Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Christian or Catholic- Say the Word



Blown out in the 2024 election cycle, Democrats know they need a new message. They're all over the place, however, and the only common theme is Mark Cuban's simplistic advice: "just getting angry is not the way to go."

True, but not much of a game plan. Democrats had a chance to annoy Donald Trump and get under his skin by referring repeatedly to "President Musk."  They did so briefly and Trump was forced to play defense, pleading "No, he's not going to be President, that I can tell you. And I'm safe, you know why? He can't be- he wasn't born in this country." They had gotten the President-elect off his game, and Trump doesn't play defense well. So they stopped- too rude.

Currently, Elizabeth Warren has a clue.  She has sent to Elon Musk as chairperson of the Department of Government Efficiency a letter outlining measures which would reduce government inefficiency and save taxpayers at least two trilllion dollars "over the next decade." Noting that she has introduced the bipartisan Stop Price Gouging the Military Act, Warren explains that the Air Force has been overcharged by 7,493 percent for soap dispensers. 

Would it be so difficult for Democrats to deride, say, "$27,000 soap dispensers"?  Ir shouldn't be, but has been. 

"By the mid-1980s," Wikipedia reminds us, defense "spending became a scandal when the Project on Government Oversight reported that the Pentagon had vastly overpaid for a wide variety of items, most nefariously by paying $435 for a hammer, $6,000 for a toilet seat, and $7,000 for an aircraft coffee maker."

The numbers were "inaccurate," apparently, and insignificantly. President Reagan appointed a commission which made several recommendations to reform the procurement process and in 1986 Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 219. Soon after, the Goldwater-Nichols Act reformed the Joint Chiefs of Staff and implemented some of the recommendations.

Positive change came about after the President had responded to misguided, hyperbolic outrage from the public. Understandably, then, when asked whether the Democratic Party should nominate a celebrity as a presidential candidate, Mehdi Hasan in early Janurary explained (at 3:32 of the video below)

Whether it's a celebrity or not a celebrity, whether it's a normal Senator politician, you need Democrats who are not afraid to say wild shit. Focus group bulshit has got to stop. Like, it's got to be- I said this in 2016- Democrats to go on Meet the Press and say "we're going to have a $25 minimum wage" or "we're going to spend a trillion dollars on health care."   

"How are you going to pay for it?"    "We just will. Trust me."    

How are you going to pay for it?"   Canada's going to pay for it."   

Just say absolute bullshit. Trump has set the bar. Say whatever the hell you want. I'm so fed up with a political system, this assymetric warfare which Donald Trump gets up and says "I'm going to buy Greenland and then we have serious discussions about him buying Greenland. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris produces a 27-page policy document on child care fully costed. 

That's assymetric warfare, right? It just seems to be it needs to be apresidential candidate who says "vote for me and I'll make sure $30 minimum wage. I'll make sure everyone has the best health care in the history of the world." Just say wild things because that's apparently what the American public wants and that's what social media is mainly.





Saying "whatever the hell you want" may take the form of extreme exaggeration, as Hasan points out, or misrepresenting the opponent's motives while highlighting the effect of his actions. Such an opportunity has been presented to Democrats on a silver platter, and Vice President J.D. Vance has given the good guys a blueprint:

 

The criticism by rhe US Conference of Catholic Bishops is telling because it opposes punitive immigration policies for two reasons: 1) it is generally welcoming to immigrants; and 2) most of the immigrants affected are Catholic.

If most of the newcomers were not Catholic, the Church still would oppose the Trump Administration policy. However, the leaders of the faith are aware of three things: 1) most of the affected individuals are Catholic;  2) most of these Catholics are more committed to their faith then American Catholics are and 3) the Church, facing declining numbers, need these immigrants, their numbers and the vitality they bring. 

This situation is simultaneously both fundamentally different and analogous to the Trump Administration's attack on immigration eight years ago. Campaigning for the presidency, Trump demanded "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Once he took office, he "stopped nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from being allowed to travel to America for 90 days."

The day before President Trump retroacitvely left office in 2021, the ACLU recalled

When Trump implemented his first Muslim ban, the public response was immediate. Crowds of protesters flooded airports in support of Muslims and other impacted communities who were immediately being detained or turned away all over the country. Lawyers and immigrants’ rights organizations nationwide, including the ACLU, filed a series of lawsuits as court after court ruled to block the ban. 

Despite the backlash, Trump issued new iterations of the ban to circumvent the law and conceal its real purpose, which in his own words was to block Muslims from entering the United States. Ultimately, the Supreme Court allowed the third iteration of the ban to be implemented. The Trump administration then further expanded the ban, explicitly targeting Africans. As a result, people from 13 countries still remain barred from coming to the U.S.

By contrast, the Administration crrrently is targeting individuals who entered the USA through our southern border. They are from Latin America and with a few exceptions, are not Muslim. They are not Jewish or Hindu. They are Christian- mostly Roman Catholic, with some evangelical Protestants.

Layered upon that, the Vice President has called out the Church with which most of them identify. Vance asks rhetorically "are they worried about humanitarian concerns or are they worried about their bottom line?"

Both, ovbviously, but there is no shame in doing well by doing good. Nonetheless, the Administration- if Vance was not talking out of his posterior- is hostile to the interests of the Church in building its numbers. Yet only last September

"They're anti-Christian, and it's driving people out," (Catholic League President Bill) Donohue said in a phone interview of Democrats, citing similar comments from former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently endorsed Trump. "And the guys I'm talking to, it's not even so much abortion. It's just they feel like they don't speak their language anymore. This whole idea of letting men compete against women in sports abuses the bathrooms, they think they've just gone off the deep end”….

"Kamala Harris hates Catholics and everything we hold sacred. We can’t pretend otherwise. Our institutions, families, culture and belief in the sanctity of all human life are the antithesis of her vision for America. Donald Trump and JD Vance — and now RFK — are the antidote to the ruling class that has destroyed our country," Brian Burch, president of conservative non-profit, CatholicVote, said in the Trump campaign’s press release.

It's time to turn the tables, for Democrats to point out that Republicans are trying to drive Catholics,or more generally Christians, out of the country. When it was Muslims, Democrats were apoplectic, especially outraged because Trump was singling out individuals based on their religion. 

Now, the Administration is discrimating against Catholics and other Christians. Presumably, that's not by intent, though Vance's comments can be interpreted otherwise. It is, however, a blow against Christianity in effect

However, if Democras truly wish to change their message, the President and the Vice President, the former by policy and the latter by words, have given them an opening. You can drive a Mack truck through that gaping hole. Unfortunately, Democrats may be waiting for an electric-powered vehicle to take that drive.


No comments:

Appreciating Trump

We owe President Donald Trump a debt of gratitude. He pardoned 1500 criminals involved in the 1/6/21 insurrection, including many who pled ...