Today, I saw a photo on an Internet news site which showed former President Donald Trump being taken into custody by a S.W.A.T. team in New York pursuant to charges filed by the local District Attorney.
This was very interesting “breaking news”, particularly since the Manhattan D.A. has yet to file any charges against Trump (regarding hush money payoff to an ex-porn star). The photo is a “deep fake”, i.e. a digitally-altered photo, put out into cyberspace by some goofball or political nutjob.
Or, more likely, Trump himself in an effort to rile up his followers.
The problem is that fake shit like this floods the Internet, influencing the beliefs and behaviors of millions of people who are too dumb or lazy to look a bit deeper into the story. A photo like this is red meat to Trump-cult followers who want to believe that their hero is being mistreated by the criminal justice system… similar to that mob that attacked the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, after being led to believe (by their President) that he’d been robbed of re-election. He hadn’t, but they wanted to believe his version of events.
“Alternative facts” are what former White House spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway called the disinformation (i.e. lies) that President Trump would put out to counteract bad news (i.e. truth). I think it was Adolph Hitler who coined the phrase “The Big Lie”, connoting a colossal falsehood that, when repeated over and over, eventually becomes accepted as truth… by those who really want to believe such crap. Anti-semitism is one good example.
Donald Trump may be the biggest liar that has ever served in the White House, eclipsing even ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, who foisted on America and the world the canard that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction”.
Charlie and I have recently been watching a TV series called “Under the Banner of Heaven”. It is a docudrama about some grisly murders which took place in Utah, perpetrated by some wacko fundamentalist Mormons against fellow Mormons. An interesting component of the story is the history of the Mormon religion and the disparate beliefs of different Mormon factions.
Like all of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), Mormonism puts men in an exalted position as the spiritual leader of the family unit. They make all decisions (because they are God’s representative in the household), while the wife and children are expected to toe the line in the home and outside of it. Taking family business and disagreements outside the home is verboten, as is any criticism of the Mormon religion or the head of the household.
There is a hierarchy of religious officials in every community which are tasked with keeping the flock in order, perpetuating the Mormon religion myth, and covering up misdoings by the clergy and the faithful. This is not dissimilar to the organized cover-up by the Catholic Church of rampant child molestation by priests.
In the docudrama that we are watching, a small group of disaffected Mormons, who’ve adopted a “sovereign state” attitude toward local and federal governments, decide that the rest of the Mormon population in Utah is practicing the religion incorrectly and decide to impose a stricter version which… of course, permits polygamy. The latter was publicly and formally disavowed by the Mormon Church long ago as a condition of statehood for Utah.
In the docudrama, the group of fanatics decide that they are going to conduct a scorched earth campaign on behalf of “Heavenly Father” to right the ship… killing those who get in the way… again, on behalf of God. They begin the campaign by killing and mutilating a young Mormon wife and her infant daughter… because the wife questioned their extreme views.
That, of course, begs the question, “Why does God need these men’s help?” Isn’t it God’s duty to judge people?
A divinity that can create our world and everything in it, part the Red Sea, inflict a plague on the Egyptians, turn wine into water, flood the entire planet because he was pissed at mankind’s behavior, and resurrect a dead man… could surely handle His own business without human assistance. If God is annoyed with any human being who fails to respect Him, the Boss doesn’t need a posse of bearded guys with AK-47s to punish sinners.
If God needs the help of humans, he’s probably not a real god, right?
This kind of religious vigilantism has been going on for millenia with no sign of abating. The Crusades, the Holocaust, the 9-11 Twin Towers attack, etc., are but a few examples of true believers doing horrible things “under the banner of Heaven”.
The idea of God, and the many religions purporting to “speak” for the deity, was invented by man. All of the stories in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon arose from the imagination of men who wanted attention, prestige, and power. Incredible stories and “truths” were supposedly revealed to these special folks by God to be passed along to the unwashed masses.
Well, it doesn’t take much digging to unearth the fable of religion.
Even religious scholars admit that most of the Old Testament is composed of myths and campfire tales, no one knows who wrote the New Testament, and the various heroes of the Bible stories, and their spectacular achievements, were unknown to people who actually lived at that time in that part of the world. There is scholarly debate over the issue of Jesus being an actual person or just a made-up character devised to sell the “Christianity” product. No evidence remains in any form other than the New Testament stories, which are not backed up by historians of that day in age. “Apostle Paul”, the creator of Christianity as we know it, admittedly never met Jesus. As a matter of fact, Paul is totally unknown to history except in the Bible stories that he allegedly wrote.
All of the stuff that we would normally call “evidence” in solving a mystery is conveniently lost. This pattern repeats itself with every religion. Just like the Ark of the Covenant, Jesus’ Last Supper goblet, and the golden tablets given by the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith, the critical physical evidence has mysteriously disappeared. The Shroud of Turin, supposedly the linen used to wrap the body of Jesus after his crucifixion, was identified back in the Middle Ages by a Catholic bishop as a clever fake, a truth that was verified in the 20th century by carbon dating.
“You have to take our word for it”, say the rabbis, priests, pastors, imams, and televangelists as they tell you that every word in the Holy Scriptures is 100 percent accurate, tell you how to live your lives and tell you how much money God needs you to send them.
Why is it that we human beings set such a low factual bar for religious belief?
Some guy says that he’s spoken to God and we say, “What did He say?” On any other subject, we would want to know the Five W’s (who, what, where, when and why), what are the credentials of the guy making the outrageous claims, and demand to see the physical proof.
If some nutcase says that he talked to aliens, most people call “Bullshit!”. But, when a “man of the cloth” says that God revealed something to him, the faithful lap it up. Why?
The normal standards of proof don’t apply to religion.
As a matter of fact, probing questions about prophets or dogma are discouraged, at the least. “This is the way it is; learn it, practice it, and defend it.” Non-believers are shunned in some circles, tortured and killed in some societies.
I am happy to live in a society where we can question beliefs and preposterous “truths”. Had I grown up in the Dark Ages in Europe, I probably would have been burned at the stake by zealous Catholics for asking embarrassing questions.
No doubt that I would be a bad Mormon, too. The wackadoodle story of the teenager Joseph Smith and his discussions with the Angel Moroni is a bit hard to believe, particularly since the God-given Golden Plates are nowhere to be found. It is inconceivable that such important evidence would have been “lost” or, supposedly, returned to God’s emissary, as the story goes.
Really?
It would seem to me that if God seriously wanted to get human beings to understand and obey Him, He would broadcast His message to everyone, rather than entrust the job to a 17-year-old, pimply-faced kid from upstate New York. Also, one would think that the All-knowing and All-powerful divine being would have kept that Illinois mob from killing His emissary on Earth, the Reverend Smith. I’m thinking that a few-well placed thunderbolts would surely have discouraged the Christian zealots from riddling the Good Reverend with bullets.
But then, who am I to question God’s Plan?
That is typically the end of debate on any theological subject… the invocation of God’s wisdom by some peddler of religious hocus pocus who claims to speak to God on a regular basis.
That is the great thing about religion and politics… facts and truth are not required: you just make up shit to serve your purpose.
“Faith: not wanting to know what is true” (Frederich Nietzsche)