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I study religion for two reasons. First, the history of culture —art, music, mythology, poetry, ritual— is told largely through religion. If you want those wonderful things, you need to retrieve them from the clutches of religion. Second, I study religion because I am fascinated by our human willingness to submit to nonsense —to...

He should worry that there are tapes.He might fire Mueller. (N.B., he might)I’ll let you know.Just like Sessions said, it’s the “general strategic concept of the possibility.” It’s interesting how many people seem to find Trump’s words and actions baffling or incomprehensible. Too many pundits take these questions seriously. Is it because they need...

This week James Comey proved the President of the United States to be a pathological liar. Is that a crime? So what’s next? There are still 1318 days until Trump’s first term ends. While it is hard to believe it has only been this long and harder still to fathom that the republic can...

The Comey hearings drew out Republican strategy that should be familiar to anyone who understands how they win elections. And plan on continuing to win. They don’t need the majority, they need their voters to vote. So here’s what they do. They use explicitness—words _said_ that allow them to direct their agenda. Selective literalness...

Why Republicans Will Never Impeach Trump andFundamentalism’s Grasp of “Truth” The crux of the Republican agenda is to appropriate not only the followers of dogmatic, authoritarian religions but to act like one. Their followers follow suit. That they realized some decades ago and what we see today is the result. To resist is to...

The Word “Religion” Comes from the Latin Root that Means “Keep it Together” and That’s the Problem, Now Isn’t It? I have taught the study of religion for 30 years in the same University job and studied the subject my entire adult life. It’s what I do, for better and worse. What I have...

The other night Bill Maher crossed a line that he should know better than to have crossed. He used the n-word in ways that violate every boundary of good taste.  More importantly, he broke the Rules of Funny.  Comedians are required to know the Rules of Funny. Yup, funny has rules too. Maher broke...

Most people have jobs that don’t allow them to read, write, and think all day. Most people don’t _want_ that job. Reared on manual typewriters the size of Godzilla and more noisy than Mothra, I write so furiously that the keys of computers literally wear through. I would take a screen shot of that...

When Dysfunction is the new Hope(Metaphors When That’s Almost All We Got?) We’d like to believe that we’re some kind of holding pattern, flying around what we think is America or was America below us. That when this nightmare flight with more turbulence, storm, and sheer terror finally lands, there will be something familiar...

David Brooks in today’s NYTimes (June 2nd, 2017) writes eloquently about how Trump poisons the world.  I cannot disagree.  But Brooks’s eloquence and pointed criticism of Trump, for all its merits, is also typically reductive.  It’s a feature of David’s thinking that the human world is rooted in some sort of metaphysical moral either/or,...