Saturday, May 13, 2017

God, Guns and Lies

"Be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures,"
said Trump to graduating students at a university that shares the dubious provenance of many other things that include Liberty, Freedom and Patriotism in the title. Like Trump University, it was founded by another megalomaniac with a narcissistic personality disorder and an angry, vindictive and graceless nature. I should say humorless as well, or at least immune to irony, as entrenched interests and failed power structures are in fact the notable characteristics of Trump and his efforts to bring us back to the age of Corruption and coal and a culture of every man for himself.  The Trump administration is literally packed with representatives of established power and authority and yes, failed power structures and failed ideas. He's pandering to future representatives of  a power structure based on undemocratic un-elected authority over our lives.  It's fraught with punishment and persecution and they're selling it with fraudulent and fallacious claims of  victimhood.  
"In America, we don’t worship government, We worship God,"
 He goes on, giving a dishonest and unconstitutional hurrah to the biggest entrenched interest in Western History and fallaciously implying a binary choice between God and Government: offering the absurd proposition that anyone has been or has even suggested worshiping government. What he means is the choice between religious authority and our secular laws and what he's arguing is dishonest.  Of course the question isn't worship, it's Trump's use of presidential authority to give support for religious worship and for a presumably Christian God.

It's another typical Trumpish example of "tell 'em what they want to hear" and it is, after all, an institution as devoid of challenge to religious authority as the space between galaxies or, at the moment, the Oval Office. It's been argued and argued well that it really isn't a University, it's a Church and a place where if you don't agree that the Earth is new and  Biblical cosmology and history isn't real, you flunk out or are expelled.  An institution dedicated to supporting ancient and un-sourced authority against objective and demonstrable fact doesn't deserve the title of University, regardless of what the Liberty University brochure might say.

In America we don't have to worship your  God in fact, nor do  all of us.  That's not meant to be offensive to those who do worship or acknowledge or pray to a virtually infinite number of gods, it's just a statement of religious freedom,  and of course that's a cornerstone of what used to be our secular Republic.  A president who insinuates, at least to that particular audience, that "worship" is an essential and necessary qualification for citizenship is not a real president; nor is he as he suggests, an "outsider" or one to challenge tradition or authority, but a fake, a phony, a panderer and an enemy of the Constitution he swore and pretends to protect.

But you know that. You may support him, believe him and in him and disregard the virtual Niagara of lies and misrepresentations, but in your heart, you know it's all dust and ashes and ego and cupidity and bigotry and indecency and fear and disregard for morality or ethics. You can lie to yourself, and say it's true when he lies to you, but all of this will eventually need to be answered for. There will be nothing left to say  and no ears to listen when it all falls down.

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