Before I begin, I would be remiss not to say, ‘this has been a week.’ The george santos indictment news was as delicious as it was blatantly obvious, and I don’t want to diminish the importance of it. However, we are once again thrust into the media storm surge of another trump presidential run, pour some out for the fallen homies who don’t have to listen to this shit. Let me give his full preface: The twice impeached, insurrectionist, indicted, liable for sexual abuse, fast food obsessed former president is running again for your vote. I’ve decided I might test out those libel laws he was hoping to, ‘open up’ when describing him this time.

The struggle for free speech is a constant one, and it is being hijacked by a disturbingly large and malevolent group of people on the right wing in American politics. The situation has stopped being, ‘many horrific things are protected by the first amendment, regardless of how much you disagree with them’ and started being: ‘on what platform can I say only horrific, untrue things of no redeemable value, while being legitimized in their proximity to factual material. There is now a market-driven, media fanned rather than responsibly panned, systematic malpractice to get that hateful dollar for their shareholders.

The CNN ‘town hall for trumpers’ this week was a genocide of facts, decency, responsible broadcasting and wholly unnecessary despite Anderson Cooper’s desperate attempt to dilute the incident. Before I go any further, I want to give Kaitlan Collins a pass because nobody should have to be on a stage with that human 55 gallon drum of bud light orange for an hour. I have never seen something so unprofessional and out of control be advertised and promoted as if it had some kind of merit for voters’ decision making. The backlash was totally justified, and I would have been embarrassed for the network could I not remember the apology tour they did after making trump happen in 2016.

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E-Van-Gelicals, let’s talk. You have got to be the most spineless, broken, talentless, toothless, moronic voting group of people to still support trump at this point right? But we all know that you’re not. I’m not going to name-call and disparage with exaggeration, although it’s easy and justified. I’m just gonna call it like I see it: you’re just terrible people, full stop. Religious people are some of the most hypocritical people on the planet. You love trump’s tax cut, you love his racism, you love his decade by decade wavering opinion on fetuses because it wavered in your favor this decade. You hate the poor, you are racist, and you hate women, as was made obvious by the fact that it was you laughing in the audience at a woman that trump was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming, as he defamed her publicly again. You attempt to mold the worst parts of the Old Testament into policy ideas, and ignore the entirety of the New Testament (For you lay people, ‘The Jesus Part’) and that is the reason you continue to support trump blindly despite all the evidence otherwise. There is no afterlife, so luckily you won’t all be frying.

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The First Amendment is far too important and so clear in what it provides even 200 years later that we can’t give up on it now. I am for every voice being heard, but as soon as you’ve seen them admit to maliciously disseminating untrue information, cut the cord. The fact that they promoted it, and profited from it, and were unapologetic about the response is a good reason to change the channel or medium for that matter. It’s a day like this that I wish Jon Stewart was still on tv four nights a week to see him filet this atrocity with enough jokes to make me forget for a moment that it’s my reality. Quoteth the prophet Snoop Dogg, ‘CNN can eat a big fat dick.’

I was having such a good Sunday, Manchester United advanced to the Semi-finals of the FA Cup, and I talked to my loving parents. I start watching Nascar at one of my favorite speedway tracks, Atlanta, and Denny Hamlin, my Toyota guy is leading. Then it goes to commercial and I am once again bombarded with the, ‘He Gets Us’ campaign. I am confused and frustrated by this advertising idea, it is something superfluous and illogical coming out of the right wing the way that usually left wing organizations are accused of things like, ‘Give Peace a Chance.’

I am not writing this to dispute the existence of Jesus Christ, just to provide a critique on the latest attempt to monetize and completely destroy his message as is described in the New Testament. Preface: I’m about to say a bunch of horrible things about religion because from the bottom of my L3 vertebrae I believe it is detrimental to the progress of humanity. My position for many years has been, call him Jesus Christ Philosopher, without the miracles, and I have no problem. I agree with much of the New Testament and adamantly believe Jesus, if resurrected again, (Christ, can we let the man sleep?) would be a Bernie voter.

What I cannot accept is the hijacking of religion in the United States to serve a political goal. This is what the right wing has been sanctimoniously doing for my entire lifetime, and it is despicable. The saying shouldn’t be, ‘As American as apple pie.’ The saying should be, ‘As American as the separation of church and state.’ Building on the greatest thinkers of all of history, the founding fathers created an imperfect republic that has endured over 300 years. Don’t swallow that bit from your preacher about this being a Christian nation, it was explicitly not. The early law of the United States shares don’t kill and don’t steal with the ten commandments, get over yourself, theologobats, or do I wanna say theologicians?

If I have to burn in eternity because we both read the same texts and they came to the conclusion that America is Christian and I came to the conclusion that we can be free from the intentional suspension of critical thinking that is faith in religion, I will take that chance. Growing up Catholic was so frustrating if you had 20 brain cells in your head during my timeline because it wasn’t even the child abuse that’s been going on for centuries, but the fact that our junior religion textbook had one paragraph on the crusades. I can’t let it go, religion forces you to be less than you can be mentally and when weaponized is dangerous.

I never want to crucify anyone, and if you want to have your religious candy because that is what gets you through the day, that’s fine and that is the right afforded to you by the constitution. However, when you do serious damage to the country, like electing Donald Trump, and getting 3 unqualified, lying justices put on the Supreme Court, that is a problem. The affected rights and healthcare of over 50% of the people in the country will have something to say for many years to come. I cannot believe that this is the way that this ends, but if you were trying to keep the country safe and secure with your vote in 2024, ‘What would Jesus do?’