America is a great country. But the US Capitol Insurrection is part of a long, dark, racial history in the United States.
“This isn’t who we are.”
President-elect Joe Biden said these words in the aftermath of Wednesday’s assault on the US Capitol. Politicians like to say this during events like this. I believe that President-elect Biden and others who use that phrase mean nothing but good. They want to say that as Americans we aspire to higher goals and that what happened is something that is uncharacteristic of who we are as Americans.
This phrase comes from a good place. It’s also incredibly wrong. This is who we are. This is who we are as a nation.
African Americans, Native Americans…
President Trump won’t be able to change the results of the election. But Michigan shows how he is destabilizing American democracy.
November 17, 2020 might go down as a date when American democracy was put to an extreme test. It was the day a county in Michigan was close to not certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The county is Wayne County in my home state of Michigan. Wayne County is home to the city of Detroit, the state’s largest city and a city that is 83% African American.
Two GOP canvassers decided to not certify the results. Had they not change their minds it would have invalidated over 800,000 votes, a good chunk of those votes were made…
Especially in these divided times, Christians have to be agents not just of justice, but of reconciliation.
The following is my reflection for the Midweek Vespers service from November 4, 2020.
“Be tolerant with each other and, if someone has a complaint against anyone, forgive each other. As the Lord forgave you, so also forgive each other. 14 And over all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.”
Colossians 3:13–14
It’s almost over. …
Liberals and Never Trump Conservatives must learn Donald Trump was a warning from the Working-Class.
Alex was a worker at an Ohio factory. When his plant was bought out by a multinational corporation, he learned he learned how expendable he was to to the company.
Alex came down with the flu, which put him out of commission and out of work for three days. When he returned, he came armed with a doctor’s note explaining why he called in sick. The new plant manager didn’t accept the note because the doctor never said when Alex could come back to work. Alex got a revised note. This time the plant manager said he should have called…
How two progressive writers’ electoral hopes for the future changed America in ways they could not have imagined.
There are many factors that have made American politics so toxic. The 2000 Presidential election. The rise of the Tea Party and later Donald Trump. The Iraq war. The legacy of the Confederacy.
But there is one factor that has changed how our political parties operate, how they look at the world, and how they will govern America. We need to understand how two progressive writers’ electoral hopes for the future changed America in ways they could not have imagined and in many ways, it wasn’t for the better.
In 2002, political writer John B. Judis and political scientist Ruy…
The Bad and Good of the Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump
It’s not surprising and yet it is.
The second trial of Donald Trump, following his second impeachment ended on Saturday with his acquittal with a vote of the Senate, 57–43, ten votes short of the two-thirds vote needed to convict the former President. None of this was a surprise, but it was still frustrating to hear that yet again, Donald Trump escapes punishment.
There are a few observations on a number of actors that I want to talk about, so let’s start with the Dear Leader himself.
Donald Trump: In the movie Despicable Me 3, the big bad is Balthazar…
We are told that starting new political parties in America is a waste of time. History demands we try.
Donald Trump is now a former president. He is gone from Washington. He is now in Florida, leaving behind an awesome amount of wreckage. He wrecked a long-standing political party. He leaves a nation in tatters. We will find out in the coming years, how our country has been affected by the actions of President Trump. But how will the party he ran under fare? Will the GOP be reformed? Or will it splinter?
Recently Trump mulled the idea of starting a third party called the Patriot party. Rumor has it he was talked out of this idea. His confidants…
Sometimes, just doing your job matters
Let me just start with this: I don’t think former Vice President Mike Pence is a hero. He enabled President Trump and spent way too much time groveling to the former President. His legacy will be stained because of the choice he made.
That said I do want to give him one cheer, for doing the right thing when it counted.
Pence’s deep loyalty to Trump went overboard, but deep down there was something good there that became corrupted under the Donald: attention to duty. He showed duty to the constitution even as Trump tried to bully him with the…
Twitter and Facebook are not all bad, but they have changed how we think about the news of the world.
Innovation can alter our ways of life. Fifteen years ago, no one knew what a smartphone was. Who thought you could use a cell phone as a laptop? The advent of the light bulb made life after the sun went down possible. Another thing that made life possible was air conditioning. The American South was an unbearable place to live because of the heat, but the invention of air conditioning transformed a backwater into a thriving region. We can order a pizza or clothing from a desktop or a phone. …
I used to believe that people would judge me on my skills and not skin color. Experience taught me otherwise.
Writer’s Note (January 10, 2021): I wrote this story nearly five years ago in the middle of a job search. I’m in the middle of another job search and I can tell you that things haven’t changed much.
There is a hesitancy on my part about sharing this because I don’t want to complain and I know that race is not as big a factor as it was say 50 years ago. I still want to believe that my skills will speak for themselves. …
Dennis Sanders
A middle-aged pastor living in Minneapolis. I write about politics, religion, sexuality, and autism. https://www.dennislsanders.net/
