#RevThread # 68
Fancy Specks,Part 2: The Margin Man
1/ Everything we love is at risk? Trump and the Mob? Really? A reminder: if you haven't already, a good place to start is with citjourno.org and/or @LincolnsBible. Also, the writings of Luke Harding.
Fancy Specks,Part 2: The Margin Man
1/ Everything we love is at risk? Trump and the Mob? Really? A reminder: if you haven't already, a good place to start is with citjourno.org and/or @LincolnsBible. Also, the writings of Luke Harding.
2/ Trump has operated for decades on the margin between organized crime and business. In the early phase, the mob was a part of his business expense, as a considerable portion of his construction costs, especially for concrete, went into mob pockets.
3/ Then, when Trump’s business skills led to his several bankruptcies, he became the recipient of mob money, both in his casinos and in his condominiums --
4/-- two favorite places for organized crime to put their money. For example, once the mobster’s condominium is sold, the money is no longer traceable to the crimes where it was earned. Hence the obscure term “money laundering.”
5/ So is that so bad? To be a frontman for mobsters?
6/ Yeah, it’s really bad. Trump’s dealings with mobs enable them to continue in the child sex trade, in the opioid trade, in arms sales to terrorists, in slave trading and in selling uranium & other components of nuclear weapons to rogue nations.
7/ Transnational organized crime is one of the main causes of oligarchical injustice. That’s what you get in countries where scores of millions of people barely survive, while a few hundred mob billionaires loll about on their yachts. (Think Russia, Turkey, Hungary)
8/ That’s where Trump wants to take us. Apparently R's and White Evangelicals are only too happy to follow.
9/ “Surely not!” you may say. Well now. Let’s look again, shall we, at the 8 funny specks I put at the beginning of this 2-part thread -- behaviors that are so endlessly commented on by MSM, who look and look and do not see:
10/ 1) All the weird, insulting re-namings. Who does that? “Sammy the Bull” “Scarface” “Lucky Luciano”. It’s part of macho mob culture. It’s a way of domination. When a Capo gives the moniker, he’s doing a parody of God, who changes, say, “Jacob” to “Israel.”
11/ 2) Of course Mueller hired a Rico lawyer, a mob specialist, right away! Mueller himself has prosecuted lots of mobsters. He knew what he was looking at...
12/... Plus the FBI, which Mueller had led, chases mobsters all the time. I suspect Trump knew all about this -- I suspect he flipped on gangsters himself when the FBI was chasing him.
13/ 3) The abuse of women. Parts of mob culture include the macho strut, the presence of the Moll, the exhausted wife who wants out of mob life. Think of Stormy the Moll and Melania the Long-suffering...
14/ 4) The coziness with Russia. Russia is a mafia state. The oligarchs are simply gangsters. When Trump was flailing, they shoveled vast amounts of money into his company, & in return got real leverage over him. “The borrower is a slave to the lender,” (Proverbs 22:7)
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15/ 5) The ostentatious spending? “Mara Lago”, anyone?”
6) The dancing at the edge of the law? Think about his 3500 lawsuits.
6) The dancing at the edge of the law? Think about his 3500 lawsuits.
16/ 7) The use of religion to gain respectability? Remember the Baptism scene in the Godfather? Maybe you heard Trump at either of the last two Evangelical Prayer Breakfasts. That sound from high above? The poor angels were barfing.
17/ 8) The inability to trust anyone but family -- hello? How could you when there is so much to hide? And if all your relational skills have been honed into exploitation, how could even your family trust you?
18/ All of these signs are not so much revelations of psychological states as they are the results of mob involvement. Have you noticed how often Trump is dry-mouthed, often panting? He’s scared. When displeased, the Russian Mob kills.
19/ Here’s today’s first text: “If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
20/ This is the great Biblical text preached by revivalists. The leaders of the white evangelical church need to apply it to themselves. They are the ones who have been caught up in the evil ways of Trump.
21/ 80% of white evangelicals voted for a man who owes his fortune to his mob dealings and whose epic immorality pointlessly threatens not just our democracy but human life itself. (cf Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine.)
22/ Great discernment, guys! You’re really tight with your god, but your god's name is not Yahweh; your god's name is Mammon. #emptythepews!
23/ Remember the story of Edwin Hubble and the funny specks on the telescope? If our very stable genius had been in that scene, he would have ordered the dirty telescope destroyed and a new one built -- covered in gold gilt with a mirror instead of a lens.
24/ Here’s the second text from Joel 3:14: “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.” The prophet’s vision is of crowds of people stampeding back and forth in the valley.
25/ What should we do? Stop stampeding.
26/ Decide for righteousness and dignity and liberty and truth speaking. Insist on the values that are foundational to the nation. Reject this racist, greedy, lying predator and his party who are destroying our nation’s honor.
27/ If we can offer that integrity to God, His word promises He will use us all to heal our land.
28/ Here's the first part in case you missed it:
