Which Way?

Grover Cleveland was the first ally of the former confederacy to win a presidential election in the US after the Civil War. He was elected the first time in 1884, having risen to national attention as the governor of New York. He narrowly defeated the Republican, James Blaine.

Robert Ingersoll campaigned for Blaine as he had for Grant, Hayes and Garfield, but in 1884 the country was almost 20 years past the Civil War, and was passing through a generational realignment in politics.

When Cleveland was elected a second time in 1892 he became the first US president to serve nonconsecutive terms, but he would not be the last.

Back in 1884 it would have been almost impossible to continue electing Republican presidents forever.

‘Which Way?’ was Ingersoll’s appeal for more humanism, and less theocracy, on both sides.

Emperor William was once the only man in Germany who really believed God had placed him in office and would keep him there regardless what everyone else wanted.

He was not the first man in Germany to occupy this position, and he was not the last.

In 2020 Donald Trump became the first man in the United States to occupy that position, and since all his attempts to overturn that election were unsuccessful, he was proven wrong the very next January.

No other US president had ever attempted such a thing before him, not even Grover Cleveland. None would have dreamed of it. It would have been their nightmare, or their funeral.

In 2024 Trump became the second US president, and the second confederate sympathizer, elected to two nonconsecutive terms.

And there is a real question whether he will leave office or not after his second term is done.

Donald Trump saw Abraham Lincoln’s proposition that it was impossible to fool all of the people all of the time and he accepted the challenge. He set out to fool enough of the people enough of the time, and so far he has generally succeeded.

His allies wish to rewind all social and moral progress in America at least back as the 1830s if not even earlier.

They would sacrifice the future on the altar of the past just for treasures in heaven and profits in the next fiscal quarter.

They are an alliance of convenience between those who are very wealthy right now and those who expect to become very wealthy once they die, both groups completely disinterested in the public good as such.

And whoever believes in him will be pardoned for any crime.

It must be admitted that the use of power is an excellent test of character.

Everyone admits that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Theocrats, however, believe everyone is absolutely corrupt, even the most powerless, and they believe the only perfectly uncorrupt person is the almighty.

This level of doublethink explains why they voted for Trump.

Their self image is aligned with the power of the almighty. Therefore they entitle themselves to absolute power; therefore they become absolutely corrupt at the first taste; therefore they think themselves humble vessels of glory; and therefore they believe everyone else is even more corrupt than they are.

How is power used in a theocracy?

Does it make people’s lives better or does it make their lives worse?

A theocrat, by definition, sees no problem with the way ‘God’ handled the situation in the Garden.

To them that is model presidential behavior. So was the flood. So was the conquest. So were the judges and the kings.

In all of ‘Western’ literature, the worst epithet we can give about any character is that they resemble the God of the Old Testament as much as their health permits.

A theocrat thinks this is high praise.

There are two things we can do with our religions.

We can obey or we can understand.

We can obey them without needing to understand, or we can understand them in all our domains of knowledge without needing to obey.

There are two ways we can relate to people with religious differences from ourselves.

We can react to them without needing to relate, or we can relate to them without needing to react.

There are two ways we can decide what is the right thing to do.

We can decide either based on obedience to authority or compassion for humanity.

The authors of our religions spoke much of compassion, but in that capacity their hearts were limited, and the God they point to is as limited as they were.

At a Christian school, if a teacher finds a fact inconsistent with Christianity, as the school defines it, he must keep it secret or deny it or lose his place.

If such teacher is a woman, it will not be enough for her to keep it secret; she will have to deny it proactively or she will be replaced by the first man who wants her job.

If Project 2025 is fulfilled, that same fraudulent standard will be imposed on all schools.

If history is any guide, the result could be as mild as a generation lost wandering the wilderness, as moderate as two hundred years of slavery, or as severe as a thousand years of serfdom.

If science is any guide, the result will be irreversible climate change.

It seems between two hundred and four hundred people just died in Kerr County, Texas, from flash floods, and the Christian nationalists in Washington actively resisted sending any federal resources until they knew the disaster was beyond the capacity of the state to handle.

They are busy scrapping federal agencies that manage not only disaster relief but also disaster warning.

People in Kerr County had been trying to get warning sirens for about ten years already because they know God is only going to help them if they help themselves first.

Texas Republicans would never put in warning sirens without first seeing either a personal need or a personal benefit. Their voters believe God is sorting us out just fine and as long as they don’t live in a floodplain they trust God’s methods.

Democrats would have put in a siren as soon as it became an issue at a town hall and some of them don’t even believe in God.

In four more years will it still be legal for me to state these facts?

The prospects of Christian nationalism depend entirely on control of the facts.

That is, they depend on control of information.

Already they are testing initiatives aimed at shielding Christians and their children from unwelcome facts.

Artificial unintelligence.

Political parties change and forms of governments change, but behind us and ahead of us there are really only two paths: liberalism and illiberalism.

Either we pursue basic liberty and justice in all areas of society even though we know we will never arrive there or we flatter ourselves we already did arrive there despite everyone else on earth knowing better.

Either the government exists to take care of people or it exists to take advantage of them.

There is no other way for a government to exist.

And there is no other way besides a government for us to take care of one another at scale.

We all know in 2025 Christian nationalists have total control of the US federal government. They believe the government exists to take advantage and as long as they’re in charge that’s all it is going to do.

They defunded disaster prediction on the logic that God would provide better protection than any weather forecast. They defunded disaster response on the logic that local authorities would do a better job of crisis management than the federal government.

They must think God will never send their constituents a crisis they can’t handle.

Then, predictably, there was this flood in Kerr County, Texas. The people had already predicted it for years and had been trying to manage the risk proactively by getting sirens installed, but they couldn’t get it done because the average Texas voter who lives outside a flood plain believes floods are one of God’s mysterious ways of sorting us out.

A Democratic municipality would have had sirens installed as soon as they became an issue at a town hall. A Democratic administration also would have pushed aid into the region the instant a disaster was apparent if not even earlier.

Democratic presidents do this both for red states and for blue states but voters in red states tend not to notice.

This Republican president actually withholds aid from blue states to extract personal favors from the governors and his voters definitely don’t mind.

And even in Texas, the most important red state in the country, this Republican president actually resisted sending aid until he knew there would be too many bodies rotting in the sun even for the whole state of Texas to handle.

If you’re not a Christian, you’re dead to them already.

If you are a Christian, they’re not so sure about that, and they’re going to trust God to sort you out.

As for me, I think ‘God’ helps those who help themselves.

And if you’re a Christian in Texas I think deep down inside so do you.

Background art

Krönungszug für König Wilhelm I, October 18, 1861, Wulf D. Wagner, Heinrich Lange: Das Königsberger Schloss. Eine Bau und Kulturgeschichte. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2011, S. 155, ISBN 978-3-7954-1953-0.
The Empire Strikes Back, 1980.
The adoration of the shepherds, Mattias Stom, c. 1635.
Adam and Eve Driven From Paradise, James Jacques Joseph Tissot, c. 1896-1902.
Joshua passing the River Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant, Benjamin West, 1800.
Moses and Joshua bowing before the Ark, James Tissot, c. 1900.
Goliath Cursing David, William Blake, c. 1803-05.
The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, c. 1338.
Luther at the Diet of Worms, Anton von Werner, 1877.
Galileo before the Holy Office, Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, 1847.
Trial of George Jacobs, Sr. for Witchcraft, Tompkins Matteson, 1859.
Death of Orpheus, Giulio Romano, c. 1525-28.
Guillaume Farel, Johannes Calvin, Théodore de Bèze and John Knox, University of Geneva, Paul Landowski and Henri Bouchard, 1909.
Quakers being whipped in Puritan Boston in the 1670s, unknown artist, digital print after 19th century wood engraving.
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch, 1500.