Today we’re pleased to welcome with us, Mr. Mikey Weinstein, author off the book No Snowflake in an Avalanche.
Mikey Weinstein: We’re very greatful that you’re taking the time to take a look and give us your thoughts and want to thank you for making the effort.
Rhodes Review: A lot of people would say you and the book are anti-Christian, and that it’s just a liberal attack on religion. How would you address that?
Mikey Weinstein: Well, I would say they’re full of shit. Let me explain why. That is a canard. That’s like saying that if you fight back against bullying in schools, you know that new movie Is out bullies, that you’re against bullying. In our situation we have just between 80 and 90 people that work in our foundation around the country. Most of our folks are full time volunteers. The vast majority of our staff are Roman Catholic and Protestant. We had 27,385 clients as of a few hours ago. It is just like a universal constant. It stays right around 96% of our clients are Christians. About 3/4s are Protestants of pretty much every denomination alone. We have 21 different varieties of Baptists alone. The other ¼ of the 96% are Roman Catholic. Only 4% of our clients are non Christians. Ironically some of our best donors are very conservative Republicans but don’t want people to know what their names are.
Our largest organization supporter is none other then the California Council of Churches IMPACT Organization. They interviewed and followed us for many years then made the decision to endorse us. Get this, there are 5,500 individual protestant churches in the state of California, 21 Different protestant denominations, and it’s 1.5 Million California Protestants. So if we are anti-Christian, that’s news to our staff, our donors, our endorsers, our clients. If you saw the video (link) I tried to explain we are absolutely at war with the American Christian Fascistic Taliban and that’s what the book is focused on and those are Fundamentalist or Dominionist Christians, they follow the great Commission
Mark 16:15 – And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
Matthew 28:19 – Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
They feel they have the right to scream Jesus in a crowded theater. They feel there is no time, and there is no place, and there is no manner that can restrict them from proselytizing. That’s why one of our largest growth areas is Evangelical Christians. We now have them on our advisory board, as clients and donors. Of the 368 Clients we have from the Air Force Academy, the only one that is out is a Conservative
Evangelical Christian Republican. Even the Evangelicals follow the great commission, but they refuse to proselytize in a manner that is constitutionally noxious. So to say that is like saying we’re against all of Islam because we’re also against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc. Of course we’re against Fundamentalist Islam. 10% of every Muslim American in the U.S. Military is our clients, and we never have any of them saying you’re anti-Muslim because we’re fighting the Fundamentalists in Islam. We don’t hate anybody’s God, we don’t favor or oppose anyone’s faith, we support our Constitution. It allows everyone to celebrate what faith they have or no faith. The rules are since we have a social contract in this country, you need to follow the rules of the law. And we have a Constitution that represents that social contract that there is a place, time and manner you can proselytize to your hearts content, but we also have the rules when you can’t do that, and if you want to violate it, then we’ll see you in that court.
Rhodes Review: I liked where you mentioned you even had a few Jedi clients.
Mikey Weinstein: I’d never heard of the Jedi Faith before, I think it’s a lot like Bahai. It’s not our position to sit there and say “What a ridiculous faith”, that is more than a slippery slope, one of our most well known clients, a highly decorated combat Medic, told us when he was told he had to stand in formation and bow his head to a Jesus prayer, mandatory, military, U.S. Army Formation, he told his first sergeant he didn’t want to do it. The sergeant told him he could follow his own religion when he wanted to, but when the Army tells you you’re going to do this. He told the first sergeant “My religion requires me to absent myself from people attempting telepathic contact with imaginary beings.”
Rhodes Review: You and your family face a lot of hatred and hostility as well as anti-semitism. How do you cope with that on a day to day basis?
Mikey Weinstein: That’s a tough question. I’ve told people that we’re not activists. We’re actually civil rights fighters. It’s like I’m talking to you with a gun stuck in my face. This is not like riding a unicorn through a cotton candy forest handing out lollipops to little forest animals who are singing in English in unison. This is a bloodsport. This is very, very hard. It’s dangerous, lonely, and expensive. The book was to try to make people understand. It’s like what Gandhi said was right: There are four phases of fighting, the first stage they ignore you. In stage two, they ridicule you. In stage 3, they fight you. In stage 4, you win. We’re well beyond ignore, we’re well beyond ignoring and ridiculing, we’re into fighting and winning. This comes at a cost. You know the quote from Voltaire where the title of the book comes from “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible”. Here’s another that explains this “It is very dangerous to be right in manners, upon which the established authorities are wrong.” . He also said “Courage cannot see around a corner but goes around it anyway. “ It’s something we realize we have to do. We’re not going to stop. We’re not going to be cowed. We do our best to protect ourselves with our weapons, our security, our firearms, whatever we’ve got. We’re trained to drive home in different ways, sit in restaurants in certain ways. I’m not asking everybody to be fighting this everyday, I’m just asking for one day of the lion. Give me just one day. Help us fight. It’s not like I don’t care about the starvation and violence in Darfur, or the HIV Crisis in Subsahara Africa, or global warming, or how to save the whales. I do. But the people we’re fighting want to use nuclear weapons to bring Jesus back. Dealing with this type of oppression and marginalizaton, we’ve had our windows shot out of our house, animals slaughtered, swastikas and crucifixes painted on our house, and we get it, you don’t like us being here. We also understand it’s important. The bill of rights which includes the first amendment where the Separation of Church and State exists, even though the Christian right says we don’t see those words there, they were put in to protect the minority. Frederick Douglas said “Power concedes nothing with a demand” so me, my family, and my foundation are the demanders of the commanders. The others out there are afraid to speak, to deal with the tyranny of the majority. The book is intended to be a primal scream to get people to understand, to make a call to action.
Rhodes Review: Tell us about the Chaplaincy of full Gospel and the Imprecatory Prayer. I remember similar prayers for the President?
Mikey Weinstein: About 12 days ago, the judge granted a summary judgement motion. He couldn’t see causation. We thought the judge was going to let it go to a jury, and let the jury decide. Yet the judge did not grant summary judgement.. The judge said how can you see a correlation between someone praying for someone to die and anything that happens to you.
[For the Readers: An Imprecatory prayer is a prayer wishing harm on others. In Obama’s case, it was for his days in office to be few and his children to be left orphans. In Mr. Weinstein’s case, it tends to be prayers for violence and death upon his family.]
Mikey Weinstein: Where are you going to post this review?
Rhodes Review: My own website, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
Mikey Weinstein: How many of these have you done in the past, you ask good questions.
Rhodes Review: Probably about 30 or 40.
Mikey Weinstein: Wow, I don’t’ want to take up your whole night, please continue with your excellent questions.
Rhodes Review: Is this just a problem in the airforce, or is it all branches?
Mikey Weinstein: Do you have a pen. Hold your pen up six inches over your desk. What made the pen drop?
Rhodes Review: Gravity.
Mikey Weinstein: Correct. That is exactly how systemic and ubiquitous and out of control Fundamentalist Dominionist Christianity is, in the technologically most lethal organization ever created by human kind which is our U.S. Military. We have roughly 1,000 military installations scattered around the world, in 150 countrys, as we garrison the globe. This is a national security threat to our Country. It’s inextricably entwined into the very DNA of the Pentagon or as we call it the Pentecostalgon. One of President Eisenhower’s most famous speeches was where he warned about the rise of the Military Industrial Complex. We’re facing this enormous Fundamentalist Christian Parachurch Military Corporate Congressional Complex. It is the very particulate of the department of Defense.
Rhodes Review: Can you tell us about the 68 Nuclear Missile Launch officers? The Jesus Rifles?
Mikey Weinstein: The 68 Nuclear Missile Launch Officers were part of the Jesus Loves Nukes situation, I believe that’s chapter 14 of my book. The Jesus Nukes occurred late July/August last year, the Jesus Rifles were around January 2010.
We’ve had a lot of our stories go viral. The Nazi SS flag being used by the Marine Scout Snipers had over 16 Million News Hits alone. Nature Abhors a vacuum. If you’re being persecuted in the military because of your religious faith, you can’t go to the EO people, you can’t go to the inspect general, you can’t go to the Chaplain, You can’t go to the Lawyers, you can’t go to your chain of command, they’re the biggest perpetrators.
We think somewhere between 28 and 32 percent of the senior enlisted and officers are Fundamentalist Christians. People say what’s the big deal, but here’s the problem. The problem is they’ll come out and outrank 80% of the military. These other organizations such as the ACLU doesn’t speak military, we do. In every conceivable way, this is a template ofFundamentalist Christian Facism. We’re our own worst enemies in regards to Afghanistan, etc.
Rhodes Review: Are there any political leaders that we can depend on who are unaffected by this? It seems we’re in trouble either way sometimes.
Mikey Weinstein: No. In an election year they won’t touch us. I spent a lot of money with a very well appointed lobbying interest in Washington D.C. until they came and told us to stop paying them. I’m a registered Republican myself. Under Republicans it’s man exploits man. Under Democrats it’s just the opposite. It’s not a left or right issue, it’s a right or wrong issue. Martin Luther King Jr. said “In the end we remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” And there comes a time where silence becomes betrayal.
We live in an America where most people don’t speak truth to power. They don’t have the guts to do it, especially If it’s a spouse, teacher, particularly a boss, they’re too terrified. Most Americans are too docile to tell others to “shut the fuck up” if they’re talking in a movie theater, so how do you expect them to stand up and fight if they’re being told there is one approved solution for religion. It’s not a small matter. It’s well beyond racial, gender, sexual orientation. None of those have an ideological book telling you what to do. Of course the people we’re fighting, the Fundamentalists, have that stench, they are anti-semitic, islamophobic, misogynyistic, and homophobic. They also have a virulent hatred of the constitution.
Rhodes Review: There are those who might think this was just another conspiracy theory such as birtherism. What would you say to such critics?
Mikey Weinstein: Well I would tell people there were 300 spartans at the battle of Themopoly. In honor of those 300 brave men, give me two seconds of your time, give me six hundred seconds, that’s 10 minutes and go to Military Religious Freedom.org and look at the video, listen to the audio, read the text particularly the part that says you ought to read the book. Read the Book. There’s a reason Harper’s Magazine referred to me as the Constitutional Conscience of the Military, and I’m proud of that.
This isn’t about self-grandizement. I’m 57 years old, I don’t care if anyone likes me. Trust the message whether you like the message or not. I wrote the book because I knew I wouldn’t be happy until people were unhappy. Until people face some level of discomfiture, they won’t do anything.
Have you ever gone on a picnic? You and your wife go on a picnic and are surrounded by flies, no big deal, but if there’s suddenly hornets and wasps, that’s going to scare the shit out of you, you’re going to do something about that. So we had to make ourselves into hornets and wasps, because people won’t pay attention to anything else. Remember power pays attention only to demands.
The Department of Defense’s only weaknesss is bad press or being hauled to the federal or state court. There’s two things I want to say here. When you tell somebody they lack integrity, character, courage, intelligence, trustworthiness, honorability, and honor, because of their chosen religious faith, or lack thereof, there’s no difference between that and telling them they’re stupid because of the color of their skin or because they were born with a vagina.
What we’re dealing with here is a Fanatical religiosity. Not the enemy we’re fighting, not jihadist Islam, but Fundamentalist or Dominionist Christianity. You have one of it’s biggest leaders, Rob Parsley of World’s Harvest Church. He’s very fond on Sunday, and I’ve seen him on the videos, he’ll sit there and promise them a 200 mile long river, 4 ½ feet deep filled with nothing but human blood. Then he’ll say “Therefore my brothers and sisters, rejoice, rejoice because the worst is yet to come.”
So we’re dealing with a fundamentalist, fanatical religiosity tied in with a putrescent disgusting version of patriotism, and an unfettered access due to this draconian specter of vertically entrusted military command influence. What you have is a metastasizing cancer, a fundamentalist Christian, unconstitutional cancer that is of such magnitude that it’s almost impossible to believe unless you are complicit.
If you have a little tickle in your throat, your wife gives you hot tea. If that doesn’t work you see the doctor. The doctor gives you antibiotics. That doesn’t work they give you a shot. But ultimately at some point you need those adenoids and tonsils to come out. And we’re way beyond the stage of hot tea. It’s in our public schools, it’s in our sanitation departments, it’s in our cops. But they don’t have laser guided and nuclear weapons. If I can increase the level of trust and communication 1000 fold between the dark forces of Christianity then and only then can I fairly describe the relationship between them and us as two ships passing in the night.
Someone asked my wife how much do you owe? What did you have to give up, probably a lot huh? She was crying when she made the statement, “No, we didn’t have to give up a lot, we had to give up everything.” There is no retirement fund. There is no retirement home. There is no sense of security. But we’ve made the decision that someone has to do something. If you rescue a child who crawled into the street are you called a hero. No you are doing the right thing. I know the people we fight consider me at best to be an asshole, but to the people who we represent most of whom are protestants and catholics, and all of whom wear the uniform of this country, or have worn it, we are badasses, and we work hard to be hornets and wasps and bees.
Sorry if that’s too long winded.
That’s why this review is so important. We’re hope merchants. We’re supposed to give our clients AARP. Anonymity, Action, Results, and Protection. We have to give people hope. At any one time, we have a dozen clients on the cusp of suicide. It’s a horrible feeling of marginalization and people can only take it so long. I’ve had clients who were Muslim whose commanders told them the only good Muslims were dead Muslims, and they fantasized about killing themselves with a note saying “Am I a good Muslim now.”
There’s a saying “One often finds their destiny on the road one takes to avoid it.” I didn’t ask for this to happen. I was at point A in my life in 2004 when I was faced with anti-semitism and I didn’t care if I lived or died, someone was going to get a beating, and I was going to do it. Now I’m at point B, whenever I see unconstitutional religious tyranny of any type from any client, I don’t care if I live or die, someone is going to get a fucking beating, and I’m going to be the one to do it.
For those on the religious right, those fundamentalist Christians who say separation of church and state isn’t in the constitution. I’ll ask them if they were arrested and taken to jail, would they have the right to a fair trial? They’ll always say yes, but it’s not. You have the constitutional right to a speedy trial and a public trial, but not a fair trial. That right is given by something called legal precedent case law just like Miranda rights.
Remember we’re dealing with an American populace more focused on Dancing with the Stars, and the book is intended to be a wakeup call.
Rhodes Review: What advice would you give to those wanting to get involved?
Well, I would say read the book, buy the book, get the book to as many people as you can. Donate to us. We’re the tip of the spear. It is a way to reach out to politicians, they will not touch us. And finally give me that one day as a lion.
We’d like to thank Mr. Weinstein for joining us here at Rhodes Review and for taking the time to talk to you about this issue, and about his book. As part of this, We’ve been given permission to offer two signed and personalized copies of his book, “No Snowflake in an Avalanche” to our readers. To Enter the contest go here. And be sure and read our review of No Snowflake in an Avalanche here.
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An avid reader since the age of three, Jeremy Burns was devouring novels by the time other children his age were still learning their ABCs. Blessed (and, at times, cursed) with a decidedly active imagination and an insatiable curiosity for nearly everything, Jeremy made learning and storytelling two of his chief passions. After earning his degree in History from Florida State University, Jeremy accepted a position teaching literature, creative writing, political science, and philosophy at an international school in Dubai. Like the characters in his books, Jeremy is an intrepid explorer whose own adventures have taken him from Mayan ruins in the Yucatan to the pyramids of Egypt, from medieval castles across Europe to the jungles of Bangladesh, and beyond. To date, Jeremy has traveled to more than twenty countries across four continents, seeking adventure, discovery, and ideas for future novels. When not exploring a new corner of the globe, Jeremy lives in Florida, where he is working on his next thrilling novel.
R. J. Terrell was instantly a lover of fantasy the day he opened R. A. Salvatore’s: The Crystal Shard. Years (and many devoured books) later he decided to put pen to paper for his first novel. After a bout with aching carpals, he decided to try the keyboard instead, and the words began to flow. When not writing, he enjoys reading, videogames, and long walks with his wife around Stanley Park in Vancouver BC.
Steve O’Brien is the author of Elijah’s Coin and Bullet Work. Both works have been the recipient of multiple literary awards.