Category Archives: Culture

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Obama, Politics 2020, Responsibility

Corona, corona

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Corona beer comes from yeast, not a virus.
there is no connection whatsoever…

There are people who believe that the latest health threat to emanate from China is caused or somehow made contagious by Corona Beer, a well-known health threat from Mexico.  It is on this canvas that the gloppy acrylics of impeachment, economics, presidential politics, petro-dollar monetary policy, Antifa, Hezbollah, North Korea, opioid deaths and suicides, and the real threat of coronavirus must create a picture that is both truthful and meaningful to majorities in dozens of countries including our own.  Whew!  There are 15 national leaders whose views and beliefs about these and other issues, will define the next ten years and beyond: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jung Un, Xi Jinping, Ram Nath Kovind, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Volodymyr Zelensky (who at least has a sense of humor), Arif Alvi (who doesn’t), and both last and least, Nicolás Maduro, who is an idiot.

Mixed up in all of their opinions is the existence of American constitutionalism, our ostensible structure of rights and freedoms, and our unbalanced, imperial economy.  Our primary concern must be the survival of the United States and freedom itself.  What presidential politics does every four years is stir us enough to reflect on our beliefs about our nation and our country, not the same things.

Democrat hotheads, committed to control of… well, everything, have impeached Trump to no good end, although his acquittal was never in real doubt.  No good end, certainly, but the disinformation value of, first Mueller, and then impeachment itself, must appear to elected Democrat leaders as a worthy end nevertheless.  Those who now shy away from bottled Corona most assuredly cling to bottled hatreds, known and unknown, but felt viscerally.  So there is the worthiness of relentless hatred of the aforementioned Mr. Trump.

There should be little disagreement with the proposition that hatred is the worst basis for political competition, yet hatred is everywhere employed in the United States, of all places.  Hatred doesn’t develop automatically.  Fear does: it’s pure ethnocentrism, even “racism,” per se.  But racism and fear of difference are not hatred.  Hatred is a visceral desire to kill or destroy the “other.”  To fear or to mistrust a stranger – or a strange “culture” – is instinctive and need not be taught.  To HATE  that person or group requires coaching, teaching, explanation and mythology.  It’s a long-term, methodical process to convert fear to hatred.  Who does crap like that?

Here and there are parents who were, themselves, taught to hate certain others and to varying degrees manage to convince their children to also hate them.  But it’s not as easy to do in the modern era, as public schools, ostensibly, fight the urge to bully or to gang-up on the unusual or most defenseless kids.  To some degree, children receiving messages of hatred at home are going to hear enough lessons countering that prejudice, that fewer and fewer reach early adulthood with firm hatreds.

Yet, now we have a split electorate, fueled by the sweet lies of socialists (people complain about Trump’s looseness with the truth but never a peep about the absolute and historical bullshit spread in the name of socialism).  A virtual communist is at or near the front of the pack in the ostensible “Democrat” party’s campaign for nomination to the presidency, and giddy polls regularly trumpet the acceptance of “socialism” by millenials.  There are reasons to fear Bernie Sanders’ cry for “transformation” of the United States, just as there were for the stated intentions of Barack Obama to “fundamentally transform” the United States.

Consider just the “ACA,” Affordable Care Act, which was not “affordable,” whatever that was hoped to mean, and it wasn’t about “care,” particularly: it was about coverage, the perpetual stumbling bloc to health care.  The nature of every “coverage” entity, whether “insurance” companies and HMO’s or governmental agencies that both regulate and directly pay actual care providers, is to reduce costs.  The main difficulties inherent in the ACA-expanded coverage industry were made worse and more expensive, nearly removing people from decision-making while nearly removing physicians and others from caring about their customers.

These sorts of change ought to be anathema to citizens of a nation with the heritage of the United States.  Our mythos is founded in individualism, self-made success, pioneering advancement into unexplored territories, and homesteads created even where the only building material was prairie turf.  Somehow the steady erosion of socialist promises of “free” safety and comfort have weakened the resolve of Americans to take control of their lives and circumstances, and to do so responsibly.

(See:
http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/01/16/health-care-fairness-and-free-enterprise/

Obama also made substantial changes to our foreign relations and to our ability to control events to our benefit, rather to enhance the influence and strength of Muslim regimes.  Fundamental transformation.  Here in 2020 these same intentions are voiced repeatedly by Bernie Sanders and others whose vision is not to improve or “perfect” our union, but to replace our form of government by altering Constitutional institutions and original rights.  The “new” goals are not comprised of strengthening liberty, but to “set” everyone’s standard of living so that no one is “above” his fellow residents: ultimate “fairness,” a new form of political organization that removes the interference in individual beliefs by churches, and in which every sort of human pleasure-seeking will be permitted… by benign elites, and, perhaps, taught in public schools.

The struggle of socialism is never-ending.  While “we” in the American, Judeo-Christian traditions of individual liberty and responsibility tend to assume our battle for freedom is won… and done, globalist socialism never rests on its continuum of undermining and destroying liberty and faithfulness.  It is a continuum that extends back to the “Garden of Eden.” 

“What?” you say, “nothing Prudent about that silly claim.”

Well, a few terms we don’t think about enough: Thesis – The Word of God, or the first premise; Antithesis – Direct opposition to the Word of God; Synthesis – Human-generated, pretended, compromise position with the Word of God.  The synthesis becomes the new Premise, no longer the Word of God, something less.  Is this not exactly what the “Serpent” offered to Eve, assuring her that God’s threat to not eat of the tree in the midst (center) of the Garden, or touch it “…,lest thou die.” would not come true.  “thou shalt not surely die.” the serpent told her.  God issued the thesis to Not eat of the tree; Serpent offered the antithesis  that the punishment would not be death (at least not right away) and the rewards of knowledge were worth the chance.  Is this process any more or less than the Hegelian dialectic?  Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.  Abortion is no longer murder; socialism will create a better America than God did.

Culture, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, Taxation

20-20 Vision

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Wither Freedom?

What shall we do, we American people, holders of the temporary promises of freedom and individual sovereignty, with our new gift, the year of our Lord, 2020?  What will be our direction?  Toward greater wisdom and enlightenment, growing nearer to God as we know Him… or Her?  Or, as this millennium has presented, toward firmer rejection of God, morality, purpose and humanity; toward greater animalism and destruction of the Constitution?  Big choices, either way.

We err terribly if we devote ourselves to any politician, thinking, dreaming, hoping or wishing that that one person will “fix” our own lives, our uncomfortable feelings or our deep concerns about the future of America.  A terrible mistake, that.  The only true value of a political leader is that he or she might cause large segments of the constituent population to develop a new sense of hope, of good expectations and of a belief in their social abilities to solve problems.  Unified purpose – not coordinated, necessarily, but unified – is the most powerful force on Earth.

Unified purpose can ignore the pain of sacrifice, as it has during times of war, for example, or during the 8 years that created the Apollo space program.  Tyrants create a form of unity by instilling fear.  Dominated subjects believe they will suffer if they act on contrary thoughts.  Free people, unified in purpose and hope, will overturn the dominator every time.  Nothing can resist the power of free people who believe in freedom.

The only way a free and sovereign people can be defeated is to render them less and less free over time – even it takes 4 – or 20 – generations.  Those who are threatened by freedom, who fear it, never stop trying to destroy it.  They, too, have a unified purpose.  When they are the only unity on the playing field, freedom cannot survive.  When young citizens are at an intellectual point where socialism appears preferable to “capitalism,” several of the methods of rendering a free people less free are revealed.

First is re-education.  Naturally conservative people, enjoying freedom and responsible for themselves, have to be taught to rely on “the government” when ill fortune finds them.  That purchase of philosophy might not have worked if the “government” hadn’t created a misfortune, like the Great Depression, that seemed too difficult and complex for individuals to withstand on their own.  Social Security easily became law and was tiny, a mere minimum for old widows.  Today Republicans defend it as if part of the granite of Mount Rushmore.  Older former conservatives speak up for “their” Medicare, now that the government has made health care so costly and complex that individuals cannot contend with it on their own.  A little socialism goes a long way.

Second is education, itself.  The best plan would be to populate the education licensing bureaucracy with unified liberals/leftists who could guide education degree programs such that new teachers would tend toward socialist ideals of equality, fairness, anti-racism, anti-discrimination of all sorts, feminism, bi-lingualism and multi-culturalism.  Pretty soon they’ll be teaching youth that our Constitution fails to defend these important principles and needs to be changed or supplanted with new thinking.  Pretty soon a proto-communist can be elected president, and the long march to the end of this democratic republic will be underway.

Thirdly, enough rope, in the form of creature comforts, new cars, easy credit and wide-screen TVs, must be provided for erstwhile Americans to hang themselves while their heritage is forgotten and their freedoms swept away.  Let illegal entrants have the country – we don’t seem to want it any longer.

Lastly, promote new “rights” that no one ever heard of, but the lack of which can be made to appear oppressive.  Link the denial of such rights to the constantly re-boiled slavery-guilt/systemic racism civil rights struggle, and soon these new rights gain the power of civil rights that once nearly split the nation… politicians must respond.  Shortly after, laws are proposed, agitated for and passed to, perhaps, force boys and girls to bathe or perform their toilet together.  What, “never,” you say?  Or, as a fantastic example, licensed, educated teachers could actually lose their jobs for failing to call a boy a girl.  “Impossible.”

We have contributed mightily to our “mis”-education and “mal”-economics.  The worst of our economics has two parts: Unconstrained debt creation, and incredible inflation.  You’re objecting, now, that “inflation” is only at 2%, or some such low number.  You’re talking about price increases, which are not what inflation is.  Prices go up and down for reasons of supply of goods, demands (desires) of consumers, including competitive products, and availability of spendable cash (or credit, nowadays).  “Inflation” affects only the last factor: spendable, or “excess” cash and credit.  “Inflation” is inflation of, or artificial expansion of, the money supply, something individuals cannot control.  Politicians do that or allow it to happen by government agents.

Don’t confuse inflation with a rise in the cost of goods.  Inflation is tolerated or actively promoted when government needs more money and is politically unwilling to raise taxes.  Foolishly, we have converted our money system to a debt-based system whereby the federal government borrows every new dollar it wants to balance the federal budget with.  As it does so, it infuses added dollars into the economy as a whole.  This will increase sales of thousands of products as companies that do business with the government get new contracts and, presumably, hire more people or raise wages.  Increasingly, more of those products are imported, sending a lot of those “excess,” “new” dollars to other countries.  This increases domestic profits, but not domestic, widespread, individual wealth.  Consumer prices don’t experience much upward pressure because the actual inflation of the money supply is siphoned into the hands of multi-billion dollar companies, or concentrated in the hands of external multi-billion dollar companies or government-run companies, which is to say, in the hands of foreign governments.  What does this mud puddle of excessive profits and concentrations of wealth have to do with most people?

It diverts their freedom and personal sovereignty, and… it so corrupts free enterprise that socialism, despite its total history of failure – history little known by today’s youth – can be made to appear attractive.  Step by step, the never-ending plan to destroy freedom and independence (non-globalism) is being carried out.  Our government education systems, including “private” universities and colleges made wealthy by government-promoted student loans, are almost the last places to depend upon to correct this historic ignorance.

And all of those inflated dollars?  Since our prices haven’t risen too, too badly, can we pretend they are no concern of ours?  Every dollar “bill” is a bill America must eventually pay.  If the rest of the world no longer wanted (thank you, Saudi Arabia) U. S. dollars, our economy, and those of several other countries, would collapse.  Along the way every dollar, printed or electronic, would drop in value like a stone.  How’s $50 or $80 gas sound? At those prices the “national debt” will be manageable, won’t it?

Meanwhile, we, who should be totally pissed-off, are comfortable enough that we worry about climate change, UFOs and the NFL standings, rather than what should be job-one for American citizens.

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Governance, Race

NEW LIFE TOWN

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Side WALKS no longer: semi-permanent housing.

Leftism, global socialism, in fact, is transforming America’s national unity and our local states, counties, cities and towns.  It is insidious.  Because of George Soros’ financed groups, for example, several counties are suffering under prosecutorial regimes that refuse to prosecute “small” crimes.  Unfortunately, the definitions of the nature of crimes that fall in the “serious” and “minor” lists, are subjective, and proving to be dangerous by their very existence.

Every major metropolis, at least all the ones run by liberals… but I repeat myself, is turning away from public order.  Several have District Attorneys who campaigned on platforms of “criminal justice reform,” which is Orwellian newspeak for leniency toward criminals.  In Boston, which is mostly in Suffolk County, the new D. A., Rachel Rollins, ran with a list of “petty” crimes her administration would not spend time prosecuting.  This was so that “they” could concentrate on “serious” crimes.  One might suppose that every petty criminal – particularly those that enjoyed doing those crimes, or who felt a right to the proceeds of those crimes, or any of their relatives who thought it unfair that their otherwise “good” sons, daughters, nieces, nephews or grandchildren should be hassled or incarcerated when, after all, life has already been unfair to them, voted for Ms. Rollins… all in the interest of social justice.  The D. A., it is fair to say, has never made a living running a convenience store, or an auto-parts store or small grocery.  She has never paid  the increasing insurance rates for small businesses victimized by thefts deemed non-serious; she has never paid the extra-high prices for the products those stores’ neighbors must pay to cover the no-longer-sanctioned thievery.

She represents the very odd, even twisted logic of liberalism: people of certain skin colors and economic circumstances are not responsible for their actions, since they are largely RE-actions to (pick all that apply) racism, systemic racism, institutional racism, heritage of slavery, social injustice, police brutality, departmental (police) racism, lack of education resources, having to pay for Transit rides and poor housing.  In fact there IS systemic racism and it is the outrageously expensive welfare racism that has destroyed the family structure of inner-city populations – mostly of color – since the “Great Society” began.  Regardless of what people of any color may think about brown-skinned people, even if their thoughts are racially vile – and they’re out there – it is only the actual impact of “racism” that truly matters.  It is safe to say that only an infinitesimal fraction of “racist” or prejudicial thoughts have any impact on anyone besides the ignorant thinker.

Racism is as natural as breathing, otherwise, today, there would be no ghettos forming.  People, however, prefer people like themselves: those who look like, sound like and “live” like themselves… even those who eat the same foods and attend the same churches.  It’s as natural as breathing.  What each ethno-centric group thinks about the others is mostly inconsequential.  Should they think nicer thoughts?  Probably, but it’s not anyone’s business what thoughts they think unless… unless they take some negative action because of them.  Burning down or looting some Korean’s store because of racial hatred is racism that actually matters.  Stealing from any store because you think life has been unfair to you because of “racism,” is actual racism that matters.

Consigning 4 or 5 generations of black and brown people to welfare dependency, and now “legally” enabling them to be more effective criminals, that is real racism that matters.  To help counter black welfare hopelessness, the same liberals promote and finance abortion-on-demand as some sort of civil right, and, as evidently intended, it reaches 60% or more of its pinnacle of “success” by killing off black and brown babies.  What a country.

San Francisco, formerly under the guidance of Gavin Newsome, now the winsome governor of California, has, in the span of less than a decade, converted itself from a city of beauty to one where humans are enabled, if not encouraged, to live more like animals, thanks to new “rights” afforded to those so inclined, to camp out in public spaces, take illegal drugs in public, commit certain levels of crimes to support their “oppressed” life choices, fornicate in public, and relieve themselves wherever the fancy strikes them, now amounting to 20,000 or more defecation “rights” in public places, including sidewalks, parks, playgrounds and schoolyards, each year!  Uptight “conservatives,” San Francisco authorities discovered, have no right to impose lifestyle choices on others not as fortunate.

Dogs and other animals at least endeavor to cover up their feces.  Once public nudity was found to be a “right,” was public defecation far behind?  Once public defecation was ensconced among constitutionally protected “rights,” was defecation in a super market far behind?  That’s where the toilet paper is, after all.  The astronomical property values in San Francisco are starting to slip, and segregation from public areas is growing for those able to afford it.  Dystopia.

Liberalism appears to have partnered with global socialism on the path toward destruction of “Western” culture and North American culture in particular.  A very effective way to accomplish that goal is to disrupt cultural norms, one of which has ALWAYS been that laws mean what they say, those who break those laws deserve legal sanctioning for those criminal acts, policing, prosecution and adjudication shall be, BY LAW, unbiased, fair and based only on the law.  In other words, no individual in the chain of justice has the power, logically, to decide the resolution of cases outside of the lawful process – certainly not on the premise of some sort of triage due to “limited resources.”

Who represents justice for victims?  Isn’t justice the key reason for relinquishing personal sovereignty to a government?  Where does ANY law convey authority to an individual to judge some people’s justice as more valuable than that of others?  None does, in fact, but many are deciding that justice somehow varies based on skin color.  This is not to say that injustice hasn’t been meted out by white authorities based exactly on skin color.  It was shameful then, and is shameful, now.  But how is injustice for most citizens able to correct, or balance, injustice meted out for some others in the past… even if the past was yesterday?  It isn’t, of course, unless perceived in a certain level of hatred… hatred spawned in racism, a terrible way to conduct public safety and other policies.

Public safety is attacked hourly by the growing hordes of “homeless” people accumulating in major cities, all liberal bastions of victimhood.  Clearly, feeling sorry for people who, in the vast majority, choose to be how and where they are, neither improves their condition or living circumstances, nor their health or humanity.  Victimhood requires someone to be “oppressing” those in uncomfortable straits, and liberals/socialists, never exhaust the reasons that misfits, criminals, drug addicts and otherwise “homeless” denizens are not responsible for their situations.  Indeed, it seems more cruel to perpetuate – practically promulgate – living “on the streets” rather than forcing those who do so to “shape up.”

Public vagrancy laws have, in some liberal jurisdictions, been set aside as somehow un-Constitutional.  In other words, “society” has no right to require either living or sanitary standards.  Drug addiction and public urination, defecation and lewd exposure are now civil rights.  “Crimes of survival” are to be tolerated by the more fortunate in order to balance past – possibly current – oppression of “the homeless.”  Cultural standards, norms, are now simply suggestions.  By extension, then, one is left to decide which laws enforcing standards are worth obeying: very poor statecraft, to be sure, helping, steadily, to dissolve social and political unity.  The natural result will be imposition of social order by a police state.  The mindset of modern liberalism is creating, or has created, sets of problems that are insoluble by democratic republicanism.

A woman in Seattle was brutally raped at a car dealership by a “homeless” man.  Her screams brought help too late to prevent the consummation of the assault.  She has spoken out as loudly as she can against policies that foment Seattle’s growing homeless/lawless population.  Liberals, at least those who still feel sorry for poor, victimized, homeless criminals, attacked the victim for spreading a story that might reduce public sympathies for “homeless” people!

In Los Angeles many homeless people “live” in the terminals at LAX international airport.  They cause problems, of course, including filth, lewd and lascivious exposure to both adults and children, stealing of small packages and purses – generally discomfiting the traveling public.  Some keep themselves clean in the restrooms, some don’t.  Some avail themselves of indoor plumbing, some don’t.  The situation is tolerated.

Liberal administrations shrug at the existence of these “intractable” problems.  Cities spend tens of millions “addressing” the homeless problem, basically in trying to contain it.  But they cannot, or will not, contain the drugs, the diseases, the “petty” crimes or the human failure.  Liberalism is incapable of creating or imposing order and standards in urban centers.  Does this mean the problems are unsolvable?  If liberals declare a condition as “normal,” does that stop consideration of ideas for its solution?

To correct the conditions, or causes of homelessness and addiction, requires changing the beliefs of those who cling to that way of life.  This is not to say that most, or even very many of those living on the streets intended to live this way or even want to live this way, but they cling to it out of fear.  It is their life and their comfort.  It is where their co-sufferers live, their friends and drug dealers, some quite petty, sharing more than selling.   To be torn away from them is the most grievous outcome imaginable.  They help one another and bond with one another.  “Arresting” them is no solution, since the penal system cannot provide what is missing.  Individual cities cannot simply “place” them in housing: their beliefs won’t have changed and their habits and life-choices will immediately resume.  For most of the “street” people, a new belief in both themselves and in their legitimate place in civilization, must be learned – inculcated, if you will.

OMG!  Do you mean “re-education camps?  You fascist!”  Yes.

The loudest screams will come from leftists, for whom the entire country is a well-orchestrated re-education camp – but let that go for the moment.  There is no long-term, or even short term solution to rampant, growing homelessness, other than changing the beliefs of those who cling to that way of survival.  Pursuit of happiness, indeed.  They need a new happiness, and not one drug-induced.  A test-city/county needs to be selected and a tightly defined state of emergency declared.  The resources of a wealthy nation, and its brain-power, must be applied to a new community where survival depends on learning and practicing the skills of construction, farming, sewerage treatment, fire-prevention… every single skill and craft needed to operate a small town.  Every homeless or addicted person in the test region will be brought there.

Removed from filth and literally forced to be clean, in every way, and drug-free, our test-community will rise from a tent-city to a constructed one.  Individuals will be detoxed and then taught nutrition and self-care and then their old skills or new ones will be employed – as will they – to create a model community.  These people are not worthless, they are lost or trapped.  If they do not work they will have meager sustenance.  If they work and contribute and grow, they will eat better, live better, perform better.  Much like the American legion’s “Boys’ State” and “Girls’ State” programs, they will form neighborhood groups and eventually town or city councils.  They’ll elect leaders and establish schools for themselves and their children.  They’ll learn how to build and furnish houses in the most eco-friendly ways, and they’ll produce goods or foodstuffs to sell to others so that their town can afford fuel, electricity and so forth.  From completely subsidized they will become completely independent, a program that will probably take 4 or 5 years.  With success, every drug addict, homeless or not, could be sentenced to “New Life Town.”

To accomplish this will require military discipline and regimentation, and a domestic “Peace Corps” to assist relatively backward people to learn to be civilized, to live well through self-discipline and responsibility, rather than enforcements.  They are the wayward children of America.  We know how to effect adult maturity and responsibility, we do it all the time with our own children.  For how many more decades and ruined lives will we refuse to “raise” these people?

Culture, Family

A Universal Question

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We had take-out from Chipotle’s tonight.  It’s pretty good, although hard to take home without it’s becoming cold, but still tasty.  I went out of my way a few miles to get it, even though I nearly pass one on my normal way home.  When I arrived the place was packed, unusually so – extraordinarily unusually so – for a weeknight at this particular mall full of restaurants.

They were hosting a fundraiser for a five-time cancer victim who had been on the local swim team in high school, in between cancer battles, and who has made nothing but friends in her first twenty five years on Earth.  The swim team was sponsoring the event during which, for several hours, Chipotle would donate not five or ten or fifteen percent of revenues from identified supporters, but an astronomical thirty-three percent thereof.  By the time I left the wonderfully noisy establishment, the line had expanded from the long one I waited in, to one that extended through the double doors.  I had tears in my eyes.

The ultimate beneficiary is a granddaughter.  But that isn’t the topic… not really.

I work in a small city beset with every social ill, discomfort, and disruption there is, from drug abuse to gangs to illegal entrants on welfare.  Yet it has its own vitality, too, with hundreds of small businesses, including several that expedite everything from cars and furniture to cash back to the “home” countries.  Driving along the best route to the Chipotle restaurant I passed blocks that once were nearly pure Italian, now nearly pure “Hispanic,” although none of the residents come, actually, from Spain.

Looking at the myriad signs hanging from brackets or otherwise affixed to the storefronts, I was struck by all the forces, factors, influences and opportunities to create something, that had come together to form the human consciousness that had created this or that sign in particular.  And for that matter, that had created the things on display in the windows, or the very windows or the cars parked in front.  In the boundless (we think) Universe of planets and places of every shape and kind, how insignificant and majestic each of those creations are.  Why are they what they are?

Across the street were new apartment blocks of certain size and shape, in certain colors chosen from millions of colors, made of materials natural and invented, but made – created, by people, whose purpose and motivation may have been garnering money, another human invention, but whose product, however important to the net occupants, is, in the grand scheme of things, so infinitesimally tiny as to be invisible, which is not to say, meaningless.  One can rightfully assume, I believe, that every human-conceived and created thing or, I suppose, idea, is meaningful.  Indeed every thing  is or was meaningful in a large manner at some time, and the fact that no one we can find remembers its large meaning in no way detracts from its infinitesimal and utter importance.

How is it that we mere specks of tissue on this planetary mote have found within ourselves the need and the ability to create things?  How is it that we have invested so much of our cosmically virtual instants of life to the work of creating things, but even more astonishing, to devise ways and means to care about one another… like the five-time cancer patient who has created of herself, in spite of constant physical attacks on her tiny body, a teacher to children?

That so large a fraction of our blinks of time is spent creating ways to comfort ourselves and our children, is logical and to be expected, one would think; but, how is another such large fraction of our time consumed by caring for others, unrelated, most likely and unmet, even more likely?  Chemistry?  Cosmic rays?  Hmmnh.  What is the point?

Many of us human specks think there is no point.  To they who agree, apparently one should have as much fun as possible, as much sex as possible, own as many things as possible, be they items for sale behind that singular window in the building built as it was with the certain kind of sign saying what it says on the street where I passed, or the painted apartment blocks with unknown people in them… unknown at least to me.  If the things one owns happen to bring the owner more fun and more sex, then he or she has hit “life’s lottery,” making him or her “lucky” despite the impossibility of luck as a force working on the dust-mote of a planet we call home, else there would be something larger than our atoms and selfishness.

The house a semi-handyman lives in is full of things that he has made or perhaps modified or built because of need or artistry.  They are pleasing to him, for a hundred reasons, perhaps even to impress his wife or mate.  Oftentimes they were argued about in the concept, but he still “did” them, sometimes to praise.  But, why?  Why could not things have simply stayed the same?  Someone else crafted them as they were, or damaged them to leave them so.  Barring concerns of safety or comfort, why not leave them alone, tan instead of green, yellowish instead of rose, blue instead of stained and polished wood?  Whence came the compulsion, by anyone, to change them, all those things?

There may be, a billion stars away, a planet with what we call astronomers looking through what we call telescopes and barely detecting the changes in brilliance of our little star as we circle across its disk of light.  If a little more “advanced” than we they may have detected radio signals or nuclear blasts on our little speck and feel compelled, somehow, to let us know they know.  We will.  What would it matter, the color of my house or socks or fingernails, to any of those distant, distant cousins?  Or, to us, theirs?  But they and we, matter above all of our respective, awakened histories, to one another.  Interesting, that.

Where does freedom live?  Is there some reason, aside from novels and movies, both strange aspects of humanity, to believe that only planet-wide, homogenous people could ever advance sufficiently to contact other life?  Isn’t science most properly an affirmation of freedom?  Freedom to wonder, investigate, experiment and explore?  Freedom to challenge “truths” and to postulate new ones?  A billion stars away, would the search for us be a scientific endeavor or a military one?

Or, as many appear to believe, increasingly over many decades, is freedom, the essence of individuality, an impediment to “progress?”  If it is snuffed out on our Earth-speck, will the Universe care?  Or is freedom a blip in the history of humanity, otherwise destined to be controlled by more powerful elites, inexorably planet-wide?  How is it that humans evolved to invent democracy and the concept of republicanism?  Cellular luck?  Not possible if there are no philosophical forces, like “luck,” operating outside of simple existence.  Did biochemistry produce democracy?  Or a nation founded on self-government and limited central powers?

And if “freedom,” the inherent rights of individuals to both succeed or fail, were to be snuffed out on the tiny mote of matter we call Earth, would it matter to our brothers on that other speck a billion suns away?  Would it matter here?

Culture, Economics, Education, Foreign Policy, Governance, Representation, Trump

HATE TRUMPS REALITY

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Two world-changing events occurred in 2016: the U. K. vote to leave the European Union… and the election of Donald Trump to the U. S. presidency.  There are many parallels, both in the respective happenings and in their aftermaths.  Both events have exposed flaws in the collectivist trends both nations were in the midst of.  Both nations have experienced hate-filled political discourse ever since.

The “UK” – Britain – had taken an economic step away from sovereignty when it joined the “European Community” in1973, and reinforced the decision by referendum two years later.  After the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Britain took a political step away from sovereignty, as well.  Now the European Union, The “EU” placed controls and limitations on member “states” regarding citizenship, borders, immigration and judicial decisions, with the avowed intention of forming a “United States of Europe” and subverting cultural distinctions and national rights.  Britain has always been restive about the changes to its sovereignty, and public pressure and petitioning finally caused Parliament to create the referendum, yes or no, on leaving  the EU: the so-called “Brexit.”

What is interesting is the emergence of hatred as a dominant British political tool, more than even during existential threats of war over Britain’s lengthy warring history.  Per usual, all of what Brits call “hooliganism” is laid at the feet of “ultra-right-wingers,” who, apparently, are too stupid to recognize the wonderful future that’s possible with globalization.  If anyone objects vociferously to the slippery amalgamation into an ephemeral United States of Europe, he or she is pigeon-holed as a “right-winger” and not worthy of considered attention.

In other words, “nationalism” may be viewed only through the lens of Nazism and racism and all the other “isms” leftists use to end debates.  The benefits of national competitiveness in the elevation of living standards of every sort, is carelessly conflated with government’s benign intentions and centralized economic control.  Individual liberty is the first victim of centralization. The unholy alliance of history-ignorant education and a leftist press have proven useful in the imposition of this theory.

A similar effect has clearly been evidenced in the rise of Donald Trump.  With calls for his impeachment even before his inauguration, there is no surprise that his political opponents are clamoring ever louder for impeachment, now.  The only thing missing is an impeachable offense, but they’ll construct one or hire a contractor to create one for them.  Why not win at the ballot box by putting the efforts at impeachment to work building an electoral coalition?  That’s a good but separate question.

Why the hate across academia and liberal-leftist “communities?”  From Antifa on up, the degree of hatred for Mr. Trump and his supporters is indicative of tremendous fear: fear of losing something so dearly held that nothing is too extreme to defend it… even if that means disrupting democratic republicanism and the Constitution, itself.  What could that be?  That is the question, and a larger question in the U. S. than in the U. K.

Do leftists simply hate all non-leftists?  Maybe… they don’t like us, certainly, and think we are stupid for not appreciating their view of history’s inevitable direction.  But, hatred?  Takes a lot of energy to hate, maybe that’s why they aren’t very cheerful.  It could be that they have plans to facilitate the supposedly inevitable direction of human activity (and serfdom) and that those plans are so important that they must destroy everyone who opposes – even by disagreeing with – the idea of a universally socialist future.

Is it as simple as just hating Trump, the man?  He has lived a very exposed life and, until deciding to run for president, he enjoyed the benefits of wealth and acceptance in the elite circles of power and influence open to those who appear to not oppose the leftist vision.  You might say he exploited those benefits.  While not a perfect husband, he has been a good father by all measures, and treats his ex-wives gently.  Evidently he married more of his female affair partners than John F. Kennedy did his.  He has never had any questionable deaths connected to him or his companies, and no one has had to “take the rap” for him.  Is he a sweetheart?  No.  He’s rather ruthless in business… a requirement in the kinds of businesses he has worked in.  He’s a scrapper, willing to fight back when politically punched.  He seems quite patriotic.  What’s to actually hate so vehemently?

Trump must be a threat to something held very dear by all of those who have reared up to stop his presidency.  The measure of his enemies helps us size up the President, no longer simply Mr. Trump.  Trump’s life and past business successes and failures, did not include diplomatic niceties, euphemistic half-truths and pretend alliances.  Trump, himself, has never tried to present himself very differently than he actually is: brash, defensive, crude and vulgar at times.

He is vulnerable, politically, mainly from being a braggart, from which he slides in and out of embellishing the truth, even small truths.  Unlike people in ordinary life, many of whom have the same bad habit of embellishing stories, but for whom it doesn’t make much difference, Trump’s overstatements are described only as lies.  Others’ families and acquaintances recognize the habit and live – or work – around it.  It may even be a source of humor.

In the position of U. S. President there is no room for it… none, we’re told.

People want to hear the lies they expect.  They want to hear about “diplomacy” and “budget cuts” and “working-class” families like Teamsters, and about “working families” with indefinable careers, and the great favorite, “investments” in the future or in our children.  Another whopper we like to hear is “religious freedom.”  While more liberal leaders are expected to purvey “white” lies that keep America happy and keep secret the daunting business of the executive branch, Trump is pilloried for overstating, he is the worst liar in American history, after all.

Trump’s election, though, has interfered with our worldwide economic position, our military standing, the sanctity of our national borders, our ability to complete or repair relations with many nations, and with our ability to conduct domestic business.  Why?  Because of something Trump has done?  Some action that has hurt our standing everywhere?  That doesn’t seem like the Prudent answer.

Hatred of Trump, the man, is the damaging cause.  Hatred, stirred by certain leaders in the Democrat party, and continuously stirred up by them, to a degree pushed by international socialists, is the hammer that has been pounding the U. S. domestically and internationally since before he was elected!  Hatred.  Political action founded on hatred.  Trump has awakened and exposed the essential fraud of the socialist, administrative, “deep” state – the statist monster of socialist dreams and the ultimate threat to our constitutional form of government.

When has this phenomenon ever been seen in the United States?
Leading up to and during the second Civil War. Now we are entering the fourth. 

Widespread hatred, particularly violent hatred like that exercised by so-called “antifa” gangs, is a symptom of civic breakdown.  Political leaders are the very people whom we hire to subdue these effects of social dissatisfaction, or hopelessness, yet many are foregoing their responsibilities or actually encouraging the breakdown.

There are many threats to freedom, the greatest of which from outside, is China.  They have permanent interests from which they do not deviate.  One of those is to achieve dominance over the United States – everything else is secondary.  Yet we, U. S. citizens  AND our so-called representatives, are allowing Chinese interests to dominate us internally! Who voted for Nike?  Politicians on both sides are profiting mightily – and in cash – from connections to Chinese companies.  We keep re-electing them.  Trump is trying to stand up to the Chinese and receives bitter domestic resistance for trying.  You just can’t gore a single ox, anymore.

Meanwhile, we are doing our best to ignore history, these past few decades, and many seem determined to undermine the American idea from within.  A world that is still fundamentally not-free, and dominated by soulless international bankers, is in no way the place for the end of national identities, to be replaced with global socialism – for “climate” reasons or any other.  It seems more than Prudent, now – today, to defend and strengthen our Constitutional, democratically-elected republican form of government.

Culture, Economics, Education, Obama, Trump

RATIONAL ENDS

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Antifa thugs with weapons and masks claim to right the wrongs of "fascists", mistakenly named as far-rightists.

One can understand why liberals and other proto-socialists feared George W. Bush.  He had developed himself into a patriotic, empathetic and religious man, shucking the follies of his youth and the excesses of inherited power… for the most part.  Growing up in the shadow of powerful and successful (read: wealthy) people, going back several generations, creates a different mindset and outward view from those of most of us.  The Bush dynasty developed from good fortune and good genes, and, perhaps, some good luck, but no family with the political impact of the Bushes could have had its hand on the levers of wealth and power for so long without ruthless application of power and influence.

But “W” is/was a little different, more empathetic, stemming from his “kinder, gentler” father, George H. W. Bush, and from his newfound humility.  Unfortunately, after the 9-11 attacks, “W” also wanted to change the world, exporting and delivering democratic republicanism to other peoples who were not, in themselves, prepared to believe in it.  Still, more than most who ascend to the presidency, “W” remained fairly honest, believing in what he was doing, however wrong-headed.  Not a bad guy, all things considered, but not a particularly successful leader of the free world, let alone of the United States.  The hatred of him was just as wrong-headed, but some of the fears were rational.

The left was more than ready for a change and with some ruthless interventions, able to ride a wave of window dressing and socialism into the White House with Barack Obama.  Republicans in general didn’t trust him or ANY of his ideas, while those in congress tended to give him what he wanted for appointments and budgets, despite uniform hostility to the mis-named Affordable Care Act.  They couldn’t even make hay from his wild failures internationally and the mis-feasance / malfeasance of his Secretary of State… not even from his demilitarization of the armed forces, socially and financially.  He completed two terms, by the end of which he had virtually decimated the Democrat Party.

Still, Obama accomplished much of what he promised to do, starting with the destruction of compromise with Republicans.  “We won,” he would say.  Policy discussions with Republicans were few and fruitless, if not more derogation than debate.  The liberal press learned that access came from right-thinking (left-thinking), not honesty and, indeed, many government types were finding jobs with networks and relatives of powerful network types were finding jobs in the administration – altogether too cozy a relationship and bearing no relationship to the term: Free Press.  From 8 years of besmirching “W” Bush at every turn, the left-leaning, Obama-approving press learned that fawning coverage of Obama was a ticket to better ratings.

For the average listener/reader/watcher, the Obama administration was the opportunity to espouse socialism and so-called “multi-culturalism.”  Suddenly, finally, it became okay to proclaim alternatives to and opposition towards… umm, actually, more like hatred  towards the institutions and standards of “American” culture.  Everything that was influenced by the Bible, Christianity and English common law, was fair game for leftist, communists, socialists, atheists and anti-U.S. activists of every stripe, many of whom had been lurking in public education for years.  College campuses are full of their weak-kneed and malleable products, now.

Oddly, crony capitalism expanded under Obama, that erstwhile social warrior, as have monopolies, due in large part to the digitization of information and the intellectual laziness of large swaths of the population, particularly educators.  Given free rein to proselytize leftward, weaker teachers at all levels literally graded on right-thinking (left-thinking) rather than on true intellectual curiosity, balanced inquiry, research and expansion of knowledge.  Indebted graduates and drop-outs emerge committed to ideas untested and unchallenged.  Some professors, reduced to tears and seclusion after Hillary’s electoral loss, have never recovered, except to hate the current president and to entertain ways to undo some parts of the Constitution so that such defeat may never recur.

The “politics of personal destruction” first named during the early Clinton era, has become just “politics.”  Since The Loss, the only path to power appears to be one that climbs over destruction of opponents, at least for Democrats, and not one paved with better ideas, policies and uplift.  As with all socialist movements, uninvolved people are also destroyed, at least in spirit, in order to create a more perfect world, free of merit and everything else that works for the majority of people.  Inevitably, the controlling elite minority (also very wealthy) will self-identify and new rules will prevent anyone else from gaining “unfair” advantage in society.  Those who “cling” to quaint ideas of individual sovereignty, self-protection, private property, unlicensed enterprise and the Electoral College, will be clearly spotlighted as the reason for others’ failure to achieve, and further restricted to make things even more fair.  A final solution for their uppity independence will pass both houses.

Now, too, politics includes the Orwellian “Antifa” gangs.  Somehow, and for obscure political reasons never explained, various municipal governments tolerate lawlessness as if it were actually “anti-fascist” in its purposes.  Who wants “fascism” in their warmly welcoming and inclusive cities?  The thing of it is that “antifa” employs the tactics of classical fascism!  Huh.  The terrible “fascists” whose heads they try to crack consist of people who believe, basically, in the U. S. Constitution, and there is the crux of modern politics: Constitutionalism and the enumerated and implied rights guaranteed thereunder, is being vilified as “fascism,” an extraordinary twist of language and logic.  Our “free press” supports this dichotomous hatred of the country whose Constitution protects them.

The other “new” element of politics in 2019 is a mix-up of anti-legality and anti-Americanism, if not anti-Americans.  The hot words are “illegal alien” or, more accurately: “illegal entrant.”  One party has invested political capital, much heat, anger and historic blindness on behalf of open borders, unrestricted illegal entry and loose, extra-legal asylum/refugee processes.  The net effect of it all is to flood the nation with aliens who are neither committed to earn citizenship or even to learn English, rather to steal from Americans – through government agencies who willingly participate in lawlessness – in order to “share the American Dream” or other phrases of equally opposite meaning.  That there is a political party gaining support on this basis ought to trouble all of us.

It seems within the realm of Prudence to doubt the true motives of the Democrat party and its best-known leaders.  This is no testament to the righteousness of Republicans, but the rapid leftward skid of Democrats is unparalleled in American history.  Since Roe v. Wade the defense of abortion has become more than a mere knife in the heart of Life, itself, morphing into a virtual sacrament that Democrats must receive to stay in the party.  Death to unborn children, unborn Americans.  It has served its second purpose well, the delegitimizing of religion, most specifically Christianity: the death of America, itself.  In leftist hands abortion has been the sharp wedge for breaking the bonds of our federation of states and to break the bonds of freedom, as well.

Some 61 Million Americans have been denied the Right to Life, mainly for convenience.  Some millions of them would have grown up to love this nation and its exceptional purposes.  They’d have grown and loved and learned and married and taught their children to take care of themselves and their families and their country.  Perhaps that is the threat those babies represented – a threat so grievous that they had to be eliminated before they threatened the final solution for our aberrant Constitutionally limited  democratic republic, Land of the Free.

Simple abortion has itself morphed into infanticide while illegal entrants are encouraged to sneak in to the country in order to have their babies become U. S. citizens as if by magic.  There is magic afoot in abortion on demand: black magic that makes murder the day before birth a right; and for babies who insist on living through abortion procedures, quiet termination in HOSPITALS at the hands of doctors and proto-parents who simply don’t want to take the baby home.  Are these children not U. S. citizens by virtue of birthright?  How is it that these citizens have not been murdered by willful neglect?  Magic most foul, and the hallmark of Democrats – the Party of Death.

Culture, Economics, Governance, Health Care

FOR THE HEALTH OF IT

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A patients view of the doctors, just before going into surgery.

Few topics or “matters” matter as much or generate as much discussion and political malfeasance as health care, and not really “care,” but coverage.  Coverage is where the “easy” money is.  “Coverage” is like a giant public works construction project: easy to skim from.  It’s virtually impossible to get any graft – or campaign contributions – from individual medical procedures, but insurance conglomerates and hospital corporations and the pharmaceutical industry are deep wells for craven politicians.  Consequently, those same politicians are willing to expose the federal budget and debt creation to the medical “field” to the benefit of all, and even of patients sometimes.

Money, money, money.  About one-sixth of the U. S. economy is tied to “health care,” but a much smaller fraction is tied to CARE, itself.  These are huge industries with gigantic advertising, promotion and bribery budgets.  The ever-pure United States calls those filthy bribes  campaign contributions… or, they might be “donations” to colleges and universities for research and production of new doctors who, coincidentally, will be fully committed to pharmaceuticals, chemotherapies, surgery and maintenance for life – or death.  It’s all expensive.

Cancer is one of the cash cows of medicine: the big shibboleth in human caring and willingness to help others.  People fear it, and rightly so.  Breast cancer is a powerful subset, and so is pediatric cancer.  We love kids and care about their health more than for any older group.  Kids are helpless and pathetic; humans feel these things and sacrifice to raise them from complete dependency, to minimal independence, to experimental independence, to sports and education and personality development and, one day, separation into adult-hood.  We hate any interruption to these things and sacrifice to facilitate the stages of normal childhood.  Cancer is a Hell of an interrupter and we want to pay to stop it.  And we do.

Billions of dollars have been raised by the American Cancer Society, for example, and they claim a 79% rate of actual cancer expenditures: mostly for research, but a large amount is for “soft” expenses that help those who are in treatment and their families, and other non-care, non-research uses.  A big pile goes to run the Society, of course.  To its credit, A.C.S. does a lot of good along the paths it sees fit, and it’s much more efficient than the federal government, a low bar.  Sadly, despite its widespread use of children to raise its millions (Relay for Life, anyone?), only a small percentage of ACS dollars are employed to solve pediatric cancers.

In one case Prudence knows well, a 6-year-old girl survived neuroblastoma after much chemo, operations, stem-cell harvests and replacements only to fight through it again 4 years later, with more of many of the same poisons that forced the cancer to retreat the first time.  Five years later, more chemotherapy to force a third retreat.  “A miracle,” her family declared.  3 years later osteosarcoma attacked her right tibia, part of which was removed with cadaver bone up to the knee.  More chemo – same crap as earlier times, same poison to push the cancer back.  College and Masters degrees completed, 6 years later the fifth attack and fifth battle with cancer, now in the thoracic cavity pressing on the lung.  The bone cancer was a not rare reaction to earlier treatments; the chest problem a recurrence of the bone cancer, by genus.  Same poisons prescribed and administered, except she was unable to tolerate any more of it.  Twenty years of treatment, constant news about this and that breakthrough therapy, DNA, customized immunology, yada, yada, yada… same attempts to kill the cancer a little faster than the patient.

When the young woman with the lengthy, miraculous, cancer survival history heard what kind of poisons they were planning to pump directly into her bloodstream, she naturally pointed out that it was the same crap she’d received the last time!  Was there nothing better?  Newer?  Apparently not.  Bring us your sick children and we will poison them for you in the hope that the cancer cells will die first and we can hold your child back from the brink of death.

Medical students arrive at medical school with science knowledge
–at least biology, maybe chemistry – ready to be taught some skills, mostly about using and understanding the data produced by wonderful diagnostic electronics, and about the latest in pharmacological weapons to counteract natural biological weaknesses, failures, breakdowns, related pains and mental/emotional discords and incongruities.  There is a lot to learn.  If surgery is the interest, there is a lot of practice.  Students develop likes and dislikes that lead them to one specialty or another, or, for many, general health and well-being such as “family” doctors ought to know.   Some of these general practitioners are really “internists” who understand “internal medicine” as distinct from “external medicine,” one supposes.

In any case, new doctors are taught according to fairly rigid protocols and traditions by people whose adherence to standards is well known… and respected.  Indeed, it is only by proving one’s own adherence to those standards that a doctor will be licensed or safe when sued.  “Recognized” standards, “current” protocols, “best” practices – those are the only defense a doctor has.  Where is the profit for leaving medical orthodoxy?

Does this mean that “doctors” or “big pharma” are blocking the introduction of miracle cures that an obscure researcher somewhere has developed because traditional medicine would not?  Well, “yes,” and “no.”  I think, or at least hope fervently, that the answer is “yes” although there is no intent to do so; and that the answer is “no” because there is no intent to do so.  But, the inhibition of new ideas is almost inevitable.  Thankfully it is not impossible and progress does get made, inventions are developed and made marketable – and trustworthy – and new drugs are eventually approved.  So, what’s the problem?

The problem is that the new drugs are rarely giant steps – sometimes they are, but not  often.  This is because most research is built on previous success and lines of inquiry and wide departure from the reservation is not very likely – it doesn’t get funded.  Pharmaceutical manufacturers are looking for sure things.  Often the greatest advances are side-effects of drugs, new and old, that coincidentally prove beneficial elsewhere.  More power to them.

Similar effects produce medical technology like, for popular example, knee replacements and hip replacements.  Now very reliable and long-lasting, such replacements are commonplace, almost to the exclusion of alternatives.  Could the damage and erosion of joints be prevented?  In most cases.  Are there nutritional preventions that are still regarded as anecdotes, not science?  Absolutely.  Do you suppose that part of every knee replacement is dedicated to learning how to prevent knee replacements?  Well, no.

Americans, and most residents of highly developed countries, eat themselves to death, drink and drug themselves to death, smoke themselves to death, fertilize and pesticide ourselves to death, and so on.  For all of our health clubs, gyms and YMCA’s, Americans tend, on average, to not take very good care of the bodies we are born with and, now that parts can be replaced by our remarkable “repair, replace and maintain” medicine, there seem to be fewer reasons to worry about the consequences of ice cream, sodas and cheese-burgers and lack of basic exercise regimens.  We are told 8 times every half-hour by our flat-screens that we need never suffer from aches, pains, discomforts, anxieties or depressions.  There are pills for each of these maladies.  In fact, there are separate analgesics for shoulder pains, neck pains, knee and foot pains, back pains, headaches, migraines and insufficient sleep.  People who have allowed apnea to intrude on their ability to sleep can get a C-Pap device to counteract it.  What’s to worry?

What do all of these OTC chemicals do to us?  Some of the long-term effects are known, not the least of which is liver damage, but it’s slow, virtually unnoticeable, until it isn’t – kind of like moderate smoking.

Sugar and alcohol also have cumulative effects, if not simple diabetes, then an acidification of body chemistry that weakens the immune response to invaders.  Too much gluten, perhaps?  The American diet is awash in wheat and wheat proteins, right down to canned tunafish (only one brand is clean).  Tunafish?  And lots of other products: vinegar, puddings, many candies, gravies, prepared foods of all kinds include wheat starch, “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” and on and on.  Many people know they are allergic to gluten, far more do not… know, that is.  Skin problems, digestive problems, immune problems and, of course, weight problems, stem in large part from too much wheat in our diets.  The body tends to become allergic in the presence of too much of the same thing – often the food you like the best, as well.  But, that’s no problem!  There are multiple crèmes and pills to fight off the effects of our odd diets, so many, in fact, that they must be profitable enough to purchase TV advertising nationwide.  Do you ever wonder if every prescription for these somewhat dangerous drugs includes a small amount of money to fund prevention of gluten intolerances?  Nahh.  Bread, cake, doughnuts, fried clams, stuffing, ice cream, mayonnaise, salad dressings, sub-rolls, pita, crackers and… and… whatever, are too tasty to forego and, besides, “they” have things for that.

When Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency he warned America about the encroaching power of the “military-industrial complex.”  Rightly so, although that sloppy circle of funding and influence has managed to keep the country fairly safe in an uncontrollable world.  One can almost hear the words of a true outsider warning us against the “medical-industrial complex,” although almost no one would listen.  On the edge of Boston and Brookline there is a street called Longwood Avenue where hospitals have grown into connected proximity.  It’s starting to look like Las Vegas.

The insertion of politics into health care really got moving with the “Great Society” in the mid 1960’s.  It hasn’t been all good despite the public intentions of the socialists who caused the Great Society to be codified.  Today federal funds feed into the insatiable maw of modern medicine, and to help it along, every Congress adds new mandates for care and coverage.  Combined with the primacy of welfare (federalized at the same time) the general interface with patients has trended to impersonal, if not de-personalized, care.  The vision for health care is still greater impersonality, robotics and, again, health orthodoxy that satisfies… umm, well, the federal government, and “averages.”

No one is going to stop the money.  If we have to borrow from our 5th descendent generation, by God, we’ll do it!  No one who needs a new hip, rich or poor, will be denied one!  What?  Do we want to have a society where there is one level of care for the wealthy and another for the poor?  With enough agitation and politics anything that needs a licensed medico to accomplish will be funded.  Trans-gender mutilations?  Where’s the checkbook?  Prudence would advise that there is not enough money, or desks for nameless bureaucrats to sit behind, to provide all the repairs and drugs that are known, to every person who thinks he or she needs them.  Maybe robots will provide more even-handed care and cost less than humans.  Not so far.

Education, Family, Sex

WHY A RAINBOW?

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Carlisle, Massachusetts

In many cities, towns, villages and hamlets, churches and synagogues display some form of rainbow flags.  If the congregation and pastor is really “woke,” the top color stripe is black; otherwise ‘red and orange, green and blue, shining yellow, purple, too…’ is enough to advertise how welcoming that church and congregation is to, well, any one.  It is a friendly intention, throwing wide the arms of, umm… it’s not clear, Christianity(?)… to the world. 

Among Christianity’s strengths is its history of reformation.  The best known is the protestant reformation of Martin Luther.  His 95 Theses exposed the sloppiness and politicization of the Catholic Church, it’s corruption and ties to wealthy bankers and corrupt royal families.  There followed a reformation of Christianity, but not of the Catholic Church, particularly.  The world forced “the Church” to adapt, but it always appeared to follow, not lead.  Despite its self-proclaimed heritage direct from Simon Peter, Holy Mother Church retained its worldly flaws and intrigues, descending into sexuality most foul, ruining thousands of lives and families.  It appears incapable of reforming itself.

Rampant homosexuality and pedophilia has caused a reformation never intended, where droves of the faithful washed their hands and feet of the Church, losing trust in the priesthood.  The written and spoken liturgy and the artful back-story Catholics have recited and agreed with for centuries is still the same, but the trust is different.  Despite its self-immolation of recent decades, the Catholic Church is still a pillar of Western civilization – worth our defending.  One hopes the Church will come clean and preach the truth; its power to do and to guide good, is still immense.  It is incapable of defending Christianity, itself, just now, especially in the face of Islam and other anti-Christian forces arrayed against it.  Catholic parishes don’t need to fly the rainbow banner.

“Protestantism” reforms itself by subdividing.  Each new sect, even each new congregation within some sects, keys in on certain tenets of the Bible as the best lessons to learn for how to live a “Christian” life, raise your children and increase charity in the world.  To the degree that each is honestly led, each has a divine function to fulfill.  Everyone is not at the same point in their evolution – evolution of the soul, that is – and each will find the teacher whose teaching he or she is ready to receive.  Each should also be ready to move upwards when it is time for a more profound teacher along the path toward truth.

Lately, however, Protestants are racing to not be the exception in the Rainbow Revolution.  Every church has one: Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, United Churches of Christ, liberal Baptists, even a handful of reform Synagogues.  Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists appear immune to the blandishments of Rainbows, as are Quakers.  The latter three are not caught up with filling the pews for no reason or for any reason.

If the Rainbow symbol were created to bring more people into adherence to Divine Law, it would be a wonderful, actual, reformation.  Church “Reform” ought to improve human distillation of the Word insofar as we have tried to learn and understand it.  If a widespread movement serves, instead, to DEform churches and their ability to spread the Word, then Christians ought to question it, starting with ministers, preachers, priests, rabbis, bishops and deacons. That’s not happening… not that a Prudent observer can detect.

What do interested people believe that banner says?

The first and primary message, beyond all claims of “inclusivity” or unity with those discriminated against racially, is that same-sex activities are equally valid to those of heterosexuals.  Every other meaning of the other 5, 6 or 7 colors, occasionally adding white, is simply claiming identity with every use and delight in the ‘rainbow,’ particularly for children.  If unicorns are made happy by rainbows then so are we, so to speak.  The rainbow flag, originally a symbol of racial inclusiveness, from the late fifties and sixties, is a clever appropriation of thoughtless human sympathies for the unhappy.

Consequently, the banner has become ubiquitous during “Pride” month, which is not ever a celebration of the Word of God, nor does it reflect prayerful meditation on the innate beauty of God’s creation of humankind.  It is a collective demand… against heterosexuality, since true gays and lesbians will never enjoy it or the incredible joy of motherhood and fatherhood and of the nurturing of offspring; and against God and anyone who claims to speak for Him.  The demand translates, both for other humans and for ecclesiastics, that non-heterosexuals deserve both attention and respect based on their different sexuality, unusual emotions and desires, and discordant habits.  Imagine: a group of humans who are not happy with their emotional make-up, so much so that they will flaunt their intention and practice of breaking… no, denigrating, religious dogma and, to the faithful, the Holy Word of God. 

In the chance of there being a God, sneering at His Law and rules for righteousness is a very arrogant move, a Prudent observer might think.  Unfortunately, economics being what they are, churches have been tempering their messages for decades, hoping to fill the pews with charitable attendees.  That is a path along which it is virtually impossible to reverse direction.  Accepting the rainbow flag as a church’s statement of acceptance is to ignore the shift that has occurred in the legal status of the self-proclaimed “LGBTQ” “community.”

One might Prudently inquire of a member of a rainbow-endowed church… or even of a clergy-person, just what he or she means to say with the flag.  Without a doubt the answer would include something about “anti-discrimination” or “inclusiveness” and “all are God’s children,’ and the like.  None would suggest that they displayed the flag with the message that 1) Christians must forsake scripture so that non-heterosexuals won’t feel challenged in their pleasures or beliefs; and 2) By extension, all laws and customs that follow the inherent message of Judeo-Christian scripture regarding same-sex relations and sex activities, must be set aside by law, no matter the damage to our society or civilization.  No, no, no.  “We love everyone,” they might say.

Yet, somehow, their love does not seem to extend to everyone’s beliefs in equal measure.  That is, they have no banners celebrating the strictures and scriptures of the Word of God that underlies the very existence of their church, physically and spiritually.  Adding the rainbow banner to the physical existence of their church would indicate that what the followers of that banner believe is not only equal to the beliefs that built and maintain the church, physically and congregationally, but, to some degree, greater than those of the founders of that church.  “Oh, no,” comes the distressed reply, “we are simply saying they are welcome no matter what they believe right now.  The magic of Christianity will infuse their hearts and cause them to renounce their forbidden practices and join more fully with our beliefs!”  Okaaaay.

That last is a Prudent speculation but doesn’t actually work out in fact.  In fact, the presence of the rainbow flag acknowledges that non-heterosexuals are consistently demanding full “equality” with religious heterosexuals, including full marriage equality, as one example.  Resignedly, most “rainbowed” churches advertise their willingness to perform, and therefore endorse, same-sex “marriages.”  This is a public replacement of parts of scripture that undergirded the creation of their churchly existences.  At this point, parishioners and clerics alike are advertising their desire to accept emotions felt by non-heterosexuals as equal  or even superior  to their previously revered scriptures, teachings and beliefs.  Extraordinary.  By erecting the rainbow banner, all of these have foresworn their existence as churches, in favor of a new existence as social or fraternal clubs, of whose continued existence the countdown to disappearance has begun.  For shame.

Much the same is happening in secular circles, and in government.  Secular society is being forced, jump by jump, to accept a new basis of family, of children and of life’s purposes.  Government, much like churches seeking contributions in their collection plates, is racing to get in front of this heritage-replacing movement so that it might consider itself still the leader of society (in the persons of craven politicians).  Consequently we have commenced to codify the self-declared feelings of non-heterosexuals such that public education and personal privacy have been transformed in the space of two decades, to the point where individuals may be punished by severe professional and economic loss for failing to treat self-declared feelings, even self-declared sexual identities  as the equal of reality.  This is a dangerous weapon aimed at rationality, heretofore the glue of our cooperative society.

Creating laws that grant or reveal new civil rights that can change on an individual basis at individual whim, is extremely sketchy.  Punishing people for failing to respond according to some shifting, individually prescribed way, to the individual declarations of unproveable personal feelings, marks the descent into anarchy, and the end of reason, as well as the end of social cohesiveness: the tyranny of a tiny minority over the vast majority, backed by police powers.  May God save us from folly.

Culture, Education, Governance, Representation

NO CHEEKS TO TURN

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Public discourse has never been as corrupt as can be heard and read everywhere in 2019.  To arrive at this nadir required leadership and neither “side” in recent elections is innocent; both deserve their own condemnations… or praises, as each self-proclaims.

We have arrived at a contest of hatreds, a contest that appears more virulently joined by one of two sides.  That side is the ‘attacker.’  The other side is, by definition, the ‘defender,’ insofar as it is not attempting to tear down traditional social norms, but to hold to them.  The attackers are motivated, they claim, by hatred of every flaw in the history of America, and they couch their attacks inside nebulous desires to “perfect” her, if not the whole world.

Defenders are automatically defined as reactionary clingers to everything that is “wrong” with America, and therefore somewhat lesser beings than those who have the discernment to see what needs correction.  There is no compromise.  Defenders cannot stomach facilitating the attackers’ attempts to “fundamentally transform” the United States.  Attackers become increasingly hateful of those who cannot recognize how correct the attackers surely are.

The nature of adversaries can be better understood by examining their allies, and allies of the ‘attackers’ are illustrative.  First let’s stipulate that those whose struggle is comprised of attacking the history, heritage and motives of America, are on the “left” side of the political spectrum, such that they are allied with forces of socialism and communism, even if many claim to believe in ‘democracy.’  This position allies America’s ‘attackers’ with fascism and fascists for whom strict alignment of corporate power with social policy is preferable to free markets and sovereign citizens – preferable to ‘freedom,’ itself.

Google, Facebook, Amazon and other cyber-platforms, and many billionaires in other industries are happy to comply with this trend as it helps cement them into positions atop our and the world’s economies; This places them largely atop our ostensibly constitutionally ‘limited’ government, and the marriage between economic and political power is one that fascists constantly propose.  Only such an elite form of benign governance can possibly make everything “fair” and safe from “hate speech.”

Interestingly, virtually every ‘attacker’ is strongly in favor of abortion on demand, many agreeing with abortion up to the moment of birth.  This is a form of hatred: of motherhood, of fatherhood, even of God, that is as destructive to the rightness and righteousness of America’s right to exist, as any other social / political action.  Part of the danger on the attacker side is that its combatants seem to demand perfection of their targets, whereupon not finding it, they are justified in almost any action to tear them down.  Widespread abortion would come under the heading of society’s Imperfection as it destroys its own future, it would seem to Prudent observers.

Indeed, the disintegration and, here and there, re-segregation of society as it tries to comply with ‘attackers’ new rules of correctness and non-offensiveness, are evidence of society’s lack of perfection on Earth, spurring still more radical adjustments of every habit and norm until “perfection” is attained.  Oddly, “perfection” appears to mimic the communist mythos, something with which the ‘attacker’ side is allied.

There are numerous examples of spirituality being part of the motivation of attackers as well as of defenders.  In this minefield it is critical to choose one’s allies cautiously, and the ‘attackers’ are “allied” with both militant atheism and militant Islam, a pairing of qualities that requires the energetic holding of two antithetical beliefs at one time.  Militant atheists, no longer content to not believe amidst a tolerant, largely Christian society, now have shifted to denying belief to those same tolerant, albeit, rather weak Christians.  Christian displays or symbols must be removed, apparently, since, to these anti-Christian militants, they interfere with the eventual perfection of the world.

Their other friends, the militant Islamists, want the destruction of Christianity because it is an imperfection in the soon-to-be purely Islamic world.  Atheists and Islamists are comfortable in the big tent of ‘attackers’ of imperfection on Earth, although once either team’s vision of perfection is attained, their alliance may fray.

So, let’s take stock: the ‘attacker’ side in our current national and societal conflicts is happy with the hatreds embodied (disembodied) in abortion – which is very anti-Christian, happy with hatreds of atheist anti-Christians and happy with Islamic anti-Christians.  There is a spiritual aspect to all of this that the ‘attackers’ barely recognize in their zeal to perfect society.  How can Christians be a threat to all three factions of attackers?

Christians are the one tolerant group in the battle, but, like their attackers, they barely recognize that the destruction of America is the destruction of Christianity.  Indeed, in an utterly foolish misunderstanding of their own spiritual strengths and obligations, Christians fail to defend their own sacred office(s) while they contort themselves to prove their tolerance… to the point of suicide… America right behind them.  There is not enough wealth – or comfort – in the world to counter the anti-Christians, nor should there be.

Is there any prospect of ANY government or official organ reversing these multiple trends toward destruction of social cohesiveness?  It appears unlikely in a political environment where those who deny their gender have gained exceptional political influence, including transformation of educational standards and cultures.  Amidst a current rush toward socialist perfection on Earth, the prospect of rational defense of heritage and liberty seems remote, as well.  To whom can we turn?  No one.  It is a misplaced hope that we will find any “leader” who will “clean up” society or neutralize our attackers.

Culture, Economics, Education, Immigration, Race, Representation

GHETTO, LIVING

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“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”  – Ronald Reagan.


    Into his simple statement, Ronald Reagan distilled the greatest threat and the greatest strength of America: the ideas of it.  We could forget them.  We could become so enamored of the false idols of socialism that we finally fail completely to pass along the meaning and significance of America.  The Prudent observer already recognizes that a large fraction of U. S. citizens are far down that path.

What makes this possible?  Obviously, education is worth examining; so is immigration; so, too, is ghetto-ization.  Let’s look at the last.  Ghettos form somewhat naturally, primarily for ethnic reasons, which is to say, cultural reasons.  They form economically, as well, but where the only shared “norm” is poverty… or substantial wealth.

Religious ghettos are well recorded and well-storied in history.  Most were either harmless or threatening to a power-structure.  Some were left in peace, most eventually destroyed for their “other-ness,” and the implied threat that represented.

Most ghettos engender resentment, or cohere because of it.  Shared resentment is a political tinderbox, to which outside intrusion, however legitimate, can provide the explosive spark.  In and of itself, ghetto-ization is deconstructive of the greater society, corrosive and segregationist.  There is no good reason to encourage the growth or even the existence of ghettos – of any sort, at least not in a democratic, free-enterprise republic.

In its perpetual confusion, religious sectarianism both creates and attempts to integrate, ghettos.  Part of Judeo-Christian teaching is to “…come apart and be a separate and chosen people.”  It is not dissimilar to many other faiths.  The direction seeks purity of body, mind and soul.  When the rest of the “world” is deemed impure and immoral, “sickly” in a sense, quarantine appears wise, and temporarily it is.  Enlightened sects both separate themselves and purposely integrate themselves, hoping to attract some – if not all – of the impure and immoral to adopt their ways of belief and of life.

Mere enlightenment can easily evolve into messianism, causing religious groups to send missionaries out to dissimilar, and therefore, “heathen” lands who are living in sin for no other reason than ignorance of the one, true path.

But ghettos, religious, ethnic, economic, tend to inhibit understanding – understanding which is essential to cultural/social survival based on shared mores and standards, habits and language.  Those “inside” tend to mostly talk to one another, share distrusts of outsiders with one another, hear only opinions from one another and, eventually, for some, reinforce one another’s hatreds for outsiders.

Hatred is unhealthy, especially so for relatively “open” societies, where there is freedom of movement, speech and expression… and where there are politicians.  Hatred spawns a rotten sort of political power… a sort that is happy to ply ghetto hatreds with pandering postulates, even to the point of social revolution.  That is, every form of “establishment” power is besmirched and derogated until the cravings of those seeking votes are but a shade away from the hatreds of the marginalized.

It would seem unwise to spur the creations of more ghettos, and unwise to feed the ones that exist such that they need not integrate and come to better understandings.

In effect, the United States has permitted, encouraged and protected the formation of new ghettos, both through civil tolerance of the rights of homeless people to remain drugged while living animally on appropriated public lands, and by importing enclaves of aliens whose cultures and belief structures are not only unlike our own, but antithetical to our own.  The great “melting pot” of quickly assimilating immigrants is a quaint notion.  Immigrants today come, in part, to show Americans how inferior our mores are to their “superior” ones, from which they have fled to our shores.  This is unhealthy.

At the same time our social welfare industry strengthens and feeds the original, “black” ghettos, feeding their politically powerful support to those in government who feed the welfare industry.  More recent ghettos based on Central and South American attitudes and language(s) actually compete for the support from the welfare industry that was largely delivered to blacks 50 years ago.  The United States literally fights to grow those ghettos in contravention of our own laws.  This is doubly unhealthy since it cements a disregard for law amongst our fastest growing minorities, many of whom reside here illegally.  Very unhealthy.

Very few within the ghettos described share understandings of our Constitution or of our common law and standards.  For these growing sub-cultures, there is no need to forget our heritage: they come or are born without it and there is no requirement to adopt it in order to enjoy our land and protections, legally and honestly or not.

For the rest of us, upon whom the survival of the ideas of America rests, many of our youth are ignorant of, have forgotten or have been instructed away from those ideas.  One generation is all it will take to lose everything.