Suicidal Tendencies // Teach Your Children to Worship Satan
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Readings for 1st Sunday of Lent: Dt. 26: 4-10; Ps. 91: 1-2; 10-15; Rom. 10: 8-13; Lk. 4: 1-13.
Today is the first Sunday of Lent - the annual 40-day process of repentance and purification leading up to Easter (April 4th).
The readings for this Sunday begin on a strong political note. In fact, the Gospel selection issues a powerful summons for all of us to divest of all loyalty to U.S. empire. It reminds us that unless we do so, we end up worshipping Satan instead of God (or Source or the Ground of Being, or the Great Mother) however we might imagine Her.
Put more starkly, the snippet from Luke's account of Yeshua's temptation in the desert confronts us with the fact that QAnon is unwittingly correct in saying that the world is run by a cabal of Satan worshippers. It's governed by a gang best described by OpEdNews' editor in chief, Rob Kall, as "the devil's Christians."
I mean, the readings identify the worship of Satan as a prerequisite for endorsing empire of any kind - be it Rome's or that of the United States.
The story of Yeshua's temptation makes it clear that the Master rejected all of that. Even more shocking: subsequent history shows that his "followers" embraced fervently what he rejected so unequivocally. As a result, those pretending to follow Yeshua have been worshipping Satan since at least the 4th century of our era.
To illustrate my point, consider first of all the extent of U.S. empire and secondly the narrative under consideration. Then draw your own conclusions.
U.S. Empire
The best source I've come across for detailing the current extent of U.S. empire is Daniel Immerwahr, a professor of history at Northwestern University. A few years ago, he published a book called How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. It describes the actual extent of U.S. empire that remains hidden even, as Immerwahr notes, from PhD historians.
Begin with his description of the occult U.S. realm that so concerns him. Immerwahr traces its inauguration to the period immediately after our country's founding. It was then that settlers incorporated territories seized (in clear violation of treaties) from Native Americans.
Then in 1845, the U.S. absorbed nearly half of Mexico - Texas first and then [after the Mexican American War (1846-'48)], what became Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. By the end of the 19th century, the U.S. had added Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Wake Island.
If we add to this the implications and actual invocation of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) in order to control the politics of Latin America, we can see forms of U.S. colonialism consistently extending throughout the western hemisphere.
Coups in Africa [e.g. Congo (1961), Ghana (1965), Angola (1970s), Chad (1982)] established U.S. hegemony there. Similar interventions in the Middle East (e.g., Iran in 1953) along with the establishment of Israel and Saudi Arabia as a U.S. proxies controlling political economy throughout their region established United States control there.
Factor in the 800 U.S. military bases peppered across the world and one's understanding of our empire's extent expands exponentially. (Immerwahr notes that Russia, by contrast has 9 such bases; the rest of the world has virtually 0).
To understand the sheer numbers involved, think of our continued military presence in South Korea (35,000 troops) Japan (40,000), and Germany (32,000). Besides this, of course, there are the active troops who daily kill civilians and destroy property in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere. In total we're told that there are about 165,000 troops deployed in 150 countries throughout the world - though, in the light of what I've just recounted, even that number seems vastly understated.
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