The Non-Easter Proclamations, the President, and the Election

On Friday the White House issued two proclamations about Sunday, March 31, 2024, the day I and many fellow Christians worldwide observed as Easter. Each was accompanied by a lengthy official statement. One proclamation called Sunday César Chávez Day and was mostly ignored. The other set off a firestorm. It labeled the holiest of Christian holy days, Easter, a Transgender Day of Visibility.

Finally, on Easter itself, the White House issued a very brief statement by the President and First Lady with their “warmest wishes to Christians around the world celebrating Easter Sunday.”

Some on the right speculated that no one at the White House was even aware of Easter until a chorus of angry voices pointed it out. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, given the White House publicized and hosted its annual Easter Egg Roll — and specifically forbade the use of religious imagery in decorating Easter eggs for the event.

Some on the left rushed to assure us (a) that the timing of this Transgender Day of Visibility was a coincidence, because it doesn’t move and Easter does, from year to year, and (b) that you have to be part of “the Trump cult” to be bothered by it anyway.

It’s reasonable for the right to be suspicious. When the Left’s project is to demolish a nation’s culture, so they can replace it with a different culture in which they rule with awful power over everyone else, they understandably attack their target’s most sacred institutions, including its holy days.

The Afghanistan Rescue and the American Spirit

Displayed on a shelf in my home office is a wool cap from Afghanistan, a pakul or kapul, depending on which regional language you choose. It’s flat on top, and the fabric is thick and coarse. It can be worn with the sides rolled up for warm weather or rolled down several inches for cold weather, of which Afghanistan has plenty. It was never intended to fit me, and it doesn’t. I keep it to honor a friend of mine and a friend of his.

It was a gift to me from a retired US Army Special Forces officer who deployed with a Utah National Guard unit to Afghanistan in the first half-decade of our 20-year presence there. It was a gift to him from the tribal leader – more governor than warlord – of a certain region in Afghanistan.