It seems like Donald Trump has finally cracked up, after six years of unrelenting attack of the most foul and dishonest sort. My reaction is basically, “What took him so long?”
On “Truth Social” Trump stated, regarding the 2020 election, “A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False and Fraudulent Elections”.
Trump stated the only two responses possible were to throw out the 2020 election results and declare him president, or to have a new election. Such drastic action is a step farther than Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War or Harry Truman’s seizure of Steel Mills in the Korean War.
I actually felt such personal outrage (about what seemed to me like obvious fraud) after the 2020 election that I expected action of this sort back then, while Trump still had the power of the presidency. So did the Democrats and Rinos, I think, which was why razor wire was erected around the Capital, and why the peaceful protests of the time of Biden’s inauguration have been misrepresented by the media as an “insurrection.”
Now it (Trump’s declaration of a veritable insurrection) seems like it is too little too late. For Trump to now say the 2020 election should be invalidated and he should be proclaimed president seems a bit like Napoleon crowning himself emperor, only Napoleon had the power to enact such an audacity. What power does Trump now have?
If the FBI felt they could raid Trump’s home three month’s ago, with no evidence of any real wrong doing, what will they do now? The media has gone silent after the initial flurry of indignation, and I fully expect Trump will soon be arrested.
Of course, there may be much going on we don’t know about. Nothing reported in the media has made much sense for years, whether it is the absurd meteorological “science” about Global Warming, or the absurd medical “science” surrounding the vaccine, or just about anything having to do with politics. Therefore it should come as no surprise when the actions of Trump make no sense.
I am reminded of a “prophecy” made by Kim Clement back in 2008 which stated that the United States would be “ruled by two presidents”. It drew some attention right after the election in 2020, when some felt it was being fulfilled, but then was largely ignored when it seemed it was discredited.
In any case, we seem to be experiencing the old Chinese curse, “May you live in Interesting Times.”
Unless I am mistaken, we are not hearing the usual cheering which follows an election victory by a majority. A few of the usual suspects, Hollywood hacks, are preening and triumphantly clucking, but there is a strange sullenness on the streets. One might even go so far as to suggest the majority lost.
Perhaps I am merely turning into a cantankerous old coot, but I suspect the voting machines were turned up full blast, when it comes to altering the correct count of the vote. It would be easy to check. If it is true that we, “Trust, but verify”, we need only hand-count a few, select machines, in unannounced precincts, and see if they match the given results. But of course, this is the very thing the “winners” will scrupulously avoid.
In any case, the hoped for “Red Wave” has seemingly turned into a “Red Grave.” Even Donald Trump seems especially bad tempered. One can hardly blame him. Trump has endured an onslaught from the “Swamp” for six years, attempted to fight fairly midst cheaters, and it is difficult to win elections when even the voting machines are rigged. He now says we should do away with the machines and hand-count ballots, but it seems a bit late for that advice.
Again, I may seem like a sore loser, and to be indulging in a “conspiracy theory”, when I suggest the voting machines were rigged. However, it worked in Venezuela, so why not try it here? To be honest, in my bones I feel the machines were rigged. The public is simply not behaving as one would expect, if the majority won.
It is said, “cheaters never prosper”, however at the moment they certainly must feel smug, if the voting machines were indeed tampered with.
In fact, this may be the darkest moment for the United States since the infant American army was booted out of New York City in 1776, and Washington suffered defeat after defeat as he was chased clear across New Jersy and the Delaware River, until he only had a few thousand troops left, and many of those few remaining soldiers would be leaving in a few weeks when their enlistments were up. The survival of the United States balanced on the point of a hair, only a few months after the Declaration of Independance was publicized, and then, right at that critical time, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet beginning,
These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
At this point I suppose it is good to remember historical times when might did not make right.
At the height of Assyrian Power, King Sennacherib had defeated all powers but a small city-state with its capital in Jerusalem, and he marched a huge army up to its walls. According to his history, he forced them to pay tribute and marched away. According to the people of Jerusalem, on a single night 185,000 of Sennacherib’s soldiers died, “slain by an angel of the Lord”, just outside the city walls. (Cholera? Poison in the well water?)
More recently, things looked bleak for Russia when Napoleon marched towards Moscow with an army of 450,000. Only 28,000 made it back from that debacle alive and fit to fight another day.
Cheaters never prosper.
However, this is not to say we are not about to endure a bitter winter, like Washington’s troops did in December 1776, and in Valley Forge in 1777, and following winters as well, before the sunshine of victory shone.
The sheer dishonesty rampant in the media these days reminds me of a prophecy in the seventh chapter of Book of Daniel, where an evil power in the future is described as attempting “to change the set times and laws.” In other words, such an evil power would disregard Truth. It would have the audacity to believe it has come up with a “better idea” than Truth.
One “set time and law” I’ve enjoyed the ups-and-downs of is: An old-fashioned marriage. Call me a fuddy-duddy if you will; I am not an admirer of the “alternative lifestyle”, I state this even though, as a gullible young hippy, I did dabble in the apparent escape-from-responsibility called “free love.” I quickly saw it wasn’t free, nor was it love. How did I escape from the escapism?
I’m not sure. I think it in part had to do with the examples set by my elders, which struck me as potent symbols long before I was capable of intellectually digesting or describing what the symbols meant.
On one hand I had a set of grandparents who met in second grade and, at age eight, announced they would marry, which seemed cute but absurd to their elders, because they were from very socially different backgrounds, yet eighty years later they were still together and apparently still in love. On the other hand, I had my parents, who were like a god and goddess the first ten years of my life, but then who shocked me with a very antagonistic divorce.
It may sound a bit audacious, but in my boyish view my parents suddenly acted very immature. They were embarrassing, whereas my grandparents were not. I could not have justified my impressions, but they were what they were. Only now, as an old man, can I see what the differences were.
The difference between marriage and divorce transcends they being mere opposites. They exist on (or in) utterly different dimensions, in different worlds. The love involved in marriage is so different from the selfishness involved in divorce the two subjects are themselves divorced, as the heavens are from the ocean’s depths, and as oil is from water.
I have recently had to endure the breakup of one of my children’s marriages, and the difference between love and selfishness was made blatant by the lawyers involved. I could remember when the young couple, in love, overlooked differences. They even found differences “cute”. Now, abruptly, those same differences became, “evidence.” What love had forgiven abruptly became “grounds for divorce”, and every slightest error was used to “build the case.” (Thank you very much, you bleeping lawyers.)
In Truth there is no better idea than love, but divorce thinks it has come up with a “better idea”. Wrong. But in my time, I have been guilty of turning away from love, so it is not like I am up on a high horse and looking down a long nose. I have seen myself put my selfishness ahead of others, and selfishness is seldom a friend of Love.
How is it Love has the power to overlook differences which selfishness finds intolerable? It is because Love operates from a separate universe than our worldly desires. Love utilizes the so-called “heart” which the “head” tends to brush aside. Yet the heart solves problems the head calls utterly unsurmountable.
The most unsurmountable difference humanity is faced with, greater than racial differences, greater than all religious differences, (even the differences between Isaac and Ishmael), greater than differences between capitalists and communists, between winners and losers, between haves and have-nots, between old and young, is the difference between men and woman. Nothing is more different, yet nothing is more natural than men and women coming together in a thing called “marriage.” It happens worldwide, often against considerable odds, and makes mincemeat of divisive powers who say we can’t get along.
I think divisive powers strongly disapprove of marriage, for they dislike anything which mocks their divisiveness. Nazis are mocked when one of their children loves a Jew, and Jews are mocked when one of their children loves a Nazi. But Love, as a power, could care less for our silly hatreds. On the cross Jesus had every reason to say, “Father, screw these bastards for what they’ve done to me,” but instead his amazing Love had him say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”
I try to say the same thing about the mainstream media, but I think many of them do know what they do. They are like a spouse ‘midst divorce proceedings, urged by lawyers to never confess a mistake and never forgive an error.
However, the “marriage” they are part of “breaking up” is the United States, which long was a two-party system where the two sides were married by Love. Yes. Love.
One of the aspects of a marriage is the humor both sides bring to their non-stop disagreements. For example, I recently heard a husband pretend to pompously announce, in a barrister voice, “A marriage cannot possibly succeed unless the wife, in ALL arguments, grants the husband the final word; in fact, grants the last TWO words; and they should be, (pause), ‘Yes, dear.'” Such humor walks hand in hand with love.
The unlikely survival of the United States through over two hundred years of tumultuous history has been largely due to the fact we are led by a marriage, not a despot. The debates in congress have involved the sharpest minds, able to split hairs, with plenty of humor. We are led by Love, not selfishness. I could drag you through example after example, but some find history boring. So, I’ll just shove the Truth in your face.
The mainstream media is controlled by an invisible despot who does not believe in a two-party system. Whoever this arrogant idiot is, he does not believe in marriage. He does not believe in Love. What this means is that, because God is Love, this despot is picking a fight with almighty Truth. (The despot is not as smart as he thinks.)
The election we are about to experience shows many signs of being a repudiation of this invisible idiot, this one-party-system which feels it is superior to the marriage called the United States. The one-party-system will likely be unable to accept such a repudiation. It will likely resort to altering the election’s results through voter fraud. Why not? It worked once, so why not again? However, the American people are far more on guard, concerning fraud, and there is likely to be greater push-back.
The brazen impunity with which “fake news” has been doled out is reaching a crisis point, where it may self-destruct, crumbling because it is rotten to begin with, and rot cannot replace the wholesome structures it usurps with anything wholesome, but only with further rot.
Into my mind’s eye comes this analogy: A thief steals a ladder, and uses it to climb to great heights, but removes rungs of the ladder to discourage pursuit, (and also to discourage copy-cats), and eventually reaches a point where the ladder has so few rungs left the two sides of the ladder start to wobble and shift, and the remaining rungs start to creak and crack, and then suddenly the thief is not standing on a ladder, but two very tall stilts. Because the thief has no idea how to walk on stilts, he goes wobbling out of control, and exits stage left, followed by a long descending howl and a crash.
In “Hamlet” Shakespeare used the phrase, “hoist with his own petard”, to create the ironic image of a bombmaker “lifted” by his own bomb’s explosive charge. (In the sly world of London slang which Shakespeare was so adept at using, the phrase could also mean being “lifted” by one’s own especially-loud fart.) It was not a fate one desired.
In like manner, the “better idea” which proponents of divorce always dangle as lures never result in the “freedom” they originally promised. I got to study my parents, who both got to live over thirty-five years “free” of each other after their separation, and they never were really free. Not that they didn’t live productive lives, and not that they didn’t meet new people who loved them and nursed them towards maturity. However, they never achieved complete amnesia, and never forgot the loops and nooses of their initial entanglement. If marriage is a battle, then those who think they escape the battle find they are haunted by ghosts and experience “flash backs” and “traumatic stress disorder.” The undealt-with must be dealt with. Often a second marriage sees the exact same problems that appeared in the first marriage reappear, and the second marriage becomes a second chance to “deal with it”.
In like manner, in the world of governance, any attempt to replace the marriage of a two-party-system with the divorce of a one-party dictatorship always seems like a “better idea” in a time of confusion, but over and over history shows us that society suffers when it resorts to such tyranny. The confusion and terror of the French Revolution turned to Napoleon, who seemed like a hero at first, but eventually led to the death of a million Frenchmen, and a France with fewer than nine men left alive for each ten women.
The lesson is there in history for those with eyes that see. The problem is that when you try to teach Truth to a tyrant, they censor it. Love is a dimension they refuse to allow to govern their lives. They are all head without heart, or, if they have a heart, they only allow it in places utterly removed from their workplace. In the dark of a movie theatre they may weep, but not at their bank as they foreclose on a widow.
The world of governance is currently seeing the idea of “globalism” arise as a sort of vast, one-party dictatorship, with only a single view allowed and all other views censored. The sanity of Truth is affronted by all sorts of attempts to “change the set times and laws”, with even the-sex-one-was-born-as called into question. This creates chaos and confusion, and also the tendency for people to long for a powerful leader to “make things right.” A globalist dictator likely will soon step forward and say, “I am your Napoleon.”
The world does not need a Napoleon. What the world needs now is Love, sweet Love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
In terms bankers understand, power involves control of material items, and this winter we may even see power asserted through materially forcing people to choose between heating and eating, and perhaps even see unnecessary starvation, and people unnecessarily freezing to death. However, the rescue will come. The bankers will not see it coming, for they do not accept the dimension the Rescuer exists on. It is not a material reality.
I can’t predict the way the cards will play out, or how and when Love will manifest. My guess is that “heart” will not likely come from centers of power, but from heartlands. Also, I guess the three nations most likely to resist the globalist Napoleon are the United States, India, and the tiny state of Israel. Lastly, in my own small way I hope to make a last stand and go down fighting for the magic of Love and of marriage, in this invisible war against brazen impunity.
I have felt for months that Fraudulent Biden will have to find some way to halt the midterm elections. The opposition to his leadership is too great and too obvious, and the electoral losses may be so extreme it will be hard for the “Elite” to ever recover. Once the Elite lose power there may well be exposures of corruption which those now in power fear being exposed. Loss may lead to greater losses. Pebbles can start avalanches. So, if it was possible to avoid an election, that alternative might seem preferable to reform, to those who have no desire to reform.
After all, in the eyes of some the electorate is too stupid to govern, and the idea of a democratic republic should be replaced by a dictatorship. The “Deplorables” should be replaced by the “Elite.” We should return to the concept of serfs ruled by a royalty.
So, I sat back and waited, with an attitude I fear is cynical. How would the elections be circumvented? Would there simply be widespread fraud? I doubted that, because too many eyes are watching this time.
Now, with the election only a month away, I watch a Russian pipeline sabotaged, and a major bridge to Crimea severed, and Fraudulent Biden speak in an inflammatory manner about nuclear war, and said, “Hmmm.”
And then I thought I’d write a headline to be ready for what’s next.
Amendment 4 – Protection from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
Note the word “particularly”, and then compare that with the amazingly general and vauge description of what is to be seized in part “C” of the warrant.
Basically, the warrant allows the FBI to seize anything Trump wrote or received while president.
I’ll leave it to others to state whether this is a “fishing expedition” or not, and whether or not the possibility exists that evidence could have been “planted”, (especially as people were banned from serving as witnesses and onlookers), and whether or not the FBI has a shred of reliability left after it has been exposed as culpable to the processes that led to prior unfounded attacks on Trump.
Instead, I would like to address the question, “Why should Trump want to hide even a single paper?”
The simple fact of the matter is that we mortals are not perfect, and often need to go through a process of “feeling things out” before we arrive at a decision. During the “process” we may say things we would never say “in public”. We may stamp around and be wall-bangers. Those who love us wait until we are done ventilating, and then say something along the lines of, “You don’t really mean that.” And, speaking for myself, I tend to respond, “No, but it’s how I feel.”
Such emotional honesty is only possible with those who love you. It is a thing called “intimacy.” Such emotional honesty is not wise among those who hate you, and who want to harm you, for they will use such honesty as a proof you are a sinner.
The word “sin” has become politically incorrect, but the sad fact of the matter is that it is human to err. Saint John stated, “If we say we have no sin then the Truth is not in us.” It follows that our ability to confess our sin, in some safe space, is vital to our ability to grow, and even to exist, as humans.
This is not to say we accept sin as behavior we want to follow. After saving the adulterous woman from being stoned by telling the angry mob, “Let you who is without sin throw the first stone” Jesus told the woman who he had saved, “Go, and sin no more.”
There needs to be the recognition that sin is undesirable. If one attempts to justify sin and perpetuate sin, one faces a danger Saint Paul described as being “given to your sin.”
In fact, the good are as prone to sin as the bad, but the good fight what the bad promote.
To return to the subject of private papers, I have kept a diary since I was nine, and if the FBI wants to dig up evidence that I am not always sweet and saintly, or even sane, all they need to do is seize my private papers. In fact, just to tantalize them, here’s a page from 1965:
(The FBI might like to know why my older brother, who was 18 at the time, was coming home at two AM and entering the house through a third story window.)
I think it might do the FBI some good if they were forced to read my writing. All 60 years’ worth. If my poetry didn’t make them more sensitive, it might gag them, and either would be better than their current state.
But as far as your private papers are concerned, they are nobody’s business but your own. The U S Constitution defends your right to work things out in your own time and in your own way, and anyone who wants to limit or infringe upon that liberty can go take a flying leap.
It seems the United States is in a state of being denied, wherein what people want is not what they are getting. In a sense it is like fasting. People hunger and thirst for righteousness, but never seem to be fed.
Fasting is supposedly spiritual, when it isn’t done out of vanity, merely to improve appearances, but rather is done to break our addiction to worldly cravings.
I must confess I was never big on fasting. When young I had a revved-up metabolism and couldn’t put on weight even when I tried, (and I did try, attempting to increase my bulk for football.) Having this sort of metabolism makes you into a sort of eating machine at times, which doesn’t look all that spiritual. Yet then I might go a surprising period of time on nothing but coffee and cigarettes (and sometimes whisky) utterly indifferent to food, because I was “a writer”. (I will confess I learned to add lots and lots of powdered milk to my coffee, so I suppose the milk kept hunger at bay.) However, after one of these spells of being “a writer”, I’d be hit by a ravenous appetite and completely disgrace myself, in spiritual terms, by wolfing an entire large pizza like it was a cracker.
Therefore, I am no one to seek out as an authority on self-denial, and how it benefits the spiritual aspirant. To be quite honest, a lot of my “writing” is me complaining about how I don’t get what I want. (I am rather good at such complaining, if I do say so myself.)
Oddly, even though I never really sought self-denial, I did manage to wind up in some situations where I was a “suffering poet”. Largely this was because I was offensive. I didn’t mean to be offensive (most of the time) but there is something offensive about taking the attitude that you are special and should get what you want, especially when what you want is for everyone else to go to work nine to five as you stay home smoking and drinking coffee (sometimes spiked with whisky) being “a writer”. In any case, let it suffice to say I did not get what I wanted, and people made me feel less than welcome, when they didn’t just throw me out on my ear. This placed me in a position of self-denial even though that was the last thing I wanted.
One crisis I got myself into involved leaving New England in a sort of self-imposed exile, at age 27. I had offended just about everyone, including myself, and just packed all that seemed valuable into a tiny 1974 Toyota with a 1200 cc engine and headed off into the cruel world. I slept in that tiny vehicle fairly often, which I suppose is self-denial. And, (as even exiled Romans such as Ovid and Cicero admitted), exile had its benefits. Self-denial can uplift the spiritual seeker.
In any case, while thinking about the current suffering occurring in the United States, I recalled a poem I wrote before I left New England on my exile. In Rome people often accepted exile as a way to escape a more severe punishment, and the old poem was about the punishment (self-inflicted) I was enduring before I left. Something about America’s current suffering reminded me of that past, and I went searching for the old work in my yellowed papers.
Found it! It is an unusual poem for me, in that I reworked it several times. The first draft was from November 1978, the second draft from July 1979, and the final draft was from October 1980. In other words, this poem expressed the passion of a young man in his mid-twenties.
Anger's a sabre thrust into my heart;
My heart is a scabbard of pain.
I would draw out the long, bloody blade
And see all my enemies slain,
But blood is a terrible stain.
My fingertips shake with the strain.
Foolish men fawn for a dollar a day
And artists are driven to hiding.
Generals are riding fat horses that bray,
And therapists yawn at confiding
While counting up dollars deciding
What beaches to ruin residing
Within aluminum siding,
Then they go back to their guiding.
Where is the handle? I must draw the sword
And see that the dragon is thoroughly gored,
Yet how can I haul out that head-hacking blade
When the charger you sold me so recently brayed?
Sorrow, sweet sorrow, is clotting my throat
With stabbing I never could swallow.
I want to bail out. We're in the same boat.
Excuses have always been hollow.
Where is the scalpel a surgeon would use
And where is the surgeon who knows how to choose?
The enemy has to be slain
But blood is a terrible stain.
My fingertips shake with the strain.
Besides being a fairly good indication that I chose correctly, in deciding to depart a situation which was driving me bonkers over 40 years ago, the poem traces some depths of feeling one may experience, when the situation that is driving them bonkers is difficult to escape. And the current situation in the United States is driving people bonkers. It is also difficult to escape. People who are nowhere nearly as offensive as I was in my mid-twenties may be feeling like I felt, all those years ago.
This makes me wonder if there is any advice I can offer.
In one sense I have no advice. I have never figured out how to make the people driving me bonkers stop doing it. They are what they are. The only thing I can stop is to stop myself. I’m the only one I can change.
In 1980 the biggest change I made was to stop retreating to my mother’s basement, when I felt hurt, and instead to retreat in an outward direction. It seemed a very brave thing I was doing, but even little birds do it, when they leave the nest. My departure was actually retarded, when you consider I was in my mid-twenties, and few took it all that seriously, considering I had “left home” many times before. Few knew how serious I was, and that I was truly gone for good.
Leaving the nest is self-denial because one is denying themself the very real comforts offered by a mother. Such comforts are provided in a nigh instinctual way and can be addictive. For example, my dirty socks would vanish and then reappear cleaned in the top drawer of my bureau neatly balled. This may seem like a little thing, but it never happened again, and, after forty years, recalling such kindness makes me nostalgic. But at the time I took it for granted and it made me lazy, dependent, and disgusted with myself. Moving from my mother’s basement was like leaving a dank dungeon and soaring into the open sky. Where is the self-denial in that? (I suppose it is in the fact the open sky can get stormy, and then one wants to head home.)
In the above example it can be seen that self-denial is closely associated with freedom. It is part of a tension which forever exists between security and freedom, wonderfully portrayed by a couple of Saturday Evening Post covers by Norman Rockwell which appeared on consecutive weeks: (Notice the face is the same.)
In some ways this tension is as simple as the fact we get up in the morning and go back to bed in the evening. Life involves alternating desires. However, the factor I want to focus on is the self-denial.
In order to be a sort of yogi and to qualify as “spiritual” the self-denial must encompass both sides of an alternating duality; IE: when you want to get up you must stay in bed, and when you want to stay in bed you must get up. This sort of “fasting” is annoying as heck. It is a swift way to turn even bright spirits into sourpusses. It can only be done when the yogi involved is fiercely determined to reach some preconceived transcendental state, and, even then, is full of hazards.
I did try some of this self-denial when in my twenties and I learned something of the hazards. It is a bit like enduring the pain of jogging to get yourself in shape. One problem I ran into was that I tended to lose my desire and to see my resolution fade, and to in a sense “fall off the wagon”. (This was not like falling off a horse, wherein you get back on where you fell off, but more like the game of snakes-and-ladders; you go slithering down a slippery slope and have to start over from the very bottom.) Then a second problem was that the very few times I did bungle into the periphery of some sort of transcendental state it tended to scare my socks off; I wanted to run away and be normal again. Lastly was that, (most of the time), such self-denial wrung the joy from my life and left me a sourpuss, and a crank. This was so far from the nirvana I was seeking that it actually was what propelled me from my mother’s basement.
This brings me to the subject of what was propelling me. I felt as if I was to some degree out of control. This seemed irresponsible, but to some degree we cannot take control of everything. Some days the fish simply are not biting, and no amount of yelling at the water can change their minds. And the same is true of hitchhiking. Some days the traffic will not stop, and neither yelling nor smirking convinces anyone. It is at such times one finds themselves muttering to the sky, and to the possibility of a Power besides ourselves, who controls.
As a young intellectual I strove to be logical, and to doubt the existence of anything which could not be scientifically replicated, but my Atheism was troubled by a series of events which could not be replicated but could also not be denied, for they saved my life. Midst my “bad luck” were odd experiences of “good luck”. Eventually this led to a series of inner crises and I “got religion”, which made me in some ways even more offensive than before. I was even more likely to sit around writing as others went to work when I thought God would care for me. But eventually I became aware God didn’t automatically gratify my desires, and was as libel, and in fact more libel, to utilize self-denial. For example, the only time God washed my socks and put them in the top drawer was when God manifested as Mom. The rest of the time the socks stayed dirty.
It is upsetting to some when God doesn’t respond to prayers like He is some sort of vending machine, wherein you put in your prayer and the answered prayer plops out at the bottom. After such disappointment, one must take matters into their own hands. This is fine when the problem is dirty socks; one simply learns to wash their own socks. However, it is not so easy when things get out of control, and your best efforts come up empty.
In my case, (along the lines of fishing when the fish weren’t biting, and hitchhiking when nobody stops,) coming-up-empty often occurred when looking for a job. Many times, I was one of those fellows who waits outside an unemployment office hoping for spot labor. I didn’t feel in control of my destiny, especially on those days when there was no work, and, on those days, God heard a fair amount of grumbling.
I well know the temptation one then feels to be corrupted; God may say you’ll earn no money that day, but one is tempted to rob a bank.
To be honest I suppose I must reluctantly confess that I have succumbed to temptations to some degree.
As a teen I sowed some very wild oats, but once I “got religion” my moral failures never progressed much beyond smoking and drinking too much, a few failed romances, and some petty theft, (and I did repay the market I shoplifted cigarettes from). While I did feel the urges to be corrupt, they never won me over to the degree one sees among politicians in “The Swamp.” I tested the waters of corruption and was repelled.
I’m not sure why this was the case. It could be that I simply wasn’t deemed worthy of spending the time, by those who do the tempting. One good thing about being flat broke is that few see you as being worthy of seduction.
It also could be I was protected. After all, once I “got religion” I had given my life to the Lord (to some degree), which means I had admitted I couldn’t control life and needed help. And what happens next?
Once you have such a Superman watching over you, perhaps you get protected even when you don’t want to be protected, as was the case when certain gorgeous women walked by. When lonely I was not at all inclined towards self-denial, but had to endure it. The Good Shepherd was guiding his sheep, even if the sheep was a black sheep.
Eventually it sunk into me that a lot of the self-denial I was experiencing was actually good for me. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s I endured a fair amount of mockery from even my closest friends for being something of a prude. Then, starting around 1982, a lot of the fellow “writers” who had mocked me started dropping dead of AIDS (which was a reletively swift and unpleasant way to die back then, with no cure). Then self-denial didn’t seem like such a misfortune, and indeed more like a miracle.
Of course, I always wanted the miracles to be more pampering. One story I often tell involves a Christmas miracle. I was five dollars short on my rent and a green, rumpled piece of paper came blowing across a parking lot. As I stooped to pick it up, I could see it was money, and was fairly certain it was a five, which it was. Even though I felt a warm glow all over I felt comfortable enough with my Creator to joke, “Couldn’t You have managed a hundred?” But I’ve heard it said that when you are thirsty God gives water, not lemonade, and to me this has seemed true.
This brings me back to the subject of self-denial, and the fact I seemed to get more self-denial than gratification, which must mean that, if the Good Shepherd is in charge, there is more good in not getting what you want than in getting what you want.
Why should this be?
I think this is true because getting what you desire seldom satisfies. You usually just want more. We tend to be creatures of habit, and the way to freedom from addiction is not to get what you are addicted to. This is not to say some habits are not good habits: When a bad habit enslaves us we tend to call it “being stuck in a rut” however a better habit is described as being “in the groove”, but even good habits limit our freedom, and I think God wants us free.
It helps me to understand how habits enslave when I describe a “desire” as a “craving”. Craving sounds more beastly, and even undesirable (which is wonderfully ambiguous, as you are saying desire is not what you should desire.) People who can admit they “desire” are less likely to confess they “crave.” But, if you don’t think craving controls you, just hold your breath for sixty seconds. Soon breathing, which you ordinarily don’t even think about, becomes the only thing you can think about.
Craving can be seen as a distraction. It is like when you have a job to do, but just then a very attractive person walks by. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, nor what your sexual preference is, you are distracted. And from God’s perspective, humanity is a herd of distracted cats. He is the only One able to herd them.
One thing God seems to seek to do is to free us from our cravings. And it turns out that such freedom is far more likely to occur when we don’t get what we desire. For example, when even the most zealous suiter is disdained over and over, and is finally arrested as a stalker, the zeal must seek a different channel, even if it doesn’t completely fade like the final ember of a fire. Typically, the suiter settles for second best, and rather than a “lover” becomes a “friend”. If they can’t be number one in the beloved’s life, and can’t actually massage the beloved’s shoulders, they must settle for making this a better world for the beloved to live in, by uplifting other people they formerly wouldn’t bother with.
Having our desire frustrated is painful, but it frees us from needing to have a specific desire fulfilled in a specific way. One thing I have noticed in people who have been through great suffering is that they are less demanding and are more able to be happy with less. They are satisfied with water and don’t demand lemonade. Rather than restless they know more of peace. Rather than post-traumatic-stress they know post-traumatic-resignation.
I have had trouble being resigned because I am a battler and tend to be more inspired by pep talks, like Winston Churchhill’s famous “Never Surrender” speech when England was threatened by Hitler. I also liked the prophet Issaih’s defiance of the Assyrians when they besieged Jerusalem. I did not like the prophet Jeramiah’s advice when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem a few decades later, for his advice was, “Surrender, for this time you are up against God’s Will. You must accept the punishment of captivity and exile.”
Surrender is a bad thing when it is a surrender to slavery, but God does not want us to be slaves. God is the only One worthy of surrendering to, for He knows best when our desires should be thwarted and when they should be gratified, and how best to move us to a point where our minds are unclouded by cravings, and our hearts are free to love.
One interesting thing about the relatively poor people who the “elite” call “deplorables” is that the poor seem more able to put their own desires aside. A factoid which never made sense to me is that the poor give more to charity than the rich, in terms of a percentage of their income. (In fact, some rich will not give to charity unless they themselves profit in some way, which is not charity at all.) How can this be true?
It has occurred to me that the poor, without the slightest wish to be yogis, have had to see their desires denied over and over again, until the habit of craving is worn down, and they no longer expect gratification. Then, because their minds are not clotted with cravings, they are more able to hear their hearts. The poor workingman’s heart defies his intellect’s banker’s-budget, when he impulsively hands half his sandwich to a hungry, onlooking child. In this and a thousand other small ways the so-called “deplorable” are not deplorable at all, and in fact are more loving than, and are spiritually superior to, the so-called “elite.”
Blessed are the poor. Because they do not require gratification to be happy, they are often happier than billionaires. They live in a world wherein quaint values the elite call “old fashioned”, but which are actually ancient and eternal, rule. So maybe not getting your desires gratified is a good thing.
The elite, who are constantly sating their desires for wealth and power and fame and sex and drugs, discover gratification does not lead to freedom, and instead become more and more addicted to their desires. In spiritual terms this insidiously matures into a colossal mistake, for even when they imagine they are enslaving others they in fact are enslaving themselves. Even when they think they are smarter they are in fact becoming increasingly ignorant. Even when they think they see clearly, they are blinded by desire. And even when they think they gain control they are losing self-control; in seeking power they become spiritually powerless.
Hopefully you see where my thought is leading. It is a complete contradiction of the values which rule the elite. It denies that which the American mainstream media attempts to say is the only sensible way to think.
The foxes push saints from pulpits to preach
To the chickens, but their sly idealism
Is cynicism. They actually teach
The opposite of what they say. To them
Hypocrisy's second nature. They don't know
How fresh and clean Truth is. They cannot see
How blind they are. They think it wise to sow
Thistles, and create their own tragedy.
See them now, puffed in pulpits, so sure that
They're collecting dainties, like gamblers sweep
Winnings from a table, chewing pure fat
That drips from chins. Meanwhile chickens keep
Their distance: In fact, the pews are now empty.
The outfoxed fox snarls, for he can't tempt me.
Tired of this anger I'm carrying
I turn to You, my Lord, and plead my case:
Mankind creates divorces out of marrying
And turns the sweetest blush into disgrace.
Your generosity is met with greed.
Your colossal kindness met with hate.
They snatch away the milk that babies need
And dream their tyranny will make them great.
Am I to sit and turn the other cheek?
Must goodness zip its lip as hellfires singe?
How is it You in silence will not speak
As bigmouths blare the bull that makes me cringe?
I pray my suffering's like that of fasting.
I hurt today for joy that's everlasting.
The national and world news seems so bad that at times I find myself gasping for relief, and one relief I find is to take small children at my Childcare on a hike. Partly the relief involves the simple fact small children require constant attention, and I have few braincells left to think about the cost of gasoline or suffering in Ukraine. But another source of relief is more subtle.
Yesterday I had a couple “former students” visit after five years. Brothers, the older was at the threshold of adolescence, and ordinarily in such circumstances I find a strange amnesia has set in. I am looked at across a vast chasm, as if fifty years had passed. However, for some reason no such amnesia affected the brothers, and they regaled me with fond memories they had, including some things I did (and stories I told) which I myself had no recollection of. At one point the older brother looked about the pasture, where small children played in the distance, and folded his arms, smiled, and pronounced, “The Childcare: Where there’s not a care in the world.”
I was touched to be remembered in such a way, but it also made me think, for, when I am hiking with small children, I often feel I’m in a different dimension, utterly alien to the world of adults. It is not merely that war mongers have no use for old men and small children, but also that, old men and small children have no use for war mongers.
I led a gang of three-to-five-year-olds
Into deep woods, where we followed old stone walls
To a slanting, fallen tree with hand-holds
Better than any jungle-gym's. The hallowed halls
Of looming trunks hushed to hear the laughter,
And silent deer and foxes peered from down
The corridors of trees, seeking after
The joy. No crows croaked; no eagle's frown
Disapproved; no jays cried harshly, "Thief! Thief!"
There was only the sound of children at play,
And perhaps my long sigh of thankful relief.
This poor old world hears news day after day
That tires the heart. It relieves to be free
Of such souring news, and watch kids in a tree.
The above map sort of ruins my plans. I was hoping to slip away to Maine to play with my twin-granddaughters and their toddler older sister, and to discuss how to fix the world with my son, but the weather has been wrecking everything and looks like it will wreak those plans as well. Worst case scenario: Quarter inch of freezing rain followed by inch of sleet followed by six inches of snow. Not good conditions to drive north, where they may get a foot or more. Oh well. Roll with the punches.
There should we a phrase like sailors have for when they get used to the constant pitching of a deck. They call it “Sea Legs”. The phrase I want applies to northern people in February, when they get used to winter’s abuse of us hairless apes, who ought to be in a warmer climate like the Garden of Eden, but our ancestors (including Adam) blew it.
What phrase can describe the fact people who call temperatures below freezing. “a warm spell,” and then drive to the market for a pack of smokes without wearing a jacket? “Freeze Legs?” That’s the best I can do on short notice. Any suggestions?
One thing about having Freeze Legs is this: Having no free time because weather-related problems are on all sides doesn’t seem to keep people from having free time. They “seize the moment”. For example, a plow driver was pushing back the snowbanks in front of my house, to make room for the oncoming storm, when an elderly woman who rents an apartment next door brought her trash to the curb. The plowman idled the engine of his front-end-loader, to see if she was coming out to talk with him, and she informed him she wasn’t. However, before he revved up his engine, they also discussed the latest weather report, Whoopee Goldburg’s troubles, and the Canadian Truckers. Perhaps I exaggerate, but it seemed to take them forty-five seconds.
In like manner, my mind seems to grasp things with equal swiftness. Usually, 45 seconds isn’t enough time to write about them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
Very briefly, the above map shows a very wonderful switching of patterns. When the last storm exploded, it knocked both the “northern” and “southern” storm tracks for a loop, and forced the creation of a new storm track down the middle. The northern remnant is the “clipper” which failed to come south, and instead moved from southern Manitoba to the east coast of Hudson Bay in the above map. The southern remnant is the blob of clouds off Florida in the above map. Between the two is a southern seep of air north and a northern press of air south, creating a new front, and a blob of Gulf of Mexico moisture riding northeast towards me, promising future chaos.
My mind grasps such things as I sag by a woodstove at the end of a long, hard day. Sleep is soon going to push me to my bed, but I have a short moment to cover many fascinations. Besides the weather maps, I note the networks don’t cover the “sea of blue” at a policeman’s funeral in NYC, but many comments at assorted sites have links to pictures of the amazing demonstration. I think the public is fed up, but just then my dog intrudes, requesting a last walk before bed. So, I then find myself out in the crystal quiet of a sub-zero night, noting observations. Then I’m back by the fire, writing brief sonnets before sleep sets in:
Everything's cracked in the cold: Schedules
Interrupted by slush and snow; frozen pipes;
Dumb cars won't start. I thumb old manuals
For how to fix things, as my irked brain gripes
And spirituality flies right out
The window. Plans to write poems seem dumber
Than sunbathing in the rain. Prayer seems a pout
And a request that God become my plumber,
Yet I, too, have seen God in the cellar
Brushing cobwebs from my humbled face.
The Highest looks down at thrones where kings are
Yet washes the feet of those in disgrace.
The champagne of wealth sours joy, I now think,
While love's simple water remains a sweet drink.
I flinch before the storm comes. I'm fearing
The effort. Nor do I much like grueling
Labor, but I love it when skies are clearing
And the work is done. Then I start fooling
Myself, calling all the grunt-work a breeze.
Then I'm able to love my enemy.
Hard work's given way to fireside ease.
I even leave fire for moonlight. Each tree
Stands still, and moon shadows stand still as well,
But my dog doesn't notice the motion
Off on the moon-bright snow. I cannot tell
What it was, for it's gone. I've the notion
I've glimpsed a ghost. Then I get the joke:
The motion's the shadow of a chimney's slow smoke.
“Snow”, in local jargon, is not cocaine, but the rough equivalent of what a con-artist tells you. A ruder word might be “Bullshit”. A false report, given in an attempt to influence you with trickery, is described as a “Snow Job.”
In the eyes of many ordinary local folk, the last election was not merely a “Snow-job” but a “Snowstorm”. They do not believe the “Fake News”. They honestly and sincerely believe Donald Trump was reelected. His victory was stolen by corrupt thieves of the Deep State, AKA “The Swamp”, who now are trying to pretend we can get back to life as usual.
Apparently we can’t. For example, here is one thing I have never seen before: It is February, and the election was back in November, yet in my neighborhood the Trump election banners have not been taken down. Every time I pass one, fluttering in the wind, I know things are not getting “back to life as usual.”
People keep sending me “links” which have been apparently been banned by YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, which suggest that many are not buying the “Snow-job.” A storm is brewing. A “Snowstorm”.
Apparently there is a part of American Society, the part which voted for Donald Trump, which feels violated. Raped. What’s more, they actually feel they are the majority.
Even if you are a minority it is hard to take being violated. When the Sioux were minding their own business in their own homeland, and a vast majority of American settlers overran their land from the east, they nobly fought to save their homeland, defeating Custer at “Custer’s Last Stand,” but in the end they faced the grim fact that for every one of them there were a thousand settlers. But they didn’t feel their cause was made less righteous. They felt someone, somewhere, must see they were right, and turned to the supernatural for help. They danced the “Ghost Dances”, asking ancestors to return from the dead and save them. You might think such a request was silly. But it scared the US Cavalry silly. The troops were scared to such a degree they decided they had better shoot people for dancing. Shoot people for dancing? Yes, it did happen, and even Sitting Bull, who defeated Custer, received a bullet.
I’m nervous because in a sense I see history repeating itself. Trump supporters are largely righteous people minding their own business, but stand in the way of what “The Swamp” sees as a “New Manifest Destiny”, which they call “Globalism.” Just as the Sioux were once seen as being “in the way” of progress, so too are Trump Supporters seen as being “in the way” of Globalism. However Trump Supporters are not a tribe of a few tens of hundreds, but may even be the majority of Americans, (if election results are as fraudulent as some suggest.) If Trump Supporters start doing their own version of a Ghost Dance, “The Swamp” may not have enough bullets to stop the dancing. Or, if they do, it would be a bloodbath of such proportions that they and their kin would be forever stained and cursed (if they are not already). In any case, what is developing is not “getting back to life as usual.”
Could the Sioux pretend it was “life as usual” when invaders made the millions of Buffalo, which they depended on, lie in slaughtered, festering heaps and nearly become extinct? No. In like manner many Trump supporters feel backed into a similar quandary. There is no “life as usual” allowed in “progressive” thought, which wants to tear down statues and replace pillars of sensible thought with nincompoops. Consequently some Trump Supporters are suggesting things which Facebook and Twitter and YouTube feel you should not hear. They are suggesting a sort of Ghost Dance of tens of millions.
I may be a poet, but a hard life has forced me to be realistic. I like the idea of the pen being mightier than the sword, and the mere words of a sermon stopping an army, but my poems haven’t stopped a flea. There are times poetry simply will not wash the dishes, and I have to face the suds. The school of hard knocks has taught me to just be pragmatic, and face whatever assignment God has given me, even if it is not the assignment of writing poetry, (which I prefer).
Every poet born has wishes
That his muses did the dishes.
I am therefore a hardened poet, toughened by time. I’m no longer mooching off my Mom and living in her basement (as I once did, fifty years ago,) but rather am a person made unlike the so-called “Elite” of the so-called “Swamp”. The Elite seem to feel they have the power to tell others to wash dishes while never washing their own.
What weaklings the Elite must be, in my mind’s eye, when they can’t even wash their own dishes, or their own clothes for that matter, or heat their own homes with an ax and tree, or feed their own bodies with seeds, hoe and garden. To me the effete Elite seem like either babes, or ninety-year-olds, incapable of being self-reliant. Their Mom is the taxpayer, and Washington DC is her basement.
Some of the Elite seem to think power means becoming more and more incapable. They become more and more dependent on the very people they scorn. Not even a heroin addict scorns the heroin he is dependent on, and not even the cruelest old-time capitalist would completely destroy the very miners that created his profit, but the Elite have taken hypocrisy to a whole new level.
I used to be a little grumpy towards God for never giving me a one-hit-wonder, but now I understand it was a blessing. If I’d made a brief fortune I might have become like the Elite, addicted to something which time has taught me I don’t really need.
It is because even an airheaded poet like me was forced by the school of hard knocks to become sensible and self reliant that I feel nervous when I start to see not only the Elite completely losing touch with the so-called “base”, but also other sensible and self reliant people, the so-called “base”, begin Ghost Dancing.
My view is that such dancers tried the ordinary route, which they felt was to vote for Trump, yet, even when they won, they lost. It makes no sense, So they turn to what is in some eyes not sensible: Dancing. Or, perhaps, prayer. When the world stops making sense, people turn to the supernatural for help.
At this point I, as a hardened poet, will surprise some by saying the supernatural does respond. However, where people expect flashy “signs” and miracles, the supernatural prefers to use the natural.
Why should the Creator alter the rules of His creation? Are you suggesting He is a bad Creator? (If so, then, while bossing Him about, do not fail to inform Him I still could enjoy a one-hit-wonder, even at my advanced age.)
Not that our Maker can’t do whatever he wants. He can part the Red Sea. However 99.99% of the time, it seems to me, He uses the magnificent laws he already has in place, laws that made what awes us: The Grand Canyon, or Yosemite, or our first child, newly born.
Life itself is a miracle, if you are a poet and have eyes turned towards seeing how fucking beautiful a sunrise is, even as you reluctantly drive to work at some job you find it difficult to feel grateful for. Just the way every action has a reaction is a miracle. At the time we fail to see the humor and beauty, but afterwards we laugh at even hitting our thumb with a hammer. Vietnam is more difficult, but up in heaven the Viet Cong chuckle with Americans who died at eighteen; they get the joke.
The joke is that life was not intended to be as bad we make it be. We make our own misery. We are hitting our own thumbs with our own hammers, and the very worst at doing this, it seems to me, are the denizens of the so-called Swamp. They have surpassed a tipping point and now careen downwards like an overloaded truck with no brakes.
It is said by people who nearly died of thirst in a desert that, just before rescue arrived, they became so crazed they attempted to drink the dryness, filling their mouths with the very hot sand that was parching them. In a sense this is what the Swamp now does, clutching at and clinging to the very lusts, greeds and hatreds that poisoned them. They are past saving themselves; their rescuer must come from outside.
And in a sense this is what Donald Trump represented, an outsider with a different approach. But, just as a drowning man can drag down the lifeguard attempting to save him, in his insane, thrashing desperation, the Swamp did everything in its power to destroy its rescuer. But darkness cannot put out a candle.
The Light that Donald Trump represented is much greater than any mortal man; Donald Trump represented the heart of America, a goodness and kindness that amazed onlookers at his rallies, when the happy crowd chanted unheard-of slogans such as, “We love you.” This Light is not made by Donald Trump or any other mortal; at our best we merely reflect It. Yet this Light is a great healer and unifier, for it is the almighty power of Love, which unifies all of us, rich and poor alike, as a single body, indivisible.
The Swamp has lost sight of this Light. It distrusts the very idea of unselfishness. It prefers an inequality of Haves vs. Have-nots, Winners vs. Losers, Power vs. Weakness, and prefers the schisms of divorce to the unity of marriage. Yet the tighter it tries to grip the darkness the more it is losing its grip. Darkness may be inside a closed fist, but when you open your hand to see what you hold there is no darkness in your palm. All the Swamp truly holds is a shadow.
An element of desperation is creeping into Washington; they seem to feel surrounded, and erect barriers topped with razor wire to keep the light away from their precious shadows, yet they sense they are outnumbered by dancers they cannot defeat any more than the Grinch could steal Christmas. It is a last stand of shadows against a swirling snowstorm of light.
One great thing Trump did was to simply walk away from Washington. I expected more of a fight, but in a sense the fight was already won. Shadow was exposed as shadow, and he left the foul to stew in their own juices. Increasingly Washington will recognize its power is a shadow; it cannot control the weather, nor even the common cold. Then, perhaps, it’s eyes will lift to That which does create and control, preserve and sustain, and see it is surrounded by a blizzard of goodness.
I’m seeking escape from worrisome news by ducking thirty-five years into my past and writing about a time I worked in a fast-food joint. I think I’ll call the work, “Fatty Burgers”. But worrisome news keeps popping up as fake-news headlines on my phone, even when I try to block it.
It seems so sad that President Trump is portrayed as such a criminal, worthy of having his Twitter and Facebook accounts blocked, when what he did was speak Truth to Power. He simply held up a mirror, so the “Swamp” could see itself. Sometimes a mirror corners you like a rat.
A cornered rat is vicious, and it seems Trump has been exposed to four years of viciousness. This viciousness has in turn exposed the “Swamp” as being exactly as Trump described: Corrupt, evil, hypocritical, and illegal, and supported by a press that is dishonest. Now the “Swamp” feels it has at long last turned the tables, and Trump is the cornered rat.
Psychologically the “Swamp” shows symptoms of a person with so-called “personality disorder”, wherein a family and/or workplace and/or community desire to love and help, but all the individual sees is a preconceived threat. Trump supporters want to love and help America, but are seen as racist Nazis. The swamp is so terrified it fights like a cornered rat, breaking rules, even including the counting-of-votes which forms the backbone of majority-rule. To cling to their piece of the pie they will shoot the chef; kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Back against the wall, like a cornered rat
The guilty bares teeth and does not confess.
It's a sad conclusion. The pity's that
It only worsens the rage and distress
To fight to the end. A bloody last-stand
Sneers at surrender, scorns forgiveness,
And slaps away Love's soft, offering hand.
Where life promises more, death clutches less.
Oh Lord, You have shown us a high, white peak
But some poor souls are unable to climb.
Silver silence is in these words I speak
But some clutch cold gold. Silence? Its sweet crime
Will rob them of lusts. Oh Lord, break their fears
And Your silence. A final stand nears.
Sunrise's Swansong 