What Now

As I told a friend of mine the other day, the fact that I am siding with the Catholic Church on current events these days is not something I would have predicted in my lifetime. To be fair, they have been consistently antiwar for many years; but I’m old enough to remember clergy cheering on the US war in Vietnam and other Cold War theaters of imperialist violence.

Pope Leo follows Pope Francis in promoting a more progressive vision of the world, more compassionate to immigrants and queers than past popes, and more willing to speak out in criticizing the Western world. But then the Western world has never been so authoritarian and full of genocide in my lifetime. (I’m going to set aside experiences of Latin America and Indonesia for later discussion; props to all the priests and nuns who fought for the people in the face of US funded death squads.)

JD Vance made excuses for the clearly blasphemous AI-generated Jesus Trump image Trump shared last week before deleting it and blaming a staffer. I thought about including Hegseth’s Pulp Fiction faux pas, but there wasn’t enough time.