The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Barth's picture

    Things to Think About

    By Barth on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 11:12am |

    No time to blog so, instead, just a few reminders of comments past and references to things you might find interesting:

     
    Such as this:
     
    1. Occupation Wall Street. It's about time but you have to wonder where these people were in November, 2010. If you decide that voting is worth the effort, your complaints about politicians truly fall on deaf ears. (If, by the way, you think Ron Paul makes sense, or that substituting a flat (or 9-9-9) tax for the progressive income tax is a good idea, you are just a dupe of the people against whom you are supposedly protesting.)
     
    We have, on these pages wondered where you were and discussed how the recipe for change is clear but not something that can fit on a banner (see below for the closest facsimile thereof), but two years after it was first posted here there is now evidence that big trouble could be ahead:
    Nothing less than our very system of government is at stake. We are watching the spectacle of a Congress beholden to the contributors who make possible their continued hold on office unable to respond to the call of a vast majority to reform health care, to protect our posterity from the doomsday path on which we have placed our nation and to regulate wizards of finance whose obsession with their self-interest have put the financial security and well being of the rest of us in permanent jeopardy. This is a recipe for disaster all by itself and placed side by side with the fact that we are no longer able to have civilized discourse over opposing views, the future looks bleak indeed....
     
    This is playing with fire, folks. An unresponsive government acting on behalf of its benefactors instead of the people who vote cannot last long. It can last while people are sleeping---which they are---or while they are obsessed by cable driven foolishness about a helium balloon)---which they are, but then something happens and people wake up, though sometimes not for very long. This is playing with fire, folks. An unresponsive government acting on behalf of its benefactors instead of the people who vote cannot last long. It can last while people are sleeping---which they are---or while they are obsessed by cable driven foolishness about a helium balloon)---which they are, but then something happens and people wake up, though sometimes not for very long.
     
     
     
     

    2. Rigged Elections. After a similar period of radio silence, your faithful blogger returned in August 2009 witha rant about how the electoral system is so broken by the way campaigns are financed that nothing is more important, and seems unlikely to be fixed. Lawrence Lessig's plan, as discussed on Rachel Maddow and in a book he has written presents a lovely pipe dream, but since members of a constitutional convention would be elected in the same way that we have destroyed Congress, it seems unlikely this presents the answer.

     
    His other idea, though, to give voters enough money to compete with special interests might have merit. Something has to give folks or we are sunk: Watch this from Rachel and see what they have in store for the rest of us.
     
    3. Values. Maybe they are right after all. This while thing is a struggle for whose values should shape the country. When you look at it that way, and you know your own values and cannot understand theirs, the impossibility of reconciling these two views becomes very clear.
     
    It was hard for a Jew to not have some of those thoughts while listening to the rituals of our High Holy Days (and observing that the "Values Voters summit" was held in Washington on Yom Kippur, effectively excluding Jews whose "values" might be different.
     

    Still, it is hard to hear the traditional prayers of the season without seeing the disconnect between the two sides of political thought as almost a religious war. Some of us are New Dealers at heart; others see themselves as rugged individualists, in need of no government in their quest for fortune.

     

    And then, we say this:

     

    We pray that all creation will take up Your promise of justice and tolerance....

    We shall not hate others; we shall love our neighbors as ourselves. We shall consider the strangers among us as our own...

    Teach us more and more to respond to the pain of others, to heed Your call for justice...

    In the days to come, we will turn outward and take care of the world around us. We will turn toward each other and foster peace within the human family. We will turn inward and seek wholeness within our souls...

     

    If this is a clash of religious philosophies, hearing an opposing view will be very interesting. It is hard to imagine that people who claim to represent religious thought, believe that a mission to impose one's sense of morality trumps any sense of connection with the rest of humanity.

     

    But prayer works best as a reminder of higher callings. ;It cannot be an end to itself. "No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor" as Regina Spektor puts it, but prayer alone feeds nobody or makes them warm.

     

    Neither does marching.

     

    But both can help to focus the mind.

     

     

    Comments

    Item 1, line 2, did you mean not worth the effort? Otherwise I don't follow that point.  

     


    by AmericanDreamer on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 11:42am

    'Course.  (Mouth too fast for fingers). And I fixed it but somehow that has become a double post.


    by Barth on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 12:02pm

     hearing an opposing view will be very interesting. It is hard to imagine that people who claim to represent religious thought, believe that a mission to impose one's sense of morality trumps any sense of connection with the rest of humanity.

    Humanity? The record shows the righteous have had to live amongst the wicked ,who control the world.(Not for much longer though)

    To impose ones sense?  Why would you accept anything but Gods viewpoint, so as to not be enslaved with some imposition?  Do you rely upon your own understanding or do you search, to really find out .....what Gods word really says on any matter.  Not some senseless persons "sense of morality"  used to trump Gods own words?   

    Remember the heart is treacherous and if it desires something, it will mislead some to ignore the " reminder of higher callings" counsel.

    Only a minority, has what is considered by the Great Judge, to have maintained GOD's standard of moral values. In contrast to what man thinks, is a good moral sense.

     

    But prayer works best as a reminder of higher callings.

    I hope you understand he doesn't hear all prayers.

    It cannot be an end to itself.

    He only hears the prayers of those who earnestly seek him, he does hear the prayers of his servants.  A simple question really, Who you going to call?

    "No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor"

    Which god do you refer to. The one that is both used to cook and warm our souls  and the other half is made into an Idol/God ? 

    but prayer alone feeds nobody or makes them warm.

    Prayer, without works in harmony with GODS  purpose is no safeguard.

    When the time comes, and we face our Red Sea moment, seeing the hordes of wicked ones, approaching to take our souls and we thinking were as good as dead;  then we'll appreciate, that only through his undeserved kindness and divine intervention, because he heard the prayers of his loyal ones, did we escape certain death.

    "Give us today our daily bread ....deliver us from the wicked ones"

    FOCUS YOUR ATTENTION

    These protests attest to the fact, mankind's empty promises of being able to deliver peace and security, absent Gods direction, resulted in self destruction.

    Marching and prayers won't deliver us

    Future generations of the "meek that inherited the Earth" will recall  "Mans own sense of morality, didn't deliver him from the abyss."  They marched and they prayed and it was to no avail .

    The final defeat of the corrupt, wicked leaders and their followers, occurs when those who are looking to strike the righteous out of rage, find out the righteous have a defender, because they did heed the "higher calling" when HE said  "Get out of her my people" if you don't want to share in her plagues."


    by Resistance on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 10:58pm

    Only a minority, has what is considered by the Great Judge, to have maintained GOD's standard of moral values.

    That line reminded me of this:

     

     


    by mageduley on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 11:28pm

    Won't they be surprised, when they find out, their "sense" or knowledge of the rapture is mistaken. 

    The master arrives and says "who told you, I was taking you to heaven" 

    "But Lord, lord, didn't we prophesy and do powerful works in your name?

    "GET AWAY from me, you workers of lawlessness, I don't know you........For if you had maintained, your moral  integrity, in accordance with my fathers standards and living your life (TO DO)   his will and purpose, your name would be written in the book of life,  I don't see your name here."


    by Resistance on Mon, 10/17/2011 - 12:47am