Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow, Idaho

Trump As Chemo-Man

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

INTRODUCTION:

Now that the Mueller report has been turned in, and it does not appear that any new heads will roll, and we are witnessing a reprise of Election Night Horror with leftists sobbing, I thought that this would be a good time to present my thoughts on Trump that have been gestating for some time now, thoughts I have teased and promised on various occasions. What on earth are thoughtful Christians supposed to do in the upcoming presidential election of 2020?

I ask this question on the supposition that Trump will run again, and that one of the likely Democratic candidates will obtain the nomination. We do not yet know who that will be, so let us use the placeholder name of Some Commie (SC).

To set the problem up, I believe the honorable options to choose from would be 1. To refrain from voting for president at all; 2. To vote third party or a write-in candidate; or 3. To vote for Donald J. Trump. Given how the Democrats have made the slaughter of infants their bloody and non-negotiable sacrament, and how pride in sexual perversion is highlighted on the front of all their political brochures, I believe that for any Christian to vote for the Democratic nominee, regardless of who it is, represents a deep moral confusion, compromise and failure.

But for the Evangelical Kool Kids it won’t look or feel like deep moral confusion, compromise, and failure, and because the #3 option that will be chosen by most evangelical voters will look to them like deep moral confusion, compromise, and failure, I thought I should outline my thinking now. I say this as I have come to the decision that—if things remain largely the same as they are now—I will be voting for the president. 

And so here’s my thinking. I would really like to have a discussion on this one, so I am going to leave comments open on this post. Have at it, but behave yourselves.

Daily Meditation

Confronting Satan’s Deception

Ligonier Ministries

It is the nature of Satan to be deceptive. Scripture says he has been a liar from the beginning. His first appearance in Scripture comes under the guise of a serpent. The credentials of this malevolent creature are announced in his introduction: “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made” (Gen. 3:1).

These words fall as a sudden intrusion into an otherwise glorious account of God’s majestic work of creation. With the words “Now the serpent,” the whole atmosphere of the biblical record changes dramatically. A sudden and ominous sense of foreboding enters the narrative. An uninspired author of Genesis 3 may have introduced the record of the fall by saying, “It was a dark and stormy day.” But such hackneyed prose would have failed to yield the foreboding dread contained in the words “Now the serpent was more cunning.”

Cunning. Craftiness. Subtlety. Guile. These are the descriptive qualifiers that paint the biblical portrait of Satan.

Coram Deo

Cunning. Crafty. Subtle. Full of guile. How has Satan used these attributes against you in the realm of personal temptation?

Passages for Further Study

Genesis 3:1
2 Corinthians 2:11
Revelation 12:9

Rulers Who Are Evil in the Extreme

We Must Never Forget Them

A copy of an unusual book has crossed the desk.  It is based upon a popular blog called "Ask a North Korean".  The subtitle is "Defectors talk about their lives inside the world's most secretive nation".  (Tuttle Publishing: Tokyo, 2017)

The object is to provide commentary and insights from a number of North Korean defectors on a variety of everyday practices in North Korea.  It gets beyond talking about the Kims and discusses what living in North Korea is actually like.

In a section entitled, "The Powers That Be" the question is asked, What does the average person know about political prison camps?"

One North Korean refugee explains it this way:

The Papacy Losing Credibility By the Day

Climate Change is the Big One

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News


Pope Francis tied a lack of water in different parts of the world to global warming Sunday, calling it one of the “inevitable consequences of climate change.”  In his message for World Water Day 2019, the pope called for education of future generations in a greater respect for the environment and a greater awareness of the suffering caused by climate change.

The pontiff also decried the spread of droughts and waterless areas and urged the international community to come to the assistance of those impacted by the phenomenon.  “It may be seen in our days how the aridity of the planet is extending to new regions, and more and more are suffering as a result of the lack of water sources suitable for consumption,” Francis lamented, while calling for “an end to this injustice” and reiterating his conviction that access to clean water is “a fundamental human right.”

The disadvantaged of the earth “challenge us to find a remedy for the lack of water in their countries,” he said, “they also challenge us, from their poverty and limits, to accord the just value to this good, essential for the development of all peoples.”

But . . . 

Daily Meditation

Understanding the Nature of Corruption

Ligonier Ministries

The technological explosion proliferates in geometric proportion. Yet the human spirit of corruption remains. We are still trying to be God. We still grasp for autonomy, refusing to have God rule over us. We now reach beyond the heights of an ancient ziggurat. We walk on the moon and call it a real step forward for mankind.

We are indeed “enlightened.” No longer do students carry switchblades to school. They carry guns. Gangsters don’t use tommy guns. Machine-gun Kelly has become obsolete in the face of assault weapons and rocket launchers. The battering ram has yielded to the ICBM. Our cities are armed fortresses, and we need more brick and mortar for prisons. We are still confused. Our politicians babble to us daily on the magical technology of television. And still everyone does what is right in his own eyes.

But there is no technology sophisticated enough to fulfill the Serpent’s seductive promise. We are not gods. We shall not be gods. We cannot be gods. Only God can be God. Only God can be supreme. The issue in Eden is the issue today. Who will have dominion over man and man’s technology? Our margin of error shrinks each day. Now we have the technology and techniques not to destroy God, but to destroy ourselves. It is technological madness.

Coram Deo

Examine your personal life. Are you grasping for autonomy? Refusing to let God rule your life? Trying to be as God?

Passages for Further Study

Acts 8:22
Galatians 6:8
Romans 8:21

Much Ado About Nothing

Hard Yards

In the aftermath of the Mueller bombshell in the United States, satirists have been having a field day. 

Here are a couple of doozies.






For more, go to No Minister.

The Big Double Down

Conspiracy Theories Now Control the Chattering Class


We are all familiar with conspiracy theories.  Grand poppas like the landings on the moon being hoaxes are exemplars of the trope.  The actual landings were staged in the Arizona desert, don't you know.  And then there is 9/11--the actual perpetrators of those terrible murderous acts were employees working with deep operatives of the CIA.  Didn't you know that?

One of the characteristics of empty conspiracy theories is that they can never be falsified.  The more evidence supporting the "official narrative" becomes a proof of the alleged conspiracy.  The appearance of compelling evidence becomes an argument for the depth, power, and cleverness of the conspirators.

Now that the Mueller Report is out this kind of meaningless, fatuous appeal to conspiracies hiding the truth from the rest of the world has marched into our living rooms.  Here are some examples:

The Mueller Investigation ignored the real evidence.

Cenk Uygur

✔@cenkuygur

Let me be clear, I CONCEDE NOTHING! If #MuellerReport didn’t look into Trump’s business ties with the Russians before the elections and didn’t look into his secret meetings with them after the election, then this is an epic debacle that looked into the exact wrong things.

1,239

10:47 AM - Mar 25, 2019

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The Investigation has actual, hard, real, and admitted proof.

Rick Wilson

✔@TheRickWilson

This is DAY ONE and there's HARD, DIRECT, *ADMITTED* collusion.

BYE, Felicia.

14.3K

3:59 AM - Oct 31, 2017

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We Just Know Trump is Guilty

The Hill

✔@thehill

Beto O'Rourke campaigns in Charleston, SC: "You have a president who, in my opinion, beyond a shadow of a doubt, sought to, however ham-handedly, collude with the Russian government or foreign power to undermine and influence our elections."

222

3:15 PM - Mar 24, 2019

492 people are talking about this

The Truth is Out There--But The Media Have Not Been Aggressive Enough

Ryan Lizza

✔@RyanLizza

Contra a lot of commentary: given the issues, stakes, and seriousness with which special counsel treated all of this, the media’s coverage of Russia-Trump connection and possible obstruction over the last two years was somewhere between about right and not quite aggressive enough

212

9:55 AM - Mar 25, 2019

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Attorney General's Summary of the Mueller Report Is Inadequate

Chad Pergram

✔@ChadPergram

Feinstein: Barr’s 4-page summary of the Mueller report is inadequate and demonstrates why Congress needs to obtain the full report and underlying evidence.

5

12:35 PM - Mar 25, 2019

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And so it rolls.  Conspiracy Theories always operate like that.  They are viciously circular and constantly self-reinforcing.  Evidence to the contrary becomes framed as examples of the cunning and guile of the conspirators putting up false flags. 

As always, sunlight is the best disinfectant.  Those who are captured by conspiracy theories are to be pitied.

Daily Meditation

Going to the Root Cause

Daily Meditation

The twentieth century was the start of the age of high technology. The technological advances of our age have eclipsed all previous generations.

It was the nineteenth century that evoked an unprecedented spirit of human optimism. The Enlightenment concluded that man no longer needed the God-hypothesis to explain his origins and purpose. An optimistic humanism was born that promised a coming utopia. Education, science, and technology would produce the acme of evolutionary development. Peace would prevail and poverty, disease, crime, and war would be banished by the modern techniques of government, economics, and education.

World War I temporarily burst the bubble until it was decreed to be The War to End All Wars. Somebody forgot to tell that to the sons of Lamech: Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, Mao, and the corporal from Bavaria. The twentieth century brought a new horror to world history, the phenomenon of global war.

We cannot blame this on technology. It is not the instruments that are culpable; the root cause is the users of the instruments. The same scalpel that is used to save a life in surgery is now used to hack into pieces millions of unborn babies. The same atomic energy that supplies power for living is harnessed for weapons of incalculable destruction.

Coram Deo

Pray for God to reveal the root causes of your problems, bad habits, or recurring sins.

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 28:3
Psalm 31:17
Psalm 101:3

The Mueller Fizzer.

It Was All Much Ado About Nothing

When one contemplates the apparent outcome of the Mueller investigation into alleged collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian intelligence services, "underwhelmed" is too weak a word.  On the other hand, it's pretty much what we expected, having kept an eye on the scribblings of the more reliable (conservative) media as Mr Mueller and his staff left not a stone unturned.  But the Chattering Classes have been left, well, chattering. 

One is reminded of  a couple of images.  The first is the Star Trek creation known as the Borg, a fictional creation, but nevertheless an apt description of the Chatterers. As Wikipedia has it:

The Borg are a fictional alien group that appear as recurring antagonists in the Star Trek franchise. The Borg are cybernetic organisms, linked in a hive mind called "the Collective". The Borg co-opt the technology and knowledge of other alien species to the Collective through the process of "assimilation": forcibly transforming individual beings into "drones" by injecting nanoprobes into their bodies and surgically augmenting them with cybernetic components.

Picture the Democratic Party and its PR department, otherwise known as the "Main Stream Media", all minds working in syncopated harmony,  buzzing and droning, buzzing and droning, buzzing . . . You get the picture.  They present a closet representations to an actual real life Borg on the earth.   For two years they have droned on with endless replays of manufactured horror, anger, disgust, and outrage at something they imagined and cooked up from the outset. 

The second image is conjured up by T. S. Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men.

Petering Out

Winston Peters' Career-defining Mess in Turkey

Mike Hosking
NZ Herald

Fantastic with the compassion, not so good with the politics. How big of a gaffe, how big a mistake has this Government made with Turkey?

In the midst of last week Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan injected himself into Christchurch in an egregious way. Across the Tasman, Aussie PM Scott Morrison was ropeable and hauled the ambassador in and, when given an explanation, like it was for domestic consumption, he didn't believe and said so.

We, on the other hand, seemed to avail ourselves of a nicely placed op-ed piece in the Washington Post written by Erdogan's henchman designed to appease the gullible. We were one of the gullible. Meantime he carried on at his rallies stirring the pot by playing excerpts from the mosque gunman's livestream.

Our Prime Minister, immersed in Christchurch and its grief, dismissed the outrage by suggesting Winston Peters was on his way to Turkey via Indonesia, and he would deal with it. It was suggested Peters may not even get to see Erdogan, but nevertheless the message would be delivered and matters would be sorted out.

The good news was Peters did get to the see the President - but then astonishingly did not raise the matter with him. He said he didn't need to because the whole thing was sorted and Erdogan wasn't "doing that anymore". And yet half an hour later that's exactly what he did. We had more footage, and more vitriol.  Peters, even more astonishingly, denied Ardern had ever said what Ardern had said. How do we explain this? An abject failing of a diplomatic mission and complete denial of reality?

Daily Meditation

Comprehending the Pattern of Evil

Daily Meditation

After the flood, Noah and his family began to repopulate the earth. Noah’s descendants became hunters and builders. A new technology emerged to provide more stable and suitable shelter. Brick and mortar became the means by which whole cities could be built: “They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves”” (Gen. 11:3b-4).

Immediately after the flood, Noah erected an altar, a structure on which to offer the sacrifice of praise and worship. The building project at Babel was something else. Again, it was a reach of pretended autonomy, a stretch for heaven, an attempt to rip God down from His throne that man might make for himself a name. The result of this effort? This primitive scientific undertaking was chaos. The language of man was confused and communication gave way to babbling.

This pattern has not changed. The greater the technology, the greater the chaos. The more sophisticated the tools, the more sophisticated the violence.

Coram Deo

Are there spiritual “Babels” in your life that need to be torn down, such as an attempt to make a name for yourself? A project that takes precedence over God? An idol that is more important than God?

Passages for Further Study

Genesis 11:4–9