DEFEAT FASCISM

Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: Spent the evening watching a video about Blues Music in America. Of course it covered the enduring myth of the man who sold his soul to the devil in return for mastery of the guitar. This morning, my “hair shirt hour” featured reading Adam Smith on the development of currency. From Abraham's paying four hundred shekels of silver for the field of Machpelah to the modern evangelicals selling their decency for political power, we love the concept of bartering. This is true even though we’re not quite sure why Judas wanted his 30 pieces of silver. Sadly, we’re now bartering the life of our planet for a few generations of mobility and the fun it brings. And a cult is bartering the health of our children for the strained concept of “owning the libs.” When someone asks me why I accept being labeled a liberal, and thus “owned,” I’m reminded of the tale, a wonderful but likely apocryphal one, featuring Henry David Thoreau in jail for not paying his poll tax. According to the story, when friend Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau and asked why he was in jail, Thoreau is said to have responded, "Waldo, why are you not here?”

This draws one to the line from John Steinbeck’s "Sweet Thursday": “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen".

DEFEAT FASCISM

 It appears that the planned trip to Gettysburg and Antietam stands in jeopardy because our government has ceased to function. It presents a personal loss but a minor one in the great scheme of things.

 Still, I reread this book in anticipation, this time with an eye focused on General George McClellan. There have been some attempts in recent years to defend his timidity and define it as justified caution. We’ll see. He faced obstacles, no doubt. The fact remains that his opponents faced the same obstacles.

To this untrained, uneducated, and unqualified mind, one of the apparent factors in this battle was speed. One army had it. One didn’t. Even though the discovery of the Confederate Special Order 191 gave “Little Napolean” the disposition of the insurrectionist forces, he delayed any major attack for 18 hours and then deployed his forces in piecemeal fashion.

At countless times during the battle, delays by the United States forces gave General Lee time to assemble his smaller army for maximum deployment. A.P. Hill’s Division rushed from Harper’s Ferry in hours. The typical federal unit would have taken days, arriving just in time to form burial details.

 The final result? Some call it a stalemate. Some credit the federal forces with repulsing an invasion into the northern states. Some point out that it was enough of a victory to convince Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which pretty much eliminated the possibility of foreign involvement in our tragic war.

Today’s emphasis is about speed. We see it in the current invasion into all that was ever good and decent about America. One side is unleashing havoc upon the poor, the different, the least of those among us and the ones who believe in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. The other side says we must wait, in the manner of General McClellan, until we decide what pronouns define us ere we set our defenses.

As in any battle, the side weaker in numbers and moral basis must move faster and with the most force.

Why is that so important now? Anyone who can read knew what might happen. Hell, it was published and available, much like Special Order 191. No one, however, seems to have believed it would happen so quickly.

It must. It gives the forces of darkness time to weaken the American resolve with what we might call their “political artillery.”

At the proper moment, then, with resolve in shamble, “I declare martial law and declare that elections are no longer useful” will sound simply like another day in the park.

Saving America

Sitting here a few weeks before the election, I shudder in fear of what my country has evolved into during the last couple of decades. I won’t say it is the country for which I put my life on the line. I joined the United States Navy because I wanted to go to sea, not because I wanted to go to war. Fate intervened and here I sit, terrified, angry, sad, and, yes, patriotic. I just read how the president of the United States of America, soon facing reelection, is motivating crowds to violence against his political opponents, one a governor of a state within our country.

 Has it come to this?

 I have friends who have different political view than mine. We used to talk about them. We discussed topics we felt were worth discussing. How much regulation is enough? How much regulation is too much? What are the valid purposes of good government? How do we measure the wealth of a country and its people? What are the benefits of enlightened immigration? What is the role of government in equalizing the opportunity palate for the myriad colors of its people? When will women in our country be equal citizens? Children? Those whom nature has determined to be different?

 Now? Now it seems that the only issues worth voting for are unborn babies, religion, and guns. Those are the mentionable topics. Underlying it all is the issue of white supremacy.

 The unborn? Every educated person, and/or competent processor of facts I know realizes that the best ways to address the issue of abortions is to first address the issue of unwanted pregnancies. Then they agree that sex education, access to contraceptives, and equal male responsibility address those issues far better that hateful and misguided laws.

 Religion? Which religion? A person cannot say “Mine,’ for there are so many. How about the words of the figure on that lonely hill in Judea who is reported to have said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7, NIV)

Guns? I invite any reader to come to my “little postage stamp” of America on a Sunday afternoon, listen carefully, and tell me with a straight face that someone is confiscating guns. For maximum benefit, best wait until church has let out, lunch finished, and the first case of beer consumed.

Bigotry? I thought we might have had it on the run once. Then, America elected a person of color to the presidency and, like some powerful volcano that we thought was dormant, hate spewed forth like some noxious poison and became acceptable. It seems to buttress our every movement.

Here is my modest proposal to those whose political views are opposite mine. Let us unite for our country and vote this brood of vipers out of Washington. Then for the next two years and the two after that, let us have a normally functioning two-party system that deliberates and votes on issues and policies that area real and honest. May the side with policies that are free from hate and best for America win. I’m willing to take that chance.

Are you?

Saturday Sermon

One of the worst memories of my youth is that of being forced, in grade school, to watch films of children my age locked into what they called “iron lungs.” Those were machines that allowed children with polio to breath. Yes, to perform the simple act that allows us to breath. Invariably, after seeing such a film, my Sainted Mother would decide, after school, to subject us kids to a homemade test for polio. You had to lie on your back on the kitchen table and hang your head over the edge. You lowered it, waited, and then had to lift it. If you couldn’t, you might be headed for one of those machines that allowed you to breath.

Know what allows us to breathe without an iron lung? Green plants do the trick. Trees do the trick. Science-based physical transformation does the trick. I know of no peer-reviewed double-blind study that supports a thesis that “thoughts and prayers” will do the trick.

In the news, I read recently that a sizable section of our population is composed of Americans who “don’t believe in the scientific facts of global climate change.” Believe? Science is not something in which someone believes or doesn’t believe. Goodness gracious. Jump from a tall building and see if the Law of Gravity cares whether you believe in it or not.

When the last tree on earth is cut, as the last tree on Easter Island was, nature won’t care if we don’t believe in the scientific fact of photosynthesis, not even if we declare loudly that we believe in individual property rights more than we believed in survival.

When we start bringing back the iron lungs for children with polio, the disease won’t care that we claimed a right not to believe in the healing power of scientific facts.

Reading the news today, I can’t help believing that the major policy determinant emerging from the current American presidency is the desire to eradicate the memory of President Barack Obama in the manner of Egyptian kings defacing the statues of their predecessors. No matter how sound, or popular the existing policy may be, the goal will be, not to amend it, not to replace it with a sounder tool, not to ignore it, not to admit, however grudgingly, the efficacy of a rival’s work, but simply to end it. “I’ll show him,” sounds better as comic book dialogue than as political policy.

Back in olden days, national policy often changed as a result of thought, dialogue, compromise, and a public administration concept called “satisficing,” or finding a solution, perhaps not the best, but one that got the job done. Yes, sadly, national policy was once settled by means of a bloody civil war. We should all behave in such a rational manner that it is never again solved that way. The signs are not encouraging.

Nowadays, national policy is changed or established by an executive order by one man. Another man has ended dialogue between the two legislative bodies of government. One man in a foreign country controls a broad swath of our foreign policy. Another man in a foreign country controls parts of our free-election processes. One man leading a secret organization led, for many years before his death, our national government’s direction regarding our First Amendment right to exercise religious belief or non-belief as we choose. His successors still do.

I’m sure that there is a name for all of this, but I can’t put my thumb on it right now.

As another hurricane prepares to slam into our east coast, public systems based on science will determine the amount and extent of damage to our native soil. Whether one believes in science or not, transportation and communication systems based on science will be the sole determinant of life and death for many Americans.

Don’t bother asking Hurricane Dorian if it believes in science.

When Trump Tower is under water up to its second floor, the Atlantic Ocean won’t care that an American president didn’t believe in climate change. The National Geographic Society, owned by a Rupert Murdoch-controlled company that owns the 20th Century Fox movie studio, the Fox television network and Fox News Channel, made a prediction. The following photograph suggests, based on our current path, how America will look after the ravages of global warming take control.

A bit of irony that will comfort me until my last hours appears here. As you will notice, the little homesite near Pine Bluff, Arkansas, once purchased by my sharecropping parents will be more valuable than Mar-A-Lago.

“Fear and Loathing …” is a catchy phrase for a book title, but no way to run a country. As author Hunter S. Thompson said, though, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” We bought the ticket, and now we are riding into oblivion in a country ruled by fear and loathing. What a shame.

           

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Tomorrow's children won't travel far in an iron lung.

Science eliminated these.
Disbelief in Science
will bring them back.

Theology Time

Sunday Theology Time. “… when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” That was my Sainted Mother’s favorite verse of the Bible, I think. It may have been a close second to Verse 35 of the Gospel of John, Chapter 11: “Jesus wept.” Of course, she had a funny story that went with that, but let’s wait for another day.

Right now, let’s continue with our consideration of The Sermon on the Mount. The Galilean was beginning to “shuck the corn” when he got down to the hypocrites. He offered some pretty strong words in Verse Five of Chapter Six: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.”

Then he gets into to Sainted Mother’s line about praying in closets. If there was one thing she shared with the Galilean, it was a wariness about hypocrites. She called them “religious fanatics,” which broadened the definition a bit. I hate to think how she would feel about the hypocrisy that drips from our nation’s capital now.

“Oh my goodness,” I can just hear her say. “They’re calling that man a Christian?” Sainted Mother would have had what she called a, well I can’t say what she would have called it but it involved, among others, a euphemism for excrement, and the words “hemorrhage” and “fit.” Enough said about that. She had a most colorful command of our language, especially when she referred to hypocrites. They seemed to bring out the most erudite in her.

Forget Her for a second and consider Him. Why was the Galilean so upset about hypocrites? I mean, he was lumping them in with murderers, adulterers, thieves, and the greedy. Hypocrites? Well he certainly didn’t include them on the list of those who were blessed. He didn’t “cut them much slack” as they used to say in the Navy. He reminds us that “Your Father, … sees what is done in secret.” Oh dear. That’s got to scare the hell out of some folks while comforting others.

Is he telling those now in power that when they refuse to provide succor to those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are merciful, are pure in heart, who are  peacemakers, or who are persecuted because of righteousness that they be in some serious trouble if they don’t change their ways? See Franklin Graham run.

Perhaps the most notable band of hypocrites are those shouting the loudest about this being a “Christian Nation.” The Galilean laughed about it last time we spoke. He almost guffawed when he said, “Verily I say unto you (he does that as an inside joke) … I say unto you: Were my Beatitudes to be flashed up in bright lights on the wall of the U.S. Senate chamber, there would be a great rushing to dark places by those who use my name for that which is cruel and greedy.”

Wow. He’s worse than Sainted Mother.

He sets a pretty high standard, that Galilean. What in the world would happen, you think, if he’s watching America now?

In a strange sort of way, some who may suffer most over America’s “gun thing,” may be the harmless hobbyists, hunters, and enthusiasts.

Although I am not one, I have no great bone to pick with these folks. Some probably don’t collect banjos. To each his own I say, as I down my morning glass of buttermilk and listen to Schubert.

I view it this way. There will come a time when mothers get fed up with seeing the cold corpses of their children spread across the schoolyard. Then they will act. It won’t be because of the killing that happened this week. It won’t be the one after, nor the next one, perhaps not even the one after. The NRA won’t allow it as long as its coffers overflow and some politicians have deep hands.

But it will happen someday. Just wait and see. There will come a day when the “butcher’s bill” gets too great. And those who read history, in states where it is still revered and taught, will remember what happens when mothers get mad enough against something.

Then what will happen? There won’t be a discussion then. It will be too late for one, not too soon as the “auto-response” button puts it. Grab a history book and look up the Volstead Act of 1919, then tell me Americans won’t go to extremes when it suits them.

When that happens, as the scriptures tell us, the rain will fall on the just and the unjust. Good, decent people, of whom I am blessed to know many, will suffer along with the thugs who run the National Rifle Association, the manufacturers who own them, and the once-majority of politicians. It won’t be pretty.

What happened? How did we get into this mess? I believe good people were sold a bad bill of goods. Moreover, they failed to sense the betrayal from what once was a benign organization that taught young kids—I was one—the value of safe and sane firearms usage. Too many stayed in its ranks until it has become the tool of the purveyors of death.  Good people make bad decisions. Why?

Things change, sometimes so gradually that we don’t notice. Who can pinpoint the exact date when that benign organization became the evil, blood-soaked empire that it is today? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that innocent owners of firearms, who simply wanted to collect, hunt, compete, or protect their homes, stayed latched onto the NRA like it was the Pied Piper. And, as in that cautionary tale, blind followers may ultimately face the same end.

It will be a shame, for many going over that cliff will be, as I say, kind, generous, good-hearted people, but last seen holding hands with the imbeciles that carry loaded assault rifles into Walmart, our schools, churches, or other gatherings of the innocent.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t want your firearms. I already have some that I have inherited and don’t know what to do with. I don’t want to take any away from you, and I don’t recall right off hearing anyone else with half a brain proposing to. I simply don’t care what you do inside your home, the deep woods, or in a spot designated for discharging weapons of destruction.

If you simply can’t abide the thought, yeah there may be some, of not using your firearm to kill another human, be aware that the military is scraping the bottom of the barrel in its recruitment efforts. Your enlistment might postpone the ultimate return of the draft one more day. (Full disclosure: the animals hunted by the military do shoot back).

I just want to talk to you about not elevating your gun to the status of a religious icon. Religious icons have wreaked havoc on our planet for eons, from the fate of the Midianites to the destruction of the Twin Towers. It’s time we put those aside.

I just want reasonable people with different points of view to sit and discuss ways to prevent the carnage, and don’t say it won’t work. It works in other countries. Don’t say our “founding fathers” were infallible when they wrote the Constitution. If they were, many of my friends would still be counted as three-fifths of a human and my wife couldn’t vote at all. And let us all bear in mind that if it had been the “founding mothers” we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Imagine reasonable people sitting down to discuss a solution to a festering sore that is slaughtering our innocents. I think it could happen. Call me a dreamer if you wish, but “I’m not the only one.”

And it’s not to soon. Just a few more slaughterings, however, and it will be too late.

Grandmothers get mad too.
Best not risk it.

Don't Get Me Started: December 4, 2017

A few years back, my trophy wife fell and broke her ankle in three places. I used the “Fireman’s Carry” I learned in the Navy and got her into the car. At the emergency room, we were lucky. They got her in quickly and efficiently (Springhill Baptist in North Little Rock, AR ☼☼☼☼☼).

It was Friday. Turned out the Doc on duty was the surgeon who operated on such breaks. He operated on Saturday. I took her home on Sunday. Within a week I was pushing her through Lowe’s parking lot in her wheelchair going “Whee whee whee!”

Until she made me stop, but that’s another story.

We’ve had to go back to that emergency room a couple of more times: once with a kidney stone (me) and once with acute dehydration and pneumonia (mother-in-law).

It’s gotten more crowded each time. Last time, I’ll swear I sat beside a teenager and 12 of her close relatives. From all appearances, she was there for a pregnancy test, or something very close to it. (When she came back from consultation, they all wanted to know if it was a boy or girl). Also saw someone we knew who, from all accounts, has the distinction of never having held a job in his adult life. He was with his latest girlfriend and their baby, I think his fifth. No. Not African-American—white and ultra-conservative. You ought to hear hear him rant about that "n****r" president."

Here’s my big fear for the future. The current plan for the ruling party, apparently, is for the emergency rooms across the country to provide care for those who don’t see the need for health insurance. I guess we’ll pay our share of the cost. We don’t like to watch suffering.

But … and here is the real rub. It’s going to be a helluva wait if you happen to need emergency care.

Oh, and I recently saw a particularly hateful and venomous essay by former football coach Lou Holtz. Yeah, he’s the one who left Arkansas because they wouldn’t let him use his position as football coach at U of A to advertise air conditioners. Anyway, he claims our country is divided into doers and takers. Made me think, yeah, there’s some truth to that. I thought of America’s “Sweetheart City,” Savanah, Georgia and how the “doers” who built those fancy homes were, upon completion, never allowed within them again except, perhaps, to serve the “takers.”

Now there’s the current ex-coach. He was supposed to “do,” but he didn’t. So, he’s “taking” somewhere near $12 Million to go and “not do” somewhere else.

I think I read in the Book of Ludicrous that oversimplification is as great a sin as worshiping riches.

Sailing To Oblivium: July 8, 2017

He looked at me, frowned, and said, “Mr. Jimmie, if y’all don’t straighten out, the Lord’s gonna quit blessing you white folks.” That made me stop and think.

It was in response to some whimpering complaint about a burden I felt at the time. I can’t remember now if it, the burden, was real or imaginary. The speaker was, though. He was a man who lived next to us and whom I had known my whole life. His name was Amos Fletcher. I’m sure his grandparents had been born slaves.

At any rate, I think of his admonition a lot. It never fails to bring to mind, as well, the verse, currently much out of fashion, from the 12^th Chapter, 48^th verse of the Gospel According to Luke in the Christian New Testament: “to whom much is given, much will be required.”

Today, we’ve turned that one around, haven’t we? In the next version, I’m sure it will be corrected to read, “to whom much is given, more will be given until all is given, and even that will prove wanting of justice.”

For the time being, we’ll just use the “taken out of context” ruse. It seems that every time the Galilean steps on someone’s toes, he is accused of out-of-contextedness, Is that a word? Well it should be. We can pretend it is anyway.

We have looked at two of the world’s great philosophers, Amos Fletcher and the Galilean, now let us visit a third, Jonathon Swift. I don’t think we could contemplate our current set of political leaders without thinking of a species encountered in the classic Gulliver’s Travels. I’m speaking of course of the Yahoos. Swift describes them as noxious, hairy creatures and adds,  

“They're endlessly greedy: they kill each other over a certain shiny rock found in Houyhnhnm Land (which, beyond being shiny, has no value). And even if there are only 5 Yahoos supplied with enough meat to fill 50, they will still attack each other for control of these supplies.”

Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, are a breed of intelligent horses who, in Swift’s mind, represent the most noble of creatures. He says of them,

: "… the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they posses, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm, which no man in this wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them.”

For now, perhaps it is time to think about where we Americans stand in the great river of history. As we exercise our precious privilege of being able to vote for our leaders, will we choose Yahoos or Houyhnhnms?

If we choose poorly, will our blessings disappear?

Sailing To Oblivium: July 6, 2017

Seems our Secretary of State is going to give Donald Trump some of my personal voting information. Amazing.

Here's a hint. Before each election cycle, I study the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian New Testament. Then I think about them. I don't encouraging the mixing of politics and religion, but I think the Beatitudes, whether viewed as religion, literature, philosophy, or moral guidance, are useful in contemplating the manner in which a country is governed.

So, I use them to initiate thought. I must say they have influenced my voting record over the years, so Mr. Trump can view it, along with our Secretary of State, Mitch McConnel, Paul Ryan, and the Koch Brothers.

I don't think they are going to like it, though.

Just Thinking

Sailing To Oblivium

To an alarming percentage of Americans, the three dirtiest words in politics are compassion, cooperation, and compromise. How did we get here? It’s taken a while, and it is exacting a terrible toll.

It doesn’t make sense. At least it doesn't to me on this first day of July, 2017

We are being told that America was great when it eschewed these fine principles. I suppose that means the height of the Jim Crow era in the South, the depths of the Great Depression nationwide, or maybe during the debacle in Southeast Asia for men who were young during my early manhood.

I’m not sure I would place a five-star rating on such periods of our history. I say this partly because of a study I read while in Graduate School. In it, the writer employed an operational taxonomy for public bodies whereby individuals were divided into two categories, guardians and advocates.

Guardians, as we might guess, represent a class of managers with philosophies tending toward so-called libertarianism, i.e. spend no more to maintain their city or state than absolutely necessary.

Advocates represent the opposite style of management. The spend freely on new ideas as well as necessities.

The author studied governing bodies that could be logically classified as fitting into one of the two categories. Guess what? Entities managed by guardians tended to be rusting, decaying, moribund places. Entities managed by advocates tended to teeter on the verge of financial disaster, if not actual bankruptcy at any given moment.

A third category represented polities that were managed by a combination of the two types of management. Through mutual cooperation and equal influences, they provided a healthy environment for those in their care.

What happens when we don’t pursue the last course? Our infrastructure crumbles, people suffer and die because the wealthiest country on the planet won’t provide them basic health care, and we shut down our once fine public school system. How did we let this happen?

There are alarming trends in our political psyche these days. One is that we can have public services without exacting taxes to pay for those services. A sizable group of politicians even signs a pledge to an insidious jerk with access to funds, stating they will never vote for a tax of any sort. They used to punish young men, back in my day, who burned their draft cards, a similar, and one might say less insidious, type of blind dis-allegiance.

Adherents to another alarming trend posit that the government can, and should, solve all our problems, no matter what the cost socially or financially. The police should provide the nurturing and psychological counseling that our troubled youths need. The schools should rear our kids. Individual groups or races should bear no responsibility for their families, neighborhoods, cities, or state, but simply let the government handle it. But hell hath no fury like that exacted when the government doesn’t do it “our way.”

As a result, we’ve quit talking to one another. This allows a senate majority leader to say publicly that his job is to make sure that the sitting president of the United States of America fails. It further allows him to get away with it.

It allows a sitting president of the United States of America to post, in a manner that goes public world-wide in a second, personal and false statements about anyone who questions him. It further allows him to get away with it.

It allows an entire political party to swear its opposition to any idea, no matter how kind, compassionate, sublime, or desirable, that the opposition proposes, and to get away with it.

It allows too many people to live and rule by greed, ignoring the immortal warning of Thomas Gray in his immortal Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, that

“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

I don’t know where this is all leading us, but it doesn’t appear to be a happy place.

Sailing To Oblivium: June 25, 2017

We expect cruelty in this country. After all, slavery was written into our Constitution. We also expect goodness. We fought a Civil War over it, one of our most tragic but most noble moments.

We hope for the best but we don’t always plan for the worst. This past week has seen the results of this. Meanness is oozing from our national psyche like noxious gas from a garbage dump. Oh, we’ve seen cruelty since the Civil War. The long and horrible era of the Jim Crow South. The destruction of ways of life of the original inhabitants of our country. The Joseph McCarthy era. The subjugation of women. We’ve seen much. And many of us have had to endure so much more than I, a white male of European descent.

The meanness and cruelty of a health care act—specifically designed to punish the poor and elderly while benefitting the rich—prepared in secret and brazenly tossed out for expedited passage still makes us cringe, though.

Even though we might not be religious ourselves, we could once take comfort in faiths that taught love, compassion, and social justice. Those old voices are being drowned out now, though, by voices that teach hate, anger, and greed.

What can we do? Allow me an idea.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, beset by worries and falling prey to despair, I comfort myself by forcing pleasant images as pictures into my mind to cover over and erase the bad. I think I’ll do that now, even in my waking hours. I can, if I choose, maintain the images of

- President Abraham Lincoln urging us to listen to “the better angels of our nature.”

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt assuring us “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

- President Harry S. Truman telling us “I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.”

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower telling us “This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”

- President John F. Kennedy telling us to “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”

- President Lyndon B. Johnson, ending the first State of the Union message after the assassination of President Kennedy, promising us that “We shall overcome.”

And many others, any of which could erase the thoughts of early morning soundbites, delivered via social media, by a frightfully insecure, immoral, and divisive man.

We have had moments of cruelty in this country and we have had moments of sublime glory. We have had bad leaders in this country and we have had great ones. We have had bad days and we have had good ones. If we all join hands together, we can have great ones again. We will truly and surely overcome.

Sailing To Oblivium: June 23, 2017

In life, we can be caring and good. We can be mean and greedy. I’m not sure we can be all at once and preserve our humanity.

I thought about this much of yesterday. I also thought about the words attributed to the Galilean at the end of the 25^th Chapter of  the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian New Testament. Whether you think it was spoken by a god in human form, a real person, or a historical character of fiction, it is an amazing piece of literature. It may be the most embarrassing passage in history to those who seek to hide their baseness behind a cloak of religion.

In the Galilean's own words, as he spoke of the final judgement by his god:

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (NIV)

Plainly spoken if you ask me. Rough translation? “Don’t use me as the basis for your cruelty and greed.”