On owning the libs or how to waste your time trying to impress the rest of the Sixth Grade

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Tuesday April 12, 2022 · 3:23 PM PDT

2022/04/12 · 15:23

The phrase also drew the attention of US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. "Raise your hand if you've ever posted anything online to quote-unquote 'own the libs,'" Haley asked the teenage students attending the same conference as Sessions."I know that it's fun and that it can feel good, but step back and think about what you’re accomplishing when you do this — are you persuading anyone? Who are you persuading?" Haley said. "We've all been guilty of it at some point or another, but this kind of speech isn't leadership — it's the exact opposite.""Real leadership is about persuasion, it's about movement, it's bringing people around to your point of view," she added. "Not by shouting them down, but by showing them how it is in their best interest to see things the way you do."

- Nikki Haley, Business Insider quote

Or this opinion by Ben Shapiro , an American conservative political commentator.

"If you want to truly own the libs, the only way to do that is to actually win an argument," he said. "Not alienate them by saying jerky things that make them upset."

Facebook is possibly the largest and most read swamp containing a huge and motley collection of political views, the majority of which are expressed in childish meme’s and quotes.

I dare say very few of the “owning the libs” treehouse have actually searched the phrase to understand what it means or how it came into being. The usual suspects trot out meme after meme, quote after quote and image after image that rarely came from their own imaginative creating process. Essentially such users are like little kids who throw rocks while hiding behind bigger rocks.

Try these on for size. See who thinks they are owning libs:

Bad people are constantly trying to destroy America because we are free.

Anyone different than me is bad.

Children are smart if they can pass multiple choice tests.

God hates the people we hate.

To negotiate is to be weak.

Never admit to any doubts.

What is our oil doing under their sand?

The truth has nothing to do with evidence.

Sex for pleasure is bad except for me.

Constantly talk about Jesus.

Follow the teachings of Jesus.

Obsess about embryos, but ignore the needs of real children.

Suck up to banks, telecoms and other big campaign contributors.

Blame gays and immigrants whenever possible.

Disparage all inconvenient science.

Act as though it's important to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Kill or torture all people who might be possibly bad.

Then try these on. See where you fall, Consider whether or not you are seen as a bug on the wall being viewed by a political entomologist

A political entomologist is a scientist who studies political behavior. Entomologists have many important jobs, such as the study of the classification, life cycle, distribution, physiology, behavior, ecology and population dynamics of insects and political gullibility.

One can point one’s copy-and-paste fingers at libtards, socialists, democrats and any others who see through the snake oil of the president the majority of us fired in 2020. But your kindergarten conservatism has done snuck back to haunt you.

Remember the H1N1 outbreak? I don’t know about foul cries over a mishandling of that particular outbreak, but granting the validity of that rhetorical question, I ask one of my own:

If Trump was so smart why didn’t he learn from Obama’s mistake especially when we all knew – including the President that we later fired – that this Covid virus was far more rapid, virulent, contagious and dangerous?

The man who constantly bragged about how smart he was certainly dropped the ball with his chance to outshine Obama. His press conference whining and tweeting as he points backward at Obama only made him look shallow and childish; his supporters more shallow, more childish and even more ill-informed.

Trump kept trying to drive his car while only looking at the rear-view mirror while crying, “It’s not my fault!”

Trump was not a real conservative.

A real conservative would have been the genuine article patterned by Barry Goldwater whom I admire. The closest we have nowadays are not in a position to have great effect. I speak of honorable politicians like Romney, Huntsman and Jeff Flake.

In the 1980’s I used to drive around Portland listening to Rush Limbaugh, thinking, “At’s right! Go Rush!” But after a while his pattern of angry rhetoric grew tiresome. It demonstrated little depth, no breadth, and lacked seriously considered substance. He had a shopping list of angry notions around which he built angry phrases aimed mostly at gullible white men.

That is important to me and it was at that time that I think I resolved to not let someone else’s opinions become a limited encyclopedia by which I would evaluate life.

It’s left me somewhat isolated in who I would have a beer with. But it also left me free to do more than copy and paste someone else’s thinking and values.

I was and still am genuinely angry and disgusted with Trump whose frail and thin-skinned capacity for leadership and statesmanship offended me deeply and continues to embarrass all of us.

I was not raised, educated nor enculturated to admire someone like that.

I don’t understand how In the Mormon Corridor a respect for Ezra Taft Benson, a genuine conservative who served in the Eisenhower cabinet, could morph into hero-worship of of the likes of Donald Trump, Mike Lee, Mitch McConnel, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Tuck Carlson, and need I go on and on?

Oh yes, and in my state I have to live under the likes of extremely partisan politicos whose emails to me are mostly “what’s-wrong-with-Democrats” and “why the Republican Party’s talking points are gospel you can trust.” I speak of Idaho Senators Risch and Crapo, Representatives Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher and of course the two practical jokers running for office and prancing in front of their mind-swoggled choir: Ammon Bundy and Lt. Gov McGeachin.

Who are these Kindergarten Konservatives?

We are not citizens of a nation founded by Konservative Intellectuals whose generational grandchildren prance and posture on our national stage nowadays.

To wit …

The wrong side of the American Revolution.

Approximately one third of the colonial population supported the English King George the Third. These Konservatives wanted no disruption. Afraid or trying to hang on to what they felt England had granted them, they did not want national independence. These Kindergarten Konservatives were not our original patriots.

Original American Konservatives supported protection of slavery in our Constitutional Convention. They wanted to count slaves in determining which states would be "slave states" but did not desire that they be citizens with voting rights. These Kindergarten Konservatives in no way acted as Founding Fathers, rather as enforcers of their own power and influence at the expense of all others.

Our original Konservatives opposed tariffs to protect American manufacturing. In their Kindergarten-ness they were not able to understand any need to develop our own industrial base. They wanted no changes to a system based on cheap slave labor. They were not industrialists, but cash croppers - planters whose profits required no economic equality.

Our historical Kindergarten Konservatives supported “nullification”, which said that states didn’t have to enforce federal laws they didn’t like.

Our original Kindergarten Konservatives supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise so as to allow slavery in other states where votes and political clout was more vital than common good.

The ancestors of today's Kindergarten Konservatives opposed the transcontinental railroad, primarily because railroads carried people who might want to work on their own land and who wouldn't want or need slaves in the western territories because it might encourage small farmers who owned no slaves in future non-slave states.

Which is why the Grandpas and Grandmas of today's Kindergarten Konservatives were against the Homestead Act. They didn't want more land-owners turning the American West into a collection of non-slave states.

Those old Kindergarten Konservatives opposed freedom of speech for Southern opponents of slavery. Perish the thought that southern adults and children might hear something other than the Konservative gospel.

And so Kindergarten Konservatives full of pretend patriotism and self-promoting civic piety disagreed with our sacred declaration that “all men are created equal.” Their Kindergarten civic ideology was that “the black man has no rights the white man is bound to respect.” (Dred Scott v. Sandford), quite possibly the most foolish Kindergarten Konservative legal decision in our national history.

… which led to a Kindergarten Konservative support of destruction of the union rather than allow any restriction of slavery.

Konservatives were opposed the earliest civil rights legislation to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments. They obstructed, intimidated and harassed newly freed slaves who attempted to exercise their Federal civil rights, including the right to vote … and considered themselves god-fearing, civic-minded moral patriots.

Konservatives were against preserving the union. Back then they wanted secession and they got it.

Konservatives were also aggressively and brutally opposed to industrial workers forming unions. Sound familiar?

The ancestors of today's Kindergarten Konservatives supported the acquisition of foreign colonies

… armed suppression of Filipino independence.

… opposed anti-trust legislation.

… opposed child labor laws.

… opposed universal free public education.

… opposed literacy for African-American citizens, in particular.

… supported the legal theory of “separate but equal”, a sham that led to the establishment of “Jim Crow” in the south.

… opposed state laws guaranteeing minimum wages and restricting working hours for industrial workers.

… opposed the right to vote for women. — Joe Lyles, Conceptual Guerilla

These are the real Moochers among us

These are the Kindergarten worshipers of that false American Exceptionalism that has cause more global and national grief than any noble achievement in the past 60 years.

These are the believers that uncompromising anger is civic wisdom, that blind and unblinking opposition is always better than compromise.

Look where it got them.

Look where it didn't get us.

Who are these Junior High School Civics flunkouts?

Go back to the top and start reading again.

On Human Cultural Spirituality

Arthur Ruger for Street Prophets

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Sunday April 03, 2022 · 12:20 AM PDT

2022/04/03 · 00:20

On ministry,

When I was twelve years old I was ordained to the priesthood in my church and called to be a Deacon. At nineteen I was ordained an Elder, issued a ministerial certificate and called to preach the gospel to Spanish-speaking sons and daughters of God in the southwestern United States. When I was in my mid thirties I was ordained a High Priest and called to serve in assorted capacities that required that title.

In retrospect I believe that – as most adults do when their desire to serve results in the bearing of titles, labels and responsibilities – spiritual practice unavoidably becomes defined by whatever “ministry” one connects with. This may be by choice; for example, aspirations regarding a need to serve The Divine in a personal way. Or it may be the result of someone else’s opinion or prompting from which one is asked to contribute time, talents and resources.

This is in fact the fruits of organized religion. Organized religion is essentially represented by a local or global scattering of religious ant piles within which everyone has tasks deemed necessary for the survival of the organization, local or in a larger venue.

A while back I concluded that I cannot remain in either the ministry or the performance ministries of a church.

As a young adult beginning as I stated in my twelfth year, as one sufficiently domesticated in the cultural venue of community and its predominant religion, life as commonly experienced involved fitting in as the more comfortable posture than living in rebellion against the expectations of family and community. Such was safe for me as a young boy and young adult who had been called and chosen by a society for whom being called and chosen was important in life.

In retrospect, I believe that I entered my personal ministry under the influence of a learned tendency to seek refuge from the confusion of our times by giving in to a kind of community nostalgia.

As a grown man and finding myself in a world where all the traditions in which human beings found security are crumbling, I felt the need to seek peace and sanity in an by attempting to return to or remain in a former state of faith. My yearning seemed to be for the inner calm and certitude of my earlier age when I could put absolute and childlike trust in the authority of the Church, and in the ordered beauty of what I accepted as a restoration of ancient religious doctrine.

Institutionally organized religion for the most part believes that its doctrine, covenants and ordinances contain the most profound truths. We are seeing however that the attempt to maintain or revive it is an ineffectual resistance to on-going and inevitable change.

Despite a stubborn resistance to change on the part of most Churches, most shoot themselves in the foot by clinging to religious forms and rituals that no longer convey their original meaning. The language used is not only archaic and cumbersome, but if attempts are made to translate the forms into modern and churchy new-age god-talk, what happens is not unlike what is left when all spices are removed from a savory soup.

Often we want to believe and try to convince ourselves that we do, but our faith has that hollow self-consciousness, since the mind is acting a role untrue to its own inner feeling. You cannot imitate faith. When the forms of belief begin to weaken or become to routine, the effort to revive them is imitation.

Sensing the imitation aspect of religious forms, the inner feeling often expresses its passion with a relating to the stories we’ve heard about Jesus. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

In a Christian manner such a cry could be a prelude to a non-dogmatic “resurrection.” Why? Because spiritual growth depends upon ceasing to cling to any set or prescribed form of life for security.

Forms are not contrary to spirituality but since they are in fact forms, it is their nature to die if they do not move one to a newer form on a path of progression. A fixed and permanent form becomes a monstrosity (think fraternal or temple rituals that are ironclad in their clinging to rigid procedural dialogue and ceremony.) Such forms become nothing more than finite ritual acts aping God.

In my experience, any inner feeling of Spirit uses forms that allow itself to be expressed and revealed through them. When that happens they are both wonderful and necessary. If the forms are treated as “living” expressions and nourishment, they are not exempt from when happens when fragile and tender living things are constantly fondled.

To grasp them is to strangle and kill them. To preserve them in death is to cling to a thing corrupted. This can be profound. One might interpret this idea in the words of Jesus:

“It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Paraclete cannot come unto you.”

Perhaps that is why in the bible mythology, after his own resurrection he gave the same warning Mary Magdalene: “Touch me not!” could be equated to Do not cling to me!

To repeat, there is tragedy when Churches worship forms. They deny the original intent of whoever or whatever sourced the forms in the first place. The whole nature of forms is denied by attempts to make them absolute.

Within Christianity in general and organized religion in particular the image and words of Christ himself have been corrupted in the very act of giving them permanent and absolute authority. He has been made into an idol something which must be repudiated.

I am not trying to hurt churches. Churches are people whom I have learned to love.

For myself I cannot be a party to their hurting themselves and others by seeking security from forms which, if understood aright, are crying, “Do not cling to us!”

Insofar as any Church is committed to a desire for and a clinging to authority, permanence, spiritual safety, and absolute guides of conduct, it is clinging to its own death. Staking one’s internal and spiritual hopes on the hope of immortality and a quest for an earned salvation based on worthiness, we tend to an inner emptiness and insecurity which most of us feel when confronted with the transiency, and the uncertainty of human life.

To cling to security is only to cling to oneself, and perish of strangulation.

It would be a silly kind of pride to pretend that we can surrender this particular seeking of safety just by trying to stay on the treadmill of forms. The effort that breaks the circle of self-destruction is an awareness and understanding of its complete futility.

To be aware of this futility is to look through the emptiness within and perhaps grasp a more useful understanding that “Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it.”

Unfortunately we don’t seem to understand that idea within the Church as it exists without running into contradictions at every step. The doctrine, covenants, dogma and ordinances are cluttered beyond hope with sentiments, prayers, and hymns conceived in the state of anxious grasping to forms.

Whoever tries to suggest a healing acceptance of fear within the framework of the Church is again beset by contradictions, since in all its official declarations and formalized preachings the Church is either threatening with penalties or consoling with promises.

Church claims to be the best way to God is not only a mistake, it’s a manifested symptom of its own anxiety. But to insist— biblically and often in ignorance of other revelations—that one’s supremacy argues a certain inferiority complex characteristic of all authoritarian churches based on performance.

From an authoritarian point of view, the leadership ministries reflect the same egoistic afflictions for individuals. I have known and can name serval who are men and women of wonderful humility. Others succumb to the temptation of being led to the cliff by The Adversary where whether they intend it or not, their assumption of that office usually becomes, in the eyes of laymen and the general public, a claim to spiritual authority and moral superiority.

Beyond doubt there are priests who speak with true authority and who are morally superior. But to claim such gifts impairs the quality of their words and efforts. Even when the claim is tacit, it may become a stumbling-block to those who mistakenly cling to authority in their quest for security.

The expectation that every church authority be a moral exemplar is an aspect of that unfortunate the overriding moral self-consciousness which has afflicted the Western world. It is only the temptation to be self-righteous – even hypocritical – that often becomes the fruit of publically trying to be good; posing, as it were.

Sanctity not being moral in and of itself. It is in loving The Divine in whatever form the Divine is experienced. Moralism which condemns any human being simply adds to the sense of fear and insecurity which prevents loving.

Where not to find real family priorities in Idaho

Arthur Ruger

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Saturday April 02, 2022 · 7:47 AM PDT

2022/04/02 · 07:47

When it comes down to the nitty gritty, we as attention-paying citizens or don’t-give-a-damn citizens need to come out of the closet. We need to admit who or what we stand for and declare what philosophy and policies best reflect our concerns.

If we are most focused on American Idol, Nascar, the chosen pro sports team and crime shows, let’s just stay where we are, with asses super-glued to the couch. But if we are paying even slight attention to what is going on, listening even with half an ear to campaign slogans, television sound bytes and what passes for popular journalism in this country, let’s make a real appraisal of who stands for what?

I focus with Republicans because in this state they are the big boys on the block. Appraising most Democratic policies really means labeling Dem priorities as corporate Republican values moderated in a more liberal direction.

However in our state we have Republicans slip sliding toward a loss of family values credibility as they focus on driving this machine with one hand on the steering wheel and the other listening to party marching orders. This past week all our Republicans voted against the insulin bill in which a reasonable monthly cost for important and life-saving medication was not worth stepping out of the partisan march.

Why? Looks to me like the Republicans only have one single song to sing.

The only “good” for the Republican Party absolutely must be the only “good” for the rest of us.

America is at War with itself.
American lives need to be lived in a wartime environment.
American citizens need to practice a total deferral to the self-defined patriotism of the elect.

Risch, Crapo and company continue to insist that American citizens absolutely must trust their future to those few at the top of the power pole who want to personally stay in their public civic high castles they vote their party prejudices rather than what the citizens need or want.

Right.

Those Idaho Congressional Republicans who have to run for re-election this year are in truth insisting their corporatist view of what’s best for working families and the poorest among us, here is the national and state Republican Platform in a large nutshell:

(1)

We must stay the course while remaining strictly committed to tax cut priorities which did not help the former president from his impact of setting in motion our national economic failure. We must accept the lie that what has happened is totally the fault of the Dems.

If we want to vote Republican we are then left to hope for the best but continue to expect the worst and recognize that the burden of middle class taxes are going to continue paying for our recovery efforts that poor unnecessary cash into Corporate Welfare Capitalism.

(2)

We will stay the course in a pay-off-the-national-debt circumstance created by Republican values that will be an ongoing burden on our grandchildren. Trillions of dollars of debt generated under the influence of lobby dollars and an obstructionist party that has always labeled Democrats as “taxers and spenders” is not the legacy the party of Crapo, Risch, Fulcher and Simpson will be remembered by. In truth future citizens are likely to look upon the Republicans as the “tax-cutters and spenders” party.

(3)

We will continue to stay the course while baiting us with the phrase “ownership society.” Ownership society to Republicans is in reality merely another means of generating – you guessed it – more profits for business.

“Owning” health care, retirement, education and homes only happens when you “buy” something from chosen lobbied corporate interests (see Medicare D plan), “invest” in something to own or by patriotically consuming what the Jones are already consuming so as to keep up civic duty.

(4)

We will continue to stay the course while an ungodly number of us go without access to adequate health care. That’s one thing tens of millions of Americans could use ownership of.

Of course the rest of we middle-classers do “own” always-increasing health care premiums. Somehow I fail to see how this helps the troops, keeps terrorists at bay, or will make it easier when we have to cope more aggressively with thugs like Putin in order to secure whatever non-attention-paying Americans (apparently the largest voting bloc in the state and nation) will buy into as a security blanket worth supporting.

(5)

We will continue to stay the course while the Republicans – under the guise of “ownership society”- preside over corporate reductions and/or eliminations of pension funds. Why is it that we must be patriotic and tolerate a “conservative tax-cut and spend” partisan party under this circumstance?

(6)

We will continue to stay the course while Republicans pretend that the extreme Christian Right represents the majority of American Christian voters. The Republicans need Jesus and his Armageddon Asteroid of the End the Times. Leaving (all of us more liberal-minded citizens) Behind thus works for a party hunger to climb back into the driver’s seat. Your Republican Party thinks more of these folks than the attention-paying voters who live and work all around us.

(7)

Republicans will forever deny any criminality on the part of their pseudo-religious political shill who did their bidding when they thought they would have the majority votes forever.

These things are what the Republicans did not and will not tell you. They want to continue to stay the course and do it in terms of maintaining their own discredited and – when it comes to corporate welfare – dishonest domestic economic theories. It does not matter what you and I think so long as they are in power.

Only you and I can take this out of their hands.

They will not change things unless we intervene.

So all you self-styled economic sophisticates who have bought into Republican Konservative Kapitalism worship keep your heads in the sand. If you cannot see just how many corporations in this country are only showing profits primarily through government intervention, bail-outs and contracts – you go ahead. Reveal to the rest of us just how poorly you understand the less-government-more-free-enterprise ticket.

As we attempt to impose a fake American dominance on the world based on our national credit rating and economic extortion backed by big-stick-waving, go ahead and look the other way while your narrow morality authorizes a trashing of the American Dream.

Those of you who have been politically born again into the cult of a Republican Jesus, can keep insisting that Jesus would have voted for Failed President Trump, would have made propaganda appearances on Fox News and Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club.

Republican Jesus would go along with the deaths of civilian men, women and children in The Ukraine or anywhere else as “acceptable collateral damage.”

If you think a former president and his railroaded political automatons hold the key to wise governance, you still haven’t done your homework. The holes in your common sense and civic wisdom remain vast and empty.

It’s time to step out of the shallow end of the religion pool

Arthur Ruger

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Wednesday March 30, 2022 · 11:22 AM PDT

2022/03/30 · 11:22

Replacing the first 3 words avoids the permanence of Borg's precritical naivete.

“Old Wrathful” as created by Michelangelo is a description that typified the predominant religious mental construct of the masculine god of patriarchal order.

The Pieta image, also by Michelangelo, suggests to me a more accurate and beautiful rendition of the Divine.

That which gives right-wing social conservatives the fuel for self-righteous anger is an unconscious assumption that they are only expressing the same judgmental feelings of the unseen punitive Jehovah: “You and me, ain’t that right Lord?”

That Old Wrathful is the God they see, reverence and obey in their hearts is obvious.

However, most living things are – in one form or another – birthed by a female. In the case of human beings, males do not conceive a child, do not carry an unborn within their bodies and do not birth human beings.

The big fat divine male patriarch can only do one thing. No matter that he talks about it all the time and elevates his contribution to a point of silliness, all he can do is contribute his seed.

The female does the rest.

So I ask you honestly, who owns creation?

If you were all gaga about your invisible friend who can’t tolerate sin with any degree of allowance and who is obsessed with human sexuality, i.e. “seed dispensing,” how gaga or shamed would you be if you knew that all your theological prancing around was being observed invisibly by the female portrayed in the sculpture and who’s Divine Ancestor had to have birthed the Old Wrathful Male?

How would you act and speak if you knew that Heavenly Mother – the real thing and not the wife of Jehovah – was watching you and listening to you? Let me continue by asking that you describe to yourself (and for your own understanding) the spiritual image that comes to mind when you think of God, of Jesus, of the Holy Ghost and – but not least – Mother in Heaven.

Is your image of God the Father defined by the doctrine and theology of your particular religion? Is your image of Jesus that defined by fundamental Christian theology? If you pray to Jesus Christ, do you pray to the standard Christian theological definition of the Savior of the World, the Redeemer, the He-Who-Accomplished-the-Atonement?

And how – if you carry such an image – do you perceive Heavenly Mother; the Goddess?

Many ancient pagan religions encouraged prayer to statues. Christianity has a tradition of bowing and praying to statuary images of Jesus, Mary and the Saints. Wouldn’t it be interesting to discover whether we are offering prayers to internally-imagined anthropomorphic divine images, or merely offering mental oblations to the cosmos? Or might we reverence our selves as well as the Divine in a manner entirely different?

If you had achieved a genuine and spiritually sensed relationship with the higher power how would you respond to the following portrayals if they did not fit what you already possessed in your experience?

There is the old idea of God as a masculine Boss of the Universe no matter how respectfully and reverentially that notion is expressed.

There is the old idea that God is a kindly, and benevolently divine version of a Caesar?

There is the old idea that God is the male head of a divinely created and eternal Patriarchal Order that relegates every female to a secondary role in a forever of existence?

Based on a relationship with the old ideas you have already accepted could you not then by your own perception understand that the Divine with whom you commune is in fact Old Wrathful?

How about a new challenge to your honesty about belief? Could you consider that the higher power with whom you have intimate and personal communion is also the Divine Author of Compassion. Might the ultimate way of human interaction with the Divine not be with a God of commandments, obedience and punishment? Could you easily accept the idea that the God you have yet to really know or understand is focused entirely on our loving one another and not focused on our condemnation of anyone?

The adolescent religion of my birth was presented to me as a life based on a continuous pattern of spiritual prompting. The Mormonism that informed my culture came into being in the world of 19th-century American religious literalism. It was based on experiences that bore in their very existence widely-accepted assumptions as to the definitions and meanings of spiritual promptings – revelation, as it were.

The Father and Son described by Joseph Smith in his Vision were entirely consistent with the fundamentalist bible-based definitions of who God is. In addition, there was a naïve assumption as to how that male patriarchal god communicates with man. As I was taught, when God the Father speaks, such communication includes an investiture of authority to those “called” to speak to the rest of us on His Divine behalf. Such became his middle men to the rest of the mortals.

It is necessary to discover, understand and acknowledge one’s own personal cosmic vision and acknowledge the assumptions upon which definitions and constructions of both reality and the spiritual world are created.

We create them all by ourselves. Others do not create them for us except to the degree that we let someone else’s constructs become our constructs.

In very powerful but subconscious ways, many believers practice their religion with an internal image that they “know” exists. This internal image that they have never actually seen exists in their perception for one principal reason. Religious authorities or friends and family whom they esteem have witnessed to them that they “know” God exists as defined in the traditional dogmatic ways of testimony and authority.

In the same fashion, many believers “know” of the reality; where the patriarchal god “is,”; where Jesus Christ “is,”; and where Satan “is” and “works” and “wants to rule.” For many Christians, that spirit world exists in some other dimension and can only interact with our own world in supernatural ways.

When we get to the supernatural in a religious sense, honesty requires some sort of consistency to assumptions about that realm. Satan is a god or godlike and – as is the Father – is everywhere omnipresent and forever asserting his contrary will. Satan becomes the direct opposite and yet needful counter to the goodness and righteous-requiring Commander-God. Satan is a supernatural reality who tempts mortals to both “sins” of commission and of omission.

Does it not seem that most believers then have difficulty with the psychology of evil and the idea that Satan does not have to be supernatural to function more as a conceptual part evil’s existence? Satan represents among other things the natural mortal tendency to self-focused, self-interested acts that disregard the good of anyone else. In this regard concepts of laziness, selfishness, arrogance and intolerance, for example, represent tendencies that can easily be related to evil and its impact on actions.

Such a circumstance suggests that if not addressed with the growing maturity of critical thinking, the childish state could grasp us for a lifetime.

Many of us, as Dr. Marcus Borg has written, have never gotten away from our pre-critical naiveté that still forms our internal Imaginative spiritual reality.

Stuck in that 19th-Century place.

Christian fundamentalists remain even today driven by hundreds of years of theological guesswork that is more obviously flawed and inadequate than it was when the early “fathers” concocted imaginary scenarios in which mortals suffered an imaginary “fall” and from that moment had need of being redeemed by a Divine savior. It was all made up no matter how many friends, family and religious authorities presented otherwise.

Older believers continue to be astonished that more of their own children are willing to step into an adult life absent the childish religious thinking of their parents. Many childish adults are mortified that the happy ending anticipated for themselves and their children because of all that obedience and performance is not coming to pass.

The Old Time Religion does not work – principally because all those old assumptions that were never valid are now seriously impeding societal movement toward social justice and genuine compassionate concern for each other.

The old imperial and monarchical imaginary of heaven no longer describes any spiritual reality that which more and more human beings are accepting. The opposite is true. Heaven as portrayed by literalist Christians has become an ideal place where Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny might be found running things.

It’s time to stop climbing and clamoring all over that medieval statue of Jesus and instead look in the direction in which Jesus was always pointing a compassionate divinity whose kingdom has always thrived and pulsed within ourselves … which is what he said.

Most importantly, it is long past time for us to grow-up. It is time that adults reject the childish idea of patriarchy, a morally corrupt fraud that seriously harms every society in which it festers.

It’s time to step out of the shallow end of the religion pool.

What About Idaho?

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday March 27, 2022 · 11:35 AM PDT

2022/03/27 · 11:35

I was born and raised in Idaho. That means that regardless of my civic leanings I have as much claim on this state and what it ought to stand for as anybody else. Check my bona fides!

Me and Politics:

Politics is a slimy business but something we’re stuck with. Back in my younger days I remember reading about how lots of folks from both parties thought Chrysler chairman Lee Iaccoca would make a great president but old Lee flat out turned em down … cause politics is a slimy business and slimier today than it was back then.

What are ya? Gimme the label you’re tryin to live by.

? Democrat?
Republican?
Conservative?
Liberal?
Somewhere’s else?
Not-a-damn giver?

No labels. Soon as you do you’ve proposed a definition of yourself that is imagined in the mind of those to whom you reveal your label. Don’t do it.

Believe what you believe in all its variety and across all the spectrums. Tie yourself down to a label and most folks will perceptually hold you to the label.

That being said, in my life I have been a registered Democrat from sometime after the invasion and sacking of Iraq until the end of the mid-term elections in 2006. At that point with a majority in Congress, I figured the Dems wouldn’t need my help coping with the non-wise governance of a tin horn Howdy Doodie and the rubber-stamp congress that functioned for Doodie from 2000 to 2006.

What happened after 2006 is between the Dems, Repubs and Amercian voters and not my affair anymore. I unregistered from the Democratic Party in Washington in 2006 and although I have had no formal or informal interactions with the Dems since then, I have reacted more positively partial to Dem positions than Republican positions. But neither party’s talking points do much to clarify civic issues.

Talking points: the stuff of spin doctors who are at least one step below lawyers on my scale of respectability.

I grew up in Mormon Country before it became the domain of the Republican Party after I left home. I am the son and grandson of folks who regularly voted Democrat or Republican according to whether they thought a good man or woman was running.

I do remember my Congressional District voted Ralph Harding (the Democrat) out of office in the 60’s because that honest man had the gall to question the relationship between future Mormon apostle and later Prophet Ezra Taft Benson and the John Birch Society (Benson’s son was the at one time was the national director of public relations for the John Birch Society.)

Didn’t matter how statesman-like my Congressman was. He spoke ill of the Lord’s Anointed and you can’t do that in Mormon Country without consequences.

Personally, although only 17 and in no way knowledgeable or sophisticated about politics and parties, I still thought that was chicken shit on the part of those who voted against Harding for that reason.

I recall the time when my interest in politics was something akin to but less than my intense interest in the NBA, MLB and the NFL. The winners and losers in local, state and national elections were mostly a matter of “Did the person I like win or lose?” There was very little if any interest on my part in initiatives, law-making or the rising and falling fortunes of our political parties.

Now I’m an old veteran with no hair, high blood pressure and military memories going back to the early 1970’s when Jane Fonda was a swear word and my cousin somehow got into the National Guard and I didn’t. Had I waited another six months before enlisting, the new draft lottery which placed my birthday at the 350+ level would have meant that I, like Mr. Cheney, could have pursued my “other priorities.”

Somewhere downstairs I’ve got an old hard-cardboard Schlitz beer-box with enough military records in it to prove I went and to prove I did. There’s a bunch of ribbons down there in a glass jar where sometime I’ll go down and look at them. There’s an air-medal (and maybe a cluster) that are still in their containers. There’s little sterling silver wings that my commander told me I could wear even when not on flying status after completing ten combat missions. They’re all down there to prove I went and did.

When I was studying Russian at Syracuse University, Woodstock happened less than 100 miles away. I wasn’t about to drive over and see that. I was too mad at Jane Fonda – mad about her movie Barbarella and its flaunting R-rated morals-challenged images which had offended my youthful moral view of the world. Oh, and I was incensed by her Hanoi activities.

Funny how time changes perspectives. My yuppie kids are outraged that in 1968 I deliberately refused to go to Woodstock.

I agree with them.
What was I thinking?

Was my patriotism so shallow that rain, mud, outlandish music, naked women and pot smoke could rock my foundation as a true American?

I’m embarrassed about what I thought was important when I was 22 and what I did and didn’t do about it.

Yet, here I am today, a retired and stay-at-home repository of all my experience which is the only source of wisdom I have to offer my kids and grandkids. I sure as heck am not going to teach my kids that military veterans are long on judgment and condemnation and short on forgiveness. Most veterans have seen enough in life to know that there’s not much useful in taking an “I’ll never forgive you for that!” attitude in most areas of life.

No, I’m not retired from the military. I got out after 6 years and served 2 more in the reserve. 29 years later, I’m still aware of a sense of difference between the civilian and military world where you have got to trust somebody before you follow them.

By 2000 I realized that my veteran’s instincts were alive and well and I saw only form without substance in George W. Bush. He’s my age and I could never vote for anyone who at best was no smarter than me. Besides, an old NBA fan like me thought Bill Bradley was the smartest guy for president and I was disappointed that he didn’t get nominated. I voted for Gore, the military veteran.

By the time George W. invaded and occupied Iraq and lied to me and you in order to get away with it, I was having problems with the political behavior in this country that now seemed more important than the Red Sox beating the Yankees.

When my wife Lietta took off for Texas to help Cindy Sheehan beat up on George Bush, I also decided to get involved as a citizen rather than a party partisan. This despite the fact that my dissent and opposition to a sitting president almost demanded that I support the opposition party’s candidates and issues – to the degree I could stomach them and could stomach their lack of stomach for a fight.

I soon learned that lock-step support of a sitting president and publicly patriotic loyalty grandstanding had very little to do with civic responsibility and holding the government responsible. I was in good company .. folks like Tommy Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight the Eisenhower.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. -President Thomas Jefferson

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.” – President Theodore Roosevelt

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President. – President Theodore Roosevelt

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -President Theodore Roosevelt

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionist and rebel men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. -President Dwight Eisenhower

Good enough for me. So I began public dissent and never regretted it. Didn’t stop no wars, didn’t get anyone indicted or impeached and didn’t impact the outcome of any elections.

But I felt good about myself for trying, for taking a stand and for standing for something of merit.

Bush’s 2004 re-election after all those manipulative antics and with the help of religious and social conservatives was a shock for me. It taught me things about American voters as a group and their diminished or absent attention spans that I’ve never forgotten. Predominantly what I came to regard as “kindergarten conservative congresspersons, television commentators and talk-show jocks all acting and speaking almost in lock step synchronicity, saying the same things and sticking almost sickeningly to the same talking points and slogans left me with a vulgar and foul taste in my mouth.

Democratic voices were mostly mealy-mouthed and seemed almost afraid to throw down any gauntlet against what I began calling the Kindergarten Konservative Klamor.

By 2008 there was no visible Republican worthy of my vote and perhaps with one or two exceptions the Democrat got my vote.

Again here I am, So there I am, trying to vote the man instead of the party, flip-flopping and waffling with the best of them.

Here I sit at my keyboard reminding myself why I got involved when one president and his administration lied their way to all those dead soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

I want to rephrase a few things I wrote about a president in 2005 and expand the subject to include the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary.

In 1968 when I enlisted I had a rough idea of what I was getting into.

That “rough idea” was based on trust … trust in a system and, ultimately, trust in a specific leader and a specific governing political party. The specific leader of course was LBJ, the specific party was the Democratic Party and the specific system was and is the system that allows us to hang our political opinions on buttons and sanctimonious drapery of stars and stripes from which we belch our prejudices.

When you sign up you endorse a contract on the bottom line. It’s a contract with specified written obligations on the part of both parties, but also with unspecified but powerful assumptions on the part of both parties.

In the case of joining the military knowing what you are getting into is based on very powerful unwritten but nationally accepted assumptions:

(1) The integrity and honor of the commander in chief of the military and that CIC’s skill, wisdom and understanding of all reasons when and why military citizens are to be placed in harm’s way.
As a volunteer you are at the mercy of that individual, his party and their combined priorities – with a strong expectation that those priorities extend beyond a desire to remain in the driver’s seat.

(2) As a volunteer you are at the mercy of your own fellow citizens (including your own family) whom you trust to be willing and supportive in making sure the leadership does not waste your vital blood, devotion and patriotism in pipe dreams, self-interested agenda’s and ideologies;
hat leaders are driven by a genuine desire to involve the country in on-going mutual participation and compromise regarding foreign policy before resorting to force as a last resort.

(3) Volunteering to become a soldier is volunteering to preserve and protect – with your own power and will – the country, its borders, its citizens and its institutions. It isn’t volunteering to keep a political party in power.

The only way to avoid that circumstance is for the citizens to assume their rightful role in the triangular relationship with the troops and the CIC. The troops are expected to trust the CIC’s wisdom as well as the patriotic participation of the Citizens who will keep the CIC honest.

The CIC is expected to trust the troops to follow orders and expects to sustain by honesty and integrity the support of the Citizens.

The Citizens expect the troops to do their duties and expect the CIC to sustain by honesty and integrity his political authority. The Citizens must be willing to hold the CIC accountable and willfully resist when the honesty and integrity of leadership is absent.

That is what is going on right now.

The politicians have demonstrated a lack of leadership at a time when leadership is needed.

We have civic responsibilities that include critical thinking, striving for common sense and an ability to wade through or ignore bullshit so we can help do something about the bullshitters. If I could fire and replace them all I would. But I can’t. However, there’s no requirement to sit quietly in the tavern while the blowhards waste everybody’s time and money with political silliness. We ought to stand up to grand-standers, bullies and drugstore cowboys – no matter the color of the ice cream on their boots.

That’s why I’m taking my mind off the shelf and have gotten back in to the scuffle. It seems to be what makes me feel good about myself for trying. First thing to do is give a little hell to any drugstore politicians who think partisanship is citizenship but look the other way rather than looking right at a problem. Such have earned a bit of hell.

QAnon Ginni on "the Biden crime family"

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 25, 2022 · 2:57 PM PDT

2022/03/25 · 14:57

The “Biden Crime Family” as Our Lady of Nonsense, Ginni Thomas, texted comes from a vividly imagining mind that is dumb enough to consider her own participation in sedition as “heroic.”

Ginni Thomas, there is no so-called Biden Crime Family. However, a Trump Crime Family that includes currently serving Congress Persons, Senators and conflicted Supreme Court Justices is alive and unwell in our midst.

Clarence Thomas’ wife told Mark Meadows that ‘the Biden crime family’ and ‘ballot fraud co-conspirators’ would be ‘living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,’ texts show

I saved this to my OneNote from a couple of years ago.

American exceptionalism is killing the planet The many abuses of endless war

War, in other words, is our new normal, America’s default position on global affairs, and peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against the Taliban, ISIS, “terror” more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia or China, is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an unprecedented 800 or so military bases, when you configure your armed forces for what’s called power projection, when you divide the globe — the total planet — into areas of dominance (with acronyms like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you spend more on your military than the next seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion) already quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a reality of endless war?

Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. William J. Astore

Whatever we thought we had to prove to the rest of the world, we didn’t. What we have proven is this:

“We proved the lie, were served up with a gagging portion of our own vintage distillation of apocalyptic horseshit

— all the narcissistic swill about indomitable spirit, invincibility, courage and nobility of purpose

— and demonstrated once and for all to those who looked on with interest a fact long suspected:

that this nation, through a self-administered indoctrination of spurious righteousness, larded with the false rewards of superfluous luxury, had at last achieved the most tractable, malleable — let’s face it, spineless — people to walk the face of the earth.”

-Aptly described by Oliver Lange in Vandenberg – The Journals, 1971

Lange’s Cold War novel concerned a fictional lone American holdout against a Soviet occupation of America – hardly a liberal theme by today’s standards.

Yet the description still appears to fit this society to a Tee.

Our politicians of both parties thrive on tossing our way narcissistic swill about what America stands for and what the American People are truly like.

It was never this regardless of why Ginni Thomas thought it was:

We do hopefully attempt to teach, encourage and try to foster ideas of indomitable spirit, invincibility, courage and nobility of purpose in the military. You know, those on whom we count and by whom have cast our imperialistic dice; importing Democracy, war, defense and security.

For the rest of us talk is cheap. We indomitable spirits are inspired by the cheap theatrics and propaganda of talk-show and political personalities, movies and commercialized patriotism more interested in money than global peace, global honor or global respect.

Robert Blum has had a video out there that flat out stated the premise of America’s track record all around the world, Be nice to America or we’ll bring Democracy to your Country.

I dare you to expose your beautiful minds to that short video and then tell me how and why none of it is true nor an accurate portrayal of what’s been going on while we potato our couches.

The public righteousness long proclaimed by the TV reverends and political god-talkers finally caught the attention of genuine social justice Christians who are now furiously publicizing social justice values in the most justified religious backlash in years

,,, and having success – except among those who think God is a Conservative Republican.

That might be a good sign but it still seems like the most popular and followed god-talkers are not the ones advocating that we care for our poor and infirm. No, the god talkers that fill former basketball arenas and mega-churches are either promising that God the capitalist wants to reward folks too trusting for their own good with riches

… or are promising that the greatest threat to religion in America lies in liberal and progressive values that detract from the image of God as the One Angry Almighty-ness who supports a fundamentalist literal definition of sin which can’t be tolerated with any degree of allowance..

I suggest that the wisest thing we can do is turn off the television sets and all the other “sets” through which we are told what to think, what to feel, what to be afraid of and how our money can buy us relief from all of it.

I suggest that being fluffed into believing every little commercialized medical threat and the need to consult your doctor needs to be seen as a need to ask the Doc if super-glue on the lips is a good way to stop eating corporate-larded-consumable swill

… and if ear plugs and eye masks are the best way to lower all your physiological levels to a manageable level. ( Have you every noticed how that word broken down the middle forms two double syllable concepts: “physio” and “logical” – neither of which are honestly proposed to you in pharmaceutical commercials?)

Turning off the TV sets would help – at least until advertisers and broadcasters get the message that selling larded false rewards of superfluous luxury, gossip-based headline news and self-absorbed entertainment is not what a mature society wants.

Oh …. sorry … that above paragraph describes someone else’s Brave New World where “mature” and “society” can be justifiably used in the same sentence …. but certainly not our Cowardly Consumptive Outworn World.

We can’t go on like this much longer.

Our new clothes were never new and never clothes.

America’s persistent empathy gap. Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what we’re actually doing to them. Even our globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast bases, referred to in the military as “Little Americas,” complete with familiar stores, fast food, you name it.

Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives, these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.

Our uncovered asses are all hanging out there exposed to the winds of change – William J. Astore

…while we, well we seem to be content in our ignorance or awareness of (whichever fits) the fact that we are the most tractable, malleable — let’s face it, spineless — people to walk the face of the earth.”

Thank you Oliver Lange … sorry that you are still right on the money.

Remember Joe Bageant?

What about being hypnotized by entertainment in whatever form that takes?

” … The American national illusion, where all the world’s a shopping expedition. Or a terrorist threat. No matter, as long as it is colorful and wiggles on the theater state’s 400 million screens … keep the public in an entertained stupor, awed, mislead, and most importantly, distracted.” -Bageant

What about Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again constituency? What might Bageant have said about that?

“we are seeing an armed infantilized nation wail, hurl blame and do horrific things, the worst of which we do to one another

… to keep its captives deluded and sated enough to remain productive and consuming — not to mention hating the right people — right up to the last moment before total collapse, and they are no longer needed.” – Bageant

Or, what do we do with the pretended American Dream – whatever that ever was?

Entertainment addiction is like contracting measles after never having been vaccinated or educated about how to think safely.

Consequently such addiction

has, and still does, prevent Americans from grasping any of this. Instead, the hologram allows us to believe that life can exist without suffering. We actually achieved that state for a while, too, by forcing the suffering on unseen people elsewhere. We accepted the hologram’s one voice to the many as truth (not that we had much choice, The ‘Gram was all we knew), then let our souls and national character necrotize in the warm bath of self-gratification and statist hubris. -Bageant

So where are we now Joe?

Clearly, we have taken an unimaginably disastrous course, and intend to take everyone else out with us. Yet we have only done what most of the world’s nations would have done, given such brute power and wealth for such a time. Perhaps more accurately, done what most of the world’s governments and leadership would have.

So long as nations have hierarchical leadership, they will have escalating hierarchical greed, power hunger and destructive folly — and therefore, eventually approach hierarchical evil at some point. It may be an old saw, but power does corrupt. -Bageant

What might we do to come to social maturity?

Inside most Americans is a globally brattish child. Thanks to our endowed natural resources (since squandered) and to armed national theft abroad, the American has not suffered enough to become a responsible adult on the planet.

resist pride in anything said to be national, whether it be prosperity, healthcare, culture, competence, social cohesion and identity, or whatever. Pride and courage do not live in the same house. Courage, which has little to do with blood and guts, but everything to do with sacrifice, chooses to dwell alongside humility. -Bageant

Ginni Thomas, there is no so-called Biden Crime Family . But a Trump Crime Family that includes currently serving Congress Persons, Senators and conflicted Supreme Court Justices is alive and unwell for certain.

Is That You God?

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday March 22, 2022 · 4:04 PM PDT

2022/03/22 · 16:04

YouTube Video

How come most Christians only perceive in the mind's eye, a limited image of God. How come in all of scripture we read nothing like the following lyrical description of one singer's particular "Divinity?"

Over and over I tried to prove my love to you.
Over and over What more can I do?
Over and over My friends say I'm a fool.
But over and over I'll be a fool for you.
'Cause you got personality
Walk, with personality
Talk, with personality
Smile, with personality
Charm, with personality
Love, with personality
And of Cause you've got
A great big heart.
Now over and over
What more can I do.?

Lloyd Price was an American R&B and swing singer-songwriter, record executive and bandleader, known as "Mr. Personality." Perhaps his most famous song came out in 1959 - a love song to his sweetheart. It's title was Personality.

We might find such lyrical odes to God in the writings of ancient Christian mystics but even then they do not read as if a mystic had sat down with God and enjoyed an in-depth interview from which a glowing description of a vital and intense Divine Being was the result.

Spiritual writer, Stephen Mitchell expressed in The Gospel According to Jesus, a comparison between the Jesus of scripture untainted by Roman or Protestant theology and the “Jesus” of orthodoxy and conformity.

No careful reader of the Gospels can fail to be struck by the difference between the large-heartedness of such passages and the bitter, badgering tone of some of the passages added by the early church.

It is not only the polemical element in the Gospels, the belief in devils, the flashy miracles, and the resurrection itself that readers like Jefferson, Tolstoy and Gandhi have felt are unworthy of Jesus, but most of all, the direct antitheses to the authentic teaching that were put into “Jesus’” mouth – doctrines and attitudes so offensive that they ‘have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust.’

Jesus teaches us, in his sayings and by his actions, not to judge (in the sense of not to condemn), but to keep our hearts open to all people.

The later “Jesus” is the archetypal judge, who will float down terribly on the clouds for the world’s final rewards and condemnations.

Jesus cautions against anger and teaches the love of enemies.

The later “Jesus” calls his enemies “children of the Devil” and attacks them with the utmost vituperation and contempt.

Jesus talks of God as a loving father, even to the wicked.

The later “Jesus” preaches a God who will cast the disobedient into everlasting flames. (A Eloheim who will deliberately withhold blessings and mercy because of sin,)

Jesus includes all people when he calls God “your Father in heaven.”

“The later Jesus” says “MY father in heaven.”

Jesus teaches that all those who make peace, and all those who love their enemies are sons of God.

The later “Jesus” refers to himself as “THE Son of God.”

Jesus isn’t interested in defining who he is (except for one passing reference to himself as a prophet).

The later “Jesus” talks on and on about himself. (As does the LDS version of Jesus)

Jesus teaches God’s absolute forgiveness.

The later “Jesus” utters the horrifying statement that “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of eternal sin.”

The epitome of this narrow-hearted, sectarian consciousness is a saying, which a second-century Christian scribe put into the mouth of the resurrected Savior at the end of Mark:

“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever doesn’t believe will be damned.”

No wonder Jefferson said, with barely contained indignation:

‘Among the saying and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.’

When I first read this it occurred to me that even the writers of so-called holy scripture did very little to assign any kind of three-dimensional view or personality to God. What we have to work with as we try to conceptualize and perhaps make a portrait of the personality is the limited 2-dimensional personality reflected in scripture:

The Writing Tools Blog describes a two-dimensional character.

"A two-dimensional character is the same as one-dimensional character except for the fact that they show one emotion or character trait. They are also known as "cardboard" characters, your cutouts, because they lack dimension. They show a little bit of character through their words, actions, or emotions, but everything they reveal is of a one-track nature that's somewhat undeveloped and often lacking in background, explanation, or depth.

Unlike the one-dimensional character, they must react through speech or gesture to reveal an emotional trait. Their reactions and integrations in the story are often brief, but not always. Though a main character may be present the majority of the story, if he/she is lacking in depth, complexity, or history, that character becomes two-dimensional. One of the biggest dangers to believability or engagement of readers in a story is a lack of depth to main, or even secondary characters."

So the God of most Christians, in terms of personality and get-to-know-you-ness, is in truth not much more than a cardboard character whom we have been taught to respect, revere and actually worship through praise, prayerful petitions and doting hymns that are nothing more than appeals to an assumed narcissistic deity who loves to be lauded.

The other truth is that there is no substance to an on-going intuited relationship with a cardboard character which is not what those early mystics sought or achieved in their inner imaginary worlds.

The television series LUCIFER presents a mythological angel who has a no-holds-barred intimate and often hostile relationship with the creator of the known universe in Christian terms. Lucifer Samael Morningstar (think biblically: Son of the Morning) who appears fearless in his willingness to confront and verbally attack God who he calls "Dear Old Dad."

Just as in the TV series, God has not struck anyone down with lightning, thunder, earthquake or floods except in the Biblical Fairy Story accounts. One would think that according to our contemporary crop of right-wing fundamentalist Christians God would have smote the whole TV series and all the blaspheming actors straight to a real fire-and-brimstone hell. So far no.

Same for us.

There are folk lore and apocryphal stories about a punitive God punishing a specific sinner or group of sinners, but those are essentially unprovable and will remain in the folklore closet forever.

The Greeks knew who their supreme being was and what he was like. They believed that Zeus live high on Olympus with his clan of unruly, sinfully delicious companions and offspring whose charms he could not always resist. They knew what he was, what he was like and lived in a kind of fearful bondage until the time when there were not enough demonstrations of his mighty and angry existence and the Olympian gods ultimately were banned to myth only.

We Christians seem to have a hard time doing that to our Almighty Father of Heaven and Earth. Although our fundamentalist and biblically literalist friends seem to think our irreverent come-uppance is long overdue and still in the script, the myopic, immature and overly sober divinity seems stuck in the imaginations of such wannabe prophets of doom.

Maybe so, but as my alter ego (icon), Reverend Duminyun, would say:

“Madam, you will burn in hell for making light of that!”

I wrote this fourteen years ago this week. In retrospect this moment could have been a scene in the LUCIFER TV series.

Guess Who Showed Up In My Office

If you've seen the movie GHOST and remember the scenes where Whoopi Goldberg tries to convince Demi Moore that she (Whoopi) has actually spoken to Patrick Swayze, you may have a sense of what it was like the day an internationally known psychic walked into my office announcing that God would shortly grant an interview, adding,

"You're all God's got so He has to use you."

Needless to say, I closed the door to my office lest a few ears could hear any more of her fantastic drivel.

"I'm glad you brought me in here. It makes it easier to set up the interview," she said as I closed the door.

"You mean you are going to produce God himself? Are we going to have some sort of 'crossing over' here?"

"Oh, heavens no! Uh, pardon the expression." (With a whisper, she continued,) "I used to say 'hell no' but since linking with Mr. Big himself, I don't dare use the phrase. Now Arthur, God wants you in this room tomorrow morning at 4:30 a.m. SHARP and says that the rest will be handled for you. You just be here!"

"You'd better explain yourself." I told her, thinking of how to get a 911 responder to believe my reason for calling.

She explained.

Article space is precious and it would take up too much to relate how she convinced me to at least give God a chance to show up at the appointed time. Since tomorrow morning I had planned to start work on my next article before turning on The View, I decided to get up real early so as to humor the lady. Assuming God would not show, I could still get some work done.

Next morning I was no sooner in my office and reaching for the light when the light switch activated before I could touch it.

And there was light.

A voice, not loud, not soft, not a whisper but then not a shout either ... spoke quite forcefully.

"Sit down son. After turning on your light for you, I'm only going to give you one other miracle."

There wasn't time to go through any theatrics of shock and awe. I heard the quite command and I obeyed. As I sat down at my desk, I suddenly spied a shape in the side chair opposite my desk. The shape clarified itself and I found myself staring at a distinguished old man dressed in a long white robe with gold edging casually sitting in my side chair.

There was no pillar of fire or light and no aura around him but I knew somehow that He was either legitimate or Steven Spielberg's special effects crew had snuck into my office and set up shop in the middle of the night.

Now I felt it ... I really KNEW who was sitting there.

I remembered one time a child's story about new arrivals in heaven not recognizing their Savior when they met him. It was explained to me that only the righteous will recognize Him instantly. Well, I knew instantly that I was looking at God. There was no time to be astonished. One minute there was nothing and the next I found myself no longer alone in my office. God was sitting in my side chair looking directly into my eyes ... and I exclaimed, managing only a quivering whisper,

"You really are … God! I somehow know it to be true. You are … you are!"

Then God turned in His chair, facing me from another angle. And my wild eyes saw a woman; g elegant and wise, snarling gently all the while.

She shifted again and I saw a young man looking exactly like a Michelangelo David

... who moved again and I found myself looking at my 13-year-old granddaughter who, I knew, was 150 miles away sound asleep.

"I ... I think I get your point. You're telling me ... you're revealing to me that you are ..."

"I'm not revealing anything that all of humanity does not already know inside. Now, let's get this going and be done with it. Son, I'm not a meddler, but things have gone so far in the wrong direction that something must be done. You people need to redirect the path everyone seems determined to march down."

My granddaughter was back and pointing at my legal pad.

"You do some asking and I'll do some telling. As things progress you'll realize a few things without asking. Other things won't come to you as answers from me, but as understandings ... if you pay attention and let your thoughts run free."

I was convinced ... or hallucinating ... or delusional like Uncle Pat Robertson.

God was talking to me.

No doubt about it. I can't and won't launch into any speculation as to why God chose me. I appreciate John Denver's role with George Burns even more now. And somehow I know that it's not relevant to me whether some or all disbelieve what I write. What is relevant is that I know and God knows that I know.

The wise old woman was back only this time she looked like an older Queen Latifa.

"Start the interview young man." was all she said.

I did and managed to come up with a question.

ARTHUR: Why didn't you appear on a mount or in a mega church before one of the prominent Christian celebrities or even in Salt Lake?

GOD: I tried! I couldn't get through. All of them were like you were yesterday, only much more dense to my touch.

A: What do you mean?

G: They are all like peas in a pod. What they inwardly imagine is the only thing they'll accept. They have in their minds a specific image of what God is and how God communicates - by the way, most of them think I talk only with men. It's a part of their minds that is literally stony. There wasn't any use in appearing to them in the way they expected. Their chests would all puff out and they'd be thinking, "see? I told you so. Now quit doubting"

A: What way would that be?

G: Looking like Max Von Sydow or Jeffrey Hunter or Jim Caviezal in the movies.

A: Why not?

G: Because I'm not that way! I'm not in any way the sort of character your Christianity has made me out to be.

A: What sort of character are you ... uh, Lord?

And it was my granddaughter again looking at me across my desk.

G: Do you know where I've come from?

A: Uh ... Heaven? A Mighty Fortress?

Granddaughter laughed uproariously.

G: We'd better back up. I can see you need to have your own assumptions adjusted. You've noticed that I can appear as anything I want (adding with a sly smile) even an angel of light?

A: (Thinking that somewhere I'd read or been told that the devil could appear as an angel of light and that you can test the angel by touching) Would you mind shaking-

G: Yeah yeah yeah. (Young David reached across and gave me a hard gripping hand shake. As if he'd been lifting weights.) I'm not the God you people think I am.

A: Obviously ... er, Lord. But what sort of God - I mean, why do you say that?

G: Well, for heaven's sake, pardon the pun! More than a few of you are starting to pray to the female me. Does it matter?

A: I beg your pardon?

The old woman sighed and shrugged at me.

G: No young man. I didn't come from some heaven or a mighty fortress out there somewhere on the other side of the moon. In a way, I've come from your future. No, better said ... I'm trying to portray your future in a way you'll understand.

A: But doesn't the Bible say that —

The old beardy guy was back.

G: The Bible says three things. " "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, " "believe in me " "and love each other. " The rest is 6000 years of private interpretations.

A: But your Son? He was killed and the priests say we owe him. Which of those three things expresses that?

G: All three of them do ... minus the need for fear, shame and guilt.

A: But all those commandments!

G; Private interpretations son. Believe in me and love each other. Everything else will take care of itself.

A: Are you telling me that —

My granddaughter was giggling.

G: Gosh Grampy, you're being dense.

A: But what about the End Times? What about your Son coming to-

G: To kick butt and take names Grampy? What for?

A: Because of evil! Because of the war in Heaven! You and Satan are-

Granddaughter giggles again impishly. G: You know I'm asleep 150 miles away but even I know that Satan is only a nightmare.

A: A nightmare? Surely you know how many people have been killed because of Satan?

Young Adam smiled and took my paperweight in his hand, eyeing it with one eye.

G: Surely I know how many people have been killed because of someone else's nightmare.

A: Is Satan real?

G: Only in the Left Behind novels.

A: Okay, so now I'm talking to David the body-builder. You were there at the start! What about the serpent in Eden.

G: A snake. Nothing more, nothing less.

A: But he made Eve ruin everything.

That brought out the old lady again.

G: You men are such twits! Eve watched the snake as she watched all things in the garden. One day, watching the snake shed its skin and not die, she figured it out. Told Adam what she learned from the snake. They took the next step together, knowing what they were doing.

Adam the twit passed the story on ... but you know how gossip grows. Years later - by the time the patriarchs took over - the story changed to a talking snake, guilty women and innocent men. Fixed in place by dullards.

She gestured to the morning light coming through the window and I knew it was time.

A: We're about through aren't we?

G: Yes we are.

A: They won't believe it.

G: Well, Junior, whether they believe it or not, God is not coming to their rescue, God is not going to justify what they say or what they do and God is not going to punish their enemies or reward their self-righteousness.

A: You mean you're just going to let —

G: I mean, sonny that humans have gotten into and out of messes for millennia without my meddling. It's your world. It was built for you to nourish, not to treat like a rental.

A: Meddling? Aren't you interested? Don't you care?

G: Does a parent care for the children? Does an artist care for the creation? Oh you betcha I care young man!

She stood and moved toward the door.

G: But I may have to meddle just a little bit if things get worse.

A: And if they do?

She smiled and shrugged.

And then the body-builder was eyeing me and wiggling his pectorals.

G: I might just have to appear as you see me now, kick a few butts and take a few names. Tell them to take care about what they say and do in my name.

When the going gets tough, this governor does the blame- and-hide.

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday March 15, 2022 · 7:53 PM PDT

2022/03/15 · 19:53

What does an incompetent kindergarten conservative governor look like? Oh, maybe one who decides that any “program” he sets in motion doesn’t need to have the highest good of all concerned. The "program” only has to succeed as a campaign prop, particularly when your opponent is a candidate of stature and positive credentials.

Let’s introduce Texas Governor Abbot's "Project Albatross." Let’s also look at how the failure of his project could not possible be his fault. Let's watch him do a Putin and shift blame on the Texas generals he appointed. Governor Abbott makes of himself then the ultimate incompetent governing villain. Ten thousand National Guard members were deployed and stationed along Texas’ southern border to enforce the state-run crackdown.

Among other things, the National Guard unit suffered a string of suicides in the closing months of 2021 that had hardly anything to do with law-breaker or border-violator violence. Rather, those losses are a Those losses can be laid before a pretend Texas leader who's administration failed his troops. If you're so damn good, Mr. Abbott, why the inconsistent paychecks, canceled education aid, and a mission with indefinite, involuntary activations?

Just days before Christmas Eve, the Army Times reported that four guard members had taken their own lives over the course of two months. Furthermore in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, a soldier accidentally shot and killed himself while another survived a suicide attempt. What did the man-who-seeks-reelection do about it. Well he did what all cowardly Republican politicians do when the going gets tough and his inner Trump is summoned: blame others cause it ain't his fault. So what does a law-and-order political stuntman do when his scheme literally blows up in his face? Well what else?

Blame others.

The pass-the-bucker replaced one major general with another. That's what Trump always did, by the way. And speaking in his best Trumpist voice, Mr. Abbottt said the replacement appointment would "uphold the integrity of the Texas Military Department and exemplify servant leadership throughout every aspect of this position."

Enter Abbott’s feared gubernatorial opponent, Beto O’Rourke.

“You can switch Generals, but we all know where the buck stops. ... Abbott has treated soldiers with incredible disrespect as he has delayed their pay, cut their tuition benefits in half, and used them as political pawns in his re-election campaign ... It’s time to bring them back home.”

Uh oh. What does reelection candidate Abbott do now? Obey his opponent and look even more incompetent?

I can’t think of a more impactful gift an incumbent governor running for re-election could v

Regarding Operation Lone Star, game over.

My Principal Source was Gabe Ortiz, Daily Kos staff, Greg Abbott continues to blame everyone but himself for his disastrous Operation Lone Star scheme

RELATED: Texas House members urge federal investigation of Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star scheme

Arthur's Editorial

These particular players are a collection of self-labeled socially myopic choir cheerleaders who struggle with stick shifts and complicated words containing more than five letters, words like QAnon.

These hoping we won’t have noticed just how “all-star” they are after so many years of Trumpitis. They seem to want the country to stumble forward handicapped by a flat tire at the highest level of their leadership vehicle.

They are not sending correct-direction signals - even to their myopic choir members. They have very little apparent leadership skill and are not up to the task of governing.

Despite the political advantage of our most recent national election and the temerity and caution of the Democrats, these supposedly wise Republican leaders and strategists are demonstrating an incredible lack of skill at managing the affairs of any civic body, federal or state.

As James T. Kirk goaded Khan, “You [Republicans] just … keep … missing … the target!”

If there is such as thing as a “normal situation” in this country I could say that “normally” when one party emerges victorious in an election, those who voted for the other party can take comfort in the general high quality, integrity and bi-partisan value of supporting the governing wisdom of those who did win.

Not this time. The only demonstration we have seen going back to November of 2020 is a party of poor losers dominated by an openly cynical liar-in-chief who was fired by the electorate now over a year ago.

These guys make it look like their constituents elected the Washington Generals instead of the Harlem Globetrotters. They can’t dribble, can’t shoot and certainly can’t play team-oriented ball.

They’re constantly out of bounds, palming the ball, committing foolish and egregious personal fouls and falling further and further behind on the scoreboard.

They try to play on only one end of the court where the bleachers are full of fanatics who want to change the way the game is played, want to change who can play and want to change what the public address system is allowed to broadcast.

If you look down their bench, you don’t see anyone riding the pines capable of substituting for the fumblers on the floor. You do see some of those benchwarmers like Cruz, DeSantis and McCarthy nursing wet dreams of future stardom by focusing on the bleachers when they should be focusing on the game itself.

You see flashes in the pan for whom the team’s financial backers have big plans and lots of money but also a limited self-serving priority of filling more bleachers rather than championship rings.

Not the players …

Not the coaches …

Not the owners …

… none of them show skill, wisdom or even a concern that the team remain viable, competitive and effective.

We’re not witnessing the creation of any kind of winning tradition here in the spirit of the, Bucks, Braves, or Rams.

Oh no!!

We’re looking at having to endure years of the 1960’s Mets when Casey Stengel asked,

“Can’t anyone here play this game?

BattleStar America In Search of Mythical Core Values

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday March 14, 2022 · 8:42 PM PDT

2022/03/14 · 20:42

The notion of "America's Core Values" haunts our society in a manner not unlike the frantic crew of Battlestar Galactica hunting for the rumored Edenesque Planet Earth. Some of us voice the yearning but most do not register feelings until someone in prominence - this cycle it's Biden - touches that tender nerve of idealism.

Yes yes baseball, Mom and apple pie are exemplars of our internally reinforced images, but they constitute merely the gate to the family homestead. The homestead itself is where the house, the property and the family members ought to sustain themselves by mutual trusting dependence on a value system based on loyalty, tolerance, economic equality, industry and opportunity.

That homestead has never existed in this country.

However, as an internal visualization it has driven the grandest, most successful and most popular events, changes, adjustments, creations and reforms that we've seen in our history.

Our idealized homestead never included a unanimous endorsement of supposed free-market economics. It never included subordination of individual rights and freedoms to the priorities of corporate dominance and certainly did not include evolution of the government into a source of camouflaged corporate welfare.

In that regard, a pure and successful free-market society has never existed, has never proven itself a successful nor universally beneficial system for public well-being.

When pondered and considered honestly; when valued for what they truly represent, our mythical core values reflect the undeniable rebuttal to politicians who declare that government should be run as a business.

At best, that notion reflects a very narrow view of economic reality in this country and is perhaps best exemplified by the contemporary conservative candidacies of those who only pretend-knowledgeablity.

In 2016 Donald Trump proposed a self-made myth about his self-made-career in a manner that far too many Americans who were waiting for a "hero" who would "speak" for them gave in to their own gullibility. Trump most cynically typified politicians who have come to equate their personal financial success as a blend of entrepreneurial wisdom fortified by civic understanding of the laws of economics which somehow generate a natural entrepreneurial compassion for the less successful.

Most of these prominent megaphones want you to believe that justice for all is found on the back of a dollar bill more so than in any Constitution. We seem to hear this nonsense more from conservatives and/or the Republican Party who have for the last 50 years portrayed themselves as economically wise fiscal conservatives.

In reality, once unleashed by their political successes beginning in the 1990's, with great fanfare they put on the Miter of reform, picked up the Scepter of change in order imply a "fiscally responsible makeover " that in reality represents today's most powerful contemporary economic embarrassments.

For example, we saw a welfare reform in the 1990's that has only marginally resolved even half the problems of poverty in this country. We also saw a rebuttal of the Clinton presidency's attempt to address national health care inadequacies. Resistance to the Clinton efforts was foolish, ideological, partisan and primarily greed-based. These were un-American refusals to reform or change health coverage in this country. This has remained even more radically unchanged with the political lack of will to do anything in terms of health care reform but propose repeal of Obamacare which in itself was the best of the worst that was compromised into law. Why?

In my opinion it has been the Republican party's willingness to harm the citizens in the name of opposing anything originating out of the Democratic Party.

We saw how the "fiscally responsible" party of change actually changed many American core value freedoms into unprotected vulnerabilities subject to the whims and greed of corporate capitalism.

These same fiscal hypocrites continue to campaign as if they were successful self-made representatives of a mythical American Dream available to all voters. Republicans have never satisfactorily explained at a national or state level how running the government as a business specifically benefits and protects the physical and economic well-being of the majority of citizens.

One simple example is that any effective business will look at its bottom line and look for ways to refuse to spend money as a means of generating greater profits. They HAVE to look for ways to say No. A government run as a profit-motivated business would do the same. The only requirement is for them to train their choir to respond only to what they label economic conservatism.

What does a government do with "greater profits" created from denials and refusals to spend on the social infrastructure that supports and protects all citizens? Are refusals to expend funds to the needy or most vulnerable in the name of "fiscal responsibility wise and good public policy?

If not the citizens, then who are the shareholders to whom government business-runners owe their highest allegiance?

What is to be done with those profits generated by an elected government run as if it were the same sociopathic "person" based on self-interest inherent in the non-human entity in this country known as a "corporation?" Yes, folks, based on it's need to survive and grow is by definition sociopathic.

Having taken some whacks at Republicans, I'm not about to imply that Democrats would have been able or even willing to reverse many of the legislated mistakes of the past 20 years in this country.

It ought to be obvious to those citizens who are not blinded by partisan perspectives and propaganda that neither party's victories in the future will guarantee any movement for genuine reform unless among those victories a specific mandate is included. It must be a mandate that reflects the will of the people; a mandate opposed to bought-and-paid-for civic policies enacted at the behest of monied lobbyists.

Voters must simultaneously have opportunity or means of formalizing a mandate to remove, severely restrict or equalize the playing field when it comes to lobbying our representatives for change. We need to intervene and force corporate lobbyists out of our elected official's waiting rooms.

In this regard, any pretend apologetics from candidates and incumbents trying to justify accepting corporate donations is worthless. What is simultaneously real and imagined in an almost mindless and tragically immature assumption - rarely expressed but always the basis of attitudinal and tactical thinking - is the self-serving notion that pragmatism usurps any desire or commitment to an ideal.

Partisan activists who consider themselves wise and who are intimately involved in the campaigns of their most beloved candidates almost always belittle ideal thinking. They use the chestnut that you have to play the game in its forever-deteriorating manner in order to win power.

Only then - once in power - can the victor look up the core values even he/she have probably forgotten and restore America to its mythical former glory. Such thinking neither proves nor wins anything but individual personal advocacy duels. It also demonstrates and reveals a cynicism that fuels the ever-increasing loss of a civic appreciation for how things work in this country. This is an obvious tactic non-religious candidates of both parties have had to utilize.

That's why too many of us - and I mean this literally - are too stupid to see through political tactics generated by polls and political consultants.

Candidates wearing real or memorized earphone prompters so as to conceal their inability to think on their feet and give genuinely honest answers are not the candidates who believe in America's Core Values.

We're losing our trust in whatever the Mythical American Core Values ever were. Nothing is taking the place of that trust except perhaps cynicism and an ever deepening self-absorbed behavioral pattern; a pattern that only underlines what historians will eventually describe as the reason for the fall.

A future mythology may be only a speculation about an American Dream once believed to exist.

McCaffrey is about knocking Putin out in the ring, not going to his home town and cleaning house.

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday March 13, 2022 · 2:48 PM PDT

2022/03/13 · 14:48

Vladimir Putin was nine years old when Nikita Khrushchev ran the last large scale bluff when he vowed to declare the 1948 Berlin Agreement null and void and assume Soviet control through the East German puppet government.

In 2009 Fred Kaplan wrote that

“Western intelligence agencies didn’t know it at the time, but Khrushchev’s threat stemmed from desperation. Over the previous decade, West Berlin had grown free and prosperous while East Berlin had stagnated under the Soviet boot. Easterners were emigrating to the West in droves, using West Berlin as their transit point. By the fall of 1958, East Germany had lost 2 million people, with continued losses of 10,000 per month, including some of its best-educated youth. Khrushchev needed to stop the hemorrhage.”

I remember hearing a rumor early in my Air Force Security Service career, that the U.S. did not fully understood how much of a bluff Khrushchev was making and that later intelligence revealed that had a show of force opposing the blockade been made, the Soviets would have backed down. I have not been able to confirm that story. However, what we seemed to have learned currently is that Putin’s desperation perhaps exceeds that of Khrushchev 50 years ago.

Though not the political buffoon that is Trump, Putin seems to have allowed his myopic vision of a potential Soviet reincarnation in Russia’s future project get out of hand. Probably assuming that any American population that would elect a political joker would not fully have its mind on the implications of Russian aggressive maneuvers abroad.

Vlad seems to have become the bluffer who assumes that Biden and a voting majority would reflect the same shallow silliness of the last administration.

General McCaffrey suggested an adjusted foreign policy approach when he put “the chances of Vladimir Putin using nukes at "zero" and urged NATO forces to destroy the Russian military forces on the ground in Ukraine before they begin their final assault on Kyiv. ” — MSNBC

I also tend to agree with McCaffrey when he refers to Putin as being,

"so over his head by invading Ukraine and not anticipating how citizens of the country would fight back and that it is time to bring about an abrupt end to the unprovoked invasion. MSNBC”

My own military service began in 1968 and ended in 1975. Thinking about Putin-versus-Zelensky, I remember a satirical line regarding LBJ that went something like this: “Johnson simply cannot understand why Ho Chi Min won’t obey him.”

I’m also impressed that McCaffrey without hesitation has concluded that Putin’s embarrassed military muscle combined with his shrunken economic potency makes him in effect a sitting duck.

True, a desperate sitting duck might trigger a larger disaster and it seems that McCaffrey was ready for the question around which many hesitations happen that cost lost opportunities. Putin’s options beyond the border of Ukraine are in reality certainly limited.

I agree that there is a risk of a nuclear Armageddon but I’m not yet convinced that a desperate Putin madman performance would be supported and sustained by his own military, his own Russian oligarchs and above all his fellow citizens. We can look on the Russian populace as a gullible, tyrant-dominated group think QAnon types) of ignorant consumers of a shrinking Russian prosperity, or we can expect from a more mature perspective that in a country dominated by an authoritarian regime people do not have to wait until the next election to fire the bumbler.

McCaffrey is talking about knocking Putin out in the ring, not going into his home town and cleaning house.

"I think it's a political decision at the highest levels," he continued. "NATO can clearly knock the Russians into the next world in a 30-day air campaign. They can take out their ground elements, which are still inviting targets. So the question is, is NATO there? The answer is no. And is the president prepared to risk escalation? I think the answer is, no. We need to understand -- I don't think World War III is in the offing. I think that's nonsense. Putin is so over his head. 60 percent of his ground capability is in Ukraine and half his air power. So it's a question of are we going to watch Ukraine go under or not?" — MSNBC

What I learned about being so right I might also be wrong.

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday March 05, 2022 · 11:38 AM PST

2022/03/05 · 11:38

Effective contribution to civic discourse:

The greatest American Heroes are those willing to learn about sharing opinion … and then share it. To my chagrin, I have not tried to be a great American Hero, rather a Johnny One-Note who encourages political polarization as opposed to genuine civic and civil discourse.

The town-hall citizens that I believe were the civic hope of our Founding Fathers have a need to understand and preach political wisdom with among other things, three tools of communication:

Rhetoric - The art of speaking or writing effectively

Reason - The power of the mind to think, understand and form judgments by a process of logic

Persuasion - The action or fact of persuading someone to accept an idea, concept or fact.

A Con is not one of those tools.

A Con - The act of cheating or tricking someone by gaining their trust and persuading them to believe something that is not true. A con is also the act of saying to someone exactly what that person is expecting to hear in order to create the illusion that speaker and listener are “on the same page.”

The goal of political debate is not necessarily to be “right.” Nor is it an advancement of a particular view of “the truth.” Rather, political debate has as its goal that of causing someone to act in a way consistent with the speaker’s objectives. Fundamentally as campaigns roll-out, political debate’s most important pursuit is the winning of votes.

Many political persuaders decided long ago that truth and reason are irrelevant to political debate. With competing ideas in a supposed democracy in which free speech is a function of persuasion, those most easily persuaded tend to be mostly one-dimensional, simple-minded or in fact unscrupulous regarding ends and means of persuasion.

If you would persuade, maintain constantly for yourself a reverence for reason and genuine truth. However, understand that you yourself may not know what is true, whether or not your reasoning can be shown as flawed and your own priorities not necessarily of the highest importance in the over-arching political and civic reality.

Unless you understand that your assumptive knowledge and wisdom are not drinkable bathwater, you have little to contribute toward genuine consensus.

Reason may not be the most effect tool of perceiving the correctness of your own perceptual truth and is perhaps of greater value in discovering for yourself what is not true.

Bearing a respect for reason and truth according to reason, political debate ought to be then a clear-headed objective of reaching consensus based on commonality of understandings of truth and reason.

Political debate is at its least usefulness when the principal reliance is on talking points, canned stump-speeches and the broken record of “Johnny One-Note” candidates. The object of such political persuasion is the creation of a voting base of Johnny One-Note voters who are obsessed with single or merely one or two issues about which a candidate or its party are obsessed.

Such becomes the Johnny-One-Note electorate about which it the following has been written and this is a quote I have publicly posted previously:

Author Oliver Lange in his novel, Vandenberg, had this to say about American society in the 1970’s.

"We proved the lie, were served up with a gagging portion of our own vintage distillation of apocalyptic horseshit

-- all the narcissistic swill about indomitable spirit, invincibility, courage and nobility of purpose

-- and demonstrated once and for all to those who looked on with interest a fact long suspected:

that this nation, through a self-administered indoctrination of spurious righteousness, larded with the false rewards of superfluous luxury, had at last achieved the most tractable, malleable -- let's face it, spineless -- people to walk the face of the earth."

- Vandenberg (later published under the title, Defiance) - The Journals, 1971

Lange’s Cold War novel concerned a fictional lone American holdout against a Soviet occupation of America – hardly a liberal theme by today’s standards.

Yet the description still appears to fit this society to a Tee.

Our politicians of both parties thrive on tossing our way narcissistic swill about what America stands for and what the American People are truly like.

I’m reminded of G.W. Bush during his presidency expressing surprise that the rest of the world might not see America and Americans in the same light as our narcissistic swill and all those talking points celebrities of all stripes throw at us.

For all of us as a political audience talk is cheap, indomitable spirits are prompted by the cheap theatrics and propaganda of pundits and political personalities, movies and commercialized patriotism more interested in money than global peace, global honor or global respect.

If we refuse to seek consensus among ourselves our whole lives will seem like unsatisfying and unavoidable implementations of ideas and notions entirely lacking in substance and socially redeeming value.

Mormons, Gay Parents and Innocent Children

Arthur Ruger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday November 08, 2015 · 8:25 PM PST

2015/11/08 · 20:25

We the leadership met with the Lord about the children of apostate gay parents ... and this is what the Savior of the World told us

Tyranny and Divinity

This week as he clarified the Church handbook changes regarding apostates and children of apostates, Elder Christofferson spoke of Jesus Christ in the same familiar and intimate way as does Pat Robertson - who also pretends to have an inside track to the Divine Mind. Both - perhaps in a perceived respectful and reverential way - tend to portray describe Christ as a legalistic and rigid moralizing divine tyrant.

Such from the Divine who also said, "Let the children come unto me."

Children born into the Church are in most ways unaware and unwitting conscripts into an environment that is totally and unequivocally one of "let's pretend."

Since comparative critical thinking is not one of those innate gifts with which most children are born, those born into active, believing and participating LDS families experience from the get-go a circumstance that - if explained to adult recruits/investigators in an honest, fair and responsible manner - might go something like this.

"Now, Brother Brown, we are here today because we are totally happy, totally satisfied, totally believing in the truths we are preaching. We have mentally moved into the world portrayed by these pretend truths and invite you to do the same.

These truths along with the duties and obligations that we consider legitimate, real and effectual in this pretend world, are what you should come to believe in.

To get there we challenge you to suspend your disbelief and assume that everything we teach you is the truth.

We invite you to pretend along with us, go along with us, go along with all our stories, rationales and theologies. As you suspend disbelief, you will become more and more planted in this pretend reality we who are members all share.

If you are faithful, at some point, the disparities, the faulty rationales and theologies and the absolute truths will all be just that … absolutes. You will be so convinced that they are all true, that our drama - yours and mine - is the only true reality, that it will be hard to return back to that original curious state that led to your encounter with us."

That would be the honest way to proselytize. But such may be too frank and too honest for a religious organization believing unreasonable notions about itself.

At some point - usually after baptism - at risk is the loss of the right to ask frank and honest questions that are based on anything resembling doubt - principally because the religious authorities do not necessarily believe in academic situations where questions that help make sense of things are addressed directly. The simple truth is that the authorities themselves deeply believe and assume that you - like them - have lost yourself in the make-believe world.

Whether born into the Church or converted with a few years of total participation in your history, to free yourself from such costly assumptions, you must pursue and suffer withdrawal pains from your addiction to a pretended dramatic performance in which you have been recruited and commissioned as a participating actor. This often becomes even more challenging if you have been commissioned a more significant role as an actor of influence on a local, regional or home-office level.

The circumstances of the pretended drama for most religions may be porous and permeable - allowing entry and exit easily according to desire and inclination. However, in some organizations, the let's-pretend devolves in the the rigid, inflexible formalism of religious fundamentalism. Some of the circumstances became buttressed by equally pretended but nonetheless real "rules" and "conditions" that must be met in order for the drama to play itself out to a personally successful conclusion.

When such circumstances exist, fellow actors are empowered to work manipulatively (in many cases as unwitting participants) to keep you engaged in the pretended drama through what amounts mostly to mental and emotional coercion. One becomes subject to threats, warnings and admonitions that are as pretentious as the entire scenario itself unless one has been mentally stampeded to believe that not only is the scenario real, but the threats are real and legitimate.

Inside the pretended drama, belonging and participation validated by fellow actors' opinions rise almost to paramount importance. It is only in that venue that theologically-based threats appear to be legitimate. The legitimacy lies mostly with our pretending that there IS a God who would let some mortals eternally be cursed or impeded in their "progress" toward some imaginary bliss by the arbitrary rule-making of other mortals.

We make it so when with willing suspension of disbelief. Otherwise, such authority-defined mortals would not be empowered. But even within the imagined scenario such authorities of the earthly church cannot "do" anything to you physically or eternally. They can only request that the actual Divine head of the church do that. Specifically, no LDS authority can ruin your eternal happiness, your forever, or consign you to outer darkness unless Jesus Christ endorses and carries out the decision.

If you believe in that kind of Jesus, then I might say that you have been stampeded too far and for too long and now believe in a divine punitive despot obsessed with obedience more than free agency … and you yourself deserve what you have bought into hook line and sinker.

Given that the genuine and loving Heavenly Parent is not going to let one child abuse another for any personal or authoritative retribution, the Church can only physically restrict its validation of anything formal you accomplish, you say or do inside the walls of the formal and conforming church. In other words, the Church can only enforce its specific earthly organizational "club rules" mostly in ways that are expressed in social ostracism, shunning, disfellowshipment and actual dis-enrolling in the earthly club, i.e. excommunication.

Remember, no Church and no leader can stand between you and God and block your access unless you stop thinking about who and what God is as defined by your own experience and let someone else's definitions run your life and needlessly drain your emotional energy.

Any God who would actually turn that sort of power and influence over to a few mortals at the expense of the rest is not a real God, has ceased to be God and - in truth - does not exist

… unless we are lost in an imagined reality and willing to pretend that such a god IS real

... and in quiet desperation we attempt to live in fear of the imaginary divine tyrant.

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