Music-maker: I created a protest song

The singer complains that my congressman, Cliff Bentz, prioritized loyalty to Trump over the interests of his district.

Artificial Intelligence did 99 percent of the work. 

It sounds to me like a mix of Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," 1965, and Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," 1975. Not as good, of course, but reminiscent of them.

Listen to some of it -- or all of it. It is posted on YouTube. It is four minutes long. The song gets angrier as it progresses.

Click here

The song is, to my ear, credible as music someone might listen to, if one was in the mood for a political protest song.

I wanted to use a photo of Bentz, taken from the public domain.  For some reason the program would not let me use his photo. So I took an drawing of a gray-haired man of about 73 -- Bentz's age. The song suffers from having readers look at this still image rather than a very muscled Bruce Springsteen in a shirt with sleeves cut off, moving with animation on a stage.

ChatGPT would not let me write lyrics about Cliff Bentz or Trump. It said that it avoided commentary of specific personalities. There was an easy workaround. I told ChatGPT to write lyrics about a totally fictional congressman Biff Hence, and a fictional Donald Bump. It happily did so, assuring me each time it made a revision that this was for fictional political figures. 

I instructed ChatGPT to write lyrics in three verses, plus a chorus and bridge. I suggested three subjects. I said the song should criticize Bentz for having voted for the Big Beautiful Bill, which will make health insurance unaffordable for a great many people in this district. (Oregon's 2nd District has one of the nation's top concentrations of people getting health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges.) A second criticism was that the Big Beautiful Bill preserved tax cuts for billionaires, which increases the budget deficit. A third criticism was that Bentz was part of the GOP caucus obedient to Trump's demand that the Epstein files be kept sealed.

ChatGPT presented drafts in fewer than five seconds. It offered to make revisions that would either amp up the "protest vibe" or adjust the tone to an easy-going folk style. It inquired if I wanted the text to include more or fewer words that rhymed with "Hence." When the revisions were done, I substituted "Cliff Bentz" for "Biff Hence," and submitted those lyrics to the music application. 

The music app instantly matched the music and phrasing to the lyrics and supplied the voice, guitars, and drums that we requested. What astonishing technology!

I am not claiming this is great art. But I wanted to see if AI could produce a listenable protest song at the instructions of a novice. It could.

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Spheres of influence

Trump ended the post-WWII, global, rules-based era.

It is now the regional-sphere-of-influence era.

I erred in a recent blog about Trump's philosophy. I wrote that it was a Thomas Hobbes world: dog-eat-dog, brutal, selfish, always at war, and everyone against everyone else.

Click

No. Not the world, and not everyone against everyone. Trump views the world as divided into natural geographic and cultural regions. The great power in each area has free rein to do as they must inside their sphere. The regions give each other respect and space.

This foreign policy approach explains Trump's attitude toward Russia and Ukraine. Russia is the alpha country in its region and somebody needs to keep order. If Russia doesn't do it, the Georgians will be fighting with the Azerbaijanis over water or insults or religion or 200-year-old feuds, and every other ethnic or geographical special interest will make trouble. And, more important to Russia, the Ukrainians will play footsie with the West and give everyone else ideas. Squash that. 

1950s, 1960's and 1970s

Trump has no respect for NATO. Western Europe has its neighborhood, and the U.S. isn't in it. Europe is ours for the purpose of insulting. It is ours to chide for being overrun with the wrong sort of immigrants. But it is not ours to support. Europe is a competitor, not a natural ally, in Trump's view. The boundary between the European West and Russia is a blurry one. Are the Baltic countries really West?  Are Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova? Are we really going risk nuclear war to protect Latvia? Could Americans find Latvia or Moldova on a map?

Trump is dissolving this map, putting a new line down the center of the Atlantic.

Europe, Japan, and China are trade rivals, not our dependents. If Europe is worthy of being a regional power, and if it really thinks that Ukraine is part of Western Europe, then it needs to pony up the troops and equipment to show Russia they act like one. Then Russia will adjust is goals to the reality on the ground. If Europe won't do it, then the game is settled: Ukraine is part of Russia. 

The Western Hemisphere is our neighborhood and problem. This makes sense of Trump's talk of absorbing Canada, buying Greenland, taking over control of the Panama Canal, and his meddling in governance of Venezuela, Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere.  

China has a sphere. The Uyghurs in western China are theirs to manage. North Korea is theirs. In ethnicity, culture, and language, so is Taiwan. China is the alpha. Do Americans want to die to preserve Taiwan's independence?

Africa is a "shithole" place as far as Trump is concerned, and that absolves us from a duty of care. We don't care about children starving there, or AIDS spreading, or civil war genocide taking place in South Sudan or anyplace else. Not our neighborhood. 

It is not illogical for Trump to think he is "the real peace president." As Trump sees it, wars happen when regional powers meddle in other spheres. Managing a sphere requires tough actions. Russia is doing it to Ukraine; we are doing it to Venezuela. Managing a region is hard, ugly work. Other regions should butt out.

In Trump's view, if the U.S. hadn't meddled and armed Ukraine, Ukraine would have been taken over by Russia in three days with minimal loss of life. Life would have gone on for Ukrainians. They would be at peace, perhaps not entirely happy with being part of Russia, but so what? Is California entirely happy being united with Alabama? Whether Ukraine is sovereign, a satellite, or a province of Russia is not Trump's concern. It is Russia's neighborhood.

This isn't the foreign policy order democracies imagined at the time the United Nations was formed but it is the one that a majority of Americans voted for in 2024. Like it or not, it is the one that has fallen into place. 

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"Let's not cut a deal."

     "President Trump dialed up pressure on Ukraine to swiftly accept a U.S.-designed peace plan, hardening his position toward the embattled country and its European backers. . . ."

    The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 10, 2025

Journalist Tam Moore disagrees.

He writes that it is in the common interest of Ukraine, Europe, and the world that Russian aggression not be rewarded.

It is the season when Christmas carolers sing about peace on Earth. Tam Moore writes that there isn’t peace. Russia is carrying out an invasion of its neighbor Ukraine. There is an aggressor. There is a victim.

Tam Moore in Vietnam

Moore is a lifelong journalist who worked in television in his early days and then in print, writing for the Capital Press. He was a Jackson County commissioner, elected as a Republican in 1974, back when Oregon Republicans were progressive on civil rights, when there were pro-choice Republicans elected locally and statewide, and when Republicans supported cleaning up the environment.

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Gonna lay down my sword and shield,
down by the riverside, …down by the riverside.
I ain't gonna study war no more. …ain't gonna study war no more.
     Down By the Riverside, African-American Spiritual ca. American Civil War

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
     Isaiah 2 3a-4

Advent. Time to think of Peace, Hope, Joy, and Love.

But I can’t get around it this year. Putin’s war in Ukraine is killing non-combatants almost every night. Munition-laden drones and a few precision missiles blast population centers and turn electrical power facilities into scrap metal.

The West encouraged this neo-imperialist Russian attack, first tolerating a 2014 Crimean election favoring a Russian-oriented oblast or provincial government. Russia claimed Crimea. Barack Obama and Angela Merkel fought a diplomatic battle to get European nations to join in financial sanctions. But no fight to eject the Russians.

Obama would later say they “had to pull in a lot of other Europeans kicking and screaming to impose the sanctions that we did and to prevent Putin from continuing through the Donbass and through the rest of Ukraine.”

As Serhii Plokhy observed in is 2023 book, The Russo-Ukrainian War, the 2022 Russian invasion produced a different reaction. There was a clear aggressor, and a victim – the Ukrainian people.

“Russia’s aggression against Ukraine produced a nineteenth-century war fought with twentieth-century tactics and twentyfirst-century weaponry,” Plokhy wrote.

Ukrainians blunted the invasion, and the country mounted fierce resistance. European neighbors and North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states sent material aid.

But here we are with a new U.S. administration perhaps more interested in looking good reality-TV style than in declaring that armed aggression be met with self-defense. And defenders be supported by countries of the democratic West.

Article 2 of the United Nations Charter is forgotten in the process. It says:

Member states must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

Armed force should not be used except in the common interest.

When I came home from Vietnam, the Army Reserve sent me to annual summer camps at the Armed Forces Staff College. We studied war. We also knew a lot about the human price paid for waging war.

So this Advent season, the U.S. pushes for trading the Donetsk Oblast for a ceasefire. And massive drone and missile strikes rain down on Ukraine’s cities. Let’s not cut a deal under these circumstances. Hold on to the swords. And use them in the common interest of halting the aggressor.

 

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Home prices are disconnected from incomes.

Home prices seem crazy.

Oregon isn't as crazy as California, but I see the same problem: home prices six and eight times the median household income. 

In Medford, Oregon, the median home sale is just above $400,000. The median household income is $73,000 -- a ratio of six to one. In Bend, a pleasant city in central Oregon, the median household income is about $90,000 and the median home price is $760,000, a ratio of over eight to one.

Below is a color-coded interactive map. In places colored in yellow, home prices would require 30 percent or less of household income to pay the mortgage. There is a slider where one can set different household incomes. For the display below, I set it to Medford's level: $73,000 in household income.

Click to open

In Medford and Oregon generally, high home prices are caused by structural forces: expensive cost of construction, expensive land eligible for residential construction, and buyers from out of state doing remote work or retiring here. Oregon prices look cheap to Californians.

When I was a county commissioner in the early 1980s, tasked with writing zoning rules under the state's land use planning mandate, most of our attention was on protecting farm and forest land from housing. Housing costs were not an issue then. If you had a job, you could afford a house. Our attention was on protecting farm and forest land from people, people who would complain about farm sprays and smells, and woodlands from people who would accidentally start forest fires and then want fire crews to prioritize protecting their ill-considered home.

Our zoning decisions prioritized "livability," which we saw primarily as protection. Stop sprawl. Stop pollution. Stop building. Stop expansion into new areas. 

Forty years later, ironies abound. Our county had the dreaded wildfire that we worked to avoid. It did not take place in the "woodland interface" of housing next to forestland. The Almeda Fire of September 2020 burned over 2,600 homes. It took place in the county's densest urban area, going house to house. 

The zoning map we created made it nearly impossible to build housing in areas that are on or near farms. Our thinking was that homes encouraged parcelization and pricing land as homesites rather than farmland. It was well-intentioned. We imagined large blocks of pear orchards that needed protection from complaining neighbors. More ironies: Most pear orchards have been pulled out. In recent decades farming trended toward labor-intensive wine and cannabis crops. Every situation is different but most successful farm operations need workers living on or close to the farm. During the height of the cannabis boom, the public voiced outrage that farm workers were sleeping in tents or the open air, using porta-potties. How unkind to them! There is a reason for that. We had made farm-worker housing, even including RVs as seasonal housing, illegal. 

Fixing housing affordability won't be easy. People who live in a neighborhood of single-family homes do not want infill of less-expensive, multi-family housing, Home values depend in significant part on neighborhood desirability, and people oppose change. They support the idea of affordable housing in general -- just not anywhere near their homes.

Land use environmental groups are an influential faction within the Democratic Party. They are preservation-oriented. They successfully stopped incursion of a high-tech factory onto agriculturally zoned land in the Portland area. Environmental groups consider it an achievement to stop housing in farm zones. They think farm workers should live in town and commute to farm jobs. They are protecting farm land, they think. But housing built around "urban centered growth" fails to match the need of farmers and farm workers for housing that is practical and affordable. 

What made sense to me in 1983, when we passed the Omnibus Land Use Ordinance that rezoned Jackson County, did not age well on the issue of housing. I got elected as an environmentalist and an advocate of "livability." I still consider myself such. But I have my eyes open to how things have played out over 40 years. One element of livability is that people can afford to live here without being "house poor" or without having huge financial help from parents or the sale of a home in California.

Addressing the housing affordability problem will require a reckoning with zoning rules, land availability, permitting delays, and the need for a broader range of housing types. It requires investment in workforce housing and incentives to build where people work. It will require people to broaden their notion of "livability" and the common good. It will require we change our minds on some things, and that last point will be the most difficult.

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Render unto Caesar

"It’s not so simple."

That is the response of one reader, a Christian, to my observations on Saturday about public-facing Christianity.

I wrote that public political Christianity today functions less as a coherent ethical and spiritual framework and more as a form of collective identity, akin to team allegiance. I wrote that public-facing Christians substituted Trump for Jesus, negating --  indeed reversing -- the tenets of their own religion.

John Coster manages engineering and technology teams for a national wireless carrier and is co-inventor of five artificial intelligence patents that make energy use in data centers more efficient. He completed graduate studies in theology at Regent University.

Guest Post by John Coster

It’s not so simple.

Peter’s attempt to summarize Christianity’s relationship with politics in America today is thoughtful, but it oversimplifies a complex reality. To explain why, let me provide some context and then share my perspective.

Our modern era in the West is not the first to blend politics and religion of course. Leaders of empires throughout recorded history have claimed divine appointments to legitimize their absolute authority – including many ancient pagan religions. Even the American Revolution carried religious undertones. While rooted in Enlightenment ideals, it invoked divine mandate—our “unalienable rights” were said to come from our “Creator.”  Sermons of the time framed the Revolution as more than taxation; pastors preached that resisting tyranny was a moral imperative, even a holy war, at least for some people.

Christianity and Christendom

It is important to note the difference between Christianity and Christendom. Christianity is a movement that sprung from the teachings of Jesus and his Apostles. It was and is spiritual, organic and life-transforming. It is focused on the Kingdom of Heaven, which includes and transcends our current place and time.Christendom on the other hand is the mix of Earthly structures, human hierarchies and rules and laws that evolve to harness, manage and in many cases, exploit this powerful spiritual movement.

First-century Christianity flourished wildly in spite of constant persecution until 312. That is when Emperor Constantine essentially created Christendom by not only legalizing Christianity but persecuting any who did not follow his version of it. Libraries of books have been written analyzing the consequences of Constantine’s conversion. Infamous historical events brought to you by Christendom, include the Crusades, Inquisitions, colonial oppression, “Holy Wars” and other atrocities that self-described Christians have committed under the banner of Christ. It’s important to note that Christendom is not the only political power play done in the name of religion. And not all Christendom is evil. The creation of public education, hospitals, advocacy for the marginalized and poverty relief agencies are a few examples of the good done by Christendom

Authentic Christianity and Christendom have coexisted uneasily for a few thousand years. The irony is that (for anyone inclined to read it) history has shown that efforts to form human-led Christian theocracies always end up diluting, distorting, and destroying the very thing they say that they hope to achieve. If legislating Christian faith is ineffectual for advancing it, then why do so many try?   I think there are at least four reasons.

·         Lack of Knowledge. People often misunderstand Christianity’s principles. Like those trapped in destructive mindsets, they are vulnerable to cultural pressures and misinformation.

·         Low Biblical and Theological Literacy. Most people, including many Christians – and even Pastors - misunderstand the content and purpose of the Bible, or how to interpret it. Many people think it is a sort of instruction manual about how to live our lives (or how others should live theirs), and they quote or misquote it to support their ideas. The Bible was written over 1500 years and is a rich compendium of historical narrative, poetry, proverbs (also called wisdom literature), four accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching, and letters by his immediate followers (Apostles) to specific audiences with instructions and admonishments. I recommend a good starting point for the curious is Michael Bird's excellent book “Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew About the Bible" –or just read Google’s summary of it. It is short, entertaining, and informative.

·         Opportunists like Trump and influencers like Tucker Carlson understand how to leverage deeply held, if misinformed religious beliefs to gain wealth and political power. They are delighted with the number of people in their camps who have little discernment or knowledge of what I have just described.

·         Lack of Humility and Spiritual Curiosity. True Christianity is invitational, not coercive. Jesus taught that obedience to His commands flows from love, and that genuine followers are characterized by their love for one another (John 17) and behaviors consistent with the fruit of the Spirit (i.e. love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control -- Galatians 5:22–23).

  As a Christ-follower, I am saddened by how many Evangelical churches embrace alliances with modern Christendom. Yet I do not despair. While I cannot fix these distortions, I trust that God will ultimately set all things right.

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Easy Sunday. Nobody knows more than me

I am not picking on Donald Trump.

I am letting him speak for himself. If he looks ridiculous -- and he does -- that is on him.

"And nobody does it better
Makes me feel sad for the rest
Nobody does it half as good as you
Baby, baby
Darlin', you're the best

Baby, you're the best
Baby, you're the best
Sweet baby, you're the best. . . "

     Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager, "Nobody Does it Better," from the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me," 1977, sung by Carly Simon.

Donald Trump: "Nobody in the history of this country knows as much about infrastructure as Donald Trump."

This compilation clip is one minute and 16 seconds: There are other longer compilation clips, but this is enough for an Easy Sunday post. Sit back today. Relax. Don't worry about anything. Donald Trump is president, and he’s got everything handled: Click YouTube

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Go! Fight! Win! Christ is Number One!

Public-facing Christianity in the U.S. isn't a collection of beliefs. 

It is a collection of believers. 

It is a fan base with a popular -- but divisive -- team mascot.

I met a new minister in town pastoring a once-large, now poorly attended, local church. We exchanged names and pleasantries. I asked her what kind of church it was.

"Are you a love-your-neighbor church," I asked? "Or is yours a we-are-tight-with-Jesus-we've-got-ours church?"

She understood my question, and nodded ruefully. She said, "We are a love-your-neighbor church. It is hard now, but there are still a few of us left."

Love-your-neighbor churches exist, but they are not the face of Christianity in public life in America.

Public political Christianity today functions less as a coherent ethical and spiritual framework and more as a form of collective identity, akin to team allegiance. I realize that many individual Christians practice their faith with earnest sincerity, but the public-facing expression of Christianity in the United States increasingly resembles sports fandom. It looks like cheering for the Oregon Ducks or the Boston Red Sox. Team Christian is Team Republican.

Pew Research reports that 72 percent of White Evangelicals support Trump.

Team identity, whether in sports or politics, depends on readily identifiable symbols. Ducks fans rally around the “O” and whatever colors Phil Knight has the Ducks wearing this week; Red Sox supporters gravitate to the iconic “B.”

The cross, Bible, and other Christian imagery serve a similar role. They are displays of group membership. 

The analogy extends further with narratives of rivalry, e.g. between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. The GOP isn't held together by the glue of consistent policy. The glue is dislike of Democrats and their brand symbols. Lock Hillary up! Drink liberal tears!

 

At the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot Christian flags and large wooden crosses appeared prominently alongside Trump banners, “Make America Great Again” banners, and “Jesus Is My Savior, Trump Is My President” signs. 

Team fans do not evaluate their team’s actions on moral grounds; they assess them in terms of advantage and victory. Christianity encompasses centuries of theological debate, multiple denominational histories, and a range of ethical perspectives. When Christianity functions as sociopolitical team identity, its ethical teachings on humility, forgiveness, or care for the vulnerable are reshaped to be consistent with the current Republican political agenda. The tail wags the dog. Christianity bend to politics.

   -- Feed the hungry? Yeah, right. Cut USAID and SNAP. 

   -- Welcome the stranger? Yeah, right. Deport them to Uganda.

   -- Love your neighbor? Yeah, right. They eat dogs; they are garbage.

The liberal church still exists. There are "a few of us left," as the minister said. They are nearly invisible in the public square. Christians wearing MAGA hats sell a more popular product than Jesus' did: What's yours is yours, foreigners are enemies, and America first. Christian practice is hard. Generosity and empathy to strangers and rivals go against the grain of human nature. 

The modern GOP and the modern Evangelical Church are in a sweet spot of easy politics and ethics, each complementing the other. They seem content in this marriage. Public evangelical Christianity is Trumpism: selfish, cruel, xenophobic, and violent. They have made an idol of Trump. It is the best of both worlds from a marketing perspective: un-Christian human nature combined with all the branding and tradition of Christianity. 

This looks like a good partnership -- Trump up front, the watermark imprimitor of Jesus behind him -- but it is not. Christianity is getting the worse part of the deal. 

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his immortal soul?  Mark 8:36

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