Monday, February 13, 2023

News bits: Regarding the Jesus loves everyone TV ads; Israel wins, Palestine loses; etc.

The Jesus TV ad campaign: The two Jesus gets you ads I saw yesterday during the super bowl were revolting and infuriating to me. But probably most people saw them as sweet and loving expressions of Gods gentle grace and boundless tolerance of diversity. In my opinion, this Christian nationalist (CN) funded ad campaign is firmly grounded in the shameless, hypocrisy and deceit, and deep mendacity that underpins the elites who control theocratic CN movement. The Jacobin commented on the ad campaign a week before the super bowl:
The foundation behind a $20 million Super Bowl advertising campaign to promote “the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love” has also bankrolled a conservative nonprofit leading efforts to roll back abortion rights and allow businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers.

He Gets Us is a subsidiary of the Servant Foundation, a Kansas-based charity also known as The Signatry that says it “exists to inspire and facilitate revolutionary, biblical generosity.”

Between 2018 and 2020, the Servant Foundation donated more than $50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom — a nonprofit that’s led big policy fights over abortion and nondiscrimination laws at the Supreme Court and in states around the country. The nonprofit is designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Alliance Defending Freedom says it helped draft the 2018 Mississippi abortion law at the heart of the Supreme Court decision last year allowing states to ban the procedure — and also helped argue that case before the high court. This term, the Alliance Defending Freedom is leading a new Supreme Court case arguing that businesses should be able to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers.

While the Servant Foundation reported having nearly $1 billion in assets and making $390 million in grants in its 2020 tax return, its contributions to the Alliance Defending Freedom were among the five largest donations given out by the foundation in each of those three years, according to our review.

“He Gets Us is a movement to reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible and his confounding love and forgiveness,” said a spokesperson for the company. “The campaign is governed by the Servant Foundation, a 501(c)(3) [charity] with a 100/100 Charity Navigator rating.”  
He Gets Us says it wants to help people “understand the authentic Jesus as he’s depicted in the Bible — the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love.” 

In one ad, the company says, “Jesus struggled to make ends meet, too.” A family-focused video says, “Jesus disagreed with loved ones. But didn’t disown them.” Another ad describes Jesus as “an influencer who became insanely popular” — before he “was canceled.”
Jesus may have lived a life of confounding love and forgiveness as a human in ancient times, but the modern radical right CN movement is the opposite. It openly promotes hate, intolerance and vengeance. It corrupts politics and backs efforts to cancel and discriminate against the LGBQT community, immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, women and non-Christians. CN's cynical hypocrisy and deceit here is beyond revolting. 

Q: Is me being revolted and angry at the hypocrisy, irrationality and deceit that underpins this taxpayer-supported propaganda campaign irrational, unwarranted, over the top and/or counterproductive?


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The Middle East misery and violence end game: The final moments of the Israel vs Palestine game are playing out as expected. The crowds are heading for the exits. Palestine lost, Israel won. Guess its time for the United Nations to find another plot of land for a new nation called Palestine, or whatever the worlds blasé/self-interested overlords choose to call it The the game can begin anew with the Palestinians oppressing the locals in the games new frontier. 

The rationale for doing that? How about the world’s indifference to the deed oppression of a hated ethnic minority called the Palestinians at the hands of a ruthless oppressor. The Guardian writes:
Israel to authorize nine ‘wild’ West Bank settlements

Security cabinet announces recognition of areas built without Israeli authorization, after series of attacks in East Jerusalem

Israel’s security cabinet has announced it will authorize nine settlements in the occupied West Bank after a series of attacks in East Jerusalem, including one that killed three Israelis.

“In response to the murderous terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, the security cabinet decided unanimously to authorize nine communities in Judea and Samaria,” the office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement on Sunday that included the name Israel uses for the West Bank.
Authorizing only nine? Why not finally end the game and authorize settlements anywhere that Israel  radical right religious fundamentalists want? Its only a matter of time. Just go ahead put the Palestinians out of their misery and drive them all completely out. That’s the humane thing to do. Right?

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The Republican 2024 presidential race: It is still early and everything could change, but experts indicate that if there is one or more reasonably popular Republican candidates running for president in addition to DeSantis, that will split the vote and make Trump the party nominee. At present, that seems highly likely based on current polling data. Various sources, e.g., the AP**,  are reporting that this coming Wednesday, Nikki Haley will announce her candidacy. Experts who assessed poll data on a Haley vs DeSantis vs Trump race predict that Trump would win because Haley would hurt DeSantis more than Trump. As it is now, DeSantis is in 2nd place behind Trump among Republican voters. But, it is too early to put much weigh on these predictions. There are just plausible possible outcomes, nothing more.

** For context, Haley appears to be not much different from Trump. In 2018, she commented on her time in the Trump administration: “I proudly serve in this administration, and I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country.” The direction that Trump was taking the US was undeniably away from secular democracy and into corrupt capitalist authoritarianism and corrupt Christian fundamentalist theocracy.  


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