Northern Plains Anglican

Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right! (Isaiah 5:22-23)… Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring, that we may drink!” (Amos 4:1)

Woe to me for even thinking to blog this. Those who style themselves conservative will see the left in these verses; those who identify as liberal will see the right.

Ancient Judah, the target of Isaiah’s sarcasm, and Israel, mocked by Amos, worshipped badly at competing holy places while ignoring the unifying spiritual, moral and social foundations revealed to their ancestors by God. Contemporary Americans (and most of what was “the West”) flock to separate political shrines, free to demonize one another and vaccinated against even the slightest appeal to Christ’s revelation of a kingdom that values and unites divided people in love and mercy.

Besides, those Old Testament prophets are MEAN, flinging microaggressive triggers left and right. Woe to those who quote them!

Anyway, verses about drunks and cows and lots of other prophetic opprobrium leap to mind when I consider King’s Landing Washington, DC. The vast amount of national wealth sucked up to subsidize already well-off people and their pals should raise more criticism than it does. Like cud chewing critters, most of us collude with it. We’ve come to believe that a caste of learned, capable and moral heroes populate the place – or at least do so when our party is in power.

The reality is that DC is a massive welfare system – not as conservatives too often use the term, about support for struggling people who should just “get a job” – but for made elitists and wannabe elitists on the make.

The only difference between the parties is whose heroes and cows get to mix and swill all the goblets of money siphoned from the population. As a recent analysis points out:

The truth is, after $6 trillion of Covid stimmies—most of which were monetized by the Fed—there is (sic) no fiscal standards left in Washington at all. And Donald Trump and the GOP were every bit as culpable as Biden.

Indeed, Biden’s pending $300 billion student debt giveaway is a piker compared to the massive debt cancellations under the GOP’s PPP loans (payroll protection plan).

More than 11.8 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans were issued as of June 30, 2021, with 708 borrowers receiving the maximum loan amount of $10 million.

Yet of that massive outpouring of “loans,” the Small Business Administration (SBA) data shows that about 94% of PPP loans that were approved in 2020 had been forgiven as of December 2021!

Overall, only $28 billion of all PPP loans, which totalled upwards of $800 billion, remained unforgiven as of February 2022, a recent Bloomberg News analysis suggested. And as of April 2022, the average dollar amount forgiven was $95,700.

In short, the bipartisan duopoly is in the free stuff business in a manner that wasn’t even imaginable two decades ago. Joe Biden is just the latest politician to jump on the bandwagon—-an outbreak of fiscal incontinence that has far less to do with the inherent spending propensity of democratic politicians than it does with the money-printing madness of the unelected central bankers who actually run the nation’s financial affairs.

It’s not just the unelected bureaucrats and influence traders who are to blame. The Congress, the elected representatives of populations and states, live on the public dole while refusing to hammer out consensus on national matters or exercise their Constitutional power to pass budgets and legislation. The recent cocktail of student loan breaks for doctors and lawyers had no legislative debate or input – the President simply declared it as a response to the “Covid emergency.”

Like the wine swilling heroes and cows of ancient Judah and Israel, the DC crowd claim entitlement to rule and are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight (Isaiah 5:20). They are those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (5:20).

Sadly, the leaders of Israel and Judah were pretty much accepted by their populations, and both nations suffered catastrophic destruction and exile as a result.

What did I say about woe for even bothering to blog this?

Enjoy your wine. Sleep well.