Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Stochastic Terrorism: Springfield’s Hidden Crisis

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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

Original movie poster for "Being There" with Peter Sellers as Chauncey Gardener.

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

THREE PRESIDENTS in and out of the Limelight

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Former President Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care at home. The love of his life, Rosalind, asked that their privacy be respected. They have had their fill of limelights and cameras. When Ronald Regan defeated his bid for a second term, President Carter graciously conceded, and returned to their home in Plains, GA. He spent the rest of his life with hammer and saw in hand, building homes for Habitat for Humanity.

On Presidents Day, President Joe Biden risked a visit to Kiev for a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Zelensky to assure him that the USA would keep its commitment to Ukraine for as long as it takes to put down Vladimir Putin’s siege. Joe Biden was in the limelight yesterday, but the limelight was not about him. It was about Ukraine and the defense of democracy against autocracy and oligarchy.

Former President Donald Trump was at home alone with a golf club in one hand and a scorecard in the other. The cameras and microphones were missing. His soul, buried in a sand trap, was his only company, if he could find it. No one is holding their breath waiting for Mr. Trump to find the conscience he had sliced into the rough years ago, long before he pressured Vladimir Zelensky to investigate — and announce to the world — Ukraine’s investigation of Hunter Biden as the quid pro quo for releasing the US budgeted dollars he was withholding from the Zelensky administration.

Living in the Metaverse

In the latest issue of The Atlantic (March 23), Megan Garber’s “We’re Already Living in the Metaverse” draws on the insights of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Neil Postman, Neal Garber, Hanna Arendt, and others to trace how we came to live in the dystopian “post-truth” era when “the news is entertainment, and entertainment is the news.

In the metaverse, the ideal subjects of authoritarian rule are not the true believers in the cause. They are instead people who come to believe in everything and nothing at all: people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.

To live in the metaverse is to expect life should play out as it does on our screens. And the stakes are anything but trivial. In the metaverse, it is not shocking but entirely fitting that a game-show host and Twitter personality would become president of the United States.

Megan garber, “we’re already living in the metaverse,” The Atlantic, March 2023

Character counts for little in the world of the metaverse. Glitz and entertainment are everything. But flesh and blood reality doesn’t disappear. Within a matter of weeks, Jimmy Carter will breathe his last in Plains, GA. Rosalind and the Carter family will decide how best to celebrate the exemplary character of the former president whose real hammers and saws remind us that character is everything.

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, February 21, 2023.