outside the US. Tim Farron, an evangelical Christian, resigned from his post as the head of Britain’s Liberal Democrats after a campaign where his views on whether gay sex was a sin were the subject of repeated press questioning.

It’s easy to object that the other side is worse, and it most certainly is. But that doesn’t excuse us who call ourselves liberals when we speak and act illiberally. Liberals are supposed to support freedom, especially the freedom to dissent from the prevailing views of society. That’s why freedom of thought, press, and religion are dear to liberal hearts, as is tolerance for people who think and act differently. In other words, illiberal liberals are hypocrites. They also provide ammunition to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who are pleased to trumpet any examples of leftist bigotry.

More pragmatically, left-wing intolerance undermines our ability to compromise with reasonable people on the other side. For a democratic system to survive, it’s essential that people who disagree find compromises that most people can live with. But when we’re intolerant toward those who think differently, we add fuel to the fires of polarization and make compromise impossible. After all, isn’t it immoral to compromise with evil? Many on the right are guilty of this, of course. But when people on the left do the same, it reinforces the radical right in their obstruction and uncompromising stance.

We liberals hope to regain power in Washington and the states, so we can begin to solve the massive problems our country has. Realistically, though, we can’t do this without stripping away some of the right’s supporters. White evangelicals, who voted 80 percent for Trump, are a group we can make inroads with. Jesus told his followers to feed the hungry, cure the sick, visit those in prison – in short, to love our neighbor as ourselves. Liberals’ compassion for the poor and dispossessed has its origin in Christ’s teachings. Christians who support Ayn-Rand-type libertarians, such as Paul Ryan, do so mostly out of ignorance. If we focus on helping the poor and middle class, we can win many evangelicals over if we don’t treat them as enemies.

This means we need to respect evangelicals’ beliefs, even those we disagree with. But respecting other people’s opinions has always been the essence of tolerance, and liberalism.

What Happened to Us?

May 19, 2017 / rampinelli

Terror on the Right: What happens when the pursuit of power trumps patriotism.

May 19, 2017

I guess you could say I was a child of the sixties, a decade marked by turmoil. It started with the Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., which ultimately led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended the infamous Jim Crow laws in the American South, our version of Apartheid. The Civil Rights Act, while a huge step forward, didn’t create equality, justice, and peace overnight, as the decade’s numerous race riots and the assassination of Dr. King vividly show.

The other great movement of the sixties was the anti-war movement, opposed to American involvement the Vietnam War. Because of the draft, thousands of conscripts were pulled from American cities and towns into the military and sent to fight in the jungles of southeast Asia. As casualties mounted, so did opposition to the war. The anti-war movement gained strength and spawned other leftist movements, which opposed just about everything in America. I spent my teenage years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a hotbed of left-wing radicalism and anti-war activism. I remember a march where someone waved the Viet Cong flag. The Students for a Democratic Society – founded in Ann Abor – called for revolution to overthrow “capitalism”.

Most Americans back then, including many who opposed the Vietnam War, were appalled by the excesses of the far left. We could disagree on politics, but for most of us, our allegiance to the country was never in question. And once the war was over, many of the long-haired hippie types cut their hair, put on suits, and joined the “establishment”. Many of them became Republicans.

So, let’s fast-forward half a century. In 2014, rancher Cliven Bundy and his armed supporters, self-proclaimed “militiamen”, threatened to do battle with law enforcement officers attempting to enforce a court order to impound his cattle to pay grazing fees owed to the federal government. Amazingly, the insurrectionists were supported by a number of Republican politicians. As the 2016 election approached, some right-wing “militias” were training for civil war in case Hillary Clinton got elected. But Trump’s election hasn’t brought peace. With opposition to Donald Trump growing throughout the country, some of his supporters are still talking of civil war against “left-wing terrorists”. And at the end of April, a self-described conservative walked into a campus coffee shop in Lexington, KY, and asked customers what their political affiliation was. If they answered Republican, he left them alone. If they said Democrat, he attacked them with a machete.

Mainstream sixties conservatives would have been appalled by this. William F. Buckley Jr., for example, steadfastly opposed the John Birch Society for its conspiracy-mongering and extremism. If he were alive today, he’d certainly have harsh words for the Tea Party, militiamen, and Trump supporters. But today’s Republicans can’t find it in themselves to condemn advocates of sedition and extremism, as long as they vote Republican.

We now have a “conservative” Republican president whose ties to a hostile Russian government are suspect and about whose incompetence there is no doubt. The Justice Department has appointed a special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. How have Republican leaders reacted? With a few honorable exceptions (such as Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain), the silence has been deafening.

In the “good old days”, Republicans and Democrats could work together. Both parties supported the space program. Both parties voted for the Civil Rights Act. On foreign policy, the norm for both parties was, “politics stops at the water’s edge”. Shutting down the federal government was unthinkable, as was refusing to raise the debt ceiling. Back in the sixties, America worked, even during the depths of the Vietnam War.

What’s happened to us? The same thing that happened to the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius died. Power, not patriotism, reigned supreme, and the Empire descended into a period of civil strife. But today, everything happens much faster, thanks to modern media. The media could be a force for educating the public, but many Americans have no use for education. Rather, they tune in to TV and talk radio commentators who confirm what they already believe. Roger Ailes, who died on May 18, built Fox News into a “conservative” kingmaker. He combined right wing ideology with flashy entertainment, which hooked much of the white middle class. Rush Limbaugh and others were even wilder, hatching conspiracy theories and blaming all the country’s problems on “progressives”. Amazingly, new media outlets, like Breitbart, opened to the right of Fox News, as if there were much space there!

Republican politicians soon learned that compromising and negotiating with Democrats would get them a primary challenger for the next election. The key to a long career as a Republican member of Congress was to fight everything Democrats supported. And when voters elected the first African-American president, the very moderate Barack Obama, Republican politicians tried their best to make him fail, despite the harm that did to the country.

Hindus believe in Karma. Christians prefer to say, “you reap what you sow”. The laughable presidency of Donald Trump could well mean the end of the Republican Party, as Americans turn away with disgust from the lies, corruption, and incompetency of this administration. We can only hope that some principled conservatives start a new party or sweep up the shards of the broken GOP. But if we don’t want to go the way of the Roman Empire, we must never forget what happens when the pursuit of power overwhelms patriotism.

Geert Wilders’ “Loss”

March 23, 2017 / rampinelli

Problems in the EU parallel those in the U.S.

Germany, March 23, 2017

After the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s surprise election, many of us feared that right-wing populism would continue its momentum and win other Europe elections as well. After the Dutch vote, we breathed a sigh of relief. But will populism be stopped in its tracks?

Geert Wilders, head of the populist right-wing PVV, is best known for his opposition to Islam. A member of the anti-EU “Nationalist International”, along with France’s Le Pen, Germany’s AfD, Austria’s FPÖ, Italy’s Lega Nord, Britain’s Ukip, Wilders seems to be the most extreme of the group, at least when it comes to Islam. He has called for banning the Koran and mosques in the Netherlands, where Muslims make up about 6% of the population.

For many months prior to the election, Wilders’s PVV was leading the polls. But when the votes were counted on March 15, his party came in second with 13.1%. The clear leader was the center-right VVD, headed by the current prime minister, Mark Ruute, which won 21.3%. Still, the PVV added 5 seats in parliament to its total from 2012, while the VVD lost 8. The biggest gain was chalked up by the Greens, with 10 seats.

So, is the Dutch election a harbinger of things to come? The Economist argues it will have little impact on the French election, which is the one that counts. If Marine Le Pen wins, she will try to pull France out of the EU, which would probably spell the end of the unification project. Currently, Le Pen is expected to make it to the run-off election on May 7, but ultimately lose to the pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron.

For those of us who support the liberal international order, which has dominated the West since World War II, we can breathe a sigh of relief over Wilders’s loss. But we should not be complacent. Nationalism and populism are still powerful forces in Europe as well as the United States. We can’t stop populistm by ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away. We can either fight it, give in to it, or strip its supporters away.

Fighting populism is essential, or it will win. We need to object to extremist statements and resist its agenda. But resistance alone won’t defeat populists, since they draw strength from people’s real problems. Giving in to populism is certainly no solution. The free societies we’ve built in Europe since WWII would be threatened, and we could slip back into an age of competing nationalisms and periodic war.

Stripping populist supporters away is the only way to win. This means taking their fundamental concerns – their interests – seriously and looking for ways to meet them. What are these concerns? Fundamentally, people are afraid of losing what’s important to them: their jobs, their communities, their countries.

Globalization, free trade, and economic change have made many people better off, but have also hurt others. The American “Rust Belt”, which has lost manufacturing jobs that you could support a family with, has been replicated in regions throughout Europe. While this will always happen in a dynamic economy, the people who lose their jobs need help to get back on their feet. Since the “Neoliberal Revolution” of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, little has been done for them.

Many people also see their communities threatened by drugs and crime. While violent crime in the US has fallen over the years, many think it has gotten worse. Crime and drug addiction must be fought, but people also need to hear the truth.

Ultimately, populist voters may be most afraid of losing their countries. At a gut level, they fear being overrun by foreigners, especially Muslims, who make up about 6% of the population in France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Due to migration and birth rates, which are higher among Muslim immigrants than native Europeans, their share is growing. These demographic trends are fundamentally changing European countries, and many people don’t like it.

It’s easy to write this fear off as racism, but that would be naïve. While many Muslims have integrated well into European society, some have not. When Turkish President Erdogan tells Turks in Europe to have more children and calls them the future of Europe, fear of demographic changes is hardly irrational.

Finally, the European Union has become a favorite whipping boy for populists, who argue it’s undemocratic and a project of the elites. The EU certainly needs to be reformed, but its biggest problem is ineffectiveness, not heavy-handedness. The EU’s inability to help the southern periphery overcome the last recession and its failure to handle the refugee crisis suggest we need a stronger Union, not a weaker one.

These basic problems – jobs and wages, crime and drugs, migration and integration, and the EU’s ineffectiveness – are difficult to solve. But the future of Europe, and of the West, will depend on how well we do it.

Jesus Is Lord – and Trump Isn’t

March 15, 2017 / rampinelli

The gates of Hell will not prevail.

March 15, 2017

For those of us who are politically to the left of the far right, the time since November 8 has been depressing, and the two months since January 20 have been downright shocking. We may have hoped that the reality TV star whom a minority of voters elected president would suddenly act like one, but it’s clear our hopes have been dashed.

Every day, it seems, a new outrage awaits. Trump’s inauguration speech, with its coarse nationalism of “America First”, was quickly followed by “alternative facts” about inauguration attendance. He followed with the speech at CIA headquarters, where he hinted about stealing Iraqi oil. Then came the chaos at the borders, when Trump’s ill-prepared executive order barred entry by anyone with a passport from one of seven Muslim countries, including permanent residents of the United States.

While our attention is now being held by revelations of the Trump campaign’s frighteningly close ties to Vladimir Putin’s hostile government, Republicans in Congress are pushing their extremist agenda, from eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency to repealing the Affordable Care Act.

But far worse than anything Congress is doing is the reign of Trump and his inner circle. Steve Bannon, a white supremacist and godfather of the “alt-right”, is Trump’s most influential advisor. He was quoted after the election saying “Darkness is good: Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That’s power.” But this admirer of darkness would have no power if Donald J. Trump were a different sort of man. An extreme narcissist who cares not a bit for truth or reality, he’s addicted to the adulation of his “base”, who apparently are living in an imaginary world of their own making. Fake news, alternative facts, attacks on the press, bans on refugees: Could anything worse happen to our country?

President Trump reminds me of a narcissistic Roman emperor, like Nero or Caligula, or maybe Commodus. Netflix’s series “Roman Empire: Reign of Blood” tells the story of Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, who becomes emperor when his father dies. The parallel to our times is striking. Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher and a great emperor, somewhat like the constitutional scholar Barack Obama, while Commodus was a narcissist who cared only about his pleasure and the people’s adulation. After a bloody and incompetent reign, Commodus was murdered. And the chaos that followed, in which five emperors succeeded each other in just one year, should be a warning to anyone who thinks assassination is the solution.

While the Trump presidency will certainly put our country to the test, Christians need not fear. In the Roman Empire, Christians said “Jesus is Lord, and Caesar isn’t.” Christians today can likewise say, “Jesus is Lord, and Trump isn’t.”

That doesn’t mean that President Trump and his modern-day Rasputin Steve Bannon can’t do a lot of harm. We know from history that Christian countries can fall. The Western Roman Empire fell to Aryan Germanic tribes in the 5^th century. Invading Muslim Arab armies wrested historic Christian lands – Palestine, Syria, Egypt, North Africa – from the Eastern Roman Empire, and then went on to conquer Spain. In the 13^th century, Mongols vanquished the Kievan Rus, today’s Russia and Ukraine, and in the 15^th century, the Ottoman Turks occupied Constantinople and reigned over much of the Balkans. In the previous century, Communism took over the Russian Empire and then subjugated Eastern Europe, brutally suppressing Christianity. Jesus promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His church, but he didn’t say our kingdoms would stand or we’d be free from persecution.

Still, history shows that God’s people also triumph. A Christian community still exists in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, though threatened by war and Muslim extremists. Spain was reconquered over 770 years. The Balkans threw off the Ottoman yoke and later Communist rule. Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Russia today are again Christian, at least nominally. And Christianity in China is experiencing the most rapid growth in the world today.

The United States of America is not the church, and the gates of Hell can certainly prevail against it. The Trump Administration, supported by Republicans in Congress, could usher in the decline and fall of America. But our country has walked through fire before. The Civil War killed hundreds of thousands and threatened to destroy the country, but in the end, the Union prevailed, and the cancer of slavery was excised. America came through the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the Cold War, and it abolished its own form of Apartheid, Jim Crow. We survived the Vietnam War and Watergate. We can now survive Trump.

The crucible of Trump’s reign will test us greatly. We might lose our democracy and turn into an authoritarian state, as happened to Russia under Putin. But if we win, we can usher in a new age, hinted at under President Obama, where we as a country move toward greater freedom, justice and prosperity for all Americans and serve as a force for good in the world.

I believe this can be our future, because: Jesus is Lord – and Trump isn’t.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9 (NIV)