Coronavirus and Exploding Conspiracy Theories of Religious Crackpots

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi

The novel coronavirus is not only devastating humankind, it is also disrupting the settled certainties and spiritual verities of religious fanatics for whom atavistic and superstitious frames of reference are the only ways to make sense of the world around them.

I’ll start from fringe members of my own religious community. When the new coronavirus first emerged in China, a lunatic fringe of the Nigerian Muslim community celebrated it and said it was Allah’s punishment against China for mistreating its Muslim minority population.

They said the clearest indication that it was divine pestilence to avenge the persecution of Chinese Muslims could be seen in the fact that all Chinese people were compelled to cover their whole bodies in ways that were reminiscent of the sartorial choices Allah enjoined Muslims, especially Muslim women, to make, which China denies its Muslim minority.

I recall telling a religious crackpot who made this silly argument early this year that it wasn’t the first time that people had covered their bodies in response to a pandemic. The 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed nearly half a million Nigerians and more than 50 million people worldwide, caused people to wear face masks.

I added that his theory would fall apart if the virus made its way to Muslim communities. But, like other simpleminded, delusory loonies, he was certain that Muslims were providentially inoculated against Allah’s pandemic for infidels.

Shortly after, Iran became one of the epicenters of the new coronavirus. It killed people, including political and religious leaders, with the same viciousness that it did Chinese atheists, Buddhists, and Taoists.

Then Sunni zealots among the conspiracy theorists changed tack and said Iranians became susceptible to the virus because, being Shiites, they are not real Muslims, and that the Hazrat Masumeh Shrine in Qom, Iran, which was the principal way by which the virus spread in the country, isn’t “Islamic.”

Of course, we all know the virus has infected Sunni Muslim strongholds in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. For the first time in decades, al-Masjid al-Ḥarām in Mecca and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, Islam’s two holiest mosques, were closed to worshippers because of COVID-19.

As of the time of writing this column, there were 3,651 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 47 deaths in Saudi Arabia. An April 8, 2020 New York Times report said up to 150 members of the Saudi Royal family have been infected with the virus and that Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud, the king’s nephew, is in intensive care unit arising from COVID-19.

The tenor of the conspiracy theory has changed again. Coronavirus is now a grand plot by “Jews” to halt the inexorable march of Islam, to disrupt Muslim rituals in Mecca, and to dominate the world to the exclusion of Muslims!

There are different Christian versions of this superstitious lunacy. Enoch Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), for instance, said the new coronavirus would not infect, much less kill, people “who serve God wholeheartedly.”

Since thousands of Christians, including medical professionals who were on the front lines in the service of humanity, were killed by the disease, Adeboyean logic would have us believe that they died because they didn’t “serve God wholeheartedly.”

Abia State governor Okezie Ikpeazu upped the ante of religious irrationality when he said, “Abia is the only state [in Nigeria] that is mentioned in the Bible. We have been promised by God that none of these diseases will get to us. We saw Ebola and pox. Even this one [COVID-19) it won’t get to us.”

If Abia State is immune from COVID-19 because of the phonological accident that caused the word “Abia” to appear once in the Bible, why is the virus running riot in Israel, the very scene of the Bible?

As of Friday when this column was written, more than 10,000 people have tested positive for the new coronavirus in Israel, and nearly 100 people have died from it. But Israel was mentioned countless times in the Bible.

Italy, the headquarters of Catholicism and of Christianity for centuries, has been one of the worst-hit countries in the coronavirus pandemic, with 147,577 infections and nearly 20,000 deaths as of April 10.

What is so special about Abia that God would spare it of the coronavirus but let it fatally maraud Italy and Israel? Even the United States that Nigerians like to call “God’s own country” and whose motto is “In God we trust” is now the epicenter of the coronavirus.

The unvarnished, unsentimental truth is that COVID-19—and other natural calamities that periodically befall humankind—isn’t a providential, celestial missile that faith can give us cover from. Nature is insensitive to our emotions and sensibilities. Our piety, prayers, and religious affiliations can never provide us with safeguards against the ruthlessly unstoppable march of nature.

A rational, scientific mindset free of the encumbrances of silly, retarded superstitions is what we need. And that’s precisely what is lacking in Nigeria—and many developing countries.

The vast majority of our people stand in uncomprehending awe before the littlest natural complexity and quickly take recourse to mythic, superstitious explanations for confounding but knowable phenomena. It is this mindset that explains why Nigerians give “testimonies” of “God’s mercies” on them for surviving car crashes in which others perished. They imply that God hates the people who die in car accidents.

This is a country where many people still believe that one can become wealthy through the ritual murders of other humans, where deaths, including car accidents, are attributed to witchcraft and sorcery, where the ability to perform cheap magic tricks is invariably associated with the possession of supernatural powers.

Sadly, in Nigeria, superstition and anti-scientific attitudes often take refuge under religion so that an attack on superstition and pre-scientific attitudes is usually mistaken for an attack on religion. But that’s a fallacious association. Both historical and contemporary examples show that religion and science can co-exist.

Religion isn’t necessarily synonymous with superstition, nor is science necessarily the anti-thesis of religion. Superstition, belief in witchcraft and sorcery, and a disdain for the scientific method represent the infancy of human reasoning. It’s sad that many Nigerians have not evolved from this.

I have no doubt that unthinking obsession with supernaturalism and metaphysical claptrap is Nigeria’s, nay Africa’s, biggest stumbling-block to progress.

Maryam Uwais and COVIK 419 Writ Large
"Those who benefit from the conditional cash transfer of the Federal Government as palliative to cushion the effects of the lockdown caused by the deadly Coronavirus don't want to be addressed as poor people. That is why we can't publish their names.

"Also, the beneficiaries of the Federal Government's gesture are invisible and dwell where the conventional society cannot see them, and carrying journalists along to investigate the authenticity of the payments to the target persons will be cost implicative to the scheme because the funds at hand can't pay for extra burden as we are only managing what we have."

Maryam Uwais
Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment on Channels TV Sunrise Daily.

When I received the above text on WhatsApp on April 10, 2020 from several people, I thought someone initially just made it up for comic relief and that it was being shared by people on social media in ignorance.

In fact, I persuaded an older friend that the quote couldn't be real, based on what I’d read of Maryam Uwais who strikes me as an extremely smart woman. But after watching the video clip of her interview a few hours after I’d read the text, where I heard her express sentiments that were consistent with the first sentence, I was compelled to go back to WhatsApp and retract what I said to my older friend about the quote.

Anyone who is too proud to be called poor is clearly not poor. The pangs of hunger are stronger than the vanity of self-esteem. That’s why there are hordes of Nigerian “e-beggars” who drop their names and account numbers on social media without shame during social media “giveaways”—and sometimes without “giveaways.”

But the whole point of asking for the identity of the people who benefited from the government’s “palliatives” is to be able to authenticate government’s claims.

In any case, the minister of humanitarian affairs, who supervises the disbursement of the “palliatives,” was reported by the Daily Nigerian to have stolen 200 tonnes of date palms (dabino) donated to internally displaced persons in the northeast by the Saudi Arabian government in 2017. This is COVIK 4-1-9 writ large!

How Political Power Damages the Brain—and How to Reverse it

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

I was one of seven professors who facilitated a leadership training in my university here in Georgia for local government chairmen from a major Nigerian southwestern state. In the course of the training, I adverted to a January 13, 2018 column I wrote about how power literally damages the brains of people who wield it and causes them to be dissociated from reality.

A few of the chairmen at the training initially said they “rejected” what I said “in Jesus’ name.” But the more I expounded the research on the psychology of power, the less resistant they became. In the light of the interest it excited among these local power wielders, I thought I’d share a revised version of the column for the benefit of other people in power.

 

On Nov. 20, 2014, Buhari, Amaechi, Oyegun and other APC honchos protested in Abuja against the increased insecurity and killings in the country. Insecurity and killings are worse on their watch than at any time in peacetime Nigeria.

Almost everyone I know wonders why people in power change radically; why they become so utterly disconnected from reality that they suddenly become completely unrecognizable to people who knew them before they got to power; why they get puffed-up, susceptible to flattery, and intolerant of even the mildest, best-intentioned censure; why they appear possessed by inexplicably malignant forces; and why they are notoriously insensitive and self-absorbed. 

Everyone who has ever had a friend in a position of power, especially political power, can attest to the accuracy of the age-old truism that a friend in power is a lost friend. Of course, there are exceptions, but it is precisely the fact of the existence of exceptions that makes this reality poignant. As the saying goes, “the exception proves the rule.”

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Look at all the power brokers in Nigeria—from the president to your ward councilor—and you’ll discover that there is a vast disconnect between who they were before they got to power and who they are now.

Also look at previously arrogant, narcissistic, power-drunk prigs who have been kicked out of the orbit of power for any number of reasons. You’ll discover that they are suddenly normal again. They share our pains, make pious noises, condemn abuse of power, and identify with popular causes. The legendary amnesia of Nigerians causes the past misdeeds of these previous monsters of power to be explained away, lessened, forgiven, and ultimately forgotten. But when they get back to power again, they become the same insensitive beasts of power that they once were.

So what is it about power that makes people such obtuse, self-centered snobs? It turns out that psychologists have been grappling with this puzzle for years and have a clue. Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California Berkeley, extensively studied the brains of people in power and found that people under the influence of power are neurologically similar to people who suffer traumatic brain injury.

According to the July/August 2017 issue of the Atlantic magazine, people who are victims of traumatic brain injury are “more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.” In other words, like victims of traumatic brain injury, power causes people to lose their capacity for empathy. This is a surprising scientific corroboration of American historian Henry Adams’ popular wisecrack about how power is “a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.”

The findings of Sukhvinder Obhi, a professor of neuroscience at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, are even more revealing. Obhi also studies the workings of the human brain. “And when he put the heads of the powerful and the not-so-powerful under a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine, he found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, ‘mirroring,’ that may be a cornerstone of empathy,” the Atlantic reports. “Which gives a neurological basis to what Keltner has termed the ‘power paradox’: Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place.”

Take Buhari, for example. Before 2015, he was—or at least appeared to be—empathetic. He supported subsidies for the poor, railed against waste, thought Nigerians deserved to buy petrol at a low price because Nigerian oil was “developed with Nigerian capital,” and so on. He even said foreign medical treatment for elected government officials was immoral and indefensible, and wondered why a Nigerian president would need a fleet of aircraft when even the British Prime Minister didn’t have any.

Nothing but power-induced brain damage, which activates narcissism and loss of empathy, can explain Buhari’s dramatic volte-face now that he’s in power. This fact, psychological researchers say, is worsened by the fact that subordinates tend to flatter people in power, mimic their ways in order to ingratiate themselves with them, and shield them from realities that might cause them psychic discomfort.

“But more important, Keltner says, is the fact that the powerful stop mimicking others,” theAtlantic reports. “Laughing when others laugh or tensing when others tense does more than ingratiate. It helps trigger the same feelings those others are experiencing and provides a window into where they are coming from. Powerful people ‘stop simulating the experience of others,’ Keltner says, which leads to what he calls an ‘empathy deficit.’”

Researchers also found out that excessive praise from subordinates, sycophantic drooling from people seeking favors, control over vast resources they once didn’t have, and all of the staid rituals and performances of power conspire to cause “functional” changes to the brains of people in power. On a social level, it also creates what Lord David Owen, a British neurologist-turned-politician, called the “hubris syndrome” in his 2008 book titled In Sickness and in Power.

Some features of hubris syndrome, Owen points out, are, “manifest contempt for others, loss of contact with reality, restless or reckless actions, and displays of incompetence.” Sounds familiar? You can’t observe Buhari’s governance—or, more correctly, ungovernance—in the last four years and fail to see these features in him.

But it’s not all gloom and doom. Powerful people can, and indeed do, extricate themselves from the psychological snares of power if they so desire. Professor Keltner said one of the most effective psychological strategies for people in power to reconnect with reality and reverse the brain damage of power is to periodically remember moments of powerlessness in their lives—such as when they were victims natural disasters, accidents, poverty, etc.

They should also have what American journalist Louis McHenry Howe once called a “toe holder,” that is, someone who doesn’t fear them, expects no favors from them, and can tell them uncomfortable truths without fear of consequences.

Winston Churchill’s toe holder was his wife, who once wrote a letter to him that read, in part, “I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not as kind as you used to be.” Was Aisha Buhari performing the role of a toe holder when she publicly upbraided her husband in the past? I doubt it.

Her disagreements with her husband are often opportunistic and self-serving. They are triggered only when her husband’s puppeteers in Aso Rock limit her powers to nominate her cronies for political positions and to dispense favors to friends and family.

Another potent way to reverse power-induced brain damage is to periodically get out of the protected silos of power and solitarily observe the quotidian interactions of everyday folks—their humor, laughter, fights, etc. — without the familiar add-ons of power, such as aides, cameras, security, etc. This helps to stimulate the experiences of others and restore empathy.

This is particularly important in Nigeria because power, at all levels, is almost absolute and unaccountable.

Mercenary “Investigative Journalism” in Service of Fraud

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter:@farooqkperogi

As a scholar and teacher of journalism, I am troubled by an emerging character of Nigeria’s diasporan and homeland digital-native news formation, which had functioned as alternative outlets for the sort of critical journalism that the homeland legacy news media have abandoned. 

They start by attracting attention to themselves through what seems like uncompromisingly adversarial journalism against venality in government. But just when they succeed in persuading people to invest faith in their journalistic integrity, they cash out and become indistinguishable from, and sometimes worse than, the compromised homeland legacy media they were thought to be an alternative to.

It started from Elendu Reports, the first successful diasporan citizen media outfit, which, after sensationally unmasking high-profile corruption in the high reaches of government in Nigeria in 2005, turned around to furtively serve as “media consultant” to the same politicians it exposed as venal. Most other online-only news outlets have followed this template, the latest being the dubiously named “International Centre for Investigative Journalism” (ICIR). (Neither its reportorial purview nor its workforce is “international,” but it ignorantly calls itself one nonetheless).

I became aware of ICIR after it routinely tagged me to its reports on Twitter about a year ago. It appeared to be committed to the sort of critical enterprise journalism that has gone out of fashion in Nigeria but that is crucial to sustaining democracy. So I subscribed to its news feed.

Although I liked what the site did, there was always something fundamentally defective about its reporting. It usually lacked depth, thematic coherence, and intellectual sophistication. The quality of English of its reports was and still is also bewilderingly dreadful. It appears like a crucial criterion to be hired as a reporter on the site is an ability to demonstrate capacity to write illiterate English, to show contempt for grammatical correctness and completeness, and to write mind-numbing clichés and solecisms.

But I chalked this up to the possibility that the owners of the site had the passion to uncover sleaze in government but lacked the education to do so. That was good enough for me. I thought they might improve in the coming years. Nevertheless, before they even gained traction in the Nigerian public sphere, they have chosen to cash out.

On June 24, the site published what it purported to be a “fact-check” of “social media influencers who shared fake news during the 2019 election.” I had been alerted several weeks in advance that some people had been “commissioned” by Bola Tinubu’s media team in Lagos to both launch an aggressive media onslaught on my person and to buy credibility for Buhari’s fraudulent “reelection,” which I have spent a great deal of energy exposing as the most barefacedly duplicitous election in Nigeria’s history.

I thought this would come in the form of the predictably sterile “attack” pieces in newspapers and on social media platforms, which I am already used to and for which I have developed a thick skin since Goodluck Jonathan’s days. But my informant said, “This would be different.”

Just when I got tired of waiting, a “Damilola” who said she was a reporter for “SaharaReporters” sent me a WhatsApp message weeks ago about videos of rigging that I shared on Twitter during the presidential election. She said she wanted to know the source of the videos or whether, in fact, I witnessed the events in the videos. No one who has even a day’s training in journalism would ask me those sorts of boneheaded questions.

First, the videos had gone viral before I shared them, so I couldn’t possibly be their original source. Second, the “reporter” obviously knows that I live in the United States and that I couldn’t have witnessed the rigging in the videos. If, for any reason, I did, I would have stated so—and would be the first to share them. Most importantly, though, no real journalist does a story about other journalists’ confidential sources of news, although I was, in fact, not the source for the videos she “fact-checked.”

The “fact-check,” which was published on ICIR’s website (and not Sahara Reporters) by two bylines, said I shared two “fake” videos during the 2019 election. The first so-called fake video was of INEC officials furiously thumb printing ballot papers on behalf of a political party. I wrote the following to accompany the video: “See shameless rigging by INEC officials: Thumb printing on an industrial scale.” I didn't mention the year this happened, and said nothing about what party was a beneficiary of the mass thumb printing because I couldn't tell that with any certainty, although other people who shared it before me said it was during the 2019 election.

The “reporters” said their “investigation” confirmed that the video indeed showed INEC officials thumb printing ballot papers except that they found it wasn't during the 2019 election. But I never said it was. Nevertheless, the “reporters” said I "implied" it was during the 2019 election. Was sort of “fact checking” is that?

You can’t fact-check what’s on my mind. That’s babalawo (or is it mamalawo) journalism! I am capable of saying it was during the 2019 election if I wanted to, but I didn’t. Others, however, did. The fact of INEC officials feverishly thumb printing ballot papers on a mass scale in support of a party, irrespective of when it happened, was worth sharing, particularly in light of similar things that went on at the time, which the second video confirmed, as I’ll show shortly. So the video wasn’t fake by any definition of the term. If anything, it’s the analysis of it by the venal, uneducated philistines masquerading as “reporters” that is fake.

The second so-called fake video they said I shared was real even by their own analysis. They confessed that they “set out to debunk many videos we believed to be old or not related to the elections. We were not prepared to deal with actual, blatant rigging, not with the PVCs and not with the improved vigilance that was supposed to be a key feature of the 2019 polls.” If you ignore the woolly, incoherent thought process of the sentence, you will see their bias seeping out like fetid pus. They were disappointed to find the video to be an authentic “recent case” case of rigging. All I said about the video was: “Why would anyone accept the outcome of an election like this? Democracy is supposed to be one person, one vote.”

They agreed that the video, which clearly showed INEC officials rigging on behalf of a party, was from the 2019 election. They only said they couldn’t “emphatically state that those stamping and thumb printing the ballot papers are INEC officials” and that they “could not distinctly make out the party being thumb-printed.” That’s blatant partisan claptrap. They could “fact-check” the thought-processes that resided in the inner recesses of my mind, which I didn’t verbalize, but they couldn’t fact-check an obvious fraud in a video. Nevertheless, neither the video nor what I said about it was inaccurate by any stretch of the imagination.

Can’t Tinubu’s media team get smarter mercenaries for their hit jobs than these pitifully lowbrow vulgar buffoons? Other dimwitted daggers for hire like a faceless, ignorant “Okanga Agila” have joined the fray to attack me.

But the truth remains that it was Buhari’s government that hired Israeli disinformation agents to spread fake news on social media against his main opponent, Atiku Abubakar. According to a May 17, 2019 Associated Press news story titled “Israeli Disinformation Campaign Targeted Nigerian Election,” “One of the pages that Facebook cancelled appeared filled with viral misinformation attacking Abubakar, the former vice president of Nigeria. The page’s banner image showed Abubakar as Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, holding up a sign reading, ‘Make Nigeria Worse Again’.” The AP story added: “The report also featured a page that explicitly lionized and boosted Buhari, with amateur videos eulogizing the accomplishments of his presidency as though he were not locked in a tight battle for re-election.”

Interestingly, the ICIR “investigative report” on fake news only briefly referred to this report but didn’t point to the fact that it was Buhari who hired an Israeli firm to spread fake news during the election. ICIR has killed itself before it’s even had a chance to live. That’s such a shame!

Related Articles:
ICIR's Sponsored Fake "Fact-Checking" about Fake News
Propagandocracy and the Buhari Media Centre
Nigerian Media as Comforters of the Comfortable, Afflicters of the Afflicted

In Power for the Wrong Reasons by Omoruyi Uwuigiaren

President Muhammadu Buhari has been sworn in for a second four year term on Wednesday May 29, 2019. Under normal circumstances, there should be proof that you have done enough to earn or merit such privilege. A man should not be given any mandate to rule because of his political affiliation, tribe, ethnic or religion. For a president that has done little or nothing in the last four years, the reactions from the people should be loud enough to retire him.

With what is on ground or the current situation of Nigeria, Buhari does not deserve a second term. One wonders why he still has the mandate to lead majority of Nigerians who are sad, demoralized and depressed from his years of misrule. There have been more cases of mediocrity than excellence since 2015. Except he makes the right decisions and see Nigeria from a broader perspective, we are only going to reinforce failure.

Under Buhari’s rule, crime rate has increased. Kidnapping, banditry and killings of innocent Nigerians have reached the high heavens. Terrorist group, Boko Haram, not only roam free in the north eastern part of Nigeria, they have also claimed territories where they easily launch attack on military base and soft targets in the north east. Ironically, Buhari is a northerner. All the service chiefs appointed by him are all from the north, and majority of the security challenges in Nigeria are from the north. A man who lacks the will to protect himself will likely not protect anybody. If Buhari and his northern security chiefs cannot protect the north that is their home, why do you think they can protect what is not their own? Today whether you believe it or not, the northern part of Nigeria is a burden to the entire country. The north brings so little to the table and takes a very large chunk of the country’s resources through security challenges that could have been easily dealt with if the right appointments are made. A leader is as good or as bad as those around him.

Also see

People who have surrendered leadership of their lives to others are always at the mercy of those they serve.

 Unlike the thief who aggressively robs you of your belongings on the highway, the fraudster connects to your need. 

Great countries and continents are not built by faith – they are created and built through vision, integrity, hard work and scientific creations.

The economy doesn’t look like it is progressing. There are no indication that Nigeria is headed the right direction. Youth unemployment is very high, factories are closing down, job losses are recorded on a daily basis, and one must be a superman to successfully run a business in Nigeria. All these and more have left many Nigerians disillusioned. Some have taken to vices and others who feel they could no longer carry on have resulted to taking their lives. Rather than resign and go home and rest, Buhari has been handed another four years that could break Nigeria! Buhari is not suited for a very demanding secular state. You don’t rule a secular state on the wings of integrity. His policies and ideas are outdated. They are no longer useful. Nigeria can no longer depend on a politician that does not understand economics, finance or educationally sound.

President Buhari will do well as a monarch or ceremonial head. Nigeria doesn’t need him. He’s not right to lead. Leadership is not all about honesty and integrity. It is a complex subject that requires a sound mind. It is simply doing what is right irrespective of who you are and what will happen. As a leader, you are not permitted to do what you like. You do what is right. There is hardly any improvement in any sector in Nigeria since he first took over power in 2015 and I doubt if the next four years will be any better. Except Buhari shuns nepotism and appoint credible people as ministers, I do not see how Nigeria will move forward.

LeBron James calls President Trump a ‘Bum’ and thinks Obama was the ‘best ever.’

LeBron James calls President Trump a ‘Bum’ and thinks Obama was the ‘best ever.’ His fans listen to him because he has a talent for basketball and buying huge mansions. The letter writer below, a sports journalist, tells the truth, the truth that applies to most celebrities on the left. It's a GREAT Letter to Lebron from former Houston news reporter Hal Lundgren.

January, 2019

Mr. Lebron James
The Los Angeles Lakers 
2275 E. Mariposa Ave. 
El Segundo, CA 90245

Dear Mr. James:

No one in my circles discusses French Modernist artists. That comforts me. Such a conversation would expose me as an illiterate on French Modernism, just as I am an illiterate on cooking and many other things. When I know nothing on a subject, my mouth stays closed. That's at least one difference in us. You are an economics illiterate. You prove it often. The dishonest ‘reporters’ who cover you want to be your buddy. They won't embarrass you by being honest journalists and treat your words as economics illiteracy. When you call Trump ‘a bum,’ none of them will tell you that statistics rank him as one of our best presidents for black Americans. His tax cuts and freeing us from absurd regulations have resulted in -- after only 24 months -- the lowest unemployment numbers EVER for Hispanic and black Americans, and one of the lowest numbers for women.

DURING THOSE 24 MONTHS, TRUMP'S POLICIES CREATED ABOUT FOUR TIMES MORE MANUFACTURING JOBS THAN WERE CREATED DURING THE ENTIRE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S EIGHT YEARS!

Remember during the Trump campaign when Obama mistakenly said, "What's Trump gonna do? Wave a magic wand? These lost manufacturing jobs aren't coming back." Just maybe manufacturing job growth depends on a president who knows what the hell he's doing as opposed to some smiling idiot who was nothing more than a community organizer. As a professional journalist, I cringe at some of Trump’s buffoonery, like repeating sentences and wearing us out with ‘great, fantastic’ and other empty adjectives. He is egotistical and bombastic. He was not my original candidate which just goes to show how wrong I was. But there’s no question his policies have helped many more minority Americans than Obama’s. It's not even close. Today, he’s working to free many black and Hispanic prisoners who, in his opinion, have been in prison too long for relatively minor offenses. 
Are you aware of that effort?

You need to look up Gross Domestic Product, adjusted for inflation, and learn what it means to everyday Americans. Learn what one GDP point means to employment, and see how Trump has kept the numbers climbing. Your  buddy Obama? In addition to being our worst foreign affairs president, and worst military commander-in-chief, his economic numbers all deserved an ‘F.’ He is our ONLY eight-year president who failed to give us at least one 3% or higher year of adjusted GDP growth. EVERY other president achieved at least one year of 4.28% or higher growth. Aided by Vietnam spending, Johnson had an 8.48 year. The best peacetime year, 7.83, belonged to Reagan. And Obama couldn't even score a 3?
Go ahead. Look it up.

You say you would talk to Obama, but not Trump? Why? Is it because you're a star basketball player, and you feel this God-given talent elevates you above speaking to the most powerful person on the face of the earth? How tragic that your ego is so misplaced. Obama had BY FAR the worst debt accumulation record of all our presidents in our history. His economic blunders added about $9 trillion to our debt. NO OTHER PRESIDENT EVEN CAME CLOSE! That's ALMOST as much indebtedness as ALL of the former POTUSes combined! This debt will fall to you, your children, and your grandchildren.

Poor families suffered most during Obama's tenure while he and his family were on VACATION, most of his time in office, on taxpayer funds! His awful job numbers forced a record number of people to receive food stamps. Black household income under Obama fell steeply as black unemployment rose. 
Oh yes, you can look that up, too. But the worst part of what Trump inherited is that Obama, like Bush and Clinton before him, thought bribes and sweet talk were the best ways to deal with North Korea. As the North Koreans neared being able to wipe out your present area of employment, Los Angeles, with a nuclear-tipped missile, Trump became the first president to stand up boldly to this rogue nation. Have you noticed North Korea, because of Trump, has stopped launching missiles over Japan? Noticed North Korea has released political prisoners? Noticed North Korea has returned the remains of U.S. Service members? Absent sturdy spines, Clinton, Bush, and Obama could not approach those major achievements.

Obama naively bribed the planet’s worst terrorist nation, Iran, with what was supposed to become a $150 billion handout, mostly in cash, and without notifying Congress. Did Obama not know many of those U.S. tax dollars would help fund Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism? Of course, he did. He just wanted to appease the masses.

Remember the $800 billion of your, and everyone else's, tax dollars in his early stimulus for ‘shovel-ready jobs?’ Most of those tax dollars went to political cronies. He handed $500 million to Solyndra, a solar company run by HIS boosters. The company soon went bankrupt. Our half-billion in tax dollars vanished with it. (And Trump can't get 5.7 billion to build a wall to keep ALL Americans safe because he is asking to do it LEGALLY with Congress' approval.)

Trump is often obnoxious, but people with courage often have that hang up. Obama always talked big, smiled a lot, then feebly stood by and did nothing. A perfect example was when Putin infringed on Ukraine and annexed Crimea. What did Obama do?
Not one damned thing! One of Obama's most cowardly moves came when he warned Assad not to cross ‘the red line’ in Syria. When Assad ignored Obama’s warning, Obama once again did nothing; which Assad knew would happen. Now please Mr. James, be honest. If this happened with Trump in charge, do you really think this action would have occurred without some retaliation? Hopefully, you're not that naive. It makes me sad that you, as someone with a national voice, would be so ignorant of economics, and also of presidential decisions. I encourage you to do more reading and thinking as you watch the nation's GDP numbers improve, and minority employment rise.

Also See:

At the Threshold of Love

There's Future for self publishing in Nigeria

Criminal Code

It is a tragedy to remain in a world you cannot control and all the more tragic if you do not have control over your own life. People who have surrendered leadership of their lives to others are always at the mercy of those they serve.

Read about ‘Right to Try,’ which frees terminally ill people to sign a lawsuit waiver and take an experimental drug that might not be approved for many years. Democrats fought this sensible plan for years because it would cost them HUGE donations from the drug industry. In order to become at least somewhat intelligently informed, Mr. James, why don't you read about a Navy that Obama left to Trump that struggled with almost half its carrier aircraft unsafe to fly.

Read about Trump's giving the VA the right to fire any employee who neglects or abuses a patient.

Read about Trump's courage in challenging, actually demanding, NATO partners begin to pay their fair share rather than keep mooching off the U.S. You might also read the wisdom of two of the world’s brightest people, black intellectuals Dr. Thomas Sowell and Dr. Walter Williams. They have written numerous books. Sowell and Williams’ integrity, remarkable insights, and clarity of expression cause their common sense to soar off the page to readers, both Black AND white, I might add. Or, you could ignore vital Trump decisions, and remain an illiterate on both presidential achievement and economics. If you disdain knowledge, and keep calling Trump or any other U.S. president a bum (YOUR word) other people with normal intelligence might actually begin to wonder who the real bum is with a bigger mouth than Trump's!

Sincerely, Hal Lundgren

This article took some backbone to write. Every fact listed in this letter is verifiable but, alas, the people who should really read it will probably never do so, and will blindly go on thinking and believing whatever pulp news is fed to them via the liberal media, and will still vote for the so-called ‘free stuff’ until the money runs out. When reality hits them in the face, and in their pocketbook, they will wonder what the hell happened; and you can be sure they'll NEVER believe the truth and how wrong socialism is even with Venezuela a prime example at this very moment. We have fallen to a level I never believed possible in my lifetime. 
So sad!

Culled from Facebook