Post election words to my mod/lib friends

[ET]

[Tim Bonney]

ET, you and I seldom agree. But I thought what you wrote above was well written and made a lot of sense to me. And, yes, I think now that we probably should have gone with Bernie.

[Haruo]

Nothing to apologize for. I agree with a surprisingly large part of what you said.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

My thinking (and emotions) are almost exactly as ET described. I avoid F. Graham's stuff, so I didn't have an opinion on him.

[Tim Bonney]

[Dave Roberts]

ET, I appreciate your analysis of the election. Many of us share some of your concerns. I appreciate your concerns more than you may understand, even when I disagree with some of them. Thanks for sharing what you felt.

[William Thornton]

Some of us have noted the silliness of evangelicals on political issues and politicians for years.

[Tim Bonney]

[William Thornton]

A note of caution on all this 'evangelical' stuff: the term is seldom defined and when it is the definition is sometimes uselessly broad or vague.

I think religious liberals do a poor job of calibrating their beliefs, such as they are, to politics.

[Dave Roberts]

Strangely, I've had a couple of church members tell me since the election, "Now everyone will have to wish me 'Merry Christmas.'" That too is a strange correlation between religion and politics. I also had one add, "God will be back in the White House." I think we are living with the results of people not being able to reason through what they hear. No wonder, as William noted, "evangelical" is so seldom defined.

[Tim Bonney]

So strange. Mrs. Clinton is an active Methodist yet it is a non-Church attending inactive Presbyterian that is going to rescue Christian values?

[KeithE]

[Stephen Fox]

I've got a few blogs to do before I weigh in on this definitively. In meantime Thornton and friends can educate themselves for my insights with this background reading.

I think Fox News lies and distortions and lies by a thousand cuts are as equally to blame or more likely the reason than the points of Molly Ball though there is a lot of substance in them as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... st/507704/

And of course the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC particularly in North Carolina. I agree with Molly Worthen on the day after in the NY Times on that one, reading the Kaballah so Sandy don't go looking literally at the text.

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

http://news.furman.edu/2016/11/08/profe ... ight-2016/

Will engage Sandy later

[Stephen Fox]

http://foxofbama.blogspot.com/2016/11/m ... molly.html

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

I am fascinated by the continuing discussion of SCOTUS nominees and Trump's election. First, it is flawed logic to assume that the opportunity for appointments will always be to seats now held by progressives. The continuing assumption is that the next vacancy will be that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She may be the oldest justice, but Justice Scalia's death was not the one expected. Second, the assumption is that a justice appointed will do what the appointing POTUS expects. W appointed John Roberts who then wrote the opinion that the ACA was legal. There are many such stories in the history of the court. I think the calculus is very faulty.

[Tim Bonney]

[William Thornton]

Saw a catchy description of all the post-election hysteria on college campii where, predictably, counseling is available to the disappointed Clinton supporters, delicate snowflakes. Also available are pet therapy dogs and adult coloring books.

Someone, not me, has offered an alternative therapy: "Suck it up, buttercup."

Has a nice rhyme.

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

[Haruo]

We attend (and Mrs H is a member of) a Baptist church that was boarded up through most of World War II while all or almost all the members were incarcerated in concentration camps because of their ethnicity. "Suck it up buttercup" is an evil thing to say to these people, or to the college students who are either under threat of incarceration or deportation, or whose family members or friends are. The incarceration of ethnically Japanese Americans is being cited by Trump appointees as "precedent". The fact that our internees were not slaughtered the way the Germans' were is of little comfort given Trump's support for torture of prisoners and intentional killing of family members of terrorists. Remember King Christian even though the story is apocryphal. (The harassment and discrimination suffered by non-Japanese--white even--American Baptists who sought to visit and support the internees is bad enough, and something many are already suffering.) If you brush off the behavior and tell those victimized to "suck it up", shame on you! (I was also married during the Iran hostage crisis to a woman who was harassed and threatened at bus stops because "Americans" thought she looked like an Iranian; she was a Hindu from Fiji.)

For Jesus and humanity, I will be a Muslim.

[KeithE]