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In Business, History, RELIGION, Social commentary on December 17, 2025 at 12:16 am
There are several good reasons for skipping Christmas this year—and for years to come.
Reason #1: It’s based on a pagan Roman festival.
- There is no reference anywhere in the Bible to the month, day—or even the year—of Jesus’ birth.
- There are no sources outside the Bible that give a date for Jesus’ birth.
- Jesus never commanded his followers to celebrate his birth—but he did call on them to remember his death. It’s called Easter.
- Many of the “religious” traditions associated with Christmas stem from the pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia, which celebrated the “birthday” of the sun.
- This was celebrated December 17-25.
- Saturnalia traditions included feasting, gift-giving, lighting candles (to ward off evil spirits) and displaying wreaths (as a sign of the coming spring).
- Early Christians tried mightily to convince their members to stop celebrating the Saturnalia.
- When these efforts failed, the Roman Catholic Church, in 336 A.D. “Christianized” the festival by naming Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25, as Jesus’ birthday.
Reason #2: It’s based on a story that’s patently false.
The story of the Three Wise Men—or Kings—bringing gifts to the infant Jesus was added long after Jesus’ birth.
Realistically, there was no reason why anyone in Israel would have known—or cared—about the birth of yet another Jewish child.
If he had actually been born the son of a king, then his birth might have mattered to people generally.
In his 1973 bestselling Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox explains that “in antiquity…life’s perspective was reversed, and youth was mostly described through a series of anecdotes which falsely mirrored the feats of the adult future; proven kings or bishops were remembered as kings or bishops when young.”
Thus, Alexander the Great, the future conqueror of the Persian empire, has been depicted—as a boy—astonishing Persian ambassadors with precocious questions about the innermost workings of that empire.
For followers of the crucified Jesus, it was essential to establish his divinity from the outset of his birth. And what better way to do this than having not one but three Kings show up, uninvited, to declare his reign over them?
Reason #3: It’s actually blasphemous.
Assume, for a moment, that the story of the Three Wise Men—or Kings—is true.
The whole point of the story is to establish that Jesus’ birth was a truly special event—and a recognition of his fate to redeem humanity from sin.
No one else in that story is depicted as giving—or getting—gifts.
No matter how much a child might be loved today, almost no one expects him to be a future savior.
So giving him gifts is essentially a parody of the acknowledgement of Jesus’ divinity.
Reason #4: Christmas is overwhelmingly a commercial—not a religious—event.
- The Christmas shopping season can start as early as September. Some consumers begin shopping even earlier.
- According to Gallup, the average estimated holiday spending for Christmas in 2025 will be $1,007 per person—and thus similar to $1,014 per person in 2024.
- Illustrator Haddon Sundblom, popularized the warm, jolly, rosy-cheeked, red-suited Santa we know today in Coca-Cola ads in 1931.
- A survey by the American Institute of CAPs found that almost half (47%) of people planning to spend on gifts and travel during the 2025 Christmas season expect to take on debt to do so.
- For many stores, holiday shopping accounts for nearly a third of annual sales.
Reason #5: There is no Paradise waiting for the dead.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus will return, cleanse the Earth of sinners, and claim it as a paradise for God’s faithful worshipers—that is, themselves.
They quote Ecclesiastes 1:4: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”
Except that it won’t.
The Sun will become a red giant in about five to six billion years, when it runs out of hydrogen fuel in its core. Its core will contract and heat up, while hydrogen fusion will begin in a shell around the core. This will cause the outer layers of the Sun to expand significantly.
The Sun will swell to hundreds of times its current size, becoming a red giant.
This will likely destroy Mercury and Venus. Earth could be swallowed entirely or, if it survives, it will be scorched by extreme heat and radiation, making it uninhabitable.
A Red Giant
Then, eons after the Earth disappears, so will the entire Universe.
Scientists debate how this will happen. Some believe it will occur in a Big Crunch (collapse back to a singularity) in about 33 billion years. Other theories favor a Big Freeze, Heat Death or Big Rip.
So don’t count on Jesus to return from a 2,000-year slumber to prevent this from happening.
There are people who insist that Christmas is a religious event that they are commanded to celebrate.
For those people, it’s a good time to remember the advice of 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 3, 2025 at 12:24 am
On November 16, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (CE) published online that it was holding 65,135 people in detention facilities throughout the United States.
This is the largest number of arrested illegal aliens publicly reported by the agency, which was created in 2003 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Critics point out that illegal aliens without criminal records comprise the vast majority of those held in federal detention centers—30,986, or 48%.
This number has increased by over 2,000% since the start of the second Trump administration in January.
Those with criminal convictions represented about 26%, or 17,171, of all ICE detainees.
Illegal presence in the United States, including after overstaying a visa, used to be generally handled as a civil matter in immigration court. Those accused of doing so usually had their cases treated as civil immigration violations, absent additional criminal activity.
Not anymore.
Donald Trump made illegal immigration a key issue in his 2024 campaign for President—and Republicans gleefully signed on. At their nominating convention—July 15-18—a virtual sea of delegates held up blue and white signs reading: “MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW!”
Despite this, numerous Hispanics, when interviewed, said they didn’t feel threatened. They felt certain that Trump would deport “only the bad people.”
Young Latinos, particularly young Latino men, were more supportive to Trump than in 2020. Roughly half of young Latino men voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, compared with about six in 10 who went for Trump.
Since Trump assumed the Presidency on January 20, that “mass deportations now” policy has gone into effect. And it has generated widespread outrage by
- Civil liberties organizations; and
- Those who believe the United States should not have—or enforce—its immigration laws.
Certainly past presidents of Mexico didn’t believe the United States had the right to do so.
On May 20, 2010, Mexico’s then-President Felipe Calderon addressed a joint session of the United States Congress—and attacked a recently-enacted Arizona law that allowed law enforcement officials to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.
According to Calderon, the law “introduces a terrible idea: using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement: I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”
Ironically, Mexico knows even better than the United States the perils of unchecked illegal immigration.
In 1821, Moses Austin sought a grant from Mexico to settle Texas. After he died in 1821, his son, Stephen, won recognition of the grant by Mexico.
The Mexican government had been unable to persuade large numbers of its own citizens to move to Texas, owing largely to raiding by such fierce Indian tribes as the Comanches.
The government saw the Anglo settlement of Texas as its best hope to tame an otherwise untamable frontier.
Stephen Austin
Austin convinced numerous American settlers to move to Texas, and by 1825 he had brought the first 300 American families into the territory.
Throughout the 1820s, Austin helped ensure the introduction of slavery into Texas, even though, under Mexican law, this was illegal. Tensions developed between unchecked numbers of Anglo settlers flooding into Texas and the Mexican authorities in charge there.
(“GTT”—“Gone to Texas”—was often carved on cabin doors by debt-ridden settlers who decided to seek their fortune in Texas. And some of the most notorious criminals on the frontier—such as land swindler and knife-fighter James Bowie—joined them.)
James Bowie
Eventually, the irresistible force of unlimited Anglo illegal immigration rebelled against the immovable object of Mexican legal/military authority.
The result:
- The battle of the Alamo: From February 23 to March 6, 1836, about 200 rebellious Texans withstood a 13-day siege in a former San Antonio mission, only to be slaughtered to the last man by an army of 2,000 Mexican soldiers commanded by President (actually, dictator) Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Among the victims: James Bowie and former Congressman David Crockett.
- The massacre at Goliad: On March 27, 1836, 425-445 Texans captured after the battle of Coleto were shot en masse by Mexican soldiers.
- The battle of San Jacinto: On April 21, 1836, Texans led by General Sam Houston won a surprise Texas victory over Mexican forces who were caught in a mid-afternoon siesta. Santa Anna—who had fled—was captured the next day.
Mexico was forced to give up all rights to Texas—which, nine years after winning its independence, became a state.
But ongoing conflicts between Mexico and the United States over Texas led to the Mexican war in 1846.
This, in turn, led to a series of devastating American victories over the Mexican army, and the capture of Mexico City itself.
Territory (in brown) that Mexico lost after the Mexican War
Mexico suffered the humiliation of both military defeat and the loss of its land holdings within the American Southwest—which, up to 1848, it had controlled.
This territory later became the states of California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, and western Colorado.
And the United States finally spread “from sea to shining sea.”
So Mexico knows what it’s doing when it unloads millions of its own citizens—and those of other Latin and Central American countries—on the United States.
Mexico, in short, is a textbook case of what happens to a country that is unable to enforce its own immigration laws.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 10, 2025 at 12:10 am
In January, 2018, the White House of President Donald Trump banned the use of personal cell phones in the West Wing.
The official reason: National security.
The real reason: To stop staffers from leaking to reporters.
According to an anonymous White House source: “The cellphone ban is for when people are inside the West Wing, so it really doesn’t do all that much to prevent leaks. If they banned all personal cellphones from the entire [White House] grounds, all that would do is make reporters stay up later because they couldn’t talk to their sources until after 6:30 pm.”
Other sources believed that leaks wouldn’t end unless Trump started firing staffers. But that risked firing the wrong people. To protect themselves, those who leaked might well accuse tight-lipped co-workers.
Within the Soviet Union (especially during the reign of Joseph Stalin) fear of secret police surveillance was widespread—and absolutely justified.
According to the 2016 book, One Day We Will Live Without Fear: Everyday Lives Under the Soviet Police State, by Mark Harrison, the methods used to keep conversations secret included:
- Turning on the TV or radio to full volume.
- Turning on a water faucet at full blast.
- Turning the dial of a rotary phone to the end—and sticking a pencil in one of the small holes for numbers.
- Standing six to nine feet away from the hung-up receiver.
- Going for “a walk in the woods.”
- Saying nothing sensitive on the phone.
The secret police (known as the Cheka, the NKVD, the MGB, the KGB, and now the FSB) operated on seven working principles:
- Your enemy is hiding.
- Start from the usual suspects.
- Study the young.
- Stop the laughing.
- Rebellion spreads like wildfire.
- Stamp out every spark.
- Order is created by appearance.
Trump has always ruled through bribery and fear. He’s bought off (or tried to) those who might cause him trouble—like porn actress Stormy Daniels.
He’s never been able to poke fun at himself—and he grows livid when anybody else does.
At Christmastime, 2018, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody of the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Its title: “It’s a Wonderful Trump.”
In it, Trump (portrayed by actor Alec Baldwin) discovers what the United States would be like if he had never become President: A great deal better-off.
As usual, Trump expressed his resentment through Twitter: The Justice Department should stop investigating his administration and go after the real enemy: “SNL.”
“A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?”
By saying that, Trump showed his contempt for the role of the First Amendment in American history.
Cartoonists portrayed President Andrew Jackson (1829 -1837) wearing a king’s robes and crown, and holding a scepter. This thoroughly enraged Jackson—who had repulsed a British invasion in 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans. To call a man a monarchist in 1800s America was the same as calling him a Communist in the 1950s.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was lampooned as an ape and a blood-stained tyrant. And Theodore Roosevelt proved a cartoonist’s delight, with attention given to his bushy mustache and thick-lensed glasses.
Thus, the odds are slight that an American court would even hear a case brought by Trump against “SNL.”
Such a case made its way through the courts in the late 1980s when the Reverend Jerry Falwell sued pornographer Larry Flyint over a satirical interview in Hustler magazine. In this, “Falwell” admitted that his first sexual encounter had been with his own mother.
In 1988, the United States Supreme Court, voting 8-0, ruled in Flynt’s favor, saying that the media had a First Amendment right to parody a celebrity.
“Despite their sometimes caustic nature, from the early cartoon portraying George Washington as an ass down to the present day, graphic depictions and satirical cartoons have played a prominent role in public and political debate,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist—an appointee of President Richard Nixon—wrote in his majority decision in the case.
Moreover, Trump would have been forced to take the stand in such a case. The attorneys for NBC and “SNL” would have insisted on it.
The results would have been:
- Unprecedented legal exposure for Trump—who would have been forced to answer virtually any questions asked or drop his lawsuit; and
- Unprecedented humiliation for a man who lives as much for his ego as his pocketbook. Tabloids and late-night comedians would have had a field-day with such a lawsuit.
And while Trump loves to sue those he hates, he does not relish taking the stand himself.
On October 12, 2016, The Palm Beach Post, The New York Times and People all published stories of women claiming to have been sexually assaulted by Trump.
He accused the Times of inventing accusations to hurt his Presidential candidacy. And he threatened to sue for libel if the Times reported the women’s stories. He also said he would sue the women making the accusations.
He never sued the Times, The Post, People—or the women.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 4, 2025 at 12:09 am
“The Holocaust never happened.”
“The Sandy Hook massacre never happened.”
“The MAGAbomber is a Democrat who’s mailing letter-bombs to make Republicans look bad.”
These are among the lies regularly hurled by “lunatic fringe” Right-wingers—and, more importantly, “mainstream” Republicans.
Many liberals believe Right-wingers simply lack correct information.
They assume that, if only Right-wingers knew the truth about such matters as:
- The millions slaughtered during the Holocaust;
- The horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School; and
- The pro-Trump motives of the MAGAbomber
they would be telling the truth.
There are two motives behind such blatant lying—and mere ignorance is not one of them.
Motive #1: Right-wingers don’t want to admit the truth about events most people instinctively believe are evil.
Right-wingers intuitively know that:
- Shoving huge numbers of naked men, women and children into gas chambers
- Spraying scores of bullets into scores of helpless men, women and children in churches, nightclubs and schools; and
- Sending bombs through the mail to murder people
are indefensible examples of pure evil.
They know they can’t convince decent people that such atrocities are really acts of humanity. So it’s easier (for them) to simply deny that they actually happened.
The tobacco industry paved the way for such arguments.
The Tobacco Institute—a trade association created in 1958 to pose as a “smoking research” center—cast doubt on scientific studies linking smoking with lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
Tobacco Institute ad
Its premise: “We really don’t know if smoking causes cancer. We need more studies to make certain.”
And, for the Tobacco Institute, there could never be enough studies to prove that smoking was a thoroughly deadly habit—that reaped billions of dollars every year for the tobacco industry.
The longer they could convince the public of their lies, the less likely they were to be regulated.
Motive #2: Right-wingers claim Right-wing atrocities didn’t happen to put the victims of such atrocities on the defensive.
This, too, was a major aim of the tobacco industry. By constantly demanding “Prove to us that smoking is deadly” and then arrogantly dismissing all evidence put forward, tobacco executives put the onus on their opponents.
From October 22 to November 1, 2018, Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe-bombs to 10 prominent Democrats—including former President Barack Obama, then-former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
After Sayoc was arrested and his van was found plastered with pro-Donald Trump stickers, Right-wingers reflexively seized on a series of lies to “cleanse” themselves:
- “He’s a liberal put up to it by other liberals.”
- “The bombs were fake, to stir up sympathy for liberals before the November elections.”
- Right-wing talk-show host Rush Limbaugh: “Would it make a lot of sense for a Democrat operative or Democrat-inculcated lunatic to do it? Because things are not working out the way they thought.”
- Right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza: “I hear the FBI squeezed lemon juice on the suspicious packages and a very faint lettering revealed a single word: DEMOCRATS.”
Totally ignored was that FBI Director Christopher Wray—a Trump appointee after the firing of James Comey in May, 2017—publicly stated that the bombs were real: “Though we’re still analyzing these devices in our laboratory, these were not hoax devices.”
Christopher Wray
So how did Right-wingers react to Wray’s no-nonsense rebuttal of Right-wing conspiracy lies?
They attacked the FBI as part of the “deep state” determined to thwart and, if possible, impeach Donald Trump.
According to one Rightist theory: The FBI made the bombs and sent them out to implicate some poor Trump supporter—if not the President himself.
So how can such liars be defeated? Lawsuits based on the truth.
On August 1, 2018, families of four students and two educators who died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre filed a defamation lawsuit against Right-wing broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Jones hosts The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas. He had claimed the mass shooting was fake.
Twenty children and six adults were killed in the December 14, 2012, attack by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.
On his program in January, 2015, Jones said: “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors.”
Alex Jones
Michael Zimmermann [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
According to the complaint filed against Jones:
“The Jones defendants concoct elaborate and false paranoia-tinged conspiracy theories because it moves product and they make money. Not because they truly believe what they are saying, but rather because it increases profits.”
Thus, a reasonable person would understand that Jones meant the massacre was staged and the deaths were fabricated.
So Jones responded with another lie: “This is all out of context….And it’s not even what I said or my intent. I’m not going to get into the real defects of this, I’m going to wait until it’s thrown out with prejudice.”
Jones’ lies did him no good. On August 4, 2022, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay two plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages. The following day, he was ordered to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages.
Other trials are pending.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 3, 2025 at 12:09 am
It’s commonplace to read about the role sex plays in motivating behavior. But the power of ego to determine history is often ignored.
Consider the role that ego played in igniting the American Civil War (1861 – 1865).
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 11 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was less and less willing to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
The British author, Anthony Trollope, explained to his readers: “It is no light thing to be told daily, by our fellow citizens…that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven.
“All this [Southerners] could partly moderate, partly rebuke and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands. But they have gradually felt that this was going, and were prepared to cut the rope and run as soon as it was gone.”
Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.
Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.
There were some Southerners who could see what was coming—and vainly warned their fellow citizens against it.
One of these was Sam Houston, the man who had won Texas independence at the 1836 battle of San Jacinto and later served as that state’s governor.
Sam Houston
On April 19, 1860, addressing a crowd in Galveston, he said: “Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you.
“But I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states’ rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates.
“But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South.”
Four years later, on April 9, 1865, Houston’s warning became history.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.
And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.
The South had paid an expensive price for its fixation on ego.
Even more proved at risk a century later, when President John F. Kennedy faced off with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
John F. Kennedy
In August, 1961, faced with the embarrassment of East Berliners fleeing by the thousands into West Germany, the Soviet leader erected the infamous Berlin Wall, sealing off East and West Berlin.
Khrushchev pressed his advantage, threatening Kennedy with nuclear war unless the Americans abandoned their protection of West Berlin.
In April, Kennedy had been humiliated at the Bay of Pigs when a CIA-sponsored invasion failed to overthrow the Cuba’s Fidel Castro. So he was already on the defensive when he and Khrushchev met in Vienna.
Kennedy’s reaction: “If Khrushchev wants to rub my nose in the dirt, it’s all over.”
In short: Kennedy was prepared to incinerate the planet if he felt his almighty ego was about to get smacked.
Nuclear missile in silo
What has proved true for states and nations proves equally true for those leading every other type of institution.
Although most people like to believe they are guided by rationality and morality, all-too-often, what truly decides the course of events is their ego.
For pre-Civil War Southerners, it meant demanding that “Yankees” show respect for slave-owning society. Otherwise, they would leave the Union.
For Kennedy, it meant playing a game of “chicken,” backed up with nuclear missiles, to show Khrushchev who Numero Uno really was.
And during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October, 1962, humankind almost disappeared as Kennedy set out to make Khrushchev “blink.”
It is well to keep these lessons from history in mind when choosing political leaders—and when making our own major decisions.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 22, 2025 at 12:08 am
It’s the racism and sexism, stupid!
That’s how Lilliana Mason, an associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, sees the reason for the animosity between Republicans and Democrats.
“Part of the reason that partisan animosity between Democrats and Republicans is so terrible right now is because what the parties are fighting over are really matters of racial and gender equality—the traditional social hierarchy—and whether we’re going to go back to being a country where White Christian men were always at the top of that hierarchy or become a more egalitarian, multiethnic democracy.”
Lilliana Mason
Referring to the book she co-wrote with fellow political scientist Nathan P. Kalmoe, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy, she said:
“What we found in our data was that, particularly on the right, Republicans who really hated Democrats the most were also the highest in racial resentment and sexism.
“And those who hated Democrats the least were those who were lowest in racial resentment and sexism. Actually, in our data, racial resentment is one of the most powerful predictors of Republicans hating Democrats.”
Once again—as in the years leading to the Civil War—it’s the South trying to impose a slavocracy mentality and control over the rest of the nation.
From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia-–produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 11 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North increasingly refused to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln President in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, triggering the Civil War.
More than 750,000.Americans died—when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.
Four years later, on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Now Southerners are trying to win through political manipulation what they couldn’t by open treason.
Red states are adopting Fascistic social policies on such issues as abortion, gay rights and classroom censorship. And they are trying to prevent the federal government or their own largest metro areas to resist those policies.
In the case of abortion, Red states are not only outlawing it within their own borders but trying to prevent states where abortion is legal from providing that service.
Thus Republicans, who began as the party of freedom, have mutated into the party now trying to end it.
According to Donald Kettl, the former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland:
“The only time I can recall in American history even remotely like this [divergence] was after the Civil War when the separate but equal doctrine began to emerge” across the South as a backlash against the attempts of the 13th, 14th and 15th Constitutional amendments to ensure equality for the freed slaves.”
CNN Correspondent Ronald Brownstein warns of this development:
“The real threat in the red state effort to set their own course may be less an advantage for one side or another than a challenge to the nation’s underlying cohesion.
“As red states grow more aggressive about going their own way, while working to preempt challenges from above (the federal government) or below (blue local governments), they are testing how much divergence the nation’s fundamental cohesion can take before it begins to unravel.”
Thirty-one states voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Of these:
- Twenty-four rank in the bottom 25 for the percentage of adults holding at least a four-year college degree;
- Twenty-seven fall into the top half when ranked by the share of their population that are White Christians of who own guns;
- Twenty-one rank in the top 26 states for total energy-related CO₂ emissions;
- These states have long sought to reverse the “rights revolution” of the last 60 years—on such issues as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception.
Today’s Republican party is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It has become the party of John Wilkes Booth, Benito Mussolini and Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Social commentary on August 14, 2025 at 12:14 am
Since February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been under Russian assault. For more than two years, President Joseph R. Biden supplied Ukrainians with arms and Intelligence.
Then voters elected Donald Trump President in 2024.
Suddenly, the future of Ukraine—and those countries making up the 75-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—looked very different.
Numerous commentators have noted that Trump is a “transactional President.” Meaning that he doesn’t enter any enterprise unless he believes there’s something in it for him.
Thus, defending a nation simply because it’s a democracy is a waste of time—unless he can gain something from it.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Trump wants access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which are key to manufacturing high-tech products like computer chips and military equipment.
The reason: In April, 2025, China announced export restrictions on some of these minerals in retaliation for Trump’s placing tariffs on Chinese goods.
In asserting the United States’ sphere of influence, Trump sees himself as the leader of a country that’s expansive and claims new territory,
As a result, he has attacked America’s longtime ally and neighbor, Canada with tariffs. He’s even threatened it with possible military invasion.
Vladimir Putin is another politician who believes in spheres of influence.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin has yearned for its reestablishment. He has called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions—especially entry into NATO.
Since late February, 2014, he began moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous Republic, Crimea. Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine.
On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported: “The Kremlin was planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops” against Ukraine.
And where there is activity by Russians, American Rightists are eager to turn such events to their own political advantage.
All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.
First, all great powers have spheres of interest—and jealously guard them.
For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.
And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?
It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
The Monroe Doctrine has no legitimacy except the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up. When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy threatened Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev with nuclear oblivion unless Soviet nuclear missiles were withdrawn from Cuba.
For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine. Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.
Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.
Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.
Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.
Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.
Latin and Central America
Similarly, the Soviet Union forced many nations—such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to submit to the will of Moscow.
The alternative? The threat of Soviet invasion—as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.
In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Zedong defeated the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.
China had never been a territory of the United States. Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.
Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”
The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.
Now Republicans—who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens—want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.
They want the United States to “intervene” in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024
This would insert the United States into yet another war in yet another Islamic country—after our disastrous forays in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history. And to learn from them.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2025 at 12:45 am
Donald Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2, 2019 was an occasion for rejoicing among his supporters.
But for those who prize rationality and decency in a President, it was a dismaying and frightening experience.
For two hours, Trump gave free reign to his anger and egomania.
Among his unhinged commentaries:
“We have people in Congress that hate our country.”
If you don’t agree 100% with Trump on everything, you’re a traitor.
“He called me up. He said, ‘You’re a great President. You’re doing a great job.’ He said, ‘I just want to tell you you’re a great President and you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.'”
Trump attributed these remarks to California’s liberal governor, Gavin Newsom. On February 11, 2019, Newsom had announced he was withdrawing several hundred National Guardsmen from the state’s southern border with Mexico—defying Trump’s request for support from border states.
Donald Trump at CPAC
“You know if you remember my first major speech—you know the dishonest media they’ll say, ‘He didn’t get a standing ovation.’ You know why? Because everybody stood and nobody sat. They are the worst. They leave that out.”
Once again, he’s the persecuted victim of an unfair and totally unappreciative news media.
“And I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who use its more than I do? But the First Amendment gives all of us—it gives it to me, it gives it to you, it gives it to all Americans, the right to speak our minds freely. It gives you the right and me the right to criticize fake news and criticize it strongly.”
Trump has repeatedly called the nation’s free press “the enemy of the people”—a slander popularized by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. And while Trump brags about his usage of the First Amendment, he’s used Non-Disclosure agreements and threats of lawsuits to deny that right to others.
“For too long, we’ve traded away our jobs to other countries. So terrible.”
While this remark got rousing applause, he failed to mention that his own products are made overseas:
- Ties: Made in China
- Suits: Made in Indonesia
- Trump Vodka: Made in the Netherlands, and later in Germany
- Crystal glasses, decanters: Made in Slovenia
- And the clothing and accessories line of his daughter, Ivanka, is produced entirely in factories in Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.
“By the way, you folks are in here—this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK.”
He’s obsessed with fear that the media won’t make him look popular.
“So we’re all part of this very historic movement, a movement the likes of which, actually, the world has never seen before. There’s never been anything like this. There’s been some movements, but there’s never been anything like this.”
Trump sees himself as the single greatest figure in history. So anything he’s involved with must be unprecedented.
“But I always say, Obamacare doesn’t work. And these same people two years ago and a year ago were complaining about Obamacare.”
In 2010, 48 million Americans lacked health insurance. By 2016, that number had been reduced to 28.6 million. So 20 million Americans now have access to medical care they previously couldn’t get.
“But we’re taking a firm, bold and decisive measure, we have to, to turn things around [with North Korea]. The era of empty talk is over, it’s over.”
- Trump has boasted that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “fell in love.” Then he met with Kim in Vietnam—and got stiffed on a deal for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
- On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI and CIA—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
“I’ll tell you what they [agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] do, they came and endorsed me, ICE came and endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate before, they might not even be allowed to.”
Trump can’t stop boasting about how popular he is.
“These are hard-working, great, great Americans. These are unbelievable people who have not been treated fairly. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.”
On the contrary: “Deplorable” is exactly the word for those who vote their racism, ignorance, superstition and hatred of their fellow citizens.
A FINAL NOTE: Trump held himself up for adoration just three days after Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer:
- Damned him as a racist, a conman and a cheat.
- Revealed that Trump had cheated on his taxes and bought the silence of a porn “star” to prevent her revealing a 2006 tryst before the 2016 election.
- Estimated he had stiffed, on Trump’s behalf, hundreds of workers Trump owed money to.
And, only two days earlier, Trump had returned from a much-ballyhooed meeting in Vietnam with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. Trump hoped to get a Nobel Peace Prize by persuading Kim to give up his nuclear arsenal.
Instead, Trump got stiffed—and returned empty-handed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 8, 2025 at 12:24 am
“Is Donald Trump simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”
That was the question that Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wanted to answer.
And she tried to do so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
But an observer didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to feel frightened by Trump’s behavior at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2019.
For two hours, in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump delivered the longest address (so far) of his first term as President—and of any American President.
“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”
And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”
“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”
Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.
“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”
Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.
“So now we’re waiting for a report [from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller] and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report might end his Presidency.
“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”
Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.
“Now, Robert Mueller never received a vote, and neither did the person that appointed him. And as you know, the attorney general says, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.'”
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were career Justice Department officials. They weren’t voted into office.
Robert Mueller
“Number one, I’m in love, and you’re in love. We’re all in love together. There’s so much love in this room, it’s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There’s love in this room. You can talk your heart out. It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s easy.”
Trump apparently finds it easy to fall in love—with Right-wing audiences and Communist dictators such as Kim Jong-Un.
“And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don’t believe we’ve had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds.”
Once again, he must brag about how popular he is and how many people want to listen to him.
“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none.”
By January 20, 2020, The Washington Post found that Trump had made “16,241 ‘false or misleading claims” in his first three years in office. He is in no position to talk about integrity.
“But we’re going to have regulation. It’s going to be really strong and really good and we’re going to protect our environment and we’re going to protect the safety of our people and our workers, OK?”
To “protect our environment,” Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal company lobbyist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 7, 2025 at 12:12 am
What would happen if the President of the United States went stark-raving mad?
That is the premise of the 1965 novel, Night at Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.
At the time of its release, its plot was considered so over-the-top as to be worthy of science fiction:
Iowa Democratic Senator Jim MacVeagh is summoned to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, by President Mark Hollenbach. MacVeagh is expected to become Hollenbach’s next Vice President. But he becomes alarmed that Hollenbach is clearly suffering from intense paranoia.
Hollenbach wants to develop a closer relationship between the United States and Russia—while cutting ties with American allies in Europe. Moreover, he believes the American news media are conspiring against him with his political enemies.
Only one person possesses evidence that Hollenbach is losing his grip on sanity—his mistress, Rita. Desperate to retain his power, Hollenbach orders the FBI to investigate both MacVeagh and Rita.
So why was a 53-year-old novel re-released in 2018? The answer lay in two words: Donald Trump.
In a November 30, 2018 review of Night at Camp David, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote:
“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.
“He stays up half the night watching TV and tweeting about it, then wakes up early to tweet some more, in what must be the most remarkable public diary of insecurity, petty vindictiveness, duplicity and scattershot focus by a major head of state in history.”
And the nightmare isn’t over.
Among the outrages Trump has committed since returning to power on January 20:
- Pardoned about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Move than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
- Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
- Ordered the dismissal of 5,000 FBI agents who investigated his incitement of the January 6 riot and his illegal hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
- Declared “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
- Tried to cancel birthright citizenship—enshrined within the United States Constitution— for U.S.-born children.
- Demanded a military parade for his 79th birthday, poorly disguised as a salute to the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
- Fired without cause the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Angrily fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a weak jobs report, triggering fears about his extortionate tariff policy.
Donald Trump
- Demanded that the media refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and banned the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to do so.
- Ordered the closure of all Federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility offices.
- Fired the inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies.
- Demanded that Canada become the 51st state and aggressively raised tariffs on Canadian goods.
- Aggressively stated that he wanted the United States to acquire Greenland, its longtime ally.
- Issued executive orders revoking the security clearance of Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs’ “crime”: Preventing lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms from swaying the 2020 Presidential election to Trump.
- Threatened Harvard University with the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding, claiming that 2023 student protests about Gaza violated the civil rights of Jewish students.
- Accepted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar for his personal use, a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?
One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.
John D. Gartner
Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.
During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”
Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:
- anti-social behavior
- sadism
- aggressiveness
- paranoia
- grandiosity.
“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.
More of that behavior was on full display on March 2, 2019 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
For more than two hours, Trump delivered the longest speech (so far) of his first term as President to his fanatically Right-wing audience.
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SKIP CHRISTMAS: JESUS ISN’T RETURNING TO SAVE YOU
In Business, History, RELIGION, Social commentary on December 17, 2025 at 12:16 amThere are several good reasons for skipping Christmas this year—and for years to come.
Reason #1: It’s based on a pagan Roman festival.
Reason #2: It’s based on a story that’s patently false.
The story of the Three Wise Men—or Kings—bringing gifts to the infant Jesus was added long after Jesus’ birth.
Realistically, there was no reason why anyone in Israel would have known—or cared—about the birth of yet another Jewish child.
If he had actually been born the son of a king, then his birth might have mattered to people generally.
In his 1973 bestselling Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox explains that “in antiquity…life’s perspective was reversed, and youth was mostly described through a series of anecdotes which falsely mirrored the feats of the adult future; proven kings or bishops were remembered as kings or bishops when young.”
Thus, Alexander the Great, the future conqueror of the Persian empire, has been depicted—as a boy—astonishing Persian ambassadors with precocious questions about the innermost workings of that empire.
For followers of the crucified Jesus, it was essential to establish his divinity from the outset of his birth. And what better way to do this than having not one but three Kings show up, uninvited, to declare his reign over them?
Reason #3: It’s actually blasphemous.
Assume, for a moment, that the story of the Three Wise Men—or Kings—is true.
The whole point of the story is to establish that Jesus’ birth was a truly special event—and a recognition of his fate to redeem humanity from sin.
No one else in that story is depicted as giving—or getting—gifts.
No matter how much a child might be loved today, almost no one expects him to be a future savior.
So giving him gifts is essentially a parody of the acknowledgement of Jesus’ divinity.
Reason #4: Christmas is overwhelmingly a commercial—not a religious—event.
Reason #5: There is no Paradise waiting for the dead.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus will return, cleanse the Earth of sinners, and claim it as a paradise for God’s faithful worshipers—that is, themselves.
They quote Ecclesiastes 1:4: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”
Except that it won’t.
The Sun will become a red giant in about five to six billion years, when it runs out of hydrogen fuel in its core. Its core will contract and heat up, while hydrogen fusion will begin in a shell around the core. This will cause the outer layers of the Sun to expand significantly.
The Sun will swell to hundreds of times its current size, becoming a red giant.
This will likely destroy Mercury and Venus. Earth could be swallowed entirely or, if it survives, it will be scorched by extreme heat and radiation, making it uninhabitable.
A Red Giant
Then, eons after the Earth disappears, so will the entire Universe.
Scientists debate how this will happen. Some believe it will occur in a Big Crunch (collapse back to a singularity) in about 33 billion years. Other theories favor a Big Freeze, Heat Death or Big Rip.
So don’t count on Jesus to return from a 2,000-year slumber to prevent this from happening.
There are people who insist that Christmas is a religious event that they are commanded to celebrate.
For those people, it’s a good time to remember the advice of 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
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