The date June 14 had multiple layers of meaning for my family this year. June 14 (Flag Day) was my mother’s birthday. Muriel Eva Titus Stewart would have been 110 this year. It was Donald J. Trump’s birthday; it was the day of the military parade celebrating the President’s birthday and the 250th Anniversary of the United States Army.
It was the day a gunman killed Minnesota Speaker of the House emerita Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park), her husband, Mark, in their own home, and critically wounded Sen. John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin) and his wife, Yvette, in their home.
A Brooklyn Park Police advisory to secure our property and stay put during the search for the suspect.
Later that day, downtown Minneapolis Interfaith Clergy representing Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Unitarian-Universalist congregations published the following statement on hate and violence.
Downtown Interfaith Clergy Statement, Jun 14, 2025
We are a multi-faith coalition of clergy representing more than 35,000 Minnesotans from congregations across the city of Minneapolis.
Many of us have had the honor of offering prayers in the chambers of the Minnesota House of Representatives and the Minnesota Senate. As clergy, we pray for unity, peace, and guidance for our elected officials—public servants working toward the well-being of all Minnesotans.
It is unimaginable that Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and Senator John Hoffman, his wife Yvette, and their daughter were targeted in an act of extreme political violence. We mourn alongside the family of Speaker Emerita Hortman and her husband in their time of inconceivable grief, and we send our prayers for a complete healing of body and spirit to Senator Hoffman, Yvette, and their daughter.
In these deeply troubling times, we stand united against the rising culture of hatred and fear that has been allowed to take root in our communities. Violent words lead to violent actions, and we must not let depravity become the new normal in our world. Together, we will work to counter it wherever we see it.This is a time of great divisiveness in our country. As people of faith, we are called, as the prophet Jeremiah teaches us, to seek “peace in the city, and in the places where we dwell.” (Jeremiah, 29:7) As interfaith religious leaders, we have worked to maintain connections across faiths through thoughtful and respectful dialogue, even when we disagree. Such conversations between people of faith offer a powerful alternative to division and hostility.
Interfaith relationships have brought us closer to our own faith and convictions. This work has opened the door to deeper engagement with our holy texts, our sacred communities, and our relationships with God. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But it does not bend on its own. We must bend it—with courage, conviction, compassion, and action.
God help us to live our lives with moral courage, to strengthen our communities, and to stand together for justice.
Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman, on behalf of the Downtown Interfaith Clergy
Rev. Jeffrey Japinga, Westminster Presbyterian Church; Rev. Dan Adolphson, First Christian Church; Rev. Jullan Stoneberg, First Unitarian Society; Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay, Hennepin Ave United Methodist Church; Pastor Elijah McDavid III, Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church; Rev. Timothy M. Kingsley, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral; Rev. Jen Crow, First Universalist Church; Rev. Peter Nycklemoe, Central Lutheran Church; Makram El-Amin, executive director, Al-Maa’uun; Father Daniel Griffith, Basilica of St. Mary;Father Kevin Kenney, St. Olaf Catholic Church.
Downtown interfaith Clergy statement, Minneapolis, MN, June 14, 2025
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, June 30, 2025.
“Beware the Ides of March,” says the seer, warning Caesar that his reign would end that day. ”Well, the Ides of March are come,” declares Caesar, mocking the seer with a sneer. “Aye, they are come,” says the seer, “but they are not gone.” — Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.
A very long day
When words escape me, I look to a psalm, a poem, or work of fiction. Today I find words for what I feel in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and in the exchange between Caesar and the seer in the Ides of March. In 2025, it happens, if it happens, on more than one day. The day for us is longer––weeks, months and years – when we are suspended between Caesar’s sneer and the seer’s prophecy.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to turn the Oval Office into a whipping post, the headquarters of a demolition crew, and a showroom for a car dealership. None of us has lived through a period like this. Which is why good fiction like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 offers a different lens to see what is happening in real time.
Joseph Heller’s character without character: Milo Minderbinder
The setting of Catch-22 is a U.S. Army Air Corp base during World War II. First Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the squadron’s entrepreneurial mess officer, finds a way to turn the weapons of war to his financial advantage without a hint of principle or scruples.
The result, M&M (Milo & Minderbinder Enterprises) is all about Milo. Led by Lieutenant Minderbinder, M&M Enterprises amasses weapons of war through the black market and by a covert deal with the enemy. By the end, Milo takes pleasure watching the explosions that kill and maim his own troops.
Good fiction lifts the veil on reality,
How does an author describe someone like that? Heller calls him ‘a miracle’. “It was miraculous” is an apt description of what is happening to America now, in real time. Four years ago, it was unthinkable that the American electorate would return Donald Trump to the White House. It would take a miracle, or so it seemed. Until Mr. Trump, like Jesus, walked on water. Heller’s description of Milo Minderbinder jumps from the pages of Catch-22. “It was a miracle,” Heller says,
” It was almost no trick at all, he [Milo] saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” — Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
It takes a character like that to lead others to see you as a miracle, as happened in the Weimar Republic of Germany on Feb. 27, 1933, when the Reichstag (Parliament building) went up in flames. It happened a month after Hitler became Chancellor. Hitler and his devotees blamed the Communists.
Some events outlive their dates on the calendar. Like COVID, Polio, and Measles, they disappear, but never go away. They lie dormant until the circumstances are ripe for their return. Social, cultural, political, economic, and spiritual alienation is the challenge now as it was in Germany. A charismatic sociopath turned Germany into a cuckoo’s nest where morning becomes night, goodness becomes evil, the fear of death turns hearts into stone, mortality into delusions of grandeur, faith into demagoguery, courage into cowardice, patriotism into cruelty and carnage. It’s happening now in America.
Criminal Insanity requires no character
Serving churches and a public defense law office has brought me face-to-face with the likes of Milo Minderbinder. They were patients in the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Their delusions and illusions had created their own worlds. None of them had access to nuclear codes. They were burdened, but no one bore the burden of national security. They lived in secure quarters within the real world.
Aside from the nuclear codes, former daily national security briefings, drawing the global spotlight, extreme wealth and power, multiple women, wives, and lawyers, and well-practiced skills to avoid legal consequences, Donald Trump seems undistinguished from similar souls suffering from the worlds in their heads. He, Donald, is its center. His wants, wishes, and desires — and his alone — define reality. He is, in fact, the weak man, the needy man, the sick man who puffs himself up to be a man’s man, the strong man with authority to separate truth and falsehood, good and evil. He is the star who can do no wrong— in a lingerie section of an upscale department store, on an airplane, or in a Moscow hotel suite. His charm beguiles millions of Americans to believe January 6 was an act of patriotism, deserving of pardons, rather than a poorly executed insurrection, an act of treason.
Fiction and reality
Author George Saunders’ work of fiction, “The Moron Factory” (The Atlantic, March 2025) captures what many are feeling in the world’s very long day:
Sometimes feel life stinks, everything bad/getting worse, everyone doomed. Then day like today occurs, reminding one that yes, although life stinks, does not always stink to same extent, i.e., variations can occur in extent to which life, from day to day, may stink.
Today strange.
Maryanne Trump Barry speaks candidly of her younger brother Donald in terms akin to Heller’s description of Milo Minderbindinder:
“He [Donald] has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this. . . It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”
Today is March 27. The Ides of March have passed, yet nothing has changed. Milo and M&M Enterprises are still undermining the country I thought I knew.
Get up and walk around
You can’t make this stuff up. But novelists and poets can and do. They remove the veil of ignorance. Creative imagination allows us to see reality as it is. Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, George Shakespeare, belong in the same guild as Heller and Shakespeare. Kesey saw in Shakespeare’s work a moral imperative.
“When Shakespeare was writing,” said Kesey, “he wasn’t writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.”
Poetry and fiction may yet save us from Caesar and Milo Minderbinder and our worst selves. That will only happen if we get up and move around.” This long day has not yet passed. Get up and move around!
Gordon C. Stewart, author of "Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness"(2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 brief commentaries on faith and public life, Brooklyn Park, MN; June 4, 2023.
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) entreats his Senate colleagues to stand up and be counted for the American Constitutional Republic and the survival of the rule of law and law enforcement. The three examples of January 6 violence are chilling. We’re better than that!
On January 20, the Constitutional duty of administering the presidential oath of office fell again to the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Chief Justice holds his position by virtue of his own oath to the Constitution.
Supreme Court Justice Oath of Office
I, ___________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent upon me as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court under the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Supreme Court Justice oath of office, Curator of the Supreme Court
Question
Does a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court violate his Constitutional Oath of Office by fulfilling his constitutional duty to preside over the administration of a President-elect’s oath-taking when the Court is in possession of evidence that the oath-taking was, and again will be, disingenuous, and for purpose of evasion?
Rhetorical or Serious?
The question seems rhetorical. It’s not. It’s serious. On January 20, 2025, the former president who violated election law by silencing a porn star, burying the story in a deal with a gossip tabloid; refused to honor the Constitutional peaceful transfer of power in 2021 and rallied the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and his supporters in a violent insurrection that threatened his own Vice President‘s life; promised to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists; mastered the five principles of effective propaganda outlined by Third Reich Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment Josef Goebbels; maneuvered the rule of law to evade trial; denounced the American justice system, courts, judges, prosecutors and court personnel as “rigged” against him; refused to surrender top secret national security documents after leaving office; and who continues to mock the juries that convicted him, and to use the powers of the presidency to exact retribution–– courts-marshal, imprisonment, or execution for treason––stood before Chief Justice John Roberts, ‘forgot’ to place his hand on two Bibles, raised the other hand, and “solemnly swore” the oath he had given no reason to trust.
Subversion by any other name is still subversion
A jury unanimously found the president-elect guilty on all 34 felony counts. Mr. Trump had already broken the presidential oath he took in 2017, but shrewd maneuvering through the state and federal court processes, Donald Trump is a convicted felon in the state of New York but has yet to be sentenced, and the more consequential federal indictments have been dropped. When Yogi Berra said “It’s not over til it’s over, “he had in mind the nine innings of a baseball game, but, like many other Yogi-isms, it describes real life beyond baseball.
If perception is nine-tenths of reality, the Supreme Court and the rule of law have lost. So has Congress. Oath-taking has become performative. The rule of law is at the point of implosion. It has been subverted by a well-heeled criminal well-practiced in using the law and judicial procedures to escape accountability under the rule of law. If there is a crack to be found, Donald Trump will find it and crawl through it unscathed.
It happened once. If we’re not careful, it can happen again.
History records moments like this. Ten years after conviction for “high treason” following the Beer Hall Putz, a failed coup attempt, Adolf Hitler rode the wave of public frustration and anger with the Weimar Republic to become Reich Chancellor and Führer. Six months after he took the oath of office, the Constitution was changed. It put Hitler where the Constitution had been. The United States Holocaust Museum tells the story.
Those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it
Following the death of President von Hindenburg in August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed power as Reich Chancellor and Führer. Shortly thereafter, on August 20, 1934, the longstanding oath taken by state officials was changed so that they no longer swore loyalty to the German constitution but rather to Hitler as head of state.
Although in retrospect this change seems to indicate another step in Hitler’s consolidation of power, at the time many would have understood it differently. By replacing “Constitution” with “Hitler,” the oath was meant to convey that Hitler’s will was the same as that of the nation and the people and that his will could not, by definition, contradict the imperative to ‘observe the law and conscientiously fulfill the duties’ of office. In this way, the oath appeared to equate Hitler’s authority with the constitution and to ensure that it would be limited by the primacy of law and duty in public office.”
Oath of Loyalty for All State Officials as of August 14, 1919: “I swear loyalty to the Constitution, obedience to the law, and conscientious fulfillment of the duties of my office, so help me God.” [Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1919, pp. 1419-1420.]
Oath of Loyalty for All State Officials as of August 20, 1934: “I swear I will be true and obedient to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, observe the law, and conscientiously fulfill the duties of my office, so help me God.” [Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1934, p. 785.
Is one’s word one’s bond? Or is it subterfuge?
The Hierarchy:: Adolf Hitler (L), Joseph Goebbels C), Hermann Goering (R)
The Oath of Office to which President-elect Donald Trump swore for the second time was either what it appeared to be, or it wasn’t. Whether the German felon convicted of “High Treason” authentically swore to be loyal to the Constitution is a question no one can answer. Some oath-takers and their administrators are honest, but their personality disorders contort the language to equate the people’s constitution and the nation with themselves.
This commentary is not the product of the power of positive thinking, but Christ does not call me to be willfully blind. Sharing this commentary, I feel like Sir Alfred Hitchcock driving by a remote church in the Swiss Alps. Seeing a priest standing next to a little boy with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Sir Alfred rolled down the rear window of his chauffeur-driven Bentley limousine and cried out, “Run, little boy! Run for your life!!!
God help us all!
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, Presbyterian Minister (HR), author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, January 13, 2024.
Age has its advantages. Racing home from school to watch the House Army-McCarthy hearings, chaired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), is still fresh in my generation’s memory. Some indecencies never die. They’re like ghosts. The people we thought were dead reappear when the time is ripe. The 2024 election is such a moment. Take a look.
Some dragons are not slain
Some dragons cannot be slain. They become ghosts. In this season of the 2024 national election, I can’t believe my eyes. I see the ghosts of Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn. I hear their voices and see their scorn for decency.
Roy Cohn became infamous for representing the mob, a ‘fixer’ for hire. He sullied the reputations of innocent people, represented Donald Trump, and became his mentor. You might says tha tDonald became Roy’s apprentice before he became a popular entertainer on The Apprentice.
Winning was everything, and the way to win was to attack, threaten, lie, and bully. “Always attack! Never defend!” was his First Commandment. Winning was the only thing that mattered.
“I don’t believe in the concept of regret. I have no time for it.”
“I have a simple motto: Always attack, never defend.”
“In the end, winning is the only thing that matters.”
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
“Hate is just a tool we use to control and manipulate others.”
“I don’t play by the rules, I make them.”
“The only thing worse than losing is being forgotten.”
Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does.
Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Minister, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock), 49 brief (2-4 page) social commentaries/ meditations on faith and public life; Brooklyn Park, MN, Oct. 25, 2024.
While 67 million Americans watched the presidential candidates debate in Philadelphia’s Convention Hall, something else was happening in Springfield, Ohio. Nathan Clark, a grieving father, whose 11-year-old son, Aiden, died when a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant veered into his school bus, was speaking at a city commission meeting.
What has to stop?
Those of us watching the debate might suppose Mr. Clark was speaking of the Haitians pouring into Springfield, but this “this” was not that. Aiden’s father spoke clearly.
This has to stop now. They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members, however, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time to hear their apology.
No apology in Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, there was no apology. “In Springfield,” said GOP candidate Donald Trump, “they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of people who live there.”
Fact check
ABC moderator David Muir set the record straight with a fact check: The city’s elected officials say there is no evidence that dogs and cats had been killed and eaten in Springfield. Mr. Trump replied that he thought he had seen it on television.
In that moment, film-goers as old as I might have thought of Chauncey Gardiner in “Being There” — the estate gardener who confuses television with reality, whom the power-brokers and politicians mistake for a genius.
But Chauncey was not the only one that deserved a fact check. The “they” of whom Mr. Clark spoke was much larger. “They” are the party that eats lies for breakfast and claims they’re eating Wheaties.
Venus Flytrap or Bird-of-Paradise
Who are “they”? A Venus Flytrap and a Bird-in-Paradise “They” are a Venus flytrap, capturing the fearful, the gullible, the anxious, the confused, and the floundering, who mistake the leaf of a flytrap for a solid foothold, or who mistake a Venus flytrap as a Bird-of-Paradise.
In the spin room after the debate, a reporter interviews Trump advisor Stephen Miller. The journalist is asking Mr. Miller for evidence to support the claim that criminals, rapists, murderers, gangs, and people released from prisons and insane asylums are invading our country. Here’s the spin room exchange where Chilean journalist Jose María del Pino asks for specific numbers and the source.
In the aftermath of the debate, a citizen of Springfield has identified herself as the source of the story about pets being eaten in Springfield and has apologized for making up the story and for the hateful disturbance it has caused.
“If I have to create stories…”
Republican candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance continue to repeat the story they know is not true. Last Sunday’s “State of the Nation,” JD Vance replied to Dana Bash: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do….”
Since the presidential debate put the spotlight on Springfield, 38 bomb threats have resulted in the evacuation and closures of City Hall, public schools, medical centers, and the office of the Department of Motor Vehicles, among others
Stochastic terrorism is turning the city of Springfield into a minefield. Although there is no direct relation between the former president’s finger-pointing at Haitian immigrants, random individuals hear it as a call to action.
As happened on January 6, 2021, the former occupant of the Oval Office, stays silent. The leader of the MAGA movement stays glued to his television set, tees, and fairways without distancing himself from threats of violence in Springfield. He has yet to say, “This has to stop now!”
When a nation mistakes a Venus flytrap for a Bird-of-Paradise, only an election can get it out.
Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), September 17, 2024.
Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN. Sept. 16, 202
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world that can be thy place .
Ezra Pound, Canto LXXLI
They’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just standing in the way.
There’s been a mistake
There’s been a mistake. I don’t know you; you don’t know me. No one is coming after me. I’m not that important. Neither are you. No one with their wits about them could believe you are the only one who keeps “them” from getting to me. But the pitch has a familiar ring.
The old, old story?
It sounds like “the old, old story of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love,” but this story is a far cry from the one in the New Testament. The Biblical story includes a warning, attributed to Jesus: “Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and they will lead many astray.”
It’s a biblical way of saying, “Don’t mistake a wolf disguised as Little Red Riding Hood’s Grandma for the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
Life with Buddy
Even a parrot can quote scripture. But there’s a difference: the parrot has no idea what it’s saying. Human beings do. Take Buddy, for example. Shortly after arriving for a visit with old friends, the phone rang. Harry stayed put. Knowing that any call to Harry could be an emergency, we encouraged Harry or Anna to feel free to take the call.
Harry raised his finger to his lips. Anna smiled and whispered, “Shhhh!
The phone continued to ring. When it stopped, a voice from an adjacent room yelled, “Harry! It’s for you! Harry. . . it’s for you!”
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, an African Grey Parrot doesn’t know it. After Buddy had fooled us with his imitation of the phone ringing, with precise intervals between the rings, and calling Harry to the phone, Buddy went on to recite the 23rd Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…” before imitating the sounds of Anna he’d heard every morning: brushing her teeth, gargling, and other sounds not fit to print.
Shakespeare: “O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” wrote Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. “An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge: To See More Clearly, and author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN.
Thanks to Carl Krieg for permission to republish “The Rule of Law, No More” from Progressive Christianity. Information about Carl follows the commentary.
The Rule of Law, No More
As the American public reels in the face of the many trials of Donald Trump, delayed again and again by rules only a lawyer could ever know, we are consoled again and again by the analysts who assure us that this only proves that we are a nation wherein the rule of law is supreme and applied equally to all. Baffled though we may be, we Americans want to believe that in drafting the Constitution, the “Founding Fathers” exhibited unparalleled wisdom in creating the bedrock of our society, our law and our democracy. The problem they could not anticipate, and therefore could not adequately prevent, was the possibility that a definitive proportion of that society would ever reject the freedom they were offered and instead choose a dictator. The bedrock of our society, however, is not the Constitution itself, but the public consensus that grants validity to it. Without the mutual agreement that we all accept the rule of law with the Constitution as the foundation, – without that consensus, democracy becomes untenable. And we have lost that consensus.
The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution as it chooses, searching for ways to make the Constitution say what the Court wants it to say. The Republican Party refuses to guarantee that it will accept and support results of future elections. And the Leader of this Party mocks courts every chance he gets, encouraging his disciples to chaos, disruption, and violence. Meanwhile, dictators around the world, fearful that successful democracy elsewhere might loosen their own grip on power, also work to destroy our consensus, covertly undermining the helpful discussion and dissent that characterizes democracy and replacing it with diatribe and demonization. Achieving consensus in a nation of immigrants, such as the US, was never an easy proposition. But maintaining consensus when one of the two major parties refuses to abide by majority decision, is impossible.
That is the situation we now face. Trump and the Republicans will of course accept the results of an election “if it is fair”. But if they lose, by definition the election was not fair. And they will not accept it. As we gather steam toward November, Republicans, please think long and hard about your party’s refusal to abide by election results. We went that route once before and wound up shooting each other as the nation was thrown into civil war. And to all you evangelical Christians, without whom the Republican party could not exist, is this really what you believe God wants of you?
Thanks for coming by, Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge; author of Be Still! Departures from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, May 20, 2024.
This 2020 commentary has stayed hidden in Views' draft file for reasons perhaps as obvious as the reasons for posting it now.
Every deed in the grand manner on this earth will in general be the fulfillment of a desire which had long since been present in millions of people, a longing silently harbored by many. Yes, it can come about that centuries wish and yearn for the solution of a certain question, because they are sighing beneath the intolerable burden of an existing condition and the fulfillment of this general longing does not materialize.
These words are not Donald Trump’s. “The intolerable burden that yearns for a solution” did not refer to the continuing dispossession of America’s First People, or the descendants of men, women children whose labor produced the wealth of their white kidnappers.
They are the words of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, the book Ivana Trump said her husband kept in his bedroom.
Nations which no longer find any heroic solution for such distress can be designated as impotent, while we see the vitality of a people, and the predestination for life guaranteed by this vitality, most strikingly demonstrated when, for a people’s liberation from a great oppression, or for the elimination of a bitter distress, or for the satisfaction of its soul, restless because it has grown insecure – Fate some day bestows upon it the man endowed for this purpose, who finally brings the long yearned-for fulfillment.
Adolf Hitler, Chapter 8, The Strong Man Is Mightier Alone, Mein Kamp
A Man Endowed for this Purpose: To Save the Nation
The president is a moral predator who feeds on fear of “the other.” Predators show no respect or compassion. Not for the sick and dying during the new coronavirus pandemic. Not for African Americans disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Not for at-risk first responders: doctors, nurses, orderlies, and hospital custodians and kitchen staffs begging for more masks and ventilators. Not for journalists who bring facts to disinformation press conferences. They show no respect for anyone or anything and hold nothing as sacred. They pose with Bibles in front of churches, but never read them.
Is it unreasonable to suppose that a president at risk of losing his fight to keep his tax returns from public scrutiny, fearful of losing his bid for re-election in November, and facing multiple criminal charges after leaving office would use the playbooks his first ex-wife and ghost writer alleged to have been by his bedside?
Hermann Goebbels, Minister without Portfolio Joseph Göring, Minister of Public Enlightenment and PropagandaErnst Röhm, SA co-founder and Chief of Staff
The Supreme Judge of the ________People
As news of the covert operation began to leak, Reich “Minister Without Portfolio” Joseph Göring ordered police stations to burn “all documents concerning the action of the past two days.” Newspapers were told not to publish the names of the dead. Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goring took to the airwaves to announce to the nation that Hitler had prevented traitors from overthrowing the government and throwing the country into turmoil. Eleven days later (July 13, 1934) Hitler gave the nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag (the German equivalent of the U.S. Congress) in which he conflated the nation and himself. The strong man who made Germany great again proclaimed himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people” and threatened opponents as traitors.
If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this. In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.
Adolf Hitler speech to the Reichstag, July 13, 1934.
Concerned with potential objection from the Reichstag and the courts, Hitler acted quickly to push official approval by the Reichstag the expansion of his powers. The change was approved immediately and retroactively, serving as official justification for the massacre of the Night of the Long Knives. On July 3rd his administration’s cabinet approve a measure that declared, “The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defense by the State.”
The Blossoms of Disrespect
Had journalists asked former civil rights and peacemaking activist William Sloane Coffin what he would say about the self-proclaiming law-and-order U.S. president and his loyal partisans in Congress, I imagine he might repeat what he said years ago of public figures who insist their language bears no responsibility for hate and violence.
“Trent Lott, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell– all insist their words contribute nothing to an atmosphere that might legitimate anti-gay violence. Don’t they know that the seed of disrespect often blossoms into hatred?”
William Sloane Coffin Jr., Credo (WJK)
All who seek a respectful future do well to remember how quickly good gets twisted into evil, and how even a society’s best intentions for a just society can fall prey to the law of unintended consequences: the end of a Constitutional democratic republic by little men with little mustaches and deranged men with orange hair.
While brewing the coffee this morning, I remembered writing a commentary on the power of language. “The Language of Demagoguery” first appeared on Views from the Edge in 2012, long before the word ‘weaponization’ muscled its way into American public discourse. Here’s the piece. Though no longer in the pulpit, It still speaks for me.
Words are POWERFUL! Sometimes those who preach wonder whether our words matter. But reading this paragraph in Timothy Egan’s NYT, “Deconstructing a Demagogue,”reminded me of just how powerful they are:
Back in 1994, while plotting his takeover of the House, [Newt] Gingrich circulated a memo on how to use words as a weapon. It was called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” Republicans were advised to use certain words in describing opponents — sick, pathetic, lie, decay, failure, destroy. That was the year, of course, when Gingrich showed there was no floor to his descent into a dignity-free zone, equating Democratic Party values with the drowning of two young children by their mother, Susan Smith, in South Carolina.
Today, if you listen carefully to any Gingrich takedown, you’ll usually hear words from the control memo.
Timothy Egan, “Deconstructing a Demagogue,” New York Times, 01/26/2012
And that’s just the beginning of the story of how language is used and abused for purposes of social manipulation. Gingrich knew that language is “A Key Mechanism of Control.” Those who are well-schooled in theology and politics know that language is the primary mechanism of mind control: truth becomes falsehood and falsehood becomes truth; beauty becomes ugliness and ugliness becomes beauty; goodness becomes evil and evil becomes goodness, twisted by the language of innuendo and word association.
Growing Cynicism
The cynicism that pervades the American electorate is due, in part, to this demagogic use of language. Words are precious things. Holy things. Sacred things. When they get twisted, they become vulgar and profane, one might even say ‘demonic’ in the sense in which Paul Tillich defined ‘demonic’: the twisting of the good. “The claim of something finite to infinity or to divine greatness is the characteristic of the demonic” (Paul Tillich, “Life and It’s Ambiguities,” Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, p. 102).
Paul Tillich, “The Courage to Be”
Words are sacred. And those who abuse them enter into the darkness of the demonic twisting that led James Russell Lowell to write the hymn lyrics I sang as a child:
Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood…. Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet t’is truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong , Yet that scaffold sways the future, And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadows, Keeping watch above His own.
Hymn “Once to every man and nation,” James Russell Lowell
Gordon C. Stewart public theologian, Brooklyn Park, MN, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), December 5, 2023.
Views from the Edge 