I'm sick of hearing about US politics, the ABC is in official morning ever day they run at least two or three stories about how wonderful Obama was and ho the world will end now Trumps is coming.

The reality will be different Trump will do the usual thing he try to drive some change, pretty soon he will wade into the political molasses and any momentum he had will dissipate and he'll be allowed to tinker for the rest of his presidency.

The democrats have themselves to blame. They have all but given up on wining state, and federal seat and have been concentrating on wining the White house. They then throw up a candidate like Clinton.

I'm sick of U.S politics, too. We have enough problems with our our political class. I am also sick this Sells character politicizing Christianity, as he does. He knows little about a subject he claims as his own, and absolutely nothing about politics or humanity.

It boils down to the difference between shame and remorse: http://www.kimleatherdale.com/self-care/shame-versus-remorse-going-to-the-garden-to-eat-worms

While churches created a culture of shame for centuries, true remorse was mainly absent. Where the weed of shame grows, remorse cannot.

Yes, Trump does not exhibit remorse, but unlike those who came before him, he exhibits no shame and this is half a step forward.

When the gods and the daemons churned up the ocean together in order to retrieve the nectar of immortality, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshir_Sagar#The_Churning_of_the_Ocean ,the first thing that came out of the waters was a terrible poison.

Here, gods and daemons symbolise our mental/psychic/emotional propensities and ocean symbolises unconsciousness: shame is a poison. When doing self-reflection, shame is among the first things to come up. It should be briefly acknowledged, but set aside: far better treasures await in the deepness of our mind. Incidences of guilt, the memory of specific wrong things that we have done or failed to do will then also surface, terrible as they might be, but we should not stop there either.

Yes, at some level we are sinners, but this does not sum us up: deeper still, we are divine and when self-examination goes long enough and deep enough, we will discover this.

While confession is a great technique, always saving a stock of shame for next-Sunday's confession defeats its purpose. It's cheating!

While bombastic declarations can possibly trigger self-inspection, no declarations are a substitute to self-inspection. This is indeed a mistake of some New-Age churches, but so is the mistake of traditional churches which feeds people with verbal answers. The one tells us that we are great, the other tells us that we are small, but both remain a mere untested concept. Only when we delve deep inside can we truly know whether we are good or evil.

Trump is no saint, but neither were his predecessors. The road to sainthood requires exposing one's ego with all its ugliness, otherwise it would fester inside, possibly as a secret feeling of "holier than thou". The egos of former presidents were not nicer, only better hidden.

Sells:

We heard all these arguments before the election. For nearly a year we heard them trotted out every day. The majority of Americans heard them and they rejected them. However much you want to envelop yourself in denial Donald Trump is the president.

What are you doing about that reality? Why are you just reviving the same old arguments ‘parrot fashion’? If they were losing arguments before the election then they remain losing arguments. If you do not think Trump should be president then what is you plan to have him impeached? What evidence do you have that as president he has shown himself unfit for that office?

You behaviour is totally illogical. Here is a situation over which you have absolutely no control and yet you continue to waste your time writing about it. Every time you open your mouth you condemn yourself because there is no purpose to opening your mouth if what you say is irrelevant.

You are trying to use the opportunity to convince yourself of the arguments in favour of Christianity. Who would be convinced about arguments for Christianity from a person who shows himself to act with such stupidity and lack of integrity in other fundamental areas?

The Church should be at the forefront of absolutely nothing.

It has been trying to re-invent itself since it was shown to be irrelevant to Society.

Church and Politics have started far too many wars in the past.

Better it sticks to those few who truly believe,that is ,the handful who turn up to your services regularly !

Anyone who would prefer Obama to Trump, or the drovers dog is a "BL00DY IDIOT", & simply making a fool of themselves, voicing that opinion.

Isn't it a pity that our PM, opposition leader, & the ratbag Green leader have all done it? Hang on, it actually gives us a guide on how not to vote in future, so perhaps a good thing. Saves us a fortune in sending them to his inauguration too.

I love US politics. Give me more.

Trump is more colourful than any of our cardboard cutout politicians.

He is a scary showman who has the world's imagination. The greatest actor on Stage Earth.

Trump's every projection will effect Australia.

Hey, Life on Earth may now be a little shorter than anticipated, but at least it will be more exciting. And we won't have to worry about Climate Change.

He does seem like a bit of show pony lol, but also appears to care about middle peoples whos job went overseas. Lord knows that the churches didn't have answers for workers damaged by one world globalism.

The old adage still rings true: "We get the politicians we deserve." The sad fact that the great majority world-wide are self-serving rather than serving the people if they were to be honest is something that has the propensity to cause some 'minor ripples' or even perhaps a tsumani . . .wait and see perhaps . . . Another quote, I think by Jefferson: "I tremble for my country when I remind myself [he was a biased Christian I admit] that God is a just God."

Perhaps to throw some more fuel on the fire with a 'rather 'controversial' comment: Did God arrange the Nazi rise and Holocaust in an unsuccessful attempt to 'encourage' the Jews to understand that while they were his "chosen race 'they needed to move on and recognise that Jesus Christ was not a liar or a lunatic but just perhaps, he was God's Son - the Messiah! . . ."Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, like forgiveness, until we have to practice giving it to others." Peter Johnson

There is no group think WE here sells! Just you, your crystal ball and a bagful of forgone conclusions!

If Donald Trump has no Idea what Donald Trump is going to do or say from minute to minute?

How in heaven's name do you expect to second guess him, let alone use your patent fear mongering as some sort of recruitment to the cause vehicle?

Mr Trump is manifestly not a moral man, neither was a clearly corrupt Nixon, the assassinated, war hero Kennedy nor the womanizing Clinton?

The latter bringing one of the most astute, economically literate minds to the position! And witnessed by the results he engendered with his preferred policies?

While I might agree with your assessments, I prefer to wait the usual first ninety days to reach some results based value judgement!

His morals and moral code while seemingly atrocious, does not necessarily disqualify! Nor a manipulated election?

If the Yank religious right can live with it? What chance you and a tiny OLO audience?

Say what you like, but at least Joh (my fellow Queenslanders, next Sunday, lettuce spray) could make it rain?

Get a handle on that one and you'll likely not only fill the pews, but the plate as well!

Peace be with thee and with thy spirit
Alan B.

Very true Alan B.

Especially "the plate as well!". Where would the God Fearing Stockbrokers, Bankers and other Sellers of Perth be without Church ticket punching on Sundays?

Further, it is important to our Yankee betters that Trump worships Mammon. "In God We Trust" maintaining respect for the Almighty Dollar. For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust#Criticism .

This essay sums up the situation of the self-serving Godless ego-culture in which the liar-in-chief has inevitably appeared.
http://www.beezone.com/basketoftolerance/myfirstwordbaskettoleranceADAPTED.html

But conventional entirely exoteric christian-ism is not about Real God. To be a sinner is to be entirely self-possessed or Godless.
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/three_great_myths.html

Sells seems to forget that many influential right-wing so called conservative christian leaders including the principal "catholic" bishops outfit enthusiastically endorsed the Chump, even claiming that he was going to be the necessary agent to re-christianize or bring "god" back to American culture.

Isn't it about time that people stopped referring to the USA as a uniquely "religious" country.

Remember too that when Barack Obama was first elected that there was much hyperbolic ranting about he (Obama) was the anti-"christ". Strange that that hyperbolic theme is not being used now.

Re the essentially harmless protests that are occurring in response to the Chump. If Killary had been elected the protests against her would be much more widespread and probably much more violent too. Remember that during the erection campaign there was open talk of armed rebellion if she was elected.

Remember that when Obama was elected there was a virtual explosion in the number of right-wing militia groups, in opposition to him.

We don't yet know whether Donald Trump will be a poor president, a good president or a great president. We do know, however, that if Hillary Clinton had been elected she'd have been a corrupt president.

And enough Americans knew that. So she's not.

As someone who tipped a Trump victory from March last year, I'm very pleased that he has been elected. He has also picked a solid cabinet and from what we've seen of his personal staff, they all seem very competent.

Which flies in the face of the would-be totalitarian Left who caused violence during the presidential race, who caused violence and destruction of property after the election - did someone mention narcissists? - and who are promising more such destruction and obstruction for the inauguration. Their obsession with the "popular" vote seems to be part of a mass psychosis, probably a result of very poor education, since the US Constitution provides no prize whatsoever for winning most votes, just most Electoral College votes in most states. I hope that if such obstruction and destruction begins on Saturday, our time, they are met with the full force of the law, pour encourager les autres.

Let us be clear: criticism of Trump, particularly from the likes of Peter Sellick and others who have never met him, never will, but feel self-important because of their facile moral posturing, contributes nothing to the betterment of humanity.

They are, for the most part, the same people who went for the "Hope and Change" scam that delivered the worst president in US history, the bloke who gave Iran access to nuclear weapons, who sold out Israel at the UN, the bloke who almost doubled US national debt during his presidency, the bloke who kow-towed to the Saudi King, who lied about his knowledge of Clinton's unsecured emails, the man who lied about the scope and cost of Obamacare and whose only real achievement in eight years was to watch live TV while Navy seals killed Osama bin Laden.

Donald Trump would have to be a really, really poor president to match that.

Well, he hasn't even been sworn in yet and already everyone's talking about golden showers, so I guess we'll wait and see.

I think it is a sign of the times that we fail to judge character, or even think it is necessary to judge character. We have lost any understanding of what virtues we would look for in a leader that we find ourselves deliberately agnostic concerning an aspirants capabilities. It does not seem to matter that Trump is an immature fraud. Such judgments are lost in the polarisation between us ordinary citizens and the elite. The elite being those who have spent their lives honing their statecraft. This is just ignorant bigotry.

"we fail to judge character"!

Depends if the author has it.

I'm sick to death of all the know-it-all know nothings having their two cents worth on Trump.

Sells,
It's not ignorant bigotry mate, its just plain ignorance - on your behalf.
You, like all your other Clinton criminal cohorts can't get your pea sized brains around it so you all keep going on and on like a bloody cracked record.

Do you idiots think I want the leaders who sell this country out that YOU all choose for me every few damn years?
I don't require a dress, tissues, play-doh, LEGO's or Safe Spaces every time I have to face one of your idiots running the show..
Honestly I've seen 4yo kids act more mature than this.
Get over it, learn to live with it or you know, you can always go kick yourself off a cliff.

The biggest problem here is the people that think they know something that actually don't know shite.
I'm getting tired of hearing them moan and whine with all their baseless arguments and neverending broken brain farts..

The reason they can't work out out is a failure to listen to the other sides point of view.
Too busy listening to the stupid voices in their own heads.

I'm not even going to bother trying to set you straight.
It's more satisfying to think of your unsettled brain doing circles like a dog chasing its tail and slowly burning out of its own accord.

Trump won. Deal with it.

.

Dear Peter,

.

You concluded :

« The Church must be at the forefront in limiting the damage that Trump will do. Now is the time to preach obviously political sermons denouncing him »

We have already witnessed the devastation caused by the onslaught of political Islam on our democracies.

As an Anglican deacon, I think you should abstain from political activism and respect the principle of strict “laïcité”. Religion has no place as a normative political ideology in the world's modern democracies. It is even questionable as to whether it has ever had any place :

[ Matthew 22:17-22New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not ?
18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites ?
19 Show me the coin used for the tax. And they brought him a denarius.
20 Then he said to them, Whose head is this, and whose title ?
21 They answered, The emperor’s. Then he said to them, Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.]

.

Graham Y picked out the wrong sentence to summarise this article. This is better: " It explains why he [Trump] seems to have no idea of reality, of truth."

The bottom line is that the author disagrees with Trump and his supporters, and that proves (to the author) that they are wrong. Nothing more to be said.

Now it may turn out to be true that Trump's plans and planned solutions fail, but that's a long way from showing that they are divorced from reality. The author thinks a barrier to protect the southern border is "impossible". What will be his fallback position when its built? And it will be built. It may not be a 50' concrete barrier but a barrier will nonetheless exist. Its the core-est of core promises and it is the right thing to do. The author shows how little he knows by not understanding this.

For the previous several decades those who value 'seeming' over 'doing' have been in the ascendency and have convinced themselves of their own goodness. Seeming to want to place the needs of those far off ahead of those near-by has been, usually, a disaster for both. The Syrian debacle, Libya, Sudan, Yemen. Do those who do God's work really think they are scenarios we want to repeat.

In the end, the US economic system has been skewed to advantage some and disenfranchise the deplorable others. That that is about to change is anathema to many and they are virtue-signally their self-claimed goodness to maintain their advantages.

The first and foremost duty of any government is to its citizens. Previous US administrations have decided that only some of those citizens require its attention and after they've been 'looked after', then outsiders will be given priority. The deplorables can make their own arrangements. Well they have and the likes of the author aren't happy about it.

There are many ways to do good in the world. The conceit of our supposed betters is that only their way is valid. They are about to be disabused of that conceit.

Sells:

“I think it is a sign of the times that we fail to judge character, or even think it is necessary to judge character.”

Character is irrelevant. President of the US is a job like any other job. You choose the person who has the best credentials for the job not the best character. You would be happy to see the country go down the toilet so long as the president was of good character and virtue. This exposes what your true values are.

You do not care about people having a job or security or some kind of incentive in their lives which means you do not care about people. You only care about Christianity and controlling everyone to be Christians. You need them to be Christians because you are so desperately emotionally dependent on Christianity.

Trump is not a leader and we do not need him to be. We need him to do a good job as president. Those who are looking for ‘leaders’ are insecure. They need someone else to have the values that they have because they are insecure about those values. The rest just need a good president.

The only ignorant fraud is you because you purport to care about people but act in a totally uncaring way towards those who want things to change for the better.

Go, Donald!!

I tipped a Trump win and I'm delighted.
I could have made a mint had I opened a 'book' but as I don't gamble (personal choice, no bandwagon), I passed up the opportunity to be rich.

Dear Mr. Sellick,

I read your article 3 times. Enough is enough. I will not waste my time with a detailed reply but suffice to say I would use words like : Irrational, Illogical, libel , Hubris .

You start your essay with a cringing appeal to a non-existant America then proceed to libel Mr. Trump by calling him " ... a self deluded narcissist and fool" . Whatever Mr. Trump may be he is not a fool. Perhaps you will demonstrate to us how you came to the conclusion that he is a fool. OK, he might be a narcissist. What is wrong with that?

The body of your essay is a religious rant. I mean

"In theological terms this is idolatry; things of the world are worshipped instead of God. Thus our desire is directed not towards the face of God and hence towards greater humility ... " .

Give us a break.

Read Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I am not a christian.

You conclude with

: " The Church must be at the forefront in limiting the damage that Trump will do. Now is the time to preach obviously political sermons denouncing him. "

Is this not Hubris ? Is this not hubris of the powerless Do think, for one moment, that anybody will take note of this conclusion ?

Yours sincerely,

simplesimon

//Do you idiots think I want the leaders who sell this country out that YOU all choose for me every few damn years?//

Don't you vote, AC? You can't really whinge if you don't vote and wind up with leaders you don't like.

The good Peter Sellick:

The fundamental difference between the old and new Testement are probably applicable for discussion here.

*The Old Testament shows the wrath of God against sin (with glimpses of His grace); the New Testament shows the grace of God toward sinners (with glimpses of his wrath).*

you appear to believe Trump to be opposed to God, when a neater description would be his ambivalence.

Rev., Dr Michael Bird/Ridley college Melbourne, identifies The Trunp phenomina here:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-16/why-did-evangelicals-vote-for-donald-trump/8028932

You may be out of step!

Hey Toni,
Yes I voted, I even took the time online to look at many parties and their policies.
I voted Hanson then Liberals, Greens and Labor last.
One vote won't change the status quo..

//Yes I voted, I even took the time online to look at many parties and their policies.
I voted Hanson then Liberals, Greens and Labor last.//

Then why are you whining about the parties WE choose for you, when it's YOU doing the choosing? You get to have your say, just like the rest of us, and sometimes you end up with a result you don't like, just like the rest of us. It's called democracy, and as Churchill pointed out, it's the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.

Presumably you'd be happier with the Ankh-Morporkian 'One Man, One Vote' system of democracy: where there is one Man, and he gets the one Vote. But then what happens if the Man with the Vote turns out to not Vote the way you like?

Probably best to leave dictatorships for crappy third world countries without proper sanitation. I don't like the leaders YOU choose for me either, but I'd still rather have the great unwashed doing the voting than a dictator.

//One vote won't change the status quo..//

But zero votes would... suppose they gave an election and nobody came. Sorry, just some idle musing...

It is possible for one vote to swing a seat, but it's very unlikely. However, the sum of a multitude of 'one votes' is what really matters. I find it interesting when people argue that democracy is a sham because their vote doesn't matter anyway, and still make the effort to cast a formal vote. If their vote doesn't matter, why bother voting? And if it does matter, why bother bleating on about it not mattering? Just make up your bloody mind.

Hey Toni,
You missed my whole point...
I don't have a problem accepting what the community chooses.
That was in fact the argument I was making.

If anything at all I get frustrated that the news is so full of it that a lot of people are either uninformed or even worse misinformed, but this is only because I often have to share a different side of the story the media isn't informing us of.

On that note though, sharing a side of a story the media isn't telling us about is probably where my comments are most worthwhile.

I expect you'll certainly disagree on the assertion my comments are worthwhile, as you would... Lol