It’s amazing, how events like this week’s can make you understand things like the butterfly effect. I just looked it up: “The Apprentice” first aired January 8, 2004. I was living in Ann Arbor. It was a Monday. The Knight Wallace Fellows had our seminars on Tuesday and Thursday, so the following night would have been the first of the new year. If I recall correctly, it was a duck barbecue at the director’s house. None of us would have suspected that a fuse had been lit the previous night, that one TV producer had breathed life into a monster that would blow up the richest country, a beacon of freedom all over the world, not 20 years later.
You “Game of Thrones” fans remember little Arya Stark, making her way in the wilderness and putting herself to sleep at night with her own form of fantasy-novel doomscrolling: Reciting the list of people she wanted to kill for having wronged her. I have my own list, although I’m not homicidal and some of them are dead already (hey, Roger Ailes!), but Mark Burnett, producer of “The Apprentice,” is on it. He’s a very public Christian and has never once expressed regret for having rehabilitated this transparent phony, this con man, this moral homunculus who just today cost my household 3.37 percent of our life savings, into what we used to call presidential timber. Today presidential timber is a termite-infested telephone pole.
A Kennedy Center Honor is coming for Mark Burnett. Bet on it.
Today I got an email from an old friend who asked I use no identifying details in telling their story. They and their spouse are laying the groundwork for permanently leaving the U.S. for Canada in the next year. The details involve applying for permanent residency, picking a home base, checking out neighborhoods, etc. This sentence in their letter stood out:
I have admired Canada since I first started visiting here in 2001. I’ve simply given up on the U.S. Even if Trump and Vance were to die tomorrow, the GOP and Fox have so corrupted the country I see no way to truly combat an active embrace of falsehoods. It’s never going to end.
I’m reminded of a line from Neil Steinberg, way back in the first Bad Administration: I’d rather be on the last train out of town than the first. Me too, but I don’t fault my friend one bit. Meanwhile, measles is starting to spread in Michigan.
OK. Sorry to be a downer, and after I was feeling pretty good yesterday. It’s hard to stay on the sunny side, this week.
Check out this interview with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “one of the best-known evangelicals in the United States, famous for his writings on faith.” Today, his faith compels him to support you-know-who, and to argue against empathy. Here’s one passage:
You’re talking about the Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador. The White House claims that they were all gang members, but we actually don’t know that. It seems like some of them were not. Time magazine wrote about these men: “Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.” The President and his Administration were revelling in this.
I think you ought to have a concern about the mistreatment of anyone. Look, I take a very Augustinian view of state power. You know Augustine, the Church Father?
I’ve heard of him.
This is the main Western theological tradition in Christianity. Am I making sense?
Yup.
An Augustinian view of government says that government coercion is never pretty. It is necessary, but it’s never pretty. And, when government acts in a coercive manner, it always leads to some form of pain. That’s what government coercion is. And so I am not justifying it. I’m simply saying that if you are going to return people against their will to their country, where they are seen there as gang members and they’re going to be treated as criminals—
They were Venezuelan, and they were sent to El Salvador, but go on.
O.K. No, that’s true, but at least in theory, they are to be sent back to their home country. And I think that’s a part of the spat between the Trump Administration and Venezuela at the moment. But, I also think the vast majority of Americans would say, Look, our understanding of refugees who are legitimate refugees does not include gang members who clearly are coming to the United States with an effort to expand their colonization of criminal activity.
We just don’t know for sure that they were gang members. There’s been some reporting that suggests some of them are not.
I understand that, but want to be honest with you, and I think you’ll be honest with me. Look, you can’t say that everyone with that tattoo is a gang member, but there’s no reason anyone other than a gang member should have that tattoo.
One of the “gang members” had another tattoo entirely, but do go on, Reverend.
OK. Three blogs this week is the best I can do. Let’s see what the financial markets do tomorrow. Maybe we’ll all be penniless by next Thursday, eh?
Happy weekend! Hands off!
Gretchen said on April 4, 2025 at 1:15 am
“CLAIMED to be a barber” (he was a barber). “Spat” (Whether or not to detain people without due process)”. “No reason that anyone but a gang member should have that tattoo”. – (Autism awareness tattoo indicates a gang member?). “Slapped”. “Government coercion is never pretty.”
I think we can’t understand our current moment without understanding how reliant evangelical Christianity is on hierarchy and the enforcement of that hierarchy by physical pain and coercion. Talia Lavin’s Wild Faith is an eye-opener in that respect: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/talia-lavin/wild-faith/9780306829192/
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David C said on April 4, 2025 at 5:52 am
I don’t blame anyone for pulling up stakes and moving to Canada. I also wouldn’t blame Canadians for telling them to go back and fix their own damned country. Canada has its own problems with housing shortages. Whatever Americans move there won’t be the ones in the most danger. I know enough about Canada to know those people would be welcomed. They’ll be the ones with the most resources. If I was a Canadian bidding on a house and some well-off American gloms it out from under me, I’d be plenty pissed.
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Suzanne said on April 4, 2025 at 9:19 am
“Look, you can’t say that everyone with that tattoo is a gang member, but there’s no reason anyone other than a gang member should have that tattoo.”
Well, then, my 65 yr old sister-in-law, her 2 daughters, at least 2 of my other nieces, at least one nephew, many of the nurses I had during my cancer treatments, and several of the people I worked with at my last job must all be in danger of deportation because of tattoos according to Mohler. Because they all have them.
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alex said on April 4, 2025 at 9:46 am
Mohler seems to have been caught off guard in his hypocrisy and I’m surprised he even sat for the interview. He’s defensively rationalizing away his complete and utter abandonment of morality. Even the moral imperative of feeding starving children, long a hobby horse of evangelicals, must cease because it has suddenly become all about “populating bureaucracies” in the World According to Musk. And then he closes by prattling on about his self-reflection and introspection. What a turd.
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David C said on April 4, 2025 at 9:59 am
I guess Hegseth’s white supremacy gang tats are exempted.
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Deborah said on April 4, 2025 at 10:16 am
Never heard of technocracy before, interesting https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/opinion/elon-musk-doge-technocracy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9E4.rA1m.GFXwYeXq5lSy&smid=url-share gift article
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FDChief said on April 4, 2025 at 10:35 am
When a prelate rings in Augustine of Hippo? They’re trying to reconcile autocracy with Christian theology, since that’s what Augustine was doing. His contemporaries were worried that all that sissy loving thy neighbor shit meant that the Late Roman bible-bangers couldn’t be trusted to do the dirty work of empire. Augie was insisting that we Jesus freaks could TOO kill and burn for Caesar as good as any goddamn pagan.
So invoking Augustine is a huge tell that this God-pestering shitpoke isn’t stanning for Jesus but Caesar. His real God is the spray-tan gibbering idiot inside his teevee, not the invisible sky wizard.
I wish journalists were smarter or better educated or, better, both. Then perhaps they’d know stuff like that and question the guff they’re hearing.
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Jeff Borden said on April 4, 2025 at 11:53 am
Rep. Keith Self, R-Texass, literally quoted Josef Goebbels in Congress on Wednesday,
“A direct quote from Joseph Goebbels: ‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,’ and I think that may be what we’re discussing here,” said Texas’ Keith Self.
Once again, I am grateful my father and all my uncles who gave up the best years of their young lives to fight Nazis and Imperial Japan are no longer living. My dad would’ve had a stroke had he heard an American politician quote Goebbels approvingly.
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Mark P said on April 4, 2025 at 12:13 pm
I have been reading about how hard it is to immigrate to Canada. I think you need to have a skill they need, or perhaps be independently wealthy. Old people who would be a drag on their system need not apply. If things get so bad here that there are legitimate refugees, don’t count on luxury accommodations. Think tent cities.
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nancy said on April 4, 2025 at 1:03 pm
True, but a Canadian spouse is a narrow entry port, and my friend has one.
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Deborah said on April 4, 2025 at 12:23 pm
We always call those tent cities Hoovervilles, I guess we’ll have to call them Trumpvilles now.
Santa Fe is trying to construct pallet housing for homeless veterans and the citizens are up in arms about it. They have one already in the parking lot of a Lutheran church and it seems to be doing fine, it’s got security around the clock and maintenance, there aren’t very many tiny homes on it though, they need more.
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Sherri said on April 4, 2025 at 12:36 pm
Paul Krugman wonders if the administration has given any thought to how they’re going to enforce these country specific tariffs? He points out that Ireland, part of the EU, faces a 20% tariff, while Northern Ireland, part of the UK, faces a 10% surplus. What happens if an Irish company simply ships out of Belfast? Repeat, ad infinitum.
(The answer is, no, of course not, since apparently the whole idea of country specific tariffs was decided on the day before the announcement.)
Like so many things Trumpian, the whole thing will fall apart when they try to implement because it’s so slapdash, stupid, and illegal, but the harm will remain.
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Dexter Friend said on April 4, 2025 at 3:22 pm
Markets nosediving again. A friend in San Diego pulled all her wealth out of her portfolio and into money markets yesterday, then just now she wrote she put all of her money into cash. And this shitstorm is just now brewing up.
Joy abounds in Detroit, as Tom Waits sang years ago how you can never hold back Spring, we can never hold back Opening Day. Tigers are kicking the Chicago White Sox around. It is now 7-1 Tigers. 6th inning. I have the game on my iPad beside me here.
I have been to many, many Openers, in DET, CHI, and CLE. Now I enjoy the festivities on TV.
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Sherri said on April 4, 2025 at 4:19 pm
Six trillion gone poof in the markets this week! Don’t you love this booming economy?
And here I thought Brexit was the worst case of a self-inflicted economic disaster.
Well, we’ve been saying for some time the GOP needed to be destroyed. Maybe this will do it. Unfortunately, it will destroy the country, too.
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Bob (not Greene) said on April 4, 2025 at 4:21 pm
Fun fact: With today’s stock market calamity, Fearless Leader has now been in office for 10 of the top 11 largest single-day DOW point losses — including the entire Top 8 — in history.
Economic genius, that guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_in_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
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David C said on April 4, 2025 at 5:10 pm
I transferred my 401(k) into cash the day before the inauguration. Like Maya Angelou said ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’. I knew full well he was going to tank the economy with tariffs. They say don’t try to time the markets, but I think they mean day to day, not some baboon deliberately fucking it up.
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Sherri said on April 4, 2025 at 8:35 pm
Boy, it’s a good thing that Black woman isn’t in charge when this totally avoidable disaster that she never would have caused hit us.
It still blows my mind that MAGAts look at Trump and look at Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and think that Trump is the one that isn’t corrupt.
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Ann said on April 4, 2025 at 9:53 pm
Time for some better news for a change. Weren’t we just talking about vaccines? Turns out that getting the shingles vaccine reduces your risk of dementia by 20% “more than any other known intervention.” Get your vaccines while you still can, my friends. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/03/shingles-vaccination-dementia.html
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Jeff Gill said on April 4, 2025 at 10:01 pm
Late this afternoon on Truth Social, Trump posted a (for him) terse five word comment. You can see it on an X echo profile here:
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1908250953695822097
The post, or “Truth” as he calls the individual entries on his personally owned site, was:
ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!
I’ve not met Dr. Mohler but often run into his disciples, online and in person around my neck of the woods. My question for any of them as Christian ministers, preachers, or theologians, would be to ask them to respond to how they understand that core affirmation: Only the weak will fail.
Then to invite comparisons of those words to Psalm 41:1, Matthew 11:28-30 & 20:16, Romans 5:6, 8:26, & 15:1, I Corinthians 1:27-30 & 9:22, and II Corinthians 11:30 & 12:9-10. For starters.
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alex said on April 5, 2025 at 11:11 am
Remember Trump’s “Two Corinthians” gaffe when he was trying to ingratiate himself with the holy rollers in 2016? I guess they forgave him for it, just as they did when he said he would punish women for their abortions, which was the quiet part they didn’t want said aloud. Come to think of it, that no longer seems like a political liability or an improbability.
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I fell in love with quinoa this week. I’d had it in my pantry with intentions of subbing it for rice, but it just always seemed so onerous to have to rinse it before using. All those tiny grains. But I tried it with a bone-in chicken dish and now I’m hooked. And now I’m going to use another pantry item purchased with good intentions, which is harissa. Paired with quinoa in this recipe: https://dishingouthealth.com/one-pot-moroccan-quinoa/
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Deborah said on April 5, 2025 at 5:30 pm
Alex, I love quinoa, my main way to use it is mixed in a chopped salad. So good.
I’m back from the protest in Chicago, quite a few people were there I have no idea what the estimate is, I’d say at least 10,000 but may have been as many as 25,000 for all I know. Not nearly as many as the women’s march in 2017 but there were also some protests today in surrounding suburbs so if all are added up it could be a lot. It needs to be a lot to do any good. Here’s a video, it’s very long, you don’t need to watch it all of course, but can give you an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6faEOSrEy9o&t=7s. My feet are sore, my back is sore, I walked from 11:30 until 3:30 and it’s that slow walking that gets to me. I used my same Musk rat sign, I was going to make a new one but then I thought it was going to rain and thank goodness it didn’t rain. Lordy there were a lot of people out in Chicago today, not just for the protest, lots of tourists too.
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Dexter Friend said on April 5, 2025 at 5:50 pm
Steve Liesman said since the inauguration, $10 trillion of wealth has been lost.
Trump done-it.
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diane said on April 5, 2025 at 5:53 pm
If only all of the lost wealth was muskrat’s. Instead he will be able to get even more wealthy by buying low.
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Carter Cleland said on April 5, 2025 at 6:00 pm
There were between 500-600 folks at the rally in Evanston today. I debuted my newest sign: It’s Mourning In America (with Bill Mauldin’s “Weeping Lincoln” inset). Saw another sign: Orange Lies Matter
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Sherri said on April 5, 2025 at 7:51 pm
I wasn’t at a protest today because I was at a board meeting instead. One of the things I learned in that meeting is that Trump’s attacks on law firms is having an impact. The ACLU regularly uses cooperating attorneys, lawyers from outside firms, to help with cases and to aid in things like writing amici briefs. Since Trump started attacking firms like Paul Weiss and Perkins Coie, firms that normally work with us are getting shy about doing so.
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Deborah said on April 5, 2025 at 7:52 pm
My favorite comment on my sign, which is an image of a rat with Musk in script coming off of the rat tail, was a guy who hilariously said he thought Musk was more like a melon. I instantly envisioned photoshopping Musk’s bloated face on a muskmelon. I think I’m going to try making that.
Have you folks seen images of the crowds in Salt Lake City and St. Paul Minnesota of the protests in those places. Wow, amazing, something is really happening in the heartland (St. P) and the most conservative places (SLC). You can expect places like NYC, Boston and Chicago to have crowds but those places with the thousands that showed up, wow.
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