Coercive Prosperity Gospel Laws

This looks religiously motivated to me.

During the Great Depression many Americans were rootless due to the lack of work which was driven by the replacement of investing with gambling. We’ve gone through periodic dislocations since then but protections like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid have kept the country from looking like a Carnivàle episode.

I don’t say a lot about this here and many of you are new, so I’ll explain what my personal travails have contributed to my view.

I had a small telecomm engineering firm at the beginning of the summer of 2007, but dehydration during a hike up La Luz in the Sandia mountains on the last day of June gave an opening for the Lyme virus my body had been battling. Three months later I was laying on my mom’s couch, unable to remain awake for more than a couple hours. That was the start of what has been seventeen years of partial disability and frequent homelessness.

I moved to California in 2015, specifically because of MediCal, sleeping under a eucalyptus by the railroad tracks for the first month, with the day’s first Pacific Surfliner as my alarm clock. I’ve been stable to trending upward since then, with a dramatic improvement in my condition occurring two months before I relaunched this Substack.

My parents were Depression babies and my father was disabled just as I entered my teens. I’ve been a millionaire on a paper a couple times between then and now, but it was never all it’s made out to be. Struggle has been my lot in life, and should my single annual lottery ticket purchase ever pay off, it wouldn’t make me wealthy, I’d just be a poor guy with a lot of money.

That being said, let’s have a look at where Leonard Leo’s mullahs are taking this country.

Attention Conservation Notice:

This is personal, speculative, and focused on the origins of conflict, rather than methods. If you weren’t already a John Steinbeck fan, maybe just keep going …

Impoverished Infidels:

If you haven’t read Heathens & Heretics you almost certainly should before going any further.

Do you see the Prosperity Gospel Heresy in this?

This same doctrine is also the core tenet of the prosperity gospel. It teaches that the reason why people suffer from poverty, sickness and lack is because they inadvertently created that reality through their negative thoughts and words. According to those who teach the prosperity gospel, the solution to poverty and lack is for people to create a different reality through their positive, faith-filled thoughts and words.

People who are godly are materially wealthy - Joel Osteen and his ilk are an example. People who are poor are not godly. There’s no way this has to do with income inequality, Citizens United having turned our elections into auctions, our manufacturing economy being shipped offshore … nope … it’s a lack of the appropriate sort of prayer.

Elimination:

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise.

One has to wonder what a Prosperity Gospel heretic makes of this part of the New Testament.

Christian Nationalist churches are suffused with not just an end of days myth, they have become attached (in the Buddhist sense, obsessing) to the idea that they will be personal participants in some epic final battle. Those who are poor or sick are not right with god; it follows that they can and should be eliminated … does that make the illegalization of being homeless clear for you?

False Prophets:

This article has lingered in my queue since the SAN video was new, back in June. Being homeless became a crime and bribery became legal. There’s a famous biblical quote typically represented in modern English as “you can’t serve God and Mammon”. Here’s a translation of the actual verses.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

One of the things I remember clearly from my youth are the born again Christians, who would howl about false prophets at the drop of a hat. There’s a lot of writing on this, this ten point guide to recognizing them seems right to me.

1. They Say What People Want to Hear

2. They Teach a Doctrine Other than Christ

3. They Use Tricks to Pull People In

4. They Are Dishonest about Their Real Intentions

5. They Seek to Divide Congregations

6. They Ignore the Need for Repentance

7. They Gloss Over Any Sins They or Other Church Leaders Commit

8. They Substitute Their Own Words for God’s Word

9. They Do Damage to Church Families

10. They Will Face God’s Punishment

Conclusion:

There are so many subsets of Christian Nationalism that are hungry for violence. The Prosperity Gospel Heretics are not so inclined, but the Qanon Heretics most certainly are. When Trump fails, which appears imminent at this point, there will be weeping/gnashing of teeth from some of the deceived, but others will read this as a sign that the last battle has begun.

I’ve been saying We’re Gonna Fight for the last seven years. November’s Civil War Referendum is just ten weeks away. I don’t desire this outcome, I recognize the preconditions and I seek to interdict this conflict “left of boom”. As I come back to focusing on the types of insurrectionist behavior I am … I wonder how much I’m going to see in the way of fractures in the MAGA movement. Already there are Republican politicians hedging, hoping to preserve their careers after Trump’s fall, by noting that things do not look good.

DHS and FBI are crawling all over the MAGA world. They vilify and incriminate leaders, they foster division, and in this case I wonder if it’s going to be like our sideshows here in the Bay Area. Hundreds of vehicles turn up for these events and police are so few they can do little except observe.

Now imagine a sideshow sized crowd in every town, only in an ugly, fatalistic mood, with lots of guns.

The scary thing is that these things are already “baked in” - the causes and conditions are in play, we’re just waiting for the spark to set the blaze alight.

If you’re distressed and unsure of what to do … close this browser tab, go find a local food bank or homeless shelter, and give what you can. Then start looking for bigger picture opportunities to not mistreat the poor and the sick among us.