Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread 10/6/22
Depravity

1/ I’ve had it. I’ve been watching and listening to the GOP as it invests in Donald o-my-god Trump and then in Herschel can-you-believe-this-monster Walker.

2/The Republican party has been thoroughly corrupted. Staying in it means you are willfully allowing your soul to be covered in the slime of depravity. A political party is not like a family. You’re not born into a political party...

3/...and you don’t break any commandments if you leave one. Anybody can leave a political party at any time for any reason. Leaving that party is never a criminal act. You belong to it by choice, by an act of the will. You stay in it because you believe in its principles.

4/My understanding of the social norms of the GOP, prior to the arrival of Trump in its ranks, is roughly as follows: 1) It is good to keep government as modest as possible in order to encourage individual initiative;...

...2)The most qualified people for political office are normally wealthy white guys; 3) Office holders, to signal their fitness for office, should behave with exemplary courtesy;4) If leaders of the party betray those norms, they should be corrected or lose support of the party.

6/The Republicans may not have had the greatest norms, but they were better than what we have been witnessing since the campaign of 2016. Those previous norms were exploded by Donald Trump.

7/FATMAN & LITTLE BOY are the names our military gave the two atomic bombs Truman ordered dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Trump was our generation’s version of FATMAN--this FATMAN had his own LITTLE BOY: Herschel Walker. And the clueless GOP dropped both of them on America.

8/“As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods: they kill us for their sport.”, so Glouchester laments to his sons as they wander on the heath in Shakespeare’s "King Lear". I know the feeling.

9/Only now it’s not the gods who are killing our nation for their sport; it’s the depraved adherents of the despicable Donald Trump, the man without morals, without wisdom, without honor, ...

10/...Donald Trump, whose only skill is a deadly accuracy about the vulnerability of others, and whose only purpose is endless, nihilistic self-aggrandizement.

11/What is Trumpism, and why does Trump keep occupying our news? Even more, why is he so persistent a presence in our own heads?

12/More than 50 years ago I read the unforgettable novel by Albert Camus entitled “The Plague.” It’s a story of an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in a city called Oran in Algeria. The novel’s relevance to us who now find ourselves living in Trumplandia is how the plague spreads..

13/The plague in Camus' novel spreads. Nobody wants it to. Quite soon, people know what it is, but they don’t do anything for there is no cure as yet. The telltale buboes in the armpits or groins of the victims are unmistakable...

14/... But the horror of it and the absence of a cure lead to a lengthy denial, and the plague keeps spreading and killing.

15/ We are not, thank God, dealing with a biological pandemic, but with a spiritual one. And more than 70 millions of us, more than 70 millions of once-free citizens, have infected one another with a fear and a hatred of our liberty.

16/Their souls now embrace the folly of the strong-man leader, the toxically greedy lout who exults in violence, lies without remorse, enables racists, assaults women, wantonly insults rivals, steals money, embraces dictators, steals federal property -- all in plain view.

17/ The more shameless his dishonesty, the more his followers adore him. Trump has become a moral plague, bit by bit destroying their conscience, their very souls.

18/ How is this possible? In a time of relative peace and prosperity, how did this wicked man rise to such prominence and wreak such havoc among us? It happened with, and was empowered by, the complicity of the entire hierarchy of Republican leadership.

19/ I no longer can trust the discernment of anyone I know who remains a Republican. What will it take for them to wake up?

20/Here’s at least one revelation we can now perceive: Americans are not exceptional. We can be easily conned. About half of us have enough personal greed to follow someone who is shameless about his immorality.

21/Here’s something worse: more than half of those who, like me, self-identify as Evangelical Christians actually know nothing about the Bible, Jesus, or Christian ethics.

22/There is not a sentence, in all the statements of Jesus of Nazareth, that would justify Trumpism. Trumpism, spreading in a free and prosperous country, is an affront to the Lord as well as to our founders.

23/ If by chance anyone reading this is a Trumpster I implore you to repent. Repent is a Latin word that just means, “change your thinking.” I don’t say that Trump is the AntiChrist - he’s too much of a spiritual pipsqueak for that...

24/...What I do say is this : Trump's life and his professed values are in direct opposition to the words and the life of Jesus.

25/ And Herschel? Someone who beats their spouse, who puts a gun to her head and threatens to murder her? Someone whose own son begs us not to put Walker into power, because the son has suffered this man’s vicious cruelty?

26/But because Trump endorses him, Republican leaders would make of Mr. Walker a Senator of the United States of America. His credential is that he once could run with a ball. You leaders of the Republican Party:

27/ Do you really hate women and your country enough to impose this avatar of misogyny on the rest of us, embarrassing America before God & all of humanity? Will you get your herd of 70 + million to vote for him because a loaf of bread is now 50 cents more? Are you kidding me?

28/ I’m 77 years old. I have never seen such widespread decadence in our country. I don’t want to see Trumpsters go to hell. I want to see them released from the Trump Hell that has corrupted them. If I knew how to awaken them I would.

29/This is, for sure, an hour to pray for the mercy of God.