Tag: Christianity and Politics

Tell Your Elected Officials You Want Peace in Venezuela

The Alliance for Global Justice is leading a world-wide campaign for Peace in Venezuela today, Feb. 7, 2019, in coordination with an international conference occurring in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Their letter begins:

“Today in Montevideo, Uruguay, nations from throughout the world, hosted by Uruguay and Mexico, are meeting “to establish the basis for a new dialogue mechanism that includes all the forces in Venezuela, in order to help restore peace in that country.” Shamefully absent is the Trump administration and its ordained “interim president” Juan Guaido. Instead, the Trump administration is threatening to invade Venezuela and Guaido is calling on the military to betray their oath to the Constitution. The number of voices in Congress raised against Trump’s illegal regime change policies is insignificant.”  (emphasis mine)

This link will take you to the webpage that allows you to contact your elected officials to let them know that you oppose the US backed regime change in Venezuela.

Please write your Senators and Representatives today.

The same link also reproduces an excellent article by Michael Weisbrot at The Intercept entitled,  “Trump Sanctions, Regime Change Strategy in Venezuela Can Only Cause More Violence and Suffering.”

Below is an excerpt highlighting the degree to which American imperialism serves the purposes of class warfare around the world.

Case in point:  the forces now working to unseat Maduro are primarily white and well off.  Whereas, Maduro’s supporters are overwhelmingly brown,  Indian, poor and marginalized:

“Venezuela is polarized along political lines and has been ever since Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998 and launched his Bolivarian Revolution. The opposition’s attempt to overthrow Chávez in a military coup in 2002, aided and abetted by officials in the George W. Bush administration, as well as the opposition leadership’s vacillating willingness to accept the results of democratic elections in subsequent years laid the groundwork for many years of distrust.

“Venezuela’s political polarization, however, also intersects with a great chasm that permeates most of Latin American society: a division by class and race. As in most of the Americas, the two are correlated. In the opposition protests that have occurred over the past decade, one could see these differences in the clothes worn by pro- versus anti-government protesters and in their skin tones. The opposition crowds and their leaders have been considerably whiter and from higher income groups than Venezuelans who supported the government. In the most recent protests, there has been an increase in anti-government actions in working-class and poor areas in Caracas, but the class and racial divide between Chavistas and opposition has not gone away.

“Another line of Venezuelan polarization is the belief in sovereignty and self-determination. The Chavistas have made independence from the U.S. a centerpiece of their agenda, and their government, when it had money, pursued policies in the hemisphere that sought more independence for the region as well. The opposition and enemies of the Chavista governments, by contrast, have worked closely with the U.S. government for the past two decades — as can be seen in the coordination of this latest attempted coup. Washington’s intervention aggravates the polarization along the lines of sovereignty, and opens the opposition to charges of alignment with a foreign power — and a power that has historically played a terrible role in the region. To appreciate the animosity that this would create, think of how much ill will has been generated in the U.S. by Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, and multiply that by a few orders of magnitude.”

Huge Pro-Maduro Rallies Today in Venezuela

Today the streets of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities were filled with huge crowds of pro-Maduro/anti-imperialist rallies.  A site that you will

Massive pro-Maduro/anti-imperialist rallies were held today throughout Venezuela

never see on corporate, mainstream news outlets in this country.

While American talking heads insist that Maduro is an unpopular dictator, the Venezuelan people say otherwise.

I don’t know how to copy video from Twitter, so I have supplied a few of the many links I have found today.  Take a look at the vast crowds of pro-government supporters here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Yes, president Maduro also has many opponents.  So does Donald Trump.  And….?

U.S. officials and their media puppets want the American public to believe that U.S. (military) intervention will rid Venezuela of an unpopular dictator, hated by a majority of his people.

If we all swallow that lie, then we are placated and will remain docile when we subjugate, undoubtedly with bloodshed, another nation for our own selfish, national interests.

In addition, would a real dictator allow anti-government rallies to be led by the upstart, US/CIA backed contender for his presidency?  I don’t think so.  A dictator would have arrested Guaido and his fellow opposition leaders long ago.

In any case, the one thing followers of Jesus Christ may never be is placated and docile in the face of evil, especially when that evil is being committed in our name by our country.

Citizens of God’s kingdom will stand up and say, “No!  This action is wicked and ungodly.  It is completely unacceptable.  We will not condone such evil with our silence.  We will speak and work to stop our government’s unwarranted, illegal use of force.”

Call your elected representatives and tell them, Hands Off Venezuela!

A Biblical Ode to America

A few days ago The Wall Street Journal published an expose revealing the Trump administration’s intention to remake Latin America in its own image, continuing to use the well-worn strategies of assassination, economic sanctions — which commonly lead to widespread starvation — and military intervention.

The headline and opening paragraph read, “U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela’s Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America.”  

Recent assassination attempt against Maduro

“The Trump administration’s attempt to force out the president of Venezuela marked the opening of a new strategy to exert greater U.S. influence over Latin America, according to administration officials.”

Hence, I offer the following New Testament pesher (a contemporary interpretation) from John’s Apocalypse, chapter 18:

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor.  With a mighty voice he shouted:

The harvest of a US trained Salvadoran death squad

“‘Fallen! Fallen is America the Great!’
    She has become a dwelling for demons
and a haunt for every impure spirit,
    a haunt for every unclean bird,
    a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.
For all the nations have drunk
    the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
    and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

Then I heard another voice from heaven say:

“‘Come out of her, my people,’
    so that you will not share in her sins,
    so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for America’s sins are piled up to heaven,
    and God has remembered the crimes of the United States.
Give back to her as she has given;
    pay her back double for what she has done.

    Pour her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torment and grief
    as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
    ‘I sit enthroned as queen; I am the sole Super Power.
I am not a widow;
    I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
    death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
    for mighty is the Lord God who judges her…

..Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said:

“With such violence
    the great nation of America will be thrown down,
    never to be found again.
The music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters,
    will never be heard in you again.
No worker of any trade
    will ever be found in you again.
The sound of a millstone
    will never be heard in you again.
The light of a lamp
    will never shine in you again.
The voice of bridegroom and bride
    will never be heard in you again.
Your merchants were the world’s important people.
    By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.
       In America was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people —  who stood to warn you but were few and far between — of ALL who have been slaughtered on the earth by your drones, your assassinations, atomic bombs, cruise missiles, special forces, cluster bombs, stealth fighters, torture programs, death squads, economic sanctions and regime changes.”

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: America Now Exists for a “State of Perpetual War”

Regular readers of this blog will know that I believer Col. Lawrence Wilkerson is a guy worth listening to when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

He has demonstrated an unusually strong moral compass in renouncing his

Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

past role working in the George W. Bush administration and serving as a consistent critic of the burgeoning American Empire.

Listen to his thoughts in a recent RT America interview regarding American policy today.  His sad verdict is that the U.S. raison d’etre of American empire is preserving “a state of perpetual war.”

Wilkerson’s remarks begin at the 1:50 mark.

Oops, Howard Schultz’s Class Consciousness Is Showing

The billionaire owner of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, has thrown his hat into the presidential ring as an independent candidate in 2020.

He has publicly declared that his singular motive for entering the race is the

Howard Schultz

recent suggestion by Democratic leaders to raise taxes on America’s millionaires and billionaires.

Does anyone else catch a whiff of billionaire self-interest in Schultz’s candidacy?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has suggested a 70% tax rate on America’s 1% (see my post discussing her ideas here).  Sen. Elizabeth Warren, not to be outdone, suggests a 2% wealth tax  on income above $50 million and a 3% tax on wealth above $1 billion.

Remember, these are marginal tax rates (see an explanation of marginal taxation here).

Such talk is down-right horrifying to Mr. Schultz.  In fact, he takes it very personally.  So much so that he deliberately misconstrues such suggestions as “personal attacks” launched against him as an individual!

Take a moment (actually 7:26) to check out this clip from The Young Turks.  It contains a slice of Mr. Schultz’s hissy fit over the idea of slightly raising his marginal tax rate together with some good analysis and commentary from Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uyger.  It’s well worth a listen.

Schultz’s candidacy is another fine example of the class war in America.

Venezuelan Opposition Leader in Line to Become Another U.S. Puppet

Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen have published an excellent piece of investigative journalism at the GrayZone entitled, “The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader.”

Remember that Juan Guaido is the young man selected by the Trump administration to be designed the real president of Venezuela, rather than the actually elected president, Nicolas Madura.

The article’s headline reads:

“Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.”

Blumenthal and Cohen have done their homework thoroughly, as always.  They detail the long history of U.S./CIA backed rebel training organizations in various parts of the world equipping people like Guaido — he an upper-crust graduate of such a program — to subvert governments that refuse to submit to U.S. foreign policy objectives.

An excerpt of the article is printed below.  I urge you to read the entire piece here.

“Guaidó is more popular outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,” Sequera remarked to The Grayzone, “He’s a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.”

While Guaidó is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela’s most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.

“‘These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to León, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”

But this is precisely why Guaidó was selected by Washington: He is not expected to lead Venezuela toward democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.”  (emphasis mine)

Trump Appoints Elliott “War Criminal” Abrams Special Envoy on Venezuela — Let the Blood Bath Begin

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.

If you don’t know or can’t recall the history of Abram’s involvement in war crimes, Consortium News has reposted an older article by the eminent journalist Robert Parry documenting the massive bloodshed for which Abrams shares responsibility.   It is entitled “With the US Meddling Again in Latin America, a Look Back at How Washington Promoted Genocide in Guatemala.”

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

Victims_Of_The_Mozote_Massacre_Morazán_El_Salvador_January_1982

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?

I guess the righteous brother Pompeo says, Yes.

 

 

 

 

Sec. of State Mike Pompeo’s Policies “a product of ideology compounded by ignorance”

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 your kind 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.

Secretary Pompeo is yet another example of everything that can go wrong with American evangelicalism.  His corrupted theology is affected nations around the world, exposing them to the dangers I explain, condemn and try to correct in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

The article is entitled, “Mike Pompeo’s Deranged Foreign Policy.”  I have copied an excerpt below.  You can read the entire article here.

“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: 

“For those who fret about the use of American power, remember this: (No.1) America has always been, and always will be, a liberating force.” [Since World War II we have been liberating dictators from their own rebelling people.] (No.2) “We assembled a coalition to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.” [The subsequent two Gulf Wars plus the U.S. imposed sanctions regime killed at least half-a-million Iraqis.] (No.3) “And when the mission is over, when the job is complete, America leaves.” [Unless the “liberated” countries’ government wants Washington to establish bases which, it seems, they almost always do. The U.S. now has some 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world.] (No. 4) The U.S. and its allies helped destroy most of ISIS, and in the process “saved thousands of lives.”[There is no official number for the civilians killed in the so-called war on terror, of which the campaign against ISIS is but a part. However, there is no doubt that, to date, it is at least in the high hundreds of thousands. ] (No.5) “Life is returning to normal for millions of Iraqis and Syrians.” [Unless you have a really perverse definition of “normal,” this is a total fantasy.]”

Why Christians Should Care About Venezuela. It’s Class Warfare, Folks.

What we are witnessing in Venezuela today is a classic demonstration of the most extreme expression of class warfare. (See my recent series on the class war in America here, here and here).

Let’s begin with two observations:

One, starting with the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999, the Venezuelan government has put an extraordinary amount of energy into improving the quality of life for its poorest members.   International capitalists haven’t approved of their methods, but then, they weren’t elected by the Venezuelan people.

Check out this article from The Guardian to see statistics on the dramatic improvements brought about by the Chavez-Maduro party in Venezuela’s levels of education, health care, poverty, infant mortality and unemployment.

Two, Americans in general, and Christians in particular, need to break out of our simple-minded binary (either this or that) way of thinking.  The world is more complicated. It rarely offers only two possibilities, e.g.  it’s either this way or the highway; it’s always America against the world; vote either Republican or Democrat; you either support another American coup in Venezuela or you are a communist who thinks there is nothing wrong with Maduro.

Christians must think differently!  

As citizens of God’s kingdom, we know that there is always another alternative.  We are obligated to look at this world through the radically alternative lens of Jesus Christ and his gospel.  This requires nuance, an understanding of alternatives, and stepping outside of the conventional “wisdom.”

So, an alternative option in this current situation is opposition to any and every U.S. attempt to manipulate and control the internal politics of a foreign country.

It doesn’t mean that we are blessing everything that the Bolivarian Revolution has done in Venezuela, but it must mean that as followers of Jesus (a) we applaud the government’s attempts to prioritize the needs of the poorest members of Venezuelan society, and (b) we oppose any actions intended to reestablish domination by wealthy elites inside the country and/or foreign, corporate powers like the U.S.A.

Jesus Christ never bludgeoned anyone into following him.   HE is our one and only model in life, not the realpolitik of American “strategic interests.”  Using force, deception, or cheating to get our way is not the way of Jesus Christ.

Anyone who wants to understand this world with the mind of Christ; to embrace his/her role as a citizen of God’s kingdom, now living in America; to grasp Jesus’ call to live lives of peaceableness and non-violence, will always oppose, in words and actions, any American attempt to spread more violence, war and social unrest by forcing its will onto other people in the world for its own selfish purpose.

Below are several brief videos offering a picture of the widespread, popular support Maduro has among the poor of Venezuela.

Here and here are two longer videos (about 30 minutes each) offering more detailed discussion of what is happening in Venezuela from long-time students of Venezuelan politics at The Real News.

 

National Budgets as Weapons of Class Warfare

(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.

How else can we explain our persistent, even habitual, addictive, military interventions across the globe?  According to The National Interest, the U.S. “engaged in forty-six military interventions from 1948–1991, from 1992–2017 that number increased fourfold to 188.”

Those figures are incredible.

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

Sen. Mitch McConnell

already at it.

Not long after Congress passed both Trump’s disastrous new budget and his tax overhaul last year, Sen. McConnell began trumpeting the predictable, and wholly fallacious, lament that the growing national deficit is due to “the three big entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.”

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.

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 serious about conforming themselves to the image of a crucified, suffering Savior, has no choice but 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?