Tag Archives: Musk

Can we listen to the Truth in Trumpland? We are so easily deceived!

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , , , , ,

The prophets have been speaking. We should listen. In September of 2024 the Scientific American (of all things!) published an article titled “Meet the New Autocrats Who Dismantle Democracies from Within.” This was just before our billionaire oligarchs started to boldly dismantle the U.S. government.

I hear some people say, “Why isn’t anyone listening to the warnings everyone is shouting?” I think I’ve said that myself since Ronald Reagan was president. There are a LOT of great books, movies, articles and podcasts whose prophecies of doom are being fulfilled as we speak. Doesn’t anyone have an ear to hear?

It might be a little late, but I think people are beginning to listen. I keep hearing about it everyday.

Listening issues

To be honest, in general, most of us are not very good listeners. We’re kind of into ourselves and we are rather isolated these days.  Those realities are compounded by the fact we get fooled. We buy dumb stuff off TikTok. We can’t believe our eyes when things are appalling or out of order – “Did I just see Elon Musk’s four-year-old tell Donald Trump to shut up?” We wait and see. We are strangely trusting for being so cynical. We don’t have the energy to dig through the deceptions powerful people throw up to defend their designs for power. Proverbs has to tell us to attend to the obvious:

Enemies disguise themselves with their lips,
but in their hearts they harbor deceit.
Though their speech is charming, do not believe them,
for seven abominations fill their hearts.
Their malice may be concealed by deception,
but their wickedness will be exposed in the assembly. (Proverbs 26:24-26)

So the researchers of Scientific American came up with a study to prove the same old wisdom. Here’s a bit:

Rather than eradicating democratic institutions as leaders like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet or Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko did in the past, today’s established and emergent autocrats (as is the case of Maduro or Orbán, for instance) corrupt the courts, sabotage elections and distort information to attain and remain in power. They are elected through ostensibly free elections and connect with a public already primed to be fearful of a fabricated enemy. Critically, they use these democratic tools to attain power; once there, they dismantle those processes. Autocratic tactics creep into the political life of a country slowly and embed themselves deeply in the democratic apparatus they corrupt. Modern autocracy, one may say, is a tyranny of gaslighting.

We gathered a group of scholars who have looked at successful and failed autocracies worldwide in a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, to identify common denominators of autocratic rulers worldwide. This research shows that modern autocrats uniformly apply key building blocks to cement their illiberal agenda and undermine democracies before taking them over. Those include manipulating the legal system, rewriting electoral laws and constitutions, and dividing the population into “us” versus “them” blocs. Autocrats routinely present themselves as the only presumed savior of the country while silencing, criminalizing and disparaging critics or any oppositional voice. They distort information and fabricate “facts” through the media, claim fraud if they lose an election, persuade the population that they can “cleanse” the country of crime and, finally, empower a repressive nationalistic diaspora and fund satellite political movements and hate groups that amplify the autocrats’ illiberal agenda to distort democracy.

We give into these people because we aren’t sure what is going to happen to us if we don’t. Look at the Senate who gave us Tulsi Gabbard last week! They know better, I presume. Only God knows their heart, but they can’t possibly believe Trump’s cabinet is good for the country! Maybe they are all evil, but I doubt it. They must be scared. They might be deceived.

They might be exhausted, too. Elon Musk is counting on us being exhausted as he marches through the “deep state” like Sherman destroying Georgia. We need to get some strength from God, every day, so the liars don’t destroy every sense of goodness in our communities.

A Hegseth is hard for us to resist

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signs a memorandum reversing the name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg while flying in a C-17 operated by the 300th Airlift Squadron en route to Stuttgart, Germany, Feb. 10, 2025. (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

I admit I was a bit exhausted. I could not believe my eyes. But I decided to highlight the Under-dictator of Defense, the unqualified Pete Hegseth’s immediate action upon being  seated on his throne. He renamed Fort Liberty, the former Fort Bragg in North Carolina, as Fort Bragg.

I wrote on Facebook:

The United Daughters of the Confederacy were responsible for many of the monuments to confederate soldiers erected in the 1920’s, when Fort Bragg was built. Now Hegseth is re-writing the unwriting of the rewritten history of the Lost Cause, the misinformation campaign of the Jim Crow era. I’m sticking with Fort Liberty and the Gulf of Mexico. We can at least not conform to the intellectual fog machine.

He’s acting like they are naming the base after a decorated WW2 private (wink) which only compounds the nonsense. …Come on, Senate! Are you really going to subject the country to a slew of petty, racist dictators?

I also wrote a version of my post to my senators and representative, as well as Senators Young, Kennedy and Lankford.

Did anyone listen to me? I didn’t get 5000 likes. But I’d say, “Sure they listened. Because the Spirit of God, Jesus the Truth, is praying for us in ways too deep for words.” We are notably deludable, but we also have a way of spotting lies, even if it takes a while. The psychological skill of spotting lies can be improved, and the spiritual ability is built in and Spirit-nudged. You can usually tell when you are lying, after all.

In the case of gaslighting about Fort Liberty, the 2021 defense budget directed that nine military bases that honored Confederate rebels would be renamed after review by a commission of retired senior military officers and civilians.

The commission said in a 2022 report that it purposefully did not choose different honorees with the same last name as the Confederate figures. Mr. Hegseth’s decision did the opposite, swapping out Braxton Bragg in favor of Roland L. Bragg. (Although the caption from the DOD site above belies that switch).

The 2022 report noted that Braxton Bragg had a plantation stocked with slaves and is considered to be “one of the worst generals of the Civil War.” Roland Bragg was a private who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and won several medals.  But the main thing about him, for Hegseth’s purposes, is his name was Bragg.

This is what the liars, do. They make a statement which is obviously a lie they can deny is a lie and tell everyone to swallow it. I’m going to remember the name is Fort Liberty.

Relanguaging

Meanwhile, after listening in on Tulsi Gabbard territory at the NSA, Judd Legum got on X to report on a memo: “The administration has continued its efforts to eliminate, and maybe eventually outlaw, ‘woke’ language….it is working to remove 27 disfavored words from all agency websites and documents. The 27 dirty words are:

  • Anti-Racism
  • Racism
  • Allyship
  • Bias
  • DEI
  • Diversity
  • Diverse
  • Confirmation Bias
  • Equity
  • Equitableness
  • Feminism
  • Gender
  • Gender Identity
  • Inclusion
  • Inclusive
  • All-Inclusive
  • Inclusivity
  • Injustice
  • Intersectionality
  • Prejudice
  • Privilege
  • Racial Identity
  • Sexuality
  • Stereotypes
  • Pronouns
  • Transgender
  • Equality”

My friend Lou said “I suggest they remove Christlikeness also so as not to confuse their intentions.”

Dominating communication, right down to what can and cannot be said Is the deceiver’s playbook.

How do we do the truth?

I seem to be quoting James a lot these days: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (1:22)

If we are bad at listening and easily deceived, if we even deceive ourselves, we might be even worse at doing the truth in love! But it is certainly time to try again.

The U.S. government is not the arbiter of God’s will. Jesus does not require it to save the world. It is a dispensable tool, whoever uses it. Right now, however, it is filled with false prophets asserting they are Christians called by God to take over the seats of power so true righteousness can be installed. It takes about five minutes of thought to suspect they are deceivers. For instance, Elon Musk is working to eliminate the agencies that were investigating his companies and likely finding a way to sell armored cybertrucks to the State Department. His minions fired the people who oversee the U.S. nuclear arsenal the other day and had to call them back.

In the face of the Corinthian superapostles Paul boldly wrote his truth.

I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.  And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.  It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve. (2 Corinthians 11:12-15)

I’m going to keep doing what I am doing too. I feel moved to build a community in Christ full of truth and love. And I will be at City Hall at noon today to demonstrate I can see the deception and demand change.

And I am going to keep listening. The Spirit of God is moving in the world right now. The logjam of Evangelical nonsense is being exposed and is about to break. I can’t predict a great American economy once it gives Ukrainian territory to Russia, or whatever Trump does. But I think I can predict a renewed church finding its courage and voice and providing an alternative. Many of you are probably the reasons I have such hope. God bless you.

War is burned into the U.S. culture: A warning 

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, The Mission, , , , , , , ,

The greatest skill the United States of America has is making war. My veteran dad was proud of that. His pride helped propel me into a meaningful life. Ever since I decided to follow Jesus, proactive peacemaking has been an everyday aspiration. One of the reasons I felt called to stay in the United States, even though I thought it could harm my children, is this: the U.S. A. is a major mission field for the Prince of Peace.

Joint Task Force – Bravo website: Nov. 24, 2024
NGOs retrieve 180,000 pounds humanitarian aid from Soto Cano Air Base (Honduras)

The country where I became a citizen by birth, is history’s largest war machine, by far. Presently, it has 800+ military bases around the world. It rules the air, land, sea, space and, probably for at least a few months, prevails in technowar. It spends more for “defense” than the next twelve largest militaries in the world put together. China is a distant 2nd and Russia is 3rd.

So I am not writing to debate my title; the truth of it is rather obvious. I just want to demonstrate the truth of it, once again. You did not need the last paragraph’s stats to agree that war is burned into the U.S. psyche. You just have to watch our movies, play our video games, look at our national sport, and listen to our language of “shock and awe” to verify the fact that our societal amygdala is wounded.

Researchers say about 20 million U.S. Americans a year demonstrate PTSD symptoms. For many people the symptoms are transitory. But we therapists who listen to a lot of people know that the vestiges of trauma are hard to dislodge. When you live in a country where violence is foundational, where war is considered essential, where the most honored people are the winners of conflicts, and where our political life has degenerated into opposing encampments, most of us expect some projectile to hit us any moment, one way or another. Many of us haven’t slept well for years and even endless screen scrolling can’t distract us enough from the fear that’s built into our lives.

The War on Drugs

The war on drugs is a prime example of our bellicose assumptions.

When Richard Nixon, Trump’s grandfather, was president, he called for a major assault on drug use. People called it his “war on drugs.” The description stuck. It is exactly the way one would expect the U.S. to approach a problem — and not solve it, as is evident all around us. In fact, the war on drugs created a worse problem, including the cartels stationed on the southern border, for whom Trump promises, you guessed it, a war.

However, Nixon did not invent the war on drugs. In Johann Hari’s book, Chasing the Scream: The First And Last Days of The War on Drugs (2015 with a 2018 afterword) he reveals the real instigator: Harry Anslinger of Altoona PA, married to the favorite niece of Andrew Mellon, the richest man in the country. I’m a little late to Hari’s book but the internet is full of articles and blogs where parts of it are lifted wholesale and presented as fact without reference. It is still popular.

Anslinger served as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics, beginning with the administration of Herbert Hoover, then under Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy – an unprecedented 32 years. He zealously advocated for and pursued harsh drug penalties, in particular regarding cannabis, which he got included with regulated drugs like morphine. As a propagandist for the war on drugs, he focused on demonizing racial and immigrant groups. And he used the power and influence of the U.S. after WW2 to force the whole world to fight drugs the American way. Hari notes when the Swiss and Portuguese decided to stop the war in their countries, they still had to face international treaties that enshrined a compassionless approach.

I could see the war at work but I, like Johann Hari,  never knew about this well-connected bureaucrat who found a way to make his little department into the DEA. Hari tells his story with verve. Anslinger apparently said in a radio speech:

“Parents beware! Your children…are being introduced to a new danger in the form of a drugged cigarette, marijuana. Young [people] are slaves to this narcotic, continuing addiction until they deteriorate mentally, become insane, [and] turn to violent crime and murder.”

The infamous 1936 film Reefer Madness referenced one of the murders Anslinger falsely attributed to marijuana and which the yellow journalists of the Hearst newspaper chain falsely asserted as fact.

Just four months after the passage of the Marihuana [sic] Tax Act of 1937, which made selling pot illegal if not registered and taxed, Anslinger wrote an article in the FBI Law Bulletin, linking marijuana to instances of rape, assault, murder, and madness. He called it a more dangerous drug than heroin or cocaine when viewed with regards to causing crime and insanity (article).  In 1948 he told a congressional hearing, “Marijuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.”

This story should not astonish me. It is the American way. But I am still flabbergasted.

Now a war on the USAID

Musk and Trump with their war of words

In the footsteps of Anslinger and Nixon, young jackboots have been let loose in the “deep state” to root out corruption and anything that seems “woke.” The Nazi-tinged Elon Musk promotes the war like Harry Anslinger on Ex-Twitter, telling mostly outright lies in order to grab the power to gnaw the meat off the bones of the institutional carcass.

Ron Kraybill, a respected voice from the Mennonite branch of the family with worldwide experience, wrote about Musk’s assault on the USAID on Facebook last week:

You may think [our military might] makes us secure and safe. But a military presence that vast, often heedless to local populations who see no benefits to themselves, also earns us plenty of resentments, even when our warriors are not in combat. When our bombs, missiles, and shells kill people who see themselves as defenders of their freedom and homeland, or innocent civilians – well, how would you react if you were in the shoes of their families and communities?

One of the few things we bring to the world for the stated purpose of assisting the well-being of others is assistance channeled through USAID. In 2023 we spent $43.6 billion on USAID. For the military, $820 billion. That’s a ratio of about twenty to one in favor of weapons. Now Trump/Musk are ending even that tiny investment in the social and economic thriving of our neighbors on the basis of falsehoods. And we would like the world to appreciate us more?

As people later found out, Harry Anslinger didn’t even believe marijuana was as dangerous as he advertised — as he had been repeatedly told by researchers. But he did believe people of color were dangerous and he thought wielding power over the world from his important office was crucial. I suspect Musk and friends are much the same.

Marco Rubio said “foreign aid” was the least popular thing the federal government does when justifying Musk’s attack. It is true, the supremely capitalist country is wildly self-interested, so giving anybody anything seems illogical. In truth, the whole point of USAID is also about securing American interests. But at least it helps some people and shares the wealth a little bit. Among the many things the government does which I find immoral and detrimental, the USAID stands out as something a Christian could easily defend, even subject to the God-free Constitution, as it is.

War has a way of killing the winner

This post is another warning, in case you need one, to never surrender to powermongers, liars and the rich drunk with their wealth. They are the ancient enemies of goodness and charity. Proverbs 26:18-19 is picturing Trump:

Like a maniac who shoots deadly firebrands and arrows,
so is one who deceives a neighbor
and says, “I am only joking!”

In the U.S. the maniac has a vast arsenal of “firebrands and arrows.” He presides over a society imprinted with war and traumatized by the use and abuse of power. Lying is his native language and he deludes a host of followers who believe all his lies as a matter of faith — he’s a true wolf in sheep’s clothing, a devil disguised as an angel of light. The War on Drugs is followed by the War on Terror, the War on the Borderlands, and now the war on the government, which may soon be a war on us all, starting with the most vulnerable.

The vulnerable is who I hope to attend to in this troubled time. I hope the vulnerable find community in the church, where the Lamb of God sits on the throne, where love, even of enemies, heals war-torn hearts, and where truth reinforced by the Truth, himself, gives us courage to take our daily stand for goodness and charity. Like the resurrection demonstrates, the wins of murderous have a brief shelf-life.  Like Jesus says, the meek will inherit the earth.