Saturday, July 22, 2017

Redistributing the Wealth, Like Jesus and Bernie Sanders

I LIVE IN A VERY SMALL town in the United States, because big cities are fun to visit on special occasions, but very expensive to live in. The problem with this arrangement is that big cities are where the progressives tend to be, and I am an extreme progressive. Bernie Sanders is my favorite politician, and surely that says it all. I am surrounded by conservative Christians, which I don't like. I call them the "Jesus, Guns, and Money crowd", because besides the political-economic conservatism and the devout faith, they tend also to be staunch defenders of the second amendment, and advocates of packing heat, as long as you're a good christian. I don't like them because to my way of thinking there is absolutely nothing about the teachings of Jesus Christ which is compatible with conservative free market capitalistic economics or the national Rifle Association, or Donald J. Trump. This weird political-religious marriage in America called the "Christian right" is an obvious evil. These Jerry Falwell Junior Liberty University types praise Jesus, but hate taxes and hate passionately government redistribution of wealth. What these hypocritical people ignore is the fact that, when it comes to redistribution of wealth, Jesus Christ was hard core in favor of it. In fact, he demanded it as a precondition to entering into his heavenly kingdom. Render unto Caesar. Give unto the poor. I promised I would stop writing about my local small town senior center, of which I am a member. Too many hurt feelings. Overwhelmingly, the other members are both Christian and politically conservative, when for the sake of compatibility and morality they should be christian socialist, like Jesus. These Christian conservatives seem to have thin skin. They can dish, but they can't seem to take. But that's my complaint with the small town Christian conservative seniors. They should know better than to think the republican party, and the conservative political movement, and free market economics has the slightest commonality with the teachings of Jesus. If they all suddenly renounce Trump and the republicans, which seems highly unlikely, and endorse Bernie Sanders, which seems even more unlikely, I'll give them credit for making progress, spiritually as well as politically.

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