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Don’t Abandon Trump Because You Have a DeSantis in your Back Pocket

BY Susan D. Harris

~ PLUS: THE SKEWED HATRED OF ROD DREHER – adopted grand theologian of orthodox churches across America

At this writing, a Fox News subheading reads, “EXCLUSIVE: FBI found classified documents during search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.”  Did they think this would bowl me over? I’m disappointed in Fox for feeding me this completely predictable propaganda couched as original material.  Former Trump advisor Kash Patel told Breitbart News back in May that Trump was in possession of documents he himself had declassified.  Of course I would expect the FBI to be claiming these are their smoking gun.  Calling it “gaffe-davit” late Friday, Greg Gutfeld expressed what many of us were thinking:  “It sounds like every hoax we’ve heard before.”

At this point, it looks as though Fox News may jump on the bandwagon to pummel Trump with more allegations from the liberal hit machine.  Stories that may pan out to be as meaningless as all the other “shocking” anti-Trump exclusives the media has been throwing at us since 2015.

In a recent broadcast, Glenn Beck said, “I don’t think there’s anyone in American history…ever been a politician or anyone in the public view…that has gone through what he’s gone through.”  Beck then reviewed the onslaught of lawsuits they’ve racked up against Trump that most people aren’t even aware of.

That said, I regret to report that among my own supposedly conservative acquaintances, I’ve begun to hear a plan of cowardly back door escape.  “Well, we have to admit he is emotionally unhinged,” a man from my church told me.  “I’d rather have DeSantis anyway.” He then repeated “unhinged” numerous times while discussing Trump as though he were reading the Democrat’s talking points.

His “unhinged” tirade came on a 9 a.m. phone call while I was receiving an antibody infusion for covid.  I was nervous to begin with, after all, I’d chosen not to be vaccinated because of numerous allergic reactions throughout my life.  Now I was sitting in a doctor’s office hooked up to an IV, a blood pressure monitor, and an O2 sensor listening to a new strain of Trump Derangement Syndrome coming through my phone.  My normally low blood pressure was elevated, and I had to embarrassingly tell the nurse it was from a phone call I shouldn’t have taken.  (Thankfully my covid was like a mild flu, and I was no worse for the wear.)

Another subject of that phone call, and I suspect the real reason this man was unhappy with me, was that I’d recently called his attention to Rod Dreher’s long history of attacks on Trump and his supporters.  Dreher had been invited to an upcoming event with our church primarily because of his 2017 book, The Benedict Option.  It was this book, largely, that carved Dreher a niche market as a pseudo-theologian.  A polarizing political pundit, I did not think he was a proper speaker to invite to an important church event.

The thing is, if you push back hard enough, the masks begin to come off.  The man from the church wasn’t critical of Dreher because he had secretly agreed with his politics.

Despite hardcore conservatives continuing to support Trump, like those voting in the CPAC straw poll, Dreher and his ilk keep trumpeting the “drama mantra”:

I’m sick of the craziness of Trump, and just want a conservative president who believes what Trump believes (or said he did), but who can be counted on to be a damn grown-up, and spare us the drama.

(I can only hope we can get a candidate with a personality Dreher approves of.)

Of course, to be taken seriously and stay in the game, Dreher has to push DeSantis to the forefront.  We, the “ordinary people” (his words) have been so caught up with Trump “the messiah” that we can’t think for ourselves, thus we need to listen to people who sell books – – like Dreher.

So it was that another friend of mine texted me, the night of the raid on Mar-a-Lago, that she preferred DeSantis over Trump anyway because if Trump gets in again it “will be four more years of hatred and fighting and he won’t be able to get anything done.  It will tear the country apart.”

“What makes you think they won’t do the exact same thing to DeSantis?” I asked. “Oh no,” she said, “He has a stellar record , they can’t!”

Do you not think that the haters can spin lies as easily about any Republican candidate as they did about Trump?

They can and they will.

It seems like some folks are willing to throw Trump to the wolves because we have a DeSantis in our back pocket that we hope will both serve our needs AND placate the liberals.

But if the liberals completely destroy the man I voted for president; if they can stop him from running for public office again or dare I say arrest, imprison him or worse, nothing else matters.  I believe if we do not stand up and speak out to defend this one man who has sacrificed so much for our Republic, we’re no longer the kind of people who deserve a Republic.

Exclusive to American Thinker:

Don’t abandon Trump because you have a DeSantis in your back pocket – American Thinker

On Finding Warnings for America from Rev. Billy Graham

By Susan D. Harris

The old dresser holds my prized possessions; no jewels or money or a key to a safe deposit box…just simple things that hold a place in my heart.

Today I’ve opened its weathered drawers to look for an old dress pattern — a memory that was jogged by a conversation with my elderly mother.  I opened the drawer and carefully started sifting through the contents — a 45rpm of John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” I’d bought before he was killed; a personal letter from Phyllis Schlafly on being Conservative; People magazine’s tribute on the death of Sir Lawrence Olivier, “Goodnight Sweet Prince.”  Then I pulled out a theater program for “Camelot” signed by Richard Harris; a paperback titled, “Dark Shadows;” and the last issue of George magazine published before John F. Kennedy Jr. flew through the clouds to eternity.

“Ah,” I always say with a smile — one of my favorite old snapshots of me posing in the lobby of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in front of their giant “Gone with the Wind”/Margaret Mitchell exhibit.  I don’t think they could even have that on display today without threats or protests.

Then I ran across it.  Something I didn’t even remember:  A copy of Billy Graham’s Decision magazine from March, 1976.  The subscription was actually in my name — I was a small but precocious child.  Why I saved this particular issue, I’ll never know…or maybe it explained itself.

It’s the day after the death of Rev. Graham, and I feel like I’ve run across this for a reason.  Though he was 99, his death felt like the passing of an era; and as I’d told my mother the news the day before, she began to cry.  My father and she had been married for 62 years; she was a widow now.  The summer they married, they’d driven to one of Billy Graham’s largest crusades and rededicated their lives to God. What a different world we live in — most young people don’t even bother to get married anymore, let alone go to revival meetings!

Decision wasn’t even really a magazine yet; it was more of a glossy newspaper format.  A small side banner read, “Two Billy Graham TV Specials from Rio de Janeiro and Brussels: consult your newspaper for times and channels.”  Back then it seemed like everyone in America tuned in for a Billy Graham Crusade.  The front cover began an article by Graham himself titled, “The Shaping of America.”  In it, Graham critiques Life magazine’s “100 Events that Shaped America.”  Graham notes that only one or two of the events mentioned by Life could be considered “religious” in any way;  certainly not Sigmund Freud’s visit to the U.S., nor Babe Ruth and the introduction of big-money sports.  Instead, Graham has his own ideas of what should have made the list.

He begins with the Mayflower Compact, which began with the words, “In the name of God, Amen.” (The document goes on to say the pilgrim’s voyage to this new world was in large part “for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith.”)  Graham argues that document set the course for the entire colonial period, and that the ensuing immigrants from Europe fleeing religious persecution “were influenced by the pattern of religious self-government under God, established in the Mayflower Compact.”

Next he mentions the birth of the American Bible Society in 1816 that facilitated millions of copies of said holy book being distributed around the world.

He continues by mentioning the publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which had, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1976, “probably made the greatest single contribution toward arousing antislavery opinion in the United States.”  It was well-known that the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was inspired by her family’s Christian faith, abolitionist writings and personal experiences.

Graham then points to the founding of our greatest universities:  “Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Dartmouth” and “many other schools …established to train students for Christian leadership in America.”

He explores the 1806 “Haystack Prayer Meeting” in which five Williams College students, seeking shelter from rain, dove under a haystack and there prayed and conceptualized the “first documented resolution ever made by Americans to begin foreign missionary work.”  (One of those students was Samuel Mills, who also “played a role in the founding of the American Bible Society and the United Foreign Missionary Society.”)  Graham contends that Christian missions had done “as much as anything else to bring about the emerging ‘third world.’”  An African prime minister had recently told him that missionary outreach had largely contributed to the “struggle for freedom that has come to fruition in Africa (over) the past two decades.”

The many Biblical references to the disciples “speaking with boldness” are, according to some Biblical authorities, translated to “freedom of speech.”  With this point, Graham’s article seems to make it clear that Christianity was instrumental not only to our country, but to America’s global influence for freedom and democracy.  That’s not the kind of democracy Any Rand or George Soros want to hear about — but it’s the only kind of democracy that can truly flourish — democracy with a Christian soul.

Also of interest is the paper’s editorial titled, “1984.”  It warns that the nations of the West must change their ways or they will lose their freedoms including, “freedom of speech, of religion, of the press, of movement; economic freedom, ballot box freedom — everything.  It will all be swept away with the trash; and a lot of people will be glad about it!  Yes, they will say, ‘Thank God, decency has come back.’ And it may so appear, but the democratic experiment will be over.”  Predicting the loss of freedoms was one thing, but predicting the death of freedom as something that would be hailed and celebrated — that was spine-tingling.  Few people in 1976 envisioned the kind of world we live in today where the death of freedom is openly threatened or begged for.

One entire page of Decision was dedicated to a man’s struggle with drug addiction.  It could have easily been a message for 2018.

This magazine came out 23 years after my parents attended a Billy Graham crusade, and 21 years after his historic crusades at Madison Square Garden where nearly 2 ½ million flocked to hear him preach over a 16-week period.

For nearly 70 years, Billy Graham seemed to have his finger on the pulse of America.  Of course, his legacy will live on through his son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; but there is a deep, almost mysterious foreboding that lingers after news of his passing.  The man who preached Jesus Christ and biblical principles to more live audiences than anyone else in history is dead.  That should give us pause.

For those who believe in ‘no God’ or the ‘new god’ the world has created that loves everyone and judges nothing — everything still feels okay.   For the rest of us believers, there is a palpable sense that whether the Christian Second Coming is near or not, the world is well overdue for a good sound Judgement Day thrashing; we can run from our sins no more.  A small gasp escapes as we’re overcome with the uneasy feeling that mankind’s day of atonement has passed — along with Rev. Billy Graham.

Published in American Thinker at https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/02/on_finding_warnings_for_america_from_rev_billy_graham.html

Photos Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Obama’s Race War: The Not-So-Pretty National Discussion on Race

By Susan D. Harris

The hometown of my youth, like so many small towns in the Northeast during the 1970’s, contained a handful of black families. A little black girl sat with me on the bus, and my only thought in regard to her color was noticing how her neck looked different from mine after we’d been sunburned.

During my childhood, I watched as the Cosby Kids provided many laughs as they spent their time rummaging through a junkyard. The association with junkyards prevailed as I watched “Sanford and Son.”

“Good Times” gave me a look into ghetto life as I watched a decent, moral family struggling in a Chicago housing project. On the flip side, I watched “The Jeffersons” after they’d “moved on up to the east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky.” Most of the laughs came from the fact that they:  a) had a hard time being accepted in their new world and b) made fun of white people.

My next introduction to black people on film was a harsh one. We were forced to watch “Roots” in school at a rather young age. The only naked people I’d seen on film prior to this were dead ones in WWII newsreels. Thus my introduction to seeing live, naked people was watching blacks in the jungle or on a slave ship. It was shocking; not just because they were being tortured or killed, but because in the big scheme of things, I now assumed all blacks had once been abused, naked people who had slid off ships. Worse yet, the implicit message being thrust upon our class was that we, as white people, were responsible for this. I was offended. Neither I nor my parents were even alive when all of that happened. I felt a twinge of bitterness for being forced to shoulder the blame for events I had no hand in; and accused of feelings I did not harbor.

When I was 18, I moved to a town with a substantial black population. I learned the hard way that they had their own side of town, as parking there to watch a softball game netted me four slashed tires simply because I was white. “But why does that matter?” I kept asking my friends.

Calling a taxi to go home from my job at the mall became a hassle. I found that black families would call every taxi service and take the first one that came, leaving the others hanging. At one point I became so frustrated trying to get home that I called a taxi and said, “I’m white and I will wait for your taxi.” It worked.

Another bad impression of black people came when I was an entertainer who interacted with shoppers at a local mall. Due to the demographics, shoppers were mostly white, so when I saw a black man and woman walking quickly through the crowd with particularly sour expressions and avoiding eye contact, it caught my attention. I purposely avoided them. I later learned they had just killed an entire (white) family of four. They were at the mall using the stolen credit cards of their murder victims.

Later, as the editor of the college newspaper, I was sitting alone in the cafeteria after-hours when I was approached by a large black man who kindly asked me to proofread his theme paper.

The theme of his paper centered on the fact that he was having a hard time controlling his anger; he was being bullied by another black man, the result of a longstanding feud between two families. I made grammar and punctuation suggestions, carefully avoiding discussing the content. He thanked me, and seemed like a genuinely nice guy.  A month later he was arrested for premeditated murder after using a sawed-off shotgun to kill the man he’d written about. I actually kind of felt bad for him, wondering why his professor hadn’t identified the theme paper as a plea for help.

Last year, a blogger writing on whether blacks commit more crimes than whites, spoke of the “violent subculture theory.” He said:

This is the idea that some black communities, for some reason, have developed cultural values that are more tolerant of crime and violence.

Adding that it was a “mostly right-wing” view, he went on to call it “highly controversial,” when pitted against the “poverty breeds crime” argument.

It’s a generally accepted fact that a law-abiding white person walking into a mostly black neighborhood is at an increased risk of being victimized by harassment or vandalism, at the very least. It’s also safe to say that a law-abiding black person entering a mostly white community will be safer than he is in his own neighborhood.

When black ghetto culture became pervasive among young whites, I cringed. Until then, I had been able to avoid looking at men’s undershorts in public; men holding their crotches and spitting as they walked down the street listening to rap music. All of that was avoidable by staying away from the black section of town. Now, young white men were doing it walking down my street. They were playing that chanting, rhythmic music filled with vulgarity; they were idolizing black ghetto culture. They picked up the lingo, the hand gestures; they were passionately embracing a ghetto culture that many blacks were working hard to escape. Now they would never escape it; it was all around them. White culture fed into it and wanted more. They got it in spades too…drugs, rap sheets, violence, fashion imitating prison clothes, and gang slang.

So if blacks really want to have a “national discussion” on race; the truth isn’t going to be pretty. As far as I’m concerned, that “national discussion” has been beating a constant drum in my ears all the way from the fraudulent story of Kunta Kinte — to the culturally degrading influences of celebrities like Jay Z and Beyonce. (What a downward spiral for a culture that once gave us some of our best loved Christian hymns.)

There are many blacks who I admire and hold up as heroes: Thomas Sowell, Alan Keyes, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Col. Allen West, Dr. Ben Carson, and Star Parker among others. And of course I’ve had black friends in my life.

However, from my own view in suburbia, to the riots I see on national television, I admit I often have a hard time not lumping all blacks into a group that I blame for deteriorating American culture.

If this country had elected a black president that could have helped elevate the black community out of the depths of its fiscal and cultural demise — into the higher moral consciousness and economic affluence that is so deserves — we would have a healthier and happier society. We might even have had a better chance at staving off anarchy in our cities.

Every day I struggle to remain colorblind, despite personal experiences. But thanks to Obama, that struggle is getting harder.

One day, about a month ago, a black woman pulled up next to my car and yelled, ““F-ing white b-ch!” I ignored her and drove on.

Later that day, in a supermarket line, I was behind another black woman. Normally outgoing, I was about to ask her how she intended to use her panko bread crumbs. But as I turned my head, the cover of Time magazine blared: “Black lives matter.” (I couldn’t help thinking what a strong statement it would have been if Time had printed instead: “Black Lives Matter.”)

In light of recent events, I found myself uncomfortable starting a conversation with this black stranger while surrounded by such controversial headlines. I wondered if she too might hate me because I was white. Pre-Obama, I would have only been thinking about bread crumbs.

Most of us, black and white, have worked to overcome prejudices we’ve built-up or encountered in our own lives. And we were doing a pretty damn good job of it before President Obama and his Department of Justice decided to exploit every real or perceived injustice in an attempt to incite a race war aimed at dividing our country.

Charles Manson was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, partly fueled by his obsession with starting a race war. It is lamentable that Barack Obama will not be held accountable for inciting violence underpinned by his black liberation theology — which is apparently just another demented interpretation of the Beatles’ “White Album.”

Dr. Ben Carson, O’Reilly and the Nazi’s