January 31, 2020: For Whom the Bell Tolls, Death Knell of the Republic, National Suicide

“Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.”

             -----John Donne, “For Whom The Bell Tolls”

The hour approaches, the long slow suicide a half century in the coming. As I write these words, the Senate is gathering a quorum to vote against admitting any witnesses and any further evidence in the impeachment trial of our Caesar Disgustus. In so doing, the Senate—as in the days of Rome—will vote to cede not only its oversight functions but the very power of the purse to the Caesar in waiting. Disgustus, with his jackasses on the federal bench and his toads in Congress has now no need to put his horse in the Senate, he already has his Senate whores.

Toynebee taught us that civilizations are not conquered from without but commit suicide. Today, the Generation of Swine, in one of their last acts of mendacity, thrusts the dagger into the rib cage of the republic. The constitution is now shredded and Caesar now stands astride the rubble declaring himself the chosen instrument of god.

Donne wrote that the death of one is felt by us all, that we are in this together. This also applies to nations and the community of nations. The death of the American experiment will be felt by all, a sharp pain followed by a deep sense of emptiness. The lights are going out in the City on a Hill and won't be lit again in our lifetime.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

January 30, 2020: Deal of the Century, Tunnel to Gaza, Boy Blunder

Earlier this week two known criminals one guilty of ethnic cleansing and under indictment for corruption, another having been impeached by his people and awaiting indictment and prosecution upon leaving office, stood before the cameras and announced a peace plan.

The orange one declared it to be the 'peace plan of the 21^st century' and then proceeded to outline the 'deal'. The Palestinians would be walled up in the highlands with a tunnel leading to Gaza. They would also get a large chunk of sand in the Sinai Peninsula and about 50 billion in so-called economic aid. What, precisely they are to do with all this sand is unclear, nor is there any clear plan as to how water would be supplied to these territories.

Israel would get Jerusalem, with the indigenous population relegated to East Jerusalem. No word on the fate of the temple mount, nor any of the religious shrines, at least nothing newsworthy enough to be discussed openly in any detail. Further there is no commitment to withdraw from any settlements on the West Bank and, indeed, land immediately upon the West Bank of the Jordan River would go to Israel. Also, no public discussion of the mineral rights to the oil and gas fields under Gaza, not the immediate off-shore drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean that would, by rights, belong to Palestine. Lastly, there are no provisions for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees who have been living in the camps of Lebanon and Jordan for my entire lifetime.

This 'deal of the century' was, of course, dismissed out of hand. The Egyptians, who have long made their peace with Tel-Aviv, demurred. But Jordan quickly rejected the plan, as did Syria, Iran, Yemen and several other Arab states following the fierce condemnation by the Palestinian authority.

Disgustus, the great 'deal-maker', has no idea how to negotiate a deal. A deal requires at least two parties with disparate interests coming together to reach a common goal. The Palestinians were not at the table. Heretofore, the agreements reached at Camp David and Helsinki were announced with the leadership of both sides—the Israeli's and the Palestinians—joining hands.

Instead, what the world witnessed is the United States dropping all pretense to being a neutral observer. The fig-leaf of being an honest broker no longer covers the U.S. Support of naked aggression, of ethnic cleansing. Under this agreement, Palestine wouldn't have control over its own air space.

The Palestinian spokesperson said, in effect, that Jared Kushner's 'deal' is simply a dog-whistle to the political base of the president's* (I) (1)party designed to shore up support in order to ward off conviction by the Senate and removal from office. That it is, and should be seen as no more than that.

It is also a ham-handed demonstration that the Boy Blunder is in over his head and negotiates on the world stage with the same acumen as he negotiated 666 Fifth Avenue. Like his father-in-law, Kushner is an idiot in fools clothing, presenting the Palestinians with a 'take-it-or-leave-it' proposition that everyone knows is going nowhere and only serves to further erode American influence in the region.

An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Convict and Imprison

_____________

1. *designates illegitimate political power, (I) designates the scarlet letter of impeachment, 1. See the post dated January 25, concerning how the Jesus Junkies view prophecies as they currently apply them.

January 29, 2020: The Dictionary Fails Us, Cockwomble, Snort Giggle and Swoon

“The dictionary fails us. We are at the Rubicon with the fate of the republic in the balance. If the Senate acquits it will follow the Roman example as well as the Reichstag in ceding power to the newly minted Caesar. As Disgustus farts in church, no words can fully express the disgust and contempt for Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsay who, while snorting his farts, giggle and swoon.”

             ----from The Quotations of Chairman Joe

I responded with these words in a correspondence on Facebook with my old friend Pete Carlberg in which he had posted a description of tRUMP penned by the late novelist Philip Roth. Like conservative political commentator George Will, the erudite Roth had appeared to have plumbed the depths of the dictionary in order to find nouns and adjectives sufficient to put hands upon, and wrap arms about, the stench from which the world now recoils. Noting the literary effort, I responded, in effect, that our lexicon is near exhaustion; the dictionary is—in mining terms-- nearly played out.

I spoke too soon. Pete possesses a mental elasticity and breadth that always pleasantly surprises.  His response was to conjure another apt description of presidential psychosis: 

Cockwomble: (Noun) Person, usually male, prone to making outrageously stupid statements and/or inappropriate behavior while generally having a very high opinion of their own wisdom and importance.

Precisely the kind of person who would fart in church and expect his acolytes to snort, giggle and swoon.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Convict and Imprison

January 28, 2020: Shaken Not Stirred, Knocking On The Senate' s Door, Dead Silence

“Mama, put impeachment in the ground
we won't use it anymore

that long black cloud is comin' down
I feel like knocking on the Senate's door
Knock, knock, knocking on the Senate's door
Knock, knock, knocking on the Senate's door”

       ----Parody of Bob Dylan's “Knocking on Heaven's Door”.

Former National Security advisor John Bolton's about-to-be published accounts of the inner working of the maladministration of our Caesar Disgustus has sent shivers down what is left of the Republican spine. Senator Collins, among others, has reportedly said that she is 'shaken' by the revelations. Shaken but not stirred.

No, there is no call to action. Instead the White House defense team is now claiming with a straight face that not only did the president not violate any law, but that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.

The Democrats, ever able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, are losing this argument. Instead of pointing out that the president*(I) did indeed violate the law, they continue to focus on the quid pro quo of aid for dirt. The country doesn't give a damn about pressuring foreign countries to fabricate dirt on political opponents. The violations of political norms are what this guy was elected to do.

Instead the Democrats should be pointing out that withholding duly appropriated funds is a violation of the 1974 sequester act, passed in the wake of Watergate, which prohibits a president from sequestering or withholding funds that have been appropriated by congress. Caesar Disgustus has done this on at least two occasions: both with Ukraine and the sequestering of appropriations for the Department of Defense to spend on his god-damned Mexican wall. Moreover, he has violated a 1924 law requiring the production of his tax returns to duly authorized congressional committees. The argument that the country has no interest in his financial statements is laughable on its face, especially now that Bolton's book also is reportedly about to reveal special favors he has granted various authoritarian regimes—Turkey and China in this instance—both of which he has deep financial connection and obligation. The same can be said of Putin's Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and others. In any case, the argument that Disgustus has violated no law is laughable.

Secondly, the administration is arguing with a straight face that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. Normally, this argument would get you thrown out of any law school in the nation, but the courts and the government has been stacked with graduates of Yale and Harvard and, therefore, novel interpretations of constitutional law have increasingly gained currency. The ignorance, indeed willful ignorance, of this proposition is breathtaking, as even a cursory reading of Hamilton and The Federalist Papers demonstrates. Indeed, the American Revolution was fought precisely about abuses of power.  Any sane reading of the Declaration of Independence reveals that what follows an assertion of the rights of man is nothing but a long list of abuses of power.  But this is what happens when one of Harvard's own, best known for defending O.J. Simpson and regularly appearing on Faux News to defend our Disgustus, is now a central player in a presidential impeachment proceeding.  Disgustus does nothing but make a mockery of every occasion.  

At the end of yesterday's session, the president's* defense team implored the Congress and the nation to bury this proceeding and end impeachment altogether; a subtle recognition that if the Senate acquits our national disgrace, he will inevitably be impeached again.  

And so, as Bolton knocks on the Senate's door, Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsay hold their caucus to dead silence.

Shaken but not stirred.

An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Convict and Imprison.

January 27, 2020: First-person Accounts, Misleading the Senate, Staring Down The Barrel

Former National Security Advisor to Donald J. tRUMP is about to publish a book in which he details the machinations of Caesar Disgustus as he attempted to extort the Ukrainian government using federal funds. In an article written by Jon Ward and Michael Isikoff and published by Yahoo News, (1) leaked details from the about-to-be published manuscript give lie the president's*(I)(2) defense team's claim that there is no first hand account of any such iniquity.

“One Republican operative who advises the White House said he was “flabbergasted at how stupidly they have handled this.”

Trump attorney Mike Purpura argued Saturday that “not a single witness testified that the president himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a presidential meeting or anything else.”

Purpura repeated that claim on Monday afternoon, saying that “anyone who spoke to the president” said there was no pressure campaign on Ukraine.

That assertion echoes what the president’s legal team argued in its legal brief filed a week ago: “House Democrats’ claims are built entirely on speculation from witnesses who had no direct knowledge about anything and who never even spoke to the President about this matter.”

The disclosure in the New York Times Sunday night directly contradicts the arguments of the president’s lawyers, who said in their brief that this is “the central fact in this case.” Bolton, Trump’s former security adviser, has written in his forthcoming memoir about having just such a conversation with the president last August.

“This just completely washes away Purpura’s whole argument,” the White House adviser said. “WTF. He misled the Senate.” (2)

The manuscript was submitted to the White House for security clearance nearly a month ago, just prior to the New Year. The White House defense team should have been aware of its contents, details that would surely emerge if not before the Senate would render a verdict, then certainly shortly thereafter, a revelation that would then display to the world just how badly Moscow Mitch and his cohorts would have been conned.

This revelation comes on the heels of appearances by Lev Parnas, the Boris Badenov of this Rocky and Bullwinkle saga who told Rachel Madow on MSNBC and CNN that as Rudy Giuliani's bagman he was charged with the task of delivering the demands of the White House to the Ukrainian government. He told Maddow and others that not only was the 391 million dollars in military aid at risk but all of the U.S. Assistance as well as our alliance with the Ukraine. Caesar Disgustus was about to hang Kiev out to dry.

Parnas too, is not only a first-person witness, but the prime operative on the ground. He told Maddow that Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo were both, as Ambassador Sonland had testified, in the loop and, with Secretary Perry, delivering similar messages to Kiev. Indeed, Parnas' bona fides were established with the Ukrainians when Mike Pense cancelled his trip to Kiev to attend the inauguration of the new government. Ukraine understood well before the infamous phone call that relations with Washington were capricious and arbitrary.

As we begin the week the Senate is staring down the barrel of whether or not to call witnesses. Both Bolton and Parnas have offered to testify. Both have first-person experience that will confirm prior testimonies. Both stand ready to implicate others and the testimony of both will create overwhelming demand to hear from Pompeo, Perry, Pence, Giuliani and others.

Will the Senate Republicans act or will they simply inhale the stench and sheepishly look about as if they don't know the source, or will they throw the miscreant from the temple and flog his ass? That's the question facing the republic.

An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Convict and imprison.

_________

1. www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/27/trump-lawyers-slammed-in-wake-of-bolton-book-news/
2. The *, as noted previously denotes the illegitimate ascendancy and, hence, the nature of this administration. “I” in parentheses, denotes the scarlet letter of impeachment.
3. Op. Cit.

January 26, 2020: Corrupt Politician, Bastard in Knee-Britches, Farting in Church.

“Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country”

Congressman Adam Schiff, of course, heads the House managers in their impeachment of the would-be Caesar. Here our birdbrain tweets yet another veiled threat. Coming as it does in the aftermath of previous missives calling Schiff and the whistleblower traitors, it is an ominous development in domestic politics.

In tRUMPspeak, of course, what this translates through the lens of projection is this: “I am a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and a very sick man. I have not paid the price, yet, for what I have done to the country.”

But Disgustus cannot look into the mirror. Instead, he projects his warts and drooling syphilitic sores unto others while spewing scorn and threats. 

Clearly, Disgustus is hoping that one of his knuckle-dragging acolytes will take matters in hand and inflict serious injury upon the congressman, for Disgustus is, at base, a coward. He doesn't have the courage to do it himself. Instead, the mafia “Don” wants someone else to rid him of this eloquent, compelling and meddlesome priest.

However he tries to conceal it, Disgustus, posturing as our modern Caesar is still the snot-nosed son of privilege.  He is still the little bastard in knee-breeches alone on the playground.  He is still Lord Fauntleroy whining and crying in the schoolyard.  He is still, as he was to his classmates, a dim-witted ignorant twit, who held up the class, and should have long ago been expelled.  And he is,  now to his contemporaries, a boorish clown; a subject of loathing, derision, disgust. Disgustus has always been the polecat at the barn dance; the choir boy farting in church.

The question is when Moscow Mitch and giggling Leningrad Lindsay will stop snorting his farts and get down to the serious business of flushing this turd to the gutter from which he came. 

“An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Convict and Imprison.

January 25, 2019: Gog and Magog, The Rapture, Bat-Shit Crazy.

Many years ago the late Molly Ivins wrote about the links between George W. Bush and a certain fundamentalist sect in Southern Texas, about the 'end times' and the rise of the growing influence of the evangelicals in the conservative movement. Stephanie Mencimer has published an article in Mother Jones updating the movement and its adoption of Donald J. tRUMP as the instrument of the lord. It is frightening.

As a student in an evangelical Lutheran School, I sat and listened as my schoolmasters preached much of this nonsense. I didn't know it at the time, but what I was taught was merely the latest incarnation of long held beliefs that the end is nigh. The principles change names and faces, the Anti-Christ assumes various forms, according to the telling, from Caesar, to Hitler, to Stalin, to the Pope...Magog is located variously depending on the political winds, but the end is never in question. Here is the latest incarnation as it makes its way through the movement of the bowels. It is bat-shit crazy and, accordingly, I am submitting the article in its entirety:

The enemies of Israel have unleashed a massive air attack on the Promised Land. Hundreds of fighter jets streak across the sky. But before Israel can be destroyed, fire rains from the heavens and the enemy jets explode in mid-air with no explanation. Hailstones the size of golf balls follow the fire. The ground shakes. Birds pick clean the bodies of the fallen attackers. The enemy is vanquished without a single Israeli casualty, and the country is saved.

These are some of the opening scenes of the bestselling 1995 book Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, by Jerry B. Jenkins and the late evangelical minister Tim LaHaye. But don’t mistake this scenario for a mere action sequence: It’s based on the war of Gog and Magog, a biblical conflict prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, Gog is the leader of Magog, a “place in the far north” that many evangelicals believe is Russia. According to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog will join with Persia—now Iran—and other Arab nations to attack a peaceful Israel “like a cloud that covers the land.” LaHaye, like many evangelicals, believed this battle would bring on the Rapture, the End Times event when God spirits away the good Christians to heaven before unleashing plagues, sickness, and other horrors on the unbelievers remaining on Earth. Meanwhile, the Antichrist reigns supreme.

The story of Gog and Magog is central to the bloody eschatology long embraced by millions of American evangelicals. In recent years, End Times has gained special political currency as believers have seen any number of Middle East conflagrations as fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecy, notably the US invasion of Iraq and the war in Syria. Gog and Magog took on fresh relevance earlier this month, when the Trump administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

On many levels, President Donald Trump’s self-created crisis in Iran seems to have no relationship to any sort of coherent foreign policy or geopolitical plan for the future. The assassination has yielded few if any tangible rewards for the US. But there is an eager constituency for Trump’s improvised policy toward the Middle East and Iran in particular: the evangelical Christians who see it as a means of ushering in the return of Christ. Lured by the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices, anti-abortion measures, and a commitment to Christian supremacy under the guise of religious freedom, white evangelicals voted for Trump in higher numbers than any other group—more than 80 percent.

He desperately needs them if he’s going to be reelected. And while some have expressed concern about the administration’s inching toward war with Iran, many of those with what were once fringe beliefs have cheered the killing of Soleimani. “Iran has this big part to play in biblical history,” says religious historian Diana Butler Bass, who grew up in the evangelical church, attended an evangelical college and seminary, and wrote her Ph.D. thesis at Duke University on American fundamentalism. “There are these particular prophecies from Ezekiel, where there is talk of a war that will happen at a very important moment in Israel’s history. And that war is going to kick off the End Times. People in this prophetic community believe Iran is going to be one of these aggressors.” 

“When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals.”

Bass thinks this worldview may be central to understanding Trump’s foreign policy. “When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals. They will support anything that seems to edge the world towards this conflagration,” she says. “They don’t necessarily want violence, but they’re eager for Christ to return and they think that this war with Iran and Israel has to happen for their larger hope to pass.”

Not all or even most evangelicals believe in the literal truth of these sorts of prophecies, though nearly 60 percent of white evangelicals, according to one 2010 poll, believe Jesus is definitely or probably going to return by the year 2050. But those who do subscribe to this apocalyptic world view seem to be overrepresented among Trump’s religious supporters and advisers. In October, a host of influential evangelical pastors came to the White House to pray with Trump to protect him from impeachment. Among those who laid hands on the president as he stood, head bowed, in the Oval Office, was repeat visitor Greg Laurie, pastor of a California megachurch. A few days after the killing of Soleimani, Laurie made a YouTube video with Don Stewart, author of 25 Signs We Are Near the End, to discuss Iran and the End Times. “The scenario that the Bible predicted, seemingly so impossible,” Stewart promised, “is now falling into place.”

From the outset, Trump has surrounded himself with people who hail from the fringes of the evangelical community that is steeped in the language of biblical prophecy, and his administration regularly reflects that language back to them in its messaging. In March 2017, for instance, Trump issued an official White House statement recognizing the Persian New Year in which he misattributed a quote to Cyrus the Great, the libertine pagan leader of the ancient Persian empire who was anointed by God to free Jews in Babylon. Ordinary Americans probably wouldn’t have even noticed the announcement, but evangelicals knew that Trump was speaking their language. Many of them believe Trump is like Cyrus, a flawed nonbeliever who nonetheless is chosen by God to work his miracles on Earth.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was reportedly instrumental in pushing for the killing of Soleimani, is also a master of such messaging. In March, during an interview in Jerusalem with the Christian Broadcasting Network (founded by another apocalyptic preacher, Pat Robertson), Pompeo showed his familiarity with another Iran-centric Bible story popular with End Times evangelicals. In the story, a Persian king is urged to slaughter the Jews in his kingdom at the urging of the evil adviser Haman. But his Jewish Queen Esther convinces him not to and saves her people. Asked whether he thought Trump could be a modern-day Esther, saving the Jews from Iran, Pompeo replied, “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible.” The secretary of state’s End Times beliefs made headlines again after the Soleimani killing, as meme-makers circulated a quote from a speech he made in a Kansas church in 2015. A few days after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Pompeo said: “We will continue to fight these battles. It is a never-ending struggle. … until the Rapture.”

The State Department did not respond to questions about how Pompeo’s religious views may affect his foreign policy decisions. But it’s not hard to see how apocalyptic evangelicalism might be influencing the Trump administration as it seeks to mobilize the millions of evangelicals reached by televangelists and megachurch pastors preaching the End Times. The most blatant appeal to this constituency came when Trump made the controversial decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-desired goal of evangelicals who see it as fulfilling a biblical prophecy necessary in securing the Second Coming. What may be less obvious is how Trump’s disdain for international governing bodies like NATO also dovetails almost perfectly with End Times theology, whether he realizes it or not.

Matthew Avery Sutton, a Washington State University history professor and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, says evangelicals who believe the end is near have always been hostile to any sort of international organizations. That’s because they believe biblical prophecies that say that in the last days, a world leader who preaches peace will emerge and move toward a one-world government. In fact, the prophecy goes, that leader will be the Antichrist who will force the world to accept a false religion and persecute people who don’t accept him as a Messiah. (In Left Behind, the Antichrist is a Romanian UN secretary-general.) Evangelicals love Trump’s talk of pulling out of NATO, his attacks on the UN, and his trashing of the Paris climate change accord. “They hate the UN,” Sutton says. “Trump’s unilateralism is also music to their ears.”

Trump is not the first president to surround himself with evangelical Christians with an apocalyptic bent. Ronald Reagan was advised by Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, and personally believed in the End Times and the coming apocalypse, writing about it in his journals. He appointed people like Interior Secretary James Watt, a Pentecostal fundamentalist whose disdain for environmental conservation seemed to be informed by his belief that the end of the world was nigh. In an appearance before Congress, he told stunned lawmakers, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”

Apparently George W. Bush was also part of this apocalypse-now group. When Bush was trying to convince French president Jacques Chirac to support an invasion of Iran in 2003, he reportedly told Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.” Chirac had no idea what Bush was talking about and had to consult a biblical scholar.

George W. Bush: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.” 

Trump, who seems unable to distinguish between the New and Old Testaments, doesn’t seem particularly fluent in the prophecies of Ezekiel. But he has brought into the White House a host of people who are. Quite a few also hail from what Bass delicately describes as the “not respectable charlatan wing” of evangelical Christianity. They’re the prosperity preachers and prophets of the sort depicted by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry. “I have no doubt at all that those people are sitting right next to [Trump], giving him these Bible verses, telling him about these prophecies,” Bass says, “which means that they are kind of egging him on, [telling him] that he’s part of God’s prophetic fulfillment for these last days.”

Many of those who have become White House regulars are associated with something known as the New Apostolic Reformation, what Christianity Today describes as “a loosely connected group of Pentecostals and Charismatics.” They’re the ones who speak in tongues, scour the news for clues to biblical prophecies, engage in faith healing, and preach prosperity gospel—the notion that faith in God (or, usually, the preacher) will make people wealthy (or at least enrich the preacher). These apostles tend to embrace “dominionist” theology that implores Christians to take over of all levels of government, media, and education as a way of preparing for the End Times and return of Christ. Influential politicians like former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who has made several visits to the Trump White House, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry fall into this camp.

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the liberal nonprofit People for the American Way who has tracked the religious right for many years, says that the network of preachers who come from NAR and Pentecostal media operations “are telling people over and over again that Trump was ‘chosen,’ that God intervened in the election. Some of them say very explicitly that Trump is playing a role in God’s End Time plans to bring about the return of Christ.”

One of the most prominent representatives of the Left Behind wing of the evangelical movement is San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who has been calling for a war with Iran for more than a 15 years. In 2005, Hagee wrote a best-selling book, Jerusalem Countdown, that claimed the Bible predicted a war with Iran. (In 2011, it was turned into a movie of the same title, starring Bionic Man Lee Majors and Randy Travis.) Shortly after the book was published, Hagee created Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organization that now claims to have 8 million members. It lobbies for support for Israeli settlements, military aid to Israel, and for the US to join with Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.

He has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel.

Hagee, now 79, had once been popular with powerful Republicans during the George W. Bush administration, despite some of his more controversial statements. Among other things, he has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel. His star began to fall in 2008 after he endorsed Sen. John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination. McCain rejected his support, calling Hagee’s views “crazy and unacceptable.”

The election of Barack Obama consigned Hagee to his megachurch in San Antonio. But Trump has restored him to the corridors of power in Washington. Hagee endorsed Trump early in 2016. Once Trump was elected, Hagee met with the new president for two hours in 2017 to discuss moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Foreign policy experts feared the embassy relocation would destabilize the region and hamper peace talks, but Trump moved it anyway in May 2018. Israeli troops killed more than 50 people in the protests that followed.

Hagee attended the opening ceremony alongside notables such as Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, and he gave the closing benediction. “Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message: Israel lives,” he announced. “Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran: Israel lives.” He later told the Texas Observer that he was looking forward to Trump confronting Iran, explaining, “The sum of Iran’s evil is greater than the whole of its parts.”

When Christians United for Israel held its annual DC confab and lobbying day last summer, Trump sent no fewer than five top administration officials to address attendees, including Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence (both evangelicals themselves), then–national security adviser John Bolton, a special envoy to the Middle East, and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Pompeo opened the speech by telling the crowd of more than 5,000 people, “This is what it must have looked like to be part of the crowd for the fishes and the loaves. What a miracle that was.” Once more the story of Queen Esther came in handy, this time as Pompeo compared it to modern-day Iran.

Hagee is one of the most prominent of Trump’s evangelical supporters who see a war with Iran as a necessary step towards the End Times, but he’s far from the only one. The White House has hosted a steady stream of dominionists and NAR apostles since Trump took office, including Lance Wallnau, author of God’s Chaos President. An evangelical leader with a consulting business in Dallas, Wallnau has become famous as one of the few evangelicals who accurately prophesied Trump’s election after receiving divine inspiration to read chapter 45 of the Book of Isaiah. That’s the story of King Cyrus, whom Wallnau and many other evangelicals think Trump resembles. (For $45, Wallnau and ex-con televangelist Jim Bakker now sell a Trump/Cyrus coin that people can use to pray for Trump’s reelection.) Dr. Lance, as he’s known, has made several visits to the White House, including for a private briefing on Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan.

Facilitating many of these visits is Paula White-Cain, the controversial televangelist associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network who became Trump’s spiritual adviser after he saw her preach on TV in the early aughts. White led a 20,000-strong megachurch in Tampa that was investigated by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007 for lavish spending on private jets and big houses and possible violations of its tax-exempt status. His report did not find any wrongdoing—church leaders refused to cooperate with the investigation—but in 2012, White’s church declared bankruptcy. She went on to lead a mostly African American church in Florida where she remained until last spring, when her son took over the ministry.

Now on her third marriage, White has long been at odds with more elite, mainstream evangelicals because of her particular self-help brand of prosperity gospel. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore called White a “charlatan” and “heretic.” Nonetheless, in late October, Trump installed her in an official post at the White House office of public liaison to do outreach to evangelicals, formalizing access for some of the more extreme members of that group. She has referred to Trump as a modern-day Esther and called his enemies “demonic.”

 Bass says that evangelical elites of the sort who associated with President George W. Bush have long looked down their noses at populist preachers like White and her crowd, but Trump has elevated them to positions of power. It’s a win-win situation. The evangelicals are at last in the influential positions those who disparaged them once held. And Trump’s narcissism is receiving special nourishment by their insistence that he was chosen by God. “I think that Trump likes it when people think he’s close to God—he called himself the ‘chosen one’—and to think that all of this has some sort of divine backing,” Bass says. “I don’t think there’s ever been a president who was quite influenced by this stream of evangelicalism as Trump has been.”

Naturally, there are political benefits to all of this. The administration has struggled to provide evidence of any imminent threats from Soleimani, but the timing for the assassination was certainly fortuitous for someone looking to mobilize evangelicals. Not only was Trump embroiled in impeachment hearings, he was still chaffing from a recent editorial in the evangelical publication Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, calling for him to be removed from office on moral grounds. Trump announced the killing of Soleimani just hours before appearing at the launch of his campaign’s Evangelicals for Trump coalition in Miami.

That event took place at a Pentacostal Latino church headed by Guillermo Maldonado, who speaks in tongues and hosts a TV show called “The Supernatural Now.” He’s the founder of the King Jesus International Ministry, a Miami megachurch with upwards of 20,000 members and a large TV and radio presence. Maldonado is also another regular White House visitor who has preached that Trump has a role in God’s plans for the End Times. At the 2019 Global Prophetic Summit, he claimed that God told him, “America, I have prepared this time, I have raised somebody in office to open the doors for my gospels.”

André Gagné, a theology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says the apocalyptic worldview is concerning at such high levels of power, because believers may be rather sanguine about the possibility that assassinating an Iranian general might spur an even bigger war or nuclear confrontation in the Middle East. “If it brings the end of the world, it brings the end of the world,” Gagné says. “They’re ready. They can’t wait for the Rapture to happen. For them it’s the ultimate reunion with God.” (1)

This is what happens when reason has deserted us,  we have suspended disbelief and learned to worship kings. 

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Convict and Imprison

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1. 1. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/evangelicals-are-anticipating-the-end-of-the-world-and-trump-is-listening/