In the last several years, many humanists who had never hated anyone before were taught to hate. They were taught to hate a particular man. And they were taught to hate this particular man by the man himself. It was as if the man looked humanists in the eyes and said, “I was chosen to […]
Donald Trump
Posted inPolitics
Voters hammered Trump in 2016. So how did he end up president?
You may be unaware of it, but the Democratic Party has been on quite a win streak of late, capturing the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections (1992-2020), including when Donald Trump won the White House in 2016. The question is, how was Trump able to win that election when he […]
Posted inHistory, Politics
From Hitler to Trump, strongmen’s lies have devastated the world
At the risk of exaggerating a connection to today’s American political environment, bald-faced lies disingenuously and persistently applied over time destroyed Germany’s pre-World War II Weimar Republic. The lies were spread by the racist Nazi Party’s fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, in a cynical and diabolical propaganda campaign inflicted on the German people during years of […]
Posted inCritical thinking, Deep Dive, Politics
Resisting the new F-word
There is a South Park episode in which the kids use an “f-word” to mock a bunch of obnoxious bikers. The word is obviously offensive, which is why the kids use it. A violent struggle erupts. In the end, the bikers embrace the epithet and admit that they are f@gs. But at that point, the […]
Posted inTech
The internet is lethal. That class I took in 1995 didn’t mention it.
I remember way back in 1995 I took a nontraditional local college class on “the Internet,” then a curious new tech phenomenon emerging from the womb in barely post-fetal form. I had no idea then that this seemingly miraculous invention would become as exponentially huge—and potentially dangerous to the health of Americans and our republic—as […]
Posted inLaw, Politics
Judge backs untrustworthy Trump, further eroding trust in democracy
For now, let’s just focus on this word: trust. Justice, as we all know, is supposed to be metaphorically blind to everything but facts and evidence in courts of law. That’s why, when lacking solid evidence to the contrary, we generally believe American courts are trustworthy. So, I was greatly disappointed this week when a […]
Posted inCulture, Deep Dive
What makes ‘skeptical’ kids grow up to be God-believing adults?
If kids are the savvy, skeptical creatures that Will Gervais proposes in his recent essay, why do endless hordes of them in each generation turn into conservative American adults who uncritically worship invisible gods with zero objective verification? And what makes these same supposedly mature folks end up uncritically adoring visible but damaged demigods on […]
Posted inPolitics
The GOP has become the party of liars
I’ve watched with morbid fascination as an entire American political party—the GOP—has slid, apparently irretrievably, into a deep well of ethical relativism and easily debunked lies. The vast majority of Republicans have clearly decided that virtually nothing is wrong if it aligns with what Donald Trump desires—although the former president’s Teflon coating appears to be […]
Posted inPolitics
Are GOP’s social media villains being coached?
The seemingly instantaneous, coordinated blow-back by Donald Trump supporters on social media whenever they believe the former president has been attacked begs the question: Are they being coached? The matches that ignite these online conflagrations are strident public alarms set off by either Trump’s own protestations or by elected sycophants in MAGA world rushing to […]
Posted inPolitics
Why hasn’t Trump become a Christian?
Jesus didn’t offer his religion to people who were already good. In Jesus’s modest opinion, some people know how to do the right thing without the guidance of his philosophy. Read his words in the gospel of Luke 5:32 and you can arrive at no other conclusion: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to […]