Plot synopsis

A priest's younger brother runs off with a woman from a gang.  They live together, she gets pregnant and then both of them get sick from a dangerous disease that is going around.  The baby gets born with serious disfiguring deformities and, with his last breath, the brother asks the priest to care for the baby.  Having no wife and no good place to keep such a child as this, the priest still agrees and cares for and instructs the boy as he would his own son.  Knowing that the boy would attract hostility because of his deformities, he keeps him in the church, and warns him that it would be dangerous for him to go outside because of the way people would treat him.

As was the custom of the city in which the priest lived, an annual festival is underway in which the gangs roam freely through the streets, fascinating people with magic tricks, getting drunk, soliciting sex from strangers and robbing passers-by when the opportunity arises.  Angry about how this kind of behavior had damaged his own family and concerned about the damage it could cause to his community, the priest finally makes up his mind to ask the king to outlaw this festival.

His nephew, having become a very strong adolescent, become restless in his confinement, looks out on the celebration and thinks to himself how much fun it would be to be down there on the streets with all the excitement and activity.  Rebelling against his uncle, he sneaks out of the church and into the crowds.  As his uncle had warned him, the boy is badly abused by a gang and his uncle, hearing about this, at considerable risk to himself, has to go into the crowds to rescue the boy and return him to the safety of the church.  In this he is aided by a young woman in the gang, who feels guilty about the abuse her fellow gang members heaped on the boy.

The priest was not unscathed, however, by this encounter. His close proximity to this attractive young woman, who cared for his son like a mother when others were cruel to him, awakens in him a powerful desire to have her for his own.  He now finds himself consumed with the memory of her presence and struggles to remain faithful to his vows.  She, on the other hand, concerned for the boy and  increasingly uncomfortable with her lifestyle, comes to the priest's church one day to see how he is doing and seek help in finding a different way.  Shocked to see her there, the priest nevertheless recovers himself enough to offer to teach her about the ways of God, but he is unable to conceal the desire that her presence triggers in him.  She, recognizing the signs, flees the church and he, angry at himself and her, warns her never to return.

Torn between his desire for the woman and the demands of his vocation, the priest prays but finds no relief.  Horrified by the power his desire has over him, the priest convinces himself that the woman had used her magic to ensnare him and determines not only to outlaw the festival, but to drive the gangs out of the town and destroy the woman.  He persuades the king to give him a military force for this purpose and sets out on his mission.  Coming to a brothel that is run by the gang members, the priest demands that they turn over the woman to him.  When they refuse, he orders that the place be burned down.  The captain of his military force (who had visited this brothel previously for "recreation") refuses, and the priest, infuriated by the insubordination, strips the captain of his command and has the building burned.

The captain is injured during this encounter and the young woman takes him to the church to seek the boy's help in caring for him and out of a vague hope that the church might provide a sanctuary for them.  When it becomes obvious that she can't stay, she gives the boy a map of where to find her and flees the church.  The priest shows up soon afterwards, suspicious that the boy is sympathetic to the woman, and the boy conceals the captain and denies any involvement with the woman.  Not convinced, the priest decides to trap them by announcing that he knows where she is hiding and will send a force there tomorrow to root them out.  Wanting to warn gang members, the boy and the captain follow the map to their hideout, where they are promptly captured by the gang and sentenced to be hung.  The woman shows up and persuades the gang that the captain and the boy are friends and has them released.  The priest then arrives, having followed the boy and the captain, and he has his force arrest the entire gang.

Having imprisoned both the woman and the captain, the priest then offers to set them both free in return for her company.  Indignant, the woman refuses, and the priest has them both confined together.  The captain tries to persuade her to take up the priest's offer to save her life, while the woman contemplates doing so to save the captain's life.  The following morning, the captain is released and the priest offers the woman one last chance for life on the same terms.  She spits in the priest's face, and he in rage has her burned.  The boy, who has been struggling to find courage to try to rescue the woman, finally runs to the pyre, frees her and takes her back into the church, where she dies after thanking him.  The priest sends the military force into the church to capture them, but they are repelled when the boy pours molten lead from a high window onto them.  The priest, however, is able to enter and he tries to persuade his nephew that all is well and life can continue as it had previously now that the woman is dead, but the boy calls his uncle a monster and throws him out of a high window to his death.

And they close, singing "who is a monster and who is a man?"

Thoughts about John chapter 3 (inspired by this morning's sermon)

In chapter 3 of the gospel of John, Jesus is approached by Nicodemus, a man who is described as a Pharisee (the strictest group of Jews in Jesus' day), a member of the Jewish ruling council (the highest governing body in Jewish society) and "the teacher of Israel" (an esteemed authority on religious matters).  He starts the conversation by saying, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.”  From his standpoint, he was honoring Jesus by calling him Rabbi (even though Jesus had no official credentials within Jewish academic circles that would entitle him to such a title) while displaying his own credentials as one who represents the top academic circles in Israel, people qualified to make such a judgment about Jesus.

But Jesus knows the hearts of the Pharisees, how they will go toe-to-toe with him over his healing on the Sabbath, how they'll attribute his work to the devil, how they'll excommunicate people who believe in him, and how they'll finally join the chorus of people who demand that he be crucified.  So when Nicodemus, says "We know that you are from God," Jesus pushes back hard by replying, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above [or "born again"], he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  In effect, he's saying, "You guys who think you are qualified to evaluate me as a spiritual teacher can't even see what I'm doing unless you're spiritually reborn."

This knocks Nicodemus back on his heels.  Far from getting appreciation from Jesus for his generous acknowledgement of Jesus' teaching ability, he has been told that he and his peers are utterly unqualified to evaluate Jesus, and have to become spiritual infants in a second birth before they can even begin to understand who Jesus is.  So he reacts with incredulity by parodying what Jesus says; "What do you mean - crawl back into my mother's womb and be born once more?"  Of course he knows that Jesus doesn't mean this, but he wants to deflect the accusation that he's incompetent to evaluate Jesus by making Jesus look silly and this is the best way he can find to do it.

But Jesus won't be deflected.  He drives his message home harder, by saying: “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit."  Evaluating Jesus is a spiritual matter and must be done by people who have spiritual life in them.  For a person who is only born of water (that is to say, through normal human conception and birth) to judge Jesus would be as hopeless as for a dead person to evaluate a living person.  We are born spiritually dead and, just as we received biological life from our parents, we must receive spiritual life from God before we can evaluate spiritual people like Jesus.  Otherwise their behavior is as mysterious to us as the movement of the wind, for, as Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus, "The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus is now entirely out of his depth, only being able to reply with the weak question, "how can this be?"  He is now where Jesus wants him to be, admitting his inability to understand what Jesus is doing, and Jesus affirms his ignorance with the question, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don’t understand these things?"  But in case Nicodemus think that his ignorance is innocent, Jesus goes on to say that the ignorance of Nicodemus and his peers is is not simply a lack of information, but a rejection of the truth.  "I tell you the solemn truth,", Jesus says, "we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony."  Nicodemus and his fellow Jewish teachers should have recognized that Jesus was no freelance rabbi needing to be welcomed into the official guild, but that he was far above any official guild and the appointed teachers of Israel needed to sit at Jesus' feet and learn from him.

Jesus then asks Nicodemus, "If I have told you people about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven – the Son of Man."  The fact that Nicodemus and his peers didn't see how far Jesus was above them was a moral failure on their part and makes it impossible for them to learn from him.  He alone was qualified to teach them about heavenly things, yet they wouldn't even sit at his feet and learn earthly things from him, let alone the things of heaven.

Jesus goes on to say, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  Jesus must be lifted up in their conception of him before they can truly believe in him in a life-giving way.  This is the thrust of what Jesus goes on to say in his famous statement in John 3:16: "For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."  Those who believe in Jesus, who see Him as he truly is, lifted up above all things, and are willing to sit humbly at his feet to learn from Him and follow Him, will not perish, but will have eternal life.  But not everyone is willing to do this, for being born again entails becoming small and dependent, losing our prestige and authority, and learning again to humbly receive teaching that we cannot obtain any other way.

 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 Now this is the basis for judging: that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. 21 But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.

These days it's easy to be a spiritual authority.  We tell one another what we think God would say or do and are taken with complete seriousness.  Everyone is qualified to say "my god would never..." or "of course god wants us to ..." without needing to appeal to any higher authority than our own desires and intuitions.  We freely correct Jesus when he gets something wrong, and are perfectly happy to choose from a smorgasbord of available religious teachings the ones that suit our taste and fancy.  But this is the road to death.  Rather than sit in the light of Jesus' judgment of us, we prefer the darkness of our judgment upon him, perhaps following Nicodemus in magnanimously admitting that Jesus is a teacher from God, or perhaps more critically declaring that his teachings are deficient and others are more worthy of our allegiance.  But only by being reborn in the Spirit can we see Jesus for who he is, the Son of Man come down from heaven, and abandon the folly of passing judgment upon him.  Only as our hearts are made alive in Christ will we see Jesus clearly enough to realize that all of our judgments of him are foolishness, and our right position before him is as a humble student and follower of him, seeking to learn true wisdom from the only one qualified to dispense it.

For those who think abortion is about the women...

Abortion was never about women.  It was mandated by male judges when a large majority of women thought it was wrong.  Four out of five women who are planning to get an abortion change their minds when see the child in their womb via ultrasound.  And Planned Parenthood knows this.  Most women don’t leave their offices with a smile on their faces, relieved that they got their abortion and glad to get on with their lives.  They leave depressed.  They didn’t get an abortion because they wanted to kill their child, but because they saw no way to raise the child.  They’re being pressured into it by their boyfriends, who threaten to leave them to raise the child alone.  If pregnant women knew that the father of the child they were carrying would be a good husband to them and a good father to the child, most women would never get an abortion.

Abortion is not about the women, it’s about the men.  It’s about boyfriends who want the perks of sex but don’t want the responsibility of caring for the mother and child.  It’s about pimps who don’t want their prostitutes getting pregnant.  It’s about child abusers, who want sex with their daughters but don’t want to get caught having made them pregnant.  If men didn’t push women to get abortions, but instead supported and cared for them and their child, Planned Parenthood would go out of business in a shot.

And abortion is cruel - puncturing the skull of the child to suck out its brains, cutting off its arms and legs in the womb.  We’ve seen ultrasounds of the process and it’s terrible.

We need to stand up and say that we will no longer allow this cruelty in the name of sexual convenience.  That we will no longer drive women to do what their hearts tell them is wrong just because we refuse to be responsible for our actions.  That people need to have sex responsibly, just like they need to drink responsibly and use a cell phone responsibly.  The lives of others hang on their actions.  We need to tell each other that if we have sex we need to be prepared for the possibility that the woman might become pregnant and that man will need to act responsibly and care for the mother and child.  It will be hard now, because we’ve raised a generation of men who are used to being able to have sex irresponsibly, but it can be done and it must be done for the welfare of the women and for society as a whole.

Addressing systemic racism (or something like it).

I read awhile back about a city - I think it was Baltimore, but it could have been any of a bunch of cities, I'm sure - where the mayor is black and so is the chief of police. As the city had a tight budget (as do many cities these days), they naturally funded the police department in large part from the fines collected from issuing tickets. In order to maintain the needed income stream, the police were given quotas of how many tickets they had to write each day. On slow days when a policeman wasn't writing enough tickets to meet quota, he quickly learned that he could go to the poor part of town (which was predominantly black, as is typical in large cities) and pick up people for any of a bunch of violations, such as jaywalking, loitering, trespassing, and the like. These people weren't rich enough to hire a lawyer to get them off the hook, so the tickets would stand, the money would come in, and the policeman wouldn't get in trouble for not meeting quota.

Though the system resulted in a disproportionate number of blacks getting tickets, I'm not sure if it could be called systemic racism - maybe systemic oppression of poor people would be a better description. Whatever we call it, the system is clearly incentivizing police behavior that results in far too many poor/black people getting tickets. In fact the system depended on there being a certain amount of crime so that the police could write the tickets and generate the income, thus discouraging the police from doing anything that would actually reduce the crime rate and so jeopardize their funding.

It seems then that the police department's income stream should not be dependent upon their writing tickets, and police should be evaluated not on the number of tickets they write but on a reduction in the number of crimes reported by the citizens. This would incentivize good behavior from the police, reduce the pressure on them to write tickets, result in lower crime in the city, attract businesses which would otherwise be fleeing the higher crime rates, create more jobs, reduce the number of poor people, improve the tax base for the city, and make life all around better for black people (and everyone else in the city).

This is easily said, but less easily done, as many of these cities have no other funds with which to pay their police. If Kaepernick and Nike used their social clout to help cash-strapped cities find better ways to fund their police departments and to incentivize their police to really reduce crime levels, I'd jump to support them in any way I could. Whether this would actually be addressing systemic racism or not, it would make life better for blacks and reduce the disparity that is evident in how they are treated (even by other blacks) in many cities.

Trump supporters and the corruption of law.

A friend of mine recently asked my opinion of the Atlantic Magazine's article Why Trump Supporters Believe He Is Not Corrupt by Peter Beinart.  The article argues that "What the president’s supporters fear most isn’t the corruption of American law, but the corruption of America’s traditional identity."  It views Trump as a a fascist politician and makes the claim that for Trump supporters corruption is less a matter of breaking the law than of violation of established hierarchies, such as America's racial and sexual norms.  While it is true that Trump supporters tend to favor established hierarchies, this article totally fails to understand the strong concern for the corruption of law that motives those who support Trump.

The first example offered of the Trump supporter's concern for corruption of established hierarchies over and against the corruption of law is Fox's coverage of the alleged murder of Mollie Tibbetts by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.  Beinart claims that what makes this such a hot issue for Trump supporters is not that it violates the law, but that it violates an established American norm that white women must be protected from non-white men.  Frankly, this is nonsense.  As Beinart says a little later in the article, Trump has tweeted nine times about "rule of law" and seven of those mentioned illegal immigration.  This is what makes Tibbetts' murder such a hot issue.  Calling Rivera an "undocumented immigrant" shows where Beinart's sympathies lie, but Trumps supporters call him an illegal alien and wonder why Rivera was allowed into the country, and why he as been allowed to stay now that he is found to be here illegally.  That Rivera remains here and is not deported is a corruption of American law and it is this that Trump supporters are concerned about, not Beinart's "established American norm".

The second example offered by Beinart is how Hillary Clinton is seen by Trump supporters as the more corrupt candidate when "reporters uncovered far more damning evidence about Trump's foundation than they did about Clinton's".  As I am not a subscriber of the Washington Post, I can't read the article linked to substantiate this, but it's not really relevant, as the issues of the Clinton Foundation are only a small fraction of what is viewed as Hillary Clinton's corruption.  Her manipulation of the Democratic Party to secure the nomination over Bernie Sanders, her scheme to circumvent campaign financing laws by routing donations through the state DNC chapters (see also here), her storage of classified emails and work related emails on her email server and perjuring herself in sworn testimony about these issues, etc. are all part of the evidence of Clinton's corruption, and this does not even touch the now evident corruption the FBI, of which she was clearly a beneficiary.  For those who care about corruption of law, these issues are FAR more significant than the management of Clinton or Trump foundations, however significant they may be in other circumstances.  As for the currently hot issue of the payoff of a mistress to get her to keep quiet about Trump, the precedent for that was set by Bill Clinton.  One's sexual behaviors were then deemed to be irrelevant to one's role as president, and to consider them relevant now because Trump is president is hypocritical.

Beyond that, the corruption of the FBI (which used a report drafted by the DNC to obtain a FISA warrant to tap an associate of Trump and by extension Trump himself, and put someone who clearly hates Trump in charge of their investigation against him) now renders any accusations made by the FBI against Trump suspect.  It is clear that they were willing to use unscrupulous means to gather evidence against him, so any accusation they bring against Trump must be scrutinized with extraordinary care to confirm that we don't find in it another fabricated effort to discredit him.  It is this corruption that that Trump supporters care about, and this corruption that they attach to Hillary Clinton as heir apparent to the Obama presidency in which the rot blossomed, for it is clear that had Clinton been elected, absolutely none of this would have come to light, and the weaponization of both the DNC and the FBI to elect pre-selected candidates would have continued unabated, leaving us with the appearance of democratic elections but not the reality.

Beinart's claim that powerful women threatens Trump supporters needs no more refutation than to point to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Nikki Haley as prominent figures in Trump's administration.  They have earned the admiration of many, and it has been suggested that Nikki Haley in particular could find a place on a future presidential slate if she desires.

None of this is to say that Trump is blameless here.  Had the DNC fielded a less corrupt candidate than Hillary Clinton, the FBI not used its powers to try to influence the election, and previous administrations demonstrated a little more concern to enforce our immigration laws as they are written, then Trump's failures might have been sufficient to disqualify him as president.  Some Trump supporters felt they had to hold their nose while voting for him, but the risks of a Clinton presidency were too great to be scrupulous about what had to be considered secondary issues.

The claim that Trump supporters are more concerned about corruption of norms than they are about corruption of law could only be plausible to someone who has already decided that Trump is fascist and then analyzed his supporters through that lens.  This label has been attached to Trump and his supporters when in fact those on the left, notably the profoundly misnamed "Anti"Fa demonstrate far more fascist tendencies than do even the extremists on the right.  The fascists' tendency to suppress free speech (whether through violence, as with Antifa, legal means (witness California's attack on sexual orientation counseling), or simple power, as with Facebook, Google and YouTube censorship) and their willingness to assault those with whom they disagree simply because they disagree are much more characteristic of the left than the right.  If analogies to fascism can be fruitful in analyzing our current social tensions, Beinart might be better served applying them to the left than to the right.

Why I voted for Trump - and still support him.

When I'm asked why I support President Trump despite his obvious deficiencies, these are some of the reasons that come to mind:

1. Abortion.  Under President Obama, this country actively pushed for expanded support of abortion both nationally (funding it through the ACA) and internationally (through the UN).  Abortion is bad not only for the unborn child, but for the mother as well, and I am opposed to abortion except when necessary for the mother's life.  I am pleased with President Trump's reversal of support for it in the UN and his elimination of the mandate to fund it through ACA.  I would like for him to defund Planned Parenthood as well, as it provides no prenatal care that is not available elsewhere and is the largest abortion provider in the country, and I hope that, despite the failure of the Congress to do this, that he will be able to accomplish this.
2. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Under President Obama, numerous judges were appointed who have viewed the Constitution as a flexible document, subject to review and reinterpretation by international law.  I oppose this.  I believe that the Constitution is not subject to international law, and it needs to be honored as it is written.  Beyond this, there is a frightening tendency in this country to declare that parts of the Constitution can be ignored if they don't satisfy our current sense of what is appropriate (e.g. freedom of religion with respect to the LGBT agenda, freedom of speech with respect to so-called "hate speech", and the right to bear arms).  This is a very bad trend for our country and could lead to widespread loss of liberty as political correctness increasingly comes to supersede the written law.  I strongly favor President Trump's appointment of conservative judges who will enforce the Constitution as it is written, and am convinced that if we believe as a nation that the Constitution is wrong that the proper response is to amend it (as has been done in the past) rather than ignore it.
3. Immigration and the rule of law.  Under President Obama, our federal immigration laws became largely a dead letter.  He specifically ordered that they not be enforced and, when individual states sought to enforce them, he threatened them with action in the courts.  The message that was communicated was that our borders are open, and that anyone who wishes to enter the country for any reason at all is free to do so and to receive numerous benefits that previously had been limited to citizens of our country.  The natural fruit of this attitude has been to encourage more illegal immigration, culminating most recently in a march of thousands of people from Honduras through Mexico to demand entry into the US.  Illegal immigrants have marched in this country to demand rights that they had no legal grounds to claim, and California has gone on record saying that it will refuse to cooperate with the federal government in enforcing federal law in this regard.  I strongly oppose all of this, and support President Trump in demanding that the state governments should cooperate in enforcing the laws as they are currently written, and that if there is something wrong about these laws that the proper response is not to ignore them, but to write new laws that define a proper boundary between the US and other countries that extends grace to those in need while giving proper precedence to the citizens of this country when the responsibilities of the government are considered.
4. Racism and Poverty.  From what I can see, the policies of the last 50+ years have done nothing to ameliorate poverty and have hurt blacks in particular as much as they've helped.  Black-on-black violence is endemic, most black children are born of unmarried parents, and multi-generational poverty is commonplace.  Government policies have discouraged forming healthy families and communities and encouraged dependency and a sense of entitlement to the point where the fact that over 40 million people receive food stamps is celebrated when it should be mourned.  Stockton's announcement that they are guaranteeing a minimum income of $500 to everyone is simply another step down this road, and is likely to draw many more homeless into the city but do little to resolve the underlying issues that cause the homelessness in the first place.  Rather than pursue a strategy of ever increasing government handouts, we need to cultivate a sense of personal responsibility in people that encourages them to seek their own improvement through their own efforts.  Where help is needed, it should be limited to overcoming immediate roadblocks and not allowed to quench personal initiative.  Much more should be done to encourage the formation and preservation of intact families among the black community, as this is the surest antidote to generational poverty and the formation of gangs.  I support the steps that I've seen that President Trump has taken in this area and hope for much more.
5. LGBT issues.  Sexual dysphoria (like depression) is a mental illness and not something to be celebrated.  It certainly should not be cultivated in the schools, as is now happening.  It is not good for men to be able to use women's restrooms if they self-identify as female, nor for men to compete in women's sports or women in men's sports according to how they self-identify.  People should be free to not have to support gay marriage by making wedding cakes, taking pictures of gay weddings or providing flowers (as we would not and do not require Islamic restaurant owners to serve ham sandwiches or liberal bakers to create "Make America Great Again" cakes).  I am glad that President Trump has reduced the support given to LGBT causes by the federal government and I hope he continues down that road.
6. International affairs.  I am glad that the US is now supporting Israel as it customarily has, and I believe that our support has encouraged Saudi Arabia to support Israel as well.  I am glad that President Trump has stood up to North Korea and am delighted that they will have talks over nuclear weapon reduction.  I am glad that the US is willing to stand alone against the UN when necessary.  I agree with President Trump that the agreement we negotiated with Iran regarding nuclear weapons was a very bad idea and I'm glad he's walking away from it.  I also agree that Honduras, Mexico and other countries should be accountable when large numbers of their citizens seek to enter the country illegally.  I think that China should be held accountable for its theft of intellectual property, and if tariffs are a way to encourage that, I'm OK with that.  I think we should never have scaled down our military strength (trusting that everyone else would be good) and I'm glad that Trump is building it up again.  I'm glad that ISIS has been greatly weakened and that Iraqi Christians are able to return to their homes.  I think that the European countries have not contributed their fair share to NATO and I'm glad that President Trump is urging them to up their contributions.
7. Economics, big business and jobs. I believe that higher taxes hurt our economy and that during an economic downturn, the first thing the government should do is lower the tax rate, rather than increase government spending (which is what President Obama did).  In particular, lower corporate taxes will stimulate the economy far more efficiently than higher government spending, as governments do not know how to spend money as efficiently as companies can.  While the government should watch over the economy as a whole to prevent it from being manipulated by people in power, it should also allow as much freedom as possible for economic forces to work naturally.  Local businesses that create local jobs should be encouraged.  Agenda driven government stimulus, whether for home ownership, college tuition, or clean energy, is likely to be a bad idea and will usually drive real costs up, either directly (escalating college tuition prices) or indirectly (higher taxes to pay for high speed rail).  Where action is needed, it should be the minimum necessary to accomplish the desired goal and it should be temporary if at all possible.  I support President Trump's tax plan and his efforts to scale back spending in many areas, which I think will reduce unemployment and may well reduce the federal deficit as well.
8. Education.  The federal government does not do education well.  Washington DC, which is run by the federal government, spends more on education and gets poorer results than pretty much anywhere else.  The responsibility for education should be returned to state and local levels, as I think President Trump is doing.  I support vouchers as well, and believe that students do better when parents have a choice on where to send them and pay for some of the costs of their education directly rather than just through taxes.
9. Climate change and energy.  I'm not convinced that we know what is happening to the climate, why it is happening, or what (if anything) we can do about it.  I'm certainly not convinced that spending trillions of dollars to reduce CO2 emissions is going to materially improve life on this planet for anyone except those who are receiving the money.  I am, however, convinced that levying the huge taxes that will be required to support this level of government spending will have a significant detrimental effect on our economy and the economies of many other nations throughout the world.  Increased production of petroleum and natural gas in the US has lowered the price of energy throughout the world, helping the poor throughout the world, and has reduced the money that petroleum producing countries in the Middle East and Africa have to fund terrorism.
10. Corruption of government agencies.  Under President Obama, the IRS slow-walked approvals for tax-exempt status for conservative interest groups, impeding their ability to receive donations and speak into elections.  As Comey of the FBI testified before Congress, Hillary Clinton perjured herself repeatedly in her testimony before Congress regarding the emails kept on her server while she was Secretary of State.  One of the Clinton foundations received numerous substantial donations from various nations while she was Secretary of State, often with the appearance of pay-to-play incentives.  There is now clear evidence that the FBI actively collaborated with the Clinton campaign to discredit Trump.  Several government agencies have indeed become swamps, and I support President Trump's efforts to drain them.
11. Mike Pence.  I like Mike Pence.  His attitude towards women is exactly what is needed to answer the complaints of #MeToo.  Hollywood's statement, on the other hand, that "we make movies to offend Mike Pence", makes it clear to me where the root causes of the problems #MeToo complains about really lie.  I also think that if all the accusations made against President Trump regarding how he has treated women were as serious as the press claims, and if they still presented as much of a problem today as they did 10-15 years ago, then Pence would not have accepted the position of Vice President.  

Black Panther

I tried to like Black Panther, as a lot of people have enjoyed it a lot, but I had problems with some aspects of it that made it a less than satisfactory movie from my perspective.  Writing them down helps me to clarify my thoughts and it allows others to respond if they wish to help me see where I'm missing the point.  There will be spoilers throughout, so if you haven't seen the movie you are warned.

The first issue was right at the start, in the story of the origin of the Wakanda people.  The idea of a people hidden in the heart of Africa, shielded by their magnificent technology, left me cold.  First, the thought that they could come up with the technology so immediately and hide themselves so thoroughly required a suspension of disbelief that is beyond me.  For a tribal people to be able to suddenly and completely conceal themselves upon discovering a miraculous mineral required me to suspend disbelief at the technological level (how would they develop the cloaking field so quickly?), and the sociological level (what human race has ever sat on such power for so long and remain so hidden without using that power to conquer its neighbors?)  Had these people been aliens who landed on earth with the required technology and moral development, I would have found it far easier to enter the story.

The origin story also cast a moral shadow on these people right out of the gate.  If they were such good people that they could hold such power without using it to conquer their neighbors and so powerful that they could perform all manner of technological marvels (including completely healing bullet wounds in a day), why hadn't they used that power for the good of their neighbors before now?  Africa has suffered grievously from all manner of warfare, oppression and disease in the last three millennia; why had these miraculous people not used their power to help this stricken continent long before, rather than contentedly sitting on it and allowing the suffering to continue?  They condescendingly called white people "colonizers", but the fact that they stood by and did nothing to prevent any suffering caused by the colonial powers makes them at least complicit in the suffering and leaves one wondering what kind of moral standing they have to tell our world how to live.  Had the story been cast in a world that less closely resembled our own, I would have felt these tensions less starkly, but the real history of Africa was far too visible in the movie to ignore, and it cast an unavoidable shadow on the Wakanda people.

The unreality of these people - made instantly technologically advanced simply by the possession of a miraculous mineral and simultaneously virtuous enough to not use it to conquer their neighbors and cruel enough to stand by and watch their neighbors suffer without lifting a finger to help - continued to unfold throughout the movie.  That such a technologically advanced people should rely on hand-to-hand combat to decide succession to the throne was equally incredible to me.  Why would a mighty king submit to such an indignity as being stripped of his physical powers to fight as an equal with any muscle-bound contender who might show himself?  In what sense could this be considered either good for the king or good for the people he ruled?  Has there been no king in all the long history of Wakanda who simply refused to endure this abuse and abolished this primitive and brutal tradition?  And that a king should be surrounded by a female bodyguard with no hint of sexual tension between them is likewise implausible in the extreme.  Though the Wakanda people look like us, they are scarcely human in any fundamental sense, making this story far less real to me than many stories with more incredible technology but more real and believable characters.

The spirituality of the Wakanda people also was disappointingly deficient to me.  There was nothing in the encounters that the various kings had with their ancestors that gave any clue that these ancestors had grown in any significant way as a result of their death and transition to the ancestral plane.  There was no hint of any additional moral insight or wisdom that would have made them worth consulting; indeed T'Challa is wiser and better than his father, who has no viable explanation for his past actions and no counsel worth offering to his son.  It seems that the best that can be said about those who die is that they continue to be the people they were in this life, in an existence that lacks any of the color or energy of this world.  Certainly there are more hopeful futures offered by other world religions.

So when these unreal people with dubious morality and an impoverished spirituality make their digs at "colonials" throughout the movie and stand up at the end to offer to make the world a better place, I feel like they are the real colonials, not us.  What I'm seeing is just racism reversed, a condescending paternalism that without any real moral authority presumes to instruct us on how to live our lives.  How do they propose to heal the world?  By giving us their marvelous technology?  They already have made it clear in the story that the theft of this technology would trigger massive warfare; should we just take it on faith that they know how to prevent this from happening?  By advising us to live as unreal human beings with no desire for power, no sexual energy, and no future worth having beyond the grave?  This is just religious proselytization, and we already have religions that offer us more.

Though the movie was in many ways attractive, Black Panther simply had too many issues for me to enjoy the movie.  It felt too much like an effort to tell me that this is how the world should work, an effort made without adequately understanding how the world actually does work.  Had the movie either been kept more separate from the world that we know or made less of an effort to critique the world we live in, I would have found it much more approachable.