SO WHY DO CHRISTIANS LISTEN TO THIS GUY?

       With the genocide in Gaza now in its sixth month, and breaking news emerged about a Zionist attack on one of the Palestinians' last remaining hospitals---resulting in a massacre of about 100 people in cold blood---Arch-Neocon Dennis Prager has penned another article portraying the Zionists as something like the heroic Defenders of the Alamo. Like any good Liberal, Prager plays the Victim Card, even going so far as to criticize Chuck Schumer of all people for even questioning Netanyahu's ability to lead Israel. The Corporate Oligarchs who run both the Israeli Government and ours wouldn't allow Schumer an independent thought: the reality is that they are frustrated with Netanyahu's management, not his policies. 

       I had thought about writing a refutation of Prager's absurdities and blatant hypocrisies, but the question came into my mind: why do Christians even listen to this guy? Prager is a Jew, not a Christian, and his whole enterprise is funded by a Texas megachurch headed by a billionaire. The Church itself is an Adventist Cult that holds, it's own words: "the true religion is Jewish, not a Gentile religion," and observes Jewish laws and festivals in contradiction to the teachings of the New Testament and centuries of Christian theology. Though on his third marriage, Prager is considered by many Christians an expert on family and relationship issues and has even written a commentary on the Torah and various Jewish festivals as moral guides for Christians. Quite tellingly, Prager highlights his favorite passage from the Pentateuch on his website:

     Which does seem to contradict certain things that Jesus said at The Sermon on the Mount. Most of what Prager writes contradicts Christianity and Reason in general; which again begs the question---why is this guy taken seriously by Christians? When we hear an alleged Conservative saying things like "few non-Jews have a clue how much the Holocaust has affected Jews—including those born after the Holocaust and those Jews who lost no relatives in the greatest genocide in modern history. Most Jews suffer from a form of collective PTSD" ---a statement that's just a variation of the 'systemic racism' and 'collective trauma from slavery' nonsense that Black Militants push---one has to wonder.

     Prager's popularity probably has a lot to do with the fact that Prager has an excellent marketing machine with a patron wealthy enough to fuel it. Jeremy Boreing, one of the ringleaders of media group funding Prager is a product of Hollywood---where, sadly, most Christians today seem to derive both their theology and their moral value systems. Prager U is actually still produced in Hollywood, at a studio there. Echoing Vox Day, Boreing refers to his position as that of god-king, which doesn't sound especially appropriate for Christian. Even some Old Testament prophets like Samuel and Hosea didn't seem to have very high opinion of either false gods or kings.

     Part of the problem too is a failure of American Christian leadership to call out such characters. The reason for this failure is because many pastors---for wholly political reasons---see these Megachurches as allies against the Churchianity on the Left and overlook many of the Megachurches' glaring flaws. Another problem is that, like much of American society in general, the churches have become corporatized: seeing Big Business models as the operating procedure for everything. Megachurches have scores of thousands of communicants, a major media presence, unlimited wealth, celebrity preachers---wealth, power, and success are believed by most Americans today to be a measure of human morality. The average local pastor or parish priest probably sees himself in relation to the Megachurch in much the same way as a local grocery store stands in relation to Amazon or Wal-Mart. 

    Christians ought to reflect that America grew largely from immigrants who were escaping the grip of Megachurches which---like their modern counterparts---had a very close relationship with the political and economic establishments in the countries from which they fled. Our Founding Fathers separated Church and State for this very reason. I would never support someone like Prager being censored; but I have serious doubts that if he, or his followers, came to power that I would get the same consideration. That is where the danger of such people lies: not in what they say, but their power for subversion. If we actually an independent press and investigative journalists any more, such characters would be exposed like they were in the 1980s when none of them were too big to fail. But like Prager himself says, "You vote for the guy who votes the way you would—character is secondary," and, thus today, so as long as they say the right things, these charlatans get a free pass.