HoltesThoughts: Charlatans, Dominionists, Fanatics! And Russians???

Religion in his world has always been dominated by Charlatans and Fanatics. Typically the Charlatans pose as holier than thou folks who can speak for God, and stir up fanatic followers. Their sociopathy and/or narcissism appeals to those who want to be told what to think and believe. Those who fear their own shadow, and those who are otherwise angry and deeply frustrated. In the United States, our religious right used to be deeply fanatically anti Russian. Then the Russians shed Bolshevism, collapsed, turned into a kakistocracy of oligarchs and re-emerged as an ultra-right nation. The Socialist paradise became a hell. The state melted away into a merger of Mafia and Oligarchy. And our Right Wing found a love affair with Russian Spies and a Bromance with President Putin.

And since fanatic authoritarian religious people are used to being led by Exploitive, Manipulative, Amoral & Dishonest Narcissists, who cynically tell them what they want to be they found Donald Trump and turned him into their King David or Cyrus the Great! [Franklin/Trump]

The License of Being like King David

Franklin Graham, who is neither as wise nor has the integrity of his father, likens Trump to King David & has found God in Russia.

Remember, if you've actually read your bible, no matter how hard the authors and editors of the bible try to portray King David as a hero and a paragon of Virtue, he actually was a very flawed, even despicable man. He betrays his King (Saul) and goes over to the Philistines, at the very moment the Philistines are about to destroy Saul's army and murder him. He is portrayed as loving Saul's son Jonathan, but also betrays him when he goes over to the Philistines. Later, He betrays Uriah the Hittite so he can acquire his wife. An late in his life he engages in acts of vengeance that would be at home on "Game of Thrones", yet he is lionized in the Bible. And Dominionists believe that those who are the elect of God can sin with impunity as long as they are doing God's work., which excuses a lot of narcissism an even Sociopathy. And I suspect is their excuse for living duel lives as Christian evangelicals, and often hypocritical or even despicable in private.

Hypocrisy is not a new thing!

The reality of Right Wing Religious leaders is that they are pure hypcrits. They know the bible, quote it conveniently and do the exact opposite of what they preach & condemn the same kinds of things they practice. A friend shared with me this excerpt from Lee Atwater's hypocrisy. He was hardly alone. Newt Gingrich also got fame around this time for womanizing. They seem to really believe they can do antying as long as people believe they are doing right.

Trump as Cyrus!

For example Wallnau said God told him specifically that Trump is:

“a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness.” [RW Watch]

Now why anyone who is an actual Christian would call being kind and applying basic ethical standards to fellow human beings is a bad thing. But the Right Wing in the United States wants a license to practice Bigoted, demeaning and deprecating language and actions. They claim that doing different is PC, even though their being forced to use code language and symbols comes from their own prior leadership. The late unlamented Lee Atwater taught "PC" to the Right Wing as a means to get their message across under legal radar.

God Using People

Wallnau dedicated a section of his website to explaining why:

“Trump is the guy that God is going to use.” [RW Watch]

Trump also promised to give them everything they want; impunity to get involved in politics, avoid taxation, and oppress their own people!

“I ran across a picture of Trump that said “Donald Trump 45th President of the United States.” Immediately the thought hit me “read Isaiah 45!” I was shocked by what I discovered. It’s about a king named Cyrus and he would not appear on the scene for another 100 years. Cyrus was a secular ruler. He was not a believer. He was “anointed” to do certain things “for Jacob my servants sake.”

“Like King Cyrus, says Wallnau, Trump is a secular figure who God will use to get things done. And, he told Strang, he told Trump all about the Cyrus prophecy when he met with a group of African American ministers last year.” [RW Watch]

God also "put a lying spirit" in the prophets of Israel, so they could be useful in taking down some arrogant and evil Kings. So being elect is not always an endorsement of behavior so much as God's way of using Karma to illustrate His messages. These folks are blaspheming when they arbitrarily interpret the bible. But when a EMAD demagogue is fighting an "enemy" he/she throws those rules out the window.

“Wallnau calls Trump a “chaos candidate,” someone who is unconventional enough to push back hard against a radical left that is transforming America into “an increasingly hostile anti-Christian culture.” And Hillary Clinton, he told Strang, is helping take America down the road that Messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn, author of the end-times bestseller “The Harbinger,” is predicting. [RW Watch]

I'm not sure a sane or an ethical person would be hurrying "end times." Those are not the behaviors of ethical people. And they have a strange way of studying religion. They used demented biblical exegesis for purely partisan purposes including:

“Hillary Clinton is part of a machine that is taking America socially, spiritually, and economically into everything the Harbinger talks about…the Harbinger has Hillary on it. That’s why I was thinking, I want to do an article called, ‘Lead us not into Trumptation but deliver us from Hillary.’ Because Hillary Clinton is not an individual, she is a machine with an entire ideologic [sic] agenda that goes all the way to the most ghastly interests you can imagine in terms of the survival of Christian civilization.” [RW Watch]

The Russian Evangelical Connection

But these incredibly perverse people go further. They are coordinating with the Russians! Recently nearly the entire RW evangelical movement met with the Russians! They seem to:

"esterday, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence made headlines for his appearance at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians, where he proclaimed Christians to be among the most persecuted people in the world."

Of course this is completely bogus (unless one lives in majority Muslim Countries) as my friend stroop comments:

"The Christian Right is not being oppressed, they're the oppressors." [bedfellows]

These hypocrits make a common cause with Russians. I suspect more for the money than the ideological commons because as Stroop notes:

"While there are parts of the world where the persecution of religious minorities, including Christians, is a real problem, the United States is not one of them. Russia, on the other hand, has enacted laws that bar Protestant groups from proselytizing on penalty of fines, and has even gone so far as to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses entirely."

So What they hey? The Russians spend a lot of time cultivating traitors. And both are demagoguing Muslims...

That is enough for this entry. If your appetite is wet now: