One politician supposedly came to Ronald Reagan one day seeking advice of "What can I say or do to insure that I win and to get my message accross?" Ronald Reagan responded that what he needed was a story, a "narritive". That is, a scenario of events that "sets the scene" that justifies whatever whacko ideas the political leader may care to put forth. We see this in Judy's depiction of the Wall Street Protestors as anarchists and communists and people - - mauraders, if you will, who want to cease the property of the rich. We see this also in Robert Gates' assertion that "Revolutions almost always turn out bad". Actually this isn't true. The thirty years war in the seventeenth century could be boiled down to France and Italy and the Catholic Church against the rest of the world in far flung places such as Prussia and England and Russia. After the war ended in 1648, England almost that exact same time instituted certain "common law rights" that we adopted in our Constitution as far as the right to face your accusers and trial by jury, and the right to cross examine the opponents witnesses. The tea party has been trying to come up with a new narritive since the old one about the economy failing because of President Obama's socialist policies- - appears more flimsy and tattered with each passing day. Not are all private areas of the economy stronger and more robust with each passing day, but now a new study has announced that the government deficet has dropped to six hundred billion, which is about two hundred billion below where everybody expected we'd be at this point. Mort Zuckerman can put that and his pipe and smoke it. They say if the number of government jobs had grown, as it usually does upon most recession as a counter-balance measure both republicans and democrats agree on (but not this time) had this growth proceded along the previous pattern- the unemployment rate would now be 6.1% - - which isn't great, but it would be tollerable. Anyhow that won't work now. We have no need for Mitt Romney's talking about "slow walking the real estate crisis" or how the Dodd - Frank bill has crippled new bank loans, and all the rest. So now we have some new narritives. Moe Kelly and ABC news both played into the hands of the doom and gloomsters today in saying that President Obama is "facing the worst crisis of his Presidency' and "All Hell is breaking loose around him" in Washington. We have the Bengazi narritive which is kind of an updated version of the "2016" movie script from last Summer when of course we learn this President was influenced by his Mother who was an orthodox Marxist- - - and how she divorced her husband when he turned Capitalist. We hear that President Obama - - supports oil drilling in Brazil but has blocked oil production in a major way in this country. We hear how President Obama "Prevented the Canadian oil pipeline from being built" and if he had, gasoline prices wouldn't have risen to nearly five dollars last year. And now we hear how this President ordered security forces in Libya to "stand down" because Obama doesn't care about US deaths if Moslems do it, because the President is a Moslem himself and so of course he's never going to "admit" that Islamists can on occasion be hostile. But today the President torpedoed these claims by release of the E Mails that are rather private- - which reveal step by step why itr was believed that wording the talking points the way we did last September is in the national interest- - and doesn't blow CIA leads as to who did it in the interest of flashy press coverage. The President believed that saying "We don't know yet who did it' was the proper thing to do. Politically, this proved to be the wrong decision. As to the Internal Revenue Service thing - - my feeling now is "bring it on" because the Republicans will only look stupid bringing the thing up any more. About as stupid as Will Horton going to Hope and saying "I know who murdered Raphael - - Nick Fallon. But I can't tell you because if I did I would be prosecuted for attempted murder myself. But I know Nick was up to no good. You can count on that".
Christians have their crucifixion narritive, of course, by which an innocent "protestor against the inherent repressive nature of Judaism was martyred for his beliefs, because he on principle refused to deny his divinity. That's a powerful narritive, all right. The problem with that is that evidence I uncovered today supports my thesis that the first so called "Christians' were in fact following a Living Christ- - - first in Egypt and then to Rome, where at some point the founder died a natural death that went unherolded. Perhaps no more powerful evidence exists that the "Catholic Church" as we know it did not exist in first century Rome is that - - Dometian was an Emperor who reigned for fifteen long years, and there is not a hint that ever persecuted Christians - - except for stuff that appeared in the Fourth Century that makes fleeting reference to some sort of persecution. Since Dometian had such a despotic nature- - we know if Christians had been around the way they claimed to be preaching their "Gospel" that Dometian would have been on them like white on rice. In the paragraph further down - - we note some interesting things about St Paul. One of these he wasn't given to using the term "Christian". In fact Catholics aren't given to referring to themselves as "Christians' but rather as Catholics. Why do you suppose that is? Were St Paul and Marcion really the same person? They say we don't have any of Marcion's writings. But what if we actually do? What about those ten "epistles" to the Churches? Marcion didn't reject the Old Testament or its prophecies of the Messiah on factual grounds- - but rather more etherial theological grounds. Marcion accepted the "Crucifixion narritive" just as other groups like Jehovah's Witnesses, and Baptists and Mormons or Greek Orthodox do. In fact Marcion-Paul elevated the whole death and reserrection thing that it's pretty much the centerpiece of his theology. Do you remember what Tassitus said of those earliest Christians? His last sentense was "Even to this day the sect of Christianity hasn't entirely died out". He did not say they were growing. He did not say they were a threat. He did say they were an almost universally hated group. One thing Marcion sought to change in His - - "narritive" was - - not only does his Luke lack the Christmas story - - but apparently reference to Christ's second coming were deleted. (What you might call the Neil Savedra school) Why would Martion NOT want reference to "The Last Days" in his theological repetuire? Because it's something those original under-ground Christians believed in. Marcion did not embrace THEIR messiah because THEIR messiah never claimed to have died and been raised from the dead, but appealed to his audience rather on some "Last Days" advent of the Kingdom of God on earth. Think about it. Sects that believe in an iminent Judgement Day are inherently short lived- - because obviously when "Judgement Day" fails to arrive, the people, one by one, abandon the sect.
Moe
Kelly is upset at the Oxygen network again.
This time it isn’t baby mamas of rappers but rather it’s scandals of
Church Leaders of Los Angeles, Moe
rattled off a lot of names of presumably famous pastors I’d never heard of, and
have the feeling I wouldn’t want to, by how they have lived their lives. I had Rush Limbaugh on for a while and he
said Chris Matthews said “President Obama is bored his job and hates the
routine duties of being an executive but would rather campaign all the
time”. But as it turns out I checked out
that program and Chris Matthews was saying exactly the opposite. That President Obama stepped up to the plate
and grabbed the bull by the horns tackeling this Internal Revenue Service full
on. He fired Steve Miller last night,
and another guy just under him resigned today.
But neither man was at the lead post when this abuse was alleged to have
been going on. Rather that was a Bush
appointee. We just had cold cut
sandwiches for lunch, and French fries with catsup. The tomato soup was so hot it took an
extended time to let it cool down. We
had cantaloupe for desert. I listened to
Randy Rhodes at noon and at two, and I watched the soap opera. The key remark of the entire day was
Gabriel. She remembered something that
had also lodged in my mind. It was that
phone call that E J Di Mira received saying “OK- - so it’s done? Good!” and he had a smile on his face. Gabriel interoperated this as satisfaction
for a malicious deed well done. And I am
inclined to agree. Lucas is the last to
find out about his mother having an affair, as he puts it, with the husband of
his ex wife. Awkward.
This
is after dinner. We had chicken Alfredo
tonight. I had three helpings of it all
together and all of them were rather small.
I had my initial serving, with the squash, and that Prune guy gave me
most of his, including some squash, and then seconds came around and I had
that, too. We had strawberry ice cream
for dessert. Before dinner I was reading
up again on some old favorites like Marcion and Marcionism, looking for any new
slant. They say that Marcion believed in
a lot of things he couldn’t if he endorsed Paul’s writings. I was reading from Romans and Galations from
my bible earlier. It’s interesting that
it would be unnecessary for Paul to write a letter to the Galation church
condemning Judaizers, because if he was away- - and then visited the Church and
learned first hand of the hericy, then he would be THERE. So why write a letter saying you’re dismayed
about it later? It’s funny how for Rome-
- Paul says ‘I have spiritual gifts I want to impart to you” and also “I would
desire fruit from you”. At times Paul
sounds awfully narcissistic, saying another place he wants to teach them his
Gospel, but also acknowledges that “Your faith affects the whole world” or
something. They say that Marcion was a
preacher of the “Unknown God” named Monia or something - - this Gnostic prime
source is given a personal name, which I’d never heard before. It is said of him that “earth was a stranger
to him”, not that earth didn’t know of Him, but that He as God never had
“visited this planet before”. I have
trouble with this. But elsewhere they
admit that Marcion does not dispute the factual material of the Old Testament,
or that OT scriptures spoke of the Messiah.
There was some group of Palinists in the early middle ages from 660 to
about 850 or something - - which the “Emperor” (?) tried to snuff out. I also reread Clement of Rome. Much as I feared you can learn nothing of
what things were actually like in Rome, Christian wise, at the end of the first
century since Clement’s life biography was generally written centuries
later. But things are said like Paul
referred to Clement, and that Peter personally anointed Clement as Pope. But the Coptic Church has a rather different
portrait making him more secular.
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