Friday’s “Republican Party of Texas Update” e-mail puts party Chair Cathie Adams’ bizarre worries on display once again. The Update notes Adams’ activities while attending the Republican National Committee Winter Meeting. Among them:
“Chairman Adams sponsored a resolution reaffirming the American right to bear arms, in the face of threats eminating from international bodies like the Organization of American States and the United Nations.”
Huh?
So does Adams think the UN or the OAS is trying to take away Americans’ guns? Or is she worried about America’s imminent invasion by the two international organizations?
Well, her fellow Republicans didn’t seem to think her suggestion was weird. The e-mail notes that Adams’ resolution “passed without controversy.”
Did this emanate direct from erudite Adams mouth. (not “eminate”)
Bill is correct, of course, on the spelling of “emanate.” The misspelling is in the Republican Party of Texas Update. We don’t know if it’s also in Adams’ resolution.
yes, I wrote in 1/2 Texan. Reads good that way. The SBOE might approve.
In Texan one abjures adverbs faithfully.
She’s obviously trying to provide cover for the arms dealers who are selling guns to the Mexican drug cartels and assisting, as they do, in the laundering of drug money. The civilized people south of the border are getting tired of our assistance to the drug gangs.
It’s very predictable that she would go to the well once again on the ,”gin up hysteria among the gun-worshippers.” tactic.
Regarding the imminent threat by Satan’s hosts (the UN and EU) one should Google “Left Behind” at (amongst other prophetic website) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind,
The “The End of Times”. “Left Behind”, and similar themes assert that Satan (or his Avatar) in on the earth acting in the role of the Secretary of the UN, Papacy, or other Pre-Mellinal Disponsationalists whose words are aimed at setting up a world government. Hence globalism (as opposed to globalization) are inherently Evil.
The trigger for the End of Times sequence is pulled on the establishment of a government of Greater Israel which at or near the same time, the Rapture occurs in which “GoodChristians” go to a heavenly transit station until Jesus has returned and is in effect the true world government. In between the Rapture and the Second Coming is the “Tribulation” in which the GoodChristians “Left Behind” battle Satan and all his owrks. At midpoint in the Tribulations 144,000 Jews convert to Christianity and rest of Jewry goes into the Pit of Fire (Hell).
Left Behinders have hit the news from time to time and are not put into Prophetical Perspective, except by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in their serious news reports on the Comedy Channel. Thier alleged love for Israel is in fact tied to the destruction of Israel less 144,000 converts halfway through the Tribulation.
Cognitive Dissonance is switched in the Off position in that working against the works of Satan (UN and gun control)
if sucessful retards the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming.
If one is confused by this, it should be remembered that in order to make sense out of what Satan says, is that what he says makes sense. Prophetic Correctness is entirely subjective, objectivity is, of course, Satanic.
Well, something puzzles me here with regard to Biblical numerology. God is usually referred to by the number “7.” The power of the anti-christ (infused directly by power from Satan) is 666. Billy Graham used to say that these numbers should be viewed in the same light as what they used to call the “power ratings” of teams in football. Therefore, the 666 is just shy of God’s 7, which means that Satan commands almost the same power as God himself—and remember that God created the whole universe and probably multiple parallel dimensions. We know from the Bible that a single angel has the ability to destroy whole armies on the sly in a single night. Therefore, it stands to reason that Satan’s fallen angels command similar powers because Satan was allowed to retains his power. (Patience—this is going somewhere)
Therefore, when the so-called end times come, just what exactly is it that Uncle Jed thinks he is going to accomplish against Satan and his demons with that .44 magnum in his drawer. Shoot them? Shoot something almost as powerful as God himself and the angels? Give me a break!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where do these fruitcakes come up with this crap? Something tells me it’s gonna take light years more than guns to address this sort of evil. You might as well pull a squirt gun on Superman.
This cycle of mass stupidity will pass in a few years. In the meantime it’s dangerous, and these are dangerous people. I mean the fomenters. From time to time some whack will be susceptible to their dog-whistle theology and take a few people with him. The gun worshippers, the racists, the misogynistic wife-beaters and the superstitious religious bigots are finding a common cause, and these folks pander to them.
Education is the battleground and the weapon that must be used against them.
In the meantime they can kiss my left behind.
Allow me to translate:
“We ain’t gon let some promiscous pepperbelly infiltrators and their pinko Godless Commonist friends in the UN come down heah a’tellin’ us we can’t carry our guns around in the hope that we get a chance to shoot some greaser in the back for stealin’ a tv. With the End Times comin’ its damn neah the last chance we’ll get. We ain’t gon have no liberal New York Jew lawyers a’comin’ down heah makin’ trouble like they did last time with the Negrahs either.”
Praise Jesus! Let’s get the rapture started.
Jack Van Impe proved categorically that the 666 refers to the word “computer” , when you decypher it properly. The computer is the beast of the apocalypse.
The push-back on the U.N. is part of the traditional John Birch Society agenda. It’s been going on for decades among the Bircher, Neo-Nazi and Klan subculture.
It’s interesting that the GOP has brazenly embraced these groups as a last-ditch desperate effort to latch on to something as they go down the tubes.
The new twist is that they’re rightly concerned that Dick Cheney (a conviction would be almost guaranteed, Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Bibey might be caught up too) will be tried on war crimes. There’s a lot of evidence against him.
The sad thing about it is that we desperately need the U.N. right now. Even though the U.S. is the primary financial resource for the UN disaster relief efforts, etc., we need the international community to step up to the plate and provide a larger share of the aid in Haiti around the world. The US is shouldering too much of the burden.
These people cannot be discussed without using words such as hypocrite, liar and idiot.
Christians have argued about the proper interpretation of the Book of Revelation in the Bible for 2000 years. Just for general education, the following article has a pretty goood summary of the variou schools of thought on this subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation
Personally, I tend towards the Preterist view. I guess my point is that many millions more than just a few Christians think Tim LaHaye and Jack van Impe are full of horse manure onthis subject.
Well, David, most days I’m afraid I’d have to agree with Van Impe……
Thanks for that link, man, it’s amazing how handy Wikipedia is.
I’ve seen the History channel show where they outline the actual evidence of the Preterist interpretation.
Long ago, I decided Revelations just wasn’t a legitimate book of the Bible, I didn’t know Thomas Jefferson agreed with me.
I do know he wasn’t a big fan of hooey.
My gripe is that it has done more damage than all of the rest of the Bible.
For those who are practicing Christians out there, never in my life have I said ANY negative word against Jesus or Christianity as a personal spiritual path.
I’m completely intolerant of the current xenophobic, Nationalistic political movement that masquerades as “Christianity”, which could also be referred to as “evangelo-fascism.”
I’m also completely intolerant of the con-artist huckster assholes also known as “televangelists.”
Maybe Armageddon will be when the Neocons have finally had enough of the anti-Semite Birchers, and the homophobes and the few remaining Log Cabin Repubs, (and Dick Cheney’s daughters,) will get into it.
That, of course, will be after the Islamic radicals have quit fighting and giving these whacks an enemy to team up against.
Then maybe we can have a couple decades of peace and quiet.
That’s my prophecy. Not sayin’ when it will happen…
David:
Once upon a time, I knew the son of a court judge in North Carolina who had a unique way of pronouncing the words “here and “hear.” I would like to teach you. Let’s have a lesson and then practice.
Lesson:
Here it is with some phonics: “Heeahyaw.”
It is pronounced simultaneously with “skrinching up” your nose (no hand use allowed) and blowing the word out through both nostrils and your mouth as you say it. My friend used to practice saying it while playing his guitar.
Practice :
“I don’t won’t none o’ you boys acomin’ around HEEAHYAW no moe.” Ya HEEAHYAW????
Good luck. It’s fun when you get the hang of it.
I think that comes from back in the day when our ancestors spent most of their day with a team of mules.
Inspired byGordon Fowkes’ posting above, I submit the following:
“…In those days it shall come to pass that ten men…. shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”
Zech. 8:23.
Both Christianity and Judaism agree the above verse is ‘messianic’; that is, it is referring to a future utopia. Christians must ask themselves: If Jews are so wrong about Jesus, why are Christians coming to Jews saying “God is with you.” Jews should be the LAST people Christians would come to.
Other verses around this one also refer to gentiles (“men of many nations”) coming to Israel to seek God there in messianic times. Why?
“And the Lord will be king over all the earth: in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one.”
Zech. 14:9.
Judaism is clearly saying that God is One. God is not Two, Three, or more…. This, among many other issues, Christianity rejects.
“And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.”
Zech. 14:16.
Now why on earth would gentiles (or Christians) come to Jerusalem to worship and keep the feast of tabernacles? The feast of tabernacles is the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Why would Christians observe Sukkot? It makes no sense given what the New Testament teaches, which is basically that Judaism is finished.
I point these things out to illustrate how much the “Old” and “New” Testaments disagree with each other on a number of major issues; thus there is no such thing as “Judeo-Christian,” a phrase we keep seeing ad nauseum.
666 is code for Nero Caesar. 666 has nothing to do with Satan or the Devil or any supernatural being. In Hebrew gematria, every letter has a corresponding number. Summing these numbers gives a numeric value to a word or name. The Greek spelling, “Neron Caesar,” transliterates into Hebrew as “נרון קסר” or “nrwn qsr”. Adding the corresponding values yields 666, as shown:
HEBREW LETTER/NUMERIC VALUE
Resh = 200
Samekh = 60
Qoph = 100
Nun = 50
vav = 6
Resh = 200
Nun = 50
TOTAL = 666
By contrast, the Latin title for Nero is spelled simply “Nero Caesar,” which transliterates to “נרו קסר” or “nrw qsr” and has a value of 616, which explains that variation in Papyrus 115 (a mid 3rd Century [fragmentary] manuscript of the NT, that includes the Revelation)
The hypothesis that 666 or 616 is a code for a Roman emperor does have historical support. The emperors were noted for their oppression of both Jews and Christians. Both communities were known to use numerology, codes and symbols (such as the Ichthys) when living under Roman rule to avoid persecution.
Regarding Nero being called “the devil’s son”, I’ve never heard or read any Christians today calling Nero that specifically, though many modern Dispensationalists (who DON’T think Nero is the Beast, but rather that the Beast is someone to come after the Church is Raptured, during the Great Tribulation) may call the Beast the Devil’s son — and more than a few may mean it literally, judging by such nonsense as the Left Behind series.
However, in ancient Semitic usage, the expression “son of _______” typically meant that the person so described exhibited the character of whatever was in the blank – hence such expressions as “son of a camel” and “son of a dog” and “son of Hell” and also “son of God”: the expression was a reference to the person’s character and behavior, not his actual parentage.
In that regard, Nero certainly could well be described as “son of Satan” as he was the enemy and would-be destroyer of both Israel and the Church, and the enemy and would-be supplanter of God.
Right now, I’m reading the “Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion”,Jane Harrison, written to illuminate the study of Greek art and literature, which is basically about the complex of dieties superimposed on other dieties and the submersion of the older “chthonic” rites of aversion of evil gods, by the later “olympian” rites of service to the beneficient gods. Right now I’m in the section on Orphism. There’s a lot of points of resonance between the Orphic rites and Christianity. The “chthonic” refers to the gods of the underworld and the “olympic” are the celestial gods. The earlier gods stem from a matriarchial social system and the later to patriarchial society. There’s a lot of overlap and assumption of properties, the identities of the various dieties , the various sacrifices and totems, paraphenalia, ritual, etc. from one to the other, and reflect to some degree absorption of rites due to military dominance, agricultural or economic interdependence , or colonization, of various tribes and city-states. There’s a lot of discussion about 3-fold and 2-fold godheads, and about the diety as the son or daughter, as well as the diety as mother/father.
The sources of these various rites ranged from Egypt, to Persia, to the Balkans.
Anyway, this is, kind of, the soup in which Judaism and the early church was simmering. It’s interesting.
Parts of Judaism were “invented” as a response to the “pagans” around them, and parts of Judaism absorbed pagan themes. The egg on the seder plate (the Pesach or Passover ritual meal), for example, is most likely of pagan origin. Passover occurs in the spring, and we’re all familiar with the themes of spring such as rebirth. There is no distinctively Jewish reason for an egg to be included on the seder plate. It is a nod to the rebirth of the Israelites as a nation; in Passover, we are to begin the journey out of Egypt.
The ancient Egyptian religion was heavily centered on death and after-life. Judaism hardly mentions an afterlife; it is hardly mentioned at all in our scripture, liturgy, or religious education. This too may have been a response to Egypt’s obsession with death; a way of rejecting that to which the Israelites had been exposed.
Likewise, it is thought that the Jewish prohibition of the consumption of blood, pork or ham may have been a response to the pagan peoples who populated Canaan. Perhaps the Canaanites drank blood and ate pork and ham in huge quantities, and perhaps the consumption of such may have had religious significance for them. Thus, the incoming Israelites wanted to set themselves apart, and prohibiting such food from our diet was one way of accomplishing that.
Some of the Psalms are almost verbatim copies of Egyptian praises to the Egyptian sun-god, Ra.
Cytocop:
I don’t think the assorted religious right fruitcakes are using the term “Judeo-Christian” to explicitly mean or imply that they are somehow the same thing. All they are saying is that Jesus was Jewish and that Christianity was a spinoff from Judaism—sort of like Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.
When I was growing up in my small southern town, we had one Jewish family. That was the Jacobs family, which consisted of Aaron Jacobs, his wife, their daughter Kathy Jacobs, and an adopted gentile son by the name of Harris Jacobs. They were all very nice people. In our public schools, I noticed that the teachers would send the Jacobs children to the library or on some school errand when the class talked over plans for a school Christmas party or whatever. I feel sure that this was at the request of their parents. Clearly, there was a religious difference there, people understood that, and they respected it. I never heard anyone say that Kathy Jacobs was a Jewish person in baptist clothing.
As we all know, the religious rights hates the ACLU with a passion. The ACLU, at least in my experience, is heavily populated by Jewish folks. Again, this shows that the religious right’s use of the term “Judeo-Christian” is not inclusivist in nature. Basically, I think the term “Judeo-Christian” comes from the incessant fear and paranoia felt by the religious right. It chiefly comes from that Biblical verses in Genesis 12: 1-3 where God says of Israel:
“And I will bless those that bless you and curse the one who curses you.”
They just want to give lip service to the “Judeo” part as insurance against getting cursed at some point along the line. You know. Pat Robertson pants fall down during a 700 Club broadcast. They also want to suck up to the Israelis so they can find a way to tear down the Dome of the Rock (the abomination standing where it should not), start rebuilding Herod’s temple, and by so doing force Jesus to return earlier than originally planned. In religious right fruitcake parlance, that is known as “forcing the hand of God.” Of course, Cytocop and I both know that no human being can force the hand of God—way too much prideful religious arrogance in a phrase like that. God does things on his schedule—not ours.
” Pat Robertson pants fall down during a 700 Club broadcast”
Don’t start giving him any ideas… You know how those folks are trying to make headway on Youtube, etc.
Seriously, here’s this idea that has “forcibly” intruded on my thoughts and settled in for the long haul
This is all about how tragedy “gets our attention.”
There are periods in history that are “plateaus” and then periods that are steep mountains which we must climb, or precipices which take us into the depths of the gorge.
This particular period is not a “plateau”. In fact you could say that the earth has literally risen up under us.
This period is bracketed by 9/11, when 3000 people died, and we allowed the dumbest among us to initiate a war for oil disguised as a religious crusade.
The end bracket is Haiti, when 200,000 of the world’s poorest died. Our response , noble,as it is, so far, is yet to be fully determined.
My point is that both these events were preventable.
What will be the lesson of history for us? Which way will we go? Will we make the hard climb up? Or will we fall off the cliff?
One thing’s for sure, these John Birch/GOP/ religious right people are useless. They represent a whole lof of synapses that aren’t firing. They’re in the way. They’re dead weight.
The Tea Party people are even more useless. Unfortunately Dave, I am beginning to think that we may be going off that cliff you mentioned.
The Tea Party is really the same bunch. It’s really the religious right that had the big social network that these folks tapped into. Palin’s speech was basically gibberish. What’s that line in “Blazing Saddles”? “Authentic frontier gibberish…? ” or something.
Main thing is not to let them screw up the education system any more than they’ve already done.
Thank you, Charles. I appreciate what you wrote. It was helpful and informative. (I especially liked the part about Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. Ha ha).
Given the growing membership of the Tea Party and the growth of radical conservativism in general in America, I’m with Charles in that going off the cliff thing. There just is no evidence for optimism, not for another generation at least. Speaking in local terms, it’s a safe bet TX’s next governor will be one of the three Republican candidates. (And please don’t mention K. B. Hutchison as a consolation “prize”; I’ve not seen her promote one progressive issue).
As for the UN and the OAS invading the United States, uh, has anyone ever drug-tested Cathie Adams?
People like Cathie Adams gets their drugs prescribed to them.
I disagree about the pessimism/optimism thing, but I would counsel for guarded optimism. It will take some work to make some changes happen.
I think Bill White will be a shoe-in, frankly.
To be overly technical, it’s possible to be drug-tested for prescription drugs.
The work required to make some changes will be fiercely resisted, and the resistance will be very well-populated and funded.
I think Bill White will be a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination for governor. As for getting elected to the governorship, I don’t see how anyone can be sure. The Repubniks have three heavy-weight candidates: Perry, Hutchison, and newcomer Debra Medina. Medina is the darling of the TX Tea Partiers, and her star is rising higher and faster than that of any other candidate. Medina is now outpolling Hutchison with conservatives by a 25-23 margin, and she is endorsed by independent TX voters.
I don’t see how the Haitian earthquake – or any earthquake – could have been prevented. And I’m not sure how the Haitian earthquake brackets anything. Maybe I misunderstood the point.
The earthquake could not have been prevented.
The slipshod construction could have been prevented. The scientists knew there was an active fault with a high probability of a 7. 0 quake occuring.
Part of the problem is also the denuding of the landscape which has made Haiti so vulnerable to hurricanes, mudslides, flooding, etc. If they had had a better economy the capacity to disperse the population, etc.
Obviously hindsight’s 20-20. There will always probably be disasters. It’s possible a comet or a gamma ray burst from space will wipe us out in seconds.
However, we have the capacity to know better. We know the ocean levels are going to rise. We know the population’s growing faster than we can handle. Etc.
The WILLFUL stupidity of people (such as the Bartons and the Cathy Adams’) in the pursuit of power are indulgences we just cannot afford. They’re betting and hedging their bets that it will be “those” people, those other people who will get the shit end of the stick. Sorry. It’s terrorism if Americans get killed. If little Muslim boys and girls are killed, it’s collateral damage.
On and on.
I hope to God it’s a bracketing. If we’ve got an even greater calamity coming up soon…
America spends more on military (we call it defense) hardware than all the rest of the world combined.
This millenium started with us putting an idiot and a crypto-fascist in charge of the country. They stopped at nothing to scuttle the ship of state. Then we had Katrina. We saw their response to that. We’re still dealing with it.
Then we had the tsunami, most of those deaths were preventable if they had had a warning system in the Indian Ocean.
There’s billions of dollars worth of nuclear warheads and other military hardware of many nations distributed throughout the Indian Ocean, but no chincy little tsunami warning system.
The American people and the American military created millions of new friends by how we responded to that emergency.
Likewise Haiti.
We still have the idiot class in this country wanting to replicate our stupidest mistakes. They’re doing this because they see it as a way of regaining power and of making money.
It seems that we’ve got a lesson to be learned here that just can’t get any simpler.
We cannot afford the stupidity of the Cathy Adams, Palins, Perrys, Bartons, McLeroys. etc.
Wiki tells me that cyypto-fascism is the secret admiration of fascism. That leaves a bit of a problem as the current definitions of fascism are those made after WW2 by the intelligentsia, always fearful of emasculation by people who have to work for a living. Likewise the actual forms of governance that called themselves fascist at the time differed widely from each other as they resembled other regimes and forms of governance that proclaimed themselves anti-fascist at the time.
Italian Fascism and the Nazis were opposed to Catholiscism while Spain’s Nationalists were more catholic than the Pope. Woodrow Wilson segregated the Civil Service and the Navy and imprisioned critics of WW 1 (even mild adherents). Every nation used public works to provide jobs for the unemployed.
It is an old whine that if the US didn’t spend on weapons that the world’s spoiled rich kids wouldn’t play with high explosives and wouldn’t exploit the world’s poor to die for their bloody temper tantrums.
I tend to hold to the old view that the original Fascists were the industrial giants like the Krupps who quicky became the “military-industrial complexes of their respective national economies, and who co-opted the various nationalist/populist movements in their countries like Nazism as a prophylaxis against Marxism.
Definitions are always subjective. The Marxist regimes quickly became almost exactly like the industrial monarchies and oligarchies they replaced. You could also say that Roosevelt and Johnson were “social liberals” to curb domestic unrest.
By that definition, I don’t know if you would call Cheney a crypto-fascist or just a fascist. Maybe neo-fascist.
We’re going through growing pains. Previously, nationalist military industrial complexes who battled for the world’s oil supply (mainly) in the twentieth century, grew up out of the old colonial Empires of the previous centuries.
The good news side of the good news/bad news pardigm of “globalism” is that corporations are starting to see warfare as bad for business. The bad news is that this system still runs on the idea that there are poor people out there to exploit.
The religious right is up to their eyeballs in the exploitation of 3rd world countries. Pat Robertson is a longtime pal of the former brutal dictator Charles Taylor of Liberia. He was advising his flock via the 700 Club back in the ’70’s to invest in strategic metals like titanium because our planes were getting shot down in Vietnam and there would be a demand for those minerals for a long time to come.
You’re putting up a straw man to say that there are global bad actors who would be doing even worse if America had no strong military.
The fact is that the oil corporations and others (ITT in Chile) have been using CIA and American military power to protect their interests around the world. They installed the Shah in Iran, etc. Over and over.
Yes, there are bad guys in countries around the world. Why are we not invading them? NO OIL.
Like I said, our efforts in Indonesia and Haiti made friends. That will pay off on a foreign policy level eventually.
Our effort in Iraq created as many enemies as it destroyed, if not more so.
The Pentagon is way ahead of you anyway, even they recognize climate change and population density as two of if not the major national security threat we face in the future.
There will come a time when there’s no more money to be made by exploitation. No room to grow. Then the basic premise of capitalism will cease to exist. De-facto “socialism”.
Either that, or the most bloodthirsty will inherit the earth and eliminate all those “others” so we can have another run at it.
ps
As someone who got a Bach. of Fine Arts and who has worked in the construction trades for the last 30 years, I can say that your caricaturization of the “intelligentsia” doesn’t really hold much water. That’s the kind of fiction that keeps the teabaggers “hoppin’ mad.”
Hi David. Oh OK. You had said the earthquake was preventable. But that’s not what you meant. So I accept your explanation – and the rest of what you wrote. You were spot on. I still don’t see though how the Haitian earthquake brackets anything. We are still carrying on as before. Nothing has changed. The stupidity, the waste, the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots, the coming radcon tsunami, the Corporateworld takeover of everything – including health care. I could go on and on. People are still dying for lack of insurance yet nobody wants universal care. Hell, that would be SOCIALISM!!! And we sure can’t have THAT, now can we?? It’s much better that people die. That way, we can be rid of them. Survival of the fittest, ya know. Oh wait! The people who most don’t want universal care tend to be people who are also creationists. They reject “Darwinism” yet fully embrace “social darwinism.” Cute, huh?
Scientists know the San Andreas “Big One” is coming, and possibly within our lifetimes. When that happens, the Haitian earthquake will have been a “mere” dress rehearsal for the California Big One.
Man, you sure are negative!
I know. It’s hard for me to disagree with you.
To set the record straight, I didn’t say the earthquake was preventable, I said the “event” was preventable. The “event was the death of 200,000+.
The “realistic assessment” side of me is fully functioning and in more or less agreement with you.
However, I practice a personal discipline which features “perseverance” prominently. It also reminds me to focus on that which is within my capacity to influence and change. Most importantly that which occurs between my ears. It’s a “remove the log from your own eyes before you try to remove the splinter from others” .
But that doesn’t mean you let the idiots of the world run the wagon off in the ditch. If those of us who know better are going to do something, now’s the time.
Also, I don’t want the “other side” to have the satisfaction of thinking they have any chance of winning.
I agree they’re drunk on “social darwinism”. What they’re pushing is basically a “master race” ideology.
I lived in Ca. for over a decade, most of my friends were of the “liberal” stripe. That is, of the South Park “Smug” variety. They were cosy in their enclave of liberal assumptions. They could care less what happened in Texas, they assumed everyone here was a redneck, and that made them feel better about themselves.
Now we’re all drifting around with the flotsam, and some of us are in the lifeboats, etc.
Now there is the window of opportunity for them to understand that they need to care about what happens in Texas, for their own self-interest, if for no other. (I’m thinking “it’s !#$%@ obvious, any idiot can see that, etc.)
Pres. Obama, (first of all, I always knew he was a politician, I didn’t or do not expect him to be the messiah), is setting us up for getting out of the wars. There are people who are mad because he hasn’t invaded Iran, and there are those who are mad that he didn’t order the troops to drop their weapons and run, not walk, to the transport planes home.
He’s restored the Constitutional authority of Congress to write laws. There are those who are mad because he didn’t write the Health Care bill himself and “make” Congress sign it.
However, this whole exercise has made it clear that Congress is dysfunctional, and corrupt, and we’ve got to do something about the money problem.
The problems in the Muslim world involve China, India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, Israel, Europe, the U. S. and the multinational oil corporations. We have to get progress in Kashmir in order to get things straightened out on the Khyber Pass.
We have to have leverage on China to get progress on Iran. However, thanks to Bush, they own us. Luckily, they own too much of us to completely dictate their whims.
The Imhofe’s and the Cheneys are actually acting against the interests of the American people on all this. They’re still perpetuating the “Islamic terror” angle.
Their actions are going to get more of the opposition in Iran killed, for purely partisan American political reasons, etc.
And so on. Issue after issue. His administration is getting precious little help.
You’re right. It’s possible that Haiti is not an end bracket, but if it isn’t, woe is us.
It should be. We have all the information we need to act. To change. To pull together.
This is the existential moment. To decide. To act.
To suck it up and have stronger willpower than the opposition.
To not blink.
And so on.
The one and only weapon against bullshit is education. Information. Knowledge.
That’s why we’re involved in this network in the first place.
To sum it all up, I find it hard to argue with you, but…
There’s another layer of history we have to consider:
It’s easy to see how “Evangelical Christianity” which existed before Billy Graham, but mainly in revival tents, is essentially “Christianity meets existential philosophy”. It’s a function of of the intersection of various trajectories of history.
“Islamic fundamentalism” is basically a replacement for Marxism in the Islamic world in the trajectory of “social justice”, and the resistance to the forces of industrial and capitalist imperialism.
Marxism was dying out, and would not have been accepted in the first place.
College students, after all, led the Iranian revolution.
By the ’80’s, the Soviet Union was functioning basically as an Imperialist power, and was repelled in Afghanistan.
Daniel Yergin needs to write a sequel to “The Prize”, if he’s still alive.
The most recent world history is being distorted by the idiots, as well.
Not to mention “global warming” . They’re trying to make “snow” into the proof against global warming. “More snow” doesn’t mean “colder”. We’ll just have to wait this summer until Maine spontaneously ignites or something…
The idiots.
666? Count up roman numerals DEO REX LUCIFER! another false christ! No rapture! Left behind! Good I’ll watch your back