Good morning. 
Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon showers a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 07m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 86.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand one hundred twenty-fifth day.
On this day in 1941, the United States declares war on the Japanese Empire.
Recommended for reading in full:
Peter Wehner, an evangelical Christian opponent of Trump, writes Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It:
One of the things I have been most struck by in my conversations with Christian conservatives is how moral concern has given way to moral panic. It distorts their perceptions about the very real progress that has been made while causing feelings of deep insecurity and fear, despite “fear not” being one of the most frequently repeated commands in the Bible.
Many Christians have become invested in a dark narrative. As a friend of mine puts it: “They seem to have some kind of psychological craving for apocalyptic fear. I wonder if walking it back is even possible.”
Whether these Christians will be able to walk back or not, the effects have been injurious. This apocalyptic moral mind-set has led to an alliance with a shockingly unethical figure, who embodies a mobster’s mentality and an anti-Christian ethic. Mr. Trump, a skilled demagogue, has taken full advantage of this. There appears to be almost nothing he can say or do to break the bond that has developed, and virtually nothing that many of his Christian supporters will not excuse.
See also Wehner’s The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity (“evangelical Christians should acknowledge the profound damage that’s being done to their movement by its braided political relationship—its love affair, to bring us back to the words of Ralph Reed—with a president who is an ethical and moral wreck.”)
(Wehner’s two articles seem contradictory – on one hand doomsayers, on the other hand a deepening crisis – but are easily reconciled: he considers general trends as relatively positive, but his fellow evangelicals’ particular political support for Trump as destructive to evangelicalism. Both are possible. I’m not of a conservative evangelical denomination, but Wehner’s assessment seems sound.)
Michael Gerson writes Trump and his Fox supporters are no longer content just spewing propaganda:
The triumph of ad hominem arguments on the Trump right also has a deeper and darker meaning. Fox News is no longer content to spout pro-Trump propaganda. It must destroy Trump’s opponents, even if they are honorable people. Especially if they are honorable people. The goal is not to dispute their testimony — which, on the facts, seems indisputable — but to discredit them as witnesses and as human beings. The immediate response to the release of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s testimony was for Ingraham to call his loyalty to the United States into question — despite a Purple Heart giving evidence of such loyalty. Attacks on those who dare oppose Trump are reflexive and brutal. To hell with past service. To hell with facts. All that matters is muddying, blunting or silencing an accusation against the dear leader.