20 July 2018

Sasse: A Danger and Disgrace to Protestant Testimony


If you're a Conservative or Evangelical Christian and you haven't heard of Ben Sasse, then you're probably in the minority. He's young, popular and part of a crop of politicians that has grown up and been 'properly educated' in so-called Worldview teaching. In many ways he's the candidate the Christian Right has been looking for. George W. Bush may have been the 'every-man' Evangelical, the omnibus candidate that could appeal to the wealthy and the working class but by all accounts he was an intellectual lightweight. His heart expressed the sentiments that resonated with the Christian Right but his tongue was unable to articulate the ideas. Time will tell if Sasse is able to have that kind of broad appeal but in terms of not just the lingo but the actual ideas, he's the one their looking for. He's the politician that can truly express the theology and social visions of intellectuals from Abraham Kuyper and Francis Schaeffer to RJ Rushdoony and even figures like Cornelius Van Til.


Many are excited when they think of the promise someone like Sasse holds. In many ways Sasse and those of his ilk represent the culmination of a larger Evangelical project born in the wake of the 1960's, the generation that (when it came of age) would help to lead 'Christian America' back to its foundations.
At one time I might have shared in their excitement and yet that window in my Christian life was decidedly and thankfully brief. Subsequently I would have spent a few more years uncomfortable with someone like Sasse and yet not quite hostile to him as indeed today I believe I am Biblically compelled to be. He is not a hope but a danger and listening to him being interviewed by Christian academics or NPR this has become clear enough. But now reading something as lame and seemingly innocuous as a social media feed, the danger he represents, the threats and warmongering, the false claims to morality and truth becomes painfully obvious and patent.
He recently decided to comment on Trump's Helsinki meetings with Putin. Like many other politicians he has signed on to the Anti-Russia campaign and demonstrates he's quite willing to twist the truth to further the agenda. This is especially noteworthy and problematic as Sasse is a rising star in GOP/Christian Right circles.*
PCA member and Evangelical darling Ben Sasse wants to utilise moral categories. That's certainly something worthy and required of a Christian politician is it not?
While murder is a universally recognised concept the charge of murder means something more to the members of the Christian Right.
For Christian Rightists and Dominionists there are the implications of the death penalty and when cast in geo-political terms there is an impetus for so-called Just War.
Sasse is taking the moral high ground and obviously continuing to lay groundwork for a future 'rescue' of the GOP and his own presidential bid.
Sasse tell us that Putin is a murderer, crook and a liar. Who doubts it?
And yet will anyone say that Trump isn't a crook and a liar? And anyone honest will know that his administration has been (according to mathematical averages) dropping multiple bombs an hour since he took over the presidency in January 2017. Morally, Trump is most certainly a murderer. As far as his 'dealings' back in the 1970's and 80's, his underworld connections and all the rest... I leave that to others to investigate and comment on.
But why focus on Trump. Sasse who opposes him might even agree with what I've said. But it doesn't end there.
Every US president has been proven to be a murderer, thief and liar. Some like George Bush, Reagan, Johnson, Truman and Teddy Roosevelt committed murder on a massive scale but every US president is practically speaking dripping in blood.
When one 'adds in' the larger US imperial apparatus and moves beyond purely military-Pentagon death tolls, the numbers become staggering. Through backed dictatorships and proxy wars US presidents have the blood of millions on their hands. And that's just since the dawn of the 20th century. The US is in fact one of the most violent and murderous regimes in modern times. It is only surpassed by the regimes deemed to be the 'most monstrous' in history and though its crimes extend over a longer period then say the USSR under Stalin, China under Mao or Germany under Hitler, the overall US tally and impact aren't all that far behind. Hundreds of millions of people across the Third World and even within Europe could testify to this.
Now does Sasse mean that Putin is a murderer because political opponents and journalists have been murdered? CIA backed coups and dictatorships and certainly our many 'heroic' Pentagon wars don't count and so we're only talking about assassinations and the utilisation of hit-men and underworld figures, right? Is that why Putin is a 'thug' as the baby-killing mass murderer John McCain refers to him?
If an individual commits or orders a murder it's immoral but if thousands of people elect someone to do it and he commissions the murder to be committed by men wearing uniforms... then it's moral.
Right?
The powers that be are most certainly ordained by God and this age is to be plagued by wars and rumours of war. On one level it's all part of God's plan and even evil governments keep the world from becoming what it would be if sinful men were left without restraint but in no way does that grant moral legitimacy to either these states or the wars they fight. Sasse it would seem doesn't understand that. If he did, if he understood anything about the Kingdom Christ preached he wouldn't be a senator in the employ of the US Empire, let alone defending it and its assumptions.
Though you'll never learn it from our media or in scholarly Establishment-safe histories, the truth is US presidents and their agents have ordered the murder of not just a few but a myriad of political opponents, journalists, rivals and others. Often due to concerns of plausible deniability the president is kept somewhat out of the 'official' loop and yet it's clear that in many cases the president knows about what is happening and gives his approval. These crimes are covered up and explained away by the creatures of the Establishment but those that spend any time looking into them know better. Some questions are left open and cannot be resolved and in some cases one has to resort to circumstantial evidence. But as all will admit, sometimes circumstantial evidence can become overwhelming and it's only one's commitments that blocks them from seeing how what is inferred, coheres with what can be empirically demonstrated.
Establishment critics attack conspiracy on this basis and yet (ironically) it is circumstantial evidence and a conspiracy theory they are utilising in the anti-Russia campaign. The concept of conspiracy based on circumstantial evidence is valid enough but if it fails a series of larger questions and concerns (as does the Putin-Trump-Wikileaks collusion conspiracy theory) then it must be rejected. If you also factor in the obvious political angle motivating the theory its dubious claims become all the more apparent, even glaring. Add in the timing of certain press attacks, and all doubt is eradicated. It's is clearly an orchestrated campaign.
Do US officials cavort with the underworld? Yes, they do and on a massive scale. From the mafia, to drug gangs in Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans and Latin America, the US has worked with and collaborated with smugglers, people traffickers, drug dealers, death squads and every other sordid monstrosity that inhabits the earth. This has been going on for decades and many whistleblowers have told the story... and not a few of them have ended up dead. Accidents and suicides of course.
Has the US shot down civilian airliners? Yes. Did Putin shoot down Malaysian flight MH17? We don't know. It's possible. It may have been deliberate. It may have been an accident. There's also the chance the Russian backed forces didn't do it all. I don't know. However, the US has shot down civilian airliners and been involved in other air disasters that led to massive civilian death.
I'm not excusing Putin but I am saying that Sasse and the apologists of American Empire have nothing to say. The US cannot claim the moral high ground. He's either ignorant or dishonest. Probably a bit of both and yet given his education I am more inclined to believe that he has closed his eyes to the truth because his commitments and presuppositions have made the truth... unthinkable and out of bounds. That's quite a worldview but it's far from a Christian one.
Does he really want to talk about chemical weapons? The Skripal case has collapsed but I will admit it's certainly credible to argue that Litvenenko was killed by Russian polonium. Unlike Skripal, Litvenenko was actively campaigning against Moscow and represented a threat to active operations. Of course the notion that Israel used polonium to kill Arafat continues to be a question out of bounds. You can be sure if Russia was being accused, the story would receive around-the-clock coverage and reckoned conclusive by the American media and scientific establishments. But since Israel is implicated and is backed by the United States, the story has been dropped.
Does Sasse know nothing about US radiation and chemical experiments on its own people? On the poor in the Third World?  Alcohol during Prohibition? The attempts to kill Castro and Lumumba using chemical agents? How about the Church Commission uncovering evidence of CIA poison dart guns? How about Agent Orange? How about Depleted Uranium? I'm literally only scratching the surface.
We should trust the intelligence agencies? How anyone could suggest this beggars belief. These are the same intelligence agencies that have spied on congress and the American public. Its leaders have repeatedly violated the Constitution that Sasse in applying his 'Biblical' worldview apparently so reveres that he's willing to swear an oath to it. These are the same intelligence agencies that were exposed in the 1970's having violated not only the law but by most people's standards basic human decency. From their political murders, their collaboration with the underworld, grotesque scientific experiments, attempts to infiltrate and subvert every aspect of society, their assassinations and coups, the FBI and CIA were exposed as a group of reckless and immoral monsters, a house of psychopaths, a den of evil. Some seem to forget that by definition intelligence agents deliberately corrupt and blackmail people in order to steal information and control them. Reckoned grossly immoral when done by others, when these same agents commit these deeds for the sake of the American Empire, they are reckoned heroic and lauded for their integrity and courage.
Of course it didn't end in the 1970's. The Reagan era was rife with intelligence agency scandals including one of the greatest in American history, Iran-Contra. It's full story and implications are not known let alone grasped by most of the public. Some of these same figures would resurface in the WMD debacle that under false and manufactured pretenses led the United States into war with Iraq. In more recent days, the leaders of US intelligence have been exposed as literally decimating Constitutional principles and specifics, committing perjury, overseeing drone assassination programmes, torture and they will even admit they are still engaged in manipulating politics outside the United States.
These are the people we're supposed to trust? Sasse in all his godly wisdom and discernment certainly thinks so.
Putin breaks agreements we're told. I think maybe Sasse is just uninformed and unfamiliar with the basic history of US-Russian relations during the latter part of the Cold War and after. Has he never heard of the ABM Treaty? Who broke that and what did it mean? Barely newsworthy in the United States, it sent shockwaves through the corridors of Russian power. What about US guarantees regarding NATO and eastward expansion? Gorbachev foolishly trusted the US and they betrayed him.
Sasse also flaunts his ignorance in referencing the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings. Reagan was lambasted at the time and conservatives referred to him as a dupe. To many it was Nixon-Brezhnev all over again, the very detente they hoped to avoid in bringing Reagan to the White House. But that history was revised and re-written after Reagan's great 'victory'... yet another instance of 'spin' regarding the USSR collapse narrative... spin apparently embraced by the Ivy League educated Sasse.
Sasse all but parades his incompetency regarding his statements about Syria. He is in this case to borrow from Tolkien, the Mouth of Sauron, an apologist for the lies of empire and in one 'tweet' and condemnation of Putin, he white-washes US policy, crimes and murder throughout the Middle East over the past three decades. Syria is a cauldron of lies but the sorceress stirring the pot back in 2011 was a bestial harlot living in Washington. She was also busy in Libya and elsewhere. 2011 marked a significant shift in US policy as a new era of warfare was unleashed and the larger neo-con project underwent what can only be called revivification.
Sasse lies about events in the Balkans, Ukraine and Georgia. By only telling a portion of the story he's engaging in the very suggestive 'half-truth-ism' the US Establishment accuses RT of doing. Sasse is vomiting forth what can only be described as propaganda.
He even trots out the tired and disproven allegations of Russian hacking of US infrastructure. Does he actually read the news or does he simply not care? The stories have been retracted. They were obvious plants, cases of deliberate disinformation.
Sasse is a disgrace. This is true in terms of his qualifications as a US Senator but all the more in that he professes to be a conservative Christian. Having traversed conservative Lutheran and Reformed circles Sasse has learned many things about theology, dominion and so-called worldview but apparently has learned little about Christ's Kingdom and what it says about truth, integrity and the dangers of power and worldliness.
An idolater, Sasse like so many other Christians who get involved in politics has made a Faustian bargain and has sold out. He has signed on to the US Empire project and has pledged his soul to defend its record and its narrative. Dripping in blood, anti-Christian ideology and a murderous mythologised history, the US has become Sasse's heavenly kingdom and he's willing to lie, cheat and through his political power commit murder on its behalf. His social media feed is a call to war, a war in which thousands or even millions will die... based on lies, rooted in idolatrous thought and worldly ethics.
Political leaders are almost overwhelming evil people but there's something especially offensive about a professed Christian trying to take the moral high ground and condemn others. This is especially so when that politician holds high office in an empire. All empires are built on violence, blood, theft, racism and a host other abhorrent and anti-Christian concepts. The 'secular' regimes of nations like the USSR, North Korea, Maoist China and the Islamist regimes of Sudan, Iran and Saudi Arabia are monstrous to be sure but spiritually speaking there's something worse and even more nefarious about empires that profess to be Christian.... and commit the same deeds.
Sasse is unremarkable in this sense. He's but one of a long line of Christian sell-outs who have bought into the lies of this world and have fallen into the moral pit of calling evil good and good evil. This is done even while he condemns evil. That's the irony.
Sasse is remarkable in that he's part of a small but influential sector of the Evangelical world... the Reformed world of the URCNA, PCA and Westminster Seminary. They're quite proud of him. This is to their shame.
He's a rising star but in reality the more I listen to him speak the more I am convinced that Sasse is part of God's Judgment on the American Church, part of their handing over as it were. Reprobation doesn't always have to be associated with the abandonment of moral categories. Many socio- and psychopaths obsess over moral concerns, they just happen to be blind to their own sins and engage in endless justification of their own actions.
John Wayne Gacy raped and killed young boys but it was 'their fault'. A sodomite monster, he railed against the immorality of sodomy and in his own mind he divorced himself from his actions.
I don't mean to compare Sasse to Gacy but my point is that kind of sociopathic behaviour is endemic in the US Establishment, indeed in all political establishments, and clearly Sasse is not exempt. If we want to split hairs someone like Trump crosses the line from sociopath to psychopath but personally I believe that all US presidents qualify as the latter.
I use these categories not to grant legitimacy to the pseudo-science of psychology but because these traits do exist. It's not mental illness per se, but sin, gross hard sin.
Sasse is being upheld as a moral leader entering US politics, a burst of hope amidst a sea of corruption. As I read his 'tweets' about Putin I cannot but think he's but another psychopath in the making. When I suggest he's perhaps ignorant of US actions and history, I don't actually believe it. I think like many corrupted by power and dazzled by the money and crowds he has made a volitional and moral commitment to look the other way.
Sasse isn't the great hope for American Conservative Christians. He's the great threat. He's exactly the kind of person that will with smooth and deceitful words lead the Church into supporting him, even while he's sold himself out to commit great evil. His pro-US imperial narratives already tell me he's well advanced on that road. Once again, he's calling for war, based on lies and rooted in idolatrous and heretical ethics.
* I wrote this piece before the actual summit. Now that it has happened, it's clear it's being used as a platform to pounce on Trump and unless the rhetoric calms down this is seemingly the beginning of what will become an impeachment, an opening salvo in what could very well end in the war against Russia certain factions within the Establishment seem to want. Sasse has made sure to get on board and make sure his hat is in the ring.
The summit proves yet another point that Sasse doesn't grasp. If the truth is treason, then the kingdom you serve is one of lies. If loyalty means embracing a lie, then you're loyalties are not to Jesus Christ.
Whether one believes Trump or not, contemplate this as a thought experiment. Suppose Russia did not interfere and Trump is right and the FBI has fabricated the information for political reasons. As president should he tell the truth? Is he ethically bound to do so?
Or, is loyalty the paramount concern. Should he lie in order to stand by the FBI and other American intelligence agencies?
For Christians I would hope the answer is obvious and yet I believe that the vast majority of professing Christians, due to their higher loyalty to America, a loyalty that supersedes their loyalty to Christ... would argue that the president should lie and stand with the liars.... even if it meant war, death and destruction.
There is no more patent example of idolatry and the embrace of an ethical system rivalling and antithetical to Biblical Christianity.