A Little Bit on James Talarico

 

Boy do my wife and I have a political disagreement these days, perhaps the only one we’ve ever had. I am as enthusiastic as I can be about James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas. Jane doesn’t like how Christian his political talk can be. She doesn’t like him quoting Christian scripture because this isn’t a Christian nation. Of course it isn’t, but at last, at long, long last, a prominent public figure is basing his political positions on true Christianity. Not bigotry. Not misogyny. Not racist white Christian nationalism, none of which are truly Christian. Talarico is a Christian who gets it right. He preaches peace and distributive justice from a true Christian perspective. He is a Presbyterian seminarian, and it is obvious that he got good, progressive Presbyterianism, not the conservative, unintelligent Presbyterianism that is also present among us. 

If people will listen to Talarico, they will hear a Christian voice that has been far too silent for far too long in this country. They will hear that Christianity is about love. Love of neighbor with everyone as our neighbor. It is about benefits not bombs. It is about equality, with no oppression of anyone. Ever. They will hear that actually is what we can call Great Commandment Christianity not Pharisaic bigoted Christianity. Intelligent, thoughtful Christianity not unthinking Biblicist Christianity. They will see how radically un-Christian so much of public American evangelical "Christianity" truly is.

So once again I say: Thank God! There is at last a ray of hope in American politics. There is at last a truly Christian voice in American politics that is actually getting a hearing. So no, dear. Talarico’s Christian talk is not something to worry about. Not at all.

How Far We Have Fallen!

 

I just saw a clip of Harry Truman talking about the difficulty and the responsibility of the presidency. I couldn’t help but think: How far we have fallen! Farther than I ever thought possible. Perhaps even farther than our democracy can survive. After all, our fascist president is trying to impose restrictions on voting that will, most of all, disenfranchise people who tend to vote Democratic. He knows he can’t win a free and fair election. He knows that, in a free and fair election, he and his billionaire fascist reporters will lose power, and power is all he cares about. Donald Trump is an irresponsible moron. He doesn’t know one tenth of what a president needs to know, and he doesn’t give a shit that he doesn’t. He may not even know that he doesn’t. He uses every chance he gets to speak publicly to lie. He lies and lies and lies. We can’t believe a single word he says, and we never have been able to. He truly is an American fascist, and so very many of us either love it that he is a fascist or just sit idly by and watch him destroy our democracy. Yes indeed. How far we have fallen!

Proud to Wear the Uniform?

 This is an entry I just made in my personal journal on March 9, 2026.

Watching US v. Mexico in the World Baseball Classic. The players on the US team so often speak of what an honor it is to wear the US uniform and represent the country. And I cry: Bullshit! There isn’t one good God damned thing about this country to celebrate these days. We are the world’s worst rogue nation. We attack other countries at will, international law and common decency be damned. We slash taxes for the ultra-wealthy and spend most of what the government gets from the rest of us on the fucking God damned military. ICE brings terror to our streets. We leave millions without health insurance, then slash what paltry insurance programs we have so even more people will die because they can’t afford health care. It’s hard to say what is our country’s greatest sin, but this one surely is at or near the top. Our president and his goons pander to racism, misogyny, and xenophobia in the most outrageous ways. They scream fraud every time the lose an election, and they want to force the feds to force an election law on the states that would disenfranchise millions of people, especially married women and many adopted people whose current names are not the names on their birth certificates, never mind disenfranchising trans people whose names are not those on their birth certificates. They stop the government from protecting the environment. We imprison more people than any other country in the world, more even than Russia and China, both which are grossly unjust countries. No, there is nothing good about the United States of America these days. We are threatened with becoming just another fascist dictatorship. The one power party would be the Republicans even though they represent only a minority of the population. Donald Trump or some asshole successor of his would be the dictator. We would all have to bend the knee in homage to our oppressors the way the people did in the USSR. So how the hell can anyone be proud to wear this country’s uniform? Beats the hell out of me.

On Trump's Iran War

 This is the text of a letter I just sent to our local newspaper:

President Trump has attacked the sovereign nation of Iran. He insists that we are now at war with Iran, and I suppose we are thanks to his unilateral actions. Trump’s war on Iran is wrong in a great many ways. The American people don’t want it. Congress has not authorized it. It violates the international law that prohibits unprovoked wars of aggression. It is grossly immoral, for Trump’s military is killing thousands of Iranian civilians including even schoolgirls. This unnecessary, illegal, and immoral war is having significantly adverse economic effects. The stock market is down, and oil prices are up—a lot. Surely it is a “high crime” within the meaning of the Constitution’s impeachment clause for a president to begin an illegal war of aggression against a country that was no threat to us when the president attacked. Sadly, at least with regard to the presidency, that impeachment clause has become essentially a dead letter thanks to the extreme partisanship that prevails in Congress. Still, President Trump clearly committed an impeachable high crime when he attacked Iran. That the regime ruling the country he attacked was indeed a very bad regime for the Iranian people and for some of Iran’s neighbors is true. It does not, however, justify what President Trump has done. We all must do whatever we can to make it clear to those in power that we do not support this war, and we must pray for it’s rapid conclusion.

Rev. Dr. Thomas C. Sorenson

Briefly on Birthright Citizenship

 I understand that there is a case pending before SCOTUS on Trump's attempt to end what is called "birthright citizenship." I'm sure I've said this here before, but I don't understand how there can even be a legal question about such citizenship. The US Constitution is often vague or ambiguous. It isn't always entirely clear what it means when applied to any specific case. That is one of the legal realities that keeps the courts busy. But there is no vagueness or ambiguity about birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution begins: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" excludes the very few people born in the US but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The classic examples are children of foreign diplomats and children of enemy soldiers. The phrase "All persons" is itself perfectly plain and clear. With the very rare exception of people born here but not subject to the laws of the United States, if you're born here, you are a citizen. Period. I can't even dream up an argument that says the phrase means anything else. Donald Trump and his fascist allies may want to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants, but the Constitution just won't let them do it. They can make every policy argument they want to support their unconstitutional position, but policy preferences have nothing to do with it. When interpreting any law, including the Constitution, a court must first ask: What does the law say? Then it must ask: Is there anything vague or ambiguous about what the law's language means. If there is, the court can consider the arguments of the parties to the case about what it should mean in the case before the court. But if there isn't, the court can do only one of two things. It can declare the law unconstitutional, or it can apply the plain language of the law to the case it is considering. You can't, of course, declare a constitutional provision unconstitutional. It is constitutional by definition. The language of the 14th Amendment is clear and unambiguous. I don't see how SCOTUS has any choice but to throw Trump's case out of court promptly and perhaps even with sanctions against the Trump administration for having brought the case in the first place.

More on Donald Trump

 

More on Donald Trump

February 24, 2026

Tonight President Donald J. Trump will give his annual State of the Union speech to Congress. Essentially everything he will say will be a lie. But then, essentially everything he ever says is a lie. Most members of Congress will be there, though some Democrats apparently have the nerve and the good sense not to be. Here are some thoughts, written here a short time before Trump's set of lies is set to begin.

Nearly all of Trump's supporters are white Christian nationalists, and the more I read about white Christian nationalism the more convinced I become that this country is not just rotten to its core with racism. I’ve known that for a long time. It is also rotten to its core with stupidity. White Christian nationalists are just flat stupid about reality. About what the facts of the country have been in the past and what they are today. They insist that the US was founded as a Christian nation. It wasn’t. They insist that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution are based on Christian principles and express Christian values. They aren’t, and they don't. They insist Christians are under attack in this country today. They aren’t. They say liberals are trying to stop them from practicing their faith. They aren’t. They think God sent us Donald Trump to save the nation. God so obviously did not do that that this one is even harder to get your head around than are the others.

Here’s the truth. This nation was founded on rationalistic principles derived from the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries CE. The Declaration of Independence clearly shows this truth. It says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” It doesn’t say, “We hold these truths to be divine revelation.” The US Constitution almost ever mentions religion, but when it does, it does so to keep religion out of the government not in it. Not all, but many of the so-called Founding Fathers were Deists not Christians. No one is trying to stop white Christian nationalists from practicing their faith. We’re just trying to stop them from imposing it on everyone else and to stop them from inflicting the harm of others that they seem to think their ideology requires them to inflict.

Donald Trump is everything any Christian must vigorously though nonviolently oppose: He is stupid. Nearly everything he says is a lie. He is grossly immoral. He is narcissistic. He cares about no one but himself and maybe his immediate family. He violates his oath of office at every turn. Although this hasn’t quite been proven yet (largely, perhaps, because Trump's Department of Justice won't obey the law requiring them to release the Epstein files), he may be a pedophile. He is a racist. He is misogynistic. He abuses immigrants the way the Nazis abused Jews at the begging of the Nazi’s control of Germany. He uses them as an innocent target demographic on whom he can blame things that are in no way their fault and who he can use to whip up his rabid supporters against them to distract those supporters from what the causes of the country's problems really are. He is a convicted felon. He is, in fact, trying to turn our federal government into an authoritarian, indeed fascist, regime with him as its dear leader. He has no belief or faith in democracy whatsoever. To him, if he or his people lose an election, it can only be because of election fraud (of which there is virtually none in this country) and rigging of the election by his opponents (which just doesn’t happen). He has committed more impeachable offenses than anyone can keep track of. I know of not one good thing about the man.

Donald Trump is a lethal threat to American democracy and the rule of law. No person of good will could possibly support him whatever the person’s faith or political beliefs may be. Yet millions of Americans who self-identify as Christian nationalists, nearly all of them white of course, have voted for him for president three times and elected him twice. They see him as some kind of savior. I can only believe that they support him because he gives them permission from the highest office in the land to be their worst selves. Because he makes their stupidity and their bigotry somehow socially acceptable and, indeed, even virtuous. American democracy will survive only if we can overcome the immense damage to our country that he has done, is doing, and will do in the future.

On My Personal Racism

 

On My Personal Racism

February 20, 2026

This is an entry I just put on my personal diary edited just slightly for posting:

I just saw an ad in which two children, one Black and one white, are playing patty cake. It made me think. I have said that I am trying to see the person first and race second. But I have been so conditioned by American racism that I can hardly do it. How do I get over race being so unconsciously significant? It’s not consciously significant. I get how immoral and stupid racism is. But cultural conditioning is a powerful thing, and the American culture in which I grew up is profoundly racist. No one ever told me Black people were inferior. But when I was a child we chanted “Ee Meenee  Miney, Mo, catch a nigger by the toe.” And I thought nothing of it. My Mom said she didn’t like watching the NBA on TV because the players were all Black and they all looked alike. I though she was being silly, but I never really thought of her a racist; but clearly she was. The few Black students at South Eugene High School when I was there in the early 1960s were always outsiders. I never knew any of them, nor did I particularly want to. I remember the Black couple I once spent some time with In Germany. The husband was a professor at Wayne State University, no small accomplishment of course. His wife was a beautiful young Black woman. Mom, my brother Pete, and I wandered around Frankfurt am Main with her while Dad and her husband were off doing something or other, and I though nothing of it except I found it odd how the Germans stared at us like they’d never seen a Black person before. Or perhaps they’d never seen a Black person and white people being friendly with each other before.  

When I was a parish pastor, I had a few Black parishioners. They were both problematic in their own ways, one worse than the other. The Black parishioner I had for the longest time, and I, I like to think, got along fine. Late in his life he told me I was a good man, that despite the fact that we disagreed about many things about the Christian faith. I took him to mean he didn’t see me as racist, and I flatter myself that in my relationship with him I never was.

Yet when I see a person I don’t know, the first thing I see is race. I like to think that I don’t react negatively to anyone’s race, but I can’t help but wonder why it is the first thing I see. Maybe it’s because I’ve never lived anywhere where there were all that many people of color. I did have many Black clients at the Legal Action Center, where I worked for five and half years as a legal services lawyer representing low income tenants in eviction cases; and I flatter myself that I treated all of them with appropriate respect and saw them not just as Black but as Black people. I learned a bit about Black American culture from them, something I very much appreciate.

Well, whatever. I was brought up in a racist culture, and I can’t undo that fact. So I just try to be aware of it. To counteract it and to reject racism whenever I’m with a person of color. Still, my limited personal experience of it tells me how deeply, radically racist white American culture is. Even those of us who try so hard not to be racist are, deep within, racist. I can’t deny it. All I can do is hope and pray that I am able sufficiently to reject it.