And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.
And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comes into thy kingdom.
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. Luke 23:39-43Seriously?
Trump flew a "Thin Blue Line" flag instead of a regular American flag at one of his rallies.
I like Presidents who fly the American flag, personally.
But it's more than that, it's the symbolism I find offensive. The whole idea of "Citizens" above and "Criminals" below a certain imaginary line is wrong.
Just because an idea or a symbol is popular does not make it right.
Criminals are citizens, too. I learned this from my family, from my high school government class, from my Air Force Security Police training, hell, I learned this in Church. You don't stop being an American, or a citizen, or a human when you do a crime...and yes, I know this from experience.
At every level of our justice system, from being read your Miranda rights when you are arrested to the appeals for a person on Death Row there are checks and balances, laws that are meant to check the enforcers' behavior, and to guide the defense and the prosecution, and ideally to protect life, yes, even unto death, there are automatic appeals when a person is convicted and condemned and sent to Death Row to await execution.
But it's more than that, too, more than Man's law could ever address.
I was raised and taught to follow a Savior whose last chosen act was to redeem the criminals condemned with Him.
If we don't stand up for the least among us, for the criminals, for the oppressed, for the sick, even for those who fall through the cracks of our society or reject it entirely, what are we?
If we don't believe in Justice, and if we don't recognize that there are higher judges than Man and his petty ego, what the fuck are we even doing here?
If civilization, government and society do not strive to protect the weak from the ruthless, why even have them?
American movement-Conservative Christians, who are by far majority-Protestant, love to talk about how religious they are.
We all love to talk about how much of a beacon of progress and this, that and the other thing America is.
But while Trump was having his "Blue Lives Matter" flag-rally, Pope Francis was making the decision to make an African-American, Wilton Gregory, Cardinal of Washington D.C.
Think about that, for a second. He's the first one in this country. It's 2020.
So far as I know there have been Black Catholics since there's been a Catholic church, and there's even some Black saints, at least two that I know of, hell in 2019 an African American man named Augustine Tolton who was born into slavery in Missouri in 1854 and later became the first African-American Catholic Priest was given the title of 'Blessed' which is the first step in the canonization process. There should've been Black Cardinals and stuff in America like 100 years ago.
The United States of America is is a country, at this point, where for at least one out of three of us, petty rage, racism and shitty hatred is more important than citizenship, more important than our own freedom, more important than life, and more important than
God.
How does anybody, even the people who have this mentality, think that any of us will ever be free so long as this condition persists?
When power and hatred are more important than life, how is anybody supposed to look at this mess and call it a free society, or even call the people who believe in this shit free as individuals?
When whether or not you're happy as a person depends on somebody else being unhappy, when whether or not you see yourself as free depends on somebody else being enslaved, and when you spend your own life judging things by your relative status to somebody else...
What are you? Are you an individual, a person? Or are you just willingly enslaving yourself to systems that everything going all the way back to the Old Testament calls unholy in the hope that you might get something out of it?
And the rub here, is that a lot of the people who do this shit consider themselves not just believers, but exemplars of Christianity.
How that works when you're one of the people who would have been shouting "Crucify Him!" in the streets of Jerusalem, I don't know.
How does it work that even as most of the rest of the Western world and two thirds or more of their own country rejects murderous authoritarianism, American conservatives are infinitely doubling down on exactly that?
How are so many of us...but more to the point so many of the Conservatives so devoid of identity, of personal belief or principles, that they have their very identity and sense of self based on one man, and how are their standards so damned low that it's Donald Trump?
It seems like for most of my life, it sort of went without saying that if you were a conservative...hell, if you were an American in general...but if you were a conservative in particular, you should be able to go through life without worrying that much about the government, or who's in the government.
But now we've got people whose feelings get hurt if you criticize the President, to the point where these soulless boot-lickers will call you a "Traitor?" Traitor to what?
Seriously, is having a President who says racist shit really that important to people?
For one thing, being able to criticize one's leaders is the very point of Democracy, of elected leadership, and of freedom of speech as I was taught these ideals, by conservatives, by Christians, the overwhelming majority of whom were white people. I mean fucking seriously I had one Latina teacher...Sister Maria...in Catholic school in California when I was in the sixth grade and the next time I was being taught by a person of Color was when I had a Black training instructor in the Air Force. I had a couple more a few years later, during my first attempt at college...and it took until then before I was taught by anybody who was an identifiable, much less self-confessed
liberal.
Yet what all those people taught me, much less my own belief that I have an inalienable right to be alive regardless of the vicissitudes of my own government and its utter disinterest in protecting the lives of its citizens...damned near make me a "Socialist" today, and in the eyes of the Trump Supporters, they certainly do.
What are we, if we as a people continue to put up with this crap?!
No, answer the question.
No excuses, no hand-waving, what exactly is important to you?
Because if "Conservative" judges, the political power of people who hate you, White Supremacy or Donald Trump is the answer to that question than you, yes
you personally, have a problem:
You're every bit the Subject of that Pharaoh in ancient Egypt that Moses called all those judgments down on, or the microchipped drone of the Beast's global empire in Revelation who can see all around that God's judgments are being rained down upon your world, but your own bullshit beliefs, your own pride, and your own refusal to change is more important that the truth, or even more important than your own life.
And you, yes, you personally, deserve every bit of This American Revelation and to come face to face with God and His judgment when COVID or internal conflict, war, or starvation because Republicans reneged on promised societal benefits or social safety nets kills your ass.
Maybe we can't help you, maybe we can't reach you. Hell, for all I know maybe you've got some equivalent of that spiritual mark that means you've rejected God and accepted the false system of this world instead.
But if we, the rest of us, do not stand up to you and fight for our own freedoms and rights in the face of your hatred, what are we?
I don't know about you, reader, but I ain't going out like that.
Vote, because we're citizens, not criminals or subjects and because yes, our lives really do depend on it.
That is all. That is the question.
What comes of this election, on November 3rd, is what we are.
Think about that.
VOTE.
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