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.”
As I am a poor, pathetic victim of “shadow banning” I know that by now some brainless “search engine analog” no longer needs to even read my posts before suppressing them. Sad. In the old days I could get a bit of satisfaction from the thought some geek, perhaps in China, was reading my sonnets and being uplifted. Even as I got cancelled, I might be uplifting the cancellers. Sigh. Now the cancelling is done by a robot.
This is the bizarre war we are midst. Little old me, a minor voice with rather odd views, is deemed some sort of threat by somebody somewhere. The powers of suppression rear their might to supress my self-expression.
Not going to happen. I will express my love of Truth and of the creation that Truth created even from a jail cell. So, what the suppressers actually want to suppress is the chance I might convert anyone to my rather odd views. They are not doing it for me they are doing it for you.
However, while there is indeed some selfishness involved in my self-expression, it is not entirely selfish. To be marginalized and cancelled is in some ways helpful, for solitude can be helpful. At times I do my best singing in the solitude of the shower. However even in the shower I do not sing to myself. I am unabashingly belting out my heartfelt rhapsody to an imaginary audience. But who? Maybe God. But maybe I’m doing it for you.
Poor you. On one hand you have the oppressors oppressing me for your sake, and on the other you’ve got my howling my odd songs for your sake. In other words, you have a two-party system, and you are in the shoes of the voter.
It has occurred to me that my microcosm resembles the macrocosm of the current war between Biden and Trump. However, Trump is much smarter than me, and plays his cards better. He is basically driving Biden nuts.
Oppressors, by their very nature, want to oppress some view or another. And Biden did want to suppress the ghastly views made available by his son’s laptop. The media was informed by the FBI the laptop was “Russian disinformation” although the FBI knew it was genuine, and the weak-willed mainstream media then compliantly reported it was “Russian disinformation.” Now it is years later, and, in the most watered-down way, the media wants to sneak an ironic admission that the media itself was the mis-informer, but only onto page 22 of Sunday editions, where no one will see.
Instead, a crowdsourced movie, “My Son Biden”, is to be released today, blaringly publicizing all the suppressed stuff in the laptop, in a manner which makes the corruption so ludicrous it is a comedy.
This surely makes Biden furious, and he apparently decided to send Trump a message, “You’re messing with the big boys, now.” So, he raided the sanctuary of Trump’s home, trashing even Trump’s wife’s and son’s bedrooms (and not tidying up afterwards), seeking some shred of evidence that it was Trump who oppressed Truth, by disobeying some unspecified law.
Unfortunately for Biden, this action was so oppressive it broke several laws, which resulted in Biden needing to oppress the fact he broke laws, which resulted in heavily redacted documents. So, Biden actually winds up oppressing himself. In like manner, the FBI is reduced from being a big bully, enforcing the oppression, to backtracking and attempting to oppress evidence it went forward illegally.
What a joke. The oppressor oppresses himself. In the words of Robert Lewis Stevenson, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive.”
As the date of the movie’s release approached, Biden then tried a prime-time speech, trying to speak as a wise and kindly king against an unruly rebel, but the posing and posturing and lurid red background went over like a lead balloon. Rather than wise and kindly he came across as even more oppressive.
Nor did Trump appear the slightest bit intimidated. At a rally less than twenty-four hours later he delivered the ultimate insult: He never even mentioned Biden’s prime time speech. Instead, he focused in on all the issues Biden didn’t touch, in Biden’s prime-time speech.
I likely could go on about what Trump talked about that Biden didn’t mention, but why bother? When Biden doesn’t mention things, it is just another example of how he wants to oppress Truth.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the film exposing what was in the oppressed laptop is shown this week. “My Son Biden” can’t be cancelled as slander, first because Biden is a “public figure”, and second because such a lawsuit would have the laptop brought forward as evidence, and all it holds would become public knowledge, which is the last thing Biden wants.
Poor Biden. He is between a rock and a hard place.
Congratulations to Trump. He is proving an ancient spiritual truth is still true. Oppression loses to Confession, regarding the Truth.
And Me? I think this is one of the strangest wars History has ever seen.
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.
Around a year before the election Nancy Pelosi made a vaguely disturbing comment, along the lines of, “If we are going to do this thing, we had better be prepared to do it all the way.” It was somewhat unclear, (as it often is with her), what she was referring to, but it had to do with “winning the election”. It now seems possible that the “thing” she was referring to involved winning the election by fraudulent means.
To say the election was fraudulent is a quick way to be banned on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and yet such a fraud is generally accepted by a surprisingly large number of people. Many say the Dominion voting machines were “rigged”. In any case, by hook or by crook, Pelosi “won”.
But, in Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth”, Lady Macbeth also “won”, when she convinced her husband to gain power by murdering Duncan, King of Scotland. She worried her husband had too much of the “milk of human kindness” in him, and bragged that she had no such weakness, no such wimpy tendencies towards mercy, and would even pluck her own baby from her breast and dash its brains out, to gain political power. However, after Duncan was murdered, Lady Macbeth turned out to be less tough than she thought she was. This led to the famous scene where she is either sleepwalking, or just plain off her rocker, attempting to wash hallucinated blood from her hands and muttering, “Out; out damned spot.”
Lady Macbeth is one of the greater examples in literature of a person plagued by a guilty conscience. Shakespeare suggests there is something within the human psyche which reacts powerfully against evil, no matter how persuasive we may consiously be, regarding how evil is to our advantage.
This subconscious reaction is not a mere matter of disappointment, over having a gratified desire turn out to be less fulfilling than imagined beforehand. It is not the mere disappointment one feels after going out on a date with a person who appeared beautiful, but who turned out to be a complete dullard. Rather it is the keen sense one is guilty, one has done wrong, and that there are unpleasant consequences of some sort which one is going to face. One has ingested poison, and the future is not bright. Although one may have “won”, one has won a free trip to hell. Lady Macbeth “won” what she wanted, which was to be Queen of Scotland, but becoming queen was not the heaven she imagined, beforehand.
I wonder if Nancy Pelosi might not be in similar shoes, now that she has “won.” The murder involved was not of a person, a “King Duncan”, but rather of the United States of America, and all it stands for, (if the election was truly fraudulent.) What was “killed” was democracy.
In a sense Nancy may have achieved her life’s aim, if she saw opposing views as something which must be utterly defeated, yet now she may awaken, like Lady Macbeth, to the fact that what she has done is terrible.
For opposing views are not truly an enemy. They are like the other side of a tug-of-war; they keep you from falling down. If you destroy the other side of a tug-of-war your own side falls over. It is like killing the goose that laid the golden egg. What is beautiful about the two-party-system is what beautiful about marriage; to destroy one half of a two-party-system is like thinking you “win” by shooting your spouse.
Debate, when most healthy, results in an increase in understanding on both sides. But such healthy debate becomes impossible when one side resorts to blanket denial. And that is what negating the vote of a majority amounts to: A blanket denial of all the charges which that majority was making.
Nancy Pelosi cannot have worked so long in Washington DC without knowing what healthy debate looks like. Therefore she must also be aware it has recently largely been extinguished. I wonder if she looks down at her own hands, those same hands which tore Trump’s State of the Union speech in half, and mutters, “Out; out damn spot.”
I am trying to pay no attention to politics, and am engrossed with a tale of my life as a bum. It was a time in the winter of 1984-1985 when my good deeds were not rewarded in the manner young men are rewarded in a Horotio Alger novel. Instead I experienced being something of a chump, a sucker. I would do the right thing, but my rewards were negative.
I suppose I am attracted to such ancient history because in 2020 the American Voter did the right thing, but hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes may apparently be playing such honest citizens as chumps. I am looking backwards to see how the heck I survived the humiliation of such cruelty.
Hopefully my research of old diaries will eventually result in some good advice, but the American People are not going to wait with bated breath. Anyway, even if I came up with some amazingly spiritual revelation, then Google, Facebook and Twitter likely would promptly make my brilliance hard to find. In essence, I’m basically retired, thinking for myself without any power which the worldly care for. The American People are responding to being treated like chumps without a bit of my good advice.
It is something of an interruption to my work-in-progress about 1984-1985, but I feel compelled to note that on this date in history what the media reported as “hundreds” of Trump supporters gathered in Washington to protest being treated like chumps. Likely the crowd was a quarter million, and perhaps a half million, for the gathered entirely filled the “Mall” between the monuments. Then a very small number, 00.001% of the gathered, “stormed” the Capital. Interestingly, close-ups show some of these badly-behaving individuals had the hammer-and-sickle tattooed on their forearms, which is not often seen on Donald Trump supporters. It is being suggested Antifa staged the event to make Trump supporters look bad. Trump himself then urged the demonstrators to refrain from such misbehavior, and to peacefully go home, having made their point.
The point being? That the American People do not appreciate being played for chumps.
All this is off the point of my attention, which is the winter of 1984-1985. But as the stimulus of current events does demand some small amount of attention, I suppose I should sigh and give those who never attend to me some attention, with a quick sonnet:
History repeats, but what's tragedy
The first time is comedy the second.
I try to look away, and to not-see
How the stiff-neck's logic tends to bend
When the treatment they doled-out to others
Rebounds and bites them. Oh sure, it is OK
When Antifa assaults tea-sipping mothers,
But when Trump-supporters ask the time-of-day
The hurt Swamp quivers. I must shut up!
It is like watching a boy ask a girl
For a first date. Runneth over's my cup
Of good advice, but though my grim lips curl
I bite them. Fools don't want to hear
Truth that is rising and will shortly appear
The fraudulent election has usurped the interest of nearly all; in the woods even the deer are puzzled, for hunters neglect to stalk them. Therefore I wondered if any would show up at a meeting of an odd collection of old fossils I belong to, called a “prayer group”, the days after the election.
This group consists of a small bunch of grumps past retirement age who still work every day, but who, one day a week, find time to gather before work, (during winter, long before dawn), to drink coffee and to talk, and then to pray.
Our talk tends to move along the lines you’d expect from grumpy old men: Mostly conservative, but sprinkled with tales that are usually very funny, though sometimes poignant, about what we did when we were not so conservative. But after the coffee comes the prayer, where, man by man, each prays aloud, and I find this creates something I wish I had discovered fifty years ago.
In some ways it reminds me of something which I did discover fifty years ago: The “men’s groups” which, back then, psychologists used to create for themselves, in a cultish sort of way, with the psychologist himself ensconced as the guru.
Back then the “men’s groups” I attended basically involved young, tough, lantern-jawed guys attempting to be wimps, and to cry their precious, little eyes out, about how their feelings got hurt, (in an effort to become more “sensitive”).
Hopefully we grumpy old men aren’t ever quite so absurd as that. For one thing, there is no cult-leader-psychologist in our grumpy-old-men prayer group, unless you call God the psychologist. Second, among old men a young man’s interest in self-improvement has largely faded away, replaced by an interest in slowing the process of self-deterioration.
I like being among men who are exposing deeper parts of themselves. Not that we are always deep. Partly our prayers involve the trivial; things such as a wife’s toothache or daughter’s speeding ticket, but prayers also move on to whatever the opposite of “trivial” is.
This makes me wonder about what the opposite of “trivial” actually is. So I use a search engine (never Google) and arrive at a long list of antonyms, none of which satisfies me. But perhaps the best opposite-of-trivial is not a word, but a string-of-words which admits there is no word; namely the string-of-words, “life-and-death”.
The problem is that “life-and-death” tends to be very subjective. For example, when a toothache is at its height, it seems very important, and you might resent very much anyone telling you it was “trivial”. However should you, in your desperation, rummage about in your kitchen, locate some clove oil, and administer that burning oil to the gums around the roots of the hurting tooth, the pain might swiftly shrink and fade, until what was “life-and-death” became “trivial”.
In like manner, on a hot day in a desert, water may become a true, honest-to-God matter of “life-and-death”, but, as soon as you arrive at a well and drink deeply, you don’t think so much of water. “Life-and-death” has become “trivial.”
Also in like manner, naming no names, lust can become a thirst, and one can write ardent sonnets about how gratification is a matter of “life-and-death”, however, should gratification occur, the object of desire may no longer be so desirable, and some mighty fine sonnets may be crumpled up and thrown away.
For these reasons I think a good opposite to the word “trivial” is the word “momentous”, because too often what seems important is a fleeting thing which soon, after a “moment”, becomes unimportant.
When young I often ran into people who scorned my suggestions that what I desired was “momentous”, and who were all too eager to inform me that what I cared about was “trivial.” In the face of such sneering, belittling and bullying I developed a sort of fax-humbleness wherein I felt my concerns were too trivial, too downright petty, to bring before God in prayer. In my mind God was the only truly “momentous” thing, and all things that I myself cared about, when analyzed, were “trivial”. I didn’t want to bother God with my petty banality, and in a sense I made God become like the elders I knew, an authority full of scorn. Then I was introduced to some gospel (which means “good news”): The gospel was, “God is Love.”
The idea that One as infinite as God is could be interested in a speck of dust like myself was beyond my comprehension. It seems such an outlandish proposition that I think God Himself doesn’t ask anyone to believe such a preposterous thing. Therefore, to the sincerely curious, God seems to offer proof He is Preposterous. It is not a scientific proof that can be replicated, but rather is an intimate and usually secretive kiss: Perhaps some inconsequential event, such as a passing butterfly swerving to land on the tip of one’s nose. It is hard to scientifically replicate such an occurrence, let alone describe the way that it happens at the perfect time and place, and dissolves even a stolid individual to tears.
Of course, while a butterfly landing on the tip of their nose may have meant a great deal to the individual, it will not do for that individual to share such intimacy with scoffers. They will roll their eyes and do what they always do, which is to call what you feel is “momentous”, “trivial.”
I am perfectly willing to admit I am trivial. However I have learned that, to have any sort of civil discussion, the person I am talking with must also confess they are to some degree trivial. Scoffers can seldom do so. Sadly, the reason they scoff at others is often to boost themselves, to puff up their own already-obese egos with further flatulence. They have the odd belief that, in dismissing others as trivial, they somehow assert that they themselves matter. Apparently they are very insecure, and fear they don’t matter, and fight this fear by proving they do matter, using a bizarre technique wherein they behave as if others don’t. To wit: A bully sees a happy sissy, walks up to him, and punches him in the nose.
If there is anyone who can say they matter, and the rest of us don’t, it would be God. He is the Creator, and we are merely the scribble on the pages of a novel He is writing. He is omniscient, which means He knows the end of the novel before He begins. Time itself is His creation, an unwritten book He pulped wood to make the paper of, and bound, even before writing the first Word. He is also omnipotent, which means He is both sides of His pencil; besides creating us He can erase us, which is disconcerting to contemplate, for it emphasizes how trivial we are: Besides creating us He can rub us out.
I imagine what matters to God is that his novel arrives at the happy-ending He sees, and we can’t imagine; all we call momentous is trivial compared to the infinite Bliss He aims his creation towards. From time to time, to people as witless as sheep, God appears cruel, like a stern shepherd with a prodding, hooking crook. But God is Truth which is Love, sometimes soft as butter, but other times steel, a stern Love that must be tough: Pushing us away from bad water and poisonous herbs towards crystal streams and greener pastures may involve driving us across parched deserts.
Sometimes beautiful people enter our lives and we want them to be with us every day, but it cannot be. This seems cruel; it seems life would be so much better if it went as we wished. But perhaps in such situations God, who knows the happy-ending, needs to rub out a character who distracts us from His plot, the way Shakespeare rubs out the dazzling, scene-stealer Mercutio, when he threatens to turn “Romeo and Juliet” into a play called “Mercutio.”
(And yes, to reply to scoffers, even a tear-jerking tragedy like “Romeo and Juliet” does have a “happy-ending”, because the Montagues and Capulets come to understand the monstrous futility and stupidity of their feuding.)
Sometimes I think God snatches beautiful people from our lives to increase our thirst for beauty. If life was too pleasant we’d lose our desire to move on. Where even turtles and snails know their houses must be portable, we might stagnate, basking on some perfect Polynesian island, immobile to our dying day, unaware we were marooned. Therefore God sends us a tsunami.
This thought is emphasized by the fact that the people who tend to be most sensitive to beauty are those who have suffered loss. The wealthy like to think that it is they who create beauty, when they patronize art, but you very seldom see a wealthy man write a symphony, nor grow a single rose in their gardener’s gardens. The wealthy are incapable. In fact they all too often serve the purpose of making the misery which makes the art. The wealthy have no cause for vainglory when they look in a mirror and (perhaps) see they sometimes make the ugly wounds which make the beauty of healing possible.
It is a glorious defiance, (to the so-called logic of many wealthy men and women), to accept loss the way a starving poet accepts it. The wealthy scoff that loss is for losers. Their mindset makes them incapable of seeing beyond the material stuff they accumulate, until they are “given” to behavior which actually blinds them to the doorway to richness beyond riches. Where a poet will “pay the dues to sing the blues”, the wealthy think, “I’ll avoid the blues and pay no dues,” and the wealthy sadly then live nasal, tone-deaf lives with little music, (which may explain their sense of emptiness and thirst, which often causes a few wealthy people to patronize musicians. Such patrons tend to straddle a fence, seeking to gain the benefits of poetry without enduring the suffering.)
In the end we are all basically faced with a choice. What matters to us? Things of this world? Or things beyond this world? To try to have both is like standing with one foot in a rowboat and one on a dock. Eventually one needs to chose; otherwise one is all wet.
Sometimes the choice comes through circumstances. Beethoven lost his hearing, which was a thing of this world, without losing his music, which was otherworldly. He stated something along the lines of, “Those who understand my music are not troubled by the woes of this world.” Yet he himself had trouble enduring a woe of the world called “royalty”, a wealthy elite who felt he should consider them his “betters”, and accept their patronizing attitudes.
Too often the so-called “elite” were prone to inflating their own importance, while putting the gifts of others down, saying things such as, “Without me there would be no Beethoven,” which belittled Beethoven. It did not do for such royalty to brag; even deafness could say the same: “Without me there would be no Beethoven.”
For me the puffed egos of the elite seem absurd, for, when I look about, there is plenty to be humble about: Without farmers I’d starve; without garbage men I’d live in filth; without garment-makers working in Asian sweat-shops I’d be naked. It would take a certain sort of hutzpah for me to put on airs, and, rather than gratitude, to call myself a “better” who was “in charge”, and who deserved the credit for other’s gifts. (This is not to say “administration” is not also a gift, but it is no reason to put on airs.)
I believe God has blessed all of us with gifts, which are likely as varied as our fingerprints, and I also believe that, if we could only think, speak and act according to His will, our path towards the happy-ending of creation would be heaven on earth. Sadly, speaking only for myself, I have a problem with keeping the path smooth, due to the fact I also have a gift called “free will”, which causes me to be deaf to God’s will. I may preach that we should all appreciate each other’s gifts, but some people…….well, I have trouble appreciating them. Be this as it may be, I still believe we all have gifts, and that we should respect others even if we have no clue what the heck their gift is, and even if they appear utterly worthless.
In order to achieve a heaven-on-earth, God has given us handy rules which allow us be more harmonious and to evolve away from discord. Such laws are woven into the very tapestry of creation. We may not like such laws, but there is no way around them. I myself love freedom, and bristle at the slightest whiff of bossiness, but even I have to admit that, as much as I would like to levitate, I’m bossed by the Law Of Gravity (so far). In like manner there are all sorts of other laws concerning action and reaction, called Karma, basically stating that if you sow thistles you shouldn’t expect to reap oats. The only one independent of such law is God, who is above the law because He created it.
Therefore, because God is enthroned above the law, it follows that grumpy old men should go to God, if we find ourselves in trouble with the law, (which is trouble we mortals tend to find ourselves in, on a daily basis, as we are all imperfect). Despite the fact we are mere specks of dust, God’s omniscience allows Him to know us better than we know ourselves, and to see our path out of discord and towards harmony more clearly than we ourselves can envision. Furthermore God apparently likes seeing specks of dust turn towards Him, perhaps because it is a sign specks of His creation are moving in the right direction, to arrive at the happy-ending He has planned. (And even crooked lawyers, with sleazy flattery, have the good sense to attempt to please any judge they approach, and therefore grumpy old men should do the same.)
Yet mortals display an ambiguity when they approach God in prayer: In seeking escape from the law, they often ask for further laws. The simple question, “What should I do?” is a request for an order. We ask for a boss. Then, if we are given any sort of commandment, we mortals tend to complain worse than children do, when told to do a task, but there can be no getting around the fact we do ask.
When Jesus was asked, concerning the subject of rules and laws, what the most important rule of all was, He stated it was to love God with all your might. (Therefore approaching God in a prayerful way seems a good place to start.) But then Jesus went on. He stated the second-greatest commandment was to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself (which admittedly is not very much, in some cases.)
This steers me back to the start of this essay, when I was discussing the word “trivial”, and whatever its opposite might be. Seen in the context of the greatest and second-greatest commandments, the opposite of “trivial” seems to be the mysterious word “love”, especially when used in the context of “love thy neighbor”, which in the case of some neighbors involves “loving thy enemy.”
How important is this? Jesus stated it was the firm foundation upon which all other natural laws were built. Any lawyer’s law that strays from such a firm foundation is in essence founded on shifting sand, and is heading towards collapse.
Mortals usually want a firm foundation, and something they can count on. Even wild-eyed pirates upon pitching decks on the bounding sea count on a ship that won’t sink. Even vicious communists, while killing millions, dream of the stability of the strange utopia they never achieve.
Gentler individuals seek procedures more civil than piracy and killing, and one such group of individuals, very mortal and flawed, thought long and hard, argued long and hard, researched every example they could find in history books of how civilizations sought to create situations where neighbors loved neighbors, and discussed why such civilizations succeeded and why they failed. We call this group of individuals the “Founding Fathers” of the United States, and the documents they produced include the “Declaration of Independence”, “Constitution” and “Bill of Rights”. They themselves admitted what they were proposing was an experiment, and that they were in essence stating, “We know tyranny sucks; let’s give this other, experimental way a try.” In many ways many outsiders, onlooking, (the politically-correct “experts” of that time), were full of scorn, and quite certain the experiment would never work.
The democratic experiment the Founding Fathers came up with involved each responsible citizen having the same one vote every other responsible citizen had. (There was a lot of discussion about the definition of the word “responsible”. There always is. For example, why should a man, as head of a household, go to jail for debts; shouldn’t his wife and kids go to jail if they were responsible for the debt?) Over the years the definition of “responsible” has changed so that women and former slaves could vote, but one principle has endured: One person gets one vote. No man is deemed more responsible and more gifted than any other, to a degree where he gets ten votes to his neighbor’s one.
This is very much aligned with the second-greatest commandment of loving-thy-neighbor-as-thyself. We are not to stand in judgement of who is superior and who is inferior. Just because we are tone-deaf while Beethoven is a musical genius is no reason for him to get ten votes while we only get one. In like manner, you would not have to be very good at managing money to be superior to Beethoven; (he wrote an excellent piece called, “Rage Over A Misplaced Penny”), but just because you are gifted in a way that lets you manage money better than Beethoven, and results in you being richer where Beethoven was poorer, is no reason for you to get ten votes while Beethoven only gets one.
And this brings me to the subject of the fraudulent election.
In my view even a single fraudulent vote spits in the face of a neighbor. In negating their vote with a fake voter, it disenfranchises them. It takes away their right to vote, which is not loving your neighbor. Therefore it is also spitting on God, if He truly advises us to love our neighbors and even our enemies.
Personally, just guessing, I don’t think it is all that wise to spit on God, even if you are an Atheist. Anyway, if you are an Atheist you don’t believe in God, so what are you spitting on? If you are an Atheist it’s likely best to just not spit, just in case you’re wrong.
If Atheists are wrong, and if Jesus actually was God’s infinity taking physical form, then He has already been spat upon, as well as brutally beaten and crucified and punctured with a spear, and He is said to have arisen unharmed. I doubt God feels any need to prove his authority the same way twice. Been there; done that. Next time will be different.
It seems very clear (to me at least) the last election didn’t involve a few nasty people spitting on their neighbors by casting a few fraudulent votes, but a concerted effort to cast absurd numbers of fraudulent votes, numbers exceeding a hundred thousand in a few cities, which would change the outcome of the entire election. A landslide majority might approve of Donald Trump, but the minority that detest him would “win”.
The people behind this effort are in essence spitting on all that the United States stands for. And this includes God, and the motto “In God We Trust.” The effort is so bald-faced, and done with such a smug assurance that it cannot be stopped, that it it utterly appalls most Americans. Many are stunned stupid. It is utterly horrific, as if a Madonna’s nipple turned into a snake that ate the baby.
This brings me back to where I began, which, in case you have forgotten, was describing a group of grumpy old men gathering to drink coffee, chat, and then pray. How do old men pray, when everything they have stood for their entire lives has been befouled by cheats and thieves?
Would you believe me if I told you there were prayers for Joe and Hunter Biden? Those two are up to their necks in corruption, and dealing with corrupt people is like dealing with gangsters; chit-chat is not a nice experience; the people who grin at you may slit your pretty, little throat. (Some beer steins have glass bottoms so you can watch the pirates you drink with, for in raising the stein you expose your throat.) In such a society even to “win” is not a nice thing, and may even be a death warrant.
It is said, “Cheaters never prosper”, and, “Evil eats it’s own”, and history is full of examples: Stalin was a “comrade” to many when communists were “winners” of the Russian Revolution, but nearly every single one of Stalin’s contemporary “comrades” was “liquidated” by Stalin, within nineteen years. Those who live by the sword die by the sword, and most of Stalin’s communist, “winner” “comrades” saw this was true, but did not live to tell us about it. (And in the end Stalin himself may have been poisoned.)
For some perverse reason Stalin extracted signed “confessions” from those he purged, to provide evidence for “show trials”. No one dared point out that the signed confession of one of his best generals, during a show trial, was spattered with blood. (Last I knew, that blood-spattered document still exists in Russian archives.) Such a horrible society is nothing we should wish on anyone, and we should pray to God it doesn’t happen here in the United States.
One of the saddest elements of the Russian Revolution was the bewilderment of those Russians with an entrepreneurial nature, who had worked hard to improve their lot in life and, in the process, to make Russia a better place. For example, former slaves (called “serfs”) worked hard to improve their soil’s fertility, and their little farm’s productivity, and had succeeded, to a small degree. They were called the Kulak, and Stalin despised them, as they suggested something besides central authority might be good. He accused the Kulak of “hoarding” the grain they themselves grew, and “purged” between a quarter and half million small farmers, sending them off to “reeducation” in Siberia. A suspiciously large number of the Kulak, roughly 50,000, died before they even got to the reeducation camps in Siberia.
But what is saddest to see, through the fog of history books, is how baffled such people were to be facing such wrath, when all they had ever done was to work hard. Is hard work a sin? If so, it was a sin seldom seen in the government “collectives”, the utopian state-run farms which replaced the Kulak on the land the Kulak cherished and suffered to improve. The collectives produced far less than the Kulak had, and the famine Russia then experienced was horrific, and only exceeded by the famine China experienced, when Mao “reformed” China’s farmers.
How communist leaders can do such horrible things to their people, (people they claim they love), is beyond me. As best as I can tell, they convince themselves they are removing some sort of societal “cancer” for the betterment of all. The problem is that the “betterment” never appears, except for a few people in power, and even those powerful people live degraded lives of eating pork with the grease dripping from their mustache down their jowls, lives which lacks the music Beethoven heard in his head while eating plain, black bread, while going deaf, yet which manifested (in the Ninth Symphony) as “kissing the whole world”, (words from the Ninth Symphony).
Admittedly my summation of who is happier, a hungry Beethoven or a slobbering Stalin, is subjective, and likely offensive to some. But if I am going to be offensive I might as well go the whole mile, and subjectively summarize which women are happier, those who have babies or those who have abortions.
For women the “neighbor” they should love is sometimes a unwelcome proliferation of cells in their own womb. Some women deem such cells a “cancer” which must be aborted for the “betterment” of their own life, while others call the pregnancy a gift from God, and accept all the sacrifice involved.
After fifty years of watching from afar, (as I’m male and can’t imagine the level of responsibility that femininity entails), I am very subjective when I state the women who chose personal “betterment” appear worse off, in the long run of fifty years, whereas the women who chose to “love their neighbor” and raise babies, (often as impoverished single Moms, and often seeing cute babies turn into ungrateful brats), in the end look richer. Mind you, they are not richer in terms of coins, but in terms of richness beyond riches. Why? Well, they now fondle grandchildren, whereas the women who chose personal “betterment” seem to live in plush mansions with plush carpets even in the hallways, but the carpets seem just a bit musty and spongey, and the hallways seem haunted by the voices of small ghosts who wonder, “What might I now be, if you had not decided I was better off never suffering the experience of life?”
One problem I have, when it comes to my faith in God, is that He allows our failures, (such as the extermination of innocents), to occur. Why doesn’t He step in to save the unborn babies? Why didn’t He step in to save the Kulak from Stalin? Why didn’t He step in to save six million Jews and a million Roma and millions of Slavs and others from Hitler? And will He step in to save the people of the United States from the minority now using election-fraud to bully the majority of Americans? If this God is a God who can care to a degree where He may direct a butterfly to land on your nose, why doesn’t He zap bad people with thunderbolts and leave them as a pile of ashes?
Stop. What did I just say? Did I just wish my neighbor be reduced to a heap of ashes? Hmm. Is that loving my neighbor?
Perhaps I am not as loving as God. Perhaps His love sees in ways I can’t. Where I only see six million Jews going into gas chambers, and six million corpses, he sees beyond the corpses and sees six million souls rejoicing on the streets of heaven. And perhaps He understands Karma in ways I can’t: Prior generations sowed thistles, so we must reap thorns.
OK, OK. I confess I’m not God. But the fact of the matter is I do not intend to be exiled to Siberia like the Kulak or herded into gas chambers like the Jews, just because some harebrained leftist has the crackpot desire to improve the “herd” by “culling”. And they have made it quite clear they think I should be culled: I’m a “deplorable” and a “bitter clinger”, and even this obscure blog you are now reading is (rather splendid) writing they itch to see censored.
Where I have been loving, seeing them as my neighbor, they have been nasty. In terms of “science”, I have patiently explained the science that refutes Global Warming, the Ozone Hole, the “Arctic Death Spiral”, and even the uselessness of using masks to halt the spread of coronavirus, but they refuse the pleasantries of civil discourse, as well as the goodly sharing involved in scientific debate (basically excited observers exchanging differing (and seemingly conflicting) wonders they’ve witnessed). In essence they refuse to respond, to even talk, and spurn my friendship, basically stonewalling all discussion with insults, such as calling me a “denier”. Such people are one of the main reasons that, rather than a kindly old man, I am a grumpy old man.
So what do I do with them? I pray for them, and for their enlightenment. They need not do the evil they do. Even a person committing genocide against spiritual people can be redeemed. After all, one of the worst persecutors of the first Christians, (a people who had actually seen Jesus), was Saul, a man ardent in his belief Christians were evil and that all good Jews should seek to eradicate Christians from the face of the earth, but then Saul got knocked off his high horse on the road to Damascus, and became Saint Paul, one of the most effective promoters of Christianity ever.
It is interesting to compare Saul with Stalin, considering they started on the same page, seeking to overpower those with differing views. In some ways Stalin was loyal, while Saul was a traitor to his original power-centric cause. Stalin accumulated power, while Saul renounced overpowering. People bowed and scraped, walking on eggs, around Stalin, while Saul, as Saint Paul, wrote letters wearing chains, down in the sewers of Rome (where the prisoners were kept). Stalin saw the city of Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad, as Saint Paul received no such honor, nor Pulitzers for his letters. If towns were to be renamed around Rome they would be named for the emperor Nero, and when Nero (who killed his own mother) decided Saint Paul should be executed, (basically for saying Someone besides Nero should be worshipped), Saint Paul had no indication his letters ( a major part of the New Testament) would be remembered, and likely felt his death would not mean much to the world and the worldly, yet, as the preacher Andy Stanley points out, ” ‘Saint Paul’s‘ is now the name of a huge cathedral in Rome, whereas ‘Nero‘ and ‘Caesar‘ are names we give to our dogs “.
And Stalingrad? Very quickly after Stalin died it became “Volgograd.”
As a person who will likely never have a city named for me, or a statue raised, or a statue later torn down, the whole business of how people remember us seems ludicrous. What a worthless sidetrack! What a fluff of ego! How did it help the citizens of Tsaritsyn to change their name to Stalingrad and then Volgograd? Did it make burdens lighter, work less hard, winter less biting, summer less hot, water less wet? Of course not. Such name-changing is the idiocy of intellectuals who would not know what actual work was if it bit them on the leg. God forbid that I ever live in a land like Russia, where such lunacy was (for a time) allowed to reign.
But my own homeland now seems willing to fall to such a disgraceful state! This past summer saw statues torn down and places renamed.
As a grumpy old man I am currently depressed, outraged, upset, angry, and in some ways terrified (which is what terrorists want), and for the life of me can’t understand why President Trump hasn’t declared a State Of Emergency. An insurrection is occurring! We need to stand up and fight back! (Good thing I’m not President, because, if I was, the battle would be begun, and there might be slaughter in the streets.) However instead President Trump has retreated into a thing he is not known for: relative Silence.
The silence is unnerving. I have the sense we are amidst a calm before a great storm. A sort of distant rumbling trembles on the horizon. The shit is about to hit the fan.
The most aggravating (to me) thing about the current situation is that grumpy old men like myself are made so powerless. Google has “disappeared” my writings about Arctic Sea-ice, which not only violates the commandment about loving your neighbor, (me), but violates the commandment about honoring grumpy old fathers. I am in essence gagged. Even my vote doesn’t matter, if hundreds of fraudulent votes are created out of thin air by evil people, to negate my voice. I feel distained, cast down, even a bit like the prophet Jerimiah must have felt when all his efforts to spare the inhabitants of Jerusalem got him thrown into a city-cistern, where he sank into the mud at the bottom, up to his armpits. He couldn’t move, and when they put the cover back on the cistern he was in complete darkness. Later he was rescued, but for a time things must have looked pretty black.
Things also looked very bleak for the United States when it was only five months old. The British had sent a huge fleet and landed a huge army, and Washington had lost battle after battle, and had been driven from New York and battered clear across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. His army of 20,000 had been reduced to barely 2,000 under his direct control, and most of these men were only enlisted for a time period which would end in a couple weeks. It was at that time Thomas Paine wrote “The Crisis”, which began,
“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…”
Paine was a journalist who spent time with the troops, and Washington asked that Paine’s freshly printed pamphlet “The Crisis” be read to his troops, before he himself pleaded that they commit themselves to the cause just a little longer. But there can be little doubt that, right then, prospects did not look good. Now we know about the two electrifying victories Washington won just afterwards, but at the time electricity seemed in short supply. Words were mere words, and talk is cheap.
Any words I now write are the same; mere words. In the end grumpy old men do what Washington did:
And in the current situation, we are similar to Washington’s troops, in a situation very unlike the palm trees of Polynesia.
Things do not look good, and indeed these again are times that try men’s souls. I may not be in the position to judge my homeland’s soul, or even the souls of a group of grumpy old men, but I can tell you many are praying in the desperate manner Washington prayed.
One gift I lack is the gift of prophesy. (This seems to be a shortcoming common to all who study meteorology.) For all I know I may be an American version of Russia’s Kulak, and will end up despised for being honest and for working hard. If so, I will likely wind up like one of the 50,000 Kulak who the heartless “disappeared” between the time they were torn from their farms, and the time they were scheduled to arrive in Siberia. The motto of New Hampshire is “Live free or Die”, and there is certain treatment I feel cannot be borne. Maybe fifty years ago I could have endured with the tenacious will of a Solzhenitsyn, (and, in my own way, I did), but when you get old, endurance is in short supply. Not that you are not tenacious, but some days your tenacity get used up just getting out of bed.
Though I lack the gift of prophesy, one gift I have is the ability to create tales, which can be absurd but which make people laugh. Among the grumpy old men of my “prayer group” I confess my lack of spirituality, by telling them what impossible things I daydream I might do. I tell them that if someone slapped my cheek I might fail to be spiritual, and fail to turn the other cheek. Instead I’d brawl like I was twenty, (which is absurd, when you consider carrying an armload of wood up the front steps leaves me winded). In an actual brawl I might throw one or two punches, but then swiftly sue for peace. That is reality. But my fantasies ignore reality.
Surely my fantasies qualify as delusions of grandeur. An old fossil like myself would be unwise to take on a mob ruled by Antifa, but when I see video of such a mob assaulting a elderly woman sipping a tea at a sidewalk restaurant, I’m infuriated, and my imagination seems to automatically put myself into that situation, and I see myself, an old man with a long white beard and a cane, leap to the lady’s defense. I become a super-hero, “The Ninja Fossil”, and teach those Antifa whippersnappers to mind their manners, wading into the mob with a flailing cane. I create many versions of my heroics, and all are unlikely, but speaking such a fantasy aloud does seem to have benefits; it expresses my indignation, and also makes the other grouchy old men sipping coffee with me chuckle.
In one version my trick is to dodder into a position between two big thugs, offend both, and then, just when they throw a punch, to duck, so they punch each other. Then I nimbly back out of the escalating brawl, as Antifa fights Antifa. (This is not an original delusion of grandeur. I read of it in the Old Testament, 3000 years old, which describes a time three kings brought three big armies to crush a small Jewish force, but the the night before the battle the three armies fought among themselves to such a degree that when the small Jewish force set out to do battle at dawn all they found were heaps of corpses). (God knows evil eats its own, and can arrange such events.)
Such daydreams may entertain grumpy old men, but the fact of the matter is that such a confrontations are unlikely in my old age. I am powerless, beyond the lone vote I cast. And my vote is negated by fraudulent ballots. I, and perhaps a majority of other Americans, have been “disappeared”, by evil. So we turn to prayer.
The scoffers sneer. What power has prayer?
We are about to find out.
I wonder what God will do. Despite all our mistakes and shortcomings, America is not entirely a fallen people who has chosen evil, and who deserve the tough love Jerimiah warned the Jews they’d earn, which later manifested in the destruction of their holy temple and their exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Instead America consists of a people who (I believe) by a landslide chose a praying president over a party which has mocked God, but the mockers mocked fair play to such a degree that they have stolen an election from the people who believe in fair play. And now God sees the good people turn to him in prayer. Not a few good people; apparently it is millions.
I have faith God won’t stand idly by. Nor do other grumpy old men, who I listen to in my prayer groups, and also listen to on other obscure sites on the internet. There seems to be a sort of consensus that we have done all that frail mortals can do, yet evil is out to get us, and in such situations God helps the hapless, especially when they turn to him in prayer. He will manifest His might.
One way God formerly manifested His will was through free and fair elections. True democracy has God in its guts. This seems true despite the fact we, as mortals, do make mistakes, and democracy has been called, “the worst form of government, with the exception of all the others”.
The reason democracy bungles to better results than other forms of government is because flawed mortals, despite making mistakes, learn from their mistakes. And replace them. Which people in power don’t like. They don’t like being replaced.
The working people of America have created all the money politicians play with. People, as voters, have approved of their tax-dollars being sent by their elected politicians to third world countries, and to the children in inner city schools, because Americans are generous people with good hearts. But then Americans saw the results of their generosity were fat dictators in third world countries, as the third world poor remained poor, and Americans also saw fat schoolmarms in the inner city, as schoolchildren became more illiterate than ever before. Seeing such evidence, people suspected the money was not being wisely spent, which the politicians playing with the money didn’t like. Politicians were enamored with dealing with shuffling money, and with dealing with other politicians shuffling money, even if they were dictators and wicked schoolmarms, even when such dictators and schoolmarms bullied and exploited the poor. American generosity felt especially abused, when it witnessed schoolmarms send their own children to private schools as poor, inner city children went without. The generous American tax-payers knew that having politicians and schoolmarms act in this way was a form of madness, as it can only come to a very bad end.
How so? Allow me to use a baseball analogy, where the pitcher symbolizes the politician, and the manager symbolizes the voters who send the pitcher to the mound.
Now suppose it was the seventh game of the World Series, the most important baseball game of the entire year, and a pitcher was sent to the mound. It would be a great honor. But, supposing he did a bad job, the manager would want to replace the pitcher with a relief-pitcher. But suppose the pitcher refused to obey the manager, and instead insisted upon keeping the position of great honor, even though he did a bad job. Would it help his team win, or would it guarantee loss?
Perhaps it is because they want to keep receiving the tax dollars, and to continue misusing them, and also to continue hobnobbing with dictators and sending their children to private schools as inner city children are left illiterate, that some politicians corrupt a free and fair election with fraudulent votes. They are like a pitcher who so delights in being the center of attention that they tell their manager (the voters) to go to hell.
At some point such a selfish pitcher starts to notice the crowd has stopped cheering, and that even teammates have started to glower. But this only makes him increasingly desperate to retain his position, and increasingly desperate to resort to desperate deeds.
This seems to be the corner the Washington elite have painted themselves into. With increasing desperation they violate the American code of honor, a code for which they once placed their hand on the Bible for, and swore to uphold.
No good can come of this. They have already seen the backlash manifest in the votes of the American people, but now they are seeking to ignore the voters, which leaves God no alternative but to seek a different way of manifesting.
Actually, I think we have something to look forward to, in these dark days. God is not called the “Almighty” without reason, and the different way of manifesting, which he now may be forced to employ, could be an utterly amazing manifestation and knock our socks off.
The funny thing is that the scoffers, who ordinarily dismiss all I call “momentous” as being “trivial”, seem to be expecting the same thing. Not that they have renounced Atheism, but they seem to be looking over their shoulders in an odd manner, as if they are wondering, “Are we actually going to get away with this?” They think what they are “getting away with” is a small thing, “stealing an election”, and they have no idea of the magnitude of the affairs they are involved with. The unease in their hearts bothers them, for it doesn’t fit in with their idea that they are “winners”. They are like a wealthy man sitting down to a delicious dinner, assured he is a winner, who is made uneasy by a faint crunching noise he has just heard in the background, and the way the crystal chandeliers have tinkled slightly, (as he happens to be aboard the winner’s ship, called the “Titanic”). Some inner voice is whispering to him that he will not get to gratify his gluttony and finish his dinner, and instead soon will be treading water.
The Titanic is a good analogy, for the politically correct were assured in 1912 the Titanic was “unsinkable.” This pseudofact was proven by “authorities” who spoke what they called “science.” And everyone nodded and agreed. Then God stepped in, taking the unlikely form of an iceberg.
Currently we are under the oppression of those who believe they are the “authorities” who understand better than we do what they call “science”, but I fear they are about to be greatly humbled.
When envisioning God stepping in to fix the messes we have made, people tend to envision God as a warrior king abruptly manifesting in darkness and riding down from above the midnight stars on a white horse. As much as I enjoy envisioning that, I also sometimes fret such an image is the power-centric thinking of the power-mad. God is equally able to manifest in other ways, even as an iceberg.
In the current situation, I do not think God will manifest as an iceberg that will sink the United States, but rather as an iceberg that will sink those who seek to destroy the United States.
Of course, when I use the word “iceberg” I am not talking about an actual iceberg. It is a symbol of however God choses to manifest, to sink an unsinkable Titanic of evil. God is above all law, and utterly amazing in the ways He works.
Personally I feel Donald Trump was an iceberg sent by God to sink the Titanic of “The Swamp.” But this only makes Trump an instrument of God, not God. If The Swamp throws all its energy into destroying Trump, they are too occupied to notice God is uplifting another individual, another “iceburg”, which will puncture the “Titanic Swamp” from astern, as it backs away from the Trumpian iceberg dead ahead.
Also, personally, as a person who has lived among the gruff sorts who feed, clothe and shelter the effete elite, I was never all that bothered by Trump’s “political-incorrectness”, and even enjoyed his unorthodox honesty, and I think the majority of America felt the same way. It was a nasty flock of shrill swamp-harpies who attacked him non-stop, from day one. Therefore I would very much like to see God grant him the power to defeat the fraud, and somehow legally contest and win the election he in fact has already won.
However, even if Trump can’t overcome the screeching harpies, he has already forced “The Swamp” to show its true nature. Before he appeared, many still felt the harpies of “The Swamp” were fellow Americans, who carefully considered both sides of an issue. This delusion has been shattered. Trump has exposed the selfish and one-sided and downright Unamerican behavior of The Swamp’s “elite.” And, if that was what God intended, I think Trump has done his job superbly, and deserves a retirement in some safe space, free from those who smolder revenge.
But even if that were the case, I believe another Donald would promptly appear. Why? Because God opposes the proud, the elite, the “Swamp”. Why? Because He is the only One worthy of worship, and knows that worship of the Swamp is a distraction from the happy-ending He aims His creation towards. Therefore he constantly undermines the efforts of the Swamp’s elite to set themselves up as gods.
This has been a quiet and private conviction of mine for a long time. Some people are simply “cruising for a bruising”. I don’t have to supply the bruising with my knuckles, they will find it all by themselves. I don’t have to supply the bruising with my eloquent pen, though my pen is mightier than their sword. They will get the point, for those who live by the sword get the point in the end. Even if I am gagged and can’t utter a peep, I’ve got an invisible Power on my side.
Some chose selfishness over Love, lying over Truth, darkness over Light, but in the end can’t avoid a tidbit of common sense. The common sense is this: We can project a beam of light with a flashlight, but there is no such thing as a “darklight”, which can project a beam of darkness. Light can do what darkness cannot.
Therefore all darkness can do is to put up umbrellas to create shadows, so it can hide from the Light like a worm under a rock. In the shadows it spins webs of doubt, as doubt is its only defense; it has no positive arguments against the existence of Light, so it merely does a lot of doubting in the shade, digging a hole for itself deeper and deeper, seeking to herd all humanity into a bunker miles underground, where darkness could rule and feel safe from Light, but even in such a enormous cavern, filled with ultimately inky darkness, a tiny scratch could defeat darkness: The scratch of a match being struck. With the flaring of that single match the entire cavern’s darkness would be defeated. And if darkness can’t even stand up to a tiny match, how can it stand up to God?
This assuredness is something I smiled at hearing, in the prayers of other grumpy old men. Somehow they have learned over the years, through bangs and bruises in the School of Hard Knocks, that resistance to the Light is futile, and that certain behavior is “cruising for a bruising.”
Sitting about with these grumpy, old men I reminisce about how I myself suffered bruises, learning in the School of Hard Knocks. One series of tales involves a time I actually quit being fully self-employed, and instead worked for an amazing, record-setting two entire years at a Real Job. I had a wife and five kids, and bills were through the roof, so I had to sacrifice my independence, and punch a timeclock day after day, week after week, month after month. I felt I deserved a chapter in the next “Profiles In Courage.”
The pay was good as it was a Union Job. We made nails and pins and also those copper rivets you sometimes see on blue jeans. It was incredibly noisy, but I could handle that. I found it far harder to endure the strange babble you hear in union-shops, where workers consider their employer their enemy. I felt grateful my employer gave me such high pay, and was constantly overstepping the union rules, innocently and accidentally, by doing things which might help the boss, such as working too hard or innovating improvements or suggesting changes which might elevate our efficiency. When rebuked, I constantly felt like telling people to shove impossibly large objects into impossibly small orifices, but managed to bite my tongue because I had a wife and five kids, and needed the job. I had to kowtow to the Union as much as the boss. But observing silence was like salt on a wound, at times.
I found a strange ally in an old man I worked with, who was mere months away from his retirement. I had the sense he had been biting his tongue for decades. Not that he ever said a word in opposition to the younger worker’s ravings. But he did sigh, and look away at the sky out the window, when they backbit the boss. Only once did he confide to me.
It occurred before second shift one grim Monday evening, as I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and forced myself to approach the awful entrance and yet again punch in. Others were crowding in to punch in, and one hungover, young redhead was ventilating about the boss’s outrages and how revolution now simply had to happen. (I think he was offended that the stripes painted in the employee’s parking lot were too close together, and that it was Monday, and also that his wife had told him he drank too much and he’d better shape up or ship out.) What I remember is the redhead pointed east and, with great drama, stated, “Look at those purple storm clouds rising! The moment is upon us! The time is at hand!”
Due to my interest in meteorology, and the fact there was no forecast for storm, I paused to look east, as did the old man approaching retirement age, who happened to be beside me. More to myself than to the old man, I muttered, “That isn’t storm clouds. That is the earth’s shadow, rising as the sun sinks below the horizon. I think they call it the ‘twilight wedge’. Folk have seen that forever. The Romans called it ‘The girdle of Jove’ and that pink band of sky above it was called ‘The belt of Venus.'”
To my surprise the old man actually responded. He chuckled, heaved his shoulders in an exaggerated manner, and then sighed, “These young fellows! They simply will have to learn.” And then he stepped inside to punch in.
What struck me at the time was that the old man apparently felt no obligation to teach the young whippersnappers they were in error. He was perfectly willing to let them be fools and learn the hard way. Perhaps he long ago had attempted to offer advice, but was told to shut up, so now he no longer had the slightest desire to reform society. At the same time, he seemed very aware they would be reformed. The statement, “They simply will have to learn”, implies they were “cruising for a bruising”.
(As an aside, I’ll mention that young fellow did get bruised. Roughly two months later, shortly after the old man retired, when I had at long last paid off my debts and was relatively solvent, I was offered a chance to work in a non-union position at the nail-factory, but at the same time I received roughly two-years-income from my mother’s estate. After prayer and long talks with my wife, I chose to bail out from further involvement with the nail-factory, though I lost benefits and received no unemployment because I was quitting voluntarily. (I’m not certain it was a financially wise choice, for within weeks after I quit the union went on strike; even though my promotion would have meant I would have lost my union strike-benefits, I might have collected unemployment at a higher rate of pay.)
The Union went on strike because the boss had dared ask them to pay part of their health insurance, stating he could no longer afford to pay for it all. When the workers were outraged and went on strike the boss responded by closing the factory. Why run a place if you couldn’t make money? That noisy, bustling building, once a thriving part of a small community, stood silent. The derelict building still stands empty, twenty years later. That is the sort of bruising that Union cruising can get you.) (The Union did seek to find new Union jobs for its members, but in some cases the jobs were hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and some of the workers at the nail factory were “local boys” who didn’t like driving even five miles to work, let alone uprooting their family and transplanting to Texas or California, where nobody knew them.)
I think I brought this story up to my “prayer group” of grumpy old men to emphasis this point: You don’t have to be rich to fail to love your neighbor. You don’t have to drink tea in the day and champagne at night. Union beer-drinkers can manifest a hoity-toity attitude, smearing and backstabbing the best bosses, or even ordinary bosses who are not always the best, and such people are “cruising for a bruising.”
In more ordinary times we tend to learn from our mistakes. The old song sings, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till its gone.” The job at the noisy factory in your home town doesn’t look so bad, when the alternative is moving to a town with reeking air near a refinery in Louisiana. Hindsight is 20-20, and all too often we learn to love our neighbors in the small window of a rear view mirror. This happens over and over, until, when you get to be a grumpy old man, you are far less liable to denounce your boss, or employees, or anyone at all. It is for this reason old fossils like myself should be respected, even honored, for we have done the cruising and endured the bruising, and know better.
But these are not ordinary times. Creatures of “The Swamp” have not the slightest desire to know better. They already think they know better, and call better, “it all.” They imagine they have “it all” and want to keep “it all,” and even that they know “it all”.
Sadly, they have neglected to think deeply about what the “it all” they cling to actually is. Often it is an illusion, a wraith they eventually find out is mere mist, a bridge made of vapor that cannot support them when they attempt to cross it, and which always lets them down.
“It all” tends to be an illusion of power. You think you can swagger, but the carpet gets yanked out from under your feet. You may be a boss who thinks he has power over his employees, or a union which thinks it has power over the boss, but the boss discovers he is powerless when his workers all leave, and the union discovers it is powerless when the boss choses the shop.
The business of yanking the carpet from under another’s feet is prevalent among those caught up by the illusion of power, but is most definitely not an example of loving your neighbor. It is the antithesis. Sadly, too often people see “winning” as, in some way, shape or form, causing their neighbor to fall. Bosses sometimes want their employees to fall, and employees sometimes want their bosses to fall, In the end both sides discover a greater truth: “Divided we fall”, as the entire business goes belly-up.
The illusion of power is seen in its most naked form in communism, which worships power on the level of pigs. One of the saddest things to see is people seduced by such craven ignorance, renouncing religion for what will eventually turn on them like wheedling wolves do the day the leader of their pack has a limp.
This is especially sad to witness in the case of schoolmarms, who are essential to the promotion of communism, yet who history shows are among the first to be purged. If you believe in toppling statues and burning the books, can the schoolmarms be far behind? Look what happened to the educators under Stalin, or what Mao did to all teachers and professors during the “Cultural Revolution”. To free themselves of “old, outdated ideas” even teachers were sent to farms to learn “new ideas,” and many never returned. In Cambodia, Pol Pot skipped the bother of “reeducation”: If you had a writer’s callus on your middle finger you were were summarily executed.
As a young writer I collided with such schoolmarms on a regular, even daily, basis. I confess it was difficult to love my neighbor. It was even more difficult for them to love me, and some loathed me, for I would expose their ignorance, their idea they had “it all” and could keep “it all”, with innocent questions. Some would have whipped me for asking, but whipping had just gone out of fashion, and these same schoolmarms would have drugged me, but drugging children hadn’t come into fashion yet. I was spared in an eddy of time called by some “permissiveness”, but I assure you, even without whips or drugs, I caught hell just the same. For what? For asking questions.
What sort of schoolmarm would not invite the questions of an inquisitive child? Only a Leninist, or Stalinist, or Maoist, or Pol-Pot-ist. Yet what happens to children in our schools if they question Global Warming?
In like manner, what sort of public would not invite the questions asked by grumpy old men, (instead censoring obscure blogs like this one?) Only Leninists, Stalinists. Maoists, or Pol-Pot-ists. After all, grumpy old men represent no great threat, for they are declining into their second childhoods.
What is it about childhood, whether it be the first or the second, that threatens people in power? Can it be a reality hidden in the statement, “Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven?”
In other words, in my first childhood I could go places the schoolmarms were banned from going, and now, in my second childhood, I get to wander heavenly realms of thought the politically-correct are banned from entering. But it is not my fault I am rich and they are poor. They chose to live in the filthy slum they abide within, called by common people, “The Swamp.”
I think one of the chief delights of my life has been to gain first-hand experience that the poor are rich, and the rich are impoverished. Rather than making me get political and angry, it makes me chuckle. I may not be a kindly old man, but one reason I’m merely a grumpy old man, but not a truly nasty old man, is due to the ability to chuckle.
It is such a joke! That those who think they are so rich live in a filthy slum!
But what will happen if those in the slum wake up? Even if they don’t open their eyes they may open their nostrils. What if they suddenly understand the mire they are in stinks?
I like to think that might be the way God manifests. That might be the “iceberg” that sinks the Swamp-Titanic. People would simply get “sick of it.” Even Atheists could handle that sort of revelation.
What would be nice is that it need not involve riots and bloodshed, and all the ugliness of civil war. Listening to the prayers of grumpy old men, I note a lot of hope that slaughter and purges are averted. And behavior can be changed when people are “sick of it.” Even those who live for the adulation of others, such as Hollywood stars, change when in the eyes of others they see others are “sick of it.” So the revelation that changes mankind might not be thunder and aurora in the midnight skies, but rather a quiet and simple dawning of understanding.
I sure hope so. It beats being struck by a thunderbolt and turned to ashes!
I have many other things I’d rather write about, and in some ways would rather be in my garden weeding than be writing at all, but politics has a way of shoving its snout in your face, when you live in New Hampshire. I blame this political intrusiveness on the fact we are the first state in the United States to hold its presidential primary. If it weren’t for that event, no one would bother with us, for we are barely over a million people. Neighborhoods in New York City hold more people than our entire state does, and we only have two representatives to congress. There is not much reason to notice us, (and I don’t think it is always an entirely bad thing to go unnoticed).
Not that I haven’t craved fame in my life. Writers do hanker to have their efforts appreciated. However when I look at famous people I sometimes thank my lucky stars I never had to suffer what they are afflicted by. Some famous people are wonderful, but the majority strike me as….well, I’ll just say I don’t admire them.
And when I think back to the “popular kids”, (back more than fifty years ago), who I attended high school with, there were quite a number who I also don’t recall fondly. They may have felt they were “popular” back then, but they were not “popular” in my private estimation, and some were downright mean.
I think it was at that time I developed the habit of steering away from the sort of situations where “popular” people go to be “seen”. Not that I didn’t go to some high school dances, but I was usually drawn by a particular woman, and I tended to have such a miserable time that I eventually stopped going.
At some point I wondered if I was just a coward. I pondered that perhaps I was bigoted towards popular people, who might actually be nice, so, to test myself, I went and sat down at the “popular people” table in the school cafeteria. (Yes, a very beautiful woman did sit at that table, which did play a part in my decision to test my courage.) The “popular” people seemed so astonished to see me sit down that they forgot to tell me to buzz off, and I sat at the “wrong” table an entire week, contributing very little to the conversation, and somewhat astounded by how inane the conversation was. I concluded popular people were very boring, and I went my own way, and did my own thing.
Right at this point (1969) “doing your own thing” became fashionable. As a senior in high school I quite accidentally found myself “popular”. All the things I did because I couldn’t bother be politically correct, such as wear shabby jeans and have unkempt hair, suddenly became politically correct. I’d left school the prior June as an unpopular slouch, and when vacation ended and I returned in September I was abruptly “cool”. I was “hip”. I was the dude others wished they had the nerve to emulate. (That was the summer of Woodstock, and of men first landing on the moon, and of Kennedy driving off the bridge.)
I will not deny that being flattered for being “hip” swayed me to some degree. But all too soon fashion moved on to “Disco”, and abruptly wearing shabby jeans and having unkempt hair became emblematic of being a “has-been”. Flattery’s rosy glow faded to the gray of disillusionment, and I became aware that “doing your own thing” is often done because it is the right thing to do, and not always because it is rewarding.
I should hasten to add that being righteous is rewarding, but not in a way the world pays much attention to. The salt-of-the-earth gain no great wealth nor acclaim for being the backbone of the planet. They are why we are fed and clothed and sheltered. They are why things work, and the fact things work is their only reward. They may never be rich and famous, but they raise children and pay their bills and are the reason life goes on. They just “do their thing.”
When I look back through time it seems to me that times-of-trouble arise in human history when societies forget to value the salt-of-the-earth commoners, and become too enamored and infatuated by wealth, power and fame. It doesn’t matter if one is royalty spurning the commoner, or a Brahman spurning the Untouchable, or Hitler spurning the Jews, or Stalin spurning the Kulak. All hell breaks loose when people snub the very people they depend upon. Rather than loving your neighbor it is like sawing the branch you are seated upon.
The American Constitution was devised by men who thought long and hard about why this problem occurs, and how best to avoid the inevitable repercussions. It is a marvelous document, unique in human history, and most people who state it needs to “evolve” and who seek to “improve” it have not thought nearly as long and hard about human nature as the Founding Fathers did. This is especially true among those who refer to America’s salt-of-the-earth people as “Deplorables” and “Climate Change Deniers” and “Bitter Clingers”, and refer to the American Heartland as “Fly-over Country.” Unfortunately many such people were educated to dismiss the Founding Fathers as “rich, white slave-owners”, and to never themselves think long and hard about the mortal desire for wealth, power and fame, and how such desire can corrupt human endeavors in the manner the “Ring of Power” demented its wearer, in Tolkien’s “Lord Of The Rings”.
It seems to me that one thing that sets the American Constitution apart from other forms of government is a premise, (to some degree unstated), that power corrupts and is a vigorous root of evil. Therefore a framework was devised to keep any one person or group from gaining too much power. The three branches apportion power in a way that keeps power dispersed, and the Electoral College does the same thing. Therefore our constitution is very frustrating to those who want all power in their own hands, wrongly thinking that if there is no opposition there will be unity.
Such a one-sided “unity” is a farce. It is the “unity” of a dictator, a Hitler or Stalin or King George, who has little respect for the salt-of-the-earth commoner. It cannot conceive a commoner may do good by “doing his own thing”, and often seeks to outlaw commoner’s small pleasures, assuming “unity” knows better, (“unity” being the personal preference of a tyrant).
The tyrant sneers at the fact commoners may like to scoot across lakes on noisy jet-skis, claiming it disturbs the peace, and therefore bans jet-skis, but then inevitably goes out on the same lake on a diesel-belching, three-story cabin-cruiser. The tyrant scoffs at the commoner’s hot-rod, and demands they use electric golf-carts, while riding in a sleek limousine. The tyrant snubs roasted ribs at a commoner’s barbecue, and passes laws demanding vegetarian diets, yet holds feasts with apples in the mouths of pigs. The tyrant demands commoners use no hydrocarbon fuels, while scouring the skies in their private jets. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. They hunt for sport, but call commoners who hunt for food “poachers”. Tyrants demand commoners, who are relatively faithful and respectful to their wives, bend over backwards respecting women, but then are less than respectful themselves. Perhaps their greatest hypocrisy is to demand commoners be honest, while in private stating it is smart to lie.
My personal view is that one never is wise to lie. Lies always backfire in the end. (I even have a hard time with surprise-birthday-parties). Truth has a purity and sanctity so clear and undeniable that, even among Atheists who who can’t stand the use of the word “God”, I can have uplifting, calm conversations simply by replacing the word “God” with the word “Truth.” Yet some believe it is wise to lie.
It isn’t. Even when you are selling something, and seek to attract buyers by pointing out the good attributes of what you are selling, honesty is the best policy. The moment you introduce a lie into the transaction then what was beautiful gets ugly.
A beautiful transaction is when a person has something a second person needs or wants, and is then rewarded for giving the second person what they need or want. Both people benefit. However, when a snake-oil-salesman conducts a transaction guaranteeing a bald man a full head of hair, promising the buyer they will save money because they won’t have to buy a hat to avoid a sunburned scalp, the transaction becomes ugly when the bald man remains bald. Such sneaky salesmen tend to hurry from town more often than they honor their guarantee, and give the money back.
The ugliness gets profound when some deem others “suckers” and “chumps” and “sheeple”, and think a good way to get rich is to gain another’s confidence with a lie, and then never deliver what they promised. If such people succeed with their con-artistry, they think that the money they then ruffle is proof that what they have done is wise, and they build upon a quicksand foundation which assumes success comes from harming others. However what they do does not go unnoticed, by the salt-of-the-earth commoner, or by God.
The average American has long been bombarded by commercials. One once could escape by turning off the TV and radio, and driving on a back road that had no billboards, but now one has advertising logos even on their dashboard and lapels and shoes; their wife’s pocketbook is a portable billboard; and even their little children’s toys are often a sales pitch. Madison Avenue spends billions to find better ways to convince people to want what they don’t need, and of course politicians noticed this phenomenon, and hired Madison Avenue to get people to buy into their election promises. However the average American is not as stupid as some sellers think. Just as mosquitoes developed a tolerance to DDT, and required larger and larger concentrations of spray, until in some places spraying no longer was feasible, lying to the American public required larger and larger audacity, until it finally fooled so few that Donald Trump was elected.
I think Trump won because he simply spoke the Truth. It sounded harsh and impolite to many, but to the salt-of-the-earth commoner it was a breath of fresh air. They had grown weary of being lied-to by bald-faced hypocrites, who basically said, “Trust us,” and then broke the trust again and again and again. And the bald-faced hypocrites? They were terrified, for they could not simply flee to the next town like a snake-oil salesman. Their power, which had seemed made of rock, abruptly seemed made of sand, and the commoners, whom they had mocked as chumps and sheeple, were rising like a tide.
This was actually exactly what the Founding Fathers intended to have happen, as they thought long and hard about how to devise a government. They knew very well that some become so enamored of money, power and fame that they will hurt others to gain such inanimate things, and then will hurt others to keep them. They knew this because they themselves had money, power and fame, and were well aware of the hazards such possessions bring. For example, even though Jefferson owned slaves he was able to criticize slavery, stating, “We hold the wolf by its ear.”
Like bosses everywhere the founding fathers had to deal with sloth and theft among those who worked for them, and were forced to dole out punishment to employees who broke the trust, yet at the same time they were mere “employees” of King George, facing punishments the king felt forced to dole out to them. Perhaps it was because they could see things from both sides, and then gathered together to think together long and hard, that they came up with a Constitution which comprehends that sloth can occur both in employees and in bosses, as can theft. Therefore they attempted to devise a system wherein all people, both rich and poor, could call-out others when they detected sloth and theft. Which is exactly what Donald Trump did, regarding the so-called “elite” in the so-called “Swamp” of Washington D.C.
The response of the so-called “elite” has been telling. Rather than accepting the results of the election, they doubled down on their dishonesty, wasting over two years attempting to inflate a false narrative that the Russians had somehow “stolen” the election, with Donald Trump complicit. They did not want to heed the results of the election, because the electoral college majority was telling them that the public was sick of the elite’s dishonesty, and tired of seeing the elite with their hands plunged up to their elbows in the cookie-jar of taxes. The so-called “elite” were then faced with a choice between democracy, and destroying democracy to cling to power, and many seem to have chosen destruction.
The salt-of-the-earth American commoner can’t help but think, like Queen Gertrude in “Hamlet”, that the elite “doth protest too much, methinks.” The public has undergone weary decades of seeing lies exposed, and seeing the exposure bringing no penalty to the elite. President Clinton was nicknamed “Slick Willy” because no wrong-doing stuck to him; he could lie, “I did not have sex with that woman”, and then, when “that woman” stated the truth, he just laughed it off. Consequently the public became so accustomed to lies they were no longer all that shocked by lies, or by corruption going unpunished, and indeed were so jaded that they rather expect to be lied to. The elite kept up a pretense of morality, thinking the common man consisted of fools to be fooled, but Abraham Lincoln stated “You cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” and it turns out he was right.
Just as an experienced fisherman can scan the smooth surface of a still lake, and spot ripples that tell him where the big fish move beneath the surface, an experienced person can look at the smooth talk of a skilled politician and spot the lies beneath the slick guff. In some sad cases the politician is fooling only themselves. Wise people recognize when a smile is not genuine, and where it may even hide the malice of a murderer. While people avoid leaping to conclusions, and don’t want to be guilty of developing an entire conspiracy-theory from a single, suspicious detail, people do notice when such coincidences pile up. “The List” (of deaths associated with the Clintons) has been kept since the 1990’s:
When Jeffrey Epstein was recently accused of allegedly running a sort of upper class whorehouse staffed by underage girls, cynics in my little town wondered aloud how long it would be before, (because Epstein “knew too much” about Bill Clinton and other “elites”), he would commit suicide under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and be added to “The List.” Then, when Epstein did commit suicide, a new cynical joke could be heard making the rounds among the local folk. It was to facetiously say, with very round eyes, “I know nothing about the Clintons. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!”
Though spoken in jest, the humor does describe how repellent the elite have become in the eyes of the common man. Call the reaction “fear” if you will, but a common man with teenage daughters or granddaughters cannot think highly of men who attended Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged whorehouses. What is so elite about such depravity? And the fact such privileged people could look down their long, depraved noses and sneeringly label common men “deplorables” calls the very sanity of the elite into question. Do they never examine their own behavior? Or do they see a mirror as a thing only used to make sure their make-up is applied correctly, to hide the ashen hue of their spirits with the falsified rouge of health? (After all, the original “bigwigs” wore their big, faux-healthy wigs to hide their patchy baldness, caused by syphilis.)
I personally am so repelled by the rich and powerful and famous I want little to do with wealth and power and fame. I far prefer the small garden of a small man in a small town. The small pleasures of raising five children cannot be measured in money. Upon the edge of poverty one has a chance to be wholesome, and in that wholesomeness one owns riches surpassing that of billionaires wading in the reek of “The Swamp”.
Furthermore, I’m getting old. Though I likely will work until I drop, I am of “retirement age.” I can’t do what I once did, and must adjust my ambition downwards to some degree. While I don’t abandon the helm entirely like King Lear did, I do hand some batons of life’s relay-race to the young, who have ambitions that see a future I won’t live to see. Not that I don’t plant orchards, but I know I won’t live to see the apples. Rather than overrule the young, I respect their new ideas, for they are the ones who must reap crops I will never witness. Not that I don’t give them more advice than they sometimes ask for, but I have a different attitude toward power than The Swamp’s: I can give power up.
This retiring attitude is something I’m good at, for in a sense I’ve been retiring ever since I stopped going to dances as a teenager. It is part of being a writer, and is also called “withdrawal”. However it also makes Donald Trump a man beyond my comprehension, because he doesn’t retire and he doesn’t withdraw. To be quite honest, he puts me to shame. How does he take on The Swamp with the tenacity and courage he displays? It can only be because God formed him very differently than God formed me, and he is able to derive pleasure and zest from what would be, for me, a living hell.
There are times he makes me feel like a complete sissy. I feel like an anxious mother watching her child climb a tree or tall cliff. I can’t bear to watch, and turn away, not because I don’t admire what Trump is attempting, but because I don’t want to see him fall and be crushed.
I fully expected he would be assassinated by now, and am amazed by his survival and by what he achieves. One of his greatest achievements has been to so alarm the people addicted to wealth, power and fame that they have stopped pretending to be nice. They have thrown off their sheep’s-clothing and revealed themselves as wolves. Of course, some of us knew they were wolves all along, but if we said so we would risk being accused of “having a conspiracy theory”. How could we call a sweet, adorable lamb like Slick Willy a wolf? He had such a nice smile, as did other wolves. But now they are showing their fangs. Formerly they pretended to be part of a two-party-system and to be like Harry-Truman-democrats, but now their dictatorial, one-party-system tendencies towards tyranny are undisguised. Groups like Antifa resemble Hitler’s Brown Shirts, and clearly stand against the two-party-system our Founding Fathers established as a great and noble experiment.
I find their attack upon America deeply troubling. I lose sleep, and find politics bad for my health. Because it will do no one any good if I get sick, I prefer to retire to my garden. I have run my race, and it is up to the young to carry on.
But as I squat and weed, listening to birds sing, and watching thunderheads bloom in the summer sky, a little voice whispers in my conscience. “Have you been intimidated? Are you a coward? Have the bullies of Antifa silenced you?” If you pass by my garden you may hear me muttering to myself, from time to time, as I wrestle with this voice.
I certainly haven’t been silent on the web, concerning arctic-sea-ice and Global Warming. My posts on this site have been viewed by over a hundred thousand people, and my other posts and comments (on sites less obscure than this one) have been seen by millions. I have been part of a process that has exposed the falseness of a false narrative, to such a degree that thinking-people (including some cynical Alarmists) are well aware Global Warming has no scientific basis that justifies it being called a serious threat, and only exists as a political tool used to seize money and power.
Ten years ago there were wonderful and lively discussions involving the actual climate-science involved, but now such discussions have devolved to name-calling. I even heard a wonderful description of arguing-with-an-Alarmist: It was described as being like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how brilliant your moves are, the pigeon just knocks your pieces over, poops on the board, and then struts around like it won.
To a certain degree one just gets weary of arguing with pigeons. It producing nothing, whereas weeding my garden produces delicious vegetables.
But then I pause, and think my arguments did produce something. It produced a degree of censorship from Google. If you type in “Arctic Sea Ice” on Google, you can scroll down through page after page of search-results, and not see any mention my past posts, though some of my posts have thousands of views. Formerly my posts appeared in the first few pages of search-results for “Arctic Sea Ice”. So my posts did have an effect. They forced some at Google to take off their sheep’s clothing. They think they have “silenced” one party in a two-party-system, (me), but what they have done is to “show their hand”. They cannot claim to believe in the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press when they, in essence, burn books. If they wanted silence they have gone about it the wrong way, for they have been too loud.
Having bragged (to a degree) about having had this effect, I cannot claim to owning much desire to become more deeply involved. Such one-party-system-people have a sort of reek about them, and I do not usually feel comfortable when in the proximity of a skunk, even when it wears a lovely fur coat. I would like to just be done with such nonsense. Let the young carry on with the battle. I have played my part. I’ll just become one of those silent people who do not appear in polls, (because I hang up when a pollster calls me on the phone), but I’ll still vote when the day comes.
But then that whisper occurs again in my conscience: “Have you been intimidated? Are you backing off because you are afraid? What if Donald Trump did that?”
When I heard a Trump Rally was going to be held only 45 minutes from my front door I had no desire to attend. While I like live concerts, I am uncomfortable once crowds get much larger than a hundred. I admire great athletes, but would rather watch them on TV than attend a Superbowl. There is something about a crowd that makes me uncomfortable, perhaps because I’ve seen crowds turn ugly, and also because I have seen involuntary goosebumps of thrill rise on my own arms, and know I am not unmoved by the group-think of a mob. I prefer to stand back and watch from a distance and mull things over. I am a retiring sort, and even these words I now type are words I will mull-over and rewrite many times, before I set them free. Spontaneity is not my middle name.
However when I heard a local branch of Antifa was calling for people to come and disrupt the Manchester Rally, seeking to intimidate people from showing Trump any support, a bit of spontaneity ruffled my feathers. I may be retiring, but I’m not dead yet, and I can’t stand the way Antifa calls Trump a bully for bluntly speaking truth, and then turns right around and behaves in a bullying manner, speaking balderdash propaganda. To argue with Antifa is another case of playing chess with a pigeon. Rather than speaking opposition to their concept of a one-party-system, sometimes it is better to simply show opposition by attending a rally.
However when the day came I was very busy with work at my Farm-childcare, and it seemed unlikely I could get in to the rally. The 12,000 who gained entrance to the arena arrived before 4:00, and I wasn’t off work until 5:30, and it would take me another hour to drive in through rush-hour traffic, and on the radio I heard parking was just about non-existent and that the traffic was especially terrible near the rally. To top it off I was dead tired. I decided to spend my time praying the rally wasn’t bombed, and went to bed before the rally even ended.
The next morning I didn’t bother listening to the news, for I knew networks would report a highly negative view of whatever had occurred. Instead I searched through the web until I found a film of the actual rally. I find it interesting to form my own impressions, and only later to listen to the impressions the media gathered, which they then brazenly state are opinions “everyone” should share.
Quite often I see the media’s impressions are in lock-step, as I switch from network to network, right down to the talking-heads parroting the same exact words, yet their impressions are so different from mine that you would find it hard to believe they were of the same event. The Press takes things so far out of context it becomes downright humorous listening to the “experts”, who make such an ado-over-nothing they resemble people throwing a tizzy over the warped view they see in a circus’s fun-house mirror, as if unaware their views are warped.
At his rallies Trump often states something, and then gestures towards the Press, poking fun at what they will make of his statement, and how his statement will be warped when it appears in the next day’s papers. Where the Press once had the ability to make or break a politician, Trump has emasculated them by pointing out a reality which all now call “Fake News”. He has turned the tables on them, for rather than the Press manipulating the politician, the politician is tweaking the Press, making them prance like puppets, and playing them like a violin.
I feel I have watched a deterioration of the media that has taken decades to manifest; a crumbling of the trust the public has in the news they are told. It began during the Vietnam War, and the irony is that back then it was the Press itself that stood up against the purveyors of propaganda. How times change. Now even events which were accepted as well-researched-truth sixty years ago are called into question by the unrelenting scrutiny of countless, private, investigator-bloggers on the web, and, while there are a lot of paranoid rants and nonsense to be sifted through, some attempts to manipulate a gullible public are exposed by bloggers in ways that brook no doubt. (For example, some horrific pictures of bomb-blasted, weeping children crouching by gory and apparently deceased mothers in Syria were rendered far less heartrending when before-and-after pictures revealed the mother and child laughing as they put on bloody make-up usually used to make triage-training more realistic for EMTs, and then relaxing after the photo-shoot; IE: The entire bloody scene was a scam created to move public opinion.)
It doesn’t matter which “side” one is on, one gets tired of having their heart played as if it were an inanimate violin, and one wearies of what seems to be a general acceptance of lying. Especially exasperating is that, rather than the Press working to make amends for past failures, by working harder to sift through various views and versions of truth, and by honestly seeking to show all evidence, the Press has seemingly abandoned all attempts at objectivity in favor of a total devotion to a one-sided one-party-system. Bias appears to have become a sort of virtue-signaling; reporters appear eager to be purveyors of propaganda, (though their eagerness perhaps demonstrates a child-like and frantic attempt to please Big Daddy, enacted by frightened employees leery of being fired).
As I watched a replay of the Trump rally I did not see anything like what the media described and reported. The media saw racism, because the crowd was 94% white, but the simple fact of the matter is that the population of New Hampshire happens to be 94% white. What the media was seeing was simple demographics, but at times they snarl like wolves at people merely being what people have no control over being. Meanwhile Trump looked glad to see everyone. Right off the bat this made him a mile more likable and winning than the suspicious, hostile media.
Then Trump began to talk about what he has been attempting to achieve, which the media seldom mentions. Instead the media has reported what never happened. They have clogged newscasts with misinformation, focused on how Trump’s election was due to Russia and not his supporters, which is a theory now disproved. The crowd seemed far more interested in what Trump was actually attempting, and untroubled by the three years of false accusations, (both before and after Trump’s election).
Because the media has been such a abysmal failure, in terms of telling the truth, in a sense Trump was doing what the media should do but doesn’t do, as he described his agenda at the rally. As he listed what he was trying to achieve there were some topics I recognized but others I didn’t, and as he described his critics there were some I had heard about but many I hadn’t. However when I thought about “what I already knew”, it occurred to me very little came from the mainstream media. Instead, much I have learned has come through diligent searches of non-mainstream websites. Sad to say, but the mainstream media offers almost no actual information.
For example, concerning the subject of illegal immigration, the media’s focus has largely been upon ideas, and not facts; they discuss the idea that “borders” are racist, and upon the ideas of individuals who feel “open borders” are a good idea, and upon the idea that Trump’s promise to “Build the Wall” is bound to be an abject failure.
To some degree I can commiserate with such no-borders idealism, for it holds the beauty of John Lennon’s song, “Imagine.” However, as a man who has lived long and still works hard “past retirement age”, I can look back across decades of experience and am well aware people have limits; people have to draw-the-line. I’ve seen that, while in a Perfect World there would be no borders, we do not live in a Perfect World.
I may be an old grouch, but once I was young and brimming with idealism, and visited a hippy commune where “everything was shared”. After an evening of profound talk I went to bed, and when I woke the next morning I couldn’t find my pants, (which were new bluejeans). When I meekly brought up the fact I had no pants, it turned out someone else had “shared” them. When I suggested it would be difficult to avoid arrest if I headed out into the world without pants, I was “shared” some pants. They were the most ragged, frayed, filthy, and in-need-of-mending-and-patching pair of pants I have ever worn in my life. This experience awoke me to the fact idealism can get ugly. I said I did not agree “sharing” was a good thing, and wanted my own pants back, which did not go over too well among the idealists at that commune.
It is experiences such as this which turn “Songs Of Innocence” into “Songs Of Experience” (William Blake) and leads to slightly cynical statements such as “If you’re not Liberal when young you have no heart, and if you are not Conservative when older you have no brain.” (Winston Churchill and many others). Many old hippies know exactly what I am talking about, even as many youngsters haven’t a clue.
In the end we come back to the dilemma the Founding Fathers were striving to deal with, when they wrote the United States Constitution. This dilemma boils down to facing the fact we do not live in a Perfect World, and that vices such as sloth and theft occur in the rich and poor alike, the young and old alike, and the Liberal and Conservative alike. In the face of our mortal weaknesses, (whether you call them “foibles” or “sins”), it is obvious a one-party-system cannot succeed, for eventually it will pit the old against the young, the rich against the poor, or masculinity against femininity. Instead a two-party-system must evolve, where there may be some discord and conflict, but good things such as “harmony” and “marriage” are also possible. “Vive la difference”.
Lastly, for a two-party-system to work, there must be a division between the two parties of some sort. There must be “borders”. There must be male and female, rich and poor, Liberal and Conservative, and buyers and sellers. This may not be utopia, (for in the State of God-Realization absolute Unity exists), but we are not God-Realized, and in fact we had darn well better recognize we haven’t realized God yet, or else we are possessed of such arrogance we are doomed to disaster.
Some members of the media bewail what they call “polarization”. Despite a superficial praise of “diversity”, they don’t like the existence of differing views. I think this is what lies behind the dislike some express towards the Founding Fathers, for the Founding Fathers not only accepted the fact views do differ, but devised a system to handle the differences.
If the Press desires to function in a healthy manner it needs to describe both sides of an issue, which involves departing from the idea-world of idealism and descending into the nitty-gritty landscape of facts. But if a Press is captured by bias, it becomes so affronted by differing views that it cannot handle them, and flinches into a sort of reflex of bashing. They leap to conclusions. When covering the situation at our southern border they are quick to report the idea that illegal immigrants are held in “concentration camps” and “drink from toilets”, but are slow to fact-check such distortions. Because the Press offers a dearth of facts, it is up to the president to say there is news the mainstream newspapers are not mentioning, which is what Trump does at his rallies.
I hope you recognize the irony. Fifty years ago the president (Johnson) was the purveyor of propaganda, and people turned to the Press (Cronkite) for news about Vietnam. Now the tables are turned. Rather than the Press, people turn to Trump for news. More news is dispensed by Trump, during a rally, about the situation at the United States southern border, in fifteen minutes, than is heard in months on mainstream media. What’s more, Trump not only reports about his own views, but also about his opponent’s views, and he does so in a cocky, off-hand manner which infuriates many.
I think I see one reason he infuriates some people. In their eyes he over-simplifies, and is breaking their complex system of rules, which happen to be rules that in many ways stifle free speech.
This exposes a second irony. Fifty years ago the people speaking freely and in a refreshing manner tended to be celebrities such as “The Smothers Brothers”. (It is interesting to watch reruns of their old shows from the 1960’s, and to realize what seems so innocent (to us now) eventually caused such a fuss (back then) that they were taken off the air.) Now celebrities tend to avoid causing a fuss, and spend most of their time fussing. They are far too busy virtue-signalling and being politically-correct to dare be so refreshingly incorrect as to bring up the Truth.
There is something about Truth that is refreshing. What’s more, it is something salt-of-the-earth commoners recognize and respond to, whether the speaker is on “their side” or not. It is for this reason that a good debate between two opposing politicians can be a delight to listen to, providing the opponents treat each other with respect, in a sense “loving their enemy”. But when that respect is absent then one sees the recognition of Truth bring about a quite different and somewhat rabid response, where the humorous jibes are absent and instead hatred of Truth manifests.
I saw a bit of such hatred, in a small way, after I watched the video of the Manchester Trump rally. I liked what I had watched, and was musing to myself about the strange similarity between Trump’s performance and an old Smother’s Brothers show: Despite the great differences in political views, there was an impishness and good humor I associate with Truth. Then I checked the clock.
I had found time to watch the long rally because insomnia had awoken me at three AM, and I saw that I still had a bit of time before heading off to my Farm-childcare, so I thought I’d scroll down and check-out the comments-section, which was below the video. I was curious how people had responded.
I was taken aback by the negativity of most of the comments, which were full of foul language and generally bashed supporters of Trump as being racist pigs. It took me a little while before I noticed seven straight comments by the same person, and then scanned backwards and saw that same person was responsible for many earlier negative comments. Further scrutiny showed other individuals were doing the same thing, and that most of the comments were written by roughly ten people, repetitively cranking out the same disproved talking-points, such as Trump being put in office by Russia, illegal aliens being forced to drink from toilets, the electoral college being a dumb idea invented by rich, white slave-owners, and so on. When anyone replied to such comments all ten Trump-haters piled on them, stating disparaging things about their sanity and their mothers, using fairly ugly language.
To me this suggested the ten people were “doing their job”, and I wondered if they might even be paid to do it, perhaps with the money George Soros is so generous with. They didn’t seem to have another job they had to get to, judging from the time-stamps beside their comments. They’d been at their job for hours.
With a second glance at the clock I decided I had just enough time to reply to one comment before work, and I chose a particularly snide comment about how only fools accepted Trump as a leader, because he wasn’t a legitimate leader as he had not received a majority of the popular vote. I pointed out Abraham Lincoln had only received 39% of the popular vote, and headed off to work.
A couple hours later a member of my staff contacted me in great alarm about negative comments appearing on our Childcare’s Facebook page. When I checked, it struck me as humorous. The site contains pictures of small children at play, with innocuous comments such as “Susie looks so sweet” and “Johnie is so cute”, but abruptly the comments switched to “You’re talking through your pie-hole,” and “Parents must be insane to let their children near a fascist pig like you.” However I doubted my wife would see the humor, and sought to find out how the leftists had tracked me down.
It turned out the original video of the Trump Rally had appeared on a Facebook page, and therefore when I replied, in the comments section beneath the video, my Facebook site had automatically appeared by my comment. Yikes! What a mess!
To extract myself from the mess I went back to the original video and deleted my comment, which “disappeared” me from the discussion under the video, and also “disappeared” the nasty replies to my comment from my business’s Facebook page.
However I don’t take kindly to being silenced in such a manner. Such a silence might make Antifa happy, and might make George Soros feel he invested his money wisely and perhaps even clap his hands in glee, but such silencing is unhealthy to those who seek to nourish Freedom of Speech, and understand the refreshing, healing quality Truth has, when spoken aloud.
Therefore I have refused to be silent, and have gotten up early all week to write this essay. Please share it if you like it. I have the sense the coming election will be particularly nasty, and it is particularly important to have all views, even mine, heard.
One impulse I’ve often been embarrassed by in my life has been the urge to pop victims right in the snoot. This is especially embarrassing because I strive to be a spiritual person. But one time, when young, I was saying peace and love were desirable, and another person sneered I only said that because I was a gutless wimp who couldn’t fight. So I punched him. It shamed me because my reaction was so obviously not peaceful and not loving.
Victims tend to especially draw this out of me when they become militant. Even when I start out sympathetic they lose my sympathy. For example, when I lived in New Mexico I was friends with many Latinos and was in sympathy, but La Raza does not touch my heart with warm feelings of love.
The problem with getting mad about being a victim is that it can make people react in a way that victimizes you and perpetuates your victim-hood. If La Raza starts a war there will indeed be victims, rather than an end to victimization. If they “win” the war then they will merely move from being the oppressed to being the oppressor. Then a new people can get mad about being a victim.
It can be very hard to remain calm. For example, when people in Europe were attempting to have a debate titled, “Blasphemy – crime or freedom of expression,” some militant feminists decided to debate in a way all their own.
The priest did rather well, quietly praying as the ladies doused him with water and raged, and then, after “security” had ushered the women out, (when the priest noticed the water bottles were in the shape of the Virgin Mary), picking a bottle off the floor and kissing it.
I’m not sure I would have done so well. I can’t say how I might have reacted. Attempted to give the girls a spanking? Gotten beat up? It probably would have been a shambles.
I tend to avoid rallies and crowds, as I am too easily provoked. And it has become clear that some are out to provoke. Even in Berkeley, once a center of free speech, Antifa appeared to use fascist techniques in what it claimed was anti-fascism.
One starts to wonder exactly who is the victim and who is doing the victimizing.
Some claim it would be good to “bring things to a head” and that they want “blood in the streets”, but to me it seems anti-American to destroy our ability to discuss differences in a sane and civil manner. I am starting to really be touched by any group which includes many races and nationalities, cooperating and harmonizing, because it defies the entire separative ideology that at times it seems the media supports, and desires to make rampant.
How can I say the media supports such a thing? Because the media has sought so hard to preserve its status as “the voice of freedom” that it blackballs other voices, attempting to make people who are not fascists appear to be fascists. For example, an effort was made to never show any pictures of Blacks, Latinos, or Asians supporting President Trump. A more honest press would have felt more free to report the diversity of America’s views. Here are some minsters meeting the President (which got little press):
What I see is two forces at work in America. The powers of division, and the powers of unity. The powers of hate, and the powers of love. If we are divided we will fall. If we remain united we will stand. If we are victims, we are victims of our own separative exclusiveness.
Only one thing can save us, and that is the Personification of Love.
One small child has the weight of an army If God is in all, for in that small one Is the same pure, stunning Infinity Marching hoards are led by. The same warm sun Shines on and out-of rich and poor alike. The widow’s farthing means more than Miser’s million When Love prompts her; for pride is a dike Holding refreshment from sands parched by a sun Which wants to be kind but must be cruel Without water. If you compare your lot With others, and sneer and resent, Poor Fool, You are missing what you’ve already got, For God’s in all, and you don’t have to wait. See that and your aching will evaporate.
This appeared on a Facebook page called “Legal Insurrection”, and then on the “Ice Age Now” site. Apparently it is someone’s wry joke that is now going viral.
So far April in the USA has been 4 1/2 degrees below normal in the USA, which is the coldest April since 1982. Here is a map from Joseph D’Aleo’s blog at the Weatherbell Site showing how much below normal it was yesterday.
A slug of Gulf of Mexico heat will try to punch north, likely creating big storms and tornadoes down south towards the end of the week, but I doubt it will make it this far north. We just shiver and shudder and wait for May.
The words that really made me think, in Laura’s speech were aimed at politicians and pundits at 13:45, and were, “We’re not the enemy; we’re the people. We’re not your servants. You’re ours.”
This resonated because I really have felt on the defensive for so many years I’ve lost count. Yet I really have done a lot of good things in my life and, despite all my flaws, have been a fairly nice guy. However some simply attack. For example, if you hold a door open for a woman carrying two bags of groceries, she may glare at you and call you a chauvinist pig.
Or, if you point out the sea-ice isn’t melting away as forecast, you get called a “Denier”.
This sort of treatment simply gets old, after three or four decades. Eventually there is “push-back”, and I think that is what has given Donald Trump his power.
Sunrise's Swansong 