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The Republican Hell List

Axios reports:

Congressional Republicans are getting ready for hell. Axios has obtained a spreadsheet that’s circulated through Republican circles on and off Capitol Hill — including at least one leadership office — that meticulously previews the investigations Democrats will likely launch if they flip the House.

Why this matters: Publicly, House Republicans are putting on a brave face about the midterms. But privately, they are scrambling to prepare for the worst. This document, which catalogs requests Democrats have already made, is part of that effort.

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We Could Really Use a President

From John Pavlovitz:

America could really use a President right now.

I have this thought more often than I care to consider.

I have it again today.

As the funeral for Senator John McCain approaches, we find ourselves in yet another occasion of national consequence; one our supposed Commander-In-Chief is intentionally excluded from because he is beneath the dignity and capability the moment requires.

Like an impulsive child who cannot handle adult things, he needs to be worked around by the big people around him, so as not to overwhelm him or set him off or highlight his immaturity or trigger his tantrums.

Today, as every day since January 2017, in a moment of gravity, we simply act and move as if we do not have a sitting President, because for all practical purposes—we do not.

This moment plays itself out whenever there is a national tragedy, whenever compassion or decency or strength or goodness are required; whenever an adult leader would be called upon to actually lead us.

In those moments, he does not lead—he tweets.

Our petulant, amoral, intellectually drowning, emotionally crippled White House squatter, once again sits sequestered in some heavily bunkered bathroom behind a phone, ranting to the ether in all caps nonsense—unable to have rational debate, unwilling to be decent, incapable of basic human empathy.

This is what we get in our times of greatest need, America: a narcissistic man-child, whose complete lack of competence and preparedness rears its repugnant head in the very moments that require a steady hand, and a clear voice, and a calming presence.

When we require unity, he brings division.
When we need reason, he provides conspiracy.
When we crave calm, he feeds us chaos.
When we seek clarity, he shines the light on himself.
When we look for selflessness, he looks for praise.
When we need eloquence, he offers verbal diarrhea and spelling errors.
When we deserve truthful fine print, he manufactures bold type fake headlines.

Today will not be the last day America stumbles forward trying to compensate for the massive void we have at the top.
It will not be the last time the smart and decent and rational people all get together to figure out how to avoid a man, whose only contribution to a combustible situation—is propellent; whose sole offering during times of mourning—is further cause for grief; whose lone function in the most tense of national situations—is escalating tension.

When people of renown pass away and we mourn together, we will need a President.
When international conflict erupts and diplomacy is required, we will need a President.
When mass shootings occur and people are terrified and chaos ensues, we will need a President.
When complex legislation requires sustained intellectual attention, we will need a President.
When racism and injustice and hatred explode like a fireball, we will need a President.
When we are having our children’s futures crafted in real-time, we will need a President.

But we don’t have an adult President right now.
We don’t have a leader.
We don’t even have an impotent figurehead.
We have an egomaniacal instigator who makes everything more cruel, more volatile, more painful than it could and should be.
We have a egomaniacal shell of a man, whose very presence in the place in which he finds himself is the greatest and most tragic joke of our lifetime.

In two years, hopefully we’ll course correct on this colossal national mistake and begin to undo the unfathomable damage we’ve sustained.

In the meantime, just as today, we’ll all have to work together to fill in the spectacular gaps in leadership and compassion and intelligence and dignity that used to be filled by our Presidents.

We simply don’t have one right now.

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Pass This Along

When you are a pet owner it is inevitable the majority of the time that your pet will die before you do. So if and when you have to take your pet to the vet’s office for a humane, pain-free ending I want you all to know something. You have been the center of their world THEIR ENTIRE LIVES! They may just be a part of yours, but all they know is you as their family. It is a crappy decision/day/time/event every time; there is no argument against that and it is devastating as humans to lose them. But please, I beg you: DO NOT LEAVE THEM. Do not make them transition from life to death in a room of strangers in a place they don’t like. The thing you need to know that most of you don’t is that THEY SEARCH FOR YOU WHEN YOU LEAVE THEM BEHIND!

They search every face in the room for their beloved humans. They are frightened to begin with and they don’t understand why you left them there when they are sick, scared, old, or dying from cancer AND THEY NEED YOUR COMFORT. Don’t be a coward because it is just too hard for YOU. Imagine what they feel as you leave them in their most vulnerable time, and people like me are left to try our best every time to comfort them, to make them less scared, and try to explain why you just couldn’t stay.” ~ A tired, broken-hearted vet

THIS, THIS, THIS a thousand times THIS.

How could I possibly simply drop this little furball off and then leave when his time comes? Well, there is NO way I could—or will—do that to either him or our other furry child. I will be there to hold them and help them say goodbye.

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It’s 9 pm on a Friday Night

And I’m home. Not at all unusual for the last twenty-five years. Ben is out at the moment doing his Lyft thing to pay some bills. I don’t expect him back until around 3 am, by which time I will be deep asleep and probably won’t even hear him come in. I’m listening to some classic jazz on the radio while Bobo is sleeping in his bed and Sammy is running around the living room like a maniac.

Forty years ago however, at 9 pm on a Friday night I’d be heading out the door to go dancing. (We didn’t call it clubbing.) I’d most likely start out the evening by meeting my friend Kent at His Co. Disco because the cover charge between 9 and 10 was only a dollar. If the crowd got boring or if certain B-list DJs were spinning, we’d then head over to The Forum. But His Co. always seemed to play better music and have the new stuff sooner. It also had a slightly raised, lighted dance floor and a much better light show, so whatever else happened we’d always start out there. I can’t say I ever reliably got laid on a regular basis via either place (it wasn’t until many years later that I discovered The Connection and all that changed), but His Co. was where I met the great unrequited love of my life Steve Golden, and where I connected with Paul Bayfield and Ken Coyer, the two doormen—with whom I did have carnal relations on multiple occasions. Separately. (They couldn’t stand each other and were each aghast when they learned that I had slept with the other.)

Oh, and there was the boy who’d driven all the way into town from Gilbert (which was to hell and gone in relation to the club’s location back in the day and still is—just not out in the middle of nowhere like it was in 1978). My buddy Chas was up from Tucson that weekend and since I was still living at home he let me borrow his hotel room for a few hours to entertain Mr. Gilbert. “Don’t get anything on the sheets! I have to sleep on those!”

And come to think of it, His Co. also served up Craig—and his lover—whom I’d encountered at work as customers in the housewares department at Broadway Southwest just that afternoon. “You really should wear underwear with those Angel Flights,” Craig told me later that evening. “I could almost see veins!”

Good times.

Anyway, I bring this up because my previous post about Live and More triggered lots of memories of my wonderfully misspent youth.

And speaking of 3 am, forty years ago if neither none of us was busy getting laid, I’d probably be at breakfast with Kent and a drag queen or two before heading home…

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Quote of the Day

There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn’t just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They’d come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully-functioning human brain could conceive, then shout, “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn’t have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.” ~ Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

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Christians Supporting Trump Aren’t Christians

From John Pavlovitz:

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride,

The first Christians didn’t call themselves Christians.

It wasn’t some congratulatory self-identifier as it is today; a way of loudly trumpeting one’s own supposed goodness, quickly slapped on Twitter bios and bumper stickers and t-shirts without forethought or personal cost or empirical evidence. It wasn’t about a place you visited for an hour on Sunday before Cracker Barrel, either.

The term Christian was originally a designation of the community of people following Jesus, by those outside of it after his death—and it was quite likely a slur; a scarlet letter attached to a marginalized group who’d traded comfy allegiance with Caesar for dangerous devotion to an itinerant Hebrew street preacher from Nazareth.

In the Roman Empire in which it was born, Jesus’ movement was fully countercultural; shunning its power and material wealth, breaking its barriers between the important and the inconsequential, fighting the stereotypes of the in and the out. It was a table builder and a wall breaker.

These “little Christs” as they were called, were derided by outsiders because the expansive, diverse, interdependent community they were creating stood in such opposition to Rome’s singular trickle down might—and their presence created turbulence there.

Being called a Christian then, meant ridicule and threat and oppression from the Government and the religious leaders. It wasn’t a cheap decal one adorned themselves with to declare their own righteousness; it was applied to them by powerful people who despised them.

Trump Christians wouldn’t be called Christians by these people, they would be called Romans—and those following Jesus then, wouldn’t recognize people supporting this President now, as their spiritual descendants.

There would be no bloodline to trace, no affinities to note, no visible family resemblance.

Christians then, destroyed social barriers between people—they didn’t fortify them.
Christians then, welcomed the marginalized and vulnerable—they didn’t harass them at school or in hospital rooms or on street corners.
Christians then, healed the sick and fed the hungry and clothed the naked—they didn’t resent them for being lazy or making bad choices.
Christians then, pushed back against the corrupt power hoarding wealth—they didn’t partner with it.
Christians then, loved their disparate neighbors as themselves—they didn’t wall them off and send them away and lock them in cages.

People aligned with a Jesus who said “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them”—would have been fully sickened by families separated at borders.

People connected to a Jesus who said, “You cannot serve both God and money”—wouldn’t be overlooking adultery, corruption, and bigotry just to pad their nest eggs.

People synonymous with a Jesus who fed a hillside multitude, not because they were right or saved or moral, but because they were hungry—wouldn’t recognize a “pull yourself by your own bootstraps” callousness toward those in need.

People associated with a Jesus who touched lepers and healed the blind and bleeding—wouldn’t be able to comprehend believers who penalized people for preexisting conditions or made staying alive a financial death sentence.

Most of all, people connected to Jesus they weren’t tripping over themselves to publicly claim their Christlikeness. Other people decided that.

People currently supporting this President can label themselves any way they want.

They can imagine themselves sanctified while perpetuating something that far more resembles Caesar of Rome than Jesus of Nazareth.

They can try and retrofit Jesus’ Christianity to the bloated, self-aggrandizing, malevolent Empire they’re currently wallowing in.

They can try and bastardize Jesus expansive’ “For God so loved the world” purpose statement, into a walled-off, gated community “America First” rally slogan.

They can even preach the angry gospel of white nationalism and contempt for outsiders—and call themselves Christian while doing so.

But no one in the time of Jesus would be calling them Christian.

Not the Romans.
Not the Christ followers.
Most of all, Jesus.

The first Christians were labeled Christians, because they emulated Christ—in all his compassionate, kind, loving, healing, welcoming, border-breaching, barrier-busting goodness.

These folks emulate someone antithetical to all of it.

Technically speaking of course, given the origins of the word, none of us should claim to be Christian—but if we’re going to, we should at least seek some spiritual synergy.

They may be self-identified Christians, but from the outside the title is suspect.
They aren’t “Little Christs”
They aren’t “followers of the Way.”
They aren’t even Evangelicals.

They are “Little Trumps.”

In that God of arrogance and greed and enmity, they truly trust.

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