Revenge and Rumors of Revenge
June 22, 2019 Leave a comment
The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.
Hamlet (3.2.250)
The Murder of Abel – Gustave Dore
How would you respond if a group of people became jealous of your influence and they decided to do away with you?
Revenge, retaliation, reprisal and retribution. These are four words with the same connotation: returning an offense taken in back onto the offender; payback.
Escalation, increase, intensification and mushroomed. These four words connote the same thing. Their meaning is made obvious as the media uses them to describe the burgeoning effects of revenge, retaliation, reprisal and retribution. Those effects include estrangement, conflict, lack of closure, segregation, armed conflict, crisis, strife, tension, turmoil, wars and rumors of wars, and exclusion.
Settling scores sets in motion a chain reaction of settling scores. On a personal level, a husband and wife may engage in tit-for-tat sniping and then become increasingly retaliatory and then, later, lawyer-up for a contentious divorce. The effect on them and their children is one or more of the effects mentioned above.
On a global level, a nation may resist détente and instead stir up animus with hawkish rhetoric. Such a nation wants to settle accounts on their terms. So, they prepare nuclear armament for retaliatory strikes. And again, whether as an ongoing hawkish stance or a strike, the effect would be one or more of the effects mentioned above for that nation and its relations with other nations. Settling scores, whether on a personal or national level, becomes an open-ended endless battle of wills and powers. This is also true on the societal level.
A guru of the sixties, French postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault believed that power is the most important aspect of any societal relationship. In his way of thinking, first comes power, then comes truth. Power produces truth. Institutions such as the legal system, the family, the parent, the teacher, the church, and those that hold the traditions handed down hold sway over others. Such regimes of power were to considered to produce their own realms of truth. And all such power domains were deemed by Foucault to be exclusive, repressive, censorious, concealing, and oppressive. Foucault’s ‘unmasking’ of power and its trappings would involve rebellion and retaliation against them. This, he posited, would be the path to liberation for society. This is the path of the Progressive Element who demand institutions change and they remain unchanged. Philosopher Roger Scruton saw what was happening:
The intellectuals of 1968 hunted through the social world for marks of power, in order to declare their rebellion against it. Every gathering, every institution, every fragment of the old civilization wore for them the badge of enmity. [I]
This Post-modern thinking – power produces truth and power is everywhere and in the wrong hands – produces a context for revenge, retaliation, reprisal and retribution against long-standing institutions and traditions in the name of social justice. Again, Roger Scruton:
“People inoculated by the culture of repudiation, reluctant to acknowledge the search for meaning as a human universal, tend to think that all conflicts are really political, concerning who has power over whom”[ii]
Add nihilism, moral relativism, and ad hoc justice into the inoculation and things turn viral. The culture, as one can witness, is obsessed with anger, hatred and vindictiveness. Theologian Miroslav Volf, in his book Exclusion and Embrace, describes one reason for the spiral of vengeance as “the predicament of partiality” – the inability of the parties locked in conflict to agree on the moral significance of their actions. Put another way, “For me to err is human, to forgive you is weakness”.
While the news media daily presents us with unresolved conflicts and their escalation, the entertainment media offer us conflicts resolved with revenge justice. Its offerings are almost countless, so I’ll name just four current dramas.
John Wick is described as an “Old Testament revenge story”. Wick is a former hitman who returns to the criminal underworld when a Russian gangster steals his car and kills his dog. He searches for those for who did this and for those who act against him. He wants retribution. Revenge is a bloody mess.
In the black comedy Cold Pursuit the main character Nels Coxman, played by Liam Neesom, is a vengeful snowplow driver who starts killing the members of a drug cartel following the murder of his son. Revenge leaves no street unplowed.
Death Wish is described as a vigilante action thriller. Bruce Willis plays the main character, “a Chicago doctor who sets out to get revenge on the men who attacked his family”. Revenge goes pathological.
Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood stars as William Munny, “a notorious outlaw and murderer, but he is now a repentant widower raising two children”. He takes on a revenge job offering reward money to support his family. In the process his partner Ned is tortured and killed by Little Bill, the local sheriff. “Munny heads back to Big Whiskey to take revenge on Little Bill. Revenge downs Big Whiskey.
(Men are particularly drawn into these action revenge dramas. Women are drawn into the relational revenge drama offered on the likes of Bravo.)
Because of the innate human desire for justice, revenge has been plotted (and popularized) in movies, books and plays. Vengeance was a frequent theme of Tudor drama, as dramatized in the work of Shakespeare. The main character has been wronged or has incurred a significant loss and so self-justified revenge becomes the plot to mete out justice. But, beyond invoking a motivation for justice, the story line taps into fallen man’s impetus for vengeance. The story line allows the reader, the viewer and the play goer to vicariously take revenge. (I woke the other day with the MyPillow jingle in my head. I had heard the commercial in the background the night before. I wonder if watching revenge justice in any of the above movies lays in one’s subconscious mind waiting to be acted on.) Pay back is portrayed as the means to a just and redemptive end. But is the end just and redemptive? Credits will role after a revenge justice movie and your hunger for justice may be temporarily sated, but real-life revenge does end that way.
By many accounts, revenge is the ongoing de facto way to deal with social matters. Political wars, tribal wars, cultural wars, local and national conflicts, Jihad, personal vindictiveness, suits and counter suits, hatred, greed, and the dogfights for power over others contain elements of revenge and rumors of revenge. The revenge process is a vicious circle, as theologian Volf writes in Exclusion and Embrace:
Instead of wanting to forgive, we instinctively seek revenge. An evil deed will not be owed for long; it demands repayment in kind. The trouble with revenge, however, is that it enslaves us. As Hannah Arendt pointed out in The Human Condition, vengeance
acts in the form of reacting against an original trespassing, whereby far from putting an end to the consequences of the first misdeed, everybody remains bound to the process, permitting the chain reaction contained in every action to takes its unhindered course; …[vengeance] encloses both doer and sufferer in the relentless automatism of the action process, which by itself need never come to an end. (Arendt, 1959, 216)[iii]
What shall separate us from loving God and others? Revenge. What shall be the way out of the death spiral of revenge? Again, a quote from Exclusion and Embrace:
“…our actions are irreversible. The only way out of the predicament of irreversibility, Arendt insisted, is through forgiveness …A genuinely free act of which ‘does not merely react”, forgiveness breaks the power of the remembered past and transcends the claims of the affirmed justice and so makes the spiral of vengeance grind to a halt. This is the social import of forgiveness.[iv]
We both know that even when we forgive and don’t return evil for evil, the other may seek to continue the cycle of revenge. But, when we disengage from the revenge process and only return good towards the other “you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you” (Prov. 25.22, Rom. 12:20). With forgiveness and acts of love we frustrate the other’s attempt to continue in the spiral of revenge. The onus to continue is put on the other’s head. The other may shake off our response and continue to seek revenge (becoming more of a hothead?) or the other may look to get out from under the burning coals and go their way.
To be sure, forgiveness is not a denial of the injustice incurred. Rather, it is placing the injustice in the proper perspective, as Joseph did so long ago: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20). Joseph forgave his brothers, embraced them and showed them kindness.
How would you respond if a group of people became jealous of your influence and they decided to do away with you?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[i] An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture, Roger Scruton, page 130.
[ii] Forgiveness and Irony, Roger Scruton
[iii] Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Miroslav Volf, page 120-121
Cindy Wity 
Who Says So?
June 27, 2021 Leave a comment
As kids we preceded “Who Says So?” and “Who do you think you are?” with “Oh yeah!” “These questions weren’t posed to source a truth-bearing authority we would readily accept. Rather, they were a demand to know “Who thinks they can tell me what to do?”
The hands-on-the-hips stance has been around since the Garden of Eden. It became the posture of mankind after Adam and Eve accepted the serpent’s imperious challenge to God’s authority. The posture of the defiant adolescent is in vogue today.
By way of a prolonged adolescence – from playground to the political realm, say – the childhood attitude has remained the same: “Who thinks they can tell me what to do? The past holds no authority. Truth holds no authority. Only my power holds authority.”
And so it was that elected officials dismissed the U.S. Constitution as an afront to their dictatorial ways. The playground stance became Woodrow Wilson’s “living Constitution” posture under the ruse of “progress”:
All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when “development,” “evolution,” is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.
Owing to the same progressive posture, FDR bullied the Supreme Court into accepting his definition of the Constitution’s “commerce clause”. He was then able, with the tentacles of bureaucracy, to regulate and control the banks and the U.S. economy. This wasn’t crisis management. This was the elitist “Who thinks they can tell me what to do?” FDR taking over “we the people”.
FDR’s reign created a monstrous welfare state. With the government’s imposition of the “New Deal” and the National Recovery Act, millions became dependent – infantilized – under the government’s new parenting role. Later, FDR would take account of his “enlightened administration”. He would call government welfare “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit”.
LBJ, an FDR lackey, adopted FDR’s imperious attitude. He extended the New Deal’s use of a big and more powerful government to overhaul society.
“The truth is, far from crushing the individual, government at its best liberates him from the enslaving forces of his environment.”
With the enslaving forces of government and apparently ignoring FDR’s admission of welfare’s dehumanizing effects, the imperious LBJ created the ruinous Great Deal: the “Great Society” and “War on Poverty.”
Within the same “nobody can tell me what to do” echo chamber of elitists, the haughty Barack Obama’ announced the “fundamental transformation” of America. This was to bring about Obama’s version of “hope and change” for us little people.
Remember Obama’s spiritual and ideological mentors Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky? Remember these bullies with the playground attitude “Who thinks they can tell me what to do? I tell you what to do.” They taught Obama to impose his will onto others for the sake of radical transformation.
Remember Obama’s despotic weaponization of government against naysayers? Remember Lois Lerner and the IRS targeting scandal? Remember the high and mighty Obama trashing America to foreign nations?
The almost inorganic “Oh yeah! Listen man!” Joe Biden and his regime, an Obama franchise, are “Building Back Better.” The regime wants $35 billion dollars to add 75,000 agents to further weaponize the IRS.
The regime is in the process of tossing the Constitution and creating a Woke “living constitution” form of government. This takeover of America will benefit most those in positions of power including globalists. You and I will have the Constitution ripped from our hands. We will be handed a “Here’s who says so” card. The European Union has already issued “permission” cards.
(The Biden regime’s focus on the WOKE religion of racialism will buy them votes. Biden and Progressives (FDR, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson among them) infer that black Americans are inferior and can’t function in society – whether in business or as a voter or in feeding and housing themselves – without them. Their solution is more of their “enlightened (Woke) administration” and less of the Constitution.
“Juneteenth” is Biden’s token gift – a refrigerator magnet – to black Americans. It also serves to keep America annually focused on racialism, BLM and CRT.
It appears that behind Anthony Fauci’s defense of himself on MSNBC as the embodiment of science – people’s attacks on him “are attacks on science” – is “Who do you think you are?”
Owing to a prolonged adolescence – from playground to philosophical realm, say – the religion of deconstructionism was born. Its tenets hold that there is no legitimacy or “Who says so?” authority in the world. This was the stance of the 60’s French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida.
The deconstructionist theory of textual analysis holds that a text has no stable reference. The theory questions traditional assumptions about identity, truth, certainty, and the ability of language to represent reality. Critics have rightly called deconstructionism a dangerous form of nihilism.
Due to a prolonged adolescence – from playground to popular culture, say – we hear “No one has the right to tell me what I can and can’t do except my political tribe.” The shutdown mind – no debate, no questioning, censored social media, etc. – is sold as the right thing to do.
Maintaining narcissist affirmation from an elitist’s perspective is the objective. Hence, the culture of repudiating and canceling anything that doesn’t conform to a narrative of empowered-self.
Just this morning I went shopping for groceries in a local super store. I passed the women’s clothes section. On the wall was a large ad photo of a large woman modeling some of the clothes being sold. The statement above her read “The maximum of self-love”.
The childish attitude of “Who thinks they can tell me what to do?” benefits no one. In fact, when it’s the posture of political overlords, philosopher-ideologues and the power-hungry, people are canceled, put through struggle sessions, de-platformed, blacklisted, killed, forced into labor camps or deported.
There are the willing who submit to a system that will not countenance disagreement. But minds that shut down to only accept the pablum given it by its tribal overseers will find that they have become infantilized. They will remain little children under the watchful eyes of the parent state.
(Read Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom to gain insight into the progression of narrow-mindedness since the ‘60s.)
A grown-up post-modern stance of questioning the source and legitimacy of assertions, is a welcome posture in any discipline. Science (including medical science Dr. Fauci!), philosophy and theology depend on inquiry. Questioning is a healthy stance when its objective is sourcing truth. Questioning is squashed for political ends or for the negation of truth.
Note: a key indicator of whether something is true or a lie: truth never manipulates or coerces one to accept it; lies and half-truths serve to manipulate and coerce. As humans, we want to live in truth and be respected for that desire. We do not want to be manipulated by ideologues, technocrats, and bureaucrats.
One last thing before I move on. By now you know that Progressives, like the willful children they are, believe they know everything and that you should know everything about them. That is why they walk around with the offended attitude “Who do you think you are?”
Progressives are not mortals. They are superior omniscient beings with “enlightened” WOKE morals. Not only do the WOKE know their own hearts and minds inside and out from constant reprogramming, they also know what is in another person’s heart and mind. Yes, they are mind readers and the ministers of “science” and “hope and change”. Progressive Jesuits come across as being more Christian than Christ with what they readily accept.
Out of their prolonged adolescence, Progressives, like the proud and stubborn children they remain, project onto others all kinds of intent.
Progressives condemn people on the spot. That is how they can call me, a white woman, a “racist”. That is how they can call the Founding Fathers “racist”. That is how they can say that any disagreement is an attack on them, the embodiment of “science”. That is how they can criticize people about their purported effect on climate change or about gun ownership or about any multitude of internalized offenses.
We have ‘progressed’ out of the post-modern age back to the age of Pontius Pilate: “Truth is what I say it is and don’t you forget it.”
It is no surprise that the mental health of the users of the narcissism-based narcotic of Progressivism has declined dramatically. Social media documents the decline.
*****
The hands-on-the-hips stance has been around since the Garden of Eden. It has been used to stare down and de-platform anything that challenges a certain mindset. During the first century AD, Jesus encountered “Oh yeah! Who do you think you are?”
The gospel according to Mark reads as a response to that very question.
Mark opens the “good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son” with the authority of centuries-old Scripture. Words from prophets Isaiah and Malachi preface his account. (Note: Mark ascribes both texts to Isaiah, the more prominent author.)
Isaiah the prophet put it like this: “Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of me; he will clear a path for you.”
A shout goes up in the desert: “Make way for the Lord!” Clear a straight path for him!”
John the Baptizer is then presented as the one clearing the way for the Messiah – the Ultimate Authority. John tells his followers “Someone a lot stronger than me is coming close behind.”
Jesus is baptized by John in the river Jordan. The heavens open. The spirit in the form of a dove descends onto Jesus. A voice out of heaven says “You are my son! You are the one I love! You make me very glad.”
One would think that that event alone would suffice to qualify Jesus as the Ultimate Authority, but Mark continues to document the outworking of Jesus’ Ultimate Authority.
Jesus announces the kingdom of God (1: 15).
Jesus calls disciples (1:16-20).
Jesus teaches with authority in synagogue (1: 21-22).
Jesus casts out demons (1:23-27).
Jesus heals the sick (1:29-43).
Then (in chapter 2), a lame man is lowered through a roof to where Jesus is teaching. Religious legal experts were in the room. They were listening and waiting for Jesus to produce Messianic credentials.
Jesus tells the lame man to get up and that his sins are forgiven. (2:1-12) These shocking words blew the roof off of the expert’s thinking.
“How dare the fellow speak like this?! Only God forgives sins!” Who do you think you are?
The next thing the legal inquisitors find out is that this guy who forgives sins also eats with sinners. (2:16) What kind of Messiah is that? We don’t behave like that!
Mark records more hand-wringing by the religious authorities (3:1-5). Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. This healing did not go over well – it was deemed as doing ‘work’ on the Sabbath. Jesus wasn’t “following the science”. So, Jesus had to be de-platformed:
“The Pharisees went out right away and began to plot with the Herodians against Jesus, trying to find a way to destroy him.”
Jesus continues to not “follow the science”. He “scolded the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Shut Up!” The wind died down and there was flat calm.” (4:35-41)
Jesus touches the unclean. (5:25-32)
Mark records that Jesus sends out his disciples with his authority. (6: 7-13)
Jesus feeds 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish. (6:34-44)
Jesus walks on water. (6:47-51)
Jesus’ disciples eat with unwashed hands. (7: 1-15)
Jesus removes an unclean spirit from a child. (7:24-30)
Jesus feeds 4000 with 7 loaves and “a few small fish”. (8: 1-9)
Jesus heals a blind man. (8: 22-26)
Jesus is transfigured (his glory revealed) before Peter, James, and John. (9: 2-8)
Jesus casts out an unclean spirit from a boy. (9: 16-27)
Jesus teaches his disciples about authority. (9:35-49)
The first half of Mark’s gospel account documents Jesus’ ultimate authority over nature, diseases, evil spirits and the “follow the science” orthodoxy of his day.
In the second half of Mark’s “good news”, we read that Jesus had set his face toward Jerusalem. What awaited him there was not a triumphal entry nor a clear path. He would encounter soldiers, betrayal, an angry mob, Pontius Pilate, scourging, and crucifixion. It was intended punishment for not “following the science”.
Jesus was handed over to be questioned by the “Who do you think you are?”- “What is truth?”- “follow the science” authorities. They proceeded to ‘de-platform’ Jesus.
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus revealed his authority over evil, sin and death. It also revealed his authority over man-made narratives. Jesus answered “Who says? with utter humility and self-denial. Jesus is the Ultimate Authority. Yet there are those, still with hands on hips, claiming to be the ultimate authority. Let’s see them do what Jesus did and prove it.
*****
*****
COVID Court:
Ex-Pfizer VP Yeadon Warns: Children 50 Times More Likely to Die From Vaccine Than Virus (rumble.com)
Former Pfizer VP issues warning: ‘This is Israel now, UK in just a few weeks’ – America’s Frontline Doctors (americasfrontlinedoctors.org)
93 Israeli doctors: Do not use COVID-19 Vaccine on children
Woman says ‘severe allergic reaction’ to second dose of Oxford vaccine left her unable to talk | Daily Mail Online
19-Year-Old College Freshman Dies From Heart Problem One Month After Second Dose of Moderna Vaccine (noqreport.com)
Exclusive: Dad Says Life ‘Not the Same’ for 21-Year-Old Student Who Developed Myocarditis After Second Moderna Shot • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)
Are Covid Vaccines Riskier Than Advertised?
CENSORED: Pro-vaccine doctor Francis Christian, over Covid-19 vaccine safety concerns | Sharyl Attkisson
(VIDEO) Exclusive Investigation: Separating rumor from fact on Covid-19’s origin | Sharyl Attkisson
CENSORED: Hydroxychloroquine | Sharyl Attkisson
Shocking lab results on masks… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS
Covid has emboldened our modern censors | The Spectator
Top Virologists Admit Lying to American Public for Months on Likely Wuhan Lab Leak Theory Because They Didn’t Want to be Associated with President Trump (thegatewaypundit.com)
Chief of Pediatric Critical Care: ‘Never Taken Care of a Single Patient With a Vaccine-Related Complication Until Now’ • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)
The following video was removed from YouTube for “violating community guidelines”:
Top Immunologist and ‘Pro-Vaccine’ Doctor Issues Urgent Warning…
Dr. Byram Bridle Professor of Viral Immunology University of Guelph
‘We finally learned how and where the Vaccine antibodies are stored in the body’
‘The spike protein in Vaccines can kill you’
Top Immunologist and ‘Pro-Vaccine’ Doctor Issues Urgent Warning… | Populist Press 2021 ©
Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin therapy at a higher dose improved survival by nearly 200% in ventilated COVID patients (news-medical.net)
“You are a pathetic liar”: CDC senior scientist to CDC’s head of immunization (DOCUMENT) | Sharyl Attkisson
Former Trump Official Slices Fauci Apart Over Hydroxychloroquine Fiasco by Matt Vespa (townhall.com)
Why Has “Ivermectin” Become a Dirty Word? – TK News by Matt Taibbi (substack.com)
Heart problems in vaccinated students trigger medical, legal scrutiny of campus COVID mandates | Just The News
30 Cases where PFIZER/BIONTECH COVID Vaccine produced symptoms of Brain Contusion or Brain Damage or Brain Injury
Fight Back:
TRO: Motion for Temporary Restraining Order Against Use of COVID Vaccine in Children
TRO – America’s Frontline Doctors (americasfrontlinedoctors.org)
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Filed under 2021 current events, Christianity, Culture, Political Commentary, Politics, Post-Moderism, Progressivism, social commentary Tagged with Christianity, culture, FDR, Jesus, Joe Biden, LBJ, Obama, politics, progressivism, the Gospel according to Mark