it has gotten to the point that some Americans behave like Islamic jihadists toward people who disagree with them and their leaders

 

    Ok, younguns, some really serious shit today.

    Where to begin?

    Perhaps with something I read that a German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: “Silence in the face of Evil itself is Evil, God will not hold us guiltless.”

    Bonhoeffer is best known for his book, THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, in which he compares what he called “cheap grace” with the real thing. I think every Christian should read that book.

    Bonhoeffer and other German men planned to assassinate Adolph Hitler and were caught and that was the end of them.

    It has come to the pointin America where one person has gathered a huge following that behaves like Islamic jihadists when they don’t like what someone says about them and their leader.

    I had my first taste of that vibe when I was invited into something, and the instigator had a change of heart and left me in a serous lurch and threatened to call the police on me, and I warned her, if she did not back off, I would publish her and my emails and our Facebook messenger chat at my blog, so people could see what really happened, and she called he police on me, and I published her and my correspondence, and she sued me, and lost, and she sued me again, and lost. I defended myself, because I was homeless and could not afford a lawyer.

    A man I knew well, who joined the instigator by bashing me online, had kidney failure and was put on dialysis. A blogger, who joined the instigator by bashing me on his blog and reported me to the Alabama elder protection agency, got a wellness visit from a district attorney and law enforcement and shit his pants, and his lawyer brother, who had joined in, was fired by his state agency employer. Covid-19 made the instigator an invalid.

    The other day, the fellow who operates the refreshingly delightful Free Radio Rulu Newsletter, https://freeradiorulo.substack.com/, invited me to send him a “fictitious” letter to the editor. I replied, be careful what you ask for? He said to let fly.

Ahoy, Wonder Bread truck free radio station Rulu, Nebraska...

I have to say, you are a cornhusker wonder to behold.

I do not say that lightly as a long-time Alabama Crimson Tide fan.

I say it as someone who has shot off his mouth and pen for a very long time, disturbing the self-deemed precious  STATUS QUO.

The HEAD UP WHERE THE SUN NEVER SHINES religion, or should I say, cult?

The POLITICOS and the RELIGIOUS, who FEATHER their and their friends and families' NESTS.

And their LAWYERS’ nests.

I am a lawyer, by the way. Or was one. Well, it's probably terminal, like Ebola. But IT takes much longer.

In the past I ran ten times for local public office, claiming God told me to run, if I knew what was good for me.

I detested politics, but I was dragooned in a dream to roll up my sleeves and dive into that raunchy sewer. So, I dove.

I never came close to winning, so I didn’t have to ask for a recount.

I always was the minority report, out of the box, the pissant, some might say.

But, my goodness, it actually was some fun, when I wasn’t moaning about it.

I named my good morning blogs in salute to the VERY SUBVERSIVE “Good Morning Vietnam” movie, may Robin Williams, the Vietnam war dead and those blogs all rest in peace.

It was many years after that war that I considered JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcom X all got shot dead after they came out against America at war in Vietnam.

I had a pretty big reader following at my blogs.

I spoke hundreds of times at city and county commission meetings, school board and other local government meetings.

I got quoted in local newspapers, one of which likened me to Don Quixote in an editorial cartoon.

I got interviewed by local radio and TV stations.

I gave real estate developers and their lawyers and their captured city and county commissioners hell, and then some.

But dang, I never dreamed of having my own Wonder Bread truck radio station.

I don’t now recall how I stumbled across you and instantly recognized a fellow kamikaze pilot, balls to the wall, no sacred cow left un-poked, skewered, drone-missiled.

And to beat all, you are a POET!

The SCANDAL!

Once upon a time, when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, I met a woman disc jockey in Salt Lake City, who had her own morning call in show. She interviewed me several times by telephone, and the Christians and the Momons in Salt Lake lit up the station’s phones.

One day we were to entertain the Salt Lake folks, she called around breakfast to ask if I had heard what was on the news and did I still want to do the interview? 

The news was the federal assault of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

I said, of course. Just tell your audience ahead of time that you will be interviewing the Devil in Waco.

She laughed.

She did the promo, and oh my God, the station’s phone lines started lighting up after she asked me who I was, and I said, The Devil, and where I was, and I said, In Waco, Texas, and why was I there, and I said, to see how people make my work so easy for me that I mostly hang out on Maui staring at half naked beautiful women on beaches.

I dunno. It just now occurs to me that maybe that was my first plunge into national politics, or any kind of politics.

Now, I have to tell you this.

Back when I wuz running for local office, you could shoot off your mouth about politics and religion without worrying much about somebody shooting you. But as you have observed, times have really changed, and while I keep shooting off my mouth here and there, it won’t surprise me to walk outside some day and look down to see red laser dots on my chest.

So, while I hope you keep on poking the places that deserve poking, this 81+ grandfossil the Smithsonian is still trying to recapture, after it let me out for a walk one day and I snuck behind a bush and gnawed off the hind foot with the tracker on it and grew another hind foot and hightailed it, also hopes you have plenty of Kevlar and a band of battle angels backing you up, who truly appreciate fools who rush in where angels fear to tread, but if there were no fools, who’d lead the angels?

    Not long ago, I mentioned in one of my tales to you younguns that a 4-year black of the soul began to lift in 1995 after I had three visions, and that I might share those visions with you later on. I think this might be time to do that.

    I spontaneously lived these three visions in about 4 days' time while oceans of tears and rivers of snot ran out of me. You can view the visions as parables, but they are far more than that, and are free for you, and anyone, to claim and use.

of men, wolves and eagles … 

Once upon a time there lived a man named Joseph, who grew tired of living with people and left his village and went into the woods to live. 

By and by, a wolf pack discovered Joseph and over time got to know him and that he was not like other men, and eventually they took him into their pack. The leader of the pack was a red wolf named David, and soon David and Joseph became fast friends, and they hunted and played and slept together like . . . wolves. 

Then one day, the men in the village where Joseph had lived learned from hunters that Joseph was living with wolves. The men decided it was not right for a man to go off and live in the woods and run with with wolves, so they got their guns and set off to find Joseph and bring him back to the village, to live like a man. 

The men came upon the wolf pack sleeping in the sun next to a bluff. The wind was blowing off the bluff, away from the wolf pack toward the men, which prevented the pack from scenting the men as they approached. By the time the wolf pack realized the men were there, the men had the pack surrounded, pinned against the bluff. 

David wanted to order the pack to attack, but Joseph said, “No, I am a man, they will listen to reason, let me go and speak with them.” Although David did not like this idea, he agreed to it because Joseph was a man. But the men would not listen to reason and they shot and killed the entire pack and took Joseph heartbroken back to the village. 

Joseph languished in the village for many weeks, blaming himself for the death of his pack. 

Then, Joseph has a dream, in which he sees David’s face. David is angry, but says nothing, just stares. Finally, Joseph blurts out that he did the best he knew how to do, and he’s so sorry for the way it turned out! David says, “Better that we attacked and died like wolves, than be slaughtered like sheep!” 

Then, Joseph is back with the pack, against the bluff, surrounded by the men. David says he wants the pack to attack. Joseph says, “And I will lead the charge!” Then, they hear a voice, the whole pack hears it, say, “There is another way, ask for another way.” Never before have Joseph, David or the pack had such a thing happen, but Joseph asks for another way. 

Suddenly, a great bolt of lightning strikes the ground between the pack and the men, stirring up a huge cloud of dust. As the the dust begins to settle, it begins to take the shape of something huge. The wolves and Joseph then see a pair of golden eyes peering from the bushes behind the men. Then a second pair of golden eyes. Then a third pair. Then ten pair. Then a hundred pair. Then a legion of . . . wolves’ eyes. The men are moved by some force to turn around and see what the now delirious pack already see. 

Then, the men turn back around and find themselves face to face with a great towering eagle, whose piercing golden eyes penetrate their hearts. Then, they hear, “These are my battle angels. You may leave this place and go back to your village, taking your guns with you, on condition that you tell everyone what has happened here today.” 

To this condition the men readily agree, and they return to their village and tell everyone what happened, and they go to nearby villages and tell it.

something about lions …

Once upon a time there lived a woman named Alya. She was the medicine woman in her tribe, using herbs and poultices and spirit ways to help her people. Yet she had one flaw: she hated lions, because a lion had killed her father. Her hatred caused her to cast spells against lions, which caused her husband great concern. He often told Alya that her war with lions was going to get her into big trouble, but she was a medicine woman, she knew the ways of the spirits, and she did not listen to her husband. 

One day while Alya was out gathering herbs, she spotted a lion sunning himself in tall grasses on the savannah. She hatched a scheme in her mind to sneak up on the lion and cast a spell on him, which would enable her to steal his spirit and have it for herself. As she crept closer to the lion, she began chanting softly and seeing in her mind’s eye her spell taking over the lion. However, she was so focused on what she was doing, that she did not see in her mind’s eye the lion’s mate returning from hunting. Nor did she see the lioness catch her sent, drop her kill from her mouth to the ground and circle around behind. Too late, Alya realized her peril, just as the lioness took her from behind.

Next thing Alya knows, she is in the spirit world, standing before the Lion Spirit. Trembling with terror, Alya wants to run away, but the Lion Spirit speaks to her heart, says, “There is something you do not yet know.” 

Then, Alya is back on the savannah, watching a hunter from her tribe sneaking up on a nest of lion cubs, whose parents are away hunting. The hunter has a twisted spirit, and decides to kill the lion cubs just for the fun of doing it, even though killing any animal just for sport is taboo in his tribe, which worships the Lion Spirit. On returning to his village, the hunter tells no one what he has done. 

When the lion and lioness return to their nest and find their dead cubs, they are enraged. They catch the hunter’s scent and track him back to the edge of the village, where the lion hides in a thicket and begins roaring and bellowing out his rage over what has happened. The hunter knows why the lion is there, doing that, but still he tells no one.

 

Alya’s father, the tribe’s leader, prepares to go out and face and kill the lion, because it his duty to protect his tribe from marauding lions. And so he sets out to face the lion, even as the hunter lets him go without saying what has happened to bring this about, and that a lioness is also out there with the lion. 

Alya’s father quickly finds and confronts the lion, and is preparing to kill it with his spear, when he is taken from behind by the lioness. In her horror, Alya helplessly watches on, even as she now realizes that her hatred of lions was completely misplaced. She feels awful.

 

Then suddenly Alya is back on the savannah, stalking the lion whose spirit she once wanted to steal for herself. The lion looks up, stares into Alya’s eyes. She shakes all over, is terrified, but does not look away. Then something takes hold of her, she says to the lion, “I have lost my father and you have lost your cubs. I will be your cub.” The lion looks deep into Alya’s spirit, nods, says, “And I will be your father, and will always protect your front.” Then beside the lion is the lioness, who says to Alya, “And I will always protect your back.”

the gift …

A sleeping man dreams he sees the back of a young yogi meditating in the lotus position. Before the young yogi appear two cobras, raised up, hoods flared. One cobra is pure white, the other pure black. Both beautiful. The white cobra says to the young yogi, “We came to you once before because you were innocent, and you knew we brought a gift and you believed you had to choose one of us and you chose me.” The black cobra says, “We come before you again because you now are wise.” The yogi, now very advanced in years, weeps, chooses them both. The sleeping man, now an old man, awakens, crying.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

What I don’t get is how any patriotic God-fearing American supports Donald Turmp, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or Joe Biden

    It had been a while since I posted something at this blogspot, when earlier today I posted Will God, karma, etc. make Donald Trump president again because President Joe Biden didn't stop giving Israel money and munitions to devastate Gaza?

 

   It had been a while, because I felt I ran out of things to say, and America is so screwed up that I doubt even God can fix it, and it didn’t matter what I say, which is how I felt when I ran six times for mayor of Key West, three times for county commission, and one time for school board in the Florida Keys, as an independent.

    I paid the filing fees for each race. I had no campaign committee, no campaign workers, no vote for me signs in people’s front yards, no newspaper, radio or television advertising. I did not make house calls to meet my constituents. 

    I felt dragooned into something I detested. I felt it was egotistical and immoral to presume to run for public office. I felt anyone who actually wanted to hold public office was insane and should not be allowed to run. I felt political parties, PACs, campaign contributions, etc. should be outlawed. I felt the onus should be on the voters to dragoon candidates for public office via write in voting. 

    I participated in candidate forums, where I consistently was against the grain, likewise in media interviews and on my blogs, goodmoorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, and after they went on to the cyber afterlife, afoolsworknevernends.blogspot.com, about half of which passed on to cyber afterlife.

    There never was a candidate for public office like me in the Florida Keys, because no other candidate had angels known in the Bible telling them to run if they knew what was good for them. No other candidates had been turned very which way but loose and upside down and stood before endless mirrors by angels known in the Bible. No others candidates lived each day and night with this part of Proverbs 9:10 ever in their gut, heart, mind and soul:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

    Dreams last night had me down in Key West talking to Father Stephen Braddock, a Catholic Priest who once ran a security company in New York City, and Donald Trump was one of his company’s clients. In Key West, Steve was fully involved in trying to help homeless people turn their lives around. He ran Florida Keys Outreach Coalition’s halfway houses.

    In 2003, I ran ran out of money again and was living in a tent in the wetlands near the Key West airport. I contracted MRSA, a ruthless, life-threatening, antibiotics resistant flesh-eating staphylococcus bacteria that lives in Key West and Florida Keys waters. Near death, I went to the entry level FKOC halfway house and was admitted.

    The next day, I was in the city’s hospital having emergency surgery to carve two awful MRSA abscesses out of my groin and one out of my butt. I was released the next afternoon and returned to the FKOC shelter. The next day, Steve Braddock and Key West City Commissioner Bill Verge asked me if I would run for mayor of Key West? They said they would pay my filing fee.

   They had heard me speak many times at city commission meetings about how the city treated its homeless people, and about other things on the city commission meeting printed agenda. They said they liked what I said.

    I told Steve and Bill that I would have to sleep on it. After sleeping on it, I told Steve that I was told in a dream that he should run for major. He said he had too much on his plate. I said I needed to sleep on it again. I was told in a dream to accept Steve and Bill’s offer, and I told Steve that. They gave me money for the filing fee and I filed with the local election office.

    That night in my sleep, I was told in a dream, “If you know what's good for you, you will do everything you can to get Jimmy Weekly reelected.” Jimmy was the incumbent mayor. He had pissed off some people and it was thought he might not be reelected. However, he was sympathetic to homeless peoples' plight.

    Later that day, I rode my bicycle through a city park where there was a seafood festival in progress and Jimmy was there and told him what I had dreamed and for him to be prepared for me breaking that news. 

    A few days later, I attended the first candidate forum, hosted by the Key West Business Guild, which was started by the city’s LBGTQ community, which was not happy with Jimmy, even though he had gone to Washington, D.C. to participate in a LBGTQ march.

   The first candidate to arrive at the forum, I was asked to draw a straw to see when I would get to introduce myself. I drew the longest straw, meaning I got to go first.

    When the forum moderator introduced me and handed me a microphone, I looked at the audience and said I detest politics and am running because God told me in a dream to run, and what are you all thinking, talking about not voting for Jimmy Weekly, who has been so supportive of your community? Jimmy knows he made some mistakes, and he made adjustments, and you should vote for him.

    When the forum ended, a lot of people in the audience introduced themselves to me and thanked me for what I had said. 

    The LBGTQ community made up about 20 percent of Key West's voting population. The election was over, but it took a few more candidate forums before the voters said it was over.

    By then, I was pretty sure Steve Braddock was gay. He and Bill Verge did not seem thrilled with how I went about it, but through several terms as Mayor, and after he term-limited out, as a city commissioner, Jimmy Weekly remained sympathetic to the city’s homeless people, while the city government and city police and city residents grew increasing hostile toward the city’s homeless people, as they worshipped their homeless savior Jesus Christ.

    Yesterday, I saw on CNN that former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, the 70-year-old son of Democrat President John F. Kennedy’s Democrat brother Robert F. Kennedy, running this year as an Independent candidate, questioned whether the January 6, 2020 riot at the national Capitol was an insurrection, and said, if elected, he will have that investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice.

    I thought the only investigation the stupid fuck had to do was google photos of the white mob outside and inside the national Capitol, and watch easily googled videos of same- res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.

    That was discussed in the Reddit r/politics forum yesterday. Here are some of the early comments before video gamers arrived and wandered all over everywhere.

Smaynard6000

The more this guy appeals to Trump voters, the more I'm happy to see him stick around

AxlLight9h
How does it matter? As long as he's not siphoning democratic votes, he can say whatever he wants and Republicans can play around spinning him however they want.
But regardless, Democrats once again show they're bad at strategy with calling this guy to quit when he's doing us a world of favor. RFK, go crazier please, launch some gold shoes or something, make some playing cards, hug a flag.

jpk195
There's no clearer line in the sand between Trump's base and the rest of us than Jan. 6th. He's on the side that can only hurt Trump, and hope he stays there.

Nukesnipe
It's so fucking funny to me that he was obviously pushed as a Biden spoiler but he's genuinely such a fucking stupid wackjob that he ended up as a Trump spoiler instead.
He was supposed to spoil votes for Biden, watching this shit blow up in the republican’s faces is too bloody good

Puzzled-Drop (me)
Many flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

    I think it was in 2016 that two American journalists working for the British-based Guardian newspaper interviewed me and my homeless girlfriend Kari Dangler in person about homeless politics in Key West. When the Guardians' journalists met with me again, they said the people running Key West's homeless shelter declined to speak further with them after learning they already had interviewed me and my homeless girlfriend. Their ensuing article in the Guardian did not mention that.

    Here’s a link to The Redneck Mystic Lawyer podcast about Kari, which has had over 500,000 complete watches worldwide: 

Homeless outlaw cowgirl shaman with the blues saved Key West from Hurricane Irma obliteration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ0Dc03eksU&t=971s

    The Guardian did a somewhat better job with an article in my Apple newsfeed this morning, perhaps because what’s at stake is a helluva lot more important than how Key West treats homeless people?

    I added in the 2nd Trump Jesus photo and the photos of Trump with his good friend woman trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and of Trump with his good friends Bill and Hillary Clinton, and of Trump bowing to a Saudi prince who had maybe 100 wives and had a Saudi journalist sawed up into little pieces. 

    Below this lengthy article are my parting thoughts, for today.

THE GUARDIAN

Christian nationalists embrace Trump as their savior – will they be his?

   

 

Christians opposed to infidelity and immorality have embraced a thrice-married man who can’t name a single Bible verse

A thrice-married man who refers to the Eucharist as a “little cracker”, was apparently unable to name a single Bible verse and says he has never asked God for forgiveness was always an unlikely hero for the most conservative Christians in the US.

But in both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump resoundingly won the vote of white evangelicals. Now, with Trump having almost certainly secured the Republican nomination for 2024 and eyeing a return to the White House, his campaign is doubling down on religious imagery, securing the evangelical base and signaling sympathies with Christian nationalism.

Indeed, the former US president’s relationship with the religious right has deepened so much that Trump is now comfortable with comparing himself to their messiah.

“And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise, and said: ‘I need a caretaker,’” booms a video that Trump shared on his Truth Social account, and that has been played at some of his rallies.

“So God gave us Trump.”

The video, made by Dilley Meme Team, a group of Trump supporters, continues:

“God said: ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay up past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state.’ So God made Trump.”

To some, it is a baffling pairing. Evangelicals, who typically adhere to a literal reading of the Bible and, theoretically, follow a strict code that opposes infidelity, immorality and abortion and is critical of same-sex relationships, seem an odd match-up with a man like Trump.

But the pairing has had benefits for both parties: Trump got elected in 2016, and evangelicals got a conservative supreme court that has already overturned the Roe v Wade ruling, which enshrined a constitutional right to abortion.

Now, Trump is believing the hype he’s received from some on the religious right: that he has been chosen, or anointed, by God himself.

He has increasingly begun to lean into the rightwing social conservatism that white evangelicals – who make up 14% of Americans – favor. That was clear in February, when Trump spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters convention (NRBC), a gathering of the kind of conservative Christians who lead mega-churches, host televangelist shows and claim to receive prophecies from God.

Trump said in that address that there was an “anti-Christian bias” in the US, and promised that he would create a taskforce to investigate “discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America”.

While Trump easily won the white evangelical vote in his previous two presidential elections, Kristin Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University whose research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion and politics, said this election cycle sees him leaning even further into this appeal.

Du Mez said his speech at the NRBC was “a new level we haven’t often seen”.

“He was promising [the evangelical audience] power, but in much more explicit terms,” she said. “And he was really leaning into this language of culture wars, of religious wars: that he was going to protect their interests and protect their power against the enemies – against fellow Americans, against liberals, against the enemies who were trying to persecute Christians, who were persecuting Christians.”

The “God made Trump” video is not the only example of Trump seeing himself as a deity. On 25 March, Trump said on his Truth Social account that he had received the following message from a supporter:

“It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you.”

It follows Trump sharing a fake court sketch in late 2023, published during Trump’s fraud trial in New York, which shows him seated beside Jesus Christ.

About 85% of white evangelical Protestant voters who frequently attend religious services voted for Trump in 2020, Pew Research found, as did 81% of those who attend less frequently.

Securing, and adding to, that vote could be key to a Trump victory. Du Mez pointed to research by the Public Religion Research Institute that shows how crucial the evangelical vote is in swing states. Evangelicals make up about a quarter of residents in Georgia and North Carolina, 16% of the population in Pennsylvania and about 12% of voters in Wisconsin.

…so the Guardian won’t cover this election like a reality show. With so much at stake, support fiercely independent, reader-funded journalism – it only takes a minute. 

Biden beat Trump in all but North Carolina in 2020. Given the lack of enthusiasm for both candidates, both men are desperate to win every possible vote in what is expected to be a tight election.

It helps Trump that evangelicals feel under attack. Since 2015, he has told his supporters that they are looked down on by liberal elites, and that their rights are threatened. That same message resonates with some religious voters, Du Mez said, who could also resent the mockery of Trump’s imagining himself as Jesus Christ.

“It only reinforces the scripts that they’ve been handed, which is that the left is out to get you and they are mocking and they have no respect for your faith,” Du Mez said.

While Trump has long enjoyed popularity among evangelicals, and has been courted by leaders including televangelists and pastors at mega-churches, this is the first election cycle in which he has been confident enough to compare himself to Jesus Christ. So, what’s changed?

Trump “has been getting this message from these folks for years now”, said Matthew D Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, recalling the sight of evangelical leaders praying over Trump during his time in office.

The thirst for Trump as a biblical figure can be traced to the unique way he ascended to become an evangelical favorite, Taylor said: when he launched his campaign in June 2015, few in “respectable evangelical circles” wanted anything to do with the brash, twice-divorced, self-proclaimed billionaire.

It made sense. This was a man who, during his first presidential campaign, memorably misnamed the body of Christ, and while at church put cash in a plate that is meant to hold the communion. During his early forays into religious outreach, Trump was asked to name his favorite verse in the Bible, and couldn’t name one – asked again three weeks later, he named one that doesn’t exist.

He enlisted Paula White as his spiritual adviser, and charged her with bringing the evangelical elites onboard. The problem was that White, herself a thrice-married multimillionaire who preaches the idea that God will bestow wealth on his followers, didn’t move in those circles.

Taylor noted that White’s allies were among fellow prosperity gospel preachers and “new apostolic reformation leaders” – a movement that seeks to inject Christianity into politics, the judiciary, the media and business.

“These folks were really on the margins not only of American Christianity, but of American evangelicals. They were seen as kind of lowbrow and prosperity gospel types and televangelists. They were seen as kind of a laughable sector of evangelicalism in respectable evangelical circles,” Taylor said.

As Trump won primary elections in state after state, the respectable evangelicals were able to overcome their moral objections to him being the Republican candidate.

But by this point, Trump’s main advisers were cemented as the type of religious leaders once scoffed at by the religious elites. Trump continued to rely on the Paula Whites of this world, and the more far-out religious leaders won influence – and are set to have even more if he wins in 2024.

“Those are the type of people I think Trump would be bringing in to help shape policy, help shape identity,” Taylor said.

“These aren’t the kind of people who are policy wonks, but there are Christian nationalists who have very clear agenda items, especially on topics like abortion, on topics like support for Israel, on topics like religious freedom, on topics such as LGBTQ +rights.

“Trump has surrounded himself and has brought into his White House advisers echelons some very, very extreme Christian voices. And he seems to be at the very least playing footsie with them, if not overtly endorsing some of their ideas.”

This bodes poorly for a Trump second term, when abortion rights, the rights of LGBTQ+ people and even the right to access IVF treatment could come under attack.

There are also warning signs, Taylor said, should Trump again refuse to concede the election – and if his supporters once more interpret his rhetoric as a call to attack the home of US democracy.

Trump’s religious supporters were among those at the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. Taylor said he was seeing “more and more of this cross-pollination between far-right and even overtly racist elements and these spiritual warriors”.

“When you are mixing white nationalism and neo-Nazi ideas with very heavy religious fervor and processes, that is a very, very dangerous mix,” Taylor said.

“Because it’s encouraging more and more people to do extraordinary things, if they feel like their country is slipping away from them.” 

    The Brits ought to know, since once upon a time, Americans did extraordinary things to rid themselves of their brutal British king.

    What I don’t get is why THE GUARDIAN didn’t hone in on Ivana Trump told VANITY FAIR that when she was married to Donald, he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet on his side of their bed, and sometimes he read it at night.

    What I don’t get is why THE GUARDIAN did not say Trump’s white supremacist base is far larger than white Christian evangelicals.

Trump’s 2016 victory celebration

Charlottesville protest of removal

of Confederate Monuments

while Trump was president

Trump’s January 6, 2020 peace demonstration

    What I don’t get is how any God-fearing American supports Donald Trump.

    Or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Or Joe Biden, who helped Israel destroy Gaza.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com 

Will God, karma, etc. make Donald Trump president again because President Joe Biden didn't stop giving Israel money and munitions to devastate Gaza?

 

Gaza

    I’m 1/8th Jewish through my Polish great grandfather, who came to America in the latter 1800s and ended up in Troy, Alabama, where he met, courted and married a Southern Baptist school teacher, whose father had been an officer in the Confederate Army. They raised their children in the Southern Baptist Church in Troy, whose Sunday services Leopold attended, but he did not convert. That’s how the Leopold Bashinsky bloodline became Christian.

    Leopold is memorialized in the “He Was a Nobel Creation" chapter ofA Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known, which I wrote with oceans of tears and rivers of snot in 2004, in Helen, Georgia. Now it is a free read at the internet library, archive.com. Here’s a link directly to that little book: https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

    Because I am an old fart with lots of spare time on my hands thanks to time, gravity and life killing off what I once did to pass the time and get in and out trouble, I will tell you that 3 nights before 9/11, in my tent on a friend’s land outside of Helen, Georgia, where earlier that summer the novel Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale gushed out of me on a public library computer, now a free read at archive.org, https://archive.org/details/heavy-wait-a-strange-tale_202212/page/n1/mode/2up, the angel known in the Jewish and Christian scriptures as Michael asked me in my sleep, “Will you make a prayer for a divine intervention of all of humanity?", and I woke up wondering what that was about and made the prayer and went back to sleep. 

    On 9/11, my concern was America would get itself into another foreign war it could not win, like what happened in Vietnam, which divided American society down the middle and shredded the nation’s soul. I could not imagine America would get into two such wars: Afghanistan and Iraq.

    A few days later, I was back in Key West, via Greyhound, and as I walked out of the U.S. Post Office in Old Town, Michael told me, “America should get out of the Middle East altogether and let Israel and Islam work it out or fight it out, and in that way learn which, if either, is God’s chosen people.” I sensed the end of Michael’s comment was irony, or sarcasm. 

    In the summer of 2003, during a Sunday school class in a church near Helen, where I was hanging out again to get away from the Key West summer heat, mosquitoes and hurricanes, not much fun for a homeless person, the Sunday School teacher said he hoped God kills all Muslims!

    I said quietly, “What about turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies?"

    The Sunday school teacher looked at me, said again what he hoped God would do.

    I said pretty loud this time, "What’s wrong with Christians? Don’t they read their own Bible? In Genesis, God told Abraham that Ishamel’s seed would become a great nation and would cause Isaac’s seed trouble."

    A great hush fell over the room. 

    Back then, I was put into situations where I said stuff that rattled Christian cages a bit.

    I was not yet active on the internet.

    Back to the present.

    Despite what I hear from Christians, read online

 and see on TV, I don’t think God by any name called likes war.

    I cannot wrap my mind around God sanctioning any war reported in the Christian Bible's Old Testament. I wonder if the Jewish prophets of old who waged war, starting with Abraham, were listening to voices in their own heads, or to the Devil?

    I don’t see how the war in Gaza pleases God, and to the contrary, it looks to me that the war in Gaza pleases the Devil, and both sides are in deep doo doo with God.

    In that regard, two Substack newsletters to which I subscribe.

Mark Flore

April4, 2024 

https://markfiore.substack.com/p/an-offensive-defense?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#media-6cf65d10-3c86-469d-bf49-b25f8d8b5cad

An Offensive Defense

An Offensive Defense Mark Fiore 樂�It sure doesn't look very defensive...

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

Gaza mayhem is horrible. I think if HAMAs cared about its subjects in Gaza, months ago it would have offered to release all of its Oct 7 hostages, if Israel agreed to leave Gaza alone for so long as HAMAs left Israel alone.

Ezekiel Detroit Substack

Sloan B., That is a sane solution. It does not meet Hamas definition. Their solution is to kill all Jews in Israel. Terrorists do not think like typical westerners. If they die, they just go to paradise where women will serve them. No big deal to die. Hostages are now their property to be their slaves. It is written. Catch my drift?

Sloan Bashinsky

I understand your drift completely. 

Hamas views all of its subjects killed by Israel as martyrs sent straight to Allah, so no big deal. Hamas’s original charter called for the destruction of Israel. Hamas' “amended” charter praises Islam as a peace-loving religion and does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Sinwar spent a long time in prison in Israel, and he figured out there was no way Hamas could defeat Israel militarily, and after he got out of that prison he switched to defeating Israel, and its benefactor America, in the court of public opinion, and he designed an attack that he hoped would cause Israel to do precisely what it did in Gaza, to paint Israel as a modern Nazi Germany, and smear America, and Israel took the bait and America sided with Israel and here we are.

I know Israel did plenty to provoke Islam in the past, taking land, and taking land, and wars in Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel does not have clean hands, and it, too, is run by religious fanatics, who claim God is on their side. President Biden should have cut off money and munitions to Israel months ago. But I live in Alabama, which is very red, and I know the America religious right back Israel all the way, (a) because their Bible says God promised Israel that land, even though they ignore the Israelites turned their back on God many times, and (b) they hope Israel will kill every Muslim in the Middle East, and they wouldn’t mind Israel using its nukes to to it.

It’s a really screwed up mess, thanks to religion, and God has nothing to do with it. If Trump is elected this year, his base won’t let him abandon Israel. It’s a shame all the nice Christians in America did not allow the WWII Jewish refugees to resettle in America. If that had happened, maybe there would be no Israel today. 

As long as Israel exists, there will be strife in Palestine. All predicted in Genesis when God told Abraham that Ishmael’s seed would become a great nation and would cause Issac’s seed (Israelites) trouble. Islam views Ishmael as the promised child, and radical Islam views that part of Genesis, which is in the Koran, as a mandate from God to cause Isaac’s seed trouble. All of that is in the Bibles Donald Trump is selling :-)

Money Circus

Crisis Update: Troubling Lessons Of Israel’s AI Kill Targets

Efficiency or unearthing darker impulses?

APR 05, 2024

https://moneycircus.substack.com/p/crisis-update-troubling-lessons-of

Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter, liked by Money Circus

Hard for me to imagine Sinwar and other Hamas officials did not know of Israel’s AI military capability when Hamas launched the October 7 attack, which looks to me was designed and hoped to provoke Israel to do precisely what is has been doing in Gaza, to turn the entire world against Israel and its benefactor, America, which leads me to think Hamas doesn’t care how many people Israel kills, maims, displaces, etc. in Gaza, they are martyrs, and the worse the mayhem in Gaza, the better for Hamas’s publicity. Looks to me that Hamas and Israel both are run by religious freak monsters, and God has nothing to do with any of it. If only Hal could return from Jupiter to jettison both sides’s leaders into space to see if that gets the left behinds' undivided attention :-)

    I wonder, younguns, if Donald Trump will be back in the White House this time next year, because Joe Biden kept living Israel money and munitions to hunt down and kill Hamas in Gaza? Yeah, I know that ain’t ever gonna be a popular perspective of how God and karma work in mysterious ways, and I hope it doesn’t play out that way, but maybe Trump being president again is how it needs to play out, because that’s what America deserves, thanks to President Biden and America supporting Israel in Gaza, and Trump said he is Israel’s best friend and that war would not have happened if he was president :-)

    Maybe if we are real lucky, Hamas, Israel and President Biden have not started World War III.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com