Don Lemon's excuse for the disruption of worship services in Minneapolis is that Jesus flipped over tables in the Temple - the anti-ICE protestors are just following Jesus.
It's an inaccurate analogy. Jesus flipping the tables of the moneychangers would be more like ripping out the card scanners for a private valet service in the church parking lot. It is part of a larger poor analogy that Jesus was disruptive/protested the culture/opposed the authorities, therefore whenever we do those things we are being like Jesus. Jesus's example in these things is no more than a declaration that such protest techniques are permissible, not that they confer blanket permission. This is obvious enough that I have to suspect people of bad faith and deceptiveness. However, we all have such remarkable abilities to deceive ourselves, and they may not be attempting deceit.
I used to have paranoid patients who claimed to be prophets or the Second Coming who would point out that Jesus was persecuted and disbelieved, they are persecuted and disbelieved, therefore their message is validated*.
There are competing sets of subtle manipulations in the discussions about whether people are being called Minnesotans** or Americans, whether they are being called Moms/Dads vs Parents, and a host of tricks of video perspective and what is left out of stories. I'm not happy with much of anyone on this and am not entering that discussion at present. There are manipulations that bother me more than others, but I have not done an Examen on that and better not get ahead of myself.
*Their "message" was nearly always the same, that they were a prophet. If pressed, the manics would say that "people should love each other," schizophrenics would say that "judgement is coming." That would be about it.
**Walz, Frey, Smith, Omar, Ellison, Good - none are Minnesotans, BTW.
All analogies always break, but an analogy between one's self and the son of God breaks almost immediately.
ReplyDelete**Walz, Frey, Smith, Omar, Ellison, Good - none are Minnesotans, BTW
ReplyDeleteBy their own standard of citizenship they are but, as some folks have observed, so are the ICE agents operating in Minneapolis.
Somewhat more seriously, of the six listed I would only say Omar would have had a significantly change in lifestyle after moving to Minnesota though her likely father being a high official in the Somali government might cut against that somewhat, and I don't know much about Ellison's background. Looking at Walz specifically there isn't much difference between growing up in rural Nebraska vs rural Minnesota vs rural Iowa. It's mostly what laundry you cheer for. Even way back in the Middle Border days it was not uncommon for people to move among the states, the Wilders being a good example and Hamlin Garlin's family also started in Wisconsin and moved to Iowa. Most of the borders of the Midwest and Plains states are just lines on map and the river valleys on either side of those state boundaries tend to be pretty similar.
Delete