Graeme Decarie
Well-Known Member
This should really be a new post -but I'm not smart enough to know how to do that. Anyway, it sort of fits in with Trump.
Trump has ordered that the funeral of Billy Graham be held under the Rotunda in Washington's capital. This is a very, very rare honour. So why do it?
Billy Graham was a Baptist evangelist who, from 1949 into the 1990s was virtually the evangelist-in-chief for the White House. He had an open door to give religious advice to the presidents, cabinet members, Senators, and did so in a gruelling schedule. No other clergyman has ever done that. To understand that, you have to understand two things about Billy Graham.
He grew up in an American belief that God was an American. They called it Manifest Destiny, the belief that it was God's will that they should kill native peoples, invade Canada, Mexico, Latin American, The Phillipines.... God wanted Americans - and American capitalists - to rule the world. The British Empire was built on a similar view. And the poet Kipling welcomed Americans into that myth of God's will with his poem "Take up the White Man's Burden".
By 1945, the thinking of American politicians and capitalists had taken a giant leap in that concept. Their next target would be China to capture the immense wealth of Chinese trade and cheap labour. That's what the Korean war was about. Indeed, American capitalists were now - and still are - seriously looking at world domination.
But one problem that concerned them was that Americans might become critical of a nation run by capitalists, one in which most Americans would be neglected. A particular fear was that they might be attracted to communism. One result of this was the formation of Senator McCarthy's committee on unAmerican activities. It attacked the Soviet Union because it's communism was not American. (However, American capitalism's killing of North Koreans and enslavement of Latin Americans was good - and very American.) A supporter of McCarthy was the very wealthy William Randolph Hearst, America's most successful newspaper magnate. He heard of two preachers, Billy Graham and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, both of whom were developing large followings, both of whom were anti-communist. Hearst ordered his newspapers to give lots of reporting about them, to make them famous.
(I should add in all of this that none of these people really knew what communism was. Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was certainly evil. But it was never communist. In fact, so far as I know, no nation has ever been communist. The irving press still doesn't know that.)
Politicians, too, saw the advantages of these anti-communist preachers. They would further the anti-communist crusade, and they could build support for politicians. Billy Graham would be particularly useful to appeal to the votes of the bible belt. (So it is not a coincidence that Trump ordered the funeral to be held in the capitol.)
In particular, politicians saw the advantage of getting PR through inviting them to give religious counsel to them on a regular basis. So he did. And, though he advised presidents not noted for their religious values - from Truman to Nixon to Johnson to George Bush Sr. - Billy Graham never once criticized their wars in which they killed millions, mostly civilians. He never criticized mass bombing with napalm, never mentioned the Agent Orange in Vietnam that is still killing people. And most certainly, he never criticized the massive corruption of American governments by billionaires - or the neglect of the poor - or the failure of the U.S. to provide even basic social services -or the massive shift of national wealth from the poor to the very rich which was a feature from the 1960s on.
When Martin Luther King didn't get invitations like that. And when he spoke on social problems, he was killed. But Billy Graham represented a God for whom Americans were His chosen people, and capitalism His chosen economy. American capitalists and politicians and armies had a right to kill. And those who were killed were victims of their own evil and ungodliness. And their killers were still God's chosen people.
For all his skill as an orator, Billy Graham's understanding of Christianity (and of American history and of economic systems) was primitive. And those he 'brought to God' were brought into false belief in being killers for an American god.
He was a stooge for politicians and capitalists, a front created to justify what was a thoroughly unChristian leadership of the U.S. The people who created him -like William Randolph Hearst and Richard Nixon and the rest - were scoundrels and killers consumed by greed.
P.S. Because Billy Graham believed in an American God, he was disturbed that Jews were prominent as news media owners.
He expressed this to Richard Nixon, not knowing that the tape recorder was on.
I have no doubt that pulpits across Canada this Sunday will vibrate with sermons about the greatness of Billy Graham. Canadian clergy, too, seem to believe that God is a Canadian, that an economic system that penalizes the poor for being poor is quite in accord with the teaching of Jesus, and it's okay to drop napalm on foreign children, especially if they're communists.
As with Billy Graham, Christianity has come to mean drifting along with the rest.
Trump has ordered that the funeral of Billy Graham be held under the Rotunda in Washington's capital. This is a very, very rare honour. So why do it?
Billy Graham was a Baptist evangelist who, from 1949 into the 1990s was virtually the evangelist-in-chief for the White House. He had an open door to give religious advice to the presidents, cabinet members, Senators, and did so in a gruelling schedule. No other clergyman has ever done that. To understand that, you have to understand two things about Billy Graham.
He grew up in an American belief that God was an American. They called it Manifest Destiny, the belief that it was God's will that they should kill native peoples, invade Canada, Mexico, Latin American, The Phillipines.... God wanted Americans - and American capitalists - to rule the world. The British Empire was built on a similar view. And the poet Kipling welcomed Americans into that myth of God's will with his poem "Take up the White Man's Burden".
By 1945, the thinking of American politicians and capitalists had taken a giant leap in that concept. Their next target would be China to capture the immense wealth of Chinese trade and cheap labour. That's what the Korean war was about. Indeed, American capitalists were now - and still are - seriously looking at world domination.
But one problem that concerned them was that Americans might become critical of a nation run by capitalists, one in which most Americans would be neglected. A particular fear was that they might be attracted to communism. One result of this was the formation of Senator McCarthy's committee on unAmerican activities. It attacked the Soviet Union because it's communism was not American. (However, American capitalism's killing of North Koreans and enslavement of Latin Americans was good - and very American.) A supporter of McCarthy was the very wealthy William Randolph Hearst, America's most successful newspaper magnate. He heard of two preachers, Billy Graham and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, both of whom were developing large followings, both of whom were anti-communist. Hearst ordered his newspapers to give lots of reporting about them, to make them famous.
(I should add in all of this that none of these people really knew what communism was. Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was certainly evil. But it was never communist. In fact, so far as I know, no nation has ever been communist. The irving press still doesn't know that.)
Politicians, too, saw the advantages of these anti-communist preachers. They would further the anti-communist crusade, and they could build support for politicians. Billy Graham would be particularly useful to appeal to the votes of the bible belt. (So it is not a coincidence that Trump ordered the funeral to be held in the capitol.)
In particular, politicians saw the advantage of getting PR through inviting them to give religious counsel to them on a regular basis. So he did. And, though he advised presidents not noted for their religious values - from Truman to Nixon to Johnson to George Bush Sr. - Billy Graham never once criticized their wars in which they killed millions, mostly civilians. He never criticized mass bombing with napalm, never mentioned the Agent Orange in Vietnam that is still killing people. And most certainly, he never criticized the massive corruption of American governments by billionaires - or the neglect of the poor - or the failure of the U.S. to provide even basic social services -or the massive shift of national wealth from the poor to the very rich which was a feature from the 1960s on.
When Martin Luther King didn't get invitations like that. And when he spoke on social problems, he was killed. But Billy Graham represented a God for whom Americans were His chosen people, and capitalism His chosen economy. American capitalists and politicians and armies had a right to kill. And those who were killed were victims of their own evil and ungodliness. And their killers were still God's chosen people.
For all his skill as an orator, Billy Graham's understanding of Christianity (and of American history and of economic systems) was primitive. And those he 'brought to God' were brought into false belief in being killers for an American god.
He was a stooge for politicians and capitalists, a front created to justify what was a thoroughly unChristian leadership of the U.S. The people who created him -like William Randolph Hearst and Richard Nixon and the rest - were scoundrels and killers consumed by greed.
P.S. Because Billy Graham believed in an American God, he was disturbed that Jews were prominent as news media owners.
He expressed this to Richard Nixon, not knowing that the tape recorder was on.
I have no doubt that pulpits across Canada this Sunday will vibrate with sermons about the greatness of Billy Graham. Canadian clergy, too, seem to believe that God is a Canadian, that an economic system that penalizes the poor for being poor is quite in accord with the teaching of Jesus, and it's okay to drop napalm on foreign children, especially if they're communists.
As with Billy Graham, Christianity has come to mean drifting along with the rest.
