Around the time of the American Revolution, "Bloodletting" was considered pretty much a universal cure -- it is fairly commonly accepted that it killed President Washington. The theory was that your "humors" got out of balance, so everyone needed to let out a few pints from time to time. When you got sick, it needed to be done early. If you got sicker, you needed to let more blood. More was better and starting the process early was critical. If the patient died, clearly you didn't start early enough or let enough. More aggressive action was called for on the next case!
If you need any more proof that mental health disorders are a public health issue, look no further than rising suicide rates over the last decade and a half.
Deaths from suicide have increased 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to an analysis of Americans aged 5 and up conducted by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Any of the rest of you notice a huge decline in government intervention in all aspects of health and mental care from 1999 to 2014? No? Anybody see the OPPOSITE? Anyone hear that drugs for depression and other mental illness are being prescribed at record levels?
As the article points out, suicide rates among high school educated whites are rising rapidly, but interestingly ...
Black men were the only racial and gender group to lower their rate of suicide; it declined 8 percent between 1999 and 2014.
Anyone want to bet that when you have something between 4-6K young black men murdering each other every year it cuts down on the suicide rate for the survivors? THERE might be the poster for "More Government" -- see, the largest government intervention in family lives in the nation is in the black inner city, and their suicide rate is lower!". Wonderful -- born to be shot you will never be hung. Dying by murder is a guarantee you won't commit suicide!
We have more and more government, but LESS people gainfully employed, LESS intact families, and LESS community coherence. For the common person, American life is meaningless and empty -- and suicide rates are rising rapidly.
Government is the modern equivalent of bloodletting -- no matter the condition, the assumed answer is to get it more involved quicker. If things don't seem to be improving, apply even MORE government to the problem!
An excellent article by Dennis Prager (he pretty much only does excellent!), highly recommended to read the entire thing.
His point is that the left loathes all standards and judgement save their own.
Bible-based religions affirm a morally judging God. For the Left, that is anathema. For the Left, the only judging allowed is Leftist judging of others. No one judges the Left. Neither man nor God.
Since Western civilization was founded on Bible-based religion (Judaism and Christianity), the left hates Western civilization, so therefore the enemy of Western civilization is their friend.
The Left similarly describes any suggestion that anything Western is superior to anything non-Western. Likewise, the Left dismisses virtually all Western achievements, but regards criticism of anything non-Western as racist, chauvinistic, imperialist, colonialist, xenophobic, etc.
That is why the Left is so protective of Islam. America’s first left-wing president, Barack Obama, will not use, or allow the government to use, the words “Islamic terrorism”; and all criticism of Islam is labeled “Islamophobic,” thereby morally equating any such criticism with racism. It is not that the Left is sympathetic to Islam; the Left has contempt for all religions. It is that many Muslims loathe the West, and the enemies of my enemy (the West) must be protected.
Prager is smarter and more rational than I, so he doesn't take the next step. Revelation 12:10 "And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night."
Job is also an excellent source to see Satan the accuser in action. As Luther said, "Man is an ass, he is ridden by God or by Satan." As Christ says in Matt 11:30 "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Christ seeks to give those under his care peace, Satan seeks to make sure they are FULLY occupied! Satan WILL be cast down, but for some reason (my guess is that it is the price for "free will", he is still accusing today)
So we see the left -- screaming, yelling, marching, demonstrating. Constantly angry, offended, outraged, oppressed, burdened with horrid unfairness -- all the while, seeking to "remove the burden of having standards"!
Of course what is really meant is "no standards but theirs" -- Thou shalt bow before the altar of Global Warming, Gay Rights, Transexual Rights, support of ISLAM, women's rights, BLM, income equality. Gods standards are known and unchanging, and his Grace is freely available. The "standards" (accusations) of Satan are explicitly designed to be a constant thorn, and there is no grace -- only constant accusation and ever greater demands for sin and depravity.
You think you would draw the line and infant sacrifice to Baal? Try 60 million dead to the Baal of abortion already in what was once a great nation while Satan cackles and the flames rise.
God is a just judge that judges from the standard of Truth, yet another name for Christ. If you are in Christ, you will be judged from the standard of God looking at Christ and imputing his righteousness to you . Satan is a capricious and evil judge -- he enjoys sentencing souls and whole nations to eternal damnation. Eternal misery loves eternal company.
The power of Satan grows each day in the US. When someone loses their employment for saying that men and women need to use the bathrooms which align with their genitals, and you see the mass of the left leering with delight at their "moral" power, we are allowed a vision of Hell right here on earth. The evil schadenfreude false joy of casting your enemies down as you shift standards on a daily basis is palpable as the next barrier of common decency is breached and the noose of totalitarian enforcement of even the tiniest infraction of "The Party's" rules tightens.
People are losing their jobs over men not using the women's bathroom -- how long before our currency reads "In Satan we trust"?
There was a time in America where the "maverick", the straight talking, honest, look you in the eye sort, that believed in the American right to say what was on your mind with the understanding that other Americans had that same right was highly respected. Being a mature, capable, member of the community meant that you could and would state your position and others DID respect people who did so because they believed that was at the core of the American ability to partially self-govern. Freedom of thought, speech and belief were core values, and tolerance of others who differed in thought was considered a critical part of being an American. There was a solid reason we once had a First Amendment -- the government was required to follow it, but we all accepted and spoke up for others rights to their opinion.
Those times are long gone. Oh, you can burn the flag, march chanting "Pigs in blankets, fry'em like bacon", march naked down 5th Avenue espousing gay sex or attend an Islamic church that espouses raping women and "marrying" girls under the age of 10, but those things don't really count. They are 100% in line with the dogma of "The Party" (TP-D) -- wholly vetted, approved and required canonical beliefs that all good membership of TP MUST espouse whole-heartedly, and which disagreeing with can and does cause the loss of employment, friends, community standing and increasingly IRS and other alphabetic named named TP "investigations".
Can religion become too powerful? Yes, we hear about it endlessly, "The Spanish Inquisition", heretics being burned, etc. The Constitution prohibits a STATE CHURCH, but it DID NOT establish "freedom from having to see anything about God". The Church is not a "perfect human institution", but contrary to what TP would have you believe, there are NONE of them, and Government is certainly not about to become even close to perfect.
Can government become too powerful? **NO**!!! Pay no attention to Socialist Germany, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Mao's China, Pol Pot, etc ... nor "that man behind the curtain"!
We have reached the point in this borderless land of the offended where things are simply not to be "discussed". If you don't get your mind right you are to SHUT THE F UP! and be damned quick about it. There are plenty of things that TP will tell you to scream about if you want to scream -- your "freedom" to follow the crowd is immense. They will even assure you that you are "courageous".
It's pretty obvious that Schilling had to be fired -- on FB he made himself out to be nearly as awful as can be imagined today.
Schilling describes himself on his Facebook account as a “Conservative pro life pro 2nd amendment American who wants to help those that cannot help themselves.”
Had he declared himself "Christian", he no doubt would have been fired long ago! As it is, ESPN was very open minded in keeping him on as long as they did -- modern society needs to have strict limits on how offensive it's citizens can be allowed to be!
He must have been awfully confused about what it meant to be "American" -- or at least he is now!
A little historical context, like a Montgomery martini, VERY dry -- and in this case old. The article I pulled this from in '93. Some of the points that I'm interested in:
"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."
Remember, this is '93 -- the USSR is just gone, the first Gulf War was 1991, and appeared very economic / Arab on Arab (Iraq invaded Kuwait). The next paragraph covers the
In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it, "the wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun." This nineteenth-century pattern lasted until the end of World War I. Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then between communism and liberal democracy.
Everyone thought that the world was going to go into a "golden age" as science replaced religion, but as the 20th century wore on with it's two world wars, Korea, Mao killing millions in China, Vietnam, Pol Pot killing millions in Cambodia, and scores of regional bloodbaths, religion started to look better than it once id.
The "unsecularization of the world," George Weigel has remarked, "is one of the dominant social facts of life in the late twentieth century." The revival of religion, "la revanche de Dieu," as Gilles Kepel labeled it, provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.
I'd argue that in the West -- Europe and the US, religion has NOT recovered and along with it's continued decline, any sense of culture or "civilization" has declined with it. The cultures are less damaged in Europe, but in the US, the culture is on life support at best.
Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor rich, but Russians cannot become Estonians and Azeris cannot become Armenians. In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was "Which side are you on?" and people could and did choose sides and change sides. In conflicts between civilizations, the question is "What are you?" That is a given that cannot be changed. And as we know, from Bosnia to the Caucasus to the Sudan, the wrong answer to that question can mean a bullet in the head. Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and half-Arab and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.
So the US is essentially unarmed in this conflict, because there is no longer any answer to "What are you". ... "black", "Christian", "progressive", etc, but NOT "American". Other than at Trump rallies, there really aren't any people very excited about "America" -- let alone rallying around it. No, it is all about "special interests" and "voting blocks" ... women, minorities, elderly, gays, the unemployed, single mothers, etc, etc ... "Americans"? You mean the "Trumpkins"???
Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.
So as early as '93, there wasn't enough "American civilization" to recognize -- and there is a LOT less now! I'd argue that we are already not "playing" in this clash, but rather just LOSING.
There is irony, then there is irony so rich that it defies description -- the punchline, HR 347, signed into law by BO in 2012 makes it felony with up to 10 years in prison to "disrupt" events where someone under Secret Service protection is speaking!!
What might be a surprise is the fact that quietly and right under our noses in 2012, Congress nearly unanimously passed H.R. 347 (a.k.a. the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act) which makes it a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to "willfully and knowingly" enter a restricted area or to engage in "disorderly or disruptive conduct" that in any way impedes "government business or official functions."
Signed into law by President Obama, this supposed tweak of a pre-existing law effectively criminalized protest of any person under the protection of the Secret Service, a select group which includes both major parties' front-runners for the presidential nomination. During the general election, the nominees of both parties are automatically assigned Secret Service protection, but Hillary Clinton, as a former first lady, is entitled to a Secret Service detail for the rest of her life, and Donald Trump has had a detail assigned to him since last November.
One has gotta love this! Every time I've been at any sort of Republican event that isn't just a local thing that isn't in the news, there have been protesters, picket lines or hecklers. If you wanted to attend, you needed to not be intimidated. The left has a LONG history of using violence and intimidation to shut down speech that is not in agreement with them and to get their way.
This is a testament to the lack of interest in free speech in this country by BOTH political parties and a pretty good testament to why we may actually NEED Trump! I'm very surprised that BO signed this one -- he must have assumed that since the left controls the judiciary, cases from that side would just get thrown out.
Probably another asset to one party rule like the IRS. Prosecute the opposition if they demonstrate, make sure your thugs get a pass.
Want to bet how many of the felons protesting at Trump rallies get jail???
When the WaPo quotes Edmund Burke and even starts to wonder about democracy being good, you know you have fallen down the rabbit hole to a new level of Wonderland (as in Alice In). When they list the BO administration policies directly as being a "horrible danger" when Trump talks about them, you know that folks in Wonderland think that theirs is the only world.
Burke is about tradition, rule of law, aristocracy, the need for democratic inputs to a government to be STRONGLY controlled, etc.
“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.” (Burke)
Indeed. Farhter on, the column quotes Federalist 10 of all things!
“Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.” A representative government is designed to frustrate sinister majorities (or committed pluralities), by mediating public views through “a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.”
"intrigue, corruption, or other means, first obtain the suffrages" Obtain the votes! How about just by not having to show an ID? The WaPo is favor of that after all. They are REALLY in favor of using government funds to buy the votes!
Our founders wanted to mediate the level of democracy they allowed through "a chosen body of citizens" -- meaning that to be allowed to vote, you had to meet some criteria! Like own land, have a certain level of wealth, a certain level of education, etc! The idea of "everyone voting" was crazy talk to our founders, and even then they wanted it FAR more limited than it is now!
The Senate was supposed to be appointed by the State, NOT elected by popular vote. The 17th Amendment screwed that up in 1913. The Constitution was to provide a rule of law that has been usurped constantly since the Warren court and continues to be desecrated today. Our slide into Mob Rule is all but complete -- and now WaPo is concerned as to what it really means to have NO RULES!
In 2008, a "sinister majority" voted for "Hope and Change", and a man that called broad swaths of the electorate "bitter clingers", and stood before faux greek pillars and declared that he would stop the rise of the oceans by his messianic presence.
With the theory of a presidential nominee as a wrecking ball, we have reached the culmination of the founders’ fears: Democracy is producing a genuine threat to the American form of self-government. Trump imagines leadership as pure act, freed from reflection and restraint. He has expressed disdain for religious and ethnic minorities. He has proposed restrictions on press freedom and threatened political enemies with retribution. He offers himself as the embodiment of the national will, driven by an intuitive vision of greatness. None of this is hidden.
Lets take this rather amazing near closing paragraph apart and show how the WaPO manages to totally point out that Trump = BO in all important aspects, just varying in the usurpation choices of what used to be America!
"Trump imagines leadership as a pure act" -- So BO has proudly used "executive action" in direct usurpation of the Constitution on immigration, EPA actions on climate change, and gun control. Both Bernie and Hillary explicitly promise more of the same on at least guns. So what is supposedly unique about Trump beyond the WaPo not liking his possible selection of where to be lawless? They have supported lawlessness for 7 years!
"disdain for religious and ethnic minorities" -- What part of "bitter clingers, clinging to their guns and Bibles" has been missed? Has not every Bible believing Christian that respects life and marriage as between a man and woman been maligned constantly and in more and more cases even lost employment with the sanction of the current administration? How many times does the WaPo expect us to be called all sorts of names including "racists" for not agreeing with BO on policy? How long do you need to watch BO to realize that disdain for his "enemies" is his standard mode of operation!
"restrictions on press freedom and threatened political enemies" -- Both the 1st and 2nd amendments are in the Bill of Rights. BO has not only "threatened", he HAS restricted 2nd amendment rights by executive order! He has openly espoused to the need to "control Fox News and Talk radio" on MANY occasions, and directly espoused the overturn of Citizens United which gives a tiny bit of ability for those not agreeing with government in all cases to have free speech that matters and costs money!
"He offers himself as the embodiment of the national will, driven by an intuitive vision of greatness." -- I haven't seen Trump use grecian pillars yet. I'm not even going to insult your intelligence with having to point out the finger wagging snobbish constant of his worshipfullnesss, the brilliant, the totally superior, "the ONE", his supreme odifferousness --- BO!!!! that we have suffered under since '09!
We have already crossed the rubicon that the WaPo now is concerned about. One can only guess as to their thoughts as to how to prevent those who they disagree with from having a voice. We see that violence is already being directed at Trump with outlets like the WaPo blaming Trump because he is being attacked. Do they also blame women that are raped for dressing provocatively? It isn't hard to imagine all kinds of sanctions from the left against Trump and people supporting him -- the normal left wing argument is SHUT UP!!!!! (or be dead if you refuse!)
WaPo can't understand why people would support him. For a large segment of our population dying in droves at a rate not seen since AIDs, all for the "crime" of being white and lower middle class at the time in which BO decided to squeeze them into dependency.
When God, Law, Tradition, Family, Work Ethic and countless other aspects of the fabric of society are torn apart, the results are unpredictable specifically, but predictably bad. BO showed many of us how bad such results can be -- we can rest assured that the lessons will go on in unpredictable and very bad ways!
The left's answer to this problem is historically "Kill the ones we don't like". We can get a good idea as to how they operate from TP running Jim Crow in the South for 100 years.
The conservative / Christian / Founders reaction was "Religion, Rule of Law, Limited Government and Democracy, Individual Freedom and Responsibility, Family, Community and WORK".
We decided to go the left way as a nation. Readers of this blog should not be surprised at the outcome.
Trump, Hildebeast and BS all promise to continue the decent, the question is just who specifically gets bloodied during the fall.
I've been driving back and forth to Barron a lot, so I've listened a lot more to Rush Limbaugh than I have in YEARS ... most likely since I was driving back and forth to Eau Claire and Bloomer in '03 when my Mom was dealing with two severe heart surgeries. You can read through the attached article on Trump -- it is wordy, and I'll try to explain it all here and more.
The CORE is "It's all an act" -- certainly in the case of Trump, Rush, all the media, BO, Hillary, etc.
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (Shakespeare)
We live our lives entirely between our ears. The outside world comes in processed by our individual filters and models, making "sense" only as it fits into each of our unique world views -- that are indeed unique to some degree, but much more products of what we have cultivated as our model -- "liberal, educated sophisticate", "hard working, common sense, down to earth", "Christian, conservative, realist", "caring, compassionate, idealist" ... and on it goes. The basic types are very well known, and our identity, friends, family, employment, etc is wound into those thoughts. They are "us", and we are sure they are "real", but for the most part, they are only "really real" in each of our own heads.
All the word's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one main in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. (Shakespeare)
We play our parts -- the seven he refers to are infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, judge, "pantaloon" (money), old age (near death and death). But there are many more -- son or daughter, sibling, schoolmate, husband / wife, parent, friend, career person, church roles, medical patient, hunter, teacher -- a nearly endless list. Some roles are "real", they feel like "us", at least most of the time, but nearly all of us "play the part" at least at times, and in some roles, all the time.
None of this is new, but like a fish swimming in water, we often lose track of what it means to be "wet" on our stage and in our roles. "The map becomes the territory" -- which can be very good if we are truly engaged in something of real meaning and import. Those are the best parts of life!
For thousands of years, religion was the "anchor" that allowed nearly everyone to step off the stage and connect with what was felt to be a deeper "more real" reality -- for centuries, that was a truer sense of "It's got soul!" than any Blues vibe in the most real and soulful establishment known to man today. People entered the "Soul World" regularly.
The key book to visit on the dangers of not realizing that "your model has been messed with" (meaning "how you see the world", which IS the world in your head!) is "Ideas Have Consequences". It is CRITICAL to have some values and "transcendent space" that allows you to step back and realize what roles you are playing, what narratives you are buying into and who it is that is messing with your mind and why!
Note, many (maybe even most) of the people messing with your mind probably believe what they are selling, but a good many of the ones you believe are just good at telling "stories" (some parts may even be accidentally true). As Hillary said in the debate last night, "She is not a natural politician like Billy C or BO"! To the extent she was trying to tell the truth, that means she doesn't lie as well as they do. When she is mad, dislikes you, or finds you to be an idiot, she is not able to smile sweetly, curl her lip, slap you on the back and treat you like you are her best friend in the world like BO or Slick. I'm guessing that Slick might have lied to her rather impressively more than once.
In the old world, where there were actual religious values and people believed that their immortal soul was at peril, lying was harder. The consequences of being caught were also greater, PLUS, there were the "weekly" or more frequent times when everyone went down to church and admitted to their sinfulness, begged for mercy, and promised to repent. Certainly, everyone still fell short, but it is the difference between having a speed limit and not having one. Today there is no moral speed limit! "Truth is relative"!!!
Back to Rush. He has CONSISTENTLY made it clear to his frequent listeners (and in his books) that he is "playing a part" -- he is like "Steven Colbert" before Steven Colbert thought of being the fake comedy conservative. That doesn't mean he is "the same" as Colbert, it means that all his "talent on loan from God", "drive by media", "EIB research", "dittos", etc is his "schtick". His listeners "get it", but in general the rest of the media and politicians do not. It is a MAJOR part of the fun -- like being a "Packer fan", able to recite most the lines from some stupid movie, communicate back and forth in titles from classic rock, baseball stats -- again, the list is ENDLESS, but "special knowledge" (gnosticism), being an "insider" in SOMETHING is a major part of being a normal healthy human.
It is a normal part, but historically, in every case but religion -- and the special case of that was that most / many / nearly all the people ACTUALLY believed that at least some of the time!
But today, there is no "greater truth", there is no point at which you "get dry" from the myriad of roles and narratives you live in as a "wet fish". You are "inside". You are "wet" all the time. You have no time to "examine your life" -- to make your life the kind that Socrates said WAS worth living, as opposed to the "unexamined life is not worth living". Today, few even know who Socrates was, what he had to say, much less, what it MEANT!
So in the modern distracted irreligious completely unreflective life lived by a huge percentage of our population, people are totally unaware of what "stages, roles, actors, narratives, etc" make up what they think is reality. The college students stopping speech they don't agree with is a symptom. College was to be a place for "the free exchange of ideas", but they want to INVERT (there is that word again!) that and make it a place of absolutely controlled speech that fits with their pre-packaged view of "correct".
THEN CAME TRUMP!
As Rush points out, he is CLEARLY playing a role! His supporters are his "insiders" -- he gives them inside clues that the MSM and opponents THINK that they have "picked up on", but in fact they are outsiders and ("wink, wink, nod, nod"), his supporters know exactly what he is doing". Rush has a decent example in the linked article above, but I like this one better.
In his victory speech in Nevada, he said "I love the poorly educated." The MSM and TP went BALLISTIC, it was ALL OVER! The assumed that such and utterance would KILL HIM!
The full context of what he said was:
"We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated."
He was responding to exit polling. His supporters know that he DOES (at least in the role he is now playing) "love the poorly educated" -- meaning those without degrees or even high school diplomas. He is clearly their champion, they are hopeless and dying in droves and he LOVES THEM (at least in his role)! He didn't call them "low information voters" (like Cruz called Trump voters today), he didn't call them ignorant or stupid. He said they were "poorly educated" -- which they know they are, and so are MANY more due to the sad state of our Democrat union controlled public schools -- even if they DO graduate and have a degree!
But neither the Republican establishment nor "The Party" (TP-D) media and minions can get out of their own "stages, narratives, roles, etc" to see that Trump is using THEM, the supposed "overlords" to help him build his own "Trump Stage" -- with caring for the "poorly educated", the "angry", those "sick of being ignored", etc.
Is any of it "real"? It is AT LEAST as real as "if you like your healthcare you can keep it", "red lines", "wipe it with a cloth", and a myriad of false promises about how important it was to get "both houses" from the Republican establishment.
As I've pointed out with boring frequency, the vast number of Americans have lost all contact with what reality might even be -- and the left keeps changing names on things like "marriage", "gender", "life", "truth", "theft vs success", etc. We live in such a house of mirrors so that the standard American's grasp on anything "real", let alone "lasting" has been completely unmoored by the dominant TP surrealism machine. They want it that way -- but like ALL ideas, it has CONSEQUENCES and definite costs!
I'm coming to understand that it probably HAD to be someone like Trump who knows how to manipulate symbols, the media, and TP itself to help build his mass. As I've said before, it IS certainly dangerous, but BO has been a complete unmitigated DISASTER, and many don't even know that! Hillary is clearly pathological. When one is living in wonderland, danger goes with the territory!
Potentially Trump is enough to get at least a FEW more people to understand what stage we are on and what roles we and our "masters" are playing. There is a whole lot of waking up to be done, is Trump the hard slap in the face that I really really thought BO would be enough to accomplish for our sleepy US electorate ???
On the way up yesterday I heard a story on MPR (or maybe it was WI Public Radio) on "gender neutral clothing for children". The bottom line was that young parents these days are "sensitive" to dressing their children in clothing that might indicate gender, since they want it to be clear that they will support whatever gender their child turns out to be.
One of the leaders in this area is Ellen DeGeneres who received high praise on the show. I could not find the show, but I found the linked article which includes ...
"Yet despite all this, her personal brand remains authentic, says Ian Stephens, a managing partner at brand consultancy Saffron. And Ellen Show viewers seem to agree: According to a Nielsen report, she is 35% more likeable than the average talk show host, more than twice as likely to be considered both a trendsetter and funny, and 90% more likely to be considered a role model."
As I've covered many times, "progressive" requires that there ALWAYS be a new frontier of "progress", so todays "liberals" are quite possibly tomorrows "reactionaries".
It seems like they are heard at work making early age gender changes become one of the "important issues" going forward.
Iran is firing missiles and the US is whimpering again -- oh, and Iran is threatening to just walk away from the "deal" if we do more than whimper.
In the past seven years we have become exceptionally good at whimpering -- perhaps "America, exceptional whimpering" as a motto? EVERY nation is exceptional at something! Even Greece has the gyro!
If Hillary gets in we can combine whimpering and whining! She whines exceptionally well I think.
A very long but generally solid slog through some of the relatively recent history of the Republican party. I often like to read the perspective of those who are the enemy of a position -- they are more likely to be clear in their criticism! This paragraph does a good job of summarizing what has happened to being a middle class white without a college degree in America today -- I covered this here.
You can measure their pessimism in polls that ask about their expectations for their lives—and for those of their children. On both counts, whites without a college degree express the bleakest view. You can see the effects of their despair in the new statistics describing horrifying rates of suicide and substance-abuse fatality among this same group, in middle age.
Seems that the left wing Atlantic and the Republican establishment have a hard time understanding why people that are dying of substance abuse and their own hand would be willing to take a long shot on Trump. I guess I'm just not quite intellectually removed enough to be able to understand that level of dispassionate analysis.
These populists seek to defend what the French call “acquired rights”—health care, pensions, and other programs that benefit older people—against bankers and technocrats who endlessly demand austerity; against migrants who make new claims and challenge accustomed ways; against a globalized market that depresses wages and benefits. In the United States, they lean Republican because they fear the Democrats want to take from them and redistribute to Americans who are newer, poorer, and in their view less deserving—to “spread the wealth around,” in candidate Barack Obama’s words to “Joe the Plumber” back in 2008. Yet they have come to fear more and more strongly that their party does not have their best interests at heart.
I'm reading "Darwin's Cathedral", a discussion of how religion "evolved. For an evolutionist, it HAD TO, right? There is no God, so why in the world should there be anything as stupid as religion! BIG PROBLEM! One of the big items he covers is John Calvin -- "the work ethic", how it allowed each and ever worker to see their vocation as a "holy pursuit". Being hard working was a VIRTUE!
Along came FDR and sold Americans that EVERYONE has a "right" to get more out of the government than they put in via FICA. Not that FDR cared -- he knew he would be LONG gone before the payment for the Democrat votes bought with FICA came due, but he and everyone who initiated it knew it was a Ponzi scheme based on 1). Perpetual population growth 2). Perpetual economic growth 3). 2/3 of the people dying before they received any "benefits".
All three assumptions are FALSE today, but even those WITH college degrees are generally not educated well enough to grasp these basic facts. As recently as 2005, W was willing to talk about the truth and propose putting some money in ACTUAL investments rather than spending it and putting IOUs in a box, but he was soundly defeated. The Trump voters are right, NEITHER party has their best interests in mind!
The work ethic is dead, the country is broke, over 50% of the population receives the major part of their income from the government, and neither party is stating ANYTHING as a "plan" to recover!
Politics was becoming more central to Americans’ identities in the 21st century than it ever was in the 20th. Would you be upset if your child married a supporter of a different party from your own? In 1960, only 5 percent of Americans said yes. In 2010, a third of Democrats and half of Republicans did. Political identity has become so central because it has come to overlap with so many other aspects of identity: race, religion, lifestyle. In 1960, I wouldn’t have learned much about your politics if you told me that you hunted. Today, that hobby strongly suggests Republican loyalty. Unmarried? In 1960, that indicated little. Today, it predicts that you’re a Democrat, especially if you’re also a woman.
Politics ARE becoming more central because religion, family, work, community, friends and everything else was becoming LESS central to life -- and to the extent any of those elements are part of your life, you likely only associated with those who shared your political persuasion, especially if you were on the left. As the nation falls ever farther down the totalitarian socialist rat-hole, politics **IS** the most important thing in at least THIS life!
Basically "post Clinton", the Republican establishment has been uncertainly messing around with the following issues:
1). Reform FICA, Medicare and other government benefits so they are no longer targeted to the "most needy 100%" and hav some tiny wisp of hope of being there for the "bottom 60%".
2). "Triangulate" on SOME way to control immigration from Mexico, remove at least "some/most" illegals, WITHOUT losing 90% of the Hispanic vote for the future. Most likely impossible.
3). Maintain / extend SOME sort of tax relief for those of us that are or were in the low 5 figures and are fighting a losing battle paying the freight on the massive growth of government.
4). Struggling to have SOME sort of military capability without busting the budget. Try to prevent us from falling to the point where we were incapable of telling Mexico " Build the damn wall -- OR ELSE!"
It is easy to assert that they have done a TERRIBLE job of all of these -- however, the Democrat strategy contrast is rather amazing:
1). Unlimited spending at increasing rates on existing programs with over $100 T in unfunded liability while adding new programs with abandon (BOcare) with no plan at all on paying for any of it or controlled the deficit spending. They continue to give drunken sailors a bad name!
2). Open borders for all -- adding Muslims to the list including terrorists if possible. "Win/Win" -- more Democrat voters, more strain on system, more violence -- increases chances for more totalitarian crackdown! Being a Democrat has to be FUN!
3). Tax the absolute crap out of anyone making over say "$75K", hammer any entrepreneur / corporation as hard as they can! Get business to close or leave! The more people dependent on government and not working the BETTER! Class warfare is a WINNER for D -- fan the flames!
4). Make the military a social project -- more women, more gays, get busy on transgender in the military. Lose as ignominiously as possible in as many theaters as possible! Use the military to de-stabilize stable countries like Libya and hand them over to terrorists. Pull the military out of Iraq and hand that over to the terrorists. Screw up Syria and let that become a terrorist stronghold. Capitulate to Iran, Russia, China and ISIS -- make certain America is viewed as completely powerless! Today N Korea said they were going to nuke both the US and S Korea. Everyone loves the scent of BO (at least BO burning).
The new strategy soon proved a total and utter failure. George W. Bush’s tax cuts for high earners expired in 2013, and Republicans could not renew them. The drive to cut the deficit ended in budget sequestration, whose harshest effect fell on the military. The Gang of Eight deal never came to a vote in the House. All the while, Republicans’ approval ratings slipped and slid. Instead of holding on to their base and adding Hispanics, Republicans alienated their base in return for no gains at all. By mid-2015, a majority of self-identified Republicans disapproved of their party’s congressional leadership—an intensity of disapproval never seen by the Republican majority of the 1990s nor by Democrats during their time in the majority after the 2006 midterm elections.
I think there is plenty to be angry about relative to the Republican establishment -- however, we are to some degree complaining about the few people at least ATTEMPTING to do some bailing while the Titanic of the US goes under with Democrats drinking, smoking weed, whooping it up and using the lifeboats for campfires on the tilting deck.
When Trump first erupted into the Republican race in June, he did so with a message of grim pessimism. “We got $18 trillion in debt. We got nothing but problems … We’re dying. We’re dying. We need money … We have losers. We have people that don’t have it. We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain … The American dream is dead.”
That message did not resonate with those who’d ridden the S&P 500 from less than 900 in 2009 to more than 2,000 in 2015.
Remember, this is a lefty magazine -- printing a bunch of money and having the stock market go up and calling it "BO success" makes sense to these guys. It really isn't too surprising it does NOT make sense to over half of the Republican party, and at least SHOULD NOT indicate success to even more of the Democrat party. If Trump becomes the nominee, the BIG QUESTION is if he is going to be able to get at least the white Democrats to look at the "are you better off?" question like Reagan did.
**IF** he was able to pull that off -- and it SHOULD be possible, since it is CLEARLY true that the "bottom 80%" of the US population has done terribly under BO, he could win. If that is a "good thing" and if he can accomplish anything to keep the US Titanic from the long fast trip to the bottom is highly questionable -- Can anyone???
Trump promised to protect these voters’ pensions from their own party’s austerity. “We’ve got Social Security that’s going to be destroyed if somebody like me doesn’t bring money into the country. All these other people want to cut the hell out of it. I’m not going to cut it at all; I’m going to bring money in, and we’re going to save it.”
The two biggest holes in the side of our ship are unfunded liabilities and the inability of the economy to grow. Can one be fixed without fixing the other? My personal belief is that W gave us our best chance to stay afloat in '05 and we blew it. We are going to go under -- the question now is "how far".
BUT, I do tend to be something of a pessimist -- the BEST thing going for Trump is OPTIMISM, and his ability to engender that in millions of people who are actually workers that WANT TO WORK! It is similar to Reagan, but Trump is no Reagan and our situation is MUCH more dire than it was in 1980. To have any hope of rebirth now we likely have to go through some cross between the '82 recession, the sick 70's, the Great Recession and the Great Depression!
Triple digit inflation? Years of deflation? Stock market "2,000"? No FICA payments to anyone with an income over "$15K"? I don't know how bad it is likely to get, but any of those would be better than "total collapse".
The linked article ends with a bunch of bogus "options" for Republicans to remain "viable" in the way they were before Reagan -- a perpetual minority party that provided the fiction that America was not ruled by a single party. The Atlantic finds that a great option -- but then, they still think we have an operational country, while the bottom 50% knows that what we have is a rapidly sinking ship with a lot of booze, weed and people shooting themselves in their cabins.
Remember, the Republican Party presided over the Civil War that was ANYTHING but "civil" -- 600,000 dead in a country with about 1/10th of the population we have today! In 1964, the Republicans lost the presidential election by over 20%, the Democrats had 68 Senators and a wide margin in the House.
If there is a small hope for saving America, most likely SOMEBODY has to take MAJOR, costly and risky action! Reading through articles like this shows that the "establishment" on neither left or right has nary a clue of the situation.
For all they are maligned, I find the Trump voters to have a lot more sense than the establishments of either party. They at LEAST understand there is a CRITICAL problem -- they may have the wrong approach to dealing with it, but SOME approach other than "business as usual" is certainly required!
This rather long intensely selfish article might be an appropriate parable for the elite of our lost age. It opens with dissolution of family, depression, anxiety, but passes through the "Satanic Rapture" that nothing has meaning save sensual pleasure, breaking of taboos, and "irrational exuberance". Ah, the pleasures of leaving behind the awful "irrationality of God" for the "irrationality of self". Or perhaps the ultimate Satanic rationality of denying the existence of all -- there is no creation, no self, only illusion as in the Buddhist philosophy.
I enjoy the vanity of the atheistic -- unburdened with the sense that they might have an audience infinitely more aware and existing more "solidly" as the pure spirit and source of all than the Buddha ever conceived in losing his soul to dissolution, they wax excessive about all sorts of details, nearly always focused on lost souls like themselves. When one is focused on something of supposedly cosmic import, need "gender-bending" be involved?
But it must, it must! (apologies to "Blazing Saddles") The perversion of the sexual is at the core of the Satanic impulse -- a place where the inversion of the male and the female and Gods created sexuality can be perverted in a myriad of easy ways, sometimes even pleasurable for a short season.
Reproduction -- one of the low but necessary functions of the fallen physical world, barely above respiration, consumption, defecation, etc, torn from it's intended purpose and trumpted as "freedom" -- from order at least, but blissfully unaware of service to chaos. Certainly we die when respiration or reproduction are prevented -- rather quickly in the case of respiration, in a couple of largely missing generations as we are finding in the west with reproduction.
I did have another insight here. We are told in these times of few "truths" beyond "Climate Change" being certain and settled, that sexual preference (unlike gender) is fixed very early in life. In fact, it is already illegal in some states to even ATTEMPT to get a person to change their sexual preference from being gay to heterosexual. If the left has their way, it will be illegal nationally. While the left has extreme aversion to laws acting in the direction of nature to perversion, it is critical to get as many laws as possible operating to prevent the move from perversion to nature!
You see, if you are gay, THEN your "orientation is fixed" -- but if you are heterosexual, it is HIGHLY likely that you are actually at least bi, or maybe gay. "Nature" only made non-adaptive sexuality fixed. Non-adaptive sexuality can be changed at any point in life just like gender! Isn't that special?
See, at age 50, this former heterosexual spontaneously converted to being bi -- with no therapy at all (although I'm certain that such therapy is TOTALLY legal, likely encouraged, and probably required to be covered under BOcare!) -- if she had been homosexual, there may need to be an investigation to find out what horror could have instigated a shift to heterosexuality!
They were adventures with both women and men. In my period of crisis I had discovered that I could have deep, sustaining friendships with women, as well as romance. I had been wrong about that part of my identity, too.
It's a "secular miracle"! It's enough to make a person "leap for irrational exuberant joy"! Does this woman really think there is anything new under the sun here? I suppose the "new" part is that if she and folks like her have their way, my ability to write such sacrilege as this will be declared "illegal" just like the idea that sexual preference (or at least the perversion of it) is FAR more a "choice" than a "characteristic".
See how much better that is than the church making laws and banning texts?
The saddest part of all of this is that if you are a person of intelligence and education with connections -- who knows what kind of support she had from her ex husband and kids, as well as her brother ... "Blake, an art historian who knows Italian (and French, German, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon), and got him to translate for me", on top of meeting the man that she married in that last paragraph, who was one of the founders of Pixar.
See, this woman is part of the "1%" -- or certainly the "5 or 10%" ... she has connections in major universities and corporations, lots of education. She can live the life of a dissolute bohemian and not end up as one of the statistics of addiction, mental illness and suicide like vast swaths of white middle America. Her "adventurous journey" can be proudly chronicled in the Atlantic rather than on the obit page of nowhere flyover country!
In this world, the average schmo -- the "bitter clingers" REALLY needed those Bibles, patriotism, families, communities, jobs and stability to stay alive at all, let alone have a "good life", but those have all been flushed down the toilet of post modern deconstructionist tripe. "Without vision, the people perish" -- but without any meaning or structure at all, they die horrible lonely deaths, often at their own hands.
"You shall do no injustice in judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly."
The Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
In order to understand "Equal Protection", you need to also look at the 5th Amendment. The Magna Carta, clause 39 stated it:
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
The 5th amendment merely says:
Nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
If the US was to have remained a Constitutional Republic, ruled by laws rather than men, people that voted should all be very aware of this "decent of law". They would at least understand what is behind the 23 Lawgivers around the chamber of the US House of Representatives in our capitol.
The judgement of all humans is corrupt, but we can look back through history to the Bible and see that the temptation is to judge unfairly, differently for "the poor or the great". Corruption is corruption, IN EITHER DIRECTION!
One of the spiritual rules of the universe is that when there is an inversion of meaning -- left becomes right, good becomes evil, evil becomes good, male becomes female and female becomes male, then you see the hand of Satan operating directly before your face. Let those that have eyes SEE!
The "Progressive Income Tax" in the US -- along with "Affirmative Action" and other such laws are examples of inversion! They EXPLICITLY celebrate the corruption of judgement as being a "good", when it is declared directly in the Bible as an EVIL. The corruption of judgement destroys and invalidates law. Without law, there is no civilization except that based on raw power and coercion.
The root of the end of America was the abandonment of God -- the increasing evidence of Satanic inversion is simply the proof of the fact that God's judgement is certain and as Reagan said:
A few weeks ago, after hearing the term on NPR a few hundred times, I realized that my gender, and the gender of everyone I know had changed. We are no longer "Male and Female" as God created us, but those of us whose brains match our gonads are "Cisgender", often abbreviated "Cis". NPR uses the term pretty much all the time now.
I've commented in many posts that the control of language is one of the primary mechanisms of totalitarianism -- George Orwell in 1984 and Animal Farm is both a chilling and entertaining introduction to understanding this. Changing the meaning of words and creating and controlling categories destroys the ability of the masses to discuss what is happening.
They know something is wrong, but they can't "put it into words". They can't do that because the old words that would have let them communicate are no longer used, or in some cases not even "allowed", while the new or re-used words have changed the meanings of even the most basic things -- man, woman, marriage, family, truth, good, bad, war, peace, etc.
Avery Jackson is a 7-year-old transgender girl and she is blowing the Internet away with her amazing story of transition. The Next Family is so impressed with Avery Jackson’s spunk and courage and all that her parents have done in support of Avery’s transition that we just have to share with you 10 reasons why we love Avery and the Jackson Family.
Up until a few years ago, when your little Granddaughter or girl said "Mommy, why can't I be a boy?", or "I want to be a boy". It was cause for a little smile and a discussion about how both little boys and girls are special and how glad we are that God gave us a little girl!". Knowing that there may well be a "tomboy phase" to follow, or even that she may become an astronaut (oops ... well, maybe if she lived in Russia or China!).
I've heard coverage of the "important new issue" of "transgender" children on MPR a few times. They are still "discussing" how mandatory it needs to be, but it is clear that if a little girl of boy makes their thoughts of possibly preferring the opposite gender known to school authorities, it is time for some SERIOUS thought! When a "liberal" has an idea that they believe to be "good", it is only a short step to it being "mandatory and paid for by the state!".
When I tell you that the destruction of civilization will leave us with NOTHING I sometimes realize that I can't come even close to imagining the level of depravity that consumes Satan and his followers. He seeks to utterly destroy ALL of creation!! Even the term "meaning" becomes dissolved into chaotic gibberish.
As write away on my fiction, I become absorbed in the idea that creation might include infinite timelines -- those closer to the will of God being closer to Heaven, and those farther away from his will closer to Hell. Yes, it is fiction as far as I know, but sometimes I can't imagine how God has allowed evil to corrupt what we generally believe to be the single history of creation to this extent!
We are ALL very aware that modern life in America is COARSE, profane, disconnected, uncivil. As I've said before, I never even figured out what "gay" was prior to college. I certainly knew what an erection was, but I could not even imagine that there would be constant commercials on TV doing the "in the event of ...". I'm so thankful I got to grow up in that world!
At a male outing one time watching football, a buddy remarked "4 hours? Hell, I'd drive over and show that one to my neighbor!" ... A certain amount of coarseness was always to be expected in male culture, it has just become completely pervasive. So while we are at it, as a public service, if you ever need to go into the doctor for the dreaded 4 hour wood, this is what they show you ...
The linked article is Peggy Noonan talking about the elites and the "unprotected". Her theory is:
There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.
The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created. Again, they make public policy and have for some time.
I'd argue that the ONLY "protected" are those connected to government and the VERY rich. The current assumption is that "government is too big to fail", so any sort of teacher, city, county, state, federal, etc worker that has a government inflation adjusted pension plus great lifetime medical can feel "protected".
As I've commented before, I really don't know where exactly your wealth has to be in order to see yourself as "protected" outside of the previous paragraph -- for me it would be AT LEAST 10's of millions of dollars. I find prospects for high inflation likely, but even at this moment, it is hard to get much over 1% for cash, and as I've blogged on, you may soon have to PAY to stash cash! Anyone who thinks that a "broad based portfolio of stock and bond index funds" is "secure" is delusional. It could EASILY drop 50% or much more in the next five to ten years if not much sooner!
Certainly, vast swaths of America ARE delusional -- they actually do believe that "inflation / markets / interest / medical costs / etc" will follow "some reasonable model" that they have in their mind. This in a country with $19T in debt, $120T in unfunded liabilities, negative growth, uncontrolled borders and rapidly shrinking workforce participation.
Peggy also discusses "immigration" ...
In wise governments the top is attentive to the realities of the lives of normal people, and careful about their anxieties. That’s more or less how America used to be. There didn’t seem to be so much distance between the top and the bottom.
Now is seems the attitude of the top half is: You’re on your own. Get with the program, little racist.
Ah, the "bitter clingers". Here in MN, our own heavily medicated governor has declared that he wants anyone who doesn't want vast numbers of immigrants -- Muslims or whatever, to "leave"! Because see, MN has no workers left since birth control, abortion and gay "marriage" have been so "successful", so our future depends on it! Destroying America was actually simple for the left -- they just replaced the population!
The Republican establishment has pretty much decided that it is way too late to save America from a total change in racial demographics, they agree with the Democrats -- Republicans need to "get with the program" or they are GONE!
But perhaps they forgot about the coarse, profane, disconnected and uncivil nation they have wrought. If the vast majority of the white voters that are apolitical, or "blue dog" Democrats, the "Tea Party" Republicans who have had it with the "establishment" and even a significant number of blacks, who often don't have a lot of love for hispanics, along with no doubt a good percentage of even successful hispanics who see the continuing uncontrolled wave from Mexico as a threat to the lives they have built here, get riled up and behind Trump, then ????
The genius of Jimmy Carter was to understand that after Johnson and Nixon, what the country wanted in a president was someone who taught Sunday school. The genius of Trump is to understand that after the unhappy Bush presidency and the divisiveness of Obama, a large plurality of Americans wants someone who will smash up the existing order—the details of how are not important.
In coarse reality TV, post stained blue dress, lets talk about gay sex, sex change and four hour erections america, it may be most important to the "mass electorate" that our next president match the culture that has been wrought -- and that they CERTAINLY have nothing to do with Sunday school!
The country the Trump voters knew is GONE and they don't recognize the one they are in. The people that have been telling them what to think for the last few decades while they took their religion, their decency, their values, their jobs, their pensions, their kids and even a remote sense that they lived in a country with any backbone or future of late. They have nothing at all to lose -- they are killing themselves after one fashion or another in increasing epidemic proportions.
In a country with no morals, no standards and a blatant pounding coarseness is not Trump the most perfect reflection of "unprotected America" in the same way as Hillary is the perfect reflexion of "protected America" .... old, ugly, entitled, dismissive, criminal, false, depressing.
Anyone that cares already knows what BO thinks about "traditions", "honor", "respect" and all that "stupid stuff". Whatever he "says" -- and how could ANYONE care what the incontinent gasbag "says" any more, need only to look at his ACTIONS to realize the truth of what I've been saying since 2008.
He wrote it in his book for goodness sakes!!!!!!
The reaction to BO is precisely TRUMP! Will Trump fix anything? Most likely not -- in fact, he will most likely make it worse, but once once people are completely angry, they "just want revenge". Maybe stupid, maybe destructive, maybe even terminal, but after a certain point, it just doesn't matter.
As I've wrote more than a few times, "Let It Burn" being one that springs to mind, after a certain point, one needs to accept the inevitable!
BO doesn't give a RATS ASS for "civility", "decency", "statesmanship", or "being president" -- he is and always has been in it to "destroy the colonial powers" -- and pick up as much as he can for himself while he is doing it.
The saddest part is that we live in an area of N America where well over 50% of the population doesn't care enough to know, and if they DID fully know, their biggest concern would still align with BO pretty well -- What's in it for them!!!
As the left drives the nation deeper and deeper into the abyss, even THEY miss the combatants of times past, in this case, George W Bush, Eisenhower can amazingly, even the embodiment of evil, Karl Rove!
As the ever excreble EJ Dionne puts it here:
"I had a twinge of nostalgia watching George W. Bush campaign for his little brother in South Carolina Monday night."
Ah yes, "civility". Prior to W, no president had been treated as badly as longly by the MSM. Dionne now finds Trump calling people "liars" to be unseemly -- when W was in office it was the daily harangue from all points left!
But mostly, W’s cameo in the 2016 campaign served as a reminder that, not too long ago, conservative politics wasn’t so beastly. Bush, wading into the manure pile that is the 2016 Republican primary fight, was pleasant, civil and decent.
Being on the left means having no memory, because consistency is something that must be avoided at all costs. Pretty much any conservative of a decade or so ago seems worthy of praise at the latest level of constant cultural decline -- it's just that the left looks at it as "progress" day to day, except when they look across today's isle.
LBJ begets Nixon. Carter seemed like the worst things could become on the left, but then there is BO, who shows every sign of giving us Trump.
As we tumble down the abyss, even the lefties realize that things are getting worse -- but they can't see it in their own candidates, and find lawlessness, scandal, rank partisanship, etc from their own to be "refreshing" -- as long as it is the "conservative" ox that is gored.
At this late stage of decline, the funhouse mirrors start to even make the proprietors of the carnival, those of TP to feel a bit nauseous at times. Good preparation for that stale urine smell in the hallways of the grey cinder blocks of socialism. A strong stomach is required to stand in line with a hangover waiting for whatever the all powerful state has available today -- toilet paper? rot gut alcohol? maybe some stale bread or even some nether cut of meat.
In 10 years, we will certainly miss Trump. It's like any state moving moving toward socialism.
Somebody asks, "How are you doing?" ... Oh, pretty good. Worse than last year, but better than I'll be next year!
I may be more morose than normal for awhile. My father is in the hospital and it it is looking like prostate and bladder cancer. Lots of things will be uncertain, likely for a few weeks at least, and I will have more 2 hour road trips for my mind to ruminate, listen to some NPR and likely (a rarity for me) some talk radio.
In the natural way of things, most of us watch our parents age, decline and die. The specifics vary -- sometimes it is sudden, often there are "scares" before the end, sometimes it is a painful long goodbye with enough pain for them and empathetically for us, so it is relatively easy to say at the end that they have gone to a better place. As a parent myself, I certainly pray that "the natural way" holds relative to our boys.
Seeing the mortality of those that gave you physical life causes reflection on our own mortality -- for some of us, that has been pretty common anyway, but being with a parent that has been part of your life from the first second increases a lot of complex emotional content. We love to deny the reality of both decline and death, but by age 59, we see it in ourselves plainly as well.
When we share faith in Christ with the parent, the dearness of that faith is made more precious. We feel there is a greater purpose and meaning to the pain and struggle, and the fact that we are all here for "but a little while" is made plain. Yet another thing that really tends to not sink in until 50 or so at least.
As I listen to the news and catch a few glimpses of the political and national landscape it is hard to not feel a parallel.
Last year I finished the last book in the Churchill trilogy and in so doing I had a front row seat for how the previous dominant world power went from it's zenith to being "one of the top 10 countries". It's decline and death as world leader was eased by the fact that it's offspring, the United States was in it's prime and took of the mantle in a bi-polar world to battle the collectivist enemy in the form of the USSR with many of the same philosophical values as Mother England.
February last, I finished Augustine "City of God" . While the blog I did on it was theologically focused, the book after the fall of the secular Roman Empire in transition to the period where the Catholic Church would be the overarching institution until the Reformation, which we will celebrate the 500th anniversary of next year.
Since 2008, I've been writing about the specific BO malignancy, but the end of the US really got it's start in at the same time the pathogen entered England. Call it socialism, collectivism, liberalism, progressivism, communism, leveling, or whatever, but it's purpose is antithetical to God and freedom. Freedom and equality of result (though not OPPORTUNITY) are completely oppositional concepts.
Equality of result is completely unnatural and can only be imposed by greater and greater application of power, thus reducing liberty. Science shows us that both the physical and the biological universe operate on DIFFERENCE and COMPETITION ... "all things being equal" is death. When your body temperature equalizes with the ambient environment, you are DEAD.
The leveling force is the death force. Evil.
The force of creation, growth, difference, uniqueness, liberty is the force of God -- GOOD.
To those that have Faith, such is so completely obvious that it seems unbelievable any would support the path to known destruction. While "greed" is certainly a sin, it doesn't appear directly in the Ten Commandments, where Envy (covetousness) is quite clear. God gives us all the same OPPORTUNITY for salvation, but Christians know for certain that not all will have the same RESULT of Eternal Life with God.
The Bible talks of different gifts and order in the Church:
1 Corinthians 12:27-31
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way.
Science tells us that our solar system could not support life without the very unequal sized gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, as they suck up the debris that would create too many impacts for Earth to support life. Without the tides caused by the moon, evolutionists would tell us that life could not have "sprung up". Competition and DIVERSITY as in REAL diversity with A LOT of "difference of outcome" is the cornerstone of evolution -- the dogma of the very same "socialists, levelers, "progressives", etc" that tell us that everyone in a country should have "equality of OUTCOME"!
As we and those we love, age, we are forced to face the reality of life passing and death coming. As a Christian, we are "part of something larger" -- the body of Christ, which is an eternal body.
For a lot of my life, the nation was also "something larger" that it was a blessing to be a part of. It looked like that might end in the late 1970's, but then we revived under Reagan. Now it looks MUCH darker than it did then.
A nation doesn't have to decline and die on a specific schedule like a person, but if it ignores God and reality, it dies as well.
Reagan put it best ... "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, we will be one nation gone under"!
Marriage is a giant problem for the left since it is adaptive -- meaning "it works" to create better health, greater happiness, better outcomes for children, better societies and communities, and yes, higher incomes and wealth. I've covered this in more detail before.
The left doesn't much like to talk about these facts because their idea is that people have no responsibility for outcomes in their lives and the job of government is to randomize incentives and disincentives so people end up in the same economic state no matter what choices they make.
Naturally, like all ideas of the left, reality continues to cause them problems. It turns out that when it comes to marriage, once you have created a whole bunch of highly educated career women, they have a nasty tendency to marry some guy that is similar to them in education and income! Who could have imagined such a thing! They call this phenomenon "Assortive Marriage"
The numbers show that assortative mating really matters. One studyindicated that combined family decisions on assortative mating, divorce and female labor supply accounted for about one-third of the increase in income inequality from 1960 to 2005. That result is from the economist Jeremy Greenwood, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and other co-authors.
This is startling news to "liberals". It "creates inequality", DAMN!
They don't indicate what they want to try to DO about this ... for fairly obvious reasons. Arranged marriages maybe? 100% tax rate on one partner working over a certain income level? Since they WANT higher income women, perhaps they will declare that the husband of a woman that makes over say "$50 or $100K" can't work -- or just gets taxed at 100%?
No doubt their fertile minds are hard at work to make all equally miserable!
The linked article is worth reading ... yes, the middle class is shrinking, BUT it is shrinking because people are BOTH falling and rising! The bottom grew from 25 to 29% since 1971, the top grew from 14 to 21% ... so 4 points for poverty, 7 points for wealth!
We should also note that the lower middle and upper middle stayed basically constant -- so all the "middle flight" was to the extremes.
We are heading toward a classic U shaped curve -- the opposite of "the standard curve", or the "bell shaped curve" -- the "normal distribution". In the U-curve the action is at the extremes, the UNnatural curve.
I did a LITTLE research on it, and ran into Francis Galton, an interesting guy who came up with a machine that would show the normal distribution, but also came up with one of the first U shaped curves relative to "consumption" ... "wasting away", normally from cancer, but they didn't know what in those days.
One of the other references referred to the U shaped curve as "the hard math class curve" -- the one where the good mathematicians excel of course, but one that is advanced enough that the vast majority of people know not to get in the class, so the "middle" bows out -- only the foolish, those with inflated opinions of themselves, etc also enter and fail miserably. Thus the "U".
Nobody really "knows" why this is happening ... the article just focuses on the good news that more people are rising than falling, but "nature" would expect a BELL with tails at the ends and nearly 70% clustered in the middle, with tails on either end dividing the rest. Both "poor" and "rich" would hold 2.27% each, with lower middle and upper middle holding 13.59% each.
My reasoning as to possible reasons is the following:
Technology is leverage. Those that are able to use it excel, those who do not tend to fall -- a long way.
Technology allows "mass everything" ... those that win, win A LOT, those that don't win fall to the bottom.
The vast increase in government means that the lower class is subsidized, but both the middle and upper classes are penalized. Our two IBM incomes made us "upper". We are now falling to being "middle to upper middle" ... we were HEAVILY penalized for being "upper", and the penalties continue and are rising as we fall -- huge deductibles on our insurance for higher cost insurance, and always taxes, taxes, taxes.
The previous point creates a "step function" ... if you can stay below the point at which you lose government benefits and start paying taxes, it is a big benefit. If you want to stay at the upper level, it takes A LOT of effort, income, risk taking, etc, **AND** you pay HUGE penalties for all that work! Because of the technology leverage, there are more people that CAN achieve that level, but it takes a toll, and after a certain length of time (the voice of experience speaking here), they just get tired of running the rat race and paying the penalties ... so they slide down the scale, PLUS government policy hastens their slide as it sucks away the assets / pension that they have built.
Given the previous two points, the vast majority of the population "wises up" ... "you can't fight city hall", let alone Uncle Sam! College doesn't pay, and even learning a trade means you have to get up and go to work every day. Father a couple kids out of wedlock, live with some single mother on welfare -- move around a bit. Tomcats do it, why not people? (covered here)
I could keep going, but the point is that unless we change the course of the nation, I'd expect this trend to continue and become a "backward J" with a large number of people on the low end and less and less on the high. One might call that "The Statist Curve" ... less and less people willing and able to take the risks, work hard enough, and pay the penalties required to support those at the bottom, and more and more than either burn out, get old, see that both the "deck" and the sanctions of their nation are stacked against moving up the income ladder.
The UNnatural curve is a sign that nature is not taking it's course -- the average are not excelling to the best of their ability while being led (and provided workplaces) by the few able to achieve at the very high level, with only a small set (the same as the upper set) falling to the bottom unable to cope with the environment. For the moment we are moving slightly toward a "J-shape" since more have moved to the top since '71, but 29% at bottom and 21% at top tells me that this hopeful trend will not likely continue. I predict the bottom is going to grow more and the top will slow down.
Were trends to continue with more rising than falling, perhaps a U-shaped curve could continue, but it seems unlikely to me. I suspect that the left is fine with a slightly tilted U (more at the bottom) as we have now, or even the reverse J with LOTS at the bottom voting for "The Party", and a tiny minority at the top "happily" paying the freight for all the "free stuff".
Interesting none the less ... not the kind of info you see much of in "The Party" controlled media!
