Category: Culture

It’s nearly 4:00 as I write this. The sun is already on the western horizon. Within an hour, it will dip below the Continental Divide. Darkness falls.

That deep, heavy, winter darkness.

The Christmas season tends to be described as the most depressing and lonely for many. For others, the season is something to sneer at for its empty commercialism and tiresome stupid Christmas songs.

However, the church body—whether it is out of concern for the downtrodden or for disdain for the materialism—tries to ignore the Christmas season for as long as possible.

Sundays look and feel just like any other Sunday of the year. No trees, lights, or candles—the very symbols of hope—will grace the sanctuary. It will likely be another couple of Sundays before a carol might even be incorporated in the Sunday worship.

The hope—the anticipation—of the coming of our Savior needs more remembrance, more celebration, more proclamation and excitement than just the obligatory Christmas service.

For the lonely, sad, and depressed, they need to be reminded the coming of Emmanuel—God with Us—who stepped into this broken world to make things right once and for all. For a society entranced by the materialism of the “Christmas season,” the universal church—the body of Christ—must break that trance by the proclamation of a coming king.

The church must not acquiesce to the world’s declaration of getting that new great toy or to their martyr complex of being so busy. We have something to proclaim that is much more real than Christmas busyness. The church must promote that redemptive reality every Sunday of Advent. If we can’t get excited for anticipation of the birth of our king, then is there really anything to get excited for?

It is no accident that the Advent season falls during the darkest month of the year (if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere, that is). December contains the least amount of light and the shortest day of the year. That darkness is so emblematic of pretty much every human on this planet.

It is through that darkness that the anticipation of a coming Messiah must be proclaimed.

However, December also has a distinction no other month can claim: it is the month wherein light returns. A few days before the day we celebrate as Christmas, the winter solstice occurs. The days start getting longer. Light returns. Darkness gets pushed away.

The world needs hope. The world needs to know that it is within this darkness that hope shines. The world must be reminded that this darkness will end.

I encourage all Christ-followers not to approach this season with contrived dread. Instead, approach this season with the thrill of anticipation and the excitement of the proclamation.

After all, for most of us, we get more excited about the anticipation of Christmas than the actual day itself.

Advent ends on December 24, Christmas Eve. It was on the night the angels punched through the darkness and proclaimed to the lonely shepherds, “Unto you a child is born.”

As I post this less than an hour later, it is dark outside. And my Christmas lights just came on.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the election. I have been silent on commenting largely out of curiosity to see how the media would respond to the election of Trump as president of the United States.

Election night had been quite a surprise. I was expecting that, by this time, ballots would be counted and recounted, lawyers would be involved, and America would still be waiting to find out who would be president.

Instead, much to everyone’s surprise, the race was called by 11:30 (mountain time). Though everyone predicted it would be a photo finish, Trump won the electoral college in a landslide as well as won the popular vote by a wide margin. Trump grew in his support among black males, Hispanics, and even white women. In addition, the Senate flipped by the GOP who also widened their margin by a few seats in the House.

Conservatives celebrated, many of the left melted down. On the right, there was relief that the nightmare of the last four years was coming to an end; on the left, they would, for some reason, packing their bags for internment camps.

Social media was quite enjoyable to watch. Many media wannabes who actually think they would be missed announced they were deleting the Twitter accounts (“Oh, please don’t! We need your sage like wisdom,” said nobody). Feminists filmed themselves shaving their heads in protests and vowed to refuse sex to all males (as though that were a bad thing). And videos showing themselves weeping were—forgive the insensitivity—were a tad melodramatic (it was kind of hard not to laugh).

Overall, however, I felt this election was as much against the media as it was against Harris and the Biden Presidency. A TV network had been quoted in the New York Magazine as saying that if Trump won, journalism, in its current form and having lost all influence, would be dead.

Thus the reason I waited to follow up. I realize they would all be licking their wounds over these last two weeks. I was also hoping that they might get enlightened with a little self-awareness. Would they realize they overplayed their hand when it came to bias? Would they see that a scant few actually listen to let alone believe them?

I have heard moments of this. For example, (I think it was on CNN) a pundit said, “This election is a referendum not just against Democrats but Republicans as well that the American people are tired of not being listened to.”

The owner of the L.A. Times canned his editorial staff and will bring the paper back to journalistic standards which include all points of view. Jeff Bazos, owner of the Washington Post and some upper levels of ABC News made similar comments as well. Word is even out that ABC News is looking to add (real) conservative voices to “The View,” which I am pretty sure will give the current hosts aneurisms.

Beyond that and a smattering of other voices, most of the media, once they caught their breath on doubling down. This election’s results, they insist, is not their faults.

It is Biden’s fault for not stepping away from reelection sooner (even though they did everything they thought possible to ignore his mental decline until the debate). Harris just did not have enough time, they insist, to communicate her non message to the nation (even though spent their every waking moments trying to communicate it on her behalf).

It’s Harris’s fault because—well, nobody liked Harris (even though they spent their remaining waking moments trying to canonize her.

Finally, sadly, they insist it’s the American people’s fault. We’re misogynists (though I would vote for Governor and Secretary of Department of Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem for President in 2028 in a heartbeat). We’re racists (welcome , black males and Latinos to this club).

Interestingly, the one ad hominum attack I haven’t heard since election night was “Nazi.” Perhaps some of the intellectuals on the left encouraged those on their side to learn about what a Nazi really is.

Sadly, two weeks after the election, the media continues to show a severe lack in self-awareness. Currently, they are loudly whining about Trump’s cabinet picks.

Admittedly, a couple—let’s just say—intrigue me, though I am wildly thrilled about others. I am especially thrilled that some dude will not get picked solely because he wears a skirt.

Hopefully with a few national newspapers and a network or two leading the way the American media will look to reform its industry.

This early out, it still remains to be seen.

However, we Americans must continue to demand we be heard. I am saying this not only to Democrats who will use every trick to get in the way (though I find it curious as to why Democratic senators no longer want to get rid of the filibuster now that they are in the minority.. hmmm…). I am also saying this to the new Republican congress. Don’t try the old bait -and-switch.

And to media: for the love of everything, stop lying to us.

I truly have had a lot of thoughts swirling around in my cranium since Tuesday about this hot mess of the 2024 presidential election. Those who lean right are used to being belittled, demeaned and called names: Deplorables, Garbage, Stupid, Misogynist, sexist, bigots, racists, homophobes. We’re used to it. These shots have come our way so often, they roll off our backs with little more than a shrug. They have lost any meaning and tell us that we’ve essentially won the debate.

Where I feel the left crossed the line is when they started throwing around the term “Nazi” to describe their political opponents.

Nothing or no one in this election remotely resembled Nazism.

Throwing around that term has far greater consequences to consider.

I teach history. Have taught it for about 20 years. I read history, and I am thoroughly interested in World War II. I have tried to answer the question how one man could whip up an entire nation to follow him in committing some of the most heinous crimes in human history. How did he fool a nation?

I have read a lot on this, scores of books about the rise of Nazism in the 1920s and 30s. This reading list actually includes Hitler’s infamous and sinister Mein Kampf.

I have personally walked on Utah, Gold, and “bloody” Omaha beaches in France, visited the World War II Museum in Caen–one of the first French cities liberated by the Allies, the church in Sainte-Mare-Eglise where a soldier from the 82nd Airborne’s parachute got hung up on the steeple the night of the invasion, and Pont-du-Hoc where American soldiers had to climb a 90-foot cliff face in the face of Nazi bullets firing down upon them. I even visited a Nazi cemetery in La Cambe where hundreds of German soldiers are buried beneath black crosses.

I have visited the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., three times. And of all the horrors spoken of there, I remember most sitting in the Hall of Remembrance alongside others at the time with a series of numbers tattooed on their forearms.

Though there are people much smarter than me in this area, I know enough, and I continue to learn.

So when I hear the word “Nazi” thrown around as political rhetoric, I cringe.

Those who sling this word at anybody they don’t agree with, know little about that horrific movement.

When the term is thrown around as it has been in the last week, it minimizes and sanitizes that horror. It dishonors those who survived Auschwitz and other camps as well as those beneath the white crosses at Omaha beach.

When that term is used today to silence political opponents, it dilutes the horror of that movement.

Like the word misogynist or homophobe, it too will be overused to the point of losing its meaning.

It is time to retire that term as a rhetorical tool.

Or else we will no longer be able to recognize when it truly appears.

I have to be honest, it has been very hard to gloat over the election results on Tuesday night.

I am glad that American journalism in its current form is dead. I am glad they have seen their absolute irrelevance first hand.

I am so glad that calling people Nazis by those who clearly don’t understand the absolute evil of that movement has been rendered an ineffective rhetorical tactic.

I am glad that, contrary to the media and the experts and the elitists, We the People are the ones in charge of this country. (A word of caution to the incoming administration and Congress: We the People are your boss too and we’re watching)

I glad that Kamala was correct when she said in her concession speech that “our darkest years are ahead of us.” For all Marxist-based, DEI, CRT ideals, they most definitely are!

I am glad the cis-white males are no longer the sole misogynist oppressor in the country. According to Al Sharpton, black males are misogynists as well (though given the results’ breakdown, so are Hispanics, black women, and white women as well.)

I am glad that some in the media talked about their industry looking within to see how they got it so wrong, although with their TDS diagnoses, that probably won’t last beyond this week.

I am glad the Election results were so decisive that there could no longer be any question that we the people do not like being spoken down to. We do not like being seen as children to be cared for. And WE DO NOT LIKE BEING CALLED NAMES because of who we vote for or our beliefs.

Finally, for the incoming president and Congress, allow me restate my earlier caution. You now control the White House and likely both houses of Congress. It is now SOLELY on you to not blow this. You won’t be able to blame the other side or the media. You already know how they will oppose you. It will be no surprise. The next four years will be all on you.

The President-Elect has formed a huge cross-cultural coalition. Your voters truly are “We the People.”

And if you note the election results, We the People are pissed.

Tomorrow is election day.

After seeing ad after ad, after burning reams of fliers through the mail (never read), after hours of discussions and even more hours avoiding commercial TV, it is finally here.

As a teacher of history, I can honestly say I feel sorry for high school students 50 years from now for the extra homework they will receive to try to explain the 2024 election.

Bizarre would be an understatement. Clown show would probably more accurately describe it.

We have seen the American institutions of media and government sink to their lowest levels. We have seen our trust in these institutions sink to their lowest levels, and as of today, they have done absolutely nothing to attempt to rebuild it. And no matter the outcome of tomorrow, that mistrust will likely continue for years to come.

We have witnessed what a society that has completely embraced the serpent’s temptation from the Garden of Eden looks like:

• Everyone making up their own definitions of right and wrong;

• Truth becoming wishy-washy and fluctuating out of control;

• History being rewritten before our very eyes—even history as late as the week before;

• People who have little to no understanding of what a Nazi is calling others a Nazi in an lazy effort to discredit their opponent;

• Our president, who once said “we need to tone down the heated rhetoric” calling his opponent’s supporters “garbage”;

• The White House rewriting the official transcripts of said insult to claim something different;

• Not one, but two assassination attempts of a president or former president—something in which similar acts in American history can be counted on one hand (plus maybe a finger or two on the other;

• “Experts” in the media attributing these attempts to the “overheated rhetoric” of the victim while using the same overheated rhetoric themselves;

• Media experts making no connection to their own previous contradictions and or insults (i.e., hiding the mental decline of Biden, and then questioning—with zero evidence—the cognitive abilities of their opponent;

• A presidential coup committed by his own side, forcing him out of the race and replacing him with a candidate who has exhibited the leadership skills of a knee pad;

• This same candidate, who as late as July, possessing only a 28% approval rating, suddenly having a 49% approval rating in the first week as a candidate;

• A media who threw off any attempt to appear objective to deliberately cover for the Democratic candidate’s inabilities and odd idiosyncrasies.

This is in no way an exhaustive list. But one thing is clear: we Americans had better start demanding more of these institutions.

The ultimate responsibility rests with us.

This election, if anything, will be a referendum on an American institution.

I ran across an interesting quote the other day. In the “New York Intelligencer,” Features Editor Charlotte Klein quoted an unnamed TV executive as saying: “If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.”

Welp, I thought, that seems a good enough reason for Trump to win.

This election—blissfully ending shortly (I hope)—will not be a party mandate. The American people will be voting on mean tweets versus an empty shell of a politician with zero leadership skills and empty promises.

No, more than the outcome, this election will be a referendum on American journalism.

I always knew journalism hated those on the right; however, in 2024, they threw off all subtly and openly campaigned on Harris’s behalf and covered for her empty campaign. When she did interview, they tossed softball questions which she still managed to botch.

After the two assassination attempts on Trump, they: 1) downplayed it; 2) quickly moved on, and 3) completely blamed him for the rhetoric.

If American journalism achieved anything, it was the complete shedding of self-awareness.

They have rewrote history (by ignoring Harris’s unpopularity as VP and even claiming she was never a “border czar”—a term they coined for her).

They claimed, without any evidence or that to the contrary, Trump’s assassins were Trump supporters.

They did backflips to cover up Biden’s mental decline—something well over half the country could easily see. Then, when it couldn’t be hidden anymore, they demanded he not run. Finally, they had the audacity to actually question Trump’s cognitive decline.

They fact-checked Vance about the claim of MI13 gangs taking over apartments in Colorado by saying it was only a few instances of this as though a “few instances” was somehow acceptable.

They’ve completely taken his quotes out of context by trying to lazily compare something Trump said to Hitler.

Recently, while criticizing Liz Cheney as a being a war hawk from her comfy place in D.C., asked rhetorically, how she would react when she had rifles “shooting at her.”

Journalists went apoplectic, claiming the Trump said Cheney should be assassinated. (One anchor, after making that claim, after a dramatic pause, “Let that sink in.”)

No one bit, and even many who hate Trump said that was totally out of context. Liberal comedian Bill Maher on his HBO tv show said, “I woke up today to the headline that Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney. And this is what I really don’t like about the media. No, he didn’t.”

2024 is the year the media overplayed their hand. This was a year they weren’t even trying to hide their bias.

They have become a parody of themselves. I can already tell you how they will respond Tuesday night depending on who wins. If Harris wins, they will say it’s a political mandate for change, they will build her up as the greatest potential as president, and they will proclaim elections have consequences. They will gloat.

If Trump wins, they will challenge the results, question whether there was voter fraud or not, and discuss how journalists will be rounded up into concentration camps. They might even cry.

I hope this election makes the TV exec’s prophecy come true. I hope the media will become so close to death that they will have no choice but to question their relevance, become self-aware of what they say, and make a real effort to return to the days of Walter Cronkite.

That in and of itself will be worth a Trump win.