Jonah and The Whale All Over Again

This whale of a tale lends credibility to the biblical tale of Jonah and the Whale.

A lobster diver finds himself inside the mouth of a whale for half a minute -- until the whale spits him out like the whale in the Old Testament did to Jonah.

Interestingly, the story also features the biblical name, Josiah - the favored godly king of Judah who restored God's law several hundred years before Jesus Christ.

God speaks?

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/11/us/cape-cod-diver-eaten-by-whale/index.html

Authoritarianism Rising

The former "moral majority party" doesn’t give a rat’s back end about the people, just power.

When a political party incessantly fear-mongers “communism” and “socialism” to the masses, while breaking from all democratic norms of a Republic – by suppressing the vote, truth, decency and reality – then authoritarianism already has one clumsy foot in the door.

If no one ever said that before, someone should have.

Five years ago, I concluded an opinion that appeared in the local weekly newspaper, The Herald, with these words:

“Rock bottom line: Obsessive greed and the relentless pursuit of absolute power, is the mad scientist that inadvertently electrified and enlivened this amalgamation of our lesser selves, (Donald) Trump, to run amok, deceive, disparage and ultimately destroy with impunity.”

At this unsettling point five years hence – after so much deception-generated upheaval, degradation and tragic death in these un-United States – what more really is there to say?

In 2016, amid the ugly, unprecedented precipitous rise of an unrepentant demagogue to power, many of us Americans sensed gratingly and forebodingly in our spirit the absurdity and imminent danger of handing the Oval office keys to a man demonstrably bereft of any sense of decency and devoid of any hint of compassion, for even one month, let alone four years.

The writing in bold-faced, capital letters was on the wall.

But the long disenfranchised were blinded by their desperation for a savior. Many of my fellow white Christian evangelicals who have worshipped the Republican Party as an idol for decades, since the days of the alleged the “Morale Majority Party” led by political opportunist Jerry Falwell, were hoodwinked again.

“Donald Trump is what happens, he’s the result, the divine justice administered, in the wake of so much criminal negligence and inexcusable abandonment of the people in their most desperate times of need,” I wrote in that same Herald opinion five years ago.

Decades of tireless hypocritical policy and lies masking our society’s engrained economic disparities and racial inequities which oppressed the “least of these” for so long, finally manifest into the glaringly obvious – Donald Trump.

And now, the destroyer has destroyed. And continues to destroy. And he’ll keep on destroying as long as his sycophantic abetters, in high office and across the American lowlands, give him license.

For the sake of salvaging the Republic, let's drop this “bothsidesing" talk, as if each of the two present day political parties had an equally legitimate argument or agenda. They don’t.

One party is eviscerating truth daily, working feverishly to suppress the minority vote, muddling our nation’s racist history, opposing desperately needed jobs/infrastructure stimulus and obstructing a probe into the machinations behind the Jan. 6, deadly Capitol coup attempt that shook this nation to its core.

The other party is defending the truth, trying to protect the vote, coming to terms with the nation’s systemic racism, striving to pass legislation that fires up the economy and rebuilds America and urgently is seeking answers to how our Republic was nearly overthrown by a bunch of Trump-loving insurrectionists six month ago.

Through all the chaos and pain that Donald Trump exacerbated -- the Covid-19 pandemic that killed nearly 600,000 Americans, the racial unrest sparked by George Floyd's murder, escalation in hate crimes and mass shootings -- it's as if an almighty Creator has been shining a giant LED spotlight on this nation's vast inequities so that we might finally start acting right.

But, still, way too few of us are picking up what God's been putting down.

George Floyd Indeed "Touched The World"

"Jesus Christ, who preached love, truth and forgiveness was crucified on a crude cross, to save man, according to God's plan. God's righteousness demanded such a price.

"George Floyd, who once told a friend 'I want to touch the world' and who mostly spread love and joy during his 46 years on earth, was also killed by hate, it seems, to save the rest of us."

I wrote that on my blog last summer. 

I was reminded of it when ex-cop Derek Chauvin's trial began Holy Week. The irony or perhaps the ordained timing wasn't lost on me -- with images of Floyd's death fresh in our minds come Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified for our sins.

It served as a reminder that perhaps Floyd's murder in broad daylight by a cop seemingly intent to crush the life out of Floyd for more than nine minutes, in essence, was a crucifixion capturing the world's attention.

Floyd's death was a cruel lynching that served to wake us all up, perhaps white Evangelical Christians as much as anyone -- and ultimately save us from our sins.

For decades many white Evangelicals have sat quietly, idily by, embracing an indifferent rightwing agenda, while our society and Republican leaders have effectively abandoned Jesus Christ's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" -- often when that neighbor's skin is a much darker shade than theirs.

So, 12 racially mixed jurors have handed down their verdict. Guilty on all three counts. 

It won't bring George Floyd back. 

But perhaps it will serve, in time, as a vital impetus to wake up those same Christians who too often resemble the hypocritical Pharasees of Jesus Christ's day. 

George Floyd's life -- and death -- indeed mattered more than we may comprehend. 

George Floyd's desire to "touch the world" was, like Christ's, painfully but powerfully fulfilled. 

A Pivotal Point

So much hinges on the trial of George Floyd's killer.

We live at a time where deceivers in the highest offices of the land increasingly insist that we Americans can't trust what we see.

That's an undeniable part of Donald Trump's destructive legacy, through his relentless lies (some 30,000) over four years.

Truth has become a mere inconvenience to so many of Trump's fellow Republican sycophants still insisting their cult leader had no culpability in the Jan. 6, Capitol Hill coup attempt that was clearly orchestrated by Trump and left several Americans dead.

But, that all will be tested as final arguements are heard today and the case is handed off to the jury. 

If former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin, who crushed the life out of Floyd by kneeling on his neck and back for some nine minutes last May, were to get his freedom, all Americans could soon lose ours -- amid the resulting chaos.

A guilty decision lays the groundwork for change. But it will still be a rocky road to healing and enduring justice.

The #TrumpVirus

Let's set the record straight. 

Clearly, once then President Donald Trump ignored, downplayed and mocked Democrats' mounting concern of the Covid-19 for some six weeks, calling it a "hoax," while death incubated in America, the lethal contagion in the United States -- which now has killed nearly 550,000 citizens -- mutated undeniably, irrevocably into the #TrumpVirus.

Period. Trump, emboldened by his political lackie co-conspirators facilitated this death march across the homeland.

Not China. Not WHO. Not Dr. Fauci. And not the Democrats. Once the "invisible enemy," as Trump initially liked to label it even though he saw it coming, encroached on American shores and Trump knew it, but decided to blow it off, it became The Donald's baby.

He was the guy allegedly in charge. 

The CNN special report "COVID WAR – The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," which points out Trump's glaring failures after the initial March 2020 shutdown, in my view, doesn't spend enough time focusing on the deceiver-in-chief's inexcusable failures to act early on. 

The special gives only passing reference to Trump's arguably criminal negligence from late January to mid March 2020 -- while Trump, admittedly aware of the death toll looming -- golfed at his own properties on the taxpayer's dime, obsessively promoted stock market numbers, held " Keep America Great" rallies and sought vengeance against patriots who testified to his malfeasance in his first impeachment.

That set the tone and explains Trump's half-hearted effort to ever truly attack the virus that would wipe out half a million Americans.

The special effectively gives Trump a pass on the first 100,000 deaths from Covid -19 in this country and questions his role in the other 400,000 lives lost. But the virus wouldn't have taken anywhere near such a tragic death toll if Trump had acted like he gave a damn from the onset of the Coronavirus threat.

Trump's lies, incites and indifference are still festering into bombastic rhetoric. Just yesterday, Trump's former trade adviser, Peter Navarro blamed Dr. Anthony Fauci for the coronavirus. This is sick, twisted trashing of the truth needs to be called out forcefully.

Enough of the Trump-facilitated shirking of blame and baseless lies which has left half a million Americans dead, led to the Capitol Coup attempt and has fed a surge in Asain hate crimes and violent deaths.

Trump did this. If you can't see that, you need to stop watching brainwashing Fox News and their twisted political agenda -- borne out of Rupert Murdoch's supermarket tabloid agenda to deceive the masses heartening back decades. 

We need to admit the truth, mourn, repent and move on. But never forget. Suppressing these dark, unsettling realities only prolongs and exacerbates the pain, virtually guarunteeing a vicious cycle of repeating the same foolish deadly mistakes on an even more catastrophic scale next time.

I Don't Get It

Go ahead. Call me a cupcake. Or a snowflake.

But I'm still trying to grasp how a two-bit con man swindles his way into the Oval Office, lies some 30,000 times in four years to Americans, facilitates the deaths of more than half a million Americans from a plague he helped spread and then in a desperate last ditch ploy to cling to dictatorial power, orchestrates a bloody, deadly coup attempt on the Capitol -- and a mystifying number of white Evangelical enablers still warmly embrace him as some kind of savior.

Equally mystifying is how a man expediting delivery of a urgently needed vaccine (the previous guy necessitated) and championing a rescue package to help suffering fellow Americans, is lambasted as doing the devil's work by those same supposedly God-fearing Christians.

Something's seriously broken. Far too few "eyes to see."

I'm supposed to be one of those Christians. But I'm not so sure anymore that we all actually worship the same God.

White Evangelicals have yet to twig onto the fact that God rose up Trump to expose and destroy the Pharasaichal hypocrisies that have beleaguered, infected the Christian faith ..harkening back decades with the political self-serving manipulations of conniving "Moral Majority" Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell in the 70s, 80s..

Trump's acquitted again. Then McConnell Speaks Up?

Must ask what business does Mitch McConnell have speaking in lofty platitudes about justice and morality as he condemns Trump's admittedly treasonous behavior?

Aside from voting against impeachment, based on a seemingly weak argument, McConnell condoned and fed the Trump monster's destructive impulses for four bloody, painful years.

Americans still deserve answers on President's most damning inaction for two unsettling hours while the Trump-instigated deadly Capitol riot raged on.