Ahem...

"We must recognize that violent instability is baked into any system where one side has power and rights and the other has none."

Noam Sheizaf, How to Burst the Israeli Bubble

 

Seeing two-dimensionally in a three-dimensional world 

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

- Hamlet, William Shakespeare

On September 10th, 2025, Charlie Kirk--a prominent right-wing political activist--was shot and killed by 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.  The murder of Kirk happened during a public event at Utah Valley University, and graphic video of Kirk's death spread rapidly across the Internet.

On that same day, 16-year-old Desmond Holly launched an attack on Evergreen High School in Colorado, critically wounding two students.  Holly then killed himself.  

Two weeks prior to that, 23-year-old Robin Westman fired dozens of rounds into an all-school Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.  In two minutes of shooting, Westman killed two children, and wounded eighteen children and three adults, then committed suicide.  

These are just the latest three in a long series of mass shootings and acts of extreme violence in public places, typically--but not always--perpetrated by young men.  Whenever they occur, politicians and pundits are quick to cast the blame.  The rank and file then join in via social media, pointing the finger (often before anything is actually known about the shooter or their motivations).  Robin Westman, the Annunciation School shooter, identified as transgender and had changed their name from Robert but had not received any kind of gender-affirming medical treatment or hormone therapy.  As a result of that tidbit, right-wing pundits and politicians jumped to blame transgender people and "woke" ideology for the shooting.  When the Charlie Kirk murder occurred two weeks later, those same right-wing pundits and politicians once more immediately blamed "the radical left" and transgenderism, even before a suspect had been identified.  Meanwhile, some on the left postulated that the killer was perhaps a radical right-winger who felt that Kirk was not right-wing enough.

And so it goes, the left suspects the right, the right is certain it is the left.  Both sides are operating in a binary us vs. them framework.  When Tyler Robinson, the murderer of Charlie Kirk, was apprehended and identified, and it was learned that he was a white kid from a good Republican Morman home and was not transgender, the calls from the right to visit holy war upon Democrats became less strident (though at this point in time some are still holding out hope that Robinson's roommate is transgender so that scapegoat can still be used).  And, so far, nothing has come to light to indicate that Robinson was indoctrinated into neo-Nazism or some other far-right ideology.  Time will tell the fuller picture.  

But in the meantime, there are very clear indications (for those who have eyes to see) that Robinson was radicalized by the same zeitgeist as Holly and Westman and a number of other mass shooters who preceded them (including 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, and killed firefighter Corey Comperatore, and critically injured two others, in Butler Pennsylvania on July 13th, 2024).  But this dark and poison wellspring exists outside of the two-dimensional binary worldview of right vs. left, Democrat vs. Republican, MAGA vs. Woke, progressive vs. conservative, making it difficult to comprehend.  It is an ideology of nihilism.  So, in a sense, it is an ideology of no ideology.  Robin Westman, the Annunciation Catholic School shooter, made the following journal entry: "This is not a church or religion attack, that is not the message. The message is there is no message.”  As the character Alfred says of the Joker in the Batman film The Dark Knight, "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (an excellent, peer-reviewed, resource), "Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy."

This particular nihilism that we see manifesting with alarming frequency lives and spreads in a world that is completely invisible and alien to most of us.  It is a world situated in dark corners of the Internet, on Discord and Telegram servers, in computer gaming culture, in decentralized online groups with names like Order of Nine Angles, No Lives Matter, Atomwaffen, 764, the Terrorgram Collective, Tempel ov Blood, the True Crime Community, etc.  Communication in this world is rife with symbols and memes that are inscrutable to the uninitiated (I'm reminded of an old Star Trek episode called 'Darmok' in which Captain Picard finds himself marooned on a planet with a starship captain from a previously unknown race called the Tamarians who's language is made up entirely of references to Tamarian culture, mythology and history.  In order to survive, Picard must figure out what phrases like "Shaka, when the walls fell", "Temba, his arms wide" and "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" mean.  This is what came to my mind as law enforcement and news reporters struggled to decipher the meaning of phrases and symbols etched into Tyler Robinson's bullet casings, and suggested interpretations that were eventually shown to be misguided).

The FBI has recently coined a term: Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE).  They define it as “individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad, in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.”  Former FBI director Christopher Wray characterized NVE as “more about the violence than the ideology."  British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned that “Terrorism has changed” to incorporate “loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety, sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.”  As disaffected young people become immersed in this dark cyberworld they are exposed to a buffet of cynicism, nihilism, extremism, graphic gore, misanthropism, sadism, rage, abuse, and hopelessness.  Human empathy becomes dulled.  

Marc-Andre Argentino, an academic expert on NVE, states, "Practitioners articulate a visceral disdain for humanity, morality, and meaning; their writings celebrate extinction, entropy, and the erasure of narrative coherence. Violence is framed as existential art: an aesthetic of ruin whose highest achievement is the visible unravelling of norms. Their ultimate objective is a civilizational vacuum in which all normative constraints—legal, moral, religious, and even ideological—have been liquidated. Collateral suffering is not a means to an end; it is the end."

A common feature of Nihilistic Violent Extremism is "accelerationism", a term that Wikipedia defines as "attempts to worsen existing conditions for a favorable outcome. [For example] Right-wing extremists such as neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists have used the term to refer to an acceleration of racial conflict through assassinations, murders and terrorist attacks as a means to violently achieve a white ethnostate."  Those indoctrinated into Nihilistic Violent Extremism, though not seeking to further a political agenda,  may choose to act out in ways that create public shock and chaos and lead to further destruction.  The perpetrator will then be remembered for his/her audacious deeds, which gives them a sense of immortality and meaningfulness.  Both Desmond Holly and Robin Westman idolized previous school shooters, studied their methods, wrote about them in their journals, and incorporated references to them into their own violent performative acts of terror.  

It remains to be seen if this is also the case with Tyler Robinson, but I suspect it will be.  It is likely that Robinson's plan to murder Charlie Kirk, a prominent national Republican figure, in such a public way, had more to do with getting himself into the lorebooks of his nihilistic online community, to join the pantheon of young people who have shocked the world with cruel violence going back to Columbine High School's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.  Robinson not only caught the attention of the entire world with a single bullet, but his act also brought about a ripple effect of chaos and potential violence as the Right blamed the Left and the Left blamed the Right.  The next shooter may very well engage in obsessive hero worship of Tyler Robinson as they plan their own outrageous performance of meaningless violence.

I'm no expert in that world, that invisible and nearly incomprehensible dimension  (I highly recommend Marc-Andre Argentino, who is), I'm just a dilettante scratching the surface.  The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice are well aware of that culture of Nihilistic Violent Extremism, and what its access points are, and what the danger signs are that a young person is being pulled into its dark orbit.  But one wonders if highly politicized government bureaucracies, as the FBI and DOJ currently are, are going to convey this information to the public-at-large or instead mute this information so as not to interfere with the cynical (and politically useful) narratives of "us vs. them" put forth by the politicians and pundits.  And the news media, alas, tends to be too beholden to what makes quick and punchy headlines rather then providing us with in-depth and nuanced three-dimensional analysis.  The obvious lesson here is that the longer we retain our two-dimensional us vs. them worldview, the more likely we are to play into the hands of these nihilistic attempts to sow self-perpetuating violence and chaos.

"I am not going to sugarcoat it: I have nothing but contempt for Charlie Kirk’s politics. He made a career out of poisoning young minds with grievance, conspiracy, and hate. He profited off division. He defended the indefensible. He celebrated cruelty. I don’t grieve for his ideas, and I won’t sanitize what he represented.

But here’s the thing: violence has no place in American politics. None.

I know what it’s like to be on the business end of political violence.

I felt fists, flagpoles, and tasers on January 6th. I heard men scream that they were going to kill me in the name of Donald Trump.

That day taught me something too many of us are still trying to ignore: once political violence becomes acceptable—once you decide that your enemy isn’t just wrong but expendable—you don’t control where it leads.

If you cheered this shooting because you hated Kirk, you’re no better than the mob that chanted for Mike Pence’s hanging. If you shrug it off because it happened to the other side, you’re part of the same sickness that’s rotting this country."

Michael Fanone - https://michaelfanone.substack.com/p/my-statement-to-the-american-people

Sep 10, 2025

(Michael Fanone was police officer in the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia who defended the United Stated Capital during the January 6th insurrection) 

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." 

-- Isaac Asimov 

Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American historian and a leading authority on The Holocaust and genocide. He was born in Israel, raised in a Zionist home and served in the Israeli military. He says he has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide. (Source: CBC)

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-14-day-6/clip/16167739-an-israeli-american-holocaust-scholar-says-israels-actions-gaza 

 

 

 

 

Back in the 1980's, when my wife and I were Charismatic Evangelical Christians, there was an idea circulating around about seven spheres of Christian influence.  The hope and belief at that time was that God was going to bring about a massive revival, accompanied by signs and wonders and miracles.  People would be drawn to Jesus by the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.  This would cause a dramatic increase in the number of Christians in seven spheres of societal influence: entertainment, media, business, government, education, religion and family.  This would occur because of a supernatural outpouring from God that would draw people in.  It would be a critical mass event of exponential proliferation of Jesus followers and of God's tangible presence.  The Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in Heaven.

Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With a Mission (YWAM) and Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, are often credited with the inception of the "seven spheres" (or "seven mountains") vision.  They and their organizations were committed to fulfilling the "Great Commission" of taking the Gospel message into all of the world--so they saw the concept of the "seven spheres" not just as prophecy, but also as strategy for missionary work.

But gradually, a radical shift took place.  The prophetic concept of the "seven spheres" drifted from something that would occur through God's supernatural power into something that would be imposed by human power.  The "seven spheres" became no longer a vision of Holy Spirit revival or successful evangelism, but a cookbook for theocratic dominion.  It slid from being miraculous to being militaristic.  In 2013, megachurch pastors Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson published an influential book titled "Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate."  The publisher's synopsis of the book includes this statement: "Before church was established as a place that people 'came to,' Jesus instituted it as an army that brought transformation to society, starting with salvation and continuing with seven spheres of influence."  Army.  Invading.

So the concept of "seven spheres of influence" has now morfed into "the Seven Mountain Mandate" and has become the blueprint for Christian Nationalism.  The transformation of "spheres" within the public realm is now viewed by followers of the Mandate as something that can (and should) be accomplished through any means necessary, including by backing the most corrupt, incompetent, and authoritarian of politicians, right up to the office of President.  The ends justify the means.  As Pascal wrote, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

Webster's defines theocracy as "government by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided."  In my studies of history I've realized that theocratic governments--from the ancient empires to the Holy Roman Empire to the Islamic Caliphate to Calvin's Geneva to the Mormon Church to the Taliban--are always, ALWAYS, oppressive; to women, to children, to racial and sexual and religious minorities, and generally to anyone who is outside the imposed definition of who is right and good and empowered and favored by God.

As of 2024, theocracy has taken root in the United States, as has the accompanying predictable mistreatment of women, of people who are LGBTQ, of adherents to non-Christian religions and views, etc.  This will only get worse until and unless it is soundly rejected and rooted out.  The "seven spheres" of Christian influence are metastasizing into the seven spheres of oppression, as the United States devolves into theocracy. 

Margaret Atwood predicted much of the United State's current trajectory in her chilling "speculative fiction" book The Handmaid's Tale, in which a theocratic government (calling itself Gilead) takes over part of the United States.  The atrocities that ensue in her book were all based on actual atrocities and oppression that have occurred in real life theocracies.  It serves as a warning.

 

 A poem for my grandson on the occasion of his birth...

I hope you have a long and easy road
I hope you don't bear too heavy a load
Struggles and hurts will make you strong
But I hope the pain never lasts too long

I hope you live surrounded by care
With family and friends who are always there
I hope you find a purpose to do
And in pursuing it, you find meaning too

I hope that you give peace a chance
And reject the path of violence
I hope you never go to war
Or blindly obey without asking what for

I hope you live life with a gentle touch
And never worry or stress to much
I hope you find a partner that's true
Like your parents did, and I did too

I wish that I could see it all through:
The amazing life that's ahead of you
But I'll only get to catch a slice
Before I'm finished with my own life

So try to leave the world a better place
Try to be an agent of grace
Try to consider others as valuable as you
Because someone had loving hopes for them too

But most of all, I hope you know
That you came from love, and to love you will go
Love will always follow you
And love will always see you through.
 

 Any day now I'm expecting to hear "Christian" right-wing pundits begin making the claim that sexually exploiting teenaged girls is Biblical.  💩

 A young Palestinian girl in Gaza begs for food. (Source: Associated Press)

James Talarico is one of the bright lights of Texas state politics.

 

 

 

Only Then Will Your House Be Blessed - Harry Manx

I love this song so much...

 

 

The Fallacy of Thoughts and Prayers

For the last three years I've been living in central Texas, near Austin.  My wife and I moved here to be close to family.  There are things we really like about central Texas and things we don't.

One of the things we've learned about this area is that it has extreme weather, including a history of deadly flash floods.  We don't live on or near a river, so this has not been an immediate concern for us.  But the tragic events that occurred this past 4th of July weekend have seared the lesson into our consciousness.  As I write this, 80 people have died, many of them children, as flash floods ravaged homes, youth camps and RV campgrounds along the Guadalupe, Llano, San Gabriel and other rivers in the region.  That death toll is sure to rise as recovery efforts continue.  There is a pall of sadness over the region now, and the inevitable (and probably necessary) finger-pointing and blame-casting has begun. 

What I find interesting is the prevailing theological response to this tragedy.  Calls for prayer are ubiquitous.  Those who survived are considered to be "blessed."  The Governor of Texas, a religious conservative, declared that yesterday, Sunday, July 6,  be "A Day Of Prayer For Texans Impacted By Devastating Floods," asking that people pray for "God's peace and comfort" and for "His merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis."  In a press conference on Saturday, he stated "All we know is that prayer does work."

Likewise, social media is filled with calls to pray for the devastated towns and people.

This is the typical Evangelical response to tragedy, be it school shootings or hurricanes/tornadoes/floods/wildfires, and seems designed to provide folks with a sense of doing something while avoiding addressing the actual underlying problems that could be fixed.  Politicians are usually the first to make these calls to prayer, while doing all they can to avoid discussion of why they failed to implement practical solutions to mitigate the tragedies from occurring in the first place.

The theological cognitive dissonance for me during times like this is in the fact that many of the people asking that we pray, and who praise God for the "miraculous" survival stories, also believe that God is omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (everywhere at once) and that nothing happens except that God wills it.  This is a doctrine called "predestination," that many, but not all, Christians subscribe to.  Many Christians aren't cognitively aware that they believe in predestination, because they've never really examined their theological beliefs in any systematic fashion.  As a result, they can earnestly ask each other to pray for God to do something even though they believe that God is going to do whatever God wants to do regardless of prayers because whatever happens is part of God's preordained plan.  So, for example, they can be militantly anti-abortion but fail to consider that if an abortion was performed successfully then it must have been God's will for that to happen. They fail to see the contradiction in believing that God has complete unilateral sovereignty and will always accomplish exactly what He wishes, whilst simultaneously asking God to do what they wish Him to do (I'm using the male pronoun here because those who believe this way almost universally envision God as male).  

No one doubts that many of the people who died in the Texas floods this past weekend were praying to God to spare them as the waters encroached and then swept them away.

Christian theologians going back to Irenaeus (125–202 AD) have proffered the idea of predestination as a means of trying to reconcile their belief that God is omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent with the observed reality that horrible shit happens to people who don't deserve it.

But it is the 16th century Protestant reformer John Calvin who's teachings about predestination have had the most profound and lasting effect on Christianity (particularly on Evangelicalism).  Calvin wrote, "If one falls among robbers or ravenous beasts; if a sudden gust of wind at sea causes a shipwreck; if one is struck down by the fall of a house or a tree; if another, when wandering through desert paths, meets with deliverance; or, after being tossed by the waves, arrives in port and makes some wondrous hairbreadth escape from death—all these occurrences, prosperous as well as adverse ... are governed by the secret counsel of God."  In Calvin's view, nothing occurs except that God wills it.  We may not understand why it occurred, we may think it tragic or unjust or evil, but God willed it nonetheless and we simply have to accept the fact that we can't fathom God's inscrutable will.

I call bullshit on that.  It's an intellectual cop-out.  Things happen because of prior causes.  Humans have a considerable amount of agency to understand those contributing causes and enact counter-measures against future occurrances.  The scientific method serves as a tool for us to better understand these causes.  No, we can't (yet) control every storm and assault-weapon-owning-troubled-mind and aggressive cancer, but we can do an awful lot to mitigate bad things--an awful lot more than issuing thoughts and prayers after the fact, and leaving it in God's hands.

Already, here in Central Texas, it is coming to light that a very lax attitude had developed about placing children's camps (many of them run by Christian organizations) and RV campgrounds next to rivers that have long histories of violent flash floods.  We are learning that in Kerr county, which had by far the highest number of deaths, flood warning systems had not been implemented (as they had in some other counties and towns), despite their need being apparent and the costs negligible compared to the potential death tolls.  We are learning that the state government has been largely AWOL on the need for improving safety in the flood-prone region, being apparently more interested in combatting immigrants and women seeking abortions, banning access to Internet porn, and getting the Ten Commandments posted in public schools.  We are learning that the Trump administration's (and DOGE's) decimation of the National Weather Service was quite possibly a contributing factor for the imminent flood dangers not being adequately communicated.  More failings will come to light, and one hopes that solutions more concrete than "thoughts and prayers" will be implemented in response.

Lives could have been saved, and future lives will be saved, not by prayers or by passive acquiescence to what is perceived as "God's will," but by intentional, practical, proactive strategies and actions. 

 A poem:  (Don't Call It) Genocide

Take their land
Take their lives
Imprison them without trials
Wall them in to a few square miles
But don't call it genocide

Kill the electricity
Choke the funds
Keep them moving, on the run
Bomb them into kingdom come
But don't call it genocide

See the children with missing limbs
See the mothers, gaunt and grim
See the rubble that fell on them
But don't call it genocide

Say it's done in your defense
Say that they're all terrorists;
Enemies who shouldn't exist
But don't call it genocide

Make them fight for scraps of food
And live in tents 
Away from you
And when they perish, as they do
Don't call it genocide

We all know the calculus
Fifty of them to one of us
Buried in the desert dust
Just don't call it genocide

But the definition's pretty clear
And if this ain't it, it's pretty near
Erasing a people through violence and fear
They call it genocide.

I deleted my Twitter account back when Elon Musk took it over and rebranded it as "X".  Last week, after Mark Zuckerberg announced the loosening of fact-checking and of safeguards against hate speech (in addition to donating a large sum of money to Trump's inauguration fund), I decided to cut ties with Meta.  I've deleted my Instagram account and am in the process of backing up 20-odd years of data from my Facebook account, and will then delete it.  I have setup an account on Bluesky.  I like it a lot, but their word limit is frustrating for a wordy guy like me.

Now, if I could just figure out how to do away with Amazon...

After the disastrous 2024 election, I've also given up on U.S. commercial media (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) but will stick with my long-time favorite news sources: the UK's Guardian, Canada's CBC, the venerable BBC, etc.  And, for her clear and cogent political news summaries, Heather Cox Richardson.

I started this blog back in 2003, when blogging was a thing.  Over time, and to my great surprise, readership increased steadily.  Eventually I was getting tens of thousands of views per month and my posts were being re-posted on other much more popular sites.  But I never set out to be widely distributed or some type of "influencer."  I was just documenting my spiritual journey and random thoughts.  Then I got onto Facebook and slowly shifted my output onto that platform.  For a few years now this blog has mostly lain fallow. 

But now I'm shifting back to this musty trusty old blog.  I don't have any kind of grand strategy for content, just occasional "deep thoughts" from a nobody, the way it used to be.

Trumpism Is A Cult

 

 

I'm no authority on politics, just a guy with some opinions. So here's a not-particularly-groundbreaking opinion:

 

The United States is in the process of transitioning from a democratic republic into an autocracy based on oligarchy. The rich will become richer, the poor will become poorer, the middle-class will shrink. Justice and opportunity will more and more become commodities available only to those who can afford them or have connections. For some, it's always been this way, but there's been a slow and steady movement over the course of many years to adopt this direction for the nation as a whole. It's anyone's guess whether or not this slide will be halted, or what it will ultimately look like. Obviously the 2024 election could have slowed or even stopped that transition, but instead has accelerated it. We could have gone in a very different direction.

 

I've been reading the various post-election analyses that have tried to fix the blame on where exactly Democrats went wrong. So far I've seen nothing in these reports that I find convincing or compelling, and I don't think that line of inquiry will bear much fruit.

 

Now, to move into a subject that I think I am a bit more knowledgeable about... In addition to having a Masters in Religion, I've informally studied cults for many years. I think my interest in cults began when as a teen I read an article in Reader's Digest about the tactics used by the Hare Krishnas to woo young people. In the 1980's I discovered a man named Walter Martin, who billed himself as "The Bible Answer Man" and wrote a book called "The Kingdom of the Cults." Martin had a radio program that I loved to listen to, in which he dissected religious systems that he deemed as "cults". His primary mission was to explain how neo-Christian denominations like Mormonism (Latter Day Saints) and Jehovah's Witnesses deviated from traditional Christianity. But where Martin's raison d'être was as a Christian apologist, "defending the faith" as it were, I became much more interested in how and why people are swayed into believing ridiculous things and falling under the spell of cult leaders. Another influence in this regard was James Randi, also known as The Amazing Randi, a former stage magician who promoted skepticism and made a career out of debunking supernatural, New Age and occult shysters.

 

So I've long been fascinated by religious cults such as Jim Jones' People's Temple, Scientology, The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna's), The Unification Church (Moonies), Heaven's Gate, Branch Davidians, and the rest. Parallel to this, I've long had an interest in propaganda and in trying to understand how and why it is so influential. I've spent countless hours over the years studying this stuff.

 

There are certain tried and true characteristics of cults. These include:

*Authoritarian Leadership. Most cults are founded by a charismatic (and often quirky) individual who displays all the hallmarks of malignant narcissism and sociopathy. The cult leader is manipulative, abusive and demanding of absolute loyalty. There is a lack of accountability (leadership is not to be questioned, critiqued or challenged).

*Dogmatic/Extremist Beliefs. Cults often present a happy front but underneath are legalistic and extreme, and expect zealotry from their members.

*Opposition to Independent Thinking or Questioning or Disloyalty.

*Fear. Most cults profess themselves to be the solution to an existential problem that only the teachings of the cult leader can save humanity from. Cult members are conditioned to adopt unreasonable fears based upon conspiracy theories and catastrophic scenarios created by the cult leaders.

*Guilt. Members who fall short, or express doubts are accused or disloyalty and failure. The threatened consequences for falling away are dire (such as eternal damnation or demonic possession).

*Modification of behavior, values and identity. Individual identity, values and behavior are transformed to conform to those of the group.

*Internal "cult jargon". Most cults develop a litany of special terminology. This creates a sense of belonging and specialness among members. Perhaps the most profound example of this is Scientology, which is rife with thousands of unique terms and acronyms. It is fascinating to listen to Scientologists speak their specialized nomenclature invented by L. Ron Hubbard.

*Exclusivism. Cults foster an "us vs. them" mentality. People outside of the cult are hopelessly misled at best and dangerous enemies at worst. Cult members are encouraged to limit or cut ties with outsiders.

*Thought Terminating Cliches. This is a technical term for idiom that are used to immediately dismiss doubt, dissent or critique. These are, according to Charles Bufe, "thought-stopping phrases..., especially repeated phrases, (used) to ward off forbidden thoughts." Although extremely common within cults, they are commonly used outside of cults as well. Examples include statements such as "Lean not on your own understanding", "God works in mysterious ways", "Just pray about it (or meditate on it)", "Trust the plan", "Boys will be boys", "Things have always been that way", etc. Within cults, however, these thought terminating cliches are very intentionally ingrained in order to cause members to police themselves against exploring ideas that could lead to doubt.

*Labeling and scapegoating. Those on the outside of the cult are referred to by labels that reinforce their inferiority to those on the inside. Likewise for those on the inside of the cult who display disloyalty. The recipients of those derogatory labels, and their arguments, can then be summarily dismissed.

*Love Bombing and Confirmation Bias. Followers are told what they want to hear and what makes them feel validated. This often includes flattery, manipulative affection, offers of comradery, and grandiose promises.

 

We often think of cults as being religious in nature, since that's where we find the most egregious examples. But other areas of life, such as business (multi-level marketing organizations like Amway, for example) and politics can also be "cultish". And this "cultishness" can exist to varying degrees.  Organizations might be mildly cultish or somewhat cultish or full-blown cults.

 

Which bring me to my point.

 

I remember, in 2017, seeing newly minted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on TV, claiming that Trump's inauguration was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”--despite clear proof to the contrary (Spicer later expressed regret at allowing himself to be pressured into making that statement). I remember Trump's Counselor Kellyanne Conway subsequently defending Spicer's demonstrably false claim as being "alternate facts".

 

I remember Trump's televised Cabinet meeting in 2017 in which his staff, from Vice President Mike Pence on down, went around the table taking turns heaping praise onto a smugly smiling Trump.  Since then we've witnesses so many examples of cult-like behavior in Trumpland that's it's difficult to keep track.

 

And now Trump is to once again be President of the United States. What I find compelling--chillingly so--about our present situation, is this: Trumpism is a cult. I don't mean that in the pejorative sense, as a cheap insult. I mean it in the technical sense: that the MAGA movement, which has overtaken the Republican party, bears all of the hallmark characteristics of a cult. You can go back through the list of cult characteristics I've provided above and consider how Donald Trump and the MAGA movement ticks all the boxes.

 

Trumpism/MAGA is a cult. We're talking Jim Jones/People's Temple. We're talking Heaven's Gate. We're talking Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho). We're talking L. Ron Hubbard/Scientology. We're talking fanatical followers of a narcissistic authoritarian leader who have their own internal terminology and thought-terminating-cliches ("Fake news!", "He's just a RINO!", "She has Trump Derangement Syndrome!"), their own specious set of beliefs, their own extremism and zealotry, their own confirmation bias, their own culture and clearly marked boundaries of who is "in" and who is "out".

 

Like many cult leaders, Donald Trump isn't a mastermind. But he is a master manipulator of people. Like many cult leaders, he's not well educated or terribly intelligent. The troubling thing about Trump however is that he has a cadre of people behind him who are very intelligent and have very specific agendas. They are more than happy to use Trump to further their ends--be they amassing personal wealth or instituting social and political change (such as creating a White Supremacist Christian Nationalist theocracy).

 

Those of us who haven't been indoctrinated into the Trump cult have watched over the years as friends and family members have been transformed; as they've adopted ridiculous conspiracy theories; as they've opened themselves to propagandic "news" outlets; as they've jettisoned the values (such as the teachings of Jesus) that they once held dear; as their perception of reality has become skewed. This is what cults do to people.

 

We find ourselves in a time where a cult has managed to take over the government of our country and the minds of tens of millions of citizens. Who knows where that will lead. As with any cult, there are degrees of involvement. There are those who orbit on the periphery and there are the true believers and there is the inner circle. Perhaps, two years from now in the midterm elections, enough people can be pulled away from the cult to enable Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in order to thwart the MAGA/Project 2025 agenda. Perhaps not.

 

One possibly hopeful aspect is this: more often than not cults fall apart, or at least diminish greatly, after the charismatic leader dies. Usually there is no one among the cult leader's coterie of minions who is able to take on the mantle (there have been exceptions, such as Brigham Young succeeding Joseph Smith). Trump is 78--the oldest person to ever be elected President. Will he live (or remain functional) long enough to complete his four-year term? Those who adore him seem far less enamored with his Vice President or anyone else in his circle of minions and sycophants. Perhaps that's when the cult of Trump will sputter to an end. In the meantime, how much damage will be done? We seem to be in uncharted territory.

I've known several transgender people in the course of my life. You quite possibly have too, and may not even know it. They're not freaks or perverts. They're just people trying to live their lives, like anyone else. That's their agenda: to live a full life in peace.

I was reading an article this morning in The Guardian about how some trans people in the U.S. are buying and learning how to use guns because they feel (with good evidence) that their lives will be increasingly in danger in the U.S. I'd seen statistics in the past indicating that 80% of transgender adults have seriously considered suicide, and 40% have attempted it. Being trans is difficult long before you pile on the social and religious and political hatred that has been ginned up by Republicans (many of whom think of themselves as Christians).

In a recent excellent conversation between historian Heather Cox Richardson and Daily Show host Jon Stewart, Cox Richardson made this point regarding the recent election:

"The way I think about it is if you have ten people in a room, eight of them just want to get by. They just want to put food on the table and have a good time and have their friends and have a nice life. But there are two people who want to control everybody else. The way that they get that power is to get six people to turn against the two at the bottom. The way that you do that is through the stories you tell. If you can tell those people in the middle that those two people at the bottom--and you can pick them at random because of the clothes they wear or the color of their eyes or the skin or whatever--then you can get power from those other six. That would explain to me anyway, why people of color will turn against other groups of color or why white women will vote against their own interests, because they are hearing stories that say, You must turn against those two people at the bottom, or we're going to turn against you. It's why I do what I do: because I think the stories we tell about who we are and the communities we are, are the way that you garner power."

We know from campaign rhetoric which "two at the bottom" the Trump/MAGA/Republicans chose: undocumented immigrants and people who are transgender. Here in Texas, Ted Cruz's ads were all about how acceptance of transgender people poses a threat to teenage girls and to the U.S. military.

How remarkably, and cynically, different this is from the Jesus who they claim to worship, who said, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." The Jesus depicted in the Gospels was constantly defying social and religious norms in order to lift up and make a place for those "at the bottom" that Cox Richardson spoke of in her analogy.

It's just another example of how Trump/MAGA/Republicans claim Christian piety, but their words and deeds show them to be quite the opposite. They're much more akin to the Pharisees of Jesus's day who opposed Jesus and ultimately conspired to have him murdered--all the while proclaiming their own godliness. Jesus referred to such folks--who claimed to be among God's chosen while simultaneously being heartless to "the least of these"--as "fools," "hypocrites," "blind men," "vipers," "sons of perdition," "whitewashed tombs (appearing clean on the outside but filled with death and rot)," etc. In fact, they're the only group of people in the Gospels who Jesus held in utter contempt.

Several years ago, when I was an evangelical Christian and was trying to understand LGBTQ+ people (many of whom very graciously helped me by telling me their stories) I attended a conference of the Gay Christian Network in Chicago (I was relatively nearby, in seminary, in Indiana). I have rarely encountered Christian acceptance and hospitality like I did at that conference, as a straight man surrounded by LGBTQ+ followers of Jesus. But the most profound experience I had there was participating in worship. It was the deepest, most heartfelt, most Spirit-filled worship I have ever encountered. I felt the presence of Jesus in their midst. That's when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was nothing "wrong" with these folks, or threatening about them.

 Yes, Donald Trump is despicable, and has been that way for a long, long time. But he's just a man. What really concerns me is the environment that enabled someone as despicable (and ridiculous) as him to rise to such a level of power. Soon enough Trump will be gone, but that toxic environment will remain. Decades and decades of irresponsible right-wing propaganda set the stage. Propaganda is such a powerful thing (as any dictator knows). In the words of wise Voltaire, "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

 

I've been watching and reading about the recent McCarthyesque hearings on Capitol Hill regarding antisemitism on college campuses. Lots of cynical performative political posturing going on there, but that's par for the course. The most egregrious thing is the intentional conflation of "anti-Israel" (aka "anti-Zionism") with anti-Jewish (ake antisemitic). They aren't the same thing. I know (and know of) lots of Jewish folks who are very critical of Israel and Zionism.

Anyway, all this has prompted me to express an opinion, if anyone cares. So here goes...

Webster's Dictionary defines "genocide" as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group."

According to the United Nations, genocide incorporates any of the following acts committed by a nation/state or organization with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

--Killing members of the group.

--Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

--Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

--Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

--Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The word genocide was first coined in 1944 to describe what the Nazis were systematically doing to European Jews. It derives from the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. 

Sadly, there are instances all through history, from ancient to modern times, of genocides being committed all over the world. In addition to the Holocaust, we can look at many instances that occurred as part of European colonialism of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, North America, Australia, etc. We see it in the current genocide of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar. We saw it in the Islamic State's massacres, mass rapes, and forced conversions to Islam of the Yazidi people. We saw it in Rwanda against the Tutsi and Twa people by the Hutus. We saw it in Bosnia, and East Timor, and Cambodia, and Guatemala, and Chechnya, and Syria, and Albania, and Armenia. And on it goes...

The recent film Killers of the Flower Moon documented the systematic killing of Osage Indians by a group of whites in Oklahoma in the early 1900's in order to gain control of the mineral rights on Osage land. That too, was genocide.

If one studies the history of modern-day Israel/Palestine one can see that it is rooted in European colonialism and the systematic displacement of the indigenous population by a largely immigrant and militarily more powerful population. That is a form of genocide. There are plenty of parallels to what European settlers did to the indigenous peoples of North and South America. Furthermore, the disproportionate and systematic displacement, isolation, incarceration and killing of Palestinian civilians (in Gaza, in the Occupied Territories, etc.) is within the scope of genocide. So many of the conflicts and wars and genocides that we've witnessed in the 20th and 21st centuries have their roots in European colonialism.

Hamas is a despicable, murderous, evil, cynical, terrorist organization that would commit genocide against Israeli Jews if they could, as they made clear on October 7th, 2023. But it doesn't justify the wholesale slaughter by Israel's military of 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7th, the vast majority of whom were not Hamas operatives. Hamas does not represent the majority of Palestinians, just as the Netanyahu regime of Israel does not represent the majority of Jews in the world. One can speak out against the actions of Hamas without hating Palestinians, and one can speak out against the actions of the Israeli government (and illegal settlers) without hating Jews. Many Palestinians speak out against Hamas. Many Jews speak out against Israel. 

For whatever it's worth, I'm against genocide wherever and whenever it occurs, and I agree with those, Jewish and non-Jewish, who think that indications of genocidal acts and policies by the Israeli government should be thoroughly investigated. Investigating possible war crimes committed by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians, and how those fit into the bigger charge of genocide, should not be a controversial thing or open to accusations of antisemitism. 

And, of course, it does not preclude Hamas and other terrorist organizations from being likewise investigated and held to account for their crimes.

One other thing worth pointing out, to try to bring this full circle, is that something seems to have eluded the comprehension of some pundits, like the ones conducting those congressional hearings: According to the Encylopedia Britannica, Semite was a "name given in the 19th century to a member of any people who speak one of the Semitic languages, a family of languages spoken primarily in parts of western Asia and Africa. The term therefore came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians (including the Amhara and the Tigrayans), and Aramaean tribes." The Encyclopedia Britannica goes on to explain that "by 2500 BCE Semitic-speaking peoples had already become widely dispersed throughout western Asia. In Phoenicia they became seafarers. In Mesopotamia they blended with the civilization of Sumer. The Hebrews settled with other Semitic-speaking peoples in Palestine." What this means is that in November of 2023, when three Palestinian exchange students--graduates of the Ramallah Friends School (a Quaker school in Israel/Palestine)--were shot near the University of Vermont by a white man because they were wearing keffiyehs (traditional Palestinian scarves), that was an antisemitic hate crime. My point in bringing this incident up is to try to hightlight, again, that Republican's concern about what they call "antisemitism" is really a smokescreen for their support of a right-wing Israeli government that has engaged in, it seems, war crimes and genocide. That unwavering, unquestioning support, which seeks silence any dissent, is based upon a set of fundamentalist evangelical Christian beliefs about Israel, as well as a set of shared values with militaristic right-wing governments.

 The most evil and tragic of human enterprises is war. Memorial Day should be a day of somber reflection on the terrible (and almost always avoidable) costs of war: All of the young people sent to fight and suffer and die, and the even greater number of noncombatants who also have their lives destroyed. 90% of all deaths in war are civilians. According to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the civilian to soldier death ratio in wars fought since the mid-20th century has been 10:1, meaning ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. This ought to be their Memorial Day too.

As Tim O'Brien wrote in The Things They Carried, “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue.”

The only exception I can think of to this is the tale of Desmond Doss, who joined the Army in WWII to be a combat medic, but refused to carry or use a weapon (his life was the subject of the 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector, and the 2016 Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge). Jesus said "Blessed are the peacemakers [not the war-makers]; for they shall be called the children of God." Matthew 5:9

 

 

When I was a conservative evangelical Christian, I went along with the party line (on any number of issues) because I was constantly being presented with a very warped picture of the world. It was inculcated in me that the "other"--be they liberals or Democrats or gays or people who supported abortion or academic intellectuals or people from other cultures or people who practiced different religions or people who were in other ways different--were hopelessly misguided at best, and intentionally demonically nefarious at worst. Thus, there was a constant undercurrent of fear and paranoia and defensiveness about living in the world surrounded by so many misguided and/or Satanic people. I recall being in a Christian rock band and we sang a song with a chorus that went "Foolish hearts, blackened foolish hearts, are destined to die." Yikes. 

 

In our fundamentalist culture, the wagons were always circled, the walls up, the basic mindset always exclusionary (while we simultaneously spoke and sang about how Jesus loves everyone--except, I guess, for those foolish blackened hearts destined to die, which meant pretty much everyone who didn't believe as we did). The solution was to get everyone to believe the way we believed or, failing that, to at least get them to behave the way we thought they should behave. That was the criteria of any outreach. I recall, a few years ago, I mentioned on Facebook that I was going to hear a Muslim Imam give a speech at a church on the topic of Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue, and an old friend from my fundamentalist past responded by asking if I was going in order to try to convert the Imam, and if I wasn't going to attempt to convert him then I had no business going.

 

In the fundamentalist Christian ghetto, the thing we were conditioned to fear most was openness and inclusivity. Acceptance of "the other" (without an agenda to convert them) and learning to listen to and understand and appreciate the viewpoints and experiences of "the other" was considered a dangerous proposition because doing so would weaken the walls of our fundamentalist fortress and dilute our scrupulous doctrinal purity. We had to be vigilant about not allowing "sin in the camp." 

 

The senior pastor of an evangelical megachurch I attended for several years referred to seminary (in other words, rigorous theological education) as "cemetery" because he believed that learning too much would kill our fundamentalist faith. That is a pretty typical viewpoint in the fundamentalist Christian world, and it chillingly echoes Orwell's totalitarian slogan in his book 1984: "Ignorance is Strength."

 

The prioritization of purity and separateness eclipsed empathy and compassion. But we couldn't see that (which, I now realize, is why Jesus called the Pharisees "blind").

 

I've been out of that conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian bubble for a number of years now, but current events cause me to reflect: If I were still ensconced in that environment, I imagine I would probably be a Fox News and conservative talk radio devotee. I would, quite possibly, have supported Donald Trump (in part out of hope that he would appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who could impose the lifestyle choices I believed to be correct upon the general populace). I would more readily imbibe conspiracy theories and the sketchy claims of prosperity preachers and self-proclaimed prophets. I would tend toward insular protectionist/isolationist ideologies and policies. I would see the larger world as filled with scary ideas and scary people intent on destroying my godly and "right" little world--a world in which the lines were clear and the explanations were simple.

 

A couple of years ago my wife and I went back to the town where we had once belonged to that fundamentalist Christian megachurch. We were doing a little shopping in the neat little "old town" area, and we came upon a store selling Buddhist, Hindu and "metaphysical" goods. We went inside and had an enjoyable browse. The proprietor behind the cash register, it turned out, was a recent immigrant from Tibet, and thus a Buddhist. We had a lovely chat, including some talk about spiritual things. But the thought never crossed our minds to try to convert him, nor--apparently--he to convert us. It was genuinely interesting to hear his perspective and he appeared equally interested to hear ours. As we left the store, my wife remarked to me, "You know, for so many years, I would have been afraid to go into a store like that or to have a genuine conversation with a person like that. It's so nice to be free."

 

Here in the U.S., whenever a school shooting occurs, the old canard will be trotted out by conservative Christians that the underlying reason for gun violence (and a myriad of other social ills) in the U.S. is because prayer was removed from public schools (in 1962), and our nation is becoming steadily more secularized. 

 

Former Arkansas Governor and perennial right-wing media pundit Mike Huckabee stated after the Sandy Hook school massacre: "We ask why there is violence in our schools but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?" 

 

In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas mass shooting, Franklin Graham, who is now president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of Samaritan's Purse, stated "We have taken God out of schools and most homes are leaving God out of the rearing of their children. He is the solution. The more we turn our backs on God and His Word, the more problems we have as individuals and as a nation." 

 

Of course, this doesn't explain the several mass shootings that have occurred at churches.

 

Another common association made is that since we allow abortion, God allows the slaughter of children. After the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) stated: “I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences too. And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on." After the Uvalde mass shooting, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick identified the root causes: "We have 50 million abortions" along with violent video games and "We threw God out of school.” 

 

Essentially their argument is that the only way to stop gun violence (and other social ills) is for the U.S. to become a Christian theocracy.

 

I've heard this viewpoint for many years, and, alas, may have even espoused it back when I was a fundamentalist Christian. But if you think it through and apply a modicum of logic, it doesn't hold up against the data. All we have to do is look at the rate of gun deaths in the nations of the world and compare it with the religious affiliations of those nation's populations to see that it's a specious correlation. 

 

Most nations track gun violence statistics.  The common measurement that is used for doing so is gun deaths per 100,000 people. This provides the rate of gun deaths (as opposed to simply the number of gun deaths, which would tend be greater in a nation with a very large population).

 

So, for example,

 

The United States has the 32nd-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world (out of 195 nations): 3.96 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019. That was more than eight times higher than the rate in Canada, which had 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people — and nearly 100 times higher than the United Kingdom, which had 0.04 deaths per 100,000.

 

But when you look at the religious affiliations in these three countries, it breaks down like this:

 

United States 

Christian 69.8%

None/Atheist 22.4%

Jewish 1.9%

Muslim 0.9%

Buddhist 0.7%

Hindu 0.7%

Other 1.8%

 

Canada 

Christian 67.2%

None/Atheist 23.9%

Muslim 3.2%

Hindu 1.5%

Sikh 1.4%

Buddhist 1.1%

Jewish 1%

Other 0.6%.

 

United Kingdom 

Christian 59.5%

None/atheist 25.7%

Muslim 4.4%

Hindu 1.3%

Other 2%

Unspecified 7.2%.

 

"Christian" here, by the way, means a combination of Protestant, Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Mormon, and all other varieties. The percentages of actual practicing/church-going Christians in all of these nations is probably much lower. But even if we stick with the “official” percentages, the UK has 10% fewer Christians and 3% more atheists, yet has 100 times lower the rate of deaths due to gun violence.

 

So, if we consider the conservative Christian argument here of correlating gun violence to lack of Christian faith, this data would point us in the opposite direction: that fewer Christians and more atheists equates to lower gun violence.

 

Now let's look at the ten nations with the absolute lowest rates of gun deaths in the world, and the religions followed by their populations (I've highlighted the percentage of Christians in each nation):

 

1. Singapore (0.01 deaths per 100,000) - Buddhist 43%, Muslim 15%, Christian 15%, None/Atheist 15%, Taoist 9%, Hindu 4%

2. Japan (0.02 deaths per 100,000) - Shintoist and Buddhist 84%, Other/Atheist 15.3%, Christian 0.7%

3. China (0.02 deaths per 100,000) - None/Atheist 93%, Buddhist 4%, Christian 1%, Muslim 1%, Other 1%

4. South Korea (0.02 deaths per 100,000) - None/Atheist 46%, Christian 26%, Buddhist 26%, Other 2%

5. Oman (0.03 deaths per 100,000) - Muslim 85.9%, Christian 6.5%, Hindu 5.5%, Buddhist 0.8%, Jewish less than 0.1%.

6. United Kingdom (0.04 per 100,000) - Christian 59.5%, Muslim 4.4%, Hindu 1.3%, Other 2%, Unspecified 7.2%, None/Atheist 25.7%

7. Indonesia (0.06 per 100,000) - Muslim 87.2%, Christian 9.9%, Hindu 1.7%, other 0.9% (includes Buddhist and Confucian), unspecified 0.4%

8. Iceland (0.06 per 100,000) - Christian 75.6%, Atheist/Humanist/None 22.43%, Heathen/Norse 1.64%, Buddhist 0.42%, Muslim 0.35%, Bahai 0.1%

9. Romania (0.07 per 100,000) - Christian 92.6%, Muslim 0.9%, None/Atheist 0.2%, unspecified 6.3%

10. Norway (0.07 per 100,000) - Christian 76%, None/Atheist 22%, Muslim/Buddhism/Judaism/Other 2%

 

What you see actually is no discernible pattern regarding correlation between religion and gun violence. Some are majority Christian, some are majority Muslim, some are majority Buddhist, some are majority atheist (and one should remember, in the cases of Iceland and Norway, that although a majority are listed officially as Christian, most of the population do not attend church, and those nations are, in fact, very secular).

 

Also, abortion is legal in most of these countries in varying degrees (but not Oman and only recently in South Korea).

 

So we don't see a discernable pattern that more Christians equals less gun violence.  Here’s what these countries with the lowest rates of gun violence do have in common: they all have laws that regulate access to guns. That is the common denominator among not just these ten nations, but among all nations that effectively reduce gun violence. These are the facts.

 

There are 400 million guns in civilian hands in this U.S.  The simple math is that the more guns that are around, and the easier they are to obtain, the more people are going to use them, including in harmful ways. Add to that an increase in polarization and extremism, ginned up by irresponsible media pundits and politicians, and some people will act out, and they have easy access to incredibly destructive weapons when they do. Throw mental health into the mix and, if guns are readily available, they will come into play in mental health crisis situations (more likely in suicide, but also in homicide), regardless of what the dominant religion is.

 

What we can clearly see is that reducing access to guns reduces gun violence. It's blindingly obvious.  In the U.S. we’ve seen that increasing access to guns has increased gun violence. Gun production by firearm manufacturers has tripled over the last couple of years in the U.S. Gun purchases have reached record levels. Yet only 32% of Americans own guns. In other words, the people who own guns in the U.S. tend to own more than one, and often own lots of them. And guns nowadays tend to be capable of firing more rounds and firing at a faster rate than guns in the past. So more damage can be done in a shorter amount of time by a single gun. Yet, in the U.S., there is minimal regulation. An 18 year old kid, like the Uvalde shooter, can legally buy semi-automatic assault-style rifles, high-capacity magazines, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, tactical body armor, etc. The man who recently murdered four people (including two doctors) at a Tulsa hospital legally purchased an AR-15 type semi-automatic rifle a little over an hour before his rampage.

 

Of course no one is arguing that violence can be completely eliminated. The reality is that humans always have and always will harm other humans. But guns are extremely efficient at harming humans quickly, in large numbers, and from a safe distance.

 

In the U.S., there is no practical purpose to having hundreds of millions of barely regulated guns scattered around. Even a nation such as Israel, that lives with constant threats of terrorist violence within its borders (and is the darling of conservative Christians), has very strict and smart gun control laws (https://www.timesofisrael.com/comparing-america-to.../). Israel, by the way, has a gun death rate of 0.68 per 100,000 (far below the U.S.), and is a secular nation where 65% of the population is atheist, and abortion is legal.