Greed to the Glory of God

I came across a discussion of the various types of Evangelicals recently.  See:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/ted-cruzs-campaign-is-fueled-by-a-dominionist-vision-for-america-commentary/2016/02/04/86373158-cb6a-11e5-b9ab-26591104bb19_story.html
It seems that Ted Cruz is a "dominionist," one who believes that Christians should take charge of the society and impose right-wing Christian values on everyone.  This includes an "end times transfer of wealth" where money is taken from the evildoers and given to righteous Christians.  According to the dominionists, this must happen before Jesus can return.  Rafael Cruz, Ted's father and a traveling evangelist, tells us that God will appoint Christian "kings" to oversee this transfer of wealth,  Ted Cruz has been identified as one of these kings.

It is amazing how a focus on end times prophesy can totally warp the values of the underlying religion.  Every Christian knows or should know that greed is one of the seven deadly sins.  Greed is bad.  Only heathens on Wall Street argue, ala Gordon Gekko, that greed is good, but they are only contending that greed is good for the economy, not to bring back Jesus.  It takes an incredible amount of chutzpah to believe that by amassing wealth one is actually helping God's plan.  Of course, if you know what "chutzpah" is, you will probably be on the losing end of King Cruz's wealth transfer.

To learn more about this self-serving doctrine, I turned to raptureready.com the compendium of end times information.  Their FAQ section is hilarious.  They have 39 categories of questions averaging about 25 questions each.  So, in total they have close to 1,000 frequently asked questions.  I don't know how the visitors to the site have time to get rapture ready when they are spending their time asking all these questions.

In any event, I searched the FAQs and found a category called "Money."  There is no mention of the need for Christians to take all the money before Jesus will return.  In fact, Rapture Ready takes the standard view that while there is nothing inherently wrong with money or having it, it is wrong to be greedy and it's harder to be righteous if you are rich.  So not only are Cruz's religious beliefs outside the mainstream of Christianity, they are even outside the mainstream of goofy Evangelical Christianity.  Very few people actually believe that God requires Christians to take over the country and run it according to a Christian version of sharia law.  How can anyone think this guy is "electable?"

Bernie Supporters Should Protest Hillary Too

In a clip of a Trump rally in Bloomington, Illinois yesterday we saw Trump yelling "go back to Bernie" at a young woman protester.  We also saw "Black Lives Matter" signs among the crowd.  Clearly, it's Trump's incendiary, bigoted comments that are being protested.  We don't know for sure who the protesters are supporting, and it doesn't really matter, but it is likely that Trump is correct in assuming they support Bernie.  Bernie is a polite and reasonable campaigner.  Everyone knows it is wrong to make bigoted comments in polite society, so politicians who make such comments in public should be chided and protested.

But is Trump the only candidate who should be so chided?  Based on Trump's life-long experience living and working in New York City with people from a wide variety of ethnic groups, in his heart of hearts he is likely to be one of the least bigoted candidates.  Everyone knows that many of the republican voters most likely to turn out for the primaries harbor bigoted sentiments.  Trump is probably making these bombastic comments just to get votes.  That's what politicians do, play to the ignorant fears of their electorate.  Recently, the Huffington Post reminded us that Hillary Clinton used racial fears of a different sort to attract voters away from Barack Obama back in 2008. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/hillarys-hypocrisy-clinging-to-obama-after-her-racist-dog-whistles-in-2008_b_9011244.html

Ignorant Republican Party voters fear that black and brown people will take white jobs and soak up government benefits paid for by white taxpayers.  Ignorant Democratic Party voters fear that their candidates won't be "electable" which will allow the evil Republicans to destroy our society.  In 2008, Hillary was telling us that a black man is less electable than a white woman in our racist country.  Of course Hillary was wrong twice.  The black man was elected and his administration carried on with the destruction of our society right where his Republican predecessor left off.

Impolite rhetoric that panders to the racial fears of voters is wrong and should be protested by all responsible citizens.  However, actions that harm groups of people should be protested even more vigorously.  On that score, Hillary deserves much more condemnation that does Trump.  She gives lip service to "Black Lives Matter" while Trump misses the point and responds that "All Lives Matter." But Trump's foreign policy statements suggest that he really believes all lives matter, while Hillary's policies and actions supporting and causing Armagideon in North Africa and the Middle East clearly demonstrate that she disagrees.  See http://williamblum.org/aer/read/144 Hillary's candidacy should be protested most vehemently!

Atlas Hugged: Pandering to Progressive Millenials as a Way to Promote the Warfare State

A Guest Contribution by Nick O. Tyme

Some boys plead for their father to get the girl toy with their happy meal. Some get beat for asking, others get grudging acceptance, but an ever growing number of kids have fathers who wish to promote alternative lifestyles. No kid should ever face abuse for their sexuality.  That is abhorrent.  Homosexuality should be accepted by every average Joe Camel father.  They also shouldn’t vote Republican, but neither regressive-minded action is soon to cease. Social progressivism is the new trend like skinny jeans that show mammaltoe (male camel toe). By urging liberal-minded young boys to explore their feminine side a small segment of the population is given solace, a much larger portion of children are confused and embarrassed, and the Budweiser-chugging, fag-damaging, wife-beating portion of the white underclass gets a scapegoat. If you imagine a boy of 8 being encouraged to explore his sexuality with a neighbor girl and are disgusted, then the same goes for a father asking his son if he and Andy are experimenting.  Alternative lifestyles should not be promoted.  Promotion destroys equality among lifestyles.

I think I have outlined a good defense of Russia’s ban on homosexual propaganda. Most young folk today do not wish to understand the mindset of the average vodka-swilling, borscht-sucking, caviar-snorting Sergei Smirnoff.  The problem is he is head of the Kremlin. The hijacking of gay and women’s rights movements is a perfect tactic to push enlightened young liberals into hating Russian people—not just their government. Documentaries have surfaced showing Russians beating up and humiliating gay youth, but the same could happen in Kansas. Pussy Riot engaged in a very public and laudable insurrectionary protest disturbance and the West cheered them on. Femen protesters are topless (hot and empowering!) and have impersonated police officers when shirted.  If any group went this far against the status quo in the U.S., they would be dead, or at least be severely beaten ala Occupy.

           

We must have the courage to look in the mirror when judging other countries. Our government does everything we accuse others of doing.  The government brutalizes its own citizens when the police harass, entrap, and murder blacks, and when it wages perpetual war everywhere by exploiting them.  The postmodern liberal cannot understand economics and the mental and moral decomposition of a war veteran, but they can recognize a rainbow and some tits.  After progressive millenials allow their sociopathic roommate of a government to forcibly hatefuck the rest of the world, they can keep warm in the blanket of social justice self satisfaction, and think to themselves; “Those bitches deserved it.”   

Trump: A One Percenter Against Armagideon?

The fact that the U.S. has been waging war in one place or the other ever since the end of WWII during both Republican and Democratic administrations, coupled with the fact that the financial and corporate elite, the Powers That Be (PTB), control the government, shows that the PTB are convinced that they need wars in order to maintain their power and profitability.  Hillary Clinton, a One Percenter by virtue of her and her husband's loyal service to the PTB, intends to continue PTB business as usual.

So what's with Trump?  He is definitely a One Percenter, and for decades has appeared to be the very face of the often hidden PTB, yet he is advocating an end to the wars of international intervention and regime change.  Well, Trump is a businessman, so I don't think his position is based on a selfless desire to relieve the burden from the downtrodden of the earth.  On the contrary, he must have determined that his businesses stand to gain more from a stable, peaceful world than from a world of chaos.

His positions on domestic issues are similarly self-interested.  Presumably, he wants to build a wall on the Mexican border because he doesn't think he'll need any low cost workers for the foreseeable future.  It has been recognized repeatedly over the last several decades that restrictions on illegal immigrants have been relaxed when the economy needs workers and tightened when there are fewer jobs available.  Trump's desire to build a permanent wall suggests that, what with all of the jobs off-shoring in recent years, he believes we will never again have more jobs than the current U.S. residents can handle.  He snottily responds to Black Lives Matter activists with the dismissive "all lives matter." Of course the life that matters most is his and he doesn't want to risk antagonizing any police or security personnel from whom he gets protection.  Trump wants to stop the expensive war-making and invest the savings at home.  "We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people.  If we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems -- our airports and all of the other problems we've had -- we would've been a lot better off.  I can tell you that right now."

Trump wants to make America great again by turning it into a giant gated community with good security and spanking new infrastructure.