President Trump recently appointed Elliott Abrams as his Special Envoy to Venezuela.
Abrams is an old hand in the machinations and bloody, dark-arts of
Elliott Abrams with the “exiled” Venezuelan opposition leader David Smolansky
overthrowing South and Central American governments, installing brutal, right-wing dictatorships and training death squads in mass murder, otherwise known as genocide.
I fear this does not bode well for the Venezuelan people.
Below is a clip of Robert Parry sparring with Abrams on Charlie Rose about his responsibility for genocide:
Abram’s U.S. trained death squads killed some 80,000 people in El Salvador, 200 – 250,000 in Guatemala and untold thousands in Nicaragua, most of them innocent civilians.
Journalist Robert Lovato tells about his own first-hand experiences with the
U.S.-led Salvadoran coup and Abrams himself. Find his autobiographical article, “Elliott Abrams: An Unequivocal Sign Trump Is Preparing a Baptism in Venezuelan Blood,” here.
Here is my question:
The U.S. Secretary of State recently returned from Egypt where he proudly wore his Christianity on his sleeve, assuring his listeners that American foreign policy was safely cradled in the ever-lovin’ hands of a born-again Christian whose decisions were directed by his daily Bible reading and prayer.
How in the blazes can those same Bible-clutching fingers embrace a butcher like Elliott Abrams?
Where are all the supposed Christian advisers the Religious Right boasts about, giving Trump their wisdom and righteous advice?
Are we to understand that Jesus approves of mass murder, as long as it’s America leading the way in slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent, unarmed Central American peasants?
Consortium News has a recent article by Lawrence Davidson, emeritus professor of history, discussing the role that Mike Pompeo’s zealous evangelicalism plays in shaping his policy vision as the U.S. Secretary of State.
It’s scary, folks…very scary.
The frighteningly common notion that America’s problems can be solved by placing more “Christians” (that is, my kind of Christians; not yourkind of
Pompeo talks to reporters on his recent flight to the MIddle East
Christians) in government repeatedly leads to incompetent leadership and horrific policies.
But that doesn’t stop true believers in the exceptionalism of “Christian America” from committing the same mistakes over and over again.
“U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo started out the new year—the date was Jan. 10—preaching “the truth” about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and for reasons we will get to below, he chose to do so at the American University in Cairo. He implied that he was particularly capable of discerning the truth because he is “an evangelical Christian” who keeps a “Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and His Word, and The Truth.” This confession indicates that Pompeo is wearing ideological glasses through which he cannot possibly see the world, much less the Middle East, in an objective fashion. We can assume that the decidedly unthinking and amoral president he serves has no problem with this prophet in the State Department because Pompeo is one of the few cabinet ministers whom President Donald Trump has not fired.
“So what are Pompeo’s versions of foreign policy truth? In terms of his Cairo pronouncements, they are twofold. First, as is to be expected of a man of his temperament (he declared: “I am a military man” who learned his “basic code of integrity” at West Point), he has identified the true enemy of the civilized world. And, again not unexpectedly given his Christian zealotry, the enemy is of Muslim origin. It is the “tenacious and vicious” cabal of “radical Islamism, a debauched strain of the faith that seeks to upend every other form of worship or governance.
“This initial “truth” is noteworthy for what it does not take into consideration, such as traditional U.S. alliances with brutal and corrupt military or monarchical dictatorships. Any move to reduce support for such regimes in the Middle East is, in Pompeo’s view, a “misjudgment” that must have “dire results.” As long as these dictatorships oppose what Pompeo opposes, their brutality and corrupt
nature can be judged acceptable. For example, Pompeo praised his host, the military dictator of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi, who is an
Secretary Pompeo with Egypt’s military dictator Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi
archetypical example of this murderous breed of ruler. He praised El-Sisi exactly because he has joined the U.S. in the suppression of “Islamists.” The Egyptian dictator, in Pompeo’s words, is ‘a man of courage.’
“Pompeo’s second “truth” is the self-evident fact of American exceptionalism. He told his listeners that “America is a force for good in the Middle East.” Pompeo does not articulate the reference, but his claim taps into the Christian image of the U.S. as “a shining city on the hill”—a God-blessed light unto the nations. This was one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite themes.
“As proof of American’s alleged beneficence, Pompeo makes a series of dubious claims about the behavior of the United States government. Here are a few. Comments within brackets are those of this author:
The Alliance for Global Justice has created an online petition and letter writing campaign that allows you to easily tell your elected representatives that you oppose the current U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela.
You can sign the petition here as well as call or send a letter to your members of Congress.
Regardless of one’s opinion of the Bolivarian Revolutionary governments in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. has no business overthrowing foreign governments because we don’t like their policies. There are many other avenues for addressing such issues.
Whether America likes it or not, or will admit it or not, Maduro was democratically elected by the people of his country.
But, of course, the U.S. has a long history of overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world whenever they possess abundant natural resources and the nation’s leaders dare to diverge from the mechanisms of U.S. economic control.
(This is the final installment in my series on class warfare in America and the church’s failure to address its immorality.)
Budgets are moral documents.
How we budget our money, whether personally or as a nation, is determined by our priorities. And our priorities are an expression of our ethics, our moral concerns. As Jesus reminds us, your treasure is invested where your love is directed (my paraphrase; Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34).
What we care about determines where and how we spend our money.
Which raises two important questions accompanied by a few implications concerning the politics of rising deficits and the ethical significance of Christian support for conservative politicians.
First, what does it say about this country when approximately 25 cents out
President Trump signs the Republican tax plan
of every tax dollar is spent on the military-industrial complex?
For 2019, the total amount of defense spending is budgeted to be $951.5 billion; nearly 1 trillion dollars. The military alone will receive $688.6 billion of that money.
When that budget item is combined with various other tidbits, such as our 800 military outposts in some 70 countries around the world, and our standing as the #1 manufacturer and exporter of military armaments around the world, it is hard not to conclude that the U.S. finds its moral raison d’etre in the maintenance and expansion of the American Empire, no matter the cost in human lives.
In light of the recent revelations regarding the mind-boggling, fiscal fumblings that pass for book-keeping at the Pentagon (see post #2), I suspect that no one has the slightest idea how much money has been spent on these continuously bloody exercises in global, American muscle-flexing.
But I do know this: between 2001 to 2014 the wars and continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq alone cost the U.S. $1.6 trillion. Spending on all of America’s post-9/11 wars reached $5.6 trillion by 2018. A large portion of that expense is made up of the interest payments required to service the debt created by those wars.
Yep, America fights its wars, in large part, with borrowed money.
So, when was the last time Congress tried to stop another U.S. military intervention, another war, or another bombing campaign because we could not afford it; because it was another “unfunded mandate” not included in the budget; because it would grossly inflate the ballooning national debt?
To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened. We always seem to find the money necessary for more war, which speaks volumes about the blood-thirsty American character.
Second, the national debt has become the most grotesquely manipulated budget item in our national conversation…but NOT for the reasons many suppose.
Ever since Ronald Reagan implemented the voodoo economic formula of “tax cuts for the rich + massive military spending = a growing national deficit” conservatives have eagerly used their feigned hysteria – feigned because they never complain when Republican presidents are creating this debt; in fact, as with the recent Trump tax overhaul, they applaud the creation of more debt – over the national debt as an excuse to cut the budgets of government social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and others.
The Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell – one of the more manipulative, cynical politicians ever to sully the halls of Congress – is
But his conservative mantra bemoaning our “entitlement” programs as wholly responsible for the national debt is the Republican (and weak-kneed Democratic) equivalent of Chicken Little flailing her wings and crying, “They sky is falling!”
Not only is this warning a lie, even if it were true, it would be a predictable result of our immoral budget priorities, inhuman spending decisions flaunted by Congressional conservatives every time they take out their fiscal crowbars and pull the sky down onto the heads of America’s weakest members.
Let’s think clearly about this issue:
America does have a growing debt, but let’s be honest. That debt grows faster during Republican administrations. That claim is not partisanship; it’s just a fact. (I know, analyzing national debt is complicated. I am not suggesting that budget priorities are the sole cause of the national debt. But because conservative arguments always make it the #1 issue, I make it my primary focus.)
Sorry for the poor quality of the following image.
Then bi-partisan complaint erupts like clockwork insisting that the only way to reduce the national debt is by cutting bigger holes into the country’s social safety-net for the poor, the sick, the elderly and our children.
This is class warfare. It is the weaponization of our national budget, using it to bludgeon the poor while enabling the rich. It is the very behavior that God’s Old Testament prophets condemned as deserving of God’s judgement.
Some of the richest members of our society – remember that Congress is composed largely of millionaires (see post #1) – decide to give more and more of our tax dollars to support the expansion of American Empire and protect its multi-national, corporate investments around the world. (Read The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, by David Talbot, for a shocking account of the CIA’s history of shameless dirty-work performed in obedience to America’s richest, corporate task-masters.)
At the same time, those millionaire politicians ask the richest Americans to contribute less and less to assist the country’s most needy members. See here and here about the vast level of economic inequality in America and the global economy.)
Then these very same millionaires have the unmitigated gall to accuse senior citizens and the poor of inflating our debt burden and insisting that the only solution is to cut their benefits.
Really?! Are you kidding me?
To make matters worse, most evangelicals, who overwhelmingly vote for conservative, Republican candidates, mindlessly support this God-forsaken economic hocus-pocus.
Not only is it all a tawdry display of narcissistic political theater, it is a heartless strategy to balance the budget-breaking expense of American Empire on the trembling backs of society’s weakest members; to rip food from the mouths of children whose only healthy meal comes through a school lunch program in order to shovel new, despoiling delicacies into the voracious, gaping maw of the American war machine, endlessly thirsting for more blood.
I am sorry, but I must be emphatic.
Every follower of Jesus Christ, every disciple who is seriousabout conforming themselves to the image of a crucified, suffering Savior, has no choicebut to decry the politics of America’s ever-expanding global warfare in the cold-hearted pursuit of America’s intensifying class warfare.
Voting matters. Why do most evangelical voters use theirs to oppress the poor at home and to wreak havoc around the world?
CBN Christian News has recently posted an article that grossly misrepresents Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion about increasing the marginal tax rate.
The article is written by Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation (more on this later). It is entitled, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% Tax Rate Won’t Work.” Sadly, it is another example of the many ways
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
in which so-called Christian journalism regularly fails on both counts – failing to provide either real journalism or a distinctively Christian analysis.
Like so many others, Mr. Moore is too busy carrying water for the wealthy powers-that-be to offer his readers anything beyond the standard conservative, Reaganomics talking-points. (See my first post in my series on Class Warfare in America).
Since I recently wrote a post discussing American taxation and Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion, I thought it would be worthwhile to use this CBN article for another exercise in how to think critically while reading the news.
There are many things that could be discussed here but I will limit myself, first, to dissecting three specific instances of misrepresentation and falsehood. Second, I will then pull back for a broader discussion of the political origins to Mr. Moore’s commentary.
Three Specific Points:
First, throughout his entire article Mr. Moore’s tone works to conjure up the conservative bogey-man of a predatory federal government hell-bent on confiscating as much of the reader’s money as possible through higher taxes.
Since, his writing is a piece of commentary, I can let Moores’s overt subjectivity slide. (His obvious disdain for Democrats reeks through every sentence, but he is entitled to his opinion. I am no fan of the Democratic party, either).
I’ll give just one example: Moore describes Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion as “cheery talk of returning to confiscatory tax rates.”
“Cheery talk”? Notice that Moore’s opponents can’t be taken seriously. Their heads are in the clouds.
But we can’t forget that all taxation is “confiscatory.” Should no one pay any taxes at all? Many libertarians will answer Yes to that question. But I am not a libertarian.
Taxation is a part of the social contract in which we all participate, allowing our government to provide the numerous services benefiting us all. It is not a confiscation but a contribution to the common good and the general welfare of the country, of our communities.
Choosing to use that negative word, confiscate, is a rhetorical strategy intended to appeal to every reader’s defensive, selfish, inner-Scrooge. Sadly, it works, all too well. Even among the readers of “Christian news.”
Only the selfish – and study after study shows that the billionaire class has a very high percentage of those folks – begrudge assisting their neighbor (who needs the fire department when his house catches fire) or paying their own way (for wear and tear on the roads and highways they drive every day) by paying their share of taxes.
Returning to my main point, what cannot be forgiven, however, is Moore’s clear suggestion that a 70% tax rate would take 70 cents out of every dollar earned by every taxpayer in America. He knows better, but stoking this lie works to the advantage of his propaganda.
In other words, Mr. Moore is lying and he knows it. Unfortunately, many readers will not understand that this entire discussion is about marginal tax rates, and Moore has no interest in clarifying this confusion. He is more interested in sowing fear and anger than he is in educating his readers, so he fails to mention this important fact.
Check out the following sites for easy explanations of how marginal taxation works (here, here and here). The fact is, only a portion of the millionaire’s/billionaire’s highest bracket of income would be taxed at 70% (or 90% or 50% or whatever); much of it would not. And the vast majority of Americans would never come anywhere near that higher bracket, remaining unaffected by the marginal tax increase.
Mr. Moore knows all of this.
He is purposely misleading his readers by feeding us misinformation and falsehoods. This, folks, is utterly unacceptable in any source touting its “Christian perspective.” It is the most un-Christian, even anti-Christian, sort of writing one can imagine.
In fact, I will say this: it is worse than printing something overtly Satanic, because Mr. Moore is deliberately abusing his readers’ trust by planting lies which he knows will manipulate his audience into supporting a position built on falsehood.
Now, THAT, my friends is a truly demonic strategy, if ever there was one.
Second, Moore repeats a favorite argument of Reaganomics fans by claiming that Reagan’s tax cuts, and the majority of subsequent tax cuts, increased the national revenue (with no citations for personal follow-up). In other words, the government gains more money, not less, when it cuts taxes on the rich, according to Moore.
in his article endorsing Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion:
We need to do some research here. As luck would have it, I already did some.
Check out this detailed analysis and discussion of the Kennedy, Reagan and Bush tax cuts and their effect on the U.S. economy (at econdataus.com with copious citations and data for follow-up, unlike Moore’s article). It is fascinating. Or you can jump down to the excerpted summary below:
“The argument that the near-doubling of revenues during Reagan’s two terms proves the value of tax cuts is an old argument. It’s also extremely flawed. At 99.6 percent, revenues did nearly double during the 80s. However, they had likewise doubled during EVERY SINGLE DECADE SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION! They went up 502.4% during the 40’s, 134.5% during the 50’s, 108.5% during the 60’s, and 168.2% during the 70’s. At 96.2 percent, they nearly doubled in the 90’s as well. Hence, claiming that the Reagan tax cuts caused the doubling of revenues is like a rooster claiming credit for the dawn.”
I won’t fault Moore for having a different interpretation of the economic data, but I can fault him for: (a) not citing the sources for his argument in a way that allows the reader to check it on her own; (b) failing to mention that there is a serious debate on the issue among economists; and (c) leaving the impression that all those on the opposite side of the fence are ignorant, dopey-eyed dreamers out of touch with reality and ignorant of history.
Finally, strangely enough, Moore dismisses the idea of taxing billionaires at higher rates by claiming that in the bad old days of higher taxes:
“IRS data confirms that almost no rich people paid those 70, and 80 and 90% tax rates. They hired lawyers and lobbyists to escape paying the taxes, or they stashed their money away in exotic tax-exempt shelters or bought tax-free municipal bonds to avoid forking over the majority of their income to the IRS.”
This is a strange way to bolster his argument. In fact, it undercuts his point.
His claims may be true, I don’t know. But, if so, the obvious solution is not to lower taxes on the rich (that is like saying “since a speed limit does not prevent drivers from speeding, we should do away with the speed limit”) but to impose stricter regulation on the many ways created by billionaires for hiding their wealth – methods, by the way, that are not available to the poor or the average taxpayer.
The Author and the Bigger Picture:
Where do Mr. Moore and his article come from? To answer that question, we need to step back and look at the broader political context of this taxation debate.
For a number of decades, the conservative movement (including Libertarians like the Koch brothers) have brilliantly implemented a strategy
US President George W. Bush speaks on the war on terror 01 November 2007 at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN.
for changing – even controlling – the terms of economic and political debate in this country.
A key ingredient in that strategy was the creation of the think tank. Think tanks are “academic” institutions that employ researchers to produce books, articles and position papers legitimizing the conservative worldview held by the wealthiest, conservative Americans.
The Brookings Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are three examples of U.S.-based think tanks. Remember that our author, Mr. Moore, works for the Heritage Foundation.
These think tanks are bankrolled by wealthy, conservative donors for the sole purpose of influencing public debate to their own political and economic advantage. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wealthy donors contributing to a research institution…as long as their money does not control the results of the institution’s research.
Once that shift occurs, it’s no longer doing research but producing propaganda.
These think tanks are not intended to promote academic freedom. Just the opposite. Their researchers, like Mr. Moore, are paid for one purpose and one purpose only: to produce “data” and to make arguments that advance the economic and political interests of their wealthy, conservative sugar-daddies.
So, now that we know who Mr. Moore is, where his ideas come from, and what he is being paid to do, his arguments and information are not the least bit surprising. Neither are his lies, manipulation and misinformation. He is a hired gun, paid handsomely to promote trickle-down Reaganomics to the general public, by any means necessary.
I wish I could say it is surprising to see a supposedly Christian news outlet like CBN promoting and benefiting from what is, in effect, a public swindle by a high-priced conman. But, alas, this has become not only the way of the world, but the way of modern, American evangelicalism.
(This post is part two in a series discussing America’s class war and its bearing upon Christian ethics and the church).
During the 1980 presidential primary race, George H. W. Bush famously described candidate Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic proposal as “voodoo economics.” (See post #1).
Check out the video below:
If the first ingredient in Reagan’s cauldron of economic voodoo was tax cuts for the wealthiest who needed them the least, the second ingredient was a huge expansion in the nation’s military budget. Check out this article by Matt Taibbi at the Rolling Stone for more on our current military spending.
More than half of the nation’s discretionary spending goes to the military-industrial-surveillance complex. The following pie chart depicts the 2015 budget allowances. Over half, 54% to be precise, went to the military:
The United States spends as much money on its military as the world’s next ten nations in line. President Trump approved a $717 billion defense bill, increasing U.S. military spending by over $200 billion in 2017.
Remember all of this money is going to an institution that recently failed its first ever audit and is unable to account for $21 trillion. That’s right: $21 trillion unaccounted for by our military-industrial complex! Haven’t heard this fact discussed much on network news, have you?
That the American public allows this kind of abuse to continue is not only a classic example of throwing good money after bad, it is the ultimate illustration of something called the Stockholm Syndrome, when kidnapping victims are gradually brainwashed into sympathizing with, and even assisting, the very criminals holding them hostage.
Similarly, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, the Defense Department and U.S. arms manufacturers all conspire to hold this country hostage.
They concoct imaginary threats (like Iran), bilk the American tax-payer for hundreds of billions of dollars in ransom money every year, and then watch approvingly as the masses dig deep to hand over the military’s blood money while standing to salute the flag and sing “God Bless America.”
The entire scenario is obscene. Especially because the spending is not motivated by the requirements of national defense, regardless of the political rhetoric used to assuage any (rare) objections or questions from the public.
The only reason standing behind our massive military budgets is the continued expansion of the American Empire, an Empire that enriches our billionaire class.
At the end of the day, all of these bombs and wars boil down to war-profiteers making more and more money. Listen to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson lambaste the unfettered greed laying at the heart of American war-making.
Yes, American warfare boils down to billionaires making more and more money; retired generals and admirals becoming CEOs, sitting on more and more boards of directors for more weapons manufacturers; or signing six figure contracts for their “consulting work” (otherwise known as lobbying) on behalf of armaments companies like Raytheon, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
In 1935, Marine Corp General Smedley Butler wrote the anti-war classic, War is a Racket. He would know. I encourage you to read the general’s short book, if you haven’t already. Below is an excerpt:
“WAR is a racket. It always has been.
“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
“In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”
General Smedley’s words are as true today, perhaps more so, than they were 80 years ago.
Nearly 1/4 of every tax dollars goes to the military budget
Once again, feeding the war machine results in a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest Americans. First, our tax dollars justify increased, military expansion. Second, that expansion funnels hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to the CEOs and shareholders who run the burgeoning U.S. arms industry.
The rich get richer while everyone else bears the burden.
Of course, the greatest burden is the cost of war in human lives.
Rarely do the rich sign up to go to war (though a few legislators tried to change that in 1935. It didn’t happen). That responsibility falls to others who have few, if any, other options for a career or for higher education. And who knows how to begin counting the untold numbers of civilian casualties created by America’s sleek, stealth drones firing anonymously from thousands of feet in the air, killing innumerable, nameless brown people, men,woman and children, for who knows what reason.
But, don’t worry, American tax-payer. Every bomb dropped, every missile launched is just more money in the bank for another U.S. corporation perfecting the dark-arts of human slaughter.
The final injustice of our obscene “defense” budgets (we really ought to call it an “offensive” budget) is the neglect of the American people and the social needs of our society.
Provide free, universal, early childhood development programs to all our children
Debt-free college for anyone attending a state university
Student loan forgiveness
Dramatic reductions in our rates of homeless and childhood-poverty
Reduce the nation’s deficit
Provide free health care to every American
Everything discussed here are humanitarian concerns that ought to animate every disciple of Jesus Christ.
What could be a more pungent expression of “loving your neighbor” through social engagement than working to starve the war-mongering beast of American Empire for the good of everyone, at home and around the world?
rank hypocrisy of American foreign policy, a policy that continues to work at toppling any foreign government we don’t like (which typically means that they won’t cooperate with American demands) and promulgating wars of strategic convenience when and where we choose.
She specifically addresses U.S. aggression in Venezuela and the Middle East.
This American Empire is an evil beast that no right-thinking Christian can possibly support, much less cheer onward.
No, Jesus may not have explicitly condemned Caesar or the Roman Empire, but he left us plenty of explicit ethical instruction which, when taken seriously, makes it impossible for his disciples to endorse or to approve of Caesar or to support the Empire’s bloody exercise of raw power for its own interests.
Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire post here.
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Saturday that the government under Venezuela’s recently re-inaugurated president Nicolas Maduro is ‘illegitimate’, and that ‘the United States will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country.’
“Pompeo’s remarks, which were echoed by Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, are interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is because Venezuela’s presidential election in May of last year (which incidentally was found to have been perfectly legitimate by the international Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America) was actively and aggressively meddled in by the US and its allies. The second is that while the US government is openly broadcasting its intention to continue interfering in Venezuela’s political system, it continues to scream bloody murder about alleged Russian interference in its own democratic process two years ago.
Woolsey lets the cat out of the bag on Fox News. The US meddles wherever it bloody well pleases
planet, and what Russia is accused of having done in 2016? According to a comment made by former CIA Director James Woolsey last year, it’s that the US interferes in foreign democracies ‘for a very good cause.’
“And that’s really the only argument that empire loyalists have going for them on this subject. The US is different because the US has moral authority. It’s okay for the US to continue to interfere in the political affairs of foreign nations while it would be an unforgivable and outrageous ‘act of war’ for a nation like Russia to do the exact same thing, because the US is countering the interests of the Bad Guys while Russia is countering the interests of the Good Guys. Who decided who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are in this argument? The US.”
(This is the first in a three-part series on class warfare in the U.S.)
Americans have been fighting a serious class war for at least the past 30+ years, and the lower classes, especially the poor, are getting the stuffing beaten out of them. Few people want to talk openly about America’s class war, but it’s a fact.
The church needs to get to grips with it.
Instead of siding with the rich time after time, the people of God must stand up for the poor. We need to recognize that our current tax policy, which serve as a major offensive weapon in the billionaires’ arsenal against the poor, is a moral catastrophe.
Trump signs the 2017 Republican tax plan
Did you agree with President Trump’s tax-cut plan passed by Congress last year? Did you cheer for his budget with its massive increases for the nation’s military-industrial-surveillance complex?
If you said Yes to either of those questions, then you supported a HUGE transfer of wealth that was taken away from the poor and the middle-class, and handed over to the rich and that new class of “people” called corporations.
THAT, my friends, is class warfare waged through the utterly undemocratic processes of Washington D.C., where the majority of our politicians are bought and paid for by millionaires, billionaires and corporate lobbyists. They don’t represent you and me. They represent big money.
We all need to get over the long out-of-date Cold War fear of saying anything that might sound even slightly Marxist (oooohhh, the big, bad boogy man…) and recognize that our society has been viciously twisted by a brutal 30+ year, class war being waged from the top down.
That war has empowered America’s richest families and biggest corporations to stomp the needy into the ground – not only in this country, but around the world. (Read John Perkin’s book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; The Inside Story of How American Really Took Over the World, to learn about just one example of the international scope of America’s economic war against the poor).
As I demonstrate in my book, I Pledge Allegiance (see pages 155 – 157), it was not Karl Marx but Jesus Christ who insisted on building a just society – beginning with the Christian church – where everyone’s needs could be met, and no one need go without. Ages before Karl M. was even a glimmer in his father’s eye, Jesus’ church was living by a definite code: “from each according to your ability; to each according to your need.”
That’s right. Marx was ripping off Jesus.
Recently, the newly elected Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suggested raising the upper tax bracket to 70%. Naturally, like robotic guard dogs hardwired for mindless assaults against anything that threatens their gold-plated, private communities and the corporate powers-that-be, the usual conservative, Republican and DINO (Democrats in name only) suspects have uniformly attacked this young, bright politician.
Paul Krugman (a Nobel Prize winning economist) is absolutely correct in applauding Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s view of taxation. Take a look at his latest editorial, “The Economics of Soaking the Rich.” Below is a brief excerpt, but you should read the entire piece:
“I have no idea how well Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will perform as a member of Congress. But her election is already serving a valuable purpose. You see, the mere thought of having a young, articulate, telegenic nonwhite woman serve is driving many on the right mad — and in their madness they’re inadvertently revealing their true selves…
“The controversy of the moment involves AOC’s advocacy of a tax rate of 70-80 percent on very high incomes, which is obviously crazy, right? I mean, who thinks that makes sense? Only ignorant people like … um, Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics and arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance…And it’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history.”
Did you know that during the post-war period Krugman refers to, the upper
Professor Paul Krugman
tax bracket in this country was 90%? That’s right. The richest Americans paid 90% in taxes on a portion of their income.
Many people fail to understand this point, and the pundits who feign moral outrage at such suggestions will never explain this point in public. After all, they are not trying to inform; they are working to protect their own financial interests.
When someone like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez suggests implementing a 70% tax rate, it does not mean that every American would pay a 70% tax on every dollar earned. Not at all.
It means that the wealthiest Americans (and corporations) in the highest tax
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
brackets would pay a 70% tax on a portion of their total income. What portion would be decided in negotiations over the subsequent budget changes.
That’s called “from each according to your ability.” I also call it good sense.
If Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president, could smile on a 90% tax bracket fueling a healthy post-war economy, then why can’t today’s Congress embrace a 70% tax bracket; especially when we are repeatedly told that our current economy is booming?
Simple.
First, far too many of our elected representatives are millionaires or richer! The typical member of Congress is 12x wealthier than the typical American family. Time Magazine referred to Congress as the millionaires’ club. How enthusiastic will these people be at the thought of raising their own taxes?
Second, Washington D.C., and the American public, continue to be mesmerized by the dark enchantment of a mythical, fire-breathing monster called “trickle-down economics.” This farcical tax policy was conjured up from the pit by President Ronald Reagan, the national bamboozler-extraordinaire. Others have relabeled it supply-side economics or Reaganomics. But call it what you will, it remains the same destructive strategy for continually enriching the rich while further impoverishing the poor.
Only one thing “trickles down” from the powerful billionaires standing on top of you in this class battle. Take a guess at what it is. (I’ll give you a hint: it ain’t well paid jobs or affordable health care.)
Here is some more analysis from a real economist, Paul Krugman. Also, please look at the impressive graph included in this part of his article:
“You see, Republicans almost universally advocate low taxes on the wealthy, based on the claim that tax cuts at the top will have huge beneficial effects on the economy [the supposed ‘trickle-down’ effect]. This claim rests on research by … well, nobody. There isn’t any body of serious work supporting G.O.P. tax ideas, because the evidence is overwhelmingly against those ideas…[emphasis mine]
“Why do Republicans adhere to a tax theory that has no support from nonpartisan economists and is refuted by all available data? Well, ask who benefits from low taxes on the rich, and it’s obvious.
“And because the party’s coffers demand adherence to nonsense economics, the party prefers ‘economists’ who are obvious frauds and can’t even fake their numbers effectively.”
Yes, the multi-millionaire, Ronald Reagan (worth $10.6 million in 1981 dollars when he took the president’s office) launched a new, immoral class war against the poor and the middle-class. Reagan whipped up irrational – even racist – hostilities against “big government” and supposedly ghetto dwelling “welfare queens” in order to sell his political snake oil dressed up as a tax plan. However, the real goal was producing a vast economic benefit for Reagan’s friends and campaign donors, members of an exclusive club I call the Triple-Bs: Billionaires and Big Business.
The working poor, the needy, the destitute, and even the middle-class, have been losing ground ever since. That lost ground includes their homes, jobs, savings accounts, educational opportunities, health care and government assistance.
It is long past time for the conservative church, all those who consistently vote Republican, to wake up and smell the coffee.
You have been naïve (perhaps) but not guiltless co-conspirators in the heartless exploitation of America’s poor and needy, our children, our sick, and our elderly. It is time to rip off the cruel partisan blinders, repent of our selfishness and confess, “Yes, we need the politics of Jesus!”
From each according to your abilities. To each according to your needs.
Please digest this explanation of the first Congressional vote scheduled for tomorrow (1/8/19) and call your elected officials. Explain to them that no foreign government, including Israel, can nullify your right to participate in BDS campaigns in your own country.
“Last Thursday, the Senate’s first bill of the new Congress – S.1 – was introduced
Marco Rubio is another senator receiving large contributions from AIPAC
by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and it encourages states to punish people for boycotting for Palestinian rights.
To make matters worse, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill tomorrow.
Then please pick up the phone RIGHT NOW and tell your Senators to vote NO on S.1.
Sen. Rubio’s new bill incorporates language from the Combating BDS Act, his unconstitutional bill which we defeated in the last Congress.
The Combating BDS Act calls upon states and cities to enact laws that curtail our constitutional freedoms by denying government contracts to people who boycott for Palestinian rights. In response to lawsuits filed by the ACLU, these types of laws have already been stopped by federal judges in Kansas and Arizona on constitutional grounds, and there are three additional lawsuits currently challenging similar laws in Texas and Arkansas.
Even though courts are siding with us and reaffirming our constitutional right to boycott for Palestinian rights, Sen. Rubio is still trying to pass legislation to deny our First Amendment rights.
The title captures the ludicrous nature of this bill and the corruption generated by the pro-Zionist lobby, especially AIPAC, in the US Congress.
Senator Chuck Shumer is also on the AIPAC gravy train
Here is an excerpt:
“…in the 2019 GOP-controlled Senate, the first bill to be considered — S.1 — is not designed to protect American workers, bolster U.S. companies, or address the various debates over border security and immigration. It’s not a bill to open the government. Instead, according to multiple sources involved in the legislative process, S.1 will be a compendium containing a handful of foreign policy-related measures, the main one of which is a provision — with Florida’s GOP Sen. Marco Rubio as a lead sponsor — to defend the Israeli government. The bill is a top legislative priority for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.”
Who do your senators and congressional representatives really represent? You or Israel?
Perhaps you have already heard about the latest brouhaha generated by Jerry Falwell Jr.’s interview with the Washington Post. Aside from the
Jerry Falwell Jr.
political hypocrisy strewn throughout the entire piece, two points, in particular, have gained significant public attention.
If you have been following this controversy, you may want to skip down and begin reading at part two of this post. Otherwise, beginning with part one will catch you up on the issues involved.
Part. One:
First, when asked, “Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders?” Falwell flatly answered, “No.”
“His explanation was a textbook piece of circular reasoning: Trump wants what’s best for the country, therefore anything he does is good for the country. There’s
Ruth Graham, journalist
something almost sad about seeing this kind of idolatry articulated so clearly. In a kind of backhanded insult to his supporters, Trump himself once said that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing his base. It’s rare to see a prominent supporter essentially admit that this was true.”
I will go one step further and suggest that not even Jesus Christ himself demands such blind, a-moral loyalty. At least, the apostle Paul admitted that he stopped short of offering that brand of devil-may-care devotion to Jesus Christ himself!
In 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, Paul seems to suggest that there is at least one thing the man from Nazareth could have done that would have caused Paul not to believe in him.
Jesus could have stayed dead.
For Paul insists:
“…if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…”
Not even the Lord and Savior of the universe demands the type of undiscerning, a-moral devotion that Falwell has placed in Donald Trump.
Folks, Falwell expresses a truly idolatrous brand of politics.
Yes, I realize that sorting out this issue requires a conversation about the relationship between faith and historical evidence, but we don’t have time for that discussion here. I suggestion that you take a look at my book, Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture and then follow up on its bibliography.
The second point of controversy was Falwell’s defense of his position by referring to his “two kingdoms” theology. He explained:
“There’s two kingdoms. There’s the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you’d like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what’s best for your country.”
I won’t bother to address the problems created by Falwell’s two kingdoms theology – though I have serious doubts about Falwell’s ability to express an informed opinion on Lutheran theology — since I have critiqued Luther’s own application of his two kingdoms theology, its dangerous uses in 20th century history, and explained what I understand to be the New Testament’s teaching about God’s kingdom in my book, I Pledge Allegiance.
Part Two:
So…this brings me to the thoughts motivating me to add something further to the conversation surrounding Falwell’s interview. Others, like Professor John Fea (here and here), have covered the issues well, but I suspect there may be another suggestion yet to be explored: the possible influence of dispensational theology in the age of Trump. If this term is new to you, start with this Wikipedia page and Google on from there.
Not long ago I came across a separate interview with Jerry Falwell Jr. where he said that he “did not look to Jesus” for guidance in his politics, but was directed instead by his concerns for “a law and order candidate.” (Unfortunately, I have not been able to relocate the source for that interview. Any help out there???).
Here are the two interesting puzzle pieces that got me thinking.
One, Jesus’ life and teaching, items such as Jesus’ own pacifism, the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of our Lord’s ethical instruction, have no role in forming Falwell’s view of Christian politics.
Two, he believes that Christian values in this “earthly kingdom” are separate and distinct from God’s values in the heavenly kingdom.
Well, it just so happens that those two positions were (are?) identifying characteristics of the earliest, die-hard advocates of American dispensational theology — a stream in which I suspect Liberty University is squarely planted. Though I can’t cite a scientific poll to prove it, I am reasonably certain that dispensationalism (in one or another of its various forms) is the most commonly embraced “theology” in North America, especially among those who are theologically unaware.
American dispensationalism is the fuel that feeds the raging fire of U.S. Christian Zionism. That alone is enough to make it highly suspect, as far as I am concerned. It is also one of the several reasons I abandoned my youthful dispensationalism long ago.
Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), the founding president of Dallas Theological Seminary, which remains the Mecca of dispensational thinking to this day, was the first American systematician of dispensational thought. His 8-volume work of Systematic Theology, first printed in 1947, remains in print today. (My father gave me a complete set as a college graduation present. Yes, I was, and probably still am, a nerd).
An important feature of Chafer’s dispensationalism was his emphasis on the postponement of Jesus’ ethics. He taught that when Jesus said the kinds of “irrational” things we find in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, he was speaking solely to the Jewish people who were supposed to receive him as their messiah.
But since the majority of Jesus’ contemporaries rejected his messiahship, the implementation of that ethical teaching was deferred, postponed until the future arrival of the “millennial kingdom” when all of Israel will finally recognized Jesus as the One they have been awaiting. (For more detail, check out this page published by someone called The GospelPedlar. It has a good summary with citations explaining Chafer’s theology of “Postponed Ethics.”
So, for old-time dispensationalists like Chafer and his modern devotees, Jerry Falwell Jr. is reflecting sound dispensational, theological conviction when he ignores Jesus’ ethics while deciding his politics. For this frame of mind, the church does not now inhabit the proper kingdom age for the application of Jesus’ teaching to the Christian life, certainly not to a Christian’s politics.
This earthly kingdom is not the correct kingdom for Jesus’ ethics to be seriously applied, across the board, to all of Christian living. Although Chafer’s dispensationalism has nothing to do with Martin Luther’s two kingdoms theology, we can see an important convergence of ideas at this point.
Arriving at the same place by different routes, both groups (Lutherans and dispensationalists) endorse the idea of different kingdoms in different spheres with different behavioral expectations for God’s people.
I admit that I have not called Jerry Falwell Jr. and asked him whether his political thinking has been self-consciously shaped by Chaferian dispensationalism. After all, he is a lawyer with a B.A. in religious studies from, you guessed it, Liberty University. Are my prejudices showing?
Maybe I should give him a call someday, but he probably wouldn’t talk to me. (See his refusal to talk with people like Shane Clairbone here, here, here and here.)
What I DO know is that ideas matter. They matter a great deal. Theological ideas matter supremely to God’s church. (Any believer who is anti-theology doesn’t understand what he/she is saying.) We don’t have to know their source or history. We don’t even have to be able to articulate them clearly, much less expound upon their ramifications, whether intellectual or behavioral.
We simple breath in the lingering aroma of influential ideas, assimilating
Liberty University
them unwittingly from our (church) environment. And the American church offers an environment seeped in the aroma of old-time dispensationalism.
As I continue to ponder the damning conundrum of America’s conservative/ evangelical/fundamentalist church offering up its overwhelming support to Donald Trump, I can’t help but wonder if this is another part of the dispensational legacy fallen like poisoned fruit from the American tree of unbiblical theology.
to correct in my book, 
campaign that allows you to easily tell your elected representatives that you oppose the current U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela.
protect its multi-national, corporate investments around the world. (Read 
misrepresents Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion about increasing the marginal tax rate.
network news, have you?
book, if you haven’t already. Below is an excerpt:
change that in 1935. It didn’t happen). That responsibility falls to others who have few, if any, other options for a career or for higher education. And who knows how to begin counting the untold numbers of civilian casualties created by America’s sleek, stealth drones firing anonymously from thousands of feet in the air, killing innumerable, nameless brown people, men,woman and children, for who knows what reason.
perfecting the dark-arts of human slaughter.
but around the world. (Read John Perkin’s book, 
mesmerized by the dark enchantment of a mythical, fire-breathing monster called “trickle-down economics.” This farcical tax policy was conjured up from the pit by President Ronald Reagan, the national bamboozler-extraordinaire. Others have relabeled it supply-side economics or Reaganomics. But call it what you will, it remains the same destructive strategy for continually enriching the rich while further impoverishing the poor.
dollars when he took the president’s office) launched a new, immoral class war against the poor and the middle-class. Reagan whipped up irrational – even racist – hostilities against “big government” and supposedly ghetto dwelling “welfare queens” in order to sell his political snake oil dressed up as a tax plan. However, the real goal was producing a vast economic benefit for Reagan’s friends and campaign donors, members of an exclusive club I call the Triple-Bs: Billionaires and Big Business.
assistance.
relationship between faith and historical evidence, but we don’t have time for that discussion here. I suggestion that you take a look at my book, 
Luther’s own application of his two kingdoms theology, its dangerous uses in 20th century history, and explained what I understand to be the New Testament’s teaching about God’s kingdom in my book, 
to this day, was the first American systematician of dispensational thought. His 8-volume work of 
seriously applied, across the board, to all of Christian living. Although Chafer’s dispensationalism has nothing to do with Martin Luther’s two kingdoms theology, we can see an important convergence of ideas at this point.