By David Futrelle
Donald Trump has tweeted many horrifying things since becoming our Fake President, but none perhaps as horrifying as the … thing … he tweeted out early this morning as a Fourth of July greeting to his subjects: video of a Trump-branded ersatz national anthem sung by an (almost) all-white mega-church choir.
My fellow Americans, witness the musical and political atrocity that is the song “Make America Great Again.” (And see if you can spot the Asian woman amidst the sea of white performers.)
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/882186896285282304
If Trump could figure out how to make this the new national anthem he almost certainly would. I guess this is what we get for electing an authoritarian meglomaniac to the highest office in the land.
While this song “feels like a dystopian anthem or a piece of explicit propaganda,” the Daily Dot notes,
[i]t’s actually an entirely real song performed by First Baptist Church in Dallas Saturday night.
The song was performed as part of an introduction to Trump’s speech during its Celebrate Freedom Rally and was written by the church’s former minister of music Gary Moore.
I can’t help but think of this clip from North Korean state television.
Enjoy your 4th of July, fellow Americans, as best you can given the circumstances.
The Lord useth a flawed vessel … to do what, exactly? To harm and maybe murder the poor? To enrich the rich? To deprive the stranger in our midst of comfort and aid? I think Jesus might have a few things to say about this flawed vessel’s policy wish list.
From Matthew 25:
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
The religious right have never cared about politician’s religiosity. They care more that a politician wants to hurt the same people they want to hurt. Reagan wasn’t religious either and they loooove him.
My racist fundie uncle follows some preacher/author that is claiming that God told him Trump would be the one to save Israel or something like that. This is not a group that can be expected to be remotely rational or logically consistent.
@wwth
Funny how “save Israel” translates to “Jesus bait.”
To put a fine point on it, yes, to do exactly that.
For the fundy christians who have been running the republican’t party since reagan, the christian greek writings are not relevant, anyway. These people are “christian” in the nominal sense only. Except for invoking the name of the junior god, everything they believe is found in the hebrew writings.
The concept of helping the poor, of being non-judgemental, of being a “good Samaritan”, none of that figures into fundy xian thinking.
Oh, the concept of forgiveness can be found in fundy thinking, useful for a preacher who’s been “caught in a motel room, doing what they said not to do”*, or a favorite right-wing polititian who’s on his fourth divorce… but that’s not christian forgiveness, it’s hypocracy.
*ray wylie hubbard
You probably aren’t meaning this but that’s wandering pretty close to antisemitism when you say that the cruel Republican beliefs are the result of Jewish scriptures. There is a fair amount written in the books of the law about the fair treatment of widows, orphans, the poor, and foreigners. The prophets, meanwhile, are often angry at the abuses and mistreatment of these groups.
I will not deny that there are many terrible things recorded in the histories and many of the laws wouldn’t fly in modern courts, but the idea that there’s only injustice found in Judaism is both false and dangerous. Honestly, it’s not like the early Christians invented the ideas of justice all by their lonesome.
It’s not so much that they care about Israel as that its existence is needed to immanentize the eschaton.
QI still think he should have retweeted “You’re Fake News”, the song I wrote to represent his touchy defensiveness and authoritarian appeal to his followers to drown out all atrempts at scrutiny and accountability:
You’re going to say I’m ranting and raving
I’m not ranting and raving
I’m just raging against the folks who keep saying
I keep making mistakes
And doing bad things…
…
I made no mistake
You can clearly see
Their news is fake
If it contradicts me
They’ll just lose
So it’s time to choose
To keep chanting
“You’re fake news!”
My theory that Trump’s goal is to provoke a war with North Korea (because his only chance at not being seen as a joke for the rest of human history is to be a war president) has really not been falsified this weekend.
@ wwth;
I fear you give the dumpster too much credit… I do not believe he is capable of the long-term thinking necessary to have a goal. I believe he really does not see the world past his own affirmation… literally the “narcissist-in-chief”
Others in the circle of buffoons likely do have that goal, especially those whose freight is paid by the military-industrial complex. A war with North Korea would expend a lot of costly weapons, as well as jingo-ize the small but growing number of trumplings who have soured on him. All without the danger of any military action here on the “home front”, or any associated (precious lord!!!) damage to property owned by capitalists. This assumes, of course, that the war doesn’t get out of hand or anything… and wars never get out of hand… in war college history classes, the wars always go the way the generals want them to.
This is a solid hypothesis and I endorse it. It’ll be interesting to see if there are people in the military who are brave enough to ignore his instructions.
As Alan said, the world is now reliant on the moderation and orderliness of a man nicknamed both “Mad Dog” and “Chaos.”
USA number one exporter of potassium,
All other potassium is inferior…
What a terrible, bombastic, meandering song. That was quite a diverse group of white people they assembled, though. I spotted Anglo-Saxons AND Protestants.
@WWTH
If he gets into a nuclear exchange with North Korea, and China and Russia get involved, the rest of human history may be rather short.
“Whoa, I’m President now? Let’s go golfing! Oh, and make sure the Secret Service pays ‘special government rates’ for hotel rooms and office space.”
Dan Kasteray – my usual quip to security guards is ‘I hope you have an uneventful day’.
Regarding Trump’s dagger rattling with North Korea – in “It Can’t Happen Here”, the enemy of choice was Mexico. I can only imagine how unpopular THAT would be today. Given that the depiction of the USA as a bellicose warmongering imperialist aggressor has been a mainstay of NK’s propaganda for longer than most North Koreans have been alive, I’m curious how the current unpleasantness is viewed by their ruling class.
Re: fundies & Hebrew writings
I don’t think this is a fair interpretation of Judaism. Having grown up in the fundie church, I have always been floored by the difference between fundamentalist interpretations of the Old Testament vs the (general modern) Jewish interpretations of the Torah. It really is its own messed up lens that starts from “I am super special and always right” and ends at “fuck the people I don’t like.” This is why you will never hear them preaching the good bits of the Old Testament, like
“For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in the land.” Deuteronomy 15:11
In many ways, Trump is playing the exact role Kim Jong-un wants him to. “We’re under attack from the US, so we must keep spending on arms and require military service from all” is his favorite message. “Our problems are caused by these external sanctions, not my policies” is probably another. He loves that he can blame the US for everything.
This tells you all you need to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
There is a direct relationship between Calvinism and Capitalism. This is why they venerate the most wealthy in society and consider them the most blessed by the Lord. Conversely, they consider poverty to be a result of sin.
In unrelated news, I just replaced our Wii’s Motion Sensor Bar with two candles and it looks like we’ve got the media view of [insert occultish-type following here] going on.
So much to say here. I have a master’s degree in religion, so all kinds of buttons are getting pressed. I’ll try and be brief.
Calvinism is evil. The prosperity/Word of Faith stuff makes me sick. Bagging on the Hebrew scriptures is unfair and seems to be rooted in a misunderstanding of what those scriptures comprise; it’s not all the holiness code. Seeing the flag of any nation so displayed in a church, while the leader of that nation is praised in song by the choir of that church, makes me want to rend my garments and flip some tables.
I second Virgin Mary’s recommendation of Max Weber’s book. Its importance can hardly be overstated.
And finally, to the composer, Gary Moore:
When my cat ate through the wire on mine, I replaced it by pulling apart an old TV remote and using that. It looked like some kinda sci-fi nightmare, but damned if it didn’t do the job.
@SFHC
Really, all you need is two sources of infrared radiation. That’s all the MSB provides, after all–and it’s enough to tell the Wii Remote where it is.
Still. I like candles.
@Troubelle
Exactly; I got the TV remote idea from a YouTube video of a guy using a night-vision camera, of all things. Kinda wish I had one of those to use.
@AsAbove: If I were a believer, I would call John Calvin the polar opposite of Jesus, Satan’s most loyal lieutenant, his Satanic majesty’s most devoted and effective agent who has brought untold millions of souls to damnation.
If you regard Jesus as I do, as an intinerant social justice warrior, then much of the current Christian Church embodies the same flaws that he inveighed against in the Judaism of his day. And Calvin had a lot to do with that. I don’t know how you can possibly reconcile the concept of salvation by faith alone with the passage from Matthew 25 quoted above by POM — it really sounds to me like Jesus is preaching salvation by works pretty unambiguously. But I suppose it’s possible that Jesus was a heretic.
My theory is that Gary Moore wrote TWO pieces of music for July 4th – one for the adult choir and one for the nursery school. Somebody made a mistake and delivered the sheet music to the wrong rooms.
I’ll bet the nursery school choir is in the basement, kicking ass with their song.
RosieLa
Everyone, Canadian & American, should read that editorial.
One big take-away is that only 6% of Americans were eligible to vote in the first election after the Revolution.
That’s a slap up the side of the head to the modern (mostly) white male dumbasses who keep saying that we should return to the original constitution and take the vote away from women, blacks and other minorities.
Hey, dumbasses – most white men weren’t permitted to vote either (often there was a property, wealth or religious requirements for voters). Everyone was disenfranchised in the passed (even the nobility) and progress is the story if how democracy was handed out, a bit at a time, to different groups of people – including white men.
I wouldn’t automatically assume that the US mainland is safe from violence if military action were taken against North Korea. North Korea has conducted covert operations abroad in the past, like the Rangoon(as it was called then) bombing of 1983, which killed 21 people, including top South Korean government officials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing