Of course, the big news this week is the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at a rally. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of information released yet, so i’m reluctant to comment on it yet. However, I will comment on some issues in separate posts here. Other news items following:
- DID GOD PROTECT TRUMP
- BLOOD ON THE EARLOBE
- CONSPIRACY THEORIES
- THE SHOOTER
- TRUMP’S BEHAVIOR
- PREVIOUS POST ON JAN 6
- THE COST OF VIOLENT RHETORIC
- TRUMP PICKS VP
- CALLS FOR BIDEN TO BOW OUT
- TRUMP DOCUMENTS CASE DISMISSED
- PEOPLE WHO ATTEND CHURCH ONLINE MORE LIKELY TO BE REGULAR BIBLE READERS THAN THOSE WHO ATTEND IN PERSON
- REPUBLICAN PARTY MOVES FARTHER FROM CHRISTIAN POSITIONS
- CROWDSTRIKE COMPUTER SECURITY CRASHES
- CAVE FOUND ON MOON
DID GOD PROTECT TRUMP
This is a very involved theological question, but I think people should think through what they’re saying when they say God “guided” the bullet away from Trump. First of all, God didn’t protect Lincoln, or JFK, or McKinley? Seems like a pretty harsh critique of those guys. Second, does that mean angels guided the bullet into the other bystanders? Are you comfortable saying “God wanted them dead”? Third, Hitler survived multiple assassination attempts – are you arguing that God saved him as well?
Now, don’t get me wrong, some Christians will say “yes” to all these questions. They will argue God controls everything, and if someone dies, that’s because God chose them to die. This is a somewhat extreme version of Calvinism, but it’s not ALL that uncommon. However, I would say to be consistent, then they have to accept that it was God’s will for Biden to win, and not claim that people were thwarting God’s will. Either God controls everything or he doesn’t.
For myself, while I believe God CAN control things if needed, that doesn’t mean that he always does or that we can even come close to understanding why. Let’s say that God DID protect Trump – maybe he wants Trump to be President to punish America? We just don’t know.
For myself, I see it as people having free will, bad things happening as a result of the fall, and God working THROUGH those things, not necessarily controlling every single thing that happens. There are consequences from living in a sinful world.
BLOOD ON THE EARLOBE
This one seems hardly worth my time, but no, I don’t think there’s any significance to his right ear being injured. As many have pointed out, Evander Holyfield had some pretty bloody ears, and I don’t see anyone calling him God’s Chosen.
This is the same as people quoting particular BIble verses with significant numbers as “showing God’s approval.” My friends, those verse numbers aren’t even there in the original text. Without being too harsh, let me just say from the bottom of my Bible teaching heart, that is complete garbage.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
When I was teaching, I had students talk about 9/11 conspiracies, among others. I will say the same thing I said then – If you are in a high school, and some couple is “secretly” dating, how long is it until everyone knows, including the teachers? A day? Maybe? People suck at keeping secrets. The idea that multiple people could plan and keep something like 9/11 secret is utter ridiculousness.
I will say the same thing here. The idea that the Secret Service let some guy take shots at Trump because they don’t like him is ridiculous. The idea that a police officer was in on it and let him shoot, is ridiculous. On the other side, the idea that it was all staged is ridiculous. I’ve seen people even argue that Trump pulled an old wrestling trick and did it himself. Anyone who saw him when he first stood up could see that he was not faking.
So, I think it’s exactly what it looks like – a lone person.
However, a friend shared an article regarding nihilism in our culture that i think is worth a read and might be the subject of a post later this week:
https://www.readcontra.com/p/mass-shootings-and-the-world-liberalism
AKIN TO A SCHOOL SHOOTING
I’ve seen so much conspiracy garbage about the shooter. Ranging from “he was a republican and was mad Trump wasn’t Nazi-enough,” to “he was a liberal who didn’t want a conservative america,” to “The democrats hired him to take out Trump,” and so forth and so on.
My read at this point is one I’ve heard several times from law enforcement professional – this appears more like a school shooting than a political assassination. That is, the shooter fits the profile of a school shooter, someone who wants to make a name for himself and thinks he’ll go out in a blaze of glory.
I think if we think of it in those terms, instead of looking for some deep underlying political motive, we’ll be a lot close to the truth.
TRUMP’S BEHAVIOR
I wanted to comment quick on people laughing at or mocking Trump for some of the things he said or did right after the shooting. Things like asking for his shoes, or the fist thing, or golfing the next day (whether he did or didn’t).
My take on that is this sounds like people who have watched more TV than have actually been through something traumatic. One thing emergency people will tell you is that people will often say the most ridiculous things right after a tragedy. Their house is burning down, and they’ll be complaining about a tub of ice cream they just bought this gonna melt now. Our minds do weird things under pressure.
I see the shoe thing like that. I do not think Trump was lucid enough to be thinking about “lifts” or any other nonsense. I think he thought “i need my shoes to walk,” and probably realized how ridiculous that was a few hours later.
As for the golf thing, when Josh died, I remember waking up the next morning, and the sun came up, and I heard people going to work, and, you know, life went on. I can totally understand Trump waking up and saying “well, what now? Might as well go golfing.” I do not blame him or think he’s callous for that.
I do have concerns that his initial reaction on stage was anger, and pushing back. I know some people admire that, but I see that as a big red flag. He didn’t say “where’s my family?” He didn’t hurry off stage to protect others – he didn’t make any mention of the crowd. He just was enraged, and yelled about fighting back. To me, the fact of “i’m hurt, i need to hurt somebody back,” as a first response is not great.
CONNECTION TO JANUARY 6
I addressed this in a longer previous post, and I’ll link it here (or just copy and paste it.) But I will just say I think people freaking out about Trump are proving my point about Jan 6. An attempt on Trump’s life is not just about killing a man, it’s about what he represents. In the same way, the attack on the capitol is more than just a building, or a riot, or a protest. It’s an attack on America, because of what that building and those congressmen and congresswomen represent.
THE PRICE OF VIOLENT RHETORIC
I know Trump supporters are pointing are certain things Democrats have said as “calling for violence” against Trump. Personally, I do not see that, but I do think we can all agree that in the last 10 years, the words used in describing politics in the US has ramped up.
In my opinion, as I’ve said before, this is in large part due to Trump. People say that he just has “mean tweets,” but let me say again, words mean things. Trump’s repeated insistence on saying “things have never been this bad,” or the “country’s falling apart,” or “the Democrats are destroying America,” have real-world consequences.
If we make every election “the most important in American history,” then people will do things that they would not normally do because the stakes are so high. This is my concern with Christians saying they “have” to support Trump to save America. My friends, there’s another election in 4 years. You can elect someone then. If your response to that is “But we might not have America in 4 years,” then you’ve fallen for the story already.
Please trust that God is still in control, my friends. Please understand that this is not our home. Please be more worked up about the poor, and widow, and foreigner, than you are about protecting your stock investment or having the 10 commandments up on school walls.
We are better than this.
TRUMP PICKS JD VANCE AS VP RUNNING MATE
I don’t have a lot of comments on this, as I’m still learning about Vance. I will say I was a little surprised, as I thought Trump might pick someone more centrist to balance the ticket. Vance, to my knowledge, is a straight up MAGA guy at this point, so I’m unclear what advantage he brings to the ticket.
I have seen some articles arguing that he’s supposed to grab the Evangelical vote, which I don’t really understand as he allegedly converted to Catholicism recently. But, who knows. Of course, that also means former ND governor Burgum is out, so there goes our brief brush with excitement.
That said, I saw an opinion article arguing that Vance is there for one reason – to win Ohio and possibly get Wisconsin and Michigan. They don’t need him to do much more than push Trump over the edge in those key states, and that makes some sense to me. So, guess we’ll see if it works.
CALLS FOR BIDEN TO DROP OUT
I mentioned this last week, and I’ve said a few times that I thought the Democrats may not like Biden, but they don’t really have any other viable alternatives. However, that changed this week when some significant donors have said they will stop supporting the DNC if Biden is the nominee. There is a lot of ideological reasons to support Biden, but in the end, if the donors back out, that’s the end.
In addition, Biden has been diagnosed with Covid now, so that’s one more thing that people will point at as being too frail to run.
As a result (in my opinion), higher profile democrats have started calling for him to drop out. In particular, Adam Schiff has weighed in. To me, that’s a pretty big voice to step up. I also think it’s possible that Schiff could be a legitimate contender as the Democratic nominee, so at this point, I’m going to change my odds for Biden to 50/50.
TRUMP DOCUMENT CASE DISMISSED
The case against Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents has been dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon. While I’m not totally surprised, it does concern me that she was on the case in the first place, since she was appointed by Trump. And the reason she gave for dismissal is quite problematic, in my limited understanding. (she argued that the whole idea of a special prosecutor was illegal, although it’s been used multiple times in the past).
My guess is this will be appealed to the Supreme Court, and who knows what they will decide. But at least then it will be a federal decision
PEOPLE WHO ATTEND CHURCH ONLINE MORE LIKELY TO BE REGULAR BIBLE READERS THAN THOSE WHO ATTEND IN PERSON
Now for this week’s misleading stat:
74% of those who attend church services primarily or equally online use the Bible at least once a week compared to just 32% of respondents who primarily go to in-person church services.
People will see this stat, and think “well there ya go, no reason to go to church.” Now, notice the key word here: ‘equally.” To me, this includes people who go to service AND watch a service online. For example, you might go to your local church, and then watch a “national” service sometime during the week too.
So, i don’t think this stat says as much as people are saying, but it is interesting nonetheless.
REPUBLICAN PARTY MOVES FARTHER FROM CHRISTIAN POSITIONS
I wasn’t sure what to title this section, so I’ll just have to trust you get the idea without me having a headline three sentences long.
In recent days, LGBT+ groups have celebrated the GOP ending its opposition to same sex marriage, pro-choice groups have celebrated the GOP new pro-choice position, and Harmeet Dhillon prayed a Sikh prayer at the Republican Convention, causing some to complain “This was a HUGE SLAP IN THE FACE to our nation’s founding and to Christian conservatives.”
My point here is not whether these things are good or bad in and of themselves, only that they point to what I was arguing back in 2016 – if Evangelicals/Fundamentalists want a voice in how the GOP is run, then they should not support Trump. Otherwise, the GOP knows they can do whatever they want and these christian groups will still vote for them.
And so here we are. Since 2016, the GOP has abandoned its position as “we are a christian nation,” has given up its pro-family position, and has surrendered on pro-life issues. And now I hear pro-life voices saying “well, we have to be practical.” I seem to recall these same voices saying “we have to support Trump because pro-life is all that matters.” I guess things change.
Was it worth it?
CROWDSTRIKE COMPUTER SECURITY CRASHES
Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity company that specialize in helping companies defend themselves against cyber attacks. Unfortunately, they had an update go wrong on July 18, and cause multitude of computer systems to fail, bring up the dreaded blue-screen of death from Windows, and cause computers to get stuck in boot-loop.
This caused certain airlines to ground their flights, some 911 services to go down, hospitals to pause visits, and media companies to halt broadcasting.
As of now, there is no indication it was related to a hack or cyberattack, but rather a faulty update.
Whoops.
CAVE FOUND ON MOON
NASA announces the discovery of the Mare Tranquillitatis pit, the first confirmed siting of a lunar cave. This is cool both for spelunking reasons, but more importantly, it also raises the possibility of using a cave as a base for future exploration.
As of yet, no mention of giant space worms in the cave.
