Hitler the Clown

They thought Hitler was a joke. Then they gave him the country.

When Adolf Hitler first appeared on the scene, few took him seriously. To Germany’s elite, he was a joke. He was a loudmouth with a funny mustache, a failed artist ranting in beer halls. His ideas were extreme, his gestures exaggerated, his speeches were easy to mock. Many dismissed him as a political joke. He was a nobody shouting nonsense in beer halls to angry men with too much time on their hands.

But behind the spectacle was something more dangerous. His message resonated with men who felt forgotten and ignored. He resonated with people who felt like Germany had become a loser.

Germany was hurting. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles had humiliated the country. It had stripped it of land and saddled it with crushing debt. It was forced to accept sole blame for the war.

The economy collapsed. Hyperinflation made money worthless. Unemployment soared. For many Germans, the republic that replaced the monarchy felt weak and chaotic.

And in stepped a man who said he could fix it all.

Hitler didn’t rise through competence. He rose through resentment. He tried and failed to seize power outright in 1923 during the Beer Hall Putsch. It was a botched coup that landed him in prison. Even then, people mocked him. He used the trial as a platform. He used prison to write Mein Kampf – a horrid book. And over the next decade, he used words to rebuild his movement. The bullets would come later.

By the early 1930s, elites in German business and government thought they could use him. He had popular support. Maybe they could harness it. They believed they could control him, contain him, keep him on a leash. He’d serve their ends, and they’d clip his wings if he got too loud.

They were wrong.

Hitler didn’t need to take power by force. He was elected chancellor in 1933. Within months, he turned that office into a dictatorship. He was no longer the punchline. He was the Führer. And the people who had laughed found themselves silenced – or “disappeared.”

Authoritarianism doesn’t always announce itself with a bang. Sometimes it arrives wearing a smirk. Sometimes it looks ridiculous, unserious, unqualified. And that’s part of the danger. We underestimate it. We laugh at it. We assume that the systems will hold. We assume the adults will step in, and the joke will burn itself out.

Until it doesn’t.

Guardrails matter. They’re there for a reason. They shouldn’t be brushed aside with jokes like, “You’re being too dramatic” or “Lighten up.” The tragedy of Hitler’s rise wasn’t just in what he did. It was in how many people saw it coming and laughed.

Arresting the “Criminals”
Once Hitler had power, he needed a target. Authoritarians often do. To unite a country through fear, you must first give it an enemy. And so, Hitler didn’t waste time blaming Germany’s collapse on a long list of “others.” Jews. Socialists. Communists. Homosexuals. The disabled. The “degenerates.” Anyone who didn’t conform to his vision of a pure and obedient German state became a threat to be neutralized. The goal wasn’t just to silence dissent. It was to cleanse the country.

And he probably was a true believer, which almost makes it worse.

The strategy was simple. Criminalize your enemies, then claim to be restoring order by removing them. Hitler’s followers didn’t just tolerate the arrests, beatings, and disappearances. They cheered them. Because these weren’t innocent people to them. They were “traitors,” “parasites,” “criminals.” Or so they were told.

Historians still debate the details, but many believe that Hitler either had the Reichstag – the German Parliament building – set on fire or at least exploited the fire in 1933 to consolidate his power. The blaze gave him the perfect excuse to invoke emergency powers, suspend civil liberties, and sideline Parliament.

With the legislature neutralized, there was no serious check left to oppose him. Predictably, Hitler blamed the fire on the Communists, who were his most powerful political rivals at the time. The move gave him an excuse to arrest thousands, dismantle their party, and eliminate meaningful opposition. It’s a strategy as old as human history.

Enter Brownshirts. They were Hitler’s private militia of street thugs and vigilantes. They weren’t police. They weren’t military. But they were loyal. They broke up opposition rallies, beat journalists, harassed minorities, and intimidated voters. All while the government looked the other way – or applauded.

If someone wanted to take over a country, this is a clever way. You by-pass ordinary groups like the police or the military. You don’t have complete control over them. Instead, you find a way to fund and raise an “army” of highly motivated loyalists who don’t mind breaking the rules. You work around the system with this group that will follow your every command.

Propaganda did the rest. The Nazi press wasn’t just biased. It was fully integrated into the state. Newspapers, films, and radio all carried the same message: Germany is under threat, and only Hitler can save it. “The people” were under siege. And anyone who questioned that version of the story wasn’t just disagreeing. They were dangerous and needed to be eliminated.

The first concentration camps weren’t built for Jews. They were built for political enemies. They were built for those who refused to toe the Nazi line. The goal was clear. Make resistance painful, and make silence feel safe.

This is how authoritarianism works. It doesn’t begin with mass graves. It begins with lists. Labels. Slogans. Enemies. It begins when people are told to fear each other. When the government defines who belongs and who doesn’t.

When a leader tells you who to fear and promises that only they can protect you, keep this in mind. Fear is a tool, not a solution. Ask yourself, “Who is really the threat?”

America First
When fascism rose across Europe in the 1930s, much of the world watched and hesitated. Germany wasn’t the only place drifting toward dictatorship. Italy had already embraced Benito Mussolini, whose iron-fisted rhetoric inspired Hitler himself. Japan, fueled by imperial ambition, was expanding aggressively across Asia, leaving brutality and conquest in its wake.

It wasn’t just Germany. It was a moment in time. It was a movement that was sweeping across continents. Strongmen were rising. Democracies were retreating. And fear was turning into strategy.

Faced with this growing danger, America’s response was clear. Stay out of it. After the trauma of World War I, the U.S. leaned hard into isolation. Many Americans believed Europe’s problems were Europe’s to solve. That impulse took political form in the “America First” movement.

The America First Committee argued that war was a foreign entanglement we couldn’t afford. The real threat to America, they claimed, wasn’t fascism. It was intervention. Among its members were prominent business leaders, celebrities, and even a young Charles Lindbergh – the first person to fly across the Atlantic. “America First” became a rallying cry for those who wanted to shield the country from global conflict. Even if it meant ignoring the rise of tyranny abroad.

But for some, the hesitation wasn’t just about neutrality. It was hiding sympathy. Nazi ideas about race and power found receptive ears in parts of the U.S. In 1939, just months before Germany invaded Poland, a pro-Nazi rally drew 20,000 people to Madison Square Garden in New York City. They raised their hands in salute beneath a giant portrait of George Washington, flanked by swastikas. 

American fascism wasn’t theoretical. It was on full display. We like to look back at World War II and congratulate ourselves for our virtue. But the Germans of the 1930s weren’t uniquely evil. They were human – just like us. Under the right conditions, any society can be deceived, manipulated, and swept into horror. Some will cheer it on. Some will realize it too late to do anything about it.

Even as Germany began its violent march across Europe, many Americans insisted it wasn’t our fight. Even as reports of brutality mounted, even as Jews fled and warnings grew louder, leaders chose political caution over moral clarity. In one of the most heartbreaking episodes, a ship filled with Jewish refugees – including children – arrived in New York Harbor in 1939. We turned it away. Most of those passengers would later die in the camps of the Holocaust.

By the time Pearl Harbor forced America’s hand in 1941, much of the world had already descended into darkness.

Looking in the Mirror
They say war changes a nation. World War II didn’t just shake the world. It fundamentally changed America. The American war effort was nothing short of staggering. Factories roared back to life, turning out tanks instead of toasters, bombers instead of Buicks. Women flooded into the workforce. “Rosie the Riveter” became a national icon. African Americans joined the effort too, despite facing brutal discrimination both in and out of uniform. They worked in segregated units. They were denied basic rights at home. Yet they still showed up to defend a country that didn’t yet fully defend them.

This was the “arsenal of democracy.”

However, while we fought Nazi racism overseas, we quietly practiced our own version at home. In 1942, the U.S. government forcibly relocated more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps, two-thirds of which were citizens. They were never charged with crimes. There was no probable cause. They were never given trials or a chance to defend themselves.

Their homes, businesses, and dignity were stripped away, not because of evidence but because of fear. We told ourselves it was for national security. But the truth is, it was easier to scapegoat than to defend the rights of those who looked like the enemy. We sinned against the United States of America and its Constitution.

Meanwhile, American soldiers pushed through the heart of Europe. And when they reached the Nazi concentration camps, they saw what unchecked hatred becomes. They smelled it. They walked through the bones. The Holocaust wasn’t a rumor anymore. It wasn’t enemy propaganda. It was ovens, mass graves, and gas chambers. It was the industrialization of genocide.

The U.S. military didn’t just liberate the camps. In places like Dachau, they forced German citizens to walk through them. These were neighbors, bystanders, patriots. They claimed they didn’t know. But ignorance was no longer an option. You can’t unsee what you’ve seen.

They had believed the lies. They had swallowed the propaganda. They had laughed at the alarmists – until those alarmists quietly disappeared. The truth they denied now lay at their feet, silent and undeniable.

Truth was the first step toward justice.

But justice didn’t just mean winning battles. It meant facing uncomfortable truths. It meant asking how a civilized society could become so complicit in evil. And it meant asking what kinds of injustice we had tolerated in our own country while pretending to be the world’s moral compass. 

Philosopher Hannah Arendt studied the men who led the Nazi movement. What struck her more than anything was how ordinary they were. They were not geniuses. They were not brilliant strategists. They were just people. Pencil-pushers. Bureaucrats doing what they were told. To sum it up, she called it the “banality of evil.”

We fought fascism abroad while excusing it in a corner at home. We liberated camps in Europe while building them in California. You can’t claim to stand for human dignity if that dignity only applies to some.

It is the height of naivety to think that similar atrocities couldn’t happen here. Human nature hasn’t changed. Our capacity to be deceived and manipulated hasn’t changed. If anything, the newness of social media, AI, and the sophistication of propaganda have made us more vulnerable to misinformation than ever before.

Like the townspeople of Dachau, some of us would not believe it unless we saw the rotting bodies with our own eyes. And even then, some would come up with an alternative explanation.

The Weight of Victory
There was certainly a fair share of celebration after World War II ended. But there was much to mourn too.

Seventy million people were dead. Cities were ash. Borders were redrawn. Empires collapsed. Humanity had seen the depths of its own depravity and barely survived it. But amid the rubble, one nation stood tall. The United States hadn’t just won. It had emerged as a superpower: economically dominant, militarily unmatched, culturally influential.

The question was what kind of superpower we would be.

That’s the real test of power. Not how you fight, but how you lead. Not whether you can conquer evil, but whether you can resist becoming it. In the years that followed, America helped rebuild what it had helped destroy. The Marshall Plan invested billions in Europe’s recovery. The United Nations took shape. NATO was born. The idea, however imperfectly executed, was that America would use its power not just for self-interest, but for peace. Not just for dominance, but for dignity.

That tension has never gone away.

Power always tempts us to forget why we fought in the first place. It makes it easy to trade ideals for advantage, to silence critics in the name of security, to put flags over principles. It makes it easy to think that because we won, we’re always right. That we’re always the good guys. That the ends always justify the means.

That’s the danger of victory. It whispers, “You’ve earned this.” And we stop asking whether what we’re doing is still just, or simply convenient. Or maybe selfish.

Happy No Kings Day!

Today is July 4th, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I had Notebook LM create a podcast discussion of the Declaration. Pretty fun. You can listen to it here.

I had hoped to have a quick writing project done by today, but alas. It is a carefully presented comparison of the history of the United States with this moment. Having missed the deadline, my goal now is the week after next.

But here are excerpts from chapter 19: "No More Kings." The book is 20 chapters and proceeds backward from the present day to America's founding. So this is one of the last chapters. It also has as an appendix the fully compiled sweep of US history that I did on this blog last week.

Here then in celebration of Independence Day are these excerpts from chapter 19.

No More Kings
The Founders didn’t dump tea in a harbor to trade one king for another.

1. When the Founders put ink to parchment in 1776, their clearest grievance was this: too much power in one person’s hands is dangerous. The Declaration of Independence isn’t just a poetic breakup letter to King George III. It’s a catalog of abuses by a monarch who saw no limits on his authority. He made decisions without consent. He dissolved legislative bodies when they disagreed. He stalled laws, delayed justice, and treated opposition as treason.

The American colonists didn’t start out demanding independence. They began by asking for respect. They wanted representation, fairness, and a say in how they were governed. But King George wouldn’t hear it. He ignored petitions, punished dissent, and doubled down with force. In the words of the Declaration, “He has refused his Assent to Laws... He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly..."

It was a pattern: power concentrated, voices silenced, systems sidelined. That’s what “tyranny” looks like. It often expresses itself in cruelty. But it is enabled by the absence of limits... The Founders insisted that power be shared between the President, Congress, and the courts... 

The Founders weren’t perfect. Many of them were deeply flawed. But they understood one thing with clarity: Power must be checked, or it will check us...

2. In the Declaration of Independence, the colonists listed King George III’s obstruction of justice among their most damning accusations. He had, they wrote, “obstructed the Administration of Justice,” and “made Judges dependent on his Will alone.” These were not technicalities. They were seen as fatal to any free society.

The Founders understood: If you cannot count on impartial justice, you are not free. If legal outcomes are determined by political allegiance rather than law, then you are not a citizen. You are a subject...

A government of laws, not of men, requires more than slogans. It requires limits. It requires courts that can operate without fear. It requires leaders who serve the law, not the other way around.

The colonists knew what it meant to live under a king who saw courts as tools. That’s why they rebelled. That’s why they listed judicial interference right alongside taxation without representation. Because they understood that once the legal system serves only one man, the republic is already gone. Justice must be impartial. It must be independent. It must have the power to say no – even to the president. In fact, especially to the president...

3. One of the most striking grievances in the Declaration of Independence was that King George III punished those who challenged his authority. He dissolved local legislatures. He revoked colonial charters. He quartered troops among civilians not as a defense strategy, but as a warning. Rule wasn’t based on consent. It was enforced through fear. Obedience was demanded. Dissent was punished...

One of the clearest complaints in the Declaration of Independence was the colonists’ outrage over being governed without their consent. They were taxed without representation, subjected to laws they had no voice in shaping, and forced to live under decrees imposed from afar. For them, legitimate government was not about power. It was about permission. As Thomas Jefferson famously put it, governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed”...

The Declaration of Independence was not just a break from Britain. It was a break from monarchy. It was a break from the idea that one man should have unchecked power over millions. The Founders weren’t perfect, but they understood one crucial truth: freedom demands limits on power. That’s why they created a government of checks and balances, with coequal branches designed to restrain tyranny in all its forms.

That’s why we don’t have a king.

American History part 4 -- From Carter to Obama

This is taking longer than I anticipated. I guess 250 years is a long time. 
1. From Revolution to Fracture
2. From Civil War to World War
3. From Roar to Reagan
__________________________

18. But the real shift came with Ronald Reagan

But first, we should mention Jimmy Carter. Before Reagan swept in with a cowboy hat and camera-ready smile, there was a one term Democratic president. He was a soft-spoken peanut farmer from Georgia, quite unexpected really. Sincere. Intellectual. Doomed.

He called himself a "born-again" Christian, the first president to say somethng like that. Of course, that didn't mean anything in my Christian circles. After all, he was a Democrat. We always had a reason to vote against a Democrat even before Roe v. Wade. The reasons changed, the vote remained the same. After all, we humnans are herd animals.

Carter promised honesty after Watergate, and he delivered. He was a truly honorable man. Thus of course, doomed. 

He was everything Nixon wasn’t. He was transparent, humble, moral. Maybe too moral. Can you be moral and be president? He told Americans we were addicted to consumption. He asked us to turn down the thermostat. He wore sweaters on TV and talked about rising above our national gloom. 

Meanwhile, inflation soared. Gas lines stretched for blocks. Iran took Americans hostage and wouldn’t let them go. In one of the final acts of his presidency, we botched a rescue attempt and lost 8 servicemen in the process.

Carter did broker a landmark peace in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel. An astounding achievement. Since Israel had declared itself a state in 1948, there had been little but war and hostility with its Arab neighbors. But that diplomatic triumph was overshadowed by domestic frustration. What Americans remembered was inflation, gas lines, and the failed rescue of hostages in Iran -- not the breakthrough at Camp David.

He was a good man in a bad moment. Far too boring. Far too intellectual. And America wanted a showman, not a sermon.

19. Reagan was charming, confident, camera-ready. He talked about America like it was a sunset movie. He said the government wasn’t the solution. It was the problem. Sounded good to people who were tired of the government telling them what to do (especially when it came to blacks).

Reagan marked the end of a decades long flipping of the parties. The Democrats had once been synonymous with Jim Crow and "state's rights," a tool to keep the blacks in their place. Now the Democrats had somehow become the champion of civil rights and voting rights. And the Republicans, once the party that had freed the slaves, now found itself now the champion of state's rights and resistance to these developments.

They called it Nixon's "southern strategy." Appeal to the disaffected Democrats in the South who were angry over the changes the rest of the Democrats were leading nationwide. It worked. By the end of Reagan's presidency, many of those who were once southern Democrats had become southern Republicans. Reagan himself had once been a Democrat.

By the 1980s, what remained of the earlier Republican Party’s identity was its loyalty to big business and deregulation. As Hoover had said, "Let the markets self-correct." Now Reagan put a new spin on the economics of the 20s.

"Trickle down economics." If you slash taxes on the wealthy and on big business, their increased investment in the economy will "trickle down" to the ordinary person. That was the concept. With more money in hand, businesses will raise wages for their workers. Their increased wealth, the theory went, would eventually drip down to the rest of us.

It has never seemed to work, although two more Republican presidents since have also tried it. Each time, the pattern repeated: tax cuts for the wealthy, soaring deficits, and eventually, economic trouble. Reagan's own Republican rival, George H. W. Bush, famously called it "voodoo economics" -- before becoming Reagan's vice president, and later, president. 

The rich got richer. Wages stagnated. And despite the promises, prosperity never quite trickled down.

20. Perhaps the most significant piece of Reagan's puzzle was the full alignment of evangelicalism with the Republican Party. Evangelicals in the North had long leaned Republican, while many Southern evangelicals had historically voted Democrat -- the party of segregation and state's rights. 

That all changed in the late 20th century. The issue that fused evangelicalism with the Republican Party was abortion. It became almost unthinkable for an evangelical to vote for a Democrat. The thing is, many southern Democrats initially supported Roe v. Wade. The outrage came later. Something deeper was going on.

What was it? Southern evangelicals had been angry about the federal government telling them to desegregate their schools and allow interracial dating in their colleges. But instead of defending segregation outright, they shifted that anger to something with stronger moral force: abortion. “The government can’t make me accept Black children at my private school” became “The government can’t make me accept abortion.” It was the same defiance -- repackaged around a more righteous cause.

While southern evangelicals had first been ambivalent even supportive of Roe v. Wade, it now became the sure sign that God was totally aligned with the Republican Party. Democrats were sheer evil.

Reagan welcomed the rise of a new force in politics: the Religious Right. Evangelicals, once wary of politics, got organized. They saw a country slipping away -- too secular, too sexual, too progressive -- and they made a deal. Vote Republican, and we’ll fight your culture wars. “Family values” became their brand. They didn’t just want to save souls. They wanted to shape policy.

And Reagan delivered. Not just with rhetoric, but with judges. Policies. A whole new political theology.

In the meantime, other biblical values were gutted. Reaganomics gutted public programs. The mentally ill were turned out into the streets as government funded facilities were closed. The war on drugs targeted Black and Brown communities. The AIDS crisis was ignored as thousands died. Many thought that gay people were being punished by God and getting what they deserved. It took the possibility that "normal" people would get AIDS to see any action.

But the story America told itself was that the country was back on track. Prosperous. Traditional. Strong. Becoming great again.

Reagan had changed the playing field. Now, freedom meant tax cuts. Patriotism meant military strength. The government could control people's moral values (but never corporate power). The backlash had become the blueprint.

Just like that, the gospel got a party platform. And the party got God's vote.

21. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The red star dimmed. The Cold War was over.

Reagan gets a lot of the credit. The Soviet Union just couldn't keep up with his spending on defense. Communism is a failed economic system, and they finally gave up.

The Berlin Wall cracked open like an eggshell. East Germans streamed west. The Iron Curtain rusted into memory. Within two years, the Soviet Union was gone, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, corruption, and economic stagnation. For nearly fifty years, America had shaped its foreign policy, its budget, its fears, its identity around this one opponent. And now the opponent was gone.

It was called the "end of history." Capitalism had won. Democracy had won. America had won. There would be no more ideological battles, no more existential threats. The world would now become a free market shopping mall. And the United States owned the mall.

But history doesn’t end. It just changes costume.

With the Cold War over, the military budget didn’t shrink that much. But the mood changed. America relaxed. It seemed like we had earned our happy ending.

Still, the West squandered a rare opportunity. After communism collapsed, Russia stood at a crossroads. The hope was that it might join the democratic world. But instead of helping it build the institutions of a healthy republic -- courts, transparency, a free press -- we sent over economists with a Hoover-era playbook: unleash the free market and let it sort itself out. "Shock therapy." Let the "Unseen Hand" take care of it.

What followed wasn’t democracy. It was chaos. A handful of insiders seized everything: factories, oil, media. The state was gutted, and oligarchy filled the vacuum. Instead of freedom, Russia got a fire sale. Now there was a new ruling class wearing suits instead of party pins. 

And soon a new approach to war with the West.

22. Enter Bill Clinton.

He didn’t campaign on moral crusades. He wasn’t Reagan with a smile. He was Elvis with a saxophone. He was a Southern Democrat who talked like one of the guys but governed like a centrist economist. He promised to modernize liberalism. Make it leaner, smarter, more market-friendly. He called it “Third Way” politics -- not left, not right, just whatever works.

In practice, it meant welfare reform. It meant deregulating banks. It meant free trade agreements like NAFTA that promised more jobs but hollowed out whole regions. Clinton balanced the budget. He charmed Wall Street. In some ways he was a Republican in Democrat's clothing. He turned the Democratic Party into something that could win national elections again -- but only by sounding more like Republicans on economics. 

He had out-Republicaned the Republicans. A Democrat had turned his back on the unions and sent jobs sprinting to Mexico. Ironically, the budget balanced more than under any Republican president and abortion rates declined more too.

In the 90s, some of the biggest changes in human history in hundreds of years were rising. Technology boomed. The internet was born. Cell phones shrank. Cable TV exploded. For some, the 90s were prosperity and promise. 

But the other America -- the one that didn’t go to college, didn’t get stock options, didn’t get heard -- it began to simmer. And while the culture wars subsided, they weren't dead. They just put on different clothes.

Clinton’s presidency became a proxy battle over sex, morality, and the role of character in public life. His affair with an intern, and his bald-faced lie about it, became the stuff of impeachment. The outrage seemed real. Although it's easy to act with moral outrage when it's the other party. We're more apt to overlook moral failure from our own team. 

Outrage over Clinton was good political theater. The same party that had aligned with televangelists in the 1980s now used moral outrage as a sword.

Still, Clinton survived. His approval ratings soared. The economy roared. At the same time, cynicism deepened. The right had weaponized scandal. The left had compromised itself into confusion. There was money, there was power, but there wasn’t much meaning.

By 2000, a new millennium was beginning. But the fault lines hadn’t gone away. They’d just been covered over by Nasdaq stocks and cable news.

23. The year 2000 ended in confusion. Florida ballots. Hanging chads. A Supreme Court decision. It wasn't quite as dramatic as 1877, but the outcome remains questionable to this day. For sure, George W. Bush entered the presidency without winning the popular vote. Yet even in the Electoral College, the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida with him ahead by just 537 votes. 

But he was a good guy. A good old boy. Someone you would enjoy having a beer with. How much damage could a president do? 

Then came September 11, 2001.

Terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers. Smoke choked the New York skyline. The Pentagon was hit. A fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people died that day. Everything changed in a morning. The American psyche had dramatically changed.

The country united around grief. But that unity was quickly channeled into war. First Afghanistan. Then Iraq.

Afghanistan made some sense. After all, that's where the perpetrator was hiding, Osama bin Laden. We had worldwide support. The Arab world was more sympathetic to us than ever. It was a tremendous opportunity to end our long term differences.

Iraq was different. It had nothing to do with 9-11. The Arab world wasn't buying it. An opportunity for reconciliation turned into heightened alienation. Some holdovers from the Reagan era -- neoconservatives -- saw this as a chance to reshape the Middle East. It was probably well intentioned if culturally ignorant. Bush naively called "Mission Accomplished" 

We said it was about fighting terrorism. We said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t. But the war happened anyway. The military-industrial complex got its blank check. The media played along. The public, stunned and scared, mostly nodded. In my little town of 20,000, the mayor barricaded the courthouse in case of jihadists in Indiana.

America went from being the world's grieving friend to its unpredictable enforcer. Endless war became a business model. Fear became a political strategy. The Patriot Act. Wiretapping. Airport scanners. A surveillance state wrapped in a flag. Fear allowed all that.

At home, Bush tried Reaganomics 2.0. The economy soared -- and then crashed. Everyone loved deregulation until the housing bubble burst. Banks gambled and lost, but got bailed out. Homeowners didn’t. Ordinary Americans watched their savings disappear while Wall Street collected bonuses. It was 1929 with PowerPoint. Wall Street was rescued. The rest got a foreclosure notice.

And then came something no one expected.

24. Barack Obama.

A Black man (with a name that sounded a little too much like Osama) rose on a message of hope. He was calm, intellectual, composed. He spoke with clarity and conviction. He didn’t scream. He inspired. For a moment, it felt like the country might be ready to grow up.

Obama inherited a recession and two wars. He passed the Affordable Care Act -- a messy, compromised attempt at universal healthcare based on something Republicans had done in Massachusetts. He brought troops home. He stabilized the economy. He killed the real Osama. And in the process, he became both a symbol of progress and a trigger for backlash.

For millions, Obama was proof that the American Dream was still alive. That the words of 1776 still meant something. For others, he was the nightmare they’d always feared. Not because of what he did -- but because of what he represented.

They called him a socialist. They called him a Muslim. They said he was born in Kenya. Some didn’t even try to hide their racism. 

It was enough that gay marriage became legal during his presidency. No, he wasn't on the Supreme Court. He had nothing to do with making it happen. But for many it might as well have been him. 

The Tea Party rose, claiming to be about reducing the deficit -- a deficit that came back under Bush and was exacerbated by the bailouts of the recession. But mostly what the Tea Party did was grind Obama's movement to a halt. Attempts to fix immigration were stopped in their tracks, making the situation snowball into what we have today.

Every effort was made to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, as if there was something immoral about the government helping people get health care. Bring back Hoover and let the church do it. Better yet, make them get a job with good health care. In his last major act in Congress, John McCain stopped the repeal of the ACA by voting against his party, which was trying to kill it more out of vengeance than for a good reason.

Gun violence had dropped to historic lows during the Clinton years, thanks in part to the federal assault weapons ban. But under President Bush, the Republican-led Congress let the ban expire in 2004. The floodgates opened. Assault-style weapons returned to the shelves, and gun violence has climbed ever since, with school shootings especially rising in popularity. That lapse let a genie out that we may never get back in the bottle.

We say that people kill people, not guns. While that is true, the correlation lands the blame for our current crisis squarely on 2004 and a Republican Congress.

25. Conspiracies were increasingly America's favorite brew. The undercurrent of white grievance found a new fuel source. Facebook and Twitter rose to the challenge, and feeble minds were putty in the hands of foreign social media accounts.

Obama tried to lead from the center. His presidency was more careful than revolutionary. But just his presence in the White House felt like too much for some. Too much change too quickly.

He wore a tan suit. Scandal. He put Dijon mustard on a hamburger. Un-American. He cried after a school shooting. Weak.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party kept shifting. Reagan’s dog whistles had become bullhorns. Moderates were pushed out. The word “compromise” became a slur. More than any other single force, Fox reshaped America. Rupert Murdoch skillfully wielded it as a propaganda channel -- it was forced to admit in court that it was actually more entertainment than objective news. Meanwhile, innocent minds were manipulated into outrage at whatever Fox wanted them to be upset about.

Birtherism. Fake news. Online rage. The internet wasn’t just connecting people. It was radicalizing them. And cable news wasn’t informing people. It was inflaming them.

By the end of Obama’s presidency, America was breaking.

The backlash wasn’t just political. It was cultural, racial, psychological. The mere idea of a changing America -- less white, less Christian, more complex -- was enough to ignite a movement. One that would soon storm the stage in a red hat. 

American History part 3 -- From Roar to Reagan

This is taking longer than I anticipated. I guess 250 years is a long time. 
1. From Revolution to Fracture
2. From Civil War to World War
__________________________

13. World War I had ground the world's optimism to a halt. Like a massive release of repressed energy, America exploded into the Roaring Twenties. We cut loose -- fast and loud. In what was really a very fragile world, we danced on the edge of a fault line.

The 1920s roared. Jazz filled the clubs. Skirts got shorter. Radios crackled in living rooms. Ford’s assembly lines put cars in every driveway. Stock prices soared. Flappers danced. Bootleggers ran liquor under the nose of Prohibition. And Wall Street promised endless returns.

It was a decade of speed and spectacle. Women had won the right to vote. Black culture exploded in the Harlem Renaissance. Technology shrank the world and expanded the future. If the Gilded Age was gold-plated, the Twenties were neon-lit.

But behind the glitter, cracks spread.

The 1920s weren’t just jazz and flappers. They were also lynchings, race riots, and immigration quotas. The Immigration Act of 1924 slammed the door shut on much of the world, especially Asia and Eastern Europe. The KKK came roaring back, larger than ever. Now it was not just anti-Black, but anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic. The fear of the “other” became political fuel.

Prohibition turned ordinary people into criminals and gave rise to organized crime. The stock market had become a casino with no rules. Everyone was gambling, and no one thought the party could end.

Until it did.

14. In October 1929, the market crashed. Fortunes evaporated. Banks failed. Unemployment exploded. The illusion of endless growth was shattered. The Roaring Twenties screeched to a halt, and the Great Depression began.

It had been a decade of wild celebration. But the bill had come due. The party was over.

Tariffs played a part. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in 1930, was meant to protect American jobs by taxing foreign goods. Instead, it triggered a trade war. Other countries retaliated. Global markets froze. The crash became a global depression.

The government’s first response? Do nothing. President Herbert Hoover believed the market would correct itself if the "invisible hand" was just left alone. He refused direct aid to anyone. He called on charities and churches to step up. It wasn't the government's job to help people in need -- that was the church's responsibility. 

But the church neither had the will nor the resources. It wasn’t nearly enough. People began living in tent cities they called “Hoovervilles” to mock the Republican president. The name stuck.

Then came Franklin D. Roosevelt, promising a New Deal. The federal government would now be an active player in the economy. It would help create jobs, protect workers, reform banks, and in general, try to rebuild trust. This marked the rise of a new Democratic Party. For the first time, Americans expected the government to care whether they lived or starved.

Roosevelt didn’t fix the Depression overnight. But he changed the rules. Social Security was born. Unions were able to make industry care about the people who worked for them. The government no longer just watched. It acted. 

Millions of Americans today survive on Social Security -- the same program Roosevelt signed into law over loud cries of “socialism.” Medicare and Medicaid continue to save countless lives. And yet, many who rely on these programs have been convinced to distrust them simply because they come from the government. What irony! Programs are seen as threats by the very people they protect.

But jobs alone didn’t bring recovery. Something bigger happened. Something global. Something you would never dare plan.

15. The storm had been building. Germany was still bitter from the Great War and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. Into that resentment stepped a man who channeled their anger. To many, he was a clown -- loud, ridiculous. The rich and powerful thought they could control him, use him. But almost inexplicably, his charisma drew in the ordinary German. The German people made him unstoppable. By the time many realized the depth of their mistake and miscalculation, Germany was in ruins. And their Führer was hiding in a bunker saying the German people had failed him.

Hitler had blamed the Jews for German problems. He blamed the socialists. He blamed the "degenerates." He would get rid of homosexuals and eventually anyone who opposed him -- including Jesus followers like Bonhoeffer who didn't go along with Germany's Christian nationalism. Hitler was going to purify Germany and make it great again -- a third Reich. 

He crushed dissent. He unleashed the "Brownshirts." These weren't the military or the police. No, they were his own group of loyal fanatics, eager to intimidate, beat, or disappear anyone Hitler labeled an enemy. They would round up people in the night (or the day) who would just disappear. Soon he was building camps -- first for political enemies, then for anyone he deemed impure. Out of sight, out of mind.

The whole world was tipping toward "strong men" at the time, autocrats. It made people feel better to think that someone was taking charge and getting their worlds under control. Someone was thinking of them for a change and kicking some butt.

Italy had Mussolini, Japan had militarists hungry for empire. The world watched. And waited. Hoping that his flame would burn out on its own.

America tried to stay out of it. “America First,” people said. Some were even sympathetic to Hitler's complaints about Jews and degenerates. American Nazis held a huge rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939.

But neutrality couldn’t stop war. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. In 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That was it. America joined the fight. Japan pushed us into taking the right side.

Factories came roaring back. This time they made planes, ships, and bullets. Women filled the assembly lines. So did African Americans, though still in segregated jobs. The U.S. became the arsenal of democracy, sending supplies to allies, turning its economy into a war machine.

And it worked. But not without cost.

120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps in America. No trials. No charges. No actual basis or benefit. Just fear and suspicion. They were an easy target for our anger. And we made the Constitution look the other way.

In Germany, we were reminded that the worst atrocities are only as far away as human beings. Hitler’s regime carried out the Holocaust, murdering six million Jews, along with millions of others. They killed the Roma, gay individuals, disabled people, and of course those who dared to speak out against what they were doing. The world was confronted with industrial genocide.

Germans were forced to see it. They had denied it. Those who believed Hitler was a savior had believed all the propaganda he had spewed as he controlled the media. They're having a good life in those camps. American soldiers forced the residents of Dachau to walk through the camp and admit with their eyes what they had let happen. In other places, we forced them to bury the dead in the camps.

America fought on two fronts: Europe and the Pacific. In Europe, it helped liberate France, marched into Germany, and crushed the Nazi regime. In the Pacific, the war was brutal. Jungle to jungle, island to island. Japan refused to surrender. 

Then, in August 1945, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs -- one on Hiroshima, one on Nagasaki. We had split the atom -- something many thought God wouldn't allow to happen. Japan finally surrendered.

The war ended. But the world had changed.

70 million dead. Cities flattened. Borders redrawn. Empires dissolved. And two superpowers emerged: the United States and the Soviet Union.

America was now a global leader. Economically. Militarily. Culturally. But also morally. That was the big question: Would we use our power for peace -- or domination? Would we remember what we fought for or just what we won?

16. The war was over. But peace wasn't simple.

Soldiers returned to parades and promises. They had fought for democracy, for freedom, for justice. But back home, Black veterans still weren't able to get a loan and were still forced to use the back door. Women who had run factories were expected to return quietly to the kitchen (yeah, that was going to happen). Japanese Americans were released from camps into neighborhoods that still didn’t want them.

America had changed. But not enough. It still fell short of those big words we wrote in 1776.

For some, the 1950s were a golden age -- suburbs, appliances, white picket fences. But it wasn’t golden for everyone. Many still lived in the shadows of that dream.

A movement began to grow. It wasn’t loud at first. It was a woman who sat down on a bus. A preacher who marched without weapons. A crowd of college students at a lunch counter, waiting to be served like human beings.

The Civil Rights Movement wasn’t just about laws. It was about dignity. Did the Declaration of Independence mean what it said? "All men (and women) are created equal."

Some people didn’t like the question. They called the marchers "communists." Called the students "agitators." Called the preachers dangerous. Maybe one day, but let's move slowly -- meaning let's just ignore the injustices. (It's often said, if you want to know what you would have done then, you're doing it now.)

The marches grew. "Those troublemakers." "Lawless." "Criminals." The dogs and fire hoses came out. The violence was televised. And the world saw what America still was.

But things began to change. Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Segregated schools were deemed unconstitutional. Was desegregation a perfect solution? No. But it finally began to move the needle in the right direction. Racists responded, "They're legislating from the bench!" There was a sudden surge in the founding of private Christian schools in the South for some reason.

Civil Rights Act (1964): No more legal segregation. Voting Rights Act (1965): No more literacy tests or poll taxes. For a moment, it looked like the country might turn a corner. It was moving toward 1776 again!

But progress always wakes up resistance. As civil rights expanded, coded backlash crept in. "Law and order" (meaning don't protest injustice). "States’ rights" (meaning the government can't make me treat black people as equals). "Family values" (meaning keep women from being equals). Make America look like it used to (nudge nudge, wink wink).

17. And then came Vietnam.

We said we were stopping communism. We had been fighting communism a long time. In 1917, we watched the Bloody Revolution in Russia, and it scared us to death. In the Soviet Union, Stalin turned out to be as brutal as Hitler -- he just did it quietly and no one ever stopped him. When the Soviets got the bomb, we saw the possibility that the world could end at our own hands.

Senator McCarthy and others exploited Cold War fear to accuse innocent Americans of being traitors. Careers were ruined, lives upended. It was a national witch hunt. Eventually he was shut down, but he was a reminder that America was not immune to hysteria. Thus far we have always managed to fix it eventually. History doesn't promise we always will.

In the 60s, the fear of communism led us to send 58,000 Americans to die in a jungle. Millions more were maimed, broken, or drafted into a war they didn’t understand. Why were we there again?

And the country cracked open.

Protests filled the streets. Soldiers came home and were blamed for decisions made far above their pay grade. A president resigned. Another pardoned him. Trust in government collapsed. The golden age faded. What was left was a country that no longer believed its leaders. Our sense that we were a morally exceptional nation was gone -- at least for a while.

The 1960s ended in fire and fatigue.

King was assassinated. So was Bobby Kennedy. The streets were full of tear gas and protest signs. The dream of the Great Society was cracking under the weight of war, inflation, and fear. The liberal consensus had overreached -- or at least, that’s what some said. Too much change too fast. It's a formula for backlash.

A new message started taking root. "We’ve gone too far. Time to reel it back in."

Enter Richard Nixon. He didn’t shout. He didn’t rage. He whispered. He spoke to the “silent majority” He soothed the people tired of chaos, change, and being told their morals were deplorable. 

He didn’t say he opposed civil rights. He just said we needed “law and order.” He didn’t say Black communities were the problem. He just cracked down on “urban crime.” Use nice words to hide good old racism.

It worked. He won.

And then he wiretapped his enemies. Paid hush money. Lied to the public. Used government power to protect himself. Watergate wasn’t just a scandal. It was a revelation of who we really were. Even a president might break the law if he thought it served him. If we hadn't had the tapes, his followers would have never believed those who questioned him. Some still didn't believe he was wrong even with the tapes.

Democracy needs good laws. But it works best with people of good character -- if you can find any. The workings of the government need to be done out in the open. There need to be mechanisms of accountability. Watchdogs. "Trust but verify." But our rules are only as good as our will to enforce them.

Nixon resigned before he could be removed. He at least had some honor. He had the character to apologize to the American people. His successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him “for the good of the country.” That phrase became code for: He broke the rules, but let’s move on.

18. But the real shift came with Ronald Reagan...

American History part 2, from Civil to World War

Yesterday I posted the first half of American history through the Civil War in 2200 words. Here's part II.
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Free, Sort of
8. The Civil War was over. The Union had survived by force. Slavery was gone -- legally, at least. Would America live up to its big words, again?

For about ten years, it looked like it might.

"Reconstruction" wasn’t just about rebuilding the South. It was about rebuilding the idea of America. Three new amendments were added to the Constitution. The 13th abolished slavery. The 14th said everyone born here was a citizen and had equal protection under the law. The 15th said you couldn’t deny someone the right to vote based on their race. 

It sounded like a second founding. A chance to actually mean the things written down in 1776.

An amendment to the Constitution means it's just as bedrock as the first version. Anyone born here is a citizen. No president can change it. No Congress can change it. Only another amendment could change it. Of course, a rule is only meaningful if it is enforced.

For a little while, real change happened. Black men were elected to Congress -- in the 1860s! Public schools opened across the South. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped formerly enslaved families start new lives. It was messy, but it was movement.

But not everyone wanted to move forward.

White supremacists in the South responded with violence. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan formed to terrorize Black Americans and the white allies who tried to help them. After the northern troops left, southern legislatures passed "Black Codes" to make it easy to arrest blacks and then use them for cheap labor. The North, exhausted by war and not really too concerned, stopped caring.

1877 was a dark year in American history. Disputed ballots and partisan maneuvering called into question the results of the presidential election. The future of the government was in question.

A backroom deal brought certainty at a price. The federal government would pull troops out of the Democratic South in exchange for letting the Republican candidate win. With the soldiers gone, so were the protections. Black "citizens" were on their own.

Reconstruction was over. The South was free to recreate slavery by other means. The result at times was worse than slavery itself.

States passed laws to segregate everything from schools to train cars. These laws were challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. But as it has done occasionally in dark times, the Court gave them its blessing in 1896. Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that “separate but equal” was just fine -- even though it was never equal. It was just separate.

The South got its way. Jim Crow took root. Voter suppression. Lynching. Legal segregation. Racial terror became everyday realities for Black Americans. The dream of Reconstruction faded into the shadows. The "Great Migration" would soon begin to the north.

And it wasn’t just Black Americans facing this backlash. Immigrants from China, Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe were pouring into the country. They were looking for work, for safety, for a future. But to many who were already here, they were the enemy. Too foreign. Too Catholic. Too poor. 

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major federal law to ban immigration based on race or nationality. The message was clear. Some people were more welcome than others. Some didn’t belong at all. 

Humans are a herd animal. We don't like people from other herds.

Gold Outside, Rot Inside
9. Reconstruction ended. The North moved on. The South doubled down. Meanwhile, some entrepreneurs got busy getting rich. Really rich. Run-the-country kind of rich.

Welcome to the Gilded Age. It was named not for the gold itself, but for the thin, shiny layer of gold sometimes used to cover something rotten underneath. 

On the surface, it looked like progress. Railroads stretched across the continent. Factories roared to life. Skyscrapers rose. Immigrants poured in, chasing opportunity. The United States became a global industrial power seemingly overnight.

But underneath? A mess.

Monopolies controlled entire industries. Carnegie controlled steel. Rockefeller controlled oil. J.P. Morgan controlled finance. They called them “captains of industry.” Critics called them "robber barons." Democracy doesn't work when the powerful can buy who they want and elect who they want.

The wealth at the top was staggering. The poverty at the bottom was crushing. Workers labored long hours in dangerous conditions -- for pennies. Children worked in coal mines and cotton mills. If you got hurt on the job, bye, bye. If you died on the job, there was no compensation. If you protested, you were fired -- or worse.

Politics wasn’t much better. Corruption was everywhere. Bribes, kickbacks, and "pay to play" ruled the day. Elected officials sold their influence. City bosses ran political machines like the mafia. The economy might have been booming for the top. But the government only served the rich, not the people.

The press was owned by the powerful. Workers were disposable. Millionaires -- who would be worth billions today -- controlled public policy. The poor were blamed for being poor. And when people got angry enough to protest, the powerful called them dangerous, un-American, even criminal.

With every wave of immigration came a wave of panic. Nativist groups sprang up, claiming America was under siege -- from Jews, Catholics, anarchists, the poor. The “real” Americans (meaning white Protestants) thought they were losing their country. They blamed immigrants for crime, disease, and unemployment. They demanded laws to keep the outsiders out. Sound familiar?

But pressure builds. And eventually, it bursts.

The labor movement began to rise. Workers organized strikes. Journalists -- called “muckrakers” by those who didn't like them -- began exposing the filth behind the glitter. Upton Sinclair wrote about rats in the meatpacking plants. Ida B. Wells wrote about lynching. Jacob Riis photographed tenement slums. Ida Tarbell took on Standard Oil.

And slowly, reforms began. Antitrust laws broke up monopolies. Child labor laws were introduced. The federal income tax was created so the rich might finally pay something back for the opportunities the country had given them. Senators would now be elected by the people, not just appointed by elites. Women fought for the right to vote and demanded to be heard.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t enough. But it was a start.

The Gilded Age had promised that anyone could rise. In reality, it was a world rigged for the few. The people finally started asking, "What kind of country is this?" And who, exactly, is it working for?

While industry built empires, new religious movements took root. This was the age of Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science. Old churches split. New sects formed. 

Urban revivals, led by people like Dwight Moody, preached salvation in a world changing too fast. The world was a sinking ship. There was no way to save it. All we could do was get as many people as we could into the lifeboats.

In booming cities, social gospel preachers said that fixing poverty wasn’t just good policy -- it was God’s will. Their sense of progress thought we were getting the world ready for Christ. We were ushering in the kingdom.

Imperial Expansion
10. By the turn of the 20th century, America had seen enough smoke, smog, slums, and scandal to demand a cleanup. That’s where the group calling for progress came in, the "Progressives."

They weren’t one group. They were journalists, teachers, politicians, and pastors. They were anyone fed up with the mess left behind by the industrial machine. Their message was that the system was rigged against the ordinary person, and the people deserved better.

Teddy Roosevelt stormed into the White House swinging a “big stick.” He busted monopolies and took on the corrupt railroads. He helped protect workers in their strikes and pushed laws for clean food and drugs. He wasn’t against business. He just didn’t like bullies. 

In the end, he was too much for the Republican party, and he left. This was a major turning point for the party. They were less and less the party that freed the slaves. They were more and more the party of industry and the elite.

The 16th Amendment gave us an income tax. The 17th made senators elected by the people. The 18th banned selling alcohol -- for a while. Then the 19th Amendment finally gave women the right to vote. Four big changes in less than a decade.

Progressives believed government could be a force for good. They weren’t always right. And they didn’t always include everyone. But they changed the game.

They said corruption wasn’t inevitable. Poverty wasn’t a moral failure. Justice should be public policy. Funny how this sort of progress could become a dirty word. 

11. But, then again, not all "progress" is truly progress. While reformers were busy trying to clean up the mess at home, we began to look outward at the rest of the world, and we liked what it saw. Land. Labor. Leverage.

In 1898, we declared war on Spain. Why? The official line was to help Cuba gain independence. The real reason? To grab territory and prove that we had power like the old European empires. The real reasons for things are often more selfish than the noble words we use to sell the public.

We won in less than four months. There were prizes: Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. That same year, Hawaii was added. It had already been overtaken by American interest in its sugar. A few years later, we took part of Colombia and carved out Panama -- just to build a canal to connect the oceans. All of it was wrapped in the language of progress and civilization.

This was Manifest Destiny, international style.

Some called it expansion. Some called it liberation. In the places we took, it looked like conquest. In the Philippines, after leading the Filipinos to think we had freed them from Spain, we then turned and fought a brutal war against them. They woke up to find that we had actually taken them over.

We said we were spreading democracy. But like King George, we often denied it to the people we governed. Turns out that it was really more about sugar, rubber, ports, and power.

But this was a turning point. We no longer just a country. We were now an empire.

Even as we were expanding overseas, we were closing its doors at home. The early 1900s saw a rise in eugenics, anti-immigrant hysteria, and “Americanization” campaigns. Immigrants were told to drop their languages, their cultures, even their names. We were flexing our muscles abroad while tightening its borders at home.

The Great War
12. The 20th century began with optimism. People thought the world would get better and better. Progress was everywhere. Science, technology, democracy. What could possibly go wrong? We had evolved beyond the primitive barbarism of the past.

Then came the Great War, which would turn out to be World War I. At first, leaders tried to spin it as progress -- they called it the "war to end all wars." It wouldn't end up feeling that way.

It started in Europe, in 1914, with a shot fired in Sarajevo. A bumbling teenage assassin killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The continent exploded. A bunch of old men beating their chests over who was the boss sent millions of their people to their deaths without a second thought. 

The war had been waiting to happen. Empires had been stockpiling weapons, signing secret alliances, and polishing their medals for years. All it took was one spark.

One of the deadliest wars in human history followed, launched by emperors and ministers whose pride was bigger than their wisdom. Millions went to the trenches. Millions never came back. 

The weapons were new -- machine guns, tanks, poison gas. But the leadership was old -- arrogant, entitled, and shockingly indifferent to human life.

For the first three years, Americans watched from a distance. 

President Woodrow Wilson promised neutrality. But the war wouldn’t leave the U.S. alone. German submarines started sinking ships. A telegram was intercepted, promising Mexico a piece of the U.S. if it joined the fight. In 1917, America entered the war.

The U.S. didn't just bring boots and bullets. It brought money. Supplies. Hope. American involvement helped tip the balance. By late 1918, Germany was exhausted. The war ended. The peace, of course, was another fight altogether.

Wilson came to Europe with big dreams. He wanted a new world order. He called for open diplomacy, free trade, self-determination for nations, and -- most famously -- a League of Nations. It was meant to be a place where countries could talk instead of shoot.

The Europeans, especially Britain and France, had other ideas. They wanted revenge. Germany would pay. Literally. The Treaty of Versailles punished the losers and redrew the world map with imperial crayons. Borders shifted. Empires collapsed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire -- gone with the stroke of a pen. And what replaced them wasn’t always stable.

Wilson got his League of Nations -- on paper. But back home, the U.S. Senate said no. America had entered the war late and left the peace early. It would not join the League. Wilson had a stroke trying to rally the nation. His dream of global cooperation was shelved. 

And yet, America had changed.

We had tasted world power and liked it. The economy boomed. American culture began exporting itself. Jazz, movies, advertising, cars. Our military had proven it could fight across an ocean. Europe was battered. America was rising.

But the war had cracked the faith of a generation. The Enlightenment dream of reason and progress had gone up in trenches and gas clouds. Cynicism grew. Art got darker. Philosophy turned bleak. The world didn’t feel safe anymore. Not even modern. Just broken.

The world had been reshaped. And America -- whether it admitted it or not -- was now at the center of it.

American History part 1 -- from Revolution to Fracture

A New World. 
1. Who would a new world attract? Certainly the adventure seekers and the innovators. Also, those looking for new ways to make money. Some were running away from a bad situation. And of course, the ill-intentioned, looking to get away from the law. Finally there were the people already here, just waiting to be crowded out.

Might there be gold? Surely there were all sorts of goods to exploit, said the Spanish, who destroyed the Aztecs and Incas to get at them. The Dutch West India Company, the Plymouth Company, and the Virginia Company all came to get rich. There was tobacco to be farmed, which would soon bring enslaved Africans to do the farming.

The Puritans sought freedom from the Church of England -- after briefly trying to take over England themselves. They couldn't force their ways on England, so they looked for somewhere else to do it. In Massachusetts, they could finally impose their freedom on everyone -- for a few years, at least. Mary-land was Catholic. Virginia and Georgia were Anglican. Pennsylvania was Quaker. 

After a century of religious wars, America decided it was best to let people worship their own way. This new land would not have an official church. There would be a wall between the church and state. Jefferson called it the separation of church and state.

2. The Spanish did better in the south. The French did ok in the north. England would rule the middle. Thirteen colonies. A rowdy bunch. 

They made the mistake of thinking they were British citizens -- who should be treated like British citizens. Worse still, they were filling their heads with all sorts of silly ideas: that all men were created equal, that people had certain inalienable rights, that governments should answer to the governed. Imagine the audacity. "No taxation without representation." Really? 

Clearly, they didn't understand how King George III saw things. He was the king. They were his servants, the help. They should do whatever he said. And he had bills to pay, thanks to a war he just finished. So, tax them he did. 

And they got angry. 

You know what happens when people get angry. Some of them shout. Then some nervous soldiers shoot them. The king thinks, "Serves them right. They should respect authority." Then they get angrier. Then some of them drop a few million dollars worth of tea in a harbor. Then the king gets angrier. And the whole thing just escalates.

They appeal to him. But he's the king. More shouting. More shooting. Pretty soon you have these high minded colonists writing declarations. They're posting, "Give me liberty or give me death" on social media. They're creating an army, well a voluntary militia using their own guns. 

That's when it stopped being a protest. That's when it became a revolution.

Out of Many, One?
3. What do you do you with thirteen colonies, each with different economies, grudges, and versions of faith? How do you turn them into a country? 

You start with some words. Big ones. Self-evident truths. Unalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t a constitution. It wasn’t a law. It was an argument. A manifesto, really. Directed at King George. And also the world. And just maybe even themselves. 

They were trying to throw off a king. They needed some something that sounded like justice. Something that rang eternal. Something grounded in nothing less than the Creator himself.

"All men are created equal." Of course, they didn’t really mean everyone. Women? Not really. The people who already lived there when they arrived? Definitely not. The enslaved Africans farming their land? Not even close. They didn’t get a seat at the table -- not even a folding chair. 

But the words were out there now. And words have a way of haunting their writers. As a black man would later write in 1935, "Let America be America again... America never was America to me."

They would somehow win. It was almost a miracle -- ragtag militias defeating the world’s most powerful empire. Leading them was a quiet, unflashy man named George Washington. And when the war was over, he did something nearly unheard of. He stepped down.

Following the example of the noblest of ancient Romans, Washington gave up power. Others would have gathered a mob and stormed the halls of authority to keep their fist tightly around the reins of power. Not Washington. And in so doing, he helped make space for something even more unusual than revolution.

A republic.

4. The colonies were now states. What was the proper balance between the states and this new government thing? Version 1 gave more power to the states. It was called the Articles of Confederation. It lasted about as long as a bad group project. States printed their own money, taxed each other, and ignored Congress like it was a substitute teacher. 

The founders quickly realized that revolution was easier than unity.

Enter the Constitution. Drafted in 1787 in a locked room in Philadelphia. It was part blueprint, part peace treaty. It gave the federal government real teeth. The government could tax, raise an army, and regulate trade. 

It also built in checks and balances. Three equal branches of government. The president was like the CEO of a company. Efficient. The Congress set the rules and passed laws. The judiciary was like a referee to say when the others had stepped outside their lines or broken the rules. The system would only work if they all kept their ends of the deal.

It was careful. Strategic. And full of compromises.

Take the Senate. Two representatives from every state no matter how big or small. Or the Electoral College. It was a way to let elites keep a hand on the wheel. Or the Three-Fifths Compromise. It was an agreement to count enslaved people as partial persons for political math, while denying them any actual rights. That one wasn't just tangled. It was morally rotten.

And yet, the document worked. Mostly. It got ratified. As long as they would add a Bill of Rights, which was essentially an insurance policy against tyranny.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even entirely democratic. But it was a system that could be improved over time. In theory, it was strong enough to hold together a messy, aspiring republic. And it was flexible enough to let that republic grow into its lofty words.

5. As I said, the first amendments to the Constitution were the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech -- we can badmouth the government without getting arrested. Freedom of religion. We can be Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists and freely practice our religion here. Congress can't pass laws that assume specific religious beliefs. The press can publish whatever it wants and not get hauled to jail.

The government can't search our houses without probable cause and a warrant. You have to have evidence to arrest us. Everyone here -- legal or illegal -- has a right to due process. Everyone has a right to a fair trial. We are innocent until proven guilty.

Still more. We have the right to remain silent. The right not to be tortured. We have the right to own a gun -- as long as we don't shoot people at random with it.

Anything else is anti-American. Anything else has no place here. Anything else should be arrested itself and thrown into jail -- with due process and a fair trial, of course.

So they made a government. Now they had to figure out what kind of country it would be.

Alongside the politics, something else was going on -- faith. America’s early years were marked by bursts of religious passion known as the Great Awakenings. The First Awakening in the 1700s stirred revivalism and helped spark ideas of equality before God. The Second Awakening, in the early 1800s, fueled movements for abolition, temperance, and women’s rights. 

Religion wasn’t just in church. It was shaping how Americans thought about justice, purpose, and who got to speak for God.

The Rise of the People
6. The Constitution gave them structure, but not identity. That came slowly, through trial, error, and power struggles. The first few presidents were mostly elites. They were men who had land, education, and powdered wigs. 

Washington set the tone with his dignity and restraint. Adams was brilliant but cranky. Jefferson wrote poetry about liberty while owning over 600 slaves. Madison built the system and then watched it buckle under the brief War of 1812. (The British burned the capitol after we tried to invade Canada.) Monroe tried to soothe it all with a “Doctrine” that said the U.S. should take over everything from sea to shining sea.

Still, the country was growing. It was growing physically and politically. The Louisiana Purchase doubled its size. Steamboats, canals, and cotton began stitching together a national economy. 

The stitching came at a cost. Native peoples were being pushed out. Slavery was expanding west. The North and South were already starting to eye each other suspiciously. And under it all, the democratic spirit was starting to boil. The common man wanted in.

Thus spake Andrew Jackson. The first Democrat.

He wasn’t like the others. No Harvard. No powdered wig. He was a self-made frontiersman, a war hero, and a political battering ram. His followers called it a movement. His critics called it mob rule.

Jackson believed the people -- well, the white, male, property-owning people -- should steer the country. He dismantled the Bank of the United States. He waged war on elites. He used the veto like a sword. He didn’t just expand democracy. He redefined it, for better and worse.

His presidency was populist, combative, and fiercely loyal. He rewarded his supporters with government jobs -- whether they were competent or not. He ignored Supreme Court rulings when he didn’t like them, putting the Constitution on shaky ground. And when it came to Native Americans, he was brutal.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced entire nations from their homelands. The Trail of Tears wasn’t just a tragedy. It was American policy -- might makes right. Thousands died so that white settlers could move west. Some Christian nation.

So yes, Jackson was a man of the people. But not all the people. Only the ones he liked. He showed the country what democracy could do. And what it could destroy.

A republic is more than a democracy. It is a democracy with rules. Rules that protect the minority and the powerless from the majority. Just like the Bible teaches. Or is supposed to.

The logic behind Jackson’s presidency soon had a name. Manifest Destiny. It was the belief that America was meant to expand across the entire continent. It sounded noble. In practice, it meant running over people, waging war on Mexico, and dragging slavery westward. It wasn’t just expansion. It was violence dressed up as national purpose.

The Road to Civil War
7. The country kept growing. Land, population, ambition. But under all the steamboats and railroads and waving fields of wheat was a slow, spreading fire. It was the question everyone wanted to avoid.

What do you do with slavery?

The North didn’t want to compete with it. The South couldn’t live without it. And the West -- new, raw, unsettled -- became the battlefield where that conflict played out. Every time a new state wanted in, the fight started again. Slave or free? Stay in balance or tip the scales?

They tried compromise. Missouri. 1820. Let one slave state in, one free state in. Keep the scales balanced. Then came the Compromise of 1850. California free, but runaway slaves had to be returned. It basically nationalized slavery enforcement. Even Northerners had to help.

Then came Kansas-Nebraska. 1854. “Let the people decide,” they said. They called it popular sovereignty. What they got was bleeding Kansas. Warfare in the prairie over whether people should be property.

Enslaved people kept fleeing. Kept suing. Kept speaking. Frederick Douglass. Sojourner Truth. Harriet Tubman. They weren’t debating. They were escaping, resisting, fighting. The South tightened its grip. The North started to listen. And the Supreme Court? It doubled down.

In 1857, the Court told Dred Scott he wasn’t a citizen. Couldn’t sue. Had no rights the white man had to respect. It wasn’t a ruling. It was a spark in a powder keg.

The country wasn’t cracking. It was already cracked. John Brown tried to end slavery with bullets. The South saw abolitionists as terrorists. The North saw the South as a moral disgrace. The center didn’t hold. Then came 1860.

Abraham Lincoln. The first Republican. 

Back then, the parties were flipped. In the mid-1800s, the Democrats were the party of slavery. Republicans opposed it. Democrats were mostly in the South. Republicans were mostly in the North.

Abraham Lincoln didn’t run on ending slavery outright. He ran on stopping its spread. That was enough. The South seceded before he could even unpack. One by one, states broke away. They didn’t trust him. Or democracy. Or the idea that their world could change.

And so, war.

The Civil War wasn’t just about states’ rights. It was about whose rights counted. Did the spirit of the Constitution protect slavery -- or people. The war would show whether the Union could survive a moral cancer it had tried to manage instead of remove.

Lincoln led not just with words, but with resolve. He didn’t free the slaves at first. But as the war ground on, the stakes became all or nothing. If there would be a Union, it would not keep people in chains any more. The Emancipation Proclamation turned the war into something more than politics. It made it a reckoning.

The cost was staggering. Over 600,000 dead. Cities burned. Families shattered. The South, once rich on cotton and cruelty, was broken. But so was the illusion that America could sidestep its original sin forever.

The war ended. The slaves were free, at least on paper. The Union was preserved -- barely. And a new question emerged. What kind of nation would rise from the ashes?

What would it do with its freedom now?

1.2 When there were many gods

In my cycle of writing, the project called, "the flow of revelation" comes next for a couple days. Here are the previous posts in this series:

Introduction
1.1 What Christians Believe about God
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1.2 Many gods
4. When you see the word God in your English Bible, it is inevitable that you will insert into that word the sense of God that is in your head. It is likely you will infer that same picture of God everywhere you read about him in the pages of Scripture. You will invest him with all the attributes you believe he has. You will assume all the impressions you have of God.

Reading the Bible on its own terms requires us to move beyond what is in our heads and into the world of the text. For example, the English word God appeared nowhere in the books of the Bible when they were written. It was rather words like the Hebrew Elohim or the Greek theos. The proper name of God does not appear in most of our English Bibles -- Yahweh. It's hiding when you see LORD in all caps in the Old Testament. Learning these names for God in the Bible is a first step toward hearing Scripture for what it first meant rather than defining God with the definitions in our heads.

A second step is to realize that the understanding of God is not static throughout the pages of the Bible. After all, there is perhaps more than a thousand year span between the earliest references to God in the Hebrew Bible and the end of the New Testament. As God walked with his people, their cultures did not stay static, and God continued to meet with them throughout that time. 

5. Let's start at the beginning of the record. Before Abraham, what was the state of belief in God? Many like to think that there was some pure line of faith in one God that came down through a godly line from Adam to Noah to Abraham. But here is what Joshua 24:2 says:

"On the other side of the River [Euphrates], your fathers lived from of old. There was Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor. And they served other gods."  

Joshua is quite clear that the father of Abraham and the fathers before him were polytheists. That is to say, they believed in many gods and they worshiped many gods. This picture certainly fits with what we know of the ancient Sumerians who lived at Ur during its peak. It fits with the Elamites after the Sumerians lost power. And it fits with the Old Babylonian culture that replaced them.

Joshua tells us that Abraham grew up in a polytheist home. Does that mean that God never spoke to anyone for thousands of years since Noah? I personally don't think so. It may not be exactly what John had in mind, but I'd like to think that God gives light to every person who comes into the world (John 1:9). 

Obviously, if God speaks to everyone at some point in their life, they do not always know what to call him. A native American living in the year AD1000 would not know the name Jesus or Yahweh. But is it possible that some might have genuinely worshiped God with what limited knowledge they had? After all, no one in the Old Testament knew to worship Jesus either. Then at death they would have recognized their Lord as he is. There is an old saying: "God judges us according to the light we have."

6. In revelation, God meets us where we are and then moves us from there. Did Terah authentically worship God with the knowledge he had? We don't know. Most in Ur at that time called the king of the gods, "Enlil." Then again, Abraham may have been an Amorite, in which case it is at least possible that he grew up calling the king of the gods El.

There was no written Bible at this time. It would be hundreds of years -- perhaps 1000 years before any of the Old Testament was written down. As we will see, the name Yahweh was not yet known as the personal name of God (Exod. 6:13).

Jacob's wife Rachel was clearly still a polytheist because she stole the ancestral household gods from her father (Gen. 31:19). This is not surprising if Terah was still a polytheist. It suggests his son Nahor and grandson Laban were as well. Rachel follows suit. The Genesis text does not try to hide it.

So what do you call God when he has not yet fully revealed himself to you? When God meets someone in this world where they are, what name does he use?

Why it is only natural that they would think of him as "the Most High God."

7. How does God begin to reveal himself to those who genuinely worshiped him in these centuries from Abraham to Moses? They know him as El Elyon ("God Most High") and El Shaddai ("God Almighty" or possibly "God of the Mountain").

When Abraham has rescued Lot from Amraphel (Hammarabi?) in Genesis 14, he meets a priest named Melchizedek upon his return. Of what God is Melchizedek a priest? He is the priest of El Elyon -- the highest God, the king of the gods. [1]

Of course! In a polytheistic world, what is the most logical way to think of God? Why he is the highest God! He is the strongest God! He is the king of the gods!

Both Genesis and Exodus 6:3 suggest that the primary way that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob referred to God was as El Shaddai, which is commonly translated as "God Almighty." Scholars debate the exact connotation of shaddai. If it is a carry over from the Babylonian world, it might mean "God of the Mountain."

It is true that Genesis often refers to God as Yahweh, but this is likely the later author identifying God in terms of what was later known. It would be as if a story referred to a character by a name that wouldn't be known until later in the story. For example, there are some place names in Genesis that are referred to by names they wouldn't have till centuries later. [2]

Trying to get into Abraham's head, then, he may have served El Shaddai whom he also called God Most High. But he probably acknowledged that there were a host of other spiritual forces out there as well. Perhaps he didn't worship them. We don't know for sure. We're at 1800 BC or so. We are a thousand years before Elijah would try to stop Israel from serving other gods.

There is a name for worshiping one God while accepting that other gods exist. It is called henotheism. And the worship of one God while there are others around is called monolatry...

1.3 One Legitimate God

[1] There is a tradition to see Melchizedek as a pre-incarnation Christophany (Christ-appearance) or cameo of Christ in the Old Testament. This is based on a popular interpretation of Hebrews 7 in church history. However, Hebrews 7 is much more likely using Melchizedek in Genesis 14 as a type of Christ rather than thinking that Melchizedek was Christ.

[2] So northern Canaan is referred to as "Dan" in Genesis 14:14. But Dan was Abraham's great grandson -- clearly not the name that location had in Abraham's day.

Through the Bible -- Mark 7

Previous posts on Mark at the bottom.
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1. Mark 7 is a key Scripture for understanding Jesus' ethic. Elsewhere in Mark, Jesus says that the command to love God and love neighbor gives us the first and second most important commands of the Law (Mark 12:28-34). Matthew 22:40 goes further -- all of the Law can be summed up in these commands. [1] What is the essence of a Christian ethic? It is to love God and love others, where the love of others includes our enemies (Matt. 5:43-48).

Mark 7 not only gives us supporting evidence for that love command, it clarifies for us that Christian ethics is a heart ethic. That is to say, it is a virtue ethic rather than an act-oriented ethic. Our human sense of right and wrong often deteriorates into "dos and don'ts." It is hard for most people to handle nuance or complexity, which requires an ability to think on a higher, more complex level.

So religious systems often deteriorate into rules. Then the human penchant for certainty over ambiguity multiples rules, and inevitably religions can become legalistic -- at least their members can. Legalism is a love for rules for their own sake. The Bible becomes a list of rules, and fundamental principles are ignored because of "this verse."

2. The Pharisees and some scribes come up from Jerusalem to "inspect" Jesus. In their minds, they are the authorities coming to pronounce a verdict on Jesus. This is the hubris of some with formal authority in the face of divine authority. They do not realize that they have no authority whatsoever in the face of Jesus.

(As an aside, we tend to stereotype the ancient Pharisees because most of Jesus' encounters with them in the Gospels are negative -- Matthew 23 especially. However, like today, some Pharisees followed their traditions from a love of God. Nicodemus would be a case in point. Some people are strict because they're legalists. Others are strict because they want to do everything to the glory of God and they believe God requires of them all the things they do. [2])

3. The flash point is washing one's hands before eating, along with all the items associated with eating. [3] It's easy for us to think this is about good hygiene and germs, but that would be to impose modern concerns on the biblical text. They knew nothing of such things.

This was about purity. Think the holiness codes of Leviticus. In the marketplace, one was likely to touch something that was religiously unclean. The practice thus seems meant to ensure that you do not contaminate yourself by eating with hands that have been "commonized" (koinos) or made unclean. It's not a matter of sin but of ritual purity.

(As an aside, it is unclear that the word baptizo here is about "immersing" ones hands. It is possible, but it would be the root fallacy to think that the word always must mean immersion because of a historical root going back to a word for dipping. The meanings of words wander with cultural use and they can easily leave etymological or historical meanings behind. "Wash" is the safest translation to avoid overinterpretation.)

4. Verses 3-4 explain basic practices of Pharisees and "the Jews." These explanations likely imply that the original audience of Mark was Gentile or non-Jewish. You don't need to explain to a Jew what a Jew does. [4]

These verses also explain that this hand washing practice is the "tradition of the elders." These were likely specifically Pharisee traditions about how to keep the Law. The Sadducees claimed to just follow the Law -- not traditions about how to keep the Law. [5] Of course that's a crock. The Sadducees also had their own traditions on how to keep the Law. In that sense they are like fundamentalists today who claim to follow Scripture alone, not recognizing that their interpretations follow traditions they aren't even aware of. It wasn't tradition itself that they were rejecting but Pharisaic tradition. [6]

5. Jesus effectively calls them hypocrites and legalists. They claim to follow God. They put up a good show of following God because they follow a lot of rules. They follow God "with their lips" (7:6). But, perhaps like some Christians today, their heart is far from him. The way they treat others reveals that they really have no part in the real service of God. They use their rule keeping as an excuse not to do the things that God wants the most -- mercy, faith, and justice for those without it (Matt. 23:23). They strain out gnats from their cereal, but let camels pass through.

Jesus uses the example of getting out of taking care of your parents by pretending to dedicate those resources to God (7:9-13). "Sorry mom, I can't take care of you because I've designated those funds." It's a lawyer trick that uses the details of the Law to get out of keeping the heart of the Law. Many Americans do this today with the Bible, using a verse here or there to wiggle out of the more fundamental principles of Scripture. [7]

Mark once again uses an Aramaic word, corban. Mark does this 7 times and it is a small piece of a cumulative case that Mark is the earliest of the four Gospels. 

6. In 7:14-23, Jesus gives the heart of his virtue ethic. External things do not make a person unclean. That's not how it works. "Uncleanness" is something that is on the inside. It comes from the heart. If the heart is "unclean," evil things come out. These include things like sexual immorality, murder, adultery, envy, slander, and others. Defiling things don't come from the outside. They are a function of what is inside.

These words reflect a fundamental moral truth. The acts we do are not the focus of whether we are doing good or evil. Rather, it is the attitude and intention of our hearts that reveals whether our acts are truly evil. Don't get me wrong, there is a place for considering the consequences of an act as well. One can unintentionally wrong someone. There are unintentional sins.

But this is not the focus of a Christian -- or New Testament -- ethic. Paul presents the same ethical approach in Romans 14. Two people can do the same thing and it be sin for one and not sin for the other, depending on one's intention in relation to the act. Whether one is acting from a heart of faith is what makes the difference (Rom. 14:23). In Paul's view, "nothing is unclean in itself" (Rom. 14:14). It is rather our attitude toward the act that makes it clean or unclean. [8]

7. A key verse in this paragraph is 7:19, usually translated as something like "Thus he declared all foods clean." Traditionally, this verse has been understood to release Christians from keeping the Old Testament food laws. It thus would sit alongside traditional understandings of Acts 10 and Paul in Romans 14 and Colossians 2.

At the very least, we should probably nuance this understanding to recognize that Mark is writing for non-Jews. Matthew does not copy this remark in his version of this story. After all, he is likely writing for a Jewish audience that did not likely believe Jews were free from keeping the food laws.

It is of course a parenthetical remark that would not likely have come from Jesus' lips. In fact, Logan Williams has made a landmark proposal that in fact Jesus is saying that the stomach cleanses all food that we eat, making washing of hands unnecessary. [9] While this is an important argument, it probably fails not only on the grammar of the verse (katharizon is masculine, nominative, singular, which seems to be an independent nominative and thus not tied to the grammatical train of thought). It also fails to recognize the Gentile orientation of the comment.

The traditional understanding would thus seem correct. Four decades after Jesus' crucifixion, there were Gentile Christian communities that did not believe that the Jewish food laws were binding on them, and they saw Jesus as the ultimate authorization of this position. This is of course the understanding of most Christians today, namely, that we can eat pork, blood pudding, and other foods prohibited of Israel in Leviticus.

8. Mark 7 has two more stories. The first is the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman. She is not a Jew -- a striking juxtaposition with a story of great interest to non-Jews. Jesus is far afield in Tyre and Sidon to the northwest. It would be a 2-4 day journey from Galilee.

Her daughter has an unclean spirit. Again, this is a striking juxtaposition with a story that has just been about what makes a person unclean. Unlike those things that are thought to make a person unclean when you touch them, Jesus' touch works the opposite direction. And in this case, he does not even touch her. His faith from a distance cleanses this young girl of her unclean spirit, and the demon leaves her.

One of the more striking aspects of their conversation is Jesus' words to her on the priority of "feeding the children" of Israel. He effectively refers to the woman as a puppy milling around the table where the children are eating. [10] She does not reject the premise but instead responses that even the puppies get to eat scraps from the children's table. 

Jesus casts the woman's daughter out and makes her clean.

9. The final story in the chapter is the healing of a deaf man who also cannot speak. Jesus spits and touches the man's tongue. He sticks his fingers in his ears. These actions were of course not necessary, but they probably were known patterns of behavior used by other healers of the day. They are thus an example of Jesus meeting his world within their own cultural assumptions.

Mark gives us another Aramaic word, Ephphatha. See above. The man is instantly healed and begins to speak.

Jesus tells them not to tell anyone. This is part of the "messianic secret" theme where in Mark especially Jesus commands the demons not to speak his identity and tells those he heals to tell others. The demons obey. But of course most of the people don't, making it difficult for Jesus to travel openly. 

It would seem that, in this season, God gives us humans the freedom to disobey him. This is a major rejection of the impulse of some Christians to try to take over their governments to force the world to follow their understanding of God's rules.

[1] Matthew 7:12 is similar, as is Romans 13:10.

[2] See especially Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine, eds, The Pharisees (Eerdmans, 2021).

[3] Some later manuscripts include the table itself.

[4] It is of course possible that this as a marginal note that made its way into the text. It is not copied into Matthew, which used Mark as its primary source. Matthew similarly does not copy Mark 7:19. It does include Mark 13:14. These three verses in Mark have traditionally been seen as parenthetical comments from the author of Mark to his audience. 

However, in the case of the first two, it is clear enough why Matthew would not include them. Since he is likely writing to a Jewish audience, he does not need to explain what Jews do. And quite possibly he would not see 7:19 as applying to a Jewish audience. More below.

[5] This sense of the Sadducees is based on one source alone -- Josephus, Antiquities 13.297. Some have mistakenly read this passage to mean that the canon of the Sadducees only included the Pentateuch. That may also be true, but it is not what Josephus was saying here.

[6] It reminds me of denominations that say they aren't denominations. Or churches that say they are non-denominational when they clearly stand in the streams of particular Christian traditions.

[7] One example is the full participation of women in the gospel, something modeled throughout the New Testament and anticipated even in the Old Testament. Yet modern day "Pharisees" use 1 Timothy 2:12 to try to wiggle out of this fundamental principle of Pentecost (Acts 2:17; cf. Gal. 3:28).

[8] In this regard, Paul and Mark seem to operate within similar communities of early (Gentile) Christianity.

[9] Logan Williams, "The Stomach Purifies All Foods: Jesus’ Anatomical Argument in Mark 7.18–19," NTS 70 (2024): 371-91.

[10] It helps the tone a little to recognize that the word used is not dog outright but "little dog," perhaps suggesting a playful tone to the conversation.

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Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
Mark 1:16-45
Mark 2
Mark 3
Mark 4:1-34
Mark 4:35-5:43
Mark 6

Mark 11:1-11 (Palm Sunday)
Mark 11:12-25 (Temple Monday)
Mark 11:26-12:44 (Debate Tuesday)
Mark 13 (Temple Prediction)
Mark 14:1-52 (Last Supper)
Mark 14:53-15:47 (Good Friday)

Mark 16 (The Resurrection)