So, there it is. The American embassy in Jerusalem opened today, and massive Palestinian protests were met with excessive force by the Israelis. Thus far, all reports from Gaza (and presumably other Palestinian territories as well) suggest battlefield-scale casualty reports, with at last count, 51 killed and 1700+ injured.
Naturally, the Palestinians don't appear to be backing down...and well they should not.
Now, don't get me wrong, I support Israel, but I also support the Palestinians. Both of these countries/ethnic groups have full right to determine their own destiny and, I think, at this point they need to be forcibly held at arms-length from each other by the world community like somebody stepping between two fighting kids on a playground and pushing them apart until they calm the fuck down, and then they should be forced to resolve their disputes rationally. I take no side in this and I've been saying for two decades that it's the oldest ongoing ethno-religious conflict in the world...stretching back to Biblical times...and we'd do right by ourselves and all parties if we'd just stay out of it. Especially, I think, since the Israelis are handling their side of the conflict with all the grace of a playground bully...and bullying is something I have no tolerance for.
What I have even less tolerance for is the Evangelical nuts who keep trying to manipulate this situation because they think it will somehow, something something gazpacho, magically bring about the End Times and cause Angry White Turbo-Jesus to appear and zap all the people they don't like into charcoal briquettes and then whisk them away to heaven so they can gloat about it for all of eternity.
I don't think God has any more desire to put up with these people for that long than I do, but hey, that's just me.
Granted, if God can be manipulated in such a way He is not God, and we need not worry.
If such is the case, we'd all best accept that all this stuff about the Afterlife was just made up by people who were afraid of death. Of course, you know I don't believe that. I don't believe the Evangelical End Times horse shit either and I say that as somebody who knows this stuff better than some of those who actually believe in it do.
But even if it was true...
What these people would even do with themselves without Democrats, Gay people, non-believers, People of Color and for that matter other white Christians to bitch about, I've literally no idea. Hell, most of these people can't even stand each other if the infighting, leaking chaos of the Trump administration (or your typical white-conservative Evangelical church) is any indication. About the only thing that surprises me is that there haven't been several illicit and very-not-gay relationships where there was a lot of anal sex involved in order to preserve the female partner's technical virginity.
I also rather suspect that if even one Catholic, Jew, Mainstream Christian, Muslim, Person of Color or various LGBT-person were present, these people would immediately head for the gilded exits. You have to understand, just like America isn't America to These Fucking People if anybody else gets any, Heaven isn't Heaven if anybody else gets to go...and I rather suspect all of the above are already present in great numbers, but hey, what do I know? I only got thrown under the bus by these same people seventeen years ago myself.
That really is about the only difference between every Evangelical, Fundamentalist or Pentecostal church I've ever set foot in, Evangelical heaven, and the Trump administration...well, that and the fact that I think my ferrets probably read the Bible more than Trump does, and ferrets can't read.
Listen, I'm just sayin' if Man got to determine this stuff, everybody would've been out of the pool a long damn time ago, there have been such fanatics throughout all of history, and they usually end up coming to a bad end. It's not just that these fuckers are well on their way to that...it's that they're mostly thus far doing it to themselves.
As a case in point, despite their certainly being at their peak of glories and Hallelujahs from the Evangelical community (a situation likely to end soon, if my own read on the situation is correct) A friend of mine just posted an article to my Facebook timeline stating that no one wants to work for these idiots.
I was a moderator on a message board for ex-Pentecostals at the time...so I got far more of an earful about Sarah Palin than most. Not to mention, my ex-wife, who'd never had the least bit of interest in politics before in her life, was suddenly trying to get everybody she knew to vote Republican (my ex-wife can't vote due to a felony conviction.) Of course, McCain went down in flames, and given that he spent most of the campaign looking like he was going to die, and most of the next several years seeming increasingly senile, I'm glad he lost...and I used to have a lot of respect for the guy not least because one of my Grandfathers was also in Naval Aviation.
McCain shouldn't be a guy whose death (due to cancer, of all the hellish ways to go) gets joked about by White House aides. He shouldn't be getting told by Republicans who he can or cannot have at his funeral and he damn sure shouldn't be being maligned on social media by many of the very people who voted for him in 2008.
To make matters worse, the reasoning for such maligning seems to fall into two categories: #1 Insufficient racism and #2 Insufficient Trump ass-kissing. That seems pretty fucked up to me. Given McCain's record, seniority, and theoretical status within the Republican Party, logic dictates that he should be able to say and get to do what he damn well pleases, and a majority of Republicans should be responding "Three bags full, sir."
Of course, at this point, as 30,000 nursing-home-bound Louisiana Senior Citizens can tell you, Republicans have a demonstrated capability to throw anyone, or any ally or any group, under the bus for any or no reason whatever.
Just sayin' if I was the Israelis, with their justifiable reasons for heavily armed paranoia, I wouldn't trust Republicans to tell me what time it was.
If I had to guess I'd say the Iranians probably have more actual respect for Israeli Jews...if only the respect an intelligent person gives a formidable and seasoned enemy...than the Trump crime-syndicate or their Nazi-wannabe really do.
I think the Israelis are going to find themselves in big trouble for having aligned themselves with Trump. For fuck's sake, this guy thinks more than half of America is The Enemy and would rather suck up to Kim Jong Un and the North Koreans than deal fairly with their own people, so hey, what could possibly go wrong? They'd rather threaten our allies than hang with them on numerous things we all agreed on two years ago. There are actual Trump Supporters who rant about killing all the Jews, there are actual Nazis running openly as Republicans at this point. If I were the Israelis, I'd quite frankly be looking for a new international benefactor at least until this Trump bullshit gets dealt with, but hey, that's just me.
I used to be a Christian, a Conservative and a Republican, and I've spent the last three years watching these people gleefully set everything they've ever claimed to believe on fire for Donald Trump.
I'm an Agnostic Theist, but I have a church background and even *I* have more respect for the values I was taught than this. I was taught that God is all-knowing, all-present, all-seeing and we all should probably assume He's smarter than us and probably not having it when it comes to our crap, so at least try to do better. But then, I'm not evil and stupid.
Seriously.
It's like they don't even need Angry White Turbo-Jesus anymore, they've found a new one. As I've often said lately, I seriously expect these people are going to start bowing down and worshiping Trump before this is over.
It's funny, though, what the Bible says about both the conduct and the coming of the real Jesus...and neither seem to match up well with what the Evangelicals fantasize about.
I think, deep down, that they know it too. Hence the Trump-worship.
But Trump is just a man.
You don't have to have been a member of the End Times Prophecy movement to know what the Bible says that God thinks of things like Man worshiping Man, especially over cruelty and mean, petty political agendas.
Were I an Evangelical or a still a Republican...I would fear the lightning.
Part Two
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