I got the usual email from American Atheists, and Melina Cohen brought up an interesting contrast.
First, on Monday, there was Reverend Lorenzo Sewell, whose benediction has been variously described as “spirited” and “cringeworthy.” Sewell, a born-again adherent of charismatic Christianity and a favorite of the religious far-right, appropriated the tone and cadence of revivalists and plagiarized entire sections of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Afterward, he received a hug from Trump and announced the launch of his cryptocurrency memecoin, $LORENZO: “I need you to do me a favor to go and get that coin for us to accomplish the vision that God has called us to do on earth.”
The next morning, there was Bishop Mariann E. Budde, the leader of the Episocopal Diocese of Washington who asked the president to “have mercy” for immigrants and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Later, Trump rebuked Budde, calling her a “so-called Bishop,” a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” and demanding she apologize. Representative Mike Collins of Georgia went further, saying Budde “should be added to the deportation list.” Even Sewell stepped away from his budding crypto venture to accuse Budde of “theological malpractice.”
I missed that little detail of the inauguration because I didn’t give a fuck about the inauguration, but that surprised me: the guy they brought in to do the prayer used the time to announce his memecoin grift? And a Republican is threatening to deport a bishop who preached mundane Christian platitudes?
The closer you look at this administration, the more fractally corrupt they are.
Speaking of Budde’s sermon, why did Trump and his retinue attend church in the first place? Or more accurately, why did they attend a church that isn’t part of his propaganda network?
The good news is, Trump’s ego is on overdrive right now and he’ll be hallucinating enemies everywhere. Just have a look at Putin’s obsession with defenestration. A sick government wracked by infighting is at least a (mostly?) incompetent one. Not that it helps us much…
One interesting thing about the threat to deport her is that she was born here in New Jersey. Although deporting her to New Jersey might be punishment enough I suppose.
lumipuna @ #1 — As I understand it, it’s a tradition for the president to attend a prayer service, called “the interfaith Service of Prayer”, the day after the inauguration at the Washington National Cathedral. I can’t find out old this tradition is.
Maybe somebody who knows how to do these things should create an atheist coin meme coin. Just to set off the right wing grifters.
It is going to be a 4 year long clown show like it is now.
Trump likes attention and he gets it by wrecking things and being cruel to whoever he can victimize.
The problem with a circus act like this is that it soon gets boring.
I stopped reading any news story with Trump in the title around 2017. He isn’t very interesting except as an example of a failed human.
Don’t forget that it took George Bush 8 years to wreck the USA.
We are a huge country of 346 million people with a lot of momentum.
Trump is going to have to put in a lot of effort to wreck us in only 4 years.
AFAICT, this is the plan for the next 4 years.
.1. The Culture War stuff is just a diversion.
It’s to entertain his base and horrify the Democrats and normal people.
.2. The real action and goal here is for the oligarchies to loot the USA.
They have money and power and want more.
They will loot the USA any way they can and arrange our tax laws to pre-distribute our GDP to their bank accounts.
Like it is now only more so.
So, that is our life for the next 4 years.
A clown show of hate, lies, and vicious cruelty while behind the scenes, the oligarchies accumulate even more money and power.
I think it’s safe to say that Reverend Lorenzo Sewell would be more at home in the company of the temple money changers than he would be with the angry guy who kicked over their tables.
John Watts @8: you’re right, of course; but for trumpistas, that’s a feature, not a bug.
The main programs of the Trump Clown Show are supposedly the immigration crackdown to get rid of all the undocumented immigrants, especially the nonwhite ones.
And to replace our tax system with tariffs which will also increase US manufacturing.
AFAICT, both of these are just smokescreens and may well not happen at all.
.1. As I guessed, we don’t have the money, humanpower, and facilities to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants to the USA.
I read somewhere that ICE only has jails for 50,000 people.
ICE needs the cooperation of a lot of groups and they aren’t going to get it in Blue States.
We also can’t get rid of those 11 million undocumenteds without wrecking our economy. 8 million of them are working here, many in jobs that Americans won’t do.
My guess here is that all the anti-foreigner raids and deportations are going to just amount to GOP cruelty theater. I doubt they will deport many more than Obama or Biden did. Which is how it ended up during the first Trump clown show.
.2. Same thing with the tariffs.
They will mostly be used as threats and bargaining points.
Which is also what happened during the first Trump clown show.
One of the things they did with the first tariffs was create a lot of exemptions for things the USA needs to import that we don’t have, i.e. raw materials like rare earth elements, etc.
In the end those tariffs didn’t do much of anything except be a minor nuisance.
I’m guessing again that in the end we won’t get much in the way of tariffs that actually do anything. A 10% tariff on China with a lot of exemptions for stuff we actually need isn’t going to bring in the revenue to lower taxes.
Tariffs high enough to be more that a nuisance, say 25% with few exemptions will almost certainly wreck the economy.
The oligarchies that control Trump’s puppet strings aren’t going to like that.
These are just my guesses based on past behavior and the self interests of the ultra-rich ruling class. We will see how accurate they are in the next year.
PZ said “The closer you look at this administration, the more fractally corrupt they are.”
I’ve been preaching this about Trump since 2015.
@10: The oligarchs will be fine with wrecking the economy if it means that they can buy up everything at pennies on the dollar, then control near (or actual) monopolies once the economy recovers. Remember what happened to real estate after the housing bubble in the 00s burst?
@6 raven – The problem with a circus act like this is that it soon gets boring.
Have some disagreement with that. Normally your statement would be true, but Americans have been drawn into Trump’s imagined legendary and illusionary existence. His MAGAs are hanging onto every stupid thing he does in hopes of him topping his last debacle. And they view his debacles as triumphs. Trump never seems to disappoint with his circus stunts.
Your post #7 nails it. Most of his antics are distractions from his real goals. That is a method good a thieve uses to maximize his take and reduce his chances at being caught.
Caligula used to talk about how his horse, Incitatus, would make a good senator. The horse was treated lavishly and attended banquets (supposedly) but when Caligula was assassinated, the horse disappears from the story.
It seems the US has fallen for Caligula’s joke.
robro at 4 – Thanks.
For as many years now as I’ve been an atheist, there is still something that reflexively gets stuck in my craw whenever I see those who most loudly proclaim their supposed holiness not only just ignore, but aggressively attack the only worthwhile parts of the Christian message.
In case anyone is curious, The Guardian has a transcript of the sermon from the bishop.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/24/bishop-mariann-edgar-budde-sermon-that-enraged-donald-trump
I cannot see what is so enraging, and, having just read it, I don’t want to violate its message right off the bat.
trump in church!?!?! I’m surprised he didn’t burst into flames
re brightmoon@18
I figured that was why he didn’t put his hand on the bible when taking the oath of office. He would have either been struck by lightning or he would have burst into flames.
Um, he famously held a Bible aloft during his last term as photo op outside St. John’s Episcopal Church after having protesters forcibly cleared from Lafayette Square, and General Milley realised he’d been played and apologised for going along with it. Thus his preemptive pardon by Biden.
So, no flames.
John @20: Maybe Biden should have given Budde a preemptive pardon, since she expressed her outrage at Trump’s photo op at the time.
@16 and @20
Well, supposedly he never touched the one offered while taking the oath of office and he never opened the one he held upside down, so… what if it was just a copy of something else with a cover from a Bible? Would that have the same effect as one with all the pages? We all want to know!! lol
He also just signed a EO transferring trans women to men’s prisons. For some of us it isn’t just theater.
Seeing the title here I thought the OP was going to be about this :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-26/donald-trump-fires-multiple-watchdog-inspectors-general/104860684
Predictably the Trump regime does NOt want independent oversight or checks that let people know what they are doing.
#7
like it has been said keep your eyes on the prize.
it has been all along about the money, true capitalist values. no one cares what happens to the others as long as “I” make profit!
#23
well the roman games of slaughter and execution had there entertainment value they helped to keep the “people” distracted, violence and death work pretty good at that.
raven@6:
KIRK: Yes, Mudd, you’ve been paroled to the android population of this planet.
SPOCK: The androids are being reprogrammed. Their original purpose was to adapt this planet for productive use. They’ll begin that work again.
MUDD: But what do I do? Kirk, I’m no scientist.
KIRK: No, you’re an irritant. You’ll stay here and provide a first-class example to the androids of a human failure. They’ll learn by close observation how to avoid ones like you in the future.
Where is Kirk when we need him? C’mon, do the slingshot maneuver and beam Trump up and parole him to the android population of any planet but this one.
Kagehi, yeah, alright.
Perhaps his Bible-Induced Spontaneous Combustion Unique Index Threshold was lowered since those days.
(BISCUIT, as we call it)
Something tells me he isn’t going to give a shit that he’s violating federal oversight laws. Now what might that be?
Oh, right, the 34 felony convictions he’s already racked up. Of course.
That seems to have been true during his first term. He and his oligarch buddies pulled a heist with lethal misdirection that would make Hans Gruber blush. (How many preventable deaths during COVID again? 200,000? Versus maybe a few dozen hostages Gruber planned to blow up on that rooftop.)
I worry that this second term won’t be like that. Sure, that’s what the oligarchs want, but can they keep him under control? Can they stop him from wrecking the whole economy with some ill-advised idea? Or pushing the nuclear button in a fit of pique? And don’t forget the committed Nazi ideologues chomping at the bit to grab his puppet strings or simply replace him. And the likelihood he strokes out within the next few years. Vance may be Thiel’s hand-picked techbro but he’s also got this creepy incel vibe and has been steeped in Moldbug’s neomonarchist propaganda. Johnson is a far-right ideologue. Even Trump himself is an avowed Hitler fan.
I think history is going to regret that that guy in Bowman missed. If there even is a history.
As expected, the strong and masculine party of alpha male wingnut Republicans has become a massive blizzard of snowflakes.
FWIW, this Canadian hopes that America will someday regain its international respect and worldly known democracy. Hopefully. Eventually. Maybe.
No, but it will be used as a rhetorical device to justify lowering taxes. Then, when the budget comes up short: “Oh dear, I guess we’ll have to make some cuts. How unfortunate.”
IOW, standard republican BS.
It is interesting to me that I respond to immigrant Drumpf’s antics with such horror when, well, that’s capitalism as mentioned elsewhere above. The U.S. has quite the sordid political history, so should be nothing new to see here. I am having wracking mixed feelings about my country and countrymen. Is it becoming apparent to anyone else that about half of humanity doesn’t adhere to the rules of civility? Dealing with them on their terms, by being actively and preemptively uncivil with them in return, sure seems to point to armed conflict ahead. Shit. Time to dust off the Winchester and the Ithaca Pump.
@6 raven wrote: It is going to be a 4 year long clown show like it is now.
I reply: you are right. The real problem is that those clowns have flame throwers! And, with the billionaire resources he has the magat will cause more death and destruction in 1 or 2 years than G W chimpy Bush did in his whole term.
The death and destruction that has accelerated in the past couple of weeks confirms that:
MAGA = Maggots Are Governing America
Martha and the Vandellas were right: Nowhere to Run to baby, nowhere to hide!
Didn’t some (in)famous person talk about this country being in some sort of a spiral???
@31 grandolddeity wrote: Shit. Time to dust off the Winchester and the Ithaca Pump.
I reply: That’s just great, climb down into the cesspool with them and cause more death and destruction. What a civilized response (sarcasm of the highest order) That obscene old testament thinking is just why everyone in our organization are anti-deists.