Propaganda, Truncation, Equivocation

In its eighth season with over 150 episodes aired, “24” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_(TV_series) is one of the longest running espionage series ever on television. Fox carries the show here in the United States but it is syndicated worldwide. We have been watching it on rented DVDs and are beginning the sixth season.

Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer, an indestructible, larger than life, rogue, government agent impervious to all danger. Some of the terrorists he overcomes are “patriots” whose agenda includes using atomic weapons to blow up cities and releasing nerve gas into ventilation systems. Jack Bauer is a “good guy” the patriots are the “bad guys”. He defends the policies of the government against the patriot bad guys who think our government is oppressive, aggressive, and out of control. Torture is a mainstream interrogation technique used on all prisoners even those who actually don’t have information the government is seeking.

Women are cast as aggressive, dominate, and competent leaders; femininity dominates masculinity. There are traitors in high positions and traitors in Bauer’s Counter Terrorist Unit. There is office intrigue in the CTU and in the Federal Government. There are chases, explosions, confrontations, fires, and palpable tension. One review describes this award winning production as addictive. Though it is not always realistic, it is exciting, intense and demands a return to the next episode.

Since the story involves national emergencies the Presidents of the United States are intimately involved in directing the operations. The most competent and moral of the Presidents is a Black man played with distinction by Dennis Dexter Haysbert who is the current spokesman for Allstate Insurance. Haysbert is assassinated and succeeded by a bumbling, corrupt White man who is succeeded by Haysbert’s brother.

Jack Bauer is a pragmatic automaton who operates outside the law, ignores orders, murders bad guys, tortures, mutilates, and maims his victims. He is famous and admired because he is successful. In spite of the fact that powerful forces want to hold him accountable his dependable success rate is soon needed and he is set free.

“24” is the brain child of Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran produced by Real Time Productions, Imagine Television and 20^th Century Fox Television. The executive producers are Howard Gordon, Evan Katz, Jon Cassar, Manny Coto, David Fury, Kiefer Sutherland and Brian Grazer.

Hollywood is adroit at juxtaposing exciting entertainment with shades of cognitive dissonance; support for gay marriage is mandatory and most of Hollywood supports welcoming child rapist Roman Polanski. Anything that debases Biblical moral standards seem to get enthusiastic support. Morality is determined by the powerful individuals who are the idolic gods of Hollywood.

“24” is a captivating drama written by highly talented writers and set forth by equally adroit producers. It is designed to create concepts in the minds of viewers that are in sync with government policies. The truth is that the United States is a dying empire being used to bludgeon the world into the tyranny of world government with its dying breath. This truth is put into the mouths of the bad guys while torture, murder, cutting edge technology, and government power are depicted as proper instruments in the struggle. With the exception of Jack Bauer, white males are less significant members of a cast that promotes Females and Blacks.

The volume of propaganda being poured through television and other media outlets is probably not much noticed by many viewers but it successfully molds public opinion and in the name of Democracy allows clandestine world leaders to control governments. Democracy is promoted because Democracy is controllable.

Propaganda is particularly effective when disseminated without challenge.

The Pastor of a local Christian Church claims he is properly confronting the evil that is bringing the world under the tyranny of secular government. However, in the year or so we spent in his congregation we never hear him mention the new world order, the Council on Foreign Relations, David Rockefeller’s Memoirs, the characteristics of a just war, the Biblical assessment of centralized power, or the propagandized mendacity of the Bush II Administration. He refused to respond to Martin Selbrede’s excellent article “National Defense and the Bible”. http://www.covenantnews.com/selbrede090201.htm A Reformed preacher supplementing expository preaching with extensive ancillary material his sermons are often too long, and fail to provide specific direction.

He and his tiny cadre seem to support the Middle East War but in our exchanges he refuses to commit himself. Equivocation is deceptive and should have no place in the Christian Church.

I understand that Christian ministers have a tough enough job without being criticized by their brothers and sisters but until they begin to understand the reasons why they are being consistently defeated by the secular devil, the critique must continue. They seem oblivious to the fact that freedom to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in jeopardy from the very forces they fail to name and condemn.

Will Grigg has penned an essay entitled “Blood On Their Hands”. http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/11/blood-on-their-hands.html Grigg showcases the dissonance of tacking the Hate Crimes legislation on to a $680 billion military spending appropriation. The Hate Crimes legislation is designed to give certain citizens special protection while the military spending bill will result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in foreign lands.

Will Grigg is talented and prolific. I always read his articles in the “New American” and cancelled my subscription when he was fired. If the press was free in our nation Grigg would be writing for the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post. He still gets out truth but in this article he missed the most significant facet.

He misses the “why” by failing to point out that hate crime legislation has been promoted by well financed intellectual Jewish Zionists and Zionist leaders of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Their goal is to wipe out Christianity. Hate crime legislation is a direct affront to the Christian Church and to God’s condemnation of Sodomy. Grigg’s article is truncated; it does not contain the whole truth.

Al Benson has published an interesting piece entitled “Let’s Call It What It Is–SorosCare!” http://www.cakewalkblogs.com/antiestablishmenthistory/ George Soros is one of the world’s wealthiest, he is an articulate speaker and writer, and a Jewish Zionist with connections to the Rothschild family.

Rev. Ted Pike writes that the Southern Poverty Law Center recently issued directives to the Missouri state police that Christian/conservatives are potential terrorists. Pike accurately describes the indefensible position of mainstream American Christianity and the terrible danger that confronts us. In a vain attempt to counter the danger he exhorts our leaders to wake up. “Christian/conservative leaders are thus enmeshed in a vicious, morally debilitating, and freedom-destroying trap of their own making. Forced to give tribute of outward support to Zionism yet privately terrorized of ADL’s power to destroy, they have become slaves of ADL. By their silence, they pave its road to tyranny and hasten its ascent to world dominion.” Please read the entire article at this site. http://rense.com/general88/hatebvi.htm

The movie industry along with the press and media has been supporting hate crime legislation for decades. They use the same method set forth in “24”. News, theater, and television entertainment depicts homosexuality as normal and desirable. This persistent Talmudic hate for everything Christian should mobilize all Christians to defend the Faith against a concerted attempt to destroy it. Michael Hoffman writes about the curious flaccidity. Read about it at this link http://rense.com/general88/ytal.htm

President Obama’s comment on the hate crime legislation was “Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love.”

When John the Baptist spoke to Herod about consorting with his brother’s wife he left no doubt in King Herod’s mind; there was no equivocation, no punch pulling, and nothing was left out. When Jesus spoke to the Pharisees He denounced them with authority. He was specific He spoke directly to them there was no mistaking His intent. God’s prophets always spoke truth emphatically. In Matthew 5 Jesus exhorted us to make our “yeas” mean “yea” and our “nays” mean “nay” – equivocation on right and wrong is evil!

I like and respect my former pastor but his church would be larger and his life more productive if he would begin to preach the whole truth by denouncing the specific people who ban, mock and denigrate the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God we worship is confrontational and specific and we should be too.

Doug Herman questions whether the American Empire deserves to die. http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/herman/herman2.html Responding to Herman, Paul Craig Roberts appears to equivocate: “American people be damned?   So the empire would then deserve to die, right?” David Lindorff a columnist for CounterPunch thinks it should die. Jerome Corsi and Devvy Kidd believe it should return to Constitutional government. Alexander Cockburn equivocates with a reference to Rome and Stephen Lendman believes the Empire deserves death. Alex Knight and George Smith, with some reservation, come down on the side of death. Several responders would reserve judgment if the nation would change.

Herman ends the article with this paragraph, “Personally, I believe that all empires deserve to die, some sooner than others. Just imagine the tens of millions of innocent people crushed beneath the juggernaut of the American Empire in the past century and then try your best to justify their deaths. Could you? If you can, than yes, America deserves to survive and thrive, but if not, we deserve the trash heap as a grand idea that failed, drowned in blood. I wish it were not so, but wishing doesn’t make it so, only worthy efforts”.

It is hard to justify the evil the American Empire has brought to the world. We were a nation founded by a Christian explorer and settled by a Christian people. We were bequeathed a religion that contained an immutable legal system but we preferred to write our own. We claimed to serve our Christian God but in practice we made Him our servant. We have treated the world with an arrogant, aggressive belligerence demanding that other nations succumb to our superiority. We have ignored our own sins and focused on the sins of others. Maintaining a military presents in over 130 nations we demand world hegemony.

Our churches have lost the fear of God and are no longer able to discern His Will. Instead of dedicating themselves and their people to serving Him by extending His dominion over His creation as He directed us to do in Genesis our Pastors, Preachers, and Priests are attempting to use God to build and enrich their own kingdoms. When building a large church and enjoying prosperity is the goal, care is taken to maintain a seeker friendly service that will attract new members. When this becomes the primary intent the church no longer stands on the firm platform of God’s word but instead sinks into the sand of humanism. In these churches truncated sermons and half truths are common. Government propaganda is ignored. They quake at speaking truth to power and fail to take stands against evil.

United States Christians have allowed politics and patriotism to overshadow Christianity. Pride in our country overshadows God’s commandments and patriotism overlooks gross disobedience. The proper criterion for a Christian nation is missing from the minds of most of those who venture into debates on this subject. Since law forms the religious base of a nation, no nation can claim to be Christian that does not live under God’s Law. The United States of America was much closer to being a Christian nation before the ratification of the federal Constitution All of the original thirteen colonies acknowledged a Christian God in their Constitutions. Several required a Christian oath for all office holders. Religious oaths were rescinded by the Philadelphia Convention.

God intends that we bring His creation under His control by obeying His Law. Righteousness, peace, and prosperity are companions, when God’s people obey His Law they are blessed with peace and prosperity. When they ignore His Law, write their own law, and create idols of the work of their minds and hands they suffer confusion, chaos, and captivity.

Patriotism has become an idol. (Bring up this site. Where is the humility a Christian nation should have before a righteous God?) Christians must be loyal to God and to His Will before they are devoted to their nation.United States is a cesspool that deserves judgment and until the church humbles itself and seeks forgiveness, patriotism is sinful and futile.