As I sit here, surrounded by prancing and wrestling ferrets, I find myself worried about our future. There have already been a few violent incidents according to what I've seen on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. As I have said, been saying since before the election had even been decided...and for more than a decade, I worry that the partisan divide in this country has become too deep and this whole mess might just come flying apart like one of Wile E. Coyote's Rube Goldberg inventions when he fails to catch the Road Runner.
Perhaps more to the point, idiot Republicans won't care as long as they end up in control of a good-sized chunk of land, with enough weapons to protect themselves.
Last night I bitched out one of my co-workers and gave him a profanity-laced quick lesson in basic economics and morality when he (who has been anti-Trump until, evidently, yesterday) was all the sudden like "Come on, give Trump a chance!"
Evidently he got his 401 (K) statement in the mail and his stocks are up. I had to explain to him that the stock market hasn't been a real indicator of economic...well, anything...since the 1980's when all the deregulation started. I had to explain to him that my dislike of Trump has been a thing since 1989 and has one hell of a lot more to do with adultery, bankruptcy, divorce and racism than it does today's politics. In terms of politics it's not even Trump, it's the Republican Party's stated desire to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, gut Social Security and privatize Medicare, and with issues of LGBT rights, preservation of our National Parks, and racism. They are wrong, morally wrong, and they know it or they wouldn't be running away from their constituents. I explained to him that my Mom, who is retiring in April...needs all of that stuff. I also had to point out to him that he's a grown ass man in his late 50's and if I have to explain to him why he should care about other people, this conversation is probably going to end the same way it did when my Mom taught me that...when I was about one-tenth of his age. (Hint: The end of that conversation involved a Yard Stick.) Worse, supposedly this guy is a Navy veteran, and he doesn't seem to understand the concept that respect is earned and one's Word has to be good? Some corporation waves a little money under his nose, and suddenly, no principles? There's some words for people like that...
Selfishness, pure and simple, as another co-worker pointed out after the first one scuttled away.
How did we get here?
Well, it goes all the way back to the beginning of this country.
Now, most apolitical, liberal, and indeed many conservative Americans think of the beginnings of the United States of America as the Boston Massacre, Lexington and Concord, the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War.
That's the De Jure beginning of us, yes. For a lot of us, often the best of us, that's our starting point.
However, for a large subset of American conservatives and apolitical types, and a much smaller slice of the liberal population (usually the part that's more Utopian in thinking) that's not the case. We have a different De Facto beginning:
The real story of us, for those people, for greedy bastards, religious nuts, and Utopian social reformers alike...begins with the Pilgrims, and is remembered yearly in the holiday of Thanksgiving.
(On the liberal...for the time, anyway...end of it, these are also the wonderful people that brought us Prohibition. You do the math.)
To make a long story short, Puritan Calvinists from England came over here and established a colony at Plymouth, and then proceeded to nearly be wiped out by disease and a hard winter. So, in March of 1622 the colonists signed a peace treaty with Massassoit, principal chief of the Wampanoag people. This is the exact event we celebrate in November. The Pilgrims are presented as being models of Calvinistic Christian piety, hard work, perseverance and thrift. They leave the bloody bits out when you're a kid. Most of the time they don't teach about diseases, people freezing to death, rumors of cannibalism and the fact that the only thing that prevented a war at that time was that *Both* Native and Pilgrim societies had been devastated by disease (mostly transmitted via travelers from what is now Nova Scotia thanks to contact with the French) and hard conditions (with the added pressures of recent wars and Mik'Maq raiders from what is today the Canadian maritime provinces on the Wampanoag side before Europeans arrived in the area.) What they don't tell you is that almost 40 years later, shortly after Massassoit died (of old age) relations between the two peoples got really bad, really fast until under Metacomet (King Philip) the Wampanoag rose up against the colonists and fought a bloody war, in which they were defeated having suffered about twice the losses that the colonists did. (Be aware that by this time there were many more Europeans than Native folks) and in the aftermath, by means of cultural assimilation, enslavement, and more war, the Natives were almost exterminated.
Today, about 2,000 Wampanoag people are enrolled as members of two Federally-recognized bands or tribes. Not much left of what, to hear the average Elementary school teacher tell it, was a noble and proud traditional culture, eh?
How is this Okay?
One word: Calvinism.
Calvinism, in a nutshell, is "Fuck You, I've got mine" Christianized.
The basic theology of Calvinism follows:
Total Depravity of Man: Humans are basically Evil, and can do nothing about it, because God, that's why. Unless...
Unconditional Election: ...You're actually Not Evil, again, because God. That's why. Technically, through...
Limited Atonement: ...Jesus dying a bloody and horrible death so your wretched, sinful ass could go to Heaven, because of His...
Irresistible Grace: Yep, and even if you're cursed to grow up among these people with enough empathy to worry about what might happen to all those inconvenient other people, there's not a damned thing you can do about it. This is also the basis for that uniquely American idea of "Once Saved, Always Saved." Which again, basically says you can do whatever you want, because Jesus and the..
Perseverance of the Saints: Because God is Sovereign and cannot be frustrated by Human actions and (according to this mentality anyway) only follows His own rules (as set forth in the Bible) or expects Humans to follow them when it's convenient.
Gee, when I put it like that...well, it certainly explains modern American Christianity and who the Evangelicals voted for, doesn't it? Calvinism (now mostly known today as Reformed Theology here in the United States) often brings with it a veneration of Capitalism and the Wealthy, because money and secular power are an easy metric to measure people by (and in these days, these fucking people often don't read their own Bibles.)
Now, I've known a few decent and logical Calvinists, but most of the ones I've met have been religious nuts and/or single issue fanatics, infamously, in South Africa the racist philosophy of Apartheid was inspired by Calvinism. It was in fact originally implemented by Daniel Francois Malan, who before becoming Prime Minister of South Africa, had been a Calvinist (Dutch Reformed) Minister. In my own life, I still remember a guy who posted several long rants on ChristianBBS back in 2003 fervidly advocating the burning of homosexuals over the course of several days and becoming the only Fundamentalist Christian I ever heard of being banned from that place. The bar on that forum was set so famously low (and the Admins could be counted on to be in the tank for the promotion of things like homophobia) that he was basically banned only because hundreds of people including long-time members and site contributors complained.
The worst part is, my bastardized, from-memory synopsis probably required more thought than the average Disco Ball Megachurch Evangelical ever puts into their religion. (That said, before the infamous incident previously mentioned I'd had some fierce debates over theology with the Burn the Gays dude, and we about broke even according to opinion on the forum. It's often the theological ones that are the craziest. For fun some time look up a guy named Rousas John Rushdoony.) No, seriously, you can ask these people and half of them can't even tell you who John Calvin was, what he did, or what Calvinist theology is all about. But, these ideas have been baked into the American psyche and anymore you don't even have to be a Christian to follow them. You just have to be greedy or have money. No, seriously, why the hell do you think Ayn Rand is so popular?
She advocated for the destruction of Christianity and replacing it with Greed-driven Atheistic Objectivism in the 1950's on National TV in an interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes and was not run out of the country on a rail. Why? Because she told Right-Wing Nuts what they wanted to hear, that's why.
I see the same shit with a lot of these alt-right Nazis today, most of whom also appear to be irreligious.
As Chuck Colson put it, Rand envisioned Man at the center of a godless world, with self-satisfaction as the sole moral purpose of his life.
Sounds an awful lot like Trump, doesn't it? That said I'd be surprised if Trump or very many of his Supporters know who Ayn Rand was. But that's OK, they've got theirs, and Ayn Rand can go wander lost in the Underworld for all they care because just like she replaced the Pilgrim Fathers, well we're sorry Ayn but there's a new Right Wing Jesus in town...
So here we are.
Amos 5King James Version (KJV)
5 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel.
2 The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.
3 For thus saith the Lord God; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.
4 For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live:
5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought.
6 Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel.
7 Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,
8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:
9 That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.
10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.
11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.
12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.
13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.
14 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.
15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.
16 Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.
17 And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord.
18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.
19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.
20 Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?
21 I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.
22 Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.
23 Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.
24 But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
25 Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?
26 But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.
27 Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts.
Replace "Israel" with "America" and there you have it. Ronald Reagan's shining city on a hill is no more. It's been razed to make room for a giant gold statue of Trump.
(The picture above is of a golden statue of Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan.)
As goes the least of us, so too will go the rest of us. Remember that, when you get that 401(K) statement in the mail. Without health coverage and Social Security that money isn't going to get you very far when you're old. We can't...and we won't...all be rich, no matter what they tell you.
Resist.
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