Bill Kassel's Blog

Occasional reflections on religion, culture, politics, and anything else that comes into my mind...

bill kassel

Ideology & Politics

A Fifth Column?

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RELIGION IS BEING USED
AS A WHIP AGAINST TRUMP

There are certain Facebook pages I visit regularly to keep up with the topics that agitate folks on the Progressive Left. And I’ve discovered something quite interesting…

If you want to encourage a lefty agnostic to read the Bible, tell him it’s a great source of material for bashing Donald Trump.

Ever since media began focusing on the practice of detaining illegal-immigrant kids separately from adults, Facebook has become a veritable Scripture study. You needn’t look hard to find passages such as…

“Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”
— Exodus 22:21

“There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native…”
—Leviticus 24:22

“Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.”
— Deuteronomy 27:19

“Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner.”
— Jeremiah 22:3

Indeed, you’d think Progressives have their iPhones set to stream “The Bible Answer Man” 24/7.

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Memo to Robert De Niro

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WHY ARE MOVIE STARS
SO BUGGED WITH TRUMP?

Dear Bob,

Okay, I get it. You don’t like The Donald. Your outburst at the Tony Awards made that clear.

I’m not surprised. There’s a lot of anti-Trump stuff going around.

But let me ask you:

Do you really think “F-ck Trump!” brings new clarity to the current political discussion?

Giving the benefit of the doubt now, I’ll assume you were just calling for proper presidential decorum and behavior.

But, don’t you see a little irony here, Bob?

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A Teaching Moment

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ROSANNE & SAMANTHA
HIGHLIGHT BIAS & IRONY

I’m old enough to remember when folks in the entertainment business tried to avoid saying offensive things — or to avoid being heard saying them. If something problematic did get out, stars and their PR minions would scramble to clean up after the ill-considered words.

Recall John Lennon’s observation that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” Given the slide in church attendance already obvious in 1966, that remark had a certain prophetic quality. Yet Lennon was forced to apologize to irate clergy and believers.

In a tense press conference, he nervously tried to explain the origin and context of his controversial quip…

“Well, originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England — that we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time. I wasn’t knocking it or putting it down. … I just said what I said and it was wrong, or it was taken wrong, and now it’s all this.”

Lennon had at first dismissed what looked to him like the proverbial tempest in a teapot. But the furor — especially in America where there were credible death threats surrounding a planned Beatles tour — made him realize the price of his own thoughtlessness. As recounted in Rolling Stone…

“Faced with the realization that both the tour and his life hung in the balance, Lennon finally cracked. ‘He actually put his head in his hands and sobbed,’ [Beatles press aid Tony] Barrow maintains. ‘He was saying, “I’ll do anything … whatever you say. How am I to face the others if this whole tour is called off just because of something I’ve said?”’”

One wonders if Rosanne Barr is having similar feelings in the wake of her notorious Valerie Jarrett tweet and the cancellation of “Rosanne.”

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Just Catching Up

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IRELAND COMPLETES
ITS QUIET REVOLUTION

How interesting it’s been — no, revealing, actually — to observe the absolute glee with which Ireland’s legalization of abortion has been met.

Facebook is awash in photos and video footage of people celebrating wildly.

There appears to be no mixed emotions, no acknowledgement of moral ambiguity, about this reversal that’s taken place in historically Catholic Ireland. All is joy, merriment, revelry.

Pass around the Guinness, lads! Crank up the volume on that U2 album! Good old Bono was with us!

[Read more…] about Just Catching Up

Westside Story

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LEGAL MARIJUANA IS RUINING
A ONCE-CHARMING COMMUNITY

There have been some startling developments in the world during my two-week sojourn in Colorado.

Kim Jung Un has started playing his predictable games over the Trump summit. America opened a new embassy in Jerusalem, with predictable backlash from Hamas and other Arab extremists. And Mother Nature showed how unpredictable she can be by launching her volcanic re-conquest of Hawaii (of the “Big Island,” at any rate).

[Read more…] about Westside Story

Trumpy Bear

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A CUDDLY NEW PLUSH TOY
MARKS TRUMP’S SUCCESS

Forget the ongoing pointless and contrived Mueller investigation.

Forget the Democrats’ empty threats of impeachment.

Forget all that fake news and the incessant carping from your liberal friends and coworkers.

Forget Stormy Daniels.

Instead, be assured, my friends, that Donald Trump has truly established himself as President of the United States.

How do I know this?

Because American business — the ultimate reflector of public sentiment — has said it is so.

Presenting: Trumpy Bear, a cuddly teddy complete with blond comb-over and comfy American flag lap robe.

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Commencement Season

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TIME FOR STRONG ACTION
ON PROTECTING FREE SPEECH

College commencement season is at hand.

That’s the time of year when conceited actors, overpaid sports stars, and self-righteous leftist icons offer words of encouragement to young people who are about to discover that the world isn’t like those warped descriptions they’ve been hearing for the past four years.

This exercise in emotional uplift is especially challenging when messages must be couched in terms that avoid giving offense to even the most contrived identity group, and can’t carry the least suggestion that our nation and way of life hold any hope for progress, equity, or civic virtue.

Commencement season focuses my mind on a particular source of impatience with the Trump Administration.

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The Children’s Crusade

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WHO CAN SPEAK SENSIBLY
ABOUT SCHOOLS & GUNS?

I have never been comfortable with involving kids in political campaigns or politically tinged causes.

No doubt, the presence of apple-cheeked toddlers or clean-scrubbed, wholesome looking young people can add a certain moral luster — rather like when a candidate trots out the wife and kiddies for a campaign ad. Such gestures purport to show concern for the future and commitment to what’s best for those we love.

But whether it’s baby strollers at a protest outside a local abortion mill, or the spooky video that appeared early in Obama’s first term showing cute little black kids marching and chanting to demonstrate their pride in the new President, there’s always an element of exploitation.

This element is clearly on display in the “children’s crusade” that has emerged from the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

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Pondering the Imponderable

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THE RAMPAGE BY NIKOLAS CRUZ
RAISES AN URGENT QUESTION

The February 14th attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School far exceeds the carnage of that 1929 hit job in which seven mobsters were gunned down amid a Chicago turf war.

So I assume it’s the horror of 17 dead bodies — most of them teenagers — plus numerous blood-soaked survivors keeping this appalling incident in Florida from being widely labeled as the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

But if such a designation seems too flip for the seriousness of this tragedy, there’s been no restraint in hyping last Wednesday’s murderous rampage into a demand for gun control, as well as, predictably, a criticism of Donald Trump.

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Mr. President

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STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH
WAS A TRUMPIAN TRIUMPH

You might have called it Reaganesque.

Surely, The Gipper himself couldn’t have delivered it any more effectively.

But we were hearing it in The Donald’s true voice, with all those resounding Trumpian flourishes and — blessedly — few of his typical emphatic asides (i.e. “so great,” “not good,” “very, very bad,” etc.).

It was a triumph.

The hour-and-a-half performance demonstrated clearly, visibly, undeniably that Donald Trump has taken command of his presidency.

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In Praise of Hypocrisy

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PRUDENCE IS A VIRTUE EVEN
IF IT SEEMS LIKE HYPOCRISY

In a play I wrote some years ago* the ghost of Erasmus, a leading Christian Humanist and one of the great wits of the Renaissance period, comments on the subject of hypocrisy…

“Hypocrisy is like human waste. It’s obnoxious, but we suffer when it doesn’t come forth with a certain regularity.”

This line springs to mind amid the firestorm currently raging over that crude description of certain Third World countries attributed to Donald Trump. It’s particularly relevant in two ways:

First, of course, is the human waste imagery.

Second is its reflection on the role of hypocrisy (not to mention regularity) in easing life’s discomforts.

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