Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, November 12

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

MR TRUMP IS PRESIDENT: PRAYER TRIUMPHS, INTELLECTUALS STAY PURE, FISHERMEN AND WORKERS GOT BUSY: The power of prayer. Across the board, prominent Catholic and Christian intellectuals sat the race out, but Catholics and Evangelicals were crucial to the Trump/Pence win. The loyalty of the Christian intellectuals to the neocon intellectuals of Weekly Standard and National Review was reinforced when individually or in another of their endless group signed statements of principles they denounced Mr Trump. Their acts of virtue signaling relieved the great thinkers of the citizen's messy task of choosing a captain for the ship of state. There is something about men who work with their hands. They can tolerate getting them dirty to get a job done. That’s why Jesus built His Church on fishermen.

THE NON-COLLEGE EDUCATED: WHEN THEY SWITCHED PARTIES IT TURNED SWING STATES TO RED. WHEN WHITE COLLEGE REPUBLICAN WOMEN WENT FOR HILLARY, IT JUST RAN UP MARGINS IN STATES SHE HAD:
"Trump’s margin among whites without a college degree is the largest among any candidate in exit polls since 1980. Two-thirds (67%) of non-college whites backed Trump, compared with just 28% who supported Clinton, resulting in a 39-point advantage for Trump among this group. In 2012 and 2008, non-college whites also preferred the Republican over the Democratic candidate but by less one-sided margins (61%-36% and 58%-40%, respectively)."
Pew breakdown by Gender and Color

Our first thoughts on the President-elect.

ELECTION OVER - TIME TO HAVE A REAL FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE AND ASSEMBLE OURSELVES AS A CULTURE OF PROTECTION TO KEEP THE PEACE: Mr. Trump is President-elect. The enemies and friends of our nation are the same as last week. From journalists and congressmen ,we need a debate on post-9/11 foreign policy. Let us throw out all the left vs right slogans as we frame this discussion in terms of the religious and national loyalties that drive history. While we discuss our place among the nations: who are our allies and who are our enemies, let us also rebuild the Christian and civic brotherhood which shapes our nation under God. The pro-life movement especially needs to mature in terms of developing a national strategy beyond "abortion as an issue." This involves understanding the masculine nation and the femininity of motherhood as the two complementary forms of the culture of protection needed for the culture of life. If either one is missing, the other will falter.

THE MOST IMPORTANT EMAIL OF WIKILEAKS - THE SAUDIS (WHAT THEY DO) AND THE CLINTONS (WHAT THEY KNOW): In a 2014 email made public by Assange’s WikiLeaks last month, Hillary Clinton, who had served as secretary of state until the year before, urges John Podesta, then an advisor to Barack Obama, to "bring pressure" on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, "which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Islamic State, IS, ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups."

“I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection,” Assange, whose whistleblowing site released three tranches of Clinton-related emails over the past year, told Pilger in an exclusive interview, courtesy of Dartmouth Films.

“All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS and funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it is some “rogue” princes using their oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS.”

Assange and Pilger, who sat down for their 25-minute interview at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the whistle-blower has been a refugee since 2012, then talk about the conflict of interest between Clinton’s official post, which she held throughout Obama’s first term, her husband’s nonprofit, and the Middle East officials, whose stated desire to fight terrorism may not have been sincere.

John Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the first two, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton is secretary of state, and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Julian Assange: Under Hillary Clinton – and the Clinton emails reveal a significant discussion of it – the biggest-ever arms deal in the world was made with Saudi Arabia: more than $80 billion. During her tenure, the total arms exports from the US doubled in dollar value.

JP: Of course, the consequence of that is that this notorious jihadist group, called ISIL or ISIS, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation?

JA: Yes.

ANOTHER RELATIVE OF A PREVIOUS PRESIDENT WHO BECAME THE FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT OF HER COUNTRY: South Korea’s Park Guen-hye is engulfed in bizarre scandal involving her shadow lady friend-shaman.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

HOW IRAN SEES THE LAST 30 YEARS: An excellent talk by an Iranian expert with emphasis on Shia-Sunni lens to understand fight against ISIS.

CREATING SECULAR IRAQ - BATHIFICATION UNDER SADDAM HUSSEIN MEANT SUPPRESSING RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES: From a book analyzing documents from Iraq, the strategy of the secularist government of Saddam Hussein was to enhance tribal divisions in order to suppress the wider religious identities, especially of Shiites. In America our shared Christian identity unites the black and white working class, but the secular elite plays the tribe card against the religious and national loyalties that could unite us. Interesting parallels. From Amatzia Baram's review of The Ba'thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein's Totalitarianism by Aaron M. Faust [Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015].

"The regime failed at its two central goals: pan-Arabism and secularism. By legitimizing the tribes and their sheikhs, Saddam jettisoned the party's ideal of creating a seamless, national Arab society. It is true that after he recruited the tribes, Saddam used them to support his regime in a difficult era. However, he paid dearly for that cooperation. The tribes became much stronger than under the previous regimes. Both Sunni and Shiite sheikhs acquired wealth and total power over their people coupled with a very high profile ideological surrender of the regime to tribalism. Rather than disappearing, many social identities were, in fact, enhanced."

CLINTON FOUNDATION AND GOVERNMENTS SUPPORTING WAHHABI JIHADISM - COULD THIS BE PART OF REASON WE HAVEN'T NAMED OUR ENEMY IN THE WAR ON TERROR? "The Saudi regime by itself has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with donations coming as late as 2014, as she prepared her presidential run. A group called 'Friends of Saudi Arabia,' co-founded 'by a Saudi Prince,' gave an additional amount between $1 million and $5 million. The Clinton Foundation says that between $1 million and $5 million was also donated by 'the State of Qatar,' the United Arab Emirates, and the government of Brunei. 'The State of Kuwait' has donated between $5 million and $10 million."

BUSH LIBRARY ALSO RECEIVED MAJOR SAUDI FUNDS: House of Saud, House of Bush (This does not lessen the blow, but proves the hypothesis. The Bush dynasty and the Clinton syndicate are both negligent in defining our true enemy in the "War on Terror").

SOMALIA DANGEROUS FOR CHRISTIANS AS THE SAUDIS BUILD MOSQUES: Where doe this brand of hatred come from?

III. R&G ROUND UP

OUR REAL ENEMY: The Vatican exorcist Fr Amorth has passed. May his great soul rest in peace, and may the Enemy rot in Hell.

PIERRE MANENT AND POLITICAL FORMS: A good review of the French political philosopher.

WHY CARE ABOUT NATIONS AND HISTORY? - FROM CHRISTIANITY IN EAST AND WEST BY CHRISTOPHER DAWSON: After speaking of the Eastern mystical ideal of the flight of the Alone to the Alone:

“But this is not Christianity. Although Christianity does not deny the religious value of contemplation or mystical experience, its essential nature is different. It is a religion of Revelation, Incarnation, and Communion; a religion which unites the human and the divine and sees in history the manifestation of the Divine Purpose towards the human race.”

John Mulloy, THE EDITOR OF THIS BOOK IN THE FOREWORD says of Dawson:

“Christianity, unlike the Oriental religions, does not exist for the individual to have a mystical experience. Its purposes embrace the whole of humanity and it is therefore essentially historical in its orientation, rather than mystical. The mystical experience is not denied but it is subordinated to historical revelation.”

AMERICA’S FOUNDING: Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor, explains why we can't build a proper nation on the notion of rights-bearing autonomous individuals. His description of that inadequate civic notion is well formulated. He grievously errs in saying that is the basis of the American founding. He is missing the religious and military bonds which won the revolutionary war. Long before the Declaration of Independence, the militia men of Lexington and Concord showed the communal bonds which still form the basis of the American Covenant.