Donald Trump
on Monday compared himself to Jesus Christ during a court hearing of his criminal trial over hush money
payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. There may be similarities; scholars have suggested, based on the apocryphal gospels (those not recognized by the Church; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha), that Jesus Christ may have been the lover or husband of Mary Magdalene, the prostitute he once defended against Jews who wanted to stone her to death. Hence, Jesus and Mary Magdalene = Donald and Stormy Daniels.
But the comparison ends with the prostitute-porn actress feature. Keeping the supernatural magic out of the Messiah business, Jesus may have historically been a rebel rabbi who wanted to topple the Roman occupation of Palestine. Outside of the fabricated mythology of the Gospels (miracles, raising the dead, flying demons into pigs, etc.), rabbi Jesus was an unknown. No historical source of the time mentions him. Had his "movement" been of the magnitude we attribute to it today, many Roman authors, historians, poets, jurists... would have at least mentioned him. But they didn't, which suggests that his rebellion was barely noticed and his myth was later created post-mortem by his followers in 24 different Gospels. This proliferation of various renditions of the life and death of the hero Leader, 100 years after his death , was seized upon two centuries later by his "church" as testimonials of the faith. But church bosses saw it fitting to bring some discipline to the blooming of the faith by choosing 4 out of the 24 gospels and declare them "canon" gospels, the only ones to be believed and used in worship.
Jesus's revolt failed militarily. He was caught, judged, and crucified like thousands of other rebel fighters - known as "terrorists" by the Roman occupation army. During that first century of our era, and after Rome crushed the Jewish revolt in Palestine and destroyed the Jewish Temple in 70 AD, the barely known historical fact of Jesus - his was probably not the only movement of the rebellion - was slowly magnified into a myth by his followers, and the rebel became a hero, a god, the son of God who rose from the dead. Somehow, you've got to make the story so out there that few can really challenge it. That is why faith rests on believing stuff by simply suspending one's reason...The myth grew and Jesus's followers took his story all the way to Rome, the center of political power at the time. If they were going to rid Palestine of the Romans, better try to cut off the head of the snake in Rome.
This is where things become interesting because I compare the Christian movement during these first 2-3 centuries to the Communist movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, Communism and Christian dogma are very similar: The rich should give their money to the poor, unity, brotherhood and equality, international appeal by preaching to all peoples of the earth, not only Jews, share the wealth of the nation equally among all citizens, no value is attributed to material wealth and enrichment, reject and challenge old received ideas like the "natural order", a favorite of snotty aristocratic English crooks, the policy of not worrying about tomorrow, as in "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Sufficient to the day is its own trouble", said Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is in many ways a Communist Manifesto delivered by "Che Gevara-Jesus" to the downtrodden of this earth.
As such, it took several decades for the followers of Jesus to organize. It took time for the many authors of the Gospels to write them, so a couple of generations went by before history became myth. Just like Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and other "inventors" of Communism: They were regular guys who wrote and fought for equality and against capitalism and it took time before they were elevated to the status of gods with their statues erected everywhere. Just as Communists were hounded by a conservative Christian West as plotters and terrorists bent on destroying the "natural order", early Christians of the Roman Empire were seen as trouble-makers and terrorists trying to subvert Rome and its pantheon.
History, they say is written by the victors. So besides the made-up story of Emperor Constantine's mother Helena, who secretly became a Christian operative and counseled her son to carry the cross on his battle banners to secure victory, which led him to convert the empire to Christianity, no serious history text tells us how the Christians effectively took over the Roman Empire. But just like communist cells of our 20th century - the Bolsheviks in Russia for example - Christians lived a secret underground life, hounded and persecuted, and they in all likelihood carried out attacks against Roman soldiers and institutions, just like modern-day terrorists, which were met with harsh reprisals and those arrested were taken to the arena to be devoured by wild beasts. They lived in the catacombs which were to Rome what the Hamas tunnels in Gaza are to Israel. In other words, Christians were no angels. They formed an underground movement that ultimately took over the Roman government and created the Church, a sort of Politburo with the Pope at its head. The church's martyrs - just like Hamas's martyrs today - were subversive fighters who graduated to become saints.
Indeed, once the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion, the tables turned (just like when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia) and the persecuted Christians became vengeful torturers, arresting, raping, killing anyone who refused to become Christian. Just like the "red" Bolshevik revolutionaries who launched a scortched earth campaign against the "white" loyalists of the monarchy. Temples were either destroyed or turned into churches, Roman gods were converted into saints. Even scientists were persecuted if their discoveries conflicted with the "teachings" of the new order: Hypatia of Alexandria was a famous mathematician and astronomer, and being a woman did not endear her to the chauvinistic males of the church. The first Christian bishop of Alexandria captured her in her school, his followers stripped her naked, paraded her while beating her with whips made up of seashells, and finally dismembered her. That was the "love" of the early church.
But one thing stands out: these early Christians were all Jewish; Christianity was born as a pacifist offshoot of an otherwise violent Judaism. Some conspiracy advocates argue that the Christian religion was created by some Jews for the specific objective of "taming" or "domesticating" the gentiles (non-Jews) - Romans at the time - by herding them into a "religion" of peaceniks who would not fight back (turn the other cheek; love your enemy, be meek, stupid and poor and we'll reserve a seat for you in heaven, wealth is bad and poverty is good, etc.). This way, the Jews could tame the gentiles into submission and keep control of the narrative. I would not go that far into the conspiracy theory, but it is difficult not to see that some of these elements have obtained. For example, in Judaism there are no hell and heaven. The rewards that God gives to Jews are of this life, on this earth (multiply by good old fornication, including sleeping with the maid, take other people's lands, become rich, etc.). No promise of eternal life either in hell as punishment or in paradise as reward. The Jewish mindset has no horizon beyond the here and now. On the other hand, the Christian is instructed not to bother with this life because his/her true reward is eternal life after death, sitting like a junior zombie right next to the Big Zombie in the Sky, somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. Unlike Judaism whose history is one of making and breaking mercantile deals with God, the Christian religion calls for surrendering to God, just like Islam.
I digressed. But I felt it important to set the stage for Donald Dumb's assertions to his numskull Christian evangelical followers that he is the Messiah. As a good bigoted charlatan Christian, he takes his show around the country like a snake oil peddler and is now selling bibles for $59.99, the Christian philanthropist-philanderer that he is. But they, the Donald Dumb followers, refuse to see that he is a con man exploiting their Christian beliefs so they vote him into power. He knows that their Christian beliefs are stupid, but instead of educating them and telling them the truth, or at least leave religion aside, he exploits their imbecility by pretending to be one of them.
“It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you,” the message reads, suggesting that Trump’s $468 million fine for decades of financial fraud is on par with the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
The message then points to Psalm 109, a verse that the Christian right has embraced as a fairly ominous political rallying cry. The stanza ends: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” A drivel that becomes a prophecy in the weak desperate minds of those who refuse the modern world.
“Thank you again for taking the arrows intended for us. We love you,” concludes the message that may or may not have actually been sent by a fan of the former president. (It wasn’t filled with WORDS IN ALL CAPS and random uses of quotation “marks,” so it could indeed be authentic.) Trump responded by calling the sentiment “beautiful.”
So the Messiah, Jesus-Donald-Christ-Dumb, is running to become the president of the US for a second time. Not even Jesus had a second chance, but Donald Dumb has because of a huge mass of ignorant Americans.
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