Random Electrons

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An Evening With Carrie Newcomer from WFYI Productions on Vimeo.

Carrie launched her Beautiful Not Yet tour in Bloomington, and WFYI’s video crew was there to document the event. Carrie Newcomer’s concerts are celebrations: exuberant and uplifting, yet intimate. When she returned to her roots at Bloomington’s Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, the energy and good feelings were palpable.     The program also features interviews with Carrie and renowned author Parker Palmer, whose collaboration with Carrie inspired many of her new songs.   Recorded live at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre in Bloomington, Indiana on October 15, 2016     Carrie Newcomer – vocals, guitar Gary Walters – piano Moira Smiley  - vocals Sumaia Jackson – fiddle Jordan Tice – guitar, mandolin Brandt Smith – banjo Steve Mascari – bass Cameron Bailey - percussion Marta Gudmundsdottir - cello

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Evangelical Voters in Fantasyland

A few days ago, in response to comments I made about Donald Trump’s disdain for women, an evangelical Christian friend advised me to carefully differentiate between Trump and his supporters. Trump, he said, is a flawed but worthy candidate, made to look worse by a vocal minority of supporters whose values may clash with historic Christian teachings and modern sensibilities. Candidates, my friend suggested, can’t be identified with or held responsible for what their supporters say and do, and citizens aren’t electing the rabble around the candidates, but are voting for the candidates themselves. According to my friend, while Trump’s rallies might be filled with chants of “Hang the bitch!” or “Kill her!” or “Cunt!” directed at Hillary Clinton, Trump has more respect for women.

Like many evangelical Christians, my friend is supporting a fantasy candidate. If anything is abundantly clear, it’s that Trump most definitely despises women. He belittles, demeans, exploits, insults, and assaults them.

Everyone knows about Trump’s cavalier marital infidelity, and voters have been aware of Trump’s verbal abuse of women for months – at least since Megyn Kelly called him out for describing women as “fat pigs,” “dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” If that was not enough to prove Trump’s disdain for women, this week’s revelations should have erased any doubt. Over the past eight days, we’ve learned that Trump has played a role in at least three films that firmly tie him to the sexually exploitative porno-industrial complex. And now the public is treated to audio and video recordings of Trump talking with “Today Show” host Billy Bush, boasting of sexual conquests and bragging about sexual assault, suggesting that he can just take what he wants by the sheer power of his Hollywood Walk of Fame star. When Trump tells Bush that he just kisses and gropes women that he finds physically attractive it’s like he’s writing a playbook for the sexually unhinged.

Trump’s departure from Christian teachings at this point is absolute. It’s not a matter of tone, convention, or word choice. When it comes to the ways he treats women, Trump not only falls short of Christian standards, but he falls short of human decency. In these recordings, he admits to – and celebrates – being a sexual predator. Christians should condemn that behavior for the vile filth that it is. Instead many fantasize that it doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter.

In the wake of the transcript release, some Republican politicians have begun to distance themselves from Trump, but many so-called leaders among evangelicals are unwilling to do so. Eric Metaxas’ immediate reaction on Twitter was simply dismissive, emphasizing Trump’s crude language and hairstyle: “Trump caught using foul language, combing his hair badly. Could this be the end of his campaign?” Maybe in fantasyland sexual assault is as trivial and normal as a bad combover.

These fantasies don’t end with Trump’s character, but extend to issues and policies. In response to news of the recordings, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, said that his support of Trump was never “based upon shared values,” but is based upon “common concerns about issues.” Perkins and others would be hard pressed to find evidence of that common concern in the real world. Trump has, until very recently, been vocally pro-choice, and Trump’s comments about Muslims in the United States give him no credibility on the matter of religious freedom. While Perkins is at least willing to acknowledge a divergence of values, his assumptions that Trump will prove a reliable leader on issues of common concern to the Family Research Council are fantastical to say the least.

Let me make one thing clear: Evangelical Christians shouldn’t vote for Trump. But if anyone is considering Trump, they shouldn’t try to fool themselves or others about who he is. At the moment of truth, how might they actually remind themselves who Trump really is?

When they go to vote, Evangelical supporters of Trump should carry the transcripts of these recordings and reread the sordid celebration of sexual assault and denigration of women right then and there. They should remind themselves who Trump is – who it is they’re about to throw their support behind. They should ask themselves whether they’d vote for anyone else who says these things or does what Trump admits to doing. They should wonder whether they would be – or whether they have been – up in arms if someone on the other side of the aisle said or did similar things. Then they should count the cost of the integrity, consistency, credibility, and witness they will sacrifice.

Evangelical Christians tempted to vote for Trump should acknowledge that they don’t get to vote for “fantasy Trump,” the decent person with a loud minority of indecent supporters. They don’t get to vote for the billionaire-real-estate-mogul-outsider (such a thing does not exist – billionaire real estate moguls can be mavericks, but they can’t be outsiders) who supports religious liberty (he doesn’t), protects the unborn (no reason to believe he will), loves “the blacks,” and plans to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices. Just like the fantasy Trump who respects women, that candidate isn’t on the ballot.

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If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary. But the mysticism of Catholic meditation — of the Rosary, of Benediction, or simple contemplative prayer — is a tradition in search of rediscovery. The monasteries — opened up to more lay visitors — could try to answer to the same needs that the booming yoga movement has increasingly met.

Andrew Sullivan: My Distraction Sickness — and Yours (via ayjay)

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It’s hard to ignore the hideous character failings at the core of the man, and for this purpose maybe especially his fundamental infidelity toward all who rely on his word, which makes it hard to take seriously any assurances. He has sometimes shown himself capable of sticking to script or obeying the teleprompter, and when he does that he raises the possibility that he may be containable. But when Trump is given a chance to reveal something of himself, he without fail reveals a terrifying emptiness. The idea that such a man would be improved by being handed immense power simply refuses to be believed. Even wishful thinking supercharged by a justified dread of what a Hillary Clinton administration could do to the American republic can only go so far—certainly far enough not to vote for her, but for this voter not nearly far enough to vote for him. Neither major-party option in this election is worthy of affirmation, and no amount of wishing it were otherwise is likely to change that. All we can do, it seems to me, is hope and work for a Congress able and inclined to counterbalance a dangerous executive.

The Final Stretch - Yuval Levin | National Review (via ayjay)

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The Flight 93 Election

The Flight 93 Election

I do not understand why this piece is getting the play it’s getting. It simply recycles every cliché of the Trumpite right.

Acknowledging that Trump is “imperfect” and then declining to discuss the magnitude of his flaws? Check.

Insisting that Trump has “great strengths” without defining any of them? Check.

Affirming that Trump holds “the right stances on the right issues — immigration, trade, and war” without acknowledging that his “stances” on all those issues change more-or-less daily? Check.

Claiming that conservatives who oppose Trump just want to keep their inside-the-Beltway Georgetown-cocktail-party status (defined here as taking a paycheck to play for the Washington Generals against the Democratic Globetrotters)? Check.

Equating success with wisdom — for now, anyway, until Trump loses? Check.

Ranting a lot about death (“death is certain,” “a civilization that wants to die”) and howling that Trump Is Life, without ever explaining or even hinting at what these metaphors mean? Check and double-check.

It’s an utterly vacuous, substance-free, rhetorically unimaginative but ceaselessly flailing rant. In short, precisely what we’ve come to expect from Trump and his celebrants. So what’s there to talk about?

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Fox News went on the air in October 1996. Since that time, the GOP has won the popular vote for president exactly once: in 2004, by a whopping 2.4 percent. If Hillary Clinton wins in November, as appears likely, the GOP will have lost the popular vote in five of the six presidential elections since Fox broke the liberal media monopoly. In the six presidential elections before Fox, the GOP won four landslides. The reasons for the change are complex, and we certainly shouldn’t overstate the influence of any given media outlet. But prior to 1996, a politician could truly succeed only by going to the American people through the media outlets they actually watched, which encouraged communication that persuaded those who weren’t true believers.

Fox News Hurts Conservative Movement | National Review (via ayjay)

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In 2003, a study allegedly demonstrated that ‘conservatism is a syndrome characterized by rigidity, dogmatism, prejudice, and fear'—a slander undoubtedly dear to the hearts of nine out of ten social scientists. In 2010, another group of researchers returned to the original study’s data and combined it with more recent data of their own. They found almost no evidence of such a ‘syndrome.’ Prejudice, fear, and dogmatism are pretty evenly distributed among conservatives and liberals alike. Here’s the kicker, though: Researchers have cited the older, anti-conservative study more than 1000 times in their own studies even since it was discredited in 2010. The second study has been cited a grand total of 60 times.

Study Shows Even Social Scientists Can Be Biased | The Weekly Standard (via ayjay)

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Eric Hoffer on Trump

I have recently been reading Eric Hoffer’s 1950 bestseller The True Believer, and it’s a fascinating book for this moment. It seems to me to offer a convincing analysis of the rise of Trump but also an indication of why his movement will fail.

For instance, these passages offer some real insight into the success Trump has had so far:

It would seem then that the most fertile ground for the propagation of a mass movement is a society with considerable freedom but lacking the palliatives of frustration […]

They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually their innermost desire is for an end to the “free for all.” They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society. […]

The milieu most favorable for the rise and propagation of mass movements is one in which a once compact corporate structure is, for one reason or another, in a state of disintegration. […]

Such a “compact corporate structure” being the Stoic/Christian moral world of Appalachia, the collapse of which J. D. Vance describes in Hillbilly Elegy.

About the possibility of a dangerous mass movement in America, Hoffer offers these sobering words:

The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American’s hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.

Is anything more universally true of Trump’s supporters than that thet have lost confidence in the American way of life?

Here’s Hoffer’s description of the leader of such a mass movement:

It needs the iron will, daring and vision of an exceptional leader to concert and mobilize existing attitudes and impulses into the collective drive of a mass movement. The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment dammed up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breathtaking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages the world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action. He evokes the enthusiasm of communion — the sense of liberation from a petty and meaningless individual existence. What are the talents requisite for such a performance? Exceptional intelligence, noble character and originality seem neither indispensable nor perhaps desirable. The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants.

Much of this is uncannily evocative of Trump’s appeal — though perhaps not all of it. For one thing, he does not call anyone to self-sacrifice: he tells his followers that (a) they are not to blame for anything bad that has happened to them and therefore need not change in any way, and (b) he will fix everything, all by himself. And I doubt whether he has the ability, over the long haul, to “hold the utmost loyalty” of lieutenants, except perhaps for some members of his family.

But in general, the portrait strikes me as uncomfortably accurate. And when I read it I think of a Twitter exchange from the other day:

@ayjay You, PC enforcers, have alienated us. We are now fused with him, because he’s spoken for us in the face of your distortions.

— Drew (@Hollin_Drew) July 31, 2016

“We are now fused with him.” Words worth pondering. But there is one last point that’s important to note:

Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope.

This, it seems to me, Trump cannot do. It is rage and rage only that he kindles. Many of the people voting for him, by their own testimony, do not believe he will win and think that if he does win he is unlilely to be able to change anything. They just want to put the corrupt house of American politics to the torch, and then watch it burn.

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Since Alexander wrote that post, an article has appeared based on research that confirms his hypothesis. “Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization,” by Shanto Iyengar and Sean J. Westwood, indicates that Americans today do not simply feel animus towards those who disagree with with politically, but are prepared to act on it. Their research discovers a good deal of racial prejudice, which is to be expected and which is likely to grow worse in the coming years, but people seem to think that they shouldn’t be racists or at least shouldn’t show it. However, people of one Tribe evidently believe, quite openly, that members of the other Tribe deserve whatever nastiness comes to them — and are willing to help dish out the nastiness themselves. “Despite lingering negative attitudes toward African Americans, social norms appear to suppress racial discrimination, but there is no such reluctance to discriminate based on partisan affiliation.”

“The Outgroup and Its Errors” by Alan Jacobs

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History is a long record of men like him [Trump] temporarily rising, stretching back to biblical times. Psalm 73 describes them: “Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. … They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.” And yet their success is fragile: “Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly they are destroyed.” The psalmist reminds us that the proper thing to do in the face of demagogy is to go the other way — to make an extra effort to put on decency, graciousness, patience and humility, to seek a purity of heart that is stable and everlasting.

David Brooks writing in the New York Times. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/opinion/no-not-trump-not-ever.html?_r=0&referer=https://www.google.com/

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The way events in Chicago fell out is a case study in the way that a figure like Trump is dangerous to the body politic, not just to one party or faction: He’s a walking, talking radicalizer, whose demagoguery doesn’t just encourage the extremists who love him but also feeds the no-platforming instincts of an increasingly illiberal left. But it’s also a case study in why demagoguery can be so effective: It encourages precisely the kind of reaction from its enemies that it claims as justification for its own excesses, creating a feedback loop of anger, fear and hatred that tugs moderates toward the extreme. And since Trump didn’t need to persuade that many Republicans — just an extra five or ten percent — that they’re either with him or with the left-wing protesters, what he got out of Chicago was probably exactly what he wanted: A sense of chaos, of things slipping out of control, that sharpens the authoritarian temptation.

Ross Douthat editorial in the New York Times

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And he didn’t. He became one of the first Hispanic customs brokers in our area (maybe the US). He built a business in El Paso that employed dozens of people. He invested money all over our community. He was intensely proud of being American. My city is better because of him. My country is better because of him. When Donald Trump says he’s going to Make America Great Again I can only think this: My grandfather is what makes America great. So when I hear Trump refuse to immediately deny David Duke and the KKK I see my grandfather’s eyes. When I hear Trump say he’s going to investigate paying the legal bills of a man who sucker punched a black protestor I see my grandfather’s eyes. When Trump retweet, again and again, a bunch of white supremacists, I see my grandfather’s eyes. So I will thank Donald Trump for this: he has made me Hispanic.

Ricky Alcantar, an Evangelical Pastor, on Medium

Paul writes in Galatians, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” (6:7 ESV) We all know what seeds Trump’s rhetoric is planting and there will be a harvest.

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Here’s the thing: it’s not just the poor and the working class anymore. I’m told by teachers and others that it’s the middle class now too. The attitude that if anything is wrong, it’s Somebody Else’s Fault, is becoming general. Nobody wants to hear criticism of any sort. Nobody wants to recognize authority, or to assert authority in a meaningful way. This is what it means to live in therapeutic culture, in which maintaining a sense of well being is the absolute telos of our common and individual life. This is what it means when the values of the marketplace (e.g., “The customers is always right”) have infected our normative institutions, and inform the way families and individuals see themselves. This is what it means when our churches (insofar as people still attend them) treat their purpose as offering people comfort and uplift, not solid moral norms and preaching repentance when we fall short. This is what it means when we the people expect our institutions — our schools, our churches, and so forth — to cater to our own felt emotional needs.

Rod Dreher - "Of Pigpens and Paradise" http://goo.gl/O9khFV This is a difficult subject but one worth thinking about whether you agree with all his points or not.

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Americans cannot say they didn’t know. Trump has appeared in eleven debates during this campaign (eleven more than Putin has participated in during his entire life). Many Americans are fearful and angry today, unsatisfied with the weak excuses and vague proposals provided by their establishment politicians. Audacious plans and unorthodox candidates are attractive under these conditions, no matter how utopian or menacing their proposals are. This is how ideologies like socialism and fascism gain traction in democracies. But burning it all down isn’t any more of an answer than putting the government in charge of everything. And if you think liberals like big government, just wait until you see an authoritarian! Trump’s first war would be on the Bill of Rights. . The world is in a state of growing conflict and chaos after seven years of Barack Obama’s steady withdrawal of American power. More than ever, we need an American leader with a positive vision for the free world and the ability to reassure allies and to deter enemies. If Vladimir Putin’s endorsement of him isn’t enough to convince you that Trump is the worst possible choice for president, nothing will.

Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion, comparing Putin and Trump in Newsweek

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I mean, you need to know very little about Trump to realize that he simply couldn’t be counted on to do what he promises — even vows — to do. If Trump were dogcatcher, wild dogs would terrorize the town as he was explaining to his personal stylist that he’d like to be just a teeny bit more orange. (Though he’d put the whole power of his office behind the search for a Pekinese who growled at him once.)

Alan Jacobs - “Dialogue on Democracy Part 8″

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2. Donald Trump doubled-down on the idea that innocent women and children should be targets in war. Don’t let that gravity of that be lost on you. A candidate for President of the United States says that he would order our armed forces to commit war crimes. When challenged whether our military would obey such an unlawful order, Trump said that he would force them to do it anyway. This is beyond the pale. It is a flouting of just war principles and an abomination to everything that our country has stood for. Our military commanders would be put into the situation of having to disobey their commander-in-chief. What happens to a Republic when military commanders decide that they cannot obey the lawless orders of their commander-in-chief? http://www.dennyburk.com/my-take-on-the-debate-the-race-and-our-prospects/

Denny Burk on last night's debate. Of particular interest for Christians is his last paragraph. He's correct that we are watching the disintegration of the Republican Party, barring a miracle.

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But if you think your voters are about to make a catastrophic, even republic-threatening mistake, don’t you have an obligation to actually, at some point in the process, make that case to them? Just for a few weeks, at least, before you give up in dismay? The idea that it can’t be done, that Trump voters are all locked-in lunatics with no capacity to take in new information, seems like just another version of the elite condescension toward rank and file Republicans that enabled Trump’s rise in the first place. And in that context Romney’s speech was actually an admirable, long-overdue attempt to break with that condescension, to treat primary voters as adults, to actually share with them the wide range of reasons — and Romney covered the waterfront — why Donald Trump does not deserve their trust.

From Ross Douthat's Op Ed in the NYT