Mark Siljander
speaker
279 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Mark Siljander’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
He's the strangest man of peace.
Strange indeed. Regardless of what people say about his personality, his gruffness, his bluntness, his other characteristics that you pointed out in one of your excellent presentations. He's inside And I have no inside knowledge of this, but I just believe from observation that he has this compassion.
Well, he also has a track record. I mean, when he was president, he led the West into zero wars. Right. And zero is not very many. And so that was despite the fact that we were assured by his opposition that he was a warmonger and that it would be Trump that would... You could imagine him voted in high school as most likely to start World War III.
And yet, when he became president, the fruits that his tree bore, let's say, were fruits of peace. And that was contradictory and strange given the combativeness of his personality. But, you know, one of the things we might always remind ourselves is that
if we're not ourselves capable of promoting peace, let's say, in our own family, let alone at an international level, we might not be able to recognize a true peacemaker when one comes along. He's not necessarily going to look like you think, because if you knew how to do that, you'd do it. And so, okay, now Trump seems to be doing everything he can to... But he shouldn't be trifled with.
That's the other side of Trump. Right, but that might also be absolutely necessary, right? We don't know what the preconditions are for establishing peace. He obviously indicated to people like the dictator of North Korea that he could be communicated with but not trifled with, right?
And Trump does seem to have that paradoxical personality, which is, don't muck about with me, but if we don't have to go to war, then let's not. Right, and so he tromps around like a bull in a china shop, and it's not obvious how much of that's necessary, but I really mean it's not obvious. None of that seems weak, right?
And I think that was the position of someone like Biden, who would promote himself like Justin Trudeau does. A lot of these good-thinking liberals, they're the sort of people, in their mouths, butter wouldn't melt. They're such nice gentlemen, and nice has never seemed to me to be particularly virtuous. Discriminating nice from weak is a difficult matter.
And I don't think people make that mistake with Trump. Okay, so back to Palestine.
Quick comment. Jesus, you know, they had asked, why don't you call down your angels?
Yeah.
Which he could have. But he did not because it's, and I don't mean to say Trump is like Jesus, please. I'm saying there's an attribute that while there's power behind Jesus, Yeshua as I call him, his Hebrew name, There's power. He still exerted love, compassion, and mercy.
Well, you see the same thing with Moses. When Moses is near the end of his sojourn with the Israelites, they run out of water again in the desert, and the Israelites ask Moses to intercede on their behalf, and God tells Moses to ask the rocks to deliver water. And instead, Moses goes with Aaron to the rocks and uses his cudgel to compel and command the rocks to deliver water, which they do.
But his punishment is that he doesn't lead the Israelites into the promised land. So, the God of the Old Testament, who's manifested, let's say, in the Spirit of Christ, is... Someone who radically opposes the use of unnecessary force, right? Now, it isn't that Moses has no strength of character because he stands up against the Pharaoh multiple times, puts his own life at risk.
He's a very brave person, but he's still severely punished for using force when verbal invitation is the order of the day. Right, right. And so... It's possible to have that power at your back and still be morally obliged to use as little of it as necessary to let's say, to make your point. Okay, so now you're off to Palestine. You're running into opposition from the neocons.
You have an epiphany that you should be reaching out and talking. That becomes a practical necessity with regards to the Palestinians. Pick up the story there.
Yes, and we engaged and talked and broke bread and had tea.
How did you do that exactly? Walk us through the mechanisms.
Well, I mean, when you're in Congress, you can, you know, you tell the embassy, my interest is to see some Palestinians. I said, well, that wouldn't be recommended or advised. I said... Note taken. I still want to see Palestinians, some of the leaders, and some average people. We walked down some of the streets in the West Bank and talked to people and knocked down their doors.
I felt like we were in another campaign of sorts. And it was exhilarating. And I can't even specify why. It was like meeting new people, a new constituency. But there was something missing, Jordan. I was trying to find common ground. One can be a nice person, a diplomat, break bread, which is critical in building interpersonal relationship, but there is no spiritual connectivity.
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