Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, Would God go with GOP or Joe?

 

By Hal Brown

Here's a personal note about my own religious background and beliefs.

This blog is really meant to be an addenudum to what I wrote yesterday, here:

I initially thought of the title of today's blog after reading this article about Evangelicals supposedly losing their grip on the GOP on Raw Story.

Click to read in Raw Story

I tried to make an illustration with this image:

It was taking too long to position the pointing finger properly on something like a stone tablet so I went with the easier to make image you see on the top of the page.

Click to enlarge

The hypocritical irony of beliving that  God gave the 10 Commandments to Moses as the basic rules for mankind to abide by  and how Republicans flout as many as half of them is beyond the scope of what I want to write about today.  Suffice to share the new 10  GOP Commandments (Slate 2021) by Liz Cheney and take note of the failed efforts in Texas to require that public schools to display them. Texas, of course, is the state where its governor, Greg Abbott, is putting barbed wire on floats acrtoss the Rio Grand to stop deperate immigrants from crossing.  

So much has been written about the abject hypocrisy of Evangelicals who support Trump and the other GOP candidates for president who either not only don't have any semblance of so-called the Christian values like those described on this Christian website (and like Trump probably don't believe in God). Then there's the most devout candidate, Pence, who managed to worship the false god Trump as he again and again did things that proved he was as cruel as the Devil. (More about Pence here: CNN's Tapper corners Mike Pence over accusations he used his faith to run cover for Trump)

The question I pose for Evangelicals is who would God choose to be president? 

A great deal has been written about Einstein's quote about quantum mechanics, God does not play dice with the universe, and what he meant by it (here for example). 

I doubt too many Evangelicals consider how quantum mechanics fits into God's plan, but I think they'd endorse the idea that God has a plan and everything He does is for a reason.

In other words, this goes back to my title, God does not play Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe when making decisions that effect life on Earth.

Which presidential candidate actually walks the walk? While Biden doen't talk the talk of the Evangelicals can anyone who thinks clearly about what he believes and what he has done and is trying to do for people is walking the walk that a kind, loving, and compassionate God would approve of?

You don't need to read these 100 quotes from the Bible about the poor, for example, to ask the question.

Click images to enlarge them

There's nothing more I can add to this.

"Listen up GOP candidates and your pious flock, according to me and my son, woke is good." God*

By Hal Brown

* Disclaimer: I do not profess to know God actually said "listen up GOP candidates and your pious flock, according to me and my son, woke is good." I think that the Bible's deity probably would say this. There's more about my faith history on bottom of the page.

I read the following in Raw Story:

Click above for article

This was my comment in Raw Story in response:

 If there was a capital G god, the most real tradtional all powerful diety decision maker ruling over Earth and all points in every direction to the end of the Universe and perhaps beyond, you know, the capital G god who looks like one of the images below, why would capital H he have had a son he sent to Earth who preached a message to mankind that in its essence was what the GOP is calling woke. Read (Newsweek) "Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting 'Liberal' Teachings of Jesus" here.

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The Newsweek article has as its central premise that Trump, other GOP presidential candidates, as well as many members of the party who are pandering to Evangelicals  have "transformed the political landscape in the U.S. to the point where some Christian conservatives are openly denouncing a central doctrine of their religion as being too weak and liberal for their liking."

I didn't read the Daily Beast article cited in Raw Story since I don't have a subscription but I did look at the other article. It was from The Christian Post (below) describing the speech Ron DeSantis gave which concluded with this sentence: He told the audience, “As president, we are going to leave the woke mind virus in the dustbin of history, where it belongs, once and for all.” 

Click above 

Here are two other Raw Story comments with illustrations (click to enlarge):

A commenter who goes by SailorRet posted many more images here.

Below are a few of the other comments in Raw Story which I think make excellent points:

BowlingGreenMassacreSurvivor an hour ago edited

“I don't know how you could be a leader without having faith in God," DeSantis said. 

The only member of the Founding Fathers who had beliefs similar to Evangelicals was John Adams, and get this, he was also the only member of that group who was an abolitionist.

(Yeah, maybe that was a big reason he and Thomas Jefferson hated each other. But the point is clear.)

METAL_TREK an hour ago

Yeah. Woke is why young people are putting off getting married and having kids. Not because they can't fucking AFFORD to have kids thanks to 40 years of union busting and trickle down pushed by their own party. 🙄

Too bad for them, the young people aren't buying their line of bullshit the way boomers and a chunk of my generation (X) did.

No lie. My 20 year old asked me what they could do to avoid struggling with bills and stuff the way I sometimes do. I looked them straight in the face and said "Don't have kids unless you have a great job and you're living with someone who also has a great job. I love you and your sister, but kids are expensive and you need two solid incomes to raise them" (my ex, their mother, was stay at home and ran off with her affair partner just as she was supposed to go back to work, but that's a different story). My 20 year old is LGBT and doesn't want kids anyway. My 20 year old also votes. And NOT for RepubliQans.

So thank 40 years of GQP union busting and trickle down. Not woke (whatever the fuck that is).

AdvocacyShouts an hour ago

"And it’s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition."

Um...actually...Ron...it's having a strong moral compass and a desire to do the right thing (for others as well as yourself) that keeps people unwavering.

It's very weak, and irresponsible, to act as if some invisible being is directing and supporting you, because it's a lie and you know it. You do what you want, giving into your hate and fear, because then you can take it out on others - and blame the outcome on your deity.

As for "COVID-ism", Vivek? We all know every single one of you candidates is vaccinated. So you can fk off with that bs.

And you'll never eradicate "wokism", because that's just respect for others and not trying to control who people are. Us telling y'all to stop banning books is not the same as you telling us which gender we are. You're just so convinced you're right, when you're very, very wrong!

n Goth We Trust-91 counts PAB23 minutes ago edited

Ex-Vice President Mike Pence told the audience, "The facts speak for themselves. Today more young people are delaying having a family altogether. The share of never-married adults has tripled since 1980. People are getting married later, having children later in life; declining U.S. birth rates" — all the "hallmarks of decline."
—
Phvck YOU Q-Tip! That's called freedom to decide when or what to do in ones life. What is declining is American's showing up on Sunday mornings for sermons, which now a days at many churches are white Christian nationalist propaganda.

Linda Beaver8 minutes ago

These. Christofascists. Are. Insane. I've posted this quite a few times over the past several years on quite a few threads, but it bears repeating: When you mix religious fanaticism with political fervor, you have big trouble. Wasn't it Barry Goldwater who said, "when fascism comes to the United States, it'll be wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible"?

Aldewacsa minute ago

...""protect children from 'indoctrination' in public schools.""...
Now THERE is projection on steroids... Religious schools of ANY religion are breeding grounds for extremism and bastions of indoctrination. Manipulation at its finest.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" ... OOPS forgot about that, did you? If we all followed the dictate of keeping government out of religion and vise-versa, and ENFORCE that, we'd be much better off.
But NOOO, they claim to be pure and god-fearing, but then reality bites ... right, Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski? Donald Trump and (..MANY..)? Ken Paxton and his side piece?

As it is, there are millions running around proclaiming that they "live by" the demands in their religious texts, but they fail to even provide a modicum of proof that their god exists.
Should that not be STEP #1 before committing to your chosen cult? ... I.E. Prove there is a basis for your beliefs in magic? Asking too much, I know...

A personal note:

I was raised a secular Jew.

I suppose I am so un-Jewish that I just had to be reminded what today was, so I am adding this to the blog:

My town of Mt. Vernon, NY at the time I lived there had a very large Jewish population and I barely knew any Christians. There was one Christian family on my block. 

As a adult I was amazed to learn that three of the major players in the failed illegal attempt in 1947 (when I was three) to buy the soon to become a sovereign country of Israel a surplus aircraft carrier named the Attu for $125,000 (described in article here) were my neighbors. They lived literally next to my house or one house away. I discovered that the men I knew, the fathers of my best toddler friends, were being investigated by the FBI and there were agents prowling the treelined streets of my  tranquil neighborhood.  I am still in frequent touch with two of these friends.

My great-grandfather was one of the founders of a major synagogue tthere.

Click above to enlarge

Most of my male friends and all of my boy relatives went to Hebrew school and went through the •  bar mitzvah ceremony with the attendent big party afterwards. My parents couldn't afford this and didn't believe it was important anyway. 

They taught me that God was simply a force for good.  I used to say the "now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep, God bless Mommy and Daddy etc." prayer every night when I went to bed. I stopped believing in God when I pretty young after one experience. I had terrible stomach cramps and was sitting on the toilet. I was already doubting that there could be an actual God but was in such pain I said out loud "God I promise that if you stop the pain I will believe in you." The pain persisted for a long time. I figured nobody with the power to stop it existed because after all I knew I was a good kid and didn't do anything which I needed to be punished for.

Now if I had to describe my position on matters of faith I would call myself an ethical atheist.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders' grim vision of a "woke mob" enforcing Satanic rituals

 

Click image to enlarge

This was the subtitle of this Salon story:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders' grim vision of a "woke mob" enforcing Satanic rituals

This is the real way the article appears.

Regular readers of my blog know that I often can't resist making my own version of images used to illustrate various articles.

Images I used to make my illustration

Excerpt:

I looked for any mention of Satanism or specifically of satanic rituals in the article but there weren't any. She may not have uttered his name because she believes, as some people do, that you must never say the name of a demon out loud.

The word "rituals" does appear three times:

"We are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn't start and never wanted to fight," she proclaimed, although the antecedent of "we" was not altogether clear. "Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols," she said. 

That certainly sounds alarming, but specifics were again absent: What false idols and what flags, and where are these alleged rituals mandatory?

"Every day," Sanders said, "we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols." 

She also may have wanted to invoke this QAnon conspiracy belief...

... that liberal politicians and Hollywood "elites" are harvesting the blood of children to extract adrenochrome for its psychedelic and life-extending benefits. (Reference)

Sanders has company among the super-Maga high priests. None other than a blood relative of His Highness Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., believes that Hollywood satanic rituals will soon be exposed. Hollywood, Democrats, you say tomato they say tomatoh.

One could suggest that Satan is one of the Democrat's false idols, although it could be said that if you are a Christian who believes in Heaven and Hell to suggest that Satan is not real, i.e., false, would also be to say that God and Christ aren't real either. 

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Sanders is a sincerely true-believing Christian. This would mean that she believes in Satan, aka the Devil, Lucifer, Beezlebub, the antichrist and 25 or so other names from the Bible. As the righteous believer she is, she would believe both God and Satan are keeping an active eye on her and her activities. 

It would seem that in the State of the Union response she has mightily pissed Satan off. Why does he even need demons. He has a "woke mob" working for him. Not only are they woke, but they all are well educated and have significantly above average IQs.

I sure hope for her sake that God will protect her from this mob... not really... I am rooting for Satan. 

Seriously, though, unless you are a delusional MAGA nutcase there is one word in the Salon article title that rings as true as a church bell. 

_______________________________

Footnotes:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not known to have ever claimed to be a witch or having had ever attended a Witches Sabbath. This is a midnight meeting of witches to practice witchcraft and sorcery; in the Middle Ages it was supposed to be a demonic orgy.

Above: Sixteenth-century Swiss representation of Sabbath gathering from the chronicles of Johann Jakob Wick. Note Devil seated on serpent-enlaced throne, witch performing the osculum infame upon a demon and another being aided by a demon to summon a storm from her cauldron, while others carouse and prepare magic potions

Unlike failed Delaware GOP senate candidate Christine O'Donnell she has never had to state that she wasn't a witch.

Insert: Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Witches’ Sabbath (1797-98), oil on canvas, 43 x 30 cm, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, Spain. 

Addendum: No insult is intended as far as those who practice Wicca or Paganism. Differences  between them and Satan worship are explained here. The likes of Sanders and QAnon cultists don't know anything about Wicca and Paganism and I am sure think they all worship Satan. Of course this is not true (LINK).

Click above to enlarge

Reference to above here 

The Arkansas  federal funding as a share of total state revenue is 30.3%. Reference.

Satanic ritual abuse has been the subject of serious scholarship. Here's one such example from the Christian Research Institute website. ( See Wikipedia). Note that it was originally published in 2009 but updated in 2022.

The Hard Facts about Satanic Ritual Abuse

Here's the Wikipedia entry about satanic panic which is about allegations of ritual abuse.

This was in VOX in 2021:

Why Satanic Panic never really ended

The collective fears that consumed the US in the 1980s and ’90s are still alive and well — all the way through QAnon and beyond.