#everyone wants him to be something different. a leader. a politician. a king. a husband. whatever

[rucow]

the way im the only person who genuinely sees nerevar as being a divine (or at least a fragment of a divine) .... i need to lie on the floor and ponder

[navree]

I love House Tyrell too !! ❤️❤️❤️ That’s who really knows how to play the Game of Thrones - looking at you Olenna 👀 -

Speaking of House Tyrell, don’t you think that what Margaery was accused for, I mean adultery and disloyalty because she too enjoyed the company of handsome men, was very similar to what Rhaenys was accused for? 🤔 Was the concept the same for both of them? Are they really guilty? Honestly, they seem to have many similarities - like being shrewd and maybe even manipulative politicians - and I would love to read your thoughts ❤️

There's some similarities, but not a whole lot. The main thing with the accusations against Margaery is that they're not whispers at court like it seems to have been with Rhaenys, these are legal accusations of treason. Margaery is currently waiting to be tried, in what amounts to a Westerosi court of law, for committing high treason against the king, her husband, by engaging in affairs with other men. These are allegations being made publicly and specifically with the intent to prove her guilty of a crime. In Rhaenys's case, these appear to have amounted little more to the occasional rumor, certainly never anything as formal as what Margaery's going through.

There's also the place they're in as queens when any allegations of impropriety are being made. Margaery is the wife of a king with very little authority, since Tommen is like eight years old and isn't anywhere near power right now, and she herself has no way of cementing any power the way a queen typically would, since she's sixteen and it is generally frowned upon for sixteen year olds and eight year olds to consummate a physical relationship. Rhaenys, on the other hand, had been Aegon's wife for a while, and was very clearly favored by him, and had cemented her place in his life as his preferred romantic and sexual partner in a way that was clearly visible to everyone. That's probably why there wasn't anything beyond the occasional rumor of her liking comely young men, because it wouldn't have been able to get that far with an authoritative king who wouldn't take those accusations against his wife sitting down.

So on that front, they're both in very different situations, with Margaery's being far more precarious, but the original concept is kind of the same, since the idea of "this powerful woman is actually a secret slut" is something we've seen not only throughout history, but still being done to modern female politicians and leaders today (that or calling them frigid robots).

Is Margaery guilty? Honestly, no. It's been a good while since I read AFFC, but it seems to be pretty clear that all of this was made up out of whole cloth and all orchestrated by Cersei because she wanted Margaery out of the picture in order to forestall the coming of Maggy's prophecy. She convinces people she knows to claim that Margaery was unfaithful, or that they were unfaithful with Margaery, and all of those people recant their charges. The only one who doesn't is the Blue Bard, who is very explicitly written as having been tortured into confessing to the point where he's gone mad as a result of the ordeal. No one was concocting any rumors that Margaery was unfaithful or promiscuous before Cersei decided to do her thing, and it's pretty clear not only to the reader, who has access to Cersei's thoughts, but also to a lot of the people in King's Landing, that these allegations just straight up aren't true.

Is Rhaenys guilty? A bit harder to say. Unlike ASOIAF, F&B is not a proper narrative, where you can get into people's heads and see their thoughts and motivations. It's a history book, without the access to inner monologues and closed door conversations and private accountings that a narrative with POV and characters can have. And this section of F&B is, as I've said repeatedly, really just not one that has a lot of information about the people it's talking about, and certainly never anything from their perspective. So, while we can't ever know for certain whether Rhaenys did or didn't have affairs, I'm pretty certain that she didn't. The main point of evidence just seems to be that a) she patroned singers who happened to be young, we know that her patronage had a distinct propagandist bent that was her primary motivator and b) that Aenys didn't really act like Aegon, but those rumors about Aenys are explicitly stated to have died away the second Aenys was able to bond with Quicksilver (and in general, I'm willing to cut a toddler going through a mental breakdown because his mom was very suddenly killed in action some fucking slack).

As to whether Margaery and Rhaenys are similar, maybe. They're both intelligent and they both possess a clear understanding of the political landscape, and appreciate using politics to shape how the kingdom is run as opposed to a more militant approach, and they're both well loved by the populace and appear to know how to use that to their advantage. But we don't really know all that much about Rhaenys, and meanwhile with Margaery, since we're not in her head and we view her through people who have a pretty distorted view of the world (Sansa and Cersei), so we don't necessarily have the clearest view on her either. I think Rhaenys is also just a bit more settled, she enters the history books already as a woman in her mid-twenties, where Margaery is still just a teenager, and as such has a bit more mastery over herself and the world around her than Margaery currently does.

[things2mustdo]

“If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.” – Camille Paglia

The Book of Genesis has a warning to men and to civilizations. People typically only focus on certain phrases in the Genesis account and thus, miss the warning. God’s pronouncement of judgement upon Adam and Eve actually tells us some of the problems that will beset men and women and thus, civilization. The Genesis story contains a warning for men and women, individually and nationally. The Book of Genesis established an order, God’s order.

Most people are at least vaguely familiar with the account in the Garden of Eden. However, the details about the expulsion provide more information about one of the continuing events between men and women that would occur after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden.

Genesis chapter one gives the entire creation account. Mankind is created in chapter one and told to multiply and replenish the earth. The following chapters in Genesis provide additional critical information about mankind and the outcome of certain events. Adam was created first and no suitable mate existed for Adam to fulfill the commandment of multiplying his own kind. God created Eve, not out of the Earth as in the case of Adam, but out of Adam himself. Eve was a reflection of Adam.

The Serpent’s Lie of Equality

After Adam and Eve partook of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil at the prompting of the beguiling serpent, God came to the Garden of Eden and decreed judgement. The King James Translation is a good translation but many English speakers have a limited knowledge of the definitions of the English language and are typically too lazy to consider additional meanings. The word “desire” in the KJV text is a word that has additional meanings. The following translation from the NLT provides additional clarification.

“Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” Genesis 3:16, NLT

And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:17-19, NLT

The phrase “and you will desire to control your husband” is translated as “and thy desire shall be to thy husband” in the KJV. While the word desire certainly means that a woman will long for her husband, the word “desire” also means to desire something to control it and to have power over it. The second meaning is clarified by the clause, “and he shall rule over thee”. This clause tells us something about the nature of women that people, neglect, forget, overlook, or disbelieve. The desire of women to control men.

The Bible does not provide the conversation that took place between Adam and Eve concerning the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We know a conversation took place with the intention of convincing Adam to partake of the fruit. God’s statement to Adam makes clear there was a conversation. “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat.” Adam knew the commandment but still partook of the fruit.

Part of the lie the serpent told Eve is that she would be equal to God. Another part of the lie is that she would be happier having more power. The idea that men and women are equal is the same lies told differently. Men and women have different God-given roles. Adam was placed into the Garden to cultivate it and keep it. Eve was created after Adam was placed into the Garden. The populists would have us believe that Adam had no dominion over Eve and that they were “equals”. Eve was provided to Adam so the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth could be fulfilled and to assist him.

Adam named the animals and he named Eve. Naming is an act of dominion. Adam was given dominion over the earth, the animals, and Eve. Part of Adam’s error was he allowed Eve to convince him to break the natural order. Adam allowed Eve dominion over him when he allowed Eve to convince him of the lie of the serpent. Their expulsion from the Garden of Eden meant they had to work harder.

Adam and Eve as a Microcosm of Civilization

The account of Adam and Eve is also a fundamental description of the man and woman’s interaction within the family and the interaction of men and women within civilization. In general terms, we should place ourselves in the position of Adam, the women in our lives in the position of Eve.

The family, man, and woman, is a microcosm of civilization. Consider the following:

Garden of Eden = Civilization

Adam = the majority of the men of that civilization

Eve = the majority of the women of that civilization

The Serpent = Advocates of progressivism, gender studies, that men and women are equal, etc.

Taking into consideration that Adam represents the majority of men in a civilization and Eve the majority of women in a civilization, the civilization fell after the men heeded the promptings of the women and subverted the natural order. The women, flattered by the enticing serpent, taught their sons and daughters that men and women were equals, encouraged the acceptance of homosexuality on par with heterosexuality, encouraged abortion, destruction of the family, and that transsexuality and cross-dressing are acceptable, and in some instances desirable.

Since women obtained the right to vote, the family, and by extension our civilization, has moved more in the direction of disorder and lawlessness, essentially toward destruction. Giving women the right to vote has been a disaster. Giving women the right to vote pushed matriarchy to the forefront and diminished patriarchy. Most women inevitably vote their proclivities and emotions. A woman should voice her concerns to her husband or other adult male family members.

Left to themselves women are not inclined to build. This dynamic can be seen in the television program of Dutch version of Survivor (titled Expeditie Robinson). ROK has an article from 2014 discussing what occurred with men and women in survival situations. Suffice to say, men started working together to survive and the women squabbled. Towards the end of the program, three men went to the woman’s location and three women went to the men’s location. The men that went to the woman’s location became the women’s workhorses while they continued to be lazy and worked very little. The women that went to the men’s location worked little as well.

Men work with a substantial portion of the fruits of that labor going to their women and children. Ever since women have received the right to vote, they have used that voting power to persuade businesses and politicians that they should still receive the fruits of all men’s labors. Since the rise of feminism and the subsequent confiscation of the fruits of men’s labors, men are now producing less.

The Upside-Down Order

Voting comes with responsibility, which many women have not been able to handle since feminism has prevented and encouraged a childish and responsibility avoidance mentality. There was a reason earlier civilizations did not give women the right to vote. Voting, and thus government were seen as the realm of men because men are the primary builders of civilization and because of the responsibility that comes with voting rights. Women were to receive support from their husbands, fathers, or other male family members.

Feminists would have everyone believe that women have always been oppressed and are still being oppressed while this is not the case, wherever women obtained political power civilization fell. Feminism does not discuss or teach the sharing of power but how women need more power and do not have enough power. This desire for political power is the desire to control men. This is why everything is “sexist” in feminist eyes. There are plenty of articles on the Internet about how feminism is not about equality but about power.

A blogger wrote an article about the rise of feminism in Ancient Rome and Rome’s subsequent demise. The blogger also mentions Ancient Babylon and some of the Babylonian laws. The Bible, in the Book of Isaiah, states:

“Childish leaders [adult children] oppress my people, and women rule over them. O my people, your leaders mislead you; they send you down the wrong road.” Isaiah 3:12, NLT.

Roosh recently proved an excerpt on ROK from his book, Game. The excerpt is titled, Never Follow A Girl’s Lead. Adam let Eve lead and look what happened. A woman that tells you to be less of a man and less masculine desires power over you. She is trying to control you. Men want to be respected, women want to be loved, but neither is possible with the lies of equality in the picture. Women will be happier when they stop seeking control over men.

We all know when women obtained the vote feminists began moving in the direction of replacing men with another authority, government. Feminists also began pushing for more women in government and other positions of authority. Men, being ostracized and deceived, began letting more and more women lead. This makes men weak.

The more a woman seeks to control the men around her, the more unhappy she becomes. Feminism deceives a woman into believing that having power will make her happy and if she is not happy it is because she does not have enough power. These are lies. This is why the more power a woman attains the more unhappy she becomes, even if she will not admit her own unhappiness. Hillary Clinton is one example of a woman that desires control. An honest person can see that Hillary is clearly unhappy and she believes the solution to her unhappiness is more power, which is not the case.

There are women that realize there are important differences between men and women, and these women are responsible caring wives and mothers. These mature women realize that feminism harms everyone and creates unhappiness and lawlessness.

We are witnessing the demise of our civilization at the hands of weak men and women that desire to control men. Women will be happier when they stop trying to control the men and return to God’s established order. God did not make Eve equal to Adam. Eve was not Adam’s slave; she was a helper to him. She was to assist him in his assigned tasks.

Woman, instead of seeking to snatch control from the man, must do what she was created to do and assist the man. Men must lead, which requires responsibility and masculine strength. A man truly shows he cares for the women and children in his life by leading instead of abdicating his role designated to him by God.

Read More: Who Was The First Man To Be Red Pilled?

[tabloidtoc]

National Enquirer, July 13

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Steve Bing knew too much -- movie mogul murdered in Jeffrey Epstein cover-up 

Page 2: Jennifer Garner is blaming ex-husband Ben Affleck’s new squeeze Ana de Armas for him spending a lot more time with their kids making her the odd mom out 

Page 3: Reese Witherspoon wants to muscle in on Gwyneth Paltrow’s turf as a lifestyle guru and Gwyneth is fit to be tied -- Reese is consumed with creating her own business empire and she doesn’t care who gets in the way but Gwyneth can’t believe Reese would encroach on her territory like this 

Page 4: Drew Barrymore’s long-anticipated CBS talk show is in danger of being killed by the coronavirus before it ever airs and Drew is freaking out over doing interviews without her adoring fans smiling from their seats

Page 5: Big-hearted Dolly Parton is helping a devastated Kelly Clarkson bounce back from the wreckage of her shattered marriage, kid-crazy Kathie Lee Gifford is begging her newlywed daughter Cassidy to hurry up and give her a grandchild but it’s embarrassing for Cassidy who’d like to enjoy married life for a little while before starting a family 

Page 6: Dennis Quaid secretly eloped with Laura Savoie, photos of Pierce Brosnan clearly show surgical scars under his left breast revealing the 67-year-old star has recently gone under the knife and a doctor says the scars resemble breast tumor excisions 

Page 7: Jimmy Kimmel might not be coming back as the disgraced late-night talk show host who’s come under fire for performing in blackface in the past has been taking time off for a summer vacation but he may be gone for good -- Jimmy apologized for the blackface incident and making an insensitive joke about Megan Fox but ABC execs are already seeking a replacement and Melissa McCarthy and Kevin Hart and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson are contenders but the name that keeps coming up is Ryan Seacrest 

Page 8: Why Prince Harry hates Prince William -- Will made a bold bid to make peace with his rebel brother Harry but it exploded into a battle royal that may never be mended -- everyone is blaming Henry’s wife Meghan Markle and she certainly hasn’t helped but the rift started way before she came on the scene and goes much deeper than anyone ever knew because Harry hates Will because years of living in his brother’s shadow have left Harry tormented by one all-consuming belief that nobody loves him 

Page 9: Spurned Gayle King is devastated after a younger woman stole away the love of her life U.S. Sen. Cory Booker -- the 65-year-old CBS This Morning host and the 51-year-old New Jersey politician had long been rumored to be hot and heavy before star Rosario Dawson gave Cory a new lease on his love life 

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Alex Trebek and wife Jean wear masks and hard hats as they visit a home improvement store, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson offered a toast of gratitude and tossed back tequila, Brooke Shields doing a puzzle alongside daughters Rowan and Grier Henchy and their pal Luke, Bella Hadid during a photo shoot in Corsica 

Page 11: Megan Fox’s super-hot romance with Machine Gun Kelly has a slim-to-none chance of going the distance because right now their chemistry is sizzling but he’s also turned into Megan’s personal gofer and the people in his life find it pathetic, Matthew Perry has a flabby fanny and he put it on display for the world to see after he suffered a wardrobe malfunction and exposed his tush while climbing out of his car at his Malibu home 

Page 12: Straight Shuter -- Izabel Goulart on the beach (picture), Billie Eilish’s new James Bond song No Time to Die has been a disaster with just 52,000 downloads which is why they’re talking about replacing her, when fashion powerhouse Anna Wintour was still new in town in 1975 she took a walk on the wild side with Bob Marley and her fleeting relationship with Bob is something she’s pretty proud of, tensions between Pete Davidson and the rest of the Saturday Night Live cast were bad but now it’s worse because he thinks he’s a movie star and he’s a nightmare, The Bachelor franchise is making changes to the show far beyond just having the first-ever Black bachelor Matt James by adding more diverse cast and crew 

Page 13: Troubled Southern Charm star Kathryn Dennis was labeled a racist after butting heads with a South Carolina radio personality and now she’s being sued by a Charleston brand consultant who claims Kathryn owes her nearly $5000 in unpaid wages, things are going south for scandal-soaked ratings-challenged reality show Southern Charm as the show is on the verge of cancellation

Page 14: True Crime -- porn star Ron Jeremy was charged with raping three women and sexually assaulting another and could do hard time if found guilty 

Page 15: Bill Cosby is certain the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s shocking decision to hear his appeal for his 2018 rape conviction is the only thing that could keep him from dying behind bars, Crocodile Hunter star Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo could be shut down for good -- his widow Terri Irwin revealed the heartbreaking news that the beloved Queensland attraction was on the brink of collapse due to the coronavirus pandemic 

Page 16: Pamela Anderson is mortified because her hated ex Adil Rami has been spilling secrets about their sex life, Jeremy Renner’s ex-wife Sonni Pacheco has accused the Avengers star of being a deadbeat dad and demanding $500,000 in back child support and an extra $100,000 for expenses -- she dropped the bombshell in their custody battle over seven-year-old daughter Ava after previously accusing Jeremy of drug abuse and womanizing and claims he retaliated against her by withholding and refusing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support that he was ordered to pay her, NFL superstar Ben Roethlisberger was an alcohol addict and a porn fiend 

Page 18: Real Life 

Page 19: Kim Jong-un’s trigger happy sister Kim Yo-jong is making the North Korean dictator look like a wimp as she ruthlessly tightens her grip on power and pushes the rogue nation closer to war 

Page 20: Hollywood’s Craziest Exes -- wild unions ended in bitter breakups -- Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, Madonna and Sean Penn, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard

Page 21: Sandra Bullock and Jesse James, Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva, Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton 

Page 22: Health Watch, Ask the Vet 

Page 26: Cover Story -- Movie king Steve Bing knew too much -- fears perv Jeffrey Epstein’s pal got tossed from 27th floor in murder staged as suicide 

Page 28: Scientologist Danny Masterson attended an event to combat sexual exploitation at a church-sponsored event years after the religion’s leaders were told he’d been accused of rape, quarantine has fired up Ne-Yo’s love life -- the singer who split from his wife Crystal Smith early this year said that living together under lockdown together has helped him lock back in with his spouse 

Page 34: Chris Evans whines playing superhero Captain America has wrecked his chances for romance -- he thought he’d be married and have kids by now but the whole Captain America phenomenon has left him less trusting about people he meets and what their motivations may be, Hollywood Hookups -- Raven-Symone marries Miranda Maday, Demi Lovato’s boyfriend Max Ehrich is ready to pop the question, Khloe Kardashian and Tristan Thompson are together again during lockdown 

Page 36: Warring exes Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have called a temporary truce as they struggle to find the right school for their kids, troubled Playboy Playmate Ashley Mattingly used a single gunshot to end her short and tragic life 

Page 38: Glen Campbell’s adult children are on the warpath over his widow’s scathing new tell-all because it paints the legendary hitmaker as a booze-soaked maniac 

Page 42: Red Carpet Stars & Stumbles -- Nicole Kidman 

Page 45: Spot the Differences -- Sharon and Kelly and Ozzy Osbourne on the show Celebrity Watch Party 

Page 47: Odd List 

[ultrakouka]

Senators - The Danger of Trump

Dear Senator,

I am sending this information to you as a concerned citizen and as a Christian. ( Yes, there are evangelical Christians in Massachusetts. ) I am upset with the unequivocal backing of Donald J Trump by the Republican Party when , at the start of the 2016 election, the Republican Party did not want him to be their candidate.  And now, former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry stated that Donald Trump was chosen by God to be president. He said throughout history God had picked “imperfect people” such as King David or Solomon to lead their people. ( See article below ) This statement mirrors the thrust of the late Doug Coe and his religious group “The Family” who subtely influenced our federal government officials for years. ( See the Netflix special on “The Family” and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Coe ).  Yes, God chose David to be king of Israel.  Yes, David was imperfect.  They failed to continue the story about the affair with Bathsheba and then the murder of her husband. That God punished David severely.   ( read 2 Samuel 11 -  2 Samuel 18 ) Here is basically what was said:  “ 2 Samuel 12:9  Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’ “  David sinned in God’s eyes and was punished, severely.  Once again read  2 Samuel 11 -  2 Samuel 18.

From the New Testament    1John 3:4 “ Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”  1John3:10 “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.”   Please read all of  1John3.   

Let’s get back to Rick Perry.  He flip flops on policy. “Perry said using foreign aid as a policy tool against foreign countries that violate the human rights of homosexuals was "not in America's interests" and was part of a "war on traditional American values”.”  Now Perry wants to use foreign aid as a policy tool?  “Two weeks after the inquiry was launched, Trump claimed in a conference call with Congressional Republican leaders that he had only made the telephone call at Perry's urging.”  Here is another topic in which Perry did a flip flop. “In 2016, The Texas Tribune wrote that "Perry has long been a critic of building a wall or fence along the border."[118] After Trump won the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Perry backtracked and fully embraced Trump's proposed border wall.”

Why am I bringing Rick Perry into the discussion?  INC Christianity of which “we found, to have some close ties to conservative politicians, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and more recently President Donald Trump.  Now to the First Amendment to our Constitution to which our President and Representatives have sworn an oath to uphold.

In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The relevant constitutional text is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...".

The Establishment Clause was based on a number of precedents, including the Constitutions of Clarendon, the Bill of Rights 1689, and the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonial constitutions. An initial draft by John Dickinson was prepared in conjunction with his drafting the Articles of Confederation. In 1789, then-congressman James Madison prepared another draft which, following discussion and debate in the First Congress, would become part of the text of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The second half of the Establishment Clause includes the Free Exercise Clause, which allows individual citizens freedom from governmental interference in both private and public religious affairs.

The Establishment Clause is a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation forcing an establishment of religion, broadly making it illegal for the government to promote theocracy or promote a specific religion with taxes. The second half of the Establishment Clause inherently prohibits the government from preventing the free exercise of religion. While the Establishment Clause does prohibit Congress from preferring or elevating one religion over another, it does not prohibit the government's entry into the religious domain to make accommodations for religious observances and practices in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause. Furthermore, it does not prevent the placement of religious symbols on government premises.

The problem that we have here is that the First Amendment does not prohibit the influence of religion on our government, which is exactly what is happening at this very moment.  From the conversation.com :  “A large number of evangelical Christians in the U.S. believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to advance the kingdom of God on Earth. Several high-profile religious leaders have made similar claims, often comparing Trump to King Cyrus who was asked by God to rescue the nation of Israel from exile in Babylon.”   Here is the problem with INC Christianity: “INC beliefs, however, are different. Most INC Christian groups we studied seek to bring heaven or God’s intended perfect society to Earth by placing “kingdom-minded people” in powerful positions at the top of all sectors of society. These “seven mountains of culture” include business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion. In this form of “trickle-down Christianity,” they believe if Christians rise to the top of all seven “mountains,” society will be completely transformed.

“The goal of this new movement is transforming social units like cities, ethnic groups, nations rather than individuals,” one INC leader we interviewed explained. “If Christians permeate each mountain and rise to the top of all seven mountains…society would have biblical morality, people would live in harmony, there would be peace and not war, there would be no poverty.”

We heard these ideas repeatedly in most of our interviews, at events we attended and in INC media materials.

Most significantly, since the 2016 presidential election, some INC leaders have released public statements claiming that the Trump presidency is part of fulfilling God’s plan to “bring heaven to Earth” by placing believers in top posts, including Perry, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.”

Here is what Jesus said :  John 18:36. “Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’”   What are these INC Christians thinking?  “A large number of evangelical Christians in the U.S. believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to advance the kingdom of God on Earth.”  Jesus has said that His kingdom is not here , but “from another place.”   Do you know who’s kingdom IS here? 

Read Matthew chapter 4:  Matt 4:1 “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil. “  Matt 4:8 “ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”  Why am I writing this?  BECAUSE!!  It is not God’s plan to have his kingdom here.   Please read the following:

Matt 24:29-32 

 “Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened,

    and the moon will not give its light;

the stars will fall from the sky,

    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]

30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Did we see this?   Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away.

Will we be sheep or goats?

Matt 25:31-46 

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Read Matt24:35 “ Heaven and earth will pass away..”

If Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world” and “Heaven and earth will pass away” Then the INC Christians are wrong in their efforts.   Matthew chapter 4 tells us who’s kingdom is here on earth, and it is not the one Jesus or God  will establish.

My point:  Our representatives in all three branches of our government should not be swayed or even listen to these so called Christians.  Our founding fathers insisted as stated in the First Amendment that there was to be a separation of church and state.  But, as I have stated before, the amendment is has only one direction - government influence down to control 

religion.   It does not prohibit the influence of religion up to and through our government.  I think that our founding fathers intended the First Amendment to be a two way street, not the one way avenue that it has become.  

Why this rant?  Back to R Perry and his flip flopping and influence on DJT POTUS.  DJT called the Ukranian president after Rick Perry asked him to make the call.  Seems like Mr Trump really does not have any clear ideas about what policies he should have and is open to “anyone” influencing those ideas.  Because he is so easily influenced , DJT has and is making BAD decisions.  He is the President of the United States of America !!   He is in charge of our national security! His actions have undermined the office of the President and of Congress.  Yes, he was elected to office.  But, he is incompetent.  Have you heard of the Peter Principle?  

To my Democratic Senators :  Please vote to Impeach. You are correct that DJT is a threat to our national security.  To the threat to our national security please note these reported events about DJT-POTUS :

1) September 18, 2019    Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “played” Pres Trump.  Who else has “played” Trump.   Maybe the President of Turkey?

2) September 18, 2019    Trump visits the US-Mexico border to talk about his wall. After discussing some of the wall’s technological features, Lt Gen. Todd Semonite, acting head of the Army Corps, says, “Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing that.”    Sure - give away military secrets.  Isn’t that treason?    A high crime?

3) September 9, 2019.      CNN reports that the U.S. successfully extracted a high-level covert asset from Russia in 2017 because of  “ concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.”  The decision came after Trump spilled classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak during a may 2017 meeting in the Oval Office.

To my Republican Senators :  Mr Trump is an embarrassment to the office of the President and to this country.  The few policies that he does have go counter to my understanding of what a Christian should be.  The Democrats have given you the opportunity to remove him from office and to spare this country from more of his idiotic claims and rants. You will still have a Republican in office as President, and control of the Senate.  Do us all a favor -  remove DJT from office.

And my response to Romans 13:1 “ Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”  Jesus did not question the physical authority of the Romans, but he did separate authority on earth from God’s authority in Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, and Luke 20:25 when “He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” . Here is what was happening at that moment : 

Luke 20:20-25     “Paying Taxes to Caesar”

20 Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. 21 So the spies questioned him: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 22 Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

23 He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

25 He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

26 They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent.”

Remember John 4:24. “ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The truth is that the coming kingdom of God is NOT going to be here on earth.  Please do not let anyone influence our government to act in a way that expects that outcome.  Resist the one way street that the First amendment has become.

December20, 2019

The following is for your reference :

FROM: Wikipedia ( a web site that DJ Trump likes )

Perry said using foreign aid as a policy tool against foreign countries that violate the human rights of homosexuals was "not in America's interests" and was part of a "war on traditional American values".[96]

In 2016, The Texas Tribune wrote that "Perry has long been a critic of building a wall or fence along the border."[118] After Trump won the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Perry backtracked and fully embraced Trump's proposed border wall.

A July 25, 2019 telephone call between Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky led in September to a whistleblower complaint and an impeachment inquiry against Trump. Two weeks after the inquiry was launched, Trump claimed in a conference call with Congressional Republican leaders that he had only made the telephone call at Perry's urging.[165] Perry's spokesperson said that Perry had suggested Trump discuss energy security with Zelensky, but energy was not mentioned in the publicly released memo about the conversations, which instead focused on Trump asking Zelensky to launch investigations into Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Crowdstrike, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[166] Per Trump's direction earlier this year, Perry spoke with Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine, which Mick Mulvaney confirmed.[167][168][169] Perry denied ever mentioning the Bidens in his discussions with Trump or Ukrainian officials.[170] Mulvaney had put Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, and Perry in charge of managing the Ukraine–United States relations instead of diplomats at the National Security Council and the US Department of State.[171][172]

Perry was mentioned in October 2019 by former U.S. officials in relation to reports he planned to have Amos Hochstein replaced as a member of the board at Naftogaz with someone aligned with Republican interests. Perry denied the reports.[173][174] In November 2019, both Sondland and David Holmes, who serves as counselor of political affairs at the U.S Embassy in Ukraine, testified that Perry had played a senior role in the Ukraine campaign, with Holmes even describing Perry, along with Sondland and Volker, was one of the "Three Amigos" who directly assisted both Trump and Giuliani.[175][176][177][178][179]

US Energy Secretary Rick Perry urged President Donald Trump to talk with Ukraine’s newly elected president, a suggestion that resulted in the telephone call that has triggered House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry.

“Secretary Perry absolutely supported and encouraged the president to speak to the new president of Ukraine to discuss matters related to their energy security and economic development,” spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said Saturday after the Axios website reported on comments it said the president made about Perry and the origins of the call.

According to the website, Trump told House Republicans on Friday during a conference call that he spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky at Perry’s urging.

The only reason I made the call was because Rick asked me to. Something about an LNG [liquefied natural gas] plant.”

Hynes said Friday that Perry wasn’t on the call between Trump and Zelensky.

As energy secretary, Perry has regularly travelled to Eastern Europe to promote the sale of US-produced natural gas and coal.

Perry told confidants in recent days that he plans to resign from the Trump administration by the end of the year.  ( How convenient. Me)

While Perry’s contacts with Ukraine have drawn him into the impeachment inquiry into Trump by House Democrats, three people said his expected departure was not related to the Ukraine controversy, POLITICO reported last week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment investigation after a whistle-blower lodged a complaint about Trump asking Zelensky to look into investigating former US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The complaint mentioned Perry, who led a small US delegation to Zelensky’s inauguration in May, replacing US Vice-President Mike Pence.

Trump has openly called on China as well as Ukraine to investigate Biden.

Trump alleges that Biden, as vice-president in 2014, tried to block a Ukraine corruption probe into his son Hunter’s business partner, a Ukraine gas tycoon, using US aid as leverage.

He also alleged the younger Biden used his stature to raise $1.5 billion in 2013 from China for a new investment vehicle in Beijing.

He made “millions” off these investments, Trump alleges.

Biden has responded by calling Trump “the most corrupt president we’ve had in modern history.”

No evidence has surfaced showing wrongdoing by either Biden.

US President Donald Trump fired back at Mitt Romney on Saturday morning, calling the Utah senator a “pompous 'ass'” while defending his calls for Ukraine and China to investigate political rival Joe Biden.

“Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

“If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!

“Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him). He is so bad for R’s!” Trump wrote.

FROM: Theconversation.com 

In a recent interview with Fox News, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry stated that Donald Trump was chosen by God to be president. He said throughout history God had picked “imperfect people” such as King David or Solomon to lead their people.

Perry is not alone. A large number of evangelical Christians in the U.S. believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to advance the kingdom of God on Earth. Several high-profile religious leaders have made similar claims, often comparing Trump to King Cyrus who was asked by God to rescue the nation of Israel from exile in Babylon.

Many of these Christians are part of a movement that we call “Independent Network Charismatic,” or “INC Christianity” in our 2017 book.

Leaders such Rick Perry are connected to this movement. Eight years ago – in August of 2011 – more than 30,000 people cheered wildly when Perry, who was then a U.S. presidential candidate and Texas governor, came center stage at “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis” at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Perry quoted from the Bible and preached about the need for salvation that comes from Jesus. Many of the leaders who organized this event are the same leaders who claim that Trump is God’s chosen to advance the Kingdom of God.

We argue that INC Christianity is significantly changing the religious landscape in America – and the nation’s politics.

Here is what we found about INC

INC Christianity is led by a network of popular independent religious entrepreneurs, often referred to by their followers as “apostles.” They have close ties, we found, to some conservative politicians, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and more recently President Donald Trump.

Charismatic Christians emphasize supernatural miracles and divine interventions, but INC Christianity is different from other charismatics – and other Christian denominations in general – in the following ways:

It is not focused primarily on building congregations but rather on spreading beliefs and practices through media, conferences and ministry schools.

It is not so much about proselytizing to unbelievers as it is about transforming society through placing Christian believers in powerful positions in all sectors of society.

It is organized as a network of independent leaders rather than as formally organized denominations.

Finding followers

INC Christianity is the fastest-growing Christian group in America and possibly around the world. Over the 40 years from 1970 to 2010, the number of regular attenders of Protestant churches as a whole shrunk by an average of .05% per year, while independent neo-charismatic congregations, the category that includes INC groups, grew by an average of 3.24% per year.

Its impact, however, is much greater than can be measured in church attendance. This is because INC Christianity is not centrally concerned with building congregations, but spreading beliefs and practices.

The influence of INC Christianity can be seen in the millions of hits on many of their web-based media sites, large turnouts at stadium rallies and conferences and millions of dollars in media sales.

In interviews, leaders of Bethel, an INC ministry based in Redding, California, claimed to have had an income of US$8.4 million in media sales in 2013. This included music, books, DVDs and web-based content. Another $7 million came from tuition to the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.

Sean Feucht, one of Bethel’s popular musicians and worship leaders, is now running for Congress in California’s Third Congressional District.

Appeal of INC

As part of our research, we conducted in-depth interviews with senior leaders, staff and current and former participants in INC Christian ministries. We also conducted supplementary interviews with Christian leaders and scholars with knowledge of the changing religious landscape and attended conferences, numerous church services, ministry school sessions, healing sessions and exorcisms. In all, we conducted 41 in-depth interviews.

Our primary conclusion is that the growth of these groups is largely the result of the informal way in which the network is governed. When compared to the oversight and accountability of formal congregations and denominations, the network allows for more experimentation. This includes “extreme” experiences of the supernatural, unorthodox beliefs and practices, and financing as well as marketing techniques that leverage the power of the internet.

We also witnessed the appeal of INC Christianity, particularly among young people. We saw the thrill of holding impromptu supernatural healing sessions in the emergency room of a large public hospital, the intrigue of ministry school class sessions devoted to the techniques of casting out demonic spirits and the adventure of teams of young people going out into public places, seeking direct guidance from God as to whom to heal or to relay specific divine messages.

‘Seven mountains of culture’

Most Christian groups in America have seen the role of the church as connecting individuals to God through the saving grace of Jesus and building congregations that provide communities of meaning and belonging through worship services.

They also believe in serving and providing for the needs their local communities. Such traditional Christian groups believe that although the world can be improved, it will not be restored to God’s original plan until Jesus comes back again to rule the Earth.

INC beliefs, however, are different. Most INC Christian groups we studied seek to bring heaven or God’s intended perfect society to Earth by placing “kingdom-minded people” in powerful positions at the top of all sectors of society. These “seven mountains of culture” include business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion. In this form of “trickle-down Christianity,” they believe if Christians rise to the top of all seven “mountains,” society will be completely transformed.

“The goal of this new movement is transforming social units like cities, ethnic groups, nations rather than individuals,” one INC leader we interviewed explained. “If Christians permeate each mountain and rise to the top of all seven mountains…society would have biblical morality, people would live in harmony, there would be peace and not war, there would be no poverty.”

We heard these ideas repeatedly in most of our interviews, at events we attended and in INC media materials.

Most significantly, since the 2016 presidential election, some INC leaders have released public statements claiming that the Trump presidency is part of fulfilling God’s plan to “bring heaven to Earth” by placing believers in top posts, including Perry, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.

Changing the landscape

INC Christianity is a movement to watch. If it continues to draw adherents in large numbers in the future, as we predict, it will produce a growing number of Christians who see their goal not just as saving souls but as transforming society by taking control over its institutions.

While the Ukraine scandal, family separations at the border, and allegations of corruption have made some evangelical Christians question their support of Donald Trump, most of those steeped in INC Christianity will never abandon their president.

To them, as we found, to oppose Donald Trump is to oppose God who chose him specifically to bring America and the world back to God.

This is an updated version of a piece first published on March 15, 2017.

FROM:  Christian Science Monitor. June 18, 2018

When Julie Frady planned to make a poster to protest the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” immigration policy last week, she wanted to find the perfect Bible verse to stand against it, she says, one nobody else would expect.

She’s voted Republican most all of her life, but Ms. Frady, an evangelical Christian who lives in Wichita, Kan., says she’s been “appalled” by the Trump administration’s practice of separating immigrant children from their parents. And she’s been especially appalled, she says, at the administration’s stated purpose to use the practice as a deterrent to other immigrant families thinking of crossing the border illegally.

Since she joined about 60 protesters who marched in front of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Delano, Kan., Thursday, more and more people across the United States, and from across its often-polarized political spectrum, have begun to express deep moral reservations at the logistical realities of the practice.

Former first lady Laura Bush called the zero-tolerance policy “cruel” and “immoral” on Sunday, and first lady Melania Trump spoke out in favor of a resolution that would reunite families as well. Conservatives in Congress, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Trump loyalists, have also voiced their opposition.  

But in many ways, it was evangelical Christians, including some of President Trump’s most vocal supporters, who first began to change the course of the national conversation about immigration.

As federal agencies began to put into place the actual protocols of separating, detaining, and then finding suitable care for more than 11,400 immigrant children in custody – including about 2,000 taken from their parents since the Trump administration began its “zero tolerance” policy in April – many Evangelicals began to speak out against it.

Before opposition to the policy began to dominate the national conversation, Frady decided to use a verse from the small Book of Obadiah for her poster. The Hebrew prophet condemns the nation of Edom for closing its borders to Israelite refugees fleeing the Babylonians.

In multiple colors, she drew: “The LORD declares: You should NOT stand at the crossroads to cut down fleeing REFUGEES … in the day of their DISTRESS.”

It’s in many ways a defining feature of American Evangelical identity: the centrality of Scripture for both personal piety and political action.

“I place an extremely high value on the authority of Scripture, and the place it should hold in our lives,” says Frady, a lay leader who often leads Bible studies at Northwest Free Methodist Church, a small congregation in Wichita, where she also plays tenor sax for morning worship. “I would not knowingly go against something I thought the Bible commanded, no matter how I felt about it.”

Indeed, the Bible, and the voices of Evangelicals around the country, have become a focus of the debate.

The Rev. Franklin Graham, one of the president’s most outspoken evangelical supporters, called the policy “disgraceful” last week. “It's terrible to see families ripped apart, and I don’t support that one bit,” he said.

The Evangelical Immigration Table, which includes pastors from the president’s group of faith advisers, wrote a letter to the president earlier this month, calling for the end to the policy. “As evangelical Christians guided by the Bible, one of our core convictions is that God has established the family as the fundamental building block of society,” members of the coalition wrote. “The traumatic effects of this separation on these young children, which could be devastating and long-lasting, are of utmost concern.”

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the nation and one of the most politically and theologically conservative, overwhelmingly passed an immigration resolution at its annual meeting last week. The resolution called for immigration reforms that would include a path to legal status for those here illegally – which has long been anathema to most Evangelicals. Such reforms should maintain “the priority of family unity,” the convention proclaimed, and should “[honor] the value and dignity of those seeking a better life for themselves and their families.”

“It’s been a really interesting week or so,” says David Gushee, an professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, and an Evangelical.

“I don't think we should be using Scripture to defend any of these laws. My question is: How does love demand us to act?” said Sister Phyllis Peters, a Roman Catholic nun, speaking at a roundtable in Brownsville, Texas, Monday afternoon after elected officials visited the Casa Padre and Casa Presidents children's shelters in the city. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, (D) of Texas, called on Evangelicals, Mr. Graham, and other religious leaders to act, saying, “It will take that kind of spirit that is nonpartisan, religious, social, and humanitarian, and I think that group is much stronger than the federal government at this time. We must stand up to the federal government when it is necessary, and it is necessary now.”

Still, white Evangelicals have been Trump’s most ardent supporters from the start, and as a group they remain the most supportive of his administration’s immigration policies, polls suggest.

And Evangelicals within the Trump administration, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, invoked the Bible to defend the policy of separating children.

Discussing the “concerns raised by our church friends about separating families,” Mr. Sessions told an audience in Fort Wayne, Ind., last week, “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.”

Later, Ms. Sanders told reporters that “it is very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible.”

On the one hand, it speaks to the power and influence that Evangelicals wield in US politics, notes Professor Gushee, given that a political debate over immigration policy became a debate over biblical interpretation. “Only in America, really, and only in America in the 21st century and with a conservative Republican government, would we be having these public biblical arguments about immigration policy.”

The fraught history of Romans 13

Yet after Sessions invoked Romans 13, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established,” Christians, including many white Evangelicals, pointed out the long history of this passage, a passage that Gushee says “has been used and abused by tyrants and governments doing injustice for centuries.”

“There are two dominant places in American history when Romans 13 is invoked,” said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, to The Washington Post. “One is during the American Revolution [when] it was invoked by loyalists, those who opposed the American Revolution.”

The other was in the middle of the 19th century, to support defense of the Fugitive Slave Act, Professor Fea continued. “I mean, this is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made.”

Steven Colbert, a devout Roman Catholic and the host of “The Late Show,” suggested Thursday that the attorney general continue reading the passage on submitting to civil authorities through Romans 13:8-10. “Love thy neighbor as thyself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Trump has been backtracking from his policy of zero tolerance, falsely asserting that his hands are tied, and that Democrats are the ones responsible for legal requirements that his administration is only enforcing.

But as the Monitor reported in March 2017, the Trump White House has been mulling separating children from their families as a deterrent policy from the first months of the administration. After an outcry from religious leaders, however, the plan was postponed. 

‘Prosecutorial discretion’ vs. ‘zero tolerance’

The Obama administration, too, separated immigrant children from their parents, advocates note. And it also greatly expanded a policy of detaining mothers with children in expanded facilities. If a father crossed the border illegally with a child, they would typically be separated.

“The separation of families at the border is not new,” says Christina Fialho, co-executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, who advocates for immigrants being held at places like the private, for-profit Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. “Under the Obama administration, we worked with hundreds of parents who were separated from their family in home raids, including mothers who were still nursing young children.”

The difference, however, was that the Obama administration maintained a policy of “prosecutorial discretion”: the focus of resources on known, dangerous individuals, rather than “zero tolerance,” an adherence to the letter of the law in all instances.

“We realized that we had limited resources in what we could do,” says Kevin Fandl, who worked as a senior counsel for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2007 to 2013. “We believed we should target those resources toward the most serious threats to the country, those threats being convicted felons or those with a criminal history, terrorists, threats for national security, and recent border crossers, those people with no ties whatsoever to the United States.”

“Everybody else was considered a really low level for enforcement, which encouraged agents to say, ‘OK, if we spot a family with children, we’re probably not going to spend much time with them,’ ” Mr. Fandl continues. Sometimes, if they were picked up, the policy of “catch and release” allowed families with children to enter the country after being given a Notice to Appear order – which, he admits, no one expected them to do.

For critics, however, this created a perverse incentive. “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” said Stephen Miller, the president’s senior policy adviser, to The New York Times last week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

And as Sessions put it earlier this month: “If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them. We’ve got to get this message out.”

As a result, however, the system has been severely strained. Sessions said last week that taking care of unaccompanied minors was costing taxpayers more than $1 billion a year, most now under the care of the US Department of Health and Human Services and its Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Logistically speaking, the system is not prepared to handle the care of thousands of children, says Lisa Koop, associate director of legal services for the National Immigrant Justice Center, who represents a number of immigrant woman whose children were taken from them by the US government.

“They did not know what was going on with their kids, and when we finally managed to figure that one of the kids was being detained in New York, the child’s mother [being held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center] said to me, Where is New York? Is New York far away from here?’ ” says Ms. Koop, who recounts stories of mothers having their children literally torn from their arms. “They just have no concept of where their children are, and what conditions they’re in.”

Gushee says he has been heartened by the biblical responses to Sessions’ use of Romans 13, from those on Twitter to the discussions in the media. Biblical passages that have to do with compassion and care for those suffering, and especially for “the least of these” and the most vulnerable in society, he says, “they surfaced when they were needed.”

“But the story is not just the Bible verses,” Gushee continues. “The tears and suffering of human beings whose rights are being violated speaks. That is a language that should be taken seriously. In fact, one might even say this language is revelatory.”

“To see children weeping, to see bereft parents not knowing where their children are, to learn about a man who killed himself in a detention center because he was torn apart over the destruction of his family – these stories speak, too.”

And they have spurred devout evangelical Christians like Frady to action.

“I love America,” says Frady, who wore a purple T-shirt with “Jesus was a Refugee” to the protest near her home in Wichita. “It is my homeland, and I am certainly blessed to be an American.”

“But I am also not naive to its warts,” she continues. “And this is more than a wart.”

Staff writer Henry Gass contributed to this report from Brownsville, Texas.

[him-e]

Anonymous said:

Who is the Stark child that is most like Ned in your opinion? (I don’t count Jon.)

I think all the Stark kids took after Ned in some aspects and internalized a lot of his values and lessons, and at the same time, none of them is really “like” Ned? Each surviving Starkling is growing into his or her own person and, in a way, moving past their father’s example (see: some of them develop manipulative skills, while others grapple with more nuanced and ambiguous notions of “honor” & “justice”; all of them are starting to break some rules). I like that GRRM resisted the impulse of turning one specific Starkling into an obvious Ned 2.0: instead of funneling all of Ned’s legacy traits into one kid, he’s distributed his qualities and flaws among all the children (almost) equally.

That said: barring Jon---whose Ned-ness is actually a bit complex, and not as straightforward as his physical resemblance imo---I see echoes of Ned’s personality especially in Bran and Sansa. (Or maybe they’re just the ones whose similarities with Ned interest me more, as they’re not exactly the most obvious choices, I don’t know)

Bran shares with daddy one of the things that made Ned “Ned”: they’re both second sons, raised with the idea that they wouldn’t be lord of Winterfell, that they would never bear that kind of responsibility unless something terrible happens... and then something terrible happens, and they have to “man up” for a role---being “the Stark in Winterfell”---they were never adequately prepared for (in Bran’s case, that also happens when he’s entirely too young for that, and shortly after a highly traumatic incident that left him disabled). When I think of a possible king Bran endgame I always end up picturing Bran with the same melancholic, bittersweet feelings about ruling that Ned had. A quiet “I am sitting here because my father and older brother were brutally murdered” kind of existential angst that’s never going to heal completely. Another common trait is arguably the ability to minimize conflict within his “pack”. Bran has the smoothest, easiest relationship with each of his siblings—everyone, from the “wild” sister to the soon-to-be princess, from the firstborn brother to the “little one” to the “bastard”, loves him unconditionally and has no reason to resent him (and likewise, he doesn’t resent any of his siblings)---and this makes him virtually the best suited to become a leader as universally loved as Ned was, capable of cementing around himself vassals and family members alike. 

I think it’s significant that Bran’s pov is the one introducing Ned to us and that Bran directly receives one of Ned’s most iconic teachings in the same chapter; it’s meant to draw an ideal line between the two, father to son, apparent protagonist to real protagonist, a line Martin smudges a bit by making Bran a Tully through and through in appearance (because we don’t want to get too obvious with the similarities, as I said earlier). Unlike Ned, Bran’s childhood dream was becoming a knight---that’s where the Catelyn side of his nature comes in---but that’s actually another point in common with Ned, when you think how the latter spends the formative years of his youth in the Vale, fostered alongside a true “southerner” like Robert, yet never loses his Northern roots and identity, and proceeds to retreat back to the North to barely leave it for the 15 years following the Rebellion. Similarly, as the story progresses Bran becomes more and more aligned with the Old Gods and Northern identity in general, and even physically moves further and further North. 

The other one I mentioned is Sansa and that’s where it gets really interesting. On paper, Sansa should have no reason to be like Ned: they don’t seem to have the same close relationship that Ned and Arya have, they received gender-specific (therefore, diametrically opposite) educations, were raised to appreciate and value different things, and to behave differently in society. In fact, Sansa is often perceived by the fandom as the “least Stark” of the lot... and yet, ironically, she has some crucial traits in common with her father. Sansa and Ned both share, to different extents, a capacity for self denial, for avoiding or literally unseeing those pesky little things that don’t fit their narrative and make them uncomfortable/anxious (in Ned’s case: continually postponing the much needed talk about Jon’s mother, refusing to make concrete plans about Jon’s future, not taking any measures to alleviate Catelyn’s resentment of the kid and being willfully oblivious to Jon’s evident pain as he grew up; not dealing or postponing to deal with Arya’s rebellious nature, and similarly failing to correct Sansa’s behavior in KL; refusing to admit to himself the full extent of how his bff Robert sucked as a king, as a husband, as a father for a long while; underestimating/misreading Cersei and Littlefinger; Ned’s resistance to mentally revisit the events of the Tower of Joy, while doylistically a plot device to prevent the reader from learning the truth too early and easily, from a watsonian perspective can also be associated to the same reluctance to process traumatic events that we see in Sansa, who goes as far as censoring or rewriting them entirely in her head; etc.). 

Sansa and Ned also share a certain inwardness, a quietness that is easily mistaken—both in-narrative and by the reader—with being meek, easily manageable and occasionally stupid (...except Ned’s ~honorableness~ is usually seen by fandom as a more acceptable mitigating factor than Sansa’s immaturity and young age). There’s a semi-serious meta about Ned and Sansa being the fashion victims of the family, which is really funny but also enlightening. And that’s without getting into the narrative parallels, like Sansa and Ned both wrongly trusting Littlefinger, or spending some formative time in the Vale. 

These similarities get even more interesting when you start weighing in the aspects where Sansa and Ned really differ. Unlike Ned, who doesn’t really “lie” to himself as much as he ~avoids~ going into certain mental rooms and is actually a very awkward and uncomfortable liar, Sansa's relationship with The Truth is notoriously very complicated and one of the cruxes of her character arc, as she lies easily and frequently both to herself and to others, especially when’s she’s in a stressful situation that her subconscious refuses to register as such. Also unlike Ned, her blind idealism and preconceived notions of honor were crushed quite early, leaving only her intense trauma and isolation to cloud her judgment and distort her perceptions. I think Sansa has the potential to get better in those areas where Ned failed, but first she absolutely needs to confront her own tendency to rewrite things in her head. Mastering the art of lying to others is an exceptional asset for a politician; lying to yourself... not as much.

[itsnebulous]

BLOODLINE

NARRATOR: Years ago there lived a King and Queen. He who was infamous of being selfish, brutal, but smart which made him suited for being King. King Henry had always wanted to have a son as his only heir to the throne and rule his kingdom, and so the day he waited came. The Queen Stella gave birth to royalties and the King felt proud and excited.

Scene 1: King and Queen's room

(King Henry approaches Queen Stella when he noticed her moving)

HENRY: (He holds her hands tightly while staring at her) My Queen, how are you feeling?

STELLA: (Her eyes adjusted to the blinding light coming from the windows) I feel better, thank you but our children? Where are they?

HENRY: Our son is sleeping soundly on his room but our daughter… she didn’t make it.

(Henry stops talking then hugged Stella tightly. Then Stella cried loudly)

NARRATOR: While King Henry was comforting Queen Stella, Javert quietly closed the door to give them privacy. He felt something was off and checked the boarders of the palace.

Scene 2: Palace Garden

NARRATOR: Meanwhile Grace, one of the servants in the palace, was about to deliver a meal to his husband Robert, the palace gardener when she spotted an unusual basket hidden behind one of the trees at the garden.

GRACE: Robert! Robert! For the love of our highness, why is this misplaced in here. (She uncovers the basket then screamed)

NARRATOR: The poor servant didn’t know what to do and Robert was not there to help her. Instead the gardener was just about to enter when she screamed.

ROBERT: Grace! (He ran towards the sound and then wrapped his shaking wife in his arms) What happened!?

(Grace pointed at the basket with a terrified expression on her face)

ROBERT: Oh shit.

Scene 3: Prince’s room

NARRATOR: The little boy, Damon, grew up to be a wise and handsome prince like how his father always wanted. Years had already passed and he is in search for his rightful Queen at the age of his eighteenth birthday.

DAMON: (He grunts in annoyance) When will this annoying measurements stop!? I have plenty of suits in my closet.

STELLA: Calm down Damon. (She approaches him then smiles) its your eighteenth birthday tomorrow and everything should be perfect. Especially now that you are soon to be King.

DAMON: I am honored, mom. I know now how I want to rule this kingdom but numbers of suits isn’t part of the plan.

(The servants and tailors giggles at the Prince’s joke)

Scene 4: Palace Kitchen

NARRATOR: Meanwhile at the palace kitchen. The chefs, maids, and other servants are busy preparing for a pre-celebration of the Prince’s day of birth. Wines and other alcoholic drinks are placed on a cart and is ready to be served at the palace garden where the King and other leaders that are acquaintances come to drink their nights away. A young lady at his late teenage years makes her way to the garden for she is assigned to serve the royal family for the week.

EVANGELINE: (She sighs and walks to the garden) Another typical day at the palace. They’re all drunk and enjoying their lives! While here I am.

Scene 5: Palace Garden

NARRATOR: Evangeline approaches the long table where the higher ups and well known politicians are sitting laughing and drinking.

(Evangeline approaches the long table and poured wine in every glass container placed on the table then bowed afterwards)

GUEST 1: King Henry I was just curious but if your daughter should be alive, she is as beautiful as your wife.

HENRY: (He laughs boldly then sneers) Indeed as beautiful but she is dead isn’t she!? (He chugs the left wine as his guests shut their mouths)

(Evangeline slowly turned around to go back inside, on her way she thinks of the passed away princess that everyone talks about)

Scene 6: Evangeline's room

EVANGELINE: (She sits on her bed then started outside the window) If the princess was alive would we be friends? I think she'd be a wonderful Queen.

NARRATOR: The young servant stared longingly at the Prince’s window hoping to see him before she takes a nap. Like a miracle, the Prince Damon went out to his veranda, sitting there while looking back at her.

DAMON: (He stands then shouts) Wait I'll go there!

EVANGELINE: Wait—what!? Go where!? (She quickly fixed herself, checking her appearance on the mirror)

(After a while Damon knocked on her door)

EVANGELINE: C-come in!

(He opened the door slowly, not wanting to startle the servant)

DAMON: I have been observing you and you are always looking at me with longing and not desire. You maybe familiar with me but I’m afraid my memory is quite a disappointment.

EVANGELINE: (laughs nervously) Have I disrespected you your highness? (she looks down to his feet) I deeply apologize for my manners.

DAMON: Not at all, perhaps lending me your time will make it even.

NARRATOR: Evangeline looks shocked but still managed to nod and follow the Prince out her room.

Scene 7: Palace Garden

NARRATOR: The Prince Damon looks at her like she has seen her before. On their way to the other part of the garden they passed by the drunk men laughing their hearts out. The King eyed them with confusion while the two teenagers laughed like they had known each other for years.

DAMON: I feel comfort when I talk to you, which I usually don’t feel by the way.

EVANGELINE: Me too! I mean—It makes my heart flutter knowing that a Prince is talking to me, us laughing and all.

DAMON: I agree but unfortunately we must continue this conversation tomorrow. It’s my big day and I know as a servant of my Father you are tasked a lot but still I hope I’ll see you tomorrow—Bye for now.

NARRATOR: Damon left the garden and makes his way back to his room while Evangeline still sat on the bench while counting the appearing stars. She felt at ease and happy until a hand pulled her out of her own paradise.

Scene 8: Grace's house

EVANGELINE: Mom, Dad… I’m so sorry… (She cries her heart out while the couple is hugging her) I-I didn’t mean to talk to the Prince. (She sobs) I didn’t know it wasn’t allowed for a ser—

GRACE: Hush now Eve, we know you’re innocent. Do not worry and we are not mad.

ROBERT: (He messes her hair then chuckles) Stop crying and we are going to tour you in the city. You’ve been serving the royal family long enough. It’s time to start afresh.

(Evangeline wiped her tears and leaves her eyes red and puffy from the outburst)

Scene 9: The City

EVANGELINE: Wow!

(Evangeline hoped from stores, markets, malls, and different boutiques. They spent their time together roaming around the city)

NARRATOR: Javert looms in the shadows following the family, eyeing the young lady like his prey. He didn’t know why he feels threatened with Evangeline. True enough he noticed how fond the Prince is with the servant which he dislikes.

ROBERT: Who’s hungry?

(Stella and Evangeline raises their hands then laughs)

Scene 10: The Palace Ball room

DAMON: (He looks at every servant who walks by) Where is she? I couldn’t find her since last night.

(Damon walks down the stairs and through the hallways where the rooms of servant are located and stops when he hears whispering)

SERVANT 1: Have you heard? Evangeline and her parents were sent away because she spoke to the Prince.

SERVANT 2: Well that can’t be helped. Who knows if she is a slut trying to seduce the Prince!?

(Damon clenches his fist while listening to the conversation. He walks back to his parents’ room and looks for his Father)

DAMON: (He opened the door loudly and forcefully) Father! Have you sent Evangeline away!?

(Henry looks at him with a challenged look, leaving the Queen confused on the couch)

HENRY: Are you accusing me? What right do you have?

DAMON: (He punched the wall behind him) Fuck that! Are you seriously doing this just because she talked to me!? How low can you go!?

HENRY: I am doing this for you because you do not know where you belong. On that throne, for you to be served! Not to entertain a servant!

DAMON: Stop degrading them like you own them!

HENRY: I do own them. (He smiles viciously)

(Damon walks away bringing his personal stuff on a bag before leaving the palace using one of his vehicles)

Scene 11: The City

NARRATOR: Damon searched for the servants using pictures. He is half way on giving up when she heard the familiar laugh that brings back the memories of when they were at the garden. There he saw her, sitting on the edge of a fountain while talking random guys and suddenly he feels this anger growing inside him.

DAMON: (He calls out) Evangeline!

EVANGELINE: (She looks at the direction of the sound then gasped) P-Prince—

DAMON: Shh! (He covers her mouth, glaring at the men who retreated at the sight of him)

(Evangeline struggles to remove his hands off her. He pulls away when she bit him)

DAMON: Ouch!

EVANGELINE: What are you doing here!? I’m not supposed to be with you!

DAMON: I know. I know and I don’t want you in trouble. Listen to me and we will figure this out.

EVANGELINE: Alright. What do you want? (She stares straight at him)

DAMON: Soon they’ll look for me. Meet me at the back gates of the Palace tonight. Wait for me outside and I promise I’ll be there. I want you at my party, be there.

Scene 12: Grace’s old house

NARRATOR: The two part ways and return to their homes. Evangeline’s expression shows how excited yet nervous she is. She picks up her old dress that her mother, Grace, gave her. With a few zips and ribbons, the dress fits her perfectly with every curve.

EVANGELINE: It’s his birthday. What should I give him as a gift?

Scene 13: Back part of the Palace

DAMON: (He walks back and fort behind a large tree) Where is she? Is she not going to come? I thought we—

EVANGELINE: (She fakes a cough upon her arrival) Did you wait long?

DAMON: (He stares at her with an amazed expression) Beautiful.

(Evangeline blushes then walks pass him)

EVANGELINE: It’s getting late and the party is about to start.

DAMON: (He looks away to hide his red face) Y-yes. Let’s get in.

Scene 14: The Palace Ball room

NARRATOR: The Prince Damon and Evangeline entered the ball room wearing masks. All but them shows their faces which lets Evangeline give off a mysterious vibe to everyone in the room. The music starts to play and they danced. He holds on to her tightly like they aren’t meant to be apart. He is showing much affection to the young lady that she most certainly like.

(Henry walks towards the two people dancing, beside him is the Queen Stella)

STELLA: A fine young man and a lovely young lady. A pleasant sight for a Queen to see. (She smiles genuinely)

HENRY: Not pleasant enough with these masks on. (He sneers and glares at Evangeline’s direction)

(Evangeline kept her gaze low and unmoving)

DAMON: Mom, Dad. I’ll be taking her to my room now if you don’t mind?

HENRY: I refu—

STELLA: (She covers Henry's mouth) Go along now dear your room is clean and tidy for the both of you. Have fun! (She winks at them then pulls Henry away)

(Evangeline and Henry looks at each other then giggles before leaving the ball room)

Scene 15: Prince’s room

EVANGELINE: This is your room?

DAMON: For eighteen years, yes. Why?

(Evangeline looks around and spots an old looking door on the right side)

EVANGELINE: What’s in that room?

DAMON: Oh that. It’s a room supposed to be for my twin sister but she died.

EVANGELINE: That’s—I’m sorry.

NARRATOR: The Prince Damon sits on his bed, his coat already laying on the ground. Evangeline finds it pleasing to her eyes as she can’t take them off of him. Suddenly she finds herself on his bed and wonders happened that only the four walled room had witnessed.

EVANGELINE: (She pants and breathes heavily beside him, sweat dropping from her forehead) Happy… Birthday.

DAMON: (He also breathes heavily then stares at Evangeline) Best gift I ever received.

Scene 16: The King and Queen's room

JAVERT: My King (He bows). I have been told that the young slave hasn’t returned home yet.

(Henry sipped on his wine before looking out the window, his wife sleeping peacefully on their King sized bed oblivious of what’s happening)

HENRY: What time did she leave their little house?

JAVERT: After the sun has set.

HENRY: I see a brat has entered our Palace without us noticing. Place guards surrounding the Palace. We mustn’t let her get to his head. The Prince still has a lot to learn.

Scene 17: Down the Lobby

NARRATOR: The right hand, Javert, nods firmly before leaving the room. He walks away to inform the guards about the Palace's security and showing them Evangeline's face.

JAVERT: Have you seen this girl enter the Palace?

(The guards shake their heads then went back to patrolling the Palace)

JAVERT: sneaky little brat! (He picks up a vase and throws it to the wall)

Scene 18: Grace's old house

NARRATOR: Weeks passed and it has been like this. The Prince Damon meets up with Evangeline and they explore the city together. Everyday seems so normal until this day. Evangeline woke up tired and feeling weird. She smelled something she didn’t like making her puke.

GRACE: (She walks up to her) Eve, I hope I’m wrong but you may not be sick but perhaps…

ROBERT: Who were you with these past weeks?

EVANGELINE: I’m pregnant with… Damon's baby. (She gasps then claps before looking at the couple)

ROBERT: fuck!

(Evangeline's eyes became wide at his response. Grace shakes her head and starts to murmur)

NARRATOR: The news has driven the couple insane. It was too much for them to take in but knew that Evangeline is as clueless as a new born baby. After sinking in the information they didn’t think twice and told her everything that happened.

Scene 19: The Palace

NARRATOR: Damon grins at the little box he’s holding. An engagement ring passed down royalty to royalty and he wants Evangeline to wear it as his soon to be Queen. When he was about to leave the Palace using the back gates he heard footsteps and so he hid behind the tree.

JAVERT: Where are you going again? To spy on your dead daughter?

HENRY: She is supposed to be dead but you’re an idiot.

JAVERT: It wasn’t my fault Roberto has a heart for brats like your daughter.

HENRY: Shut the fuck up and stop saying daughter you imbecile! What if someone hears you!?

JAVERT: For a smart King you’re quite dumb. Everyone suspects her as the long dead princess because she looks exactly like the Queen.

Scene 20: Grace’s old house

NARRATOR: Damon walked his way to Grace’s house to see Evangeline. Each step he takes feels like daggers stabbing his footsteps. When he reached his destination, he was too late.

DAMON: Eve… Evangeline…

(Damon kneels in front of Evangeline’s lifeless body, a knife stuck on her stomach and her blood spilling everywhere on the ground)

DAMON: Fuck… It was all a lie. Everything. (He screams) You were my fucking twin sister and I made love to you!

[commonplaceshook]

In the relation thus put together, i.e., constructed, let us observe three (logical) moments: a  general, abstract, metaphysical: the relation of the ‘soul’ with society in general, represented as a whole; b  particular, positive, pragmatic: since he perceives society as a given, the problem for the individual is to establish a determined relation with this given society, in given conditions; c  singular, mystic, personal: the representation which the individual has of himself as difference and in-difference, as irreducible originality and as personality. Thus the active representation and the ‘lived’ which it represents enter into the logical pattern of classic syllogism: general/particular/singular. Each logical ‘moment’ implies another, and they all assume substance and reality independently of each other. Thus in the everyday reality of existing (bourgeois) society we find the general type, the particular type and the singular type, each one emphasizing a logical element or moment; what is more, at the heart of each class or type we rediscover all the other moments, in a subordinated or recessive state. For example, in the class (in the logical sense of the term), i.e., in the general type, we will recognize one general type (or subclass, or subtype), another particular one and another singular one. Thus we will have a formal combination: A.B.C.; A (a,b,c), B (a,b,c), C (a,b,c); A (aa, ab, ac …) with implied types, subtypes and sub-subtypes. A. The general type. This is the highest class or type; he considers the relation with society consciously and takes it as a constant object of thought and meditation; however, his consciousness of the social remains abstract. A.a. The Utopian. Utopianism poses the fundamental problem of the individual/society relation in such perfectly clear terms that the absurdity of formulating it abstractly by means of two mutually independent and external terms becomes blindingly obvious. The Utopian knows that the truth of praxis consists in a conscious oneness: the everyday/the whole, the individual/society, or even the individual/the human race. However he sees this truth as a pure ideal outside the real, something to be created ex nihilo. He cannot see that this oneness already exists, but in an incomplete way, mutilated, alienated, mainly because it lacks conscious expression. Thus the Utopian in the classic sense of the term wishes to create a new society and an entirely new life, with new men, individuals united in their desire to sign up to a new social contract. He thinks this is easy to achieve, since it relies merely on the consent of a certain number of minds similar to his own. He is not very aware of the practical conditions and problems. For him, the principle of the identicalness and oneness of the ‘individual/society’ relation remains general, logical and abstract, rather than being concrete and dialectical. Devoid of means, the pure aim becomes a false one. Mankind will fail, but the failure will be a noble one. Subtypes: ‘Idealists’ in the commonplace sense; dreamers, reformers and founders of sects; leaders of literary or artistic movements, etc. Sub-subtypes: the misunderstood, martyrs, minor poets … A.b. The man of action. The opposite of the Utopian, and his complement, he gives priority to the real, realization and means. For him, the data of problems are solid ground. He uses them as a foothold. He has little concern for what may be in the distance. He accepts goals which come from beyond himself and his own thought. He spends little time mulling over the goals and a lot of time on the interests and on the solid means of action. In the case of the Utopian, only the ends counted, and without means, the true goal became a false one. In the case of the man who wants action for action’s sake, good and genuine means become dubious if the goal for which they are used is an uncertain one. He thinks he is free, but he is the unconscious slave of real historical forces. If genuine freedom can be defined as knowledge and mastery of necessity, the freedom of the pure man of action can be defined as ignorance of his own enslavement. Among the humbler representatives of this type we find agents and hired men – among its more illustrious representatives are enlightened despots, and certain captains of industry and kings of finance. They can only ‘succeed’ by exploiting the stupidity of other people; their careers end tragically and they cannot understand what has happened to them. Opposed subtypes: the activist and the militant; the organizer and organizational man; the politician; the boss; the male ‘Rastignac’ and the female one (a recent species).27 A.c. The thinker. He despises the Utopian because the Utopian is not a man of action. He despises the man of action because the man of action is not a Utopian. He is a thinker, therefore he thinks. He is particularly fond of problems of method. He tends to emphasize personality, which he understands to be the opposite of the social, but he tries to reconcile this opposition by being adaptable. In fact, the thinker is a subordinate of the Utopians in ideological terms, and a subordinate of the men of action in practical terms. Deluded by his own methodological or ‘intellectual’ efficiency, he effortlessly combines the inactivity of the former with the lack of awareness of the latter. He interprets the world, and thinks he has transformed it. He comes to believe that ideas act by themselves, or ends up adopting an ideology which justifies his real life. Opposed and complementary subtypes: the systematic philosopher; the essayist; the eternally misunderstood; the resigned woman; the embittered cuckold, etc. B. The particular type. The ‘individual/social’ relation ceases to be perceived as such. If there is any awareness of the social, it is as the postulate of a limited practical activity. Thus the relation is reduced to the particularity of the individual within a limited group. In the words of this individual, philosophers are not practical, and there is no social problem; everything is a mere question of force and adaption, whether by constraint or by consent. B.a. The civil servant (the bureaucrat). With a bit of preferential treatment, a little savvy, a serious attitude and a couple of qualifications, all will be well. Remember the respect we owe to the hierarchy inside which we are on the up and up. Things being what they are, all we need do is to be virtuous in principle, i.e., to make virtue the principle of the state and to make decency the principle of bureaucracy. Subtypes: the conformist; the specialist; the well-informed man who has his finger on the pulse of things; the pedant (the policeman of knowledge); the citizen; the matron or eternal mother; the member of the Académie française. B.b. The middleman or the bohemian. The reverse and the complement of the bureaucrat, this ersatz civil servant tries to occupy every available hole in the social automatism to which he owes his appointment. Although this has no status, and comes to him from outside, he considers it to be the freest and most internalized act of his own personal initiative. Although his function is to act as a safety valve or conductor, he sees himself at the summit of the hierarchy. He despises bureaucracy for being too staid and too pragmatic, and thinks he is using it. In fact, by sweetening its brutal methods and by adapting it to local conditions, it is he who is being used by bureaucracy. Opposed and complementary subtypes: people in ‘public relations’ and ‘personnel management’; publicity agents; literary critics (benign ones); lawyers; well-meaning little priests; brokers; masters of ceremony; detectives, etc. B.c. The independent man. He believes that conscientious work is the only road to success. ‘After all, we need right-minded folk who do an honest day’s work and who are not there merely for the show. Maybe us lot aren’t famous, but at least we’re our own men. The state, civil servants, thinkers and what they think, art, religion – what’s it all for if not to be made use of and to make our lives that little bit more enjoyable …?’ Such are the independent man’s thoughts as he sets up his little business. A good husband and a good father, off he goes to war to get conveniently killed for his country. Is he the unknown soldier? He certainly is. On fixed days of the year he remembers that he is a citizen, and goes to vote. His life may revolve around himself and his relationships, but he has a clear conscience, for surely his way of life is essential not only to himself but also for the well-being and existence of society. ‘If everyone thought only of themselves, and if God thought of everyone, what a wonderful world it would be.’ Opposed and complementary subtypes: the criminal; the scab; the professional double-dealer; the expert; the pure glance and the voyeur. C. The singular type. In the previous two classes of types, the relation with the social existed, but in a mystified form and reconstructed misleadingly in a representation. So in A.a, the relation appears as goodwill, followed by an inability to make it real. In A.b, the relation is as sharply presented as it is in A.a, but in a negative form: the strength of this positive character comes from his negative completeness. This type of individual has sold his goodwill in exchange for success. He imagines that the structure of society is there to serve him, and that by exploiting it he has overcome the ‘individual/society’ division or the ‘private/public’ division to his personal advantage. In fact, although he is using society for his own ends and is controlling it for that purpose, he is allowing himself to become enslaved by the reactionary social forces of that society, without knowing how, and without even realizing it. In A.c, the relation degenerates somewhat more, both in practice and in its representation. Rather than being negative, it becomes indifferent. The individual puts himself ‘above society’. This is why the philosopher finds it so easy to imagine that he has overcome the fundamental contradictions, in the Mind, or in his system. In the B groups, we no longer find society as a whole, either as a practice or as a representation. The relation is between delimited spheres, and society as a whole disintegrates into particular groups. Every individual in these groups enters into contact with one or several ‘circles’ which he takes to be society as a whole. In this way the civil servant, or even the professional intellectual, believes in the generality of his experience, whereas in fact all he has experienced is a sum total of particularities and particular groups. The middleman imagines that he has a strategy for overcoming the fragmentation and the division of labour: to travel everywhere, to see the world. He thinks he has grasped the totality, whereas in fact he is fulfilling a function: he links people together. As for the independent type, he buries his head in the realness of a fragmented activity and thinks he has resolved the same problem. In group C, we witness the complete degeneration of the ‘individual/social’ relation. Not only does it become blurred; it also dissolves and vanishes. The term ‘society’ disappears from consciousness; but the only way it can really disappear is as a result of a pathological state. Thus society appears to be completely disguised, and the return to generality is achieved by the invention of completely phoney representations. So logical structure does not stop alienation. This is two-sided, and consists of a weakening of any concrete link, and of a series of arbitrary representations (ethical, aesthetic, etc.). The individual man of type C sees himself facing the ‘world’ alone, and he tries to attain it without the mediation of the social, of history and of practice. An intuitive sense of a pure ‘self’ leads him from a lived, everyday situation into irrefutable fetishisms. Here, character per se disappears. Everything becomes attitude, role-play, theatricals, acted out on the theoretical stage of a vulgar empiricism. C.a. The fanatic. A coarsely egotistical ‘self’ disguises itself under cosmic banners: god, nature, ‘world’. This individual sees himself facing the universe, and his only relation is with the ‘world’. Thus he believes himself to be universal, whereas in fact nobody could be more singular. He asserts himself hypocritically by using the ‘world’ as a sphere of influence and self-justification. This character, or rather this attitude, encompasses various stages and variants, from the cold-blooded calculator disguised as a Kindly Soul to the religious fanatic. This type is forceful and ferocious in equal measure. Subtypes: the Lady; the pseudo-poet; the Kindly Souls. C.b. The oppositionist. In C.a. there is a conscious emphasis on the ‘world’. In C.b., the emphasis is expressly on the Self. C.a. says yes; C.b. says no. C.a. is a hypocrite; C.b. is a facile cynic. The type whose character is oppositional defines his ‘self’ as the contrary of someone or something, and often as the contrary of everything which is not him. He is ‘pro everything anti, and anti everything pro’. He thinks he is more sharp-witted and human than the fanatic; and yet although his disposition is the complete opposite, he performs the same kind of social (i.e., antisocial) actions. Deep within his consciousness–unconsciousness he is often frustrated. Of all the types, this is probably the most unstable. Sometimes his relation with praxis sinks even lower, i.e., even farther from that of a genuine consciousness. Sometimes he finds a way out; he escapes from the prison of his own character. We can often detect traces of infantility in him, as well as many flagrant contradictions (for example, the superstitious atheist). Subtypes: the ostentatious anarchist and the ostentatious anticleric; the hypercritic. C.c. The pompous idiot. This one is well anchored in the everyday; he collects its most commonplace contents and inflates them crudely. He uses triviality to discover wisdom, a philosophy, a vision of the world. For example, he extracts proverbial sayings from their ironic context, their mutual oppositions and corrections, and turns them into eternal truths. There will always be rich people and there will always be poor people. Those people don’t suffer as we do. Money can’t buy you happiness. There will always be wars. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. We aren’t choirboys. I’d rather be a happy pig than an unhappy Socrates. There’s a nip in the air, etc.… The pompous idiots are so stupid that they seem harmless. Because of their retarded and blinkered individualism, they are easy prey for demagogues. Through the inertia and mechanical nature of their stupidity, they go farther than others more treacherous or more intelligent than themselves in disintegrating the social and the human. Subtypes: these are innumerable: the sententious sage; the sermonizer; the avid reader; the ‘public-spirited’ man, etc.28

Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life Vol. 2

[christianlivingtoday-blog]

Employees of the Accuser

Satan would like to talk to us directly. He would like to say how bad we are and describe our sins to us as vividly as possible. Fortunately, he does not have that chance because we are operating in different realms. Satan is a spirit operating in the spirit realm and we are human beings operating in a physical realm.

Accusations are very effective, and Satan relies heavily on them. He, therefore, needs workers to carry his foul and degrading messages. Satan knows he can weaken, degrade, deceive and even control God's servants through accusations. Satan desperately needs workers he can employ as his mouthpiece. He will rain foul, slimy faeces on God's holy men through these workers. Do not become the mouthpiece of Satan.

Satan wants to defecate and vomit on God's servants. Will you be the tool of Satan from which he will spray good people with his defiling accusations?

Never Accept Satan's Job Offer

Do not accept this job from the devil. Accusations are the trademark of the devil. I want you to learn a lesson from the angel Michael who refused to accuse even Satan. Why would Michael not want to accuse someone who is a confirmed, certified, evil being? Because that is not the way of God. As soon as you begin to accuse someone, you have taken over from Satan and done the work of a demon!

Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

Jude 9

If even an angel would not accuse Satan, why would you choose to accuse someone as good as your pastor? Why would you accuse your husband or your wife? Can the evil in your husband or your wife be compared to the evil that is in Satan? Then why do you accuse them? Pray for them and love them.

God is the only One who can change a human being! You will not bring about a positive change in someone by accusing him. He may be pushed around for a while by your accusations but one day he will rebel.

"No more," he will say. "I will choose my own way from now on." That is what John Wesley said in a letter to his wife. "Attempt no more to abridge me of the liberty, which I claim by Godand man. Leave me to be governed by God and my own conscience…"

Who will be the mouthpiece of Satan and do the work of demons? Not everyone can do this work of accusing people. Some people are more suitable than others are. Some people are actually predisposed to this finger-pointing ministry! Let me give you some examples of the type of people predisposed to becoming accusers.

The List of Potential Accusers

1. Evil men:It is said that it takes a thief to catch another thief. Usually, evil people know how the evil mind works. Innocent people do not have the slightest idea about many possible evils. It is when you are corrupted that certain ideas even occur to you.

Sometimes, I hear people accusing others of things, which I find absurd. "How could they think of such a thing", I ask.

Yet, some of these accusations are proved to be realities. Many times these ideas come to people from experience. You see, when you have used your office to steal millions of dollars before, you will know that large amounts of money can be stolen by politicians. You will not find it unusual to suggest that someone would steal such monies.

Is it not interesting that it was Judas, the thief, who pointed a finger at Christ for not caring for the poor? This is the way to know the evil men in your midst. They seem to spot evil and accuse quickly because they themselves are evil.

Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

John 12:4-6

2. Bitter and unforgiving people:These people have suffered many hurts and pain. They therefore trust no one and expect no good thing from anyone.

Some people who come out of bad relationships become the wildest accusers of their future partners. They have no trust.

Because African leaders have looted the treasuries of their nations, Africans generally do not trust their leaders. The best of leaders are met with numerous accusations about their lives. It is difficult to lead an army of suspicious and accusing people.

Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.

1 Samuel 30:6 (NASB)

Notice how David's men thought of stoning (attacking) David. These men were hurting and grieving men. They were ripe and ready to become accusers.

3. Insecure and jealous people:People who are not secure in their positions tend to attack anything that comes around them.

An insecure female dog, which has littered, will attack anyone who comes near her puppies. She feels a threat to the lives of herself and her children.

Insecure senior pastors attack their associates and accuse them of disloyalty and unfaithfulness.

Insecure husbands and wives constantly accuse their spouses of having an interest in other parties. Often, the husband or wife is jealous of how their partner seems happy in the company of others.

This generates jealousy and insecurity.

An insecure head of state constantly fears being overthrown. He is constantly spying on people and accusing those around him. He may execute some members of his government from time to time to discourage mutinous ideas from growing.

One pastor was transferred and for the first time had the job of heading the church and relating with all sorts of people. One day, his wife freaked out and accused him of being in love with the worship leader. This pastor was so shocked at the accusation that he almost had a fit. But his wife would not relent.

Unexpectedly, she asked him, "Tell me, are you in love with her?" She continued, "Come on, do you love her? I need an answer now!"

Her husband was bewildered but she continued with her confrontation.

She said, "You should see the way you look at her!"

She hammered on, "You should hear your voice on the phone when you are talking to her."

One day, she said to him, "I know you are having an affair with a married woman and you know what I am talking about."

She was convinced that he was in love with her. Sadly, this outburst marked a major downturn in this minister's marriage. All the negative effects of accusation played out in the marriage, which had hitherto been peaceful.

This is how insecurity becomes a problem for marital couples. In the ministry, honourable men are sometimes accused in private by their insecure wives. I do not blame you if you do not understand these examples.

The Pharisees were insecure because Jesus had a huge following. They sought to destroy him because He threatened their very existence. The hypocrisies of the Pharisees were exposed by Christ. Even Pilate could see through their insecurities and jealous accusations.

But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?

For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.

Mark 15:9-10

4. Fearful people:A good example of an accusatory person is the servant who was given one talent. He accused his master of being hard and of reaping what he did not sow.

However, the root of these accusations was revealed when he said, "I WAS AFRAID and I hid the talent in the ground." His fearful spirit made him attack his master with accusations.

Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

And I WAS AFRAID, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

Matthew 25:24-25

These are people who harbour the spirit of fear. Such people are fearful of many possible evils. They are constantly expecting the worst thing to happen. Such people tend to accuse those around them of something very bad. They may accuse their best and most honest workers of stealing. They may accuse their husbands or wives of having affairs. The great fears they have in their hearts are manifested through accusations.

5. Men of hatred: "But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, they hated me without a cause" (John 15:25).

Accusations are manifestations of hatred. Satan uses people who hate you to accuse you. Your accuser is the one who hates you most. The hatred that politicians have for one another is manifest through the accusations they hurl at each other. Please do not say you love someone whom you accuse! You do not love him! You hate him because you hate the one you accuse!

6. Witches: A person with a controlling spirit is a witch. Accusations harass and threaten God's servants. Accusations are perfect tools to control great people.

A witch is someone who has realized that she has this power to twiddle people around her thumb. She controls people and makes them do things they would not have done. She wields this power through relentless accusations.

A minister complained that he no longer felt free in his home. Witchcraft had modified his domestic behaviour! He told me how he had to always hide his phone from his wife who would search through the phone for incriminating text messsages and evidence of questionable phone calls.

In the end, he became a fugitive in his own house, running to answer calls in private and rushing about to ensure that his phone was not available for inspection.

This controlling witchcraft had converted a normal husband into a strangely-behaving man who lived on tenter-hooks in his own home. One day, a friend living with him noticed the tension surrounding his handling of the phone and asked, "What is wrong with you?"

He said, "My wife charges me with various allegations. The other night she accused me of being interested in someone.

She confronted me and said, 'Can't you leave that girl alone?'

She continued her barrage, 'You speak to her first thing when you wake up and she is the last person you talk to before you go to bed'."

He lamented, "I have no such interest and God knows my heart. I have never had anything to do with any lady and God knows my heart."

This lady was trying to control her husband's life, relationships, and even his use of his phone. Through horrible-sounding accusations, she tried to deter him from calling or speaking to people. It takes a strong person to see through these accusations and not be confused.

Jezebel sent a frightening message to Elijah about how she was going to kill him. This was a form of accusation. Elijah was under threat for the lives of the four hundred prophets of Baal who had perished under his ministry.

Jezebel, the named “witch” in the Bible, harassed the man of God in her day.

Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to morrow about this time.

1 Kings 19:2

She controlled her husband with her words and her actions.

Jezebel his wife said, "IS THIS HOW YOU ACT AS KING OVER ISRAEL? Get up and eat! Cheer up. I'll get you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite."

Kings 21:7, NIV

7. Ungrateful people:People who are not thankful for what they have received often have little restraint when attacking loved ones.

"I don't owe you anything," they say. The Israelites accused Moses of trying to kill them. They were not grateful to him for delivering them from Egypt. If you were thankful for the privileges that have come to you through certain people, you would never want your mouth to be used to rain slime, vomitus and faeces on them.

In my experience, I find that accusers are often ungrateful people with short memories;they do not understand how God was good to them through certain people.

For example, they wanted to stone Jesus (a physical form of accusation) without cause.

Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?

John 10:32

8. Forgetful people:The children of Israel forgot how they had suffered as slaves. They forgot the experience of passing through the Red Sea. They forgot how the armies of Pharaoh had drowned in the Red Sea. They forgot how bitter waters had been sweetened by Moses. They forgot the manna that came from Heaven. They forgot about the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. They forgot how much gold they had carried out of Egypt. And so they complained and accused Moses of numerous unbelievable crimes including, evil intentions, murder and genocide (killing entire groups of people).

THEY FORGAT God their saviour, which had done great things in Egypt;

Wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red sea.

Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them.

Yea, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his word: BUT MURMURED in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of the LORD.

Psalms 106:21-25

9. Hard-hearted people: People with hardened hearts cannot believe in the grace of God.

They do not trust in the love of God. They cannot forgive. They cannot believe there is any good thing in someone who has made a mistake. They cannot receive counsel. They cannot stop attacking fathers, pastors and authority figures. Their hearts are hardened. These are perfect vessels meet for the devil's use as accusers.

10. A person with a melancholic temperament:"...If you remove the yoke from your midst, THE POINTING OF THE FINGER and speaking wickedness" (Isaiah 58:9, NASB).

Melancholics are perfectionists. It is easy for them to feel that people have stepped out of line. They have their own laws of life and expect people to measure up to their standards. With such a personality it is easy to see wrong in many things and point them out. The pointing out of people's weaknesses often becomes full-blown accusations. Be careful that you do not become the finger-pointing member of the church.

11. A person with a phlegmatic temperament:Phlegmatic people are perceived as good, calm people who stay out of trouble. A phlegmatic person, not affected by the Word is usually a very lazy person.

These phlegmatic Christians are therefore often self-righteous people - perfect in their own eyes. Such people quickly notice when others fall short. They can become judgemental and accusatory.

The servant who accused the master of being harsh was actually a slow-moving and lazy person, perhaps a phlegmatic man.

His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and SLOTHFUL servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

Matthew 25:26

12. Disloyal people: Often, when someone turns against his father without justification, he becomes an accuser. He often needs to justify himself to others for the stand he has taken.

Ministers who turned against me without a cause have often railed strings of accusations against me. I have a long list of different things I have been accused of. I have been accused of almost every evil under the sun. Watch out for disloyal men! They are top-class accusers employed by Satan to poison the church.

Absalom, the disloyal son who tried to kill his father, accused him to outsiders. He accused his father of neglecting the kingdom and mismanaging affairs.

And Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that when any man that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy servant is of one of the tribes of Israel.

And Absalom said unto him, See, thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee.

Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!

2 Samuel 15:2-4

13. Your enemies:Accusation is the language of your enemy. I detect the presence of an enemy by any hint of suspicion or accusation.

In parliament, enemy parties accuse one another of different evils because they are political enemies.

When husbands and wives are not lovers but enemies, they accuse one another of even imaginary things. Do not think that you love your wife if you accuse her! You do not love your husband if you accuse him of different things. Accusation is the language of an enemy and not a friend.

I am amazed that ministers love to be interviewed by journalists who accuse them of a variety of evils. They do not perceive that they are sitting with an enemy. You can never justify yourself to your enemy. He hates you and wants to see you destroyed.

Jesus did not bother to respond to interviews with evil men. He could speak for hours to His disciples, but when He was in the presence of accusers, clothed in the garb of justice, He clamped up and said nothing.

And while He was being accused by the chief priests and elders, He did not answer.

Then Pilate said to Him, "Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?"

AndHe did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed.

Matthew 27:12-14 (NASB)

14. People with something to cover up:Often people cover up their own sin by being the first to attack! They take the battle to the enemy's gate by being the first to strike. Watch the accusers very well. They are often evil men with many things to hide. The author of accusation is the devil. God does not accuse anyone. This means that he who is truly righteous and holy, does not accuse.

Is it not ironical that Ahab would accuse Elijah of troubling Israel? Who was causing more trouble in Israel than Ahab? And yet this very person had the audacity to accuse Elijah of troubling Israel.

And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?

And he answered, I HAVE NOT troubled Israel; BUT THOU, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim.

1 Kings 18:17-18

15. Mentally unwell people:Mentally unstable people suffer from delusions. One of the cardinal symptoms of madness is delusions.

When a person has a delusion, he believes things that are not true in spite of evidence to the contrary. He often accuses the other party of various crimes, which are not real. Watch every accuser closely. He or she may be suffering from a mental problem that needs medical attention.

by Dag Heward-Mills