Death, Theft, And (Especially) Jesus March 26, 2026 DEATH! I’m not sure I buy the premise that we’re all going to die. But, yeah, well, maybe. In any event, we should all be able to control how we go . . . choosing, if we want, to avoid suffering, to avoid undue strain on those who love us, and to avoid enormous health care costs to gain a few more days of pain and indignity. Watch this superb 16-minute short (password, all lower case: mancini) and, if the spirit moves you, join Compassion and Choices and share widely. THEFT! Trump appeared to have business motive for stealing and concealing and lying about highly classified documents. The special counsel’s office found that Donald Trump held on to documents so secret that only six people could legally review them — and the team believed his reason for doing so was financial gain. But that’s okay, if you’re MAGA, because he gets you; he’s not some elite snob know-it-all. He loves the poorly educated — and he loves . . . . . . JESUS! Which brings us back to John Fugelsang’s Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds. It’s such a good read, I’m plugging it again. Condensed from Chapter One: I’m here because two people broke a promise to God. My mother was born during the Depression in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She entered the convent directly out of high school. Before they sent her overseas to begin her new life, they briefly assigned her to Holy Family Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. My father had been born in Brooklyn just a few months before her, and had become a Franciscan brother a year after graduating high school. He’d been working as a butcher at the Brooklyn fish market, and after losing half a finger, celibacy probably seemed like a step up. Upon entering the brotherhood, he became Brother Boniface. As a brother, he taught history to Catholic boys at St. Francis Prep, coached basketball, wore the robe and rope belt, and walked among the people like the Lost Jedi of Flatbush. My father, the brother, met my mother, the sister, when he entered Holy Family for tuberculosis treatment. By all accounts, he was instantly smitten by this quiet, Southern girl in a nun’s habit, a woman he knew he couldn’t have, and had promised God he would never want. But they became friends, and when the convent sent Sister Damien to Malawi, Brother Boniface took it upon himself to write her letters—many letters—to innocently keep her informed of what was going on in the states—civil rights, Vietnam, and US politics. Her village had no TV or radio, so his letters became the de facto newspaper for the entire convent. Eventually, she returned—briefly—to the US. After ten years of hiding his feelings, poorly, my father eventually convinced her to leave the convent and go on a date. They were married two months later, in the chapel at Fort Story Army base in Virginia Beach. They soon settled on Long Island and tried to raise us to be progressive, free-thinking, sexually repressed Catholics. Which is why I would eventually turn to stand-up comedy. We were an extremely Catholic family. My dad was a lector, Christian doctrine teacher, and eucharistic minister at church; my Uncle Louis in Brooklyn was a Catholic deacon; my brother an altar boy. And when my mother became head nurse at a convent nursing home for her former order, there was a steady multicultural flow of elderly nuns in and out of our house. We said grace before every dinner and our prayers before bedtime. Whereas some kids were taught piano, my parents got me ORGAN lessons. I was taught—relentlessly—that Christianity was about the things Jesus prioritized: Service to others. Forgiveness. Caring for the poor, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner. Fighting injustice with nonviolence. Love. Empathy. Compassion. And go wash your hands, we’re leaving for Mass in five minutes. My parents presented as Republicans, identified as Independents, and lived like closeted Democrats. Like most dads, mine was liberal in some ways and conservative in others. He maintained the same severely short haircut regardless of what decade he was in, flew the US flag outside our home, and believed God was love. His overall parenting strategy was to guarantee that I’d be way too liberal to ever fit in with Christians and far too Christian to ever blend with liberals. And almost every therapist I’ve ever been able to afford has agreed that his plan worked perfectly. . . . If you watched American TV news in the late twentieth century, you received a steady diet of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and all manner of ex-segregationists and blow-dried televangelists, all ranting about welfare queens, feminists, and AIDS patients. These right-wing Christian media stars preached the virtue of forcing poor pregnant women to give birth against their will, that they might experience substantially greater poverty and greater risk to their health. They warned us that any government programs that actually helped the poor were “communist.” They always punched down—always attacking the poor, the addicts, the migrants at the border, and a gay minority they assured me the Bible condemned, somewhere. Zero teachings of Jesus. Only condemnation and propaganda, always seeking more power, and always needing more cash. I didn’t have the words to express it, but it was awkward to be told I was the same religion as these men. These were the fundamentalists, the power-hungry grifters who took advantage of the fact that most people don’t know the Bible all that well. They were charlatans, frauds, hypocrites, and villains. And they made for great TV. I’ll stop there except to say that the rest of the book tells you — in the most engaging way possible — what’s actually IN the Bible, and why, and how . . . and it’s fascinating. And verifies everything James Talarico and others have long been saying: There’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. Were Jesus alive today, he’d be booed off the MAGA stage. Read, listen, share. Okay, sorry. I can’t resist. One more passage: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.” You’ve probably guessed that this is not going to end well for the goats. But this is important—Jesus gives a clear mandate to all people and nations. “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ” Then, Jesus addresses those who don’t think societies should care for poor and sick people, or incarcerated people, or immigrants. This part is like Jesus’s memo to the Heritage Foundation. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” It’s a happy story. I always wondered what the vibe in the room was like when Jesus finished that one. But that’s it. That’s what Christianity was supposed to be about. Not banning abortion, blocking care for trans kids, hating Muslims, fighting for tax cuts, or making people believe in a talking snake. Jesus asserts that his true followers are the people and societies who care for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the immigrants, and the incarcerated. And he tells you who his fake followers are—the ones who are openly religious but indifferent to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the immigrants, and the incarcerated, the lowest of the low. How we treat them is how we treat him. I mean, we could end the book right here. You’ve got things to do. But there’s more. Jesus emphasizes that nations will be judged based on their actions and treatment of the vulnerable—not their religious affiliations or beliefs. He’s not just commanding individuals—he’s calling on societies to commit to compassion, mercy, and kindness on a policy level. This means that Christians living in a democracy have the option to vote for—or against—Jesus’s very direct instructions. Note that he doesn’t care how pious you are, how often you go to church, or how much money you donate. You get zero points with Jesus for being religiously observant. He’s giving instructions on exactly what a Christian nation should do, which is why conservative politicians never talk about it. TOUGH GUYS For a Christian with a bone spur, Trump is one tough cookie. Far from loving his enemies, he posts that he’s glad Robert Mueller is dead. Pete Hegseth’s pastor goes a step further: he prays for James Talarico’s death. Trump has a Talarico opinion, too: . . . saying on Truth Social: he “insults Jesus” and “may be the worst candidate I have ever seen” next to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. To which Talarico replied, “You want to know what insults Jesus? Kicking the sick off their healthcare. Bombing school children in Iran. Deporting moms and babies. Covering up the Epstein files. Again I say unto you, patient reader: There’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. Were Jesus alive today, he’d be booed off the MAGA stage. Join today’s 3pm Indivisible call: What’s the Plan.