• Scenes from the bonkers anti-government protests in Michigan have me revisiting the classic 1997 Moxy Früvous song that provides the title of this post:
This was written 23 years ago:
Now they got us on TV
And makin’ us look stupid
Shot of me flippin’ my lid
At that mutt reporter
A classic case of race dilution
Houston
What is the problem?
I’m fighting for you, and a blue-eyed Jesus
America first
The rest get the pieces
They weren’t being eerily prescient, they were just paying attention to something perennially present.
• Speaking of bonkers racist conspiracy theorists … it seems raving Antisemite “Pastor” Rick Wiles is now preaching that “Bible prophecy” requires Christians to be anti-vaccination. He thus says Bill Gates is the Antichrist.
Apart from the illiteracy of such “End Times” hermeneutics and the vile antisemitism lurking just beneath (or, in Wiles’ case, just above) the surface of all such conspiracy theories, I detest all this white nationalist nonsense fabricated out of the “Mark of the Beast” passage in Revelation because it’s a big part of the reason that I, personally, have to keep up-to-date paper records of my auto insurance and registration in my car, at all times, in 20-freaking-20. There’s no technological reason that this isn’t all easily and conveniently kept as a digital record easily accessible with a swipe of our driver’s license, but instead we have to watch the mail every six months for a little paper card from our insurers and then vigilantly make sure that paper card — and not any of the previous, out-of-date ones — is right there, able to be quickly located in the glove compartment. Why? Because too many people absorbed too much garbage theology and false “prophecy” from the likes of Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye for us to be allowed to make life easier.
That’s annoying. I mean, it’s not quite as annoying as millions of Americans embracing anti-vaccination superstition in the midst of a pandemic, but still.
Here’s the thing: You cannot read an apocalypse if you’re an Empire First! nationalist. It’s just not for you. A lot of it was written about you, but it was not written for you. And if you ever meet any of the people it was written for, you’re really, really, really not gonna like what they’ll tell you it means.
• And while we’re on the subject of barking mad beastly readings of “Bible prophecy” by the nationalists of Empire whom John the Revelator wrote against and not for … Charisma’s sex-with-demons correspondent Jennifer LeClaire asks “Is Sorcery Defying Prophetic Words About the End of Coronavirus?”
Despite all the prophetic words — and the dreams from children — about coronavirus ending April 30, scientists are insisting the pandemic is likely to last as long as two years, the BBC reports.
Personally, I didn’t hear anything about when the coronavirus would end. I heard from other prophets that the general consensus was April 30 and put my faith on that date like the rest of us. But science is flying in the face of the prophetic utterance — or at least it looks that way through our natural eyes.
What’s going on?
If it seems like LeClaire’s fellow “prophets” were, yet again, utterly wrong in their prophecies, or if it seems like the prophetic dreams of innocent children were, instead, just more “Boy Who Came Back From Heaven”-style Malarkey produced by sleazily manipulative parents, then, in LeClaire’s view, Something Else must be “going on.” And that Something Else, as always, is witches. You know — Satanic baby-killers.
• Tomorrow is the Official National Day of Prayer, so it’s time yet again for my annual joke:
In 1952, Congress passed a law establishing the National Day of Prayer as an annual religious observance.
Quick: give me another sentence that uses the words “Congress,” “law,” “establish” and “religion.”
OK, then.
• Tim Bray’s announcement that he’s resigning as a VP at Amazon, and his explanation of why he was morally obliged to do so, is worth reading:
Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.
• This is why I will go to work tomorrow at the Big Box, where more than 2,000 people will once again squeeze past one another in crowded aisles (we’ve relaxed our customer limit from 100 to 150, because money) to purchase essential and life-sustaining mulch, grass seed, grills, and patio sets.
I would prefer neither to serve nor to drink that poison but, as Emily Stewart writes:
It’s a scenario that’s been playing out for essential workers for weeks, and one that’s about to play out for workers across the country as states begin reopening their economies even as the coronavirus crisis continues to rage on. Many Americans aren’t comfortable going to work right now, but most don’t have much of a choice.
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