President Trump

Liars always get caught. It may take some time, even years or even longer. They may even die before they get caught, but they always get caught. Right, Adam (Schiff)?

Most of us on Planet Earth are living through a never-before-attempted experiment in dealing with a crisis. The lockdowns of cities, states and entire nations, intended to slow the spread of a particularly nasty virus have been undertaken by governments of all types, not just authoritarian regimes like China. But what has the effect been?
Well, according to this report by Tucker Carlson, there is increasing evidence that the answer to this question is precisely none at all.

Even though the US president is often seen to pivot in opinions about given points, the sum total of his maneuvering seems to work for the nation as a whole. The coronavirus pandemic is no different.
However, it does have to be acknowleged that the President has done what amounts to a complete 180-degree turn on his policy positions about the Wuhan coronavirus since the time it first made headlines back in December and January. He went from “it is not a problem” to “there is going to be a lot of death” over the three-month period.

When starting this series, we fully expected to find really strong arguments supporting the position taken by most Orthodox Christian Church jurisdictions – that the parish temples be closed to laity during the period of quarantine imposed on most of us in the “First World” (Europe, the Americas, China, Australia, the Far East) by the coronavirus and COVID-19 mitigation efforts.

Despite the facts we are outlining in this Christianity versus Socialism series, we are faced with the fact that there are a great many people – even Orthodox Christians – who ascribe to a philosophical point of view that is not Christianity at all, but socialism. Telltale signs of this include the belief in the notion that rich people should not be so rich, that their ‘excessive wealth’ is sinful and that money ought to be distributed among the people who are not wealthy.

The World Health Organization upgraded the status of the novel coronavirus threat to “Pandemic” on Wednesday, March 10, 2020. As the cases grow in number around the world, particulary the Western world, President Trump took decisive action Wednesday evening, suspending travel from Europe to the US for thirty days:

Dr Steven Turley posted an amazingly thorough summary of the effects felt in the Democrat Party by President Trump’s acquittal from the impeachment charges and the surprising temper tantrum by a hapless and enraged Nancy Pelosi, who (after preparation) tore up the pages of the President’s State of the Union address the night before his acquittal. These events are both the culmination of the Democrat Party’s latest attempt at doing something to derail or even remove the President, and they outline the extent of Democrat hysteria and insanity.

Strictly party-line with an asterisk. President Trump acquitted of the two articles of impeachment 52-28 not guilty of “Abuse of Power” and 53-47 not guilty of “Obstruction of Congress.” The asterisk was Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who delivered a lofty sounding defense of the need to follow his principles, religious and otherwise to try and convict a President of a crime that had little more than political significance.

President Trump spoke briefly on Wednesday morning, Washington D.C. time, appearing with an assortment of military leaders, the Vice President and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The expression on the President’s face was serious, but his speech was far from the gloom and doom predicted (and desired) by much of the mainstream media outlets (including Fox News), and of course, the military-industrial complex.

It is easy to report on the United States “from the outside”, by scanning the discussion from the major media outlets. It is a different matter to describe what is actually going on from the point of view of “ordinary Americans.” To do that, one has to be in the country talking and listening to people.