Who is the anti-Christ?

I was reading the other day that a non-trivial number of conservative Christians believe that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. This is crazy. Not the part about the anti-Christ coming to destroy America; that part is pretty reasonable. What is crazy is the notion that Satan would deliberately choose to come as Barack Obama.

Consider: Satan is supposed to be very tricky. When Satan does come as the anti-Christ, he will need to find a way to be accepted among Jesus Christ's followers - especially the ones who will be on guard for the anti-Christ. What a terrible disguise Barack Obama would be! He is a pro-choice Democrat for one, so that raises red flags (and thus is a bad disguise). After all, whether or not one believes that abortion is evil, there are literally hundreds of millions of Americans who support abortion rights; they can't all be the anti-Christ. Obama also has a funny sounding name; his Dad was a Muslim, he has lived in Indonesia, and he is biracial. These are all attributes that draw attention to Barack Obama, most of which happens to be unfortunately negative (ie, the birther movement of the Tea Parties). Thus, we can conclude that Obama would be a terrible vessel for Satan to use as the anti-Christ. Way too obvious.

They say the wolf will come dressed in sheep's clothing. The anti-Christ will need to blend in naturally with the right-wing Christians who will be looking out for him. Thus I suspect that the anti-Christ will almost certainly be white, although could be either male or female. Definitely will be physically attractive, and a decent orator (which excludes George W. Bush from the running). The orations of the anti-Christ will be very emotional in nature, to appeal to our primal, irrational, and often evil side. Naturally, the anti-Christ will profess great faith in Christianity and may even present him/herself as a Christian leader. Finally, since most of the devout and evangelical Christians in America are Republicans, the anti-Christ will also certainly be a Republican.

Jesus Christ will need to come to earth to save his followers from the anti-Christ. With this conclusion, we can infer then that the anti-Christ will inevitably fool the majority of Christians into following him/her. This makes sense upon further consideration. Satan is supposed to be the Prince of Darkness, and the Master of all Evil. How competent of a villain would Satan be if he could not even deceive the majority of Jesus Christ's mortal followers? Thus, if the anti-Christ is among us, he/her will be held in high regard by a strong majority of evangelical Christians, who will have been fooled by the wolf in sheep's clothing.

We know from Biblical sources that Jesus Christ was apolitical, was an "outsider" in the sense that he did not recognize traditional forms of authority, and that he was persecuted greatly. The anti-Christ will naturally attempt to mimic Jesus Christ in these regards. He/she will pretend to be working for the good of the people as an outsider, and will claim to be viewed by the establishment with contempt. The anti-Christ will also feign persecution by anti-Christian forces, and will elicit a sense of victimization among his/her followers.

In truth, the anti-Christ will be a great persecutor of others. Some of these persecutions will be difficult to see, because the anti-Christ will try to present the perpetrators as victims and vice versa. For clarity, imagine where Jesus Christ would stand on an issue; the anti-Christ would take the opposite stance. For example, would Jesus Christ support the waterboarding of Muslims picked up in Afghanistan or holding men indefinitely without trial in Guantanamo? Of course not, but the anti-Christ will support these positions by pointing out that they are probably all terrorists who want to kill Christians. What would Jesus Christ say about plans to build a Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan? I think he would be OK with it; so naturally the anti-Christ would not. Again, the anti-Christ will pretend that the persecutors (Christians who are willing to strip American Muslims of their rights to build houses of worship) are actually the victims (by claiming that Muslims want to kill or convert Christians) in order to confuse Christians.

Another example: Jesus Christ would certainly not advocate military force to solve our foreign policy problem; the anti-Christ will naturally be more open to those suggestions. Jesus Christ knows that all humans are sinners and that we are all equal in the eyes of God. Jesus Christ would not hold a homosexual in lower regard than any other person. Naturally the anti-Christ will take strong positions against homosexuals, but like always, the anti-Christ will claim that the persecutors (Christians who wish to deny homosexuals equal rights, such as the right to serve their country in the military) are actually the victims (the anti-Christ will claim that homosexuals want to molest or corrupt children, destroy Christian families etc). Would Jesus Christ support rounding up illegal Hispanic immigrants like criminals and shipping them back to Mexico? Nope; so the anti-Christ will, but will pretend that Americans are the victims instead of poor immigrants, by claiming that Hispanics are committing crimes, stealing jobs, abusing public services, et cetera.

I do not know how soon the anti-Christ will come to destroy America, or if he/she is already here doing this evil work. I suppose it is also possible that the anti-Christ works through multiple people at the same time to advance Satan's evil agenda. In any case, I think I have established a useful set of descriptive factors, so that we may potentially identify the anti-Christ(s) and work to marginalize him/her. As a recap, here are some possible attributes of the anti-Christ:

- Attractive, well spoken
- Uses emotionally charged language, induces strong emotions in others
- Could be male or female
- Caucasian race
- Republican
- Christian, with generally high marks from Christian groups
- Claims to be a political outsider
- Pretends to be persecuted
- Political support for the persecution of others

I am not really sure if there is anyone in American life with all of these attributes, but if there is, we should really watch out for him/her.

**** UPDATE ****

I swear I knew nothing about this soon-to-be-released book, "The Persecution of Sarah Palin", until days after writing this post.

American Enterprise Institute on the Bush tax cuts

Long synopsis here:
www.aei.org/outlook/100989

A summary.  We cannot afford to extend the middle class tax cuts because of the deficit, but we can afford to extend the tax cuts for the top 2% despite of the deficit.  I kid you not, that's the argument they are making.

The thing is, I don't actually doubt that extending cuts for the rich but not the middle class would promote faster overall growth.  Of course it would!  But there is more to an economy than purely GDP. 

Economic growth over the last two decades has been quite unbalanced, with increasingly stark wealth disparities.  You don't need to be a socialist to think that uneven economic growth is a bad thing for a society.  What is more difficult is figuring out what to do about it.  Instead of those solutions, what is coming out of AEI is a recipe for how to continue economic growth for the top 2% and stagnation for the middle classes.  I wouldn't blame someone for not being thrilled about that.

The right has only itself to blame for the expiring of the top Bush tax cuts.  I've no doubt that Obama would have agreed to an extension as a quid pro quo for Republicans playing ball on some other issue (cap and trade maybe?).  Alas, Republicans have refused to cooperate on a single issue.  Now Obama is presented with a tempting opportunity to be the economic populist that the GOP portrays him as.  I don't blame him for seizing it.

In Mexico, a war every century.

Interesting Op-Ed in the NYT.  Money quote:

"But this is not the way things are. We (Mexicans) are dealing with a situation generated, to a great extent, by the market for drugs and weapons in the United States and by the refusal of many Americans to recognize their own portion of responsibility in these tragic events. The drug war will have to be resolved on both sides of the border."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=8BE04864C366600E2B0CAE00E236544C.w5?a=660860&f=28&sub=Contributor

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."

***** UPDATE *****

1. More regarding point 4 below, where I connect the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim sentiment with the political aspirations of the GOP. Here is Andrew Sullivan elaborating on that point: "You reap what you sow. You turn a benign Muslim community center into a "stab in the heart" of Americans (in Sarah Palin's words) and someone soon will up the ante." The fact that Palin herself doesn't support the Koran burning is irrelevant. If you help ignite a fire, don't try to claim innocence when it starts to burn out of control.

2. Terry Jones totally chickened out. He says he canceled the burning because the NYC Imam agreed to move the mosque there. This is BS for two reasons. One is because the NYC mosque organizers promised no such thing. Two is because Terry Jones' motivation for the burning never was the NYC mosque. He was doing it because he claimed the book "is full of lies", and he probably thinks he is doing God a favor by burning Korans. Presumably he still believes that. My money says the real reason he canceled the burning is because getting death threats isn't as fun as it sounds. He is a fraud to begin with (read about his ministry in Germany), so I'm not surprised that he bailed on his publicity stunt when he realized he might actually be in danger.

3. The Westboro Baptist Church has promised to stage a Koran burning if Jones backs out. This is not surprising. We have 300 million Americans, many of whom are crazy. We have all seen how much attention someone can get for threatening to burn Korans, so I definitely expected someone to repeat, although not to quickly. As I said before, the real story here is that Muslims world-wide just need to grow up and realize that throwing a temper tantrum every time someone insults their religion isn't going to repeal the 1st Amendment.

***** END UPDATE *****

That was Heinrich Heine in 1821. I read this quote with connection to the Florida Pastor's decision to stage a "Quran-burning day" on 9/11 this year. A few thoughts on that:

1. Burning books is fundamentally un-American.

2. This pastor has a right to make a fool of himself and his 50 followers.

3. If I was a Muslim I'd be most bothered by the predictably childish reaction to the burning, not the burning itself. That is, millions of Muslims worldwide with apparently nothing better to do will have a childish, almost Pavlovian reaction to this "insult". They will work themselves into a tizzy and probably dozens of people will die because of some irrelevant stunt pulled by some jackass in Florida, United States, of all places. Such a reaction is a sign of intellectual weakness, of insecurity, and of backwardness.

4. There is a very clear connection between the mainstreaming of attacks on Islam and the political inclinations of the right. A majority of Republicans think that Obama is a Muslim or is not an American. This is not novel. The right does this sort of thing all the time. Hispanics, homosexuals, and atheists are the tried-and-true scapegoats; Muslims are a more recent addition. These tactics are proven; they work very well. They don't make America a better place.

Hyperinflation

Not to say that hyperinflation in Germany was a good thing, but it actually took place many years before the Great Depression and well before Hitler took power.  It wasn't hyperinflation that led to Hitler coming to power, in fact, it was the Great Depression.  Hyperinflation in 1920's Germany was certainly disruptive but in the aftermath Germany was not left in a terrible economic situation.  After all, when there is hyperinflation, what did people do?  Consume and invest.  A rich man would build a factory, or a house, or purchase equipment, anything rather than let the money get eaten up by hyperinflation.  Once the economomic picture settled down, all of these investments still had real productive value, as France discovered shortly thereafter.

 

On the other hand, consider deflation.  People with debts are worse off:  think of middle class people with mortgages, car payments, student loans, etc.  These people will seriously struggle and certainly will decrease their discretionary consumption (think of American farmers in the 1930s).  Now consider the rich:  people who may have a bunch of liquid assets.  They have every reason to sit on their fortune rather than invest it.  They will postpone purchases for as long as possible so that the money becomes worth more through deflation.  This means less consumption, and less investment.

 

I can understand why inflation is something to be avoided in general.  However, from my rudimentary economic knowledge I'd think that given our current contractionary situation, inflation might be a good thing while deflation will exacerbate the problem significantly.  Right now we are on the verge of a deflationary spiral, whether or not people want to admit it for political reasons. 

 

Disclaimer:  there is a conflict of interest to this post.  I am sitting on approximately $ 200,000 dollars of student loan debt (as are most medical students).  So I stand to gain a lot more from inflation, which will eat away my debts, than deflation, which will exacerabate them. 

 

Too much deflation and I may be forced to flee the country.

Ignorant or Malicious

I think the organizers are mostly the latter, and the attendees are mostly the former.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/us/politics/28beck.html?_r=1&hp

 

It is funny though that many conservatives are saying that Muslims should not build a mosque anywhere near ground zero out of sensitivity for the victims of 9/11 families.  There is an obvious parallel to this rally in the pre-civil rights oppression of African Americans, incidentally by a cohort of Americans then that is remarkably similar to the average tea party protester today.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

I love Ron Paul.  His recent rant about the demagogery surrounding the NYC mosque is a classic piece.

 

http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-08-20/ron-paul-sunshine-patriots-stop-your-demagogy-about-the-nyc-mosque/

 

Money quotes: 

 

"The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer."

 

"Conservatives are once again, unfortunately, failing to defend private property rights, a policy we claim to cherish. In addition conservatives missed a chance to challenge the hypocrisy of the left which now claims they defend property rights of Muslims, yet rarely if ever, the property rights of American private businesses."

 

"It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don't want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty."

 

Ron Paul was and is the only true conservative of the Republican Party.  All of these other fools...Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell and the like, are frauds.

Super interesting article about a Chinese Lt General

Democracy is the most powerful weapon:

 

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20100819.aspx

 

I personally think China will surely democratize smoothly in the next few decades.  There really won't be a defining moment; it will be a gradual process.  The Chinese authoritarian state is/will gradually morph(ing) into a one-party state with increasingly full civil liberties.  Eventually it will look like Japan for the last 40 years, where the dominant political party held control but politicians competed for control of that party.  Opposition parties may compete, but will generally do poorly.  Finally one day, an opposition party will win an election, but hardly anyone will notice, as happened in Japan last year.

On the mosque "at ground zero"

Sam Harris is not OK with the mosque because he believes that Islam is unlike other religions and that previous Western liberal tolerance towards Islam betrayed weakness.

I disagree with him on several counts. The first is the issue of Islam being a violent religion in passage. That, it undeniably is. There are quotes in the Koran that invoke violence. But at the end of the day - what does that prove? Nothing, really. There are violent sections of the Christian bible. And furthermore, people do not need religion to make them evil - they can do that on their own. They also don't necessarily become evil because of religion. In other words, even though Islam does advocate violent action in certain parts, it does not follow that Muslims are destined to become violent. No doubt someday they will mostly come to ignore their religious tenants just like we have here in the West.

The most important point of disagreement is the context of our tolerance. There is a fundamental difference between European tolerance and American tolerance of Islam. Europeans were tolerant from a position of Muslims on that continent not being well integrated into the society at all, an extremely anemic European growth rate, and a very robust Muslim birth rate from a relatively high starting base population. In other words, Europeans are tolerant of Islam out of weakness.

In the United States, we can be tolerant of Islam for different reasons - we can be tolerant because of our strength. We do not have to fear Islam because we know that it poses no threat to America. Why? Well for starters, American Muslims are far more integrated than European ones. This is a testament to our melting pot society, which has an almost limitless capacity to absorb and welcome newcomers. Muslims succeed in America, and they feel welcome in America. Furthermore, they represent a very tiny proportion of the population, barely 1%.

Americans should not worry about the mosque near ground zero because we are strong enough such that we don't need to. Allowing the mosque reflects our confidence and strength, even though a similar situation in Europe might have reflected weakness. This partially explains the European tendency lately to overreact in bits of anti-Islamic hysteria (the Swiss, the French); they are compensating! Nobody in the world will question that our allowing the mosque is from a position of strength - except maybe all of the unpatriotic Americans who are expressing their vote of no confidence in their country by whining about this issue.

Bombing Iran

"Netanyahu’s belief is that Iran is not Israel’s problem alone; it is the world’s problem, and the world, led by the United States, is duty-bound to grapple with it."

This is a quote from Jeffery Goldberg's recent comment in The Atlantic. I will admit that the Iranian Republic of seven years ago is different from the one of today. Then, there was a widespread distribution of power among clergy, the religious assembly, the Supreme Leader, Ahmadinejad, and the Revolutionary Guards. Now the more moderate clergy has been sidelined, and the more extremist Revolutionary Guards and their leader Ahmadinejad have consolidated power.

The nation looks more like a police state / dictatorship than it did seven years ago. I absolutely hate WW2 analogies, but I actually think it is appropriate here: Iran now looks like Germany in 1932, where the brownshirts and the SS were on the brink of a major consolidation of power within the nation. So too may the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Ahmadinejad be poised.

Any time power gets more concentrated, it is unstable, and more dangerous - especially when the people in whose hands it is concentrated have apocalyptic religious beliefs, and thus are likely irrational and hard to deter. So before having finished the article, I will say that the thought of a military solution to this problem does not turn me off nearly as much as it did previously.

If I was Obama, what would I do? I would tell the Israelis flat out that settlements in the West Bank stop TODAY if they want our military / diplomatic support in a year from now if things get a bit hazy. If we have to go to war, we have to go to war. The world has to know that we at least did everything possible to prevent that eventuality, which Obama has virtually done, save successfully restrain Israeli provocation in the West Bank.

The chicken or the egg?

Actually, I am pretty sure that scientists recently figured out which came first.  Anyway, I sometimes wonder:  are Americans short sighted, gullible, and stupid because this is the dismal state of our national media?  Or is our vapid and useless media just catering to a hopeless audience?  I mean, Fox News for example certainly did not invent stupid, it just profits from it.

Chinese docs and patients

I did a month long surgery rotation in China in April.  When I came back, I told people (friends, family, docs) that American surgeons have it lucky:  if the patient does not do well, the worst that could happen is we get sued.  In China, you get sued and you get beat up by the patient's family.

 

I don't think people believed me when I told them this, or maybe thought I was exaggerating.  I'd tell them that if a patient had a bad outcome, the docs in some places would wear a helmet to work the next day.  And I'd get this look like "Nick, you're full of it."

 

Quote from a recent NYT article.  "In 2006, patients or their relatives attacked more than 5,500 medical workers, reflecting wide discontent with China's public health care system."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html

 

See?  I wasn't exaggerating.  American doctors have it great.  Our patients generally respect us.  They only sue us 5% of the times when they could.  And, they don't beat us up when things don't go well.

quote of the month

"There's still this notion that we should build big roads everywhere because the car represents personal freedom. Well, that's bullshit. The truth is that most people are prisoners of their cars."

 

This comes from a great article about traffic and road congestion, and the future of American urban planning.

 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html?pg=1&topic=traffic&topic_set=

Barack Obama is a better man than I

Apparently he has initiated regular face-to-face meetings with senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

It would have been really difficult for me to do this sort of thing given the extremely low opinion I have of McConnell in particular. But this sort of action is really the thing that Obama promised for his presidency. "Change" was never about being liberal or moving the country to the left. That had been done before. It was about consensus seeking and bipartisanship. Just because the Republicans have downright refused to play government thus far does not make Obama a less bipartisan politician.

Gay marriage

Many people agree:  government is too big, it shouldn't be involved in private affairs, and individuals should be free to live as they wish so long as it doesn't harm others.

Many of those same people would however disagree that the government shouldnt be involved in private affairs vis a vis marriage.

I guess they think gay marriage will harm others?  Id be interested to hear an argument for that position that couldn't be extended to outlaw all sorts of "amoral" behavior, thus destroying the separation of church and state and turning America into a theocracy.

And then of course many of these same advocates of private freedom of government intervention might also oppose homosexual military service, again because I somehow should believe that gay military service harms others.  Even though every other western nation allows it, including Israel.

Everyone likes big government when it suits them, I guess.

Wikileaks

My rule of thumb is that more access to more information by more people is always a good thing. And even in the case of Wikileaks, it is a good thing. If the war in Afghanistan is going so poorly that we have to lie to the American people about it, maybe we should reconsider how or whether to fight it. Anyway, I think that nation-building in Afghanistan is, while perhaps an exercise in futility, not a grave threat to world peace. I would think Wikileaks could really do a much better job at promoting world peace if it figured out a way to get information to citizens in countries like North Korea, Iran, and other places with tons of censorship. More information to more people = better, after all, and Americans already know Afghanistan is not going well.

A government bail-out that you won't see the Tea Party complain about

Continued federal subsidies to farmers. So much for the whole "free market, small government" capitalism thing that they're always talking about.

Obama and BP

One thing I'd like to point out in light of all of the GOP attacks on the way Obama treated BP. Republicans have asserted that the 20 billion dollar escrow fund is a "shakedown" and that it is unlawful. Granted, they all backed off because they realized that it was politically a bad position to be in - but was there any merit to their position? I would argue no.

I agree that it would be illegal if Obama was trying to force BP into putting 20 billion into escrow, since damages claims should go through the tort system. But from what I know, Obama simply asked BP to do it, and BP complied instead. This is a subtle difference, but a relevant one.

If someone was to rear end me on the road, I could ask them to give me a few hundred dollars in cash. It would be convenient for both of us, after all. That way, I wouldn't have to deal with the courts, I wouldn't have to call the police. The person who hits be benefits as well, since their insurance won't find out and they end up paying less in the long run. That being said, if the person who hit me refused to give me a few hundred bucks cash, theres no way I could force them to do it. Instead, I would have to use the court system, and would probably try to get more than just a few hundred bucks in damages for my inconvenience.

Obama wanted BP to put 20 billion in escrow because it will result in very rapid payments to people who are injured financially by this oil spill. Obama benefits from this because it is going to be good politics - people will see that he made action on the issue, that people are going to get paid, and that BP is punished. Yet, BP stands to gain as well and I have no doubt that this is one of the reasons they complied with Obama's request. BP knows that using the tort system, they would have had to paid out huge sums of money anyways. Furthermore, not being seen by the American people, investors, the world as cooperating would probably injure their long-term bottom line by damaging their reputation.

Besides Obama and BP, I think the people on the gulf coast are going to benefit from this as well. It took decades for the Exxon Valdez oil spill damages to get paid out to some of the claimants. The tort system is a slow and cumbersome beast. It obviously is the judicator of last resort, but there is nothing illegal about avoiding the tort system if all parties agree.

Strategic Default

Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. on strategic defaults: "Any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator — and one who is not honoring his obligation.”

When I read that quote, I thought it was one of the most audacious things I had ever read. The entire world banking system was on the verge of collapse two years ago until it was rescued by the Obama administration. And the reason it almost happened was because bankers on Wall St. were recklessly speculating with the savings of American citizens. Who wasn't honoring an obligation? Regular citizens are held to a higher standard than banks?

Meanwhile, here are the Republicans going after strategic defaulters. Again, these are the regular citizens who have made a business decision that their home is no longer a smart investment. These citizens decide to cut their losses and walk away - and suffer the consequences in the contract, which state that they must surrender the property.

There may be an economic explanation for widespread strategic defaults should be discouraged, although I don't really see it at the moment. It is certainly bad for the housing market *now* but it wouldn't be bad for a housing market *in general*, since the threat of strategic default would serve as a powerful incentive for banks to not feed housing bubbles or try to profit off of them. At any rate, its pretty heinous to see the Republicans go gung-ho about pursuing regular Americans and forcing them to stick with bad business decisions when Mitch McConnell and the Republicans have been defending Wall Street from any regulation whatsoever.

If anyone remembers, Jim Cramer (of Mad Money) went on the Daily Show a couple years ago and got a beat down by Jon Stewart that was so complete that it was actually awkward to watch the show and Cramer looked like he was going to cry. Well the reason that Cramer caught Stewart's attention in the first place is that on Mad Money, Cramer referred to Americans who were walking away from their mortgages as "losers".

I'm just trying to figure out how in our culture, corporations and banks who f*ck up beyond belief deserve to be preserved, bailed out, and protected from any regulation. But average Americans, who don't do finance for a living, when they decide that they can no longer afford a mortgage and walk...what are they? They're "losers", who "aren't honoring their obligations". It is just too ironic that the only reason many of these citizen defaulters were in those mortgages in the first place is because banks were giving home loans people with bad credit for zero money down.

The Oil

I think one important point that keeps getting lost on impatient Americans is why BP was drilling in the first place.  They were drilling because Americans refuse to use less oil.   BP had to drill because our energy policy for the last decade has been "drill baby, drill" when especially after 9/11 it should have been "conserve baby, conserve".  We didn't want nuclear power or mass transit.  We wanted SUVs and strip malls.  We went to war for it.  Now the gulf is paying for it.

The saddest thing is through all the whining and bitching about this oil spill, nobody is talking about how we reduce our dependence on oil.  We need a gas tax, nuclear power, and public transit - and soon.  Until we decide to make a sacrifice I seriously am sick of the whining about BP, who did the job we paid them to do, with risks that were clearly not part of the fee but that should have been (this is why we need an oil tax).