Hoofbeats of the Pale Rider

When people in this country believe that being too nice disqualifies a man from being president, we see but one of the many signs that Jesus told us would herald his coming. I weep for what kind of nation we are fast becoming - a nation of coarse, hateful, cold-blooded, self-centered narcissists only capable of understanding and appreciating that which is most like themselves.

We no longer look up to the good, the kind, the brave, the resourceful and decent. Instead we look inside ourselves for enlightenment; we make ourselves our own heroes and our own gods. We worship our own egos and we sacrifice those who live by the Golden Rule as virgins upon the altar of smug self-satisfaction.

God help us, but the apocalypse is coming. I can see the sparks in the distance as the fires are being kindled.

© 2015 by Tom King

From the Duck Blind of Truth - An Observation

We are, I believe, nearing the end of time. 

Perhaps we are even seeing the beginning of the last great debate - good vs. evil; God vs the Adversary. 

Jesus said at the end we would be divided, not into Democrats and Republicans or even liberals and conservatives, but into Sheep and Goats. When I see people on both sides acting like goats, I do understand the analogy and why God divides along different lines than does man. 

Don't get me wrong, it's great to have well-considered political opinions, but it's even better to live by the Golden Rule and those pesky Ten Commandments, than to toe the party line, right or wrong, whichever party that happens to be.

Better to be a good person in any case than to be a good Democrat, a good Republican, a good liberal, libertarian or conservative.  

Just an observation from the old Duck Blind of Truth.

Tom King (c) 2015

.

In Their Own Nest

More Gloom & Doom for the One Percenters From the New York Times.

A Libertarian Friend sent me a link to the New York Times.  Reporter Chrystia Freeland believes the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. are so busy protecting their own piles of wealth that the rest of us can no longer rise in the world and escape our own class. Predictably, she tells us that it’s much better in Europe if you want to rise into a higher class.

The temptation is to abandon ship.

Well, duh? Europe has more classes than Carter has liver pills. The place is a monument to the class system. A 15 cent raise will get you in a more elite social group over there. She goes on to quote champions of free market capitalism like Karl Marx and several of Barak Obama’s advisors and concludes that America’s 1% oligarchy is destroying the very system that created them. Why she should lament that puzzles me as I thought Progressives wanted a classless society. So where's the need to rise from your class unless you're in a hurry to get one of the higher class statuses BEFORE the Progressive Apocalypse freezes everyone in place.

Surprisingly, I agree with Ms. Freeland with regards to the 1% oligarchy protecting it's own butt. That's what I've been saying for years. What I don’t agree with is who she and the pundits of the NY Times see as the saviors of the middle class.

The Dems had every opportunity to do something about the often pitifully low tax rates enjoyed by the super-wealthy, simply by closing loopholes in the tax codes. They don't. They never do. They spout all this crap about the unfairness of it all and then they sell their souls behind closed doors for campaign contributions, weaving elaborate money protection schemes into the tax codes to protect the very people they castigate publicly. Oh, yeah, they’ll bump up the tax rate all right, but it won’t affect the 1%. They will continue to buy protection for their own fat piles of money.

The ones that will get hammered are the working wealthy – the ones trying to break into the upper income brackets. It’s the job creators that will become the actual victims of all the Occupy/Progressive symbolism. The Dems are not trying to end the class system. They’re trying to make it fair!

And the tea party, the group that most opposes the elitist sweetheart deals the giant corporations get from the government and who believe that abusive financial giants should be allowed to come crashing down instead of getting bailed out by the rest of us when their card houses come fluttering down – we are the ones who get castigated as extremists by both the left and the so-called` moderates in our own party. The Libertarians aren’t any better. They offer us legalized marijuana, conspiracy theories and isolationism and not a snowball's chance in hell to win an election.

The heartland is increasingly left with nowhere to go, politically.

I think we may be at the fall of the empire. The mainstream media and academia all believe we should trade the corrupt wealthy elitist manipulated mess we have now for a big bloated elitist government spouting progressive rhetoric while continuing to support the exact same corrupt wealthy elitist manipulated mess we have now.

The only hopeful thing going in American business right now is a burgeoning free market space industry. I think a lot of people would like to get off the planet, go somewhere and start over and leave Earth to stew in the vast swamp of its own corruption.

I think the private space race may be a manifestation of this feeling we all have that we need to get out of here before it all blows up in our faces. Look at the people that are driving it – working wealthy entrepreneurs like Paypal billionaire, Elon Musk and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson working with aerospace cowboys like Burt Rutan and Robert Bigelow. Those are the guys that will get squished by the progressive’s misguided efforts to “make ‘em pay”. I think most Americans are beginning to suspect that all this is going to end badly.

Look at all the dystopian, post-apocalyptic TV shows and movies lately. Hardly anybody thinks things are going to turn out well. I certainly don’t. As a Christian I figure Jesus has already loaded up the bus and is comin’ to get us. All I can do is pray daily, "Even so, come Lord Jesus."
It would be kinda fun, though if He had to pick some of us up off the moon or Mars, though when he does come.

Tom (c) 2012

It's Not About Race; It's Not Even About Politics.

Good vs. Evil on the Eve of the Apocalypse.

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Hiroshima 1945 - US Archives

It's not white people vs. brown as some claim.  It's not progressives vs. conservatives, East vs. West, Christian vs. Muslim, Jew vs. Gentile or even left vs. right..  It's a question of good vs. evil pure and simple. The agents of Satan are among us, insinuating themselves into every corner; using every means available to confuse, agitate and sabotage every decent thing we try to do. Left, right, Democrat, Republican and Libertarian, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist and Jew. The devil has his representatives everywhere.

We are told by prophets of every stripe that the whole thing is coming to a bad end and we are at best fighting a holding action.  Throughout history we have seen the tide of the Great Controversy come to a bloody head in vast explosions of violence.  In the 1800s we had the Civil war.  In the 20th century it was two world wars. We've held off the coming orgy of killing that is the wages of sin now for more than half a century.  Small wars (by modern standards) have bled off some of the urge to violence, but not nearly enough. Organized mass murder in Russia, China, Cambodia, Rwanda and throughout the third world has reduced the population for a time, removing the meek by and large, apparently for the purpose of guaranteeing they do not inherit the Earth - at least not while it lasts.

You see it's a geometry not arithmetic.

If you have one person you have relative peace although that person may resort to suicide.
Two people and you have two possible vectors of aggression A against B and B against A
But add a third and you have 12  possible vectors of aggression

1. A against B
2. A against C
3. B against A
4. B against C
5. C against A
6. C against B
7. A&B against C
8. C against A&B
9. B&C against A
10. A against B&C
11. A&C against B
12. B against A&C

(c) public domain Striking workers circa 1922

For every extra person you add to this overcrowded world, you geometrically increase the number of vectors of aggression and possible combinations of aggressors.  Think about billions of people on Earth today and how much worse it gets when you add more people. Add into the mix the fact that many of those people choose to be evil and are thus unscrupulous about who they attack and periodically the whole thing builds up to an orgy of killing.  So far most of those orgies have merely reduced the number of trained killers along with slow-moving or slow-witted noncombatants who didn't see it coming and get out of the way in time - at least enough to take some of the pressure murder their fellows off the survivors.

Paul in Romans said, "The wages of sin is death." I think he was being literal.  I think the apostle was trying to tell us that choosing to serve yourself first (which is the essence of sin) leads inevitably to death. Every notice how vigilant self-lovers tend to come to a bad end rather earlier than one might expect.  Sadly and too often they take good people with them. The innocent may die. They may even fight to defend their home or loved ones, but it is inevitably the sinners who are behind all the death.

As Creedence Clearwater Revival once sang, "Two hundred million guns are loaded. Satan cries, 'Take aim!'"

It's not religions or political parties that do evil. It's people. Parties and religions are merely the tools bad people use to accomplish their aims.  To those who reject political parties, churches or even families, your withdrawal from these institutions won't help. They will do their bloody work without you if evil men are allowed to take them over. You can never change a church or an organization or party from without except by destroying it altogether and doing that makes you just another killer and robs you of your soul. If you abandon these institutions which may have been established for quite noble purposes, you merely hand them over to evil people.  You by your abandonment are as guilty as those who stayed and cooperated in the heinous actions of their leaders.

It remains best for us, I believe, to trust in God and treat our neighbors as we would wish to be treated and to stand for what is right wherever we are called to stand.  "They that wait upon the Lord," says the Psalmist, "shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles."

So wait and be strong. Help where you can. Do good so far as you're able. It'll all be over soon.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King