Love at a Reasonable Price

You know what?
Donald Trump worked against democratic norms, rules, institutions, and balances of power in his presidency.
Then in 2020 he spent months trying to lie and cheat the American people out of their sovereign decision in the 2020 presidential election.
Then we had these four years for the country to say that that behavior is not Okay.
And the GOP took that time to not repudiate Donald Trump’s actions, but to at every level bow to him, excuse and/or echo his crimes.

What you GOP have done is say, “Oh, exchange democracy for a system in which the president is a dictator who uses law to perform crimes against the law and the citizens of the nation?? Hmmmm, well, and we’d get to win and shove the democrats faces into the dirt, make them bleed a little or maybe even a lot — not sure how much, guess we’ll all find out together — ? Hmmmm. You know what: Okay, sure! I’m in!”
That’s what you’ve done.

How is that not a knife in my gut?
How is that not a crime against both of us and against the human spirit?
How is that not a crime against God and man?
It is.
It very much is.

What am I to do?
What am I to do with what you have done?
You’ve lined up with political evil.
What is the logical result of your submission to political evil?
If you win, political crime’s primed and ready to go: a government turned against its own citizens, using the tools of law to suppress freedom, justice, and competency in the name of “I WIN FOREVER, SUCKERS!”

What you are doing is agreeing to crime, to evil.

What am I to do?
You have hurt me so much.

Now we gently stop you, or you cruelly oppress first us, and then yourselves.
Because once you put crime in charge, crime and nothing and no one else, is in charge.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

A wife floats in on butterfly wings
A loving family parachutes to the ground
A vocation’s carried by elephant caravan
And dancing deer share insights profound

Her dew-wet wings enfold your nakedness
Their well-placed faith restores your own
Its clear necessity: a blessedness
Their prancing speaks like God on the phone

It’s great how all now falls right into place
Even Michael Johnson apologizes
for lies about the presidential race!
All’s well, and everyone wises up
Because your wife finally floated in
on beautiful gossamer butterfly wings.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copryright: AMW

They are so wrong.
Whose madness exceeds whose?
They are so wrong; doesn’t make him so right.

Oh the project so vital

Except the project is a waste
And without the project he’s a ghost
For there was only ever this work
And now the work seems like noise
And all he ever does is waste
time energy effort passion

The project is done
But without the project, there’s nothing
that matters, nothing that counts
It’s been lonely, but there was a purpose
It’s gotten grim, but there was a solace
It’s worn boring, but there was a point
Now it’s jut lonely, grim, boring, no point

The project is lost
But without the project, there’s only work
not the worthy work of the project, but the empty work of treading water
Without the project, there’s only effort
but not the breathing effort of Beatuy, but only the gasping effort of organizing your things as you wait to die

The project meant something
Jobs and paying rent meant nothing
The project meant something
Paying US$ to a touch a woman’s shoulder
meant
means
is
leftover confetti
water in hull the pumps ringing and orders too

The water rises slowly
He says he’s sorry to the wall still facing the wall in timeout forever
The water rises gently
But drowning makes you struggle, thrashing about, disturbing the slow and gentle movement of the cold salty sea
The water rises slowly
He tells them it’s a mix-up, but he’s not sure who he’s talking to or exactly what about or why everyone’s allowed to know except him
The water rises quietly
He remembers nothing except for trying to remember and for trying to tell them what he feels and what kind of memories those feelings seem to contain even as they constrain them, swallow them, leave him only with a cut they don’t want to hear about he doesn’t want to talk about but in time it wears you through more than just loneliness and frustration something deeper hollower more consumingly exhausting

Different people on different slopes
with different ideas and different jokes
But all altogether wrong, almost as wrong as they are indifferent to the truth of this faltering pirouette
Because they don’t care, not near nor far is there a glance that wants to while
long enough to know

What slices your gut
What twists the blade ever deeper
What laughs you down into shag rug on plywood floor
what wins by making you always lose
what wins like Trump wins like crime wins like abuse wins like lies win like might-makes-right wins like meanness wins like cruelty wins
what wins like that, with such violence that win-lose inevitably becomes lose-lose, that calls win-win just a loser’s whine

Whatever
The project will stand again
or it won’t
His wife will float in on butterfly wings to rescue him from the lonely hurt and dogging frustration
or she won’t
He will stand upright within himself
or he won’t
The country will choose to share or thuggery will choose itself more and more, with evermore insistent dishonesty and cruelly violent certainty
And these strange trickling sounds that he’s been told are just the vapors of his own madness will either invent real reasons to justify real harm or will fade away into the silence some say they already are
So whatever
It’s not as if
He’s done a great job
dressing the wound and returning nobly and effectively to the holy wars
It’s not like that
It’s more like
a gray squirrel
flinch-flickering his bushy tail
as he bounds across the grass
at the sure-bark of a fatold darkbrown proudround oak tree
with the worms
mindlessly
(or, if his bio-theology’s correct, almost but not quite completely mindlessly)
chugging dirt
in every possible direction
through the soft pitchblack earth below
and some child
crosslegged on the soft bending grasses
picking dandelions
late now in the season
dandelions turned white and puffy
dandelions you can blow into the wind
a wind to carry the tiny fluff-tipped, seed-ballasted sticks
here and there
this way and that
eager to go and never you mind

I’ve heard of a birthday ledger
where I can move a few dollars
to make you a little richer
I guess that’s what’s called for

Here in the bee-loud glen,
where our cartwheels kick the sun,
and we with flowers laugh, to remember when
the world was new and all was one —
a giddy churning joy.
But God giggles deeper than the noise,
so nothing’s ever changing —
just Laughter rearranging.

Copyright: AMW

Weird is not the problem

The problem is not weird people or nasty people or deplorable people
The problem is embracing lying as a political tool, might-makes-right as a value system, autocracy as a form of government, and bowing to an autocratic regime (where talking back means risking the safety of you and your loved ones) as our new way of life.
That is the problem here.

Mean is the problem
Dishonest and manipulative is the problem
Forcing your will on others is the problem
Pretending your will is God’s will is the problem
Choosing autocracy over democracy is the problem

Imagining you can trust a thugocracy to do your bidding is the problem.
Governments of the Donald for the Donald and by the Donald don’t serve anyone except Donald.
Their only question is: How to keep Donald important, powerful, wealthy, fawned over?
Such a government cannot govern well for the simple reason that governing well is not even a goal.
And such a tyrannical temper-tantrum and face-stuff of a government will do whatever Donald thinks will help Donald consolidate power: maybe today abortion is illegal; maybe tomorrow there’s a one-child rule, and after that you have to have abortions — whatever it takes to keep the power in one tiny little place, in one hot little hand!

Not that if Donald succeeds in turning We-the-People into We-the-Donald, this nation will always remain We-the-Donald
Not even the great* Donald Trump can abide forever
However, We-the-Donald becomes We-the-Vance (or whoever hangs on long enough) much more easily and naturally than it goes back to being We-the-People

*[“He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great,” the US president reportedly told Republican donors.

“And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot some day,” Trump added, according to CNN which obtained a recording of what it described as an upbeat, joke-filled speech.]
[‘Maybe we’ll give that a shot’: Donald Trump praises Xi Jinping’s power grab from The Guardian, published March 3, 2018]

Weird is not the problem today
Just like deplorable Trump supporters weren’t the problem in 2016

The problem existed somewhat in 2016; but is much worse today — now that these eight years have taught Donald that his style is more dictator than democratic president; and now that the Republican Party has managed to sideline those willing to stand up to Donald lying about the 2020 election and trying to steal the 2020 election, while also elevating those most willing to embrace Donald’s lying and cheating.

The problem is that Donald Trump is not fit to serve as president of the United States — largely because he’s never learned to value serving anything except his own greeds and ego-trips

The problem is that Donald Trump is a conman conning us all — no matter how we vote — out of the democratic process.
He is a selfish fool and systems that reward selfish foolishness are corrupt systems.
A healthy system rewards selfless service and wise speech and action.

A healthy system does not seriously consider handing power over to a man who worked to undermine democratic norms, rules, procedures, and institutions in his first term of office; who blatantly for months tried to steal the last presidential election; who continues to lie about that election and everything else; who routinely warms us up to the idea that he’s going to weaponize the DOJ to go after political rivals, punish the media for criticizing him, fix everything so his supporters won’t ever have to vote again, and otherwise
— as abusers do —
slowly make his way to our shoulders, down our backs, around to our bellies, then back again but now to the lower back, then caressing the tops of our buttocks, then …

Please let’s all here and now stop Trump
And then continue to work together to demand that our representatives in government
tell the truth
(Donald’s lying is off the [previous norm’s] charts; if that becomes the new norm, how will democracy survive?)
and put the democratic process, checks and balances, and the universal rule of law ahead of their own power.

Please let’s together gently but firmly say
No! to the GOP
until the GOP says
No! to Donald and
No! to those who would tag along with Donald and risk our shared democracy for the power to force their will on the rest of us.

The problem is not weird people or nasty people
The problem is embracing lying as a political tool, might-makes-right as a value system, autocracy as a form of government, and bowing to an autocratic regime (where talking back means risking the safety of you and your loved ones) as our new way of life.
That is the problem here.

We’re trying to win the hearts and minds of the nation
We’re fighting for the soul of the nation

“Weird” “nasty” “deplorable” are put-downs
And put-downs are never the whole truth

How can we fight for the whole truth unless we stick with
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God?

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

…

By 2016, four decades of neoliberal governance had created inequalities of income and wealth not seen since the 1920s. Labor unions were in decline. Workers received a smaller and smaller share of the profits they produced. Finance claimed a growing share of the economy but flowed more into speculative assets (like risky derivatives) than into productive assets (factories, homes, roads, schools) in the real economy.

…

Mr. Biden’s ambitious public investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, jobs and clean energy recalled the muscular role of government during the New Deal. So did his support for collective bargaining and the revival of antitrust law. It made him one of the most consequential presidents of modern times.

…

When he [Biden] broke with the era of neoliberal globalization, reasserting government’s role in regulating markets for the common good, he did so with little fanfare or explanation. He did not acknowledge that his own party had been complicit in the policies that had deepened the divide between winners and losers. Perhaps he was guided more by political instinct than thematic vision; perhaps he did not want to highlight his break with the market-friendly philosophy of the president he had served. His American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act — in the end, it all made for impressive policy but themeless politics. His presidency was a legislative triumph but an evocative failure.

[From How Harris Can Win, guest essay by political philosophy professor Michael J. Sandel, published in The NY Times July 27, 2024]

“The bird upon the wing
Will never give his power
To the man who would be King”
[John Stewart, “The Man Who Would Be King”,
From his 1992 album Bullets in the Hourglass]

“Ah, once
We were dreamers on the rise
We were the sun
Where the sun never shines
And we were gold
Where the night bird only flies
Oh, that’s a long time you know
For that kind of wind to blow
A long time ago
We were dreamers on the rise”
[John Stewart, “Dreamers on the Rise”,
From his 1985 album The Last Campaign]

“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
[Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”,
Written 1833, published in his 1842 collection Poems]

What would we?
Lucky folk who share the keys
to a people-led land
Gripped not so well as we’d please
But here yet, still in our hands.

Here, oh magic spell,
rare and precious well
where human hearts combine
beyond pomp or empty swell
to together sound and find
Our path ourselves to tell
Needn’t be an oligarch to keep one’s children safe
Don’t have to swallow lies and crime for their sakes
Why, here a president’s a temporary assistant
to us all — to what we all together are!
Here while we yet listen well and only assent
to those ready to serve this brittle star,
that we might soonday know
a yet wider wiser glow

What form we?
A poem, a thought?
Ah let it
Coalesce around
A Beauty
that answers only
to the Love
that chooses all.
Help us
together sing

Kamala and us all are
Not heroes saints or saviors
Just people
With jobs to do

Before the Civil War
Before the great depression
And lately again
So much money at the top
So many feeling squashed

Maybe this time
No great calamity
Merely a shared vision
Maybe this time
A shared heart song
could be enough
to stir the pot
share the wealth
with meaningful work
and a safety net
that complements
work thought democracy community

Don’t worry, Mr. Big Shot!
It’s always way better
to be a billionaire
In our free USA
Than an oligarch
Wrapped in Putin
and his bloody fingernails
You can still be so rich
as to do whatever
You ever want
Just not quite so rich
so as to
buy our government

Besides
People who rule for power
Don’t govern well
!It’s not their goal!
And so in the long run
(even setting aside
having always to decide
between abetting political crime and looking after your loved ones)
everyone does better in a country
where the leaders know they are working for their countrymen,
and that just for a time — just for a time lending a hand

How to work together
For ourselves and each other?
Our job is to listen well
And act with great care
Gently the truth to tell
Gently this treasure share
and expand,
that all in the land
might better stand,
might better lend a hand

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

What sneaky sleuth slays what mystery and dream
What rascal truth hollows sympathy and fame
?
Whose violence rings the heaping hills, where gleams
The red swollen setting sun, ‘midst a song of blame and shame
?

Who wakens slow to the stench of crime embraced?
How repeated lies, blessed by fear disdain ambition lust
So swelter swell so muddling mix in the caged-rat haste
of a people lost from each other and from their sacred trust
?

Who slipped into the keep with guard and judge asleep
Who turned the wheel to raise the gate, that sword might steal
Round our ramparts steep, might stroll across our moat so deep
To hack our joyous order — ballots-anchored in the commonweal
?

For what?
For power’s draw you serve power’s worm
For shared sureness you bow to lies
To splice sliced scripture to law, you turn
away the Light that makes a smile wise.

And so your grin grows jagged, cruel and coarse
I watch from afar yet feel the blade twist my gut
You think me such shit it’s not crime to force
Your will on me, no sin to choose lies over what
You’ve made me out to be.

But this our compass ship
Compact and delicate
Not invincible nor inviolate
Held together by nought
But honest speech,
careful effort,
good intention

This is all we have,
The both of us
To keep us safe
From might makes right
From “real” and “true” as empty weapons
From “God” as human will stealing human law

Come back to me, broke down though I be
Come back to us; remember, and again see:

We already share a culture and a purpose:

Aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent,
loving-kind, joyfully-sharing:

Together sharing
the rights and responsibilities
of a free people.
we nudge our speech and government
gently
carefully
lovingly
towards the better
and away the worse —
Never sacrificing
what we already all share
for what we tell ourselves we are

We are one in the Love that chooses all
We will not
— No matter the lurching certainties —
sacrifice the
rules, laws, institutions, norms and bounds
that keep we the people in power
and our leaders
serving honestly, with good will,
accuracy, competency,
within limits appropriate
temporary rulers and lifelong citizens
— equals under the law, partners in the joy.

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: Andy Watson

When do you know?
When it is too late?
How do you explain
what’s you-obvious but they-invisible?

Where will you go?
Will you move in time?

Can we yet reclaim
wider considerations?

All the clues assembled for all to see!
Have they lost their minds, their hearts?
Or are you completely insane?

You walk now through a whirl
upside down and getting upside-downer for years
every time you think the cruel silliness has played itself out
it doubles down and leaps up again — this time with more adherents, more normalcy

Surely this is an abuser groping first your shoulders
and then down your back
and then around your waist
and every step getting you
and all the witnesses
a little
a little more used to
a little more sympathetic for
a little more inured to
a little more resigned to
a little more ready for
his deeper purpose

Or are you just chicken little?

Are you a some crazy and/or corrupt wolf-crier?
Or are the wolves all assembled,
wearing now snazzy gowns of mere bluster
and
different but not therefore evil interpretations
of the
still of course
oh so treasured
government of by and for the people,
wearing now the merry certainty of politics as usual in a land where voters always get a say;
but underneath, some knowingly and others perhaps not so much,
carrying the tools their leader’s been warming us up to for the last eight years
loss of power prestige opportunity for those who oppose his will, prisons for those who really annoy him, a media tamed to follow his lead, a judiciary understanding the law must bend to serve only his greater ends, protests violently silenced, elections that he — or his chosen acolytes — always win because of course the winners must always win (only stands to reason!)
?

Who is crazy in this madness?
Who is sane in this unbalance?

In democratic republics (where the citizens serve as a final check on madness, corruption, incompetency, and mean lying rotten behavior), the government is incentivized to honestly, openly, and competently seeking win-wins for all the citizens.
In autocracies (where the citizens learn every day a little better that disagreeing only jeopardizes the safety and security of themselves and their loved ones), the government is incentivized to get and keep power — whatever the cost to the citizens of the nation.
The former is a spiritual good because the government and citizens are incentivized to together find a way forward for all.
The latter harms individual and collective spiritual growth because all day long every day one is deciding between the safety security and happiness of them and their loved ones and telling the truth, doing the right thing, saying no to corruption, cruelty, dishonesty, mean boring crime.

Where are we on the spectrum now?

Is not the RNC falling to the evil?
If they win here and now, is this GOP not likely to drag the us all into a great crime against ourselves, the world, and the soul of things?
Is this not a great folly?
Are the applauds in the RNC convention not a crime?
Not necessarily applauds for a certain and definitive termination of our democratic republic; but applauds nonetheless for happily subjecting us all to the very real threat of a transition from rule of the people to the rule of those politicians and oligarchs who are wise enough to get in now?

What is going on?
Who is crazy here?
I say you are risking turning the USA into Putin’s Russia.
You say I am full of baloney.
Who is crazy?

Or are you only saying I am full of baloney out loud?
In your heart of hearts has the worm turned?
Are you ready and even kind of thrilled to get in now, while the getting’s good?
But don’t you see (perhaps you see; but perhaps you do not yet feel): almost no one gets in and stays in when the law turns to crime.

The question of evil at this moment
is a vague question
a question about how the worm turns within mere ideas, mere stories, narratives, possible futures

It’s been a good run, USA
all these years of having our cake and eating it too
all these years of freedom to think, speak, create
The joy of being a US citizen
has been
the joy of
children caught up in the safety
of parents who provide and are kind and reasonable
in
the joy of
a happy home
the joy of
not being abused

No, this joy
has not been for us all in all our times
But a government of by and for the people
can and does
learn from its mistakes

If we can keep this democratic republic,
we can

what?

We can what?

America?

I see two roads,
the one almost certainly towards folly;
and the other probably away from the folly
and maybe even —
if chosen sincerely carefully and gently so gently, remembering the Love that makes everything Okay and without which nothing is Okay —
towards renewal,
towards a widening
of the consideration, of the joy, of the shared wholesome fun, of the happy home

What does it feel like?

It feels like
follow Trump and his current crew where they lead
and we will really have to fight to keep our shared sovereignty over this nation;
but we
lack the cohesion
and the fight
and the shared love
to really fight to keep our shared sovereignty over this nation

It feels like
maybe we could muster enough shared insight here and now
to yet stop this freight train from leaving the station

but after that
mmmm idunno doesn’t look good
well, it looks blurry: it doesn’t feel good

What should we do?

Am I crazy?

What is going on?

Author and Editor: Bartleby and Amble
Copyright: Andy Watson

Let’s separate republicans into those who would help Trump steal an election and those who would choose to instead protect the rules, norms, institutions, and rules of our shared democratic republic.

Then let’s only put those who would help him steal the election in his next administration.

And let’s get together a group of thinkers dedicated to figuring out how to manipulate the constitution to force their will on everyone else, and they can be the think tanks guiding Trump’s next administration.

And let’s rally the billionaires behind Trump so his coffers overflow.

And let’s have Biden’s mind slip and the democrats turn on him but not actually change our ticket, or maybe let’s change our ticket when it is too late to gather momentum behind a candidate.

And let’s graze Trump’s ear with a would-be assassin’s bullet, have him fist bump the sky, and so be both a hero and victim. How can you criticize a victim of and hero within the democratic process for trying to harm democracy? And not enough people believed you before. Why? Are you chicken little? Is the atmosphere too much he-said, she-said? Is the hate of the other side so clear and present that people can’t tell the difference between well-intentioned and essentially-honest and politicians and a man who lives for power and glory, who has no interest in or sympathy for democracy and the universal rule of law, who is interested in getting maintaining and exploiting power much more than he is interested in finding what’s best for everyone, and who doesn’t think the words “true” and “false” are anything except weapons?
Let’s do everything wrong.

And then see if we become Russia.
Another place where the only way to survive is through cynicism and/or silence, where everyone “knows” that politics is just always corrupt and that only fools speak out too loudly against the leadership.
A fun game, this Russian roulette.

How evil will it get?
Will innocent people lose their jobs for disagreeing publicly with Trump-or-MAGA?
Will innocent people lose their savings for speaking out against him?
Their standing in society?
Their access to good schools? To good food? Safe drinking water?
Will dissenters disappear like they do in Russia?
What will really happen if we give this fool the government in these terms?
Why do it to yourself?
Why does a nation shoot itself in the head?
Out of hatred for itself?
Like a mind at war with itself descends into vice, addiction, crime, violence?
Have we learned to hate ourselves so much that we would rather submit to the tyranny of a fool and his lackeys than to accept the imperfection of a workable democracy?
How bad will it get?
Surely best case scenario is real and lasting damage done to the structure of our government.
Why do we fall in line for that?
But it feels like we’ve become a mesmerized little mouse, waiting for the cobra to strike — certain that we can’t win and thus hoping against hope that cobras biting and swallowing you isn’t so bad after all, isn’t at all like we’ve always thought it was.
But no, that’s not it; the truth is we don’t know how much we’re risking by electing Trump.
Certainly, it seems that we are at least signing up to be in a desperate fight to try to get back to some normal baseline of democratic normalcy. How could it be different for a nation that has watched a man try to steal an election and then continue to double-down on the lie that the election was in fact stolen from him, and then not just elect that man, but also elect him now with the people who refused to help him steal the last election replaced by those who fall over themselves parroting his lies about a stolen (or at least somehow “suspect”) election, and with a plan to fill bureaucratic posts with political appointees motivated primarily by a desire to stay on the king’s good side, and … ???
Who is to blame?
How bad will it be?
Is there anything we could do now?

Jesus Christ engineered how many wars?
Jesus Christ demanded the Spanish Inquisition.
Jesus Christ was agitating for the conquests of the New World, the subjugation of the Natives.
Jesus Christ supported the slave traders and Jesus Christ was complicit in the Holocaust.
Jesus Christ supports the regime of Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.
The list goes on and on.

And now Jesus Christ is helping to elect Donald Trump and to organize around him a group of thinkers who will help him to shore up power in ways that will — when paired to this man who has already shown a taste for thugocracy and a contempt for good government — almost surely undermine democracy, perhaps to the point where we must spend all our energy just trying to get back to a functioning democracy, maybe even to the point where that’s not really an option.

What can we conclude but that Jesus Christ is an evil genius, and we poor humans are all just pawns in the mechanisms of him and his fellow evil geniuses as they coolly smash the world to smithereens, not so much for private gain as for the joy of hurting people by helping foolish pride and incompetent feeling and thought rule.

Mike Johnson, you have spent your life worshipping which Jesus?
I think he was a great political leader, right?
A warrior who sought to restore Christian Kings to the throne, right?
A man willing to silence conversation to silence dissent to force people to mime faith in God and scripture — mime faith, or else! Right?
Jesus would’ve much preferred a corrupt but thereby perpetual theocratic reign over a functioning democracy, right?
Jesus believed that the ends justify the means, right?
Jesus Christ hates abortion but would love to fast-track the death penalty, right?
Jesus Christ can follow the logic of how we can say the 2020 election was not fairly won because states made some changes in good faith and under the current common understanding of the constitution — an understanding that was actually confirmed in a subsequent Supreme Court ruling — , changes whose impact on the election was not large enough to actually change the outcome of the elections in any swing states. Right? Jesus can follow how you should use a novel, after-the-fact interpretation of the constitution to throw out not only the votes effected by these rule changes, but the entire state’s votes — not in all the states where such rule changes happened (since they, due to the pandemic, happened in most states), but just in enough swing states to swing the election to Donald Trump. Right? Jesus pats you on the back and says, “My good and faithful servant!” when he watches you trying to undermine a still-functioning democracy with specious constitutional lawyering.
And this talk of how God chooses rulers? Only in the sense that God chooses everything, including every act of political evil and personal evil, every war fought for human power wealth lust pride, every massacre in the name of human pride power lust, every murder, every rape, every cruelty. Only in that sense does God choose rulers. Is there no other sense? What about the sense of God choosing through humans turning to God and becoming wiser, gentler, kinder, more loving, more alive? But God as the immediate souls-speaking rather than the external flow-of-history chooser of human events — that works so much better in a democracy than a tyranny, because in a democracy the people are given both the right and the duty to find the Truth in a way that is meaningful to them and to act on that Truth not just secretly, privately, help-your-family-stay-out-of-trouble-y, but publicly, together discussing and shaping their shared government.

Steve Bannon thinks we’re in the midst of a spiritual war.
He is right.
Because the soul loses when governments fall to the thugocracy of might makes right, “truth” and “false” are just tools for crushing the opposition, and hey: you have a choice: you can either go along with these crimes, or you can lose wealth, prestige, power, a safe place to live and safe food and drinking water, and maybe — if you persist — your freedom and/or life. In a democracy people are not forced to choose between the security of their loved ones and working for a more competent, honest, and just government. What a blessing!
And because the soul loses when the American experiment of a people bound by a shared commitment to aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving-kind and joyfully-sharing thought and action within a system of checks and balances and regular fair elections that allow the citizens to simultaneously steer their conversation and government, while most fundamentally serving as a final check on madness and corruption in government — The soul loses when that experiment is replaced by the same old boring culture of “us-versus-them”.
We already have a shared culture in this country: a commitment to an openness in government, democracy, freedom of speech and from reprisals for one’s speech, a government responsive to the people, justice and equality under the rule of law, and the belief that all humans are essentially the same and share certain inalienable rights — included, but not limited to, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That is the culture that makes a land healthy, not cultures that pretend xyz people “are not like us”.

But all this is by the by.
For Jesus Christ loves to parade, loves to pray loudly from the best seats in the halls of great power, loves to smile proudly as he uses any means — even to the point of replacing democracy with tyranny — to get and maintain political power. Jesus believes might makes right, that lies are useful tools and weapons for getting and maintaining holy power, that the only thing that really matters is winning and maintaining power.
And who are we to argue with Jesus Christ?