FIFTEEEN DAYS

You & I would've been arrested 15 days ago if we did what Trump did;

— incited a riot that escalated into a lethal terrorist attack on our nation's Capitol

You & I would have been arrested 15 days ago.

Denial of reality is unacceptable. T is a terrorist threat.

24 January 20210 #MAGAanalysisisMini

"In the month leading up to the riot, Mr. Trump was devising his own plan: He and a Justice Department official plotted to oust the acting attorney general to try to advance baseless election claims, interviews showed...

Trump’s belief that he will be reinstated, alongside Flynn’s hope for a coup underscores how patently absurd these 2024’ers sound when they say what we really need is some sterilized version of Trumpism, or Trumpism with a smile.

A smile won’t fix it. There’s no silver lining.

Trumpism threatens our constitutional system by its nature—the threat is what fuels it. There is no “middle way.” You are either with it or against it. It doesn’t offer ideas. It doesn’t want a debate. It doesn’t even want an election. It just wants power at any cost. Defeat it.

The media issue a scathing, well-documented look at how much money US Catholic dioceses raked in under Trump's pandemic relief initiative, and watch the response in Catholic circles, Catholic media, among many Catholic laity. /1

It's a variant of the VERY SAME response used repeatedly by Catholic leaders to exonerate top-level responsibility for priests abusing minors and going unpunished.

The typical gambit now being used to justify the lavish feeding at the Trump trough: /2

Well, maybe dioceses were grabby and did not need all that money — look at the assets they're sitting on already — but poor, struggling parishes needed that money.

As if a parish is somehow disconnected from a diocese …. As if a parish is not integrally tied to a diocese. /3

As I say, this is a variant of the argument often advanced by Catholic leaders to justify doing nothing when a priest is known to be abusing minors: Well, he's only a hired employee on a contract. What does he have to do with us, with the bishop, with the chancellor? /4

The whole Catholic governing system is set up in a way that totally integrates parishes with dioceses. No parish and no parish priest can possibly function with independence from diocesan structures. Let a parish/parish priest try that, and see how quick the reprisal is. /5