June 1 2024 Anniversary of Traitor Trump’s Seizure of St. John’s Church and Assault on a Protest as a Stage For Propaganda
On this day we remember the weaponization of faith in service to power as authorization of the use of state terror and repression of dissent against the Black Lives Matter protests of racial justice. In this obscene subversion o…
On this day we remember the weaponization of faith in service to power as authorization of the use of state terror and repression of dissent against the Black Lives Matter protests of racial justice. In this obscene subversion of the message of the brotherhood of men and our duty of care for each other of the Sermon on the Mount, so beautifully written of by Tolstoy, Traitor Trump aped the gestural and rhetorical performance of his model Adolf Hitler as he often does, whose newsreels he studied for years as he sleeps with a copy of Mein Kampf on his nightstand in place of a Bible. This is the true faith of Trump, and his vision of a future for us all.
Let us remember, and bring a Reckoning; but we must remember also that Trump exploited but did not originate the weaponization of faith as authorization and legitimation of theocratic tyranny, white supremacist terror, and patriarchal sexual terror. This special form of totalitarianism is as old as the first city-states founded on mass slave agriculture and conquest as slave raiding, the first priest-kings who spoke for the gods and the first police enforcers who kept the slaves at their work. There is always someone in a gold robe who cons and bullies others into doing the hard and dirty work which creates his wealth and power. This we must resist and change.
As written by Alan Moore in V For Vendetta; "Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse."
As I wrote in my post of June 2 2020, The Great Dictator: Trump's Reboot of the Chaplin Classic; As the world is gripped by images of Trump's expulsion of the priests from the church and brutal repression of protestors against racist violence, of his photo op holding a Bible while invoking the use of the military against citizens to silence dissent and bolster his failing regime of white supremacist terror, patriarchal sexual terror, and authoritarian state force and control, I believe it is time to consider the relative merits of our Clown of Terror's performance of the role of the Great Dictator as compared to its originator, Charlie Chaplin.
To this end I recommend Robert Coover's 1968 satire The Cat in the Hat for President, written originally about Nixon and republished as A Political Fable, and the luminous and feral 1933 novel on which Trump has modeled his revised Theatre of Cruelty, Heliogabalus; or, the Crowned Anarchist by Antonin Artaud.
Let us mock and deflate all such absurd monsters who would enslave us.
As written in the Charlie Chaplin website; "The Great Dictator was Chaplin's first film with dialogue. Chaplin plays both a little Jewish barber, living in the ghetto, and Hynkel, the dictator ruler of Tomainia. In his autobiography Chaplin quotes himself as having said: "One doesn't have to be a Jew to be anti Nazi. All one has to be is a normal decent human being."
Chaplin and Hitler were born within a week of one another. "There was something uncanny in the resemblance between the Little Tramp and Adolf Hitler, representing opposite poles of humanity, " writes Chaplin biographer David Robinson, reproducing an unsigned article from The Spectator dated 21st April 1939; "Providence was in an ironical mood when, fifty years ago this week, it was ordained that Charles Chaplin and Adolf Hitler should make their entry into the world within four days of each other….Each in his own way has expressed the ideas, sentiments, aspirations of the millions of struggling citizens ground between the upper and the lower millstone of society. (…) Each has mirrored the same reality – the predicament of the "little man" in modern society. Each is a distorting mirror, the one for good, the other for untold evil."
"Chaplin spent many months drafting and re-writing the speech for the end of the film, a call for peace from the barber who has been mistaken for Hynkel. Many people criticized the speech, and thought it was superfluous to the film. Others found it uplifting. Regrettably Chaplin's words are as relevant today as they were in 1940."
Transcript of Charlie Chaplin's Final Speech in The Great Dictator:
"I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness - not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost….
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. …..
Soldiers! don't give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!
In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!
Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!"
As the notorious St John's Church incident is described in The Washington Post in an article entitled Trump's use of the Bible was obscene. He should try reading the words inside it., written by Rev. William J. Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove; "On Monday evening, federal authorities used tear gas to clear Lafayette Square so President Trump could pose for a photo while holding a Bible in front of St. John's Episcopal Church. It wasn't the first time Trump has used the word of God as a political prop. But it was obscene, even for him.
Though Trump answered ambiguously when asked if the volume he was holding was his Bible, it appeared to be the Revised Standard Version of the text that he has used to signal to his Christian nationalist followers before.
According to David Brody and Scott Lamb's unironic "spiritual biography," "The Faith of Donald Trump," the Revised Standard Version was a gift from Trump's mother, Mary Anne, on the occasion of his graduation from Sunday Church Primary School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. Since his 2016 campaign, Trump has publicly claimed that the Bible is "very special" to him, using it frequently to authenticate his faith among what he calls "the evangelicals." When he took the oath of office at his inauguration, Trump placed that Bible on top of the Abraham Lincoln Bible from the Library of Congress.
Though Trump has said little more about this Bible publicly, charismatic television preachers such as his faith adviser, Paula White-Cain, have developed a mythos around it. According to the version of the story these preachers often recite in sermons, this Bible was sent to Trump's mother by two aunts in Scotland who were instrumental prayer warriors in an early-20th-century revival there. Among so-called Christian nationalists who believe that America has strayed from its traditional values and must be redeemed by "Christian" leadership, this Bible has become a sort of talisman to convey spiritual authority to an unlikely "chosen one."
Whether Trump believes any of this, millions of Christian nationalists do. For them, a picture of Trump with what appears to be his great aunts' Bible in front of a beleaguered church is worth a thousand words of reassurance.
But for those of us who study and preach the Bible's text, that Christian nationalism is an offense. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, tweeted on Monday evening that the president had "used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes." While that is true, we find it even more outrageous that Trump and the religious extremists he appeals to have turned Christian faith against itself.
As preachers in the South, one black and one white, we are painfully aware of the ways Christian faith has been used to justify slavery, white supremacy, legal segregation, corporate exploitation, the dominance of women and the dehumanization of LGBTQ people. As Frederick Douglass put it, "Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference."
Millions of Christians and other people of faith see and acknowledge this difference.
We read the prophet Isaiah's cry, "Woe unto those who legislate evil … make women and children their prey," and we know it is a challenge to this administration and any political leadership that neglects its responsibility to care for the poor and most vulnerable in our society.
We read the prophet Jeremiah crying out against those who say, "'Peace, peace' when there is no peace." We hear it as a call to listen to the grief of Americans who are not only weary of racialized police violence but also of a pandemic that has fallen disproportionately on black, brown and poor communities who are often asked to do what the essential work of food preparation, sanitation and bodily care.
We read Jesus saying, "Woe unto you … hypocrites … you have neglected the weightier matters of the law," and we know that, at the very heart of our faith, we are called to challenge those who try to twist belief to use it for their own ends.
The Bible as a talisman has real political power. But we believe the words inside the book are more powerful. If we unite across lines of race, creed and culture to stand together on the moral vision of love, justice and truth that was proclaimed by Jesus and the prophets, we have the capacity to reclaim the heart of this democracy and work together for a more perfect union.
To do that, we need to read the Bible and live it, not wave it for the cameras."
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