Some mornings I feel like Washington at Valley Forge.
The propaganda of the Deep State is relentless. What a misnomer it is to call it “The Resistance.” It is obvious some big money is involved, when it blares from posters in glass cases in public places in New York City. It is not the voice of the sweltering poor. It is insidious, and is seen virtue-signaling from the plot of a Broadway play, when you head out to “take in a show.” However a truer “Resistance” shines from the efforts of the individual actors, striving not to be “the masses”, but the best of the best.
Liberal means “generous”, and there is nothing wrong with being generous. Jesus was generous. But it is not generous to tax the crap out of people to enrich your own greedy life. That is gross hypocrisy. It is far better to be an individual seeking to be superlative, the best ball player or the best actor. Then you are giving all you’ve got.
It is individuals giving all they’ve got that makes America great. It is seen in the boss, and in the boss visiting an obscure corner of his factory where a sort of family of workers do one step of a process better than it has ever been done before. The genius of the Founding Fathers was to tame the despotic tendencies of leaders and allow individuals to have rights, and it is the poison of the Deep State to remove those rights.
The distinction is obvious to me, but sometimes I despair I’ll make it clear. The Big Lie of the Deep State blares on and on. The true debate is between greed and generosity, but no one really talks about the real debate, and instead many blather about empty issues like Global Warming, which is an exercise in witlessness. If you ask an Alarmist what an “isobar” is, they think it is where Santa drinks whisky. They haven’t a clue, but still manage to virtue-signal down their noses and call me a “denier”. I fight against depression and defeat.
DOUBLE SONNET — TESTED FAITH
My faith is too tested, and I wonder
What purpose can be served by bruising me.
Have I not proved faith, singing in thunder?
Have I not been so crushed I crawled, bowed free
Of all hope, yet looked to Your kind beauty
Like an innocent man on the gallows
Looks past this cruel, dark world, and can see
Spring’s dawn lies ahead? This lipsticked earth shows
No allure to me; I see the rank sores
On powdered skin. Why not show me Your smile?
You’re kind to the sickly; You walk with whores
As their friend. Please walk with me a mile
As the Dead Sea thumps surf on sighing shores.
Add Your flashing smile to my poetry.
What purpose is served by misery?
Yet I will trust there is a lesson hidden
In these scorched days: Some wrong wish for worldly
Fame or Wealth’s lodged like a splinter, and when
It is removed I will once again see
The Surgeon is my friend, despite His knife.
But for now I don’t see, and faith is blind
As the best faith always is; for the strife
We think matters has no weight, we will find,
On the true scales. For Justice, too, is blind
To the allurements that prompt bribery
And cause all corruption. A calm, clear mind
Wears a blindfold to be able to see.
I know it makes no sense, and so I must
Endure my scorched passages mustering trust.
My mood was not at its best Sunday morning, for I’d been up long past midnight and also my youngest son drinks no coffee, whereas I am an addict. I was astonished a kitchen could even exist without coffee. Perhaps a caffeine-free morning contributed to my gloom. However to my surprise I discovered I didn’t die, and in fact as I stepped out Brooklyn’s bricks astonished me with their orange brilliance, and the green surprised me as well, as I was unaware a tree grew in Brooklyn.
It is bragged that 600 languages are spoken in New York City’s Burroughs, by those who see it as being a sign of liberal diversity and multiculturalism. I’m not so sure it is a good thing, because I cannot help but think that somewhere else 600 communities have been lessened, and perhaps even destroyed. A community is a sign of God’s creativity, but ignorance loves to destroy. Some people think Satan will manifest as a sort of Godzilla tearing down skyscrapers, but it seems to me he has no problem with material things; he won’t bother bash skyscrapers; what he dislikes is Love, and in my time I have witnessed the destruction of families, neighborhoods, clans, tribes, and communities world-wide.
Liberals once decried the idea of a neutron bomb, which would kill people without the damage to material objects an atomic bomb manifests, yet they have said little as families and neighborhoods have been evaporated. Some even clap their hands, deeming the small-scale patriotism of a tight family a type of racism, as if even a mother’s love is evil and opposed to a faceless ideal of one vast McCulture. How much of the world has been destroyed the past sixty years? With hardly a whimper.
Yet as I trudged the sweltering street, desperately seeking my first coffee, I had the strong feeling God cannot be denied. I might be only one language of six hundred, and my skin might be only one hue of six hundred, but there was no way this swirling I was midst was going to become a melting pot, creating a drab smear of a single, muddied hue. Already new clustering was occurring, as the will to excel individually combined and created new marriages, new families, new neighborhoods, on its way to the recreation of 600 springtimes, if not 601.
Having proven optimism does not require coffee, I did find a coffee shop. Then my optimism soared, helped out still further by finding a church.
Red Brooklyn brick in Sunday morning sunshine
Spreads awakening to the blue horizon
As if brick has no end, but green that’s mine
Lies over Earth’s curve, all made by the One
Who has no end; and now all gather
To sing of Love, of sweet brotherhood
With many voices; and though I’d rather
Be over Earth’s slow curve, this neighborhood
Enchants with the same beauty shimmering
Like symbols by snare drum; a song so good
That it will follow me like angels on wing
And dance when I’m back home in my green wood.
Why my surprise? It’s not unexpected
That One Light is in all eyes reflected.
Sunrise's Swansong 