Former President Donald Trump shared his thoughts on the recent attack against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul; it’s “a terrible thing,” says the former President.

“With Paul Pelosi, that’s a terrible thing, and with all of them, that’s a terrible thing,” Trump said in an interview with the conservative Spanish-language network Americano Media.

“Look at what happened to San Francisco generally. Look at what’s happening in Chicago. It was far worse than Afghanistan,” he said.

Trump also lit up liberal lawmakers for skyrocketing crime rates.

“These people are crazy,” the ex-president said, referring to Illinois lawmakers who passed a controversial law last year abolishing cash bail, which goes into effect next year. “They’re gonna release stone-cold killers from jails, nobody knows why. I mean, they need room, or something.”

More over at The New York Post:

Trump calls Paul Pelosi attack 'terrible,' rails against rising crime https://t.co/oPGBpbKCGh pic.twitter.com/QC9S8VkQUV

— New York Post (@nypost) October 31, 2022

October 31, 2022 at 12:33PM - The First
‘A TERRIBLE THING’: Trump Comments on Paul Pelosi Attack, Lights Up Libs for Crime
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis showed up in Hauppauge, NY to support New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin; he says Zeldin will bring law and order to the Empire State.

“Florida is a law-and-order state. I am a law-and-order governor. If Lee Zeldin gets into office, New York will become a law-and-order state, and he will be a law-and-order governor,” DeSantis told the more than 1,000 Zeldin supporters at a “Get Out the Vote” rally on Long Island.

“You cut police budgets, you do things like eliminate cash bail, and you have rogue prosecutors who won’t even enforce laws that they disagree with,” he added. “Of course, you’re gonna have streets that are less safe. Of course, you’re gonna have people that aren’t able to do the basics without fearing for their safety.”

From The Epoch Times:

Crime in New York City jumped by 15.2 percent, with 11,057 crimes in September compared to 9,596 in the same month last year, according to New York Police Department data. Burglary, auto theft, and grand larceny were the categories of crime that saw the biggest increases, rising by 22.7 percent, 21.5 percent, and 21.3 percent, respectively, compared to September 2021.

Crime is one of the biggest concerns for New York voters. According to a recent poll by WNYT-TV/SurveyUSA, 35 percent of the respondents said inflation was the most important issue to them, followed by crime at 18 percent and abortion at 15 percent.

“If Lee Zeldin gets into office, New York will become a law-and-order state,” said DeSantis. @GovRonDeSantis told a crowd that GOP gubernatorial candidate @LeeZeldin can turn crime-ridden #NewYork into a “law-and-order” state just like #Florida. https://t.co/toYWHytw5d

— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) October 31, 2022

October 31, 2022 at 10:57AM - The First
BIG DeSANTIS ENERGY: Ron Fires Up New York Crowd, Says Zeldin Will Bring Law and Order to the Big Apple
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

A politically-motivated attacker tracks down the address of a hated political figure. He arms himself and makes the trip, fully intending to administer what he sees as justice on the person that he blames for the loss of his freedoms and rights.

You may think that the preceding paragraph is a reference to Friday’s attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, but it could just as easily be about the man who attempted to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh back in July. Nicholas John Roske didn’t make it as far as David DePape, who broke into the Pelosi residence and beat Paul Pelosi with a hammer, but either of the incidents could have ended in tragedy.

We are on borrowed time. We have been lucky so far, but sooner or later one of these violent radicals is going to pull off his plot. History teaches us that it is often a lone nut with little skill or planning who can off an assassination that dramatically alters the course of events.

And the US is awash in nuts these days. Our bubbles of confirmation bias prevent many of us from even hearing differing viewpoints. Quite a few of these bubbles are filled with conspiracy theories that go unchallenged in the recipient’s ears.

That seems to be the case with David DePape. The AP reports that DePape, 42, was a “hemp jewelry maker” who lived with longtime girlfriend Gypsy Taub, a nudist activist and host of public access conspiracy show. The couple had two children.

Per the article, DePape had posted online rants on a variety of topics including QAnon, claims that gun rights were being taken away, Mike Lindell’s election conspiracy rants, and COVID vaccine conspiracy theories.

“You no longer have rights. Your basic human rights hinder Big Brothers [sic] ability to enslave and control you in a complete and totalizing way,” DePape apparently wrote in a blog post in August.

Up until a few years ago, it was common for people on the right to point the finger toward the left when conversations turned to political violence. That isn’t entirely unfair because the left does have a history of violence that goes back at least to the 1960s.

But that’s only half the story. Right-wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan dabbled in terrorism as well, and in recent years, we have seen more and more violence from the right. Over the past few years, there have been a number of high-profile attacks that involve right-wing ideologies or conspiracy theories. These include:

• An August 2022 attack on the FBI’s office in Cincinnati
• A QAnon adherent who live-streamed her trip to New York to kill Joe Biden
• The racially-motivated mass shooting in Buffalo
• The plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan
• Boogaloo Bois murders of police and security personnel in California in 2020
• The January 6 attack on Congress and the vice president
• Planned attacks by the Boogaloo Bois on Biden’s Inauguration Day
• The 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting by a white nationalist
• The Highland Park mass shooting last July by an anti-semitic Trump supporter
• The 2019 El Paso mass shooting by an anti-immigrant radical

It shouldn’t be surprising that we are seeing increased violence from the right. In fact, given the massive amounts of dire claims about America’s future that have emanated from the right over the past few years, it is surprising that there hasn’t been more. Maybe most Republicans don’t take these claims seriously or maybe they just don’t want to take action themselves, but we shouldn’t be surprised when some people hear the conspiracy claims and pick up a gun… or a hammer.

And the left isn’t innocent either. As I mentioned before, there was a planned attack on Justice Kavanaugh’s home as well as a 2019 attack on an ICE detention center in Tacoma. We can also include the BLM rioting and anarchist violence in Portland.

While both sides can be violent, the difference seems to be that much left-wing violence is an emotional outpouring of anger and frustration (with a bit of looting mixed in) while right-wing violence seems more likely to be targeted against specific people for political reasons.

Just as disturbing as the acts themselves is the lack of condemnation from within the parties for the actions of their outliers. It’s easy and costs nothing to criticize a radical from the other party, but it takes a bit more intestinal fortitude to condemn someone within your own party. That weak-spined malady affects both sides as well.

I don’t recall many Democrats calling out Roske but the silence from Republicans about DePape has been deafening. Many members of the Utah congressional delegation expressed sympathy and Andrew McCarthy unreservedly condemned the attack, but they are among the few.

In fact, silence would be preferable from some on the right. I’m not going to link them here, but I’m seeing quite a few posts that imply that Paul Pelosi and DePape were involved in some sort of homosexual lover’s spat. This is based on reports that DePape was in his underwear and that Pelosi referred to him as “a friend” on the 911 call.

In fact, DePape was not in his underwear. That claim was based on a report by one lone outlet, KTVU. The station has since retracted the report, but, like the early erroneous reports from Sandy Hook, it will live on among the conspiracy set as “proof” of a coverup.

The LA Times reported that Pelosi told the 911 operator that he “doesn’t know who the male is” and that the attacker asked “where’s Nancy?” but the scandal-mongers ignore these inconvenient facts. The use of the word “friend” was apparently a ruse to make DePape feel more at ease and to try to defuse the situation.

Gizmodo has put together a (so far) definitive list of conspiracy theories about the incident and the evidence debunking them. The piece also points out that there was no third person in the house as some pundits claim. This claim is based on a misinterpretation of early reporting.

Of course, there is no evidence that the lover’s spat theory is true, but that doesn’t stop those who are so invested in their politics that they have to explain away anything that reflects poorly on their side. These people are the intellectual heirs to the now-broke Alex Jones for whom everything was a false flag operation.

Political violence has already cost lives here in recent history, but we have avoided more widespread violence, often through the incompetence of the perpetrators or good fortune in preventing more deaths. But if we keep heading down this road, there is going to be a tragedy in which prominent political figures are murdered. With the current high tensions, such an attack may trigger more widespread violence or set off the civil war that so many seem to want.

Here is a bitter pill for online political trolls to swallow: Other people doing the wrong thing does not excuse you from doing the right thing. That’s especially true if you claim to be a Christian. Regardless of what you think about how the other party responds to political violence, you are supposed to respond with sympathy and compassion and condemn sinful acts.

I still believe that a majority of us don’t really like either side and really don’t want to see Americans fighting Americans in the streets. I still hope that cooler heads will prevail, but we need to switch off the people who stoke the fires of radicalism and fire the politicians who excuse their party’s radicals and look the other way as they incite more violence.

Don’t buy into the hate, folks. Also, don’t buy into the conspiracy theories. But I repeat myself.

---

I’m going to go further and condemn the attack on a Marco Rubio canvasser in Hialeah, Florida. Last week, Christopher Monzon was passing out flyers and wearing a Rubio shirt when he was brutally attacked by two men.

Police have arrested two men in the case, but there are unanswered questions. Police have arrested two men in the attack but have not released details about a possible motive except to say that there was no indication that the attack was politically motivated. The Miami Herald reports that the initial police report did not mention politics and that Monzon did not make that allegation until the next day.

Much has been made about Monzon’s radical past as well. I won’t go into detail about that here because it has no bearing on the incident unless it can be shown that Monzon said or did things to incite the attack. So far, that is not the case.

At any rate, I can unreservedly condemn this attack because you shouldn’t have to wait to see what someone’s political ideology is before you condemn a violent act. That is simply what decent people should do.

The First TV contributor network is a place for vibrant thought and ideas. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The First or The First TV. We want to foster dialogue, create conversation, and debate ideas. See something you like or don’t like? Reach out to the author or to us at [email protected]. 

Follow David Thornton on Twitter (@captainkudzu) and Facebook

October 31, 2022 at 10:56AM - David Thornton
Turn Down the Heat On Political Rhetoric | David Thornton
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Georgian Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) faced off against Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams in their second gubernatorial debate on Sunday night where Abrams did her best to distance herself from defunding the police; it was quickly fact-checked on Twitter.

RNC Research posted a clip with the following message:

Stacey Abrams tonight: “I’ve never said that I believe in defunding the police.”

Stacey Abrams in 2020: “We have to reallocate resources, so yes” I support defunding the police.

Watch the clip below:

Stacey Abrams tonight: “I've never said that I believe in defunding the police."

Stacey Abrams in 2020: "We have to reallocate resources, so yes" I support defunding the police. pic.twitter.com/gcWtUk8Ogj

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 31, 2022

Despite record-breaking early voter turnout, Abrams is also still pushing her voter suppression myth.

“Let’s be clear, that the voter suppression that I’m talking about is being felt by Georgians every single day,” she said.

From Fox 5 Atlanta:

After two weeks, Secretary of State Office Chief Operating Officer says over 1.6 million Georgians have voted – more than 1.5 million in-person and over 155,000 via absentee ballot.

As of Friday, the number of early voters was 36% higher than the same time during 2018’s midterm election. 

“One in five active voters have already gotten their vote in, and we will hit the 2-million-mark next week,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a statement. “The strength of our voter registration system and our county election directors are on full display.”

October 31, 2022 at 09:33AM - The First
THE OL’ DEFUND FLIP FLOP: Abrams Says She Never Supported Defunding Police —That’s a Lie
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Musk is preparing to layoff 25% of Twitter’s workforce.

According to a Newsmax report, new Twitter owner Elon Musk will layoff 25% of Twitter’s workforce in what is suspected to be just the first round of aggressive downsizing.

From Newsmax:

Twitter, which was acquired last week by billionaire Elon Musk, plans to let go of a quarter of its workforce as part of what is expected to be a first round of layoffs, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro, a long-time Musk legal representative, led the conversations about the job cuts, according to the report.

Twitter had over 7,000 employees at the end of 2021, according to a regulatory filing and a quarter of the headcount amounts to nearly 2,000 employees.

Members of Elon Musk’s inner circle huddled with Twitter’s remaining senior executives throughout the weekend, conducting detailed discussions regarding the site’s approach to content moderation, as well as plans to lay off 25 percent of the workforce. https://t.co/g8T24AjQMe

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 31, 2022

October 31, 2022 at 09:20AM - The First
HERE COME THE CUTS: Elon Set to Layoff 25% of Twitter Staff in First Round of Firings
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake fired off a savage “Thank You” note to soon-to-be-gone Rep. Liz Cheney after the Wyoming congresswoman ran a television ad targeting Lake.

“Thank you for your generous in-kind contribution to my campaign,” the letter, dated Friday, began. “Your recent television ad urging Arizonans not to vote for me is doing just the opposite. Our campaign donations are skyrocketing and our website nearly crashed from traffic as people rushed to learn more about my plan to put Arizona first and join our historic political movement.”

Lake also calls Cheney a “warmonger” and tells her to enjoy her forced retirement.

Read the full letter below:

Thank you, @Liz_Cheney. pic.twitter.com/rW5Qevwwf5

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) October 29, 2022

From The Daily Wire:

Lake is running against current Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, crossed party lines to support. Polls have Lake leading the race by anywhere from 3.5 points too 11.

Lake’s letter, addressed to “Liz Cheney, Defeated Member of Congress,” also labels Cheney a “warmonger” and advises her that the ad exceeds the maximum allowable individual contribution under election law.

More over at The Daily Wire:

"… our website nearly crashed from traffic as people rushed to learn more about my plan to put Arizona first and join our historic political movement.”https://t.co/sw7POCvETx

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 31, 2022

October 31, 2022 at 08:45AM - The First
SAVAGE LAKE: Read Kari Lake’s ‘Thank You’ Letter to Liz Cheney
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

With just over a week until the midterm elections, polls are coming in hot —and this one is bad news for President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.

According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, nearly 8 in 10 Americans think the country is “out of control.”

From CBS News:

Republicans today remain in good position to win a majority of seats in the House. However, voters’ current intentions suggest anything from a sizable GOP majority to a bare Democratic one possible. Our latest model indicates a range of possibilities, which you can explore using the interactive tool below.

In our baseline model, Republicans lead in 228 seats. It represents a slight shift their way from a few weeks ago, with the party recapturing some of the leads that slipped from them in the summer.

That would constitute a 15-seat gain — lower than average for a party challenging a first-term president in recent history. At that level, the majority line is just on the lower edge of the margin of error for our model. 

More over at CBS News:

NEW @CBSNewsPoll: Republicans head into final week with lead in seats, as 8 in 10 likely voters describe things in the country today as "out of control," as opposed to "under control." https://t.co/PPvW0Mc2MP

— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) October 30, 2022

October 31, 2022 at 07:48AM - The First
‘OUT OF CONTROL’: New Poll Shows 8 in 10 Americans Think the Country is Off the Rails
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

You like the movie “Aliens”? I do. Besides masterful performances from heroine Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the late Bill Paxton (Hudson), Michael Biehn (Hicks), Lance Henriksen (Bishop, the “synthetic life form”), Paul Reiser (Burke)—and the rest of the cast—and being one of the few examples of a movie sequel that’s better than its original (“The Empire Strikes Back” is arguably in this small and hallowed club), the movie touches a deep place in the human psyche.

There’s this exchange between little Newt and Ripley.

“My mommy always said there were no monsters. No real ones. But there are.”

“Yes, there are, aren’t there.”

“Why do they tell little kids that?”

We’ve all been told by mom or dad—or some adult—that there are no real monsters. That the closet is just a closet. That the dark basement down the stairs with creaky sounds and bangs is just the furnace. And when we grow up, occasionally—at least with me—we get goose bumps going down a dark staircase, or when the lights go out during a storm.

And when we grow up and read the news, we know there are monsters. Not the kind with double, drool-dripping jaws, or dreadlocks and mandibles. (OK—a small detour, because whoever greenlit the truly brain-dead idea of a movie with the Alien fighting the Predator deserves to be forced to watch the movie in a loop, A Clockwork Orange-style, for at least five years as penance for the movie equivalent of splashing tomato soup on a Van Gough.) The monsters we grow up to see are the ones who snatch five-year-old kids from the street, or who beat their own small daughter to death with their fists.

Grown-ups tell little kids there are no monsters because we make an implicit promise to protect them from the monsters.

Sometimes, the monsters get the best of us, despite our vigilance. Even the most ardent helicopter parent can’t be everywhere with their kids. So we send them off to school, like the parents of kids in Newtown, or Uvalde, or Columbine, who sent their kids off, some of them never to see them alive again. Saying there are no monsters is a dangerous promise to make, but the other options are worse.

Telling little kids to be scared of monsters is kind of monstrous. We tell them to be cautious: “stranger danger.” But we leave out the details of what true monsters do. It’s better that the kids trust mom, dad, and the adults charged with their protection than they learn the ugly, true, sickening, details of what monsters do. The reason James Cameron never shows the Alien actually killing someone on-screen is because our minds are far more effective at inventing that horror than the camera could ever do.

Yet, there’s a more pernicious lie than telling kids there are no monsters, when we know there are. It’s telling kids there are monsters but the monsters aren’t monstrous. Some people believe there are no real monsters, that people who do terrible things are the product of society, or a bad upbringing, or some kind of racial, economic, or religious inequity. They believe that monstrous deeds are not the result of evil, but the result of poor social engineering. Or they believe in nihilism or will to power like Nietzsche proffered.

As a Christian, I believe it’s far worse to believe that the devil isn’t real than that Jesus never lived. If there’s no opposer of humanity, then there’s really no need for a savior, since we are the captains of our own souls and destiny. The devil’s best disguise is that of a friendly monster with horns and a pointy tail. We can connect with that movie monster and dismiss it as the product of overactive imagination, or fears of the dark stairs. We can wish it away like we do when we watch a movie that gives us nightmares. We can go back to the comfort of mom and dad telling us “there are no monsters” and wish the devil away. Even the most hardened atheist, or the most doubtful agnostic realizes that the best way to hide a monster is to deny it exists.

Dean Coril got away with torturing and brutally murdering over two dozen teenage boys because Houston police in the 1970s refused to believe the missing boy cases were linked. It was only because one of his teen helpers killed him and confessed, that compelled the authorities to admit the enormity of this monstrous evil. Some parents in the neighborhood told their kids to avoid the “candyman” because he was creepy, and to avoid the two boys who hung out around him because they were degenerates. Parents of missing kids implored the police to do more than write off their missing boys as runaways. But police wouldn’t believe there was a monster.

When we refuse to believe that there are monsters—that politics, or society, or brainwashing is the source of all evil in the world—then we are preaching a kind of religion that puts mankind on the throne of God.

This is one of the reasons I am not a fan of Halloween. Oh, I’m not a curmudgeon who turns off my porch light and refuses to give candy to kids. (Not going to lie, I was one of those at one time.) I put on my costume and take my kids on the local candy shakedown until their bags are overfull with a dentist’s nightmare of sugary treats. When kids come to our door, they get a handful of the same. Last year, we ran a raffle where kids drew from a basket and winners got giant (I mean huge) chocolate bars.

Besides getting sacks full of diabetes-inducing fat pills, I simply see no useful reason why there’s a holiday called Halloween, or why anyone should celebrate it. It’s a holiday celebrating making monsters into movie creatures, to deny the reality of monsters. It’s a holiday with a religious origin, for those who are ignorant.

It’s a day set aside to celebrate a lack of knowledge, by those who don’t care enough to gain it. Halloween is a feast of stupid self-indulgence. There’s nothing positive I can say about this day, no matter how much fun it may be to dress up, join a bunch of other people, walk door to door demanding candy, then go home and gorge yourself on it while watching horror movies.

In fact, I will give you seven reasons why Halloween is dumb, and celebrated by the ignorant. If you want to keep celebrating, maybe you shouldn’t read the rest of this, lest you become infected by knowledge and lose your desire to behave like a boorish ignoramus on October 31st. Halloween violates our implicit promise to defend those who we tell there are no monsters.

1.  Halloween is a religious holiday.

If you didn’t know that, it’s because your only source of information must be ESPN and beer commercials. Most people have some vague idea of where holidays like Christmas and Easter originate; they are religious holidays. But you won’t find Halloween in the Bible. Anywhere. Trust me. Or better yet, go read the Bible yourself and let me know when you find Halloween there.

Isn’t Halloween short for All Hallows Eve? Yes, it is. And isn’t All Hallows Eve the day before All Saints Day (All Hallows Day), which is November 1st? Yes, it is. Isn’t there another day called All Souls Day? Yes, there is, and if you knew that, you’re probably Roman Catholic. Here’s the progression: All Saints Day is a Catholic Feast day commemorating the saints who have entered Heaven. It’s followed by All Souls Day, which commends us to pray for souls who are being purified in purgatory or have entered Heaven to commune with us who are still living on the Earth.

In short, many Catholics believe in the un-Biblical teaching that we can pray for the dead and the dead will pray for us.

Somewhere between the years 609 A.D. and 741 A.D., various Popes ordained a celebration of the Saints who have entered Heaven, and by 846, Pope Gregory IV declared November 1st to be All Saints Day. In this way, Halloween is definitely a religious holiday, celebrating the souls of the dead.

Way back into what historians call “antiquity” (the time before recorded history), the Celtics and druids celebrated a Pagan holiday called Samhain (SOW-in), as the end of summer, halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. They believed that the shortening of the days, and the advent of cold weather (it’s northern Europe after all, nasty climate and all) signified the dying of the world each year, and that evil spirits would walk the earth looking to possess or consume the living. They would dance around bonfires and dress up in various costumes to “entertain the spirits,” to avoid being possessed.

Here we have the perfect confluence of beliefs: the Catholic belief in the communion of the saints, and the Pagan belief in warding off evil spirits. It only made sense for the Pope to declare November 1st as All Saints Day, since the church was trying to evangelize the heathens in northern Europe. It was a whole lot easier to turn a pagan holiday into a Christian one than to give those people knowledge of the Bible.  Besides, back in those days, Bibles were rare and only possessed by rich clergymen and priests. Ignorance was the norm, and Christianity was too hard to explain to such ignorant savages, went their logic. Better to just give them another holiday.

Halloween is celebrated by some small groups today as a religious holiday. Modern druids (the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids) celebrate Samhain much as the ancients did. One other group celebrates Halloween: the Church of Satan (not going to link to it). They, in particular, love Halloween, because it celebrates dead things, dark things, and scary things.

Satanists embrace what this holiday has become, and do not feel the need to be tied to ancient practices. This night, we smile at the amateur explorers of their own inner darkness, for we know that they enjoy their brief dip into the pool of the “shadow world.” We encourage their tenebrous fantasies, the candied indulgence, and the wide-ranging evocation of our aesthetics (while tolerating some of the chintzy versions), even if it is but once a year. For the rest of the time, when those not of our meta-tribe shake their heads in wonder at us, we can point out that they may find some understanding by examining their own All Hallows Eve doings, but we generally find it simpler to just say: “Think of the Addams Family and you’ll begin to see what we’re about.”

I don’t want to celebrate anything dead, dying, dark or scary. I don’t want my children celebrating those things. I don’t care what you think about God and Jesus Christ, or miracles, angels, or Heaven. We are here on this Earth full of living things, powered by a warm sun which provides 100% of the light on this planet, and we communicate and exist here among LIVING things. We bury dead things, because they rot and deliquesce.

Satanists stand in opposition to God and everything God stands for. They hold selfishness as the highest virtue. Anything Satanists celebrate is something I automatically, by definition, stand against. If you are a Christian, there’s only one reason you would celebrate Halloween, and that’s the bliss of ignorance. Gain a little knowledge and stand for light and life, not darkness and death (even if it’s candy coated).

2.  Halloween is not a family holiday.

A 1992 study in consumer behavior at Rutgers University noted that Halloween in several respects appears to represent “oppositional consumption patterns” as compared to Christmas (and Thanksgiving as well). For example, there is no communal family meal, rather children independently go from house to house in search of candy. In contrast to the openness and informality of interactions during Christmas and Thanksgiving, Halloween is characterized by secretiveness and the formal “masking” of personal identity.

You don’t see movies made about busy executives struggling to get home for Halloween. You don’t see college students loading their cars to make the drive to grandma’s house for the traditional Halloween feast. They’re more likely buying beerand ordering pizza. Halloween is a day when we seek out the worst influences in our lives and encourage mayhem. When we get older, we stock up on candy, turn on the porch light, and await the parade of children while we hand out treats and pretend to be scared by little ghouls.

Halloween’s traditions involve going to the store and buying decorations, bats, vampires, and costumes. There may be an old-fashioned bobbing for apples or pumpkin-carving. But our memories typically involve some form of mischief, not hugs and grandma’s pumpkin pies. We don’t even watch football on Halloween.

3. Halloween is about greed.

On Christmas, we give our kids gifts, and encourage them to give gifts—or at least Christmas cards. On Easter, we remind our kids of the gifts that God gave, or talk about spring being a time of renewal. Only on Halloween do we encourage kids to take as much as they can, and give nothing back. (It’s the Pirate Code, arghhhh!)

Getting, taking, wanting are the three themes of Halloween, and none of these are values I want to teach my children. Kids compare their hauls at the end of the night to see who got the most candy, and then wait until the other kids are distracted to steal their stash (just the Reese’s cups please).

Sure, yeah, they’re kids. They fight over anything and everything. They’re greedy little beings, and if it wasn’t for them being cute, we’d all consider giving them away. I get it, I have two boys. But there’s no value to actively promoting bad habits and behavior. There’s no way to turn “trick or treat!” into a polite request. I wouldn’t have my kids dress up as zombies on July 4th and go door to door saying “may I please have some candy, if you don’t mind, or I’ll toilet-paper your yard.” The implied threat of a “trick” is simply brutish.

Getting without earning, and taking without giving are values more in line with Satanists than Christians. 

Retailers love Halloween. It’s the run-up to Christmas shopping these days. Used to be, you wouldn’t see any Christmas decorations until Thanksgiving. Those days are long gone: now Halloween is the starting line for the big Christmas shopping rush.  Retailers would start at Labor Day if they could get away with it but back-to-school interferes in the northern states.

Stores love it when you wait till the last minute to get your small fries their costumes. One retailer admitted,

Back when I was in the business, I believe we brought in 16% of our annual sales in the three week run-up to Halloween. And as the holiday got closer, rather than feeling a need to drop prices, you’d start to get the sense that you could raise the prices on costumes rather than lower them (we didn’t). In fact, you’ve never quite seen desperation like that of the thirty year old on a Saturday, who has a costume party to go to that very night. It seemed like they’d pay anything for a reasonably acceptable costume. And so we’d cheer for procrastination.

It’s bad enough that Christmas, Easter, and every other holiday on the calendar has become a reason for a sale or commercialization, TV specials, gift-giving, and spending money. Halloween has little other purpose than retailers to find ways for you to hand over your cash to buy a new costume every year. God forbid that little Johnny wears the same thing twice, or you make your own homemade costume.

Even taken with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of charm, Halloween has become too commercialized.

4.  Halloween is about displaying children as objects.

The word “objectifying” is popular these days. It means anything from gender stereotyping to sexual exploitation. If holidays are a lens magnifying our society, then Halloween’s microscope reveals a pretty filthy concoction. Kids are influenced by television, movies, and their parents. I don’t need to tell you the stuff that goes on today on TikTok, or YouTube, or at youth-oriented concerts.

Especially with young girls, Halloween costumes have become little X-rated versions of their older strippers-masquerading-as-singers. 

These are girls who have bought into the belief that their social power comes from their sex appeal. They have bought into the belief that to make themselves into the object of male desire is a fun and exciting thing. But what they, and many women and girls, don’t know is that when this idea becomes a reality, it is far from empowering.

Letting kids wear whatever they want is a really, really bad idea. Dressing up as a little puppy or a cowboy is cute, but dressing up as a stripper is not. Some parents go too far the other way: they dress up their kids like some kind of decoration. These parents dressed their daughter as a selfie (warning: language NSFW). What kind of awful experience and lifelong complexes will that give the poor child?

One of our kids is very clothes-aware. It was hard for him to even don a pirate outfit for two hours. I can’t imagine forcing our kids to dress up for Halloween, have other kids (and parents) compare their costumes with ours, and generally be judged as cool or nerd based on the results. It has to be the most shallow, prejudice-inducing, stereotype-reinforcing, scary experience imaginable. It’s amazing I made it through life without a psychotic break from my own childhood.

5.  Halloween is about secrecy and fear.

Masks obscure. Costumes disguise. It’s okay for kids to pretend they are someone else, when they play. It’s even fun to dress up. But take a night when everyone is in disguise, and it’s all about secrecy. And fear. In the age of COVID, we’re all used to masked people, which in itself has indelibly harmed the development of countless toddlers and young children who never saw the faces of their teachers or classmates. I’m against masking when it means nobody can see a smile.

Trick-or-treat is traditionally at night. Lately, for safety’s sake, it’s during daylight hours. That’s a good thing, since it gives cars better visibility when kids are walking the streets in dark outfits. The reason it’s at night is because the dark is scary. Scary animals like bats and spiders are symbols of Halloween. Scary music, images, movies, all tied in to Halloween. The purpose of Halloween is to scare people; for kids to scare adults, for adults to scare kids.

Elaborate haunted houses have become a $6 billion industry. No longer a small, neighborhood affair, attractions rivaling theme-park production values are all over the country. Scaring is big business. You can’t be scared if you know what’s about to happen. You make something really scary by not telling people what’s behind that dark door. You put them in the dark, disorient them, send hot moist air down their necks, pop a few pyrotechnics and flash-bangs, and jump out of the dark in a really creepy costume. It’s adrenaline city after that.

There’s something sinister about being scared. It’s a rush for sure, but there’s other ways to get a rush. Roller coasters, water slides, skydiving, and zip lining all come to mind. But standing in the dark waiting to be scared into heart failure (and spending $40 to do it) is a thrill I can do without. If you’re a Christian, remember that fear is the opposite of faith. I can be scared and do something that builds my faith, or I can be scared for the sake of being scared.

There’s no value to experiencing fear for fear’s sake. It doesn’t overcome the fear by doing it (nobody goes through the same haunted house 20 times in a row, but they do ride Space Mountain 20 times in a row—I’ve done it). If you’re too ignorant to get your thrill some other way than a dark room with creepy people in costumes holding bloody knives, keep on celebrating Halloween like it was Thanksgiving or Christmas.

6.  Halloween rewards bad behavior.

Do you know how trick-or-treat started? It was self defense. Back at the turn of the 20th century, Halloween was celebrated by Irish immigrants (remember, Roman Catholics), who went around in drunken mobs committing acts of vandalism and general mayhem. To combat this, merchants got together and started having festivals around the holiday. They targeted children, encouraging them toward less destructive behavior by handing out candy.

Halloween is a dumbed-down version of beast-night. Drunk teenagers and college students do plenty of damage. The insurance industry labels Halloween as the worst night of the year for vandalism. From simple pranks like toilet-papering your house, to serious crime like spray painting your car, Halloween is a time when crime is tolerated, and bad behavior is encouraged. Trick-or-treat is the training ground for more serious mischief as kids get older.

7.  Halloween is incompatible with the Bible.

Only the Biblically illiterate would celebrate Halloween. If you don’t believe in God or the Bible, I have no beef with you. Now you know you’re celebrating a religious festival based on a mixture of pagan, Catholic, and Satanist beliefs, dedicated to communing with the dead, focused on greed, self-gratification, objectifying children, secrecy, fear, and mayhem. If you’re okay with that, then keep on rockin’ Halloween—it’s your nickel.

If you call yourself a Christian, then I’ll safely assume you’re not interested in following pagan or Satanist beliefs. You are, in fact, following a Catholic feast day. I’ll quote from Catholic Online:

Catholics celebrate All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual communion between those in the state of grace who have died and are either being purified in purgatory or are in heaven (the ‘church penitent’ and the ‘church triumphant’, respectively), and the ‘church militant’ who are the living.

Purgatory is malarchy. There’s no such place. You can’t pray the dead into Heaven any more than you can pray the dead sinner out of Hell. There are only two destinations for the departed soul in the Bible: Heaven and Hell. The idea of being forgiven through Christ in this life yet not being pure enough to enter Heaven in death is ridiculously flawed; for this to be true either Christ’s forgiveness is incomplete (it’s not, see John 3:16), or our living bodies carry our mortal sins beyond the grave for the elect in Christ (they don’t).

When you die, the Bible says your eternal fate is cast. This is the whole reason Christians preach repentance in Christ. If you can put off your repentance until after you die and then “do time” in Purgatory until you’ve “repented enough” then nobody would enter Hell—they’d all be in Purgatory waiting for us to pray them out. The Bible doesn’t support this, and the Bible doesn’t support Halloween. There’s no “pray for the dead and the dead will pray for you.” Pray instead for the living and leave the dead to God.

1 John 4:18 reads “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”  1 John 4:8 says “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”  If you celebrate Halloween, you celebrate fear. If you have fear, you don’t fully have love.  And to the degree you are not full of love, you don’t know God.

If you celebrate Halloween, you are distancing yourself from God and everything God is, desires, and loves. In fact, Halloween is the opposite of God and His plan. The quickest way to ignorance is separation from God.

Halloween is the only day on the calendar dedicated to the ignorant. Embracing Halloween, you are embracing ignorance of God, ignorance of everything good, everything bright, warm, illuminated, and glad in your life. You are embracing fear, darkness, death and mayhem.

Worse than all that—you are taking the promise you made to your own kids, or received from your parents, and turning it into a mockery. You said, or heard, that there are no monsters. Not real ones. But there are. Pretending it’s all part of some elaborate celebration of darkness, fright, and costumes is saying the monsters are really there, but they’re not really bad. We all know the monsters are there, and they are bad.

Eat the candy, play dress-up with your kids, fine. But you don’t have to celebrate Halloween, because the devil loves it when we say he’s not real.

Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.

The First TV contributor network is a place for vibrant thought and ideas. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The First or The First TV. We want to foster dialogue, create conversation, and debate ideas. See something you like or don’t like? Reach out to the author or to us at [email protected]. 

October 31, 2022 at 05:07AM - Steve Berman
BOO! 7 Ghouls For a Halloween Hater | Steve Berman
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

President Biden baffled millions of Americans over the weekend when he bizarrely declared there are 54 states in the Union.

Old Joe was speaking at a gathering of Democrats in Pennsylvania when he made the strange remarks.

WATCH – Dementing Joe sputters gibberish then claims he’s been to 54 states…

“By the way, if they do, that means, not a joke… That’s why we bedefeadita… 2018… When we went to 54 states!” pic.twitter.com/8yuY90SKEO

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) October 29, 2022

“By the way, if they do, that means, not a joke… That’s why we bedefeadita… 2018… When we went to 54 states!” said the confused Commander-in-Chief.

Watch his comments above.

October 30, 2022 at 06:49PM - The First
DEMENTING JOE! Biden Says There Are 54 States in the USA
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

President Biden blamed the vicious attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband on Trump supporters over the weekend, saying “election deniers” were somehow behind the assault in San Francisco.

President Joe Biden blamed political rhetoric including denial of the 2020 election result for the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, saying “this talk produces the violence” https://t.co/wFuwPFBOVF

— Bloomberg (@business) October 29, 2022

“You can’t just apologize and say: the violence,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. “It affects people’s mentality, it affects how people think — particularly people who are not maybe as stable as other people. So the talk has to stop. That’s the problem.”

“But you can’t condemn the violence unless you condemn those people who continue to argue the election was not real, that it’s been stolen — all the malarkey that’s being put out there to undermine democracy,” Biden said Saturday.

“He seems to be doing a lot better, looks like he’s going to recover fully,” Biden added, referring to Pelosi’s condition.

October 30, 2022 at 06:41PM - The First
BLAME TRUMP! Biden Says ‘2020 Election Deniers’ Led to Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s Husband
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV