Responding to More Propaganda From DHS  So, the Department of Homeland Security has made another video for social media to advance their engagement farming campaign, and it once again is appealing inappropriately to the Bible. Let's take a look. So once again, DHS is using video and imagery that is glorifying and romanticizing war and violence. And they're putting over it the text of Matthew 5:9, part of the biatitudes. And then the track that is played over the video is Lord's Cover from 2013 from the Catching Fire movie of Tears for Fears 1985 song Everybody Wants to Rule the World. And the sense seems to be that they're out there to try to create peace where other people are trying to take over the world. And this is wildly tiating not just the Bible but the song as well because the song is about corruption and people trying to take over the world with violence which is exactly what the Department of Homeland Security is doing on behalf of Donald Trump. They're really just the goon squad for a wannabe autocrat who is a rapist who can barely read and who lies about literally everything. And if you go look at the history of this song, the chorus originally the lyrics were not everybody wants to rule the world. It was everybody wants to go to war. And we're seeing that right now with Trump trying to stoke and threaten war and the Department of Homeland Security. again romanticizing war and violence and then they're wildly inappropriately appealing to the biatitudes uh obviously under the pretense of using violence to generate peace which is absolutely not what the word that is used in Matthew 5:9 is referring to when we look at Matthew 5:9 the word for peacemaker there is no pio which means peacemaker but in the sense of one who engages in peaceful behavior. One who negotiates for peace, brings about peace by means other than violence and it's related to a verbal root in PO which is the same one who brings about peace as opposed to war. And one of the ways we know this is we can look at another passage where the verb form of that word is used in reference to God's activity. Colossians 1:20, which by the way wasn't written by Paul, was written by somebody pretending to be Paul, probably long after he was dead. And through him, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. So the idea here is clearly the generation of peace through your own activities of self-sacrifice or peaceful behavior rather than trying to intimidate or dominate the other side into submission. Cuz what DHS is interested in is more like the Pax Romana than like the sermon on the mounts idea of peacemaking. It's about violent public displays that are intended to intimidate and terrorize the other side so that they submit to the state authority. This is why you see videos all the time of ICE agents virtually trembling with the need to be given an excuse and sometimes creating that excuse themselves. officer created jeopardy is what resulted in the murder of Nicole Renee Good when an ICE agent was standing in front of her car, which ICE agents are trained not to do, is not a part of protocol, and then as she tried to flee when she was rushed by other ICE agents, he fired three shots into her car, not a single one of which was defensive. Not a single one of which did or even could have in any way, shape, or form whatsoever changed the threats that that ICE agent may or may not have perceived. And two of which through the driver's side window while he was standing next to the car. And we won't know until the investigation is over, but it seems highly likely that it was one of those two shots that were fired after the threat had already passed that ended up killing Nicole Renee Good. That's not peacemaking. And DHS is now trying to impede justice. DHS is withholding information. And DHS is hiding the agent and took everything out of his home and is instructing agents to investigate Good's widow and not investigate the agent, which has caused a number of federal prosecutors to resign because that's not lawful behavior. That's not prioritizing the rule of law. It's certainly not peacemaking. What that is is protecting oneself. What that is is the reification of Will Hoit's law, which is the conservative notion that there is an in-group whom the law must protect but must not restrain and an outgroup whom the law must restrain but not protect. Because right now DHS is in flagrant violation of the law in a wide variety of ways. We routinely see ICE violating the law, violating the constitutional rights, not just of undocumented immigrants, but also of documented immigrants as well as US citizens, frequently resulting in injury and even death. So much so that now in response, ICE is sending out a refresher, letting agents know what the first and fourth amendments to the US Constitution actually mean and what kind of limits they actually place on their legal authority. Because ICE agents are notoriously bad at obeying the law. And that's perhaps the biggest irony, the notion that they are the ones who are enforcing the law and so they must be exempt from obeying the law. If you are more upset about a woman blocking one lane of traffic and leaving another open so that ICE agents who shouldn't have been there in the first place had to go around her, then you are about that same person's murder by an agent of the state who is now being protected from accountability by the state. You're on the wrong side of the moral arc of the universe. You are not for law and order. You cannot be for law and order while saying that this petty civil offense merits death even if it is a criminal violation on the part of the state agent who executes it. That's not law and order. That's just you wanting your side to win. And again, your side is the goon squad of a wannabe autocrat who is a rapist who doesn't know how time zones work, who lies about literally everything. The notion that the sermon on the mount at all supports this campaign is just laughably stupid. And we can look at the sermon on the mount and particularly the biatitudes in Matthew 5:es 2-12. And he began to speak and taught them saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Poor in spirit here can mean humble but it also has a socioeconomic dimension. Obviously folks who are poor tend to be poor in spirit. In fact anciently it was understood that the poor in spirit were those who did not have a lot of wealth or status or influence. And in the Lucan version of this the version of the biatitudes that we find in the gospel of Luke there is no inspirit qualification. It's just blessed are the poor. The socioeconomic dimension is the dimension there. But let's carry on. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. DHS is actively engaged in a public campaign of vilification as well as a campaign of prosecution against a woman who is mourning right now because DHS murdered her wife for not adequately performing obeisance to the masculinity and the authority of an insecure ICE agent. Verse five, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. uh DHS and a lot of right-wing authoritarians uh are happy to try to leverage Jordan Peterson's laughably stupid attempt to try to argue that meek means that you have the capacity for being an utter monster but you control it which is again just laughably stupid and I've made multiple videos about that. Verse six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. people going around uh trying to get other people to assault them so that they can legally use force to stomp them into the ground and then arrest them. Uh are not thirsting after righteousness. Those are people who are thirsting after power. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Nothing about DHS is remotely merciful. But there is a verse in James that comes to mind here. James 2:13, for judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And a lot of people these days are putting themselves in harm's way, not because they thirst after power, but because they want to speak out against abuses of power, against fascism. And DHS is obviously opposed to that. So obviously, this is not about them. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. When we go look at who persecuted the prophets, it was primarily agents of the state and the members of the public who were carrying water for the state and their agents. The prophets are not those aligned with state agencies. In this comparison, in this simile, absolutely nothing about the biatitudes in the sermon on the mount authorizes or legitimizes what DHS is doing. And their appeal to Matthew 5:9 is profoundly misguided and misinformed. But it's par for the course because all they're trying to do is appeal to the authority of the Bible to authorize and to validate their fascism, their violence, their hatred, their lack of mercy. And they're basically functioning as the goon squad of a wannabe autocrat who is also a rapist who can barely read and lies about everything. So echoing uh the Lord of the Rings community, the uh movie community, the comic book community, the One Piece community, and many other communities, allow me on behalf of the community of critical biblical scholars to say [ \_\_ ] ICE. And the fit for this video, it's been frog and toad., Responding to More Propaganda From DHS, YouTube, 01kf118kqzsbx7n9aye6fm99bx.