Matt 24 watch, 298: Chaos hits the US presidential election (650,000 emails' worth), while the onward targetting of Christians begins

Sophia's warning seems to be haunting the 2016 US presidential election, first with Mr Trump's potty mouth "playboy" mentality boasting of sexual prowess and now with a revelation of 650,000 emails being discovered on the computer used by Ms Huma Abedin's husband (in the course of a pedophilia investigation regarding a 15 year old girl).

Drudge's "screamer," last night and up to this morning:

Daily Mail's header (overnight, updated) with bullets -- a very useful approach, BTW -- amplifies:

Swirling in the background are not only issues of state secrecy violations (which had been coming out in the Wikileaks infodumps now amounting to 35,000 emails), but also quite nasty rumours of pedophilia trips in the 650k emails and the like, which spin off the long history of "bimbo eruptions" surrounding the Clintons. (This last may in the end be a payback dirty operation: I see you one groping tape and raise you rumours of pedophilia trips. The emails will likely be months in the vetting before we see redacted releases, as they will have to be assessed for potential secrecy issues and relevance to legal cases.)

All of this goes to underscore the revelations of how broken and bankrupt our civilisation's leadership culture is.

Lesson 1: character counts.

It also tosses the election trends and projections into the waste basket. Mr Trump's odds of winning in the dirty media war election have just risen, and that may well trump the rumours of a nasty November surprise targetting him in the last week. Doubtless, he has saved up his own "killshots" for the last week. (I doubt that the  FBI emails story was in itself a Trump operation. This letter by a very angry retired FBI officer and the implication of near-mutiny in the FBI are much more likely to be triggers, especially if Comey was shown smoking gun emails off the record. His choice then would be, explosion now or worse and uncontrollable explosion by mutiny and leaks later. He picked, explosion now.)

And, it points to a coming wave of attacks on Christian leadership not only in the North but likely here in our region. (The major media have become utterly ruthless and people will be out for revenge. We are handy scapegoats.)

Indeed, here is Michael Brown:

Consider this Oct. 26 headline on Fox News: “State of Georgia demands pastor turn over sermons.”

Yes, “A lay minister who is suing the Georgia Department of Public Health for religious discrimination has been ordered by the state’s attorney general to relinquish his sermons to the government, according to federal court documents.”

In the words of Attorney General Samuel Olens, “Please produce a copy of your sermon notes and/or transcripts.”

And why is the state of Georgia demanding his sermon notes and/or transcripts?

As Todd Starnes reports, “Walsh, a Seventh-day Adventist lay minister, had been hired in May 2014 by as a District Health Director with the Georgia Department of Public Health. A week later, a government official asked him to submit copies of his sermons for review. He complied and two days later he was fired.”

In other words, he was not fired because of any lack of qualification. To the contrary, he was highly qualified for the job.

As noted by attorney David French, Walsh’s résumé included “working for former President Bush and President Obama to combat AIDS, serving as a board member of the Latino Health Collaborative, and starting California’s first city-run dental clinic for low-income families dealing with HIV/AIDS,” but that “wasn’t sufficient to overcome the horror at Walsh’s Christian views.”

Yes, Walsh was fired for the unpardonable sin of preaching against homosexual practice, based on Scripture – and note that he was preaching this to his fellow-congregants, not giving a lecture to his staff . . .

In short, if one has a scripturally grounded moral-theological view on homosexual behaviour as destructive soul-robbing sin, it is already held to be disqualifying, and a sermon from Rom 1 or 1 Cor 6:9 - 11 may be in effect deemed hate speech. 

Let me cite the latter, to make the non-negotiable, Biblically grounded Christian view (backed up by thousands of cases across the ages of gospel-transformed lives) utterly clear:

1 Cor 6:⁹ Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality [--> the Greek words identify active and passive roles in such acts], ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. [ESV]

Nor is this just the USA. 

A very disturbing case in the UK, shows how Christian parents are being targetted for objecting to a demand for sex change by their 14 year old daughter:

Interview that will chill every parent: Social workers accuse Christian family of 'emotional abuse and homophobia' because they refuse to let their teenage daughter undergo a sex change at 14

• Peter and Kate Wilson's daughter was a 14-year-old wanting to be a doctor
• That was a little less than a year ago, but today, she threatens suicide
• Social workers believe behaviour shift is due to her wanting a sex change
• Parents have given a harrowing interview lifting the lid on their experience

By Rebecca Hardy for the Daily Mail

Published: 21:00 GMT, 28 October 2016 | Updated: 07:45 GMT, 29 October 2016

. . . Melissa is surly, rude, self-harms, threatens suicide and is being monitored by social workers, who insist that her sudden change in behaviour [over the past eleven months] can be attributed to one extraordinary fact. 

Melissa, they insist, wants to be a boy.

Not only that, but they are accusing Peter and Kate of ‘emotional abuse’ and ‘homophobic’ behaviour and putting them under extraordinary pressure to call their daughter ‘Mark’ as a first step towards changing her gender.

The Wilsons, who believe their daughter is far too young to make such a momentous decision, fear that if they don’t toe the social services line she will be taken into care.

‘Can you understand how we feel as parents?’ asks Peter. 

‘We’ve known our daughter her entire life, but after meeting her for just a few months the social services say they know her better and she wants to be a boy.

‘They’ve told us if we don’t allow her to be called “Mark” and give permission for her to be assessed at one of these centres that’s pushing the transgender agenda, we’re emotionally abusing her. 

'I said: “It’s not going to happen, not now. When she’s older she can make her own decision, but not at 14.”.

‘She’s not even old enough legally to have a sexual relationship . . .

Notice, in a demonic turnabout, it is suddenly abuse in the minds of activist, agenda-driven social workers etc,  to object to petulant demands for a drastic and unnecessary medical procedure with irreversible consequences. 

And, thanks to vague, ugly, loaded laws and policies, sincere moral objections are suddenly transformed into irrational fears -- that is specifically what the suffix, "phobia" means --  and/or hate.

The hour is late, and our failure to thoroughly engage the discipling the nations challenge across the board in recent generations is coming back to haunt us.

I again put the seven mountains of influence challenge on the table:

We may not be interested in these issues, but as our civilisation spins utterly out of control and becomes stubbornly heedless of warning signs of a march of folly:

. . . these things are very much interested in us. END

A collapse of leadership -- as Sophia warned us about

. . . In Proverbs 1:20 - 33:

²⁰ Wisdom [Gk: Sophia] cries aloud in the street,
    in the markets she raises her voice;
²¹ at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
    at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

²² “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
    and fools hate knowledge?
²³ If you turn at my reproof,^[a]
behold, I will pour out my spirit to you;
    I will make my words known to you.

²⁴ Because I have called and you refused to listen,
    have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
²⁵ because you have ignored all my counsel
    and would have none of my reproof,
²⁶ I also will laugh at your calamity;
    I will mock when terror strikes you,
²⁷ when terror strikes you like a storm
    and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
    when distress and anguish come upon you.

²⁸ Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
    they will seek me diligently but will not find me.

²⁹ Because they hated knowledge
    and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
³⁰ would have none of my counsel
    and despised all my reproof,
³¹ therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way,
    and have their fill of their own devices.

³² For the simple are killed by their turning away,
    and the complacency of fools destroys them;
³³ but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
    and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.” [ESV]

  Here, we see a picture of a city in trouble. 

Sophia -- wisdom personified -- is about to give a final warning, and she goes about like a town-crier, calling people to the gates; the traditional place for merchants, movers, shakers, decision-makers, courts and rulers to meet. That's where she makes her speech.

In the implied presence of the elders in the gates, she speaks to the city in grim rebuke.

The diagnosis addresses three influential groups: the simple, the mockers, the hardened fools. For the first, she points out that it is wrong to be simplistic and lazy-minded in the face of the complexities of reality, that just sets you up to fall into traps and troubles. The second group have taken a further step down the road of folly to ruin: lacking the fear of God, they mock sound insight and counsel, to try to discredit sound teachers sent by God. The third, are the confirmed, hardened fools who resist correction and are hostile to knowledge. Indeed, they hate sound knowledge, and of course sound teachers who will not tickle their ears with what they want to hear.

A city -- and I daresay, a nation or a civilisation -- in such hands is patently on a march of folly; on, a road to ruin:

That's why Sophia now sounds almost cruel: when the calamity comes, it will be my turn to laugh. 

Or as Solomon famously put it in Ecclesiastes:

Eccl. 7:⁵ It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
    than to hear the song of fools.
⁶ For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
    so is the laughter of the fools;
    this also is vanity.

The fools -- 3,000 years ago or as close as your favourite Cable TV news channel, or on your verandah, or in the street or the office water-cooler, or the election meeting or debate, or the pages of the newspaper, or even the board room -- may laugh and mock for now, and twist and spin, and cleverly lie and deceive; but all the while they are only thorns crackling away under the pot that is cooking supper. 

And when the end of the day comes, that crackling will have long since turned to ashes when the family sits down to the day's stew or soup.

Yes, a march of folly may seem successful at the first, and s/he who warns of where it ends can be made to seem to be ridiculous, someone to be dismissed with a barbed quip and mocking laughter.

But all along, that laughter is as thorns crackling in a fire under the pot of reality.

And of course, Sophia is showing us that there comes a point of no return, when a march of folly takes us to a crumbling cliff's edge, and it gives way underfoot. When that happens, consequences have to be faced, personal, community, national, civilisational.

Along the way, we see also the solution to one of those dark, wise sayings in the Proverbs, a seeming contradiction:

Prov 26:⁴ Answer not a fool according to his folly,
    lest you be like him yourself.
⁵ Answer a fool according to his folly,
    lest he be wise in his own eyes . . . .

¹² Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?
    There is more hope for a fool than for him.

In short, one should not become like a fool when one answers one. Instead, he should be answered as his folly deserves, exposing and correcting its error so that he (or at least onlookers) will not become so deceived that their folly seems wisdom to them.

No wonder, Sophia points out the end of such a march of folly: death, destruction, calamity, ruin.

She counsels instead, that we should heed soundness so that we may go in another, saner, safer way.

And that brings me to my concerns as outlined in the place-holder note I wrote yesterday:

I will come back when I can to argue this case, that we are seeing a breakdown of moral, spiritual and intellectual fibre in our civilisation occasioned by the rotten fruit of turning our backs on God. DV, later today. Exhibits A and B, of course, will be the two main US Presidential candidates. For a preview of my line of thinking, please read Prov 1 from v 20 on.

I am of the considered view that for decades -- and in some quarters, centuries -- our civilisation has increasingly turned its back on God, and has instead walked in ways of apostasy and folly, leading to ruin.  This march of folly has eaten out the moral, spiritual and intellectual fibre of our civilisation. And, that is the context for, for instance the sort of silly season we see every four years on our TV screens as the next Presidential Election of the USA plays out across the scope of half a year or more. 

So, it is no surprise to me to see the want of moral fibre in the major candidates, or the blatantly dishonest manipulation in the media, or the shadowy agendas that lurk behind the slogans, adverts, street activism, debates, news, punditry and more.  Perhaps a hundred billion dollars is being spent to manipulate the public and by and large to advance an anti-Christ agenda posing behind would-be political messiahs. 

(Yes, I have just named a spirit at work in what is going on.)

Now, the USA is the leading nation in our civilisation, and where it is going has strong influence on where we are going; especially here in the Caribbean. Indeed, it is the primary source of the tidal wave of de-Christianisation from the North that has been pounding on our region's shores ever more powerfully since the turn of the new millennium:

That is why I have long been of the view that we need to understand that and prepare ourselves to withstand the pounding, then restore our strength and surge forth under our own calling from God.

We need to realise that after the so-called sexual revolution in the 1960's, demonic chaos, defiance of decency and perversion have spread far and wide among elites and across the whole civilisation. With the plague of addictive porn just a click away. That is why it is no surprise to see the potty-mouthed boasting of sexual conquest, the disrespect for marriage, the perversion, the enabling of infidelity, the intimidation of inconvenient victims, the trotting out of dubious accusers as part of the "October surprise" game, and more.

The utter breakdown of leadership, soundness, wisdom manifest in the ongoing US Election cycle is a big red warning flag.

Meanwhile, sobering policy challenges and a dangerous geostrategic situation spin faster and faster, out of control -- by and large, unheeded:

I have already said, that I expect much worse to be coming, as the big media guns are turned on the Christian faith in an attempt to utterly discredit it and sweep it to the far margins of our civilisation.

The question is, how are we to respond.

First, as above, with the voice of Sophia in sober warning, identifying and exposing what our civilisation faces due to its march of folly.

Second, I think a modified form of the seven mountains of influence analysis of the "gates" of a culture, give us key insights -- to the point that it is worth putting it up yet again, for reference:

Then, let us take a prophetic viewpoint, informed by Daniel 2:

Despite the rise and fall and dirty power games of men, God is still in ultimate control and he is building his eternal Kingdom. So, let's look at the seven mountains theme from a different angle:

We are called to discipleship, and we are to take seriously the force of the operational form of the church's mandate and call to transformational discipleship under the fullness of Christ:

Eph 4:^{10 . . .} He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 

 ¹⁵ Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
 
¹⁷ Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 

¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. ¹⁹ They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 

 ²⁰ But that is not the way you learned Christ!— ²¹ assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, ²² to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, ²³ and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

In Christ, the Rock has already struck, and the waves of impact are spreading out through the gospel, the service of the church and discipleship. As we mature in godly knowledge and the life of the truth in love, we will not be vulnerable to manipulation and deceptions and clever corrupt schemes. We will not walk in the futility of the gentiles, we will not be caught up in marches of folly. Instead, we will undergo godly, morally upright transformation.

Unfortunately, too often, this does not ring true of Christians, or the church as a whole, today in our region and in the wider civilisation.

That is a sign that we are in serious trouble and must repent, starting the process of renewal, revival and reformation; yielding fruit of salvation, blessing and transformation.

And so, as we see ourselves in the mirror of how we have been caught up in clever, manipulative, foolish schemes and ways, we hear again Sophia's call to wisdom. As first, a call to repentance.

We know where marches of folly lead.

So, the question before us is, will we repent? 

Even, on the crumbling brink of a cliff of civilisational ruin?

Time, is short. END

Nastiest US Presidential Election in decades busts wide open

. . . as the notorious National Enquirer tries to repeat its Gary Hart knockout bombshell in 1984 and its more recent knockout of John Edwards:

Unfortunately, given the blatant agendas and cultural marxist alliances that are now obvious in the major international media . . . and only somewhat less so in our regional media, we are looking at the new normal for media. 

A new normal that echoes the worst days of yellow journalism. 

Where, a key step to understanding our times is to realise that the same forces, agendas and messages that have come out as dominant through the current US election are in the main violently anti-Christian, and will be turning their media spin big guns on us next as they seek to de-Christianise our civilisation.

So, we need to hold our noses and look closer, so we can begin to understand the forces, trends, strategies and factors at work in this media exchange. Which -- echoing the "October Surprise" hits at Trump in the days leading up to the first two debates -- is occurring in the 24-hour news cycle leading up to the final of the three scheduled debates between Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton.

 So, let us look at a snippet, reportedly from a  nine-page article full of specifics, documents and more:

“I arranged a meeting for Hillary and a woman in an exclusive Beverly Hills hotel,” the man, who was hired by the Clintons, via a Hollywood executive, to cover up their scandals, told The ENQUIRER.

“She had come to the studio to see the filming of a movie in 1994.”

“While I was there, I helped her slip out of a back exit for a one-on-one session with the other woman. It was made to look casual, leaving quietly [rather] that being caught up in the melee … but really it was for something presumably more sordid.”

What’s more, it wasn’t just Hillary’s flings with women that the shadowy Mr. Fix It helped to orchestrate!

Hillary’s former bagman finally confessed to The ENQUIRER just how he helped her to cover up her affair with married lover Vince Foster, too!

-- How should we view this, given the steady bombardment of accusations that followed the recent locker-room, potty mouth boasting tape of Trump, from 2005?

-- Is this, turnabout is fair, given the mud-slinging already on the table?

-- Should we dismiss this as simply uncorroborated accusations?

-- Is the lesbian angle even a scandal anymore (given the promotion of homosexuality as a perceived "normal" behaviour)?

At one level, this counter-offensive clearly illustrates how two can play at mud-slinging tactics, and is likely a warning-shot that much worse can be opened up if the Clinton campaign does not back off. Especially, if there is a further doubling down on slinging sex abuse accusations at Trump.

So, it is in effect a "fight fire with fire" counter-move to block a piling on of accusations.

At the second level, it opens up/gives legs to seven key issues that would likely give many would-be voters in the mushy middle (where elections are decided) significant pause . . . and I reluctantly list these claims because of their importance in the climate of discussion, not as an endorsement of either truthfulness or of tactics: 

1: whether or not Mrs Clinton is a practising Lesbian (and, e.g. Ms Gennifer Flowers long since cited her husband to that effect, which fits the context that such a view has been a commonplace in the Clinton home state, Arkansas), she and her party have been key backers of the homosexualist agenda and would be likely to entrench it through US Supreme Court appointments should she be elected. (As a consequence this and several other radical agendas would move forward at warp speed, potentially triggering civil disturbances in the US on a scale that echoes the 1850's - 60's, not even the 1960's.)

2: One of those fingered as suspiciously close to Mrs Clinton is Ms Huma Abedin, who is an obvious Islam-IST agent of influence, given her radical connexions to the Muslim Brotherhood via front groups and also through her family, e.g. she was on the editorial board of The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (founded by her mother) for a decade.

3: It is rumoured that Chelsea is actually the daughter of Webster Hubble, to the point that comparative pictures are common, with a focus on lips and nose.

4: It is rumoured that Vince Foster (a former colleague at the Rose Law Firm and a senior White House officer in the early days of the 1990's Clinton Presidency) was her lover and that his apparent suicide was in that connexion. (Which in turn brings up other cases, scandals and concerns going back to the Whitewater, Travelgate, 900 FBI files on opponents and Commodity Trading cases.)

5: There has been a claim that her husband has an unacknowledged black son.

6: It is credible that Mrs Clinton has been closely involved with intimidating and discrediting women sexually abused by her husband.

7: It is on tape -- tape that major media do not play, even as they have endlessly played the 2005 potty mouth tapes of Mr Trump -- that when Mrs Clinton recounted how she successfully defended an accused rapist of a twelve-year old girl, she noted that he passed a polygraph test, which led her to disbelieve such machines. And then, she laughed. This, in a context that the defence was based on the notorious former rape defence tactic of discrediting the girl.

This cluster is sobering and yet it has been overshadowed in the context of the massive media bombardment of Trump. 

If the media only now picks this up, it drastically shifts the climate -- and raises the question of why these things have been suppressed for so long. 

If it studiously avoids, it proves its loss of credibility; which discredits its message dominance.

Perhaps more likely is the selection of snippets that they can make seem ill-founded, then try to brush aside the whole as discredited . . . relying on mass media reach dominance. (The problem, here, is that National Enquirer has a huge circulation, and will be there, sitting in essentially every supermarket check-out line as an impulse item. In the 24-hour media cycle surrounding the third and final Presidential debate. And, it has a decades-long track record of bringing down Presidential candidates through breaking scandals suppressed by the main stream media houses.)

Whichever way this goes, this blows open the media side of the election.

Then that opens up a wide range of further policy linked issues that have been overshadowed across the election cycle, raising further questions as to why that has been happening. 

For instance, we face a dangerous and unstable global geostrategic situation:

 

And, it opens up some serious inroads on why so many do not trust Mrs Clinton.

All of this has some significance in its own right, sordid though it is. It underscores just how broken and bankrupt the leadership culture of our civilisation is. And, it shows us the sort of tactics and techniques that are likely to be turned on Christians more and more in coming months and years. Especially if the generally available polls, betting markets and many pundits are right, and the American public will vote in Mrs Clinton as the next President of the USA.

We have to prepare for a ruthless, vicious, devastating media onslaught, the likes of which we have never seen before. An assault that will be led by an orchestrated wave of scandals with piling on accusers as we have seen in recent weeks. Backed up by wall to wall coverage across a range of major networks. Then, deeper issues of the radical challenges to the credibility of the gospel, scriptures and general foundations of the Christian faith will be on the table. Echoing Dawkins and others (and drawing on typical cultural marxist themes about oppression by the culture of Christendom and the need to liberate fringe minorities), how dare you resort to myths about a misogynistic, genocidal, anti-gay/lesbian bronze age sky god to oppress people needing liberation in today's modern age. 

How will we handle that?

While scandal after scandal, accuser after accuser is being trotted out and given wall-to-wall media coverage by a shark-pack of activist journalists and editors 

(many of whom are driven by homosexualist rage at traditional morality and are energised by their recent cultural war triumph of establishing so-called same sex marriage as "mainstream" in law and public opinion . . . ) 

. . . who smell blood in the water, Christian blood in the water?

The "final" assault on the vestiges of Christendom in our civilisation is doubtless being prepared as we speak, and it its going to be nasty, demonically intense beyond belief and sustained for months to years. 

Where, it is obvious, that we are woefully under-prepared for what is predictably coming. 

Samson, the Philistines are upon you! 

And that should give us serious, sobering pause. END

On " . . . an unaware and compliant citizenry" -- Wikileaks inadvertently hits the jackpot

Part of the current Podesta email trove exposed by Wikileaks (and pardon the exposed emails, I assume accounts were cancelled), is the following:

This requires a modicum of decoding (given the tendency to play at projective,  "sawdust in your eyes vs planks in my own" games, as Jesus warned us about so long ago . . . ):

>>>>>>>>>

1 --> Are "Right Wing" Mr Moneybags the only moneybags at work in our world? Nope, try George Soros for just one instance. (Cf. here, the lesson of Ac 27. Beyond, if you are up to it, try Plato's parable of the ship of state.)

2 --> Is it just a "Right Wing" and "megachurch" etc phenomenon to mix celebrities, seductive star-power, entertainers and promotion of political or policy agendas? (This one practically answers itself in one word: Hollywood. [And if you think it is only sexual seduction that is aided by star-power influencing the star-struck to let the seducer do as he wills, think again. And yes, that is the next level in the story now being spread far and wide to try to discredit one particular operator in politics. What else do you think Ivey is implying by discussing the dangerous nature of celebrity/ charismatic power when it is turned against his favoured side?])

3 --> Now, too, notice the money-shot confession, carefully hidden behind the wall of distractive projections against the "Right Wing":

" . . . we've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands some serious, serious thinking - and not just poll driven, demographically-inspired messaging."

4 --> Given the US context, we instantly need to ask, just which parties, ideologies, agendas and unions have dominated education, academics and the mass media over the past generation? The answer is notorious, the progressivist, cultural marxism- influenced, statist, secular humanist, often evolutionary materialist LEFT; often, dressed up in the lab coat.

5 --> So, too, vulnerability to manipulative spin and to learned passivity in the face of powerful spin tactics, dominant media messages/ "narratives" and charismatic "star" figures is largely a product of artificial ignorance of sound civics, sound history, sound government and citizenship, sound ethics, rudiments of logic and principles of right reason.

6 --> None of these is particularly difficult to counter and correct, once we are open and willing to change; that is, once we are no longer complacent. For instance, on media spin tactics, distraction games and message/ narrative dominance tactics (cf. here, here and here for a current case) we can get into the habit of de-spinning and grading the media's stories:

7 --> This test, once we are reasonably informed (thus the value of sound history, civics, ethics and logic . . . ), will quickly expose spin in the media, or from the platform, or from the lecturer's podium, or from the pulpit (yes, wolves can dress up in the clothing of the shepherd, the better to fleece and feast on the flock . . . ), or even in personal conversations, etc.

8 --> That then poses a double-challenge for our civilisation in our day, brought to focus by the present US election cycle. First, the geostrategic peril we face:

. . . then the problem of lemmings heading for the cliff:

. . . or in more "analytical," sustainability-linked strategic change terms:

9 --> With that sort of peril on the table, with Gorbachev plainly worried over Syria -- which "coincidentally" [NOT!] just happens to sit right in the middle of the pivotal triangle -- why is it we are talking about every triviality instead? Simple: we have been distracted, dumbed down, and manipulated by clever message dominance, spin and agit prop games. Which, is exactly what this Wikileaks release inadvertently highlights.


10 --> And so, conclusion: we had better attend to warning signs such as this Wikileaks message and act sensibly now, before it is bloodily too late. (Remember, nukes are in play now.)

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Of course, history tells us that generally we do not heed such grim warnings until it is at best almost too late. Being complacent on the edge of a crumbling cliff is not exactly a wise or responsible thing to do. But, historically, it is all too common -- one reason for why history can be quite depressing. But, if we do not learn from its sound lessons of warning, we doom ourselves to making unforced, foolish, ruinous blunders. Over and over again.

(Ever wondered why there is a common saying as to how bad history repeats itself over and over again? No prizes for guessing why. And notice the lessons drawn out by a voice from the now despised as "deplorable" Alt Right; a voice that just happens to hold an MA in History. [Yes, I know he is an Atheist and at points draws inapt comparisons and inferences. Discount for that and listen, he has something we need to learn from. Well worth the time to watch.])

So, we are back to the Mordecai challenge: why not now? why not here? why not us? END

Trump goes nuke . . . critical moment of the night:

" . . . you would be in jail."

 

The crowd goes wild.







Clip:




Transcript:

TRUMP: "Bernie Sanders and between super delegates and Debra Wassermann Schultz and I was surprised to see him sign on with the devil. The thing that you should be apologizing for are the 33,000 e-mails that you deleted and you acid washed and the two boxes of e-mails and other things last week that were taken from an office are are now missing. I didn't knowledge I would say this, but I'm going to and I hate to say it. If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, so much exception. There has never been anything like it. We will have a special prosecutor. I go out and speak and the people of this country are furious. The long time workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this with e-mails. You get a subpoena and after getting the subpoena you delete 33,000 e-mails and acid watch them or bleach them. An expensive process. We will get a special prosecutor and look into it. You know what, people have been -- their lives have been destroyed for doing 1/5 of what you have done. You should be ashamed." 

COOPER: "Secretary Clinton, I will let you respond." 

CLINTON: "Everything he said is absolutely false.

[ --> 30,000 erased emails? People are angry over it? FBI workers? Intent to get a special prosecutor? This looks like a canned talking-point misfire under pressure.]

It would be impossible to be fact checking Donald all the time. I would never get to talk and make lives better for people. Once again, go to Hillary clinton.com. You can fact check trump in realtime. Last time at the first debate we had millions of people fact checking and we will have millions more fact checking. It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country." 

TRUMP: "Because you would be in jail." 

[Crowd cheers and applauds]

COOPER: "We want to remind the audience to please not talk out loud. Do not applaud. You are wasting time."

Now, let us see how the spin tactics play out on this. END

PS: Kindly cf my earlier comment today as updated to include the pre-debate press conference with four victims of sexual abuse etc. (Who apparently were Trump's guests in the debate.)


F/N: The second Debate on Youtube . . . much more pivotal than the first given current events:



F/N 2: I add, Daily Mail report, here.