LIVING CONNECTIONS

 This morning seems to be a time, for me, of connections revealed.
First, thinking again of Jesus's words as to what being 'the greatest' requires: 'If any of you will be the greatest, you must become the servants of all."
Second, my mind ricochets back to the story of the Fall. What was the first couple's original sin?
Wanting to be 'like God'. Perhaps a more accurate rendition might be wanting to be like how they imagined God Is? Think about this, carefully.
In any case, they wanted to take on something for which they were by no means ready. We still aren't, but  with God's help we cope with it. But too few of us ask God's help with this; we act as if we are already gods when the evidence is all around us about how godlike we ain't. And the first sign of this is our asking Lenin's question: Kto-Kogo? Who can do what to whom, we ask, usually with a view toward being one of those who can get away with murder or, more benignly, not being one who can be harmed with impunity. Too many of my own pale cast are aggrieved at not being among those who can get away with murder. As if their masculinity depends on them being able to go out and murder anyone of darker skin tone, and/or a different faith, whenever they're having a bad day!
More and more, it looks to me as if our Original Sin may well be wanting to think ourselves better than (fill in the blank) as per LBJ's saying this to young Billy Don Moyers, as he still called himself then. LBJ's words are a bit altered here to cover a broader problem.
"If you can convince the lowest [white man] [Arab] he's better than the best [colored man] [Jew], he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you." And, conversely, when it becomes painfully clear that 'lower' groups can no longer be harassed or worse with impunity, there looks to be (almost?) nothing the former harassers won't do to be able to have such impunity back! Consider this carefully, along with this addition: those who seek equality, which usually includes real indigenes to a place, are willing to share. Colonists are exclusive; they never want to share power or wealth with other groups.
Those who seek to realize equality here on this continent are allies to indigenous peoples. And indigneous peoples are usually content with equality with others, unless those others seek to make themselves sole and exclusive masters. Which is how both Arabs in the Levant and peckerwoodies here want to be able to see themselves.
In the story of Cain and Abel, I believe the attitude with which Cain brought the fruits of his labor to the altar was (at least partly) as proof of how much more hard-working, and therefore how much better, he was than his brother. Which was, I suggest, why God was not pleased with Cain's offering. But like those who cling to seeing themselves better than others even to this very day, he didn't listen to God when God told him he needed to look within himself for the cause of God's displeasure. He dumped it all on Abel and consequently murdered his brother.
Anyone who has looked at a medieval chronicle may have been struck to the degree that tillers of the soil look down on pastoral peoples as lazy and less worthy than they. Cain tilled the ground; Abel was a herdsman. Need I write more?
Still, today, those who feel themselves immiserated and thereby (?) ennobled by their Hard Work and (especially?) their Hard-Earned money feel they have a right to look down on others who seek more joy in their lives. Mind you, preparation for joy can be, and usually is, hard work too, but work of a different kind. There's work that stretches the mind, heart and soul by at least semi-compelling us to care more for other living creatures and there's work which scrunches our minds and hearts. Or, maybe, it's largely how we see and do the work in front of us.
When we are brought face to face with the barbarities of 'our own people' and the evidence is pretty incontrovertible, we have work to do. Being ashamed of our paleness of skin, eyes or hair or of what our ancestors have done, does nobody any good. The question then becomes: how do we realize equality and socialize and expand democracy? We are all equally corruptible; we need to keep private power on short leash and a ceiling for how big we allow individual and family fortunes to become.
Part of this may yet be putting bullies down by hard means; let's hope they don't compel us to shoot back more effectively, but let's be ready for that possibility.

SERIOUS MALEDICTA

 I have just absorbed a shocking piece of news.
On the Saturday when the last presidential election was called, my wife and I stopped at a package store where we bought wines and beers at the time. The store had both a TV and a music-player in it. The song being played was Give Peace A Chance. Faux News was on the TV set calling the election for Biden. My wife expressed the hope that, now the election was decided, that there'd be some peace. The AMH (adult male hominid; I won't call him a man) behind the counter lethally threatened the new president-elect if he made any move to 'take guns away'.
Apropos of this, a close friend of ours just informed us that to even indicate a desire for peace marks a person as a Democrat hereabouts! Which means that a lot of people are lusting for the chance to shed the blood of others whom they hate, mostly with no cause at all except someone being different and, usually, more civilized and cultured, than they are! Their hatred is the fruit of fear cultivated by those standing to profit by it and of envy commonly held by these knuckle-draggers and their inciters against those who are, to put it plainly, both more humane and more human than they are, maybe more so than they will ever be!!
If they expect to shed the blood of such others, let me recall to y'all what happened with another band at least as ignorantly arrogant: The Marquis of Newcastle's 'white coats' were one of three armies of King Charles I during the English Civil War. They were effectively destroyed at the battle of Marston Moor. They had boasted that they would dye their coats red with their enemies' blood. Those coats were indeed reddened--but the blood was their own. As Shaw wrote: "If [people] will not learn until their lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, preferably their own."
I could not agree more. So, here follow the title features of this particular post:
May those who lust to shed the blood of their fellow citizens out of misplaced fear and/or wicked envy see that desire recoil upon themselves and their own even to the extent of breaking even their hearts of solid stone!
May those who desire power in their hands only see that desire recoil until they are left utterly without such power, political, economic and financial!!
May those who seek to feudalize our economy through inequality be compelled to do things they utterly detest doing for their next meal!!
May those who can think of nothing but fattening their already obscenely obese wallets or purses be left in the end with only small change and no power to stop urgently needed change in this country or on this planet!!
May those determined to die on the 'Whites Only' hill be granted that desire, but not before they see a really multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faiths democracy beginning to flourish in this land!! And may you live to hear from young native, Latino, and African-American men, "We don't want your daughters. Go and inbreed as you like until you die out and leave the earth a better place."
And may all ye who hoist black flags end up begging those who know very well how merciless you longed to be for that same mercy! May your guts run when that happens and all who smell you mock you with 'DOOOOOky boy/girl!"
I feel a heaviness after pronouncing such maledicta, so I will include the hope that all those on whom I have lain these words repent and turn to the God Who bids us to welcome and make room for the stranger and the outsiders, Who bids us to come and reason together with Him while reminding us that, thankfully, His ways are not our ways and Who would have us listen to each other.
Too long have we been encouraged to listen to the Trumpolaters who still want to kill us all; let them now hear us as a sign of their repentance! And bring out those who know hermeneutics!
Holy Writ informs us that anger 'rests in the bosom of fools'. Well, if the ammosexuals among us are governed by anger rising from fear and envy as opposed to those of us angry at the shredding of our common society, of democracy and of our Constitution (which does not make whites superior; at least when it's uncontorted), who then are the fools? Doesn't fear of the unknown and envy of those more civilized give rise to the anger of fools? I leave it to y'all, Gentle Readers, to decide that for yourselves.
To our side, I say: be ready for anything. That means exactly what it says. Anything, including full-scale violence from the ammosexuals and their minions.

BETWEEN TWO TERRORS?

I hope not. More than almost anything in my life, I hope not.
Which two terrors do I mean? Let's start with the earliest: the terror that the Inquisition fastened onto Spain in the later 1500s right into the 1600s. That was terror from the top down which claimed to be in search of secret Muslims and Jews with a very occasional Protestant stumbled over.
When the Inquisition came for somebody, it was almost always at night. And once the black robes had their intended victim, they would stop their mouths with something called an 'iron pear' or something like it so they could not cry out. I don't know if any of the Inquisition's victims were ever seen alive again but I'm not putting any money on that possibility. The effect of that terror on all the people was such as to stop any sharing and discussion of religion and spirituality for generations. I can see a connection between the Inquisition and the odious Fascist motto from the Spanish Civil War of 'Abajo la intellgencia! Viva la muerte! (Down with intelligence! Long live death!). Not to mention a connection between both and the current cavernous emptiness of too many Spanish churches!
I can see a day coming when the counterfeit 'Christians' of the Right try to enforce such terror on the rest of us. They who talk of 'the sin of empathy'. Yes, you read that only too rightly! Texas seems to be pointing and maybe paving the way for just such a terror on most of us and the Taney Court 2.0 will surely look the other way!
I devoutly hope I am wrong in this, but as I write I can see a time coming when we may have to use a Terror similar not to what I just outlined but to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror in order to save, renew and multi-racialize democracy and give equity a fighting chance.
Thankfully, it is still true that legal remedies are not yet exhausted. I'm terrifyingly unsure to how close we might be to that point, but we're not there yet. I'll leave it to those better informed than I to tell the rest of us how close we might be to there.
But one thing history should teach us about any and all fascists, whatever moves and informs them: they do not stop until they either have what they want or the decent people have lain enough of them low in the dust! If anyone can tell me and my readers anything which gainsays this, or suggests that today's right-wingers, whether they're labelled 'Christianist', 'Islamist', or anything else, are somehow not anti-democratic and, thus, FASCIST, I for one am all too ready to listen!!
But if they are fascists and, thus, can only be stopped by hot lead and cold steel, it's time for us to take advantage of states like Texas who make it so much easier to buy firearms and ammunition. It's time for us to buy weapons and ammo, form shooting clubs and/or 'militia' groups in order to learn how to use them, then hunker down for when they go over an irrevocable line. Maybe we should start with the nonviolent resistance some of us know and we all admire. The point of no return may be when they choose to mow down our people, cackling hatefully as they do so unhindered by any pigs in blue uniforms!
Once we win, who needs to visit Madame? All the Trumpolaters at all levels, for starters! All QAnon cultists! All the anchors of the right-wing Machine of Lies! All those politicians who have sold whatever passes for their souls to these devils! We must have laws protecting the right to vote and ensuring equal access to the ballot! The Electoral College must GO!! And we must have a Truth-in-Reporting law which will prevent anything like Faux News and worse from ever re-emerging! And the breaking of that law must be a felony of the highest degree!! More than that, I'm not yet sure about.
Again, I hope and literally pray that legal remedies will give us and our country what we need. I'm a palefaced Anglo-Saxon in my sixties and I'd much rather just live peacefully with my wife and our pets. I have no desire to be fighting a civil war in my old age, but if that's what we'll need to preserve and expand democracy and equity, make our country a truly multi-racial democracy, then that is how it will have to be.
So, fellow Democrats, liberals and progressives, let's take advantage of laws which make it easier to get lethal weapons than to vote. We may well need to only too soon.

NO BUSINESS DESPAIRING!

 "Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery."
Frederick Douglass said this. It is in his address telling a white American audience what a sham the Fourth was to the slaves. On this day, it strikes me with considerable force that he did not despair. Two years before, William Lloyd Garrison had despaired and had shrieked, "Up with the flag of disunion!!" Seven years later, John Brown also despaired of nonviolent ways to end slavery and organized, planned and executed the abortive raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry for which he, in turn, was executed.
I must confess that, much of yesterday (July 4) I was keeping company more with William and John rather than Frederick. In the wake of the latest decision by which the Taney Court 2.0 basically said 'STIFLE YOURSELVES' to the people they don't really want to see voting as they actually allowed dark money to stay that way, I was in something of a funk. Me. A straight pale male, Anglo-Saxon no less, with an unimpeachably English family name, albeit with no real money, in despair over my country's lurching retreat from the things which really do 'make it great' to whatever extent it may be considered so.
Then again, that's also what Garrison and Brown were. They both despaired. Douglass, who had been an actual victim of the unconscionable slave system, did not despair. Let's all chew on this for a few seconds, shall we?
I don't know what made Garrison and Brown abolitionists. I'm pretty sure that, for myself, I see the full measure of my own freedom as inextricably tied in with an equal measure of freedom for each and every one of my fellow citizens regardless of sex and orientation thereof, of skin color, creed or national origin. I can see that, although such rights are equal on paper, they are almost anything but equal in actual practice. And such a sight enrages me. This is an 'advantage' I do not want for myself or anyone else. I say only real loo-sers want to hold on to such unearned privilege. I hope I'm not posing as a White Savior despite my efforts against that sort of semi-to-unconscious manner.
But my main point is, if the actual victims of a wicked system do not despair of our country, what business have I, born with at least some privilege due to my pale skin, gonads outside the rest of me and my heterosexuality, with such self-indulgence as despair? No. I shall take up my cross again and march with the rest and continue to do whatever I can to make sure all of us can have at least a voice in our country's counsels and, meanwhile, give five to Roger Taney II (Roberts) and Gabi D'Annunzio (Alito). Onward, then. On with the struggle, in the name of all who did not despair even when they were the system's victims!

'PALESTINE' IS ON HISTORY'S WRONG SIDE

 

I was going to wait and see but such a grossly lying title of a post as ‘Be Human; Support Palestine’ tipped me over the edge!
I will start here with some fairly recent historical background.
1695: An Ottoman census shows Hebrew surnames still make up a majority of Jerusalem residents and a large chunk of what some still call ‘Judea’.
What happens next? Here it comes.
1834: A local uprising is put down in typical Ottoman fashion. I doubt whether you want the details of what that means. In any case, the land is so depopulated that the Ottomans offer free land to any Ottoman veteran who will come and settle in present-day Israel/Palestine, be they Turkish, Macedonian, Epirean, Egyptian or Bosnian.
1868: Mark Twain publishes Innocents Abroad and relates how sadly depopulated and dessicated the Holy Land was then. He has no reason to lie.
1882: Even before modern Zionism began, Jews start returning to the Land of Israel.
1894: Modern Zionism begins when Theodor Herzl, reporting from Paris for a Viennese newspaper, hears a mob yelling, “A mort les Juifs!” (Death to the Jews!) in the wake of the trumped-up conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason and his mind starts to mull over the ramifications.
Between 1900 and 1920 was when Jews started returning to their ancient land in a more organized fashion. They bought all the land on which they settled. Usually they paid twice "first with money and then with sweat and blood." They decided they would work the land themselves rather than be overseers. Still, they brought new life to a moribund land and, as they did, Arabs started coming in from neighboring areas.
In 1920, in the wake of World War I and the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the British were ‘given the mandate’ over, by agreement among the powers and between Prince Faisal and Chaim Weizmann, the area which was to be the Jewish National Home. Originally, it included the area now known as the Kingdom of Jordan.
However, Jew-hating elements in the British High Command found a way to frustrate this: they supported a Jew-hater from the powerful Husseini clan for Mufti of Jerusalem. Haj Amin el-Husseini had fought in the Ottoman army and saw the return of the Jews as the biggest obstacle to his quest for despotic power.
He also knew what ‘buttons’ to push to rouse the Arab population — much the same buttons as Southern politicians used to push to rouse up the peckerwoodies to vote for them. They’re doing it now, too.
Google and read a section of ‘dhimmi’ laws under Muslim rule and tell me how different it is (or, more likely, similar) to Jim Crow laws ans customs not only in the South, but throughout most of the country. Then google and read what LBJ said to a young Bill Moyers and reflect on the universality of the wicked joy of having someone to look down on!
So, what have we here so far? first, a land so largely denuded that the Ottomans had to offer free land to refill it. Second, it wasn’t refilled to much of an extent. Third, exiles returning with new technologies. Fourth, a clan who saw them as a threat to their power and whose head knew how to get the locals foaming by telling lies about the returnees meaning to simply turn the tables as opposed to crafting a bigger table for everyone in the land.
From 1920 to 1948, 100,000 more Arabs than Jews entered the Palestine Mandate. This was because the British pretty much let Arabs come and go as they pleased as opposed to the tight regulations they put on Jewish immigration.
The 1930s is where the ‘turn’ starts. Before 1940, nearly every Jewish community had its anti-Zionists and in some communities they were quite numerous. After 1945, they were gone — many murdered and gone up the chimneys. But when the Jews of Germany at first and then of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland sought refuge, no nation would take them. Repeat: no nation wanted more Jews.
This is something that no large number of Jews will ever forget — or forgive. Not for at least a thousand years. I for one say Jews are right to trust no one else with their safety and protection. And I do say the same as regards the native peoples and nations of the Americas and Oceania — that is, Australia and New Zealand. I also say the same regarding our own fellow citizens of African heritage. And had Rommel won at El Alamein and gone on to Palestine, El-Husseini would have had the extermination camps in the Dothan valley which he wanted to build and operate. So those who follow him are not as guiltless as they whine and wail; nowhere near the case!
There are many things in Israel of which I don’t approve, most of which have to do with racism of lighter-skinned people against darker-skinned. But most Jews and Arabs are the same olive shading. Besides, are we saying Jews should be more than human? Especially when we set the bar as low as many of us do for their Arab cousins? Read what brother Eldridge (Cleaver) had to say about Jews and Arabs after living in Algeria for seven years!
Let’s jump ahead to 2006, to the last real deal that Abbas killed between Israel and Fatah. Israel offered him 95% of what he asked for. And when Abbas told the then-Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (now the late king) about it, the prince threw up his hands and expostulated, “You actually turned this deal down?! That’s it! We can’t support you anymore; you’re on your own!!”
As Jewish life and culture points back to what some call Eretz Israel and that it’s a settled fact that Jewish genomes, including the Ashkenazic genome, are still at least 75% Levantine Semitic, I consider Jews as the oldest indigenous people to their land.
And arising from that, I have an invitation to make and a pair of questions to address to the howlers against these particular facts. The invitation arises from the first question, which is this: Do you think that indigeneity has an expiration date, or that it ‘wears off’ after a certain period of time? If you do, I invite you to take that interesting little notion either to any Native powwow or, say, a Maori luau and see what happens then!
Second question is this: If Israel is a ‘European colony’, then how is it that Jews returned thither from elsewhere in the Middle East consistently vote Likud or even further right instead of, say, for the Arab List? I’d really like to know.
Finally, I’d like to say that I applaud any and all sincere efforts to ‘weave’ peace between Jews and Arabs in the land ‘from the ground up’. I suspect the current government looks coldly on such attempts, in which I feel the government is making a serious mistake. Bibi’s been too close with Kachites and their like for way too long. All the more respect from me for those who seek to ‘weave’ real peace in the face of coldness and hostility from both the current Israeli government and the PA.
But too much of what I’ve lately read might as well have been ripped from the pages of the Protocols. So I must speak the truth now.

POLITICS FROM THE NECK DOWN

Some weeks ago, I observed how poor we liberals and progressives are at dealing with human irrationality. I further observed that fascists of any kind live and die by irrationality. They'll only deal with facts convenient to their bunk lines.
I now suggest that a, perhaps the, line of separation between the democratic left and what might be called the alt-left is in their respective attitudes toward human irrationality. The alt-left is rare now, much weaker than it was when I was in college, but it does still barely exist. We of the democratic left tend to treat irrational human nature as either one's own concern or, sometimes, as an inconvenience or weakness which needs transcending. The alt-left seems to me to have declared war on human irrationality, without realizing that 1) in believing that they've declared war on human irrationality, they are actually living by it and 2) the result of such 'wars' on human nature from the neck down tend to be very bloody indeed and 3) there is no going 'back to the Garden' and attempts to do so result only in bloodshed and more bloodshed. Neither alt-side grasps that last.
If we can gauge someone's politics by how they deal with human nature from the neck down, it is still also true that the political spectrum is a globe with a democratic Prime Meridian on one side of it with the democratic left and democratic right on either side. On the other side of the globe is the Autocracy Date Line with the alts back to back along it.
The alt-right is today's great danger to democracy as we all know. They're the ones who seek to grab their target followers by the heart and the gut and, if they could, have everyone headless at the same time. Now is the time that the democratic left and right need to join together and work out a way of grabbing the hearts and guts of those we need in order to preserve and extend democracy!
We of the democratic left have always been very good at engaging our actual and hopeful voters from the neck up; now we need to do the same below the neck. We cannot afford to ignore human irrationality in this time when it has an alarmingly good chance of swallowing us all up--human civilization, perhaps human existence and possibly many other animals and plants we cherish and/or know are instrumental to our own existence and flourishing.
First step is, we need to quit playing at being entirely rational beings ourselves. That's probably a big part of why people who, taking a largely above-the-neck view of their interests, ought to support us, don't. It's probably a large source of motivation for 'owning the libs'.
Tell more stories from our own growing up. I could tell plenty, for instance, about growing up in one of the few successfully racially (and economically) integrated neighborhoods in the whole country, never mind the city, and how it continues to shape my own personality and politics. Most of the MSNBC anchors seem to grasp this now. We need to share these histories with others and we probably need to keep hammering them until those who don't want to believe our truth have no choice but to know what we speak is the truth!
Above all, we need to engage our fellow-citizens by their hearts and guts as well as their heads. Maybe it's because the alt-left is at war with human irrationality that it's so much weaker than the alt-right. We may not like the conclusions to which this fact may lead us, but if we mean to be real liberals, progressives and small 'd' democrats, we need to face that fact and follow its ramifications. In any case, we need to engage and involve our fellow-citizens with both urgency and hope. The first because the jobs at hand needed doing yesterday, the second because without it, too many of us may succumb to despair's inertia. We can't afford that now either. Now we must rally and organize to save our country, our planet and to save and extend democracy.

HEY JOE, WHAT D'YA KNOW?

An innocent African-American motorist shot in the back of the head, execution-style. Straight from the Purges of the 1930s in the USSR. Not the first and, deplorably, not to be the last and we all know it!
One of our major parties making deliberate plans to steal the elections from here on in, rendering our democratic processes into total shams. Yes, I know some will say, they already are but I'll debate the current percentage of sham in those events as of now.
A tyrannical dictator once said, "It doesn't matter who actually votes; what matters is who counts the votes." And our current fascist party, aka the 'Republicans', is making sure only they count the votes henceforth.
These two themes tell me that the spirit of another Joe (aside from our president) is stalking our country. He was born Jozef Dzugashvili in Georgia. (Not our Georgia; the one in the Caucasus) His father was by no means sure his son was his and took his suspicions out on the boy viciously. When the boy was a man, he took up with revolutionaries. He found out he could be a successful power player. He is known to us as Joseph Stalin. The words cited above were said by him. His is the spirit that rules today's 'Republican' party.
And if we let their plots succeed, purges, repeated purges, is what we can expect. And we can expect pseudo-science such as Lysenko's to knock out real science. This means serious lurching towards and probably over the climate cliff! The purges will be against people of color, first those who have power and influence. Then against the rest of them. We can count on the Jews being among those groups purged most viciously. That is one thing tyrants always--repeat, always--do.
There will probably be purges against 'race-traitors' like me. When they come for me, I for one will do my damnedest to take at least one of the thugs down. What about you?
It may have to come to open civil war if we are to preserve and, yes, extend our democracy. We liberals and progressives aren't very good at fighting. Some of us have non-violence training, which will be all the more necessary if and as things worsen. I just wonder, will it be enough? I hope it will be, but I fear we had better get ready to shoot back when our fascist Stalinists start shooting. What will we do if, and when, our fascists establish oligarchic dictatorship under 'legal ' cover? Will we knuckle under, and then be taken and murdered in the successive purges sure to follow? Or will we see through the 'legal' cover, shout out a glorious 'NO!!' and get marching, with either nonviolent weapons or 'traditional' weapons?
I fervently hope and pray that it will be the latter.
If and when it is, as the group Yes sings in the song Roundabout, I'll be there with you--!!

FIGHT THE LIES!

 Knowing what I do of human nature, I should not expect this post to be popular.
Lies.
The whole right-wing noise machine and fascism now incipient here and flourishing in other countries is based on lies.
Sometimes those in the center or on the left get caught up in lies too, but there's a world of difference between getting temporarily caught up in lies and basing one's whole life upon them. Can I get an amen somewhere from someone?
Most of those on the Left (except those who have become Islamist stooges) and in the center at least try to discern truth and live by it. From my own experience, the most consistently reliable way to do this is through a relationship with God, or the Higher Power or whatever inadequate words language provides you prefer to use, through whatever figure you find most helpful. I happen to believe that is Yeshua HaMeshiach, better known as Jesus the Christ. But that's just me; I'm not here to proselytize you but just to give you an idea whence I come.
And since at least 1980 (and very likely well before that) too many of my fellow citizens have sought lies which they feel comfort them and reinforce that wonderful feeling of being superior to other beings with any number of legs from two to thousands (millipedes).
The late Eric Hoffer, one of my allltime favorite philosophers, wrote in his book Before The Sabbath, that he thought that America was the worst place for alibis to survive. Then again, he wrote that in 1975, when more Americans seemed interested in the truth. I shudder to think what he must feel now if he's looking down on us!
Now, we are faced with the need to fight an ongoing civil war against an ongoing attempted coup by the forces fed by lies and who project that unenviable human trait onto all of us. They are funded by a desperate fossil-fuel industry which knows itself to be a dinosaur and sees the meteor hurtling down towards them. Their message is spread by Faux News and heretical 'evangelicals' who preach more white male supremacy than anything from the Gospel and a nationalism overlaid with egregious and blasphemous heresy masquerading as 'Christian evangelism' but which is only James Crow, Esq. aka Jim Crow 2.0. The latest attempt by them to seize power and kill American democracy has just come in Georgia. It's been all over the news so, if you don't know about it yet, what the blank are you doing reading this?
Now and again, my wife weeps how she cannot stand to live in a country so eaten up with hatred (mostly white males hating women, people of color and LGBTQs) as ours sometimes seems to be. What infuriates me and makes me think of shaking my country's dust off my feet and, once out, turning and spitting over the border, is lies. Those who live by lies to the injury of others who, for whatever reason, can't do much about it by themselves and, thus, need to organize and educate themselves as such organizing proceeds so that they don't fall for lies spread by those who live by them. Such as the lie that more freedom for you means less freedom for me. That's only true if I value being able to put you down and stomp you into the ground. Otherwise, more freedom and/or security for you also means more freedom and/or security for me! This is something I understand to be a part of God's message: more for the lowly doesn't have to mean less for those high up--unless something in them values being able to look down their fine noses with sneers!
So, at least right here, right now, it's up to us. Will we look for the truth we need and test everything which claims to be true? Or will we cling to comforting lies such as that we're better than all others because our skins are paler? And that we earned everything we have without any help from anyone? Watch those two words, fellow citizens. They're quite a bit bigger than you may realize.
If you choose the truth, then you need to do whatever you can to ensure that everyone really does have an equal chance. An equal chance to vote, for starters. Don't sit still in the face of any attempts to make it harder for anyone to vote--students, poor people, people of color--than it is for those who are well-off and, usually, white. Make what the late lamented John Lewis called 'good trouble' and don't stop doing so until and unless ALL attempts to rig elections stop. And keep snooping to make sure the fascists are back under their rocks where they belong!

SLOW OR FAST, WHITENESS IS POISON!

 A pinched nerve, or a pain that feels like one, can make a person think. It can even be a catalyst for things coming together in some truly enlightening ways.
In my case, such a pain tied in with an interview with Dr. Jonathan Metzl, the author of Dying of Whiteness, which I read yesterday. I read the interview, not the book, although I probably should read that too.
Like the interviewer, Chauncey DeVega, whose work I highly admire, I have NO sympathy for those that cling to their 'whiteness'; even die for it. But Dr. Metzl said more than a few things that highlight certain facts. Rooted in irrationality, but facts nonetheless. We libs and progs seem to have difficulty in dealing with irrationalities; dealing with them and exploiting them for all they're worth has been and continues to be the hallmark of all fascists, here and elsewhere, and their fellow-travelers as well.
Anyhow, this morning I was lying beside my dear wife with something along my shoulder ridge that felt like a pinched nerve might feel, at least in my imagination. And for some reason, it occurred to me, isn't this how blacks and most other people of color feel in this country? Never really 'at ease' but in a degree of tension that can flare up at any time?
And then my mind returned to the interview with Dr. Metzl. One thing that I believe God asked me about that interview was, Don't you think poor whites feel the same way? Never really at ease, always afraid of being 'left behind'? Their trouble may not be as urgent as people of color, but isn't it there? I couldn't deny it. Poor whites may not have to fear for their lives when a boar in blue stops them the same way as people of color, but the unease is there.
That which I know as God is much likelier to ask questions than to command. And by such questions God leads me to the answers and the process engraves the answers on my heart, as the Book might put it.
In any case, both lower-class whites and just about all people of color share varying degrees of unease. For POCs, it includes fear of the thugs in blue murdering them for nothing at all. For lower-class whites such unease doesn't usually come to that. That's why the unease eats at them more slowly than with those of darker skin tones. Death by opioids rather being murdered by boars in blue. Or by suicide. A few downright alarming facts Dr. Metzl mentioned are: out of the 40,000 deaths by firearms yearly in our country, two thirds are suicides!  And eighty percent of those suicides are white men!!
No mistake about it; 'whiteness' is showing its lethality all the way around! People of color know it as a constant threat and an omnipresent boot on their backs; with palefaces it's a slow grind rather than a hard stomp but it looks as if the result is the same in the end!!
To enlarge on what I wrote before about our unease with irrationalities, we libs and progs need to get over that! We need to be able to grasp the irrationalities which are all too powerful in our place and time AND we need to remember that we can NOT get by with ignoring them! If we are to transcend poisonous ideas based on poisonous irrationalities we MUST know our enemies! Here, indeed, is a power and principality with which we must contend and which we, individually and collectively, must transcend if we are to live and grow! If we don't, young adults now living may see civilization crumble before their eyes!!
Also, remember that what Fascisti are really good at is twisting words and phrases the wrong ways. I suggest to my readers, by that they show whose children they have chosen to be--and it ain't God! Remember the 'original' twisting: Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1, NIV)
That second part. The original twisting. Remember that and also remember that the Greek word from which we derive 'diabolical' and all related words means to take a word out of its proper context and stick it where it does not belong! This is what all fascists and all who wish to justify their greed, envy and selfishness do! So be warned! We fight real powers of darkness, so pull no punches and don't be fooled by any crocodile tears from them!
Finally, (yeah, I hear the sighs of relief in the peanut gallery!) as I feel like I'm just capsulizing a very large subject, if anyone feels they've anything to add to this, please feel free to do so. That's why we have spaces for comments!

MORE PROMISE OR MORE PERIL?

 I write this as much to strengthen my own peace of mind and my resolution to fight on for the protection and extension of democracy as for anything, or anyone, else.
What I try to do with this post is to come to as accurate an ascertainment of the peril and promise of this present moment as I possibly can. And being who I am, I'll start with the perils.
1) 186 of our national legislators--143 in the House and 43 in the Senate--have basically given an affirmative nod to our homegrown Fascists to do whatever they will including murder and mayhem in the service of White Male Patriarchy. These false swearers have indicated their readiness to see democracy destroyed in this country and perhaps worldwide!
2) Many state GOP Parties seem to be in a Lunacy Race to see which one can pick up radio signals from space with their tinfoil helmets first or maybe to see who can get to Mars first by flapping their arms.
3) Wealth and income inequality on an almost feudal scale fuels this sort of insanity, be it racially and/or religiously based. And many of our 21st century dukes, earls, counts and barons quietly support these lunacies as their wealth and power silently grows greater and much more menacing to We The People and to the democracy which a majority of us still seek to preserve and extend.
4) The Democratic establishment and too many Democratic politicians still don't seem to understand how we need to STOP being nice-nice hall monitors and get bare-knuckle with the GOP over the consequences of their 'programs' and of the evil they do in letting even this pass simply because it's done mostly by white males! I could be wrong about this, though; time will tell.
5) I'm still bitterly ashamed over this: a majority of my 'fellow' palefaces voted for more fascism in the election just past. We owe democracy's preservation to our fellow citizens of African, Latino and/or Native background along with we palefaces who are 'woke' to varying degrees.
And this feels like this post's pivot point. Because enough blacks, Latinos and Natives were roused and registered and because they showed that they have what it takes to be free citizens of a free country (to a much greater degree, I suspect, than we pale people) by resisting all efforts to 'legally' disenfranchise them and for waiting for hours in order to be able to vote--they are the people who saved democracy and, thereby, the best in this country. Kudos above all to the brave and beautiful African-American women who were the foot-soldiers of this victory. They ought to be more of both the field officers and the top commanders from here on in and this is written by an Anglo-Saxon straight married paleface who becomes eligible for Medicare on his next birthday this August! And so to the promises:
1) As mentioned above, our communities of color are roused and mobilized to an unprecedented degree. Maybe more of us palefaces are a little more 'woke' as well. Especially those of us who tend to be 'green' (and not NIMBYs) to varying degrees.
2) Many former GOP contributors have now washed their hands of that Trumpery death cult, having recognized it as such. I don't know how to encourage this trend but probably there are those that do know how.
3) The young people. They are more open to those who are racially, religiously and/or sexually oriented 'different' than themselves than has yet been the case in this country. And the Stoneman Douglas high school alumni, along with other mass-shooting survivors, stand out especially in this group! David, Emma, all of you, I love you all and look forward to seeing you and your colleagues put and set our country on a brighter road than it's yet travelled!
4) This might be as much wishful hoping as anything else, but maybe mentioning it will impress more people how necessary it is: more of us seem aware this is a fight and a long one. I hope more of us are ready to fight, whether we're armed only with God's Truth and His justice or also with the kind of weapons we know our Fascists are itching to use on us. My opinion is, let's train non-violently first but also have guns and ammo (and know how to use them too) if and when it becomes necessary.
5) The depth to which democracy, as a habit, is embedded in our national life, however incomplete it's been till now. When we turn our gaze away from Washington and the loony state capitals, we might be surprised by what we see. We might also be dismayed by how many mini-despotisms there might be in this land such as John Wallace had in a Georgia county (watch the film Murder in Coweta County) but maybe the scale is more evenly balanced than we dare to hope.
I wouldn't call these lists 'complete'; they're just what occur to me right here, right now. If any reader has anything they'd like to add to either side, feel free to tell us all about it. In the meantime, friends and allies, stay awake, organize, organize, organize! And resist all fascist efforts at disenfranchisement especially their lie about 'wanting to make sure only the right people vote'. I hope y'all know what that is code for! Don't forget it and bring the truth about it to the unsure! And of course, vote and keep on voting in ALL elections from school board on up to presidential! That's how we'll wind up going for the road of promise and avoid the road of peril!

ABORTION AS A 'CHEAP GRACE' FLASHPOINT

 I am pro-life. I am also pro-choice.
I am in favor of women in crisis pregnancies being enabled to carry their babies to term and then helped to get back securely on their feet, whether they keep the child or give it to be adopted. I 'm pretty sure such help consistently available will encourage progressively more women to choose life. That is where I think a genuinely 'pro-life' movement's main focus ought to be. Not to mention supporting measures that actually do render life better and brighter for all or at least most of us. But in no case do I support anyone but the women choosing their courses of action.
I also hold already-breathing lives to be at least as important and as sacred as those not yet breathing. This includes those with darker skins than me, LBGTQs, and condemned criminals.
I also know Biblical tradition holds that life begins with breath, which in Hebrew is the same word as 'spirit'. I am also willing to pay any additional taxes that might be levied to pay for such help when offered by federal and/or state governments.
I think a question that should be asked is, does a woman pregnant as a result of rape compound the violence done her by aborting her child? I don't claim to have or know the answer. I only think that the question deserves asking and civil, and cogent, discussion.
I'm married to someone I call a genuine 'pro-lifer'. She takes the late Cardinal Bernardin's 'seamless garment' articulation about the sacredness of life very seriously indeed. I'm not sure I do, but I respect such a stance. I cannot say the same about most others who call themselves 'pro-life'. I call such hypocrites pro-birth Pilates. The minute the child breathes, they take water and wash their hands, although not usually before a multitude. Then they're gone.
I imagine such bipeds, when called on their hypocrisy and being told that, if they were really 'pro-life', they would support such things, you'll get replies along these lines:
"WHAT?! Do you mean now I have to pay more taxes from my hard-earned money so that this no-good slut and her bastard brat can get 'on their feet'?! This slut deserves all the hardship she has coming and she and her slut sisters should cry us Good People a river before they get another red cent from us!The only thing I'll pay for is JAIL for her, her sisters and all their brats and then I'll be happy to pay for a public gallows where their brats can be executed when they're caught in crime--any crime! I wanna see these b*****s bawl as their brats swing and I want them producing more brats so we can all see what SLUTS they are!!" You see, they're usually anti-contraception as well. Basically, they don't want anyone--and certainly no one with less money than they--to have any pleasure at all.
Can you imagine what pumps their blood? If they have hearts, they have to be as small and hard as withered walnuts. And as darkness cannot comprehend light, they think that those who genuinely seek to help are lying about their motives, because that's what they do. They really cannot comprehend any motive which doesn't involve enabling oneself to feel nastily superior to those they seek to help. Thus they project that motive onto many, most of whom it may have never occurred to feel 'superior' or, best of all, to thrust that idea from them whenever they find it in their own hearts.
Today's pro-birth Pilates are addicts to something the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called 'cheap grace'. That is, they look for ways to look virtuous and think themselves Good People which don't really cost them anything. And pro-birtherism is a current flashpoint for 'cheap grace'.
I'll stand with Fr. James Martin when he says that he considers all life equally precious and add that, if anyone is genuinely 'pro-life' it is incumbent on them to be for real gun control, against capital punishment and for making a country and a world where abortion becomes redundant. For any and all measures necessary to that end. About what they are I expect vigorous but civil debate as we reason together right down to the roots of the issues.
But no one should be allowed to call themselves 'pro-life' unless they also support the measures above. Absent such support, 'pro-life' means only 'pro-birth Pilate' which means, a peculiarly nasty variety of hypocrite.

FIGHT EVERY WHICH WAY!!

 This post has been 'simmering' in my mind and heart for a few days now, but one of Faux News's blonde no-hearts brought it to a boil when she called President Biden to task for cancelling 'everything we like'.
Is that so? If it is, then the fire and brimstone following are definitely aimed at you. If you like shutting ourselves off from co-operative planetary endeavors to contain illness and reverse pollution, if you like making already obscenely rich people richer, if you like being the top caste in a country gurgling down the drain, if you like tearing little ones from the mothers' very breasts, if you are content with 'thoughts and (phony) prayers' after mass murders of innocent people, if you like seeing our Gestapos murder unarmed people of color and above all if you seek to tilt both the political and economic tables permanently towards you and no others while trumpeting how unbiased it is, oh, how very, very much and with such force is this brimstone lava coming at you!
First: despite all--and I mean ALL--your protestations to the contrary, all your efforts to look so good, spotless and sanctified--you are not Good People! And unless you turn and repent of your evil, evil ways you will never be Good People! Being Good People has precious little if anything to do with being clean or even clean-shaven, still less with being clean-mouthed and not at all with having money! If anything, the wealthier you are, the more your money might tilt the heavenly scales against you and never mind how much money you give to your church or other religious causes which tell you how very Good you are!!
If what you really like the most is the feeling of being Placed Above Them ('them' being anyone you don't like) or, worse, wielding power in such a way that you actually have a part in tearing others from their dear ones, or making their lives harder and emptier (including making them hungrier and homeless) then no, you are not Good People at all but children of the Enemy! Not included in this is revealing the ignorance of others to them or the evil in which they've had a part. That's only truth, and if truth offends it is never to blame! Remember that saying from Sunday School, anyone?
To Democrats, liberals and progressives, let me say here: I know most of us, by and large, are motivated by the desire to serve all the people. Our enemies--yes,let's be brutally honest here--are motivated by the lust for power over others, to rule and rule harshly! They LIVE for the power to make others weep from their harshness; that is the sort of creatures they are! And y'all must deal with them accordingly!
So, Mr. President, be very, very guarded with your efforts to seek comity. Be quick to break off the negotiations our enemies never pursue in good faith and ready to fight them even unto a domestic analogy to the Rheims schoolhouse where the representatives of the Third Reich signed the unconditional surrender. That is the one and only way to deal with our homegrown fascists: do what the people want done, do whatever it takes to get around our enemies' obstructions and get those urgently required things done, trumpet our doing of them and also our enemies' (and, indeed, the enemies of both our country and the planet!) hypocrisy in wanting only to obstruct when out of power, rule like Ivan the Terrible when in power--but never to serve anyone but those already wealthy on a 21st century feudal scale! We cannot repeat our enemies' hypocrisies and near-treasons to both our country and our planet often enough! Now is the time to basically GIVE a full-throated 'F**K YOUR FEELINGS' to those REAL 'snowflakes' and 'buttercups' even unto--and past--the point where they are SCREAMING their oh-so-easily-wounded hearts (or whatever pumps their blood; it may not be a heart) onto their own lying airwaves! Let's treat their tears and wails as topping for the things which need doing so badly for our planet, our country, and then--but only then, 'cuz that's who we're s'posed to be--for ourselves as well. And even for they I now call our enemies, but they'd rather be atop Fresh Kills than equals with others they see as 'beneath' them in a renewed and expanded democracy!
I should also say of our enemies that they do not understand the genuine desire to serve people in much the same way that darkness cannot comprehend the light. They consider all our talk about 'public service' so much hypocritical hooha covering our desire to rule as harshly as they albeit squeezing different weak points. This is what they tell themselves in order to deceive themselves that they are Not Bad People. When the good fruits of our good and honest service are before their eyes, I don't know whether they will acknowledge their long string of errors and deliberate evils or  whether they will say the good fruits are merely incidental to our enrichment or some other concoction in order to keep on lying to themselves about 'being right'. But that, in the end, is extraneous to the work which needs doing and whatever ways we work out of getting it done. Let's get to it.

DEMOCRACY v. ANYTHING ELSE

 "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised--except for all the other ways of government that have been tried and found wanting."  Sir Winston Churchill

As Winston Churchill was something of a historian, I for one am inclined to believe this quote of his.
The recent fascist thuggery at our Capitol, with large-scale abettance by individual police officers and/or departments, along with four years of Trumpery, has reactivated the debate about democracy v. anything else. Our democratic allies were watching in dismay and with bated breath while our autocratic traditional 'enemies' howled in thigh-slapping delight.
And commentators here have also remarked on how delightfully (to the autocrats) hypocritical our attempts to further 'democracy' over the globe look now and how the autocrats will be saying how democracy produces license and puts the least capable people into the seats of power. Not to mention the airy-fairy notions of Innate Human Goodness on which such 'nonsense' is based. First big mistake.
Democracy is based on exactly the opposite idea: we are all equally corruptible by power, including the economic power that is wealth. And this being the case, no individual nor small group of people can or should be trusted with too much power. And even no majority based on immutable but unimportant characteristics as skin shade or which way our hormones run can or should be trusted with power over those of smaller groups based on the same political trifles. And from this comes the observation that, the realer that equal rights for all becomes, the more secure everyone's rights are. Rights are not zero-sum; quite the contrary.
Such being the case, part of making democracy realer ought to be the limiting of privately-held wealth to, say, $500 million. This way, everyone can at least have enough with enough public goods for all including ecosystems. It might even re-introduce better ways of measuring societal happiness than said wealth. Besides, a study a few years ago showed, once the kids were educated, people protected against medical bankruptcy and people could retire in at least modest comfort, that was enough wealth for most people.
On the other hand, some autocrats might say, democracy, with its frequent elections, takes too little account of the future and of long-range necessities. I may be missing something, but I don't see any authoritarian or autocratic government taking more account of long-range needs than most democracies. Including today's Celestial Empire which now calls itself the People's Republic of China.
Democracy and Autocracy both have their weaknesses in inculcating the ethic of service necessary for and in any government. Democracies might offer more to the shifty cons than it should. But autocracy, and authoritarian regimes generally, tend to cultivate less of an ethic of service to the country at large than they encourage civil servants to kiss the Dear Leader's ass! It's a very bad idea to confuse Dear Leader's ample derriere with the country as a whole--even if said Leader voids on the country often enough! And non-democracies seem to encourage less seeing themselves as trustees than seeing the country as their private property, just as did Clovis, king of the Franks at the advanced age of fifteen (in 481 C.E.) and with about the same understanding of government as too many boys that age! Seems to me that this kind of setup produces at least as many Caligulas, Mad King Ludwigs and Bashar Assads as Marcus Aureliuses, Good King Wenceslases and Ataturks.
Democracy seems at least somewhat better in encouraging the necessary ethic of service to the country as a whole and all that is best in it. Its main drawback right now, fueled largely by white racism, seems to be a Dunning-Kruger effect which seems most pernicious in white males who come from inherited wealth and who, notwithstanding being mediocre students at their historic prep schools and colleges, often wind up in powerful and/or high-paying jobs in government and/or business.
Chances are good that we are in the threshold of making democracy realer than it's ever been here, and maybe anywhere else. I pray (literally) I may be right in perceiving this. Perhaps as we make democracy realer for more kinds of people, more creatures and living things generally, that Dunning-Kruger effect may evaporate and be replaced by respect for real but plainly-expressed (minimal shop talk, I mean) expertise. Another weakness of democracy is the idea that my ignorance is as good as your knowledge, to quote Isaac Asimov. Which it isn't, but autocrats have no reason to boast on this point! Authoritarian regimes by and large share this weakness in an aggravated form where Dear Leaders are concerned.
So long as we continue to strive to realize more and more of democracy, it will continue to have an edge on authoritarian and autocratic regimes. As true and as unflattering a knowledge of history is a very necessary part of this, as is ensuring that equal justice under law is real. As real for BLM as it is for pasty-faced fascist thugs, for example.

APPROACHING 'CRITICAL MASS'?

 The November election was both a mighty relief and a bitter revelation. The reason for the relief is obvious to anyone with an eighth of a brain; the bitter revelation was that a majority of my 'fellow' pasty-faces were quite willing to install a fascist regime! The Georgia runoffs which will probably conclude later today are something quite different: this is a revival of real hope in more ways than one!
First, it's a sign that many different racial groups, especially the African-American women who won the November election and thereby saved the country, have been organizing for real and their efforts are now bearing good fruit!
Second, (and may this be especially heartening to all my fellow 'race-traitors' who saw the same things I did in November and felt the same way), our pasty-faced minority (I mean, among the pasty-faces) might just be approaching 'critical mass' status. I'm not certain about this and anyone can think otherwise but if you do please tell us why. This second reason for hope is big because, if we 'race-traitors' are approaching 'critical mass', guess what that means. It means, from the march toward making equal justice a reality, there will be no turning back! It means that even a majority of our 'fellow' unbaked pasties will not be able to turn things back to the bad old days! Is it too much to hope for that, even those among us to whom racism and bigotry were not deal-breakers are now beginning to understand why they have to be seen as deal-breakers?! OK, I admit it: here's where I might be running away with this; better slow down and steady meself, right?
The Devil, or his most prominent current representative, went down to Georgia lookin' for some votes to steal--and it looks like there were enough of us in Georgia to whom 'equal justice' means all of us and not just those as pale as we, along with relatively new arrivals like Latinos and Asians (btw, Jews are also Asians, from the western end of that continent) led by the strong and beautiful women who have done such glorious organizational work (and who really have, unlike us, no choice but to keep on fighting) to LAY THAT DEVIL DOWN!!! HALLELUJAH!!!
With the Georgia runoff elections. the political future is taking shape! Maybe, just maybe, an all-races, all-faiths, all-sexualities coalition of working people who want a decent deal for themselves and others, including other creatures and ecosystems, is taking shape now! Maybe they will come to understand that rebuilding ecosystems is vital and not naturally opposed to a revived economy which will have enough for all needs but not for everyone's greed, as Gandhi once said!
After the November election, I took a long and relieved breath. Then I felt bitterness welling up as I looked to see who was serious or hypocritical about our country and its promise. Now, I feel both renewed hope for all of us! All us pasty-faced 'race traitors' who just might be approaching critical-mass status and the rainbow of good women and men who are now our leaders on the long march toward 'liberty and justice for all'! America may yet truly be America for us all--for the first time!! May it be so; let's keep on moving to that end, sisters and brothers!!
And let's do what urgently needs doing and waste no time trying to appease those who aren't interested in anything except power and more wealth for their political masters! We've tried that for forty years; has it really worked for the country at all? I suggest it hasn't. So let's drop it and use the power our voters have won for us all!

SAWING BRANCHES & CONSEQUENCES

 

As is often the case at the start of time periods, I was reflecting on some Biblical verses earlier this morning.

I was thinking about how The Message translates the passage about 'the sin against the Holy Spirit'. It gets to the main point that Jesus is making: that those who deny the power of the Spirit are, in the context of Jesus's message, sawing off the tree-branch on which they sit and, thus, set themselves up for a seriously great fall.

Then, I thought about that sort of wicked stupidity in some more earthly contexts as well. The application of this teaching to the current pandemic is SO obvious I hardly need mention it; am I not right? But far more than that is how we just go on devouring the earth and so much on and in it. AND how the counterfeit right-wingers who call themselves 'Christians' while daily insulting Jesus, eating away his message from within and making those of us who walk the walk look like hypocrites like themselves, say that we need to devour more and faster so as to hasten Jesus's return.

I got news for y'all: you're sawing off the branch on which all of us--all life on earth--sit and urging us to join you in doing so! But doing that will NOT hasten Jesus's return in glory. Why? I suggest to you and all my readers that, if we continue in such wicked and deliberate stupidity, there will only be forgiveness for us 1) after a probably lengthy period of time in which God allows us to taste the consequences of such evil in much fuller measure than has yet been the case and 2) showing some seriously real repentance! I say that God will NOT sweep down like Superman before we hit the ground!

No, I say He will allow us to hit the ground without a bounce and be there only when we moan and wail how 'we've fallen and we can't get up!' Then He will come to us not as Superman but as the Merciful Healer He is.

Remember the hymn 'Come Ye Sinners, Poor And Needy'? That's how God sent His Salvation to us all, as one of us. Not as a being from another planet with superpowers to swoop down and save us from our wicked and stupid greed! No, the Godhead will allow us to taste much more of the gall and wormwood we have made ourselves before He lifts us up after the cataclysm which will come if we don't change our greedy ways bigly, to borrow someone else's word. Think about it, all y'all fascist text-proofers without any grasp of God's Holy Spirit!