For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.
They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.
And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family,
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities,
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance,
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.
And yet today, you openly give a “mulligan” to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.
And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion.
With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.
With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.
With him, you see only Providence.They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.
Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.
You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.
You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
You’ve lost the plot.
And most of all you’ve lost your soul.
The G.O.P.’s Bonfire of the Sanities
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Or, for that matter, the very idea that the F.B.I. is dedicated to destroying the Trump presidency. Recall this is the same bureau that, wittingly or not, probably did more than any other arm of government to create the Trump presidency in the first place, in part because disgruntled F.B.I. field agents were intent on forcing James Comey to reopen the Clinton email investigation 11 days before the election.
.. None of this would have surprised Hofstadter, whose essay traces the history of American paranoia from the Bavarian Illuminati and the Masons to New Dealers and Communists in the State Department. “I call it the paranoid style,” Hofstadter wrote, “simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.” What better way to describe a Republican Party that thinks America has more to fear from a third-tier F.B.I. agent in Washington who doesn’t like the president than it does from a first-tier K.G.B. agent in Moscow who, for a time at least, liked the president all too well?
.. The paranoid style, he noted, was typically a function of powerlessness. “Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed.”
.. Today, Republicans control every branch of government, and nearly every aspect of the Russia investigation. Robert Mueller, a Republican, was appointed special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, another Republican, and a Trump appointee. Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, supposedly accuses the F.B.I. of anti-Trump perfidies in a secret four-page memo, but he won’t share the memo with the director of the F.B.I. — who’s also a Trump appointee.
.. The principal lesson of paranoia is the ease with which politically aroused people can mistake errors for deceptions, coincidences for patterns, bumbling for dereliction, and secrecy for treachery.
.. The failure to know the difference, combined with the desire for a particular result, is what accounts for the paranoid style.
.. America already has one party that’s lost its mind. We don’t need another.
What Syria Teaches Us About ‘America First’
Though he promised to defeat ISIS, he specifically eschewed any further “nation building.” That left it open to questions about how Islamist terrorists would be prevented from retaking power once he was done “kicking ISIS’ ass,” as he repeatedly claimed he would do. The “America First” tag seemed not so much an assertion of priorities as it was an appeal to those who saw the country as a perpetual victim of nefarious foreign influences.
.. As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced last week, the United States will not be pulling its troops out of Syria. To the contrary, the administration is in this fight for the long haul, and though it will not be labeling any of its activities there as “nation building,” the implication is clear and directly contradicts the spirit of the Trump campaign’s version of America First.
.. Trump knows that ISIS arose out of the vacuum left by Obama’s precipitous retreat from Iraq, which threw away the victory won by Bush’s 2007 surge. If ISIS is to stay defeated and not be replaced by yet another, even more barbarous, Islamist group, it will require an American commitment to stay in the combat zone.
.. Far from being neo-isolationist, or anything else that ought to bring to mind the phrase “America First,” Trump’s presidency has turned out to be little different from what we might have expected from almost any of the other Republican candidates (besides Rand Paul)
.. But the actual policies pursued by the administration could be described as mainstream Republican in their reliance on the assertion of American power abroad. Rather than governing like a president who fears foreign involvement, this is an administration willing to fight in Syria and stay there even if it means antagonizing Russia.
.. Trump’s version of “America First” is turning out to be nothing more than a reassertion of mainstream Republican thinking about the need to assert U.S. power to defend our interests and values. Like his conservative governance on many domestic issues, Trump’s Syria policy is one more proof that if you can ignore the tweets, the gaffes, the thin skin, and the impulse to rage at his foes (which, admittedly, is often impossible because the president not only can’t help himself but is actively encouraged to behave in this manner by much of his base)
The Price I Paid for Taking On Larry Nassar
But on Aug. 29, 2016, when I filed the first police complaint against Larry Nassar for sexually abusing me when I was a 15-year-old girl and chose to release a very public story detailing what he had done, it felt like a shot in the dark. I came as prepared as possible: I brought medical journals showing what real pelvic floor technique looks like; my medical records, which showed that Larry had never mentioned that he used such techniques even though he had penetrated me; the names of three pelvic floor experts ready to testify to police that Larry’s treatment was not medical; other records from a nurse practitioner documenting my disclosure of abuse in 2004; my journals from that time; and a letter from a neighboring district attorney vouching for my character. I worried that any less meant I would not be believed — a concern I later learned was merited.
.. I lost my church. I lost my closest friends as a result of advocating for survivors who had been victimized by similar institutional failures in my own community.
I lost every shred of privacy.
.. When a new friend searched my name online or added me as a friend on Facebook, the most intimate details of my life became available long before we had even exchanged phone numbers. I avoided the grocery stores on some days, to make sure my children didn’t see my face on the newspaper or a magazine. I was asked questions about things no one should know when I least wanted to talk.
.. And the effort it took to move this case forward — especially as some called me an “ambulance chaser” just “looking for a payday” — often felt crushing.
.. These were the very cultural dynamics that had allowed Larry Nassar to remain in power.
.. Some were abused when they were as young as 6 years old.
Some were victimized nearly three decades ago, others only days before my report was filed. Far worse, victims began to come forward who had tried to sound the alarm years before
.. they were suffering deep wounds from having been silenced, blamed and often even sent back for continued abuse.
.. More than 200 women have now alleged abuse by Larry Nassar... at least 14 coaches, trainers, psychologists or colleagues had been warned of his abuse... a vast majority of those victims were abused after his conduct was first reported by two teenagers to M.S.U.’s head gymnastics coach as far back as 1997... Because most pedophiles present a wholesome persona, they are able to ingratiate themselves into communities... Research shows that pedophiles are also reported at least seven times on average before adults take the reports of abuse seriously and act on them.
.. a symptom of a much deeper cultural problem — the unwillingness to speak the truth against one’s own community.
.. The result of putting reputation and popularity ahead of girls and young women?
.. extending or removing the statute of limitations on criminal and civil charges related to sexual assault, and strengthening mandatory reporting laws
.. Predators rely on community protection to silence victims and keep them in power. Far too often, our commitment to our political party, our religious group, our sport, our college or a prominent member of our community causes us to choose to disbelieve or to turn away from the victim.
.. Fear of jeopardizing some overarching political, religious, financial or other ideology — or even just losing friends or status — leads to willful ignorance of what is right in front of our own eyes, in the shape and form of innocent and vulnerable children.