parallelsversusdictators.org

“The haves and have-nots can often be traced to the dids and did-nots.” This expression is sometimes used to blame a host of societal problems on the victims. If your poverty, inferior place in society, poor health, proneness to drug abuse, etc., was pre-ordained before your birth, is it fair to call you lazy? If the reason you can’t read is that your parents and their ancestors were systematically denied education to make them better suited to life as underpaid or unpaid laborers?

As someone who for years believed the “conservative” thinking expressed in the quoted proverb and who is now regarded by some as “woke,” I may have an unusual perspective on the huge philosophical divide we live with today. Whichever end of the political spectrum you stand on and endorse, I’ve been there and done that. If you are and always have been solidly “centrist,” maybe you are part of the problem, one of nearly 90 million eligible voters who didn’t vote in the last presidential election because you were undecided about Trump’s suitability for office.

A “Woke” Pope

Pope Leo XIV has officially broken with the centuries-old doctrine of papal infallibility by acknowledging that his church has only recently admitted the reality of sexual abuse by clerics. He also differs from previous popes by standing up to an American president who represents a version of Christianity never taught by Christ. Leo, like some predecessors, may have no choice but to address a well-documented scandal within the Church, but his response is the opposite of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files.

In my recently published book Parallels, a chapter called “Trump and Christian Evangelists” highlights inconsistencies between the New Testament version of Christ’s teachings–selflessness, generosity, humility, etc.–and the commercially successful version taught in megachurches by super-wealthy ministers.

Christianity as taught by Christ

Dr. Paul Leggett, a retired Presbyterian minister, once gave a sermon on the old adage “God helps those who help themselves.” He pointed out that the expression isn’t found in the Bible, as many people imagine. In fact, Leggett explained that the phrase contradicts basic Christian tenets like “Love thy neighbor as thyself ” and stories like that of the Good Samaritan. Those teaching tools are in the New Testament, not the Old.

On at least one occasion that I witnessed, Leggett broke with the unwritten rule against mixing religion and politics. He spoke from the pulpit before the first Trump term in office, pointing out the obvious, documented problems with the Republican candidate. Leggett often spoke admiringly of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor in Germany whose public criticism of Nazism in the 1930s and ’40s resulted in his arrest, incarceration, and guillotine execution during the war.

I shared Leggett’s attitude toward Trump, but from an early age retained my belief that Germany didn’t deserve all the bad press it has suffered since 1945. In the “Author’s Note” foreword to Parallels, I reveal my father’s role as national security chief in the Axis government of Slovakia, a part of the ThirdReich. He was the sole survivor of a mass assassination by anti-Nazi insurgents in 1943, was captured by Allied troops in 1945, and narrowly escaped extradition and execution in post-war Czechoslovakia. Officially cleared of charges brought by the new government seeking his extradition, he brought his family, including me, to America in 1950 early in the McCarthy period. He was profoundly Republican and voted for Nixon but died before Watergate and Nixon’s resignation.

I can’t know how my Dad would have reacted to Watergate, but I never voted in any election before 2014. My attitude was that political engagement wasn’t worth the distraction from my formal education, career, and hobbies. One vote was, statistically speaking, worthless. Since 2014, my opinion is that informed voting is everyone’s obligation, and that overwhelming evidence shows why we are reliving the political phase lived by Germans from the 1930s until the early ’40s.

Not only do I think ultranationalism–called “America First” today–is linked to racism, economic isolationism, and other absurdities, I developed a template for judging if a government is an anti-democracy, whatever its supporters claim. This tool, entitled “A Cautionary Tale,” is the final article in Parallels.

Finally, I apologize to Pastor Leggett for quarreling with him.