He's huge

It's a kerfuffle barely visible in the rearview mirror.

Bernie Sanders is on CNN. He's with Erin Burnett, when Ms. Burnett asks him something about General Flynn. Maybe you've seen this. Ms. Burnett claims the President seems in the dark about what happened, at least that's how he acted when he asked aboard Air Force 1 on his way to his Florida retreat.

Senator Sanders says, "Maybe he was listening to CNN, Fake News."

It's a joke, and he tells Ms. Burnett that much; but then technical difficulties break in, Sanders disappears and the network takes us to a commercial. After the ads, Erin Burnett returns, apologizes, repeats the "fake news" line, and the two of them continue their discussion.

Not long after, our Commander-in-chief gets on his Twitter account and announces to the world that even Bernie Sanders, something of an enemy of his, to say the least, gets dusted off for criticizing CNN.

Now our President is either truly mean-spirited, a bald-faced liar, or some zesty marriage of the two. Some conservative news outlets picked up his version of the story and trumpeted it abroad as if what Mr. President said was gospel truth. An outfit named "The Free-Thought Project" summarized what happened this way: "At this point, the ugliness of using ‘technical difficulties’ as a weapon to silence interviewees not in direct alignment with CNN is plain to see — Sanders dared deem the vanilla media behemoth Fake News, albeit perhaps in jest."

A flat-out lie.

I'm sure the technical difficulties were greatly regretted by both Ms. Burnett and CNN, but to say Bernie Sanders was booted off the network for saying what he did--clearly in jest, clearly a reference to Trump himself--is just plain nuts. It's dead wrong. It's not one bit true.

No matter. You're reading this now--if you're still with it--because Trump fills the air with tweeted flack every day. He's not "in" the news, he IS the news. He steals all the oxygen, period. He destroyed 17 Republican challengers by refusing to allow them ink. He keeps the entire bottle himself, constantly making news, often by lying.

Hard as it may be to believe, a new Quinnipiac Poll, released just yesterday, says Americans now, finally, have come to believe the news media more than they do the President. The man's approval rating has now fallen, by Quinnipiac's measure, to just 38 percent. Really, that's disastrous because we face judgments that have to be made. Just this week, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, said there were contacts between Trump's staff all during the election, even though Trump's staff says there were not. “I cannot say that all, but a number of them maintained contacts with Russian representatives,” Mr. Ryabkov said.

So, pray tell, who do we believe? Donald Trump falsehoods litter the landscape, making judgments impossible because both parties sport ridiculously long noses.

How on earth will we get through this? "It is likely that no living person in history has ever been as famous as Mr. Trump is right now," says Farhad Manjoo in this morning's New York Times. And the man, our President, fabricates the truth almost daily.

Even though this country is split open like a ripe watermelon, in a perilous way he keeps us together, conjuring up equally white-hot quantities of hate and love. He rages against a media that gives him galaxies of space because we can't stop staring. He's a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon filling our skies. "Here a Trump, there a Trump, everywhere a Trump, Trump." But there's no Old McDonald-had-a-farm; there's only the Donald who right now has a whole lot than a farm. He's got an entire country.

Maybe he'll deflate. Maybe leave. Maybe he'll just settle down and learn to be President.

Maybe real life will reset. Keep hoping.

I'm tired.

Growing into the office

Even before the Rebs fired on Fort Sumter, there were two distinct motivations for the Feds to go to war. One reason was slavery--the "peculiar" institution already erased from most Western societies and cultures, but still very much alive and kicking here.

More than a century later, it's helpful to remember that opposition to slavery, however, was not the most pressing motivation for going to war. Keeping the Union together was. The Union Army was full of men who went to their deaths believing that no black man would or should ever be granted the right to vote. 

Abraham Lincoln himself was thoroughly anti-slavery and said his much for years before becoming President in 1860. Although he came from a region of southern Illinois known for its sympathy for its slave-holding neighbors, as early as 1837 Lincoln and one other Illinois legislator were the only reps who objected to an anti-abolition measure that passed overwhelmingly. 

So many years later, it may come as a surprise--it did to me!--to know that significant differences existed between those who opposed slavery and those who campaigned for abolition. Some historians argue that when Lincoln was inaugurated he hated slavery, opposed it, wanted it ended. He was anti-slavery.

But he wasn't an abolitionist, wasn't someone who wanted equal rights for the slaves, for the millions of African-Americans who'd been brought here against their will, treated and regarded as animals. 

In 1860, President Abraham Lincoln simply believed, like many others, that the end of American's "peculiar" institution was soon to come. He wasn't in league with John Brown or any of the wild-eyed New England abolitionists, or those passionate believers who carried the cross of Christ into battle. Equal rights was simply unthinkable. 

But in office, during the war, Lincoln changed. Why? Some historians argue that when the Union effort included over 200,000 former slaves, it became impossible for him to believe that those patriots (as in the 1989 film Glory) could be anything less than American citizens once the fighting ceased. 

Lincoln himself believed that his signing the Emancipation Proclamation was his most important contribution to American history and culture. “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper,” he said. “If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it."

It's difficult not to argue that Abraham Lincoln grew into the office he held. The Civil War--the death of thousands of Americans on both sides, the destruction wrought by almost five years of bloody battles--changed him and made Lincoln a more powerful presence in American history.

Those of us who believed Donald Trump was not fit to be President have no choice now but to trust that what happened to Abraham Lincoln can happen once again when we inaugurate this nation's 47th President. Trump is not about to be deposed or to quit. He is our President, as hard as that is for me to say. His disdain for the CIA does not mark any progress down that road. He continues to lie about most everything. 

But people grow into the offices they hold. Even Lincoln did. That's what I have to continue to tell myself.

Morning Thanks--Vets at Standing Rock

It was an unusual prayer request. Most all of the members of the little church up the road are steadily getting up there in age, so requests almost always have hospital settings. Most people know other people who are dying, often relatives. It's fair to say, that political consciousness isn't high, in part because life itself is the major concern.

So yesterday when the widow a pew over raised her hand and said what she did, her prayer request was unusual, but understandable too. It had to do with the veterans on their way to North Dakota, a couple thousand of them, she reminded us, to protect the protesters. "We should be praying for them," she said, robustly, holding a little lapful of attentive grandson who seemed greatly satisfied with his binkie.

The standoff at Standing Rock started months and months ago. There's nothing new about it. Yesterday, after church, the whole congregation could have got into cars and taken a gravel road three miles north to see the swath where the black snake has been already laid beneath precious Iowa topsoil thoughtfully returned to the corn and soybean fields the pipeline transgressed late summer. 

I'd wondered about the news story of the veterans. I'd wondered what locals might think about 2000 vets heading up to all those protesters thereby giving the whole movement a cutting edge it hadn't had as long as it was only a bunch of Indians. In our church, I didn't remember anyone asking for prayers for the Lakota people. After all, right here, a block from church, dozens of travel trailers belonging to the Dakota Access pipe crew inhabited downtown for months. The workers were honored guests.

What changed up north was the attention of "the veterans," a couple thousand of them, due to arrive yesterday in North Dakota. What charged that grandma's passion was safety for "the veterans." She didn't mention the protesters. She wanted the Lord to look out for the veterans. 

Just so happens that I know a veteran who's been there more than once in the last several months, one of the protesters, in fact. I rather doubt local law enforcement fears her much, nor did she go up to Standing Rock simply to protect peace-loving protesters. She's no strong arm, after all. She's 96 years old, a protester herself. 

She's Lakota, from the Cheyenne River Reservation, just south of Standing Rock. She's a highly decorated vet who served with Allied forces once a beachhead was established at Normandy, once it was safe enough for her and her unit of army nurses to put up a makeshift hospital on ground only recently freed from the Nazis. The French people rewarded her with a medal for her heroism a few years ago, flew her to Normandy to pin that medal on her.

That vet's been to Standing Rock before.

I think it's wonderful that the grandma with the toddler asked for the prayers she did. It wasn't all that much later yesterday when my phone lit up with news service headlines about the Corps of Engineers determining the time had come to search out alternative routes. Reportedly, great rejoicing erupted at the protesters' camp. 

Maybe it was that grandma's request that registered with the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Or else it may have been the rabbi from Oregon, who told the protesters yesterday that what was happening right there before their eyes was a "battle in a greater war. It’s a war for the hearts of humanity. And the only way to win that war is through prayer," she said. "You can’t win by fighting. They can take away your gun. But they can’t take away prayer."

Today, it's still Obama; tomorrow it'll be Trump. Who knows what'll happen? After all, you can bet Trump's got money in oil.

Just the same, what happened yesterday in North Dakota was an answer to prayer. I don't know if the Army nurse was out there yesterday in the cold--I don't think so. But I do know her well enough to know that today she's rejoicing. 

And so am I. This morning's thanks is simple: peace.