well, heck

why not?

Most everyone knows its going down now.

Bloomberg, this morning, is carrying no news at all.  Instead, their pages are plastered with feel-good editorials about growth and recovery, such blatant lies that not even the writers themselves are fooled anymore.

So, heck, why not start a new war?

Lets pick a country where there are already warring factions but both sides hate us.
Lets pick a country which has an ancient reputation as a world-wrecker.
Let us pick a country which has no wealth or natural resurces.
Let us pick a country which offers us no stategic or military significance whatever, but which does provide vital military security to Russia and to China and to Iran, countries which we very very much need to provoke and to incite to make war against us. 

Let us give aid to a group of rebels with strong ties to Al Qaida.

Let us see if we can reduce the world population by just a bit, before the coming debacle in the food production centers of the world as natural gas fertilizer and oil transportatrion become more scarce.

Let us see if we can increase the US feceral deficit.

Let us see if, by increasing our deficit spending, by increasing the rate of new debt accumulation, we can thereby bring about even more printing of money by the Federal Reserve, hastening the total demise of our currency.  All the while, threatening the world supply of crude oil at the same time.

Its all doomed anyway, lets see what we can do to bring it down faster.

heck, why not?  brilliant move, I say ....

now

it gets interesting.

The crash is upon us.
First to collapse are all the countries of the far east,
separately and together.
Japan, struggling with an aging populace
all wanting benefits when so few are still working,
and meanwhile Fukushima is pouring radioactivity into the Pacific
and they can't afford to clean it up.
China, which has been fudging and lying even more than the US about its economy
India, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand,
all having been surviving and prospering on exports but now nobody is buying.
What money they still have is all coming here
and keeping the US from total collapse -- yet --

Next, Europe will fall
as the German people finally reach their limit
in trying to "buy" the entire continent
by supporting failing economies of Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, etc
and even France and the UK have been leaching off of them.

Meanwhile the entire Middle East goes up in flames
as the failed policies of the would-be colonialists in Washington become more apparent.
We have tried to bully the entire region but its just not working anymore,
now that death is more desirable than servitude to us ....

For awhile the capital will still flow to New York
and still sustain us
but as the stock market falls
and faith and trust in our government completely collapses,
our cohesion will also fail
and it will become each man for himself ...

our population has been carefully taught to be so frustrated, angry, mistrusting, vengeful
and it is armed to the teeth with guns, pistols, knives, ammunition, assault rifles,
body armour, and so forth ....
killing will be random and ubiquitous ....

God has a plan.God still loves us,
still loves His creation and everything in it.
He just has quite a bit of housekeeping to do.
The darkest hour will be just before the dawn ....

The Matrix

     I (finally) watched "The Matrix" last night.

     Many, many insights.


     Probably all people of my age, particularly political, religious, and corporate leaders, ought to watch this movie in order to gain some understanding of what the young people of this culture, this society, think about them and their constructs.  So many older people are still clinging to the ideas that the system is sound.  They preach to the young that working to improve mankind's lot from within the system is the purpose we are all intended for.  They really believe that, and they really believe that the kids will fall in line, sooner or later.  How quaint.

     Then, there is the total misconception of energy.  If you haven't watched it, one of the supporting theses of the movie is that the sun has been burned out but that life goes on.  The world is owned and controlled by digital machines which use human beings as energy source, as "batteries".  Huh?  Do the young people really have so little understanding of the physical properties of potential and kinetic energy?  Well, of course they do.  How else could I explain how young people can be so bamboozled into believing that solar, or wind, or hydrogen (!) can be used as an eergy source in the future more potent than crude oil? 

     Then, there is the total flattening of computer programming, computer data, and the process of human learning.  The movie proposes that a human can be taught a subject by simply inserting a floppy disk and reading it, in about three seconds.  No wonder the kids today take school with such a blazee attitude.  Why bother learning math or physics or engineering, when it can simply be loaded in, on the spot, if the need ever should arise? 

     I am of course appalled that most cashiers today cannot even make change correctly in their heads, they need the cash registers to do it for them.  The other day I was debating with a cashier friend of mine whether or not this skill is even needed.  She stauchly insisted that she did not ever need this skill because the machines could always do it faster and more accurately.  So I asked her quickly if she could give me change, two tens for a five.  The exchange was made and I went on my way, content to let her win the discussion.

     Most impactful to me was Hollywood's age-old fantasy about true love and sex.  Central to the plot is how one kiss, accompanied with a vow of true love, could bring a human being back from death.  No wonder there are so many divorces in this country.  There are so, so many people who believe (and I myself was counted with them for the majority of my adulthood, which is why I've been divorced four times) who blindly believe that there exists for them a sexual partner who will save them from their own foolishness, all of it.

     Thank God for God.

The price of love

     Scarcely 30 years after Jesus' crucifixion, Emperor Nero gave the order for Jerusalem to be overrun.  Most residents, men, women and children, were put to the sword immediately.  All those buildings and belongings which could be burned, were burned.  All those structures of brick, stone, and mortar, were razed, til there was not remaining one stone upon another.  the few survivors were scattered and sold as slaves in distant parts of the empire.  Just for good measure, the ground was then copiously salted.


     Jesus offered hope, he offered ultimate love, joy salvation, redemption.  But he did not offer an end to suffering or injustice, not at all.  Others following in his footsteps made such rash promises but He never did.

     From the earliest that I can remember in my life, I have been teased, ridiculed, criticized, badgered, abused, beaten, and belittled.  From the earliest that I can remember, I had faith that I could be happy, and not only that I could but that it was my right to be happy, to love and to be loved.  For a long long time I found events to be highly confusing, because it was precisely at those times when I felt the most joy that other people were most apt to put me down and try to hurt me.

     I went back and forth between trying to live as others told me I ought to live, and trying to live as I wanted.  Neither one offered any satisfaction, but only pain.  Til finally, I began to really feel God's love for me, to notice all the things, big and small, that He has done just for me.  He showed me how wonderful it is to do for other people.  Not so much giving material goods for those really have little value, but what people cherish the most is the giving to them of control, to empower them.

     That has not ended the persecution.  These days, in fact, the threats grow greater and greater, as totalitarian regimes, police states, central control, spread across the earth.  I sense more and more danger.
There is more and more jealousy emanating from desperate greedy folk who are terminally dissatisfied with what they have and always require more.  There will always be people who have convinced themselves that duty and obligation prevent them from loving, from being happy. Not enjoying it themselves, they don't like happy people spreading joy.  They don't like it at all.  The religious and secular leaders, as ever in cahoots, insist that joy is impossible, always out of reach in this life, and one must buckle under to a heavy yoke to have any chance of salvation in the "next" world.

     There will never be an end to pain.  There will never be an end to persecution.  That was never the point.  The point is, they have already been defeated.  Their own doom is just as sure as the fall of the Roman Empire (and of course, every other empire which has been built, before and after.).  Nothing that they build or write will endure, and everything they do is vanity, meaningless.  Only love endures .....