Everyone deserves a fair shake, but somewhere along the way, you have to put two eyeballs on what’s in front of you. The truth is, Donald Trump and his political phenomenon are a product of the false Evangelical gospel. The family secrets of American, fundamentalist Christianity are increasingly becoming exposed. In Donald Trump, we have a megaphone of what their Gospel looks like in human, political form.
Quotes
The Fury and Failure of Donald Trump
QuoteKeeping up with Trump revelations is exhausting. By late October, he’ll be caught whacking it outside a nunnery. There are not many places left for this thing to go that don’t involve kids or cannibalism. We wait, miserably, for the dong shot.
“Do you want to make sure something sucks really bad for decades? Put the rich wives of hedge fund managers on the board to fix it.”
QuoteDo you want to make sure something sucks really bad for decades? Put the rich wives of hedge fund managers on the board to fix it.
— holly wood (@girlziplocked) October 14, 2016
‘This is disgraceful. It is intolerable.’
QuoteThe fact is that in this election, we have a candidate for President of the United States who, over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign, has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week, we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for President of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.
“Electric Brains” and Other Menaces
QuoteWe should recognize that advances in science, and in material benefits are not necessarily good for humanity in the long run. They are incomplete, imperfect benefits, Wisdom, on the other hand, is the most thorough-going benefit for all the world. Thinking and attitudes born of morality and virtue are thoroughly good for us all. The Buddha’s Four Measureless Attitudes of kindness, compassion, joy, and even-mindedness are totally advantageous to all creatures. When we base ourselves in thoughts such as these, then we can go ahead and put technology to work for us. There’s no fear that we will forget the fundamental aspects of humanity: our own bodies for example. In the future people will forget entirely what people look like. We will all become like animals. I’m not scolding you, this prediction is a cold, hard fact. The superior person, Even in poverty, Maintains his integrity; The petty person stops at Nothing to strike it rich.
James Alison on Mark 13 and September 11, 2001
QuoteThere is something apparently callous about this. We react to bad news as to a form of emotional blackmail, obliging us to “feel” for the victims, and be outraged by someone who doesn’t appear to feel. But not Jesus. His attention is entirely concentrated on his interlocutors. It is not the events themselves which concern him, but their reaction to the events, and what that reaction says about whose power they are in. We can imagine the excitement of those telling him, wanting a pronouncement of appropriately apocalyptic tenor: the Galileans were not sacrificing at Jerusalem, probably at Gerizim. Maybe this was their punishment from God. But they are disappointed. Jesus completely de-sacralizes the event, removing any link between God and what has happened. Any link between morality and what has happened. If we are caught up in thinking like that, then we too are likely to act in ways moved by the apocalyptic other, the god of blood and sacrifice and murder, of morality linked to worldly outcome, and we will perish like them. To ram home his point, he chooses an example where there was no obvious moral agency, no wicked Pilate, no sacrifices of dubious validity: the collapse of a tower — maybe an architectural flaw, maybe a small earth tremor, the shifting of an underground stream, who knows. Once again, Jesus completely de-sacralizes the incident. It has nothing to do with God. But if we are caught up in the world of giving sacred meanings, then we will be caught up in the world of reciprocal violence, of good and bad measured over against other people, and we will likewise perish. Once again I stress: Jesus will not be drawn into adding to meaning. He merely asks those who come to him themselves to move out of the world of sacred-seeming meaning. What does it mean for us to learn to look at the world through those eyes?
Can elections be hacked? And the Russian gambit.
QuoteSure, Fox News and right wing radio guys have been spreading a cult of adoration of Vladimir Putin for a decade, culminating in Donald Trump’s huge, bromantic crush on the (I’ll admit) very clever Russian President. But is it truly possible that the conversion of U.S. conservatism into confederate-ism is so thorough that no one in Red America can smell a rat? Nothing else makes the conversion more clear. Russia used to be red. Now the color doesn’t even apply in Trump Country.
White Privilege Thy Name is Donald Trump
QuoteLet’s conduct a thought experiment. Ask yourself: What if Donald Trump, all things being equal, was a black (or Latino or First Nations or Muslim or Asian) man? Trump brags about sexually assaulting women by grabbing their “pussies.” He has been divorced twice and is a serial adulterer. Trump is belligerent and hostile to women having called them “pigs, dogs, and slobs.” He has declared bankruptcy four times and refused to pay his employees and contractors. Trump has not paid federal income tax in (at least) ten years. He encourages violence at his political rallies and other events. Trump has also made veiled threats that his political rival, Hillary Clinton, should be shot or put in prison. During their second presidential debate, Trump hovered over Clinton in a menacing way, lurking about the stage like an abuser, one ready to wallop or otherwise assault his wife or partner. Trump wallows in his ignorance yet considers himself genius and expert — “he appears not to read.”Trump is an overt bigot and racist whose political campaign has numerous connections to hate groups. During the 2016 presidential race, Donald Trump has been graded on a curve by the corporate news media where “doing better than expected” is elevated to the level of success and competency.
The paranoid crazies are now central to the Trump campaign
QuoteTrump has also bought into every tired Whitewater and Benghazi theory, even recently dredging up the old story that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had her friend Vince Foster murdered. He has flogged ancient Bill Clinton scandals that have been fully investigated and litigated by Congress, state and federal investigators and independent prosecutors with unlimited budgets and boundless mandates.But now it’s really getting weird. As the campaign melts down over Trump’s bad performances, revelations of sexual misconduct, ongoing exposés about his business failures and cratering poll numbers, the GOP nominee and his supporters are diving headfirst into new conspiracies.
Building the Jesus Movement
QuoteThe Christians of the first three centuries had a consistent ethic of life – they spoke out against all killing, without exception, including war, abortion, and the death penalty. They asked: Why do we call it murder when one person kills another in private life, but call it killing if it’s done in war or through execution? Two thousand years ago they were already naming these contradictions.An overwhelming majority of Americans actually know this. In a recent Pew poll that asked people whether Jesus would support the death penalty, only 5 percent said yes.
In the Abuser’s House #2
QuoteOnce again we have a day that knocks into pieces everything we think is within the realm of the possibly normal or conceivable in our politics. Republicans half cut Trump loose over the weekend, only to see a rapid and brutal backlash from Trump’s supporters who make up the bulk of the base of the Republican party. That they didn’t anticipate this is a measure of how much, at this late date, they still don’t quite grasp the nature of the person they are dealing with or the moment they are operating in. By Monday, the few Republicans who had explicitly jumped ship were starting to jump back on the ship. Now over the course of a single evening we have as many as a dozen new accusers – women from various walks of life, different parts of the country, different historical eras. By any remotely reasonable political, moral logic, Trump’s whole party would now desert him en masse. But it’s less than four weeks before the election. And the process of endorsing, de-endorsing, re-endorsing and more has become too much of a dark comedy to go through yet again. As I noted earlier this week, Trump is now at war with Hillary, the media and the GOP. But the GOP is the only one of those three he’s in a position to hurt. And bullies prey on the weak.
Rush Limbaugh complains about nonconsensual sex being called rape
QuoteYou know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.
Rush Limbaugh complains about nonconsensual sex being called rape