And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13: 16-18
This morning, while sweeping the floor in the break room toward the tail end of my shift at work, I saw this.
No, my day has not improved.
Aside from the obvious pitfalls of any person who is not a member of a group trying to tell people in a particular group how to vote...and the fact that this is America, where how you vote is nobody else's damned business besides your own...I think it's just wrong for your basic silly old white man to try to act like he knows more about some other people than they know about themselves.
I mean, it's typical privileged bullshit, to the point where our society has assorted slang terminology to describe exactly that, and that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.
Next, Trump quoted some internet nobody, some conspiracy theorist named Wayne Allyn Root (who I actually had to Google to know who he was) who was trying to say that Israeli Jews love Trump "Like he's the King of Israel, like he's the Second Coming of God."
I feel like I need to point out here, that Trump doesn't appear to be any more popular in Israel than he is anywhere else...except among the Israeli hard-right and Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories. Trump, and Republicans, are being played for advantage, for money and political power by the fanatics in Israeli politics...people for whom the entire basis of their way of life is that they don't believe in Christ, and indeed don't believe in many of the same things that American conservatives believe. Even most people on the Israeli hard-right and many religiously conservative Jews in Israel support abortion and LGBT rights, for example.
But, at the same time that's not the point. Look at Root's language. "King of Israel" and "Second coming of God?" Firstly, No, that's not how Israeli Jews feel about Trump. That's how Wayne Allyn Root feels about Trump. Secondly, and more important, as I've mentioned before I'm a former conservative Christian and former member of the End Times Prophecy Movement.
The sort of language Root is using is the language of Anti-Christ, and in particular the exact same sort of verbiage that Evangelical End Times fiction uses to describe the Anti-Christ and how they imagine the Jews would react to him or her.
I'm serious. Go and read the Left Behind series, or various books by Hal Lindsey, or watch any of innumerable cheesy, badly-done Christian-produced movies on the subject and see for yourself. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Listen, as I've said before I used to be a conservative. This is the same exact kind of dumb out-of-touch paternalism that Republicans have spent at least my entire life accusing Democrats of having.
Thus, showing that they can't see the evidence right in front of their faces (like the fact that the man has a happy wife and two beautiful daughters, for example) and they don't know (or care to learn) even the most basic facts about Islam and how that religion relates to sexuality. As with Christians, yes there are plenty of LGBT Muslims. Unlike LGBT Christians, however, in the Islamic World those people don't have the support of secular society...so life is infinitely harder. While the idea of a "Secret Gay Muslim" in America is ridiculous (and in America and other Western nations most Muslims support LGBT rights!) in places like Egypt or Lebanon or Saudi Arabia, however, there's plenty of Muslims who are secretly gay.
It's a subtle difference, but it's there. Obama ain't from any of those places either way.
No, short of a very, very strictly-spelled-out set of circumstances...that basically doesn't exist in our modern world...you can't be and there's no reason to be a "Secret" Muslim because that religion requires a number of very public acts and behaviors, like prayer five times a day at certain specific intervals...this being something I've observed in public spaces even in my own home town...and also certain body-modesty and dietary requirements. I've quite honestly never seen that Barack Obama or any of his immediate family members observed any of that stuff. In fact, somewhere I remember seeing a clip of Obama fist-bumping the counter-person in a barbecue restaurant where he and some Secret Service agents had gone to pick up some food for the First Family and members of the Detail.
It turned out, in the course of the video, that the subject of sexuality did come up...because the counter guy was gay and was wearing a shirt with a rainbow flag on it.
Islam is generally, vaguely hostile to homosexuality in the same exact way that Christianity is, and for the same exact reasons. In fact, just as Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are most often hostile to LGBT rights in America...so are the various interpretations of Islam that are most hostile to America often the most hostile to LGBT people...and for the same reasons as their supposed Evangelical and Fundamentalist and politically Conservative enemies are.
And, Takfiri nuts aside, mainstream Islam does not condone the targeting of civilians or mass murder in general.
You know what all the conspiracy theories were for? I think this stuff was put out there for a purpose, to strip away people's desire to seek, or even respect for, the truth. I think it was put out there to encourage fanaticism, and ultimately, to help promote false doctrines.
I mean, if you believe Barack Obama is some kind of secretly gay Muslim in spite of all the obviously visible, publicly available evidence to the contrary is it really a big stretch to believe that Donald Trump is god?
Is it really?
The President of the United States is talking, today, like he either thinks that he is the Anti-Christ of Revelations, or like he's having some kind of major psychotic break.
And neither of those things is good for anybody.
Trump's numbers are not great, his disapproval ratings are basically almost the highest they've ever been and that's before you consider the fact that the numbers say we're at the start of an economic recession. Trump is resorting to open racism and seems more out of touch with reality on a daily basis.
If you think any of this is a good situation, or that it will benefit you, then you are a fool and it's as simple as that.
And if you think any of this mess is "Godly" then I'd suggest that you've probably signed up for the wrong side and maybe you should re-think that as well, while you still have the option.
Read the stuff in Revelation that's towards the end, imagine yourself facing that judgment. The phrase "Lake of Fire" comes to mind. Think about what the Bible says happens to those who took that Number, which is representative of the false world-system and the false religion of the Beat.
Think about it. Think hard, and for your own good.
Because especially if you are a Christian, if ya'll signing up to follow somebody who's walking around accepting being called the "King of the Jews" in the modern day, that's the risk. Hey, it's your beliefs. I'm not a Born-Again anything anymore. I'm just telling you what I read about lakes of fire and eternal punishments.
As far as I'm concerned, if you make the choice to replace INRI with TRUMP you deserve what you're going to get.
If you think you're going to get something by following along with this mess, read this again and note how the cult seems to demand more and more of its followers as time goes on. If you think you're going to be able to sneak out the back door with some money or a few right-wing activist judges in your pocket...you're probably not any safer from the cultists than I am.
And if you think Trump wouldn't demand that you worship him, so that you could eat, then you probably don't know much about people with personality disorders.
We need to get this guy out of power, not next year, not tomorrow, now. Impeachment, 25th Amendment, whatever, I don't care. But we need to do it before this madness swallows up our whole country,
God has not seen fit to bring about the Apocalypse yet, but there are still many people in America who desire one...mostly because they want to punish those who they see as rejecting their beliefs.
And if you want to get technical about it, according to those people's own doctrines the first box in that first list of seven judgments just got a big check-mark. And I guarantee you those people will end up loving that the Big Bad is on their side, and they will reinterpret everything else accordingly.
And no, they don't care where that lands them in Eternity. They want to feel all saved and righteous now, while watching the rest of us burn. This is their religion.
Think about that. Where does that leave the rest of us?
It's not about policy or your favorite candidate anymore, it's about getting Trump and these people out of power before they kill us all. Vote...because that's what they're afraid of. You know what can stand up to apocalyptic cults and religious woo woo?
A constitutionally secular Democracy where their god and its doctrines don't get a vote, that's what.
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