Evangelicals must live by the Biblical words they memorize

It’s time for the evangelicals to have a (serious!) talk about Christian nationalism- IOW!  "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17)

Don't listen to demagogues! Behave according to God's tenets and man's just laws. 

Christian nationalism is not patriotism, which can be a moral good. Moreover, neither is it Christianity.

Echo opinion published in the Dallas Morning News:

This opinion is part of the ongoing commentary on faith, called Living Our Faith. Ready for it or not, we are in the midst of a conversation about Christian nationalism.

The prominence of Christian symbols and messages intermixed in the Capitol insurrection was disturbing, but for many pastors and church leaders this was not entirely surprising. The photos and videos from Jan. 6 represented the most radical manifestation of one of the American church’s most cherished idols, one that has continued to snare individuals, churches and ministries in subtle and corrosive respects. This is the idol of Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism is not patriotism, which arises from civic affection and responsibility. Yet, more pressing in our perspective is the fact that it is not Christianity. Rather, Christian nationalism is a syncretistic* fusing of the two. It interweaves notions of national exceptionalism, moral authority, and mandate into the Christian mission, rendering the two difficult to distinguish. 

In time, this proves corrosive to the Christian faith.


The belief that America enjoys providential favor or blessings above other nations is unbiblical, but it continues to animate elements of church life in America. Through emphasizing political and cultural victory using spiritual language, it incorporates national identity into the mission of the church. In doing so, it makes this national vision not only the lens by which we understand Christian faith and practice but a precondition for participation in the community of faith.

Although it is tempting to focus on the radical examples, this impact is far more subtle and pervasive. Focusing on outliers enables most Christians to miss the ways Christian nationalism might manifest in their churches, communities, and even in their own thinking. Instead, pastors and church leaders need to be involved in this conversation by asking ask ourselves: Is Christian nationalism subverting the identity and mission of churches in America?

In fact, the famed Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) maintained that the essence of idolatry is “to love anything better than God, to trust anything more than God, to wish to have a God other than we have … this great sin is the main mischief in the heart of man.” The most insidious feature of our hearts is that we can make idols out of anything, even out of what is good. In time these idols bury themselves in our lives, intertwined with the beliefs, institutions and rituals central to our faith. Fully ingrained in our lives, we struggle to distinguish them from our faith and can become defensive at the suggestion they are even idols.

This is why conversations within the church about Christian nationalism have proven so difficult. For generations, many of its central myths have become so cherished that any criticism is perceived as an attack on the church itself.

Over the past several generations, churches in America across various traditions have offered a compelling vision for human flourishing rooted in the Gospel of Jesus. This has stood against the emerging narratives of secularism and humanism, both of which have been readily critiqued for failing to satisfy our needs for love, forgiveness and purpose.

For the church to succeed, it is not enough to correctly identify the deficiencies of others while remaining ignorant or defensive about our own. While we continue to be gravely concerned over trends of secularism and its increasing hostility towards religious liberty, we believe the greatest challenge to the future of the church in the United States lies in how we respond to our own failings.

In his epistle to the Philippian church, the apostle Paul used the metaphor of citizenship to drive home the reality that the Christian identity is not bound up in any nation or a ruler. Writing within a culture where Roman citizenship meant everything, Paul instead exhorted the church to live “as citizens of heaven.” For Paul, the fact that believers shared a common home was not only the basis of their unity but the rationale for their ongoing partnership within a world that obsessed over earthly status.

In the coming years, churches in America face the challenge of truly hearing Paul’s words. Pastors and church leaders need to challenge themselves and their people to consider where we have allowed our identity to be rooted in anything other than the Gospel (!).

At times, this may lead us to confronting hard truths and even risk being alienated. However, as Paul reminded the Philippian church, suffering the loss of all things is nothing compared to truly gaining Christ.

We can love our country. We must love God. When we disorder these loves, we denigrate the values of both.

Christianity is never represented by Jesus wrapped in American flag. The God of the Bible critiques every nation, culture and people. By loving our country, and that includes our rightful embrace of patriotism, we put God above country.

When we do, the Gospel is clear, the nation is critiqued by the truths of the Scriptures, and becomes a better place.

Ed Stetzer is executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. His newest book is Christians in the Age of Outrage: How to Bring Our Best When the World Is at Its Worst.

Andrew MacDonald is associate director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Research Institute and a doctoral candidate in historical theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

They wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

*Attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.

(!)In my opinion, the followers of political demagogues need to internalize this statement. Hear Ye! We must live in the spirit and in harmony with the Gospels, the teachings in the Ten Commandments, and the Beatitudes and not just preach about them! 

Cherish Freedom- Arlington Cemetery is evidence of Americanism

An America to believe in:

An echo opinion published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette written by Rev. Randy Hyde

Witness Americanism!  

Arlington National Cemetery

On Jan. 20, 2021, as I watched the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden, the 46th president of the United States, I was reminded of something that occurred years ago.

"Here we stand," said the newly minted president, as he offered his acceptance speech, "across the Potomac from Arlington Cemetery where heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion rest in eternal peace ..." 

My mind floated back to years ago when I officiated at a burial at Arlington.

I was pastoring a church in Baltimore, Md., and one of our parishioners died just three days past her 39th birthday. Her grieving husband called to give me the sad news. I was soon to learn he was not just mourning his great loss, but was at a loss as to what to do next. In the course of our conversation, he told me he had no money with which to bury his wife. Could I help him in that regard?

I promised to see what I could do.

I had developed a friendship with a local funeral director, whom I had found to be a very caring and compassionate person. So I called, asking if there was anything that could be done. I pledged to do what I could through the good graces of our congregation. Was there any consideration he might give to this grieving family?

We worked on some details, bringing the cost down as much as possible, but he told me that he didn't think any of the local burial sites would be quite as understanding about such things.

And then he asked the pivotal question: "Is her husband by any chance a veteran?" "I don't know," I told him, "but I'll ask." I did, and he was. So my funeral director friend made some calls resulting in permission for her to be buried at Arlington.

That also meant that when the time came, the husband too would be buried with his wife.

Think about it, if you will. For the last 36-plus years, her body has been in repose alongside presidents and generals and all manner of dignitaries, along with the bodies of those who gave their lives in service to our country, those "heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion," as Mr. Biden reminded us.

Repeatedly since Jan. 6 when insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, we have heard it referred to as a violated sacred place. And while I certainly agree, and watched in horror with many of you, I view the ground across the Potomac- Arlington Cemetery, to be even more sacred.

And I see it as a powerful symbol of our nation.

We are white, Black, brown, and otherwise. We are Christian, Jew, Muslim, and otherwise. We are Democrat, Republican, Independent, and otherwise. We are straight, gay, and otherwise. As diverse as God has created us, we are (or at least can and should be) unified in one respect: We value and cherish the freedom our Constitution provides us, and we can believe in one another and our common values, even when we don't agree exactly on how to go about doing it.

I would ask that you let Arlington National Cemetery be a symbol just as real as the American flag or the Capitol or the Constitution. We are not all alike, but one day we will all reside in the same earth from which we have come.

People of faith believe there is more--much more--beyond this earthly existence. But in the meantime, it is our responsibility to make our earthly one as redemptive as possible. And that falls to each of us as we continue this journey together.

That is the America I believe in.

Randy H. Hyde, a retired minister and pastor, lives in Little Rock, AK.

Republicans leaving the party because of Trumpziism's evil

'I'm out': Longtime donor quits the GOP - Republicans, because they're 'absolutely' controlled by Trump and (evil) QAnon!

Echo report published in the Raw Story by Roxanne Cooper:

Immigration lawyer Jacob Monty said this week that Trump's deadly Capitol riot was a 'bridge too far' and has now formally quit the GOP. His sentiments were revealed on Friday's CNN episode of "Out Front" with host Erin Burnett.

In fact, Monty made it clear, that his beef wasn't just with Trump, any longer. 

Monty, who's raised more than $1 million for the GOP, said he watched the Capitol riot and cried.

"Trump owns the party and Trump has always loved the conspiracy theories and this is Trump's party now," Monty told CNN's Burnett.

"I tried for four years to be a 'Never Trumper' in the Republican Party, but it's obvious now, everyone is paying homage to this (evil!) ex-president. No one will stand up to him ... Well, I'm a Texan and I don't lick anyone's boots."

"If Republicans are so blind, that they can defy reality and ignore the legal votes of millions of American citizens, there is no way I can convince them of the rightness of comprehensive immigration reform," he added. "There is simply no room for me in the GOP any longer."

Trump has splintered GOP leadership -- and it could be devastating in the midterm elections: report

Monty briefly served on Trump's Hispanic Advisory Council until the former president delivered an anti-immigration speech, which Monty characterized as a "combative, red-meat nativist stemwinder."

Republicans are now the Grim Old Reaper party!

Echo opinion written by Paul Krugman published in Arkansasonline.com, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette: 

Obviously, the Republican party has lost its way. Republicans have fallen and they cannot get up. 

Now the Grim Old Reaper party have become #Trumpzis

Krugman- Here's what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn't snap the party back to sanity--and it didn't--nothing will.

What isn't clear yet is who will end up facing doom. Will it be the GOP as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? We don't know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes.

About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week.

On Tuesday Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump's role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he's no longer in office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.)

The GOP's national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules.

And the fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. 

Incredibly, the Arizona state GOP party censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the coronavirus.

 The Texas GOP has adopted the slogan "We are the storm," which is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link. Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by the rioters themselves, that the attack on the U.S. Capitol was a left-wing false flag operation.

How did this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media, notably Fox News.
This opens the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something that I've seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates. 

What remains of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates, and so on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles.

This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich's takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump's reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head.

And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America's two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it's not coming back.
What happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically. And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to impotence in the face of a Democratic super-majority.

But it's not at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans have become more extreme, they have lost broad support; the GOP has won the popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11.

Given the unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and came fairly close to pulling it out in 2020 despite a deficit of 7 million votes. The Senate is evenly divided, even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people than Republicans.

And the Republican response to electoral defeat isn't to change policies to win over voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the state's electoral votes and Senate seats.

So the Republicans who control the state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID requirements and other measures to limit voting.

The bottom line is that we don't know whether we've earned more than a temporary reprieve. A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the legitimacy of its opposition isn't getting saner, and still has a good chance of taking complete power in four years.
--–––––v–––––--
Paul Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, writes for the New York Times.

UGH! On Thursday Kevin McCarthy (i.e., the dummy Charlie McCarthy's evil twin!) the House minority leader--who still hasn't conceded that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump "bears responsibility" for the attack on Congress--visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make amends.

Roman Catholics in parishes without priests

Gérald Cardinal Lacroix prepares the dwindling number of Catholics in Quebec for the end of parish life as they know it.

America Magazine by Phillipe Vallancourt with Catholic News Service (CNS)

Cardinal Lacroix in Quebec Canada
Lacroix was born on 27 July 1957, in Saint-Hilaire-de-Dorset in the Archdiocese of Quebec and completed his secondary and higher education at Trinity High School in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Saint Anselm College, in the neighboring town of Goffstown. He then studied for his theological training at Université Laval, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in theology.

QUEBEC CITY (CNS) — The Archdiocese of Quebec announced its intention to reorganize its parishes to focus on local missionary activities. This move comes as human and material resources continue to diminish.

At least 75% of the parishes will be affected by this change, in both urban and rural areas.

In a video, Cardinal Gerald Lacroix stressed that the church of Quebec was born out of mission. But, he said, it is now clear that the parish system that had a strong impact on French Canadian society is not sustainable and needs to evolve.

“We can no longer be satisfied with giving good pastoral services to the people who faithfully participate in our assemblies and movements,” said Cardinal Lacroix. “These people now represent a tiny part of the population entrusted to us.”

Quebec Auxiliary Bishop Marc Pelchat added that in recent years, the life of the parishes has relied on teams that have carried out “almost everything” of the daily functioning, often focusing on “expected services.”

“We must now reorient our pastoral teams toward a more intensely missionary activity, turned toward the people and groups that we reach too little,” said Bishop Pelchat.

This call to go beyond the usual frameworks aims at “freeing energies” to better reach out to the population that is currently not reached by the church’s message.

Priests, deacons and laypeople must “envisage working to spread the Gospel message outside our usual frameworks,” with new means, in new territories, Cardinal Lacroix said.

Over the past decade, the number of parishes in the Archdiocese of Quebec decreased from 200 to 38. These 38 parishes were then organized into 29 large “pastoral units.”

“For a long time now, the resources available have not allowed us to appoint pastors and other pastoral collaborators in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of all the communities,” confirmed Marie Chrétien, diocesan pastoral coordinator. “We now lack the resources to assign a pastoral team to each of these large units.”

From now on, the diocese will constitute expanded pastoral units, which will be articulated around new teams that will collaborate with people involved in the various areas.

The communications director of the Archdiocese of Quebec, Valérie Roberge-Dion, said that, in a first step, 22 of the 29 pastoral units will become 10 missionary units. Human resources will be shared, but no juridical grouping of parishes — a process that ended in 2019 for the Archdiocese of Quebec — is expected initially.

These changes will be made for the pastoral year that begins Aug. 1. In the meantime, the diocese intends to continue consultations to “clarify the roles and responsibilities of each one” and to determine according to which new financial and administrative agreements the parishes will continue to operate.

Cardinal Lacroix said he believes it will be necessary to get used to a “new face of the organization of the church.” He called on employees to welcome these changes and invited them to see how they can collaborate.

He also announced other changes anticipated for the church of Quebec. He raised the possibility that eucharistic celebrations could eventually be centered around “a few central churches.”

“The use of our places of worship and other buildings will have to be reevaluated, for the financial weight of these has increased and considerably restricts our ability to fulfill our essential mission,” he said. “The number of eucharistic celebrations will also have to be reviewed, because priests, far fewer in number than before, cannot limit themselves to multiplying sacramental celebrations while neglecting other forms of presence.”

He said he also expected the diocese will have fewer paid personnel and more volunteers.

Domestic terrorists are in a dangerous frenzy in support the looser!

Echo opinion letters published in the the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and published in Arkansasonline.com

Better off without Trump and his domestic terrorism brand!

Americans are trying to understand how to survive in strange and uncertain times.

#DomesticTerrorist #Rioters referred to as *patriots* (#StupidIvanka!) stormed the U.S. Capitol and somehow became the deranged heroes of a narcissistic person who, by some (Russian infused!) fluke, was elected to the presidency.  He is a person who cannot accept defeat and, instead, incites insurrection.

Craziness! The call for these "Ivanka patriots" to come to Washington D.C., armed and ready for "protest" is also repugnant and contrary to any concept of a democratic republic.

Donald Trump is a loser in any sense of the word, whether by vote or by intrinsic lack of moral center. He needs to fade away as the worst president in our history and face the consequences of his actions, whether felonious as POTUS or in his personal business dealings.

Our nation will be better without Trump than it ever was with him as--and I use the term cynically and loosely--our failed leader.

From Chris Baker, in Little Rock, Arkansas

President Joseph R. Biden has the opportunity to lead!

Inauguration speech by President Joseph R. Biden

Although, in this opinion echo, the writer disagrees with President Joe Biden's politics , the author actually agrees with a lot of what he said in his historic inaugural address. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/jan/22/bidens-opportunity/

An echo opinion published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Dana Kelly. 

President Biden's opportunity

When President Biden said, "hear me clearly, disagreement must not lead to disunion," that's prudent advice with which I concur.

"We can treat each other with dignity and respect," he said, imploring that we "stop the shouting and lower the temperature."

Good words, which unfortunately may fall on deaf ears to millions of the Trumpzi voters, who remember the superheated shrieking of Democrats at the 2017, inauguration that promised to not stop until Trump was impeached and cast out. (Maine Writer opinion- Donald Trump lied, cheated and colluded with Russia during his Trumpzi campaign to win the electoral college margin and defeat Secretary Hillary Clinton.....big reason for having him impeached!)

"Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury," Biden said, "no progress, only exhausting outrage." Those are indeed the predictable outcomes when incessant disunion, denial and delegitimizing propaganda were launched like missiles against the president in 2016 who, incidentally, had an Electoral College margin of victory larger than Joe Biden's.

"Show respect to one another," he urged. "Politics doesn't have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path." I'm right with Biden there, and what a difference it might have made had those sentiments prevailed with not-my-president/Never Trumpers who never respected his election, were insultingly disrespectful of him personally and promised scorched-earth opposition to his policies.

As he said in his speech at Wednesday's inauguration, "We have to be better than this," and he's right. That's why I was disappointed that Biden broke with the time-honored tradition of thanking his predecessor for his service. The snub may have been in response to Trump's bad decision to break the 152-year-old tradition of attending his successor's inauguration, but I wish he had been better than that. The classy thing would have been to adhere to the "two wrongs", adage.

The point of drawing the contrast between what President Joe Biden inspiringly said and what's been discouragingly done since 2017, isn't to call for retribution, but to bring balance to the task at hand.

There's little doubt that restoring the good-faith unity Biden wants now would be good for our nation, but it's going to be a tough sell without first walking back the bad-faith disunity of the past four years.

The inaugural speech wasn't the time for doing so, of course. Inaugurations are forward-looking occasions, and it was welcoming to hear President Biden reach out to those who didn't support him, and "take a measure of me and my heart."

In his heart, he knows how Trump was maligned and vilified, with unprecedented hyperbole and hypocrisy, and he knows that millions of Americans also know it. The hope is that President Biden can rein in the vindictive radicals in his party, and find constructive ways to repudiate their behavior as something that should never happen again. Calling that shameful spade by its rightful name would go a long way toward bridging the partisan divide.

It was lamentable to see the event that celebrates our uniquely American peaceful transfer of power shrouded by an over-show of armed troops. Thousands of machine guns clash with and undermine the imagery of a president of the people.

Biden's inaugural speech also omitted any reference to the prescience of another president, our own Bill Clinton, who in his 1997 inaugural address acknowledged aloud the stark political fissures of the time.

Noting that the people had chosen a president of one party and a Congress of the other, Clinton said, "Surely they did not do this to advance the politics of petty bickering and extreme partisanship they plainly deplore." Clinton then quoted Cardinal Bernardin on the wrongness of wasting precious time "on acrimony and division."

After the swearing-in pageantry, all cloaked with its rah-rah rhetoric of unity in the abstract sense, however, Biden's busy first day included issuing more than a dozen important executive orders.

"Are you ready to work?"- President Joseph Biden!

President Joseph Biden said, "the American story depends. not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us."

Racism leads to the pseudoscience of evil eugenics

The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics- Naziism built a culture of hate on this pseudoscience.

By Edwin Black published in the History News Network:

Racism leads to eugenics horror.  People that deny science will fall victim to this evil pseudoscience, called Eugenics.

The horrifying origins of racist eugenics.

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations--which functioned as part of a closely-knit network--published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.

The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.

Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.

The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, Applied Eugenics, which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."

Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.

Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first twenty-five years of eugenic legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At Sonoma, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.

In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 of which were on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.

Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense.

Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.

During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."

Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."

Hitler's struggle for a superior race would be a mad crusade for a Master Race. Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and even hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.

During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.

In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.…I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

That same year, ten years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."

More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.

Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.

Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade."

A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.

At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."

Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]."

Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.

Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.

After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity--an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty.

However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re-established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946 when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany…. I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.

Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."

Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.

Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.

Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late twentieth century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.

There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On October 14, America's first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.

This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission of the author.

QAnon-Naziism and lies

 AQnon  is a clandestine organization that is built on a culture of lies. Donald Trump became the false idol for this crazy group.  Naziism was created the same way.  A bunch of people wanted to blame the economic post World War I crises in Germany on a defenseless group of Jews and the rest is documented in the horror of the Holocaust.  This letter to the editor echo published in the Southern Illinoisan explains:

A lie is a lie

In the years following the First World War, an antisemitic “stab-in-the-back” conspiracy theory was used by right-wing extremists to explain how Jews allied with communists and other insidious foreign interests were responsible for the defeat of the German homeland. 

The evilness of this lie, repeated again and again by Adolf Hitler, fueled the German psyche until it became mainstream thinking. Although untrue, the lie catapulted Hitler into power, and kept him there. This same lie eventually metastasized into the Holocaust with the help of a passive, enabling and complicit citizenry.

Trump learned from Hitler that a lie, if told frequently enough, could convince many that fiction was truth. We saw him test of this theory with his birther claim that Obama was not an American citizen. The birther lie allowed Trump to examine how his racist beliefs would play among white Americans, and it served as a dress rehearsal for his bully pulpit claim of fraud before, during, and after the 2020 election, stoking the American psyche with an accusation that, in the event he lost his bid for a second term, he could use the lie to remain in power.

The tragedy of repeated lies is that they transform beliefs into behaviors that operate at the basest level of human activity. Acting out lies using simple phrases like “Where is Pelosi?” “Hang Mike Pence,” “Stop the steal,” and “Lock her up,” turn crowds into mobs, mobs into rage, and rage into unthinking and uncontrolled violence.

What looms in our future is the very real possibility of an in-house insurgency of Americans who continue to believe in the lie of a fraudulent election and are convinced they are acting as true patriots. We are at the cusp of having the true believers of this lie become our nation’s counterpart to the IRA in Ireland, the FARC in Columbia, and the ETA in Spain. In our case, the Tea Party/Trump Republicans have become the political face of this newest of insurgencies. I weep for my nation, my children and grandchildren.


John S. Haller Jr.
Carbondale, Illinois

Maine Writer- In my opinion, QAnon is Naziism reincarnate.

"You Are There" on January 6, 2021: If not an impeachable offense, then what is?

In the 1950s there was a popular series titled "You Are There"- This report by Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic is reminiscent of that theme.
 

Insurrection Day, 12:40 p.m.: A group of about 80 lumpen (IOW- screwed up cult!) Trumpists were gathered outside the Commerce Department, near the White House. 

They organized themselves in a large circle, and stared at a boombox rigged to a megaphone. Their leader and, for some, savior—a number of them would profess to me their belief that the 45th president is an agent of God and his son, Jesus Christ—was rehearsing his pitiful list of grievances, and also fomenting a rebellion against, among others, the klatch of treacherous Republicans who had aligned themselves with the Constitution and against him.

A year from now we’re gonna start working on Congress,” Trump said through the boombox. “We gotta' get rid of the weak congress people, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world. We gotta get rid of them.”

“Fuck Liz Cheney!” a man next to me yelled. He was bearded, and dressed in camouflage and Kevlar. His companion was dressed similarly, a valhalla: admit one patch sewn to his vest. Next to him was a woman wearing a full-body cat costume. “Fuck Liz Cheney!” she echoed. Catwoman, who would not tell me her name, carried a sign that read take off your mask smell the bullshit. Affixed to a corner of the sign was the letter Q.

“What’s your plan?” I asked her. People in the street, dozens at first, then hundreds, were moving past us, toward Pennsylvania Avenue, and then presumably on to the Capitol. “We’re going to stop the steal,” she answered. “If Pence isn’t going to stop it, we have to.” The treasonous behavior of Liz Cheney and many of her Republican colleagues was, to them, a fixed insurrectionary fact, but Pence was still in a plastic moment. Across the day, however, I could feel the Trump cult turning against him, as it turns against most everything.

I told the woman in the cat costume that I would walk with her group. “Only if you take off your mask,” she said. The media is the only real virus, she explained, knowing that I was a part of the media. I told her I would keep my mask on. Trumpists had asked me periodically to remove it. Some were polite about it, a few others not. It seemed to me that only 5 percent or so of the thousands of people gathered for the insurrection wore masks. 

At one point, when I was caught in the thickest part of the crowd, near the Ellipse, a man told me, “Your glasses are fogging up.”

“Yep, masks,” I said.

“You don’t have to wear it. It’s not a mandate.”

“No, I do.”

“Why?”

“There’s a pandemic.”

“Yeah, right.”

We will find out shortly if the January 6, 2021, insurrection was also a super-spreader event. What I do know, after spending hours sponging up Trumpist paranoia, conspiracism, and cultishness, is that this gathering was not merely an attempted coup, but also a mass-delusion event, not something that can be explained adequately through the prism of politics. Its chaos was rooted in psychological and theological phenomena, intensified by eschatological anxiety. One man I interviewed this morning, a resident of Texas who said his name was Don Johnson (I did not trust this to be his name), told me that the country was coming apart, and that this dissolution presaged the End Times. “It’s all in the Bible,” he said. “Everything is predicted. Donald Trump is in the Bible. Get yourself ready.”

The conflation of Trump and Jesus was a common theme at the rally. “Give it up if you believe in Jesus!” a man yelled near me. People cheered. “Give it up if you believe in Donald Trump!” Louder cheers.

I would not compromise on the matter of my mask, but the woman in the cat costume and her friends allowed me to come along anyway. We turned from 14th Street into the sea of people moving down Pennsylvania Avenue. It did not strike me, even then, that this mob would actually storm the Capitol. I assumed, in a non-insurrectionary failure of imagination, that they would gather on the Capitol’s sloping lawn, sing Lee Greenwood anthems, and curse Mitt Romney. There were Proud Boys—or at least Proud Boy–adjacent boys—in this group; they would not speak to me but were also not overtly hostile. (I noticed on two occasions groups of Proud Boy–looking men smoking marijuana, which, all things being equal, was a good thing.)

“Where are you all from?” I asked the woman in the cat costume. “Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Illinois, all kinds of states,” she said. “Are those guys Proud Boys?” I asked. “They’re American boys,” she answered. “Do you believe in the ideas of QAnon, that there’s a deep state that is a cult of pedophiles?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said, attitudinally. My mask continued to bother her. “It’s very rude,” she said.

The streets became more crowded the closer we got to the Capitol. I lost track of my group. I tried to interview a bunch of other Trump supporters, mostly unsuccessfully. Earlier in the day, just west of the Washington Monument, a group of insurrectionists turned on another reporter—I was not able to figure out the identity of my masked compatriot—chanting the word guillotine (“Make guillotines great again” was one rally-poster theme).

The crowd continued to grow. It was then that I sensed the mob, goaded by its master, would not be pacified. “Stop the steal!” someone near me said to his companions.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is sometimes called "The First American"

We were close to the Capitol. Large formations were approaching the building. It stood there gleaming, not yet defiled. (Maine Writer: IOW, the Capitol has been physically damaged but the democracy still stands!)  -  In fact, when 

Benjamin Franklin was 81 years old, he was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates at the Constitutional Convention had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it."

Someone inside the White House created parallel data about the COVID19 epidemic

Face the Nation on CBS, with Margaret Brennan and Dr. Deborah Birx

Dr. Deborah Birx on #Covid19 #disinformation inside the #Trump White House: “I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made” she tells Margaret Brennan: 
@margbrennan “Someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president"

Dr. Deborah Birx, an American physician and diplomat who served as the United States Global AIDS Coordinator for President Barack Obama and with Donald Trump between 2014 and 2020; she additionally served as the United States Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy between 2015 and 2021, and as the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force between February 2020 to January 2021

Washington DC — Dr. Deborah Birx spoke out about her tenure as coordinator of the White House's coronavirus task force under Donald Trump, telling "Face the Nation" new details about the 11 months she spent trying to steer the federal government's response to the pandemic.

In a wide-ranging interview, Birx spoke about her decision to join the task force in the first place, after repeatedly declining to do so, her relationship with Mr. Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, the legacy of her time in office and her upcoming retirement.

A transcript of Birx's interview moderator Margaret Brennan that aired Sunday on "Face the Nation" can be found here. A selection of highlights from the full interview appears below, lightly edited for length and clarity.

Joining the White House task force

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, we're at the end of February. CDC official gives a briefing to reporters that tanks the markets when she says that within the community there may be a virus spreading and it could cause severe disruption to daily life. Dr. Fauci goes on television a few days later and says the risk to Americans remains low. You're watching this and what are you thinking?

DR. BIRX: So I'm in South Africa. We have all of our countries in, from all over the world. We're going through — we're working 24 hours a day, but we have a break over dinner. And we're staying at a place where we can cook, and I love to cook. So, we're cooking, we're eating, we're watching CNN. And so over those two weeks of February, we're yelling at the CNN television saying, this is going to be a pandemic because the Chinese — what I saw from China, when you overwhelm your hospitals, you have to know that you have broad-based community spread before that happens. Yet they weren't seeing it.

And that really worried me because what we were looking for is people with symptoms. And so when people were coming into the country, we were looking for people with symptoms.

MARGARET BRENNAN: When you say we, who do you mean?

DR. BIRX: I mean the United States.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The CDC.

DR. BIRX: Well, the United — I think it was everybody. I don't know who was on the task force at that time, but I think multiple agencies were represented at that time.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But why wasn't it obvious to them, when you're watching this on TV and saying this is so clearly a pandemic that's coming to hit us hard?

DR. BIRX: I guess because I've been in a lot of pandemics, and I've learned from the things we've missed.

This is exactly how we missed the HIV pandemic. That's how we missed it when it started. I know that it's not a respiratory disease, but it has a large asymptomatic component. And so we didn't see it until people started getting sick. And that's true about many pandemics.

If you're only looking for sick people, you miss a lot of what is really happening under the surface. And so I was always worried that there was a big iceberg under the surface and we were just seeing the top of it. So, when we were questioning people who came into this country about symptoms rather than testing everybody who came into the country, that's when I started to get really worried.

At the same time, there were individuals — there was a single individual in the White House that had been calling me since January.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That was Matt Pottinger —

DR. BIRX: Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: — the deputy national security adviser?

DR. BIRX: Because I've known him and I've known his wife for a very long time. We've worked on pandemics together. Both of us were in Asia during SARS. And so we understood how serious this can go.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And he asked you, Matt Pottinger asks you to come from the State Department to the White House.

DR. BIRX: And I said no about 20 times.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why?

DR. BIRX: Well, from the outside, everything looks very chaotic in the White House. I had spent —

MARGARET BRENNAN: Wasn't it?

DR. BIRX: — the first three years of this administration trying to stay out of the swirl, trying to protect the PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) program. We had extraordinary cuts, obviously, every year.

MARGARET BRENNAN: This is AIDS?

DR. BIRX: The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) Relief. It's what's changed the trajectory of the pandemic around the world, both for HIV and TB.

I had no interest in going into a political space. I'm not a political person. I'm a civil servant. I've never been a political person. I've never worked on a campaign. I've never campaigned for any of the candidates. I take the Hatch Act very seriously. I- I just am not a political person.

World Health Organization (WHO) Data site here.

So, it never occurred to me to go into the White House until I could see that we were missing pieces that I thought were very important in the response. And so after many weeks of saying, no, no, no, the president announced the new task force with the vice president in the lead. They said this would be very technical, and that I would have a very technical position. And because I thought that I could be helpful, which is the only reason I go and do anything. If I think I have something to add, I feel like it's my obligation to the American public to go in and do that. That's what a civil servant is supposed to do.

The crisis in the spring

MARGARET BRENNAN: Was that the moment, though, that moment in the spring — is that the moment you looked at the task force and you said, we have a serious problem here, this is not going according to plan?

DR. BIRX: I think everyone knew that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: When did that hit you?

DR. BIRX: Everyone knew that. Everyone knew that from, I would say, March 8, on. Because you only had to look at the slopes of the curves in these major metropolitan cities to understand what was happening and understanding if you're seeing that rate of hospitalization, how much community spread there was.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you were trying to get Americans just to wear masks. And the president himself was undermining you. He wasn't wearing one. I mean, you would go out and talk about it can be a fashion statement from the podium. I mean, you were trying to make it light so people would accept it. But all these guidelines are getting undermined by the president himself. Is there ever a way to make that scenario work?

DR. BIRX: Well, you have to, because that's the president. So you have to figure out how to get that message out when you can't get it out from the head of the country. And that's our job. You don't give up. You don't say, well that didn't work so, of course, you know, everything is going to be terrible. You've got to try to make it the least terrible it can be. I mean, you can't ever in any moment when American lives are at stake, say, well, this is just too hard. I'm giving up.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But where's the vice president in all of this?

DR. BIRX: The vice president knew what I was doing.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You mean he knew that you were telling the governors privately to do things that the president publicly was making light of? When he was saying, you don't really need to wear a mask, or pushing to reopen the economy faster than your guidelines would allow, Mike Pence knew that?

DR. BIRX: He knew what I was doing because —

MARGARET BRENNAN: And he supported it?

DR. BIRX: — I don't —I'm not a person who would go out on their own and not do, you know, I wouldn't go —

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why would you have to be sneaking around? You're the head of the COVID task force and tens of thousands of Americans are dying. Why is that a covert operation?

DR. BIRX: Because, if this isn't working and you're not going to get that to work, you have to find another solution. I mean, you can't just say, well, the president is saying this so I'm going to give up on the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories that we support. I couldn't do that. And others couldn't either.

I mean, there was a team of people going out and supporting this approach. I felt all along that if we could have put 20 or 30 full-time Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) personnel in every state for long term assignments, six-month assignments, they could help states get over these barriers and understand and help support states translate their guidance.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you were looking at all this data. Do you think when you were in the room and briefing, even if it was with other people, do you think President Trump appreciated the gravity of the health crisis you were describing?

DR. BIRX: I think the president appreciated the gravity in March. It took awhile after I arrived in the White House to remove all of the ancillary data that was coming in. I mean, there was parallel data stream coming into the White House that were not transparently utilized. And I needed to stop that, where people were —

MARGARET BRENNAN: You mean outside advisers?

DR. BIRX: Outside advisers, coming to inside advisers. And to this day, I mean, until the day I left, I am convinced there were parallel data streams because I —

MARGARET BRENNAN: Disinformation?

DR. BIRX: I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made. So, I know that someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president. I don't know to this day who, but I know what I sent up and I know that what was in his hands was different from that. That worries me because at any moment — I've built my career on data transparency and accountability. It is very important to me that we all agree how the data is collected and how we use it. We don't cut it in pieces and say, we're only going to look at it in this six weeks because it makes us look better. Or, we're all going to look at it in these two weeks because we look better than Europe in these two weeks. You can't do that. You have to use the entire database.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Who was doing that?

DR. BIRX: To this day, I don't know. I know now why watching some of the tapes that certainly Scott Atlas brought in parallel data streams. I don't know who else was part of it, but I think when the record goes back and people see what I was writing on a daily basis that was sent up to White House leadership, that they will see that I was highly specific on what I was seeing and what needed to be done.




MARGARET BRENNAN: What were the biggest obstacles to you communicating that, though? I mean, were there COVID deniers in the White House?

DR. BIRX: There are people in the White House and I think people around this country, because I've had the privilege to meet them and listen to them and hear them, because I wanted to hear what people were saying. There were people who definitely believed that this was a hoax.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why?

DR. BIRX: I think because the information was confusing at the beginning. I think because we didn't talk about the spectrum of disease, because everyone interpreted on what they knew. And so they saw people get COVID and be fine. And then they had us talking about how severe the disease is and how it could cause these unbelievable fatalities of our American public.

I mean, so every American life lost, I mean — I haven't slept in 10 months or 11 months because those were the numbers. That's someone's parent. That's someone's grandparent. My great-grandmother was lost in the pandemic flu. I know what that feels like from just listening to my grandmother. To have that others feel that same level of pain and loss when it was preventable or could be preventable was really excruciating.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you don't blame the president's own language of calling some of this politically motivated, a hoax? It was a phrase he used at one point.

DR. BIRX: You know, when you have a pandemic where you're relying on every American to change their behavior, communication is absolutely key. And so every time a statement was made by a political leader that wasn't consistent with public health needs, that derailed our response. It is also why I went out on the road because I wasn't censored on the road.
Working with governors

DR. BIRX: I was so frustrated by the end of May going into June by the lack of reaction to what I could see in the middle of May coming, that it and that — you combine that with the gating criteria not being utilized, that I realized that the only way, if I could not get a voice internally, that I could get a voice out at the state level because I could see the governors on the governor's call weekly and I could see how deeply they were concerned about every one of their citizens. Most of them were not in the middle of an election campaign.

And so by going out and working with the governors, two things happened. One, I got to see amazing things that are best practices and really bring those back. And what I've learned from Detroit and Chicago and Arkansas and Alabama and Texas and Arizona and up through Connecticut — I mean, it's just been amazing to be able to see really great solutions and try to bring those back. But that was the place where people would let me say what needed to be said about the pandemic, both in private with the governors and then in following up, doing press to talk to the people of that state.

It was difficult during the run-up to the election. That was the time when one of my daily reports — there was by that time 200 of them. That was when one of them was leaked, right before the election. So clearly there was some intentionality there. And I was talking about how severe the epidemic was in the Northern Plains states and saying if that epidemic gets into our populous states of California, Texas, Florida, New York, that this would be an early surge to what we expected in the winter with the expansion of this virus.

And so I was very worried. But others were worried, too. I want to make it clear this was just not Debbie Birx. There was a coalition of four of us at the beginning, from Steve Hahn to Bob Redfield to myself to Tony Fauci, making it clear that we would make sure that we could get the information out to the public in one way or the other. It's why I sent the information to all of them every morning, because I never knew who would have the ability to do press.
No "full-time team" at the White House

DR. BIRX: I was an N of 1. So having a team at the White House that can really respond to this is going to be really, really important, because the amount of work that needs to be done not only at the White House, but also at the state level to really ensure that we come out of this in some kind of normalcy by summer, will be really critical.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You said you were just one. You were coordinator of the task force. What do you mean, you were just one?

DR. BIRX: There was only one full-time person in the White House working on the coronavirus response. There —

MARGARET BRENNAN: How is that possible?

DR. BIRX: Well, that's what I was given. So what I did is, I went to my people that I've known all through the last years in government, all 41, and said, can you come and help me? And so I was able to recruit from other agencies, individuals.

And certainly, Irum Zaidi who I brought in from PEPFAR, was my chief epidemiologist and data developer for the PEPFAR program, where we really revolutionized data to really end the- work on ending the pandemic of HIV and TB in sub-Saharan Africa. And so I would be able to wicker together a group of volunteers who really helped me.

And I had one incredible support person, Tyler Ann McGuffee, who really helped make sure I was at meetings on time and didn't miss emails. But there was no team, full-time team in the White House working on coronavirus.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Did you ask for staff and you were denied?

DR. BIRX: I did ask for staff. I think what [the Biden administration is] doing, of bringing in an expert in testing, an expert in vaccines, an expert in data and data use, not just collecting data, but how to use it successfully, I think all of those pieces are going to be critical for their success, bringing in a full-time supply chain person.

And so, all of these individuals existed, but they existed in different pockets of government. So as a team, you're constantly having to work outward to getting everybody on board, to making sure the response is as coordinated as it can be.
Why Birx didn't quit

MARGARET BRENNAN: Did you ever consider quitting?

DR. BIRX: Always.

I mean, why would you want to put yourself through that everyday? Colleagues of mine that I had known for decades, decades in that one experience, because I was in the White House, decided that I had become this political person, even though they had known me forever.

I had to ask myself every morning, is there something that I think I can do that would be helpful in responding to this pandemic? And it's something I asked myself every night.

And when it became a point where I could — I wasn't getting anywhere and that was, like, right before the election, I wrote a very detailed communication plan of what needed to happen the day after the election and how that needed to be executed. And there was a lot of promise that that would happen.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because you knew at that point that the election was a factor in communication about the virus?

DR. BIRX: Yes. Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Did you ever withhold information yourself?

DR. BIRX: No. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: When some of those colleagues were repressing you, I mean, some people felt you became an apologist for President Trump. They look at that moment in the briefing room, you know the one I'm talking about, when he came out and he talked about injecting bleach and you were sitting there and he looked at you and he asked about ultraviolet light and heat —

DR. BIRX: See, that —

MARGARET BRENNAN: — and you start talking about fevers. You didn't say no.

DR. BIRX: No, no. OK, so —

MARGARET BRENNAN: Tell me.

DR. BIRX: — so let's go back to that, because that's a really critical moment.

He was not speaking to me. He was speaking to the DHS scientist that was two seats over from me that entire time. When he finally turned to me and said, is it a, could this be a treatment? I said, "not a treatment." You can look at the transcripts. "Not a treatment." That dialogue was between the president of the United States and a DHS scientist.

I have always been respectful of offices, and you can see I don't criticize people specifically in public. I don't think that — I always think that you need to transcend that and you need to find a way to communicate effectively where you're not criticizing a person in public.

So when he did turn to me at the very end of that dialogue, I said, "Not a treatment."

Now it's in the transcripts. It never got picked up by the press as, that is what actually happened.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Your answer when he said bleach, you said, not a treatment?

DR. BIRX: Not a treatment. When he turned to me and said, what do you think? Could this be a treatment? I said, not a treatment. But that moment was — that was completely lost.

And then there's, you know, skits on Saturday Night Live. I mean, when you're a scientist who's grounded themselves in data and combating epidemics and working with communities and working with governments to change the future of people's lives for the better and then you get, this is what — when you talked about, was I prepared for that? No, I wasn't prepared for that. I didn't even know what to do in that moment.

I think, you know, that's when you're in that, can't-let-the-floor-swallow-you-up moment. I mean, that conversation between two people was going on in front of me. And I, to this day, don't know what to do when that happens.

I think now — I think there's some people who thought that I would just stand up and take over the microphone from the president. I don't know what people's expectations were in that moment.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, sometimes people say, well, Tony Fauci, when that happened to- to him, he would sort of gently come back up to the podium and set the record straight if he disagreed with the president.

DR. BIRX: Well, he was given the opportunity to do that, though.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And you don't feel you were given the opportunity to respond?

DR. BIRX: Not until he turned to me and said, could this be a treatment? And I said, not a treatment. You know, in that moment, you know, people then want to define you by the moment and I understand — I, look, I understand how perceptions go. And I understand, I understood when Matt Pottinger was calling me to go into the White House and try to support a comprehensive coronavirus response by utilizing the strength of the federal government would be a terminal event for my federal career, which is part of the reason why I didn't want to do it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: A terminal event?

DR. BIRX: A terminal event. I know that I wouldn't be allowed to really continue successfully within the federal government. You can't go into something that's that polarized and not believe that you won't be tainted by that experience or how people interpret you in that experience.

So I knew that part of it. I didn't want that to happen.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And this will be the end of your federal career?

DR. BIRX: Yeah, I will need to retire probably within the next four to six weeks from CDC.
Her legacy

MARGARET BRENNAN: An immunologist, you were appointed by President Obama to work on AIDS relief, as you mentioned, at the State Department. Yet your name in the history books is going to be associated with President Donald Trump. How does that sit with you?

DR. BIRX: Well, you know, this is what worries me. When I see how partisan and divided the United States is that then gets played out in the civil service, and if we start looking at technical civil servants as belonging to a political party, we will lose the ability for highly qualified civil servants to come and help.

And we have amazingly qualified civil servants. They're at the CDC. They're at HHS. They're at FDA. They're at NIH. And most of the White House personnel are civil servants detailed there from their home agencies. If we start saying if you come in and do this, you are then going to be part of the political apparatus, that is going to be very dangerous for this country.