The Golden Image

Well I see him on the TV
Preachin' 'bout the promised lands
He tells me to believe in Jesus
And steals the money from my hand

Some say he was a good man
But Lord I think he sinned, yeah.

Twenty-two years of mental tears
Cries a suicidal Vietnam vet
Who fought a losing war on a foreign shore
To find his country didn't want him back
Their bullets took his best friend in Saigon
Our lawyers took his wife and kids,
No regrets

In a time I don't remember
In a war he can't forget
He cried forgive me for
What I've done there
'Cause I never meant the things I did"

And give me something to believe in
If there's a Lord above
And give me something to believe in.

~Poison, Something to believe in.

I've been reading since yesterday about this "Nashville Statement" released by a bunch of Southern Baptist bigwigs regarding gender and sexuality issues. This morning, I downloaded it and read the .PDF file. Let's take this a piece at a time:

"Evangelical Christians at the dawn of the twenty-first century find themselves living in a period
of historic transition. As Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian, it has
embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being. By and large the spirit
of our age no longer discerns or delights in the beauty of God’s design for human life. Many
deny that God created human beings for his glory, and that his good purposes for us include our
personal and physical design as male and female. It is common to think that human identity as
male and female is not part of God’s beautiful plan, but is, rather, an expression of an
individual’s autonomous preferences. The pathway to full and lasting joy through God’s good
design for his creatures is thus replaced by the path of shortsighted alternatives that, sooner or
later, ruin human life and dishonor God."

That's according to your interpretation, bro. Other people have different understandings of God, or don't believe in the same one or the same interpretation of Him, or don't even believe in any gods at all...and that's fine. The same United States Constitution that allows them to believe thus also protects your right to believe what you believe and release silly declarations. The world is complex, deal with it.

This secular spirit of our age presents a great challenge to the Christian church. Will the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ lose her biblical conviction, clarity, and courage, and blend into the
spirit of the age? Or will she hold fast to the word of life, draw courage from Jesus, and
unashamedly proclaim his way as the way of life? Will she maintain her clear, counter-cultural
witness to a world that seems bent on ruin?

What I want to know, is WHY? Why does this age have a "Secular spirit?" Could it perhaps be, because a nationally-known Prosperity Gospel preacher whose "Church" is a 16,000 seat former Basketball arena had to be damned well shamed into opening his church-stadium to provide shelter for hurricane victims in a flooded city? Could it be because American Evangelical Christianity not only has been consistently on the wrong side of people's freedom and rights, but has aligned itself with a President that's so low-class he can go to a disaster area...and talk about himself and how big the crowd is?

The sheer "Fuck You" attitude of these rich people makes me very angry. I hope that whoever came up with the idea that wealth equals righteousness has a special place in hell.

I'm just saying, when your religion is known for shamelessly grubbing after money and political power in vain attempts to remake the country and the world in it's own hair-gelled, spit-shined, gold-plated, vacuously banal feel-good man-centered get-rich-quick-because-Jesus theological image, ya'll might have a fuckin' problem. When ya'll support greedy businessmen and politicians and systemic racism and wars and ignore what your own Prophet, the very Son of God told you to do...ya'll shouldn't be surprised when people either go out and find a different interpretation or maybe, just maybe, abandon your religion altogether.

American Christianity has become self-congratulatory bullshit for conservative white people, that treats the Bible as a self-help manual and accepts spiritual leaders who act like car salesmen and fortune-tellers.

You have to look to the Black Church for somebody that's speaking Truth to power, rather than lies to the powerless. Don't take my word for it, look for yourself.

I don't have to guess what Jesus would say about that, because the Word tells me exactly what He DID say:

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. ~Matthew 21:12-13

Got that? Good.

Meanwhile, as water flows like the sea over freeway interchanges...there are people, of all creeds, colors, races and religions, lining up not for aid...but to volunteer to provide it. They *Ain't* wearing their religion or their politics on their sleeve to be seen by Men in doing so.

I fully expect that a lot of these Cajun Navy good ol' boys with their air boats and fishing boats, if asked, would self-identify as conservatives. You know what? Unlike the Trumps, who could've both showed up in practical work clothes, started handing out blankets and bottled water and diapers and food along with American Army National Guardsmen, Baptist aid workers, Mexican Soldatos, both native-born and immigrant Muslim Imams and other volunteers from every walk of life, worked up a sweat and done an honest day's work and right or wrong, probably been lifted up as heroes and generated weeks worth of positive coverage and both approval points and ratings bumps in doing so...except that they declined the offer. Unlike the Trumps, the Cajun Navy good ol' boys are out there busting their asses doing dangerous work and doing it with their own boats, on their own dime and on their own time.

...And they ask for no glory in doing so.

Hey, church people, you want respect? You want the "Spirit of the age" to bend back your way? Get out there and get wet and dirty helping the people of Houston rebuild and rescuing old people out of flooded nursing homes. Respect is earned, Leadership, is earned. Every action, every day. Integrity above all, service before self, excellence in all that we do. It really is that simple.

We are persuaded that faithfulness in our generation means declaring once again the true story of the world and of our place in it—particularly as male and female. Christian Scripture teaches that there is but one God who alone is Creator and Lord of all. To him alone, every person owes glad-hearted thanksgiving, heart-felt praise, and total allegiance. This is the path not only of glorifying God, but of knowing ourselves. To forget our Creator is to forget who we are, for he made us for himself. And we cannot know ourselves truly without truly knowing him who made us. We did not make ourselves. We are not our own. Our true identity, as male and female persons, is given by God. It is not only foolish, but hopeless, to try to make ourselves what God did not create us to be. 

Would somebody please explain to me when the FUCK modern conceptions of gender and sexuality became central tenets of Christianity? Or are we just reacting negatively to social change, yet again? I'm gonna put it down as being the latter.

Also, believe it or not, nobody in America owes God (or ya'll) anything of the sort. According to what *I* was taught starting out as a Baptist, allegiance and praise and thanksgiving are to be given by one's own choice and of one's own free will or it doesn't count.

You have to believe it because you want to believe it. Now, social group dynamics and this and that or the other thing may play a part in that choice for each person, for good or ill...but at the end of the day no person can be compelled in their own heart and mind to either give or to owe God anything. Either we give our Belief freely because we desire to do so...or, in effect, we do not give it at all. Again, it comes down to respect, to trust, to faith in something greater than what can be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands. True belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as one's Savior and the Redeemer of sins and the Son of God may never...never...be compelled.

Ya'll might be able to get people to act all religious when you're looking, but that's about it.

We believe that God’s design for his creation and his way of salvation serve to bring him the greatest glory and bring us the greatest good. God’s good plan provides us with the greatest freedom. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it in overflowing measure. He is for us and not against us. Therefore, in the hope of serving Christ’s church and witnessing publicly to the good purposes of God for human sexuality revealed in Christian Scripture, we offer the following affirmations and denials.

I'm serious, I think these people spend way too much time thinking about sex, especially sex that other people are having. Sorry, but the Christianity and conservatism that I was raised with included minding one's own business as part of the deal...and that's hard...but even the Good Book says none of this is supposed to be easy.

Let's get started:

WE AFFIRM that God has designed marriage to be a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife, and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church. WE DENY that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship. We also deny that marriage is a mere human contract rather than a covenant made before God.

WE AFFIRM that God’s revealed will for all people is chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage. WE DENY that any affections, desires, or commitments ever justify sexual intercourse before or outside marriage; nor do they justify any form of sexual immorality.

Oh, horse shit, the divorce rates, closeted gay praise-and-worship band members, Pastors on the Down-Low with their Grindr profiles and teenage and young adult technical virgins in your own churches...and the fact that all this stuff is known to and tacitly accepted by anybody who knows what's really going on in American church culture...put the lie to this crap. The fact that I can think of people who I know who make me think that goats have more dignity and self-respect and sexual morality than at least some Christians do tells me that whoever wrote this is full of crap and knows it.

Tell me something, if marriage isn't a human construct, why are humans the only creatures that get married?

WE AFFIRM that God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings, in his own image, equal before God as persons, and distinct as male and female. WE DENY that the divinely ordained differences between male and female render them unequal in dignity or worth.

WE AFFIRM that divinely ordained differences between male and female reflect God’s original creation design and are meant for human good and human flourishing. WE DENY that such differences are a result of the Fall or are a tragedy to be overcome.

Might want to explain that to your own believers, and do so using smaller words...because some of them don't get the parts that you are denying. Such have been part of Fundamentalist belief...for as long as there has been Christian Fundamentalism.

WE AFFIRM that the differences between male and female reproductive structures are integral to God’s design for self-conception as male or female. WE DENY that physical anomalies or psychological conditions nullify the God-appointed link between biological sex and self-conception as male or female.

WE AFFIRM that those born with a physical disorder of sex development are created in the image of God and have dignity and worth equal to all other image-bearers. They are acknowledged by our Lord Jesus in his words about “eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb.” With all others they are welcome as faithful followers of Jesus Christ and should embrace their biological sex insofar as it may be known. WE DENY that ambiguities related to a person’s biological sex render one incapable of living a fruitful life in joyful obedience to Christ.

WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture. WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.

First, science says you're wrong, and second, my own personal experience of interacting with LGBT people or even an asexual person (Maybe I should try out one of those longer acronyms?) tells me that this interpretation is wrong. No one wakes up in the morning and decides to "adopt" a gay or lesbian or bisexual or asexual or transgender "self-conception." You are what you are, and due to cultural, religious, social and various other factors some people might even have a hard time figuring that out.

That sucks, but it's the truth. I've seen people struggle to accept themselves.

Hell, I knew at least one dude who didn't figure out that he was gay until he was 70 years old and his wife of almost 50 years had died. In hindsight, you could see it in some ways. Fun fact, dude was a conservative and a Republican and very active in his church. We all pretty much rolled with it, when he figured it out. Maybe we didn't like it, necessarily...but he kept his private life private and that suited him and us church people at the time. When he died, every last one of us in the Bible Study group shook his partner's hand and offered our condolences. We all agreed that we felt we owed that to our brother. He'd been there for us. At his funeral his partner of several years...who was a church-going Polish Catholic and he got more shit from some of us Baptists about that than being gay...was right there along with his family and those who had a problem with that just didn't show up.

Maybe not everybody agreed with it all, certainly some things were said that might not be said today (and that they were said was accepted, with only occasional offense) but we had enough respect for him to accept his choices and enough respect for ourselves not to freak out and act like idiots.

We affirmed that we're all human beings, and not one of us was free from sin. We denied any claim to judge another man lest our own sins be held up against us.

WE AFFIRM that people who experience sexual attraction for the same sex may live a rich and fruitful life pleasing to God through faith in Jesus Christ, as they, like all Christians, walk in purity of life. WE DENY that sexual attraction for the same sex is part of the natural goodness of God’s original creation, or that it puts a person outside the hope of the gospel.

WE AFFIRM that sin distorts sexual desires by directing them away from the marriage covenant and toward sexual immorality— a distortion that includes both heterosexual and homosexual immorality. WE DENY that an enduring pattern of desire for sexual immorality justifies sexually immoral behavior.

WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness. WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.

I'm just going to say here...that I'm starting to wonder if the people who wrote this crap have ever interacted with actual human beings? Again, you don't have to like somebody else's choices, but as I long ago did...you do have to recognize that other people's choices are simply not yours to make.

If you want them to make different choices, live the teachings that you say you believe and provide an example...be a "Light in the darkness" like we used to say...and hope and pray that your efforts have an effect. It may not be what you want. but if you want to lead someone to live a Christian...or more Christian...life then it might be a good idea to accept that a gay Christian is still a Christian and if they are to be judged then it's not for you to do the judging.

After all...you're not Christ. You don't know what that person has been through or what their brain chemicals tell the rest of their body and it's just that simple.

WE AFFIRM our duty to speak the truth in love at all times, including when we speak to or about one another as male or female. WE DENY any obligation to speak in such ways that dishonor God’s design of his image-bearers as male and female.

Here, I will most strenuously disagree. We have an obligation to respect other human beings, and if that means addressing them by whatever pronouns they prefer or picking the neutral ground of they, them, their, then that is what should be done. You cannot win somebody over to your point of view without common courtesy, decency and respect nor without establishing the comfort level and trust needed to have an open, honest conversation.

You have to talk TO people, not AT them.

I'm serious.

WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ gives both merciful pardon and transforming power, and that this pardon and power enable a follower of Jesus to put to death sinful desires and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ is insufficient to forgive all sexual sins and to give power for holiness to every believer who feels drawn into sexual sin. WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ enables sinners to forsake transgender self-conceptions and by divine forbearance to accept the God-ordained link between one’s biological sex and one’s self-conception as male or female. WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ sanctions self-conceptions that are at odds with God’s revealed will. WE AFFIRM that Christ Jesus has come into the world to save sinners and that through Christ’s death and resurrection forgiveness of sins and eternal life are available to every person who repents of sin and trusts in Christ alone as Savior, Lord, and supreme treasure. WE DENY that the Lord’s arm is too short to save or that any sinner is beyond his reach.

Again, that's all fine and good that you want to affirm things that are basic Christian theology...but you might start with explaining this stuff to the average homophobe sitting in the pews, and making sure that they understand how it applies to The Other and that yes, indeed, it does apply.

Otherwise, all this has been is yet another patronizing exercise in self-congratulatory bullshit

Without that last part, and without that being emphasized, and without treating all those other people in all those articles like human beings and maybe accepting the fact that they're gay and that's not going anywhere...ya'll just wasted a lot of time and got yourselves blasted on social media for nothing.

My friend Tim calls that "Talking because you have the capability to talk."

Now instead of claiming that ya'll are persecuted and the "Spirit of the age" (whatever that means) is against you, consider this?

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?

Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

~Daniel 3:14-18

In this time of our Basketball-stadium churches and our gold-plated President with his gold-plated toilets and overactive social media blabber-mouthing, where worshiping statues is apparently not out of the question at least for some people...ya'll might want to give some real thought to who really is holding up the golden image here, and who really IS representing the Truth.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O King...they were ready to die for the Truth, because they knew it was the Truth. Can you say that? Those men didn't need...didn't have...bright lights and glamour and TV to persuade them one way or the other. In fact they saw the equivalent of it in their own time and they rejected it, out of hand. They stood apart from the culture in which they lived, rather than trying to control and dominate it.

Might not be a bad idea to give that some consideration

Old rich white guys don't give a fuck about you, and they don't give a fuck about Jesus either. Every. Single. Time.

And Everything that Trump touches, dies.

Every. Single. Time.

Give that some thought...

Ghosts, Part II

Mine eyes have seen the glory 
Of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage 
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fateful lightning
Of his terrible, swift sword
His Truth is marching on.

I was screwing around on Twitter this morning, waiting for my friend to get done at the Dentist...when I saw this:

'Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) on Thursday defended President Trump's claim that "both sides" were responsible for the violence that erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend, comparing Confederate memorials to those put up to honor the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.'

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

(While we're at it, I can think of few ideologies that might be more worth dropping a couple of fully-fueled jumbo jets on than the idea that one human being should have the right to own another human being, but I digress.)

I have seen Him in the watch-fires
Of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar
In the Evening dews and damps
I can read His righteous sentence
by the dim and flaring lamps
His Day is marching on.

Maine.

Of all the fucking places...

During the battle of Gettysburg on July 3rd of 1863 the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, held the far-left end of the Union line and repulsed multiple attacks by two Alabama regiments of the Confederate Army. Their ammunition was exhausted, and knowing...knowing...that the Enemy was coming back and there was no way his spent troops could withstand another assault...he ordered his men to fix bayonets and, executing some freewheeling, complex maneuvering to get the regiment back in formation...he ordered a damned-near suicidal downhill bayonet charge straight into the face of the oncoming enemy. In the process, one Confederate regiment was overwhelmed and captured...and with the men, their powder and shot...and another was broken and picked apart by a company of Union sharpshooters from another regiment that were under Chamberlain's operational control.

I have read a fiery Gospel
Writ in burnished rows of steel
As ye deal with my contemners 
So with you my grace shall deal
Let the hero born of Woman
Crush the serpent with His heel
Since God is marching on.

That takes balls, damned suicidal courage and nerves of steel to give an order like that. But more importantly, it takes bone-deep respect and trust...because those men went when and where they were ordered. That speaks to the character of the man himself, because respect is earned. Every action, every day. No mistakes. It's moments like that when you find out what you're made of. Respect, either you have it or you don't. His men? They didn't just go down that hill. By God, they did so with sufficient ferocity that they literally ripped victory from the jaws of certain defeat. Many historians credit Chamberlain and the 20th Maine with preventing a Confederate flanking maneuver and in so doing, saving the Union.

Joshua Chamberlain would go on to fight in many more battles, be severely wounded at Petersburg, resume command of the regiment...and ultimately receive the surrender of and order his men to render honors to the Confederate infantry at Appomattox. Thirty years later, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in the battle of Little Round Top.

Joshua Chamberlain would go on to be elected Governor of Maine (As a Republican, back when that meant you were something other than a bigot.) He would serve as President of Bowdoin College and serve in a variety of other government and charitable capacities before ultimately dying of his wounds over fifty years after he sustained them.

I had to look it up. Dude literally should not have even survived. He should have died at Petersburg.

Joshua Chamberlain made his state and the world a measurably better place while living on borrowed time and there are statues of him aplenty in Maine...and deservedly so.

Go ahead, tell me what Robert E. Lee or Thomas John "Stonewall" Jackson did that is comparable. I'll wait.

As I mentioned the other day, I've *Been* to Gettysburg. I was a little kid at the time, but I was there. I think it was 1979, my Dad's gray 1978 Jeep CJ7 was still pretty new...and for much of the trip I was sandwiched in the back with all the camping gear and stuff. It was a warm summer day under a clear, cloudless blue sky. We hiked around the park. We visited a number of sites that my Dad...all serious with his books and maps in his backpack...compass in hand and a notebook-which he used up most of by the end of the day-and pencils in his pocket...wanted to check out. We were there for a couple of days...the next day we drove more places, and walked less. The whole time my Dad thoroughly enjoyed his time in what had to be the equivalent of Disneyland for an amateur historian of the War Between the States. As I would be a decade later in Wyoming, that day...my Dad was feeling the ghosts, hearing the shouted orders and smelling the scents of black powder and blood on the wind, carried across time by his imagination.

I still have that notebook, and another that went with it, plus some papers left over from a talk he gave to members of his Civil War reenactment group.

I am steeped in this history. I have been studying it since I could read. Hell, a huge part of why I was a Republican or stood for the values of checks on the power of the State (because slavery or any other racist system cannot exist without the support of the State) international engagement, limited government, personal freedom, respect for the Constitution and the respect for diversity and tolerance that all that stuff entails are *Because* of people like Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglass and Joshua Chamberlain and Robert Gould Shaw.

He has sounded forth the trumpet
That shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of Men
Before His judgment Seat
O be swift my soul to answer Him
Be jubilant my feet
Our God is marching on.

Paul LePage wouldn't have been fit to hold Joshua Chamberlain's hat while he took a leak...And this goddamned motherfucker wants to compare the removal of the statues of fucking Traitors to the United States of America to the September 11th Attacks?

No. Just. No.

It doesn't work like that.

You know why I left the Republican Party? Because over the last nine years the Republican Party has ceased to be the party of Lincoln in any meaningful way. It has even ceased to be the party of George Wallace, who eventually became a born-again Christian, publicly and privately repented of his racism and appointed record numbers of African Americans to government positions in Alabama. No, the Republican Party...due to racism, stupidity, and just plain yellow-eyed hatred of Barack Hussein Obama...has pushed the refrain of "I'll never be out-niggered again" to the point where I honestly think the hate and the racism and the overall situation has even gotten away from Donald Trump...who is of course, too stupid to realize it. His own statements regarding Charlottesville appear to be continuing to do more harm than good.

Like I said, to hear these people tell it the primary value of America is and should be racism. If they can't own other people, damn it, they want to at least memorialize having once had the right to do so.

Yeah, about that...

So, Instead of Republicans being out of control, we have...well, Nazis, existing in the first place in the United States of America...and not being dead yet.

There can be only one solution to that problem.

As I feel certain that the ghost of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain would tell us to do...

...Fix bayonets, and charge. Fight, speak, Prophetically. If you want a better nation, be better citizens. If you want a better world, be better people. If you want people to act in accordance with the Word of God and the Truth as you understand it...do so yourself. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

In the beauty of the Lillies
Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in His bosom
That transfigures you and me
As He died to make men holy
Let us die to make men free.
While God is marching on.

For those who don't know, the Battle Hymn of the Republic draws heavily on Apocalyptic themes from the Biblical Books of Isaiah and Revelation, and is rich with End Times imagery. It quotes and paraphrases a number of Bible verses and was written in a time when the use of Christian idiom and imagery was common in most spheres of life. In the hands of an artful speaker it could be and was used to powerful effect. As such, it was a common sentiment on (yes) both sides that the Armies were the forces of Revelation, defending against (or protecting, depending on which side you asked) the agency of the Anti-Christ. These currents still ebb and flow through American Christianity today in the struggles for civil rights, LGBT and racial equality and religious tolerance. The song was also quoted by Martin Luther King Jr. in his last public speech:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live - a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain top. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

...And it wasn't just Black people he was talking about, it never was. It's all of us.

Ghosts, Part I

Ghosts, Part I.

Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they've always done before

Look at the hate we're breeding
Look at the fear we're feeding
Look at the lives we're leading
The way we've always done before

My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can't deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars

~Guns & Roses, Civil War

I've been a few places, I've seen some stuff. Thankfully...owing as much to the time in which I came of age as anything else, I never had to go to war. I've seen a little of its after-effects though. Ironically, none of that stuff stayed with me so much as when I went to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana with my Mom on a gray, windy day in July of 1989. Not the first such place I'd seen, as a kid I'd been to Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, and the Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia. My Dad was a Civil War reenactor, such places were important to him. But, for me, being a kid at the time it was just a big adventure...though being steeped in Civil War history from such a young age would go on to greatly affect my thought process as I got older.

As a young adult though (and several years after my Dad passed away) doing more serious things (for example, I drove off and on, on that trip, which would take us to Seattle and all the way down the West Coast to San Diego, a big deal for a 15-year-old kid with the ink on his permit barely dry, looking forward to getting his driver's license the following November) this time felt a lot different. Looking out across those low hills, and the gravestones, under that vast gray sky...I could almost feel the ghosts...

What must it have been like, for the Native Americans, or the Soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry? The desperate fight for survival as arrows and bullets zipped through the air, the pain of wounds, the blood...the cries of the dying or the wounded? Did the Soldiers know, or care, that they were dying for some rich man's bullshit ideas about "Manifest Destiny" did the Native Americans consider that even a great victory might buy their lifestyle, as they knew it, only a few more years? Or was everybody just trying to survive the engagement in one piece...as is usually the case with such things?

War is hell. It doesn't matter which side you're on.

We didn't say much, I got a couple of small books at the Visitor's Center that I kept for many years. I think both of us were pretty quiet for a good couple of hours once we got back on the road, too. I drove, lost in thought, until it started to rain hard...big raindrops that spattered hard against the windshield of my Mom's dark blue 1988 Chevy Cheyanne pickup truck, and made it hard to see. Not to mention the winds that pushed the trailer around and forced me out of my reverie as I struggled to hold the steering wheel steady. I still remember pulling over and getting damned near soaked as each of us got out to change drivers...there was a cooler full of stuff on the bench seat, as I recall. Once on the passenger side...recently having given up my habit of reading in the truck for a tendency to watch the road ahead...I settled back into my uncomfortable thoughts and peered ahead into the deepening grayness of the evening storm.

So it's been the last couple of days. I've thought a lot, I've wanted to write a lot on this subject but I've been unable to articulate my own thoughts to any degree that I thought adequate.

Like most people (and more aware of World War II-era history than many others are as well) I watched the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, with a combination of bemusement and mild irritation at the Tiki-Torch bearing, Sweater-vest-wearing Internet Nazis on Friday night. What a joke these people are! I mean, come on, Tiki torches? What is this, Triumph Of The Will meets late August Wal-Mart rollbacks? Are you kidding me? That'd turn to anger and horror by Saturday afternoon when a car driven by one of these loser Nazi dumb asses deliberately and with malice aforethought, plowed into a crowd of nonviolent protesters, killing one young woman and injuring 19 other people.

I found out about it many minutes after the fact, on Twitter. I'll remember seeing that video for the rest of my life, just like I'll remember the Invasion of Kuwait, the start of Desert Storm, the start of the Yugoslav wars, first hearing of the Rwanda genocide (and sitting there watching that rec-room TV in the dorms and wondering why we weren't on our way to try and stop it) or arguing with my ex-wife on Yahoo Messenger right before finding out about the (then-ongoing) 9/11 attacks.

Some things, they just stay with you, I guess.

The chants, the Confederate flags, the guns, the racism, the Swastikas...all that crap didn't really matter after that. The situation turned into a brawl and I watched one video where some fucking White Supremacist got repeatedly interrupted by some old guy shouting "Indict for murder now!" Then  he got beat up and run off and had to be rescued and escorted away by police. Not long after that, the Governor declared a state of emergency, citing the fact that most of the white supremacists were apparently from out of state, and endangering his citizens. The rallies were dispersed and riot police were called in.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, among others, correctly called the vehicular homicide an act of Domestic Terrorism. Many various people on both Left and Right have also called that shit out. I've found myself agreeing with people that normally I'd check if they told me the sky was blue.

It's been a long time...since the end of the Indian Wars, in fact...since conflict has come to this country, on land at least.

Oh, sure, there have been plenty of conflicts other than war. Not least the long struggle by African Americans to gain the full Civil Rights that our Constitution says they are due...and that one is still not over. Do you think the ghosts of Rosewood, of Tulsa, or of individuals from Emmett Till all the way on down to Mike Brown and Philando Castile rest easy? 'Cause I sure don't. Most of the time though, we resolve these conflicts without mass bloodshed...or at least we have since the Civil War and the end of the Indian Wars.

A different kind of conflict is coming. One doesn't negotiate with Nazis, one destroys them. It may take a war...or given the weak nature of most of these idiots, a hell of a lot of punches to various young, white faces is more likely. We cannot reason with people who don't think the rest of us have a right to exist. This situation is made worse by the fact that all too many Americans cannot conceptualize the idea that some people would rather kill and steal than live, or that some people would rather hate than eat. These people are the reason I say we need to bring back the ass whuppin' here in America.

Look at the shit-fest that is social media most days, and all the evidence is laid out before us.

Our own history is much the same, only a lot more bloody at times.

We look out into the world, and judge...but we've had our own Concentration Camps here in America, and we've done our own ethnic cleansing...and we did it without no damn Nazis. In point of fact as a friend of mine who is Alaskan Native will tell you, we did it to her ancestors at the same time as we were defeating the Nazis and liberating the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Not even a full decade after that, as African Americans stood up and demanded their Civil Rights, with bus boycotts and court cases and protest marches...the racists stood up and said that Black people were destroying America. Never mind the century of abuse and discrimination and murders and terror that had gone on since those people were supposed to have gotten their rights in the first place! Black people are destroying America!

Fuckin' seriously?!?!?! Where did these people come up with that shit?

Christ, you'd think to hear the racists tell it...that the sole purpose of America is to perpetuate racism and protect their white privilege.

After all, don't most "Conservatives" these days, constantly bitch about how gay people, liberals, minorities, something something George Soros blah blah blah DESTROYING AMERICA!

Yet, if you look at the conduct of most of the Republican Party, not to mention the Trump Administration, vs. the decisions made by the previous administration, the courts, and people in general...it's not hard to deduce that right-wingers have basically decided that if they can't have America...and have it their way...they'll burn it down or sell it to the Russians for thirty pieces of silver before they'll see Black folks, or liberals or Muslims, or even their own poor white voters get their fair share.

Remember, these are the people who call this logic:

'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it', a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong. (Quoting war correspondent Peter Arnett)

But no, it's everybody else that's "Destroying America."

As I've said many times, being anti-liberal is not the same thing as being conservative. Blaming other people for your bullshit or your problems doesn't make them go away.

I'm quite sure that if you could go back in time, and ask one of the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, or Sitting Bull, or some poor Sharecropper, or Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X, or the ghost of a murdered voter-registration worker in Mississippi "Are you intent on destroying America" they'd honestly tell you No. I'd further be willing to bet that if you asked them what they did want to do...most if not all of them probably just wanted to live life as they knew it, better themselves if possible, and help others along the way as needed.

Thankfully, in the history of this country a lot of people have stood up for what's right. A lot of others stood up for the wrong thing...and I'll bet that an awful lot of those people knew it was wrong, too. They just didn't care.

You know, one thing I consistently find appalling...in these recent events as much as the more distant past...is that white people refuse to recognize not only the basic dignity or humanity of African Americans (and other ethnic or racial minorities) but even their Christianity...the one thing that if we actually went by the Bible...should unite people. But of course, it doesn't.

Likewise with religious minorities...Jews and Muslims believe many of the same things that Christians do, and we all believe in the same God. I've never heard of a Buddhist, or a Hindu or a Sikh in this country going out of their way to hurt anybody else where it wasn't for a reason.

What makes all these white idiots think that everybody else is out to take their Jesus away?

(...Unless of course, the answer is that their "Jesus" is an idol made in their own image that would evaporate like rain from a Wyoming hillside if it were exposed to the Truth...)

All too often, people who've been handed an easy life care more about what makes them feel good about themselves than they do about doing the right thing. People will chase after ideological unicorns, follow after the dumbest conspiracy theories...and in general go to an amazing amount of work just to avoid doing the (often, easier if you think about it) work of facing down our bullshit and doing what we should have done in the first place.

Things, they're changing. The United States of America is becoming more diverse...and continues to do so no matter the political machinations of Fascists and Nazis and racists and Republicans. Hell, the social fabric of our country has changed in the last seven months, with a majority of people now saying that things like health care are a right rather than a privilege. People are sick of income inequality, and wars, and the various social problems that mostly are tolerated in this country because some old rich fool makes money off of them. As regards people? If you look at whole regions of the country...not to mention human beings under the age of about twelve or so nationwide...the demographics have already changed. Roland Martin said on his show this morning, that we should be ready for 30 years of conflict...until we hit the point in 2044 or so where no one group will have a majority nationwide.

Personally, I think we'll hit that point sooner than that.

On a more general level I think with all this Trump bullshit and the fact that they've appointed idiots as their champions, right-wingers are gonna go down faster and harder than that. Once that happens, I doubt that many people will be bothered by ethnic or racial diversity. I don't doubt though, that there will be a long period of conflict. Some are already saying we're in a period of Cold Civil War.

When someone consults the ghosts of my generation, I wonder what we will have to say? For me, I'll say that for one thing I've always thought that diversity was kind of the default setting of life...and I started out as a conservative. I've always thought that education, the environment, history, and maintaining the things we as a people...all of us...have, were important, and so is progress and people bettering themselves. Would I die for those ideals? Hell yes. I wouldn't want to live in a world without them.

Creationists don't build starships, and while the Nazis built excellent rockets, they decided they'd rather aim for London than for the Moon.

The horizons of such people are always too close.

I claim the right to master my fear and reach for the stars.

All people have to have the right to do that...or none of us do. We are all free, or none of us are.

We still have a long way to go.

When are we going to get there, and how much blood will be spilled by those fighting for decency and equality and progress vs. those fighting against it? Who can say.

Ask the ghost of Heather Hayer. The spirits of the dead are unfettered by the shackles of time.

...

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. ~Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley.


Ghosts, Part II

Reading Amos in the Devil's House

Amos 5King James Version (KJV)

5 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel.

2 The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.

3 For thus saith the Lord God; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.

4 For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live:

5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought.

6 Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel...

As any who know me can tell you, I work in food service at a casino. I've been there for 14 years. It used to be a good job, now it's just...average I guess. The benefits are good and I have days off that I like. That's why I'm still there after all this time. Last night I was running a bit late, had a hell of a time finding a parking place and getting in to punch in on time...

Anyway, I report for the pre-shift meeting and before I even get there, my boss tells me where I'm at. The Slot Palace. OK, great, back out to the car to drive over there and then I have (on a normal night there) a long night ahead...because it'll get pretty slow.

While driving over there I pass this huge red tour bus...Safeway tours, it said on the side. What was notable however was that the name appeared in two languages, English and a complex slew of Chinese characters...and the flag on the back was Canadian. Cool, I thought, not a lot of idiocy regarding diversity and multiculturalism in Mr. Trudeau's Great White North. 

(I have to wonder if my own country will survive long enough to reach that point where an American greyhound bus might have Arabic or Chinese letters on it to go with the English ones, and I wonder now, without it seeming so far-fetched, if what comes after might do a better job of handling the simple truth that we are all human beings, and all equal...equally saved or equally damned...in the eyes of our Creator...depending on whether or not we accept whatever Truth it is that He has for us?)

Around that same time, the above Bible Verses stuck in my head...enough that I felt compelled to look up Amos chapter five when I went on my first break after an uneventful first couple of hours, and read it.

7 Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name: 9 That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

Then I saw this.

For those who don't care to follow the link, a Texas Baptist Church choir basically sang a song of praise to Donald Trump. Like he's Jesus or something:

(Sorry, but my theological background is originally Baptist, so this offends me on a literally theological level. I'm about to get a little ranty and most likely I'm going to lose my cool and cuss up a storm before it's over because I'm sorry, that's what people with my level of Baptist influence, who grew up around carpenters and sailors and who've lived a rougher life than they should've and seen a lot since do in this case.)

The short version could best be summed up as "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!"

But then, my mind flashed back to what I'd just read...

10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

If that doesn't sound like the Republican Party and about 36% of America right now, I don't know what the hell does. Our elected officials want to take health insurance away from 32 million of their own citizens, and massively drive up costs for all the rest. We've denied entry to the country to robotics competition teams from Afghanistan and the Gambia (although the all-girl Afghan team's robot is going!) and though most of the Muslim Ban stuff was not allowed to go into effect...we're still not allowing people's grandmothers into the country...

Any of this sound fucked up to you yet?

....AND then we have Baptists, singing songs of praise to Trump?

Sorry, but this is starting to sound an awful lot like one of those overpriced, extremely terrible End Times Apocalypse novel series one would find at the local Christian bookstore...only worse and it's reality. It's almost enough to make me wish I didn't know that the Rapture was a false, unbiblical doctrine based on escapism and revenge fantasy...

13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

14 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

16 Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.

17 And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord.

18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.

19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.

20 Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

The End is coming, people. It won't come in nuclear fireballs or the flash of lightning seen from east to west that Matthew 24 says the Lord's return will be like. No, the End comes when day by day, our country and its government lose a little more credibility each time the President says something stupid, ungodly, or both. The end comes from pulling out of the Paris Accords climate change pact (which many cities and states have pledged to continue to follow, in effect, setting their own foreign policy...which in my view, they are right to do) and from pretty much every state so far refusing to fully comply...and many, including many conservative states...refusing to comply at all with the President's bullshit "Voter Fraud" voter suppression commission....and yet again...they are 100% right to do so in order to protect the interests and privacy of their own citizens. At this rate, the End of America will come by disunion simply because of utterly incompetent leadership...and we will deserve it...

Why?

...Because people who should've known better sang praises to this asshole like they thought he was Jesus Christ in a bad orange wig.

Because white privilege, and white supremacy...were more important to a lot of people than decent governance. Because people would rather want horrible things about their neighbors to be true...and act as if they were...than go and talk to those same neighbors and risk finding out that those things were false...and most of all? Because people have lost the ability to discern the truth from a lie...which is also something that the Bible speaks of in the End Times.

21 I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.

22 Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

23 Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

(I think in this case, He is speaking to you, First Baptist church of Dallas, Texas. Maybe it might be a good idea to have more homeless people and fewer oil billionaires in your Congregation, you might get closer to the Truth.)

I started out as a Christian, as a (moderate) conservative, and when I first registered to vote I did so as a Republican. I can't tell you how angry and disappointed I am, that I see those words all becoming synonymous with what the Bible or even my old Baptist church back in the day would have called doctrines of devils and houses of demons.

Go ahead, tell me where the Bible advocates exaltation of the Self, greed, hate, racism and mindlessly following after vapid pop-culture icons, I'll wait.

Probably for a damned long time...

24 But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

25 Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

26 But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.

27 Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts.

To quote a signature line from a favorite science fiction series "All this has happened before, and it will happen again."

The authoritarian bootlickers and the bullies and the idiots and the rich con-artists will have their fun for a little while, a while that appears to grow ever so slightly shorter by the day, and then there will be blood. People are only going to put up with this shit for so long. That's what a good portion of these Trump idiots want. They want to fight the rest of the world with their guns and get saved by the intervention of White Republican Jesus. I just don't think that's going to work out the way they think it will.

Not least because their version of Jesus is fake, made in their own image.

When the bill gets settled up after, you best be sure you were on the right side.

Pro-tip: Historically, the right side is not the one that sings songs of praise to buffoonish false Christs and wannabe-dictators.

Think about that for a second. 

By the most basic standards of Christian conduct as outlined in church tradition and the Bible, Trump fails.

Who ever thought that electing a non-Believer to lead this country would make it more "Christian?"

And then the guy allows Christians to sing praises to HIM?

Think about it. Just set aside all the dogma and all the politics and what you thought was gonna happen and think about it.

You know it's wrong, don't you, really?

Exodus 20:3King James Version (KJV)

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Coins For Mercedes (Fundraiser closed by me.)

Two weeks ago, my friend Alyssa and I rescued two ferrets, a large Sable male who we named Monte Christo and a small Cinnamon female we named Mercedes. They are both supposed to be around eight months old.

Monte is fine, a big bouncy happy boy that likes to get into stuff, whose only real problem is a dangerous desire to chew on anything rubber that he can reach.

Mercedes, however, has real trouble using her back legs. We first noticed this when giving them the obligatory bath after we got them back to my house, and during the ensuing ferret playtime. At best, she'll walk sitting down, or sort of crawl. She wants to be a ferret and play...but that's difficult with mobility issues.

We took her to the vet, and she got medication for a potential back injury which was what the vet suspected, as did I at the time...and after two weeks of cage rest and medication there hasn't been any improvement and Alyssa, who along with a friend is caring for her...appears to be becoming despondent about this situation.

(Anybody seeking to donate should message me on Facebook)

Thanks.

Changes.

"I've had some long nights in stir, alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade. That was the longest night of my life." ~Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman's character) The Shawshank Redemption.

I do travel, occasionally. Last weekend I hired an animal sitter to tend to my dogs and the ferrets and I went up north...first to my Mom's and then to the Upper Peninsula (of Michigan) to attend my Grandma's 90th Birthday party in the Marquette area.

Early Saturday morning (with Memorial Weekend well underway, judging from the previous day's traffic) my Mom and I headed out pretty early. driving up through Cheboygan and then along the lake towards Mackinaw City...and after driving across the Mackinaw Bridge (which had reduced traffic due to joggers being present) we made a quick stop for breakfast and to use the bathroom at MacDonald's in Saint Ignace. When we got our food...we were waited on by this cute little Black girl.

That's a change...and an obvious one,,,here.

Mom got behind the wheel of her Jeep, and we set off down US-2, headed west under a vast, clear blue sky. There is a reason locals often call the Upper Peninsula "God's Country" and days like that one are it.

You notice things...signs for small businesses in houses, tourist traps, changes since the last time you went this way...for me, it's been about five years.

Early on, we passed a small convoy of Army National Guard trucks, shockingly out of place painted in desert tan. Almost certainly, they were from the 107th Engineer Battalion (the Upper Peninsula's resident National Guard unit,) All headed the other way...presumably to Camp Grayling for training. You'd think they'd have the holiday off. I have to say that, thanks to the open side windows on the armored cabs of their Oshkosh M1083 trucks, I observed that this troop included at least a couple of Black and Brown faces...and it, too, is worth noting that though they have Armories in the cities like Marquette and Sault Ste. Marie, many of their companies, detachments and troops are based in outlying communities like Gladstone (near Escanaba) Ishpeming, or Kingsford.

So, diversity in this case is noticeable.

Along US-2 is still kind of a tourist area, so everything is decently well kept. Some of the houses might be a little rough, old cars here and there...and, it being Memorial Weekend...lots of garage sale junk...but things are decently maintained.

Further down the road, I noticed that not only some of the houses...but road signs with blinkers and the common pumping stations and transfer sites for things like natural gas that are pretty ubiquitous in the area had Solar panels to power them. This held all the way through our turn north up through Engadine and driving up to M-28 for the main leg of the trip across the Upper Peninsula...what they call the "Seney stretch." This is the Upper Peninsula that people think of when somebody says the word "Yooper."

Much of the way along M-28 a railroad track follows along the highway, crossing in several places. On sidings here and there sit old railway cars, boxcars and tanker cars mostly...and many have not moved in 30 or 40 years. The route goes through several towns...skirting around Newberry, Seney, Shingleton...and there's more than one collection of abandoned houses or other buildings in each town or in between. Especially given the changes I'd mentioned earlier the disparity can be jarring.

Yet for whatever reason, Federal grants, who knows? Each town had a nice, new, well-maintained park with new-looking playground equipment.

Odd...but not that out of place in the land of rusty old pickup trucks and nice new deer rifles.

In some places...it really does seem almost apocalyptic...abandoned houses, broken-down cars in the yards of shitty shacks, falling-down barns, rusting rail-cars on equally rusted tracks. Hell, add a few abandoned cars on the highway and it would not be hard to imagine a different past in which instead of the last ones flying out to Minot, North Dakota on my birthday in 1994, the BUFF's (Boeing B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers) of the 410th Bomb Wing were all bombed up in response to some crisis, that orders were hastily given and that the sky shook every 12.5 seconds with Minimum Interval Takeoffs, and filled with the ear-splitting sound of screaming TF-33 jet engines and vast trails of black smoke in the face of incoming Soviet (or Russian) missile strikes that would turn the northern night brighter than the light of a thousand suns in an apocalypse of energy and fire, nor to imagine that the area that I knew so well in my younger years...K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, the surrounding communities of Gwinn and Skandia, and probably Marquette itself...would not be so hospitable to human life as it was to be for us later that day. If one imagines the few bike-riders or people out walking that we saw as the living ghosts of shell-shocked survivors...it's not hard to imagine that the Nukes...or perhaps in our more popular modern context, the Zombies...have come and gone and the apocalypse is decades in the past.

But in the real world...we face many less immediate, but in some ways more insidious crises. Climate Change, for one...and election meddling by the Russians that might even cause as much or more damage than the aforementioned nuclear weapons. I heard dumb ass Trump is thinking of pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Change accord?

Dude...the oil and gas companies are already using solar panels.

Try as you might, you can't hold back...nor easily undo...progress. If you try...you're likely going to get squished under the forward motion of the world. It's slow, perhaps, but inexorable if it's gotten to here by now.

Funny thing, too, not a political sign in sight. People have moved on.

We stopped for gas in Munising at the other end of the Stretch before doubling back a bit to take a slightly different route. A Latino family got gas at the same time we did. We got back on the road, a large programmable sign I'd seen earlier advised truck traffic to K.I. Sawyer to take this route also. An hour or so later...and having shooed several mosquitoes out of the Jeep...we turned onto US 41 north, only to find extensive road construction and a decent amount of truck traffic close to the former Air Force Base. So, after a couple of decades of inactivity...the area seemed busy again...or at least busy enough for the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend...perhaps more so than I remembered it.

We went on to have a nice day with my family. When we got there, my cousin was regaling guests with the tale of her Lyft driver...one of the top five in Chicago, she said. An immigrant from Cameroon who works as a scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory who drives Lyft as a second job to pay off his student loans...and she took the opportunity to speak to him in French. Like I said...we NEED people like that Lyft driver in America...that kind of drive, freaking energy and intelligence...if this country is going to meet all the challenges it must in order to survive. But some people don't like that guy, just because he's Black?

Madness, I say.

Even as I write this people I know are arguing with StormTrumpers and dealing with Russian bots on Twitter. Putin has basically admitted that the Russians diddled our Presidential election, and even as Republicans plan budgets that will kill their own constituents I just saw that even FOX News is not saying that Trump is innocent anymore. So the stakes...and increasingly the amount of public mockery and outrage directed towards Republicans and Trump...grow exponentially by the day if not by the hour. Yet people thought this bullshit would be a good idea? Why? Because they thought they wanted to be able to say racist shit in public again?

Son, that shit hasn't been cool...that I know of...for 40 years. The President is not a King, he cannot undo 50 years of social change nor 70+ years of progress by decree. Let alone he can't do it just because you don't want Black People to get any...and THAT has been the way it is for over 150 years according to our Constitution.

We got back on the road after dinner and pictures, Mom was tired so we switched drivers in Munising and this time I drove...and one thing I noticed above some of the trees was prodigious funnel-clouds of bugs. We talked about the day and various issues and among other things...our first remembered encounters with people of different races.

By the time we got close to St. Ignace, Mom was knocked out in the passenger seat. I fished around in the console for the bridge-fare money so I didn't have to wake her up. When I got across the bridge I stopped at the rest area outside of Mackinaw City to take a piss...and there was a Toyota minivan with several people of apparently Indian or South Asian extraction...young men and women, one girl wearing a Hijab with otherwise-Western clothing, including shorts. The van had Missouri plates.

"As Salaam Alaykum" I said. Peace be upon you. "Wa Alaykum Salaam" one of the young men replied, smiling...And upon you, peace. He was young, early to mid-20's, bearded, very dark skin and shiny black hair, very neatly brushed, dark American-hipster type clothes. Each of us...myself and these two young foreign men, the second in shorts, a Chicago Bulls T-shirt and Sandals...set off separately for the bathroom. They got there before me, we each concluded our business and when I went to wash my hands, the first guy was combing his hair in front of the mirror with exacting precision.

"Where you from?" I asked, curious. "St. Louis" he replied, again smiling. The second guy was done, and obviously needed the sink. I stepped back, grabbed my cane and headed for the door. I said my say "You gentlemen have a safe trip...and a blessed day." Both replied "And you as well, sir."

As I drove home under a darkening sky, I noticed an awful lot of anti-oil-pipeline signs in front of permanent residences and vacation homes alike...in an area not necessarily known for being full of environmentalists or liberals.

That was a bit of a surprise, and honestly I was shocked that I'd not noticed the signs in the morning.

Politeness and common decency should never feel revolutionary...but in Trump's America, they do. That one desires to protect one's environment should never be a surprise. It is, but yet there it is. If normal things are so revolutionary in this time of abnormality, sign me up for the revolution. I was taught to use a rifle, once upon a time.

But I was also taught that Soul Force was far stronger than force of arms.

We are faced with a choice, as we face the future:

We can do this their way...and live through the darkness and its fires...

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

~Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God, Jonathan Edwards, 1741

(...And remember, kids, if you're a Republican, and/or sufficiently anti-Liberal, none of this need apply and you can do whatever you want. Damnation, hell, and rules are for other people.)

Or...

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

                Free at last! Free at last!

                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

~Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a Dream." August 28th, 1963.

Change is coming. Make your choice.

As for me 'To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other."

Bonus points if you know who I'm paraphrasing.

Education, experience, knowledge, and an informed and consenting citizenry were considered essential things when I was coming up...and I knew who Johnathan Edwards and Martin Luther King Jr. were, what they had done, and at least some quotes from each of them...by the time I'd made it through the 5th Grade.

Think about that the next time you're dealing with some Trump Supporter that can't get basic pronouns right.

We have to be the change we wish to see in the world.

As Roland Martin put it at the end of his show today. "We'll fight until hell freezes over, and then we'll fight on the ice."