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.