My church friend from years ago, Hoy Fellure, posted this message on Facebook in response to my article: The Trump Has Sounded: “I’m concerned about you Mike. Your daily negative post about our President is over the top. You hardly ever posted anything on FB until after the election in November. Now you are relentless in opposing the actions by President Trump. May I suggest that you promote the positive points of the Democrat Party and how it can improve the conditions of America instead of the so called negative points of the Republican Party.”
Hoy — you are correct that recently I’ve been very active on FaceBook. Below are my posts from just the last two weeks. None of this is “fake news.” It is all mainstream news. This is not stuff I’m making up. I get that you may be irritated that I’m filling your Facebook feed with material that you’d rather not see. But this is a pretty good record of what I’ve read that I think is worthy of sharing.
Posting items on Facebook is a pretty feeble way of “opposing the actions of President Trump.” But when Trump’s actions are focused on destroying the ACA or funding private prisons, or appointing billionaire cabinet members whose agenda is to destroy their agencies, or denying climate change — even feeble opposition is better than no opposition.
You are failing to understand the urgency of my point of view that the election of Donald Trump is a huge wake-up call that our democratic republic is in a dangerous state of dysfunction. The tires are coming off. That someone like Donald Trump, a person of his values and history, could be elected president is shocking — as Mitt Romney and George H and George W Bush and many other reputable Republicans all emphasized prior to November 8. Now, for forty days and forty nights, Trump has been reminding us again and again how truly shocking it is that such a man should become president.
I get that you want to normalize Trump’s election. You need to consider why many people see his election as shocking and why so many are looking for an effective response. In my POV, the only hope I can see is for a revival of the citizenry — a great civic awakening. You are assuming that my flurry of posting on Facebook and my comments on FB are all about pushing a partisan point of view — that I’m all about advancing the Democratic Party. Wrong. My point is that we need to be pro-democracy, not pro-Democratic Party, nor pro-Trump. We need to create civic harmony, not civic division. In my “The Trump Has Sounded” post, I wrote: “The big question is: What is the root cause of our republic being so weak? Here is the sad fact: our democratic republican system of self-government is dysfunctional because it is lacking the informed and engaged citizenry that it needs in order to function as it should.”
Thanks for you concern for me. As Christians we need to pray for each other. All Christians need to find a way to work together to strengthen our citizenry so that our republican system of government will begin to work as it should. Partisan politics is destroying us. We need to find a common ground from which to work. I’m thinking that what should unite Christians is our sense of community. How could our Christian values unite us as a community — a community devoted to making our republican system work as it should. Here is a good question that I am dithering with: How can Christians transcend partisanship and work together to build community? How can Christians work together to make politics emerge from communities that are guided by Christian values?
These are the twenty-five posts I’ve made on FB in just the last two weeks. I can see why Hoy may be irritated that I’m flooding his feed with material he’d rather not see. Only four of these articles — shown in bold — were written by me and posted on my website DaytonOS.com. The other articles are from mainstream news like the Washington Post or the New York Times. You can find the links to these articles on my Facebook page here:
- The Trump Has Sounded — Will The Dead Be Raised Incorruptible?
- Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History
- AP fact check: Trump claims Affordable Care Act covered ‘very few’ people
- Under Mr. Trump, Private Prisons Thrive Again
- Bannon Admits Trump’s Cabinet Nominees Were Selected To Destroy Their Agencies
- Trump’s Big Agenda — Privatize Everything In sight
- Eulogy For My Friend: Rosie Hardin
- ACTION ITEM — Mail postcards to Paul Ryan
- ‘Medicare for All’ Only Way For Trump To Keep Healthcare Promises
- Should Bannon Resign? He and Milo Fake-Newsed Hillary As Pedophile
- 100 days of Trump claims
- Note to William Wild: Build Structures Outside of Public Schools To Bring Excellence In Civics
- Mandel defends spending $1.3 million in public money on TV ads
- Humans causing climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces
- Don’t Dismiss Trump’s Attacks on the Media as Mere Stupidity
- Kasich: It’s a ‘bad idea’ to phase out Medicaid expansion
- Climate Change Denial is the Original Fake News
- Quit Calling Donald Trump and Isolationist. He’s worse than that.
- Senate vote to repeal transparency rule for oil companies
- China grants Trump a trademark he’s been seeking for a decade
- Trump Science Adviser Candidate Calls Climate Science a “Cult”
- Robertson: Opposition To Trump Is ReVolt Against God
- Trump lots keep Palestinians Stateless forever
- Congress Says, Let the Mentally Ill Buy Guns
- America Needs A Great Civic Awakening
