The 250th Anniversary of the US—celebrate or mourn?

To me, this before-and-after photo of the White House and grounds this week perfectly symbolizes the destruction of our country by Trump and his MAGA minions, a destruction aided and abetted by tens of millions of “christians”— 81% of evangelicals and more than 60% of white Catholics.  The second photo was taken just a few days ago. You can see glimpses of the East Wing corridor in the left-side photo through the trees in the first photo. The construction of a CAGE for an MMA fight on the White House lawn on trump's birthday, is even more of a travesty than the "military" parade he put on last year, which few attended. This year he's degraded himself and our country and the White House itself by using taxpayer money to put on one of the most violent "sports" around-- to "celebrate" the nation's 250th anniversary.  This year trump co-opted the planning from the official planning organization ( non- partisan) to impose his own partisan stamp on it - to honor himself, and not the country.  The "prayer rally" on the Mall cost a million of taxpayers' dollars. It was an evangelical form of christianity, and non-evangelicals were barely visible. Of course, Barron was there along with evangelical ministers who refer to the Pope as "satan" and Catholicism as a "satantic cult". Hegseth's "pastor" (invited to speak to military staff at the Pentagon) was there. This article in The Atlantic "Holy Warrior" by Missy Ryan) reveals what a fine person he is.   https://tinyurl.com/43e5sc7h 

Summer Reading

 What has everyone been reading lately? I have a few selections that I liked.

One of them is Work in Progress, by Father Jim Martin, SJ. It is a coming of age memoir, telling the story of the jobs he worked before becoming a Jesuit priest, starting with the one where he worked in an ice cream parlor as a young teen in 1976. Of course everything was about the bicentennial then. It sounds like he was having more fun in his hometown of Quaker Meeting, PA, in the bicentennial year than we are having now.  He had a bunch of other young people starter jobs, and one bigger one working for General Electric before he decided to become a Jesuit at, I think, the age of 29.