Walking home from Mass this morning, I saw a slogan that might give focus to the widely reported, but hard to identify, Resistance.
It was a bumper sticker on the back of a large SUV of indeterminate manufacture. The sticker read, "Make America America Again."
Perhaps implicit in that idea, or so I mulled, is that the singular focus on the Fraudster-in-Chief, can be shifted to a multi-focus on the diversity of all of us, the rest of the country.
Any chance of that?
Trump has been sucking up all the oxygen in the room, because that's what he does best. To a degree the news media has been complicit in it. All his flip-flopping on the Korea summit; are we going to set off a trade war, what is he going to do about NAFTA? I don't think he knows what he's going to do next, he just knows that he intends to be the center of attention. It would be good if we could shift the focus, as you suggest. But I don't know how that's to be accomplished. Maybe for a start the media could stop publishing his tweets.
ReplyDeleteMaybe religious leaders, diet gurus, and international do-gooders could declare a ten day fasting from the Fraudster, say beginning July 4 (Independence Day) and going through July 14 (Bastille Day).
ReplyDeleteThe slogan apparently comes from Sister Joan Chittister's piece here. One of the types of things that makes me want to remain a friend, if not daughter, of the Church. I like the idea of a day of fasting and prayer July 4.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/blogs/where-i-stand/make-america-america-again
Referencing a poem by Langston Hughs:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/let-america-be-america-again
My suggestion would be to drop the "again". Our current president has coopted and corrupted nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteI think the whole point is that it's a response to him and his policies.
DeleteValedictorian in Bell County, KY (southeastern part of the state) quoted some inspiring words and said, "Donald Trump." Crowd of parents and grads cheered, stamped their feet, went wild. Then valedictorian leaned into microphone and said, "Just kidding. That was Barack Obama." Cheering stopped. Dead silence followed.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/03/kentucky-valedictorian-quotes-trump-then-reveals-obama/667758002/
Pretty sad when we judge our bromides by who says them.
Is there any doubt that we have descended into tribalism? And that this happened before Trump?
DeleteWe've pretty much been tribal since we were chasing wooly mammoths around. This article was originally published as "The Science of Righteousness". I don't agree with everything the author says about morality, but thought this statement was interesting: "The evolutionary Rubicon that our species crossed hundreds of thousands of years ago that led to the moral hive mind was a result of “shared intentionality,” which is “the ability to share mental representations of tasks that two or more of [our ancestors] were pursuing together."
DeleteRegarding the 10-day fast, why not co-op the two weeks between the feast of Thomas More (June 22) and July 4? That used to be the Fortnight of Freedom, during the Obama administration. But now that they have the Neil Gorsuch, the U.S bishops are settling this year for June 22-29 (feast of Sts. Peter and Paul) as Religious Freedom week. Obviously, with Trump's appointment of Gorsuch the issue is no longer as fraught as it was when the other guy was president.
ReplyDeleteGorsuch was one expensive SCOTUS justice. For some people, Scalia's replacement was what the whole election was about. Hope the one issue people are happy.
DeleteWell, today's ruling on the baker suggests that replacing Kennedy and/or Ginsberg is still necessary before the court will be "co-ordinated with" the Imperial President (whose word, as the Chinese trade officer said, can't be trusted "as everybody knows"),
ReplyDelete