Tag Archives: suicide

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

ONCE UPON A TIME

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Americans are, to a greater extent than at any time since the “Great” Depression, unhappy and untrusting of others.  For all of our history as the United States of America, we have shared several senses of hope: economic, health, safety and cleanliness.  We might also add a sense of religious hope.  These hopes have slowly been… and are now quickly,  being erased from our shared beliefs.  It is unsettling.

Our origins as a people are exceptional as are our philosophies of governance and religious freedoms and numerous other rights protected by the Constitution.  The fundament of American exceptionalism is that the government(s) are formed and defined by the people.  Yet, since the beginning, those forces that believed the exact opposite: that governments are formed to control the people, their styles and means of living and their status in society, have been hard at work to undo the exceptionalism that once defined us.  Starting in 2020, the virtual Communist enemies of America have believed that success is within their grasp and, sadly, very many Americans, particularly young Americans, agree with the destruction of our culture and nation.

We are losing our hopes.

Every person has grown up with a pattern of habits and beliefs imprinted by or in reaction to our parents or guardians or lack thereof.  Other key people and childhood friends and classmates – and TEACHERS – all contributed to each of our belief structures and general outlooks and reactions to problems and opportunities.  Huge industries of psychologists, child-psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists have developed to channel our feelings, guilts or irrationalities relative to our upbringing.  In one way or another, at some level, we are, all, “screwed up” and seeking someone to blame for how we are.  How is it, then, that most of us have, throughout the history of the United States, turned out so well?

Indeed, through the times of greatest tests: The Civil War, various economic crises, World Wars One and Two and the Civil Rights movement, Americans have impressed the world with our drive to “do the right thing.”  Perfectly?  Naturally not; but, overall we used to tend toward the best response to challenges – personally and nationally.  Was it a miracle?  Was it a set of millions of coincidences?  Were children raised more perfectly then?

A qualified “yes” to the last question, but it was no accident that most of us grew up reasonably rational and morally straight despite our imperfect parents and circumstances, and the fundamental reason was culture.

We had a beautiful culture based in honesty and responsibility.  The rest of the world envied it and struggled to emigrate to our land of opportunity.  Our laws were equally applied, mostly, and our contracts were honestly enforced, mostly, and our private property – the fruit of our labor – was fairly protected by civil authorities, mostly.  We rewarded initiative and success and, mostly, forgave failure for those who strove to do better.  We honored churches and charity and respected marriage – even encouraged it in policy.  We respected learning and the learned, and the inventors who kept our economic future bright.  Parents could reasonably expect their children to have better lives than they had.  It almost sounds funny to recount these “American” qualities.

Our culture was the best there was, in our capitalist democratic republic, and we tried to share it with others.  Americans, individually, were enormously charitable toward one another and with the rest of the world, and we supported our nation being the same toward other peoples.  American citizenship was a golden possession, yet anyone who applied to be one had to meet only the simplest tests and commitment to be welcomed into our nation as an equal possessor of our “gold.”  Our basic Judeo-Christian ethics made us tolerant.  What have we done?

In spite of obstacles, our young people used to grow up in pretty good shape, and the reason was culture.  Schools, churches, libraries, police departments, pronouncements from the work of Congress, the military branches, radio programming, music and lyrics, television programming and news reporting, and even cinema… all reinforced our shared cultural beliefs.  Today?  Today, nearly all of these institutions challenge, if not tear down, our basic cultural norms.  Parents are nearly alone in their efforts to pass our culture along to and in their children.  What have we done?

As society becomes, almost daily, less and less honest, and our institutions less and less trustworthy, young people facing difficulties tend toward immediate suicide or the long-term suicide of drugs.  Adults seem to have no valid response to this.  Indeed, we allow for policies that make drug-addiction SAFER!  We don’t even want to enforce sanctions for criminal behaviors!  What are we doing?

None of what is going wrong is inevitable or guaranteed by the Constitution.  We human beings created the mess we’re in and we can “un-create” it the minute we decide to be adults, again.  What are we going to do?  God save us.

Culture, Education, Family, Governance, Politics 2023, Religion, Sex

ALLIES OF ASSAULT

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American patriots must face the truth of the assault on “the American way.”  The threats and active destruction of our world-leading culture and governmental theory, are premised on the warped analyses of Communist theory.  We seem to enjoy arguing “Republicanism” and “Democracy” inasmuch as these ill-defined, rather amorphous distinctions are poly-philosophic in the worst, most dangerous ways.  American political argumentation is largely hollow: platitudes are spouted by not just “both” sides, but by all the “sides” folded into our two parties, yet the translation of philosophy into public policy is nearly indistinguishable from a frontal assault.  Other forces have more to do with policy than our overly platitudinous blatherings ever have or will.

Money has a lot to do with how we govern, as does corruption.  The two are often, but not always, contiguous.  For “fellow travelers” and other acolytes, philosophical corruption is its own reward.  One may be easily drawn in to a corrupt philosophy by not recognizing that its premise is a lie… like communism, trans-genderism, oligarchy and “equity.”  Or, alternatively, one may not care if the premise is real or not, only that joining with it is a source of social capital that is comforting.  It is well to analyze the end-game of any philosophy.  Many have an intent toward a goal that is utterly destructive, of individuals, of freedom or of whole societies and cultures.  And here, sadly, is where we seem to be in 2023.  Divide and conquer.

It serves an attacking force to have a number of fifth-columns who are willing to attack simultaneously, even for deeply held reasons of their own, whose targets and purposes have been laid out for them for completely other reasons than their own.  These are they who the most cynical tyrants call “useful idiots.”  For shame.  They are not idiots… indeed, nearly all are strongly motivated by virtuous beliefs in the need for action on a host of issues, and motivated enough to take action to right a wrong, redress injustice, prevent global warming or stop the scourge of pandemic.

Unfortunately, most of these deeply-held beliefs are premised on falsehoods – falsehoods that serve the overriding purposes of those who spread them – falsehoods that contain a tiny kernel of truth.  These can include the truth of slavery and slave ownership by white Americans 150 years ago and longer.  From that truth springs the false premise of retroactive hatred: somehow doing the hating in the 21st century that was not accomplished in the 18th and 19th centuries, will make life better for … well, someone.  It cannot, of course, but it’s sold on another false premise: injustice.  Yes, there is injustice in the world, and it’s part of just about every culture, group, nation and tribe.  But it is dead wrong – sometimes deadly wrong – to foment new injustice to somehow “balance” the old injustice of slavery.  What isn’t clear to those who fall for “two wrongs will make something right,” is that the whole business of such fomenting has nothing to do with justice OR injustice: it has to do with dividing a nation against itself, segregating races and sexes and families, in order to weaken that nation, making it easier to eventually defeat it.  God forbid.

True believers who are caught up in that (or some other) movement will, most of them, deny that their aim is to destroy America… they want to make it a better, fairer country.  Their way of doing so is to steal money from those who earn it (unequal and punitive taxation) in order to pay some form of reparation to certain, select others whose main justification for receiving it is the depth of their anger at long-deceased slave owners.  There is no “justice” involved, whatsoever.  Yet warriors for justice believe that justice will increase if they support the false premise.

Those whose primary purpose is neither justice nor fairness (rarely synonymous), but destruction, are also strongly supportive of sexual deviance, especially that promulgated by the newly conjured race: trans-gender and its multiple subsets.  Nothing has proven more effective for sundering the national identity that makes a nation strong.

We have a culture… supported by thousands of years of philosophical and economic evolution including, most emphatically, Judaism, Christianity and the heritage of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.  What became “American” is a result of some of the greatest human advances in science, engineering and philosophy.  It is nothing to be ashamed of, nor is all the history that led humankind here.  There is no point, or stage, or precursor society or culture that may be adjudged perfect.  There is no population, each a mixture of many others, by virtue of war or proximity, that was either pure or perfect in its own right, however it may have been judged by its successors.  Each, in another sense, was perfect.  Based upon its more or less rigid philosophies and shared beliefs, every stage of human existence and advancement was “perfectly” human.  It was what it could be; each ended as it did in ways we can smugly judge to be “good” or “bad,” from our supercilious and lofty positions of hyper-technology and hyper-sexuality.  Our own greatest limitation may be  severely limited humility.

We are the wrong people to be judging ourselves unless it is to improve our honesty, philosophy, charity, economy and humility so that we might, as a culture edge closer to our more perfect ideals.  It does not seem that this could possibly succeed without shared beliefs, shared morals, shared trust in honesty and truth, and shared respect for our individual worths.  We know the forces that hurt and hobble our culture, and that interfere with the strengthening of family structure and with the raising and maturation of children.  We know these things.  Yet the number of our co-culturists who champion the weakening of these aspects of cultural success, is growing with only limited opposition.  Even our legal and penal systems fail to slow the increase of weakening efforts.  Those with eyes to see can observe what amounts to a suicide of our society and culture.

Will we collapse for lack of understanding of what our defense must consist of?  Have we talked ourselves into accepting evil as a partner in our culture?  Because it’s fair?  Or, just?

Has our system of justice earned a legal right to protect evil in contravention of ten thousands years of advancement?  We cannot seem to even agree on what is good or bad for ourselves and our “American” culture.  Must we accept that what is tearing away at our culture is a valid part of it?  Is freedom no more than a right to kill ourselves and our homeland?

Will those who follow us be guided by our best traditions and ideals… or will they spit on the grave of liberty?

Economics, Governance

Borrowing for Welfare?

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Nearly every day there is some article or letter in the newspapers that decries the fact that the United States’ “defense” budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ defense budgets, combined. Moreover, that “bloated” defense budget could be reduced significantly so that the “savings” can be used to feed the hungry and house the homeless right here in our own country, for Heaven’s sake.

None of these heartfelt concerns is based on the right perspectives or even the right data. That’s the trouble with statistics.

For example, 65% of fiscal 2017’s Federal Budget is committed to entitlements, pensions, health-care and education. From a Constitutional standpoint, most of that 65% is not the business of the federal government, whereas defense, now 16% of the budget, categorically IS.

Years ago welfare was strictly local… and recipients were a little ashamed of having to ask for it. Many, your grandparents or great-grandparents, and many of your parents, would do the most menial jobs to AVOID being on welfare and to get “off” of it as quickly as possible. Children learned this reaction and revulsion. Welfare was a handout when you needed it, as temporarily as possible.

Soon after World War II, though, states took over welfare from cities and towns, mainly under pressure from cities, which were buckling under the northward migration of blacks from the deep south. Almost immediately, states began prevailing on Washington to take the burden off of their backs. After all, weren’t the new Northerners crossing state lines because of “national” conditions in the economy?

After 13 years of the “New Deal,” we could have seen where this was going. There were votes to be gained in the impassioned cries for better – federal – welfare: codified compassion.

Truman blazed integration trails, Eisenhower enforced anti-segregation in schools, Kennedy hemmed and hawed but crawled toward full integration and voting rights legislation, Johnson, riding a wave of sympathy for his murdered predecessor, got civil rights legislation done, and then carried on further to create some wildly expensive – reckless – new “rights”: federal, unaccountable, politically charged, easily defrauded, vote-attractive welfare.

Smartly, though, Johnson couched the new largesse to which people were now entitled – not ashamed-of, in wonderfully sympathetic terms and names. Names like: Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC), Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, ie. Food Stamps), Pell Grants (free college), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Rental Voucher Program (Section 8), Federal National Mortgage Administration (“Fannie-Mae”), Child Nutrition (School lunch, breakfast, dinner!), Head Start (very, very expensive day-care), Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and, the granddaddy of them all: MEDICAID.

Current spending on these and more than ONE HUNDRED other federal “anti-poverty” programs (who could be PRO-poverty?) is nearly 900 BILLION dollars. That means that our virtually bankrupt federal government is BORROWING money to provide welfare.
Well, say unionized federal social workers and sympathizers, our defense budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ combined, let’s cut that, first!

Except… it isn’t.

When China, for example, builds sand islands in the South China Sea, and puts military airstrips and naval “bases” on them, and claims 200-mile territorial waters around these extensions of “China,” it’s not a military expenditure, but something else. For example.

When Russia directs a manufacturer to produce engines for new IRBM’s and ICBM’s, they aren’t military expenditures – they’re developments in space exploration. All peaceful. And subterranean military bunkers for both armament manufacture and survival are certainly construction projects… and expensive, but military? Not so you’d know.

And no other country carries the degree of personnel costs and benefits that are packed into the “Defense” budget of the United States. Simple ledger numbers are not comparable with other nations’ budgets.

Actually, under the Obama administration, defense has been cut a few times. One of his first steps was to fold tens of billions of retirement costs into the Defense Department budget. Logically, the cost of military retirements should not be measured as part of the Pentagon’s war-fighting / force-projection budget, should they? They certainly don’t threaten anyone but us.

Next, Obama forced the Congress into the “sequester” process, of which a large fraction of restrictions were imposed on defense – to be “fair.” Big cuts.

Finally, he walked out of Iraq, abandoning the very bloody, very costly gains we had made there. We are now paying to regain what had been won. His frothy, fraudulent Iran anti-nuclear “agreement” (cunningly not a treaty), will cost us many billions going forward – billions that need not have been spent had there been a different foreign policy.

The new president sees significant weakness that exists now or very shortly will, as normal refitting and reconditioning of hardware takes larger and larger fractions of critical military systems out of service. Warplanes are becoming antiques as our most experienced pilots are retiring; it is our phenomenal pilots who keep last-generation fighters useful in their 30th year of service. Now our latest fighter platform is too expensive to buy enough of!

If anyone thinks that McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried chicken are going to convince our potential enemies to not work – and fight – to destroy us, it is time for him or her to wake up. Maybe unrestricted immigration will make everybody love one another, but so far it is weakening the “West” and confusing our Constitutional rights with national suicide.

Culture, Health Care

TO LIFE, TO LIFE, L’CHAI’IM

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Now that life, itself, is measured only in financial terms, at least for many – mostly young First-Worlders, the shining wisdom of liberal thinkers is becoming clearer… and more frightening. Canada recently completed a study that showed “savings” of nearly $140 Million, Canadian, that might be realized with more accessible “end-of-life” care, as they call it.

Or suicide, for the crudely honest. And that $140 Million could finance, ummm, infrastructure improvements and transportation safety! For those who remain, of course. One hopes that all that protein won’t go to waste – maybe pet food. After all, we’ve been eating animals like forever and they’re only human, too.

This is a side-effect of socialized health care, like those ads for the latest wonder-drug where the disclaimers about side effects like moods of depression or suicide, elevated heart rates, rash, constipation, diarrhea, dry mouth, bad breath, loss of vision and tingling in hands and feet, are three-fourths of the ad. Certain cancers and even death have occurred. If you experience any of these symptoms, speak to… your… doctor. He or she is a caring, white-smocked employee of the Government Accounting Office.

Abortion as a “constitutional right” is the first step to the destruction of not just life, but of freedom. We have been sold on abortion providing “Freedom” of choice for women who are shocked, shocked to find themselves pregnant when a child is too much to cope with… for any number of reasons. Even Planned Parenthood, responding to the outcries of stranded, pregnant, shocked women, has found ways for all that protein to not be wasted, as a market exists for whole, pre-natal organs and tissues. Financial value and loads of freedom for those who remain. They’re a non-profit, you know, so not much help with the infrastructure thing.

Some Planned Parenthood executives have had their own infrastructures improved.

And yet, despite all the excess babies we produce, “scientists” are struggling to clone humans like frogs and sheep, as if there were not enough, already. Maybe we just don’t want to accept the risk of imperfection; let’s replicate a human that “we” like.

We’ve followed the liberals, the socialists, the communists, the progressives and the Democrats down the path to where dollars or other forms of power define the value of life, even as the role of churches, religion, spirituality itself, are cast aside like so much magical mumbo-jumbo, a drag on society and on tax-receipts. We should be taxing all that church-owned property because our collective costs to protect it are born unfairly by non-believers. Abortion, and infrastructure, and voting… that’s real.

Since we can’t keep up with fertility, and since more people born into the last, best hope for freedom is a big public problem, we have got to destroy hopefulness, as they have in Russia, for example, where too few people are being born. Perhaps some terrorism will help spur the youngest, most fertile citizens to fear bringing children into “such” a world… a world where Donald Trump can be elected. Let’s just hook up after lecture hall and if I get pregnant I can get an abortion before mid-terms.

The value of life is primarily spiritual, if there’s any purpose beyond finance and fun, at all. Isn’t that the big question? What is the purpose, the meaning of life? Didn’t you see the movie? Hilarious. No, but honestly, sometimes I get the feeling that there just must be more to it than eating and screwing, don’t you think?

Well, we could help people who are having problems – that always makes me feel good. You should take that job at the clinic and you could help girls with unwanted fetal masses. When I get my promotion at the condom factory we’ll have enough money to maybe donate to Greenpeace or PETA. How would that be?

I’d rather donate to my alma mater where the money could help poor kids get their Masters. Aren’t they a religious school? Oh, they used to be.

Roughly speaking, Americans can choose, now, between the Death Party and the Life Party. The Deathers are pretty firm in their beliefs, while the Lifers are kind-of soft in their defense of Life. The former can state their death wishes as matters of Freedom, and Choice, and purging the country of brown people… except they don’t mention the last part. Lifers are almost afraid to mention their beliefs or their spirituality, yet they somehow won an election the other day. Seemed like spiritual intervention, but with all this warm weather we’ve been having, who can worry about that?

The main thing is to get back on the death track or we’ll never balance the budget. Consumer confidence is high, though. Maybe Christmas sales will cap a really good year, financially.

I hate Christmas, don’t you? It’s so commercial.