Monday, November 4, 2024

No Canvassers for Trump

 

At all the houses I canvassed, I saw one piece of Trump literature

Several times when I canvassed on weekends, I ran into other canvassers.  They were always Democrats.  Usually, I was canvassing for a Congressional or State candidate and the other canvasser was out for Harris-Walz.  We made sure to avoid overlap so as not to knock on the same door twice in five minutes.  

But I never ran into a Trump canvasser.  In fact, I saw only one piece of Trump literature on a porch the whole time I canvassed.  In some neighborhoods, I would see several pieces of literature left under a mat or near a door I was canvassing.  The literature could be for Harris-Walz or other candidates, but it was there.  

I listened to Holly Otterbein, a Pennsylvania political reporter talk about strife within the PA Republican Party over canvassing.  She said the party traditional organized canvassing, but the national party had hired Elon Musk to control the canvassing and it was not getting done.  That certainly agreed with what I saw. No literature. No canvassers.  

If Harris-Walz win Pennsylvania that lack of canvassing may be a factor.  I can only hope.


Who is the Antichrist? A 2,000-Year Fantasy Journey

 

Meet the Antichrist: 
In the Bad-Theology (Burn-at-the-stake Heresy) Novel Series Titled Left Behind 
the Antichrist is the Secretary General of the United Nations. Currently Antonio Gutierrez. 

When Trump held his Nazi-revival meeting at Madison Square Garden last week, one of the vile warm-up acts called Vice President Kamala Harris the Antichrist.  

Unlike Trump and the majority of his followers I have actually read the Christian Scriptures--in the language they were written in. If you haven't you may not know that the Antichrist is mentioned just twice in the entire 27 books that comprise the Christian Scriptures.  Both mentions are the letters the Apostle John sent to new Churches during his lifetime.  In another letter (2 Thessalonians) there is a reference to a "man of lawlessness" and the "beast" of Revelation that are taken to be the Antichrist, but the references are ambiguous.  

More importantly, the prefix anti in Greek has multiple meanings.  In can mean against or in opposition it can also mean equality or correspondence as in antitype.

But if we take Antichrist as in opposition to Christ, the context of both letters is to men acting against the Church at the time the letters were written. 

But for those besotted with prophecy, identifying the Antichrist has been a source of endless vain speculation for two millennia. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins wrote the bestselling Christian-market novel series in history in the 1990s turning a very bad interpretation of Bible prophecy into the Left Behind novels.  

In the first of the seven novels the Antichrist is identified as the Secretary General of United Nations.  Maybe the LaHaye and Jenkins had Kofi Annan in mind or Boutros Boutros Ghali.  They did not get their supervillain from the actual citations in 1 John or 2 John.  They were using the Beast of Revelation.  

Novelists can and do "make shit up" but their readers took as "gospel" their wacky reading of Christian Scripture.  If you wonder how Donald Trump became King Cyrus of Persia in the minds of prophecy obsessed Christians, the sales of Left Behind (upwards of 50 million copies) shows a very plausible path.

Neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor the Secretary General of the United Nations is anything like the actual references to the Antichrist in the letters of  John. The best candidate for that office in modern America is the proud commandment breaker Donald Trump.   



Saturday, November 2, 2024

Canvassing in Monoculture Neighborhoods

 


Multifamily homes I canvassed were multicultural.  Every sort of American lives there

But when I canvassed neighborhoods with single-family homes with two-car garages, the demographics were very different. As I mentioned in other posts I get the name, age and party affiliation of the voter.  In multifamily homes I often had the names of both members of a couple, or even a couple plus an older parent or adult child.  

But in single-family suburban homes, I often had just one name, almost always a women.  And if someone answered the door, it was often a man of about the same age. Which means that man was not a Democrat.  Assuming he was a voter, he was Republican or a Republican-leaning Independent.  

I asked for the voter by name. She was "not available." I would say I was asking her to vote for the candidate.  The guy said he would tell her, or say "We're not interested."  Door shuts.

The age of the voter and the couple was often 40s to 50s.  Kids were often hovering around the parent who answered the door.  While the couples in these houses were mostly white, there was one interesting exception.

It was a neighborhood of single-family houses, all built since 2021 on two parallel streets named for Ivy League colleges. All of the families on the first street were South Asian.  All of them.  The voter lists had three or four generations of voters. On the porch were shoes of kids and adults.  

I skipped three houses, which means they were probably Republicans--the entire family. But the shoes and the Hindu blessings on the doors said they were South Asian also.

On the second street it was mostly South Asian families plus a few Black and East Asian families. 

Canvassing is fascinating just for the demographics. 





No Canvassers for Trump

  At all the houses I canvassed, I saw one piece of Trump literature Several times when I canvassed on weekends, I ran into other canvassers...