Tag Archives: politics

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

“If it’s fair”

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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?

About the Author

Carl Krieg, Ph.D. received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith,   The Void and the Vision and  The New Matrix: How the World We Live In Impacts Our Thinking About Self and God. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife Margaret in Norwich, VT.

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.

Ivana Knew: The Seeds of Disrespect

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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
Photos of Hermann Goebbels, Joseph Goring (Third Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda), and Ernst Rohm (SA co-founder and Chief of Staff)
Joseph Göring, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Ernst 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.

Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, July 8, 2020.

When tyrants rage: Isaiah’s rebuke

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In Russia, Vladimir Putin denies responsibility for the death of Alexei Navalny. In the U.S.A, Donald Trump serpentine mind twists Navalny’s assassination into a fun house mirror, portraying himself as America’s Navalny — a victim of state power. When words fail me, I often turn to the Hebrew prophets. Finding Isaiah’s rebuke of Assyrian King Sennacherib in the Seventh Century BCE gives me the words. Isaiah speaks in the name of God (“I AM”) who cannot be mocked.

Isaiah’s rebuke

But I know your sitting down
and your going out and coming in,
and your raging against Me. Isaiah 37:28

ISaiah 37:28

A personal reflection

You cannot hide. You plot and scheme as though unseen, not noticed, secure in the dark places of public life. You rise. You sit. You go out among the shadows, declaring innocence and impunity. You mislead. You cheat. You lie. You bear false witness and concoct stories to assail your neighbors. You connive, conspire, and assassinate.

You poison your opponents and flood the public with fear and hate. You threaten your critics, and pay legal fees for sycophants who have placed their trust in you. You rant and rage and rouse the people with a voice that feigns righteous indignation.

Isaiah’s rebuke continued

Because you have raged against Me
    and your insolence has come to My ears,
I will put My hook in your nose
    and My bit in your mouth;
I will turn you back on the way
    by which you came.

Isaiah 37:29

A hook in the nose

photo of a hook (ring) in cow's nose illustrates the Isaiah text "I will put my hook in your nose."

Personale reflection

Uncivil, insolent, resistant, unhinged, kicking up dust on everyone around you, you mock whatever would restrict you, restrain you, expose you to the light of day, but darkness is not dark to Me. I hear you snorting, braying and bellowing. I see you bucking against the bit and bridal that will break you of your whims and schemes, your defamations and slander, your arrogance and threats, your schemes of terror, your treasonous justifications of insurrection and assassination.

I AM. You cannot hide from Me.

A call for prophets

The biblical prophets Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Ezekiel et.al. were not, as is commonly supposed, fortune tellers. They were not palm readers. Isaiah confronted Sennacherib, king of an empire, while he called his countrymen to re-claim the souls they had almost lost.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases the rebuke of Sennacherib in his masterpiece rendering of the Bible, The Message:


I know all about your pretentious poses,

  your self-important comings and goings,

 and, yes, the tantrums you throw against me.

Because of all your wild raging against me,

 your unbridled arrogance that I keep hearing of,

I’ll put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth.

I’ll show you who’s boss. I’ll turn you around

 and take you back to where you came from. 

Isaiah 37:28-29

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still!: Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), 49 brief (two to four page) reflections on faith and public madness; Brooklyn Park. MN, Feb. 22, 2024.

Meeting President Bill Clinton

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January 28, 1998

He gave the State of the Union address
the night before, and flew on Air Force One
to our college town in the middle-west
to check out press and public reaction.
(The sex with an intern story made news
the week before.) For six years he had met
not politicians, but “Local Heroes”
at airports (Do-Gooders the Democrat
Party chose.)
Our church worked with homeless men.
As Pastor, I was picked to shake his hand
as he came off the plane (in a long line
with 14 other folks.) He called each one
of us by name. He firmly gripped my hand,
looked in my eyes, pretending to be fine…/

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 28, 1988

Steve Shoemaker with President Bill Clinton

Steve Shoemaker with President Bill Clinton

Join Steve next Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church.

Sermon – The Divided House

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A sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, Minnesota. It could also be called “Take a Risk – Stand for Something!”

Irony of Ironies: MLK and Syria?

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The same day America honored the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington most remembered for Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, America’s first black President appeared on the Newshour to discuss military strikes in Syria.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was as deeply committed to peace and to NON-VIOLENT, non-military solutions to global problems as he was to ending racism. As his analysis of the national, international, and human condition continued to develop, he became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, capitalism, and imperialism.  He grasped as well as any public figure of his time the institutional power of an unelected, undemocratic web of the economic-military-corporate power at work behind the scenes of American public life.

I was proud of President Obama’s speech from the same spot where where Dr. King had stood 50 years before at the March on Washington.  I can’t put that together with his entertainment of military action in Syria.  For whatever reason, the media did not seem to notice the incongruity.

Last night’s PBS Newhour featured a conversation about the advisability of “punishing” Syria. University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer’s statements, in my opinion, hit the nail on the head. “Stay out militarily.”  Click HERE to listen to the conversation. 

The military-industrial-technological-corporate complex feeds of mistakes like Iraq and Afghanistan. Martin Luther King, Jr. never lunched on their food. Nor should we. 

Solitude and Society Sermon

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Solitude and Society

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Marriage Equality in Minnesota

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gaymarriageMy younger son is gay. For 12 years he’s been in a committed relationship in New York.

His response to the news that Minnesota will now become a marriage equality state was:

“Great. One more state in which I get to choose not to get married!”

He doesn’t want to get married. He just wants for anyone who chooses the covenant of marriage to have that choice. He just wants to live his life.

In 1978 students at The College of Wooster began “coming out” to me in the safe space of my office at The Church House”, the campus ministry center that housed the offices of the College Church, Westminster Presbyterian Church. I served the dual role of Pastor of the church and Pastor to the College of Wooster.

Dr. Violet Startzman, the physician at the College’s Health Center, came home with the results of a three-year study on homosexuality commissioned by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Westminster sponsored public forums, adult studies, and less formal conversations about the core finding of the study: same-gender orientation is not a choice; it’s part of the natural spectrum of human sexual attraction and love.

It was in that context that previously fearful or confused students shared in the privacy of the pastor’s office and found affirmation. They were active in the college church. They were ordained (student) elders on the church board.

My story since then is complicated, more so than I would like it to have been, in retrospect. Pastors are teachers and educators as well as advocates. Those of us who seek to minister to a congregation wear the mantle of conflicting responsibilities of conscience, patience, unity, and advocacy. We are first and foremost rabbis (teachers). Teaching is different from preaching, although the good preacher is also a teacher. And teachers begin by respecting their students, no matter what their views are on a given subject. Each of us perceives the world through eyes that see what experience has taught us to see.

When my son came out to us, we were grateful. Grateful for his self-knowledge. Grateful for his trust. Grateful that a (not-so-secret) secret was no longer a secret. So very grateful and proud of who he was as a young man and all that he had done and stood for.

Now, today, I am in Minnesota. He is in New York. I, like him, am grateful that there is one more state in which he can choose whether or not to be married.