Friday, February 26, 2021

The Golden Image, really? (Fiery The Angels Fell, Addendum Two.)

I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; ~Exodus 20:2-5

Several centuries ago, it seems (Okay, really, it was 2017 and 2018I wrote a series of posts invoking the Biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being cast into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship the Golden Image of King Nebuchadnezzar, in direct comparison to conservatives worshipful attitude towards Donald Trump, and railing against their otherwise equating political power and the Trump presidency with divinity for their political movement. I've called out their cowardice and hypocrisy on a constant basis and I've invoked this theme of the golden image of Trump repeatedly.

For all the good it ever did.

Note that all that was metaphorical and using Biblical imagery to make a point, I never expected these goddamn fools to do this shit in real life. But ya know, dumbest possible timeline, blah blah blah.

I'd also like to point out that 20-25 years ago this was exactly the type of shit conservatives routinely accused liberals of doing, and to be fair Bill Clinton did have a small, not terribly mainstream personality cult, and I know people who were like that. Ironically, some of those people have also been supporters of Trump (although they mostly are not currently) and for the same reason (i.e. imagined Alpha-maleness.) With Clinton this really came out of the woodwork during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which of course sent the conservatives of the day over the fucking falls. (On the other hand, with Trump it's been like that all along.)

And yet today a hell of a lot of these same fucking people are perfectly fine with Donald Trump.

Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
~Daniel 3:14-18

Perhaps more to the point, it's only getting worse, and it is being enabled by those who are nothing but Golden Image desirers in their own right, whether they'll admit it or not.

A couple days ago, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene caused a stir by putting up an anti-Trans sign outside her office door. Rep. Marie Newman responded by putting a Trans pride flag up next to her office door, and posted a video of herself doing this. Facebook took Newman's trans pride flag video down as "hate speech" while leaving Taylor Greene's assorted anti-everything stupidity mostly in place.

Facebook, more so than Twitter and some other sites, has made a point of making itself a half-ass safe space for bigotry and hate simply by selectively enforcing its own increasingly arbitrary and bizarre rules, and because its content moderation is largely automated and crowdsourced, "Conservatives" routinely dogpile anything they wish to censor.

Which is probably exactly what happened in this case, which has the effect of making Facebook a safe space for hate.

Mind you, Marie Newman's kid is transgender and she likely put the flag up for exactly that reason.

So, what happens when some Christian person calls out this Trump-worship bullshit as the base idolatry that it is? Is their standing up for Jesus "Hate speech" if somebody does so?

Of course, the sad truth is that most likely nobody who isn't already a liberal Christian will likely do this. And that, my friends, is exactly the problem.

And people like Mark Zuckerberg, who could give a fuck about any of this stuff, will gladly allow it if it means they might get their own golden statue. When Malcolm X talked about how the media would have people loving their oppressors and hating the oppressed, this was the kind of shit he was talking about.

Modern conservatism is bullshit, as the meme goes, prove me wrong.

Except you can't.







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