Daily Archives: December 29, 2020

We are living in perilous times. Statistics show that there are many more unchurched people than there are attending any type church. Political correctness has dampened the spirit of a lot of people and many have gone the way of the world due to this. Our younger generation is not receiving or hearing the gospel message as it was given in years gone by.

Many of todays preachers have led their congregations into a message of feel good preaching. They tell you that God wants you to have every day conveniences. They lead you into a direction if it feels good do it because God will bless you in your efforts instead of your sincerity. Many leaders of the church are teaching and preaching from books written by worldly men and women instead of the one and only inspired, inerrant, Word of God, the Bible.

I have heard some men, who are deacons and elders in the church, agree with the world that the Bible is antiquated and needs to be updated. Where in the world is this coming from? Gods Word has never changed. It has always been the same and speaks to us today just as it did to those in biblical times. It is the only book that never loses its value or its message.

Christians that adhere to the gospel message have to go into the world and tell others about Jesus. For too many years we have sat in our pews and waited for people to come into the church and hear Gods Word instead of going into our neighborhoods and reaching out to the unchurched and unsaved. We, as Christians, have become complacent in our duties of what God wants us to do.

In 2 Timothy 2:1-10, the Apostle Paul writes to young Timothy about being strong in the Lord and be attentive to what he should be doing. He gives the analogy of serving the Lord as an athlete is in a constant state of preparation for his next competition. He speaks about the military soldier always being prepared and ready to do as his commander says and leads. A third analogy is that of a farmer who stays focused on what he needs to do to prepare his land to have a good crop.

The modern day believer also faces a multitude of distractions that can take away our focus of spreading the gospel. Just as Paul told Timothy to be strong, dedicated, and focused on what he is doing, we as Christians are to spread the good news of our Savior far and wide. This will not happen if we take our eyes off of Jesus or water down His Word. We need to be strong and go into our communities with the good news of Christ and be bold in our witness.

Do you remember the person that told you about Jesus? It seems that the men and women of yesterday reached out to a dying world to tell them about the saving grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Are we going to be the ones that withdraws and not carry on the message of Jesus to an ungodly world?

PrayerThank you Lord for the opportunity of knowing you personally and for your promise of eternal life. I pray that I may bold in my witness for you and tell others about your saving grace. Amen.

Suggested ReadingsSunday Matthew 28:16-20Monday Isaiah 41: 8-10Tuesday 2 Timothy 1:3-11Wednesday Deuteronomy 31:1-6Thursday Romans 1:16-17Friday Psalm 96:1-9Saturday 1 Peter 3:13-17

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Sharing the gospel message with others - Kosciusko Star Herald

Happy holidays, dear readers! Possibly, in my genuine good wishes, I have just raised some hackles. Some of you may be thinking, Bah humbug. COVID. Its understandable. Others, though, are fuming because I didnt say, Merry Christmas. Its Christmastime, the thinking goes, so people should wish each other a merry Christmas. So what if people dont celebrate Christmas?

The idea seems to go along with a misconception, that This is a Christian country. Actually, no, its not. The First Amendment the same one so many people proudly lean on to claim their right to say anything they want no matter who their words might hurt expressly states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The United States is not an officially Christian country, even though much of the population is Christian.

Further, many do not realize that not all Christians celebrate Christmas. For instance, Jehovahs Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas. Quakers dont generally celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay colony likewise rejected Christmas as a religious holiday, finding no evidence in scripture that Jesus of Nazareth was born on December 25.

Those who insist that Merry Christmas is the only thing to say this time of year often complain that People get so offended nowadays. They call others snowflakes. They grouse about political correctness. However, I want to offer that such thinking is absurd.

Lets start here, with a brief tour. First, the African American holiday of Kwanzaa starts on December 26. Its one of the newest holidays, beginning in 1966, when it was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga. Kwanzaa celebrates pan-African culture and family, and focuses on cultivating values including unity, responsibility, faith, creativity, and purpose, amongst others.

For Jewish friends and neighbors, Hanukkah has just ended. For eight nights, candles blazed in their windows to commemorate a miracle: that oil meant to last one day lasted eight days when the temple was rededicated after a small group of Jews who had resisted Hellenization, the Maccabees, revolted against Greek oppressors.

The Persian holiday Shab-e Yalda also just occurred on the 21st. My dear friend Ara Serjoie from Guilford College explains that, The longest and darkest night of the year is celebrated by friends and family gathering together to eat, drink and read poetry (especially Hafez) until dawn. Fruits, sweets, seeds and nuts are eaten and pomegranates and watermelons are particularly significant. The red color in these fruits symbolizes the crimson hues of dawn and glow of life (University of Tehran). This tradition dates back thousands of years and marks the winter solstice. It precedes the birthday of Mithra (Goddess of Light) on December 25th.

Bodhi Day, was celebrated on December 8th. Bodhi Day commemorates the spiritual transformation of Siddhartha to the Buddha as the result of his commitment to his meditation practice, the middle way, that enabled him to awaken from the illusions of conventional reality. And this year Hindus celebrate Gita Jayanti the birthday or creation day of the spiritual text Bhagavad Gita on December 25.

I dont say Happy holidays because I am a snowflake or politically correct. I dont say Happy holidays to avoid offending people. I say Happy holidays to honor people, to wish someone joy no matter what they celebrate this time of year. I say happy holidays to acknowledge the many different religious paths that exist in this beautifully diverse world. Saying happy holidays offers inclusion. It respects those paths and their followers. Its kind.

Be aware: in our own country, some are violently attacked because of the religions they practice. Jews, Sikhs, Muslims and others have been targets of hate crimes, including murder. Acknowledging and respecting the paths of others helps to protect their lives and rights.

I mentioned absurdity. I happily say Merry Christmas to people who I know practice Christianity and celebrate Christmas. But to me, saying Merry Christmas to people I dont know is akin to saying Happy birthday to strangers on my birthday. Why would I assume that my birthday is their birthday?

So happy holidays, dear readers, whatever you celebrate. If you celebrate nothing at all this time of year if you like to exchange gifts this time of year but walk no religious path happy winter. Happy slightly longer days; the solstice is behind us now. Happy almost new year; may 2021 be kinder to us all than 2020 has been. May we be kind and respectful to each other. May we remember that every world religion teaches us to treat others as we would wish to be treated, and to avoid treating others in ways that we do not wish to be treated. May we all create for others and find for ourselves moments of comfort and joy in days ahead. And if you celebrate the birth of Jesus, a very merry Christmas to you.

Nancy J. Thompson teaches comparative religion at CCV and NVU. She is author of Touching the Elephant: Values the Worlds Religions Share and How They Can Transform Us. She is a member of the Bennington Interfaith Council.

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Nancy Thompson | Speaking of Religion: Tidings of comfort and joy - Bennington Banner

This grim year of misery and misfortune has highlighted the difference between cinema and the movies: its been terrible for the former and excellent for the latter. The pandemic-induced closure of theatres across the world took the focus away from big tentpole releases and shifted it to smaller budget, water cooler productions that were wolfed down by homebound audiences.

Streaming should probably be listed as the Oxford Word Of The Year, given how much weve all been doing of it. Theres been plenty of TV events drawing conversation around the proverbial water cooler such as, to name a few, I May Destroy You, Ill Be Gone In The Dark, The Last Dance, The Queens Gambit and the wildly overrated Tiger King.

All up its been a pretty good year for local movies and TV, though it would be remiss of me to ignore the negatives, given how foul the last 12 months have been. With that spirit in mind, let us first look at the Australian productions of 2020 that were pretty, well, crappy, before moving on to the good and the great.

Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears

Thank god: another Crocodile Dundee movie! Said nobody, ever. At least not for 30 years.

Paul Hogan stumbled back into the spotlight this year with his meta-ish comedy The Very Excellent Mr Dundee, looking like hed just woken up from an ancient slumber. The film embraces his status as a cranky dinosaur, casting Hoges as a befuddled version of himself who is confused about the state of the world, with its political correctness and all these online thingmebobs. The story is simple and daft, involving him wandering around accidentally offending people. It was Very Far From Excellent.

Another disappointing movie that felt like it belonged to an older era was Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears, the Saturday matinee-style, big-screen debut of glamorous TV fashionista-detective Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis). Not because the film is set in the 1920s, but because this hammy adventure feels like it was made in the 10BA era of Australia, a period in the local entertainment industry when outrageously generous tax incentives encouraged filmmakers to create money-burning spectacles.

The Crypt Of Tears didnt have a massive budget (a substantial amount of it was raised by Kickstarter) but it does retain the 10BA eras lavish attitude. Director Tony Tilse cobbles together a silly story involving murder, valuable artefacts, a tattoo that doubles as a map and glowing green rocks. I wish the film was as stupidly entertaining as it sounds.

Hopes were high for Dirt Music, the latest film based on a book by beloved Australian novelist Tim Winton, whose work has made impressive screen conversions before, including Breath, The Turning and In The Winter Dark. But this was not, as we all know, a good year for high hopes.

Dirt Music turned out to be a visually and emotionally uninteresting romance between a lobster-stealing beach hunk (Garrett Hedlund) and a bored former nurse (Kelly Macdonald). Its one of those adaptations that feels conspicuously adapted, with dialogue that might have worked on the page but comes across wishy-washy when spoken on screen.

Dirt Music

On the subject of disappointing and/or bad and/or burn it to the ground Australian TV shows released in 2020, I believe reality TV is the work of the devil. Therefore you will find no mention of Pooch Perfect or Yummie Mummies or whatever other dross that needs holy water thrown on it.

And talking about (segue alert!) a show that needs holy water: consult Stans morbid true crime series After The Night. The four-part series examines one of the countrys most notorious serial killers, Eric Edgar Cooke, who brought terror to Perth in the 1960s, murdering eight people and violently assaulting many more. As the crimes occurred more than half a century ago, most interviewees were simply reflecting on what it was like living in Perth at the time; few have any real connection to the crimes. After The Night has an amateurish, rinky-dink vibe.

While the Four Corners documentary Black Summer certainly isnt amateurish, this investigation into the bushfires, which caused many human fatalities and the death or displacement of around three billion animals, was heralded as a riveting and important watch. Guess how many times climate change a driving force fuelling the length and severity of the worst wildlife disaster in modern history was mentioned? None. Not once. Nada. Nil.

The filmmakers appeared to have followed the nows not the time to mention climate change mandate as dictated by our fossil fuel-loving Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Not cool at all. In fact, extremely dodgy work from the ABC.

I Am Woman.

Time to move on to a more upbeat conversation: local films and TV shows that were good but not great.

Starting with the small screen first, this year marked the arrival of Informer 3838, the latest spin-off of the often trashy Underbelly series. The titular character is Nicola Gobbo (Ella Scott Lynch), who begins the show in a graffiti-strewn bathroom, deploying the classic stay tuned device via voiceover narration: I was the most notorious police informer in Australian legal history. I broke all the rules Why did I do it? Youre about to find out.

Content-wise, the show covers familiar ground, with Gobbo rubbing shoulders with characters explored previously including Tony Mokbel (Robert Mammone) and Carl Williams (Gyton Grantley). But the female perspective adds freshness, as does Informer 3838s rigorous editing style its chopped up and assembled with a frenetic, fast-paced kind of sass, making it an interesting stylistic exercise.

Halifax: Retribution, belatedly returning Rebecca Gibney to her most famous and high-rating series (which was a huge hit in the 90s) is also told from a strong female perspective, strong in this instance being a synonym for total bad arse. Gibney reprises her role as a forensic psychiatrist or psychological sleuth, helping the police (including Anthony Lapaglia) get to the bottom of a series of killings orchestrated by a sniper.

The best Australian LGBT movie drama this year was Sequin In A Blue Room, a richly styled and intensely colour-graded film about a 16-year-old boy (Conor Leach) addicted to online hookups, who attempts to track down somebody he desires while trying to avoid unwanted attention.

Young romance was also the subject of the gently stylish and AACTA award-sweeping Babyteeth, about a teen protagonist with terminal cancer (Eliza Scanlen) who meets and develops feelings for a drug-dealing nogoodnik (Toby Wallace). Her parents (Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis) dont like this, but its not the biggest issue in their lives.

Rams

Australian cinema has countless stories about cancer victims, but surprisingly few musician biopics. Enter I Am Woman, a fist-pumping celebration of feminist singer and glass ceiling-breaker Helen Reddy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who passed away in September at the age of 78.

Another film about an artist (albeit of the aspiring kind) that landed this year was the very low-budget but well-made Hot Mess, a Sydney-set dramedy about a young playwright (Sarah Gaul) struggling to balance her romantic life with her career. It played at a few event style screenings last year, but didnt get a proper release before being added to Netflix in October.

For an older and blokier affair, check out the excellent Rams, starring Sam Neill and Michael Caton as sheep farming siblings who live next door to each other but havent spoken in years. Its a very good, very tender film, funny and well acted, with an unprepossessing vibe that gradually manifests into touching and heartfelt drama.

Other standouts this year that were just shy of crossing the threshold into greatness: Hungry Ghosts, a modern-day ghost story set within Melbournes Vietnamese-Australian community; The Gloaming, a moodily shot series that follows a police detective investigating all sorts of jiggery-pokery, and A Lion Returns, about a jihadist who returns home to visit his dying mother after having been radicalised by his uncle.

The Beach

Now its time for the pedigree titles. The top-shelf whiskey. The fine dining experience.

The words rustic worn-down shack dont usually gel with fine dining but anybody whos seen Warwick Thorntons sublime series The Beach, the best Australian TV show of 2020 by a considerable margin, will probably empty their bank account for a chance to eat in this beautiful isolated place in the Dampier Peninsular in Western Australia. But the real feast here is not about food but rich cinematic visuals. Some images from the show have been burnt into my psyche: a leaf floating in water; boats in the sand; a guitar by the door.

It might not sound like all that much. But in Thorntons hands (his oeuvre includes the great Samson And Delilah and Sweet Country) The Beach becomes a rumination on many things from the healing of self-isolation (before it was compulsory) to connection with the land. It is a sublimely emotional and yet utterly enjoyable experience, with notes of the slow TV style.

Stateless

ABCs gripping six-part series Stateless, which explores the lives and distressing circumstances of characters connected to an Australian detention centre, is a different kettle of fish with harder edges and a pointier political context. Nevertheless its something special.

As is the tranquil sitcom Rosehaven, from stars and co-creators Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor, who play best friend real estate agents working and living in a sleepy Tasmanian town. Its fourth season premiered this year, which is at least good as the others and these are very good, matching Seinfeldian narrative minutiae with a lovely ebb and tone.

Mystery Road

The Mystery Road franchise (comprising two feature films and two TV shows) isnt beautiful or slow, but it does have an absolutely killer performance from Aaron Pederson. His character, the outback sleuth Jay Swan, belongs to the pantheon of great 21st-century Australian screen detectives, joining the likes of Phryne Fisher and Jack Irish. Season two marked his fourth screen adventure and it didnt disappoint, with Swans investigations beginning with a headless corpse (natch) and leading into drug-distributing crime syndicates.

Criminals are the subject of the best Australian film of the year, which is also one of the best 2020 films from anywhere in the world full stop. Not just any two-bit bad guy, either, but Australias most famous and legendary.

Im talking about old mate buckethead Ned Kelly, who is played by a beardless George MacKay in The True History Of The Kelly Gang. Justin Kurzels high-powered and brazenly stylish film, dotted with horse riding and shootout scenes, contemplates the bush outlaw as a victim of his own legend a man doomed to become a myth.

This is a complex subject to explore, signalled most obviously in lines of voiceover narration such as a man cannot change the past nor ever outrun his destiny. Everything comes to a head in a breathtaking final act, depicting Kellys last stand at Glenrowan in a way thats both utterly original and connected to previous representations if only to mark a fascinating point of departure. And depart from the norm it does: this is a truly wild ride.

Relic

Away from hotheaded masculinity, director Natalie Erika James explored womanhood, family and the losing of ones marbles in Relic, a richly textured horror-drama centred around an elderly lady (Robyn Nevin) suffering from dementia. When she goes missing her daughter and granddaughter (Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote) visit her house in regional Victoria, conveniently located near cinematic-looking woodlands. What they find is well, actually, see it for yourself.

What you wont see at least for most of the running time is the titular villain in Leigh Whannells excellent second feature as a director: the US/Australia co-production The Invisible Man. Wiping the cobwebs off an old and tired franchise, Whannell delivered a socially conscientious thriller that explores the terrors of domestic violence and an abusive relationship. Elisabeth Moss delivers another white-knuckled performance in the lead role as the victim, widening our eyes and draining the blood from our faces.

Although, do we even have any blood in our faces left (final segue alert!) after this collective haemorrhage of a year? Hard to say. Im pretty sure all my internal organs are operating at reduced capacity. Ah well. Time to have a stiff drink, get through the silly season and welcome in 2021.

The rest is here:

Australian film and TV in 2020: the good, the bad and the great - NME.com

Comedian Jimmy Carr has taken aim at Swansea in this year's The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year.

The show, which has been on TV since 2004, is a comedy panel quiz which sees celebrities in pairs take on questions relating to the past year. As part of his introduction to the TV and Film round, the stand-up comedian, who is quizmaster on the Channel 4 show every year, said: "This year's I'm A Celebrity was held in Wales. The contestants had to endure foul smelling unsanitary conditions, awful food, and disgusting creepy crawlies. Then they left the hotel in Swansea and headed to location."

Jimmy Carr is no stranger to Swansea, and has regularly visited the city through the years to perform at its Grand Theatre.

He is scheduled to perform there on Monday, August 23 next year, with his show 'Terribly Funny', which is billed as containing "jokes about all kinds of terrible things that might have affected you or people you know and love."

The show advertisement also warns that "having political correctness at a comedy show is like having health and safety at a rodeo."

What's on where you live? Find out with your post code:

This year's The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year saw Richard Acaster, Stacey Solomon, David Mitchell, Maya Jama, Richard Ayoade and Joe Lycett and take part.

It is not the first time Swansea has featured on the show. Back in 2009, Swansea cagefighters Daniel Lerwell and James Lilley featured as the 'mystery guests' on the show, where teams have to find out, through a series of yes or no questions, why they made the news that year.

The two men had dressed in drag for a night out on Wind Street and The Kingsway, and had knocked out yobs who had approached them, unprovoked, and began picking on them. CCTV footage of the incident was captured and ended up being viewed all over the world, racking up millions of views.

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Jimmy Carr slates Swansea in The Big Fat Quiz of The Year - Wales Online

Frank Barry is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. This column is part of a series, Looking for Lincoln: A Portrait of America at a Crossroads. It features reports from Barrys journey west along the Lincoln Highway, a zigzagging network of local roads running from Times Square to the Golden Gate Bridge, from Sept. 11 to Election Day.

Those things are finally good for something: They keep your face warm. A woman is smoking a cigarette outside the Four Deuces Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, where the worlds most famous gunfight, 139 years ago, still keeps the town alive, its shops and businesses catering mostly to tourists, though almost none are around tonight. My wife Laurel and I, wearing masks, laugh and say something about the cold: The sun has gone down and its in the 40s. We had just arrived in town and, seeing the saloons large outside patio decked with garlands, decided to stop for a drink. But there is no one outside, save the woman smoking. To order, well have to enter the saloon.

Oh, you dont have to wear those in here. The bartender young woman, friendly greets us with information that is already clear from a glance at the patrons. But whatever youre comfortable with. We leave them on and feel some stares. We take the drinks out to the patio where a sign notifies us that no weapons are allowed the town likes its gunplay staged, three times a day at the O.K. Corral, for an admission fee. A song comes on over the speaker: Christmas in Dixie, by Alabama.

With glasses emptied, we return them to the bar and walk back out the front door. The woman smoking is still outside, now with a friend. Have a merry Christmas, she says as we walk by, but the words have an edge to them, a defiant tone as if shes testing us, wondering if the masked visitors will say Happy holidays in return. Laurel hears it, too. Merry Christmas! I reply. And as we head out onto a dark street, we hear them talk of the phrase being overtaken by political correctness.

We pick up dinner from Marios Bakery Caf and I make the mistake of getting hey, were in Tombstone a pizza. We return to the RV for the night, in a public lot across the street from the old county courthouse, built in the shape of a cross one year after local lawmen including the Earp brothers and their pal Doc Holliday were put on trial for their role in the 1881 shootout. All were cleared. I cannot resist the conclusion that the defendants were fully justified in committing these homicides, ruled Judge Wells Spicer. The decision divided the town some supported the lawmen, some the slain men. Controversies surrounding the justice systems treatment of police are nothing new.

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The next morning, 30 miles south in the old mining town of Bisbee, I meet Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and several of his deputies. Inside their offices, one of the deputies reaches out to shake my hand. I freeze and, before I can think of a fist bump, I extend my hand. Its the first time Ive shaken hands in nine months.

Sheriff Dannels is an Army veteran with 37 years of law enforcement experience and a masters degree in criminal justice. When he began in the sheriffs office in the 1980s, Cochise County was acquiring the nickname Cocaine Alley, for all the drugs coming over the countys 83-mile border with Mexico, mostly rural ranchland. Cochise County has always been on the front line of smuggling, he says.The Sinaloa cartel is south of us. Its a profit-greed game for them. Anything they can smuggle in the United States, they will do for a dollar bill. Thats what drives it that and violence and fear.

He calls human smuggling or trafficking modern-day slavery: Theyre paying about $6,000 a head to come across. They get three attempts and head-to-toe camouflage for the journey. These people dont have $6,000. So theyre servant to the cartels, whether its sex, gang labor, drug labor, whatever it may be. The torture these people go through is just incredible. And thats where the humanitarian side comes from.

He sees this humanitarian side protecting the human rights of those being exploited and smuggled as being a core part of his mission, in addition to protecting public safety for local residents and protecting national security for all Americans. As an example, he mentions a man recently reported missing by his wife, who lives in Mexico, after crossing over the border. We have a group that came across here and one of the individuals involved in the group went missing. Hes on our Facebook page right now. We know hes undocumented. And we sent a team and resources and technology trying to find him and we still havent. Thats a John and Jane Doe in the future, which means well find the bones later, and it's really those are tough.

Today, he says, drug dealers are avoiding his county. Im telling you, we watch them every day his office has developed and deployed its own camera system. They go around Cochise County every day to New Mexico, the counties adjacent to us.

One reason: The sheriff has cracked down on one of the cartels favored tactics enlisting teens as smugglers. About five years ago, youth smuggling was chronic. We had 22 juveniles in 45 days that were bringing drugs into this county, Dannels says a majority of them Mexican, but some American kids, too. Not one prosecution. The U.S. Attorneys office would not prosecute them. They released them, no consequence exactly why the cartel kept recruiting them.

Sergeant Tim Williams explains what it was like on the ground: We would catch them and they would go right back [to Mexico] and we would catch them the next day, if not sometimes eight hours [later] because they would already have been processed and sent back, where they often faced a different form of justice. If they lost their drugs, they would get a severe beating and then sent right back [to America]. And so we have numerous pictures of kids that are just beat with two-by-fours on their backside theyre completely black and blue or even in some senses possibly tortured.

Sheriff Dannels developed a local program to prosecute juveniles. We went from one or two in our facility right next door here the county jail to 36 a day, to show you how bad it was. One hundred percent of those kids went to prison for 1.5 years. Today they are down to one juvenile a year. When you run a 100% conviction rate,you see the reduction in drugs.

The number of illegal border crossings has tripled since March, to 2,700 a month, likely a result of the Trump administrations decision to resume catch-and-release. Given the need for physical distancing during Covid-19, detention centers dont have the space to hold migrants. Now, they are often simply sent back across the border.

Dannels knows that law enforcement is only one piece of the puzzle. Immigration reform is so needed. It truly is. What is the process to get in this country? It takes years. Come on. Can we look at that? But people are so afraid of their parties. I blame Congress hard on this all sides. I mean, Republicans will blame Democrats. Democrats will blame Republicans, but remember, Republicans had the House, Senate and the presidency and didnt fix a damn thing. We have to have a balanced immigration, progressive plan. We also need a balanced plan of border security, which is a balance of technology, staffing, physical all that needs to come in play. One doesnt fix it all. We all know thats common sense, but can you get them to agree on any of that? Of course not. Youve got from open borders to close it all. Folks, the answers in the middle. We all know that.

He has a message for those who extol sanctuary cities. I call it offensive when local leaders and state leaders say, Come see us, get through that border, break the law, come see us and well take care of you because it puts his officers at even greater risk. Thats offensive to what weve done here.

Sergeant Williams who leads the South Arizona Border Region Enforcement, or SABRE team, that Dannels began takes me out in his truck to have a look at the border. Williams built the camera network the sheriff proudly touted, which uses AI to filter out non-human images and provide real-time data to the team. Every time you hear that phone go ding he points at his cell phone thats another group of illegal aliens or drug smugglers come across.

He had no experience building a camera and communications network. So I actually learned how to bounce signal [using] radio waves its been awesome to learn. His system, which he built for a little over $1 million, has been adopted by other jurisdictions across the southern border to California, and localities use it to alert the border patrol. One of the border patrol supervisors about a year ago said in this valley right here, that my unit and our camera system does 80% of their work meaning that the cameras were responsible for 80% of what they were going after.

At the border town of Naco, we get out of the truck. There is a 20-foot-high fence built during the Obama administration, and now construction crews are installing a 30-foot-high steel-beamed fence directly behind it. The two walls together are a jarring sight that call to mind King Canute and the futility of trying to stop the tide.

I ask if anyone has tried to scale the taller fence yet.

Absolutely. We catch them all the time.

And how are they trying to scale it with ropes?

No, no. One of my guys used to be able to show you, but you literally grab it like this he extends his arms in a circle and they just shimmy right up that. I think the border patrol's already had quite a few fall off of it. They got seriously injured.

The top of the fence is supposed to be sharp enough to prevent people from grabbing onto it. But what they do is they just throw a blanket over it.

Sometimes, they dont even need to climb over Im astonished to learn the fence includes storm gates that are open half the year.

During monsoon season, all these gates will be wide open and they'll leave them open, and theres thousands of these gates across the border. You can see where they can lift them up. Theyll walk right through that. For months at a time, those will just be open, because if they dont, the water will rip the whole fence apart. And Ive seen that, where the fence is getting completely destroyed. The water will just take it right off.

When theyre open, I ask, it makes the rest of the fence a moot point, right?

Yeah. And thats where our camera system comes into play, because we can saturate that area with the cameras and see them coming across and go after them.

The fence extends only up to the nearby Chiricahua Mountains, but construction crews are carving their way alongside it though only up to a point. As we travel up into the mountains, many miles of the border are marked by low-slung fence that is easy enough to step over, and there is no current plan or funding to change that.

Its easy to seize on these gaps people can walk around the fence, or even right through it! to argue that the fence is useless. Sheriff Dannels was quick to say that its not a panacea, but his team sees it as an essential tool that makes it harder to cross into population centers, protecting border communities from drug and human trafficking. And wherever it exists, it buys law enforcement time to respond.

Thats why were so adamant that you got to have something, because it gives us a fighting chance to try to get them, says Sergeant Williams. Several years ago, you would be standing right here we are in Naco, steps from houses and a group of 30 would run right into the community. And so the community here, being a port of entry, they really wanted to secure this and push [migrants] out to where the rural population was. But then you also have U.S. citizens that live out in the rural part. Theyre just as important as anybody that lives inside the city.

For many Americans, the fence is a canvas onto which we project broader beliefsabout what the country should be. But standing beside it in Naco, I realize that for many people in border towns, it is something much simpler and more tangible: one way of several to push trafficking and illegal crossings away from their neighborhoods, into more remote areas. Even if it doesnt solve the nations problem, it helps solve their problem.

Thinking about the day in Naco and the night before in Tombstone, I begin to wonder whether border walls are to many liberals what masks have been to many conservatives. Both sides are dismissive of these measures, seeing them as useless as a matter of practice, because they are incapable of solving the entire problem, and damaging as a matter of policy, because they chip away at our national character by striking at the heart of values we cherish societal openness by liberals, individual freedom by conservatives.

Of course, assessing the wisdom of each policy requires balancing its benefits with its costs, but a fair accounting of both sides of the ledger is often blocked by partisan loyalties, ideological attachments, social pressuresand overriding emotions. For liberals, acknowledging that border walls have some public safety benefits would risk appearing to be sympathetic to Trumps attacks on foreigners. For conservatives, at least for much of this year, acknowledging masks have some public safety benefits risked appearing to be sympathetic to Democratic attacks on Republicans.

Sheriff Dannels wishes the national dialogue on the border were more grounded in the practicalities of public safety: Politics, emotions, sensation[alism] have no business in policing. It truly doesnt. But in a democracy, where even sheriffs are elected, those forces shape the challenges facing all law enforcement agencies, including those patrolling the border. And until Congress acts to overhaul a badly broken immigration system, the challenges will only increase.

You hear all that? Williams asks me.

We are back in cell service, having driven down from the mountain, and his phone is lighting up with dings.

Thats how many groups have crossed since weve been over there. How many was that, 30?

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:Frank Barry at fbarry5@bloomberg.net

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Frank Barry is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. This column is part of a series, Looking for Lincoln: A Portrait of America at a Crossroads. It features reports from Barrys journey west along the Lincoln Highway, a zigzagging network of local roads running from Times Square to the Golden Gate Bridge, from Sept. 11 to Election Day.

Continued here:

Masks, Walls and Security in a Divided Country - Bloomberg

In 2016, anti-Trump conservatives decided, at considerable cost, that their mission transcended party and ideology: defeating a candidate gravely unsuited for the presidency. In 2020, they opposed his re-election with the stakes even highersaving constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and responsible governance from incipient autocracy, the abuse of presidential power, the erasure of political norms, and a concerted effort to undermine the electoral process.

By acting in the prudential conservative tradition which harks back to Edmund Burke, they helped terminate a radically destructive presidency. But what now?

Do the Never Trumpers strive to reconstitute the GOP as a responsible political party? Do they join a moderate Democratic party led by Joe Biden? Or do they try to help Biden succeed for the larger good of the country while ultimately hoping, someday and somehow, to provide a new home for principled conservatives?

A word about my perspective. Among my gifted and gutsy colleagues at The Bulwark, generally conservatives whose foundational loyalties lay with the Republican party, Im a center-left Democrat who saw Trump as the continuationnot the causeof a moral and intellectual decline wherein the GOP conflated conservatism with a Manichean white identity politics that demolishes fact, degrades political discourse, and promotes scorched-earth partisanship. So Id be delighted to claim them as political coreligionists at this perilous national crossroads.

But my colleagues and their siblings on the center-right are not of one mind. What unites us is the desire to help our country rebuild a collective comity.

I lack standing to suggest a specific path for my conservative friends. But, to me, one indispensable predicate comes first: stopping the GOP as constituted from gutting our democracy.

The dangers before us transcend Trump. Witness Evan McMullins stark assessment of why elected Republicans, in overwhelming numbers, acquiesced in or actively supported Trumps unprecedented effort to undo a presidential election: That they. . . clung to his mad king strategy, like sailors lashed to the mast of a sinking ship, proves that the majority of the party has, at least for the foreseeable future, forsaken democracy.

This mutation reflects a fatal miscalculation made by the party establishment well before Trump: that they could harness the GOPs restive white baseincreasingly dominated by evangelicals and the less well educatedwhile serving the financial interests of their donor class. Catherine Rampell describes the fruits of this delusion:

Over the years, Republican politicians seemed many times to be on the cusp of a reckoninga realization that a lunatic fringe had seized control of the partys more pragmatic center and that conspiracy-theorizing, race-baiting, science-denigrating demagogues had transformed the GOP base into ungovernable paranoiacs. The situation seemed untenable; the fever had to break. . . . Yet the partys radicalization continued, and the reckoning never came.

Nor will it anytime soon. Increasingly, the baseand therefore the partyis captive to an apocalyptic worldview rooted in fear of dispossession by the racial, cultural, and demographic other which, in turn, feeds authoritarian cravings. As the president of the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, Albert Mohler, explained to Nicholas Lemann: Theres an anxiety. A world is being demolished before your eyes. Its an instinct that things arent going as they should. The world is coming apart. Somebody has to say no.

For these angry, anxious, mostly white Republicans, Trump appeared as a human Powerball ticket. As Mike Murphy, a longtime GOP consultant who is a strategic adviser to Republican Voters Against Trump, told Lemann: Trump was a perfect grievance candidate, at a time when Republican voters wanted to blow up the system He was very George Wallace. And then there was the strongman thing: Juan Pern in an orange fright wig.

Trump sealed the establishments devils pact: He stoked the resentments of the GOPs primary electorate while giving the partys donor class the tax cuts they crave and judges who, shrouded in cultural conservatism, protect their economic interests. The contradictions inherent in this pact require the perpetuation of a socially corrosive alternate reality that narcotizes the baseand thereby increasingly entraps or defines the partys officeholders.

In examining why so many voters exhibit such cognitive decline when it came to politics George Packer cites the dire history of twentieth-century Europe:

Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, describes the susceptibility to propaganda of the atomized modern masses, obsessed by a desire to escape from reality because in their essential homelessness they can no longer bear its accidental, incomprehensible aspects. They seek refuge in a man-made pattern of relative consistency that bears little relation to reality.

That psychic need for absolutism aptly describes the animating spirit of Trumps GOP. Concludes Packer: Though the U.S. is still a democratic republic, not a totalitarian regime, and Trump was an all-American demagogue, not a fascist dictator, his followers abandoned common sense and found their guide to the world in him. Defeat wont change that.

This sensibility is rooted in the GOPs reliance on fictional tropes years before Trumps riseat first in the service of political ideology: that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves; that climate change is a liberal fantasy; that gun-control laws dont limit gun violence. In time, this fed a nihilistic quasi-libertarianism nurtured by right-wing mediaseen in everything from the mindless political arson of the Tea Party to the deadly aversion against wearing masks to stifle COVID-19which erodes our capacity to resolve common challenges through prudent governance.

This animus differs from opposition to authoritarianism per seit is directed at the supposed elites who have unleashed government on those who already feel marginalized. Hence the findings of social scientists who link the instinct for autocracy among the Republican base to racial and cultural resentments which, as they see it, require the subordination of their societal enemies.

Beneath the hatred of political correctness lurks the desire to control its perceived proponents. Add the desire for simple explanations of complex problems to the belief that you are opposed by evil forces, and conspiracy theories follow.

In all too many cases Trump did not originate the false narratives which poison the current Republican party. He simply exploited the pre-existing paranoia of its base.

Thats why, before seeking the presidency, he could so easily spread the conspiratorial nonsense of birtherisma classic expression of racial anxieties and resentmentsthroughout the party. The Republican electorate elevated Trump because such lies had already become the lingua franca of a gated community of the mind that will outlive him.

The common assertion that the GOP became the cult of Trump misses this central pointthe party houses an alienated worldview which he simply fortified and exploited. Long before Trump, the base was captured by Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaughand so, inevitably, was the party.

While Trump fed this phenomenon, it does not require him. Observes Packer: No number from Trumps years in power will be more lastingly destructive than his 25,000 false or misleading statements. Super-spread by social media and cable news, they contaminated the minds of tens of millions of people. Trumps lies will linger for years, poisoning the atmosphere like radioactive dust.

Little wonder that the GOP of 2020 had no platformthe glue which binds the base is no longer principles or ideas, but its angry addiction to false narratives. Within this hermetic world the psychotic assertion of QAnon that Democrats molest and devour children to satiate Satan is taken, by many, as reality.

This collective insanity has profound implications for public policy and social coherence. The widespread disbelief among the base in the deadliness of COVID-19 accelerated the diseases spread; enabled Trumps lethal neglect; and now feeds the aversion to vaccination, thereby likely adding to the toll of needless death.

Similarly, the refusal to accept the reality of Russian attacks on our election in 2016 surely encouraged the massive Russian cyberattack that has come to light over the last few days. Not so many years ago, the Republican party was reflexively hawkish on Russia; today, the party is nearly silent, taking its cue from Trump, who, when it comes to Vladimir Putin, follows the old adage If you dont have something nice to say about someone, then dont say anything at all.

The appalling apotheosis of the GOPs embrace of delusion is the willingnesseven eagernessof the great majority of Republican voters to accept Trumps most destructive falsehood: that Joe Biden stole the election through massive voter fraud for which no cognizable evidence exists. In the echo chamber of the Republican party, the most grotesque lies are self-validating: voting machines were rigged in Venezuela; Stacey Abrams harvested bogus ballots; the dead voted en masse; mail-in balloting created millions of phony votes; for Trump to lose was statistically impossible.

As The Bulwarks Tim Miller and Amanda Carpenter have detailed, these otherworldly claims were metastasized by media sociopaths profiteering in the GOPs hysteria market. The primetime hosts of Fox News, until now the most prominent purveyors of rank disinformation, now compete with prevaricators on Newsmax and OAN who make Sean Hannity look like Walter Cronkite. Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy exults over the opportunities for profit arising from Trumps chaotic reign: The news cycle is red-hot, and Newsmax is getting one million people per minute.

Peddling misinformation that further inflames a ready audience of Republicans is, it seems clear, the ideal business model for those who savor shriveling souls and shrinking minds. In the post-truth netherworld, their profit swells, and their influence grows apace. As social psychologist Peter Ditto told Thomas B. Edsall, in that environment almost any lie can be believed, almost any transgression excused, as long as it helps your side.

Such unmediated antagonism breeds not only authoritarianism but violence. One particularly toxic element is racism, expressed most recently in Trumps blatant attempt to disenfranchise black voters in states which Biden wonfollowed by the vandalization of black churches in Washington, D.C. during a pro-Trump rally earlier this month.

But this ugly spirit transcends race. Witness the right-wing militia that plotted to kidnap and execute Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer after Trump denounced her lockdown orderslet alone the dangerous flashpoints stemming from Trumps loss: armed protesters who surrounded the home of the Michigans Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson; and the threats against secretaries of state and otherwise anonymous election workers in Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.

No longer are the fears of public officials confined to electoral defeat. As the Republican leader of the Pennsylvania Senate told the New York Times, had she not signed a letter urging the states congressional delegation to toss out its electoral votes for Biden, Id get my house bombed tonight.

This menace highlights a broader truththe Republican party has become inimical to democracy itself. Write political scientists Steven Livingston and W. Lance Bennett:

The descent of the GOP into illiberalism did not begin with Trumps ride down an escalator five years ago. It started with the partys Faustian bargain with racism, along with its embrace of billionaire backers who fund elections, think tanks, and media networks producing propaganda for extremists. All of this serves as a distraction from decades-long strategies to legalize voter suppression.

Long before Trump took over the party, the GOP committed itself to preserving the dominance of its white electorate by targeting people of colorpassing photo ID laws which have the documented effect of reducing minority turnout; purging voting rolls; and closing polling places in minority areas. As Geoffrey Kabaservice observes, once the GOP stopped believing it was the majority party . . . then anything would be permitted, including antidemocratic means.

Their bogus pretext, turbocharged by Trump in 2020, was that such measures prevented massive voter fraud. Notes David Litt in the Guardian: Trump simply absorbed his party establishments prevailing viewthat it is acceptable to win elections through whatever means possible . . . and took that approach to its logical conclusion.

The partys longstanding claims of voter fraud may have begun as a cynical contrivance. But by now the loathing for democracy among the base is not just tactical, but visceral. Combine the instinct for authoritarianism with conspiratorial thinking, the belief that your political opponents threaten all you hold dear, and an alternative reality marinating in hatred and fear, and democracy itself becomes the enemy.

This helps explain the acquiescence of party officials to Trumps depredations: They fear the base; the base fears elections; and both fear the larger electorate. Jamelle Bouie describes the GOPs bottom line:

We have learned that the Republican Party . . . views defeat on its face as illegitimate, a product of fraud concocted by opponents who dont deserve to hold power. That it is fully the party of minority rule, committed to the idea that a vote doesnt count if it isnt for its candidates, and that if democracy wont serve its partisan and ideological interests, then so much for democracy.

Already, Republican state and federal legislators are working to rig future elections, proposing harsher ID requirements and strict limits on voting by mail. In furtherance of these aims, Senator Ron Johnson held a hearing last week to publicize false claims of voter fraud. The next election may be closer, GOP election officials less willing to risk political opprobrium and personal danger. Warns Dan Pfeiffer, In elections going forward, not trying to steal the election will be seen as RINO behavior.

Already, the GOP is abetted by structural advantages that circumscribe genuine democracy. In 2021 Republicans will initiate more partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts to regain control of the House, having retained majorities in crucial state legislatures which are themselves gerrymandered. And their efforts to control presidential elections are, of course, fortified by the Electoral College.

Trumps attempts to manipulate its arcane machinery should extinguish the notion that this 233-year-old compromise with slave states embodies timeless conservative wisdom. Instead, it has become a Republican tool for undermining representative democracy. Procedures put in place as last resorts for rare outcomessuch as a state legislature appointing its own slate of electors if that states normal election fails, or situations in which there is no clear Electoral College winner and therefore the House of Representatives picks the president by vote of each congressional delegationhave been misappropriated by Republicans desperate to find some mechanism, no matter how anti-democratic, to subvert the election.

Moreover, demographic sorting means that the Electoral College is increasingly likely to contradict the popular vote, as happened in two of the last six presidential elections. Finally, its results turn on a handful of closely contested states, thereby incentivizing voter suppression and electoral chicanery.

As Jesse Wegman notes, the fact that every other election in the United States is determined by popular vote confirms its conservative virtuesby treating voters as equals, it provides legitimacy and, therefore, stability. No matter: in the guise of conservatism the GOP will fight to preserve it as an instrument of electoral subversion, a bulwark against majority ruleand a perpetual gun to the head of democracy.

All this has less to do with Trump than the Republican base and its minoritarian-authoritarian political home. Observes Kabaservice, the GOP has become a perpetual grievance machine unwilling (and unable) to address those grievances through governance or the legislative process. . . . Any Republicans who hope to succeed [Trump] as president will have to parrot his claims that he won in a landslide, that American democracy is corrupt and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.

A roll call of aspirantsfrom the scary Tom Cotton to the slicker Josh Hawley to the careful Nikki Haleydiscloses no one with the following or the gifts, let alone the integrity and courage, to undertake the protean ordeal of rehabilitating the Republican party. Equally probable, the bases avatar in 2024, if not Trump himself, could well be his ignorant and demagogic oldest son. With the help of voter suppression and the Electoral College, he just might win.

So what must principled conservatives do?

In my view their first imperative is to help reinvigorate our democracy, and our capacity for effective governance, by making common cause with other Americans of good will in opposition to the GOP. The immediate challenge facing conservatives is less about ideology than restoration: reinfusing society with the stability, optimism, and renewed belief in our traditions and institutions indispensable to a sound polity.

One essential element is protecting the franchise: ensuring voting rights; combating voter suppression; expanding vote by mail; and encouraging broader participation. Another possibility is curbing gerrymandering through redistricting by nonpartisan commissions.

Some problems with the Electoral College could be resolved by amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887. In 2020 this ill-drafted law created the prospect of partisan state legislatures overriding the results of failed elections based on false charges of voter fraud; the specter of partisan congressional challenges to a states designated electors still looms over the proceedings scheduled for January 6.

But the deeper problem is that the Electoral College engenders electoral disputes, encourages voter suppression and manipulation, frequently abridges the popular vote, and confines meaningful participation in presidential elections to the citizens of a handful of states. Thus a number of statesaccounting for more than a third of the total Electoral College voteshave entered a compact agreeing to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote nationwide.

This extraconstitutional contrivance, intended to circumvent the need for a constitutional amendment, provokes justifiable unease. But one must ask whether completing it is nonetheless preferableindeed, more conservativethan maintaining a dysfunctional and destabilizing anachronism which was, itself, a contrivancethereby promoting minority rule, electoral subversion, and, inevitably, the grave constitutional crisis augured by the maneuvers of Trump and his party.

The other necessity is to support the Biden administration in addressing our urgent needs. This, too, is inherently conservative: Compared to renewing confidence in government at this crossroads between renewal and decline, ideological disputes are secondary.

Clearly, conservatives need not become Democrats. But for now Democrats have defined themselves as a center-left party which presents the vehicle for preserving a functioning democracy. Again, Evan McMullin:

If the coalition that defeated Mr. Trump and elected President-elect Joe Biden, of which we [Never Trump conservatives] are a part, fails now to lead the nation past the coronavirus pandemic, widespread job losses and economic instability, social division and injustice, inaccessible health care, fiscal shortfalls and disinformation, we will invite a resurgence of Trumpism and even more formidable illiberalism in the future.

Unmoored from partisanship and the related constraints of ideology, principled conservatives can strengthen the political center, promote compromise over polarization, and consider anew the problems which atomize America: income inequality, discriminatory law enforcement, substandard education, unaffordable college, and residential segregation. The majority of Americansand Democratswant solutions, not slogans.

The healthiest society is that in which its citizens believeand which, by helping the least of them achieve their full potential, enriches the whole. That shared enterprise requires the energy and commitment of true conservatives.

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The Ghost of Conservatism Future - The Bulwark