The Republican God wears a Red Cap

 

The Republican God Wears a Red Cap

Why is it when a Republican/Maga type is offended by a comment they often respond with things such as: “I will pray for you, or you need Jesus, you are a lost soul etc.”  It seems these Maga/Christians have a certain version of christianity which without any cognitive dissonance allows them to profess to be a devout christian while being loyal to their pedofile, adultrous corrupt leader.  They just don’t miss a beat. This is when we most definitely need the separation of church and state.  

Separating the secular from the absurd is the best way to have a parallel process, perhaps allowing real christians and anybody else to express real compassion, yet vote for a better quality of life and even promote science and education, support vaccines, human equality, quality and standard of life.

I am a Mennonite and have grown up with conservative christian values my entire life.  The Jesus I have come to know is loving, caring and compassionate.  The MAGA /Republican God and their interpretation of Jesus and the scriptures is unrecognizable to my conservative ways.  

My god does not wear a red cap, teach hate, deprive people of education, medical attention or look down on the poor.  I have come to conclude that the sect of christianity that maga identifies with is what paganism is to christianity.  

MAGA reveres their fallen leader with the expectation that he be honoured nation-wide, including football games, nor can bad things be said about him in this new era of “freedom of speech.” The vice president implores citizens, in Orwellian 1984 style, to turn on fellow citizens and report if they say bad things about christian podcasters. Talk show hosts are silenced because their satirical truths pierce the shallow sensitivities of this new ruling class of imbeciles. 

They keep it all under heir red caps.

Here Comes the Sun

 

Here Comes the Sun

A little rock and roll band that made it big

They did their ten thousand hours of practice

Their tipping point to immortality,

“Sleep pretty darling do not cry,

And I will sing a lullaby,

Golden slumbers fill your eyes…”

Perfected their style to change the world.

They changed mine.

“Something in the way she knows

Something in the things she shows me

I don’t want to leave her now.”

From Berlin in the early days to 

Beatlemania

In America

And beyond.

“When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, Let it be…”

I grew up with their tunes

Savoured every lyric,

Every hit,

It speaks to me.

Everybodies laughing

Everybody’s happy

Here comes the Sun King

Quando para mucho mi amore de felice Corazon

Mundo paparazzi mi amore chic aferdi parasol

Questo obrigado tanta mucho que

It runs deep in my being.

Music meant something then,

It was exciting, my parents didn’t understand

But they endulged it.

“Late nights all alone with a test tube…

Bang bang Maxwell’s silver hammer

Writing fifty times I must not be slow…”

As an old man I ride in a taxi in Lima, Peru

The taxi driver and I don’t speak the other’s language,

In an octopuses garden in the shade

I ask my friends to come and see

I’d like to be under the sea

I’d like to be in an octopuses garden in the shade.”

We communicate over a Beatle’s song playing

On the radio in the beat up Chinese-made taxi cab.

He looks at me through the rear view mirror, smiles

Across languages as we sing:

“Pennylane all the people come and go some

stop and say hello.  Pennylane is in my ears and my eyes…”

I wonder does he understand a word?

I pay in Peruvian sol, exit the taxi, still singing

“Here Comes the Sun” my favourite Beatle song,

“Here comes the sun and I say it’s alright,

Little darling its been a long cold lonely winter

And I say it’s alright

The smile is returning to their faces,

Here comes the Sun.”

A Republican God as Bigot

 Republican God as Bigot

Recently, I wrote a short piece on Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated and concluded that although I did not agree with his manner of death, his absence on the scene is beneficial to the divisive nature of present day American society.  Of the some two hundred responses I received, the majority were positive. Although one person took issue with the term assassination, another called me vile and what really caught my attention is that several people said they would pray for me.  

I asked these people, all women, please do not pray for me.  First, this whole “thoughts and prayers” thing does more for the individual who generated them then for the people they are intended to help.  

Secondly, to have a republican, who apparently worships a republican god, one that is all knowing, but at the same time seems to foster fear, racism, hate, bigotry of every kind, all the republican virtues, is not the kind of god I want on my side in a prayer of any kind.  

We can go two routes here, if there is a god as represented in the New Testament then he is loving, kind, generous, humanitarian…basically a libtard by today’s standards.  He would be a socialist and a union member, if she had political affiliations it would be of some sort of liberal party. In the United States since he, Jesus, is not White would be hunted down by ICE at the first opportunity. 

The second interpretation is that God is a construct of man.  This is easier because in this model republicans can just make-up a God, as in the early days, that identically represents their own value systems.  They can then follow this god with no cognitive dissonance.  Their god and their thoughts, beliefs and ideations are all one, as in the diabolical trinity…Hate, racism, greed.  God, or the imaginary “friend” made-up god has the same personality of a MAGA patriotic, nationalistic, white supremest, capitalist, bigot.  This they can grasp, understand and follow without questions. This is a god for the people, a republican god. 

That’s why when any republican says online, or anywhere that they will pray for me, I know in my heart they are not praying to the right god.  They are praying to the republican bigot they made up represented here on Earth in all his glory by Donald Trump.  To think that an immoral man like Trump is part of a spiritual divinity is the ultimate joke.  One which many people sincerely believe in with their own hearts and souls…In his name I say these words.  Amen.

Charlie Kirk for a Better America

 Charlie Kirk for a Better America

When Charlie Kirk was assassinated I didn’t actually know who he was or what he represented. Social media was immediately awash with the things he stood for so I took the time to read about this troubled MAGA mind and why he is revered and abhorred by so many at the same time. 

Since he is a Trump ally and co-founder of Turning Point there was nothing about the man and his point of view that would be of value to my way of thinking.  He espoused the typical conservative agenda which includes gun rights, opposition to abortion and transgender rights.  

None of this is surprising as these are all in the normal range of conservative values. He is one of the conservative Christian nationalists who manage to blur the lines between Trumpism, patriotism, nationalism and Christianity.  Once these four concepts merge I believe one is in dangerous territory.  

Since Charlie Kirk was charismatic, articulate and intelligent he did an excellent job of selling his brand and promoting MAGA. Ironically, his support of guns is also the same vehicle that struck him down in the end; so in a very real sense he is the collateral damage of his own belief system.  

His policies and beliefs are a toxic combination of right wing populism with a multitude of strategies that work together to undermine democratic norms and thereby further polarizing the American population. He speaks like a patriot but one with facist leanings as with his unique and intelligent brand of double speak he can make his visions appealing to the unwashed.

Kirk and his organization are masters at disseminating false information on a variety of topics from election fraud to vaccines  while promoting culture wars, thereby fuelling the powerful distrust in American institutions that weakens the shared basis of facts that democracy depends on to thrive.  This process makes it possible for a man like Musk to disassemble American institutions on the basis of inefficiency and corruption to national MAGA applause. 

Kirk and many like him, including Fox News, lay the ground work making it easy for DOGE to do their damage unabated.  It has always amazed me how little trust Americans, as a whole, have in their own system.  I believe they have been exposed to so many layers of negative propaganda that the American “go-to” is that less government and in some cases no government is the ideal.  

In addition Kirk’s policies play heavily on inflaming divisions over race, gender, sexuality, and education.  His zero sum game of attack fosters hostility toward fellow citizens rather than promoting honest factual debate between them.  He may have presented well in his short and active life, but like Vance in the Vice Presidential debate he did not represent the inner anger and hostilities to fellow Americans that he constantly fostered.  

In his career he was a divisive force, the last thing a divided country needs at this point in their history.  He will be missed by MAGA and honoured by a bent president devoid of honour, truth and dignity, but the world, at least America is a better place now that this voice is silent. 

Conquistador

 Conquistador

The Humbolt current cold, powerful

Pushed perpetually south

Along the Purvian coast

Creating morning fog, light rain

As the joggers hug the curvatures

Of the walkways in wealthy Miraflores

Winding their routes where the coastal 

Waves buoy the surfers then crash the 

Stony shores beneath the cliffs.

The shores now herald the Americans and

Europeans who travel continents

To witness the colonial story.

Pizarro landed in the same surf with his

European greed, disease with his weapons,

a lust and quest for gold, an avarice

Superceded culture, dignity and humanity.

Instinct, then dominance led him to the Inca 

Emperor

Who held for ranson,

With missionary zeal, for a room full of gold,

Only to be executed on colonial promise.

The Spanish nobles pay the church to fill

The catacombs, the dead lay oblivious to

Succession upon succession of

Inca colonalism,

Of conquered neighbouring lesser tribes,

Followed by

the vanquished “lesser Incas.”

There will always be those less.

There will always be the conquistador.

We can not save ourselves from ourselves.

Conservatives as Conservatards

I read Facebook comments it is generally those written by self confessed conservatives/republicns that are the most negative and abusive.  Conservatives (conservatards) are those that generally find the negative in something and therefore support things like the reduction of the minimum wage, while liberals often called libtards find the good in human nature and want to add a dental plan to that phone in order. There are many points of view in between but essentially conservatives seem for centered on fiscal issues, therefore are fiscally conservative and would never support a dental plan or increase the minimum wage while liberals by nature seek to improve the quality of life and oddly even when accused of being fiscally iresponsible, that charge doesn’t seem to consistently hold when viewed over Canadian or American history.  

Each government type, despite their claims, are capble of creating debt.  What Conservatives excel at and leave liberals in the proverbial dust time and time again is selling off national assets, anything from 400 highways in Ontario, to Air Canada, Petro Canada, the Wheat Board, Real estate, Canaair, Candian Arsenals, Teleglobe and Canadian National come to mind.  It was Mulroney who entered Canada into NAFTA and to do so had to reduce the universality of some of our social net programs to be more comparable to the United States. 

Conservatives followed the lead of Reagan and Thatcher promoting the idea of less government and trickle down economics.  If we look at the gaps in wealth in the American economy today it is safe to conclude that nothing actually trickles down.  Conservatives and those who are wealthy have the individual boot strap mental philosophy of life that they are the only ones that work hard while the poor are basically undeserving because they don’t work hard , some don’t even have boot straps.  Its as if the wealthy accomplished everthing in a vacuum without a society to support them, no educated work force, health care system infrastructure etc.  Since they did it for themselves, or so they think, they seem hard done by when it comes to paying taxes.  The idea is that if they created jobs built part of the economy why the taxes that accomplishment in and of itself should prove sufficient.  Besides the rest of the world is just lazy.  The richer one gets the more out of touch one becomes as to who contributes and the fact accomplishments are not in a vacuum they are in a society, a community and therefore there is merit in distribution of wealth.