CONSCIENCE, EMPIRE & DEMOCRACY

"As long as you have the wisdom to keep this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever [people] worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you." Edmund Burke 

Yes, now I'm beginning a third post with that quotation. And why?
The reasons for that will likely prove to be long and involved. Beginning with how fashionable it now is to excoriate not only the European 'white' empires but also the whole notion of empire.
As to the second excoriation, I'll say, well and good, accompanied with questions about what may take the place of current unitary or corporate empires. You can, and I would, bet my bottom dollar that they're not about to be replaced by peaceable confederations and still less by pristine forests with innocent human creatures prancing like fauns in Arcady. As to the first, I'll observe how much of the excoriations come from other current or former Great Powers (China, Arabia and Turkey, I'm looking at you) and throw some words which basically amount to, 'Can it, sore loser!'
I hope none of my readers need reminders that the sequence of formation, zenith, decline and fall of empires is as old, almost, as civilization itself. It has been nearly unheard-of for any empire to have internal critics who will tell the rulers of said empire that they are behaving in a way which will prove the undoing of that empire in time because said empire is betraying the best in itself.
Virgil may have come close to such a thing, but in a more upbeat way when, after admitting all the talents of the recently-conquered-by-Rome Greeks, he wrote these lines:

But you, Romans, remember your great arts;
To bring [civilization] to remote places,
To establish peace under the rule of law,
To subdue the mighty, and show them mercy
Once they are conquered.

Apart from that, there is only one nation with such an internal conscience, and it never was and probably will never be, an empire. Indeed, it is a tiny nation which punches far above its weight, thanks to the God Who made them a nation: Am Yisrael.
And there may have been only one empire which at least tried to have such a conscience. Yes, many of its agents only pretended to have such a conscience while they were only in it for the money, but there were also many who actually did. Kipling's poem, The White Man's Burden, is today roundly condemned for its 'racism'. But some say Kipling wasn't referring to lack of melanin in the skin but to the light in the hearts of such 'uplifters'. At least, he sounds genuine in his belief in such lights to me. Ponder this couplet of lines from that poem:

Fill full the mouth of famine
And bid the sickness cease.

These are two things Kipling thought of as vital to the success of the imperial mission. Yes, I know of the imperial role in making the Bengal Famine of 1943, not to mention the Great Hunger of 1845-49. And however much some may regard this poem as a screed, I'll also bet my bottom dollar that Kipling himself never meant it to be so used. But tell me: in all of human history, had any empire even thought of doing such things? Had any empire had any thoughts at all aside from subjugating as many others as possible and taking as much as possible from its subject peoples?
The British Empire had an appreciable number who believed in its mission, and who were also willing to call out authority in the City and/or Westminster and/or in the field for behaving in ways they considered antithetical to that mission, indeed for downright un-British behavior. I suggest that, a primary reason for this, is how deep many Britons were into the Scriptures. A secondary reason would be their knowledge of their own history and their long struggle to bring even the Crown under the law.
Democracy is a progression and we need it to be progressing again. No nation should measure greatness in how many billionaires it has; they are likelier to be onerous parasites on those nations than anything else! No, any nation's greatness is measured in the absence of abject poverty and ignorance among its citizens, in the equal fairness of the law and its enforcers to all its citizens and enabling all of them to be heard somehow and in civil discussion that can and must be passionate and yet measured and civil towards those on the other sides--and the resources left for succeeding generations!
On my dad's side, my ancestors were colonists here: Scots, English and Welsh. And here, and in what were once called the Dominions, many have come from other nations to adopt our language and our civics while retaining their own customs at home and enriching our societies.
My dad's people were also independent, slave-less farmers in the antebellum South. They had an idea where 'liberty' stopped for them and others. It is time for democracy to move forward again, and not only in America but all over the English-speaking world and to resume its offensive worldwide as well. On the Continent (of Europe), in Latin America and Africa.
Conscience above the power of one's tribe is a gift of God to this planet, transmitted first through the Jews (which is why all those who would make the tribe and/or nation absolute hate the Jews with such intensity) and then through a growing number of peoples.
I think I will leave you with this question: has any other empire even tried to rule with such a conscience as have the empires made by those of us whose mother tongue is English? Seriously, as the young people say nowadays.
I also hope the source of such conscience doesn't dry up in the face of what might well be serious Jewish fascism. At any rate, the new Israeli government scares me in that.

 

BURKE CONNECTED WITH QUIRKS

"As long as you have the wisdom to keep this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever [people] worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you." Edmund Burke
 

Yes, I know. I started my last post with these lines and now I start this post with the same quote.
And this is why. We all have our own 'quirks', right? Well, one of my quirks are the images which certain songs produce in my mind.
Some of you may remember a Canadian rock group of the late eighties up to about 1990 called The Pursuit of Happiness. Maybe you also remember an album they made titled Love Junk. It has quite a few songs which get me to think of London as it once was and might still be again, although probably not within my lifetime given how horrifically insane a majority of our cousins seem to have gone.
That is, London as the hearthstone of such liberty which, back around 1990, seemed like it was on top of the globe. I remember how happy I felt that English is not only my native language but my ancestral language on my dad's side. When I imagine these songs as musical backdrops to the above quotation, I actually choke up. No, really.
And I choke up all the tighter when I'm back in 2022 and I remember that England (not Scotland, at least not as much) has gone insane with xenophobia and that we here in the States still have a long, hard fight ahead of us to get democracy out of the woods and onto the sunlit uplands where, for the first time in recorded human history, democracy will be multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith and, I guess, multi-gender (although that last is something I barely understand at all!)
Then will we see that freedom is not zero-sum but something which acts in such a way that, the more rights and freedoms (and yes, corresponding responsibilities to maintain and strengthen these things) we all have, the better off we all are! With the possible exception of those who need someone to bully to feel they're alive.
Our way of life is not and should not be defined by letting just anyone get rich and overly powerful but by the ancient Biblical promise that 'every [person] shall be under [their] own fig tree and none shall make them afraid'. And let's remember that every person means just that. Everyone of every color, ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation. And faith in every person having a voice and in the rule of law to ensure that no one is stifled who does not seek to promote division based on one of the factors I have cited. And that when power changes hands, it does so without bloodshed.
We now know we fight against fascism; what I outline here is what we need to recall as what we fight for! A truly level playing field, no one compelled by dire hardship to what is essentially slave labor,  freedom of faith for all under the law and no retribution from speaking uncomfortable truth to too-complacent power! This doesn't mean power shouldn't argue with you; we need to expect that. But also remember that argument means just that. Ad hominem/mulieram attacks should not be part of that, nor should ethnically or sexually based epithets be considered argument!
'Fellow' pale males who think you entirely earned your positions, tell the rest of us why and how you did so, but be prepared to be reminded of helps you may have had absent to others not male and not as pale.
On the other hand, let me remind those on my political side, calling out lies and liars for what they are is not gutter politics. Right now we need to fight bare-knuckle, but we don't need brass ones. We need to shout out truths from the housetops and thereby drown the lies.
Remember what is best in what we who speak English have given the rest of the world. For those things, let us fight unremittingly until democracy's new day fully dawns!

A FATEFUL HINGE INDEED!

"As long as you have the wisdom to keep this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever [people] worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you." Edmund Burke

It is, and should be, debated how true that is or how true it's ever been. Not only for the USA, but for the English-speaking world as a whole. We should be able to debate that, and other political questions, with both passion and civility, always with the awareness that our opponents may well have something worthwhile to say. How difficult that's been for at least since the Clinton administration speaks unhappy volumes about the crumbling of our freedoms--and who's doing nearly all of the crumbling!
But let's set that aside for the moment as, in two days' time, we come to a seriously fateful hinge.
I see the great 'gifts' that the English-speaking peoples have given to the greater world as these: first, the equality of all before the law and no one, not even the Crown, (let alone any president!) being above it.
Second, representative democracy and the idea that, given enough truthful information and time to digest it, we are all capable of participating in it. Third, that democracy is also a process, one which might never be completed but is all the more worth pursuing. Fourth, that certain freedoms (I think FDR's Four Freedoms is an excellent summing up of them) are the God-given rights of every human being on the planet!
To all of you who have yet to vote in this election: whether we in the English-speaking world will have a rebirth and expansion of those freedoms or whether we, having turned our backs on what we gave the world and, indeed, the truest sources of our own greatness, will decline into richly deserved obscurity and contempt, is now on all of you. Yes, you.
You cannot not decide this time. Indeed, 'not deciding' is a way of doing just that--opting for the way towards obscurity and contempt. Whether you like it or not (and I'm pretty sure most of you don't) this question hinges on your choices on Tuesday.
If you do your duty to your country, your civilization, your language and our common faith and vote straight Democratic, then you will point the way towards a rebirth of the spirit of freedom and equality for all of us. You will be a sign to our cousins across the Pond (in England, not Scotland as they've stayed canny and sane) to continue to recover their senses. You will be a wonderful source of frustration to foreign autocrats who still dream of making themselves emperors and a beacon of hope to those who know how much further democracy has yet to travel.
But if you are feckless and either vote for so-called 'Republicans' or try to dodge the question by not voting, you will open further the path which leads to the varieties of English becoming actual separate languages and thus to the end of anything called 'the English-speaking peoples'. The autocrats around the globe will be cheered as they point to us and say, "See? Didn't we tell you so? They were always in it only for the money and the excuse for exploiting poor folks like you." They will say this in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and, yes, Riyadh as well. Not only that, but it will shake democracy elsewhere.
Shills for autocrats and slave-masters will say all the louder, "See? Freedom is zero-sum. More freedom for them (fill in the blank) means less freedom for you."
'France' originally meant, 'land of the free people'. How does it feel to think that French might then be freedom's primary language? Or, maybe, Spanish? Those two languages, especially French, love logic, so maybe they can save freedom if we turn our back on the gifts we've given the rest of the world.
Maybe with the help of the still-sane Scots--renewing an old medieval alliance.
Some will remind us, we've been here before, and they'd be right. But there are two signal differences between now and when one-party Jim Crow rule was reinstated across the South: first, back then, most of the world didn't have its eyes on us. Second, the parts of the world that did, most of them actually thought the peckerwoodies were doing the right thing! Neither applies now.
In any case, the choice is on you. Either towards a future which can still be bright for more of us if we do our part, or back towards an already-failed past. And let me remind y'all in passing that the 'Republicans' have no solution for inflation either. All they want to do is further enrich the already obscenely rich and satanically greedy as they try to take your benefits from you!
Choose wisely on Tuesday. Vote straight Democratic. At all governmental levels from local to federal.

WHO, REALLY, IS MORE 'GOVERNMENT DEPENDENT'?

 As I ate my breakfast this morning, I meditated on how our fascisti and their supporters voted as compared to us libs and progs and so forth. They all goose-step together to the polls whereas getting enough of the American majority that we really are seems to make herding cats look relatively easy.
So I started to wonder, why is that? Why does politics not swallow more of us up like it does our 'fellow' palefaces and their shills of color (I'm looking right at you, Distort D'Newza) on the right, just past John Fogerty's bathroom?
And then I thought a little more. What is a YUGE part of the takings of most of those obscenely rich and satanically greedy billionaires who buy political slaves, fund propaganda outlets like the Cato and Claremont Insititutes, endless lobbyists (including the gnomes at ALEC) and are largely responsible for democracy's decaying this far?
I'll tell you: government contracts, many of which are no-bid. That means, our tax dollars are supporting billionaires who live in such a way as to make Nero and Louis XIV, to name two despots, look like peasants in their own eyes!
Yes, liberal and, most of all, non-partisan organizations, get government bucks too. But the difference between liberal and non-partisan organizations on the one hand and right-wing corporations on the other is, the first two seek to benefit every one of us with their endeavors. The last, or at least the pale males that run them, are primarily, when not exclusively, interested only in fattening their pockets and, maybe, their wives' purses.
And another thing: none of us beg the government to buttress any beliefs we have without external empirical proof. We rightly understand that to be our own business, and only that. And our neighbor's beliefs are only her business as well. Etc. A large part of what our fascisti do is either beg or threaten government (be it  local, state or federal) to defend their worn-out unspoken points of 'faith', such as racism.
With these things in mind, it makes all too much sense that they believe that they, and only they, should rule. They're not interested in sharing anything. Now, I know that most of us are, on the contrary, geared to share with others. But this is where we need to steel ourselves and , first, vote as many of them out as we possibly can and, second, when they bring out their AR-15s and hundred-round clips of ammo, be ready to fire hot lead back at them!
Let them have what they need to pursue their non-government-connected endeavors (to whatever extent they have them) but get them OUT of government at any and all levels!!! Don't let them anywhere near anything to do with public education, for one thing! If they don't like what's taught there, let them go organize a Private Academy, often a guise for continuing Jim Crow anyway!
As I have stated before, I'd even be willing to kick in so they can have some decent bars with decent booze and even pianos on which they can mangle sad songs as they drink and weep for the only ones for whom they ever shed tears: themselves. That's another difference between us and them: when we weep, it's for things larger than ourselves--our planet, our country, our civilization, etc.--or for others who are afflicted. Very rarely do libs, progs, etc., weep for themselves. Many would  think scorn to do so.
On the other hand, the enemies of democracy weep for themselves alone and cannot comprehend anyone weeping for anything else. They are truly children of darkness as described in John 1:5. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." Isn't that our right wing, fascist and fellow-travellers, or what?
Ten days now till Election Day. If you can, vote early, but vote--and, if you believe in democracy, vote Democratic on all levels. Let there be no officeholder with (R) after their names still in office on Wednesday!

SAVE DEMOCRACY THIS NOVEMBER!

 Elections have consequences, as we all say these days.
And if Democrats don't hold both houses of Congress and win some state legislatures, expect the results to be disastrous.
I was appalled to see that more voters actually believe 'Republicans' are better for the economy than Democrats. I want to ask these voters: Why do you think this? How could you think this? Especially when each incoming Democratic administration has had to clean up the mess left by the Greedy Oligarchs' Party? Or is that why you think the way you do?
Do you really believe the GOP makes it easier for people like you to make more money and be able to put a bit by, as our cousins would say? Which reminds me: take a l-o-n-g look across the Pond, see what Truss's Tories tried to do. It was so bad for the economy that even the City gnomes nixed it--and it's almost exactly what Kevin McCarthy the jellyfish promises to enact!
God, please let our cousins be coming back to their senses!
In any case, if you do think that, that means the GOP has gaslighted you to a degree nothing short of astounding. Of course, they were helped by your readiness to believe that the 'n***ers' and 's**cs' were just itching to take your plasma screens and other status symbols from you when it's they who want to take much more important things from you--yes, from y'all as well as from the you-know-whos! They mean to take the following from you, me and all of us just holding on:
Our Social Security. Our Medicare. Our Medicaid. Our Veterans' Benefits. Veterans' Benefits, for God's sake!! They must share Trumpelthinskin's opinion of our honored dead: "Such suckers!" Remember hearing Orange Julius Sawdust Caesar say that?
And as they prepare to steal from us, they distract you with LIES about how kindergarteners learn to read with Show Me! and how CRT is going to make you and your kids feel personally responsible for slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings and all the rest of our history's dark side! Or whatever related lies they use, ad nauseam!
Do any of you know, CRT is only in graduate schools? As an elective?!
They want their political masters to own everything--including, eventually, all of us. Not just the ones with darker skins but all of us. Never mind streets safe from 'n***ers', etc., but rather think about having safer streets, classrooms, supermarkets and so forth from unhinged white male incels who find it easier to get an AR-15 then to get a date! Think about having the law really treat everyone equally so that Trumpelthinskin and cohorts might now wear the orange jumpsuits we know they deserve!
If the GOP is hinting that you, too, can aspire to be above the law if you go stomp on 'n***ers', 's**cs' and maybe 'k**es' as well, be warned: that will last only as long as it suits the new class of feudal barons for whom they really work! And how long that might be, to quote the Bard, who knows save Heaven?
If the GOP wins anything next month, it will probably be the end of our democracy. In time, you, or your sons and grandsons, will see yourselves reduced to serfdom--including seeing the young and arrogant lordlings rape your wives and daughters before your faces! Imagine watching that while all you can do is cringe like a poor beaten dog!! But, then, remember: we can still give them the drubbing they grievously need. It's still up to us; use this chance well for your own sake and that of your granddaughters!!
Harry Truman once said, and I think he was so right, "If you want to live like a Republican, vote for Democrats." True when he said it, and even more so now.
See, when Democrats 'make it', they reach a hand back to help others. When 'Republicans' make it, they either pull up the ladders as they go or otherwise render them inaccessible and/or needing repair. Inwardly digest and remember what I write here as you vote. Vote Democratic; let not a single candidate with (R) after their names be either elected or re-elected. That's what's necessary for keeping our democracy alive and well this November!

TANDEM QUOTES WITH RAMIFICATIONS

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

"If you can get the lowest white man to believe he's better than the best colored man, 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."
LBJ to Bill Moyers

Those who observe people who live with, or by, hate as opposed to those who live by love, however imperfectly they (or, rather, we) do so will agree with the first observation. Hate is a burden to bear. And yet, it is a burden which too many actually choose to bear. At least one 'reason', or excuse, is explained in the second quotation.
Feeling inherently superior, probably especially when we know inwardly we're anything but that, is something for which too many will give too much! Even if it is a burden, it's one which they will carry proudly and resist most efforts to separate themselves from it.
(I wonder: does goose-stepping make that burden easier to carry? I wouldn't be too surprised.)
To what can we liken such hate? Perhaps to something edible which tastes very sweet but, then, just 'sits' in your innards? If anyone else has what might be an apter analogy, feel free to offer it here!
And does the observation made by the second quotation also keep the 'marks' of hate coming back for more? Maybe that's one factor, but I'll venture a guess that there's another factor at work here.
If someone offered you such a sweet, would you say 'no dice' or would you not want to think, perhaps fairly desperately, of yourself as a 'mark' and thus return for more? I hope I'd do the former, but then I'm only one man. How many people are out there that would rather do d.n.a. (for dam' near anything) rather than admit they fell for something, even once?
Of course, there are also those who know dam' good and well how privileged they are and who do not want to give up those privileges, although you might have to bring in wild horses in order to get them to admit it. You might even have to harness them behind those horses before they'll cop to the truth!
And if truth be known, those current privileges would not be given up but merely extended to include all of us and thus be converted from privileges into rights. Which would also have Tuckums, Vanity Hannity, 'Judge' Jeanine and IngraHAM and all the other Murdoch puppets howling, along with QAnon and all the other loonies! And this is because they don't really believe in love except for self-love and their narrowly-as-possible defined tribe! These are the bipeds of whom LBJ's observation is, unfortunately for us all including the above-named, most true.
But others out there, for whom the 'benefits' of thinking oneself better than (fill in the blank) are more elusive, y'all might want to think about whether carrying that burden is really doing you any good at all. Make your vaunted 'Christianity' more than just a tribal label. Drop the hate and open yourself to actually liking some folks different from you and treating them as you would your 'own'.
And remember, Our Lord asked an audience, what credit is it to you if you love only 'your own'? And that means appreciating them as they are--not trying to make them into copies of y'all. Think about it. Maybe those who get more benefits are the ones making you into marks. As the smart people say, follow the money and see who gets it in the end.

DEMOCRACY'S UNEXPECTED (TO US) BASIS

 

Democracy is not based on any such modern claptrap as 'the natural goodness of humankind'. No. Indeed, it's based on exactly the opposite viewpoint: that each and every human heart is equally wicked and deceitful and that, hence, NO human being is to be trusted with too large a share of power, political, economic or religious.

That's right, boys and girls: modern democracy has its roots in (of all things) Calvinism! Franklin's letter to Robert Morris dated December 25, 1783 has the same roots, where he speaks of enough wealth to maintain oneself in modest comfort and bring up a family (nowadays, this would include education and health care) is a natural right, but wealth superfluous to that is 'by right the property of the public'. Anyone want to tell me what Peter Thiel 'needs' all that money for? Or the Koch brothers? DeVos and Prince families?The Gateses? Or, for that matter, George Soros, to 'even the score' for all those reactionaries who've swallowed that crapfolah?

And part of this needs to be to assert, vigorously, that fair hair, blue eyes, pasty skin and male genitalia aren't supposed to put anyone above the law. Nor are riches. Nor, even, are past injuries: Proverbs advises against 'favoring a poor man in his quarrels'--but that's in the presumed context of justice for the poor otherwise. If anyone wants to argue that the poor have justice today anywhere on the globe, I may need Depends to make sure I don't wet myself from laughing so hard!

We are all equally corruptible and Lord Acton was only too correct when he observed, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Is this any less true in a family or a community of faith or a business than it is in any nation? I very much doubt that.

Finally, democracy requires at least some of us to grow as individuals and it is the only way of organizing ourselves which actually makes room for that growth. Democracy also encourages the spread of such growth, while undemocratic systems do the exact opposite: they compel us to stay 'children' to varying extents. The process of growth humbles us even as it shows us what we can do, together, what we couldn't do separately and thereby exalts us to that extent. Remarkable, but (at least to my watching eyes) none the less true. Save and share this post. Together, let's breathe new life into democracy at home and all over this globe!!

A LIE UNEXPECTEDLY BECOMING TRUTH

 Unless we start radical change of our outlook on nature and indeed our whole economy, we are now headed straight for that very place where the fossil-fuel billionaires with their Stetsons and their handcrafted cowboy boots warned us for a half-century we'd be going if we 'greened' our way of life: back to a few pitiful clans having to walk two miles for water and having to cut wood for fires to cook and stay warm. Cooling off? Apart from the nearest body of water, fuggedaboudit!
We're headed that way because of our own inaction, true, but those same fossil-fuel billionaires and their boughten political slaves are the ones mostly responsible for that inaction. And a too-large number of us have been adamantly unwilling to tolerate a bare minimum of inconvenience, like the spoiled brats they are!
And together with those already obscenely rich individuals who put nothing above more and higher  profits for themselves (pretty much alone) they are the people who have kept the rest of us on this road to real perdition.
'Radical change' is now what is urgently necessary to keep our discomfort with the necessary changes to a minimum and to keep living standards for most of us from plunging abruptly. And an unlooked-for benefit of such change will probably be the narrowing of inequality and the democratizing of our economies. (Maybe that's another reason why the obscenely rich fight this. They want worldwide neo-feudalism buttressed by propped-up theocracy)
For one thing, the regeneration, aka the 'greening' (re-greening?) of our planet will produce tens of millions of jobs, which, if decently paid, will be really good jobs! They'd be good jobs anyway, but if the people are decently paid, they'll be really good jobs!
And yes, there will have to be training and/or re-training of many people to do these jobs and they'll need to be paid something in order to live while they're being (re)trained. I refuse to believe we can't do this; it's only that too many of us won't because they, or we, are so vain and stupid we think we'll weather the crisis all right and screw all those other sloths (especially ones with darker skins) who are not as virtuously hardworking as us!
Never mind the absolutely wicked and, yes, immoral selfishness and vanity in such an outlook. Never mind even that none of us know where climate catastrophe or the latest strain of Covid will strike.
For argument's sake, let's pretend that, no, in our wealthy and mostly white lands, catastrophe will be sufficiently cushioned. Two things we cannot govern on this planet are the movements of air and water, that is, winds and tides.
Now let's imagine that much of western Africa and the Indian subcontinent become uninhabitable. Let's imagine that there are large stretches of land where the living are not enough to bury or cremate the dead. So those heaps of corpses just rot in piles, or, having jumped into the ocean, drown and some, uneaten by satiated sharks, float as far as our shores. Australia, I include you in this.
What will you do when the wind carries, every single day, the scent of death with it? What will we do when pieces of corpses and bones wash up on our shores? Have any of you thought about that? Stay inside all day, our ventilation systems will still draw air from outside which may compound rather than alleviate that horrible odor! What will you do when the scent of death is unavoidable and omnipresent?
Guess none of y'all's thought of that, am I right?
If we get planetary regeneration under serious steam beginning NOW, this is still something we can avoid--but only just. We need to elect real public servants with the courage to do what's necessary and the intellectual heft to explain to we the people why these measures are necessary. We need to vote out every single boughten political slave of the obscenely rich and those phony 'religious' shills who pretend to 'anoint' such bogus characters! Begin now! Now! NOW!!
Only by breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry and seriously regenerating our planet can we now avoid what the fossil-fuel shills have been warning us about!!

TAKE BACK THE FOURTH!

 Tomorrow is the 'Glorious' Fourth.
And this year, it feels like anything but. And I know I'm not alone in feeling that way by any means.
I'm also tired of the gleeful meanness of what I call, and invite my readers to call, the 'rule-AND-ruin gang'. No, that's not a misprint. I mean 'rule-and-ruin'. The gang claiming that only they should be the rulers, and if they must share with others, they threaten to ruin the country for all of us. One problem with that is, they ruin the country even worse if and when they are the sole rulers--for all of us except themselves! So them as the only rulers is a lose-lose proposition for the rest of us!
I draw a heavy sigh and imagine what life might be like if we lived somewhere else where people actually treat each other (individually and collectively) more like human beings rather than as enemies. And this is no less true in 'blue' states than in 'red' ones. For me, the Herblock cartoon dated March 12, 1963, still has too dam' much to say in that respect!
Then I think of our down-the-road neighbor (95 miles or so, actually) who has written that she won't let this crowd steal the Fourth, the flag and other patriotic displays from her. She will display the flag tomorrow, and I for one say, more power to you, our own Maggie!
And along with that, I remember a guest column written by a law professor who makes the very cogent point that our side now needs patriotism more than ever. I ponder how spot-on he is. Especially since he points out something I also noticed and mentioned in a post I wrote on July 5 of last year about how actual victims of our system often seem more optimistic about change than do those who seek to make change but have not been victims of the system. Like me.
And then, perhaps aided by my morning shower, I ask myself: why, literally, in God's Name should we let a gang of mean and greedy liars steal our country's very story from us? Why should we concede to them the sole star billing they don't deserve?! If they won't share top billing, that's their problem, not ours. We tell the truth; throw out their evil lies!
And that's the truth. Is Edith-Ann's raspberry necessary here? Maybe.
But here is where we need God as well as country. Our enemies and those of our country exhaust us with their meanness and they know it! That is their intent! To restore and renew ourselves for the l-o-n-g fight ahead of us, and to be able to help revive and renew each other's spirits, we need God's own Spirit. We need to 'tap into' God's Spirit however we can, in whatever way that works for each of us and does no harm to any other sentient life.
Part of this needs to be to discard any worries about not being a Nice Person. We need to tell the whole, unvarnished truth about how our enemies lie and who funds those lies as well! Gloves off; it's bare-knuckle time if ever there was one!
Another part needs to be patient organizing across racial, ethnic and religious lines. Wherever possible, make it so people can discover their own errors and lack of good information for themselves. 'Slapping' people with their misconceptions needs to be a last resort if used at all. This, too, will take time and effort and for this, too, we need the kind of regeneration that can come only from God's Spirit.
But no; let's not give up when the real story of our country involves all of us and many different groups and individuals of different groups all sharing star billing! Our history was made and is still being made by something much more like the Group Theatre rather than the 'star system' of old Hollywood. Let's shout it from the rooftops and challenge those who want to shout us down with questions that will stop them in their tracks! Let's take back the Fourth and all the other days too!

TO BE LIKE GOD--REALLY

 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4 & 5, NIV)
Be like God. I emphasize those words as I ask myself, what did our conflated far ancestors conceive as 'being like God'?
I can guess. Most of us still imagine 'being like God' as being able to order the world to revolve around us, am I right? To be all-powerful, self-sustaining and immortal to boot, am I right? And have we any reason to think our prehistoric and early-civilizational forebears imagined anything different? I think the answer to that is a rather resounding 'NO'; don't you think so?
But such clues as we have to the nature of God--and if we call ourselves Christians, we follow, some for real (and I'm not at all sure of most of us), the God made flesh in Christ Jesus. His life is supposed to show us what it really means to 'be like God'. And those clues are at least 180 degrees away from what our human imaginations conjure up.
Jesus lived and died like 'the least of us' whom he called 'his brethren'. And when his apostles were scared and disheartened, God raised him as He had promised to do. But the point here is, Jesus lived and taught (and, I believe, still lives and teaches) the way to be like God is to empty oneself as we live the lives of servants to one another and to Creation as a whole.
I think a whole lot of dough-colored faces started to redden to varying degrees as I wrote the above lines. These evil-minded, greedy, essentially cowardly dinkyjohnnies and the shrivelled walnuts who are their consorts want to rebuild a caste system in our country with themselves as the actual owners of everything--and, yes, of everyone else as well. And they routinely violate both the Third and Ninth Commandments in their misuse of the name of Jesus in their attempt to reduce the rest of us to actual and perhaps again to legally defined slavery as well!
And now they'll whine they seek to 'serve' the rest of us by compelling us to live like them. Rather like Granny Clampett brandishing a rifle and declaiming, 'Th' code of th' hills holds ever'where!'
No, 'ladies' and 'gentlemen', that is not 'service'! That is imperialism of the worst kind!!
One salient trait of real service is, it listens seriously to those it seeks to serve. You seek to do no such thing! You seek to be served by the rest of us!
And what fuels you is rage. Rage at having not been listened to for decades! But you have very much the wrong targets for that rage! You have brethren who have also gone unheard, not for decades but for centuries--and who now welcome you to the Club of the Unheard! And we all have the same enemies: cunning dinkyjohnnies who have stolen from all of us for at least decades (and in some cases for centuries) and who have bullied those with darker skins even while they humbug a majority of us into the lie that, because our skins, hair and eyes are paler, we are intrinsically superior to the rest of humankind! Join those of us who are wise to their vicious game NOW!
Unless you wish to be content with stomping those who your puppet-handlers have taught you to hate--and this means, few if any tangible benefits for you--in order to have the nice things that most of us want and don't have, you'll need to make common cause with those of African, Native, Hispanic and Asiatic heritage who now share with you the trait of being willfully unheard! As Franklin said when he signed the Declaration, "We must now all hang together or we shall most assuredly hang separately."
So it is now with all of us. If you really wish to 'be like God', you must choose the way Jesus lived and showed and instructed us to follow. You need to let go of wanting absolute earthly power and be ready to share it, and earthly wealth, instead. If you don't, the rest of us--and the world at large--will know that you are not, and were never, real Christians at all but only greedy savages trying to misuse God's Name! And I hope you remember that God Himself will not hold you guiltless for that--and neither will I, for one!

SOLD SOULS

   Sold souls.
What do I mean by that?
Simply this: those who have sold their own souls for the ultimately worthless gewgaws of this world, chiefly for wealth and power. Mostly, for the power to stomp on the faces of others with impunity. Always of those with less eartthly power than the stompers and usually 'different' in some relatively unimportant way such as sex or orientation thereto, skin color (A BIIIG one!), national origin or faith community.
And, having sold their own souls for such trash, now seek to sell their followers out. The prime example of this is the arms manufacturers and their lobbyists, with the NRA leading this pack of TRAITORS!
Their followers are mostly my 'fellow' male dough-faces, although they do include an alarming number of women, nearly all of whom are also dough-faces. Most of those with darker skins seem to be wise to them, mostly because they've always been among the sufferers from what the bullies do. Jews are an exception to this: most are neither dark nor dough-faced, but at least a millennium and a half of being pushed round, proscribed, exiled, expelled , re-expelled and massacred tends to teach one to recognize the signs, if you follow me.
But they too are human and, hence, not immune to such dangerous blandishments. Stephen Miller, I'm looking right at you. You too, Benny boy. Not at you though, Caroline.
Right now, such bullies are not found on the left side of North American or European politics. They might be found on that side in 'People's Republics' such as China, North Korea, Venezuela and maybe Cuba. But in our political world, they are almost all among today's fascisti. Yes. Use. The. Correct. Word. FASCISTI.
And they bait their followers with promises that they too may one day stomp on those who they hate--or those who they believe, from being lied to constantly, hate them. Which is not so. We are big believers in 'live and let live'. For y'all as well as us.
And yet, they are not the most dangerous characters featured herein. If an African-American blues musician can sit down and talk with Klansmen and by God's Grace get them to come to the light and give him their robes as tokens of that change (and he has done so with 200+ of them so far!) then, again with the Grace of God, they are yet reachable when God gives the strength of character and understanding to some of us to do so--part of which needs to be avoiding the addytood (thank you Philly!) of the Yankee schoolma'm who thinks she knows it all and we don't know s**t.
The most dangerous characters are those who, so long as what's in their wallet or purse continues to grow, could frankly care less about anyone else or the nation, much less the planet, as a whole. And yet, when the underpinning of such 'growth' collapses, as it does with sickening regularity, is there anyone who wails, yelps, snarls and whimpers with as much noise as they? Here are the hardcore Judases, who would sell out the rest of us and be content with probably only five pieces of silver per head, never mind thirty!
These are the ones who either don't, or say they don't, understand that the way to build lasting prosperity on this whole planet is to invest in both our natural capital and our human capital. This means re-planting the Amazon rainforest, protecting the Boreal Pines, capturing carbon and re-enriching impoverished soils with it, sweeping up the Pacific Plastic Patch and finding real uses for all that plastic. Could we build an island for all those selfish billionaires with it, I wonder? Anyhow, that's just a fraction of such investment!
We invest in our human capital by doing all we can to nourish and educate them. The GI Bill and FHA are examples of how we invested in our (white, OK) human capital. And the result was a turbocharged economy for thirty years. Imagine what investment in all our human capital, along with investment in our natural capital, can do--for all of us!
But first, every single sold soul, at every level of government, must be voted out, thrown down and be barred, somehow, from any office of public trust which they have abused nearly to the utmost! They control the Senate, are too many in the House and own too many state legislatures! WE need to change that this November! Think about what a future we can make together--and how we will surely implode if we don't vote out all the sold souls!
Apologies for the lack of fire and brimstone seasoning; it's a great flavoring but we dasn't get addicted to it.

SOMETHING ABOUT FIRE & BRIMSTONE

Something about what we call 'fire and brimstone'.
It can energize and it can....burn.
What does it burn up? I really don't know. Considering liberal, democratic and Democratic aversion to it, does it burn out the neo-cortex which is indispensable for being fully human? Does it burn out hearts, leaving only a stony residue therein? Our side is glad to have, and sometimes a bit too proud to have, both organs which we all try to nurture as God gives us the light to do so.
Which brings me to the sorely misguided members of what is, for good or ill, my paternal tribe. I hope I don't disappoint those who like the flavor of my fire and brimstone with this post because as of now I sort of suspect that, in this column, it may only be a flavoring as opposed to a serious portion. But, be that as it will.
I think about those who have known little else but fire and brimstone from those they've been taught to trust and defer to as 'leaders'. What of their internal earths have been so scorched that, unless Christ Jesus reaches down and touches those stretches of their psyche, nothing can grow except briars, thorns and brambles if even them? How many hurlers of brimstone have included salt in their mixture? How many of these children of God have had their souls, or parts of their souls, sown with salt by those they trust?
When land is sown with salt, that means nothing--repeat, nothing--will ever grow there again absent divine intervention!
And now I address myself to those sadly abused brothers and sisters with questions, viz.
What have those you call 'leaders' really done for you? I mean, do you have any physical benefits from supporting them? Is your house in better repair? Are you and your family eating better? Do you have assurance that a medical emergency won't utterly ruin you and your family? Or is all they give you what W.E.B. DuBois called 'the psychological wages of whiteness'--that is, the lie that the lowest among us is still 'better than' the best persons who happen to have darker skins? How much does THAT do for you when your bright and beautiful child or grandchild is sick and you know you can't afford medical attention?
Brothers and sisters, cry out to God in Christ Jesus to restore your soul's scorched, and possibly salted, grounds! Throw away the hateful lies which those you call 'leaders' and those who claim to tell you the truth but feed you with the anti-human junk foods of hatred of certain differences heap on your plates!
Cry out to Jesus that he may indeed restore your souls and strengthen those restored souls against being re-scorched and re-salted! But for Him to do this, you must throw away the lies that you've been fed about skin color and act as Jesus would have you act--that we are all brothers and sisters, regardless of skin color, national origin or faith community!
If you feel the need for healthier instruction (and I'm sure you will) consult first with our African-Americnn brothers and sisters. But first, explain to them, when they ask why don't you seek instruction from those of us who are 'woke', that we will do that but we want a guide which will keep us from choosing teachers who have the air of that obnoxious character about them that nearly ALL we Southerners of all colors can hardly abide: the Yankee (and I mean real Yankee, not generic Northern) schoolmaster or schoolma'm who acts as if they know it all and we don't know s**t!
Every one of us down here, of any color, knows that the North, and especially Greater New England (the original, except Fairfield County, CT, most of upstate New York and the area around the Great Lakes) is nowhere near as enlightened as they like to think and that the truth is STILL much closer to a Herblock cartoon to which I'll provide a link at the end of this 'sermon'.
In any case, we need help from somewhere to point us to teachers who won't act obnoxiously superior and thus put us off the things we need to learn.
I reckon fire and brimstone is something with which we need to flavor our speech more, but we need to handle it carefully.
Brothers and sisters, those you look to now for leadership are leading you, and all of us, to a very dead end. Remember I said before, they lead you now in a DEATH CULT! You cannot tune them out, and tune in more truth, quickly enough! You cannot grasp Jesus's Hand with one hand and hold an AR-15, along with the lies of 'whiteness', in the other! Choose life, with Jesus, that we all, and our descendants, may live!!
Apparently I'm being prevented from sharing a link to that Herblock cartoon. But it's dated March 1963, and the caption is: 'What's the matter? We don't say 'n***ers' up here.' Sorry, best I can do just now.

MORE FIRE & BRIMSTONE. APPLIED TO FENCES.

 It seems as if all the mass murders, as they continue, will keep my fire and brimstone flowing.
After hearing of what happened in Tulsa (and that the murderer actually bought the murder weapon after leaving the hospital!)  that sets my f.& b. moving again all right!
Again, Gentle Readers, imagine me verbally hurling this message at a gang of dough-faced ammosexuals.

Do you know what you are?
Do you believe you are 'washed in the blood'? If you do, and if you own assault weapons and ammo clips of more than ten rounds, I have seriously bad news for you: you are much mistaken about your purported 'regeneration'. Why do I say that? First, tell me why you own assault weapons with such large ammo clips. Surely hunting rifles are enough to put meat on your tables and scare dangerous critters away, right? And, if you have need of personal protection or have a job which requires you to be armed, surely sidearms such as pistols are quite adequate for that job, aren't they?
I can tell you with some confidence that no one--repeat, no one--will be coming against you. No 'n***ers', no 's**cs', no 'Injyns' and certainly no 'weirdos', to quote from the sewage systems which are the minds of many of you! I also understand that your 'news sources' have been lying to you about this. Yes, they have lied to you in order to keep you whipped up with fear and rage and buying lots of things they have you believing you'll need. If you want news from sources that tell you the truth, then return to the old networks--PBS also tells the truth, as do CNN and MSNBC. They make no bones about their editorial stands, but they don't twist the news to conform to their ideology as do your probable current sources.
By the way: you do remember that the performers of the 'Boston Tea Party' were actual white men masquerading as 'Indians', don't you? Well, it might be said that Fox, OAN, Newsmax and the Sinclair Broadcasting stattions have done the same to y'all. Think about it.
Rage, fear and hatred are serious barriers to something you say you all crave, as believers. They are barriers to your regeneration and to the infusion of God's own Holy Spirit into your own beings!
As of this moment, you are NOT even 'pro-life' in any meaningful way; you are--and, yes, you may not realize it--members of a DEATH CULT!!
YES---A DEATH CULT!! You have chosen to rely not on the living God in Christ Jesus but on your assault weapons, ammo and your pale skins which you've been deluded into believing mark you as superior! Don't try to lie to me; remember I'm also a Southern white man! If you were 'pro-life' you would cast aside these weapons of war for the weapons with which Christ Jesus can give us and train us in using IF we are willing to learn from Him!
If you become truly 'pro-life' you will reach out to other working people who have darker skins and work with them in order to compel our representatives to give us the things we all need and desire!
And you would listen to our darker brothers and sisters when they caution us not to listen to those who say, 'There's only so much available' with intent to re-divide us!
You know what the FHA and the GI Bill after WWII did, right? It created a much larger middle class than any country had yet had! True, it was almost all white, but that's not your fault nor mine as none of us knew how hard it was for people of color to get those benefits. We might have, and eventually did, ask about that, but the architects of those laws also were very discouraging of such questions from we who benefited from them.
In any case, the making of such a middle class turbocharged our economy! In light of that, imagine how strong our economy would be if people of color had been included among the beneficiaries of those laws! Now do you understand how we've been lied to and deliberately divided from one another?
Brothers and sisters, put down the instruments of death! Leave your death cults and grasp the hand held by the Lord Jesus Christ! Choose life, indeed, that you, your children and our brethren of color may ALL live!  But remember you cannot grasp the hand of Jesus with one hand and have an AR-15 in the other!!
Some of you may know an old religious song; I don't know if we can call it a hymn. I think the title is Sunday Morning and it sings about  being able to 'tear down the fences that fence us all in/Fences created by such e-vil men' and being able to 'live together again'. This is what Our Lord calls us to do: do our part in the truly godly work of tearing down those fences! Join Jesus and me in this holy work and save your souls, yourselves and our country!

FIRE & BRIMSTONE POURED ON THE 'RELIGIOUS' RIGHT

Here it comes. The 'sermon' that's been brewing at least since 2010 and has boiled over with the latest shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde.  Gentle (usual) readers, for the full effect here, you need to imagine me in front of a crowd of dough-faced ammosexual bipeds preaching this. I hope you can tell when I'm at the top of my lungs and when I drop my voice so that my hearers must strain to hear me. Anyhow, here goes.

"Howl, howl, howl, HOWL! O, you are men of STONE!!" King Lear, Act V, Scene 3

Indeed you are. Men and women with hearts of stone upon which you whet your Bowie knives of hate!
Remember this: I come from the same stock as you and I am historically a Southerner. A 'scalawag', yes, and proud of it, but a Southern white nonetheless.
Another senseless, completely unnecessary massacre of little children and all you do is fold your hands and mumble some version of 'Lord, Lord' so uselessly as you weep crocodile tears it makes me want to SCREAM--which, come to think of it, is exactly what I'm doing!
Anyone with so much as a nodding acquaintance with the truth can see what a COP-OUT that is on your parts! Then again, y'all already have plans for much larger massacres already, ain't that right? Plans to basically kill all that really makes our country great to whatever extent it is, don't you? To end any nonsense about 'equal justice' and 'equal opportunity' and so forth? If, after you do this and you keep mouthing the same empty phrases, DO YOU REALLY THINK ANYONE ON THIS PLANET WILL BELIEVE A WORD COMING OUT OF YOUR LYING MOUTHS?!?! Or don't you care if anyone believes you or not?
An anti-Christ figure has shown you how to tilt the table so you can keep on winning 'elections' indefinitely and you have eagerly grasped at what he's shown you! And apparently you don't care how much of a sham those elections will come to be thereby!  And I know why. Remember, I am one of Y'ALL.
Another man was elected to the White House. A decent man, a gentleman, with a fine education and a personality to match. He was and still is, apparently, an excellent father and husband. He and his attractive and gracious wife have two smart, pretty and goodhearted daughters. At least, let's hope so. And your reaction to him, entirely because of the color of their skins (don't even try to babble lies and rationales here; remember, I'm one of you!) is probably the biggest telltale about what (I can't say 'who') you really worship.
Oh, LBJ had y'all down pat when he said, somewhere along what was then the new I-40 in 1964 to the young Billy Don Moyers, as he still called himself, "If you can make the lowest white man believe he's better than the best colored man, 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 one of the best colored men was elected to the White House and y'all just couldn't stomach how much better he and his family still are than the lowest among us, ain't that right? Admit it to yourselves, because only if you do can God's Grace in Christ Jesus reach down and pull y'all out of the pit YOU have dug for yourselves by electing one of the lowest among us to be this good man's successor!
You have shown yourselves to be idolaters to our common paleness of skin and your AR-15s with clips of between 50 ans 100 rounds and NO followers of Christ Jesus! I can perceive little to no signs of God's Holy Spirit moving amongst you, although that might be my problem too! If so, explain it to me if you can!
Montgomery Gentry sings a song titled Some People Change. Google the video on Youtube.It is to that kind of change I call y'all right now. It involves some relatively mundane things. Once you change, tune out Fox, OAN and Newsmax (all of which make things up) and tune in CNN, MSNBC and the old major networks. They make no bones about their editorial stance but neither do they make up lies and call them 'news'. You'll get better information from them.
Second, start trying to connect with African-American and/or Latino churches. Speak with them and listen. When they speak of their experiences with racism, remember that's not necessarily a reflection on you but is against the system as a whole.
I could preach a whole 'nother sermon about that, but I expect most of y'all need a meal by now. Just remember to tip your servers rightly; twenty percent of the check or better if they do a good job. Anyhow, learn what you, as working people, have in common with your working brethren of duskier hues. And, most importantly, organize together with them to make a new and larger 'us'.
Above all, vote for no one who's trying to make life harder for some of you. Because that 'some' will eventually include you, whatever you may do, if you don't see and oppose such measures. And you may not see that coming without our brethren of color. They're much better trained to perceive such designs than most of us yet are. For at least that reason, we need them as much as they need us! Remember that! I think I can safely say, it's this kind of thing Jesus wants us to do. Listen without agendas and don't fear to ask questions; we all have things we don't know but should know.
And remember, sin has a collective dimension as well as an individual one. Nations and, yes, churches, synagogues, mosques or what-have-you, can be caught in sins--mostly sins of false certainty or want of charity and welcome to the stranger. Fight those sins when you bump up against them.
Finally (do I hear sighs of relief?) remember that our apparently common theology tells us that we are ALL sinners, every last one of us. We need to fight sins inside our countries and churches and so on, but we cannot expect sin's absence anywhere, nor should we. Remember, we don't stop being sinners once we grasp Jesus's Hand of Grace! His Grace gives us a fighting chance AGAINST our sins both individual and collective!
If we are to be 'pro-life', we need to make it so children can go to school without fear of being mown down by a maniac with an AR-15. We need to make it so another mouth to feed won't mean dire hardship, or shaming, for anyone and that all of us--the expanded 'us'--can have the education and/or training we need for what we want to do. And that no medical emergency will wipe any of us out financially!
And, Archbishop Cordileone, allow a humble man to caution you as regards your own allies in your cause and to remind you that Jesus shared meals with everyone, with his opponents as well as his disciples. Let politicians look to their consciences but perhaps Eucharist should be given as Jesus would give it. I know money's hard to find but what has your archdiocese been doing lately to help families, mothers and little ones? Again, a humble man's question. And what do the SGCs in your archdiocese make of your action? You do know that abbreviation and what it means, right?
Now is the time, brothers and sisters, to turn from the weapons of death and heeding calls for division to the means of life for ALL and building a larger 'we' than this planet has yet seen. Remember we have been pioneers. Now is the time to resume that status. Pioneers for better lives for ALL!

GRACE OR FASCISM'S FUEL?

 Historical amnesia.
This, plus a refusal to look squarely at ugly facts or to think when necessary, are fascists' bread and butter.
For at least the last 42 years and probably longer, a large bloc of voters in this country have done this. Considering we elected a Grade B actor as president, with nothing inside of him except what he absorbed from those to whom he was closest (more on that) because these voters wanted to live in Disneyland, I guess it's poetic irony that Florida's caudillo DeSantis is now yanking the floor out from Disney World.
And just what did the Grade B actor absorb? Once he married the adopted daughter of Dr. Loyal Davis, a wealthy surgeon with anti-New Deal politics, he absorbed most if not all of them, and thus became a fit front-man for those who wanted to scrap every scrap of the New Deal, including Social Security.
I wonder if the vacancy inside Reagan doesn't have something to do with his son's atheism, but that's for another time. Suffice it to say for now that, while I don't agree with the conclusions of atheists, I very strongly support their right not to believe. But back to the main topic.
Conversely to fascism, democracy stands stronger when it is more inclusive. Is it perfect? No, and perhaps never will be this side of Judgment. But democracy is a process. It enables more voices to be heard than ever before and, thus, has more self-correcting potential than any other way of governance than our world hath seen to date. Its weaknesses tend to be the places where bullies, mostly financial bullies, can make their influence felt. That is, those cracks where autocratic ways come flowing through.
Democracy, both political and economic, is also based on the truth that too much power inevitably--yes, Gentle Reader, you read me right, I wrote inevitably--corrupts human beings in mind, heart and soul. Kudos to Lord Acton for re-articulating this truth. Democracies, if they are to remain so, must have a solid economic floor and a not-too-high ceiling in terms of its citizens' incomes. We must also learn to give nature a voice (voices?) for our own preservation.
Democracies also need citizens accustomed to taking action together, making common cause with each other when the need arises. It needs citizens who keep themselves informed and engaged; no matter on which level. It also needs citizens to remember that autocracies have been largely dismal failures as governments except for the handful of people who profited by them.
Democracies are also right to require of their citizens, both native and adopted, to assimilate to the ways of democracy as each country has them and including what I just wrote.
Now: considerin' that all we bipeds are equally corruptible by too much power, let s/he who can answer me this: is this not true of us collectively as well as individually? Why do so many of us need to believe that our country and/or religious community is Without Sin, aside from those sins which look like fun but are actually mostly acts of desperation in search of an anodyne and/or a human connection?
And it seems that those who are most openly 'people of faith' have forgotten the lines of Scripture about no one, no, not one, doing good. Not to mention Jesus himself asked the rich young man, "Why do you call me 'good' "? I am also a person of faith, and let me remind you we are NOT saved by the apparent perfection of our faith community, much less our countries, but only and solely by the UNEARNED Grace of God! I happen to believe that comes in fullest form in Christ Jesus, but I'll tell you why and how only if you ask.
We need to grab hold of that Grace and use it to face the ugly historical truths and their current fallout and do what we can to eliminate or at very least mitigate that fallout and also to hear the alarm bells of how much we need to change NOW if there is to be any decent future for our grandchildren! We need Grace for a clear and honest remembering of our past, including all the ugliness of it. And a word for my political brethren: no nation is without its own uglinesses. No nation is more wicked than others but some (democracies) are more open to reforming those nasty parts. It's being closed to such reform that cements any nation or people in wickedness.
Let's ask for courage and discernment in this process of Grace thus pulling us forward!

TRIBE-TRANSCENDING DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY

 It seems my mind and David Brooks's are running along similar tracks this morning, although I think I'm a little more interested in reconciling 'tribal' wisdom with multiracial, multiethnic democracy.
Someone, somewhere has written this line: "Western Civilization was born in the creative tension between Athens and Jerusalem." I can see the truth in that; the tension is between the empirical observation of Athens and Jerusalem's loyalty to divine revelation. I think about another pair of opposites currently at loggerheads and wonder if one thing we need is a state of creative tension between them. These opposites are: on 'our' side, a universal law under which all life has equal justice and all humans have equal dignity and, on the other, ever more naked tribalism: everything for Me and Mine and crumbs, if even that, for all others.
You, Gentle Reader, might think the choice obvious. But, for many of us who are actually or, in our own minds, all for universal rule of law and democratic principles, we also still have what might be called tribal barnacles on us. That is to say, we all have our own partialities which tend to lean towards the ways and people who look like those with whom we grew up. There is nothing evil in having such biases.
The evil begins when, deliberately or unthinkingly, we treat 'our tribe' like royals: members of our tribe can do no wrong. My own inclination is to go the other way: were I on the bench and a case came before me in which a 'fellow' (fill in the blank) allegedly violated a law which I considered to be one of the treasures our common group gave the world, I would be hard put not to throw the book at the wo/man before me. I would be inwardly enraged and disgusted with that person. I might take a long look at the other judges in the same court, ask myself if one of them might better ensure justice done and wonder if I should recuse myself from the case at hand.
Many on my side of the political fence, including my wife (and, I suspect, my mother) like to think of themselves as 'global citizens'. I don't share that particular feeling except, maybe, as a catholic Christian. I do what a man can to put and keep my relationship with God foremost. Second, I love and care for my wife and our fur-babies. Then, I consider myself a U.S. citizen, a 'green' social democrat, an ethnic Anglo-Scots/Jewish hybrid and very much a product of Western Civilization. I suggest that loyalty to transnational ideas and ideals do not nullify tribal bonds. On the contrary; such ideas can take flight from their tribal origins throughout the world to the benefit of all life!
It must be stated and thoroughly understood, that a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith democracy is something quite new in human history. To those who rip and wish to tear down Western Civilization I ask, "And replace it with what? With naked tribalism? A new imperialism?"
One thing Athens and Jerusalem had, and have, in common is rigorous methods of self-criticism and self-correction. The West has this, too, in a way I cannot see any other civilization or culture to have. And it is one thing which has enabled the West to become what it is today.
At different times, two other cultures decided they didn't need to know anything more. Eight or so centuries ago, the Muslim world 'closed the doors of ijtihad' (meaning independent inquiry) and proceeded down the scale of scientific progress to the basement it occupies today. Six centuries ago, Ming China decided it needed to know no more about the outside world and that was the end of Zheng He's voyages across the Indian Ocean and even into the Red Sea. Had it been decided otherwise, China might have colonized at least eastern Africa long before Europeans did.
To be satisfied with 'enough' material goods and services is one thing and a commendable one. All the Abrahamian faiths enjoin us to share our surplus; we don't do nearly enough of that!
But to decide that 'we know enough' is arrogance of the worst kind. When we stop growing our minds and hearts, we start to die at a snowballing rate. The only thing worse is believing that no one can teach us anything but we have everything to teach to everyone else.
Allow me to point out to the haters of the West that allegiance to trans-tribal and transnational ideas and ideals didn't spring from somewhere fully grown. Within the West itself, such allegiances have had to (and still must, even today) climb up a long, steep hill. And there have been plenty of reverses, breakdowns, and tribal relapses along the way. We're staring such a relapse in the face, right now, e'en as I type these words!
Such relapses were, and are, characteristic of empires. The West is the only culture that has honored the best in itself by giving up those empires in a relatively short time and with relatively little bloodshed. And it is worth pointing out that capitalism run amok is probably one of, and quite probably the most, tribally oriented aspect of our own country: all for me and mine and crumbs, if that, for all others. Pretty tribal in the worst way, not so?
In order to grow, and make room for progressively more peoples, democracy must be both liberal and social. We must ensure a seriously level playing-field so that equal opportunity is--well, really real for everyone. We must build a solid floor and ceiling for our societies. This means that, among other things, no child goes to bed hungry and that everyone has clean water to drink and use. And that no individual, family or small group is powerful enough to defy a popularly elected government. We've been learning how much can be involved in that; we still are. Democracy is still unfinished; we're only beginning to give the natural world a voice--which, btw, we need to hear and work with!
It can even be argued that autocracy or oligarchy, in all its forms, is that society which says to its members: you needn't grow as people; indeed, we don't want you to. We know enough; we know all that can be known. We must now be static.
On the other hand, democracy knows there is always more to learn as long as we're here on this blue-and-green planet and, at least I hope and believe, beyond this life as well.
I also suggest that believing tribal/global is an either/or proposition might be a tribal remnant in and of itself; we need them to be both/and rather than either/or. We need to figure out how the two fit together and/or what creative tension between them feels and looks like. One thing is for certain: it can no longer look like 'empire', be that empire Chinese, Russian, Arab, Mongol, Ottoman, Aztec, Spanish, British or even....American. We've been trying to work out being a democratic republic and an empire simultaneously. I'm not sure we've really succeeded in that or if success in such an endeavor is possible. But exploration of that probably needs a whole 'nother post. Did I see some shudders in the gallery? No worries; not this time.
I think Our Mr. Brooks and I agree that the West, especially Anglophonia and perhaps Protestant Europe, need to reconfigure personal dignity with communal cohesion; it's never good for any society to have as many lonely people as we do. And, like Mr. Brooks, I approach these dilemmas with both humility and confidence: humility because we, too, have plenty yet to learn about forging a society as justly as possible and confidence because we, too, still have plenty to teach about that as well. Maybe we all need to remember a saying about how much more we learn from failures than from successes.
Also, David, I agree with you in that the West is at least not supposed to be 'an ethnic designation or an elitist country club'. Our troubles begin when those we choose to maintain our systems behave as if it is rooted in ethnicity and gives better deals to members of their country clubs than to others. We all need to watch out for this as this is something we may do quite unconsciously. We need to remember we have two ears and one mouth. I for one very much believe that the Creator meant to make a point with that proportion.
And I'll end with two quotes from Our Mr. Brooks with which I heartily concur:
"At the end of the day, only democracy and liberalism are based on respect for the dignity of each person." We must show this by making this a real universality by our actions!
And again. David, I couldn't agree with you more about this: The heroes of Ukraine are showing that at its best, it is a moral accomplishment, and unlike its rivals, it aspires to extend dignity, human rights and self-determination to all. That’s worth reforming and working on and defending and sharing in the decades ahead.
Amen and amen, sez I. How about you?

DEMOCRACY UNDER ATTACK: DEFEND AND EXTEND

 Democracy is now under attack around the globe.
It is being attacked both from without and within free, or partially free, societies.
The attack from without is centered in Russia, which is currently not a free country. It can be argued that Russia has been the locus for reaction and autocracy since just after Waterloo. Anyone remember Alexander I's idea of a Holy Alliance against liberalism and democracy?
But wait: don't the Bolsheviks and the USSR make an exception to that? I'm still pondering that, because I'm not sure the answer is yes. Bolshevism's original stated intent was a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' but whatever there was of democracy in that was very autocratically stifled by Stalin, if not earlier by Lenin. Both men had highly autocratic ways of governing.
Before I go any further, let me be clear. Real democracy proceeds from the bottom up, autocracy from the top down. Keep this in mind as we proceed.
The Russian Revolution may have started with a democratic impulse, but was imposed in the same old autocratic way that has characterized Russia ever since the Mongols conquered it and held it (except for what's now Belarus and most of the Ukraine, which became part of a Polish-Lithuanian kingdom) for two centuries. So right now, the Revolution doesn't look like too much of an exception.
And other autocracies, most notably China, are watching democracies to see how we react to this revival of autocracy and all its ways of increasing misery among most humans for the sake of elevating a handful of mostly exceptionally vicious bipeds.
An earlier post of mine recalls Lord Acton's phrase: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Rarely have humans said or written anything as true. This being the case, autocracy in all its degrees from familial to imperial is at least partially based on a lie: that humans who have had much power ought to keep holding it because they know how to use it. Much depends on what 'knowing how to use it' means. Other than that, autocracy is no more than the embodiment of Thucydides's dismal observation: "The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must."
That's all autocracy is.
Democracy is based in the truth that we are all equally corruptible by power, be that power political or economic. Cultural power is somewhat different as its power to coerce is much more elusive and limited than is the case for political and/or economic power. Cultural power depends at least partially on how desperate one is to be considered one of the 'cool kids' and/or one of the Good People. I frankly don't give a defecation about that, so, at least for me, cultural power is more like smoke and mirrors. And here's a poke for those anxious to think of themselves as Good People: don't most of you also call yourselves Christians of one kind or another? And doesn't our common faith tell us that we are all SINNERS?! At least that's how I understand it and I am a Christian. And I tell you as Christians we are called on to do right, love mercy, etc. and concern ourselves with how we can help other humans and other creatures to live and flourish alongside us--NOT to concern ourselves with Looking Good. Unless, of course, y'all are among the hypocrites of whom Our Lord spoke disparagingly!
Democracy is NOT based on any airy-fairy notion of how 'naturally good' we all are. To use Rachel's word, that's bullpuckey! Democracy seeks to arrange power so that we all have at least a little power but no one has too much. No one person or small group should have enough power to, essentially, privatize the public realm for themselves.
Democracy is also under assault from within, from those politicians bought by billionaires who love to think of themselves as Nietzchean supermen (Like the Nazis loved to.) and by their shills at businesses such as Faux News. The whole staff, with Tuckums and Vanity Hannity in the lead, like to think of themselves in the same way when all they really are is bullies' toadies. What they live on is the same type of patronage that kings and nobles used to give to those who flattered them enough.
Democracy is also now threatened by a slower sort of rot from within. It begins with taking democracy and its forms for granted. This is aggravated dangerously when too many of an ostensible democracy's citizens have to spend most of their waking hours just keeping roofs over their heads and food on their tables. That is now the case here in the US of A and it looks like the same thing is happening back across the Pond in the Mother Island. I hope it's not also happening in Israel.
In fairness, it must be said that democracy also demands more of us. We need to beware of those who would divide us by flattering some and pointing at others as the source of all or most of our problems. We need to check sources when we hear or read things that sound preposterous and figure out how 'interested' those sources are in persuading us of this or that. Democracy needs a large number of citizens engaged with its processes at each point. It also needs an understanding that rights, of both citizens (humans) and of other creatures and life-forms is NOT a finite pie to be divided.
We are now at a point where, to preserve ourselves and civilization, we need to establish Nature as having certain rights as well as ourselves and our pets. Autocracy allows, yea demands, we all not grow but remain overaged children looking to our daddies for our wants and needs. Democracy is the opposite: it needs us to continue to grow as human beings. Under a democracy, when we provide nourishment and services for each other via government, we need to remember that the government is NOT a Big Daddy but OUR government. Government is how we join together to give one another what we all need to live decent lives and which we cannot give each other any other way.
Democracy also needs respect. Respect for its forms, respect for one another as human beings, respect for nature. And also respect for expertise legitimately gained. But we also need the experts to be able to put their expertise in language all or at least most of us can understand. We are right to be suspicious of anyone who claims to be an expert at something but only comes out with a lot of ten-dollar words which s/he probably doesn't know what they mean either. (I'm looking at YOU, Newtie!)
Also, democracy requires that we insist on real answers from our representatives. Anyone going around a question ought to be voted OUT at the next election! Let our questions be answered, but if that representative can tell us WHY s/he answers the way they do, that too deserves respect even if we don't agree with that person's conclusions. And we need to be alert for clues that 'special interests' might have their claws in our representatives too.
Some will claim that they have the right to espouse ideas which give more rights to some than to others. I say, if anyone is whining about their rights not being respected while they seek to abrogate the rights of others ought to be shut down there and then for the lying hypocrites they are. My personal belief is that no one who attacks equal rights or the rule of equal justice under law OR the very rule of law itself ought to be allowed to hide behind those rules when they're cornered. Let anyone who so chooses make a counter-argument to what I write here!
Anne Appelbaum is right: we need to fight for democracy, liberal and social. We need to enforce democratic ways and means domestically and, at least at times, globally as well. There may be a tightrope between the capability of doing that and having an oversized and too-powerful military-industrial-security complex, but we need to walk that walk if democracy is to be defended and extended. In hope, let me remind my readers that real democracies do not go to war with each other.
This is one of my longest posts, but it seems to me to require that this much be written. Read, digest and share. Let's all do what we can to defend and extend democracy so more voices can be heard.

HONEST RELIGION NEEDS A SECULAR SOCIETY

 I read something today which first alarmed me and then had me thinking: the suggestion that Putin dreams of leading, along with the racist, fascist Bannon and his minions, a Great Revival of white 'Christendom'. He wants to revive the ancient error of the 'Cross-and-crown' framework of society using a coalition of counterfeit 'Christian' nationalists here, reactionary Romans (I question just how 'catholic' these people might be) and the Orthodox churches which have always been organized on an ethno-national basis. This 'coalition' would have three enemies: Islam, China (which has always feared Islam; why do you think they're persecuting the Uighurs so cruelly?) and....modern secularism.
That last gets me really thinking. I grew up in a 'sekler-HEWM'niss' family. I started to become a Christian when I was in college and am still becoming one; I am and have been an in-process Christian just about all my adult life. Neither my church nor any Rationalist body called on me to cut off ties from the first part of my life, by the way.
To me, 'secular humanism' is a few things: first, I'd say it belongs to spiritual adolescents at that stage of development where they see their parents as Utterly Hopeless Creatures, which we know to belong basically to high schoolers, college students (and maybe other young people of corresponding ages) and tends to begin to change in one's early twenties. Perhaps starting regular jobs has something to do with that.
Second, I see it as a way-station between moving beyond the god many of us know from childhood and our parents. We move through the valley of unbelief and in the hills on the other side, we find a God of Whom we know far less than we're used to believing. Paul Tillich said it well: "The post-skeptic God often bears little resemblance to the pre-skeptic God." How right he was!
Third, I see a secular society as actually quite necessary for the nurturing and growth of what I understand to be true religion and true spirituality. A society which is resolutely secular--that is, one where the government concerns itself only with earthly good for its members, including ecosystems--is probably necessary for religion to remain relatively uncorrupted. A society where one faith or another is supported by government opens the door all too wide to corruptions. Not to mention that such a society can play an important role in keeping religion intellectually sharp and honest. The Gallican Church (that is, the Catholic Church in France) offers some proof of that, I'd say.
When we try to use shiny objects to bring people to, or back to, 'old-time religion' it works for a while, but only for a while. Soon enough the objects lose their shine and the whole thing as shown up as yet another snake-oil medicine show. And that's where, in the dark past, religious coercion usually kicked in.
Modern secular society asks only that no religion make a public nuisance nor a public danger of itself; its only compulsion upon religion is more honesty, both intellectual and emotional, than any established religion would require of itself. Such societies have tended to leave such honesty to its religious dissenters.
Modern secular society might also require religion to dig deeper into its scriptures for more meaning--such understandings as can incorporate scientific facts with religious truths. Here, as elsewhere, the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life!
I should also mention here that, to the everlasting shame of religions, secular societies seem to treat their members with considerably more 'humaneness' than do societies which place high importance on outwardly religious displays. See Matthew 7:21 for what Jesus had to say. And, at least as importantly, note this passage:
Jesus, knowing that they [the crowd which he had fed] intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. John 6:15 (NIV)
He fled from those who would have made him an earthly sovereign. How then can he approve of a renewal of the 'Cross and crown' governmental framework? And read these lines written by a man who was himself a friar more than four centuries before our Bill of Rights was crafted, in a time when any other governmental pattern could hardly be imagined:
When the kindness of Constantine gave Holy Church endowments
In lands and leases, lordships and servants,
An angel cried on high above the Romans,
saying, 'This day has the church drunk venom,
And all who have Peter's power are poisoned forever'.
If Will Langland could see the evil results of 'Cross and crown' government in a time when hardly anyone could imagine anything else, there can be no excuse for us if we permit a renewal of such a flawed model of governance. Repeat. NO. EXCUSE!
Honest religion and secular society need one another! And something it seems I can't say often enough: A robust, living faith welcomes questions, can answer criticisms cogently, gives mockery a pitying smile and asks the state only for impartiality. It is a brittle and moribund 'faith' that begs the state for help to squelch questions, criticisms and justly deserved mockery in order to shore up its outward shell, as its insides are already usually empty as it is.

ENLARGE THE EQUATIONS

 Enlarge the equation.
Could this be the slogan which we on the political/economic left--Democrats, democrats, liberals, progressives, racial justice-seekers and Greens--need pretty badly? Something that says what needs to be said in a brief, understandable and memorable way?
I thought of it today in what might be considered and interesting context: the cost of keeping a henhouse, including the raising up of altered male chicks to be capons instead of having them horribly ground up the way the great poultry houses do, versus the cost of just buying eggs and poultry at the markets. Obviously, it will cost more money to build and maintain poultry. But on the other hand, I might contribute something to local food sufficiency and I'd be giving at least some life to the male chicks who would otherwise be destined for a quick and horrible end.
And then it occurred to me that enlarging the equation was what I was doing in my head. And then my mind took another jump as I asked myself, isn't this what we need to do across the board? Enlarge the equations of profit and loss? Include as many others, human, animal and even plants, in the gain/loss equation? Isn't that why, at least until 1980, we didn't grind the seed-grains?
Don't we need to enlarge the equation so that we act to make sure every child is cared for and has at least an education which will enable them to keep on learning through their lives, and more, wanting to keep on learning thus? Sarah Palin is the personification of those who don't want to learn further; need I say more?
Don't we need to enlarge the equation so that we can see what a monetary rathole the military-industrial-security complex is for the most part? And, above all, don't we need to enlarge the equation so that we start putting 'capital' back into the ecosystems from which nourish us all? What good will even gold and silver, never mind fiat paper cash, do us when there's nothing left to make, sell or buy?!
Finally, don't we need to enlarge the equation to enable us to see, with perhaps a hint or two of how God sees all His Creation, much more of the ways not only all humans, but all life on this blue-green planet, are connected with each other and treat those connections with understanding and respect?!
Overgrown palefaced frat-boys who have never had to worry about putting anything by for any reason have ruled the roost for far too long! It is past time to knock them off that roost and compel them to get honest jobs! If all they can do is fast becoming antiquated, especially thanks to these new car-buying services which avoid going to a dealership, well, too bad. I can hardly wait to see Alex Jones, Tuckums and everyone who is part of the fascist noise machine trying to sell pencils and wrapping paper on the street corner!
My profound apologies to Xers, Millennials, and Zoomers for the ways in which my Boomer generation (ESPECIALLY my 'fellow' pale males) has proven such a dismal, dismal failure! Back when we were young and getting some inklings of what hard work this all might prove to be, what did we do? Did we roll up our sleeves like sturdy men and women and get to the work before us?
We all know the answer is a big fat NO. Most of us shirked in favor of jamming our own pockets and purses with mostly ill-gotten cash 'made' by selling off still-vital parts of our economy and losing millions of honest people's jobs and pension funds. And now those problems are bigger and mostly up to y'all to solve, although Bill McKibben is giving us another chance with his Act III organization.
Think about that phrase, though: Enlarge the Equations. Might that not just be a winning slogan?

LORD ACTON REDUX

 "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."--Lord Acton

Can we be said to all agree on this? And further agree that none of us bipeds are born more or less so corruptible than our fellows? Well, whether you agree with this or not, I will proceed under just that assumption. If you think you can make a case otherwise, you're more than welcome to try. Good luck with that, though.
So. Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a large reason to protect and extend democracy. Ideally, under a democracy, all living things have some power but none have too much. Yes, there is and will continue to be a certain amount of inequality of power; that's a condition of life. But democracy is intended to make it so there is no one as abject to have no power at all nor anyone who is dangerously powerful enough to 'bid defiance to our laws and people', as Mr. Jefferson said of our moneyed corporations in the year of Grace 1814!
So this is one point of political democracy. But political democracy can be made into a hypocritical laughingstock when economic power is skewed toward the rich and already powerful. Inequality is already so great that our economy may not even be capitalist anymore: we may have crossed the line into a neo-feudal economy.
Those who have either never, or barely, had to work for their wealth think they do the poor and working people a favor by making their lives as miserably hard as possible for as little money as possible. A favor, so please you! 'Builds character', according to those who knew they were never going to miss a meal and who always had Daddy or Mumsy to pull them out of any trouble!
Well, I for one am for returning that 'favor'! How exactly am I so? Read the maxim with which I begin this post. Then reflect on what kind of power billions of privately-held dollars or other currency gives one individual or one family. Isn't that pretty dam' close to absolute?
Not to mention, aren't a lot of rich people rather anxious to save the souls of we who have much less than they by making us work so very hard for so very little? Well, that's where I want to return the favor: if absolute power corrupts absolutely, consider the state of the souls of these rich folks! How can they be other than hanging by threads above the very mouth of hell? Shouldn't we pull them back from the edge of the flaming abyss over which they hang?
Make no mistake about it: even after such 'heavy' taxation of the rich as I propose, they'll still be richer than you and me, and to such riches as that, big whoop, sez I. They'll still have vacation homes, country clubs, yachts and other toys of the rich--not so many private aircraft, though, I imagine! Shocking privation, isn't it?
But now they'll only be ten to twenty times as rich as you and I rather than 350 times as wealthy. And, with their wealth scaled down, they won't have such dangerously corrupting power as would turn feudal barons and kings into solid emeralds with envy! And, best of all, we pull their precious immortal souls well back from the edge of the flaming abyss!
And surely none of us should aspire to such wealth as to give us such all-encompassing and, thus, completely corrupting, power, now should we? So let's dispense with wanting to aspire to such a truly dangerous state; let us rather endeavor to do our own personal best at whatever we can do and at least like doing in building up each other and our ecological reserves. No one is wrong to ask for at least a modestly comfortable living by doing so; am I not correct in this? Seriously.
Finally, there is really no such thing as a monopoly on cultural power. We have media moguls, and one in particular, along with some of his spawn, has done the world horrific harm and should be prevented from doing more. But apart from that, cultural power is far more diffuse than political or economic power. Indeed, economic power affects cultural power. Culture follows money, so 'tis said, and it's true to a fair extent. I only mention 'cultural power' because I know that's where the 'What about...' is coming from today's fascists.
Anyhow, let's save the souls of our far-too-wealthy brothers and sisters by allowing no individual or family fortunes larger than $1 billion max, although my preference would be for making $500 million the maximum. And for keeping the top tax rate where it was in Ike's day back when I was born! And most of you who read my posts know what that means! As I said, the rich will still be rich but will be well back from the flames to which neo-feudal power brings us too dam' close!

WE, NOT THEY, ARE THE 'REAL AMERICANS'

 In my last post, I wrote that we liberals and progressives, so far from being un-American, are in fact the very soul (no pun meant) of America. We are the pioneers trying to build something that, so far as is knows, has not yet existed in human history: a multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith (including none) democratic republic. We also stand on the verge of a further extension of democracy; the giving of a voice to Creation itself.
We always should beware of saying our enemies are also God's enemies, but if God is urging us towards His holy realm as Isaiah describes it, can it be otherwise? They want all--repeat, all--the economic and political power in their hands alone and wish to stifle, or at least neutralize in Viktor Orban's soft-fascist style, any and all differing voices. Which feels more like God's Will to you: all of Creation having many various yet harmonious voices or the only voice that of the most ruthless and heartless among us? Which is more Christ-like? If we're not sure of the answer, I'd say some serious prayer and study (hermeneutics mandatory here!) is seriously required!
I think a word is in order about Orban's style, and what its possible transplanting here will likely require of us. 'Soft-fascist' means that our side is, through co-opting of the media, the judiciary and the counting (and, more often, the discounting) of certain votes means that we are put in a permanent 'loser' position. The whites, most Asians and palefaced Hispanics among us will be largely left in physical peace. The fascists will say, 'Nyah! Nyah!' which is what those wicked fools live for anyway! 'Enjoy your families and private lives; we don't need to bother you anyway! NYAAAAH! NYAAAAH!'
This is where we may have to make bothers of ourselves. When 'racial purification' begins, we dare not hide in our homes. We will have to put our bodies between the fascists and their intended victims and say, "No, you'll have to knock us down to get at our friends and our equally American brethren here." And to keep on doing this as long as we can. Are we ready for this? Some of us are but most of us need to learn the whens and hows at least.
I can't blame anyone who wants to leave this country and move somewhere else where people and other living creatures are treated more humanely and not so much like hostile alien things. But the war will be fought mostly here and it must be won here. The choice is between us who represent the truest and best spirit of this country and the Western world at large and those who would make a bitter, obscene and tribally inbred parody of both.
We, and the West at large, are what we are in large part because of our openness to new ideas, new technologies and new people as well. It is much more of a strength than a weakness. We close the doors and we start to decompose from within. Such inbreeding might be a large part of how the Arab/Muslim world, which led the world in learning and technology a thousand years ago while we were still running round bare-assed under our chain mail, lost its primacy and is today at the back of the line intellectually. I personally feel that's worth a lot of thought. What about you?