I never heard of Brig Hart in my life, but by accident I discovered there is a huge subculture that follows him. Used to be with Amway. Writes books promising to make you a millionaire. The usual. He is, naturally, a big booster of another rich white guy who promises Evangelicals that they can have all the kingdoms of the earth if they will bow down and worship him. So he is fond of posting MAGA disinformation on his Facebook wall like this:
His cult of personality thought this was brilliant, so I responded:
“By the way, what Biden said is, “Put trust and faith in our government to fulfill its most important function, which is protecting the American people — no function more important.“
You know who said exactly the same thing about our relationship with the state? St. Paul:
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (Ro 13:1–7). .
If you actually understood the Christian faith and were not a MAGA antichrist worshipper trusting in an obvious fraud like Trump, you would understand these things.
Repent and believe the gospel.”
To my astonishment, as of this posting, 2.1K people have responded to these (to me) fairly obvious observations, nearly all of them positively (some 20+ laughed and one or two got angry, the rest agreed). I mention it here because I take it as a token of something Normals need to remind themselves of: namely that there are way more of us than there are of the MAGA freak show.
Sundry people responded, as well, some with Sheer Crazy (“Biden bill gates fauci and the government is trying to depopulate the world with a killer nano vaccine created by Bill Gates to depopulate the world” and “I just want too add that DC is a forgein land owned by the city of London and the Vatican NO one is in the Whitehouse except those holding military tribunals that’s the only way they can hold them BET the fake need media forgot to mention that one too you.”
In addition, there was the standard “Biden the Babykiller” stuff, to which I replied:
“Our abortion regime is 100% the creation of a GOP SCOTUS (with Roe) and was entrenched (with Casey) by an 8-1 GOP SCOTUS. Abortion rates rose under Trump after being brought to their lowest point in history under Obama/Biden. Trump also raised Planned Parenthood funding to record heights.
The MAGA cult has no interest in saving the unborn. It cares about using them as human shields for your selfishness, cruelty, stupidity and greed. It’s why your evil cult has no interest in the pregnant woman and unborn children being killed by the COVID you fight to spread. And it’s why you consistently back punitive policies that punish the poor and make it hard for them to support families. You pressure the poor to abort and then blame them for caving to your pressure.
I oppose abortion. Your evil cult fights to make sure it keeps happening. All Dems do is maintain the regime that your evil cult created.”
There was also a smattering “IknowyouarebutwhatamI?” Pee Wee Herman stuff from braindead MAGA incapable of anything but tu quoque replies.
There was a small amount of noise from people informing me that Paul was an agent of Rome sent to found Christianity and keep the Jews quiet (amazing to hear this weird theory is still taken seriously), a couple of “Jesus never existed” types, some Bible thumpers telling me to study the “Septuagenarian” Bible and informing me that I worship Mary, and quite a number of people taking Paul to mean that the state rules by divine right and can never be questioned.
To that last misunderstanding, I reply:
“What Paul is saying is that the state, for all its evil (it murdered the Son of God, after all) is still preferable to anarchy and that God gave it to us, not because it is incapable of evil (Nero is the Caesar he is speaking of and will later murder Paul), but because civil order remains a good.
Paul doesn’t tell us to trust the state at all. He says to obey the just laws of the state. Even in Nero’s Rome you aren’t free to mug people. Living under Stalin does not give you license to speed in a school zone. Even in Nazi Germany, the state had the right to arrest you if you beat up an old lady and took her purse. And however much you might think being a super duper KKKhristian Patriot Freedom Eagle Warrior frees you from your obligation to love your neighbor, you still have no right to attack the Capitol and overturn a valid election because some orange mob boss in a diaper is mad that he lost.
Advertisement
4 Responses
If [i]Roe v Wade[/i] gets overturned by the [i]Dobbs[/i] case (which I sincerely hope it does, just on the basis that it was a terrible decision that should never have happened), you just [i]know[/i] the MAGA freaks will be pointing fingers for the next decade and shrieking something along the lines of, ‘Nyah-nyah! We told you so! Republicans magicked abortion away! Nyah-nyah!’
That is…until they have to take the battle over abortion back to the state level and realise: Hey, guess what? Showing the world that we only care about this one issue in a political/philosophical vacuum and have no concern for the circumstances that make it seem like a viable option to people kinda makes us look like a bunch of dirty hypocrites with our heads up our asses! And all the good people out there who see abortion for what it really is – a human rights issue that needs a human solution, not some abstract moral conundrum that can be magicked away with the stroke of a pen – want nothing to do with us anymore!
If any actual progress is to be made on this issue, either the Republicans need to embrace real-life ‘compassionate conservatism’ (remember when that was a thing?) and start thinking about what’s best for the poor and working class, or the Democrats need to ease up on the whole ‘abortion on demand without apology’ schtick and embrace a big tent approach, or members of both parties who really care about life-issues-as-human-issues need to go their own way and come up with a viable alternative – or maybe some combination of all three.
P.S. Thanks to John Thayer Jensen for showing me how to use italics!
“or the Democrats need to ease up on the whole ‘abortion on demand without apology’ schtick and embrace a big tent approach”.
Please. As recently as 2017 the leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus was an anti-abortion D, Harry Reid. The Senate D’s still include Joe Manchin and Bob Casey, who both oppose abortion.
And it was D’s in the House who made sure Obamacare did not include funding for abortions.
– joel
Wrong type of brackets, alas! You used square brackets; they need to be angle-brackets – left-angle-bracket like the less-than symbol; right-angle-bracket like the greater-than symbol.
That’s a great sign that most people responded in good faith.