The Moral Achilles Heel for MAGA

By Cliff Kincaid

December 31, 2024

Our local pastor gave a Christmas Eve sermon on why the birth of Christ was God’s D-Day invasion in a spiritual sense of the Roman Empire. It was an interesting analogy. The influence of Christ lives on but America’s reputation as a Christian nation does not.

Those who thought that Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House is a mission ordained by God must be disappointed by the current internal MAGA debate over special high-tech visas for smart people from foreign countries, when the real issue for America is continued moral and spiritual decline.

Perhaps they are related after all. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” declared General George Washington.

In this current debate, Trump has sided with the foreign brains, like Elon Musk, who have contributed immensely to the American nation.

I saw this for myself when one of my smart sons was able to compete for two years in the National Spelling Bee and the winners inevitably turned out to be young people from India. I learned a lesson.

America is enriched by foreign countries.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” Vivek Ramaswamy declared in the debate over special visas for foreign high-tech workers.

If Americans are honest, they must admit he is right. Equally significant, our mediocrity extends to being willing to stand up for what’s right, morally and spiritually.

If you want an example of American mediocrity in the moral sense, look at the collection of college football bowl games on television, including one called the “Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl,” named after the notorious marijuana smoker who now markets alcoholic drinks.

The official and longer title, “Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl by Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop,” incorporates the “first time an alcohol brand has sponsored a bowl game,” according to a sports website. On the air, Snoop Dogg praised the new alcoholic drink as he and his fellow commentators laughed about it all.

I didn’t hear “Snoop” endorse dope smoking but perhaps the “Cannabis Bowl” will be featured next year.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism cites estimates that each year there are more than 178,000 deaths (approximately 120,000 male deaths and 59,000 female deaths) attributable to excessive alcohol use, “making alcohol one of the leading preventable causes of death in the United States, behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.”

Trump, a non-drinker, has nominated Robert F. Kenndy, Jr. as Secretary of health and Human Services (HHS) and he promises to Make America Healthy Again.

It would seem that avoiding alcohol would be part of that equation.

Beyond this emphasis on food and drink, what America desperately needs is to Make America Moral Again (MAMA), a campaign launched by author and commentator Linda Goudsmit. Her column identifies the key problem as the influence of Marxism on American culture, undermining America’s founding principles and “designed to collapse the Judeo-Christian morality and infrastructure of the United States…”

As for Snoop Dogg, portrayed during the bowl game as a role model and humanitarian, he opened his first pot shop earlier this year in Los Angeles and was labeled S.W.E.D. for his “popular” catch phrase “Smoke Weed Every Day.”

On Reddit, someone asked, “Does Snoop Dogg actually smoke a lot of weed?”

The responses included “It’s so wild to me because as someone who was a heavy smoker and can’t do it anymore because it puts me in a psychosis, I don’t understand how someone like him can continue doing this. I know everyone’s different but it’s wild to me.”

In addition to the link between marijuana and psychosis, the legalization of marijuana has been causing human suffering and environmental devastation on a scale most people do not yet comprehend.

There is an example from the NFL. Aaron Hernandez, the former NFL star and notorious pothead, became a convicted killer and then killed himself in prison. The subject of a Netflix series, “Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez,” he was a chronic marijuana user throughout college and his NFL career who experienced brain damage from the drug. The case proves a direct link between marijuana, mental illness, and violence.

More than a year ago, however, Snoop Dogg posted on X: “I’m giving up smoke.” It’s too bad he wasn’t serious. It turned out to be a marketing stunt for a smokeless fire pit.

For more evidence of American mediocrity, or worse, look at what just happened in Federick, Maryland, where a new “tavern” has opened in a Marriott hotel and installed a cocktail bar directly on what used to be a chapel’s high altar. The high altar, side altars, tabernacle, altar rail, stained glass windows, and statues all remain behind and around the bar.

The bar owners took over the space in the Visitation Academy, a private, all-girls, Roman Catholic school which was run by Catholic nuns until 2005, when its order was dissolved due to declining numbers.

Elyssa Koren, who initiated a petition to move the bar, says, “The chapel that brought me to Jesus is now a Marriott hotel bar with cocktails on the altar. They could have put the bar anywhere. The choice speaks to an utter disregard for the sacred.”

Koren is an example of righteous concern about the moral decline of America. Her petition seeks to restore the dignity of the chapel.

Without Christians like this, as well as Linda Goudsmit, arguing for Making America Moral Again, MAGA will fail. America cannot remain a mediocre nation spiritually and be strong in an economic and material sense.

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net