Trump

I was right about Trump

I was right about Trump 1

I scan the images from that day, looking for a familiar body shape and face.  One looked like him, but the next pic showed him near somebody else, so I dismissed him as too short.  Was Richard at the insurrection?  Was his buddy Chris, who has gone full QAnon?

I don’t know, but I do know one thing:

I WAS RIGHT.

For years, we’ve been dismissed for warning about Trump.  We’ve been called libtards.  We’ve been accused of hyperbole and alarmism and “not giving Trump a chance to govern” and Trump Derangement Syndrome.  We were mocked for saying that neo-Nazis and white supremacy are a huge, dangerous problem in this country.  I was harassed and trolled by my own friends and family when I started to finally speak up.  I had to lose a few, and it looked like a few dropped me on Facebook, our only link to the outside world most of the time in this plague-ridden world.  And yeah, it makes me angry.

But we were right.  We were all right.  Dems, Never Trumpers, liberals, Independents, we were all right.  People said it could never happen here, while ignoring that it is happening around the world–What makes us so special?  Are our institutions really that secure?  Could we go the way of Venezuela or Hungary or Brazil (or Nazi Germany)?

I recently saw in horror that a narc blogger, whose blog I liked to read on occasion, totally missed the biggest narc of them all, and accused us of thinking he’s a narc because of our political beliefs.  Now her blog has gone full MAGA, even after Wednesday, where she denies the truth of what happened.  She’s one of those poor souls conned into thinking that this is somehow God’s will.  She switched from her narc parents to the most dangerous narcissist in our country, and is down deep in the delusion, where she has become one of Trump’s flying monkey army, spreading lies and Trump’s smear campaign around the Net; it breaks my heart to see it.  How could she have missed all the signs after blogging about narcissism for years?  Meanwhile, other narc bloggers recognized the truth years ago.

Many Republicans are finally waking up from the Hitler-like spell they’ve been under.  Our European allies are horrified and, even with Biden about to take power, are backing away from letting America lead them on anything anymore.  Our enemies are mocking us, using our own words against other countries, against us.  Even our local Rep, who’s been MAGA all this time, went against Trump.

I’ve even been listening to the Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes lately, a conservative, because it’s so reassuring to hear the words of the Resistance coming out of a conservative’s mouth.  He used to support Ron Johnson, but that, also, has ended.  He once supported Ted Cruz, but only because the alternative was Trump–while he privately noted that Cruz is “a snake.”  (That’s what he called him on his latest podcast.)  It seems that as the primaries wound up in 2016, Republicans came down to a choice between the Stupid Demagogue and the Smart Snake.

Sykes warns that Cruz is setting himself up to take Trump’s place; other names being tossed around by conservatives and liberals alike as dangerous, are Hawley and Cotton.  They warn that the way has been opened for smart autocrats to step in and actually succeed this time, because of all the damage our stupid autocrat has done in the last four years, even as he finally fails to hold onto power.

These people who attacked our Capitol call themselves Patriots, but they’re not: They’re Traitors, trying to subvert the will of the People, overturn Democracy, and set up an Autocrat.  They are modern-day Visigoths, or Confederate traitors, the legacy of our first Civil War (is another coming?).  They are our own homegrown ISIS, radicalized on the Net and just as delusional and dangerous.  ISIS and al-Qaeda don’t seem to be doing much around here lately, just leaving us to burn ourselves down.

Meanwhile, Trump the Toddler is whining and tantrumming because 80 million people finally stood up and told him NO and, so far, our institutions have been holding.  But it’s very disturbing to see how easily those institutions could fail, because of corruption in the people within them.  For years I’ve seen how the GOP has been installing corrupt people in various parts of government and the justice system.  I’ve seen it here in Wisconsin, which led to Scott Walker being let off when he was clearly guilty.  And now Trump’s been doing it, putting the whole country at risk, not just one state.

As I wrote on this blog more than a year ago,

Because these days, supporting the Republican Party means supporting evil and the demolition of our great democracy. It means supporting racism, torture, mistreatment of immigrants, oppression of various minority groups, yanking food and health care and help away from the poor. It means ignoring cries that someone has been sexually assaulted. It means permitting persecution as long as your favored group commits it. It means forcing women to carry babies to term even when they are at high risk of dying, or the father is her father, or they’ll be so poor they can’t even keep a roof over their heads, while doing absolutely nothing to help those women so they don’t see the need for abortions. It also means that if the 15-year-old girl does carry the baby to term, she’ll now be seen as a bad sort of girl who (gasp) has had sex.

It makes me not want to hear about anyone who voted for Trump, or supported Trump or whatever.

Many of us are saying that we can now see and understand how Hitler took control of the hearts and conscience of the Germans, because we see it happening all over again in our friends, neighbors, and family.

You can find my own warnings on this blog, going back to 2015.  You can find my outrage when I saw Richard and Tracy in a newspaper photo of people working for Trump 2020.  And you can see that

I WAS RIGHT.

 

On Trump’s latest executive order

From a post I just made on Facebook:

(I used a conservative source, The Hill, so no one could complain I was getting this from the librul media.)

I remember, back in 1994, a school board in Texas wanted to do this very thing. I remember Pat Robertson praising them. I remember thinking I’d been so wrong about Pat Robertson all those years, that he truly was a racist and was preaching poison. Now Trump is doing what that Texas board wanted to do, only trying to force the entire nation to teach this white-washed, racist version of history to the youth. Not surprisingly, “Trump Youth” and “Hitler Youth” are trending on Twitter right now.

Meanwhile, Trump is doing his usual politics of division, telling people that liberals are trying to destroy the country. Every day with this clown in office, I get more and more worried that one day my views are going to be illegal.

It’s sickening to hear Trump, a white supremacist, twist the words of Martin Luther King, using his name in vain, projecting onto the left what Trump himself is doing.

The efforts of so many over the years to bring full equality to this country, are finally bearing fruit–so Trump is trying to erase it overnight. This is what conservatism has done over and over again throughout history: Reformers come along, start to make real change that improves the lives of everyone, so conservatives wipe it all out again and go back to the way things were. This is one of many reasons why I abandoned the GOP some 15 years ago.

Some groups think Trump is the Messiah?

So I’m checking out the blog of a fundamentalist who claims that Trump is indeed the Antichrist at the End of the World–not sure whether to believe, but curious how he counters objections and explains his points.  Then I come across this:

But nevertheless, Orthodox Jews do believe their messiah will be Jewish and of the house of David – which is true of the True Messiah, Jesus. But they do not recognize Jesus, and so they still search for their Jewish messiah, a false christ, the Antichrist. Please watch my video.. https://youtu.be/F-UxKCzsURI – This video observes that some Orthodox Jews are searching Donald Trump’s ancestry to find a link to King David. –Brother James, Misconception: Antichrist Will be Jewish and Not a Gentile

The video led me to this article in the Christian Post: Some Rabbis in Israel Believe Trump Could Be Messiah or His Forerunner, End Times Author Says  Lots of crazyness is there; especially note this:

“We would say the second coming is about to happen, but their messiah is going to be a false messiah. He’s going to be the anti-Christ, right? I also don’t believe Donald Trump is the antichrist. So I think the smart ones in Israel are looking at him right now, saying, he is God’s, what we would call, John the Baptist. He is God’s messenger. When he takes over in January there is a 5777 countdown to the appearance of the messiah,” Horn added.

The Jerusalem Post reported last month that Shas Chairman and Minister Aryeh Deri said Trump’s election could herald the coming of the messiah due to the blow he expects the next president will strike against the “non-Orthodox Jewish hold on the U.S. government.”

(So–If Trump is the forerunner, could the messiah be–Putin?)

Some groups think Trump is the Messiah? 3

I checked the Jerusalem Post link and did a little googling, and there is indeed such a person as Deri making such claims about Trump.  Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been doing everything he can to benefit from friendship with Trump, which has been fulfilling his wishlist.  Netanyahu has been playing into Trump’s narcissism, even naming a Golan Heights settlement after him.  ABC News reports an Israeli group is selling a special-edition Trump coin.

From Henry Siegman’s What my escape from Hitler’s Germany taught me about Trump’s America:

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has presented itself to the world as an avatar of democracy and guardian of the moral truths the world needs to learn about the Holocaust. Yet its governmental leaders and a majority of its Jewish citizens—led by its prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu—have fully embraced Trump (as well, in some instances, as the authoritarian leaders embraced by Trump).

Giant posters and photographs of Trump were recently plastered on the streets and public places of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Declaring “Trump is a friend of Zion” and “Trump Make Israel Great,” they expressed adoration of the man who doubled down on his insistence on the moral equivalence of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and the Americans who took to the streets to express their abhorrence of these racists and anti-Semites.

So I don’t know how pervasive a belief in Trump as the messiah/forerunner actually is in Israel.  But there are certainly groups pushing the idea.  And to see a malignant narcissist such as Trump–one of the worst people this world has ever produced–viewed as a messiah is frightening.  He has a lot in common with, say, Hitler or Nebuchadnezzar.  Many of us see him as far more likely to be the Antichrist at the End of the World.  Or at least one of many antichrists which have popped up throughout history.

Meanwhile, I keep finding various accounts that some Evangelicals don’t bother fighting climate change because they see it as the End of the World rapidly approaching–meaning Christians finally triumph over their enemies.

Whether you believe or not that the Bible truly prophesies the End of the World, complete with plagues and the Beast (Antichrist) and one-world government etc., many people do believe and behave accordingly.  And we have several facts in front of us.

One is that climate change is real and is already leading to catastrophe around the world: erosion, fires, mass extinctions, floods, extreme heat, extreme storms, etc.  People are already losing their homes and being forced to move because of it; animals and other creatures are also on the move.  I’ve seen reports that farmers know very well that climate change is real, because they’re being forced to change their practices.  With or without prophecy, climate change could lead to the End of the World if we do nothing about it.

Another fact is that some groups of people are venerating Trump for various reasons, making him into a god.

No matter what you believe about biblical prophecy, these are very dangerous factors that could turn the End of the World into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather fight back, not sit back and allow this to happen because of our own stupidity.

 

Trump, Putin, and the Antichrist

I was raised in premillennial dispensationalism during Rapture Fever. I’ve tried to set that all aside and be more amillennial, after much study and becoming Orthodox–but those alarm bells keep going off these days.  Many people have been wondering if Trump is actually the Antichrist, if maybe it’s time to take those End of the World predictions seriously after all.

It even trended on Twitter a while back, not seriously but jokingly–though some people pointed out alarming prophecies that sounded like him.  Shortly after, I tweeted that Trump can’t be the Antichrist if he gets impeached.  But then he said we were pulling out of Syria, and I tweeted that I take that back because here he goes and sparks Armageddon: His actions allowed captured ISIS members to escape, and Turkey and Putin to get what they wanted in Syria–along with one of our military bases.

However, Putin seems a more likely contender for the Antichrist, with the Russian Orthodox Church as his Prophet.

Trump may be too much of a puppet of other nations to be the Antichrist, too easily manipulated by Putin, Erdogan, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, etc.  Putin’s definitely smarter than Trump, and he’s got the Russian Orthodox Church in his pocket (the Prophet).  The last two patriarchs are rumored to have been KGB agents.  The church blesses nuclear weapons, and separated from the rest of us when the Ecumenical Patriarch allowed the Ukrainians to form their own church separate from Russia.  Putin’s tentacles have been reaching all over–all documented as truth, and not conspiracy theories, by intelligence agencies of various countries.

He’s even got members of the GOP doing what he wants, along with Trump.  We see signs of this in both the Mueller Report and the Ukrainian debacle, along with reports in the news of politicians being benefited by Russians, Saudis, and others.

(Such as, McConnell is accused of allowing the end of sanctions against companies owned by an oligarch named in the Mueller Report–so that one of those companies could build in Kentucky.  Also, a group of aides and former officials are accused of working around Congress in a potentially illegal deal to get nuclear power to Saudi Arabia–and fill the pockets of many.)

GOP House members have been pushing conspiracy theories that are confirmed by government officials (particularly Fiona Hill in the latest Impeachment Hearing) to have come straight from Russia’s propaganda machine, his cyber war to turn the West against Ukraine and weaken NATO.  The biggest proponents of these conspiracy theories in the hearings included Nunes and Jordan, trying to shout down and ridicule and silence witnesses and House reps who told the truth.

Through Trump, American Evangelicals are falling into Putin’s trap as well, supporting Putin’s own tool to bring down our democracy.

As an amillennialist and preterist, I believe that the events commonly attributed by dispensationalists to the End Times refer to events that have already happened in history, either before or after the apocalyptic books (Daniel, Revelations) were written.  Also, that several events referred to by Jesus happened in AD 70, when Jerusalem was besieged with devastating results.  (Josephus describes the horrific events, complete with cannibalism.)

But the Bible also refers to antichrists not as a one-time event, but as a spirit that continually emerges.  A good run-down of the various interpretations is here.  My studies, including of Orthodox interpretation, have led me to believe that the prophecies refer to things that have happened, and things that will continue to happen.  I thought we didn’t hold to any part of premillennial dispensationalism, but some Orthodox sources say the prophecies refer to the End Times as well.

So you can say that Antiochus Epiphanes was an antichrist.  Nebuchadnezzar was an antichrist.  Caligula was an antichrist.  Hitler is the most obvious antichrist of the twentieth century, with the state-supported church as his prophet, bringing the whole world into Armageddon, then finally defeated.  But he’s certainly not the only one even of that century.  Soviet Russia was full of the spirit of antichrist.  Communist China is also filled with the spirit of antichrist.

Trump is shaping up to be an antichrist of the 21st century, throwing our government into disarray, systematically setting himself up as a dictator until nobody is left around him but sycophants and justices who’ll do what he wants.  The great irony is that Evangelicals, after spending decades warning us of the Antichrist, didn’t recognize him and are now worshipping him, becoming his Prophet.

But there are many people in power now who qualify as an antichrist: Putin, Kim Jong-Un, Erdogan, Orban; the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is certainly shaping up to be one.  Trump is doing his best, but we still have the workings of democracy trying to get him in check.  But are any of these the Antichrist at the End of the World?

That one can’t be answered until it happens.  However, there are some significant elements now in the world that make it possible: Climate change, for one.  We’re getting countless accounts from scientists warning us that the clock is ticking and if we don’t make drastic changes, we could soon see the end of human life on Earth.  This has been going on since the Industrial Revolution, but never faster than now.  Yet governments keep ignoring the warning signs because their fat cats don’t want to lose money.  Another element is the computer age.  Putin has been infiltrating the elections of various NATO countries not with the military, but with the Internet.  He’s found it easy to manipulate millions through Twitter bots, not just in America but in the UK and probably other countries as well.  There are ridiculous, unfounded rumors of body counts around the Clintons, but there are actual body counts piling up around Putin.

But then again, throughout history, antichrists keep meeting their end.  They all die eventually, after all–often prematurely.  Hitler met a spectacular end–like the hand of God–that led to the destruction of Nazi Germany and the deaths of many of the people in charge.  Kingdoms and empires are strong for a time, but always fall eventually, sometimes thanks to people rising up and fighting back.  We may still turn climate change around.  Trump is most definitely going to be impeached; there are many reports of his health deteriorating, and if enough people speak out, the GOP Senate could very well change their minds about removing him.  Putin could meet his own end in one way or another, or we NATO countries could finally win the cyber war.

Ever since my teens, I’ve seen various predictions of the End of the World from Christian “prophets” who turned out to be wrong.  I don’t want to say we are definitely heading into the End Times only to find out nope, wrong again.  Maybe, like every time before, the antichrist will fall but the world will keep turning.  But we do need to keep an eye out for the spirit of antichrist, and take care not to fall into his trap–whether he is “an antichrist” or “THE Antichrist.”

Update 12/30/19: This is not specifically an “endorsement” because I haven’t checked out the site/videos yet.  But here’s somebody who is convinced that Trump is the Antichrist: Brother James Key

Update 6/23/20: Benjamin Corey, a “former fundie” who starts out planning to make light of the whole thing, ends up, as he puts it, “unsettled” by what he finds in biblical prophecy, here.  He updated his post a few weeks ago; things have happened since he originally wrote it that are alarming (such as COVID-19 and events during the BLM protests) and add more support to the idea that Trump could be an antichrist–or even the Antichrist.

Running commentary on yesterday’s impeachment hearing

Yesterday, I posted a running commentary on Twitter while watching the Yovanovitch hearing.

This is what I posted, in text form because there’s no good way to embed 25 tweets from a thread.  I’ll expand abbreviations, because tweets don’t allow for more than 240 characters, and add some interjections here and there:

1) Just started watching the next testimony on C-Span….Skipping past Nunes’ Nunesense…..

2) And the GOP is doing their best to turn this into a clown show and act surprised when Schiff shuts them down.

3) My birdies approve of Yovanovitch’s voice.

4) Ever notice how Trump keeps saying he’s allowed to do things–but not whether they’re morally correct?

5) There’s so much corruption in the GOP–from local to national–that there’s no way I can see myself voting for a Republican again for the rest of my life–without some major housecleaning.

6) Beginning to wonder if the GOP strategy is to say that everything except the July 25 call itself is irrelevant–making the quid pro quo the be-all end-all. But that’s not the case at all.

7) Um–Rep Stewart, it has been PROVEN! [Russian collusion] It’s not ridiculous–It’s FACT! And yes, there was collusion. Did you not notice [Roger] Stone got convicted today?

[Also note that Stewart merely asked if Yovanovitch had any information regarding Trump’s criminal activity.  Just because SHE has none, doesn’t mean he’s innocent of all charges.  It only means that SHE has none.  Yet he twisted it into proving Trump is innocent of all charges.  He also asked if Trump *accepted* a bribe, not if he *offered* one, yet twisted her answer into meaning that Trump is innocent of bribery.  Just shows the mind game the GOP establishment has been playing on the American people.]

[To “The American people know this is nonsense. The American people know this is unfair”: ]
8) The American people know that Rep Stewart is full of ??

9) The GOP keeps trying to bring in their conspiracy theory ??but Schiff keeps shutting them down and they get whiny complainey.

10) And Quigley brings in some levity, while pointing out that things didn’t end all hunky-dory making everything that happened before to the ambassador okay.

11) Yovanovitch’s response to [Sondland’s suggestion of] praising Trump via tweet to keep her job: that’s ?? (yeah, I’m having fun with emojis, lol)

12) uh-oh Stefanik again with more conspiracy ??

13) Geez….The GOP keeps insisting on bringing in the whistleblower. Those are TWO MONTH OLD articles [in which Schiff spoke of bringing in the whistleblower to Congress]. Things have changed: ie, now the whistleblower’s life is at stake because Trump put a target on his head. And the GOP is trying to give Trump the gun.

14) The whistleblower IS NO LONGER RELEVANT. You have the many witnesses proving what he said. WHEN I REPORTED MY EX-FRIENDS FOR CHILD ABUSE, NOBODY CONTACTED ME TO BACK IT UP. THEY DID THEIR OWN INVESTIGATION ON THE FACTS & LEFT ME OUT OF IT. That’s how it works.

15) The only abuse of power is coming from the frickin’ GOP.

[Rep Jordan complained that four transcripts have not yet been released to the public for the American people to see:]
16) And, you know what, Jordan, the American people could really use the unredacted Mueller Report.

[Jordan complained with faux outrage that Ukrainians complained about Trump while he was a candidate, and that Yovanovitch said nothing to them about it.  She responded, “I think from my point of view, that doesn’t — that doesn’t create a Ukrainian government strategy to interfere in our elections.  So I would just say that, you know, U.S. politicians will often criticize policies of foreign — foreign counterparts, even perhaps during their elections. You know, this happens in politics and I think that it doesn’t necessarily constitute interference.”]

17) To Jordan’s questions: So officials of other countries aren’t allowed opinions, especially for a candidate [not elected yet]?

18) So nobody in Ukraine was supposed to prefer one candidate over another, especially where their own interests were concerned?

19) So if I say it’s stupid to vote in Boris Johnson, or for Brexit, am I now “interfering” with Britain’s elections?

20) So Jordan expects that the ambassador from a land of FREE SPEECH should tell Ukrainians WHAT THEY SHOULD THINK?

21) Near the end, some key points: There was a 1-month gap between ambassadors to Ukraine [Yovanovitch and then Taylor]. During that time, Trump tells Sondland and others to talk to Rudy about Ukraine. Parnas & Fruman [“Lev and Igor”] tried to open a natural gas company in Ukraine; at noon today, we hear that feds are investigating Rudy for planning to profit from that natural gas company.

22)

[To Nunes saying that this impeachment hearing “is an embarrassment”: ]
23) Yes, Nunes, you are an embarrassment.

24) I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if others stood to benefit from the Parnas and Fruman natural gas company: Nunes, Ratcliffe, Jordan, Stefanik, McConnell, Graham, etc. It would explain a lot.

After this, I posted:

Funny thing is I saw a guy in that audience who reminded me of Richard, except he has blond hair–and he was applauding.  It made me wonder if it was him.  Except it seems to me Richard wouldn’t be applauding, unless he’s actually broken free of the Trump worship on the right, like Amash did.

The transcript for the hearing is now out here.

 

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