Here is a secret. Just as George Bush Jr is really not a Christian, neither was Stalin really a socialist or the like. On the surface, it seems to be about ideology, but these are masks for the public. This is to fool people, to gain popularity or power with the majority, to say what they think people want them to say. A tool of manipulation.
Such folks rarely really have any true beliefs beyond power for self. That's all they really care about, power and money. And they will use very different and even seemingly opposing masks for the same purpose!
Just as Obama is not a socialist, but a man who is an actor and puppet for people who again have no real ideologies beyond self, power, and materialism.
We have been fooled, time and time again, and the purpose is to keep us divided and weak, confused and polarized. Let's fight the battle of left wing vs right wing, while the people with the real power laugh at us because they know how much they have orchestrated such black and white belief systems and camps and could care less about the issues and arguments we have.
Both sides are manipulated and fooled, the majority of people, whether they identify with this or that have bought into the lie.
Here is where we differ, apparently majorly. I find that most people that i meet, the average common person,
whether or not they identify with the left or right, tend to be decent hearted people who are trying their best with what they know and the awareness they have. Yes, they have their dark sides and their lacks, but i don't focus on that, because if i did, i would go insane or at least become severely depressed by the sheer amount of darkness in humanity in general as a collective total.
The people that i talk about in a more extreme way, are very rare and i've never even met one in person. They are not the average folk you have conversations with. They are the 1% of the 1% so to speak. They have immense, simply immense wealth that most of us cannot even begin to fathom, and they are pathological about gaining ever more power, influence and wealth. They truly have sold their souls to Baal and Mammon.
It is only these, that i wish to see taken out of power. But, even if i had the power to do so, i would not personally harm them or take them out of the equation. That is for God and the purely Creative Forces intune with same to handle. Or for karma, and karma or like attracts and begets like always comes around sooner or later.
Meanwhile, i speak not from ideologies, wants, wishes, or the like, but from guidance given to me by expanded guidance including the Teacher of teachers. My life and beliefs are most based on his life and example, and he is ever my compass and my standard.
The facts that i bring up, which is clearly in the NT, and how he practiced and advocated a spiritualized form and blend of what we might call socialism and communism as regard material resources, you conveniently do not address or even acknowledge. For, if you did, you might have a belief system crash. Easier to ignore and gloss over.
All that dislike, all that angst, and intolerance to those horrible "socialists", leftists, etc, would have no where to go.
What i see in those people you described, is this. They start off with higher ideals than the average, want to create positive change in the world, but once they been in the system for awhile, and they experience first hand how broken, how corrupt, and see and feel so much darkness and suffering, well only the strongest can resist being resonated or corrupted by some of that darkness themselves (and most people in general are not that strong and spiritually centered). More over, a lot of them, feel a lot of anger and powerlessness at their inability to really change things for the better. Some start to get twisted and cynical. Dark sarcasm and the like becomes their way of venting and gaining a sense of power and control.
My wife is a teacher and i've met some of her older teacher friends--i've seen that bitterness and cynicism--none of them start off that way though. I have a good friend who is a social worker and psychological counselor. It is perhaps one of the most stress filled and depressing jobs imaginable, and again, it takes a very strong, centered, and mature Soul to keep self inviolate.
I have compassion for such people. I have compassion for the "right wingers" as well, because i realize they are often heavily brain washed and conditioned (often starting as a young child in the home). Any person so attached to a particular group, belief system, and societal ideology is brain washed, or as the Monroe/Moen crowd likes to say, stuck in limited, narrow belief systems.
Have you taken the logs out of your own eyes that you can so extremely and negatively judge your fellow co workers and so regulate and pigeon hole them to being such horrible, hate filled human beings? Do you see the pain, the desperation, the stress, the feelings of helplessness behind those limited and destructive thoughts and feelings?
In short, you have a long, long way to go before you start to see through the eyes of Him, whom you profess to believe in and care about.
A first step would be to study and focus on his life. Even, and especially, his views and practice toward the material fruits of the earth o' owner of the olive groves. Or his rebukes to the material, political, and religious powers of his day.
And ask yourself this, if Jesus was here today, whom do you think he would tend to side with more as a trend, the more hard core and extremist liberals and leftists or the more hardcore right wingers, conservatives, etc.?
He would find lack in both surely, but his ideals, his ways, and practices very clearly do come closer to the former more than the latter. You know, free social work, free community work, pooling of individuals' resources for the collective, free healing, telling people to give up their attachment to wealth and power, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
How can you think his truths and teachings belong or apply any less in our day than in his day?
Hey, maybe Jesus is one of your despised enemies too?
Sigh (written partially while sipping on a glass of red wine
)
p.s. if my words seem overly strong, it is because i'm speaking to one who professes to be a follower of Yeshua Ben Yosef, and yet refuses to see where they and he clearly disagree. Just as Yeshua had little patience and tolerance for the hypocritical Pharisees, Sadducees and spoke strongly to same, do i have little patience and tolerance for hypocritical Christians who preach differently than he taught and exampled.