The death knell of Evangelicalism

When president Trump was elected, he had the support of the majority of evangelical Christians in the USA. President Trump was the most unchristian president the USA had ever seen.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro has the support of most of the evangelical Christians. He is the ‘Trump of the tropics’. He is on his way to destroying the environment and has the support of the ruling class of Brazil’s billionaires.

What is happening here? I believe that this is what is happens when one worships Jesus and then does not pay attention to what he said.

Changes that are needed

You can feel it in the air. Change is coming whether we heed it or not. We cannot continue to trash the planet as we are doing. Social and income inequality cannot continue to reach record heights.

So, what might change look like? It will either be planned and rational, or violently forced upon is by relentless nature. The future will be multi-faceted and complicated. We will need to make personal changes and system changes. Here is a list of the actions needed.

Radical hope in a doomsday scenario

Our human species has had a remarkable ride over the last 10,000 years. We have gone from a group of scattered hunter gatherers, we have discovered agriculture, moved from a religious, mystical phase to an age of reason and science to industrialization and technology to our present era of a new and evolving digital world.

There are two sides to every story

Recently 43 Ukrainian women arrived in Ottawa to be trained in parliamentary procedures. On May 9 (Victory day in Russia) they staged a demonstration at the Russian embassy. At the same time a smaller group of Russians arrived to remember the Nazi German invasion into Russia. So interestingly, two invasions were being commemorated – the German  invasion into Russia in 1941, and Russia’s invasion into Ukraine now. Things did get somewhat turbulent at times, but all that occurred were several heated shouting matches.

Who caused this war, and what to do about it?

One of the main causes of the WWII was the Versailles Treaty which closed WWI. It treated Germany poorly and Germans felt aggrieved. However, as the Wehrmacht rolled across Europe, the memory of the Versailles Treaty was lost in the ensuing carnage. Hitler’s military rampage destroyed any sympathetic alliances that he may have had.

Eventually the original causes of that war got smothered by the atrocities committed during the war and the accompanying genocidal actions. In the case of WWII that meant the Nazi holocaust.

A Short Tale of Two Wars

WWII

The Versailles peace treaty after WWI treated Germany badly.

Hitler appealed to this sense of grievance and rose to power.

One could have been sympathetic with him at the beginning, but after he began

his military rampage (in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland...) sympathy for him dropped.

For more details see How Hitler Invaded Half of Europe (7 mins.)

Ukraine

The creation of NATO and its expansion eastward treated Russia badly.

Putin has risen to power and has appealed to Russia’s concerns about NATO.

One could have been sympathetic with him at the beginning, but after his military rampages (in Syria and Ukraine) sympathy for him has dropped.

For more details see Why Russia Wants Ukraine ( 8 mins.)

Lessons from history

Destructive foreign wars do not achieve their objectives:

Hitler in Germany
Putin in Ukraine
And USA in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Against the USA in Vietnam, then; Against Russia in Ukraine, now

All empire states tend to dominate their neighbours. Russia has a long history of doing this. During WWII, Russia invaded Finland and grabbed the state of Karelia, where my mother was born. Subsequent Russian invasions include Hungary (1954), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1979-89), Their methods are often brutal as seen in recent wars in Chechnya (1996-99) and Syria (2015-19). Now after Russia’s first invasion into Crimea, it is invading all of Ukraine.

A Tale of 2 Empires. Or is it 3?

We are witnessing the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Many people are saying – Why is this happening now? This is part of a pattern. Empire states tend to control smaller ones at their borders.

What we can learn from the Freedom Convoy (FC) ?

The recent freedom convoy of truckers and others who recently invaded Ottawa can teach us something. Members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) claim to be working on a rebellion. There are obviously different types of rebellions – there are peaceful rebellions and there are violent rebellions, and everything else in between.

It all begins with disinformation – or is it misinformation?

Let’s begin by defining the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is false information that one spreads because one believes the information to be true. Disinformation is false information that one spreads even though one knows it to be false, i.e., an effort to deceive people. 

Jesus, on the rich and the poor

We are living in difficult times. The divergence between the rich and the poor is huge and increasing. Rising inequality as registered by all indicators is as high as it has ever been since the great depression. Many have warned that such inequality will spawn a raft of severe social problems (the book, “Spirit Level”, Joseph Stiglitz, Pikett). Even some of the rich themselves have alerted us and said that this trend needs to be reversed (Warren Buffet, Bill Gates).