Iowa's King-sized mess

Southwestern Iowa, can we talk?

Surely you've noticed lately that your guy in the U.S. House, Steve King, has been a little out of control . . . even by his own loose standards. Frankly, guys, the rest of the country is starting to think he's a little nuts.

OK, a lot nuts.

He's going around throwing rhetorical bombs. He's acts like he's trying to start something bad, trying to get people all riled up.

Frankly, if the tea partiers actually got their way and got national governance just the way the Founding Fathers served it up . . . your representative might be writing manifestos on toilet paper for his lawyer to smuggle out of jail and hand over to Glenn Beck. The Alien and Sedition Acts, as applied by President John Adams, surely would not have been kind to Steve King.

LET'S TAKE a look at Steve King's latest, greatest hits, shall we? Starting with this story today in the Omaha World-Herald:

Midlands Republicans on Capitol Hill strongly opposed health care legislation, but most showed little interest this week in repealing it now that it is the law of the land.

One man who is ready for a repeal push is Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

“Today the work begins to repeal Obamacare and restore the principles of liberty that made America a great nation,” King said within hours of the bill's passage. “The American people must take their country back by methodically eliminating every vestige of creeping socialism, including socialized medicine.”

Of course, repeal would be a steep climb. Republicans probably would need to capture the White House, a majority in the House and 60 seats in the Senate, where they currently hold 41.

THEN, WE HAVE this from KTIV in Sioux City:


AND THIS, an account of King's Sunday night antics, courtesy of The New York Times:

“Let’s beat the other side to a pulp!” Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to the last stand of Tea Partiers on Sunday night. “Let’s chase them down! There’s going to be a reckoning.”

OF COURSE, let us not forget this, as recounted by CBS News:

Conservative lawmakers and pundits already have many grievances against the Democratic health care reform plan, but Rep. Steve King of Iowa and Fox News personality Glenn Beck are adding one more to the list -- the vote scheduled for Sunday.

Democrats are scrambling to get the bill to the president before leaving for Easter recess, prompting the House to schedule a vote for the bill this Sunday.

"They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God," King said on Beck's radio program Thursday, the Hill reports.

Beck chimed in, "Here is a group of people that have so perverted our faith and our hope and our charity, that is a -- this is an affront to God."

OR THIS, in The Huffington Post on March 16:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) urged a smaller-than-expected crowd of Tea Party protesters on Tuesday to launch a Velvet Revolution-style uprising against the federal government, saying the parallels are striking between America's current government and Eastern European communist rule.

Speaking to the Huffington Post shortly after his speech, King declared that a peaceful uprising, a la the successful overthrowing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on the streets of Prague in 1989 "would be fine with me."

"Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can't get in, they can't get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people," he said.

"So this is just like Prague under communist rule?" the Huffington Post asked.

"Oh yeah, it is very, very close," King replied. "It is the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over. So there are a lot of similarities there."

Earlier, King implored the crowd to bring the nation's capital to a sort of paralysis. Warning, erroneously, that the health care bill would fund abortion and fund care for 6.1 million illegal immigrants, he demanded that concerned citizens "continue to rise up."

AND, OF COURSE, we can't overlook this "Osama bin King" moment after Joe Stack flew his plane into Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas, last month:


SOUTHWEST IOWA, let me be direct. You have a problem -- you elected a lunatic. Furthermore, considering you elected a lunatic to Congress, he's our problem, too.

And we expect you to fix our problem at your earliest possible convenience.

Iowa uber alles

Iowa's crackpot congressman, Steve King, always has marched to the beat of a right-wing drummer.

He now apparently is goosestepping to an Anschluss beat, hobnobbing with a far-right leader of a political party founded by ex-Nazis in old Österreich. The candidate of the ironically named Freedom Party lost Austria's presidential runoff, but apparently its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, still ist Nummer Eins in the heart of the Hawkeye State's korncob kommandant.

Strache, you see, will be attending the inauguration of Donald Trump as the guest of King. Let that sink in for a moment.

Rep. Steve King

Various media had reported that Hofer and Strache had been invited by Washington's conservative republican deputy, Steve King. King, who had already supported Trump in the election campaign, visited Vienna last October, where he met the then-Presidential candidate, Hofer. Now the confirmation.

Facebook knows about Strache:

"I was invited to Washington this week. As usual, I am accompanied by a Freedom Delegation on this trip.

On the margins of the US presidential election, a series of talks with interesting US political representatives is on our tight schedule."

(Translation by Google)

A STORY on an English-language Austrian news site is here.

Of course, this isn't the 4th District representative's first flirtation with the outrageous.

In 2010, King said he could "empathize" with a domestic terrorist who flew his small plane into an Internal Revenue Service field office in Austin, Texas, killing himself as well as an IRS manager and injuring 13 others.

That same year, during the final House battle to enact Obamacare, The New York Times quoted him as saying this:

“Let’s beat the other side to a pulp!” Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to the last stand of Tea Partiers on Sunday night. “Let’s chase them down! There’s going to be a reckoning.”

In 2016, King attracted attention when a television report showed a small Confederate flag on his desk in Washington. Earlier, he had defended the Rebel flag as a "symbol" of Southern pride and decried efforts to ban the banner from official display:

“A huge price has been paid. It’s been paid primarily by Caucasian Christians. There are many who stepped up because they profoundly believed they needed to put an end to slavery,” said King. “This country has put this behind us.”

And less than a week later, on TV at the Republican National Convention, der Kongressabgeordnete went all master race on an MSNBC panel when someone mentioned the last gasp of "old white people" in the GOP.

This 'old white people' business does get a little tired, Charlie," King said. "I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

"Than white people?" Hayes asked, clearly amazed.

"Than, than Western civilization itself," King replied. "It's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That's all of Western civilization."

The other panelists objected, with Hayes trying to keep the peace. Panelist April Ryan, who is black, asked, "What about Asia? What about Africa?"

"We're not going to argue the history of Western civilization," Hayes said. "Let me note for the record that if you're looking at the ledger of Western civilization, for every flourishing democracy, you have Hitler and Stalin as well."

WHEN IT comes to Steve King, I haven't even scratched the surface of the lowlights here. Believe me.

And now this.

Let me summarize "this": A congressman who can do nothing outrageous enough to alienate his constituents in Bumf***, Iowa, happens to be an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump, who could do nothing outrageous enough not to become the 45th president of the United States.

Then, the outrageous right-wing congressman invites an outrageous right-wing politico of a Nazi-birthed Austrian party (who late last year signed a cooperation pact with Vladimir Putin's United Russia party) to the swearing in of Trump, who has his own thing going with the Russians, whose geopolitical aim is to blow the Western alliance to hell and achieve complete Eurasian dominance.

No, nothing to see here. Move along to the showers for delousing.


IT WOULD SEEM to this schlub sitting at his computer in Omaha, by God, Nebraska, that the problem isn't that Steve King and Donald Trump are going to turn America fascist. It seems to me instead that the reason we have public disgraces like Steve King and Donald Trump at the forefront of American public life is because large swaths of our land already have gone fascist.

Folks hereabouts would deny that till the cows come home, and they'd probably want to sock me "in the goddamn face" for saying it. Of course, the other plausible explanation is that an electoral majority in Iowa's 4th and a winning electoral-college coalition nationally elected these two little Hitlers because they were too effing stupid and racist to manage otherwise.

If I were an King voter in western Iowa or a Trump enthusiast nationwide, I'd just cop to fascist.

For the rest of us, the Resistance begins Friday.

Right of the great divide

If you care to look at what kind of political climate we're facing these days, look no further than Rep. Steve King, western Iowa's crazy-uncle congressman.

In 2008, King -- a three-term representative for whom the description "incendiary" may well be an understatement -- won with 60 percent of the vote. Tuesday, he won with 68 percent.

In February, he was being glib about the guy who flew his plane into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas. Two years before, it was this:


AND THE good people of western Iowa like him just fine, according to today's Omaha World-Herald:

King is a staunch conservative known for eyebrow-raising comments. He expects the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives to lead to his becoming chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. He is the senior Republican on the subcommittee.

He said Tuesday he wants to introduce legislation reducing and eventually ending federal aid to so-called “sanctuary cities” if they did not change their policies.

“We have a number of cities in our country that, essentially, forbid their law enforcement officers from gathering information on illegals,” he said. “We need to put an end to it.”

Cities — including Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco — have adopted ordinances banning city employees and police from asking residents about their immigration status. King described Des Moines as a “de-facto” sanctuary city where the practice is in place without an ordinance.

He also called for ending automatic citizenship for what he called “anchor babies,” children born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents. Doing that would likely require changing the U.S. Constitution.

WHAT DEMOCRATS have to deal with isn't that King is a nut and attracts like addle-minded zealots. What Democrats have to deal with is that lots of normal people in the country's breadbasket keep electing a bomb-thrower like the congressman from Iowa's 5th Congressional District.

That they regard him as "normal" enough to represent them, and see Democrats as unfit.

What Democrats have to ask themselves is why they are so alienated from normal Midwestern folk -- angry, fearful, marginally knee-jerk and increasingly deluded folk, to be sure, but not particularly lunatic ones. Dismissing folks like Steve King's Iowa voters, deriding them as bigots and nuts, may be satisfying for the Democratic base, but it still amounts to pissing in the wind.

The difficult question that some Democrats need to ask themselves, but won't, isn't "Why is everybody but us so crazy?" The pertinent question, instead, is "Why do people find us significantly more frightening than somebody like Steve King?"

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars . . ." etc., and so on.

Osama bin King, R-Iowa

Remember how mad you were when you saw Palestinians celebrating on 9/11?

Steve King, southwest Iowa's mad-hatter member of Congress, is one of those people. Just so long as the target for the terrorist's flying bomb is the Internal Revenue Service.

ACCORDING to Talking Points Memo, the Iowegian carbuncle on the House's ass told a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference he could "empathize" with a domestic terrorist like Tea Party Airlines pilot Joe Stack:

King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account.

The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people "implode" their local IRS office.

HELL, we invaded Iraq on flimsier evidence than that regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed support for al-Qaida. What to make of a sitting congressman who can "empathize" with domestic terrorists who launch suicide attacks against the United States government?

When confronted by Think Progress about his remarks, King said that if we just hadn't built the World Trade Center and Pentagon, those 9/11 suicide jockeys wouldn't have had anywhere to aim those jetliners full of innocent Americans. Or something like that:

I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax.

(snip)

It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

WITH THE political heat now on high, King took the weasel route in an interview published in this morning's Omaha World-Herald:

King said his heart goes out to the victims in Austin and their families.

“These acts of violence have no place in our society to be condoned or supported,” King told The World-Herald. “When someone finds themselves in this position of extreme frustration with the IRS, which I do understand that frustration, they should do what I did, get involved in the process.”

King said his treatment by the IRS contributed to his decision to run for public office.

As for the comments about imploding IRS buildings, King said he was employing levity in discussing his belief that the IRS should be abolished. He said he was referring to imploding the empty buildings left behind.

YEAH, RIGHT.

You know, if only the voters of southwest Iowa hadn't elected such a radical asshat to Congress, we who live across the Missouri River in Nebraska wouldn't point our fingers eastward and laugh so hard.

Maybe we should stop that, though. Terrorist-loving creeps like King -- especially when they get elected to high office -- hardly are a laughing matter.

Calling Jake and Elwood: The Iowa Nazi edition

Truth in politics?

Rep. Steve King, National Socialist-Iowa, is at it again. No doubt, our national appetite for wallowing in political pig poop is fathomless.

The Washington Post is there with a shovel, as usual.

"We go to a place like New Orleans, and everybody’s looking around saying, ‘Who’s going to help me? Who’s going to help me?’” King said, recounting what he said officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, had told him about the relief effort, in which he said he had participated. Yet, he was also one of 11 members of Congress to oppose a bill providing federal aid to Katrina victims in 2005.

In his home state, he said, residents looked after one another without government handouts. Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has declared a disaster in more than half of Iowa’s 99 counties because of severe flooding and is seeking a federal declaration that would free up funds from Washington.

“We go to a place like Iowa, and we go see, knock on the door at, say, I make up a name, John’s place, and say, ‘John, you got water in your basement, we can write you a check, we can help you,'" King said. “And John will say, ‘Well, wait a minute, let me get my boots. It’s Joe that needs help. Let’s go down to his place and help him.’”

THE NORMAL human response -- or what one would hope is the normal human response -- to the question "Who's going to help me?" is "I am."

King seems to admit as much by lauding Iowans' willingness to help their neighbors without hesitation. So, I suppose the only thing he finds offensive is that people would ask for help -- particularly from, one supposes, the federal government. Particularly the majority-black population of New Orleans.

Something tells me the right dishonorable white nationalist from Kiron will not be pressing FEMA to withhold aid from those of his constituents affected by flooding on grounds of "We can take care of this shit ourselves." This leaves us with the explanation that's left for what King said Thursday.

Steve King is a racist piece of that in which we've been wallowing since 2016.

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King of Kooks, Lord of Losers

The Passion of Steve King (Wikipedia photo)

I'm just gonna leave this right here. Because there is no bottom anymore.

U.S. Rep. Steve King invoked the story of Jesus Christ at a town hall in Cherokee, Iowa, on Tuesday, comparing his experience of being called out for racist remarks in the House of Representatives to Jesus’ trial and crucifixion.

“When I have to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives, and look up at those 400-and-some accusers — you know we just passed through Easter and Christ’s passion — and I have better insight into what He went through for us partly because of that experience,” the Iowa Republican said, referring to the biblical story of Jesus’ trek to Calvary and execution on a cross in Jerusalem.

King told the roughly 30 constituents at the town hall Tuesday that the prayers he has received from others have helped him through the tough time and given him a “certain peace,” the Sioux City Journal reported.

What hath Bubba wrought?!?

More and more, it looks like when three little redneck bigots in Jena, La., hung nooses from their high school's "white tree," what they really did was light a long fuse.

That fuse, thus far, has led to and set off various small racial bombs. And the fuse yet burns. We know not where the last bomb lay, nor do we know its size.

YESTERDAY'S U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Jena Six, however, gives us some clues. The Politico reports:

The House Judiciary Committee hearing would have drawn a packed audience regardless — a crowd that is, by Capitol Hill standards, remarkably diverse — because the topic involves the Jena Six, a half-dozen African-American kids whose moniker has become the rallying cry of a resurgent civil rights movement.

(snip)

The room has a tense and excited feel to it. Two representatives of the Justice Department, Donald Washington, a U.S. attorney from the Western District of Louisiana, and Lisa Krigsten, representing the civil rights division, must defend the department for its decision not to press hate crime charges against teenage noose hangers in Jena, La., and for not doing enough to intervene in a racially disparate prosecution. Washington, an African-American, will draw the most heat from the committee.

“I’m sure we’re all familiar with the alleged facts,” says Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), though he and several Democrats enumerate them anyway:

On Aug. 31, 2006, “all Hades broke loose,” as Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) puts it. Three nooses were hung from what was known as the “white tree” at Jena High School after a black student requested the principal’s permission to sit under it. No charges were filed, and the culpable students, initially expelled, had their punishment reduced to a suspension and family counseling.

Tensions rose, and white District Attorney Reed Walters — who doubled as the school’s attorney — reportedly told students to cool it or he would “erase their lives with the stroke of a pen.”

Later that fall, one of the Jena Six, Robert Bailey Jr., had a gun pulled on him by a white student. Bailey wrestled the gun from him and was charged with stealing it; the white student was charged with nothing. Tensions rose further and white students were “calling folks niggers out in the school yard,” says Johnson.

Then in December, six black students beat up a white kid, Justin Barker. “There was a small degree of physical injury to the white student who attended a party,” says Johnson. The six were charged with attempted murder, and the story went national 10 months later when Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. got involved.

(snip)

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) also stands up for Barker and says that the beating is more significant than the hanging of the noose. Although, he concedes, “I know I come from a part of the country where there’s less sensitivity to that.”

“We see things different,” agrees Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). She goes on to point out that while Democrats are talking about racial injustice, GOP members are “talking about single-parent families.”

By 11 a.m., the man most likely to do some disagreeing still isn’t here, and that’s just fine with Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.). “If I were compiling a group of witnesses” with the goal of racial harmony, he says, “I don’t know if Mr. Sharpton would make the cut.”

“He may be here shortly,” warns Conyers.

“He may be looking for me,” worries Coble. Indeed, a few moments later, chatter fills the courtroom as Sharpton makes his way to his center chair and cameras flash.

Conyers recognizes Sharpton, who apologizes, claiming his flight from New York was delayed two hours. Sharpton draws press attention, but he also draws scrutiny: During recess, a Washington Post reporter goes online to fact-check flight departure and arrival times.

Sharpton, though, for all his star power, ends up a minor player in the hearing, overshadowed by the emotion filling the room. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) betrays some of the sensitivity King referred to as she questions the Justice Department witnesses.

“I am almost in tears. Mychal Bell is now in jail. ... The tragedy of this case is that it called out for federal intervention for the protection of children,” she says. “Shame on you.”

Krigsten struggles to maintain a half-smile as Jackson Lee grows louder, directing her anger now at Washington, who she pointedly notes is the first black western district attorney. “I’m asking you to find a way to release Mychal Bell and the Jena Six,” Jackson Lee cries. “What are you doing now?!”

The room erupts in applause and shouts. At Washington’s answer — that he did what he could — the crowd hisses as Conyers tries to regain control.

The next to pile onto Washington is Waters, who adds that she is disappointed that the district attorney, who was invited to the hearing, chose not to show. The crowd breaks out in repeated shouts of “Subpoena!”

“You do have the power of the subpoena,” Waters reminds Conyers, reigniting the crowd: “Use it! Use it! Subpoena!” Conyers sits through the outburst but makes no indication of whether he will subpoena Walters.

THE CONGRESSMAN FROM IOWA, Steve King, is from just across the river from here. He is somewhere to the right of . . . well, probably everybody not already in some Idaho enclave. And, like many Midwesterners, he is clueless about race in America.

Where and when I grew up -- in the Deep South, in the '60s and '70s -- white people often were malicious about race. Here of most white Midwesterners like King just don't get it and, in the absence of a tradition of de jure segregation, are nevertheless still happy with de facto segregation.

And unless they are hit in the face -- over and over again -- with the rank inequity of how white malefactors in Jena got a wink and a wrist slap while black ones are looking at hard time in the state pen, they probably aren't going to get it.

The passions unleashed by the sins of Jena, however, make "not getting it" an exceedingly perilous proposition across a nation not nearly so well-off, tolerant, fair-minded and progressive as it thinks.

UPDATE: And there's this, in New York.

'Top of the world, Ma!' Or . . . spare us your white bleat

Steve King, the Nazi-lovin’ Iowa congressman. Again.

Donald Trump’s Amerika. Still.

Identity politics, culture warriors and vilification of those unlike ourselves. Always.
 
Much has been said over the last year and a half about the need to understand the beleaguered, alienated Americans demeaned by arrogant progressives, poor souls who have lashed out electorally, using the only weapon available to them. Thus, President Donald Trump.

Blow up a skyscraper with a jetliner, you’re the most notorious terrorist in history. Blow up a country with a fascistic orange imbecile, and we’re supposed to understand your goddamned pain. Gotcha.
 
Listen. I have pain. Oftentimes, I feel beleaguered, alienated and demeaned by arrogant virtue signalers who think I’m a “hater” by mere virtue of my religion. Identity politics is not just a knuckle-dragging, right-wing phenomenon mostly experienced in trailer parks, King's congressional district in Iowa and at Nuremberg for Dummies events featuring the president of the United States of Amerika . . . er, America.

Despite my beleaguered, alienated distress, I made the conscious choice not to take it out on the rest of the country. Neither did I take it out on minorities, refugees, gays, the poor or undocumented immigrants. That would have been profoundly wrong.

By November 2016, anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knew exactly who and what Donald Trump was. He wasn’t shy about letting us know, and the press wasn’t exactly, shall we say . . . reticent.

We knew. We knew.

We knew that Trump acted like a nut and talked like a fascist. We knew he was reckless in word and in deed. We knew he was a liar. We knew he was a cheat. We knew he was a cad, a philanderer, a vulgarian and a misogynist. We knew he was a raging narcissist.



We knew he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

We also knew that, for all her myriad faults as a public servant and a politician, Hillary Clinton wasn’t an idiot, wasn’t a racist, wasn’t a fascist, wasn’t certifiable — and wasn’t in Vladimir Putin’s hip pocket.



A majority of voters held their noses and voted for Not the Fascist Buffoon, a.k.a., Hillary Clinton. They voted for not blowing up the United States, despite everything. They voted for not making things worse. They eschewed the hissy fit.



I was among that popular-vote majority. I don’t know a lot of things, but I knew President Donald John Trump would be an existential threat. Events thus far are proving me right.

Others, however, wanted to “shake things up.” Consider them shook.

Trump gets owned by Little Rocket Man

THOSE ENABLERS of that unfortunate electoral-vote majority shook up the lives of people who could just use a little affordable health care right now.

They shook up the lives of desperate migrants fleeing to a Trump-addled Amerika . . . er, America . . . because almost anything was better than being killed by Salvadoran or Honduran gangs, or being staggeringly poor for one day more, or looking at the future of one’s children and seeing nothing.

Now many get to look on as la Migra tear the little ones out of their arms at a detention center, and they get a glimpse of hell.

The Trumpkins shook up their own manufacturing jobs, too. Full-scale trade war with the entire world ought to work wonders for their economic prospects.



And, hey! Amazing how a just 80,000 or so proud “deplorables” in just the right spots on the electoral map could — Dare we dream? — shake up the entire global order. Well, it’s all shook up.

The Iranians perhaps are going to build the Bomb now, Little Rocket Man in North Korea is our best buddy (Yeah, right) just a few months after Trump was threatening to nuke him and his . . . and, oh, by the way, the Western alliance is in tatters, Canada is our enemy, and pretty much the whole rest of the world hates our guts. This all happened in the past month or so.

Cue Jerry Lee Lewis. There’s a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.

Yeah, you have a shitty job, the pencil-neck geeks are makin’ fun of you, and Barack Hussein Obama and the liberal establishment have capped your ass a couple of times with a long gun.



What to do . . . what to do?



“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”


 
FASCIST AUTHORITARIANISM and racist identity politics: They’re the gifts that keep on taking. Taking your freedom, taking your dignity, taking a country’s prosperity, taking your idealism, taking your hope . . . taking your soul. And all you got was that stupid Make America Great Again trucker cap.



Well, Trump voter, if you had any sense right now, you’d be feeling like a Trump Organization contractor after the bankruptcy hearing.

So, let’s talk about “identity politics” for a second.

What’s your “identity”? White? Christian? Conservative? ‘Merkun?
 
Not “one of them”?

None of us, you know, are just any one thing. For me, being American is somewhere down the line of my identities -- somewhere behind human, child of God, husband, Catholic and smartass. "My country, right or wrong" doesn't cut it with me.

Just like "Mein reich, richtig oder falsch" was less than persuasive among the Allies when Germans used it as a justification for doing Adolf Hitler's bidding. There are consequences when your country is wrong, and you are not immune when you acquiesce to evil — because "my country.”

Do not, Brother Trumpkin, ask me to understand you or sympathize with your plight as you stand proudly with your evil boy in the White House, telling me it’s all good and justified just because you were pissed off at the world. America’s prisons are filled with misunderstood, pissed-off souls who got psychic relief by robbing a Quickie Mart or blowing somebody’s brains out.

I’m with Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce — I don’t effing want to hear it. Because two wrongs, etc., and so on.

It might be important to understand why half of Americans initially supported Donald Trump, but we have no need to understand why people support this administration now, as it inflicts evil upon evil both here and abroad, upon both nations and vulnerable individuals.

We didn't need, in the heat of battle, to understand the Nazis' desire to be Nazi. We needed to understand how best to stop the damned Nazis.

We didn't need to understand the complex dynamics of racism and white supremacy to unleash all legal and societal hell against Jim Crow.

In the 1940s, denazification could begin only after we kicked the Nazis' asses and turned Germany into ruins.

The only thing Trumpkins need to hear from the world now, as the horrors of their boy Trump mount, is "You must have had your reasons for voting abject evil into the White House, and we can talk about that. Later. But there is no justification in heaven or on earth for supporting what Trump is turning America into. None. And you will be stopped."

Some 'very fine people' in Charlottesville, Va.

 
LIKE I SAID, I’m a Catholic. Not a liberal Catholic, not a conservative Catholic . . . a Catholic. Period. Paragraph.

As a Catholic, I believe in the concept of divine judgment. For that matter, so did non-Catholic Abraham Lincoln, who thought the Civil War was God’s divine judgment against slavery and the country that tolerated it for so long.



Me, I think we have it coming today for any number of reasons. The continuing scourge of racial injustice would be just one. My particular concept of divine judgment, however, is that God gives sinful people, countries and societies just enough rope to hang themselves.

I figure about now, America is swinging like the pendulum on a cuckoo clock. It won’t get better from here. Not for a good while.

We, in our blind arrogance, just can’t see that yet. But we will soon enough, and “the least of these” whom we abuse — in the name of Trump and “Well, we were pissed off” — will be avenged. Alas, Trump will not save our sorry selves.

Place not your faith in golden calves . . . or orange asses. For "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Why they call it Counciltucky

In the Age of Trump, we Americans live in a giant tinderbox. And we're fighting over everything.

Black Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter. All hell breaks loose when Blue Lives shoot unarmed Black Lives. These skirmishes break out amid the larger struggle over the strategic crossroads of race and inequality.

Also in these fraught times, the battle over the Rebel flag and Confederate monuments still rages, and Lost Cause aficionados still cry over their spilled "heritage" as they wave the Stars and Bars in the face of civilized humanity.

Sometimes, one stumbles into a situation where two or more of these things converge, which today quickly could become a Situation.

So . . . welcome to an impromptu pro-police demonstration in Council Bluffs, Iowa, following the fatal shooting of a Pottawattamie County sheriff's deputy -- white -- by an escaping inmate -- black. The gathering along Broadway Avenue consisted of members of a Facebook group for off-road enthusiasts -- at least two of whom also are enthusiasts for something else not usually associated with Iowans.

Iowans, that is, who aren't Republican congressmen named Steve King.

THE GROUP of Counciltuckians -- and displays like this are why people across the Missouri River call Council Bluffs Counciltucky -- waved at least a couple of Blue Lives Matter American flags, a couple of regular Star-Spangled Banners and. . . .

I swear to God, I didn't even know this was a thing.

. . . at least two Confederate battle flags that had been Blue Lives Matterized. In Iowa.

Again, by people not Steve King.

Are you seeing where this could all go horribly wrong? Are you sensing that at least a few of these folks, in addition to saying police lives matter, might be saying that black lives do not? And that one of the Molotov cocktails we Americans so love to use for a pepper game -- when you win, you lose -- is somehow part and parcel of cop killings.

I don't know about you, but my inclination is to ask the Rebel-flag wavers "What the hell are you thinking? Why the hell do you think this is appropriate? What exactly are you saying here?" I'm curious that way. I imagine the Blue Lives that these people seem to think Matter might like a bit of insight, themselves.

"Intelligence," I think they call that kind of information.

MANY REPORTERS might like to know, too. Then again, maybe not.

Too many journalists today operate under the same "narrative pressure" local TV reporters face at times like these. Dead cop. Ordinary folk show their love and support. Tears. Respect. Cue somber outro music. Fade to black.

Even so, I don't know how a reporter ignores the flag flying right in her face, but there you go.

Confederate flags do not fit The Narrative -- at least not in the Midwest. And I suspect that even in the former Confederate States of America, there would be hell to pay if they did. The descendants of slaves tend to get touchy when white folk celebrate a society predicated upon their ancestors' suffering.

And just like those who embrace the Rebel flag must let go more important things to take up a tainted standard, journalists who stick to the feelgood, feel-bad Narrative are, in their own ratings- and circulation-driven manner, doing exactly what Confederate enthusiasts do in the South and -- one presumes, because Counciltucky -- elsewhere. They whitewash fact so we might live an alluring lie where we all love the cops, the cops all love us, and everybody does it out of the goodness of our June and Ward Cleaver hearts.

In The Narrative, communities are good, communities pull together and no one scapegoats, stereotypes or has ulterior motives. Never mind those people waving the Rebel flags, banners the Channel 7 reporter seems to think will cease to exist if just she ignores them hard enough.

It would have been such a simple question: "The Blue Lives Matter American flags, I understand. But why the Confederate flags?"

It's a simple question that wasn't asked by reporters for the Omaha World-Herald, either, even though the newspaper made note of the flag-waving off-roaders and even ran a picture of them.

Sans Rebel flag, of course.

Perhaps the answer is the fewer questions you ask, the better off you are in post-truth Tinderbox America.

Until, of course, you aren't.

Hitting close to home. Again.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all
the evil spirits, who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

SEX AND MONEY. If one doesn't get you, the other one will.

They ought to engrave that above the doors of every chancery in every Catholic diocese in every corner of the world. Then they ought to make a sign and post it in every priest's office.

And in every damn one of our homes.

Mrs. Favog and I always thought Fr. Steve Gutgsell was a great guy. When we were wanting to become Catholic, Father Steve -- then an associate pastor at Christ the King here -- made the time to give us private instruction because we worked nights, when RCIA classes (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) met.

We got solid instruction -- we used Fr. John Hardon's Pocket Catechism -- and we completed our studies in about half the time RCIA would have taken. We began instruction in January, and Father Steve confirmed us during a regular Mass in May 1990. (And there's a whole story there that can wait for another day.)

During our instruction, Father Steve took a philosophically pro-choice Favog and began to open his eyes, and heart, to the Culture of Life. He gave us copies of Humanae Vitae to read for ourselves . . . and when I did, the light bulb went on in my head:

This isn't a scheme to make sure there are lots of Catholics. This thing makes absolute sense.

Before our confirmation, Father Steve heard Mrs. Favog's and my first confessions. After our confirmation, he put together a group of married couples (including us) to study scripture and Church doctrine.

By this time, we weren't even at his parish anymore. Didn't matter.

AND SOME YEARS LATER, when Mrs. Favog was in the hospital for cancer surgery, he made sure to visit her. Even though he was a pastor in O'Neill, Neb., hours away in the farthest corner of the Omaha archdiocese.

Between then and now, there came -- apparently -- that "wickedness and snares of the Devil" thing. It would seem, for Father Steve, the master of deceit (who, by the way, is a true professional . . . I know) slipped past St. Michael the Archangel. And on his rounds prowling about the world seeking the ruin of souls, he is alleged to have made a stop at St. Patrick's in south Omaha.

From the Omaha World-Herald (free registration required):

To some parishioners, the Rev. Stephen J. Gutgsell seemed like the kind of man who would spend money on St. Patrick Church rather than take money away.

He made sure tablecloths were new for every season, as well as the scarves that hang on statues in the south Omaha parish. Once, organist Rita Carbonell watched him pay for Christmas flowers with his own credit card.

"He liked to make it so the parishioners could do what we're here for -- come to God," said Carbonell, a lifelong member.

But that image was marred Friday when Omaha Archdiocese officials accused Gutgsell, 48, of embezzling more than $100,000 from the church.

The archdiocese contacted the Omaha Police Department Friday, and Gutgsell resigned his position as pastor.

"At least for the time being, he's not going to have a pastoral assignment," said the Rev. Joe Taphorn, chancellor of the archdiocese.

Taphorn said there are no indications that anyone else was involved in the theft. The archdiocese started a financial review in early January after parish lay leaders raised concerns.

Gutgsell could not be reached for comment Friday.

St. Patrick, at 1412 Castelar St., stands in the middle of a neighborhood with brick streets, large trees and old houses with chain-link fences. The church, like the neighborhood, is a place where people make their home for generations.

The parish -- Gutgsell's home since June 2001 -- has about 320 households and 680 parishioners, small when compared to other Omaha parishes. The Rev. James M. Buckley, an associate pastor at Holy Cross Church, has been transferred to St. Patrick as the parish administrator.

Gutgsell grew up in Blessed Sacrament parish in north Omaha in a devoted Catholic family. His brother, the Rev. Michael Gutgsell, is a former chancellor of the archdiocese and is pastor at St. Cecilia Cathedral.

(snip)

In addition to his regular church work, Gutgsell said Mass at other places in the neighborhood, including the Women's Care Center of the Heartland, St. Joseph Villa and St. Joseph Tower. He even led a regular Mass for home-schooled children.

He oversaw the opening of the Women's Care Center, a residential crisis pregnancy center housed in a former convent adjacent to the church.

"He was always hustling and bustling, said Fran Rieschl, who lives across the street from St. Patrick and attends morning Mass. "I've never seen anybody who is as busy as he is."

Rieschl said she refused to believe he would do anything wrong.

"He is a nice guy," she said.

Not everyone was shocked, though.

When 84-year-old Jennie Grazziano died in September, her son contacted Gutgsell to arrange the funeral.

Tony Grazziano, 58, whose mother was a St. Patrick member for more than 60 years, said he recorded his phone conversation with Gutgsell because he "didn't have a good feeling" about the priest.

In the recording, Grazziano and a man identifying himself as Father Gutgsell discuss conflicts about the funeral date. After declining to change the date, Grazziano has Gutgsell talk to funeral director Patrick Henry of Council Bluffs.

"I expect to charge this fellow (Grazziano) a huge amount of money for this," Gutgsell tells Henry. "That's what I'm expecting to do. Don't tell him this at this point."

(snip)

Monsignor Edgar Wortmann of Blessed Sacrament Church knew Gutgsell as a teen. Michael and Stephen served as altar boys. Their mother attended daily Mass and cared for the altar and the vigil candles.

Wortmann said he didn't talk much about a vocation with the young Stephen Gutgsell.

"But he was certainly thinking of it," he said. "(He was) very devoted, very -- I hate to use this word, but a very straitlaced person. There was absolutely no indication that anything like that was there."

A video report from KMTV, Channel 3 is here.

Just call this Object Lesson 1,239,702,481,968,807 in How the Lord's Prayer Is Deadly Serious Bidness. I don't know about you, but I plan on praying extra hard next time when I get to the "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" part.