The Status Quo Can't Last Forever

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, against all the odds, brought home a reality that was already becoming apparent: the world is changing, and the old order of the past sixty years cannot last forever. The 2016 election has not been the only indicator: Brexit and the rise of Marine Le Pen in France are two others, which most prominently demonstrate the continuing populist surge across the West. Even the Arab Spring of several years ago could, in hindsight, be seen as a early sign of the dissatisfaction with the established order sweeping the globe.

North Korea seems to grow more belligerent by the day, faced by a United States no longer satisfied with détente and endless rounds of failed negotiations and sanctions which seem to do little good. Iran, too, seeks to become a regional power, spreading their influence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The movement of greater European integration, begun after the Second World War, is stalled, and perhaps is in full retreat already, depending on one’s point of view. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin seeks both to cement his own power, and return Russia to the imagined glory of the old Soviet Union. And the time of Venezuela’s “Socialism of the 21^st Century” may be reaching its inevitable conclusion.

It is a tangible truth, so much so that one can almost feel it in the air: the second decade of the 21^st century is a time of great, unprecedented change, the past two years especially so. The old order is gradually giving way to something new. What ends up replacing it will not become clear for a long time yet, but its shape is slowly emerging.

All the issues we increasingly struggle with today—from North Korea to immigration and globalization, all the way to the exploding national debt—will be affected by this change. The current, decades-old balance of power in the Korean Peninsula cannot last in perpetuity. Neither can America’s current rate of borrowing and spending. Neither can the European struggle between integrationists and nationalists, and the centralization of power in Brussels. Changes across the world have been gestating for a long time, and many are finally coming to a head.

Change is in the air.

Pro-Lifers Banned From The Democratic Party

Everyone knows that the modern Democratic Party is radically pro-abortion, but I never thought they would actually say this:

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez became the first head of the party to demand ideological purity on abortion rights, promising Friday to support only Democratic candidates who back a woman’s right to choose.

“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” Perez said in a statement. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”

“At a time when women’s rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country,” he added, “we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice.”

To my knowledge, this is the first time in recent history that the leader of a major political party in America has demanded absolute conformity on a political issue from all members of that party. Sure, certain groups of people have been barred from parties before, or at least been discouraged from showing active support—racists and white nationalists come to mind. No self-respecting political party wants to be seen as a home for such people. But on policy issues such as abortion, parties usually encourage diverse coalitions as a means of growing their brand and expanding voter outreach.

Obviously, Perez’s comments cater to the core of the Democratic liberal base. But outside of an extremely narrow group of voters, it’s hard to see how this does anything but hurt the party at large, as it gears up for midterm elections where it hopes to make significant gains in Congress. Even many pro-choice Democrats recognize the importance of building coalitions with pro-life, but otherwise liberal, voters. Even Nancy Pelosi recognizes this fact.

According to polls, 28% of Democrats can reasonably be classified as pro-life. That figure includes some Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2018, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Senators vital to any Democratic hopes of regaining control of the Senate. Will the DNC continue to support their re-election bids?

A final note: Some may say that the Republican Party, and conservatives specifically, have long made pro-choicers feel equally unwelcome. But this is a false equivalency. There are many pro-choice Republicans prominent in the party today, such as Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Have they been the target of ire and primary challenges from the Right? Absolutely, much of it well deserved. But no respectable figure has ever demanded that they leave the party altogether. Primary challenges are robust and healthy for a party and a movement. Attempts to silence dissenting views altogether and impose conformity by degree are not. But no one should expect any more from the modern progressive movement.

Breaking Down The New Star Wars Trailer

Because it’s Friday, Congress is out of session, and not everything needs to be political, now seems as good a time as any to offer a brief analysis of the latest Star Wars trailer, which was released last week.

This teaser is similar in style to the first trailer for 2015’s The Force Awakens—brief, disjointed clips of only a few seconds each, promising a grand new story but offering little in the way of plot details. We know more now about the Episode VIII plot than we did at the same point for VII, based on both the trailer and public statements by the cast and crew, but not much. Rey will train as a Jedi under Luke Skywalker. The First Order will grow in strength, and there will be a massive space battle at some point in the movie. Not exactly a lot to go on, which only heightens the anticipation even further.

The trailer raises plenty of questions—What’s with the salt-flat planet and the speeders kicking up red dust? Does the shot of a large burning structure mean we’ll get a flashback depicting Kylo Ren’s destruction of the new Jedi Order?—but the biggest is undoubtedly in the last few seconds, when a voiceover of someone who sounds a lot like Luke Skywalker intones, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” What?

Does that mean Luke has strayed to the dark side over the course of his long seclusion from the galaxy? Is he just dejected and discouraged by the endless wars, and the failure of the Jedi to do anything to stop them? Or does he mean that it’s time for the old Jedi, the old methods of teaching, to end, and for the Jedi Order to become something new and different? Of course, that last possibility assumes that the Order Luke rebuilt after Episode VI was exactly the same as the Order in the time of the Old Republic. We don’t have any evidence from The Force Awakens to suggest that, and the Jedi Order founded by Luke in the old Expanded Universe stories (now branded as non-canon Legends) is quite different from that which served the Old Republic, which—if those aspects are carried over into the new canon—would make another “rebirth” seem rather pointless.

Episode VIII: The Last Jedi comes out in December. It can’t get here soon enough.

Memo to North Korea: Time To Get Real

North Korea has long been known as a strange blend of rogue nation and true national security threat, driven largely by its aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons, combined with an almost comedic level of propaganda denouncing the West and lauding its own “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong Un. But the past few weeks have seen an unusual amount of attention focused on North Korea, with the nation conducting more and more missile launches and Vice President Mike Pence promising that the United States is tired of using the same failed playbook to get North Korea to stop pursuing WMD’s. “The sword stands ready,” Pence said yesterday, speaking to U.S. sailors stationed off the Korean peninsula.

There will be no more red lines, of the sort President Obama so infamously drew in Syria. No more one-sided pleas for negotiation. Peace should always be the goal, but with a ruler as dangerous and unstable as Kim Jong Un, conflict is always a possibility. America has to be ready for that very real possibility, and it looks as though Trump, guided by Mike Pence and his advisors, has accepted that fact.

North Korea has been a danger to world security for decades, and that danger only increases as time goes by. Too many nations, and too many U.S. administrations, have not taken the threat seriously enough, or have attempted to use the same failed tactics over and over again. Credit where credit is due: Trump (or his advisors) have recognized that the current Korean situation is untenable. Something has to give.

A Funny Thing About Abortion on TV

Traditionally, and with few exceptions, scripted TV has tried to stay away from the pro-life/pro-choice abortion divide. But a curious thing happens when pregnancy does enter the equation, especially on comedy shows: The fetus is humanized, and abortion becomes unthinkable.

It’s no secret that television as a whole leans to the left, both news programs and dramas. Television actors, directors, and producers as a group are just as liberal as their infamous counterparts on the big screen. But when the topic turns to pregnancy, and that simple question—“When does life begin?”—at the heart of the abortion debate, even avowed pro-choicers find themselves uttering classic anti-abortion arguments once the cameras start rolling.

Take CBS’ The Big Bang Theory, which in seasons 9 and 10 had a storyline dealing with the pregnancy of one of the main characters, and the various reactions of her husband and the other main characters. Now, creator and showrunner Chuck Lorre is a dedicated liberal across the board. I assume much of the cast and crew feel the same way. But throughout Bernadette’s pregnancy, there were innumerable references to the “person”, in the words of another main character, growing inside her, scenes of friends and family looking at ultrasounds and listening to the baby’s heartbeat, and otherwise treatments of the fetus as exactly what it is, and what real-life experience tells us it is: a human being.

Another example: in its fourth season, ABC’s Modern Family saw the pregnancy of one of its main characters, Gloria. In one episode in particular, she and Claire discussed motherhood and the ramifications of having another person growing inside them. The actress who plays Claire is openly liberal, and in fact has attended fundraisers for Planned Parenthood. Yet in this episode, there was no evidence of that. Claire talked about the strangeness of “having another person inside you” (her words). In another episode, Gloria and Jay, the baby’s father, use a microphone to talk to their unborn child, and worry about him hearing them fight. Would a “blob of cells”, as pro-choicers prefer to think of fetuses, care about its parents fighting, or the quality of its mother’s singing?

There are a multitude of other examples of this phenomenon on TV, in both current and older shows. Conversely, circumstances in which abortion is openly praised, or the unborn child is indeed discussed as a “blob of cells”, are much rarer. Only the cast and crew can say for sure why they are so comfortable with humanizing an organism they are only too happy to exterminate in real life, but it is an interesting trend, given the well-known prevalence of liberal activism on the major networks.

Easter: Good A Time As Any for a Presidential Reset

It is no secret that President Trump has had a turbulent first couple of months on the job. The (deserved) failure of the American Health Care Act, controversies over Russian meddling in the presidential election, the travel ban rollout, now a burgeoning fight over tax reform… All of these were avoidable crises, during the best time for a new administration to score some big wins. And all were made even worse by the President being the same impulsive, vindictive, easily-provoked Twitter addict he’s always been.

During the campaign, we were promised a presidential Trump, someone who could be “so presidential you’ll be bored.”We haven’t seen him yet. And while the Twitter outbursts have sometimes been amusing, they are quickly getting in the way of opportunities for real conservative reforms. I like fun, WTF-style tweets. They keep the day interesting. But not from the President of the United States, not multiple times a day from said President, and certainly not at the expense of real progress in reforming the federal government.

Spring is a time of growth and optimism. Maybe Trump can be inspired to start putting more effort and focus into governing, away from the constant media attention he craves. Maybe someone close to him can be inspired to stage an intervention and lock him out of Twitter for a week or two. But whatever the reason, it’s something that needed to happen yesterday. The sooner, the better.

Campaigning is fun. But the campaign, and the playtime, is over. If Trump can’t see on his own that it’s time to ditch the phone and start acting like the leader of the free world, hopefully someone in the West Wing can wake him up to the fact.

The Death of Jesus Christ

From the Gospel of Luke:

23 Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. 2 And they began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.”

3 So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“You have said so,” Jesus replied.

4 Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”

5 But they insisted, “He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here.”

…

13 Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, 14 and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. 15 Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. 16 Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.”

18 But the whole crowd shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” 19 (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)

20 Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. 21 But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

22 For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.”

23 But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. 24 So Pilate decided to grant their demand. 25 He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.

…

32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

35 The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37 and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

38 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.[d]”

43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

44 It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, 45 for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

47 The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” 48 When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. 49 But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

This Sunday is a joyful day in Christianity, and much like Christmas will be celebrated by both believers and nonbelievers. But what many fail to appreciate is the darkness that took place just days before the joy of Easter Sunday. For everyone present on Good Friday, it must have seemed as though the sun would never rise again. But the Son did rise.

A powerful message for believers and nonbelievers alike.