An Insightful Read

I have started reading an excellent book that takes a look at our current president. It probably will have lots of people feeling affirmed in their feelings and beliefs about President Trump.

It seems like more and more places are showing us the "writing on the wall" as it concerns our president. And I know it's been said that sometimes the writing on the wall can be a forgery, but in this case, so to speak, we have all the essentials, even down to the culprit's DNA.

The book is titled, How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

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Some Changes at Hand

It seems there is constant news concerning global warming. I got a taste of it recently. I had a flat tire and tried to change it--it was noon in the middle of August, in Greater New Orleans. Not to be melodramatic, but it was one grueling-as-hell experience, and I had to take about three breaks by getting in the car with the air-conditioner on. The reason it took so long was because I was turning the screws the wrong way. The heat will do that to you.

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Marcus Borg

I have been reading some material lately by the late Marcus Borg, the religion scholar. I do miss him. I emailed him years back asking a few questions about faith and he wrote me a kind response.

I wrote to him because I think we had similar religious backgrounds. Yet there are some differences. I was heavily involved in Christian fundamentalism as a late teen and young adult and Dr. Borg's Lutheran upbringing overlapped some with conservative thought, but the teachings I was taught was more conservative and rigid.

Another commonality was that we both moved away from conservative teachings. But we are different in that Dr. Borg entered what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur called a second naivete and found a congenial faith; I have, to some extent, entered a second naivete, but the faith I have found has been much more tentative and halting.

In any case, he was a great scholar and a kind man.

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Trump's Concerns

I've been reading more and more about the precarious mental state of our president. He has to know on some level that what will be coming at him from Mueller's investigation will be highly formidable. That is probably why his hue and cry as of late has been more raucous  than ever.

It will be very interesting to see this play out. The outcome of the investigative will be a political tsunami; it will make Watergate look like a mild riptide.

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