How Christian Zionists got their man into the White House

"Last summer, the New York Times reported that Pence appeared to be preparing for a presidential bid. Pence vehemently denied the story. Pence imagined the real possibility of the GOP turning on Trump after another major scandal ensuring Pence's subsequent rise.

The United States could end up with a truly evangelical president. What is worrying is not that Pence believes in God, but that he seems certain God believes in him.

Mainstream Christian Biblical scholars regard the Bible text as allegorical. The Christian Zionists believe in a literal interpretation of the tediously, torturous text of the book of Revelations.

The Christian Zionist movement however is not a recent phenomenon. There have been more than a century of efforts to restore Israel to a largely illusory biblical glory. In the 1600s King James I suggested that "the End of Days" would take place in Palestine.

He believed, as the Christian Zionists do now, that the Hebrew tribes must be reunited and return from diaspora so the final battle between the forces of evil and the messiah could take place at Armageddon."

Pence - what a fucking nutcase.

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Chart: What Assets Make Up Wealth?

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The Everything Bubble

US foreign policy as bellicose as ever

By January 2017, Reagan’s eternal rest was no longer threatened. ‘Presidents come and go but the policy never changes,’ Putin concluded (7). Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington.

Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a ‘presentable’ enemy once ISIS’s military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow’s alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who ‘promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel’s security non-negotiable’ (8), hated Trump’s neo-isolationist instincts.

The media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post, eagerly sought a new Watergate scandal and knew their middle-class, urban, educated readers loathe Trump for his vulgarity, affection for the far right, violence and lack of culture (9). So they were searching for any information or rumour that could cause his removal or force a resignation. As in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express,everyone had his particular motive for striking the same victim.

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