STATE WORSHIP
Daniel 3
1 King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, sixty cubits high and six cubits wide, [a] and set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. 2 He then summoned the satraps, prefects, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates and all the other provincial officials to come to the dedication of theimage he had set up.
3 So the satraps, prefects, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates and all the other provincial officials assembled for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up, and they stood before it.
4 Then the herald loudly proclaimed, “Nations and peoples of every language, this is what you are commanded to do: 5 As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. 6 Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace.”
Exodus 20
The Ten Commandments
2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
SARAH’S AMERICAN MANIFEST DESTINY & ISOLATIONISM
Sarah Palin and the T-Party, of which she is the star, politics is a mixture and also throw-back to the politics of the 1900s. The most important part of this political stew is the concept of Manifest Destiny and Isolationism. Adam Woog posits that at the beginning of the 20th century the term “manifest destiny” had been used since 1845 to signify the ideas that Americans were a special people, that their land was a special place, and that they had an almost religious mission to create a great country based on institutions such as republican government, individual liberty, and capitalism. After the continental United States had been more or less settled, many Americans began to extend this vision abroad.
If the United States was destined to be the greatest nation on earth, they reasoned, it was only natural for Americans to bring their government and way of life to others. This attitude was bolstered in part by the now discredited theory that people of northern European descent, especially those of English origin, were genetically superior to other races.
To expansionists, manifest destiny overseas was not a greedy campaign for power or an expression of ethnic superiority. It was a grandly moral crusade to remake the world for the better—a campaign waged by diplomats, merchants, industrialists, the military, and by religious and cultural missionaries. (94)
Sarah Palin’s manifest destiny approach is ciphered from Theodore Roosevelt’s personal attitude that in wrote in his autobiography in 1913:
During the seven and a half years that I was President, this Nation behaved toward all other nations precisely as an honorable man behaves to his fellow-men. We made no promise which we could not and did not keep. We made no threat which we did not carry out. We never failed to assert our rights in the face of the strong, and we never failed to treat both strong and weak with courtesy and justice; and against the weak when they misbehaved we were slower to assert our rights than we were slower to assert our rights than we were against the strong.
Not everyone was pleased, however. A small but vocal group of Isolationists strongly opposed America’s expansion. Some feared that expansion could lead to “contamination” from supposedly inferior non-Caucasian races.
The Isolationists also had a practical side to their argument. They pointed out that acquiring far-off territories would create enormous expenses, anger other countries, and inevitably lead to exhausting wars of independence. No matter how Isolationists and expansionists divided themselves, the Spanish-American War left a permanent mark on America. (96)
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE MEDIA
Sarah Palin, like Adolf Hitler, is a creation of the media. Prior to this they were merely cultural jokes. When people try to make a point about Hitler outside of the Holocaust, they are usually silenced because of political gravitas. It is now time to examine the phenomenon of Hitler as a media creation outside of the Jewish Holocaust. Hitler had the talents of a skilled rhetorician and actor—but lacked the self promotion to make him a demigod until he teamed up with Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Hoffman.
Hitler's field headquarters, Hitler with staff, May or June 1940, Heinrich Hoffmann front row far right
Hoffmann worked in his father's photographic shop and as a photographer in Munich from 1908.[1] He joined the NSDAP in 1920 and was chosen by its new leader Hitler as his official photographer. The two became close friends. Hoffmann's photographs were published as postage stamps, postcards, posters and picture books. Following Hoffmann's suggestion, both he and Hitler received royalties from all uses of Hitler's image (even on postage stamps), which made the photographer wealthy. In 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag and in 1938 Hitler appointed him a 'Professor'.
Youth around Hitler, a Hoffmann picture book
During the Third Reich Hoffmann wrote many books on Hitler such as The Hitler Nobody Knows (1933) and Jugend um Hitler (1934). In 1938 Hoffmann wrote three books, Hitler in Italy, Hitler befreit Sudetenland and Hitler in seiner Heimat. His last book, Das Antlitz des Führers, was written shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Paul Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism. He was the chief architect of the Kristallnacht attack on the German Jews, which historians consider to be the beginning of the Final Solution, leading towards the genocide of the Holocaust. Through the Nazi take over of the media: radio, press, and film, Goebbels remade Hitler into Sigreid, the Wagnerian Germanic hero.
The importance of Hoffman in making Hitler a household image cannot be overstated. He created the Hitler image and the Hitler Mustache as a symbol. The 1920s and early 1930s was the era of the silent movies. Hoffman using the imaging technique of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) who was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting; [1] made Hitler into a matinee idol.
Sarah Palin has the cunning of Hitler (who had the Junker aristocratic Industrialists to back him) and all the resources of the entire media empire of Rupert Murdoch and his Fox Media Network to crate and promote her as “America's Athena.”
THE POWER OF POLITICS
David Rothkopf in Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making (2008) writes that Clearly, the richest would not be drawn to politics if politics did not offer them additional power above and beyond that which they had already acquired through financial or other professional success. Winning (or seizing) political office, or having the ability to influence political decisions or having a base of political support directly empowers individuals.
The source of the power is multifold. It is the power of the institutions that one has leadership within. It is the power of allocating the resources and setting the agenda for those institutions. It is the power to influence the creation of new laws and regulations, which offer the ability actually to institutionalize key ideas. It is the power of the history and national identity associated with those institutions. It is the power that comes from having quantifiable support among the people of a country or region. (85)
In order for Sarah Palin to obtain this power, it is necessary that Barack Obama be removed.
RELIGIOUS ASSASSINATION OF OBAMA
The new spiritual adviser to Barack Obama, Jim Wallis, has called on the public to come out of the economic disasters of recent years as changed people.
He outlines his thoughts on returning to community values.
The Reverend Jim Wallis (b. June 4, 1948) is an American evangelical Christian writer and political activist. He is best known as the founder and editor of Sojourners magazine, and of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian community of the same name.
Although Wallis actively eschews political labels, his advocacy tends to focus on issues of peace and social justice; as a result, he is described as a progressive evangelical,[1] and his primary support is from the religious left. Wallis is also known for his opposition to the religious right's fiscal and foreign policies.[2]
Speaking to a conference of clergy from the Anglican Diocese of Liverpool (The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, Derbyshire, UK, 23 June 2009) Wallis said, "The press don't get it - they say, 'Have you replaced the religious right with the religious left?'" Rather, he says that his Christian commitment does not allow him to align with any political wing - on some issues; his views would be counted as coming from the left, on others, from the right. "Don't go left, don't go right: go deeper."
DIVERGENCE BETWEEN FUHERER AND EMPRESS RHETORICAL OF RABBLE ROUSING
Hitler created the straw man of the Jew and the vindictiveness of the Treaty of Versailles as points to rabble rouse. He relied on the Aryanism and fascism of the period to control his people into submission.
Palin relies on the straw man of the “Real American.” Real Americans live mentally in the 1950s, long before Civil Rights and Affirmative Action. They are White male Christian head of household (Jews are accepted because they hasten the Rapture), with a subservient wife (who ignores the fact that White women have been the greatest beneficiary of Affirmative Action), and 2.5 children; with Joe and Josey de Plumber (formally of the KKK) acting as dragoons.
Palin uses U.S. Aryan super-patriotism, nationalism, flag worship, and innate American racism to rouse her followers. Like Hitler, she is a cunning politician who has managed to split an established political party, the Republicans, into the far right and extreme far right, which will if politics plays itself out the extreme right will strike of on is own as an entity called, The Independent T-Party of America.
It is this split which is the point of Robert Reich’s “Election 2020,” which is embedded in After-Shock (2010).
THE 2020 ELECTION~AN EMBEDED TALE DEDICATED TO SARAH PALIN AND THE T-PARTY
Robert B. Reich in his latest book, After-Shock: The Next Economy and America’s Future (2010) places an embedded tale called “The 2020 Election,” which is only a thinly disguised backhanded homage to Sarah Palin and the T-Party:
November 3, 2020, Reich begins. The newly formed Independence Party pulls enough votes away from both the Republican and Democratic candidates to give its own candidate, Margaret Jones, a plurality of votes, an Electoral College victory, and the presidency. A significant number of Independence Party members have also taken seats away from Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
The platform of the Independence Party, as well as its message, is clear and uncompromising: zero tolerance of illegal immigrants; a freeze on legal immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Asia; increased tariffs on all imports; a ban on American companies moving their operations to another country or out-sourcing abroad; a prohibition on foreign “sovereign wealth funds” investing in the United States. America will withdraw from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund; end all “involvements” in foreign countries; refuse to pay any more interest on our debt to China, essentially defaulting on it; and stop trading with China unless China freely floats its currency.
From this point on Reich goes on to comment on Margaret Jones' platform which included to abolish the Federal Reserve and bar immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia from the U.S. Then he quotes president-elect Jones’ victory speech which is all too Palin:
My fellow Americans: You have voted to reclaim America. Voted to take it back from big government, big business, and big finance. To take it back from the politicians who would rob us of our freedoms, from foreigners who rob us of our jobs, from the rich who have no loyalty to this nation, and from immigrants who live off our hard work. (Wild applause.) We are reclaiming America from the elites who have rigged the system to their benefit, from the money manipulators on Wall Street and the greed masters in corporate executive suites, from the influence peddlers and pork peddlers in Washington—from all the privileged and the powerful who have conspired against us. (Wild applause and cheers.) They will no longer sell Americans out to global money and pad their nests by taking away our jobs and livelihoods! (Wild applause, cheers.) This is our nation, now! (Wild applause and cheers that continue to build.) A nation of good jobs and good wages for anyone willing to work hard! Our nation! America for Americans! (Thunderous applause.)
Her opponents in the election had been George P. Bush as the Republican candidate, and Chelsea Clinton as the Democratic candidate, who both condemned Jones’ speech. They along with foreign leaders were anxious. The British prime minister and the German chancellor offered best wishes and “condolences. The president of China simply said, “The United States has committed a grave error.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable issued a joint statement warning that Margaret Jones and the Independence Party “will push America into another Great Depression.” Shortly after the bottom fell out, during the panic the pollsters asked over and over again, “How could this have happened? (79-81)
AMERICA’S FUTURE UNDER PALIN AND THE T-PARTY
Every utopia society is someone’s dystopia reality. This is what the Palin/T-Party seems likely to be: Margaret Atwood’s dystopia utopia in The Handmaid’s Tale.
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction,[1] written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood[2][3] and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. Set in the near future, in a totalitarian theocracy which has overthrown the United States government, The Handmaid's Tale explores themes of women in subjugation and the various means by which they gain agency.
The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, male chauvinist, nativist, theocratic-organized military coup as an ideologically-driven response to the pervasive ecological, physical and social degradation of the country. Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President, a movement calling itself the "Sons of Jacob" launched a revolution, ousted Congress, and suspended the U.S. Constitution under the pretext of restoring order. Taking advantage of electronic banking, they were quickly able to freeze the assets of all women and other "undesirables" in the country, stripping their rights away. The new theocratic military dictatorship, styled "The Republic of Gilead", moved quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily-Christian regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious orthodoxy among its newly-created social classes.
The story is presented from the point of view of a woman called Offred (not her real name; it is a patronymic slave name that means "Of Fred", referring to the man she serves. Her real name is never revealed, although the name Eurydice was revealed near the end of the epilogue suggesting that that may have been Offred's pre-Gilead name).
The character is one of a class of individuals kept as concubines ("handmaids") for reproductive purposes by the ruling class. As explained in the novel's metafictional epilogue, the events of the novel occurred shortly after the beginning of what is called "the Gilead Period." The epilogue itself is a "transcription of a Symposium on Gileadean Studies written some time in the distant future (2195)," and according to the symposium's "keynote speaker" Professor Pieixoto, he and "a colleague", Professor Knotly Wade, discovered Offred's narrative recorded onto thirty supposedly unnumbered cassette tapes.
They placed these tapes in a "probable order" and transcribed them, calling them collectively "the handmaid's tale"—a reference to the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. Offred's narrative is disjointed in a grim, internal stream of consciousness style, out of order, and unfinished, ending abruptly when she indicates that she is about to be escorted away in a van to an unknown fate.[4] [5] [6]
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David Biddle
jmac1949
Snowden
libbyliberalnyc
skypixie0
Jimmy Zuma
Salon.com
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stop the advance of the 451s