Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Donald Trump's appearances as a boxing commentator and a Moonies convention - on a day when almost every other living president spent this solemn moment commemorating those who lost their lives on 9/11 twenty years ago.
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Hey everybody, just wanted to let you know that the paperback addiction... BAH!
Doesn't happen very often, but it happens.
I have a paperback addiction.
Addiction!
That's funny.
That's actually really funny.
Yeah.
Hey everybody, just wanted to let you know that the paperback edition of American Rule, How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, is out today, Tuesday, September 14th.
It is a real reckoning with American history that explains how we've arrived at this moment of crisis, gives a little bit of hope and direction in how we might make things better.
And if you got the hardback edition, the good news is there is an additional chapter, which deals with the attempted coup of January 6th, Trump's attempts to try and steal the election and this horrific tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic.
So if you haven't already, and maybe if you already have, go ahead and pick up the paperback edition.
Get it to somebody that needs to hear the truth and everything.
And thank you again for all your support.
I want to thank the Universal Peace Federation, and in particular, Dr. Hawk Jahan Moon, a tremendous person for her incredible work on behalf of peace all over the world.
I also want to thank her late husband, Reverend Moon, for founding The Washington Times, an organization for which I have tremendous respect and admiration.
Under my leadership, the United States adopted a policy of unprecedented strength, doing more than any prior administration to ensure that America and its allies could always protect our citizens.
Okay.
Okay.
You good?
Yeah, I'll just keep it rolling.
Okay.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Saxton.
I'm here, as always, with Nick Halseman.
We hope you're having a decent week so far.
We're guessing that it probably was not as good of a start as former President Donald Trump.
And unfortunately, we don't like having to check in with him, but there are moments where Of course, he dominates the news cycle, and as America is trying to climb out from the wreckage of his presidency, he chose the 20th anniversary of 9-11 to sort of reemerge in the public eye, which I don't know about you, Nick, but I think that's just totally appropriate.
Sure.
Well, you know, he doesn't experience FOMO.
Are you familiar with that term?
fear of missing out, apparently, since he didn't seem to want to be at either Shanksville or New York with all the other former presidents to honor the dead and the injured.
Yeah, I don't know if you watch this stuff, but so much took place on the 20th anniversary of 9-11.
And of course, we had most of the living presidents in New York City to commemorate the tragedy of 9-11.
Also, if you haven't listened already to the Weekender edition for patrons that we did last week, which broke down 9-11, and also we talked a lot about the involvement of the Saudis, which, you know, release documents are now showing is more and more apt and unfortunate.
But so we had most of the living presidents in New York City sans Donald Trump.
Then we had George W. Bush, who by the way can still go fuck himself and everybody still wants to pretend like he's a halfway decent human, who gave a speech and said that not only do we need to worry about terrorism, but that the forces of anti-democracy and domestic terrorists have now become a major, major problem in the United States of America.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump.
The last sitting president of the United States of America, on the 20th anniversary of September 11th, decided to double book his dance card, and first of all, was providing color commentating for an Evander Holifield boxing exhibition, because how else are you supposed to honor the memory of those who have fallen besides, you know, chipping in on the mic for a bullshit fight?
Well, you know, just so you know, Holyfield wasn't even supposed to fight in this bout.
You know, apparently, Oxford, LA gets COVID, is hospitalized, having been vaccinated on a breakthrough case.
So, I mean, the idea that Holyfield would just get out of, you know, come out of retirement for a week of preparation to actually fight somebody, he was a little older himself, is reminiscent of the organizational skills of, you know, the Trump administration.
Well, and it was one of those bullshit events that is very Trump-like.
It's very obvious that the people who ran this thing are absolute hucksters who put together this under false pretenses.
They misrepresented what the actual matches were.
They have now been classified as exhibitions versus professional boxing matches.
It had to go to Florida in order to get out from underneath the overseeing regulatory bodies.
And it goes down to Florida.
And Donald Trump takes God knows how much money from these people who the guy who runs the thing has since lied about offering Barack Obama an opportunity.
And Barack Obama is like, you know, do not talk about me.
Do not use my name.
And Donald Trump takes that money and decides that it is proper for a former president to spend the 20th anniversary of September 11th chipping in on an absolute bullshit boxing match.
You know, let's give credit to Jim Lampley, who is the legitimate source of boxing commentary on every major fight and was supposed to do this as well.
And as soon as he heard that Junior and TFG, is that what we call them now, were doing it, he completely and utterly backed out and delegitimized this new streaming platform.
So I just want to make sure, was Jim Lampley in the Rockies?
I'm pretty sure he was in Rocky, at least one of the Rocky movies too.
So if not, he did very well.
Just, you know, credit to him for pulling out because we don't see enough of that where people are like, take a stand and actually bypass the ability to be, you know, in front of people and do your job because they'd be next to, you know, those guys.
Well, Donald Trump has become so radioactively toxic that people are unwilling to share a space with him.
But a good news for everybody is that there are still people willing to share a space with Donald Trump.
And the real main event of this entire thing that we wanted to talk about and really break down, a really incredible moment as Donald Trump, the former president of the United States of America, beamed in to a meeting of the Unification Church, or as they're more widely beamed in to a meeting of the Unification Church, or as they're more widely known as the Moonies, an international cult that has brainwashed people, mistreated
Donald Trump beamed into the meeting on the 20th anniversary of September 11th.
And if you haven't seen the video of this, I recommend people go out and find it.
He's in front of a galactic background.
It looks like he's on some sort of a space mission as he's talking to them.
Of course, he goes through the usual stuff.
He talks about how beautiful people are, how tremendous they are.
He pats himself on the back for his relationship with North Korea.
And he does all of this, obviously, for money and access and support, which is, um, let me check my notes, an absolute disgrace.
is how I would characterize it.
An absolute disgrace.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it's as disgraceful as him going to the DMZ in between North and South Korea and validating North Korea's regime.
And again, does he not have anybody who works for him?
Here's my impression, because I know you're going to blow this whole thing up, but my impression was, all he heard was, How much?
Roll those cameras!
Like, that's all he got as far as understanding what he was appearing at.
But I think that's not the case, right?
You have to film me on some more background.
Well, so to go ahead and pull the curtain back, Nick and I had discussed this episode and we were going to talk about Trump speaking to the Moonies.
And then I told him that there was some information that I was withholding from him.
And I wanted because I wanted this to be an organic process, because maybe there are listeners who don't know about this stuff as well.
And so they can learn along with Nick and we can have like a real verite moment here where we're talking about this situation.
Because on one hand, it absolutely is somebody passed Donald Trump a check and said, will you come and speak to us?
And he would do it.
That's who he is.
He has no actual scruples.
He has no actual principles.
I tweeted about this.
He would have spoken to a flat earth society.
You know what I mean?
He wouldn't have even had a moment of hesitation on that, correct?
Right, for sure.
Flatterer.
Yeah, go ahead.
So the Moonies, to get you up to speed... He would almost speak at a Democratic convention if they paid him.
Oh yeah, for sure!
I mean, for decades he was going around telling everyone he was a Democrat.
I mean, he gave money to the Clintons while he was giving money to the Republican Party.
He does not Care.
And that's the whole point of what we're talking about here is how money and influence can absolutely make anything happen, particularly when you have a party like the Republican Party.
So to get people up to speed on the Moonies, and undoubtedly you've heard of them before, but this is a group that They're most famous for having mass weddings when they were, you know, putting couples together and they would officiate over these big, giant weddings.
And the leader of the group, Moon, had told everybody that he was the new messiah and that he was taking over the gospel of Christ.
And this is a weird movement that is all about apocalyptic Christianity.
Which, you know, we're very familiar with on this show, and we'll talk about a little bit more.
This is about the unification of the Koreas, which makes the Trump North Korea trip more interesting as we start to learn some more facts.
And this is a group that has controlled its members, it's pilfered their money, it has absolutely bullied them and kept them under watch and key.
And on top of that, lately, Before we get into the background that might shock some people in this, there's also an offshoot.
The son of the Reverend Moon, Sean Moon, who I know this is going to surprise some people.
Let me see.
January 6, 2021, he was doing something.
Nick, do you want to guess what he was doing on January 6, 2021?
Bowling?
He was hanging out, you know.
Because when you ask me like what church people do, like functions, I just think bowling.
Well, close.
He was in Washington, D.C.
in the rally about the 2020 election.
And then they marched to the bowling alley?
Yeah, to the bowling alley.
And here's a fun thing about Sean Moon, which is that he has created a splinter church off of the Mooney church.
Which is called the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Church.
So, sounds on the up and up, probably just worshiping, fellowship, all of that.
Interesting fact about them, a lot of their services are done while their members are holding and brandishing their AR-15s, which They are forced to buy because they believe in an apocalyptic confrontation that is going to take place between their church and the forces of evil, the New World Order, you name it.
And while they're taking these services and sacraments while holding their AR-15s, a lot of the time, Nick, they're wearing hats.
Do you want to take a guess at what those hats might look like or say?
Do they have any, you know, sort of early 20s Hollywood movie, black and white feel to it at all?
Am I close?
Close.
They're actually red and white hats that say, Make America Great Again.
Oh, okay.
While they are worshiping their, and by the way, if his dad is the messiah, then that makes him another messiah-like figure, while they're holding their AR-15s and preparing for gunfights.
Now, that would be bad enough.
If that was simply where it was at.
If it just popped up and it was like a side effect of modern politics or the drift towards authoritarianism.
But I'm just going to read you a list of Republicans who have spoken to the Moonies.
Many of them in front of this celestial background that Donald Trump spoke in front of.
Are you ready for that?
I'm ready.
I'm sitting down.
Tell me if these names ring any bells.
Mike Pence.
I know him.
him you okay you're you're aware of him okay um mike pompeo i i'm aware of him too okay okay so two for two that's good that's good um newton leroy gingrich yeah he's he's definitely someone who's familiar okay okay Oh, wow.
You know, somebody who I was dreaming about the other day.
Awesome.
Yeah, yeah, lay it on me.
Do you want one more?
Because this is fun.
Yeah, yeah, lay it on me.
George H.W. Bush.
Oh, poppy.
Yeah, and it turns out that one of the reasons why that a lot of these people have spoken to the Moonies is because while the Moonies are bringing in these people and they're taking their money, one of the main things that the church has been doing with their money is, has been pushing it into right wing conservative GOP causes, including groups, including political action committees, including elections.
So the GOP has actually relied on this apocalyptic brainwashing cult for decades now.
You know, I want to give kudos to this, to the Moonies.
You got to tip your hat.
You gotta tip your Make America Great Again hat to him.
Because, you know, if you're going to create a cult, and let's, you know, we can't make it miss words here.
This is a cult, and if you lived in, like, the Bay Area in the 70s, like, this is, they'd be everywhere.
Why invent something like, you know, L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, when you can just use Jesus
for your cult and that to me is like wow I mean I have a feeling if we did some 70s research into the cult movement then a lot of them did use like you know the teachings of Jesus but this is like they try to legitimize themselves as a church of Jesus to bring everybody in and it make it gives you the sheen of legitimacy and then they hit you over the head with all of their cult stuff by the way you know AR-15s are described in the Bible Jared as called they're called steel rods that you're supposed to use as
I'm sorry, that just blew my mind a little bit.
As a person who grew up in a Christian cult environment, you're speaking my language.
And that's what I'm saying.
It's very strange to hear you speak my language.
And the moment that that happens, like there's that old framework, the old You know, it's like the algorithm that runs in the background, the operating system, like it's still there.
So when you start talking about, you know, steel rods and iron rods and all of that, like all of a sudden my brain starts lighting up because that stuff is still in there.
But speaking of that, and by the way, you'll notice that the people who I just read are pretty much focused on a theocratic type of Republican Party, particularly Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo.
Like, that's their bread and butter, right?
They are very interested in using GOP politics and the right wing to forward prosperity in terms of economics, but also to try and create a theocratic society where, I don't know, women are allowed to have the right to choose, there's a subjugation of people, you know, people are basically underneath the iron fist of a Christian rule.
And one of the originators of that idea, Nick, is a guy, tell me if this name sounds familiar, a guy named Jerry Falwell.
Yeah, his son has a nice pool in his backyard.
I've heard that.
I hear that the pool guy spends a lot of time over there.
So Jerry Falwell, who, you know, we've spoken about this guy before, but, you know, we've been getting a lot of new listeners, so let's get everybody up to speed.
Jerry Falwell was a white supremacist neo-confederate preacher who gained a foothold particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.
As he preached at the time about white supremacy and was an opponent of segregation and then eventually used the issue of abortion to galvanize the quote-unquote evangelical right and then merge it with the GOP post Jimmy Carter.
Well, Jerry Falwell, tell me if this sounds interesting to you, Nick.
He ran into a little bit of money trouble.
See, when you are Running a giant Christian empire, right?
When you're flying on jets and when you're, you know, you're trying to help Tammy Faye Baker and Jim Baker, like, you know, as they're embezzling God knows how much money, right?
As you're doing all this, as you're hobnobbing with Ronald Reagan and hoping that that's the day where he's mentally there as you're trying to tell him about your agenda, he ran into A little bit of money trouble, Nick.
You know, as one would want to do.
As one does.
Quick question, Nick.
Where do you think Jerry Falwell went to help himself in Liberty University?
Well, he must be gone to the Republican Party.
Yeah, but the Republican Party is not going to write that check.
I'll tell you who is going to write the check.
The Moonies.
And so what we actually have found here Is that the Republican Party?
For decades now, has relied on an abusive cult in order to raise funds, in order to create a voting base, in order to give them logistical help.
This has spread throughout the party, but it has also spread throughout the evangelical right.
And by the way, I told you one of the main things that this cult is interested in is the unification of North Korea, which last time I checked, There are two Koreas currently, and that's because of the Korean War, which was the action of America.
The GOP has for decades now said that they will protect South Korea, called North Korea a war-mongering country, but you've noticed that over the past couple of years that started to change for some reason.
That started to move.
It's almost like the Republican Party Is cozying up with this cult in order to continue to prop themselves up with whatever money and influence and movement that they can possibly have because they are, let me check my notes here too, without principle.
For sure.
Well, by the way, do you want any proof of this or do you feel like you just want to throw these things out there as theories without any evidence?
Because I can throw out one thing, and it's not even that long ago.
I'm old enough to remember when Trump had signed an executive order that would free up churches to be tax-exempt and they could be more politically active.
The Johnson Amendment is another one of those things.
They were trying to repeal it or they were trying to repeal it.
And again, all in the name of let's get these churches shilling for us as much as possible.
And at the very least, back when LBJ was in office, they recognized the problem with that and had put the law in to stop that from happening.
And so, and by the way, that goes for both sides because the Democrats would use it too, or they would try.
And it's like, we need to start figuring out other ways to keep religion out of politics.
I already said this, actually I'm not even sure if I brought up the actual ideology I had from a tweet last week when, maybe I did, maybe you had to correct me.
But I was like, if the mixture of religion and democracy clearly is going to lead to the downfall of it, then what does that say about communism?
Which rejects religion, in theory, at least.
Now, you have a response to that, I know, but certainly when you have a governmental system that completely recognizes the evils of mixing religion with it, that that's good.
We should probably find something that can do that better than what we're doing now.
Well, you know, I'm actually really glad you brought that up.
I've been doing the research on the book recently, and I'm currently within the founding of the Soviet Union, right?
Oh, nice.
And so what I've actually found is that it was a complete betrayal of communism in every single possible way.
And so you actually, you have this group of people who overthrow, you know, the Tsar and Russia, and then they come in and they carry out this violence and they basically terrorize the country, they survive a civil war, and a few years after that you have Vladimir Lenin, who, by the way, just to go ahead and spoil a couple of things,
One of the funniest things about Russian history is that Vladimir Lenin would just run away at the slightest provocation and wear costumes in order to get in and out of the country.
Thinking about it makes me chuckle, actually, quite a bit.
But so, you know, Lenin comes back and Lenin takes over and is in control of the country.
And as he's dying, you know, you have Joseph Stalin, who sort of hides Lenin away in order to control him.
And Vladimir Lenin, who, of course, was like completely anti-religion and anti, you know, religious orthodoxy.
Everyone's like, you know who'd make a really good religious figure?
Vladimir Lenin.
And so you have this group of people, they actually call themselves God builders, and they believe that the only way to make communism work would be to create a cult of religion.
And so what do they do?
They actually, weirdly enough, they take Vladimir Lenin after he dies.
And for anybody who's familiar with this, he's been on display since he died about a hundred years ago.
He's in this mausoleum where you can see him and he's like in this weird like sort of stasis of a sit-up, right?
And they take his body and they like do all kinds of weird experiments on it.
They actually try and freeze him a la Walt Disney to see if they can bring him back to life at some point because science will do it.
They try all kinds of procedures on him and they intentionally and tirelessly turn him into a religious icon.
And so what they actually do is that they go ahead and they just take the religious idea and then they turn it around.
Same thing happened with the French Revolution.
They got rid of the worship of a Christian God and they started worshiping either the Revolution and or, you know, later on Robespierre.
And so what you actually see is that like even the people who reject this stuff, they go ahead and they embrace it because it's powerful.
And that, of course, is what the right has done in this regard.
Like, of course they have a religious background.
But I have to tell you, people like George H.W.
Bush didn't give a shit about religion.
That wasn't their thing.
That wasn't their bag, you know?
They got off on geopolitics.
They got off on, like, you know, making an oil deal with the Saudis or whatever.
And instead, they saw it as a really Useful tool.
And what did they do?
They made their bed with these people.
They made their bed with Falwell, right?
Who was pushing segregation and who was pushing white supremacy.
Now they're making their bed with people who are worshipping holding AR-15s and expecting a giant spiritual civil war and bloodletting.
Like, they have made their deal.
That's who they're in bed with and they're inseparable at this point.
Well they must have thought in the beginning that they were like franchises where they can now bring or well I guess it's almost like you're going to um you know back in the 80s everyone was like mergers and acquisitions we're just going to envelop them and that'll just give us a whole other arm of a whole other vertical that we can reach uh so they were I'm sure thinking that that was sort of what this was to sort of get their reach out but then
What happens when, yeah, you don't vet who you're bringing in and then it becomes infected from the inside, and then they have no choice but to continue this because there's more people who these, you know, churches reach that are insane, like the non-vaxxing, non-masking people who, you know, don't care, you know, if they're voting for anybody that's not Democrat.
You know, that's what's taking over.
You know, that's the loudest thing.
By the way, it's funny because we keep coming back to this notion of like, how many of these people are there in the country?
And it sort of became a big thing when Trump, you know, looked like he was going to win.
And we realized there's just enough people in this country who are crazy and who are not really like, you know, either they're not educated enough or they're not, or they're just, you know, they're conspiracy theorists.
And that number was always around 30 something, right?
33%, 34%.
Well, you know, guess what?
The percentage of people who will not get the vaccines, who simply will not get the vaccines, it's 30%.
It's that same percentage almost, right?
And I have a feeling the Venn diagrams are pretty close to a circle here.
But anyway, so that is the problem.
But here's the thing, like, you know, I would like to give respect to people who want to dedicate their lives to a higher calling and have supreme faith in something, you know, higher than ourselves.
But, you know, if you listen to what you're saying closely, it kind of feels like you might be advocating for, like, we shouldn't believe in anything too fervently.
I, you know, okay, so real fast, I want to go ahead and split this into a couple things.
You said that that's exactly right, that there is a percentage of people in this country who won't get vaccinated or believe it's part of a giant conspiracy or whatever, right?
That's actually smaller than the Republican Party because the people at the top of the Republican Party got vaccinated.
They know it's real.
Like this whole time they've been sowing the seeds of this thing, knowing full and well that COVID was really deadly.
And that they were basically creating situations where people were going to get sick and die.
And that deals with the same co-opting of everything that we're talking about.
Like there was this, it's been going around today on the social medias, that there was this older woman who was a QAnon conspiracy theorist who would harass people.
She just died of COVID.
And one of the reasons that she was radicalized, and one of the reasons that she was such an active member of the conspiracy theory community, We're people like Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn, who has used his former post as a general and a former advisor to the president before he got his ass shit canned, like, he used this platform to basically wrap himself in the American flag and apocalyptic Christianity and the conspiracy theory of QAnon in order to make money and gain political power and influence, which has worked out gangbusters for him.
Well, guess what?
When you play with fire, you get burned.
And that's what has happened here is that they have made these bedfellows, which they've been going right for decades now, because one of the reasons was they started working with in the 1970s, 1980s, they started working with the evangelical right.
What happened in the 1990s, when they needed more, they started going to militias, white supremacists, domestic terrorists, they started working with them.
And that's how we arrive at this point.
It's a perfect amalgamation of all those things.
Now, spiritual wise, which I didn't plan on necessarily talking about today, but like, if you asked me, like...
What should you have faith in?
You should have faith in life and humanity and other people.
And if we could start to look past this stuff, because I have to tell you, meeting in a church and clasping your AR-15 to your chest and wearing Make America Great Again hats, like, that's not religion.
That's a cult.
And there's a difference between the two.
That's about political power.
That's about controlling things.
That's about personal profit.
And that's where all of this has gone So disturbingly wrong is that a political party and the right have just absolutely just become intertwined with these people.
And it's perverted both of them.
It's actually destroyed both religion and also the right, which has always relied on this shit.
But it's been really poisonous all the way around.
Yeah, I mean, it makes the cynicism really come out like, you know, listen, I don't believe in Christianity.
I'm a little bit of an older version of religion, I suppose.
You know, so Jesus was a very nice, you know, Jewish boy from Bethlehem who said some really cool things.
But, like, by the very nature of what happened and the facts of his life, he, like, he doesn't seem to be the guy that everyone thinks he was.
Like, if he really was the Messiah, then we wouldn't all be in this hellhole of a world now, you know?
Like, if he was really the Messiah and he's a carpenter, like, wouldn't the table he had built last until now?
But, like, the point being that, like, the goalposts get moved Over time.
And this is where the Moonies come in because now the goalposts are moved where the originator of the Moonies thinks that he's the Messiah.
And then, okay, no, no, no.
You know what?
It's this guy's Messiah.
You know, 10 years from now, he's going to be the Messiah.
And so there's never a sense of like reality of what's going to happen or what's going to happen.
They just keep moving the goalposts and keep trying to rationalize this through their lives.
And, you know, we get to the same kind of torque I've been talking about before where things are in their brains that don't match and don't, you know, are causing a lot of turmoil internally.
Well, a big part of the problem is – I'm going to hell for that, by the way.
Basically. - Exactly.
The whole problem is that the idea of religion is that humankind had to try and understand how the world worked.
And so as a result, they took their own understanding of themselves and then projected it out onto a mythical figure that could control everything, but also reflected them.
I mean, there's a reason why, you know, the gods of yore had human characteristics.
They were angry.
They were, you know, fallible.
I mean, the god of the Old Testament is.
Just kind of a dick, you know, and it's like a like a complete and utterly controlling genocidal Jealous figure but when you start to bring in the idea of a Messiah The problem is that humanity if we don't if we don't look at ourselves and scrutinize ourselves the narcissistic viewpoint becomes I am a Messiah and Right?
Like, I know what's right, and I know how the world is supposed to work, and I'm the only one who gets it, so basically you're living a messiah-like life.
And then all of a sudden, you start using politics, economics, all these societal ideas.
I found this yesterday in my research, Nick.
I just had to find it real quick.
I'm gonna read a quote here.
This was from the early 20th century.
Had Jesus been among us, he would have been president of the first Eugenics Congress.
He would have been the first to grasp what our writers and poets and artists ought today to grasp, the great idealistic and spiritual significance of Darwin's generalizations.
Wiseman's microscope, Grindelwald's peas, Bateson and Castle's guinea pigs, Davenport and Laughlin's human pedigrees.
By the way, Davenport and Laughlin were the major eugenicists in the United States of America.
With these in his hands, Jesus would have cried, a new commandment I give unto you, the biological golden rule, the completed golden rule of science, do unto both the born and the unborn as you would have both the born and the unborn do unto you.
And that was like one of the leading ideas behind eugenics, was that, you know, and you had like preachers all over America preaching that eugenics, sterilization, killing people, making sure that you were making the best breeds of stock, which by the way, reads Aryan, white people.
That they were the ones breeding and not everybody else.
It's literally Nazi ideology filtered through the idea of, oh no, Jesus would have loved this.
Which makes it okay.
You can't argue with that.
If Jesus believes it, what are you going to do?
Because that is the Messiah idea.
I know better than other people, so that's the way it should be.
This is amazing because, you know, I wrote a screenplay once in the late 90s about what if the Messiah comes down to Earth now?
And, you know, you can imagine what would happen now if that really happened.
As I wrote this in the beginning, they throw him in an insane asylum, right?
So he's there, heavy medicated, you know, because he's talking all this stuff about being the Messiah, right?
He actually runs into Elijah, who's supposed to prepare the world before he gets here, right?
And Elijah's also a drunk.
That's why we open the door on Passover and leave a cup of wine for him.
But ultimately, he gets his message off in my movie because he becomes a weatherman, because he can accurately predict the weather to an inch of rain.
So that's an interesting take.
I like that idea more, the fact that that would be an interesting alternate version of that.
But it's as silly as anything else.
Like anybody wants to come down – listen, watch the Oh God movies.
It's like anybody who really in earnest wants to say that.
It's funny that some people can do it where they can now raise tens of millions of dollars and have this big cult.
And most other people who try and do that end up in an insane asylum.
Well, and by the way, I just want to share one more quote here.
This is from Adolf Hitler.
Hitler?
Okay.
I heard of him.
I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
Also, Joseph Goebbels.
Hitler is an instrument of divine will and Christ was harsh and relentless in the very first anti-Semite.
So the whole point is you can take this and filter however you want because religion is a waiting lens for those ideas.
The problem is that people who are in it, they need it.
You know what I mean?
Like they need something to give meaning to the world because the world is a terrifying, frightening place.
The moment that you start talking I mean, my God, this is why postmodernism is so frightening.
This is why, you know, the idea of nihilism is frightening.
This is why existentialism is so frightening, and people reject it constantly, is because you suddenly have to start figuring out what matters and why it matters, right?
Like, oh, I'm now responsible for being a decent person?
Like, I'm not doing it for some sort of reward?
There's nobody watching me at any given moment?
But in this case, You have a lot of people like Pence and Pompeo who totally believe this stuff and they totally want to welcome in a theocratic society.
But they're being helped by by Republicans who don't give a shit.
Do you think Donald Trump for a second was like, I'm going to do this for Christ.
I'm going to do this for religion.
No, he did it for the paycheck.
And then you have people like H.W.
Bush, who undoubtedly did it for the power and the money.
And Falwell, who, you know, went out and basically prostituted himself in this sense.
Like, that's what this is about.
It's using that lens for whatever measure you can get out of it, whether it's power or profit or influence.
I'm so glad you're bringing this up this way, because I had an existential crisis this weekend while on the tennis court, where I feel like intrinsic human value is now rated by how much money you make.
Oh yeah, for sure.
And it's connected to the church as well, because a lot of these churches will advocate that, you know, too, in some sort of divine, you know, reparations or whatever you want to call it.
And it was severely depressing to me that, like, somebody who lives a pious life, a pious life who helps people, who in earnest wants to be part of a, you know, society, he makes $35,000 a year But for some reason he's going to be judged a lot more poorly as a person and as value as a life than someone who makes a lot more money.
I don't know.
It hit me like a ton of bricks this past weekend and I don't know how to rectify that because I don't know if you can in this society.
Well, you know, all of what we're talking about right now, and this is something I've been studying a lot from the new book, which is Christianity changed in the way that it ordered society when we went from feudalism to capitalism.
And it was all on the back of Protestantism, the Protestant Revolution, right?
So you start out in a feudalism and the entire idea is...
Listen, you're going to spend your entire life on this small piece of land, right?
You are simply going to raise things, you're going to raise animals, and you're going to have enough to eat, and then you're going to give it to your Lord, right?
And by the way, when you have a relationship with the Lord, it's sanctified by the church, it's sanctified by God, right?
I stand here, I make an oath to God.
Meanwhile, the only education you have is from a church that tells you about obeying.
That's the entire purpose, right, is that you are on this earth, you are wretched, and you are going to be judged for being wretched.
The best you can do is put in the work for your Lord and serve that obligation.
Well, all of a sudden, capitalism springs up, and it's not a coincidence that this takes place with Protestantism, right?
Okay, so you're making a direct connection between those two?
Oh, absolutely!
No doubt about it.
Because what ends up happening is it moves to this idea where each person is responsible for their own salvation.
And or people are already chosen to be saved, right?
Because you actually go back and you look at the church and the reason why Martin Luther leaves.
Martin Luther leaves because the church is collecting money from people to pay for entry into heaven.
And eventually this work ethic that comes through, it's like you either can prove yourself through your labor, right?
In how much money that you have.
And capitalism, by the way, and this should be familiar to all listeners, How much money you have is also a sign of God's pleasure of you, right?
Like, how much have you pleased God?
There's a reason why the prosperity gospel comes out of all this stuff.
So, all of a sudden, it's the idea that either your wealth is showing that God shines on you, or, well, I'm already chosen to be saved, I might as well have a decent life here on Earth, so I'm gonna make money and accumulate and spend my time, you know, accumulating and making money.
So you have this schism that occurs.
And all of a sudden now, I mean, you know, all of the people that we're talking about here for the most part are pushing a Protestant, also racist and hierarchical type of idea.
I mean, that's for the most part what we're dealing with.
But, you know, part of the problem with that is that even if you're not Protestant and you follow the teachings of Jesus, you shouldn't feel that way.
Right?
Jesus certainly spoke about that, about not hoarding money and being that kind of a person.
So, you know, the bastardization of this is really frustrating.
Oh, dude, the way that this changes and the way they start talking about religion, particularly as the Industrial Revolution takes off, is absolutely mad.
Like, they start talking about the idea that, you know, markets are God's will, that he has set up the world for free markets.
I mean, it completely gets bastardized.
And the whole thing with Christ, it's really interesting how this figure who You know, it depends on how you look at it.
If you, like, narrow your eyes a little bit and look at it from the side, he can be used as everything from an icon for socialism to militant right-wing apocalypticism and absolute, you know, stealing of money from people.
I mean, it's not a mistake that Donald Trump ended up becoming a messiah in this absolute, you know, clusterfuck of a situation.
You know, speaking of Messiahs, you know, back in Jesus' time, there was the prophecy that a Messiah would be coming on a donkey and riding into Jerusalem.
So, apparently, if you were to wander outside of the gates of Jerusalem at any moment of any day, you'd see hundreds of people riding in on a donkey, you know, hoping to be the one that they chose.
Did you ever see the movie, The Life of Brian?
I love Life of Brian, absolutely.
So Monty Python, they're all going to hell for that one, but they put basically a positive where he is mistaken basically as one of those guys on a donkey riding in because some random person said that and it stuck.
And this is the same kind of cult that we see with the Trump stuff, right?
Or even the rejection of science.
It's like they can find someone to say something that they're like, yes, that is great.
Well, hell, we've seen this in... Oh, gosh.
I was going to say... Anyway, funny sitcoms, where all of a sudden, you know, people start saying random stuff, and it's treated like gospel, and people become like, oh, I know, we saw it in Seinfeld.
This happened with, I think, Costanza, right?
I think he did this.
And hit a following by the end of the show because everything he was saying about indigestion was being interpreted.
Who knows what this show is I'm thinking of.
But nonetheless, that's how easy it can happen.
You know what it is?
I'm sorry.
My brain is so addled in this COVID-19 world.
I wrote a Seinfeld spec that that happened I believe is that yeah George Hussein has started saying these things that were complaining about his life that are funny and people started taking his gospel like he was like the next Messiah but you know that's how easy it happens.
You just entered your spec script into the Seinfeld canon.
I somehow did.
I mixed it all in my head.
Actually, I could see it in my head as if I watched it.
I guess I just wrote it and then I saw it in my brain.
That's incredible.
Well, and to go ahead and put a bubble in... That's really funny, actually.
That's actually quite funny that you confused your spec script for actual... That's fantastic.
Obviously funnier than the actual spec script.
To take this and put a bow on it, though, one of the reasons that we talk about cults and one of the reasons why this has been something that comes up on this show so much is because of what you just said, which is people who need to go ahead and reinforce their own beliefs, right?
The things that they've been told, the things that they have built their lives on.
I mean, I know a lot of people, and this is a strange thing to talk about, But I know a lot of people who support Donald Trump and believe he's a messenger of God and they're actually people that I would categorize as being culturally Christian.
Do you know what I mean?
Like this idea there's a very popular thing you know with people I grew up with and people who are in my community who you know they talked all the time about how they were Christians but they didn't go to church and they didn't behave very Christianly you know what I mean?
But it was it was an us versus them type thing or it was How their grandparents and how their parents were.
And so it was part of that culture.
And you notice, I mean, my God, I I've never really talked about it on this podcast, but one of my hobbies is keeping up with really bad country music.
OK.
And I'm really fascinated by it because it is this very, very politically, culturally motivated type of art that very much like signals to like Trumpism.
and you know, like a sort of backward whiteness and angry whiteness.
And you'll actually hear a lot of stuff where it's like casual mentions of Christ while they're talking about drinking, you know, whatever liquor has paid for a promotional slot in the song, right?
And you actually start putting this stuff together and you realize it has nothing to do with actual religion.
It has to do with what I was talking about, which is putting the self in the position of the Messiah, right?
I know what's important.
You can't tell me anything.
You know what I mean?
There's no science you can tell me, there's no expert you can bring out in front of me.
I believe something, and now I'm going to view that through the prism of religious idea.
And we've talked about this before, it's the difference between empirical ideas, things that can be proven, whether or not it's the temperature which water freezes, or how, you know, like How warm it was today, or who won the election, versus I can't even imagine that we would ever lose an election.
It had to have been stolen, right?
Which is revealed knowledge.
It's something from a higher plane, and when you view yourself as the arbiter and the Messiah, that's when you start using this religion in a really dangerous, fucked-up way.
Right.
You know, we talked about, or I'm sure we all studied Hawk and Law, Well, certainly the one thing that would never happen in the state of nature is religion, right?
how you can develop independent of the influences of the culture.
Well, certainly the one thing that would never happen in the state of nature is religion, right?
You would not develop a discipleship for Jesus if you hadn't ever been taught that, right?
And hadn't ever been shoved down your throat from a very young age.
Versus maybe the notion of caring for other people, which could be developed on your own, I would imagine, just as an instinctual thing.
So, this is the other problem.
These people are having kids.
And they're teaching their kids this.
This is why we can't seem to get beyond this over all these decades and over all this notion of progression forward.
We're constantly being held back, I feel like, because of what's been handed down generation over generation.
See that's interesting because it's when you actually take a look and you know the the conversation we're having right now is Christianity and the associated cults of Christianity but if you actually rewind time you start to find that Christianity is and has in fact co-opted a lot of what we would call natural religions which are people who worshipped
the sun or people who worship the sea or you know like there's a reason why the fish is like one of his you know sort of images there's a reason why he has a halo around is his head and there's a you know the the cross is like a part of astrological issues so one of the things that we actually see is that we're constantly looking for these things
But before Christianity came along with its monotheistic sort of evolution of what you would say older religions, before that came along, like, we had more pluralism of religion.
Like we had a bunch of people was like, oh, that's cool.
You worship the sun.
Well, I worship the sea.
Well, that doesn't...
Put us at odds.
Right.
Right.
Like, oh, I can also worship the sea and you can worship the sun and we'll figure out a way to go.
And in fact, that was like one of the great innovations of like the Roman Empire.
But eventually the Roman Empire starts falling apart and they need something like a split.
You know, they need something that is like, no, you have to believe this one thing.
And congratulations, Christianity, you're right there and you're perfect.
And so that entire idea then influences all of it and injects apocalypticism, which goes back to empirical knowledge versus revealed knowledge.
All of a sudden it's like, well, why should we listen to you?
And like the facts don't work with you.
And then all of a sudden it's like, if you don't do this, it will mean the end of the world.
And they're like, well, how do you know that?
I was like, somebody told me.
It's like well, can you prove it?
No, God told me and then that's how it goes And then you then you have every reason to declare war you have every reason to oppress people I know people in the discord wanted to argue or push back on the point that you know devout Christianity has a lot of or evangelicals and There's a commonality between that and the extreme Muslim terrorists and their ideology and why they're willing to kill themselves in the name of Allah to kill infidels.
But I think what we just said right there, that is the connection.
It's the apocalyptic nature of what they're being taught.
Is the connection between that and like getting your 40 virgins and you know going into heaven I think there is the parallel there that can be equally luring to people to these religions and that's what's so dangerous about it because it ignores what the present reality is and ignores what the the the truth is and that's that's when you can bend truth to whatever you want it to be Yeah, it's never a one-to-one ratio.
I mean, there is a direct line between Christianity and Islam.
I mean, they're siblings.
I mean, Christ is in the Muslim faith, and the Muslims actually believe that during the apocalypse, Christ will come down and fight on their side, you know, in the Battle of Armageddon, so to speak.
But it's not just that.
It's every time that we lift something up to be infallible and or worshipful, right?
We've had tons of cults all over this world.
There was a cult in Japan that, like, Killed a bunch of people with gas and, you know, in mass transportation.
But on top of that, like, we're watching a cult get constructed right now in China.
Like, Xi Jinping is being put up on the level, of course, with Mao, who was another constructed god, and being turned into its own godhead, the same way that the Soviet Union had their situation.
And there's a reason why dictators construct cults of personality and turn themselves into living messiahs.
This is a constant danger within humanity.
It doesn't make it one for one.
The problem is certainty.
The problem is believing that whatever you believe is so infallible and so inscrutable that if somebody were to ever question it, they're not just acting in bad faith, but they're acting maliciously.
and that they need to be met with violence.
You know, it's telling your followers, go out and buy AR-15s.
We'll meet here and talk about how to use them.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's when those things start to come together is when it starts to get really dangerous.
Right and here we are and there's all sorts of evidence of violence breaking out and if you don't if you ignore it and you can say oh that won't happen here but then you don't think so and then you can list 12 things in the last you know several months of incidents and that would that approve that this is turning in violent and isn't going the other way.
It's not getting less violent.
And that's the problem here.
And I feel like, you know, it's too easy in America to sort of slough up all this and say, it just simply can't happen here.
We're an open society and this and that.
But it's like, you know, before you know it, what we have as democracy will not exist anymore.
And that's, that's, you know, and you'll see people on both sides of the aisle right now talking that way, the reasonable people.
And I can only hope that they have enough voice and enough, you know, voting power that they can keep some of these people at bay.
But there's no question we have more extremists running for these offices than ever before.
And we talked about this last, a few weeks ago, where not only are they, are they running hopeful to win, but they are also putting enough pressure on incumbents by, by threat of violence or threat of death that those people are going to voluntarily leave those positions and not want to run again for those positions. by threat of violence or threat of death that those And that's, that's the beginning of when you're talking about fascism.
Thank you.
Yeah, and it's all very complicated because not only is it going to force people out of positions, even what we would consider quote unquote moderate Republicans, which are still so far right at this point because they were pushed there by the Tea Party and they were pushed there by Newt Gingrich and Fox News, What you would now consider a quote-unquote moderate Republican is going to get pushed even further to the right, where they have to talk about the apocalypse, they have to talk about rigged elections, they have to talk about the country being stolen, yada, yada, yada.
The entire point is that, you know, it's not that necessarily the Moonies are going to be an apocalyptic army for the Republican Party.
It's indicative of who the Republican Party is, how they have been corrupted ideologically, religiously, in every single possible way.
But you also have to understand that not all cults meet in a church and carry AR-15s.
We are in the midst of a giant American exceptionalist cult.
I've called it the cult of the Shining City on this show before.
And you don't have to be a member of a church to believe in it.
It helps.
But there's a ton of other people who totally believe that Donald Trump is an agent of God or an agent of good and that the country is going through an apocalyptic situation and that the country has to be overthrown and democracy has to be sacrificed.
And meanwhile, the same people who are going to these cult members with a bag in hand and a smile on their face, you know, ready to take their money, to take their money, those are the same people who are going to more than happily use those waiting groups for whatever they can use them for, including the possibility of fomenting some sort of violence.
Now, the Hollywood version, like in the script that I had written about the Messiah, at the very end, what happens is it turns into hell on earth, and then that brief instant, they heaven then becomes unearthed because we had to go through that hell as sort of the apocalyptic nature.
You have to go through the apocalypse before you can get to heaven.
And that is why we have people actively rooting for this, right?
Like that's sort of what you're saying as well.
And that's the problem is that, I mean, I don't believe that.
I don't know if you do, but I certainly don't want to find out if that's what we need.
Nick, I grew up around people who, and I don't know, I'm a writer, so maybe I should be better at explaining this, but I really don't know how to express this to people.
Like you, You would hear members of your church and your community just dreamily talk about the apocalypse.
That they were so ready for literally billions of people to die.
And just enraptured by the idea of Christ returning and slaying enemies.
They were so ready to fight and murder.
There was a burning in them that needed to get out.
And that is, unfortunately, a worldview that I would have seen millions of Americans believe.
Like millions.
You would have to put that on there.
And that is conducive with a group like the Republican Party, who is more than happy to use that.
We've talked about this in the past.
The Republican Party, their base or their ideology is not Religion.
Their ideology is hierarchy, and power, and profit.
There's like a very, very elite group of ideologues that have used the religious, that have used the racist, that have used the terrified, and they've amalgamated them into this big, weird coalition, and most of them are in favor of using violence to fight off the fear-mongering that the ideological elite are continuing to sow within them.
And I think that the only reason why people are refusing to acknowledge this or really look at it is because they must say to themselves, well, you know, Mike Pence says really nice things.
He believes, you know, he loves your heart.
Like, you know, this lady posed as a January 6th insurrectionist and got him on tape.
You know and she wants to make a gotcha moment of it but the bottom line is you know he's saying all these things where he sounds pious he sounds like he believes these things and it's it's hard to I think you want to fight that you want to believe that the guy actually is religious and he likes the best parts of the religion he wants to live his life that way and call his wife mother and not be in a room alone with anybody else any other women and all those different things but but then you see him drinking water at the exact same time that Trump does Or no, what does he do?
He puts the water bottle down.
Remember that video?
There's something about Trump putting the water bottle down.
He puts it down right away.
It's like to mimic him or be exactly the way in step with him.
And then you realize, yeah, this is the Bob Roberts tapping his foot while he's in a wheelchair, pretending like he's a paraplegic, right?
And you can see this foot moving underneath the blanket.
Oh, Pence.
And that's one of the grossest things about it is that I actually do believe that Pence believes what he spews.
But his ability to compartmentalize this stuff in order to push his own political power and sway is the frightening thing.
We're lucky that Mike Pence is not more charismatic and, you know, likable.
Like he and same with Mike Pompeo.
We're so lucky that these two people are absolutely contemptible.
Oh, God.
Thank God.
Because I'll tell you who believes that they're a messiah and who is part of a religious movement.
And Ted Cruz's dad has made a lot of money and has created a lot of power for himself, telling a lot of these Christians around the country that his son, Ted Cruz, is a Messiah.
Like, that is actually something that the Cruzes have pushed for a very, very long time.
We are incredibly fortunate.
Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Ted Cruz are completely detestable.
Because if they were to gain some sort of a measure of power, like, there's no telling what they would be able to do.
I would have thought Ted Cruz is definitely busy doing the JFK tour, speaking about his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Well, there we go.
All right, everybody.
We've got to wrap it up when we start getting to Raphael Cruz and old Lee Harvey.
We're going to come back later this week for our Weekender episode.
A reminder that if you want to access those, you need to go over to patreon.com slash muckregpodcast.
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