Tagged: Jesus
Just In A Bad Mood
I only caught a glimpse of my step-son through the front-window this morning, coming up from the basement as I did, a minute too late to see him off to the bus stop. I immediately thought, “What a moron.”
The window was mostly covered by the drapes, but they were poorly closed and so a large enough crack to see through was present. The eleven year old boy was wearing his mask like all morons do, over his ears and around the bottom of his chin, like a chin strap. The sides were around his ears, the mask itself, pulled down off his face. You get the picture.
What bothers me is that the atheists that don’t have children never, and I mean never, talk about one specific topic in this mess called life. They’re so smart, they know oh so much, they want to teach us all, but they never mention the singular sight that I saw.
Because of the efforts of atheists, today’s children are figuring out how to make masks fit their personality, how to make masks look cool. Like pinch rolled jeans, or Jordans, or braided belts, masks are being adopted by children as part of their external personality. Why? Because they’re morons. Children as a group are morons. They blindly follow anything the adults say.
Now, the atheist, as a rule, won’t have children and if they do, then they don’t raise them as children. They treat them like small adults. “Babies are delivered through the vagina,” they tell inquisitive kindergartners, proud to not fill a child’s head with stories of large-beaked birds wearing funny hats.
Atheists, the godless and the childless, and I don’t mean the ignorant ones—I mean the ones who want to fight, who think they have made a proper study of the topic and are sure they are right (Freud, Nietzsche, Marx and the like)—never satisfactorily explain how they stopped being a moron. Despite this content void in their curriculum, they proceed to place all their efforts towards the obviously impossible task of teaching all children (current and former) the importance of human mask-wearing.
Trying to implement mask-mandates still? The only failure of my life that took me more than a year and a half to notice was my first marriage. How long until these morons admit that positive legislation (telling us what we must do), if not backed by a spirit of support, fails?
Atheists are children grown older. I’ll never forget that getting divorced, admitting failure, was the first time I felt like an adult. I was a father, a pilot, a veteran of combat. None of those things felt grown-up to me. Admitting I failed? That was my ticket to the real world. That was my ticket to Jesus Christ.
My moron step-son? There’s hope. Lord willing, there’s hope.
This Post Is Not About Trump
Unlike every other composition of contemporary writing, I want to be clear up front that this post is not about Trump.
My grandpa died a short while ago, after a long life. Like Billy Crystal’s character in City Slickers, I have to admit that this one death calls to mind other deaths—and death in general. Keep in mind, this post is not about Trump.
Since this post is not about Trump, I want to use it to talk about and I need to work out three deaths that have happened in the course of my life.
The first death is that of the exclusively male Air Force flying squadron. I proudly state here that I was a member of the last flying squadron in the United States Air Force that required the aircrew members to be male. The squadron, or I should say, that iteration of the squadron exists no more. Now females can take part in every aspect of aerial combat, at least in the USAF.
The second death, chronologically, is that of the Boy Scouts. I’m talking Shakespeare here. There is something in a name. Or in this case, there is something in two names. I am an Eagle Scout, the highest achievement the Boy Scouts of America offered. And when I grew up there were Girl Scouts. The best organization the females in the country could develop was the Girl Scouts—a bad facsimile of excellence training for boys. That the Scouts now lets in girls does not change history (whether meaning the past facts or the introduction of some new mode of living): where on earth do women have a club that men want to join or wish they had thought of? The new name just admits that the Boy Scouts have died. Like my flying squadron.
Lastly, the Baptists have died. Sure, sure, sure. The Baptists are still meeting every Sunday. And they collect money and they publish Sunday School materials and run some seminaries. But it’s over. What makes me so sure? I just spoke with a new-ish Baptist pastor this morning who confessed that in five years he has not had one non-believer attend, convert, and join his church. Five years. Five years? Five years!
Remember this post is not about Trump.
I spent nearly every Monday from 4th grade to 12th grade in Boy Scout meetings. I spent nearly every Sunday and Wednesday in the Baptist church. And I worked my tail darn near off to get into the last male only flying squadron the United States Air Force had.
What will America be like without Men, Boys Scouts, and Baptists?
That’s an easy answer that you already feel in your bones.
Feminine, fatherless, and godless. In other words, absolutely unremarkable.
Pointedly: uninteresting.
Tragically: unsafe.
And most frustratingly: undesirable.
Remember, this post is not about Trump.
Luckily for you, I am still alive and happy to call your attention to what has died. Why? Because I was a Boy Scout, I was in the last exclusively male flying squadron of the USAF, and I was a Baptist. In short, because I am not afraid of you.
(This post is not about Trump.)
Imitation Is The Sincerest Form of Flattery Part 2
Whatever the malady that drove Mayor Pete and Chasten to the hospital (Get Well Soon!), I had quite the adorable little experience with my 13 month old daughter the other day. It definitely was a sign of the times.
Like most fathers, in the true sense of the word, I found myself feeling weary from spending several hours in all manner of mind-numbing activities with my daughter. And like most fathers, again, fathers, not homosexual men who visit hospitals for photo ops, being tired, I began to consider poor decisions as viable options and thought, “I can just lay down on the floor, right here, smack dab in the middle of the family room. Nothing unsafe can happen without me hearing it. I just need to rest my eyes.”
Here I must confess that there is also a certain thrill when your own flesh-and-blood, your very seed—as they used to say in Bible times—believes they have free reign to climb around, on, and over you.
As most of you know, this daughter is not the only continuation of my bloodline which I have helped deliver unto the world, which I only mention here to relate that I have experienced this climbing scene before.
So, little “A-” (let’s call her) starts to crawl on top of me until she gets right up onto my chest.
Oh, sorry to interrupt, but you should know that for whatever reason A- has developed a habit of leaning her head forward when she wants a kiss. (Or at least that’s how we interpret and respond to the signal.)
So, as I can tell that her head is near my head, I next feel her head, face really, lower down to my head. This was not, to my thinking, very well aimed, if affection was her goal; her face landed nowhere in particular, it seemed. All I’m trying to describe is that her face was now awkwardly touching mine.
As you’re probably thinking, I thought, “Oh! How sweet!”
Then (my eyes are closed all the while) I feel a slightly uncomfortable, open-infant-palm go: “Smack!” And right on the button, too!
As you know, I’m tough as nails, being a hero pilot and all, so don’t read into this recounting anything more than that it startled me.
And then it hit me! No, not her hand, but what she was doing.
While laying there I remembered that we have on the shelf these old 1950s era children’s encyclopedias and that back in the 50s and before, the physicians used to have a less precise approach to CPR. Taken together (context drives meaning, folks) with the fact that, these days, especially with the pandemic going on for her entire life, everyone knows that first responders are the priestly class, if not gods themselves, and she was communicating to me—the little savant—that she, too, like her maker, wants to be a first responder.
Do you see it? In that face-to-face move, she wasn’t giving me affection. She thought I was dead, or unconscious at the least, and she was at the “look, listen, and feel” step of assessing her patient.
As far as the whack on the nose, it was a forgivable targeting error—she is only 1 after all. She had merely—incorrectly I might add (some performance improvement is upcoming)—assessed that I was in cardiac arrest and had begun old-style compressions.
My daughter! Following in the footsteps of her ol’ man. Can you believe it? It was a beautiful sight to behold, even if there was no professional cameraman nearby.
I Enjoy the Topic, That’s Why
I didn’t write anything at length yet about Afghanistan etc. I never went there. My helicopter was there for a bit before I was officially qualified on it, but it kept crashing or having expensive mechanical issues due to the combination of its gross weight and mountain operations. Therefore, it was relegated to Iraq. That said, I was an officer in the United States Air Force, during the main time that we were in Afghanistan and I joined for the main reason that we were in Afghanistan—revenge.
I want to talk about today’s Kabul attack more than Afghanistan in general, but I want to get this out there before the moment has passed. Daily I am more convinced than ever that the minute 9/11 happened, if not sooner, the United States should’ve declared war on Islam.
I don’t think this war would be blood-free, but it doesn’t have to have any killing. My aim is not killing people, but killing lies, killing Allah, and killing the Koran. All the other false gods of human history, at least in the West, went the way of the dodo, for very complicated reasons. Allah still holds his own because of lies.
Islam is a totalitarian system, not a religion.
By way of example, I wore sweat pants and a sweat shirt every day in college. It was my burka, of sorts. Additionally, I went to the weight room every Monday-Friday, like it was a mosque. That behavior, while religious, didn’t qualify me for sainthood. Anyone who knows anything knows this.
Don’t give me that “most muslims are peaceful”. The supposed “peaceful muslims” are owed an end to Islam as much as everyone else.
No one in human history has ever eradicated Islam, despite many other world-views being trounced, so it must be difficult. Enter the United States.
Now. To today’s attack. Here’s my initial gut reaction. This is said in the same vein as the one during the heated rhetoric of last election, where many of my veteran pals and I had some sort of instinct telling us to make sure our weapons were in working order. This was, of course, to no avail, and ultimately brought a healthy feeling of foolishness. But right now today, my gut is telling me the place to avoid is DC. And that’s my negative way of saying my gut is telling me the place that is going to suffer is DC.
Remember my post on “alignment”? The one where I said we need alignment, not “justice”? Well, the bad guys are being bad guys. The bad guys are aligned. It’s the United States that isn’t aligned. We’re the good guys. And we all know it. We feel it in our bones, no matter how many lies are trending right now.
I am a fairly normal, if at times recluse and eccentric, citizen. Heck, my wife just became a citizen today. Imagine that! I almost forgot about it already. This morning I stood among a lobby full of newly sworn-in Americans who were holding new American flags, who were asking each other to take pictures, and who were genuinely smiling. But there are other Americans making the news daily who seem to me to have my vision, but, unlike me, they seem to have nothing to lose.
If these other citizens get the itch to take action, I don’t think Kabul is accepting inbound flights right now. But I’m pretty sure American roads are wide open.
Again, this is just a feeling. My meaning is figurative and my aim is posterity. Except the war on Islam, bit. That needs to be declared immediately. (Consider your own loathing of the idea. I didn’t know you were an Islamic apologist, did you? It’s not a religion in any meaningful sense of the word. That’s its first lie. There is no constitutional protection for totalitarianism. After clearing that hurdle, the path to victory is clear.)
Get Lost, Loser!
I’m a loser. Fact.
The Taliban—well, you know.
Why am I so unafraid to declare my shameful status? Because I never want to stop “moving forward”, as Rocky Balboa said in Rocky 6.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, for a while now it has become evident that the next “loss” is written on the wall. The workplace is being used as a tool for government conformity, totalitarian-style. I’m stubborn (and right), but I’m not stupid. I’m talking, of course, about the vaccine and mandatory-ness.
So to hit rock bottom as a loser, I took another loss and got the vaccine just now. (I’m writing this as I wait to not have an adverse effect.)
Why get it today? Because I’m tired of losing. So today I’m a loser twice-over. I’ve doubled-down on losing. The only way to go from here is up. (Umm, wait, that’s not right.)
Wish me luck.
I’d Bet China Loses
I started the next guided reading in the GBWW set tonight. It’s Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of Laws”.
Only a preface and a few paragraphs into it, and as is often the case, on my mind is the seeming unstoppable growth of the Caliphate, Islam. I read something excellent and think, “but this thought recorded here is not stopping the Taliban or the Muslims in Europe…”
Tonight, my thoughts drifted to China as my best bud is constantly confessing how horrible it is that America is becoming just like China. And I can hear my brother and his wife say, “Well, what’s wrong with China?”
Because I’m in no particular rush, I let the world’s merge and blur.
Let’s just join my brother and his wife and admit that America as we knew and loved is a relic relegated to history. The new America isn’t China exactly, but in its new state is surely not going to conquer China.
The new question is, “Would Islam conquer China?”
Neither China in reality, nor my newly minted America can call themselves Christendom. So who comes out ahead as the muslims don’t continue to borrow from China and China learns just how stubborn Mohammedans can get?
I mentioned to my pal, “I think I may go to the Muslim Center and see if I can rent space for a Bible study.”
He, a former US Marine Officer, actually warned me that I’d be putting myself in harm’s way.
My wife familiar with mooslims from life “back home” also suggested that I’d probably end up being followed around as I kept on living here in this town if I asked about renting space.
I’m not afraid of the Chinese. I think they’re political aim is just totally wrong (not freedom), but I’m not afraid of them.
But muslims? They are something else.
What do you think? Should I ask about renting the space?
What do you think? For fun, admit that with this recent experience of living under “abnormally bad decisions made by uncommonly weak leaders” or what you call “the pandemic”, we’re basically China here in the States. Then ask, does China stop Islam? Or Does Islam conquer China in the end?
In both cases (hypothetical as they may be) Christendom is on very unstable ground. And this makes me sad.
They’d Call Me a White Evangelical Who Won’t Voluntarily Get the Vaccine
I don’t believe masks work.
This is a simple claim that is as obviously true as ‘what goes up, must come down’, but it is also apparently the dumbest claim I could ever make these days. That I would assert it apparently reveals something very wrong with the way I am built.
The reason I don’t believe masks work is because of the word “work”.
Before last year, if we were flying a patient with Tuberculosis, we would don an N95 for the leg of flight with the patient on board. But before ever launching on that leg, we had been through our companies “fit testing” wherein the company and ourselves would use a tester and learn whether the mask actually sealed around my face. I don’t recall ever flying a patient with Tuberculosis, but I do recall believing that the N95, of my size, worked to keep me from contracting the disease.
It would be used for one flight. Maybe an hour long at the most.
Given that I am a pilot and not a clinician, to hang out around a Tuberculosis patient at length is just not my calling. In other words, I never considered long term mask use or if I would continue to work in an environment which required it.
Does an N95 or simple or cloth mask work to end a pandemic? Hmm. Let me think… no. How do I know? Because it hasn’t yet. And rather than pretend some hypothetical situation where everyone complies with my wishes is actually possible, I’ll just look around and state the obvious: the “pandemic” is not over. So wearing masks doesn’t work to end the pandemic. Next question.
It doesn’t end there, though. No. Somewhere along the way, by well-meaning folks with platforms, these folks attempted to hoodwink me into wearing masks by the reasoning that the mask was to save high-risk people from my unsuspecting transmission of the disease. “Put on the mask for love of fellow man.”
Then vaccines are created and the best message that Dr. Fauci’s team can develop to convince stubborn ol’ me to follow orders is, “Get the vaccine so you don’t die, Pete.”
Mask up for others, vaccinate for me. Got it.
But I still say, “No.” Or, “Not without some undue level of coercion.”
Why? And does my faith in Jesus Christ as captured by the social science label “white evangelical” have any correlation to my stance?
Let’s talk about that.
Simply put, I don’t believe masks work and I won’t voluntarily get the vaccine because I believe I have something to teach you.
You read that right. I believe I have something to teach you.
Get it? Understand?
(Picture me pointing at you). You believe you have something to teach me. You believe you know information that I don’t and you believe that I need to learn from you. Right?
(Now picture me pointing at me). Well, I believe, likewise, that I know information that you don’t and I believe that you need to learn from me.
I have noticed that your beliefs clog your ears, so I have concluded that I have to demonstrate my beliefs to your eyes.
One more time: I don’t believe masks work to end the pandemic. And I won’t voluntarily get vaccinated. The reason for my twin beliefs is that I believe that I have something to teach you.
I can freely admit that this situation, then, is similar, in method, to why I don’t become an apostate and renounce my faith in Jesus Christ at your bidding. Besides my fear of everlasting damnation being greater than my fear of enduring lackluster social shaming, besides my gratefulness for Jesus’ sacrifice for my sake, besides my awe at the daily display of God the Father’s Glory, besides the comfort of the Holy Spirit who indwells me at this moment, I also believe that I have something to teach you about life.
And in both cases, the pandemic and Christianity, my lesson is necessarily one of action. Unlike you, I have no theory, no models, no hypotheticals, only action.
As briefly as I can, then, the fact that I don’t believe masks work and I won’t voluntarily get the vaccine is my physical manifestation of the question: Will you learn from me?
Honestly, we all already know the answer in the pandemic sense is: ‘you’ll never learn.’ You will choose to live in fear until death.
In the Christian sense, it is possible that you will learn from me, or be willing to receive the gospel someday. But time is never on our side. And unfortunately, there is no escaping judgment. On that day, there will be no piece of paper or cloth big enough to hide behind. On that day there will be no data-driven model robust enough to be accepted by your maker. On that day one question alone will remain.
Jesus is going to ask you: “But who do you say that I am?”
I Love Focusing
I want to be clear about a couple things. Yes, I lie when it comes to the vaccine. I am not vaccinated and I do not wear a mask, even if I cross some magic boundary that suggests I am now at risk for killing people. So maybe you should get your third and fourth and tenth shot and quadruple mask. ‘Cuz I’m out there. Oooo.
This “little white lie” of mine isn’t going to hurt anybody, least of all kill them. And if I was to get vaccinated at this point, it would feed the bigger lie, being that my act of taking the vaccine saves the very lives of every person on planet earth. It doesn’t.
For context, I will add that my oldest friend got the vaccine because of social pressure at a university. He really believed his professors would somehow put a stop to his doctoral work if they found out he was unvaccinated. So rather than lie like I do, he chose to lie in a bigger way—that is, he chose to take a vaccine to please someone else. We fight ferociously about this choice of his whenever the topic comes up.
I will also add that when my job makes it mandatory to get the vaccine, I’ll get it. I make good money. It’s not a difficult decision.
And I’m sure that the mandatory-at-work thing is in the works, how could it not be?
That said, as I approach it, my focus has become clearer and clearer. And I love the feeling. I imagine that it’s like how gaining a superpower must feel.
Here’s why I won’t get the vaccine, put even more clearly: firstly, my doctor has never had a conversation with me and told me to get it (I haven’t spoken to any doctor about the vaccine ever). Secondly, the reason I am being told to get it by everyone but my doctor (who I don’t see because I’m not sick) is to save the entire population from dying. This is no joke. People are telling me that when I join them in getting vaccinated then life goes back to normal. People are telling me that my vaccine is so I don’t get other people sick.
No one is telling me, none of these people are suggesting that I get the vaccine so that I don’t die. Not one person has ever said that, my doctor or otherwise. No one. Not ever. Why? Because it’s a lie. And the chance of me getting Covid again and dying is meaningfully zero. This means I’ll be able to promptly call out their bullshit—and don’t miss this—and they know it!!
So they package their—get this—“attempt to avoid the reality of death” in a more palatable and completely unprovable, unmeasurable, and unbelievable manner by saying that the vaccine that goes into my body is about other people.
Nobody ever got a vaccine to save someone else. Unheard of. I won’t be a part of that nonsense. (I will, however, get a vaccine for my salary. Again, that’s an easy choice. Of course I can be bought. I’m not on some crusade to prove it’s possible to be poor.)
But as far as “do it for others”? That’s a lie. One big fat lie. And it’s told by cowards, as all lies are.
Want me to get the vaccine? Call my doctor and tell him/her (not really sure who my doctor would be) to recommend to me that I need the vaccine to save myself. Or you can keep lying and my work will cave to the zeitgeist for business reasons, as it’s forced to do by virtue of being a business.
The Future of America
My wife just passed her “interview” within the naturalization process. This was the last step, not counting the formal oath ceremony, along the road to citizenship of our beloved United States of America. As she accomplished this goal, (just for clarity—she began this process before we met—marriage to me has nothing to do with it), I couldn’t help but wonder, “What was the point?”
Practically speaking, the big benefit of citizenship is travel. As an Ethiopian, you can’t just travel at will. As an American, the world has no borders. Her mom can also come to America as near “immediately” as the world of immigration allows. And her son, my step-son, is now also a citizen. Good for him.
(If you aren’t aware, I wasn’t, a green card suffices for staying in America for ever, it just has to be renewed every 10 years, but there’s no chance it doesn’t get renewed. The travel element, again, is the great difference.)
(Or is it?)
My wife is very spiritual, within the biblical meaning of that word. She prays more in one day than most Christians I’ve met pray in a lifetime. She also knows the answers to the questions for the interview, but the spirit of GW doesn’t really live in her like it does me.
Yet, she’s excited she passed the interview.
For the first year of our marriage I assumed the citizenship thing was about her siblings back in Ethiopia. I figured/planned that once she was in, they’d be able to come over and my house would be full of life and injera for a few years. As time drew near, I learned that that isn’t the case at all. I learned that it’s a very long process to bring siblings over here. And, despite all the bad press about Ethiopia’s civil war and resultant human rights violations, her siblings are very proud of their country and want to live there forever.
To be “ho-nest”, I generally think my wife is a bit naïve to think that her citizenship means anything. And I think her siblings are simply nuts for wanting to stay in Ethiopia.
As for how Americans view our relationship, old people are nice to us, but with effort. Our peers are disarmed by us, assuming that our mixed-ness means something big about our focus in life, and they are very ready to approach us and expect to have a normal, nonthreatening conversation, like those of yesteryear. Young people don’t seem to notice anything but their screens.
As for me, I sought my wife because Ethiopia is called the “Island of Christianity”. Look it up. And the Muslims are already here. ‘Whatever flavor of Christianity she brings, it must be stronger than what we do in America,’ was my thinking. Jesus is more important than any political designations.
****
Biden has admitted to tracking online dissent, with the intent to silence it. A fool’s errand, firstly. Secondly, immoral on every level. But I can turn off this phone, turn off my laptop. I probably would be happier if I did. (I finally did start actively telling YouTube to stop recommending channels that only caused “I can’t believe this garbage is happening” reactions. Now I get broadcast/podcast microphone reviews, Jomboy breakdowns, and movie previews. Perfect.)
This small town we live in is inundated with Somalis. I’ve seen things with my own eyes that I cannot believe.
Fully covered women posing for their boyfriend at the lake, like they’re in a bikini.
Muslim centers packed on Fridays. Packed.
Little girls still wearing the gear.
Older youth girls still wearing the gear.
The Lutheran churches have an outreach ministry, if the yard signs can be trusted. But they suggest Ramadan is related to Passover and Easter.
****
The government is attempting to censor the internet. Islam is here and growing. I am no fear monger. I’m not afraid of Islam anymore than I’m afraid of a lie. You shouldn’t be either. The answer is know your Bible.
Now, I am also always on the lookout for a new political philosophy that accounts for current reality. As much as I love the classics, the situation has changed such that they do not suffice. Population size, to name one variable, is a completely new element and therefore unaccounted for in their theories.
What do I think about the future of America? I hope this post’s biographical content provides insight.
In short, I can turn off the internet.
I am powerless against invasion.
Packed.
Unvaccinated
To become a pilot in the US Air Force, I had to go through a process more similar to a job interview than simply “being recruited”. At one point, I had to be interviewed by a current officer—otherwise I might prove to be just a really good looking piece of paper.
I cannot recall exactly what I had been reading at the time. I know I wasn’t some well-read war or military history/philosophy guy. I would’ve been a junior or senior in college when I drove out to this man’s house. But I’m sure I was preparing mentally for all sorts of questions etc.
At one point, I remember being asked, “Why do you want to serve?” My answer went something like, “I’ve thought about war a lot. It seems that most people think that defense starts a war. As in, someone wants the land that another person is on, and if the current occupant doesn’t defend themselves and the land, then there would be no fight, no war. But,” I went on, “this type of thinking doesn’t satisfy or admit the full truth. The truth is that the aggressor starts the war. The aggressor wants the land. The occupant indicates that the land is not available and, here at this point, the aggressor can back down and keep the peace,” I opined all those years ago in some stranger’s home library.
“Well,” I concluded, “I figure that out of all my family, like my cousins and brothers and sisters, I am best suited to meet the aggressor on the field. Best suited to make sure we win the war.”
This answer (and my grades, 20/20 eyesight, physical ability, private pilot’s license and more) was good enough to get me my dream job of being a pilot in the USAF.
The current spirit in this country includes many powerfully-positioned folks telling me what I should do with my body. I hear them. Obviously. And I disagree. Period.
This vaccine battle is not an argument. This is not a debate. This is a moment where they, the “teller/aggressor”, have to decide if they’re going to start a war over controlling my body. It’s that simple. It’s not about other vaccines (consistent living). It’s not about protecting other people (sacrificial living). It’s not about “delta variant” (flexible living) and “94% of new cases being unvaccinated” (more flexible living). It’s not about “smart” (consensus living) or “stubborn” (unbalanced living). It’s only about the meaning of the word “no” (living with integrity). The only world I want to live in includes “no” meaning “no”. And, make no mistake, I will attempt to resurrect that world if necessary.
This post is simply clarifying that if they persist in their little ‘ask’, then just like in all wars, they will have started the war. Not me. Maybe it’s worth it to them.
And the only real reason for the post is that while starting this war, they persist in the belief that they want peace.
I cannot say it enough.
We are living in a time of perversion.
Captain’s Log 