Donald Trump inconsistency: "more stable direction from a weather vane" opinions

Donald Trump the UN-stable genius is emotionally unbalanced.

To the Editor of the New York Times: “Trump Is Turning America Into a Psychotic State,” by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner. (Opinion guest essay, April 12), is disconcerting on many levels. 

To date, the other two branches of our government - judiciary and legislative- have failed to hold Donald Trump in check. 

Perhaps he feels that the Supreme Court decision that granted him sweeping immunity allows him to rule without restraint. Congress seems unwilling to hold Trump accountable when he clearly acts beyond the legal limits. These factors, combined with a president who can be emotionally unbalanced and whose circle of advisers seldom pushes back, place the country in an extremely precarious position. From Amy M. Ferguson Dunmore, Pennsylvania

To the Editor: Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner are ultimately making an argument about process, not just personality. Strip away the rhetoric, and what remains is a concern that the machinery of government — deliberation, consistency, institutional memory — is no longer reliably engaged. When that discipline weakens, policy begins to look less like strategy and more like improvisation.

The United States has weathered strong presidencies, weak presidencies and moments of real turmoil. What is different here is the suggestion of sustained unpredictability at the institutional level. That is not a governing philosophy. It is the absence of one.

I’ve seen more stable direction from a weather vane — and at least it knows which way the wind is blowing. At this point, the only consistent policy is inconsistency, and even that seems subject to revision.  From Douglas Shields in Pittsburgh, PA

Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner lay out in depressing detail Donald Trump’s lethal combination of qualities: evil, ignorance, out-of-control anger and disorganization. And he has freed up and nurtured the parts of our society and culture that share those qualities.

The results have plunged the rest of us into a state of dread💢😨

But, like the rest of Americans, I was mesmerized watching the return of the Artemis II astronauts and the ground team that pulled off this mission, I felt a bracing shot of optimism.

We were treated to an awesome display of the qualities of the other part of our culture: thirst for knowledge, intelligence, drive, planning, attention to detail and cooperation. And diversity — among both the crew members and the entire mission team. These qualities remain alive and well❗ From Natasha Lisman in New York

Republicans did not care how much people suffered during the Trump government shutdown. But ahhhh! The Epstein Files!

Republicans and Donald Trump's misplaced priorities: Children going without SNAP supplemental nurtriont❓ Republicans did not blink. Air traffic controllers working without pay❓ No problem.

But the Epstein Files has their attention. #WWWTP❓

To the editor of the Los Angeles Times: When the American flag flies, the red and the blue share the same fabric. 

One does not overpower the other. Yet the leaders who represent it refuse to focus on anything beyond landing punches on their political opponents.

The MAGA clan can bark at Democrats over the Republican❗ shutdown all they want, but reports consistently signal something far more troubling than gossip. The more than 20,000 pages of additional documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s private estate released this week make that clear (“Trump ‘knew about the girls,’ Jeffrey Epstein claimed in emails as Democrats, GOP release trove of records,” Nov. 12). Then President Trump reveals just how quick he is to turn on his own, claiming “only a very bad, or stupid, Republican” would question him.

This obsession with playing “big stick” only distracts from accountability, and leaves figures like the late Virginia Giuffre reduced to convenient props.

Unfortunately, right now, our American flag stands for little more than the colors that divide us. But one thing remains certain: The Epstein victims embody the perseverance and valor the flag is supposed to symbolize better than a MAGA party line ever could. And that can’t be written off as a hoax.

From Samantha Hoffman, in Conover, North Carolina

To the editor of the Los Angeles Times: So, I wonder why the MAGA Republicans want to see the files❓ If they show that Trump participated in illegal activity and sexual assault, would they care? They knew he was a convicted felon and an adjudicated sexual offender last November, but they voted for him anyway.

Since criminal convictions and sexual assault don’t seem to matter to the MAGA base, perhaps they’re upset about something else: Trump lied to them 🤥when he promised to release the files. But his well-documented, proven, chronic lies never upset them before, so why now❓

From Jay Lynch in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

Donald Trump should have been in prison three years ago!

Echo opinion letters published in The New York Times:

To the Editor: Donald Trump was specifically directed at his arraignment not to attempt to threaten or intimidate witnesses. He has had similar directives by judges in his other pending cases not to use threatening incendiary language.

So he posts in capital letters shortly after the last hearing “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” — a clear threat to judges, prosecutors, witnesses and possible jurors.

Experienced federal prosecutors have stated that if any other defendant so blatantly violated court orders, they would likely be sent to jail to await trial.

At the very least there should be an immediate hearing and a clear unmistakable message that one more violation and he’ll be sent to jail. I am so tired of Donald Trump flouting the rules and getting away with it.

From Richard Goetz in Delray Beach, Florida.

To the Editor:  Jurors are asked carefully to examine the evidence presented in a trial, in accordance with a judge’s instructions. 

(Evil! 👿) Donald Trump already lashed out at prosecutors, judges and potential witnesses and has exhorted his followers to take action.

Unless jurors (and any family members) are guaranteed protection or anonymity during and after any trial, who would be able to exercise the needed care to serve as a juror in any of the upcoming trials of Mr. Trump?

From David Austin, in Pittsburgh PA

Maine Writer:  In my opinion, Donald Trump is now just an ordinary citizen He should have been in prison and charged with sedition, three years ago!

End evil white supremacy

The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ 

Rather, he’s a Mainstream Republican
Echo report published in Rolling Stone Magazine

By Talia Lavin

Mass shooter "lone wolf" crime scene

The right-wing extremists who control the modern GOP are all gripped by a racist delusion. The shooter is just the latest to act on it.

There’s no such thing as a lone wolf — an appellation often given, in error, to terrorists who act alone, particularly those of the white supremacist variety. There are only those people who, fed a steady diet of violent propaganda and stochastic terror, take annihilatory rhetoric to its logical conclusion.

Such was the case on Saturday, when a teenaged white supremacist named Payton Gendron opened fire in a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people, while livestreaming the carnage on the live-video site Twitch. Prior to the shooting, he had posted a 180-page manifesto in which he laid out his rationale clearly: He was an adherent of what is called Great Replacement Theory, the idea that white people, in the United States and white-majority countries around the world, are being systematically, deliberately outbred and “replaced” by immigrants and ethnic minorities, in a deliberate attempt to rid the world of whiteness. It’s a conspiracy theory that has inspired terror attacks in New Zealand and Pittsburgh, San Diego, and El Paso – an ideology that marries demographic panic with the idea of a cunning, nefarious plot. Reading through the document, what struck me hardest, however, was how very close the killer’s ideas were to the American mainstream – the white-hot core of American politics.

Five years ago, when white supremacists walked down the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and carrying tiki torches, few people understood their intent – the fact that they were referring to replacement theory. The idea seemed outlandish, even incomprehensible; at the time, it was a fairly obscure rallying cry, based around a 2012 book by French novelist Renaud Camus fear mongering about a nonwhite-majority Europe, absorbed into the fetid stew of white-supremacist cant, where it acquired a vicious antisemitism. For many white supremacists, it is Jews who are orchestrating the “reverse colonization,” as Camus put it, of white countries, in order to more easily manipulate a nonwhite and therefore more malleable general populace. 

In Gendron’s manifesto, after explaining in detail why he picked the particular supermarket he did — it was in a majority-Black neighborhood with a majority-Black clientele — he felt the need to explain why he did not choose to attack Jews. “[Jews] can be dealt with in time, but the high fertility replacers will destroy us now, it is a matter of survival we destroy them first,” he wrote, before listing his weaponry in detail with price points included — a manual for future murders. While Gendron’s choice to engage in mass slaughter puts him on the radical fringe of those who enforce their beliefs with bullets, and his overt antisemitism differs slightly from vaguer blame of “elites,” “Democrats” and “globalists,” his fixation on white birthrates and demographic change are neither fringe nor particularly unusual. The gnawing fear of a minority-white America has utterly consumed conservative politics for the past half-decade, creating a Republican party whose dual obsessions with nativism and white fertility have engendered a suite of policies engineered to change the nature of the body politic. What unites murderers like Gendron, and the long list of white supremacist attackers he cited with admiration, with the mainstream of the Republican party is the dream of a white nation.

The demographics of the United States are changing, and the share of the population considered white is shrinking. This change is occurring faster than anticipated, thanks to the relative ages of white and nonwhite populations in the country — the nonwhite population trends significantly younger — and all national population growth is being driven by nonwhite groups, according to an analysis by Brookings. This confluence of death, birth, and immigration is in and of itself morally neutral, a matter of the natural ebb and flow of populations over time. But as the era of the white majority nears its end, a revanchist, racist right has treated the facts of demography as an occasion for a sweeping, violent moral panic.

Donald Trump’s ascendance was a key marker of the force of white racial panic; from the moment he launched his candidacy, his overt racism set the party’s agenda, and from the very first, his rhetoric directly provoked racist violence. Far from ebbing as Trump has ceased to be the party’s sole center, however, the tide of white animus has become even more central to a new crop of Congress people and candidates.

The Republican Party’s embrace of nativism has been more of a full-on dash than a slow slide, and it has been catalyzed by the vast constellation of right-wing media. Chief among these is the juggernaut that is Fox News. 

As a New York Times analysis revealed, the network’s flagship prime-time show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, has an obsession with replacement theory: In more than 400 shows the newspaper analyzed, Carlson evoked the idea of forced demographic change through immigration and other methods. Carlson is not alone: A Media Matters examination of Fox’s rhetoric throughout 2021 found that the network fulsomely embraced replacement theory, or, as it is more commonly known among extremists, “white genocide.” Such fears have become commonplace campaign talking points among Republican candidates: Ohio senatorial candidate J.D. Vance recently declared that Democrats are “bringing in a large number of new voters to replace those that are already here”; in Arizona, far-right state senator Wendy Rogers responded to an article about migrants with the ominous message, “We are being replaced and invaded.” Just hours after the mass shooting in Buffalo, Senate candidate Blake Masters posted a video appearance in which he declared that Democrats’ electoral strategy involves bringing in “millions” of immigrants to vote for them. 

(#STUPIDMTG) Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene rode extremism into Congress, long after sharing a video that declared that an “unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists, and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.” This clamor — from politicians and pundits, candidates and conspiracy theorists — has become the radioactive center of the right’s policy.

Once you understand an obsession with racial composition and white fertility to be the driving engine of Republican politics, a number of seemingly disparate movements begin to fit together into an ugly whole. Some aspects are obvious: The anti-immigrant movement that has seen U.S. refugee admissions at historic lows and asylum seekers marooned in purgatorial camps in Mexico continues to dominate the right-wing airwaves. Historic levels of gerrymandering are ensuring that a diversifying populace remains beholden to the views of a white minority — alongside openly antidemocratic restrictions on voting and changes in election administration.

Other aspects are more veiled, but no less vitriolic. Years of fearmongering about transgender rights, and in particular their influence on youth, are linked to fears of waning fertility: anti-trans demagogues like Abigail Shrier describe trans bodies as “maimed and sterile,” and, as such, a chief motivation for the legion of anti-trans laws passed by state legislatures is the future fertility of trans children born female. The violent antifeminism of a far-right movement that sees women principally as vessels for breeding a new white generation expresses itself in a fixation on a return to “traditional” gender roles. 

And the culmination of generations of right-wing activism, which will secure the “domestic supply of infants,” as Justice Samuel Alito memorably put it, is poised to arrive in the form of the dissolution of Roe v. Wade. Payton Gendron, and those like him, are listening: like Brenton Tarrant, the mass shooter at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Gendron opened his manifesto with a screed on the supposedly apocalyptic consequences of “sub-replacement fertility rates” among white women.

In his manifesto, Gendron claims to have acted alone, while in the same breath admitting, “I’ve had many influences from others.” The 180 pages of the document reveal the breadth of those influences: it is largely pastiche, with page upon page of racist and antisemitic memes compiled in repulsive collages; collections of scientific studies of I.Q. differentials between racist groups; screenshots and links to news articles that confirm his prejudices; and segments of other manifestos, including Tarrant’s, bloat a thin line of racist scrawl. He may have, as he claims, become radicalized by over-enthused browsing of the Internet’s sewers, principally 4chan. But his fixations mirror those of the right wing more broadly, from violent transphobia to a loathing of immigration to a preoccupation with the possibility of civil war.

When the rhetoric of an entire movement devolves into Manichaean demonization of their political foes; when demographic shifts are represented as apocalyptic; and when a party can appeal to nothing but the consolidation of white power, it is an inevitability that such rhetoric will leave bodies in its wake. The Republican Party caters chiefly now to those who claim that to be born the wrong color is an act of genocide, and act with appropriate fervor. 

There has never been a lone wolf when it comes to racist terror in the United States; it suffuses every aspect of our politics and policy, and in latter years the mass howl of fear at change comes from a jaw that drips with blood. As long as we fail to recognize the wellspring of racial animus that animates the right wing in this country, the corpses will continue to accrue.

Donald Trump fired everyone who was able to keep him somewhat in check

Echo letter opinion published in the Pennsylvania news- TribLive ~ too many "yes men" (but Trumpzi whines about impeachment! He fired everyone who could've prevented this.)

Dump Trump while we can

Donald Trump’s actions with Ukraine for personal political gain should trouble us all. Worse is the fact that he sees nothing wrong with getting dirt on a political opponent from a foreign country, (Maine Writer - click here to read Donald Trump's presidential oath!) ~ even after having said as much openly in an interview in June. But worst of all, is that there is clearly no one around Trump to restrain him. (Oath! - "So help me God")

At the start of his term, three generals were able to keep him somewhat in check, James Mattis, John Kelly and H.R. McMaster, until they left and he surrounded himself with  !yes-men! Should he be reelected and no longer has to worry about polls — and having his Twitter rants approved by the electorate — he will be completely out of control.

Dump Trump. While we still can.

From James Hillebrecht, Latrobe (Pittsburgh area) Pennsylvania

Remember, Repair, Together - Tree of Life Synagogue memorial and commemoration

Day of programming announced to commemorate Oct. 27, 2018, massacre of eleven Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

Planned events will include Torah study and opportunities for volunteering. 

Published in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle by Toby Tabachinck

Initial plans have been announced for a day of activities marking the one-year commemoration of the Oct. 27 massacre at Tree of Life building, the most violent anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.

Emblematic of the tenor of the day’s activities, to be held on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2019, is a new logo with the words “Remember,” “Repair” and “Together”.

Programming will focus on honoring the victims, families and survivors affected by the mass shooting, which took the lives of 11 congregants of Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha, New Light, and Dor Hadash congregations. 

The day will include speakers, Torah study, and a host of volunteer opportunities. A public memorial service to remember those murdered will be held at 5:00 p.m. at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland, Pennsylvania.

"Remember" is to honor the victims and their legacies, and to remember how Pittsburgh rallied behind the Jewish community after the shooting. This will largely be done at a community service at Soldiers and Sailors on Oct. 27.

"Repair" comes from a Hebrew saying that translates to "repair the world." This will be on the minds of volunteers during service projects that will be announced.

"Together", the Pittsburgh community will gather just as it did after the shooting.

A commemoration committee comprised of representatives of the 11 victims’ families are planning the program.

Other representatives included the City of Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety, the director of the Pittsburgh resiliency center, and other advisers.

“On October 27, 2019, we will commemorate one year since the attack with public events to honor the memories of the deceased and those most closely impacted,” said Rabbi Amy Bardack, planning committee chair and director of Jewish life and learning at the Federation. “The theme encompasses three elements. ‘Remember’ means recalling the lives that we lost and remembering the attack so that we can prevent future attacks. ‘Repair’ means both repairing emotional wounds in the community and repairing our sense of brokenness in ourselves and in the world. ‘Together’ means that we were heartened by the support we felt from the city, county, many different faith communities and diverse communities, and all over the world. ‘Together’ also means that we are not in this alone.”

Schedules for the events are still in the planning stage and will be available on the official website, www.pittsburghoct27.org.

“There are already over 30 community service sites that will be available,” noted Adam Hertzman, director of marketing for the Federation. “There will be a variety of different types of organizations throughout the city. We are conscious of the fact that the October 27 attacks affected not only the Jewish community, but really all of Pittsburgh, and that many different people of all faiths and diverse communities will potentially want to volunteer.”

The commemoration planning committee evolved from “the same committee that has been meeting almost from the beginning to coordinate help for the victims’ families and people with psychological trauma,” Hertzman explained.

The victims’ families have requested that the day be “non-political,” according to Hertzman, allowing the focus of the commemoration to be “on the lives we lost and the needs of the victims. We are hoping that the people who have political interests don’t choose to demonstrate or show their political leanings on that particular day.”

The day will provide an opportunity “for the community to come together,” said Barb Feige, executive director of TOL*OLS. “Not one entity owns the event– it happened to all of us. I think the lovely opportunities for both Torah study and volunteerism are particularly meaningful and a reflection of the dedication and the personalities of those we lost.”

The commemoration’s motto—“Remember,” “Repair” and “Together”—captures the essence of the overarching aims of the day, according to Ellen Surloff, immediate past president of Dor Hadash.

“We want to remember those of all three congregations who lost their lives on Oct. 27 and we want to honor them,” she said. “There will be opportunities to do service projects that day which will honor their memories. There will be opportunities for Torah study that day, and that will also honor their memories.

“The ‘repair’ is we are all going to be together, and we will be doing projects,” she continued. “’Together’ is just seeing the whole community come together and show support just like they did in the immediate aftermath. It’s really an opportunity to reflect on the people whose lives were lost, reflect on the last year and the impact it’s had on everyone, the survivors, the community, the greater Jewish community, the Jewish community in the world at large.”

Although there will be some events “that will be unique to the survivor group or unique to the three congregations,” public events have been scheduled “because just as the entire community, Jewish and non-Jewish, helped us to heal, they can help us to remember and honor on the one-year anniversary.”

While the programming for the day is designed to help the community remember and to heal, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, spiritual leader of New Light and a member of the commemoration committee, is approaching the day of commemoration events with some apprehension.

“I’m a little skeptical,” he said. “There are people on the committee that expect a media spectacle, they expect a great deal of attention, Pittsburghers and people coming from elsewhere. And they say this is based on the evidence they have from other sites of tragedy, like in Parkland, or Colorado, Columbine, for the one-year anniversaries and other anniversaries. They said the same thing is going to happen here.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The thing is that I really feel that all the love and the hugging and the memorials and the goodness came out around the first two or three months of the killing. 

Pittsburghers really showed themselves, and showed themselves well. I don’t really see them coming back to say, ‘We need to do our own memorialization’ and turn this into a holiday where we return to the scene of the crime or go back and have another vigil with the same numbers.”

The “mood” for Perlman, is that “it is over,” he said.

“We all have our souvenirs and our t-shirts and bumper stickers and it’s not going to be in the same numbers as it was last year. And we are planning for a great number of people to come out. We are reserving Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, expecting we are going to get the same numbers.

“I’m the skeptical one on the committee,” he said. “Everyone else seems to be very enthusiastic. What I don’t want to happen is that the people feel the pressure to go to all these activities and then be re-traumatized about what happened. I want them to feel positive about going forward.”

Still, Perlman praised the “creativity” of the planning committee, organizing a variety of volunteer opportunities, Torah study, and being mindful of the needs of the victims’ families.

Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

Enjoy this inspirational report by Tom Purcell - LSP Pittsburgh PA

Tom Purcell: God chose her to be a beggar- An opinion published in The Times Record newspaper in Brunswick, Maine.  

https://www.timesrecord.com/articles/opinion/tom-purcell-god-chose-her-to-be-a-beggar/

"Today, she greatly enjoys being the lead begging sister. Next year, she hopes to celebrate a decade in that role – and 50 years as a Little Sister of the Poor." 

Saint Jeanne Jugan (1792-1879)

On fire with love for God

God led more poor old people to her doorstep.

Let's meet Sister Margaret Mary, who didn’t think she was up to the job.

Nine years ago, during her 40th year of religious service, she had been assigned the most difficult role of her life: full-time beggar at the Little Sisters of the Poor retirement residence in Pittsburgh.

Little Sisters of the Poor (LSP) is a Roman Catholic order founded in France in 1839 by St. Jeanne Jugan. Its mission is to care for the elderly poor in their last chapter of life. Today, 172 LSP homes in 31 countries serve nearly 12,000 aged poor.

The sisters vow poverty, chastity, obedience – and hospitality. You won’t find a more cheerful or meticulous environment than an LSP home.

Since its founding in 1872, the Pittsburgh home has given love, dignity and care to more than 10,000 elderly poor, enabled by a fundraising tradition that St. Jeanne originated nearly two centuries ago: Sisters literally beg for support.

The alms that “begging sisters” seek from local merchants, benefactors and churchgoers are essential. In the U.S., Medicaid only covers 30 percent of each home’s cost. The alms cover the remaining 70 percent. 

Which brings us back to Sister Margaret.

She’d done her share of begging over the years – the sisters always go out in pairs, and she often accompanied the lead begging sister – but never expected to lead a collection program.

She first volunteered at an LSP home during her eighth-grade year in Arizona. The moment she walked inside – the moment she began caring for its residents – she fell in love with the order’s mission and knew God had called her to serve.

Her parents were delighted by the news. You see, eight months before her birth, her parents had lost her infant brother to a tragic birth defect. When she announced she was giving her life to God, her mother said, “God gave you to me and your father to help us heal from the loss of your brother. Now he wants you back!”

In 1965, just before her 18th birthday, Sister Margaret began a whirlwind mission that would take her to Europe, Asia and several stops in the U.S. She studied hard to prepare, including training as a registered nurse (and later becoming a certified dietary manager).

Though she preferred providing hands-on care to LSP residents – few things bring her more joy – her organizational talents led her to a variety of management roles abroad and in the U.S. Following her standard of “Do whatever God requests of you,” she took on many difficult duties in a spirit of humble service.

But beggar?

Outwardly confident, Sister Margaret admits to inwardly being a bundle of nerves around people she doesn’t know. Lead begging sisters are often spirited and persuasive – skills that didn’t come naturally to her. She dreaded the role, but after prayer and reflection, she humbly accepted her next assignment in 2010.

It turns out she was born to do the job. Building on the Pittsburgh home’s already robust collection program, Sister Margaret’s organizational skills doubled donations.

Today, she greatly enjoys being the lead begging sister. Next year, she hopes to celebrate a decade in that role – and 50 years as a Little Sister of the Poor.

We live in a time of great anger and cynicism. Newspaper headlines suggest we’re coming apart at the seams.

But for every headline that makes us doubt our future, 10 headlines go unwritten – headlines about people whose daily sacrifices and heroism bring great beauty to our world.

People like Sister Margaret Mary.

To donate provisions, funds or volunteer time to The Little Sisters of the Poor Pittsburgh home, 

visitwww.littlesistersofthepoorpittsburgh.org or call 412-307-1268.)

"The Trib"....Tom Purcell, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Tom@TomPurcell.com.

Tree of Life Synagogue - a witness report

This account is about an encounter with the chaos in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, while the evil killing of eleven Jewish worshipers was happened. They were gunned down by evil, while they were attending the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  This essay was published in the Biddeford, Maine newspaper, the Journal Tribune.
Also, it's posted on the Vision and Values website. A horrifying point of view, reported about a witness to the chaos:

“Pray for us, I will call you later.”

By Paul Kengor: Death at the Tree of Life Synagogue

That was the text message we received from our 16-year-old daughter at 10:16 a.m. on Saturday morning as we drove down Liberty Avenue toward Pittsburgh’s Strip District (a special area in Pittsburgh where shops and boutiques are located).

My wife called her immediately. “Are you okay? Were you in an accident? What’s happening?”

I heard a gasp from my wife and braced myself. In a hushed voice, my daughter explained that she and our second daughter and three friends, along with an adult friend of ours, were hiding in their van across the street from the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill section, the wonderful historic Jewish section of Pittsburgh.

They were there for a Saturday morning retreat at an Opus Dei house. They had arrived at 9:55 a.m. They initially stopped the van directly across from the synagogue, on Shady Avenue, which would have been straight in the line of fire between the police and the shooter, who did his dirty work both outside and inside. They were planning to hop out and walk to the house.

Mercifully, the driver, our friend Suzy, decided almost on a whim (a gut-feel, she later conceded) to find a parking spot so she could walk the girls inside. Just as she moved to a spot a little further away, police cars began flying in, and out poured officers brandishing serious weaponry.

As the girls struggled to assess the chaos, the police parked sideways so the officers, now in combat readiness, could use their vehicles as shields for the shoot-out. The girls’ van was hemmed in. The street was instantly closed off, like an action scene right out of Hollywood. Suzy told the girls not to get out, and to duck. They all sat on the floor of the van and listened and prayed and worried.

We received the text message about 20 minutes later.

Shortly after we talked to our daughter, Suzy and the girls made a careful decision to try to drive a little further away. She did a U-turn and went down the street just enough to pull into a driveway that allowed them to put a few houses and buildings of separation between them and the synagogue—and the gunfire. More and more police streamed in.

With none of us having an idea why this was happening, my wife and I headed to St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, closer to the girls and to a church. We sat in that parking lot and prayed and worried, and alerted family and friends. We checked websites, radio, any source for information.

After nearly an hour of confusion and concern, the girls decided to abandon the van. They dashed across backyards and over fences to meet a relative of Suzy who lived down the street. They met him in his getaway car.

“I was really surprised that we heard gunfire,” Suzy would later say of their escape. She had hoped the shooting had ended. “I didn’t expect that. That was scary.”

The whole thing was scary. It was also evil—an act of evil against our beloved Jewish brothers and sisters at a peaceful Saturday worship service.

I followed a roundabout route to the house of Suzy’s relative, barely avoiding the blocked off crime scene and eluding police cars screeching past. We picked up all the girls. All were safe. My 16-year-old had merely a small cut on her hand and a ripped sweater from jumping a fence.

The same cannot be said, of course, for all the people inside that synagogue, 11 of which were murdered, nor for the injured police who risked their lives to save many others. My wife and I gave thanks to God that our loved ones didn’t get caught in the crossfire. I imagine, however, that many of the families of the victims are asking why God hadn’t protected their loved ones.

That’s one of those timeless questions that the Jewish people in particular, and believers of all stripes, have often asked since literally the time of Job. It’s a mystery why some leave this world in a violent way, seemingly prematurely, while others stay longer in this valley of tears and sorrow. I have no answer there, though I know that God is the Author of Life, and God wasn’t pulling the trigger in that synagogue. That was a malicious act of evil by a warped human being, not an act of benevolence by a loving God.I also feel confident in saying this: the true Tree of Life is not an earthly one but an eternal one. This world, unlike the heavenly paradise we seek, is full of sin and rot. Trees in this world decay and die. Like people, they face mortality in this realm. Eternal life and perfect bliss is not reachable in this world. It comes in the next.

We live not so much for this world—though we strive to make it better—but above all for the next. Those who permanently departed the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, now enjoy a Tree of Life truly greater and truly everlasting. That may be small consolation to their grieving and hurting loved ones, but I think it’s truly the best we can say.

—Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His latest book (April 2017) is A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century. He is also the author of 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative.
My wife called her immediately. “Are you okay? Were you in an accident? What’s happening?”

I heard a gasp from my wife and braced myself. In a hushed voice, my daughter explained that she and our second daughter and three friends, along with an adult friend of ours, were hiding in their van across the street from the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill section, the wonderful historic Jewish section of Pittsburgh.

They were there for a Saturday morning retreat at an Opus Dei house. They had arrived at 9:55 a.m. They initially stopped the van directly across from the synagogue, on Shady Avenue, which would have been straight in the line of fire between the police and the shooter, who did his dirty work both outside and inside. They were planning to hop out and walk to the house.

Mercifully, the driver, our friend Suzy, decided almost on a whim (a gut-feel, she later conceded) to find a parking spot so she could walk the girls inside. Just as she moved to a spot a little further away, police cars began flying in, and out poured officers brandishing serious weaponry.

As the girls struggled to assess the chaos, the police parked sideways so the officers, now in combat readiness, could use their vehicles as shields for the shoot-out. The girls’ van was hemmed in. The street was instantly closed off, like an action scene right out of Hollywood. Suzy told the girls not to get out, and to duck. They all sat on the floor of the van and listened and prayed and worried.

We received the text message about 20 minutes later.

Shortly after we talked to our daughter, Suzy and the girls made a careful decision to try to drive a little further away. She did a U-turn and went down the street just enough to pull into a driveway that allowed them to put a few houses and buildings of separation between them and the synagogue—and the gunfire. More and more police streamed in.

With none of us having an idea why this was happening, my wife and I headed to St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, closer to the girls and to a church. We sat in that parking lot and prayed and worried, and alerted family and friends. We checked websites, radio, any source for information.

After nearly an hour of confusion and concern, the girls decided to abandon the van. They dashed across backyards and over fences to meet a relative of Suzy who lived down the street. They met him in his getaway car.

“I was really surprised that we heard gunfire,” Suzy would later say of their escape. She had hoped the shooting had ended. “I didn’t expect that. That was scary.”

The whole thing was scary. It was also evil—an act of evil against our beloved Jewish brothers and sisters at a peaceful Saturday worship service.

I followed a roundabout route to the house of Suzy’s relative, barely avoiding the blocked off crime scene and eluding police cars screeching past. We picked up all the girls. All were safe. My 16-year-old had merely a small cut on her hand and a ripped sweater from jumping a fence.

The same cannot be said, of course, for all the people inside that synagogue, 11 of which were murdered, nor for the injured police who risked their lives to save many others. My wife and I gave thanks to God that our loved ones didn’t get caught in the crossfire. I imagine, however, that many of the families of the victims are asking why God hadn’t protected their loved ones.

That’s one of those timeless questions that the Jewish people in particular, and believers of all stripes, have often asked since literally the time of Job. It’s a mystery why some leave this world in a violent way, seemingly prematurely, while others stay longer in this valley of tears and sorrow. I have no answer there, though I know that God is the Author of Life, and God wasn’t pulling the trigger in that synagogue. That was a malicious act of evil by a warped human being, not an act of benevolence by a loving God.I also feel confident in saying this: the true Tree of Life is not an earthly one but an eternal one. This world, unlike the heavenly paradise we seek, is full of sin and rot. Trees in this world decay and die. Like people, they face mortality in this realm. Eternal life and perfect bliss is not reachable in this world. It comes in the next.

We live not so much for this world—though we strive to make it better—but above all for the next. Those who permanently departed the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, now enjoy a Tree of Life truly greater and truly everlasting. That may be small consolation to their grieving and hurting loved ones, but I think it’s truly the best we can say.

—Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.