Letters: ‘Gospel of Trump’ anything but funny; The purpose of a school

‘Gospel of Trump’ anything but funny

My favorite posting on our refrigerator door — going back a few years — is a Tom Toles depiction of a Bible-thumping preacher, arms raised at the pulpit, where he fulminates to his followers: “Blessed are the rich in Bank Accounts, Blessed are the Winners. Blessed are the Boastful! Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for Acclaim. Blessed are the Ruthless. Blessed are the Perfidious of Heart. Blessed are the Discord Makers. Blessed are they who Persecute those who Investigate them.”

The Gospel of Trump, forever intertwined with the Gospel of Political Evangelicals, seems riotously funny. But a closer look reveals the truth of what Trump and his acolytes have championed over the past five years. The hideous shallowness and lack of compassion for his fellow human beings (remember, this is the man who mocked a disabled person in front of a crowd, who equates a woman’s value to her appearance, goaded supporters into violence by vowing to pay their legal bills) is still drawing adoring crowds who, well, worship him.

When the church says “we can’t cross the line into the political arena,” I say, “if you don’t take a stand, this is what people think they hear from the church.” If the so-called evangelicals have hijacked Christianity to resemble something none of us believers recognize, the silence of the church to oppose that thinking becomes deafening. And in practical terms, it’s all but complicit.

The purpose of a school

My calendar for Black History Month shows Little Rock High School. This is how its look strikes me.

In battle the Lieutenant comes to the Company Commander for the orders of the day. This building suggests that the children come to it to receive the orders that will preserve our country.

Quickly the educator responds that the greater purpose of the high school is to open the individual mind to help the student achieve moral independence.

The cost of this latter is the real risk of anarchy, and the Chinese dictator asserts the west is in ungovernable decadence because of it.

But I say to be men we must be able to judge the state’s orders in freedom rather than follow them blindly like slaves.

There is risk to this. Athens, where this idea was born, succumbed to Spartan dictatorship in the end. But without the independence our teachers present us, the flame would go out in the center of the heart. And we would not be men at all.

Fission and fusion deserve more discussion

This is about clean energy and reversing climate change.

We should all be thrilled to hear that UK scientists have recently doubled the record on fusion created energy.

Sure, all sources of clean energy should continue to be developed, but why have fission and fusion not been passionately discussed in the public forum? Nuclear is potentially the cleanest power form but has a terribly unwarranted stigma. Think 43 years ago down the road a piece, where no one died. So let’s not use that word.

Fusion will change our world, and if we put the majority our resources and effort into it, we can get there in this decade perhaps.

Read about it, study it and start talking about it! If you really care about climate change and clean energy independence, get on the wagon.

Fabulous scientists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers and big thinkers from our neighborhoods are working on this.

Fission has been powering the world for decades. Our country produces the most gW, while France leads the world in fission power by a huge margin on a per capita basis. France, that progressive country.

But fission splits, while fusion brings together. So, fusion should be even more acceptable socially.