No money for health care, endless money for unpopular war

Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic discussed Poolgate, the mess in the Reflecting Pool at the National Mall. Warzel says the mess is an example of the nasty guy’s debacles, which tend to unfold in 13 steps. I won’t mention all 13, partly because some of them repeat. Devise unnecessary spectacle, such as improving a landmark. All the better if he can claim he’ll do it faster, cheaper, and better than Obama. Disregard expertise. Bypass normal procedures because it has to be done right away. Declare victory too early. Spend way more than estimated. Realize it’s not going well. Bypass procedures to fix the problem. Allege conspiracy and sabotage, blame other people. Lose interest. Pretend it never happened and move on to the next thing. Emily Singer of Daily Kos said the nasty guy has asked Congress for $87.6 billion cover costs of the war with Iran, to bail out farmers hurt by his tariffs, and to fund his vanity construction projects around DC. He’s asking for that much even though the war is widely unpopular and many voters think it was a waste. As for his vanity construction projects he appears to be turning his eye towards the WWII Memorial and its fountain (having learned nothing from Poolgate).

If Republicans vote to give Trump more money for the conflict and bail out farmers but not help average Americans afford their skyrocketing cost of living, Democrats will almost certainly use that in attack ads this year. “President Trump launched a reckless and costly war with Iran—without authorization from Congress or the support of the American people—that he should never have started, and now, instead of doing anything to help families get by, he is asking taxpayers to pick up the tab and give him billions more to wage wars overseas,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. Murray added, “This president is telling the American people there’s no money for health care, housing, or child care—but there should be endless taxpayer dollars to fund wars they don’t support.”

I heard a bit about this in the morning news and I’m glad I found links to the whole story. That story is told by Pete Buttigieg on his Substack about what his family just went through. An anonymous person called Child Protective Services saying that a woman claimed that several years ago Buttigieg told her he had committed violent crimes against his twin children, now age 4. The caller thought those children were still at risk. I’ll pause the story to note that if Buttigieg said that “several years ago” the children would have been infants or it happened before they were born. Did CPS spend any time investigating the veracity of the claim before traumatizing the family? Buttigieg doesn’t say. He eventually told them he had never been to the place where the woman said it had happened. Because of the allegation he had to stay away from the children for 24 hours. They stayed with grandparents. The next day each child was interviewed with no family member present. Only after that would the case workers interview him, then explain what was going on. They ended by saying there was nothing to substantiate the allegation. That was traumatic for the kids. After being warned against talking to strangers each child had to spend an hour with only strangers. The night before they couldn’t have Papa read their bedtime stories and couldn’t understand why. That was also traumatic for Buttigieg. He’s endured all kinds of hate and cruelty from opponents and is able to take it in stride. But this cruelty involved his kids. And it appears to be politically motivated. Buttigieg noted that the target of this cruelty was a family led by gay dads and done during Pride month.

Now our family is left to deal with the aftermath. I worry about any unseen effects this had on our kids, on Chasten and me, and on the rest of our family. Even though the accusation was absurdly and obviously false, and was promptly rejected by law enforcement, I still worry about the harm it has done. Chasten and I worry about who else might try to do this kind of thing, to us or to others. And at the most basic level, I worry about how anyone, even in today’s world, could fail to respect the absolutely fundamental principle that whatever you think about someone in politics, you leave people’s kids out of it.

Jon Paul Sydnor of the Kos community and its Street Prophets group discussed a progressive Christian political vision. Towards that he discussed authenticity. To be in a relationship with God we must be honest and authentic.

If a church demands that we hide our self to be accepted, if a church creates an artificial standard and demands that we conform to it, then that church has stifled the image of God within us.

Sydnor divides churches into low social control and high social control.

A low social control church respects members’ uniqueness, trusting that cohesion will emerge from diversity, as it does within God. Some churches deny the possibility of unity-in-diversity and become high social control groups, subjecting members to shame, shunning, denial of sacraments, and threats of damnation if they fail to be who the church wants them to be. These churches demand that members subordinate their God-given uniqueness to a church-generated stereotype, hiding their authentic self within a conformist shell.

Where there is hiding, there are secrets, and there is shame. A low social control church, an authentic church, celebrates their LGBTQ members. A high social control church does not, instead it denies what LGBTQ people know about themselves. And that causes horrific harm. When transgenders transition they frequently change their name. The Bible has stories of people who undergo a profound change and change their name.

Abram became Abraham, Sarai became Sarah (Genesis 17), Jacob becomes Israel (Genesis 32), Simon becomes Peter (Matthew 16), and Saul becomes Paul (Acts 13).

A church that is a true reflection of God is one that celebrates the authenticity of its LGBTQ members.