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Andrew Sullivan Lectures on Trump’s Lack of Religiosity

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And by lack of religiosity, Sullivan means, Trump does not support Democrat leftist welfare and social policy.

Trump’s proposed budget, released this week, would eviscerate basic support for the poor in order to reward the already stupendously superrich, and would lay waste to the natural world so that our collective wealth, already greater than any country’s in human history, could be goosed some more. His party’s health-care plan would throw 23 million people off their insurance, even as he pretends it will cover everyone. Every pillar of Trump’s essential character is a cardinal sin for Christians: lust, gluttony, greed, envy, anger, and pride. We are all guilty of these, of course, but there is in Trump a centrality to them, a shame-free celebration of them, that is close to unique in the history of the American presidency. I will never understand how more than half of white Catholics could vote for such a man, or how the leadership of the church could be so terribly silent when such a monster stalks the earth.

Donald Trump is not a religious man. Neither was Barack Obama (apart from his membership in Jeremiah Wrights “Gawd Damn America” Church). Neither was Bill Clinton. None of this was troubling to Mr. Sullivan. In fact, his adoration of Barack Obama was quite a thing to behold.

Andrew Sullivan is one of those people who looks at Jesus Christ not as a figure who should transform him, but rather as a figure who must validate Andrew Sullivan’s moral convictions. Hence, Andrew Sullivan’s Jesus Christ is a person who would cheer promiscuous, drug-fueled circuit party sex and would vote Democrat in every election. According to his Jesus Christ, caring for the poor and sick is not a personal responsibility; but rather something from which virtue is derived by demanding that other people’s wealth be confiscated and used for.

The left finally found a version of Jesus Christ they appreciate: The magical, invisible, socialist in the sky.

Comments

  1. Getting lectured by Sully on Christian morality (Christianist morality) is something I can’t take seriously. Given the chaos and misery in welfare communities, it’s difficult for me to see “Christian values”. (And it’s not charity to spend someone else’t time and money.)

    Our current welfare is a waste of people’s lives. The problems in, say, Baltimore are not because its people are materially poor (Air Jordans, iPhones); they’re spiritually and morally bankrupt. Paying them to remain like this doesn’t seem all that Christian to me.

    Also, Sullivan supports the continued importation of the world’s poor who then compete with our already-large (and growing) poor population for a shrinking pool of jobs and benefits.

    What Sully (and Pelosi, et al) can’t explain is how it came to be that gov’t spends a larger percentage of GPD now than at the height of WW-II yet the list of unmet needs grows and grows without limit.

    There is a lot wrong with the tax code (most of that being favors, bought and paid for, inserted into the tax code by the politicians Sullivan trusts so much).

  2. Religion is obviously a private matter with President Trump. Otherwise, it would take zero effort to just ignore it & situations in which its symbolism is featured plainly. I find that his stance on religion echoes my own. Not that lack of or the pious super righteous is a bad thing. I agree with V’s take on Sullivan. But Sullivan would benefit from keeping his mouth shut on the matter of religion. He’d have more fans.

    Trump didn’t have to & wasn’t required to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He’s got a myriad of things swirling about him, as do many of us. I only see balance coming from him & the ability to interact on a personal level with his environment & with the public. Can we all say the same, or do we devote too much to just one thing?

    Sullivan is obsessed with death, his own idea of equity, putting words in people’s mouths & is a terrible busy body. One can be opinionated & a fanatic without being a busy body. I do not like busy bodies. Have I said how much I don’t like busy bodies?

  4. With respect to Ms. Sullivan, I’ll just repeat what I’ve said about her ad infinitum:

    AIDS-related dementia is a real beyotch.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  6. So often, it makes me feel dirty just to read a few sentences from Miss Andrews. She has all the dishonesty and hysteria of the Left, with extra pretense (the extra layer of her pretending to be conservative). And it only takes a few sentences to ooze out. Like a pizza with too much anchovies and raw garlic, the dishonesty-with-extra-pretense is in every bite.

    Jesus said: Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. And: Love your neighbor as yourself. And: Forgive the tax collectors their tremendous, undeniable sins.

    Jesus certainly did NOT say: Lobby Caesar and use him as a club to forcefully expropriate your neighbor’s wealth, which you envy. You go, tax collectors! Yeah!

    There is nothing loving about the left-liberal politics of using government to redistribute things by legalized force. Nothing.

    These left-liberals occupy a spectrum between “deluded” and “malicious”. Their self-candy-coating of Jesus is just them trying to confuse others into not noticing.

    It is true that the present crony-social-fascist system of the U.S. is socially unjust. And government created the problem. (I’ve posted many a time on the bailouts, money-printing, over-regulation and other government policies that rip off the average American for the benefit of The Oligarchs, thus creating the injustice.) As such, less government – including less government spending – is what We The People need.

  9. People also like to use “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” to defend their behavior, but they forget that Jesus told the woman accused of adultery* to stop sleeping around. Jesus’ message wasn’t “don’t call people out when you think they’re doing wrong,” it was “remember your own failures before you try to set yourself in a position of moral superiority above others.” A message that many in the Progressive Left could stand to pay attention to.

    *In Jesus’ time, the punishment for women guilty of adultery was actually to be buried in excrement up to the neck and be garroted. Stoning was the punishment for fornication.

  10. His party’s health-care plan would throw 23 million people off their insurance, even as he pretends it will cover everyone.

    This “fact” is easily remediated. Give every single person on US soil an insurance policy at no charge to them whatsoever. Don’t bother with citizenship status, gender, creed, age, physical condition, or even check to see if they are real.

    We absolutely must reach our heart throbbing goal of having 100% of the population, including Hottentots and Eskimos, covered by insurance.

    [For the sake of those with more sedentary thinking machines, I am referring here to “insuring” everyone that they can get as much medical care as they want if they pay for it. The insurance is free and the policy covers the first $1.00 of expenses except parking.]

    Bozo Socialists of the World Unite, You Have Nothing to Lose With Your Minds.

  11. When your argument includes “I will never understand how so-and-so could vote for whatever” it’s time to get out of the house more often or something.

  13. Sullivan came to this country a staunch Catholic conservative Thatcher supporter and ended up a debauched leftist busily observing Sarah Palin’s ovulation charts. To paraphrase a character from Paul Scott’s “The Jewel in the Crown”: “America has been very bad for Andrew Sullivan.”

  14. I USED to play tennis with a liberal who would constantly say, “Jesus Christ” or “Oh my God” when he missed a shot or made an error.

    I started saying, “Oh my Allah”. He quickly corrected me telling me it was blasphemy for me to say that. When pressed as to the difference, he tried to explain how “Oh my God” was part of every day speech and not offensive. He would not not listen to any explanation that “Oh my God” was indeed offensive to Christians.

    He ended up walking off the court. Despite numerous attempts to contact him, we never played tennis again.

  15. “I started saying, ‘Oh my Allah’. He quickly corrected me telling me it was blasphemy for me to say that.”

    That is weapons-grade stupid.

  16. V, it also illustrates the inflexibility of the left and their insistence that everyone must agree with them. As a Christian, I would still associate with someone who uses “Oh my God” all the time. However, not agreeing with the tennis playing leftist was grounds for completely​ severing the ties. I call that immaturity.

  17. #14: In fact, Arabic expressions based on “Allah” are quite commonly used in a totally non-religious way by people in the Middle East who are neither Muslim nor Arabic-speaking. Inshallah, “If Allah wills it,” is pretty much equivalent, in practice, to saying “Hopefully!” in English. There’s also W’allah — “Oh, by Jove!” — and Mashallah — “Saints perserve us!” and others that really aren’t that pious.

  18. Note that Andrew leaves out a Sin from the traditional catalog of the Seven Deadlies. Possibly he’s aware, on some level, that sloth absolutely permeates his own writing and thinking.

    “Hmmm, I’m out of arguments … [takes hit from medicinal bong] …Gosh, still no ideas. [light bulb] Hey, maybe I could just copy-and-paste the standard left-wing boilerplate, but church it up a notch with some book-of-Jeremiah stuff.”

  19. Randy Andy’s sudden piety reminds me: there was a minor news story going round on LGBT/progressive sites about the latest outbreak of Homophobia in Putinstan. In some re-tellings, an entire chain of Russian supermarkets had put up ”No fags allowed” signs in their windows!

    The real facts are a bit kookier — it’s not a supermarket chain, but just one small health-food store in Moscow, owned by a Russian billionaire named Herman Sterligov, who evidently did a “Leo Tolstoy meets Howard Hughes meets The Mosquito Coast meets The Road to Wellville” thing.

    Now he reportedly lives in a log cabin and owns the Moscow shop selling organic olive oil at $45 for a half-liter, organic sea-salt at $28 a pound, etc. But his SIGNATURE product, the very cornerstone of the brand-identity, is hand-shaped, wood-fire-baked “Russian black bread” (i.e., sourdough rye that’s actually light brown), which will set you back a mere $30 per loaf. And not a gigantic loaf, mind you — exactly the same size as the ones that Americans buy from Safeway in order to scoop out the insides and fill it with spinach/artichoke dip. What you’re really paying for, of course, is quasi-religious Slavophilic peasant-nostalgia, complete with 19th-century spellings to lend it that “Ye Authentick Olde Shoppe” feel.

    Anyway, though, the “No fags allowed” sign IS for real — handcrafted from an irregular slab of tree with old-timey Cyrillic letters wood-burned into it:
    Пидарасам вход запрещен, which exactly translates “For faggot-perverts, entry is prohibited.” AND I TOTALLY WANT ONE, because it looks really cool in a folk-kitsch way, and you never know when you might need to bonk Andrew Sullivan on the head.

  20. P.S. Inside the health-food store, a poster on the wall announces that Russia’s most expensive bread is given out for free to the deserving poor: “Just ask a salesperson For the sake of Christ, may I have some bread?, and we will give you a quarter-loaf at no charge.”

    There’s a small catch in the fine print, however: “We will NOT distribute our bread to smokers, or painted women, or drunks, or persons of a pederastic appearance.”

  21. This “23 million Americans will be thrown off their health insurance” meme is only true if you consider that the vast majority of the 23 million are young people who will voluntarily elect not to pay for insurance they think they don’t need. Whether that’s good policy is debatable by honest people; Sullivan isn’t one of them.

    Encouraging dependence upon government is not Christianity. Neither is pointing to oneself as a paragon of Christianity.

  22. Off the video in #8

    From Marlon James’ FB:

    “Nothing I’m about to say is anything new, but this weekend, more than any other, I came to realize that of its many flaws, Facebook’s worst was that it is an inept medium for disagreement, a shitty one for argument, a hostile one for any kind of confrontation, and yet a frightfully efficient way to instantly end friendships and alliances. This might be because liberals give themselves credit for something they actually suck at, which is to have a constructive argument. I saw so much of it, that at one point I suggested starting a debating course as a public service. Maybe Facebook is just a vessel, and the people who use it are merely showing themselves to be the assholes they really are, and amplifying it. Or maybe being online, even with friends and allies you see in real life, still gives you a mask of anonymity, where you never have to care about tone, or how you will be read, or even if the person you are speaking to has feelings.

    So Saturday I saw a white male liberal activist and Native American activist, get into the kind of confrontation one would never see in real life. Things of course exploded as quickly as you thought it would. Neither person came off well. But it was interesting how much blame was given to the white guy, for just being in the situation in the first place, a situation he did not start, or choose to escalate. This is not some Trump Supporter, but a liberal activist with a record for social service, and yet here he was, literally being accused of worse crimes than Trump. I’m not saying that for dramatic effect; he was actually accused of being both party to genocide and displacement of native peoples, and as a final insult, profiting off the tragedies of people of colour.

    There’s more. When straight white male mentioned how much being called all these things by allies and friends, most of whom he has worked closely with, hurts, because you know, they weren’t true, the whole fracas took a different turn. Before, he was just the genocidal/gentrifying arm of white male patriarchy. Now he was showing something even more pathetic: white male fragility. He needed to shut up and listen, even if the person was abusive, because hey, it’s not about YOU. We progressives love our terms, after all conservatives got that from us. Our emotional shorthand, that allows us to make sweeping, yet snap judgments of people without once taking into consideration the people we are judging. And make no mistake—I have done that too. And the refrain, that this IS discussion is bullshit. If what you are saying attempts to close discussion instead of open it, (usually by proving one’s sufferation credentials as a form of mic drop) then you have a seriously unsophisticated grasp of what argument means.

    We progressives do love our binaries. Everything is us/them, if/then, either/or, with us/against us, oppressor/victim. Every single action is judged on two and only two variables, so much so that I’ve started to wonder if any American ever learned to count to three. And because we have no code of conduct online, we have no time for decency. We do nothing to compensate for the fact that it’s impossible to gauge tone and context just from our words, so we slip into ad hominem attack in less than two lines, and outright war in four. Sure conservatives are just as vicious, vindictive and petty. But they save such things for their enemies.

    So where are we this Monday? Progressive movements, lesser in number than they were on Friday, friendships that are over, and groups of voices that have thinned out. Also this: a lot of very self righteous people still holding on to the fallacy that they stood up for something, when all they did was cut and slash the people right beside them. Conservatives may be a lot of things, but it would be a cold day in hell before kill friends first, kill enemies later, become their code of conduct. Progressives love to think they are at war with conservatives, but right wingers laugh at such nonsense, because they already know you don’t need to bring a gun to your enemy’s suicide. I would love to place all the blame on Facebook, but that would be kidding one self. And maybe I’m just a foreigner looking in, with a radically different idea of what arguments should sound like.

    But I look at you all, and all I see is a two term Orange President.”

    Coincidence, maybe.

  24. Andrew Sullivan was, indeed, quite conservative at one time. If I recall correctly his “conversion” took place around the time of the Iraq war. I do remember that I had a few brief conversations with him in the comments section of his blog. Those were the days – Windows 95 and a dial-up modem. Anyhow, he started writing about his new boy friend and how he had changed his outlook. Love can do crazy things to your head.

  26. Cray Cray:

    I notice that socialist and commie types protest with loud booing and walk out on conservatives. Do conservatives walk out when liberals and commies speak at commencement addresses? No, it is because conservatives in general have class and liberals don’t. So there, Cray Cray, eat those words.

  27. Sullivan came to this country a staunch Catholic conservative Thatcher supporter and ended up a debauched leftist busily observing Sarah Palin’s ovulation charts.

    This is what living in NYC will do to you, if you’re there long enough.

  30. Parsing the very interesting citation CrayCray posted @ #23:

    [From 1st paragraph] This might be because liberals give themselves credit for something they actually suck at, which is to have a constructive argument.

    100% true and very sad. First, as a classical liberal, I insist that the miscreants are the Progressives, because Woodrow Wilson kidnapped and trashed the concept of classical liberalism.

    Conservatives are cast as the protectors of the status quo. If that is true, at least they know and can accurately define what they are protecting. Progressives “see” the future and they are hot to get there. One person’s “vision” of better or superior is another person’s “vision” of poison. You can’t have a “constructive argument” flapping gums over the probable possibility of whatever. To that extent, Progressives suck at constructive argument simply because they have no facts and they are selling what is essentially an emotional belief.

    [From 2nd paragraph]…he was actually accused of being both party to genocide and displacement of native peoples, and as a final insult, profiting off the tragedies of people of colour.

    Well, that sucks. For sure. As a classical liberal, I would demand to know the facts and perimeters of what constitutes “genocide and displacement of native peoples.” So, if I am related to someone at “Custer’s Last Stand” I am eternally guilty of genocide and displacement of native peoples by blood. Right? How Progressive is that? Palestinians, Kurds, Copts, Sunnis, Shia and tribal fools everywhere are stuck in that quicksand.

    And dear God, I am desperate to know how to cash in on the “tragedies of people of colour.”

    This is all a pathetic psychobabble sauna in a mist of hummingbird sweat.

    [From 3rd paragraph] Our emotional shorthand, that allows us to make sweeping, yet snap judgments of people without once taking into consideration the people we are judging. (….) If what you are saying attempts to close discussion instead of open it, (usually by proving one’s sufferation credentials as a form of mic drop) then you have a seriously unsophisticated grasp of what argument means.

    Bingo! 100% true.

    [From 4th paragraph] (For) progressives (….) Everything is us/them, if/then, either/or, with us/against us, oppressor/victim. Every single action is judged on two and only two variables…..

    Bingo! 100% true. For Progressives, everything in morality and ethics depends on the situation and relative nuances, but when confronting conservatives (classical liberals) any disagreement=war.

    [From 5th paragraph] Progressive(s)…: a lot of very self righteous people still holding on to the fallacy that they stood up for something, when all they did was cut and slash the people right beside them.

    And there you have it: snark over substance.

    [From 5th paragraph] Progressives love to think they are at war with conservatives, but right wingers laugh at such nonsense, because they already know you don’t need to bring a gun to your enemy’s suicide.

    I don’t agree. It is almost useless for a classical liberal to waste time addressing a Progressive. BUT, since classical liberals are CORRECT, they have an obligation to try to bring a Progressive back to the realm of common sense.

    [From 5th paragraph] And maybe I’m just a foreigner looking in, with a radically different idea of what arguments should sound like.

    Nope! The logical argument was laid out in c. 500 b.c. by the Greeks and no one has improved on it since.

    That is a Progressive conceit writ large. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants, Progressives earnestly believe that they are unique in the minds of mankind.

    Meanwhile, every leading pharmaceutical company is studying the poop, spit, toxin, etc. of age old organisms, vegetation, and minerals to find “modern” cures for anomalies which interrupt the life cycle.

    Just for clarification: A “classical liberal” is someone who believes in popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty which chooses a powerful government which usurps the powers of the people (socialism) forfeits popular sovereignty for temporary comfort.

  32. CCP displays the same condescending attitude that has caused liberals/progressives to be almost completely shut out of legislative and executive elected positions. “Keep moving yourself forward into oblivion.”

  33. Progressivism is why I can be myself in public without incurring the scorn of society.

    But, thanks for reading and understanding (most of) it, Helio. We seem to be making some progress.

    Whoa! Being yourself in public without incurring the scorn of society is not a benign statement.

    What are you now doing in public which you could not have done in public 50 years ago? Fess up or shut up. (How’s that for Progressive style argument.)

    Come back, please, with the part of your citation I didn’t understand. It seemed all quite clear to me.

    As to “We seem to be making some progress” – who is the “we” – Progressives, gays, or you and I? And just what is “progress” in the mind of a Progressive?

    Frankly, that “We seem to be making some progress” statement hit me exactly like the puppy treat that Cas is forever tossing as he/she wanders from “what if” to “consider that” to “you don’t comprehend my meaning.”

  36. What are you now doing in public which you could not have done in public 50 years ago?

    Being anything less than a 5 on V the K’s masculinity scale (10 being John Wayne and 1 being Richard Simmons) isn’t a crime. But, hey, firing someone for being gay never was, right?

  37. No political/economic movement is perfect. Nor have I pretended it is.
    But feel free to illustrate where I have.

    But, progressivism has impacted your life, Jimmy, in positive ways. Just like capitalism has impacted mine. Feel free to argue otherwise.

    *shrug*

  38. Better put some ice on that, al-Cray-da. (As your idol and masturbation fantasy, Bill Clinton, said to Kathleen Willey after he raped her.)

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  40. Cray,Cray:

    I was raised on the advice that “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” That meant, simply, follow the examples and don’t make waves.

    Gays are, at best, 3%-ers. Remarkably, the 3%-ers got themselves outed in the military, can find a state which will marry them and able to close down bakeries which won’t play along with their wedding plans. They even got a Silicone Valley CEO canned and got the military to pay for a sex change.

    You call that Progressive. I call it patronizing a bunch of ninnies who want the nanny state to legitimize their fantasies.

    I have known and befriended productive and civic minded gays all of my life. We automatically don’t get ourselves involved in each other’s private choices. A few, along the way have gone “Progressive” and tried to badger me into supporting their “cause” as a price of our friendship. That never ended well.

    When the time came for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to morph into “Welcome, Gays,” I asked the foundational question: “What critical military mission is served by having gays serve openly?” That was not the revelation of a hidden agenda meant to thwart gays in the military. It is a basic questioning of just how being openly gay makes the military better positioned to break things and kill people.

    In my estimation, gays would be pretty much where they are today without all of the Progressive posturing, division and hissy-fits. Societies evolve according to trend.

    Adolescence is generally a stormy period. For whatever causes, the adolescent period for gays is significantly more stormy than it is for adolescents in general. Trying to blame that on society and rebuilding the social order to account for what so many gay adolescents go through is whacky. It is a societal problem that needs careful attention, but it is not caused by a lack of government enforcing strict political correctness.

    This site is very conscientious about keeping the gay sex chatter at a minimum. I suspect that is because GayPatriot wants to build bridges of respect, not feed a division.

    I don’t find any effort on the part of Progressives to even care about what non-Progressives have to say. They are all about steamrolling and smirking. When they hit a bump they scream about the sky falling and cry like hungry nestlings and rant about the evils of the right.

    Your applesauce about the “gains” due to Progressivism may feed your needs. But Progressives have been the architects of division and made themselves into generally unhappy cultists.

  42. As players? Or as objects of nocturnal fantasies? 😉

    Actually, Christian is the type of cute ol’ Southern boy you just want to smother with affection. I’m sure he’s also a very competent QB, but I go for the manly types.

    As for Jake Butt – who plays tight end, of all positions – well, let’s just say that the jokes just write themselves. But I sure as heck don’t want to tell them to his face. He’s thisclose to becoming a big ole bear in his midlife.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  45. Just for the record, Sullivan has never lived in NYC as far as I can tell. He always worked out of DC and has a house on Cape Cod.

    You can live your entire life in NYC and never discuss politics.