Christians who are supporters of the president have braided themselves to a man who in just the past few days and weeks tweeted a video of a supporter shouting “white power” (he later deleted it but has yet to denounce it); attacked NASCAR’s only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, while also criticizing the decision by NASCAR to ban Confederate flags from its races; threatened to veto this year’s annual defense bill if an amendment is included that would require the Pentagon to change the names of bases honoring Confederate military leaders; referred to COVID-19 as “kung flu” during a speech at a church in Phoenix; and blasted two sports teams, the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians, for considering name changes because of concerns by supporters of those franchises that those team names give undue offense.
These provocations by the president aren’t anomalous; he’s a man who vaulted to political prominence by peddling a racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States—he later implied that Obama was a secret Muslim and dubbed him the “founder of ISIS”—and whose remarks about an Indiana-born judge with Mexican heritage were described by former House Speaker Paul Ryan as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
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And what have evangelicals gained from supporting such a grotesquely unchristian man?
Based strictly on the standard of advancing causes that conservative evangelicals most care about, a fair-minded assessment of the Trump record is that some important things were achieved, especially in appointing federal judges. That clearly would not have happened in a Hillary Clinton presidency. But in virtually every other area, including the outcome of several key Supreme Court decisions, Trump has fallen short of the promises and expectations.
God moves in mysterious ways.
An Orthodox Israeli, desperate to find evidence that the haredim are something other than catastrophic for the state of Israel, quotes an article that, far as I can tell, has been taken down, in which a haredi person claims big improvements are in store for that cult. Yeah, turns out the haredim are even angrier than we are about their having spread covid all over that country because they’re too ignorant to credit the germ theory of disease. Dump our wretched rabbis and replace them with benevolent enlightened leaders!
On March 23, well-known haredi activist Avigayil Heilbron wrote a piece on the liberal news site Ynet entitled “The Criminals Among Us: We Are Angrier At Them Than [You] Secular Jews Are.” “Something historic is happening now,” wrote Heilbron. “Rabbis of perhaps a lesser status [than those who called for schools and synagogues to stay open] are openly expressing [their objection] to blind obedience to a leadership that has for years been a sad joke. There has been an unbelievable fear to voice criticism, but now, little by little, it’s happening…The majority of us are law-abiding citizens, and we are also angry.” These are strong words, of a kind rarely heard.
Right. Rarely. As in never. Babe, you don’t know what godly submission is, do you? (See this post for details.) Remember what haredi means. It means tremble. These are the people who above all, as their basic identifier, tremble before the word of God as expressed by that pale little coot in the corner over there. They don’t rebel, babe. They tremble.
Her other piece of evidence for exciting changes among the haredim? Mr One-Man Fraud Op himself allows as how all those haredim killing themselves and everyone around them because they’re too ignorant to credit the germ theory of disease maybe should do a little reflecting on the carnage their community has caused.
Ooh la la!
The utterly corrupt chief rabbinate of Israel (put the words in Google and go to town) may halt all rabbinical ordinations — rather than let us cows become rabbis, of course – which would give Israel a chance to do some serious thinking about that institution.
Let these wise elders shut down their shakedown, and see if Israel can’t come up with something at least a little cleaner.
It’s always fun to watch dueling religious fanatics. In this corner, impressively featured in a new University of Manchester book, HaH and his followers preach death to apostates, the removal of female genitalia, the right of husbands to beat their wives, and of course the necessity of replacing godless states with caliphates. In this corner, Edmund Waldstein and his followers also preach death to the godless liberal state and the necessity of replacing it with a … cathophate and if people don’t like that idea there’s always burning at the stake. “Rather than enter the fray to persuade citizens, they instead wish to put their citizens under the control of a Catholic administrative state that degrades free association of citizens into the solemn submission of subjects to their spiritual and temporal superiors.”
Because the Church is not a “human power” but a supernatural one, it is permitted to use coercion. And Catholic doctrine on the duty of societies toward Catholicism, as formulated by Pius IX, Leo XIII, and others, is that they must recognize it as the one true religion.
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[The dominant theologian of integralism] is a monarchist who argues that the Church has the right to punish baptized heretics (Protestants), including by burning them at the stake... “[We must] recognize the truth of the revealed religion not only as individuals but also corporately, as societies.“
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It is an internet aesthetic of mostly young men alienated from the public life and consumed with the libido dominandi.
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Er let’s see which was that last one? Right, the integralists… And they may be young, but they have a Big Daddy – Harvard’s Adrian Vermeule.
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So… you go, girls! Put on your Sunday or Friday best and (pant pant) submit…
With the latest Supreme Court decision, it’s time for Pater Edmund and his integralist acolytes at Harvard etc. to start torturing defenders of Roe to death in the public square.
Meni Schwartz, a prominent ultra-Orthodox communications strategist who served as a special adviser to the Health Ministry regarding the ultra-Orthodox community during the height of the crisis [comments]:
“The ultra-Orthodox [members of Parliament] should have gone from house to house amongst the rabbinic leadership telling them what was happening, each one should have gone on every single radio station to tell the public,” he says, and angrily juxtaposed this torpor with the alacrity with which the MKs take to the media regarding political campaigns and elections. “Since they are connected to the wider world, and understand that there is a danger to life from the coronavirus and saw that it was taking time for their community to understand the danger because they are disconnected from the media, why didn’t they do anything with urgency when they saw that this disease was life-threatening?” he demanded. “How did they not turn the world upside-down to do everything to get the information out and inform the rabbis? Why did it not bother them? Why wasn’t it the first thing on their agenda? Why did you not want to save the lives of your brothers?”
Our old friends, the haredim.
Those who closely track the politics and culture of the Hasidic community speculate that one reason that Trump has gained popularity among some of its members is very specific to the way Hasidic life is organized. For generations, the ultra-Orthodox religion and communities have been structured around a strong central leader, a rebbe or rabbi, who controls nearly all aspects of their life.
“How we operate on a daily life is to follow a certain rabbi and be inspired by him and do whatever he orders without questioning him,” says [Jacob] Kornbluh.
Trump represents a similar type of leader, who promises plenty of great solutions if the country just follows his example. Explanations of how, exactly, he’ll achieve those solutions come later. (See: “Make America Great Again”). These similarities between Trump and the rebbe style of leadership could be “why a lot of Orthodox Jews are inspired by him without questioning what he says or what his views on certain issues are,” said Kornbluh.
America’s poorest, least educated, most cultic minority will vote for Trump in huge numbers this November. The rebbe will make sure of that.
Cause hundreds of Israelis to die by telling them to ignore the coronavirus.
Pressure psychiatrists to lie about the mental health of a fellow ultraorthodox sect member in order to keep her from being extradited to Australia on 74 counts of sexual assault against children. Protect bunches of other sect members also accused of sexual abuse:
[Yaakov] Litzman allegedly intervened improperly to aid at least 10 sex offenders from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.
Pass out bribes.
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Litzman has now resigned. Who will take his place?
I’m putting my money on Moshe Katsav.
The poorest town in America, where living conditions are so crowded and squalid that in 1992 seventy percent of their children got hepatitis A, thanks this country for its willingness to let it live a welfare-dependent, scofflaw existence by breaking virus-containment laws and endangering hundreds of children, as well as the people of neighboring communities.
I wonder. If local and state authorities had ever, over the course of the last fifty years, taken the endemic law-breaking of this locality with real seriousness, I wonder if it might have stopped spreading epidemic illnesses among its children. (Don’t even talk to me about measles! Or vaccinations!)
… classrooms, Texas motivational speaker Eric Hogue steps up to ban not books but women. In his capacity as mayor of a small city, Hogue has decreed that women may not lead prayers at city council meetings onaccounta the Bible done said they caint.
Now ah don’t know much bout Christian invocations afore civic meetings, ahm a big ol’ blue stater, and round these parts the idea of praying together afore a town council meeting is pretty fucking weird, and, you know, making sure the prayer always happens to be Christian is even fucking weirder. But you caint quarrel with Mayor Hogue’s Bibleology – the Good Book do indeed go on bout how stupid and pointless women are, and how they better shut up ifn they know what’s good for them.
And I for one am ready to bow down to the superiority of men like Mr. Hogue to the female race. Just look at the guy and ask yourself if you could ever (I mean, ifn you’re a woman ask yourself) hope to accomplish all that he has accomplished. Start with his picture. (Scroll down.) The man is a Clown for Christ, bringing the Good News About Women, in a chock-full of chuckles format, to young people all over America. He has even self-published a clown book – Clinky The Clown (not to be confused with the very similar-sounding, very famous, Blinky The Clown) – which you can purchase. And he’s a magician!
What woman could hope to compete, invocation-wise, with a clown-magician who takes every single word in the Bible literally? Mayor Hogue, the stage is yours.
“It just seemed like they were trying to see what they could get away with.”
Why not? When you don’t know what science is, quarantines seem silly.
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A growing number of schools and synagogues have reopened in recent days, defying city and state restrictions.
Are parents on board? Who cares?
According to a recent report in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, some Borough Park schools have ended phone instruction, forcing parents to choose between sending their children to illegal in-person classes or risk falling behind.
When you’re a theocracy, you reward the theos for their covid-amplifying ignorance/civic indifference (see many recent posts on this blog about ultra-orthodox criminal negligence in the matter of the virus in Israel). “They put everything in the hands of the ultra-Orthodox, they capitulated on everything,” laments one of Israel’s vanishingly few enlightened voices about the new government.
Yet what more capable hands than the corrupt and benighted rabbis who have impoverished and infected their own constituency?
[Recent] mass arrests [in Israel] are the latest incident in a global trend with dangerous consequences — a small but committed segment of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community from Israel to London to New York refusing to obey social distancing orders… About 50% of Israel’s coronavirus cases have been in largely ultra-Orthodox municipalities, according to a CNN analysis of Ministry of Health data through May 12. The country is about 14% ultra-Orthodox… Though some communities have been hit hard, ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel may look at the pandemic and think: “That’s what providence wanted and I accept this as it is…”
And how nice that they are accepting it also on our behalf.
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Christopher Hitchens:
With a large part of itself, [messianic religion] quite clearly wants us all to die. It wants this world to come to an end. You can tell the yearning for things to be over… The contempt for the things of this world shows through … So that the painful business of living as humans and studying civilizations and trying to acquire learning and knowledge, health and medicine, can all be scrapped and the cult of death can take over… [What] a hateful idea.
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“He” is one of many clueless coots running the haredim and everyone they come in contact with into the ground. Literally into the ground. All because Israel has allowed – encouraged – a large group of people to live in contemptuous ignorance of a world of other people.
Israel as a Jewish gathering-in. Quite the joke. At the moment it’s a Jewish cult-factory, and that country is living – dying – with the consequences.
There’s the baseline chosen – Jews like me, I guess – and there’s the SOOOOper chosen among Jews, the ultraorthodox, whose existence founds itself on two things: Denying spiritual legitimacy to all non-ultraorthodox so-called Jews, and adhering to the very, very highest of heavenly standards every second of their day and night. This religious elite strenuously attempts to please God with every breath…
So why aren’t they able to breathe? Why has covid decimated them, tearing through much of their rabbinate and many of their non-rabbinic tremblers before the Almighty?
This article, into whose theological whirlpool we will now plunge, reviews the explanations for this incredibly sad turn of events that these same people are now providing for themselves and for the world.
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Yes, let us eke go, as Stephen’s friend Lynch says; let us embark on the idiocy and the oddity of ultraorthodox theodicy.
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For why would the being we propitiate with every cell in our body blast those cells with a fatal cytokine storm? What have we done to deserve this?
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But first: lunch! UD needs to fortify herself for this faith journey.
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Hokay. Let’s start with this:
“The Torah protects us. We don’t need to do anything,” one yeshiva student [said].
Indeed the entire ultraorthodox response, for a lethal length of time, was to double down on large gatherings of daveners, this constituting the only immune response that mattered: Entreaty to the divine.
Aryeh “Longest Rap Sheet Among the Elect” Deri was one of the first u-o leaders to wonder why, despite his in-group’s exemplary behavior, the Lord was leaving profane people alone and slaughtering the sacred.
“We need to do very deep soul-searching,” the ultra-Orthodox politician said, asserting that God was “telling us something.”
Yeah but like man like what.
First explanation: God is telling us that we are great. The best.
Secular Jews [aren’t] as prone to divine retribution as the religious, whose sins are judged more harshly by God.
Ya bum! Go walk around hatless and fuck your brains out! You’re not worth killing! … Now this guy, this guy over here, him I can choke to death on a ventilator.
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Him? Did I say him? If you want to know why God punishes his most beloved, look no further than the hopelessly whorish among us.
“Horrifying discovery: Corona epidemic = lack of modesty,” [a] poster seen in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem announced, using gematria, or Jewish numerology, which ascribes a numerical value to letters and words and draws significance from words or expressions with equal values.
According to the poster, both “corona epidemic” and “lack of modesty” have a numerical value of 900, indicating a conceptual link.
Using an analytical method made famous by the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, some of the Lord’s designated coronavirus sufferers blame their women for it all. We’ve tried killing them off through contempt and overwork, but if you do the math, they’re killing us.
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Or is it something higher? God’s had it up to here with Jean-Francois Lyotard and thinks killing haredim because people like UD find postmodernism interesting is a good idea.
[T]he disease could be a divine response to “moral relativism or postmodernism…“
God’s elect are called upon to sacrifice themselves so that Verso and Routledge will publish fewer books with the word meta-narrative in their titles.
Let’s see. Anything else?
So much else. God is quarantining us to bring families closer… But when you live in a hovel with ten kids, four in-laws, and a set of parents, you’re already pretty close! God hates our materialism. But we don’t have any money or any material, so his motives are pretty obscure … God is issuing a “wake-up call” for Jews who don’t want to live in Israel… by… making several regions of Israel horrifying corona hotspots…? The virus forces naughty us into much-needed meditation on our sins and … then the … rapid shutting down of all of our vital systems…?
Of course the most dearly held theory of all is that everyone’s dying, the whole world’s dying, the messiah’s finally on the chimney tops. This is the one; this is the one that’s finally going to blow this fucking place to smithereens. Geloybt gat. Bend down and kiss your ass goodbye.