In Methuen, Massachusetts a young woman is trying to prepare for a very early death. It’s not her fault; she’s done nothing wrong in her nearly 27 years. Indeed, from the very first she has been a bright, delightful person, quick to learn, quick to love pretty much everybody.
Inside her genes, however, something is not the same as most people’s. She can’t fight off dysfunctional cell growth. Her first cancer arrived when she was about 6, it’s not completely certain when, but she had been complaining of “back pain” for months before her mom finally got her to a “pediatric gastroenterologist” whose connections at Tufts Floating Hospital for Children found and diagnosed neuroblastoma. There can be no worse day for a mother, unless it’s the one approaching inexorably, almost exactly 20 years afterwards.
That’s a short dash, 27 years. In between those dates were 5 big battles with cancer, excellence in school, swim team, graduation from High School, excellence in college that included trips to New Orleans to help repair Katrina-damaged homes, trips to England and Ireland, visit to Paris through the Chunnel, Graduation from Wheelock College, Masters degree through Merrimack College, friends’ weddings, even one she coordinated, a trip to Peru and Machu Picchu only to run headlong into the fifth cancer struggle, now stretching into the last. Loving teaching, early childhood and special needs, was not enough. There never will be the full-time teaching position of which she dreamed.
How does one prepare for death? I don’t know. My good friend, Tony Fusco, prepared for his when an undiagnosed tumor in his brain stem proved inoperable, impossible to biopsy and ultimately fatal. I got to sit with him the last Sunday afternoon before he re-entered the hospital to try some other treatments multiple neurologists had only the faintest idea might help. I’d brought some nice scotch thinking we might enjoy a sip together but his gag reflex was so impaired he dared to sip only water. It was a good afternoon and I expected he’d be home again.
When the only option of a feeding tube was offered, Tony realized – decided – that it was a tube too far: no further treatments, thank you. His world shrank to a room at a beautiful hospice facility that was always busy with visitors and family. He had a huge heart; it took a couple of weeks for it to go to sleep.
Clearly he’d prepared for the end. He was 71. At his funeral I told him that I knew where to hide a flask for when I’d join him on a porch where he now lived, where we could enjoy a sip and analyze the world situation. He was a year younger than me.
How does one prepare at age twenty-six and three-quarters? Without an abiding religious faith it is hard to imagine. She believes in God, but hasn’t had a lot of religious education. I try to explain, but it is uncomfortable, certainly it was a year ago when the lung cancer appeared. It represented a third kind of cancer, and her tiny body could tolerate no chemotherapy. They operated and radiated, but the treatment was still a variation of repair and destroy with the overarching hope that the cancerous cells might be killed before the patient, herself. Her breathing hasn’t been very good – or comfortable – since then. Within a couple of months lesions were found in multiple places: brain, bones, pancreas and more. Now at Dana Farber, they’ve radiated as many places as possible and she’s been taking an oral chemo pill with side effects. It tended to slow down the growth, but never stopped it and now isn’t slowing it much, either.
There’s only one door open to her… to a place where the weaknesses of her body will no longer be a problem – a place where her health will become perfect. One needs a reason to hope in order to contemplate passing through that door, alone. Observers might say that she has no choice so “…she just has to deal with it.”
What does that mean: deal with it? If one has any trust in God it should be clear that trying to pass through when angry and bitter is probably not the right approach. One school of thought is that when you pass you’ll find exactly what you believed you’d find. If that is a fade-to-black scenario, and hopeless, then that is what it will appear to be. I believe that there is an eventual judgment, an audit if you will, of how well your tests were passed – tests you knew were coming when you agreed to accept the lifetime just ending. Your “you” or your soul, may or may not have aced everything. The life just ended may or may not be the last one you need to make your ascension, but Redemption is the unfailing lesson of the Bible. It doesn’t make sense that in the matter of life and death itself, that the opportunity to redeem oneself would be absent.
For the soul, the agreement to accept a new life that includes the needed tests, is the greatest act of love expressable.
Another path of spiritual guidance says that not only are we responsible for our un-passed tests, or “karma,” but also for our reason for being, our “dharma.” Both are part of judgment. The more aware we are while on this side of that door, the more likely we are to meet and exceed the reasons for this life. Life is not a knife-edge: Hell on one side and the gift of Heaven on the other; it is a path made broad by our free will. The choices we make have meaning.
When someone passes very young, there has been little time to make bad choices, which is to say, few sins have been committed. At the same time, few opportunities have presented for passing tests. Maybe a life that ends in youth is lived sacrificially so that those around you can pass their tests. Living that life is your test: a unique expression of love.
From the limited, somewhat fuzzy understandings of a human lifetime, this is my most comforting perception of the young lady’s life: one of sacrifice. Neither I nor anyone else on this side of the door is privy to the purposes of the lives of others, and barely able to grasp the meanings of our own. Still, this observer has recorded no imperfections in our young patient’s life.
Is she comforted thereby? Does she perceive the success of her life? Or does she feel she’s been punished or singled out for “bad luck?” I try to tell her to not fall into those ideas, but to approach the door with an open heart and mind, accepting of the possibilities of immense love on the other side.
Hatred, anyone can see, is imPrudent. In some circumstances one can understand anger, as when a person of color appears to have been mistreated or, God forbid, killed by police for no good reason. Obviously his or her family has good reason to be angry in such a case. His or her friends have a “right” to be angry, too, one could allow. “Justice” is the correct call… in every instance, but lately by some process that translates into destruction of American culture and political existence. How? Prudence wonders.
It takes a long-term plan, a lot of work… like a political campaign, and money – it takes money. People are not born haters, we must be carefully taught. Part of our social troubles… or dissolution, is our tendency to paint with broad, angry brush strokes. It used to be if an Irishman were inebriated it was because “…those Irish are all drinkers.”
If an Italian pulled a fast one on you, then “… those Italians are all like the Mafia.”
Frenchmen are all great lovers and they all have mistresses. Scotsmen are cheap. Germans are all rigid and militaristic. Used-car salesmen are all liars. There are dozens of similar generalizations. These are prejudices. They seem not so bad when applied to ethnic or economic distinctions… not nearly as bad as for racial distinctions.
Yet there are people who judge whole “racial” groups based on prejudice from anecdotes and half-truths and expressed hatreds, as well as from official, legal special treatments, real and perceived, based on popularized, but largely meaningless racial victim-hood. In this sense, government is the worst offender for dividing populations by so-called, “race.”
“Blacks are too stupid to do…” whatever was in question. “You can’t depend on Chinamen.” “White people are racist white-supremacists.” Almost everyone is guilty of some form of “group-think.” That is, that individuals may be understood by virtue of their “group identity.” This is diametrically opposed to the ideals of the Constitution. In the ostensible American system, everyone is equal under the law. Therefore, laws should be written for individual application, not racially or ethnically or for any other “group” connection. Color-blindness is a virtue for a free people.
Governments, for the most crass, self-serving (politician) reasons, have proven themselves incapable of resisting group-identity codification. They attempt, and intend, to garner votes by doing favors legally, legislatively for various groups, undermining the greatest strength of our Constitutional republic. What a crappy way to damage one’s own nation.
These largely inaccurate distinctions are an easy building-block for generating hatred for groups, and, by natural distillation, for individuals within that group. Automatically, that hatred is reflected back on the originating group and its individuals. Great, great restraint and moral strength is needed to resist an easy slide into hatred and prejudice. Religious teaching helps here, particularly Judeo-Christian teachings and the Bible. It is instructive that those who would tear down the Constitution and the family-centered culture it protects, are doing their damnedest to dissolve Christianity, too. Rainbow flags weren’t enough.
Where does the money come from to pay rioters, BLM agitators and Antifa thugs… busing or flying them around the country, covering living expenses and raising funds to bail them out if arrested while looting, committing arson, assaults and an occasional murder? Is it surprising that, literally, Democrats provide it? Millions of dollars flow from Democrats and Democrat-supporting corporations like Apple, Amazon, Nike, Microsoft and others who donate multiple millions to various Black Lives Matter-connected foundations and others. Other Democrats donate and encourage others to donate money to bail criminals out of jail. Why would people on the Left do such a thing to their own country?
It is what leftists do. We are no longer contemplating the arguments of left-of-center liberals as to how we can organize America better for everyone. We are watching socialists and avowed “Marxists” of all colors who are organizing total disruption – first of cities, by rioting and grabbing “reparations” for the “community” by looting and burning, then states by confusing and changing a perfectly good voting system, and ultimately the United States, again by confusing and changing voting procedures to reduce election certainty, and by destroying faith in our system of government by distorting economics and the justice system… possibly by stealing elections.
Back to “justice.” In MOST instances, the offending police officer or officers are dealt with properly and prosecuted as he or they should be. Some are in jail. But not all are appropriately sanctioned, and anger toward a closed, obscured process is well justified. What should relatives and friends do to seek real justice? Here’s the list that lately is providing popular choices:
Protest loudly and publicly in large groups, vilifying all police.
Throw stones and bricks at police who are trying to maintain order during the protest.
Burn a police car
Burn a store or restaurant near the site of the use of excess force by the offending officer(s).
Bring in Antifa and BLM to rile up ever larger crowds.
Shoot explosive fireworks at police.
Pull down or deface a statue that honors someone few if any in the crowd know much about.
Assault, or worse, whoever is wearing an article of clothing that offends somebody in the crowd.
Force police from one of their buildings and burn it down.
None of this, obviously, generates “justice” for the victim of a perceived crime, but spreads INjustice across the lives of as many people as possible. How does this bring even a sense of justice to the family of the original victim? Maybe our erstwhile leaders could institute something like the following:
First, legislation that requires police agencies to provide a comprehensive, public report no later than 5 days from the date of the questionable incident. This report could not include any statements of judgment that could distort other legal actions or suits. The same legislation should include a strict limit of, say 20 or 30 people who are permitted to stage a protest during those 5 days; more than the right number would be apprehended and fined.
Political leaders would call for a 5-day cooling-off period and offer such help as would be accepted to the family of the “victim.” No public funds could be diverted to any advocacy groups not related directly to the family. This process, however, must be free of admissions of any guilt or responsibility by the municipality or agency before the public report is made. During the 5-day waiting period groups could apply for permits for demonstrations to follow the waiting period, that may or may not be granted in some form. Beyond that, demonstrators will be strictly contained and arrested for actions outside of the parameters of issued permits. Public safety and the civil rights and private property of others are paramount.
Being “really angry” is no excuse for rioting or stealing things or setting fires anywhere. Municipal leaders: WAKE UP!
For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the waves crashing against the shores of America’s understanding ought to be exposing to the wise some of the great fallacies of our corrupt and feckless political power structure. First, a crucial point: government cannot “fix” racism, but it does make it worse. Government… and politicians, can’t even describe what racism is and as a consequence, they attempt to fix something else, leaving no question as to why they have failed so miserably.
Racism is not the government’s business at any level; injustice is. That is, how individuals ACT against the rights or property of another individual are the only matters that may be adjudicated, for only they may be placed in evidence at trial. How someone feels about another individual is inadmissible since it is not provable. Often it is self-declared or, at least, a matter of others’ feelings. Brought forth through testimony today, an individual’s feelings may be different tomorrow, if not within the hour. This is the problem with so-called “hate crimes” and with the laws that purport to make the underlying, adjudicable crime worse in the presence of hate, than otherwise, such as in the presence of neutrality, one supposes.
Our Constitution protects every person under its lawful jurisdiction by the principle of “equal justice under the law.” Any individual who interferes with that principle deserves appropriate sanction under the law. Any individuals of a group who interfere with it to the detriment or damage to any individual or individuals, each deserve equal sanction. Aside from some sort of executive or threatening force applied to cause an individual to abrogate the rights, freedom, or property of another individual or individuals, the individual perpetrator is responsible for the consequences for his or her actions. He or she is not absolved of that responsibility by virtue of others also being prosecutable for the same actions.
Our various governments manipulate racial groups and their designations in order to both control “groups” and to acquire their political favor. In other words, local, state and federal governments constantly distinguish among groups in terms of legislation, special benefits that result, and differential legal sanctions, both good and bad. That is, equal application of the laws is out the window if there is racially-based political advantage to be gained. The ideal of a color-blind society is most undercut by the very governments formed in its shadow. Prudence wouldn’t mind defunding that.
One of the worst consequences of the multi-city insurrection we have endured in late May and early June of 2020, is the obsequious surrenders of mayors, governors and federal politicians, to the well-coordinated mobs that have committed thousands of crimes across the country. These include murder, assault, arson, theft, insurrection, destruction of public property, incitement to riot and public mayhem. Yet public officials, sworn to uphold the law, public safety, state’s and our federal Constitutions, have decided to ignore most of it because “people are really angry.” This philosophy deserves some analysis.
Two weeks ago soft-headed, stiff-necked governors, and mayors, were threatening to fine, if not arrest, law-abiding citizens who dared – dared – to open a barbershop or 20-seat restaurant in the face of the Covid-19 scourge of the century and the requisite lock-down and social-distancing dictates. “We’re following this week’s CDC recommendations.” None of the orders were strictly legal but lots of ‘woke’ people were and are afraid to not wear a mask outside. Some mayors say they,ll fine you up to $300 for not wearing a mask! Burning out someone’s business should be fined at least $350 by that measure.
Protesters who are upset (as is everyone else) about the excessive force in the arrest of Saint George Floyd, somehow conflate every white person’s white skin with the causes of Floyd’s death. Guilt by skin color. People with white skin may say they are glad the police officers involved have been arrested and charged, but it doesn’t count: their skin’s the wrong color. People who own businesses or private property or both, are guilty of Floyd’s death, too, making the needed “justice” for George Floyd fall upon them, and burning and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s unjust death at the hands of 4 individuals in Minneapolis, can barely begin to balance the scales of racism since time immemorial. Besides, looters apparently believe, the only way white people are going to respect black people is if they are deathly afraid of them… that part of the plan is working.
They can show respect only by kneeling and apologizing for being white. Anyone who kneels for that is an idiot… they’re out there.
Lost in all of the riots – as clearly distinguished from “protests” – are the rights of individuals supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States which every elected official and police officer is sworn to uphold. These same rights protected George Floyd throughout his long criminal career and involvements with police, courts, judges, public defenders and prisons. What are police, mayors and individual, terminally guilty white kids being ”forced” to kneel for? Being white? Being elected and somehow responsible for George Floyd’s death – when they clearly aren’t?
Are they being made to kneel before the “Black Lives Matter” organization/movement? “BLM” is based itself on lies that they repeat over and over. Every wrongful death is tragic, although not always a crime, per se. In many cases they occur as a result of a series of grievous errors, not always only by the police personnel in question. But police are the ones who must operate at a higher level of professionalism. They can’t react from fear or confusion, else they must be accountable.
The “justice” that legitimate protesters seek has been remarkably swift in the Floyd case –rapid. That’s justice. First fired in one day and charged criminally about 2 days later. A couple of days after that, the other 3 police officers present were also charged in Floyd’s death. Very swift. Two autopsies had been performed before the smoke cleared from the first riots. A go-fund-me operation had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Floyd’s family before the funeral services had been scheduled. That’s a lot of justice. Derek Chauvin, the officer whose knee caused the death of George Floyd, was served with divorce papers as he sat in jail under suicide watch. How much more “justice” can the protesters obtain?
None, that’s how much. So why keep protesting?
The actual protesters are a minority of those marching in the streets. Indeed, if one were able to interview every “protester,” the majority of them would be hard-pressed to explain what they are actually protesting. Are they protesting the death of George Floyd? Well, pretty good, so does every Prudent person. What do they hope will be the result of their protest? Better police? Cool, me too. The elimination of police? We part ways on that one because doing the ultimate stupid act isn’t Prudent at all. Is that really what protesters think they’re doing? Doubtful.
Rioters, though, are a different group, literally paid to agitate. They are where most of “Black Lives Matter” personnel are – coordinating riots. If that means looting, arson and beatings, that’s okay, in their eyes, because justice for George Floyd is not their purpose. If they cared about black people they’d be agitating to get rid of welfare or, possibly, they’d be protesting the 6,000+ deaths ANNUALLY, of blacks killed by other blacks. But they seem mainly to be concerned, upset really, about police and police departments. Regardless of color, black activists want to get rid of police. This is not a solution to problems shared by all Americans; police, law and order are a problem only for those attempting to destroy belief in our Judeo-Christian mores and America, itself.
“BLM” believes very different philosophies than you or I do, or do the vast majority of Americans. Their own statement of beliefs is in opposition to the norms of American, Judeo-Christian culture. In effect, every “victim” class they can identify, including all variants of sexual identity and “trans” sexuality, most particularly non-white, are claimed as equal-status members of the Black global movement. In this they are largely in opposition to the norms of a majority of American blacks who desire to live far more conservatively. Like most Christian or Christian-influenced people, Americans are tolerant of the need for political expression and of the redress of grievances, Prudence included of course. BLM is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, however.
BLM is purely racist. There is no pejoration in that description. Blacks, evidently can demand “black-only” this or that, whether a congressional caucus or a college graduation; whites, not so much. One of the lies that undergirds Black Lives Matter is that only whites can be racist. That is utter nonsense, of course. And racism per se, is neither evil nor negative… it is normal. Only under a regime of group identities and its hand-maiden, socialism, is “racism” a weapon. Americans are sadly in error, literally in denial of our heritage, if we accept group guilt for “racism.” Our nation and its founding is based on individual responsibility, not group responsibility. Every individual could be “racist” in the sense that he or she is uncomfortable with members of another race. It takes time and education to overcome that uncomfortability, even fear. But only a handful of individuals will act uncivilly or in a hateful manner toward members of the other “race.” That action is the only legitimate area of action for government. Bad actions may be sanctioned under the law, bad thoughts may not be.
Another aspect of what BLM “believes,” is that the “Western” nuclear family model must be undone (that is, thousands of years of Judeo-Christian family structure must be undone). BLM global wants “village” child-rearing, which is to say, some sort of government child-rearing. We’ve been drifting toward this model to our social detriment, for 60 years. As the federal government federalized welfare, removing all moral or any other judgment in the disbursal of “benefits,” black families disintegrated to such a degree that over 60% of black children are born to and raised by a single mother, which means that Headstart, Pre-K and numerous other social support programs often have more time with a child than its mother, let alone its father.
Black Lives matter is a fraud on America, since its concern is not helping black people, but rather the unseating of our nation and constitution. To communists, which they are, freedom is an affront. Any politician who accedes to BLM demands, kneels for their blessing or grovels in other ways, is presenting him or herself as the person to vote against in the next election… while elections that so many have died for, are still free.
Life is a philosophy, as is death, one could surmise. Another philosophical thread might be spun from the question of whether death and life are opposite one another. The observer of, say, a live frog and a dead one can readily note the obvious differences, most specifically that the live one is capable of independent action while the one considered dead, obviously is not… but, are the two states opposite one another? Given that death is the natural end of the limited period called life, it ought not be seen as the opposite of life.
Let’s jump up a level in our contemplations. Philosophy implies belief and wouldn’t exist without it. Truth being immutable and untethered to belief, the death of, say a frog, leaving a dead, stiff carcass, is subject to only one belief: the formerly live frog has ceased the stage we call “life” and now exists in a state we call “death.” There isn’t any room for conflicting descriptions of the change of condition or, for the rational, conflicting meanings of the change, as well. Humans, however, are immersed in a sea of philosophies and, in the presence of a large smattering of scientific knowledge, our philosophies are concentrated upon – if not entirely concerned with – life and death… of humans. We believe humans are unique for whatever reasons and philosophy enables our explaining those beliefs.
One might distill that fact into simpler terms: philosophies are based on how to create life, how to live and on how to die. Too simple? Let’s consider a few. The most widely known are religious, the fire that has forged most of our beliefs: marriage, rearing of offspring, educating them and launching them into marriage, conducting our personal lives, dealing with crime and anger and unfairness and injustice, meeting our obligations to others, and being honest and honorable and fulfilling our duties… and how to worship our creator and perhaps other gods. Every religious belief structure includes dietary and sexual laws, ways to punish and ways to exact revenge, as it were… or avoid it. Structures of belief.
There are philosophers who explain the meanings of our beliefs, of our lives, our emotions and our hatreds. They try to explain why religions are complete or incomplete, why life has meaning or it doesn’t; they rationalize failure, success, happiness and depression, loneliness, gregariousness, hygiene and filth. Philosophers have, and will again, endeavor to explain industry, work, laziness and entertainment… even complete nihilism and the need for suicide. In a way, they are all explanations or understandings (opinions) about creating, living and ending life… of humans, mainly.
Humans build things. There’s a philosophy about this need to construct more than is necessary for basic shelter and safety. Humans invent ways to grow more than enough food – then we eat it all. There are philosophers trying to explain why we eat more than we need, even if it hurts us. The same is true about alcohol, drugs, tobacco, coffee and chocolate. Why are these things so important to humans? How is it that we can abuse one another and even children? People try to think about and reason about, explain and understand these odd behaviors. What do they mean?
Much of religious thought / philosophy is about the end of life and the existence or absence of a soul living in the spiritual self of every human. The majority of humans alive today believe to some degree that there are rewards or punishments awaiting them after death. It feels Prudent to consider those possibilities. If we live a rotten life do we, should we, “get into” heaven the same as the most charitable and saintly people we know? Do non-religious people have a last minute choice to win or possibly earn a ticket to heavenly realms? How good a life must one live to be acceptable to get even a decent room in the many mansions of heaven?
Do we have to leave earth, or just life, to get to heaven? What if you aren’t good enough to take up residence in heaven? Do you remain stuck on earth somehow? Or are you wiped from creation, every record and memory, any act of love or anger toward others that you created while alive – just ‘poof’? Gone? The people who run heaven wash their hands of you? Maybe you are parked in a halfway village – or a one-third way or one-quarter way – until there is either a lull in new applications or one of the staff in heaven thinks you can be rehabilitated. These are philosophical questions because each is laden with meaning. For some.
It is possible to drift through, or fight through life without ever thinking of what your actions mean. Philosophically this seems like a sad outcome for years of living, and implies a certain sociopathy: complete disregard for others, something that has to be learned; no one is born that way. Some people, unfortunately, learn a rare but real philosophy of hatred or disregard for others, even in their families. These are they who have a high likelihood of incarceration and other interactions with government agencies. Those interactions, whether with social workers, foster care or special schools, fulfill the philosophies of others.
That is, a large fraction of society believe in government as a better source of decision-making than any family unit or parent. We can see a constant push from these types to remove children from parental influence at ever earlier ages. It reflects the philosophies of socialism which are also anti-religious. At the same time, there are smaller societies where communal child-raising has worked beautifully for centuries, only thanks to a culture supported by shared philosophies toward rights, wrongs and the stages of life. These beliefs are too rare in complex industrialized “societies” like ours. Here and there small “communes,” often religion-based, attempt to maintain cleaner and simpler cultures and child-raising is shared somewhat.
This can practically, and honestly, be done in the United States in only small, restrictive communities, because ever growing fractions of our “multicultural” nation do their best to be as different from our actual heritage and mores as possible. Parents relinquish control of their children for more than brief periods at great risk. Their teachers, counselors and coaches are increasingly likely to believe very different things about what children should believe , learn, memorize or think of the world, than what their parents believe. Those whose philosophy includes greater trust in government(s) than in individuals will tend to separate children intellectually – philosophically – from their parents. These are the ones whose guiding philosophy is that we cannot enjoy a true society until we all accept the “common good” ideals of socialism, and reject all the old ideas and ideals, including that pesky freedom we try to enjoy and pass on to our kids. Religions are an impediment for this type… unless the beliefs they espouse are destructive of the awful principles that formed the United States.
Try to find out the philosophies of your children’s teachers. If they don’t believe what you believe, why let them screw up your kids? Because the government says to?
There are a lot of money-related philosophies, too. Some of these – most of them, actually, are destructive of the lives of ordinary people: the kind that go to work and try to provide for their families and save for retirement. Most of the people who form the backbone of free-enterprise capitalism don’t have money philosophies. Money is simply a tool for negotiating life… which could be a philosophy, but isn’t worth the time. For the ultra-capitalists, worldwide bankers, central bankers, money isn’t money, it’s their lower-than-secular God. They worship the stuff.
Money is not the “root of all evil,” it is the love of money that has that effect. Those international, ultra-wealthy, celebrity and relatively hidden titans of finance, are among the most evil, amoral humans on the planet. The small-business entrepreneur who winds up wealthy is the example to emulate; the financial wizard who earns through speculation and trading and who controls multiple fortunes internationally, is not. While both may cause envy, you will have to forego your moral bases and patriotism to emulate the latter. Prudence is skeptical of entrepreneurs who become extremely wealthy because they are smart, but then decide that they are also wise. These same then try to sway governments or major institutions to follow the wealthy person’s philosophy on how life should be lived. The wisdom of history and heritage, they often deal with as impediments to the “better” or more efficient ways of life, education and freedom from which the oligarch is far removed and insulated by wealth.
There are philosophies of money and wealth that derive from the love of money. They are perceived as entitled control of others, and are divorced from the beautiful chaos of freedom.
Philosophies about human differences are key to civilization. Rarely do philosophies derived from ignorance of “others” include automatic trust or love. A philosophy of tolerance will erode natural distrust and lead to acceptance and then love and trust. One’s philosophy must include belief in a path toward acceptance – the alternative is mental barriers that devolve into hatred. Either philosophy must be taught to offspring.
Can we make laws that require belief in eventual acceptance? No, not successfully. But we can, by trusting citizens self-governed by largely shared philosophies, create a legal structure where acceptance is possible. Our Constitution is the best example of this structure. “e pluribus unum” is the clearest statement of the philosophy of acceptance: “from many, one (people or nation).” Recent failings of American constitutionalism have resulted from the intrusion of alternative philosophies into the fabric of liberty and responsibility, and from the denial of other philosophies, primarily religious.
We must remain vigilant.
Each of us will pass on, but not, Prudence’ philosophy says, like the stiff and lifeless frog. We have an obligation – one we accepted – to leave this plane of existence having lived, loved and served for the benefit of others and thus for the benefit of ourselves. A wise and Prudent soul once observed that “…you get to keep only what you give away.” Only our acts, loves, angers, hatreds go on with us to be judged. That’s a Prudent philosophy. The United States of America provides unmatched opportunities to live in ways of which we might be proud.
Every cloud has a silver lining, we tell ourselves. We believe, or hope at least, that no matter how grim conditions may be, we will emerge from them to a new level of happiness, love or accomplishment. We know – or believe – enough to sacrifice today and in this lifetime, to receive the rewards of a better life before we die… or afterwards.
So it must be with this God-forsaken imposition of leftist tyranny that politicians are blaming on “the coronavirus.” Most of us have quickly, aggressively, agreed to forego our “unalienable rights” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Most of us have agreed to be frightened by the dire descriptions of what is happening to a fast-shifting number or percentage of COVID-19-infected fellow citizens and to denizens of foreign countries. In the span of 3 weeks or so Americans watched China (until the news was clamped down) Italy and Iran erupt with thousands of deaths from COVID-19. Suddenly in early March, politicians and medical bureaucrats who days earlier had been telling Americans that they would not be very much impacted by the new coronavirus, were grimly commanding us to stay at home, stop intermingling with others, stop working or playing, and to obey, obey, obey in order to “flatten curves” and “save lives.”
It might have. There really is no way to precisely state whether the curves “flattened” because of the lockdown. It’s possible that the course of the infection rate (which is still not fully known) would have been about the same if people were given good advice and masks and told to stay out of work if exposed or symptomatic. Unfortunately, locking down a whole city or state is something the true government types have dreamt of: stopping people from enjoying life unfairly, and enforcing the stoppage with police powers. Oh! My! Gawd! “I never realized how good this would truly feel,” hundreds of mayors and governors (may) have been overheard to say. “My Poli-Sci professor tried to tell us but who could have imagined the glow?”
There are several collateral injuries that result from any brutal attack and the requisite stern defenses governments must mount on our behalf. Businesses close down, for one, but, when you think about it, most of those were unfairly profitable, especially for the owners. Lots of people lose their jobs, for another, but, when you think about it, a lot of them are church-goers and even Christians, so the damage isn’t as bad as it could have been. If we put a stop to church-going altogether, no one will feel unfairly repressed. There are more reports of domestic violence, but that’s a problem of degree, only. Child abuse is also up, according to agencies that watch those things, but those kids were going to be abused at some point, anyway. Let’s get the federal government to send out checks to everybody and they’ll all put up with the house-arrest that is so obviously necessary.
Still, we can’t let people stew over conditions for long periods. We’ll have to add new policies and closures here and there to keep lock-down opponents off-balance. We are saving lives, after all.
There are several silver linings, though, despite the multi-trillion-dollar costs (so far) and building conflict with Red China. For one big thing, the utter inability for state governments in “progressive” states to do the right thing for even a large fraction of their populations, has been made glaringly clear. Their citizens, tenuously holding the power of voting idiots out of office, should take note: big opportunity ahead.
The purposes of those at the federal level, both elected and appointed, come in two sets: elected and deep-state. Elected officials have two goals: re-election and avoiding responsibility. Deep state denizens have only one: staying in power. Everything else is subordinate. This should help explain why change can be excruciatingly slow or, about as often, way off-target… not off any target, just off our, citizens’ target. Whatever politicians do is hitting, first, their personal targets as they become wealthy in office.
Power and re-election are drivers for state pols, too. The most common end of legislative service is retirement at age. Citizen-legislator is a mythical being from a long-ago time; today we have the inside-government “us” and the lesser, civilian “them.” In any case, once a sweeping declaration of change is made, it must be defended and justified as the very best, life-saving decision that could have been made due to forces over which the deciding politician had no control. Then, when the consequences appear to be going sideways, the same politician will defend and reinforce the underlying, out-of-control circumstances that forced the original decision.
In effect, then, regarding current political fears, it is Prudent to describe the problem as one of politicians building a box from which they cannot escape. With haphazard statistics peppering them during January, February and into March, everyone in a decision-making position – president on down – was afraid to not shut things down. “We must flatten the curve,” said the medical experts, “for if we don’t our hospitals will be overwhelmed and people will needlessly die… die…die.” OMG! The possibilities of politicians being blamed for something – being forced to take responsibility for something, anything – were growing to be a real crisis.
As each day passed and unfortunately ill-suited supply chains drew unending accusations, the future looked bleak. Hot spots seemed to be simply precursors of what was waiting around the corner for every city and state. Stormy skies for the Republic were forecast, minute by minute, to finally fall on our heads the day after tomorrow. Things were worse than we thought and getting worse than that.
Quickly, private enterprise shifted manufacturing and supply chains to fill the gaps in equipment and personal protective equipment. Hospital ships were deployed; ventilators found, refitted or newly manufactured. Less than 3 weeks later there were too many ventilators and the emergency hospitals and ships were largely unused. We’re told those successes are all due to stay-at-home orders and strictures on groups as small as, well, one.
The work of the healthcare “system” was and is remarkable as it dealt with an infectious disease not fully understood. But understanding has developed quickly, as have testings that seek current infections, and past infections, more interestingly. The folly of many policies and mandates intended to slow the infection rate, is becoming stark.
All incidents are anecdotes until they are added up. People, especially blame-shedding politicians, can adhere to the “science” of mathematics while ducking responsibility simply by adding up certain incidents and not others. Every “covid” death was not a covid death; every shutdown business was not about to cause increased infection if not shut down. School-age children were neither at risk nor a risk for others. Even public transportation turned out to not be a major source of cross-infections.
Still, shutdowns were not relaxed and even enhanced to varying degrees. Governors and mayors were just beginning to flex their dictatorial muscles when pesky statistics began to intrude into the shutdown model. Two things were never going to happen as a result: 1) Those elected executives would change their shutdown tactics to accommodate new facts; or, 2) Those same would admit they had been wrong about some of their policies.
In some states shutdown rules became ever stricter despite evidence they need never have been strict at all. Besieged governors and even judges, appear to have reacted arbitrarily and personally to citizens demanding that the shutdowns be lifted, including arrests, lifting of licenses, incarceration and harassment. Essentially none of those instances involved any provable health risk… not even suspected health risk, the ostensible basis for the “rules.” Americans should be alert to and instructed by these and hundreds of other examples: Our nation is no longer a nation of laws, but a serfdom of rules. Rather than “We the people” ratifying shared moral codes of rights and wrongs, set in law, there are now, literally, tens of thousands of rules for what we sovereign citizens are allowed to do. The solemn advisories that cause small and large “g” governors to promulgate their new rules do not come from US, but from unelected “experts” who self-declare their predictive expertise and carry impressive resume’s.
Some are, perhaps, experts in a field of study, even epidemiology, even in studies of contagions and how they spread in past, somewhat similar environments. Our newest adversary, coronavirus-19, is not the same as earlier epidemics, it was not spread around the world in the same way, it has not mutated the same way, it has different symptoms, different impacts on different demographics, different gestation periods and different sensitivities to drugs and anti-viral chemicals. But, they knew exactly what to do before all the statistics were collected and studies were underway. Presumably these “scientists” would be poised to alter their predictions upon receipt of new facts and observations. Oddly, however, in direct contravention of scientific method, they have tended to “double down” (a popular gambling term) on their first predictions, making ever more draconian recommendations DESPITE new data. It is at this point that medical science became medical politics, or ideology. Like true ideologues they had staked out their beliefs, not their science, and those positions would be defended… economies and lives be damned.
Dr. Fauci appears to be in this class of dictators. In the span of a few days he switched from reassuring the public that the new coronavirus was not a major concern for Americans, to advising that the economy be shut down, gatherings prohibited and healthy citizens be confined. Only he can tell us if any science was behind his first views of COVID-19; only he can tell us if any science is behind his current views. Anyone, however, can tell that there is no science or even judgment behind his praise of W.H.O. director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a politician willing to cooperate with or promote some very sketchy other politicians in matters of public health – including those tied to the Chinese Communist Party. Ol’ Tedros’ communist-inspired lying can be thanked for many thousands of deaths in the U. S. and around the world.
The attack on western civilization by China, performed through the agency of the Wuhan coronavirus, has, finally, presented us with reasons to try to understand foreign policy, international trade, and, key to all, international banking. To the United States, international banking means The Federal Reserve, which is neither federal nor a reserve. It is time to remove international banking’s hands from the throats of sovereign individuals.
The existence of religion since time immemorial is also a factor in our understandings of money, wealth and individual value – things that bankers have devised the financial system to control. That’s an unpleasant concept: being controlled by strangers for their own profit; being forced through economics to cede one’s future and that of his or her family to the service of financial manipulators and to perpetual indebtedness they have placed on our shoulders. But, why religion? Aren’t we talking about money here? What has religion to do with my finances?
Religion, and most particularly Christianity, forms the basis of “western” beliefs and of our basic self-governance, as well as our economic beliefs and practices. We share most of our basic beliefs, and it is Prudent to list them, however much you tend to quibble:
Honesty. We value honesty in our dealings with one another and, if we are wise, in our “dealings” with ourselves. Our contracts are enforceable; our word is our bond.
Independence. We value our personal, “civil” rights, at least as we think we understand them. That is, we have inherent value and we agree that everyone else does, too. We believe we have the right to personal liberty that does not hurt others, and that we are “sovereign” and yield to government only as much of our rights and freedoms as we deem necessary for the safety, protection and happiness of all.
Responsibility. Despite the constant corrosion of socialism we recognize that we are responsible for our actions and their consequences. The concepts of personal responsibility have been stretched and twisted, but we still expect to pay our bills, clean up after ourselves, interact with basic civility, and keep our promises both verbal and written.
Sacrifice. All sort of activities, choices and financial decisions are rooted in the belief in doing without some comfort or desire now, for a greater reward later. For the faithful this extends to an afterlife that rewards “good” behavior and choices while on Earth; and for all of us it defines civility, and civilization and even education. The very idea of earning status, wealth or recognition is founded in recognition of sacrifice for later reward. There would be no actual charity without a level of sacrifice. Even investment for future growth and reward fits this model.
Health. Virtually every religious belief structure includes a significant portion of its accumulated writings devoted to diet and food preparation or combining. There is often an “apothecary” of useful plants and methods of animal sacrifice and religious feasting. Their attendant cultures incorporate many of these rules and so do individuals and families. We grow up believing in a certain amount of responsibility for the health of our bodies – some to the point of worshipping the body instead of the spiritual “powers” that gave the instruction way back when.
Self-defense. Most religions view the corporal body as a mere vessel for the “soul” to use on Earth for the balancing of karma, for some, or for the fulfillment of one’s “divine plan” or other forms of good works, sacrifice and charity. In most traditions, suicide is sinful and cowardly, showing an unwillingness to face the tests the supreme spiritual being, God, places before us. Therefore it is inherent that the possessor of that body defend it and keep it safe. Wasting its life is the wasting of spiritual energy that has been given – literally “gifted” – to it at conception, or at “quickening” or at birth, and renewed each morning.
Procreation and sex. How to live and how to create life properly are the most vital instructions in most religions: essential fertility. How to assure the proper upbringing and acculturation of every child, how to maintain parental responsibility until children’s age of maturity – a set date – are crucial components of how to extend belief in the God or gods issuing the instructions. All of these are spiritual events more than they are social or simply cultural. Strong societies and nurturing family or village environments are the result. Breaking or flouting these rules for life yields some of the strongest sanctions in every belief structure.
Justice. Every religious tradition that recognizes spiritual beings, God, gods or saints / ascended beings of some sort, is replete with how INjustice shall be dealt with or adjudicated, or, in so many, many words, how justice is to meted out to offenders of the laws laid down by God, gods, prophets and other spokespeople who have some form of direct communication with the supreme being. In most cases these instructions (commandments) become codified law to be applied by those granted their position to specifically do so, be they “judges” or spiritual leaders. In each of our hearts is the blueprint of what is just punishment or retribution for all sorts of infractions.
In view of our cultural / legal understandings and beliefs, it should be incumbent upon us to rise up and replace any system or group or institution that BY CHARTER steals from us daily, while it forces us to indentured servitude, which is to say, economic slavery. Our inherent power of sovereignty should also undo the fiefdoms of any who continue or promote such servitude – most of whom we think we freely elected to begin with.
Well, fellow sovereign Americans, have you not noticed how little changes no matter who is elected or which party holds the most power? Is it not a little disconcerting how people from “Wall Street” are always holding key budget power in every administration, as well as becoming Treasury Secretaries? Aren’t you troubled a small, unsettling amount, by the fact that our “national debt” (which doesn’t begin to measure our national obligations) only grows, and now is in the realm of $26 Trillion – more than all the economic activity of the whole country in a year?
Please don’t throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t give a nickel to a politician unless he or she is willing to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. “The what?” you say. “What does the Federal Reserve have to do with all this moral stuff you listed earlier?” Aside from unknown dietary habits, the Federal Reserve has no morals, and has been stealing steadily, through good times and bad, from Americans and from the United States, since it began to operate its conspiracy in 1914. How it abuses the procreation part is outpictured in its economic handiwork.
“Conspiracy” could be a good word for their peculiar crimes: “Con” means together; “piracy” means piracy. “Piracy Together” among the 12 private reserve banks. You may think it is too complicated for your practical, day to day brain, and that is exactly why the Federal Reserve System is designed the way it is. But it is designed to commit legal THEFT, and it affects every purchase, mortgage, car loan and candy bar or quart of milk you buy. It threatens the integrity of the United States – its very independence – and each of our personal freedom and sovereignty. If recent collusions between the federal government and the “Fed” over the coronavirus bailouts haven’t exposed the rot to you, you’re not paying attention.
Please, Prudence begs you to devote a bit of time to this video:
The Federal Reserve is a diabolical, century-long fraud upon the American people… including you, your parents, your children and their grandchildren, if we do nothing. Vondir!
You may have heard of this new virus, COVID-19? Many have.
It’s not as widespread as “the flu” or hemorrhoids, but it’s becoming a
popular meme. The Chinese provided the
best possible environment for the rapid spread of “Coronavirus,” but they are
quite reluctant to take full credit for their successes with this new flu virus. Funny, that, for the progressive and benign
inventors of virtually everything, starting with justice for all.
People and governments,
businesses and schools and other institutions, have reacted in some ways
foolishly. Again, the Chinese were world
leaders, although they have started to forcibly push that honor onto the United
States, displaying their progressive generosity, to the point of claiming the
highest honor of all: being the victims of COVID-19, rather than the originators. How friendly is that?
There
are numerous “corona” viruses, 7 at least.
Some of them haven’t “sold” as well due, possibly, from their not having
been granted cool, mysterious names.
Right now, COVID-19 is hot, and everyone seems to want it… or, at least,
wants to worry about it. 229E (alpha coronavirus), NL63
(alpha coronavirus), OC43 (beta coronavirus), and HKU1 (beta coronavirus), all
gain customers every year but are never celebrated as much as SARS, MERS or the
king, COVID-19. I mean, who the Hell
would want people to know he or she were suffering from “NL63?” No one, that’s who.
“Coronavirus,” however, or COVID-19, clearly carries a certain élan, some people are so
excited about it they are posting their symptoms and difficulties for all to
envy and, perhaps, copy, if they’re lucky.
Admittedly, your correspondent, who has never caught SARS, MERS,
229E, NL63, OC43, or HKU1, and not even the 2009 Swine Flu, and whose ability
to get within 6 feet of COVID-19 is equally in doubt, still shares your desire
for victimhood and all the benefits that go with it. President Trump and Congress have cooperated
to pump air into our virus-deflating economy.
They call the air, “money,” so-called “billions” of dollars’ worth. It, and many regulatory changes may prove
valuable in the limiting of COVID-19’s popularity, so those of you who have gotten
hold of some will be even more famous as the weeks and years go by.
Popular and social media, along with other “influencers,” have
managed to whip up a pretty good frenzy over “coronavirus.” In response, every business that typically
attracts crowds of people to its products, from Wal-Mart to the NBA, major
league baseball, the NHL and various marathons and fun-raisers, have cancelled
or postponed their events, at great economic loss. Individual star-players have stepped forward
to financially support the hundreds of ancillary employees and businesses that
function to operate sporting events and to serve their attendees. Real generosity, as compared to the “federal”
type. A lot of the lost or displaced economic
activity will never be restored or replaced.
Some businesses, naturally, will benefit mightily… paper-goods
manufacturers, for example and any store or supermarket that sells them. Bottled-water purveyors and those same
stores, again. Company’s that make hand
sanitizer, antiseptic surface wipes and face-masks, among other goods, are
doing nicely as sheeple attack their supplies to obtain extra quantities of
those items that no one and no family, certainly, could bear to do without.
Toilet paper is a big item as the perceived threat of worldwide
pestilence rears its empty head. Dozens
of rolls. If the supply chain for toilet
paper gets severed, people are calculating, their family is not going to suffer
the absence of toilet paper until the very last possible minute. This is perfectly logical, possibly even
Prudent, although neither quality can be judged on real merits. Faced with a frightening disease, the natural
reaction is to stock up on toilet paper.
Clearly adherents of this philosophy have not thought things through: if
conditions deteriorate to the complete cessation of toilet-paper production,
there likely won’t be any food to eat, either, and wiping one’s butt will mean
less and less in the grand scheme of things, until we are all smothered by the
final, rapid descent of what’s left of the sky, bonking us all on our heads,
rendering us senseless. No shit?
Basically, coronavirus, COVID-19, is a new strain of an old
friend, causing a variant of the seasonal flu.
AS WITH ALL “FLU” VIRUSES, elderly, especially elderly nursing-home residents
are at the greatest risk, as are those with other respiratory diseases or
weaknesses, smokers and those otherwise immune-compromised. Without strong immune systems, infected
victims will find it hard to conquer the virus, and in those, the virus will
replicate at its fastest, causing fluid build-up in the lungs and death from
pneumonia or, in effect, drowning. No
one wishes such an end on anyone.
The “flu,” we have observed, tends to decline in the spring and
virtually disappear in the summer. Why
would that be so, if it’s so virulent?
Why are some people able to fend it off easily in its “high” season, mid
to late winter? Why are carefully-tended
nursing home residents so susceptible?
It’s all dependent upon individuals.
It is our habits, our practices, our health and nutrition and our good
sense that enables a virus like COVID-19 to succeed or fail.
Why do flu viruses infect more people in the winter? In large part it is because humans tend to
have more bronchial and rhinopharyngial inflammations in cold weather. We cough, our sinuses produce more fluids and
mucus, we blow our nose, and our bronchial tubes collect mucus and fluids. We work hard to get rid of these intruders
and enflame these sensitive linings.
Both bacteria and viruses find welcoming environments and it’s off to
the races. Over the period of a couple of
weeks to a month our bodies fight off the infections and our immune systems are
invigorated. Fairly soon there are fewer
and fewer people who are contagious and the season passes into spring and summer,
and another factor kicks in: sunshine.
Vitamin D is essential in all sorts of organic functions,
including strengthening our immune systems.
We are likely to be a little healthier in warm weather because we get
more sunlight and our skin creates more vitamin D. It’s not just that simple, but it’s not a lot
more complicated, either. Nursing-home
residents don’t get as much sunshine, for one thing, rarely consume really good
meals, don’t get to take supplements, and are kept away from viruses to a great
extent, thus rarely exercising their immunities, leaving them more vulnerable
than just age alone would make them.
With flu warnings hammering us every “flu season,” we also modify
our habits, cover our coughs and sneezes more diligently, stay away from others
when we’re feeling ill, take our vitamins more diligently, wash our hands more
often, things like that. And, we survive
the flu, kind-of like the way we are surviving the new “coronavirus” this year,
too. There aren’t many MORE ways to have
reacted badly to COVID-19 than the ones we have and are trying, starting with
the Chinese in particular. If we had
simply described this virus as an especially aggressive flu bug and blasted the
airwaves with how to protect ourselves and what to do if our symptoms are one
way or another, we’d be acting extra carefully and still going about our daily
and business activities. There’d be more
absenteeism, but no mania, the cost of which we can hardly estimate.
COVID-19s is a nasty bug.
It has a more severe effect on lungs than other coronaviruses, making
breathing difficult and stressing hearts.
The death rate is higher, too, and, like other coronaviruses, mainly for
senior citizens, rates spike with age and certain pre-existing conditions. Number-one is heart disease. Another big one is diabetes, which is its own
epidemic in overweight America. If your
health is already under attack, please protect yourself. For age groups over 60 the risks are
higher. Compared to other well-known flu’s
– the ones that come back every winter – the death rates spike higher with this
new one for these at-risk, older groups.
Use good sense: don’t snuggle with anyone exhibiting ANY flu symptoms.
In the United States, hyper-politicized and divided into sets of
enemies, we have allowed the entry of the latest coronavirus to modify our
governance and our economic relationships, citizens and federal government, and
states and federal government. It’s
dangerous.
COVID-19 is a serious disease, mainly because it is more easily
transferred than other flu’s. It doesn’t
mean we’re all doomed to catch it, nor that every senior citizen is going to
die if he or she is infected. The speed
of its spread has tripped up health systems, but now that it is better
understood, the natural anxiety caused by the rate of infection can be set
aside and replaced with best practices to help people recover, AS MOST OF THE
INFECTED ARE GOING TO DO. Reactive
mania, while politically irresistible, is not particularly helpful beyond the
shortest of terms. The concerns about
testing rates have more to do with getting the infection statistics right than
with specific treatments for those infected.
One of the reasons South Korea has relatively low infection and death
rates is its widespread testing. That
data keeps panic at bay. With cleaner
air nationwide, and lower smoking rates than Asian nations, Americans are in
some ways healthier and somewhat less at risk.
Americans have learned, on a sudden, how quickly their freedoms
may be curtailed by a handful of press conferences and an executive declaration
of a “state of emergency.” Families can
be disrupted with school closings and by “woke” corporations changing job
descriptions without notice. Whole
businesses may be shut down by arbitrary event-attendee limitations, mostly by
state authorities. It seems unreal, yet the
expansion of economic, social and religious displacements is evident with every
hourly newscast. It seems imPrudent.
Take your vitamins, extra C, as much as 3,000 IU’s of vitamin D, eat fresh fruits and veggies, and an orange every day. It makes a lot more sense to stock up on oranges, lemons and limes than toilet paper. Don’t smoke… anything. Get plenty of sleep. Don’t frequent venues where people are packed tightly together; stay away from others if you feel sick, have a tough cough or are sneezy. Pray – praying for those who are sick is always recommended. While you’re at it, ask God to protect our hapless United States of America.
Lyon Hospital, Department of urology. Sex reassignment surgery, transgender Female to Male, hystero-ovariectomy under laparoscopy. Operation which precedes the phalloplasty, hysterectomy, ovariectomy, vaginectomy, (Photo By BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“Male and female created He them.” For hundreds, thousands, millions of years,
this truth was not a burden on humanity.
Many would rather ignore the whole statement because they don’t – or
don’t want to – accept the “He” portion.
Somehow, and religious teachers must bear some blame, “we” have, over
just a couple of decades, tried to
undo the essential facts of biology: male and female. Being called a female or male, amazingly,
collides with thousands of people’s beliefs.
Why has this phenomenon crept out of counselors’ offices and parents’
concern? Who are they who work so
tirelessly to force the sexual variant of Jonestown
on the rest of society?
Because lives are definitely lost amongst this new belief
structure.
Transgender-ism is a belief structure. It is not supported by biological fact in any
but the rarest of anomalies. It is a
belief, usually quite temporary, that one’s body is the “wrong” one. This is a strange thing to believe… strange
only if other humans were interested in discovering the source of the belief,
itself. But, strange becomes “normal”
and deserving of societal respect if – and only if – the individual’s feelings
have been elevated to the level of truth:
truth in the absence of evidence, a new faith.
Non-evidenced “truths” are now receiving legal
status as craven legislators bend over as far as possible to pander to
the new faith. Sadly, there are craven
doctors, too.
And craven educators.
Public schools are not merely tolerating and preventing overt discrimination or bullying against children pretending to be their opposite gender, but they are encouraging transgenderism among those children who are, for the moment, envious of the opposite sex. Parents, and professionals, ought to be helping children to be comfortable with their bodies, not to be revolting against them. At the same time, adults should all be trying to find the source of childrens’ “gender dysphoria.”
The resolution of this heretofor rare condition, is something adults should pursue, even if it means
a full social transition. Few people
will need to know that an individual was not born as he or she appears. Whether full surgical mutilation is called
for, is quite another question.
In the past decade the number of dysphoric youth has grown
1,500% to 5,000% and even more in some countries, with the ratio of girls to
boys flipping dramatically. Why? Transgenderism “advocates” would say that
only now are trans youth enjoying the freedom to express their “true”
identities, thus accounting for the explosive growth. Critics of the trend might see a frightening
desire, like a virus from the bowels of China, that infects female and male
alike, however disproportionately, with the desire to escape the
responsibilities of their sex.
There are unnumbered ways to achieve sexual release, alone, in pairs or even groups, and none require total denial of self, or bodily mutilation, so there is something else at work, beyond the sexual. Perhaps it is more Prudent to consider a virus that infects not those who reflect its torment but their parents, schools, and social institutions, like unbalanced feminism, which, with other failures of freedom, convince late-term, newborn, toddlers and pre-schoolers (which age socialists and fascists would have include all of the earlier mentioned) to distrust, if not hate, the prospects of womanhood and manhood. Despite our access to Instagram and Twitter, Panera, Chick Fil-A, Starbucks and weed, our twisted norms create a society in which children don’t want to be, well… who they are.
The result is not true gender dysphoria for most of its claimants, but a hatred for life, itself. Prior to actual suicide (the end-game for many who attempt to change their sex) these, now, tens of thousands try to kill their personal realities.
For those who are dysphoric, one’s heart must fill with
sympathy, and great care should be shown them, and tolerance and kindness. For most of the new residents of Jonestown,
however, new beliefs, alone, can save them however that counseling can be
accomplished. Doctors and clinics that
press them with chemical and surgical confirmation of unreality, are but
licensed charlatans. Their parents,
worse.
Shame on religious institutions. From old, old texts, replete with truths eternal, they have made difficult lessons and philosophies not more clear, but softer and “more inclusive,” practically rejecting realities in order to fill pews. The elegance and majesty of womanhood should be the easiest clay to work into gracefulness and motherhood, but they’ve largely failed to enhance those values. The responsibilities and required wisdom that men are obligated to accept and to achieve, are trivialized and even derogated, as boys are drugged into submission and global communications portray men not as leaders but as fools.
The institutions of our culture and nationhood, almost as
though coordinated by some evil puppeteer, are all reinforcing the concepts of
unreality and hyper-sexualization.
Websites produce and provide pornography 24/7 for free, perhaps the most
insidious attack on men, marriage and mental health. Congress after congress ignore this corrosion
without even discussing ways to restrict and limit global pornographics. Why?
Money? Is this addiction
different from opioids, gambling or tobacco?
Or does it simply expose the flaws within males that all “woke” geniuses
knew were there all along?
In a thousand ways we have made life, itself,
unattractive. Why would thousands of
young people, even youngsters, refuse to the point of embarrassment and
mutilation, to be who each actually is? Is
it because so many are born with the “wrong” body? All of a sudden? Doubtful. Birth is not the issue, Prudence believes,
but influences, even before birth. We
are teaching boys that being male is a sort of disease; and teaching girls that
life is a system of oppressions, including motherhood.
The destruction of social roles and values is reaping its
foul rewards with great efficiency. The end-game
is social dissolution, loss of nation-hood, economic stratification and, worse,
institutionalized unreality. What shall
we teach our children when lies have gained legal status?
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?
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?
