Scripture as the Collision of the Sacred and the Mundane

I first became an intentional Christian my freshman year of college (making it relevant to my studies) and who took my first course in New Testament studies and Lehigh from a Yale-trained biblical scholar my sophomore year.

Being raised in a modern world and having taken high school courses in Earth Science, Chemistry, Physics, world cultures, and English, and lived in a pluralistic culture emphasizing tolerance for those of different beliefs, I had no problem scraping a year of fundamentalist Bible interpretation for the historical critical study of the Bible.,

I have always lived in a world with no "Berlin Wall" between my Sunday religion and the other six days of the week. God is in the details, whether it be loving one's enemies, running one's restaurant, or developing a more advanced form of machine learning.

I gave the secular cultural reason above.

The reason given in Christian culture is God in Christ crucified in the incarnation evident at Creation, Christmas (or Solstice if you wish), and the Eschaton.

Incarnation (Wikipedia)

AN "OLDE" APOSTOLIC REFORMATION: CHRISTIAN REALISM

 The modern representative of Christian Realism is considered to be Reinhold Niebuhr.

It is not the only flavor of the Christian faith by any means, but it portrays all creatures - including us Christians - as the frail, fallible people we are rather than as those to whom God has given divine authority to execute His "revealed" a plan for Christian dominion of earthly empires.

"I’m an Anglican by conviction as well as by birth, and that will inevitably influence the way I approach Christmas."

*   *   *

"Meanwhile, Merry Christmas to those of you inclined to celebrate that holiday, and seasonal greetings to everyone else. Whatever your faith or lack of it, however you understand the meaning and purpose of your life, may the Christmas season be a time of rest, relaxation, and healing reflection for you that brings you closer to those you love, makes you more generous to those in need, and leaves you more in tune with that wiser, happier, richer, and more generous self that it’s your hope, your joy, your duty, and, with the help of a merciful God, your destiny to become."

<CONTINUE AT The Fourteen Posts of Christmas: 2024–2025 Edition>

OLIGARCHY 2.0: NEW AND IMPROVED!

Peter Hickey has pounded me for years, obsessed with oligarchy (and guillotines).

I've told him that oligarchy is not only normal in democracies but in ANY human grouping. To steal from John LeCarre, some must lead society and so some must reluctantly claw their way to the top.

But we're on the precipice of something QUALITATIVELY different. 

The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory first developed by the German-born Italian sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book Political Parties.[1] It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of the organization.[1]

Michels' theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise. As he put it in Political Parties, "It is organization which gives dominion of the elected over the electors. [...] Who says organization, says oligarchy."[2]

-"Iron law of oligarchy" (Wikipedia)  

But, as demonstrated just a week ago, one particular oligarch - Elon Musk - managed to BLOW UP a carefully negotiated (and unlikely) agreement between House Democrats and Republicans by unleashing multiple O-DARK-THIRTY tweets threatening any Republican supporting that bill (their own REPUBLICAN bill negotiated by President-Elect Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson) with a primary if they passed it.

They folded like a house of cards and Democrats had to rescue them on the rebound.

This ISN'T a further development of Oligarchy 1.

It is a qualitatively different beast.

THESE oligarchs create and control the infrastructure that maintains the increasingly significant VIRTUAL aspect of our lives: algorithms that determine what we do and do not see as well as increasingly powerful artificially intelligent systems that will augment - and possibly replace - human decision making. 

"Behind the Curtain: The Great Upheaval" (Axios)

The Christian religion is a religion of power, BUT...

 The Christian religion is a religion of power. But it's an ironic power manifest in history as suffering, failure, and death with the "happy ending" mythically occuring beyond the end of history.

Nietzsche hated Christianity but dignified to the extent that he UNDERSTOOD it better than our modern, dominionist, Seven Mountain Christo-fascists: it's a religion for losers, freaks, and low life.

The above mentioned factions, which appear to be coalescing under the banner of the New Apostolic Reformation.

The "New" part is their central founding myth that while God has ordained leaders such as evangelists, pastors, and teachers since the closing of the NT canon, that we're at the VERY end of the end of history, He has dusted off and restored the offices of apostle and prophet equal or greater than their New Testament forbears: the Twelve, Paul, and - per some - Jesus himself!

As such, they have access to direct revelation from God KNOWN ONLY TO THEM, are self-authenticating, and have been instructed to act in ways VERY different from the New Testament apostles and prophets.

They not only share the common Christian mandate of influencing culture, God has told them they are to SEIZE CONTROL AND DOMINATE the entirety of civil governments worldwide.

And to oppose these super-apostles (see 2 Corinthians, their ACTUAL forbears) is to oppose God.

It is Christofascism on the road to totalitarianism.

What’s the Difference Between Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism?

Celebrating Murderers

Every time there is a school shooting, there is hooting and hollering for gun control / gun safety / pick your euphemism in the midst of the public grief of the families and coverage of the many funerals and the response is that now is NOT the time to shamelessly exploit a terrible tragedy for political gain.

Now we have a shooting of a health insurance CEO and there is hooting and hollering for healthcare system reform and the response that now is NOT the time to shamelessly exploit a terrible tragedy for political gain.

I must have a complicated personality; I feel the first is completely justified and the second is a descent into barbarism.

Maybe its because murdering a school room full of children victims in the first case is much more exploitable for the media than is the same number of children dying due to being uninsured or underinsured and the privacy and anonymity of the families' private grief.

But whatever my contradictory emotional responses to what appear to be similar similar situations (even leaving out the additional aspect of turning the perpetrator in both murders into a role model - which might be the actual commonality), I'm becoming interested in the ideas of C.B. Macpherson.

""Possessive individualism" is a political theory, primarily associated with C.B. Macpherson, that describes a social and political perspective where individuals are seen as the sole owners of their abilities and capacities, essentially "owning" themselves and owing nothing to society for their skills or talents; it is often linked to the idea that society is primarily composed of market interactions between individuals who are self-interested proprietors of their own labor and lives."

-AI Labs (Google) at Google Search

"what is possessive individualism wiki"

AN ENGAGED CIVIL SOCIETY: Democracy's Not So Secret Weapon

 AMERICAN CIVIL SOCIETY is MORE POWERFUL than autocracy.

THAT is why Trump, and the "thought leaders" of the MAGA movement (Flynn, Putin, Orban, Carlson, Bannon, Stone, etc.) attempt to pit Americans AGAINST each other.

WE MUST NOT FALL FOR IT.

We must see are MAGA friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family as RECRUITMENT OPPORTUNITIES for democracy and LISTEN to their anxieties about culture and globalization.

[And "immigration" has always been an effective weapon utilizing BOTH concerns that demogogues use to stoke fear in their supporters.]

"Korean civil society, from student groups to religious organizations, maintains robust networks that can rapidly mobilize against perceived threats to democracy."

What Just Happened in South Korea?

WHEN WANNABE DICTATORS SCREW UP

 I generally consider civil disobedience the LAST resort in a civil resistance campaign.

But, in South Korea, the FIRST thing citizens did when Martial Law was declared was to defy it, assemble, and go into the streets.

They did that IMMEDIATELY.

A cunning and patient autocrat will gradually "capture" the government by making incremental changes where it just makes sense for individuals to "go along to get along" because it is easier, safer, and allows them to deny the reality and indulge in the myth that it is "just a phase" or "the guardrails will protect us."

Timothy Snyder ("On Tyranny") told Nicole Wallace last night that he hated the term "guardrails." "Guardrails" implies a physical barrier that will stop a car.

He said there are no guardrails in that sense, only "signposts" (that is, traditions, norms, even laws) that will NOT protect democracy unless people put themselves at risk to DO THEIR DUTY.

Trump is neither cunninig nor patient and his display of naming the most unqualified (in competence AND character) to some of the most important and powerful cabinet positions seems to be helping Senate Republicans develop, belatedly, at least a bit of a spine.

DeSantis is a policy menace but at least has the basic competance to DO THE JOB of Secretary of Defense. Had he been Trump's initial choice, he'd have sailed right through. The same for other "second choice" cabinet candidates.

Maybe he wanted to see how far he could push Republican Senators and, at least with Matt Gaetz, now he knows.

DAMN! MY THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION MIGHT ACTUALLY BE USEFUL.

 Who knew?

So... Christian NATIONALISM is an *IDEOLOGY* where Christian's have a DUTY to love their "nation" (that is, their own people, the Christian Church) whereas Christian PATRIOTISM is an EMOTION Christian's feel and FREELY (to varying degrees) exemplify their (at times, sacraficial) love of their state.

So far, so good.

As a Christian I DO have a duty to love my fellow Christians (as individuals and as a community) and I am FREE to partriotically love my country, America, without necessarily approving of every action it takes in the world.

The fatal theological flaw of WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST HERESY (or the New Apostolic Reformation or the 7 Mountain Mandate or Dominionism) is their claim that God gave Christians the American state TO THEM just as God is portrayed in the Bible as giving Israel to the Jews.

And now they claim that THEIR LAND (and Christian culture) was stolen from them by the liberals, the socialists, and the heathen and / or non-White immigrants.

And they mean to take it back, by fair means or foul.

"The Puritans were inspired by the passages in Revelation about the New Jerusalem, which they interpreted as being a symbol for the New World. The Puritans saw themselves as the builders of the New Jerusalem on earth. This idea was foundational to American nationalism." (See "New Jerusalem (Wikipedia)

Needless to say, NONE OF THIS is in the Bible.

Patriotism vs Nationalism (Philosophical Distinction)

RESPONSE TO CHARLIE SYKES

With respect, this is just wrong.

You keep saying "we can't treat any of this as normal" but that seems to be exactly what you are doing.

I don't believe Biden would have pardoned Hunter had Harris been elected. Because THAT would have fit the consequences you are saying will happen.

He simply saw what I thought you saw so clearly: the pro-democracy forces are fighting an asymetrical cold civil war against an emerging fascist attempt to capture the government.

And it looks like they could very well succeed.

Donald Trump's selection of Attorney General, FBI Director, and Secretary of Defense clearly shows he intends to make good on his multiple promises to use the DOJ and - "if necessary" - the military to seek revenge and retribution against his enemies. And to use his pardon power to free the "political prisoners" who attempted, at his instigation, to overthrow a free and fair election and the US Constitution.

The rules that obtained on November 5th are done.

Harris' loss to Trump is a wormhole through which we're being delivered to a dystopia whose final state would remind us of "The Man in the High Castle."

The only judgment a future free America can make on any of our actions is did we stay within the law (as did Biden's pardon) and were we disciplined enough to restrict necessary law-breaking of unjust laws to protect the Constitution and vulnerable targets of Trump's wrath (whether Hunter Biden or Alexander Vindman or undocumented immigrants) to non-violent civil resistance.

The Bible tells us we must be innocent as doves yet wise as serpents.

Or, as the Ben Franklin character in "1776" tells John Adams, "Don't worry, John, the history books will clean it up." <smile>

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

See Charlie Syke's blog at the link. I think he's totally wrong on this but he and other Republicans paid a price to warn America about the danger of Donald Trump.

"Remember. A clown with a flamethrower still have a flamethrower."
-Charlie Sykes

https://substack.com/home/post/p-152513566?source=queue

THE BIDEN REVERSAL (POSTSCRIPT)

The more I think on Biden's reversal of his - and his wife's - insistance on not pardoning his son Hunter, the more I tend to believe he would NOT have done so had Harris won the election.

Aside from a father's care for his son and the question as to whether Hunter got the book thrown at him for the crime of being named "Biden," I believe President Biden is letting all Americans of ONE THING through his actions if not his words.

He is letting us know that, informed by President-elect Trump's repeated promise to use the DOJ (and possibly the military) for a campaign of revenge and retribution AS WELL AS his EXTRAORDINARY cabinet picks, that Donald Trump - like fascists before him - means to do EXACTLY WHAT HE SAID he would do.

Response to Reed Howard in Maverick (substack)

Biden’s pardon undermines the integrity he…
Reed Howard
A father’s love is commendable, but the presidency demands impartial justice. This pardon is a grave mistake.

See Biden’s pardon undermines the integrity he promised to restore

In normal times, I would agree with you. But these are not normal times. 

President Biden did not set a precedent. Former presidents have made questionable pardon decisions. 

But it was President Biden's immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, who ignored the entire pardon process and pardoned any number of people such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D'Souza, Paul Manafort, General Michael Flynn, Charles Kushner (the possible future ambassador to France!), Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Steve Bannon.

And he has promised to pardon those who HE INCITED to storm the capital on January  6th in an attempt to throw out the results of a free and fair election. 

Donald Trump should consider himself fortunate if this is all President Biden does to monkey with the rule of law considering Biden is still president for another month and a half and that the Supreme Court has given him immunity from criminal prosecution so long as he uses the powers of the executive branch to commit the crime and to justify the crime through some broad reference to the official duties of his office. 

But I'm afraid we will have to wait for President Trump to cross that line.

THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS

 William Stringfellow considered this quote from The Revelation to St. John an exemplary verse regarding what Luther called the theology of the cross (as compared to theologies of glory).

For a book using such an abundence of symbolic, mysterious, and coded language, it's a plainspoken statement of Christian realism.

Christians and all of history lie within a Holy Saturday, of sorts, between suffering, crucifixion, and death of God in Christ on Friday's cross, and God's final, complete, and public victory over death at the end of time.

We live in the REALITY of suffering, death, and the temptation to nihilism and yet with the hope guaranteed by God at the end of temp, already anticipated in history by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

[Yes. That's a mythological assertion. I know. Deal with it. ]

It is, indeed, the starkest biblical rebuke to the cults of positive thinking, prosperity gospels, and "7 Mountain" theologians of glory rather than humanity's broken toys living in a real world exemplified by the cross of Christ.

"5 The beast was given a mouth speaking arrogant and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to speak blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. 7 Also, it was allowed to wage war on the saints and to conquer them.[a] It was given authority over every tribe and people and language and nation, 8 and all the inhabitants of the earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slaughtered.[b]"

Revelation 13:5-8

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

AMERICAN ANTI-INTELLECTURALISM

 AMERICAN ANTI-INTELLECTURALISM

(or, in a more positive lights, Pierce's and Willaim James' philosophical pragmatism.)

The importance of rationalism - or the lack thereof - has been a Western cultural battle since the Counter-Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries.

But it's particularly close to the American "can-do" mythology.

I've studied New Thought for the last 30 years (though I didn't know it by that name) and, in the Age of Trump, have come up to speed on the Counter-Enlightenment, the actual HISTORY of New Thought, esotericism, traditionalism, the occult, chaos magick, and quantum mysticism (which sounds redundant, but I was a psych major so it's ALL mysticism to me )

Needless to say, since becoming an intentional Christian in 1972, I've always indulged what I would call the trans-rational (going beyond rationality, NOT overthrowing it)

Enlightenment thinking has emptied the culture of the language of mystery, paradox, poetics, emotion, along with the sense of individual and cultural significance, value, purpose.

THAT. As well as the cultural and economic threat to the working and middle classes, has left us vulnerable to demagogues and magicians of various stripes: including Christian Seven Mountain Dominionism and the Prosperity Gospel.

"In The Campus War (1971), the philosopher John Searle said,

"[T]he two most salient traits of the radical movement are its anti-intellectualism and its hostility to the university as an institution. ... Intellectuals, by definition, are people who take ideas seriously for their own sake. Whether or not a theory is true or false is important to them, independently of any practical applications it may have. [Intellectuals] have, as Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, an attitude to ideas that is at once playful and pious. But, in the radical movement, the intellectual ideal of knowledge for its own sake is rejected. Knowledge is seen as valuable only as a basis for action, and it is not even very valuable there. Far more important than what one knows is how one feels.[8]"

Anti-intellectualism (Wikipedia)

Who the hell is Alexander Dugin?

A SPECTACULAR PRESENTATION ON WESTERN LIBERALISM'S CRISIS (as seen by "Putin's Brain," Alexander Dugin.

I've been obsessed attempting to figure out WTF is happening in America since Trump won the presidency in 2016. I've "met" the most outlandish characters from Julius Evola to to Carl Schmitt to Moldbug Mencius, etc. Came across Dugin early on. Having searched high and low, I think this video is "one stop shopping" for Dugin. I'd go farther and say that you can get a good part of the way understanding the MAGA movement - from batshit crazy General Flynn to Steve Bannon to your insufferable uncle at Thanksgiving dinner, by re-listening to the video and substituting "MAGA" for Russia. How Dugin feels about the West (and the many specific targets of Dugin's criticism) is how our (non-crazy, at least) family, neighbors, friends, and co-workers who voted MAGA consider those of us of a liberal or progressive persuasion. Like the presenter, one need not accept Dugin's answers but we ignore his criticisms at our personal, national, and worldwide peril.

Alexander Dugin: The Philosopher Shaping Russia's Destiny

Who the hell is Emmanuel Swedenborg?

Bad news. I just purchased "The Collected Works of Emmanuel Swedenborg" (190,544 pages!!) as part of my studies of Trumpian occultism.

Better news. It's on Kindle so the house won't open up a sink hole.

Best news. It costs $0.00.

I've heard about Swedenborg for years and when I was at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem Pennsylvania our church secretary - who was not a member of our church - belonged to a Swedenborgian church. (Swedenborg, himself, did not form a church.)

He was a scientist and an engineer before becoming a Christian mystic (albeit heretical, as most mystics in ALL religions are considered).

I'm developing a theory that, while occultism and esotericism has always existed, its flowering in America was the result of a broader backlash against the Enlightenment's restriction of reality to that which can be confirmed through a consensual process of reason and evidence AS WELL AS the American genius of separating church and state.

With tolerance, America's entrepreneurial spirit could invent its own homegrown religions, many of which focused on the direct experience of the divine rather than on authoritative holy books and creeds. (Emerson's trancendentalism is a good example.)

And the separation of church and state meant that, absent funding from the state, a religious entrepreneur or snake oil salesman, well. had to hustle to pay the rent. 😀

Emanuel Swedenborg (Wikipedia)

THE MAGA MYTHOS

America is in moral and physical ruins, but God has set apart a champion of TRUE Americans, as unlikely an agent of God as was Moses, Gideon, or David, and given him charismatic powers of persuasion and all but magical political skills as well as the divine authority to make him uniquely qualified to “make America great again.”

• Champion (see “Demigod”)
  “A demigod is a half-god and half-human offspring of a god and a human,[1] or a human or non-human creature that is accorded divine status after death, or someone who has attained the "divine spark" (divine illumination). An immortal demigod often has tutelary status and a religious cult following, while a mortal demigod is one who has fallen or died, but is popular as a legendary hero in various polytheistic religions. Figuratively, it is used to describe a person whose talents or abilities are so superlative that they appear to approach being divine.”
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demigod 

• Charisma
  “...attribute of astonishing power and capacity ascribed to the person and personality of extraordinarily magnetic leaders. Such leaders may be political and secular as well as religious. They challenge the traditional order, for either good or ill.”
  https://www.britannica.com/topic/charisma 

• Chaos magic teaches that the essence of magic is that perceptions are conditioned by beliefs, and that the world as we perceive it can be changed by deliberately changing those beliefs.[9] Chaos magicians subsequently treat belief as a tool, often creating their own idiosyncratic magical systems and blending such different things as "practical magic, quantum physics, chaos theory, and anarchism."[10]
  
  Scholar Hugh Urban has described chaos magic as a union of traditional occult techniques and applied postmodernism[11] – particularly a postmodernist skepticism concerning the existence or knowability of objective truth.[12] Namely, according to him, chaos magic rejects the existence of absolute truth, and views all occult systems as arbitrary symbol-systems that are only effective because of the belief of the practitioner.[12]
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic 

THE TRUMP DOCTRINE

1. MAGAfy the Republican party such that elected congressional representatives, senators, and executives (e.g., governors) appease Trump rather than risk him punishing disobedience by denouncing them via tweet to his base voters, thus endangering their prospects for re-election and quite possibly putting their family in physical peril. [LARGELY DONE ALREADY]

See How Trump’s intimidation tactics have reshaped the Republican Party

2. Consolidate political power in the presidency, substituting incompetent sycophants (whose function is to allow direct presidential control of those powers necessary for his political agenda while simultaneously rendering them too dysfunctional to restrain his use of those powers) for the competent professionals constrained by law, regulation, and norms in the civil service.

See 'Assume the worst' from Trump's 'menagerie of misfits': ex-GOP lawmaker 

3. Abolish the norm that, following the Senate’s confirmation of a president’s Attorney General, the Department of Justice operates independent of political influence.

See Trump has made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies

4. Exploit the loopholes within (and ultimately abolish) the Posse Comitatus Act restricting the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

See Trump confirms plans to use military to deport migrants after declaring national emergency

5. With these dramatic extensions of the already awesome power of the presidency, wield power by attacking minority communities (especially immigrants) unpopular with the culture warriors of his base; attacks where the cruelty (e.g., child separation, a “bloody day” of migrant round-ups) is the point.

See Court orders feds to pay $6M as family separations lawsuit ends

6. Realign America’s foreign policy, discarding the alliance-based, and rule-governed Western liberalism that has prevented another world war for the past 80 years, to engage if not actively ally with autocracies such as Russia and China to increase his personal political power and wealth.

See One year of Trump’s praise for authoritarians - POLITICO ,  All the President's Profiting • OpenSecrets 

Trump's Mental Deterioration After a Lifetime of Hate

 In some alternate reality somewhere it is sound campaign strategy to go to a Jewish conference on anti-semitism and spout anti-semetic rhetoric including letting the world know that - if he loses - it is the fault of "bad Jews."

In that same universe, it is sound strategy to talk to the civic leaders in a city and basically call their city a shit hole. One person remarked that it's like telling a woman she's ugly and then asking her out on a date.

I'm hoping that we are not living in THAT reality and, call me foolish (you will anyway 🙂  ), but I don't believe we are.

Stetching my memory back decades to C.S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strengh" (I believe - it was in one book of Lewis' "Space Trilogy"), I believe Lewis characterized the "Satan in human form" character as cruelty for cruelty's sake - that is, mindless cruelty.

It's taken just short of 80 years for Trump's malignant narcissisim to turn into unbridled hate and cruelty and, now, what appears to be irreversable mental deterioration.

"“The whole country will be like — you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president.”"
Donald Trump (Speaking to the Detroit Economic Club)

https://apnews.com/article/trump-detroit-2382e6f01ea6d236e8a2b755ff150580

My last full day as a registered Republican...

will be on Wednesday, November 6th of this year no matter who ultimately wins the presidential election. My party affiliation in Pennsylvania will be "None (No Affiliation)."

It is now quite obvious that the de facto "great man" of the GOP is inciting violence during the interval between Election Day and Inauguration Day, that those MANY GOP OFFICE HOLDERS who know how dangerous he is are too frightened of being targeted if they speak out, and that he is painting immigrants - as well as Jews and people of color and gays and about any other marginalized group you can think of - as inhuman.

Trump lacks the brains to understand how dehumanization logically leads down the Nazi path of genocide and certainly doesn't care to: for all his grave faults, he is not ideological - unless his ideology is whatever enhances his own prestige, political power, and wealth.

I'll lose my ability to weigh in on either party's primaries but I am content to let the Democrats and Republicans choose their own candidates for office.

I will continue to help campaign for Democratic nominees until a detoxified GOP returns, which will no doubt be either sometime after I'm dead - or never.

But my agenda will switch from partisan campaigning to rebuilding social capital at the local community level.

The GOP's Bloody Hands

 15 When you stretch out your hands,

I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.

Isaiah 1:15
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Historical Note: The GOP's presidential and vice-presidential candidates have worked for years lying that Biden was elected through outcome-changing fraud.

This has delegitimized the entire democratic electoral process for many voters AS WELL AS setting the stage for making the same claim for 2024 and unleashing further violence in an attempt to influence the outcome.

AS OF LAST NIGHT, they have strongly implied that Democrats are responsible for the two recent attempts on Trump's life, all but ensuring that this election will be marked by violence.

Democratic vs. Republican Administrations

"There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets."

- Fiorello H. La Guardia

That's not QUITE true.

The Democrats say, "Let's investigate the root cause of dirty streets."

The Republicans say, "Let's find out who is dirtying the streets and shoot the bastards!" 🙂

TIME TO WAKE THE EFF UP! (2/2)

Not you, fascist-tolerant, fascist-adjacent, committed racists, and reactionary modernists such as Thiel and Musk and Vance.

You have thought about the Counter-Enlightenment, organic nationalism, various implementations of it in 20th century Italy, Spanish, Japan, and Germany as well as post-modern varieties in the Russian Federation, China, Hungary, and Iran, and studied it in depth in the writings of folks like Carl Schmidt, Julius Evola, and Alexander Dugin.

You've thought and read about it. Joined collectives with like-minded (and, in some cases, highly armed) others, and have made and COMMITTED TO your decision.

And now you are taking bold, decisive action to achieve that vision in Western, liberal democracies - bolstered  by the phenomenal success of your movement's capture of the White House in 2015 and the subsequent capture of one of the two major political parties in America.

And you are poised within striking distance of doing it again A MONTH from now.

I applaud your seriousness, your industry, and your no doubt willingness to die for what you believe to be a just cause (even if Donald Trump and the other grifters and political opportunists at the top are not).

No. You are not the ones to whom I speak.

I’m speaking of those who would default on their civic responsibility to learn, to think, and to make the MUCH SMALLER SACRIFICE, of VOTING to support Harris / Walz and the Democratic party in this election (with or without the holding of one’s nose) because you can’t bring yourself to vote for a Black woman Democrat (or possibly ANY Democrat).

Or maybe because you harbor some ridiculous belief that NOT VOTING AT ALL is somehow an alleged morally significant symbolic non-act - as if you haven’t learned this late in life that we are ALL morally implicated in the results of our decisions whether the decision is made to ACT or to DO NOTHING.

And that often the only choices we have, particularly with the tough decisions, are all BAD choices with some being MUCH WORSE than others (though, as a Republican, I don’t think that is the case in this election - seems cut and dried to me, at least if one wants to live in a democratic republic under the Constitution).

So wake up. Vote for Harris.

And then let’s all GET TOGETHER (whether one is a non-violent reactionary or Reagan conservative, on the one hand, or a non-violent socialist, liberal, or progressive, on the other) and deal with our respective grievances in the public square and under the rule of law.

TIME TO WAKE THE EFF UP! (1/2)

Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney,  Elizabeth Warren, almost all members of Trump's cabinet as well as key national security and military leaders as well as top leaders in every administration going back to Ronald Reagan are all supporting vice president Harris for president. 

These folks, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the "good people"at the unite the right rally in Charlottesville who murdered a counter protester, as well as the "patriots"and "political prisoners" who beat the crap out of cops while attempting to prevent the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th, would love to see Trump elected. 

And Trump loves them back.

"The proud boys? Stand back and stand by!"

Neo-Nazi Telegram Users Panic Amid Crackdown and Arrest of Alleged Leaders of Online Extremist Group 

"Introduction to Transrational Thinking"

I’ve always believed that there is a difference between being irrational and being transrational.

If you believe something to be true that goes beyond peer-reviewed science (i.e., just about everything we think we “know”! 🙂 ), that is being TRANSRATIONAL.

If, on the other hand, you believe in something that is absolutely, verifiably NOT TRUE, then you are being IRRATIONAL.

Decided to look this up (for about the first time) and found the cited article that reads, in part:

The concept of Paranoesis (Transrational Thinking), as I developed it, ought not to be

confused with intuition as generally understood (hunch, premonition, "gut" feeling, etc.). This is what could be called "emotional" intuition. The one I'm interested in is known in philosophy as"intellectual intuition" (see Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, and others). It is a way of thinking (not feeling), on a higher level and usually leads to insights, understanding, and a more comprehensive, holistic knowledge. 

So far, so good. (Though I’m not sure I’d use the term “knowledge” to describe assertions arising from it.)

But then the author goes on to write:

SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS IN TELEPATHY AND REMOTE VIEWING show that there is a faculty of our mind that allows access to non local knowledge, that is, knowledge which is not directly stored in the brain's memory, but resides outside somewhere (as in the minds of other people). I think that Hyponoesis or the fundamental underlying reality is the place where all information resides, and because we are part of reality (as Individual Minds), we should be able to hook up to reality or reunite the Individual Mind (Exonoesis) with Hyponoesis. That's what Transrational Thinking is all about. (emphasis mine)

WHAT experiments? Peer reviewed?

Why claim it’s “knowledge” that goes BEYOND the empirical / rational and then claim that it’s supported by peer reviewed (?) scientific research?

Okay, now we’ve fully entered the realm of what the Germans called “border science” or what might be called “fringe science” or “pseudoscience.”

That’s a bridge too far for me.

Introduction to Transrational Thinking 

"Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene"

 It has been proposed that humans are now living within a period of the Earth’s history appropriately named “The Anthropocene.”[1] The name is derived from the observed human influence and indeed increasing dominance of climatic, biophysical, and evolutionary processes occurring at a planetary scale. The issue of human dominance is not simply climate change (as bad as that is), it is the whole capitalist development paradigm that is at the dark heart of maldevelopment—that which undermines and destroys the very foundations of all life on earth.

FYI: "Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene"

One of These is Not Like the Others

 ASSERTION regarding Vance ducking as to whether the 2020 presidential election was legitimate. 

Avoiding an answer to one question when both did that several times is not really an indication of anything other than standard politics.

RESPONSE Substitute him ducking the question as to whether or not the 2nd Amendment should be repealed (merely a DIFFERENT PART* of the Constitution than the part Walz asked about) and it is obvious that both the 2nd Amendment hypothetical and the actual question Walz (and the moderator) asked regarding Article II, Section 1 are FUNDAMENTAL TO THE RULE OF LAW.

Vance and Walz can duck questions all they want about unpopular policies they support or are stuck with but THIS is not a question as to whether someone cheated at poker: the courts and Trump's own Attorney General said the game was fair.

This is someone showing their cards and then announcing they are going to ignore the Constitutional referees and make up their OWN process of determining the allocation of Electoral Votes.

You would see that IN A HEARTBEAT if it was the 2nd Amendment hypothetical.

You SHOULD see it through Trump's challenge to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.

* See SCOTUS, "CHIAFALO ET AL. v. WASHINGTON" at 19-465 Chiafalo v. Washington (07-06-2020) 

ORDERS OF CREATION

 ORDERS OF CREATION: A timely reminder that, while the devil is in the details, a Christian has two - and only two - moral responsibilities.

The first responsibility is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and action.

That is a simple task: tell someone you're a Christian and then be mindful that from that point forward your words and actions will show them what YOU, if no others, mean by that.

It's NOT my job to convert ANYONE. That is a work netween God and them and I can only pray that God forgives me for the all but certain mess I'm making of my life that miscommunicates that message. ("Holy Spirit, clean-up on aisle Bekkenhis - he's preaching again.") 🙂

My second responsibility is to ally myself with God's efforts to PRESERVE CREATION, both the natural and the sociological.

One way to do that is to put myself into a purity or holiness community to provide a model for emulation without dirtying my hands. That's called Christian perfectionism.

And, as I have no illusions regarding my ability to be perfect with or without the Holy Spirit and - not being particularly pious by nature - that is not my calling.

The second way is to enter into public life with other sinners (sinning, like misery, LOVES company!) to do our damnedest to attempt to preserve or even improve society without falling prey to the hubris of a thoroughgoing liberal theology's vision of creating the Kingdom of God on earth. THAT'S called Christian realism. (You can look up both terms on Wikipedia.)

"DID HE LOSE THE 2020 ELECTION?"

 "DID HE LOSE THE 2020 ELECTION?"

-Gov. Tim Walz

Paraphrasing Michael Steele's boxing metaphor on Morning Joe:

JD Vance was beating Walz on points in rounds 1 through 9.

In Round 10, Walz landed the knock-out blow.

"We've seen that brought up. I just think for everyone tonight, and I'm going to thank Senator Vance. I think this is the conversation they want to hear, and I think there's a lot of agreement. But this is one that we are miles apart on. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say, he is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?"

Vance could not - or would not - say.

It's no mystery why Vance could not say that Trump LOST the election.

Trump would not have picked him without ensuring he was on-board with The Big Lie.

More intriguing, why didn't he just say, "No, he WON the election and was a victim of outcome-changing election fraud orchestrated by the Democrats and the "deep state."?

After all, Trump and Vance are mainlining that position directly into the veins of the rabid, the crooks, and the hoodwinked whose worldview is created by a diet of FOX, Newsmax, Tucker Carlson, and Alex Jones.

It's not like it's a secret. 🤔

On second thought, maybe it IS a secret.

JD Vance DID NOT provide The Big Lie conspiracy theory BECAUSE MOST OF MAINSTREAM AMERICA - the 43 million or so watchinig the debate - KNOW THAT ISN'T TRUE and he doesn't want to blow his brand new "normie" persona and reveal that the MAGA elite has created an alternate reality that would appall most patriots.

Read the full VP debate transcript from the Walz-Vance showdown - CBS News