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Intentionally Dividing Americans Is Evil
Back in Tennessee, we lived on top of a mountain, at the box end of a long, wide valley. Our house was at 3,300 feet, and the floor of the valley was 1,400 feet. In the summers, storms would come barreling up the valley, and we could watch all the turbulence of the clouds below them, while the top of the clouds would light up with lightning and swirl around — a great show. Our kids would run down to the corner of our deck, right on the edge of the cliff, and watch the storm together.
It would be perfectly calm at our house, until the storm hit the cliffs at the end of the valley. Then, all of a sudden, powerful cold gusts would blow up the mountain, lifting the kids from their perch on the edge of the cliff. It never lifted them off their feet, but they would hang on to each other, trying to create their own little sail, and squeal and laugh as they felt it lift them, lighter on their feet. They would laugh and yell until the rain hit them (usually raining UP at that point), and they would come sprinting into the house, looking like crazed, wet birds. Great times.
I love the picture above. I can’t get past the symbolism. The storm is coming. They’re going to get wet and get knocked around a bit. But they’ve got each other, so they don’t care. In fact, together, they look forward to it. The sisters can handle anything together. Disasters go from setbacks to hide from, to roller-coaster rides to enjoy and savor. As long as they have each other, it’ll be fun, not scary. It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. This picture brings tears to my eyes every time I look at it.
America was once like this. We had each other. We understood one another’s faults, but we loved each other just the same. And our love for one another changed setbacks to opportunities. Because we knew that when things got bad enough, we at least had each other. And things would probably work out. And then we could run back inside, sheltered by our shared strength, and laugh at the setbacks. Together.
My kids are sisters. They grew up together. They know each others’ faults, but they love each other anyway. After all, they’re sisters.
America is different. We don’t share anything obvious in common. We don’t share a common race, or a common religion, or a common background, or a common anything else. But we’re bound together by our belief in a simple ideology. Our belief in liberty and free will.
The efforts we’re seeing right now to separate Americans into hostile tribes is poison. It’s pure evil.
It’s difficult to unite such a diverse group as Americans, and it’s easy to tear us apart. Once we no longer trust each other, our infighting will disable our previously remarkable ability to turn setbacks into opportunities.
Once we’re driven apart, then setbacks become catastrophes, and even opportunities become setbacks. At that point, we’re just looking for something to fight about. And we’ll always find something.
My kids are all in their early 20s now. They’ve reached the age that when something goes wrong, they don’t call me, they call each other. Which is perfect.
I see the efforts of the power-hungry American statists to leverage the divisions inherent in our complex society, as equivalent to efforts to tear siblings away from each other. That may help consolidate power, but it’s needlessly destructive. Which is another way to say pure evil.
That picture of my kids brings tears to my eyes. So does the picture from Iwo Jima. The picture of Biden brings tears to my eyes, as well. For different reasons.
None of this had to happen.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
Published in General
You mean you shouldn’t be executed? I promise to use the absolutely cheapest Chinese axe I can import.
Joking aside, I think one of the real problems is that there is less to unite us than before. Fewer people go to church or social clubs, “safe” topics like sports and the weather get politicized, and we have fewer common experiences. Even subcultures like SF/F fans, gamers, and metalheads have political elements jammed in to divide and weaponize people. I hate this with the fire of an exploding galaxy.
Skipsul really used to drive me up the wall with his politics. In response, I found it was more useful to talk with him about his work and his family. It made him much easier to work with rather than just an icon on the Internet saying political stuff that sounded insane.
There is a big difference between the person who disagrees with you politically and an activist. I work with people who are straight-up democrats. However, that’s not their driving passion and they don’t talk politics 99% of the time. If you ask them about the government bureaucracy they work with or IL state government, they sound pretty skeptical. Being a democrat is not their religion.
“None of this had to happen.”
That’s what’s so maddening about the current troubles, and the troubles to come.
Not all. But we have friends (husband and wife) who can’t talk to each other about serious things because he’s not left enough. Tragic.
Well said
But,
As I talk to clients who struggle through families they’re divided politically I still see people who a people who have family is more important than politics.
When the storm hits the posers will crumple and the people with their lives together will weather the storm.
I blame the education system. When we were kids we were taught about freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. It was hard to grasp what that meant because a kid has a lot of bosses making their decisions for them (parents, teachers, coaches, neighbors, bus drivers – everybody.)
But when I got out on my own and travelled, I realized that a lot of what I’d been taught was true. And it was important enough to impress it on me in school. There was and still is great value in being American.
That message is not getting through. History is being re-written, taught with strenuous denial of the great things and heavy concentration on the nation’s sins. Context is missing on slavery, for instance (practically everyplace but the US and Great Britain practiced it at the time of the Civil War.) Try your luck with almost any other country’s judicial system (Brittany Griner.) Communism is not the citizen’s friend. Without adult experience younger Americans have little appreciation for the gift of being born here.
Diversity has never worked anywhere as well as it works here. I am flattered that people from all over the world want to come here. Apparently, foreigners teach kids that the US is a great place to be, but our teachers – not so much.
Im visiting a brother, family and his friends out west. They’re into all Democrat spin and see me as so crazy we can’t talk about any of it. So we don’t. We fish and that’s great. This is Montana, a two party state. They see problems caused by the political class of both parties but are oblivious to Washington and what folks there are doing. These are relatively well informed people who have been engaged for many decades in public business. But they don’t know Washington and don’t read widely so they could learn. They have deepened my fear that there is no fix. The country is going to end and very soon. An electoral win requires massive voting to over come electoral fraud and if they get away with winning that’s it. The Presidential election will be easier for them to steal with any sane looking candidate. The only solution is to break apart like we did from great Britain, pulling states and pieces of states away from Washington, New York City, L.A.and wherever concentration of Democrat party politics exists. Then each state has to sort it out under the same constitution and some will get it right influencing others to gradually follow. Washington etc. will die quickly if they don’t change. The problem is China and that will get worse and more threatening with time, even as their economy also declines. The problem is Washington DC, pretty much all of it. That should be our concentration.
A willingness to put Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton forth as leaders is telling. This is done with no accomplishments to support it. A willingness by people to accept that is even more telling
That is true. People who obsess over politics think everyone else should be, and sometimes try to bring it onto areas that have no need to be political at all. There is no reason whatsoever for science fiction to be considered to be inherently left-wing. For generations it was enjoyed by people across the political spectrum and people who were apathetic about politics. But if you go to a science fiction in a left-leaning city, the convention will probably be organized by people who will put a heavy injection of leftism into the programming.
Agreed. Rather than comparing the United States to the real world, it is being compared to Utopia, or a fantasy version of Sweden.
Wow Randy, you must have some really, really terrible views on international trade!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist, ha!
Bourbon, as you have exhibited, does worlds of good for one’s typing.
When my children needed me to guide them and tell them what they should do, I did that. When they appeared to have grasp what was needed I ceased that approach. Those control freaks who get power in Washington never want to quit no matter what age they reach.
Randy, that line about comparing the US to utopia is too good. I will steal it without attribution.
Here is Claire Lehmann, the Australian who is founder & publisher of Quillette, writing in 2018:
Having hundreds of people explaining to me on Twitter that everything from sex to nature to beauty is “political” makes me realise that Western civilisation really hasn’t come up with a viable alternative to religion, yet. Until we do, politics will be the opiate of the masses. Her observation of what is happening is spot on; not so sure about her diagnosis of causes and possible cure. See also my post Professors and the Pornography of Power.
I’m sure many citizens of communist countries have been punished for expressing economic views like mine. I don’t know if it has typically gone as far as execution, or just imprisonment.
Hay, as long as they can still post on Ricochet……………
According to Strong’s, satan come from the root to attack, to accuse, and is translated as adversary.
Creating division is what enemies do.
Let’s kill all the Americans who are creating division!
I see this happen when the wife, a family member, and/or a close friend is a member of a teachers union.
The Left’s leaders may be “Nonproducers Of The World” but all of them are intent on seeing to it that Dr Kissinger’s notion of eliminating “Useless Eaters” comes about. And those Useless Eaters are middle class and working class people, and anyone running a small or medium sized business.
I suspect that for a while at least, being a card carrying Lefty will prevent that individual from being eliminated. But few on the Left are aware of how once their purpose was fulfilled, Trotsky and trotsky-ites were done in. (And not too pleasantly, either.)
That works, too, in this context. Satan is the Accuser. See also, Biden, FJ.
I was thinking of “demon” “demonic”
That could be too, generally. But I tend to refer to fallen angels (which were once good) as fallen angels and all other evil spirits (such as the roaming disembodied spirits of the nephilim — which were never good) as demons.
I don’t know how the Roman Catholic exorcists view those evil spirits that they cast out. But I doubt they are fallen angels.
I don’t believe anything was created evil by God. Anything evil choose to turn from Him.
That’s correct. The nephilim were in all likelihood the off-spring of fallen angels and human women. This Genesis 6:4 and 6:9 references are disputed (and I would say watered down virtually to nothing), but it is the natural inference from the Jude 6 references of fallen angels “who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day”.
Sherlock Holmes quote from “Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror 1942”:
Sherlock Holmes:
There’s an east wind coming, Watson.
Doctor Watson:
No, I don’t think so. Looks like another warm day.
Sherlock Holmes:
Good old Watson. The one fixed point in the changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson. And a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind nonetheless and a greener, better, stronger land that will lie in the sunshine when the storm is cleared.
Let us pray it is so.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/18/equal-justice-they-said/
Divisions are inevitable, especially in politics. Some people will want a certain policy and others will want something opposite to that. We settle the question of which policy to go with using the democratic process.
In some cases the difference matters a lot. Whether or not the government will take all I have and give it to someone else, for example. I’m liable to be rather passionate about that. I’m going to call the supporters of this policy all sorts of vile names. That’s normal.
What’s not normal is being faced with such extreme and radical propositions.
Over the years the differences in policy preferences have become more extreme. Murdering little just barely unborn and otherwise viable babies or not, letting men with dresses into the girl’s public bathrooms or not, pandering to crazy people who think that they are members of the opposite sex to which they were born or not, mutilating children in the name of ideology or not, arresting and prosecuting shoplifters or not, confiscating guns or not. These seem like more extreme choices than what we had in the past.
I don’t know what to do about such division except fight like hell to win. Reason and logic don’t seem to have any purchase with people who disregard both.
And when the democratic process appears to have been corrupted, when the very government apparatus turns against the people, then what?
The new Antifa/BLM/Squad/socialist Left filtered into government and absorbed the Biden Administration. It knows it lacks majority public support, so it has weaponized the justice system to punish enemies and ignore the crimes of allies—all to be excused by its morally superior ends that justify the use of such discreditable means. And the Left wishes to send a message to Americans: We are serious and mean business. So, join us, and receive indemnity from the federal government; oppose us and watch your back.
The result of all this is that America is not quite America anymore. We are now a revolutionary society in decline that uses the courts, prosecutors, the administrative state, and the law itself to punish enemies, help friends, and declare such asymmetry “social justice.” There is no equality under the law, but simply “some are more equal than others.”
You know you are in trouble when Victor Davis Hanson ends his writings like this.
Not just the programming. I loved reading sci-fi books. At this point most sci-fi is unreadable. It tends to into so much of “the message” that I just can not stand it. Add to that how much of it has become just another form of erotica I have basically given up on the genre.