26: Worship

25: Vivek Ramaswamy

Putting All My Eggs in the Boyfriend Basket As my friends left college for exciting jobs and law school, I went to Mexico for a guy.

Trump, Lord of the Ring (Around the Collar) an actual madman, a former president who tried to overturn an election and may yet destroy U.S. democracy

Political Christianity Has Claws Simply put, America is increasingly beset by a version of cultural and political Christianity that bears little resemblance to the faith as described in the Bible. It seems as if there’s an almost mathematical equation at work — when you combine theology and ideology but subtract virtue, you’ve created a formula for viciousness and strife. Raise the stakes to an existential or eternal level, remove the restraints of kindness and self-control, and watch the worst of humanity emerge. .......... .......

even the most impeccable theological understandings are meaningless if they don’t result in Christian character.

.......... a series of simple virtues, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” ........ Joy and gentleness should earn our attention and respect; hatred and jealousy are red flags, even in those who can quote every line of scripture. ......... beware the hateful, the people drawn to strife; embrace those who are kind and peaceful. .......... “Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.” ........ But the dominant tone of contemporary American political Christianity is close to the opposite. It’s angry. It’s punitive. In many ways it positively delights in strife. ........... If theology minus virtue can equal violence, then perhaps theology plus virtue can enable justice.

What Prigozhin Did in Putin’s Russia Was the Ultimate Betrayal .

Making Manufacturing Great Again As it turned out, Trump had no visible success in promoting manufacturing. But a funny thing has happened under his successor: Suddenly, investment in manufacturing has surged. What Trump’s trade policies didn’t achieve, President Biden’s industrial policies have. ......... Trump’s trade policy was simply incompetent: Because it raised tariffs on industrial inputs as well as consumer goods, it raised costs and may well have reduced manufacturing employment. And the Trump tax cut was based on the belief that if you let corporations keep more of their profits, they’ll invest the money rather than use it to, say, buy back shares; this belief was proved wrong. ........ Until recently, for example, there was an explosion of resources devoted to Bitcoin mining. As far as I can tell, these resources produced nothing of value

It’s Clear That Ron DeSantis Is No Longer on the Rise, but Someone Else Is Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old political upstart with little chance of actually securing the nomination. ........ DeSantis has a chronic personality problem. He simply doesn’t connect with people. He smiles the way a Doberman bares its teeth: It feels forced, aggressive and dangerous. You feel like you should retreat from it. And when he’s not forcing a smile, he reflexively scowls. He has a resting wince face. ....... He was largely ignored by the other candidates, and the only thing that cuts deeper than disparagement is indifference......... Vivek, you are no Barack ....... You have a shallow, CliffsNotes understanding of the issues, but because you speak with speed and confidence, polished diction and a toothy grin, the incoherence is disguised by the delivery. Ramaswamy is the kind of person who gets hired for charisma rather than competence. ....... he is the personification of click bait.