A Fork in the Road By Jens Lelie for "Unsplash"
I haven't written very much on my blog over the last six months. A little more than half way through 2025, I became overwhelmed by the news of the day and how it had transformed our culture and our society in such a short time. Anger and fury seemed to have gripped many of us. Love of neighbor vanished from the hearts of many of my religious contemporaries. Close friends turned their backs on me, throwing vitriol over their shoulders as they exited my life. I was frantically trying to "inform" people of the factual material that I thought surely would convince them to put aside their bizarre political animosity, but most refused to read it. Instead, they called me names and falsely labeled me as a "lefty" and other more nasty monikers.
I have to point out that, when Satan moves into the White House, one cannot believably pretend that nothing untoward has happened. But it DID throw me for a loop and I haven't done much blogging since this started. I needed to find my bearings
The primary question is whether or not I should allow this governmental chaos to claim my attention, instead of just continuing on with my meditation and contemplation and ignoring the circus in Washington, D.C., no matter how crazy it gets.
Members of Donald Trump's cult will complain at my characterizing him as Satan, but my guess is that, while his resolutely committed cult members will always refuse to see anything wrong with almost anything he does, those who voted for him because they believed that he was the lesser of two evils, or for some other particular reason, are probably getting ready to concede that there are many problems with his administration because he is an inveterate, constant liar, and his actions have caused chaos for all of us.
by D.J. Paine on "Unsplash"
I was alarmed by his reversals to the opposite of his campaign promises. He campaigned on "no new wars" then went on to attempt to start several himself. We are in the middle of one right now - in Iran, which he decided to start bombing about a month ago.
(It has been posited that the primary driving force that impels Trump toward war is that he intends to use an active war as the method by which he could suspend the next elections indefinitely, and thereby escape the criminal prosecutions that are sure to immediately follow upon his leaving office. He intimated this intention during his public statements many times, saying things to the effect that his followers should be sure and get out the vote for him and then it would be the last time they would "have to" vote for him because he would remain in office from that time forward.
It alarmed me that few citizens were commenting on these wild reversals and that none of his voters seemed to be phased by them. In fact, I watched in horror as, instead of discussing the topic in any kind of rational manner, they would attack the character of every news outlet, politician, government official or Democrat who dared to point out Trump's inconsistencies or, in fact, any defect of his whatsoever.
I wondered how all these people managed to graduate High School without absorbing the lessons in Constitutional theory and whether or not I was supposed to be spending time warning my fellow citizens of the implications of all this. Then I would remind myself that this is not my business, in more ways than one. I am not an educator or a politician or an activist. I am a contemplative, and as a contemplative, I have my own path.
By Maria Oswalt On "Unsplash"
Government actions had also begun to affect my own life and the lives of my friends. Trump had campaigned on lowering prices of groceries "on day one" but, because of the actions of his administration, grocery prices have continued to skyrocket to the point where many of us are having to make drastic cuts to our typical purchases. Like most of the seniors I know, I live on a fixed income and, at the end of the month, even my freezer is bare, which has not been the customary condition in the years I have lived here. We have had a sharp uptick in the number of homeless people in the town where I live and I wondered, at times, if I would become one of them.
I am also concerned for our beloved little animals. I had to start calculating the exact number of cans of vegetables and salmon to make my dog's food, so I don't run out before the end of the month, and I am also having to stress myself trying to organize my menus a month ahead of time, despite cooking being an extremely painful activity, due to chronic disabling conditions in my joints, making it torture to have to stand in the kitchen.
Charlemagne, BELLY UP! by Silver Rose
Many people have said that they have had to cut meat out of their diet entirely. Nor can they relax with a pleasant after-dinner drive because the gas prices have also become challenging to the average budget. Our political situation is beginning to appear to be quite serious. I wonder at times if I should be speaking up more about it - but to what end? I am well informed, and I have a basic working knowledge about how our government operates, but this is not my specialty, and in order to be able to speak authoritatively on this topic, I typically will have to spend time gathering sources that are good enough to convince other folks, even after I have informed myself to the degree that I already find necessary.
Any effort to educate myself about all these political topics means that I am taking time away from my primary interest, which is in the spiritual realm, and I do not really think that political commentary is what God wants from me. But my growing concern over the instability of our government kept pulling at my heart strings.
Grocery Display Case by Alan Alves on "Unsplash"
One issue of great concern was the refusal of the Trump administration to release the Epstein material. Because of the many years and many victims, the files are vast and contain the names of many prominent men and women who are running the country in some sense.
Trump received the support of many people on both sides of the political divide because of his promise that he would immediately release all the Epstein files. As soon as he took office, however, his Administration pushed back and it has been a struggle to get those things published. Despite a law being passed that they MUST be released by a certain date, the date came and went. Nothing happened to force his hand. Something like 10 percent of the files have been released, and all of them redacted so completely that there are some pages on which only one or two words appear.
At the same time, we are told that Trump's name appears more than a million times in the entire collection, which belies his claim that the two of them weren't close.
It is hard for me not to react when Trump additionally keeps asserting that he walked away from Epstein long before he actually did that. Everyone knew what Epstein was all about. We know that Trump was in Epstein's inner circle, and Epstein himself said that Trump was his best friend. I further believe that Epstein's death in prison was not a suicide but obviously a murder, but no amount of hand-wringing is going to uncover the truth. There is a lot more to it than we will probably ever know.
Files by George Diama On "Unsplash"
Trump's lies about the topic of Epstein are the most ridiculous. There are photographs, videos, and the testimony of many women. Try as he might, however, he cannot shake this scandal because everyone, no matter their political orientation, is fed up with pedophiles getting away with savaging our children and grandchildren. While I do suspect that Epstein was far more sophisticated and prolific in that arena than the baby-faced Trump of the 1980's, Trump will not escape punishment for these crimes.
Epstein was much more dangerous than Trump and more active in the pursuit of underaged sex objects, because he seemed to be almost addicted to this lifestyle, and he pursued it as if it was his JOB (and perhaps it WAS an employment, judging from the number of wealthy people connected to him.)
Epstein and Trump, best friends
Looking at the picture of him and Jeffrey (above), Trump looks to be more of a doughy youngster than a sex beast, despite being 11 years older than Epstein.
I could probably do an entire blog post about Trump's friendship with Epstein, but that would be playing into Satan's hands! He would love it if I were to meditate on HIM instead of Christ.
I will just say, however, that, in the interest of fairness, I feel compelled to point out that what Epstein was doing, with the bizarre sex gambits,, parties, etc., was an epidemic among the famous and wealthy during the late 60's through the 1980's, at the very least. Perhaps it is still going on. But neither he nor Trump invented this sex-crazed world view.
We know, though, that neither Trump nor Epstein is responsible for the vulgar, hideous and sinful destruction of innocence but that it is Satan himself who does this through these people, and this is what we need to remember when placing blame. It is hard not to despise Trump and the other men and women who have hurt these children in a manner that will likely remain with them for the rest of their lives. We are inclined to publicly excoriate them, but is that what we are all called to do? Perhaps in doing so their reputations may precede them and thereby save some of the innocents, but I am conflicted about this. Each of us has our role in the life of our community. Very few live as contemplative hermits, and it occurs to me that I need to be a bit more observant of that fact.
The more crazy things have become, the more I feel that Satan is deliberately stealing my attention away from where it is supposed to rest - on Christ. By paying attention to every salacious news story, I felt some instability and some discomfort at having to have any of my attention resting on the evil one.
One day I WILL write something about how our society has degraded itself, starting in the 1970's and how we really need to go back to a more innocent time. Sexual profligacy is not good for anyone, though we will have a hard time convincing many modern people who cling to this particular type of sin and call it "freedom."
Yes, sexual immorality is sinful - but what does "sinful" mean, other than something that is toxic to our spiritual selves? I think a lot of people are confused about the nature of sin in this particular arena of our lives and I would like to write about it one day when I feel up to the task. I know one thing, though, you cannot force people to be holy. One must inspire them. Once our society reached the point where the institution of marriage bears only a ghostly resemblance to its former status, and young people are using sexual congress as a means of becoming acquainted, resurrecting that institution and the ideals of purity are very difficult.
Woman Praying
by
Josh Applegate
for "Unsplash"
Looking back on the history that formed Trump:
By the time sexual license became celebrated in the entertainment industry, movies and television served as a vehicle of propaganda that essentially brainwashed the American population. Several historians make the point that Trump's approach to life was cooked in the foul cauldron of the 1970s. He wasn't friends with Epstein until sometime in the mid to late 1980's. But the 1970's formed Trump in a way that made him more susceptible to Epstein's debauchery, even though Epstein was a decade younger than he was. You could say that the decadence of the 1970's prepared the ground for Epstein.
If we lived in a different time in which one's status and the admiration of society was determined by how truly one adhered to a an honest Catholic sensibility around sexuality, marriage and family, then Trump's insecurities and flattery-prone psyche might not have been so receptive to Epstein's lecherous world view. I say this because my impression of Trump is that status and the admiration of others is more important to him than anything, and to whatever degree he joined in with Epstein's immoral self-indulgence had more to do with the massaging of his ego than anything else.
I do think that a much-needed change to our societal "norms" might have deterred some of Trump's behaviors and the degree to which he might have joined in with Epstein's aberrant activities.
With regard to those societal norms; I was in a position to have some insight into this milieux directly because, in the 1970's, I was very involved in the television industry which plays a big part in forming the consciousness of young Americans. I was writing television story treatments for shows like the original "Charlie's Angels, " and doing episodic show development for Aaron Spelling, who had asked me to submit my ideas for a new television series. I was also employed for a couple of years at a start-up literary agency and I dabbled in television production at 20th Century Fox.
Hollywood Boulevard
By
Benoit Debaix
for "Unsplash"
Obviously, I was familiar with the famous and monied "movers and shakers" of the entertainment industry of that era - at least on the West Coast, and I had to fend off a lot of the frightening perversion that felt like an epidemic. (I remember working as the personal secretary for a very famous actor at his home office during a short temporary job where, even though his wife was typically home all day, the actor was constantly "hitting on me" and I just had to quit that job. He kept asking the agency to send me back to him and I refused. It was a scary time. Men had become predatory.)
Abortion was legalized in 1973. Coming just on the heels of the invention and distribution of the birth control pill in the 1960's, those two factors gave the young female population the relief of a sure-fire method of avoiding pregnancy, thereby eliminating one of the prime aversions to behaving in a "loose" manner.
By
Iryna Studenets
on "Unsplash"
All of those influences, combined with the hippy dippy "free love" propaganda of the 60's, resulted in a huge surge of sexual experimentation that neither Trump nor Epstein invented. My impression is that Epstein developed what I believe to be an absolute addiction for perversion, and he had enough money to create an entire industry out of it. Fame and money can endow a man, who otherwise has only a passing attractiveness, with an allure that could conceivably act like a "sex trap" for young women.
Anyway, I am pretty sure that Trump was acting out just like many other men of his era. It does not make his actions acceptable but we do not have to pretend as if he was unique among his peers. The lifestyles of the rich and famous are, to a great extent, a filthy quagmire of decadence.
By
Igor Omilaev
on "Unsplash"
As far as his lies and misdirection are concerned:
Trump is so proud of his ability to accomplish his aims without pushback from anyone else that he cannot resist publicly bragging about his dishonest methods, admitting in a recent speech that he is calling the war in Iran a "military action" because he was told that he had to get permission if it was a war. It IS a war. He is just lying about it.
Here is a clip of his admission: (You may have to copy and paste into your browser's address bar to get this.)
I cannot stop thinking about how it says in the Bible that Satan is the "father of all lies." The stakes are very high, and it appears that the evil one is running the show, but the committed MAGA crowd are still defending it all. Anyone that dares to inform them is immediately attacked. I have never seen such vulgarity and hostility being thrown about by ersatz church ladies.
For some time, I have been feeling a growing alarm, and thus I gravitated toward expressing my fears in my writing and my Facebook posts, but it recently occurred to me that perhaps this is what has to happen in order for the will of God to be understood by Americans.
One of Trump's promises that he DID keep was to be a "dictator from day one." The oppressive monarchy of England, against which we raged in the Revolutionary War, will be nothing compared to Trump and his wretched, grasping family. He has already thrown his name over those of our premier American heroes, and has sprayed his ridiculous gold embellishments over every monument in his view, conquering our dignified American institutions and monuments with Trumpian Kitsch. His planned takeover is nearly complete.
All he would have to do is make good on his threat to never leave office, and our country may never recover. We have already sunk from the richest, most powerful and most comfortable country the world has ever seen, to a petty, isolated dictatorship against which our former allies are beginning to turn their backs.
It occurs to me that perhaps the Lord may have found it necessary to demonstrate to hard hearted Americans that when He said we were to love our Neighbors, he meant it. When he said we were to be kind to the stranger, the immigrant, because we ourselves were once strangers in Egypt, He meant it. He did NOT mean the opposite - and it is in the opposite direction we are hurtling.
Maybe He needs us to experience the natural consequence of our actions in order to understand our folly.
I.C.E. is killing people. The government is using sneaky methods to find, capture and incarcerate otherwise innocent people whose only crimes are a lack of paperwork.
Meanwhile, the jobs to which immigrants typically gravitate are going wanting. Kitchen work, in particular, is something that has been drastically affected in my town. Many restaurants are closing at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and not opening again until the next day. They don't have enough dishwashers, prep cooks, sous chefs and cleaners. Any job that does not rely upon a good grasp of the English language is left empty.
Trump's administration is violating primary ruling considerations based on the Constitution, which is the spirit of our society. Dozens of laws are being flouted, and the government officials currently in the majority are just letting it happen. Maybe the natural result of all this has to be left to play out.
Trump's MAGA is the engine behind all this, and while they are violating the will of God, plainly expressed in the Bible, they are claiming to be doing the will of God at the same time! They resolutely refuse to see this and probably never will, until the results are felt by themselves. They do not care when other people are suffering and dying.
Part of the consequences of our folly is that, while all this madness is happening in our country, the rest of the world is slowly turning its back on us, banding together for the new reality. They can no longer rely upon America to be the brave and morally superior older brother that would rescue them in times of trouble. Instead, we have become the bully of the household and we can't be trusted.
MAGA thinks that NATO is required to defend whatever Trump does, but they do not bother to gain an understanding of the true nature of the relationship. If we were to have been attacked, then our allies were bound to defend us and protect us. But there is no such agreement that they would protect us when WE attack someone else.
Trump has attacked Iran, bombing them out of the blue, with no provocation whatsoever. Our allies are not required to help us do it. Nor are they responsible to go on suicide missions in the Straight of Hormuz so that our ships can safely pass through that narrow passage. Trump has shot us in our own foot, and everyone else has turned their backs on us.
One of 7 miniatures from a 1470 breviary
Photograph kept at
McGill Library
on "Unsplash"
If the Democrats were ABLE to stop them, Trump and MAGA would simply blame them for the whole thing. But Democrat hands are tied and they can do nothing but watch Trump sink us all, and maybe this is the way it is SUPPOSED to be.
This lesson will be a permanent one. Our allies will never trust us again - not for decade upon decade. Our premier trading position will be lost forever. We will sink into poverty. Immigrants will no longer WANT to come here. They won't want to work here or live here or create businesses here. They won't feel safe to do so. And it will be entirely the fault of Trump and MAGA.
Even if I thought that I was called to be another one of those people spreading and analyzing the news, what can I really do about any of this? I am in my 70's, poor, disabled, in a wheelchair, and stuck at home. The majority of my life is over, and it is time for me to prepare to meet my maker - something I started 22 years ago, and which I cannot abandon. The clock is ticking.
On the way to the extermination camp
by Karsten Winegeart
on "Unsplash"
There is another pertinent point. Jesus was not a political leader. He did not want to be the Jewish Messiah. He knew that his throne would be a cross and his crown would be a crown of thorns. This was always his destiny, not politics. He did not come as a king. If I am to follow Christ, I need to go where he goes - and he does not go into the halls of government. He enters the hearts of the faithful, and then THOSE people bring their faith and the guiding light of Christ into all their endeavors.
In order to properly join myself with him, in my contemplative mission, I must put my attention on Him, pray with Him and stay with Him. In my own actions in the world, I attempt to obey Him as much as I am able. I will love my neighbor, and I will be kind to the stranger. But instead of praying that Trump and MAGA will be stopped, I pray that I may always be obedient to the Will of God, that I never try to circumvent it, and that I always stay open to it, because I now realize that sometimes the will of God is to stand by and let the disobedient humans damn themselves with their perverse noncompliance, and suffer the consequences.
After all, the message of Christ is for the willing. He does not force Himself on anyone. He gives you His message of Love, and if you Love Him, you obey Him. If you work against His instructions, you suffer the consequences. Hell is clearly meant for such people. Jesus certainly talked enough about that. I am sure He was not lying about Hell.
By
Mauro Fossati
on "Unsplash"
If I point to anything, I am supposed to point to Christ. I am not called to point to the evil and name it, nor to shame the person who hurls evil at me.
By
Kateryna Hliznitsova
on "Unsplash"
So I have decided to make the effort to remain solidly established in Christ instead of reacting so much to the world, even while the world goes mad around us all, even when people are hurling hate at me (something which has happened at an alarming regularity over the last few years.)
Consequently, while I work to remain rooted in His love in the contemplative life to which I am committed, I will endeavor to leave the majority of the political commentary to the experts whose job it is. They will do a better job of it than me as it is not my path.
No matter how much the news terrifies me, I will work to restrain the impulse to run screaming through the public square alerting the population to the impending doom.
Please pray for me as I pray for you.
God bless us all!
Silver Rose
