Traditional American Values

I struggled with how to write about the murder of far right wing, Christian nationalist influencer Charlie Kirk this week.

There are many reasons for this but primarily I’ll confess three:

I HATE violence
I HATE hypocrisy
I HATE when religion of any kind gets mixed up in politics of any kind

The latter point is particularly meaningful to me because I believe, as our founders did, that religion has no place in politics. (Note: Yeah, they did. Check out this pre-MAGA analysis from 15 years ago)

Believe what you like or DO NOT believe AT ALL.

But the bottom line for me is that ATHEISTS have as much RIGHT to the moral high ground as the most devout preacher, rabbi or imam in this country.

As a Jewish person, I loathed when the late Sen. Joe Lieberman injected his faith into political arguments.

As a lifelong Democrat I become extremely uncomfortable when Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) uses his senatorial platform to quote scripture in order to burnish any political argument.

And as a secularist, my blood begins to boil when the likes of Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth, to name a few of many, advocate all over the internet for a Christian nationalist state requiring prayer and religion becoming a part of American education and American politics, AND that Americans be guided by THEIR Christian principles as if they are some universal doctrine.

It’s not that I am against Christianity. I mean, I married a guy who spent most of his early years in Catholic school. It’s that I believe the basic tenet of America is that we are a melting pot of inclusivity and beliefs AND that it is THE primary asset we have to offer the world.

We are AMERICANS. That means we are comprised of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Protestants, Wiccans, Agnostics and ATHEISTS, just to name a few.

When we favor one we are ostensibly telling everyone else they can’t believe what they believe. In essence, we’ve going against the traditional values given to us by our very imperfect, yet very prescient, founders – the Separation of Church and State.

If you don’t believe me look at the first amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

It’s not like you can’t talk about it as a social issue. But when the lines are blurred and it becomes a political cudgel used by political figures to adopt laws or defeat the opposition, that’s a dangerous attempt to turn the United States into something it was never intended to be – a theocracy.

Which brings us to violence and hypocrisy.

Mr. Kirk, 31, was shot dead by one bullet fired by a disturbed young man from a rooftop while speaking at an outdoor forum at Utah Valley University.

It’s a large school of approximately 47,000 that leans conservative and Kirk was on the first stop in a series of 10 college campuses on what he had branded as The American Comeback Tour.

He brandished his internet fame with these events and at the time of his death had close to 4 million followers on his personal YouTube channel, though his outreach was in the tens of millions.

On the surface, Kirk’s thing was to have a dialogue with “anyone” on the events of the day, and often loved being challenged by young people on the left about his beliefs.

But in reality, what he offered was catnip entertainment where he used his oratorial powers and extreme views to rapid fire “own the libs” through speedy, seemingly impromptu discourse where he’d quote select Bible verses and offer a mashup of statistics and unvetted conservative think-tank type studies/talking points to publicly pillory his opponents.

He was charismatic to many but certainly not to me.

I will never understand the appeal of people who spew racist nonsense like, If I see a Black pilot I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified; or who categorize accomplished Black women like Michelle Obama and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as “affirmative action picks” who “had to go steal a white person’s slot to be taken somewhat seriously.”

I also don’t appreciate people who proclaim there is no separation of church and state, cherry picking facts (Note: Once again) to prove A-historical points.

Nor do I appreciate anyone who blithely uses their Bible quotes as a way to order any woman to “submit to your husband…you’re not in charge,” as he recently did to one of the most successful female entertainers in the history of the world, Taylor Swift.

Lastly, and needless to say, as a Jew and a gay person, I find it lazily provocative, not to mention offensive, when a person proclaims: We need a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender affirming clinic doctor” as Mr. Kirk proclaimed in April last year.

There are many dozens of bilious bon mots of this fashion, some of which are quoted in this article from The Guardian.

And if you want a particularly strong editorial of Mr. Kirk’s origin story, how he founded his business and the way he conducted himself in his attempts to convert America to Christian nationalism, click here.

On the other hand, if you want to read or listen to a defense of Christian nationalism and Mr. Kirk’s roadshow simply google the President, the Vice President or Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. They represent the succession of power in U.S. leadership at the moment and the current “official” word on the subject.

But let me close with this:

It’s abhorrent the guy was shot, in public, for saying anything someone didn’t like. And It’s especially hurtful and awful for his family and friends, who have to endure that footage being broadcast worldwide and shared endlessly online everywhere and probably for all eternity.

But let’s not turn this into a biblical argument between good and evil.

That’s just plain un-American.

In the very traditional sense.

Laura Nyro – “Save the Country”

09.07.25

by notesfromachair

Apocalypse Now?

I don’t pay much attention to the current president’s tweets because:

They’re usually meant to distract from something else much more important.
They’re usually mind-numbingly juvenile and as an “older person” I don’t like to waste my remaining years with stupid.
They’re usually an empty threat or a lie.

But when, on Saturday, he co-opted Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now poster and dialogue to make a joke threat of invading the great American city of Chicago – a town where I went to grad school, lived in briefly in my early twenties, and formed key lasting friendships over more than four decades, he pissed me off.

Royally.

Though royalty is something he will never be no matter how much he tries to act like King George III.

Anyway, I hate to reprint him (Note: POTUS, not the Real King) but desperate times call for desperate measures when you sense danger. So here it is.

Some observations:

When the president of a country thinks it’s cool to declare “war” on an American city – metaphorically, in reality or both – it’s time to stop what you’re doing and pay attention. (Note: You are allowed, however, to watch the men’s U.S. Open’s Final Sunday because we don’t want to ruin EVERYTHING good).

2. This POTUS renamed our Department of Defense to our Department of War by executive order on Friday even though it’s not official and not legal since that power lies with Congress. So clearly he’s signaling how he’s planning to “rule” unless he’s stopped.

3. The ad he’s “parodying” features a black-hearted but fictional U.S. lieutenant colonel during the Vietnam War who famously said, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It was a piece of dialogue illustrating how uncaring, sadistic and morally reprehensible/insane this fictional military man was. So when you are the actual real-life president – and put an image of YOU in place of the colonel – it means either:

a. You want to be seen as just that.

b. You are just that.

You are BOTH a. and b. At least in your own mind.

Totally fine. No problems at all. #yikes

Whichever you or I choose to answer to any of these questions or observations it’s clear that the current occupant of the Oval Office intends to order his battalions of enforcers (Note: ICE Agents, the National Guard from a red state since blue states aren’t playing and, well other masked guys) into the streets of another blue city to round up as many people as possible – much in the style napalm rid Vietnam of Vietnamese of all ages that fictional colonel wanted to exterminate.

Will he do it?

Won’t he do it?

How are these even questions we have to ponder??

That’s the reality show teaser promo this POTUS, a former reality TV show host and life-long bottom feeding huckster who in the last year has made $3-5 Billion in bitcoin selling virtual tchotchkes of himself, wants us to play.

Well, we’re not playing.

But we ARE paying attention.

Because there are 2.72 million people in Chicago, many of them non-white and a lot of them immigrants, who are being threatened. They are threatened not so much by the face of the colonel inserted in the ad, but by someone with the same face acting more like a real life counterpart of the fictional Col. Kurtz that Marlon Brando played in the last third of that Coppola film classic.

And he was plain bat shit crazy.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker is clearly treating the situation as such. Over the weekend his response was short and to the point.

The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.

Tens of thousands of people across the country took to the streets in red and blue cities in the last week, enraged at the militaristic threats, mass raids rounding up innocent citizens and the stripping of rights and legal status.

The current administration is also losing court cases nationwide, most recently from the federal bench, which ruled his deployment of troops in my home state of California was illegal.

And yet the threats continue, often veiled in lame comedy, as do the lies (Note: Crime is down in Chicago and Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles). As does the misinformation and obsequiousness of his cabinet AND his private spray of willingly sycophantic billionaires (Note: Check out Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg caught on a hot mic serving up embarrassingly servile by watching this four minute segment in its entirety) which has now reached Saturday Night Live level.

It all reeks of either a new Gilded Age or the beginning of a contemporary version of the French Revolution.

Though many people are saying it’s beginning to sound more like Russian oligarchy or the seeds of a late 1930s-style German dictatorship.

Whatever it is or is not any of those, it’s worth paying attention to.

Not because it’s now co-opted imagery and dialogue from one of our greatest American director’s work.

But because it’s more serious than the heart attack lead actor Martin Sheen had that caused Apocalypse Now to famously shut down during filming.

He recovered from that and went on to play the president of our dreams on The West Wing.

But will we?

Let’s do more than hope we can do the same and recast our real life leader in the next election.

One that is not only free but fair.

And take to the streets en masse if the narrative begins to more and more lean towards the apocalypse.

The Doors – “The End” (with scenes from Apocalpyse Now)

notes from a chair

Monthly Archives: September 2025

Traditional American Values

Apocalypse Now?