TrueTomHarley

You know, I can see how the idea might come up for discussion at Bethel. Despite my innocuous take expressed about it—a take that has mostly played out (but may someday not)—there certainly were military overtones in JFKs speech rallying Americans to support a moon launch. 
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is worth a simulated launch, I guess—presenting the idea—but I’m glad that it blew up on the pad.
It would have been lost on most people. Relatively few catch the implications of anything. They take it at face value—“Space: The final frontier: these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise—it’s continuing mission: to seek out new world’s, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
On a flight to Damascus, Bill had a vision of such. Some odd fellow that he took for an angel presented the idea to him right there on the Shatner wing. Like Paul, it disoriented him completely for a time, and the other passengers heard of the disturbance, sure enough, but witnessed nothing themselves.
As a boy, I never once trembled when they launched a rocket from Cape Canaveral. I always took it in the spirit of advancing technology, advancing exploration. It’s one of the few accomplishments of men that has NOT been quickly put to military use, as airplanes were. 
In contrast, WWI was not only perceived by just about everyone, but it was instantly perceived as a negative. Probably that’s what the other—how many were there then—GB members pointed out, sending Bert and his co-astronauts scuttling off to the pantry for a donut.
Robocalls from the cloud, on the other hand, ARE perceived as an instant evil, as any time-share owner in the Everglades knows.

Anna says 10 years and she’s just being speculative, just putzing around, with the existing arrangements.
You say 10 years, I think in earnest, with a brand spanking new anointed from somewhere or other—everything new from the ground up.
You are both wrong. It is ten days. Be ready.

I don’t think so. 
I’m playing a bit, I admit, but not to the point of being silly.
Any historian will say that early Christians lived in expectation of the immanent end of this system. The Great Reawakening, or whatever it is called, from which Russell eventually emerges, invariably features expectations of just when the Lord will return. Branches of Christianity that do not concern themselves with this go an entirely different direction. They focus their efforts on improving the present world through education and charity. They abandon their resolve to stay separate from it.
It may be part of the equation that the two—expectations of the short time till the end, and kingdom proclamation with the unique teachings that are JW alone—must always go together. Maybe it is the great Carrot and Stick game of God, knowing how we are. At any rate, I think it most unlikely they will ever tinker with the formula much.
Is the 33-doctrine tinkering with the formula? By moving the beginning back in time, I think it will be hard not to also move the day off into the vague future. It may be that some are gingerly poking at the foundation, as JWI seems to think, but I would not expect any wholesale change.

I don’t see any backing off of 1914 whatsoever. It was pedal to the metal at last nights meeting where the assigned reading was Revelation 10-12. Moreover, I thought of talks I had put together over the years, using some of the details in those verses. I thought of how I had made a big deal of Rutherford & crew unambiguously ‘advertise, advertise, advertising’ the King and his Kingdom at almost the exact same moment that the Federal Counsel of Churches was hailing the League of Nations as the political expression of the kingdom on earth today—each side publicly parting ways at the fork in the road.
I read that background WT of how 100 years ago it could not even have been conceived that humans might “ruin the earth,” yet how that manifestly is a great  threat today, as humans invent & implement new technologies without regard or ability to control the consequences. (I finally figured out why my wife had been able to get the Research Guide on her IPad but not me on mine—I had thought it was @James Thomas Rook Jr. messing with me from afar.)
And now you propose that it should all go? What would be the effect of this strange new teaching of yours that Jesus began to rule in 1933–period, end of story—and that WWI was just “boys will be boys?” How will it affect “last days,” ‘urgency of the end,’ ‘the end of all things has drawn close’ ‘ridiculers will come with their ridicule’ and so forth?
Do I understand this correctly? (Maybe I don’t) We have been living in the last days since 33? Constantine lived in the last days and should have been keeping on the watch? Napoleon lived in the last days? George Washington lived in the last days? Sleepy Rip Van Winkle lived in the last ‘Keep on the watch’ days? People couldn’t even read that there were last days that they were supposed to be keeping on the watch for until 3-400 years ago when the Bible began to appear in languages other than Latin!
I think the “33 doctrine” effectively waters down the urgency of keeping on the watch to the point where the practical response is—why do it at all?
I can envision several historic Watchtowers, to run in successive weeks:
1) We are out of harmony with the majority of ancient date scholars. Therefore, let us acknowledge that they must be right, and kick 1914 to the curb—Advertising, League, WWI, Atlanta—it all goes.
2) We are out of harmony with the majority of scientists. Therefore let us concede that Darwinian evolution is the bee’s knees and let us consign Adam and Eve to fairy tale.
3) Let us work on giving our children a “good education” so that they can get a “good job” and turn their talents to making a difference in the world—let us get in there and fix those problems! We can do it!
4) Let’s get Trump out of office and the sooner the better! He spreads meanness. Of course, we realize that some in the congregation will feel another way. They can buy another building and meet there.
5) Let’s focus more on love. Why should we care about what gender people are attracted to? The Bible was written a long time ago when people had different sociological needs and were less enlightened than now.
6) Let’s lighten up on the kingdom preaching work. Who knows how far off it is? I mean, if you have time on your hands and nothing else to do, that’s okay, but don’t let it get in the way of anything important. Let’s have our religion but keep it in its place. There are many roads and they all lead to heaven.
 
 
 

For a brief time, Mike Tussin was a roommate of mine. He drove me nuts in taking literally the admonition to read God’s Word “in an undertone day and night.” In time, he learned that he had better not do it in my presence. I logged some of his exploits in No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash.
He was one of the most squirrelly characters that you will ever hope to meet, and yet—people are a mix—he had the most telling common sense, knack for nailing aspects of human nature (though mixed with an odd naïveté), no fear whatsoever of man, and the ability to simplify the complex. I can hear him now explaining to someone or other just how it worked with the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, composed of anointed Christians. This would have been in the early 1970s.
“They study and study their Bibles and one of them notices a point and discusses it with the others. They continue to turn it over and over. If their discussion reaches the point of agreement, that idea finds its way into the Watchtower—that’s how God’s people are fed spiritually today.
“Now, in your own personal study, you may have noticed that point, too, maybe even before they did. And if this was Christendom, you’d go out and start your own religion over it.” 
He captured it. I like the idea of ‘they’re not the only people who can think’ as well as the notion of waiting on headship and not running ahead. Present your idea, but if it doesn’t get adopted, don’t lose your cookies over it. The ship cannot sail in every direction at once.
Rumor has it that Sputnik came up for discussion at the Bethel table after 1957, but it was aborted before takeoff. Might that date not be a milestone in the last days stream of time commencing with the outbreak of World War I in 1914–a year marking the first time in history that the entire world went to war at once? Throw in the greatest plague of history, the Spanish flu of 1917, the colossal food shortages that always accompany colossal war, and viola!—one is powerfully reminded of Luke 21:10:
Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs.” 
Might 1957 Sputnik mark a mighty exclamation mark in “fearful sights and great signs from heaven?” It certainly scared the bejeebers out of the Americans, and within 3 years President Kennedy declared that the US would not play second fiddle to the Russians. They would join—and so make it—a “space race” by sending a man to the moon.
It is worth a simulated launch, I guess—presenting the idea at Bethel—three GB members batted about the idea, I’m told, but I’m glad that it blew up on the pad. The “fearfulness” would have been lost on most people. Did the race have military implications? Relatively few catch the implications of anything. They take it at face value, as it was popularly repackaged just a few years later:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!
On a flight to Damascus, Bill had a vision of such. Some strange fellow that he probably took for an angel presented the idea to him right there as he was riding in the Shatner seat. Like Saul, it disoriented him completely for a time, and the other passengers heard of the disturbance, sure enough, but witnessed nothing themselves.
As a boy, I never once trembled when they launched a rocket from Cape Canaveral. I always took it in the spirit of advancing technology, advancing exploration, and so forth. It’s one of the few major accomplishments of men that has NOT been quickly put to military use—though that could ever change—the way that airplanes were. No sooner had they been invented then they were strafing the towns of Europe and dogfighting each other in the skies.
In contrast to 1957, World War I was not only perceived by just about everyone, but it was instantly perceived as a negative. Probably that’s what the other GB members pointed out, sending the three Bethel “astronauts” pitching the notion hurtling off like Darth Vader in his crippled craft, careening off to the pantry for a donut or two.
Hmm. Maybe an update could incorporate robocalls from the cloud. What year did they begin? Truly, they cause men to raise their faces and curse the heavens. Truly, they too, are instantly perceived as a great evil, as any time-share owner in the Everglades knows.
You know, as I read the 1960 speech, I can see how the idea might come up for discussion at Bethel. Despite my innocuous take expressed about it—a take that has mostly played out (but may someday not)—there certainly were military overtones—overtones that just might make some tremble—in JFKs speech rallying Americans to support a moon launch. Everything must be considered in its own historical context. I’ve added italics to his words that play this way: “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? 
“We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
.....
Yes, you could read a measure of terror into that speech if you were of a mind to, though I did not as a boy. The President says: “Space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.”
What are the chances of that happening?
 

It is worth a simulated launch, I guess—presenting the idea—but I’m glad that it blew up on the pad.
It would have been lost on most people. Relatively few catch the implications of anything. They take it at face value—“Space: The final frontier: these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise—it’s continuing mission: to seek out new world’s, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
On a flight to Damascus, Bill had a vision of such. Some odd fellow that he took for an angel presented the idea to him right there on the Shatner wing. Like Paul, it disoriented him completely for a time, and the other passengers heard of the disturbance, sure enough, but witnessed nothing themselves.
As a boy, I never once trembled when they launched a rocket from Cape Canaveral. I always took it in the spirit of advancing technology, advancing exploration. It’s one of the few accomplishments of men that has NOT been quickly put to military use, as airplanes were. 
In contrast, WWI was not only perceived by just about everyone, but it was instantly perceived as a negative. Probably that’s what the other—how many were there then—GB members pointed out, sending Bert and his co-astronauts scuttling off to the pantry for a donut.
Robocalls from the cloud, on the other hand, ARE perceived as an instant evil, as any time-share owner in the Everglades knows.

What year did robocalls from the cloud begin besieging every man woman and child on earth, causing them to look to the heavens and curse, day and night?

I was there about a month ago, having flown into Orlando for the wedding of my nephew. I arrived near closing time, and was only able to walk around the outside of the fort.
But I had just before came from Ft Matanzas, about ten miles south, party closed due to hurricane damage. The next day I went to Ft Caroline, outside of Jacksonville.
Ft Caroline was French. They send a raiding party to the Spanish Ft Matanzas, but the party got upended in a squall. When the Spanish discovered that, they took those French soldiers captive and slaughtered most of them. (Matanzas literally means ‘slaughter’—landmarks, businesses, and roads all around that area are named Matanzas this or Matanzas that.) The docent at Ft Caroline told me the Spanish commander sent a letter to the French king saying the prisoners were killed, not because they were French, but because they were Protestant. The few captured French soldiers that were Catholic were spared.

What year did robocalls from the cloud begin besieging every man woman and child on earth, causing them to look to the heavens and curse, day and night?

I don’t think so. 
I’m playing a bit, I admit, but not to the point of being silly.
Any historian will say that early Christians lived in expectation of the immanent end of this system. The Great Reawakening, or whatever it is called, from which Russell eventually emerges, invariably features expectations of just when the Lord will return. Branches of Christianity that do not concern themselves with this go an entirely different direction. They focus their efforts on improving the present world through education and charity. They abandon their resolve to stay separate from it.
It may be part of the equation that the two—expectations of the short time till the end, and kingdom proclamation with the unique teachings that are JW alone—must always go together. Maybe it is the great Carrot and Stick game of God, knowing how we are. At any rate, I think it most unlikely they will ever tinker with the formula much.
Is the 33-doctrine tinkering with the formula? By moving the beginning back in time, I think it will be hard not to also move the day off into the vague future. It may be that some are gingerly poking at the foundation, as JWI seems to think, but I would not expect any wholesale change.

One unanticipated personal consequence of going digital is that I read nothing until the week it is to be considered at meeting. I have not read the new Ezekiel book yet. Back in the day of subscriptions, I would read that entire Watchtower at the nearest opportunity. Doesn’t happen anymore. I never think to download the latest until I need it.
In recent years I’ve come to think a lot about Paul’s counsel to follow the pattern of the healthful words. At first, the healthful words are retrieved and spit out verbatim—it is the nature of much of our research. But if you’ve been around long enough, you soon to learn to pick up on the pattern and you can originate them yourself. 
It is as Mike Tussin used to say, a real person from No Fake News whose name I changed with the most sordid upbringing and the most telling common sense. He would explain how it was with the GB (in the 1970s). “They study and study and one of them notices a point and discusses it with the others. After subsequent discussion reaches agreement, it gets into print. Now, in your own personal study, you may have noticed that point, too,” I can hear him explaining now, “and if this was Christendom, you’d go out and start your own religion over it.” 
For a brief time, he was a roommate of mine. He drove me nuts in taking literally the admonition to read God’s Word “in an undertone day and night.” In time, he learned that he had better not do it in my presence.

Have you not read of Trutom Harley, an underappreciated luminary who lived from 722-795 CE? Call him a “nowhere man”?
Did he? Forgive me if it has already been mentioned. On what basis? The bomb was dropped in 1945–or is it that Sputnik is 1957? A hard sell, I would think.
As for Nebuchadnezzar, so far my suggestion that he is the pre-type of Ralph Kramden has been unwisely ignored, and I hope the brothers survive the egg on their face when they come to realize how right I was.
Ralph—just like Neb:
1) Unbearably boastful and obnoxious.
2) Absolutely abased each time with the greatest humiliation.
3) Learns absolutely nothing. The beginning of each new show has him at his blowhard worst.
 

I don’t think so. 
I’m playing a bit, I admit, but not to the point of being silly.
Any historian will say that early Christians lived in expectation of the immanent end of this system. The Great Reawakening, or whatever it is called, from which Russell eventually emerges, invariably features expectations of just when the Lord will return. Branches of Christianity that do not concern themselves with this go an entirely different direction. They focus their efforts on improving the present world through education and charity. They abandon their resolve to stay separate from it.
It may be part of the equation that the two—expectations of the short time till the end, and kingdom proclamation with the unique teachings that are JW alone—must always go together. Maybe it is the great Carrot and Stick game of God, knowing how we are. At any rate, I think it most unlikely they will ever tinker with the formula much.
Is the 33-doctrine tinkering with the formula? By moving the beginning back in time, I think it will be hard not to also move the day off into the vague future. It may be that some are gingerly poking at the foundation, as JWI seems to think, but I would not expect any wholesale change.

Yes, of course. And this issue of the 1,260 and Revelation 11 from this week's meeting was actually the real reason I started this topic. But I do not expect that any trend is being looked at for the purpose of backing off from 1914. I think that this is a bit backwards. I think that the fewer and fewer discussions of Jesus' kingship and presence in 1914 will result in a rethinking of this particular use of the 1914 date.
Also, 1914 will ALWAYS have a place in our preaching, just because it helps us to mark the times we live in now as a fulfillment of prophecy for a time when men will become faint out of fear and expectation, and a time when the creation is groaning for release.

Have you not read of Trutom Harley, an underappreciated luminary who lived from 722-795 CE? Call him a “nowhere man”?
Did he? Forgive me if it has already been mentioned. On what basis? The bomb was dropped in 1945–or is it that Sputnik is 1957? A hard sell, I would think.
As for Nebuchadnezzar, so far my suggestion that he is the pre-type of Ralph Kramden has been unwisely ignored, and I hope the brothers survive the egg on their face when they come to realize how right I was.
Ralph—just like Neb:
1) Unbearably boastful and obnoxious.
2) Absolutely abased each time with the greatest humiliation.
3) Learns absolutely nothing. The beginning of each new show has him at his blowhard worst.
 

I was there about a month ago, having flown into Orlando for the wedding of my nephew. I arrived near closing time, and was only able to walk around the outside of the fort.
But I had just before came from Ft Matanzas, about ten miles south, party closed due to hurricane damage. The next day I went to Ft Caroline, outside of Jacksonville.
Ft Caroline was French. They send a raiding party to the Spanish Ft Matanzas, but the party got upended in a squall. When the Spanish discovered that, they took those French soldiers captive and slaughtered most of them. (Matanzas literally means ‘slaughter’—landmarks, businesses, and roads all around that area are named Matanzas this or Matanzas that.) The docent at Ft Caroline told me the Spanish commander sent a letter to the French king saying the prisoners were killed, not because they were French, but because they were Protestant. The few captured French soldiers that were Catholic were spared.

There are few things more off-putting than condescension 
Not at all.
If you negate the upside of something, your sense of proportion goes all awry. There is nothing left to focus on but the downside, and to bang away at it until it seems far more imposing than it truly is. In fact, if you negate the upside, ANY downside becomes intolerable.
You have negated the upside. She has not.
She knows there is a downside. She knows it is a price well worth paying in view of the upside. She knows that any human being or institution crumbles under relentless accusation. Even Job fared poorly at the hands of his three interrogators.

They are all backstabbers, here—the GB, the COs, the elders, the MSs, the.....really, everybody but me.
But it doesn’t bother me. When I see them sneaking up behind my back to do this (which is always) I have learned to whirl around and take them out with a kick to the head like Chuck Norris.

What is it with this idiot?
His first remark bashes me for seeming to criticise Trump:
His second bashes me for seeming to praise him:
As his many accusations at JWs are shot down, he is degenerating into just another source of vitriol.
As for cheering for Trump, an elder leading a pioneer meeting—dare I say it was the circuit overseer?—emphasizes the importance of neutrality and the challenges of completely remaining so. “Now we all know that Trump is crazy, but.....” he starts. Two sisters look at each other, and the one says to the other: “I know that my father is a good man, and he voted for Trump.”
That CO is very atypical. I’ve never heard another one mention the president, or any president, either way. Doubtless he watches the network news at the end of the day, where they do nothing but bash the president. Making any country great again doesn’t necessarily do it for those accustomed to treating equally those of any “nation, tribe, people, and tongue.” (Revelation 7:9) As for the photoshopped Trump beating up on the CNN bobble head, the average Witness who sees that thinks of how he tries not to do like that with the householder. He observes that Trump is bombastic whereas he tries to be polite. Often his politics go no further than that.

Trump is a pugilist, fully capable of vulgarity. It doesn’t really bother me. In some regards, it is refreshingly candid. It is not for nothing that the Bible calls the political nations “beasts.” They behave that way—ripping and tearing at each other and indeed, at anyone who gets in their way. So I am not put off by someone who drops the pretense and carries on to call a spade a spade.
As much as ones might like the facade of being “presidential,” and of respecting the “dignity” of fellow world leaders, ought they not produce results to earn that respect? The hospital operating room can expect awed dignity when it routinely save lives—conducting the most delicate of procedures. But if the results degenerate to indistinguishable from that of a butcher shop, surely that aura of admiration will fade. “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made,” is the old saying, and it is the butcher shop comparison that wins out over the precision operating room. It almost does my heart good to see Trump brawling with his political counterparts as they do their utmost to preserve “dignity.” 
Moreover, you would almost expect Jehovah’s (American) servants to see that. They don’t because they truly are apolitical. They follow politics hardly at all, and there is a fair number of them that consider even a comment about the topic as akin to ripping a loud one at the concert hall—it is just gauche—it is as though deliberately contaminating the soufflé with the street rock salt. The JW Governing Body works hard to keep the squabbles of politics out of the congregation and to safeguard its neutrality. 
Keeping truly neutral is not easy. Geoffrey Jackson reflects on how (Australian) candidates of his youth offered dramatically different proposals regarding the military draft—a matter that would affect him greatly. Updating his struggle to the present—adapting it to brothers today who might be personally advantaged or disadvantaged by the proposals of a given political figure—he ventured on how some might truly strive to be neutral and yet in the back of their head was the thought: “I hope that idiot doesn’t come into power.” He said it about two years ago. It is impossible for me not to wonder what “idiot”—if there was one—he had in mind. 
Of course, Witnesses are politically neutral due to their advocacy for God’s kingdom—the one of the Sermon on the Mount—“thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” “God’s will is done in heaven,” I tell the householder as I glance upward. “I mean, I guess it is—surely he has it all running smoothly up there—but it sure isn’t done on earth. Pockets of it here and there may be, but nobody would ever say that the world runs that way it does today according to God’s will. According to the prayer, we should not expect that until the kingdom comes.” Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t go campaigning for human governments because they are announcing God’s government which will tackle and solve the problems human governments consistently flounder on.
If Witnesses today did reflect on national politics—and the particulars are replicated in many nations—they might reflect that Trump’s enemies are the “one world government” people of the humanist variety—180 degrees apart from the one world government of the “God’s kingdom” variety. They are the humanists who would rise above national boundaries to blur or even erase them. They are humanists who yet pursue the dream of the League of Nations, reinvigorated after WWII as the United Nations. A worldwide blending of peoples and their interests into one common government by man, incorporating whatever is the humanistic thinking holding sway at the time. These ones fully expect those of government (largely themselves) to be granted dignity in light of the noble task they have assumed—it doesn’t matter if praiseworthy results are slow to come—it is the intention that matters.
The common working people know it is a crock. They see their own interests being sold out for the loftier “higher” interests of these they would call the “elites.” Their economic interests are tamped down. Their moral values are shoved aside. They are astounded, to take an example, to think that biological differences should not determine male and female, and dismayed to see the view that completely defies their common sense and all of recorded history take the world by storm under the new tidal wave of humanists. They don’t think these guys deserve any dignity at all, so when a photo-shopped Trump is bare-knuckle boxing with the CNN moniker (bastion of world-government think), they love it, and they also love it that the dignified crowd are aghast.
....To highlight the GB’s challenge in encouraging all to stay on the same neutral page, I wrote the following in No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash:
“They just about succeeded in their mission to re-instill complete neutrality – they were alllmmoooost there, when along came the summer Olympics in Rio. On the second day of the Olympics, I mentioned to Tom Pearlsnswine in the field ministry that Hillary had worn a bright pants suit. “Christians are no part of the world!” he rebuked me. On the third day of the Olympics, at the Kingdom Hall, I told him that Trump had tied his shoe. “We must fix our eyes on Jerusalem above!” he said. On the fifth day of the Olympics, I dropped by his home while he was watching the games on TV. He screamed: “Look at that medal count, Tommy!” he shouted. “We’re cleaning up!”
 

Unnecessary on his account. He is so bombastic that I can hear him in my sleep.

Another reason I follow politics is for its clarification of Pilate’s question: “What is truth?” It is a cynical question, as though mocking ones who say they can find truth.
“I will never lie to you,” Trump promises his “base.” ‘He is the most lying President in history,’ opponents say. It doesn’t matter if you like him or not. How can one not look into that?
It turns out that a lie is in the eye of the beholder. By May of 2019, the Washington Post claimed to have chronicled 10,000 Trump lies—“false or misleading claims,” and yet by any historical standards, they would not be called lies. NBCNews.com, hardly a Trump-friendly site, gives examples.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-lies-lot-media-must-focus-what-he-s-lying-ncna1009986
92 times Trump claimed that “NAFTA is one of the worst trade deals ever signed in the history of our country.” That can be called a “lie?” The Post counts it as 92 lies. Speak to those whose interests have suffered on its account. At worst it is an subjective exaggeration. 
Trump says, “I have been the most transparent president and administration in the history of our country by far.” A lie? An unprovable boast, at worst. Daily tweets of whatever happens to pop into his head, in any historical context, would be lauded as the epitome of transparency. Here the pundits harrumph mostly because they are bypassed—they are used to spinning a president’s words before he can spin them himself, but here he does end runs around them.
In fact, the nbcnews.com article recommends readers not to be so gleeful over counting his “lies” that one becomes like the little boy crying wolf. The “lies” are mostly boast, imprecision, exaggeration, hyperbole—and not actually “lies” at all. The article actually produces no “real” lies, even as it counsels readers to be on the lookout for them. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. To be sure, that is not the purpose of the article, but you almost think that some would be there, if only for purposes to contrast the “not-really” lies with the “actual” lies. All we hear on media is “the lies of Trump” repeated full-throttle, and yet this article, by someone who is decidedly not a Trump fan, points to none.
Now, one must be verrrrry careful in comparing the spiritual and the profane—even more careful in comparing words of the sacred with words of the politics. You do not want to be confused with the right wing church that mixes politics and religion so thoroughly as to make any smoothie maker envious. The School Guidebook observed that when you give an illustration, your illustration should parallel the reality illustrated in all significant respects. Otherwise, someone will point to the discordancy and the entire illustration goes up in smoke. It is why I do not care for those illustrations likening Witnesses to firemen who are urgent because lives are at stake. True, lives are at stake but they are not at stake at that very hour. Those firemen would not carry on so urgently if it was just to warn you that your smoke detector batteries are getting low.
So you have to be cautious comparing the two. Manifestly, they are not the same in many regards. That’s why I like it that Alan brought up the subject (6 times!) and not me. Still, Jesus uses all types of people in illustrations—those “righteous” and those “unrighteous.”—like the “unrighteous” steward who robs his owner blind and the owner ends up commending him for it. (Luke 16:8) So you don’t have to run like a rabbit just because those you use to illustrate points are not saints.
The same people that savage Trump for his “lies” would have savaged Jesus for his “lies.” In fact, for the most part, they do—the political left is far more irreligious than is the right. There are many excellent reasons to dislike Trump—reasons that do not hold true at all with Jesus. But here we are dealing with word devices that some would qualify as legitimate and some would qualify as lie. Jesus would have been a consummate liar in the eyes of these critics, and that fact is better appreciated for how they kick back at the commander-in-chief that they loathe.
Hyperbole? Jesus uses it all the time. Yes, he puts it to more noble use than Trump, but he is not shy about using it. He thinks it not a “lie” to use hyperbole—it is plainly a tool in his tool box—and it has the added benefit that the critics are separated out—they miss the point completely so as to object to blatant and unprovable exaggeration. Many of Jesus’ parables are not only hyperbole, but they are quirky hyperbole, such as the unrighteous judge who will not grant justice to the widow until she nags him nearly into an early grave—and that judge is used to illustrate how you ought to persist in prayer to the Father! (Luke 18:5)
Metaphor? Strictly speaking, a metaphor is a “lie.” “The tongue is a fire,” says James. ‘It is not,’ would counter the Washington Post and you can almost imagine them testing this statement, evaluating the claim with a thermometer. “God is the potter and we are the clay,” says the Word—and the Washington Post logs two “lies.” “He that feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life, and I shall resurrect him at the last day,” declares Jesus at John 6:54. Call that not a metaphor? It is even a metaphor that contributed (says Bart Ehrman) to accusations of cannibalism that served as a pretext for early Christian persecution.
Ad hominem attack? That’s a type of lie, Trump’s detractors say, since they are stated “without evidence”—to borrow a media clarification that is now routinely applied to the President but has never been applied to any of the other countless scoundrels and blaggards of history. Jesus used ad hominem attack all the time. Pharisees were the “blind men leading the blind”, the “whitewashed graves hiding every sort of filth.” He would have been called out for lying each time in the Washington Post.
Ask Jesus a question, and he will not answer it. He will ask a counter question instead that makes you scared to ask another. This is a major no-no to critical thinkers today, who insist that their questions be answered without resort to raising a “straw man.” Still, Jesus doesn’t care. He raises straw men as readily as he raised Lazerus. (Mark 11:27-33)
Head games? I don’t know what in the world was Trump’s claim of huge inauguration attendance, easily debunked as a “lie” by just viewing the photos—so easily that it becomes clear he is playing a head game of some sort, clarified when KellyAnne comes on TV to speak of the “alternative facts” he would like media to pay attention to. Are not Jesus’ parables head games of a sort? He would never explain them to his critics—only afterwards to his disciples would he “explain all things,” and it served as a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. (Mark 4:34) Would he have granted an interview with the Washington Post to explain all those parables? I have my doubts.
About this time we can send Trump packing off to the stables. I was never too comfortable bringing him in to begin with, so I waited for someone with TDS to do it, and Alan obliged—allowing me to point out with but diminished spiritual damage that Trump illustrates certain aspects of communication so perfectly that he becomes invaluable for just that reason. 
You can even go further. Trump, by all accounts, represents “flyover country”—the common working people usually ignored by policymakers who are pursuing their own ends and careers. His enemies? Those policymakers—the “swamp,” the “elites,” the wonks that hail from Harvard and who live for the machinations of the beltway. And if you really want to get sacrilegious, you can recall that he descends on the golden escalator from his high and mighty perch, and announces to his “base:” “I am your voice.” You can even liken media’s relentless efforts to separate Trump from his “base” to the efforts of JW critics to separate the GB from its “base”—and for the same reason—that both might be better neutralized.
I can think of only one other President who offered some of these same parallels: “The buck stops here,” “give em hell, Harry” Truman , who was despised by the “elites” then—even blue blood FDR kept his distance from his own “inferior” VP—on account of his crude demeanor and businessman origin. Like Trump, Truman’s elite enemies even gloated that they had won the election and later had to eat crow!—one of the iconic photos of American history is Truman holding aloft the (wrong) headline of his own defeat. He offers many of the same object lessons, but not as strikingly as Trump, mostly because people were more civil back then and opponents didn’t seek to gouge each other’s eyes out as they do now—a nod to the further applicability of 2 Timothy 3:1-5.
(Wow. I just thought up the Truman parallel as I was writing this remark. The day I throw my hat in the ring to form my own sect, I will spin some sort of an anti-type out of both names beginning with ‘Tru”—what are the chances of that? And I will play on Truman being “True Man”—same as they did with Jim Carrey on the Truman Show. And wait till I get done with the fact that Truman started as a haberdasher-, the same as you-know-who. Yes, I like the idea more and more. Only....I cannot do this Mighty Ministry on my own! Send me your contributions—large or small!—(but large is preferred)—for the Lord’s sake I would gladly walk around in rags, but the fact of the matter is, I look so much better in the two-thousand dollar suit that I will buy with them)
 

What?!!! Never do that again!!

The steward that robs his master blind and the master ends up commending him.
The unrighteous judge that will not grant justice until the widow nags him half to death and that judge is used to illustrate the Father.
Just now I am spinning others (on the TDS thread) regarding current politicians who will provide my own underpinnings as Sect Leader. I know I will have at least one follower—JTR.