Wahrheit oder Fiktion?

"And Jesus said unto them, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," says Mark 12:17. The Gospel of Mark is considered almost universally to be the oldest of the New Testament gospels, the source of the rest of the synoptic gospels. It's also one of the most willfully misquoted and misunderstood (if not overlooked out of convenience) outside of the parable of the chances of a rich man getting into heaven and a camel passing through the eye of a needle. When you look at the majority of statements attributed to Jesus in the NT, most of them address that the priority is to care for the poor, the vulnerable--you can't miss it, yet many do because they're hatefully bonkers.

This is not a debate over whether Jesus was the son of God--I don't believe that and never have. That's irrelevant to me, unimportant like whether Paul Bunyan's Ox babe was blue or not, that's about mythology and missing the point because you're an asshole.

What did Jesus mean by the "render" comment? We've had the answer for almost two millennia now, right in front of our faces, just like the Nazarene's stupid disciples who almost never understood what he was going on about. God would have chosen a better lot than those dummies. When you look at orthodox Christianity's many flaws and horrific mistakes, look no further than these small-minded, patriarchal idiots. This was the best God could do? It had to be the Demiurge, but that's a bedtime story for another time. What did he mean? Common sense should be a guide here by posing a few questions: What did Caesar want? What did the Roman emperors want? First, they wanted taxes, but most of all, fundamentally, obedience to their rule and its proscribed laws. For the Jews, this was a tall order, because they had their own set or religious ones, hence why there were money changers in Herod's temple, for example, one of many, and frankly, not an especially big deal, more neurosis that became codified tradition. 

I think what Jesus said was pretty simple. Tell the Romans what they want to hear, go through the motions, but never give them your heart, never yield your soul. That's not a very difficult prescription for living under the occupation of another culture. To be sure, the Romans were brutal occupiers, we don't need to retread over that ground, it's settled. However, when it came to tolerance of indigenous cultures and religions, they weren't all that bad--better than what came after them in most cases in fact. There was a rub for the Jews: like all Roman subjects, they were supposed to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor. After that, they could worship pretty much as they wished. Just as there's always some asshole heckling at a concert, this wasn't good enough for some people, and like the Christian martyrs that would come decades later, what they were about to engage in was pretty pointless: fighting an uphill battle nobody wanted over abstract concepts that weren't and aren't rooted in reality. When you're a fanatic, you do these things. Politics and religion were inextricably-linked in those days, and this is how one should read the synoptic gospels as well as the esoteric sects of Judaism and the region in that day in general.

Jesus wasn't telling anyone to take up arms here, quite the opposite. He was suggesting the power of ideas and how they cannot be killed, how people can basically lie to their oppressors and keep the lamp lit in their hearts and minds. Yet, so often, this quote is used as an excuse by authoritarian-minded fools calling themselves Christians (they aren't by a long shot) to obey authority under all circumstances, one more divine cop-out exhortation to blindly serve evil.

The last time I checked, Jesus never said, "Give the boss man a blowjob," only to tell the asshole what he wants to hear and to go on doing what you would anyway out of view. But hey, that's must just be me. I must have missed that after I got kicked out of Sunday school for asking too many questions...

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) review

Hermeneutics n,-The study of hidden meanings in sacred texts.

For fans of Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, this is a triumphant return to his more fantastical side, but also a sad look back on the last few hundred years of post-Enlightenment disenchantment, war, and the death of nature, therefore, of magic. We have lost a sense of the enchanted, and that loss is seen in our most daemonic and destructive behaviors over the last few hundred years. The repressed always return one day, and the toll has been profound. While the Enlightenment brought with it classical Liberalism, democracy, and the expansion of the rights of the average person (along with more material comfort), the price has been a high one: for the most part, we have forgotten how to imagine and to dream and have lost our symbols and meaning. We have lost ourselves.

This loss of meaning is a recurrent theme in Gilliam's body of work since his first movie, Time Bandits (1981), and has carried through in some form or another in practically every one since, even in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1997), yet another quest for "the dream." In that case it was the "American dream," which the characters never really find. Modernity doesn't tend to deliver on dreams but does its best to repress and eradicate them, while at the same time dazzling us with illusion devoid of meaning.

The modern world has liberated us from discomfort to a great extent, but it has also robbed us of the symbols, the archetypes, and the stories that feed the human soul. People used to dream and imagine things we no longer can as a culture, at least in a general sense, and it's beyond tragic. Now, it's down to artists like Gilliam and he himself is part of a "dying breed" of maverick filmmakers. It has also robbed us of the "quiet times" of contemplation that greeted our peasant ancestors with the harvesting and the turning of the seasons; Blake's "Satanic mills" came, the human mind fragmented, and nothing has been quite the same since. Gilliam has been acutely aware of this problem for some time and shares this feeling with director/storytellers like Werner Herzog who has stated emphatically that life cannot go on for much longer without these meanings, these symbolical signposts that are supposed to punctuate our lives. It should be said again and again: human beings were meant to dream and to yearn for a better world. The fact that we do--and the "whys"--is one of the great mysteries of this life.

Without giving too much away, Dr. Parnassus (taken from the name of the mount from which the Greek Oracle of Delphi spake) is a centuries-old Magus and Secret Chief whose last days have finally come, and the Devil had come to get what's due to him--literally. Like the suppressed inner tradition of the West, Parnassus has been with us for thousands of years, fighting the darkness, the ignorance, lack, and yes, the Devil himself ("Mr. Nick," an appropriately dapper1920s-festooned pimp in the great Tom Waits). Like the songs of the Troubadours (their Cathar verses preserved by Dante), and the hidden symbology of the Tarot, the subterranean transmission of esoteric knowledge has been embodied in Parnassus, a sage and a prophet with a mission to save souls throughout the millennia from crass materialism and jaded cynicism. He is a bringer of light in the best sense, just like a filmmaker is in his own way if he's doing the medium any justice. From Georges Méliès to Terry Gilliam, cinema has always been about magic--the trick that reveals a truth and nourishes the soul of mankind, that special place where imagination is supposed to rein.

There are more than a few jabs at the Vatican in the film, and Gilliam is definitely coming from an anti-clerical position. In one scene, the good doctor shows another character a scrapbook of his battles with Old Nick through the ages in works of art: one shows Parnassus as a Christ-like redeemer and illuminator preaching to the masses, while another is an "illuminated" page showing Waits' Devil character leading a procession of priests carrying an open-Bible. The message there is very, very clear, and the Devil's always in the details--the fine print--if you look closely and "see with eyes that see, and hear with ears that hear." Filmmakers know that bringing dreams to life has nearly always been a Faustian bargain, and the myth of Simon Magus and Faust is where this tale originates from; indeed, Faust originates from the story of Simon Magus, an early Gnostic thinker and "redeemer" who cast a few illusions and spells in his time. One could argue reasonably that Gilliam is telling us, "This is what the inner traditions have been reduced to--a rickety form of show business--but that's OK, we still need them and the eternal symbols. So be it." For this reason and others, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is also autobiographical.

The illuminated procession is not the only example of anti-clericalism within the plot and its imagery: Gilliam and his co-writer Charles McKeown (one of his co-writers on Brazil) have based the Tony/Heath Ledger character partly on the murdered Vatican banker, Roberto Calvi! How do I know? The bricks in the pockets and the role of organized crime in the plotline for one. To make a very complicated and long story short and comprehensible, Tony is a man that Parnassus's daughter and his helper Anton ( the other side of the coin since they share the same name) find hanging from a bridge the moment the good doctor is reading from his Tarot and pulls the hanged man card from the deck. Anton plays the god Mercury on the Parnassus stage, the god of commerce, trade, and profit, but really the god Hermes in Roman clothing. What better analogy of the movie industry could one have, that uneasy combination of vision and commerce? Hermes was the bringer of dreams, of knowledge, the guide to the underworld, a trickster, and messenger between the deathless gods and the human race. That is Anton.

Tony is a lost soul who has allegedly forgotten who he is--which is true and false--but true enough as he's lost his identity in the modern world and is as adrift as Parnassus and his struggling theater company that grants the deepest fantasies of the chosen (those they think have good hearts and who are genuine). On the other side of their mirrored-gateway into imagination, they offer one's greatest dreams, but as a test of one's true self. Mr. Nick is always waiting inside to tempt the dreamers towards their destruction, and time's running out for Parnassus who has made a series of bets with the Dark Lord with his sixteen year old daughter as the prize. In a sense, then, his daughter Valentina (played by the luminous Lily Cole) is Parnassus's final chance at redemption and mortality; he's tired of living and wants to be a normal man. He isn't alone in the traveling cosmological theater troupe: Tony is Valentina's temptation, her desire for a normal life.

Sadly, like many of the cynical and lost today, Tony has an agenda of his own and is a betrayer. This adds a measure of sorrow to the film because of the fate of Ledger, but it also lends the film a poetic quality that otherwise might not have been as powerful. This is a film no-less about the inner traditions than it is about the wrecked spiritual and natural landscape of our era, so it's not exactly going to be one of Gilliam's more uplifting tales, but since when have we come to his films for that? Christopher Plummer has probably never been so great in cinema, and were this his final role, few actors could be so proud of their work. Gilliam is a mirror, as most good artists are, of his time, and our time. Dream your dreams, because without them, there is no human race and no future. Make your dreams a reality, but be sure that those dreams are worthy of dreaming and bringing into fruition in this very material world.

Lavacocktail.com nominates Alex Jones "Fear Monger of 2008"

WWW--And boy has he earned it, although I could mention someone else with the same first name for runner-up. But we won't dwell on that, let's hold dangerous opinions about other nuts, namely Alex Jones. At least he's never threatened to sue me for holding opinions about him.

I wasn't surprised that another blatant alarmist--Naomi Klein--has been on his radio show. Right, I mean we don't have enough paranoid conspiracy theorists in America, so one with a well-developed...uh, will to power comes down from the great white north, eh, to tell us the wrongliness™ of our ways.

Thanks, thanks a lot: we need more paranoia in bad times. I don't buy--literally, I don't--her "crisis capitalism" theory at all, it's too simplified, too pat, like Marx for cliff notes. If they had anything relevant to write or say, something might actually have happened to them. They don't. Yes, Alex Jones may have won "Fear Monger of 2008" for his dionysian rants on how everything is under control and that a police state is imminent.

Scratch that--Alex Constantine wins, he's got me scared at least, making threats of defamation suits and whatnot. The problem he has is that he called me a "liar" on several occasions on his website making already dubious legal claims void. Having the opinion that someone's writing wildly speculative theories about someone's death for money is protected speech because it's an opinion, nothing more.

I've written that Kurt Nimmo, Jeff Rense, and Alex Jones are just a few along with Constantine who I feel are trying to milk this particular theory for attention, maybe even cash. Considering the fact that Constantine just avoided a similar situation in court himself over Psychic Dictatorship, he could be enacting a psychologically-reflexive action towards me. This has a scientific basis, as it's understood that an organism will inevitably strike-out against a source of pressure or duress. Strange people. Very strange.

And the winner is:

http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2008/12/21/fear-monger-award-2008.aspx?ref=rss

A take on Alex Jones as utterly strange as the subject itself: http://www.spirituallysmart.com/Jones-CIA.htm

"Eli, Eli lama sabachthani?" Dude?

Ed.--A pal forwarded this. I find it very funny. Who can't relate to his sentiments? Why else would he have yelled, screamed, and wailed, "Lord,Lord, why has thou forsaken me?" Some think he was calling out to the prophet Elijah, which makes more sense than the orthodox reading (I prefer the unorthodox one myself). Crying out, "Oh God! Oh God!" in agony doesn't really jibe well with the rest of the story and the other gospels too well, does it?

Thankfully, that's a Synoptic problem for another time...

Was Tim Russert a Divinely Inspired Hack?

Our Generally Crappy Mainstream Media--Perhaps eclipsing the death of the last Pope, Rudolph Valentino, JFK, RFK, and Gerald Ford (still dead), we got an earful about the allegedly wonderful Meet the Press host over the last several days. The litany was endless over what a "great guy" Russert was, and just what an incredible journalist he'd been...except that he wasn't, and expect them to keep braying. And where's Russert's Oswald? It was his heart, it betrayed him after he betrayed all of us.

Granted, he cast a charming Irish spell on those of us who want to feel reassured by a journalist who doesn't ask the "hard" questions of public officials--something he rarely ever did, if ever. I never noticed any substantial questions. For those of us who don't want things to change for the better, and for those of us who are afraid of a truly dynamic democracy where there's supposed to be acrimony and disagreement, Tim Russert was Jesus.

There is one thing, and one thing only that the late Tim Russert should be remembered for: he and his counsel resisted testifying over his involvement in the Plame scandal, an incident that needs no explaining to anyone paying attention. Russert had crucial information on the outing of a CIA officer by members of the executive branch as part of a disinformation campaign surrounding the pretext for the war in Iraq, and he withheld it. So much for patriotism or principles, Russert was a crusader-in-disguise for creeping authoritarianism:

Russert was aware that a special prosecutor probing the leak of a CIA operative's name knew of his summer 2003 telephone conversation with Libby, and that Libby had released him from any promise of confidentiality. [Ed.-My emphasis.] But Russert, the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and host of "Meet the Press," and his attorneys argued in previously sealed court filings in June 2004 that he should not have to tell a grand jury about that conversation, because it would harm Russert's relationship with other sources. ("Russert Resisted Testifying On Leak," the Washington Post, 01.10.2006)

As this site has always contended, the livelihoods and careers of these so-called journalists are their main priority, and they believe in nothing. The "Fourth Estate" aren't concerned or worried about our rights, and therefore feel no connection to the social contract or the common good. What they care about is themselves only, but orders are orders. But man, the coverage of his death! Oh, the coverage! Wall-to-wall, just breathtaking.

CNN and other major television news outlets even told us that there was a rainbow shining during Russert's funeral, strangely begging the question that he--like El Presidente--was somehow touched by God (more like in the head).

Mark this, and mark it well: whenever this system props-up a supplicant like Tim Russert for public deification, something is amiss, and the lies are flying. Court jesters had more courage than this clown ever did. Mediacrit.com sums-it-up best:

Being favored by Dick Cheney’s handlers doesn’t sound like a case for the journalism hall of fame, though.

In the case of Russert, we should consider what small impact “public affairs” journalism like Meet the Press has in these days of The Daily Show, social networking on the Internet, and Obama’s nontraditional campaign. I think the New York Times’ Media Equation columnist David Carr got it right when he observed that the mourning seemed not only for Russert, but an attempt to celebrate and shore up the increasingly irrelevant establishment political journalism. ("Mourning in America," Mediacrit.com, 06.19.2008)

All hail the death of establishment journalism. No, there's no reason at all to think of Tim Russert as anything but an American version of a commentator for Pravda under the Soviet regime, or a voice-over from a creaky old Nazi propaganda film. He was a stooge, a lapdog, and a moral coward without a shred of credibility.

Not that that makes him any different from his peers who attended his funeral this week, endlessly expounding on his (and their) fictitious merits as a journalist. His passing really is only relevant in relation to the Plame scandal.

Like most working within the world of the mainstream news media, he was not a man, but he was a traitor to himself, his family, and his nation. He will not be missed by those of us with the ability to reason, and history will judge him harshly. We're all born, and we all die. Tim Russert was no exception to this rule, and therefore, not special. Mourn the people he could have saved, save it. See you in the Emerald City, the Populists are off to meet the Wizard!The only problem is, they're shelling the Emerald City.

"Russert Resisted Testifying On Leak," the Washington Post, 01.10.2006: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010901745.html

Mediacrit knocks it out of the park, June 19th, 2008:

http://mediacrit.com/mourning-in-america

Everyone's a comedian, but what would Jesus™ actually do?

Jesus™ would (if he weren't carbonized-dust somewhere in Palestine):

1. Jesus would never call anyone "nigger," "spic," "chink," "gook," "slant," "wop," "kike" (we know this one), "mick," "spade," "ofay" (he wasn't white, get over it), etc. .

2. Wash AND dry, because he's a nice guy and a responsible guest.

3. Jesus would watch NC-17 movies because he had depth and curiosity, unlike his subsequent generations of followers. His favorite director is Pier Paolo Pasolini. I asked him last night.

4. Jesus would always be in-trouble because his beliefs wouldn't be popular in-practice today. Luckily, only a tiny minority of self-proclaimed Christians have ever done this: himself and St. Francis.

5. Jesus would vote independent, and never for a Republican or Democrat unless they were enlightened (there's a clear-and-empty shot there so far...). He would be a hard-left voter who hates the sick, greedy rich as most reasonable people have throughout human history.

6. As a carpenter in an industrialized, mechanized, and technological world Jesus...would do very little work. He would be unemployed unless he was lucky and had a journeyman's union-card.

7. Jesus would say, "I told you to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but I didn't mean 'worship him or myself as a god.' I never said, 'worship authority.' " Like the last time, nobody would listen or change their behavior and would go on like before in the standard dumbshow way.

8. Jesus would save green stamps, finding-out that they were worthless later-on, exclaiming as he did on the cross: "Lord, why have you forsaken me?"Indeed. Clouds would gather as they did in a Cecil B. Demille movie--but didn't at the actual crucifixion--and the mourners would gather (also more than at the actual crucifixion). Birds would fall from the sky, but the universe would shrug as it always does.

9. Because Jesus would see our industrial and technological reality as a hell on earth, and because he would see America as the New Rome, he would read Philip K. Dick, Mark Twain, Melville, Huxley, Blake, Poe, Marx, and Nietzsche voraciously. He might even smoke pot occasionally.

10. Jesus would avidly watch Sam Peckinpah movies because he hates violence and murder. His favorite would be "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia."

11. Jesus would find Deborah Jeane Palfrey innocent for every reason you suspect.

12. Jesus would abolish the death penalty for every reason you suspect.

13. And finally, Jesus would be very-very angry that anyone would suggest what he would do, nearly 2,000-years after his untimely death, as most human beings would. Luckily, it doesn't matter, only what he taught about treating each other better does. "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword," said Jesus. So mote it be. We murder a guy for saying, "Be nice to each other," and then we feel bad and are haunted by the guilt of it for two-millennia. We're still pagans, barbarians flailing our way through history. It will end one day. So mote it be.