November 2022 sees Canada and the United States wallowing in the mire of colonial attitudes, with apologists broadcasting explanations of necessary wealth and prosperity. 45 is a known criminal vetted as the saviour of an America most people wished never happened, and Canada’s opposition parties seem to be headed in that direction, spurred on by Conservative politicians. The promises to reduce crime are like reviews of a restaurant never visited.  Any society that has failed to outlaw racism and wholesale packaging of public misinformation is doomed.  The United States and Canada are more like Iran and Russia than people are willing to admit.   God and mammon are not mere options; they are the two poles to which the human heart can be attached. We cannot be so blind as to not see that the desire to be rich sinks boats.

Love of money is covenant-killing  covetousness and idolatry

A nation devoted to tipping the scales of justice for some of its  citizens and deeply invested in denying rights and access to improving standards of living is on a suicide mission.   In the terms of bottom line definitions, such a society is dead. Temple mount in Israel is desolate, even though a mosque adorns the hill, and the hill lacks a Jewish installation not because Romans or Jews were bad people but because God wanted to make an example of national hypocrisy and international consumerism. The fourth world-ruling empire is all consumer and destroyer. Every modern state bears the stamp of this dreadful entity.

“After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.”

Daniel 7:7, New American Standard Bible

When religion turns criminal

One has to look hard to find a religion that does not at  least smile at the awkward and airy things people call wisdom, justice and nobility.   Let’s own the space that says noone deserves to be faceless in the  public spaces, without rights in private, and exempt from investigation in the courts.  There is no need for crimes to attach to what people eat, drink, or wear. God designed our bodies to be seen, and we should not want to hide our faces. Least of all we should want to put a lid, of any kind, on the aspect of our humanity that makes us whole or complete; women.

Fighting for the voiceless

When a government clothes itself in religious robes and brings the gavel down on women and girls, foreigners and particular ethnic groups we can be sure that lunatics are in charge. Even the seemingly thriving province of Ontario has lunatics running things. The legitimacy of labour protest and bargaining process has choked the premier. His Heimlich may well come from the courts, but the women the premier seems ready to erase as valuable workers who deserve a decent wage will ring a bell he cannot ignore, unless he wants to be exposed as a verifiable insurrectionist and arsonist in the chamber of Canadian Charter Rights.

They’re all inflamed with conservative nincompoopery

Political and religious conservatives rely on extreme legislative moves or extreme rulings by courts while clinging to their mantra that less government is better. Tell that big lie about less government to the people who lived in the time of the judges (the 15th to 11th centuries). Maybe people want to forget that even with a law created by Great Britain (the British North America act of 1867) Canadians embarked on a genocidal venture which many today are slow to acknowledge. Conservatives and fundamentalist types of politics and religion should be the last sources of more laws when solutions are needed. Their rhetoric tells us that removing restrictions makes society better, and removing regulations in the markets will improve general welfare. That kind of reasoning does not seem to apply to people’s rights; rights for which the crown stands as the guarantor. But they don’t believe in the crown either, do they?

When the politician and preacher are cult-created crackpots

I do not know who can take miracles and mounds of money as the tokens of a thriving society. It was not the case when Hebrews sought to save their lives by moving to Egypt. It was not the case when Haitians unraveled the French grip on their island. It does not apply as America China and the European Union jostle for supremacy in economics and people control. It is obvious that both preachers and politicians are drinking something that intoxicates them. It is neither feast nor famine that defines human nobility. The sustainability of leadership needs something more than lawyers, police, jails, and business partners. Yeshua once asked his disciples on whom they thought the rulers of the world impose tax or tribute.

25a) “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect customs or poll-tax, from their sons or from strangers?” 26) When Peter said, “From strangers,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are exempt. 27) “However, so that we do not offend them, go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for you and Me.”

Matthew 17:25a-27

Cults are to be identified by (a) their own unique authority structure and resources, such as books and institutions (b) their undue elevation of a single person to all-encompassing authority. With that identification we can all smell crime like we have never seen before, worse than Nazi Germany, worse than Tiananmen Square, worse than the African Slave Trade. Politics depends on crime.