When Belief Turns into a Costume There’s a strange thing happening in America, and you can feel it long before you try to explain it. It’s this gap — this canyon — between what people say they believe and what they’re actually willing to live by. And nowhere is that gap wider than with the two books Americans love to wave around: the Bible and the Constitution. You see it at rallies, in church parking lots, on cable news, on bumper stickers. People hold these books up like trophies. They swear by them. They defend them. They quote the parts they like. But when those same books ask something difficult — something that cuts against anger, or pride, or loyalty to a political tribe — suddenly the meaning gets fuzzy. Suddenly, the text becomes “complicated.” Suddenly, the rules don’t apply. It’s not that people don’t know what these books say. It’s that they don’t want to be bound by them. And that’s how belief turns into a costume. The Bible and the Constitution: Sacred Until...
For years, Donald Trump has insisted he’s the most persecuted man in America — a victim of courts, prosecutors, and a justice system supposedly “rigged” against him. You can probably say that Trump has loved playing the victim. But when you step back and look at the record, not the campaign lines, not the whiny social media posts, a different picture comes into focus. It’s not a story of a man being treated unfairly. It’s a story of a man who has pushed the limits of the law harder than any president in modern history — and a Supreme Court that has repeatedly stepped in at key moments to give him breaks no other president ever received. All the whining is meant to manipulate the courts and definitely rile up his supporters. Start with the lower courts. Judges appointed by Republicans, Democrats, and even Trump himself have documented a pattern of defiance from Trump and his administration. Not once or twice, but dozens of times. Federal courts found the administration...