Suggested Discussion Outline

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Discussion Outline

Post by johnkarls »

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A. What are the essential characteristics of a Messianic leader??? [For example, Christ, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, Osama bin Laden.]

B. How does the opposition deal with a Messianic leader effectively???

B-1. To what extent did Christ's martyrdom create such a wide-spread and long-lasting religion???

B-2. Was it sufficient to expend many lives and much treasure to defeat Hitler, or was it necessary for decades thereafter to occupy and re-indoctrinate Germany (and even to submerge it in European-wide institutions)???

B-3. Why haven't we seen any Pew Research Polls regarding Arab public opinion since the demise of Osama bin Laden??? After all -- (A) Pew used to poll Arab public opinion quite regularly -- showing that the United States was virtually-universally reviled in virtually every Arab country and that Osama bin Laden was virtually-universally worshipped, (B) as we have studied many times, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa to nuke 10 million Americans which, inter alia, was the subject of a book by the Founding Dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government regarding how to deal with the fatwa and which was, during the 2008 election cycle, what prompted Presidential Candidate Joe Biden to write a 6/4/2007 Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal recommending, since nuclear material has "DNA", that we issue a standing threat to annihilate with nuclear weapons any country that is the source of nuclear material that is used by terrorists against the United States, and (C) as we studied shortly after the death of Osama, fatwas that have not been revoked before the death of the issuer can never be revoked (as was made eminently clear to the British, during their 1998 negotiations to re-establish relations with Iran, with regard to the 1989 fatwa of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to assassinate Salmon Rushdie -- that fatwa was what caused the Brits to break diplomatic relations in 1989 and Khomeini died shortly thereafter in 1989 without revoking it).

C. Is it more important for a wannabe Messianic leader to be principled or practical???

C-1. Ingrid's mother, a former beauty queen who used her celebrity to raise the funding for the many NGO's that she created and ran to serve Colombia's poor and dispossessed, was a model of practicality in doing whatever was necessary to achieve her goals.

C-2. Ingrid's father, a minister in several Colombian governments, was unbending in his opposition to corruption -- which made him acceptable for ministerial positions but prevented him from becoming President of Colombia and achieving the dream of providing a better life for Colombia's poor and dispossessed.

C-3. How principled/practical were Christ, Churchill, Hitler (in his way), FDR, Osama, etc., etc.???

D. How important is it for a wannabe Messianic leader to be willing to accept torture and/or death???

D-1. Christ was well aware of all of the prophecies concerning his crucifixion.

D-2. Churchill often wrote and spoke about his expectation of being tortured and executed if he were ever captured by the Nazis.

D-3. Hitler reveled in Wagner's Goetterdaemmerung (Twilight of the Gods) and especially in the notion of heroic death that permeates all of Wagner's works.

D-4. Ingrid Betancourt begins her first book (Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle To Reclaim Colombia) with a description of how she was trying to send their two children who had been in her custody to live with their father in the French Embassy in Auckland, because she had just leaned that sicarios (young men with motorcycles who live in Colombia's poorest neighborhoods and who are hired every day to assassinate people for ridiculously-small sums of money) had already been paid to assassinate both her and her children -- while Ingrid would remain in Colombia despite the danger.

E. Other???

UtahOwl
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Re: Suggested Discussion Outline

Post by UtahOwl »

A. What are the essential characteristics of a Messianic leader??? [For example, Christ, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, Osama bin Laden.]
My concept of a Messianic leader is someone who
• Has great charisma (this is attraction fundamentally based in non-gender-specific sex appeal)
• Is expert in theatrical manipulation of religion – either from conviction, or as a route to political office, fame and/or power.
Therefore, I am baffled by your inclusion of Churchill and Roosevelt in the group of Messianic leaders. To me, they have only the first characteristic, not the second. And the second (the religious wrapping) is essential to a Messiah figure.
B. How does the opposition deal with a Messianic leader effectively???
If they are male, removing such leaders from the scene WITHOUT killing them (this creates a martyr, whose image can be a powerful organizing force). In that sense, having them in long-term captivity at the hands of a handy guerilla group is an excellent choice. In the case of female Messianic figures, killing is effective & easiest, because of the deep-seated need in almost all world cultures to debase female power – see Joan of Arc. Probably someone can come up with other examples.
B-2. Was it sufficient to expend many lives and much treasure to defeat Hitler, or was it necessary for decades thereafter to occupy and re-indoctrinate Germany (and even to submerge it in European-wide institutions)???
The long-term re-education of Germany was effective, and I think necessary. Seems to have worked fairly well in Japan also.
C. Is it more important for a wannabe Messianic leader to be principled or practical???

It’s most important for him to be believed to be a savior. Reason doesn’t enter into messianic beliefs much. OTOH, for a Messiah to attract enough followers for enough time to make an impact on history, he has to be practical to some degree. If Hitler had not had some leadership ability, he would have been just another streetcorner crackpot – of whom there are many, in any country & any age. The leader has to accomplish some notable things, or else his leadership and messianic status will not be affirmed and his “audience” will drift off in search of another savior.
Sorry, I don’t get what C1 & C2 have to do with C? :?
C-3. How principled/practical were Christ, Churchill, Hitler (in his way), FDR, Osama, etc., etc.???
As I said above, the Messianic leaders who succeed on a large scale must be both practical enough to accomplish notable deeds, and also seen as extraordinarily principled. Christ, Hitler & Osama fit this description.
D. How important is it for a wannabe Messianic leader to be willing to accept torture and/or death???
Very important. People have to be willing to die for the leader, and they will not unless they believe he is also willing to die for them. It’s part of the “messianic bargain” – not that people will admit to seeing it in these terms..
D4. I don’t see either Ingrid OR Benazir Bhutto as messianic leaders. Charismatic leaders, certainly, and extraordinarily talented ones at that. The reason is, the religious wrapping is absent – and as I argued above, this is a requirement for Messiahs. And because this is a necessary requirement, it’s very very difficult to see how a woman could be regarded as a messianic figure by men or women possessing real power. By the poor and downtrodden – well, possibly they could be “mother-of-God” or Great Mother figures. But I would argue that authentic Messiahs are male by definition – defined by the Judeo-Christian culture in which the Messiah concept arose.
:idea: Of course, if you want to go all mult-cultural and comparitive-religion with the Messiah concept, then I think it would be less confusing to stick with the concept of Savior, which certainly is an archetypical figure occurring in many cultures and ages. And a Savior figure can be female.

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