Category: Progressive Commentary

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

In a recent speech, J.D. Vance said that when “the settlers came to the New World they found very widespread child sacrifice.” Framing it as a core moral achievement of Christian societies, he went on to say that ending this practice was “one of the great accomplishments of Christian civilization.”

He is, of course, lying and he knows it.

Historians note that while there is archaeological evidence of ritual child sacrifice in some Meso-American and South American cultures, there is little evidence that such practices were “very widespread” among most North American Indigenous societies. Vance’s broad “New World” phrasing implies this to be true.

Critics also argue that his allegations ignore both the racial and religious violence and abuses carried out by Christian empires and missions around the world. They also ignore the fact that Western Hemisphere civilizations were already many millennia old long before European colonization and that Indigenous societies had their own complex moral systems.

Yes, Vance is lying through his teeth and he knows it. However, he is not lying without a deep and sinister motive.

The vice president is engaging in racist revisionism all dressed up as patriotism and unspoken White and Christian supremacy. It reveals exactly how far the Right-wing Christian Nationalists and White Supremacists who are running our country will go to rewrite history to justify their fascist oppression.

Of course Vance and his ilk will deny all this. However, American author Maya Angelou has couched Vance’s language in it’s proper contest:

“When people tell you who they are, believe them the first time.”

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

Donald T**** has said: “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into Heaven. I think I’m not maybe Heaven-bound.” In other contexts he also said: “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. I don’t believe there’s anything that could earn me a spot in Heaven.” 

For once in his life, he’s right. The Bible confirms that. Here it is for starters, straight from the original text: 

“Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.”  Proverbs 21:13 . And there’s more:

“Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.” — Proverbs 14:31, and “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.” — Psalm 82:3. Not to mention:

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” — Leviticus 19:33-34.

And that’s just the Old Testament. T**** claims to be a Christian. Well, here it is, straight from the Savior’s mouth:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me… Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” — Matthew 25:35-40. Also:

“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise,” — Luke 3:11, and  “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” —Mark 10:21

The Old Testament is clear on how we are to treat the poor and why, and especially how we are to receive and accept foreigners in our midst. 

Jesus taught that ignoring the needs of the poor is spiritually dangerous. He challenged his followers not only to charity, but also to radical generosity and justice with their time and resources.

These passages convey G-d’s (and his Son’s) expectation that generosity, justice and compassion for the poor reflect faith and obedience. They emphasize treating foreigners with kindness, and recognize hospitality as a core biblical principle. Jesus and the prophets explicitly connect caring for outsiders with G-d’s deepest values and blessings.

I sincerely doubt that T**** has actually read any of this himself. And I doubt that he has any real spiritual sense or religious convictions. Perhaps there is a spark of something in there, anything is possible. However, it looks like at least once in his life, T**** is right about something; Heaven will most likely be closed to him.  

After all, you can’t argue with the Good Book. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

                       

Donald T**** is literally deciding that who deserves disaster relief is based on how they voted

In the past several months, T**** approved millions in Federal relief funding for Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska, all states that helped elect him. However, the president denied disaster aid requests for Vermont, Illinois, and Maryland – all blue states that did not support him – after those states sought federal relief for severe flooding and storm damages. As of yet, he has not reversed those denials or approved the aid for any of the three states.

After Typhoon Halong devastated Alaskan villages in October, T**** was online calling Alaska’s residents “incredible Patriots.” In the same breath, he bragged about winning them “BIG” in past elections, as if disaster victims had earned their salvation by voting the right way.

So let’s be clear: if your community is drowning but didn’t vote for T****, good luck.

Vermont’s Republican governor, Phil Scott, didn’t mince words. “President T**** and his administration have politicized disaster relief And our communities are the ones who will pay the price.”

He’s right. And it’s obscene. Disaster aid isn’t supposed to be a campaign perk. It’s not supposed to depend on party lines, loyalty tests, or how loudly you cheer at a rally. It’s supposed to reflect the most basic moral principle in public life: we take care of our own.

What we’re watching is moral corruption in broad daylight, the erosion of fairness, compassion, and decency at the highest level of government. This isn’t just about who gets a FEMA check, it’s about who counts as worthy in T****’s America.

Every time T**** politicizes disaster aid he sends the perverse message that cruelty is power and empathy is weakness. We Americans don’t turn our backs on our neighbors because they voted differently. We help because that’s who we are supposed to be and that’s what we are supposed to do.

The idea that your right to recover depends on your political allegiance is beneath contempt and beyond corruption. Indeed, it is morally bankrupt. 

And that pretty much describes Donald T****. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILEYou are meant to feel powerless. That is what a strongman wants, to make you feel as if nothing can stop his taking autocratic control. This is Donald T****’s strategy, it is what he is counting on. No less than our way of life hangs in the balance.

Our democratic institutions rely on the compliance of its citizens and leaders with and within the law. They are not capable of dealing with the existential threat of tyrannical defiance. Our Founding Fathers presumed and relied on the intentions of good men to hold the reigns of power and authority.

But Donald T**** is not good man.

The 1st Amendment guarantees our right to free speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. We must continue to exercise that right, to continue to fill the streets across the country by the millions and make our petitions with loud, strong language.

It is in the country’s best interests that we are peaceful. As John Lennon observed, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”

And it works.

In Chicago and Portland, T**** did all he could to unhinge the population. He sent masked, armed agents in caravans to invade peaceful communities where they provoked violence and created chaos. They chased people down in the streets, parking lots and even into businesses. They beat helpless victims before arresting them and exercised indiscriminate use of tear gas. They arrested people as they came and left courtrooms. They claimed absolute authority.

In response, people in those cities created organizations to monitor and warn people at risk by phone and with whistles when ICE squadrons were seen patrolling their neighborhoods. They had observers on scene to document ICE assaulting and arresting helpless victims, and their lawyers in the courts. In some cases, street demonstrations intimidated T****’s brownshirts, forcing them to retreat.

Mocking their tormentors with eloquent humor, Portland demonstrators in Halloween costumes lined up opposite armed, masked ICE thugs. Costumed protestors marched by the hundreds, and the image of a defiant frog became the symbol of that city’s resistance.

The good people of these American cities creatively channeled the essence of Dr. Martin Luther King and John Lennon. Damning “optics,” bad press and spirited, peaceful protest succeeded in blunting the effects of T****’s private army. ICE is now abandoning these cities and has moved on. The people in their new target cities already know what to do, and they’re doing it.

T**** wants us to feel powerless to stop him. He must see that we are not.

Our strongest weapon in defense of our country, our liberty and our freedom is first and foremost our concerted action against the president’s quasi-military occupation of our cities. And second, we must continue to exercise our right to speak our minds, to organize, to fill our nation’s streets by the millions and express our righteous anger.

We must continually remind Donald T**** that it is the people and only the people who are sovereign in this country. He does not make laws for us nor is he above them. And if he endeavors to become so, he must see that we can and will bring him down.

And we have the way to do that. We have one path forward to fight against this madman’s lust for power. We have the ballot box, we have our voices and we have our ultimate weapon:

Resistance.

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

  ALL FALL DOWN 

In a very real sense we are witnessing the fall of American greatness at the hands of Donald T**** and his right-wing MAGA’s. Consider:

A great, civilized country would not limit health care, tolerate food insecurity for its people or leave crops rotting in the fields while it citizens go hungry. 

It would not destroy what was once admired as the world’s best educational system.

It would not attempt to rewrite its history in order to satisfy a fickle minority who would erase rather than teach and learn the lessons of its tragic past. 

It would not target women by eliminating their reproductive rights or allow politicians to decide their health care issues and all the while refusing to help the babies whoa are the result of their crass indifference. 

A great, civilized country would not refuse or abuse desperate immigrants. 

It would not pretend to believe in Christianity while perverting and betraying its tenets.

It would not refuse to protect the Earth from destruction in deference to industries that would destroy it.

It would not tolerate the rise to autocratic power of a corrupt, demented, pathological liar, second-rate con artist and convicted felon.

A great, civilized country would not tolerate masked, armed and unidentifiable agents chasing people down in the streets and hauling them away in unmarked vehicles. 

It would not tolerate the housing of unnamed victims in inhumane detention centers without access to beds, personal hygiene, medical attention, legal assistance or decent food. 

It would not tolerate the detention, arrest and deportation of unnamed victims without the pretense of due process. 

In all these things America is debased. Its shining light on the hill grows dim as its cheap, tawdry leader drags its exalted promise through the mud.

The truth is that the Great Experiment of America’s Founding Fathers has been abandoned by men who deem themselves above it’s most sacred tenets: that we are one nation with liberty and justice for all, and that no man is above the law. 

Our friends back way and our enemies exult. We have become our own nemesis.

The whole world is watching. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

Moderate Senate Democrats are catching hell for caving on the government shutdown. But they didn’t just go quietly into the long good night. There is some interesting strategy at work, here.

It’s important to remember that nothing to date is a done deal. The agreement has to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president. And there are some things in it that not everyone’s going like.

Also, the Republicans don’t come away clean. The Democrat’s legislative wins include restoring the jobs of thousands of federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown and bar further reductions through Jan. 30.

They guarantee back pay for hundreds of thousands of others who were furloughed, as required by a law T**** endeavored to break. Among other things, this would put the air traffic controllers back on the job just a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Americans will like that, and will know who to thank.

The agreement protected the government Accountability Office, (GAO), an agency that helps Congress keep track of federal spending, by maintaining funding at its current level. It also removed language that would bar the agency from suing the White House to release illegally withheld funds.

More importantly, it will eliminate the dog-and-pony issue of who is responsible for the shutdown dragging on while keeping the hot-topic issues of healthcare and food insecurity open and directly in front of the American public for at least another month. Millions are already going hungry and millions more are looking at a devastating jump of the cost of medical care.

By re-opening the government, the Senate agreement forces the Republicans to address these issues which are now squarely in their court. Without extending the ACA subsidies, which the Republicans have previously rejected out of hand, premiums will rise. And T**** is still in court trying not to have to feed hungry children. The Democrats are clearly on the people’s side, here. And the Republicans know it.

And finally, it means that Speaker Johnson will have to re-convene the House in order to pass the compromise budget bill. That puts the issue of the Epstein files on the table because he will will have run out of excuses for not swearing in Arizona’s newest member. He could even face a revolt among members of his caucus over the release of the files.

So the Senate Democrats are not just guilty of giving in. As they give, so do they get. And their agreement means they can hold the Republican’s feet over the flames for another month over the issues that matter most to long-suffering Americans. And they could even get their subpoena for the Epstein files, which could be the penultimate disaster for the Republican Party.

So what have the Senate’s moderate Democrats done? They’ve done what politicians are supposed to do. They’ve done what they get paid to do. They have “played politics.”

And it’s not a losing hand.

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

According to new reporting from journalist David Schuster, more than 100 GOP lawmakers are now leaning towards voting with Democrats in forcing the release of the Epstein files. Schuster suggests that they’re not doing this out of principle. They’re doing it to get in front of what’s coming.

Multiple sources report that senior DOJ officials have privately informed Republican lawmakers that the sealed Jeffrey Epstein files are even worse for Donald T**** than anyone imagined.

Nor is this just about T****. It is about the rot of immorality that lets billionaires, politicians, and predators operate above the law while the survivors of their depravity are silenced or dismissed. It’s about a justice system that protects proximity to power instead of the victims of it.

It is also clear that if the DOJ truly believes these files contain evidence of criminal behaviort, then keeping them sealed is not justice. It’s complicity.

Speaker Johnson is caught in an unbelievably tight bind. He has been told by his Lord and Master that he is not to allow the files be made public. Yet he knows that when (or if) he re-convenes the House, one way or another there will be a Congressional subpoena demanding that the files be released. 

Johnson knows he can’t hold out indefinitely. The House is scheduled to re-convene on November 10, the jig will be up. When the subpoena comes it will put Donald T**** into that unbelievably tight squeeze. He knows what is in those files; the thought of their release must terrify him. And rightly so.

Then there is this: will T**** defy a Congressional subpoena? Defying a congressional subpoena is considered an impeachable offense when done, as it will be inn this case, in the context of obstructing a congressional investigation. But there is precedent, this was the basis for one of the articles of impeachment against President Donald T**** in 2019.

The fact of the matter is that the truth is coming, one way or another. And when it does, Americans will have to decide whether or not they are prepared to put up with this terrible waste of human flesh any longer.

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

                               

SNAP benefits have never been cut off in any government shutdown. Until now. Not once, Not under Bush. Not under Obama. Not during other long shutdowns. The only two times Americans have come close to closing food assistance was during the 2018-2019 shutdown and the one happening right now. Both were under Donald T****’s presidencies.

In 2018, the USDA had to scramble to pay February benefits early to stop people from going hungry. Now, in 2025, we were warned that millions may not get November benefits at all.

We’re talking about families who rely on as little as $6 a day for food being told there is “no funding.” Yet the government sits on billions in reserve for just such emergencies, and under T****’s “big ugly bill,” billionaires and corporations get billion dollar tax breaks. 

And all the while, the president fields his private army in the city streets, he gives away $40 billion in American treasure to prop up the failing economy of a South American strongman he likes and ICE burns through millions on tear gas which it uses against innocent and defenseless citizens. 

And to top it off, the president accepts a gift jet that will cost Americas a cool billion to restore and will be his to keep, and builds himself a golden ballroom. 

This isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s just plain, in-your-face cruelty. Which seems to be the hallmark of  Donald T****’s administration. Fortunately, a pair of federal judges have put the kibosh on T**** halting SNAP benefits and has ordered the government to pay them, either in part of in whole. 

T**** has said, of course, that will pay only in part, and that it may take a while before anyone gets relief. And that is only after challenging the lower court’s rulings and threatening in any event to defy them. So here we have it: Federal judges order T**** to feed hungry children, and he fights the order. 

You’d almost think he wants them to go hungry. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

The T**** administration has attempted to reassure consumers facing ongoing inflation with a chilling talking point: Poverty is good, actually. This is a tacit admission that they know their policies will make us poorer and make life harder for the working classes in America. But then, they don’t care. Their message comes down to this: suck it up and get back to work

Preaching T****’s gospel, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has made the astonishing assertion that being able to afford things is not important to Americans. To quote the Secretary, “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.”

T**** affirmed Bessent’s vision when he told reporters in April that he’s not worried about empty stores or children going without toys for Christmas. In truth, T**** is priming Americans for accepting a drastically lower standard of living. 

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick further defined this vision in an interview with CNBC in May: multiple generations working in the same factories, stuck in the same grueling jobs for low pay. 

Says Lutnick, “This is the new model, where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work there. It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past but to do the great jobs of the future.” 

Great jobs of the future? For Lutnck, toiling away year after year, generation after generation in a factory is the best America can offer its working class? That’s the best we can look forward to? Who’s kidding whom?

Republicans are clearly not worried about telling us that not only is relief not coming, but you shouldn’t complain about it. However, the idea that there’s no chance for upward mobility and that generations of Americans will be bound to the same oligarch, capitalist bosses sounds suspiciously like feudalism.

Although you cannot assume that Lutnick knows it, his model of course, is not new. It is the child of the Industrial revolution, which spans the years from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. It’s heartless, uncaring and impersonal horrors were minutely dissected in  Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” published in 1905.

This, then, is Donald T****’s vision of the American dream: a regression of over a hundred years to the days when men, women and children worked grueling hours in factories at little more than existence wages.

The die would be cast at birth by caste. The ruling class would live apart in regal splendor. But there would be few paths up or out of T****’s and Lutnick’s imposed feudal existence and planned impoverishment for the working class. 

And you can just forget about toys for your children at Christmas.  

T**** is literally deciding that who deserves disaster relief is based on how they voted.

This week, Donald Trump proudly announced he’d approved millions in relief funding for Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska, all states that helped elect him. But when Democratic-led states like Vermont, Illinois, and Maryland begged for help after floods and storms tore through their towns, they were met with silence or outright denial.

The Associated Press confirmed that the White House denied those requests, including Maryland’s appeal after devastating May floods, while rushing to approve red-state declarations in the same week.

Meanwhile, T**** was online calling Alaska’s residents “incredible Patriots.” In the same breath, he bragged about winning them “BIG” in past elections, as if disaster victims had earned their salvation by voting the right way.

So let’s be clear: if your community is drowning but didn’t vote for T****, good luck.

Vermont’s Republican governor, Phil Scott, didn’t mince words. “President T**** and his administration have politicized disaster relief,” he said. “And our communities are the ones who will pay the price.”

He’s right. And it’s obscene. Disaster aid isn’t supposed to be a campaign perk. It’s not supposed to depend on party lines, loyalty tests, or how loudly you cheer at a rally. It’s supposed to reflect the most basic moral principle in public life: we take care of each other when we’re in crisis.

What we’re watching is moral corruption in broad daylight, the erosion of fairness, compassion, and decency at the highest level of government. This isn’t just about who gets a FEMA check; it’s about who counts as worthy in Trump’s America.

Every time T**** politicizes disaster aid, he sends a message that cruelty is power and empathy is weakness. But he’s wrong. Americans don’t turn our backs on neighbors because they voted differently. We help because that’s who we are supposed to be and that’s what we are supposed to do.

When disaster strikes, there’s no red state or blue state, just families in need. The idea that your right to recover depends on your political allegiance is beneath contempt and beyond corruption. It’s moral bankruptcy.

And the only way to fight this travesty is to name it, shame it, demand it stop and accept no less. Because if we accept this, if we let a president decide who gets rescued and who’s left behind, we’ve already lost the soul of this country.