Being Ourselves
Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each man will have to bear his own load.
—Galatians 6:1-4
No Christian should think of themselves as more pious or superior than any other person. We are all children of God, and we are all unique in our way. We are called to love one another with affection; to be kind, compassionate, hospitable, and gracious towards one another—forgiving one another and honoring each other above ourselves. Christians have the uncanny ability to turn on one another at the very time when they are needed most. For many LGBTQ+ individuals, we are most vulnerable when we come out. We never know how someone is going to react. For some of us, we know it’s going to go badly like it did when my mother found out I was gay. For others, we hope they will react with love and kindness. Sometimes, we get the opposite of what we expect, which can be good or bad. For many of us, that means our sexuality is rejected by the person to whom we came out. It is our most vulnerable moment, and all too often, people use the Bible as a reason to reject us. When we need them most, they act the most unchristian.
Legalists and biblical literalists apply the law more harshly toward others than toward themselves. They concentrate on their strengths and others’ weaknesses. Thus the scribes and Pharisees were ready to stone the woman guilty of adultery (John 8:2-11), yet they were insensitive to their breaches of the law by taking advantage of the helpless, the neglect of their responsibilities to their own families, or their persecution of the righteous. In their desire to maintain at least the appearance of severity toward sin, those with a strict interpretation of the Bible during Paul’s time had become calloused and even cruel toward those who had stumbled in their Christian walk. Paul put it this way in Romans 12:3, “For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.” Excessive adherence to law has no interest in reducing the burdens which we must endure. Instead, it produces limitations and then a refusal to assist those on whom they are imposed. Jesus contrasted Himself with the scribes and Pharisees with respect to burdens.
When correctly carried out, Christian love bears one another’s burdens and can cover a multitude of sins. Christian love seeks to encourage one another towards living true and experiencing spiritual growth, and Paul gives us biblical guidance on what to do when others are in trouble or needs help. First, we are to be sure that we look at ourselves before we judge others. John 8:7 says, “…“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone…” I know it is cliché, but we must ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” because we should do our best to emulate Jesus which means treating each other in a spirit of gentleness and love.
We should take the time to make an honest analysis of our own lives, instead of merely comparing ourselves to the people around us. Then, we can truly enjoy what we see God accomplishing through us, in real humility. Paul’s use of the word “boast” is not about bragging or a sinful pride in ourselves. It’s about honest measurement of what is right. It is what makes us unique. Frida Kahlo once said, “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world, but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.” As LGBTQ+ Christians and our allies, we may seem strange to those who excessively adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible. When another Christian judges us because we do not fit their image of a perfect Christian, they are not following the teachings of Jesus but are being hypocrites.
An Afternoon Ordeal
I haven’t mentioned this before because I think I complain about my aches and pains too much, but I have had a pain in the left side of my hip for about a week now. It hurts to sit, to stand, or lie down. The short of it is, it hurts. I had googled what outer hip pain might be, and the most common answer was bursitis. Finally, yesterday morning, I decided I needed to see my doctor, but what an ordeal. My doctor can’t see me until October 12. They tried to suggest one of the other providers at the clinic, but I shot that down. I have not had good experiences with any of the others except my doctor’s father, who is now retired. When I called, I was told the nurse would call me back. She called, but just as I was starting a meeting I had to attend. Luckily, I was on mute and didn’t need to be heard, but as soon as I got the meeting going on my end and stepped away to talk to the nurse, my computer crashed unbeknownst to me. That’s when my boss, who was also on this virtual meeting, tried texting and calling as I was trying to talk to the nurse.
The bottom line with the nurse was the same thing I’d heard from the receptionist earlier, and she suggested the ExpressCare Clinic or my physical therapist. The nurse wasn’t sure though I could see the physical therapist without a referral, which couldn’t be done over the phone. I have a good relationship with my physical therapist and already knew I had standing orders to see her. She’s also told me she’d take care of the paperwork to get the necessary referral to take care of any other issues I had. I’d initially gone to her for neck pain, and she helped with my headaches. I just couldn’t afford to see her every time I had a headache. Anyway, I had to get off the phone with the nurse and take care of the meeting’s technical issues, but my laptop crashed again. It could have had something to do with the coffee I spilled on it this morning and not having the power cord, but it just wouldn’t work. I finally gave up. The other people in the meeting didn’t need me anyway.
Once I finally got back to my office, I called my physical therapist’s office and left a message about what I needed. Just as I was taking care of some stuff at my desk, the nurse called back and told me she had talked to my doctor, who said I needed to go to the ExpressCare and did not need to wait. So, that’s what I did. Because of pandemic rules, I had to drive up and park at the ExpressCare Clinic, and then call to get authorization to come inside, but just as I pulled up to the clinic, my physical therapist called me back. I explained to her my issue and told her I was at the ExpressCare Clinic. She told me to go ahead and see someone at ExpressCare but that she would block out a time Monday at 7:30 am for me to come to see her if I needed to and to call her back after my appointment. So, I called the ExpressCare Clinic to let them know I was there and did all my registering for my visit over the phone. Then, I waited. It was about 2 o’clock at this point, and I had to stay in my car for an hour before the clinic called back and said an exam room was ready and I could come inside. They took my temperature and all that pandemic procedure stuff and then took me to an exam room to wait for another half hour.
Finally, the PA came in and asked some questions, then poked and prodded around my hip before deciding to have an X-ray done. Off I go to get an X-ray of my hip. After changing into paper shorts and getting the X-rays taken, I was taken back to my exam room, where I could get dressed again. Eventually, the PA came back and told me that I had bursitis in my hip, but she was waiting on the radiology report before saying more. Out the door she went again. I forgot to mention, I had been in saunas cooler than this exam room. When the PA came back with the radiology report, she showed me that not only did I have bursitis, but I also had the early stages of arthritis. She said I would need to follow up with my doctor for a corticosteroid shot, but in the meantime, I needed to see a physical therapist. So, I told her about my conversation with my physical therapist, and she sent over a referral just in case one was needed.
When I left, I called my physical therapist back, but it was already 4:30 pm, so no one answered the phone, and I left a message. I already knew no one would be at my doctor’s office answering the phone at 4:30, so I will call them this morning and get the earliest appointment I can. Geez, what an ordeal. It took all afternoon for something I’d already googled and found out the same thing. At least, though, I hope to get some relief from my physical therapist and later from my doctor. I’m just getting old and decrepit at this point.
A National Disgrace
The first presidential debate was, thanks to Trump’s participation, anything but presidential. Trump was a national disgrace. Even by the bizarre standards of the Trump era, the debate was a painful tour of Trump’s erratic psyche, as he bounced from football to Biden’s alma mater to the size of his crowds. In one sense, at least, Trump was successful: he made it all about him, which highlighted all the horrible things about him. It wasn’t what Trump wanted. Trump’s strategy all along has been to create chaos, and that’s what he did during the debate. Taken individually, Trump’s statements were ridiculous and irrational. Taken together, it was a pathologically incoherent, repetitious, incessant, and obsessive assault on Biden and reality. Trump believes that he can dominate anyone, and that was clearly his intent during the debate. Instead, it made him look like an incoherent fool.
His strategy was a risky bet for Trump, something he often takes in his business dealings and always fails. Trump was appealing to his base, but his base is not big enough to get him re-elected. All you need to do is look at the polls. Because Trump can’t focus on anything for an extended period of time, he threw wild punches at Biden including taking a shot at Biden’s son Hunter. When Biden was talking about his late son Beau’s military service, Trump attacked Biden’s other son, Hunter, and brought up his past cocaine use. It backfired. “My son, like a lot of people you know at home, he had a drug problem,” Biden said. “He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him.” In contrast to Trump, Biden kept coming back to his core messages: primarily, that the election is about the voters’ needs not about Trump’s needs/ego. But Biden was also blunt about how he viewed the president, calling him a racist, a liar, and a clown – something that would have been unheard of in any previous presidential debate.
Trump made some very serious errors pandering to his base. Notably, Trump never bothered to refute the racist label. Chris Wallace, the moderator, asked Trump to condemn violent right-wing groups and white supremacists, and Biden goaded him to call out the Proud Boys, who are neo-fascist, racist, and anti-LGBTQ+. Needless to say, Trump never condemned them. Instead, he said, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” STAND BY? Stand fucking by? He was telling his supporters to wait for now, but attack if he doesn’t win the election, and the Proud Boys are now using Trump’s words as part of a new logo. He is building up his own Blackshirts (the paramilitary wing of the Mussolini’s Italian National Fascist Party) and Brownshirts (the SA or paramilitary wing of Hitler’s Nazi Party). Yesterday, Trump claimed he didn’t know who the Proud Boys were, which means he’s either a liar or stupid. I’m betting on both. He could have just used Google like normal people do. Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs posted after the debate that he was “standing by,” and he said the president “basically said to go fuck them up.”
What’s more, Trump would not urge his followers to remain peaceful as votes are counted, including if there are delays in reporting the results. “I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that’s what has to happen,” Trump said, adding, “If it’s a fair election, I am 100% on board. If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.” When Trump was asked directly whether he will tell his voters not to engage in any sort of violence or “civil unrest” while the votes are being counted on and beyond November 3, the President of the United States not only refused to do so but also reiterated his call to his supporters to go to polling places and “watch” people casting votes. Furthermore, when he was asked whether he was going to tell his people to take to the streets if the election results are either not decided on November 3 or not decided in his favor, Trump responded, “It means you have a fraudulent election. You’re sending out 80 million ballots.” Trump is telling Americans loud and clear that he will only accept the election if he wins, and he’s going to do everything he can to encourage his followers to intimidate voters. These statements about not accepting the election are the only thing he said Tuesday night that is probably true. The rest was lie after lie after lie.
Trump tried his best to paint Biden as a socialist, or at least beholden to the “radical left.” But on issue after issue—”Medicare for All,” defunding the police, the Green New Deal—Biden disavowed policies the Trump campaign has tried to attach to him. Biden just restated his positions, which line up with the middle of the electorate, far more than Trump’s policy positions do. I think that had the potential to harm Biden with the progressive left, particularly when it comes to the Green New Deal, but only if Trump hadn’t gone quite so, well, Trump and made a complete fool of himself.
While this might not have been Biden’s greatest debate, it is not his fault. Trump’s constant interruptions and Wallace’s total ineptitude in getting control of the debate made Tuesday night a disgrace. I will credit Wallace with asking some tough questions, but what Wallace really needed was a mute button for Trump’s microphone. (Something that is rumored to be considered by the Commission on Presidential Debates [CPD] for the final two debates.) Biden tried to play by the rules, and he did remarkably well under the circumstances. Biden said several times, “Will you shut up, man?” and called Trump a “clown” more than once. Biden missed an opportunity when it came to the discussion of the pandemic. For example, when Trump was talking about the role of masks in preventing the spread of the coronavirus, Biden should have interjected more forcefully to talk about Trump’s largely maskless rallies. When Trump claimed his rallies caused no harm, Biden should have pointed out the spike in coronavirus cases after Trump’s pitifully attended Tulsa rally. Some pundits are saying that Biden missed the opportunity to say whether he would add justices to the Supreme Court — “pack the court” — if Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is confirmed, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Biden was absolutely right to refuse to say one way or the other. I agree with his response that if he had made a statement on adding justices to the Supreme Court, it would dominate the campaign for the rest of the election.
The bottom line is simple: Trump’s bullying, cajoling, and constant interruptions in the first 2020 general election debate with Biden on Tuesday night made the whole affair confusing and difficult to follow. Trump looked and acted like a petulant child not getting his way and lies when he gets caught doing wrong. If the CPD enacts new rules that Trump doesn’t like, I predict that Trump will refuse to debate Biden anymore. He will claim that the process is unfair towards him, even though he was the one disregarding the rules most often. I suspect that Trump will refuse to play by rules that are fair, and he will take his toys and leave, going back to his dangerous and largely maskless campaign rallies.
The Art of Tax Evasion
In 2009, I had my first teaching job; it paid pennies. If you factor in my debt, mostly from student loans, I may have been just above the poverty level. I was forced to pay nearly half my gross income in student loan payments. I was forced to have two jobs: teaching grades 7-12 at a private school and working as an adjunct instructor at a local college. Neither paid well. I was still barely making ends meet. When I did my taxes for that year, I owed over a thousand dollars because having two jobs put me in a higher tax bracket, and neither job had taken out enough tax from my paychecks. I didn’t have the money, and I was scared to death. I finally scrounged up enough money to pay my federal income tax though it meant I didn’t always get to eat, and I still could not come up with enough to pay my Alabama state income tax. They eventually garnished that amount from my 2010 tax refund. I’d gotten a minuscule tax refund that year, because I had lost my second job which lowered my income drastically.
Therefore, it makes me angry when politicians run on a platform of reducing taxes; it’s usually Republicans, and the only people who get the reduced taxes are the wealthy. The poorest among us rarely get tax cuts, and yes, some of the middle class received more money in their checks after Trump’s tax cut, but mine was only a few dollars. I doubt it has amounted to even $100 a year since it went into effect. However, taxes on wealthy Americans have fallen sharply in recent decades. Many still pay a lot to the federal government. A typical billionaire pays tens of millions of dollars in federal income taxes each year, but what is that compared to ordinary people like me paying nearly 25 percent of my annual salary? The wealthy’s tax rate may be higher than mine, but they have numerous ways to lower their tax burden with deductions. In 2018, I did not get a tax break because I moved into a slightly higher paying job and into a new tax bracket; I went from paying 15 percent to 22 percent.
While most billionaires do pay some taxes, President Trump is apparently different. On Sunday, The New York Times(NYT) published an investigation of his finances based on thousands of pages of documents not previously made public. The Times exposé of the President’s tax returns revealed a pitifully inept businessman and a serial tax evader crushed by massive debt that could expose him to conflicts of interest given his position as President with the power to help undisclosed lenders. The number one reason for being denied top-level security clearance is debt; it makes you susceptible to bribery and blackmail. His personal debt underscores a long-time fear about his administration—that he is managing US diplomacy to prioritize his own personal and financial goals rather than the broader national interests. Trump receives millions of dollars in income from countries like Turkey and the Philippines led by autocrats whom he has praised but who infringe on traditional US values like human rights.
The NYT article showed that Trump paid no taxes in 11 of the 18 years between 2000 and 2017. In both 2016 and 2017, he paid only $750. That means in 2010 when I had to pay an exorbitant tax bill because I was working two jobs to survive and still ended up doing without in order to pay that tax bill, Donald Trump paid nothing in taxes. Trump was able to do so both because many of his businesses reported losing vast sums of money—which reduces his taxable income—and because he has engaged in questionable tax practices. Even while declaring losses, he managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses including residences, aircraft, and $70,000 in hairstyling for television—all of this during a period when I went without food and had to work two jobs.
The publication of the well-researched article, based on more than two decades of his tax information obtained by The Times, came just days before the first presidential debate, and 37 days before an election in which he appears to be trailing Biden. It poses a serious challenge to a presidency that Trump may need to preserve to outrun creditors with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans soon coming due. It leaves the president facing many questions about his morals, behavior, and patriotism since he appears to be paying more in taxes to several foreign nations than he is to the United States. The reporting also raises the possibility that Trump’s deceptive accounting practices, already the focus of several investigations in New York, could open him up to serious legal issues when he leaves office. For instance, The Timesreport says the president has been battling the Internal Revenue Service for years over whether losses he claimed should have resulted in a staggering tax refund of $73 million.
The fact that Trump paid just $750 in taxes in two straight years should be the most damning since it is so identifiable and strikes such a clear comparison to the larger figure almost all Americans pay. If a man with his own airliner, gold-leafed homes, and a string of golf resorts can get away with that who is to argue the system is not permanently biased against regular people? Seth Hanlon, a Democratic policy adviser, pointed out, “In 2017, a single worker without children who made $18,000 would have paid $760 in federal income tax. Donald Trump paid $750.” Biden recently made this very explicit in a new ad that came out Sunday night:
Which Donald Trump is the true Donald Trump? Is he the business mastermind who has been lying to the IRS about his losses? Or is he the failed businessman who has been lying to the American people about his success as a businessman? It seems every time Donald Trump is caught in a new lie or yet another political scandal, there’s always a tweet from the president’s past that makes him look like a hypocrite on the issue of the day. He is a Republican after all; it’s the party of hypocrisy. Here is what he said about Barack Obama’s taxes in 2012:
To compare Trump to his predecessors, the federal taxes paid by presidents over the past 40 years during their first year in office are as follows:
- Ronald Reagan: $165,202
- George H.W. Bush: $101,382
- Bill Clinton: $62,670
- George W. Bush: $250,221
- Barack Obama: $1,792,414
- Donald Trump: $750
Lily Batchelder, the Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation at New York University School of Law, said, “Trump’s tax returns suggest he has only ever been successful as a showman, not at running actual businesses.” I realize these revelations about Trump’s finances and tax evasion are unlikely to change his strong emotional and cultish connection to his followers. He has been successful constructing alternative political realities while discrediting journalists and with the help of propaganda from conservative media. After all, his supporters have ignored numerous stories about Trump’s refusal to pay his creditors, casino bankruptcies, and morally questionable business practices that have been circulating for years. Throughout a political career filled with scandal, Trump has rarely paid a price for any of his scandals, outrages, and insults—any one of which would have doomed a normal politician. His brand is well known; he is a rule-breaker and a successful businessman. He may be a rule-breaker, i.e., a criminal and a fraud, he is definitely not a successful businessman according to his finances. In the past, he has explained that avoiding taxes shows he is a smart businessman and is an approach anyone would take if they could. Yet, what he has been doing is equivalent to tax evasion. On Sunday, Trump quickly adopted his typical tactic of trying to pass off serious revelations as nothing to concern voters because he said, “It’s fake news. It’s totally fake news. Made-up, fake.”
For any of my readers who continue to support Trump, I have some questions: What will it take for Trump to lose your support? His amoral, misogynistic, homophobic, racist behavior didn’t do it. His shady dealings with foreign countries haven’t done it. His rude and arrogant behavior hasn’t done it. His disdain for the press and our veterans hasn’t done it. His lack of business acumen and his penchant for tax evasion for over a decade are apparently not going to do it. What would change your mind? Can anything change it? Can you not see what is wrong with supporting this man?
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The Closet Professor 