And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
~Revelation 6:12-17
In the Shawshank Redemption, the Warden has a picture hanging in his office. A crafty Bible verse-based little framed sign that says "His Judgment Cometh, and that right soon." The irony of this doesn't really become apparent until towards the end of the movie, but bear with me.
I wasn't going to write this today. But then, I saw the Tweet snipped above, and I made the mistake of following the link, perhaps out of morbid curiosity. I've really got to learn to stop doing that. As the saying goes, never read the comments. I couldn't get very far down the rabbit hole of silly woo woo bullshit before I had to just stop reading that crap.
The basic gist of it all was "OMG YOGA IS OF THE DEVIL" and the same kind of pious-sounding drivel that usually pops up when a bunch of Fundamentalist idiots are confronted with a pat statement that confirms their biases and a couple of intelligent, reasonable Believers trying their damnedest to point out to the mob that silly bullshit is, indeed, silly bullshit. I've been there. These people's strategy is always nothing more than to keep at it until reasonable people simply throw their hands up in frustration, give up and leave.
Now we've reached the point, over the last couple of years, where even dedicated Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians and conservatives who have any sort of line they won't cross at the demand of the greater Hive-mind are being left behind while the mob lights their farts and cheers as they gleefully ransack the Church and conservatism of any dignity or value it had outside of what the upper crust of its membership could get out of it.
Now, I want to ask you a question. Do you really think somebody who feels threatened by Yoga is going to hold up even somewhat well when reality encroaches on their stuff to the point where their bubble bursts? What exactly do these people think Christians should do? Hint: People who believe this garbage tend to be a little lost when they find out that expecting life to be an endless church service can't be sustained in the long run without a lot of money or a high tolerance for drugs. Real life has to intrude at some point. If you wonder why there's so many Fundamentalist families who have at least one person on psychiatric medication...this is why, this right here.
American society has coddled these morons for years, but in the last decade or so (particularly the last couple of years) we've begun to stop coddling these idiots and kissing their asses simply because we've been running out of reasons to do so. They already have their established bullshitters and grifters outside of (or no longer involved in) politics, and political stardom as an Evangelical tends to flame out fairly quickly. It's fairly rare these days to hear anything about Sarah Palin, for example. It's gotten to the point where these people would rather polish a gold-plated turd like Donald Trump and try to pretend he's religious than actually listen to somebody even claiming to speak the Truth unless they're doing so in a manner that specifically excludes others or is reflexively against any non-American culture. Never mind that the United States of America...and before it, Europe, thrived specifically because of assimilating skilled people and useful things from other cultures, and not always by those cultures having a choice in the matter, either.
But one of the important aspects of empire is that people from the sphere of influence tend to eventually arrive at the center of it. When they do, they want to have the same rights as everybody else, and eventually their presence becomes impossible to ignore. The time will always come when white people are expected to share. Smart people accept this and move on. Stupid people tend to want to kick over the table and storm out the door...or, as is writ large in our society right now, they want to burn civilization down around them.
I never understood this, and for almost two decades I lived in a part of Michigan defined by "White Flight" from the bigger cities. Although it's worth noting that starting in the late 1990's (due to large numbers of Jamaican seasonal workers being employed in the area///and they're still there) biracial kids gradually became a visible minority. I personally thought that was a good thing, and now plenty of those kids are young adults who are an even more visible presence in society, as I've noted in a previous essay.
I worked with Jamaicans back in the day, as a dishwasher and line cook and maintenance man (I worked all three of those jobs for the same company-which used to own all the Big Boy franchises and several other restaurants in Northern Michigan-over the course of several years, usually as a second job.) They work hard, they're fun to work with, and they'll work 14-hour shifts for days at a time and do it for minimum wage without a single complaint...and oh, boy, do they ever spend that money! When I worked at Wal-Mart...and working in electronics there partly overlapped with one of the other jobs I just mentioned...toward the end of the season Jamaicans started trickling in and buying CD players, TV's, game consoles and other stuff. It's common for them to take electronics and whatnot back to Jamaica and sell it, usually for a bit more than they paid for it here.
One would think that all this stuff would be considered a good even by today's conservatives. I know the Jamaicans I worked with made quite a positive impression on me...even if I never quite figured out all the ins and outs of their culture or ever quite mastered understanding Jamaican Patois. For what should be extra bonus points with the Evangelicals...a majority of Jamaicans are religious, most of course being Christian...and many devoutly so. Plenty of Jamaican men are homophobic as fuck, and what today might be called "Toxic masculinity" was not exactly absent either. You'd think conservatives would love these guys.
Actually, back in the day when I was a line cook working for Ludlow Enterprises and a Wal-Mart sales associate (and a Republican voter) working two jobs to support my wife and her kid plenty of us did love those guys.
But no, in the comments on any online post concerning Northern Michigan where Jamaicans get brought up, somebody always complains. Never mind that most Americans won't do the work they are doing, least of all for the wages they're doing it for. I've noticed this off and on for at least ten years. I've come to the conclusion that it's because they are Black, and a lot of people are racist as fuck. Until the last couple of years, this only really came out in internet comment sections.
That's just one example.
Like I said, our society has coddled these idiot white people...and now it can't do that as much. From illegal Mexican immigrants picking beans and oranges in California to perfectly damned legal Indian doctors and engineers who are integral to things like hospitals and defense contractors...to Iraqi refugees who join the Marine Corps and do so for the stated reason of wanting to fight the people who ran them out of their own country or get a step ahead on education and job training, or for that matter both...immigrants, almost especially the non-white ones...are vital to all sectors of our society
Of course, they expect their rights, as they damned well should. There's no legal reason or way to deny them, either.
Like I said, conservatives have reached the point where they don't want to do anything, but they don't want anybody else to do anything either. If civilization depends on having people not like them in order to function, or they are not at least constantly lauded as the overlords of everything, well then civilization is against them and it has to go, too.
Does anybody who's paying attention think these people could handle a real existential crisis, especially one that they started? We have not reached that point yet, and they're coming unglued and often simply hiding in their own little bubbles posting pictures of fluffy kittens. When their own economic policies begin to create mass economic and social chaos on a level that they can't ignore (rather than the current situation where it's merely obvious to anybody who's paying attention) what are they going to do? Are these fucking people going to wake up and realize that they were wrong, and pitch in and try to help the people who are broke and dying of preventable illnesses or starving on their front porch?
Or are they going to piously assume that the End Times have come, and raise up prayers to heaven while reading bias-confirming verses from Daniel and Revelation until brigands or resistance fighters break into their houses and steal the food out of their refrigerators, too, and then (programmed by decades of silly End Times bullshit) starve to death while self-righteously awaiting the Rapture themselves? More to the point, so deeply embedded is the denial about how this moral shit sandwich came to be, that yes, I think many of these people would piously starve themselves to death and never know why.
Popular culture holds that Evangelicals and Fundamentalists experienced the surge of power that they did in the 1970's because of opposition to the Roe Vs, Wade supreme court decision...which they've also spent decades trying to chip away at it. But that's not really it. The modern Religious Right was born out of opposition to Brown vs. Board of Education in the 1950's and to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and early 1960's. The spiritual (and sometimes literal) ancestors of these people are the ones who started Segregation Academies throughout the South and who, in places like Jackson, Mississippi, closed all public swimming pools when the Supreme Court said they had to share them with Black people.
...And you wonder why Jim Bakker has reinvented himself by hawking survivalist woo and taco meat? That's why. Civilization is not important to these people. Hell, the safety of their daughters isn't important to these people. Anything can and will be sacrificed on the altar of perceived political and social power. If you want to know why racist idiots like Paul Nehlen or Roy Moore have a platform, or why the idea of building a wall around America is popular with these people, that's why. If you want to know why bacon being considered unhealthy, or a different kind of cheese on a burger, or Islam or Multiculturalism or Yoga are be considered a threat...but gun deaths or nuclear war or people eating laundry soap isn't...it's because these people either were lying about their priorities all along, or they've mentally regressed to this point because of constant promotion of white American cultural hegemony here and abroad...or simply because of everything being marketed with them as the baseline for the pitch for years...or they were weak-willed crowd-followers to start with.
Most actual principled conservatives are either Democrats now or otherwise didn't vote for Trump, in some cases they're out of power and more often, they died off years ago. In nearly all cases...they're extremely hated by the Trump Supporters. Even those in power who criticize the existing situation even a little bit are regarded as traitors.
Only a select few of the Others, those who allow their minds to be colonized by this garbage (or who are willing to lie and say they believe it) will be "Saved." Come on, really, why else would you think guys like Dinesh D'Souza or "Sheriff" David Clarke would be so popular with these fucking people?
I've read the Bible...and assuming that even one single word of the New Testament concerning the character of Jesus is accurate, I can tell you who's in the wrong here and it ain't everybody else.
So I'll ask again, How do you think these people are going to react to a real crisis, especially one they can't blame somebody else for, or deny, or that causes their entire political house of cards to come crashing down? What do you think these people are really going to do when gay people, liberals, and people of color save the American experiment and begin to repair the damage they've done, and when what happens to dictatorial and fascist collaborators begins to happen to them?
When the judgment comes. When it gets found out that there's a safe that's been filled with ledgers of their corruption built into the wall behind their little crafted warning of God's judgment...and when somebody else profits from the capitalist system they've promoted, and they can't stop it. When they hear those sirens in the distance and know the law is coming for them...and that it has to because it can do no other and still save itself...what are these people going to do? I see the Republican panic over the Mueller investigation much like Warden Norton's panic toward the end of the Shawshank Redemption. When the truth outs, when the judgment comes...I think a lot of these people's leaders will blow their own brains out rather than face the consequences of their actions.
And their voters?
When I say that these people, these supposed "Conservatives" would rather burn down civilization, kick over the table and themselves become the ignorant savages dancing around a fire and waiting for the Witch Doctor to come out of his cave...than share civilization with those they consider The Others, I'm not joking.
Remember that there's more of the rest of us than there are of them, and be prepared to act accordingly.
His judgment cometh, and that right soon.
These people would gladly try to turn Revelation, Chapter Six, into a self-fulfilling prophecy out of fear and hate and pure unadulterated spite than understand the true meaning of Apocalyptic literature or that Revelation was, fundamentally, about justice rather than revenge. Understand, when I say justice, I'm not talking about modern America's racially-skewed-to-the-point where even sane conservatives recognize that it has become damaging kind of justice, either. I'm talking about the actual reality of justice and judgment by a higher power. Never mind that before this judgment is over...probably before it even truly begins...these people will be the very people begging the rocks to fall on them to hide them from reality, and from the fact that the Creator of the Infinite Universe does not share their racism and other ridiculous beliefs about other human beings.
Understand this, God does not create junk. If God created Man, and He saw that it was good, said that it was good and it was good, then humanity in all its infinite diversity was part of the plan in the first place. To assume or believe otherwise is to put one's own racism as an idol higher than the Creator.
And that, of course, is exactly what they do.
That's why conspiracy theories and False gospels are such dangerous things. They always lead to cult-like self-worship and moral and spiritual chaos in the end...or explode into open orgies of the same when threatened. Like I've been saying, no matter what these people tell you...they people don't see Trump as some great leader...they see him as a mirror, that tells them how great they are. That's why they don't seem to care what he actually does. He's not even a person to them. He's an object, a mirror, the gold-plated statue of a clenched fist with an upraised middle finger that represents the actuality...and the falsity...of all their pious claims.
What God thinks of that, I cannot say...but I don't have to. The holy books spell it right out in small words...not just the Bible, but the Quran and the Torah as well. Not only that, but nearly all religions hold some variant of the same. The Truth is that the higher power is...indeed must be...greater than the Self.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. ~Exodus 20:3
Remember, the consequences of breaking these laws were literally written in stone.
When the time comes, act accordingly, and know that no one religion owns God or the Truth. Christianity just happens to be where I started out. There is a higher power...and it's name ain't Trump.
Do you know what the one religion I've ever heard of that doesn't hold a higher power as greater than the Self is? LaVeyan Satanism. Anton LaVey himself identified his own religion as Ayn Rand, with trappings.
Ayn Rand's vision of a godless world where Man's self-satisfaction is the moral purpose of his life is the basis for the modern Republican program.
Kind of puts Paul Ryan and modern Republicanism in a different light, doesn't it?
Mirror, Mirror (American Revelation: Part Five)
Mirror, Mirror (American Revelation: Part Five)
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