Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread # 129
Enough already!

1/ I haven’t posted in a while, as I struggle through the Mueller report and sit slack-jawed before the great reveal of American depravity on TV.

2/ For the last 3 years, one of the most painful features of Trumplandia, for me, has been the craven support offered the lout by prominent Evangelical pastors. I am not prominent, but I am an evangelical believer, & I am so not buying the “sent from God” theology about the Don.

3/ It’s probably good advice not to confess the sins of others, or, as our brothers and sisters in 12- step work nicely put it, “don’t take other peoples’ inventory.”

4/ The Don has said that he has never had to ask for forgiveness because he hasn’t ever done anything wrong. As a pastor, Don, I’d love to offer some spiritual help. We can use the ten commandments to do a brief inventory. . . .

5/ 1st: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage. You shall have no other God but me.” Trump’s god is not “The high and holy One of Israel,” but Mammon, the cruel god of money...

6/.. Trump’s service to Mammon has been extravagant, burning through $200 million of an inheritance and winding up $9 billion in debt, until he was bailed out by Russian mobsters, who know a useful idiot when they see one.

7/ 2nd: “You shall not make for yourselves any idol, you shall not bow down to it and worship it.” Trump’s idol is greed, his worship of gold causes him to coat enormous tasteless buildings with faux gold and to put his own name, high and exalted, on it...

8/.. Why are we commanded not to make up our own little gods? Well, if I can make my own little god, then what does that reveal about my ego?

9/ 3rd: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Trump swore, his hand on the Bible, “So help me God”, that he would “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That is the most solemn oath a person in America can take...

10/.. Yet the Don has undermined & assaulted that Constitution in plain view with reckless abandon. He’s never bothered to read it, does not even know what it is. (He thinks it’s a book, & says he has read “some of its chapters.”) Talk about taking the name of the Lord in vain!

11/ 4th: “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day.” In the original, this is the longest of the commandments, the one most intended to help the former slaves of Egypt to become a free people (Slaves get no sabbath.)...

12/..Sabbath was to be a day to rest, to cherish family, & to freely offer worship. Instead, for Trump, every weekend is the occasion for a tweet-storm of lies, accusations, insults & the constant spreading of division. He’s up 'til 1 & back at it by 6. Talk about being enslaved!

13/ Now, those first 4 Commandments are about relating with God. The next 5 are about relating with our neighbors:

14/ 5th: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land.” Trump does speak of respect for his parents, but this commandment also includes the notion of respecting those who lived before us, of honoring the blessings we have inherited...

15/.. Never have we had a more blissfully stupid President, one so completely unaware of our history or of our calling. He simply cannot understand democracy or the rule of law...

16/.. Trump’s self-talk about his own brilliance has convinced him he already knows stuff about which he is utterly clueless. Everytime he talks, I wonder, “Who raised you?”

17/ 6th: “You shall not kill.” Some of the children Trump has caged (in our name!!) have died in his concentration camps. For this, he & his supporters will have to account before God; Jesus has been emphatically clear that those who harm the children face a dreadful eternity.

18/ 7th: “You shall not commit adultery.” From the reports of Trump’s school mates to the trips with Jeffrey Epstein to Pedophile island to the escapades in Moscow to the boasts on the Access Hollywood bus,..

19/.. to the public affaires with Marla chronicled in the tabloids, recent history is full of accounts of this man as an abuser of women, and a compulsive sexual predator.

20/ 8th: “You shall not steal.” Trump has just stiffed the city of El Paso several hundred thousand dollars owed them for his racist rally at the border. He has been involved, either as litigant or as the accused,..

21/..in 4000+ lawsuits, most of them involving his breaking of contracts with those who actually built the properties he profited from. There’s no honor around this thief.

22/ 9th: “You shall not bear false witness.” eeeyikes. 10,000 lies and distortions so far in two years--and counting. Trump is addicted to the rush that comes from his mini-episodes of exercising power...

23/..How do you know if an unrecovered addict is lying? Right. His lips are moving. Trump lies about lying. He cannot simply speak the truth. Trust nothing this man says, for he serves the Father of lies.

24/ 10th: “You shall not envy.” This is the only commandment that addresses our inner life, that outlaws something going on inside our skin. That is because our desire for what our neighbor has..

25/... indeed our desire to have more than our neighbor has -- is the inner energy that results in violence. Trump envies autocrats, campaigned to get onto the Forbes 400 list, endlessly compares himself to those he proclaims as “lesser”. Envy is the driver of his greed.

26/ The Don says his faith in God is all that got him through the “torment” of the Mueller probe, the “witch hunt”, the “persecution”...

27/ I’m reading Mueller’s report right now. Robert Mueller is a scrupulously honest and restrained investigator, carefully respecting the rights of the ones being investigated. And Mueller has found and adjudicated crimes galore in Trump’s wretched campaign.

28/ And yet Trump is the man Franklin and Jerry and the other brownnoser evangelicals proclaim to be the man sent by God for this hour. Atta boy Jerry. Atta boy Franklin.

29/ One time, John Wesley, a true evangelical, responded in this way to a preacher of his day who was distorting the Gospel: “Your god is my devil.”

30/ To my fellow evangelicals: This administration is unjust, dishonorable & disgraceful. It’s time humbly to join our fellow citizens who have discerned and are resisting the evil of this administration.

31/ That evil is now enveloping millions of us in a process well described by Mr. Comey. Don't let the Don eat your soul.