I’ll end this post by saying that I have working-class friends... - Andrew Frisardi

Andrew, I admire you like you wouldn't believe - but what is this about the "working class"?

I am a member of the "working class", the "Great Unwashed", etc, etc.

There are no classes of people. There are only individuals. Universals are not real entities. They don't really exist.

Andrew F.

Everyone sees what they want to see. It is more pronounced regarding politics and religion. If a man in China has prospered under communism, it is pretty hard to dissuade him from that ideology and convert him to capitalism or faith in a higher Being. It isn't impossible but it's difficult. Another Chinese man down the same street might have been burdened and held back by communism and his desire to worship another higher power that the state collective and he won't be as hard to urge into capitalism or a robust faith in God. In fact, those kind of thoughts would get that man in a lot of trouble.

But in America, we don't have that problem, do we? Or do we? A lot of people just voted for the collective here. Their candidate lost by the electoral process. But she was certainly popular, even though fatally flawed. Her ideology is that it takes a village (her words, not mine) for humans to get along and prosper. Many on this very site voted for her knowing how flawed, dishonest, and self-serving she is. It was much worse than that though. They didn't care that she was the worst candidate since Carter or Kerry or Dukakis or Gore.

I will, at the moment, defend Trump and give him a little slack although I did not support him.The reason why? It's obvious. Hypocrisy. To be fair, Lehr didn't buy into her and a few others kept quiet. Sanders was a fool and let Clinton get away with murder. That's on him.

Andrew, I can answer nearly every statement you've made, clearly and objectively. If you wish me to do it, I will. But look at it from a sincere objective point of view. Ask yourself if Hillary Clinton wasn't guilty of many of the same things being slung at Trump. I'd have to say yes. Others would choke on that word, but they know it's true as well.

I think it is possible for Trump to do great damage to the country, but no more so than any other President in our history. He is considered a neophyte politician. I consider him as the consummate politician. He can do pretty much what he wants. Obama signed a ton of Executive Orders but I see no one on the left crying about it. A lot of what he did was extra-constitutional. And yet, now that Trump is in charge, the snowflake crybabies are screaming foul.

I suspect that Trump will do a lot of things I don't like.

I can't square his misogyny of women. I just can't.

As for conscience, I am always squared with my conscience. I came to that the hard way. As a Believer, I try not to tempt God. I place no stock in any politician, whatsoever. I live in Redneckville where it's just as corrupt as the big cities. It cost me a lot to learn that lesson. I don't forget.

Sincerely, since I am a Believer, I believe the scripture. It says (in Job, I think) that God causes men to rise up and to fall. He is always in charge. To me, it is a great mystery how he does that. I accept it as his will and go about my own business. I am in a small, a very small minority of people who believes this. I can't speak for others why they voted for Trump anymore than I can explain why anyone would vote for Clinton. My philosophy is guided by the premise that God does what he wants for his own glory, regardless what I think about it. I didn't always know or believe that. I am convinced of it now. Some folks will undoubtedly get hung up on that, they always do.

If a person truly looks at things in a fair light, all they have to do is see how hypocritical the other side is when that side is out of power. It goes back and forth like Lawn tennis until it doesn't.

I removed my comments per Julia's wise suggestion. I sent the comments to Charlie in private.

"Trump's sweeping executive order on immigration includes a plan for sanctuary jurisdictions to publish weekly a list of crimes committed by aliens."

This tidbit reported in many articles today is among the top alarm ringers. Just think about the mind behind this and the sort of agenda that would be served by it. Also I post it here because the counter seems to be up the writer's alley. Can you use your writing to underline the welcome presence of so-called 'aliens' in our homeplace and their enriching contributions.

Genocide studies show that a population that actively refuses this sort of us vs. them pathology are the societies most likely to subvert authoritative agendas. See Ervin Staub's The Roots of Evil

Can we have a vote?

I would like to see a thread wee creative people point out the moves the State is making and maybe suggest ways to counter those moves or even get ahead of the curve. Maybe there could be several other threads for those so inclined like "How to think like perfect bystander" or "Arcaic Misconceptions of Other Cultures and Socialist Theory" or even "Why Calvin is an Antisemitic Bore Postulating a God Who Does Indeed Make Torture Look Like a Sacrament But I Have Sworn Allegiance to Him Anyway".

But I vote this tread is for those committed to resistance and looking for some feedback with a poetic twist. This is not censorship because, well....look! The forum is wide open to new threads of wonder and delight!

Cool! Maybe we can stay on topic and come up with productive ways to unite against presidential actions we think are damaging, rather than getting sidelined by taking potshots at each others' religions, political affiliations, etc.

Defending what's left of our democracy deserves--and requires--more of our energy than whatever happens to be left over when we're done pushing each other's buttons.

You're right, Julie.

I can answer nearly every statement you've made, clearly and objectively. If you wish me to do it, I will.

Obviously no obligation to do so, Charlie, but that is what I was looking for. The points you raised in your last post, about Clinton etc., are election-time points but we’re post-election now, and into the new presidency. Hillary has nothing to do with the list of negatives about Trump that I put together, which put into general terms the list of specific actions which Andrew M. made at the start of this thread. Michael Cantor has added to this. (In my bulleted list in my post #37, btw, only the first point, about conflicts of economic interests, might apply to Clinton, though no where near to the extent that it applies to Trump and his Cabinet of billionaires.)

I continue to be bewildered how those negatives can be seen as prices worth paying, to benefit (supposedly) from whatever Trump might do to stimulate the economy. The lack of explaining about that inconsistency is a regular feature of Trump support, from what I have seen/heard/read. To date, I haven’t seen a single clear explanation from a Trump supporter or defender about why those negative points are acceptable or worth risking or putting up with. Usually, as Andrew S. says, a defensive response is given, to the effect that liberals are sore losers, or that the "elite media" doesn't understand the United States, etc. The negative and even dangerous things about Trump are never directly addressed.

Also, about William’s post #41: There are no classes of people. There are only individuals. Universals are not real entities. They don't really exist.

William, I said “working class” because that is what is always said about how Trump won the election: white working-class voters made the difference, say the articles. I don’t put much stock in the term, and I have no money myself. I was thinking of people who both don’t have much in the way of economic resources or prospects and who work at some sort of manual labor or factory job or whatever (the sorts of jobs Trump always says he is going to create). The first is true of me, the second isn’t.

I am okay with your explanation, Andrew F.

OK, Andrew, here it comes. The reason why Trump voters overlook, forgive, forget about all of those things you listed is this: Trump made promises to them and made them believe he would make good on his promises. It's that simple. Many people who voted for him didn't let anything dissuade them from going to his rallies and getting to the polls. He spent a lot of his own money, which meant he had skin in the game. Hillary spent a BILLION dollars of other folks money only to lose. Many of Trumps supporters have seen Republicans and Democrats fail to live up to what they promised and the electorate finally tired of it and said:no more. So, they took a chance on an admittedly very flawed man who was brash enough to call the rest of the crooks out on the carpet. He boned the media. The people loved him more for it. There was a groundswell of support for him over the preceding weeks before the election. I can go on and on about why he won and why they let him by with his faults. They are prepared to give him some time to succeed but not a long period of time. If he doesn't deliver on his promises they will turn and rend him.

The more the liberal left and mainstream media bash him, the further his supporters dig in.

If the left was smart (they ain't) they'd shut up and let him have the opportunity to hang himself. But they won't do that either. The media will keep stirring the stew and the left will oblige.

Trump only has to do about a dozen more semi-major things to carry him through the rest of the year. He's not, (as some would assert) stupid. The sooner people realize that, the better.

His time as a businessman and a TV celebrity will continue to serve him well, even if it means that many of his supporters will suffer for his policies. They're locked in. You nor anyone else is gonna get to them. You can make bank on it.

And if I'm wrong, we get Pence, who has none of that baggage to lug around.

That’s the impression I have, Charlie, and which I’ve been trying to express: that people who are defending Trump are willing to put with the negative stuff since they (and you) think the positives might outweigh it.

As you say, The reason why Trump voters overlook, forgive, forget about all of those things you listed is this: Trump made promises to them and made them believe he would make good on his promises. It's that simple.

I still haven’t heard, though, why those promises outweigh the imminent and actual damaging effects. Why Trump has not already gone beyond the pale by being Putin’s friend, having a Cabinet of billionaires including several Goldman Sachs people (and thus not really being “anti-establishment,” as he was touted to be), denying climate change and suppressing scientific data about it, and so on.

There are two possibilities: (1) either Trump supporters/defenders feel that the negatives are not really as dangerous and damaging as many feel they are, and therefore that the good of Trump at least potentially outweighs the bad; or that (2) Trump supporters/defenders are willing to deny or turn a blind eye to things that in their heart of hearts they know are dangerous and irredeemably negative in order to let Trump “make good on his promises.”

In other words: those negatives I listed are dealt with either by disagreeing that they are really that negative, or by denying their existence.

Andrew, time will tell regarding Trumps business entanglements. Personally, I think there are enough safeguards built in to the system to keep him honest. There is no love lost between him and the Republican majority in both houses, not to mention, the Supremes.

I don't know anyone out here in the hustings who believes Trump and Putin are buddies. I do think he is probably very friendly with the Russian Oligarchs who pull Putin's strings. I have no info either way on that. On the other hand, Russia's and our mutual interest is to destroy ISIS, ISIL, Al Quaida, and the like. Would I ever trust the Russian Bear? Nope, the book of Jeremiah warns against this in the 56th or so chapter. It's prophecy, so I don't expect anyone to pay attention to me on that. Daniel warns of it too. Again. Trump ain't stupid or naive. Democrats put academics in positions of power in their administrations who have little real world experience. Putting wealthy men and women in charge makes more sense. They have life experience and the education to succeed. Do I worry that they will enrich themselves or their buddies? Not any more than I worried Bill and Hillary took 400 million dollars for speaking fees while saying in private what they dare not say in public. Our government has been corrupt so long that I find it remarkable that anyone would bemoan Trump or his cabinet of wealth which they purportedly made by working for it. Are you against capitalism and wealth honestly earned? A lot of people are.


Andrew M. gave a list out by Dan Rather, who ran with the false story of Bush some years ago. How can anyone trust what Rather has to say?

You set the parameters of your premise and tailored it in a way that is a trap to answer truthfully no matter which way one answers. That's OK, that's not a new thing you're doing. Most of the time, I like to answer questions yes or no. Sometimes they're a little more complicated than that.
That's OK too. You already know what you think, don't you? Politics is truly war. Sometimes a real shooting war happens out of it. Will trying to delegitimize Trump prevent or start a war. I don't know. But I know if this kind of dreck continues, it could. ( Not your dreck) Democrats will dig in, Republicans will be pussies, and Trump will take the lead and do what he thinks. That's what we are left with.

You set the parameters of your premise and tailored it in a way that is a trap . . .

Logic isn't a trap, Charlie, unless facts are a trap (something the Trump administrations has more or less stated directly). What I said at the end of that post is simple logic. If it isn't, tell me an alternative possible explanation for how Trump supporters/defenders can live with the negatives.

For me, Andrew, I look for things in a person to vote for. I voted for Mike Pence because he's a Christian Conservative and he's been a member of the House of Representatives and a current sitting Governor of a Midwest state. He is qualified and lives what he believes. That was enough for me. He is a humble man. He is the things that Trump isn't. However, Trump was smart enough to choose him, which shows good judgement and a little wisdom.

Many people that I know voted for Trump because there was just no way they wanted Hillary in the White House ( with Bubba running loose) for even a second. It was like watching people vomit in their own mouths. They voted for a negative to avoid a worse negative. They detested her. That's a pretty strong reason to overlook Trump's problems. I also know people who voted for her for exactly the same reason.

I was amazed at the idea that either of these two people would be in the White House. I think we have much better people in this country than them. But that's just me. Logic? What logic?

Thanks for the discussion, Charlie. It did me good. I’m less bewildered about what I was bewildered about back at post #37. ;)

Ok. Take over the thread with another round of this.

The total dismissal of everything in the Rather list based on the way he failed to nail the clearly false representation of Bush by his Party should be enough to show you that this is a waste of time.

Dan Rather blew a tough story on Bush. He knows it. The general gist of the story remain true. On Rather and Bush:

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/27/...to-do-with-it/


No Charlie, you have "gotten with the misogyny". Just the fact that Mike Pence is backing a up a candidate caught in recorded tape celebrating fame as a lever for sexual assault, I mean locker room talk, should be a clue. Pence's approach to woman's rights is terrible.

And your faith in this system to keep Trump in check when it can't even get him to open his records is a religious stance against all odds and evidence to the contrary. You get to wager you own possessions on such stupidity if you like. But this a wager of the dregs of democracy and few life supports left in the social safety net. At that point your religion doesn't remain some thing personal to be respected but a reckless intruder into the common good. These aren't pot shots, Julie. This inability to think is threatening our world.

This is like a math class where everytime we get at the books, Tommy objects and in "fairness" the class stops and once again lets Tommy explain why 2+2 =5.

The atomic scientists moved the doomsday clock closer to midnight for the first time in decades. They based the call not just on nuclear buttons under the fingers of morons but on the cabinet of Tommy clones still questioning the threat to the climate/ecology.

Two good summations of Trumpism by David Brooks at the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/o...ype=collection

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/o...column%2FDavid Brooks&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&modu le=Collection&region=Marginalia&src=me&version=col umn&pgtype=article

On translating Trump:

http://usuncut.com/news/rubbish-tran...y-bad-english/

Good one, Andrew. I just watched his dialogue with Theresa May. Their talk about a "new era" calls to mind 1930s Europe:


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3MWrpDWYAExG99.jpg:large

Is it not also true that most of 1930's Arabia were Nazi sympathizers at the least and combatants against the allies during WWII? And that the children and grandchildren of the Arab Semitic tribes are leading the caliphate against the Israelis, not to mention the West? Why would any sane person take their children in only to have them blow up Americans or Brits when they are old enough to do so? I'm sure there would be an outcry if we wished to convert these kids to Christianity. I'm just as sure they'd be raised with their religion of peace inside the mosques of America and England. It's the natural thing for snowflakes to see to it. Jihadis in training. Great.

People in Education, particularly Higher Education, vote for the status quo every time. Why? Because they are well paid (in the UK at least) and the job (in Higher Education at least) is not very onerous Why should they want change?

And of course they know sweet fanny adams about life outside the education bubble. In general of course.

I am aware that the measured tones of Julie urge us to sweetly discourse with literary reason on even these incendiary matters.... but there are surely limits.

I cannot speak for the representative nature of Charlie's apprehensions - which seem to me neither rational nor humane - but I can deal with John's unrepresentative rants. Academics in the UK are pitifully rewarded compared with our colleagues in Europe - yes, the EU, John. When I last conducted a comparison with Dutch and Danish colleagues with comparable roles and responsibilities (in the early 90s), their emoluments, in vastly better socially supportive socieities, were c. 250% to 300% higher. Quite why John believes that his ill-informed notions of academic pay relate directly (or even at all) to a recognirion of barbarous policy intentions I cannot tell. What remains certain is that Presidents who support torture and those who act as their apologists are beyond the civilised pale - whatever their repsective levels of remuneration.

Meanwhile, can I note that with reference to my earlier literature focussed (prose and poetry) suggestion re reprintings of appropriate works - 1984, The Plot Against America and Quake, Quake, Quake - that the first of these has just become a best selling paperback in the UK - all over again.

John, I dunno how it works in the UK, but those teachers in the States, higher education or not, certainly do not vote for the status quo.

They may, however, like any sensible person, just vote to avoid a disaster.

Charlie: "Andrew M. gave a list out by Dan Rather, who ran with the false story of Bush some years ago. How can anyone trust what Rather has to say?"

Charlie, my friend, Dan Rather has been an outstanding journalist for over 50 years. His news coverage of the Viet Nam war and Watergate was invaluable. Then he messed up on a story about George W. Bush and his entire career is now in doubt? I would gladly buy into that logic if we could also apply it to Trump.

Hey Jim, Trump is a business man and an entertainer trying to become a politician. Rather, and Brian Williams and other journalists were hired to tell the new and what they saw, not editorialize. It is a fact that most journalists lean far to the left when it comes to politics. A good many of them were in the tank for Obama and Hillary. How can one who is fair-minded trust them with the truth? That's all I'm saying.

As for Nigel's suppositions about my humanity, I can directly and with great confidence say that I have experienced the issue of asylum and the notions of snowflakes who have them (refugees) in their homes. I have witnesses, two, in fact to an encounter with a couple from Little Rock who sheltered a Muslim boy and his mother back about three years ago. The conversation got really ugly real quick in a restaurant on a Friday night. It was unbelievable. SO, I actually do know what I'm talking about.
The funny thing is; the two people who were giving them shelter were teachers and former clergy. John is right. Perhaps I'll write about the incident one of these days. Of course, it'll be from a Presbyterian POV.

Yes, more and more it seems facts are left-leaning. Facts are biased and divisive.

What do you mean by that, James. Left-leaning I get, but what do you mean by facts?

Andrew M., I don't consider critiques of religious beliefs themselves (rather than critiques of the people who hold them) to be pot shots--particularly when some participants in a discussion are voluntarily bringing their personal religious views into that discussion.

If people don't want their religious views to get paintballed, they shouldn't wave them about while playing paintball.

To me, though, there's a significant difference between saying "Your belief system is flawed, because..." and "You are stupid, because..." The first is a discussion of an idea, and the second is an insult. The first has at least some--however slight--chance of convincing someone to concede a point or two. The second doesn't. No one has ever said, "Oh, yes, I see now--I really am stupid. Thanks for bringing it to my attention."

John,

How I wish you were correct on both points. Sadly, the opposite is much too true. Over 70% percent of faculty in the US is part time or non-tenured, and I can tell you from direct experience that part time faculty are nowhere near "well paid." In fact, 25% of part time faculty receive some sort of public assistance. The situation in higher education in the United States is actually dire when it comes to pay.

On your second point, there was a time (maybe when you went to university, but maybe even earlier) that education was a retreat from the so-called "real world." When students sat in classrooms in front of an intelligent expert who knew nothing else in this world except his subject and no one in the classroom knew more than him. It was a time when education endeavored to educate the human as human. That quaint notion also is sadly no longer the case. Educators now have to be IT professionals, public officials, babysitters, admission counselors, advisors, politicians. And we have to listen to students tell us that we don't know what we are talking about because we sit in an ivory tower all day reading books and playing with words.

Which brings me back to the point of this thread. The great refrain from many of the Trump supporters that I have heard from in this country is that he is a businessman and that's what the US needs...

someone who can get this country working again. What kind of a voter would believe that a politician would be a good leader? We need someone outside of the establishment. Shake things up. Knock some heads.

Donald Trump became president in many ways because Higher Education is not the way you describe it, John.

As William Blake once famously said, "To generalize is to be an idiot." We are all generalist now, John.

Sincerely,
Greg

Your humanity, Charlie, was not in question - though Trump's certainly is. It was the character and reality of your fears that were at issue. I'm not sure what your restaurant encounter has to do with my point, but, for the record, I do know of the subjects of whom we speak. I've worked with and for asylum seekers and personally pledged myself for one, a neighbour in an English city. He was a Muslim, law abiding, sincere and utterly without anything - except good intentions - and would have been an ideal victim in Trumpist sights. He was a victim, first, of islamisist terror - to the loss of his wife and children - and then, shamefully, of the xenophobic paramoia of the British state and of the reactions of a poisoned British public. Exactly the polity that exults in the isolationist insanity of Brexit and sounds all too familiar in the ranks of Trump's followers.

I'll say it again - 1984, The Plot Against America and Quake, Quake, Quake - we read it there, there and there first.

The poem below is longish, but I felt it was more than worthwhile to type it up. It was published in Muir’s The Narrow Place, during WWII, in 1943. He was there, one of the great witnesses to that time.

The Refugees
by Edwin Muir

A crack ran through our hearthstone long ago,
And from the fissure we watched gently grow
The tame domesticated danger,
Yet lived in comfort in our haunted rooms.
Till came the Stranger
And the great and the little dooms.

We saw the homeless waiting in the street
Year after year,
The always homeless,
Nationless and nameless,
To whose bare roof-trees never come
Peace and the house martin to make a home.
We did not fear
A wrong so dull and old,
So patiently told and patiently retold,
While we sat by the fire or in the window-seat.
Oh what these suffered in dumb animal patience,
That we now suffer,
While the world’s brow grows darker and the world’s hand rougher.
We hear the lot of nations,
Of times and races,
Because we watched the wrong
Last too long
With non-committal faces.
Until from Europe’s sunset hill
We saw our houses falling
Wall after wall behind us.
What could blind us
To such self-evident ill
And all the sorrows from their caverns calling?

This is our punishment. We came
Here without blame, yet with blame,
Dark blame of others, but our blame also.
This stroke was bound to fall,
Though not to fall so.
A few years did not waste
The heaped up world. The central pillar fell
Moved by no living hand. The good fields sickened
By long infection. Oh this is the taste
Of evil done long since and always, quickened
No one knows how
While the red fruit hung ripe upon the bough
And fell at last and rotted where it fell.

For such things homelessness is ours
And shall be others’. Tenement roofs and towers
Will fall upon the kind and the unkind
Without election,
For deaf and blind
Is rejection bred by rejection
Breeding rejection,
And where no counsel is what will be will be.
We must shape here a new philosophy.

It is bits like this Charlie that give the lie to your pretense of reasoned decency on here. You dismiss whole people groupings within early 20th century Palestine, the entire experience of the secular Arabs of the region as well as the Sufis and the other Islams. All Palestinians were not clones of the Mufti Of Jerusalem anymore than all Jewish settlers were supportive of Deir Yassin or the bombing of the King David Hotel. You haven't even come clean with the genocidal colonial enterprise your own states are built upon, maybe stay out of the pain of peoples you don't seem to have any comprehension of. Or at least read some actual poets and thinkers on the situation. Arendt's The Jew as Pariah has some essays by an early Zionist that have proved some clear sighted that her predictions on 1948 could have been written today. Really. That was a serious vile bit about the refugee children. You should be ashamed to write those words.

Yeah, I know, Andrew. It's not like home grown terrorists have ever attacked and killed innocent Americans in America before. I am ashamed.

In all fairness Julie, I appreciate what you are saying. But what exactly is stupidness if it can't be applied to the willing embrace of alt facts to feed an ideological need for an exclusionary them? These are dangerously violent ideas that historically lead to bloodshed and misery of every kind. When, in fact, does anyone clinging against all odds to beliefs like these that they believe are God inspired and integrated into their identity. For years I have shared with groups large and small and almost never the choir. I have seen conversions but always from those with a desperate commitment to empathy above all else. They were the only ones with the courage to let go their theologies and dare to look at strangers and see them as fellow humans even at the cost of their own securities in State and Steeple. Once people have let the disease into their thoughts as fully as Charlie has in his Jihadi children post I have never seen dialogue of any kind get through. Face to face confrontation with a blood soaked body of their own makings? Then, a few times. I have given up screaming against the stupidity in order to change it years ago. I scream now to keep the stupidity from changing me.
With respect,
Andrew

You are not even proficient enough in your own theology to get out half a post that doesn't violate the Gospel narratives on the Other or be so clearly at odds with your Calvinism that it is obvious you just can't manage self examination or a coherent argument, Charlie.

"Depart from me. I never knew you."

I wish you your own God and his judgments, from Amos to Mathew.

That's not what you are looking for, Andrew. You want everyone to agree with your rants against Trump and if they don't, you wish Hell upon them. Your practice of supremist levitation is amazing. Not unique, but amazing. The fall to earth does hurt though. Experience, man, experience.

SHIBBOLETH


Together with my stones,
heavy with weeping
behind the bars,

they dragged me
to the very middle of the market,
the place
where the flag unfurls
to which I would swear no oath.

Flute,
double-flute of the night:
think back to the dark
twin redness
in Vienna and Madrid.

Set your flag at half-mast,
memory.
At half-mast
today and for ever.

Heart:
here too reveal yourself,
here in the midst of the market.
Call it out, the shibboleth,
into the foreignness of your homeland:
February. No pasarán.

Unicorn:
you know of the stones,
you know of the waters,
come,
let me lead you away
to the voices
of Extremadura.


Paul Celan

Andrew does have a point about the religious double-standard, Charlie. You yourself make much of your religious convictions in various threads on this site. So it is natural for the onlooker to ask, given your position on refugee children: What would Jesus say about the Trump refugee policy? Show me where in the Gospels it says to turn away people in desperate need.

In any case Trump’s refugee policy is hypocritical by any standard, religious or not. Syria has been devastated in large part through U.S. policy in the Middle East, under both Bush and Obama, and especially by Putin’s Russia in alliance with Assad, mercilessly bombing Aleppo. The very Putin with whom Trump is going to talk today; and hints have already been given that the sanctions against Russia may be lifted.

How is it possible to square these facts? Dropping sanctions against or at least befriending a country whose brutal and dictatorial policies have much to do with devastating a people’s homeland, which had been thrown into disarray by our invasion of Iraq and the subsequent fallout from that. And then refusing sanctuary to those people, even the children?

What a shameful, cowardly chapter in U.S. history. Do you think, Charlie, that Jesus would applaud Trump on this? Do you really believe that?

p.s. The Celan is powerful, Andrew.

It's pretty difficult to bring in refugees, raise them up in mosques under Islam and radical clerics and then expect them to fall in love with American ideals which comes from Christianity, don't you think?

[Julie Steiner says: Sorry, Charlie and others, but I need to point out my first big mistake as moderator. I tried to quote a snippet of Charlie's rather long post #80 and respond to it, but I ended up clicking "Edit Post" rather than "Quote", and thus deleted most of Charlie's original post, except for the snippet I quoted in my response (to quibble with). I thus made my quibbling response (now deleted) look as if Charlie wrote it. My apologies to everyone, especially to Charlie.]