A Virtual Church

As the screws turn

Yesterday

Imagine a bucket full of wood cockroaches being thrown into a burning fire. The little brown bodies writhe and crackle and begin to fall apart. This is the scene we are watching in Washington this week.

The end game is cracking and folding.

One by one the blocks are being pulled. Like a game of Jenga, the blocks are picked out methodically until – Voila – the whole tower tumbles. I you have ever seen jenga played, excited, usually inebriated players carefully pull a block away one at a time. Hoping the tower of blocks will withhold the chipping away of stability at least long enough to beat everybody else playing the game.

I can’t remember the name of the columnist who proposed this analogy, but he was spot on.

We watch the stock market. Numbers remain high, even with so much of the economy circling the toilet. When you look at the indexes, it is the richest tech companies shoring it up with high investments that are turning huge profits. The little guy in this economy is actually dealing with higher prices of consumer goods, rents and all the things a real life needs to maintain a viable standard of living.

Watching Ken Burn’s documentary about the American Revolution, the parallels were obvious. In the Revolution, there was a tyrant, King George, in England. There were British Loyalists living in high positions as landowners and tax collectors in the American Colonies. The Loyalists were happy with the relationship with England. They were getting rich making money off the tea tax.

It becomes a Biblical story about the money changers in the Temple. They were cheating the lowly who were faithful in paying the Temple tax as proscribed in the Torah.

A badass Jesus walks into the Temple, and seeing this injustice and thievery, turns over the tables in anger, scattering the moneychangers to the hinderlands. Addressing injustice and wrongdoing are the work Jesus did. It is the work we are called to continue.

I could wrap myself in the Christian flag, along with the stars and stripes, and call myself righteous. Or I could walk in the path of Jesus to meet and right the ills of a corrupt system that harms the poor and diminishes the value of every human being.

Sadly, I see the American flag wrapping MAGA leadership in our congress, with milquetoast Mike Johnson at the top spouting piety from the well of the congress, as if it is a pulpit. The Maga Republican Congress is largely to blame for Trump’s ability to continue his reign of terror. That includes you, Thom Tillis. Many of you have known the wrongdoing of the Trump government, and have sat by twiddling fingers while the country implodes.

Ken Burns showed the lines of battle in red and blue, showing how the patriots out maneuvered the British in their patterns of attack.

Resistance is the answer. It was then. It is now.

The recent No Kings protests around the country have brought out many of the contemporary patriots who genuinely love this country and are willing to stand the line against tyranny. We went to the No Kings Rally in Raleigh along with thousands of our neighbors with signs and costumes and music. We were a band of resistance that at some point will be a tipping point for some of Trump’ s madness.

Margery Taylor Green’s dramatic exit is a canary in the coalmine. Polls are beginning to project a large Democrat turnout in the Mid-Term elections. The time is nigh when the tide is going to turn.

Blessed are they who seek peace and justice. Blessed are the poor, the aged, the lonely.

Stay loud on behalf of Democracy. Change is on the horizon. Stay the course and be brave. 

 

 

 

---