Trump Derangement Syndrome

[TrueTomHarley]

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

As his many accusations at JWs are shot down, he is degenerating into just another source of vitriol.

 

5 minutes ago, Matthew9969 said:

TTH, dude, if you hate Trump so much, then get off your jw ass and vote against him. But wait you can't vote against him because you are not allowed to vote. So grow some balls, meaning be a man, and vote against Trump or shut up.

I rest my case.

[TrueTomHarley]

Another reason I follow politics is for its clarification of Pilate’s question: “What is truth?” It is a cynical question, as though mocking ones who say they can find truth.

“I will never lie to you,” Trump promises his “base.” ‘He is the most lying President in history,’ opponents say. It doesn’t matter if you like him or not. How can one not look into that?

It turns out that a lie is in the eye of the beholder. By May of 2019, the Washington Post claimed to have chronicled 10,000 Trump lies—“false or misleading claims,” and yet by any historical standards, they would not be called lies. NBCNews.com, hardly a Trump-friendly site, gives examples.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-lies-lot-media-must-focus-what-he-s-lying-ncna1009986

92 times Trump claimed that “NAFTA is one of the worst trade deals ever signed in the history of our country.” That can be called a “lie?” The Post counts it as 92 lies. Speak to those whose interests have suffered on its account. At worst it is an subjective exaggeration. 

Trump says, “I have been the most transparent president and administration in the history of our country by far.” A lie? An unprovable boast, at worst. Daily tweets of whatever happens to pop into his head, in any historical context, would be lauded as the epitome of transparency. Here the pundits harrumph mostly because they are bypassed—they are used to spinning a president’s words before he can spin them himself, but here he does end runs around them.

In fact, the nbcnews.com article recommends readers not to be so gleeful over counting his “lies” that one becomes like the little boy crying wolf. The “lies” are mostly boast, imprecision, exaggeration, hyperbole—and not actually “lies” at all. The article actually produces no “real” lies, even as it counsels readers to be on the lookout for them. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. To be sure, that is not the purpose of the article, but you almost think that some would be there, if only for purposes to contrast the “not-really” lies with the “actual” lies. All we hear on media is “the lies of Trump” repeated full-throttle, and yet this article, by someone who is decidedly not a Trump fan, points to none.

Now, one must be verrrrry careful in comparing the spiritual and the profane—even more careful in comparing words of the sacred with words of the politics. You do not want to be confused with the right wing church that mixes politics and religion so thoroughly as to make any smoothie maker envious. The School Guidebook observed that when you give an illustration, your illustration should parallel the reality illustrated in all significant respects. Otherwise, someone will point to the discordancy and the entire illustration goes up in smoke. It is why I do not care for those illustrations likening Witnesses to firemen who are urgent because lives are at stake. True, lives are at stake but they are not at stake at that very hour. Those firemen would not carry on so urgently if it was just to warn you that your smoke detector batteries are getting low.

So you have to be cautious comparing the two. Manifestly, they are not the same in many regards. That’s why I like it that Alan brought up the subject (6 times!) and not me. Still, Jesus uses all types of people in illustrations—those “righteous” and those “unrighteous.”—like the “unrighteous” steward who robs his owner blind and the owner ends up commending him for it. (Luke 16:8) So you don’t have to run like a rabbit just because those you use to illustrate points are not saints.

The same people that savage Trump for his “lies” would have savaged Jesus for his “lies.” In fact, for the most part, they do—the political left is far more irreligious than is the right. There are many excellent reasons to dislike Trump—reasons that do not hold true at all with Jesus. But here we are dealing with word devices that some would qualify as legitimate and some would qualify as lie. Jesus would have been a consummate liar in the eyes of these critics, and that fact is better appreciated for how they kick back at the commander-in-chief that they loathe.

Hyperbole? Jesus uses it all the time. Yes, he puts it to more noble use than Trump, but he is not shy about using it. He thinks it not a “lie” to use hyperbole—it is plainly a tool in his tool box—and it has the added benefit that the critics are separated out—they miss the point completely so as to object to blatant and unprovable exaggeration. Many of Jesus’ parables are not only hyperbole, but they are quirky hyperbole, such as the unrighteous judge who will not grant justice to the widow until she nags him nearly into an early grave—and that judge is used to illustrate how you ought to persist in prayer to the Father! (Luke 18:5)

Metaphor? Strictly speaking, a metaphor is a “lie.” “The tongue is a fire,” says James. ‘It is not,’ would counter the Washington Post and you can almost imagine them testing this statement, evaluating the claim with a thermometer. “God is the potter and we are the clay,” says the Word—and the Washington Post logs two “lies.” “He that feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life, and I shall resurrect him at the last day,” declares Jesus at John 6:54. Call that not a metaphor? It is even a metaphor that contributed (says Bart Ehrman) to accusations of cannibalism that served as a pretext for early Christian persecution.

Ad hominem attack? That’s a type of lie, Trump’s detractors say, since they are stated “without evidence”—to borrow a media clarification that is now routinely applied to the President but has never been applied to any of the other countless scoundrels and blaggards of history. Jesus used ad hominem attack all the time. Pharisees were the “blind men leading the blind”, the “whitewashed graves hiding every sort of filth.” He would have been called out for lying each time in the Washington Post.

Ask Jesus a question, and he will not answer it. He will ask a counter question instead that makes you scared to ask another. This is a major no-no to critical thinkers today, who insist that their questions be answered without resort to raising a “straw man.” Still, Jesus doesn’t care. He raises straw men as readily as he raised Lazerus. (Mark 11:27-33)

Head games? I don’t know what in the world was Trump’s claim of huge inauguration attendance, easily debunked as a “lie” by just viewing the photos—so easily that it becomes clear he is playing a head game of some sort, clarified when KellyAnne comes on TV to speak of the “alternative facts” he would like media to pay attention to. Are not Jesus’ parables head games of a sort? He would never explain them to his critics—only afterwards to his disciples would he “explain all things,” and it served as a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. (Mark 4:34) Would he have granted an interview with the Washington Post to explain all those parables? I have my doubts.

About this time we can send Trump packing off to the stables. I was never too comfortable bringing him in to begin with, so I waited for someone with TDS to do it, and Alan obliged—allowing me to point out with but diminished spiritual damage that Trump illustrates certain aspects of communication so perfectly that he becomes invaluable for just that reason. 

You can even go further. Trump, by all accounts, represents “flyover country”—the common working people usually ignored by policymakers who are pursuing their own ends and careers. His enemies? Those policymakers—the “swamp,” the “elites,” the wonks that hail from Harvard and who live for the machinations of the beltway. And if you really want to get sacrilegious, you can recall that he descends on the golden escalator from his high and mighty perch, and announces to his “base:” “I am your voice.” You can even liken media’s relentless efforts to separate Trump from his “base” to the efforts of JW critics to separate the GB from its “base”—and for the same reason—that both might be better neutralized.

I can think of only one other President who offered some of these same parallels: “The buck stops here,” “give em hell, Harry” Truman , who was despised by the “elites” then—even blue blood FDR kept his distance from his own “inferior” VP—on account of his crude demeanor and businessman origin. Like Trump, Truman’s elite enemies even gloated that they had won the election and later had to eat crow!—one of the iconic photos of American history is Truman holding aloft the (wrong) headline of his own defeat. He offers many of the same object lessons, but not as strikingly as Trump, mostly because people were more civil back then and opponents didn’t seek to gouge each other’s eyes out as they do now—a nod to the further applicability of 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

(Wow. I just thought up the Truman parallel as I was writing this remark. The day I throw my hat in the ring to form my own sect, I will spin some sort of an anti-type out of both names beginning with ‘Tru”—what are the chances of that? And I will play on Truman being “True Man”—same as they did with Jim Carrey on the Truman Show. And wait till I get done with the fact that Truman started as a haberdasher-, the same as you-know-who. Yes, I like the idea more and more. Only....I cannot do this Mighty Ministry on my own! Send me your contributions—large or small!—(but large is preferred)—for the Lord’s sake I would gladly walk around in rags, but the fact of the matter is, I look so much better in the two-thousand dollar suit that I will buy with them)

 

[Space Merchant]

Political Theater has reached a clown world level of ridiculousness, and the Democrats are snowflakes, whoa re easily triggered by memes, especially the recent one concerning Marvel's Endgame.

The powers that be will always defend their own in our to continue the trek of the conquest of peace and security.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

I just woke up startled, from my afternoon nap.

I had a really scary nightmare, about the Presidential Impeachment effort now going on.

I dreamed I was a Democrat Congressman, and in the dream I thought I was possessed by a demon that controlled me like a puppet.

And in fighting that double whammy of being a Democrat Congressman, and a demon, I was trying to fight the evil that possessed me.

I thought "Could it be that we are just whiney bullies, completely divorced from reality, trying to railroad and frame a man for crimes that do not even exist, but are merely policy differences between adversaries?"

I thought "Could it be that this is just a vendetta, for his unspeakable crime of making us and all out friends look like complete fools, in predicting Hillary would win in a landslide of historic proportions?"

I thought "Could it be that our hatred for this man, and his continuous string of accomplishing what he promised to do in his campaign is making us hate him even more, giving us NOTHING to run on in 2020?"

I thought " Could it be that this unfair sham of a trial to get him impeached is merely to mortally wound him so he will lose the 2020 Presidential Election, especially since every one of our candidates are either senile, or bat-crap crazy .... or both?"

And then I came to the unconsious realization ( ... as I was in fact dreaming ...) that "NAAAAH! ... merely a spot of indigestion."

 

 

 

 

[Space Merchant]

@James Thomas Rook Jr. The Democrats are snowflakes, and crybabys. Although I have no side, but rather, of God's, watching the absurdities of the political clown theater reminds me of watching cartoons of a child, something to make you laugh before bible study or going to school.

Not sure if you are aware of this, but there was a meme that angered some Demos, even the people of CNN:

 

[Arauna]

On 12/6/2019 at 9:49 PM, TrueTomHarley said:

Look at that medal count, Tommy!” he shouted. “We’re cleaning up!”

This is so typical.....loved this experience !  People are people, and their ideas on neutrality are not the same - even after the lessons have been repeated over and over  in the watchtower.  Keeping neutral .... but not understanding what true neutrality is.   Neutrality does not mean you are not supposed to know what is happening around you or that someone has to be silenced when they mention something ... But I reckon.... this is where true humility comes into play and for the sake of peace,  refrain from having  your say.  It can also come back to bite you. There is a time to keep silent.

Neutrality is making a choice every time an issue comes up.  Granted, it us hard not to take sides when you have an idea about who is lying in a particular situation....!  But deceit and lying is all part of the political game. These politicians gave up something to be where they are.  Truth and sincerity are replaced by ambition and lies and many hidden deals.  I am astounded at the open nepotism tolerated everywhere in Washington- on both sides of the isle! People have truly lost their moral compass!   And the staggering amounts of money to be made ....... poor politicians become multi-millionaires pretty quickly .... and so do their children make tons of money and extend their influence in other countries!  

These days, no politician  can fight a clean fight and expect to win..... too much spying,  false leaks in the news, misinformation and outright acrimony. 

I do watch world news and events to see fulfillment of bible prophecy.  No matter who wins the next election - USA is on a downward spiral and the spectators will be agast when they realise the plane is totally out of control.  The speed of the decent depends on who is next elected....... the speed of the decent may be fast or slow.  The self-deceit of the public is amazing and helped by the press who mostly tell the public what they want to hear.   America will still exist when the end comes but it will have handed over it power willingly to the eighth king....... So, if a certain party - which is very willing to hand over its autonomy, wins - then I will gauge that the decent will be faster than i anticipated...... 

The "clay and iron" has reached a point of  irreconcileability......and this same scenario is playing out in Europe, Australia, Canada etc.  (Bible so accurate in its predictions) . In the meantime Russia, China and all their allies are extending their economic influence and territories. It is really now just a matter of time then things will truly become ugly and we will know that we have arrived at the time we were waiting for!  We will see jehovah in action! 

[Arauna]

13 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Jesus would have been a consummate liar in the

Agreed.  What they want is a government which will outlaw the bible and Jesus (I think of Matt 24 where it indicates that those having faith in jesus' randsom sacrifice will be persecuted). California recently tabled a law which would have basically outlawed the bible - but it did not pass...... but how long before it does? 

We cannot be deceived to take sides because some political party is 'perceived'  as loving God a little more than the other side and fights infantacide...... when they are in fact - the beast.  The racial hatred and injustice in USA has tripled in the past few years because of official statements made,  perceptions created and the outrageous reaction of the opposing press......it is like a cold civil war going on.

On the other side of the beast is the secular, humanist, feminist, LGBTQ, materialist goals and this side has a stated hate for the God of the bible and its white supremacist leaders... (again a generalization:  but its members belong to a party who loves Islam and shuns the bible's values - even if they go to church.) 

For us as JWs - there is no choice between the two...... because both are playing their part to lead us to Armageddon..... the one a little faster than the other.

Human government sucks and it gets clearer and clearer every day.  We should keep focussed on Jehovahs government.... watch just enough news to know where things are going..... and keep focussed on preaching and building each other up.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Hahahahahaha!

Thanks Space Merchant, I needed that!

It is so much fun watching snowflake liberal's heads explode all over the ceiling at the slightest thing that is actually funny!

It is like watching the movie "Mars Attacks", when granny is listening to the radio in the nursing home, and yodeling comes on the programming.

CNN was once my very favorite Cable News Network, for their superb coverage of the First Gulf War, but now they are pathetic, and a comedy show of utter and total cluelessness..

If they did not have contracts to be in most of USA Airports, supplying equipment and programming, I suspect ONLY Democrats who consider it the "Clinton News Network", (.. which CNN is ...) would watch it.

 

I downloaded the CNN video from the YouTube link ... Don Lemon's reaction is PRICELESS!

 

[TrueTomHarley]

Steven Hassan is the David Splane of anti-cultists. He is the Great Explainer who works tirelessly in their behalf. He is the originator of the BITE model of “mind control”—Behavioral, Informational, Thought, and Emotional Control! He is the man who, as a youth, was naive enough to join the Moonies—the robe-dressing, flower-hawking Moonies! and now, having quit them, he insists that even the most intelligent people [read: himself] can be misled into a cult. 

Of course, there are only so many Moonies in the world. Mr Hassan expands the C-word into ever more frontiers, and one of them is Jehovah’s Witnesses. You would think that it is the only one, to hear JW detractors carry on, but it is but one of an ever-growing stable. I have witnessed JW opponents on social media counseling each other as to the most effective way to conduct themselves, referring back to the BITE model of Hassan as a guide, as though he was a cult leader of himself.

His horizon’s continue to expand. His current book is: “The Cult of Trump—A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind-Control.” A review of it begins with: “Can’t understand why a loved one would vote for Donald Trump? Let the experts who spend their lives studying cults help break it down.” Of course! It is completely inexplicable otherwise! Only cult delusion can account for such a vote. When you think that half the country has fallen victim to cult influence and mind-control, it is strong evidence that you have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid yourself.

So he comes out of the closet. He reveals himself. He is a leftist—nothing more. He is of the victimization society. I’m glad to see it, for it undermines his alleged expertise elsewhere—like with JWs, for example. Up to the point of his new book on Trump, one can begin to suspect that maybe, just maybe, Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult. They pay far more attention to their Governing Body than other groups do to their leaders. They certainly take their faith far more seriously than do others, and they deviate from the accepted goals of society in fundamental ways. 

Yes, you can just begin to imagine it—and then Hassan, who got the ball rolling in the first place, comes along and says half the country is under the spell of a cult leader! Okay. That does it. He is a loon, just upset that his candidate did not win, and that recognition qualifies whatever he has said about Jehovah’s Witnesses or anyone else.

It’s not that the idea of influencing people is ridiculous. Its the over-application that is. No meaningful outfit does not incorporate some application of “behavioral, informational, thought, and emotional control”—the most striking example is that of the family. Is it really brainwashing that he objects to—or is it just brainwashing that is not his? Read him as he carries on about Trump and realize that the spillover will taint his mission with anything else.

Leaving sects that were his bread and butter far behind, he tweets: 

“We need to have a fundamentally NEW conversation about how we interact with Trump supporters.  Online arguing doesn’t work. When we label Trump supporters as “dumb” or “evil”, it only reinforces their own image that they are persecuted and cuts off any chance of them changing.”

“Though I know it’s hard to do when they say such vitriolic things, we need to imagine they are stuck inside a religious cult. How would we try to get them out?  At first, we would make sure to avoid argument and really try to CONNECT. This may take a while but is vital.”

“After we’ve established some trust and rapport, we need to be delicate. We don’t rush to talk about Trump (they will still be defensive and unmovable).  We need to find a subject that has parallels to their situation but doesn’t feel personal (i.e. Chinese Communist Brainwashing)”

“Using that example, we can highlight examples of behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.  Very delicately, we can ask them questions about their beliefs and reflexively listen to the answers without ANY judgment.”

“What if they bring up the economy?” I interjected. It worked for Bill Clinton—“It’s the economy, stupid” instantly trounced all other considerations and won him the election. I follow Mr. Hassan on Twitter. When he returned the follow, I promised that I would take no cheap shots. I find this promise hard to keep these days, since his new horizons strikes me as no less absurd that his old. But I have, more or less, kept it.

Incredibly, he answered me privately, though DM. He recommended that I read his book! Nobody answers privately on Twitter, yet that’s what he did. My only explanation is that he saw my Twitter banner, which suggests that I am a Witness—it’s an advertisement of Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia—and he simply assumed that if he gently gave me opportunity, not publicly where I would not dare respond lest my OVERSEERS take note, but in private, like Jesus pulled aside the deaf man so as not to put him on the spot, that I would gratefully let him take me by the hand so as to escape from the JW cult!

I don’t troll the guy. Everyone has a right to prevail on their own feed. I am not disrespectful when I reply and I don’t do it often. The next time he advised me, this time publicly, to read his book, I responded that I had a book, too. A third party to the thread tweeted that he had no book. “Get off your duff and write one!” I replied with a smiley emoji. “It is apparently the price of admission.”

Hassan stays at it—keeping on the watch:

“Has everyone seen this video of Donald Trump?  Senior cabinet members grovel in the exact same way Scientologists do with Miscavage.  Does this LOOK like a healthy organization to you? This is not normal.  This is cult behavior.”

“He has actually said just the opposite,” I replied, “that his advisors do not have to agree with him and he likes the mix they bring to the table. To be sure, not many of them last too long.”

“He says often what he thinks people want him to say or what he is told to say, but actions are what count!”

“I don’t see it, Steve,” I wrote. “To get a job, you must convey that you are a “team player” Try putting on your resume that your talent lies in challenging or broadening out the boss. Most bosses want a cohesive team that will recognize who leads. Have other POTUSs not done this also?”

Of course! Trump does bully on his feed, but the Presidency has been called the “bully pulpit,” after all. It is just that he is better at it than others that gets into Steve’s craw. If he bullied on Steve’s side, I can’t imagine him having any problem with it. It’s not mind-control that he is upset with. It is the mind-control that is not that from his side. I barely restrainsmyself from playing devil’s advocate far more than the little bit that I do. There are genuine reasons to dislike Trump, and plenty of people take up those reasons. You could call him a bull in a china shop, except to do that one must accept the premise that government as usual is a china shop. Junkyard dog in a junkyard perhaps works better. But this mind control charge strikes me as pure looniness. 

“How is it that SO MANY people in this country are STILL under the spell of Donald Trump?” he tweets.

“Though most of us throw our arms up in disgust or confusion, the answer to this question is actually quite simple:”

“Trump, the Republican Party and the right-wing media industrial complex are manipulating the public. They are employing the same techniques advertisers and public relations professionals use but have done so in an even more potent way.”

“They harness fear.  They repeat messages over and over again.  They disorient with conflicting messages.  They wage war on detractors.”

It is not that they don’t do it. It is that everyone else doesn’t do it as well.

“We somehow think that “mind control” and “brainwashing” only exist in Hollywood movies but they are very REAL phenomena and through the relatively new medium of the internet, we are seeing mind control like we’ve never seen in human history.”

“The only remedy is knowledge.  We need to educate ourselves so we can educate others.  If you want to understand more, let me know,” thus taking for granted his role in disseminating true knowledge. 

Still, I want to take his message to heart. There is on this forum an unabashed Trump advocate. Can I help him break free from his cult? Mr. Hassan sets the goal:

“At EVERY point in this process (and I’ve been doing this for 40+ years for people lost in cults) we want to be gentle and caring. Arguing or TELLING them they are wrong will accomplish nothing.  We want them to have their OWN “Aha!” moment.  We never force it.”

Okay. I will try with @James Thomas Rook Jr.. Let’s see if I can help him to have his own “AHA!” moment. It won’t be easy because he is a blockhead. But I owe it to him to try.

Hello James. Have I told you lately that I feel love for you, just like Jesus felt love for the rich young ruler? I only want to help you—you must believe me. I do not want to take your trump-trump away. No.

But I have noticed—I say this only because I love and respect you—that whereas you used to be the most fun and pleasant person to be around, lately you have turned into a mean-spirited so-and-so. Do you even realize that the “Arab” you just spit at was actually a Jew?

Have you noted that the President does name calling? Do you think this is very nice? How do you expect other countries to respect America if it’s leader is not nice? [Have your “Aha!” moment yet, you fathead? No? Well, let’s continue] 

Hitler was not nice, was he? I know that we will agree on that. See, I am trying to build a bridge to you. I am establishing trust and support, and I will be delicate. Stalin was not nice either. And Pol Pot—what a meanie he was! These are facts I am telling you, James. I know that you will recognize that, for you are very smart, and I know that you will see that Trump is just like them. See? I am attempting a fundamentally new conversation with you, James. Thank you for allowing me to prove my point.

Alright, that’s enough! Am I my brother’s keeper? If he comes around, so be it. I hope he does, but there is only so much one person can do.

If Trump hadn’t been elected President, I would not have had the gift—an entirely unanticipated one—of Steve Hassan the anti-cultist revealing to all that he is just another political leftist.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

TTH:

Just make sure that, since the Society is being attacked by Norway for violation of the most basic of human rights ... the right to vote ...and they are considering withholding tax subsidies paid to the WTB&TS for all 112,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Norway, as they do to all churches, per congregant ... and anticipating that this loss of millions of dollars will get the Society's attention about what violates basic human rights ...make sure you register to vote.

I have had a LOT of brothers over the years disagree with anything and everything I did, and do.

When I hear "Brother Rook , it's commendable that you ___________________ insert subject here ___________, BUT ..."

it's all I can do to suppress the gag reflex.

[TrueTomHarley]

13 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

and they are considering withholding tax subsidies ...and anticipating that this loss of millions of dollars will get the Society's attention about what violates basic human rights

Doubtless it will. But no more so than the plight of brothers who are locked up in Eritria—it has occupied their attention for decades—where they don’t have a dime at stake. The aim it to stomp out the dissemination of Bible based beliefs, an aim with which you fully cooperate.

13 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

When I hear "Brother Rook , it's commendable that you ___________________ insert subject here ___________, BUT ..."

it's all I can do to suppress the gag reflex.

I learned long ago not to do this. Not matter how respectful and conciliatory one is, completely with imputing good motives, it does nothing to stem the vitriol you emanate toward those taking the lead in the Christian work.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

10 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I learned long ago not to do this. Not matter how respectful and conciliatory one is, completely with imputing good motives, it does nothing to stem the vitriol you emanate toward those taking the lead in the Christian work.

Do you perhaps think the new "Shepherding the Flock of God" of 2019 elder's manual would have evolved progressively as it has, since 2010, without CONSTANT vitriolic feedback from those who were incensed by factions in the previous editions?

I don't.

I watched it all happen.

The Governing Body's 2017 admission that they were NOT inspired of God was kinda a "DUH!" statement, yet the progress is palpable ... inspired by those that bitch and moan, and groan from their heavy burdens .... and vote with their wallet.

It is like the Widow that ONLY got Justice from a Judge, because she was "in his face", all the time.

A vitriolic pest. worthy of mention in the Bible to illustrate an important fact of life.