Aside Archives - WORLD OF THE CROSS

From Their Apocalips to God’s Ears

Last Tuesday, GOP presidential candidate, Governor John Kasich of Ohio, in response to the brutal terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Mali, called for the creation of federal agency to promote and propagandize Christian values. Not in front of a conservative, Evangelical gathering in Iowa, mind you, where some 33% of Iowa Republicans wants to criminalize Islam. But in front of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Even the pearl clutching Lindsey Graham mocked Kasich’s idea, stating that: “I don’t think we should be promoting Judeo-Christian values in the Arab world. I think that was the Crusades.” Boom! Well, it didn’t take long for Kasich to walk back his initial proposal, now claiming that we don’t need such an agency after all. Instead, he called for the rebirth of the Voice of America. Or something.

You’da thunk that Kasich would have learned from the lesson of George W. Bush, who immediately after 9/11, twice called for a “crusade” as part of an aggressive military strategy to punish the evil doers. Not only did W. ditch that needlessly provocative rhetoric, but to his credit, praised and defended Islam:

September 20, 2001

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

Rather than highlight the differences between Christians and Muslims, let’s identify a key commonality instead; specifically, the belief by both that we have entered into an apocalyptic, end times. In the Christian tradition, the Book of Revelation describes a bloody, catastrophic conflict, culminating in the triumphant return of Christ, the Messiah, when peace and justice is restored.

In Muslim eschatology, the end times are foretold in the Hadith, a collection of teachings attributed to the Prophet Muhammed. The Hadith foretells the arrival of a fierce warrior, Muhammad al-Mahdi, (aka The Twelfth Imam, aka The Missing Imam) who vanquishes the wicked, and after a similarly bloody conflict, also brings peace and justice to the world. (The two main sects of Islam, Sunni and Shia, differ in their beliefs as to the origin and history of the Mahdi, but both recognize his indispensable, world transformative role.)

But here’s the kicker: Accompanying the Mahdi will be the Prophet Isa; aka the Prophet Jesus:

According to Islamic tradition, the Mahdi’s tenure will coincide with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (Isa), who is to assist the Mahdi against the Masih ad-Dajjal(literally, the “false Messiah” or Antichrist).

So there you have it, a moment of harmonic convergence, if you will. Maybe the Mahdi and Isa should hold a joint press conference and tell this planet’s denizens to chill the hell out. (Hullo! Anybody up there?)

As The Urantia Book puts it:

You must first recognize man as your brother, and if you honestly desire to do by him as you would have him do by you, the commonplace dictates of justice, honesty, and fairness will guide you in the just and impartial settlement of every recurring problem of economic rewards and social justice.

What’s In A Name?

17 Nov 2010, Ar Raqqah, Syria --- Sheikh Ghazi Rashad Hrimis touches dried earth in the parched region of Raqqa province in eastern Syria, November 11, 2010. Lack of rain and mismanagement of the land and water resources have forced up to half of million people to flee the region in one of Syria's largest internal migrations since France and Britain carved the country out of the former Ottoman Empire in 1920. REUTERS/Khaled al-Hariri (SYRIA - Tags: AGRICULTURE ENVIRONMENT) --- Image by © KHALED AL-HARIRI/Reuters/Corbis — 17 Nov 2010, Ar Raqqah, Syria — Sheikh Ghazi Rashad Hrimis touches dried earth in the parched region of Raqqa province in eastern Syria, November 11, 2010. Lack of rain and mismanagement of the land and water resources have forced up to half of million people to flee the region in one of Syria’s largest internal migrations since France and Britain carved the country out of the former Ottoman Empire in 1920.

What’s in a name? That which we call a turd by any other name would smell as rank.
—William Shakespeare [with apologies thereto]

In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack on Paris last week, GOPer presidential candidates are wetting themselves over the opportunity to change their image as clueless opportunists to macho champions of national security. A pissing contest has developed among the majority over whom would be tougher on the terra’ists than the feckless, petulant, secret Muslim in the White House. The centerpiece of this emerging strategy is to put tens of thousands of combat troops into the Syrian meat grinder. (Time for a reprise of The Who’s Teenage Wasteland?) Thus far, Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and celebrity entertainer Donald Trump have resisted putting “boots on the ground,” but don’t be surprised if they start walking that back as the campaign heats up.

Another refrain emanating from the right wing noise machine is to attack anyone that won’t accept their rhetorical construction, radical Islamists, to describe terrorists that use a distorted interpretation of the Muslim religion to justify their actions, and to recruit impressionable and disaffected youth. (For a counter-view, see Juan Cole’s Top Ten Ways Islamic Law Forbids Terrorism.) That includes Senator Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and President Obama. Framing the conflict that currently exists between less than 0.01% of the world’s Muslims and the largely Christian world as a Clash of Civilizations is part of The New American Century promoted by some of the same neocons that are part of Jeb Bush‘s foreign policy team— you know, war criminals— like neo-conman Paul Wolfowitz, who helped “liberate” Iraq by toppling Saddam Hussein, setting into motion the very chaos responsible for the crisis that now infects the entire Middle East. (ISIS is the direct descendant of al-Qaeda in Iraq, created in 2004 to fight the US invasion.)

Naturally, the current batch of GOPer presidential candidates are too dense to realize that they are playing directly into the hands of the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh propaganda noise machine. Its operators would love nothing more than to get the non-Muslim world to condemn, by association, one of the world’s great monotheistic religions.

In conjunction with 1) the well-nigh hopeless economic situation facing the vast majority of young Arab Muslims, impoverished by the massive concentration of wealth into the hands of a few autocratic oil sheiks and their families (the ultimate example of wealth inequality); and 2) the history of Western military intervention in the Middle East that included putting military bases in the holy land of Saudi Arabia (which gave birth to the original Al Qaeda), together they provide a terrorist recruitment bonanza. As former top aide and speechwriter to President George W. Bush and Washington Post opinion writer Michael Gerson writes:

Rejecting a blanket condemnation of Islam is not a matter of political correctness. It is the requirement of an effective war against terrorism, which means an effective war against the terrorist kingdom in Syria and western Iraq.

Not to be outdone by their Congressional colleagues, currently some 28 Republican governors and one Democrat have stated that, despite President Obama’s pledge to accept ten thousand Syrian refugees, a paltry sum compared to the commitment of individual European countries (Turkey is already hosting two million), they’re going to pull a Lester Maddox and block the “golden door ” of immigration with a big fat pick ax handle. At least thirteen governors, 12 Democrats and one Independent, have said they would accept the refugees. While the Refugee Act of 1980 prevents states from refusing admittance, that won’t stop the Republican governors from posturing the hell out of the issue. Look for them to dump the mechanics of changing the law on Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Since 9/11/2001, none of the 784,000 refugees admitted into the country, some 35-40% of which are children, have ever been arrested on terrorism charges. Thus far, the federal government’s vetting procedures have worked just fine, thank you. (EDIT: By another accounting of approximately 785,000 refugees, a dozen have either been arrested or removed; none were from Syria.)

Furthermore, Wingers are attacking Bernie for saying Climate Change is the USA’s number one national security issue, despite reports from the national security community affirming same. (See also On the Record: Climate Change as a National Security Risk According to U.S. Administration Officials.) Instead of acknowledging that these reports even exist, Wingers resort to outrage and personal attacks, accusing Sanders of being weak on defense.

Most wars are the product of resource scarcity. In the case of Syria, a devastating drought forced rural farmers to abandon their farms and migrate to the big cities to feed their families. This created social pressures that resulted in a number of peaceful demonstrations that asked for greater governmental support. These pleas for humanitarian assistance were met with extreme violence from the government of Basshar Al-Sadad, and rapidly devolved into a catastrophic civil war. Initially, Sadad sent in his goon squads to suppress the protesters. When that didn’t work, he upped the ante. Among other war crimes, he denied food and medicine to desperate civilian enclaves, and dropped barrel bombs on them from helicopters, some of which are believed to have contained chlorine gas, according to the Syrian American Medical Society.

Funny how one thing leads to another. The same mindset that denies anthropogenic climate change as a factor leading to regional wars, denies that US the Exceptional is no longer capable of being the world’s policeman. They’d rather pursue their own ideological crusade. Some day maybe they’ll reach the same level of insight that the great philosopher Pogo reached when he observed: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

If Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz had their way, they’d amend Emma Lazarus‘s poem affixed to the Statue of Liberty as follows:

“Give me your tired, your poor, (so long as they’re Christian)
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free (except the chlorine gassed, who might be terrorists in disguise),
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. (maybe not Anders “I’m 100% Christian” Breivik, though)
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me: (Muslims need not apply, despite what the Constitution says about religious tests)
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” (Sorry, out of order)

JEB! vs. MAR!

Has anyone seen Poppy Bush since this week’s GOP debate and Jeb!’s campaign firings?

A paralegal for a Huston attorney reports that during a visit to the Harris County courthouse Thursday, she noticed a file lying on the counter, tagged with the name of George H.W. Bush. The paralegal, who wishes to remain anonymous, admitted she was consumed with curiosity and opened the folder. Inside was a codicil to the will of Bush the Elder. In a nutshell, the amendment stipulated that the part of his estate, previously assigned to his second son John Ellis Bush (aka JEB!), would be immediately transferred to one Marco Antonio Rubio. (aka MAR!): Jeb! vs Mar! begins!

A spokesman for Bush the Elder refused to comment. But a reporter assigned to the Rubio campaign was able to corner him in the not-so-secret passageways that run under the Capitol Building, trying to duck yet another Senate vote.

“Senator Rubio! There are numerous reports in the press that major donors to the Bush campaign are leaving him in droves and are flocking to your campaign. This apparently includes his own family,”she exclaimed, dramatically thrusting a copy of 41’s codicil into his face. “Surely you’ve seen this by now. Care to comment?”

Rubio, pulling a large yellow sponge from his coat pocket and pressing it feverishly to his forehead, managed to compose himself. After sucking down large gulps of Fiji Water supplied to him by an attentive aide, he replied:

“You know, it’s a hard day’s night when your former mentor turns on you like Master Jeb! turned on me after Wednesday night’s debate. But I understand that as the GOP’s former front runner and heir apparent to the Bush family political dynasty, he is freaking out. Nonetheless, I feel hurt. It would be like Mr. Miyagi suddenly turning on Daniel San and hitting him over the head with a saki bottle.”

At which point two of his larger aides grabbed him under his dampened armpits and escorted him out of the hallway. Ewe.

Saki to me.

NEVER COMES THE DAY

The Moody Blues live in Paris in 1970; “Never Comes The Day.”

That’s right, forty-five years ago… and if you heard this song back then and you still remember it, you are probably ancient.
The vocals and flute are live. The rest is backing track which is why you will sometimes hear a double flute.

Three Things To Remember About JEBOOsh

If you really want to feel the BOOsh, you must click it.

It’s pretty simple, really; if you don’t remember how the pit of your stomach felt when George H W. Bush, and George W. Bush won their respective nominations and subsequent elections, then maybe you haven’t actually discovered the “pit” in your stomach. It’s an ill-defined region of the lower abdomen, regarded as the visceral repository of strong feelings, especially anxiety.

I know I have one, because whenever I see a political poll showing Jeb Bush leading that ever-proliferating pack of Republican tools, it immediately regurgitates a loop of his little brother, struggling to get through that simple aphorism, and I get the queasies bad.

I realize the head of Trump Entertainment Resorts will continue to blow up the Republican primary process until we are all nauseated. But eventually, one of those clowns will manage to wade through their political slime-fest and onto the convention floor, to accept the nomination.

Although it seems like that event is a long way off, already there have been one or two nanoseconds when the pit of my stomach reminds me— it could happen again— and sends my imagination spinning wild into a future where stupefying things happen: another Bush is handed the presidency by the Supreme Court; more young Americans dying in four, maybe eight more years of senseless oil wars; all manner of social and cultural backwardness, including the complete destruction of the “middle” class; and the depths of political despair. By God. We can’t let that happen. We can’t get fooled again.

GOLF IS JUST FOR RICH DOUCHEBAGS LIKE ME.

Lemme tell yooz something okay— you see those Mexican guys behind me, the non-rapist, non-criminal type Mexicans, playin’ there in my tremendous yard? I have assured the non-rapist and noncriminal Mexicans, the good ones, I assume, that I love them and their country, and their smart leaders who are smarter than our leaders!
Look, I am tremendously wealthy, treee-mennn-dously wealthy— and trust me, I can afford to love everyone of them if I wanted to, but let me say this: instead, they are sending us their criminals, their rapists, their murderers, their tacos, their tortillas, and you know, many many other types of their food I don’t care to pronounce. There could be anywhere from 11 million to 34 million, nobody knows; nobody knows. And you know I’m right, they know I’m right, everybody knows I’m right, including the LGPA, the PGA, the USGA, the LMOP, the QRST, everybody!

“In response to Mr. Trump’s comments about the golf industry ‘knowing he is right’ in regards to his recent statements about Mexican immigrants, we feel compelled to clarify that those remarks do not reflect the views of our organizations. While the LPGA, PGA of America, PGA Tour and USGA don’t usually comment on Presidential politics, Mr. Trump’s comments are inconsistent with our strong commitment to an inclusive and welcoming environment in the game of golf, to anyone who can afford it.” —LPGA

KICK THEIR BUTTS, BERNIE.

That’s right Uncle Bernie, KICK THEIR BUTTS.

“Their” being all those Americans who sit on their butts and don’t vote in elections. “Their” being those Americans who aren’t even registered to vote. “Their” being all Americans who think Politics in this country is broken beyond repair.

If you happen to own one of those butts mentioned above, or are just a less than enthusiastic voter when it comes to the 2016 presidential elections, because, well, you’re too busy— here’s a news flash for you— and try to imagine it being delivered with a swift kick to your buttocks: The new base of the Democratic party is unmarried women, people of color, and young voters— the Rising American Electorate (RAE)— and they already represent a majority of voting-eligible citizens.

And that’s totally meaningless when the majority of them don’t actually vote. Yes, they flexed their new-found electoral muscles to elect the first black president, and then blew off the 2010 midterm elections, because:

• 2.7% could not find their polling place
• 3.9% forgot to vote
• 5.5% experienced a registration issue
• 8.6% were out of town
• 10.0% were punishing their own party
• 10.2% don’t know what “elections” are
• 11.8% said they were just plain indolent
• 12.7% did not like the candidates or campaign issues
• 15.7% reported not being interested
• 18.9% were too busy

(Black and Red stats are real; Purple stats are my best snarky guess. )

Non-voters are disproportionately young, single, less educated, and more likely to be of an ethnic minority than those who say they are infrequent voters, and those who are frequent voters. Forty percent of nonvoters are under thirty years old, compared to 29% of infrequent voters and 14% of frequent voters. Compared to 60% of infrequent voters, and 70% of frequent voters, 54% of nonvoters are Caucasian.

The perception that politics are controlled by special interests represents a significant excuse for lack of voter participation. In recent surveys, a feeling that candidates “don’t really speak to them” was cited as a leading reason why infrequent voters and nonvoters justify not voting.

The kids are turned off from politics, they say.
Most of ’em don’t even want to hear about it.
All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds
and smoke that goddamn marrywanna … yeah, and just
between you and me Fred, that’s probably all for the best.
—HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

And then there are voices (well, at least one voice) that says, yawn.. it’s Obama‘s fault, and it’s been his fault all along. “Nothing better dramatizes the damage that President Obama has done to Democrats than the fact that Republicans now control the House of Representatives, the Senate, and a majority of governorships across America. Obama’s political style depresses liberal Democratic voters, who then would not turn out on Election Day, while inflaming conservative Republican voters, who would turn out,” blah, blah, blah.

Public opinion, the mores— is the basic energy in social evolution and state development. And when that energy is manifested through universal suffrage in the hands of uneducated and indolent majorities, we get the likes of George W. Bush; Louie Gohmert; Michele Bachmann; Sarah Palin; the current GOP Clown Car.

Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate. The character of government is always determined by the character of those who compose it. As civilization progresses, suffrage needs to be effectively modified. Every free and intelligent group of citizens represents a vital and functioning organ within the larger governmental organism.

Unless a free people are educated— taught to think intelligently and plan wisely— freedom usually does more harm than good. When fifty percent of any nation’s people become brainwashed, uneducated, intellectually challenged buffoons, and possesses the ballot— that nation is doomed. The dominance of mediocrity will spell the downfall of any nation.

[NOTE TO BERNIE] Bernie, when you make it to the White House, and after you’ve solved all the really intractable problems facing America and the World, make sure voting is compulsory, and make it easy to do so. And if they don’t vote, say because they think they’re too busy, not interested, don’t give a shit, then assess heavy fines against all who fail to cast their ballots.

The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing only those who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.
—The URANTIA Book