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Apr 16Liked by John A. Daly

It took some courage to say what he did, just as it did for you to write this. P.S. I will never use the word “pen” as a verb, meaning to write. It really bugs me.

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author

Thank you.

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I am unfamiliar with this man as I don’t follow too many current TV shows or celebrities. That said, I have no problem with celebraties or anybody else expressing their political opinions even if they disagree. Most of what I take issue with are ignorance and hypocrisy. Self-righteous right wingers (especially self-proclaimed religious types) who rail on and on about the gay agenda but then get outed for their own scandals of marital infidelities, fornication,gay sex,or worse yet, pedophilia, absolutely disgust me because they fulfill every negative stereotype of religious people. And let’s not forget how liberals rightly railed on Trump and the MAGA people for the January 6th insurrection and Trump’s lies about how the election was stolen from him. Odd but somehow those same liberals had NO problems promoting their own lies about Trump / Russia collusion nor did they mind the BLM/ANTIFA riots and the establishment of CHAZ/CHOP in Washington state. Since the media is full of lefties, January 6th was an insurrection whereas the riots of 2020 were a summer of love and mostly peaceful protests while explosions and fires were going on in the background. Just stop spreading lies the way FOX did about rigged voting machines, stolen election and the “patriots” of January 6th,along with the way the rest of the mainstream media outlets lied about Trump/Russia collusion, The “white supremacy threat” from Kyle Rittenhouse and Nick Sandman et al, and the mostly peaceful protests of 2020.

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founding

Ritchson has the right to say what he wants of course, and I understand his point as many make this point relating to Evangelical Christians. But then I trust he will not be voting at all. How could anyone of such devotion to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam vote for any politician? Voting is the most hypocritical act by people of faith ever invented.

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I obviously have no idea what Ritchson plans to do in November, but I'm not sure how drawing a hardline at someone found liable for rape would necessarily preclude a very moral person from voting for a flawed individual whose greatest moral failings fall well short of anything resembling rape.

A vote isn't supposed to be a wholesale endorsement of everything a candidate is and will do in office (though some weirdly treat it that way). For me personally, it's a question of fitness. I can accept a candidate's flaws up until a certain point. If those flaws amount to an unfitness to serve, I'm not going to vote for that person.

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founding

You're right John, it is not a wholesale endorsement and I have no problem with Ritchson stating what he wants. I'm not sure if he was asked about Biden and perhaps, he won't vote for him either. I don't care how he votes. But if voting is not a wholesale endorsement as we both agree, then Evangelical Christians have that right as well and specifically about abortions which the other candidates support right through delivery. Many of them believe 55 million abortions is a holocaust.

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To be clear, I've never questioned Evangelical Christians' right to vote for anyone. I've said all along that the 'binary choice' voting philosophy -- though I don't subscribe to it personally -- is perfectly legitimate.

Some important points though:

In 2015/2016, Trump, by any objective measure, was the least likely Republican candidate to care about the unborn. A life-long Democrat and Democratic donor, who was proudly and vocally pro-choice (right up until he decided to run for president), who lived a very un-Christian life as a womanizer and serial adulterer (who probably paid for a few abortions himself), and was advocating for nominating his liberal sister to the Supreme Court (until someone convinced him that it was a political liability). Yet, 1/3 of the Republican base, including millions of evangelicals (with the endorsements of numerous evangelical leaders), voted for him in the primary -- enough to give Trump the party nomination.

Did that happen in the interest of reducing abortions? Of course not. Heck, poll after poll showed Trump faring worse against Clinton than the actual pro-life Christian Republicans in the race.

When Trump become president (and again, I've never denounced anyone for who they voted for in the 2016 and 2020 general elections), his evangelical supporters didn't limit their support to transactional gains for the pro-life cause, or anything transactional for that matter. Their support, with very few exceptions, was unlimited, unrestrained, and unconditional. As I've highlighted in my writing several times, they exempted him from every moral standard they continue to righteously hold others to, and many evangelicals have altered their own moral views and conduct to accommodate and emulate Trump. They make every conceivable excuse for the guy, and frankly, millions worship the man like the false idols the Bible specifically warns us about.

That's what Ritchson described in the interview.

You and I agree that a vote for someone shouldn't amount to a wholesale endorsement of everything they are and do, but millions of evangelical Christians have chosen to gift him that wholesale endorsement anyway.

And now that Trump's publicly pro-choice again, do you really think he's going to lose ANY supporters who've claimed, in the past, that they only supported him because of the abortion issue? Frankly, I'm seeing commenters on this very website and the Patreon page, who insisted for years that their support for Trump was entirely based on abortion, currently arguing that people shouldn't be hung up on the issue anymore because Trump needs to win.

My broad assessment is that while there are many genuinely pro-life people in this country, a lot of them are now more invested in Trump as an individual or symbol than they are the pro-life cause. And there are many others who merely pretended to be principled pro-lifers, because it helped rationalize their support of Trump.

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